Slave Safari

by Warren Murphy

  Slave Safari

  The Destroyer #12

  Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

  For Al and Shirlee,

  good neighbors, better friends.

  Introduction

  ANY RESEMBLANCE BETWEEN THE African nation of Busati in this book and the actual country of Uganda is purely, maliciously intentional.

  In the early seventies, when Slave Safari was written, the common wisdom was that the new leaders who were taking over the countries of Africa had to make some drastic changes to free their nations from the burden of colonialism. There was nothing basically wrong with these leaders. Oh, no. How could there be? Didn’t most of them rename their countries the Peoples Republic of Something, or Somebody’s Socialist Democracy? And didn’t they all hate the United States? How could there be anything wrong with them?

  So, with their apologists cheering from the sidelines, these leaders redelivered Africa to the Dark Ages. Countries that had fed themselves for centuries suddenly, under centralized farm planning, faced starvation and were reduced to the status of the world’s beggars. The only thing that grew were the numbered Swiss bank accounts, swollen with money stolen from aid and relief programs.

  Civil liberties vanished, the free press vanished, and anyone foolhardy enough to speak up in opposition vanished, too. In countries where some of the people were forbidden to vote, equality was introduced: Everybody was forbidden to vote and anybody who didn’t like it might wind up as granola for crocodiles.

  The awful thing is that the tragedy that is Africa continues to unfold even today. It’s only in books like this one that occasionally a story ends happily.

  Prologue

  WHILE EUROPE WAS A collection of warring tribes and Rome merely another city-state on the Tiber and the people of Israel shepherds in the Judean hills, a little girl could carry a sack of diamonds across the Loni Empire in East Africa and never fear even one being taken from her. If she suffered an injured eye, here alone in all the world were men who could repair it. In any village she could receive a parchment for her jewels, take it to any other village, then collect gems of exactly identical weight and purity. Waters from the great Busati River were stored in artificial lakes and channeled into the plains during the dry season, long before the Germanic and Celtic tribes that later became the Dutch ever heard of dikes or canals. Here alone, in all the world, a man could set his head on pillow without fear of attack in the night or hunger in the morning.

  Historians do not know when the Loni ceased to care for their canals and dams, but by the time of the Arab slavers, the Loni were no more than a small tribe, hiding in the hills to escape mass slaughter. The plains were death dry; the Busati River flooded at will; and one in ten were blind for life. The land was ruled by the Hausa tribe, whose only governmental policy was to track down and to kill the remaining Loni.

  Some of the Loni could not successfully hide, but instead of being killed, they were often taken to a spot on the river and traded for food and a drink called rum. Sometimes the person who took them went the way of his merchandise. Whole villages disappeared in chains to serve the plantations of the Caribbean Islands, South America and the United States. The Loni were very valuable indeed because, by this time, it had begun to be written that the men were strong and the women were beautiful and the race lacked the courage to resist.

  In the year one thousand, nine hundred and fifty two, dated from the birth of a god worshipped in Europe, the Americas and small parts of Africa and Asia, the colony called Loniland became independent. In a stronger wave of nationalism in the 1960’s the colony became Busati, and in a yet stronger wave in the 1970’s, it expelled the Asians who had come with the British to open stores, when the lands along the Busati River had been called Loniland.

  When the Asians fled under the policy called “Busatinization,” the last people capable of mending an eye left the land of the Loni. Little girls dared not venture into the streets. No one carried valuables for fear of the soldiers. And high in the hills, the scattered remnants of the Loni Empire hid, waiting for a promised redeemer who would restore them to the glory that once was theirs.

  CHAPTER ONE

  JAMES FORSYTHE LIPPINCOTT YELLED for his boy who was somewhere in the Busati Hotel, which still used towels labeled Victoria Hotel and still had the ornate V’s inscribed, embossed and sewn all over halls, drapes, busboys’ uniforms and water faucets.

  There had been no hot water since the British left, and now with the last planeload of Asians having taken off from Busati Airport the day before, there was no cold water either.

  “Boy,” yelled Lippincott who, back in Baltimore, would not even call a nine-year-old black child “boy.” Here, he was yelling for his porter. According to the new Busati tradition, published the day before in the last edition of the Busati Times, any foreigner, most especially a white, who called a Busatian “boy” could be fined up to a thousand dollars, thrown in jail for ninety days and beaten with sticks.

  But if you paid your fine in advance to the Minister of Public Safety and to the great conquering leader, Dada “Big Daddy” Obode, who that very morning had successfully defended Busati against an air invasion by America, Britain, Israel, Russia and South Africa, using—according to Radio Busati—the very latest in atomic planes, you would not have to pay your fine in court.

  This process in Busati was called pre-guilt payment, a revolutionary system of justice.

  In Baltimore the same process was called graft.

  “Boy, get in here,” yelled Lippincott. “There’s no water.”

  “Yes, Bwana,” came the voice from the hallway followed by a black, perspiring man in loose white shirt, loose white pants and a pair of cracked plastic shoes—which made him one of the richer men of his village ten miles up the Busati. “Walla here to serve you, Bwana.”

  “Get me some fucking water, nigger,” said Lippincott, snapping a towel in Walla’s face.

  “Yes, Bwana,” said Walla, scurrying from the room.

  When Lippincott had come to Busati, he fully intended to respect the proud African traditions and search for old forgotten ones. But he found quickly that this politeness earned him only derision, and besides, as the Minister of Public Safety had said:

  “Bush niggers need beatings, Mr. Lippincott. Not like you and me. I know it’s against our laws for a white to hit a black nowadays, but between civilized men like you and me, the only way to treat a bush native is to thrash him. They’re not like us Hausa. They’re not even Loni, God help them. Just poor mongrels.”

  It was then that James Forsythe Lippincott learned of pre-guilt payments and, as he handed over two hundred-dollar bills to the Minister of Public Safety, was promised, “If any of these boys give you trouble, just let me know their names. You won’t see them around anymore.”

  In Baltimore, James Forsythe Lippincott was careful to call the maids by their marital title and last name, and to promote blacks to executive positions in the family company he ran, but in Busati he did as the Busatians. It was the only way to get things done, he told himself, and he did not even suspect how much he truly liked this method of beatings and brutality, in preference to the enlightened Baltimore way where every problem was solved by holding another seminar in race relations.

  This was Busati, and if he did not follow the Busati system of beating bush niggers, well, then, would that not be a subtle form of racism, thinking his American way was superior to the Busati way?

  James Lippincott examined his stubble of a beard. He had to shave it. Couldn’t let it go another day or he might be mistaken for one of the hippies who regularly never returned from Busati. In Busati, a man with a clean shave and wearing a suit got some respect. Those seeking truth, beauty and a
communion with man and nature, just never showed up again.

  Walla rushed into the room with a soup tureen of water.

  “Why did you bring that in?” asked Lippincott.

  “No more pots, Bwana.”

  “What happened to the pots?”

  “Liberated yesterday by the army, bwana. So that imperialist aggressors won’t get them. Atomic planes come to steal our pots, but our great conquering leader destroyed the attackers.”

  “Right,” said Lippincott. “A great attack by imperialistic nations.” He dipped a finger into the soup tureen of water and became angry.

  “This is cold, Walla.”

  “Yes, Bwana, no more hot water.”

  “You brought up boiling water from the kitchen yesterday.”

  “No more gas for the stove, Bwana.”

  “Well, how about firewood? They can certainly burn firewood. You don’t need Asians to show you how to make a fire, do you?”

  “Got to go up river for wood, Bwana.”

  “All right,” said Lippincott, annoyed. “But for every cut I get from using cold water, you get two cuts. Understand?”

  “Yes, Bwana,” said Walla.

  Lippincott counted three cuts on his face when he turned from the mirror and took the blade out of his safety razor.

  “That’s six for you, Walla.”

  “Bwana, I got something better for you than cutting.”

  “Six cuts,” said Lippincott who had intentionally given himself the last two in anticipation of taking revenge for his discomfort on Walla.

  “Bwana, I know where you can get woman. You need woman, Bwana, don’t cut poor Walla.”

  “I don’t want some little black ape, Walla. Now you have cuts coming to you and you know you deserve them.”

  “Bwana, you look. You want woman. You don’t want Walla.”

  It was then that James Forsythe Lippincott realized his body was indeed calling out for a woman.

  “White women, you do whatever you want. White women, Bwana.”

  “There are no white women available in Busati, Walla. That will be another cut for lying.”

  “White women. Oh, yes. White women. I know.”

  “Why haven’t I heard of them before?”

  “Not allowed. Not allowed. Secret. White women at the big house with the iron gate.”

  “A whorehouse, Walla?”

  “Yes, Bwana. White women in the whorehouse. Don’t cut Walla. You can do anything to them you want if you got money. Anything. You can cut white women if you got enough money.”

  “That’s outrageous, Walla. If you’re lying, I’ll give you twenty cuts. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear, Bwana.”

  When Lippincott drove up to the large white house with the iron gate, he saw to his delight that the windows held air-conditioning units. Iron bars held the gray units in place. If he had looked closer, he would have seen that there were bars also on windows that had no air conditioners. But he did not look closer, nor did he wonder why Walla did not accompany him, even though the servant knew he would be punished for just disappearing the way he had.

  Lippincott was pleasantly surprised to see that the buzzer button on the gate worked. He tried it only after he found that the gate did not open to his pushing.

  “Identify yourself,” came a voice from a black box over the mother-of-pearl button.

  “I was told I could find entertainment here.”

  “Identify yourself.”

  “I’m James Forsythe Lippincott, a close personal friend of the Minister of Public Safety.”

  “Then he sent you?”

  If Lippincott had lived a life that exposed him to any sort of danger, he might have taken cautioned notice of the fact that in a country where brass doorknobs were stolen regularly, no one had pried loose the little mother-of-pearl buzzer from that front door. But James Lippincott was discovering himself, and in the excitement of finding that he truly loved to inflict pain, he neither worried nor cautioned.

  “Yes, the Minister of Public Safety sent me and said everything would be okay,” Lippincott lied. So what? Instead of a pre-guilt payment, there would be an after-guilt payment.

  “All right,” said the voice in the hollow raspiness of a speaker system. Lippincott could not place the accent, but it sounded faintly British.

  “The car can’t get through the gate,” said Lippincott. “Will you send a boy out to watch it?”

  “No one will touch a car in front of this gate,” came the voice. The gate clicked open and such was Lippincott’s anticipation that he did not wonder what might protect a car in front of this house, when ordinarily Busatians stripped a parked car like piranha working over a crippled cow.

  The path to the door of the mansion was inlaid stone and the door handles shiny brass. The door of oak was polished to a gleam and the bell knob was the crafted head of a lion—not African lion but British. Lippincott knocked. The door opened and a man in Busati Army whites, with sergeant’s stripes on his sleeves, stood in the entrance.

  “A bit early, what?” he said in a British accent, that seemed even colder coming from his anthracite face.

  “Yes. Early,” said Lippincott, assuming that was what he should say.

  The sergeant ushered him into a living room with ornate Victorian furniture, chairs stuffed to discomfort, bric-a-brac filling crannies, large portraits in gold frames of African chiefs. It was not British, but almost British. Not the almost-British of Busati, but the almost-British of another colony. Lippincott could not place it.

  The sergeant motioned Lippincott to a seat and clapped his hands.

  “A drink?” he said, lowering himself into a stuffed sofa.

  “No, no, thank you. We can begin now,” he said.

  “You must have a drink first and relax,” said the sergeant, grinning. An old wizened black woman came into the room silently.

  “We’ll have two of your special mint juleps,” the sergeant said.

  Mint juleps. That was it. This home was furnished the pre-Civil War South, American South, thought Lippincott. Like a pre-Civil War whorehouse, perhaps in Charleston, South Carolina.

  Lippincott made a show of looking at his watch.

  “Don’t rush yourself, the girls will wait,” said the sergeant. The man was exasperating, thought Lippincott.

  “Tell me, Lippincott, what brings you to Busati?”

  Lippincott resented the over-familiar use of the last name, but answered, “I’m an amateur archaeologist. I’m looking for the causes of the breakdown of the great Loni Empire and the assumption of power by the Hausa tribe. Look. I’m not really thirsty and I’d like to get on with, well, with the business at hand.”

  “I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” said the sergeant, “but you are not on the approved list to use this house, so I’ll have to find out more about you before you may begin. Terribly sorry, old boy.”

  “All right, what do you want to know?”

  “Must you make it seem like an interrogation, old boy?” the sergeant said. “Interrogations are so crass.”

  “When crass is faster, crass is nicer.”

  “All right, if you must be barbaric, who told you of this place?”

  “The Minister of Public Safety,” lied Lippincott.

  “Did he tell you the rules?’

  “No.”

  “The rules are these. You don’t ask the girls their names. You tell no one of this house. No one. And, old boy, you don’t just drive up to the gate. You phone in advance. Make an appointment. Understand?”

  “Yeah. Yeah. C’mon. How much?”

  “It depends upon what you want to do.”

  Lippincott did not feel comfortable talking about it. He had never done this before, not what he wanted to do, and before coming to Busati had never even suspected that he had such desires. He fumbled with the words, stepping into the area of his longings, then skirting them, then approaching them from another angle.

  “Whips and chains, you me
an,” said the sergeant.

  Lippincott nodded silently.

  “That’s not so unusual. Two hundred dollars. If you kill her, that’s $12,000. Severe damage is prorated. These girls are valuable.”

  “All right, all right. Where do I go?”

  “Cash in advance.”

  Lippincott paid, and after insolently recounting the money, the sergeant led him upstairs to a long broad hallway. They stopped in front of a polished steel door. From a tall chest next to the door, the sergeant took a cardboard box, and handed it to Lippincott.

  “Your whips and chains are in here. Hooks are on the wall. If the girl gives you any trouble, just ring the buzzer in the room. If she refuses you anything, threaten to ring the buzzer. She shouldn’t be any trouble though. Been here three months. Only the really new ones give trouble. Haven’t been educated, so to speak.”

  The sergeant took a key from a ring on his belt and unlocked the door. Lippincott gripped the paper box tightly under his arm and went into the room like a schoolboy discovering an abandoned pastry shop.

  He slammed the door behind him, and in his rush into the room, almost stumbled over a wide metal cot. On it lay a nude woman, her legs drawn up to her stomach, her arms shielding her head, her red hair a dirty tangle on the mattress, which was speckled with dried bloodstains.

  The room smelled of camphor and Lippincott assumed it must be from the ointment that glistened on the girl’s flanks over fresh and precisely drawn lash marks. Lippincott suddenly felt compassion for the creature and was tempted to leave the room, perhaps even buy her freedom, when she peered from beneath her folded arms and seeing a man with a box, rose slowly from the cot. When he saw her young breasts flecked with dried blood as she rose from the cot, a driving rage enveloped him, and when she dutifully walked to the dirty, blood-spattered wall and raised her hands above her head to an iron ring, Lippincott was trembling. He fumbled the chains around her wrists, then pounced on the whip as if someone might snatch it from him.