The Honey Trap (Foxy Lady and CougarGirl)

HQ ROOM 4.68

Penelope hurried along the corridor to the interview room. Steve, her team leader, had asked her if she’d mind bringing her quarterly performance review a few days forward as he was going on a course. That was no problem, unless of course this was just an excuse to raise a problem about her performance.

As it turned out, she needn’t have worried. At least, not about her performance.

‘Penny, thanks for taking this review early. I’ve no issues to raise with you. As usual, your assessments are all fine, top rate in fact. The minister was very pleased with your report last month. She’s asked for her personal thanks to be conveyed to you and placed on your record. So well done, Penny.’

‘Thanks, Steve.’

Penelope had to keep a straight face because he always adopted a very formal vocabulary during reviews, quite unlike the way he spoke normally. She made to rise.

‘There is something I’d like to discuss, though. If you have the time, that is.’

Yes, Penelope had thought so, there was always ‘something to discuss’. She settled back into her seat and waited.

‘It’s just that there’s a foreign, well let’s call him diplomat, who’s being posted here temporarily and we’d like to get close to him. We wondered if you’d be prepared to make contact and learn whatever you can from him. How would you feel about that?’

Penelope sifted through the clues.

‘You mean a honey trap, you want me to trap him and find out what he’s up to?’

‘Yes, that’s the idea, Penny. Would you be, in principle, open to that sort of work?’

‘You mean a transfer?’

‘Ah, no, Penny, not a transfer. This would be in addition to your other duties, sort of extra curricula, as it were.’

‘Don’t we have, I mean isn’t there a special section, aren’t there women who specialise in this sort of thing? I don’t have any experience.’

‘You’re right, there are specialist personnel at our disposal, but we have reason to believe that he might be attracted to someone like you. Your lack of experience would mean that he wouldn’t suspect a trap. You’d only have to be natural.’

He sat back and waited.

‘And my husband, would he know?’

‘As you know, Penny, we maintain strict Chinese walls between partners who work here. He doesn’t know any more about your work than you know about his. That’s safest, I’m sure you agree.’

Steve let Penelope digest that before adding.

‘The target has a temporary membership at your health club, so you should have no trouble coming into contact with him. Then you just let nature take its course.’

Penelope thought for a while. She and her husband had no personal secrets, although their work here was protected by the secrecy that their profession required. But it wouldn’t be unfaithful if she was doing it in the interests of her country’s security.

‘OK,’ she said at last, ‘tell me who he is and who’s my contact for this operation.’

HQ Room 17.38

Steve sat opposite his section leader.

‘So she agreed, Steve?’

‘Yes, ma'am.’

‘Did she have any concerns?’

‘Just her husband. I think she wanted a green light that it would be OK. I gave it.’

‘She’s probably looking for a chance to have some fun. How long has she been married now? Five years, is it? She’ll be at the every Saturday night and anniversaries stage.’

‘Thursday nights, actually,’ Steve corrected his superior. ‘They go to their favourite Indian restaurant, then come back for sex and a shower.’ He consulted his notes. ‘Unless she’s on a period,’ he added. ‘And sometimes he gets it twice if he’s lucky,’ he grinned.

‘What about contact arrangements?’

‘The usual. There’s a drop box set up in her name for her to leave messages.’

‘Good. And you’re sure she bought it. The story was rather weak, we recognised that.’

‘She didn’t seem suspicious, but she is a trained professional after all, so I can’t be sure. Anyway, the weakness is its strength. She’d expect something more sophisticated and plausible if we’d made it up.’

‘Well, thank you for your work on this, Steve. This is the ideal time for you to go on that course. Six months, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, ma'am, I’ll be out of touch with HQ for six months.’

‘Good, that should be more than long enough.’

HQ PENELOPE’S DESK

Penelope sat at her desk. She needed to contact her husband. She’d been planning a swim at the health club on the way home anyway, but she’d have to hang around for a while just in case the target turned up.

Personal emails always raised suspicions and were checked as a matter of routine. Everyone knew the office phones were tapped and her security pass didn’t allow her to wander up to his floor. So she used her mobile. That could be intercepted as well, but she had to get a message to him somehow. And where was the harm? What she was doing was official, so there was no need for her to worry. But she didn’t want to arouse her husband’s suspicions, so it was best to stick to their normal ways of communicating at work.

‘Hi,’ his phone went to voice mail, ‘it’s me, Penny. Just to say I’ve got a big job on so I’ll be working a bit late this evening and I may pop into the club to unwind on the way home.’

That should do it. Then, as an afterthought, she added: ‘I may have a few late nights for a while, but I’ll try not to be late on Thursday.’

HEALTH CLUB POOL AREA

Malik – that was the name on his passport – was on his first visit to the club, so naturally he was showing himself off. Some women didn’t notice, but most did. They sent messages to each other with their glances and nods. They liked what they saw. He was well built, muscular without being muscle bound, medium height, close cropped black curly hair, with the olive complexion of the Near East or North Africa. That was what made him so successful at his job, the fact that he could come from so many places.

He affected not to look at any of the women, not directly, but he took them in as he glanced around and noticed them out of the corner of his eyes as he passed, aware of their reactions, some subtle, others less so, like the woman in the red bikini whose thighs parted as he approached.

But one he noticed in particular. She didn’t fit the sleek model of the others with their perfect bodies, light gold tans, and immaculate costumes. No, she was just an ordinary woman who’d come along to swim and relax after a hard day at the office. She wasn’t trying to impress, which is what made her stand out. Her makeup has been washed away in the pool, her brown hair was going frizzy as it dried out, her skin was pale. Her body was wrapped in a large towel, but his apparently casual glance told him that she had heavy thighs, small tits and broad hips. He couldn’t see her ass, not yet, but it was sure to be big. An ordinary woman who stood out from the crowd by being natural in the presence of so many who were artificial.

She’d noticed him, naturally, but she didn’t stare, which just showed that she was not the sort of woman who came here to show herself off and to flirt with the attractive men. He favoured her with a quick glance and the flash of a smile, a sign that he had noticed her and a reward for not being obvious in her attention. And he noted the empty seat next to hers with a neatly folded towel.

At the end of the pool he turned and, just before he dived in, paused to survey the women lying on their loungers, whose glances lingered on his sleek body as it arched in the air before cutting into the water. He swam a couple of lengths before climbing gracefully out close to the woman’s seat.

‘Is this anyone’s towel?’ he asked as if noticing it for the first time.

HEALTH CLUB POOL AREA

Penelope could hardly believe that it was this easy.

‘No,’ she told the man standing in front of her in a pool of water that was dripping off his body, ‘you can take any lounger that’s empty with a clean towel.’

Malik smiled his thanks and dried himself off slowly, turning so that his public could admire him. When he was finally dry, he lay down on the lounger.

Penelope had never picked up a man in her life, not even her husband who she had fancied when she first set eyes on him, waiting anxiously for three weeks before he approached her. But this was different. She couldn’t pass up this chance.

‘You must be a new member,’ she opened casually.

‘Ah,’ Malik replied, ‘because I didn’t know about the etiquette with the towels. Yes, I am new. I am a diplomat on secondment, so my embassy arranged for me a temporary membership here. They know I enjoy swimming.’

After such a full reply, Penelope didn’t know what to say next. She stared at the swimmers for a while before managing: ‘I try to come most days after work. I am not a good swimmer like you, but I find it relaxing.’

Was that too obvious, showing that she had been watching him? Somehow she sensed that he knew he was being watched and enjoyed it.

‘I also,’ he replied.

Why did she find his slightly stilted English and occasional error appealing. So appealing that she had failed to notice that he was speaking and had to ask him what he had just said.

‘I am sorry if you do not understand my English,’ he said disarmingly. ‘I was saying that I have to go back to the embassy for, how do you say, a function. I was hoping to have a drink first. May I offer you one – the embassy is paying my account here, so have whatever you would like.’

She admired the neat way he was able to make the offer of a drink seem so innocent by showing that he wouldn’t be paying for it.

‘A fresh orange juice would be nice,’ she replied.

‘I also,’ he said and raised his hand to signal his wish to order.

‘Please let me introduce myself,’ he offered his hand while they waited for their drinks. ‘I am Malik.’

‘And I am Penelope, Penny is-, Penny,’ she stumbled, noticing that he held her hand just a fraction too long. ‘I mean my name is Penelope but my friends call me Penny.’

‘I shall call you Penelope,’ he told her. ‘I like the name, it sounds so soft.’

As the waiter arrived with their orange juice, Penelope noted the alliteration and decided that his English was better than he pretended.

On the way home, she set up a new hotmail account and left a message in the drop box, reporting that she had made contact with her target.