This is the twentieth chapter of part three of a trilogy of novels of gay sex.
Keywords:
authority, control, slavery, punishment, re-training, submission, loyalty
This story is entirely a work of fiction and all rights to it and its characters are copyright and private to and reserved by the author. No reproduction by anyone for any reason whatsoever is permitted.
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The Market Offer by Gerry Taylor
Chapter 20 -- Soup andsatellites
They say that everything comes to those who stand and wait. Perhaps not true, but in the case of Yves Fournier of whom I had made a request to check out the slave biscuits eaten two per morning and two per evening by all the slaves, his report came back almost two months later.
It said among other things -- he having checked it out far and wide with copious footnotes - that the diet was as balanced for a healthy worker as could be devised, every mineral, trace mineral, vitamin, and what have you, needed for the human body was in each and every biscuit. To be recommended! In short, four a day and lots of water to wash them down.
Perhaps based on what Bryce Sands had said when I had bedded the stud about the blandness of the diet, I asked the doctor what problem would be caused by having a bowl of soup in the evenings. None at all, he had replied. Soup was mainly water and vegetables, if that was what were to be in the soup, it could do not harm.
So that is how the `soup kitchen' as it came to be known came into existence. Every evening a twenty litre cauldron of vegetable soup was boiled up, depending on what the farm was producing that weather and every pair of buddies would sit down on the ground of the courtyard, face each other and with a single spoon feed each other a large single bowl of soup.
After gym and swim time, it became a ritual which no one missed, neither slave, medical staff nor myself, even though I would eat formally later on each night, when the evening had totally cooled down.
It also came to be the time, when buddies would approach me either to request things either for themselves, either the request for a new partner or to make suggestions about the Lime Palace.
A second thing happened around that November as well. I ran into Rashid al-Akhri, the eldest of the al-Akhri brothers, at a business expo. I had never really liked the man with his black gimlet eyes, even though he was my friend Tariq's eldest brother. I had not been able to avoid the expo since we were bankers to a fifth of the firms with stands.
`Ah, Sir Jonathan, how are you? Have you finally managed to put your Aussie football team together?'
His colloquial English was certainly improving, and he was paying me a courtesy for some reason by speaking it, as we had in the past only spoken in Arabic.
`One day, Rashid. One day.'
`Are you still in the market for farm slaves?'
This question surprised me, because while from time to time I was, I had never bought farm slaves from him, only Greg Logan whom he was in the process of killing by thirst and Jiri Aron, the most worthless of his stock, both now an overseer and assistant overseer respectively.
`The farm work at the Lime Palace always need new blood so to speak. What are you selling?'
I said this for two reasons. He was a cruel Master, and though I could be severe in my own way at times, I was not wantonly cruel or steeped in the old traditions of slave punishment as he was. Secondly, I thought that any slave, such as Greg or Jiri, would lead a better and more productive life at the Lime Palace than in Rashid's hands.
`I bought a batch of slaves last week from the estate of a distant cousin who died up north. Two might be of interest to, and if you wish, I shall have then sent round for inspection.'
`Not at all, Rashid, I trust your instincts as to what I like, and I shall pay you whatever you have paid for them plus a little extra if you want.'
`What I paid for them will be fine. I shall have then sent to you tomorrow. Let me say that this is still a thank you for including us in the nickel deal.'
We bid our adieus to each other. I could not fathom out what Rashid was up to. He like the others had paid back the favour of being included on that deal with the surprise gift of my first six slaves after Yuriy. That deal was over and done with and paid for. No, there was something more afoot.
Early the following morning around six thirty, the slave transport transit van drew up and deposited two middle-aged slaves in the courtyard. Aziz, my head of household, signed for them and their two files. I was just sitting down to breakfast when Aziz came in with the two files and handed them to me. I put them on the table and invited him to join me for breakfast, which of course, in all our months together he never did nor would do.
`I think, Master, you should read the files now,' he said quietly.
I opened the first file which went back twenty two years and I almost spilt the coffee I was just about to drink. It was the usual profile, of a then young man of some twenty one years. He was Swedish! This was impossible. Gustav Ahlson at the Bank owned all the Swedish slaves in Dahra. The second file was also on a then-twenty-four year old Swede and date back twenty two one years. I was looking at the young faces of a Jon Lundt and a Thorval Nordmark.
A penny began to drop as I searched my memory for an explanation. Charlie Deckam, our esteemed chairman at the Bank, had told me that one of his former school mates now in the country's espionage services had queried him, knowing of our banking services in Dahra, why the Swedish satellite, EricBird VII, in permanent geodesic orbit over Dahra was monitoring, among other things, thirty short-wave pulses, twenty three of which were also being monitored also by ArabSAT IV. Now ArabSAT IV is the satellite that monitors the slaves' titanium ankle bracelets with their GPS locator.
The Swedes were obviously piggy-backing ArabSAT IV for its slave information relating to Swedish slaves of which 21 at the time were owned by Gustav Ahlson, my general manager at the Bank.
I now had in my hands the files referring to the other two pulses of which no one knew. Quite simply they had arrived in Dahra, lifted from heavens knows where, before Gustav Ahlson had arrived some twenty years ago at the branch of the Bank.
The remaining pulses had been of three members of the Embassy staff, Gustav himself who had had a locator first put in a belt that one of the Embassy staff had given him as a gift, but which unfortunately he did not always wear, so he had been given the gift of a signet ring, which he felt he had to wear at all times as it was a duplicate of one the monarch wore -- well almost a duplicate. Gustav's ring also held a transponder, the size of pinhead, under the stone. The remaining three pulses turned out to be three telecom engineers working on a private project in the country for one of the Ministers. Their presence was not known to the Embassy or anyone else, but had been picked up by EricBird VII that kept tabs on all Swedish passports and a transponder in the shape of one of the staples of the binding the passport together.
`How do they look, Aziz?'
`Old and tired, Master? They have been looking after cows on a farm to the north up until last week.'
`See that they are washed and fed, and bring them immediately to the doctor.'
My coffee was getting cold. Twenty two years disappeared and now re-appeared onto the face of the earth. I put down the files and picked up my mobile, keyed in the unlocking sequence, and rang Gustav Ahlson to tell him to come immediately to the Lime Palace.
Gustav arrived by eight o'clock. His home is on the west side of the capital so he had not hit any early morning traffic on the way.
I poured him a coffee when he arrived without even greeting him and pushed the two folders across the table to him and let him read them.
`They were here, Gustav, before you ever arrived in Dahra. They are the missing two pulses that have kept appearing on the satellites. Nobody thought of checking where they were in Dahra, other than that they were in Dahra. Even if you had know where they were, would you have been able to buy them?'
`Where are they now?'
I looked up at Aziz.
`Still with the doctor, Master.'
`Have them and the doctor come here when they are all ready.'
`Yes, Master.'
Gustav started to read the files again. I noticed that his handkerchief was quite damp and crumpled and I sent Bob, who was serving the table, off to get a couple of mine.
Some fifteen minutes later, Dr. Fournier in his white coat, was seen coming across the courtyard with two middle-aged naked slaves, deeply tanned, one with almost white blond hair, the other with flaxen hair. Both were thin, both had a single left nipple ring, and both had a SIN number tattooed over their right nipple, quite visible even at ten paces.
I stood up, and Gustav with me as they approached. They were about to make an obeisance when I spoke. Hearing English, they froze.
`Welcome to the Lime Palace, my home and your new home. My name is Sir Jonathan Martin. You have met my doctor, Yves Fournier and this is Gustav Ahlson.'
While they both looked confused at hearing my voice speaking in English, which I could see they were following and clearly understood, when they heard the Swedish name they fixed their eyes on Gustav who rushed over to embrace both of them. It was some time before any of the three could speak, and then only in short bursts of Swedish. The doctor and I left them to catch up on twenty two years.
`Well, doctor?'
`Both surprisingly well, all things considered. They supplemented three slave biscuits each a day with milk from the cows they were minding and that I think has stood to their benefit, as the calcium levels in their teeth particularly, on a first check seem very good. Some of the vegetable soup for three months and four biscuits a day and, I would say that they will be right as a charm as we say.'
`Right as rain, doctor, right as rain. Do you think so?
`Mais, oui!'
`They both look to be in their fifties!'
I never really found out what was behind Rashid al-Akhri's gesture of goodwill. Sometimes in life we do not get the answers we look for. I do not think that he had done it out of benevolence. I hope in time someone or something will not prove me wrong on that score.
Once relieved of their nipple rings, and with the SIN number put on the sole of their feet, it was the doctor's first job to remove the visible SIN from each of their chests.
Cal Thorson did quite a repair job on their teeth and was surprised how well they had fared of over two decades without being even brushed.
Nacho Cuesta fitted them with soft contact lenses with the new inbuilt sun-ban filters.
I would like to say both lived a long and happy life with me as slaves at the Lime Palace, but the older of the two, Thorval Nordmark, died a year later. His buddy, Jon, just woke up to find him dead beside him on the pallet.
I called my friend the inspector of police to find out what the procedure was, and he said that he would be over later in the day with a machine to remove the GPS bracelet. Apparently there are only two such machines in the Sheikdom and these are closely guarded, as I saw when two jeeps arrived with the apparatus in question.
As a technician did what had to be done with something that looked like an enlarged bolt cutter with a circle on the top, I entertained the inspector of police to coffee and some sweet figs. I asked him how he was getting on reading Johnny Gresham, and he said he was just getting the hang of the style of book. So I gave him another of the author's works and left another douceur on the inside of the cover page.
Within an hour of the departure of the jeeps and the inspector of police, I asked the Swedes where and how they wished Thorval Nordmark buried and after some discussion, they chose a high stop on the very edge of the property which had not yet been reclaimed but in the shade of the newly planted trees. It became in time our graveyard.
They buried Thorval in what I thought was a shallow grave, but his shroud-covered body under only a foot of sandy clay was then covered by stones which each of Swedes placed over it. It was only afterwards that I realised the body in death was facing north-west towards its former earthly homeland.
Jon Lundt now looks after all the garden walkways of the Lime Palace and with his suggestion of plants, we always now have a year round display of colour, though if the truth be told there are a lot of yellows and blues -- the Swedish national colours.
I attended the December meeting of the Board in London where Colin Bowman's prior circulated report was flavour of the month. The Rio de Janeiro branch's finance of the irrigation and Copea Dam project had gone off without a hitch.
Colin said to me before we went in that he could not have done it without the two billion of transfers from the customers of the Dahra branch that I had sent him. The deal in fact secured his position on the Board.
`I don't know how to thank you, Sir Jonathan.'
`Colin, you can think of ways between now and three o'clock when you will stand naked before me in my hotel room suite.'
`Sir, yes, sir!' was his appreciative answer and he went off like a lap-dog with a bone.
That meeting also saw the arrival of young Georgie Deckam onto the Board, at twenty six and Charlie's only son and heir. He was as nervous as hell at his first meeting. He would do fine. I had read his report the previous week. He was in the audit department where I had started all of twenty years previously.
When his father asked him the question I knew he would ask, And how, Georgie, are audits doing this weather?, he gulped once and said to his father We are working very hard, Mr. Chairman', casting an eye over to John Tunnor, the head of personnel, who smiled in broad approval.
Was that just approval I wondered, or had Georgie and John met more than professionally? If Georgie was to be linked with John, handsome man and all that he is, he had better sow his heritage oats quickly, thickly and deeply in one of Europe's minor royals and secure the next generation of male Deckhams to lead the Bank forward!
But Charlie Deckham, the Chairman, was pressing forward the agenda as always, did not appear to notice the eye contact between his son and the head of personnel, and we were on to the next item of business.
One item on the agenda was security. One of Charlie Deckam's friends from school now in national security had let it be known that there was a whisper out that a Deckam executive was to be targeted for a financing kidnapping -- a kidnapping to raise money from an employer to finance some illegal cause or other.
We all knew what had happened the previous year to that poor unfortunate Belgian who had been kidnapped in Colombia and held for three months before being rescued, minus an ear.
Each of our Bank branches has a safe room, as indeed each of the homes of the partners and the general managers. We had been advance-warned as much as we could have been.
Also on this occasion, I met Elizabeth, my sister, in London. She was down with some friends from Scotland for a West End play and I went to their hotel for drinks.
`...and Jack is working with Jonathan at the Bank, Deckams you know, out on the Gulf. Jock and I are SO happy that he has settled down! He was going to travel the world for a year. Can you believe it? But Jack spoke with him and that was that. A career in banking. We are SO happy!'
I looked at Jock and caught his eye, and we edged away from Elizabeth and her coterie.
`Elizabeth does go on, doesn't she, Jock? But Jack is doing very well, I can say. You will have every reason to be proud of him. I have him spending two weeks in every single department and section of the Bank. Before he gets near the clients deposits, he'll know where everything is in the Bank first from paper clips to stationery.'
Very important to know where everything is' was the reply, I worry about him a bit though, Jonathan. At nineteen, I was nowhere near settled. I was still chasing a lot of girls. Jack is not likely to meet a lot of girls out on the Gulf.'
Jock, he is very settled' and to steer the conversation on to safer ground, I asked and what are Tuttles doing, at present, Jock?'
His family firm supply half the standing armies in Europe with tinned supplies, when not supplying the rest of the world with canned meat pies and pastries.
`Carrots for the world, and full English breakfast in a new type of self-heating tin for the troops. We're going to have to expand two of the factories.Get a bit more capital in. '
I expected a further explanation but none was forthcoming. Jock Tuttle was a man of few words, and with Elizabeth, a man of infinite patience.
I was about to re-join the main group, when he said, Jonathan, give this to Jack for me' and he handed me a folded cheque. I know he is careful with what he does with his money, but a lad should always have a few pounds in the Bank for emergencies.'
I was praying that the cheque was not in the thousands or the son of whom he and Elizabeth were so proud, as indeed, I was myself, would be down in the slave markets of al-Mera or of al-Qatim buying a little playmate for himself or for Beno and Vedel, his Romanian gypsy slaves.
What the proud parents did not know of their son's possessions would never hurt them!
It was not until some ten or days later that the bad news struck. The kidnap attempt occurred not in Europe but in Rio and Colin Bowman was the target. He lived on the sixth floor of an apartment block and they came for him through the windows having abseiled down some four floors from the rooftop at four in the morning.
It was his eternal good luck that Carlos, his live-in partner had got up in the pre-dawn to go into the main bathroom to relieve himself, and coming out quite literally walked into the figures in black crashing through the windows. The police investigators said he must have thrown himself at or on the first figure, because a burst of a semi-automatic nearly cut his body in half, but that noise was sufficient for Colin to dive across the bedroom and into the ensuite bathroom of the bedroom which in his apartment is the safe room.
A firm push on any of four tiles in the wall had brought the two inch steel door crashing down to the floor as his body ended up between the sink and toilet bowl.
The emergency procedure is automatic. Once the security door is activated a signal goes out to a satellite and is bounced not just to the local security management firm whose commandos were there within twelve minutes -- it was possible because it was early morning and there was no traffic -- but also sent to the bank's HQ in London where the security crowd are on twenty-four hour alert.
Within seconds of being confined safely in the bathroom, Colin had opened the secure panel behind the sink to make contact with security. They were already on the way.
`Sir, stay where you are! Do not move! The password is Phoenix! The reply is Arizona! We are on the way! Sir, have you understood?'
Colin had understood and waited. When he had been password-ed to which he replied `Arizona' and entered the sequence of numbers which allowed him to open the secure door. The bloody curtain over the body of Carlos told its own story, but he was too much in shock other than to allow himself be bundled out of the apartment and away.
The would-be kidnappers were gone all of ten minutes at least. It might as well have been ten hours.
After he had been re-located two days, Colin asked to see the head of security who had come to his rescue. The ex-military man looked even more quietly ominous in his civvies into which it looked as if he had been poured.
He had only one question to ask.
`How much to see dead those who killed Carlos?'
There was silence as the question had hung in the air. The security man knew that he was not joking, and he finally said, `Expenses now, plus twenty five thousand dollars for myself and each of my two lieutenants when the job is done and nothing in writing.'
Colin told me that there and then he had handed over fifty thousand dollars in two neat bundles of bills, not even in an envelope, merely bound with their grey paper surround in a plastic supermarket bag.
A week or so later, he was collected at night by the leader of the security detail and brought into the countryside to a shack where the other two ex-military were guarding three blindfolded and gagged prisoners whose hands and feet were secured together behind them with plastic ratchet ties. The detail had been unable to locate the fourth kidnapper whose name they extracted but who had disappeared out of the country.
Colin asked the detail leader for his gun.
`Do you know how to use a Magnum, Sir?'
When Colin replied that he had never fired a gun in his life, the leader merely said, `Where do you want the first one shot?'
Taking off the blindfold off the first prisoner, Colin put his index finger between the prisoner's eyes.
Colin waited until the second and third shots were fired by the lieutenants and then merely said to the leader, `Double expenses and double payment for the fourth man when you get him for me' and he walked out of the ramshackle structure.
It was some days later that three naked bodies were discovered in a burnt out shack, executed according to a two paragraph local paper report in a gangland feud and the police had no leads.
Colin said to me that he had counted the words of the newspaper article which came to ninety five in all, which was all the value attached to three kidnappers who, perhaps part of something larger, had taken the life of his lover.
All of this I had found out after the subsequent February meeting of the Board. Colin had not said a word at the meeting. Our eyes had met a couple of times and I could see the hurt dwelling in there still. After the meeting, I merely said to him, `3 o'clock.' He knew the place.
When the knock came on my hotel room door precisely at three that afternoon, he was standing there almost at attention.
I let him come into the room and looked at him. I had but one question to ask.
`Have you cried?'
He could not reply, but merely shook his head, his eyes already beginning to brim.
There are three great unravellers of the human condition. Sleep, sex and tears. The first two were not called for on that occasion, the last was.
I gave him a simple command of a Master to a submissive, `Cry,' and the floodgates of pain and anguish and soul-tearing loss came pouring out more forcefully than water over the greatest of dams and continued for over half an hour.
He recriminated himself for not having loved Carlos more, for not having told him how much he really loved him that night, for not having held him more tightly, for not having kissed him more lovingly. The list went on and on, and I let it pour out like puss from a deep and festering wound.
When he could no longer cry and no longer talk, I merely held him and cuddled him on the bed, until the shadows of evening started to fall, and both he and I had other things to do and people to see. It took Colin a long time to heal, but heal in time he did.
The people I had to see, where in fact David Jones and his lover Mattie, and it was to see them for an early dinner at their place. David was dress in a plain cream coloured open necked shirt and brown slacks. Such was the style that there was no hint of any underclothes on at all, though in fact, afterward I personally took off his thong.
Mattie looked as if his clothes had been painted on to him, and his stone-washed jeans were so tight that they outlined every contour and configuration of his balls and cock. He is one of those people who look fabulous in clothes and even more fabulous out of the them.
When dinner was over, which was nice plain and simple fare, David said, `Jonathan, Mattie has a question for you which he has wanted to ask you for some time?
`Does Mattie not have a tongue in his own head?' I asked looking over at the blushing electrician with the pecs of a young god.
`Jonathan, would you come to bed again with David and me?'
`When?'
`Three weeks ago' was the reply said with a grin.
`Waiting that long, eh, Mattie? And are you not afraid that I am going to steal David from you? Was not that what you said the last time?'
He shook his head. Mattie was an enthusiastic top in bed, and I think he wanted to show me how hard is constant erection remained in love-making, or maybe how fast he was able to reload -- he came three times in two hours - and how well he loved David, because I was for the most part a spectator to the two almost constantly entwined figures.
But when he and David were totally and finally spent after almost four hours, fucked if you will excuse the word, he looked over at me on the side as if to seek my approval of his strenuous exercises.
I kissed both of them on the lips and left. It was now after ten o'clock, which really for me on Dahran time two o'clock in the morning, and I am not a night bird at all.
To be continued..