Rogue Angel - Secret Of The Slaves Part 8

"I am so sorry," Annja said again. "We did not mean to intrude."

It came to her to wonder if harsh tobacco was all that was being smoked, or if perhaps the incense had an extra kicker. Half the world's ethn.o.botanists, it seemed to her, were in the depths of the Amazon at any given moment. And while they were legitimately looking for the next medical miracle in the largely untapped natural pharmacopoeia of the rain forest, the fact was many of them were most interested in loading up on the local hallucinogens. Could she and Dan have been dosed by some kind of aerosol form of drug, she wondered.

But Annja's helpers were trading knowing glances and big grins. "Intrude?" the woman cradling Annja said. "We told you Ians happened. She took you over good."

"Good thing she did, too," said another woman standing nearby. "Ogum got your friend pretty hard. And he seemed pretty p.i.s.sed." Whether she meant Dan or the orixa, orixa, Annja couldn't tell. Possibly the speaker drew no distinction between them. Annja couldn't tell. Possibly the speaker drew no distinction between them.

"That's not possible. We don't practice candomble. candomble. We're American." We're American."

"Anyone can see that, child," the man said, holding out the water bowl again. Annja took a mouthful of water, sloshed it around, turned her head to spit without endangering anybody's skirts or feet. Then she drank again, more cautiously than before. Her stomach seemed to wallow a few times like a tugboat in a high sea, but the water stayed down.

"It's a sign." The words were English. Annja recognized the voice of the trim middle-aged woman who had spoken to her before. "The orixas orixas have marked you as their own. They don't do that much to foreigners. Obviously, you are acting out some great and powerful destiny." have marked you as their own. They don't do that much to foreigners. Obviously, you are acting out some great and powerful destiny."

She opened her mouth to say, "Nonsense." The syllables turned to ash on her tongue.

"Who's Ians?" she found herself asking instead. "What's she like? And did you see me with a sword?"

"Of course," the large, cheerful woman whose lap cradled her said. She held out the front of her T-shirt. "Ians always has a sword. See?"

Annja half turned to look. The woman wore a shirt labeled Cavala Da Ians, Cavala Da Ians, Ians's Horse. It showed an African woman dressed in swirling skirts of red and pink and yellow. In one hand she carried a horsetail fly whisk. Ians's Horse. It showed an African woman dressed in swirling skirts of red and pink and yellow. In one hand she carried a horsetail fly whisk.

In the other she carried a cutla.s.s.

"Ians," the woman said. "She is the wind, the tornado and the lightning. She fights like a man for justice alongside her husband, Xango, the sky father, lord of thunder."

"I don't know how I'd feel about being married to the G.o.d of thunder," Annja said shakily.

The onlookers laughed. "Don't worry," the woman in the Ians shirt said. "There are some things an orixa orixa won't ask her horse to do." won't ask her horse to do."

"She prefers to do those things herself," said another woman, to even louder laughter.

They made their way back to the hotel through streets filled with music and cheerful people. Walking through the humid air was draining. The night seemed full of chattering voices that pierced the ear like needles and jagged colors that bruised the eye.

Annja and Dan walked with arms around each other for support. Dan had a black eye and half his face was covered by a bruise that had already begun to go green and yellow. Annja's right hip hurt, as did her ribs every time she breathed. She didn't remember being hit during their battle. But she felt as if she'd been used to hammer nails.

The doorman on duty in his natty white cap, shirt and shorts a pretentious touch for such a modest hotel didn't blink when the two staggered by, undoubtedly looking overly amorous, drunk or both.

They said nothing to each other as they crossed the threadbare carpet between the potted palms in the comfortably shabby lobby, nor as they rode the elevator. In silence they walked the short distance to the adjoining doors of their rooms.

Fumbling slightly, Annja got out her key card and unlocked her door. Dan followed her inside. She did not question it, internally or aloud. It was somehow unthinkable that he not do so. After what they'd been through, they needed to be together.

Chapter 12.

The lobby door blew open in a swirl of air so humid and thick with smells of exhaust and the omnipresent water and jungle that it seemed to Annja you ought to be able to see it.

She looked up from noodling at her journal in a vague way on the notebook computer she had open on her lap. She wore cargo shorts, a lightweight buff-colored shirt and an expression, or so she suspected, of weary befuddlement.

She watched as a couple of black men in white linen suits swept in. They were very, very big. From the way they moved they were muscled like the workers on the Belem waterfront, though better dressed.

She made herself look away as they swept the lobby with the bug eyes of their sungla.s.ses. She didn't want them noticing the hardening of her expression. She suspected they were gangsters. The only reason alarm bells weren't shrilling in her soul was that their body language suggested they were looking for potential troublemakers, not trouble themselves. not trouble themselves.

She was aware of operating at lower than usual. She felt numerous aches and pains. She still hadn't been able to process the events of the previous evening. She and Dan had clung tightly to each other until they fell into restless sleep.

Annja suspected she and Dan had inadvertently been dosed with some kind of strong psychoactive smoke. In the cold light of day that seemed more and more conclusively the case.

"So," a familiar voice said from behind her. "You survived."

She looked around as the two big men moved slowly to different sides of the lobby. Dan stood there. He was dressed in a loose shirt over cotton trousers. He looked even more tousled and unshaved than usual. His eyes were sunk in dark, saggy pits.

"More or less," she said. "Much as I hate to say it, you look like I feel."

"Yeah," he grunted.

Sometime in the dark hours of the long tropical night he had risen from her bed and left without a word. Insofar as she could remember, they had not exchanged a word since their confrontation in the midst of the crowd. She had been somewhat dreading their inevitable meeting.

A second pair of men entered the lobby. They were white and bulky. They wore white linen jackets over what looked like T-shirts and white duck trousers. The jackets were tailored loosely enough about their wide upper torsos they might well have concealed shoulder holsters.

Even more than the two hard black men, one of whom had now taken up position near the elevators, the other by the brief corridor to the restaurant, the newcomers looked looked like the kind of men who'd be wearing shoulder holsters. Annja had recently acquired way more experience of hired muscle than she'd ever really cared to have. If these guys weren't that, with their shaved heads, their dark sungla.s.ses, their square jaws jutting from necks wider than their heads, then it was time to look around for the rest of the film crew, because central casting had hit all the cherries. like the kind of men who'd be wearing shoulder holsters. Annja had recently acquired way more experience of hired muscle than she'd ever really cared to have. If these guys weren't that, with their shaved heads, their dark sungla.s.ses, their square jaws jutting from necks wider than their heads, then it was time to look around for the rest of the film crew, because central casting had hit all the cherries.

"Ahh," Dan murmured as the newcomers took up positions flanking the hotel's entrance. "Our esteemed employer arrives."

"You know these thugs?" They weren't the pair with Publico on Annja's landing on his penthouse roof.

"Goran and Mladko," he said. "Croatian war criminals. His bodyguards."

"He uses war criminals as bodyguards?"

Dan shrugged. "It's supposed to be rehabilitation. He's all about forgiveness, you know. Besides, n.o.body's looking for them too hard."

Through the big gla.s.s doors Annja saw a commotion outside as hotel porters swarmed to a long, low, white limousine with dark-tinted windows. Another huge black man popped out the front pa.s.senger door and waved them off. They obeyed with alacrity. Maybe it was his size. Maybe it was his air of undeniable authority. Maybe it was the stubby little machine pistol with the magazine in the b.u.t.t and the separate broom-handle foregrip he was brandishing none too discreetly.

The gunman opened the limo's rear door. At last, out came Sir Iain Moran, Publico himself, looking neat in a lightweight gray suit. He stood, stretched slightly, smiled and nodded at his bodyguards. Then he tipped his sungla.s.ses down his nose and looked through the windows into the lobby.

Dan raised two fingers in a halfway salute. Publico beamed, nodded, swept inside.

"What's he doing here?" Annja asked. Last night's intended conference call had never come to pa.s.s.

"I e-mailed him from my cell phone after that stuff went down at Mafalda's."

Sir Iain paused between his two human pillars and swept the room with his gaze. His fine leonine head was held high, the long hair streaming down to his shoulders.

He approached Annja and Dan, beaming, a powerful hand held out.

"Annja, Dan," he said in his deep, gravelly Irish voice. "So good to see you."

"And you," said Annja a little feebly as she rose. She was trying hard to bottle up the flash of anger and resentment at her so-called partner for communicating with their boss without letting her know.

She took his hand. He shook firmly, covering her hand with his, then moved on to embrace Dan.

"Welcome to Belem," Annja said.

He smiled and nodded. "Sure, sure."

He looked to the two black men who had preceded Goran and Mladko. Annja saw no signal from them, but what Publico saw seemed to lead to a sudden decision.

"Let's walk," he said with a brisk nod of his head. "It's a beautiful day."

They walked down toward the river esplanade. The two black bodyguards preceded them. Mladko and Goran winged out from them, a step or two behind. The big man with the machine pistol followed a few steps behind. It wasn't exactly subtle. Annja gathered it wasn't intended to be. In any event, few people spared them more than a glance.

She was surprised no one seemed to recognize Sir Iain. It struck her that perhaps n.o.body a.s.sociated Publico dressed in a T-shirt and torn blue jeans and grimacing into a microphone with his sweat-lank hair hanging down his back with this dapper, obviously wealthy white guy from elsewhere.

"We had just about run out of leads here," Annja said. She wasn't able to keep a note of accusation from creeping into her voice. "You didn't give us much to work with. Especially after our one major contact was murdered."

"Sorry, Annja dear," he said with a contrite smile. "But you were fully the skeptic, weren't you? I already told you more than you were willing to believe that much was plain as the nose on your face."

"I'm still a skeptic," she said. "And I'm not sure what to believe right now." She hoped Dan hadn't felt duty-bound to e-mail him about their experience the evening before.

"What happened to Mafalda did kind of put a damper on our investigation," Dan said. "There's nothing written down about Promessa, at least that we could track down. I get the impression plenty of people know about this hidden quilombo, quilombo, but n.o.body wants to talk to strangers about it." but n.o.body wants to talk to strangers about it."

"Do you blame them, after what happened to Mafalda?" Annja asked.

"Ah, but there we have the key bit of evidence, don't we?" Publico said almost impishly. He seemed to be taking a childlike delight in the intrigue. "The fact that she was done in is itself as strong a lead as we could ask, don't you see?"

"It means we're on the right trail," Dan agreed somewhat reluctantly.

"It may or may not," Annja said quickly. "Although it's not as in-your-face here as it is in the megacities down south, crime is a real problem in Brazil. It can hit anybody any time or why are we walking around surrounded by men bristling with guns?"

"Point taken," Publico said with a grin.

"Dealing in candomble candomble items is a pretty well respected trade around here, but it certainly doesn't rule out contacts with a pretty bad element. Mafalda might've crossed a business a.s.sociate. Or turned the wrong crime boss down on a s.e.xual proposition," Annja said. items is a pretty well respected trade around here, but it certainly doesn't rule out contacts with a pretty bad element. Mafalda might've crossed a business a.s.sociate. Or turned the wrong crime boss down on a s.e.xual proposition," Annja said.

He raised a brow. "You really think so? I thought you found the same people in her shop who visited you in your bedrooms the night before. And who vanished mysteriously."

"Maybe," Annja said. Dan looked at her sharply; she paid him no mind. "The vanishing isn't necessarily all that mysterious. We're not from around here, and they are. They know the city much better than we do. And while I never saw Dan's nocturnal guest, mine and the guy in the shop well, it's not as if wiry little guys who look like Amazonian Indians are rare in these parts."

"It was the same woman," Dan said flatly. "She threw me like I was a child."

"You think she displayed superhuman strength?" Publico asked. His voice seemed to hold an edge of eagerness.

"I don't know. She could have just been real good at martial arts. But it was the same woman, and she shot some kind of energy weapon at Annja."

Annja frowned. "Maybe."

Dan glared at her. "You told me "

She held up a hand. "I know. But I've thought about it. It might have been conventional firearm using a special laser sight. Maybe it was a special effect designed to make it look look like some kind of high-tech ray gun." like some kind of high-tech ray gun."

"But she vanished again on you," Dan said, "when you chased her into that tenement room."

"Well," Annja said, "again, she might just have known more about the area than I do... ."

She let her words trail off when she noticed the other two looking at her closely. Dan looked outraged. Publico was openly amused.

"Ah, Annja, for a world traveler, you'd think you'd realize denial is more than just a river in Egypt," the rock star said. Publico held up a finger. "You're both forgetting we do have a solid lead that slip of paper Dan found in that unfortunate woman's hand."

Annja looked at Dan and sighed. "It could just be coincidental, too."

"As may be," Publico said. "But you two are going to Manaus to find out for certain. And I shall come with you."

Chapter 13.

"He was holding out on us," Annja said. "Of course I'm p.i.s.sed off."

The waiting room in the offices of the River of Dreams Trading Company in Manaus was fluorescent bright, with dark-stained hardwood wainscoting, whitewashed walls and a white dropped-tile ceiling. An array of fern or palmlike plants in terra-cotta pots, exotic to Annja's eyes but native to the surrounding forest, softened the starkness of an otherwise generically modern design, with a curved desk and chairs of curved chromed tubing with black leather seats and backs. Big modernistic murals of the rain forest splashed the walls with bright greens and reds and yellows. Pied tamarins, a famous local endangered species of primate, featured prominently, peering like troll dolls with black raisins for faces and cotton-ball wigs.

"He has his reasons," Dan said.

Publico's private jet had delivered them to Manaus shortly after noon, a few hours earlier. It had been one of the richest cities in the Western Hemisphere and possibly the richest in the Southern Hemisphere during its heyday as queen of the rubber trade. Unfortunately the invention of synthetic subst.i.tutes, and the rise of rubber cultivation in Southeast Asia, ended the frenzy in 1920.

The city had recently returned to somewhat provisional status as financial center for Amazonia and much of South America, courtesy of the global economic boom. The place had a seedy, superficial quality, as if all the glossy steel and gla.s.s high rises downtown were fancy paint over cheap plastic.

The River of Dreams Trading Company waiting room did little to dispel the impression of tackiness from Annja's mind. It was spotless, but the colors struck her as a bit too gaudy, the smell of disinfectant too strong, the Brazilian jazz playing from concealed speakers a little too strident. It was all as if they were trying to hide something.

"But to wait until now to tell us that this German friend of his had dealings with River of Dreams?" Annja said.

"Was there something that suggested to you they don't have their waiting room bugged?" Dan asked casually, hands in his pockets, studying a mural close up. "Just asking, you know."

"Oh," Annja said.

"Mr. Toby will see you now," the receptionist said, preceding them down the hallway that led into the offices.

"Toby?" Dan whispered. "Is that a first name or a last name."

"It's probably his real first name. A lot of Brazilians just use one name. And they tend to like a lot of variety in their given names."