Читать книгу Secret Of The Slaves - Alex Archer - Страница 8

“I said, Emo’s for people not optimistic enough to be Goth,” Dan said.

Annja laughed. On the long journey to Brazil from Publico’s Manhattan penthouse her companion had proved consistently entertaining, with a sharp eye and facile wit. Those traits didn’t exactly translate into being of perceptible use in fieldwork, but they did help to pass the time. And there was no doubt that his air of self-assurance, quite untainted by any hint of bragging over his own abilities or achievements, was an encouraging sign.

The Belém riverfront was splashed with noonday sun and alive with people as they strolled along it. It was hot, the humid air like a lead blanket that wrapped about her and weighed her down. The rain that had fallen as they ate a late breakfast at a café near their small but well-appointed hotel had done nothing to alleviate the heat. If anything the extra moisture in the air made it more oppressive.

The floppy straw hat Annja affected helped a little, but she still felt overdressed in sleeveless orange blouse and khaki cargo shorts. She had even forsaken her trusty walking shoes for a pair of flip-flops.

Her companion shook his frosted head. He wore a white polo-style shirt over khaki trousers, a surprisingly conventional upscale-tourist look. When she had called him on it at breakfast he had explained frankly that dressing like a more conventional college-age American, in jeans-and-T-shirt scruff, tended to attract a little too much attention from the local law enforcement.

“If there’s one thing I learned from Genoa,” he had said over a forkful of scrambled eggs and bacon—to Annja’s relief he was no vegetarian—“it’s to pick your battles with the Man carefully.”

Genoa, she had learned, was the antiglobalization protest where police had killed demonstrators, resulting in a scandal that rocked the whole European Union.

“I wish I had a better idea where this shop we’re looking for is,” he said, waving a scrap of paper holding the address of their first contact. “Unfortunately it’s not the sort of place you find in a clean and well-marked spot. Or even on Google Maps.”

Feeling surprisingly rested after what amounted to a protracted nap, Annja was noticing how different Belém looked and felt than Rio de Janeiro, that gaudy metropolis sprawling like a drunken giant along the Atlantic coast far to the south. Tourists didn’t come here as often as they did to Rio, or to São Paulo. It was hot as Dante’s imagination, a degree south of the equator, and hadn’t felt any cooler when they’d arrived at the hotel before sunup.

The esplanade where they walked was wide and bright and clean enough. But they were clearly in a poorer section of the city. Dan stopped and frowned dubiously down a narrow side street. “I’m sure it’s down one of these alleys,” he said. “But I’m afraid we could wander for days looking and not find it.”

“I can’t believe you’re acting like a stereotypical man,” Annja said. “Why not ask for directions?”

He raised both brows at her in an uncharacteristic and utterly amusing look of helplessness. “Because I can’t speak Portuguese?”

“Fair enough. But you know some Spanish, don’t you?”

“Enough to get by. But that’s a different language.”

She laughed. “So native Spanish speakers and Portuguese speakers are always trying to convince me. But if you just listen and try, you’ll find you can make out a whole lot more than you think. Trust me—I did when I first started trying to learn Portuguese after knowing Spanish.”

He set his chin in an expression she took for provisional acceptance. He seemed to cultivate a fashionable sort of perpetual three-day facial fuzz. She had to admit he wore the look well. Perhaps it was the underlying toughness he never alluded to in words, but was to Annja’s practiced eye unmistakable in the wary way he moved. He was always balanced and ready for action. It redeemed him from looking like some orthodontist’s kid from Seattle rebelling against capitalism and the modern world on a five-figure allowance.

Annja spoke to a pair of middle-aged women wearing white blouses and colorful skirts. They seemed surprised to find an American speaking to them in good Brazilian Portuguese, but were as friendly as most Brazilians Annja had encountered, and quickly told her how to find the address.

“Watch yourself,” the taller one suggested. “That’s not the best part of town for a white girl.” It was spoken matter-of-factly.

“I will,” Annja said in response to the warning. “Thanks.”

Annja led Dan away from the river down a relatively wide street.

“How many languages do you speak, anyway?” he asked.

“Several,” she said. “I’m pretty good with the major modern Romance languages. Spanish, of course. Portuguese, Italian, French, Catalan.”

He frowned. “Are you sure it’s a good idea for you to be here?”

She laughed. “One of those nice women warned me, too. But why you? I thought you were used to knocking around the Third World. Emphasis on knocking. ”

“Yeah, I am. And one thing I learned early on—sometimes it knocks back. There’s a lot of resentment at Western colonialism and cultural imperialism. It isn’t all just the wicked Muslims, the way the nutcases back home try to make it. And Brazil is kind of notorious for violence in its poorer areas.”

She noted with approval that he didn’t screw around with euphemisms. While she was no radical—she was pretty determinedly apolitical—Annja found herself more comfortable with the honestly hard core, as opposed to moderates, the mushy centrists, with their political correctness and nervous phrasing. She cared about words and what they meant. They were core to her professional discipline. She had little patience for people who muddied them with soft 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.