by Alex Archer
The fairly hideous tropical-flower-pattern bedspread was turned down. A green-foil-wrapped mint waited on the pillow. Perhaps most importantly, the air-conditioning was strong and steady.
As she approached the bed, the spread at the foot of it seemed to be moving. Ever so slightly.
She froze. The motion ceased. Did I imagine that? She hadn’t exactly been sleeping much of late.
She saw it again. The smallest hint of motion.
Deliberately she stooped and set the computer on the bedside table. Then she whipped back the spread with a flourish.
Fangs extended like spears as a big black-and-grey snake struck at her face.
By reflex she turned her body counterclockwise. Her right hand moved with her compact and rapid turn, a result of hours practicing martial arts.
To her surprise, she caught the snake about eight inches behind the head. It thrashed in her hand, trying again to strike at her face. She jerked her head away, overbalanced, fell sideways on the bed.
She knew if she let go, she would die.
The snake fought furiously to get free. She recognized it as an urutu, a South American pit viper, like a rattlesnake minus the rattles. Its venom was a hell brew that would surge through her bloodstream causing her red blood cells to explode like tiny bombs, while secondary toxins destroyed her nervous system, causing irreparable damage and unendurable pain.
The creature’s body was surprisingly solid and alarmingly strong. It must have been a good six feet in length. It felt as if she were trying to hang on to an out-of-control fire hose.
Somehow she kept her grip. She managed to get her other hand around the snake’s body below her first. It turned and struck for her forearm. Her cheeks pulled her lips back from her teeth in a grimace of horrified expectation.
But the snake struck only air. It could not double back upon its own sinuous body far enough to sink fangs in her flesh.
She sighed. The snake waved its head angrily, but she knew that, unless she got careless, she had won.
“Okay,” she said aloud, “now what do I do with you?”
She didn’t want to kill the creature. For all she knew they were endangered. In any event, this one was no longer a threat, and her spirit rebelled against taking the life of anything that didn’t threaten her.
She remembered seeing snake collectors dump their captives in bags. That seemed her best bet. Holding the snake gingerly away from her at the extent of her right arm, she groped behind her for a pillow with her left hand. Grabbing it by the closed end, she shook out the pillow.
Annja sat up. The snake had quit struggling and now moved its fat wedge of a head hypnotically from side to side. The poison sacs to either side of its head were swollen, immense. Had it buried those big fangs in her arm, the snake would have pumped enough venom into her to kill a bull.
With the little finger and ring finger of her right hand and her whole left hand she managed to get the pillowcase open. Holding it well away from her body, she took a deep breath and poured the snake inside.
She expected it to explode into wild action on finding itself trapped. Instead it subsided into fat, fleshy coils and, as far as she could tell, went promptly to sleep.
“Well, that was anticlimactic,” she said, holding up the improvised bag. She reminded herself to stay aware. The animal couldn’t bite its way out of the pillowcase, but if it happened to brush against her, it might still manage to bite her.
After a brief contemplation she gingerly and gently twisted the top, swaying the pillowcase from her upheld arm so that the snake’s weight would rotate the pillowcase. The snake weighed more than she expected.
When she had the pillowcase wound well shut she stood, walked to the bathroom door and very cautiously knotted a loop and hung it over the knob. When she let go she held herself poised to dive away, in case being allowed to hang against the door woke the viper and gave it leverage somehow to strike at her. But the captive did nothing.
Annja went to the bedside telephone, picked up the receiver, punched a single button.
“Hello, front desk?” she said in Portuguese when the line was picked up. “I have a little problem.”
15
Outside the rain poured down as if it had always been raining and never intended to stop. Evidently they didn’t call this part of the world the rain forest for nothing.
Annja sat contentedly in the lobby of the Lord Manaus, tapping away at the notebook computer. The rushing sound of the morning downpour provided a backdrop more soothing to her than the generic Brazilian jazz oozing softly from the hotel speakers.
She was still amused by the follow-up to last night’s encounter with the snake. The concierge’s supercilious disbelief when she claimed to have found a poisonous snake in her room had almost been funny. He had come around when she described the distinctive patterns of one of Brazil’s most feared snakes. Obviously he recognized the design.
She suspected close encounters with poisonous serpents wasn’t rare in this city in the jungle. But she didn’t think snakes, poisonous or not, were common visitors inside the Lord Manaus.
The first hotel maintenance man to show up at her door in his green coveralls had been cheerfully nonchalant, clearly not taking the white North American woman’s babble about vipers all that seriously. Even the fact that Annja did her babbling in Portuguese did little to dent his obvious skepticism. Then Annja pulled open the pillow-case to show him what she’d found—in a closet, she said. He turned ashen and spoke into his walkie-talkie so rapidly Annja couldn’t follow him. Then he had to sit down.
Eventually a pair of maintenance types showed up carrying a metal-looped snake-catching pole and a more substantial bag. The transfer was accomplished efficiently and with minimal fuss. Annja tipped the two snake handlers and when they had gone, tipped the first responder double. He was so badly shaken she felt sorry for him. Even if it was his own fault for not believing her.
The hotel night manager had turned up ten minutes later, all unctuous concern, to reassure himself that Annja was intact, especially unbitten, and uninclined to bring any unfortunate lawsuits. She also knew the manager really dreaded an account of her terrifying adventure turning up and catching a million hits on the Web.
She had ducked out of the hotel early for breakfast solo at a nearby café, then got back without getting rained on. Well, except for a little on the last sprint to the door, but that hadn’t done her any harm.
She was glad to have had time to herself without either Dan or their eccentric boss on hand. She’d needed it. Especially with events moving so quickly. Even if she still felt, frustratingly, as if she and Dan were stumbling around in the dark looking for clues to the hidden city.
I guess that’s why they call it hidden, she thought ruefully.
She had decided that morning to say nothing about the snake incident to either Dan or Sir Iain. It added nothing they hadn’t already known. Sharing it could only add complications.
As for warning Dan a similar attempt might be made on his life…he already acted like an old scarred alley cat, with his head on a swivel whenever he walked out on the street. He struck Annja as being as functionally alert as he could be. Winding him tighter would only feed his paranoia—and propensity for anger.
“May we join you, Ms. Creed?”
It was a familiar, mellifluous male baritone, speaking beautifully accented English. Annja looked up into the pale amber eyes of Patrizinho. At his side, compact and radiantly lovely despite her conservative gray skirt, stood Xia. They both smiled as if Annja were a long-lost cousin.
“Sure,” Annja said. She had to force her own smile. Inside she felt tight and very, very cold. “Feel free.”
She closed her notebook computer with a certain relief as they seated themselves side by side on the sofa facing Annja’s chair across a low coffee table. After the initial shock of the encounter, the chill within her turned quickly into quivery anticipation, like a hunting dog straining at the leash. Or what
she imagined one would be like.
“What a pleasant surprise to see you both,” she said.
“Likewise,” Xia said. “What brings you to Manaus? And where’s your very handsome friend?”
“To answer the second question first, either still in his room or getting breakfast.”
“Ah,” Xia said. Her eyes sparkled. “Too bad.”
Annja felt her mouth tighten. Patrizinho laughed. He was dressed in sort of retro style, a faintly pink beige jacket over similarly colored slacks and a dark green collarless shirt. “Please forgive us. We Brazilians are terrible romantics,” he said.
“I notice you say ‘we,’” Annja replied.
“I’m one of the worst.”
“As for your first question,” Annja said, crossing her legs and feeling annoyed with herself for how much she wanted to like these two people, “our research continues.”
“Here in Manaus?” Patrizinho asked. “A long way to go afield to look for quilombos. Am I mistaken, or were they not mainly a coastal phenomenon?”
“I thought so, too. But our employer asked us to look into documents available here, at the library and university.” That was what she had determined she would do today. With luck it might even obviate the need to engage in any nocturnal burglary. “We have come across hints there might actually have been quilombos established even farther upriver after the fall of Palmares. And there is a neighborhood here named for Zumbi of the Palm Nation.”
“There are lots of neighborhoods named for him,” Xia said, “even down in the Pampas, where surely no quilombos ever were.”
“Still,” Patrizinho said, “how fascinating would it be if there were something in it all? A lost civilization!”
“Patrizinho likes to let his imagination roam free,” Xia said. “Anyway, if a city really has been lost all this time, might that not be strictly accidental? Perhaps the citizens don’t want to be found.”
Has she taken my hook? Annja wondered, uncrossing her legs and trying to act casual. Or have I taken hers? Whatever the truth about this amiable and cover-model-gorgeous pair, she suspected it would be a mistake to underestimate them.
“What are you doing here?”
It was a rough challenge delivered by Dan’s voice. Annja looked around to see him standing there frowning.
Xia smiled dazzlingly at him. “Conversing with your delightful associate, Annja, of course,” she said.
“Sit down,” Annja said sharply to her partner. Dan looked at her. He raised an eyebrow in momentary rebellion. Then he grinned and sat in the chair beside hers.
“If you mean what are we doing here in this rather charmless and remote city of Manaus,” Patrizinho said, “we simply have business here.”
“Do you deal with the River of Dreams Trading Company at all?” Annja asked as casually as she could.
Patrizinho glanced at Xia. “Sometimes,” she said. “Our business naturally brings us to Amazonas State on a regular basis. You know, of course, there are no roads from here to the coast.”
“I know most of what moves through the interior goes by air. Or by river, obviously, here in the Amazon Basin,” Annja said.
Patrizinho nodded, smiling as if she’d just spoken a rare insight. “Manaus is the natural hub for the deep-Amazon trade. Especially since it’s the farthest deep-draught oceangoing ships can travel up the river. That naturally draws us. River of Dreams is what we might term a middle-scale company. So yes, we deal with them on occasion.”
“So what do you make of our Brasilia, Dan?” Xia asked.
His pale eyes narrowed. His brow furrowed. “Mostly I see oppression and environmental rape. Despite your socialist president, wild capitalism is destroying the rain forest for profit. No offense, of course.”
“Of course not,” Patrizinho murmured.
“You might wish to be cautious assigning blame,” Xia said. “Yes, the rain forest is being destroyed at a tragic clip. But were you to look deeply into our politics, you might see that—while it brings increased profits to certain sectors, such as the soya growers, who grow rich selling their produce to your health-conscious fellow North Americans—the motive for the destruction is not primarily economic. The government subsidizes it out of a desire to exterminate the Indians by devastating their habitat. Like most Latin American governments, ours regards the indigenous people as little better than animals, who disgrace our great and advanced civilization by their stubborn backwardness. It is the great unacknowledged shame of South and Central America, this ongoing genocide against the natives.”
For the first time Annja heard something other than cheerfulness in Xia’s voice. She spoke with unconcealed bitterness.
Dan shrugged. “Isn’t it fashionable for capitalists to blame the government for their crimes these days?”
“But don’t you find,” Patrizinho said lightly, “that the capitalists who commit the greatest crimes do so with the active cooperation of government?”
Dan scowled. Then he shrugged. He was clearly uncomfortable continuing this conversation, Annja saw. Otherwise she guessed a potentially vitriolic debate would have ensued.
“I admit I wouldn’t mind seeing this whole city plowed under and returned to the rain forest,” Dan said.
“And the people of the city?” Xia asked. “Would not many innocents suffer?”
“I’ve been all around the world. I’ve seen a lot of suffering. I’ve seen a lot of damage to the planet. And one thing I’ve learned—there are no innocents.”
“You don’t mean that,” Annja said. But his only response was a hard smile.
“It may be easier to see such things from your vantage point than mine, my friend,” said Patrizinho.
Xia stood up. Annja envied her grace.
“But we do not wish to intrude any longer,” she said as Patrizinho rose, with scarcely less fluidity. “You have important matters to attend to. For that matter, so do we.”
Annja rose, making polite farewell noises. Dan sat with arms tightly crossed over his chest, glaring at the Brazilian pair as if they were capitalist fat cats with dollar signs all over their suits.
When they left, Annja sat and pinned her partner with a look. “Why go all Mr. Surly with the ingenue Brazilian couple?”
He sneered. “I don’t suppose it occurred to you there might be something a little bit suspicious about them turning up right here in Manaus at the same time we’re here—not to mention how they chanced to be passing through our very hotel?”
“Of course it did. It also occurred to me my best chance of getting anything useful out of them was to play along, instead of growl at them and chase them off. Did it ever occur to you to give me credit for having any brains?”
He glared at her a moment. Slowly a smile struggled across his face. He uttered a bark of a laugh. “Eventually it’ll sink in,” he said, “I hope. I’ve found that every time I underestimate you I wind up nursing bruises in places I never knew I could get bruised.”
It was the first time he had referred, however obliquely, to the events of their last night in Belém.
“So you suspect they know something?” he asked.
“Coincidences just seem to keep piling up, don’t they? Wasn’t it Sun Tzu who said, ‘Once is chance, twice is happenstance, three times is enemy action’?” Annja asked.
“Actually,” a deep voice said from over her shoulder in a Northern Irish accent, “it was Goldfinger, in the Ian Fleming novel. I love those books. I read them every year.”
“Isn’t that like the ultimate celebration of imperialism?” asked Dan, who was clearly still grumpy.
Publico laughed. “You’d be happier if you learned to separate politics from entertainment, Dan my boy.”
“Do you?”
The rock star laughed even louder. Heads turned to stare. Such was the magnetism of the man that stares turned to smiles when they saw him. Annja thought it happened whether the people recognized him as a superstar performer or not. “Well, sometimes I do. Tha
t’s what I recommend. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”
Dan eyed him dubiously. “Did you spend the night at the hotel?” he asked.
“No. A private residence. Allow an old man his fleeting pleasures, son.”
“We just had an interesting encounter,” Annja said. Publico tipped his head curiously to the side. Quickly she filled him in on the peculiar appearance of Xia and Patrizinho, seemingly out of nowhere. She didn’t see any need to mention Dan’s hostility toward them.
The more she thought about it the more she understood it. If they actually had guilty knowledge of Mafalda’s death—and the attempts on Dan’s and Annja’s lives—they were nothing but smiling murderers. Or accomplices to murder.
It’s looking more and more as if Sir Iain’s right in his assessment of the Promessans, Annja thought. If what we suspect is true, they might be a whole culture of narcissistic sociopaths.
Publico stood by, nodding and looking thoughtful. “Doesn’t it seem to you we might be stirring things up, then? It seems to me that might just indicate we’re getting closer to our goal.”
“What now?” Annja asked.
“There may be documents to be found in the city’s libraries that hold clues,” he said. He grinned. “If you’re lucky, Annja, you might just be finding one that’ll let you off having to do anything you might find distasteful.”
THE UNIVERSITY HELD no joy for Annja. However, a helpful student aide suggested she check with the city library.
“Promessa,” said Mr. Viguerie, the special-collections librarian for the city library, walking along between shelves stuffed with books with cracked and age-blackened backs as Annja trailed behind. He was a middle-aged, middle-height man with a balding head and a frizzy fringe of white hair that came down in sideburns and up over his upper lip in a mustache that made him resemble a walrus. His protuberant eyes were light brown, moist and gentle behind round-lensed spectacles. “So you’re interested in our famous lost civilization.”
Annja’s heart jumped like a frog from a pot of boiling water. “You’ve heard of it?”
