Chapter 16: Ellie's Collection

Anch was worried. When she had got back to her household the night before, Natalya had gone. One of the doenyes had told her that Natalya had borrowed a chanoosh and slipped out just before dusk. Then there had been all sorts of a fuss later on when the Overseer had discovered that a pistol was missing from the hunting cabinet. Now it was morning again and there was still no sign of Natalya.

When she got to the office Henry was already there, giving her a smile as she came in. She returned it as best she could, anxious to make sure that Henry did not guess her suspicions.

"Good morning, Anch," Henry said brightly. "A busy day today, I think. There's plenty to do. Can you bring me the Koresh file, please?"

Anch suddenly remembered that she hadn't seen Henry since the file had been stolen. If he didn't know that then perhaps he wasn't behind its absence after all. On the other hand, she had been lured to the Spice Market by a message from his mobile phone. So, perhaps this was some sort of bluff. "I'm afraid its missing," Anch said, deliberately keeping her involvement out of the conversation.

"Well, a copy perhaps?"

"Oh no. We don't keep more than one copy of a file."

"Ah," said Henry. "Oh. Well, never mind, we'll have to manage without it, I suppose."

Anch was immediately furious with herself. That was what he wanted to know, she thought, that there wasn't another copy. He must have been behind the theft of the file after all. She looked at him and tried to decode what lay behind his placid expression. That meant he must have been involved with Victoria and Lauren and the kidnapped Russian girls, she thought. She looked across at Henry again. Who would think, she said to herself, that such a benign face could conceal such a terrible character. Natalya was almost certainly his prisoner, once again.

"Extraordinary thing," Henry said. "Things keep going missing. Lot of fuss today at the hotel — they were looking for that Baskin woman and someone else was trying to track down that reporter. Now the file. Very odd."

Anch listened with even greater concern. These other women had been investigating him. Had he been responsible for their disappearance too? Was Henry boasting about his actions as a warning to her? Was this his way of warning her off? Anch sat quietly, anxious not to say anything that would make Henry think that she was anything other than a good, compliant, Kushtian secretary. Inside though she was becoming determined to stop whatever scheme Henry was involved in.

In the cellar lent her by Sergeant Dobranin, Ellie was making sure that her efforts to keep Henry out of trouble would continue to succeed. She didn't really have a plan yet but her first objective of making sure that nothing disturbed the status quo had seemed to involve her in dealing with more pursuers than Freddie managed to attract. Three of them, Ellie thought. Who would have imagined that Henry would have attracted so much attention from the female of the species? Dana Harris, Natalya Uranova and Esther Baskin had all been hot in pursuit of Freddie's nephew although all for different reasons. Still, with luck, Ellie had been able to make sure that they didn't cause Henry any real problems.

She'd been really fortunate with Dana Harris, the reporter. When Henry had bolted into the carpet sellers it had been the work of a moment to distract Dana and send her down a narrow alley. She'd been puzzling where next to go when Ellie had clamped the drugged pad over her nose and mouth, sending her spinning into an unconsciousness from which she only woke when she was bouncing over some of the back streets of Kolin, stuffed into a large basket on the back of Desnerek Dobranin's truck.

Following Henry had proved the right way to find the various people that were pursuing him. His lack of guile made it easy for his stalkers to stay in touch and that had made Ellie's task easy too. When Henry had turned up at the Kolanis household in search of Victoria, Ellie had not been surprised to find Natalya waiting for him. Luckily the girl had no idea about weapons. The tap of a yawarra stick on the back of Natalya's head had been sufficient to drop the girl silently. Ellie had been pleased with herself. The yawarra — or kongo as she had called it - had been a gift from an old friend. Modesty would have approved of the technique, if not the objective, Ellie thought.

Esther Baskin had been more difficult. Ellie had followed her from the bank after she emerged from her meeting with Kerrish and her discussions with Anch. Esther's visit to the Finance Ministry had been little more successful than her visit to the Bank, a fact which wouldn't have surprised her if she had thought for a moment about the Under Secretary for Finance, Kollani Kerrish, and how much he looked like his brother Keren Kerrish at the Bank. She had been quite disconsolate when she got back to the hotel and had been only too happy when the woman she had met on the flight offered to buy her a drink in the hotel bar. Well she did have more than was really good for her and she did get a bit rowdy when the barman suggested that she should not have any more. Nobody could remember who had called the police but the lady police sergeant that turned up to deal with the disturbance soon quietened things down and escorted Esther away.

Ellie's thoughts about her captives were interrupted by the arrival of Desnerek Dobranin. The two exchanged smiles. He spoke no English and, while Ellie could manage a little Kushtian, she couldn't realistically do much more than exchange the conventional greetings.