An Opus for a Penguin

Story by Dikran_O on SoFurry

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A short FOX-related story for one of my most faithful fans, Carlos the Penguin.

Keep rockin' the toque Carlos.

Thumbnail art (c) Berke Breathed


An Opus for a Penguin

The new Minister of Public Safety looked up as a tall, muscular, golden-furred FOX entered her office. She had been expecting him. She had heard from her colleagues in the parliament about this fellow, Canada's current Director of the secret service agency known as F.O.X., but she was still struck by how young, handsome and fit the sixty-four year old appeared. It was a shame that he was gay, she thought, but the fact that he was meant that she could concentrate on the current matter and not worry that he was trying to seduce her to gain favour for his agency.

She slid a file with a red "X" running corner to corner across the desk to him. "We have a problem."

He picked up the file and flipped through it as if he had read it before and just needed to confirm that there was nothing new. Then he closed the file and slid it back to her, sat back, crossed one leg over the other and rested his paws on his raised ankle. "Yes, you do." She could tell from the subtle tone in his voice that he meant 'you' as the party currently in power, and not the government as a whole. But that was beside the point, in her mind, as in the minds of many elected officials once they taste power, the ruling party and the nation are one and the same; threaten one and you threaten both.

She refrained from lecturing him on the fine art of politics; he had probably heard it all before. "Can you handle it?" She asked.

"We are predominantly a foreign intelligence agency." The golden fox replied. "Why not have CSIS or the RCMP handle this?"

She scoffed. "They can't even keep their own scandals quiet, let alone the government's. This requires more finesse."

"I'll take that as a compliment." The fox stood. "I'll have my Chief of Staff look into it. But we won't break any laws for you."

"But you'll bend them, won't you." It was not a question.

He smiled, a genuine smile by the look. "As you said, we tend to use a little more finesse than the publicly acknowledged agencies." He turned without being dismissed and left the office.

After he was gone the Minister sat and wondered if she had just made things better ... or worse.

* * *

The Silver Sow was one of the last old-time strip joins in Ottawa and , true to its name, it specialized in the kind of stripper with large expanses of pink flesh and a curly tail that you could pull if you paid for the privilege. Otherwise it was paws off, least one wanted to experience flying - flying through the front window when the bouncer, a three-hundred pound gorilla, tossed what was left of your carcass out. Carlos was a penguin and had an aversion to flying, so he kept his flippers to himself until money had changed paws, hoofs or whatever. But the stripper swine and old school atmosphere were just two of the reasons that Carlos liked it here. He also liked the privacy of the old semi-circular booths for conducting business ... and for pleasure.

Carlos was a journalist, of sorts. He specialized in scandals, the kind that brought down governments. He was not the type to spend months submitting Access to Information requests and pouring over mounds of paperwork for minute clues to fiscal malfeasance though, he preferred the direct approach. Bribery, payoffs, free lunches and blackmail were his stock in trade, and while it made him a lot of enemies in the political world it was effective. He had won awards and praise for stories that had destroyed political dynasties, and had garnered an equal amount of scorn for those that merely shattered the careers and lives of senior officials.

He worked independently, occasionally taking assignments from the kind of newspaper that claimed aliens had taken over the Vatican when times were tight. But a string of successes and a couple of recent tell-all novels had given him a comfortable financial buffer. Carlos could afford to buy better information and rent a better class of hooker but a natural stinginess kept him coming back to places like the Silver Sow.

Short, stout and tubby, with flippers that had only evolved three digits, penguins were not the most sexually attractive creatures of the sentient species, except to other penguins. That was okay if one was willing to restrict themselves to their own species but Carlos had a hankering for larger ladies, ones with enough meat to sink his digits into as he banged his was to ecstasy.

He had recently come into possession of some leaked email files, files that were supposed to have come from the office of the Prime Minister himself. The mysterious contact that passed then to him said that they contained material that would destroy the young politician and bring his recently recovered party to its knees. There was only one problem - they were encrypted JPEG files, and the hacker who had gotten them would only reveal the decryption key once Carlos published them as is.

It certainly had all the earmarks of a conspiracy and the reveal would be sensational if the material was as good as claimed. But he wasn't sure if he could trust this guy, who used a dancing circus bear as his internet avatar. Wasn't that the same guy who had hacked the American Democratic Party emails recently? Hadn't the FBI claimed that it was Russian government hackers behind it? Of course, they would blame anything on Putin if they could get away with it. The other candidate in that election had claimed that it was patriots that released the emails, not Russians. Who knew? More importantly, who cared? Not Carlos; he would publish dirt on a politician even if it was passed to him from the smouldering paw of Satan himself, if it could be verified. But how could he verify this information?

He needed to think on this a bit and that's why he had come to The Silver Sow, it was the closest peeper parlour to his condo and he always thought better while getting a hummer from one of the ladies; in this instance one of the slimmer swine because size didn't matter when you were just getting a blow job. Besides, she was under the table of the booth where all he could see was her head full of curly dyed blond hair bobbing up and down on his cock.

This one, her name was Sally or Jenny or something homey like that, was very good at this, and Carlos was leaning back and staring at the ceiling, revealing in the sensation of hot lips and a warm tongue on his shaft. He was getting close to cumming when a movement beside him broke the mood.

"Hey Carlos, got a minute?"

Carlos peeped out of the corner of eye at the intruder. It was one of his contacts in the Treasury Board, a muskrat named Nathan. Nathan also had a thing for large ladies, but not the salary to indulge in it. He had tried gambling his way into funds but had, rather predictably, lost more than he could afford and was now in hock with some very nasty canines. Carlos had used his influence and a bit of cash to keep those dogs at bay in hopes that Nathan could bring him something that would lead to the exposure of a real political issue, something more legitimate than catching the Justice Minister with the babysitter or the RCMP Commissioner in an illegal poker game. He did this because deep in his heart Carlos wanted respect as a political reporter. He knew that every real secret had some sort of financial thread, and the Treasury Board was where those threads all joined in one great Gordian knot.

Carlos flapped a flipper towards the bench in the booth. "Sure, Nathan. Take a seat."

The muskrat slid in, looking under the table when his legs met an unseen obstacle. He Peered under the table and got a good look at a hairless pink face sucking on the penguin's private parts. He stared at the sight for a moment before straightening up suddenly and shuffling back out toward the aisle. "I'm sorry Carlos, I'm disturbing you."

"No, no problem. Talking will make it last longer. What have you got?"

Nathan stayed seated, but kept to the end of the bench away from where Sally or Jenny or whoever was going into high gear. Blow jobs were a flat rate whether they took thirty seconds or ten minutes, and the longer it took the more income generating possibilities she missed.

"I was shredding some reports from the Treasury Board Secretariat." Nathan began. Unlike the United States, where fiscal oversight was a function of Congress, in Canada the public service conducted that action in the form of the Treasury Board Secretariat. The TBS, as it was known, evaluated the performance of each ministry and agency and awarded or denied bonuses to the Deputy Ministers based on their findings. Their power over the senior bureaucrats' income made them feared. They also approved the budgets that would make achieving those goals possible, effectively dooming the executives of that ministry to another year of poor ratings if they cut the money off. Any deviation from authorized spending would be picked up by their teams of elite auditors. They would in turn report the malfeasance to the Prime Minister's Office, a mini-ministry in itself, where their fate would be decided by politicians with their own agendas. Needless to say a scandal involving the opposition's appointments would be dealt with harshly and publicly while a decision concerning a contributor or friend of the ruling party may never see the light of day ... except for the presence of reporters like Carlos, of course.

Pressure was building in Carlos' balls, but documents saved from the shredder were more interesting at the moment. "Go on."

"You know that they have a section with Top Secret clearance to audit the intelligence agencies?"

Carlos didn't. "Yeah, sure. Everybody knows that."

"They use a special code for the budget items that belong to those agencies. We call it the 'Don't ask' code, because when you point it out to them they just say 'Don't ask'. Well, one of their auditors was going through last year's budget to make sure any unspent funds had been returned and he found a discrepancy. Several million dollars spent renovating buildings at the Central Experimental Farm were charged to that code. You know the Experimental Farm, Carlos?"

Carlos had never been there, but he had driven past. You pretty much had to if you were going west or south in the city. It was several hundred acres of agricultural land smack dab in the middle of a city of almost a million souls. Valuable land that the developers were dying to get their paws on, but they never would. The secretive commission that allocated federal lands in the Capitol would hardly give up sixty acres for a new hospital let alone let someone build a new subdivision of town houses there.

"Yeah, it's got like a bunch of research fields, a garden and an arbor- abourit- arbour- ... a bunch of trees."

"Correct, the farm itself occupies most of the space. The section by the Rideau Canal is the Arboretum and there is an agricultural museum and a botanical garden. Other than Agriculture Canada the only other tenants since they tore down the John Carling building are some scientists from Natural Resources ... except ...."

Carlos eyebrows rose to disappear under the Canadian Flag toque he wore all year round. A Galapagos penguin, he hated the cold with a passion, even avoiding air conditioned rooms. He especially liked to keep his head protected from drafts "Except?"

"Except when the auditor checked into it his superiors told him 'Don't ask'. Kind of ironic." Nathan chuckled. Carlos just stared at him until he continued. "Anyway, he wouldn't drop it and he found a file pertaining to an agency that is unattributed. One that has its budget hidden among those of all the other intelligence and security agencies."

"This agency have a name?"

"Yes. It's called the Foreign Operations Executive. But they use the 'X' from the last word for their acronym - F.O.X. They also refer to it as 'the Academy'."

Down below the table Sally or Jenny stuffed Carlos's cock back in his jeans and called up, "If you ain't goin' to stay hard I'm outta here. We don't get paid by the hour you know."

Carlos slipped a hundred under the table. "Sure babe, no problem. Something else has come up anyway."

"Glad somethin's up around here." She grumbled as she backed out and straightened up. Before Carlos could ask if she had overheard anything she was gone.

No matter, he thought as he raised two digits to a passing waitress to order another ginger ale for him and a scotch for the muskrat. "Tell me more, Nathan, tell me more."

* * *

Back in the dressing room Sally, or maybe Jenny, retrieved her phone from her purse and punched in a number she had been given recently. "Report." A voice that had been electronically altered said when the connection went through.

"You asked me to keep an eye out for any mention of an agency named after a species. I think I got something for you."

* * *

"Good morning Violet." Bill Hanlan said as he entered the executive suite to present the morning report. He kept his eyes on the rather rough looking, poodle with the purple mohawk that was acting as receptionist for the ailing Miss CC. He had not gotten used to Violet's blunt ways and tendency to swear every second word. Still, he mused, it was better than when Bernadette the overweight skunk from the mail room who had been filling in. While she was here the suite always had an odour that Bill equated with cheap brothels or the kind of motel rooms you could rent by the hour.

"Silver's wait'n for ya." Violet said as she struggled to update her boss's calendar. "Get the fuck in there."

"Morning Bill." The Chief of Staff greeted the Head Planner and de facto daytime Duty Officer as the old grey fox took a seat across from him.

"Good morning Silver." Bill responded. "Not much on the docket today." The Chief of Staff for the agency was a large silver fox that had gone by the code name 'Silver' since he became a full agent. Unlike most of the other agents and staff that was the only name he went by. From Moscow to Beijing, Buenos Aries to Washington, he was Silver; not Mister Silver or Agent Silver, just Silver. At home his mate, one of the two people living that knew his real name, also called him Silver. Their son called him Father now that he was in the 'big kit' class - grade one.

Bill covered all the pertinent points since the previous day's report: Senior Agent Ebony and his mate the cheetah Geno, currently posted to Latin America were back in town to adopt another child; as a mixed species marriage they could not have one of their own but Bill did not need to mention that. Zac Ember and Kyroo Echos were down south covering for them in the meantime. Things were quiet on the operational front, with no major FOX missions on the go. As far as counter-espionage went the major players that might take it into their heads to target FOX were also quiet, if the living and electronic sources were to be believed. And there was nothing to report with regard to building maintenance, safety, health or welfare.

"Security did have one observation." Bill said after closing the folder. "They noted someone loitering around the periphery of the Academy."

Silver seemed distracted, inspecting his claws as Bill concluded. "Oh, really?"

Bill frowned. Normally Silver would perk up at any sign of a threat to his beloved agency. "Yes, a penguin. They've tentatively identified him as a free-lance political reporter named Carlos. The fellow has quite a reputation for getting inside information on some of the juicier scandals, and I can't help but wonder if he has not caught wind of us."

"They sure that it's him?"

"Not a hundred percent. He's been keeping out of our camera coverage, staying near the Agricultural Museum and greenhouses. But he matches the description." He pulled out a page from the folder and slid it across the desk.

Silver gave it a cursory glance, certainly not enough to absorb the details. "What? Short, tubby, tuxedo markings, yellow beak? That could be any penguin."

Bill took the paper back and read from it. "Yes, he is short and tubby and shaped like an egg standing on the big end, just like most other penguins, but it also says here that the subject wears a Canadian flag toque all year round, even when swimming. He smokes heavily and when not smoking is likely to have a half-smoked cigarette hanging from his beak, except where prohibited by law or while swimming. The details are a rather good match for the penguin that has been hanging about."

Silver did not seem interested. "So, what were you thinking of doing about it?"

"I was going to send a security team purporting to be from the museum to confirm his identity and ask him to move along." It was the standard response to those who seemed to be showing too much interest in the secretive agency's headquarters.

Silver scratched his chin. "No. If he is as inquisitive as you say that will just make him more interested in us. Just keep an eye on him from afar and tell me if he gets any closer."

Bill was perplexed, but knew better than to question Silver. After confirming that there was nothing else required of him he gathered up his files and left.

Silver reached over the desk to key the intercom. "Violet, call Bernadette from the mailroom. I have a package for her to deliver. And tell the head of Security to see me right away."

After closing the speaker Silver looked around the room for something to wrap. It was a very spartan office with few mementos and no decorations. He finally settled on and object taken from his briefcase. Taking a box that once held top secret cyrptological gear recently delivered. He placed the item in it and then wrapped it twice, just like one should when dealing with sensitive or classified information. Then he looked up the name of the Chief Curator of the nearby Agricultural Museum and addressed it to him. He was just finishing when the head of Security arrived.

"You wanted to see me Silver?" The big canine asked.

"Yes. In your last report you mentioned that you just have enough counter-intelligence staff to investigate one or two employees at a time."

"Are you thinking of increasing our budget like I recommended?"

"No, but I do want you to prioritize your efforts on some particular individuals. Will that be a problem?"

"Depends who they are."

"Senior Agent Ebony and his mate."

The canine's eyes went wide. "Marcel and Geno?" Then they narrowed in thought. "Do you know something I don't Silver?"

"Call it a hunch."

Rubbing his chin the Head of Security calculated resources and commitments in his head. "I'll have to pull folk off a couple of minor cases, and call in the guys doing perimeter surveillance to get full coverage on them."

"Yes, you do that. Thank you." Silver held the door to indictate that the meeting was over. "Come in Bernadette." He called when he saw the plump female skunk waiting in the foyer.

Bernadette had a not-so-secret crush on Silver and had tried to pretty herself up for this rare opportunity to get close to him. She had not had time to shower first, however, and still smelled of female ejaculate from the dildo she had been using whilst fantasizing in the lonely mail room that morning. The dildo was a large silicon casting of the Chief of Staff's penis, taken during reconstructive surgery after he was tortured down there by the criminal known as the Werewolf of Odessa. The Academy forger, Joel the lemur, had obtained the cast somehow and made several hundred of the dildos to sell on line. He had given his last one to her in exchange for a favour after Silver shut down his sideline business. She used it several times a day. Her colleagues had gotten so used to the smell that they hardly noticed it anymore, writing it off as part of the natural skunk scent, but another skunk would know better. Fortunately for her she was the only skunk at FOX at the moment.

"Bernadette, be a dear and take this parcel over to the Agricultural Museum would you?"

Her wide eyes were locked on Silver's blue-grey orbs as she stuck out a paw to receive the parcel. He called me 'dear' was all that resonated in her mind. The larger fox had to give her a gentle push with paw on the small of her back, just above the tail, to get her moving. It was the first time that he had actually touched her, something she had been dreaming about for years, and even though she was wearing a heavy sweater over a blouse she almost came when she felt those powerful digits on her back. After she left the office she had to check the address on the package to see where it was supposed to go because she had not heard a word he said after "dear".

It must be something special, she thought, seeing as the regular mail run would have taken it over in an hour anyway. But for the Chief of Staff, who had called her 'dear', she would make a special trip. Tucking the parcel into a courier bag she headed out of the headquarters and down the tree-lined street toward the offices of the museum.

It was a short walk, past gardens and barns and old tractors on display for the children. It was a work day and a school day so the visitors were sparse. A few single females and old couples strolling in the gardens, a lone penguin admiring the architecture of the old barns, that was about it.

At the Agriculture Canada office that housed the Museum executives she flashed her government courier pass to get access to the Chief Curator. She passed the parcel directly to him and made him sign a standard receipt that she had grabbed from the mail room along with the bag. Feeling important and satisfied that the delivery job had been well done she headed back toward the unmarked FOX headquarters building. It was almost lunch though and it was a nice day, so she debated whether to return straight to work or take a walk over to Preston Street for a little Italian food.

She did not notice that the penguin was still there when she passed the barn, nor did she notice that he was staring at her, or that he followed her off the grounds of the Central Experimental Farm.

Back in his office the Chief Curator of the Agricultural Museum, a swine who kept to a strict vegan diet, stared at the ham sandwich he had found in the parcel that had just been delivered and wondered if it was some kind of threat.

* * *

Carlos had been watching people come and go from the Central Experimental Farm for three days and he believed that Nathan may be on to something.

He had come armed with lists of government buildings from the Public Works web site. Each structure owned by the government was listed there, or was supposed to be, but along with the oilseed labs and marijuana greenhouses occupied by Agriculture Canada there were a few that were marked as government buildings that were not on the list. Some were named after dead bureaucrats that Carlos could not find mention of on Google. Others were signed as infectious plant or livestock disease labs with biohazard markings and little skulls and crossbones symbols warning tourists there to visit the botanical gardens to stay away. Carlos concentrated on those buildings.

He soon discovered that one cluster of buildings had employees that were generally in better shape than your average government desk jockey. There were a number of foxes that looked very fit, and dangerous, especially an older one with silver fur that had a scar through his left eyebrow. A vixen that Carlos often saw with him was tall and elegant, in a femme fatal kind of way. There was a shorter black fox that looked vaguely familiar to Carlos that went around dressed like a skater kid with a perpetual scowl on his face. He was often accompanied by a busty blond cheetah who reminded Carlos of the strippers in the Silver Sow by the way she dressed, although her body type - a muscular hourglass that promised to ride one into the ground - was not his cup of tea. There was also a Doberman that was larger than must canines who always seemed to wearing gym clothes and a lemur in a lab coat that worked elsewhere but often came to the office building where the foxes seemed to work.

Having scouted out a number of buildings as possible mob hangouts Carlos knew what to look for in the way of passive security measures, and he found them all here. Someone was doing something secret in this part of the farm but they did not want to be obvious about it. That matched the info Nathan had supplied nicely.

What Carlos needed now was an in. One could not just barge into a secret headquarters, not unless you already had evidence as to their existence stashed somewhere they couldn't get at it, he reminded himself. He was not at that point yet, but if he could get some confirmation, maybe convince a disgruntled employee to slip him some seemingly innocuous files.

Then he saw the plump skunk exit the building he had tagged as FOX headquarters. He had seen her before, from a distance, arriving each morning and leaving each evening on foot. From her discount store clothes he pegged her as a minor administrative drone; the kind that knew more than you though they did. She always went straight into the office and was never seen again until she left at the end of the day. To Carlos that meant that she did not have any friends at work, and was likely lonely. Perfect.

She had a package in her paw and she was striding up the street as if on a mission from god. He watched as she turned toward the offices of the Agricultural Museum, his interest piqued on two levels: first by the fact that she was breaking her normal routine and second by the wide expanse of butt wobbling back and forth under a pair of skin-tight capris.

She was something to look at, in his mind anyway. Her bust was large and bouncy, barely contained by an undercut bra and a low blouse. Although she was short her frame was wide, and she had packed it with enough meat to serve an army. Above her aforementioned rolling rump there was a bushy striped tail that was as tall and wide as Carlos.

Carlos could not take his eyes off her. He was in love, or at least a reasonable facsimile of it.

He followed her with his eyes as she turned into an office building and disappeared. He debated whether to place himself in a position to intercept her on her return but she exited before he could decide a minute later without the parcel. Instead of turning back toward her own office she headed toward the paths that led to Dow's Lake and the Italian district. Carlos hurried to follow.

He trailed her to the Preston Street and followed her into a small Italian restaurant, the kind of place where the food was good and cheap, the wine was good and cheap, and the waitresses were just cheap. It was the kind of place where ordinary folk like Carlos and the skunk he was following could blend in. There was a long counter with stools in the middle of the room, small tables near the windows and a few booths in the back. Fortunately for Carlos the skunk had chosen a booth. He took a stool at the counter directly across from her.

"Hey, put that cigarette out!" A greasy badger called from behind the counter. He looked like he could use a smoke himself, Carlos thought as he crushed out the ciggi and popped the dead butt back in his beak. He picked up the menu and studied the skunk over it.

Overweight - check. Tight cheap clothes - check. Too much makeup - check. Fur and skin absent of any evidence of sun - check. Carlos put her down as either data entry or the mailroom.

The direct approach usually worked best on the lower echelons of any bureaucracy, so Carlos put down the menu, waved off the waitress and waddled over to slide into the booth opposite the skunk.

"My name is Carlos." He told the startled skunk. "I'm a reporter and I want to talk to you about the FOX agency." Hurriedly, before she could have him kicked him out or call her agency's security, he laid out everything Nathan had passed on and a few things that he had guessed, presenting them as facts he had already established. "We know all this already, but I'm just collecting background material before we break the story; what it's like to work for a secret agency, how you feel about the way they trample civil liberties, what the pay and benefits are like, that sort of thing. We'll keep it totally anonymous of course."

There was no "We", but he found that it was more impressive if his subjects thought he worked for a big news organization like Sixty Minutes or the CBC. When he was done he leaned back to see how she would react. Whether he was about to be ignored, arrested or informed all depended on how well she was trained.

"Who told you about FOX?" She hissed.

Bingo, Carlos beamed. Every organization had a weak link and he had hit the jackpot. Up close he could smell glue and ink on her fur ... and a scent that reminded him of a bordello off Sparks street. He shook his head to clear it and continued.

"How long have you worked there?"

"Two years, but that's not the point. It's supposed to be a secret."

He did his best to keep her off guard. "Did you have to get your special clearance before you were hired or after?"

"After. I was a temp transfer and they didn't let me have access to anything until I passed a polygraph and a bunch of other tests the rat, Doctor Gordon, made me take. Hey, don't write that down!"

Carlos put his pen down. "Sorry, force of habit. I don't have to take notes, not with the recorder going."

"You're recording this? Hey, I didn't give permission for that!"

Carlos shrugged. "You don't have to. The press in this country has the freedom to record anyone anytime with or without their permission." He lied. "But it's just to help my memory. I'm not going to post it online or put it on TV or anything. Although I suppose it could cause you a little trouble if your agency found out about our inquiries and listened to them."

The skunk's face went pale under her fur. "Oh - My - God! Silver is going to kill me."

Carlos made an educated guess based on the folk he had seen around the suspected headquarters building. "Yeah, I'm going to interview the big silver fox later this week. It's been arranged through the Justice Minister."

Through intuition, lies and guesses Carlos extracted information that confirmed what Nathan had suspected. After an hour the skunk, whose name turned out to be Bernadette, was exhausted and teary eyed. It was a condition that many of Carlos' subjects reached after being interviewed by the wily penguin. Usually he left them in that state with a smirk, but today he felt sympathy for the plump functionary, and more than a little desire.

"There there." He said, reaching out to pat her paw. "It's not that bad. No one has to know that you talked with me. I'll waylay some of the other employees and use the same routine on them so your security can never be certain who said what. If they interrogate me I'll claim that you refused to say anything."

Bernadette looked up at him as she daubed her tears. "You ... you'd do that for me?"

"Sure." Carlos shrugged and tilted his toque back. "I'm not a mean guy and you're a nice girl. Kinda sweet, and good looking to boot."

"You think I'm good looking?" Bernadette had been picked out early at school for bullying and ridicule. Early enough that the insults and jibes had taken hold deep in her brain.

"God yes! Of all the females I saw coming and going from the Academy you are the only one that looks comfortable ... comfortable in their own skin, I mean." He was actually thinking of how comfortable he would feel hugging her expanse of skin, but closed his beak before blurting it out.

Now it was her turn to reach across the table and take his flipper. "Gee, no one has ever said anything that nice to me before."

She had a strange look in her eyes and Carlos had to search his mental directory before he recognized it as lust. He only remembered because he had seen it on the faces of the other patrons in places like the Silver Sow and on his own reflected back to him in their multitudinous mirrors. It was the first time anyone had directed such a look at him though.

"You ... uhm ... have a place nearby?" He asked as casually as he could muster.

Bernadette stood and pulled him up by the flipper. "Come with me." She settled the bill while Carlos checked his email. There was another message from the hacker with the circus bear logo.

"Why are you hanging about with spy agency?" It read. "Publish files now or is being big trouble for you."

That's a bit disturbing, Carlos said to himself, as well as being very poor grammar, but his train of thought was derailed as Bernadette pulled him out of the restaurant and dragged him down the street.

It was not far to her apartment, a modest third-floor walk up a couple of blocks shy of the trendy neighbourhood, which was good because she was covering ground a lot faster than he was used to. He was almost out of breath by the time she threw open the door and pushed him inside.

"Sorry about the mess." She said, sweeping her arm around the piles of dirty clothes and dishes in the open concept kitchen and living room. "I wasn't expecting company. The bedroom is nicer."

Sucking air between gasps and holding his chest, Carlos followed her through a door and then stopped dead in his tracks. The room was dimly lit, but he could see that it was dominated by a king-sized bed, surely too large for her alone, and many, many shelves. The shelves were full of dildos and vibrators and anal plugs and all sorts of devices that he had only seen online. Most of them had the logo of "Joel's Jolly Time Sex Aids" imprinted on them. But the thing that had caused him to freeze was the picture on the ceiling; it was an eight foot by six foot poster of the big silver fox, the one with the scar on his left eyebrow.

The photo looked like it had been taken through a telephoto lens without subject's knowledge. It showed the fox known as Silver life-size standing knee deep in a pond surrounded by a rock garden. He was dripping wet, which made the fur cling to his muscles, outlining each bicep and tricep as if they had been sculpted. It also made the shorts he was wearing cling to his crotch, moulding themselves around a rather large bulge there. Strangely, he was wearing an undershirt that covered his chest and abdomen.

"You like your boss, I see." Carlos commented.

She sighed as she looked sadly up at the poster. "Silver? He's okay. But he has a mate and a kit and never gives anyone else a second glance." Then she lowered her gaze to lock it on Carlos and the lust blazed again in her eyes. "But you think I'm cute."

Cute was not the word Carlos was thinking of, but it would do. "As cute as a button." A very large, soft button, he added silently.

For someone so plump she could move incredibly fast. She pulled him into the room and onto the bed before he could catch his breath. Clothes went flying in all directions and when he could see again he found that they were both naked. Now it was his turn to stare lustily at her.

She was on her knees with her legs slightly spread on one side of the large bed. Her thick thighs wobbled slightly as she straightened up. Her tail waved provocatively behind her as Carlos eyes slid up, past the wide hips and the protruding belly to the ponderous breasts that she was holding up in her paws. She raised one to her mouth and teased the nipple out from the fur with the tip of her pink tongue.

"Want a taste?" She asked, lowering it to point at him. Carlos did very badly want a taste. Falling to his knees so that his head was on the same level as the proffered breast he crawled forward.

"Ditch the cigarette." She said. Carlos complied by swallowing the butt whole. Then he pressed his body up against hers, pleased at how giving it was. He sank in several inches and could barely get his short arms around the sides as his head nestled between her breasts.

"Ahhhh." He moaned before filling his beak with her large soft nipple.

Things progressed quickly from there. Bernadette had fantasized about sex, a lot, but had no first-person experience with another living being. When the opportunity to transfer to the Academy came she had made the jump eagerly, thinking that with everything she had read on her adult story site she would spend the rest of her career being shagged continuously. But she was sadly disappointed, watching one after another fit young male pair up with fit young females while she wasted away in the mail room all alone. Her frustrations just sent her further into her fantasy world, now featuring the FOX Chief of Staff. She had a lot of lost time to make up for.

Carlos was almost her opposite as far as sexual experience was concerned, but he had relied on cash rather than seduction or finesse to bed his female partners. So he was a little unsure as to what was required from him but eager to find out if he could deliver the goods.

The "goods" in question were already erect and sticking out from under his pot belly. Carlos was considered well hung, for a penguin, but he could not help but compare his equipment to the range of phalluses on display about the room. The thought of competing with devices labeled "Big Mac", "The Sperminator" and "Golden's Rod" almost made him lose his erection.

But then he remembered something his father had told him when he caught him fapping off behind the garage one day. "Son." His dad had said. "One day you will stop playing with yourself and move on to letting some female do it for you. You will discover that there are many ways and means of achieving satisfaction then, some better than others. But no matter what you like best you must never pressure or force some chick into doing it against her will. The results may not be the best sex you ever had, but when you come to the point where you can't get it up without the help of drugs and a crane you will look back on your worst fuck and realize that it was still pretty damn fantastic."

So in one sense, Carlos supposed, there was no way that this could end badly, provided I can get my dick in her.

Freed of fear and inhibitions Carlos became a feathered sexual dynamo. Wrapping his arms around her breasts he nuzzled and nipped at them until Bernadette was gasping in ecstasy. His cock was rubbing against her belly, tickled by her thick luxuriant fur as he pressed himself against her. Fearing that this would end in a sticky mess in her naval he spun her around and pushed her down so her shoulders were on the mattress and her ass was in the air. And what a lovely ass it is, he thought as he measured its girth with his splayed flippers, wide and round and bouncy. He had to kiss it. More than that, he had to consume it.

He squeezed those gigantic globes and opened his mouth as wide as it could go. Sucking in a mouth full of tender flesh he rendered a hickey on it the size of a hockey puck. He lavished tender love bites across it as he circled closer and closer to the little pink puckered hole at its epicentre. When he got there he hesitated. This was a line he had never crossed before, mostly because at this point the lady in question would tell him that he hadn't paid enough for that kind of action. But to his surprise, a pleasant surprise, Bernadette pushed back toward his waiting beak.

He spread her butt cheeks and gave her tail hole a tentative lick. It tasted funky, like those mushrooms with the funny name that they charged three times as much for as the regular ones. But it wasn't bad, just funky. He circled the pink region with the tip of his tongue. He could feel her trembling at the touch and her moans were deep and throaty. Carlos licked harder, slobbered saliva across it and finally drove his long pointy tongue inside.

"Oh, Silver. Your tongue is so ... pointy." Bernadette moaned.

Carlos looked up at the poster on the ceiling without disengaging his tongue. How do you compete with that? He thought as his erection started to droop. By forgetting about it and concentrating on doing the best you can, a little voice in the back of his head answered.

The plucky penguin redoubled his efforts on Bernadette's sensitive anus. He also lifted a flipper and inserted two of his digits into her moist twat. Tongue dipping and flipper slipping he pleasured both holes while she writhed and wiggled against the satin sheets that covered her mattress. After a couple of minutes of that her orifices were wet and wide and Carlos' cock was as hard as steel again.

He had to stand to bring his throbbing rod close to her luscious butt, but her butt wasn't close enough. He made her splay her legs to lower her ass down to his groin level by pressing down on her back where the tail joined the spine. Switching his flipper from cunt to anus he rubbed the pointy head of his cock along her slippery slit. When it was good and wet he parted the rubbery wet lips and drove it in.

It might not have been as large or as big around as the plastic penises she was used to, but it was hot in a way warming hers up in the microwave could not imitate, and it was alive, moving inside her of its own volition, searching out the patches of sensitive flesh that every female had. His digits in her ass moved like none of butt plugs ever did, even the mechanical ones. Carlos was not trying for any particular place or using any special technique, but she was able to roll her hips to bring his frantic thrusts into contact with her sweet spot, and with her twat well exercised on devices that Joel only sold to his best clients she was able to squeeze back, massaging his rod as it travelled in and out of her.

Despite her attempts to get desirable guys into bed at high school in an attempt to have some of their popularity rub off on her and her hopes of ravishment at the paws of a succession of secret agents, this was actually Bernadette's first time with a partner. It was a new experience for Carlos too, as the ladies he paid for sex rarely did more than repeat "Yeah, baby. Oh, you're so big and hot Carlos" in a monotone while he was dipping his wick. Bernadette's enthusiasm was not only making it better for him, it was making him last longer, get harder and drive deeper than ever before. This is the difference between a Volkswagen and a Porsche, he thought, or maybe a Cessna and a really expensive Blimp. She was built for comfort not for speed, but she had his engine revving none the less.

Carlos was sweating freely after a few minutes of relentless pounding but his prick showed no signs of failing. Bernadette was gasping and emitting a scent distinctive to her species but she continued to bump her fine round ass back against him, occasionally twerking on his cock, each time stopping instinctively just before he came. But even the most practiced porn stars have to cum sometime and after no less than fifteen minutes of intense stimulation both skunk and penguin were ready to burst.

It was hard to say who came first, or whether they came together, but it was very close. Stimulated to new heights by the living pick inside her Bernadette spurted as she professed new faith in a superior being with a scream. Carlos, an agnostic bordering on atheism, almost became a believer himself when his balls shot what felt like a gallon of spooge through tubes squeezed tight by her taut twat muscles. Each drop that escaped felt like sudden death and each breath he drew after was like being reborn. If I could bottle that feeling I'd be a billionaire overnight, he thought to himself as he drew his cock back trough the tight grip of her pussy to squeeze out the last few drops.

Bernadette slowed down like an old truck put in neutral on a flat road, gradually and evenly with the occasional orgasmic backfire. Each move on his cock sent electric shocks through Carlos, but he kept it in there and it stayed hard as she wound down. It seemed like an hour before she rolled away, sending his cock bouncing free. Carlos sat back on his heels and tried to calm his heart as she drew in deep breaths and squeezed her thighs together to keep the warmth of their cum inside.

For once Carlos was at a loss for words. It was the best that he ever had and he was pretty sure that he had done his species proud, but he was afraid to ask how it was for her despite wanting to know very badly. She relieved him of his quandary by standing up on the bed and pulling the poster of the imposing silver fox down from the ceiling. She crumpled it up into a big ball of glossy paper and tossed it in the corner before falling onto her back in the middle of that king-sized mattress.

"My coffee break is over." She said to his disappointment. But then a sly smile came to her face and she spread her legs and ran her paws over the damp fur on her thighs. "But how about some lunch?"

* * *

After another hour at Bernadette's, which included an delicious tit job and a long hot shower where she allowed him to scrub her all over, Carlos headed home feeling better than he had for years. He even forgot to check his messages until he was in the lobby of his condo, and was shocked to see that the possibly Russian hacker had sent him another half dozen ominous emails, each more threatening than the last. He was so distracted by them that he failed to notice that his balcony door was ajar when he dropped his jacket on a pile of other clothes by the closet. He lit his cigarette as he waddled to the room he used as an office, cursing the condo rules that prevented him from smoking in the elevators and halls. He wondered if Bernadette would be free for dinner someplace nice, maybe the high-class steak house on Queen Street?

He had just stepped past his bedroom door when a gloved paw shot out of shadows of the room and grabbed him. Caught off guard Carlos came right off the floor and flew through the air, fortunately to land in the middle of his round super-sized bed. Before he could gather his wits the mood lights can on, all twelve of them, blinding him momentarily. He felt more than saw the paws that gripped his shirt and lifted him to his feet on the edge of the bed.

"Why have you not published the files?" A shrill female voice screamed in his face.

Carlos blinked and his eyes cleared enough to make out a curvy blonde vixen with an extremely pissed-off expression on her face. Her bust and hips were wide enough to interest him, but the rest of her was solid muscle, and that dampened his passion. That and the fact that she was choking off his air by twisting his shirt tight around his throat, so much so that he could do no more than gurgle in response to her question.

The vixen loosened her grip, slightly. "We were sending you a file. You were publishing it. Why have you not done so?" He could almost taste the bile in her tone.

Despite the situation Carlos was not cowed. "What? You think I just publish any old crap that people send me? Especially files I can't even read. You want them published you're going to have to show me what's in them first."

The small furry fists tightened his collar and Carlos' vision went red. "You do as you are being told!" She screamed again. But she looked a bit embarrassed as she yelled it.

"You don't have the code to decrypt it, do you?" Carlos managed to get out.

She bit her lip. "No, only a world class intelligence agency could decipher them." Her eyes hardened again. "And one will, once you publish them to the interweb network."

Carlos was getting the distinct impression that English was not this vixen's first language. She talked the way the circus bear guy typed. But she did not strike him as the nerdy basement hacker type; more like a break your neck and dump you body somewhere no one will ever find it type. He was also getting the impression that he was being used.

"Let me guess, your hacker friends stole this from someone important here, someone in the government maybe, but you can't just decode it and release it yourselves because no one will believe it coming from them. So you want me to post it, as if I got it from one of my trusted sources, and then your freedom of information loving hackers magically decode it and there's a big scandal."

"Very clever, penguin. But this is all work of freedom loving patriots wanting truth to come out. No foreign governments are involved. Now you post those files or I will be strangling you with your own underwear."

"I, uh, can't." Carlos lied. "I, uh, left the USB drive with my lawyer for safekeeping. I'll have to track him down and ..."

The vixen looked frustrated. Carlos felt his collar tighten dangerously close to the point where the blood flow to his brain would be cut off, but then she relaxed her grip. "You post files by midnight or I come find you, penguin, and I will not be bringing fish for you."

"I rather dislike fish actually."

"It is being the only thing you can chew once I am chopping your beak off with a dull hatchet." She released his shirt and used one paw to squeeze his cheeks together. "Understanding what I am meaning?"

Carlos wisely swallowed a smartass answer and merely nodded. With a flourish of her bushy tail the vixen turned and was gone.

Carlos was left feeling vulnerable for the first time in his life. Pissing off the Canadian government was one thing, they never did more than bluster and threaten. Even getting on the bad side of the Mafia when he exposed kickbacks on government contracts was not so bad, they tended to forget about the reporter that exposed them once they were busy fighting the allegations in court. But whoever employed people like that vixen were serious business; foreign intelligence agency business.

Carlos had very little choice but to publish the files, still, he would love to find out what they said before he did. But as the vixen had said, it would take the resources of a world class intelligence agency to crack them .... hang on a second. Did he not have the recently acquired personal number of a certain female skunk who worked for just such an agency?

Carlos went out into the hall and took out his cell phone in case the people watching him had his land line tapped. "Bernadette!" He said when she answered. "Look, I don't have time to explain, but I need some encrypted files decoded fast. It could be a matter of national security, but I need it on the down low. Think you can help me out?"

Back in the mail room, deep in the heart of FOX headquarters, Bernadette thought for a minute. "Sure, I know a guy."

* * *

An hour later Bernadette entered the Operations Room. The evening shift had just taken over from the day Staff. As usual the Arctic fox Kain Algorath was on overnight duty. The young fox seemed to like earning overtime and taking regular vacations in far flung locations. Bernadette would have loved to join him but he rebuffed all approaches, from males as well as females, seeming living a monk's existance. But other than that he was a friendly guy, and a genius when it came to hacking. If anyone had an unofficial code breaking program it would be him.

"Kain, honey. Could I get you to do me a favour? I need some files decrypted but they are so hush-hush that no one, not even you, can read the contents once they are done."

Kain took the USB drive she offered and plugged it into a stand-alone workstation, just in case it was infected with malware designed to destroy the FOX computer system. He examined the files in question. "This is high class stuff." He commented. "Only a couple of agencies can do this kind of thing. These come from the Russians or the Chinese by any chance?"

"I can't say." She was being truthful enough; she had no idea who had given them to her new lover, Carlos.

"Sure, I get it. Need to know." The young fox started tapping on the keyboard. "Give me a couple of hours. I'll call just before my program produces the clear text."

Bernadette thanked him and left. Kain continued to work as he wondered how Silver had known that the mailroom skunk would come to him with such a request, and why the Chief of Staff had ordered him to cooperate with something so obviously shady.

* * *

It was after supper by the time Bernadette brought the decrypted files back to Carlos. He was hiding out in her apartment just in case the Eastern European vixen had an urge to move the timetable forward. Together they read the contents of the supposedly stolen files.

"Oh - my - God!" Bernadette exclaimed when she reached the end of the journal that purported to be from the desk of the Prime Minister himself. "This can't be true. He couldn't. He wouldn't!"

"I think you're right there, Bernie. Much as I hate the annual hockey hullabaloo around here doing this would bring down the government and banish his party for a generation."

The 'this' he was referring to was a carefully laid out plan by the Prime Minister to sell all Canadian rights to the National Hockey League and the game of hockey itself to the Americans in order to fund his social programs.

"It's got just enough truth in it to be plausible." Carlos commented. "The guy talks big about supporting the national sport but everyone knows that he prefers yoga and boxing. And while the document says that he won't table this plan at the cabinet now because he knows it's a vote killer the simple thought that he even contemplated such a thing would cause riots in the streets. Why, Quebec would separate and join the US just to keep the Habs in Montreal."

"You think it's fake?"

"Obviously." Carlos scoffed. "Didn't your guy say that only the Russians or the Chinese could pull off encryption like this? And that vixen with the Boris and Natasha accent wasn't Chinese. Obviously Putin is still pissed at us for supporting the Ukraine against them and wants to sow a little chaos. It was a close thing though. If I hadn't come across your agency when I did I would have published it like they wanted and they could pretend that anarchist hackers had decoded it for the world to see. Now the question is, what do we do with it?"

"You can't publish it." Bernadette insisted.

"I can't not publish either if I want to live. And once I'm dead they'll come after you, my plump petunia. Then they'll find some other stooge to get this out." Carlos leaned back against her well-padded frame and sighed. "I'm no coward, Bernie, but I can't take on a whole espionage agency."

She patted his paw reassuringly. "That's okay. I know someone who can."

* * *

Midnight came, and it was so quiet in Carlos' condo that he could hear the bells in the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill ring out the hour. He was sitting in the dark in his living room, clutching the USB drive with the files that were causing such a fuss in his left flipper. In his right was a gun that Bernadette's boss, the big silver fox, had given him. It was specially adapted for aquatic fowl flippers. It was Carlos's last line of defence from the creature FOX had confirmed to be a Russian assassin.

The plan was simple. Silver's people would watch the perimeter and capture the blond assassin if they could. Should she manage to slip by them the big fox himself would intercept her as she entered the living room. But, on the off chance that she got the drop on him, Carlos could try his luck with the adapted gun.

The nervous penguin looked at the black pistol and wondered if he should use it on the vixen or himself? He had been a champion shot when he was young but he hadn't fired a shot in years. Besides, he had never shot at anyone, let alone when that someone was shooting back. If he wanted that kind of action he would have become a cop, or a secret agent he supposed. He suddenly wished that he had become a monk or picked some other trade where one did not get involved with guns, wherever they were pointed.

Was that a noise from the roof? A strangled cry? And that thump sounded like it came from his balcony. The rattle of the glass door rolling back was all too familiar.

The lights came on in the foyer. Two figures were silhouetted in the hallway. The big silver fox was struggling with the short busty vixen. She had her teeth on the wrist of the paw that held his gun. With a yelp of pain he dropped it, and she spun around to plunge a long thin stiletto into his chest. He fell, wounded but not dead, incapacitated for sure, Carlos thought. The vixen picked up the Glock that he had dropped and turned to Carlos.

The reporter acted instinctively. He raised the gun that the fox had given him and pulled the trigger as soon as it was lined up with her chest. The flash nearly blinded him, but he could see the dark rose that bloomed on her breast when his bullet struck her just over the heart. She dropped the gun, clutched at her chest, swore in a language that sounded Russian to Carlos, and dropped to the carpet to lay still.

Before Carlos could overcome the shock of having killed someone the fox staggered to his feet. He flipped the corpse over. "She's done. I recognize this one, one of their best. We're both lucky to be alive but now I've got to get a crew in here and clean this mess up." He turned blue-grey eyes that held a promise of death on Carlos. "This never happened, right?"

"Right. But won't they just try it again, use someone else?"

"Not now that we know about it. We'll get a video deposition from you so if those bogus files ever come to light again we will be able to discredit them with it, and we'll lock it away for your own safety. So there is no gain in killing you. Now you go lay low at Bernadette's until we give you the all clear."

Carlos carefully put the gun down on the coffee table before rising on shaky legs. "Does it always feel like this when you kill someone?" He asked as he skirted around the bleeding fox and the body of the vixen.

"Only if you're lucky, Carlos. Only if you're lucky."

* * *

Silver leaned against the wall plucking at his damp shirt until the surveillance team informed him that the penguin was clear of the area.

"All clear Delores." He announced. The body on the floor immediately drew in a deep breath and sat up.

Delores "Babydoll" Johnson, a FOX agent and Russian linguist took off her ruined blouse and peeled f the explosive pad and the remnants of the blood bag that had provided the special effects when Carlos triggered the gun Silver had given him. It had been programmed to go off only if the gun was aimed in her general direction but she believed that if it had been loaded with real bullets that he would have got her. "Jesus, these hurt."

"Not as much as the real thing."

"I'll take your word for it." Delores reached back and undid her bra, which was stained with fake blood, and then threw it on top of the ruined blouse. Her large firm breasts swung free and she waggled them teasingly in Silver's direction.

"I brought you some fresh clothes." Silver said, ignoring her. "I stashed them under the couch."

"Thanks, I suppose." Delores shrugged. She never had been able to entice the big silver fox into bed, not after he set eyes on the tall, elegant Vikki Beausoleil, now the mother of his kit. Oh well, she thought, there are plenty of other fit males around to entertain me. She retrieved the clothes he had brought for her and got dressed.

"Thanks for coming all the way from the Ukraine for this." Silver said as he stripped off his own stained shirt.

"Not like I had a choice ... boss." She marvelled at the size of the scars on his chest and back, and at how far he had come since settling down with Vikki. Ten years ago he would have never taken his shirt off in front of her so casually. "Actually, it was fun pretending to be one of the opposition, but you never did say what this particular charade was in aid of."

"Don't ask."

"Am I to infer that this never happened?"

"And you were never here."

"Right, got it. Back to Kiev I go, without dropping in to say 'hi' to my former classmate and her kit, your son."

"Exactly."

She walked down the hall in a mock huff. She stopped a half step past him, looked back at his bare torso with its rock hard abs and sighed at her loss. "You know," she said, "the least you do is give a girl a slap on the ass to show her that she's appreciated." Silver chuckled and complied.

"Yip!" She exclaimed as she hopped toward the door. "That's going to hurt after twelve hours in a plane seat." But she was happy that her friend Vikki had finally gotten 'Mister Serious' to lighten up.

After she had left Silver called in the clean up team. Their job would be easy tonight, just some fake blood splatter on the wall and a few stains on the carpet. It would all come out a lot easier than the real stuff. While was waiting for them to come up he pulled on a clean turtleneck and then dialled in a new frequency on his radio.

"Gold? Silver here. You can tell the Minister mission accomplished."

* * *

The next morning at FOX headquarters Silver made the rounds, thanking several individuals for indulging him with his unorthodox requests lately. He also reminded them that the events of the last few days were on a strict need-to-know basis, and therefore should not be brought up at the next heads of section meeting, or anywhere else either. Everyone from the head of Security to Kain Algorath nodded silently at that; FOX often moved in ways so mysterious that even the senior managers did not know what was really going on.

When he arrived at his office he discovered that the Director was there supervising a maintenance crew that was hanging a picture. When Williams was satisfied and the crew had left Silver could see that it was a monochrome ink work that had a series of wheels with spokes going in impossible directions, yet everything seemed to connect somehow. On closer examination he saw that each wheel was really a möbius strip, and the spoke connections were clever optical illusions done with shading.

"You felt that my office needed a little something Tanner?" Silver asked his friend and boss. The muscular golden fox was known for his good taste and fastidious decorating skills.

"It was a gift from the Minister for a job well done. She was so happy to find that we had contained the leak that she said she would intervene with any of her cabinet colleagues on our behalf should we ever need a favour. I asked her to speak to the Minister of Culture to get this on permanent loan from the National Gallery. I remembered seeing it when they did a special exhibit on Escher. At the time it reminded me of your typical plans; wheels within wheels within wheels. Speaking of which, how did your operation go?"

"It went well. If the hackers that stole the Prime Minister's journal ever break the code and release it Carlos will be jumping in to denounce it as a Russian plot. Plus he thinks he owes us his life, so I'll bet he'll cooperate with us and not reveal our existence to the general public. Besides, if he did he would get Bernadette in trouble and I don't think that he wants to give her up. Being an insider also provides a certain ego boost."

"It's good that you were able to engineer their meeting. Thank God we profile all the investigative reporters so thoroughly, and that we had someone with Bernadette's ... ah ... attributes. But aren't you worried about how easily he got confirmation of our existence out of her? Doesn't that make her a bit of a weak link, security wise?"

"There are weak links in every organization," Silver shrugged, "but according to Sun Tzu if you know yours you can turn them into strengths, or assets at least. Bernadette has always been under stricter surveillance than most employees because I've been using her like an unlocked door; anyone trying to get in will use the path of least resistance and that is Bernie. But we'd know right away and can steer things the way we want. In this case we leaked the encrypted files, which were already in the paws of anti-government anarchist hackers, to Carlos and then sent Nathan in to guide him to us, and Bernadette. The end result is that the threat from the files is neutralized, the minister owes us, the Prime Minister is being more careful with his notes and we have a clever journalistic resource on our side. Win, win, win I'd say."

"And the PM's plan to sell the rights to Canadian Hockey?"

"I'll kill him myself if he ever even thinks it again."

* * *

Silver had directed Bernadette to take a few days off so while he and the Director were admiring FOX's latest artistic acquisition she and Carlos were busy in her big bed. More specifically, Carlos was balls deep in penguin paradise, prick pounding plump polecat pussy at a prodigious pace. He held on by wrapping his short arms around her considerable waistline.

While his body enjoyed the feel of bouncing against a well padded butt his mind was occupied with other matters. He was well aware that he was being manipulated; things never work out so perfectly as they had with the encrypted file incident. FOX was using him, that was clear, but where things got foggy was exactly how and why they were doing it. But, he reminded himself as Bernadette wrapped her thick warm tail around him, as the old Bill Withers song went - 'if it feels this good gettin' used, you just keep on usin' me, 'til I'm all used up'.

"Oh Carlos!" Bernadette moaned below him. "You're so hard and hot, I'm about to pop. Can you cum with me?"

Carlos tightened his grip, redoubled his efforts and replied with a smirk, "Come with you? Baby, I'm already there."