Maria Marshall alighted from her cab in front of one of the many unmarked government buildings in the area of the Federal Triangle near L'Enfant Plaza. Many of these new buildings contained spillover offices from some of the big departments and many of the smaller agencies. But the one Maria entered was unmarked for an entirely different reason, and the guard at the door was no routine building guard, but a highly paid agent of Western Intelligence.
She had left her luggage at Dulles, hoping that her trip would be a short one, and then it would be back to her paradise island on the Riviera… and Sandra. Today, it was warm in Washington, and Maria wore a thin, stretch-nylon dress without stockings.
Once inside the building, she had to show the guard three sets of credentials, sign her name, have a thumbprint taken and whisked through a computer for an “okay." After that, she boarded the elevator and pressed the button for the next to the top floor of the well-guarded building. In the corner of the elevator, at the ceiling, there was a small black object. It was actually the lens of a television camera. Somewhere in the depths of the huge building, her every move was being monitored on a TV screen.
Finally, she was ushered into the carpeted office of her boss, a man known to her only as "Beta." He was a balding man of fifty to fifty-five, she guessed, and from things he had mentioned, she assumed that he had been thoroughly broken in to intelligence work during World War II as an attachй at the U.S. Embassy in neutral Switzerland.
"Beta" stood up politely as Maria entered his office and waited until she had taken her seat opposite his desk before sitting back down.
"My apologies for interrupting your holiday, Miss Marshall," he said. And the girl thought she could detect genuine regret in his voice. "However, as things have turned out, I don't think you'll be kept too long from your vacation.
"'As a matter of fact,” he continued, "I've arranged for you to return this afternoon!" He passed an airline ticket across the desk and Maria took it, her eyes widening in surprise.
"Well, forgive me for saying so, but wasn't it rather a waste of time to bring me all the way back here for a briefing? Surely you could have sent me a coded cable if the job I've got to do is in France? At least," she said after a pause. "I assume that's what you have in mind. There's certainly not going to be much time to do any work here."
"Beta" got his cigar going and blew a thick cloud of vile-smelling smoke past her head before replying. "No," he told her. "First of all, we couldn't run even the smallest risk of a communication being intercepted. The job is far too important. Secondly, you will start the assignment on the plane in Paris.
"Let me put you in the picture: I assume you know that a certain Miss Eva Harnecz is one of the East's leading woman scientists?" Maria nodded.
"But what you probably don't know… that nobody knew until this morning, when I received our Budapest agent's report-is that she's almost perfected an RPM-a radar-proof guidance missile!"
Maria leaned forward in her chair, amazement on her face. «That's incredible!" she breathed. «I always thought such a thing was scientifically impossible! Are you sure it's not just a piece of propaganda the Communists have allowed to filter out?"
"Beta" shrugged, lifting his hands in a gesture of uncertainty. “We can't say. It s a possibility, he admitted. "But, naturally, we can't afford to take chances. If she is on the brink of devising such a devastating invention the Communist will, quite literally, be able to strike anywhere without warning.
"I don't have to remind you, he went on. That everything we say in this room is "A-crypto" and confidential. However, what I'm about to tell you now is the most private and not-to-be-revealed information you've ever heard. I thought I should make that absolutely clear.
"Now somehow or other, and in spite of the danger that she'll be exposed to, Miss Harnecz has persuaded her superiors to allow her to take a vacation in Western Europe!" He sniffed as if the vagaries of the Communist Integrated Intelligence filled him with disdain.
"She'll be heavily guarded, of course, and watched every second. However, we want you to do your utmost to get to know her and try to convince her that she should defect to our side!"
Maria's mouth opened wide. She could scarcely believe her ears. “But this is a job for a man?" she protested. "Not because of the danger involved, she added quickly. “You know that I'm capable of looking after myself In a tight spot as well as any male!.
“To persuade her to defect means only one thing. You’d have to get her to fall in love with one of our agents. How can I…”
Maria broke off in mid-sentence, feeling her cheeks coloring as “Beta” nodded slightly, his eyes mischievous. “I see!” she finished softly. “You think I could succeed in that department better than a man because…”
“All right. I won’t be coy about it! We both know that I enjoy going to bed with girls! But is Eva really a lesbian? Are you absolutely sure?”
“Absolutely!” the man told her. “Our most notorious Lothario has done his damndest to make her fall for him. And he had no luck at all! Our only hope is to try someone who will appeal to her, ah, forgive me, my dear-her somewhat sophisticated tastes! I can’t think of anyone more attractive and more appealing than you.”
“Anything for the free world,” Maria murmured to herself. “All in the line of duty, I suppose.” To “Beta” she said: “Woul4n’t it be easier and more likely of success to simply kidnap her, though? This seems a roundabout way of trapping her.”
“Beta” shook his head. “No,” he told her. “We need to find out if the report is true first of all. If it turns out to be only propaganda, we can forget the whole thing. On the other hand, if-as I’m inclined to suspect-Miss Harnecz has broken through a tremendous scientific barrier, we want her to work for us. She’ll hardly do that if we kidnap her.
“Our prestige and importance in the eyes of the world will be increased a thousand fold if we can persuade her to defect. So you see, my dear, how very important this mission is. I’m asking a great deal of you, I know. But it’s a long-shot we’ve got to take. If it comes off, if you succeed in making Eva fall desperately in love with you (and I leave all the details to you, of course!) it ought to be a fairly easy matter, to play on the girl’s loyalty and get her to come to our side.
Maria still felt bewildered. It was the first time the Department had made use of her particular sexual desires and the calm, unemotional way in which “Beta” was telling her to use the expertise of her lesbian inclinations was frightening.
He wanted her to deliberately seduce this girl, do everything in her power to make Eva love her so much that she’d even act the traitor to please her and to be with her.
Maria shuddered inwardly at the cold bloodedness of the plot. And she realized, not for the first time, how completely the machinations of espionage overlooked and discounted the feelings of its servants. “Will I be working on my own?” she asked “Beta”. “Or are you planning to send some strong-arm boys over to help me out?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact I’ve arranged for an old friend of yours to meet you in Paris. He’ll have to keep out of sight of Eva though, because only two days ago he was doing his best to seduce her himself!”
Maria looked pleased. “If it’s the man I think you mean, I couldn’t be happier,” she smiled. “Is it Don Cabot.”
“Correct!” he replied. “He’ll stay close to you, but rye warned him to keep in the background. The Communists will be particularly interested in meeting up with him. He killed Tzerny, their chief man in Hungary. He's being smuggled out of there this morning on a private charter flight to France.
"Oh, incidentally, you'll be taking along a girl named Erica Sondgaard… Danish. She was with Don in Budapest, more as a messenger than anything else. She'll be acting in the same capacity for you. Anything you feel you can't put into a cable or phone through Erica will deliver personally to me.
"What about 'Alfa'?" Maria asked. "Isn't he involved in this, too? Since Don usually works under him I would have thought… "
"Beta" tapped his pipe against the side of his desk. "It's been decided that the full responsibility for this little exercise should fall on my shoulders, he replied.
The man dropped the cigar into an ashtray, signaling that the interview was over. Maria got to her feet. She felt that there were still dozens of questions she wanted to ask him, but time was growing short.
"We've had word that Eva will be flying to the Riviera via Paris," he added as she turned to go. "Rather a convenient timetable, isn't it? You'll be able to bump into her right away… on the flight from Paris to the Riviera."
Maria turned to make an acid retort to this bit of baiting, but "Beta" was already absorbed in a bulky file, his eyes moving rapidly over the pages as if he had already dismissed her from his mind, She let the door slam behind her, a weak gesture of defiance she knew, but she felt she had to do something to show her disgust.
The Air France jet broke through the heavy dark clouds which hung over Paris’ Orly Airport and straightened out from its climb. Just over two hours flying time away it would be coming in to land at the Riviera at about six in the evening.
Maria and Erica sat together in the first class section, talking in low voices. They had met each other just before take-off and Maria had been pleasantly surprised by the youth and attractiveness of her fellow-traveler. Erica was quite low in rank compared to herself, but Maria could tell after a few minutes' conversation with the girl that she possessed considerable potential. Both in terms of intelligence and sex appeal.
She found herself wishing momentarily that it was Erica she had to seduce. That would have been a most enjoyable task, Maria reflected; taking a quick look at her companion's extremely well-filled dress and noting the interesting pout of her lips.
So far, Maria had only caught a few brief glimpses of the woman scientist as they boarded the aircraft. Eva Harnecz was sitting two rows in front of them, accompanied by another Hungarian girl who seemed to be her maid. Two thickset men sat on the aisle opposite them and their eyes were constantly turned to Eva, betraying without a shadow of doubt their function as her bodyguards.
Maria waited until Eva got up to visit the wc, then gave her a few minutes grace before moving as casually as possible down the aisle after her. She could feel the eyes of the two Communist agents boring into her back and couldn't resist the temptation to sway her buttocks seductively as she sauntered away from them.
Curtains hung between the restroom section and the seat compartment and Eva made sure that they were closed after she'd passed through them.
She stood outside the toilet marked "engaged" until Eva opened the door, then smiled as sweetly as she could at the girl. To her surprise, Eva-in the flesh-was a total contrast to her photographs. She had an extremely beautiful face and figure, vivacious eyes and full red lips that seemed to invite a kiss.
Maria said, “Excuse me, I’m afraid rye left an earring in there-you didn’t happen to see it by any chance, did you?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Eva replied. Her English was excellent-only the merest trace of a Hungarian accent. Maria noticed that the girl’s eyes were meeting hers with a frank, openly appraising gleam in them. Her tongue licked slowly over her upper lip, leaving a moist film on the red flesh.
“Oh dear!” Maria exclaimed. “I do hope it isn’t lost. It was a present from a very dear friend of mine. A very special girl friend,” she added, letting a very slight emphasis fall upon the last three words. An emphasis which would certainly have been completely lost on anyone unversed in lesbian affairs.
Maria saw instantly that Eva’s eyes lifted in sympathetic understanding at the phrase. An unspoken alliance had been formed between the two girls; a silent, almost subliminal bond of recognition.
Eva had been put very much on her guard when she saw the American girl waiting outside the toilet. Then, studying her more closely, she felt convinced that she was simply an ordinary (though extremely beautiful!) tourist-certainly nothing to do with Western Intelligence. A slight prickling sensation was running up and down her spine as she stood so close to Maria. The statuesque beauty of the blonde girl was strangely compelling. She sensed an almost tangible flow of rapport between them.
“Please,” she said, and it seemed to her that her voice was trembling, so magnetic was the force of the girl’s personality. “Let me help you to look for it. Come.”
Eva turned back into the toilet and Maria squeezed into the tiny room with her. Their bodies were inevitably brushing together as the girls hunted for the fictitious earring. Eva bent down to search behind the bowl of the lavatory and Maria’s silken thigh-her mini-skirt hem revealing seven inches of lovely leg above the knee-was breathtakingly close to her face.
The plane swayed and she could scarcely avoid her cheek coming into fleshy contact with the girl’s thigh, and feeling the taut nylon she loved so passionately, Eva instinctively rubbed her face against Maria’s stocking. She felt the girl’s leg writhe briefly, but couldn’t be sure whether this was due to the movement of the aircraft or not.
Flushed and aroused, Eva got to her feet again. Her companion swayed slightly towards her (and again, Eva found it impossible to know if the action was accidental or not). She put her hands out to steady the girl, and her fingers pressed into the sleek swell of her hips, feeling through the thin material of Maria’s skirt her curved and fleshy hip.
Lifting her eyes up to the girl’s face, Eva saw with a start that she was about to cry. Tears had welled up in the bright eyes, and Maria’s lower lip was trembling prettily.
“It’s lost-I know it’s lost!” she sobbed. “Ill never find it again! Oh, it meant so much to me!” Suddenly, she buried her head on Eva’s shoulder and her body shook violently. Eva put her arms more tightly around the girl, drawing her into an embrace and letting their breasts press firmly together.
"There, there'" she soothed, stroking Maria and murmuring the words tenderly into her ear. "Please don't upset yourself. I'm sure your girl friend wouldn't want you to do that'" Eva rested Maria's tear-stained cheek against her own. "Come try to console yourself."
The woman was holding 'the weeping girl very close to her body, planting her feet firmly astride against the movement of the plane. Maria's hands came up slowly around her back and gradually tightened at her spine, the strong fingers pressing into Eva as the girl cuddled tearfully into her body.
"Don't cry now," Eva whispered. "Let me brush the tears away for you." She touched the tips of her fingers to Maria's cheeks and softly wiped them dry. Maria's body was shaking against hers and Eva could feel the extreme prominence of the girl's breasts against her own, thrusting and pushing as Maria continued to sob wildly.
Softly, Eva began to caress her face, running her fingers tenderly over Maria's cheeks, then down to the supple whiteness of the girl's neck.
Before she quite realized what she was doing, Eva then brushed her lips slowly against Maria's, merging them sweetly in the beginning of a voluptuous kiss. She could feel herself drifting quickly into a delicious, blissful warmth; sliding helplessly towards the intimacy of an open-mouthed French kiss, knowing only that she had to enjoy the girl's wonderful beauty, no matter what repulsion she might receive when her tears had been shed and she returned to her senses.
Maria was secretly staggered by the immediacy of Eva's reaction to her play-acting. She had not realized how terribly eager the girl was for petting and loving. How desperately she needed someone of her own sex to caress and fondle.
And Eva, though fearing that she might be making a terrible mistake in being so bold; dreading that the girl, after all, was merely unhappy at the loss of a sentimental possession, hoped against hope that her affection would be returned.
Boldly, the Hungarian pressed her mouth more and more insistently against the American girl's. She felt the wet and intoxicating lips begin to reciprocate the kiss, pushing with an equal, if not stronger urgency into her own. They were breathing heavily and passionately into each other's mouths; the very tips of their tongues meeting in a tentative, trembling caress.
The girls pressed their bodies wildly together. Their crotches were starting to grow hot and moist with desire, their hard pubic mounds thrusting through their protection of panties and dresses with mounting excitement.
Neither girl wanted the kiss to end. Eva, because it would mean that she would have to confront the girl in her arms, with the possibility that she would be angry at the advantage and liberty which Eva had taken with her; Maria because she knew that the longer and more prolonged the kiss became, the more likely it was that Eva would want to have an affair with her.
So their lesbian kissing went on and on, Maria being the first to begin to explore her partner's buttocks, though Eva's hands had now strayed to the very base of her spine (as if itching to slide down the remaining inch or so and fondle the rich, full globes of Maria's ass.
She cupped the Communist girl's fleshy orbs, lifting them gently up in her open hands and starting to give them a bold and stimulating massage. They felt wonderfully soft and pliable, more sleek and sexy to her touch than any others she could recall. Maria began to squeeze the cheeks firmly, making her fingers sink deeply into the giving softness and moving Eva's curvy cheeks round and round.
Seconds later, the girl scientist was doing the same thing to her own buttocks. Encouraged by Maria's uninhibited feeling, Eva imitated her action gladly; rubbing into the gorgeous fleshiness of the girl's ass with probing, clever fingers, and taking the initiative by being the first to push her finger into the long cleft which divided the round cheeks.
Eva could feel the well-defined ridge of Maria's panties, which only succeeded in.covering a third of the girl's abundant buttocks. They were so thin and sheer, so silky!
Through the material of the dress Eva could clearly make out their texture. Her itching fingers longed to hitch up the girl's dress and feel without any hindrance whatsoever at the tingling nylon surface of the panties.
A sharp double-knock on the door made both girls twist their mouths away suddenly! They stared wild-eyed at each other and Eva swallowed nervously!
"We'd… we'd better go back to our seats," she gulped. "But, please, please let me see you again! Quick! Which hotel are you staying at in Nice? I'll come to you tonight. Please don't say no." Her eyes were imploring, begging Maria not to refuse her.
"I'm at the Beau-Rivage," Maria told her swiftly. My name’s Maria Marshall.” She kissed Eva quickly on her mouth again, just as another knock-even more insistent than the first-sounded outside. “I like you so much!” she whispered. “Tell me your name.”
Eva’s eyes were hot and misty as she softly breathed her reply, speaking distinctly but in a hushed voice into Maria’s ear. “Say nothing about meeting me,” she urged. “There are two men with me on the plane and it’s very important that they don’t see me talking to you. I’ll explain later. Please. Let me go out first and stay hidden behind the door. Wait a few minutes before returning to our seat.”
They kissed each other quickly on the lips, then Eva opened the door, went out, and closed it quickly. Maria listened with her ear to the door. It had obviously been one of the bodyguards knocking, wondering why Eva had stayed in the restroom so long. But they exchanged only a few words, and then there was silence.
Maria saw that her hands were sweaty and slightly soiled, so she decided to remain long enough to wash them. She then suddenly realized how very excited she was about Eva. She wondered if the suspicious bodyguards would or could be persuaded or fooled into letting her out that night. But as she dried her hands, she shook her head dejectedly. Why did it have to be business? Eva Harnecz was the kind of girl Maria would love to meet as a personal and loving friend.
Opening the door casually and moving out into the curtained areaway, Maria found herself suddenly slammed against the wall by a heavy-set man in a lumpy suit! Without saying a word, he brutally pushed her back into the small lavatory room and locked the door!