The Games Read online

Tavia said, “You have to make that call.”

  “Why wouldn’t we tell the police?” Cherie asked. “I want a manhunt.”

  “No, you don’t,” I said. “A manhunt makes them want to run. And if they run, at some point they’ll consider your daughters excess baggage, and they might decide it’s easier to kill them than let them go. We want to keep this small, contained, controllable.”

  Cherie bowed her head, then said, “But no police?”

  Tavia said, “The way the kidnapping went down says to me that it was done by people who’d had training. Military or police.”

  “I’ve read about police kidnappings in Mexico,” Wise said. “Here too?”

  Tavia nodded. “Seven, eight years ago, a prominent Brazilian businessman was kidnapped and held for ransom. The police took over the operation. They tracked the ransom money, found the kidnappers, and killed them. Then they kept the ransom money, claimed the kidnappers had taken off, and orchestrated a second payment. The businessman was later found dead at the bottom of a well.”

  “I hate it here,” Cherie said, wiping the tears off her cheeks.

  Wise studied his wife’s anguish, looked over at me, and said, “Find and rescue my girls before that ransom’s due, Jack, and I’ll pay you twenty percent of it—ten million dollars cash.”

  Chapter 20

  THE LAB SCREEN flickered, split, and then the aging–Grateful Deadhead face of Dr. Seymour “Sci” Kloppenberg was on the left and the kidnappers’ video on the right.

  “You there, Jack?” Sci asked, staring out at us from inside Private’s jet.

  “Right here, Sci,” I said. “Have you seen the video?”

  “Yes, hold on a second, we’re having problems with the Wi-Fi in the jet and I want to have Mo-bot in on this as well,” he said before the camera went haywire and then went dark.

  “Who was that man?” Cherie Wise asked. “He looked like a Berkeley refugee.”

  “Sci used to teach at Berkeley, actually, but now he works for me.”

  I explained that Kloppenberg was the polymath criminologist and computer forensics analyst who ran Private’s lab in Los Angeles and oversaw all of the company’s labs around the world. Sci was also the driving force behind making Private’s criminology labs so state-of-the-art that they met FBI, Scotland Yard, and Interpol standards.

  “Kloppenberg’s quirky, but he’s the only person I know who’s an honest-to-God genius,” I said, which provoked odd looks from both of the Wises. They obviously considered themselves somewhere high in that lofty realm.

  “Who is Mo-bot?”

  “Maureen Roth. She works for Sci as a technical jack-of-all-trades. She’s also one of the most well-read people I know.”

  The screen flickered and returned, divided into thirds, the video of the girls in the middle, Sci on the left, and Mo-bot’s motherly face smiling on the right.

  “We’ve got you,” I said. “Can you see us?”

  “Yes, we’ve got it working now,” Mo-bot said.

  “Apologies,” Sci said. “But we’ve both had a run at the kidnappers’ video in the last hour and come up with a few things for you.”

  Kloppenberg said the video had been sent to Private Rio from an Internet café in Kuala Lumpur through a server in Pakistan.

  “Got enemies in either of those places, Mr. Wise?” Mo-bot asked.

  Wise thought and then said, “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Done work in those countries? Pakistan? Malaysia?”

  “Both,” he said.

  Sci said, “I find it telling that the video was sent to Private Rio and not to the Wises.”

  “Good point,” Tavia said. “The kidnappers must have known the girls had Private Rio bodyguards. So they sent the video here first.”

  “But how did the kidnappers know the guards were with Private?” Mo-bot asked. “They were in street clothes, correct?”

  “Correct,” Tavia said.

  Wise said, “Then someone in Private Rio talked, or my girls did.”

  “The girls?” his wife said. “That’s absurd. They knew the risks. Why would they do such a thing?”

  Wise cast an even gaze at her, said, “Natalie could have fallen in love again. Or Alicia could have been trying to impress someone. You know how naive, trusting, and impressionable they can be. So quick to become someone’s best friend forever or rally to some politically correct cause without doing the research necessary to justify their support. They’re just like…”

  “Me?” Cherie demanded. “Why don’t you just say it?”

  Her husband blinked, took off his glasses, said, “At times, yes.”

  “Andy, I honestly don’t know why you stay with me.”

  Wise frowned, clearly puzzled, said, “How do you make that logical jump?”

  Sci cut them off, said, “We blew up some stills from the video, Jack.”

  The images appeared one after another: the Wise twins in the chairs, the painting of the children kneeling in prayer, and the masks their captors wore.

  Mo-bot said, “See how the painting has no frame? And there’s the suggestion of other figures to either side of the children. It’s part of a mural.”

  “Why cover the rest of it?” Cherie asked.

  “The mural might be recognizable,” Tavia said.

  “Then why show it at all?” Wise asked. “Why not just cover up the whole thing?”

  “They’re trying to play on your emotions,” I said. “Two kneeling, praying children behind your girls. What about the masks?”

  Tavia said, “The feather-and-sequin mask is samba. You could find one like it in many places in Rio. But the primitive one I’ve never seen before.”

  “Looks animist to me,” Sci said.

  “Are there animists in Rio?” Cherie asked.

  “Macumba,” Tavia said, nodding. “It came with the slaves the Portuguese brought from Africa to work on the rubber plantations. Macumba’s more widely practiced up on the northeast coast in Bahia, but it’s here in Rio too, especially in the favelas.”

  “Make a note to figure out where this second mask came from,” I said. “Anything else from the video?”

  “Sounds,” Mo-bot said. “Three different background noises.”

  She typed. Dogs barked, one with a gruff tone, another a yapper. Then we heard a train whistle blow close by, followed by a gentle tinkling melody that changed to clanging and then died.

  “What was that sound?” Cherie asked.

  “High-tone chimes,” Mo-bot said. “Moving on a gust of wind.”

  Chapter 21

  THE WIND, DR. Castro thought. What will it be?

  Castro sat in a small cramped office at the medical school of the Federal University of Rio, hunched over a laptop computer, studying real-time meteorological data displayed on the screen. He paid scant attention to the temperature and barometric-pressure readings from various stations around Rio, focusing instead on wind direction and speed.

  The doctor jotted notes on a chart. Then he reviewed those notes before coming up with a hypothesis. Now he just had to conduct an experiment to see if his hypothesis was right.

  Pensive, the doctor exited his browser and shut his computer down. He put the laptop in a knapsack and then picked up a mason’s leather and canvas bag from the floor beneath his desk.

  Outside, it was a mild, midwinter day in Rio, temperatures in the low seventies and an ocean breeze that was northeasterly, coming down off the equator. As Dr. Castro walked, he wondered whether the breeze would stay prevailing and steady with a building warm trend or change out of the south, as the latest forecasts indicated.

  “Dr. Castro? Professor?”

  The doctor had hoped to get off campus quickly, but he turned. A smiling young man ran up, trying to catch his breath.

  “I’m sorry, Professor,” he said. “But I have a question from last week’s lecture on retrovirus reverse transcription.”

  Castro had important things to attend to, but he was devoted to
his students, especially this one: Ricardo Fauvea. Ricardo reminded Castro of his younger self. Like the doctor, Ricardo had grown up desperately poor in one of Rio’s favelas and had defied the odds. Despite a public-school education, he had scored well enough on an entrance exam to earn a spot in one of Brazil’s excellent tuition-free universities. He’d done it again getting into the medical school, just as Castro had.

  “Walk with me,” the doctor said.

  “What’s in the bag?” Ricardo asked.

  Dr. Castro flushed, slightly embarrassed. “A new hobby.”

  Ricardo looked at him quizzically. “What sort of hobby?”

  “Come along, I’ll show you,” he said, and hailed a taxi. “How are you anyway?”

  Castro’s young protégé recounted the latest events in his life on the short cab ride to the village of Urca, on the bay in the shadow of Sugarloaf Mountain. They got out of the cab and walked the rocky shoreline to a secluded, crescent-shaped beach.

  “So that’s me up to date,” Ricardo said. “How about you, Doctor?”

  “I’m fine,” Castro said, walking out onto the sand and happy to see the little beach was empty. “What did you want to know about reverse transcription?”

  “Right,” Ricardo said. “I wanted to know why RT doesn’t produce exact copies of viruses all the time.”

  “Because retroviruses are unpredictable. I suppose that’s why I enjoy my new hobby so much.”

  The doctor opened the mason’s bag, revealing the components of an Estes model rocket. “This toy is ingenious and predictable. I know for certain that if I put everything together correctly, it will fly spectacularly.”

  Castro loaded the nine-inch rocket with an engine and attached it to a starter and battery. “Now, some viruses are like this toy: stable, predictable. Those kinds of viruses reproduce predictably.”

  Setting the rocket on its launchpad, he said, “But retroviruses are notoriously unstable and mutate constantly. Those unpredictable ones are the ones you have to fear, because by the time you’ve figured out a cure, the one you’re trying to kill has already mutated into something else.”

  Ricardo nodded his understanding, but not convincingly. “Give me an example?”

  Castro thought of his private lab work but said, “The virus that causes the common cold. It’s constantly changing. That’s why so many have tried and failed to cure it. Ready?” He held out the ignition key and switch. “You do the honors.”

  Ricardo smiled, took the device, said, “It’s not dangerous?”

  “No,” the doctor said. “Just fun.”

  His student twisted the key and flipped the switch. An intense flame shot out the bottom of the little rocket. It gathered thrust, soared into the sky, and blew a white contrail for five, maybe six hundred feet before a parachute popped open and the rocket dangled there, floating on the sea breeze.

  Still northeast, Dr. Castro thought, and then he noticed the parachute stutter and float on a slightly different tangent as it fell slowly into the harbor and then sank.

  “You lost it,” Ricardo said.

  “Still fun,” Castro said, grinning. “You didn’t like that?”

  “No, I did,” his student said. “I liked it taking off the best.”

  “I kind of like the whole experience,” Castro said, laughing. “I honestly do.”

  “Why, do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” the doctor said. “I read about these when I was a boy, but of course we could never afford such luxuries. I suppose the rockets make me feel like the kid I was never allowed to be.”

  Chapter 22

  WHILE THE WISES checked into the Copacabana Marriott under assumed names, Tavia and I went to the hostel where the other members of the church group were staying. We took the newly restored tram from Centro across the Carioca Aqueduct and up Santa Teresa Hill. Santa Teresa, more than any other area of Rio, feels European and old, and trendy restaurants and bars thrive there.

  We got off near Monte Alegre and found our way to the hostel on Laurinda Road. Carlos Seitz, the church-group leader, was waiting, along with eight other members of the mission. They were all concerned and frightened for Natalie and Alicia. They were also nervous about returning to the favelas after the attack. One girl said she wanted to go home but her parents wouldn’t let her.

  All of them described the twins as inseparable and very hard workers, gentle and caring, though reserved. Not one of them felt close to either Natalie or Alicia despite the fact that the group had been together for three weeks.

  “Do you do all of your work in Alemão?” I asked.

  Seitz shook his head and told us they’d worked at three charity sites around Rio. Most recently they’d been with Shirt Off My Back, an NGO that delivered clothes and food to the desperately poor. Before that, they’d worked on a sanitation project in Campo Grande. When they’d first arrived, they volunteered at an orphanage in Bangu.

  “Mariana Lopes’s orphanage?” Tavia asked.

  “That’s right,” Seitz said.

  “That’s odd,” I said. “She never mentioned that she’d met the girls.”

  “We never named them,” Tavia reminded me.

  Seitz gave us the addresses of the charities, and we left with promises to keep him updated on the twins.

  Outside, we caught a taxi that returned us to Alemão favela. Night had fallen by the time we reached the tram station. We moved with the sparse crowd toward the red gondolas. The doors opened automatically.

  We got inside, meaning to return to the scene of the attack, to see it again at night and perhaps find someone who’d seen something and neglected to tell the police. Two men in their twenties climbed into the gondola, sat opposite us, pulled out cell phones, and studied them.

  The doors closed. We cleared the station and were soon high above the lights of the slum. Tavia and I turned to each other and spoke in soft English about how best to pursue the few leads we had.

  Click. Click.

  Two minutes out of the base station, I heard it. Click. Click.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw stiletto switchblades. The men never said a word, just lunged at us, blades leading.

  Chapter 23

  I HAMMERED MY right fist back and sideways, just inside the path of the oncoming knife aimed for my ribs and lungs. My blow struck the bundle of nerves, tendons, and ligaments that pass through the underside of the human wrist. The strike not only deflected the blade but sent a shock through my attacker’s fingers and thumb, loosening his grip.

  Beside me, Tavia had seen the attacker coming her way and had kicked him in the kneecap with her shoe. He’d staggered back screaming at the same time I twisted my upper body and hammered again at my assailant’s wrist, then tried to punch him in the face with my left.

  He was quick and dodged the punch, leaning backward so it passed just out of range. I drove myself to my feet, wanting to strip him of his knife.

  But he got underneath me and popped his shoulder up under my solar plexus, slammed me against the closed doors. I hammer-smashed my fist against the scapula and rotator cuff of the arm with the knife. On the second blow, over the noise of Tavia fighting the other guy, I heard the stiletto clatter to the floor of the gondola.

  I tried to knee him in the face. He blocked it, got hold of my belt, and spun me around and into Tavia, who crashed into the corner. My guy squatted, tried to punch me in the groin. I shifted my hips, took the blow on the thigh. He snatched up the knife before I could get at it.

  He slashed at my right side, high along the ribs, but I got hold of his elbows and pinned them against the glass. He had the knife in his right hand, gripping it like an ice pick. He seemed high on something, manic, and I feared I wasn’t going to be able to hold him for long.

  The tip of his knife blade crept closer and closer to my left eye. Staring at it, I saw a little sign behind and above the knife; I didn’t get the exact words, but I caught the drift. I drove my head toward his, trying to smash the bridg
e of his nose. He twisted and took the blow to the side of his face. It rocked him.

  I let go of his left elbow, reached up, and tugged the lever below the emergency-release sign. The doors flung open behind him. He had a moment of understanding what I’d done, of terror, and he tried desperately to regain his balance before he pitched backward, flailing and screaming, into the night air and then was gone.

  Behind me, I heard an “Uhh,” and I spun around. Tavia heaved for breath as she stepped back from the second guy, her hair disheveled, her forearm cut in two places, and the stiletto sticking out of the low center of his chest. He gasped like a fish out of water, quickly at first, then slower, and then not at all.

  She glanced at me, said, “What do we do with him?”

  The next station was still two hundred meters away. We looked ahead, saw a wide stripe of pitch-darkness on one particularly steep hillside, and, after checking his pockets and finding nothing, we pushed him out the door too.

  Tavia had a spray of his blood on her blouse and there was blood on her hand from the cuts to her forearm. We used her jacket to mop up the blood on the floor and seats. I gave her my jacket. We left the gondola, walking casually until we cleared the station and found a side road and then as quickly as we dared.

  We went to the clinic where we’d talked to Mariana Lopes the day before. She wasn’t there, but her nurse cleaned, stitched, and bandaged Tavia’s wounds, never once asking how she’d gotten them.

  “You all right?” I asked after we’d left.

  “Not a chance,” Tavia said.

  “Is that the first time you’ve had to kill someone?”

  “No, but it still takes you over.”

  “Like his ghost is still with you.”

  She nodded, and shuddered. I wrapped her in my arms, kissed her temples, said, “You did what you had to. We both did.”

  “I couldn’t get my gun drawn,” she said.

  “Happened too fast.”

  “They didn’t try to rob us.”

  “Just went for the kill.”

  Tavia turned stony. “So they were gangsters. On assignment.”