The Games Read online

  In short order we were led to the gondola base and told to get out at the fourth station up the line. When the gondola shut and we swung out into space above the slum, I admit that I was thinking about bazookas.

  But then I looked out the window and saw troops of military police in body armor, all of them carrying automatic rifles and moving across the twisting paths of the slum, passing one rickety building on top of five others on top of ten more. Lit up like that, the favela looked post-apocalyptic, right out of Mad Max.

  Two heavily armed officers met us at the fourth station and, with flashlights, led us down to the school. The slum was an assault on the senses: putrid smells, unsavory odors, shacks that looked ready to tumble, a general din punctuated by music blaring, voices yelling, and babies crying. The deeper I went, the more claustrophobic and inescapable the favela seemed.

  Lieutenant Bruno Acosta of the Brazilian military police was waiting for us at the school, which had been cordoned off. Acosta was in his mid-thirties, built like a tombstone, and very bright.

  The lieutenant knew who we were and the connections we had, so he seemed to hold nothing back. The attack had come in the last light of day. Two different snipers had shot Alvarez and Questa just before the favela’s main transformer was blown with an improvised explosive.

  “There were a lot of people here when it happened,” Acosta said. “The shooting and the bombing caused a near riot. In the darkness, a ground force of four, maybe five masked men swept in on the church group. They had flashlights, found the sisters, took them, and left. There were threats, but no other shots were fired.”

  “How long until police were on the scene?” I asked.

  “Nine minutes,” the lieutenant said.

  “Enough time to hide them or get them out of here,” Tavia said.

  “Who are they?” Acosta asked. “Why were they targeted?”

  Mindful of the agreement we had with the twins’ parents, I said, “The Warren family is very wealthy.”

  “So a kidnap for ransom?”

  “You have another motive?” Tavia asked.

  Acosta shook his head. “The parents know?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Can we talk to some of the witnesses?”

  The lieutenant thought, replied, “It was basically mayhem in here and it was dark. Several of the kids in the church group got trampled and were taken to the hospital. The group leader’s still here, though, I think.”

  We found Carlos Seitz, coordinator of the twenty-person church contingent. Seitz was understandably distraught.

  “What am I going to tell their parents?” he said.

  “We’ll take care of that,” Tavia said. “How were they?”

  “Up until the shots? They seemed fine.”

  Seitz described the twins as hardworking, unlike some of the others, who went on missions only because it looked good on their résumés.

  “You know, the two-month good deed of their lives,” the mission’s leader said. “But the Warren girls, you could tell they believed they could really help down here. They were smart, idealistic, and passionate about things.”

  “Can you give us a way to reach you?” I asked.

  “I have a cell,” Seitz said. “And I’ll write down the address of the hostel where we’re staying until we leave next Wednesday.”

  We each gave Seitz a card and then left him and returned to Acosta. I offered him the use of Private Rio’s lab and our forensics team, which were FBI- and Interpol-accredited. Acosta politely but firmly turned me down.

  “We’re more than capable of handling a crime scene, Mr. Morgan,” he said. “You’ll have the parents contact me?”

  “Of course.”

  Again with a police escort, we left the area, climbing back toward the ski lift that was our escape from the slum. It wasn’t until we were aboard one of the red gondolas that the claustrophobic feeling left me.

  “One good thing?” Tavia said.

  “What’s that?”

  “No one seems to know who they really are.”

  “I’m praying you’re right, but then why would they have been targeted?”

  I pulled out my cell phone, looked at it and then at the head of Private Rio.

  “These aren’t going to be easy calls,” I said.

  “I imagine they won’t be,” she said. “My offer’s still there to talk with Questa’s and Alvarez’s wives.”

  “Appreciate it, but I can be a big boy when I have to be.”

  “Really?” she teased. “I’ve never once noticed.”

  “And here I thought you were a world-class investigator.”

  She tickled me. I winked at her and dialed a U.S. phone number with a 650 area code.

  Chapter 13

  THE PALO ALTO, California, phone rang three times before going to voice mail. A robotic female voice repeated the phone number, instructed me to leave a message after the beep.

  “Andrew, it’s Jack Morgan,” I said. “Sorry to use your personal line, but please call me. It concerns the girls.”

  Ten minutes later, after Tavia and I had left the gondola and climbed down the hill to look for a cab, my phone rang.

  “Andrew?”

  “It’s Cherie, Jack,” the girls’ mother said. “Are they sick or something? I told them that the water could be—”

  “Cherie,” I said, interrupting. “The girls were taken by armed men earlier this evening. Their bodyguards, my men Alvarez and Questa, were shot and killed.”

  “What…” Cherie replied in a soft, bewildered voice that trailed off.

  I was starting to explain exactly what had happened when she cut me off, screeching at me, “Everyone said you and Private were the best! You told me to my face that you were the best! But the goddamned best would not have let this happen! Not to my babies!”

  “No, Cherie, you’re right,” I said evenly. “I said we were the best, and today that’s not true. My men were ambushed by snipers. There was no warning, just two shots out of the blue. When I get off the phone with you, I have to call their wives and families and explain that they’re dead and never coming back, which is not the case with your girls. We are going to get them back.”

  “How?” she demanded curtly.

  “I don’t know yet, Cherie, but I promise you and Andrew that I will find them and bring them back to you.”

  “Unless they’re already dead.”

  “You can’t think that way.”

  There was another long pause. I heard her crying softly.

  “What is it?” she asked at last. “Ransom?”

  “I would assume so, but no one’s been contacted yet as far as I know.”

  “I thought you were going to give them aliases.”

  “We did,” I said. “And no one we’ve spoken to has mentioned the family name. Everyone still believes they’re the Warren girls from Ohio.”

  “Somebody doesn’t,” Cherie said. “This can’t be a coincidence.”

  “How do you want me to handle their identity in the future?” I asked.

  “Keep our name out of it as long as you can,” she said. “I have to tell Andy now. He told me that Rio was the wrong place for them to be, and I…I wouldn’t listen.”

  “I can call him,” I said.

  “No,” she replied. “He needs to hear this from me. And then, no doubt, we’ll be on our way to Rio in the jet. Immediately.”

  My brow furrowed as I said, “Honestly, Cherie, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea right—”

  “Sorry, Jack,” she said. “But when it comes down to it, the money aside, our daughters are all Andy and I really have.”

  She hung up just as a cab pulled over. I climbed in after Tavia and made the calls to Alvarez’s and Questa’s widows. They were devastated. Questa’s wife collapsed and her sister told me she was taking her to the hospital. After hanging up, I leaned my head back against the rest, closed my eyes, and groaned.

  Tavia said sympathetically, “You look like you’ve b
een through the wringer.”

  “Twice.”

  “Lot of stress,” she said.

  “Muito,” I said. A lot.

  “I think I know how you could relieve some of that stress,” she said quietly.

  I couldn’t help myself, and I smiled. “I bet you do.”

  When I opened my eyes, her lovely face and her lips were there. We kissed softly and everything felt a little bit better, and safer, and right.

  Chapter 14

  LUPITA VALENCIA LOOKED as frail as a newborn bird.

  But after Dr. Castro examined the four-year-old girl that evening, he smiled at Lupita’s mother and said, “I think she’s over the worst of it. She’s going to beat it. You’ll probably be taking her home sometime tomorrow.”

  “Bless you, Doctor,” the woman said, tears in her eyes. “Bless you for saving her.”

  “Glad we could help,” Castro replied. He patted her on the shoulder and exited the room into a crowded hallway at the Hospital Geral on Santa Luzia Road in Central.

  In Brazil, there were two kinds of hospitals: public, for the poor, and private, for the rich. As public hospitals went, Geral was very good, and the doctor was happy to have found work there.

  “Who’s next?” he asked the triage nurse evaluating the line of patients that wound out the door.

  “No one for you, Dr. Castro,” the nurse said in a disapproving tone. “You’ve been here thirty-six hours as it is. Go home. Sleep.”

  For once, Castro didn’t argue. He said, “See you next time. I’m at the university tomorrow.”

  “Get some sleep,” the nurse repeated and shooed him away.

  The doctor changed out of his scrubs and left the hospital, mindful of the line of patients that seemed to get longer every day. Castro hailed a cab and almost gave the driver his home address but then changed his mind and gave him another.

  Dr. Castro fell asleep and did not wake until the taxi stopped in a light-industrial area on the western outskirts of Rio. The doctor walked beneath sodium lights toward a long, low steel-walled and -roofed building that had a door with multiple locks. Beside the door, a small cheap plaque read:

  AV3 PESQUISA—RESEARCH

  Castro got out his keys, looked around, and then unlocked the door. He went inside quickly, shut the door behind him, and flipped on a light, revealing an empty room. He locked the outer door and went to a second locked door opposite it. Beyond that was an airy warehouse space dominated by a large white rectangular tent made of laminated cloth. A myriad of ducts and hoses ran into and out of the tent roof.

  Without stopping to admire his ingenious design, Dr. Castro went through a flap into an anteroom of sorts. There he donned a full hazmat suit, duct-taped all the seams, and entered a pressurized decontamination shower. Only then did he pass through an air lock into his clean room.

  Despite having worked for thirty-six hours, Castro felt renewed energy being back in his secret lab. He loved some parts of his other life—helping patients, teaching students—but it was only here that he felt buzzing and alive.

  The doctor crossed the clean room to five glass tanks arranged in a row. Above each was an alphanumeric code and a small camera attached to a plugged-in Samsung digital tablet.

  Castro paused at each tank, studying the white rats within. In the first four tanks, the rats were moving around, but there were sores visible on all of them, and several were stumbling as if they had lost their motor skills.

  In the fifth tank, the rat was dead. Its sores were more grotesque, and there was dried blood around the eyes, nose, and mouth.

  That’s interesting, Dr. Castro thought. When did that happen?

  The doctor went to the tablet and called up a video that featured a running time display at the bottom. Castro sped the video in reverse until he found the moment the rat convulsed and died. According to the time stamp, death had occurred one hour, forty-eight minutes, and sixteen seconds after the doctor had left the lab.

  One hour, forty-eight minutes, and sixteen seconds.

  The doctor stared at the frozen time stamp for several long moments, thinking that if he weren’t so tired he might be doing a victory dance right now.

  One hour, forty-eight minutes, and sixteen seconds!

  It was the breakthrough. It was what he had been working two long years for, and he was too zonked to celebrate.

  Wait. He had to replicate his experiment. He had to know for sure before he did any rejoicing.

  Castro noted the code above the dead rat and went to a stainless-steel tank, where he donned insulated gloves to twist open the top. Fog curled out of the liquid nitrogen. He lifted a tray of steel vials and found one with the code that corresponded to the one above the dead rat’s tank.

  He took the vial and waited fifteen minutes before running water over it, gradually increasing the internal temperature. Done, he retrieved a syringe and removed a tiny amount of blood from the vial. He injected the remaining rats with it and went to a refrigerator.

  Before putting the vial inside, he shook it. He watched the blood film and settle, film and settle, thinking that this might just be the mutation of Hydra he’d been imagining in his daydreams, the one that struck quickly, the one that caused total devastation, the one that produced cells with nine heads.

  One hour, forty-eight minutes, and sixteen seconds.

  Castro glanced at the clock, did the math, and felt enough of a thrill to shiver.

  Chapter 15

  Friday, July 29, 2016

  One Week Before the Olympic Games Open

  IN THE HOURS before dawn, I slept fitfully, my mind spinning nightmares about the twins and the men who’d died trying to protect them. I jerked awake, breathing hard and in a cold sweat, around three in the morning.

  “Shhh,” Tavia said, stroking my cheek in the darkness. “It was just another bad dream.”

  “I need some good ones once in a while,” I said, calming down.

  “Then dream of me,” Tavia said, and she laid her head on my chest.

  Within minutes, her breathing slowed into a deep and gentle rhythm that calmed me even more. I smelled her hair, still damp from the shower, and drifted off into dreams of the moment I’d realized I could fall in love with her.

  “Come on, Jack,” Tavia had said to me. “You can’t really appreciate Rio without seeing her from the sea.”

  We were at the Botafogo marina, and Tavia was coaxing me into a motor launch she’d chartered after a long day of work after a long flight in from Los Angeles. We’d met formally only that morning.

  I’d come to Rio to interview Tavia about opening and heading a Private office in the Marvelous City during the World Cup and Olympic Games. She’d been a dynamo from the get-go, and I knew within an hour of meeting her that I’d give her the job.

  But Tavia had put together a crash course of all that was Rio so I’d understand the security challenges of the city before making my decision. We’d been to several possible venue sites prior to boarding the boat, and I was starting to get dizzy from jet lag.

  I got in and we pulled away from the docks and motored around Sugarloaf Mountain, through the harbor mouth, and out to sea. We stopped about a mile off Copacabana Beach, where we had a panoramic view of the remarkable landscape and design of the south side of Rio, from Leblon to Sugarloaf and the jungle mountains soaring in and behind the ever-growing city.

  “Just breathtaking,” I said.

  Tavia laughed and threw her arms wide as if trying to embrace it all.

  “I think God was in the mood to celebrate when Rio de Janeiro was made,” Tavia said, and she laughed again. “God made Rio so crazy beautiful that it’s impossible not to be happy here. I love it. I’ll never leave. If I die, bring me to this spot so my spirit can look at her, love her, and be a part of her that washes ashore.”

  She’d smiled at me and then gazed all around in wonder, as if she were lost in paradise.

  That was the moment when I felt I could get lost in Tavia. That wa
s the moment that stirred and sweetened my dreams now and for the next couple of hours until the real Tavia kissed my lips and woke me up for good.

  “Time is it?” I grumbled.

  “Quarter of five,” she said, getting out of bed. “We want to be in Alemão before everyone leaves for work.”

  I groaned, rubbed my eyes, said, “I’ll phone room service for coffee.”

  “I ordered it last night,” Tavia called from the bathroom. “Breakfast in fifteen minutes.”

  “You’re a superwoman,” I said, entering to see her climb into the shower. “I saw that about you from the start.”

  Tavia smiled sleepily. “What took you so long to say so?”

  “A complicated life,” I said, and I climbed in after her.

  I’d sworn never to get involved with an employee again. I had had a relationship with Justine Smith, a psychologist who works in the L.A. office. I still love Justine and believe she still loves me, but we both know it will never work for all sorts of reasons. Anyway, after we broke up, I’d vowed never again to mix business and love.

  Because of that vow, a long time passed before I acted on the spark I felt constantly between Tavia and me. We had a special chemistry, as if we were always riffing on each other’s thoughts. And since I had to be in Rio for repeated, extended periods, first with the World Cup and then with the upcoming Olympics, we’d spent more and more time together.

  It felt inevitable in a way. Tavia was smart, funny, experienced, and tough, and like most Brazilians, she genuinely loved life. Study after study has found the people of Brazil, and especially Rio, are among the happiest on earth.

  That was certainly true of Tavia. Despite the difficult things she’d been forced to deal with in her early life, first as an orphan, then as a police officer, Tavia still went through every day thinking life was one miracle after another, which was refreshing, comforting, and, well, enjoyable.

  Back in January, I’d flown in for a pre-Olympic security meeting and couldn’t believe how desperately happy I was to see her waiting at the gate. We’d gone out to eat and had a bottle of wine. It had been two months since we’d last seen each other. We caught up. We laughed. We talked shop. She looked fantastic.