mental note of, To lay, soonest. 'Well, maybe he does.'
'Oh, he knows,' Viljoen countered. 'We're pretty good at reading body language that way, too. As to what you're going to do, I'd suggest rape if you're impatient, seduction otherwise.'
'I'd thought that being treated as an equal, and an equally valuable soldier, meant more than being treated like a woman,' Lana said, sadly and wistfully. 'It's not a crime to be wrong, is it?'
'No crime, no, Lana,' Dumi replied. 'And don't listen to my partner. Seduction you can do. Rape would be right out.'
To Lana, the tone and tenor of the Zulu's voice, so much like that of the woman who had cared for her as a child, was inherently authoritative.
'I don't understand why he's never come on to me,' she said. 'I mean, I'm pretty sure he has me on his list. But never a hint, or at least never one he intended to give.'
'He's a pro,' Viljoen said. 'I mean, I'm pretty sure Dumi and I make his skin crawl, but he suppresses that in the interests of the mission and the organization. Equally, you make certain parts of him vibrate like a tuning fork- no, we can't hear it; that's just a guess-but he pushes that back, too, and for the same reason.'
'Seduction, huh?'
'Seduction.'
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
No man is free who is a slave to the flesh.
-Seneca, Epistolae ad Lucilium, XCII
D-91, Suakin, Sudan
Things had been worse. For one thing, he'd developed an infection, a few weeks back, from the open sores where he'd once been manacled. They'd stopped shackling Adam's legs together, long enough for the sores to heal, and never quite gotten around to putting the shackles back on. He could walk almost like a free man, now.
Almost as if they were free, Adam and Makeda walked hand in hand in the pre-morning darkness. His guards walked, politely enough, a few steps behind. They were not so far back, however, that they couldn't hear what was said. And Adam had learned already that if he whispered they simply closed the distance.
Across the water, one largish building shone electric lights. Besides that emanating from the portholes of a dhow which had shown up the previous night, those were the only lights to be seen, close in. Adam turned his head over one shoulder and asked the guards what it was.
Before they could answer, Labaan spoke out from the darkness. 'It's a prison, boy, and, yes, we considered putting you in it. Be happy we decided differently. The place is a near double for what I imagine Hell is like.
'And here, at least, you have the girl.'
Adam nodded, then squeezed Makeda's hand. Yes, at least here I have the girl.
'You must think I'm a whore,' Makeda whispered, after a bout of particularly fierce and frantic lovemaking. She was definitely growing fond of the boy, and even beginning to trust him a bit.
Adam smiled and shook his head no, while thinking, I think you're very good at your job and there's a part of me that would like to cut the heart out of whoever trained you in it. Because, in a better world, I could take you home and present you to my father as my wife. In the world that is, they'd never accept you as anything more than a slave and concubine.
Makeda wasn't fooled. 'It's all right,' she said. 'I understand. There's no place for you and me to be together after . . . if we ever get free of this place and these people. Get me free, though; that's all I ask.'
'There is such a place,' Adam replied, softly. 'Far away, across Africa, over the sea. I've lived there. It's real.'
'America? Where the streets are paved with gold? I've heard of it.'
He shook his head, rustling the pillow. 'Yes, there . . . though the streets aren't paved with gold. Still, it's a place someone can get a fresh start in life, a place where the only slavers are the . . . frankly, the Arabs and other Moslems that immigrate there. Oh, and the odd Hindu or Filipino. And even those the Americans will send to jail if they catch them. Fine them too for the wages their slaves should have been paid, with interest.
'Sadly,' he added, 'I am as much a slave as you, or maybe more so. You, if free, could go to America. Me? I have obligations to take over my clan when my father dies and those I can't . . . shit.' He rolled his head on the pillow, staring at the ceiling, the moonlight filtering in showing a look of mixed disgust and despair on his face.
'What?' she asked.
'I just realized. I mean really just realized. Labaan was right. Blood, for us, counts for most and I, no matter what they told me at the university, am just as much a member of my culture and supporter of my clan as he is. Shit.'
'I don't see what the disappearance of the Galloway has to do with us,' Labaan said to the Arab seated opposite. Both men sat on placed on the rugs that covered the polished coral floor. 'Yusuf ibn Muhammad al Hassan, from Sana'a,' the Arab had introduced himself as. He'd come in on the dhow riding at anchor in the bay. It was he, so it was said, who had arranged for a ship bearing arms, among them T-55 tanks, to be in a position to be seized by the clan's seafaring rovers. The Arab had come in from Yemen by dhow, the same dhow as brought supplies every eight to ten days.
'It didn't just disappear,' Yusuf said. 'It blew up. That's odd enough, in itself. But the area has been swept and not a single body or piece of a body has been found. That's really odd.'
'So what do you think happened to it?' Labaan asked.
'If I had to make a guess, I'd say either British or American or possibly even Zionist special forces overtook it at sea, boarded it, and captured the crew. Except that I had the ship transporting more than just the crew. There was a major strike force of mujahadin aboard, as well, and they would not have gone gently.'
'All those forces you mention are highly capable. They probably have some method of incapacitating a ship's crew before they even board.'
'Maybe,' Yusuf half agreed. 'But it is still oddly coincidental that someone went after this particular ship so soon after it transported your people and your prisoner.'
'Stranger things have happened,' Labaan said, with a shrug. 'I would think it much more likely that it was the presence of that same strike team you mentioned that alerted whoever took over the ship.'
Yusuf cocked his head to one side, shook it to and fro a few times, and again said, 'Maybe. Still, I thought
