Alex Archer - Secret Of The Slaves

She set down her cup. Her cheeks felt hot. “Now you’re flattering me.”

“Not a bit of it.”

“Well, after a speech that gallant, the least you could do is call me Annja.”

“Done. If you’ll consent to call me Iain,” he said.

“It’s a deal.” She sat back in her chair, picked up her cup and regarded him through a curl of steam rising into the cool air.

“You don’t strike me as the sort to fall for every goofy New Age notion to float past you in a cloud of pot smoke. I presume you have evidence more compelling than a wild diary, even if its pages are protected by a killer mystery fungus. Impress me.”

“I’ll do my best—Annja. In the favelas —the brutal slums—of northeastern Brazil they still speak of the quilombo dos sonhos. Legends still speak, also, of a magical city called Promise, where no one ever dies.”

“Such legends aren’t exactly uncommon worldwide, despite the inroads of science,” Annja said.

“So I thought. Until a hardheaded German business associate of mine, an aggressive atheist and skeptic, began experiencing remarkable dreams. Of a beautiful city, hidden deep in Amazon rain forest, filled with beautiful, ageless people who combined indigenous lore, Asian wisdom and Western science to create a cultural and technological paradise. In these dreams he got flashes of psychic phenomena, of cars that fly without wings or even visible engines.

“Hypnotic regression seemed to substantiate that these were real memories, submerged and now attempting to resurface. I see you look skeptical. I hardly blame you. But when we dug deeper we found recurring spells when my acquaintance dropped out of sight during trips to Brazil. It’s an aggravating thing. He cannot be documented to have ever gone deeper into Amazon than Belém, where the Amazon enters the Atlantic. He merely—vanished.”

An aide appeared, a ponytailed young blond woman in jeans. She handed several manila envelopes to Moran. He thanked her with a smile.

Beckoning to Annja to come closer, he turned and opened one of the folders on the tabletop. “Here are the medical records for my friend,” he said, setting out sheets of paper typed in English with names blacked out. With a forefinger he pushed a color photograph toward her. It showed the bare upper torso, from neck to just above the groin, with a puckered crescent from an appendectomy scar. She was glad the photo cut off where it did.

“Here’s a ‘before’ picture,” Moran said, tapping the image. “And here’s the ‘after.’”

He pushed another photo beside the first. Annja frowned. It showed the same pale, slightly pudgy torso as the first photo, with a distinctive reddish mole at four o’clock from the navel to clinch the identification. But the surgical scar was gone.

“You don’t have to go to the wilds of Brazil to have cosmetic surgery to remove scars,” Annja said.

“You rather make my point, I think,” Publico said with a smile.

Annja shrugged. “I’m intrigued. I’ll admit that much.”

He showed her a frank grin. “So you’re to be a hard sell. Well, I’d expect nothing less of you.”

He braced hands on thighs and stood. “Well, come with me, if you will, and I’ll see if I can sell you.”

“B RAZIL HAS QUITE A HISTORY of widespread and well-documented UFO sightings, you know,” Publico said. “What if some of the Maroons, retreating up the river from encroaching colonists, stumbled upon a crash site?”

They walked along the side of a sunken room Moran referred to as his “command center.” Large plasma monitors hung from the ceiling over rings of workstations where staff wearing Bluetooth earpieces typed rapidly and spoke in earnest murmurs.

Annja chuckled. “I’m not sure that’s the tack to take,” she said. “You know I’m the show’s resident skeptic.”

“Ah, but you have an affinity for the strange, as well.”

She crossed her arms and smiled tightly to hide the little shudder that ran through her. How true that was, she thought.

To divert attention from herself she gestured around them and said, “Where are we, anyway? What’s this building? Yours?”

“In a manner of speaking. It’s the New York headquarters of my eleemosynary network. It belongs to the institute, not to me personally. Although I admit I have freedom of the place.”

“I’m impressed at the word eleemosynary.”

“Not all my degrees are honorary, Ms. Creed. My MBA from Harvard, for example.”

“A Harvard MBA? I thought you were antiestablishment, antiglobalization and all that.”

“Ah, but running a humanitarian operation—actually a global network ranging from relief agencies to activists for a score of worthy causes—is an incredibly demanding task. So I learn the enemy’s skills to use against him, as it were.”

“If you say so.”

He turned to face her. “Annja, I understand your skepticism. But why not go and see for yourself? That’s what the spirit of scientific inquiry is about, isn’t it?”

“Well…yes. And I have to admit you’ve at least given me enough to intrigue me.”

“What do I need to make you passionate? I spoke earlier of saving the world. How about it? You can literally save the world—or many of the people who live on it—by helping track down the secret of conquering death. What else are you doing that’s more exciting? More magnificent?”

“Well. Nothing. Since you put it that way,” Annja said. She felt breathless, overwhelmed, needing to take back a little control of the conversation. “What if there’s nothing to it? I can’t promise results. It will probably turn out to be baseless.”

“Then you’ll do it?”

“I asked you first.”

He laughed aloud. Some of the earnest heads down in the pit turned up to look at him, then back to their business. Annja supposed they were saving the world in the event eternal life didn’t pan out.

“I won’t ask even you to deliver what does not exist,” he said. “But I suspect if I asked the impossible, in just the right way, you’d deliver.”

“Flattery will get you—well, I guess it usually works in the real world, doesn’t it?”

“I never flatter,” he said simply. He took her gently by the arm. “Come and meet your associate.”

“A NNJA , this is Dan Seddon,” Publico said. “He’ll be accompanying you to Brazil.”

They stood in an echoing space beneath what appeared to be the interior of a pyramid of translucent white blocks. A young man stood in the center, next to a slowly rotating statue of dark metal, possibly bronze. The shape suggested a feather sprouting from the floor. He turned with a certain fluid, alert grace at their approach.

When he saw Annja he smiled. She smiled back and held out her hand. He took it and shook it firmly. He didn’t seem the sort to kiss it.

He had a stylish brush of hair, either brown or dark blond, frosted lighter blond. His eyes were a green or hazel, not too different from Annja’s own and alive with curiosity. His face was a tanned narrow wedge with dark brows. His nose had been almost patrician thin and straight, but had been broken at least once and had a bump in the bridge to give it character. His grin had a practiced flash to it.

“Good to meet you, Ms. Creed,” he said, businesslike enough. He wore a lightweight jacket over a white shirt and blue jeans. His shoes were walking shoes, good quality. That scored points with Annja. An experienced field archaeologist who also tramped great distances in the course of her work with Chasing History’s Monsters, she knew the value of good footwear.

“My pleasure, Mr. Seddon,” she said. “So, you’re an archaeologist?”

“No.”

“Anthropologist?”

“No.” His manner was relaxed. Perhaps even a trifle superior.