Of this much, at least, I’m sure: My story begins more than a year ago now, aboard a gold-plated Gulfstream corporate jet I’d borrowed for a quick business trip to Thailand. The Gulfstream belonged to Helms Technology, or HT, the computer software giant. It’d been lent to me by the company’s founder, president, and CEO, John Helms. That’s right, the wealthiest person in America. John was a client of mine. I protected him, life and limb.
That is to say, my security firm did. And my trip to Thailand had been to do the advance work for John’s own upcoming visit. He was to meet with regional business leaders as well as speak at a computer science symposium sponsored by Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.
The country had a large population of Islamic extremists and growing trouble with terrorism. John’s fame, wealth, and nationality would make him a tempting target to those at war with the so-called decadent West.
But Thailand wasn’t at all on John’s mind when he phoned me during my return trip, while the jet sat refueling in Austin, Texas. “I’m disappointed,” he said in his nasal twang. “Mighty disappointed. You hear me, son?”
Son. That’s what he called me. We were born the same year.
“What’s the matter, John?”
“I’ve got spies under my own roof is what’s the matter!”
“Are you sure?” My firm was on retainer to prevent industrial spying. We also conducted the background checks on potential new hires.
“Yes, I’m sure. Damn sure.”
“Then why don’t you start from the beginning.”
John proceeded to tell me, at length, and in hardcore computer Geek-speak—which I grasp as well as a three year-old grasps opera—about a backdoor he’d discovered hidden in a new software program that HT had recently custom developed for a Wall Street consortium. A backdoor is an unauthorized, undocumented way to gain access to a computer program, an online service, or an entire computer system. It’s usually written as a shortcut by one of the computer programmers who write the software code. But all the programmers on the project had denied creating it.
“What do I pay you for?” he said in conclusion. The plane had by now refueled, three local HT executives had come aboard for the final flight leg, and the jet had begun its runway taxi.
“I’ll get to the bottom of this, John.”
“But I pay you to prevent shit like this from happening in the first place.”
The pilot called for all electronic equipment to be switched off. Outside, the engines screamed, and I could feel the plane gathering speed on the runway. To the scolding flight attendant, hovering over me, I held up a forefinger—as if to say, “I’ll hang up in a second” or “I’m a major asshole,” take your pick.
I sure felt like a major asshole, but John Helms was my biggest client and—you could sooner forget eggplant growing out of his nose—the Forbes certified WPIA! What else could I do?
“Let’s not get too excited,” I said. “Might be nothing.”
“I don’t see how. You even listening to me, son?”
“I’m tired, John. I’m on my way home from Bangkok, from setting up that trip for you.”
“Bangkok? Oh, right, that thing.”
The flight attendant’s frown—and the angle I viewed it from—brought back ancient memories of grade school teachers. “Like I said, John, I’m on a plane right now—your plane—and we’re about—”
“Now you listen to me, Argus, I don’t want to hear there isn’t any problem.”
“We’re on the runway, just about to take off—”
“Because I know there is.”
“Honest to God, John, the flight attendant’s ready to stamp on my phone like a cigar butt.”
“What? Oh, hell. Call me back.”
“Will do, John, but don’t you worry—”
He hung up.
I tucked my phone away, apologizing to the flight attendant’s trim backside as she rushed off. But I didn’t think she heard me. The engines were screaming real loud by now, louder than you’d expect from such a small aircraft.
If the Gulfstream had been a commercial jet, it would’ve held fifty passengers, but the opulent design of the interior limited the maximum seating capacity to ten. The aft cabin, at the plane’s rear, which was not being used, contained a small conference table and four chairs, along with a fold-out beige leather sofa for sleeping. The forward cabin contained four beige leather armchairs, each with a small, mahogany writing desk. The lavatory included a full shower.
The plane was airborne and nearly horizontal again when I closed my eyes and exhaled deeply, ridding myself of a little mental pollution, a bit of the long flight’s accumulated stress.
What does John Helms really have to worry about? I asked myself. Give me sixty billion dollars—or even a little less, say Malaysia’s GNP—and I’d be the sweetest, mellowest son of a bitch since Mister Rodgers.
“Madre de Dios!” said the Hispanic guy across the aisle from me, crossing himself during a bit of turbulence. Mother of God!
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “Statistically speaking, you could take this flight once a day for almost ten thousand years before you could expect to be involved in a crash.”
He turned to me and smiled. He had shiny, straight from a swim-like jet black hair and teeth I remembered from Seabiscuit. He wore a medium brown suit with a white shirt and a bolo tie.
“Thanks. I hate flying. I’m Rob, by the way. Rob Ramos.”
“Argus. Argus Ward.”
“You from headquarters?”
“Not exactly.” I explained who I was.
“Cool,” he said. “How’d you get into that line of work?”
“I started out in the Secret Service.”
For a sec, his eyes fit the size of his teeth. “You don’t say. So what’s Helms really like?”
I shook my head. “There’s a rule in my business, Rob. Never gossip about the protectee.”
He smiled, changed the subject, told me he was a new marketing executive and on his way to a three-day training conference at Helms Technology’s world headquarters, outside Washington, DC, our destination.
The turbulence died away, like our small talk, and I soon drifted off to sleep in my comfortable chair, waking more than an hour later when the flight attendant emerged from the galley that separated our cabin from the cockpit to take drink orders.
She’d been on board when I’d been picked up in Bangkok, but hadn’t spoken to me—her only passenger for more than three thousand miles—except in a professional capacity. Her smile, which had always been pleasant, now seemed to strain her, as if her skin had become a quick-hardening clay. It made me worry about engine trouble with the plane. I’m like that.
Her face was almost heart-shaped, thanks to prominent cheek bones—high and wide and rouged—and a delicate, pointed chin. Her hair—straight and thick and dirty blonde—was very cute, styled after the Dutch boy on the paint cans. I put her age at thirty-two or so, yet she was teenage slender, which made it hard to see her curves in that boxy, dark blue uniform.
“Drink?” she asked me after taking orders from the other three. Her eyes—watery, darting—left little doubt that she was nervous about something. I hoped it wasn’t me, the major asshole. I ordered scotch on the rocks with a twist of lemon. It’d been a long flight.
Before the drinks arrived, I stretched in my seat a bit and peeked at the two passengers who hadn’t introduced themselves to me. The woman who sat in front of Rob Ramos, madly keying away on her laptop, wore a sweeping, ankle-length cotton skirt of the kind favored by women from the South. She was in her forties somewhere, a little plump, but curvaceous, with Texas-size big hair of the brightest auburn, a great burning bush. Of the man seated directly in front of me, all I could see was the back of his head, tinseled thinly with silver.
Remembering some paperwork I had to do, I switched on my overhead light. I was reaching down for my briefcase when I noticed the flight attendant emerge from the galley. I noticed because she’d left her boxy uniform behind. Her underwear too. The woman was totally nude and carrying a full drink tray.
My mouth dropped open, as you might imagine. I gasped, I gawked, blinked hard, shook my head. Then I found I couldn’t take my eyes off her bushy triangle of pale blonde pubic hair.
Finally, I did. I could see she was smiling—though nervously, clearly nervously—as she delivered a soft drink to the big-haired lady.
I thought, I’ve undressed women with my eyes before, but this is ridiculous!
“Hey, Rob,” I said in a half-whisper. “You see that?”
He glanced up from a computer magazine and half-whispered back. “See what?” I jerked my head at the flight attendant just as she approached the silver-haired gentleman. Rob studied her. “So?” He shrugged. “What about her?”
“She’s a bit underdressed, don’t you think?”
“Huh? In that ugly uniform?”
I whipped my head around for another look at the flight attendant. Less than two yards ahead of me, she was leaning across the gentleman with the silver hair, dropping off a Bloody Mary with a celery stalk in it. My head whipped back to Rob.
“Uniform? What uniform? She’s bare-ass naked.”
He cracked a huge, Seabiscuit smile. “Is this . . . some kind of joke?”
“No!” I whisper-screamed. “Of course not!”
My eyes rushed around the cabin. The big-haired lady had stopped clattering away on her keyboard, and she was calling for the naked flight attendant.
“Miss! Over here, Sugar! Clumsy me had a little accident with the Diet Coke. Could you get me cleaned up?”
“Yes, Ma’am.” The flight attendant scurried her milky white bottom back inside the galley.
I addressed the entire cabin in my full voice. In fact, I nearly shouted. “Will somebody please tell me why our flight attendant is naked?”
Rob stared open-mouthed at me. So did the big-haired lady.
Then the face of the silver-haired man popped into view beside the seat in front of me. His wrinkled skin was chalky and saggy and sunspot peppered.
“There’s nothing unusual about our flight attendant,” he said with the certainty of a college professor. “There’s nothing strange going on here, Sir. Nothing at all.” He gave a crisp and confident nod—as if he’d just given me the solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem—and withdrew.
When the flight attendant appeared again she was still nude, still balancing the undelivered drinks on her tray. With a small cloth in her free hand, she mopped up the big-haired lady’s mess, then moved on to Rob, who received a bottle of Corona beer with a lime quarter wedged in the mouth and a napkin and bar glass.
Then she approached me with that nervous smile. She had sharp tan lines, B-cup breasts, and pinkish nipples, small and erect. She’s cold, I thought. The cabin temperature feels about sixty-eight degrees, tops.
A short-lived blast of air turbulence unsteadied her balance. Her breasts jiggled, and for the first time, her nudity excited a stir in me. She leaned over me with her serving tray. Her pubic hair loomed near enough to share its musty scent and fire off invisible pheromones deep into the primitive part of my brain.
She dropped a napkin down on the table by my armchair, followed by my glass of scotch on the rocks.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” I asked her, surprised by the deepness of my own voice.
“What?” she said.
I glanced around the cabin and found I doubted my own sanity. “Twist of lemon,” I said.