Perhaps the most iffy part of the whole operation was getting a dancer and waiter position at Rudi's, a gay club on the Via Port Alba off the Piazza Bellini in Naples, Italy, before the
Wind of Fortune
sailed. I wasn't a pole dancer, but I had to convince the manager at the club that I was. I was a fit and young, blond American, posing as a Canadian to lessen scrutiny, which helped, and I was introduced as a dancer and male escort to the manager by one of the rent-boys at Rudi's who had been paid handsomely to vouch for me, which helped. But I had to sell myself on the pole and sell myself on my knees and in bed to the manager to be taken on staff. Fortuitously, I managed that, so I was in place, first on stage, and then waiting the table when the Italian billionaire of secret means, Luigi Castrano, brought the guests who were going to sail with him on the
Wind of Fortune to
the club a couple of nights before the boat sailed.
I did what I had to do to get Castrano to want me--and then to enjoy me.
At that point, it was Castrano's Naples factotum, Howard Brinkley, who was really one of ours, who got me set up. He was the one who got Castrano and his party to the club once I had been established there and was on duty. And it was Brinkley, seemingly noticing the man's reaction to my flirting, who cajoled Castrano to engage my services for the night and, subsequently, to offer me the job of waiter and escort on his sail around the Mediterranean on the
Wind of Fortune
, doing whatever he was suspected of engaging in that attracted the interest of the CIA.
It was Howard Brinkley who came to me as I was leaving the stage and arranged for me to wait on Castrano's table, which included other guests, three men of Castrano's age and a young, redheaded woman, who looked familiar to me and who was good-looking enough that I would have known she was the German movie actress, Gilda Gund, if I were into women, which I wasn't. On the way to the table, me wearing just a red sequined jock strap because I was just coming off the pole, Brinkley repeated that Castrano was an Italian billionaire with his hand in a whole bunch of companies and that there were two international bankers at the table, Lars Blumfeld of Austria and Cedrick Strang from the UK.
"Blumfeld is gay; as far as we can determine Strang isn't," Brinkley confided in a whisper.
The other man, obviously connected to the young movie actress, was Salvitore Boccelli, an Italian movie director. I'd been told before who these people were and they'd be yachting in the Mediterranean, but Brinkley repeated everything sotto voce as we approached their table.
He told them I was Conner Taylor and would be serving them--any way they liked, he said, giving me a pointed look.
I served them the drinks they wanted and when Castrano wanted me to sit in his lap while one of the gay male sex acts was going on on the stage, I served him in that capacity too, letting him fondle me, run his hands all over me, and eventually unzip himself, pull out his erection, and raise and lower me on his cock right there as we watched the sex performed on the stage. It was that kind of club--sex right at the tables while watching the stage shows.
Lars Blumfeld wanted me too at the table, and I rode his cock as well, facing him. The other two men cuddled with Gilda Gund. She wasn't penetrated by either of them, but it came close.
Eventually, it was Brinkley who determined that Castrano wanted to continue having me around and who negotiated for me to sign on to the crew of the
Wind of Fortune
as waiter and bed warmer for Castrano's coming Mediterranean cruise. I agreed, since that was the plan to achieve all along. And it was Brinkley who, after Castrano's party had left the club, stayed on to, as he said, "give instructions to the young man on coming on board the
Wind of Fortune
."
Castrano and company, though, had no idea what those instructions would entail. They'd have been shocked to have heard what happened between Brinkley and me when they left.
"Well, that went just as planned," Brinkley said as he escorted me to the hotel next door to the club and up to the room that had already been reserved. "It went more smoothly than I hoped it would," he added.
"Will you tell me now what the operation is and how I fit in?" I asked.
"When we get to the hotel room," he said. "You didn't need to know if inserting you in the ship's crew didn't work. We'd have had to go with the backup plan then, which would have been more difficult."
"A backup plan?" I asked.
"We already had someone on board."
"You, right?" I asked.
"No. I stay here. I run Mr. Castrano's life when he's in Naples. Not anywhere else. No, we have someone on board who will handle communications between you and the Candy Store."
"If you already have someone on the ship, why do you need me at all?"
"Here we are. You can clear that up with Sam."