Mystery Girl

Then it was over and the crowd fell silent, but little did I know that my torment was only beginning.

They led her to the edge of the stage, and much as they had with the previous two girls they handed her down into the crowd.

But they didn't hand her back to me!

Fighting my way to the point twenty feet further down the stage where Helen had disappeared into a flurry of welcoming hands, and expecting the worst, I was surprised to see my wife being carried away by an extremely large man. He barged his way through the throng, all keen to grope whatever part of her body they could reach as he pushed by, but none of them making any attempt to stop them.

My attempts to follow them were not so easy.

I was probably further behind them than when I'd started when I saw him, her long bare legs with her high heels hanging out one side of him, and her long blonde tresses the other, as he disappear through a large door with the letters VIP marked clearly above it.

By the time I got there, I found there to be two very large and unfriendly looking thuggish types standing there clearly guarding the door. My efforts to pass them did not even warrant any comment, simply a push in my chest, which sent me reeling back.

I can't begin to describe my anguish.

I caused a fuss and got another shove for my efforts, somewhat harder this time, totally frustrated by my inability to explain that they had my wife back there. To my relief some more human looking guy came up, ordered the two hulks off me and informed me in almost perfect English that the VIP was a reserved area.

I explained to him, blubbered really, what my problem was, almost crying with relief that someone was at last listening to me.

"The beautiful American lady is really your wife?" He asked when I ground to a halt.

I assured him that she was, and he gave me a look that was strangely kind but full of pity. It was a look that sent icicles through my insides.

"I'll see what I can do," he promised me. "But there are some very powerful men in there this evening."

"But she's my wife," I protested.

"This isn't England or America," he replied simply, silencing me, and leaving me standing there as he tapped in a code on the door and disappeared, my half effort to follow him blocked off by the two door-guards.

The next twenty minutes seemed like hours as I stood there, with the two thugs glaring at me, seemingly pissed off that they couldn't just eject me.

When the man came back out he had an unfathomable air about him, and he took my arm, assuring me that everything would work itself out, and led me through a nearby door, where to my surprise, instead of finding Helen as I'd expected, found myself outside of the club and in a narrow alley.

"Oh my God," I thought. "They're going to kill me."

"Hopefully not," the man smiled at me, making me realise that I'd spoken my thoughts aloud. "Though it's still a possibility."

"Where's my wife?" I demanded displaying a confidence that I hardly felt.

"Safe," he replied with a smile. "Occupied for the moment but in no danger."

"I want to see her," I insisted.

"She's in no danger, but that doesn't mean you aren't," he reminded me of the earlier threat. "Here's your taxi. I'll try to get her to telephone you later on when she's free."

"You can't do this," I shouted. "I'm a British cit..."

Which is as far as I got, finding myself being lifted bodily off my feet by someone behind me, trundled down the alley and bundled into a taxi, receiving an elbow in the stomach for my troubles. If the punch was to keep my quiet then it succeeded with a margin to spare, as I curled up in pain, clutching my tummy as the taxi pulled away.

A beaten man, I allowed the taxi driver to help me up to my hotel room without complaint. Once there he offered me a drink of water, which I readily accepted and the next thing I remember was waking up sometime the next morning. I guess there was something in it.

I got my call, but it was short and sweet.

"Things have changed honey," Helen told me over the phone. "Better you catch the flight home this evening."

"I'm not going home without you Helen," I vowed.

"That's not going to happen Honey. If you love me then for both our sakes just go home and forget me."

"I can't do that," I cried out.

"You've no option honey," Helen sobbed back. "If you love me then please do as I say. I love you honey and I swear I'll never forget you."

At that point the telephone connection was cut, and I got the feeling that it wasn't her that cut it. Before I could think what to do next, almost by order, my bedroom door opened and the taxi driver from the previous night walked in accompanied by another guy, not unlike the two thugs from the club. Protests were of no use and a few hours later I found myself escorted onto the plane, and on my way back to the UK.

-----

At this point, Mr Smith broke off from the story he'd been relating to take a drink from the glass he'd been holding. He had visibly shrunk in stature from the confident man that I had met such a short time ago, his eyes watering up as he fought to keep his tears back.

His recount of the events had been unbelievably graphic, even down to the words that had been exchanged, almost as if he'd memorized them. The poor soul must have relived the outrage time and time again in his mind and his nightmares to have been able to do that, and I struggled to imagine how awful it must have been for him.

"So what happened when you got back here?" I asked him gently, once he seemed to be recovering his composure. "What did the authorities do?"

"Not a lot really. There wasn't much they could do," Smith replied, his haunted look belying his casual answer. "It was outside of our police's jurisdiction and I ended up dealing with the foreign office."

"And they couldn't help?"

"They tried, or seemed to," he went on, his voice sounding strangely hollow. "I don't think they wanted to upset the newly emerging regime over there, and when a letter from Helen arrived stating that she wasn't being held against her will, then they were more than happy to drop it."

"Then what?"

"I made a fuss of course," he sighed resignedly. "Eventually I managed to persuade them to get the British Console over there to meet up with her, but all I got back was that Helen was not there under duress. I even tried the American Embassy, but they were even less helpful. Just didn't want to know."

"Tough," I commented absently, not knowing how to offer him any consolation.

"I tried to fly back over there. It's not that long ago, but back then you still needed a visa to get in, and wonder of wonders, my applications never came back."

"So now she's with this guy Edin Pjanic," I moved the conversation along, as much to ease the poor sod's heartbreak as to find out more.

"So it seems," he sighed. "I heard nothing of her for nearly a year and tried, hard as it was, to get on with my life, and then suddenly she's there on the front pages."

"You mean when the American President went over to meet their new president," I encouraged him, remembering the occasion well, and the flurry of speculation as to who the hell was the willowy, blonde beauty with the American accent that stole the show, who was in the welcoming party.

"It was her," he confirmed, knowing that I'd know what he was talking about. Damn it, no reporter, journalist or for that matter 'Joe Public', wouldn't have recalled the avalanche of photos of her that dominated the news all that week. Nobody would forget in a hurry how the mini skirted seductress had put every other woman there in the shade, and how flustered the American President himself had been when she'd turned her attention onto him.

"Then she seemed to disappear for a while," I commented, trying to recall some of the weird and wonderful speculations as to what had became of her. Everything from the President having run off with her, to the Russian's having abducted her.

"More than six months with nothing," he confirmed. "Then a brief appearance at a banquet for our Prime Minister, a handful of other appearances, and then the announcement that she was the new Mrs. Pjanic."

"An announcement that took the world by storm," I added.

"Indeed," Smith confirmed, seemingly having recovered his spirits somewhat. "And ever since the world's press have been trying every trick in the book to find out where she came from."

"That and her measurements," I mumbled wryly, recalling that the Sun and the Mirror had expressed more interest in her bust size than her origins. A comment that bought a shrug of acceptance from Smith.

"So are you telling me that only you and now me, know who she really is?" I asked when he kept his silence.

"Not at all," he replied, smiling for the first time maybe since he'd started his story. "My Government know and I imagine the Americans know as well, but they don't want the whole world to know that yet."

"Why?"

"Well that's where you come in," he trumped me with.

"Me?" I asked in surprise.

"Well do you want to meet with the so-called Mrs Pjanic or not?" he grinned at me.

Yes, the bugger grinned at me.

------

The things we then discussed, even at this later stage, I'm not prepared to go into in too much detail. Suffice to say that our Government, the Western world even, were getting increasingly worried about the present leaders over there, and in particular the corrupt influence of one Mr Edin Pjanic. They were particularly concerned about dealings he was having with President Putin of Russia, and though I didn't know it at the time, they, whoever 'they' were, were even more worried that Pjanic was about to double-cross Putin.

The last thing the world needed at that moment was a pissed off Mr Putin throwing his weight around.

Helen, Mrs Pjanic, Mrs Smith or whatever her name was, though of course in reality it was none of these, had information that she was only prepared to pass on face to face to a person she felt she could trust, and in her infinite wisdom from what she'd seen of me on the TV channels, she'd chosen me!

I saw quite clearly that I had been set up as I suspected at the beginning. Even my boss at Channel ... (Ooops nearly gave the game away), pointing me in the direction of this investigation could have/must have been involved, even though later he vehemently denied it. Sure, just like he was never involved in the telephone tapping scandal.

"Is my life in danger if I go over there?" I asked eventually.

"Could be," Smith answered so casually that it was frightening, but by then I was hooked. Hook line and sinker actually, seeing this as the story of stories that I'd perhaps been chasing all my working life.

-----

'British Airways flight BA 5342 to Warsaw is now boarding at gate 34', came the announcement over the tannoy, and don't worry, I haven't given the game away, as this was to be a stopping off point for me. It was somewhere for me to confuse any watchers as to the purpose of my travels, and the sort of trip that I was well used to enduring in my job.

It was also somewhere that I was due to make my first contact with the elusive Helen, as I'd got to think of her, and a few hours later, still bemused that this was actually happening to me, I was sat in my hotel room waiting to be put through to her.

"Mrs Pjanic?" I started when I heard her make the connection. "I'm ..."

"I know who you are," she interrupted me. "Meet me in the basement bar at the hotel Imperial tomorrow night at seven thirty. I believe you know where it is."

"I can make that," I confirmed, making a quick mental calculation as to flight times etc.

"Fine," she replied and cut the connection.

Blimey!

-------

I reported in to Smith as pre-arranged, booked my flight for early the following morning, and the next evening found me descending the steps down to the elegant basement bar of one of the best hotels in the country, my heart beating wildly and wondering if I would ever be walking back up them under my own steam. The bar was busy but not crowded, and there was no sign of Helen so I took my place at the bar and ordered myself a Vodka Cocktail, grateful as ever that the world now seems to speak English.

Seven thirty passed, my pulse rate soared and every man in the bar suddenly became a state assassin.

Fuck, what the hell was I doing there?

Then a slight hush fell over place, but soon recovered, the clientele thinking themselves too sophisticated to be phased by the arrival of anyone, no matter how beautiful or infamous. Looking round towards her, I was surprised that she ignored me totally, and took a seat at the bar a few feet down from me, side on, giving me the chance to observe her, exactly the same as every man in there would be doing if they could get away with it.

Helen in the flesh as it were was indeed a beauty, and the photos I'd seen of her hardly did her justice. Tallish, maybe pushing six foot in her high spiky heels, dressed in a tight, very short, clingy evening dress, designed to emphasize and even exaggerate quite how long and perfect her shapely legs were, and which moulded itself round those exquisite pert breasts that Smith had described so expressively.

I glanced around, trying not to make it obvious, wondering what the hell was going on. I've been around a bit, travelled a lot and stayed in some weird places, but was feeling so far out of my depth that I had difficulty keeping my hands steady.

"Everything OK sir," the barman asked me, which was strange considering how long it had taken to get his attention when I first came in.

"Certainly sir. I'll see to that," he then surprised me with, considering that I hadn't said a word to him.

Even more surprised to see him go to straight to the collection of bottles and start making up a drink that I certainly hadn't ordered.

Confused when he then took the drink straight to Helen.

Then it clicked.

It clicked what he, or rather they were up to when Helen took the drink, exchanged a few words with the barman and then spun her delectable bottom round on her seat to face me, held her drink up and nodded her thanks.

Out of my depth? Frighteningly so and in danger of drowning. Drowning in those limpid watery blue eyes that were threatening to envelop me.

I nodded my head back to her, but it wasn't till she raised her eyebrows questioningly that I had the gumption to make my move and take the seat next to her. Her shear perfection up that close took my breath away. Not a blemish, lovely silky skin, the opening down the front of her dress, which I'd thought quite modest, gaping open dangerously when she turned and offering tantalizing glimpses of the soft swell of her bra-less breasts, somehow magically and frustratingly managing to keep her nipples hidden from view. With the exciting and outrageously long expanse of bare sun-kissed thigh that was also bared before me, it was difficult to know where to look. All that and the most exquisitely beautiful face that I could ever remember seeing up this close, topped off by that flowing mass of slinky blonde hair that had become her trade mark.

Then she leaned forward, twirling the stem of her glass between her fingers before slowly putting it down, quite deliberately taking her time, her smile inviting me to drop my gaze to the ever more gaping opening of her dress, her eyes daring me to do so.

I lost.

She won.

I groaned silently at the perfection of the hard nipple that tipped her glorious breast.

She giggled sexily, at how easily she had manipulated me.

She had me where she wanted me before we'd spoken a word.

No wonder Smith had been heartbroken at losing her. I was already wondering how I'd ever be able to let her go when our business was finished.

"Hi," she opened with in her clearly American accent, which was just as well because I found myself temporarily tongue-tied. "My name's Helen. Thanks for the drink. Are you here on business?"

"Sort of," I mumbled, clearing my throat. "I'm a journalist and just visiting for a day or two."

"Oh how interesting," Helen came back, for all the world as if she had no idea who I was, or even more unlikely that I wouldn't know who she was. "What sort of things do you write about?"

We continued to chat about nothing in particular, much the way a couple who'd just met might do when the guy is trying to see if the girl is going to be available, and the girl is deciding whether or not she wants to be. It was hard for me to concentrate in such circumstances, much harder with such a stunningly lovely woman that close. Her subtle perfume alone was intoxicating, and the way her tight dress rode even higher up her thighs suffocating. And of course every time she leant forward that wonderfully designed dress gaped open, affording me further heart-stopping glimpses of those plump little breasts, and a few times the opportunity to observe again quite how hard and erect her nipples were.

She knew what was happening of course and knew the effect she was having on me. Her dress was designed for deliberate and calculated exposure, and her body could have been designed for just that purpose.

Her behaviour was outrageous.

God, it was the essence of what dreams are made of.

I'm really not sure which of the two of us was enjoying it the most.

"Ready if you are," she suddenly said out of the blue, standing up from her stool and tugging her dress back down to where it should have been, my eyes blinking in astonishment at the quick peep at where her panties should have been, almost unable to believe that I'd really seen what I thought I'd just seen.

"Look happier," she whispered to me as she took my hand and started to lead me out of the bar.

"Oh I'm happy enough," I gulped back.

"Then look like a guy who's going to get lucky tonight," Helen giggled back.

Shit!

I honestly can't remember whether I did go back up those steps under my own steam.

-----

Once out of the bar Helen put her finger to my lips indicating that I should keep quiet, or more exactly that I shouldn't ask questions. The pair of us giggled for want of a better expression across the lobby to the lifts, both ignoring the stares we were earning by our behaviour and me wondering how my hand ended up so firmly on her curvy bottom. Wondering as well I might add, at how any woman's ass could feel so bloody wonderful.

She pushed me into the empty lift, pushed a button and even before the doors had closed, plastered her lithe, luscious, slim body up against mine, her arms round my neck and her soft lips hard up against mine.

"What's this all about? Why are..." I started to ask when we came up for air, but she cut me off, whispering to me to be careful what I said. Warning me that there were cameras and microphones everywhere and to follow her lead.

I had no problem with that!

Once in the hotel room, and no, I'd no idea who's room it was, I was delighted to follow her lead again as she sat me down and proceeded to unzip her dress and slowly slip it off, the memory of Smith's story flashing through my brain as my eyes confirmed what I'd suspected all along and that Helen hadn't bothered with any underwear that evening.

Wow!

Imagine all the most beautiful super models in the world rolled into one, add a few top actresses, a selection of the prettiest female athletes, and a Miss World or two for good measure. Then take all their clothes off!

Stunning!

"Come and get it tiger," she chuckled and suddenly I didn't need any further invitation, any lingering thoughts about why we were supposed to be there quickly forgotten, as I slipped my arm round her trim bare waist and led her over to the awaiting bed.

"You're on camera," she reminded me, whispering quietly in my ear as she leant over me to undo my shirt. "Put a good show on. We can talk more freely in the shower afterwards."