The Skeleton Coast

by Mardi McConnochie

  ‘Oh,’ Annalie said.

  ‘They won’t get as much money for you,’ he continued, ‘but it’s better than nothing.’ He paused. ‘It may sound scary but it’s actually kind of comforting. This is a business to these guys. They don’t want to hurt or kill you. They just want to make some money from you—as much money as possible. They don’t really care where it comes from as long as you’re worth something to them.’

  ‘You mean they’d sell me to the highest bidder?’

  ‘Yep,’ Cherry said.

  Annalie was stunned. She knew, of course, that Pod had once been a slave, but it had never occurred to her that such a thing could happen to her. A shiver of horror ran through her at the thought.

  ‘I’m not saying it’s a good outcome,’ Cherry said. ‘One of my first operations—No, never mind.’

  ‘What?’ Annalie asked.

  Cherry looked at her sideways, considering whether or not to tell her his story.

  ‘I want to hear it,’ Annalie said.

  ‘We were sent to investigate a factory,’ Cherry said. ‘It was in Estilo, but the bad end of Estilo on the Sea of Brundisi. They’ve got a few towns over there that’ve set up as manufacturing hubs—they make all kinds of stuff very cheap, and everybody knows it’s because they mostly use slave labour. And mostly nobody cares. They pretend to be legit, and their customers pretend not to know how the goods are being made because it’s so cheap. Anyway, someone must have made an official complaint, because we were sent to investigate.’ He paused. ‘The factory made bed linen. Sheets, quilt covers. Those flouncy things you put round the bottom of beds. The doors were all chained shut, so none of the workers could escape. They lived in there, worked in there, two shifts, working round the clock. They’d do 12 hours on the machines, then they’d lie down around the edges of the workroom and try to sleep. They were cooking in there too, on little stoves with naked flames—imagine! In a bedding factory! Where there’s fabric and lint and fluff and cotton everywhere! You’d only have to knock one of those stoves over and the whole place would go up. The people looked like ghosts. They were so thin and pale—they were never allowed outside—never had a day off, and the food they were getting was pathetic. I’ve never seen anything like it. But here’s the thing—even after we came in and closed the factory down, a lot of them didn’t want to leave. They were begging us to let them stay. I couldn’t figure it out.’

  ‘What were you going to do with them once you let them go?’

  ‘Another ship was going to take them to a refugee camp.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Annalie.

  ‘What do you mean, “ah”?’ asked Cherry, perplexed.

  ‘No one wants to end up in a refugee camp,’ Annalie said. ‘You’ll live your whole life there with no chance of ever getting out. Those people who wanted to stay must have thought they had at least some chance of a better life there.’

  ‘They were locked in, 24 hours a day,’ Cherry said. ‘The factory was a death trap.’

  ‘I’ve heard the refugee camps aren’t too nice, either,’ Annalie said.

  ‘And anyway, it isn’t true you don’t have a chance of getting out of the camps,’ Cherry said stoutly. ‘People get resettled all the time. Dux has a very active refugee resettlement program.’

  This was not what Annalie had heard, but she could see that Cherry believed it.

  ‘So do you do a lot of that sort of thing?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Liberating slaves.’

  Cherry’s face brightened. ‘It’s different every day. That’s what I like about it.’

  ‘You like being in the Admiralty, then?’

  ‘Of course!’ he said. ‘Why else would you join?’

  ‘Well, maybe because you have to if you want to go on and do something else,’ Annalie suggested.

  Cherry just laughed and shook his head. ‘My family would quite like me to get a nice safe job in an office. But I love being at sea.’

  ‘What do you love about it?’ Annalie was genuinely curious.

  ‘I like the camaraderie,’ Cherry said. ‘And the fact that you never know what you’re going to be doing next. When you’re out on patrol, you might be chasing pirates or answering a distress call. We’ve done search and rescue operations. Remember that yacht that got lost, that had the vid star on it?’

  Annalie shook her head, mystified.

  ‘You really don’t remember? It was all over the newsfeeds.’

  ‘I don’t pay much attention to those,’ Annalie mumbled.

  ‘We were part of the search. Wasn’t our vessel that found her, unfortunately, but we saw the signal that led to the other guys finding them.’

  ‘Wow,’ Annalie said politely.

  ‘Sometimes we’re just sailing up and down, making our presence felt, keeping the bad guys away. And that can be a bit boring. But one of my superior officers told me that it’s good when it’s boring. It should be boring. Because that means you’re keeping people safe.’ He beamed at her.

  Annalie looked at him curiously, remembering the stories she’d heard, the things she’d seen with her own eyes. She longed to press him on whether he’d been part of the not-so-noble actions, too—the ones where they burnt people’s homes or threatened to shoot them. But she couldn’t think of a way to bring it up without making him suspicious. So she said nothing.

  The morning passed quietly, but as morning became afternoon, one of Red Bandana’s companions appeared and waved Annalie vigorously to the door.

  ‘What’s he so excited about?’ Cherry wondered aloud.

  Annalie could only hope it was good news.

  Once more she was ushered into the room with the squashy lounges. Red Bandana was there with the boy and the old man, and this time, Red Bandana looked radiantly happy.

  ‘We know who you are,’ the boy translated.

  Red Bandana crowed and shouted something.

  ‘You’re a bad girl!’ the boy translated. ‘Why didn’t you tell us you’re one of us?’

  Annalie stared at him, and then realised what had happened. They’d searched her name on the links and found the story about Essie’s kidnapping.

  ‘That girl, that heiress. She still on your boat?’ the boy asked.

  ‘No,’ Annalie said. ‘We lost her.’

  The boy translated this. Red Bandana shook his head and waved his finger at her in a “naughty naughty” gesture.

  ‘You’re lying,’ the boy translated. ‘He remember her. She was the other girl on the boat.’

  ‘All right, that was her. But there isn’t any money,’ Annalie said. ‘Didn’t you read the story? Her father can’t get at his money, and the Duxans won’t pay. We already tried. There’s no money, she’s not worth anything. The whole thing was a bust.’

  The boy translated this. Red Bandana’s expression darkened. He shot out a burst of rapid-fire instructions.

  ‘You don’t know how to squeeze a family,’ the boy said. ‘We could get the money, no problem.’

  ‘I promise you, there’s no way,’ Annalie said.

  ‘We think there is,’ said the boy. He paused while Red Bandana spoke again. ‘That call ID you gave us, that was her call ID?’

  Annalie had to nod—it was pointless to deny it.

  ‘You call her. Get her to come here. If you give her to us, we’ll let you go.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You want to get free? Give us the rich girl.’

  Annalie stared at them, horrified. Swap her freedom for Essie’s? Never.

  ‘I already told you,’ she stalled. ‘I don’t know where she is now. If she’s not answering her shell, I have no way of getting in touch with her.’

  Red Bandana didn’t need this translated. He was already talking.

  ‘Then you’re no use to us,’ the boy translated. ‘We contact the other buyer now.’ Red Bandana was already reaching for his own shell.

  ‘Wait!’ Annalie said, trying not to panic. ‘Did I give y
ou this call ID?’ She reeled off her own.

  Red Bandana gave a nasty smirk.

  ‘No, you didn’t,’ the boy said. ‘Whose is that?’

  ‘It’s mine,’ Annalie said. ‘I left my shell behind on the boat. Hopefully someone’s still there to answer it.’

  ‘Your brother?’ the boy said. ‘The other kidnapper?’

  ‘That’s the one,’ Annalie said faintly.

  ‘Will he be willing to talk business?’

  ‘I expect so,’ Annalie said.

  She was taken back to the room, her mind reeling. The pirates knew who she was; they had recognised Essie. The fact that Red Bandana was still hoping to convince the others to hand Essie over to him had to mean that the pirates had not managed to capture the others. They were still free!

  This was the first good news she’d had, and she felt a surge of joy as she thought this through. But if they’d managed to escape, where were they now? And why wasn’t Essie answering her shell?

  She decided not to worry about that. There were a million reasons why that might be, including the most obvious: they were somewhere at sea with no signal.

  She hoped it didn’t mean they’d given her up for dead and sailed away. But she didn’t think they’d do that.

  No, they were probably somewhere nearby, planning their next move. For a moment she felt hopeful at the thought that they might be planning a rescue attempt, but that hope was quickly replaced by the fear that they might be planning a rescue attempt. If it went wrong, they could all wind up as prisoners.

  She wished she could remember exactly what the kidnapping article had actually said. It had certainly mentioned a ransom demand. She didn’t think there had been anything in there about a reward. Or had there?

  If the pirates had smelled the chance of a reward, they wouldn’t just be after Essie. They’d want to capture all of them.

  There would be no exchange, she realised. That was just a ruse to get them all in one place. Then Red Bandana would capture the lot of them and sell them off for as much as he could, to Essie’s parents, the Admiralty, the Duxan government—whoever was willing to pay the highest price.

  Annalie put her head in her hands, realising she had just made things a thousand times worse. Why didn’t I lie to them about who I was? she thought. She’d assumed that because the pirates were poor that they were technologically backward. But the links worked, even in Brundisi, and information was highly valuable.

  I wish there was some way I could talk to the others myself, she thought. Send them a message. Warn them not to come.

  But she couldn’t imagine how she could convince the pirates to let her do that.

  ‘You’re very quiet,’ Cherry said, from a corner of the room. She looked up; he was watching her with a rather penetrating look. ‘How did things go in there? Any new developments?’

  Annalie hesitated. There had been plenty, but not many that she wanted to share with an Admiralty officer. ‘They still haven’t been able to contact my friends,’ she said. ‘They wanted me to come up with more numbers.’

  ‘Did you have any?’

  She nodded. ‘I had to. They were threatening to sell me to this other buyer.’

  ‘Is it a real number?’

  ‘It’s real, but I don’t know how much help they’re going to be.’ She paused. ‘I think it’s possible my friends escaped.’

  Cherry looked pleased. ‘That’s great! Do you think they’ll be able to help you get out of here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Annalie said uneasily. ‘I guess we’ll find out.’

  She lapsed into silence again, returning to her thoughts.

  Perhaps she could convince the pirates to pass on a message? Something that would give the others a clue that this was a trap? She thought and thought. Then an idea came to her.

  She went and knocked on the door. ‘Hello! Excuse me! I need to talk to someone!’ She kept on banging and calling until the door opened. Red Bandana himself stood there. ‘We need to talk,’ Annalie said.

  ‘So you see, my brother still thinks he can get the money out of Essie’s parents himself. He doesn’t believe it’s hopeless. Personally I think it was time to give up months ago. We’ve done all we can and we failed. So I’m happy to let you have her and see what you can do. But my brother’s not going to give her up so easily.’

  Annalie waited while the boy translated all of this. Red Bandana listened carefully, his frown deepening. When the explanation ended, Annalie continued. ‘He might agree to hand her over, or say he agrees to it. But he won’t actually mean it. So when you talk to him, you should tell him Annalie told him to remember Gloradol.’

  ‘Remember Gloradol? What does that mean?’

  ‘He’ll know what it means.’ Annalie could see that this explanation did not satisfy them, so she elaborated. ‘We had a chance to make some money in Gloradol, and he stuffed it up. He won’t want to make the same mistake twice.’ Red Bandana listened to the translation, studying her, his eyes narrowed. Annalie gazed back at him, hoping she sounded convincing. ‘I don’t want this dragging on any more than you do,’ she said. ‘Just tell him to remember Gloradol. He’ll get the message.’

  She hoped and prayed she was right.

  The trade

  ‘Is this Will Wallace?’

  ‘Yes,’ Will said cautiously. The Sunfish rode at anchor in Doria harbour. The three of them plus Graham were gathered around Annalie’s shell.

  ‘We have your sister,’ said the voice on the shell. ‘Do you want her back?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It will cost you.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘You have a nice boat. She’s a smart girl. Worth a lot of money, we think.’

  ‘How much?’ Will said again.

  ‘A hundred thousand Duxan creds,’ the voice said.

  Will almost choked. ‘How much? How do you expect me to get my hands on that much money?’

  ‘If you want your sister back, you’d better try,’ the voice said.

  ‘We’re not rich people,’ Will said. ‘Is there—is there any chance we could negotiate on the price?’

  ‘Sure,’ the voice said. ‘You pay less than the full amount, maybe you don’t get all of your sister back. But we can negotiate.’

  ‘No, please don’t hurt her! We want all of her back.’

  ‘Then you’d better find the money,’ the voice said. There was a pause, then it said, ‘Unless…’

  ‘Unless what?’ Will said eagerly.

  ‘We know that you have a passenger on board. An heiress.’

  Essie’s eyes widened in surprise.

  ‘Do you still have her?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘If you still have her, we might be willing to make a trade. Your sister for the rich girl.’

  Pod was making vigorous “no” gestures with his hands. Essie simply looked aghast.

  ‘What if we don’t want to make that trade?’ Will asked.

  ‘Then it’s simple,’ the voice said. ‘You pay us a hundred thousand Duxan credits.’

  Will’s brain felt like a wet sheet flapping in the wind. He tried to gather his wits. ‘Okay, okay, suppose we were willing to make the trade, you’d just give my sister back, no questions asked, no money changing hands, just a straight swap?’

  ‘Straight swap,’ the voice said.

  Essie gave Will an outraged look.

  ‘And—and where would the exchange take place?’ Will asked.

  ‘We will name the place,’ the voice said.

  Pod was shaking his head at Will.

  ‘I’m sure—I’m sure something could be arranged,’ Will said, desperately scrambling for something, anything he could use. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘We will tell you the location later,’ the voice said. ‘But remember: if the trade doesn’t go smoothly, if we think you’re trying to double-cross us, your sister dies.’

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ Will said. ‘Double-cross you. Of course
I wouldn’t.’

  ‘We want the rich girl. We don’t want your sister. If you want your sister back, then remember Gloradol, and do what we say.’

  ‘Sorry—what did you say?’

  ‘Remember Gloradol. Your sister said you’d know what that means.’ The voice paused for a moment, then said, ‘We’ll call you with further instructions tomorrow at 5. Be ready.’

  The call ended abruptly.

  Will and the others stared at each other in shock.

  ‘“Remember Gloradol”?’ Essie said. ‘What do you think it means?’

  ‘Annalie’s trying to send us a message,’ Pod said.

  ‘Gloradol trap,’ Graham said.

  ‘You’re right,’ Will said. ‘It was a trap. Maybe this is, too.’

  ‘What does she want us to do, then?’ Essie said.

  ‘Not go,’ Graham said. ‘Stupid girl.’

  ‘But we have to go,’ Pod said.

  ‘Obviously,’ said Will.

  ‘Wait, wait,’ Essie said. This was all getting too gung-ho too fast for her taste. ‘Shouldn’t we try and go to the police? See if they can help us?’

  ‘“Hello, corrupt Brundisan policeman. My name’s Will and I’m a wanted kidnapper. Could you help me find my sister, the other wanted kidnapper?”’ Will said sarcastically.

  ‘There are police here in Doria, too,’ Essie said. ‘But you’re right, the kidnap story means we can’t go to the authorities.’

  ‘So we’re just going to have to try and come up with a plan,’ Will said.

  ‘Or the money,’ Essie said.

  ‘A hundred thousand creds?’ Will said, laughing incredulously.

  ‘Maybe we could sell some stuff, raise the money that way,’ Pod suggested. ‘There’s good stuff here on the boat, it must be worth something.’

  ‘This is a bunch of secondhand junk. It’s worth nothing,’ Will said scornfully.

  ‘What do you suppose the boat’s worth?’ Pod asked.

  ‘We’re not selling the boat,’ Will snapped.

  ‘She’s your sister,’ Pod said.

  They glared at each other. Will was the first to break his gaze. ‘I don’t really know what it’s worth,’ he finally muttered. ‘I don’t know if it’d fetch a hundred. Maybe, if we were lucky. Doria’s the kind of place where you might be able to sell a boat…’ He shook off the idea, looking accusingly at Pod. ‘But then we’d be trapped here.’