Chapter 11: Merchandise

Alicia was the first one to reach the holding cells on Agoras, but, then, it was less than a day's sailing across the Aegean from Mykonos.

They'd left her naked, wrists chained behind her and ankles shackled, for what had seemed like days in a windowless stone room with a barred front wall. Every so often they would bring her food and water and take her to use a bucket and shower. She'd tried pleading with them, tried telling them that no-one would pay a ransom for her, but they hadn't seemed interested. She'd even tried getting around one of the guards with the flirtatious look and double meaning suggestions that had worked so well for her in her business. The guard had just grinned. "You think that if, I wanted to, I wouldn't just fuck you, honey? What you gonna do with your hands chained up in back? Ain't gonna pull no Princess Leia – Jabba the Hutt trick on me, are you?" He'd reached over through the bars and pinched her tits just to prove his point. She'd decided that seduction wasn't a very fruitful course.

Rani had a more complicated journey. Drugged and fitted into an insulated capsule within the meat compartment of one of the Clegg Meat Transport freezer trucks, she'd been driven down from Milan to Reggio di Calabria and via ferry to Messina before being dropped off at a warehouse in Catania. From there, it was a 170km ride, doped, blindfolded and unable to enjoy the mountain views, in the back of small van to Agrigento. Carried on board a small yacht, wrapped Cleopatra-style in a rug, she had woken up to find herself out at sea, helpless and providing passing amusement to the two men who had snatched her from the Milan showroom. They'd kept her chained up and gagged on a bench in the cabin, one watching her while the other steered the vessel, each taking turn and turn about until they got to what she took to be a small island somewhere in the Aegean. Then, it had been more drugs and more rope until she found herself behind bars in a rock-walled room onshore somewhere, with a heavy metal collar locked around her neck and without the Donna Karen suit, the Stella MacCartney underwear and, of course, the Rani shoes she'd been wearing at the time she was snatched.

Finally, Denise Tallis arrived to join the others. From her tack box prison, she had been moved to the cellar of a house somewhere on the south coast of France where she'd been kept bound and gagged on the floor by Karen and Trudy. She had made one brief bid for escape, struggling with Karen as she tried to change her tape bonds. It had been no good. She had managed to head-butt Karen in the abdomen, knocking her back, but Karen had recovered quickly, pulling a pistol from the waist band of her skirt. Denise was left standing with her hands raised while Karen called Trudy down to help. They'd forced her to strip then, as much as a punishment for attempting to get free as from any security need. Karen had been especially cruel in making sure Denise was well secured. The ropes around her wrists, ankles, knees and arms were pretty standard, but the hog tie and the rope gag and harness that pulled her head back simply added to Denise's discomfort. Karen made her point further by using the helpless Denise as a footstool, keeping her on the floor beside the chair where Karen was sitting, reading or watching TV, waiting for the truck that would take her on the next stage of her journey. The truck brought a wooden crate and Denise was loaded inside, still hogtied and tape gagged. The crate was her home for the next twenty hours while she was loaded on board a small cargo plane, flown to Kalamata, driven to the port at Gythio, and shipped on to Agoras. When they broke open the crate, the naked and helpless Denise found herself in a rock-walled room with a steel-barred front wall. A heavy steel collar, wrist cuffs and leg fetters replaced the ropes. A thick leather pad gag replaced the tape. This time, she had no opportunity to attempt her escape.

Given that he was looking to place his three new acquisitions individually, Freddie felt he should take a close look at Denise, Rani and Alicia. After all, he reasoned, he could hardly recommend one or the other without a careful consideration of the attributes of each.

It was only when the three barred doors to their cells were opened that the three women realised their joint fate. Denise, Rani and Alicia stared at each other in shock as they were dragged from their cells into the space outside. A chorus of gag-muffled cries of recognition, distress, and anger greeted Freddie as they saw one another.

"Ladies," Freddie admonished as the three were arranged in a line. "Please don't distress yourselves. It really won't do any good and you might bruise yourselves. That's going to make everybody here unhappy and, believe me, you don't want that."

Freddie's quiet, matter of fact turn of speech seemed even more disturbing to the three women than threats of violence would have sounded.