Adventures Page 7

  “Nasty fellow, is he?” I asked as a small knot formed in my belly and began to grow.

  “Under other circumstances I wouldn't wish your fate on my worst enemy,” said the Dutchman gravely.

  “Tell me about him,” I said.

  “Please, my friend,” said the Dutchman, holding up a hand for silence. “I wish to speak no further on the subject. It would only depress me.”

  “If it upsets you all that much, Dutchman,” I suggested, “perhaps it might be better not to sell me to this Ishak person after all.”

  “My dear fellow,” he said severely, “this is business. I'll just have to learn to live with the guilt.”

  That being settled, he had another swallow from his flask and ambled off to his tent. His Arabs shooed me away from the fire, and I rejoined my porters, thinking that maybe they weren't such unfortunate souls after all, at least compared to some people I could name, like me for instance.

  The next three days passed pretty uneventfully, unless you think trudging across a desert with your hands and feet chained together qualifies as an event. At that point, which was five days into our little sojourn, the Dutchman had one of his Arabs unshackle me after first explaining that we were at least a four-day march from water of any kind.

  Now, I could find a lot of fault with the Dutchman's ethics and morals and appearance and even his personal hygiene, but I'd never noticed much wrong with his business sense, so when he told me that I took him at his word and made no attempt to sneak off from the caravan. Besides, he still had my ivory, and without it the Tabernacle of Saint Luke wasn't likely to get itself built in the real near future.

  Every day I'd ask the Dutchman about this Ali ben Ishak character, and every day he'd tell me that he was too fond of me to discuss the matter. The only thing he'd say was that Ali ben Ishak was one of the five wealthiest Arabs in the world, and that he (the Dutchman) felt just terrible about this whole situation. I must confess that the more I tried to talk about it, the more he wasn't the only one who felt terrible. Finally I decided to put the entire thing in the hands of the Lord, after explaining the problem to Him and making certain recommendations of my own. Thereafter I spoke no more about it, and concentrated mostly on not dying of heat stroke, a considerable task in its own right.

  It was a week to the day since we'd been captured that I looked ahead of me and saw a huge cloud of sand out near the horizon. It came closer, and finally I could make out a batch of Arab sheikhs and warriors mounted on horseback and camels, all wearing colorful robes and headgear and sporting expensive-looking rifles. The Dutchman signaled us to stop and then had us walk in a circle, just like the old-time pioneers did whenever Indians drew near. Then he had his dozen men brandish their weapons and position themselves around our close-knit little group.

  The leader of the mounted Arabs signaled his own men to stop about twenty yards away. Then he rode his horse slowly toward me and the Wanderobo, circled us twice, and turned to the Dutchman.

  “Slaves?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow.

  “Friends and relations,” said the Dutchman hastily.

  “In chains?” asked the old sheikh.

  “I don't get along with them very well,” answered the Dutchman.

  “Where are you going?” asked the sheikh

  “Nairobi,” said the Dutchman.

  “You're heading in the wrong direction,” said the sheikh.

  “We thought we'd get a little exercise along the way,” said the Dutchman.

  “And who are you?” asked the Arab.

  “Colonel T. E. Lawrence,” replied the Dutchman. “But my friends call me El Aurens.”

  Suddenly the old sheikh's attitude changed, and he became positively servile. After offering Allah's blessings on the Dutchman and his friends and relations, he rejoined his men and beat a hasty path around us.

  “That was close!” sighed the Dutchman, wiping some sweat from his forehead.

  “How did you know they'd leave you alone if you told them you were Lawrence of Arabia?” I asked.

  “Trial and error. One batch almost tore me apart when I told them I was Chinese Gordon. I guess they don't view the fall of Khartoum quite the same way you and I do. Anyway, after a number of confrontations, I found that Lawrence's name worked best.”

  “And what will happen if the real Lawrence ever shows up?” I asked.

  “I imagine they'll think he's Chinese Gordon and tear him to pieces,” replied the Dutchman with a chuckle.

  He walked over to me and attached me to the porters again. “I hate to do this to you, my friend,” he grated as he was attaching the chains, “but we reach Cairo in two more days and I wouldn't want you to do anything unwise.”

  I promptly asked the Lord to strike him down and set me free, but evidently my Silent Partner was otherwise occupied at the time, for I spent the next two days in chains, walking north to Cairo.

  It was dark when we got to the outskirts of the city. We made camp about three miles from one of the poorer sections, of which there were an awful lot, lit a campfire, and allowed the Arabs to ply us with a number of bottles of native beer. When I remarked upon the Dutchman's generosity, he replied that while it was undoubtedly true that he was the very soul of generosity, it would also serve to make us look a little fatter on the auction block the next morning.

  “And now, Doctor Jones,” he added with a strange glint in his eye, “I think it is time for my men to unshackle you and bring you over here for a bath.”

  They did so, and I must confess that the Dutchman prepared the bath of my life for me. It was sweet-smelling and filled with all kinds of soaps and oils. Then, after I dried myself off, the Dutchman himself gave me a haircut and a shave, after which two of the Arabs gave me a rubdown and poured more oils onto me.

  When all this was done the Dutchman handed me back my clothes, which had been washed while all this other preparation was going on. I got into them, and then he stood back, hands on hips, and just kind of stared at me.

  “Oh, yes,” he said at last. “Eighty thousand Maria Theresa dollars, at the very least.”

  Well, this made absolutely no sense to me, because as far as I could see the whole damned lot of us plus the ivory wasn't going to bring anything near eighty thousand dollars. And while Ali ben Ishak may very well have been one of the richest men in the world, rich folk didn't get that way by overtipping, or remembering the cook's birthday, or bidding eighty thousand dollars for a slave in a bear market.

  Still, if it made the Dutchman happy to think otherwise, it was no skin off my back—and keeping my skin on my back had suddenly become pretty imperative to me.

  Pretty soon the Dutchman and the Arabs began drinking the leftover beer, and since I was still unchained I kind of helped them a bit. It must have been a lot stronger than I thought, because in about half an hour only the Dutchman was still awake, and he and I got to talking about old times and sipping generously from his flask, and within another ten minutes or so he was out cold.

  I gave serious consideration to trying to free the porters, but I didn't want to chance waking up any of the Arabs while searching for the keys to their chains, and besides, someone had to stick around to carry all that ivory back to Mombasa, so I just gave them a brief but friendly smile and raced off toward the city.

  Being in my usual marvelous condition, and a fine figure of a man as well, it took me only a couple of hours to negotiate the intervening three miles, and I arrived in Cairo hardly panting at all. I must have come in the back way or something, because while there were a lot of huge palaces at the far end of town, I was in an area of twisting streets and little white shacks. I asked two or three locals for directions but they kept speaking some foreign tongue so I just kept on walking past the bazaars and the ramshackle housing and such until I suddenly found myself on what seemed to be a main road.

  I hopped on the back of a slow-moving double-decker bus, rode about a mile, and slipped off without distracting the conductor from his appoin
ted duties. Finally I saw a white man in a white suit just like the Dutchman's, only not so soiled, and wearing a straw hat, and I walked up to him.

  “Good evening, brother,” I said.

  “No handouts,” he grunted, and kept walking.

  “Now, brother,” I said, falling into step beside him, “do I look like a man in need of a handout? I happen to be the Right Reverend Doctor Jones, pastor of the Tabernacle of Saint Luke from down south of here.”

  “Must be a mighty small church,” he grated. “There's nothing but sand south of here.”

  “What direction are we walking?” I said quickly.

  “North, you numbskull,” he said with some distaste.

  “Well, that explains it,” I said. “My church is to the east of here. I just got turned around a little.”

  He stopped, hands on hips, and glared at me. “Just what the hell is it that you want?” he demanded.

  “Nothing much, brother,” I replied. “I just need some directions.”

  “Well?” he persisted.

  “If you were looking for a slave market in Cairo, just where do you suppose you'd find it?” I asked at last.

  “I don't traffic in slaves,” he said coldly.

  “Neither do I,” I assured him quickly. “In fact, it's my intention to buy a batch of them poor lost souls and set them free.”

  “A noble sentiment,” he said, still looking a mite suspicious. “However, I still can't help you. Now, if you'll just stop following me, I'll—”

  “Just a minute!” I said, suddenly smitten by another revelation. “Where would I find Ali ben Ishak?”

  “What would someone like you want with someone like him?” he demanded.

  “He's my partner,” I replied. “The two of us plan to crisscross the countryside buying slaves and setting them adrift on a sea of freedom.”

  “Not that I believe a word of all this,” he said, “but Ali ben Ishak lives in that huge domed building up ahead.”

  I looked ahead in the direction he indicated, and saw an enormous building, about the size of the White House, at the top of a mild incline. “That one?” I asked, pointing to it.

  “No,” he answered. “That's just the governmental palace. Ishak lives in the big one over toward the left.”

  I looked again, and saw a gold-spired building that completely dwarfed the government palace. Each of my porters could have had two rooms and a bath and would probably only have taken up the first floor of the guest wing.

  “Thank you, brother,” I said, heading off toward Ali ben Ishak's abode. “May the Good Lord look after you.” It was a sincere blessing, especially since the Lord hadn't done such an all-fired good job of looking after him so far this evening, what with me having removed his wallet while he was pointing out the government palace to me.

  I reached Ali ben Ishak's door in about fifteen minutes. I could tell right off that I wasn't going to have to spend a lot of time searching for a doorbell and wondering how to introduce myself, because two huge Egyptians wearing fancy headdresses and baggy pants and not much else withdrew their wicked-looking swords when I tried to enter.

  “What is your business here?” asked one of them in a much higher voice than fit his body.

  “Oh, nothing special,” I said quickly. “I just stopped by to see if your boss would like to make a friendly little contribution to the Tabernacle of Saint Luke.”

  “The Master supports no charities,” said the other, in an equally falsetto voice.

  “Who's talking charity?” I said. “The Tabernacle of Saint Luke is perfectly willing to make an equally friendly contribution to Ali ben Ishak. Why don't one of you boys run off and bring your Master down here?”

  The two conferred in low whispers for a moment. Then one of them put two fingers into his mouth and let loose with a shrill whistle, and a minute later another half-naked muscleman in baggy pants and a turban showed up. There was some more whispering, a few gestures, a whole lot of staring at me, and then the new arrival told me to follow him.

  And let me tell you, that was some house I followed him through. All the draperies were made of spun gold, and more jewels than you could shake a stick at sat in glass cases along the walls of the main gallery, each being guarded by a swarthy-looking Egyptian with a curved sword. We walked through a dining room that would comfortably have sat twelve or thirteen hundred close friends and admirers, circled a tiled pool that was only a little bit smaller than Lake Victoria, and finally we came to a halt in what sure as blazes seemed like a throne room. At any rate, it was a huge room filled with ornate Persian rugs, and there was only one chair in it, a big, luxurious, cushioned thing that sat smack-dab in the middle of the floor.

  “I will tell the Master that you are here,” said my guide, vanishing through a doorway that was pretty much hidden by some hanging tapestries. Since I found myself alone with a few minutes on my hands, I decided to take a look at some of Ali ben Ishak's trinkets and doodads that were sitting on shelves all over the room, and discovered, with some dismay, that they were all carvings and paintings and other renderings of naked white men, with an occasional white boy thrown in for good measure.

  Suddenly it occurred to me why the Dutchman was so sure I'd bring all that money, and I lost no time in heading back the way I'd come in, but as I got to the door two more of those damned Egyptian heathens appeared from nowhere and crossed their swords right in my path. I considered stooping down and walking under the blades but thought better of it and went back to the interior of the throne room, looking vainly for a little dirt to rub onto my skin.

  Then a silk-and-satin-clad figure, kind of old and skinny but wearing enough jewelry to make him look twenty and handsome in the eyes of most women, entered from behind the tapestries. I smelled him about three seconds before I saw him, and I stopped worrying about all the scents that the Dutchman had rubbed onto me. They were drowned out by his perfume the moment he entered the room.

  “Ali ben Ishak?” I said, extending my hand and thanking the Lord that none of the Arabs had thought to give me a manicure.

  “Yes,” he purred. “And you are Mister...?”

  “Doctor,” I corrected him. “The Right Reverend Doctor Lucifer Jones at your service. In a manner of speaking,” I added hastily.

  “And to what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this visit, Doctor Jones?” he asked, staring at me through half-lowered lids, which gave him a sort of cockeyed look.

  “I believe we have a little business to transact,” I said.

  “Have we indeed?” he giggled, easing himself onto the chair.

  “Ali ben, my friend, I ain't going to mince words with you,” I began. “I have a certain commodity to sell that I just know is going to meet with your approval.”

  “It already has,” he said.

  “How can it?” I asked. “You don't even know what I'm talking about.”

  “I understand perfectly,” he simpered.

  “Don't go understanding me so all-fired fast,” I said quickly. “As I was saying, I've brought this particular commodity all the way from the Lado Enclave at enormous personal expense and hardship, knowing that a man of your taste and status would properly appreciate it.”

  “I'm sure I will,” he breathed.

  “You can search the whole of Africa and you won't find none better,” I said.

  “What an absolutely charming notion!” said Ali ben Ishak, closing his eyes and smiling a very strange smile.

  “Well, then,” I said, “I suppose we'd better get down to talking price. Brother Ali ben, for anyone else I'd charge thirty or thirty-five thousand dollars, but for you the price is a dirt cheap twenty grand.”

  “That's more than I'm accustomed to paying,” he said petulantly.

  “You're getting six tons,” I pointed out. “That comes to less than two dollars a pound.”

  “Six tons?” he screamed. “What are you talking about?”

  “Ivory,” I said. “What are you talking about?”

/>   “Oh, nothing,” he muttered, blushing the prettiest shade of pink I ever did see.

  “Have we got a deal?” I asked.

  Well, we got to haggling and bargaining, and finally I sold him the ivory for sixteen thousand dollars, which was less than I wanted but also sixteen thousand dollars more than I had, so I guess we were both pretty pleased about it.

  “You going to be sending your servants out after it?” I asked.

  “Immediately,” he replied. “And I trust you will remain as my guest until they return with the ivory.”

  “It'll be my pleasure, Brother Ali ben,” I said, since I could see I didn't have much choice in the matter.

  He summoned a pair of his major-domos, and I told them exactly where the goods were. “While you fellows are out there,” I added, “I've got eighty-three items for tomorrow's slave auction. Would you be good enough to bring them back and clean ’em up a little for me?”

  They looked at Ali ben Ishak, who nodded his approval, and then took their leave.

  “Nice fellows,” I said.

  “They used to be,” he answered through pursed lips.

  “I read about fellows like that in the Good Book,” I said. “They were Enochians or something like that, weren't they?”

  He didn't answer but just looked kind of wistful, and I could see that he wasn't in a mood to talk to me anymore, so I ambled off, found myself a goose-feather mattress covered with satin sheets and a fur blanket, and plunked myself down for the night.

  One of those squeaky-voiced Enochians woke me in the morning, and I didn't even have time to scrounge up a little something to eat before Ali ben Ishak's whole entourage, including me, were out the door and headed toward the slave market.

  It was a grungy, grimy little place just west and a bit south of town, but it was crammed to overflowing with sheikhs and sultans and potentates who were all dressed to the nines. When we got there they were auctioning off an East Indian woman who I wouldn't have minded bidding on myself, and I followed Ali ben Ishak to a row of chairs that seemed to have been set aside especially for him and his retainers.

  Next the twelve bleary-eyed Arabs came on as a single unit, and I spent a goodly amount of time rummaging on the floor looking for diamonds and other trinkets that my neighbors might have dropped until they were knocked down for ten thousand dollars and led out of sight and earshot.