SAMPLE THE STORY BY READING CHAPTER ONE

The F-111 fighter-bomber came down out of the sky toward Kai Tak Airport. Its twin turbofan engines were deafening. It is a war craft and is not insulated against the throbbing thunder of its jets as is a Boeing 707. From my perch inside the crew module, I could see nothing but clouds. Yet my sinking stomach told me we were on the last leg of the journey that had begun by special arrangement with the Military Air Transport Service—affectionately known as MATS—at Washington National Airport. 

My name is Eve Drum. I am a L.U.S.T. agent, working for the League of Underground Spies and Terrorists. Just a few hours ago, I had been sleeping peacefully in my Michigan Avenue apartment when the phone had trilled on my night table. Like the silly idiot I am at times, I answered it. 

"Eve honey, up and at attention,” David Anderjanian greeted me. 

"Oh, no," I breathed.

David Anderjanian is my case officer in L.U.S.T. It is David who hands me the assignments by which I earn my bread. He is a big blond man, six-feet-four in height and about two hundred and twenty pounds in weight, strong as an ox and sometimes as amorous as a bull in heat. 

He was being very serious at the moment.

"There's a plot afoot to kill the President, honey. Now just be a good girl and slither into your bikini panties. I'll brief you at your place in half an hour." 

"You want me to get dressed in half an hour?” I yelped. 

"I really don't care whether you're dressed or not, but I don't have any time for fun and games. So forget I nicknamed you Oh Oh Sex—and have your traveling cases all packed and ready to go—" 

I told David where he could go, but he had hung up. So I slid out of bed, yawning and rubbing my eyes. A mirror would tell me my mascara had run like the Johns town flood while I had been playing shut-eye. I had gone nightclubbing with an old friend the night before, and now I was paying the price. 

I stumbled under a cold shower, dancing round to keep myself from freezing solid, then wrapped my girlish body in a terrycloth robe and padded into the kitchen. Orange juice and instant coffee would have to do. 

David rang the buzzer while I was on my second cup. I let him in and poured him some fragrant instant. Then I listened to the tale of a Hong Kong harlot named Lucy Chang who claimed to have discovered a plot to assassinate our President. 

"You believe her?” I asked in amazement.

"We don't know. It's up to you to find out."

"Oh, great. How?” 

David touched his temple where his blonde hair curls so entrancingly. "Brain power, love. Use your wits and anything else you can think of to get the answer." 

I stuck my tongue out at him and closed the terrycloth robe where it had been gapping to expose some of my 38-inch breasts. David looked crestfallen, so I felt a little better. 

"Okay, so tell me," I told him. 

The government acts fast when it wants to get things done. Two hours after David stepped into my apartment I was on my way to the airport in a siren-screaming police car, three bags banging into me and David yakking with the young officer who acted as our chauffeur. 

The United States Air Force had a stripped-down fighter-bomber—the F-111—all revved up and ready to go, on a take-off strip. The F-111 can travel at two and a half times the speed of sound, I am told. It would re fuel over Hawaii and then head for the long, trans Pacific hop to Hong Kong. The British authorities knew it was coming. They would meet it, with the American consul. I was to be spirited off to an apartment along Carnarvon Road. I also had a job waiting for me at the Golden Lion night club. 

"One of the killers is traveling to Hong Kong from San Francisco," David explained. "He's probably going by jet, so we want to get you to Hong Kong at about the same time he arrives. The F-111 will do the job—I hope.” 

There would be just little old me and the pilot in the F-111. Cosey-comfy, roaring along twelve miles high at close to two thousand miles an hour. When I saw the pilot, I felt a little better. He was a major, a sun-bronzed blonde boy in his early twenties, neat and trim in his uniform. He liked me, too. His eyes told me so as they went across my chest and hips and took in my legs in the black Cantrece stockings. 

On a rush job, there are few amenities. David practically pushed me into the plane, then waved me a kiss. Half a minute later we were roaring down the tan bark, then we were airborne. 

Now, Kai Tak airport was below us. 

Hong Kong is a Crown Colony of what was once the British Empire. Centuries before it was deeded over in 1841 by the Emperor of China, it was a pirate lair; and even when the British acquired it, it was little more than an island holding a big warehouse and a general store. In the century and a quarter that the Union Jack has flown above its building, it has grown to a world-renowned shopping center, a free port for great ocean liners and warships, a visitor's paradise. 

To Hong Kong has been added the Kowloon Peninsula, directly across Victoria Harbor from the city proper, and the New Territories, a strip of mountainous country that juts into the South China Sea. Hong Kong is only ninety miles from Canton, which is in Red China. It is a perilous perch for the English, for more than ninety per cent of its population is Chinese, many of whom take their orders directly from Mao Tse-Tung. 

In the shops lining the ladder steps of Victoria City, the world shopper can buy brassware from India, bronze from Bangkok, gold and jade, brocades from Burma. You can select the raw materials off a harbor sampan and have them made into suits or dresses by any of the many tailors that thrive in this great trade city. You can swim in Repulse Bay, where the sand is white and fine, or share cocktails with the Seventh Fleet at the Ambassador Hotel. 

I was hoping that I might get in a little shopping or even sip a martini or three, but we secret agents have no life of our own. 

The F-111 had scarcely touched tires to the tanbark before I was whisked into a big limousine, driven onto a Star Ferry, and boated across the harbor to a Carnarvon Street apartment, where the consul rang a bell.

The door opened almost instantly. 

I saw a creamy face rimmed with heavy black hair, big hazel eyes and a mouth the color of a red, red rose. The mouth smiled. The body in a black cheongsam moved back and I walked right in. 

"This is Lucy Chang," the consul explained. "It was she who came to me with the story about the assassination plan." 

"Is true," said Lucy Chang in her best American.

Looking into her big eyes with the long black lashes, I knew it was true. I plumped my behind on a chair and crossed my size 10s. I saw Lucy staring at the long area of leg-meat my mini-skirt showed. She lifted her gaze and then smiled slowly at me. 

“I find job you," she murmured. “Dance, maybe, sing a little at ballroom club." 

The Consul translated. “She means the night club that is part of the Golden Lion ballroom on Nathan Road. The girls meet their dates in the ballroom, where everything is very circumspect, then they talk them into having drinks in the nightclub, where nearly anything goes." 

"The Oriental version of the B-girl," I nodded. 

The Consul smiled. “The man behind the plot is Tz'u Hsi, a rich trader in tea and, I understand, in opium as well, though this latter activity is very sub rosa. He hires girls to go to his villa every week.” The Consul cleared his throat. "There a sort of orgy goes on, if I understand the young lady." 

Lucy Chang nodded happily. "Orgy, yes. Fun, you know?” 

"I know, honey," I told her.

"Tz'u Hsi like new girl," she smiled. 

Meaning me, Eve Drum. Oh, well. I am accustomed to making every sort of sacrifice for my country. Besides, orgies, can be Funsville. I nodded at Lucy Chang and asked, "What sort of dance will I do? I'm not much on the pipes, but I have a good body." 

Lucy Chang did not dig me. Her eyes looked blank. I got up, I said, “Dance, honey." I threw my hips here and there and let my breasts joggle under the surplice bodice of my aqua cotton dress. She stared, then clapped her hands. The Consul tried not to look too hard at my feminine attributes. 

“Yes, yes. Do like that, be big hit." 

I tried a chorus of Winchester Cathedral. Lucy Chang bowed her head to hide her smile. Her voice was muffled as she said, “No sing, just do steps.” 

The Consul stood up and made me a little bow. "The boy will bring your bags. You will stay here. You are a new friend of Lucy Chang's whose apartment is right down the hall. It was Lucy who got you the job at the Golden Lion night club." 

"We'll get along," I nodded. 

"I speak the English good," Lucy chimed in. “My mother Portuguese. Teach me. We know talk how." 

As soon as the Consul left, we began talking how, mixing in a little English, a trace of French, a couple of Chinese words which I did not know. I performed like a mime when I wanted to give her an idea of what I intended doing. 

My first job was to get Tz'u Hsi to become aware of my existence. After that, I was reasonably confident I would get an invitation to attend one of his orgies. Lucy Chang assured me as best she could that the three killers would be staying out of sight to avoid any publicity. It would be my job to find out where. They might even be at the orgy, she added hopefully.

My Movado wristwatch told me it was close to five in the afternoon. The night club would open at about seven. I would appear at ten, so we had plenty of time to work out details. 

Lucy Chang cooked up some pork and rice, with a little rice wine to wash it down. She cautioned me against the wine, covering my porcelain cup with her hand and shaking her head at me.

"No drink lot. Make dizzy." 

I could hold my own in the alcohol department, but I was a stranger to rice wine, so I let myself be guided. A little after eight, I started to get into my evening clothes, with Lucy Chang a fascinated on-looker. 

First I slithered into the black lace bikini pants by Olga and then fastened a cobwebby nothing with D-cups over my twin 38s. The mirror told me anybody could see my dark nipples quite clearly through the black mist. On with a black lace garter-belt, up with my black nylons, into a gold lamé evening dress cut down in the back almost to my buttock cheeks. 

My hair was done up with Grecian curls and long dangles draped from my ears. I slipped a bracelet or two on my arms and my feet into high heels. I was ready. 

Lucy had a dubious look. "Is no costume," she pro tested. 

"Honey, when you see me in action, you'll know I have my working clothes on—and they're some working clothes," I added, turning before the mirror. 

Lucy sighed and shrugged, saying something in Chinese. Then she got to her feet and lifted off her cheongsam. Outside of the alligator pumps on her golden feet, she was naked. And I do mean naked. The only hair on her was the black strands of it that framed her face. 

She saw me looking and posed. “Like?” she giggled.

I clapped her soft rump. I can go both ways on occasion, but there was work to do. I sat on the edge of the big queen-size bed and watched her make up her face, add henna to her nipples and then with a fingertip daubed in red, touch herself very lightly where the scarlet color was bound to be sensational. 

She giggled as she saw me looking. "Man go crazy like same," she informed me, whatever that meant. Or maybe I misunderstood her. 

Then she stood up, all five feet two inches of her pearly cream body, and slithered into a red cheongsam. The cheongsam is an Oriental garment that practically seduces you all by itself when it is worn by somebody like Lucy Chang. The slits up the sides exposed her shapely legs to her hip bones, and if you don't think a view of those thighs and calves is seductive, man, like you're dead. 

The cheongsam is made of thin linen. The belly presses against it in front, the buttocks are outlined quite clearly from the rear. And up front, with their nipples standing forth quite honestly, were those twin moons that went into orbit so enticingly when Lucy Chang walked. She grabbed a shoulder bag, I snatched at my gold mesh evening bag, and we were off to work. 

I had planned my night club act to present myself to Hong Kong in the most sensational way I know. After all, I wanted to let Tz'u Hsi know I was in town. I walked into the place just as any American tourist might have done. I ordered one drink and then another, until I seemed to be somewhat under the influence. That was when my act began. 

As the stripper known as Happy Peach Blossom shed her garments, I made a few snide remarks. I weaved to my feet and pushed down a shoulder-strap of my gold lamé gown. A few spectators applauded. Happy Peach Blossom only pretended to be angry at me, since she was in on the act. Besides, her own act was almost over. 

As Happy Peach Blossom faded off that part of the floor which served as a stage, I got up and began staggering toward the cleared space, yanking up my skirt. I got up to the middle of my thighs, showing off black nylons and some pallid thigh-meat before the audience realized something special was going on. Then the whistles and the foot-stamping started. 

I made a couple of turns about the stage. My legs are damn good, along with the rest of my 38-22-35 inch self. In the dark hose and with the dependent garters from my garter-belt showing, the metal claps picking up the overhead lights, I was a pretty American visitor feeling her Rob Roys. Besides, one of my shoulder straps had come loose again. 

Voyeurism is a funny thing. Everybody likes to look at the nakedness of the opposite sex, maybe even of the same sex; at least, for one quick glance. The same legs that can be seen stark naked on a bathing beach appear enhanced under an uplifted skirt, because of the forbidden aspect of the situation. Something normally hidden is being revealed. It may only be human curiosity, but it does exist. 

The psycho books all say this is perfectly normal. The trouble starts, as with the confirmed voyeur-he who gets his kicks by looking-when he or she would rather look than do. It is an adolescent form of gratification engaged in by those who are insecure in their relations with the opposite sex. The name given to such peepers goes back to the Tom who sneaked a forbidden look at Lady Godiva as she went cantering down the streets of Coventry in England, clad only in her hair atop a white palfrey. 

The Peeping Tom, the voyeur, is guilty of the abnormality called scoptophilia. Or mixoscopia, when he is especially concerned with seeing couples copulate. Most always, there is an invasion of privacy concerned, and this is what the law seeks to protect when the voyeur is arrested. 

I guess the audience thought they were invading my privacy, all right, because my skirts were up above my behind now; and just as there was nothing hiding my girlish buttocks from view, there was the same lack of protection for my mons veneris. To the eyes of the onlookers, I was not an actress. They were convinced they were seeing what only my husband or my lover ever saw. 

The idea broke them up. 

I strutted around the stage half a dozen times, giving everybody a good look. Then the gold lamé gown moved upward, just under my bulging breasts. The whistles shrilled, the voices clamored. 

Somebody from Brooklyn yelled, "Take it off, take it off!” 

I took it off. I stood there weaving a little, faking drunkenness. My mammaries were shielded by black gossamer as they swayed to my movements, but everybody and his uncle knew the shape of my big, bold nipples. 

I reached behind me as strippers do, fumbling for the bra catches. Much whistling, much shouting. I let my shoulders round so my treasures hung down, and lazily began undoing the clasps. 

The bra came off. I whipped it aside. I stood up and gave them both barrels. 

"Like 'em?” I yelled at the visiting Americans and the British. "Likee?” I asked the relaxing Chinese and Japanese business men. 

They told me they did with a thunderous roar and a clapping of hands that hurt the eardrums. Swinging the bra from my fingers, I went strolling in a wide circle, deftly evading the hands that reached for various sections of my anatomy. I laughed at the verbal sallies, the invitations. Sometimes I paused near a man and shimmied my beauties under his nose. 

I guess every girl is something of an exhibitionist. We like being admired, and we dress to emphasize our strong points. My strong points were all over me, from my stiletto heels to the Grecian curls of my taffy-tinted hair. I dressed to emphasize them all, in garter-belt and nylons. 

I let them look, I let them drool. 

I could have gone on like that all night, with all that applause slamming my eardrums around. What girl wouldn't, given such a chance? But all good things must come to an end. 

The manager came running out with a coat that he at tempted to fling over my shoulders to hide my nudity. He tried to look angry, but he was pleased as proverbial old Punch. He kept whispering compliments in Chinese and pidgin English telling me, if I understood him correctly, that I was the greatest thing in women since Mata Hari. 

The only trouble was, the audience wanted me, not him. 

A couple of big Danes started onto the stage, fists balled up so that they looked like sledgehammer heads. I got between them and the sweating, suddenly frightened manager and asked them not to start any trouble. 

Their ears listened but the rest of their senses were tuned to what their eyes were seeing. Me, all girl, mostly all bare. As they paused to survey my goodies, I let the manager whip the coat around me.

We ran for the sidelines. 

In the privacy of his office, the manager sank into a chair, mopping his wet face with a handkerchief. His hands were shaking and he could hardly talk. I guess he knew how unruly and violent a mob can be, and that audience outside had been a real mob for a little while. 

"No do that every night,” he gurgled. 

His greed and his fear fought a close battle there before my eyes. He knew he had a sure-fire sensation of an act and that it would draw customers until he would have to enlarge his nightclub. On the other hand-and I could scarcely blame him—he didn't want to face an angry mob night after night. 

"Maybe you won't have to," I told him cheerfully, "if I get the invitation I'm looking for." 

The invitation took five days to arrive. At first, because everybody thought I really was an American tourist feeling her drinks. Then the idea took over that I might be trying to cause trouble, being a confirmed capitalist pussycat. 

Only when the night club billed me the Tourist Tease did understanding dawn. This was the night Tz'u Hsi sent his boys to see me, bringing me a dozen long-stemmed American Beauty roses and a diamond-studded wrist watch as a sort of come-on. Oh, those Oriental playboys! 

I accepted with delight. 

My only stipulation was that Lucy Chang must come with me, as a kind of interpreter. The boys, inscrutable hunks of husky Far Eastern humanity, thought this would be okay. They were not unfamiliar with Lucy Chang. 

The ancient Rolls Royce pulled up to the night club door at two minutes before midnight. Half an hour later, it was braking before the big villa on that section of fashionable Hong Kong known as The Peak. The moon was a big yellow ball in a sultry blue-black sky, and the night was warm with early summer. The moon bridges and lily ponds, the lighted lanterns and the music in the air took on the aspect of something magical. 

Lucy Chang pressed close to me as we walked along a pathway of crushed stones between rows of flowers. A nightingale was singing from somewhere behind the high stone villa wall. I wore my golden lamé dress, she was clad in one of her many cheongsams. 

"I be fear,” she breathed, in her inimitable English. 

I knew what she meant. If Tz'u Hsi realized she had set him up for the kill, so to speak, he would not rest until she died in convulsions of agony. I patted her hand. 

"For this you will receive fifty thousand American dollars," I assured her, "which translates into close to three million Hong Kong iron men.” 

She got my drift and shivered in something approaching ecstasy. Moreover, she would be given asylum in the United States, where her new-found wealth would enable her to make a good marriage. If she lived so long, she was thinking, I am sure. 

A pretty maidservant in rustling brocades met us at the garden door, bowed us inside. I let Lucy Chang take over. She had been here many times and knew her way around. 

The summer house where Tz'u Hsi entertained his guests was a thing of marble and red tile. Stunted willow trees grew from little niches here and there upon its walls. It was a perfect setting for the beauties Tz'u Hsi hired from the Hong Kong night clubs. 

Tz'u Hsi himself met us at the door, a great honor, I was later told. He was not tall, but neither was he short. His face was hard, as if carved from yellow jade, and his hair was a glossy black. His eyes ran over me once, swiftly, and I knew that he was satisfied with his latest employee. 

"I am told you have a most unusual act," he murmured in flawless English. “Did I mingle with the people in the city below, I would have come to see it." 

"Instead, the act comes to see you," I smiled, figuring that flattery cost me no money at all. 

He bowed, and waved a hand. "Please to accept the hospitality of my humble abode,” he murmured, glancing at Lucy Chang. 

I put my arm around the girl and found she was shivering. I dimpled a smile at him and said, “I brought Lucy along because I have thought up a new act, a performance I could not do upon the state at the Golden Lion but one which I trust you will enjoy." 

"Ah," he breathed. Some of the hardness went out of his face. 

I told myself to beware of Tz'u Hsi. His was the devious, Oriental mind which approached problems from angles unseen by our Western brain. If he were suspicious of Lucy Chang, then he would be equally suspicious of me. He would take no chances, if he were the servant of Red China. He would kill ruthlessly and worry about questions later. 

As we were seated, Tz'u Hsi clapped his hands. 

"We shall enjoy tea first. Tea is the brew of the gods. It relaxes the nerves, soothes the emotions, prepares one for enjoyment." 

Tea might also hide a truth drug or a poison or perhaps an aphrodisiac. The aphrodisiac did not bother me, but the others did. I wondered how I could get out of drinking it. 

Two girls came in, one carrying a porcelain pot of boiling water, the other tea cups of transparent Tchinghoa-yao ware with a small canister of fragrant leaves. 

Tz'u Hsi was saying, "Four thousand years ago the fabled Chin Nung, then emperor of China, planted the first tea bush and from its leaves made the first beverage. To him we owe our present pleasure in sipping this liquid which was known long ago as chaw, by the first Europeans to import it, which was an obvious corruption of the Chinese word tcha, from which your present English term of tea is taken.” 

He was pouring the amber liquid as he spoke. I knew that the truth drug might well be in the boiling water, but I could see no way to avoid drinking it, unless—

I was sitting cross-legged on a big fat cushion. Tz'u Hsi was directly opposite me. I caught hold of the golden lamé drew it up my thighs as if it were too tight. Tz'u Hsi could see all the way up under my skirt, along my pale inner thighs. 

Under my gown I was wearing stockings and a garter belt. 

Tz'u Hsi trembled and his hand shook, spilling the hot tea as his attention was diverted. He could hardly blame me for what had happened. He was the one who spilled the Bohea. 

His face expressed momentary anger at himself. I smiled and leaned forward, putting a hand on his wrist. "We really don't need any stimulants, you know. If you want to sip as you watch, you go right ahead." 

He could scarcely insist we drink now, without arousing suspicions. 

I held out my hand to Lucy Chang. She rose to her feet and lifted me to an upright position. Her face was expressionless. It did not betray the fact that she had not the slightest idea of what our act was to be. To tell the truth, I was not too clear on the subject myself. 

I turned my back to her to let her make the first move. I felt her fingers make like feathers over my shoulders and down my spine. The gold lamé gown was backless, so her red nails met no barrier to their caresses until they were inches above my hidden buttocks. 

Tz'u Hsi had forgotten about his tea. He was staring with wide eyes at my naked back and at what Lucy Chang was doing. 

In all modesty, I can claim that this agent of Red China had never had a blonde like me as a guest in his summer house. I was in evening garb, the sort of clothes any American visitor to Hong Kong might wear in public. Mine were not the special garments strippers buy but the sort of feminine wear available in the stores along Queen's Row. 

Tz'u Hsi was subject to the same appeal the night club audience had felt as I disrobed before it. I might be the wife or daughter of one of his American or British friends. In his eyes, I was no longer a hired hand. 

The feathery fingertips went down inside the gold lamé and ran gently over my soft cheek. Lucy Chang was enjoying herself. Her breath was quickening. I felt those fingers turn into talons and grip my buttocks for one moment. With her hands, the girl was telling me that she liked what she was doing. 

She turned me around and put her red mouth to my throat as her fingers wandered across my shoulders, sliding down the straps. The gold lamé drooped floor-ward until it was caught at my hips. With a little cry, Lucy Chang bent and slipped her hands beneath my breasts, spreading her fingers to hide them. 

Tz'u Hsi said harshly, "Ho t'sai!” 

I took it as a sign of his approval. I glanced at him, saw him half off the cushions, rimming his lips with his tongue. I was quivering a little myself, because this girl Lucy Chang had fingers with electricity in them. My nipples were obeying her commands as if they were little brown soldiers standing at attention. 

I smiled at the man. “Go away,” I told him.

His mouth fell open in surprise. 

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