Monica and the Black Fortress 5
by Richard Alexander (Gromets Plaza)
(story continues from Monica and the Black Fortress 4)
Chapter Five – Contact
Despite my somewhat restrained position, I slept the sleep of the dead – perhaps not surprisingly, given Monica’s initial ministrations and the subsequent arranged tryst with Rani. I awoke next to the sound of rustling and sensed movement in the bed as Monica sat up. Mr Willy was wide awake and up as well, and Monica was aware of this as she tenderly removed my blindfold and kissed me again. Before I knew it she was on top of me, straddling me with her thighs and slowly impaling herself on my manhood.
It was a languid, gentle way to awaken, as Monica rode me, teasing my nipples and embracing me in her girl scent. In my bound state I could respond to her ministrations only to a limited extent, but she allowed me to bend my legs slightly to force myself deeper inside her. Monica’s exertions increased in speed and her breathing began to be interspersed with little cries until I could hold off no longer and exploded inside her as she, too, climaxed and gripped me with knees and arms, burying her head in my shoulder and crying out into the pillow.
We lay there for a long time, our breathing gradually returning to normal. Eventually I allowed Monica to roll me over and undo the straps holding my wrists. I sat up and kissed her, as she knelt there watching me, her blue eyes sparkling and her raven hair in joyful disarray. As I undid the scarf from my ankles, Monica climbed out of bed and sashayed over to a large armchair, in which Rani sat naked, cross-legged and bound there. She had clearly spent the night in such a position, and her head lolled against the high padded back of the chair. She was blindfolded with a scarf and her mouth was distorted by the ball gag still strapped in place. As Monica undid the blindfold and then the ropes securing Rani to the chair, Rani’s eyes looked at her with an expression of gratitude. Spending the whole night wearing a ball gag whilst being subjected to a midnight arse reaming, then being left tied up for the next few hours was a very big ask, and I could see how Monica was now pushing Rani.
Monica helped Rani to her feet without removing the gag. Rani raised her eyebrows and made a plaintive hmmming sound, pointing towards the rubber ball.
Monica shook her head and fetched some clothes from the wardrobe while Rani stood beside the chair, watching me with an embarrassed look. Monica returned, gave the clothes to Rani and pushed her to the bathroom.
“Take your time. You may remove the ball, then shower and dress in those. When you come back breakfast will be ready.”
* * *
Two hours later we were again at the Taj Mahal. The heat was oppressive and we were sweating before we’d walked twenty metres through the gate after the taxi had delivered us there. We were dressed as coolly as we could, but the day had the feel of temperatures that would be close to forty degrees, despite the cloud cover. Rani wore a white halterneck dress that was shorter than the one she had been obliged to wear the previous day. It was tailored to hug the curves of her hips and to cup her breasts provocatively, and once again she had been obliged to wear the white boots with the tall heels. Now she also wore the stainless steel collar that Monica had had made in Delhi and we had collected before we left. Monica had locked it in place with a small key and I watched Rani as she surreptitiously fingered the metal band when she thought nobody was watching. It was quite conspicuous, for Rani wore her long hair in a ponytail, and the collar stood out against her coffee-coloured skin.
Beneath her dress she was plugged front and back, and for the first time she was experiencing the total fullness that came with the largest butt plug Monica had brought and a similar vibrating dildo at the front. Rani was walking very tentatively as a result, with the devices having been inserted and strapped in despite her protests. Her sexy appearance was attracting all manner of appreciative looks from the males inside the Taj compound, and Rani stayed close to Leila, as though Leila’s presence could somehow make her own appearance somewhat less conspicuous. Monica, meanwhile, was again staying close to me, though not holding my hand. I wondered if this was also to do with Leila and Rani’s presence.
We strolled down the magnificent approaches, past the long water feature, and the fountains which were supplied from a distant tank originally filled using bullock-power. Rani explained how the gardens were split into four sections, a holy number to the Moslems, and showed how each of these sections was split into four smaller quadrants. The water feature on the main approach was nearly three hundred metres long and reflected the graceful building in its entirety.
Under the huge white cupola hushed voices echoed off the marble inlay that had taken twenty years and twenty thousand workmen and artisans to construct. Monica was rapt, and I could understand her feelings. From a building perspective I could appreciate the skill and craftsmanship that was everywhere we looked. Leila was taking photos and was not past making Rani pose in the most provocative manner. Rani was clearly uncomfortable but did not want to attract attention to herself by making a scene.
We were slowly making our way back to the majestic gatehouse when Rani’s mobile phone rang. We moved into the shade of one of the cypresses as she spoke briefly then turned to Monica.
“It’s Mr Mandrekar’s personal assistant. He wants to know our plans as he may be leaving early to head back to Chandrai.”
“Tell him we were going to the Red Fort, but we can fit in with whatever he wants to do.” Rani spoke into the phone, then paused as the message was obviously being passed on at the other end. We waited a minute, expectantly. I sensed Monica becoming tense, and I confess there were a few butterflies in my own stomach.
Rani put her hand over the phone. “She says Mr Mandrekar will meet us at the fort entrance – the Delhi Gate - in an hour.”
“An hour!” Monica frowned. “Say that’s okay,” she said, watching as Rani chattered into the phone before putting it away.
Monica seemed to let out a sigh. “Well, the die is cast now. How long does it take to get to the Red Fort?”
“Not long in a taxi.”
“Damn! Why do I feel like we’re under pressure already and haven’t got our act together yet?”
We took a taxi to the Red Fort and just had time for coffee at a restaurant across the square from the massive red sandstone structure, where Monica did her best to give us last minute instructions, which probably only made us more nervous. At two minutes before the hour we crossed the square and waited in the shadow at the huge bastioned gateway. The heat radiated off the masonry and even in the shade it was sweltering.
Fifteen minutes passed.
“Are you sure this is the right gate?” Monica demanded of Rani.
“Yes. The woman said the Delhi Gate, and this is it.” Rani shifted her weight in her high heeled boots, looking quite out of place. Monica wiped a bead of perspiration from her temple and was obviously getting anxious though trying not to show it.
“I bet he’s the sort of guy not to be too bothered about showing up on time,” I suggested. “We’re probably an inconvenience in his busy schedule.”
“And it’s up to us to overcome that handicap and show him that the publicity we represent is an opportunity,” Monica retorted, a little more intensely than I thought necessary.
Rani broke the silence that ensued by telling us that the fort had started its life a thousand years ago and had been built upon by Akbar and then Shah Jahan, he of the Taj Mahal fame, in the late 1500’s and early 1600’s. The latter had eventually wound up a prisoner in the fort turned palace turned jail, to prevent him spending the entire treasury on another memorial to his wife.
All this, I confess, tended to go in one ear and out the other, as we got more fidgety. Then a tall, solidly-built man in an ill-fitting suit appeared from inside the fort and approached us. He was in his mid-thirties and looked uncomfortable in his suit, which seemed even more out of place than Rani’s outfit.
The man did not offer greetings or his name.
“Which one of you is Miss Armstrong?” he asked. Given it obviously wasn’t me or Rani, he would have had a fifty percent chance on a guess between Leila and Monica.
“I am,” Monica said.
“Mr Mandrekar asks that you come with me to meet him,” he declared and turned without bothering to ensure that we were behind him.
We walked through the massive gate to turn immediately right, between high walls in a narrow passageway open to the sky, before doubling back in a hard turn to the left, all inside the gatehouse.
“This entrance enabled the defenders to pour boiling oil over the attackers as they got jammed up in the entrance,” Rani said to nobody in particular. Charming, I thought. The mental image did nothing for me in the stifling heat.
We emerged from the gatehouse into the blinding glare of a huge open space and followed our emissary to the right, before entering the blessed relief of a cool colonnade that stretched down one side of the open square. At the end of the colonnade, which must have been a hundred metres long, we followed the man into what appeared to be an office of some sort, with open double doors and a punkah fan revolving futilely on the ceiling inside. At a table with a half-empty glass of iced tea in front of him sat a man whom I took to be our target.
Sanjay Mandrekar stood up as we entered the room. He was about my height, of unassuming build, dressed in a tailored open-necked shirt worn outside his trousers in the casual Indian style, which along with his shoes, spelt money and lots of it. His hair was thick and black, but with a trace of grey at the temples that suggested he might have reached his early forties. He had a well-trimmed moustache and dark eyes that seemed to size us all up in a matter of seconds.
“Mr Mandrekar,” said Monica, holding out her hand.
“Miss Armstrong.” He took her hand and held the handshake for some seconds. The two locked eyes and for a moment I could see a further assessment taking place. Monica knew what she was looking for, and the kind of person she was appraising. Sanjay Mandrekar, on the other hand, did not know Monica Armstrong. For all he knew she was just another female journalist who probably had only the sketchiest idea of what he did for a living. I knew he wouldn’t be the first person to seriously underestimate Monica, or to be surprised at her intelligence and resourcefulness. I also knew that Monica was now fully focussed on convincing Mandrekar that not only was she more than just another journalist, but that she had common interests, and in these she was - at the very least - his equal.
Even then, in the short time the pair sized up each other, I could see that Monica made contact. There was an interest shown by Mandrekar almost immediately. He probably didn’t even recognise it for what it was, other than that there was something special that set Monica Armstrong apart from the people he was used to dealing with. I sensed that for all his civility, here was a man who was supremely confident in his own power and who was highly dangerous because of it. I suddenly had the feeling that we were entering the lion’s cage, where a whip and a chair and a bit of bravado just might not be enough to carry the day.
When Monica introduced us as her assistants, Leila being the photographic person, myself as a ‘technician’, and Rani as their local guide and ‘fixer’, Mandrekar favoured us with a brief appraisal. More pointedly, he favoured Rani and Leila with the appraisal. I barely ranked a glance. Rani and Leila met his eyes briefly then lowered their heads. He gave Rani a further visual review, taking in the white boots and short halter-neck dress, then the stainless steel collar that Monica was making her become accustomed to. Mandrekar seemed to pause momentarily, thoughtfully, then turned back to Monica.
“Unfortunately you’ve caught us out, Mr Mandrekar,” Monica said smoothly.
“Call me Sanjay, please.”
“Sanjay,” Monica corrected. “We were not expecting to do the interview now nor take the photos – our equipment is mostly back at the hotel. We only have the camera Leila’s brought with her, more in a tourist role, though it might still be good to get some photos of you in this wonderful setting.”
“Perhaps,” Sanjay said. His voice was rhythmical and melodious, his English educated and with little accent. “I think we should explore a little first. I have been here once before, but I did not have time to see some of the more obscure parts. Today I have managed to secure the services of the curator to guide us.” He gestured towards a shadowed corner of the room and for the first time I was aware of a small, elderly man in a suit who was obviously waiting patiently in the presence of greatness. He bowed slightly.
“Mr Patel will take us to some of the parts that tourists don’t normally get to see. Shall we?” Sanjay gestured for Mr Patel to lead the way, and motioned for Monica to follow. He was in no doubt who the boss was in our little party. He followed Monica, then his minder followed him while we three assistants trailed behind.
We were led deep into the bowels of the fort, which, even from a limited view from the outside, I had ascertained to be a massive, sprawling structure. It was impossible to keep track of which direction we were going in, and being at the rear behind Leila, Rani and the others, I caught little of what was being said. We passed down passages that had grilled windows overlooking courtyards where no doubt men of power had been spied on by other men of power. Then, for what seemed like several minutes, we seemed to be descending, moving down several flights of stone stairs deeper into the fort. At one point we stopped and Monica, Sanjay and Mr Patel disappeared into a side room with a small but very solid wooden door. The door remained open, but Sanjay’s minder blocked our path. I assumed the room might be rather confined, and that we would get our own chance in a minute or so. Such proved to be the case, for as the first three emerged, Mr Patel spoke briefly to Rani. The minder stood aside and Rani, Leila and I filed in.
The room was extraordinary in several senses. There was an immediate sense firstly of claustrophobia, since the room was barely a metre wide and a couple of metres long, the walls solid stone. But counteracting this was the absence of a ceiling, and the feeling that we were in fact at the bottom of a deep shaft, as we looked up to see the sky, blocked only by an iron grill perhaps thirty metres above us. The third thing that drew my eye was the only window – an almost full-height opening in the metre-thick wall, filled by a stone-carved grille, through which we could see, a kilometre away and lit by the setting sun, the Taj Mahal.
“Mr Patel said that this is the cell that Shah Jahan was locked in from time to time, where he could see the tomb of his wife,” Rani said, as we crowded together at the window. Perhaps because we were so caught up by the romantic picture, we didn’t hear the door close until there was the heavy thump of a bolt being thrown behind us. I turned to see the solid blank face of the ancient timber shut tightly, and my immediate response of pushing hard on it came to nothing. I banged on it futilely several times, but to no avail. It was about three inches thick, and I wondered if my thumps could even be heard through it.
The three of us looked at each other in dismay. What was going on? Suddenly our vulnerability – in a strange city in the middle of a vast subcontinent, away from outside help and dealing with a dangerous and powerful organisation – came home to us.
“They can’t be on to us already?” Leila was clearly frightened, though she tried not to show it.
“We should ring for help!” Rani said, opening her purse and rummaging for her mobile phone.
“No,” I said. “We wait. I don’t think there’s anything in this. I think it’s Monica. I think she wants time alone with Sanjay.”
“It’s a strange way of achieving it.” Rani was doubtful. “I still think we should ring for help.”
“No. Put it away, Rani. It’s too early to screw up the entire operation. If it’s something that sinister, it can wait until we’re sure. There’ll be other opportunities to make a phone call. We’re in the middle of a big city. He won’t try anything here. Not in the middle of a major tourist attraction.”
“How many tourists do you see here?” Rani taunted. “I’m going to make the phone call.” She had the mobile in her hand.
“Rani, don’t,” Leila said. “Steven’s right.”
Rani had started to press the keys when I snatched the phone from her hand. She came after me but Leila grabbed her wrist and twisted it behind her, in the way she had been trained to deal with recalcitrant clients back at Bilboes. Rani gasped with pain and found herself bent over as Leila bent her arm up behind her shoulders.
“Ow! Ow! Let me go! You’re breaking my wrist!”
“Stop it!” Leila told her. “Sit down and shut up and behave.” She forced Rani to sit on the cool stone floor next to the window, positioning herself beside the Indian girl. Rani glared at us resentfully, massaging her wrist as Leila released it.
I lowered myself to the floor beside Leila. Even though we were surrounded by stone walls and the bulk of the fortress, it was still insufferably hot, and we were all sweating. No breeze came through the grilled opening of the window, nor through the opening high above us. It was too hot to talk, and I think we all feared further verbalising of our doubts over the reason we were in the cell and how long we were to be there.
It was at that moment that Rani started, jerking as though stung.
“Oh no!” she exclaimed. We looked at her, startled, as her hand flew to her crotch, pulling the hem of her dress between her thighs. I grinned at Leila, for I knew now that I had been right, and that this was a little diversion by Monica. She wanted to be alone with Sanjay, and had seized this unexpected opportunity to pull a little stunt. She had then activated the remote on Rani’s vibrator to indicate to us that things were still under control and that we need not fret.
* * *
Almost imperceptibly the cell became darker, and we caught the last glow of sun on the white dome of the Taj in the distance, during a brief break in the overcast skies. We sat and watched the spectacle. Rani complained and squirmed as the vibrator did its work, and try as she might she could not dislodge it or make it any more comfortable, strapped and locked in place as it was. The sweat rolled down her temples and she hugged her knees to her as the intensity of the vibrations finally drove her to a climax, leading to a series of rising moans culminating in a strained, barely suppressed squeak as she abruptly straightened her legs and again thrust her hands down into her crotch.
“Oh shut up, Rani. You’re making Steven and I horny and it’s something we really don’t need now,” Leila complained, as irritable as I’d ever seen her get.
“I’m sorry!” Rani gasped, slowly catching her breath. “I can’t help it! This is all Monica’s fault ” she moaned pathetically, before subsiding and wiping her face with an already sodden handkerchief.
Despite the conclusion that I had reached as to the reason we were locked in a narrow cell in an ancient Indian fort, as the minutes had turned into hours and darkness had descended, we had all become increasingly anxious. Leila fell asleep on my shoulder in the darkness, while Rani continued to fidget and utter an occasional series of moans and sighs. The outline of the grille made an exotic pattern against the ambient light from the city of Agra.
When we finally heard the sound of a bolt being drawn on the door it was nearly seven o’clock. We had been locked in the cell for over three hours, and were hot, sweaty and – in Rani’s case – quite exhausted.
Monica and Mr Patel were standing in the dull light of an incandescent bulb in the corridor outside.
“Come, children,” said Monica briskly. “We have a train to catch.”
* * *
Leila, Rani and I were all grumpy on the way back to the hotel, peeved about being locked up and kept in the dark – both literally and figuratively. At the same time we were desperate to know what Monica had been up to and what progress she had made with Sanjay Mandrekar. When she said they had spent a fair part of the time sipping lime and sodas on a rooftop terrace while watching the sun go down, we were hardly mollified, since we had lost probably an equal amount of fluid in our dungeon cell.
Nevertheless Monica had evidently made considerable progress and hearing her talk, one might have assumed that Sanjay was quite taken with her. Monica was never one to blow her own trumpet, but there were times when I could tell that she’d done well and was feeling pleased with herself, and this was one of them. As we drove back to the hotel, none of our grizzles had the slightest effect on her demeanour, and I could tell she was quite chuffed with her progress.
Her spur of the moment decision to ditch us was so that we would not cramp her style, and was made with a nod and a wink – literally, so she told us – to Sanjay, on the guise of simply playing a trick on us. I queried what Sanjay might have thought of a normal person who locks three assistants up in a cell for hours without a by-your-leave.
“I didn’t answer that directly,” she said, grinning at me. “I left sufficient inference hanging there to suggest that it might not have been the first time it had happened to you and that you wouldn’t mind.”
“You left him no doubt who was boss,” I concluded.
“Something like that.”
“And things went very well and now you have a ridiculous smirk on your face like the cat who got the cream.”
Her smug expression didn’t change. “You know me far too well, Steven. Now, I don’t want any more complaining,” she told us without rancour. “You have half an hour to pack and get ready to go to the train. And take a shower, too. You smell like fugitives from a slave market.”
* * *
It turned out that the reason Sanjay Mandrakar had his own private train was the simple consequence of a fear of flying. It explained in part why he had rarely ventured out of India, and why his fortune was predominantly national rather than international. It also explained why he had never visited England since his education or been personally involved in the Earl’s nefarious deeds at Symonds Yat Hall.
This was a little of the background that Monica explained to us in between the hotel and the railway station. We had been collected by a car sent by Sanjay, and the driver was eager to organise our luggage between the time we were deposited at the station, our passage through the heaving masses, and arrival at a five-carriage train standing at one of the more distant platforms. We were met by a large, smartly uniformed and turbaned Indian who introduced himself as Prakash, and would we please be following him.
The engine was – to my surprise – a steam engine, and I suspected Sanjay probably had a bit of a love affair with trains, due to his enforced need to use them. This one bore the lovingly painted inscription ”The Chandrai Express”. We were shown to the fourth carriage, obviously for guests, where there were four private berths, each with a double bed, and ensuite, albeit somewhat spacially-challenged. The corridor ran down one side of the carriage, and at the rear end there was what looked like a concierge desk. This, we were informed by Prakash, was his desk, and if there was anything at all we needed, we had only to ask. We were shown to our compartments, with Monica’s at the front, then mine, Leila’s and Rani’s.
I looked past Prakash’s desk but could not see much through the door that led to the rearmost carriage. It intrigued me, not least because it appeared to be a passenger carriage, but all the windows had been covered with aluminium sheeting riveted in place, before being given a new coat of paint. It had looked quite innocuous in one way, but it had aroused my curiosity. When asked, Prakash replied blandly that it was for ‘stores’. For some reason I found the answer unacceptable, and decided that Prakash was not all he seemed.
We changed for dinner and made our way forward, just as the train gave a slight shudder and began to gradually move out of the station. The four of us gathered at the window at the front of our carriage to watch the lights of the station slowly slide behind us, then the street-lit scenes of Agra pass by. The girls were excited, I could sense. Part of this was simply the luxury we were travelling in, but also having the chance to dress up. Monica wore a deep green satin sleeveless dress to her ankles, while Leila had a short crimson halter neck that hugged her figure and contrasted wonderfully with her fair skin. Rani was in white again, still displaying a lot of leg and still looking uncomfortable about it. This time her black hair was loose, cascading past her shoulders over the thin straps of the dress that also revealed plenty of cleavage. Both Rani and Leila wore their steel collars like pieces of jewellery on display, and all the girls wore high heels. It was enough to make me seem dowdy in jacket and open-necked shirt.
We moved into the third carriage. The rear half was lined with timber panelling and lit by coach lamps. On the dividing wall was a well-stocked bookshelf, while deep green leather sofas and armchairs defined the space as the entertainment area. There was an air of nineteen twenties splendour about it all, despite the modern and discrete air conditioning, and this theme continued into the forward half, which was the dining room. An enormous table dominated the room, lit by candles this time. The décor was the same, and Sanjay greeted us as we entered. He was standing beside a well-stocked bar and I was relieved to see he was dressed similarly to me, albeit with a cravat at his throat. Beside him was a slender woman of perhaps thirty, dressed in the salwar kameez – the sort of pyjama suit favoured by many Indian women, with a long top that reached down to the knees with a split up the side. In this instance, the garment was made of grey satin, impeccably tailored to show off the woman’s willowy figure, and to show that she obviously came from a high class background – of that there could be no mistake. She wore her hair bobbed at the level of her jaw, and appraised us with intelligent but – I thought – unfriendly – eyes that matched the greyness of her dress.
“This is my sister, Seeta Indrani,” said Sanjay. I was taken aback, for while I knew Monica had researched the background of Sanjay, she had never mentioned a sister. “She’s really my half-sister – same mother, different father. She’s also vice president of my corporation.” Hence the name difference, I thought. Hence no immediate suggestion of the existence of some sort of dynasty were to be seen in looking at the company organisation chart.
Sanjay was all smiles and charm, complimenting the girls on their appearance, and I had to admit they did look stunning. I also noticed glances from Seeta that might have flayed them all on the spot. I decided I did not like her at all, and wondered how she could be so much an opposite to Sanjay’s outgoing style. She said little, preferring to let her brother do the talking. The thought occurred to me that she could in fact be the power behind the throne.
We sat down at the table. Already there were delicious smells wafting through the carriage, and I presumed the second carriage was the kitchen and perhaps the servant’s quarters. That only left the first carriage, and that had to be Sanjay’s private domain.
The table could have held a dozen people with ease, and the six of us looked a little lost, with Sanjay at the head, Monica and Leila on one side, and Seeta, myself and Rani on the other. Dinner was evidently going to be an unhurried affair.
“I don’t normally do this for all my interviews,” Sanjay had told us at the start. “I decided to make an exception in your case because you’ve come so far, and your magazine has a high profile in Australia, where we’re keen to do more business. But I think we can do the interviewing tomorrow. We will stop at one or two interesting stops, and maybe – if you have the time – you can visit my palace at Chandrai.”
“You have a palace?” echoed Leila.
Sanjay looked deprecating. “It’s a fort, really. Up in the hills. We travel by train as far as Chandrai, where we will arrive the tomorrow afternoon, then it is a three-hour drive into the hills. Maybe I could even arrange an elephant ride for the last part, which is up a long approach to the fortress.”
“It sounds wonderful,” Monica said. “I’m sure Leila is just itching to get her camera out.”
“Monica has told me all about your photographic ability,” Sanjay said. “And tell me, where did you get that delightful collar? I saw your friend wearing hers this afternoon, but now I see you both have one. They’re very becoming.”
Leila lowered her eyes and blushed. “It’s a present from Monica,” she said softly, her fingers flittering nervously to her throat to touch the steel, as though seeking reassurance.
“Monica seems to have excellent taste,” Sanjay said, glancing at Monica, then at Seeta, who said nothing.
He poured the wine and the first of the courses appeared from what I surmised to be the kitchen carriage. Rather than yet another uniformed flunky, it was served by a female wearing a sari with her head covered by a silk shawl and the lower part of her face hidden by a veil. I looked at her curiously, despite Monica’s previous instructions to display no untoward interest. From what I could see, she was relatively young, perhaps in her twenties. Despite heavy black kohl accenting her eyes and a Hindu religious mark on her forehead, I was sure she was European, for she definitely looked familiar. Then, with a shock, I recognised her as Claire Parker – the redhead we had seen subjected to the humiliation of capture and torture by the pursuing knights at Symonds Yat Hall, on the video Inspector Bates had shown to us.
Her eyes met mine for a fleeting second, and confirmed my guess, and I was amazed at stumbling on her in this way, acting as a serving girl in this man’s luxury train. I tried to keep focussed on the meal. I wasn’t sure whether the others had registered the identity of Claire, but if they did, they managed to conceal it well. I lost track of the conversation and the meal after that. My mind was racing and I surreptitiously watched Claire each time she came into the room with further plates. At one point Sanjay ordered some sauce, and her response was a sort of snuffled grunt of compliance.
I had heard enough gagged sounds in my time, and I suddenly realised Claire had to be wearing a gag of some sort under the veil. At that point I looked a little more closely at her sari, realising that she shuffled when she walked, and I suspected that she was hobbled under the skirt that covered her feet. I had seen enough saris in the last few days to notice that the traditional sari frequently displays a bare midriff between the bodice and the skirt, but this girl appeared to have some undergarment on that looked suspiciously like a tightly fitted corset, albeit matching the colourful nature of the sari itself.
At the end of what was in truth a sumptuous dinner, when the plates had been cleared away and we were into the port, Prakash appeared and went through into the kitchen, returning several minutes later trailing the waitress. I had the feeling that he was escorting her to her quarters, which could only be in the rearmost carriage. When they failed to return in the following quarter hour, I excused myself on the grounds of being a little off colour. Monica looked at me quizzically, partly concerned and partly wondering if I was up to something, but I assured her it was probably nothing and I would no doubt feel better in the morning.
Exiting from the dining room, I passed through the entertaining area and into the intervening connection between the third and fourth carriages. Being the old style, they were open at this point, as one had to exit through one door and then enter through another. I really wanted to see what was going on in the last carriage, and the only way I could think to access it without having to blunder or bluff past Prakash was to go along the roof of the fourth carriage – our own – and climb down at the fifth. That was the plan. I wondered what the hell I thought I was doing, for this was something they only ever did in spy stories, and I reckoned it would be pretty scary, not to mention dirty.
I stripped off my jacket and shirt and stuffed them in a corner. I didn’t want them to get filthy, and figured when I returned they might cover my own likely dirty appearance. Naked to the waist I let the warm night air blow over me. The train was probably only doing forty kilometres an hour, but it seemed like more when I climbed the ladder on to the roof.
It wasn’t quite as bad as I had expected. There were air conditioning vents along the length of the carriage that I could hang on to, and once I had got used to the motion, I gingerly began to work my way along the length of the roof. On either side the dark Indian countryside flowed past endlessly, the blackness occasionally broken by a few lights in the distance as we passed a small village. There didn’t seem to be a big danger of unexpected tunnels, for the land here was mainly flat. The smoke from the steam engine was an irritant, but I could live with that.
I reached the end of the carriage and carefully climbed down the ladder on to the narrow platform between the two carriages. Through the window I could see Prakash sitting at his desk reading a paper. It was only then that it occurred to me that the last carriage might be locked, and my journey might be wasted, but at least now I wouldn’t die wondering.
In this case I was in luck. The solid wooden door was secured by a heavy tower bolt that had been slid home, but with no padlock securing it. Casting a furtive look through the window again I undid the bolt and slipped through the door, pulling it closed behind me. The carriage was pitch black and there was obviously no air conditioning on, for it was like entering an oven. I felt for a light switch, trusting that Prakash would not see any glimmer of light escaping under the door.
I turned on the switch and the corridor was lit by a series of fluorescent tubes. The layout was the same as our carriage, with compartments – only two this time – on the left, before there was another intervening door in the passage half way along. The two compartments had solid steel doors and looked considerably more utilitarian and less inviting than our own carriage.
I moved past them and tried the passage door, peering carefully around it. The last half of the carriage was a single room, devoid of windows with its side walls lined with a series of horizontal steel bars about the diameter of a finger and spaced a handspan apart. On the back wall on a series of hooks hung coils of rope, lengths of chain, a variety of whips, canes and floggers, and an assortment of handcuffs and shackles. Attached to the floor and ceiling were anchor bolts, some with clips or padlocks through them. Everything swayed gently in the incessant rocking of the train. On one side there was a solid whipping bench topped with padded leather, and there were two complicated-looking blocks of wood, about the size of an orange box, with several anchor points and manacles hanging from them.
I breathed deeply, trying to overcome my rising panic. For all his charm, there was no doubt that Sanjay Mandrekar was into the S and M scene up to his cravatted neck, and that something pretty nasty had to be happening to warrant towing this little fun room around the countryside for evening entertainment. Of course the whole retinue had to be privy to what was going on, and we were now in the thick of it all, being carried along on the very same train.
The smell of stale sweat, of fear and pain seemed to hang in the room, and I did not explore further. I shut the door hurriedly and moved back along the passage, stopping at the closest compartment door. Like the outer door, this one was secured with a tower bolt but with no lock. I loosened the bolt and slid the door open, feeling around for the light switch. The compartment flooded with light and I saw it was broken up into a traditional four-berth cabin – two up, two down. The difference here was that each berth was a cage, closed in by mesh that stretched from the ceiling to the lower berth. The mesh was hinged at the top, so that it could be raised and lowered, with two locking points at the bottom. Only one – the lower right berth - was actually locked, with two heavy padlocks securing the grille in place. Behind the steel mesh was a figure wearing a sari. It had to be the girl who had served us at dinner, but I could not tell for sure because her head was encased in a leather discipline helmet. Her wrists were handcuffed in front of her, as she lay on the vinyl mattress, her hooded head resting on a pillow close to the door.
I shook the grille and poked her in the thigh where he leg touched the wire. Her eyes snapped open, the whites standing out in the black leather eyeholes. She sat up with a sudden movement, as much as she could, that is, with the limited headroom under the upper bed and with her hands cuffed.
“Errrmph!” she mumbled, and I realised at once that she was in some way gagged under the hood. There was a zipper over the mouth but a small padlock secured it to a ring at the end, locking it closed.
“Can you speak?” I asked stupidly. I don’t know why. She shook her head and turned slightly, lifting another padlock at the back of her neck where the hood was locked in place. I caught sight of some red hair.
“Are you Claire?”
She nodded emphatically, making a series of mmphing noises, which I took to be joy at finally seeing someone who knew of her plight. It was a split second after her gagged grunts rose in pitch and she pointed to something behind me that I realised that there was more to her expression than just being pleased to see me. I realised this just as something hit me over the head and the world went dark.
* * *
I awoke maybe half an hour later. It was a most uncomfortable awakening, for I found myself bound hand and foot in the dungeon carriage, as I mentally called it. The light was on and I was naked, lying on my back with my wrists bound to a floor eyebolt and my ankles held apart by a spreader bar, which was in turn fixed to the floor on the other side of the carriage. Whoever had done this had tied things very tightly, for other than turning my head, there was little I could move. I soon decided that moving my head was not a good idea, either. A large ball gag had been strapped into my mouth, unnecessarily tightly, I thought, and aside from that I had a splitting headache from where I had been coshed with whatever Prakash had used. It had to be him, I figured. I was either unlucky in somehow giving away my movements, or else he had been on to me from the start. Not that it really mattered now, as the train clattered across the countryside in the dead of night.
I had really screwed up this time.
* * *
07.01.05
story continues in Monica and the Black Fortress
o0o