Destined for Algeria Ch. 06

Tess filled the top out better than Ingrid but this was no time for comparing looks. With the denim shorts eventually fastened Tess picked up the smelly canvas bag and paused for a second.

"Are you ready?" Tess asked.

"Are you?" Ingrid replied. "Then let's do this."

"Ingrid hugged Tess tightly and thanked her again for helping her." "This has to look authentic." Ingrid said.

"Lay on your back like I did this morning and fasten the cuffs loosely above your head so that you can remove them if you need to. I'll leave the key here on this mattress out of reach but you shouldn't need it anyway. I'll put this thing over your head, tuck it under your chin to muffle your screaming but leave the drawstring loose enough for you to pull off.

Tess lay back on the bed and closed the cuffs only a couple of clicks around her own wrists and over the bar across the head of the bed.

As Ingrid approached her with the bag for her head to hide her face. Tess wished her the best of luck.

"Thank you." She replied before taking away Tess's sight.

Nervously she walked up onto the deck and studdied the situation with the men who were now all occupied with their own individual tasks as they approached the shore.

Ingrid looked at the coastline still about thirty minutes away and began to shake.

Keeping her head down she strolled to the back of the boat to look for her escape route.

Despite the distractions the captain innocently approached Ingrid from behind and asked "She's down there. You have the key?"

Ingrid looked around to see his unsuspecting gaze, beaming directly into her face, staring back, surrounded by the fur lining of the jacket's hood.

Ingrid froze.

"The key." He repeated. "Give it to me."

Without speaking she patted the back pockets of her jeans through the jacket, turned with her head down and replied. "Shit. Sorry."

Still looking away from the captain, she hurried to walk past him towards the middle of the boat where she could climb back down and retrieve the key from the bed where she had left it. "Two minutes." She said, brushing past him.

"I'm coming with you." He replied.

FUCK! She thought. "No. No. I'll be two minutes." She repeated trying to emphasise the lack of need for him to leave his important post just to accompany her in collecting the key.

"You need to get your things." He told her. "I'll take it from here."

His English was legible but nowhere as good as Musser's. She hoped that by keeping her words to a minimum he wouldn't recognise the difference between her Norwegian and Tess's Welsh accents.

"She is secure." Ingrid told him turning her head slightly in his direction as he followed closely behind.

"Hurry. Hurry." He said. "Less talking, more hurry."

She had no choice other than to warn Tess that her and the captain were about to enter the cabin.

Hearing the sound of the hatch opening so soon after Ingrid had left, Tess knew that something had gone wrong.

There had not been enough time for Ingrid to get undressed and into the water with her float yet and so protesting to whoever approached her would jeopardise Ingrid's chances of escape.

"It's me and the captain here." Ingrid announced loudly and clearly to fill Tess in on the current situation.

Tess lay absolutely still not knowing what to do or say.

She heard the captain say thank you as Ingrid passed him the key from the bed and then to her horror she felt the roughness of his hands as they reached above her head and tightened both sides of the handcuffs.

Satisfied that her wrists were secure he moved on to the canvas bag over her head. Without raising the bag to have a look, he took the drawstring from around her neck and pulled it tight enough so that the bag couldn't be removed by her hands which were now locked close to the top of it.

Ingrid frantically packed Tess's shoulder bag as if it were her own and headed for the ladder, encouraging the captain to leave the prisoner alone.

"She's secure enough." Ingrid told him. "We should go now." She pressed him for an immediate reaction before something else went wrong with this blatant escape attempt from under his nose.

Ingrid slid Tess's phone into her jeans pocket and climbed the ladder with Tess's bag of personal belongings over her left shoulder.

Once on deck Ingrid stood at the very front of the boat facing in their direction of travel, never once looking back towards the rest of the crew for fear of being recognised. The last twenty minutes of the boat reaching its lonesome concreate wall against the shore felt like a lifetime.

Only minutes from dusk Ingrid could see three cars in the distance scattered around the carpark of what looked to be a closed marketplace with lots of outdoor small storage type buildings in darkness to the right.

Seeing three men exit one of the cars and walk directly towards the boat, she quickly took out Tess's phone and pretended to call Ally who was supposed to be meeting Tess.

With the phone inside her hood she waved in the direction of the furthest vehicle away from the three approaching men as if to be holding a conversation with an occupant inside it.

Walking swiftly and confidently off the gang plank away from the boat she half turned back towards the crew and shouted "Thank you." to them with the back of her hand waving high up in the air.

Turning right she jogged a route along the shore line to gain as much distance as she could from the three, darkly dressed men, purposefully heading towards the boat, clearly on a mission.

Now running, but not fast enough to raise suspicion of how fast her head actually wanted to sprint for her life, she headed towards the first of the darkened buildings in front of her.

Nether Ally or Ingrid heard the muffled screams of help coming from Tess, as she was ushered under duress into the people carrier, to be taken under a mistaken identity to Gus's complex, possibly for interrogation.

This first building in front of Ingrid would normally be eerie in the failing light but her adrenaline voided any fear as she found plenty of stalls, steps and rubbish bins where she might be able to hide.

Changing heading to run diagonally in a direction away from the sea and the boat she quickly ran on to the next corrugated shed type building finding it to be almost identical to the first.

A window up a narrow flight of stairs looked out in the direction of the boat she had just escaped. She observed from the safety of distance and growing darkness the three men leaving with a forth person being frogmarched by one either side back towards the vehicle they arrived in.

Ingrid felt like collapsing on the floor and sobbing with guilt as the men drove away, taking the beautiful friendly Tess who she'd sacrificed by throwing into her own nightmare of torture.

Although the gangplank crashing back onto the deck happened far away it attracted her attention. The engine noise then confirmed that Musser and his crew were powering the boat, well on their way.

A slamming of a car door took her concentration back towards the scene between the two large sheds in front of her.

A man appeared into view and stopped at the driver's window of a small van parked furthermost forward of the two remaining vehicles in the carpark.

The man pointed in a direction in front of the market buildings and had a very short conversation with the driver of the van, then walked back out of sight again.

Ingrid could hear herself breathing as she watched the on goings in silence, waiting for the right moment to make her next move.

At full volume the musical ringtone screamed out for all to hear from inside her pocket, making her instinctively want to silence the phone by smashing it onto the ground to prevent it from giving her position away.

By covering the speaker on the phone and ducking down blow the window she looked at the name 'Ally Babbs' on the screen flash away as with the muted ringtone continuing at a more acceptable level.

As the headlights swung past the van indicating that the car behind was leaving, she watched the driver climb out and begin walking towards where the boat had moored, looking confused as he looked all around him.

He then walked over towards the first of the metal shed structures, looking up and down at his phone as he disappeared from Ingrid's view.

"Shit." she said quietly to herself.

She ran back down the stairs, heading towards the depth of cover provided by the numerous other, steel sheeted sheds, in front of her.

With silence being of the uppermost importance she crept efficiently from her building to the next one, only to have her skill of her stealth compromised at the worst possible time.

The familiar screaming from within her pocket echoed from the sides of the structures around her, propagating out in all directions as she fumbled to stop it.

"Tessy baby." came a voice from uncomfortably close by. The phone continued to ring as Ingrid used one of the side buttons to correctly lower its volume to mute, once and for all.

"Babbs. It's me Ally." The voice called out again. "Look I'm sorry. I fell asleep."

Ingrid froze, not knowing what to do next. She knew that Tess's boyfriend Ally could help her, but possibly wouldn't if he knew the truth.

"Tess baby." He called again. "I've been driving for thirty hours non stop and I was out for the count when your boat pulled in. Did you not see my van?" he said, into the empty market place.

Because of his fiancé running and hiding Ally had to consider that she may have had time over the last two days to realise that she couldn't trust him and that she maybe scared of disappearing in a foreign country.

"Baby. Are you ok? He asked.

Ingrid stood still breathing silently as Ally's footsteps drew ever closer. She knew Ally would be her best hope at getting to safety but what could she tell him.

As soon as the light from his phone illuminated her feet, his brain began processing what stood before him. The jeans were correct but the curves inside them were less than he remembered.

Moving up he illuminated the whites of her teeth before the timid stare of two stunningly beautiful blue eyes reflected the flashlight from his phone back at him.

The hypnotic vision blinked at him from within the confines of the familiar fur lined hood he'd purchased only two days prior.

Slightly confused by the face looking back at him he asked her "Where's Tess?"

"You have to help me." She replied. "Tess has been kidnapped."

"What?" he said with a slightly higher pitch than before.

"She's been kidnapped by the people on the boat." She told him. "They tried to take both of us but I managed to escape." Looking down and pointing to herself with both hands she then stated the obvious to Ally "These are Tess's clothes. They took all our clothes and these were all I could find as I ran from them."

"What do you mean kidnapped?" he asked in shock that he'd trusted these people with his own, precious 'Apprentice Servant'. "Where is she?"

"I don't know. I jumped overboard and left her on the boat." She told him offloading herself of any involvement in her disappearance. "They kept us handcuffed with sacks over our heads."

Ally began to try and make her story fit in with his evidence so far. "But I spoke to her only a few hours ago and she told me that she'd be here earlier than expected."

"They had guns and must have forced her to say anything." Ingrid lied further.

"And how come you and your clothes dry if you jumped overboard?" he asked.

"Erm. I used a life ring to float this bag with the clothes." she told him, proud of her quick thinking. "Can we get out of here? They might come back for us."

He wasn't buying any of her story and needed to interrogate this imposter further but without frightening her into silence. With his phone still in hand he scrolled back to the numbers he'd been contacted on by the traffickers, only to confirm them to be unavailable.

"You're right." He said pretending to play along with her. "Let's get away from here."

He touched her arm to direct her towards his van and walked quickly along side her until they reached the passenger door.

"Come on. Get in." he told her. "I know somewhere safe."

Not suspecting anything wrong with Ally she willingly climbed in to be taken to safety.

"It's about three hours away in Algeria so where going to need fuel." He explained.

The words of three hours and a different country reassured Ingrid, confirming her safety at the hands of Ally, without reason to be running to the authorities.

She wanted to contact her husband Kristofer but couldn't remember the telephone numbers of any of her friends or relatives.

"I need to go online and contact my husband?" she said, holding Tess's phone in her hand. "He'll be worrying out of his mind."

"No. Not here." He told her politely taking possession of the phone he'd bought for Tess two days ago.

Still driving he entered Tess's pin number and switched the phone off. He then reached for his own and did the same just in case somebody had a way of tracking either of the two numbers.

The fuel stop was only brief but long enough for Ally to stock up on food for the next morning.

Noticeable red marks on Ingrid's wrists prompted Ally to ask, "How did you escape from your handcuffs and not Tess?"

"I spat on my wrists to lubricate them and slipped them off over my hands." She replied.

"And why couldn't Tess do the same?" he asked.

"We had hoods on." She told him.

After this comment about spitting on her hand with a bag over her head, Ally shut down the direct interrogation. Something wasn't right. He decided that he wouldn't let her out of his sight, until he and Tess were reunited.

"It must have been awful." He said now going on the sympathetic side of questioning. "What happened to you?"

Ingrid explained how she'd been minding her own business in her garden at home in Norway when two men in suits abducted her and took her away in a van before loading her onto the boat.

"Well what do they want? And why you?" he asked.

She mentioned about her husband having connections with a diamond dealer and that she suspected it had something to do with him.

The accusation convinced Ally that she knew more than she wanted to say.

"So what do they want with Tess?" he said.

"I don't know." She answered.

It had been a long time since Ally had visited the family's inherited blockhouse in Algeria but as far as he could remember, it had minimal furnishings, all worthless items, left to age inside the security of the solid high walls the building still boasted. He remembered it had a wood burning stove, beds, a table and some chairs along with kitchen utensils.

Switching his mind to what possessions he had with him, he knew that he had enough to imprison her himself and interrogate her to find out exactly what she knew. He had rope, tape, the necklace he'd planned to use on Tess and many varieties of liquid resin.

"Did the people let you speak to anyone on the phone earlier?" he asked.

"No. I didn't know anything about it." She told him.

"So who exactly knows where you are?

"Nobody. Not even the kidnappers now." She laughed.

Hours later, the clicking of the indicators and the slowing turning of the van onto the slight up hill of a less even terrain, woke Ingrid.

A quick look at her surroundings meant nothing to her. Like all other signs, the one in front of them had its header written in Arabic, with the word TIOUT underneath and an arrow pointing straight on. This failed to register in her mind, even though it signalled for Ally to turn off, up an inclined track, towards a baron area of rocky desert.

"We're almost here." He told her.

Eventually the high walls of Ally's family's historic fortified blockhouse on the horizon, blended into the backdrop of the Sahara's rocky mountains like a feature, growing larger and larger as they drew closer.

"Is that where we're heading?" she asked in hope.

"Yea." He replied. "It's been in my family for years but me or my brother have never had the time, patience or interest to do anything with it."

With no defined method of incarcerating her yet, he casually pulled up outside, continuing as normal, confident that a convenient time and appropriate window of opportunity would arise.

Stepping out of his van he began purposely scratching around in the rocky soil until he uncovered a long metal bent wire hook.

Using a well-practised manoeuvre from his childhood, he climbed the gates by wedging the toes of his feet sideways in the gap where the gate's hinges met the wall. Reaching over the gate with the hook, he fished a key attached to a string from somewhere only he and his brother knew about, before jumping back down to the ground again.

Ingrid watched him cautiously open the first of the two gates, looking up above himself for falling debris or even sleeping animals that may have nested above, in the long absence of human activity.

Although Ingrid and her husband had a large house back at home in Norway, a comparison could not be made to the grand solidity of this structure in front of her.

Inside the entrance of the gates, huge walls surrounded a small courtyard, which led the way to the front of the main building that the fortifications were originally built to protect.

The scene from her perspective standing inside the historic fortress-like walls gave her an overwhelming sense of security. If one could ever imagine a safe place to hide away from any pursuer then here it stood.

The signal tower's feature of a thick vertical wooden post sticking up out of the ground supporting a much thinner flagpole reaching even higher seemed insignificant as her passing glance continued to pan around towards the main house.

In the moonlight she could make out the shape of a metal bared gate across a brick built outhouse at the far right hand side of the main building. Next to this and at the same height she noticed a set of solid wooden gates just before the roofline became much higher, supported by the wall of the main house.

Ingrid followed Ally to the main door, pausing behind him as he carefully opened it and confidently walked inside.

"Welcome to you new home." He said casually pulling Tess's phone from his pocket. He removed the network sim card so that it couldn't be traced, then turned on the power.

Ingrid laughed at his welcome home comment and felt comfortable in the presence of a man who could retain a sense of humour at such a time as this.

"I'll bring the van in before anybody sees it." He told her, then walked back out of the house and through the gates. He brought the van into the court yard and parked it directly facing in through the glassless windows, to illuminate the inside of the room where Ingrid stood.

By this time Tess's phone had powered up so he took a moment to look at its activity to hopefully shed some light on her disappearance. It didn't take a senior investigator to find a message with an alert tag saying MESSAGE FAILED.

In her earlier attempts at helping Ingrid, Tess had tried to send a message to Ally from the boat but having no service the phone eventually gave up trying and held it in her outbox, marked as FAILED.

The lengthily text explained everything Ingrid had told Tess about Gus the diamond dealer who she had ripped off. She'd written the address of Gus's complex in Marrakesh as being the most likely intended destination and asked Ally if they could help her new friend Ingrid.

Frustrated by his discovery he left the engine running and flicked the headlights to full beam then ran to quickly close the large entrance gates, giving them privacy from the outside world.

On his way back towards the house Ally detoured via the large wooden post to reacquaint himself with it after not seeing it for so long.