Secret of the Slaves

by Alex Archer

  “Meaning—”

  “Meaning they were deliberately capturing and enslaving clerical and middle-management types,” Annja said.

  He laughed vigorously. “That’s great,” he said. “Just great. They really were lazy. And so these well-educated urban slaves teamed up with their warrior cousins taken from the tribal lands and created their own high-power civilization.”

  “Pretty much. That’s why they were able to stand off their former masters for so long. They were every bit as sophisticated as the Europeans. More, in a way, because of their allying with the Indians early on. They knew the terrain better.”

  “A guerrilla resistance,” he said. “I like it.”

  “My sense is,” she said, leaning forward onto her elbows with her hands propping her chin, “if this city Sir Iain thinks exists really does, its occupants would be pretty current with modern technology.”

  “Or even advanced beyond it.” He arched a brow.

  She shrugged. “Your boss seems to think so.”

  Dan frowned. “He’s a great man. He’s my friend. You can call him our employer,” he said, emphasizing the our subtly, “but I don’t like the word boss.”

  “Understood,” Annja said.

  “So, all right, conceivably these descendants of the long-ago escaped slaves, the Maroons or Promessans, might be able to bug a shop in Belém long-distance. I see that. But you seem to think that’s not what they’re doing.”

  “If they really exist,” Annja added.

  “Sure.”

  She thought a moment, then sighed. “No. I don’t. A key aspect of their early survival was trade. I’d bet they’ve stuck with that as a mainstay of their economy. If for no other reason they’d have agents—factors—in the outside world. Belém is pretty much the gateway to the entire Amazon in one direction and the entire world in the other. And that seems to have been the connection with the German businessman your…Publico told me about. He must have had some kind of commercial relationship with Promessa. What business was he in, do you know?”

  “Electronic components of some sort. Controls for computerized machine tools, possibly.”

  “Hmm.” She regretted not pressing Moran for further details. The fact was, he had so swept her off her feet during their one and only interview, with the sheer hurricane force of his personality and passion, that she never even thought of it. “Perhaps we can call him or e-mail him. That might be a lead to follow up, too.”

  “Maybe,” Dan said. “Publico kind of likes his people to use their own initiative.”

  “Well.” Annja wrinkled a corner of her mouth in brief irritation. “Maybe it isn’t necessary. If the Promessans keep agents here for trade, they can just as easily keep them here for other purposes.”

  “So their traders are spies.”

  She shrugged again. “There’s precedent for that. They may or may not be the same people. We don’t have enough data even to guess.”

  “So if we can spot one of these agents we might not need Mafalda’s cooperation.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping, anyway,” Annja said.

  For a moment they sat, thinking separate thoughts. A young woman came into the open-air café. She was tall, willowy, and—as Annja found distressingly common in Brazil—quite beautiful. She squeezed the water from a nearby beach from her great mane of kinky russet hair. Water stood beaded in droplets on her dark-honey skin, which was amply displayed by the minuscule black thong bikini she wore.

  The rest of the café patrons were locals. No one else seemed to take notice of the woman as she strode to an open-air shower to one side of the café, shielded by a sort of glass half booth from splashing any nearby patrons.

  Nor did they show any sign of reaction when the young woman dropped a white beach bag with white-and-purple flowers on it to the floor, turned on the water and skinned right out of her bikini.

  Annja looked around, trying to keep her cool. Am I really seeing this? The customers continued their conversations or their perusals of the soccer news in the local paper. She glanced back. Yes, there was a stark naked woman showering not twenty feet away from her.

  She looked toward Dan. He was looking at her with a studiedly bland expression. “You might as well watch,” she said. “Just don’t stare.”

  “Never,” he murmured, and his eyes fairly clicked toward the showering woman.

  The young woman finished, toweled herself briskly, then dressed in shorts and a loose white top. She looked up as a small group of young women came into the café, chattering like the tropical birds that clustered in the trees all over town. She greeted them cheerfully and joined them at a table as if nothing unusual had happened.

  Dan let the breath slide out of him in a protracted sigh. “Whoo,” he said.

  “Whoo indeed,” Annja said. “It’s like a whole different country, huh?”

  “Excuse me,” a voice interrupted.

  At the quiet, polite feminine query in English both looked up. Two young people stood there, a very petite woman and a very tall man. Both were striking in their beauty and in their exotic appearance. Both wore light-colored, lightweight suits.

  “Are you Americans?” the woman asked.

  “Are we that obvious?” Dan asked.

  The young man shrugged wide shoulders. He exuded immediate and immense likeability. “There are details,” he said in an easy baritone voice. “The way you dress. The way you hold yourselves. Your mannerisms—they’re quicker than ours tend to be, but not so broad, you know?”

  “And then,” Annja said with a shrug, “there’s our tendency to gawk at naked women in the café.”

  The man laughed aloud. “You were most polite,” he said.

  “She probably would have appreciated the attention,” the woman said. “We Brazilians tend to take a lot of trouble over our appearance. Clearly you know that beauty takes hard work.”

  “You’ve probably noticed, we don’t have much body modesty hereabouts,” the man said. “But you were wise to be discreet. Brazilians also tend to think that Americans confuse that lack of modesty with promiscuity.”

  “They’re probably right,” Dan said, “way too often.”

  “Please, sit down,” Annja told the pair. She was not getting threatening vibes from them. And she and Dan were drawing blanks so far. Any kind of friendly local contact was liable to be of some help. At least a straw to clutch at. “I’m Annja Creed. This is Dan Seddon. He’s my business associate.”

  Dan cast her a hooded look as the woman pulled out a chair and sat. The man pulled one over from a neighboring table. Annja saw that they both had long hair. The woman’s hung well down the back of her lightweight cream-colored jacket, clear to her rump. The man’s was a comet-tail of milk-chocolate dreadlocks held back by a band at the back of his head, to droop back down past his shoulders.

  “I’m Xia,” the woman said. “And this is Patrizinho.” The pair looked to be in their late twenties, perhaps a year or two older than Annja.

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Annja, who was accustomed to the Brazilian habit of going by first names alone. “What do you do?”

  “We work for an import-export firm,” Xia said. “Mostly we are consultants. We help foreign merchants negotiate the labyrinth of our trade laws and regulations.”

  “They’re quite bizarre,” Patrizinho said. “Some of our people take perverse pride in having them that way.”

  “And you?” Xia asked. “Are you here on vacation?”

  Annja glanced at Dan. To her surprise he sat more tightly angled back in his chair than slouched, with his legs straight under the table, arms folded, chin on clavicle. He frowned slightly at her but gave no indication she shouldn’t discuss their real purpose.

  “We’re here doing research for an institution in the United States,” she said, parrying an internal stab of annoyance at Dan. “I’m an archaeologist and historian by trade. My partner is a representative of the institute.”

  “It’s a humanitari
an institution,” he said. “We’re here doing research on quilombos.”

  Patrizinho raised his brows. “Not many Americans I’ve met know anything about them.”

  A male server appeared. Patrizinho ordered fruit juice, Xia some bottled water.

  “What’s your interest in the quilombos, then?” Xia asked.

  “We understand that some of them actually managed to survive as independent entities until Brazil became a republic,” Annja said.

  “True enough,” Patrizinho said. “Some of them still exist as recognized townships today.”

  Annja glanced at Dan, who seemed to be sulking. “We’re trying to track down reports that there might be a settlement derived from a quilombo far up the Amazon, which has declined to join Brazil or, perhaps, the modern world.”

  Patrizinho grinned and tapped the table with his fingertips. “Hiding like Ogum in the forest!”

  “What’s that?” Dan asked sharply.

  “An old expression.”

  “A lost civilization,” Xia said. “Do you really think that’s possible in today’s world? With airplanes and satellites everywhere. Wouldn’t it turn up on Google Earth?”

  Annja shrugged. “We aim to find out.”

  For a moment they sat without exchanging words. A breeze idly flapped the red, green and yellow awning over their heads. From somewhere came strains of Brazilian popular music, faint and lively.

  Since their newfound acquaintances weren’t jumping in to offer clues to the location of the lost City of Promise, or even expand on local legends to the effect, Annja said, “Patrizinho, your mention of Ogum puts me in mind of a question both Dan and I had.”

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “We keep seeing people wearing these T-shirts. They’ll say something like Cavalo Do Xango or Cavala Da Iansã, around images of colorful-looking persons. I know those phrases mean, basically, horse of Xango or Iansã. We’ve seen them for Ogum, too. But who are they, and why do other people wear shirts saying they’re their horses?”

  “Those people are orixás,” Patrizinho said. “You know what that means?”

  “We’ve heard the word,” Dan said.

  “Xango is the thunder and war god. Iansã is his wild-woman wife, also known as Oyá, goddess of winds and storms—and the gates of the underworld. If somebody is a horse for one of them, that means they regularly serve as host or vessel for that spirit.”

  “You mean like in voodoo,” Dan said, perking up a bit, “where ritual participants are ridden by the loa?”

  “Pretty much the same,” Xia said. “In fact many people here worship the very same loa. Sometimes they’re even taken over by Catholic saints, they say, although the saints are usually identified with specific orixás.”

  “People advertise the fact that they regularly get…possessed?” Annja asked. For all that she liked to think of herself as a tolerant person—and she’d spent enough time among enough people in strange and remote places to have what she thought pretty good credibility for the claim—the notion creeped her out considerably.

  “They believe it’s an honor, to be chosen by the god or goddess,” Patrizinho said.

  Xia checked an expensive-looking designer watch strapped to her thin wrist. “We’d better get on our way, Patrizinho,” she said, rising. “It’s been lovely meeting you, Annja, Dan. Perhaps we’ll get a chance to see each other again.”

  Patrizinho stood, too. With a serious expression he said, “We should warn you to be wary of people who proclaim themselves horses for Ogum, or of Babalu. They are the gods of war and disease, respectively. They are dangerous, cranky spirits. Not to be trifled with, you understand.”

  Dan smiled a tight smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ve never been real afraid of gods and spirits.”

  “Horses,” Xia said dryly, “tend to mirror their masters’ personalities. So perhaps you should keep an eye on them.”

  7

  Annja opened her eyes to darkness—and the cold conviction she was not alone.

  The night throbbed with a samba beat from the small hotel’s nightclub a couple of floors below, audible as a bass thrum beneath the white noise of the overburdened air conditioner in the window. For a moment she lay frozen, wondering if she was having a sleep-paralysis experience.

  She smelled a waft of greens and warm, moist, dark earth—

  She and Dan had spent a hot, tiring and unproductive day trolling the museums, the dark shops and bustling outdoor markets for clues to the fabled lost city of Promessa. As far as Annja was concerned it was anything but promising. For all the apparent conviction of Mafalda’s warning to them the day before, Annja was beginning to suspect they were on a wild-goose chase. And Annja knew enough about folk beliefs and culture to understand too well that Mafalda’s role in the community practically demanded she be a skilled actress.

  But now—

  With a sense of foreboding rising up her neck and tingling at the hinges of her jaw, Annja turned her head.

  A figure stood at the foot of her bed. It was a shadow molded in the shape of a human. As she stared, the light of a streetlight and the half-moon glowed through inadequate curtains and enabled her wide eyes to resolve the form into what seemed to be an Amazonian man, short, wide shouldered, with a braided band holding long heavy hair away from what the shadows suggested was his darkly handsome face. His lean-muscled torso was bare; he appeared to be wearing only a loincloth of some sort.

  As almost self-consciously quaint as this older part of Belém could be, the apparition had no more place in the climate-controlled room in a modern city than a pterodactyl or knight in armor. I don’t believe in ghosts, she thought.

  “I am real,” the apparition said. Did he read my mind, she wondered, or did I speak aloud?

  “You must stop asking the questions you are asking,” the man said. “Please. Otherwise untold harm will result.”

  She struggled to sit up in bed, her heart racing.

  “What about the harm you’re doing by withholding your secrets from the world?” She said it more to see if she got a response than from any belief that such harm was being done, or that such secrets even existed. “Isn’t that the ultimate selfishness?”

  The man shook his head. “You speak of things you do not understand,” he said sadly. “There are many things you do not know, and cannot be permitted to know.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Anger at the violation of her privacy mixed with the adrenaline of fear surged within Annja.

  “You have been warned,” the man said sorrowfully. “We are willing to die to protect our secret. Consider what we will do to you, if we must.” His apparent sadness only added mass to the soft menace of his words.

  Annja whipped the sheet clear of her with a matador twirl and jumped from the bed. The sword came into her hand.

  During the eyeblink that the sheet obscured her vision, her mysterious sad-voiced visitor had vanished. As if into thin air.

  Scowling ferociously, she searched the room, sword almost quivering with eagerness to strike. Sometimes it seemed to have almost a life of its own.

  She didn’t like to think such thoughts. They smacked of madness. She pushed them firmly from her mind.

  MOMENTS LATER Annja found herself standing barefoot on the threadbare green-and-maroon flower-patterned carpet in the hallway, wrapped in a white bathrobe, aware that her hair and eyes were both wild. She did not carry the sword, since she felt a grim certainty she was much more likely to encounter alarmed innocent tourists or hotel staff than any crafty cat burglars.

  What she did encounter was Dan Seddon, wearing a pair of weathered jeans and a look at once furious and bewildered. His own hair stood out in random directions. Annja thought he resembled Calvin from the Calvin and Hobbes cartoons she’d loved growing up. She fought a semihysterical impulse to giggle.

  “So I wasn’t the only one who had a night visitor,” Dan said. “You look like an avenging angel on a bad-hair day.”

  “Y
ou’re a great one to talk, Calvin,” she said.

  He looked confused. “Never mind,” she said. “What did you see?”

  “A woman,” he said. “Tall, thin, looked African. Had one of those headdresses on, the ones with the flared tops.” He had extensive experience in sub-Saharan Africa, Annja recalled. “She warned me not to keep seeking the quilombo of dreams.”

  “And I suppose she vanished without a trace?”

  “Absolutely. I rolled over to turn on the bedside lamp. When I rolled back I was all alone. Creepy.”

  He made a sound deep in his throat that might have been a chuckle, or passed for one. “Something like this tempts a man to believe there might actually be something to the stories about these Promessans possessing mystic powers.”

  It was Annja’s turn to produce an inarticulate noise, this a distinctly unladylike grunt of confirmed skepticism. “It’s some kind of trick. It’s got to be.”

  “Was your window open? You find any sign the door had been jimmied?” Dan looked at her intently for a moment. “From your expression I’m taking that as a no on both counts.”

  “Well…still. I’m not ready to buy into astral projection or anything,” Annja said.

  He shrugged. “Come to that, if they have some kind of technique of holographic projection, that’d be pretty significant in and of itself, wouldn’t it? Moran seems to think whatever secrets the Promessans have are primarily technological, although he doesn’t say much about the mystic-powers thing one way or another.”

  “But I smelled him. He smelled of soil and plants. Like the rain forest.”

  Dan shrugged. “The Department of Defense was claiming to be able to stimulate various kinds of sensory hallucinations by beaming microwaves directly into people’s skulls in the late 1990s,” he said. “Maybe the Promessans are using a technology that isn’t really that advanced. Just secret.” He uttered a short laugh. “I’m surprised the capitalists haven’t started using it for ads, though. Imagine billboards beamed directly into your brain!”