My target was to be a woman, possibly two women if I could arrange it. I cannot explain why but somehow I was more comfortable with that than had it been a man. There is a vast trade in substandard drugs, even substances like chalk sold as real drugs, packaged as if they were the genuine article. Millions suffer or die as a consequence of this vile trade.

Katherine Eleanor Porter-Haynes had been the product of a woman of high English birth and an American philanthropist whose vast wealth had derived from the slave-trading of earlier English generations and tobacco growing thereafter.

Philanthropist he may have been but he was a cruel man and Katherine had inherited that cruelty. She was, by all the accounts I read, a sociopath and possibly a psychopath too, willing to make money by any means. Outwardly respectable, she moved in high circles on all continents. She holidayed with Princesses of several royal houses, dined with oligarchs, hosted parties for ambassadors and ministers. She was glamorous and beautiful. She had a lover who was a successful actress although I now knew that her success was largely as a result of Katherine’s threats to film producers and directors. We all know the Puzo story of the horse’s head in the bed. It could have been drawn from Katherine’s real life.

It was said that she had done dreadful, cruel things to a ballet dancer who had refused to perform for her.

Murders were attributed to her but her wealth, power and connections kept her free from justice. The actress, Sally Horne, may have been her lover but her partner in crime was another woman, American and of extraordinary wealth but she lacked Katherine’s beauty. She was a sour woman with facial skin like a prune, a lizard’s eyes. I read three accounts of how she had masturbated while she watched Katherine commit her vile assaults. Her name was Georgia Pine, fifty years old and with wealth coming originally from the airline industry but sustained by her participation in Katherine’s activities.

Their public business was a successful and international company which traded in apparently legitimate pharmaceuticals.

The file was a catalogue of crime; crime unpunished and unpunishable; sanctioned by senior officials in the developing countries where she and Georgia bribed officials, supplied whores of both sexes and drugs to Kings and Presidents and where that didn’t work, sent armed thugs to ‘persuade’ them.

I needed no persuasion to convince me that my mission was on the side of the angels.

A number of people visited that house during my three weeks. I was taught a little self defence, some ‘tradecraft,’ designed to allow me to avoid surveillance and to communicate when necessary. I was taught about my new identity. I was given my back story. I have always been good at absorbing information and I thanked heaven for that. There was so much to absorb.

Jay was at my side for most of it and in my bed or I in hers every night afterwards. I grew to love her, depend upon her. It was, of course, as planned but it would have happened anyway. She was a wonderful lover and taught me a lot, some of which I will share with you but later. How I was to get close enough to Porter-Haynes and Pine to complete my mission will become clear.

*

I got off the plane at Dubai airport; which is really a shopping mall with planes dangling off it.

I had flown economy class to Paris and taken a train to Nice. From Nice I hired a car up into the hills of Provence and stayed for a couple of days with Jay who had arrived by other means. Another woman whose name I never knew had briefed me on my identity and she was there to prepare me for what she called my ‘jaunt.’ Jay’s main contribution was to stop me getting nervous and she seemed to find unbridled and hectic sex to be her favourite method. It worked for me too.

I had not been troubled by the journey but Jay was concerned that I needed to de-stress before going into the field. She told me to go the bedroom, undress and lie face down on the bed and wait for her. I did as instructed, lying face down on a large, white towel that was spread across the bed and I must have drifted off to sleep. I didn’t hear her enter the room. I was startled when her hands, slippery with oil, began to massage my shoulders. She didn’t speak, but her strong fingers worked the tension from my muscles, down my back, along each arm, over my buttocks and down my legs.

‘Turn over, Mel.’

Rolling onto my back I saw her for the first time since she had entered the room. She was wearing a smile and nothing more. Her hair shone in the half-light. Her nipples were proud and erect. She placed a piece of heavy silk over my eyes. She leant in to kiss me and then her hands began again. Moving to be at my head she massaged my scalp and neck, then over my arms and back up and, deliciously, over my breasts. She leant over so she could reach my belly and flanks and her nipple dangled close to my mouth. I lifted my head slightly to kiss it but she moved away too quickly. Now she stood beside me and her hands roamed over my legs, from ankles to thighs.

My legs opened involuntarily and I was rewarded as her fingers stroked up the insides of my thighs. One finger insinuated itself into me as another stroked my clitoris which by now was peeping out from under its hood.

I could feel it so clearly. Her oiled finger curled inside me and stroked deep, finding my spot and caressing it insistently. I thought I was going to orgasm but she clearly did not want that just yet.

She turned me onto my front again, lifting me up at the hips so my face was pressed onto the towel. She pushed my legs wide and I felt the bed dip as she knelt behind me. Where the dildo had come from I could not tell but I knew where it was going as it pushed, gently at first and them with increasing pressure between my lips and entered my pussy. With her hands now on my hips she began to rock behind me, slowly to begin with then with increasing vigour. I gripped the towel as she relentlessly fucked me.

Jay withdrew and with haste rolled me over and mounted me face to face. I lifted my knees and put my legs around her. The silk had fallen from my eyes and our eyes locked as she pushed herself hard against me, her dildo deep then almost out and then deep again.

‘Cum with me, Mel. I’m close and I know you are. Give it to me, Mel, give it to me.’

Her voice became louder as she spoke and thrust into me. I could not resist her words. I arched under her and felt it then, like a train coming out of a tunnel at high speed as it made me roar with pleasure. Her orgasm was noisy and wet and she pressed down onto me as it overwhelmed her, her mouth covering mine, almost feeding me her passion.

She fucked me twice more that night, once hard and urgently, the other time more tenderly. In the morning she was lying beside me and I went down between her legs and licked her awake and then to a quieter climax.

*

I returned to Paris and stayed in a fabulously expensive hotel for a night before boarding the flight to Dubai, first class.

I presented my passport at the immigration control. I knew all the stamps in it and they were the destinations of the rich. Part of my training had been to learn about them and there were items in my extensive luggage that would corroborate my visits there. I even had a suntan, acquired not on the beaches of the West Indies but on a sunbed at the house.

The limousine that awaited me drove me to the Burj Khalifa and my new secretary, Alicia dealt with the formalities as she booked Olivia Stockton-Mills, that is me, into one of the hotels suites. Alicia has the face of the English aristocrat: rather pasty and with prominent teeth. She spoke high English which grated on me. I had had to do some elocution too but I had maintained most of my natural voice. Alicia was not a lesbian. Quite, I was told, the opposite. Jay had said in bed one night after I had been introduced to Alicia that the latter would shag the entire England Rugby team before going out looking for a man.

‘So don’t go getting any ideas,’ Jay had said. ‘If you need a bit of this,’ her mouth was on my pussy, ‘she’ll get you a whore. You’re rich and can have anything you want.’

Alicia was a necessary player for nobody as wealthy as I would travel without someone to smooth my way, a secretary and fixer.

My suite was luxury itself. A sitting room, a study and two bedrooms. One for me, one for Alicia.

We had been at the hotel for two days. We hadn’t remained confined to the suite but, as the rich do, we had shopped and visited the exclusive beaches and dined at the best places. I did not know how Alicia communicated with our controllers but it was on the third day that she told me that the vile Georgia Pine had arrived at the home Porter-Haynes and her lover maintained on Palm Island. The latter couple would be arriving soon but separately, Horne from California, and Porter-Haynes from South Africa. The intelligence was correct and the following day I learned that Horn was at the house. That evening she was dining at a well-known and very exclusive restaurant with Pine.

Wearing a long, black silk dress, my hair cut short and blonde (I am naturally chestnut) I arrived at the restaurant shortly after 9pm. For the first time I saw Pine and Horne in the flesh. If I had not known about Pine’s viciousness before it was almost palpable in those hideous eyes. She had a creepy way of stroking Horne’s when she spoke to her, as if she were tasting her through her fingers.

I sat at a table close by and ordered. During the course of our meals I caught Horne’s eyes a few times. She showed passing interest in me and at one point I saw her whispering to Pine and possibly pointing me out to her.

A waiter approached me. ‘The ladies at the table there,’ he pointed to them, ‘wondered if you would care to join them if you are dining alone?’

I had not anticipated this and hesitated for a second.

‘Please tell them that I refuse their kind offer, not out of rudeness but simply because I wish to dine alone this evening. Another time I would have been delighted.’

I watched as the waiter reported my response to them and I thought I saw malice in Pine’s eyes and disappointment in Horne’s.

I walked past their table as I left.

Horne said, ‘You really should have accepted., you know.’

Pine sniggered.

‘Another time.’ I smiled and reached into my small clasp bag and handed Horne my card. ‘I really wasn’t being rude but I should not have been good company this evening.’

I left without waiting for a response.