The Games Read online

  The American stood and ambled like a goat down over the loose rocks between them. “Frickin’ hot, isn’t it? Hey, that’s the pack!”

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t know it came in that color.”

  “I dyed it like that,” Castro said.

  “Nice,” the climber said. “I’d bow-hunt with something like that back home in Colorado. At least that’s what I was thinking. Where’d you get it?”

  “Moosejaw.com,” the doctor said.

  “I’ve got the two smaller ones, but I’ve never seen the big boy. Want to take a rest, let me look inside?”

  “I’d rather not,” Castro said. “I’m trying to make the top of the mountain before dark. I’ll have a ride waiting up there.”

  “Yeah?” Billy said. “You know the way?”

  “I’ve done it before.”

  “Lead on, then,” he said. “I’m always up for a virgin climb.”

  The doctor didn’t know what to do. He did not want Billy White with him. He wanted Billy White to go downhill and out of sight.

  “I was sort of hoping to do this alone,” Castro said. “Kind of a solo thing.”

  “I get it and no worries,” White said. “I hunt for the same kind of solitude.”

  The doctor smiled. “I appreciate it. Well, be seeing you, Billy.”

  Before Castro had fully turned to set off down the trail again, he felt the weight come off his shoulders.

  “Jesus, Doc, you got that sucker packed to the gills,” White said. “What the hell’s in here?”

  He’d grabbed the bottom of the pack and hoisted it.

  “Sand,” Castro said, upset. “I’m training. Thinking of climbing Everest someday.”

  “Yeah?” White said, letting go of the bag. It dropped and there were clanking noises as the weight returned to the doctor’s shoulders and hips.

  “Don’t sound like sand to me,” White said. “Really, Doc, what’s in there?”

  The American said all this good-naturedly, but Dr. Castro felt like he had no choice in the matter now. With his body still turned three-quarters away from the American, he released the chest strap and then the hip belt.

  “Since you’re so interested, I’ll show you,” Castro said. “Help me?”

  White grinned and grabbed the pack with two hands.

  “Careful,” the doctor said. “I have sensitive scientific equipment in there.”

  “I didn’t think it was sand,” White said, crouching down, unsnapping the flaps, and admiring the hardware. “You doing an experiment?”

  “Something like that,” Castro said.

  “What’s your hypothesis?” White asked, lifting the flap to look into the main compartment.

  “You a scientist as well as a climber?” Castro asked, feeling increasingly nervous about White rummaging around in his pack.

  “This is a nice feature, the top compartment on the flap,” White said thoughtfully. “Awful bottom-heavy, though. Doc, hasn’t anybody taught you to put the heaviest stuff highest?”

  The American started to unzip the top pocket, and Castro knew he’d see the pistol and extra ammunition. He reached over, picked up a chunk of jagged granite, and swung it like a hammer at the American’s skull.

  White must have sensed something because he jerked to his left just before the sharp rock struck and took a hard but glancing blow high on the side of his dreadlocked head. The American lurched to his right and fell on his side, clutching at his bleeding head and groaning. “What the fuck! What the fuck!”

  Finish it, Castro thought, and he took two steps and then stood over White with one boot on each side of him so the American climber’s upper body and head were in range.

  The doctor started to raise the rock to smash it down on White’s head and be done with it. The American swung a fist and hit him in the balls.

  The doctor hunched up, dropped the rock, and almost puked. White lurched up and punched him in the face. Castro fell backward, almost slipping off the flat and into the rock piles below.

  He was stunned but aware of White getting to his feet. Blood gushed down the side of the American’s face, which had turned primal.

  “What the fuck’s in that pack, Doc?” White asked, taking a step toward Castro and kicking him hard in the ham of his left leg. “Tell me what’s in that pack you want to kill me to keep me from seeing!”

  The American cocked his boot as if to kick him again. Before he could, Castro stuck a three-inch dagger through the side of the calf of his opposite leg.

  White howled in agony and danced back before going down on the rocks. He lay there, screaming and panting, then tried to reach the figure-eight handle of the dagger.

  The American saw Castro get to his feet and come for him. White’s face turned purple with fury, and he made insane little grunting noises before he grabbed the handle and wrenched the bloody dagger from his calf.

  “C’mon, Doc,” White said, swinging it at Castro. “I’ll fucking kill you now. What you got in that pack?”

  The doctor reached into the open top pocket of the Cinder 55, pulled out the pistol, and shot the American dead at point-blank range.

  Chapter 89

  Friday, August 5, 2016

  2:30 p.m.

  Four and a Half Hours Before the Olympic Games Open

  THE INTERNATIONAL BROADCAST facility for the Olympic Games was a ten-story temporary structure built at the far south end of Copacabana Beach, where it commanded a gorgeous view of the white-sand shore and, across the waves, Pão de Açúcar.

  Huge glass windows dominated the north side of the building, where NBC and other television networks had their sets. Behind them was one of the most sophisticated broadcast facilities on earth.

  Every image, every video clip, and every blip of the live feeds coming from various Olympic events would pass through the facility on its way to editing studios and satellites that would beam coverage of the games around the world.

  For that reason alone, shortly after the World Cup, Mo-bot had recommended that General da Silva set up a temporary Olympic security command right behind the broadcast center and tie it into every feed. He’d agreed, and she’d been in on the design from the beginning.

  There was a floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall curved screen at the front of the command center, a large, windowless, and high-ceilinged single-room affair with tiers of workstations facing the big screen.

  On the narrow left side, live video feeds from around Rio played. The narrow right side of the screen featured feeds from security cameras at various intersections and venues around the city. The vast majority of the screen, however, was dominated by a real-time satellite image of Rio de Janeiro, another of Maureen’s suggestions.

  General da Silva was standing next to Jack in front of the screen, shaking his head.

  “I can’t do it, Jack,” the general said. “I can’t pull the plug on the opening ceremony with less than five hours to go. It would destroy Rio’s reputation, humiliate—”

  “How good is Rio’s reputation going to be if you don’t pull the plug and Castro gets some bioweapon inside Maracanã Stadium? What do you think will happen to you if your president and all her invited dignitaries are exposed, and the world learns you could have stopped it?”

  Da Silva looked like he was a man trying not to drown. After several moments he said, “We are not stopping the opening ceremony.”

  “General,” I said.

  He waved me off. “As of now, I am banning the use of all cars, taxis, motorcycles, and bicycles within three miles of the stadium. As of now, I am calling in army units to seal off the area and enforce the vehicle ban. Access will be limited to residents, ticket holders, accredited media, vendors, and athletes. Period.

  “Dr. Castro’s picture will be sent to the phone of every police officer, every soldier, every Olympic volunteer, and every municipal employee in Rio, including the bus drivers. We’ll give it to the media as well. That doctor is not getting anywhere near Maracanã Stad
ium. The people of Rio are going to hunt him down for us.”

  Chapter 90

  Friday, August 5, 2016

  4:30 p.m.

  Two and a Half Hours Before the Olympic Games Open

  I HAD TO hand it to General da Silva. In a very short time his ham-fisted tactics had done a lot to ease my concern over the opening ceremony going forward.

  Looking at that real-time satellite image in the command center, I could see that the streets for miles around Maracanã Stadium were now devoid of all vehicles except for the trucks of credentialed vendors, the buses ferrying volunteers, athletes, and coaches, and the strings of Mercedes-Benz limousines bearing foreign and International Olympic Committee dignitaries. Thousands of people on foot streamed toward the stadium.

  Security got tighter within a fifteen-block radius of the Maracanã. Brazilian army tanks were already parked in every major intersection. BOPE and Brazilian army special forces units had closed off some streets, funneling all pedestrians through checkpoints where their identification, tickets, and credentials would be reviewed three times before they reached the stadium. Every single person involved in Olympic security had a picture of Dr. Castro on his or her cell phone, and the media had plastered his photo everywhere, telling everyone he was dangerous and that anyone who spotted him should call the police.

  So far, there’d been no sightings.

  Had da Silva’s drastic measures scared Castro off? It was possible, but I wasn’t betting on it as the digital clock in the security command center rolled toward zero hour.

  “Jack, I’m going to the stadium at six p.m.,” the general said.

  I understood. Da Silva wanted to be there if Castro somehow got his deadly virus in. The general was a proud man. He wouldn’t have it said that he had foreknowledge of a deadly threat and chose to ride it out in safety six miles away.

  “I’ll go with you,” I said.

  Justine and Mo-bot turned around at their workstations.

  “That’s not a good idea,” Justine said.

  “No, it’s a necessary one,” I said.

  “Well, I won’t be going with you.”

  “And neither will I,” Mo-bot said. “I draw the line at willingly exposing myself to a deadly virus.”

  “I get it,” I said. “But I don’t have a choice in the matter, do I?”

  “Sure you do,” Justine said, irritated.

  “How’s that?”

  “You have a choice,” she said. “But as usual, Jack, you just plow ahead, never thinking of the consequences.”

  “I have thought of the consequences,” I shot back. “The consequences of not going, especially what that would do to Private’s reputation.”

  “And how is Private going to look after the untimely death of its leader and driving force?”

  Before I could reply to that, an excited Lieutenant Acosta came toward us with a wide-eyed and shabbily dressed boy who looked about eleven years old.

  Acosta said, “This young man has a very interesting tale to tell.”

  Chapter 91

  FELIX MARTINS LIVED with his mother and brothers and sisters in Rio’s Laranjeiras, squatters on the third floor of a moldering palace that once belonged to the king of Portugal’s physician. Toward midday, Felix had heard a car roll into the courtyard parking area, and he went to look.

  The car took the last available space. A man in gray work clothes got out, retrieved a large gray-green backpack from the trunk, and then threw his keys inside the trunk and shut it.

  “Did you see his face?” I asked.

  “I recognized him from the pictures on the television right away,” Felix told us. “I went straight to the police station.”

  “Is the car still there?” Justine asked.

  Felix knit his brow, seemed conflicted, but then shook his head and said the car had been stolen around one o’clock that afternoon.

  Acosta said, “You know who stole it?”

  The boy chewed his lip. “It was almost like he wanted it stolen.”

  “Maybe he did,” I said. “Who’s got it?”

  “I dunno,” he said. “Some friend of my mother’s. Ask her.”

  Acosta said, “I will. When was the last time you saw him?”

  “When he went out the gate.”

  “Which way did he turn?” I asked.

  Felix thought about that and said, “Right.”

  Mo-bot found the decrepit palace and put it up on the big screen, giving us the aerial view. You could see the courtyard and wall plainly. Maureen highlighted the area on the satellite feed and then pulled back to show the winding road heading north until it dead-ended in the steep and choked jungle of the Tijuca National Park.

  Mo-bot highlighted Maracanã Stadium, which was north-northwest of the end of the road, and we requested the distance between the two spots.

  “Four point two miles as the crow flies,” she said.

  “Not on foot,” I said. “Look at the brutal terrain that he’s got to cross to get there. Up and down several thousand vertical feet here, here, and here. In some places I’d bet it’s steep enough for ropes.”

  “Difficult, but not impossible for a fanatic,” said General da Silva. He gestured to the northern edge of the forest. “But look where he can exit the jungle. Somewhere above São Francisco Xavier Metrô station, not three-quarters of a mile from Maracanã Stadium.”

  It did look tempting from a strategic perspective, but something about it still didn’t seem right to me.

  “Could a man cross that kind of terrain in six or seven hours?”

  “If he was fit and knew the paths,” Lieutenant Acosta said. “I’m sure.”

  The general said, “I’m moving more police all along that front where he’d come out. In the meantime, we’ll try to spot him from the air.”

  Chapter 92

  Friday, August 5, 2016

  4:45 p.m.

  Two Hours and Fifteen Minutes Before the Olympic Games Open

  WHEN DR. CASTRO judged he was about one hundred feet below the summit of the mountain he’d been climbing the better part of the day, he turned around and sat on a rock outcropping beneath an umbrella-shaped tree that hid him from above. The weight of the pack came off his back and he stifled a groan at the effort it had taken to get here.

  Since Dr. Castro had reached the head of the canyon on the west flank of the mountain, the path had been nearly straight uphill. It had been backbreaking work to stay balanced with the pack while grabbing onto roots and small saplings and thorny brush, hoisting himself higher, foot by grueling foot.

  But Castro had welcomed the pain and drove himself unmercifully toward the top.

  Twice on the way up, he’d had to cross a winding switchbacked road. The doctor had hidden behind the guardrails until the roads were clear, and then sprinted to the other side. The sun was low over the mountains by then, casting the final part of his ascent in shadows, which suited him. He sat for a few minutes to slow his breath and slamming heart.

  He heard a helicopter. He’d been hearing them off and on all day, and now he peered out through the vegetation, seeing several of them to his northeast, flying low and in formation over the jungle. Then he spotted a closer one, making a loop around the summit above him.

  Castro slid deeper into the dark shadows as the helicopter passed and faded away. He heard a loudspeaker announcing that in honor of the national holiday, the area was closing at five o’clock.

  By ten past, the shadows were deepening and he hadn’t heard a car go by on the road below him in a good twelve minutes. But the doctor had done his homework and knew better. At 5:20 p.m. one last car left the summit. It carried two guards, who stopped to lock a series of gates on the switchback road as they descended.

  Feeling refreshed, Castro tightened down the straps on the pack and started climbing to the summit of Corcovado Mountain as the sun drifted lower and into a haze brought on by the heat. The doctor soon stopped by a fence that surrounded the observation terraces b
elow the statue of Christ the Redeemer.

  Bathed in a gold and copper light, the Redeemer was the iconic symbol of Rio and now the Olympic Games. The doctor felt, however, that the Christ had been hijacked to hawk Coca-Cola and Visa and the goods of other multinationals. He did not look up at the statue. He stayed on task.

  Castro knew there were only three people left on the summit of Corcovado now. Two worked for NBC, a producer and a cameraman there to provide a long-lensed look at Rio by night. They’d be picked up later by helicopter.

  The third person was Corcovado’s trusted watchman Pietro Gonzalez. Dr. Castro stood there patiently in the shadows until the watchman appeared on his rounds. Castro whistled softly to Gonzalez, whose daughter and son had died of Hydra the day before the World Cup final.

  Gonzalez stopped and signaled to Castro to wait. The doctor heard another helicopter circling, filming footage of the statue for the global audience.

  How many would watch the opening ceremony? Castro had heard as many as a billion people.

  That would do it, he thought. A billion people will get the message shoved right down their throats.

  Finally Pietro gestured to him to hurry. Castro came up and over the rail, followed the security guard to a door on the back of the pedestal that supported the statue of the Redeemer.

  Pietro had a key ready; he twisted it in the lock and pulled the door open.

  Castro said, “Thank you, my friend.”

  “For my babies and your wife, and all of the oppressed,” Pietro said, handing the doctor a headlamp and a small jar of gray makeup.

  Chapter 93

  Friday, August 5, 2016

  5:40 p.m.

  One Hour and Twenty Minutes Before the Olympic Games Open

  “WE’VE GOT ABOUT ten minutes of usable light left,” General da Silva said, grunting in frustration from the copilot’s seat of a Brazilian army 36 AS350 helicopter, a nimble four-seater with a cruising speed of a hundred and fifty miles an hour.