Chapter 1

 

Yes, I am indeed a slaver and no, it is not the eighteenth or nineteenth century but right now, in the middle of the twenty-first. Let me tell you how it happened...

My father was one of Australia's richest men but I wasn't spoiled as a child. I had to earn my pocket money and make my own bed and keep my room tidy, although we had a full staff in the huge mansion in Toorak, Melbourne.

I was also taught right from wrong and the duty of a rich man to others and to treat every person, no matter his rank or wealth, with courtesy and respect. Mother and dad had always behaved in this way so it wasn't hard to follow their lead.

I was educated at Melbourne Grammar together with my lifelong friend, Rob Boyer, who was the son of our gardener. Dad had paid for his education at Grammar and later at Melbourne University where I studied Law/Business, and Rob, Physical Education.

Dad had many, many good points, but one peccadillo: he couldn't abide homosexuality in any form, considering it as an abomination. He wasn't an overly religious person, though. He just saw it as horribly unnatural and so both Rob and I, who were both 'tainted' with this dreadful curse, had to bury it down deep and we never - not ever - practised it, even in secret.

We both took out girls and yes, when it seemed necessary, made love to them and no-one ever knew of our dark secret.

We were both athletes, me in an amateur way but Rob intending to make it his profession. We were both good gymnasts, swimmers, track athletes and played in the first eleven and first eighteen sides of our school and university cricket and football teams. And we never let on, by even a glance, that we were interested in the beautiful bodies of our team-mates.

 

After graduation, Rob sought out employment as a sports master at a private school and I began to understudy dad. Rob looked high and low and eventually found a position at a girl's school not far from home, while I spent my days in dad's study, looking over company accounts, personnel appointments and the like.

Dad was one of Australia's wealthiest men, yes, but he didn't actually own companies or businesses. He had huge holdings in them and in property trusts and sometimes accepted a seat on the board of those he thought he could help. Accordingly, he had no need of a corporate headquarters and hundreds of staff. Instead he had his long-time PA, one William Heard who was then twenty years younger than my father at thirty-seven, and a very knowledgeable, perspicacious and street-smart analyst of companies and their worth.

He also had a secretary who did any typing required and looked after his personal needs. Mother also had a social secretary, at least she did until she died from breast cancer a year before I joined dad in his study.

Apart from the huge house in Toorak, he owned a holiday house at Portsea (as did many other very wealthy nabobs) and, loving the sea, had bought a large motor yacht - really a small ship with which to travel the world and he and mother and I, together with Rob (usually) and other friends, went on cruises as often as possible.

Sometimes, when they were away while we were at the uni, we would fly out to wherever the ship was at the time and join them for as long as our holidays lasted.

But then, when Mother died, he took to taking longer and longer cruises, always accompanied by William and sometimes his secretary as well.

We were on one such cruise when it happened. It was around Christmas time so Rob was with us on the yacht (it was named Esmerelda). We were at sea, up in the Mediterranean, and I was conferring with dad about a company in which he was heavily invested when he suddenly grabbed his chest, looked at me fondly once, and then just expired. He was just fifty-seven years old and Rob and me, thirty years younger.

We had a doctor friend on board and he was there in seconds but he said dad had had a massive heart attack and not even the best equipment in the world could bring him back.

We grieved, of course. He had been a wonderful father to me and a very generous patron to Rob but he was gone and nothing could now bring him back.

In time, I contacted our lawyer who confirmed I was his principal heir and should now assume control over his affairs while he would look after the legal details and then, once our grieving was done and we could think about the future, I sat with Rob, alone in the saloon now, for our guests had quietly taken their leave to return to their homes, and we talked.

"Well, Rob, it's just us now and there is now no-one we can offend with our love for one another...?

"Yes, it hasn't escaped me, either, so what do you want to do about it?"

"Nothing, first off. I so much want to drag you to my stateroom and make long and urgent love to you but I want us to be very clear about how we are going to go about it."

"I take it you mean, are we going to 'come out' and proclaim it to the world, or keep it between us only?"

"Exactly. Even in today's more liberal world gay men and women are looked down on so I wouldn't be making any moves at all until I'm sure how you want to play it."

"Oh, Conrad, you are a true chip off your dad's block. You put my feelings before your own pleasure and you always have." He paused a moment and his eyes were a trifle moist as he looked back at me. "Whatever you decide, I'll go along with. I just know I want to feel your naked body against mine and to hell with the crew..."

"Alright, first the captain..." I reached for the house phone and called him, asking if he could join us in the saloon.

"Jim, first of all I want to thank you for all your courtesies and sympathy during this difficult time..."

He smiled at me. "He was a great man and a good friend, Conrad, we will all miss him but now you are the owner, what are your orders?"

"I'll come to that later, Jim, there is the first the matter of Rob and me..."

"Oh, you mean your love for one another?"

He looked innocently at us and I knew he wasn't taking the mickey out of us either. He really was a good friend as well as a most competent master mariner. "You know?" I expostulated.

He smiled sympathetically. "We all do, Conrad. But we also knew of your father's antipathy towards homosexuality and we all admired the way you and Rob either hid it or abstained."

"Abstained," I said. "We were much too worried that if we engaged in such things, he would eventually find out and we both loved him far too much to wish to hurt him - and that is certainly what we would have done if we had.

"But tell me, if you and the crew guessed it about us, who else knows?"

Now his blue eyes really twinkled. "I suspect many of your friends, Conrad. Yes, I know you had girlfriends and that you even bedded some of them but your eyes were always going back to Rob.

"I suppose you are wondering whether to 'come out' as it is called? If you want my advice, do it. You are one of Australia's richest men now. It is now legal and in most places accepted as perfectly natural. I too, am gay, gentlemen. Like you, working for your father, I kept it repressed and hidden. Now, hopefully, I may introduce my lover to you and perhaps bring him on board at times?"

"Good God," I said weakly then looked at Rob and laughed. "Did you guess they knew?"

"Heavens, no. I wish I had. It would have made life a lot easier, wouldn't it?"

"It sure would. Alright, this is what I suggest. We don't proclaim it from the rooftops but if it comes up, we acknowledge it. I also invite you to move into my stateroom with me and to do the same at home.

"I want you by my side for good, now, Rob. Resign your posting and become my personal trainer if you want a title but we are going to be a couple, whatever we decide to call it, okay?"

"Okay!"

 

But what has all this got to do with slaving, you wonder? Sorry. I was coming to it but you needed to understand the background first.

We duly resumed our cruise of the Mediterranean Sea, calling into ports that interested us and with friends joining the ship and leaving as their time permitted.

One of our friends - and I say 'our' because despite our abstemious sexual behaviour, Rob and I had the same friends and did most things together. (I suppose, now that I come to think about it, it is strange that dad never tumbled to our true feelings). Anyway, as I say, one of our friends was a man named Peter Calloway who had been at university with us and when he joined the ship at Port Said just prior to us entering the Suez Canal, we could see he was distressed and once we had got him alone, asked him what was wrong and could we help?

"Thanks, Conrad and Rob, but I doubt anyone can help. I've got myself into trouble with a girl and her brother has told me he is going to castrate me and I think he's serious. He actually sent me a set of human male genitals. They were preserved, I think, but I'm sure they were real. Although the sender was not named, I knew it came from him."

"Why can't you go to the police, Pete? I mean that's very much against the law..."

"No, I can't, Conrad. I love the girl concerned but she is the daughter of a very powerful crime boss in Melbourne and no, I didn't know that until I was really committed to her. Anyway, the family have taken her away and I think they have had her baby aborted. The brother has a reputation for sadistic cruelty and the father, for ordering assassinations of his enemies and rivals.

"It's about as bad as it gets, gentlemen and I have no idea what to do about it. Your invitation was a godsend, Conrad. At least I'll be safe on the Esmerelda?"

We soothed him with appropriate words then I drew Rob away. I had been surprised at his reaction which had been rather odd. He actually looked to be in shock, but I brushed it aside as his sympathetic reaction to Peter's plight.

"We can't let those bastards get away with this, Rob. He's scared witless and I think he has reason to be..."

He looked at me carefully. "How far you would you be prepared to go, Conrad?" he said slowly.

I jerked my head up and looked straight into his normally beautifully soft brown eyes and now found them hard and brittle and saw something I had never seen there before. He was angry. I had never before seen that emotion in him, nor the determination that accompanied it. "As far as it takes, Rob. Why, what have you got in mind?"

"Just an idea at the moment, but I want to go and do some research on an idea I have."

He wouldn't say anything more right then and I had to leave it with him so I returned to Peter and we made small talk for a while.

That night, in our bed, he talked of a fantasy he had had a few months ago. "I dreamed that we were slavers, Conrad. That we had been asked to right a wrong and the only way it could be achieved was by stealing the wrongdoer, enslaving him and then selling his body to an Arab slave dealer.

"That's why I looked so shocked when he came out with his story. I had the oddest feeling of déjà vu, but I fully agree we have to help him and what I have been doing all afternoon is seeking out web sites that might indicate the existence or not of slavery in parts of Africa and the Middle East.

"If it was true, can you imagine a better remedy for Peter's plight - and that bastard's disappearance would send shock waves through the Melbourne underworld, wouldn't it?"

I had to agree and I grinned across at him. "Well, what did you discover?"

"It's there, Conrad. It's very hard to find, but look at us. We're now anchored in Port Said, a stone's throw from the Egyptian capital and within a day's sail of Arabia itself. I have found a contact in Cairo and I suggest we talk to William and Jim, see if they agree and then the four of us go and see this man. His name is Yusuf and I think he might be able to steer us in the right direction if we can prove our bona fides and our serious intent.

"Oh and by the way, I also researched that young hood, the brother of Peter's girl. His name is Antonio Garibaldi and while he is good-looking, his reputation stinks. He's a bully, a stand-over man and has acted as his father's hit-man according to the blurb I found. He's never been convicted, although prosecuted often enough - and he's only twenty-five years old!"

"Right. Are you sure we should ask Jim, though? I mean what we are contemplating is as bad as what this Antonio has been doing. Should we involve the ship and its crew?"

"There's no point in proceeding if we don't. We couldn't hide what we're doing from him and them and in any case, they all adore you and I suspect they'd follow you into Hell if you asked them."