Secret of the Slaves

by Alex Archer

“Well,” Annja said, “again, she might just have known more about the area than I do….”

  She let her words trail off when she noticed the other two looking at her closely. Dan looked outraged. Publico was openly amused.

  “Ah, Annja, for a world traveler, you’d think you’d realize denial is more than just a river in Egypt,” the rock star said. Publico held up a finger. “You’re both forgetting we do have a solid lead—that slip of paper Dan found in that unfortunate woman’s hand.”

  Annja looked at Dan and sighed. “It could just be coincidental, too.”

  “As may be,” Publico said. “But you two are going to Manaus to find out for certain. And I shall come with you.”

  13

  “He was holding out on us,” Annja said. “Of course I’m pissed off.”

  The waiting room in the offices of the River of Dreams Trading Company in Manaus was fluorescent bright, with dark-stained hardwood wainscoting, whitewashed walls and a white dropped-tile ceiling. An array of fern or palmlike plants in terra-cotta pots, exotic to Annja’s eyes but native to the surrounding forest, softened the starkness of an otherwise generically modern design, with a curved desk and chairs of curved chromed tubing with black leather seats and backs. Big modernistic murals of the rain forest splashed the walls with bright greens and reds and yellows. Pied tamarins, a famous local endangered species of primate, featured prominently, peering like troll dolls with black raisins for faces and cotton-ball wigs.

  “He has his reasons,” Dan said.

  Publico’s private jet had delivered them to Manaus shortly after noon, a few hours earlier. It had been one of the richest cities in the Western Hemisphere and possibly the richest in the Southern Hemisphere during its heyday as queen of the rubber trade. Unfortunately the invention of synthetic substitutes, and the rise of rubber cultivation in Southeast Asia, ended the frenzy in 1920.

  The city had recently returned to somewhat provisional status as financial center for Amazonia and much of South America, courtesy of the global economic boom. The place had a seedy, superficial quality, as if all the glossy steel and glass high rises downtown were fancy paint over cheap plastic.

  The River of Dreams Trading Company waiting room did little to dispel the impression of tackiness from Annja’s mind. It was spotless, but the colors struck her as a bit too gaudy, the smell of disinfectant too strong, the Brazilian jazz playing from concealed speakers a little too strident. It was all as if they were trying to hide something.

  “But to wait until now to tell us that this German friend of his had dealings with River of Dreams?” Annja said.

  “Was there something that suggested to you they don’t have their waiting room bugged?” Dan asked casually, hands in his pockets, studying a mural close up. “Just asking, you know.”

  “Oh,” Annja said.

  “Mr. Toby will see you now,” the receptionist said, preceding them down the hallway that led into the offices.

  “Toby?” Dan whispered. “Is that a first name or a last name.”

  “It’s probably his real first name. A lot of Brazilians just use one name. And they tend to like a lot of variety in their given names.”

  Toby was a pretty boy. Brazil had lots of those, Annja had noticed.

  “It’s such a pleasure to meet visitors from North America,” he effused in English, seating himself behind his desk. He had dark, slick hair, a cream-colored suit over a mauve shirt and dusty-rose tie, and a ring in his right ear. “They don’t often come to Manaus.”

  “I’d think you’d get a lot of ecotourists,” Dan said dryly.

  Toby laughed. “They don’t seem to visit our offices. What may River of Dreams Trading Company do for you, Ms. Callendar, Mr. Stone?” On the spur of the moment they had given the receptionist fake names. Annja hoped she could keep them straight.

  Dan’s expression hardened ever so slightly.

  “We’re here primarily for pleasure,” Annja said. “We couldn’t resist visiting the famous Manaus Opera House.”

  “It’s definitely a jewel in our crown,” Toby said enthusiastically.

  “But we have to admit to having an interest in certain Brazilian exports,” Annja continued.

  “Which ones would those be?”

  “Brazil nuts.”

  Dan stared at her as if she’d just beamed down from the starship Enterprise. “As you probably know, we Americans—North Americans, sorry—are growing ever more conscious of our health. Obsessed might not be too strong a word.”

  “We Brazilians are the same,” Toby said, smiling toothily. “It reflects our general vanity.” He made a discreet gesture as if brushing perfectly manicured fingertips down his breastbone to acknowledge his own guilt.

  “Nuts are growing in popularity back home, since they’ve acquired a reputation as a superfood, containing numerous valuable micronutrients. Brazil nuts are in considerable demand.”

  “Is that so?” Toby said.

  “I know the nuts will only grow in certain areas, including the Amazon Basin,” Annja said cheerfully. “I also know getting them out of their husks is very labor-intensive. If I understand correctly, in the wild, agoutis often chew through the tough outer shell, then bury the nuts they don’t eat. Which serves to plant new trees.”

  “You seem most knowledgeable.”

  Annja made a self-deprecating gesture. “I’ve done a certain amount of homework.”

  “And what do you wish of us in this connection?”

  “Well, I understand that Manaus is a major transshipment point for Brazil nuts. And it’s my understanding that River of Dreams, as an import-export concern, is highly experienced in navigating the sometimes tangled Brazilian export regulations. Now, this is all still somewhat speculative, I have to admit, but my associate and I were hoping to discuss the prospects of going into business with your company.”

  She looked expectantly at Dan. He was sitting back in his chair with one leg crossed over the other, looking stunned. “Huh? Oh. Absolutely,” he stammered.

  “That sounds fantastic,” Toby said. “At the moment, River of Dreams handles no cargoes of Brazil nuts. However, your suggestion certainly has merit. I will certainly have to consult with my superiors before we can possibly discuss details. I hope that’s all right with you both?”

  “Of course,” Annja said.

  “Oh, sure, sure,” Dan said, catching a sidelong look from her.

  “If you have business cards—” Toby said.

  “Unfortunately we were both robbed in Belém,” Annja said. “Among other things, we lost all our business cards.”

  Toby clucked in sympathy. “Oh, dear, that’s terrible,” he said. “There’s so much crime in Brazil these days. It’s a wonder anyone comes here.”

  “We did manage to keep our cell phones,” Annja said. She tore a page from a notebook from a pocket of her shorts and scribbled, “Anne Callendar” with her actual number. She handed that to Toby.

  They all rose. “I’m curious as to how you happened to hear about River of Dreams Trading Company,” Toby said.

  “Oh, I overheard my father telling some of his cronies about a business associate who’d had dealings with you. A German, a dealer in medical electronics.”

  Toby raised his eyebrows. “Oh, that would be Herr Lindmüller. Reinhard Lindmüller.”

  “I’m terrible with names,” Annja said.

  Toby’s expression turned sad. “I am afraid I have terrible news regarding Herr Lindmüller. He was killed this spring in a climbing accident in the United States. The horrible irony is, he had an overwhelming fear of heights.”

  Toby shook his sleek head. “Perhaps he was trying to learn to overcome his fears by confronting them directly. Irony, as I say.”

  “AGOUTIS?” Dan said as they walked down the corridor from the trading company offices.

  “They’re a kind of rodent,” Annja said. “I read it on Wikipedia.”

  He shook his head and expelled an exasperated breath. “That was
a waste of time.”

  “Remember what happened to the last person we asked flat out about Promessa,” Annja said. “What would you have done? Just asked why a murdered woman in Belém had an invoice from here clutched in her hand?”

  “Well, yeah,” Dan said.

  “What would you expect them to say? And what would you say if they started asking us how we knew about that? Who would we be placing at the scene of the crime—an actual River of Dreams employee, or just ourselves?”

  “You think they’d dare go to the cops?”

  “Why not? First off, we’re the ones who fled the scene of an apparent double murder and arson. Remember, the Brazilian authorities like to toss the occasional tourist into one of their horrible prisons just to show what’s what. And you don’t think in a country with such Byzantine regulations, a company like this one does business without having some friends in high places.”

  He walked a few steps with hands crammed in pockets and head thrust forward. Then he shook his head.

  “Okay. You make good points. But what was the point to coming here, then?”

  She shrugged. “This is our only lead. Or at least the only one Publico’s seen fit to share with us—after we turned it up ourselves. At least we’ve—what?—done reconnaissance.”

  “And what have we learned?”

  “If they know anything, they’re going to be a tough nut to crack. What do you think?”

  He shrugged. “Mr. Toby seemed pretty smooth. I have to admit he didn’t strike me as the type to blurt out deep, dark secrets just because we happened to ask probing questions.”

  “At least we have a pretext for continuing communication with them,” Annja said. “Much as I hate to admit I’m stumped, I’m about ready to ask Publico what exactly he has in mind.”

  They pushed through the tinted-glass doors onto the broad front steps descending to the street. As usual, the air seemed to push back. Even though the sun was setting, the temperature hadn’t dropped since they’d entered the building. Nine hundred miles up the Amazon Basin from the sea, Manaus was even hotter and more humid than Belém. It also struck Annja as a lot harder edged.

  Dan turned and looked appraisingly back at the four-story steel-and-glass office building that fronted the River of Dreams warehouses.

  “We might not have to go so far as that just yet,” he said. “Even though it looks pretty glossy up front here, security isn’t too tight. I think we might just want to pay them a visit after hours.”

  “You are not talking about breaking in,” Annja said.

  He looked at her from under an impishly raised eyebrow. “What else?”

  14

  Sir Iain Moran nodded gravely. “The notion has its merits,” he said in his rumbling baritone.

  Standing by the rail before the entryway to the Manaus Opera House, Dan smirked. Annja frowned. “We’re talking about breaking and entering here.”

  “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs,” Dan said.

  “Dan has a pretty rough-and-ready approach,” the billionaire singer and philanthropist said. Goran and Mladko stood discreetly apart from their boss and his conversation, but close. “It’s what you might expect from a hardened activist. I do have to point out that the stakes are pretty high in this game, Annja.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “People have been killed.”

  I’ve killed one, she thought. She hadn’t mentioned it in her own reports to Publico, by voice or e-mail—among other things, the last thing she wanted to do was leave an evidence trail for something like that. But she suspected Dan had informed his boss. She hoped he’d used strong encryption.

  “Ah, and isn’t that an indication that we’re on the right track, then?”

  Annja frowned and said nothing.

  “You know,” Publico said, “there’s even a district of the city named Zumbi dos Palmares.”

  “After the legendary last leader of the Quilombo dos Palmares, I’m guessing,” Annja said. “You think that’s a clue?”

  Publico shrugged his broad shoulders. “Why not?”

  He was dressed in immaculate white-tie evening dress. His graying blond hair swept down to his shoulders. The hair, the black tailcoat and stiff white shirt combined with Publico’s own physical presence to produce an almost overwhelming effect.

  To reduce the risk of falling under his spell, Annja turned away to lean on the railing.

  “He’s a popular historic figure in Brazil,” she said. “There are places and things named for Almirante Cochrane all over South America, too. That doesn’t seem to indicate there’s a secret conclave of unfairly pilloried Napoleonic-era British admirals dwelling away up in the wilds of the Amazon Basin.”

  Publico laughed loudly, attracting glances from the rest of the glittering crowd drifting toward the high, white-columned entrance with its arched top. Large banners announced an international film festival for the evening.

  “A hit! A palpable hit, dear lady. Maybe I feel so strongly about this quest of ours that I tend to see things that aren’t there. Still, there’s the little fact that my poor friend Reinhard dealt with River of Dreams.”

  “I still don’t know why you didn’t see fit to share that little nugget of information with us,” Annja said. She and Dan still wore the clothes they’d worn to the frustrating interview with Toby a couple of hours earlier. She was feeling increasingly dowdy as the night’s audience filed into the extravagant, domed belle epoque theater. The attendees possessed not just beauty but the ease and grace of being raised to wealth, which would forever be denied an orphan girl such as her. Or maybe that was just her insecurities speaking.

  “I didn’t want to prejudice you,” Publico said. “I thought it important for you to develop leads on your own.”

  “What are you holding back now so you won’t prejudice us?” she asked.

  “She’s got a good point,” Dan said.

  Publico nodded. “To be sure. Believe me, I hold back nothing vital, either to our quest or to your own survival. I will tell you that you’re on the right track—and that we need to know what can be learned from River of Dreams.”

  Annja clouded up. It was a totally unsatisfactory answer.

  “Ahh,” Publico said, his craggy face lighting. “My lovely companions arrive. Annja, Dan—if you’ll forgive me, it would be uncivilized of me to keep these ladies waiting.”

  He left embraced by two beautiful women, one blond and Nordic looking, one exotically African. Their own evening gowns put Annja in mind of the old phrase, “a lick and a promise.” It was about what they seemed to consist of.

  She turned a ferocious scowl on Dan. He shrugged. Then he waggled his eyebrows at her.

  She laughed. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go get something to eat. I’m starving.”

  “LOOK,” DAN SAID on the walk back to the hotel. “I know you’re reluctant about breaking into the River of Dreams warehouse. I won’t lecture you about bourgeois sensibilities—”

  “Good.”

  The traffic flowed around them like a river full of luminous fish. Annja walked along hugging herself as if chilled, although she could barely stand the heat. The smell of exhaust, ubiquitous at the center of any modern city, couldn’t overpower the omnipresent scent of the rain forest, stronger here than in Belém. Maybe that was why Manaus felt off somehow to Annja. She had a sense that this was temporary, an aberration, like a vacuum fluctuation in physics. The city, and all those within it, seemed to exist in a bubble that could simply collapse at any minute.

  Dan showed her a wolf grin as he continued. “I will point out that Publico has reason to believe these people—the people of this lost city—are hoarding secrets that could ease much misery and suffering on earth. Secrets that should be shared with all humankind. Need to be shared with all humankind. Are you with me on this?”

  She frowned. Then she nodded. Face it, she said told herself, this will not be the first time you’ve stretched the letter of th
e law out of all recognizable shape. It won’t be the last. I’ve killed people, for God’s sake. Why balk at a little B&E?

  “I guess so.” She brushed a stray lock of hair from her forehead and offered up a faint smile.

  “Good woman,” Dan said. “We’ll make an activist out of you yet.”

  “Maybe.”

  He crooked an arm. After another moment of hesitation, she wound her own through his.

  DESPITE ENJOYING the arm-in-arm walk, she said a firm goodbye once they reached their floor. She was a big girl. She could take care of herself.

  The truth was she had no clue what had really happened last night in Belém. Neither, she was sure, did Dan. She liked him, even respected him, though she acknowledged he had thorns and hitches in his step.

  She knew they, like the powerful currents of anger that ran not too far beneath his flip, hip surface, grew out of caring. He cared deeply about the world’s poor, about the planet itself. She also knew he had not just seen but experienced horrible things in the Third World.

  So maybe he was tied to Ogum, she thought as she went into the bathroom to get ready to shower. Even an easy walk through Manaus’s busy nighttime streets had left her soaked in sweat. Maybe he has reason to be.

  She’d like to get to know him better, she thought, not for the first time, as she stripped off her clothes. He was attractive in many ways beyond the purely physical. No. This was not a good time to think about that.

  She turned on the water in the shower and adjusted it. We’ll work it out, she thought, or we won’t. The most important thing is the job. She stepped naked into the spray.

  WEARING A FLUFFY TERRY ROBE, a towel wrapped around her hair, Annja came around the stepped glass-brick wall that separated the bathroom from the rest of the room. She picked up her notebook computer from the table by the window and carried it to the bed. She intended to review her e-mail, answer anything that demanded it. Then to relax she’d browse the newsgroups, then hoped to sleep soundly and not dream too much.