by Jack Norman
A pinprick of blood emerged on Sara’s teat. She looked at Borzov nonplussed, unable to find coherent words. In the end, all she could say was, “I’ve been locked in the basement for the past three weeks.”
Lev Salko said, “I think I can answer your questions, Viktor.” He placed a dark green handbag between Sara’s thighs on Borzov’s desk. “This belonged to Tamara,” he said.
“I thought her name was Tara?” Georgy said, glancing at the expensive Mulberry bag with its gold trimmings.
“Ukrainian. She changed her name and affected to be English. Your boys’ information was correct, of course: it was Tamara who sold your daughter to the Albanians. She confessed and revealed the contact details.” He tossed a USB Flash Drive Memory Stick to Georgy. “I had my people prepare a report. Plug that into your computer.”
Borzov raised his eyebrows and studied the small plastic stick. “The Vory has changed,” he murmured, leaning over to insert the stick into the console on his desk. As he spoke, a large wall screen flickered into life with a blurred picture of Henry Smithson.
Sara gave a small squeal. “That’s my father,” she spluttered.
Salko glanced at her and smiled thinly.
“Henry Smithson is an Englishman who was officially attached to the British Embassy in Moscow in a minor trade role in the days of the USSR. In reality, he headed up a unit that specialised in infiltrating the murkier side of life, using a network of brothels, call girls and such like to entrap their targets and get information.” The picture changed to show the fuzzy outline of the same man speaking to five naked young women. “That’s a rare picture, taken in 1989, showing Jackson speaking to some of his whores.”
The screen changed and showed a picture of a pretty, smiling young woman, little more than a teenage girl.
“Smithson’s wife, Tamara.”
Borzov poked Sara’s breast with his knife. “Your mother?”
“Yes,” Sara said, almost choking in shock.
“This was Tamara Bondar, sixteen years old at the time and fresh into Moscow from Minsk. Henry Jackson immediately took up with her and she was pregnant within weeks.” The picture changed again to show Tara in her white wedding gown, with Jackson standing beside her in a leafy churchyard. “Incredibly for a man who had his pick of countless women, Henry took Tamara to England and married her. Their daughter Sara was born a few months later.”
Dumbstruck, Sara watched the changing images on the wall screen. Many of them were familiar from her childhood: her mother holding her as a small baby... a little toddler dressed in a short white dress... her father driving a green Jaguar E Type car with Tara sitting laughing beside him...
Salko went on: “The Smithsons separated within a year. Henry returned to Moscow but Tamara went to the USA, changing her name to Tara. She had a brief career in films and modelling, and enjoyed the jet set life for a while after that.”
There were more images of Tara on the wall, some in cheesecake swim suit poses, others in smart designer gowns, and one a tasteful nude study.
“She had quite a body,” Borzov said. “I can see where her daughter gets it from.”
“She kept her figure right to the end. Anyway, by the time Smithson returned to Moscow, the USSR had fallen. It made no difference to him, of course. Like many people, you included, he was well-placed to profit from his previous connections.” The pictures on the screen were now racier, showing night club scenes with topless dancers, working girls soliciting for business on a street corner, and then a series of Internet images advertising escort girl services. “Smithson was involved in all of this.”
“Was?”
“He’s dead.”
Borzov looked up sharply. He said to Sara, “Your father is dead?”
She nodded. “Eight years ago. He died during heart surgery in America.”
Borzov shot a confused glance at Nikitin, who merely shrugged. “So the Englishman couldn’t have commissioned Anna’s kidnapping.”
George Nikitin began to idly look through the contents of the bag, as if keen to avert his gaze. He took out a small red address book and flicked through it. The wall screen showed a recent picture of Tara Jackson dressed in smart, designer clothes, striding through a large, garishly-lit night club.
“Tara reappeared in Moscow a few years ago, taking over the business,” Salko was saying. “She divided her time between Moscow and the USA,managing the network. It suited her to maintain the fiction that her husband was still alive. She became ‘the Englishman’, in effect.
“So she had Anna abducted?”
“In revenge for you taking her daughter, Viktor,” Salko said evenly. He paused for a reaction, but none came. Then he went on: “Tara returned from a trip to the USA shortly before Anna was snatched. She had Zeldov beaten to a pulp to find out what had happened to Sara. Then she arranged the traffickers’ party and commissioned Raisa Poda to make sure Anna attended. Afterwards, she sold Anna to an Albanian trafficker called Ermir.”
“Ermir was another guy you wasted,” Georgy Nikitin said drily. “One problem with your interview style, Lev, is that we can never go back to ask them more questions. I suppose we should be grateful that the whore Nina is still alive.”
Viktor Borzov remained tight-lipped, stroking the razor sharp edge of his paper knife along Sara’s thigh, but he glanced up at Salko. “Continue.”
Salko turned and fixed Nikitin with a steady bead. He chose to ignore the implied criticism and went on, “Ermir sold Anna to another Albanian named Plakici. Unfortunately, somebody ‘interviewed’ Plakico first, before I could get to him, and the trail stops there. All we know for sure is that Anna reached Odessa.”
“Any eye for and eye, a daughter for a daughter,” Borzov said grimly, glancing at Sara. “Do you think you can trace Anna, Lev?”
Salko shook his head. “Odessa is a collecting hub for trafficked women from across the former Soviet Union. From Odessa they are sent west to Europe, or south to Turkey and the Middle East. She could be anywhere now.”
Chapter Six
Turkey
I
Anna knew that she was somewhere in Turkey, in a fairly large town she guessed, but she didn’t know precisely where. She stepped from the shower, naked, dripping and shivering. They had not permitted her hot water but she had been glad to sluice the sweat and slime from her body. The woman who watched over her grasped her arm and turned her, fingers tracing over the tattooed image of a small blue rose on her right shoulder. Anna looked sullenly at the woman, and then she glanced again at the small black electric generator that still lay on the top of the WC cistern. A wooden ladder, about six feet tall, ostensibly a crude towel rail, leaned against the tiled wall. They had strapped her to this with leather belts before administering hateful blasts of mind-numbing electric torture to her body. Anna’s breasts still felt as if they were afire and her nipples were unnaturally large and erect. They were unspeakably sore from where the crocodile clips had bitten into her flesh.
The man who had administered the electric shock torture had left, leaving the woman to supervise their new acquisition. This woman was only a few years older than Anna, but her harshly garish make-up and henna-dyed copper-red hair gave her a hard and brassy look. Anna shivered, cold and defeated, and she hunched her shoulders and crossed her arms about her breasts. The woman suddenly slapped her face with the flat palm of her open hand. The slap was hard and its imprint burned across Anna’s cheek. Anna yelped in surprise and pain, and she staggered back against the cold tiles of the shower stall.
“What is your name?” Since Anna’s abduction, the woman was one of the few people she had met who had spoken English to her.
“My name…it’s Anna.” She hesitated, then drew herself upright and corrected herself: “I’m Anna Borzov. My father is very wealthy. He will pay a ransom for me.“
The woman slapped her face again. “Forget your father, he can’t help you now. That is over. Your name is Rosa… just Rosa now.” The woman
slapped Anna’s face again “Rosa! You have the tattoo on your shoulder. We will have another tattoo of a pretty rose against your cunt, uh? It is your whore name.”
The woman glanced towards the burly male henchman who stood by the door. He had again strapped Anna, naked, to the short wooden ladder that had served as a towel rail in the bathroom. She was propped upright against the white tiles, but the leather belts were so tight around her naked body that she could scarcely move a limb. She glanced wildly, wide-eyed at the electric generator box. They had insisted on changing her name. She had determinedly resisted it, knowing that it would further blur her trail to this place, and make her situation even more helpless, but her resolve was weakening with each added torment.
“Tell me your name, little whore,” the woman said, casually giving Anna another slap, this time across her sore right breast, fingertips spitefully and expertly flicking across the throbbing nipple.
“I’m Anna.”
The woman viciously nipped the puckered halo of the nipple between her finger and thumb, eliciting a shriek of pain. Then she pushed the plank and Anna fell to the tiled floor with a clatter. “Your name is Rosa, you will learn!” she said, taking the lower end of the plank and propping it again the rim of the bathtub.
The woman produced a polythene bag from her pocket and casually pulled it over Anna’s head. Anna gasped in terror and vainly fought her bonds as the plastic film moulded to her face and cut off the air. She screamed, literally wasting breath, when she felt her body tilt as the ladder was hoisted, and she felt herself being carried horizontally. Then she found herself laid with her head below her feet. With the blurred vision allowed by the bag that she was in the bathtub, and the ladder was tilted with one end against the rim of the tub. Anna fought to regain control of her racing panic, and she was only vaguely aware of a finger that was tracing the lips of her sex.
The man turned on the faucet and directed a strong stream of water onto the polythene bag that tightly covered Anna’s head. Anna jolted in horror and surprise as the water hit her face. They were going to drown her! She was certain. Her body thrashed against the tight bonds and the staves of the ladder were painful against her flesh. The horror continued, and she found herself in a breathless agony. There was no option but to cooperate.
“I think she’s a giving me the signal,” the woman said, nodding to the man.
The man diverted the flow of water from Anna’s head, but the impression of suffocation by drowning still remained, and she writhed as much as she might. The bag was then ripped from her head, and she spluttered as she inhaled hungrily and loudly. “Yes, I’m Rosa,” she gasped. “My name is Rosa.”
“How do you address me?”
“I – I don’t know, please…”
“Look, whore, you call me ‘Madam’,” the woman said, grasping her blonde hair and shaking her head violently to and fro. “What is your name again?”
Anna’s tears began to flow now, running in hot streams down her face. “I’m Rosa, Madam.”
“Good,” the woman said with a smile, her foreign tongue seeming to linger over the word, and she tugged Anna’s hair viciously once more before releasing the wet tresses from her grasp. “Very good. You see, you can learn. Now, tell me that you are a whore, uh? Let me hear you say it.”
“No!” Anna’s words were choked back as the woman sized her right nipple and twisted it viciously.
“Tell me you’re a whore,” the woman spat, twisting even harder on the already sore rubbery nipple.
“Alright, alright, goddamit… I’m a whore, Madam,” Anna screeched in a pained grimace. “I’m a whore. Stop that!”
“Yes,” the woman said triumphantly as she released the tortured nipple. “You see, it’s easy. You are a whore, Rosa. Of course, you are. And I’m going to make you into a good little whore. You will make very good money for me.”
“Rosa is a whore,” Anna murmured softly, half to herself, as if examining the words. She reflected that, in the past few hours, that is just what she had become.
II
It seemed an age since Anna had become the whore Rosa. Now, naked and bound to a post in what seemed to be a small room, she squirmed in the darkness of a tight leather bondage mask that both gagged and blinded her. Rosa’s jaws were uncomfortably distended by the rubber phallus-like projection that was trapped in her mouth and thrust uncomfortably almost to her throat. A cold draught of air wafted across her naked body, making her shiver, and she could hear the unmistakable hum of an air conditioning unit. She heard a door open and assumed that someone had entered, and she could hear something like cutlery being laid on a table.
They had tied her in an uncomfortable position. A projection in the pole pressed painfully in the small of her back, and she was forced to thrust her hips forward, putting pressure on her arms. Anna had no idea why they had confined her in this way, but she was resigned to a prospect of yet more degrading and unpleasant treatment. No doubt it was another harsh lesson to further embed acceptance of her status. It was no longer necessary, she knew. It shocked her as to how quickly she should have descended to abject servility. Her only aim, of course, was to survive.
She gave a start when she felt someone cupping her breasts. It was a male, she guessed, judging by the size and feel of the fingers on her full, soft flesh. He squeezed slightly, and then raised the soft flesh and allowing it to fall, testing its resilience. She knew that her nipples were hard, tightened by the chill and her fear. Then, unexpectedly he began stroking her hair at the neck, beneath the straps of the hood, teasing the long silky tresses, all the time uttering gentle sounds that, quite ludicrously, seemed to be intended to soothe and calm her.
The man’s hand were on her breasts again, warm and caressing the chilled flesh. Yes, she would live, she told herself, and live as best she may until, somehow, she managed to escape.
Anna heard the door open again, and a male voice spoke in Turkish. She could not yet understand the language, but the tone was casual and amused. She heard a chair scraping the floor as it was moved. Then, her senses alert and tense, she heard the sound of a match being struck and then smelled the mellow aroma of a cigar. The fingers were still on her breast, circling her nipples. Then he cupped the flesh gently again and she could feel the soft underbelly of her breasts filling his hand. The balls of her feet began to hurt as strained up on her toes and thrust her hips forward to avoid the projection in the pole, trying to ease the ache in her arms with the straps holding her wrists far behind her. The voice, nearer now, spoke again with a small laugh, and the other man released her breast.
Then, though she heard the whine of a small electric motor and gave a grunt of terror, struggling wildly against her bonds, fearing the vicious electric generator again. She heard the man clucking his tongue, as if to an animal, and then felt his gentle hand on her breast again, stroking the flesh insistently as he crooned soothing noises. She calmed somewhat, but was still perplexed and fearful. However, she gave a start when the other man’s hand, cool and slick in a latex glove, touched the shaven skin of her pubic mound, finger and thumb stretching the skin tight there, and she tensed as a swab was applied to the area, continuing up over the soft flesh of her lower belly. Something else, a plastic patch she thought, was applied and smoothed to her skin. She could feel that it extended to the soft flesh of her lower belly, and abutted the upper edge of her sex lips, overlaying her clitoral hood. After some moments the patch was carefully removed and she heard murmurs of approval, and a joking remark which brought a laugh from the other man. Then she felt him going to work and felt the pain as the tattoo needles jabbed into the flesh around her pussy. She guessed that the artist was drawing an outline and the pain in this sensitive area was far more intense she had experience with her other tattoo on her shoulder. The tattooist took his time, working steadily, and casually chatting with the other man in the room. After a while, her body became accustomed to the pain and it subsided into a stinging and burning sensation. After a s
hort time he took a break, probably for his own benefit rather than hers, and she could smell the cigar smoke again. Minutes later, he resumed, and she could tell that he was shading in the tattoo. The man was skilled, it seemed, and he handled her with assurance.
Tara, however, found herself crying bitterly inside the hood. It wasn’t a matter of the pain: the needle pricks burned a dull fire across her loins but it wasn’t intolerable, even though the pain became more intense over the clitoral hood. No, she was beset utter dismay at the significance of what was casually being done to her body. She could only imagine what humiliating design had been permanently applied to her intimate flesh. For now, though, she saw it as a new and telling torment, inflicted on her at a whim as a sign of ownership. Unlike the new name they had given her, this was a mark that could not be easily discarded in the future. It would always be there to constantly remind herself, and others, of her degradation.
Chapter Seven
New York – 12 months on
I
The car slowed and stopped in front of a pair of imposing double gates, waiting until they swung open. Leo then drove along a drive towards a stand of trees.
As usual on these occasions Sara felt her stomach tighten. Another outcall. She had never managed to get used to being delivered like a parcel, to be unwrapped and played with, on a loan basis. At the same time though, the familiar tingle of anticipation and dark desire welled up in her pussy. She was a hopeless case. Ahead, the mansion-like house was lit by floodlights, like some exotic palace. A couple of men in flowing Arab white robes stood ostentatiously in front of the entrance. The car slowed and stopped and Leo lowered his window. “The Borzov bitch,” he said. The swarthy man nodded and waved them through. The car’s tyres crunched on the gravel of the circular forecourt in front of the house, where a towering statue on a plinth provided a centre-point. The handsome Russian youth stopped the car and sat staring straight ahead, the profile of his Adam’s apple prominent on his swan-like neck.
