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Category: Erotica
Description: Harem slaves, domination, punishment, and the brutal abuse of power! The country called Selang is a mountainous jungle carved up among corrupt officials and ruthless warlords. Women disappear every day, seized for harem imprisonment, broken to obedience with cruel punishments. It's a playground for the rich, where the most beautiful girls are available to satisfy their desires for mastery over helpless, cringing women. Mai Okugawa and Jane Campbell are two journalists intent on exposing all of Selang's darkest secrets from the illegal trade in organs for transplant to their trade in cocaine and heroin to the enslavement of the country's women. Yet these are small horrors compared to what they discover deep in the jungles of Selang. There the two women are caught and a program of forced training is sexual slavery is begun. All too soon they are forced to undergo all the degrading experiences that the women of Selang have been subjected to for decades. Can they survive? Or will they become nothing more than mindless bodies for men to use any way they want? And if escape is possible will they be too frightened and docile to take it.
eBook Publisher: Renaissance E Books/Sizzler Editions,
seXrotica.net Release Date: June 2009

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Words: 64453
Reading time: 184-257 min.
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CHAPTER I

In a bar in Yon City, a white man sat at a table with a tumbler of whisky. It was Talisker, fifteen years old, good stuff.

'Slàinte mhath,' he said to the man opposite him, who was also Scottish, and took a sip.

From across the room, a few people looked at him with disapproval. A typical Westerner, they thought-drunk, even at this early stage of the evening. He was drinking alone-usually a sign of a drunk-and he seemed to be talking to an imaginary friend who sat across from him. What a sad case.

Leun Wa-Fai sat in the shade of the trees at a table outside the Lucky Dragon bar. He sipped his Tsingtao and waited, scratching his arm through his long-sleeved shirt. Before long, a woman arrived and sat down opposite him. 'What have you got for me?' she said in Cantonese.

'What have you got for me?' he replied. She laid her bag on the table and opened it enough for him to see the bag of white powder inside. He reached for it and she pulled the bag away.

'Tell me what you have,' she demanded.

'You know the office buildings that were being put up by Chandradas? The ones that lapsed?'

'The land was taken back by the government when Chandradas couldn't pay.'

'That's right,' he said. 'Now the Company wants to buy it.' The Company was Leun's employer, Ibáñez International Shipping, a division of OPU.

'What for?' she asked. Hating OPU and all its subsidiaries was a passion of Mai Okugawa's. In the Republic of Selang, the government-a fancy word for a junta of warlords who had divided up the country amongst themselves after they had kicked out the communists-was pretty much in the pocket of OPU.

'They want to build a freight depot for shipping. The land's on the waterfront, near the docks, so it's an ideal site.'

'What are they planning on shipping?' asked Mai.

'That's what I can't work out,' said Leun. 'We don't need this. We had enough depot space already before the economy collapsed.' It was 1998, and all of southeast Asia was in the grip of what CNN called the Asian Economic Crisis. Every country here was screwed, and Selang was no different from any of the others. 'And now our level of trade has dropped-what's the point of building more? We're in the biggest recession for years.'

'Can't you make a guess?'

'Well, I suppose it must be something they don't want anyone else to see. Smuggling.'

'Drugs?'

'Or guns, or people-who knows? But those are usually small cargoes. This development will be much bigger-they could smuggle all the heroin in Asia through there and they'd only fill a tenth of it.'

'What can it be for?' she mused, half to herself.

'Look, I've given you what you want,' he said in a pleading tone.

'Ah yes. Good work. There'll be more of this when you bring me some details of what they're going to do there.' She took out the bag of white powder, keeping it under her hand, and slipped it across the table. He took it and secretively pocketed it. Then he rose, gave her a small nod of gratitude, and rushed off to somewhere private where he had an appointment with a needle.

John Lachlan sat beside the wall of the hotel room. On the other side was a room taken by Mullah Rahman, the warlord who ran Yon City. Not for the first time, Lachlan wondered why people like Rahman always arranged these meetings in hotels. Everybody knew that he was the property of OPU, so why meet in such secrecy?

Listening with his headphones he heard the door open, then footsteps, and the door closed again.

'Assalam alaikum, Mullah,' said the visitor.

'Waalaikum assalam, Mr. Teng. How is my dear friend Mr Hirohashi?' replied the Mullah.

Lachlan knew the name Teng. He was an assistant to Hirohashi, a director of OPU.

'He has a problem with his heart,' said Teng. 'But he is due for treatment at one of the top clinics, which should return him to good health very soon.'

'Insyak Allah.'

They exchanged a few more pleasantries, fortunately in Malay, a language which Lachlan could follow reasonably well. Having to get it translated would have really wasted his time. Then they got down to business.

'We have received your bid to buy the Chandradas land, Mr Teng. We are of course very glad for a buyer in these days of economic recession, but the price seems absurdly slight. Four million Rinchan? That's little more than the price of a large house.'

'The economy of this whole region has collapsed, Mullah,' said Teng. 'No-one wants to buy anything here any more. Everyone is selling. Ibáñez International has chosen to go against this trend, and we naturally expect that property prices will reflect the state of the market.'

'But I must think of my people. This money will go into the public purse, and will pay for the poverty relief that the people of Yon City so desperately need.'

'This development will benefit the people of Yon City. It will bring work to thousands in the city, first on the construction and later on manning the depot.'

'That is very welcome, of course, but ... four million. It's almost unthinkable to sell such a large piece of land for such a price.

'Of course, Ibáñez International recognises the need for poverty relief. I am authorised to offer you another million as a donation to the government, to be used for the benefit of the people in any way you see fit. This money would of course be administered by you personally.'

'That sounds like an acceptable compromise, Mr Teng.' The meeting ran to a few more meaningless superficial words, and then Teng left.

In the next room, Lachlan disconnected his listening devices and packed up his kit into a small case. Then he went downstairs and checked out.

The OPU Group of Companies was a conglomerate. It did not have a central boardroom, but used the boardrooms of its various subsidiaries to conduct meetings. This particular board meeting took place at the headquarters of Ibáñez International shipping, in Manila. Mr Yao Mang, who controlled OPU's various medical interests, was addressing the board with his new expansion strategy.

'Since the financial collapse, prices across southeast Asia have dropped to their lowest point since the mid-seventies. Many local businesses have been ruined, but with our global infrastructure we have weathered the storm with only minor damage. Now is the time to make acquisitions. By investing now in production and distribution, now when prices are at such a ridiculously low level, and then making use of local labour, we can produce at an incredibly low cost and increase our exports to an unprecedented level.'

He displayed some projections for the potential exports from OPU's medical subsidiaries over the next five years. There were murmurs from several other board members, who regarded them as unrealistic, even fantastic.

'Procare alone could become the major producer of medical supplies for all of the Pacific Rim area and Australia as a whole. Compare the prices that we could achieve with those of our Australian competitors.'

Mr Hirohashi, managing director of Ibáñez International Shipping, had been doing a few quick calculations. 'Yao Mang,' he began, 'can you seriously expect us to make this level of investment at a time when world financial crisis is looming? The Federal Reserve fears that even the US economy will shrink in the next year. Our multinational nature will not save us if the whole globe goes into recession. This is a time for caution, not expansion. The levels of investment you suggest are unsupportable.'

OPU's Chairman, Santana, had been looking over the plans with concern. 'Yao Mang, are these proposals serious? The amount of pharmaceuticals you plan to produce at these new plants, the amount of cargo you plan to ship out ... surely this is more than we will ever be able to sell. The markets can simply not support this level of shipping and production.'

'The markets!' cried Yao Mang. 'Think of those markets! Australia-we can undercut their drug companies easily. Japan-their inflation is so high that they'll soon price themselves out of the market. And-best of all in this region-India! A nation of almost a billion people, a country plagued by endemic medical problems. India is crying out for cheaper pharmaceuticals-there are masses of people who need medications but cannot afford them at current prices. We could make a great many treatments affordable to them for the first time, and our sales would skyrocket.

'And that's just south Asia and Oceania. What about America? What about Europe? Even allowing for increased transportation costs, the situation is basically the same as Australia. We can undercut their producers. Both those markets are crying out for cheaper drugs. This plan could make OPU the largest supplier of pharmaceuticals and disposable medical supplies in the world. Think of it-not a big player in the medical market, but the big player.'

Yao Mang's plan was too big for the board. Santana and Hirohashi were not convinced, and several other board members went along with them. They voted the proposals down. Yao Mang's plans for new pharmaceutical plants and freight yards would not go ahead.

Leun Wa-Fai was working late. The Yon City offices of Ibáñez International were quiet, and in the large office where Leun worked there was no-one else around.

Leun sat nervously before his computer screen. He was sweating despite the air conditioning. He had never done anything this big before. He'd been a hacker since he was a teenager, hacking for fun and later on for small profits, enough to keep his habit fed. But this was different: he was about to break into the confidential files of his employer, a multinational company. This was an organisation with more wealth and power than several small countries put together.

He steeled himself and got started. It could only be done from here. OPU had a closed system, not accessible from the outside, only from the offices of its many subsidiaries. Slowly, step by step, he got past the defences of the system, into the files marked with top-level security: for directors only. After careful searching he found the files that contained the information on the project he was looking for: the purchase and redevelopment of the lapsed Chandradas office space. The files were written by a director named Yao Mang. Leun had heard of him: he was a director of Ibáñez International, but spent most of his time working in other OPU companies, mainly Procare Medical Supplies and Evergreen Healthcare.

The files outlined a plan to expand Procare production, and to build a bigger distribution network for Ibáñez International to handle the increased volume of cargo. They would be moving drugs, disposable syringes (a shudder ran through him as he read those words), prosthetic limbs, and...

Oh my God!

Leun made a choking sound and then looked around guiltily. There was no-one else about. He printed out the files. The printer had to go through its warm-up before it would print. Come on you bloody useless machine! Finally it started to print the first page. He looked around, sweating like a pig. He expected a security guard to come in any moment and ask him what he was doing.

The printer had stopped. Not all the pages had printed out. What was wrong?

Out of paper! He reached under the desk and got out a wad of printer paper, then opened the paper tray. He fumbled and the paper dropped from his hand and scattered across the floor. Cursing, he more carefully got some fresh paper and loaded it into the tray with his trembling hands. The printer though for a few moments, its red light flashing, and then it switched to the green 'ready' light and after a little while longer it started printing again.

Leun picked up the blank paper strewn on the floor, now covered in this own footprints, and stuffed it in the waste paper bin. What if someone notices it tomorrow? he thought in paranoid panic. Then he calmed himself and got a grip. They'll just think someone dropped some paper by accident. Anyway, the cleaners empty the bins early in the morning, before people get in.

The printer spewed its last page. He flicked through the printouts and saw they were all there. He slipped them into his briefcase and then carefully logged himself out of the OPU central system. All evidence of his wrongdoing was covered up. He breathed a deep sigh of relief, put on his jacket, straightened his tie, drank the remains of the water from his plastic cup, threw it in the bin, picked up his briefcase, and walked out. He walked out of the office, to the lift, rode down in the lift, walked out past the front desk where the security guard gave him a weary nod of recognition, and out through the big glass doors into the night.

He was free! He was out! No teams of highly-trained OPU hunter-killers had slain him before he could make his escape. The night air was fresh by the standards of Yon. A light wind was blowing from the sea with the tang of salt in it, cutting through the city-stink of fumes and slums. He had hacked into OPU's central files and walked away alive and free. He'd done it!

Now he needed a drink. A few blocks away was the district known as Tanahung, where the bars stayed open all night. The name, supposedly meaning Red City, was an unbelievable corruption of Chinese and Malay words-almost a metaphor for Yon City itself. On the way he pulled out his phone and dialled Mai Okugawa's number. It told him that her phone was switched off and invited him to leave a message. Of course: it was the middle of the night, and most people were asleep. Most people were not drug fields and hackers who played games with death and started drinking some time after two in the morning.

'Miss Okugawa, this is Leun Wa-Fai,' he said. 'I've got something special. I'll need more this time.'

He felt good. He felt exhilarated. Tonight was a night to celebrate. He walked to Tanahung, walked through it to the waterfront where the real dives were. There was a bar here where for a hundred Rinchan he could watch two girls doing it with each other.

Yon City, on Selang's narrow strip of seacoast, was the undisputed capital, the only place in the whole country worth calling a city. And Yon City was a sprawling mess of Malays, Chinese, Filipinos, Indians, Thais, Australians-all the peoples who had colonised the coastline of South Asia over the centuries. But the rest of the country-which made up about half its population and contained over ninety percent of its land area-was inland. It was a land of hills and forests, small farming villages and tribal peoples. The further inland one travelled, the fewer of the coastal peoples one would meet, and the more centuries into the past one would seem to recede. Up country, as it was known in English, men carried Kalashnikovs as a matter of course, but these were the only modern tools most of the tribal villagers possessed. They still used oxen instead of tractors to plough their land, and maintained their rice fields through careful hand-controlled irrigation.

Lu Timao was far up country, in the territory of the Yugan tribe. When the warlords had decided to get rid of the communists for good their combined forces drove north from Yon City, and the great War Road was cut through the forest to move men and supplies to the front line. Lu Timao was a little Yugan village that happened to be on the course of this road. After the communists were gone and the warlords turned to fighting each other instead, the road that had grown up remained but was hardly ever used. Then Evergreen Healthcare decided that somewhere on that road was the ideal spot to build a private hospital, and the planners stuck their finger on the map at a spot that had the name 'Lu Timao' printed on it. When they got there the village was empty of people, but the name was on the paper so Lu Timao was what they called it.

Nowadays, the Lu Timao Clinic was a large open complex of buildings atop a small hill overlooking the old war-road. It was surrounded by a circle of parkland, where the forest had been cleared away and imported rolls of lawn-grass laid in its place. This was dotted with pleasant little cottage-style residences for the more senior members of staff, and for the paying guests. There were swimming pools, a small golf course, and an aircraft landing strip for Evergreen Healthcare's private transports to ferry patients and supplies to and from Yon City. Little expense was spared to make the patient's stay a pleasant one. The clinic had on its staff many young women, and a smaller number of young men, known as 'care assistants'. It was their job to do anything to make sure that a patient's stay was a comfortable and pleasurable as possible.

Lu Timao had been chosen for its discreet location. People came from all over the world for treatment here, but not everyone wanted it known. Evergreen Healthcare's motto was Youth and Beauty at Any Time of Life, and that could be accomplished best with treatments that were considered unethical in many parts of the world. People came here to have their youth and beauty restored, but most of them would rather that no-one knew how they had come about it.

Among the patients today was Toshiro Hirohashi, who as a director of Evergreen Healthcare's parent company OPU was a particularly honoured guest. He was being seen by the clinic's top surgeon, Dr Kim. In rank, he was second only to the clinic's Medical Director, Dr Winslett.

Hirohashi's heart was simply showing typical signs of executive stress, Dr Kim explained. He worked too hard and spend too little time relaxing. Dr Kim did not recommend a heart transplant: it was not medically necessary, and he was sure that Hirohashi would not be able to bear staying off work as long as was needed for recovery.

'I know that you would resume your usual level of activity far too soon,' chided Kim gently.

Hirohashi silently gave him a look of distaste. Why did these doctors always have to talk to their patients like naughty children?

'I'm going to prescribe medication instead,' continued Kim, apparently oblivious of Hirohashi's baleful glare. 'That should strengthen your heart and allow you to keep up your present level of activity with no serious health risks. Of course, you should relax for at least an hour before going to sleep, and do some gentle exercise every day, but...' He didn't bother finishing.

Dr Kim went out to write a prescription for the medication. Meanwhile, in the consulting room, a young and pretty care assistant showed Hirohashi a relaxation technique, in which she knelt before him, holding the head of his penis in her mouth and massaging it with her tongue. It worked wonders. Mr Hirohashi felt very relaxed.

Instead of simply writing a prescription as usual and handing it to the pharmacist, in this case Dr Kim himself went to the dispensary and prepared Hirohashi's medication. He labelled the bottle as containing Procare's latest heart drug, but the pills that he put in it were very different.

As Leun was walking through Tanahung, a voice called out that froze him to the spot. 'Hey! You! Come here!' shouted the voice in Malay. Guiltily he turned his head and saw a policeman leaning out of a car window, with a look of arrogant command on his face. 'Yes, you! Chinese! Come here!' Leun was rigid with terror, unable to move. Sweat stood out on him despite the cool night air. Then a young Chinese girl moved past him towards the police car. She wore a short pink top that left her midriff bare, semi-transparent enough to show her dark nipples through the thin material. She had stiletto-heeled shoes, fine black stockings, and a tiny micro-skirt slit up the side, short enough that Leun could see the lower reaches of her naked bottom as she went past him to the car.

'Get in the car,' said the policeman impatiently. Nervously she went around to the other side and got in. The cop was fiddling with his groin-getting his tool out by the look of things. The window was still open, and Leun could hear every word. 'You new here?' he said, then continued without waiting for an answer. 'If you work here, you must do whatever I want. Take in your mouth.'

'I not take-' she stammered in rather poor Malay, with a heavy Cantonese accent. Then she switched to Cantonese, which she spoke perfectly. 'You must wear a rubber.' It was surprising that she didn't speak perfect Malay-most people in Yon City were fluent in both languages. Perhaps she came from one of the Chinese towns further along the coast.

The cop slapped her hard across the face, the sound of flesh on flesh ringing out clear through the night air. 'You do what I say! Or I arrest you for drugs! You want that?'

She shook her head and gave out a sort of low wail of despair. Then she hesitantly lowered her face-already purpling from the impact-into his lap.

Leun snapped out of his frozen state suddenly, and realised that he shouldn't be staring at this scene. He hurried on before the policeman had a chance to notice him. But the cop's attention was elsewhere. One hand was up the whore's skirt, and the other stroked her head which worked at his groin. 'Anything I want,' he was saying with slow, malicious pleasure, grinning like a wolf. 'Any time I say. That way I do not arrest you. If you make me arrest you, you will be very sorry...'

Young Mohamed was caught up in the fever of the crowd. The celebrations in Yon City were like a riot, but a riot of joy. The communists were gone! Mullah Rahman had come down out of the hills like the sword of Allah and driven the unrighteous out.

'Allah akbar! Allah akbar! Allah akbar!' chanted the crowd, Mohamed as enthusiastically as any. Mohamed Hasan had heard about Mullah Rahman all his life. When the communists had come, those Muslims who refused to submit to their atheistic system had taken to the hills. The Mullah had emerged as a leader among them, a man both holy and skilled in the arts of war. His name was whispered like a sacred charm among those who still practised the Faith in secret. One day Mullah Rahman will come, the old men used to say in tones of reverence, and he will break the power of the evil ones. Mohamed had prayed every day for years for Allah to give the Mullah success in battle. And now his prayers had finally been answered.

Now the Mullah had rolled into Yon City with shining new tanks granted to him by Allah. His men had taken the communist garrison by surprise and quickly overwhelmed it. That left the civilian police, who were nothing-they had been blown away like leaves before a strong wind. At last the government buildings had been surrounded and pounded with shell-fire until the defenders came out, begging for mercy which they knew they would not receive. Communists were seized, their bodies torn apart by the angry crowds. Some were publicly stoned by the Mullah's men, but most fell into the hands of the crowd first, and were cut up with knives or simply beaten and kicked to death. Around the city, soldiers had organised gangs of workers to pile these corpses up. Above each pile was set up a sign with the words 'The Vengeance of Allah.'

An amplified voice started to shout over the roaring of the crowd. Mohamed looked and saw a man standing on a tank with a megaphone. He had seen such things before-the police used to use them to be heard over the riots.

'Men of Islam!' shouted the voice. 'Mullah Rahman has taken Yon City from the infidel. Allah akbar!' He waited while the crowd shouted back with enthusiasm, Allah akbar! Allah akbar! Allah akbar! As the sound began to die down, the speaker continued. 'But the fight is not over. The children of Satan still have powerful armies in the north, holding the hill country. The fight to drive them out will be hard! It will be long! Allah has chosen the Mullah for the task of destroying the infidels! And the Mullah needs men! Allah commands us to fight! Now you must join Mullah Rahman's fight! Join the Mullah's army! Go to Ramung, and join! A new army is forming in Ramung! Join the Mullah there! Men of Islam! The time has come for you to join the fight against the evil enemy...'

The tank receded into the distance, and the words were lost to Mohamed's hearing. But his boyhood dreams were coming true. The Mullah had come, and wanted him to fight. Already, the surging, chanting crowd was pushing toward Ramung, a large open square on the east side of the city. Mohamed joined in the chants and his heart sang with joy and with praise for Allah.

As Leun Wa-Fai sat down at his usual table in the Lucky Dragon, he paid no attention to the westerner who had just come in and sat down at another table with a glass of whisky. He was just another drinker in the bar.

Lachlan laid his case on the table and shifted it about a bit until the directional microphone was pointing straight at Leun. As Leun picked up his Tsingtao and took a swig-an unusually heavy gulp for him, usually a slow drinker-Lachlan heard the sound of it in his discreet earphones. Leun finished his drink quickly and ordered another bottle, and then another, and all Lachlan could hear was the sound of him drinking and muttering to himself in what sounded like Cantonese. Lachlan had been in south Asia a long time, and had picked up some of the widely-spoken languages of the region-Malay, Cantonese, Thai Filipino-but Cantonese was a difficult language for a westerner to master, because the listener needed to distinguish the tone of every syllable to make sense of it. Lachlan listened, but all he make out up was that Leun was nervous. He could also see that Leun was an addict-probably heroin, judging by the way he kept scratching his arm-and he was hurting for a hit.

A woman arrived and sat down at Leun's table. Lachlan knew her face from somewhere. He searched his memory ... yes, Mai Okugawa, the crusading journalist. He had read many of her articles, and knew she hated OPU. To Lachlan that meant she was alright.

'How much have you brought?' asked Leun. Now he was speaking clearly, Lachlan could make out the Cantonese alright.

'A hundred grams.' Mai opened the bag she was holding towards Leun so he could see inside.

A hundred grams? Does she mean a hundred grams of heroin? thought Lachlan. Bloody hell, that's a lot!

Leun looked around furtively, then opened the briefcase on which his left hand had been resting. 'It's all here,' he said in a whisper. 'The plan is to ship medical supplies to markets across the world.' He looked around again. 'But not just ordinary medical supplies ... organs!'

'Organs?' said Mai, sounding like she didn't understand.

'Human organs. For transplant. It seems they're getting human organs from somewhere ... they call it the Special Projects Unit.' He said the words Special Projects Unit in English, and then continued in Cantonese. 'It's somewhere near Lu Timao.'

Mai was reeling in shock. Lachlan knew about OPU's human organ business already, so it was no surprise to him.

'Lu Timao?' asked Mai. 'They're using that place to get people's organs?'

'No, at the moment that's where they do the transplants. They get the organs from somewhere nearby-Special Projects. But now they're planning to export them all over the world.'

The Golden Crescent Refuge was a feeble answer to Yon City's desperate homelessness problem, but at least someone was making an effort. It was a mixture of orphanage, hospital and poorhouse. Some people here were terminally sick, others were crippled and unable to earn a living, and others just couldn't get a job. There were more than four adults to a bed. And the orphans were everywhere. They slept under beds, on shelves, in cupboards, and all over the floor. And there was never enough money even to feed anyone properly.

Doctor Aziz's head was swimming with the size of the payment he was being offered. And all he had to do was let them take some of his patients off his hands. Who could say what would happen to them? Perhaps it was really as the man had said, and they were going to a better life. They could hardly have a worse one than here. And the money would help the ones who stayed behind. It would let them eat properly for a change. And it would make sure Aziz could pay his rent this month. Recently things had been getting so tight that he couldn't see how even he was going to survive, let alone the hundreds that he cared for.

Silently accepting the need for it, he nodded and pocketed the money. 'I can have them ready by tomorrow,' he said.

The next day, the man returned with a convoy of unmarked trucks. Aziz assembled the hundred patients he had picked out. They were of both sexes, all below thirty years old, about half of them children. Many were crippled, but none had terminal diseases and none were substance abusers.

In one of the escort vehicles, Sergeant Lachlan of the Security Division shifted uneasily in his seat.

'What's going on?' he said out loud. 'I thought we were supposed to be guarding a shipment of valuable merchandise.'

Major Longthorne turned his head. 'Do you have something to say about the nature of our mission, Sergeant?' he asked in his posh English accent. 'I'm sure we'll all be thrilled to hear your opinions.'

'It's people, sir!' Lachlan had been with OPU a year now, and he knew that the company got up to some pretty questionable things, but this was the first time he'd heard of living people being treated as merchandise.

'Company property, Lachlan. We are guarding a convoy of company property. Don't lose any sleep over what those vehicles happen to be carrying. It's really not our concern.'

'But sir!' replied Lachlan in slack-jawed disbelief, 'They're people!'

'Don't be insubordinate, Sergeant!' snapped Longthorne. 'Any more of this and I'll report it! Do we understand each other?'

'Yes sir,' replied Lachlan, eyes downcast. Then under his breath, to quiet to hear, he muttered 'English bastard!'

On the table before Dr Keitlinger lay the living anaesthetised body of an orang-utan, with a red pen line across its shaven abdomen. He took up his scalpel, laid it to the top of the red line, and with practised skill opened the body cavity. He eased organs aside and found the liver. Carefully, the doctor cut away the organ from the rest of the body. A nurse opened a box and Keitlinger laid the living organ on the bed of biologically sterile ice inside. The nurse carried the box to a sterile cabinet containing a bath of AC237, the latest batch of treefrog serum. The nurse opened the sealed lid of the serum bath, and Keitlinger picked up the liver and dipped it in the thick whitish translucent liquid, pushing it down to make sure that it was covered. The nurse closed the lid to keep the whole thing sterile.

They went over to the second operating table. On this lay subject #4421, Asian male, approximate age 50, an alcoholic drifter picked up from the streets of Yon City. He had a similar pen line along his belly, and the doctor performed the same procedure on him as he had upon the ape. His shrivelled and abused old liver was taken out and placed unceremoniously on a tray.

The nurse brought the box of precious fluid over to #4421's table, where Dr Keitlinger lifted the perfect liver from its bath of AC237 and inserted it into the vacant space in #4421's body. Now came the tricky part. Keitlinger had to attach the patient's severed and stopped blood vessels to the alien organ. But Keitlinger was a top-flight transplant surgeon, and it went without a hitch. The beast's body and the old liver were bagged up and sent for analysis, subject #4421 was sent to the recovery room, and another day of groundbreaking medical science passed at the Special Projects Unit.

The OPU trucks pulled up at the border post. The guards on the Selang side were no problem. They glanced at the paperwork, accepted a laughably small handful of Rinchan, and they were happy. But the Thai guards were a different matter. Usually Thai guards weren't much more trouble-a few US dollars would buy them-but today they had something big going on. They were on alert for something.

'Medical supplies,' Longthorne told them for the twelfth time in his imperfect Thai. 'Must be kept sterile. Cannot be opened.' He pulled out some more dollars, and the guard took them, but they didn't change his mind. He insisted on opening them.

The guard started to bring veiled threats into his language, and Longthorne, fuming with anger, finally suffered the cases to be opened. Inside, packed in ice, were row upon row of perfect, glistening human hearts. Some were very small-children's hearts. And the men saw.

The Thais were a little taken aback, but once they got over the shock they weren't that interested. Clearly this wasn't what they were looking for. After a bit of chatter, they waved the trucks on.

In the back, Longthorne heard the voice of Sergeant Lachlan. 'The were fucking hearts man, human hearts!' he was saying. 'Look, they ship people up to Lu Timao, and they ship hearts out from Lu Timao to Thailand. Now where are they getting they hearts from? It's no fucking hard tae work out, is it?'

'Lachlan, you insubordinate bastard!' yelled the Major. 'One more word out of you and I'll have you up on a charge! It is not your place to pass judgement on the Company's ethics. We are here to guard shipments of merchandise, and that is what we will do. The contents of those boxes is no concern of yours! Do I make myself absolutely bloody clear?'

Leun was bad. First he had drunk more beer than he was used to at the Lucky Dragon, then he had shot up pure heroin on top of it. His walk was unsteady as he returned to his apartment. Lachlan had followed him there in case he was going to do anything else interesting, but it looked like he was going to be in the seventh heaven for a few hours, so Lachlan decided it was time to knock off and get a dram.

As Leun fumbled for his keys, a van pulled into the kerb beside him and its sliding side-door opened. Arms grabbed Leun and he had disappeared before he knew what was going on. The van drove on at a normal, unhurried pace. Lachlan followed in his Nissan, surprised by this sudden turn of events. It looked like OPU had found out about who was selling its secrets. But did OPU know who Leun was selling them to? If they didn't, they'd know very shortly. Lachlan was sure of their ability to learn anything they wanted from Leun.

Mai Okugawa would be in danger. He didn't know her, but she was an enemy of OPU and a potential source of information. Lachlan decided to intervene. He had done a background check on her earlier in the day, and could still remember her address. He passed the van, got well ahead and then proceeded to break the speed limit and several other traffic laws to get to her house.