Chapter 2: Webscape

Freddie Clegg was watching Connie Mbazu as she laid yet another stroke with her flogger across the naked girl's back.

The girl, ungagged so that Connie could hear her every response, whimpered and bit her lower lip.

Another stroke followed, harder this time, throwing the girl forward against the pull of the chains that held her hands high over her head.

Clegg admired the precision with which Connie carried out her work. It was hard to imagine how the stripes could be more evenly spaced, more precisely parallel or how the welts could be more equally raw.

After the fifth stroke she stopped. The girl was sobbing, her head bowed, sweating with the strain of hanging from her shackles and the beating. Connie picked up the spiked wheel from a side table arrayed with a surprising array of steel implements that looked as though they were surgical instruments but had a very different purpose. She approached the girl who looked down at the needle like spikes as the Doctor brought it closer to her breast. "Please," she begged, please what do you want me to do? I'll do anything? What do you want me to do?"

"Do, dear?" Connie responded. "What do I want you to do? To get used to it, of course! This is nothing to what your new owners will expect. You have to be ready. You have to get used to it. Now, do your best for Connie. Please."

The girl squealed, exclaiming "Nooo!" as Connie came nearer.

Regretfully, Freddie interrupted the proceedings. He didn't like to disturb Connie's activities. He knew that her methods depended on orchestrating a crescendo of sensation in her subjects. An unplanned pause would only disturb the rhythm.

On the other hand she had obviously only just started and a short period for the girl hanging in her shackles, wondering what might happen next, would probably contribute something. Connie looked up seeing Freddie and sensing that she was needed. She stopped the pin wheel a fraction of an inch from the girl's nipple. "Soon," she said to the girl. "Soon." She turned away, put the pin wheel down and walked back to Freddie. The girl sagged in the grip of her shackles and watched the two of them, seeming almost disappointed that her ordeal had been delayed.

"What is it, boss?" Connie said.

Freddie beckoned her out into the corridor. "Can I just have a chat with you, Harry and Rick about the Kalinin's request? It's just that Rick has come up with an opportunity. We need to be quick off the mark though and you know how I hate rushing things. I want to be sure we aren't taking any unnecessary risks. Harry has things set and ready to go but I want us all to be happy."

Connie nodded. "Our friend in there will keep warm for a while," she said. "I was thinking I needed a cup of tea anyway."

Freddie raised an eyebrow. A tea break? Even he was sometimes surprised by the matter of fact way that his team approached their work. The two of them headed off towards an office where Rick and Harry, Freddie's operations director, were already waiting.

The four of them sat around the office table. "Rick," said Freddie, "perhaps you can lead off on this."

Rick nodded and passed around photo copies of a print out of a half a dozen pages from a web site. "The Kalinin is looking for storytellers. As you know we track web sites of possible interest and we've been following this one, largely because it came up in some routine searches we do on keywords like 'Kushtia', 'slavery', and so on. They've had quite a thread going on in their forum about the whole Cultural Exchange Programme thing and it hasn't been the usual 'Oh! Oh! Human Rights!' stuff either. Anyway we wondered if this might be a route to finding some story tellers — they've got quite an active group of authors and some of the stuff is quite literate. Anyway, cut to the chase, we've identified a group that might fit requirements as far as their story telling ability and physical attributes are concerned and a collection opportunity. The only problem is that the timescales are a bit like Sarah' skirts, somewhere between way too tight and far too tight." Rick smirked. Freddie waited patiently. He was used to Rick's jokes. He found the best way to deal with them was to let them wash over him.

Freddie flicked through the printouts of pages from Eastern Promise. "We are actually talking about women are we?" he said. "My feeling was that most of the contributors to these sites turn out to be middle aged, balding men."

"Not in this case. We've followed up the on-line research with some fieldwork and we've got these." He passed around a series of photographs. "Fatima — or as you see her here Madeleine Roth — is one of the site's founders together with 'First Concubine' — Krysta Collins."