Rex Dalton Thrillers: Books 1-3 (The Rex Dalton Series Boxset Book 1)

by JC Ryan

  “Of course, of course. I will send a car for you. Where are you staying?”

  It wasn’t ideal. Rex would have preferred having his SUV handy. But he couldn’t quickly think of a way to decline the offer without insulting his host. “The Sheraton,” he replied.

  They said their goodbyes, and Rex went outside to get his bearings. He was ten or more blocks from his rental vehicle by then, but the sun had gone down, and the walk would be pleasant. Digger needed the exercise anyway, along with a good treat for behaving so well in the restaurant. On top of the human food Rex had already given him. Today, he had his backpack in the car, and Digger’s kong was available. He stopped between the restaurant and his destination to buy some dried lamb for it.

  After reaching his SUV he took out Digger’s kong, stuffed it with the dried lamb and walked across the road to an open lot where he unleashed the dog and gave him a chance to go for a quick run and toilet before handing him the kong. Half an hour later he was at the Sheraton and went to his room to prepare for his evening with the illustrious prince.

  Under his impeccably-tailored suit, he wore what he privately thought of as his ninja clothing. Tight black pants with zippered pockets that lay snug against his skin when not in use, but folded outward like cargo pockets when he needed them. A tight, long-sleeved black knitted shirt went under a thin white shirt to cover the black one under his white dress shirt.

  His dress shoes weren’t the best option, but he could hardly carry in a second pair that would have been more suitable for a combat operation. His near-black hair didn’t need a cover, but he put some dark greasepaint into a plastic zip bag and tucked it in flat in his suit jacket’s inner pocket. There was no way to conceal a weapon, not even a knife.

  Fortunately, he’d never felt a weapon was indispensable when it came to hand to hand combat. If he had need of a gun later, he’d obtain one from Mutaib’s guards after disabling him.

  He surveyed himself from all directions in the mirror. Nothing bulged. Regretfully, if he got the opportunity for the stealth operation tonight, his pricey suit might have to be left behind.

  Before the hour for his appointment approached, he packed his duffle bag and took a back stair down to his vehicle. It might not be necessary, but a quick getaway option dictated that he be ready, and there were items concealed in the duffle bag he didn’t want to lose if he didn’t come back to the hotel tonight.

  At the appointed hour, his room phone rang, and the operator gave him the message that his car was waiting. He let it wait just a few minutes longer. He didn’t want to appear too eager. When he thought the right balance of arrogance and good manners had been achieved by the delay, he led Digger out of the room.

  A pleasant drive to what Rex might have called a villa, had it been located on the Mediterranean instead of the Persian Gulf, gave him a chance to reassert the persona he’d projected to Mutaib. On the way, he murmured in English to Digger. When the time came to enter the house, he left Digger in the courtyard and gave him the hand signal to wait, then scout. He trusted Digger to figure out the rest, and to be where he was needed if he was needed in a hurry.

  Both were wearing some of the comms equipment that had survived the explosion in Afghanistan or replacements for the missing pieces. Digger’s special harness with the night vision camera that could be attached, his earbuds, and the battery pack to run both concealed on his collar and the leads threaded through his thick hair had all survived. The laptop that allowed whoever was handling Digger to ‘see’ what the camera saw had not, but Rex had replaced it. However, he had no plausible reason to bring his laptop to a social engagement, so he’d be ‘blind’ to what Digger was doing.

  Digger’s earbuds were Rex’s only communication option. Naturally, he had his own earbuds and a throat mic concealed in his collar, so he could direct the dog. The earbuds would be of little use when he couldn’t see what was making whatever noise he was hearing, but they would allow him to know if the dog ran into trouble of any kind and Digger would respond if Rex needed him.

  He might even be smart enough to make a sound, so I’ll know he’s coming.

  It was precisely ten p.m. when a robed manservant announced ‘Ruan’s’ arrival. Mutaib, lounging among dozens of pillows of embroidered silk, welcomed him. There were no other guests. Mutaib gestured for Rex to seat himself and clapped his hands to summon a discreetly-waiting woman with a bowl of rose-scented water and a towel. The woman knelt beside Rex and without making eye contact bathed his hands and then dried them. Rex submitted to the ritual as graciously as if he’d been born to it.

  After that, a parade of serving girls appeared. Some, Rex surmised from their undeveloped bodies, were as young as twelve or thirteen. Some were perhaps in their twenties. All were only partially clothed; their breasts bare of any cover but their long hair. They seemed unaffected by the gaze of their master and his guest. Rex was at first uncomfortable, and then, when the younger girls appeared, outraged. But his mission required he hide his attitude and act nonchalantly, as if this were his usual lifestyle.

  Mutaib kept up a steady stream of commentary on the physical attributes of the girls. Rex assumed he’d sampled all of them, though his religion forbade fornication. It was sickening.

  Halfway through the meal, Rex was startled to be handed a Bordeaux goblet. A girl of sixteen or so poured the ruby-colored wine into his glass while another who might have been her twin filled that of his host. Rex kept his mouth shut. If there’d been anything more than the decadent use of the serving girls that demonstrated Mutaib’s contempt for both the law and his religion, this would have been it.

  He sipped sparingly from his glass.

  Mutaib had already downed one glass and was gesturing impatiently for the girl to refill his glass.

  As the night wore on, Mutaib became more and more jocular. He didn’t seem to be in danger of passing out from drunkenness, which made Rex understand he was a serious and experienced drinker. Being neither, though he could hold his liquor when required, Rex took opportunities to empty his glass in the large brass pot incongruously holding a Boston fern inches from his left elbow. He chose times when his move would be unnoticed by his host, particularly while the latter was engaged in conspicuous sexual harassment of his servers.

  When not fondling the girls, Mutaib recounted his sexual exploits. The stories were vulgar, but so exaggerated that Rex could listen to them without being affected. Fiction had never interested him.

  Around midnight, a girl came in with a glass tray holding two white lumps, a small silver tube, and a gold knife. Mutaib gestured for her to put it down on the table beside his reclining form and then picked up the knife. He expertly chopped the cocaine into a fine powder and then used the silver tube to snort a line of the coke.

  He closed his eyes in apparent ecstasy for a moment. When he opened them, he waved the girl toward Rex. Momentarily caught in a dilemma, Rex wasn’t about to snort cocaine, nor could he graciously refuse. With a movement designed to look as if he was about to pick up the knife, he managed to upset the tray and lose the remaining powder and the second rock into the cushions. He made a horrified face and began to apologize, but Mutaib was laughing uncontrollably.

  “No matter, my friend. There’s more where that came from. But you must be a novice, no? No more of the good stuff for you.”

  He leered at Rex and leaned forward as if in confidence, though his voice was loud enough for the nearest serving girl to hear.

  “No more cocaine, I mean. But for my new friend, nothing but the best of my women.”

  Rex tensed. Was Mutaib going to expect him to perform right here? Was he going to offer him a child? For a moment Rex considered how he could decline without insulting his host. Maybe he could claim to have a disease he wouldn’t want to pass on. Humiliating, but not as bad as the alternative, which was killing his host prematurely.

  However, to Rex’s relief, Mutaib called for a manservant. The man, even though dressed in traditional robe
s, had an appearance that appalled Rex. Bald, beardless, and overweight, the man was the very picture of soft. Soft hands, soft high voice, soft bare feet. What had been done to him, no doubt as a child, infuriated Rex even more. Once more he had to swallow his affront for the sake of the mission.

  “Take him to Zoya,” Mutaib said. His speech was slurred so the name came out as Zhoya, but Rex knew it was probably an Ethiopian name, meaning dawn.

  To Rex, Mutaib explained. “Zhoya is not a servant. I have already three legal wives and she’s not suitable for the fourth. It is misyar. She is yours for tonight.”

  This speech, Rex took to mean several things Mutaib hadn’t said outright. For one thing, misyar was a type of Sunni marriage contract that was sometimes used for the convenience of not committing fornication in a legal sense. Typically, it was temporary, for as little as one night. Most men who entered misyar marriages were already married. This type of ‘wife’ would be called a mistress in America and most other countries.

  However, he had his doubts that Mutaib’s claim of misyar would stand up if it ever came to a court of law. Saudi marriage contracts were, by law and polite fiction, carried out by equal consent on the part of both parties. Maybe the Ethiopian woman he was being led to had entered a contract by choice, but more than likely she hadn’t.

  Second, he assumed she had fallen out of favor, either because she hadn’t kept her beauty or was older. Mutaib would never have offered a woman he still considered valuable or had any sort of respect for, even a twisted sort, to another man.

  Third, he assumed Mutaib was drunker or higher than he’d thought. He was being led into the sanctity of the prince’s harem. It wasn’t lost on him that entry into the harem in any circumstances other than by the prince’s explicit invitation would have cost him his head.

  It all played into his plans except for one thing. Zoya wasn’t the woman he’d come to rescue.

  ***

  THE MANSERVANT – REX didn’t think the term eunuch was in vogue anymore – led him to a room that had evidently been prepared for him. A large bed and a single reclining chair were the only furniture in the room, and the bed was made up in luxurious fabrics, which also draped and mellowed the walls. Low, indirect lighting bathed the room in pink and gold hues. The manservant told him to make himself comfortable and backed out, half-bowing, and closed the door.

  Rex remained standing and moved to the side of the room, near the door. What he did next would depend on who came through it next. He was ready for anything from a naked kid to armed guards.

  When the door opened, Rex caught only the woman’s profile before she passed him. His impression was of high cheekbones, a straight, well-formed nose and square chin, topped by a mass of black curls. Her form was slight under draped silk, and from her movements, Rex deduced she was still young. How young, he hadn’t had time to notice.

  Only a few seconds passed before she turned, and her eyes widened when she saw him. He didn’t know why. Maybe she’d expected Mutaib, or if she’d been told she would be entertaining a guest tonight, maybe she was shocked he was still dressed.

  Rex took only a couple of seconds to observe her lithe figure before his eyes flicked back to her face. She was clearly of East African origin, probably Ethiopian as he’d surmised from her name. It was impossible to tell her age. She could have been anywhere between fifteen and twenty-five. Not much older, he thought. She was lovely.

  Her skin glowed in the amber light, and as she smiled tentatively, he noticed big, doe-eyes and full lips. If she’d come to him willingly of her own volition, he would have considered himself a very lucky man. But she hadn’t, despite the smile.

  Rex addressed her gently in Arabic. “You are Zoya?”

  She cast her eyes downward and stammered her answer in broken Arabic. A sentence or two, which Rex could barely understand. She was asking him if she should undress.

  “No. I want to talk to you.”

  She looked up again, quickly. Rex thought he saw hurt and confusion in her eyes. This could be more difficult than he’d thought.

  “Tell me how you came here,” he urged. More broken Arabic left him confused, so he switched to English and asked again. She shook her head.

  Okay, she doesn’t speak English, and I don’t speak Ethiopian – what is it, Amharic? Arabic it is then.

  Speaking slowly and without raising his voice, he asked and gestured for her to do the same. “Please tell me again where you were born.”

  She seemed to understand his Arabic better than she spoke the language. This time, she got it across that she was from Ethiopia, as he’d determined already. She explained that she’d been taken by ‘bad men’ when she was only eight years old, she showed with her fingers. She continued and explained with more gestures, single words and short phrases that she’d been sold to someone who brought her here, and at first, she’d been made to clean the harem and serve Mutaib’s wives. Some of them were kind to her, but they turned against her when she became a woman, as she put it.

  Then Mutaib had noticed her and gave her a room of her own and started visiting her at night.

  Rex questioned her further. “Why has he sent you to me?”

  Tears formed in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “I do not please him anymore. He wants me to do…”

  She opened her mouth to say more, but Rex held up his hand in the universal gesture for stop.

  “Would you leave, if you could?” he asked.

  A flood of words in the language he didn’t understand ensued, and she threw herself at his feet, embracing his legs. Rex hadn’t expected that and took a moment to collect himself before he lifted her to her feet. Holding her by the upper arms, he said, “I came to help someone else, but I will take you, too, if that’s what you want.”

  It was a more complex thought than he’d tried to convey before, but she understood.

  “Who?”

  “Her name is Rehka. She is from India and may have come here about four months ago.”

  “I know her.”

  “Can you show me where she is?”

  She explained that it was still too early and that she’d have to wait until the prince had left the harem. She’d wait for him to leave and then go to Rehka.

  Rex agreed, and then pointed to his watch and explained to Zoya that she should wait with him for an hour or so not to raise any suspicions. He sat down in the chair and pointed to the bed for her to lie down. The language barrier made it difficult to continue a conversation. Zoya closed her eyes and took a few deep relaxing breaths.

  About ninety minutes later, Rex stirred, Zoya opened her eyes and Rex nodded for her that it was okay to leave now.

  She slipped out of the room soundlessly. Rex risked a quick look outside the room to watch her glide down the hall and turn a corner. No one was within his sight, so he pulled his head back inside the room and closed the door. He looked at his new watch and decided he’d wait another hour. That should give the prince plenty of time to finish his amorous exploits and return to his quarters. Unless he’d passed out in the room of the woman he was with. Then there could be a problem.

  While he waited, Rex lay down on the bed to think about how to get out of the compound with two women. He gave the problem and as many of its possibilities as he could imagine to his subconscious, set his internal alarm for an hour, and went to sleep.

  Chapter Seventeen

  HANDE AVCI ENTERED the room with only the passage of air around her moving body making any sound and went to shake the sleeping man awake. She cried out in fright when his hand shot out like a striking tiger and grabbed her wrist. He hadn’t been sleeping at all, only pretending to, to trap her.

  Zoya had come to her in her room and told her about the stranger, the prince’s guest, and that he was not like the others. They’d both been threatened before with being sold away as prostitutes if they weren’t accommodating to such guests. Here in Mutaib’s harem, at least they were fed and well cared for at other times, and th
e times when they were expected to entertain were infrequent.

  Zoya had told her the man would take her away, along with Rehka, the new one. She’d asked if Hande wanted to go as well. Was that a serious question? It was difficult to understand Zoya, but Hande was certain she had offered to take her with them. She asked where to find the stranger and Zoya told her which room.

  When she reached to touch him, and he grabbed her, she tried to dodge back, fearful he’d hit her. His face softened, and he addressed her in Arabic.

  “I won’t hurt you. Who are you?”

  “I am Hande,” she answered simply, reassured by his calm and his words. “I’m going with you.”

  His expression turned guarded. “What do you mean?”

  It had been a long time since she’d been so bold. Not since she’d left Turkey. Overcoming the beatings, she’d endured to learn to be a properly respectful pleasure wife to the prince was not easy.

  She had come to Saudi Arabia, a young and inexperienced seamstress from the Turkish countryside, six years before. A man had come to her village to recruit factory workers, and Hande had responded, tired of her father and brothers treating her like a child who could not make her own decisions.

  The agent told her many lies, wooing her with tales of independence and a good living in Saudi Arabia. She wished she’d been less trusting, less ignorant of the world outside her country. The agent sent her to the factory owner under the kafula system, meaning the factory owner had paid the agent, and she was now obligated to pay the owner for her passage to Saudi Arabia and the room and board he provided.

  Far from a good living, the wages she was paid didn’t even cover the growing debt. When she went to him to beg a lower interest rate, so she could someday pay it off, he laughed.

  “I have a suggestion,” he’d said. “You can pay off your debt and make your life better at the same time. No more long days of labor in the factory.”

  She should have known, by then, that the factory owner was not honest. He agreed to help her if she would spend one night with him. She refused to sleep with him. He’d raped her that night, and the next day he sold her to a wealthy man. She had to admit, her life was better with the rich man, Mutaib, than in the factory.