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Anch struggled helplessly, sprawled on the sacks in the spice store. Each attempt to dislodge the ropes that held her wrists and ankles sent a cloud of dust into the air leaving her choking, unable to catch her breath because of the mouth filling maoungf that had been strapped around her head.
The scent of turmeric, cumin and coriander filled the air. Anch wriggled herself around until she was sitting up. In her efforts to free herself she had torn her skirt and stained her blouse with the deep yellow of turmeric. Her head covering and veil lay beside her on the floor where her attackers had tossed it down the chute after her.
As she wriggled her arms once more she became aware that she could feel a little give in the ropes. She looked around. On the far side of the cellar, a hook held ropes from the cellar's hoist. Anch felt sure that if she could get to it, the combination of her struggles and the sharp hook could free her. Slowly she started to move herself across the floor of the cellar. Eventually she managed to shuffle herself close to the foot of the wall beneath the hook. Turning around, she levered herself up against the wall and finally managed to snare the loops of the ropes around her wrists onto the hook. Tugging against the hook and flexing her wrists she slowly felt the ropes begin to give.
Her efforts were interrupted by the sound of voices in the room above. She threw herself back onto the floor just as the trap door at the top of the ramp was pulled up. The veiled faces of two women stared down at her.
“She's moved,” one of the women said.
“Not far,” said the other, her American accent revealing her as one of Anch's assailants. “And she won't get out of there for a while.”
“How is the banker?”
“Oh fine. He's busy with Victoria.”
Anch was furious. It seemed that Henry was in league with these women; that he had staged the whole thing so that the Koresh file could be stolen. She had to escape and try to discover what he was planning. Perhaps he intended some fraud on the bank? He had seemed like a reasonable man but you could never tell with these westerners. And the text message that had brought her to the Spice Market had come from Henry's phone.
The cellar hatch cover was dropped back into place by the women. Anch listened quietly as slamming doors in the rooms above announced the departure of her attackers again. She worked her way back to the hook and started once more to try to free herself.
It seemed to take forever but eventually she managed to work a loop of rope free. With the freedom that gave her, she wrenched at the ropes with renewed vigour. From that moment she soon worked the remainder of the rope loose and with effort she got her wrists free.
Wasting no time she freed the ropes from around her ankles and unbuckled the strap of the mouth filling moaungf, pulling the plug free with a gasp of relief. She stood up, brushed as much of the mess from her clothes as she could and looked around hoping to find a way out.
The door into the cellar was locked but eventually she managed to pile up spice sacks into a sort of pyramid that let her climb out of the cellar and up into the room above. Listening all the while in case her attackers returned she pulled on her veil and slipped out into the street. One thing was certain, if Mr Henry was involved in trying to defraud the bank she would have to try to talk to Mr Kerrish but for now the best thing would be to go back to her own household.
++ ++ ++ ++
Much to Anch's concern, Kerren Kerrish was not in the office the following day, having gone up to the north of the country with Henry to meet some of the bank's clients there. Henry had been keen to go, Anch remembered. Perhaps the trip had something to do with his plans. Anch decided to stay put until Henry and Mr Kerrish returned.
It was while Kerrish and Henry were visiting one of their Northern clients that they encountered Dana Harris. “Hi,” she had said with a breezy tone and an American accent. “Guess that you're a foreigner here too.”
She scrounged a lift with the two men back towards Kolin and spent most of the journey telling them about herself. How she'd been in Kushtia for almost a month now, how it was so different from her home in Ohio, how she really didn't understand why the women put up with the way they were treated and so on. Kerren Kerrish affected an air of quiet interest. Henry made the mistake of asking the occasional question which had the effect of her embellishing her views with even greater detail.
“But that's not the main reason that I'm here,” Dana said as the car staggered gratefully onto tarmac roads as they got into the outskirts of Kolin. “I'm really hoping to get to the bottom of this United Nations Cultural Heritage Programme. I mean, OK, it's understandable for Kushtian women to be happy with the way they're treated – they've been brought up to it, I guess. But what is it with Brits and Americans coming here to live the same way? Seems crazy to me and nothing I've seen so far is going to seem any different to my readers.”
Dana's words sent a chill up Henry's neck. “Readers?” he said.
“Yes, sure. I write for a number of magazines back home. Women's issues, current affairs, that sort of thing. Maybe I should interview you about the UN Programme – it would be good to get the view of a British man living out here.”
“I'm not sure,” Henry responded. Actually, he was, the last thing he wanted to do was to attract attention to himself by talking to a reporter. “I don't really know anything about the programme.”
“That's OK, I can give you some details.”
The car stopped at Henry's hotel. He climbed out, hoping that Dana would forget about their conversation.
Dana wound the window down of the car and called towards him as he went inside. “And come to think of it, I could get your views on some of the things going on with the credit crunch in the west. Get a slant on how Kushtian banking compares. That could go down well. Especially for some of the UK titles – there's a real fuss on back there at the moment about some banker that disappeared leaving a trail of chaos. Could you see something like that happening here?”
Henry shrugged his shoulders. “I don't know,” he said. He was horrified. It could only be a matter of time until Dana figured out his connection with that affair.
“Well, I'll buy you dinner. We can talk then. See you at eight.”
Henry nodded. Normally an invitation to dinner from an attractive, leggy, twenty five year old, American girl would have been a welcome proposition but that wasn't the case. There didn't seem to be much point in trying to argue about it now. What he would have to do was to make himself scarce for a while. He started to think about his options. As the car pulled off he was certain of one thing though. Dana was going to be stood up for dinner that evening.
© Freddie Clegg 2009
All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or reposted without permission.
All characters fictitious
E-mail: freddie_clegg@yahoo.com
Web Groups: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freddies_tales/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Femdom_Fables/
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