Chapter 1: A Penny For Your Thoughts

J.P. Milton, of Hoffington, Burke, Jeffries and Bedletter, one of the most prestigious houses of law in London, got the nod for the mission that no one wanted, but which would make whoever did it a LOT of money.

It was probable that J.P. Milton got the job because this particular barrister, of all the barristers of Hoffington, Burke, Jeffries and Bedletter, was one of the most feared and hated lawyers in the whole of Great Britain.

And so, to the high muckety-mucks of Hoffington, Burke ... you know the rest ... it seemed like the ideal mission to send J.P. Milton on, because they all sincerely hoped that Milton would be killed in the wilds of deepest, darkest, most dangerous Africa.

After the documents were delivered, of course.

That way they'd all be rid of a dangerous pain in the ass, and the proceeds of any business generated by those documents, which could be enormous, would go to them in their entirety, instead of mostly to Milton.

J.P. Milton was a barrister, and normally eschewed the piddling work of a solicitor. In this case, however, Milton thought it would be a "hoot" as the Americans were known to say, to run off to romantic, mysterious, interesting Africa, most of which, after all had been colonies of European countries for years and years and must surely be safe and civilized by now.

That opinion was re-enforced when the plane landed in a quite scenic and modern looking city, quaintly named Leopoldville, in that part of the continent run by the Belgians, called, Milton believed, the Congo. Milton was not aware that 99.99% of all the wealth in the Belgian Congo was located, in fact, within a circle twelve miles in diameter of the airport the plane landed at.

Milton felt a thrill as negotiations were conducted with a real, live Black African. He didn't look very ferocious, which was perfectly all right with Milton. But he did look at the white barrister with what could only be called a 'fixed stare'.

Milton grandly announced that a guide to the present living quarters of one "Tarzan of the Apes" would be required, as well as someone to carry the luggage, hopefully in a motorized convoy that would not be exposed to rain or dust. Milton would retain control of the thick briefcase in which reposed the Last Will and Testament of Godfried Parker, father of Jane Parker, currently believed to be married to or in the company of this Tarzan person.

The not-so-vicious Black African, when he heard the demand, was heard to say "Pana! Mobuta ataya cissyvera no ataya bunada loquato ataya bunada monkasso."

Now the reader must here forgive the author, who does not speak Congolese, or Bantu, or whatever language was spoken by the man. The author has only heard these words repeated ... in the oral tradition sort of way. In fact the spelling of the words is even in question, since the author had to guess at it.

However! The meaning of the words is quite clear, and has been verified many times over by people who DO speak whatever language that was. Those words meant:

"Oh shit, not another fucking rich white person looking for fucking mythical Tarzan of the fucking mythical apes!"

The author firmly believes this is a paraphrase of the actual concept, but the meaning is clear.

Milton had a line of credit, however, which invariably makes negotiations go much better than the phrase might have led one to believe.

The negotiations went well and, within hours, Milton and all of Milton's baggage, consisting of four suitcases and one trunk, were loaded in the back of an old Land Rover, being driven, more or less, by an ancient wizened man who was much more chocolate colored than black, to Milton's dismay. How would it look in the memoirs if the mission hinged on some sort of mixed blood driver? Moreover, this chauffeur did not speak English, and so Milton was unable to learn much of anything. Grumbling about how things weren't off to an auspicious start, effort was expended in an attempt to watch where they were going.

Everything looked exactly the same.

What is known after this point is a topic for discussion, both philosophical and legal. Since a barrister is involved, any discussion would necessarily involve legal issues, even if it were a discussion about whether or not you would pass me a Kleenex, so I might blow my nose.

There ARE a few indisputable facts.

One is that, after four days, the elderly chauffeur returned. It is known that the Land Rover came back empty, of both Milton and the luggage. Another agreed upon fact is that, several months later, a search party duly put together and enfranchised by Hoffington, Burke, blah blah blah, found clothing positively identified as being Milton's in what could only be described as "deepest, darkest, most dangerous Africa." That clothing was torn to shreds and scattered in the jungle.

No body was found.

No trace of what might have been a body was found.

The elders of the firm would have been ecstatic, except that Milton's briefcase, containing the Last Will and Testament of Lord Parker, also was not found. All those facts are indisputable, as is the fact that Milton was not seen nor heard from for seven months after the disappearance.

It is also quite plain that, when Milton turned back up, all hell broke loose.

Your humble servant, the author, just happens to be a cousin to J.P. Milton, and it was for this reason that I was able to interview my cousin and record the story of some of what happened during those mysterious seven months. Of course there were participants in the story who could NOT be interviewed, so there is some small license taken by the author, merely in the interests of providing a story that is readable. But most of it came from my cousin.

And so, without further ado, this ... is her story.

Julia Penelope Milton (Penny to those she deemed friends), age twenty-six, and third in her law class at Oxford, had a pretty good idea that she was out of her element. What had seemed to start well had deteriorated with every mile the old bouncing vehicle plowed through the jungle.

She had a hard time communicating with the ancient geezer who was driving the land rover, but through a series of pantomimes that she was extremely glad no one else saw, she was able to get across the idea that the bouncing and jarring of the rutted road had dribbled her bladder around like a basketball, and that she had to pee.

He obligingly stopped in the middle of nowhere and she climbed out of the vehicle. the glittering black eyes of the driver were on her, which didn't surprise her. She was relatively sure, by now, that she was the first white woman the man had ever seen. By virtue of having seen a number of native women walking along what was laughingly called a road in this part of the seriously uncivilized world, she also knew she looked completely different from them.

The native women came in two basic types. One consisted of young, slim young women, girls really, with either tight high riding breasts, or hanging, droopy dugs that went along with the baby(s) the girl might be carrying. The other were older women, thick with fat and perhaps muscle, all of which had the sad looking sagging breasts that gave testimony that they had suckled many babies before they got old. All these breasts were naked, the women of that region being dressed only in long wrap around skirts, if they wore anything at all.

This made Penny a little nervous, in that she was probably the only woman in three hundred miles who had big soft breasts that DIDN'T sag, and which bulged outward in her smart and formerly pressed safari shirt in a manner that probably made it look like she had given birth to a calf, which was currently somewhere bawling for it's supper. That supper, it was plain to see, was in the wilds of Africa riding around inside her shirt.

That Penny stood out among women wasn't a new thing. While she normally kept her waist length blond hair in a series of braids that were then woven into a bun, all that hair still made men look and think about what it would look like, draped all over her naked body. Her eyes were that piercing blue that looked like the colored contact lenses of today, but wasn't. She had what people might have called an aquiline nose which, despite her diminutive 5' 6" height she could look down at one from (and did quite regularly).

In short, she was sex, packaged up in bright paper and bows, in a box that was just the right size to be every man's fantasy fuck mate.

And, she was completely aware of the effect she had on men. Every single partner in her firm had tried to get into what they glibly referred to as "her knickers" when she was hired on as a junior researcher. Penny, though, came from a hard driving, dog eat dog legal program at a university that took only the best to begin with. She knew the value of the hymen that was still firmly intact between her glorious soft thighs. She also knew how to use that to get what she wanted. She let each man get within almost literally an inch of picking that cherry before she burst into tears, pushing them away, moaning about how this was so unfair to Melody, or Margaret, or whatever the wife's name was, and how she just knew they couldn't possibly respect each other if she 'forced' her attentions on the poor man. She then made it a point to say, as she got dressed, that she didn't think it was necessary that Melody or Margaret or whoever be told about the almost incident, "even though you did suck my nipples most hotly".