“Is it a cultural thing?”
He squirmed. She wasn’t going to let it go. “Yeah, nah, maybe… I dunno…” She waited patiently for an answer, looking intently at his face for clues to what he was feeling. He wanted to tell her but he didn’t know how to explain or even justify himself.
“You can’t hold onto this. It’s got to come out sometime.”
He gave a deep sigh that was dangerously close to turning to tears. “My first time… It was… It was technically a rape…”
She sat back, shocked. “Technically?”
“Things were rough in our community. We were wild. We held a girl down and took turns.”
“Were you violent?”
“No, we never hit her or nuthin. Just held her down. It happened a lot. We were all either drunk or high on ganja, the girls too.”
Li Li had heard about substance abuse and sexual violence in Aboriginal communities, had heard that young girls were often raped and prostituted themselves to white men. “Was it unusual under customary law? Not all cultures are romantic when it comes to sex. Did she complain?”
“No. She accepted it.”
“But you feel guilty?”
He nodded. “Shamed. It happened at other times. It was the way things were done.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen, she was twelve.”
Li Li considered him carefully. He was clearly pained. “Were you ever abused?”
“Nah, I mean I was hit. Dad used to bash my mum when he was on the grog. People like to believe Aboriginal culture is all nice and spiritual, but it can be violent. Women were not treated well.”
“So sex was often forced?”
“Consent was not important. It’s complicated.”
“Would you have been punished under traditional law?”
He shook his head. “She was from a rival tribe, a half-caste. She was nuthin… There for the taking.”
Li Li had studied enough aspects of Aboriginal culture to know that there were strict rules on who a man could have sex with. There were women who were forbidden. Outside those specific restrictions there were few rules.
“How far back before your mob had to obey white law?”
He considered her carefully. It was an intelligent question. “Both sets of grandparents married under traditional law. My grandmother was the second wife. She was twelve. My grandfather had three custom wives. My mother was promised to an older man as his third. The missionaries stopped it.”
“So you were caught between two cultures within living memory?”
“It’s no excuse.”
“But you are not like that now?”
He shook his head again. “I’ve never really had a proper girlfriend or a proper relationship. Just a series of fucks that meant nothing. Even when I had a job as a tour guide I was fucking the white backpackers…”
“You forced them?” she asked, trying to understand.
“Nah, nah, nothing like that. They’d come on to me, especially the Europeans, the English, Swedes, Danes, Germans... French chicks. I was just a piece of exotic black meat. One night stands mostly.”
“And you think I am like that?” she asked, shocked that she had missed this possibility; guilty that she had seen him as an exotic.
“Nah, nah. I like you, heaps. But I don’t know if I can be a decent father and a proper lover. I’m shamed.”
She sat back, confounded by his revelation. He was clearly wounded. Reason suggested she should back away but something pulled her to him. Perhaps they were fated. “David. I apologise. We, I, have been insensitive. Alice’s stupid genetic program. We didn’t think…”
“No, I want to, but I have some shit to work out.”
She reached for his hand to comfort him. “So, friends, oui? We work it out?”
He nodded and smiled. It was a relief to confess. And then, despite his words, or because of them, he leaned forward to kiss Li Li gently on the lips. She accepted it carefully. He laughed. “Seems my delinquent cock has a different idea,” he said leaning back.
Li Li laughed. It was fully erect and beautiful. “I will teach you to make love to me, non? Properly. No one night stand. A commitment. A promise. We will become lovers, l”amour vrai.”
“A new start on a new world.”
She leaned forward to kiss him and to hold him. She was prepared to take the time. She thought he was worth it.
They eventually made love on the beach, gently, carefully. It was exhilarating because there was no one to judge, no one to condemn. Eden had no concept of sexual sin. It was the moment she conceived, but that had become unimportant, secondary. Her main concern was now David.
77
Eva
She had taken to staying behind late. Some thought she was being obsessive but the truth was that she loved her work. There were moments when she just stood and looked at the jumpers, letting her imagination carry her to alien worlds. She had already been the first human to jump to another planet and even though it was a brief, almost surreal visit, it was seared into her memory. The star was visible from Earth, a little twinkle below the Southern Cross. She could look into the night sky and know she had been there, actually been there. And she wanted to go again, desperately. Nothing would stop her.
She encountered Julio Ibinez walking hurriedly down a corridor. He was a colleague and she knew him well: an electrical engineer helping design the onboard instrumentation, the very latest in nanoelectronics and biomechanics.
“You’re working late Julio?” she inquired in a friendly manner.
His reaction surprised her. He seemed shocked to see her. He might have got away with it if he hadn’t nervously offered a lame excuse. “I left something… I had to… You know… Go back.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “It happens. We’ve all been working late.”
When he turned the corner she contacted Aviva immediately. “I think we have a problem.” She told Aviva of her suspicions.
“We have to be sure,” Aviva said curtly, clearly stressed at having to deal with so many security concerns. “I’ll alert a team…”
“This should happen immediately,” said Eva, snapping into combat mode, a reaction embedded by her air force training a long time ago.
“If I can get the team together on such short notice…”
“I’ll contact them. I’ll do this. I believe I have the authority.”
“Are you sure? Do you understand where this may lead?”
“Yes, but I don’t think it will come to that. I know Julio, he looked scared.”
“You can’t let friendship…”
“I’ll do it myself if it comes to that.”
“Only as a last resort.” She didn’t let Aviva continue and ended the call. Perhaps Aviva had forgotten that during her training she had dated a police special operations guy and he had taught her a trick or two. She had even thought of entering the Brigada de Operações Especiais, but that was still a macho boy’s club. She contacted two security staff, an ex-police officer, Pedro Loyola and a former army specialist, Chico Silva. She spoke with full authority and commanded them to meet her at the facility within three hours, no excuses. Then she made her way to the security room and ordered the AI to recover all footage of Julio’s movements. He had been clever, but not clever enough. When she asked the AI to highlight any unusual movements it delivered a series of images of him lingering around equipment he would not ordinarily be concerned with. To the uneducated eye it would look relatively normal, but the way he stood suggested he had a small camera secreted on his body. When she asked the AI about its scanning parameters she found a serious error. Her predecessor had not updated the scanners to detect the new biomechanical cameras, something Paulo would know about. The fact that he had access to them suggested that he was working for a sophisticated network. But why?
Her team arrived and they dressed in dark civilian clothes, hiding knives and automatic pistols under jackets. She then left a coded messag
e on the local police chief’s secure line. He was in the pay of Shunyata and it would be his job to make sure any reports disappeared.
It was three in the morning when they moved. Paulo would likely be in deep sleep when they entered his apartment and his immediate reaction would be confusion. It looked like it would be a simple pick up, only a few minutes to negotiate a few stairwells, bust the door open and bundle him hooded into the van. There was potentially just one problem. He had a girlfriend.
Maria De Souza woke with a hand around her throat. “Do not speak. You leave now. You never return or you are dead.” Eva squeezed her throat tighter to emphasise her point. The poor girl pissed herself. She was naked: pretty, slightly pudgy, part Indian, a mulatto like her. She dragged her out of the bed, piss going everywhere, as the two other men efficiently tied, gagged and hooded a naked Paulo before he had a chance to react.
“Dress quickly,” she hissed at the girl. She felt sorry for the poor thing. She was trembling as she struggled to dress in a halter-top and short, denim skirt – peasant clothes. When she had finished Eva pressed five thousand real into her hand, a small fortune for a girl like her. “Leave your bag and phone. We will not use your card, but cancel it anyway, get a new one. You say nothing. You had a fight and left Paulo. We will know if you talk. Do you understand?” The girl nodded, terrified. “I am sorry to involve you, but we had no choice. Now go.”
The girl ran immediately, stumbled with fright and then disappeared. Eva knew her type. She would say nothing.
She searched his apartment. He had been less than careful. She found the small camera still linked to his laptop: a biomechanical contact lens with a small chip hidden in the iris - clever. She put it in a bag along with his phone, wallet and the girl’s purse.
Paulo was shaking as she removed the hood. He squinted at the bright, artificial light, his cheeks still wet from his tears. They were in a nondescript concrete bunker, his arms and legs tied to a steel chair bolted to the ground. He attempted to wrest himself loose but it was no use.
“Don’t struggle,” she said softly. “The ties are plastic and will cut into your wrists.”
He jerked as he heard a movement behind him. The two men were letting him know they were standing at the rear, out of his eye line, a tactic designed to unsettle him.
“Where am I?” he blurted.
“Nowhere,” she said coldly from behind him. “And you are now nobody. You have just disappeared. The only way you can return to some sort of life is if you cooperate. Otherwise you die tonight and your body will never be found.”
“Are you going to t-torture me?”
She walked in front of him and squatted so that she was at his eye level. He was naked, the bright light revealing every mole, freckle, pimple, hair and bead of sweat. “No Paulo. We will not hurt you. Your death will be painless. An injection of Nembutal. But if you tell us everything you will live.” She nodded and the two men walked forward to untie him. She walked into the shadows and returned with some ill-fitting clothes.
“Why Paulo? Surely you understood the risk?”
He dressed quickly, looked about furtively and realised that any chance of escape was utterly futile. “Okay, okay,” he said beginning to cry. “I’m sorry.”
“What was it?” she asked softly, handing him a foam cup of water. “Debt? Did they threaten your family? A sexual indiscretion? Child porn? Drugs?”
He groaned. “A stupid bet with the wrong people.”
“You know the procedure. You signed an agreement that you would tell us of any compromise. You underwent the training.”
“I was embarrassed.”
She sighed. The look of shame on his face indicated that he was vulnerable to social embarrassment. “What? Horses? Cards? The Casino?”
“Football. The match was rigged. I was a fool.”
“Sit,” she barked.
He sat and bowed his head.
“How much?”
“Thirty thousand real.”
“We could have covered that.”
“I would have lost my job, been embarrassed in front of my colleagues.”
“Honour? Stupid macho shit,” she spat. “Where is the honour in this?”
“I thought I could fix it.”
“Obviously you have been passing on information for money. Who?”
He tightened his lips and she again squatted in front of him, putting her hand on his knee. “You see, it is your silence that will kill you. We can find out. I have your laptop, phone.”
“They will kill me, cruelly.”
“So that tells us they are criminals, I’m guessing an organised mob with the ability to fix matches. Big boys. This means you will need our protection. Give me a name.”
He looked about, shaking with fear. The two men remained motionless. It was a hopeless situation. “T… Tiago,” he stammered.
One of the men shifted his weight at the mention of the name.
“Tiago Diaz?” she asked.
He nodded.
“So this is serious. If you said anything you risked exposing a national football hero. If I recall Tiago’s cousin is a commander in the police force?”
“Yes, elite anti-gang task force.”
“Yet another corrupt cop. And how do you know Tiago?”
“I went to school with him. We caught up, had a drink. He gave me a tip. My team Botafogo to win: Twenty to one. I trusted him. I was a fool.”
“And you were dealing directly with Tiago?”
“No, a runner, no name, a young favela thug. He gave me a password and I downloaded data…”
“For how long?”
“I’ve been collecting for two weeks, but the first download only happened last night. Images mainly. No specifications.”
She had heard enough. She nodded to the two men and they hauled Paulo to a sterile metal cell with a prison bed, open toilet and no way to hang himself. She contacted Aviva as soon as she entered her office.
“Fuck,” Aviva spat.
“My guess is that this operation also trades in corporate espionage. They may not have a buyer as yet.”
“Let’s hope not, but let’s also assume Paulo was set up. Link his devices to our network. I’ll analyse the data.”
“There was a girl… I let her go.”
“You what?”
“Don’t worry, she’s tagged, subcutaneous.”
“Clever, does she know?”
“No, I distracted her by strangling her as she woke. It’s up under her hairline where no one can see it. If she makes a wrong move we’ll know, but I think she’s an innocent.”
The cartel had no chance. Shunyata’s system traced the data through a network of servers, burning up the trail as it made its way to a laptop in Morumbi, a wealthy suburb of Sao Paulo. Aviva copied all the data and deleted any sensitive material. Unfortunately the system also told her the data had been downloaded to an external drive. A rescue team was dispatched immediately. Within a few hours Tiago Diaz was in her hands and four hours later, his cousin, the police commander, was dead from an assassin’s bullet.
Tiago Diaz sang immediately, naming his contacts in a network of criminals with close links to wealthy Brazilians. She had got to the data before he had a chance to sell it to any number of corporate interests. He tried to strike a deal, suggest he could work for them (although he didn’t know who they were). He had nothing to offer and Aviva could not trust him. His body was found two days later in a railway culvert near the Favela do Moinho, his hands tied behind his back and his wounds consistent with a gangland execution. It was big news in Brazil and a carefully orchestrated campaign of leaks exposed the match fixing (not big news in itself) and pointed to a rival cartel as the executioners. No one suspected Shunyata.
Eva handed Paulo an e-reader open to the front page of Folha de Sao Paulo detailing the death of Tiago and the unravelling of the cartel. He began shaking immediately.
“You are lucky, Paulo. You get to live.” She held up a
hand, holding her thumb close to her pointer finger. “It was this close.”
He gulped. “What happens next?”
“You disappear. You live, but not here. Your new name is Rodrigo Cabillo. Rest assured we will watch you, wherever you are. You can even marry and raise a family. And to ensure you stay in touch we will put you on a pension, payable every month. You just have to turn up to receive it. The moment you don’t is the day you die. Quite generous considering.”
He could not believe his luck. “Thank you,” he blurted.
“Fuck that Paulo, I’d have slit your throat myself.” She slapped him hard across the face and walked out.
A day later he was in Panama, but at least he was alive.
78
Akash
He was pacing up and down the patio of his apartment, glancing inside every now and then to check on his family curled up the couch watching the latest anime feature by the master Kasumi, bracing himself against the icy wind. He needed the cold to stay awake, to sharpen his mind.
“Tell Eva she should take a few days off. A five star resort, St Lucia or something. Take the private jet, fly it in herself if she wants. She deserves it.”
“She won’t go,” said Aviva. “She’s like a snappy dog guarding a bone.”
“And all loose ends have been tied?”
“That we know of.”
He nodded to himself, adjusted his earpiece and looked out toward snowcapped mountains. He did not want to ask the question.
“We’ve completed the profile on Bhat…” said Aviva.
He sighed. “And?”
“It’s not good. He’s corrupt as all fuck. A fixer linked to goondas, Shiv Sena extremists, corrupt police officers, corrupt politicians…”
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