A Plundered Innocence
by Friar Morgan
(LLP-438)


FOREWORD 

"Give 'em an inch and they'll take a yard!" the wiseacres used to say. And 
in the next breath they would add: "Give 'em enough rope and they'll hang 
themselves!" 

Like so many proverbs, these old saws, containing the equally proverbial 
grain of truth, are based on a shrewd knowledge of the frailties of human 
nature. For it is sadly true that our mores, the codes of behavior of our 
so-called civilization that are supposed to separate us from the beasts of 
the field, once ignored, slide more and more easily, more and more rapidly 
to the back of our consciousness. This may be, as the psychologists say, 
because the code is itself man-made, a convenient barricade to protect us 
from the worst of our own instincts; it may be because, being arbitrary and 
imposed rather than stemming from our deeper natures, there is that much 
more temptation to give in and evade the responsibilities inherent in the 
code. But wherever the truth lies, it is certainly true that after that 
first fateful step it becomes increasingly easy to "break the rules." 

And this holds good in the vast majority of cases despite what may be 
perfectly genuine intentions not to transgress. The road to hell to borrow a 
third proverb from the past is paved with such good intentions: the slope 
down from the Primrose Path (to paraphrase a fourth) becomes increasingly 
more slippery. 

A Plundered Innocence is a modem cautionary tale exemplifying the truth of 
these age-old dicta. Its heroine, the voluptuous brunette Marsha Fox, has 
already transgressed one of society's rules by starting a turbid affair with 
the tough adventurer. Rex Aull. Although they are not married, they live 
together. When, to take Marsha's mind off the horrors of an air disaster 
they witness. Rex allows her to become involved with a beautiful airline 
stewardess, trouble is already in the air. But then Aull himself becomes 
innocently involved in the complexities of a Middle Eastern intrigue, and 
Marsha already adrift on a sea of moral uncertainty is very nearly lost. 

Author Friar Morgan charts the course of their efforts to free themselves 
from the ensuing web of murder, rape, kidnapping, torture and spine-chilling 
chases through the desert with gripping intensity. 

This is a tough book and a violent one but there is a lesson in it for 
everyone who imagines they can flout the rules of society with impunity. 

-The Publisher 

 CHAPTER ONE 

As Rex Aull twisted his key in the lock and swung open the door of his Paris 
apartment, the night exploded in a blast of searing agony. Glimpsed in the 
light from the fourth-floor corridor, the three squat figures lurking in his 
hallway hurled themselves upon him and jerked him savagely forward into the 
shadows. He saw the dull gleam of leather covering the blackjacks in their 
raised hands as the door was kicked shut, and then they were on him, 
clubbing viciously at his unprotected head and shoulders in the dark. 

Aull was slightly drunk or he would have reacted more quickly. As it was, he 
was beaten to his knees under a hail of blows before his brain could 
telegraph his muscles to take evasive action and then hit back. 

Fighting desperately to struggle free of the waves of pain that threatened 
to engulf him, he went limp, dropped face downwards on the carpeted floor 
and rolled to one side. Relieved for a moment from the paralyzing assault of 
the three blackjacks, his shoulders struck against legs, and one of the 
attackers staggered and fell heavily. A moment later Aull was hauling 
himself groggily upright in the blackness with his back to the wall. 

For an instant there was complete silence. A car swished down the rain swept 
street outside the apartment block towards the Champs Elysees. And warm 
breath played gently on Aull's cheek. 

He tensed. Then, whirling to his left, he swung his right fist around in a 
murderous hook that sank into something soft. There was a gasping cry and 
someone folded forward across his body. Aull jerked up his knee and felt it 
connect sickeningly with flesh and bone. The cry was repeated, falling 
towards his feet. One of the intruders at least would have a smashed nose as 
a souvenir of the attack, he thought grimly. 

But the noise had given away his position. As the two fallen men struggled 
upright, the third leaped forward and pain flamed up into Aull's skull as 
the cosh thudded brutally into the muscle at the base of his neck. Gasping, 
he kicked out, felt his heel jar against a moving obstacle, and ducked as 
the blackjack thwacked fiercely into the wall behind him. A savage blow 
numbed his forearm; another slammed like a bolt of lightning into his ribs. 

Gritting his teeth, he lashed blindly into the dark with fists and feet as 
the three anonymous attackers moved in close and flailed remorselessly at 
his weaving body. 

For awhile, as heavy feet tramped thunderously over the creaking boards 
beneath the carpet and harsh breathing gasped into the blackness, he held 
his own. But then, unbalanced by a looping, roundhouse left that only 
connected with air, he staggered away from the wall...and the world erupted 
in crimson fire as two coshes cracked simultaneously against his skull. 

Striving frantically to battle clear of the suffocating agony hammering at 
his consciousness, Aull struck out again. His bruised knuckles scraped along 
a stubbled jaw. And then, as he pitched forward, steel-toed boots joined the 
blackjacks battering at his defenseless body, and the night cracked apart 
into a ringing red silence into which he fell, turning giddily over and 
over, without trace. 

He regained consciousness with the grit in the pile of carpet harsh against 
his lacerated cheek. For a moment he lay panting, while the clamor in his 
head died down. Brakes squealed in the street outside and someone shouted 
something unintelligible. There was a cold draught chilling his shoulders. 
Shivering uncontrollably, he levered himself warily to his feet. 

He stood swaying in the dark, his head turning blindly towards the source of 
the draught. Then he lurched into the living room. The French window was 
open and the drapes, bellying in with the breeze, gleamed in the dim light 
reflected up from the street. Below the narrow balcony, the wet iron of the 
fire escape zigzagged down to the area in back of the building. Evidently 
the intruders had escaped that way. 

Aull dragged himself to the bathroom, switched on the light, vomited, and 
then. turning the faucet full on, plunged his head and shoulders beneath the 
spray over the tub. 

Afterwards, still breathing heavily, he straightened up and caught sight of 
his reflection in the mirror. Christ! he thought. What a mess! What a lousy 
goddamn mess! 

Aull was six feet tall ana his lean, hard-muscled body weighed 180 pounds. 
He still looked tough, but the rakish lines of his face were blurred with 
contusions and his lips were swollen. The skin of his temple was split and 
rivulets of blood, diluted by the spray, streaked the plane of one cheek. 
There were egg-sized lumps thrusting up the dark drenched hair matting his 
scalp. His left eye was half-closed and already turning purple. Below his 
ripped jacket, one knee of his pants was spattered with the blood of the man 
whose nose he had smashed. 

He shook his head, wincing as pain throbbed through his skull. How long had 
he been out. . . and what had the intruders got away with? 

Switching on all the lights, he checked the whole apartment. Five minutes 
later, slumped in a chair by the open window, he splashed four ounces of Rye 
whiskey into a tumbler and ran his fingers through his wet hair. The 
burglary didn't make sense! 

His packed bags he was due to leave Paris later that evening had been 
emptied and the contents neatly piled on the floor. But there appeared to be 
nothing missing. The Hasselblad camera, still in its case, was on top of a 
pile of shirts. The Zeiss binoculars stood beside it. The movie camera was 
on the bed where he had left it. The drawers of the dressing table had not 
been opened, and the diamond cuff links and gold rings he had thrown 
carelessly on top before he went out were undisturbed. Yet as the intruders 
he had so obviously interrupted had managed to knock him out, why had they 
not stayed long enough to take whatever they had come for? 

What had they come for anyway? It must have been a simple robbery. It wasn't 
after all as though Rex Aull was an undercover agent or anything romantic 
like that! 

He had certainly knocked about the world a bit. An adventurer since high 
school in Seattle -he had skippered sail boats in the Caribbean, flown arms 
into central Africa, and run contraband east of the Iron Curtain. Once he 
had even been a bouncer at a dubious nightclub in Saigon. But now, at the 
age of 30, he had settled down a little. At present he was acting as advance 
production manager for an American movie company; he was to fly to Senegal 
that night to dope out locations and obtain the necessary permissions for a 
wartime epic to be shot there later in the year. It was not, therefore, as 
it might have been in the old days, when there could have been information 
of use to someone hidden in the apartment. 

So the only motive anyone could have for breaking in must be robbery. Yet 
the mystery remained: Why, once they had effectively disposed of him, had 
they taken nothing? 

He looked at his watch. It was over an hour since he had left the farewell 
party at Harry's 

Bar. He had gotten a cab at once and come straight home, so he must have 
been out cold for all of thirty minutes. They would have had plenty of time. 

But Christ! he didn't have plenty of time...not if he was to re-pack and get 
to Orly airport in time to make that plane! He'd have to forget the puzzle 
for the moment and get going! 

He swallowed the rest of the whiskey and got shakily to his feet, his head 
aching like hell. He'd have to change his clothes and have a shower before 
he left, make himself presentable enough to meet Marsha and he'd promised 
her faithfully that he wouldn't be late. Not this time. 

Marsha was a doll...but like most brunettes she had a fiery temper, and it 
wouldn't do to keep her waiting in the sterile wastes of Orly's check-in 
foyer! 

First things first, though. He'd better get those goddamn bags re-packed 
before he thought about his appearance! He could always fix himself up at 
the airport if necessary, but he couldn't fix his baggage there. He stood 
swaying slightly in the bedroom, staring at the piles of clothing and 
wondering where to start. 

If only he hadn't had that last drink with the boys, maybe his mind would 
have been a little clearer! But then he'd gone to Harry's Bar thinking he 
was all packed up and ready to go: For once he was ahead of schedule; all he 
had to do was collect the two suitcases and take off. He hadn't bargained on 
having to do the whole damned thing over! 

Sighing, he began methodically to replace the stacks of clothing littering 
the floor. In a few minutes the Rye began working its wonders within him and 
he was back in top gear again. 

He zipped up one bag and picked up the last item to go in the other a 
crimson silk bathrobe heavily embroidered in gold. It was one of his few 
sartorial extravagances, the trophy of a disreputable adventure with an 
ex-Geisha girl in Hong Kong, smothered in dragons and temples and Chinese 
characters...or maybe they were Japanese. He couldn't read the goddamn 
things anyway! This Geisha girl had told him, though, that the characters 
told of the fate of a young princess who had pretended to be a virgin. As a 
counterfeit virgin she had lost her head to the executioner. 

Folding the garment against his chest, he paused. There was something not 
quite right about it; something that didn't jibe. Plunging his hand into the 
pocket of the robe he abruptly realized what it was. 

Aull had a super-lightweight, battery-operated shaver that he'd bought in 
Tokyo. He always slipped it into the pocket of the robe when he packed. He 
remembered doing so earlier this evening. But now the shaver was gone. 

Frowning, he checked the dressing-table, the bathroom, the other valise. 
There was no sign of the missing shaver and anyway he was certain he'd put 
it in its usually place in the pocket before he left for Harry's Bar. The 
bastards must have taken it! 

Imagine that! Those bums had left jewelry, cameras, binoculars and expensive 
clothes untouched but they had stolen a plastic-covered gadget you could 
pick up anywhere in Tokyo for a few dollars! What kind of burglars were 
those, for God's sake? 

Dropping the robe into the bag. he closed the lid and shrugged. He'd pick up 
another shaver at the airport store and worry about it some other time. 
Right now he had better things to do! 

* * * 

Like many tough men. Rex Aull liked his woman fragile and feminine. Petite. 
20 year old Marsha Fox was both of those things...and a hell of a lot else 
besides a voluptuous five feet three inches of female dynamite that was as 
well stacked as anything Rex had seen in his life. And he had seen plenty! 

The concourse of the airport terminal at Orly was crowded, but he picked her 
out at once as he paid off the cab and walked through the sliding glass 
doors. She was wearing a mushroom-colored suede traveling suit with a short 
skirt and high boots. The pale, rich material was perfect foil for the 
cascades of glossy brown hair tumbling over her shoulders, and the 
tight-waisted jacket did nothing to conceal the taut fullness of the 
high-set breasts that swelled out so provocatively above her tiny waist. 
Jesus! Aull thought as he hurried towards her. I sure got myself something 
there! Marsha was standing by the UTA check-in desk, tapping one slender 
foot impatiently as she stared up at the revolving clock beneath the high 
modernistic ceiling. There was still all of three minutes to go before the 
flight was closed and it was obvious that with each elapsing second her 
temper was growing shorter. 

Rex approached her from behind, dropped his bags on the floor, and grabbed 
her slim shoulders to spin her around facing him. 

"Rex!" she cried in her low throaty voice. "You scared me! D'you know what 
time it is? You promised...Oh, my God, darling! What happened to you?" Her 
green eyes were staring at him in alarm. 

For the first time since he had left the center of Paris. Aull remembered 
what a mess he must look. His hand rose defensively to touch his battered 
face and he grinned shamefacedly. "I got into a bit of a hassle with some 
guys who busted into the apartment. Sneak thieves, I guess. No problem 
though: They didn't take anything. Tell you all about it later." 

"But Rex you're hurt!" 

"It's nothing. C'mon, honey: Those planes don't wait for you!" Picking up 
Marsha's suitcase with his own bags, he strode across to the desk. 

The blue-uniformed, enameled blonde looked up as he gave her his name. "Mr. 
Aull? Just a moment there's a telegram for you." 

Frowning, Rex slipped the carrying strap of the movie camera from his 
shoulder and slit open the flimsy blue form. "Well how d'you like that!" he 
exclaimed, staring at the strips of teletype lettering pasted to it. "If 
that isn't just like a movie company! I'll be damned!" 

Marsha was holding onto his arm. "Is there something wrong?" she inquired. 

Wordlessly, he handed her the telegram. She read: 

SENEGAL OUT STOP SHOOTING SWITCHED TO SUDAN STOP PLEASE TAKE PLANE TO 
KHARTOUM STOP RESERVATION MADE FOR YOU HOTEL EXCELSIOR WILL CALL YOU THERE 
EXPLAIN STOP REGARDS DOUGLASS. 

"I don't understand," the brunette said. "Who's Douglass? Why do you have to 
go to the Sudan, of all places? What happened?" 

"Search me!" Aull replied, shrugging. "It happens all the time in the movie 
business. Mori Douglass is the producer who hired me. I guess he ran up 
against some snag in Senegal. Maybe he couldn't get permission to make the 
movie unless he hired a percentage of local labor, something of that sort. 
But Mori likes to use American crews so he switched the whole scene some 
place else." 

"But why the Sudan...?" 

"Don't ask me! That's show business! The story's supposed to take place in 
the western desert during the war. Could be there's scenery in the Sudan 
that matches the locations they'd chosen in Senegal. We'll find out when we 
get there." He turned back to the girl behind the desk. "Seems like there's 
no point in our checking in for that flight now," he smiled. "D'you know if 
there's a flight to Khartoum tonight?" 

"I think there's one just before midnight but you'll have to check with 
Reservations, over by the Air France information desk," she said, handing 
him back the tickets. 

There was a plane leaving at 2350, and there were seats available. Rex 
changed the tickets and checked their baggage into the cloakroom. They had 
almost two hours to wait. "We might as well go up to one of the lounges and 
sink a few," he suggested. The change of plan didn't bother him: He was used 
to being switched around at a moment's notice. And what the hell he was 
fiddling a free holiday for his girl on the company expense sheet, and 
Douglass had okayed the idea! What did it matter where the bed was, so long 
as Marsha was in it beside him! 

He shivered with anticipation, visualizing the warmly clinging length of her 
naked voluptuousness straining against his body, and the material of his 
pants tightened against his thigh as the familiar tingling feeling invaded 
his belly and his penis involuntarily began to harden. 

They found a table by the huge smoked glass windows in the first-floor 
V.I.P. lounge and sat nursing king-sized highballs as they stared out over 
the concrete apron at the dark wastes of the airfield beyond. It was still 
raining, and the lights of coaches, trucks and kerosene refuelers cast long 
wavering streamers of brilliance across the wet tarmac. To their right, the 
glistening silver shapes of the big jets were ranked like giant humming 
birds, their needle-like noses deep into the loading gates. 

They watched a baggage train crawl away from beneath the wing of a DC-8. As 
the huge jetliner was backed off by a tractor which finally released it so 
the plane could lumber slowly out towards the main runway, the PA speakers 
chimed and a honey-voiced announcer intoned in three languages: "UTA 
announces the departure of their Flight 903 for Nice and Dakar...L VTA 
annmmcent le depart du Vol Neuf Cent Zero Trots pour Nice et Dakar.. . " 

"That must be ours," Aull said, jerking his head towards the four-jet planes 
as it dwindled in the dark. "Or at least it should have been ours if it 
hadn't been for dear Mori!" 

"Never mind," Marsha said. "It's warmer in the Sudan and the liquor's good 
here!" 

Idly, they gazed at the jet as it reached the perimeter, swung round to face 
south-west, and began to move smoothly down the runway. They could hear the 
scream of its motors clear through the double glass. The searchlights threw 
pools of brightness on the darkly speeding ground: the identification beacon 
winked redly above the fuselage, rose to head steeply up into the night and 
then suddenly everyone in the lounge was on their feet screaming . . . 

A monstrous ball of fire bloomed horribly above the runway, crimsoned at the 
center, and then exploded outwards in a shower of incandescent fragments 
that seemed to strew the entire horizon with flame. The main body of the 
blazing wreckage had already crashed to the ground in an inferno of 
white-hot metal before the thunderous detonation of the explosion stammered 
the big windows of the lounge in their frames. 

Rex and Marsha stood stock still in the middle of the chaos of distraught 
relatives and friends, distressed observers of the catastrophe, and frantic 
officials milling around in the lounge. They were gaping through the glass 
at the urgently flashing blue and red beacons of the ambulances and fire 
trucks screaming towards the wreck, and the outer ring of tiny figures 
running, converging ant-like on the blaze straddling the runway. 

Marsha was trembling. "Rex," she whispered. "I...we...we were supposed to 
have been on that plane; we could have been...have been in that.. . " She 
broke off, shuddering, and covered her face with her hands. 

"You don't have to tell me," Rex said shakily, his eyes fixed on the giant 
billows of flame marbled with black smoke that flickered eerily across the 
racing firefighters. 

"Will there be . . . ? Could anyone have...?" 

"Escaped? From that?" He shook his head. "Not a chance, honey. They were 
about two hundred and fifty feet up. on full boost, flying at a couple of 
hundred miles an hour, and...bang! She went up in one go. Disintegrated. 
They wouldn't have known what hit 'em." 

"B-b-but what could have happened?" 

He shrugged. "You tell me. Fuel leak. Sabotage. Electrical failure. A single 
spark in the wrong place can start a thing like that when you have a full 
load of fuel on board." 

"Oh," she sobbed. "Oh, darling...it's awful!" 

Aull patted her shoulder and said soberly. 

'There's nothing we can do. We'd better take on a full load ourselves give 
us a little Dutch courage for the flight we do take!" 

The lounge had cleared. The crowd had either rushed out or lined the big 
windows to watch the fruitless salvage attempts around the inferno out there 
in the night. He carried their glasses across the deserted floor, went 
behind the untenanted bar, and splashed out generous measures of Rye. "Drink 
it up quick and I'll fix you another," he said as he returned to the table 
and sat down with his back to the windows. "We got to get this thing off our 
minds some way . . . " 

Three drinks later, Rex looked at his watch and rose a little unsteadily to 
his feet. Behind them the panic had subsided and the conflagration had 
reduced itself to isolated areas of wreckage that glowed and flickered 
behind the dense ring of rescuers. "Time we checked in," he said thickly. 
"I'll go get the baggage and take it to the desk. See you down there?" 

It was in the men's room that the second attack took place. 

The long line of tiled washbasins was deserted. The place was silent except 
for the soft rumble of the air-conditioning inhaling and exhaling the 
scented warm air. Aull had filled a basin with hot water and was lowering 
his head towards the steaming surface when he saw from the corner of his eye 
a movement in the mirror. 

Two men had entered the washroom. It was only when he had raised his hands 
to splash water on his face that his eyes telegraphed too late the 
information that there was something unusual about the new arrivals. For a 
split second of time he wondered what it was...and then, like a comedian 
executing a double-take, he realized: As they let the hydraulically closed 
door sigh shut, they had been pulling nylon stockings over their heads! But 
by this time a steel hand had gripped the back of his neck and forced his 
face remorselessly down into the soapy water. 

For an instant Aull panicked. Taken by surprise, he had inadvertently sucked 
in his breath as his head was shoved beneath the surface. Now his mouth and 
nose and throat were flooded suffocatingly with the acrid water. His lungs, 
starved of air, were bursting. There was a red mist before his eyes and a 
thundering in his ears. His left hand was seized in a vise-like grip and 
twisted up behind his back; his right arm was imprisoned between the edge of 
the basin and the hip of the man holding him. He could feel the hands of the 
second man searching his pants pocket and the side pockets of his jacket. 
But his billfold, together with the tickets, passports and baggage checks, 
was in the inside breast pocket of the jacket and this was rammed against 
the basin by the pressure of his own chest as he was relentlessly held under 
the water. 

He thought wildly of trying to move the disk that operated the soakaway with 
his head. But his nose and chin, thrust brutally down against the bottom of 
the basin, would stop the plug rising from the hole. 

Frantically, he heaved and bucked, trying to force his head up and break the 
iron grip on his neck. The pounding in his temples was threatening to engulf 
him. It didn't take long to drown a man. In less than a minute he could be 
dead! And then suddenly the sobering effect of the water permitted his brain 
to function in ice-cold clarity. He pictured the lay-out of the washroom. He 
saw how the basins were fixed. Instead of standing on porcelain pedestals, 
they stuck straight out from the wall, each supported on two iron brackets 
screwed into the tiles. 

With his remaining strength, he tried a last desperate effort. Instead of' 
heaving himself fruitlessly upwards against the pressure on his neck, he 
changed tactics and went with it. Drawing up his knees, he lifted his feet 
from the floor and strained down with all his weight against the edge of the 
basin. 

The effect was dramatic. The sudden extra load wrenched the screws retaining 
the brackets clear out of the wall; the brackets tilted towards the floor 
and, amidst the rending of plaster and the smashing of tiles, the basin 
canted forwards, spilling its contents over Aull's knees as he and his two 
attackers sprawled to the ground. 

Taken completely unawares, the thugs were slower to react than the 
half-drowned movie man. He had stumbled to his feet and backed off against 
the closed doors of a row of toilets before they realized what had hit them. 
By the time they had scrambled up to face him, he had wheezed enough air 
into his heaving, tortured lungs to restore some of the strength he had 
lost. 

Crouching menacingly, the two men advanced. Beneath the tightly stretched 
nylon of the stocking masks, their features were bulbous and unrecognizable, 
but he had a hunch that at least one of them had been among the attackers in 
his apartment. 

The odds were different now though. Aull could see his adversaries moreover 
he was possessed of a cold fury that lent him both strength and 
determination. He didn't like being attacked by gangs of punks for no reason 
that he could see. And by Christ he was going to show the bastards that they 
couldn't get away with it a second time! 

Leaping forward with the speed of a striking cobra, he seized the nearest 
man by the lapels and hauled him half off his feet. Then, bunching his other 
fist, he drew back his arm and smashed a murderous blow with all his weight 
behind it full into the obscenely anonymous face. The thug hurtled back to 
slam against the tiled wall between two basins and then drop to the floor. 

By now the other man was within striking distance. Aull winced and staggered 
as a vicious blow seared across his kidneys. He swiveled on his heels and 
lashed out with one foot to catch the attacker on the shin. As the man 
howled with pain and involuntarily drew up his knee, the furious movie man 
stepped in and hammered a pile-driving left to his heart. The masked thug 
fell back gasping. But he was strong and he was spunky. Moving forward with 
a rush, he butted Aull with his head and sent him crashing back against a 
toilet door. The door burst open and Aull reeled off balance into the 
cubicle beyond. 

Recovering himself as the backs of his knees came up against the pedastal, 
he put up his hands and prepared tor the next assault...but the attackers 
had had enough. Instead of following up his advantage, the thug called out 
something in a guttural language the movie man couldn't identify and made 
for the exit! 

The second man was on his hands and knees between the basins, shaking his 
head like a dog coming out of the water. Before Aull could reach him, he had 
scrambled groggily to his feet and splashed through the flood on the floor 
to jerk open the exit door and disappear after his companion. 

The movie man was left gaping at the wrecked basin hanging drunkenly away 
from the wall supported only by the distorted lead water pipes twisted 
beneath it. 

He ran to the door and dragged it open. The long passageway leading to the 
men's room was deserted. 

He shrugged and went back inside. There was no point in trying to follow 
them: they could have escaped in any one of a dozen directions in the warren 
of the terminal building. Cleaning himself up as best as he could, he went 
to collect the baggage and rejoined Marsha. 

His hair was drenched again, and the pants of his tan gabardine suit were 
dark with moisture from the knee down. The astonished brunette gasped with 
surprise when she saw him. "Rex, what on earth has happened now?" she 
exclaimed. 

As they checked in the baggage and moved up to the departure lounge, he told 
her. 

"But I don't understand," the girl said. "Why would anyone want to attack 
you especially twice in the same evening, if you're right and it was the 
same people? What were they after? Your money? And even if it was. why take 
the risk and follow you all the way here to try again? It doesn't make 
sense! I mean, it's not as if you were carrying diamonds or something, is 
it?" 

"Search me!" Aull said for the second time. "Number one, I don't have a lot 
of money on me. Number two, if they wanted what I do have, they could have 
taken it when I was out for the count in the apartment and they didn't." 

"Then...?" 

"Your guess is as good as mine," he said, adding with a crooked smile: "Two 
attempted muggings and an air crash in one evening -that's not bad going for 
the beginning of a holiday, is it!" 

 CHAPTER TWO 

The plane was almost empty. A large party of elderly tourists on their way 
to Khartoum, Karnak, and the Pyramids had canceled their bookings after 
seeing the DC-8 disaster earlier in the evening. The other passengers, only 
a handful of them, were grouped near the galley in the forepart of the huge 
140 seat cabin. Aull arid Marsha sat in the very last row, almost hidden by 
the high backs of the five empty seats in front of them. 

A stewardess emerged from the door leading to the rear toilets and baggage 
racks. She was tall and blonde, with a bee-stung lower lip, steady gray 
eyes, and ripely swelling breasts whose wide-set fullness thrust out the 
stuff of her navy-blue uniform jacket above the belt tightly cinched around 
her slender waist. 

She glanced at Aull's seat-belt to check that it was properly fixed and then 
leaned across to test the tightness of Marsha's. "You have that twisted," 
she said with a wide smile. "Let me do it for you." 

As she unfastened and then re-buckled the webbing strap, the backs of her 
hands brushed more than once against the curve of velvety suede outlining 
the voluptuous brunette's breasts. To her surprise and dismay, Marsha felt a 
tingle of erotic sensation flicker through her flesh at the girl's touch. 
She averted her eyes and then looked back to meet the blonde's level stare. 

"I think she fancies you!" Aull said with a grin as the girl walked away 
down the aisle between the seats. 

"Rex! Don't say things like that!" Marsha said hotly, blushing to the roots 
of her red hair. And then she giggled. "Much more likely to be you, my 
darling, battered as you are!" she said. "I wouldn't be surprised if she 
asked to help you unfasten your belt after we've taken off!" They were both 
rather drunk. 

Later, after the plane had reached its operational height and they had 
consumed coffee, sandwiches and a bottle of champagne, Aull switched off the 
light above the seat and settled Marsha in the crook of his arm. She nestled 
her head on his shoulder and rubber her forehead against his chin like a 
kitten. "Mmmmmmmm," she breathed tipsily. "I feel so gooooooood!" 

The movie man's hand was cupped around the taut bulge of her breast beneath 
the suede jacket. "You can say that again, honey!" he grinned. "You feel 
marvelous!" The pressure of his palm increased slightly against the weight 
of her flesh, and his thumb began rotating gently around the bud of her 
nipple where it spiked out the material. 

"Rex!" he protested sleepily. "Don't! You mustn't! Remember where we are!" 

"I know just where we are," Aull said, craning his neck to see over the row 
of empty seats in front of them. "Alone in the sky with the crew and all the 
other passengers forty feet away at the other end of the plane...and most of 
them look like they were asleep anyway!" 

"You mustn't!" Marsha murmured again but her hand, lying along the top of 
his thigh, began almost of its own volition to stir. One of her slender 
red-tipped fingers started to make tiny arabesques, caressing the 
tightly-stretched gabardine sheathing his leg. Under the heel of her hand 
she felt a sudden pressure as his long thick penis, trapped between the 
cloth and his flesh, began to jerk into hardness. Thirty thousand feet 
beneath them, the lights of Lyon slid past in the dark. 

Rex was breathing heavily. Reaching across his free hand, he unbuttoned the 
stiff material of her jacket and slipped his fingers inside. The smooth 
curve of the lushly ripened breast encased in its satin cup was warm to his 
touch. Gently, he stroked his palm up and down across the fleshy prominence 
of Marsha's now erect nipple, bringing soft mewls of pleasure from her open 
mouth. In reflex action, the heel of her hand on his thigh began a rhythmic 
gyrating motion, rolling the hardness of his penis from side to side under 
the material of his pants as the fingers increased the tempo of their 
caresses. Aull's long thick cock stiffened into still greater rigidity, 
throbbing beneath the aroused brunette's lust-provoking manipulation. A 
darkly spreading spot of seminal fluid stained the light gabardine under her 
hand. 

Rex tightened his arm around her waist, thrusting up his palm to shove the 
ripely swelling mound of her breast harder against the exploring fingers 
inside Marsha's jacket. His hand found the deep cleft of softly trembling 
flesh between the twin cups of her brassiere, lingered there for a moment, 
and then insinuated itself under the taut strap, to slide tantalizingly down 
inside the satin and fondle the warmly quivering skin straining against it. 

Marsha gasped as he rolled and tweaked the tight rubbery bud of her nipple 
between his fingers, sending maddening patterns of indecent sensation 
trailing through her aroused young body. Her breath quickened, her chest 
began to rise and fall convulsively, and her luscious mouth dropped open. 
Her own fingers started rolling over the hard bulge of Aull's massively 
pulsating penis now outlined through his pants, feeling the long rigid 
stiffness of the shaft and then tightening over the bulbous fleshiness of 
the wetly seeping head. 

The erotically inflamed movie man moaned in lewd delight, "Oh...Marsha, 
baby," 

Twisting his head around and down, he clamped his lips over her wetly parted 
lips and speared his tongue into her warm open mouth. 

Marsha's breath blew out through her nose in a shuddering sigh. She squirmed 
ecstatically against the rough cloth covering the seat, her veins afire with 
the lewdly dancing demons of lust. As their tongues fought avidly in the 
scalding cavern of her mouth, her hand darted up to the fly of Aull's pants 
and jerked down the zipper. A moment later, crooning in muffled abandon 
beneath his kisses, she had dragged aside his shirt, hauled down the elastic 
waistband of his shorts, and thrust her hand past the wiriness of his pubic 
hair to grope for his eagerly throbbing cock. 

As her fingers closed around the muscled rigidity of the shaft, Aull groaned 
deep in his throat and smashed his mouth down even harder on her trembling 
wet lips. She jerked his hotly throbbing instrument free of his shorts and 
mewled again with lustful delight as it sprang quiveringly erect into the 
air and stood up from the open fly of the movie man's pants like the shaft 
of a heavy blunt spear. 

Gradually at first, and then with increasing speed, she began to milk his 
long rigid thickness, skimming the loose foreskin up and down the iron-hard 
shaft as his tongue probed ever more deeply towards her throat and the 
maddening touch of his fingers on her nipple sent shock after shock of 
desire tingling towards her belly. Writhing in abandon on the aircraft seat, 
she became aware with an excitement tinged by shame that she was drenched up 
between her legs. She could feel the moist nylon of her panties cool against 
her throbbing vaginal lips as her thigh's involuntarily spread apart and the 
air-conditioned atmosphere of the cabin played on her secret inner flesh. 

And then, with a smothered groan of passion, she wrenched her mouth free of 
Aull's clinging lips and leaned forward across his body so that her face was 
posed just above the wetly glistening head of his lustfully pulsating cock. 
He could feel the hot caress of her breath blowing slowly against the 
distended tip. 

The movie man sucked in his breath as a reverberation of lewd delight flamed 
through his body towards his loins. The trembling brunette's mouth was only 
an inch away from his eagerly pulsing penis, which now gleamed whitely along 
its rigid length. A thread of saliva swayed down from Marsha's slack lips to 
mingle with the seminal fluid exuding in pearly drops from the slit in its 
bulbous head as she took her hand from the shaft and felt for his 
desire-tautened balls, squeezing them softly as she pulled his cum-filled 
testicles free of the garments sheathing his hips. 

Aull groaned and gritted his teeth as the girl fondled and kneaded his 
sperm-bloated glands. He was panting with desire, his chest heaving up and 
down and his head thrown back against the head rest of the seat. He felt her 
other hand reach for the shaft of his cock, guiding it towards her ovaled 
young mouth and then he gasped and thrust his loins involuntarily upwards as 
the warm moistness of her open lips closed tight as a rubber band over the 
throbbing sensitive head. 

His lungs were bursting and excitement blazed through every trembling nerve 
in his body as she slowly lowered her head taking almost half of his cock 
into her wetly heated mouth while her tongue licked against his lust-swollen 
cock-head. He jerked his own head forward and stared down at the fiery 
cascade of glossy hair tumbling about his hips. Jesus! He thought wildly. 
What a woman! What a girl! Just wait until I get her alone in a bed . . . ! 

His heart thumped frenziedly in his chest as Marsha pulled his foreskin back 
as far as it would go, tightening the flesh of his penis until it felt as 
though the head would burst. Her hot lips were sucking now at the inflated 
tip, and her tongue had began to flicker wickedly around and around the 
glistening shaft. Still keeping the skin pulled agonizingly back, she 
started bobbing her head up and down, at the same time increasing the 
twirling of her tongue around the moist stickiness of the blood-gorged tip. 

Aull surrendered himself to the lewd sensations boiling through his loins. 
Leaning back, he gazed mesmerized at the profile view of her lust-contorted 
face with the thickness of his cock buried between her sucking lips. 
Excitement rose within him as he watched his wetly glistening penis begin to 
piston rhythmically in and out of her ovaled mouth in time with the Hexing 
and relaxing of his hips. The sight erotically stimulated him still further; 
his pelvis tensed and jerked up into the slavering face of the abandoned 
redhead until he thought his wildly throbbing penis was sinking its entire 
length all the way down her throat. With each hard thrust he made, more and 
more of his thick hardness disappeared until finally only a small section 
was visible, dark and gleaming in the dim light reflected from the far end 
of the cabin, protruding from between Marsha's moistly distended lips. 

Her tongue, still with that wantonly nerve-tingling lick on the upstroke, 
was making the acorned cock-head throb and jerk as though a second heart 
beat wildly within it. He watched, hypnotized, as the flesh of her lips 
pulled out grotesquely, clinging to the hard shaft of his manhood as she 
sucked hungrily, her mind and all her concentration excluding everything but 
the lewdly thrilling task in hand. 

Easing out his intruding hand from her opened jacket where her pumping torso 
squashed her breasts against his knee, he tangled his fingers in her hair, 
guiding Marsha's greedily clasping lips up and down the hot throbbing length 
of his fleshy staff. By God, he'd give it to her as soon as they were within 
reach of that hotel bed! He'd ram it into her tight little pussy so far that 
it would reach her throat from the other end! He'd pump his scalding sperm 
so far up her belly that her heart would be coated with cum. Closing his 
eyes, he groaned half in anticipation and half in ecstasy. 

"My goodness, you two certainly know how to pass the time on a night flight! 
Can anyone join in?" 

The voice had come from just above Marsha's head. Aull's eyes flew 
open...and he stared straight into the amused and mocking gaze of the blonde 
stewardess. She was kneeling on the row of seats in front, peering over the 
high backs at them with her full lower lip shining wetly and her gray eyes 
widened in excitement. She had taken off her uniform cap and her short hair, 
cut in a thick bang on her forehead, hung about her head like a golden bell. 

Marsha had jerked her head away from Aull's cock and blushed scarlet at the 
sound of the 

I girl's voice. Now. her open mouth glistening with saliva and seminal 
fluid, she stared up at the stewardess, still absent-mindedly grasping the 
rigidly pulsing shaft, a picture of guilt and dismay. "Oh my God!" she 
whispered in an agony of humiliation and shame. "How awful. . . ! " 

Aull momentarily was at a loss of words. Not at being caught. To hell with 
that! But at the expression on the stewardess's face. 

The blonde gave a low throaty laugh. "Don't get me wrong," she said softly. 
"Nobody's making any complaints! I said can anyone join in?" 

That did it! Aull recovered his usual poise. He laughed in his turn. "Be our 
guest!" he said recklessly. "Darling, move over and make room for the lady!" 

"Rex Aull, how can you be so...oh God! Darling, we can't!" Marsha squealed. 
"It's...it's indecent! It's wicked! We...no, we can't!" 

"Come on, honey," the stewardess pleaded urgently. "You know you're all 
turned on; you were just getting going only the way these seats are laid out 
you can't both make it at once with two. With three, you get to have a good 
time as well as the boy friend!" 

The embarrassed brunette began to protest again...but the stewardess, with a 
hasty glance over her shoulder, slipped around to their side of the seats 
and dropped to her knees between the rows, as invisible from the other end 
of the cabin as Rex and Marsha themselves. 

"Keep your eyes open this time," she impudently ordered Aull. Deftly, she 
pushed up the arms of the empty seats and then, seizing Marsha's ankles, 
swung them up and over so that the astonished brunette found herself 
suddenly lying full length along the row with her head in Aull's lap and her 
cheek resting against the gleaming, veined hardness of his cock. Aull 
grinned, catching on to the idea, and shifted his position so that his 
weight was on one hip and his penis now jutted horizontally from his gaping 
fly, pointing straight at her wetly parted lips. 

Marsha's mind was in a whirl. She knew that it was wrong to fall in with the 
blonde's obscene and lewd suggestion. It was perverted and debased and 
immoral. It was unthinkable. She knew that it was. Yet why did the very 
thought of it send wild ripples of guilty excitement surging through her 
like so many electric shocks? Why did the touch of the girl's hands induce 
in her a wanton excitement surpassing even the guilty thrill she had felt 
while she was sucking Rex's big hard penis only a few minutes ago? Why was 
her heart thumping so furiously? It was bad enough sleeping with Rex when 
they weren't married. Even to consider another person touching her and a 
girl at that was outrageous. Yet the flickers of lustful desire lancing 
through her loins were increasing with every second! And Rex did seem to 
approve. Maybe it was all right after all. 

She gasped aloud and her whole body jerked as the stewardess reached swiftly 
up under the tiny suede skirt and yanked her white nylon panties down to the 
tops of her boots in a single practiced gesture. 

Her mouth flew open to protest but the movement had displaced her head so 
that now it was resting on the seat and her lips brushed against the wet 
velvety tip of Rex's cock! Almost of its own volition her mouth opened 
wider, and before she knew what she was doing she had raised an automatic 
hand to guide the thick throbbing instrument back between her avidly parted 
lips. 

At the same time the kneeling blonde, staring with passionate and salacious 
intensity at the silkily curling pussy hairs mantling Marsha's trembling 
loins, placed the palms of her hands against the girl's trembling inner 
thighs and spread them gently apart as far as the panties turned down over 
her boots would allow. 

Marsha shivered and moaned past the thick pole of flesh invading her mouth, 
a slave to the lewd and intolerable tremors of anticipation threatening her 
wetly throbbing cunt. Forgotten for the moment were the doubts and 
hesitations assailing her a few seconds before. Feeling her nipples 
iron-hard against the stretched satin of her brassiere, she abandoned 
herself to the waves of indecent pleasure that whirled through her 
alcohol-fogged mind and overcame all desire to resist. 

Gently stroking the tender flesh of Marsha's inner thighs, the excited 
blonde stewardess placed her thumbs on the pulsating hair-lined lips of the 
squirming girl's pussy as she feasted her eyes on the moistly gleaming pink 
slit nestling in its furrow of damp hair. Then, spreading the wetly 
quivering vaginal lips apart with a teasing and remorseless pressure of her 
thumbs, she lowered her face towards the smoothly glistening, interfolded 
cuntal flesh exposed to her lustful gaze. 

Marsha moaned again and increased the intensity of her furious sucking on 
Aull's cock, bringing up one hand to seize the thick base of the shaft and 
pull the rigidly throbbing stalk of flesh even harder into her contorted 
face. The wildly aroused movie man snaked his hands beneath her arched back 
to unsnap the fastener of her brassiere and then began frenziedly to caress 
her naked breasts, squeezing and scrabbling at the sensitive flesh as the 
two full mounds with their bud-like nipples erect sprang quiveringly free. 
At the same time the kneeling stewardess uttered an animal groan and 
flickered her tongue deep into the hot velvety depths of Marsha's splayed 
little cunt. 

The young brunette jerked and quivered as she felt the tantalizing wetness 
of the quivering tongue spear into her tight little vagina, and she thrashed 
her naked buttocks from side to side as she began a frenzied milking 
movement with her fingers along the section of Aull's cock that was not 
engulfed by her tightly ovaled mouth. 

Panting lustfully, the blonde stewardess licked gently at the swollen pink 
bud of Marsha's clitoris, snuggled just above the wide-stretched entrance to 
her cunt, pressing her thumbs further apart to gape the hair-fringed edges 
of the quivering wet slit wider still. Her tongue traced a salacious path 
between the layers of succulent flesh, probing the moist hidden crevices up 
between the girl's softly trembling thighs. 

And then suddenly the kneeling blonde raised her head and shifted her grip. 
Grasping the underside of Marsha's thighs, she pushed them up, so that her 
booted legs, linked together by the wide-stretched white panties, rose high 
into the air and the whole Hat plane of her genital region was shamelessly 
exposed to the stewardess's wanton gaze. 

The golden head sank down again and then the stewardess's ravishing tongue 
was darting lizard-like into the wet pink flesh of Marsha's tight little 
cunt. From this position she could penetrate much further, and soon, with 
her own lips clamped lasciviously to the swollen, hair-fringed folds of the 
writhing brunette's pussy, her tongue was stabbing far up into the delicious 
depths of Marsha's secret flesh. 

The brunette girl's voluptuously squirming body almost jackknifed from the 
sudden erotic contact of the tongue spearing so far up into her trembling 
belly. A choked cry burst from her wildly sucking mouth, her fingers fell 
away from Aull's cock, and then her loins began a slow, eager grinding 
against the blonde stewardess's face. 

Thrusting her hands between her raised and spread thighs, Marsha tangled her 
fingers in the golden hair she could see between her legs as the 
lust-inflamed airline employee lapped voraciously at her cunt. Groaning in 
an ecstasy of abandon behind the gagging mass of Aull's thick invading cock, 
she locked her booted calves behind the stewardess' neck and pulled the 
hotly sucking mouth harder still against her seething cunt, trapping the 
blonde's face between her thighs. 

Over the monotonous roar of the jetliner's engines, obscene wet sluicing 
noises rhythmically sounded in the still air of the cabin as Marsha sucked 
ever more frenziedly on the movie man's penis and the blonde lapped 
slavishly at her gyrating cunt. 

The shamelessly abandoned brunette was out of her mind now with lustful 
desire. Rolling from side to side on the seat in a paroxysm of erotic 
delight, she thrust her quivering breasts hard up against Aull's mauling 
fingers as her mouth slid frantically up and down the saliva-coated shaft of 
his throbbing penis and her thighs tightened about the golden head 
plundering her loins. The shudders of forbidden pleasure raging in her belly 
were increasing in urgency. Nothing mattered now but the delicious shafts of 
delight piercing her flesh with each savage thrust of the stewardess's 
knowledgeable tongue into the involuntarily dilating walls of her cunt; 
nothing mattered but the torturing agony of the gorgeous swirling sensations 
rippling over every inch of her half-naked body. There was nothing else in 
the whole universe, and. as she writhed and bucked and twisted under the 
blonde's expert oral impalement, she began to suck harder still on the 
bloated head of Aull's long hard cock, her cheeks hollowing with effort as 
though she would draw out the last drop of moisture in his body through the 
wetly seeping slit in the glans. 

As her fingers tangled ever deeper in the stewardess's hair, the kneeling 
blonde slid her arms under Marsha's naked hips and reached her hands up and 
over the trembling white flatness of the brunette's belly, hauling the soft 
flesh up and under the suede skirt so that the cuntal lips were tightened 
and pulled up against the hungrily devouring mouth. 

Marsha was at the point of complete subjugation to the whims of the wildly 
licking tongue fucking in and out of the searing little hole in the center 
of her loins. Her back arched convulsively off the seat as her hips began to 
shudder in a series of involuntary spasms. At the same time Aull dropped his 
head heavily back against the cushioned rest and surrendered himself to the 
sensations boiling through his own loins. "Go on, baby, go on!" he hissed 
through set teeth. "Suck it harder!...Faster, faster!" 

Rex knew it wouldn't be long now. He could feel the familiar pressure 
mounting in his sperm-laden balls. His wildly pulsing cock felt like a 
balloon blown up to its fullest stretch...and then inflated still further, 
ready to burst at any moment and spew its contents to the four corners of 
the earth! 

He thrust his pelvis hard up against Marsha's face, ignoring her protesting 
mumble as he strove for the final release of this unbearable tension that 
was building...building...building...And then, suddenly, every nerve in his 
body drained away to his genitals, and he felt the white-hot current surge 
deep in his testicles and race steam-like the length of his wetly plunging 
shaft of flesh. He gave a strangled cry and his teeth showed white in the 
gloom of the airline cabin as his lips writhed back in a grimace of ecstasy. 

As his hips arched away from the seat back, his penis began a mad staccato 
jerking that flooded the avidly sucking brunette's mouth with gust after 
gust of scalding sperm, bloating her cheeks outward with each cannonball 
spurt until she swallowed to keep from choking, mewling and crooning through 
gagged lips at his pumping loins. 

"Don't stop, honey! Suck, suck, suck!" he gasped, ramming his madly jerking 
cock deeper and deeper into her throat as his hands almost frantically 
kneaded the quivering mounds of her naked breasts. Marsha continued 
frenziedly sucking as he went on spewing his white hot cum far back into her 
mouth...and then, with a final groan, he emptied the last of his sperm 
between her lips and subsided against the seat, exhausted. 

As soon as she felt the first bulge and heave of the iron-hard penis 
stuffing her mouth, at the first acrid taste of Aull's hot sperm jetting 
against the back of her throat, Marsha sensed the overpowering surge of her 
own orgasm rearing up deep within her. 

Then, as she swallowed convulsively, the final warm drops of his load, the 
climax became an irresistible flood, a tidal wave of sensation carrying her 
helplessly along on its boiling crest, to break with a thunderous impact in 
the very center of her being and send her spiraling up amongst the stars 
spangling the dark night above the plane. She gave a sudden throaty cry, 
wrenching her cum-smeared lips away from Aull's deflating penis as her head 
flailed from side to side in his lap and she moaned in a shuddering whisper; 

"Aaaaaaaagghh! Oh God, oh God, oh God! I'm cumming! I'm cuuuuummmmiiiinngg! 
Oooogh!" 

Her thighs tightened vise-like against the kneeling blonde's ears as her 
liquid passion seethed from her tongue-plundered pussy to stream down the 
trembling crevice between her naked ass-cheeks and flood the slavering chin 
of the frantically sucking stewardess. 

The airline girl, insanely excited by the electric effect of her depraved 
attack on the brunette's genitals, dropped one hand to haul up her skirt and 
finger-fucked herself in time with Marsha's passionately thrusting loins. 
Out of her mind with wanton desire at the lewd sounds of the twin orgasms 
continuing on the seat above her, she clawed furiously at her own wetly 
throbbing cunt for a few seconds, thrusting fingers savagely in under the 
elastic leg band of her panties to massage the blood-engorged, swollen shaft 
of her clitoris. 

And, abruptly, she, too, was twitching and shuddering in the throes of a 
climax, all the while her lips continued to suck hungrily at the sweet 
quivering flesh of Marsha's pussy. 

But at last it was over. The kneeling blonde lowered the up-thrust legs of 
the sated girl gently to the seat and laid her golden head against Marsha's 
passion-damp thighs. The brunette herself uttered a deep contented sigh and 
subsided against Aull's hips. Later, maybe, there would be remorse and 
self-criticism perhaps even self-disgust at the shameless debasement in 
which she had so mindlessly acquiesced aboard this airplane. But for the 
moment she was happy to relax. She had never felt so good! 

Aull, lying back in a euphoric haze of utter contentment, was staring idly 
at the porthole on the far side of the cabin. "I don't know if it's because 
you two girls are so marvelous," he murmured drowsily, "but those stars out 
there sure look bigger and brighter than I ever saw them before!" 

As he finished speaking there was a muffled click and a crackling of static 
from the PA speaker above the door leading to the toilets. A man's voice 
suddenly intoned: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We 
have just passed St. Raphael. Beyond the Esterel mountains on the port side 
of the aircraft, you can see the bay of Cannes.. . " 

The blonde stewardess knelt up with a panic-stricken look, her hands 
automatically patting at the tumbled locks of her hair. 

"Cannes?" she almost screamed. "Stars? Those are the lights of the coast you 
can see! We're coming in to land for the stopover at Nice!" 

Rising hastily to her feet, she smoothed down her crumpled skirt and added 
sweetly: "May I help you to fasten your safety belts?. . . " 

 CHAPTER THREE 

Marsha Fox opened her eyes and rolled over onto her back. The early morning 
sun was slanting in through the slats in the shutters over the French 
windows of their hotel room, streaking the marble floor with bands of gold 
and striking fugitive gleams from the lens of Rex's camera on the dressing 
table. She allowed herself to waken gradually, stretching luxuriously 
between the soft sheets as the room assembled itself in the half-light. One 
by one, she became aware of the sounds and sensations around her: The 
ticking of her watch on the night table, a grinding of gears as a truck 
negotiated the narrow native street below their window, the muffled pulse of 
an air-conditioning plant, the quiet, even breathing of Rex beside her, a 
subdued clatter from somewhere along the corridor outside their room as the 
Arab hotel servants prepared the breakfast trays. 

The Sudan day was already airless and hot. the same clammy, breathless heat 
that had hung over the city the previous day and left her limp and exhausted 
long before they had returned to the hotel to change for Rex's promised tour 
of the night-spots of Khartoum. 

She didn't remember too much about the tour. They had gotten rather drunk 
and anyway night clubs were the same the world over: too much drink, too 
much money, not enough value in return! But she did remember the sightseeing 
session that had preceded it. . . the extraordinary contrast of Khartoum's 
modern steel and concrete and glass towers with the mud-walled huddle of 
twisting streets and open markets in the poorer quarters of the old city; 
the exotic orientalism of the mosques with their minarets and domes, 
blinding white under the blue sky; the visit to the confluence of the White 
and Blue Nile in Khartoum North, with the stilt-legged cranes and egrets 
rising in flocks to flap away like white confetti across the featureless 
spur of flat land. 

And she remembered Rex's ardent lovemaking after they had fallen into bed in 
the early hours of the morning. Half smiling to herself, she moved one hand 
under the sheets to touch the springy curls of pubic hair softly mantling 
her loins beneath the flimsy nightgown she wore. She was still quite sore 
from the violence of his attentions! 

But the raptures of sex in bed had served to dispel from her troubled mind 
the doubts and worries and recriminations she had suffered ever since their 
arrival over that outrageous scene with the blonde stewardess in the 
airplane. She had forgotten in the ecstasies of the previous night all the 
shame and guilt and self-criticism she had been directing at herself because 
she had wantonly succumbed to the girl's lewd and obscene suggestions. 

And yet...and yet...there had been moments, even in the midst of Rex's most 
thrilling caresses, when she had recalled with a shiver of forbidden 
delight, a shamefaced tremor of excited recollection, the electric effect of 
the airline blonde's hot kisses on her eagerly pulsing pussy. 

If she was brutally honest with herself, she reflected, listing idly to the 
see-saw call of a muezzin rising and falling over the noise of a nearby 
street market, she had to admit that the experience had showed her that her 
own sexual inclinations might be a little less normal than she had realized! 
There must be hidden fires of lust lurking within her that even Marsha 
herself had never suspected! 

She didn't want to think about it now, though. It was too upsetting and 
anyway they had a busy day ahead of them. 

There had been a long cable from Mori Douglass waiting for them when they 
returned to the hotel last night, a cable apologizing for the sudden switch 
in plans, briefing Rex on his assignment in the Sudan, and congratulating 
them on having escaped the disaster that had befallen the plane on which 
they had originally been booked. 

They had read all about that in the paper. She could still see it on the 
bureau if she turned her head. But she didn't need to look to refresh her 
memory: The headlines were etched into her mind. 

PERISH IN ORLY JET CRASH, the banner had screamed. And then, underneath, the 
sinister sub-heading: French Officials Suspect Sabotage. 

Marsha sighed. You never knew. Yesterday or, rather, the day before must 
have been their lucky day, that was all. Their names just weren't written on 
that one! 

She turned her head and stared at the window. The bars of sunlight thrown by 
the shutters had shortened slightly and changed their position. They had 
moved from the floor to the dressing table, silvering the mirror and casting 
a fan of reflected brilliance on the white ceiling. 

Sleepily, she recalled a line from a radio play she had once heard. It had a 
funny title. Under Milk Wood, wasn't it? She had no idea what it meant but 
she remembered the line. A boarding-house owner who had a passion for 
cleanliness had said, "Before you let the sun in, mind it wipes its boots!" 
That was cute! Looking at the shutters, she wondered did the sun in the 
Sudan wear boots too or was it barefoot like the Arabs she could hear 
yelling at each other in the market? 

Smiling to herself, she let her gaze wander away from the bars of brightness 
at the window...and then tensed suddenly as she found herself staring 
straight into the open brown eyes of Rex. She'd thought he was still asleep, 
but he had been secretly watching her all the time! It was a good thing he 
couldn't read her thoughts...especially her thoughts about that girl on the 
plane! 

The flesh beneath the stubble blue of Rex's chin and upper lip creased open 
and his white teeth gleamed in a smile. The bruises and lacerations on his 
face were not so noticeable today. "Hey, baby!" he said lazily. "I guess I 
must finally have passed out on you last night. I must have been plastered!" 

"You can say that again!" Marsha said severely. "But then so was I!" 

"Say . . . " Rex suddenly looked alarmed. "I didn't...I mean it wasn't 
before I...before we'd...?" 

"You did all right," Marsha said primly. 'Though I'm not very flattered that 
you don't seem to be able to remember!" 

Aull chuckled. "There's an easy way to fix that, honey," he said 
meaningfully. He turned to face her, and the voluptuous brunette suddenly 
drew in her breath as she felt the hem of her nightgown ride up to her hips 
and his fingers came into contact with her naked flesh. 

An electrifying shock rippled through her loins as she felt him stroke 
gently up towards the top of her thighs. A moment later, he raised himself 
on one elbow and leaned over her to cup the full mound of one swelling 
breast through the thin material of the flimsy garment. 

"Rex...?" she murmured questioningly. "Surely you can't be...?" 

He grinned down at her in the dim light of the bedroom. "Can't be what? 
Can't be getting hot pants for you this early in the morning? Just try me, 
baby!" 

Removing his fingers from her thigh, he reached for one of her hands under 
the sheets and guided it towards his own loins. She felt the hard rubbery 
head of his cock nosing wetly against her skin. As the hotly throbbing shaft 
grazed rigidly into her palm, she gasped and protested, "But darling, we 
can't. . . not now! They'll be bringing our coffee and orange juice at any 
minute. Look at the time!" 

"I am looking," Rex said. "We'll tell 'em to come back later. As to the time 
it seems I wasted some last night if I can't remember what we did! So I 
guess there's only one thing to do." 

"W-w-w-what do you mean?" 

"Have a repeat performance!" he said triumphantly. "Take your seats, ladies 
and gentlemen, for the second performance is about to begin!" 

"Rex Aull . . . " 

Marsha's squeal of protest changed in mid-sentence to a moan of pleasure as 
he moved the palm of his hand softly over the shifting mound of her firm 
young breast, teasing the transparent material of the nightgown against the 
nipple so that the tender bud of flesh hardened and stood up stiffly erect 
under his rotating caress. 

Releasing the trembling girl's hand, he began to stroke her thigh again. She 
uttered a small mewl of delight as the tip of his outstretched middle finger 
found the narrow sensitive slit of her vagina, hesitated, and then gently 
thrust into the wetly throbbing flesh. Her hips arched involuntarily up from 
the mattress as his probing digit parted her softly curling pussy hairs and 
made sudden tantalizing contact with the quivering little button of her 
clitoris. 

The tiny shaft of flesh was already wet and slippery from the unexpected and 
unbidden desire thai was now rippling through her veins, and she sucked in 
her breath to hold back the groan of helpless ecstasy she felt building deep 
in her rapidly rising and falling chest. 

Rex shifted the hand on her breast, slipping his fingers inside the low neck 
of the nightgown to roll and tweak the erect nipples as he massaged the 
whole hairy length of her desire-soaked vaginal furrow with the other. 
Maddeningly, he stroked the wetly throbbing inner lips of her tight young 
cunt, circling his middle finger around the swelling head of her clitoris as 
she squirmed and writhed with lustful abandon beneath him. 

Almost unconsciously, her own fingers clasped themselves around the hardened 
shaft of his penis, rolling the loose sheath of the foreskin up and down the 
massively rigid pole of flesh. 

"God, that feels good!" Rex panted. "Oooooh, my darling! Oh, Marsha, my 
love!" 

Suddenly he moved again. Raising his head, he took his hand away from her 
breast, reached behind him, and tore the single sheet from the bed. Then, 
dragging the length of his lean muscular body over her until he was staring 
directly into her passion-widened eyes, he eased his hips across her pelvis 
so that her fingers, and the hot rigidity of his cock within them, were 
jammed in the crease of her thigh. 

His penis felt enormous this morning, as though her slender fingers could 
only just meet around the ridged, sinewy hardness of the blood-gorged shaft. 
The bulbous head was now squashed wetly in her clenched palm, seeping its 
seminal fluid between her fingers to glide lasciviously across her softly 
trembling belly. Automatically, she smoothed the greasy liquid around the 
glans. into the stretched folds of the foreskin and up and down the long 
veined rod until the whole stiff length of it was as slippery as a 
well-oiled piston. 

Above her, Rex groaned urgently in lustful desire and smashed his mouth down 
on her wetly parted lips to plunge his tongue deep into Marsha's throat. 
Forcing his hands between her shoulders and the mattress, he ran them over 
the pliant curves of her back and hips, feeling the raised ridges of her 
spine ripple as she undulated her voluptuous body up against him in a 
dazedly hypnotic motion. Like the legs of a puppet pulled on invisible 
wires, her thighs spread of their own accord and he sank down between them, 
the tautness of the tendons hard against the outside of his hips. He knew 
how they were going to feel later, when he had buried the excruciating 
hardness of his cock far up in her quivering little belly . . . 

Panting hoarsely, the inflamed movie man shoved his hands further down 
beneath her, cupping the firm fullness of her buttocks in his palms and 
pulling her hotly open loins up tighter against him. Slowly, he began to 
move up and down, sliding his lubricated shaft in and out of her feverishly 
clutching fingers, feeling it grow wetter and wetter with every thrust. In 
the hot, close atmosphere of the shuttered room, streams of perspiration 
coursed down the crinkled skin of his balls to mingle with the dampness 
seeping from her wetly gaping cunt. 

The erotically aroused brunette began a more urgent rotating of her 
ass-cheeks, grinding her cock-hungry little cunt up against Aull's hips and 
then suddenly her legs, snaking wide on either side of him, locked him to 
her. Her heels hooked over the backs of his knees and her calves, sweating 
now in the humid air. pinioned his shuddering thighs and pulled him tighter 
still into her. 

"Oooooooh. Rex darling! Do it to me now! Put it in me now! Fuck me . . . " 
she gasped into his open mouth, her eyes tightly shut and her pelvis 
writhing uncontrollably beneath his weight. 

Moaning with desire, Aull began to shift his hips, dragging a hand out from 
under Marsha's quivering ass-cheeks to reach for his hotly throbbing penis. 
But the passion-crazed girl was too quick for him. and she pulled the 
slippery shaft of hardened flesh across her belly, rolling his thick rigid 
penis towards her cunt. Their fingers met stickily around the iron-hard 
instrument, sending waves of shivering excitement through each of them as 
together they guided the hot pulsating head between the fevered lips of her 
passionately trembling vagina. 

Aull panted wildly as she slid his penis up and down between her hairs, 
teasing it damply against the drenched hairs of her pussy, forcing the 
blood-gorged pole of flesh into even greater hardness until it ached 
intolerably from the agonizing pressure within the veins. Then the young 
brunette reached down with her other hand and used thumb and forefinger to 
spread her vaginal lips apart. 

When Rex felt her tight little pussy unfolding around the sensitive head of 
his cock, he groaned, knowing he couldn't hold back another second! Ramming 
his hips down with a sudden cruel thrust, he drove the thick bursting tip of 
his penis with a flesh-splitting surge into the gaping hot mouth of Marsha's 
trembling little cunt. 

"Aaaaaagggggggh!" she whimpered beneath him as he felt the warm elastic-like 
sheath of her vagina slide wetly over his lust-hardened thickness. 
"Ooooooooh!" 

He rammed in further and she moaned again, louder and with more feeling, 
"Aaaaaaaaggggggghh!! " 

Rex levered himself up on his hands to give greater power to his loins, and 
thrust again. His relentlessly invading rod of flesh forced its way another 
inch into the warmly clasping tunnel of her cunt. 

"Ooooooooh! Oh darling! Ohhhhhhhhh!" 

And another inch . . . 

"Aaaaah, Rex. Oooooogh!" 

And yet another inch and then abruptly it stopped. Aull's lust-swollen penis 
had bored all the way to the hilt into her pussy, tight and hot at first, 
aching the full length of the rigidly pulsating shaft, then more easily as 
the warm wetness of Marsha's cuntal. passage lubricated the way...and now 
his cock-head nosed jarringly against her cervix as his sperm-bloated balls 
slapped wetly into the wide-split crevice between her ass-cheeks. 

Marsha gave a low animal cry. She was skewered like a bird on a spit, and 
the muscular movie man lay still for a moment with his long hard penis 
embedded to the hilt in her moistly clasping vagina, waiting for the shock 
of his entry to subside. Then, far up in the trembling redhead's soft white 
belly, he flexed the inflated head. Marsha groaned, her teeth clenching 
behind her drawn-back lips. He flexed the head once more...and she groaned 
again, more soothingly this time as her hot passage grew accustomed to the 
thick pulsing length of male flesh within it. 

Then Aull began a slow revolving motion of his pelvis, grinding his massive 
hardness tightly down into her naked loins, expanding the wetly clasping 
walls of her vagina until her cunt fitted his pulsating shaft like a 
well-tailored glove. Marsha squirmed from side to side as she strained under 
his weight, arching up her hips to lift them both momentarily off the bed. 
Crooning ceaselessly with wanton desire under his pounding body, the 
lust-inflamed brunette began to open and close her legs scissor-like around 
him as she thrust upwards to meet him on each spearing plunge. 

Her mouth gaped wide. Her head flailed from side to side on the pillow in 
wild abandon. As Aull drove his penis rhythmically into the hot wetness of 
her pussy, a stream of warm moisture ran down the widespread cuntal crevice 
between her legs to saturate his fingers where he could feel his own hard 
rod of flesh sawing into the hairy lips of her tight young cunt. 

He massaged the warm softness of her buttocks, and he felt his cock growing 
and expanding still further inside her clasping little pussy until felt as 
though it would burst from the exquisite pleasure mounting in his balls as 
they slapped wetly against her nakedly rotating ass-cheeks below. It 
wouldn't be long now, he thought, listening to the hammering of his own 
blood in his ears. He hoped Marsha was ready too, for he couldn't hold back 
a moment longer! 

He began ramming his penis into her with long, hard strokes, striving to 
excite her to completion. Their undulating bodies were steamy with sweat as 
they ground frantically against one another. Her swelling breasts scraped 
voluptuously against the matted hair of his pounding chest; their bellies 
slapped and squelched in the damp heat of the room; their thighs were 
gliding one over the other as easily as the long greased shaft of his cock 
pistoning in and out of her cunt. 

Aull could tell the passion-crazed brunette was near her own climax as she 
gripped him frenziedly with her ankles and knees, opening and closing them 
around him in time with his surging thrusts into her hotly palpitating 
pussy. She gurgled beneath him, the sound bubbling up from deep in her 
throat as though she had no conscious control over it. He knew it couldn't 
be long now...and he accelerated the tempo of his merciless lunges with all 
his strength. 

"Aaaaaaaagli! Fuck me, Rex! Fuck me hard, darling!" Marsha chanted, spurring 
him on with the pounding of her heels high on his muscular back. She had 
jackknifed her legs up towards her shoulders, pulling her knees back 
savagely to offer him the widest possible opening of her upraised loins. Her 
body was white-hot. She clasped him with the backs of her calves, winding 
her tapered legs around his nakedly pumping buttocks as her eyes rolled 
uncontrollably in her head. Her ankles locked tightly together high above 
his hips then as she spiraled her ravenous young cunt up and down on the 
full length of his pulsating shaft as it fucked into her like a pile-driver 
gone mad. 

Her face was contorted and straining for the final explosion of sensual 
delight that was so near...so near...so near...just a fraction of a second 
away . . . 

And then it happened. 

The accelerated friction of her moist elastic sheath sucking at his 
throbbing cock proved too much for Aull! An irresistible flood of feeling 
built up in the nerve-ends deep in his sperm-filled balls and surged 
relentlessly outwards a towering wave of white hot passion that hurled him 
forward on its seething crest and then broke thunderously about his ears! 

He was experienced enough to go with it. With luck the force of his own 
spurting climax would push Marsha over the edge and she would cum too! He 
gasped, shuddering. His mouth clamped voraciously down on hers and he 
uttered a long low groan that swelled to a cry of triumph as his 
lust-hardened penis began jerking uncontrollably and he spewed his hot sperm 
far up into her wildly dilating vagina. She could feel it jetting against 
her cervix in great gushing torrents, forcing her nearer to her own orgasm 
with each scalding spurt...and as the movie man had hoped, the fury of his 
ejaculation triggered off Marsha's own climax. 

Wrenching her lips away from his, she opened her mouth and screamed: 

"Aaaaagggghhhh! Rex! Rex! Rex! Oh, darling, I'm cumming! I'm cumming! 
Ooooohhhhhhh!" 

Her naked heels drummed furiously on his pumping ass-cheeks, pounding at his 
sweating flesh as she sobbed her ecstasy into his widely gaping mouth. She 
squeezed the cheeks of her buttocks up against his now deflating penis to 
keep it trapped within her. Her seething belly ground frantically against 
the tenseness of his loins. For both of them there was a timeless moment of 
oblivion when they floated clear of reality and the present on a tide of 
lustful delight. 

And then it was over. With an expiring sigh, Aull collapsed limply between 
Marsha's lowered thighs, his softening cock slipping from the wet clasp of 
her well-fucked pussy with a lewd sucking sound. His lips nibbled gently at 
the soft skin of her neck where it disappeared beneath the damply curling 
tendrils of hair, and he closed his eyes. 

Marsha lay quietly on her back listening to his breathing and feeling the 
gradual slowing of her pulse. She was drowsy and contented, filled with the 
calm of complete sexual satisfaction. Tenderly, she glanced through slitted 
eyelids at the man's head cradled on her shoulder. She was lucky to have 
him! Why then, unbidden and unwanted, did the vision of that other head, 
that golden bell that had tolled so beguilingly between her legs on the 
airplane swim disturbingly into her mind again? 

With an impatient sigh, she opened her eyes wide and stared at the ceiling. 
The chattering of excited Arab voices from the street market was louder now. 
A motor horn blared noisily. Above the bed, the fan of reflected light from 
the mirror had altered shape again: One of the bright bars was much wider 
than the others, almost as though somebody had opened a shutter. 

Swiveling her eyes sideways, Marsha glanced at the French windows. How very 
odd! One of the shutters was open, and the glass door to the balcony was 
standing ajar! Yet she could have sworn . . . 

"REX!" she screamed wildly. "Look out!. . . " 

Desperately, she tried to lever the inert body of her lover away from her, 
away from the wickedly gleaming knife blades held above the bed by the two 
Arabs in red tarbooshes who must have stolen into the room through the 
window while they were making love. 

Aull was spent and exhausted...but he was sober and his mind was back to its 
usual razor-sharp alertness. In the split second before Marsha screamed he 
had sensed the sudden stiffening of her muscles, flicked his eyes sideways 
and observed the alien legs beside the bed. By the time her cry had burst 
into the silence of the room his brain had already telegraphed its frantic 
warning to his muscles and his nerve-ends were poised for action. 

As always, he took the unexpected course. Instead of trying fruitlessly to 
roll away from the murderous knives, he went towards them. 

Uncoiling his lean body like a steel spring, he tightened his arms around 
Marsha's shoulders and hurled the two of them locked together over the side 
of the bed and against the intruders' knees. 

The would-be assassins were taken completely by surprise as the two naked 
bodies cannoned into them while the knives descended. One razor-like blade 
plunged into the warm, sweat-darkened depression in the mattress where 
Marsha and Rex had been lying an instant before: the other sliced through 
the outer layer of skin on Aull's biceps to clang against the metal 
bed-frame. 

But by this time both the attackers were off balance and sprawling forward 
over the empty mattress. 

As they sprang snarling to their feet, Aull thrust the terrified girl 
savagely behind him towards the door leading to the bathroom and scrambled 
upright, snatching the discarded sheet from the foot of the bed as he backed 
off. 

Crouching, the two men advanced warily towards him short, wiry villains with 
swarthy faces and narrowed eyes glittering cruelly above their hairline 
mustaches. Their knives, which had been fisted for the downward plunge at 
the bed, were now held wickedly low, the blades slanting up for the 
disemboweling rip at the belly. 

Naked and defenseless, with nothing that could serve as a weapon within 
reach, Aull retreated towards the wall, drawing them away from the frozen, 
horrified figure of Marsha. 

Then, feinting suddenly towards the nearer man, he threw the sheet swiftly 
over the other, just as the assassin leaped forward, lunging for the movie 
man's naked belly with his knife. 

The sheet, streaked with blood from the cut on Aull's arm, draped itself 
over the intruder's head and shoulders, temporarily blinding him so that the 
knife blade ripped through the material and the vicious stab wasted itself 
on empty air. 

Aull whirled to one side as the second man attacked, twisting eel-like away 
from the murderous steel and slamming the edge of his hand brutally down on 
the intruder's forearm in a karate chop. 

Cursing, the knife-man clapped his other hand to the arm and then moved in 
for a second thrust. But Aull had seized the struggling, sheet-muffled 
figure of his companion and sent him spinning towards the assassin. The two 
men crashed together and staggered against a wardrobe. By the time they had 
extricated themselves and gotten rid of the sheet, the movie man had skipped 
nimbly to the far side of the bed. 

They were still between him and the door leading to the corridor and escape, 
however -and Marsha, her lush young body trembling beneath the flimsy 
nightgown, her eyes wide with terror and her hand raised to her mouth, was 
still isolated at the other end of the room. 

Aull's arm was hurting like hell. It was on fire from shoulder to elbow and 
there were spots and splashes of blood all over the floor and the walls. 
Suddenly he lost his temper. As the two crouched to circle around the end of 
the bed, he picked up a chair and flung it with all his strength at the 
nearest. 

Instinctively, the man raised his arms to protect his head. The knife blade 
jammed momentarily in the wicker seat, and the chair's impetus sent him 
crashing to the floor with a thump that shook the room. 

At the same time the movie man, his lips thinned into a snarl of rage and 
his eyes blazing with fury, launched himself across the bed at the remaining 
attacker in a football tackle. 

His shoulder caught the man full on the thigh and knocked him just enough 
off balance that his blade swung futilely in the air above Rex's head; then 
he fell to the floor. For a moment the two of them sprawled in a tangle of 
limbs on the marble floor and then Aull's steely fingers closed around the 
wrist of his knife-hand and forced it high above his head. 

Panting hoarsely, they lay locked face to face, the clothed assassin and the 
naked victim, as though they were posing for a painting of some obscene and 
unnatural coupling. Gritting his teeth with the effort, Aull pinioned the 
man's free hand under his arm and used his superior weight to roll over on 
top. Then, every sinew in his body tensed with the attempt, he tried to bend 
back the hand grasping the murderous knife and force it to relinquish the 
weapon. 

The muscles in the attacker's forearm corded like steel rods as he strove 
desperately to withstand the pressure. Beads of sweat started out on his 
swarthy forehead as he tried to break the movie man's grip and plunge the 
knife blade into his back. His lips bared back from his teeth like a 
maddened animal, and his foul breath played nauseatingly over Aull's 
contorted features. 

At that moment, seeing the second man clambering to his feet, Marsha grabbed 
instinctively for an earthenware jug on a side table and brought it crashing 
down on his skull. 

The vessel smashed into fragments, strewing the floor with broken shards. 
The man grunted and dropped onto his face. The knife fell from his nerveless 
hand and spun away underneath the bed. 

And Aull, caught for a split second off guard by the sudden noise, 
infinitesimally relaxed his concentration. 

It was enough for his adversary. Thrusting one foot against the movie man's 
ankle, he kicked Aull's leg wide and brought up his other knee to smash with 
sickening force into the naked American's testicles. 

Aull gave a choked cry and doubled up, rolling off the attacker's stomach 
and letting go of his knife hand to claw in agony at his own savaged belly. 

Marsha screamed wildly as the assassin rose to his knees with his features 
twisted into an evil smile. He raised the knife high into the air above 
Aull's nakedly writhing back...and then froze as there was a clatter and a 
rumble from outside the bedroom door. The sound of a key being turned in the 
lock was strangely loud in the silent room. 

Stumbling hastily to his feet, the Arab called out something to his 
companion who was now on his hands and knees, shaking his bleeding head 
dazedly and made for the window. Before the terrified girl realized what was 
happening, they had both rushed out onto the balcony and leaped over the 
iron railing to the street fifteen feet below. 

By the time she got to the window herself, they had picked themselves up and 
melted into the throng jostling towards the market beyond the hotel. 

She turned back into the room. Aull was sitting up on the floor groaning, 
the marble squares surrounding him punctuated by spots of blood from his 
injured arm and the two scarlet exclamation points of the intruders' 
abandoned tarbooshes. 

Beyond him the door opened. A wheeled chromium trolley loaded with tall 
glasses of orange juice, copper pans of steaming coffee, and hot rolls 
wrapped in starched napkins rolled into the room. Behind it an Arab hotel 
servant in white robes smiled a dusky greeting. "Breakfuss, sah," he 
announced cheerfully. 

 CHAPTER FOUR 

"Don't ask me!" Aull said for the third time to the big man across from him. 
"I don't have a goddamn idea why anyone should be after my blood!" 

"But surely if they try three times in as many days...?" 

"It's more complicated than that: I figure there were two different groups 
at work. The guys in Paris were speaking some language I couldn't recognize, 
but the punks who got into my hotel room here were talking in Arabic." 

"Maybe they were just local hired help. But why should they want to kill 
you?" 

"They don't want to kill me," Aull said flatly. "That little shit in the 
hotel room could easily have plunged his knife into me after the 
room-service waiter interrupted...and still got away over the 'balcony. But 
he didn't. And it can't be robbery. The guys in Paris had plenty of time for 
that and they didn't either. No, they must be after something I've got. 
Something particular. And the hell of it is. I don't know what the fuck they 
want!" 

The man on the far side of the desk sighed. He was a tall, coarse-featured 
man with a red freckled face and close-cropped hair. He was six feet two 
inches tall and the fact that he had a pot belly disguised the fact that 
most of his 240 lbs. was hard muscle. His name was Dick Horn and he was an 
occasional free-lance field agent for the CIA. Aull had met him some years 
before when he was running arms into Central Africa, and the two men had 
struck up a wary friendship. Now, knowing Horn was based on Khartoum, the 
movie man was seeking his aid in an attempt to unravel the mystery 
surrounding the inexplicable attacks he was being subjected to. 

"I'd like to make this clear, Horn," Aull said awkwardly. "There's nothing 
remotely connected with the CIA or your own job in this deal. I want to 
retain you in a personal capacity...and, of course, I'll be glad to pay 
whatever the trade carries." 

"Just what do you want me to do, Aull boy?" 

"Let's say I'd like you to make with the private eye routine." 

Horn fished a cigar from his breast pocket and lit it. "Meaning?" 

"Meaning I want you to find out who's behind this and why. I want to know 
what these guys are after. What have I got that's so valuable that I don't 
even know I have it? Meaning you have all the contacts here so you should be 
able to do it. And meaning most of all that I want you to look after my girl 
when Tin not there. Act as a bodyguard if you like. I've got work to do. and 
I don't have the time to find out for myself, even if I had the contacts, 
which I don't." 

Horn blew out a lungful of cigar smoke and stared at him through the blue 
cloud. "It'll cost you." he said. 

"That's okay. I said I'm prepared to pay. Just find out, is all." 

The big man heaved his great bulk out of the chair and walked to the window. 
The office was small and shabby, overlooking the loading yard of a cotton 
warehouse. "I can't guarantee results." he said at last. "It's a difficult 
country and they're devious bastards to deal with. But I'll try." 

"That's my boy!" Aull said. He glanced at a newspaper lying open on the 
desk. DOOMED ORLY JETLINER DEFINITELY SABOTAGED SAY EXPERTS, the front-page 
headline announced. "Right now." he added. "I'm ready to believe that even 
the goddamn air crash was directed at me!" 

Half an hour later, three miles away on the other side of the city, he was 
walking up the steps of a government building that stood in shuttered 
seclusion behind tall hedges of tamarisk. He had telephoned Marsha, telling 
her to store the majority of their baggage, move to a smaller hotel, and 
wait there for Horn. Now he was about to make his first business call. 

The man who eventually received him was lean and dark, a neat mustache 
emphasizing the chiseled planes of his mouth. Over his glass-topped desk a 
large horizontal fan revolved slowly in the hot damp air. His name, 
according to an ebony plaque on the desk, was Colonel Gorbel Mesh. 

He read carefully through Aull's credentials and letters of introduction and 
then looked up with a smile. "We are always happy to welcome foreigners who 
wish to film in our country." he said. "And as you no doubt know, we make no 
demands that you should employ a certain proportion of Sudanese workers. To 
be frank, the money you bring in is of use to our economy." 

Aull inclined his head and said nothing. 

"I see from your proposed schedule, however, that you would like permission 
to prospect locations in the south of the country," Colonel Mesh added. "I 
should be interested to know why." 

The movie man grinned. "Like most things in our business," he replied, "it's 
one of those deals that just happened. The company happened to have acquired 
a whole lot of jeeps, half-tracks and obsolete tanks. There happened to be a 
story in the script department for which they could be used. And the story 
happened to be a World War II adventure set in the Western Desert." 

"I see. Why not shoot it in the Western Desert then?" 

"My principals thought the political situation north of the Sahara was too 
unstable. We'd found a stretch of similar terrain in Senegal, but there were 
difficulties there too. Apparently you have an equally suitable area in the 
south of your country." 

Mesh rose gracefully from his chair and moved across to a wall map flanked 
by a coat of arms and the Sudanese flag. "I gather the areas in question 
would be, roughly, here...and here...and perhaps here?" he said, tapping the 
map with a manicured finger. "To the south and west of the El Marra massif?" 

"Yes...about there, I'd say." 

"Your company's choice of locale would not you will forgive me? would not 
have any connection with the supposed existence of mineral deposits, lignite 
and bauxite for example, in those areas?" 

"Good God, no!" Aull exclaimed. "I'm not an undercover man for some sharp 
prospecting firm out for cheap concessions! You don't have to worry about 
that: I wouldn't know a quartz crystal from a diamond! We really do have a 
movie to make. I could show you the contracts." 

"That will not be necessary. I can see you are astonished by my suggestion. 
But you must understand that, in my branch of the police service, there are 
certain formalities to be observed, certain questions to be asked." 

"Naturally. That's why I'm here to answer them if I can." 

Mesh smiled and sat down again. "In principle there should be no difficulty 
in acceding to your request," he said. "But in practice it is not as easy as 
you might think." 

"Frankly, I can't see why," Aull objected. "I mean, it's not as though we 
wanted to set up rails and trundle dollies through the main streets and hold 
up all the traffic, is it? I gather the area's practically uninhabited." 

"True. But it is an area of unrest just the same." 

"Unrest? Really?" Aull was astonished. "I'd no idea." 

"It is not a story that appears in the world's press, but it is dramatic 
enough for all that," Mesh said soberly. "There is, I regret to say, a 
species of genocide being carried out in the region." 

"Genocide!" 

The policeman sighed. "I'm afraid there is no other word for it. The 
northern half of the country is peopled by Muslims Arabs if you like. But 
the three southern provinces are inhabited by Negroes, either Christian or 
pagan. And since the big cities such as Khartoum and Omdurman, and therefore 
the reins of government, are in Arab hands.. . " He shrugged. "Well, 
naturally, the peoples of the south feel that they are exploited. They wish 
to secede." 

"And the government refuses?" 

"Since the British left and the country became independent," Mesh said 
levelly, "there has been a systematic campaign of extermination in that 
region of the south. There are fifteen thousand Arab troops quartered in the 
area. Feeling runs so high that the officers go in fear of their lives and 
spend their time lounging about in the towns leaving their men free to burn 
and loot and murder as they will. Almost every day another village is 
destroyed razed to the ground and all its inhabitants killed." 

"Good God!" Aull was profoundly shocked. "But what possible excuse...?" 

"They are said to be rebels. Cut-throat bands of renegade blacks, they call 
them here. And they say they are simply eliminating agitators. But in 
reality it is a religious and race war that is being fought. More than a 
hundred and fifty villages have been destroyed completely eradicated in the 
southeast since the British left. Fifty thousand people have been massacred 
in those villages, leaving the survivors to wander in the bush and starve. 
Such murders, plus disease, starvation and a drain of refugees fleeing 
across the borders, have reduced the African population by over a million a 
third of the total black inhabitants in those provinces!" 

"Are there in fact rebel bands?" Aull asked. "Or do they just suffer in 
silence?" 

"Some of the dissidents have naturally formed themselves into armed groups, 
a kind of black underground There are the Nya Nyerere in the southwest, and 
the Anya Nya, further east past the Sobat Lazzaro, who commands the Anya 
Nya, is a skilled guerilla leader but he has one bazooka and a handful of 
rifles among a few thousand irregulars. They fight in bowler hats and 
shorts! What can such groups do against fifteen thousand heavily armored 
cavalry? Occasionally they ambush and wipe out an Arab squadron; sometimes 
they take and hold a frontier post for a few days. But they couldn't prevent 
the Juba massacre in the summer of 1965, when fourteen hundred people were 
killed in a single night! Most of the leaders have been forced to flee into 
exile either to Abyssinia or west to Chad, Mali, and Senegal." 

"You seem if you don't mind my saying so 

extremely...uh...objective about this," Aull commented. "For a Khartoum 
official, I mean." 

Mesh smiled faintly. "I have reason to be," he said. "I am a member of a 
minority myself. My family were Copts, part of a Christian sect based in 
Alexandria. We had to leave Egypt when Nasser took over from King Farouk. 
That is why, although I have found refuge here. I shall never rise higher 
than head of an unimportant administrative department that has nothing to do 
with politics. And that is why I have sympathy for the poor people of the 
south who cannot get proper representation because of the corruption here in 
Khartoum." 

He sighed and shuffled together the papers on his desk. "But I must not 
weary you with out internal problems, Mr. Aull," he said. "I will try to get 
you your permission to film in the El Marra region though your company might 
be well advised to er ask the government for a troop of cavalry to hold, as 
it were, a watching brief." 

"We should probably be able to use them in the movie," Aull said. "And we 
should naturally expect to, shall we say, defray the necessary expenses." 

"Just so." Gorbel Mesh Hashed him a smile of understanding. "But it may take 
some time to complete the necessary formalities. If you could call hack some 
time later this afternoon...or tomorrow morning?" 

"By all means. In any case I only want to look the place over in the 
beginning." Aull hesitated and then took a sudden decision. He had formed an 
instinctive and immediate liking for the elegant Egyptian. "Are you by any 
chance free to have lunch with me?" he asked. 

Mesh raised his eyes and smiled broadly a warm smile that erased the lines 
from his face and made him look suddenly boyish and enthusiastic. "That 
would be most agreeable. I should be glad to," he said. 

They went to a rooftop restaurant surrounded by orange trees in tubs and 
shaded from the fierce heat of the sun by striped awnings. Beyond the 
parapet, the distant waters of the Nile showed blue and glittering over the 
massed palms of a small park between two glaring white apartment blocks. 

For a time the conversation was general. And then, under the mellowing 
influence of a bottle of white Burgundy (for Mesh, as a non-Muslim, was 
evidently an amateur of fine wines), Aull began to speak more freely. Partly 
because the man was after all a policeman, but mainly because the more he 
saw of him the more he liked him, he began to relate the details of the 
inexplicable series of attacks he had suffered since he left Paris. 

When he reached the events of that morning immediately preceding his visit 
to the police headquarters, Mesh looked up suddenly from his plate and 
raised inquiring eyebrows. "Did you say Horn?" he echoed. "Dick Horn?" 

"That's right," Aull replied. "I guess it's pretty well an open secret that 
he works for the CIA." 

"A big man with a crude vocabulary and a red face? An American?" 

"That's him!" 

Mesh picked up a fork and slid the succulent meat cubes of a kebab 
delicately from their skewer. "I am afraid that you have your tenses wrong, 
my friend." he said. 

"Come again?" 

"It may have been no secret that Mr. Horn worked for the Central 
Intelligence Agency." the Colonel said slowly. "What is perhaps less well 
known is that his contract was ah terminated well over a year ago." 

Aull stared at him with his glass half way to his lips". "Terminated? You 
mean he was thrown out? Fired'? " 

"Part of my work as arbiter of permits for foreigners," Mesh said carefully, 
"necessarily brings me into contact with my colleagues in the security 
police. That is the information I have been given." 

"Good God! But why? What did he do?" 

"I am afraid I am not at liberty to divulge the details. I can however tell 
you what he does now." The Egyptian stared out over the roof at the 
multicolored mosaics of a mosque glinting in the sun. "He is the proprietor 
of a seedy tourist agency touting for the less salubrious places of 
entertainment in our city from all of which he receives a healthy 
kick-back." he said. 

Aull stared at him. 

"He publishes a shady guide to the Sudan which is neither more nor less than 
an advertising medium for the country's brothels," Mesh continued 
remorselessly. "He is himself an active supplier of women for those 
brothels. And he is thought although not known to have a considerable 
interest in the supply and sale of drugs here." 

"Good God!" Aull said again. "Why don't you throw him out then?" 

"He has friends in high places," the police official said evasively. 

"You mean lie has protection? He runs in women and drugs for the boys at the 
top? Is that it?" 

Colonel Mesh drained his glass and took an Egyptian cigarette from a gold 
case. "I am not at liberty to tell you any more," he said. "I have perhaps 
spoken too freely already." 

"But...but...I'd no idea! I thought I knew the man! . . .Jesus!" Aull sat 
staring, struck by a sudden thought. "You say he supplies the cat houses 
here?" 

The policeman nodded. "So I believe." 

"And this is the guy I hired to investigate...and to look after my girl! 
Jesus!" 

Mesh lit his cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke. "Believe me. Mr. 
Aull," he said earnestly. "You could not have chosen a worse person for 
either task . . . " 

By now thoroughly alarmed, Aull called for the bill, agreed to meet Mesh the 
following morning at his office, and took a cab back to the Excelsior Hotel. 

Yes, the Arab receptionist informed him, Madame had checked out and removed 
the baggage. She had returned later without it and waited in the patio for a 
visitor. A large, red-faced effendi with a loud voice. An American 
gentleman, he thought. They had left the hotel together. 

Aull called another cab and raced across town to the smaller hotel where he 
had suggested Marsha should book them in. 

The fat old Frenchwoman behind the desk in the cramped foyer remembered him 
from a previous visit three years before. She was very content to see 
Monsieur Aull once more, she enthused. It was always agreeable to welcome 
old and valued clients. 

But no nobody had made a reservation in Monsieur Aull's name. Certainly no 
baggage had arrived. And she had seen no dark haired young lady with or 
without a large American gentleman. Of course, she would ask the staff -but 
had she not been behind her desk herself all morning? She would surely have 
remarked such a couple if they had come! She would have a look...but no, 
there were no messages. 

Aull flung himself into the telephone kiosk and dialed Horn's number. There 
was no reply. 

Marsha and the crooked ex-CIA man had vanished into the complex warren of 
the city . . . 

 CHAPTER FIVE 

Marsha Fox lay face downwards on the cushions of a low Arab divan and 
blinked her green eyes. Her mouth felt dry, nausea clawed at the pit of her 
stomach, and there was an ache behind her throbbing temples. 

For a moment she stared at the unfamiliar oriental patterns of the covers, 
and then abruptly she pushed herself up on to her hands and knees and stared 
around her. Where was she? 

The room was small and dimly lit, with only one small barred window high up 
under the arched ceiling. The dun-colored walls were hung with rugs and 
there was an intricately engraved brass coffee tray standing on wooden legs 
beside the divan. Otherwise the place was empty. 

She swung one shapely leg off the bed and realized with a start of dismay 
that she was naked! And then suddenly, with mind-shattering clarity, it all 
came back to her.. . 

She remembered Rex's telephone call. She remembered checking out of the 
hotel and taking away their baggage. She had gone back to the Excelsior and 
the man Horn had arrived there instead of meeting her at the other place as 
Rex had arranged. She hadn't even had time to book them into the new hotel. 
Horn told her that Rex had changed his plans and they were all to meet for 
lunch on the outskirts of the city. She distrusted and disliked the big man 
from the moment she saw him. but Rex had said that he worked for the CIA and 
that he was all right. So she obediently got into the back of the 
chauffeur-driven Mercedes and gone off with him. 

She remembered questioning Horn when they seemed to be penetrating deeper 
and deeper into the congested Arab quarter of the old town, but he explained 
that it was a short-cut and allayed her fears. She remembered him turning 
towards her with a curiously knowing leer on his face...and then suddenly 
she remembered, too, the cotton-wool pad drenched in some sickly smelling 
stuff that he whipped out of his briefcase and clapped over her nose and 
mouth. 

And that was all she did remember! 

My Cod! She must have been drugged! It was ridiculous and melodramatic and 
unbelievable - like some absurd story in a cheap movie but she had been 
drugged and abducted, kidnapped in the kasbah! And now here she was, a naked 
prisoner...where? 

In a sudden flood of panic, she jumped from the divan and threw herself 
towards an iron-hinged door filling an arch at the top of a short flight of 
steps at the far end of the room. The door was bolted on the outside. 

Really frightened now. the dark-haired 

American girl dragged the tray-table over to the wall and climbed 
tremblingly on to the brass top. Her eyes were still below the level of the 
window and all she could see beyond the bars set into the thick mud 
embrasure was a segment of blue sky over another mud wall. From somewhere 
nearby the plaintive quarter-tones of Arab music brayed into the air. 
Otherwise the building was surrounded by complete silence. 

Going back to the divan, the terrified brunette gave way for a moment to 
despair. She was a naked captive in the native quarter of some Arab 
town...she didn't even know for sure that it was Khartoum, for she had no 
means of knowing how long she had been unconscious. How was Rex ever going 
to find her'. ' How was she ever going to get out of this terrible 
predicament? And what could Dick Horn's motives have been, spiriting her 
away like this? 

The problem, added to the unnerving attacks on Rex and the horrifying 
spectacle of the jet disaster, was too much for her. She was overcome by a 
fit of helpless weeping, the hot tears coursing down her trembling cheeks 
and splashing on to her quivering naked breasts as she sat dejectedly on the 
low divan. 

She was still sunk in hopeless apathy when there was a rattling of chains 
and the heavy clunk of iron bolts being drawn. The door swung open, and Dick 
Horn strode into the room followed by two evilly smirking Arab servants. 

Marsha gave a gasp of dismay, clamping her knees together and crossing her 
arms to hide her exposed breasts as the big man came to a halt towering over 
iter. She had never felt so defenseless and naked in her life. 

"W-w-wwhat do you mean by this. . . this outrage?" she demanded in a voice 
shrill with fright. "Why have I been brought here? How dare you! Where are 
my clothes?" 

Horn chuckled coarsely. "Save it, baby." he rasped. "You arc here and that's 
all there is to it. Calling names won't help you none. As to your clothes, 
you won't need any where you're goin'! " 

"Ww-w-what do you mean? I don't understand." 

"I gotta client who fancies Western broads," Horn said. "Especially 
brunettes with big tits. He placed an order and you happened to fill the 
bill. So I'm deliverin' the goods, is all." 

"B-b-but that's...that's.. . " Marsha squeaked, a cold hand of fear 
clutching at her heart. "You can't do that! You'll never get away with it! 
Oh God. I thought you were supposed to be a friend of Rex's." 

"That punk? He's a coupla years out of date. He thinks I still work for 
those shit-heads in Washington! I got better friends now." 

"Well he'll find me. He won't rest until he does. He has friends in the 
p-p-police.' He...he'll have every exit in the city watched," the weeping 
brunette said defiantly. "He'll find me and then you'd better watch out!" 

Horn laughed. "He doesn't have a hope in hell," he said. "In the first place 
you already left Khartoum yesterday afternoon!" 

"Yesterday afternoon?" Marsha interrupted shrilly. 

"That's what I said. You been out for over twenty-four hours, baby. You were 
already clear of the city limits before he even knew you were missing!" 

"But...but...but I tell you, you can't do this sort of thing!" 

"Shut up!" Horn shouted, suddenly becoming impatient. "You can forget your 
creep boy friend and your goddamn clothes and everything else you ever had. 
I'm bein' paid good money for you, and you're goin' on out and keep my 
client company in his desert pad, and that's all there is to it. Squallin' 
won't get you no place, so you better keep that pretty little trap shut or 
I'll beat the shit outa you." 

"You'll never get away with it. you loud-mouthed oaf," Marsha stormed again. 
"Do you think for a moment that Rex will accept . . . " She broke off with a 
cry of pain as the ex-CIA man raised his hand and viciously slapped her 
across the face. The blow was hard enough to send her reeling back on the 
divan with the marks of his fingers livid on her cheek. 

"When I say shut up. I mean just that." Horn said harshly. He turned to the 
two servants and barked a command in Arabic. 

Before the cowering girl realized what was happening, the two men darted 
forward and seized her by the arms and legs. As she screamed wildly, they 
picked iier up and Hung her violently face downwards on the divan. One of 
them then threw himself across her frenziedly kicking legs while the other 
sat on her writhing shoulders, his sinewy knees under the striped Arab robe 
pinioning her arms to her sides, his swarthy face towards her feet. 

Twisting her head desperately to one side under his muscular weight, the 
hysterically sobbing captive girl saw with a thrill of horror that Horn was 
slowly undressing. "Ahmed," he said to the man across her legs, "get them 
pretty thighs spread good and wide, will ya? Hassan -you know what you have 
to do?" 

"Si, si, effendi!" the man astride Marsha's quivering shoulders replied with 
an evil grin. 

"W-w-w-what are you going to do?" the nakedly pinioned girl quavered. 

Horn pulled his shirt over his head. He licked his thick lips. "Like most of 
them desert duel tains, my client likes his automobiles good and run in when 
he takes delivery," he said conversationally. "He don't want to run no Caddy 
a thousand miles over the sand at forty miles per hour. He wants to put his 
sonofabitch foot down and go! It's the same way with his women. We're just 
gonna do a little test-bed run, as you might say." He chuckled obscenely, 
delighted with his joke. 

Marsha stared at him uncomprehendingly, her tear-stained face a mask of 
puzzlement. 

The big American unzipped the fly of his pants, stripped them off, and 
stepped out of his shorts. Standing naked before her, he looked immense. His 
body, meaty and muscular, was tough all over except for the heavy paunch 
bulging out above the wiry tangle of his iron-gray pubic hair. Over the 
heavy, bloated pouch of his testicles, his penis, formidable as the trunk of 
some desert cactus, jerked slowly into massive erection. 

"Like I say," Horn continued, "I'm gonna open up the road a little for him, 
so it won't be so much of a squeeze in there when he gets goin'. " He turned 
and nodded to the two Arabs. 

Marsha gasped as she felt her legs suddenly freed of Ahmed's weight and then 
her ankles were grasped and wrenched brutally apart, so that she was held 
immovably spread-eagled face down on the divan. At the same time Hassan 
leaned forward with a sadistic chuckle and dug his hard fingers into the 
softly rounded half moons of her naked buttocks. Gripping her top half 
tightly between his splayed thighs, he pried the quivering mounds of smooth 
flesh slowly apart, exposing the entire length of her hairy vaginal furrow 
to Horn's leering gaze. She felt the cool air on her genitals and she 
realized with a despairing sob that she had never in her whole life felt so 
utterly degraded and shamefully exposed. She shivered and jerked again, 
shuddering with disgust as Hassan worked a gob of spittle to the front of 
his mouth and allowed it to fall slowly on to the tightly clenched nether 
ring of her puckered little anus. 

But even then she didn't fully grasp the vile humiliation she was to suffer. 
She was staring mesmerized at Horn's huge cock. He was rubbing the loose 
foreskin expertly up and down the rigidly expanding staff, exposing the 
purplish, bulbously inflated head as he massaged the thick pole of flesh 
into even greater hardness. "W-w-w-what are you going to do?" she whispered 
fearfully again. 

"Our Muslim friends don't go too much on cunt," Horn said coarsely, "but 
they sure go a bundle on ass, so Daddy's eomin' in the back way just to make 
it easier for the boss man." And then, seeing that the anguished dark-haired 
woman still didn't understand, he added brutally: "I'm goin' to fuck you in 
the asshole, baby." 

"Oh. no!" the weeping captive wailed as the full implication of the bestial, 
indecent ravishment he was proposing sank in to her tortured mind. "You 
can't! . . .Not like that! Not there! Please don't do it to me there! You 
can't! . . . " 

"Can't?" Horn repeated. "Just try me. sweetie!" And stepping towards the 
divan he leaned down and thrust the tip of his outstretched middle finger 
against the tight entrance to her naked rectum, poking viciously at her 
defenseless anal hole." 

Spread helplessly on the cushions with her legs cruelly forced apart by 
Ahmed and her hips jammed down by the pressure of Hassan's buttock-splaying 
hands, the weeping young dark-haired woman was powerless to resist. 
Frantically, she writhed her naked buttocks against the onslaught of the 
raping finger, thrashing them wildly from side to side and clenching her 
ass-cheek muscles desperately in a vain attempt to delay the brutal 
penetration she knew must come. She could hardly believe that even these 
merciless kidnappers and white-slavers would do such a vile thing to her. It 
was monstrous! It was the ultimate depth of degradation! Surely they must be 
doing it just to intimidate her. to make her beg for mercy and prepare her 
for the humiliations of the harem? 

Horn leaned down further and spat accurately on to the outer edges of the 
desperately contracted anal ring uptilted between the cruelly spread cheeks 
of her ass. Then, with a grunt of satisfaction, he plowed his finger deep 
into the warm velvety passage beyond. 

"Asssssaggggggghhhh!" Marsha opened her mouth and screamed. 

"By God, your asshole's so tight you must be a virgin back there," Horn 
said, as the lewdly grinning American drilled his finger deeper and deeper, 
stretching and expanding the tightness of the frantic girl's rectum until 
she thought she would faint from the pain. Moans of impotent protest forced 
their way through her fearfully quivering lips as he moved the finger around 
in si elf the contracted little opening, sawing it in and out to stretch the 
clenched anus in preparation for the entry of the huge cock swaying 
obscenely between his thighs. 

"Aaaaaaaah. don't!" the helpless brunette screamed again as he jammed a 
second finger into her warm buttery depths. "Don't! You're hinting 
meeeeeeeeee!" 

"You can holler as much as you like, girlie," Horn panted. "Ain't nobody 
goin' to take any notice. They're used to women yelling around here!" 

Abruptly, he plucked the raping digits away from Marsha's defensively 
puckered rectum. Forcing his hand between her fear-tautened belly and the 
cushions, he stroked his fingers lewdly back along the hairy length of her 
moist vaginal cleft and smeared the fluid up and around her plundered anus 
to lubricate the opening still further. A moment later she felt the divan 
sag as he climbed on and kneeled between her cruelly spread thighs...and 
then the hard rubbery tip of his huge, hotly pulsating cock was pressing 
against her tight hairless anal opening. 

The spread-eagled naked girl held her breath as she felt the thickly rigid 
penis wedged into the crevice of her forced-open ass-cheeks begin to press 
remorselessly inwards. God, it was huge! It would split her! She would never 
be able to lake such a shaft in her rectum without her belly being torn 
apart! 

The muscles of Horn's stomach contracted and then stood out as he strained 
forward. Marsha felt the soft probing between her buttocks grow into a hard 
relentless pressure against the tight rubbery ring of her anus. 

"Ohhhhhhhh! God, no! Please Aaaaaagggggghhlihh!" she shrieked suddenly as 
the interfolded nether ring suddenly gave way and the inflated head of the 
American's massive penis rammed inside with a surging rush. 

A spasm of agony shot through the naked brunette's loins, a pain so 
unbearable that she screeched again and again, squirming with all her 
strength to evade the bestial impalement. Her naked buttocks writhed wildly 
under Hassan's splaying hands, but her anguished movements served only to 
wedge the thickly gleaming cock more securely into her tortured rectum. It 
was as though a monstrous battering-ram was being remorselessly thrust into 
the tiny opening of her virginal back passage! 

Grinning cruelly, Horn forced his long thick penis another inch, and then 
another, and still another into the screaming girl's nakedly thrashing body. 
And then his beefy loins smacked heavily into the softness of her lewdly 
spread ass-cheeks. She was hopelessly skewered On the brutally thick 
fleshiness of his raping penis! It was buried to the hilt in her tightly 
clenched anus! 

Panting hoarsely with his exertions, the ex-CIA man began to fuck 
rhythmically in and out of the hot spongy depths of Marsha's back passage 
under the admiring and lustful gaze of the two Arabs. 

As the helpless girl fought with wild desperation against the horror and 
degradation of the depraved attack on her defenseless anal passage, his 
pounding hips pumped faster and faster, thrusting the inflamed spear of his 
lustfully expanding rod again and again into the brutally ravished tightness 
of her rectum. She was impaled on the stone-hard cock as inexorably as an 
insect on a board! 

The kidnapped brunette's burnished hair Hailed among the cushions, her head 
twisting this way and that in helpless subjugation as the tempo of Horn's 
pistoning hips increased and his huge penis plowed on and on up into her 
savagely stretched rectum. Her mind was adrift on a sea of degradation and 
misery. The flesh of her ripe young buttocks shuddered uncontrollably under 
the pressure of Hassan's fingers; the soft bulge of her belly trembled 
convulsively every time her agonizingly splayed thighs were buffeted by 
another fiercely thrusting plunge of the American's raping shaft. Her 
ankles, held painfully wide in Ahmed's brutal grasp, were aching 
intolerably, and her proud young breasts were squashed under the weight of 
evil Hassan. 

Horn's mind was an inferno of impatient lust, and the sensation of the naked 
captive's warm velvety rectum clasped so tightly around the base of his 
passion-inflamed cock was driving him on to even greater excesses. His eyes 
locked hypnotically on his sodomizing pole of iron-hard flesh buried between 
Marsha's upraised ass-cheeks and he felt his heart pumping wildly in his 
chest. He had never seen a more exciting sight in his life! He was almost 
sorry he was selling the bitch to that dusky bastard in the interior! With 
bated breath, he eyed the tender ridges of her pink anal flesh pulling out 
with each withdrawal of his long thick staff and then disappearing once more 
as his inward thrust drove her little rectal ring back up into her belly. 
His breath jetted faster and faster through his nose as he fucked like a 
madman in and out of the piteously wailing brunette's puckering anal hole. 

Pounded into total submission by the hot pulsing cock ramming into her 
cruelly distended anus. Marsha groaned afresh with every scalding plunge. 
Gradually, though, the agony and the humiliation were taking on a new and 
frightening dimension. Unwanted and unexpected, forbidden sensations of 
excitement were beginning to invade her tingling loins. The shame of lying 
helplessly on her face being sodomized by one man while another sat astride 
her back forcing her buttocks apart was joined by a strange masochistic 
emotion...an emotion not very far from actual pleasure! God, they were 
treating her like the white-slave she was to he, using her body like a 
whore's to satisfy their brutal male lust! 

There was no doubt about it! Although twinges of pain still shot through her 
belly, the feeling of Horn's huge spear of hard male flesh racing up into 
her vulnerably filled rectum was Hooding her veins with a sensation of 
pleasure! She was actually enjoying it...pain and pleasure, shame and 
ecstasy, had become inextricably mingled in her reeling mind! 

The violently fucking American plunging in and out of her anus called out 
something in Arabic. The insanely writhing brunette felt Hassan's splaying 
fingers removed from the stretched cheeks of her ass to be replaced 
instantly by Horn's own hard hands. And then she gasped and jerked anew as 
the Arab's obscenely intruding digits forced themselves beneath her hip 
bones and crept lewdly through her drenched pussy hair to feel for the 
swollen lips of her wetly open cunt. 

Abruptly all her defenses crumbled and the young dark-haired girl began 
screaming again and again with abandoned passion as the raping fingers 
parted her throbbing vaginal lips and scrabbled at the tightly erect bud of 
her trembling clitoris. Oh God, Oh God! It was unendurable, it was 
intolerable, it was delicious...if the fingers continued their unbearable 
clawing at her secret inner flesh and Horn's vast penis went on sawing into 
her hotly seething anus much longer she was going to cum...she knew she was! 
And she didn't want to; she resisted the thought with all her mind to cum 
would be an admission that her body craved the brutal subjection she was 
suffering! 

Yet the tidal wave of erotic lust on which she was irresistibly borne swept 
her remorselessly onwards. She heard a girl's voice passionately shrieking, 
"Go on, do it to me! Fuck me! Harder, harder, harder!" And she realized with 
a thrill of horror that the words were formed by her own wantonly trembling 
lips! 

Horn felt the sweat stream from his every pore as he fucked into the widely 
distended hoe between the captive American girl's buttocks. He stared down 
in fascination at her tightly clasping rectal mouth, pulling her softly 
rounded ass-cheeks even further apart as he fixed his staring eyes 
lasciviously on those pink ridges of anal flesh clinging to his raping cock 
on each withdrawal stroke. 

She was pumping her ass insanely back against him now, meeting thrust with 
thrust as she screamed her lust aloud. The little bitch was going out of her 
mind! He couldn't remember when he'd seen a broad so hot! Jesus, it was as 
much as he could do to keep up with her! She was writhing so violently that 
she was almost throwing the straddled Hassan clean off of her back! 

"Aaaahhhh! Aaaaahhhh! Aaaaaahhhhh!" Marsha cried wildly. Her tingling body 
was at the crest of the wave! It didn't matter what they did to her now; she 
was going to cum at any moment! 

Sensing that the pinioned girl was about to peak. Horn plunged his 
stone-hard cock into her lire-filled anus with redoubled fury, brutally 
splaying her lush white buttocks apart as his pistoning pelvis fucked faster 
and faster against her eagerly thrusting ass-cheeks. And suddenly he felt 
her stiffen and shudder. 

"Aaaaaaaaah! Oooooooogh! Oh! Oh God, oh God. I'm cumming! I'm cumming!" 
Marsha screamed in a demented wail and then her lushly ripened young body 
bucked and jerked and threshed in a crescendo of intolerable delight as her 
orgasm trembled insanely through her with the force of a tropical tempest! 

The wild churning of her lust-inflamed buttocks triggered off the sodomizing 
American's climax. He raised his head to bellow out a gasping cry of 
release. His hips arched convulsively forward, ramming his raping staff even 
deeper into the helpless girl's belly as the throbbing head of his cock 
exploded into a storm of powerful jerking in the tightly convulsing depths 
of her vise-like rectum. Scalding squirts of his semen jetted far up into 
the ravaged brunette's anal passage, and she shrieked in a mindless ecstasy 
with each fresh gush of his white-hot sperm. 

For a long moment the men held her cruelly there, skewered helplessly on 
Horn's spewing penis as he ejaculated his churning cum in forceful spurts up 
into her quivering rectum. Then he thrust violently down on her spread 
thighs and levered himself exhaustedly away from her. his deflating, 
cum-covered cock pulling free of her plundered anal hole with a sucking 
squelch. 

"Jesus, that was good!" he panted. clambering off the divan to leave an 
opalescent trail of sticky sperm strung across her trembling buttocks. "But 
it's tight in there! I guess we better open her up some more before we make 
the delivery to Abd el Kerim! Be my guest. Hassan boy. and see what you can 
do!" 

Crushed into abject subjugation by the debasing rape of her anus and the 
Arab's obscene handling of her clitoris and humiliated even more by her own 
lewd reaction to it Marsha lay sobbing into the cushions. She felt Hassan's 
weight lift from her shoulders. . . and then Ahmed had leaped nimbly into 
his place, releasing her ankles to straddle her back and arms as he leaned 
forward to pry apart the shuddering cheeks of her ass once more. Again her 
thighs were kneed excruciatingly wide as the exultant Hassan took up Horn's 
old position between them and hauled up his striped robe to produce his 
darkly inflamed penis. 

Oh God' the helpless brunette moaned to herself in the depths of her 
despair.They 're going to do it to me again! Will this hell never end.' 

The lustfully excited Arab, his dark eyes glittering with triumph, took the 
rigidly throbbing shaft of his cock in one hand, rammed the wetly seeping 
head against the plundered hole that Ahmed was splaying wide before him, and 
plunged the hot pole of flesh two inches into Marsha's distended and 
sperm-wet anus with a single powerful thrust. As she screamed afresh in a 
combination of pain and shame and pure animal rapture, he rocked back on his 
heels and seized her hips to drag the tightly clasping ring of puckered 
flesh still further up the raping shaft of his penis. 

Horn was clambering back into his pants again. "Attaboy, Hassan!" he 
guffawed. "Fuck the shit outa that tight little hole! Ahmed can lake his 
turn afterwards. Maybe it'll be wide enough then to take His Excellence!" 

Stuffing the limply shining tube of his cock back into the bulging crotch of 
his shorts, he turned to the anguished brunette and added; "As for you, 
darling, we got a nice little hypo full of sleep drops. You're gonna take 
another trip and then you'll wake up all relaxed and ready for the boss man 
in his harem. 

 CHAPTER SIX 

Rex Aull shielded his eyes against the blazing sun. Under the folds of his 
Arab gown, the heavy colt automatic lent to him by Colonel Mesh had worn a 
sore place on his hip and he shifted the belt supporting its holster for the 
hundredth time since he had left Khartoum. Beneath his aching thighs, the 
camel lurched and swayed, picking its way over the shale slanting up to a 
massive limestone bluff a thousand feet above them. 

The caravan was quite small a score of camels and half a dozen pack horses 
but by now it had become strung out across the desolate plateau and snaked 
its way for nearly a quarter of a mile along the stony path. It had been 
almost five hours since they struggled up the steep valley from the last 
fortified village; five hours of torment for Aull as the sun rose giddily in 
the sky and as the caravan inexorably climbed towards the southeast through 
barren foothills pockmarked with patches of thin scrub, along a ridge of 
rock where nothing but thorn bushes broke the monotony of the scorched 
terrain, and now across this bleak upland slope beyond which he fervently 
hoped! the trail would at last tilt downwards again. Mesh had warned him 
that the desert wasn't all sand...but this, he thought ruefully, was 
ridiculous! 

It was Mesh, of course, whom he had contacted as soon as he knew Marsha was 
missing and probably in the hands of Horn. Mesh who had cautioned the raging 
movie man not to make a public outcry and advised him of the best course to 
take; Mesh who had used all his influence to help him take that course. For 
the handsome, dapper police official seemed to have for Aull an instinctive 
regard as warm and immediate as Rex's for him. 

"Believe me my friend," Mesh had said seriously, "it would do you no good, 
no good at all, to contact embassies and newspapers and government 
officials. Everybody would be most courteous and helpful. They would be 
desolated to hear of the disappearance of your lady. They would promise to 
give you every assistance -and precisely nothing would happen. She would 
simply remain vanished. An unsolved mystery of the east." 

"But where ushe? Where has that bastard --. " 

"The man Horn has too many highly placed persons on his side." Mesh 
interrupted. "There are certain ministers that he had, in your American 
phrase, in his pockets. Through his dubious activities he supplies their 
wants...and because thus he knows too much about them, he is virtually 
untouchable. His protection is absolute." 

"But good God," Randall choked, still white-lipped with fury, "he can't just 
abduct a girl and get away with it! He " 

"The abduction is already a fact," Mesh interrupted again. "You must believe 
me that it will never be pinned on him. The only question now is how to get 
your lady back." 

"How do you suggest I start?" Aull said, breathing hard. 

"Remember where you are. You must meet deviousness with deviousness. The 
official view would be that no abduction has taken place at all. Miss Fox 
has simply chosen to go somewhere else. Remember she did check out of your 
hotel and she didn't book in to another." 

'The clever bastard!" Aull said through set teeth. 

"But since she had not been abducted," Mesh continued suavely, "clearly 
there could be no official come-back if she were to be, shall we say, 
liberated . . . , " 

"You mean...?" 

"I mean that where an article officially doe not exist, there can be no 
official complaint if i is stolen." 

"In other words go on in and get her bad myself? There's nothing I'd like 
better...am break that sonofabitch's neck into the bargain But how the hell 
do I find out where she is, fo God's sakes?" 

"There," Mesh said carefully, "I may be able to help. I can do nothing 
officially, you understand. It is not my department indeed i would be more 
than my job...or my life...would be worth to attempt such a thing. 

But bribery and corruption works both ways. Those who can be paid to keep 
quiet can also be paid to talk providing the price is right." 

"I have funds at my disposal," Aull said tightly. "How much will you need?" 

The following day, meeting Mesh as if by chance at a sidewalk cafe, he had 
learned that Horn's main client for European girls was a certain Abel el 
Kerim, a powerful chieftain who ruled as virtual war-lord over a remote 
region of the interior. "His stronghold is a small town called Wacli Elmira. 
" the policeman said, "and according to my information it is to that place 
that Miss Fox will almost certainly have been taken." 

"Just tell me where it is." Aull said, "and I'll handle it." 

"Beyond the El Marra massif in the very area, as it happens, where you 
wished to find locations for your film." 

"Great." the movie man said with a mirthless laugh. "I can kill two birds 
with one stone then 

and one of the birds is going to take a long time dying! Tell me how I can 
get there." 

"It would be impossible for you to dp it on your own. The way lies through 
trackless desert. You will have to join a caravan heading in that 
direction...and you will have to adopt an Arab disguise." 

"Couldn't I hire a plane? A helicopter, maybe 

and go as myself? After all, I do have a valid reason to be in that area." 

Mesh shook his head. "Impossible. You would fall either among the Arab 
troops quartered there, the dissident Negroes of the south, or 

Kerim's own soldiers and each would take you for a spy working for one ot" 
the others. Your life would not be worth a piastre. " 

'"But if I had papers? The permits we were discussing?" 

"They would have been contingent on your being accompanied by an official 
guard. And in the circumstances . . . " The policeman spread his hands and 
shrugged apologetically. 

Seething with impatience, not daring to think what might be happening to the 
affectionate Marsha, Aull was forced to wait another day. He had finally 
received word that there was a small caravan leaving that night for Halakaz 
and Gabotomi, one of the Muslim "forbidden cities" in the south. He was to 
join it in the guise of a pilgrim on his way to Gabotomi...and Mesh could 
provide him with the necessary papers. 

After an apparently endless succession of meetings with different contacts 
at coffee shops all over the city for Mesh himself could not be seen to be 
directly involved in the affair he suffered himself to be stained brown all 
over and bearded, hair by hair, along the edge of his jawline. His teeth 
were discolored, his hands roughened, and his nails artificially cracked and 
grimed. With wax cunningly inserted inside his nostrils to alter the shape 
of his nose, even Marsha would never have recognized him! "According to your 
papers, effendi," the man leading him to the caravan rendezvous said, "You 
have come all the way from Al Khuraiba in Saudi Arabia to go on this 
pilgrimage. Let us hope that this will be considered sufficient explanation 
for your rather curious accent when you speak Arabic!" 

Now. easing the borrowed revolver holster once more on his hip. Aull scanned 
the plateau with red-rimmed eyes and wondered how the hell he had ever come 
to think he could find Marsha in this God-forsaken country! 

Below and behind them, the dead land dropped away in parallel ridges of 
clay-red and yellow. Above, some geological unconformity had placed a thin 
vein of richer rock between the weathered shale and the limestone above it, 
and here a streak of vegetation raised brownish leaves along the foot of the 
bluff. A few hundred yards further on, the line of stunted bushes followed 
the strata as they dipped towards a fault gashing the rock face. It was in 
the direction of the wedge of cobalt sky marking this defile that the 
caravan was now moving. 

Once between the towering walls of the cleft, the relief from the hammering 
of the sun was immediate. It was still stiflingly hot in the darkly shadowed 
gorge, but in contrast to the direct assault of the scorching rays, the 
respite seemed as refreshing as a shower. 

Aull moistened his lips with lukewarm water from a padded bottle slung over 
his shoulder, reflecting that it was still less than 48 hours since he had 
been sipping iced whiskey-sours with Mesh in Khartoum! The city, the 
Excelisor, Horn's office, the attacks on him there and in Paris, seemed like 
dreams from another age. Only the intolerable heat and the gnawing ache in 
his guts at the thought of Marsha were real. 

Never mind. They were supposed to arrive at Halakaz before dark and 
somewhere along the route from there to Gabotomi was the trail that led to 
Wadi Elmira. In the meantime, the ravine was at least a change from the 
gaunt perspectives of mountain across which they had so painfully been 
riding. After those open wastes, the rock walls of the pass seemed to 
amplify the incidental noises of the caravan: the beasts' stony footfalls, 
the creak and jingle of pack stays and harness, an occasional guttural 
murmur of conversation. As befitted a devout pilgrim, Aull kept silent and 
listened to the high, plaintive tones of the camel-master as he discussed 
the route at the head of the file. 

As they rode out of the long gorge into the full glare of the sun again, he 
saw with relief that the trail now led downwards across an immense tract of 
bare gravel dotted with huge boulders. The sun was beginning to sink in the 
brassy bowl of the sky; the furnace-like quality of the early afternoon was 
now tempered with an occasional puff of dry hot wind. 

Two hours later they breasted a rise and looked down on an ancient fortress 
town nestling in a deep valley whose sinuous course through the highlands 
was marked by a ribbon of palms. It was an extraordinary place a compact 
huddle of dun-colored battlements, walls, domes and watch-towers surrounded 
by terraced slopes of gravel on which nothing grew. With the life-giving 
belt of vegetation just below, it looked more like a single medieval castle 
than an open community, but as they rode slowly down towards the huge 
gateway with its fortified arch, Aull watched the town unfold and open out 
until the course of the narrow streets and lanes within could be charted by 
the bands of shadow slashing the age-old stone in the setting sun. 

As the western sky drained through vermilion to limpid green above the rim 
of the wadi. plaintive quarter-tones of Arab strings and pipes rose into the 
rapidly cooling air. A few minutes later they passed beneath the arched 
gate. They had arrived at Halakaz. 

There was a dramatic change in the country the following day. Beyond the 
town, their route led across a featureless wilderness of thorny scrub. By 
midday this had given way to a sun-scorched savannah gashed by dried-up 
river beds, and finally they rode through a pass in a range of low hills to 
find themselves facing a wide plain fringed by the tree-covered cones of a 
row of extinct volcanoes blue with distance. There were squares of 
cultivation here and there as they headed south, and vegetation covered the 
rolling contours more thickly. Twice they skirted villages no longer the 
mud-walled Arab variety but circles of round huts thatched in the African 
manner. Once the caravan traversed the burned-out shell of a village that 
had been sacked, only a ring of seared earth and a few crumbling mud walls 
remaining to show where it had been. In none of them did they see a single 
human being. 

Two hours later they reached a fork where the roads of Gabotomi and Wau, in 
Bahr-el-Ghazal province, diverged. According to Mesh's instructions, this 
was where Aull had to "lose" the caravan, turning back towards Wau and Wadi 
Klmira on the northern leg while the others rode on towards the rolling, 
game-rich grasslands of the south. 

There had once been a settlement at the junction, but all that remained now 
was the familiar patch of scorched ground and a ragged line of corn that had 
gone to seed by the roadside. From a horizontal branch that jutted out over 
the road, a blackened tree dangled the bodies of five hanged men naked and 
decomposing, the eyes plucked out by vultures. Aull shuddered and reined 
back his camel to allow the rest of the caravan to ride out of sight around 
a bend in the trail. They must be right in the middle of the area of unrest 
that Mesh had mentioned. 

Waiting for ten minutes to make sure that he had not been missed, the 
disguised movie man urged his shambling mount up the rough track-leading to 
Wau. The turn-off for Wadi Elmira was ten miles further on, in the center of 
an African village on the borderline of the Arab lands ruled by Abd el 
Kerim. 

Soon the sparse vegetation thinned out again, and Aull was back in the 
interminable thorn-tree desert. He rode for an hour and then, as the camel 
breasted a rise, pulled up short and stared ahead down the trail. A column 
of smoke was rising into the leaden sky a mile ahead of him. Around it 
soared the sinister black specks of vultures. 

Aull hesitated...and then, hearing the distant thunder of hooves on the hard 
ground, he kneed his mount out of sight behind a tangle of boulders off the 
road and dismounted. 

It was unbearably hot beside the shimmering rock pile. The spikes of a thorn 
tree clattered in a sudden puff of wind. Above him, a family of baboons 
coughed uneasily as a jerboa, one of the desert rats which somehow eked out 
an existence in the wilderness, scuttled among the stones. Far off to the 
southwest, a long smudge of dust above the scrub marked the position of the 
caravan. 

The sound of hooves rose to a crescendo and a squadron of Arab camel cavalry 
thundered past, raising a choking cloud from the trail. There were about 
thirty of them, shouting and laughing and waving their rifles above their 
heads as they rode. Two of them carried the bound and screaming figures of 
African women across their saddles; a third dragged behind his camel on a 
length of rope the lacerated lifeless body of a black man, bumping and 
twisting and turning as the flesh was stripped away by the razor-sharp 
gravel. 

Aull crouched in his place of concealment until the dust had settled. Then, 
the hairs prickling on the nape of his neck, he led the dromedary cautiously 
towards the column of smoke. 

The village was completely concealed in a shallow depression filled with 
stunted trees. The foliage was brownish-gray in color and could under no 
stretch of the imagination be called rich; but it was a welcome change from 
the eternal monotony of the thorn-tree desert. 

As he trod warily down the slopes, Aull's nostrils were assailed by the 
bitter stench of burning bodies sprawled in the dusty space enclosed still 
spiraled smoke into the heavy air. 

Tethering his nervous camel to a sapling, he advanced still further: 
somewhere in the midst of this desolation the track of Wadi Elmira led off 
through the trees. 

Aull turned a corner formed by the scorched mud walls of two adjacent huts. 
. . and stopped dead in his tracks, frozen with horror. 

Sprawled in the ashes at his feet, the naked body of a woman lay obscenely 
on her back with out-flung arms. Her teeth gleamed whitely in a mouth 
wide-stretched in the soundless scream of death. White severed tendons 
glistened too in the gaping red horror of her slit throat. There were two 
rough circles of raw flesh black with flies where her breasts had been 
hacked off, and between her splayed legs the jagged end of a peeled tree 
branch protruded from the distended lips of her swollen vagina. 

Beyond the pool of congealed blood in which she lay, a seven-foot stake had 
been driven into the ground. On its sharpened tip a man, probably the 
village headman, had been horribly impaled through the anus. His hands were 
lashed together behind his back and to each of his ankles heavy stones had 
been tied. The weight of these, added to the poor wretch's death struggles 
had forced the point of the stake further and further up into his body until 
now it pierced him from his ruptured anus to his diaphragm, through which 
the tip of the spear shone palely in the sun. His penis and testicles, 
sliced off with a single cut, had been stuffed into his mouth and bulged 
grotesquely from between his gaping lips. 

Averting his eyes from the blood-festooned stake and its ghastly burden, 
Aull saw beyond it the track he sought winding away through the trees. 
Choking down his rising nausea, he stumbled back through a cloud of angrily 
buzzing flies towards the tree to which he had tethered the dromedary. 

He had taken only four steps before he stiffened! 

There were half a dozen horses grazing near his camel now in the shade. 
Beside them, a Sudanese cavalry officer stood with two troopers whose rifles 
were trained on Aull's chest. A little further off. a tall European in 
riding breeches and a stained sun helmet waited with two unarmed Arabs. 

"Come forward very slowly, my friend," the officer said. "And keep your 
hands high in the air unless you wish to join these rebel dogs in the dust." 

Aull took half a dozen paces with his arms raised and then faltered in his 
stride as a cold hand of fear clutched at his heart. 

The man in the helmet, a malicious grin twisting his coarse features, was 
Dick Horn! 

 CHAPTER SEVEN 

The rank air of the hut was harsh with the sounds of labored breathing. Aull 
was strapped naked to a ten foot plank. His ankles were bound and attached 
to a ring at one end and his arms, stretched above his head, were tied at 
the wrist and fastened to the other. The ends of the plank rested on an oil 
drum and a low camp stool, so that his head was lower than his feet. 

Helpless and undignified on his back in this position, he had endured the 
age-old water torture. It was quite simple and very effective. They had 
plugged his nostrils with cotton wool and wedged an iron ring into his mouth 
so that it was jammed open. One of Horn's Arab servants had then draped a 
long strip of thin muslin over the movie man's disguised face and carefully 
almost lovingly poured water, gallons and gallons of water, into the open 
mouth through the cloth. 

The point of the technique is that the victim, unable to turn his head 
because of his own bound arms on either side of it, can only get rid of the 
water by trying to swallow it. . . but 

I OX before each mouthful is swallowed it is always replaced by another. And 
in the meantime the victim has to breathe: the laboring lungs heave and try 
to drag in air, but the attempt only draws in water and with the water comes 
the muslin, which is remorselessly sucked into the windpipe. In a very short 
time the victim, gagging and retching, is half drowned with the water in his 
lungs and half choked by the cloth. 

Initially, the treatment had been ordered by the cavalry officer because 
Aull, as a supposed pilgrim who had failed to follow the prescribed route, 
was unable to give a convincing enough account of his movements and because 
his Arabic was simply not good enough to support his false identity. He 
must, therefore, be a spy, and the officer wanted to find out for whom he 
was spying. They had taken him to a small army post a few miles from the 
sacked village and gotten to work. 

Initially too, Horn had shown no more interest in him than the casual 
attention of the born sadist for the sufferer. But, by the time Aull had 
twice been reduced to a condition of sobbing, vomiting semi-consciousness, 
the combined effects of tears, mucus, vomit and water had dislodged the way 
pads of his disguise and washed away half of the stain on his face and most 
of the false beard. 

And, suddenly, Horn's small cruel eyes had widened with recognition, and he 
had drawn the officer aside and murmured: "Look, Major: in your position as 
an honorable officer you can only go so far. I am under no such obligation. 
My two servants are expert at this kind of thing. 

If you could find some reason to absent yourself for half an hour.. . " He 
left the sentence unfinished and looked meaningfully at the door. 

The officer had hesitated, glanced at the helpless Aull and then nodded 
briskly. A moment later he had ordered the troopers out and left the 
helpless man alone with Horn and his two minions. 

The coarse-featured ex-CIA man walked slowly across to the plank and looked 
down at his captive. His red face was glistening with sweat in the stifling 
air of the hut. Reaching down with one hand, he pried out the iron ring 
wedging Aull's jaws agonizingly apart. "All right, Mister Pilgrim," he said 
softly, "you can start singin'. Later on, you can say your prayers." 

Aull stared up into his gloating pig-like eyes. "What have you done with 
Marsha?" he croaked. 

"Little Miss big tits with the black hair? You can forget her, buster. We 
fucked the ass off her and auctioned off what was left in the bazaar. Now 
she's long gone: you won't ever see her again, and that's for sure." 

Aull writhed impotently against his bonds. "If I ever get out of this, Horn 
. . . " he panted hoarsely. 

The big man laughed. "Forget it! You won't. Even with the protection I got, 
I can't afford to let you. Not now. But there's things you can tell me 
before you go. First off, you can answer the questions our dusky friend was 
askin'. What the fuck are you doin' here got up like that?" 

"I already told you. I came to look for Marsha." 

"Don't give me that shit! Nobody takes that trouble over a broad!" 

"You shouldn't judge the whole world by your own lousy standards," Aull said 
rashly. 

Horn bunched his ham-like fist and drove it with all his force into the 
naked man's unprotected belly. The cruel blow seared into Aull's guts, 
sending waves of agony flaming up into his skull. His body, prevented from 
the involuntary jackknifing reaction by the ropes lashing his hands and feet 
to the plank, jerked galvanically. He gave a choking cry and the hut, with 
Horn's leering face framed against the wooden ceiling, swam away on a red 
mist of pain. 

"Keep a civil tongue in your goddamn head and tell me why you're here," the 
big American repeated as Aull's tortured lungs gaspingly managed to draw in 
enough breath to restore him to consciousness. 

". . . told you...look for Marsha . . . " the captive movie man groaned. 

"And I tell you shit! Like the Major said, you're a spy! You've come 
snooping around here spyin' for the niggers, ain't that it?" 

"Spying for the . . . ? What are you talking about? What do you mean?" Sheer 
astonishment cleared Aull's mind and his eyes opened wide with surprise. The 
accusation seemed insane to him. 

"You gotta be," Horn rasped. "And talkin' of that, you can tell me another 
thing. Where's your baggage?" 

"My . . . ? My...baggage? I don't have any baggage, only a bedroll on the 
dromedary." 

"Not that, you jerk," Horn snarled. "Your baggage in Khartoum." 

The bound man stared at him again. These questions simply didn't make sense! 
"I haven't the slightest idea," he said truthfully. 

Horn clenched his fist threateningly. "I tell you I don't know," Aull said, 
tensing the muscles of his stomach. He flinched as the fist descended, but 
he was powerless to divert the blow, which thudded sickeningly once more 
into the vulnerable pit of his stomach. The world dissolved again in a 
crimson mist. 

Horn jerked his head and the two Arabs moved in and began slamming their 
fists with cold precision into Aull's defenseless body, punching his chest 
and belly and solar plexus and face with remorseless efficiency and ruthless 
force. For a time, as the helpless captive's pinioned form bucked and jerked 
and writhed under the fury of their attack, there was no sound but the smack 
of knuckles on flesh and bone and the gasping, choking groans forcing their 
way through Aull's bloody lips. Then Horn barked a command, the Arabs 
stopped and stood back as suddenly as they had started, and the big American 
grated: "Now...where is your fuckin' baggage?" 

One of Aull's eyes was closed, his nose was swollen and spread over his 
face, his lips were split and the whole of his naked body was red and purple 
with the marks of their brutal attack. "I...told you...I. . . don't know," 
he panted desperately. "Why don't you...ask...Marsha? You know...where she 
is." 

"Sure I know where she is. I know where you are too, buster. It happens I 
didn't know I needed this information when I last saw the broad. Now I do 
know...and you're right here. So where is it?" 

"It was in...Hotel Excelsior in Khartoum...last time I saw it," the bound 
man said thickly. Behind his tortured eyes his mind was racing. Why in God's 
name should Horn want to know where his baggage was? And what could that 
possibly have to do with the fact that the big man obviously thought he was 
mixed up in some way with the unrest in southern Sudan? 

The ex-CIA man moved towards the higher end of the slanting plank. Aull 
sucked in his breath suddenly as Horn's rough fingers reached down and 
seized his balls, grasping the sensitive glands in their crinkled 
hair-covered sac and pulling them roughly away from his aching body. "For 
the last time, where is that baggage?" he demanded. 

Aull stared hopelessly up at his pitiless eyes and said nothing. 

"All right," Horn said, "we'll have to try a little real persuasion! You 
gotta know where that stuff is: the broad checked it in some place and it 
was you who called her and told her what to do!" Abruptly he clenched the 
fingers of his hand. 

"Aaaaaaggh!" Aull screamed as a bolt of agony so intense that it momentarily 
blacked out his mind seared through his loins and up through his belly. 

"Where is it?" Horn's fingers whitened with the pressure he was exerting as 
he squeezed mercilessly on the tortured man's testicles. 

"Vuugh! Aaagh!...I don't know, I tell you!" Aull shouted through the waves 
of pain blazing through him. "How can I tell you what I don't Aiiiiieeeee!" 
Secured by the hands and feet to each end of the plank, his body thrashed 
wildly up and down in the center, his hips arching up and then splatting 
down against the stained wood as Horn's torturing fingers increased and 
relaxed, increased and relaxed the agonizing pressure on his balls. The 
world was an inferno of pain pain whose clangor reverberated through and 
through him with a thunder so intense that finally his vision turned black 
at the edges and a roaring darkness swept mercifully inwards to engulf him. 

Horn let go the unconscious man's purplish, swollen, savagely inflamed 
testicles and stepped back. He wiped the back of his hand over his sweating 
brow. "I dunno," he muttered thickly. "I've never known that to fail before. 
The creep's got to know where the stuff is!" 

One of the Arabs put down the jerri can of water he was carrying. "Perhaps, 
effendi, the man would react to electricity?" he suggested. "The soldiers 
have a powerful truck magneto with them. If we attached it with wires to his 
nipples and private parts and then spun the armature . . . " 

"We ain't got time for all that crap," Horn growled. "Try the water 
treatment once more." He leaned down and slapped Aull's bruised and 
lacerated face with his open hand. "Wake up, lover boy," he sneered. "We got 
more treats in store for you!" 

Retching and gagging. Aull forced his way back to consciousness through a 
sea of agony convulsing his loins. Seeing one of the Arabs fixing the 
radiator hose through which the water was poured back in the jerri can, and 
the other approaching with the iron ring and the strip of muslin, he uttered 
a despairing cry despite himself: "Oh no...Jesus...Nooooo!" 

Horn grinned sadistically. "This ain't nothin' to what you're gonna get if 
you don't come across this time," he leered. "If you don't talk, we're gonna 
give you to the Arab women and let them try. Have you heard about Arab 
women, Aull? Do you know what they do to prisoners? They bury you up to the 
neck in the sand and cut off your eyelids, and then they pour honey over 
your head and leave you to the sun and the ants! They stake you out on the 
sand and peel the skin off your prick like a banana they stick a thorn-tree 
spike up it and feed you water to make you pee! They slit open your balls 
and fill 'em with salt and then sew 'em up again. Sometimes they cut away 
the sac and leave the veins and the balls hangin' down raw. so they can beat 
'em with " 

He paused in the middle of his ghoulish recital and looked up towards the 
roof of the hut. For some time there had been a strange clattering roar in 
the air, distant at first but gradually increasing in volume. Now it 
resolved itself into the noise of an approaching helicopter. 

"What in fuck's name's that?" Horn shouted. "Ahmed go on out and see who in 
hell could be flyin' over this God-forsaken dump in a chopper!" 

The swarthy Arab slipped outside and returned in less than a minute. His 
face had paled to a dirty greenish hue. "Effendi, effendi." he stammered, 
"it is a police airplane! It comes from Khartoum, from the capital!" 

"Shit!" Horn swore. "Are you sure, boy?" 

"Si, si, effendi. I know the markings." 

"Goddamnit!" the ex-CIA man raged. "Ain't that just my fuckin' luck!...Look, 
we gotta get outta here! I can't afford to be seen givin' the works to this 
punk not in this lousy rebel stronghold. I only got connections in certain 
departments, and I can't tell if those bastards up there are from the right 
one or not! Come on, let's get goin'. . . " 

Without another look at the helpless figure of the tortured man, he snatched 
up his toupee and stormed out, followed by the two frightened Arabs. Aull 
heard their footsteps crashing away through the bush as the sound of the 
helicopter's rotors faded and died. Gathering all his strength, he filled 
his anguished lungs and began to shout for help. 

Five minutes later, the door of the hut crashed open and Corbel Mesh strode 
into the room. 

* * * 

Twenty miles to the north, Marsha Fox lay on a gold-tasseled divan piled 
high with crimson cushions and stared through drug-dimmed eyes at the 
vaulted ceiling. There was to be a diffa. a ceremonial dinner, at Abdel 
Kerim's palatial headquarters and Arab chieftains from all over the region 
had been arriving throughout the afternoon. The women of the harem were, of 
course, not to be present, but food had been brought to them in their 
quarters chickens cooked with olives, succulent roast lamb aromatic with 
spices, pitchers of milk flavored with rose leaves, tiny birds on beds of 
rice, and orange juice tasting of cinnamon. As a newcomer, Marsha had been 
left in a small room on her own: the latest arrivals were not dispatched to 
the harem proper until they had been duly "broken in" by the master. 

She remembered nothing of her journey there and the fumes of hashish with 
which she was surrounded, combined with the after-effects of the drug Horn 
had administered to keep her quiet, made even the horror of the bestial rape 
she had suffered at the ex-CIA man's hands seem distant and somehow diluted. 

Rex Aull and the carefree life they had led seemed very far away. Dazedly, 
she wondered if she would ever see him again, feel his lean practiced 
fingers on her flesh...and then suddenly she realized that she was naked 
now! She had just started up on the cushions with a gasp of alarm when the 
arched door to the room opened and three men came in. 

The first, a tall Arab in a loose white robe, she had no difficulty in 
identifying as Abd el Kerim himself the arrogant expression on his cruel, 
hawk-like face, his erect bearing despite his fifty years, the imperious 
tilt of his head, all testified to the fact that this was the 
law-unto-himself sheik to whose depraved demands the evil Hom had sold her 
in sexual slavery. 

The other two...Marsha recoiled involuntarily on the divan with a shudder of 
revulsion. Kerim was accompanied by two identical dwarves! Neither was more 
than three feet high; each had coarse features, a thick-lipped, slobbering 
mouth, and staring eyes in an outsized deformed head. And both of them were 
coal-black! 

The terrified captive girl cringed back among the cushions, her green eyes 
wide with foreboding. What further horrors lay in store for her at the hands 
of the ruthless Arab chieftain and his monster assistants? 

She had not long to wait. Kerim clapped his hands and the two black dwarves 
stripped off their shifts and approached the bed naked, their tongues 
lasciviously circling their thick lips. Marsha sucked in her breath with 
alarm. From the hairless "vee" above each pair of stunted legs, the biggest 
cocks she had ever seen in her life dangled grotesquely! Even as she 
watched, hypnotized, the two limp rods of dark flesh expanded and stiffened 
in obscene jerks, stretching the wrinkled skin until the twin shafts were 
gleaming with tautness and the prune-colored bulbous heads burst out of the 
foreskins to point rigidly at the ceiling and reveal the bull-like sacs of 
the dwarves' sperm-bloated testicles swinging below. 

Marsha bit her lip to choke back the cry of fear that sprang to her lips. 
Those menacing black penises, spearing out so lewdly so threateningly! from 
the loins of each dwarf...they were the most hideous, the most horrifying, 
she had ever seen! She was edging back towards the wall when the dwarves, 
chuckling lustfully, threw themselves on her nakedly defenseless body and 
stretched her out helplessly on the divan. 

Kneeling behind her, one of them seized her wrists and stretched her arms 
cruelly above her head while the other, sprawled over the foot of the divan, 
grasped her slender ankles and hauled her legs brutally apart. The petite 
captive girl lay voluptuously spread-eagled in abject humiliation before her 
sadistic captors, the whole brunette-curled length of her vaginal furrow, 
with its pinkly glistening pussy lips, spread open to their lewd gaze! 

Shuddering with terror, she stared wild-eyed from face to pitiless face as 
they glanced approvingly at the quivering white mounds of her breasts, the 
softly trembling bulge of her young belly, and the dark triangle of curling 
pussy hair nestled between her obscenely splayed legs. Dear God. there was 
nothing she could do against three of them! Imprisoned in the depths of 
Kerim's desert fortress, she was utterly alone and at their mercy! The only 
victory she could hope for was a mental one; they could conquer her body as 
she knew they must, but it would be an empty triumph if her spirit remained 
unbeaten . . . 

She gasped involuntarily as an alien touch sent shivers across her skin. 
Kerim was bending over her. pawing at the soft flesh of her belly with lean 
muscled fingers. "Ve-ery nice!" the Arab chieftain said slowly in English. 
"The man Horn has earned his money. This is just what I ordered!" His hand 
moved lewdly upwards, caressing the fullness of one firm white breast, 
rolling the tight rubbery nipple between his fingers. "Now understand this, 
my dear," he added harshly. "You belong to me now and you will remain my 
property. Your body is mine to do with it as I wish. You will never escape 
from here and what happens in the next few days is entirely a matter for you 
to decide. Either you can cooperate and we shall all perhaps experience an 
agreeable reaction. Or you can try to fight it. and we alone will have the 
enjoyment. It is up to you but, in any case, I assure you, within three days 
and nights you will be broken to my will!" 

Marsha felt her skin crawl with horror as she strove desperately to find 
words that might appeal to whatever sense of honor this savage desert 
warlord might possess. But then she froze in terror as the long dark fingers 
raked teasingly down the trembling contours of her body to linger 
possessively among the silky hairs sparsely mantling her pubic mound. 

Kerim clapped his hands again. "Prepare her!" he rasped. 

The two dwarves leapt into action once more. One jumped onto the divan and 
straddled the helpless girl's naked chest, his wiry thighs pinioning her 
arms to her sides, her heaving breasts squashed beneath his buttocks and the 
heavy, sperm-bloated pouch of his balls resting in the deep cleft between 
them. The other sat astride her belly, forcing her knees brutally apart with 
his hands and leaned acrobatically downwards to lace his slobbering tongue 
snake-like into the moistly quivering slit of her vagina. 

Marsha jerked convulsively, a whimpering moan escaping from deep in her 
throat. Her buttocks ground down hard among the cushions, seeking to escape 
the maddening oral assault by the repulsive black dwarf. She shivered 
uncontrollably as the little man drew the tiny bud of her clitoris up into 
his hot mouth with a liquid suck. 

It can't be happening to me! It can't! the cruelly pinioned young captive 
groaned over and over to herself as the dwarf's face rocked in greedy feast 
between her legs and his swollen tongue fucked in and out of her 
involuntarily dilating cunt. Yet in spite of her terror and revulsion at the 
depraved attack on her loins, tiny wisps of forbidden pleasure were 
beginning to purl deep in Marsha's belly and on her firm young breasts, 
suppressed as they were by the second dwarf's buttocks, the nipples had 
already spiked out taut and erect! 

She gasped aloud as the whirlpools of sensation tearing out of control 
through her loins began to build and build...Dear God! She must fight this 
enemy from within with all her strength! She must not succumb to the 
betrayal of her body! 

But suddenly the . slavering dwarf's experienced tongue arrowed forward, 
burrowing far up into her now wetly straining cunt to send shock waves 
spiraling crazily up her spine to the base of her skull. Like a Fourth of 
July rocket display, they burst there into a million stars, showering hot 
pinpoints of desire over her entire spread-eagled body. Fire was replacing 
fear as the practiced lips and tongue of her grotesque ravisher plundered 
her quivering young pussy! What could be happening to her? Her drug-dimmed 
mind reeled with shock. She had never felt so lewdly wanton in her life! 

Spontaneously, under the expert ministrations of the wickedly teasing tongue 
of Kerim's repulsive henchman in her cunt, she had come erotically alive. 
Her nakedly rounded ass-cheeks arched convulsively up off the divan, 
frantically trying to quench the searing lashes of lustful flame destroying 
her sensibilities and her inhibitions! 

She opened her mouth to groan aloud...and suddenly choked back a gasp of 
alarm. The dwarf sitting astride her chest, who had been watching her 
contorted features with a grimace of lustful glee, had nosed the huge 
rubbery tip of his hotly throbbing cock in between her wetly parted lips! 

Almost without realizing it. Marsha began automatically to suck and nibble 
on the iron-hard shaft whose wetly seeping tip was invading the hot moist 
cavern of her mouth. God Almighty! her lust-crazed mind screamed. Instead of 
recoiling in disgust from the debased and unnatural intrusion of the 
thick-veined rod pole of black flesh between her trembling lips, she was 
actually welcoming it! The demons of unwanted lust were dancing with 
ever-increasing fury about the shuddering pink edges of her seething cunt! A 
cock in her mouth and a tongue in her vagina were no longer enough; she 
wanted something more substantial! She had to have it! 

No sooner had the wish formed in her mind than it was granted! 

The dwarf at her hips withdrew his tongue from her cunt and sprang aside. 
Grasping her flailing legs, he bent them savagely back towards her chest so 
that the midget whose penis was filling her gagging mouth could clamp them 
under his arms. She was bent double on the divan, jackknifed in abject 
humiliation, her arms and legs pinioned by the little man whose penis was 
sawing in and out of her distended lips, the whole stretched plane of her 
genitals wetly upturned beneath the leering gaze of Kerim and the other 
dwarf! 

At a word from the Arab chieftain, the dwarf jumped nimbly astride the 
helpless brunette's bent-back thighs. Then, guiding the heatedly rigid shaft 
of his immense cock downwards with his forefinger and thumb, he plunged the 
bulbous blood-engorged head straight between the swollen lust-wet lips of 
Marsha's cunt. 

The nakedly doubled brunette bucked and squirmed in unwanted ecstasy as the 
raping rod of black flesh speared up into the tight hot passage of her 
hungrily clasping pussy. Her ovaled lips opened around the thick shaft of 
the penis plowing wetly into her mouth as she mewled in shameless wanton 
delight. And then suddenly she screeched, half in agony, half in lustful 
passion. Kerim himself had torn off his robe, and climbed under the dwarf 
half-standing over her loins. Then, with the steely shaft of his long thin 
cock clutched in one hand, he rammed up brutally against the tight hairless 
opening of 

Marsha's tiny wrinkled anus. 

With the whole area of her loins shamelessly distended and pulled back 
toward her chest, the tightly clenched nether ring could not for long 
withstand the punishing assault of the Arab's invading penis. The clasping 
rubbery folds suddenly gave way and the sperm-bloated head of Kerim's 
sodomizing penis arrowed far up into the scalding buttery depths of her 
vise-like rectum! 

As the Arab began sawing viciously in and out of her dilated anus, the dwarf 
on her chest began an undulating movement of his hips so that the huge cock 
stuffing Marsha's mouth fucked in and out between her widely distended 
lips...and at the same time the third member of the trio, rising and falling 
in invisible stirrups, plowed the wetly gleaming length of his rigid staff 
ferociously up and down into the hungrily grasping passage of her cunt. 

The helplessly pinioned brunette was being relentlessly skewered from three 
different directions at once! Every opening in her wantonly squirming body 
was filled with cock! There was cock in her mouth, cock in her anus, and 
cock in her seething cunt! The whole world was stuffed with hotly throbbing, 
rigidly expanding, wetly seeping, wonderful, wonderful cock! As they bucked 
and plunged and sawed and thrust, gasping hoarsely with animal lust as they 
buffeted her contorted body between them like a rag doll. Marsha sensed the 
quivering muscles of the brutal Arab and his two grotesque helpers tense and 
shudder. Thrashing wildly under the weight of their laboring. sweating 
bodies, she groaned her ecstasy aloud past the gagging bulk of the raping 
penis invading her mouth as her orgasm swept her up off the divan in a storm 
of shaking, shuddering erotic fury and sent her spinning among the stars. 

At the same time, the massive cock in her lewdly sucking mouth bulged and 
heaved, squirting a hot stream of semen far back into her gasping throat, 
and the two penises battering into her plundered loins shuddered, jerked, 
and then spewed their white-hot loads of creamy sperm in powerful jetting 
spurts far up into the obscenely milking walls of her rectum and vagina. 

Hor a long time after they had left her, she lay in the locked room in a 
sensual erotic daze, her drug-dimmed mind unable to cope with the 
unpalatable but undeniable fact that despite her horror and revulsion at the 
unspeakable and degrading ravishments she had suffered, despite the shame 
and humiliation and distress she felt her body had nevertheless responded in 
a way that both astounded and horrified her! 

Why should she so wantonly react to the brutal assaults of the cruel Kerim? 
Why should she have welcomed even the repulsive dwarves when once the fires 
of her lust were kindled? Why should she respond to the sadistic rape of the 
unspeakable Horn and his vile assistants? 

And above all why should she have wished, even in the extremities of her 
frenzied passion, that the heads staring down at her debasement were crowned 
with a soundlessly tolling bell of golden hair? . . . 

 CHAPTER EIGHT 

Wadi Elmira was a jumble of flat-roofed, mud-walled buildings spilling down 
the side of a valley gashed by a stony ravine. At the foot of the gorge a 
trickle of brown water, later to become a tributary of the Bahr-el-Ghazal 
river, slid among the rocks. Aull arrived at the arched gate in the outer 
wall at dusk, once again disguised as an Arab pilgrim from Saudi Arabia. 

Mesh had flown him in the police helicopter to a secluded valley out of 
sight of the Arab town and promised to return and wait there for him at 
midnight. "You understand, my friend," the dapper police Colonel said, "that 
I cannot take any official action to help you. It is outside my jurisdiction 
and in any case a Khartoum official meddling in the affairs of a local 
chieftain could lead to a tribal war! But I will take you to the place, and 
if you should succeed in finding Miss Fox and getting away with her. then I 
shall be happy to take you back to the capital." 

"I'm more than grateful." Aull said, shaking him warmly by the hand. "You 
are already risking much to help. What I can't understand is how you 
happened to arrive so opportunely when I was in Horn's hands!" 

"My duties happened to call me to the area." Mesh said vaguely. 

"But I thought you said...?" 

"A foreigner sought permission to make a film." the policeman said with a 
bland smile. "Naturally I was obliged to visit the region to satisfy myself 
that it was suitable before I agreed to his request." 

Aull touched his shoulder. "Thank you. my friend," he said appreciatively. 

Now on foot, approaching the gates of the town, his pulse quickened at the 
thought that within its walls he might at last find the opportunity to 
rescue Marsha. His hand rose unconsciously to touch through his borrowed 
robes the comforting bulge of Mesh's revolver in its holster on his hip. 

Through the wide archway, he saw with astonishment a scene of surprising 
bustle and activity. In a diminutive square incredibly fringed with olive 
trees, men and women laughed, talked, exchanged news and gossip, bartered 
goods they had brought into the town as they applauded Bedouin tumblers, 
watched a snake charmer, had their heads shaved under the wicker canopy of 
an itinerant barber or ate hard-boiled eggs with couscous and mint tea. The 
maze of courts and alleyways beyond was thronged with armed tribesmen, 
Berbers from the high mountains, desert nomads, hill farmers, Tuaregs in 
exotic robes a dense crowd of figures in white and gray accented here and 
there by unexpected individualists dressed in brilliant orange, azure, 
citron or bitter green. In the shadowed gateway a Berber warrior was 
dictating a letter to a scribe exactly as his ancestors must have done two 
thousand years before. 

There were soldiers with modern rifles on guard inside and outside. As Aull 
hurried through the arch behind a party of chattering nomads, one of them 
unslung his gun and stepped in his path. "Your papers," he demanded 
brusquely. 

"Papers?" Aull assumed as haughty an expression as he could and hoped his 
accent would pass muster. 

"The chief is entertaining many important people tonight." the soldier 
explained. "For security reasons all papers must be shown." 

Shit! the disguised American thought forcefully. Just my luck to hit on an 
evening when they have goddamn police checks all over! 

Reaching into his robes, he produced the papers he had been given. The 
sentry scanned them and looked up in surprise. "But these authorize you to 
visit Gabotomi! You should be a hundred miles to the south! How can you be 
here at Wadi Elmira...and on foot?" 

"I did not like the company I was in. Also my camel was lamed." 

"You speak with a very strange voice," the soldier said suspiciously. "I 
think you had better come with me and see the Captain of the Guard." 

Anil's mind raced. If he meekly went on with the man. it would at least get 
him further into the town; he might even be brought before the chief himself 
and therefore nearer Marsha. On the other hand, his Arabic simply wasn't 
good enough to stand a long cross-examination. He knew nothing, moreover, 
about the place he was supposed to have come from, nor did he have a 
prepared background or history to relate. In addition, the battered state of 
his face would be bound to raise suspicions once he was in a better light. 
They would probably throw him straight into prison and ask questions 
tomorrow...or the next day! No, there was nothing for it he would have to 
play it the hard way . . . 

The soldier had slung his rifle over his shoulder and drawn a revolver. 
"Turn around and walk around the square to the left," he ordered. 

"What is the trouble, Ali?" one of his companions called from the far side 
of the archway. 

"I am taking this man to the Captain. He is a foreigner and I think perhaps 
a thief. I am not satisfied with his story." Prodding Aull in the small of 
the back with the barrel of his gun, he urged him across the square. 

Aull made his break when they were almost at the far side. A veiled woman 
leading a donkey with bulging panniers had just emerged from a narrow 
alleyway. As he stepped aside to allow the beast to squeeze past, his hand 
streaked down behind him, knocking the soldier's gun arm aside. 

The heavy caliber revolver roared as Aull whirled and seized the hand 
holding it in both his own. He jerked the man's arm up and down. exerting a 
paralyzing judo hold on his wrist. When the barrel was pointing at the 
ground, the gun exploded again, the ricochet whining away among the olive 
trees from the stony ground. 

The donkey brayed and reared up on its hind legs. The woman screamed and 
ran. The crowd in the square scattered with shouts of alarm. As the weapon 
finally dropped from his nerveless fingers, the soldier slammed the heel of 
his other hand under Anil's chin, pushing back his head with agonizing 
force. The disguised American went with the thrust, letting go the man's 
wrist and rolling backwards on to the ground. At the same time he brought up 
his knees, lodged his heels in the sentry's groin and then suddenly 
straightened his legs. 

The man flew over his head and crashed to the ground behind him at the feet 
of two companions running up with drawn guns. As they staggered and tripped, 
Aull scrambled up in a flash and dashed into the twisting alleyway. A third 
shot rang out as he vanished into the shadows. The wind of the bullet fanned 
his left shoulder. Then he was around the first corner and pelting away. 

The alley followed the line of the outer wall. Fifty yards along, a 
passageway led to the naptha flares of a crowded bazaar. He raced towards 
the gabble of voices, stopped abruptly, and melted into the shadows of a 
doorway. Half a dozen soldiers with drawn pistols clattered into the 
passageway from the bazaar and ran past him toward the sounds of confused 
shouting in the square he had just left. 

Once they had gone, he slid out of his hiding place and walked rapidly 
towards the bazaar. "But you must have seen him!" he could hear Ali calling 
furiously to the new arrivals. "You passed him! He ran down that lane only a 
few seconds before you arrived . . . " 

Aull joined the throng eddying around the fringes of the bazaar and strove 
to conceal the fact that he was hurrying. Arab women veiled in black, 
fellaheen in striped shifts and tarbooshes, peasants in rags, and Bedouin in 
flowing white robes jostled against him as he walked. Somewhere behind him, 
he could sense, there was an unusual commotion as Ali and the soldiers ran 
back into the crowd. Faintly over the hubbub he could hear voices raised in 
argument and shouts of protest. 

In the market place, the shuffling of feet was drowned in the cries of 
barkers and the traditional haggling of merchants and customers. Hands 
gesticulated, fingers wagged, palms were upraised in the suffocating press 
among the stalls of fruit, vegetables, cloth and hardware under the flares. 

He had almost shouldered his way through to the far side when three shots 
rang out above the heads of the crowd. There was a screaming and a stampede 
as everybody fought to get away from the center of the market. A great stand 
of copper pots and pans near Aull careened over as half a dozen robed Arabs 
forced their way between the stalls. 

". . . Stay where you are! Don't leave the bazaar!" a voice shouted over the 
clangor of falling hardware and the furious protests of the stallholder. 
"This is the military! There is a foreign thief here, and we want to find 
him. Stay where you are you have nothing to fear!" 

Feeling as though he had suddenly been exposed in the glare of a 
searchlight, the fugitive movie man slunk around behind the stall and made 
for a lane twisting away into the shadows. 

"Over there!" another voice was shouting. "Look on the far side of the 
bazaar! Quick! A fter him!" 

He glanced fearfully over his shoulder. The owner of the hardware stall, his 
arms full of saucepans, was dancing up and down and pointing towards him. 
Beyond, advancing rapidly down an aisle between the striped awnings. Ali and 
the soldiers came running. 

Aull himself broke into a run and plunged down the dark street.' A fusillade 
of shots erupted behind him as he gained the shadows. Bullets spurted the 
dust on either side of his pounding feet; another chipped plaster from the 
wall by his shoulder. 

Panting wildly, he sprinted around the first bend in the lane. Ahead were 
the lights of another crowded square. He dashed into an unlit, evil-smelling 
entry choked with refuse, ran up a flight of stone stairs, crossed a wider 
street, and plunged through an archway into a maze of dark alleyways beyond. 
Behind him, the footsteps and voices of the hunters approached. There had 
been plenty of people in the street he had crossed to point out the way he 
had gone. 

Pressing on. he skirted the bulk of a mosque, raced down a second flight of 
steps, and found himself in a narrow lane lit at intervals by dim street 
lamps. All around him a faint murmur of voices behind closed shutters 
stirred the warm air. It was quite dark now and he could hear music rising 
and falling in the distance. 

He halted, the blood pounding in his temples. 

"Why do you not come inside, stranger?" a soft voice intoned in Arabic in 
his ear. 

Aull swung around. There was a click. In the upward-directed beam of a small 
electric flashlight, brown flesh quivered. The tiny circle of illumination 
revealed a woman's breast, the ripely swelling contours held towards him by 
silver-tipped fingers, the nipple and areola purple in the faint light. 
Below, a tight swathe of diaphanous material sheathed belly and hips; above, 
a gleam of white teeth, the highlight on a full lip. shone through the dark. 

"Christ!" Aull exclaimed in English. He hesitated. The sounds of pursuit 
were only one corner away. Already, heavy feet were scrambling down the last 
flight of winding stairs. 

"Very well." he said huskily, making up his mind. He stepped towards the 
doorway in which the girl was standing. The light vanished. A door creaked 
open into blackness. 

Aull brushed hurriedly past her and stood waiting as she closed the door. In 
the airless dark of the passage, the perfume of some cloying, exotic 
cosmetic washed over him. Outside, footsteps scraped to a halt. He could 
hear the voice of Ali: "A foreigner...medium height, bearded, in white robes 
. . . " 

Somebody mumbled a negative. 

"But he must be here somewhere! He can't have gotten away. It's always the 
same when the chief has important guests: It attracts all kinds of 
undesirables to the town . . . " 

"He could be anywhere here," another voice chimed in. "You know where we 
are? This is the street of-" 

"It doesn't matter what street it is," Ali interrupted. "We'll post sentries 
at either end and search it house by house!" The footsteps moved decisively 
away. 

The girl, whose breath had hissed in sharply the first time Ali spoke, now 
moved past Aull towards the back of the building. Soft flesh brushed the 
back of his hand. In a low voice she said: "This way." 

Light stabbed the blackness as she switched on the torch and shone the beam 
at the floor behind her to light the way. Aull followed her up a flight of 
stone stairs. Apart from the clip-clop of the girl's slippers and the swish 
of garments against her naked hips, they mounted in silence. At the top of 
the stairs a dimly lit foyer appeared with a number of doors off it. 

The prostitute opened one and walked into a tiny room about eight feet 
square, furnished with nothing more than cushions and rugs on the floor. As 
siie crossed to draw heavy drapes across an arched window embrasure, the 
panting fugitive closed the door silently and leaned against it. "t am 
sorry," he began, "I only want . . . " 

The girl swung around to face him. She was voluptuously curved, her bare 
breasts heavy on her chest, her soft belly shadowed under the transparent 
shift. Her kohl-fringed eyes were wide and her full lips ripe and inviting. 
"Yes?" she said. "You only want.. . ? You are running away, are you not? It 
was you that Ali and the soldiers were chasing? But this is no concern of 
mine: I have no love for the police or the military. Especially that Ali of 
the Guard, who is a brutal man. But why do you not stay here with me? See am 
I not beautiful? Come...sit here beside me and I will send for some 
refreshment." 

Whisking up the diaphanous skirts, she thrust her pelvis forward and smiled 
provocatively. Below the shaven triangle of her loins, her pink-fleshed 
cunt, from which the inner lips had been ritually circumcised in childhood, 
pouted outwards like an open mouth. "I am sorry . . . " Aull said again. 

"But I wish it! You have a good face, effendi. In my life I have not met men 
like you. Do you not find me attractive?" 

"You are beautiful." Aull said truthfully. 

"Then why do you reject me?" Suddenly she was pressed against him, her 
hands, drawing aside the long robes, feeling for his genitals...her fingers 
caressing, crawling knowledgeably over his flesh, groping for the soft sac 
of his balls, massaging the shaft of his penis. In spite of himself. Aull 
felt his restlessly stirring cock stiffen and grow longer under her touch. 
"See!" she cried triumphantly. "You desire me! Your manhood arises-" 

Abruptly she tensed, breaking off in the middle of her sentence. From 
somewhere below a persistent hammering came echoing up the stairway. "The 
soldiers!" she whispered. "They said they would search every house!" 

Gently, Aull put her away from him. "I am sorry," he said again. 

"No, you are right! You must come this way!" The girl ran to the window 
embrasure and pulled aside the drapes, her black eyes wide with alarm. 
"Nobody saw you come in. So far as they know, I have been here alone all the 
time. Out here is a flat roof. Beyond is an alley that leads back to the 
mosque without crossing the street in front." 

Aull thrust money into her hand. "You are very kind. I will not forget you. 
Before I go. can you tell me how to find the house of Abe el Kerim?" The 
hammering had stopped and there was the sound of many voices from below. He 
swung a leg over the window-sill. 

"The paslia? It is not a house but a palace! 

Take the lane to the left of the mosque and it is the one, two, three, four 
yes, fifth! turning on the right. At the end of the street. But be careful: 
There are many guards, and he is a suspicious man." 

He turned back towards the girl. "You are very beautiful and very kind. I am 
grateful. If there is ever anything I can do . . . " 

"You know what you can do," the girl said. 

Aull grinned, leaning inwards to kiss her briefly on the lips. The next 
instant she was all over him. devouring him with kisses, her lushly ripened 
body pressing against his chest, her hands cradling the back of his head. 
Gently, he disengaged himself. "The soldiers!" he reminded her in a whisper. 

"I had forgotten. But I will not forget you either. The next time you have 
an occasion to visit Wadi lilmira . . . " 

"It'll be a pleasure!" Aull said. He jumped lightly onto the flat roof and 
ran to the edge. The curtain dropped over the window. 

The drop to the alley was about fifteen feet. Even in his rubber soled shoes 
he seemed to himself to make quite a noise when he landed. But nobody 
appeared to have heard; no voice questioned him and no footsteps advanced. 
After waiting a moment, listening, he ran off in the direction of the 
mosque. 

The beaten earth road to the left of it was deserted. Just before he got to 
the fifth turning, he saw the back of a patrolling sentry silhouetted 
against the sky on top of the city wall. But he had reached the safety of 
the corner before the man turned at the end of his beat. 

Like all Muslims, Abe el Kerim followed the Koran, which instructs the 
faithful to keep the facades of their houses simple in order not to excite 
the envy of their fellow men. The outer wall of his palace was therefore 
nothing more than a line of sandstone blocks pierced by a central gateway 
and a few arrowhead windows at first-floor level. But inside as Aull was to 
discover the appointments were of an unbelievable richness. 

Gaining an entry was surprisingly easy. A group of minor chieftains who had 
been bidden to the discussion after the diffa were waiting to be admitted. 
Aull simply stole up behind them and attached himself to the end of the 
queue as it filed through the gates. The idea that any Arab would have the 
effrontery to seek admittance to the pasha's house without having been 
invited obviously never occurred either to the Nubian servants or to the two 
soldiers standing guard in the outer courtyard. 

As they shuffled through towards the inner patio waiting to be formally 
presented to the great man. the disguised American melted into the shadows 
of an empty passageway leading to the back of the building. 

He hurried through a deserted anteroom hung with rich carpets and perfumed 
with spice burning in a brazier, followed a twisting. high-ceilinged 
corridor, and then paused as he found himself looking through heavy crimson 
drapes at a kind of cloister edged with delicate, highly-ornamented Moorish 
arches on slender pillars. Beyond this was the courtyard where the diffu was 
taking place. 

Despite the urgency of his mission, Aull stopped and stared at the exotic 
sight. The moon had risen, flooding the place with pale brilliance, 
silvering the delicate tiles, throwing into sharp relief the orange trees 
and pomegranates masking the splashing of a fountain. Somewhere in the 
background there was a jangle of stringed instruments accompanying the 
strange alien yodel called the yoyo, which Arab women chant at times of 
great importance. 

The checkerboard tiles of the courtyard were strewn with costly rugs and 
cushions, and on these about thirty men in ceremonial robes reclined around 
low tables set with an incredible profusion of hot dishes, fruits, and 
earthenware vessels decorated with blossoms. Kerim himself sat on a divan 
covered with furs. He was dressed in plain white robes and a white turban. 
There were centuries of power implied in the curl of his lip, the droop of 
his eyelids, the arrogant flare of his nostrils. Rings flashed on his 
expressive fingers, but otherwise there was no external sign of his wealth 
or his importance. It was all, Aull reflected, in his mind . . . 

Holding his breath, the intruder tiptoed away. 

The harem would undoubtedly be at the back of the house not far from the 
courtyard. Mesh had told him. so that the women could emerge and entertain 
the guests as soon as the formal discussions of the diffa were over. But as 
a new acquisition. Marsha would almost certainly be locked alone in a small 
guarded room on an upper floor. 

Beyond another anteroom. Aull found a narrow stone stairway twisting 
upwards. The dark corridor on the first floor was lined with arches and 
recessed into each was a stout wooden door secured with heavy iron bolts 
located in holes bored into the stonework. Stealing up to the first, he 
placed his ear to the wood and listened. Just audible from the far side of 
the door was the sound of muffled sobbing. 

But whoever was weeping in that room, it wasn't Marsha, the voice was too 
deep and too guttural. He tiptoed to the next door. 

Here, he could discern no sound at all. Cautiously, he eased back the bolts 
and pushed open the door. As it creaked away from him. there was a flurry of 
movement from within. He poked his head around the widening crack and looked 
inside. A huge black girl with flashing eyes and enormous up-thrust breasts 
crowned with darkly purple nipples glared ferociously at him from a pile of 
cushions at the far side of the cell-like room. Hastily he shut and bolted 
the door and moved on to the next. 

The third room was empty. In the fourth, he found a naked, light-skinned 
Arab girl face down on a divan in a drugged sleep. The tender flesh of her 
softly molded buttocks and back were crisscrossed with the red-ridged, 
angrily curling weals of a bull whip. 

Biting his lip. Aull stole away. Beyond him, the corridor turned a right 
angle. He paused to listen. He could still hear faintly the murmur of 
conversation and the thin whine of Arab music from below. Otherwise the 
house was silent. 

He was just moving forward to peer around the corner when a man's cough 
sounded startlingly loud from just ahead. He froze and tried to draw back, 
but it was too late...his head-dress and the edge of his burnoose had caught 
the eye of a gigantic Nubian standing guard with a drawn sword before a 
barred door at the end of the passageway. 

Aull darted back and ran. If the monstrous curved blade of that sword came 
within reach of him. he would be a dead man! The passage was far too narrow 
for him to attempt to maneuver around the Nubian and although the guard 
could not swing the blade sideways for the same reason, with that blade 
sweeping in front of him, Aull would never have a chance to get to close 
quarters. He dare not use his revolver, moreover, because of the noise . . . 

No if he was to achieve anything against such odds, he must have space. As 
he turned and fled, the Nubian, shouting ferociously, thundered in pursuit 
up the short corridor. His lungs bursting with the effort, the American 
raced past the stair head and on into a maze of twisting passages with the 
panting guard gaining all the time. He sped around a railed balcony circling 
a fountain in an empty patio on the floor below, feeling with a thrill of 
horror the wind on his neck as the Nubian aimed a blow at him on the run and 
the murderous blade whistled within an inch of his unprotected flesh. 

Again the honed steel scimitar whooshed through the air and this time Aull 
felt a tug at his heels as the razor-sharp tip sliced through the tail of 
his robe and buried itself deep in the wooden floor. 

As the cursing guard strove to draw it out, the fleeing man's brain raced 
despairingly. He must have more space...or contrive to come up on the man 
from behind! he thought with a flash of inspiration. 

Using the distance he had gained while the Nubian disengaged his blade, he 
doubled back and pelted down the corridor leading to the cells. The door of 
the empty room, he remembered, was still open . . . 

Hurling himself inside, he took out his gun and reversed it in his shaking 
hand. Seconds later, the Nubian pounded past, chuckling with glee because he 
thought his quarry had unwittingly blundered into a cul-de-sac. 

Aull sailed out from the open doorway to land on his huge back, clubbing 
viciously at the man's head with his revolver butt as his other arm 
tightened around the muscular throat. 

They crashed to the floor together and the sword slid from the Nubian's 
grasp to skate away along the boards. As the huge black body writhed and 
thrashed beneath him. Aull planted his knees between the man's shoulder 
blades, put his arm around the guard's throat, then grasped the wrist of his 
own arm and hauled up with all his strength against the pressure of his 
knees. 

The muscles on the Nubian's back corded like iron bars, the veins on his 
forehead stood out like tree branches, as he exerted all his tremendous 
strength in an attempt to throw off the man crushing him to the ground and 
break the spine-cracking lock around his throat. 

For a moment they remained frozen in gladiatorial combat. Sweat started on 
Aull's brow and coursed down his cheeks; the muscles of his arms shuddered 
with effort. The tortured gasps of the Nubian's choking breath bubbled in 
his paralyzed gullet. And then suddenly there was a dreadful dull snapping 
sound. The rigidly straining body subsided; the wooly head flopped limp and 
lifeless in Aull's murderous grasp. Scrambling to his feet, he snatched up 
the dead man's sword and ran for the door at the end of the passageway. 

Shooting back the bolts, he flung open the door and raced inside. Marsha, 
her eyes wide with alarm, her brunette hair tumbling about her shoulders and 
her naked body trembling, stared at him from the pile of crimson cushions on 
the far side of the room. 

Before he could triumphantly shout a greeting, some sixth sense warned the 
victorious American of danger. He whirled to his right to find himself 
facing the menacing figure of a second Nubian who had been standing guard 
inside the door. 

Instinctively, Aull put up his sword as the man sprang at him with a snarl 
of fury. The two blades jarred together in a shower of sparks. And then the 
American's weapon was expertly twisted from his grasp, his feet were kicked 
from under him, and he crashed to the floor on his back. 

Jamming a heavy foot on the fallen American's laboring chest, the guard 
grinned evilly and raised the deadly scimitar two-handed above his head. 

There was only one thing to do. As Marsha screamed shrilly, Aull lifted the 
heavy caliber revolver and fired point-blank at the man's naked chest. 

The explosion echoed thunderously in the tiny room. A scarlet flower bloomed 
horribly between the Nubian's papped nipples. His body hurtled back against 
the wall as the heavy nickel-jacketed slug plowed into his flesh with the 
impact of a battering ram. and he slid limply to the ground. 

Aull pushed himself to his feet. He was trembling all over. "Marsha!" he 
cried huskily. 

"Marsha! You okay?" 

She stared at him unbelievingly. She had not recognized him through the 
disguise. And then suddenly the tears came. She flung herself hysterically 
into his arms, sobbing wildly. "Oh, Rex!...I thought...I'd never see 
you...again . . . " 

"Later, honey," he said urgently. "Later you can cry. Come on. We've got to 
get out of here fast! That shot will bring the whole world upstairs after 
us!" The room was acrid with the stench of cordite. 

There was a small window in one wall of the room, but it was heavily barred. 
He had noticed, however, that there was a similar embrasure unbarred in the 
corridor outside. Through it he could see the moonlit ravine and the bare 
hills beyond, for the house was built into the outer wall of the town. If 
they could somehow manage to let themselves down from that window . . . 

Frenziedly, he began ripping the golden tasseled cords from the bed and the 
hangings above it. "It'll take them some time to discover where the shot 
came from." he panted, knotting lengths of the cord together. "If only we 
could manage to take the goddamn rope with us. . . " 

"But. darling...I can't come like this! They took my clothes!" Marsha 
protested. 

"Better no clothes than no head." Aull said tersely. "It's a warm night and 
I have a friend waiting with a helicopter a couple of miles up the valley. 
Come on let's go!" 

It was less than forty feet to the sloping, rocky side of the ravine. They 
rolled the body of the Nubian under the window of the passage, tied one end 
of the improvised rope around his thigh, and threw the knotted cord out the 
window. It reached to within a few feet of the ground. 

"Over you go." Aull ordered the nakedly trembling brunette. "And make it 
fast!" They could hear the sound of confused shouting and footsteps 
somewhere in the building behind them. 

She swarmed over the windowsill and lowered herself, half sliding, half 
climbing, down the golden rope in the moonlight. Seconds later he followed 
her. 

Aull stood beside her and stared up at the sandstone wall of the palace with 
the telltale rope snaking from the window. "He stayed firm when we came 
down," he said. "But that was a steady pull. Maybe if we jerked with enough 
force 

Like some macabre tug-o'-war team they seized the rope, the naked girl and 
the disguised American, and began hauling on it with all their strength, 
heaving and jerking spasmodically in a frantic attempt to dislodge the huge 
body wedged against the passage wall and hide the evidence of their escape 
route. 

At last the rope lengthened in their hands. The Nubian's body had shifted. 
It was jammed against the embrasure now, resisting their efforts to dislodge 
it. Sweat streamed down their bodies as they pulled with all their combined 
strength. Then they relaxed the pressure, so that the corpse sank away 
towards the floor, hauled again, relaxed, jerked...and suddenly they were 
tumbling painfully backwards onto the rocky shale as the dead guard pulled 
free of the obstruction and came sailing out from the window with the rope 
snaking after him. 

Black against the moonlit sky, the body flew over them like a great bird to 
crash sickeningly among the rocks further down the slope. Aull scrambled to 
his feet, coiled the rope and threw it after the dead man. 

A minute later, as the sound of furious shouting broke out from behind the 
window through which they had escaped, they were picking their way among the 
shadowed rocks at the bottom of the ravine on their way towards Mesh and the 
waiting helicopter. 

 CHAPTER NINE 

"Before I even think about that movie." Rex Aull said decisively, "there are 
two things I have to do: Number one, get that bastard Horn; Number two, find 
out what the hell this crap about our baggage means!" 

"Rex, darling do you have to go and risk your neck again?" Marsha protested. 
"Why don't you let it be? You've already done the impossible and rescued me 
from that dreadful man. That was fantastic! Why not forget the whole thing 
now? You'll never pin anything on Horn he's too well protected. Do you have 
to go for the revenge bit too?" 

"Sure I do," Aull said furiously. His anger had died down to a steady glow, 
fanned by his determination to even the score with the crooked ex-CIA man he 
had thought was his friend. Not only had Horn betrayed that friendship by 
kidnapping Aull's girl and selling her as a white slave to an Arab chieftain 
in the interior; he had also savagely beaten and tortured Aull himself, 
reducing him to a whimpering wreck in front of the two servants in the army 
hut. He wasn't going to let the sonofabitch get away with that, however much 
protection he had! 

They were sitting discussing the events of the past few days with Mesh. The 
dapper police Colonel had taken them to his own bachelor villa, a pleasant, 
flat-roofed building standing among oleanders and date palms on the 
outskirts of the city, and a good night's sleep had done much to restore 
them after their ordeals -although Rex's face and body still bore the 
swellings and scars of the beating inflicted by Horn and his men. 

"Anyway," Marsha said peaceably, "I suggest that, at the moment, Number two 
is more urgent than Number one. I checked the baggage into the cloakroom at 
the central station. Why don't you go get it now? I can't spend the rest of 
my life in Colonel Mesh's bathrobe!" 

"Perhaps, when Number two has given up its secret, it may help you to deal 
with or at least understand Number one," Mesh suggested with a smile. "And 
maybe those other things puzzling you too." 

"You mean...the attacks on me here and in Paris? The abduction of Marsha? 
Horn's interest in our baggage? They're all connected some way?" 

"It seems a reasonable deduction." Mesh said. "Except for Miss Fox's part in 
it. That. I think, was simply a piece of opportunism: We know the man is a 
procurer for influential people here and in the desert. Finding himself in a 
position where he could kidnap a beautiful girl for whom he knew he had a 
client. I imagine he just couldn't resist it!" 

"But...but the rest? How could Horn possibly . . . ? He didn't know I was 
coming. I didn't know myself until two hours before I left!" 

"Perhaps this so mysterious baggage will offer a clue!" Mesh said. 

Aull agreed. He took a cab into the city center and brought back the camera 
cases, the binoculars, the valises and Marsha's holdall. They took them into 
Mesh's study and examined them. Perhaps somebody had planted a concealed 
packet of drugs on them? Perhaps they were the unknowing couriers of illicit 
gems? Maybe the suitcases had been switched and those they had now were 
furnished with false bottoms? Why else could it be so important for Horn to 
know where they were? And the biggest mystery of all how could any of this 
stack up with the undeniable fact that he couldn't possibly have known they 
were coming to the Sudan? 

Mesh tipped the contents onto a divan and scrutinized the holdall, the 
valises and the cases with professional expertise. None of them had any 
secrets to offer: There were no false bottoms, no slim packets in the 
linings, no hidden compartments. A minute search of their clothes and 
personal belongings was equally unproductive. The baggage appeared to be 
innocent of all deception; it was exactly as it had been when they packed! 

Rex shook his head and ran agitated fingers through his hair. "I don't get 
it!" he said exasperatedly. "I just don't get it! I mean, why should that 
fat slob want to know where this stuff was? Why...?" 

Absently, he began piling his clothes back into one of the valises. . . 
shirts, socks, jerseys, suits, pajamas, the familiar crimson silk bathrobe. 
He paused suddenly. Was it so familiar? In the haste of re-packing in his 
Paris apartment, he hadn't noticed, but there was something what was it? 
that was different about the exotic garment. "Just a minute he said slowly. 

He spread the robe out on the divan. It looked the same the same golden 
dragons and temples and Chinese (or was it Japanese?) characters. He 
stiffened, his eyes suddenly narrowing. They were neither Chinese nor 
Japanese: The ideographs scattered over the material between the buildings 
and beasts were Arabic! 

It wasn't the same bathrobe . . . 

And then suddenly Aull remembered the missing electric shaver. "Jesus!" he 
shouted. "Of course! How dumb of me! How stinking, goddamn, bone-headed dumb 
can you be?" 

"Could we perhaps be let into the secret?" Marsha inquired. 

"The robe!" Aull cried excitedly. "My goddamn robe! Only it isn't my robe at 
all, you see! They switched it on me! I should have known when I realized 
about the shaver! Because it was so light " 

"Darling! If you could begin at the beginning . . . " 

"It looks like my robe." Aull explained. "But it isn't. Mine had Chinese or 
Japanese characters between the dragons and things. Now they're in some kind 
of Arabic. Now I see why those break-in guys in Paris didn't steal anything: 
They hadn't come to steal; they'd been sent to take my robe and leave this 
one in its place, so I'd be carrying some kind of message without knowing 
it. The only thing was, my shaver wasn't taken out of the pocket of my robe 
and replaced in this one; I guess it was so light they didn't notice it! If 
I hadn't happened to disturb them at it, everything would have been 
re-packed and I'd never have noticed a thing!" 

"Yes. but what message?" Marsha asked practically. "For whom?" 

"Search me! I don't read Arabic." 

"May I see that?" Mesh asked quietly, lie scanned the golden marks on the 
robe and then stretched the material between his hands, holding it up to the 
light and squinting along the surface. 

"Presumably, whatever the message is. you were supposed to have taken it to 
Senegal," he said absently. 

"I guess so. I'd forgotten that. The break-in took place before I knew my 
plans were switched and I was coming here." 

"So it would be a reasonable assumption that the attack on you at the 
airport was because whoever had planted the robe had learned of the change 
in plan and wanted to get it back...so they could send it to Senegal some 
other way?" 

"Of course! Those hoods were feeling my pockets! They wanted the baggage 
checks so they could take the valise out of the cloakroom at Orly!" 

"And having failed there, they alerted accomplices here wno tried to do the 
same thing at your hotel and failed again?" 

"Yeah, that must be it." Aull said, nodding. "And perhaps after that Horn . 
. . . ' But what the hell is tile goddamn message anyway?" 

"I think Horn's involvement may he more complicated than that," Mesh said. 
"Especially when you know what the characters mean. And there I think I can 
help you. Look at this." He held up the stretched skirt of the robe. Between 
the ideographs, cunningly woven into the silk so that they were invisible 
except when the light struck them from a certain direction, were a mass of 
lines, squares and circles. 

"Gee. that looks just like some kind of map!" Marsha exclaimed. 

"It is a kind of map," Mesh said soberly. "You were carrying with you the 
complete details of the arms and strength and disposition of all the 
government troops in the southern Sudan . . . " 

* * * 

Aull hurried up the steps of Mesh's house and pushed open the door. He had 
been back into the city center to check tax details at the American Embassy 
and make enquiries about transport of film equipment and camera crews to the 
south. "Marsha!" he called. "I got us booked into that hotel okay, but we 
have to check in before eight o'clock. Are you all ready?" 

He paused in the hallway and listened. There was no answering cry from the 
bedroom Mesh had given them. He called again. "Marsha...?" 

There was no reply. 

Aull walked into the sitting room. It was empty. "Honey.'" he called for the 
third time. "We got to get a move on if we want to make that reservation: 
it's after seven now...Are you there. Marsha?" 

Silence. Somewhere in the house a faucet dripped monotonously. 

Frowning. Aull went back into the hall. Mesh was sealed al Ins desk ill the 
study with his hack to the door. His-spare, elegant body was attired in a 
spotless white sharkskin suit. His tie was beautifully tied. His shoes were 
polished and there was a camelia in his buttonhole. The only thing missing 
was his head. 

A great fountain of blood had jetted from the redly gaping horror of his 
neck to flood the papers on the desk and cascade to the white tiles on the 
far side. The crimson pool was still wet and sticky, and a cigarette with a 
two-inch trail of white ash was still smoldering in the ashtray. Whoever it 
was that had decapitated the policeman with a single murderous sweep of 
savage force must have left only minutes before Aull arrived. He had 
probably passed them on the road. 

Tearing his eyes away from the severed head, which was lying against a chair 
with the mild eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling, Aull ran wildly from 
the room. "Marsha?" he shouted desperately. "Marsha . . . '! " 

There was no sign of the voluptuous brunette in the deserted house. In the 
bedroom, Aulfs valises had been opened again and the crimson silk bathrobe 
was gone. 

* * * 

Aull screeched Mesh's Fiat to a halt a block away from Horn's office and ran 
down the dark street towards the warehouse over which the ex-CIA man had his 
headquarters. 

His mind was a chaos of shuddering fury -not only because they had taken 
Marsha again but because he had been fond of the quiet-voiced, helpful 
policeman who had risked so much to assist them. Well, his murder was going 
to be avenged! If Aull's hunch was right and Horn, for it had to be Horn, 
was going to bring Marsha here before shipping her back to the desert 
chieftain who had paid money for her, then there was a chance that he might 
not be too late. Then men who had killed Mesh and taken the girl could only 
have been a few minutes ahead of him, he reflected grimly. And before he 
settled with Horn he was going to beat the truth about that goddamned 
bathrobe out of him! It would be a pleasure! 

To his surprise, the pass door in the high wooden gates of the cotton 
warehouse was not locked. They must be very sure of themselves. Probably 
they had tipped off the police, hoping Aull would be pulled in for Mesh's 
murder as soon as he arrived back at the house. Too bad for them he had 
gotten back early . . . 

Easing open tiie door, he slipped through and stole soft-footed across the 
yard towards the warehouse. A dim light showed through a frosted glass 
window at the far end of the huge building, whose double doors were standing 
open. Above them, light streamed through the windows of Horn's office. There 
was a Mercedes sedan parked in front of the doors, its hood still warm. 

Aull crept down a dark aisle between ranked bales of cotton stacked high up 
into the shadows overhead. The warm dusty air was pungent with the 
breath-catching stink of bleach. 

The downstairs light came from a partitioned-off section at the far end 
where some of the products of the warehouse were treated before being 
shipped off to purchasers. Aull drew Mesh's revolver from his pocket and 
softly tried the brass handle. From overhead, he could hear Horn's heavy 
footsteps pacing his office in the gallery of the building. His pulse began 
to race with anger, but his head remained cool. 

The handle turned easily. He thrust open the door and stepped into the room 
with the gun ready to fire at two surprised Arabs. "All right." he grated. 
"Put up your hands and don't make a sound!" 

Ahmed and Hassan were lowering Marsha's naked, drugged body into a large 
wicker hamper standing by a row of shallow troughs half-filled with bleach 
at the far end of the workshop. An empty hypodermic lay on a table nearby. 
They Straightened up with their dark faces a study in consternation. 

The knife that Hassan plucked from the sleeve of his djellabah and threw as 
he raised his hands so fast and with such deadly accuracy that Aull didn't 
even see it until it pierced the soft flesh of his upper arm. He gave a cry 
of pain and clapped his other hand to his biceps to pluck out the deadly 
blade. Then the gun fell from his nerveless fingers and spun away under a 
bench laden with glass retorts and dyes in bottles. 

Hassan was holding another knife menacingly. "All right, my friend: You put 
up your hands while I see if" you have any further weapons!" he snarled, 
handing the knife to Ahmed and advancing warily to one side of the 
discomfited movie man. 

Aull slowly raised his hand. He could feel blood from the wound trickling 
warmly down his arm. It was only a flesh cut but it hurt like hell. He was 
furious with himself for being so easily worsted. But he dared not make a 
move under the menace of that other knife...not yet. 

He looked wildly around him. He was backed against the wall. Above his head, 
a row of glass carboys containing acids used in the bleaching process stood 
on a shelf with their wicker-covered bellies projecting slightly. He drew a 
deep breath and then fear, rage, and desperation lent him strength and 
determination. 

As Hassan stooped to recover the bloodstained knife from where he must have 
dropped it when he plucked it from his arm, Aull closed his fingers around 
the base of one of the heavy carboys and with a superhuman effort hurled it 
against a concrete beam supporting the ceiling above the kneeling man's 
head. I 

The heavy glass vessel smashed against the edge of the beam and exploded 
with a noise like a grenade, to shower the room with fragments of glass and 
send five gallons of concentrated hydrochloric acid cascading over the 
upturned face and shoulders of the Arab below. 

Hassan screamed a dreadful sobbing cry that soared agonizingly up the scale 
as he collapsed in a jerking, writhing heap on the floor, clawing 
frantically at the acid that was eating away his eyes and searing into the 
flesh of his skull. 

Aull was already throwing himself across the room at the petrified Ahmed. He 
cannoned into the wiry Arab, knocking him back against the troughs and 
twisting him violently around as the knife flew from his hand. Then, 
concentrating all of his 180 pounds weight on his arms, the enraged American 
seized the unfortunate Sudanese by the neck and thrust his head and 
shoulders brutally down into the bleach filling the trough. 

Ahmed struggled wildly against his deadly hold. Horrible choking noises 
bubbled from the seething surface of the bleach. His shoulders bucked 
frantically against Aull's remorseless iron grip as his air-starved lungs 
involuntarily sucked in breaths of the chlorine through his mouth and nose. 
His dying fingers beat frenziedly at the air. 

Aull waited until the struggles ceased. Then, panting hoarsely, he allowed 
the body to Hop wetly from the trough to the ground, recovered his gun from 
under the bench, and raced for the rickety stairway leading from the 
warehouse to Horn's office. 

Horn dropped on him from the platform at the top of the ladder. He landed on 
Aull's back. smashing him to the ground with all the breath knocked from his 
body as the revolver flew from his hand again. 

Gasping for air. Aull strove desperately to twist onto his back. Horn had 
seized his injured arm and screwed it cruelly up between his shoulders, 
clawing with his other hand for Aull's eyes. 

The winded movie man beat ineffectually at . the floor with his free hand. 
Horn's weight was crushing him. and although the ex-CIA crook was flabby, he 
was immensely strong. If Aull couldn't break his grip in a few seconds, his 
arm would be dislocated. His mind reeling with pain, his head forced " back 
agonizingly as Horn's thumb lodged in his eye socket, he forced his jaw 
fractionally forward until he could bite savagely into the fleshy part of 
his antagonist's hand. 

Horn shouted with rage, releasing his grip on Aull's arm to" seize his hair 
and drag the punishing teeth away from his hand. 

As soon as his arm was free, Aull drew his knees up under him with a supreme 
effort, threw Horn's heavy body to one side, and scrambled to his feet to 
kick ferociously at the big man's jaw as he rose menacingly to his knees. 
Horn went down as the heel of Aull's shoe caught him on the side of his 
chin. But he was up again in a flash, his hands held away from his sides, an 
evil glint in his small eyes. 

"All right, fatso." Aull snarled, "this is where you get what's coming to 
you. I'm going to break your fat carcass into pieces!" 

"You and who else, punk?" Horn sneered. "I just about had enough of your 
fuckin' interferin'. It's time you were put out of the way once and for all, 
and I'm the guy who's gonna do it!" 

Aull rushed forward before he had finished speaking, feinted with his left, 
and swung a powerful right to Horn's jaw. The big man blocked the blow 
expertly with his palm and smashed a murderous hook to the side of the movie 
man's head. Aull staggered back with his ears ringing: It felt as though he 
had been hit with a battering ram. His cheek was split and blood trickled 
warmly down to his chin. 

Before he had time to recover, Horn pressed home his advantage and unleashed 
two vicious body punches that rocked the movie man on his heels. Stumbling 
back out of reach, Aull fetched up against a wall of cotton bales and panted 
for breath. Horn was immensely heavy and immensely strong; Aull's only 
chance was to keep the fight at long range. Once they got to close quarters 
the crooked ex-CIA man's additional weight would turn the scales in his 
favor. Yet even at a distance, Aull was at a disadvantage with a shorter 
reach. 

Horn was coming at him again now. panting hoarsely as he hammered home a 
flurry of savage blows to Aull's face and body. But the younger man was 
tough too. Wincing and gasping as his adversary's meaty fists raked across 
his chin, pounded the flesh over his ribs and sank agonizingly into his 
abdomen, he stood up and traded punch for punch. If he could stay on his 
feet and prolong the combat, maybe the older man. who should be out of 
condition from his own excesses, would tire first. 

He landed several glancing blows on Horn's chin, thudded in a couple of 
lefts to the heart, and then scored with a brutal right carrying all his 
weight to the solar plexus. The older man momentarily dropped his guard as 
his lungs screamed for air...and Aull, ducking under his pawing fists, 
brought up his head to pound his fist ferociously into the other man's face. 

Horn cried out with pain as his smashed nose sprayed crimson over the lower 
half of his face, swaying dazedly away from Aull's attack. Aull leaped 
tigerishly forward to jolt a searing left followed by a pile-driving right 
across to the big man's diaphragm. As Horn fell back under the hail of 
blows, the movie man advanced relentlessly, his fists pistoning, forcing the 
battered ex-CIA crook towards the lighted door of the process room. 

But Horn wasn't finished yet. He came back with a stinging roundhouse left 
that caught Aull on the side of the head and knocked him off balance with 
stars shooting in front of his eyes. Then, seizing a high stool used by 
tellers checking the incoming bales, he swung it by the legs and aimed a 
murderous blow at the younger man's unprotected head. 

Desperately. Aull twisted aside as the stool smashed to splinters against a 
concrete pillar behind him...but the effort destroyed his balance completely 
and sent him sprawling on his back on the floor. Brandishing one leg of the 
shattered stool, Horn took a flying leap at the fallen man. 

Aull jerked his knees back into his stomach, planted his heels in Horn's 
groin as the big man dropped towards him, and then straightened his legs 
with all his force. Horn hurtled through the open doorway and landed on his 
back on the work-bench in an explosion of breaking glass. 

The movie man was after him in a Hash. As Horn floundered upright, blinded 
by blood streaming from a cut above his eyes caused by a fragment of one of 
the smashed retorts. Aull kicked him savagely in the belly. Horn reeled away 
howling with pain and tripped over the acid-scarred body of Hassan. But. 
before he had hit the ground. Aull's steely fingers were twisted in his 
lapels, hauling him to his feet and battering at his bloodied face with his 
free hand. 

Horn went down again...and once more Aull's dragged him up to pound 
pitilessly at the gory ruin of his face with his punishing right. 

This time Horn went down for good. As he lay moaning through cut and bloody 
lips. Aull jumped astride his fallen body, jammed one foot into his armpit, 
seized his right wrist in both hands, and hauled upward on the arm with all 
his strength. "All right, fatso," he panted. "Let's have it. I want the 
whole story, right from the start." 

"What the hell are you talking about?" Horn groaned. 

"You heard me. About the bathrobe. The attacks on me. Your own dirty part in 
it. The lot." 

"I'll see you in hell first," Horn snarled. "You're breaking my fuckin' 
arm." 

"I will if you don't talk," Aull said grimly. "Give!" 

"Fuck off!" 

Breathing heavily, Aull shifted his other leg so that the knee was jammed 
against the back of Horn's elbow. Then, still hauling the arm up against the 
pressure of his foot, he began bending it back over his knee. "Talk!" he 
repeated. 

Horn squealed with agony and writhed on the floor, but his bruised lips 
remained obstinately closed. 

Sweat stood out on Aull's forehead as he mercilessly increased the pressure. 
Suddenly there was a. sharp sound like a tree branch snapping in a wind. 

"Aaaaaaaaaaggghhhh!" Horn gave a high scream of animal pain as Aull let the 
arm flop uselessly to the ground. "You bastard!" the ex-CIA man gasped. "You 
fuckin' bastard you broke my arm!" 

Aull kicked the squirming man over onto his other side, pulled up his good 
left arm, and jammed a foot once more into his armpit. "You got ten seconds 
to talk before I break the other one!" he shouted, starting to exert 
pressure against his knee. "One, two, three, four " 

"Aaaaaaaah! No, no, no...don't!...Okay, I'll talk, I'll talk!" Horn 
squealed. Beneath the curtain of blood, his face had paled to a livid green 
and the rash of sweat on his brow gleamed oily in the harsh light. 

"Give!" Aull spat. 

"It was...those black bastards...in the south," Horn groaned through set 
teeth. "There's a whole...gang of 'em in exile in Senegal. They're planning 
a coup. They got agents in Paris who stole the plans from the Embassy . . 
.Let go of my arm: You're killing me!" 

"Then they worked the plans into a fake robe which they planted on me, 
thinking I'd innocently take it to Senegal and then they could steal it 
back?" Aull pursued. 

"Yeah, yeah. But they was keepin' a close watch in case you screwed up. And 
when they discovered your plans was changed they tried to get it back and 
send it some other way. In the meantime the Arab intelligence guys had 
traced the map to you, so they blew up the plane, they thought you was 
on...My fuckin' arm'. " 

"Knocking off innocent people, by the way!" Aull grated, giving the arm an 
extra jerk. "Nice guys!" 

"Aiiiiie! Slop! It ain't no fault of mine, goddamn you!" 

"No? And it's no fault of yours that you didn't just tell me all of this 
when I came to see you? You couldn't just have told the truth, you fat slob? 
I wasn't even involved, for Christ's sake!" 

"I didn't know then!" Horn shrieked as the pressure on his left arm 
increased again. "I didn't know. I tell you! I was only interested in the 
broad, I swear it!...I only found out when I delivered her to Kerim. That 
meeting you busted in on was called to discuss the threat of a rebel 
uprising down there! Kerim hired me then to get your goddamn baggage!" 

"Okay," Aull breathed, relaxing his grip a little. "Just one more question: 
Where's the robe now?" 

"How the fuck should I know?" Horn said sullenly. 

"How should you know? I'll tell you how you should know!" Aull shouted in a 
storm of rage. "You killed Mesh and kidnapped Marsha again -so you could 
return Kerim the goods he'd paid for and get the robe for him at the same 
time, you lousy bastard! Now where, where . . . is...that. . . robe?" 

"Aaaaaagh!...Ohhhhh...Euuuuuuugh!...Upstairs! Upstairs in my office! In the 
drawer of the desk!" Horn screamed wildly as Aull increased the pressure on 
his arm intolerably with each word. 

Aull expelled his breath in a long sigh. That was it, then! The last piece 
of the puzzle had fallen into place! Relinquishing his grasp on the big 
man's tortured arm, he left him blubbering abjectly on the floor and strode 
out towards the staircase. 

As he returned with the garment that had caused so much death and 
destruction and pain, he stooped to recover Mesh's revolver from under the 
cotton bales. He had just thrust it into his pocket when, incredibly, 
Marsha's voice, still blurred with drugs but wild with alarm, screamed from 
the process room: 

"Rex! Rex! Look out!. . . He's got a gun! . . . " 

Aull whirled towards the open door. Forever afterwards the macabre scene 
beyond it was frozen into his mind as graphically as a vivid movie still the 
two dead Arabs in front of the troughs, Marsha's petrified head and naked 
shoulders emerging from the wicker hamper, and on the bloodstained, 
glass-littered floor the prone form of Horn, eyes squinting evilly from his 
pain-contorted face, sighting along the barrel of the wicked automatic in 
his good hand. 

Knowing that he would never be nearer death, Aull fired through his pocket. 
The twin reports sounded as one, cracking through the dusty air of the 
warehouse and ringing in the ear. 

Aull felt the wind of Horn's bullet stir the hairs on his scalp as a third 
red eye suddenly stared horribly from the center of the big man's forehead 
and he subsided lifeless to the floor. 

The exhausted movie man gradually relaxed. He was shuddering all over, his 
battered face ached intolerably; his body felt as though it had been run 
over by a steam-roller and every muscle shrieked with strain; the knife 
would in his arm was sending waves of agony through his shoulder but he was 
still alive! The mystery solved, he had got Marsha back, and he had won! 

Breathing deeply, he walked shakily through the shambles on the floor and 
tenderly helped the shivering, half-hysterical brunette out of the hamper 
which had so nearly sent her for the second time to a living death in the 
desert. "Honey," he said, "I don't want to seem brutal at a time like this, 
but we got to get out of here, out of this country but fast! There's two 
Arabs, a police Colonel and an American dead...and no one to pin it on but 
us! Since Horn was in the pocket of some mighty important guys here and in 
the south, I wouldn't rate our chances very high once the law laid a finger 
on us!" 

"Oh, Rex!" was all the voluptuous young girl could sob. "Oh, Rex, my 
darling, my darling! . . . " 

He was about to wrap the robe in his hands around her naked shoulders when 
he hesitated. And then, seeing a striped Arab shift hanging behind the door, 
he strode across and tossed the garment to her. "Put this on," he ordered 
brusquely. "That goddamn bathrobe's caused enough trouble already!" 

He lowered one of the carboys of acid from the shelf, carried it across to 
an empty trough, and allowed the corrosive to gurgle out until the trough 
was half full. Then, shaking his head, he muttered: "It's no concern of 
ours. Let them fight it out among themselves. I don't know enough about it 
to take sides anyway! Let's just get rid of the lousy thing!" 

Dropping the gaudy crimson and gold robe into the acid bath, he watched the 
dragons and temples, the Arabic characters and the hidden lines and squares 
and circles of the map dissolve slowly in the fuming liquid. 

Then, supporting the now weeping Marsha around the waist with his good arm, 
he led the way to Horn's Mercedes and drove furiously towards the airport. 

EPILOGUE 

Aull sent Marsha to make enquiries at the airport reservation desk. 
Fortunately his money and both their passports were in the inside pocket of 
his jacket, but by now Mesh's body might have been discovered and with it 
their baggage. There could be an alert out for him...but hardly anyone in 
Khartoum had seen this girl since their arrival. 

His eyes shielded by dark glasses, a wide-brim straw hat he had found in the 
Mercedes pulled low down over his bruised and battered face, the movie man 
slid into the airport post office and wrote out a cable to Mori Douglas in 
Paris: 

REGRET SUDAN UNSUITABLE FOR MOVIE STOP TOO MUCH TROUBLE STOP RETURNING PARIS 
Aull. 

Buying a newspaper at a kiosk, he spread the sheets in front of his face and 
sat down in an unobtrusive corner to wait for Marsha. 

It was fifteen minutes before the curvaceous young brunette returned and 
when she did. he didn't recognize her at first! She was wearing a trim blue 
airline uniform and carrying a small valise. He stared at her. 

'There's a plane leaving in a half hour," Marsha explained. "But it's all 
booked up...and there's not another until tomorrow at noon." Her face was 
creased into a curious secretive smile and she seemed to have recovered 
astonishingly from her dreadful ordeal. 

Aull was still gaping at her. "Why the imagine dress?" he asked. 

"I guessed we don't dare wait that long," Marsha went on, "so I fixed 
something else instead." 

"But.. . ? " 

'There's a purser's uniform in this valise," Marsha said. "Go on in the 
men's room and put it on. When you come out, go to the door marked 'Aircrews 
Only' and wait for me there. After that, just tag along and leave it to me." 

"B-b-b-but what . . . ? How did you...?" Aull was almost speechless with 
incomprehension. 

"I found a friend," Marsha said vaguely. "A friend who can smuggle us on 
that plane provided we don't mind traveling in the baggage compartment. And 
of course there's a price to pay." 

"Why...why sure I'll pay," Aull stammered. "And, of course, I don't mind how 
the hell we travel just so long as we get out of here! How much do you...?" 

Again that strange inward smile flitted across the voluptuous redhead's 
beautiful face. "I'll tell you when we're aboard," she said. 

An hour later, Aull, resplendent in blue and gold braid, lay sprawled 
comfortably on a pile of mail sacks staring out the tiny porthole of the 
baggage compartment in the jetliner's tail. Thirty thousand feet below, the 
wrinkled blue sheet of the Mediterranean slid into view under the plane's 
swept back wing. He yawned. The roar of the motors was lulling him to sleep. 

Marsha appeared around the partition shielding the compartment from the 
other steward's quarters. Bright light streaming in through the porthole 
burnished her hair and threw dark shadows across the blue jacket beneath the 
tightly out-thrust bulge of her breasts. "Rex honey," she said, "it's time 
to take off that uniform." 

Still half asleep, Aull resignedly stripped off the gold-trimmed jacket and 
pants. 

"And the shirt and tie and shorts," Marsha ordered. 

Staring bemusedly at the smiling girl, he muttered a bewildered protest and 
complied. When he was completely naked, she reached out a hand and grasped 
the long, limp shaft of his penis. 

Aull gasped in surprise. At the first touch of her cool fingers his cock 
jerked and stiffened, lenghthening her small hand around the hotly throbbing 
shaft. She milked the long thick pole of flesh sensuously, skimming the 
loose foreskin up and down its entire length until the bloated puce head 
burst into view with a pearl of seminal fluid glistening at its tip. When 
the wetly pulsing rod was iron-hard, she turned her head and called over her 
shoulder: "Ginny? It's okay he's ready!" 

Stuttering with amazement. Aull's jaw dropped open as a girl in a 
stewardess's uniform undulated into view around the partition a tall girl 
with a wide-lipped, sensual mouth and a crop of short golden hair that 
tolled around her head like a soundless bell. 

"This is Ginny," Marsha explained with a lustful twinkle in her eye. "It was 
she who smuggled us aboard but I told you there would be a price to pay." As 
her hand tightened around the throbbing staff spearing out from the 
speechless Aull's naked loins, she added: 

"We're going to start paying right now...and we're going to go on paying a 
long time. All three of us! . . ." 

Exchanging a smile of delighted complicity, the two girls stripped off their 
uniform jackets and began hastily to unbutton their blouses. 


THE END
