Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2015 20:49:10 +0000 (UTC)
From: Pete Brown <petebrownuk@yahoo.com>
Subject: Passing Part Eight

PASSING

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PASSING

A story by Pete Brown  (petebrownuk@yahoo.com)

Part  Eight         Slave management.  A deal discovered.  A voyage.

When we got back to my flat Greg still seemed to be pretty pissed off.  And
when I decided it was time for bed I snapped at him to take his shorts off
- he has this tendency to not go around naked as a slave should, and when
he lies there sucking my cock I think he doesn't like it when I can see his
cock and bum.  He did so with very bad grace, I think, and I told him that
this was the last time I was going to tell him - if he was ever in my
bedroom in shorts again he'd not only have to take them off but I would
then spank his bum.  And I chortled as I reminded him how much Sam had
hated having Dave slap his bum, and how Jason had cried when being spanked,
and went on to say how much fun I might have if I took my hand - or even a
ruler or something like that - to Greg's hard muscles.

This didn't seem to please him at all, and he lay there with very bad
grace, first stroking my cock and then with his usual hesitancy taking it
between his lips as if it was something odious!  Still, I am his owner, and
I am in control, and when I felt myself beginning to cum instead of letting
Greg pull away and catch my cum as he normally did, I held the back of his
head firmly and shot into his mouth.  And then of course he was even more
pissed off.

His mood continued the following morning when he seemed to make a point of
walking around my bedroom naked - I know I'd said that he had to, but
there's a huge difference between doing it naturally and properly, and sort
of half-covering himself with a hand if he saw me looking, and scowling and
sighing all the time.  So I told him to start behaving properly and not
acting like some sort of naive kid, and all I got was a surly "I am."

"You're acting properly, or you're acting like some kind of naive kid and
not like a grown man?  Anyway, I don't like your attitude, so change it.
You're pissed off about yesterday...."

I never got to finish my sentence as Greg cut it "Yes I am!  I fucking well
am!  It's not right, making a man fuck like that, it's...."

"Shut the fuck up.  Right now!  And let's get something clear - you're
right, it wouldn't be correct to make a man fuck a bitch in front of
you. But you're not a man, Greg, you're a slave, my slave.  And if I want
to see you fucking, whether it's in front of me or in front of lots of
people as we;;, that's exactly what you will do.  Is that clear?"

He still looked surly, so I went on "And in any case, I can't see the
problem. You're always telling me you're so-called `straight'.  You're
always talking about all the women you've fucked.  You complain about not
having any females around the place.  And yet when I give you the
opportunity to show us what you can do, you're like this...."

Greg went to interrupt me, but I was in no mood for an argument and simply
went on "But then you know, Greg, you're always telling me things.  You
tell me you don't want me to sell you. So if I can't believe all your stuff
about fucking, how can I believe that you don't want me to sell you?"

That shut him up!  I know he lives in fear of losing his good life with me
and being sold off at auction to some other owner who almost certainly
wouldn`t treat him as well. That's always a powerful tool in an owner's
armoury of ways to deal with slaves.  So we went about the rest of the
morning's business mostly in silence, but I was pleased to see that Greg
was at least "polite", well, superficially so, anyway, and perhaps that's
the best a slave owner can hope for.

 I resolved that when I spoke to Dave later in the day I'd have a word with
him about Greg - perhaps some short period of remedial retraining would do
him good.  But then as I sat on the tube out to Canary Wharf my thoughts
turned about what exactly I was going to say to Dave anyway - he'd be sure
to want me to go around there and pick up where we'd left off, and how was
I going to do that without letting on that I didn't actually know what I
was doing when it came to fucking (and even less about being fucked!).  So
instead of those few minutes for me to get in to the day properly, calmly
and coolly thinking about all that was to be done and how I was going to
arrange it, I actually arrived far from calm.

Mondays, if there's no big deal going on, is totally boring.  The morning
is all regular weekly meetings, and as usual there's not a lot to be done
by me.  My people all know that it's not acceptable to come to the meetings
not having done all the things that they agreed to the previous week, or
with problems which they have not had some thoughts about how we might
resolve them.  So I mostly sit there mildly bored.  And today it was worse,
as the "Dave problem" was still going around in my head.

It didn't get better when Sam stuck his head in after my last meeting and
said "Dave has been on the phone a couple of times - shall I get him for
you?"

"No, hold off.  I've got a couple of other things to do first."

Sam looked at me curiously, as he knows there weren't any more things.  And
so to confuse him I got up and walked out, telling him I'd be back later
and refusing to specify where I was going or how long I was going to be.  I
like to keep him guessing, like to make it clear that he doesn't know
everything!

In fact I'd got nothing to do and nowhere in particular to go, so I
sauntered to one of the best coffee places, a long way from our block so I
would be unlikely to see anyone else from the company, and sat there doing
the Guardian crossword (which doesn't take me long of course!) as I sipped
my Americano.  And enjoying the sight of the young guys in the queue - they
all mostly come down without coats or jackets as a lot of the towers have
entrances directly into the mall so they don't need them even if it's cold
or raining (or both, we are in London, remember). So with the current
fashion in men's suits for them to be low-slung tight trousers, there's
always something interesting to see.

When I got back to the office Sam was having some kind of argument with one
of the staff, so I simply went past into my own space and shut the door.  I
could see through the glass that Sam was being very forceful, and I
recognised the man he was arguing with as one of the junior staff we'd
decided to let go during the HR part of our meetings earlier.  He was a bit
of a failed experiment, actually - we usually recruit only from Oxford,
Cambridge, Imperial and the LSE, but some member of the board had queried
this last year saying we ought to give some places to graduates from other
places "to make our diversity policy look as if it's working!.  Without
much hope of success I'd agreed to pacify the board, but I knew it wasn't
likely to work as firstly we need brain power, lots of it, and if you've
got that, you'd be at one of our usual recruiting places, not Sussex as my
memory now reminded me this man was from.  And then we like our recruits to
be "properly brought up", as my parents would have said - to be smooth and
affable in conversation, to know how to circulate at cocktail parties, how
to be properly deferential to senior management, to dress like a gentleman,
and all those kind of things.  And he was none of them.  Indeed, seeing him
standing there waving his arms about as he argued with Sam I could see that
his suit was not from a proper city tailor but something from a chain
store, and he might even be wearing a polyester tie and not silk!  As
usual, I though, I'd been right.  But at least at the next board meeting I
could say that we had tried.

I had started reading some tedious research paper on my screen - and had
decided to forward it to someone telling them to prepare a summary for me -
when my door burst open and the man strode in, pursued of course by Sam.

"I need to speak to you, sir", he half shouted at me.

"Make an appointment."

"I've been trying, all last week.  My manager won't listen.  His manager
won't either.  So I decided to come direct to you, and now this lad..."  he
half turned and sort of motioned at Sam "...won't let me in.  He says
you're too busy. Well, you don't look it!"

"I am too busy. Sam manages my diary."

"Too busy to miss out on the biggest deal to hit this century?  Well I was
thinking of quitting, and this proves I'm right.  If I can`t get my ideas
listened to here, I'm off somewhere they will be.  Any you'll all look
fucking stupid in the FT when the news finally breaks and it turns out you
missed it. Like the man who didn't sign The Beetles."

As you probably are aware, it's OK to think words like "fuck".  And with
men like Dave to use them.  Or to use them socially, or in the pub.  But
absolutely not in the offices of a huge respectable financial institution
like us.  So this was another example of how he didn't quite "fit".  But on
the other hand he was quite good looking in a rather rough sort of way.
And perhaps he did have an idea. And he was right about one thing - we
always have to be careful about our reputation.  So I said "Five minutes.
Convince me, or you're out - fired, that is.  I won't tolerate behaviour
like this in the office."

"I'm Ian, sir...."

"I know that.  I know all the staff.  Get on with it."

He looked at Sam, and said "It's highly confidential."

"Sam is my PA.  He knows everything about my work.  Get on with it, as I
said."

Well I won't bore you with all the details, but he started to tell me about
a huge scheme he'd heard about that involved a major, but major,
restructuring of one of the US's biggest - if not the biggest - financial
institutions, with various parts being spun off, or merged, or closed down.
"...and there have to be opportunities for us there, sir.  If we get in
early.  Either to be a part of it, working with them on the restructuring
for huge fees, or even better, going into the markets now to buy stuff
they'll need to round out the new venture, or future-sell stuff they'll be
dumping, or...."

"I'm aware of how to make money when you have advance information.  But how
do you know all this?"

"I got a hint from this woman I'm shagging.  She's head of operations
at...."

"No way!", Sam cut in. "He's bullshitting, sir.  She was at your `City
Influencers' dinner last month.  She's at least fifteen years older than
him.  No way would...."

Ian grinned.  "Well as it happens, I have a thing for older women - I like
a woman with a bit, no, a lot, of experience.  Someone who'll be properly
grateful.  And you could say there are a lot of ladies that like me, too -
especially when they see the `thing' I have for them."

He smiled a his own cleverness in using the word "thing" twice with
different meanings and went on "She wouldn't tell me anything really, but
we were supposed to be having our one month anniversary shag this week - I
was at your dinner, not actually eating, but at the reception first which
is where we met - and she went to New York instead.  And I can tell you, it
must be pretty important or she'd never have missed out on what we were
planning here...."

I smiled, to show I was at least understanding of how a young man like him
might spend his spare time.  "Anyway", he went on "We bought up that travel
company last year and haven`t sold it yet, and it turns out they do all the
travel arrangements for her company - it's compulsory, they all have to use
it, even the execs.  So I went over to the travel company`s offices and
started to ask a few questions."  He stopped a moment and added "I think
there's a complaint on its way to you, sir, as they didn't want to tell me
anything, something about `confidentiality', so I had to remind them who
owns them, and...."

"Quite.  Get on with it..."

"Anyway, everybody - everybody who's anybody, at least, is in the USA.  And
what's more they're not staying in their usual hotels.  One of the bookers
told me she'd had them on the phone saying the hotels the system books
automatically to get them the corporate discount were not suitable, and
they demanded places more discrete, not near Wall Street, or midtown.  So
that seemed odd.  So then I looked a bit closer and they were booking all
these meeting rooms and stuff as well....  So I rang the places in the US,
pretending to be going, and asking to check the other names....  And hen I
found out who all these meetings were with..."

I was getting intrigued now and nodded for him to continue.

"Well after that I got Research here to run some numbers, detailed numbers,
that is, and things seem to be going a bit wrong with their operations...."

"All this is very interesting, but hardly proof that there's a huge deal
about to happen...."

"Well, sir, don't you think it's worth while doing a bit of digging...?"

To my surprise Sam cut in "I know some guys in their UK operations.  We
play football every Thursday night.  They haven't been their usual cheery
selves in the showers afterwards, haven't been splashing out on the
champagne - it's been beer, like the rest of us. It could be that they're
worried."

"How well do you know these people, Sam?"

"Well, as I said, we play football, have done for three years.  And I know
them as well as any bloke I've been naked with..." He grinned.

I looked at my watch.  "It's 11:30.  This is what we will do.  Ian, you
call your woman in the USA - I assume you've got her mobile as you've been,
as you say, `shagging' her.  Pump her for anything she knows.  Tell her
you're missing her, you're missing her body, or whatever you usually tell
her, ask when she's coming back, say you're desperately horny, offer to go
there for the weekend for fun and sex.... Anything to get her talking. And
find out more of her plans.  And you, Sam - call up one of your naked mates
and offer to take him out to lunch, no expense spared.  See what you can
find out.  If he's worried about losing his job, offer to put in a good
word for him here....  And we'll meet again at 16:00, here."

I motioned for them to go, and added "And Sam, call Dave and tell him I am
not able to speak to him today as I am snowed under, but that he is to
proceed with the business we discussed.... And clear my diary for the rest
of the day. Absolutely no interruptions."

Sam nodded, and I could see the advantage of having a PA who really knew my
business!  And I had postponed, at least for the time being, needing to do
anything about Dave.  It's funny, isn't it - normally I'm the kind of
person who takes the bull by the horns, as the old saying goes.  I'll
always have the difficult meeting, always make the dreadful call no one
else wants to do.  And here I was, not calling a slave dealer, who I could
personally buy out ten times over if I wanted to.  And now feeling good
about not calling, because I'd managed to find an excuse - an excuse for
myself, that is, for not doing so.  How much effort would it really have
been to pick up the phone myself - and yet I'd put it off.

I spent the time then ding my own research - tapping my own network of
contacts.  And doing so skilfully, as of course whilst trying to find out
what they might know, I had to be careful not to reveal what I might know,
or, indeed, that I knew anything at all.  And it was very inconvenient not
having Sam there: I decided to work through lunch and when I needed a
sandwich one of the other secretaries had to be sent out to my favourite
place (the ones in the staff restaurant were not good), and she did not
know exactly what to order to cater for my special likes and it came
without the thin slivers of my favourite gherkins to add piquancy.

When we got together at 16:00 - Sam and Ian both looked very excited and I
had to tell them to calm down so I could filter out what they knew, in the
sense of having been told it, from what they were surmising from the way it
had been told to them.  Added to the stuff from my own sources, it did
indeed seem as if something might be on he cards.  I therefore decided to
do something I had not done for three years, since I last had had any
contact with him having worked on a deal with him (or, rather, for him),
and dialled the "private" number of Cyrus Williams.  For those of you who
do not know of him, that simply shows how powerful the man is - no mention
of his name, or his wealth, or his power, ever appears in the press.  When
something needs to be done publicly about one of his holdings, it's the CEO
of the corporation who is told to do it, not Cyrus.

I listened to the phone rang out, then as soon as it answered I picked up
my end as I hate "conference calls".  Yes, Sam and Ian might know more if
they could hear the call, but that's not my way of working.

It was gratifying to see he knew my name still, so my number must be in his
phone.  And he remembered our work, as he said at once "Three years, no
contact."

"Yes, Cyrus.  I would only contact you if there was something important, as
you know.  And there is.  I'd like to discuss..."

"Not on the phone.  These days you can't be too careful.  Lunch in my
private dining room, tomorrow."

"13:00?  Sorry... 1 p.m. ?  Assuming the morning flight's not late....",
and that was that.

"Get me on the 08:00 from Heathrow", I said to Sam.  "And a limo to
midtown."

"Address?"

"I'll tell the driver in the car."

"It's very short notice, the 08:00's usually full, especially in first
class...."

"Sam, just do it.  I'll slum it in business class if I have to. And anyway
there's almost certainly someone in this company going on that flight, and
if it's fully booked, tell him he's no longer going. I surely don't have to
tell you how to do your job!"

"Make that two tickets", Ian said to Sam.  "You never know, sir.  I could
hook up with my woman, sir.  Who knows what I might find out."

I was warming to Ian.  As I've said, he had a certain kind of rugged - no,
perhaps "thuggish" appearance.  He was thick and muscular, and I guessed he
may have has a tough childhood as he had that kind of look of hardness
coupled with an underlying vulnerability about his face.  And I like a man
who sees a chance, and goes for it.

This kind of semi-erotic thinking was doing me no good though, especially
as Sam was standing there with his nice little bum stuck out, and I
remembered how appealing it had looked when bare, with Dave's hand print on
it when he'd slapped him playfully in the photo session - good god, was it
only two days ago?  I've learned by now to always trust my instincts, and
something was telling me there might be more excitement to come with Sam,
so I said casually "Any you'd better come too, Sam.  I might need some
on-the-spot stuff done, and we'd better be careful about phones and e-mail
and things - there's so much at stake here, as this is the biggest of big
business, that I don't think we can really trust the American spying
agencies to stick completely to the law."

Sam looked delighted - I don't suppose he'd ever been away on company
business before.  "Oh, and you and Ian - business class!  The firm's not
made of money.  And I don't want to hear any rubbish about it being sold
out so you had to go first with me."

"We'd better take Ted, too, sir", Ian cut in again.

"Who's he?"

"He's my mate in IT.  He does all sorts of stuff for me, finds out things
you never even thought existed.  He's in Security, really, but who knows
better about how to get around all that stuff than someone who works with
it all the time?"

Interesting, I thought.  So we've got people in out IT department bust
circumventing all the controls we have.  Or perhaps even going out and
hacking other people's stuff.  We could be deep in he shit.... But perhaps
it would be useful.  So I'll pretend I didn't know, I thought, and when the
scandal broke, if it did, it would all be "Shocked that such things could
happen.  No knowledge of it...., etc."  I nodded to show my agreement.

That night as he packed my bag for the trip Greg was in a sour mood again,
muttering on about never going anywhere himself.  And I had to remind him
that, probably a reaction to their experience in the nineteenth century,
the USA was one of the few civilised (well, half civilised) places on the
planet which had not reintroduced slavery.  So if Greg arrived there he
would, by definition, be a free man.  And I'd probably be arrested for
being a slave owner, or something!  It didn't make any sense, of course -
they were not going to arrest me on arrival for being a slave owner of
slaves in London, so why should it be different if the slave was in New
York?

"So would that be such a bad thing, for me to be free?"

"For you, Greg, probably not.  But you can't be sure.  After all, you
didn't manage all that well when you were free, you did get yourself
enslaved!  So who's to say it wouldn't happen again if you were free?  But
it's not going to happen, anyway - you're too valuable and I could get a
tidy sum for you if I sold you, and I don't throw money away, you know
that."

"It's fucking unfair!", he mumbled.

"Unfair?  What's unfair?  You broke the rules. You were enslaved.  What's
unfair about that?"

It's not so bad flying the Atlantic if you're in first class, although
there's not a lot to look at - the stewards get to be in first through some
sort of seniority process, and so most of them are older than me.  And
although they look as if they like men, they're definitely far from being
the kind of hard muscled, lithe young men I like.  Indeed, I want a man
who's a proper man, not some sort of "queer".  The limo driver who met us
though was interesting, and I couldn't help thinking that if he had been
wearing only a slave collar as he drove us into the city how much more
interesting it would have been.

Although we had a hotel booked and I had been planning to go directly to
Cyrus's office first, the driver seemed to know differently and said that
Mr Williams had instructed him to take us directly to his penthouse
apartment.

Look, I have a pretty nice place in Westminster, as I've told you.  But the
building we drew up at, fronting the park, was something else.  It must
have been dramatically expensive, as unlike so many other buildings in the
area it was still only ten stories high and had not been torn down to build
newer, much higher places.  I dated it as from the 1930s, and its decor was
absolutely perfect - clearly a fortune was spent to keep it that way.  A
very discrete doorman ushered us to the desk of a "house manager" who
checked and said that we were expected, and in turn ushered us into an
elevator marked "penthouse" - which, incredibly, had an elevator operator,
I suppose in keeping with the 1930s mood of the place!  How much money was
all this costing, I wondered.  A private elevator and a private elevator
operator.

Cyrus greeted me warmly, and although I introduced Sam, Ted and Ian, he
clearly wasn't interested in them and simply nodded.  He took us through
into a simply enormous living room with panoramic views over the park, and
I complimented him on it.

"Yes, not a lot of these apartments were ever built.  They were expensive
even then.  And now....  Well, anyway, I like space.  And there are not a
lot of places overlooking the park with eight bedrooms."

I couldn't believe it!  I mean, I was rich.  But this was wealth on an
altogether different scale. At that point a servant opened the door and a
woman came in, and Cyrus introduced us.  Mrs Williams - who Cyrus said at
once I should call Anastasia - was simply stunning.  She was about the same
age as me, I guessed, so half that of Cyrus.  She was so simply dressed
that her outfit must have cost thousands and thousands, and the only
ornamentation she wore was a diamond ring - a single stone - which, if it
were genuine, and I assumed it was, would have been worth millions.  To go
along with all of this she had flawless skin (or was extremely carefully
made up to achieve perfect naturalness), and her blond hair looked so
natural it must be natural, as no hairdresser could achieve that with
dye. Although he must be good at his job as it was so perfectly coifed that
not a hair was out of place.

In turn I introduced her to Sam, Ted and Ian, and I could see that Ian was
almost open mouthed with astonishment.  And perhaps there's something in
this "animal magnetism" thing, as in turn Anastasia held Ian's hand as they
shook for at least five seconds longer than she had of either me, Ted or
Sam.

Waiters served a light lunch in a dining room capable of seating at least
twenty, and afterwards Cyrus took me off to his study, simply telling
Anastasia to "see that his people got everything they wanted", and I
suggested they went off to our hotel.

"I asked you here", Cyrus began, "As I do know something's afoot.  And it's
so big that if we're going to make money it must be absolutely secret.  The
Feds are so scared of any ruckus in the financial situation on this scale
that they'd do anything to stop the carefully-crafted plan I assume they're
executing from going wrong."  He leaned forward conspiratorially and
continued "And of course that's what we need to do, to make the killing of
the century - to have our plans execute instead and for theirs to go wrong,
horribly wrong. Irrespective of the consequences.  So this is the only safe
place we can meet and work - it's swept for bugs daily, every piece of
communication in and out is encrypted, and so on and so on.  And whilst the
financial authorities can swoop on any office in the city, a man's home is
still pretty sacrosanct."

Well, from that start, we pooled what we knew.  And as we were both
experienced, sharp operators, we soon had a list of things we needed to
know, and things to be done.  We discussed how all this was going to
happen, and I suggested that we kept the team small, pointing out that Sam
was a "fixer", Ian could be sent out to get information from women, as well
as doing other research, and Ted was possibly the best hacker not in
government service.

So that was that, and Cyrus "suggested" we all move in, to keep us all
working close and enhance security.  I nodded agreement, he picked up a
phone and told his chauffeur to go to our hotel, pick up the three men and
all the luggage, to tell them to check out, and to get back here.

End Of Part Eight