“Will you go to Karachi?"
"Perhaps. Why do you ask?"
“Because I'd like to go with you. We might be of help to each other.”
“And you might betray me as Mustafa did. Still, it might be worth a gamble. Very well, Mr. Victor, We shall go to Karachi together. But in my plane, with my guards in attendance."
"It beats dying," I told him with a grin.
"Then know that your life is a tribute to your persuasiveness, Mr. Victor. And know that should I fail to remain persuaded, your life will be forfeited.”
On that cheerful note, he conducted me from the cell and led me up a long flight of stairs. We came out in a large room containing row on row of open coffins. Four or five Afghans wandered among them, examining the bodies they contained. Observing them in the gloom, my puzzlement must have showed on my face.
“This is a mortuary of sorts, Mr. Victor," the sheikh explained. “But I imagine it is different from any other you might chance to encounter in your travels."
"Different how?"
“This one is dedicated to catering to the tastes of the living. That's why I had Dr. Wong’s body brought here. It appealed to my sense of the macabre. What sort of necrophile do you suppose will find him appealing?"
"You mean that necrophiles come here to shop for sex partners?"
“Exactly. Don't look so shocked, Mr. Victor. Such a taste really hurts no one. The victims, after all, are dead. And if they can provide joy to the living in death, why should it not be so? Surely it is the most harmless of perversions."
"Maybe." I shuddered. “I didn’t know such practices were prevalent in Afghanistan. Or anywhere else in the East, for that matter."
“They're not prevalent. But they do exist. There is no taste to which my organization does not cater. That’s our business. Come, Mr. Victor. Stop staring, or I shall suspect you of being a voyeur.”
Chuckling, he led me outside to a waiting car. A brief stop at my hotel to pick up my things and we were on our way to the airport. The sheikh’s private plane was all revved up and waiting.
As it taxied down the runway, I looked out a side window and saw a limousine racing to a sudden stop at the edge of the field. Almost immediately, another car pulled up about three hundred yards downfield from it. The sheikh courteously handed me a pair of binoculars and I focused them on the first car as two figures emerged from it.
I zeroed right in on an unmistakably familiar pair of breasts half-covered by black velvet. Raising the glasses, I looked straight into those sexy bedroom eyes of Vickie Winters. Beside her stood Alan Foster, the American C.I.A. agent I'd last seen in Baghdad. It looked like he'd picked up my trail all right. And joined forces with Vickie, too. Cozy!
I left off envying him to focus the glasses on the other car. Yep! Potemchenko! I stifled a laugh. It looked like everybody was keeping up nicely.
The motor roared then and we jetted down the field and up toward the early morning clouds. I leaned back in my seat and smiled at Sheikh Taj-ed el Atassi. “Next stop Karachi," I observed.
“Next stop Karachi," he agreed, returning my smile. It froze on his face for a moment and I studied it. It was far from reassuring. It was the kind of smile a hangman bestows on his victim before he springs the trap.
I could almost feel that noose tightening around my neck!
008
THE NAKED bodies of the two girls entwined like passionate snakes. Their hairless flesh glittered with some sort of phosphorescent paint which made it seem all the more as though they were melting into one another. Their ritually prescribed erotic movements were fascinating, but my mind was lagging behind them, still committing to memory the rites which had opened this Pakistani bathhouse ‘exhibition’.
"We will go to the Ranjit Bathhouse," Sheikh el Atassi had told me after we'd bathed and eaten at the house maintained for his use in Karachi. "It is neutral ground, an independent establishment owing no allegiance to either my organization or to the vice network maintained by the Chinese Reds. However, the owner is friendly to me and has produced useful information in the past."
“Sort of a non-aligned cat-house, hey?" I said flippantly.
"It is not a brothel at all in the usual sense," he replied. "True, sex is a bathhouse commodity, but there are delicate differences."
The “delicate differences" had been immediately apparent. The Ranjit Bathhouse catered to two types of clientele: female homosexuals and male voyeurs. The latter category, thanks to my occupation, was one to which I was used, and I had no inhibitions about the peekaboo setup through which the sheikh led me.
It began with a box seat-—literally——overlooking the baths. These consisted of eight sunken pools four or five times the size of a normal bathtub. There were perhaps ten boxes set in alcoves in the walls and raised well above the baths. Each of the boxes was curtained and angled to provide a full view of a specific bath. The viewer simply arranged the curtain to his individual taste and he could see all without being seen.
We settled ourselves in the box just in time to watch the bellaneh, or female bathhouse attendant, greet a young female patron. This bellaneh was a large girl, over six feet tall and muscular, albeit quite feminine. Her skin was a darkish brown. She wore only a loincloth. A large, snow-white towel hung over one shoulder, covering one breast. The other breast was bare, large and proud. Her face was sculptured arrogance, her hair cropped short against a well-molded skull.
The girl was dressed in a traditional sari, which the bellaneh began to remove. She was a slender girl, petite and golden-skinned. Her eyes were dark black and flashing impishly beneath a wealth of ebony tresses which came tumbling down as the bellaneh removed the diadem which had been holding it in place. She stood stock still as the bellaneh undressed her.
When she was completely nude, the customer stretched out full-length on the tiles beside the pool. The bellaneh hefted an ornamented watering jug and poured its steaming contents over the prostrate girl from head to toe. The girl turned over on her stomach and the bellaneh repeated the process until every inch of the girl's lovely torso had been baptized.
The girl turned again so that she was lying face-up, and a second phase of the bathhouse ritual began. She remained perfectly still as the bellaneh took the towel over her shoulder, twirled it into one long strand, knotted it at one end, and then began flicking it expertly at the girl's outstretched body. The tip striking against the girl's flesh was wet, and it must have stung, but the recipient of this mild whipping held herself rigid and gave no sign of feeling any pain.
There were signs, however, that this ritualistic horseplay was having an effect on her. The bellaneh’s main targets, expertly pinged so many times that I soon lost count, were the tips of the girl's breasts and the cleft of the plump, shaven rise below her belly. The first of these areas, soft, wide roseates before the towel took its teasing rips, now deepened from delicate pink to scarlet and hardened visibly, soon jutting out from the girlish circles to sharp, half-inch long points. The second target widened and dampened with a first quivering and then rhythmic response to the flagellation it received. Finally, with the only motion she made throughout, the girl's hips thrust into the air, her buttocks clearing the floor, and a loud exclamation of joy reached my ears.