Secret of the Slaves Read Online Free PDF Page A

that your striking appearance had nothing to do with my interest in engaging your services.”
    She set down her cup. Her cheeks felt hot. “Now you’re flattering me.”
    â€œNot a bit of it.”
    â€œWell, after a speech that gallant, the least you could do is call me Annja.”
    â€œDone. If you’ll consent to call me Iain,” he said.
    â€œIt’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.
    â€œYou 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.”
    â€œI’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.”
    â€œSuch legends aren’t exactly uncommon worldwide, despite the inroads of science,” Annja said.
    â€œSo 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.
    â€œHypnotic 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.
    â€œHere’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.
    â€œYou don’t have to go to the wilds of Brazil to have cosmetic surgery to remove scars,” Annja said.
    â€œYou 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.”

    â€œB 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