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 you ought to know. And, per your chief's . . . request, I could hardly call you."
"I appreciate that," Labaan said, "as I appreciate the trouble you took to bring us word. And I will increase security because of it. Even so, we are small change, here. I think whoever went after your ship was after the mujahadin, not us."
"You're probably right," Yusuf agreed, with good grace.
D-90, Suakin, Sudan
There were four guards, not counting Labaan, when Adam and Makeda were brought out for their evening walk. Labaan looked apologetic as he announced, "I've received word of some strange happenings. The details don't matter. What does matter is I have to increase security on you. I'm sorry."
Adam looked from guard to guard and answered, "What difference, two or four. There's still no privacy."
"It's more than that," Labaan said. "I won't . . . we can't . . . put the leg irons on you anymore, but . . . " He signaled with a toss of his head at the guards. One of these produced a set of manacles, old things, a little rusty on the surface, and rough, but solid looking for all that.
Adam began to protest. "Like a . . . " He cut himself off. No sense in reminding Makeda of her official status.
"I'm sorry," Labaan repeated. "But turning the two of you into one package makes it that much harder for someone to take you away."
And impossible to swim, Adam thought. Dammit. There goes that plan . . . if I can call it a plan . . . since I still had no good solution to the sharks.
Makeda took the wrist manacles in stride, or at least seemed to. Who knew what anger and hate burned inside the heart of a slave? Adam, on the other hand, felt a deep, burning sense of humiliation.
"It will only be when you're outside," his captor assured Adam. "And I really am sorry." Labaan, feeling mildly dirty, turned and left. They could hear his footsteps scrunching on the coral gravel for some time after.
The sun setting to the west over the waters of the bay framed Makeda in bright orange as she walked the rubble strewn road circling the island. She had the swaying grace common among the woman of her people, that grace being partly driven by culture and example, and partly by the mere fact that they tended to be so tall and slender. Adam walked at her side, holding her hand. This was the easiest way, since the two were cuffed together at the wrist.
The guards hadn't said, "Now try to swim in that position," as they'd linked the two. At least their mouths had said nothing. Adam thought their faces betrayed the words even so. At least most of them had. One, Adam had thought, looked almost apologetic. He thought, too, that they seemed more alert than they'd been for some time.
"Before you were brought here," Makeda said, "before they put up the fence, we were allowed sometimes to associate with the locals." Her chin indicated the surrounding waters. "They said there used to be yachts that came here . . . often, even. And a ferry from Yemen that came almost every day, instead of the one that comes about once a week or ten days now."
"Not anymore?" he asked.
She shook her head, a motion as graceful as her walk. "Too dangerous now; pirates . . . slavers . . . kidnappers for ransom. They said they used to make a pretty good living from the yachts and the tourists. Some of them hoped they might restart the slave trade that used to run through here . . . but most were skeptical that they could."
"I hope they can't," Adam replied. He exhaled, despairingly. "My father had slaves, too, though we didn't call them that. Still, that's what they were. I never thought about it back then. About where they'd come from, who missed them at home. Some of them, too, had been with our clan for generations. Those were like family."
Her eyes flashed. "Not pieces of meat like me, you mean?"
"I didn't mean that. What I meant was that the whole thing is wrong. And it took meeting you for me to realize it."
"And what can you or anyone do about it?" she asked.
He lifted both their hands, the ones that were manacled together, for illustration's sake and said, "Now? There's nothing either of us can do now. Maybe someday."
"It's a nice dream, anyway, isn't it?" she replied.
Their walk had taken them by the dock. The dhow was still there, thumping gently against the dock. The crewmen were busily scurrying about, preparing to leave. Their Arabic cries carried across land and water.