Ivory Nation by Andy Maslen (free children's ebooks online txt) 📕

took a sudden, quick pace towards Stella. Eli willed her to stand her ground and couldn’t stop a frown from crossing her face as Stella leaned back, then righted herself with a half-step.

‘My, my,’ the man calling himself Joshua said. ‘Not nervous, are we? The bigshot white lady with the briefcase full of cash and the diesel-dyke bodyguard?’

He jerked his chin contemptuously in Eli’s direction as he spat out the insult.

She stared at him, her mouth a grim line, clenching her teeth to make her jaw muscles bulge. But her pulse was racing.

Stella’s next move surprised Eli. And clearly the man in the beige suit.

She stuck a pointed finger hard against his sternum, just in the V of his waistcoat’s neckline. His eyes widened and, to each side, the athletes tensed.

‘Keep your language civil, Joshua.’ She pushed hard with her finger. ‘Or I’ll have to teach you some manners. I came here to do business with Mr Ivory,’ Stella made air quotes, ‘not to have my staff insulted. So why don’t you tell me what the fuck is going on so we can sit down and talk about making money together?’

Genius move, Stel! Eli said mentally. Either we’re in, or we’re dead. She prepared herself for a fight. The women facing her wore tight jeans and tighter vests. She saw no evidence of any weapons. In a way, this worried her more.

Joshua had clamped his lips. His jaw was working. Eli looked at the cane. He was squeezing the gold knob – a lion’s head – so hard his knuckles were poking up through his skin. She experienced a surge of adrenaline. It’s a sword stick! She altered her stance, moving her right foot behind her left a little to shift her weight. She’d aimed for a casual move but realised she hadn’t carried it off.

The Olympians were glaring at her. And Eli realised they’d walked straight into a trap. You don’t need weapons! We’re in here. God knows who’s waiting on the other side of the door. You know we could never fight our way out. Shit! The Toyota’s probably having new plates screwed to it in some backstreet bodyshop right now.

Joshua broke the silence.

‘Take your clothes off. Both of you.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Stella said, her hand sliding around her right thigh and towards the small of her back.

‘Move that slender arm one more centimetre and Galele here will snap it in two,’ he said.

The nearer of the two women took a step closer to Stella.

‘Joshua,’ Stella said, placating now. ‘I came here to talk business. Not to star in some cheap voyeur fantasy. Either we’re going to do business or we’re leaving.’

He held his hand up to silence her.

‘And we will talk business,’ he said. ‘But I am a cautious man. You don’t survive long in G-City if you’re not. Galele and Naomi will search you. I will leave. Any weapons you are carrying will be returned to you when our meeting is concluded.’

Without waiting for an answer, he squeezed between Stella and the sink, shot Eli a look of the purest malice and left.

Stella, maintaining her role as boss, looked at Eli.

‘Let’s get it over with,’ she said.

Standing naked, side by side, the two women watched as Galele and Naomi rifled through the pile of clothes on the floor. Galele placed the Glock, revolver and the two knives to one side. She stood and kicked the clothes towards Stella.

‘Get dressed.’

Eli felt more naked without her weapons than she had done without her clothes. She’d spent part of her childhood on a kibbutz where attitudes to nudity and sex were refreshingly frank and unconcerned. God gave us these bodies, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of, being the general drift.

With Galele and Naomi behind them, she and Stella walked along the corridor before stopping at the fire door. A door to the left seemed the obvious move.

‘In there, yes,’ Naomi said.

Eli pushed through the door. What she saw on the far side jacked her adrenaline levels into the stratosphere.

32

Through a sweet-smelling fug of marijuana smoke, Eli saw a couple of bare-chested guys sitting, legs spread wide, on a saggy old sofa. Off to one side, two more, wearing replica Manchester United football shirts over narrow chests. Sitting at a round table, Joshua looked up at Eli. No smile this time.

It wasn’t the men themselves that had elevated her fight-or-flight response.

The responsible parties were the AK-47s each carried or had resting beside his right arm.

The men on the sofa grinned lazily up at her and Stella. One had teeth missing at the sides of his mouth, giving him the comical look of a cartoon rabbit. The other had gleaming gold where his canines should be.

Afrobeat pounded from a boombox placed on the windowsill, its scratched silver paint and oversized speaker grilles placing it dead-centre in the eighties. Eli shook her head. It was a miracle of Japanese electronics the damn thing was working at all.

The room was lit with candles, whose untrimmed wicks led to wildly flickering flames. Shadows danced across Playboy centrefolds tacked to the walls.

As well as the cigar-sized reefers the men were smoking, they were taking pulls from long-necked bottles of beer. One belched grandly, an arm swept wide as the guttural sound emerged from between grinning lips.

Joshua rose from the table. He strolled over to Stella, hand extended. He shook her hand, then Eli’s. She registered the position of each of the four guards in her peripheral vision while smiling at ‘Mr Ivory’.

‘I hope Galele and Naomi treated you respectfully,’ he said to Stella.

‘They were perfect ladies. I hope I can rely on you to be the perfect gentleman,’ she said.

He gestured to the table, where two extra seats had been drawn up.

‘Sit. Beer?’

‘No thank you.’

He shrugged and slid into his own chair, signalling one of his men to bring him another bottle.

‘Fine by me if you don’t want to drink my beer,’ he said, before picking up the bottle sitting