The Lord of Opium

45

PRISONERS

He woke up on the floor. He was in a hospital room, and on a bed, clenching her teeth like a little wild animal, was Listen. He stood up and almost passed out again. He fell against the bed.

Then he noticed the men sitting by the door. They were squat and broad-chested, your standard-issue thugs. Their booted feet looked twice the size of those of a normal man.

Matt was swept with dizziness again, and his stomach heaved. Listen sat up. “There’s a bathroom next door if you want to barf.”

Matt staggered inside, lost the coffee he’d drunk earlier, washed his mouth out, and staggered back. He collapsed next to Listen. “Don’t bother trying to talk to them. They’re Russians,” said the little girl. “They’ve been jabbering at me for hours, but I’ve been ignoring them.”

“How many of them are there?” asked Matt.

“Only two. Dr. Rivas said the border closed before more could get in. I didn’t know we were at war with the Russians.”

“We aren’t. They’re working for Africans,” said Matt. He knew now who had taken advantage of the open border. Just as El Patrón preferred Scottish bodyguards, Glass Eye Dabengwa had preferred Russians. Foreigners weren’t as likely to betray you as your own kind.

“Africans! I’d sure like to meet them,” said the little girl.

“Don’t get your hopes up. Thugs come in all types. Where’s Mbongeni?” he asked.

“Dr. Rivas says he’s very sick and needs an operation.”

Matt couldn’t speak for a moment. He knew what kind of operation the doctor had in mind, and that meant that Glass Eye needed a transplant. “And where’s Dr. Rivas?”

“Don’t know.” The little girl shrugged. “First he came for the Bug, and then he came back for his son and daughter. They were going on a trip, but the bad guys got here first. Can you make those men let us go?”

It was worth a try. Matt pointed at the door, nodding to show that he wanted it open. One of the men rubbed his chin with a rasping sound like sandpaper. “Nyet,” he said.

Matt tried to walk past them and got pushed back. It was a lazy gesture, like shooing a fly, but the strength behind the man’s hand propelled Matt across the room and into a wall.

“Maybe they’ll fall asleep,” said Listen. The men showed no indication of sleepiness. They rumbled to each other in Russian and smoked a hand-rolled cigarette that they passed back and forth.

Matt recognized the smell from El Patrón’s parties, where guests were offered hookahs. “If they keep that up, they’ll pass out,” he said. But the guards showed no sign of passing out, either.

After a while someone knocked on the door and handed through trays of food. It was a kind of beef stew with tomatoes and onions. On each tray was a slab of polenta as heavy as a brick. But the food was surprisingly good and the polenta okay if you ignored the rubbery texture. The guards ate enthusiastically, using their fingers and wiping their hands on their pants. They cleaned up the leftovers from Matt’s and Listen’s trays.

“I’m thirsty,” complained Listen. She opened her mouth and pointed down her throat. One of the men went into the bathroom and returned with two plastic cups. “I sure hope he got that water from the sink,” said the little girl.

Time passed slowly. To keep Listen amused, Matt told her one of Celia’s Bible stories. “Samson was a very, very strong man,” he began. “When he was a baby, he could pick up his crib and throw it across the room.”

“The Bug tried that once,” said Listen. “He rocked Mbongeni’s crib back and forth until it fell over. Dr. Rivas put him into a straitjacket for a whole day.”

Matt had forgotten about the Bug. With luck, someone would have heard his screams by now, although Matt didn’t think his chances were good with Glass Eye Dabengwa’s soldiers. Of course, Dr. Rivas could have helped him, but the Bug was of no further use to him. The boy was just another rabbit.

Matt’s head hurt, and the aftereffects of the tranquilizer beads made him queasy.

“Hey, are you okay?” asked Listen, shaking his arm.

Everything’s fine, Matt thought. Sor Artemesia, María, and Fidelito are hiding. Cienfuegos is missing. The Bug has lost a hand. Glass Eye Dabengwa has taken over Opium, and Mbongeni—

Glass Eye had needed a transplant as soon as he arrived. Matt was suddenly alert. That meant he was seriously ill and was probably close to death. Too bad Dr. Rivas hadn’t waited a few more hours before opening the border.

Matt shied away from what must have happened in the operating room, but he had to face it. He remembered the first time Celia fed him arsenic. She had known, as he did not, that El Patrón had suffered a heart attack. She had forced him to eat before going to the hospital, supposedly to visit the old man, but in reality to have his heart cut out.

The arsenic had made Matt so sick that he was unusable for a transplant. And El Patrón had to make do with a piggyback transplant, with a heart too small to do the job properly. Just as Glass Eye was making do with poor Mbongeni.

“I wish we could get fresh air,” Listen said. “The smoke is making me sick.”

Matt looked up to see the guards passing their hand-rolled cigarette back and forth. He pointed at the smoke and pretended to gag. One of the men opened the door. “Izvineete,” he said.

Matt calculated how fast he’d have to be to scoot out the door, but he couldn’t leave Listen behind. “Let’s see. Where was I? Samson was strong because he never cut his hair. It was a kind of magic.”

“Dr. Rivas says there’s no such thing as magic,” said Listen.

“Dr. Rivas is a jerk. One day Samson was out walking, and a lion attacked him. He killed it with his bare hands. Later he saw that a hive of bees had moved into the lion’s skin, and he ate some of the honey.”

“Didn’t the bees sting him?”

“They sure did, and Samson brushed them off like bread crumbs. Heroes don’t worry about things like that.” Matt told her about how Samson’s girlfriend Delilah betrayed him by cutting his hair off, and how Delilah’s friends turned him into a slave.

“His hair must have grown back,” said Listen, with her usual logic. “Then he could beat everyone up.”

“His hair did grow back, but nobody noticed because he was a slave. Samson waited and waited until he got his enemies all in one place. One night they had a big party, and they brought Samson out so they could make fun of him. Samson got hold of the posts holding up the house and pulled them down. The building fell on top of everyone and squashed them flat.”

“And Samson lived happily ever after,” finished Listen.

Too late Matt remembered how the story ended. “Not exactly,” he said.

“He got out, didn’t he?”

“I’m afraid not. He died along with his enemies. But he got revenge, and that’s important.”

“I don’t like that story,” Listen yelled. “I want a happy ending! He should have picked up a rock and let ’em have it.” She grabbed a pillow and began to pound it with her fists.

“It didn’t really happen,” said Matt.

“It’s a Bible story. Sor Artemesia says they’re all true.”

Listen started to cry, and one of the guards came over and thumped himself on the chest. “Samson,” he announced. He flexed his muscles.

“Did you understand what we were talking about?” asked Matt.

“Nyet. Samson.” Thump, thump.

“That’s his name,” Listen said delightedly. “What’s the other guy called? Delilah?”

“De-lee-lah,” said Samson, pointing at his fellow guard and mincing around.

“Boris,” corrected the other guard. Now he came over and with gestures invited Listen to a game of scissors, paper, rock. They had seen that the little girl was upset and wanted to cheer her up. For thugs, they weren’t too bad.

Night came, or what Matt supposed was night. There was no window in the room. The men made gestures that indicated sleep. They turned off the light but left the bathroom door ajar. Matt still had Tam Lin’s flashlight, and they used that to move around in the dark.

Listen curled up on the bed, but it was too small to include Matt, and he had to sleep on the floor. Exhausted though he was, he couldn’t get comfortable. He dozed and woke and worried. The Russians snored erratically and occasionally woke each other up with a snort.

Sometime during the night Listen climbed out of bed and sat down next to Matt. “I get scared in the dark,” she told him. “Most times I used to climb into the crib with Mbongeni. I tried to teach him scissors, paper, rock, but it was too hard for him. We played paper and rock instead, but you need scissors to make it work. Anyhow, he liked moving his hands around.” She began to cry softly, and Matt held her until she fell asleep again.

* * *

They lost track of time. Air seeped in through a vent, but it was never fresh, and the fumes from the guards’ cigarettes made them sick. The same food was brought three times a day, but the Russians got most of it.

At night Matt went over his last sighting of Glass Eye Dabengwa. It had been at El Patrón’s birthday party three years before. Silence radiated from wherever the African drug lord walked. It reminded Matt of a large predator arriving at a waterhole. The birds stopped singing, the monkeys faded through the trees, and the antelopes clustered together, hoping that there was safety in numbers.

But there was no safety in numbers where Glass Eye was concerned. He had wiped out entire villages for trivial slights. Matt hoped that by imagining the man he could get used to his presence. But the memory of those unblinking yellow eyes appeared to him in dreams and lingered long after he’d awoken.

Matt practiced Russian with the guards and managed to communicate a few basic requests, such as soap, towels, and toothbrushes. Boris and Samson seemed unaware that such luxuries were necessary, but they were eager to please. They passed the requests on, and the supplies arrived.

“Ask them for deodorant,” suggested Listen.

“For us?” asked Matt, surprised.

“For them.”

“Boris would probably eat it,” said Matt. He suspected that even if he learned fluent Russian, the guards wouldn’t have much to say. They were stoned all the time. They sat in front of the door in a state that was almost hibernation. But they could wake up quickly. Matt tried to sneak Listen past them, and they hurled him across the room without even breaking into a sweat.

Once Listen sat up in the middle of the night and screamed, “I want Dr. Rivas! I want Dr. Rivas!” The guards fell over themselves trying to calm her down. Boris sang her a Russian lullaby so melancholy that Listen went into hysterics.