The Couriers

by Jurgen von Stuka

  “But don’t forget that there was nothing of value in the case, although we argued beforehand that this could cause problems,” said Bibi. “Their attorney, who is a very sharp guy, has already learned that it was a worthless package and this reinforced their argument for dismissal of their case.”

  “I realize that,” Strom conceded. “If there’s a next time, we’ll use some items that look and feel real, probably some high quality counterfeit bonds, if we can get the police to loan them to us.”

  “That will only work if we apprehend them immediately after the hit,” said Groff. “If they get back to their base and discover the contents are fakes, we still won’t have any evidence of theft. The unfortunate fact is that they were very well trained, but didn’t expect resistance because all of their efforts in the past have met with passive acceptance and no violence,” Groff added.

  Bibi stepped in to the conversation. “I think we should find a way to lean hard on Sydney Price. She’s the weak link in this robbery attempt. She’s hurt and I don’t think she anticipated being injured. The right approach might give us more to go on. Can we get charges dropped and pay her off?”

  “Risky,” said Strom, “but we’ll take a shot at it. I suspect she’ll fear her employers more than us though.

  “What’s the story on the other woman, this would-be Murgio, the one with the cane?” Bibi asked.

  “Nothing. Zero. No records, no fingerprints on file. Not even a driving permit or record. Cops and Europol think she’s not from the EU. Possible Asian hybrid, but she doesn’t look it. Anyway, she clammed up from day one. Now we have no legal access to her.

  “I think we can work around that,” Bibi said.

  “No,” said Strom. You stay out of this part. I have someone in mind that can pay her a visit and we remain unconnected.”

  “Okay,” said Bibi. “We get it. Let me know what, if anything, they dig up, especially if we have anything on Brillcart.”

  The interrogation of Sydney Price was a waste of time. Drugged up to undergo two different surgeries to properly reset her broken leg, she was in no condition to chat with police or Bibi, so the team concentrated on her partner and got nothing. Since there was no history or record on the woman, the questioners had very little to work with. Aside from threatening a long prison term for attempted robbery, they had no leverage on the Asian woman whose lawyer was already pressing charges against the police, Bibi and the jewelry firm.

  Gabriel Thieles, a local former mercenary in Africa and now a private agent for the police, had a more simplistic philosophy about the pseudo-Asian accomplice. Strom contacted her and asked if she would be adverse to some unorthodox tactics with the Murgio woman who had been arrested once again on charges of drug possession with sales intent. She was being held in the city lock-up with bail denied, at least for the time being. So, on a Saturday night, when the police jail was lightly staffed, Thieles, armed with several illegal weapons, wandered in, flirted with the two duty guards, pressing her impressive chest hard against each man’s sweaty front, giving each the promise of a thrilling blow job or more if she could just have a few minutes with their solitary prisoner.

  “But you can’t go down there with all of those weapons,” the policeman in charge said into Gabriel’s ear as she rubbed his crotch in a friendly way.

  “Of course I can,” she said, rubbing harder. The game went on.

  In the end and for the bored young guards, it was no contest and their eager hands passed over a set of keys to Thieles. She kissed each of them hard and went down the three flights of stairs into the dank old cellblock that had once been used by the Nazi Gestapo and later by the East German Secret Police. With the keys and directions to the solitary cell where the uncommunicative Murgio was being held, Thieles opened the peek hole in the steel door, called the woman’s name twice and then more or less blindly fired her modified taser at the figure hanging on the far wall, her arms stretched upwards by old and rusting chains. Thieles’ first shot caught the woman in the thigh and was effective. She opened the cell door and entered, locking it behind her. She went to the woman who was now spasming against the cell’s stone wall, stuck the taser into her gaping mouth and told her in three languages that if she failed to answer her questions, the taser would probably snap her head off. Murgio nodded her head and continued to push against Groff’s Bai Tung hold that essentially paralyzed the woman’s body from the neck down. This, plus the effects of the taser, brought about the compliance Thieles sought. Within fifteen minutes, she had the woman’s real name, the names and addresses associated with the Brillcart gang and as much information as any of Brillcart’s female robbery perps might have. She learned, for the first time, the details of how the young and unsuspecting women were taken captive, psychologically brain- washed and trained as street thieves. She even told about two formerly unknown acquisition methods that Brillcart’s people used to get new candidates for their program: how they advertised for subs like Marianne who wanted a harsh BDSM training situation and were even willing to pay for it and how they on occasion got new talent from the pony school in Hanover. Thieles knew that until now, the cops had no clue about either scheme. She left the woman still suspended in her chains, weeping hard and swearing she’d cooperate further if only they would release her from the barbaric shackles and horrible cell.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Thieles said as she departed the stinking cell, although she doubted the woman’s latter promise. Thieles went home after thanking each guard with a big body hug that permitted each of the horny young men an inspiring ass-grabbing and little else.

  Dede was back at Bibi’s apartment and was puzzled and disappointed that her new mentor was apparently away for an indefinite time. The one neighbor Dede spoke with said that when Bibi asked her to pick up the papers and her mail, it usually meant she’d be gone for at least a week, maybe longer.

  “Rats,” said Dede as she left the building. It was totally by accident that she saw the dirty envelope on the floor beneath the chromed mailboxes. Picking up the envelope, she saw that it was addressed to Bibi and had been hastily torn open. There was nothing inside, but the return address on the envelope was one that Dede knew only too well. With little else to do, the little blond jumped on the next tram and headed for the train station. Her student pass took her to the end of the line and it was twilight when she found herself peering over a high stone wall topped with barbed wire, looking at the distant stone ruins of the Chateau where she and her friends had once tried to hold an overnight séance and been scared and run off by the roving security. This was the return address on the envelope Dede found and she was somehow certain that Bibi was here as well. The pin prick in her cute ass was immediately dulled by a terrible urge to sleep. Dede crumbled to the damp ground, while the guard placed the empty syringe back in its metal case, and picked up the hundred pound package of Dede, carrying her to his waiting patrol Jeep.

  “An unexpected blond present for the big guy,” the guard muttered to himself and he placed Dede’s inert little form in the back of the vehicle and proceeded to strip her. A ball gag went into her slack mouth and then a leather helmet was applied to cover her head and mouth, holding the gag well in place. The laces on the helmet were drawn tight and all that remained exposed was the upper portion of Dede’s freckled face with her closed eyes and nose. The guard attached a blindfold over Dede’s eyes and then strapped her legs so that the calves were pressed against the back of each thigh. He locked a pair of iron shackles on her ankles and used additional straps to hold her forearms parallel behind her back, strapping the elbows and wrists together, then cuffing the hands as well. A collar was locked around her neck and she was attached to several chains that hung from the interior roof and walls of the truck. When he was finished, a slowly awakening Dede discovered that she was naked and suspended from the roof of the truck, chains attached to the straps around her chest, arms, legs and collar. The leg chains held her ankles wide and allowed the cool air blowing i
n through the truck’s open window to ventilate her open crotch. The gag was most effective and she sputtered and nearly choked before clearing her running nose. The only sounds Dede could make past the gag were of no interest to the guard who drove the vehicle along the outer boundary of the stone walls, occasionally looking back over his shoulder at the hanging naked girl and humming to himself that he was indeed lucky to land such a great catch on this cold winter night.

  “Don’t you worry none, little girl,” he said as he continued humming to himself. “Don’t you worry. You’ll be welcomed in the chateau in a similar fashion and I am sure you’ll provide some much needed entertainment for the staff tonight...that is if the Boss agrees.” Dede jangled her chains, chewed on the fat rubber ball in her mouth and wondered if this was going to be as much fun as she hoped for.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Tell Me...

  “So much for my smartass solo operations,” Bibi thought.

  A few days after the dummy courier run failure, in the coldest part of February, everything went wrong. Bibi talked her way into working as a single courier and the small package she carried in her modest backpack was destined for a custom jewelry retailer in Salzburg. Dressed in a casual winter outfit that showed off her figure to her advantage and to the distress of the men who watched her in the hauptbanhof, she boarded the ICE train from Munich and was, as she had hoped, neatly and quietly abducted and robbed on the way.

  In hind sight, was almost ludicrous how easily she was taken. It was also a classic case of too many people making too many wrong assumptions. Before she knew what had happened, Bibi was drugged, handcuffed, tied in a tightly bound ball and stuffed into a large traveling case designed for a tuba.

  The three female kidnappers, dressed in Goth attire and looking as strange as they could, boarded the train at the Munich East station, noisily invaded the compartment Bibi occupied and, covering her with their capes and furs, jabbed a hypodermic needle through her sweater sleeve and into her arm. The effect was nearly instantaneous and Bibi was out like the preverbal light. They propped her up on the seat, bound and gagged her and stuffed her into the monster tuba case they brought into the compartment with them. Then the group settled into the seats and used Bibi’s I-pod or drifted off to sleep, greeting the ticket taker with enough noise and abandon that she took their cards, punched them and left quickly, wondering how the hell they had gotten the tuba case into the small compartment and how they were going to get it down the aisle and out the door at their destination. Inside the case, Bibi was in a near comatose state, totally unaware of what was happening. She stayed that way until she woke up hours later in Brillcart’s cellar.

  At Salzburg station, the Goth trio eased the tuba case out the door with great skill and was soon gone in a waiting van behind the station.

  When she woke up, Bibi discovered that her backpack, clothes and watch were gone, her mouth was packed full of some disgusting fabric that wouldn’t yield to her chewing efforts and she was strapped to a cold metal post in a darkened room. Her head was encased in what smelled and felt like a combination of rubber and leather and she couldn’t hear, speak or see.

  So much for my smartass solo operations, she thought, recalling the arguments with Groff and the firm’s security people who had reluctantly arranged for her to carry what amounted to about seven hundred thousand Euros worth of custom jewelry and watches which were certainly valuable, but would be hard to fence on the black markets. The watches, especially the Frankfurt Financial Special Edition by Sinn, a very rare Patek Philippe 5013 Minute Repeater Perpetual Calendar, a couple of Hublot Big Bang editions and a few other specialty timepieces that sold in exclusive jewelry stores, were highly desirable collectors’ pieces, but not necessarily rare. The custom jewelry items were easily identifiable and, like the watches, of high enough value to be an attractive snatch for the courier thieves. Two watches had been modified by the helpful manufacturers to accommodate almost microscopic transponders that sent out a signal that the security agencies hoped to receive, assuming that the robbers fled into the Salzburg area.

  This sure as shit isn’t the way I planned it, Bibi thought. If I’m lucky, I’ll find out who is running this show before they start cutting off my fingers and toes, she mused, chewing on the gag and trying to ease the pressure of the straps and ropes that held her firmly to the post.

  What followed during the next few days was again not what Bibi expected. She was treated with considerable deference by her masked jailors and told that she would be released as soon as possible. This worried Bibi more than the prospect of being kept and perhaps tortured. Because she had not seen or heard the voice of any one of the perps thus far, that promise nevertheless held reasonable prospects for her and while they kept her firmly immobilized, she was fed and watered like a captive plant. Twice every twenty-four hours she was allowed to use a provisional toilet in the room, but was kept blindfolded and stewing inside the uncomfortable helmet. The steel collar around her neck and the cuffs on her hands and feet reminded her that there was not going to be an easy way out of this, but Bibi remained optimistic that Groff and her friends were already hot on the trail that began in Munich and, she assumed, ended in Salzburg, Austria. She had no way of knowing that in fact she was again back in Germany, far away from her original destination and well out of range for the receivers for the signals from the transmitters secreted in the two watches.

  It was on what she figured was the third or fourth day that she was removed from the post, leashed and led blindly up a flight of stairs and down several long passages. Finally, she was hung up by her feet, dangling somewhere above the floor, and left again to contemplate what might come next.

  A thorough and repetitive thrashing with a leather whip used with great dexterity to bring maximum pain and as little damage as was possible was their chosen technique. Bibi, who knew enough about how this method worked, was nevertheless totally aware of each telling blow and by the end of the second session, she was, she quickly admitted, willing to talk about who she was and what she had been doing.

  The leather and rubber head gear was removed, the terrible gag taken out and a squirt of cool water was shot into her gaping mouth.

  “Let me be brief. This can be very simple,” the same man who had been beating her said quietly. “Since you have no correct papers, we want to know who you are and who you work for. You will tell me everything or you will not be let down and the blood that is already in your head will eventually choke you and you will die unpleasantly.”

  “I will tell you everything, but please let me down. I am near blacking out,” Bibi replied, her voice sounding confused and weak.

  “Lower her,” the man said without hesitation. Bibi was slowly lowered to the cold stone floor, panting and slobbering in a pile of whipped and naked tits and ass.

  “Name?” the man said.

  “Bibi Wolfe Lynx.”

  “Occupation?”

  “Private investigator and sometimes body guard.”

  “Who hired you?”

  “Deutsches Sicherheit,” she said clearly. Silence followed, so she added, “Security.”

  “I know what it means, Cunt,” her interrogator spat, casually swinging the whip into a long arc that landed most of the oiled leather end on Bibi’s already scar-laced hips. “Your job?” he asked.

  “Deliver valuables to Hornheim in Salzburg.”

  “A rather routine courier run, isn’t it? Why hire you?”

  “I think you know,” Bibi gasped between deep breaths she forced herself to take, “that there is great concern about couriers being hit throughout Europe and I was given the job because they thought I could manage it without losing the package.”

  “Humm,” said the man, who was now standing in front of Bibi with the steel toe his black combat boot resting uncomfortably on her right breast. As he spoke, he increased the pressure, pressing her tit between the Vibram sole of the boot and the stone floor. “But you did lose it, didn’t
you? Do you know what was in the package?”

  “Some pricey watches and gold jewelry from an estate?”

  “Close enough. But you weren’t very careful. You were stupid.”

  “Yes, stupid,” Bibi admitted, trying to pull her crushed breast out from under the cleated boot sole. “I thought it was a milk run and never anticipated the three thieves who came into the compartment at Munich East Station. And they were very fast. Very good. I never really saw their faces.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, I assume it was them. They came in with what looked like musical instruments in cases. It was, as you well know, bitter cold, so they were bundled up with parkas and hats and scarves over their faces. They put their cases up on the rack except for the tuba box which took up the center of the compartment. Then they sat on me and shot me up with some quick-acting drug. And then I was here.”

  “They said nothing to you?”

  “Not a word. It was all over very quickly. I had my IPod plugged in and I guess I was dozing off. Next thing I knew I was in some sort of metal container and being carted off the train, I guess.”

  “Stupid.” said the man. “You aren’t going to get paid, Are you?”

  “I doubt it. Can you please take our foot off my boob. The whipping was bad enough, but standing on my tit is worse.” Oddly enough, with her right ear pressed to the floor, Bibi thought she heard the sound of horses’ hooves somewhere nearby. Thinking this was not likely, she pushed that from her mind and concentrated on saving her bruised boob and possibly her life.

  “Oh. Sorry,” the man said sarcastically. He removed his foot.

  “I have a proposition for you, Miss Lynx. If you accept it, you will be paid better than your recent employers would have paid you for months and you will work for us, doing exactly what those three women did to you.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “To survive. To have a real job. To make some real money.”