Chapter 4 – Chapter 4

All through my "chat" with Mr. Winterberry, I kept waiting for the accusation that I knowingly was working with the Mideast terrorist groups—that they had had me under their thumbs for years—but that wasn't even hinted at. I was treated like I was a completely honest banker who just happened to control the traffic in Arab banking transactions for BPR and could be approached just because I was so smitten with a homosexual lover that I would do illegal things for him.

And thus my quandary. What they were asking me seemed low risk to them—but to me it was a death sentence—and quite possibly for my wife and children too.

"We want all the information you can give us on any Mideast organization with a secret account at the bank that we ask you about, and promptly when we ask, Herr Bragger."

"Is that all?" I asked. I was jumping at shadows; I knew that this was too elaborate of a scheme for that to be all.

"When we are closing down the groups, we want you to transfer their funds into a U.S. government account," Winterberry said. And he had the audacity to smile as he said it.

"The risk," I said.

"Is minimal," Winterberry said.

"Is phenomenal," I countered. And Winterberry didn't know how phenomenal it was. All it would take was a hint of what I'd done on one account to reach the still-viable holders of other accounts, and I and my family would be dead. And after just a few such groups being hunted down, the rest would be able to figure where the information that brought them down would come from.

"My family," I said.

"Will be protected," Winterberry answered.

There was no arguing. Winterberry just didn't know it all, and I couldn't tell him all. And it was dangerous enough even with what Winterberry did know. Already my brain was spinning. I would have to transfer assets—there was a slight chance I could disappear on both of my oppressors. And I would have to force something that would cause Karyn to divorce me quickly and my children to part with me so publicly and irrevocably that the terrorists thought there was no bond at all between us. I was a dead man, but I would do what I could do for my family. Maybe a real mistress to anger my wife. Not reveal my homosexuality, of course. I could not humiliate my family that way—and my first wife had been good enough to keep the secret all these years—but another woman, that might work. At that contemplation, of course, my thoughts went to Salim.

"And Salim?" I asked Winterberry.

"He will be there for you as long as we are pleased with your efforts," Winterberry said, with a smile.

At least I'll die happy, I thought.

Later, after Winterberry had gone, my Arab lover did return. I refrained from recriminations—it was far too late for those to matter anyway—and when he had proved, because of my response, to have regained all of his vigor and virility, he fucked me silly, first missionary style on the bed and then, when I was washing the sex of him off me in the shower, he took me there too, my belly against the wall and his cock lifting my feet off the soapy tiled floor with the force of its thrusts.

"I'm so happy you'll be helping us out and that you and I can be together," he murmured.

I would indeed die happy.

One thing I needed to know, regardless, which I asked him when he had agreed to let me spend the night in his bed and we were in the dark in an embrace.

"Tell me one thing, please—and it doesn't matter either way—but I would like to know. You are not Sa'eed Maalouf's son, are you?"

"No," he answered with an edge of slight regret in his voice, which I noted with appreciation. "My name is Jamil Jallud. I'm third generation American. You can call me Jaime. And, as you may also have guessed already, I don't work for the U.S. Treasury Department."