Secret Of The Slaves

“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 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?”