1 – Sold into slavery
Tim lay back in bed and thought that life seemed perfect. He was living in a palatial villa on the Tunisian coast with the most gorgeous girl he had ever seen. He had stacks of money and his life involved sunbathing and great sex. It was a dream, but he knew his life was not quite as perfect as it appeared to be. Tim regularly woke up sweating from a nightmare in which he was about to be kidnapped by some faceless Russians. This would seem paranoid to most, but in Tim's case it was a sober recognition of reality. He was on the run.
Tim thought back to the previous June when this story really began. He had been asked to buy $100 million in a bond fund and due to some carelessness he sold instead, by the time he realised his mistake the value of the fund had risen by 4%, effectively losing the bank $8 million. He now realised that he should have admitted his mistake and taken the consequences, which may have been as slight as the forfeit of his bonus and at worst would have been dismissal. Instead he covered up the loss by entering some fake trades into the system, his intention was to trade out of the loss. He almost managed it, but almost inevitably the markets went against him and instead of a loss of $8 million he had a $14 million hole. As the annual audit approached he knew he was never going to manage to recover the money. After much thought he decided it would be better to escape before he came under suspicion. He knew he had been a fool, but was still quite proud of how he planned his flight. Tim booked two weeks holiday ensuring that none of his fake deals matured until after the end of this period. He than explained to his boss, Mr Tolbukhin that he needed to settle a trade with the National Bank of Albania in gold bullion for "tax reasons". Tolbukhin, the drunken ass, believed him and authorised Tim to obtain the gold bars asking for a receipt by the end of the day. Tim produced the receipt as requested, by scanning in an official looking letterhead onto his home computer and signing the resulting form "E.Hoxha".
Tim then went home and called Jessica and explained his predicament. She had clearly known he was under huge pressure at work, but the size of the loss surprised, even horrified her. The sight of the gold made her realise this was not some cheap joke. Tim explained he had to leave and she had about 24 hours to think if she wanted to come with him. Jessica had not mentioned that she had pressing reasons to leave London, or more accurately one pressing reason, an angry and aggressive pimp. Unlike Tim her savings would make it difficult for her to flee much further than Cleethorpes. So at the appointed time Jessica was ready with her suitcases.
The flight itself was relatively painless, they drove all the way to Gibraltar where they sold the car. They then bought a beaten up Datsun in Tangier for cash.
Tim expected to see his name on the front pages of all the British papers; another poster boy for the irresponsible greedy bankers. In fact he saw nothing, clearly the Commercial Bank of Chelyabinsk, or CBC for short, had taken the loss on the chin avoiding the bad publicity.
It was now three months since their flight. Tim still had nightmares but now they were no longer nightly occurrences, sometimes a full week went by without him waking up once. The nightmares had been so frequent that his body was now quite used rolling over and quickly getting back to sleep.
As soon as Rafik saw that Tim had gone back to sleep he signalled to Mahmoud and Bachir to come up the stairs. As Rafik covered them with his trusty Steyr his colleagues covered Tim and Jessica's faces with chloroform soaked rags. When they were confident the two were out cold they handcuffed them. As Rafik cleaned out the bathroom cabinet, just in case either of the two was on some medication, Mahmoud and Bachir carried Tim and Jessica down to the waiting van.
When they arrived at their destination, Tim and Jessica were still only semi-conscious. They walked across a large hall and were told to kneel in what was evidently a living room. The chloroform was still having its effect as neither Tim nor Jessica put up much of a struggle or even complained about their treatment.
Leaving Mahmoud to guard them Rafik went to find his boss, Mr Al-Battani. He found him in his study with some of his closest confidents. Knocking softly on the open door he said, "I have got the two people you asked for. They are in your drawing room, sir."
Mr Al-Battani excused himself and went off to see his prizes. He smiled when he saw them, "Ah, Tim, Jessica welcome to my humble abode. You may have wondered why the Commercial Bank of Chelyabinsk did not report you to the police. You have now found out, they like to handle fraud themselves."
The name of his previous employer rang some bells in Tim's woozy head. He did not recognise his surrounding, and for some reason he could not move his arms. It gradually dawned on him that he was naked and the reason he could not move his arms was that they were handcuffed. The man looking down at him appeared friendly but even in his current state he realised that appearances were likely to be deceptive.
As he tried to concentrate an elegant lady entered the room.
"Oh, darling these two will be with us for a few days. They will be sleeping in the cellar. Rafik will look after them."
Mrs Al-Battani was used to her husband kidnapping various unfortunates. They tended to be gamblers down on their luck and she was only too happy for them to be kept out of sight. These two were different, they were in their late teens or early twenties and were both remarkably pretty and looked harmless. She assumed they had been kidnapped to serve in one of here husband's brothels.
"Fine, as Halima is on her holidays can I use them around the house?"
Mr Al-Battani was slightly surprised by the request as normally his wife barely hid her distaste for some of his more brutal activities. Looking at Jessica he thought it would be fun to have her around until he could negotiate a handover. They were unlikely to escape as the villa's security system was one of the most advanced in the country. They were also miles away from the nearest habitation and a couple of naked whites would be fairly easy to track down.
"OK, darling, but it will only be for a few days."
Returning to his study Mrs Al-Battani turned to Rafik and said, "Take them down to the cellar. Bachir, get the girl a maid's outfit and the boy some shorts and a T shirt."
Bachir turned to his neighbour and asked in despair, "Where do I get a maid's outfit?"
"Bachir, did you see the girl? She was naked. She must be prostitute, as such go to Mrs Jubayr's whorehouse. She had loads of uniforms for her girls. She will be able to kit you out with something."
The next morning Jessica woke up her hands still handcuffed behind her back. She looked around the room, initially she thought this may be one of Tim's kinky games, but when he saw Tim looking very worried and similarly handcuffed she quickly realised they were in deep trouble. Tim summarised the situation, CBC had tracked them down and at least his life could now be measured in days if not hours. Jessica wondered what her fate would be. She really had very little experience of quasi mafia type organisations so all she could come up with was stock clichés like "She knew too much." Realistically she knew her prospects were not good.
As they talked the door was unlocked and Bachir entered. He threw some clothes on the bed, unlocked the handcuffs and said, "Put them on and follow me."
Tim and Jessica did as they were told. Tim squeezed into some tight shorts and was about to complain when he saw Jessica, she was in French maid's outfit that was so skimpy it barely covered her tits or bottom. Jessica was embarrassed, this was the sort of thing people wore in the bed room not around the house, but she pulled and stretched the material and just about made herself look semi-decent.
Bachir escorted them to Mrs Al-Battani, who looked at Jessica's dress and exploded, "What is that? She looks like a prostitute not a domestic."
"Sorry Mrs Al-Battani I could not find a normal maid's uniform in town."
"Oh never mind, it will only be for a few days." Mrs Al-Battani looked up to heaven, she knew her dear husband did not choose his associates for their brains but Bachir really 'several tokens short of a toaster'.
Mrs Al-Battani then showed Tim and Jessica where the cleaning materials were and put them to cleaning the kitchen. Tim was told that he was to clean from 7.00 to 9.00 each day and after that he was to be locked into his room unless he was needed for specific tasks. In addition to the cleaning, Jessica was to serve meals.
Jessica stationed herself in the dining room and greeted Mr Al-Battani with a curtsey when he got down. He was surprised at her outfit but unlike his wife he thought it was a rather nice way of starting the day. He ordered some coffee and started on his newspapers, Al Chourouk and the Wall Street Journal. Mr Al-Battani tried to concentrate but his new maid was so much more interesting. Jessica stood by the sideboard tugging at her short satin skirt, trying to get it to cover her suspenders. Perhaps he should delay the handover for a few days. Halima was a darling but somewhat spherical, not a patch on this Jessica. He wondered if CBC would let him keep her, surely they only really wanted Tim. This seemed a possibility but he knew his wife would never agree.
As he pondered, he saw his daughter come in. As ever, she was dressed in scruffy ripped jeans and a sweatshirt. She was a pretty girl, but would look so much better her father thought if she smiled at least once in a while, rather than wearing her habitual sneer as if her life tottered between boredom and irritation.
Jessica curtseyed and asked the girl if she could get her anything.
"Coffee, black, no sugar. By the way what the hell are you doing here dressed like some cheap tart?"
"I am helping in the kitchen whilst Halima is away, Miss."
"OK, Sophie no need to be rude. She is called Jessica and as you know your mother needs help around the house. She will only be with us for a few days. She can help you if you need anything done, like perhaps sorting out your room..."
Sophie put her iphone headphones in her ears and drank her coffee.
When Sophie had finished she returned to her room. On closing the door she immediately rang her best friend Safia. After the normal greetings Sophie got down to the point, "You won't believe it. My father has got a tart. She is masquerading as a maid but my mother will go ballistic! This will be fun. Come over and watch."
Sophie got down for lunch early, eager to see the first skirmishes of what she assumed would be the mother of all domestic fights. She was disappointed, her mother seemed to treat Jessica with exaggerated kindness. In fact the lunch was a very jolly affair with both her parents being on genuinely good form.
Sophie was still suspicious and knew the only way to find out what was going on was to question Jessica in private. So, in as relaxed voice as she could manage, she asked her father if she could use Jessica for a few hours that afternoon as she need some filing done for her school project. Neither of her parents objected and Jessica was told to present herself at Sophie's room at 3pm.
On entering, Jessica saw Sophie and her friend (Safia) lounging on her sofa chatting over a cup of coffee.
"Can I help, Miss Sophie?"
Sophie looked up and answered, "Yes, Jessica, what I really want to know is, are you fucking my father and if so does my mother know?"
Jessica denied the allegation and despite Sophie's insistence she stuck to her story. Sophie knew she was no interrogator but almost believed her.
