“Yes, sure, that I do know.”
“Jonah, you don’t mind me calling you Jonah, do you? And please do call me Annika.”
“No, not all, Annika.”
“Good. Could you please lay your Devstick on the table and strip. When you’re done, please place your devstick and clothes into the box next to the fire.” She said, and nodded at a small black box with an open lid to the left of the fire.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I wasn’t sure I had heard her correctly.
“Please turn your Devstick off and strip. I want to make sure that it is just us having this conversation.”
I looked at her for a moment and then took off my scarf and put it on the arm of the Siteazy opposite hers. She was sitting less than a meter away from me. I stripped off the tops outers. The room was warm but still I got goose bumps. Annika sat with her hand under her chin, watching me with a slight smirk on that wide mouth of hers. I thought to hell with it and undid the catch on the bottom outers, pulling them off one leg at a time, remaining facing her and looking into her eyes. Her expression didn’t change except for a slight lift of one eyebrow like she sensed my change in attitude.
I put a thumb into the top off the inners and pulled them to my knees then stepped out of them with my hands by my sides standing in front of her, looking into her eyes. She looked right back, smiled and said, “Not bad.”
“What about you? How do I know that you’re not recording?”
Her eyes flashed and narrowed. “You were the one who asked for the meeting. Not me. And I could have this whole room wired for sound for that matter.” Her eyes changed, widening. Then, arching her back in the Siteazy she said, “However, if it will make you feel better, and in the interests of fair play.”
She stood up and with her hand released something on the side of her dress. Grasping it, she pulled it aside to reveal that she was naked underneath. A thin half inch strip of dark pubic hair acted like a runway for my eyes landing there and I quickly lifted them to look across the flat stomach, with what looked like a large diamond nestled in her belly button, and up to her generous but perfectly shaped breasts. She was stunning and my cock knew it.
She looked down and I smiled at her. She smiled back.
“I must say that standing naked with Annika Bardsdale was not what I was expecting when I got out of my sleeper this evening,” I said with a smile. She burst out laughing and still naked sat back down in the Siteazy, crossing her legs and waving at the opposite Siteazy with her hand. I scooped my clothes and Devstick up and placed them in the box as she’d requested and then sat in the Siteazy and faced her.
“So, Jonah, what do you have in mind?”
“Is this room really safe for a confidential conversation?”
“Yes. It might look old-fashioned — I like it that way — but it has white noise filters surrounding it. Nothing gets in or out.”
“Good, because what I am going to tell you could cost us our lives if it becomes known to anyone other than us. I need your help, and while it is about the Tag Law, it is also about me. Before I begin, I feel compelled to offer you the chance not to hear what I have to say. Once I have told it, your life will be in danger.”
Annika’s face remained calm and expressionless. She regarded me with those huge eyes but her eyes didn’t move. They remained fixed on mine. She suddenly leant forward, her breasts swinging out a little, and placed her elbows on knees — her face a few cents from mine. She said, “After a build-up like that, do you really think that I could not hear what you have to say?” And she smiled. I couldn’t see her lips as her eyes were too close to mine but I saw the set of fine wrinkles around her eyes crinkle up. She sat back in her seat and her breasts wobbled deliciously on her chest.
I let out a soft sigh. I thought about calling Mariko and asking her permission to fuck Annika, but just as swiftly dismissed that idea. Our first night separated and I call her to ask if it is OK to fuck one of the hottest women on the planet? No, Mariko, I said in my mind. If our roles were reversed I couldn’t say yes. I don’t want to share you with anyone else.
Annika broke into my thoughts of not fucking her.
“Do you want an alky? I find that serious chats always go smoother with a glass of wine in your hand.” Saying this she reached over and picked up a bottle of red wine and poured two glasses, handing me mine. Her breasts swung forward again. Puffy pink nipples.
I switched my glance to her face to find her with that same wry grin she had when I was stripping.
“Do you want to have sex?” she asked softly.
“Yes, but I can’t. Or at least if I was going to I would have to call a woman in New Singapore, where it’s midnight now, and I doubt that she’d give me permission. So… as much as I want to, I can’t.” Annika took a big swallow of her wine and, holding it in her closed mouth, ballooned out her cheeks, swirling it around. She turned her head in profile to me and the cheek facing me ballooned in and out rapidly. She swallowed loudly and dripping her finger back in the glass ran it dripping with red wine down her throat between her breasts and around the diamond in her belly button coming to rest on that little landing strip.
“Annika, you’re killing me. Please stop it. I know I am going to regret this decision for the rest of my life but I can’t change it. Please!”
I wasn’t quite begging but my resolve was crumbling fast. She laughed while she was taking a sip of her wine and it went down the wrong way. She coughed and spluttered as the wine she had spat out was sizzling in the fireplace. I reached over and gently patted her back. She held up a hand recovering.
“I’m sorry. I’ll be a good girl. It’s not nice to tease you like that, even if it is fun. And I seem to have at least one supporter.” She nodded at my cock which was poking straight up.
“No, honestly, you’ve got two supporters. Even I think I’m idiot but a promise is a promise.”
She reached over and smiling patted my leg. “I think I would have enjoyed sex with you very much, but I think also that I am going to enjoy the man even more.”
I took her hand in mine and raised it to my lips, kissing it softly, looking it her eyes as I did so and swirling the tip of my tongue ever so slightly on the taut skin of her knuckles.
“Ooh look, you made the hairs stand up on my arm,” she said, chuckling. I sat back releasing her hand.
Her face was open and honest, as beautiful inside as out. I knew I could trust this woman. We needed friends for this cause of ours, and I chose to trust her.
“My name is not Jonah James Oliver. My real name is Mark Anthony Zumar. My father and mother were murdered by Sir Thomas just after I was born. I never knew them. My brother, Gabriel, is now the most wanted man on the planet, and he’s trying to stop six billion people from being killed. And I need your help.”
Chapter 30
Lev tube, Coast of the Indonesian Geographic
Friday 10 January 2110, 5:15am +8 UTC
I had just left San Francisco, a beautifully old city full of charm and a vibrant society. Another city lucky to have escaped the bomb. Nearby in Sacramento, where I had a dinner, they were not so fortunate. Everything there had been built in the last thirty years.
The speed of the Lev and the time difference between San Francisco and New Singapore made me feel as if I was in some kind of time machine. After traveling the sixteen and a half thousand kiloms in two hours, the fifteen hours’ time difference was what was really throwing me. I had left San Francisco at noon on Thursday and now, as we sped along the coast of Indonesia Geographic, it was 5:15am on Friday. The light inside the Lev never changed. Day or night, it was the same.
After the meeting with Annika in London, I went to Paris and New Boston and both had been a waste of time. I’d cut both trips short. Instead I spent more time with the publisher I met in San Francisco.
In San Francisco, the editor for HarperCollins had invited me to his Env in Sacramento for dinner. When I offered him Sir Thomas’s memoirs for publication, he jumped at the chance. Strictly speaking, Sir Thomas didn’t
