The Games Read online

  When we told her the girls’ real surname, she figured it out fast. “They are the daughters of this guy who’s all over the television news right now?”

  “The same,” Tavia said.

  “They told me they came from a privileged background, but I had no idea they were…”

  I asked, “Was there anyone at the orphanage who was particularly close to them, someone they possibly confided in?”

  “You mean someone they might have told about their real identities?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I thought I was close to them, or as close as you can get to people you’ve known for a week, but they never mentioned having a different last name,” Amelia said. “I think I’d remember that.”

  “I’m sure you would,” I said. “Your mother says you’re doing fieldwork.”

  “Almost got it wrapped up. Another two or three weeks and I’ll be ready to start writing.”

  “And what are you studying?”

  She paused, yawned, said, “I’m sorry, it’s been a long day. I’m pursuing a doctorate in socioeconomics, focusing on one town in southern Brazil for my dissertation. How are the girls?”

  “They’re both going to be fine,” Tavia said.

  “Would you tell them hello from me if you see them?” Amelia asked.

  “We certainly will,” I said. “And we appreciate the call back.”

  “Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”

  “If you think of anything, you’ll give us a call?” Tavia asked.

  “I can do that,” Lopes’s daughter said. “Thank you.”

  The line went dead. We returned to our Malbec, and my hand found Tavia’s. Her hands were beautiful. Her fingers were long, slender, and expressive. She used her hands when she talked, like they were speaking another language.

  My thumb rubbed her palm. “You calm me down, you know. Even when things get crazy, having you near calms me down.”

  “So you’re saying I’m a sedative?”

  “No,” I said, and laughed. “More like a glass or two of, I don’t know, spectacular Malbec?”

  “I can live with that,” she said with a slight, sly smile as her index finger trailed up my forearm. “Do you want to finish our wine and go to the second stage of decompression before we sleep?”

  “Decompression, stage two,” I said, leaning in to kiss her. “Best idea I’ve heard all day.”

  Chapter 56

  Wednesday, August 3, 2016

  3:00 p.m.

  Fifty-Two Hours Before the Olympic Games Open

  CHERIE WISE WALKED to the window in the sitting area of her suite at the Marriott and looked out through a narrow gap in the curtains.

  “I feel like food,” she said.

  “You can order room service,” I said.

  “No,” she said. “I feel like I am the food, and the mob out there is salivating at the idea of eating me and my family.”

  I could see how she’d feel that way. Matt Lauer, the Today show host already in Rio for the games, started off early that morning with a live stand-up in front of the hotel; he gave a brief synopsis of Wise’s life intercut with sections of the Favela Justice video and references to the billion-dollars-in-gold penalty.

  At last count there had been fifteen cameras on Avenida Atlântica aimed at the Marriott and twice that number of journalists on the sidewalk and white-sand beach.

  The front desk had received calls requesting interviews with Cherie from dozens of reporters, including Lauer, who was the most persistent. Either he or his producer left a message every hour on the hour.

  Tavia and I had spent the morning interviewing the man who’d overseen the Wise girls at the sanitation project in Campo Grande and the woman who ran the Brazil branch of Shirt Off My Back, the NGO they’d been working for at the time they were kidnapped.

  The sanitation guy had called the Wise girls “distracted,” which seemed to mean he didn’t think they worked hard enough. That ran counter to Amelia’s and Mariana’s descriptions of the twins. But then again, latrine duty is nothing to get excited about.

  The woman in charge of the NGO said she’d never met Natalie or Alicia. Left with no idea how or where the girls had been identified and targeted, Tavia and I split up. I went to be with Cherie while Tavia fetched the girls, who’d been given the okay to leave the hospital.

  At three fifteen, there was a knock on the door. I opened it, and Natalie entered. She looked high on painkillers and pressed an ice pack to her bruised face as she walked by me in search of her mother. Following her, Alicia looked miserable. She was paler, and her eyes were sunken.

  “Why release them from the hospital?” I muttered to Tavia as she came in behind Alicia. “They look like hell.”

  “The doctors figured it would be fine as long as they were monitored by a nurse,” Tavia said. “There’s one on the way.”

  We joined the Wises back in the suite’s sitting area; the girls sat on the sofa flanking their mother, who had her arms around both of them.

  “My head still hurts,” Alicia said. “Why can’t I have something like Natalie’s getting? She’s sitting there with that goofy smile and I’ve got, like, the worst headache ever.”

  Tavia said, “The doctors don’t like to use narcotics with concussions.”

  “When the nurse gets here, we’ll see what we can do,” Cherie promised.

  My cell rang. It was Sci.

  “We got a Zip file just now from Favela Justice,” he said.

  “Forward it to Tavia’s e-mail and then get to work on it,” I said.

  “Coming right at you.”

  I hung up, looked at Cherie, said, “It’s here.”

  Wise’s wife blanched, said, “Girls, there’s something you’re going to see that you won’t like, but Jack and I think it’s important for you to watch in case you recognize anything or anybody.”

  “What kind of thing?” Natalie asked.

  “You’ll see,” Tavia said, getting out her computer and calling up her Gmail account. “By the way, we talked to a friend of yours last night.”

  “A friend?” Alicia asked. “Who?”

  “Amelia Lopes,” I said.

  Natalie blinked dumbly, and her chin retreated. Alicia stared at us in a kind of dazed disbelief.

  “You talked with Amelia last night?” Natalie said. “How is she?”

  “Fine; working hard on her research,” Tavia replied as she typed on her keyboard. “She says she hopes you’re okay.”

  “Where is she?” Alicia asked, looking confused.

  “Some town near Porto Alegre,” I said.

  “Oh,” Alicia said. “I couldn’t remember what it was near before.”

  “She’s, like, the smartest person ever, Mom,” Natalie said.

  “I think your dad holds that title,” Cherie said.

  “Sure, but, like, she has insight, you—”

  “Sorry, here we go,” Tavia said, and hit Return.

  The screen blinked to life.

  Chapter 57

  A BRILLIANT RED logo—FAVELA JUSTICE—came spinning out of a void before leveling out on the screen.

  Then it faded, revealing Andy Wise staring out at us. Still gagged and strapped to that heavy wooden chair, the billionaire looked worn from his experience.

  Rayssa, the woman in the primitive mask, appeared, said, “We’ll let the evidence speak for itself.”

  She vanished into a series of smash-cut video clips and images crafted like a news segment on Vice.com, a hip, visual story with Rayssa explaining what we were seeing in a voice-over. Documents fluttered onto a wooden table, dozens of them, and then hundreds, piling up on the table, falling off the sides, and drifting in the air.

  One appeared in close-up for less than five seconds as Rayssa said, “These are copies of WE invoices for rebar, which is used to reinforce concrete. Mr. Wise’s company bought rebar in volume, right off the boat from Poland, for three hundred dollars per metric ton.”

  Another d
ocument flashed by with the WE logo, too quick to read, and then dozens more, one after the other, rapid-fire, as Rayssa said, “But as internal accounting documents show, Mr. Wise’s company was charging the Brazilian government and Olympic authority three thousand dollars per metric ton.”

  Over images of the Olympic village and the World Cup stadiums, she said, “Favela Justice gets that Mr. Wise is in business to make a profit, but a nine hundred percent profit? That’s gouging any way you look at it.”

  The video went on showing images of cement mixers while Rayssa alleged that WE billed raw cement at nearly six times the amount other private construction firms did. Then the scene shifted to images of favelas and favela people all over Rio.

  “The Brazilian government took on hundreds of billions in debt to finance the stadiums,” Rayssa said. “This was money that could have gone to better schools, better sanitary conditions in the favelas, hope for the vast majority of Brazilians who want a better life. Instead, like the Roman emperors who built the Colosseum, the government bought entertainment for the impoverished, and men like Wise pocketed the lion’s share of what could have been our future.”

  The screen returned to that image of the billionaire in captivity.

  “To enrich himself, Wise made us all poorer,” Rayssa said. “Took the money right out of our hands and made it look legal, and the poorest will suffer for it. Unless you vote to find him guilty. Then he owes the poor one billion in gold.”

  The screen went blank.

  There was a long silence in the room before Alicia looked at her mom and said in a trembling voice, “Is that all true? About Dad.”

  “We have no idea whether those documents are real or fabricated,” Cherie said. “I don’t think these savages obey any rules of law.”

  “You think favela people are savages, Mom?” Natalie said.

  “I didn’t say that, I—”

  “Yes, you did,” Alicia said. “But what if it is true, Mom? What if Dad did do all these things?”

  “Your father has never knowingly broken a law in his life,” Cherie said.

  “Knowingly,” Natalie said. “What does that mean?”

  “It means he runs a gigantic company with operations all over the world and thousands of employees,” her mother snapped. “He can’t possibly know what every one of them does.”

  “That’s true,” Alicia said. “But what about the price gouging? What if that’s true? What if he did it legally, but unethically?”

  Cherie looked from one girl to the other in disbelief. “Are you two suffering from Stockholm syndrome or something? Siding with the people who kidnapped you and your dad?”

  “No,” Natalie said in slurred protest. “Just asking if it’s true.”

  “I can’t answer that,” Cherie said curtly. “But I’d expect you to support your father. Can you do that? Or should I send you both home to clear out your things?”

  “Mom,” Alicia moaned. “We’re not saying—”

  “Your father would move heaven and earth for you, and you don’t feel enough for him to take his side?”

  “Mom, that’s not what we were saying at all,” Natalie said.

  “That’s sure the way it sounded,” her mother said coldly. She got up from the couch, went into her bedroom, and closed the door behind her.

  Chapter 58

  Thursday, August 4, 2016

  9:00 a.m.

  Thirty-Four Hours Before the Olympic Games Open

  THE REACTION WAS worse than we’d expected. The world press grabbed and chewed on the six-minute video from Favela Justice, freeze-framing on the documents, which looked genuine enough. They were either excellent forgeries or the real thing.

  Spontaneous protests broke out in favelas around Rio. In Alemão, police were shot at with semiautomatic weapons. Two cars were burned. From high up inside Vidigal favela, unseen gunmen fired several hundred rounds. The sounds of them echoed all the way to Copacabana.

  Sirens went off all over the city as police who’d gathered for the Olympics now set out for the rioting slums. There had been footage on every channel the evening before, and that morning on the Today broadcast, Matt Lauer had brought up the possibility that the Rio Olympics might be canceled due to violence and unrest.

  “This has been the rap against Rio as an Olympic host from the start,” Lauer said. “The International Olympic Committee was worried that the government would be unable to control the favelas, which would put the games in danger. Though Brazil has cracked down hard on crime in the slums over the past ten years, last night’s riots clearly show that there is widespread anger over the money spent on the Olympics and, before it, the World Cup. The potential for danger throughout the—”

  The anchor stopped, listening to something being said in his earpiece. “We’re getting reports that the United States is threatening to pull its athletes unless their safety can be assured.

  “I repeat, in a stunning development, the U.S. Olympic Committee has—”

  General da Silva punched off the remote in a large conference room at the Olympic authority offices. Tavia and I were there along with the three top echelons of the security team that had been assembled in Rio for the games.

  “This will not happen!” da Silva roared. “Not a chance. These Olympics are going to go down flawlessly from here on out. Are we clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” many of them shouted back.

  “I’ve spoken with the president and she has assured me that I will have whatever I need, right up to martial law in the favelas, for the games to go on.”

  I winced. The day before the opening ceremony, and Rio was going to be painted black. Who wanted to go to some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, much less the Olympics, if there was the possibility of a violent uprising six miles away?

  But what choice did da Silva have? Several countries had announced they would pull their teams if they did not believe their athletes were safe. The general had to show that he was not letting the situation spin out of control; if he didn’t, the Olympics would end before they started.

  In my eyes, da Silva was up to the task. In the next fifteen minutes, the general outlined a plan that would double police presence outside and inside the favelas most likely to riot. He ordered six helicopters into the sky at dusk to assist teams of BOPE operators being lifted and dropped into hot spots.

  “I also want a noticeable bump in the number of police assigned to Copacabana, Ipanema, Leblon, and all the beaches south to Barra da Tijuca,” he said. “The world is coming to see Rio’s finest, so let’s make sure they get it. And no one talks to the press. Until further notice, I am the only spokesman. Clear?”

  The police brass nodded, and he dismissed them.

  When they’d all filed out, the general came over to me and Tavia.

  “Is there anything I missed?” he asked.

  “Sounds like you’ve got it all covered,” I said. “The helicopters will help, but it’s a blow to Rio’s global image.”

  “Unless we stamp it out now,” da Silva said. “They want to protest, they can do it peacefully. That’s all we’re saying. No rights get trampled if we—”

  His cell phone rang. The general grabbed it and listened as he walked a short distance away.

  “What?” da Silva demanded.

  He listened again, and as he did, a vein at his temple began to bulge and quiver. Then, his face reddening, he barked, “We’ll be right there.”

  He punched off his cell, looking shaken. “That was the medical examiner. Some test results came back on Luna Santos. He says they’re frightening.”

  Chapter 59

  IN THE PATHOLOGY department in the basement of Hospital Geral, Dr. Emilio Cardoso scratched at his belly while waiting for a computer file to open on a large screen on his office wall.

  “There,” Dr. Cardoso said after the screen jumped to two side-by-side images. “The cells on the right are from Luna Santos’s liver. The cells on the left were taken two years ago from
Henri Dijon.”

  Every cell looked like the shell of an alien insect with a coiled, snakelike body and multiple heads.

  “Hydra,” I said. My stomach reeled. I took an involuntary step back.

  Tavia was also rattled. Our exposure to the deadly virus at the tail end of the World Cup had been a terrifying affair, one we did not want to repeat.

  General da Silva’s face was sweaty and stony. “Are you sure it’s Hydra?”

  “No doubt,” Dr. Cardoso said. “A mutation of the virus killed Luna Santos before her blood was drained and before she was shot and burned. But the thing to notice is that in Dijon’s liver cells, there are six heads. In the sample from Luna’s liver, there are nine. It certainly makes poor Castro look like a prophet.”

  “Poor Castro?” I said, staring at the images with a foul taste in my mouth.

  “Dr. Lucas Castro,” Cardoso said. “He was the first in the world to diagnose Hydra. He saw a four-headed version in the upper Amazon when he was working for the World Health Organization. He was also the doctor who diagnosed the six-headed cases two years ago. Those two children and Dijon.”

  “We were there, Tavia and me,” I said. “Didn’t he want to quarantine one of the favelas?”

  Dr. Cardoso nodded. “Castro feared that the outbreaks weren’t over, that Hydra would return stronger and deadlier than ever. And no one listened. He got so upset about it, he quit his job at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute because no one there took his warning or his work seriously.”

  “I remember him,” General da Silva said. “Where does he work now?”

  “Here,” Cardoso said. “Upstairs. I’ve been waiting for your permission to show these images to him.”

  General da Silva chewed on that a moment before saying, “Can’t stick my head in the sand. Let’s get Dr. Castro involved pronto.”

  We arrived at Dr. Castro’s door a few moments later. Brazilian dance music played inside. The medical examiner knocked sharply.

  “Yes, yes, just a moment,” a man’s voice called out, and the music was turned off. The door opened.