FUTURES RESEARCH

9100 - AN AGEING SWINGER - 1998

By modern standards I was not that old, barely forty, and I looked a great deal less. The rejuvenation clinics I frequented were undoubtedly expensive, but they were effective; and the firm picked up all the bills. Even so, I had to admit that, though I could still pass for twenty-two, I could no longer fool myself. My days were numbered, and to be honest I was looking forward to retirement. My body no longer accepted the routine punishment handed out to it, and most mornings I awoke with pains in almost every muscle. I still found the job fulfilling, but I no longer enjoyed it. Only my commitment to the firm enabled me to carry on through the pain barriers.

My official career to that point had revolved around the dramatic arts; a nice irony considering how much of an act my private life was. Fortunately, for most of the last decade I had been able to hide my true talents under the cover of being a production assistant with one of the few remaining 'film' documentary companies. I say fortunately because at least my daytime job did not impose extra burdens on my body. Despite my relatively poorly-paid position, it was an enjoyable job. Unlike most of the other production 'companies', numbering literally millions world-wide if you counted all the individuals who came together in loose networks to transact their business, we provided everything ourselves. We certainly 'filmed' it ourselves; the term still stuck even though we were now into third generation digital technology, which meant our cameramen, another term which had stuck, could carry the resources of a whole studio in the capacious pockets of the Barbour vests they wore.

Using much the same computer technology, we then edited it ourselves, and added effects, music and sound tracks - just as they did in the old days, when the industry still retained some vestiges of glamour. But now the computers did it in a tenth of the time. It was said, jokingly but with some degree of truth, that our most creative personnel now were the accountants. Despite costs cut to the bone, we were still on the verge of extinction; up against the part-timers, who dominated production, our overhead cost structures were impossible. Fortunately we still had a few clients who appreciated the quality of our output; and, while we could, we luxuriated in our position as the last defenders of a great tradition.

From the very different point of view of the firm, however, our position was ideal; which is why they covertly kept us alive. For a very small part of their own vast budget they could redirect our activities to wherever they wanted to penetrate. There was not a hint in the ownership structure of the company, like so many others we were a form of co-operative, but the firm effectively controlled our fortunes; not least of those of us who were, like myself, its regular operatives. Such was the skill with which this was accomplished, however, that only we operatives had any idea of the covert nature of our activities.

Even in these days of womanpower, I was not one of the front-line operatives; a blue-eyed, blonde-haired bimbo looks very much out of place in a war zone. But that was not to say that the situations I found myself in were without danger. The circles in which I often moved were populated by very dangerous people, who would not think twice about 'removing' me! On the other hand, there was usually no incentive for them to do that, they did not kill gratuitously; and what little I knew at any one time posed no obvious threat to them. For, the essence of our job was incremental detail, allowing the centre to build the big picture small element by small element. We were never briefed on the overall picture. They claimed this was for our own safety, but I sometimes felt it was just as much the culture of secrecy that permeated the centre. Anyway, whatever the reason, there was never a point at which I stumbled across a secret of national importance; the spy movies were fun but totally missed the point, and the tedium of the real job.

The nearest I ever got to that world, to the centre, were the meetings with my desk-officer; who, conveniently, was also the admin manager for the film company - so he could check my expenses in both roles! Even he was kept in the dark most of the time, but when he relaxed he sometimes let slip items of information from which we, using the training we had been given for other purposes, built a shadowy picture of that centre. We didn't even know where it was, perhaps there was no physical headquarters; like so many other organisations its structure could just reside on a mainframe, with its various groups spread across the face of the Earth. Despite sitting at the centre of a web of operatives, even it didn't seem to be able to deal in certainties. Everything it did seemed to end up as patterns of probabilities; and its gurus were mathematicians who made some sense of this nebulous cloud of guesswork! I repeat, the fiction is fun but the reality is far less glamorous; even for us operatives.

Paradoxically, I was one of the few operatives who really did have to live up to the mata-hari image of glamour! Hence the firm's interest in my looks, and its willingness to invest in rejuvenating my constantly fading charms. My immersion in the club-scene was, thus, a direct result of my dedication to duty, to my chosen role in life, rather than an abandonment of the normal good-sense of my life-stage group; the rest of whom had long-since disappeared to take up quieter pursuits. Oh, how I envied them that quiet life! I suppose I was, in effect, some form of modern courtesan. I sold my company, and with it my body, not for money but for information - indeed for mere scraps of information - and I did it well. The ever so small hints that my 'boy-friends' let slip, over the dinner table or on the dance-floor or in bed, were fed back for the centre to build their big picture.

Only once had I been persuaded to actually act out the part of a real prostitute, in a Paris brothel, and I had vowed I would never do that again. I had been so depressed by the stories of my, genuine, fellow hookers. Despite the improvements that licensing their trade had brought, they still led miserable, and brief, working lives, As a result, I had, for once, told the firm that there were limits to what I could accept. If you are a 'method' actor, as I am, you have to share all the experiences and feelings of the character you are playing, including the black despair. For weeks after that experience I felt dirty, even though I showered half a dozen times a day!

It was not that I reacted against the use of my body for sex; as they did, and hated their clients with a fervour which belied the act they were forced to put on. Soon after my covert life had started to take shape, I had realised that - if I was to stay sane - I had to enjoy all aspects of my work; even the most intimate, and potentially degrading, of them. Sex, in any case, was now the greatest leisure sport of my generation; we even held public competitions. The only difference, for me, was that it was the firm which chose my partners! Consequently I decided that I had to view sex, in particular, in much the same way that wine-buffs appreciated rare wines. I was a professional sex-taster, though I couldn't spit out the corked vintages! In practice the firm rarely asked me to service men, or women, I would find repulsive; and even then it was their minds that repelled me, not their bodies. It is easy to find beauty in the most deformed of bodies, whatever the form of sex play, when you have chosen to find joy in giving pleasure to your partner. Above all, I - and they - always checked our medical records before any fateful mingling of bodily fluids. But that was the norm these days. Even the smallest licensed brothel insisted its clients were screened in this way before they entered the inner sanctum - which is one reason that there almost no underground establishments, the only reason these days for frequenting one of these was to play Russian roulette with your health. The result was that there were now very few sexually communicated diseases present in the population as a whole; but we, swingers in particular, never took chances. It only needed one exposure to a new virus, for which there was as yet no treatment, and your days were numbered.

Enough of the background, though, let's move on to the action. I was with a crew in Cannes, always one of our favourite locations. We had just come from Brussels, one of our less favourite locations; even if it was the capital for more than a third of the world. There I had been worse than super-numerary. Befitting their global powers, the bureaucrats in the Federation maintained tight control over every interview a commissioner gave. This meant that it ran its own complex of studios, and our obligatory interview - it seemed like every business documentary these days needed one - had taken place in one of these. Their studio lacked for nothing, a four-camera set-up and every bit of kit a cameraman might desire; except that even our cameraman had to become a spectator like myself. They had their own expert staff for everything. All I was allowed to do was watch as our interviewer interrogated - as much as is possible in such controlled conditions - the relevant commissioner. Then, it was posted down the wire straight to our own office in London. The operation was so slick that it took barely fifteen minutes, and I am sure that even then the time would have allowed for suitable censorship had the commissioner let slip anything important - which, of course, he didn't!

In Cannes it was totally different. Though this was a private industry bash, for producers and distributors to meet and arrange the deals which made the industry tick rather than publicly parade their wares before the general public, it still held a groundswell of excitement. The lower levels of the ageing conference centre were crammed full of the stalls of the minor players. Crewing agencies, facility owners, authoring teams, distributors from the smaller nations, web partners, you name it - they were there. The bigger players had their own - much more grand - suites on the upper floors; but they too were totally immersed in the mad scramble to bring in every bit of business they could get their hands on. In this maelstrom of creativity, our more mundane job was to interview the heads of the key operators, the smaller leading-edge ones as much as the giants. I had lost track of the number of similar programmes I had worked on. The media industry was so fascinated with its own navel gazing that far more of the programmes were made than were really needed. There were probably half a dozen even now being promoted on the floor of the conference centre.

Potboiler or not, a significant benefit of our rather old-fashioned reputation for quality was that our offering would be one of the few which would be sold. Our name opened doors here; where most other operators wouldn't get beyond the receptionist. I had not even needed to call upon the producers personally to set up our shooting schedule; they all agreed to do whatever I wanted over the phone before we got anywhere near Cannes! Our problem would be, as usual, to cut the best sound-bites out of the hours of material we would shoot. Even so, I had spent the morning with the producer taking notes of the set-ups he was agreeing with these big-wigs; they all wanted to get their acts together, even though they knew - just as well as we did - that the best interviews were those which were genuinely spontaneous.

At the same time the camera-man, along with his assistant and the sound-man, had been trying to get some establishing shots in the can. I could have told them that they were wasting their time. The outside of the building was as anonymous as any other conference centre; it could have been anywhere. Inside, the stalls were so crowded together that even the widest-angle lens would just show a meaningless jumble of images. It was no good looking for bare-breasted starlets parading along the Croisette, as they did for the public film festival; and I no longer agreed, as I had in my youth, to stand in for them! They would end up with the boring stock shot of the row of national flags fluttering in the sea breeze, followed by a rapid montage of the fascias of the big boys' stands! It always ended up that way.

In the afternoon we filmed a dozen or more interviews; with me frantically writing down what they said. The voice-analysers, back at base, would eventually produce the full transcript; from which the producer and editor would make the final 'cut'; again that old film terminology! In the meantime, though, we had to re-shoot the questions as if the interviewer was just asking them - hence my frantic scribblings. There was, however, no way that a five-man crew such as ours could simultaneously record both question and answer. That required a four-camera set-up, with a crew of perhaps thirty of more, such as had been used in Brussels. Instead, the interviewer repeated to camera the questions as I had written them down. I worried that one day I would get it wrong; and the wrong question would be put against the wrong answer, in the mouth of a key politician, creating an international incident. But so far I had not made that fatal mistake. Just a few noddies, the silent nods by the interviewer and his subject, to cover the gaps when all else failed, and an ambient noise track for the sound-man to cover his own just as embarrassing gaps and we could wrap an interview and move onto the next one. In fact the job wasn't all pandemonium. It took something like half an hour for the cameraman doubling up, as you had to with a small crew, to light each interview. I pitied his assistant who, the butt of the vociferous comments of all concerned, never seemed to move the redheads, the only lights we used, where they were wanted. In this time, despite their yells, I could catch up on my rough notes, which I still wrote longhand on a pad, and transcribe them to my portable. Sometimes I could even relax a bit.

Thankfully, the evening shoot was something different. The Warner Brothers party had been the highlight of the week long before I had started coming to the festival. It still was, despite the fact that the company had changed hands so often that the brand was now rarely seen on the marquees of film theatres, but was more often seen on those fronting fast-food outlets. Never mind, it was still a valuable brand, and still justified a lavish party. The producer had decided, with my help, that at least one new setting was needed; to distinguish our production from the many which had gone before. So, breaking with tradition, the venue for the climax of our film was that party. The executive VP at Warners entertainment division had needed little persuading. Having our crew filming them was the sort of cabaret his industry guests would lap up!

Even so, we found ourselves just as crowded in as we had been amongst the throngs in the basement; though they opened up the terrace overlooking the Croisette especially for us. But at least here the guests were eating canapés rather than handing out leaflets. As my producer was nervously preparing for the main interview, I had the task of shepherding the crew through the crowds; once more building those precious establishing shots. For once it was fun. We were obviously the star attraction. Everyone posed for us, and in turn were steadfastly ignored by my crew. The one example I remember especially well was a couple, obviously B film material and well past their prime, who preened themselves for possibly their last appearance on the public media - only to be rudely pushed out of the way by our crew who were in search of more photogenic subjects. I will remember the look of abject disappointment on their faces for a long time. Would my own eventual retirement prove as painful?

I would normally have dressed down for my production assistant role, even on an evening like this my evening dress would have been demure and discreet. I saw no point in attracting attention when I didn't need to. But tonight was different. My latest conquest, Anton, had got himself invited to the party; he was a powerful enough player to arrange almost anything he wanted. So, I was decked out in my best party finery - every inch a miracle of skilful see-through, and all topped with the most expensive pheromone perfume the firm could buy. Even so, Anton maintained a discrete distance until we had finished the interview, with the VP strutting his stuff in front of an audience of his peers. Then I felt my elbow taken, as Anton discretely guided me out and across the road to his suite in the Carlton. Even ordinary rooms there cost a fortune during the festival, so possession of a suite demonstrated just how rich Anton was. But then I already knew that; he had arrived a couple of hours ago on his private jet - for just one night with me - and that sort of lifestyle costs real money.

It was not difficult to like, and desire, Anton. He was good-looking, intelligent and fabulously charming. He was the catch sought by every viewer of the bodice-rippers which had come to dominate some of the women's channels. Only real his job, which few knew about, was potentially repellent. In his time he had arranged to supply the armaments which had killed hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, in the various civil wars which still disfigured parts of the globe. All of that was hidden behind his cover - as a machine tool supplier. Even I was supposed to believe that was his true calling. But, of course, I did know - that was why I had been placed so temptingly alongside him when he had that fabulous run of luck on the high-rollers' table at the Ritz; better even than Anton himself, the firm can arrange anything! From that first 'accidental' meeting it had been down to my feminine wiles to develop the relationship. Of course, it had helped to have access to the firm's massive dossier, which covered his every foible, as well as every other aspect of his life to date. The character I was playing was drawn directly from that material. I even matched myself to his sexual peccadilloes; which I had been glad to find were relatively normal. Straight sex, and lots of it, was his taste; and, if I admitted it, my own.

Thus, following the dictates of the dossier, when we got back to the Carlton, unlike the experience with most of my other conquests, we had not gone straight to bed. Indeed, we had lingered for several hours over dinner. The key to his heart was not just the luscious body of a nymphomaniac, though I had to provide something along those lines as well, but the intellectual ability to match his conversation at every level. I usually hid my intellect from my 'business partners'; even though my Cambridge first had been well-earned - and along with my father's existing position in the Firm - had virtually guaranteed that first fateful interview with its management committee. But most of my male conquests would have felt threatened by it. With Anton, however, I was allowed the luxury of displaying my capabilities to their full extent. Indeed, I found the intellectual stimulation of our conversations as welcome as the sex; and I knew he did.

That night, as always, he was the most considerate of lovers. The foreplay seemed to go on for ever, and I climaxed a number of times even before he entered me. He was a veritable dynamo. When I fell back finally exhausted, he got up and sat at the ornate desk while he made a number of telephone calls. He seemed to have dozens of mobiles at his command, all suitably laundered so that the intelligence agencies, like the Firm, couldn't record his calls. They were discarded after use. He no longer hid this from me, he clearly felt his explanations of 'business secrecy', and my own shining trust in him, were sufficient. Indeed, he no longer bothered to move into the next room when he made these calls. He just assumed that the seemingly innocuous details of these 'business transactions' wouldn't arouse my suspicions. Had I not known, I probably wouldn't have guessed what they did; and the hardest part of my job was pretending exactly that!

Unusually this time, after one very brief call, he got dressed and went into the sitting room next door. Almost immediately I heard a soft knock on the outer door of the suite, followed by the hushed tones of a conversation. Fortunately it was in English. In general, my language skills are good, that is essential in both my jobs, but when it comes to straining to hear almost inaudible conversation it always helps if it is in your native tongue; and I really needed to hear every word of that exchange. Although he conducted most of his business virtually undetected through his seemingly inexhaustible supply of throwaway mobiles, we knew that he had to close some of his most important deals face to face. Where his clients were spending tens of millions, for goods of questionable legality, they wanted to look him in the eye to make sure he was going to keep to his word. The problem was that we hadn't been able to get a handle on any of these. His suite, wherever he stayed, was swept by an expert team of surveillance specialists; so, after losing a lot of very expensive equipment, we no longer even tried to bug it. In addition, he conducted his business in public places, such as the hotel we were in, where the comings and goings could not be observed. Indeed, as I now realised, I was not the only reason for his coming to Cannes; pleasure with business.

The barely-heard conversation was beginning to make sense, and to scare the living daylights out of me! Anton was moving way beyond the borders of legality. Not to put too fine a point on it, he was offering to steal a nuclear weapon. The general public had long known that the Russians had, when the cold-war still was in place, developed suitcase-sized nuclear bombs. On the other hand, they hadn't lost any of these, as the scare at the end of the twentieth century had once suggested. With a typical mismatch of technologies they had tracked them in hand-written ledgers, and simply couldn't read their own handwriting! But that scare had been enough to ensure that those bombs were as well-guarded as anything on the planet. Anton's bomb, I was sure, couldn't come from that source. In any case, their age meant that their reliability was suspect, and nobody would want to spend millions on a firecracker which might simply fizzle out.

No, there had to be another source; and, as the conversation developed, I realised what it was. It was in the US. Thus, the US army equivalents of the Russian were much smaller. They nicely fitted into ordinary rucksacks, so that their Special Forces could parachute into the target area, place the bomb and walk - or rather run - away. This was a well-kept secret, outside of the intelligence communities, the only reason we knew about it was that they were so cock-a-hoop at the Russian fiasco that they let slip details of their own 'improvements'. These devices were scattered, with the Special Forces units, around the US; though it required a presidential signature before any moved overseas, and to the best of my knowledge none ever had - until now! For, as the conversation progressed, it became clear that Anton was promising was to deliver one of them to the client's embassy in Washington; and I knew that Anton always delivered what he promised - his very life depended on it.

Washington was, therefore, the only link in the chain where we could intercept the delivery, but Anton was understandably giving no further details even to his client. Accordingly, it became imperative that I at least had to find out what nation was the customer; and hence what embassy would be receiving the dangerous gift. So, psyching myself up for the greatest performance ever, I shoved the door open, and rushed playfully into the room demanding to know when Anton was coming back to bed for more. Anton's eyes swiftly switched from my naked body, with the traces of his sperm still lingering - very obviously - on my thighs. His real interest lay to the left of me. I naturally followed this movement, swivelling to face the visitor; who proved to be as shocked as Anton was ice-cool. With a scream, I instantly fled the room; my hands flailing everywhere in a vain attempt to hide my shame. But, in that instant, I had seen enough to provide the necessary input into our intelligence computers back home. Anyone else might have just registered him as an Arab male, and I was certain that he himself would remember only a naked body flashing in front of him. But I had been trained to capture useful data from the briefest of such glimpses - on surveillance it was all you sometimes got.

My acting tour de force was completed by a fit of giggles when soon after Anton returned to the bedroom. He joined the laughter, but understandably he didn't perform again that night. But he did before he left the following morning. I have to say that bout of lovemaking, the final one as it turned out, was the best ever. It was so good that for a time it drove out of my mind all the questions that were still churning around in there.

Later that day, feigning a sudden illness, I was back in London being debriefed. The client, it emerged, was not a nation, but one of the new international terror groups. Even so, we knew from out previous contacts which embassy in Washington would be hosting their activities. Despite their attempts at coding their messages, we were even able to pinpoint the delivery date. This meant that the full-scale surveillance and response operation could be held until just a short time before the fateful time.

Thus it was that, one autumn evening, there occurred a very nasty accident at a street junction in one of Washington's more salubrious neighbourhoods. A heavy delivery truck, seemingly having lost its way, drove full speed into the side of an ordinary car. Despite all the mandatory safety features the car driver had no chance. The driver of the truck was, of course, jailed since his alcohol levels were way over the limit. The mystery which titillated the media for a number of days, of why the army colonel who was killed was in Washington when he should have been on the other side of the country, was never solved.

Needless to say, the night after that accident I emailed Anton my goodbyes. There had been enough difficulty, for the Firm as much as for me, finding ways of avoiding him in the weeks since our last assignation. I had been shifted from one project to another, around the world, so that I wasn't even on the same continent as him. Now any 'professional' contact would be fraught with danger. He would, of course, have realised where the leak came from. While he would forgive me my part, he was just as professional as I was, he would never trust me again; and that would inevitably jeopardise my own position.

In fact, at the grand old age of forty, I used the event to ease myself into retirement. Even so, and even knowing Anton was willing to sell a device which would have killed vast numbers of innocent victims, I still miss his love-making.

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