by elle`attend
FOR MATURE READERS ONLY
Cassandra Betancort smoothly downshifted the Hummer and slid it expertly into the next series of blind, treacherous turns on the steeply descending grade. She smiled coldly to herself as she recalled the man at the agency nearly refusing to give her the keys to the vehicle, threatening to tear up the rental contract if she insisted on taking it through the Wadi al Hizaj in the dark. She had rather easily overcome his concerns for her, and his vehicle’s well being, by simply shoving several more wads of Egyptian pounds into his moist, pudgy palm. Cassandra was unused to being told what to do by any man, least of all a man as soft and useless as this one had been.
After all, she was defying a direct order of Beatrix Mackay’s by being in the country at all.
Her distaste and suspicion of the entire operation as it had been laid out for her by Mackay had grown by the hour as she had paced the veranda on Calypygnos like a caged panther, recalling their last conversation.
“You’re a fool to send this woman into this situation, Bea,’ she had fumed, heedless as always of the protocols of their official working relationship. “She’ll fail, and then she’ll die; probably after burning down the rest of our organization in the horn of Africa, maybe in the entire Middle Eastern Ops region.” She shook her head in frustration and anger, just bordering on open rebellion.
“Precisely the reason that I am sending her, Cass. She can’t possibly compromise us anymore than we are already. She knows nothing of the operations here, or anywhere else for that matter. She meets the classic definition of the deep plant: She has nothing to tell anyone, should she be taken by the opposition.”
“In fact,” Mackay went on, “that’s precisely the idea…to have her taken by the opposition.”
“You hope,” Cassandra Bétancort retorted, her voice dripping with irony. “You also think that she is conditioned to respond only to the visual cues you’ve implanted, that her routine will only be triggered by seeing Brie Analieou. But I’m warning you, this woman’s a ticking bomb. We didn’t have enough time, or enough resources to break her down, wipe her clean and re-program her properly …”
Beatrix Mackay waved a dismissive hand at Cassandra. “We’ve been through all this, Cass…I know your reservations, and I’m confident that what we have done is sufficient for my purposes.” This last was said with an air of finality, as if to say that the subject was now closed permanently.
“And what about this other little tart, the cheerleader, or whatever she is…was having her abducted before she’d had a chance to get a layer of dust on her Adidas part of your plan too?” She held the International Director’s eyes challengingly in her own midnight blue orbs.
Bea Mackay frowned slightly, an obviously foreign activity for her incredibly smooth, unlined face. “No, of course not. But it has turned out to be at least as helpful as harmful, so far at any rate.”
“And that would be because…?”
Beatrix Mackay simply gave a small shrug of her slender shoulders. “In good time, Cassandra…in good time…”
Cassandra seethed with frustration as she recalled the conversation. Bea obviously hadn’t trusted her. She couldn’t really blame the woman, though; so much had gone amiss in the last month that she herself had taken to watching Hekate, Sabrina, and the other trainers and ancillary personnel at the island facility with a new, and more jaundiced eye. There was no doubt that someone was leaking, giving information to the Hekmatiyar cartel and God knows who else; the Jama’a, the AIG, perhaps even the Muslim Brotherhood itself. That was the reason she was slaloming through the desert in the middle of the night herself, in fact; she had no doubt that whoever the mole in WISDOM was, she was not through sabotaging the organization. And she had no intention of letting Bea walk into whatever snares this person had laid alone. She’d had a strong and growing premonition about Bea, that she was heading into enormous personal danger.
And like her namesake, to her sorrow, Cassandra’s premonitions were seldom heeded, and seldom wrong.
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“May I offer you something, Mme Cournoyer…or should I call you Mrs Worth?”
I smiled noncommittally at the faintly piratical figure seated across the bare wood plank table from me. “No, thanks…I’m fine. And it’s Mme Cournoyer. I very nearly disposed of your note unopened, you know. Or turned it into the information desk at the Museum…it was obviously given to me in error.” I smiled blandly at the woman again.
“And yet you came anyway,” the dark-haired woman smiled faintly now herself, as if at some inner jest. “I wonder why you did that?”
I gave my best impression of a Gallic shrug. “Curiousity, I suppose…one so seldom has the opportunity to have a real adventure like this in exotic lands…a note slipped into one’s hand by a mysterious veiled woman in the midst of a cocktail party at the Alexandria Museum of Art and Antiquities…”
“Ah, yes, the museum. And you are a…what, a purveyor of artifacts, and relics, Madame Cournoyer?” That just faintly predatory smile still played across her lips as her single eye bored into me. I found myself unable to tear my own gaze from the patch covering her other one.
“Yes, as a matter of fact. Although it happens I’m here strictly on pleasure, this time. I simply attended the party at the museum as a favor to an old friend, the assistant curator. Monsieur Soroosh? A lovely man, so sweet, and very helpful in my business. Do you know him, Ms…er, Colonel...?”
“Please,” the woman said. “Call me Zahra. And no, I don’t,” speaking as though we were two young mothers meeting for the first time over coffee at the local PTA conference, rather than in a dirty, mud-walled hut somewhere in the Egyptian desert. That coal black eye continued to drill into my skull.
“And you know of no one named ‘Jolie Bennett’, I assume, is that also correct, Mme Cournoyer? Or Beatrix Mackay?”
Again I shook my head in the negative, trying on a befuddled little frown. “Sorry, no. As I said, my curiousity was simply piqued by the mystery of it all…and since I really had nothing planned for my time here in Egypt outside of the fund raiser at the museum, I thought, ‘why not see what this is all about?’ I have made some of my most important buys in just such unorthodox encounters. I must tell you, it is very mysterious, and most exciting, I think. I’m so glad I decided to follow my impulse, and come…” I favored her with my best witless, idle-rich American-in-the-Exotic-East smile.
Colonel Zahra al`Ajii nodded her head almost imperceptibly, the smile on her thin, pale lips dropping just a degree or two closer to freezing. “Then I’m afraid I must apologize for having wasted your time, Mme Cournoyer.” She rose from her chair, as if to indicate that our little interview was over. I was genuinely surprised to feel strong hands close over my biceps from behind me, and lift me bodily from my own chair. Although I shouldn’t have been. Zahra al`Ajii nodded curtly toward a door just behind her, and the man began maneuvering me toward it. She pushed it open, and stepped aside as he thrust me into the dimly-lit room beyond.
My head swam, and for a moment my eyes lost focus altogether. But not for the reasons the Colonel suspected; not at the sight of the younger woman - ‘Jolie’, I assumed - splayed naked on a simple wooden table. I had a brief pause as something about her registered, but it just as quickly receded into the dim recesses of my mind. It was the other woman, hanging semi-comatose between her thighs that made me sway slightly, disoriented, and momentarily stunned.
Brie Analeiou.
Connections began to close in my mind. I could almost hear the click of synaptic switchs being thrown in my brain, and a host of shadowy images and unrecognizable emotions began to roil within me. I had always known that I was here to find Brie Analeiou. I had never had the slightest inkling of why. Now that ‘why’ was asserting itself within me subliminally, taking control of my mind. I could feel it happening, feel the ‘me’ inside of me slipping, as if down a steep incline, descending into complete and utter darkness, and desolation. I had a last fleeting conscious image, as dark and nebulous as all the others, but shockingly clear at the same time.
It was an image of my own death.
Fingers snapped somewhere in the darkness, and a woman’s voice drifted eerily out of the shadows, a different voice. “A chair for our guest, Zahra…she looks overtired from her journey.” I heard the scrape of chair legs on the hard-packed mud floor, and hands guided me peremptorily into it. It was very hard, and the back very upright, forcing me to sit quite rigidly at attention.
“But forgive me, Mme Cournoyer…the young woman you know of course, but the other I believe is a stranger to you, is she not?”
I turned my eyes dully toward Colonel Zahra al`Ajii again. Her eyes were fixed upon me intently now, almost rapaciously, watching for my slightest reaction to the situation, and the woman in question. I shook my head lethargically… no, I didn’t know who either of these women were, I hoped my entire demeanor suggested to her.
“I see…very well…”
There were more whisperings in a corner behind me, and to my right; and then the muffled sounds of something being moved, or arranged. The squeak of unoiled casters announced the arrival of a small steel cart at my side.
“Get her on her feet, Mustafa, and get her ready,” the other woman’s voice snapped impatiently. Hands took control of me, raising me from the chair again as if I were a sack of damp laundry. I stood unsteadily, my eyes fixed on nothing, my mind struggling to keep from being sucked into the maelstrom that had enveloped it. I was dimly aware of something cold, and hard slipping along my shoulder, sliding beneath the slender strap of my dress. It was deliciously cool on my skin, and I shivered just slightly as the man turned it, severing the inconsequential strand of nylon effortlessly. Another chill caress of steel along my collarbone and the other strap parted. The man’s hands peeled my dress down my body, and I was left in a state of complete deshabille, clad in only heels and hose.
“You salops of Mackay’s,” Zahra al’Ajii laughed derisively, shaking her head. “You’re all alike…lingerie seems to be a concept that is more than you sluts can manage.” There was a sudden sharp intake of breath, as I twisted slightly in the man’s grasp, and the lamplight picked out a glimmering of golden hoops and chain sewn into the pale shaven expanse of my womanhood.
“Merde,” Zahra al’Ajii hissed. “This one’s tricked out too! Another fucking brainless bimbo savant!” The woman rose, drawing her nickle-plated nine millimeter automatic from the holster on her hip. I looked impassively at the empty black bore staring back at me, the twin of her eclipsed eye, and seeming to me the size of a manhole. I was astonished at my utter indifference to it, and the overall lassitude that gripped me in the face of my imminent death.
“Wait, Zahra!” The other voice rose slightly, but was still calm and business-like. I heard footsteps, and a figure emerged into the light before me, reddish-auburn hair shining, her rather unremarkable face deferring to a mouth that men would kill for, probably HAD killed for…
The woman called Jolie voiced the name before my numbed brain could make the connection.
“Erica…”
A tiny stab of electricity tingled in my nether regions. At first I thought that it had something to do with the subliminal image that had flashed like heat lightning across my mind, of those lips wrapped around one of my nipples. Then I felt something click into place, something cold, and hard…much colder and harder than simple animal desire.
Erica Galloway. Beatrix Mackay had known. This woman was part of my conditioning, she was an integral part of the task that I had been programmed to complete here. I shook my head in confusion, my eyes clouded, and unfocused. How do I know that, I thought blearily. WHY should I be aware of that at all? My head suddenly felt as if it were being crushed within a huge vise. I began to perspire, not a dainty ladylike glow but rivers of salty fluids literally cascading down my torso, my arms, my thighs, dripping onto the floor in an ever-widening puddle of my own terror.
“It’s a ruse, a trick of Mackay’s, to throw us of the scent,” Erica Galloway snorted disdainfully, as she looked me up and down with an expression of utter contempt. “She wouldn’t bother to send a mere pawn into this, to try and rescue her bishop.” She smiled slowly at me. “Or liquidate her, for that matter.”
She made a curt gesture with her chin at me, and I was shoved roughly back down onto the hard chair. Buckled leather straps were wrapped around my wrists, securing them to the flat wooden arms. More leather straps were used to bind my ankles to the legs of the chair. Another was passed round my throat, jerking my head back against the hard wood, and securing it implacably. A flexible black accordion-like tube was passed around my torso, just beneath my arms and above the beginning of the swell of my bosom. A small thimble-like sheath was placed on my left index finger, with a coil of thin wire attached to it. Colonel al’Ajii pressed soft cotton electrode pads with slender green wires dangling from them onto my temples, and at my carotid arteries, and over the femorals in my inner thighs as well. I smiled to myself.
This woman is a fool, if she thinks she’s going to solve my riddle with something as crude as a simple polygraph machine, I thought.
Erica Galloway seemed to read my mind.
“Not at all, Mrs Worth. I don’t want any answers from you at all, you see. I know that any I would receive would be useless, or worse than useless. No,” she continued. “This is more along the lines of a reverse polygraph…a lie manufacturer, if you will…”
She retrieved another handful of slender wire leads from the cart herself, and began attaching tiny padded clamps to my nipples, then dipped her fingers into my shaven seam, and teased my clit out of its nest, clipping another to it. I gasped softly, and stiffened, hoping that these were simply more biomonitoring leads. I wasn’t very confident of this, though.
She bent to the console on the cart, and began plugging the leads from the various paraphernalia that had been placed on my body into it. I blinked stupidly, trying to clear the stinging salt sweat from my eyes, and to master my breathing, and heartrate. No matter how many times one has been tortured – and I had been attended to by geniuses in the discipline over the last month – there is invariably that same physical response when the actuality of physical and mental maltreatment is first introduced into a situation. The accelerated heartrate, increased respiration, clammy hands and a general feeling of almost giddily nauseating euphoria as the adrenal glands begin to function in earnest, pumping their powerful hormones in response to the body’s fight-or-flight impulse. Usually in these situations, however, the individual is restrained from exercising either option, as I was now; leaving a surfeit of adrenalin coursing through the body. Thus the heart-fluttering, tremblingly moist palmed, sick-at-the-stomach syndrome of the captive butterfly, pinned to its black velvet killing board. I swallowed hard, and hoped the scent of my own fear was not as strong in their nostils as it was in my own.
“If you’re looking for my recipe for saddle of lamb in filo pastry, I’ll be happy to give it to you without all this fuss. If you’re looking for something more obscure, however, I’m afraid I really won’t be able to help you at all, either way.” I marveled at the steadiness of my voice, the tone of almost casual indifference in it. I probably wasn’t going to fool these people, but I was proud of myself nonetheless.
Erica Galloway smiled at me mirthlessly.
“We could tap dance around each other like this for hours, Mrs Worth. It might even be fun, if I had the time…unfortunately though, I don’t.” She gave another curt nod of her head, and the man called ‘Mustafa’ and another man moved to the crude table, and began loosening the other two women’s bonds.
“Whatever your time constraints are, I can assure you that you’ll only be making them worse by wasting any of it on me. As I told your friend here,” I attempted to gesture with my chin in Zahra al`Ajii’s direction; “I simply was following a whim, and a misdelivered message in coming here. Had I dreamed that it would cost me my five hundred dollar cocktail dress, I would never have come at all…” I glanced ruefully at the ruined scrap of black metallic-ruffled spandex and nylon puddled on the floor, as though its loss was the greatest problem that confronted me at the moment.
The stinging slap that she dealt me had been unseen, but not unanticipated. I knew that my only chance to fulfill my task now lay in making one, or both of these women angry enough to lose their head, to lose sight of their own best interests in the heat of battle, as it were. Angry people often made mistakes. I smiled up into her glittering eyes defiantly, my cheek buzzing.
“Have a care who you conjure with, my little amateur,” she hissed into my face. “If you think Bea Mackay is going to do anything other than cut you loose to die the most hideous sort of death imaginable, you have placed your wager on the wrong number.” I watched her nostrils flaring, and the flush of anger staining her cheeks.
“All women are conjurors, Erica,”, I smiled placidly into her reddening face. “But it’s dangerous when the conjurer begins to believe in what she conjures...”
She raised her arm to strike me again, overcoming the impulse only with the greatest of difficulty, I could tell. Instead, she reached down behind her to the floor, retrieving a soiled scrap of pale pastel material. Bunching this in her fist, she crammed it into my still-smiling lips, poking it back nearly down my throat with her fingers, all the while holding me by the hair, twisting it cruelly. I gagged on the scrap of cotton, and a musky tang invaded my nose, and sinuses…one of the other women’s panties; probably Jolie’s, though I couldn’t have told you why I thought so. I retched against the cloth stuffing my mouth and throat, my eyes filling with tears that spilled down my cheeks.
Erica Galloway smiled.
“That’s better,” she breathed. “As I said, no verbal input is necessary from you for this next phase of our little ‘project’.” She turned away from me suddenly, and began directing the men quietly as they repositioned the other two women for what was to come.
I closed my eyes, and tried to remember my Novenas, praying that that new coldness and sense of purpose so recently sown in my soul would take root, and reach up to engulf me quickly…
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© MEB 2002
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