Nearly an hour later, an old truck appeared, heading south. The shadows had grown long. There were still a couple of hours of daylight left, even here on the equator.
Laszlo studied the approaching truck. “It’s going in the right direction.” He jumped to his feet and waved.
The truck was full of people, but it pulled over and the driver waved through his open window, smiling and laughing.
“Macapá?” Laszlo said, sounding hopeful.
The man jabbered at them in Portuguese and Mariana heard “Macapá” in amongst the words. “I think that means yes.”
Laszlo shrugged. “South means away from here. That’s fine by me.” They walked around to the back of the truck, where the high wooden sides dropped away, revealing the planks of the flat deck. There were women and children sitting on the planks, watching them with big black eyes.
Laszlo turned to Mariana. “Let me help.”
“No, really, I’m—” She caught her breath as his hands came around her waist. He hoisted her up and put her rear down on the planks. “Thank you,” she said, feeling awkward and shy.
Laszlo smiled as he climbed onto the flatbed. “I’ve been wanting to do that since yesterday. I was right.”
She licked her lips. “Right about what?”
“Your waist really is that small.” He settled on the planks next to her and nodded at the family sitting closer to the cab of the truck. The woman gave a sunny smile back while the children stared openly. The truck took off with a grating of gears and slowly accelerated. The high sides swayed as it rolled along the highway.
The four hour hike had drained Mariana’s energy and the late afternoon sun flickering through the tops of the trees finished her off. After a few minutes, Mariana felt herself drifting into sleep and woke with a start, her head jerking up.
Laszlo patted his shoulder. “It’s the only pillow around for miles,” he told her quietly. “Go ahead and sleep. I’ll keep watch.”
Mariana fought her tiredness, but it was no use. Awkwardly, she let herself lean against him. Even ten minutes of sleep would help revitalize her energy, she reasoned.
Laszlo resettled her so that she was actually resting her head on his shoulder, instead of merely leaning against him. “Relax,” he told her firmly. “I’m sweaty and tired and would sell my soul for a shower, plus we have an audience of seven innocent kids. Seduction is the last thing on my mind.”
“Not what I was thinking,” she murmured.
“Liar. You’ve been holding your breath since I mentioned your waist.”
She grinned ruefully. “Well, you do have a certain reputation….”
“One I fully intend to live up to, but not right now.”
So she had let herself relax and sleep swept over her like a hot wave of air. She slept solidly, not even the rattle and sway of the truck disturbing her.
It was the truck coming to a halt that woke her and Mariana sat up with a jolt of bewildered fright, looking around. Night had fallen while she slept. It was only slightly cooler without the sun belting down upon them.
Laszlo sat with his head tilted back against the wall. He was deeply asleep.
The land she could see beyond the truck walls was dark, with a big moon outlining the tops of more trees. They were still in the jungle.
There were rough huts lining a small clearing and none of them showed light in their windows. The ground in front of each house was bare earth. Each house had a fire in front of it, shielded by an assortment of fire-proof materials, from old cinderblocks to corrugated iron, to the time-honored pile of rocks. The fires were being used for cooking, for warmth and for light.
Mariana shook Laszlo awake. “This isn’t Macapá.”
The family in the back of the truck were scrambling past them and jumping down to the ground, with the woman helping the smaller ones.
Laszlo blinked up at the kids as they stepped over his spread legs, smiling hugely at both of them. He looked at the view available at the rear of the truck. There were people everywhere and they all wore simple clothing. “Where the hell are we?” he asked.
“In duplicate,” Mariana said with feeling. “They must have turned off the highway after you fell asleep.”
He scrubbed at his hair and blew out his breath. “This day keeps getting better and better.”
“At least we can find out where we are,” Mariana pointed out.
The woman put the last small child on the ground, then beckoned them with her hand, as she spoke quickly.
“A village this size, we’re probably going to be presented to the head man,” Laszlo said. “They’re too small to have a more sophisticated government.”
They climbed stiffly off the truck, brushed down their clothes and followed the woman as she led them to one of the bigger huts on the edge of the clearing.
Sitting outside the house and in front of the fire, with his lean rear propped up on a decrepit milk crate, was a man who looked very old indeed. His brown flesh was wrinkled and he squinted, with thick grey brows jutting over his eyes.
The woman spoke to him and he stood up, looking at the pair of them. He was shorter than Mariana, which put him at just over five feet, but there was no mistaking his authority. It leached from his posture and his attitude and the disdainful way he was looking at them.
“Definitely head man,” Laszlo murmured.
“Smile,” Mariana told him under her breath. She smiled, too.
Whatever the woman said didn’t go down well. The man’s brows knitted together and he began to jabber. That was when Mariana began to wish she had taken the time to learn Portuguese, somewhere along the way.
“Do you know any Portuguese?” she asked Laszlo.
He shook his head. “Not even Spanish. You?”
“Chinese.” She caught his surprised glance. “Long story,” she assured him truthfully, although it was a story she wouldn’t tell him anytime soon for it would threaten various security arrangements within the agency.
Then Laszlo looked at the head man sharply. “Wait,” he said and raised his hand. He spoke quickly in a language that was not Portuguese. From the cadence and rhythm, Mariana thought it might be French.
The head man listened attentively but his scowl didn’t fade. He responded in a language that sounded almost the same.
“French?” she asked Laszlo.
“I was speaking French. This is some sort of local patois. I understand most of it, though. Wait a moment.” He turned back to the head man and spoke again, this time more slowly, pronouncing each word carefully.
Mariana kept her smile in place, trying to look as non-threatening as possible.
The headman shook his head and his fist. He was talking quickly. And loudly. From the dark night around them, four much younger villagers stepped up to circle them.
“Uh-oh,” Mariana murmured.
Laszlo let out his breath and turned to her. “So...we have a tiny problem or two.”
“Just two?” she asked brightly. She didn’t know anything about Brazilian villagers or their headmen, but she did know that showing fear would give the headman the wrong impression about them. So she kept her expression bright and enquiring.
Laszlo seemed to think the same thing, for his expression, while not exactly sunny, wasn’t thunderous, either. But his jaw was very square and tight. “We’re not in Brazil,” he said.
“Oh.”
Laszlo gave her a stiff smile. “We’re in French Guiana. We were a long way north of Macapá when we landed. The road the truck took after it got off the highway...I think it probably went directly west, or even north-west. The border between Brazil and French Guiana dips south just inside the coast.”
Mariana considered that. “Then we’re in French Guiana. Does that matter?”
“A bit,” Laszlo said. “If we’re far enough west to be inside the French Guiana border, then that means we’re in the Guiana Amazon National Park.”
“You make that sound like a bad thing.”
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Laszlo gave a small shrug. “Normally, no. It’s one of the most beautiful parks in the world. Brazil and French Guiana jointly manage the park and they strictly control who gets to live inside the park borders. Does this look like a controlled and authorized settlement to you?”
Mariana pressed her lips together. Now she realized what it was about the village that had been bothering her. Everything was makeshift, from the mud-daub walls of the buildings, to the lack of power and other amenities. “They’re squatters?” she breathed. “That’s one of the problems?”
“One of the problems is that they’re more than squatters. The four heavyweights standing around us are wearing sidearms. I think we’ve hitch-hiked right into the middle of a cartel operation. Coca is one of Brazil’s major crops.”
Mariana’s heart squeezed. “Cocaine was eradicated in the twenty-second century. They keep saying it’s extinct.”
“They wish it was.” Laszlo sighed. “But the headman is insisting that we not leave and he’s called up his bodyguards to make sure of it. If it’s not coca they’re growing in the jungle, then it’s something equally as valuable, plus they’re doing it within the borders of the national park. Just being here is illegal. He doesn’t want us heading back to Macapá and blabbing about his little operation.”
Mariana pressed her lips together, struggling not to show her dismay.
“By the way, that’s the second little problem,” Laszlo added.
Mariana smiled at the headman, who was glaring at them. The whole time they had been talking, the headman had been conversing with his bodyguards. He was a quick learner. He knew Laszlo understood enough of his natural language, so he was using Portuguese. So were the guards.
She cast about mentally, looking for alternative ways to get them out of this.
The headman spoke swiftly again, this time in the patios. He addressed Laszlo and from the upward inflection in his voice, Mariana guessed it was a question.
“He wants to know what we are doing here, anyway,” Laszlo said. “He thinks we might be psi-filers, trying to get away from the cities where they’re being hunted.”
“Hunted?” she said sharply.
The headman added something.
“Gabriel is paying for any psi-filers turned over to him,” Laszlo interpreted. “He wants to know why he shouldn’t sell us to Gabriel and resolve his problems that way.”
Pure fright tore through Mariana. “He can’t,” she breathed. “Neither of us is psi, but if Gabriel meets me, he’ll break into my mind and learn everything I know about the agency.”
Laszlo’s cool green-eyed gaze steadied her. “Smile at me,” he said urgently. “Kiss my cheek. Do something to show these people that the idea of meeting Gabriel doesn’t scare you into next Monday.”
Mariana shook her head and turned to face the headman squarely. “I’m not a psi-filer,” she said flatly. “Tell him the truth about how we got here. And tell him he’s welcome to salvage what’s left of the car. He can sell the parts.”
“Bribery. Good idea.” He turned back to the headman and they spoke. It took a lot longer than Mariana thought it would, but the headman’s gaze for the first time turned to her and lingered, instead of flickering back to Laszlo. He was considering her properly.
“He says he will let us go, if we pay him what Gabriel would pay him.”
“Ransom,” Mariana said and nodded her head. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Why does that seem to please you?” Laszlo asked curiously.
“Because ransom is just another form of making a deal. One with incentive added, but a deal is a deal is a deal.”
“I don’t have any money on me,” Laszlo warned.
“I have about five credits in Brazilian Reals. It doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t?”
“I’ve done hundreds of deals on behalf of the agency and Nayara Ibarra taught me a lot about squeezing a deal of all its juice.” She smiled broadly at the headman, who was watching her sharply. “Will you interpret for me?” she asked Laszlo.
“If this works, I’ll buy you your own interpreter service.” He turned to the headman. “Go,” he told her.
* * * * *
Mathieu, the headman, was a wily and wise old man. Once he realized that Mariana was negotiating, he waved her to the ground next to the fire and settled back on his crate. The men around him relaxed, their arms crossed.
Business was all one language, no matter where she went, Mariana reflected, as she settled on one hip, her legs folded neatly to the other side and mentally rolled up her sleeves.
Laszlo didn’t seem to mind being relegated to the sidelines. He squatted just to one side of her and Mathieu and translated.
The moon was high over the clearing, a small yellow disk, by the time they got close to an agreement. Mariana held up her hand as Laszlo turned to her to interpret Mathieu’s latest claim. “I got that. He wants the five hundred thousand in gold or hard currency. Yes?”
“Very good,” Laszlo said. “Nothing folding. He doesn’t want Reals. They’re worthless on the black market, I’m guessing.”
Mariana studied Mathieu. “He won’t let us go and get it, either. We have to figure out some way to give him untraceable credits.”
“Everything’s traceable these days.”
“These days, yes—” She caught her breath, excitement flaring. “Oh...” She pressed her hands together, holding back hope, as she thought it through. “Do you have the time?” she asked Laszlo.
“It’s about seven, I guess.”
“No, I’m going to need the exact time. The exact hour and minute.”
“I’ll ask Mathieu.”
“Ask him if he would accept completely cold, untraceable credits, too. Guaranteed to be so old, cold and dusty that not even a forensic crypto team would be able to find their source.”
Laszlo frowned. “How—”
“Not now,” Mariana said quickly. “I think Mathieu understands more Standard than he’s letting on. Ask him. And ask him what the time is, too. The exact time.”
They exchanged words once more and one of the bodyguards jog-trotted over to a nearby hut and disappeared inside. He came running back, a very modern reading board in his hand.
“Thought so,” Mariana said, pleased. “They’ve got the technology they need to do deals. No self-respecting criminal would deprive himself of transaction power, no matter where he is.”
There was a brief exchange between the guard and Laszlo, then the guard handed the board to Mathieu. Laszlo turned back to her. “It’s eight-twenty-eight exactly. Mathieu agrees that if the funds are completely untraceable, he will release us.”
“What account?” Mariana asked. “Give me the number.”
Before Laszlo could speak, Mathieu moved his fingers over the board, then held it out to her. There was an account number on the screen. Thirteen letters and digits. She studied it, memorizing the sequence.
“Now tell him to check the balance in that account,” she told Laszlo.
“I don’t understand....” But Laszlo turned back to Mathieu and passed her suggestion on.
Mathieu worked on the board for a minute, calling up the balance. Mariana held her breath, waiting. The next few seconds would be vital.
Mathieu’s old eyes widened and the men standing over his shoulder muttered.
He looked up at Mariana. Slowly he smiled.
She had bargained their way to freedom.
* * * * *
“I’m completely baffled,” Laszlo complained as they hurried across the clearing after one of Mathieu’s men, who was leading them to the transport Mathieu had promised. “What just happened back there?”
“A deal,” Mariana said complacently. “We reached an agreement, I paid Mathieu the amount we agreed upon and he is living up to his side of the bargain and giving us transport back to Macapá.”
“You conjured five hundred thousand up out of thin air! I watched you. You didn’t move a
muscle.”
“I did, actually. So did you. We went to a great deal of trouble to get that money into his account in a way that couldn’t be traced.”
The guard stepped aside and waved his hand toward....
“Saints preserve us,” Mariana muttered, looking at the thing the guard was presenting.
“What on earth is it?” Laszlo demanded.
“A car. Just as Mathieu agreed to provide.” Mariana moved toward the vehicle.
“It looks ancient.”
“It is ancient,” she said. “It runs on gasoline.” She looked at the guard. “Keys?”
“Clés?” Laszlo added.
The guard thrust a thumb toward the rust-covered vehicle. In the moonlight it looked like there was very little left of the exterior that wasn’t a lacy, fragile pattern of eaten-away metal.
“Makes sense the keys would be in it,” Laszlo said. “Who in their right mind would want to steal it?” He moved around to the driver’s side.
“Have you ever driven a gasoline powered car before?” Mariana asked him.
“How hard can it be? Steer, accelerate and brake when needed.”
She looked through the glass-less window at the controls and stood up again. “This one has a manual transmission. Have you ever used gears before?”
Laszlo stared at her. “Are you telling me you have?”
Two hundred years ago, I have. But saying that aloud would open up a conversation she couldn’t have with him. Instead, she moved around to where he was standing. “I’ll drive.”
Laszlo looked like he wanted to argue the point, so she rested her hand on his arm. “You can do all the fancy flying. You already have. But I can drive this and you can’t. Leave this bit up to me.”
He moved away from the door, letting her through. “Hell, it will probably break down a hundred meters down the road, anyway.”
“It won’t,” Mariana assured him and wrestled open the door. It slid aside with a squeal of raw metal on metal, making her wince. “Hop in,” she told Laszlo. “We’re going home.”
Chapter Seven
French Guiana, 2265 A.D.
The engine took coaxing, but it finally started with a roar and a cough of black exhaust that made Laszlo hiss.
Spartan Resistance Page 8
