Chapter 13 : Ellie In Kushtia

It was hardly the best organised process. Victoria was gesticulating wildly and attempting to order Husna Hannish to prepare the girls for transfer to the Kalinin's palace while he protested that any arrangements should be made by the Kalinin's overseer as the representative of his household. Neither of them were ready to do more than bluster about what needed to be done. Finally Victoria got her way and Husna, reluctantly began to ready things.

In another room Henry, oblivious to the contents of the truck, was greeted by Victoria. His arrival had been most inconvenient but at least with Husna doing the necessary work to make the girls ready she could keep Henry distracted.

Outside the Koresh mansion, in a small roadside hut that sold vegetables during the day, Anch was waiting patiently. Having followed Henry there, she was determined to discover what was going on, why she had been attacked and what Henry's involvement was.

The truck in which the girls found themselves was no better than the one they had been brought from Pestrovka in, only this time they did not have the benefits of travelling while sedated. It was almost midnight by the time the truck set off. The air in Kolin was chill and about as clear as it ever got.

Things went wrong almost as soon as they started. The Zlin in which Victoria and Henry were travelling stalled as it emerged from the Koreshi building to turn on to the road to Kolin. The truck, braking unexpectedly, slid forward inexorably, slamming into the back of the Zlin with a crunching of metal. The two drivers got out, swearing at one another, waving and pointing and trying to attribute blame.

Watching from the shelter of the small hut, Anch saw Henry peering out of the Zlin looking irritated. What, she thought, was going on? And what was in that truck?

There was no sign that the drivers were about to resolve their differences. Victoria climbed out and was berating the two men.

Taking her chance, Anch slipped around to the back of the truck and unfastened the door catch. As she pulled at the door it came open easily and a helpless, naked, girl half fell through the gap. Anch lowered the bound and gagged girl to the road. Hearing that the argument over the collision was subsiding, she quietly closed the truck's door again and dragged herself and the girl back into the bushes beside the road. The Zlin and the truck moved off. Anch, holding the girl close to her in the cold night air, watched them go and waited to see that nothing more was happening in the Koresh household.

Natalya had been surprised and relieved at her turn of fate. She had hoped that she might get a chance to escape but she had never imagined that her efforts would be rewarded so quickly. As soon as the doors of the truck had been closed she had shuffled herself to the door and when it had opened she had simply fallen through into the arms of this other woman that had come to her rescue. She watched in dismay as the other girls were driven away but at least, she thought, if I am free perhaps I can get help for them as well.

Her rescuer started to unbuckle the straps of the maoungf that stuffed Natalya's mouth. "Oh, thank you," she blurted as the hated leather plug was pulled free.

"Shh," her rescuer warned, starting to work on the straps that held Natalya's wrists, ankles and arms. "We can talk later."

Ellie's flight to Kushtia, on the same Tupolev 114 that had carried Henry there, gave her plenty of time to think about the approach she was going to use when she got there. First of all she would need to talk to Henry, she thought. Only then would she have the chance to work out what was going on and what to do about it. She did, however, spend some time talking to a seemingly shy, reserved woman who was also flying to Kushtia.

"I'm Esther, she said when Ellie introduced herself, "Esther Baskin. I'm with the FSA, you know the banking regulation people."

"You must be busy right now," said Ellie with a laugh. It was the wrong thing to do. Esther, unused to anyone expressing even the least interest in her work, simply took this as encouragement to describe her role in minute detail. At the end of it Ellie could see how an FSA investigator might make an interesting subject for a movie but Esther certainly wasn't the person to write the screenplay. The next hours passed very slowly indeed but fortunately Ellie managed to disconnect herself from Esther when they arrived at Kolin Airport.

Henry was there as agreed to meet her. Ellie was glad that her bags came through before Esther's. She was pretty sure that the woman from the FSA would be pleased to see Henry and equally that he wouldn't be pleased to see her.

"Why is Freddie getting so agitated?" Henry asked her. "Everything has been going very smoothly, apart from some stupid journalist I'm having to keep out of the way of. Sure there had been a few hiccups with this client but that always happens doesn't t?"

Ellie tried to explain, patiently, that Freddie wasn't in the least bit worried about Henry. "It all concerns," she said, "some problems that Freddie is having with one of the companies that he sometimes does business with. Not a banking matter at all. In fact not really a Kushtian matter. It's over the border in Petrovka."

"Oh," says Henry. "That's a coincidence. That company I was telling Freddie about has done some business done some business there. I've got a board meeting tomorrow. I was going to ask them how their meetings over there went. Although it has got a bit more complicated now what with Koresh dying and everything. I was trying to sort that out last night. Gone midnight it was when I finished with them!"

"Board meeting?"

"Yes. Oh I didn't tell you. That's been one step up for me. I'm a bona fide board member — their financial director. Bit of a promotion, eh?"

"You're the financial director? Of Lauren and Victoria's little enterprise?"

"Yes. Is that a problem?"

"Probably," Ellie said, thinking that it was very unlikely to make Anatoly happy to discover that a Clegg was sitting where Henry was sitting. "I'll let you know."

Ellie had elected to stay at the Kolin Centrum where Henry was lodging too. After checking in and making some discrete enquiries about where she could find such interesting sights as the residence of the country's hereditary ruler, the Kalinin's Palace, she dressed herself in that most anonymous of outfits, the chanoosh, and headed out into the night.

Ellie found the palace easily enough, she even managed to get into the courtyard of the household by joining a chain of doenyes carrying baskets into the palace's storerooms. Once inside it wasn't too difficult to find her way into the kitchens and from there to palace rooms themselves; nobody seemed interested in one more veiled doenya going about her business.

The problem was that the further Ellie got into the palace, the less of an idea she had about what she might be trying to discover. The palace was a warren of rooms and corridors. It was then that she had a stroke of luck.

From a room to the side came a sound that Ellie recognised, the muffled moan of an annoyed and gagged woman. Ellie followed the sound. Peering through a curtained archway, Ellie could see the back of a slim woman with dark bobbed hair standing in the middle of the room, obviously Victoria from Freddie's description. Crouching in a small cage on the far side of the room was another woman, naked and gagged.

"This is very tiresome, Lauren," the dark haired woman said. "I had hoped that you might have accepted this change in your fortunes more willingly. It's an honour to be part of the Kalanis household, even as a doenya."

The gagged woman in the cage growled.

"Now, you know I can't do anything about that. There is only so much influence I can bring to bear on my husband's decisions." Another grunt didn't interrupt her. "And until I've had the chance to sort out the little problem with our absentee, I'm afraid I don't really want you plying your charms in his direction. Let's just say I like to keep on top of my competition and since you have no idea of where that little bitch has got to after we left the Koresh estate, I don't think you can be much help to me."

Ellie edged back from the curtain disturbed by what she had overheard between Victoria and Lauren. It was obvious that one of their charges was missing and that wasn't going to make Freddie happy.

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It was almost two in the morning when Anch and Natalya got back to Anch's household. Natalya, wearing only some blankets that they had found in the hut was shivering with cold but grateful to be free. Anch managed to smuggle her indoors and to find her a corner in out of use store room where she could hide.

"I must talk to the police," Natalya insisted. "There are all the other girls. We were going to be sold. Slaves to men in the north, they said."