Ambassador 1A: The Sahara Conspiracy (Ambassador: Space Opera Thriller)

by Patty Jansen

  The double bed was like a hammock and Thayu’s body temperature was running at higher than normal. I couldn’t avoid touching her and lay sweating most of the night. My stomach was still making strange noises. When it started getting light, I felt like I’d been awake all night. My back was sore from trying to stop myself sliding against Thayu.

  I must have slept some, because I woke up sweating with morning light streaming into the window, and Thayu and Telaris making rustling noises with paper.

  They had bought breakfast: some kind of doughy bread rolls pre-wrapped in plastic.

  Telaris complained again how all the food was really expensive.

  I suspected it was only expensive because of what they bought: western, packaged food. However, being Indrahui who ate yellow-coded food, there were certain ingredients they needed to be careful with, and normal street food didn’t come with ingredient lists. They were weary, might have been burned before, or might be intensely aware that being sick precluded them from doing their jobs. They took their jobs very seriously.

  Hence bland pre-packaged food.

  There was a knock on the door and Nicha and Evi joined us in the already cramped room.

  “Thought I could smell food,” Nicha joked. The all-pervasive smell of oil mixed with garbage was so strong that even he couldn’t possibly smell anything over that.

  There was little room, so Evi sat on the bed where Telaris had slept and Nicha on the big bed. This made the mattress sag even more.

  “Whoa.” He had to stop himself sliding towards the middle. He looked at me. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Ha, ha, ha.”

  “I slept well. I’m ready to start work.” He held a reader and a projection attachment under his arm.

  But first, we ate the odd breakfast of bread with some sweet drink from a bottle. The fluid was cold. Magic!

  “Someone obviously has a working fridge somewhere,” I said.

  “No idea how. The power is off half the time,” Nicha complained.

  “Well, obviously, this is not the Exchange,” Thayu said.

  He glared at her and her implication that he was soft and unused to such hardships caused by computer failure.

  I was not in the mood for their good-natured underhanded stabs at each other. Thayu was exaggerating her tough girl stance as much as Nicha professed to liking luxury. My stomach started growling again after that strange meal. This was not good.

  After we finished eating, Evi set up the reader and projector in the middle of the double bed.

  He looked at me for a sign to start talking and began when I nodded. “We need to plan how we are going to do this, how we’ll travel there without being noticed, what we will be looking for once we’re there, and what plans we have if things go wrong.”

  Everyone fell silent and listened. I guessed this was a security type briefing that I wasn’t normally privy to. I felt strangely honoured to be included but would have been a lot happier if my bowels would stop gurgling like a sewer.

  “This is the area where we’re going.”

  The projector sprang into life with a three-dimensional map. It showed Mr Kray’s mansion and the abandoned research station. Evi took us through the distances between those places. The research station was barely two kilometres from Mr Kray’s mansion, but it was on an island in the middle of an area that was about to go underwater and Mr Kray’s mansion was on the shore. The building site was also on the shore but about five kilometres north of the house.

  The elevation of the research station was sixty metres below sea level. The temperature was forty-three degrees Celsius. It was seven in the morning.

  It sounded like fun.

  CHAPTER 13

  * * *

  THE FIRST QUESTION was how we were going to get there. For a settlement that was supposed to be built as a “tourist destination” it sure knew how to make sure no one ever visited the place.

  The only sign of civilisation in the area was the mining town that had seen bursts of activity followed by long periods of abandonment. There had once been a train line, but it hadn’t been used for well over a hundred years. A road project that linked the mining developments up with the main road from Djibouti to the Ethiopian highlands had been abandoned before it had been completed.

  There was a goat track of a road to the research station but it probably hadn’t been maintained since the researchers left and was so badly eroded and covered in sand that it would need desert trucks with large wheels to get through the sand drifts. We might have to travel at night, Evi said, but also added that there was not much in the way of cover and that however we travelled, anyone keeping an eye out for intruders would easily find us.

  “What about by air?” Thayu asked.

  To which Evi replied that he had seen no airfields in an extensive study of Asha’s images.

  “Aren’t the locals fond of gyrocopters?” Nicha asked.

  “Too noisy,” Telaris said.

  They all agreed with that.

  “Maybe we could hire a water plane,” I said. “We want something light that doesn’t make a lot of noise, doesn’t need an airfield and doesn’t show up on radars.”

  “I thought you supported the ban on gamra vehicles outside the Exchange enclave.”

  Yes, any of the lighter Asto-built craft would do very well.

  Still, they agreed that to hire a private pilot might be the best alternative.

  Then we needed to buy some supplies for a trip.

  Thayu said, “We are meant to be a research team and they would be well-prepared, having travelled there before. This is extremely hostile and remote country. They would have to know what they’re doing.”

  I agreed. The information Amarru had given me about this Martin Spencer indicated that he had travelled extensively in all sorts of remote areas.

  I suggested that we ask Tamu for the best places to get what we needed.

  Thayu said, “I agree, but I’ve submitted a background check of her to the Exchange. I don’t want to say anything sensitive to her until that comes back clear.” Sensitive information obviously also included the fact that we were going into the desert.

  “She’s Omi, not Zhori.”

  “I know, but I still want to be sure.”

  Nothing was ever sure in the eyes of security. In an unknown place, every person on a corner could be a spy.

  Next, Thayu insisted that we got clothes that would make us less easily recognisable. She went out with Evi and Telaris’ quickly diminishing pile of grubby bank notes, and returned with a bunch of kaftans wide enough to wear armour underneath. Thayu was adamant that I should disguise my hair, so she had bought me a headscarf of the type that many of the local men wore.

  Evi and Telaris got a pair of colourful African gowns. She carried black hair dye in her gear—given to her by Amarru in case she needed to disguise as an Asian, and spent a good deal of the morning in the rather disgusting bathroom at the end of the corridor dying their hair.

  By that time, my insides had completed their noisy deliberation about the food I’d eaten and had decided that they didn’t like it, so I spent a good amount of time there as well, while said foodstuffs were being expelled from both ends. But enough said about that.

  We went into the afternoon sunlight while it was turning golden. We wore our disguises. The kaftan was cooler than the suit and it looked like my adaptation was starting to kick in. All good things to make me feel better. I still felt a bit shaky but Thayu informed me that she thought I looked better, and also that adaptation medicine at higher doses messed around with my digestion as much as the natural adaptation did with hers.

  Thanks very much for that bit of detail.

  She grinne
d at me.

  Wandering around the surrounding city blocks didn’t provide us with any information about transport. We did find a place that rented out old, open-cabin vehicles and got one to make it easier for us to move around town. The traffic was chaotic but we were fairly close to the edge of town and went out into the hills on badly-maintained bumpy roads. There were young boys with goats and camels going in and out of town and here and there a couple of fields where a bunch of old women were hoeing in the dust waiting for the rains.

  It was a dusty, desperate, desolate landscape.

  While we stood on a hill overlooking the countryside in the lowering sun, Thayu’s request on Tamu’s background came in. The Exchange judged her to be safe and clear.

  She read off the screen. “Born in Athens. Never been to Asto. Too poor, probably. The guy who runs the hotel is her partner.”

  This was another side of the equation that people like Danziger often forgot: so many of these Coldi had lived here for generations, no longer had connections with Asto, or even with the Exchange.

  Tamu was by all measures an Earth citizen. Apparently, she had lived in this area for about four years.

  Thayu was not entirely happy. “The Exchange register is not always right or up-to-date.”

  Nicha said, “No. But it’s the best we’ve got. If she’s lived here for that length of time, any illegal activities that she’d been involved in would have come out.”

  “I’m not worried about legality. I’m worried about possible connections with Mr Kray. They can’t know everything. So yeah, I asked. I got a reply. There is nothing obvious, but I’m still going to be careful.”

  We’d walked up the hill and when we came back to the vehicle, we found it surrounded by a mass of curious children and a few adult women. The children ran as soon as we approached, but a few of the women lingered when we got into the vehicle. Evi was about to put the car into gear when I had an idea.

  “Wait.”

  I opened the door again and went up to the group. One of the women was clearly the boldest and maintained her position whereas the others retreated a bit.

  “Can I help you?” I asked in the clearest Isla I could manage.

  She held out her hands in a pleading manner. She was quite young, in her early twenties, and her face still had the pretty roundness of youth. “My husband. My brother. Where are they?” She was looking not at me but at Evi in the car.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t think I can answer that question for you. What happened to them?”

  “The big man, he comes in a big truck and he takes all the men away. They like to work for him because he promises good money. He turns them into krayfish. And then they leave and we never see them back. You are going to see krayfish, right?”

  A chill crept over me.

  Here I was standing talking to a victim of the warlord while highly visible in the countryside. Anyone could tell that we didn’t belong here, that I was poking my head in places where it was likely to be chopped off.

  I said, “I’m very sorry. I don’t know anything about missing people. I’m just a scientist studying geology.” I gestured at the fields. “I study soils, so that you can continue to grow things.” I smiled, feeling like the biggest coward on the planet.

  While I walked back to the vehicle, I realised that the majority of the people we’d seen working in the fields had been older, women or children. The majority of people on the streets in town were older, women or children.

  Either the men were fighting, or they were dead, or they were working for Mr Kray.

  We drove back in the fast-developing dusk. The dust in the air rendered the sky in fiery reds and oranges. It was very pretty and too tranquil to be real. I felt uneasy. Someone in that chaotic jumble of traffic, dilapidated houses and messy markets had to be spying on us.

  Tamu sat at the desk watching something on a screen when we came in. The suburb’s power was on, but the only light in the foyer was a feeble tube light without a cover. She looked up, her face lit from underneath by the screen. “Oh, there you are. I thought you might have been caught in the traffic jams in town.”

  “Isn’t that the normal state of affairs?” I said. I realised immediately that I wasn’t supposed to have said anything in Coldi, and her eyes widened in such a way that I guessed she rarely heard a non-Coldi person speak it.

  “You’re very good.”

  “Yes. Apparently I have an aptitude for languages.” Like, fifteen years’ worth of study kind of aptitude. Dumb move, Mr. Wilson.

  “No, the traffic is not usually like this. The army has set up roadblocks and is combing through whole blocks house by house.”

  Thayu gave me a sharp look. Searching for us.

  I nodded. Highly likely. PanAf was looking for us because PanAf didn’t want us here? Because they meant to orchestrate my visit and now they had lost sight of me, thought I’d been killed and realised that I had made it here without being chaperoned to “approved” places by some government official.

  “We didn’t see any army people or road blocks,” Nicha said. “Where was this happening?”

  She mentioned a part of town. I didn’t catch the name and it didn’t mean anything to me.

  Thayu said, “We’re interested in travelling to the Afar Sea, and have been trying to find out what is the best way to get there.”

  Her eyes widened. “Why do you want to go out there?”

  I was highly tempted to say, It’s supposed to be the next hottest tourist destination, just to check her reaction, but stuck to a more professional approach. “We have a research station out there. Our institute abandoned the station five years ago, and we were always going to check how the area was coping with the rising water levels. I’m a geologist.” One who speaks perfect Coldi. I was still hitting myself in the head for that stupid move, but the damage was done so I might as well continue.

  “But it’s dangerous out that way.” Clearly she knew little about rising water levels. “Some of the gangs have their base out there and you don’t want to interfere with them.”

  “We’re fine. We’re armed.”

  Thayu showed her a glimpse under her jacket.

  She looked at us with wide eyes. “Well, if you really want to go, people normally fly out to places like that.”

  “I thought so. Where can we find a pilot?”

  CHAPTER 14

  * * *

  ONE OF THE LESSONS of life: white material in a plastic bag spells trouble, especially when slapped onto the counter of a dark shop in the outskirts of Djibouti by a man missing his front teeth and with a look that said, “Here’s the stuff, now give me the money.”

  Trouble was, I had no idea what was in that bag, and neither did I have any money of the type that he would accept. I’d walked into his shop because Tamu at the hotel had told me this was where I could hire a pilot and I wasn’t going to become an accomplice in someone’s drug ring. With his teeth gone, the man could be a krayfish, the first we’d seen. Could be. Or he might just have bad teeth. I was starting to distrust everyone in this crowded, stinking town.

  I eyed the white stuff, which looked like a bar of soap crushed under an elephant’s foot, and decided to ignore it.

  “Actually, I’m looking to hire a reliable pilot. Can you help me?”

  He squinted at me. Sounds of people talking drifted in from outside, as well as wafts of hot desert air. “I help people with eperything, mista. Where do you want to go?”

  “I’ll tell the pilot that.”

  “Oh, there are no secrets here, mista. You leave and ask permission and then eperyone will know where you go.”

  “Do you or don’t you have a pilot?”

  “I hap the best pilots in the world.�
� I had to admit that the lack of front teeth did interesting things to one’s ability to say the letter v.

  “Then get me onto one those pilots.” I pushed the bag with the white stuff back to him.

  “Don’t you want—”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You go out there, you die, mista.”

  “I think we’ll be fine.” I had my adaptation medicine. I’d take an extra dose. My body temperature would go up and I could stand the heat.

  He put the bag back under the counter with a kind of suit yourself look on his face. No, I did not want his drugs. I really didn’t.

  “A pilot,” I reminded him, hoping that my refusal to buy his drugs was not going to create ripples. We could handle small-time crooks, but really wanted to stay out of the way of the big guys on top of everything else.

  “Yes, yes.” He pulled an earpiece out of his pocket. Earth-made, so that was all above water. He didn’t seem to like how I watched, so he turned his back to the counter. He spoke to someone in local dialect, with a lot of hand gestures.

  I waited.

  Lights blinked in the far corner of the shop, where I guessed he had some sort of hub setup.

  I waited, eyeing the various wares for sale on rows of plastic sheets on the dirt floor and tables for the smaller items. There were engine parts, bits of agricultural equipment such as ploughs, battered-up tools, control panels of machinery, a plane propeller. Many of the parts dated from the fossil fuel era.

  Thayu studied a giant jet engine that sat just inside the door, and Nicha walked around a big scoop that might have come from some sort of mining vehicle. How had this guy even obtained all this stuff?