Chapter 13
We had both been told to go to room 3--the library where we had started. There, eight of us relaxed in overstuffed chairs or on the sofa. "Agent Hardrock" and his date--a pretty brunette in a blue dress--had already claimed one side of the sofa and gestured for us to take the other side. After a quick glance at each other, we agreed and flopped down beside them. Waiters brought spritzers for us and one of the former dealers stood at the front of the room. I scanned my dossier, frantically trying to memorize every detail. Cary was doing the same with hers. The room was deathly silent except for the announcement that the second group could now begin reading their dossiers.
Ten minutes passed too quickly, and my folder was collected from my hands. The dealer stood at the front of the room, arms crossed. It suddenly occurred to me that these guys had been
paid
to be here, and probably had some very strange ideas about each of us. I wondered what they would tell their friends or family about this party tomorrow.
"Agents," the dealer announced, "you have a lot of work to do. You have part of the nuclear code, but if you want to get more, you need to find your suspect. Your contact has provided you with information, but Soviet agents interrupted you and destroyed your dossier. You are being interrogated now, and must trick your Soviet captors. So, you will tell them two true things about your suspect, and one false thing."
Everybody nodded along; we all got the gist. After a moment, the brunette (who looked to be about the same age as Cary was pretending to be) raised her hand. "Where are the Soviets?" she asked, words slightly slurred.
"You will all play the parts of Soviet interrogators when the agent who has been selected is standing in front of you. Once you have told your two truths and a lie, the rest of you will vote on which is the lie. If the majority of you guess right, the agent must pay the penalty. If the majority guess wrong, you get a point. The first four people to four points will get their bonus for the next game."
"What's the penalty?" It was Cary's voice. I nodded, wanting to know as well.
"The lead interrogator will draw a penalty card from this deck and you must do as it says," the dealer announced. As he explained how the lead interrogator for each round would be chosen, I glanced at the deck of cards. It looked like the sort of card game you would get at Spencer's Gifts--naughty challenges all the way through.
"Agents who won at poker earliest, you will start."
I gestured to Carla. "Ladies first."
Carla walked to the front of the room and cleared her throat. "My suspect works in an office as part of his cover. He is a man. He eats at the same restaurant every Thursday evening."
The rest of us turned to one another as Carla fidgeted back and forth. "I bet the suspect is a woman," I said. A few of them raised their eyebrows, so I continued. "Believable, doesn't change the details of the two true facts, 50/50 shot that we guess incorrectly."
"Watch out for this smart guy," muttered the tousle-haired guy who looked like a surfer. I had heard him introduce himself as 'Swelling' earlier. He nodded in agreement. We all exchanged glances.
"Second fact is the lie," announced Agent Hardrock.
Carla frowned and folded her arms. The dealer nodded. "Correct. Draw a penalty card!"
Hardrock drew a penalty card and read it aloud. "You and your contact must lift up a baseball from the ground and finish by holding it between your two noses for a count of ten. You have one minute or the next penalty for each of you will be two cards." The dealer obligingly produced a baseball and set it on the ground in font of Carla, who glared expectantly at me.
Too late, I realized that
I
was her contact. This had backfired. Smirking and chuckles erupted through the room as I flushed and stood up. I gave Cary a glance and squeezed her hand before moving to the front of the room with Carla. Both of us knelt on the ground in front of the ball with our hands behind our backs.
"Go!" the dealer directed. At first, we tried to have me nose the ball up to her knees and along her legs; the sequined skirt of her dress was uneven enough that the ball got caught in the wrinkles fairly easily. The problem came when we realized that if either of us tried to stand up, the ball would roll off her hips.
"Okay, I think I have an idea," I said, still leaning precariously close to her thighs. "I'll try to stabilize it with my chin and squat down. You stand up by leaning forward into me, and then I can bite onto it and push it up until you can catch it between your boobs."
She nodded. "Let's move. We don't have a lot of time."
It mostly worked. As I squatted over her, nearly sitting on her thighs, I bent almost double. The baseball was able to fit into the hollow of my chin. I nudged it up slowly to just under boobs, super aware of where I was. I tried not to sweat, and willed my dick to behave itself for just a few moments.
Carla stood up sinuously, and I followed, half-knelt beneath her cleavage with a baseball balanced on the hollow of my chin. I could feel her heart beating rapidly. The sequins on her bustline shimmered. Serpentine as a stripper, she rolled back and up, and I rolled the ball onto her cleavage. She squeezed her shoulders towards her chest, momentarily trapping the ball while I stood and reset, knees complaining.
From there, we basically stood close together and rolled it up each other's chests until it was beneath her chin. I slowly opened my mouth, bit into it, and gingerly stood to place it against her nose. She leaned forward a little bit to put pressure on it, and I released it from my mouth, mashing my nose against it.
But we were out of time. The rest of the group cheered and jeered, even as the dealer announced that the next time either of us was due for a penalty, we would draw double. Cary gave me a sympathetic look, mixed with something else. Carla rolled her eyes. "There was no way we could have made that work," she muttered. I privately agreed--I wondered if all of these challenges would be similarly unfair.
My turn was next. "My suspect is a Turkish expatriate. They always carry a handgun. They never sleep in the same building two nights in a row."
I lucked out--the group thought the last detail was the lie, when in fact my suspect always carried a knife.