CHAPTER I

 

RECAPTURING THE PAST - CAPTURED FOR THE FUTURE

 

It looked like the last seedy bastion of British Imperialism in Asia. What had obviously once been a grand hotel now only feebly echoed the former grandeur of Empire. Highly polished mahogany and brass worn and tarnished by timeless Asia complemented the cracked marble floor gritty with dirt. Dull with wear of long gone British Civil Servants and toadying Oriental subalterns, it only dimly reflected the former age it served. Dusty crystal chandeliers glistened with grime - not light. Stained linen and chipped crystal graced the tables in the shabby dining room and bar. The brilliant arabesques and colourful patterns now faint on the nappless carpet felt sticky underfoot. It sucked at the soles of trainers and sandals that trod its worn tracks. Fine hand lasted leather shoes no longer came its way. The sound one made while walking its smooth greasy surface seemed to bemoan the loss.

The paucity of foreign guests that stayed there no longer wore linen suits and Panama hats, but shorts and sandals with garish Hawaiian shirts or jeans and T-shirts with adverts or vaguely obscene declarations of poor taste and glaring ignorance of correct spelling and syntax. One Japanese student, a nearly flat chested young girl, wore a white T shirt with 'GRATE CALIFIRNIA TOMATOES' blazoned in large red letters across the front. Not only was spelling and usage unknown to her; she was blissfully ignorant of irony as well.

All that remained of the former colony was a well-organised bureaucratic system of police and tax collectors. Corruption, from an Occidental point of view, was simply the Oriental version of Capitalism. It was how things worked. Payoffs, bribery, compromise and collusion was simply standard business practice. Greed, venality, self-aggrandisement existed as before, but now it was corrupt not being done in the name of the Queen. True, the rule of law had changed, but as it was practised more in the breach than in observance in the past, it hardly mattered.

Only aware of the distinctly evident changes in the society and with naïve trust that the rearrangement of political furniture was to their advantage in the form of inexpensive accommodations in a formerly grand facility, the two young girls at the registration desk blithely signed the guest register.

Sandra Chase and Marie Howarth, dressed in tennis skirts with tight tank tops against the oppressive heat and humidity, grinned gleefully at each other. Their flight and bus trip to the hotel had been long and arduous. They had to share the crowded bus with chickens and ducks as well as mobs of men, women and children who seemed always to be bound for some place other than where they were. Now they could relax in the sumptuous luxury of memory in a hotel renowned in literature and history as 'the place to be.' Ignoring the rundown condition of the lobby, the creaky, slow moving lift-the tiny birdcage struggled to raise them and their luggage in its open iron grillwork to the first floor. They didn't notice the unctuous desk clerk looking up their short skirts as it rose.

The desk clerk reported what he saw.

The local Chief of Police had three reports on his desk. Immigration, Customs and the hotel all reported the arrival and gave a general description of Sandy and Marie. He read with some interest about the two young graduate students. Copies of their passports with photos clipped to a corner of the reports showed the Chase girl an attractive twenty-three year old blonde from San Francisco. Height and weight descriptions revealed her diminutive stature. The brunette, a British citizen, had a sensual overbite in her photo. It rather enhanced her attractive features, large eyes, wide mouth and great waves of full dark hair cut in a low fringe over her eyebrows. She was a year older and at five foot eight, she was six inches taller than the other girl. Lee Shih-Wei called one of his sergeants to notify him they would be going to the hotel to have a closer look at these two foreign women. They might just be candidates for recruitment into a very unique institution he had in mind.

That evening, dressed to the utmost their modest kit permitted, Sandy and Marie came down to dinner, pretending to be the young sophisticates they were not. Marie wore her basic black, Sandy a hot little red number. Both dresses exposed their shapely legs to great advantage while similarly revealing necklines displayed daring décolleté. Sandy's breasts quivered extravagantly at each slightly jarring impact of her high heels. Marie's exquisitely carved breasts stood high and firm as if forging way for her concupiscent young figure. A faint tracery of blue veins on her pale flesh accented the contrast of black and white between her dress and the jutting cleavage that led the way as she walked with liquid grace behind Sandy. Her long lithe legs flowed from trim ankles to above mid-thigh below the hem of her short dress. Imagination supplied the rest of the image, including the prominence of her buttocks, almost boyish but for her narrow waist, and the enchanting abundance of her resilient bottom cheeks undulating softly under her short garment.

Sandy, shorter by nearly a head than the graceful Marie, nevertheless possessed a figure more voluptuous, more conspicuous in its generous proportions than her taller companion. Full and firm, her figure matched her personality in ebullience, spilling out of her dress as she bubbled across the dining room to their table. Her strong athletic legs, full thighs and well-rounded calves, firmed and well defined by her high heels, flashed under her flouncing dress as she literally strutted toward their table thrusting her well-developed chest out with the shameless exuberance of her youth and beauty. Both girls were excited to be finally in the romantic and mysterious hotel they had both read so much about.

Throughout dinner they giggled and chatted, ignoring the poor service, mediocre food and shabby surroundings. They drank much too much cheap Champagne while also failing to note the interest of two uniformed police officers at a table nearby.

The two policemen noticed them, however. Lee made his decision before Sandy and Marie had coffee. Leaning toward his henchman Huang, he gave orders to gather the special unit and their unique equipment for another late night operation.

The young women, still playing the worldly and refined adults, smoked cigarettes after dinner, although neither of them smoked. The cigarettes looked as out of place in their attractive full lips as the incongruity of their voluptuous mature bodies spilling out of their dresses and the innocent youthful beauty of their faces. Truth be known, they were more like little girls playing dress-up in a fantasy world of their own creative imaginations. Feigning disappointment at not meeting diplomats, spies and fascinating raconteurs of literature and drama, they tipsily made their way to the tiny lift in the lobby. Repressing giggles, speaking with slightly slurred speech they pulled the latticed metal accordion gate closed behind them. Pushing one, they slowly rose to the first floor. The desk clerk looked up their dresses.

Lee interrupted the clerk's lecherous voyeurism, sauntering up to the desk.

"In 217, are they?"

"Yes sir. As usual."

"Good. I'll have a look."

The desk clerk smiled. He knew he would see more of the two young foreign girls later in his shift. He would see a great deal more of them than by merely looking up their skirts as they rode the lift. Lee seldom used the concealed room unless he planned to have his special unit make a late night call.

As rundown and neglected as the rest of the facilities were, a modern and sophisticated surveillance system was deemed necessary police work. In addition to informers and Quislings scattered throughout the city the very latest of electronic eavesdropping equipment, strategically placed, aided in the pursuit of particular goals and operations frequently carried out by Lee and his special units. Room 217 was a strategic location.

Lee entered a small room near the registration desk. A broom and other cleaning supplies stored innocuously inside revealed no other purpose than storage. The door closed behind him but the light stayed on while he moved a disguised latch, opening a wall panel to reveal another room behind. A long desk in the narrow chamber supported eight small video monitors with a control panel and a large screen monitor at one end. Earphones lay to the side of the controls. Lee switched it on and room 217 appeared in eight different monitors from eight cameras. He turned the audio off; he didn't need to hear what was said as he punched up monitor seven on the big screen. Both beds in an aerial view jumped onto the large monitor.

In room 217 eight pinhole cameras in lamp bases, dummy drawer locks, ornate carvings on the fireplace mantle and in the smoke detector over the beds covered all of the large room. Microphones near conversation areas picked up the slightest whisper. Infrared capable, the cameras could see in low light and in all but complete darkness. Lee watched to see which girl slept in which bed - nothing more. Once Sandy sat on the edge of her bed, Lee made a note to himself and, leaving the monitors on, returned to the lobby. He called his wife to tell her he would be working late on a case.

Some hours later Huang shook the Chief awake on the couch where he had been napping in the lobby.

"It's one thirty, Chief. We're all ready to go when you say so."

Yawning and rubbing his eyes, the Chief shuffled over to the tea urn and drew a cup.

"We'll have a look in a few minutes. We can go up in about thirty minutes. The small blonde is in the bed on the left. I didn't see any luggage or other clutter on the floor. We shouldn't have any problems."

He didn't question Huang on the unit's preparedness or the state of their equipment. They had done this often enough. They would have the right sizes knowing the girls' height and weight from their passports. All paraphernalia - cuffs, straps, buckles, head harnesses and the small gurneys would be in good working order. All that remained was for him to finish his tea and have a last look at how the girls were positioned in their beds. Gulping down the last of the drink, Lee ordered Huang to bring his men into position. Moments later a black goods van pulled into the circular drive of the hotel. Eight men dressed in black running suits emerged. They pulled what looked like miniature ambulance gurneys silently from the back of the lorry and carried the two small trolleys up the stairs, leaving their collapsible wheeled legs folded underneath. Noting with satisfaction the leather and steel equipment neatly arranged over an unusually designed high bolster down the centre of the narrow gurneys, Lee and his sergeant stepped into the surveillance room for a last observation.

Back in the lobby, Huang explained to his men exactly how the girls slept and which bed each was in. Nodding understanding, the two teams of four bounded up the stairs. Two men from each unit carried the lightweight gurneys between them with the Chief and sergeant following at a more moderate pace.

When Lee and the sergeant arrived outside room 217, both teams were ready on either side of the door. The gurneys' legs had been deployed with quiet metallic snicks, standing about a metre high against the wall. The leaders of each unit held multi-strapped leather head harnesses in their hands. Large red rubber balls dangled from one of the many buckling straps on each. Behind them stood the rest of the men, each holding the particular set of cuffs that were his responsibility. Huang silently unlocked and opened the door. A wedge of dim light moved across the floor, revealing the two sleeping girls in their beds. Sandy was lying on her stomach with her arms and hands under her with her head turned to the right; Marie was flat on her back, breathing quietly through her partially open mouth. They heard not a sound. Only half covered by sheets, Sandy's bare back gleamed pale in the faint light, Marie, with the sheet bunched between her legs, lay with one knee bent, her uncovered leg flung out to the side. Her soft milk white inner thigh lay open in light and shadow. They hadn't moved since being observed on the monitor downstairs. For a brief moment, they both looked serenely beautiful in their deep slumber. Then the special units moved in and the ugliness began.

Sandy was having a terrible nightmare. The most terrible thing about it was, she couldn't wake up. She dreamt men entered their room while they slept. One straddled her waist after the sheet had been stripped from her bare legs and buttocks, revealing her full bottom cheeks scarcely concealed by brief cotton knickers. Sitting in the small of her back while his knees and legs tightly clasped her sides from shoulders to hips, preventing her from extricating her arms from under her, she struggled to escape from under his weight. Sandy clenched her bottom cheeks, bent one leg up at the knee and raised her head in astonished disbelief. Opening her mouth to scream merely permitted a large rubber ball to be forcefully jammed between her teeth, holding her jaw wide open with her lips distended around its bulbous girth in a rubber stifled open mouthed scream. She managed a burbling sputtering protest around the mouth-filling ball before its strap was tightened at the nape of her neck, forcing it deeper and more solidly between her palate and tongue. She mewled piteously around the huge oral intrusion, her lower lip distended in prominent accommodation to its distressing size. The leather strap circling her head just under her ears pressed into her cheeks firmly while forcing the corners of her mouth back slightly where it held the ball securely in place. As the remaining straps of her head harness were fitted and buckled around her head by one man while another held her still by her pony tail, the rest of the unit were busily fastening cuffs to each of her ankles. Next, she felt her legs pulled apart and thick wide leather belts encircle both her thighs near her groin. A brow band around her forehead and the back of her head tightened, holding a pair of straps in an inverted Y-shape from the cheek straps just behind her ball gag to the bridge of her nose where they linked to a rising strap all three joined by a small steel ring between her eyes. Her right ankle was drawn up, pressing her calf against the back of her thigh until her heel touched her buttock. Sandy heard a metallic click. When her ankle was released, she could not straighten her leg. The cuffs at her thigh and ankle held by a double spring clip between D-rings in both leather strictures held her leg doubled up behind her with her knee sharply bent.

In concert with even more thin straps being pulled tight around her head and face as her left leg joined her right in doubled up restraint, the man straddling her back rolled to one side, lifting his opposite leg to free one of Sandy's arms. Pulled from under her, held out straight to the side a pair of cuffs similar to those on her legs fastened tightly around first her wrist and then high on her arm near her shoulder. With two men holding one arm, Sandy was unable to resist as these cuffs too were clipped together, holding her hands helplessly to her shoulders with her elbows acutely bent. First, one arm, then the other. Sandy floundered on the bed, arms and legs rendered useless, helplessly bound as the last strap and buckle around her head and face was pulled tight and made fast. When they released her pony tail and let her head fall back to the bed she was in the same position they found her but for her doubled up arms and legs and the myriad dark straps surrounding her head and face. A large dark ball partially protruded from her open, but silent, mouth. She watched in the dim light as Marie's throat latch was pulled tight and buckled under her jaw. Somewhere in the midst of the activity and commotion Sandy had realised why she couldn't wake from the nightmare. It may have been when she heard the activity from Marie's bed and the gurgling futile objections of her friend as she tried to scream around the huge rubber ball being strapped into her gaping mouth. In any case, she became startlingly aware of why she couldn't wake up. She was awake. This was really happening to both of them.