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From beneath the bed where she had secreted it earlier, she took a soft cloth bag and tipped its contents onto the sheet beside her.

Smearing her fingers with a thick, creamy jelly, she lubricated a medium-size dildo-vibrator, lifted one of the general’s thighs, and slipped it expertly into his anus.

General Kadiri grunted, opened his eyes, glanced down at the naked woman crouching beside his genitals, and grinned again, the teeth flashing beneath the thick black moustache.

Leila pressed the disk on the base of the vibrator, and the insistent pulsing throb began to fill the general’s lower body. Beneath her hand the woman felt the limp organ begin to swell.

From a flask with a tube sticking through the seal she half-filled her mouth with a swig of tasteless, odorless petroleum jelly, then leaned forward and took the man’s stirring penis into her mouth.

The combination of the oily smoothness of the jelly and rapid probing of her skillful pointed tongue began to have an effect. For ten minutes, until her jaw ached, she caressed and sucked until the general’s erection was as good as it was ever going to be.

Before he could lose it, she lifted her head, swung an ample thigh across him, inserted him into her, and settled across his hips. She had felt bigger and better ones, but it was working—just.

Leila leaned forward and swung her breasts over his face.

“Ah, my big strong black bear,” she cooed, “you are superb, as ever.”

He smiled up at her. She began to rise and settle, not too fast, rising until the helmet was just still between the labia, settling slowly until she had enveloped everything he had. As she moved, she used developed and practiced vaginal muscles to grip and squeeze, relax, grip and squeeze.

She knew the effect of the double incitement. General Kadiri began to grunt and then shout, short harsh cries forced out of him by the sensation of the deep pulsing throb in his sphincter area and the woman rising and falling on his shaft with steadily increasing rhythm.

“Yes, yes, oh yes, this is so good, keep going, darling,” she panted into his face until finally he had his orgasm. While he climaxed into her hips, Leila straightened her torso, towering over him, jerking in spasm, screaming with pleasure, faking her own tremendous climax.

When he was spent, he deflated at once and in seconds she had removed herself and his dildo, tossing it to one side lest he fall asleep too soon. That was the last thing she wanted after all her hard work. There was yet more work to do.

So she lay beside him and drew the sheet over them both, propping herself on one elbow, letting her bosom press against the side of his face, smoothing his hair and stroking his cheek with her free right hand.

“Poor bear,” she murmured. “Are you very tired? You work too hard, my magnificent lover. They work you too hard. What was it today, eh? More problems on the Council, and always you who has to solve them? Mmmmmm? Tell Leila, you know you can tell little Leila.”

So before he slept, he did.

Later, when General Kadiri was snoring away the effects

of arak and sex, Leila retired to the bathroom where, with the door locked and seated on the toilet with a tray across her lap, she noted everything down in a neat, crabbed Arabic script.

Later still, in the morning, the sheets of flimsy paper rolled into a hollowed-out tampon to avoid the security checks, she would hand it over to the man who paid her.

It was dangerous, she knew, but it was lucrative, double earnings for the same job, and one day she intended to be rich—rich enough to leave Iraq forever and set up her own academy, perhaps in Tangier, with a string of nice girls to sleep with and Moroccan houseboys to whip whenever she felt the need.

If Gidi Barzilai had been frustrated by the security procedures of the Winkler Bank, two weeks of trailing Wolfgang Gemütlich were driving him to distraction. The man was impossible.

After the spotter’s identification, Gemütlich had quickly been followed to his house out beyond the Prater Park. The next day, while he was at work, the yarid team had watched the house until Frau Gemütlich left to go shopping. The girl member of the team went after her, staying in touch with her colleagues by personal radio so that she could warn them of the lady’s return. In fact, the banker’s wife was away for two hours—more than ample time.

The break-in by the neviot experts was no problem, and bugs were quickly planted in sitting room, bedroom, and telephone. The search—quick, skilled, and leaving no trace—yielded nothing. There were the usual papers: deeds to the house, passports, birth certificates, marriage license, even a series of bank statements. Everything was photographed, but a glance at the private bank account revealed no evidence of embezzlement from the Winkler Bank—there was even a horrible chance that the man would turn out to be completely honest.

The wardrobe and bedroom drawers revealed no sign of bizarre personal habits—always a good blackmail lever among the respectable middle classes—and indeed the neviot team leader, having watched Frau Gemütlich leave the house, was not surprised.

If the man’s personal secretary was a mousy little thing, his wife was like a scrap of discarded paper.

The Israeli thought he had seldom seen such a downcast little shrimp.

By the time the yarid girl came on the radio with a muttered warning that the banker’s wife was heading home, the neviot break-in experts were finished and out. The front door was relocked by the man in the telephone company uniform after the rest had scuttled out the back and through the garden.

From then on, the neviot team would man the tape recorders in the van down the street to listen to the goings-on inside the house.

Two weeks later a despairing team leader told Barzilai they had hardly filled one tape. On the first evening they had recorded eighteen words. She had said: “Here’s your dinner, Wolfgang”—no reply.

She had asked for new curtains—refused. He had said, “Early day tomorrow, I’m off to bed.”