Chapter 9

Gwendoline took a second or two to take in this stunning news and leant on a conveniently placed table for support until the effects of the shock she had just received began to fade...

"Would you please repeat that?"

"I said I saw your friend alive and well ten weeks ago in Africa. In Zambekia to be precise. She is there fighting for the Liberation Front"

"Is that what that bunch of murdering thugs call themselves? My darling hated those people. She wrote to me every day and told me loads of things about them - how she hated them and all they stood for. I don't believe she would ever join up with them - never in this world would she! You can see some of her letters, if you like."

"Well, I was at one of their bases as a fraternal delegate from the world wide Liberation Front to our brothers in the fight to liberate Zambekia. And your friend was there. She's a lot more well-built than in that painting, and I remember thinking how remarkable it was that someone with such delicate features should have such a powerful body. And my God she certainly needed that body the day I saw her!"

"Did she tell you she was fighting for them" Gwen felt sick as she asked this question.

"I couldn't speak to her or she to me. She was serving a twenty-eight day punishment of detention with hard labour for some offence or other - trying to entice one of the other fighters away from his wife, I seem to recollect - and she was incommunicado until she completed her sentence. I would have liked to speak to her to express my admiration of her for her decision to throw in her lot with the cause of the people, but rules are rules. They told me she fully appreciated the error of her ways and had accepted her punishment as right and just. She was due to get her uniform back a couple of days after we were due to fly out."

"Get her uniform back?" asked Gwen, her contempt for the man growing by the second.

"Yes. She was working sixteen hours a day, completely without clothes and with no food between dawn and dusk - just enough water from time to time in order to stop her from dehydrating. And when I say work, I mean work - hard work, such as many a strong man would never stand up to. She wouldn't step out of line again - not after that month of hell! There was another Freedom Fighter behind her all day with a leather strap at the ready - and he wasn't afraid to use it on her handsome backside, I can tell you!"

Gwendoline was growing ever more angry and distressed with every word this creature was uttering. He had seen Harry! He might have been able to help her and he had done nothing! This imbecile had accepted some ludicrous cock-and-bull story - a story that a mentally-challenged child of three would have seen through - and flown away, leaving her dear friend to continue her torment. She did her best to keep her voice under control and fight back her tears.

"I do not doubt that if you visited that rebel base today, you would certainly see my darling friend still working sixteen hours a day, naked under the hot sun, just as she has most likely been for the past ten ghastly awful months! You might have been able to help that lovely sweet girl, and instead you flew out and left her to be tortured by those scum until one day - maybe one day soon - she won't be able to take it any more and just lies down and dies of despair! Come with me!"