The Prince's Slave

by P. J. Fox

  They were affordable because they were dangerous: the car’s lack of any reinforcing structure between the rear panel and the gas tank meant that, in an accident, the tank would be pushed forward by the protruding bolts of the differential. Which, in turn, would transform a fender bender into fiery death. Ford was allegedly aware of the design flaw, but after performing a cost benefit analysis had concluded that it would be cheaper to pay off possible lawsuits than to effectuate repairs.

  The end result being that the old car had been affordable, even on her mother’s waitressing pay.

  Belle spared a glare for Ash before returning her attention to her surroundings. She didn’t know why she was so—angry was too weak of a word. Maybe, she thought, it was because being outside like this was reminding her of everything she’d lost. Everything that had been ripped from her, forcibly, in the space of a few minutes.

  Her life. Her hopes for the future. Her belief that the world was a fundamentally safe place. Years cleaning up after her father, and weathering her mother’s rages, hadn’t diminished that belief. Although she’d thought, naively, that they had. She hadn’t realized, until after she’d been taken, that she’d never really left that little town in Maine. Not in any real way. Her time in Cambridge, and then her time in Dresden, had merely been detours. Detours for a country bumpkin for whom the world was still Maine.

  Ash had taken that from her, stripping her illusions as effectively as she might strip an onion. And with as little thought for the consequences of his actions. She hated him for that.

  And he thought she tormented him.

  The valet gaped at the Bugatti before recovering himself and nodding.

  “Aren’t you worried he’ll hurt it?”

  Ash shrugged, a diffident gesture that barely moved his broad shoulders. “If one can’t afford to repair it, one can’t afford to drive it.”

  He offered her his arm, a strangely outdated gesture that from any other man would have been charming.

  She stood, rooted in place on the cobblestones. In that moment, she didn’t know what to do. Part of her had almost reached out, without thinking, slipping her small hand into the crook of his elbow. He, unlike herself, was fully clothed. He was wearing expensive-looking wool trousers and a white shirt. All of his clothes seemed to be gray and white, with the occasional splash of red. Red ties. Red ruby cufflinks. Blood.

  She willed her hand to remain at her side. This was conditioning, she supposed: to be obedient. To think of herself as his slave. To think of herself as not having a choice. But she did have a choice. Part of her wanted to run.

  No, all of her. Or so she told herself. Except, if that was the case—then why wasn’t she running? It was, she told herself, because this was too soon. They’d just arrived. He’d be on his guard. Better to go later, after she’d lulled him into a false sense of security.

  She should take his arm. Smile at him. Pretend.

  He waited.

  “No,” she found herself saying.

  “No.” He echoed the word without particular feeling. She watched him, warily. He seemed—upset wasn’t precisely the right word. She wasn’t entirely certain of how to read his expression. And then he seemed to come to some sort of internal decision.

  “Walk with me, then?” His tone was pleasant. Solicitous, even.

  She nodded before she could stop herself. He’d managed to keep her completely off balance, as usual. He was being so goddamned polite. He was treating this like—like a date!

  Like he was trying to impress her.

  Well she wasn’t impressed.

  They’d come to a little village in the mountains. Medieval architecture warred with modern signs. Belle couldn’t speak the language, but she recognized well enough what was for sale: Coke, Pepsi, and prepaid calling cards. They walked across a small square to a whitewashed building with red-painted windows. Some sort of hunting scene had been painted across the whitewash, and Belle had the sudden and distinct impression that this place had looked exactly the same five hundred years ago.

  There were tables out front, with umbrellas advertising Gösser beer. The fabric was eye-searingly green, at odds with the subdued nature of their surroundings. Ash led her to one of the open tables. Which was most of them; there was only one other couple taking in the scenery, and they were obviously tourists. There was no maître ’d. Evidently no one stood on ceremony, here.

  He pulled out the chair for her and she sat, because she didn’t know what else to do. And then he sat down next to her, their backs to the wall behind them as they faced the square. Belle sat stiffly, primly. She wished she were elsewhere. She was glad that they were sitting outside, though; the weather had warmed to the point where it felt like summer.

  Almost.

  There wouldn’t be many more such days. If, indeed, this wasn’t the last one. For the year. Forever.

  Belle returned to studying her surroundings, in the hopes of banishing such an uncomfortable thought. The square was formed by the juxtaposition of several large buildings; the one that housed their café, which looked like it might once have been an inn and, directly across from them, what looked like a guild hall. The second floor shutters were closed.

  And although the square itself was large enough, at least by medieval standards, the street running through it formed something of a bottleneck at both ends. The houses on either side were close enough that neighbors could reach out a hand from each respective window and touch. To their right, at one end of the street, reared a morbid looking church. At least, Belle thought it was a church. The finial on top of the spire was enormous, reminding her of the stories she’d heard as a child about Vlad the Impaler.

  A couple passed by them, chatting and laughing.

  “It’s a fortified church,” Ash said, following her gaze. “Built in 1147, or thereabouts, by King Géza II of Hungary. For decades,” he continued, “the main task of the German settlers was to defend the southeastern border of the Kingdom of Hungary. Hence it being fortified.”

  “Against whom?”

  “The Ottoman Empire.”

  Belle absorbed this information in silence. Her companion’s interest in history surprised her. But there was no doubting he knew a great deal about his chosen home, however odd his choice might seem to her. Why would a man who spent millions on toys choose to live among peasants? She would have thought, to feel superior. But so far, she’d never seen him be anything but gracious. To everyone but her, that was.

  A girl appeared with menus, and asked if they’d like anything to drink. She spoke in German. Belle didn’t respond. She knew that she was being rude, and knew that this girl hadn’t done anything to deserve such treatment, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

  Ash spoke to the girl politely, in her native tongue. Belle glanced up just in time to see him gesture, and the girl’s face fold into sympathetic lines. He was telling her that Belle was sick, then. Or something of the sort. Belle didn’t need to speak the language, to follow that dialogue. Ash said something else, then, and the girl nodded once before retreating back into the cavernous darkness of the old building.

  Belle watched the world go by.

  Minutes later, the girl returned with tea. She smiled encouragingly. Belle smiled back, and was rewarded with an even broader smile.

  Ash ordered for them both. The girl was completely captivated, Belle saw, admiring Ash as though he were on display in a museum. As though he were professing his undying love for her. Which, Belle thought sourly, he might be. He handed back the menus, even that simple act a graceful gesture, and rewarded her with one of his rare smiles.

  He never smiled at Belle. Of course he didn’t. She was nothing.

  FORTY-TWO

  She stared into her tea, as if hoping to find answers there.

  “I’m doing this for you, you know.”

  She looked up.

  Ash sipped his ice water. He was studying her again. “I’m doing this for you. To please you. So the least you can
do is make an effort to be pleasant.” He paused. “Unlike yourself, I have work to do. Quite a bit of work. Which I’m ignoring, much to my own detriment.”

  “I would have quite a bit of work,” Belle pointed out dryly, “if you hadn’t kidnapped me.”

  And that interchange, strangely enough, broke the tension.

  “Aren’t you worried I’ll run away?” she asked.

  “No,” he replied.

  The girl returned with a gin and tonic for Ash, and a cocktail napkin. The girl that Belle still hadn’t asked for help. He waited until she’d left to speak again.

  “Where would you go? What would you do?”

  “Go to the nearest embassy.”

  “How?” He sounded genuinely curious. “You have no money. No papers. No ability to speak the language. The nearest American embassy is in Bucharest, which is hours from here. By train. And yet you’d—what? Propose to trek that distance overland?

  “Romania is dangerous.” He sounded like he was trying to warn her, not to scare her, and she found herself listening in spite of herself. “Half the population here lives on less than five dollars a day, many in near-medieval conditions. No running water. No electricity. The infrastructure you’re used to simply does not exist here. There would be no one to help you if you got in trouble, no one to even tell me where you were.”

  “Oh.”

  “And,” he added, “kidnapping is common.”

  Their lunch arrived: sautéed mushrooms wrapped in some kind of puff pastry and served with a cream sauce. Belle dipped her fork in the sauce, and brought it hesitantly to her lips. It tasted of butter, and cognac. Lunch itself proved to be delicious and she ate ravenously, although she hadn’t believed herself to be hungry. Ash ordered another gin and tonic.

  “So you’re a dancer,” he said.

  “And you commit crimes.”

  He made a dismissive gesture. “Technically, most of what I do is not illegal. I’m careful to operate in jurisdictions where there are no laws, or where the laws can be, ah, changed.”

  He leaned forward, his elbows on the table. He’d rolled up his shirt sleeves. He wore a watch, expensive but not ostentatious. He seemed at home, here. Belle wondered, suddenly, how often he’d come to this café.

  “Take the DRC, for example.” The Congo, he meant. Belle didn’t know much, but she knew that it was no democratic republic. “Cobalt is used in jet engine turbines and gas turbine generators. Katanga, which is a state in the south, has some of the richest cobalt mines in the world.

  “The DRC as a whole is rich—boasting mineral deposits, diamonds, rubber, and fertile soil. Moreover, because these things are accessible. Especially cobalt. Cobalt mining does not require expensive processing. A man with a shovel can become a cobalt miner, simply by digging a hole. So cobalt mining should be lucrative.

  “And the demand for cobalt is so great that middlemen in Lubumbashi, usually Indian, exchange bags of cash for bags of cobalt. The sacks are then collected into piles, and the piles loaded onto trucks—all of which have seen better days—and then driven to the border with Zambia. Then they’re driven another 2,000 kilometers to the closest functioning port, which is Durban in South Africa.”

  He took another sip of his drink. “But the presence of all this wealth guarantees nothing. Particularly not for the local populace. First, an investor has to complete the necessary paperwork to drive the cobalt to Zambia, and this means paying a bribe to the Ministry of Mines. Not just locally, in Lubumbashi, but in Kinshasa as well.

  “And if a new Minister of Mines is appointed during this process, an occurrence that happens frequently in a country where there is no meaningful government, you have to start all over again by learning—and paying—an entirely new system of payments. Moreover, once you’re finished with the Ministry of Mines, you have to repeat the entire process with the Immigration Department.”

  “Which also changes.”

  He nodded. “Which also changes. As well as the Department of Customs, and of course whatever local potentate happens to be in charge at the moment in the area where the cobalt is mined.”

  Belle tried her tea. It was somewhat bitter. She added honey from a small ceramic pot on the table.

  “But, lest you think that this is the end, you’re not then faced with the mere prospect of tarmac road. First of all, there is no tarmac. No roads have been repaved in the DRC for decades, since Patrice Lumumba was shot. And second, you must pass tens if not literally hundreds of checkpoints, at each of which an official or two waits to be bribed. Moreover, not only can they be bribed by you, but also by your rivals. To slow you down, or whatever.

  “And even if you make it past them, a great deal of traders have decided—and quite correctly, I might add—that it’s far cheaper to position themselves by the side of the road with AK-47s and help themselves to whatever comes along.”

  He finished his drink and sat back. “There’s absolutely no merit—for anybody—in doing things by the so-called book. More than once, associates of mine have loaded trucks in Lubumbashi with sacks of cobalt ore worth a hundred thousand dollars or more, only to inspect those same sacks in Durban and discover that they contained nothing but soil.”

  “This is depressing.”

  “Life is depressing,” he said, with perhaps unnecessary vehemence.

  “And it’s the same here.”

  “Yes. It’s the same here.”

  “You exploit these people.”

  “I pay them. Their own government doesn’t. If it wasn’t me, it would be someone else.”

  On that last score, Belle had to agree. And the uncomfortable truth was that she hadn’t seen any real injustice. Except toward herself. Ash, if rumor could be believed, had been a major force for good in this region. Recognizing this made her feel deeply conflicted. She wanted him to be one-sided. A gorgon. Someone she could hate, and continue to hate, with no qualifications. And yet too much of what he said made too much sense. He wasn’t sitting here, lecturing her on some robber baron theory of the strong man’s right to power but on the simple facts of corruption.

  Was it right to recognize a corrupt government, simply because that government claimed itself to be legitimate?

  “I’m not a dancer,” she said, with more bitterness than she’d intended. “Not anymore.”

  “What happened?”

  And, strangely, she found herself telling him. “I missed a jump landing and tore a ligament.” The ligaments to her tarsometatarsal joints, actually. “I have a weak knee. It gave out.” At exactly the wrong moment. And then, “dancers are always in pain.” She shrugged. “You learn, early on, to work through the pain or you never work. But this time…my foot swelled. Began to turn black.”

  The pain had been agonizing. Because, she’d learned later, the muscles of her foot had been necrotizing. “And then I couldn’t bear weight on my ankle.” She made a spreading motion. “My bones…drifted apart somehow. I had surgery, and I was in a cast for six weeks. And after that I couldn’t dance anymore.” Not en pointe, which was all that mattered.

  “You have a dancer’s feet.”

  “Deformed?” She laughed. Dancers had famously ugly feet.

  “No,” he said.

  She smiled slightly.

  “You miss dancing.”

  “Yes. And no.” The truth was that she didn’t know, not now. So much of her life had been wrapped up in other people’s choices. In their expectations. In their demands. Ballet had been the one thing she’d ever done, that had earned her mother’s approval. Donna Wainwright’s daughter the prima ballerina, a vision in pale pink tulle. Belle had wanted that approval, she realized now, more than she’d ever wanted to dance. She’d wanted to fit into her own family, to be accepted by them. To finally be considered worthy of something other than censure for her so-called lazy ways.

  Lazy, in the Wainwright home, was spending the afternoon curled up on the couch with a book. Lazy was making art, when there were chores to be done. Lazy
was pursuing her own interests, when she could be out earning minimum wage at McDonald’s.

  Dance had been an outlet. The only outlet.

  “Ballet breeds perfectionism,” she said. “The classic ballerina’s body is long-limbed, flat chested, and lean. You learn to hate food, and hate yourself for wanting food. Hunger is seen as weakness; those ballerinas who manage to practice all afternoon without so much as breaking for a cup of yogurt very quickly achieve near godlike status.”

  “But then what?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Most dancers’ careers end when they reach their mid-thirties.”

  “You’re very cavalier.”

  “I grew up attending the ballet.”

  “So that makes you an expert.”

  “I’ve slept with a number of dancers.”

  “I see.”

  He saw her expression, and checked. “I didn’t mean….” He let the thought trail off. She swallowed. And waited. “All I mean is that I’ve heard them talk about their various issues. Their concerns. For the future, and for what the future might mean to them. You’re in a far more fortunate position, in that you don’t have to worry about finances.”

  “For now.”

  “Belle,” he said, “I’m hardly such a lush that I’m going to spend it all.” He’d mistaken her meaning, perhaps intentionally. “I know you have no reason to believe this, but I do in fact know how to balance a checkbook. And I live within my means. Besides,” he added, a slight note of pride creeping into his voice, “I make five thousand dollars per minute.”

  “Until you throw me out.”

  “What do you want to do with your life?”

  That was it: she didn’t know. “I want to be happy,” she said.

  FORTY-THREE

  They took a walk after lunch, through the town. There were no cars, but one: a disreputable-looking sedan piloted by an even more disreputable-looking man who advertised himself as a taxi service. Ash had translated his enthusiastic come-ons into something about how he had the most reliable car in the mountains and never told on patrons when they were visiting their mistresses. Belle had laughed.