The Syrian Rent-Boy

"You'll be doing a great service. You'll be saving lives."

I could see why that might be so, but why did I still feel so used? And why was he forcing me to do this rather than someone in his own service, from his own country? I wondered that so much that I asked him.

"I'm from the American embassy. And all of my colleagues are known and watched. I can't get close to Zahlé, let alone across the border into Syria. You're Canadian and a newsman. You have a good excuse to be in the refugee camp."

And just when did you discover I was a Canadian newsman, I wondered. But then I had to laugh dryly. Of course you knew. You knew, Hal Hessler, if that's even your real name. You knew even before we met in Bardo, in the restaurant's gay-friendly bar, on Hamra Street. Didn't you? I was an easy mark, wasn't I?

Hal had been moving around the living area of the flat, naked, exposing what he had captured me with—one of the main attributes that he still held me with. If it only were the photographs and the video, I would have brazened it out, laughed in his face, walked out of the flat, and dared him to use the photographs. But there also was what he had swinging between his thighs. I couldn't deny that. Did I shock him how easy I was?

He came up close behind me, where I was sitting, naked under a thin robe on a stool at the kitchen island, all of his documents fanned out in front of me. He had already fucked me on the bed and would do so again. We were just taking a break. Or so I had thought. I'd made coffee, and when I turned around, he'd put those photographs and documents on the kitchen island and switched on the TV across the room, in the living area. A video was showing Hal fucking me on the bed and me begging for it. Then he told me what it meant and what I was going to do for him.

He embraced me from behind where I was sitting on the stool at the kitchen island, his lips going to the hollow of my neck and his hands pulling the front of the robe open and cupping my pecs, his thumbs going to my nipples. I moaned. I could do no more. I was putty in his hands.

"It will be easy for you and simple, you can even get a story out of it. We've arranged for your clearances to cross the border and spend three days in the refugee camp, interviewing the Syrian dissidents there. It will be a great news story."

"And I will contact these twenty-two people, give them these letters from their relatives in Cyprus, and convince them just to walk across the border with me?"

It sounded a bit too pat for me.

"Yes, just like that. That's all. The fix is in at the border. All you do is walk them to a café, the Café Clemenceau in Zahlé, and there will be a bus to bring them to Beirut, and a plane to fly them to safety in Cyprus."

"These twenty-two? These are important to you because they have relatives the CIA is obligated to?"

Hal gave me a hard look, took his hands off my chest—which I felt, guiltily, with a tremor of regret—and started pacing the flat again. He obviously hadn't wanted me to name who was at the bottom of all of this. I, conversely, felt it must be named—who was doing this to me. Who had seduced me into this position.

Seduced. That was the best word for it. He had been sitting at one end of the bar at Bardo when I came in. I was all keyed up from a hard day interviewing Syrians who somehow had made it as far as Beirut. I'd had a day of them trying to convince me that the Syrian regime was using chemical weapons on the dissidents and begging me to tell the world. I took notes, promising them that I would write up something—while knowing there wasn't much to write without some sort of tangible proof. I was depressed. I came into Bardo vulnerable and lonely—oh so lonely.

And, there being no use fooling myself. I came looking for what I got. I felt so guilty not being able to do anything with this Syrian situation that I wanted to be punished.

He had been just what aroused me the most. Hal Hessler. Tall and built big—built really big once his clothes were off. Younger than I was by a good ten years. A blond buzz cut, a twinkle in the blue eyes, laugher lines around the smile. Open, easy going, confident, straightforward. I would have known he was an American. In fact, as squared away as he was, I thought through our first two encounters that he was a Marine guard at the American embassy—before he lowered the boom and let me know he was so much more than that.

We were the only two at the bar. It was early. That I had decided to start drinking early reflected how rough my day had been—how much I needed crutches. Hal Hessler was just one more of those crutches. He raised his beer glass to me and smiled. I smiled back. He called the bartender over, who then informed me that the next round had been paid for by the gentleman at the end of the bar. As we both drank, we stared at each other down the length of the bar. His face was expressive. I wasn't sure what he was offering, if anything, but there was nothing in the gazes I returned that would give him the idea he couldn't have it—any of it; anything he wanted to do to me, as long as I could forget everything else while he was doing it.

Then he made what he was offering in addition to a free drink clear—at least to those of us who knew the traditional handkerchief codes—when, still keeping his eyes piercing mine, he took two handkerchiefs from his left back pocket and laid them on top of the bar. A camouflage-colored one, signaling military discipline, and a mustard-colored one, announcing over eight inches. Having come out of the left side told me he was a top.

I hadn't brought any handkerchiefs. The Lebanese wouldn't know what any of the colors represented. I had assumed that it would be a Lebanese Arab fucking me that night. I liked them.

I swallowed hard, pushed away from the bar, and headed to the men's room. I told myself that I really did need to take a piss. As I was finishing at a urinal and before I zipped up, he slid in at the urinal next to mine and exposed his cock. The mustard-colored handkerchief hadn't lied. I could have swallowed my teeth at seeing how thick and long he was. And hard. He hadn't come in there to piss. He turned to me, put one hand on the back of my neck to pull my face to his and wrapped the other hand around my exposed cock. The camouflage-colored hanky hadn't lied either. He was a take charge guy.

It took no more than that. It was a seduction by him, that was for sure. But I gave no indication that I didn't want it. I couldn't have that day. I did want it. I'd had such a rough day that I didn't even begin to think why he had thought—how he had known—that what he was offering was something I wanted. When we disengaged from the kiss, his other hand still squeezing and slow stroking my cock, my eyes went to the bank of stalls.

But he pushed me to my knees right there, with that hand gripping the back of my neck, and both of the roughness and insistence of his touch and the raw public nature of where we were, in the open in the men's room, sent an electric charge through me. When he'd had enough of me sucking his cock and balls, he pushed my head away. I looked at the stalls again, assuming we'd finish in there, but he had other plans.

"I have a flat nearby," he whispered. "We'll be more comfortable there—safer."

Safer. I could see humor in that now.

I wanted it so bad and, just as he had advertised, it was him inside me. I sometimes took cock, but it usually was me giving it. I wanted it so badly that I lowered to my knees just inside the door of the flat and sucked his cock again. I wanted it so badly that he just lay on his back on the bed the first time and I straddled his hips and rode the cock. He let me, but he was a man wanting to be in control. He embraced me close twice after that—muscular enough to move me how and where he wanted me—and fucked me hard. I didn't object. If I was the one being fucked, this was the way I wanted it.

The flat. I should have known even from that. It was conveniently near Bardo, near enough so that I wouldn't have second thoughts going there. And it was just a hotel flat. Nothing personal in it at all. This wasn't where Hal lived. I was a newsman. I should have caught on to that. This was just a flat for assignations. What I now knew to be a CIA safe house—I knew that without Hal ever saying those three letters. And of course we had to do it in this flat. The photographs and the video. This was the place outfitted to obtain those when I thought we were alone.

"Yes, these are all families of assets to U.S. intelligence," Hal answered, returning my attention to the documents in front of me. Even now he couldn't use the three letters. "They do important service for us—and for our allies. For Canada too. You are serving your own country's interests in this. These are important people to us. So getting their relatives out of that refugee camp inside the Syrian border is important to us—and to Canada as well."

But we both know that journalists are supposed to be neutral and that Western intelligence services are not supposed to use us this way, I thought. That's why you've gone to these lengths to suborn me. I didn't say it, though—not least because I couldn't. Hal had returned to stand very close behind me. One hand had cupped my chin and raised my mouth to his. His other hand had glided down my chest and belly and cupped my balls and cock. He held them close and I was getting hard again.

Hard for him—despite all that he was forcing me to do.

He released my mouth, and I leaned forward on the stool, my arms stiff-armed wide on the counter, my face staring down on the pile of documents he was giving me. His lips working the back of my neck. One hand still holding my balls and cock, the other one having pulled the robe up behind me and having snaked down the small of my back and into my crack, two fingers in my hole. Searching for, finding my prostate.

I moaned and groaned for him for several minutes as he worked both my cock and my channel with his hands. With a little cry and a jerk I ejaculated into the base of the kitchen island. I wondered if this had been caught on camera too. I supposed, though, that it didn't matter anymore.

He removed his hands from where they were but not from my body. They were cupping my pecs again and he was leaning his chin on my shoulder and playing with my ear lobes with his teeth.

I looked down at the documents and counted the letters.

"Seven letters. You said there were twenty-two refugees."

"Yes. Seven families. That accounts for twenty-one of them."

"Only twenty-one?"

"Yes. We couldn't get a letter for one of them, Asu Gemal, in time. You will have to talk him in without the letter. But he is very important to us. You'll have to talk him in."

"Why again is this so urgent?"

Hal paused before he answered, gauging, I suppose, how much I should know. "The Syrian regime is going to gas that camp in four days. Probably sarin gas. Extremely deadly. You have to go in tomorrow—and be out in three days."

"Gas the camp? But how do you know this?" My mind was racing now. The newsman in me. This would be the proof I needed—or at least a great on-the-scene story. Or near the scene at least, if I didn't want to be gassed too. I could just stay in Zahlé and then I'd be the reporter on the scene. But, my god, the horror of it. All of those people killed. And we—we in the West—knew about it in the advance. And couldn't—wouldn't be—doing anything about it. But I couldn't do anything about it either. Well, I could do at least a little. I could go into that camp and pull at least twenty-two people to safety. In that, Hal was right about doing some service. Better than nothing.

"I'm going to fuck you again."

"Yes," I murmured. "Go back to the bed. I'll be there in—"

"I'm going to fuck you here, on the floor. Get down on all fours." I watched his hand go to the kitchen counter next to where the documents were strewn and pick up a Golden Ticket condom ring. These were scattered throughout the flat, as there was no telling where he would decide to take me. It was part of the thrill of being fucked by him. I also knew, of course, that he was checking—checking on whether he retained control of me after what I now knew about what this entailed. I wanted the fuck, but he needn't have bothered. I still would do anything he told me to do. Knowing should have changed everything, but it changed nothing. I was a whore for him.

He pulled my robe off me as I stepped away from the stool and went down on all fours on an Oriental prayer rug. He crouched over me, covering me close from above. I howled when he thrust that thick, long, hard cock inside me and almost immediately started pumping me hard and deep. His chest was pressed against my back, his arms embracing my torso closely, his teeth holding the scruff of my neck like a wolf holding a cub steady. We both howled and barked as he took me rough and hard.

After a bit, he pulled out of me and rose off my back. Without losing hold of my waist with his hands, though, he turned me onto my back, putting my weight on my shoulders. He pulled my torso and hips up to him, with his arms under my thighs, and thrust inside me again and resumed pumping. I tried reaching for his chest with my arms, but could only reach as far as his upper, meaty thighs, where I dug my fingernails in, holding him to me.

As he pumped my ass, his eyes were boring into mine, watching me express my ecstasy at what he was doing to me. His eyes were telling me that I was his to do whatever he wanted with. Mine were not contradicting him. As I arched my back, my arms now extended from my sides and my hands clawing at the nubby carpeting under the prayer rug, I ejaculated again. I could tell that he came at nearly the same time.

"Tomorrow, 9:00 a.m. in Zahlé, at the Café Clemenceau," he said in a low, hoarse voice.

"Yes," I answered.

When I left the flat later that afternoon, stumbling from the effects of his cocking, Hal handed me an envelope stuffed with Syrian currency. I gave him a quizzical look.

"Make sure you take that into Syria with you. I think you will need it."

* * * *

Most of the first day in the refugee camp was spent in tracking down the seven families for which I had letters. I couldn't go straight for the families, though. I spent half of my time interviewing generally. I would have to produce a news piece on this visit or there would be questions why I'd done this. I had managed to come up with enough other names of people in the camp—from refugees who had made it to Beirut and had urged me to do something—so that it would not raise suspicion when I asked for these specific seven families also. It broke my heart, though, to interview people who I knew were not going to be leaving the camp before the gas attack—if the intelligence on that was correct.

Despite the reticence of all to leave Syria, most of the seven target families were willing to make the extreme change, conditioned, I'm sure by the truly primitive conditions in the camp. It nearly broke my spirit, though, when I couldn't convince two of the families, both of four, to go with me. They either didn't believe the letter was genuine or they would not attempt the change. I was equally saddened to find that another of the families had recently lost a daughter. They told me she had died and showed me photographs of a lovely young woman of nineteen or so, but the mother just started wailing and the father closed down when I asked what she had died of. Outside their tent, others were willing to tell me that Syrian camp guards had come and dragged the young woman out of the tent and away. I didn't really need to hear more of the specifics on her demise then.

Toward nightfall, having had what success I thought I was going to have, although I'd make another run at the holdout families the next day, I started looking for this Asu Gemal, who Hal had told me to be sure to convince to leave. Finding him wasn't that easy, and I soon realized why.

I went through the camp's bazaar, asking shopkeepers if they knew where I could find a young man named Asu Gemal. Each time I got hard looks, and more than once, the shopkeeper, after giving me a hard look, spat on the ground and turned away. At last one, obsequious and sweating fat man, though, gave me a licentious look and told me I'd find Asu on his back in the tent of one Sargon. He had no trouble giving me directions. And I had no trouble then either knowing why I'd gotten the reaction I had from the others or why Hal had picked me for this assignment. It also started me to thinking that maybe this Asu Gemal was key to the whole operation.

At the designated tent I paid Sargon for two hours with Asu, and, although he gave me a surprised and then a speculative look, he took my money, told me to wait a moment, pushed aside a carpet hanging, and went into an attached, smaller tent adjacent to the larger one.

The young man was already on all fours, his pert little butt pointed to the entrance of his small tent, when I entered. He was mostly naked, with a small and berry-brown body, which was very well proportioned. His only attire were gold serpentine bracelets on his biceps and flat sandals on his feet with laces of gold string winding around his well-turned calves nearly up to the knees.

There were condoms on a small ivory-inlaid table at one side of the entrance into the tent and a chair on the other side where I could fold up my clothes. Most of the space in the tent was taken up by a large bed with silken sheets on it and a mound of garishly colored pillows in silk cases.

I was hard by the time I'd taken my clothes off and folded them and crowned myself with a condom. There was a bottle of lubricant on the table too, but I could tell by the glistening wetness of the young man's well-opened hole and the slickness of his spread inner thighs that he'd already been prepared.

I knew what I had to do. And now I knew why it had been me who Hal was forcing to be here. And I only had a couple of days.

I approached the young man from the rear; crouched over his hips; pulled his face around to mine with a hand gently cupping his chin; and, to a surprised look on his face, gently took his lips with mine and kissed him deeply. After positioning the bulb of my cock at his channel entrance, where he was stretched enough for me to hold the bulb just inside the entrance, I encircled his waist with my arm. While holding his lips with mine, I slowly and deeply entered him with my cock. He was open, but I am horse hung, so he still was belabored to take me.

He was sighing and moaning as I began to stroke inside him slowly, with long, deep strokes. He writhed a bit in my embrace and purred, obviously not having been treated anything like this by his other customers in the rough and tumble camp, and came for me, having moved one of his hands back to stroke his own cock.

He gave me a dreamy look as I picked him up and laid him on his back on the edge of the bed and, after cleaning his cock with my mouth, kissed all up and down his body. He sighed for me and kept whispering words in Arabic that I recognized as endearments. When I entered him again with my cock, he wrapped his legs around the small of my back, holding me close into him, and pulled my face down to his for a kiss, while I slow-stroked him to my own ejaculation. He was a beautiful young man. A face that was more beautiful than handsome. Almond-shaped eyes with large, brown pupils. Long, dark eyelashes. Rose-bud lips with a shy smile even with the mixed pain and pleasure on his face of taking a big cock. I knew mine was bigger than most he took. That it was a challenge to him.

Not long after that I took him again, with his chest on the surface of the bed, pillows under his belly to lift his buttocks to me, his legs spread wide, and his arms extended, hands clutching at bunched-up sheeting and fists opening and closing to the rhythm of a fuck that was harder and even deeper this time. From the noises he was making and the countermotion of his hips, I didn't think that his response to the cocking was all an act by a talented rent-boy.