Tania perched on the marble balustrade surrounding the pool, arching her back provocatively and giggling as Marcus approached. He smiled appreciatively at the scanty bikini accentuating her high breasts and tiny waist and stooped to press his lips on her shoulder as gently as the breeze from a summer zephyr.
Leaning forward, he flicked his tongue into the shallow declivity of her navel as Tania shivered in anticipation. She never saw the fist that broke her nose or the second punch that split the tender flesh above her right eye. Marcus grasped her arms and dragged her away from the drop down to the terraces, her legs twitching in shock and her open mouth gasping in silent agony. Inside the bedroom, pinioning her arms above her head and wedging her thighs apart with his knee, Marcus raped her and then beat her until black marks covered most of her body.
The translucent nature of her skin excited him; bruising was always spectacular on such a pale background. If sex was all he wanted, he could have had the woman by now and discarded her, but his desires were far deeper and darker than such a basic need. The manner in which the woman had offered herself to him, a stranger, had been the catalyst for the pain that was to be her reward.
El Jaffeh, his skin creased like old leather, had been recruited from the nomadic tribes of the desert. His ancestors had valued the pale flesh of captives since the time when the great expanse of Barbary was known only to the nomadic tribes who alone could tame its savagery. Such men were loyal unto death and would die rather than betray a comrade.
El Jaffeh looked at the sprawled limbs of the woman and smiled. Below the hem of his burnous, his skeletal legs resembled twin sticks of liquorice, riven with rope-like sinews and sharply defined bones, but he could march for three days and nights without stopping through pitiless terrain that would defeat a highly trained athlete. It was for this capacity to survive in the face of overwhelming hardship that Marcus had recruited him and his followers.
As a Bedouin, El Jaffeh was bound by a strict code. The death of a young boy while in his care was unfortunate, and the circumstances of the boy’s death even more so. The boy had belonged to a tribal chief whose certain displeasure would have had only one outcome. El-Jaffeh had travelled for many days before he could feel safe and had been eager to put himself under the protection of such a powerful leader as Marcus. Men such as El-Jaffeh and the others he recruited in turn were of great value. Impervious to suffering, steadfastly loyal and with a natural distrust of anyone in uniform, they formed the beating heart of a smuggling empire that would transcend anything that had gone before.
To a desert Arab, the sea was alien, but the new recruits learned swiftly and were now as adept at making the short crossing between the two continents as the fishermen who had plied their trade in these waters for a lifetime. Provided with EU passports and valid documentation, the couriers had no fear of a random check, but in the event of being captured in the actual course of their illicit duties, it was then that the true value of the Bedouin became evident. These men would never inform on their employer or any of their companions. Marcus had spelt out his requirements and had seen the expression on the face of the men. Any suggestion of disloyalty was an affront to their pride and their response had surprised even Marcus.
Invited to choose a man at random, he’d indicated one of the younger members of the small group. The man accepted his selection with apparent stoic resignation. He had taken four hours to die at the hands of Marcus, watched by an encircling group of his companions. Fingernails had been pulled away, hot irons placed on his exposed flesh and only when his testicles were crushed between two boulders did he utter a faint cry of agony, instantly suppressed. Marcus would have spared the man for his courage, but his former companions insisted on torture being prolonged unto death. The point had been made and Marcus had gained a work force whose loyalty was beyond reproach.
Marcus gave his orders and left the villa. Tania opened her eyes as the car engine started and looked at the face of the man who knelt by her side. El Jaffeh opened his mouth revealing broken and stained teeth in a grotesque parody of a smile. His hand caressed the pale skin and long limbs of the woman. Truly, she was a gift from the Gods. His men would work with a will on their next journey across the straits with the memory of such pleasures as this to sustain them. When he removed his robe, revealing the great bunch of his genitalia, and reached out for her, Tania wailed in terror, her cries echoing unheard around the lonely canyons surrounding the villa.
