Mark Townsend

Slavetrader's captive

CHAPTER ONE

"One thousand Turkish lira," said the taxi driver. "In advance."

Penny Hale hesitated a moment, staring at the lean brown hand extended over the back of the seat. The man was filthy and his face reminded her of the pictures she had seen in books of the men who had tortured the Crusaders such a long time ago. His teeth were blackened, some broken off at the gums, and his left eye seemed to be blind. The young blonde shivered and reminded herself that the porter at the luxury hotel where she was staying had selected this man as reliable. Finally she reached into her purse, took out one crisp bill and paid him. With what seemed to her to be a derisive smile, he took the money and stuffed it into his torn shirt pocket. Then he started the engine and slowly pulled out of the parking lot.

Soon they were weaving in and out of the heavy late evening traffic of Istanbul. He certainly seemed to be a competent driver, she thought, as he skillfully threaded through the human obstacle course in the narrow streets. Suddenly they rose over the crest of a hill and she gasped at the sight. Below she could see almost all of the European side of the ancient city. The moon was nearly full, and combined with the lights of the city, it enabled her to get a panorama a hundred times more impressive than any travel poster she had ever seen. She recognized in the distance the famous Hagia Sophia, the Topkapi museum, the Blue Mosque with its seven minarets pointing at the sky like so many missiles ready to be fired. Beyond that, like a thick serpent curled around the Golden Horn, the Bosporus glistened brightly in the moonlight, separating the main part of the huge city from the darker Asian side. She knew that on the other side where she was going now there were camels and mud houses in some of the small villages, and that the men still wore baggy pants and kerchiefs tied around their heads. That much she had learned from the brochures that she and her new husband had been reading over the past year before finally deciding on Istanbul for their honeymoon.

The picturesque quality of the young boys running through the streets with brass trays balanced on their hands carrying the tiny dipper-like containers of thick black Turkish coffee, the strange babble of voices coming in the windows of the taxi, the whole exotic scene around made her suddenly very sad.

Why, oh why did it have to happen this way, she cried inside her troubled mind.

Penny had been looking forward to her first night with Robert for such a long time – she had never dreamed it would turn out this way. It didn't seem possible that only two days ago she was still living in her apartment in Philadelphia waiting for the arrival of the so carefully planned wedding day. Only by the greatest effort of her will could she recall her feelings of that time that seemed so long ago now.

She and her fiance Robert Hale had been engaged for over a year before that, and they had gone over every detail a hundred times before the big day. Finally the actual moment of saying the words that would tie them together forever came. Then under the colorful shower of rice and confetti they ducked into the waiting cab which had taken them directly to the International Airport. Robert had kissed her passionately all the way there, whispering into her ear that he would prefer to cancel their flight and postpone the Turkish honeymoon until the next day. He had tried his best to persuade her to check into a hotel near the airport, but Penny was determined to go through with the original plan and let him make love to her for the first time in the exotic setting of a foreign city.

At the airport they had separated long enough to change from their formal clothes to sensible travel suits, shipping her wedding gown and his tuxedo back to her parents' house, and then they began the series of delays and frustrations involved in getting from one country to another.

First there had been the usual three-and-a-half-hour delay in leaving the Philadelphia airport because of heavy air traffic. Then the weather was so bad when they put down for refueling that there was another six-hour wait. Finally, bleary-eyed and tired, they had arrived in Istanbul the next day, only to find that their reservation had been lost. They had waited almost two hours in the lobby as the agent who had supposedly booked their suite argued and gesticulated like a madman with the hotel manager. Eventually they were shown up to a less luxurious room than the one they had expected, and it was then, after the agent had been given a big tip and the bellhop had smirked his way out of their room, that Penny had first noticed that her husband Robert was in a state of angry frustration.

So fatigued that she could barely think straight, Penny had begun to carefully lay out her new nightgown and bedroom slippers. Then she had collected several toilet articles from her cosmetic case, and, trying her best to give Robert a girlish alluring smile in spite of her fatigue, she had gone into the bathroom to prepare herself for the moment they had both been waiting for.