Chapter 3 – Chapter 3

The afternoon after getting the "go" from Ted, I pulled up in my BMW convertible to a rambling beach house on a nearly deserted stretch of beach between Salamis and Famagusta on the east coast of Cyprus, still in the Turkish Cypriot zone. I parked next to a bright red 1959 Cadillac convertible—the one with the outrageous tail fins—that was in pristine condition. Looking out toward the Mediterranean, I saw Onur sitting at his easel, facing out to sea and painting. The multicolored caftan he was wearing, which was billowing in the wind, was more arresting in color than the paints being applied to the canvas. He wore a white turban on his head, the end of which was loose and was beating on his cheek in the air currents. He didn't seem to notice.

I took my shoes and socks off, stowed them on the trunk of my car, and then walked down the beach and stood behind him. I looked out to sea, where a large sailing yacht was bobbing up and down, and then at the canvas where the naked figure of a young man was appearing. No sign of water or a boat on the canvas. The young man was very nicely equipped, though. Onur was especially fond of nice equipment on a young man and I was always flattered when he told me I was one of his nicest young men.

"What is it you want, Ron?" he asked me in a low, bass voice. He hadn't turned around to see me either arrive in the car or walk down the beach to him, as far as I could see. "Mustafa is off in Istanbul, accompanying the prime minister. He's been gone since the last time you visited."

Ah, so he hadn't forgiven me yet for having caught me with Mustafa on the beach that night.

"I know. I just came to visit. I'm lonely for the company of crazy old men. I see that Sami is gone too." I recognized the model in Onur's painting. It was his sometimes houseboy, who easily got into a snit and went back to his boyfriend in Famagusta, only to return to Onur when he got hungry—and into a snit over something his boyfriend had or had not done.

"He's been gone a week this time."

"And you've had no one to . . . model for you since then? You know I could—"

"You'd have to take off more than those shoes and socks."

"If it will make you forget about that night on the beach. It was your fault anyway—that cheap wine."

He sketched me reclining on the low wall of the long loggia that ran across the sea side of the sand dune-hugging villa. I was leaning on a Moorish column, one leg on the wall, knee bent and my seaward side arm propped on the knee. My other leg stretching down to the tiles on the floor of the loggia, my toes reaching for the floor. My landside arm stretched loosely onto the thigh of my stretched leg, the fingers of my hand, at Onur's direction, pointing to the goods dangling between my legs. I was half hard, also at Onur's request, although I had to dredge up some pretty exotic thoughts to become that way.

"Very nice," he said after about twenty minutes. I knew he was referring to my half hard-on and I also knew he had the sketch finished then. He always was in a trance while he was painting or sketching.

I came around to his side of the easel and gave a little laugh. Everything was done in subdued, almost sketchy strokes except for my package, which was drawn in great detail. Still, it was a masterful work, something to respect as well as chuckle at. "Not too subtle," I said.

And it wasn't subtle. He wanted me to fuck him. I probably wouldn't be forgiven for Mustafa until I had done so.

"When a young man is as hung as you are," he said, "I like to focus on what is important. Now, what is it you want from me, Ron? And what else are you willing to do for me to get it?"

Onur was another one of my regular assets. The wrist he had a pulse on that was of interest to me was the man named Mustafa, who now was personal secretary to the Turkish Cypriot prime minister. Mustafa had been initiated by Onur decades before, and the man had remained close to Onur ever since. That had been a specialty of Onur's. Initiating young men. Garish and flamboyant, from a wealthy merchant family but with a genuine talent for art—especially for nudes of young men, Onur was an institution of decadence in Cyprus. He left at the first hint of a Turkish invasion and the resulting division of the island and had come back to retire quietly in one of his family's villas after an arrest and imprisonment on the Turkish mainland for debauchery and sodomy—apparently of young men in families that were too powerful with sons who were a bit too young.

He was a large man, thickish of waist now, but still solidly built. He once had been beautiful and had had no trouble being a pied piper to young and curious and beautiful themselves barely men. Not yet completely gray, he had a beard and mustache to be proud of and a hairy chest, arms, and calves. There was no hair on his head, though. He was bald, which was the reason that he had worn a turban for decades. He was still a man who was vain about his appearance and used deflections to take the eye away from what no longer was perfection in his body—an earring, multiple rings on his finger, and, when the caftan came off, nipple rings and a gold serpentine band encircling his cock, the tail wrapped around the base of the balls and a cobra head flaring over the bulb.

He had taken the caftan—but not the turban—off when he'd started to sketch me. He obviously hadn't been fucked—receiving now being his favored position—since Sami had wafted off in a snit. And Onur, even at sixty, was a highly sexed man. Despite his nonchalance, he was happy I had come to see him. In his own way, he was trying to seduce me. He wanted me to fuck him. This sketching of me in the nude and his disrobing with the excuse that it was hot in the loggia were foreplay.

After many an encounter such as this, we understood each other perfectly.

I wanted a favor from him, so I would fuck him. I would have fucked him just out of friendship. I was fond of him in terms that went beyond his usefulness as an intell source. Knowing what the Turkish Cypriot prime minister was thinking and doing was fine and helped pay for my usefulness in the station, but in all the time I'd been in Cyprus, we hadn't received a golden question about the Turkish Cypriot prime minister. Washington didn't seem to give two fucks about the Turkish Cypriot prime minister. The mainland Turks controlled Turkish Cyprus.

"Stop asking me what I want, Onur. Can't a man drive all the way across Cyprus just because he fancies a blow job from an old friend? Don't you realize how irresistible you are?"

Onur put his sketching pencil down and looked up at me, glowering at me from under his bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows. He had a slight smile on his face. "Fuck you, Ron," he said. But he had that slight smile on his lips.

"No, fuck you Onur. But you really must be quick about it. This cock can go either way in a hurry. Hard or soft. Which do you want?"

I had unconsciously returned to my pose on the loggia wall after taking a look at the sketch. He came to me and knelt next to my extended leg, cupping my balls in one hand while letting the other glide up to my chest and find a nipple. His mouth took all of my cock. It would have been a chore for most men. But Onur wasn't most men. Swallowing cock whole was a specialty of his. I leaned back into the Moorish column, moved the leg that had been posed, bent on the low wall, to rest on his broad shoulder, closed my eyes, and let him take me to arousal heaven.

I fucked him on his throw pillow-strewn studio couch, taking him from behind as we lay on our sides. I held his upper leg up to give me deep penetration inside him. He particularly enjoyed deep penetration and always complimented me on being able to reach farther into him than most men. He sighed and panted lightly and purred as I stroked him slowly at first and then giving him the impression I knew he loved of losing control in the fuck pushed him over on his belly, straddled his hips, and rode him hard. He ejaculated before I did and was reduced to deep moans and expressions of pleasure as I focused on finishing myself. After I shot off, I lay close on top of him, my cock still buried inside his ass, kissed the hollow of his neck, and let my hands play in the thick hair of his forearms.

I knew he loved this attention afterward. Something, along with the inability to fuck hard, Sami had yet to master. I didn't care if Sami never learned to master it. I wanted Onur always to be happy to see me when I came to milk him for intell.

He turned his face to me, we kissed, he murmured his appreciation for the attention to an old man, and then he gave me that glower of his. "Now can you tell me what you want of me?"

"I want to borrow the Cadillac for a few days. I'll leave the BMW here. You can drive it into Famagusta and bring Sami back. He loves the BMW."

"I allow no one to drive the Cadillac. You know that."

"Which is why it needs the exercise." I knew he was just posing. For a fuck from me, he'd give or do just about anything. He always had before.

"Perhaps. Perhaps with a bit more persuading."

"You know I always give you a second one—when you give me what I want," I murmured. And, indeed, we both could tell that I was managing to go hard inside him again.

This time I fucked him just as we were, in close embrace, me plastered to his back. Just my hips moving, giving him a slow and deep fuck—until he begged me for more, and then I vigorously finished him again.

"The keys are on that dresser over there," he said when I finally rose off him and padded toward the bathroom to clean up. He could resist saying in my wake, "I would appreciate if, just once, you came just to make love to me."

I gave a chuckle. He was still so old school that no matter how debauching the fuck was he referred to it as "making love."

After slipping the loafers on my feet and stuffing the socks in my pocket, I opened the trunk of the BMW and took three bottles of scotch out, looking carefully as the subtle markings on the labels to keep them straight. All of them were Johnny Walker Red. We had tried to impress our assets one Christmas by moving up to black label for their presents and had received a resounding—and not particularly polite, considering they were supposed to be gifts, not straight-out bribery—confirmation that they all wanted the red label. I don't know how they would have reacted to the blue label.

I put two of the bottles, after carefully examining them, in the trunk of the Cadillac and the other one on the floor of the backseat. I waved at Onur as I left and watched him, after he had come over to the Cadillac and lovingly stroking the trunk and giving me the "there had better not be a single scratch when it returns" look, stroll down to the beach. He was quite a sight, with his caftan and the tail of the turban floating in the breeze. He settled down on the stick chair, dug off kilter in the sand, and returned to the canvas he was painting of the absent Sami in naked repose while he was facing the surf of the Mediterranean.

That night I visited Angie on the Rocks, which was just west along the beach from the safe house in Lapithos. As I was leaving, I told Musa, "Not this Tuesday. Fail to show up to deliver the liquor in the pasture this Tuesday. I've arranged it with Angie. The story is that Angie sent you to Kyrenia for a new shipment of liquor, but it didn't arrive. So you missed the connection and didn't have liquor to give anyway."