"Gabi, it's Mahmoud. What's that crying in the background?"
I suppose there's no sense in trying to hide it now,
she thought.
"Ummm . . . the baby. Your baby . . . errr . . . our baby."
"And you didn't fucking
tell
me?"
"I didn't want to trap you," she said, softly, less certain at the moment that she'd done the right thing. "Or to seem like I was trying to trap you."
Mahmoud, on the other end of the line, sighed heavily. Gabi could almost see him nodding in his fatalistic and accepting way.
"Okay," he said. "What now?"
"I don't know," she answered. "I still won't go to the United States."
"And I won't live in Europe."
Certain persons have been begging me for the past five years to write about war against the Turks, and encourage our people and stir them up to it, and now that the Turk is actually approaching, my friends are compelling me to do this duty, especially since there are some stupid preachers among us Germans (as I am sorry to hear) who are making the people believe that we ought not and must not fight against the Turks. Some are even so crazy as to say that it is not proper for Christians to bear the temporal sword or to be rulers; also because our German people are such a wild and uncivilized folk that there are some who want the Turk to come and rule.
—Martin Luther, "On War Against the Turks," 1528 AD
"You'd never been drunk before, had you?" Ling asked.
Hans, a study in misery, just shook his head and said, "That's the second kind of virginity I gave to you. I much preferred giving you the other kind. Much."
"I'm sure," Ling said, grinning widely. She hadn't known she'd been his first and that was . . . warming. That he remembered and appreciated was much more so.
Find out, if possible, why he attacked your contact,
said the little voice in Ling's head.
She asked.
She asked and was surprised as such a torrent of hate and loathing poured out of Hans as she had never heard before. Not just hate for Hamilton, whom Ling only knew of as "De Wet," but Hans also felt deep hatred for the Corps of Janissaries, for Moslems, for all slave dealers, and for the Caliphate. He hated the boys who'd raped Petra, the dealer who had auctioned her, and the bastard tax gatherer who had taken both the siblings away from their home. Hans hated the laws that had made him crucify a priest. He hated everything.
"Everything?"
"Okay, not everything. Not you. Not Petra. But I hate everything else about this land."
I wish we could be sure it's not an act,
said the little voice.
He would be a great asset.
Is there a way to test him
? she thought back.
We are considering this.
Hamilton lay on his side, head propped up on one elbow, considering the face and form of the sleeping girl next to him.
Seventeen,
he thought.
Maybe eighteen. So much skillful
wickedness
in so young a girl. Almost . . .
almost
, I can see the attraction of Islam if it enables a man to own such beauty. Better, she makes it seem as if she's a lover, not just a whore playing a part. Perhaps that's only because she's a natural whore, though, if she is. It's possible, too, that she's just been very well trained. Or both.
Only things I can be sure of are that she's both beautiful and an amazing fuck.
Christ, what kind of pervert am I, fucking a seventeen-year-old?
A little contrary voice said,
Hey, look at the bright side; maybe she's eighteen.
Oh, that helps a lot.
Could have been worse. She could have been thirteen and you would still have had to fuck her to keep up your cover.
Unable to stand it anymore, Hamilton reached out one hand, shook the girl awake and asked, "How old are you?"
"Seventeen," Petra answered groggily. "Why?"
Pervert.
Our best consensus, for the moment, is to ask him for proof,
the little voice in Ling's head said.
It is not perfect but, if he turns out to be an agent provocateur, you can claim you asked for proof in order to denounce him. In the interim, it moves us a bit along toward confirming his true thoughts.
Did you know they made a whore of his sister and that she's my best friend and lover here?
Ling asked back.
We watch your every move. Of course we knew. That is still not
proof.
The Caliphate produces only one thing of genuine excellence, and that product is fanaticism.
True,
she agreed.
If you had access to a laboratory, we could teleoperate you to create a first grade truth serum. Sadly—
—
I don't. And the still where Latif makes the poor stuff won't do.
In truth, Ling hated the very
idea
of being teleoperated, which involved surrendering complete control over her own body to another. It was bad enough sucking and fucking people she didn't want to. Teleoperation was, in its way, even more degrading.
Still,
in vino veritas.
What he said last night while drunk is a good indicator of his true feelings. We're still reviewing the tapes. We'll get back to you. In the interim, ask for proof. And try to be
clever
about it, won't you?
"Reviewing the tapes"?
Ling sent back.
I'm sure you voyeuristic bastards are.
Be nice, Ling. We can teleoperate you without permission, you know.
Breakfast for the two was delivered to Petra's quarters by a eunuch. It didn't have any bacon, or pork sausage, of course, but was otherwise decent.
Hamilton already had the name of the girl sitting opposite: Petra. Moreover, she was already, technically, his wife for the next thirteen days.
"I've never had a wife before," Hamilton said.
"You don't really have one now," Petra answered, perhaps a little sadly. Clothed in a nightgown, still her young, firm breasts showed through the front opening. Her nipples were pink, Hamilton saw. "It's just something they do to get around the law. Doesn't mean anything."
I will
not
ask, "how did a nice girl like you end up in a place like this,"
Hamilton thought.
I will not ask . . .
"How did you ever end up here?" he asked.
"You don't want to know."
"Yes, sure I do."
"It's a sad story," Petra said.
Saddest of all for me.
"Even so."
She sighed, cast her eyes upward and then down to the floor. "I was a pretty little girl—"
"I can believe
that
."
"The tax gatherer picked me and my brother. First he set the jizya—"
"Jizya?" Hamilton asked.
"A tax non-Moslems pay here as part of their surrender," she explained. "Anyway, he set it so high my father couldn't pay . . . and when he couldn't the taxman took me instead. I was nine. My brother, Hans—he's the one who attacked you last night—they took later."
"They sold you to this place when you were
nine
?"
And how are they any worse than Bongo and I? We've just sold some six year olds.
"No . . . no. That came later. Though my friend, Ling, was sold even younger. At first I was sold to a wonderful family . . . I thought they were wonderful anyway. Their daughter, Besma, really was. We still write. She's married—
really
married, I mean . . . not the travesty we have here—and has two children now. She named the girl for me. She's says she will come for me, and not to lose faith. Faith! Like I have any reason for
faith
."
"It's okay," Hamilton said, disconcerted at the pain growing in Petra's voice. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want."
"You are my Lord and Master, for the next two weeks," Petra said, a trifle bitterly. She sensed, somehow, that with this client she could get away with a lot more than with most. "You asked; it is my duty to tell you."
"Anyway," she continued, "life with Besma was pretty good. If you don't count her stepmother who used me to control her. And then her stepbrother and two friends decided I was just the thing for a dull afternoon—"
And then the tears came forth. The force with which they gushed took Hamilton completely by surprise.
"I never talk about it," Petra sobbed, "I never talk about—"
After which she couldn't say anything, as Hamilton was kneeling beside her chair, holding her in his arms, and pressing her head into his shoulder. "Shhh," he said soothingly. "It's all right. You don't have to talk about it and I am a complete ass for even asking. I'm really sorry."
* * *
"Hans, I need you to listen carefully to me," Ling said. "This is important and the answer means everything. Why did you attack that man last night?"
Hans drew in a deep breath and then exhaled forcefully. "He's a slave trader, and I saw his cargo. They were just children, Ling, even younger than Petra was when they took her away. He's a stinking slave trader."
Ling chewed on her lower lip, wracked with indecision. Finally, she asked, "What if he wasn't?"
Hans just shook his head in confusion. "What if he wasn't what?"
"What if he wasn't a slave trader, but was something else?"
"Something else? Like what?"
"I can't tell you. Not won't;
can't
. Someday you'll understand, maybe someday soon. But what if he really wasn't a slave trader?"
"I saw what I saw," Hans insisted.
"Yes . . . but you didn't necessarily
understand
what you saw." Ling started chewing her lip again. She continued at that for several confused minutes—confused for both her and Hans—before saying, "I need you to
prove
to me you're not with the Caliphate."
"I'm a dead man," he said, "dead before I can do any good, if I can't trust you. Everything I've told you so far would get me nailed up to a wooden cross. How much more can I do?"
She insisted, "I need more, Hans."
He thought about that for a minute. Then he went to his overnight bag, dropped off in her quarters by a servant the previous night. From the bag he pulled out a Koran. He opened in to a random page and spit on it. "That's one," he said. "Now follow me."
There were, after all, reasons why Abdul Rahman had thought Hans had a future. If he had flaws, lack of decisiveness wasn't among them.
Ling followed Hans to her bathroom. There he thumbed through the book, apparently looking for a choice passage. When he'd found it, he tore that page from the Koran, bent over, and wiped his rear end with it. "That's two." He dropped the page in the toilet, spit again, and flushed.
Hans walked back to the bedroom and picked up his bag again, feeling inside for a small box. This he withdrew from the bag and opened. From the box he pulled out a crucifix, kissed it and said, "This was given to me by a man, a priest, I helped murder . . ."
* * *
"These mountains are murder, I know," Hamilton said in sympathy, as he helped Petra over a rock lying across their path.
Feeling like an absolute rat, Hamilton had offered anything to make up to her his—"stupid, insensitive, moronic, unfeeling, idiotic"—question.
Shyly, she'd asked, "I don't get to go out much. If I dress properly, could you, maybe . . . take me for a walk?"
He'd had to leave a six hundred dinar deposit, but that was within his means. (Why six hundred when her purchase price had been three? The cost of her training had been added to her value.) Other than that, the management had had no objections whatsoever. Since Hamilton had "hospitality of the house," they'd sent for a picnic lunch for the two from the kitchen. The two had left by the main gate to the castle, before the mosque and between the minarets.