The Games Read online

  After twenty seconds of this—well, maybe thirty—a few of them started taking liberties with my terry-cloth robe, and I called a halt to the action.

  “Please, ladies,” I said, raising my hands. “You’re all lovely, truly, but I’m looking for Estella this evening.”

  Suddenly there was a lot more room around me and the spectacular smiles were all turning, as if they’d sniffed something unsavory about me.

  “Is she here?” I asked.

  A vivacious redhead rolled her eyes, said, “She’s over in the corner, Mr. Freaky Man. But she looks tied up to me.”

  I followed her gaze and saw a pleased and very heavyset Chinese guy sitting on one of the plush couches and pouring himself a healthy shot from a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red he’d had chilling in an ice bucket. He swayed slightly, obviously hammered. He drank half the whiskey in two gulps.

  Then he leered at the gorgeous brunette woman in black lingerie sitting beside him and started to rub his free hand all over her very pregnant belly.

  Chapter 68

  GROSSED OUT?

  I was.

  It was about as creepy a thing as I have ever witnessed, and my initial reaction was to recoil, turn, and walk away as fast as Vitoria had. The fact that the women who’d surrounded me were now looking at me as if I were a lower form of life than Bug-Eyes only made matters worse.

  I was about to pull out my cell and call Tavia, get her take on how best to handle the situation, when I glanced into the corner and saw from Estella’s blank, faraway expression that she was suffering.

  Without another thought, I walked over to them and said, “Estella?”

  She blinked, sat up, and looked at me quizzically. The Chinese man’s drunk eyes were trying to focus and doing a poor job.

  “Wait your turn,” he slurred.

  I ignored him, said, “I’ll pay you twice what he’s paying you, plus tip.”

  Estella smiled.

  The Chinese guy got belligerent, said, “She’s with me, gringo.”

  “Not the way I understand it,” I said. “Have you had your wristband checked with Bug-Eyes?”

  Estella smiled even more at me and tried to get up. The Chinese guy put out a pudgy arm to hold her in her seat, said, “You stay where you are, bitch.”

  Why do some people have to do things the hard way?

  I curled my left hand into a fist with the first knuckle of my middle finger exposed and smashed it tight behind his jaw about an inch below his right ear. He made a soft squeal of pain, let go of Estella, and slumped against the couch, looking like he was about to be violently sick on his terry-cloth robe.

  I held out my hand. “Estella? Shall we?”

  Urso’s girlfriend grinned ear to ear, stood, and took my hand. She paraded me through the room, ignoring the disgusted, sidelong glances of the other women, and led me through a maze of hallways to an empty room with a bed, a shower, and mirrors on the walls and ceiling.

  She shut the door, said, “Shower together?”

  “That’s not necessary,” I said, showing her my Private badge.

  Estella rolled her eyes. “Haven’t you been paid this month? C’mon, I had a real customer up there.”

  “I’m not a cop. I’m looking for your husband, Urso.”

  She wasn’t expecting that. Frightened, she looked to the door, said, “The Bear’s not my husband.”

  “But I’m betting he’s the father of that baby in your belly.”

  “What’s he done?”

  “You tell me.”

  “No,” she said, trying to get by me. “I don’t know nothing.”

  I blocked the way, said, “Your sister, Claudia, says you do.”

  “Claudia’s a junkie.” Estella sneered. “No one believes her. You let me out of here now or I start screaming you’re trying to kill my baby.”

  “And I’ll start screaming that you’re part of a conspiracy to kidnap and torture one of the world’s richest men. You’ll be having your baby in prison, and who knows where Milena will end up.”

  That got to her. “You leave my baby and Milena out of this. And I’ve got nothing to do with whatever that Urso’s up to.”

  “But you know he’s involved in Wise’s kidnapping.”

  Estella held her belly, stared at it like it revealed terrible secrets.

  “We can keep you safe,” I said.

  “No, you can’t,” Estella said in a lost voice.

  “Yes, we can, and if you help us, there will be money in it for you.”

  Shaking, Estella sat down on the bed. “Money?”

  “A lot of it.”

  Hugging herself, she said, “Like what? Fifty thousand reais? A hundred?”

  “I was thinking three million U.S. dollars would be a fair reward if what you tell me leads to Mr. Wise’s rescue. You’ll be able to leave this place, start over somewhere else, make a life for Milena and your baby.”

  She was looking at me in disbelief. “Three million. No way.”

  “Urso’s asked for a billion, or haven’t you been watching the television? Three million’s a bargain.”

  Estella shook her head. “A billion? Is he stupid or something?”

  “You tell me.”

  “No. It’s got to be that crazy know-it-all college bitch filling his head with all this bullshit.”

  “Rayssa?”

  “Her name’s not Rayssa. It’s Amelia.”

  Chapter 69

  AMELIA? MARIANA LOPES’S adopted daughter? Friend of the Wise girls?

  So much of it made sense, and yet so much didn’t. Amelia Lopes had been with Alicia and Natalie at the beginning of their trip to Rio. She would have had time to learn their identities and set up the kidnapping.

  But the girls said they’d told no one their real names. And wouldn’t they have recognized Amelia’s voice as Rayssa’s?

  A sad thought started to worm and grow in my brain.

  “They’re going to kill Urso for this, aren’t they?” Estella moaned. “They’ll just shoot my Bear on sight for this, and my kids will be left without a father.”

  Before I could think about any of it, there was a knock at the door.

  “Tempo,” a woman said. My forty minutes was up.

  I sat on the bed next to Estella and said, “If we’re to have any hope of keeping Urso alive, we need to get you out of here.”

  That frightened her. “It is not allowed. I must stay to the end of my shift.”

  “This can’t wait. There are some people who want to talk to you.”

  “Polícia?”

  “Yes.”

  “They can’t be trusted.”

  “And Amelia can?”

  Another knock. “Tempo!”

  I wanted to ask more questions and thought about buying more time, but then I decided we needed to leave. Now.

  “If you want that reward money, you’ll have to come with me. Go get dressed in your street clothes. Meet me by the locker room.”

  “They’ll stop us,” she said.

  “They’re not stopping me.”

  Estella looked unconvinced but said, “Okay.”

  We left the depressing little room. She went to change, and I did too. I waited and waited until I thought she might have chickened out or run for it. But just as I was about to go looking for her, she appeared near the locker room, dressed in a shapeless black cotton maternity dress and looking more frightened than ever.

  “Just follow me and let me handle it,” I said.

  I threw Bug-Eyes one hundred reais, said, “Keep the change.”

  He spotted Estella, said, “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Estella rubbed her belly mournfully. “I’m sick. My friend drives me home.”

  “Don’t work like that.”

  “It does today,” I said.

  His hand shifted under the desk. I knew he was going for a gun, so I lunged forward, reached through the window hole, grabbed him by his collared shirt, and yanked. His knees cracked ag
ainst the desk. His face smashed against the window, and he crumpled.

  A woman started screaming. I glanced back into the brothel and saw Vitoria raising hell.

  Taking Estella by the arm, I said, “We’ve got to go, fast.”

  We went through the glass door, took a hard left on a rug of synthetic grass, and headed down on a slight slant toward the entrance. I’d hoped to reach it before the bouncers came in, but no such luck.

  When we were halfway down the ramp, the Brick and the Boxer came through the doors. The Brick carried a police baton. The Boxer had a sap.

  Chapter 70

  I PUSHED ESTELLA back as the Boxer moved into range. I sprang at him, blocked his arm before he could clobber me, and kneed him hard in the gut.

  The Boxer made a puhhh sound and crashed. I spun toward the Brick. His overhand baton strike just missed my head but smashed hard against my left shoulder. My arm felt jolted electrically and went numb.

  When he raised his arm back to strike me again, I punched him in the triceps with my good hand. It threw him off balance. He slashed the baton at me. I dodged it and punched him in the windpipe. He staggered, dropped the baton, and went to his knees, choking.

  “C’mon,” I said, picking up the baton and holding out my hand to Estella.

  Estella was wide-eyed as she stepped around the bodies of the fallen bouncers. I pushed open the front door and saw a third bouncer charging me. I cracked the baton off his forehead and knocked him senseless.

  Tavia came screeching up to the curb. I put Estella in the back, got in front.

  “How’d it go?” Tavia asked, throwing the car in gear.

  “I feel like I just escaped some perverse level of hell, but I think we’ve got the break we—”

  Boom! The rear window shattered.

  Tavia stomped on the gas. I twisted in my seat.

  Through the blown-out window I saw a bleeding Bug-Eyes running down the street after us, trying to get another shot.

  Chapter 71

  Thursday, August 4, 2016

  7:30 p.m.

  Twenty-Three and a Half Hours Before the Olympic Games Open

  THE MOON WAS but a sliver low in the eastern sky. The small jungle clearing in the shadow of the Dois Irmãos Mountains was barely lit by the glow of Leblon and Ipanema far below. Amelia Lopes stood for a long minute listening to the sounds of the rain forest, the peeping of tree frogs, the sawing of crickets, the rustle of birds on the roost. There was balance there. It was all so natural.

  Then she heard a distant car horn and looked out over the glittering lights of the superwealthy to the favelas, seeing everything she considered unnatural about Rio and the world in one long, sweeping glance.

  The megarich. The megapoor. You couldn’t find a country or city on earth that displayed the income gap as glaringly as Rio de Janeiro did. The city went from ultrachic to squalor in a matter of miles. These brutal facts and more had caused Amelia Lopes to start thinking of herself as Rayssa.

  Rayssa the warrior. Rayssa the revolutionary.

  She wore the name like armor. As Amelia, she was rather passive, risk-averse, and incapable of violence. As Rayssa, she was visionary, audacious, cruel, and, if need be, deadly.

  A billion dollars, she thought as she climbed toward the cluster of shacks in the trees at the top of the clearing. She went to the smallest hut, the one where Andrew Wise was being held. Think of what good a billion dollars could do in Rio’s favelas. Think of what forces for good would be unleashed.

  Fervent now, she nodded to one of Urso’s men standing guard. He pulled open the door. Wise was sitting in the chair, his hooded head lolling on his chest. But when Rayssa stepped inside, the tycoon must have heard her because he raised his head groggily.

  “Water,” he said.

  Rayssa ignored the request. “Thought you might want to know the vote count with two hours to go.”

  “I don’t care. I want water. I want food.”

  “For hash tags WiseGuilty and PayTheBillion, total stands at twenty-three million and counting. For hash tag WiseDecision, it’s eleven point two million,” Rayssa said, and she turned to go.

  The tycoon called after her, “Please. It’s inhumane.”

  That stopped her. She looked over her shoulder, spitting mad, and said, “Welcome to hungry and thirsty, Mr. Wise, the plights of the poorest poor.”

  She left him then, and closed the door. She told the guard to feed and water the prisoner in an hour or so. Give him some time to come to his senses.

  The generator kicked to life, masking the jungle sounds with a constant thrum. Rayssa was barely aware of it as she returned to the largest shack, the one with all the satellite dishes on the roof. She entered and found the pickpocket Alou at his keyboard and screens.

  For a moment, she gazed at the boy genius in wonder. So young and so brilliant, but because he was born in the slums, this society would have thrown him away. How fortunate he was to have found a bed in Mariana’s orphanage. How fortunate he was to have played with a computer at such a young age. How smart Rayssa had been to encourage—

  Her cell phone rang. She frowned when she saw it was her mother calling.

  “Mom?”

  “You actually picked up,” Mariana Lopes said in a disapproving tone.

  “I’ve been busy,” Amelia said. “Wrapping up the fieldwork. I told you.”

  “A mother longs for her daughter’s voice every once in a while.”

  No matter how much kindness and empathy she dispensed in the course of a day, Amelia’s mother was always putting guilt trips on her daughter.

  “You don’t have time for me now?” Mariana said. “I understand.”

  Rayssa would have hung up, but Amelia was sensing that Rayssa’s existence was coming to an end. And for the first time, she realized the dire consequences of her actions.

  “I have ten minutes, Mom,” she said. “Let me get somewhere I can talk.”

  Chapter 72

  “CAN YOU HEAR me, Mom?” Amelia Lopes said.

  We’d put Amelia on speaker. Mariana Lopes looked at Sci and Mo-bot, who were trying to track Amelia’s location, and then at Tavia and me. Tavia nodded.

  “Loud and clear, dear,” Mariana said, but there was a tremor in her voice. She was still shocked by the fact that her daughter was the ringleader of the Favela Justice plot. She had refused to believe it until Estella, Urso’s woman, told her what she knew: that Amelia met, slept with, and brainwashed the Bear after he was driven from Alemão favela.

  “She made him believe that the way we live is a crime,” Estella said. “She made him believe that not fighting the situation was a worse crime.”

  This evidently sounded like something Amelia would say because Mariana’s shoulders slumped and she wept, and then she agreed to help us.

  She got more confident the longer the conversation with her daughter went on. They chatted about challenges at the orphanage. They talked about Mariana’s hip, which had been bothering her enough that she was considering hip-replacement surgery, and about when Amelia might be finished with her field research and able to come back to Rio to see her.

  “Soon,” Amelia said. “After the Olympics are over. When it’s less hectic.”

  Mariana looked over at us. I made a spinning motion with my finger and she tried to talk about Amelia’s field research some more.

  But after two minutes in that vein, Amelia said, “Mom, I’ve got to go now.”

  “Oh,” Mariana said, growing nervous. “Of course. Call me tomorrow?”

  “If I can,” Amelia said. “Mom?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Are you proud of me? Of the way I’ve lived my life?”

  Mariana looked at us. Tavia nodded and I twirled my finger again.

  “Mom?”

  “Of course I’m proud of you,” Mariana said, tears welling in her eyes. “You’re a woman of great learning, conviction, and kindness.”

  We heard a sniff over the speaker. “Thanks, Mo
m. I needed to hear that.”

  “Are you okay, Amelia?”

  “I’m fine,” her daughter said, and sniffed again. “Love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  The line went dead. Mariana began to weep again.

  “Did you get her?” I asked as Tavia moved to comfort Mariana.

  “Wait a sec,” Mo-bot said, not picking up her head.

  Sci didn’t look up either. They both pounded at their keyboards and then suddenly, virtually in unison, they stopped.

  “Got her,” Mo-bot said with a satisfied grin.

  Sci said, “Give the software a minute or two and we’ll have a position for you within ten feet of where she was standing.”

  “You did fine,” Tavia was saying to the orphanage director when I walked over beside them.

  “I feel like Judas Iscariot,” Mariana said.

  I said, “What you did was noble. A mother looking out for her child.”

  Mariana glanced up. “Don’t kill her. Please? She’s my only child.”

  I frowned, said, “Senhora Lopes, we are not assassins. We will not intentionally harm your daughter. But she is a kidnapper, a murderer, and a terrorist. She’ll be brought to—”

  “There she is,” Sci said.

  “Throwing it on the screen now,” Mo-bot said.

  At the far end of the conference room, Google Earth appeared showing a satellite view of Rio de Janeiro. A red pin blinked off the north flank of the Two Brothers Mountains.

  Sci manipulated the image, zoomed in, and tilted the perspective so we could see that Amelia had been in the jungle five or six hundred yards east of the Rocinha favela and close to the bottom of a cliff that went up two thousand feet to the top of the second mountain.

  Sci zoomed in again, and a blurred view of the slope below the cliff appeared. Mo-bot used filters to clear the image, and we saw the pin blinking at the upper end of a long narrow clearing just off the spine of the slope. Near the pin, in the trees up the hill and closer to the cliff, there were several shacks.

  “If that’s where they’ve got Wise, it’s going to be a bitch getting in there quietly,” Tavia said. “If we go in on foot we’ll have to go through Rocinha or Vidigal, and that will raise all sorts of alarms. They’ll no doubt have sentries, people watching the trails to and from the favelas. And they’re probably in the trees all around the clearing.”