PASSING
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PASSING
A story by Pete Brown (petebrownuk@yahoo.com)
Part Eight Slave management. A deal discovered. A voyage.
When we got back to my flat Greg still seemed to be pretty pissed off. And when I decided it was time for bed I snapped at him to take his shorts off - he has this tendency to not go around naked as a slave should, and when he lies there sucking my cock I think he doesn't like it when I can see his cock and bum. He did so with very bad grace, I think, and I told him that this was the last time I was going to tell him - if he was ever in my bedroom in shorts again he'd not only have to take them off but I would then spank his bum. And I chortled as I reminded him how much Sam had hated having Dave slap his bum, and how Jason had cried when being spanked, and went on to say how much fun I might have if I took my hand - or even a ruler or something like that - to Greg's hard muscles.
This didn't seem to please him at all, and he lay there with very bad grace, first stroking my cock and then with his usual hesitancy taking it between his lips as if it was something odious! Still, I am his owner, and I am in control, and when I felt myself beginning to cum instead of letting Greg pull away and catch my cum as he normally did, I held the back of his head firmly and shot into his mouth. And then of course he was even more pissed off.
His mood continued the following morning when he seemed to make a point of walking around my bedroom naked - I know I'd said that he had to, but there's a huge difference between doing it naturally and properly, and sort of half-covering himself with a hand if he saw me looking, and scowling and sighing all the time. So I told him to start behaving properly and not acting like some sort of naive kid, and all I got was a surly "I am."
"You're acting properly, or you're acting like some kind of naive kid and not like a grown man? Anyway, I don't like your attitude, so change it. You're pissed off about yesterday...."
I never got to finish my sentence as Greg cut it "Yes I am! I fucking well am! It's not right, making a man fuck like that, it's...."
"Shut the fuck up. Right now! And let's get something clear - you're right, it wouldn't be correct to make a man fuck a bitch in front of you. But you're not a man, Greg, you're a slave, my slave. And if I want to see you fucking, whether it's in front of me or in front of lots of people as we;;, that's exactly what you will do. Is that clear?"
He still looked surly, so I went on "And in any case, I can't see the problem. You're always telling me you're so-called `straight'. You're always talking about all the women you've fucked. You complain about not having any females around the place. And yet when I give you the opportunity to show us what you can do, you're like this...."
Greg went to interrupt me, but I was in no mood for an argument and simply went on "But then you know, Greg, you're always telling me things. You tell me you don't want me to sell you. So if I can't believe all your stuff about fucking, how can I believe that you don't want me to sell you?"
That shut him up! I know he lives in fear of losing his good life with me and being sold off at auction to some other owner who almost certainly wouldn`t treat him as well. That's always a powerful tool in an owner's armoury of ways to deal with slaves. So we went about the rest of the morning's business mostly in silence, but I was pleased to see that Greg was at least "polite", well, superficially so, anyway, and perhaps that's the best a slave owner can hope for.
I resolved that when I spoke to Dave later in the day I'd have a word with him about Greg - perhaps some short period of remedial retraining would do him good. But then as I sat on the tube out to Canary Wharf my thoughts turned about what exactly I was going to say to Dave anyway - he'd be sure to want me to go around there and pick up where we'd left off, and how was I going to do that without letting on that I didn't actually know what I was doing when it came to fucking (and even less about being fucked!). So instead of those few minutes for me to get in to the day properly, calmly and coolly thinking about all that was to be done and how I was going to arrange it, I actually arrived far from calm.
Mondays, if there's no big deal going on, is totally boring. The morning is all regular weekly meetings, and as usual there's not a lot to be done by me. My people all know that it's not acceptable to come to the meetings not having done all the things that they agreed to the previous week, or with problems which they have not had some thoughts about how we might resolve them. So I mostly sit there mildly bored. And today it was worse, as the "Dave problem" was still going around in my head.
It didn't get better when Sam stuck his head in after my last meeting and said "Dave has been on the phone a couple of times - shall I get him for you?"
"No, hold off. I've got a couple of other things to do first."
Sam looked at me curiously, as he knows there weren't any more things. And so to confuse him I got up and walked out, telling him I'd be back later and refusing to specify where I was going or how long I was going to be. I like to keep him guessing, like to make it clear that he doesn't know everything!
In fact I'd got nothing to do and nowhere in particular to go, so I sauntered to one of the best coffee places, a long way from our block so I would be unlikely to see anyone else from the company, and sat there doing the Guardian crossword (which doesn't take me long of course!) as I sipped my Americano. And enjoying the sight of the young guys in the queue - they all mostly come down without coats or jackets as a lot of the towers have entrances directly into the mall so they don't need them even if it's cold or raining (or both, we are in London, remember). So with the current fashion in men's suits for them to be low-slung tight trousers, there's always something interesting to see.
When I got back to the office Sam was having some kind of argument with one of the staff, so I simply went past into my own space and shut the door. I could see through the glass that Sam was being very forceful, and I recognised the man he was arguing with as one of the junior staff we'd decided to let go during the HR part of our meetings earlier. He was a bit of a failed experiment, actually - we usually recruit only from Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and the LSE, but some member of the board had queried this last year saying we ought to give some places to graduates from other places "to make our diversity policy look as if it's working!. Without much hope of success I'd agreed to pacify the board, but I knew it wasn't likely to work as firstly we need brain power, lots of it, and if you've got that, you'd be at one of our usual recruiting places, not Sussex as my memory now reminded me this man was from. And then we like our recruits to be "properly brought up", as my parents would have said - to be smooth and affable in conversation, to know how to circulate at cocktail parties, how to be properly deferential to senior management, to dress like a gentleman, and all those kind of things. And he was none of them. Indeed, seeing him standing there waving his arms about as he argued with Sam I could see that his suit was not from a proper city tailor but something from a chain store, and he might even be wearing a polyester tie and not silk! As usual, I though, I'd been right. But at least at the next board meeting I could say that we had tried.
I had started reading some tedious research paper on my screen - and had decided to forward it to someone telling them to prepare a summary for me - when my door burst open and the man strode in, pursued of course by Sam.
"I need to speak to you, sir", he half shouted at me.
"Make an appointment."
"I've been trying, all last week. My manager won't listen. His manager won't either. So I decided to come direct to you, and now this lad..." he half turned and sort of motioned at Sam "...won't let me in. He says you're too busy. Well, you don't look it!"
"I am too busy. Sam manages my diary."
"Too busy to miss out on the biggest deal to hit this century? Well I was thinking of quitting, and this proves I'm right. If I can`t get my ideas listened to here, I'm off somewhere they will be. Any you'll all look fucking stupid in the FT when the news finally breaks and it turns out you missed it. Like the man who didn't sign The Beetles."
As you probably are aware, it's OK to think words like "fuck". And with men like Dave to use them. Or to use them socially, or in the pub. But absolutely not in the offices of a huge respectable financial institution like us. So this was another example of how he didn't quite "fit". But on the other hand he was quite good looking in a rather rough sort of way. And perhaps he did have an idea. And he was right about one thing - we always have to be careful about our reputation. So I said "Five minutes. Convince me, or you're out - fired, that is. I won't tolerate behaviour like this in the office."
"I'm Ian, sir...."
"I know that. I know all the staff. Get on with it."
He looked at Sam, and said "It's highly confidential."
"Sam is my PA. He knows everything about my work. Get on with it, as I said."
Well I won't bore you with all the details, but he started to tell me about a huge scheme he'd heard about that involved a major, but major, restructuring of one of the US's biggest - if not the biggest - financial institutions, with various parts being spun off, or merged, or closed down. "...and there have to be opportunities for us there, sir. If we get in early. Either to be a part of it, working with them on the restructuring for huge fees, or even better, going into the markets now to buy stuff they'll need to round out the new venture, or future-sell stuff they'll be dumping, or...."
"I'm aware of how to make money when you have advance information. But how do you know all this?"
"I got a hint from this woman I'm shagging. She's head of operations at...."
"No way!", Sam cut in. "He's bullshitting, sir. She was at your `City Influencers' dinner last month. She's at least fifteen years older than him. No way would...."
Ian grinned. "Well as it happens, I have a thing for older women - I like a woman with a bit, no, a lot, of experience. Someone who'll be properly grateful. And you could say there are a lot of ladies that like me, too - especially when they see the `thing' I have for them."
He smiled a his own cleverness in using the word "thing" twice with different meanings and went on "She wouldn't tell me anything really, but we were supposed to be having our one month anniversary shag this week - I was at your dinner, not actually eating, but at the reception first which is where we met - and she went to New York instead. And I can tell you, it must be pretty important or she'd never have missed out on what we were planning here...."
I smiled, to show I was at least understanding of how a young man like him might spend his spare time. "Anyway", he went on "We bought up that travel company last year and havent sold it yet, and it turns out they do all the travel arrangements for her company - it's compulsory, they all have to use it, even the execs. So I went over to the travel companys offices and started to ask a few questions." He stopped a moment and added "I think there's a complaint on its way to you, sir, as they didn't want to tell me anything, something about `confidentiality', so I had to remind them who owns them, and...."
"Quite. Get on with it..."
"Anyway, everybody - everybody who's anybody, at least, is in the USA. And what's more they're not staying in their usual hotels. One of the bookers told me she'd had them on the phone saying the hotels the system books automatically to get them the corporate discount were not suitable, and they demanded places more discrete, not near Wall Street, or midtown. So that seemed odd. So then I looked a bit closer and they were booking all these meeting rooms and stuff as well.... So I rang the places in the US, pretending to be going, and asking to check the other names.... And hen I found out who all these meetings were with..."
I was getting intrigued now and nodded for him to continue.
"Well after that I got Research here to run some numbers, detailed numbers, that is, and things seem to be going a bit wrong with their operations...."
"All this is very interesting, but hardly proof that there's a huge deal about to happen...."
"Well, sir, don't you think it's worth while doing a bit of digging...?"
To my surprise Sam cut in "I know some guys in their UK operations. We play football every Thursday night. They haven't been their usual cheery selves in the showers afterwards, haven't been splashing out on the champagne - it's been beer, like the rest of us. It could be that they're worried."
"How well do you know these people, Sam?"
"Well, as I said, we play football, have done for three years. And I know them as well as any bloke I've been naked with..." He grinned.
I looked at my watch. "It's 11:30. This is what we will do. Ian, you call your woman in the USA - I assume you've got her mobile as you've been, as you say, `shagging' her. Pump her for anything she knows. Tell her you're missing her, you're missing her body, or whatever you usually tell her, ask when she's coming back, say you're desperately horny, offer to go there for the weekend for fun and sex.... Anything to get her talking. And find out more of her plans. And you, Sam - call up one of your naked mates and offer to take him out to lunch, no expense spared. See what you can find out. If he's worried about losing his job, offer to put in a good word for him here.... And we'll meet again at 16:00, here."
I motioned for them to go, and added "And Sam, call Dave and tell him I am not able to speak to him today as I am snowed under, but that he is to proceed with the business we discussed.... And clear my diary for the rest of the day. Absolutely no interruptions."
Sam nodded, and I could see the advantage of having a PA who really knew my business! And I had postponed, at least for the time being, needing to do anything about Dave. It's funny, isn't it - normally I'm the kind of person who takes the bull by the horns, as the old saying goes. I'll always have the difficult meeting, always make the dreadful call no one else wants to do. And here I was, not calling a slave dealer, who I could personally buy out ten times over if I wanted to. And now feeling good about not calling, because I'd managed to find an excuse - an excuse for myself, that is, for not doing so. How much effort would it really have been to pick up the phone myself - and yet I'd put it off.
I spent the time then ding my own research - tapping my own network of contacts. And doing so skilfully, as of course whilst trying to find out what they might know, I had to be careful not to reveal what I might know, or, indeed, that I knew anything at all. And it was very inconvenient not having Sam there: I decided to work through lunch and when I needed a sandwich one of the other secretaries had to be sent out to my favourite place (the ones in the staff restaurant were not good), and she did not know exactly what to order to cater for my special likes and it came without the thin slivers of my favourite gherkins to add piquancy.
When we got together at 16:00 - Sam and Ian both looked very excited and I had to tell them to calm down so I could filter out what they knew, in the sense of having been told it, from what they were surmising from the way it had been told to them. Added to the stuff from my own sources, it did indeed seem as if something might be on he cards. I therefore decided to do something I had not done for three years, since I last had had any contact with him having worked on a deal with him (or, rather, for him), and dialled the "private" number of Cyrus Williams. For those of you who do not know of him, that simply shows how powerful the man is - no mention of his name, or his wealth, or his power, ever appears in the press. When something needs to be done publicly about one of his holdings, it's the CEO of the corporation who is told to do it, not Cyrus.
I listened to the phone rang out, then as soon as it answered I picked up my end as I hate "conference calls". Yes, Sam and Ian might know more if they could hear the call, but that's not my way of working.
It was gratifying to see he knew my name still, so my number must be in his phone. And he remembered our work, as he said at once "Three years, no contact."
"Yes, Cyrus. I would only contact you if there was something important, as you know. And there is. I'd like to discuss..."
"Not on the phone. These days you can't be too careful. Lunch in my private dining room, tomorrow."
"13:00? Sorry... 1 p.m. ? Assuming the morning flight's not late....", and that was that.
"Get me on the 08:00 from Heathrow", I said to Sam. "And a limo to midtown."
"Address?"
"I'll tell the driver in the car."
"It's very short notice, the 08:00's usually full, especially in first class...."
"Sam, just do it. I'll slum it in business class if I have to. And anyway there's almost certainly someone in this company going on that flight, and if it's fully booked, tell him he's no longer going. I surely don't have to tell you how to do your job!"
"Make that two tickets", Ian said to Sam. "You never know, sir. I could hook up with my woman, sir. Who knows what I might find out."
I was warming to Ian. As I've said, he had a certain kind of rugged - no, perhaps "thuggish" appearance. He was thick and muscular, and I guessed he may have has a tough childhood as he had that kind of look of hardness coupled with an underlying vulnerability about his face. And I like a man who sees a chance, and goes for it.
This kind of semi-erotic thinking was doing me no good though, especially as Sam was standing there with his nice little bum stuck out, and I remembered how appealing it had looked when bare, with Dave's hand print on it when he'd slapped him playfully in the photo session - good god, was it only two days ago? I've learned by now to always trust my instincts, and something was telling me there might be more excitement to come with Sam, so I said casually "Any you'd better come too, Sam. I might need some on-the-spot stuff done, and we'd better be careful about phones and e-mail and things - there's so much at stake here, as this is the biggest of big business, that I don't think we can really trust the American spying agencies to stick completely to the law."
Sam looked delighted - I don't suppose he'd ever been away on company business before. "Oh, and you and Ian - business class! The firm's not made of money. And I don't want to hear any rubbish about it being sold out so you had to go first with me."
"We'd better take Ted, too, sir", Ian cut in again.
"Who's he?"
"He's my mate in IT. He does all sorts of stuff for me, finds out things you never even thought existed. He's in Security, really, but who knows better about how to get around all that stuff than someone who works with it all the time?"
Interesting, I thought. So we've got people in out IT department bust circumventing all the controls we have. Or perhaps even going out and hacking other people's stuff. We could be deep in he shit.... But perhaps it would be useful. So I'll pretend I didn't know, I thought, and when the scandal broke, if it did, it would all be "Shocked that such things could happen. No knowledge of it...., etc." I nodded to show my agreement.
That night as he packed my bag for the trip Greg was in a sour mood again, muttering on about never going anywhere himself. And I had to remind him that, probably a reaction to their experience in the nineteenth century, the USA was one of the few civilised (well, half civilised) places on the planet which had not reintroduced slavery. So if Greg arrived there he would, by definition, be a free man. And I'd probably be arrested for being a slave owner, or something! It didn't make any sense, of course - they were not going to arrest me on arrival for being a slave owner of slaves in London, so why should it be different if the slave was in New York?
"So would that be such a bad thing, for me to be free?"
"For you, Greg, probably not. But you can't be sure. After all, you didn't manage all that well when you were free, you did get yourself enslaved! So who's to say it wouldn't happen again if you were free? But it's not going to happen, anyway - you're too valuable and I could get a tidy sum for you if I sold you, and I don't throw money away, you know that."
"It's fucking unfair!", he mumbled.
"Unfair? What's unfair? You broke the rules. You were enslaved. What's unfair about that?"
It's not so bad flying the Atlantic if you're in first class, although there's not a lot to look at - the stewards get to be in first through some sort of seniority process, and so most of them are older than me. And although they look as if they like men, they're definitely far from being the kind of hard muscled, lithe young men I like. Indeed, I want a man who's a proper man, not some sort of "queer". The limo driver who met us though was interesting, and I couldn't help thinking that if he had been wearing only a slave collar as he drove us into the city how much more interesting it would have been.
Although we had a hotel booked and I had been planning to go directly to Cyrus's office first, the driver seemed to know differently and said that Mr Williams had instructed him to take us directly to his penthouse apartment.
Look, I have a pretty nice place in Westminster, as I've told you. But the building we drew up at, fronting the park, was something else. It must have been dramatically expensive, as unlike so many other buildings in the area it was still only ten stories high and had not been torn down to build newer, much higher places. I dated it as from the 1930s, and its decor was absolutely perfect - clearly a fortune was spent to keep it that way. A very discrete doorman ushered us to the desk of a "house manager" who checked and said that we were expected, and in turn ushered us into an elevator marked "penthouse" - which, incredibly, had an elevator operator, I suppose in keeping with the 1930s mood of the place! How much money was all this costing, I wondered. A private elevator and a private elevator operator.
Cyrus greeted me warmly, and although I introduced Sam, Ted and Ian, he clearly wasn't interested in them and simply nodded. He took us through into a simply enormous living room with panoramic views over the park, and I complimented him on it.
"Yes, not a lot of these apartments were ever built. They were expensive even then. And now.... Well, anyway, I like space. And there are not a lot of places overlooking the park with eight bedrooms."
I couldn't believe it! I mean, I was rich. But this was wealth on an altogether different scale. At that point a servant opened the door and a woman came in, and Cyrus introduced us. Mrs Williams - who Cyrus said at once I should call Anastasia - was simply stunning. She was about the same age as me, I guessed, so half that of Cyrus. She was so simply dressed that her outfit must have cost thousands and thousands, and the only ornamentation she wore was a diamond ring - a single stone - which, if it were genuine, and I assumed it was, would have been worth millions. To go along with all of this she had flawless skin (or was extremely carefully made up to achieve perfect naturalness), and her blond hair looked so natural it must be natural, as no hairdresser could achieve that with dye. Although he must be good at his job as it was so perfectly coifed that not a hair was out of place.
In turn I introduced her to Sam, Ted and Ian, and I could see that Ian was almost open mouthed with astonishment. And perhaps there's something in this "animal magnetism" thing, as in turn Anastasia held Ian's hand as they shook for at least five seconds longer than she had of either me, Ted or Sam.
Waiters served a light lunch in a dining room capable of seating at least twenty, and afterwards Cyrus took me off to his study, simply telling Anastasia to "see that his people got everything they wanted", and I suggested they went off to our hotel.
"I asked you here", Cyrus began, "As I do know something's afoot. And it's so big that if we're going to make money it must be absolutely secret. The Feds are so scared of any ruckus in the financial situation on this scale that they'd do anything to stop the carefully-crafted plan I assume they're executing from going wrong." He leaned forward conspiratorially and continued "And of course that's what we need to do, to make the killing of the century - to have our plans execute instead and for theirs to go wrong, horribly wrong. Irrespective of the consequences. So this is the only safe place we can meet and work - it's swept for bugs daily, every piece of communication in and out is encrypted, and so on and so on. And whilst the financial authorities can swoop on any office in the city, a man's home is still pretty sacrosanct."
Well, from that start, we pooled what we knew. And as we were both experienced, sharp operators, we soon had a list of things we needed to know, and things to be done. We discussed how all this was going to happen, and I suggested that we kept the team small, pointing out that Sam was a "fixer", Ian could be sent out to get information from women, as well as doing other research, and Ted was possibly the best hacker not in government service.
So that was that, and Cyrus "suggested" we all move in, to keep us all working close and enhance security. I nodded agreement, he picked up a phone and told his chauffeur to go to our hotel, pick up the three men and all the luggage, to tell them to check out, and to get back here.
End Of Part Eight