Wonder Woman in Sydney #4

Wonder Woman was created by Dr William Moulton Marston in 1941 and is the © copyright trademark of DC Comics. My Wonder Woman stories are only fan fiction and based, primarily, on the 1970s CBS TV show (albeit, updated to the present time of writing). However, any resources from adaptations and comics may be utilized. All characters are entirely fictional. Except for any characters found in DC Comics or related adaptations, these stories and characters are my creations, unless otherwise stated. In my stories, Wonder Woman is the only known superhero.

04 The interrupted dinner date

“Now that you’ve been given temporary clearance with the IADC, we can discuss the case without any restrictions.”

“That’s great, Diana,” Roger drearily responded in a low mood.

They sat in the green pillared splendour of a Hilton’s Marble Bar. Roger sipped his pint of Australian beer as if it were soup. Diana preferred iced tea and lemon.

“The IADC received an anonymous tipoff, two weeks ago, describing Jase Chase as – and I quote – ‘a dishonourable man’,” she said. “Given his key role in the ATLAS project, it was thought worth investigating.”

“Any idea who the mole is?”

“It has to be someone close to Jase who betrayed him. Maybe someone who was never really on his side…”

Diana maintained eye contact with Roger.

“Like Kay-I,” he said.

“She fits the profile, don’t you think?”

“Damn! Why didn’t she talk to me, Di?”

“Perhaps she wanted to but couldn’t.”

There was a period of contemplation as Roger turned over the information in his mind. He returned to his colleague with increased frustration.

“To think that little creep could have some leverage over Kay-I makes my blood boil. What did your investigation on him reveal?”

“At first, everything checked out, then we discovered a quarter of a million dollars had been deposited into his Swiss bank. Jase went to the trouble of using an anonymous phone number to check the amount, but made the mistake of calling from his home, which is how we traced him.”

“Who would pay him such a sum for what?”

“The ‘who’ would be our Chinese friends from the Temple of New Science – whom we suspect are Chinese government agents – and I’m guessing the ‘what’ might be to do with that meteorite. Would there be a record of any meteors which travelled to Earth after Jase’s asteroid was destroyed?”   

“Sure, everything on course for Earth is tracked if we can detect it. But you’ve lost me, Diana, I don’t see how it fits into the jigsaw.”

“Neither do I for now. Get some rest. I must go,” she said kissing Roger on the cheek.

“Your hot date with the CIA friend, right?”

“It’s just a meeting over dinner,” she replied, a little defensively.  

Mitch Kawai arranged to meet Diana at a restaurant on Sussex Street in Chinatown. Following the tram tracks down the road, Warren pulled over at the address. Diana sent him photos on his phone.

“I want you to go back to the Hilton and call me if you see any of these faces,” she said. “Don’t try to confront them.”

“Okey-dokey, Diana, but, you know, I’m not such a bad pair of hands in a fistfight.”

“That I can believe,” she said alighting the vehicle.

The restaurant possessed a gothic feel with its low lighting and classical red Chinese décor against a black background. In contrast to this came the novelty of robot servers carrying orders to their tables. The white machines rolled on wheels and were about the chest height of an average man. The trunk contained a programmable screen and the black display on its head simulated facial expressions in red graphics.

Diana wore an off-the-left-shoulder pink dress with splashes of radiant red, orange, and yellow rainbows.

“You look divine,” Mitch said on greeting her.

He came in a short-sleeved pale blue shirt accentuating his brawn. Diana felt his machismo instantly. They were sat at a table overlooking the street through tinted windows. After they ordered, the pair got down to the business in hand.

“We’ve been working on this case without the other’s knowledge,” said Mitch. “I say we pool our resources.”     

“Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Diana replied with a brisk grin.

Mitch wasn’t fazed by Diana’s cautious response. In fact, he expected it. “Your reaction suggests the IADC has no record of my existence.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that…” Diana said. She showed Mitch a CCTV still of himself among the Chinese delegation taken at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport. “I don’t think the picture does you justice, but according to our records your real name is Jun De Wang, and you’re a monk at the Temple of New Science.”   

“I’m no monk,” stated Mitch licking his lips in a suggestive manner.

“Is that all you’ve got to say?”

“If I’m a big bad wolf, how do you explain me saving your life twice?”

“I can’t.” Diana reluctantly admitted. “Not yet.”

“Okay, Diana, I’ll place my cards on the table. I am Jun De Wang, at least, that’s who I am known as to the Chinese. I’m really a deep undercover CIA operative, which is why you’ll find no record of my existence. We need to work together. Can you take my word for it?”  

“Err…”

A robot stopped at their table.

“Saved by the bot,” she quipped, cheerily.

“Diana Prince, you have a call,” the robot’s speaker voiced in a female monotone. “Please, follow me.”

“A call? Oh, I see.”

“Excuse me,” she told her dinner companion in an amusingly baffled expression.

The robot took Diana past the reception to the elevator.

“This way…we’ll wait for the elevator,” the robot informed.

An observant young waiter noticed its unusual behaviour.

“Hey, that’s not one of our bots,” he claimed.

The machine swung around. It zapped the server with a burst of blue electric current.  

“He is only stunned. I’ll only kill him if necessary. Believe me when I say this unit is more than capable of lethal potency.” Although transmitted through a vocoder, it was clear the voice belonged to an Asian woman. “Step into the elevator, Miss Prince, and don’t try anything stupid.”

The machine’s face turned grim. Diana saw the young man awakening on the floor.  Slowly, she did as she was told. An advantage for a human over a robot in this situation is knowing when the elevator is about to leave.

“You can take the next one,” Diana said, kicking the machine back into the restaurant as the doors shut.    

At the bottom of the elevator, two thugs in balaclavas awaited its arrival. The doors opened to reveal Wonder Woman.

“I’m afraid Rosey the Robot got rerouted,” she said while placing her hands on her hips in a relaxed manner.

“You’re coming with us, lady,” one stressed in an Aussie accent.

The thugs tried to manhandle Wonder Woman. She pushed her palms into their torsos on her way out of the elevator. The balaclava-sporting kidnappers hurtled backwards over themselves. Climbing to their feet, they ran out the exit into the street. Diana watched them go. She suspected the thugs to be nothing more than low-paid local crooks. Besides, she wanted to wait for her mechanical server to catch up.

As the robot rolled out of the elevator, Wonder Woman scooped it up under her arm. The machine’s face displayed a look of distress. The voice complained with what sounded like a scripted protest.

“Let’s see if we can find your owner,” Wonder Woman said, casually, strolling outside.

It was a muggy twilight. A few pedestrians were passing by. There were no signs of the thugs. Diana thought a parked white van with a prominent aerial on the roof looked the most promising prospect of enquiry. As she approached, the robot quit babbling. The vocoded female voice returned.

“It was nice to have known you, Wonder Woman!” she rasped.

The ominous farewell stopped Diana where she stood. She watched the van screech away. All at once she realised why; Wonder Woman flung the robot sky-high. The machine erupted in midair. As its debris rained down flaming fragments, Diana’s attention turned to thinking about what part did her dinner date play. After all, building a remote-controlled robotic bomb for a specific restaurant takes time. She reminded herself of her belief in the principle of being innocent until proven guilty.

“I thought that robot had kidnapped you,” Mitch joked when Diana Prince returned to the table. He appeared oblivious to events or as cocky as hell.

“At the IADC, we’re quite used to robots,” she replied.                               

The deliciously spicy hot meal didn’t match Diana’s simmering mood. Nevertheless, there was something about Mitch’s assertive presence that Diana found strangely alluring. He kept the conversation light during courses. She felt unable to read him.

“So, how did you track me down in Sydney?” she said over coffee.

“I’ve been keeping tabs on you since Honolulu. Your flight to Sydney, booking in at the Hilton–”

“You tracked my flight to Sydney?” interjected Diana in disbelief.

“It’s all in a day’s work for your friendly CIA operative.”

“Remarkable,” Diana coyly replied.

Warren’s taxi took the couple to the Hilton. It was time for Diana to use her feminine wiles to her advantage.  

“Would you like to stay for a nightcap?” said Diana.

Mitch watched Warren’s face light up in the reflection of the mirror.

“Looks like it could be your lucky night,” enthused Warren. “Good on ya, son. Good on ya!”

 A hotel janitor approached the couple in the lobby.

“Excuse me, ma’am, am I right in thinking you’re Miss Prince?”

“Yes.”

“It’s about your friend, Mr Macintosh. He’s had a little bit too much to drink and is refusing to leave the Marble Bar. I don’t suppose you could persuade him to return to his room.”

Diana rolled her eyes. “No problem. Leave Mr Macintosh to me.”

“Do you want me to lend a hand?” said Mitch.

“No, it will be all right, thanks,” replied Diana placing her hand affectionately on his chest. “Do you mind waiting?”

“Waiting for you is a privilege,” he said charmingly.

Diana found Roger slumped over the bar with a bottle of Scotch in his hand. She pulled up a stool next to him.

“I told you to get some rest,” she said.

He just about lifted his head enough to see his friend. “This feels pretty damn restful to me, Diana.”

“Roger, I wasn’t expecting you to hit the bottle. I need you sober and so does Kay-I.”

“Kay-I hasn’t needed me for a long time,” he slurred with a frown. “You know, Di, I thought I had found a happy life. Sure, there were ups and downs, but that’s the same for everyone. Now look at me, I’m a drunk, ex-NASA, ex-Air Force, and soon-to-be ex-husband. An ageing washed-up bum.”

He sat himself up. “What’s your secret, Diana?”

“Secret?”

“Look at you. You’re beautiful. I swear you haven’t aged a day since the first time I met you. I don’t know how you do it, but then I could never figure you out. Perhaps, that’s why…” He drunkenly gulped. “Perhaps that’s why I’m so fascinated by you. I should have married you, instead, Diana.”

“I think, maybe, you have had a little bit too much to drink. Let’s get you to your room.”

To Diana’s relief, Roger agreed – and with the broad man’s arm around her shoulders – they made their way to his room. He crashed onto his bed.

“Diana, I can’t marry you,” he sleepily confessed. “I love Kay-I…she’s my baby girl.”

“I know,” Diana replied with a wee smile. She felt bad for her old friend.  

In the lobby, Mitch still waited. Diana studied him carefully.

“Now to decide what to do about you,” she uttered to herself.      

Mitch stood to greet Diana again.

“How about that nightcap?” she said.

“Sounds good.”

“There’s a rooftop bar here.”

At the weekend the rooftop Zeta Bar could get overcrowded. In the early hours, Mitch and Diana found they were the only people present; even the barman disappeared after serving them. They leaned against the balcony sipping champagne, opposite the red-bricked, Romanesque, Queen Victoria Building. It was a significant drop below.

“I know we’re here on business, Diana, but look around, we have this place to ourselves. The two of us in this decadent wonder.”

“Now that sounds like someone who has experienced economy class,” she quipped to cover her query.

“Not everyone in Hawaii has money,” he said. “That’s my point. I’m living a five-star lifestyle. Great food and gorgeous views.”

“It’s a nice spot,” she said looking along at the streetlight below. A mild breeze ran between the buildings, lifting strands of her hair, and making her look even more angelic than normal.

“I was talking about you,” he replied. His dominant arms boxed her in against the side of a slabbed wall.

“Don’t you think we’re rushing this a bit?”

“Life is for living, Diana. You know as much as I do, in our line of work, how fleeting it can be. Who knows what tomorrow might bring? The spectre of death waits for us at every turn.”

Diana couldn’t disagree. She briefly thought of her many losses; and the most recent lost love of Peter James…

“If the moment feels right, we need to take it,” he gently stated in a virtual whisper.

He pressed his lips against hers. The sensation felt electric – and electricity is conductive – so they kissed again. His palms held her head by the temples and his fingers combed through her hair. Diana hesitated; conscious of the fact that nothing remained of her laceration but the stitches.

“I want you,” he asserted.

Once more they obeyed their primal urges. A prolonged caress of mouths ensued. Mitch’s right hand worked its way up Diana’s thigh. When his fingers reached the fold of her buttock, her body contracted, and she felt the shoulder blades of her back pin to the cold, hard wall. His broad hands gripped her hips; she thrust towards him as he pulled her closer. Her left arm wrapped around his neck, and the fingers of her right hand pressed into the top of his glutes. They smooched restlessly. His body felt the soft bulges of her ample chest. With a single stroke of his hand off her extraordinarily smooth bare shoulder, he attempted to slip his fingers down her dress…

That was enough. Something inside heeded caution. She needed to pull back. Her body followed suit. Just.

“Meet me in my room in ten minutes,” she told him in a low seductive tone.

He drank up and made his way to the number she gave him. The room was ajar when he arrived. He knocked, and entered, heading straight for the bedroom when a golden rope ensnared him before the door. It instantly tightened around his beefy body. Wonder Woman held the free end of the lasso.  

“You’re compelled to tell the truth,” she said. “Please, don’t try to fight it. I do not wish you to suffer.” This informative warning was not one she gave to most subjects who endured the Lasso of Truth. “Since the IADC is missing your file, Diana asked me to verify your credentials. What is your real name?”

“Mitch Kawai”

“You’re an undercover CIA agent at the Temple of New Science.”

“That’s right.”

Wonder Woman slowly paced about the room.

“And everything you’ve told Diana Prince has been the truth.”

“As far as I’m aware.”

“Including tracking Diana’s plane?” she said with a mild tug of the lasso.

“Sure,” he said with a jolt. “I didn’t do it myself, but I trust my sources.”

“Did you know about the robot that led Diana away was a bomb?”

“No!” he strongly protested. “I would never hurt Diana.”  

“I believe you.”

“Is that it? Because the truth is Wonder Woman, you’ve killed the mood tonight.”

“I’m sorry for the interrogation,” Wonder Woman said removing his binds.

Mitch shuddered after the unbecoming treatment.

“Tell Diana to call me when she is ready to apologise,” he vociferated on his way out of the room.

For Part 5: click here

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