The Slave Market of Mucar (2 page)

grains of sand in their faces, so that the slavers and camel drivers pulled their head- dresses round their faces.

The shadows of the camels were long, thin silhouettes on the stippled edges of the dunes and the high, lonely cry of a muezzin calling from a tower in the city came to their ears. Even the big man was silent and affected by the weird beauty of the scene until they presently came to the principal gate of the city, which was guarded by sullen, bearded men with ancient Martini-Henry rifles in their dirty hands.

Zadok spurred his horse forward and made themselves known to the guards, who were strangers to him.

Mucar was one of the most heavily guarded of the desert cities and its trade was not advertised to the outside world. Had the caravan not been accredited and expected the slavers might have been massacred on the spot or, at best, turned back into the desert again. Even the man with the cropped head looked with respect at the hard-bitten faces of the sentries as the gates were unbolted for them to pass.

He had now donned a large black mask which covered the upper half of his heavily jowled features, and he would keep this on while he was in the public places of the city. He swiftly made for a tavern where he was known and expected, while Zadok whipped the weary band on to the great central markets where the auction would begin at midnight.

The slaver was back well before then, in rare good humor; with him were other slavers from the far parts of the desert, who were his drinking companions. They strode up and down the stalls in the private parts of the market which had been put aside for the slavers' use. Here the wretched human wares which would soon be on view were meagerly fed and rested until they could put on a show of simulated vitality when their turn came to go under the hammer. The big man laughed with satisfaction as the nude forms of five fine-looking Circassian women- the only females in his group-cowered under the buckets of water emptied over them by the grinning Arabs.

He sold one of the girls, a particularly desirable and nubile beauty of eighteen, to a colleague at a good price. He was in high good humor when it was his turn to present his wares soon after 1:00 AM

His was the second batch of the night and prices were warming up. He got better than average prices for the men and the women sold for sums which even he felt to be satisfactory. This was saying a great deal for a character compounded of ninety percent greed and ten percent self-interest. The big man was humming under his breath as he carried his clinking leather bags from the rostrum to a private stone-walled room at the rear of the market.

Gold was the only currency in use here-gold coins, glittering and jingling through the fingers and on to the cold surface of the stone table lit by the flickering flare of two hurricane lamps. Zadok's eyes gleamed as he watched the master count out the ever-growing piles. The addition was finished at last and the slaver pushed his pith helmet to the back of his head and filled his whiskey glass. He poured another for Zadok and the two men drank silently.

"To increasing prosperity," he said. He smacked his lips and refilled their glasses. The whiskey was provided by the city of Mucar, so he could afford to be generous.

Zadok stretched himself and arched his thin form languorously on the rough wooden bench opposite his companion. He wondered idly where all the slaves went once they had cleared the city. Some back to the desert tribes undoubtedly; others to hidden oases or mountain castles where no white man could guess their fate, much less interfere with the age-old trade. By dawn the inhabitants of Mucar would go about

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their business once again and no one-especially those in authority-would ever guess that an illegal auction had taken place during the small hours of the night.

The big man yawned and scratched beneath his mask.

"I'm tired," he said. "But I suppose I'd better see Prince Selim before I sleep."

Zadok nodded, getting up from the bench.

"It's been a good night's work, Saldan," he said.

The big man snarled. Purple showed on his cheeks beneath the mask. He stepped forward, the muscles on his forearms quivering. Zadok staggered as Saldan's hand struck. The crack of the blow sounded like a pistol shot in the quietness of the room. Zadok fell against the wall. His face showed an ugly yellow where Saldan's open palm had cut across it. Blood trickled slowly from the corner of his mouth.

"Fool!" the big man hissed, his breath whistling through his mouth. "How many times have I told you never to use my name in public?"

Hatred flickered in Zadok's eyes as he stepped forward.

"I'm sorry," he gasped. "It won't happen again."

"Just see that it doesn't," said the slaver grimly, picking up the loaded bags on the table before him.

Zadok passed his hand across his face; it came away scarlet. He went silently out into the night.

It was almost dawn when Saldan's white horse clattered into the courtyard of a heavily guarded villa in the Old City. The moonlight glinted on swords and pistol barrels as guards came forward to take his horse.

They relaxed when they saw who it was and one went running on ahead, opening the great iron-bound doors and bounding up the marble steps. Saldan knew that by the time he had reached the ornate mosaic-floored hall of Prince Selim's residence, his arrival would have already been noted by the ruler of Mucar.

His footsteps echoed hollowly through the corridors as he made his way towards the old man's private apartments. Nubians, heavily armed and with naked scimitars in their hands, stood before the entrance to the women's quarters.

Saldan advanced over a floor of the blue and gold inlaid tiling of exquisite beauty as a dark-skinned body servant bowed deferentially before him.

"Prince Selim will see you now, sir," he said softly. "I'll bet he will," Saldan said sardonically to himself as he jingled the money bags contemptuously, elbowing his way past the guard and down the room. It was a strange and exotic chamber, lit by small oil lamps of weird and bizarre shapes, suspended on chains from the slatted ceiling and which cast shimmering bars of light into every corner.

Prince Selim was a man of about seventy who was reputed in Mucar to keep twenty or thirty young wives actively occupied. Saldan himself doubted this, but he knew it pleased the old man to have people think so.

He bowed stiffly from the waist and came to a halt about three yards away from the ruler's carved sandalwood throne, waiting until he was bidden to come closer by an imperious gesture from Selim's clawlike hand.

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Saldan smiled and took the leather backed armchair Selim indicated to him. But first he put down the bags on the ornately carved table at his elbow and bent once again over the emaciated fingers the Prince held out to him.

"Some refreshment, my dear sir," said Selim in quavering tones. Saldan sat back in satisfaction as sweet Turkish coffee in small porcelain cups and plates of sweet-cakes with syrup and arid little biscuits were placed between them.

Only when be had eaten did etiquette permit them to talk business. Prince Selim was a striking-looking man, despite his advanced years. He wore a richly embroidered tunic of slashed silk, on the front of which dully gleamed the golden disc of the Order of Allah, which he had instituted only a half-dozen years before.

Though he and his son were the only people in the kingdom allowed to wear it, Saldan admired it a great deal. He could not help wondering how much it would fetch, deadweight in the market, every time he visited the Prince.

Jewels blazed from the ornamental turban Selim wore on his head, in deference to the local people, for he was completely Westernized and paid little more than lip service to local custom. He wore an elaborately chased dagger with a gold hilt in his belt of doeskin and his trim beard was more often to be seen glinting in the sunshine of Deauville or Cannes than in Mucar-at least, when the slave routes were impassable and it was the closed season for the market, which happened briefly twice a year.

Surprisingly well-preserved teeth-they were the Prince's own, Saldan had on good authority-smiled beneath the beard as Prince Selim swallowed the last of the coffee and returned the cup to the chased gold tray. But then an expression of displeasure passed across his features as he glanced across at the big man's mask.

"Must we have this masquerade every time you visit me?" he said wearily.

Saldan frowned. "Yes, your Highness," he said, "until we are alone." Selim shrugged.

"As you will," he said. "Let us be alone now, then. There are others to come after you."

He clapped his hands and his body servants took out the tray and the coffee service, leaving the two men alone in the brilliant flickering of the lamps.

Saldan yawned again as he took off his mask.

"A good night's work, your Highness." he said. "We sold forty slaves at two thousand a head."

Prince Selim frowned in turn. He picked delicately at his teeth with a filigree-work toothpick.

"I think not, Saldan," he said. "My steward tells me it was fifty slaves at three thousand a head!"

Saldan shifted uneasily on his armchair, hut he did not seem at all put out. It was the expected thing, after all; a sort of protocol the two men observed whenever they met. Saldan did his best to cheat the Prince-he did cheat him in any event for his prices were never correctly reported to even the Scum's steward-and the old man always tried to get the better of him. In the end, they were both satisfied.

"As you wish, Your Highness," he said easily. "But I would ask you to be kind enough not to use my real name here. Even the walls have ears."

The Prince smiled a thin smile.

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"Your real name is the only weapon I possess. Do not try to cheat me. Then perhaps we shall get on better."

Saldan smiled a thin, insincere smile in his turn. "We are both slavers, after all."

The Prince put a fine lace handkerchief to his nostrils. "I don't like that word either," he said. "It is not seemly that you use my city as an auction block."

Saldan closed his eyes and squinted over his nose at the Prince.

"I don't see you objecting to your half share, your Excellence," he observed.

The Prince smiled again. "Touché. You are so right, my friend. We are merely playing with words. After all, as you intimate, this is a good arrangement."

Saldan counted out the money in silence, then waited until the Prince's steward had checked it and put it in the safe behind the tapestries to the rear of the throne. He rose and put the remainder of the money in a big leather pouch at his waist, He lingered, one hand on the doorknob of the salon.

"After all, if you're dissatisfied, Your Highness, I can always find another place for my auction block."

The Prince was at his side in an instant. Humor shone in his eyes.

"I do not think that will be necessary, my friend," he said. "And neither do you. This is too good an arrangement to consider terminating."

Saldan bowed stiffly.

"As Your Excellency says."

He stood aside so that the old man could precede him. Despite his years the Prince had the erect carriage of a man thirty years younger. The two walked out through a side door into a courtyard lit by wall sconces and soothed by the splashing noises of many fountains.

He slipped his arm through the big man's as they walked.

"We all wonder how you obtain your merchandise in such an arid region," he said. "In the mountains and deserts and jungle, it must be difficult."

Saldan disengaged his arm from the other's.

"That's my business," he said shortly. "You'd better tell your men I'll have another shipment ready for you in a month's time-at the dark of the moon."

Saldan paused and looked long into the Prince's eyes. He leaned forward slightly and the Prince recoiled, even his iron will subdued at the purpose in the other's gaze.

"Remember, Your Highness," the big man said with great emphasis. "My business is my business. I want no one spying on me when I leave. No one knows who I am and where I go-and live. My identity and purpose in life are my business, too."

"Certainly, my friend," said the Prince, glancing round thoughtfully in the early dawn light. "As you say."

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He saluted Saldan in the Arab fashion. The big man bowed over his hand once more and was then gone like a shadow through the archway of the court. A few moments later the clatter of horses' hooves sounded in the outer courtyard. Scum walked to the arch and watched silently as Saldan and Zadok spurred their horses out into the growing dawn.

An old man, a trusted confidant of the Prince, sidled up to his side.

"Who is he, sire?" he whispered. "Where does he go and how does he obtain slaves in such quantity?"

The Prince shrugged. He stood, still as the dawn itself, with his cloak wrapped around him to keep off the dew.

"Who knows, Ali," he said. "As long as he brings us gold, who cares?"

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CHAPTER 2

JUNGLE PATROL

A scarlet jeep bounced down the jungle trail and skidded dangerously on two wheels. Tim Ricketts, spinning the wheel, desperately hoping to keep the vehicle upright, inwardly winced. Colonel John Weeks, local commander of the Jungle Patrol, tightened his mouth round the stem of his pipe and grinned inwardly. Ricketts was one of his newest officers, but a likable youngster and one ever ready to show off.