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Anch was worried. When she had got back to her household the night before, Natalya had gone. One of the doenyes had told her that Natalya had borrowed a chanoosh and slipped out just before dusk. Then there had been all sorts of a fuss later on when the Overseer had discovered that a pistol was missing from the hunting cabinet. Now it was morning again and there was still no sign of Natalya.
When she got to the office Henry was already there, giving her a smile as she came in. She returned it as best she could, anxious to make sure that Henry did not guess her suspicions.
“Good morning, Anch,” Henry said brightly. “A busy day today, I think. There's plenty to do. Can you bring me the Koresh file, please?”
Anch suddenly remembered that she hadn't seen Henry since the file had been stolen. If he didn't know that then perhaps he wasn't behind its absence after all. On the other hand, she had been lured to the Spice Market by a message from his mobile phone. So, perhaps this was some sort of bluff. “I'm afraid its missing,” Anch said, deliberately keeping her involvement out of the conversation.
“Well, a copy perhaps?”
“Oh no. We don't keep more than one copy of a file.”
“Ah,” said Henry. “Oh. Well, never mind, we'll have to manage without it, I suppose.”
Anch was immediately furious with herself. That was what he wanted to know, she thought, that there wasn't another copy. He must have been behind the theft of the file after all. She looked at him and tried to decode what lay behind his placid expression. That meant he must have been involved with Victoria and Lauren and the kidnapped Russian girls, she thought. She looked across at Henry again. Who would think, she said to herself, that such a benign face could conceal such a terrible character. Natalya was almost certainly his prisoner, once again.
“Extraordinary thing,” Henry said. “Things keep going missing. Lot of fuss today at the hotel – they were looking for that Baskin woman and someone else was trying to track down that reporter. Now the file. Very odd.”
Anch listened with even greater concern. These other women had been investigating him. Had he been responsible for their disappearance too? Was Henry boasting about his actions as a warning to her? Was this his way of warning her off? Anch sat quietly, anxious not to say anything that would make Henry think that she was anything other than a good, compliant, Kushtian secretary. Inside though she was becoming determined to stop whatever scheme Henry was involved in.
++ ++ ++ ++
In the cellar lent her by Sergeant Dobranin, Ellie was making sure that her efforts to keep Henry out of trouble would continue to succeed. She didn't really have a plan yet but her first objective of making sure that nothing disturbed the status quo had seemed to involve her in dealing with more pursuers than Freddie managed to attract. Three of them, Ellie thought. Who would have imagined that Henry would have attracted so much attention from the female of the species? Dana Harris, Natalya Uranova and Esther Baskin had all been hot in pursuit of Freddie's nephew although all for different reasons. Still, with luck, Ellie had been able to make sure that they didn't cause Henry any real problems.
She'd been really fortunate with Dana Harris, the reporter. When Henry had bolted into the carpet sellers it had been the work of a moment to distract Dana and send her down a narrow alley. She'd been puzzling where next to go when Ellie had clamped the drugged pad over her nose and mouth, sending her spinning into an unconsciousness from which she only woke when she was bouncing over some of the back streets of Kolin, stuffed into a large basket on the back of Desnerek Dobranin's truck.
Following Henry had proved the right way to find the various people that were pursuing him. His lack of guile made it easy for his stalkers to stay in touch and that had made Ellie's task easy too. When Henry had turned up at the Kolanis household in search of Victoria, Ellie had not been surprised to find Natalya waiting for him. Luckily the girl had no idea about weapons. The tap of a yawarra stick on the back of Natalya's head had been sufficient to drop the girl silently. Ellie had been pleased with herself. The yawarra – or kongo as she had called it - had been a gift from an old friend. Modesty would have approved of the technique, if not the objective, Ellie thought.
Esther Baskin had been more difficult. Ellie had followed her from the bank after she emerged from her meeting with Kerrish and her discussions with Anch. Esther's visit to the Finance Ministry had been little more successful than her visit to the Bank, a fact which wouldn't have surprised her if she had thought for a moment about the Under Secretary for Finance, Kollani Kerrish, and how much he looked like his brother Keren Kerrish at the Bank. She had been quite disconsolate when she got back to the hotel and had been only too happy when the woman she had met on the flight offered to buy her a drink in the hotel bar. Well she did have more than was really good for her and she did get a bit rowdy when the barman suggested that she should not have any more. Nobody could remember who had called the police but the lady police sergeant that turned up to deal with the disturbance soon quietened things down and escorted Esther away.
Ellie's thoughts about her captives were interrupted by the arrival of Desnerek Dobranin. The two exchanged smiles. He spoke no English and, while Ellie could manage a little Kushtian, she couldn't realistically do much more than exchange the conventional greetings.
Esther, Dana and Natalya were all helpless. Dana had been the first to arrive in the cellar, She was sitting, roped to a heavy chair, her ankles tied one to each of the chairs front legs, ropes across her lap and around her waist. Her pale cream trouser suit was covered with dust and scraps of plants from the basket she had been transported in and streaked with vomit, the consequence of the chloroform that had drugged her. Desnerek hadn't cleaned her up. The smell in the cellar wasn't pleasant.
Poor Natalya, was on the floor close to Dana. Abducted for the second time in only a few weeks, she'd recovered from the kongo blow that had laid her out but she still had a powerful headache, an egg sized lump on her head just behind her left ear and a grazed arm from her unconscious fall to the ground. Once in the cellar, Desnerek had tied her to an old iron pipe that ran up one of the walls. The pipe was flaking rust. Occasional drips of water fell from the joints in the pipe. Natalya, still dressed in the black robe she had borrowed from Anch's household had her wrists tied behind her back and to the pipe. Her ankles were bound too and she had been sat with her feet pulled back towards the pipe and tied to that too. In the process Desnerek had managed to push her long robe up until her legs were bared. Looking down at the helpless girl, Ellie didn't believe it had been an accident.
Esther had been the last to arrive and was probably the least comfortable of the three. Handcuffed by Sergeant Dobranin after her “arrest”, Esther had been bundled into the boot of Dobranin's police car with her ankles cuffed so that the linking chain crossed that of the one between her wrists After she had been brought into the cellar, they had simply left her on the floor. It had taken a while for the effects of the powder that Ellie had spiked her drink with to wear off. Now all she had was a hangover, aching arms and a gap in her memory for the last 24 hours.
All three of the women had been gagged with large, red rubber balls. It was becoming an industry standard, Ellie thought, almost apologetic for her lack of originality.
Ellie looked across at the three girls. There was a certain personal satisfaction in this, she felt. She wondered how long it had been since she'd been doing something like this. For too long she'd spent all her time on contracts, administration and legal issues. She understood, now, how Freddie had felt about the archaeologists he had spent hours boring her about. When he'd got back from Greece he'd been positively smug about his solo efforts.
Natalya stretched against the ropes and groaned, attracting attention. Ellie ought to feel sorry for others of her sex, she supposed but, in truth, it didn't feel like that. It was more a case of hunter and prey, merchant and merchandise. She'd grown up trying to make sure she wasn't on the wrong end of those relationships, so it was hard for her to feel sorry for those that hadn't been as successful as she was.
On the other side of the room an alcove had been separated off with steel bars. On the other side of the bars, behind a padlocked door, there was a small piles of boxes stamped with Cyrillic characters, the remains, Ellie suspected of some local resistance to the Russian occupation. Ellie pointed towards the girls and then to the barred alcove. They would be more secure in there, she felt. She pointed to the boxes miming that Desnerek should take them out before putting the girls in. Desnerek responded with a toothy grin and an upturned thumb showing that he understood her request. He unlocked the door to the caged alcove.
The girls were evidently distressed by this further development in their captivity. But it was Desnerek's next action that disturbed them more. He paused in his task of moving the boxes and turned to Ellie once more, lifting a single finger. Ellie looked puzzled.
Desnerek pointed at Esther. “Anglichsye?” he asked.
Ellie nodded. As far as she knew Esther was English. Desnerek nodded. Pointed to Esther and himself and then made a thrusting movement with his hips which made his interests obvious. “Anglichse femnyette – kunting.” He lifted his thumb again with an enquiring look.
'Kunting' – that was another Kushtian word Ellie knew. It said a lot about Kushtian attitudes that their most common word for sexual congress and the slang word for a woman's sexual parts were exactly the same. She thought about it for a moment. There really wasn't any reason why Desnerek shouldn't have some fun, she thought. She gave him a nod but pointed to the other two and the cage, indicating that they should be locked up first and then gestured to Esther's ropes to show that whatever he might get up to she should not be released. Desnerek responded with another raised thumb and a smile and set to moving the boxes from the cage with renewed vigour.
Esther had worked out the meaning of the dumb show between Ellie and the old man that was their guard. She sat struggling in fear in her ropes and trying to plead through her gag.
Ellie had some sympathy for the poor girl but on the other hand, she needed to keep her staff on side and Desnerek deserved a little bonus. Anyway it would give them something to worry about while she sorted out the next problem on her list. What was she going to do about the rest of the Russians?
© 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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