Chapter 6 -- Lena makes trouble and decides to travel to trouble
CARBON DIOXIDE AND OTHER RESEARCH PROJECTS
Guy Fawkes' Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament to restore Catholicism to England, William Walker's effort to seize Nicaragua to create a slave state, John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry to end slavery, the Lakota Ghost Dance religion and uprising to end oppression, the Irish Easter Uprising to liberate Ireland, the Bier Hall Putsch to establish a right-wing government in Germany, the Baader Meinhof kidnappings to establish communism in Germany, the 9-11 Terrorist Acts, the 2008 attack on the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, the 2036 effort to kidnap busloads of European women for shipment to the Free American States Under God (FASUG), and many other such violent actions by angry or distraught groups of men had totally different causes and results. The motives behind these actions can be seen in some cases as defensible or even noble, and in others as evil or even detestable. But they all demonstrate the willingness of people to sacrifice their lives and the lives of many innocent people for what they saw as some great cause.
Lena stumbled upon one such attempt to change history with an act of violence. That discovery figures tangentially in the history of sex slavery in the Free American States Under God between 2045 and 2050.
Lena did not spend the summer and fall of 2045 just watching paintball gun duels and having sex with Killer. She was in the midst of another ridiculously dangerous caper that involved an effort by a relatively small group of men to change the course of history through violence.
As Lena had told Frau Sprengler, she was investigating a meatpacker. However, meat had little to do with Lena's investigation. The key clue that something was up at 4th Empire Meatpacking Company had to do with its large purchases of CO2.
Lena had become interested in the North Rhineland Westphalia operations of the 4th Empire Meatpacking Company because she was always looking for ways to attack the meat industry. Lena was not a strict vegetarian but generally disfavored meat consumption to the point of annoying many of her acquaintances and business colleagues. Crude graffiti appeared about her willingness to consume tiny human gamete in the men's rooms. Some co-workers made suggestive jokes to her about eating sausages that were barely subtle enough to avoid the joker from being fired for sexual harassment. Frau Dir. Sprengler had encouraged Lena to investigate just about anything but the meat industry (except for the publishing industry, naturally).
The owners of the 4th Empire plant, operating under a different name, had been raided years before for employing illegal immigrants in 2025. In 2031 the company was fined for failing to provide sufficient bicycle parking.
In 2039, Lena had disclosed that the 4th Empire had not paid the greenhouse gas tax that had been imposed in 2028 by failing to report methane emissions properly. That report had not shut the plant down but did embarrass the 4th Empire and cost its owners a lot of money. In 2042, Lena had discovered illegal ammonia pollution from the plant going into the Ruhr River. This did close the plant for a few weeks while it installed new pollution control equipment.
Because of these discoveries, whenever Lena happened to be in North Rhineland Westphalia, she made a point of just driving near the 4th Empire plant, parking, sniffing around and looking at who and what was coming in and out. In Summer 2045, she spent a few days near the plant while staying at a hotel in Dรผsseldorf.
Lena did not see any evidence of illegal immigrants, unpaid taxes or pollution, but she did notice something that caught her attention. Trucks carrying liquid carbon dioxide were coming into the plant frequently. That was not entirely surprising, as Lena knew that liquid CO2 was used for freezing meat. What interested her was that she saw nearly no trucks full of animals coming to the plant and very few coming out with meat. What was up?
Lena knew there was no chance of her getting into the plant or talking to the management. Lena Fesch was far from a household name nationally and had tried to keep her face out of the news as much as possible; however, in the meat industry, she was well known. In addition to reporting on their continued use of low-paid illegal immigrants and methane underreporting, Lena had gotten stories published regarding meatpackers regarding water pollution, air pollution, mistreatment of animals and, of course, about the lack of precautions for workers during the 2038 Covid Yusilon outbreak.
Because Lena knew the meatpackers had advised all of their managers and security people about her, Lena went to the CO2 truckers to learn what she could. Lena used her usual tactics. She got information from men under circumstances in which they would not want to disclose having been interviewed by anyone, certainly not by a very attractive woman who they told a lot of things before or after sex.
Blow jobs were quick and involved comparatively little energy and risk. For more important information, Lena offered pleasures that required more of her.
Lena learned that 4th Empire was indeed amassing CO2 for some purpose. She also learned that CO2 could be deadly. At Lake Nyos, a natural emission of CO2 had killed over 1000 people in 1986, and there have been numerous CO2 accidents since then, causing people to become sick or die. By interviewing/seducing some bankers and others who dealt with 4th Empire, Lena learned that the sons of right-wing German nobility, some of whose fathers had been arrested as Reichsbรผrgers twenty-five years earlier, were among the owners of 4th Empire.
Now all she had to do to score big was figure out what 4th Empire wanted the CO2 for and, if it was something nasty, pin the conspiracy on the owners. Lena hoped she could use the information she'd obtained from a trucker that one of the security guards at the plant was the somewhat dissolute 20-year-old son of the plant manager who liked to talk. She knew that there was no way she could identify or approach that security guard while he worked at the plant. Maybe she could arrange for one of her "interviews" if she could question him when he was alone off from work.
Lena had let Killer in on the fact that part of the reason for the trip to Dรผsseldorf in September was business. He was not terribly surprised to learn after a night of lovemaking at a hotel that Lena wanted him to drive well out of town to get some information. All he had to do was get chummy with the security guards at the plant, figure out when the manager's son worked, and find out where he lived.
It was not as though Killer had never done anything like that before.
Pretending to be seeking a job and asking if there was anyone there who could get him in to see the manager, Killer accomplished his mission before going back to spend another three nights in Dรผsseldorf with and in Lena. Using publicly available information, Lena continued her research of 4th Empire and its owners and managers during much of the day while spending 12 hours a day in bed with Killer.
Killer had never tried the lotus position before. Lena reached new heights.
At the end of the third night, Lena fondled Killer's testicles and commented, "I kid you not; your balls are much larger than Herbert's. He has such tiny little balls, and yours are like walnuts."
"Thanks for the compliment, I guess," Killer replied.