Silas's Choice Expanded

"Do you know the quickest and most effective way to get intelligence out of a target, Mr. Pulido?"

"No, what?" I said, still stunned, not able yet to talk to the man, not able to lift my head up.

"It's not to torture him for the information. Then he will tell you what he thinks you want to hear—anything to stop the pain. No, Mr. Pulido, the best way to get reliable information out of a target is to give him what he wants—and to make him want more. And then to deny it to him if he stops giving you information that is both good and reliable. And all the better if what he wants is something that will cause him great pain and suffering if it comes to light that this is something he wants."

"Oh, that's interesting . . . but what . . .?"

"Spy candy, Mr. Pulido. I'm starting up a unit of very, very special operatives that we're informally referring to as the candy store."

"Candy?"

"Yes, and we can give you two choices, Mr. Pulido. You can be severed from the Agency—just let go without any consideration or a recommendation—because, after all, you knew very well what our requirements were when you applied for a career here, didn't you? Or you can join the new unit I'm creating. I think you can be very useful to us—and we won't mention whatever sexual preference you want to follow as long as it doesn't publicly redound on the Agency. You'd be doing important work—getting good information from targets in a time-honored way, helping to dispense with any need for torture tactics. Your choice. Which will it be? All you need do is nod, and we'll start the processing in immediately, and you can come back to Langley with me. Just a nod."

My prospects were bleak. Of course I gave the nod.

"Ah, yes. Very good choice. We'll leave within the hour. We'll be arriving in Northern Virginia late, so you can spend the night at my house."

When I left the office, Silas looked up, and I saw the pained expression in his face. I didn't bear him any grudge. I'd known the risks, and I could only imagine what was being held over his head to participate in this recruitment. And, if I'd been asked, I would have had to admit that, despite everything, if Silas had stood and beckoned me to him, I'd have let him do anything he wanted to do to me right there in the corridor of the administration building at the Farm.

Sam Winterberry fucked me that night in the four-poster bed in his townhouse in McLean. He was a master at it, and he made clear that this was all part of my instruction to the new job. But he couldn't give half the cocking that Silas could.

Chapter Three

I was barely eighteen, for craps sake, and all of my life had been tied up in competitive swimming. I had lived and breathed it, nothing else. What did I know about any of this. I hadn't even thought about it. I'd thought only about the next swim meet, how I could parley that into a college education, and how I could manage to keep off the streets of Hampton and out of trouble until I could get out of Virginia. I hadn't even been around white men all that much. God, I didn't even know this went on between guys. I was so naïve, not ready for it—until it happened to me.

The swimming is what did me in, really. I'd gotten that scholarship to Florida State, and a full scholarship too. That didn't mean I didn't need any walkin' around money. That meant a job. My best prospect for a job was at a pool, a life guard maybe—of course I was certified—or pool maintenance. I landed a summer job doing both, at the top secret training base they had there right outside Williamsburg. It was supposed to be some sort of big secret, but everyone knew who ran that place and that it was for training spies.

That didn't bother me. They had a pool at their clubhouse that needed a lifeguard and someone to keep it clean, and they paid a lot of money, and it was no real hassle for me to go through all of their security clearances to be able to work there. As I said, all I'd done in life was work on my swim times from one meet to the next, so I had as clean a record as a black boy in southeast Virginia could have. It certainly didn't hurt in the employment process being black.

From the first day I was working there, I noticed I was being noticed. As raw at anything involving relating to another person—especially a white man—as I was, I had no idea what those looks meant. I certainly didn't get it when the guy called me over to where he was laying on a lounger by the pool. But I certainly get it now. We were the only two out there that afternoon. All of the students were in their classes. This guy was some sort of visiting official. Pretty old—at least in his 40s—but well-developed and worked, with a buzz cut. Everything Marine style. We see a lot of those around the naval bases in Norfolk.

I remember walkin' down the street toward where we were goin' for a swim meet one day, over by the naval base. I was with Leroy, about as good a friend as I had, and we walked by where there were some Navy guys cut just like this guy at the pool, and they gave us cat calls and called out somethin' to me that I hardly understood, and Leroy just took my arm in his hand and started draggin' me in a extra step out of there.

"you don't wanna have any truck with guys like that, Antoine," Leroy said. "What they got on their mind combined with your looks don't equal up to nothin' you wanna know 'bout."

I just went along two-steppin' with him, not asking what he meant, my mind focused on how I was gonna' make my turns in the pool, thinkin' I'd thought up a way to save a split second on each turn. Thinkin' back on it, I guess I shoulda asked him what he meant.

"Come close and let us look at you," the man that day at the pool said in a friendly voice. "My name's Sam Winterberry. Haven't seen you here before."

"I'm Antoine," I mumbled. "This is my first day at the pool."

"Swimmer, aren't you?"

"Yas, sir," I answered.

"Thought so," he said. "And competitive, I'll bet. You got the long legs and the right leg muscles for it." He had reached out and ran his hand down my flank and thigh. It seemed natural at the time. The swim coaches sometimes did that too, to make sure I was keepin' the right muscles developed. Twasn't nothin' in it. Or so I thought.

"And the right streamlined torso, too," he said. And he ran his hand down that too.

Right then someone else, a woman and two little kids came into the pool area. One of the kids was luggin' a giant duck floating device that is really too big for the pool and could as easily hold a kid that size under the water as well as on top of it. The guy—Sam—had dropped his hand from where it had ended on my waist.

"Well, nice meetin' you," I said. "I gotta go figure out how to tell this lady nicely that her kid can't have that duck in the pool, that it isn't safe for a kid his size."

"Hey, Madge," Sam called over to the woman. "I saw in Consumer Reports that that duck is a water hazard for someone the size of Jamie. You might want not to—"

"Oh, my," the woman exclaimed. "I didn't know. His uncle gave it to him. Thanks, Sam. Here, Jamie, give that to me please. We'll have to put it away for another year."

I turned from watchin' the woman start after the little kid, who took out across the pool deck, duck in hand, but the little bugger was soon under her control. And I smiled at the man.

"Thanks, Mr. Winterberry."

"Sam. Call me Sam," the man said, and then he gave me a big smile. "And yes, we'll have to meet again. Soon."

The "soon" came rather frequently, but almost always when other swimmers were there.

But then came that day when "soon" caught up with me. I was cleanin' the pool when Mr. Winterberry came in to the pool area. He wasn't alone, though. He had another white guy with him, a much taller, bulkier guy. Still of the Marine ilk, though. And very good looking.

I guess Silas Collins was the first guy I ever looked at and thought of him being a gorgeous guy in his skimpy little Speedo swim briefs. They were not that much different from the ones I was wearing, from those I always wore at swim meets, although I was told I would get some of those skin-tight full-body swim suits they wore at international meets when I went out to California for the Olympics pretrials in September. My proudest moment had been when I was selected for those. But now there wouldn't be any of that, of course.

I was walkin' around the pool, with the skimmer, takin' the loose leaves out of it. Sam and the other guy, Silas I was soon to learn was his name, were on the loungers, talking softly to each other, and both were eyeing me up and down to my increasing embarrassment. The Silas guy had a sketch pad too, and while he was watchin' me, his hand was flowing across the sketch pad.

He was having a very strange effect on me. I felt all tingly, and I felt my cock gettin' a little hard. Now I could masturbate with the best of them, on my bed at night, with my stash of girlie magazines. But this was the first time I'd ever felt any sensation of arousal like this without the girlie pictures—in fact from a white man. I was so naïve, though, that I wasn't even all that self-damning about how I felt. It was just new and sort of interesting. If I didn't have all of my focus on swimming and had had a daddy in my life, I might have thought about puttin' some stops in right about now. But I didn't. And within minutes it was too late.

I moved to the pool house, where we kept the equipment in the middle, and the women's showers were to the left and the men's to the right inside sort of a little covered but open area with the service counter in front of where we kept the equipment.

The Silas guy was up off his lounger and intercepted me right at the counter as I was tossing the skimmer back to the back of the equipment area. He had his sketch pad in one hand and some four-foot-long leather strap thing fisted by a handhold at one end in the other hand.

"Like to see what I've sketched?" He asked. His smile was terrific. Very friendly.

"Yeah, yeah, I guess." I said dubiously. I didn't want to be unfriendly, but I felt the danger in the air. The closer he got to me, the more aroused I was by him. These were interesting sensations, but now, suddenly, I wasn't so sure they were something I should be feeling.

I looked at the sketch he held out for me to see, and I froze, in shock, my knees starting to go to rubber. It was me, and a great likeness. But it wasn't just me. It was me and this Silas guy, both naked, and he was fucking my butt with me being suspended in front of him with this black leather sling thing he was holding supporting me under my belly.

"Oh god, no, sir. No, I don't—"

That's as far as I got. He moved into me and wrapped one arm around me, bringing my body in close. And he had his lips on mine, and his free hand was moving down my belly and below the waistband of my Speedo.

"You don't what? Don't fuck? Never been with a man before?" he muttered in a gravelly voice when he let me up for air.

"Oh, god no . . . I've never—"

"I don't believe it. You're hard for me. You want me."

"No . . . no, I've never. Please, please—"

"I can take you to paradise. I can show you pleasure like you've never known before. You were getting hard just watching me on the lounger. You're ready to go right now."

He took my lips in his again and opened my mouth to him with his invading tongue, and I shoot off a load into his fist.

He came up for air and laughed. "You've done it with another man now. And it was easy. And you can't tell me you didn't want it, didn't enjoy it. Come into the shower room with me."

"Oh, oh . . . please." But I followed him into the men's dressing room and over to the showers. He turned on the water and turned my belly to the wall and stripped my Speedo down and off my legs.

I moaned and groaned and gave little pleadings of "don't" that weren't even convincing to me, as he knelt behind me and worked my virgin hole open with his tongue, while holdin' my belly to the slippery tiled wall with one strong palm in the small of my back and workin' my cock to and through another ejaculation with his other hand.

I was a rag doll now, lost to him, not fightin' him for anything he wanted to do to me.

And what he wanted to do was fuck me. He took it slow and was as gentle as one could be with a first timer. He turned me and lifted me with palms under my buttocks and just slowly settled my channel down on his cock, as I gasped and groaned and cried out at my first taking. He'd gotten his Speedo off and a condom rolled on before he took me. When he'd worked himself deep inside me and I had stopped shuddering and cryin' and began sighin' for him, he leaned down and picked up that black leather sling he'd brought into the shower with him and slung it up under my butt as he moved out from the wall, leaving me supported by my shoulder blades against the slick wall, water cascading down on both of us, and the sling under my butt, held and controlled on either end in his fists. And then he began a rhythm of tightening and releasing pressure on the sling and moving his cock inside me that, as he promised, sent me to heaven and to my third shoot off.

When he was done, he put his lips to my ear and whispered, "Do you want more of that?"

"Yes," I answered in a small voice. Indeed, having now crossed that threshold, I wanted more of that right now.

But he didn't give me more of that right then. "I'll be at the gate to the pool at four when you get off tomorrow. I'll take you to my room in the student dorms."

"Yes," I whispered.

Then he was gone, and I just sank to the floor of the shower. I still had my eyes closed, both savoring and regretting every moment of that first fuck, when someone turned the water off. I looked up, and there was Mr. Winterberry—Sam. And he was naked and had that look in his eye that I soon was able to read and a raging, condom-crowned hard on.

He reached into the shower and dragged me out and literally folded my belly over his arm and brought me out to the bench running between the lockers in the changing area. He laid me down on my belly on the bench, with my legs straddling the bench. Then he straddled my thighs with his, fisted the hair on my head with one hand and arched my back to him while rollin' my pelvis up to him with his other hand. He guided his throbbing cock to my hole and thrust inside me in one long, strong slide. As he pumped me, I sobbed silently and contemplated not only my second white man of the afternoon but for all time.

When Silas fucked me again in his dorm room on the afternoon we'd agreed to, he used the black leather belt sling, which he called a plow belt, again, holding my hips to his pelvis, his cock buried in my channel, and the small of my back supported by the sling. The weight of my body was supported on the blanket covering his bed by my shoulder blades and the back of my head. The second fuck was as glorious as the first one was.

On our third assignation, Silas wasn't in his room. Mr. Winterberry was there instead, sittin' on Silas's bed, a bunch of photographs fanned out in his hand.

I looked down. They were of Silas fuckin' me in this room two afternoons previously.

"I don't really think Florida State would be happy with these photographs. Do you, Antoine?" Mr. Winterberry asked.

"You bastard," I muttered under my breath.

"I didn't hear that answer, Antoine. Would you care to repeat it—and, by the way, I think I know a way out of this—if I'm in the mood. So, what was your answer?"

"No, sir, I guess they wouldn't like it," I answered through clinched teeth.

"As I said, the Agency actually could use young men like you. I happen to head up a special unit myself. I think I could find a place for you. And it pays well. And I think we might even be able to get you out to California for those Olympic trials. Of course, you'd have to say you were interested. Or you could just walk out of here and do it on your own; see what might happen. Or—"

"I'm interested," I whispered. The possibility of still getting to the Olympics was the kicker. I lived and breathed swimming competition. I'd made a mistake here, but there seemed to be a door still open to me.

"What was that? I didn't hear your response," Sam Winterberry said. He was smilin' that smile and unbuttonin' his shirt.

"I said I was interested," I said in a little louder voice, trying to keep the anger and frustration and belligerence out of it. I knew when I was whipped.

"Well, we can talk about it," Winterberry said as he stood and dropped his trousers. "Strip for me please and lay on the edge of the bed. And spread your legs for me."

As I could have guessed, I wasn't at the Olympic swim trials in September. In September I was back here myself in training at the Farm and two Septembers after that, when the trials came up again, I was deep in the south of Colombia in the compound of the Colombian drug cartel kingpin Estaban Delgado and bound to a sling in his special room and being fucked relentlessly by Delgado.

The only pleasant memories I had from my recruitment into what was informally called the candy store—beyond the fuckings I got from Silas Collins—was seeing the confrontation between Collins and Winterberry outside the dorms when I hobbled outside after being fucked by Winterberry. Collins grabbed Winterberry by the shirt front, and they had a bit of a row, ending in Winterberry being decked onto his butt by Collins and Collins declarin' that he was finished with his "duty" at the Farm and goin' back into South America unless the Agency didn't want his services any more.

Chapter Four

We had to go through three checkpoints, each cut through close-packed rolls of concertina wire, before we were able to enter the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp near Lebanon's border with Israel. It was difficult to think that in just two days Israeli tanks would be cutting through these defenses like they were butter and blasting the hell out of the camp—but Silas had told me that the security measures here were more to keep the refugees in the camp than the Israelis out. I leaned across the aisle in the old school bus and tapped him on the thigh, almost having to scream for him to be able to hear me over the sputtering of the engine and the creaking of metal in the bus as it lurched from one pothole—mortar shell hole, really—to another.

"How many are on the list?" I asked.

"Sixty-five names," Silas yelled back.

"How many does this bus hold?"

"I think we can wedge in thirty-five. What, Seth?"

Silas Collins was looking sharply at me. He knew that I hadn't liked the idea of this from the beginning, the futility of it. I could appreciate the heroic effort he was making, but it all seemed to be so "too late and not enough." Sending out a broken-down bus with seats for only half of those on the list seemed to illustrate the futility of this perfectly.

"What, Seth?" he said again.

"What do we tell the thirty-sixth person, Silas? And more important, what do we tell our colleague, the son of the thirty-sixth person?"

"It's just a hope list, Seth, you know that. There won't be thirty-five relatives of our Palestinian operatives who will be willing to go with us—not even with the personal letters we have begging them to leave. Half of them aren't even here anymore—and two-thirds of those who are still here won't believe the Israelis will really attack the camp. How can I tell them it's going to happen because the Israelis have already given us the date and time it's going to happen?"

"So, this is more so we can feel good about it, then?" I yelled back. I was third-generation American. I never knew until now, right at this moment, how much of Palestine was still in my blood.

"No, this is so we can tell our colleagues we tried and not be lying to them. What choice do we have, Seth?" Silas shot back. "We do what we can. The rest is in the hands of the gods."