“Oh yes—Shaki, good idea!” Number One screamed at him, “and whilst you’re at it, tell him why an idiot such as you, did not stay with the car!!!”
“I am sorry...” Rajnesh whined, “they just dragged me away with them. Nothing I could have done. Have the foreigners escaped?”
Number one went down in a crouch and said almost sweetly: “They scrammed. And guess what they have taken with them?”
“No idea, what then?”
“Rajnesh, dearest, where are the car keys?”
“I left them, ehm, in the...!” Rajnesh stopped, frightened. “The car...” his voice failing, “did they really take the car...?”
“The car and the girl!” Number Two took a few steps back and violently ran his foot into Rajnesh’s ribs... and somewhere deep inside, Rajnesh knew, he had deserved this.
Considering her current situation, gagged, bound and lying in a question mark position inside a trunk, Sherie had nonetheless slept quite well. Actually she was used to confined living quarters, she being the eleventh child of an extended family, and gagging as well as bondage were not altogether foreign concepts in her line of work either.
Although she had her eyes wide open nothing but darkness surrounded her. They were still driving, obviously, since her prison cell was rocking back and fro relentlessly. She had meanwhile lost all sense of time and it was impossible for her to tell how long she had been sleeping. She knew about hostages who had been locked up in a trunk or a box for days on end, but in all those events one had somehow embarrassedly avoided the only subject matter that was of interest to her at the moment. Namely, what does the victim do when nature calls?
Did her kidnappers really expect her to pee into her sari? Or was it part of a cunning torture, where the victim was to choose between a bursting bladder and the total annihilation of self-respect? But maybe—and this was most probable—her kidnappers were just typical dumbasses, never bothering to even waste one thought over the natural urges of their victim.
After an eternity Sherie noticed the car slowing down and then it stopped altogether. Did her kidnappers show some mercy, finally? Pee stop? She heard the car door being opened and slammed shut again, then the sounds of footsteps moving away. Dammit! Most certainly they were at this moment all lining up in a butch like fashion, checking who was reaching farthest.
Sons of bitches! Angrily she kicked against the trunk lid. A hollow ‘Bang!’ and she kicked again... and again! This might be the trunk of death, but she was not going to croak thinking about a toilet, no way!
Suddenly she heard the footsteps coming near again, stopping in front of her. The dangling of keys, a turn in the lock. The trunk was opened and Sherie was blinded by stark daylight.
“Sherie??? She heard an astonished voice, the sound of which was somehow familiar.
“HUET???” (Without her gag she would have shouted “GERD???”, although he knew what she meant)
Gerd was as surprised as Sherie. What on earth was she doing in that trunk? He had just released her from her shackles, when she jumped out throwing his arms around his neck.
“Hou hapf hescued he!” she was rejoicing, although unintelligible.
“Maybe you better take out the gag before you say something!” Gerd answered still totally flabbergasted and he loosened the knot behind her head.
Sherie spat the gag onto the ground and immediately began to splutter: “You have rescued me!!! I would never have believed that! I am sooo sorry for all what I’ve done. Here...” she fished his wallet from her pocket, “I was lying to you! I’ve been so shitty—and you, that’s what you do for me! And all the while I thought you did not like me! And now you single-handedly took care of them all!”
Gerd, who could hardly get a word in between, felt of course flattered. “I... ehm,” he stuttered, “well, actually I was...”
“No, no don’t belittle yourself now! You are the best, best guy I ever met, I really mean it!”
She kissed him on the mouth, which simultaneously robbed him of his breath and his sanity.
“We thought, you were through with us!” he demurred with a coated voice.
“Actually I was, in the beginning, but then I wanted to return to you and suddenly there were these Goans and they wanted me to tell them where you were, which I did not do of course and then they locked me in the trunk. Until you rescued me. Was there any fighting over me?”
She looked at him with big, admiring eyes. Gerd who had not been looked at like that for ages, swallowed hard. “Well... fighting... actually nnoo... ehm, but yes... a little fighting, yes... and not so little at that, of course, they had knives... and guns... rifles... I mean machine... machine guns. But I took them on, I overwhelmed them and stole their car!”
“Wow”! Sherie said in honest admiration. “And I had thought all men were pigs! But now I need to take a leak. Just show me where an Indian princess can spend a penny!”
She looked around scanning the area. They were standing at the side of the road on front of a little wooden shack functioning as a STD telephone shop. On the other side there was a rest area, where several military vehicles had been parked in front of a big tent. No public toilet far and wide.
“You were going to make a phone call?” she asked pointing her head towards the STD shop.
Gerd nodded. “Yup! Got to make some phone calls to Germany. I’ve got an idea!”
“Will it take long?”
“Nope, I’ll make it snappy!”
“Okay, if you’ll make it snappy, I can hold on. Where have the others gone?”
“They went ahead, we’ll meet up at the Palace of the Winds in Jaipur!”
“Great!” said Sherie and jumped on to sit on the hood, letting her legs dangle. Then I’ll wait for you here and we’re going to stop for a toilet at a restaurant somewhere on the way.
Okay?”
“Okay!” Gerd went over to the little shack, Sherie looked after him misty eyed.
“Hello!” Gerd confronted the portly Indian, who was sitting in front of the shack on a plastic chair in his underwear. “I would like to make a few phone calls to Germany as well as send some faxes, can I do that?”
“Number four!” The owner mumbled, slapped his meaty hand on the meter and pointed towards the booths with the telephones.
4.000 miles to the West the insistent ringing of the telephone was tearing Doctor Alberich Seligheim out of deep slumber. He was wide awake in an instant, jumped out of bed, got into his ready slippers and hurried to his desk.
“Seligheim!”
“Good morning, Ex-boss!” he heard vaguely.
“Gerd? Is that you? How dare you, you know what time it is?”
“Oh I am sorry, if I woke you up!” Gerd answered.
“You did not wake me up, I am already working at this time of day!” Seligheim lied, wiping the sleep from his eyes, “Listen, Gerd, I really don’t care what kind of emotional problems you have at the moment. If you want to stay in India on your Guru Trip, fine! But if you think you can start begging for you job again...”
“Don’t worry, you can keep the job! As you know yourself, India is very nice!”
“Gerd, you are wasting my time. What do you want?”
There was a pause. Doctor Seligheim heard only noise in the line.
“I am led to believe, you have left some souvenir photos of your travels here in India. I was just asking, if you would like me to send them to you!”
“What are you blabbering about?”
At his very moment Doctor Seligheim’s fax machine started to beep.
“Oh, you already forgot? I’ll fax you some photos, just to refresh your memory. If you like, I can send them into your office as well... you sweet little honey bun!”
With a whirr the fax machine was spitting out copies of unspea
kable pictures, pictures of a fifteen stone ‘baby’ in diapers.
All of a sudden Doctor Seligheim felt dizzy. Cold sweat appeared on his forehead. Gasping for air he fell onto a nearby chair.
“Well? You remember now?” Gerd’s voice sounded ingratiating.
“You dirty little...” Seligheim hissed staring at the photos in his shaking hands; some baby whose mother would not have been proud of.
“Careful now, Alberich, careful. You wouldn’t want me to get mad and do something rash and imprudent, would you?”
“These pictures were staged, I was being drugged. I was unconscious and did not know what happened. That little slut...”
“... proved to be more than just a common whore, didn’t she?” Gerd interrupted him cherishing the moment, “You have to admit those pictures are something else. Would be a damn shame if these works of art could not be shown to a wider public, wouldn’t you say so?”
“What do you want? You want my money? You want your job back?” Seligheim was snivelling, his composure totally shattered by now.
“Hell no! I really don’t want anything from you, except a business proposal!”
Again the fax machine beeped, and with a subdued hums it spat out a business contract.
When Gerd had finished his conversation some minutes later, he was very pleased. That really went down well! He opened the door of the telephone booth and called to the fat man on the plastic chair. “I want to make some more phone calls. And I need an Internet connection as well!” The fat man only nodded lazily, scratched his hairy chest and let his hand fall onto the meter again.
Where in Shiva’s name was Gerd? Sherie was desperately pressing her thighs together, Her bladder felt like a water bomb.
Splish, splash!... a boy was pumping water from an open well into a canister.
Don’t listen, ignore it!
Gurgle, gurgle!... a man with a moustache was pouring some tea in a high arc from a kettle into a glass.
Just ignore it!
Squirt, slosh!... a sizeable camel bull was letting go of a just as sizeable stream of piss onto the earth below.
“I-cannot-bear-it-any-longer!!!” Sherie cried out so loud, that the camel bull jumped aside with fright, issuing an involuntary golden shower onto the boy with the canister.
Her gaze fell onto the big tent standing on rest area opposite. Maybe they’ve got something like a portable toilet—and if not, the tent would be big enough to go behind…
Resolutely she crossed the road, snuck behind the tent and was just about to squat down when someone violently grabbed her arm.
“Ze darkie girl!” Hermann cried out delighted, when she was brought into his tent.
Sherie was baffled. “The old nutter!”
Hermann stood upright in front of her. “You hef come to turn yourself in? You surrender, ja?”
“I came to piss, if you really must know!”
“Ver are your friends, what hef you done with my autograph?”
“What autograph? What are you jabbering about?”
“So you are denying, zat you hef stolen the autograph from me? Just you vait, ve hef vais of making you talk!”
Sherie was squirming under the iron grip of the soldier who had kept her from relieving herself.
“Can this pea brain let go of me, for once?”
“Search her!” Hermann gave the order to his soldier, who was enjoying himself doing so.
Get your paws off of me you randy monkey...” she was just about to pee on the soldier’s boots when he had discovered three bags of Golden Biker inside her bag.
“Ahaaa!” Hermann triumphantly held up the bags. “Illegal substances. And in such a quantity! Confiscated!”
“What? Are you bonkers? Those are mine!” Sherie ranted.
Hermann opened one of the plastic bags and sniffed at the golden shimmering grass. “Golden Biker... You may not believe zis, but I know exactly what zis is. I once had the dubious pleasure to experience the effects of this devilish stuff. Ver did you get it from?”
“None of your fucking business!”
“Well, you vil tell me soon enough. Until zen, you are my prisoner!” He moved his head slightly towards the soldier. “Take her away. And spread out, the others can’t be far away!”
The soldier was shoving her out of the tent.
“Okay, just lock me up again”, she grumbled angrily, “getting used to it by now... BUT LET ME GO AND HAVE A FUCKING PEE, ALREADY!!!”
Gerd had logged off. Thanks to the creeping slow Internet connection of the phone shack, the online banking had taken an eternity, but now it was done. Satisfied with himself he paid the exorbitant sum the fat man had asked for, which now that he had his wallet back had posed no problem. He had no further use of his credit cards however, he had just had them all cancelled.
Gerd was not weighed down by any bad conscience; after all he had hurt nobody. Well almost nobody. On the contrary, he had either sold his different assets to his former acquaintances or co-workers or had asked them for small favours. He had made them offers the kind of which, thanks to the photographs, they could not refuse. No really, the victims of his ever so discreet blackmail would not, besides a good scare, suffer any remaining damage.
It was not them he was after. Not Doctor Seligheim, not the Member of Parliament or his ex golfing buddy—no it was all about Beate. Beate the adulterant slut, who had had the cheek to send two contract killers after him, well, she would be in for a surprise in a very short while.
He could not suppress a grin when he was slowly returning to the jeep. He looked around.
Where was Sherie? Didn’t she say she would wait? He went onto the road and looked left and right. There was no trace of her. On the opposite side hectic activity had broken out. Some soldiers, who Gerd found strangely familiar, were dismantling the tent; others were quickly mounting the military vehicles and then drove off. Just as he was thinking about, where he had seen those brown uniforms before an open jeep was leaving the area and sped off in the direction of Jaipur. Gerd paused. Was that not crazy Hermann on the passenger seat? And behind him, squeezed in between two soldiers sat Sherie.
“Hello! Hermann! Sherie!” he called after them frantically waving but the jeep was well beyond hearing distance.
8. People’s Republic of China / Beijing
At an altitude of 400 miles above sea level the usual prevailing temperature is cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. A sweater is of no real use up here. So it was just as well, that the Chinese spy satellite ‘Hurray—the 46th National Congress!’ did not give a flying fig about the temperature. This cruising paparazzo was following its regular paths in the upper stratosphere and was clicking away for all its worth. Okay, it was not the latest model on the market and some parts in dire need of some patching up, but it was diligently doing its job for the good of the Party and the Chinese People (whereas the majority of the Chinese people would have been put up against the wall instantly, had they known about the satellite or blabbed about it). Beneath it lay Mother Earth shimmering in her majestic blue. Continents, countries, oceans—all spread out, as if on a giant map. And there it lay: The massive triangle of the Indian subcontinent. How many millions of people down there must at this very moment, be laughing, loving, dying or being born? How many destinies fulfilled, dreams come true or destroyed. Truth be told—the satellite could not care less. It was taking pictures and since the Chinese had upgraded it with a pirated copy of ‘Photoshop’, the quality was actually quite good. Assiduously it sent new pictures to Beijing every 70 minutes.
The representative of the European economic delegation was sipping at his cup of green tea, carefully putting it down again.
“Before finalising the agreement, my dear Wu, I am bound to mention the matter of ‘Human Rights!’
Wu, who had been into politics for many years, knew the rules of the game. He casually leaned back in his desk chair.
“Of course, my dear, considerate friend!”
“Well then... the human rights issue!” The European made an artificial pause, “Fine, I did mention it, nothing stands in the way of signing the treaty now, right?”
They smiled at each other. An unnerving buzzing noise disturbed the harmony. Wu still smiling pushed the button of the intercom on his desk.
“Comrade Li Xiao to see you at your earliest convenience, comrade Wu!” the tinny voice of one of his secretaries came through the speakers.
Wu arose from his chair. “As you can see, the best moments in life are like the penis of a Korean—rather short. Please be so kind as to leave the contracts on my desk. I will sign them later today!”
The European bowed slightly and left the room.
Imbecile, thought Wu, all this ‘kotowing’ is Japanese, the Europeans are such ignoramuses!
Every time General Li Xiao was summoning someone it was advisable to drop everything else. He was a big shot in the Party, whose word was law within the defence ministry. Wu was crossing his antechamber, passed his eight secretaries (if there was anything abundant in China, it was personnel), entered the elevator, gave a friendly nod to the three elevator operators and squeezed inside (he was the only passenger but due to all the elevator operators it was always crammed). Two stories higher he got out, knocked at the door of Li Xiao’s anteroom, crossed the room, passed fourteen secretaries, who were for the most part filing their nails and eventually entered the huge office of his superior.
“Good day, Comrade General!” Wu greeted him politely.
Li Xiao just gawked at him. “Who are you? What do you want?”
The general, as was known, had a somewhat delicate problem: Although being Chinese himself, general Li Xiao, could not, or only with difficulties, tell one Asian face from another. Since this made him an easy target for potential spies he was first of all suspicious towards every visitor. Also it was embarrassing for him...
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