Secret Of The Slaves. Alex Archer
heads or hearts.
“Favelas,” she said. “Some of the Earth’s most serious slums. You’re thinking more of Rio de Janeiro. And yeah, that’s full-contact poverty. There really are favelas in Rio where the police literally don’t go except in battalion strength, the way they did in one of the worst districts just a couple of years ago.”
“I read about that online,” Dan said.
“I’ve been to Rio,” she said, “and this place has a different feel. For one thing, food’s a lot more readily available than it is in the middle of a huge urban wasteland.”
By chance they had come into a little market square, lined with kiosks offering everything from live chickens in crates to bin after bin of mostly unfamiliar fruits and vegetables to big wheels of cheese. And everywhere fish, of a remarkable range of size and shapes.
“Look around you. The people are mostly smiling, happy,” Annja said.
He shrugged. “Anesthetized to the realities of repression.”
“Dan, that’s not worthy of you,” she said more sharply than she’d intended. “You know nothing about these people.”
A man passed them with a cheerful nod and word of greeting.
“I stand corrected, Ms. Creed. “I confess I’ve been guilty of Western cultural imperialism and assumed superiority. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. ”
“You know some Latin,” she said. “That’s a great grounding for Romance languages. And just for the record, I like the wiseass Dan a lot better than the doctrinaire Dan.”
He might just as easily have told her off. They were, after all, contractors on assignment together. But he flashed a devil-may-care grin and said, “Noted. And maybe I do, too.”
They wandered down a line of stalls, listening to the good-natured—mostly—bargaining. Sometimes the African dialects were so prevalent Annja understood little if any better than Dan appeared to.
“Whoa. Those are some ugly fish,” Dan said, waving at a particularly formidable specimen, arrayed with armor and sinister spikes and barbs. “Didn’t I see one of these eating tourists in Mexico on an old episode of Outer Limits on Nickelodeon?”
“It’d have to be a bit bigger and a lot more ambitious than that one looks,” Annja said. “Of course, it is dead.”
“Remind me not to take a dip in the river. Not that it looks that inviting—it’s the color and consistency of pea soup.” He shook his head. “Man spoils everything he touches, doesn’t he?”
“Don’t kid yourself. The crust of old plastic bags and junk is largely man-made. But the river’s color and consistency are all natural, a combination of silt and things exuding into it from the forest all around,” Annja said.
“Huh,” he said, clearly unconvinced. She felt a flash of annoyance. He had a tendency not to see things that clashed with his preconceptions. She tried to let it go.
I have to work with him, she reminded herself. And anyway, for the most part he’s a lot more fun than a lot of partners I’ve had…. She let the thought dangle, unwilling to follow it further.
They pushed on, turning into a narrow street where two-story whitewashed buildings seemed to lean toward each other overhead. They took a right turn into a dank, muddy path that it might have been a compliment to call an alley.
Dan hung back, frowning at Annja. “Uh—” he said.
She stopped and looked sternly at him. “Don’t tell me you’re going all male-chauvinist protective on me.”
He shrugged. “It’s my job to look out for you, Ms. Creed.” She recognized he was in official mode.
“Hasn’t it occurred to you I’ve looked after myself in some pretty rough parts of the world?” And more than that, of course, but she wasn’t sharing that information. With any luck he’d never find out.
“Well—I don’t see a film crew anywhere,” he said. “Not to mention network security staff.”
“You’d be surprised how sparse that is for our show,” she said. “Anyway, look. If it makes you feel better, I happen to have long legs. I know you noticed.”
To his credit his gaze never wavered from hers. “Yeah.”
“So if anything bad happens I can run away real fast. Satisfied?”
He frowned at her a moment. Then his face unclouded and he laughed. “I get the feeling I have to be.”
They stopped at a blue-painted door set into a wall missing some chunks of stucco. He nodded. “After you.”
She pushed her way into darkness.
5
The first thing that hit her, along with the earth-burrow coolness, was the smell. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell, particularly. But it was a complicated one. A skein of smells, a tapestry, woven out of elements familiar, hauntingly reminiscent and outright strange. Some were organic, some chemical and astringent.
“May I help you?” a voice said from the shop’s dim depths.
A beaded curtain rustled. A woman emerged into the front room among close-packed shelves and counters. She was tall, possibly taller than Annja, although the red-and-yellow turban around her head added a few inches. In the gloom it was hard to be sure.
Annja glanced sideways at Dan. “We’d like to talk to the shop owner,” she said.
“That’s me,” the woman said. She seemed to glide forward without moving her feet, doubtless an illusion caused by her long skirts, which brushed the warped boards of the floor. “I am Mafalda. How may I help you?”
As she came close enough to distinguish detail, Annja realized that she was a very beautiful woman, seemingly no older than Annja, with mocha skin and eyes that might have been dark green.
“You’re Americans,” Mafalda said.
Annja smiled.
“What can I do for distinguished visitors from so far away?” Mafalda seemed to be slipping into a familiar role, which Annja guessed was half mystic, half huckster. She probably had one mix for the tourists and another for the locals.
Annja looked openly to Dan. Though never spoken, the arrangement seemed to be that while she was in charge of the scientific and research aspects of the expedition, he spoke for their mutual employer Moran. She wasn’t entirely comfortable with the arrangement, but Sir Iain was paying her very well.
“We understand you might have some information about a hidden city,” Dan said.
“Who told you that?” the proprietor asked. Shrewdly, Annja thought.
“Someone back in the United States,” Dan answered blandly.
Mafalda seemed unimpressed with that response. “Lost-city rumors crawl all over the Amazon like bugs,” she said, unwittingly echoing what Annja had told Sir Iain in his Manhattan headquarters. “They have done so ever since the days of the first explorers. I don’t deal in treasure maps. Perhaps you should seek elsewhere.”
Shooting an exasperated look at Dan, who only shrugged, Annja said, “Perhaps if you’d be so kind as to show us what you do deal in, please, we’d better understand how we might help each other.”
It occurred to Annja that their employer might be playing his cards too close to his well-muscled chest. Unless he simply had no better information to share. But he must have had some reason to send them here.
After favoring Annja with a quick, cool glance of appraisal, Mafalda smiled slightly. “Of course. If the lord and lady will follow me.”
“Lord and lady?” Dan echoed quietly.
Annja sniffled. He