The Kinky Christmas Tree Caper

Twisted By The Pool

"Eeeewww!" Celeste said, her tone dripping with disdain. Georgio ignored her. For all he knew her contempt was aimed at the Limeys more than the building, the setting it protected, or the prize both contained. Or maybe she was worried that her beehive was starting to wilt.

"None of that," Georgio said. "Your recall better be as good as always today. Try to look like you're having fun."

Chastened looking, Celeste adjusted her rubber two piece swimsuit and looked about the Jubilee baths. It was a big old redbrick swimming pool in a town centre. The prize Georgio and his posse planned to steal stood in the drained shallow end of the larger of the two swimming pools that took up the huge main space. It was a modernist Christmas tree statue, sculpted in some plastic that didn't quite look like latex over a metal supporting core, and with its predominantly green finish marbled with red and white streaks that artfully suggested tinsel and fairylights and tree decorations, despite the fact that the tree itself looked more like a giant ribbed buttplug than a fir however aggressively cubist or deconstructionist or whatever the Hell they called modern art styles that didn't even pretend to realism these days it looked. Georgio wasn't a fan of modern art, but he knew what he liked: art that was worth a lot and ideally easy to fake so that a stolen artwork could be sold to more than one buyer after it was acquired. However little Occam's Eleven did for him as art, they ticked that box very handily. Like a lot of conceptual art, you wouldn't even need a forger with any sort of drafting or fine art skills to fake this thing. Just a metal worker and some idea how to mix the plastic.

Georgio didn't really feel any more comfortable in his rubber swimwear than Celeste did. His cock and balls felt cramped and constrained in the tight rubber. He appreciated that this was part of the appeal of rubber for a lot of the people who enjoyed wearing the stuff, but he couldn't see why they liked it at all. He didn't like these kinky Eurotrash either, even if they spoke something like American. He could appreciate that rubber worked for pool wear and admire the way the two pools under the frosted glass skylights had been filled up with aquatic pervishness, but that wasn't his thing at all. The main thing that struck him was that the changing rooms and dress code would make the job a lot more difficult. He didn't think the submerged mummy bags looked like fun, even there were little gaggles of perverts keen to try them out, and in fact just looking at them made his flesh crawl, and the bondage furniture above or below water level he liked the look of even less than the submerged snorkel trailing cocoons. Georgio couldn't look at them without thinking of wetland insect larvae.

The eleven different "trees" the increasingly fashionable French designer Bertrand Occam had created for the this year's Christmas were unique, which made them expensive now and meant that they were only going to get more desirable if Occam's name didn't take a fall the way Konstabi or Haring's had and devalue his work. Georgio had come to the British midlands thinking that the tree that was on display here would be an easier heist than the ones in Paris, Barcelona, New Orleans, Madrid, Berlin, Hamburg, Chicago, London, Mexico City, and Rio. In fact, he was now thinking that he'd been proved wrong and one of Occam's eleven latest works that were displayed outside under heavy guard might have been a lot easier to steal after all. He couldn't hide a hand gun in these rubber trunks and shuddered to think about having to carry a roll of lock picks up his back passage.

It had taken a lot of money to get in here, and Georgio hatred to think he'd wasted it getting Celeste and the rest of his Krewe here. Still, a tree in a college town in a country where the Police didn't carry guns would have to be an easier target than any of the others, even if it was sited in a wet building full of perverts. Georgio kept telling himself that and reminding himself that maybe going into the family business like his brother would have been a better move. He prized his independence, and the fact that he wasn't having to split any money from his capers with half of the Italians in Brooklyn, but at least the familia looked after its own. This whole deal smelled even weirder than the aroma of wet rubber, sexual arousal, chlorine and poppers in the room, and he couldn't wait to get out of here and start planning the theft, even if he did have to admit that some of the women looked a hell of a lot better in rubber than any of the men.

Georgio snapped his fingers at a passing server and took a champagne flute as she smiled at him. He appreciated the female form, and even the staff here were tens, but he didn't think the metal chastity bikini and collar she was sporting did anything for her. He returned her smile and sipped what tasted like decent but undistinguished non vintage champagne. At least he and Celeste were doing a good job of presenting convincingly as middle aged newbies realising they were way out of their depth at their first play party, he supposed.

The Authority Figure With A Nose For Trouble

Lord Kinky sat bolt upright in bed with a shudder. The pneumatic blonde he'd been sharing the silk sheets with looked at him in alarm. After what they'd got up to before even making it to bed that afternoon, she hadn't thought he'd be up for a while yet.

"My Lord and Master," she said, "what's wrong?"

He smiled. "Nothing my dear. I felt a great disturbance in the force, as though a million vanilla idiots cried out in disgust and were suddenly silencing all the fun. Nothing to worry about."

The blonde didn't look reassured. All Lord Kinky's intimates knew that he could smell trouble and was rarely wrong. "This idiocy in the 'States, My Lord?" she said.

"No," Lord Kinky said. "It may be connected somehow, but no. Something closer. Some sort of threat. It might or might not be fun killers of some sort."

"Shall I have somebody check that all of your enemies remain silent?"

Lord Kinky pondered that. "So far as I know," he said, "they all are. Even Khan appears to still be dead." The Dutch techno musician had been one of his greatest challenges: Lord Kinky was more of a classic rock man and only wanted to hear synthesisers if they were mixed with a loud guitars. He was worried that this was part of the reason why he had dealt with Khan far more forcefully than the circumstances had really required at their first meeting and was more responsible for the way things had escalated. "Civet and Faulchion are restricting their mean spirited activities to the 'States at the moment. Stark, the Prince of Evil that was is still sulking over the fact that I blew his face off at our last meeting. No doubt he has something planned, but nothing just now and nothing here.

"No, I think if this is anything, it's somebody new. Ring down to the cellar and tell Roanoke I want a word. It's time to demonstrate the other function of those geese, besides producing eggs that only suit a very specialised taste."

The blonde knelt and spread her hands. "Yes, My Lord," she said.

A-schemin' And A-scammin'

Georgio looked around at his current firm. He wasn't sure that this was the best posse he could muster, but most of his regulars had refused to come to Britain. Besides Celeste, now looking a lot more comfortable in a 'sixties style sheath dress dress than she had in a rubber bikini, was sitting at a portable drafting table with a needlepoint Japanese gel pen in one hand and a set square under the other, drawing plans of the repurposed swimming baths from memory. Georgio knew that her memory was up to the job, and along with Georgio's idiot cousin, Guido she was the member of this group he had the most confidence in. Unfortunately, she was as useless in a fight as Guido was at anything involving sublety. Guido could always be relied upon in a fight, and had tracked down some heavies, who'd also be useful for heavy lifting.

Farren, who refused to offer any other name, Georgio felt he could trust, but he wasn't sure the man was half the computer expert any of his previous tehnical experts were. He was currently hunched over an Alienware laptop on the couch, supposedly infiltrating local sources of information. From his worried frown, he wasn't digging out anything like as much as they wanted or needed.

"Trouble, Farren?" Georgio said. Farren didn't quite jump out of his skin, but he did start so hard that he almost dropped his laptop.

"I can't find anything on this guy anywhere," Farren admitted, pettishly. "Or nothing that he doesn't want out there. We know he was involved in local government but whatever he did there seems to have been wiped. His wikipedia entry just talks about his involvement in the local fetish scene and his noble title. And the fact that he once punched out the singer of Blur at some sort of music biz do in London. It seems he is a real Lord, though he appears to have bought his title, and there's some doubt about how he made his fortune."

"The British laws on libel are very harsh," Celeste said looking up from her plans. "There are probably limits to what they can say on a freely available website."

"Sure, but the Darknet stuff doesn't add much either. "He almost certainly was involved in the financial ruin of Pharamond Khan, and might have had something to do with the plane accident last year. There are rumours that he's ex special forces..."

"Whatever excuse for special forces they have in this backwater shithole country, you mean," Guido said, looking up from his copy of Soldier Of Fortune. Guido had been so stupid none of his family wanted him in the business. He'd also failed to get into the US armed forces, though he was a member in good standing of several militia groups.

"Whatever," Farren said. "Also, there seems to be some proof that he made his fortune by selling on a software company. There are suggestions though that this was just money laundering and he'd acquired the company using money seized through extra legal methods in Somalia. He's been connected with the utter failure of Leon Civet's businesses in the UK, though Civet has threatened to sue anybody who breathes a word about that. He supposedly has some sort of arrangement with the local member of Parliament and is openly agreed to have a lot to do with the local Mayor's election. And he has a seat in the House of Lords. Oh, and as a rich Englishman with taxes to pay, he obviously does a lot of work for charity. Or just donates big sums to favoured causes, which is probably more useful than using other people's misery as a PR stunt.

"It's the rumours that worry me, more, though. The suggestions that he somehow talked Lucius Snape into jumping off the Gherkin are impossible to prove one way or the other, but it's definitely the case that he was the last person to talk to Snape alive. Then there's the stories about him having something to do with the insurgent attacks that wiped out three pirate organisations in Somalia. There's even a circumstantial link there in that one of the pirate groups had abducted a film crew he employed and the talent they were filming, who he also had an interest in. Which if it is on the level makes you wonder why he wiped out two other crews as well."

"You sound scared," Georgio said. Farren looked scared as well.

"Damn right, I'm scared. I have no idea if any of this is true, but even if it's all urban myths and flapdoodle, this is a rich and influential man who will be able to call in all sorts of favours to deal with people who steal his property."

"So we do it as quickly as possible and get the hell out of town in a hurry," Georgio said. "We're all agreed on that?"

There were nods. "The heavy plant approach looks the best to me," Celeste said. "Minimum fuss, and quick. We can punch straight through the skylight over the west end of the pool without risking damaging the tree with falling debris, get it under the hole in the roof and lift it out fast. You were saying it'll be a cinch to rent some sort of big excavator with lifting gear and an eighteen wheeler to move the tree, Georgio?"

"Should be," Georgio said. "No messing about with the local electrical grid to disable whatever security alarms they have, though turning it off can't hurt, no precise timing, no anything. There's even a breaker's yard a couple of blocks from the pool, where we can stash one of those silly little British trucks and keep the yellow goods until needed."

"How fast can we do that?" Celeste said. Can we get hold of a cherry picker and a big rig..."

"Small rig," Guido said. Georgio supposed the line about silly little British trucks had only just penetrated his mind.

"Can we manage that for tonight? If we get done and get out now, I'll feel a lot safer. All those weird sissy freaks in rubber bother me, and if we're going to have to deal with some sort of pervy Batman that makes it even scarier."

"Chill, Celeste," Georgio said. "I agree. How fast can you get us a suitable bit of yellow goods and a truck, Farren?"

Farren looked happier. This was more his sort of thing than data mining from servers he couldn't find. "Three hours tops," he said. "We'll just need to have a word with the owner of that breaker's yard."

Guido grinned a grin that didn't reach his eyes and put down his magazine. "Leave that to me," he said. "I can take the boys other now."

Hack And Poop

"The sexual energies from the geese should be rising now, My Lord," Miriam said. The small IT room was in the same wing of cellars as the goose pens. The women in there who were immobilised in heavy bondage while being forcefed through tubes and milked for eggs of excrement which were tinned and sold on to a selective market of scat enthusiasts were kept quiescent with a steady feed of virtual reality pornography. Turning off their vibrators and other stimulation while keeping the porn flowing led to towering levels of sexual frustration that filled the air with more orgones than you'd find at a Wilhelm Reich fan convention.

"It is," Lord Kinky said. "I'll have the harem play some sex games with penalties for orgasm as well."

"Yes, My Lord. Shall I tell all of the Dommes in your circle than No Nut November is to continue until further notice? I'm sure a fair few of them haven't released their gimps and let them come yet."

"An excellent idea, Miriam. Every little helps and the vices must flow. Any progress on tracking the malefactors?"

"There was a brief heads up from the Mainwaring Arms." Miriam's fingers flew over the keyboard resting between her and the 36 inch monitor that dominated her desk. "We've traced the most recent serious attempt to dig up information on you to an IP in one of their rooms. There was an attempt to hide that using a VPN, but it was this laptop here that originated it."

"What can you tell me about the owner?"

"One James Tiberius Farren. No idea if he wears a weave and a corset like The Shat, but he's part of a group of American tourists that booked into the Mainwaring yesterday evening. They don't look like a bridge club to me, and they;'re a bit young to be retirees. A dozen in the party and one chick which looks a bit fishy as well. Fake papers and false names, obvs. Made a point of paying cash rather than using plastic as well, which hardly makes them inconspicuous."

"So they might as well have checked in all wearing domino masks, stripey sweaters and black berets then?"

"Yes, My Lord. Two of them did visit the baths this afternoon. Do you think they're after the tree?"

"What else? The question is how they intend to try to steal it."

"The laptop I've tagged is currently being used to set up a false payment for a JCB excavator and a container rig."

"A shame," Lord Kinky said. "Watching them trying to sneak it out of the building like Laurel and Hardy moving a grand piano might have been fun."

"You think they're planning something tonight, My Lord?" Miriam said.

"I believe so. If this was a carefully planned set up they'd have earth moving equipment in place already, rather than having to burn a few fake lines of credit to acquire some in a hurry."

"Why the rush?" Miriam said.

"You said they were researching me on line, didn't you, Miriam?" Lord Kinky said. Miriam couldn't see him as she concentrated on the screen in front of her, but she could hear him grinning. Miriam's master had a disturbing feral quality that made it look like he could open beer tins by biting the tops off them. "They're probably scared."

"So what do we do, My Lord?"

"For now," Lord Kinky said, "you had better carry on as you are. I take it you have Dban set up to wipe that laptop as and when?"

"Of course, My Lord. It's lurding in a hidden folder with a script to run it. The owner has been investigating the local power grid as well as the information online about you."

"Well, we can't allow

that

, but don't nuke his laptop until he tries something unacceptable. And send the log ins and geolocation data to my smartphone."

"Yes, My Lord."

"We need to make sure there's nobody in danger at the baths tonight. If they come in before closing when there's still people enjoying themselves, somebody might get hurt. Announce that there's going to be an early Christmas ball at the Regal. Free entry for anybody with circle membership and free drink tickets for anybody with a membership at the baths. And have a bongo contest set up to make it worth everybody's while, those always go down well. There's a lot of bum men out there. If somebody likes to ogle bums in rubber at the baths, they'll get just as much from watching somebody playing the bongos on a naked bottom."

"This is to ensure nobody's in harm's way at the baths tonight, My Lord?"

"Partly. Also to convince the malefactors that the coast is clear. And then there's that whole orgone thing. I might well be burning off a lot energy dealing with these fools: as I said, the world is full of bum men."

"Shall I start tipping off everybody who can be trusted?"

"Do so, and make sure the Valkyries are good to go, but I'll make a few calls myself. Keep up the good work, Miriam."

"Yes, My Lord," Miriam called as Lord Kinky left the room and made for the stairs. She tapped an onscreen button on the goose management application, and heard the geese in the cells lining the rest of the subterranean hall begin to sigh and moan around their feeding tubes as their vibrators fired up and their VR rigs switched to sexier stimulation.

When Good Heists Go Bad

Georgio's ears were ringing. He had an idea that Guido had overdone the explosives. The tree was intact as he watched Guido's crew of gorillas and idiots manhandle it onto the cradle that was going to lift it out through the hole that used to be a skylight. At least it would fit through fine. Georgio stepped onto the cradle himself, and pushed a button. The cradle started to rise. The square in front of the baths was a fairly tidy size, and it'd be the work of minutes to get the tree into the back of the container once it was outside. Georgio looked down and watched Guido and his goons make their way out to the exit at the front of the building, then up as he entered open air and looked around. No flashing blue lights in the distance. Farren was working the cherry picker, and his tongue poking out of one corner of his mouth as he concentrated. His laptop was at his side, open, screen blanked and battery lights flashing as it slept. Georgio didn't think he'd be hiring the guy again.

The cradle hit the ground. Georgio leaped off. Guido and the goon squad came rushing around the corner of the building and seized the tree as he unlocked the back of the truck. Farren picked up his laptop and looked over at Georgio. "Light's out?" he shouted. Georgio bristled: the guy shouldn't even need to be asking that.