The Braintrust Complete Series Omnibus

3. First Coins in the Fountain-4

Jam quietly hunched over and looked down at her plate. “Not true,” she whispered.

Colin watched her as he answered, “I’ve heard that too. Both Huffington and Drudge agree that we secretly slaughter hundreds of refugees. Surely they could not possibly both be wrong, could they?” Colin’s expression turned sour. “Nonsense, Byron. Our official policy is to return stowaways to the port they originated from once they get here. In practice, it’s sufficiently hard to sneak onto our ferries that the successful few almost always find jobs on board. Employers often line up at the dock to talk to stowaways about job opportunities. Because…” he paused and looked around the table to make sure everyone was paying attention as he revealed a secret truth, “a successful stowaway has a characteristic even more important than genius.” He sat back in his chair, waiting to be prompted.

Jam quivered, all her muscles taut, but Dash broke first. “Tell us,” she demanded.

“Grit,” he said simply. “The relentless pursuit of one’s goal even if one has to cross continents and oceans to achieve it. People with grit can achieve the impossible.” He looked at Jam. “Isn’t that right, Ms. Yousafzai?”

Grit… Jam ran her finger across her scarred cheek. The memories came at her, and the world and her friends faded from her sight. She flashed back.

Evening turning to night. Jamal, her husband, gone again. The sound of angry voices. Jamal crashing through the door. Rage in his eyes. A fist swinging at her.

Dodge, dodge, block. His anger growing with each missed swing. Dodge. Don’t trip! The giant ring on his finger, on his fist, in her face. No!

She was dazed, but she was angry too, so she fought. And when it was over and he was curled sideways on the floor screaming, she took the emergency savings stashed behind the flour crock and dragged herself numbly out of her village into the abysmal darkness.

Ping waved a hand just in front of her nose. “Hey, girl, where’d you go?”

Jam’s hand flashed as she knocked Ping’s away. She touched her scar again.

Ping asked, “Where’d you get that, anyway?”

“My husband,” Jam mumbled.

“You hit him back, right?”

Jam raised her hand, examining it closely as she closed it in a fist. “I was a Pakistani commando! What did he expect me to do?” She looked at Colin. Grit.

She knew where she needed to go, but she did not have enough money to get there. She did not have a passport or a letter of recommendation. All she had was her training, but it would be enough.

She remembered leaping off the dock next to the ferry that carried excited new employees to the BrainTrust, and as the ship left the port, she remembered climbing ever so quietly up her rope on the starboard side, and rolling over the gunwale, soaked and shivering, to fall onto the deck. She no longer had any money, but she still had a few dried dates and a soggy biscuit in her pack. Perhaps she could sneak into the bathrooms for water? It would be enough.

She thought of the bosun finding her as she dozed under the tarp covering a deck winch spare. He ordered her out onto the deck, and she explained that she had been a Pakistani commando and she could do security work, and he eyed her skeptically. He gave her a meal and escorted her back onto the deck to demonstrate her hand-to-hand skills with the security chief while the captain watched. After she threw the chief five times and gave him a black eye (for which she apologized), the chief and the captain and the bosun called the BrainTrust. “Boss,” the captain said, “we have another sob story for you. Yeah, real grit, if it's true.”

Grit. Yes, that was the word he had used.

The chief muttered, “I don't get it. She's graceful and all. I mean, it's like fighting a ballet dancer, but she's not very fast, so you can see her move—flow, really—from block to attack and back again. She's so slow, she should be easy to take no matter how graceful. But somehow she always has an arm or a leg in position to mess you up, or she’s not there anymore. How does she do that?”

The captain chortled. “You don't know? It's easy. Bruno, she starts throwing the block before you start throwing the punch. You have a tell.”

“I do not have a tell!” Bruno objected. “Nobody's spotted a tell since high school! I do not have a tell!“

“That's fine,” the captain said. He jerked his thumb in her direction. “Tell her that.” He turned back to the phone and listened briefly. “No, she surrendered peaceably when we found her. I suspect she could have taken us all, locked us in a hold, and commandeered the ship. Is that laughter? You sound like you're choking. Yeah, it's funny if you're a thousand miles away, I suppose. What? Put her in with Ping? Ping's already got a roommate. A bot wrangler. What are you complaining to me for? Ok, I'll shuffle ‘em. In with Ping she goes. Yeah, yeah, right next to that Dyah Amabara-something girl. The doctor. She seems pleasant. Very polite. As you wish.”

Jam squeezed her eyes together, and once more shook herself back into the present. She caught Colin’s eyes with her own. She silently mouthed the words: It was you. It was you.

Colin smiled mischievously. Jam rubbed her scar.

Dash interrupted the unspoken conversation. “Jam, I have offered before, and I offer again. Would you please let me fix your cheek? It would be quite easy.”

Jam pulled her hand away from her face. “It helps me remember.” She put her hand down and leaned toward Dash. “Why don’t you get your eyes fixed so you don’t have to wear those ridiculous glasses anymore?”

Dash turned away. “I, uh…”

Ping interjected smugly. “I know why. I bet she thinks they make her look older.”

Jam looked at Ping, then back at Dash. “Is that true?”

Dash bowed her head. “Without them, I look too young to be a doctor. Even in Bali, I still looked like a college student. And to American eyes, I look—“

“Like jailbait,” Ping interjected brightly. “Same as I do.” Her smile turned wolfish. “Of course, in my line of work it’s helpful to look harmless. Then, Ka-Pow! But it’s probably different for Dash.”

Dash squared her shoulders. “The glasses and the lab coat grant me the appearance of maturity I deserve.”

Ping interpreted this for everyone. “She wears the glasses so her patients don’t argue with her so much.”

Dash nodded her head sheepishly. “That too.”

A moment’s silence filled the air, then Ping picked up the thread of conversation that had been dropped. The thread Jam had so neatly dodged. “Jam, we were discussing your husband. The one who hit you, you know.” She pointed at the scar. “What did you do to him when he did that to you, Ms. Pakistani Commando?”

Jam looked down at her hands, now clasped hard together. She mumbled an answer only Ping could hear.

Ping clapped. “Do you have a picture of him? In case he ever shows up here, I mean. I want to spot him right off.” Ping reached out very slowly and lightly touched Jam’s scar. “I think he deserves one of these, too. Dash, as a surgeon, could you teach me how to cut a cheek just that way?”

Dash frowned at Ping. “I still have not heard what she did to him. Jam?”

“Tell her,” Ping demanded. “Don’t mumble.”

Jam looked at Ping. “He won’t show up here.” She delicately took a sip of tea and looked at Dash. “I broke his nose.” She took another sip and looked at Ping. “He wouldn’t dare come after me here.”

Jamal passed through the metal detectors aboard the Elysian Fields and hurried toward his luggage. A security woman stared at the x-ray screen as his bags passed through the machine, then at him, then back at the screen. He was suddenly glad he was wearing Western clothes, from the obscenely colorful Hawaiian shirt to the stupid flip flops his heels kept stepping sideways out of. Ridiculous! He raged within, but he smiled placidly, like a harmless tourist. Idiots! Of course, they were all heathens, so what could he expect?

The woman in the security uniform frowned at him. “There’s a knife in there, right? You’ll have to pull it out and show me.”

He pushed the earplug from his phone deeper into his ear and asked the phone to retranslate her question. “A work of art,” he explained. As the phone translated for her, he continued, “Hundreds of years old.” He hoped the translation sounded proud, because he was. His chura was indeed a work of art, handed down from his father and his father’s father. He opened the bag and removed the weapon reverently. “Should I withdraw it from its sheath?”

The woman sighed. “It’s just short enough to pass our standards, so I’m not going to confiscate it. You understand?”

Jamal nodded vigorously, almost bowing. “Thank you. You are a kind person.” Idiots! Still, it was fortunate he owned a chura rather than a longer peshkabz. It would have been annoying if his knife had been confiscated. He would have had to kill his wife with a Western kitchen knife. It just would not have been proper.

Jamal grabbed his bag and hurried to catch up with his younger brother Amu, who was standing next to his best friend Marjan. He was delighted to have Marjan along on this journey of honor. Not only was he as big as a water buffalo, but Marjan also happened to be Jameela’s brother.

Upon reaching his companions, he dropped his bag on a chair and unzipped it. He held the chura in his hands, reluctant to put it back in the bag. The elephant-tusk hilt was old and worn, but Jamal had polished it religiously every night since that night. The night she’d broken his nose. And although the chura was designed as a stabbing weapon—the curved blade tapered to a reinforced tip, originally designed for penetrating a knight’s steel armor—he had also sharpened the blade’s razor edge. Though the blade remained sheathed, in his mind he could see that edge, and taste the blade’s hunger for his wife’s blood. He grabbed the hilt to pull it forth.

Marjan hissed, “Are you crazy? Don’t pull that out here!” He looked around fearfully. “There are video cameras everywhere!”

Jamal squeezed the hilt, furious and determined to do as he would, no matter what Marjan said. But a dollop of sanity returned. He caressed the handle for a moment, then tucked the sheathed knife into his waistband and pulled his Hawaiian shirt over it.

Amu pointed to a passageway off to the right. “I think our rooms are that way.” As he turned down the passage, he pointed again. “There’s an available hooker!”

A woman with long strawberry-blond hair wearing a cherry-red bikini top and a black microskirt tottered down the hall on red wedgies. Seeing a man come out of a room, she waved. “John!”

John, seeing her, smiled and held his arms wide. The woman demonstrated extraordinary grace and balance as she ran on her high heels. They wrapped each other in a tight embrace.

Amu was irritated. “This ship is full of hookers, but they all have customers all the time.”

Jamal growled. “Forget the hookers, Amu. We’re here on holy business.”

“But this is the only chance I’ll ever get to have a Western hooker!” He tapped the pocket where he kept the twenty-dollar bill his uncle had given him. “Well, two hookers. I have enough money for two.”

“Stay focused! You can look for hookers after we find Jameela.”

“I guess,” Amu grumbled.