MONICA AND THE BLACK DRAGON TRIAD

 

 

EXTRACT

 

CHAPTER FOUR: TAKEN - Leila's Story

 

We were met in the lobby by Edwin and escorted to a taxi. The trip lasted only ten minutes before we alighted at an imposing building.

"This is Pacific Place," said Emma. "Lots of nice shops here. This could be fun."

It was, in a way. Edwin explained that they wanted some general background shots of Jill and I enjoying ourselves. Edwin was nothing if not organised. He gave us each a brand name shopping bag with empty boxes inside, which we carried with us. Later on, he gave us a couple more to demonstrate our shopping progress.

Pacific Place was a huge modern shopping precinct under a tall office block. It was clean and open and airy, with multiple mezzanines and the open spaces criss-crossed by escalators. At one end a pianist played on a grand piano, the music echoing around the marble surfaces.

Edwin had two camera operators. They positioned themselves on mezzanine levels and shot us in the throng of people as we window-shopped and went up and down the escalators. At one stage he asked permission from one store manager to film inside his shop, claiming it was for a travel program, and sounding totally plausible. The manager was delighted and was keen to show off his gorgeous antique paintings and teapots. We looked admiringly, trying not to be conscious of the now close-up cameras. Thank goodness it was air-conditioned, for I felt the camera would be showing every pore of my face, so close did it come. At the same time the cold air made our bodies betray us, as our unfettered nipples poked at the thin fabric covering them. The cameras could not help but record those, either, I noticed.

After a couple of hours there, we went to the Jade Market under a flyover on the Kowloon side, with more shots of tourists browsing amongst the stalls. It was a small, intimate little market, predominantly under cover of awnings and very low key. The jade was wonderful and the people friendly, but we bought nothing. Instead, Edwin paid the stallholders for the privilege of filming there.

It was dark by this stage, and we were hungry and a little tired. Edwin took us to a restaurant nearby and we spent two enjoyable hours tasting and then stuffing ourselves with Cantonese cuisine and drinking what I reckoned was a rather dubious Chinese wine by the name of Great Wall, although admittedly the third bottle tasted pretty good.

I don't know what time it was when we left the restaurant. The night was sticky and humid. Edwin wanted to do some shots in the night market nearby, so we duly tramped several blocks and spent more time wandering the jammed precincts of Temple Street, looking at the cheap clothes, pirated cassettes and all manner of garish but fun stuff. The wine had had a decided effect on the three of us, and Jill and I were in rollicking good form, we thought, joking with the stallholders and finding much that was uproariously funny. I explained to Jill that it all added to the character development, and that there was nothing so true to life as two tipsy Australian girls in a foreign country. 

As the stalls began to close, Edwin explained that he wanted to do the final scene a couple of blocks away. We grabbed a passing taxi and found ourselves in a quiet street between blocks of apartment buildings. It was not an alleyway or anything - rather a deserted residential street that was reasonably well lit.

Edwin explained what he wanted. We were to be walking back to our hotel and become conscious of a van following us at the same pace. It was a white Toyota Hiace with no windows in the rear, which Edwin had evidently pre-arranged to meet us at this place. We followed his directions.

The street sloped slightly upward. We passed the Toyota parked without lights and were about fifty paces in front when it started its engine and the lights came on. It started to crawl up the street very slowly behind us. I gestured to Jill and we quickened our pace. I was conscious of Emma and one of the cameramen on the other side of the street up ahead, while the second camera operator - a woman - filmed us walking towards her. I tried to look nervous, and found it wasn't hard. The wine had reduced my inhibitions, as well as my coordination, and I found emotions more readily available.

The engine speeded up and we broke into a run, our heels echoing against the buildings. Up ahead, near a streetlight, two men stepped out from a doorway. One was solid and formidable in jeans and a dark tee shirt, while the other, dressed similarly, was short and slimmer. 

Edwin called a halt at that point while close-up shots were taken of the two men pulling flick knives from their belts, then the action was on again. Jill grabbed me by the hand and we started to cross the road diagonally away from them, but they moved to cut us off. We halted, looking about. The pair looked frightening and suddenly it wasn't difficult to act. 

We turned to retreat, but the van was almost on us. It came to an abrupt halt with a squeal of brakes and two more men leapt out. Jill and I went in different directions as we tried to elude the four. There was a flash of a knife as one grabbed me by the wrist then had his arm around my throat, the knife hovering an inch from my cheek. 

"No noise!" came the harsh command. 

Jill saw me caught and hesitated, long enough to be seized herself. Her arm was twisted behind her as we were hauled towards the van. Here Edwin halted the proceedings long enough for the woman with the camera to climb inside ahead of us. It only took a minute, but Jill and I remained locked in our captors' grips. Then we were bundled into the back of the van, thrown on our stomachs and promptly sat on by two of our assailants while the other two climbed in the front. The engine started and we were moving, as my captor dragged my wrists behind me and proceeded to cross and tie them.

The absence of the knife and the knowledge that we wouldn't cause a disruptive scene in the street now gave me the encouragement to struggle and protest for the benefit of the camera in the brightly lit interior of the van. Jill joined in, screaming abuse and demanding to be freed, all of which required little motivation under the circumstances. That was when one of the men delved into a brown leather holdall and produced two ball gags threaded on white cotton rope which were forced into our mouths with some muttered curses in Cantonese as we tried to keep our mouths shut. The men were obviously used to this behaviour, for my man grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked my head back without a moment's pause, jamming the ball behind my teeth as my mouth opened involuntarily. The cord was tied tightly behind my head, which I didn't like at all, for we normally use straps at Bilboes for ease and comfort. 

Comfort did not seem high on the list at this point, for more lengths of rope appeared from the holdall and my ankles were quickly crossed and bound, the tails of the ropes being tied to my wrists in what was perhaps not the most stringent hogtie I'd ever experienced, but certainly very effective. I looked up at the woman on the camera, who had clearly got it all on film and was taking a lingering shot of Jill's now prone form, emphasised by a hand of one of the men that roved over her legs and buttocks before sliding easily under her skirt. Jill squirmed and mmmphed, glowering at him. His colleague said something sharply to the man, who muttered and withdrew his hand.

By this time we had turned the corner at the end of the road. I had seen the second cameraman filming the struggle and the pair of us being bundled into the van, and I could fully imagine the shot of the van driving off into the night. When we turned the corner, I expected us to halt and wait for the other cameraman, Edwin, and Emma. But nothing happened.

We must have travelled for five minutes before I looked at Jill and raised a questioning eyebrow. She nodded imperceptibly, furrowing her brow in concern. I struggled to roll over, and was part way there when a hand seized my breast through my dress and pulled me face down again. I squealed my outrage into the rubber ball, but it sounded pretty weak amidst the noise of the road and the engine. The indifference of our captors and the lack of any cessation to the scene abruptly made a shiver run down my spine and I felt the cold hand of fear grip my stomach. Jill and I had been conned. We'd all been conned - Monica, Emma, all of us. This was no acted scene. This was the real thing. 

A tear rolled down my cheek and I looked at Jill, her face pressed into the shabby carpet of the van floor. Her eyes were closed, and I could see her hands exploring the ropes in their vicinity - the ropes which held her ankles crossed and her bent legs open. I could also see there were no knots she could reach. These men were good. 

They were also smokers. They sat on the floor against the rear doors and chain smoked dispassionately as we drove through the night, two bound and gagged females whose futures were suddenly very, very uncertain.

 

I could not see my watch, nor those of any of the other person in the back, but I estimated we must have driven for maybe an hour or so. The bright light in the interior remained on while the air became stuffy with smoke and the smell of five human beings in various stages of restraint, fear, and indifference. We seemed to leave the noise of the city, and to speed up on what may have been country roads. At one stage we climbed over some hills on a twisting, turning road that made me feel sick. The alcohol I had drunk heightened my feelings and my thoughts kept darting about to all manner of terrifying possibilities ahead of us. 

As the journey lengthened the shocking realisation occurred to me that we were heading into China! THE People's Republic of China! I nearly wet myself, such was the powerful and scary image I had of China in my mind - a place where the rule of law was irrelevant, where nobody would speak English and where no one would care what happened to us. How would Monica or Emma ever trace us? I began to sob to the extent that I could through the rubber ball in my mouth. The net result was that my nose ran and tears rolled down my cheeks. Jill looked across at me with her big empathic brown eyes that tried to comfort me but could not.

We finally pulled off the road into a driveway where gravel crunched under the tyres. We halted momentarily and there was the sound of a motorised industrial roller door opening, then closing after we had driven through. I got the feeling we were inside a warehouse, for the floor was obviously smooth concrete. 

The engine stopped and the rear doors opened. Our two jailors untied our ankles and the connections to our wrists before hauling us to our knees and half-dragging us out of the van. As the blood returned to our feet we stood unsteadily in the gloom of overhead fluorescent lights, only a few of which were working. The woman with the camera, and the two men who had been in the front seat disappeared towards the door. There was a discussion between the two remaining ones, the smaller, slimmer one evidently being in charge. They each grabbed one of us by the arm and pulled us towards a corner of the warehouse where a partition had been built to create a separate room.

A flimsy-looking plywood door was opened and we were dragged inside. The room was about four metres square, and contained two foam rubber mattresses covered in a gaudy material on the stained concrete floor. The rest of the place was bare, save a bucket half full of water next to one wall. The room was constructed in the corner of the building with outside walls of steel cladding on two sides and the timber partition on the other two. It was all grey and dirty, with light coming from a single fluorescent light suspended from the high roof. 

The slim one reached into a corner behind one of the mattresses and came up with a long length of rusty chain, one end of which he locked around Jill's neck. He ran the other end between the steel corner column and the cladding then locked the other end around my throat. I tried to recoil from the touch of his hands and the cold dirty feel of the chain, but the big man held me still, not missing the chance to grope my breasts when the other had been busy with Jill. 

The slim one pointed to the bucket. "Toilet," he said tersely, then the pair turned and left, locking the door behind them, leaving us standing there, staring mutely at each other. I felt the tears of despair begin again. Jill moved close to me and made little grunting noises, turning her back to me so that our bound wrists touched. I realised what she intended and obediently held my hands steady as she searched for the knots and twisted her body to reach them. That's when the lights went out and we were left in the pitch darkness.

Because our wrists were crossed the movement was limited, and she could only use one hand at a time. Finally, she managed to undo the critical knot and I felt the ropes loosen and eventually I pulled my hands free. I quickly undid the rope securing my gag and extracted the drool-covered ball from my mouth. It took only a minute to free Jill. We hugged each other in the darkness and I literally cried on her shoulder.