Sun on the Rocks - The OOL Broderie Read online

  "No more duty free 4 us, we're in a clothing lab, working."

  "What's our mission, what I mean is why isn't Scafarel a priority now?" Donway offered a tex-mex hamburger to Clarity, but she refused, she was in no mood for eating.

  "We got briefed by Central headquarters, the one who oversees our superchief, all of this is classified, Owens & Owell is a national interest priority, that was confirmed by the president himself. Many high order economic reasons for that, here's the few which matter. It is imperative that the Owens & Owell daughters don't get married, that they return to their studies at University of Arizona, and that they abandon the Church of the Holy Flower as members. O&O has also ordered that the Church of the Holy Flower be dismantled, and that any documents signed by Jenny Owens and Shalia Owell be destroyed, so that the Board of Owens & Owell stays intact." Money Fact lifted her eyes through the car rear-view mirror.

  "We're reaching the surveillance area," she said.

  "You're getting dropped off as clothing expert officials working in China. One more thing, the OOL broderie should be recovered, our electronics division wants to take a look at it, and they want to know what the L stands for, obviously the two OO letters stand for Owens & Owell, but the L is a mystery, and OOL was the three letter code sent to Penelope Avalon's decryptor we found in the Bahamas, which Scafarel sent as she was leaving the Hexas Style resort in the Bahamas. This code refers to the wedding between Shalia Owell and Jenny Owens which cannot take place, in particular it is the name of the brand chosen by both daughters for their single embroidered wedding piece, replacing the traditional wedding dress. One of the reasons it cannot take place, we have been told, is that every Owens and Owell wedding is a public, prominent event, not a secret one, another reason is that bridal gowns for both families are made only by Allure Bridals."

  Chapter Five

  Clarity and Montana went through the gate of building four of the Bahrain Industrial Investment Park, passed large warehouses, until they reached the entrance of a modern glass-covered building. Two security guards looked at their passes and led them to a room full of attractive women labeled as the 'Air Fashion Flight Harem.'

  "Did you mention we're part of a harem?" said Montana.

  "No," said Clarity.

  "I think someone knows of our visit, not sure, at least I know I look good enough to be part of a harem."

  They walked inside the room. The friends of Clarity were there, speaking loudly with other women about the future salary as stewardesses and their role inside the double deck five hundred plus passenger Air Fashion Jet being built in Bahrain by the Owens & Owell conglomerate, in a joint venture with the kingdom, a transaction about to be approved. Lanai and Cynthia were three feet from each other, talking to each other, each holding an interphone used in planes.

  "What are you doing?" said Clarity.

  "I'm performing an interphone system drill with Cynthia," said Lanai, "we're getting ready to become sophisticated stewardesses for an upscale Middle Eastern fleet."

  "She's right across from you."

  "Yes, it makes easier for the drill."

  Clarity scratched her head. Last time she checked, all five girls were shopping leisurely at the Manama airport duty free shop. That was then. Then, Donway had refused the request of Flower to pay for abduction damages to the Middle East, but Donway had accepted to pay for their food and lodge, while Clarity and Montana performed their mission for the Sensual Brigade. Somehow, this had to be related to pleasure, specific pleasure.

  "Lanai, are you wearing anything right now, I mean anything that makes you feel good?" Lanai pressed on the interphone pause button, letting Cynthia relax three feet across from her.

  "Really good, you mean there?"

  "Yes, there," answered Clarity, firmly.

  "It's just this small jade egg, feels so good you know, Lady Scafarel gave it to me after telling me how to interpret the difficult parts of Decadence regarding the role of the Turkish harem in the conquests of the Ottoman Empire. She said I could wear it for two or three hours a day, to see how it felt."

  "First, it's not your jade egg, I should be testing that right now," said Cynthia, "you're simply taking advantage of your connections with Scafarel, she likes you because you understand Decadence better than us." Clarity looked at Taimi and Jenna and Flower, who were discussing how a harem could lobby a Sultan or King or Emir or Sheikh to engage in the clash of civilizations and to subvert the ambitions of the kingdom towards spending more money on products for feminine hygiene. Their motive was genuine, Clarity thought, she knew that it would be difficult to convince the girls to side with the Sensual Brigade of Central Intelligence, to defend the interests of Owens & Owell, in order to expose Scafarel's beauty lotion scam. Scam it was, but to the girls of Sun on the Rocks, it was a vacation.

  "We've called the City of Wellington, to let them know we won't be working there anymore, we'd rather become stewardesses," said Flower.

  "The City of Wellington is our job, it's our synchronized swimming choreographies, we like that. Have you signed any papers to become part of Scafarel's Church?"

  Clarity tapped on Flower's intricate white dress, decorated with fake but pleasant to the eye rubies and green emeralds, slightly jealous of the beautiful flight attendant clothing gear that Scafarel had provided, including a hostess cap.

  "No, we're going to be just stewardesses, I avoided the paperwork, even though Lanai wanted to sign the papers and become a naked assistant of Shalia Owell to see her wardrobe. Our Cayman Islands experience with the indenture served us well. Besides, Scafarel is being nice, she gave me back the earring that Buddha Talk stole in Acapulco, she says it's a present I can keep." Flower moved her right earlobe forward with her hand towards Clarity, looking like a rabbit showing its ears, to show the earring, tombraided by her boyfriend in Mongolia.

  "Well, it's yours, yours and yours to preserve that is."

  "I know, isn't it odd she said that and gave it back?"

  "It isn't that odd if she wants to bed you or get you to sign the church papers."

  "I'd have to bed Buddha Talk first, he's the first who took the earring away from me and he's the one who gave the earring to Scafarel as gift."

  "Your sense of consistency in bed is surprising."

  "My earring is special, that's all I know, my consistency is probably still in Acapulco, and one of the problems is precisely that I don't have a bed unless I become a stewardess."

  Clarity stepped forward towards an area that Montana was exploring, the backline of Jenna, who was wearing a cream color broderie lingerie piece made of embroidered cotton and intricate patterns and eyelets, style 4789, a One Size Fits Well sleeveless mini dress, which barely hid the right parts of the woman, in order to arouse the imagination of the man or the woman looking at the woman wearing the item.

  "This bridal lingerie set is for one of the brides," said Jenna.

  Taking a closer look, Clarity noticed several green and red lights on the feminine clothing item, in the back, and along the side of the lingerie dress, which barely hid the breasts of Jenna. At the curve line of her lower back, three initials in red stood out for the one watching Jenna's back and firm bum, OOL.

  "Light and love will allow me to feel the energy in my navel," said Jenna, reading a paragraph from Decadence, the book of insightful pleasure for the feminine woman, the official Bible of Scafarel's Church.

  "L stands for light, or for love," said Montana, inserting a finger between the narrow embroidered grooves of the wedding underwear gown, "she's wearing the Owens & Owell Love bridal gown."

  "We like to call the lingerie piece a broderie," said Flower, "it's so intricate, you can nearly see through." Jenna bent over in front of Flower.

  "Can you see through?"

  "There's no fabric where you're showing, I do see through," said Flower, reaching for the area between the buttocks.

  "You're tickling me," said Jenna, "can't wait to earn my first flight dollars, to get my ow
n jade egg," she said. The lights of the clothing item lit up a bright red and green light, indicating that Jenna was aroused, according to the clothing gear manual near the box.

  "This clothing gear light is activated by the woman's temperature," said Montana, "pretty cool." Taimi interrupted their observation of Jenna's temperature reaction to Montana's slow caress of her navel with one hand, while she brushed her bum with the other. Additional lights started to light up.

  "We have to go for an inspection," said Taimi, "the joint venture with the kingdom to install highway lights has been struck thanks to our dance in front of the king's investment representative. They're waiting for the money from O&O now, from the first O actually, Owens always has more money than Owell, to fund the manufacture of our plane, the Air Fashion Jet from the Emirates airline. Scafarel said that they're missing a light lot that may be in with the highway lights lot, and we have to go there to inspect the area, because the lights on the highway are not working. Maxini's being interrogated by authorities apparently, she won't join us for the wedding."

  "There won't be any wedding," said Clarity.

  "There has to be a wedding, there's a lot of money involved in this wedding, and two women are getting married, it's nice," said Flower.

  "There's something fishy with all this money, Flower, I mean, don't you think all of this is coming too easily to all of you?" Flower thought for a few seconds, pondering the question carefully. The answer came to her in a sudden burst of assertion.

  "No, we're just in the right place at the right time, are you coming with us?" said the ethnographer.

  "No, our interests are not aligned, right now," said Clarity, who was thinking about how good another night with Money Fact would feel, being taught new insights about specific areas of pleasure. Flower looked at Montana.

  "I'm staying with Clarity, I'm investigating the competition of the S group, can't be part of the competition, if I want to get rid of it," said Montana.

  Habib entered the room looking for the girls, and Clarity and Montana hid behind the delivery box of the broderie. He left, leaving a piece of paper, showing the schedule of the girls. Taimi grabbed the schedule and looked at it. She took Jenna by the hand.

  "Shalia Owell wants to see you in her wedding nightwear broderie," said Taimi, "let's go Jenna." Flower, Lanai, and Cynthia followed, leaving Clarity and Montana with the delivery box of a clothing item.

  The two remaining girls passed on the opportunity to ride inside Scafarel's Church car, and instead used their special permits provided by Donway, to join the working crew of King Fahd Causeway, where new, lights were being installed to allow car traffic at night.

  Chapter Six

  Clarity looked at the women left in the room. They were part of the Church of the Holy Flower Harem, known as the Nightline of Kuala Lumpur, fifty four ladies coming from thirty four countries, all displaying shapely bodies, smelling exceptionally well, of fragrances such as ? de L'Orangerie, Tr?sor, or La Vie est Belle, by Lanc?me, Noa, Amor, Amor, or Catch me, by Cacharel, or Lily of the Valley, Night Scented Jasmine, and Edwardian Bouquet by London's Floris. Clarity and Montana stepped out of the harem room and reached the back of the building, where a truck was picking up several road workers going to the Causeway highway kilometer seventy three, that was giving trouble to the rest of the highway lamp posts.

  "We're going with you," said Clarity. She looked at the driver, noticing the face was familiar.

  "You look familiar, do you have relatives?" asked Clarity.

  "A cousin named Habib, who works at the Cocoon Lounge."

  "I know him well, we can get you in for free, if you let us go with you," said Montana.

  "My cousin can get me in for free, but with ladies better," said the driver, "come in."

  "We have to get that broderie," said Clarity, hopping on the lamp post cleaning and repair truck.

  "You'll have to abduct Jenna, then, she's pretty set with the others," said Montana. "I have to say I like that broderie, an embroidered bridal intimate lingerie gown, it's nice for a wedding."

  "There can't be any wedding, Montana."

  "Why don't we rescue the broderie and the O&O girls after the wedding?"

  It was ten o'clock in the evening when the truck reached the road work area, west of the capital. Most citizens of the kingdom were already safe asleep. Five workers were showing the 'men at work' sign, and one man, wearing official road work equipment from the kingdom, was carefully assembling a bundle of electricity cables, near a highway lamp post which included five lights instead of one. Clarity stepped out of the truck with Montana, and assured the driver and the crew that they were going to ensure that the steel lamp post met the international standards ISO 'millenium one' 9001-2000 quality criteria. Clarity approached the man holding the cables.

  "Do you know what to do, light is not working, this lamp post is problem."

  "Yes, you need light, there should be some lights for the lamp post pole." The man pointed his finger towards a large box, filled with several rectangular lights made by Liaoxing, all coming from Ningno, Shanghai, wrapped up in plastic bubble wrap.

  "I know it needs light, but how do the cables work?"

  "Another cable problem," said Montana.

  "I have this device, but don't know how it works." He gave a small remote to Clarity, and she noticed it worked like an automatic home garage door remote, with a particular frequency. She looked for the instruction set of the lights in the box and found a multiple digit code for the frequency light active-ator.

  Clarity found a box which looked like one of the boxes in the investment park. It had several small lights which seemed ready for another broderie, and instead had been delivered by mistake to the highway working group. Deftly, she told the worker to put green, red, and yellow lights in the lamp post, and the truck which had brought them, lifted a hoist to put the lamp post pole in place. A few minutes later, a limousine car drove by, and the lamp post turned to red, after Clarity pressed on the remote. The limousine stopped and Scafarel got out of the car.

  "It's going to slow down traffic I think," said Montana, watching the scene inside the truck.

  "It slowed down our broderie, Jenna's inside the limo with the O&O girls and the rest of the girls." They moved inside the hoist truck, watching Scafarel and the Owens & Owell daughters step out of the Lincoln Continental dark grey limousine.

  "What's the problem here?" asked Scafarel. The man working with the cable bundle extended his hand, dropping the bundle to the ground, causing the lamp post to flash red, yellow and green lights intermittently, and turning off the lights on the rest of the highway.

  "No problem, miss, lamp post works."

  "It's not a lamp post, it's a traffic light," said Scafarel, "it's going to slow down traffic, car jams, not good."

  "Traffic light, for night," said the man. He smiled, knowing he had done his job well. Scafarel turned to Shalia Owell.

  "The lights you ordered are not for highway lamp posts, they're for traffic lights." Scafarel looked at Shalia Owell and Jenny Owens tactfully but firmly.

  "Well, I asked for a Christmas special price to the provider, he must have thought I meant Christmas lights and then he found traffic lights," said Jenny Owens.

  "We had to pay for the spiritual course offered by the Church of the Holy Flower in the Bahamas, we had no more allowance money and had to get a rebate," said Shalia Owell.

  "I see, well, I hope that the plane got the right lights and that the electro-mechanical switches for the engine got there as planned. What about the money to build the plane, the king's chief of staff advisor wants to know kingdom aeronautic employees will be paid."

  "That's easy, I can order the transfer from my smartphone. I tweaked my paypal account to include bank details from our treasury front office in London." Shalia Owell typed a few codes in her phone, and one hundred million dollars were transferred to a bank account in Bahrain from London.

  "Won't they miss the money at O&O?"<
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  "That's Jenny's work," said Shalia Owell. Inside the truck, Montana was taking notes of how efficiently the two girls managed their company.

  "We have a credit facility, I can draw one hundred million from it," said Jenny Owens, "so that the money won't be missed."

  "Yes, good idea, let's do that, for a year or so," said Scafarel. Clarity saw Jenny Owens type a few numbers on her own smartphone, and the credit facility transferred the same amount, one hundred million dollars to the O&O treasury front office in London. Cash on hand at Owens & Owell had not moved by a single dollar.

  Scafarel turned to the man holding the cable bundle. "Can we go through?" The man lowered his head, announcing potential problems with the optic fiber cables.

  "Permission ask to my friends," said the man, carefully counting the various colors on the cable bundle. Scafarel approached the workers holding the 'men at work' sign, who gathered around Scafarel.

  "We're off to the special manufacturing site in Saudi Arabia across the channel, can we go through?"

  One of the employees lifted his head and watched the lamp post flash the various lights intermittently. When one of the lights flashed green, he made a sign to the limousine and spoke in Arabic to Habib's cousin driving the road repair truck.

  "Now, you can go through," he said, "with the truck in front." Scafarel and the O&O daughters returned to the limousine.

  "Follow that car," said Clarity. The truck driver didn't move and stared blankly at the road ahead.

  "Why?" he said, "my wife waiting for me."

  "It's not displaying the ISO 9001-2025 bumper sticker. With these lamp posts, you need a special car, a car with a bumper sticker," said Clarity. The driver looked at the lamp post and drove past it when the light flashed green.

  "No need, we going in front of the car, we need to turn on light for lamp posts with the no-cable device, otherwise the car cannot see anything."

  "With the remote you mean?"

  "No remote area, here, highway," said the driver, "the light."

  "Yes here, no remote area, but with remote." Clarity flashed the button on the remote repeatedly and lamp post lights flashed a soft light on the highway.