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Page 46.

Chapter 13. Mauritania, 1942: Nordhall's Ransom

Tim Nordhall awoke feeling stiff and numb.

A woman sat watching over him. She was covered from head to foot in black robes. Over her head, she wore a black hood with gilded decorations around eerie looking eyeholes. A fire crackled nearby, and he could smell the sea. He heard surf crashing faintly. Light wind keened through rock formations scoured by eons of blown grit. He smelled camel dung and the greasy smells that went along with camp life. He smelled charcoal and tea and tobacco. The woman looked up toward a knot of men around the fire and let out a low, quick yell. Then she spoke softly to him, offering him a broad shallow cup. He rose effortfully onto one side and accepted the cup. He sipped hot tea that tasted faintly of butter, cloves, and blood. It was salty to the taste, and he drank it in quick, short, eager sips. Anything to get salt and fluids down his throat. There had to be some food value to this stuff. “Thank you,” he told her, “shukran.”

“Ah,” she said in the shadows of her veils, echoing: “shukran.” It was about the only Arabic word he knew. She seemed appreciative, and let forth a small torrent of praise for God and kind words on Tim’s head.

A man rose by the fire and came close. He was a tall and wiry mix of Negro and Caucasian, like so many North Africans. He had quick, intelligent eyes and a sharp mercenary mien, and spoke some desert dialect. Tim couldn’t understand any of it, but sensed that he was in roughly the same bargaining position as the lion cub mewling in its net cage 100 feet away, or its dead mother lying beside it. Tim made beseeching sign language with his hands, with his entire body, promising peace, offering the sky if they took him to a police station.

The Berber laughed—a knowing and dirty snort and pulled a gun out with his right hand. He bent over and in a flash had a knife at Tim’s throat. He held the gun on Tim while scraping the knife’s razor edge loudly through the unshaven stubble on Tim’s neck. Tim felt the pressure of the blade’s edge moving over his skin, just strongly enough to indent the skin without breaking it, but he could feel each tiny nick and dent on the delicate nerve endings around his carotid artery as that blade slowly moved from one side to the other. The message was clear, and he looked up into the Berber’s eyes in exhaustion and submission. He had never felt so helpless in his entire life, even while nearly drowning with his shipmates a day earlier.

Two other men tied Tim’s feet together at the ankles so that he could not run. They laughed as they tied a small goat-collar around his neck. Every time he moved, the unevenly shaped, hand-carved wooden balls inside those steel bells would roll around with a rattling noise. Not only was he not going anywhere, but he was noisy as a London bus every time he breathed in and out. The men laughed, and one made a bleating noise. To them, he was something of a goat. He got the dreadful feeling that he was about to be sold along with the lion cub. Was there still slavery in this part of the world? Would he ever see civilization again?

Stomach was full, he belched uncomfortably as he sank into an exhausted slumber. The last thing he saw was the coppery faces of the men regarding him from around the campfire. He had the twin impressions that he had been drugged, and that they were debating what price they could fetch for him.