Secret Of The Slaves. Alex Archer

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СКАЧАТЬ slavery—what? Over a hundred years ago,” Dan said.

      “In 1880,” Annja said. “It may be,” she continued, setting the cup down and leaning forward over the table, “that Mafalda gave us more information than she intended.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “I thought a lot about what she told us last night. She was worried, basically, that the Maroons—the Promessans, we might as well call them—might think she talked too much about them.”

      “So you’re thinking they’ve got some kind of surveillance on her,” Dan said. “Bugs? Or maybe something astral?” He said the last with a laugh.

      “Hey, I’m as hardheaded skeptical about that stuff as you are.” Although I bet I have to work a whole lot harder at it, she thought. “I’m not even sure I go so far as buying electronic eavesdropping, although with snooping gear so incredibly cheap and tiny these days, I guess I shouldn’t dismiss it out of hand.”

      “What are you thinking?” He was all business now. In a sense she was pleasantly surprised. While he had been polite and correct the whole time they had been together, she had picked up pretty unequivocal signals he found her attractive. But he also conveyed a certain sense of superciliousness. Not quite disdain. But as if he were the professional here, not she.

      Given his background, and current mission brief, she could even understand that, however it irked her. If only he knew how wrong he was. And yet, of course, she couldn’t tell him that the last thing she needed was his protection.

      Not that he’d believe her if she tried.

      But now he was acting like one pro talking business with another, and that was good. “While it’s not even impossible they could bug Mafalda’s shop long-distance—I mean, all the way from Upper Amazonia—I don’t think that’s the likeliest thing. At least, it’s unlikely to be their only measure,” Annja said.

      “Back up a step. You think they could bug the shop all the way from their hidden fortress?” Dan asked.

      She shrugged. “Why not? It could be something as prosaic as a satellite phone relay.”

      “So you’re not envisioning these people as, like, some kind of lost culture still living in the eighteenth century or whenever?”

      “I think that’s King Solomon’s Mines,” she said with a smile. “Not necessarily. Were you? For that matter, is Sir Iain? I thought his whole thing was the possibility they might possess technology far in advance of ours.”

      “Well—maybe. But they could possess, say, herbal techniques developed beyond the scope of modern medical science and still have an archaic culture. Or an essentially indigenous one.”

      “Maybe. But from what Sir Iain told me, and some research I did afterward, one of the first things the escaped slaves did was start trading with the English and the Dutch for modern weapons.”

      “I don’t mean to be racist, but that seems pretty sophisticated for slaves,” Dan said.

      “I found out something pretty startling. Not all the slaves were preliterate tribal warriors from the bush. It turns out the Portuguese colonists were so lazy they got tired of administering their plantations and mines and other businesses themselves. So they started kidnapping and enslaving people from places like the ancient African city of Tombouctou. They may even have enslaved their own people from their colonial city of Luanda.”

      “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 СКАЧАТЬ