BDSM Library - Story: Banking For Beginners, Chapter: Part 1

Banking for Beginners

Most of the action takes place in and around Kolin, the capital of Kushtia. High on the fringes of the Hindu Kush, the small country of Kushtia is moving out of the shadow of its colonial past as part of the Soviet empire. Although trying to become a modern, secular state, Kushtia is still troubled by its immediate and distant past. Its distinctive way of life has been recognised under the Untied Nations World Heritage Cultures programme. (Described in “Anthropology”)

Characters

Most of the folk in this tale introduce themselves as they go along but some of them were first encountered in earlier Freddie Clegg stories (Mainly in Market Forces although some or all make appearances in Anthropology):-

· The Kalinin : President elect of the state of Kushtia.

· Lauren – daughter of Brad, the Kushtian Trade Minister, wife of Kushnati Koresh (a council elder and a very elder council elder at that).

· Victoria – wife (well, one of them) of Koreni Kalanis, (son of the Kalinin of Kushtia).

· Freddie Clegg – an entrepreneur with a serial interest in female flesh.

· Ellie Grant – Freddie’s right hand woman, lawyer for the Clegg Enterprises business

· Anatoly Kustensky – a Russian with similar aims to Freddie but in different markets

· Sergeant Dobranin – a helpful officer of the Kolin traffic police.

Language

A few words of Kushtian that you might find helpful (although I'll try to keep the meanings obvious when they turn up). Some others will be used but please don't be put off, I'll try to keep things understandable:-

· doenya : a household servant

· seragla : the harem of a Kushtian household

· huna : bitch

· chanoosh : the all covering robe of an unmarried Kushtian woman

· hunashif : an aromatic herb smoked for its intoxicating effects

Chapter 1: Flight from the UK

Henry Clegg looked nervously around at the departure lounge. Of course he really knew that the armed police, in their flack jackets, carrying their disturbing array of weaponry, were only there to provide security, but he couldn't help feeling that they were also keeping a close eye on him, personally.

In Henry's mind the question was which of the forces of law and order would be first through the door of the departure lounge ready to snatch away his ticket and boarding card before he could get to his flight. There was the bank's inspection department, their auditors, the financial services regulator, the head of consumer finance watch, and of course the police themselves. And that didn't include the irate parents of his recently pregnant P.A. Lately things just seemed to have piled up and now he was just glad to be getting out. Some bankers might be getting bailed out but it certainly didn’t seem to extend to him.

“Air Kushtia is pleased to announce the departure of flight 003 to Riga, Strigino, Tashkent and Kolin. Passengers should please board now through gate 27.”

Henry felt relieved by the announcement. He picked up the small bag that carried the few things that would sustain him on board and scurried towards the gate. It had been awfully good of Uncle Freddie to arrange this for him, he thought, and at such short notice. He'd certainly needed the chance of a new job somewhere far away from where he had been working. Somewhere far removed from structured funding arrangements linked to the American sub-prime market, the fall out from his deal with Lehman Brothers, from his negotiations with a certain savings bank in the North East of England or indeed the exit strategy for his finances that he had arranged with Landsbanki, Glitnir, and Kaupthing in Iceland.

With his current set of problems, the Kushtian capital of Kolin had sounded attractive at the instant that Freddie had mentioned it; if only because he'd never heard of it before and he could readily imagine that none of the people who were hoping to find him would have heard of it either. At the very least it would allow him to keep his head down for a few months. That way he could wait until the more acrimonious scalp hunting had finished and then he could work out what his options were.

The boarding gate was curiously quiet. Looking around, as far as Henry could tell, he was the only passenger. Airline staff walking back along the pier to the terminal building looked at him with what seemed to Henry like a mixture of astonishment and sympathy. Henry got his first inkling of why when the stewardess came forward to open the gate. He wasn't sure what sort of 'plane the flight was using but with her bulk he hoped it was a large one. He'd been used to the idea of wide bodied aircraft, he was surprised to see it applied to cabin crew too. She peered at him through thick lensed, heavy black framed spectacles and beckoned him forward. Henry looked around to make sure it was him she wanted but to his disappointment there was no one else.

As he handed the woman his boarding card, his eyes were drawn to the thick dark moustache that adorned her top lip. She misinterpreted his startled curiosity for some form of flirtatious interest and handed him his boarding card back with a disturbing smile. As Henry got back to his seat he noticed her adjusting her dark brown uniform jacket in some sort of vain attempt to pretend that it had anything to do with the figure of the woman underneath it. When she straightened her jacket, her body appeared to move off in another direction entirely. As far as Henry could tell the uniform had been created by dyeing a khaki Soviet army jacket with cold tea and replacing the badges with the insignia of Air Kushtia. You could still see darker patches where the military badges that had been there before had stopped the fabric from fading.

When the fight attendant pulled back the curtain that closed off the boarding ramp he was only too pleased to slide past her and on towards the plane.

As he walked down the ramp he peered out of the window into the gathering gloom of the evening. The aircraft that was waiting for him was no sleek jet but one of the largest propeller driven aircraft that Henry had ever seen. With its thin fuselage, steeply swept back wings and four large engines each carrying two sets of propellers, the thing looked more like a bomber from the cold war than any sort of airliner that Henry had travelled on. He would have to ask his uncle about it, Henry thought, Freddie knew a lot about aircraft. He emerged from the ramp close to tail of the aircraft. Its fin and rudder stretched up high above him. Henry could see the insignia of Air Kushtia on the fin; it appeared to have been painted over a Soviet red star. Maybe his theories about cold war bombers weren't so far off the mark.

The bulky, moustachioed, flight attendant was waiting at the head of the stairway as he climbed up to the rear passenger door. Henry was a bit puzzled as to how she might have got there given that she hadn't passed him on the ramp but he managed to squeeze by her. As he did so he realised that it was not, after all, the same woman as had checked his ticket at the gate. He was depressed by the idea that, in Kushtia, maybe all women looked like this.

He stepped into the cabin and looked around, wondering at how an interior designer could find a use for so many shades of brown. He found his seat and stowed his flight bag in the overhead locker.

The engines coughed into life. He was evidently going to be alone for the first leg of the flight at least. He heard the flight attendant slam the rear door of the aircraft and then, obviously not happy that it had shut properly, slam it again. He was beginning to wonder if Freddie had done him such a favour after all.

The aircraft seemed to lope across the tarmac towards the runway before lurching upward with a whine of engines and staggering into the air. Henry thought the best thing to do would be to get some sleep.

“Henry George Arthur Clegg,” the judge was saying. “You have been responsible for defrauding your employer and the customers of your bank. You have caused distress and hardship. You have been found guilty of fraud and it is the sentence of this court that you will be taken from here to a place of confinement and then to a place of execution where you shall be hanged by the neck until you are dead in twenty minutes.”

“In twenty minutes,” thought Clegg, “what sort of sentence was that? Where's the time for appeals? That can't be right.”

“In twenty minutes. Sir, we will be landing in Riga in twenty minutes. Please you must fasten your belt seat.”

Henry looked up with relief, waking up with a jump to find the flight attendant tugging at his arm. He nodded to show understanding, fiddled with the controls of his seat to slide it upright and strapped himself in, ready for what he feared would be a bumpy landing.

At Riga the flight was joined by more passengers, a small group of men in dark suits, dark shirts, dark ties and dark glasses that sat together and spoke not a word for the entire 4 hours of the next leg of the fight to Strigino. They left the fight there and Henry had the opportunity to stretch his legs while the plane refuelled.

The flight took off again heading to Tashkent. An hour out from Strigino, one of the engines coughed and failed, its propellers shuddering to a halt. Clegg waved the stewardess over to show her but she seemed neither surprised nor even very interested. At least that was reassuring, thought Clegg. Certainly it didn't seem to interfere with the aircraft continuing its flight.

At Tashkent there was much shouting and excitement on the tarmac beneath his window as mechanics debated what if anything could or should be done about the faulty engine. A ladder was brought. Anch argument ensued. There was much banging and thumping from the engine nacelle as shouts of encouragement were offered from the ground. Clegg dozed off again, not anxious to witness exactly how they managed to get the plane airborne again.

By the time he woke again the plane was well into the final leg of the flight. Keen for a drink he decided to risk the attentions of the hirsute cabin staff and reached up for the stewardess call button. It came away as he tugged at it.

Henry, embarrassed, was trying to push it back into place when he realised that a stewardess was beside his seat. “What can I do to help, Sir?” a soft voice asked.

Henry turned to see a vision of loveliness staring down at him. The flight attendant was evidently no relative of the one that had crewed on the earlier parts of the flight. This girl was, Henry judged, barely twenty. She had almond shaped, dark brown eyes and a dark complexion. Her face was modestly veiled but her belly was naked, a jewel sparkling in her navel. Her uniform looked more like something that belonged in a middle eastern harem. Henry thought it a great improvement over the one earlier that had appeared to have been acquired from a T34 tank regiment. She reached across him to push the call button back into the panel. Her breasts were only inches from his face.

“Ah, a, ah, err yes, ah, a scotch please,” Henry stuttered.

“Of course.” The girl disappeared and returned moments later pushing a trolley with a tray carrying three bottles of different malts, a small ice bucket, a small jug of water and a cut glass tumbler. She knelt in the aisle beside his seat holding the tray towards him. “Which would you like sir?” she said.

Henry happy at the improvement in cabin service grinned. “The Laphroaig,” he said, “please.”

The girl smiled again, poured a stiff measure of the drink, offered him ice and water both of which he refused and then handed him the glass before kneeling again beside him to ask if there was anything else he needed.

It was only later, when Henry had learned much more of the compliant and obliging nature of Kushtian women, that he realised that he had missed an opportunity. As it was he settled for a bag of nuts.

All characters fictitious

E-mail: freddie_clegg@yahoo.com Web Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freddies_tales/