by elle`attend
FOR MATURE READERS ONLY
“Aisle or window seat, Mme.Cournoyér?”
“Il est sans importance,” I replied evenly, my eyes sweeping the nearby ticket counters, automatically registering every face that they encountered. “Mais je voudrais être près des toilettes, si possible, merci.” It was not my bladder I was thinking of, however, when I made this one request regarding seating assignment. I unsnapped and tugged off my white kidskin glove, and slid my passport and ticket across the marble countertop to the young woman. She smiled at me warmly. I returned her smile noncommitally, my eyes hidden by my wraparound Oakley’s.
“Porte douze, Madame. Ayez un vol plaisant.” She handed my ticket and papers back to me. I smiled aloofly and tucked them into my shoulder bag, then turned away and started down the concourse toward the sign marked Gates 1-16 in Greek, French, and English. As I passed the plate glass fronts of the shops lining the walkway, my eyes were drawn almost hypnotically toward the reflection dogging my footsteps. I couldn’t say with complete certainty that I recognized this woman any longer.
The young matron who had stepped so naively through WISDOM’s doors close to two weeks earlier was scarcely discernible in this sophisticated woman striding purposefully toward her appointment with almost certain oblivion. She was nearly ten pounds lighter, with a new firmness about the jaw line, and just a hint of new resolve and determination to her full-lipped mouth, a determination that was echoed in her confident, almost arrogant demeanor. Dressed in a red-on-black hibiscus print sleeveless silk dress, cap-sleeved white linen bolero jacket, broad-brimmed white Françoise Javits sun hat and white wrist gloves and ankle strap heels, she looked every inch the fashion model being whisked away to Tenerife or St Bart’s for the cover spread of next month’s Vogue. I wondered if she knew where she was really going. And if she did, why she wasn’t running just as fast and far as those beautifully toned legs would carry her.
I wanted to scream at her to do just that.
I sensed, more than felt or heard, the faint whispering chime, like tiny carillon bells. I turned reluctantly away from the image in the windows, my eyes clouding over slightly, all of my attention focused on the boarding gates now, and the mantra echoing within my body as the exquisite little golden rings brushed softly between my thighs.
Fifteen minutes into the flight I was propped against the door of the first class lavatory, my dress bunched around my hips, my fingers frantically kneading my denuded sex, sobbing silently, cursing the rings and chain that denied me access to my own body, and momentary escape from this nightmare I had tumbled into.
I bit savagely into the white glove clenched between my teeth, and battered my clitoris until I nearly fainted. I heard voices laughing derisively at the spectacle I presented; this prim young American matron abusing herself in the toilet of an A320 as it sliced impassively throught the dusk gathering over the eastern Mediterranean.
I knew that those voices existed only in my mind, but that did not prevent fat tears of shame, and despair, from spilling down my cheeks as I clawed mindlessly at myself.
**********
Métis Faroda looked up in amazement as the doors to her private office suite banged open, and Beatrix Mackay sailed through them like a man-o-war secured for action. She strode to the startled woman’s desk and slammed her palms down furiously on its polished surface.
“What the Hell’s going on here, Métis?”
The flustered Egyptian woman rose hurriedly, running a nervous hand over her shining dark mahogany hair. She cleared her throat uneasily.
“Dr. Mackay, I …that is, uh, we had no idea… I mean…there were…”
“I know what there ‘were’, Métis. Now I want to know ‘how’. I want to know ‘how’ our key operative in the region could be rolled up less than thirty-six hours before the biggest heroin shipment we’ve ever targeted for interdiction moves. I want to know ‘how’ a college girl coming to work on an internship could disappear less than six hours after she sets foot in Alexandria, before the opposition has had time to get a goddamned picture of her. I want to know ‘how’ six years’ hard work and meticulous planning could be put in jeopardy virtually overnight.
“But most of all, I want to know ‘who’, and I want to know ‘why’ And I want to know NOW!”
Beatrix Mackay paused for a moment, letting the full extent of her rage wash over the thoroughly nonplussed woman, before she continued.
“I want every intelligence communication that’s come through this station in the last seventy-two hours, and I want them ten minutes ago. And I want everything, and I mean everything on the Jamaah ‘al’ Islamiyah’s known informants’ activities for the same period. Anything and everything we have on the Hizb` i` Islami shipping channels, both through Turkey and Kenya, every shipment that’s moved in the last two weeks and the movements of every, and I mean every operative in those networks, right down to the last strung-out bimbo mule turning tricks for dime bags in Mombasa.”
Beatrix Mackay paused again for a breath, and to gather herself. Never let your subordinates see you sweat, she reminded herself.
“Also give me a complete rundown on the whereabouts and movements of that little Yemeni whore that Brie Analeiou has been sleeping with. That,” she paused for emphasis, pinning Métis Faroda in her icy glare, “was a royal screw-up…”
“But Dr Mackay, you know Brie…trying to tell her who she may and may not go to bed with is like trying to make Madonna take a vow of celibacy. We tried to…”
Mackay cut her off with an impatient gesture. “Don’t tell me what you tried to do, Dr.Faroda. I’m only interested in what you’re going to do now. We’re on the edge of having our entire operation in the Golden Crescent rolled up. I want to know how, and I want to know who, and I want to know immediately – that means, for your information, now. Right…fucking…now!”
Beatrix Mackay spun on her heel without waiting for the thoroughly intimidated woman to reply, and stormed angrily from the suite. Dr Métis Faroda watched the woman’s retreating back until her secretary looked in nervously as she closed the door to the suite. Then Métis Faroda grabbed her cell phone and mouse simultaneously, and went to work. But the first number she dialed was not on her speed dialer.
She knew that one by heart…
*******
Zahra al’Ajii gave a little tug on the bindings, satisfying herself as to their integrity. She hadn’t risen to the rank of full colonel in the Pakistani army, or deputy chief of field operations in the Horn of Africa for the ISI by being careless, or leaving small details to chance.
Jolie looked sullenly at the woman as she drew up another chair, identical to the one she was bound to, and seated herself in it. She fussily arranged several sheets of vellum notepaper and a fountain pen on the wooden table next to her. Jolie watched with feigned indifference for a moment, then found her eyes wandering of their own accord to the heavy wooden door across the room, and her mind shied again from the horror she had seen behind it. She was suddenly all too aware of her nudity, and her vulnerabilty beneath this woman’s watchful gaze.
Colonel Zahra al’Ajii cleared her throat.
“And now, Ms Bennett…a few minor housekeeping details to dispose of, and then we can chat at our leisure.” Colonel al’Ajii slid the papers across the table a bit closer to the girl’s chair. “We need you to compose a few quick notes, if you would. Just to reassure your friends, and loved ones that you are perfectly all right, and enjoying your little ‘tour’ of the exotic Middle East.”
“Like I could, even if I wanted to,” Jolie retorted, flexing her purpling fingers for the benefit of her captor. The vinyl covered cords securing her wrists to the arms of the plain ladder backed wooden chair were sufficiently snug to make her wonder if she would ever regain the full use of her hands again. More of the damnable clothesline was wound about her upper arms, just above the biceps, digging deeply into her flesh, binding them to the back of the chair. Her ankles were bound to the chair’s legs by more cord, as were her thighs just above her knees. Jolie was beginning to think that plastic clothesline cord was either Egypt’s main import, or chief export good.
Zahra al’Ajii nudged the small table closer to Jolie’s left hand, so that her numb fingers were just brushing against its surface. Then she gave a quick, curt nod to the man standing just behind Jolie. He leaned forward and slid the tip of a six-inch stiletto beneath the cord on her wrist, severing it in a single swift motion. Jolie felt the tiny hairs on her arm rise in response to the cold touch of the steel on her skin, and then it was gone, like a vague premonition of some impending catastrophe. She flexed her fingers more vigorously, and made little semi-circular motions with her wrist, attempting to get the blood flowing again through the constricted blood vessels of her left hand.
“My penmanship might not be all that it should, given the circumstances,” she said sardonically. “I hope you grade on the curve.”
“No matter, it will suffice,” the woman replied tersely. “Address the first one to Dr Beatrix Mackay, if you would, please…tell her that you became bored waiting around your hotel, and decided to do a little sightseeing, take in the pyramids…that you’ll be in touch with her in a day or two.” Colonel al’Ajii slipped the fountain pen between Jolie’s still-magenta fingers.
“Not even signed up for the 401k yet and already taking a vacation,” Jolie drawled. “They oughta love this.” She twirled her wrist a last time, and began scratching at the sheet of vellum with the golden nib of the pen. Zahra al`Ajii watched her hand closely as the pen moved across the paper.
“Now just one more, if you please,” she said, slipping the signed note from beneath Jolie’s pen, and replacing it with a fresh sheet.
“This one is for your friend, Mrs.Worth…”
Jolie’s hand froze in mid twirl.
“Van…why on earth do you want me to write to Vannie? She’s six thousand miles aw…”
A dawning awareness slipped slowly into Jolie’s bruised-looking eyes. The pen slid from her suddenly bloodless fingers, falling to the table with a soft ‘thuunk’.
“No,” the girl whispered fiercely, her face suddenly ashen. ‘I won’t do it. You can’t make me…”
Now it was Colonel al`Ajii’s turn to cut her eyes meaningfully toward the door, her good one glittering like obsidian in the lamplight, nearly as black and unfathomable as the patch covering her other.
“Oh, I think we can, Ms Bennett…
“In fact, I’m quite certain of it…”
**********
Métis Faroda studied the stream of disembarking passengers closely, looking down every now and again to check the small black-and-white photograph in her gloved hand. When her eyes were arrested by the broad brimmed white hat and wraparound shades, she knew immediately that she had found her quarry.
The picture doesn’t begin to do this woman justice, she thought to herself as she slipped the photograph into her handbag, and began to manuever expertly throught the throng of people between her and her prey, gliding through them like a soft breeze through a wheatfield. She reached the woman’s side, and touched her arm gently.
“Madame Cournoyér?”
**********
“But it’s so dangerous!” Métis Faroda protested again, gripping the phone so tightly that her knuckles paled beneath her golden skin. “What if Dr. Mackay finds out? What will happen then?”
“She’s expecting to be contacted upon her arrival anyway…we’re simply going to make that contact under other auspices, shall we say,” the voice at the other end of the connection said reassuringly. “If you do this properly, Beatrix Mackay will never know, until it’s far too late for her to do anything about it.”
Métis felt the dampness forming beneath her arms again, and swore silently. First Mackay, and now this one…her life was becoming entirely too exciting lately.
“But what if she recognizes me? Or wants to know why she’s not being met by someone from WISDOM?”
“Your photograph was carefully removed from the bureau dossier that was given to her, so you need have no concern on that account. As for WISDOM, it’s perfectly all right for you to imply that you are with the org, darling,” the voice continued soothingly, as if speaking to a backward child. How had this one ever reached the position of number two in the Middle Eastern operational sphere, she wondered. “In fact, it’s far better if she does think that you are an ‘unofficial’ contact from us. Just don’t let her know who you really are, or your true position with the organization. And above all else, keep her occupied until the reception at the museum tonight. Do you think you can manage that?”
Métis bit her lower lip savagely. She was not cut out for all this cloak-and-dagger nonsense that seemed to be swirling around her recently. When she had gone to work for WISDOM, fresh out of Cairo University, she had been filled with an altruistic zeal to transform the face of Egyptian society. She had hoped to be doing ground-breaking work for the women of Egypt, and the Muslim world at large. Instead, she found herself enmeshed in subterfuge involving international drug cartels, laundered money, and now kidnapping. She wanted to scream. How had she let this woman get such a hold over her…
But that was a foolish question, of course. Visions of her two younger sisters, drugged mindless and splayed naked on tick-infested mattresses in an Istanbul brothel reminded her instantly of where her allegiances now lay.
“Give me that flight information again, please,” she sighed resignedly, reaching for a pen.
**********
I felt the light touch on my arm distinctly as opposed to the general jostling that I was receiving in the swarm of passengers as we disembarked into the waiting crowd. I was very pleased with my sang froid, as I made no noticeable reaction to the contact, only turning my head very slightly to my left, and raising an inquiring eyebrow in the direction of the owner of the hand upon my arm. I encountered a lovely, light olive-complected face, wreathed in a mane of nearly coal-black hair. Her eyes were hidden, as were mine, by oversized Raybans.
We exchanged polite, insincere smiles.
‘A thousand pardons, Madame Cournoyér,” she murmured to me, slipping a small buff-colored business card into my right hand. She linked her left arm through my right, and began guiding me expertly through the mob of swarming humanity, her head constantly moving, as if on a swivel. This woman is frightened of something, I thought to myself as we were swept along in the tide of rather fragrant bodies heading for douanes. I glanced down quickly at the card.
Dealer in Rare and Unusual Antiquities
10 Tareek Elgueish Pasha
Alexandria
Whoever she was, she seemed to have clout. I was waved through customs and immigration with barely a glance at my papers, and my bags completely untouched. I glanced at her again, trying to put a name to the face as we passed through the automatic doors from customs out into the blazing Egyptian noonday sun.. The heat struck us all at once, like a blow from a huge searing fist, immediately claiming all of my attention. It nearly took my breath away. She steered me to a small Mercedes limo waiting at the curb, and politely but firmly guided me into the passenger seat, then slipped behind the wheel herself. We drove for several minutes in silence through the crowded airport, then into the bustling streets of Alexandria proper.
“This is very kind of you, but I’m afraid I can’t repay the service,” I said at last. “I am not in the market for ‘rare or unusual antiquities’ this trip, alas.”
“I am not offering to sell you any such antiquities, Madame Cournoyer,” she returned, her eyes still fixed on the teeming mass of cars swerving seemingly randomly about the road.
“But I believe that I can put you in touch with something that you are seeking.”
I eyed her more closely now, my gloved hand finding the door handle, and resting on it tentatively. “And what makes you suppose that I am seeking anything, Mademoiselle al’Sayyid, beyond a hot bath, and a relaxing dinner?”
“Ah, but Madame, we have a saying…’Allah distributes His gifts equally among His children’. To some He gives great ambition, and the ability to rule over men. Others,” she gave me sudden, disarming smile, “He favors with great beauty.”
“To still others, He gives the gift of WISDOM…”
Something gave way inside of me, like taking a misstep in a dream, and feeling that sudden stomach-churning plunge as one’s foot encounters the void where it had expected solid ground. My grip tightened a bit on the Mercedes’ door handle.
She seemed to sense my sudden disorientation, and my tension. Her lovely face softened, her mouth twitching into a uneasy smile as she studied the traffic ahead of us.
“We are a predominately Muslim culture, as I’m sure you are well aware, Madame Cournoyér. WISDOM finds it useful to employ several front organizations, through which to make approaches and contacts that would otherwise be too indiscreet, if not impossible altogether for an organization such as ours to make, given the strictures and constraints placed upon us in even so modern a metropolis as Alexandria.”
“A small, but unfortunately necessary concession for the furtherance of the foundation’s aims in this portion of the world,” she concluded, returning her full attention to the more immediate problem posed by rush hour traffic in Alexandria.
My mind was feverishly processing the woman’s face against the virtual file cabinet of photographs that had been burned into it, but I could come up with nothing but the face of an actress from several foreign films I had seen. She had the lovely, raptor-like profile of the classical Semitic beauty, cheekbones that seemed chiseled from warm golden cypress, framed by that nimbus of jet hair, which in this light refracted deeply polished mahogany highlights as well. Her hands on the wheel were beautifully manicured, long-fingered and graceful. The swell of her bosom strained the button holding her taupe linen jacket closed. I licked my lips unconsciously, and shook myself mentally to keep my mind from wandering again into that all-too-familiar territory that seemed to preoccupy it so frequently these days.
“I’m gratified to learn that ambition, and intelligence are rewarded here regardless of gender,” I replied at last, an impersonal little smile fixed to my own lips. “I’ll be certain to give you a glowing reference, should I come across anyone in need of the services of your… ahh, ‘foundation’.”
She gave that enigmatic little smile again, no more than a slight rearrangement of certain fine lines around her mouth, and eyes. “They told me that you were a cautious, and clever one,” she said. “In any event, my duties are explicit, and shall be executed precisely.”
I arched a brow, my smile widening in genuine amusement. She glanced at me again, a slightly challenging look on her own face now.
“Something amuses Madame?”
“No, pas du tout, Ms.al`Sayyid,” I said, turning my attention back to the exotic urban landscape crawling slowly past my window.
“Just having fun trying to figure out what your ‘duties’ might include…”
**********
I lay naked on the bed, coated in a humid, sticky sweat.
The tendons stood out in my neck, and in little knots at my jaw as the next orgasm took me and shook me like a kitten in its mouth. I bit down ferociously on the folded brochure that the woman had slipped between my teeth (‘Exotic Egypt’) to keep from crying out, or making God knows what other noises, sounds that would undoubtedly have turned out to be more apropos of a Turkish brothel than a suite at the Mercuré. I arched my back, my fingers scrabbling frenetically at the coverlet beneath them. The Egyptian woman had had just enough self-control left to honor my request, and had bound my wrists loosely behind my back with a scarf when I had felt that inexorable itching beginning again between my legs, as if an army of hot velvet ants were marching through my vagina. I had no desire to mutilate myself permanently in the throes of my passion by tearing off the tiny golden hoops that pierced me, sealing my vulva.
She pressed the length of her dusky body, redolent of sandalwood and musk, against my own, our breasts slipping wetly over each other, rigid nipples clashing en passant as we ground our bodies urgently together. Her tongue was busily exploring my ear, while the index and second fingers of her right hand were buried in my anus to the third knuckle. Her thumb toyed carelessly with my clit beneath the tiny hoop that sealed the fold of flesh over it.
Pictures kept flashing through my mind like a bizarre, dirty kinescope at some perverts’ arcade. Parted thighs framing smoothly shaven mounds beckoned to me like moist pink mouths; smooth, wet limbs reflected golden lamplight as they tangled and twisted in an obscene carnal ballet; all interspersed with darker images of pain, and suffering, and still others that weren’t even discrete images at all but only vague, unsettling shadows, that pierced me like hot knives being twisted in my viscera. These were the ones that always tipped me over into the next orgasm, swirling down and down into that dizzying black emptiness that had once held the woman called Evangeline Worth.
This shouldn’t be happening, a small whispering voice nagged at me between convulsions. You shouldn’t be doing this; you shouldn’t even be ABLE to do this…
I shuddered as she brought me to climax again, letting my body eclipse the thought, sweep it away, and replace it with the one image that was a constant, recurring theme in these dirty picture shows that my mind was putting on for my benefit with increasing regularity. A blonde, gamin face, with startling light gray eyes, and lips created to suck cock, or drive a woman to the brink of madness.
Sabra al`Sayyid did something clever with the fingers of her right hand, and my eyes rolled back in my head.
God in heaven, I breathed. Please make it stop…
Mistress spoke again, and another word of control was seared into my subconscious, forever.
I moaned, and writhed ineffectually against the ligatures that anchored me spreadeagled to the tubular metal slant frame. My lips twitched soundlessly, silently imploring Her not to hurt me again; I was a good girl, I would remember my lessons oh God please Sister I would I would only no more hurting, no more pain oh please Sister please no more…
I felt Her cool hand on me now, vague and evanescent as a dream, touching my right nipple, which flared at the slight contact, sending little frissons of exquisite pleasure shooting through me.
“Here.”
Another touch, this one at the tender fold of flesh where my thigh joined my sex, made my knees buckle and stretched my arms even more tautly above me, causing my shoulders to howl in protest. I panted harshly, eyes wide and imploring.
Begging.
“And here…”
My hips tipped up, and thrust forward toward her touch, brazenly joining my frantic eyes in their desperate wordless entreaties for release. I no longer cared if I tore my arms from their sockets, if only I could get to that hand, and have it possess me, rape me. I jerked and bucked as if in the throes of a gran mal seizure, sweat coursing down my naked body. She leaned more closely to me, capturing my unfocused eyes in the hypnotic emerald vortex of Her own. She whispered another word, sending it like a poisoned dart into my hippocampus. She touched me again, lewdly, familiarly.
“And here…”
This last caress nearly made me yearn for the pain again…
I rolled onto my side on the sweat-saturated coverlet, wondering muzzily where the Egyptian woman had gone. The light had faded from the windows, turning the sky framed in them a deep, velvety blue. I had no recollection at all of her leaving. Such lapses would have frightened me a month ago, set me to worrying about premature menopausal onset, or some still-darker madness taking root in me. Now I scarcely noticed them.
I worked my wrists free of the scarf wound loosely about them, then stood and wobbled unsteadily toward the bath in the deepening twilight that filled the room. Snatching a thick Egyptian cotton bathsheet from the rack, I began toweling myself distractedly, swabbing the perspiration, and the more intimate secretions from my body. I stared at the woman in the full-length mirror across from me, and the tiny golden circlets and fine chain that twinkled like a new constellation in the smoothly shaven pink galaxy of her sex. I let the towel slip from my hand, and brushed them lightly with my fingers.
The resonance that they set up within my body nearly brought me to my knees…
“…they’ll think she’s just a drone, a shock trooper. They won’t expect her to have any conditioning keys. They know enough about our methods to know that we wouldn’t use such an obvious form of control with our more valuable assets – it makes them too readily identifiable, too vulnerable to kidnappings, and extortion.”
Mistress’s voice floated somewhere above me, and I struggled toward it like a drowning swimmer, as consciousness slowly returned. I was still hanging limply in the metal frame, the pungent smell of my own body filling my nostrils, making me tingle softly between my legs again, even as it shamed me being displayed like this before these women. Fingers pulled at me, stretching my vulva. I groaned as they pinched me more firmly, distending my inner lips. I was vaguely aware of a high-pitched whistling noise, reminiscent of a dentist’s drill.
“Almost finished, my pet,” Mistress breathed to me, stroking my damp hair back from my face. I stared at Her wildly, no longer capable of anything resembling human speech.
The first set of perforations made me wet myself, fragrant piss splashing down on the floor between my widespread legs. My eyelids fluttered, and my eyes rolled back into my head but I made no sound other than one short, guttural grunt. I was so proud. Mistress leaned in, and whispered in my ear softly again. I felt the muscles surrounding my sexual organs ripple and contract, as the needles plunged into me again.
She whispered ceaselessly to me now, as the piercing continued, and I hovered in twilight between this world and some other wilder, more savage one. She spoke in words that I should never have comprehended, in a strange tongue, about a universe filled with pain and arousal, betrayal and obedience…
Above all else, obedience…
I captured my hand between my thighs, and pressed the heel of it against my sex, grinding it into myself, moaning like an animal as I began to sag against the doorway. With a nearly superhuman effort I tore my fingers away from myself and retrieved the towel from the tiled floor. I finished wiping myself off, and stepped toward the shower, then abruptly changed my mind. Stepping instead to the Pullman, I took the fogged glass stopper from my Isabeau, and dabbed it in my armpits, then stroked it twice lightly between my thighs, shivering as the cool glass touched my hot folds, setting the hoops to ringing sympathetically again.
If the hare was going hunting, she might as well put down a strong scent for the hounds to follow.
I slipped the black spandex/poly blend cocktail dress from its plastic covering, regarding it with a vague sense of uneasiness. Spaghettini straps and slutty little latitudinal ruffles warred for attention with a hemline that was a full hand span further north of my knee than anything I had ever dared wear in my life. I had the feeling that this little number exposed a good deal more of both my bosom and leg than Van Worth would have dreamed of displaying a fortnight ago. I wriggled the thing past my hips with some difficulty, and tugged it up over my breasts, slipping my arms through the slender straps. I struggled with the zipper in back for several moments more, cursing enthusiastically, and wondering where a man was when you needed one.
An unusual choice to say the least, even for a city as liberal as Alexandria, I thought. I imagined that the selection of my traveling attire, and the conspicuous omission of undergarments of any description, had something to do with getting me noticed as well,. but I didn’t waste much time or effort worrying about that either. I took a last look in the dresser mirror, surveying the results. If amateur night at Heidi Fleiss’s was the look that was required, I thought that I had hit it dead on.
My gaze drifted away from the tart in the mirror, and fell across the card Sabra al`Sayyid had left on the dresser. I picked it up, and flipped it over, reading the short scrawl on the back.
_Sabra
I frowned. None of this seemed familiar, or right. But then, none of it was really my concern at all. I was simply another piece on the board now, being moved by unseen hands, toward unknown ends. Pawns are not supposed to concern themselves with the final denoument of the contest. They exist for one purpose, and one purpose only: to be sacrificed.
All I had to worry about was getting in the same room alone with Brie Analeiou for ten minutes. And as quickly as I could.
To Be Continued...
**********
© MEB 2002
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