“And why’s that?” I asked.
Acting as if it should have been obvious, the general said, “Brazilians and, especially, Cariocas do not have the right mind-set for terrorism. They’re too happy with their lives. Let’s say you are some crazy Middle Eastern terrorist and you come to Brazil and you say to your neighbor, ‘Hey, Senhor Carioca, let’s build a bomb to change the world.’ You know what Senhor Carioca is going to say?”
I raised my eyebrows. Tavia smiled as if she knew the answer.
The general continued, “He says, ‘No, you go on, Mr. Crazy Terrorist. I am heading to the beach. Cold beers, soccer balls, the ocean, many fine women in bikinis with big round bundas for me to look at and many muscular men with six-pack abs for the women to look at. This is all we want in life. This is all any Brazilian wants in life. Not terror, Mr. Crazy Man. Not bombs.’”
I glanced at Tavia, who was highly amused.
“You agree with this argument?” I asked.
“For the most part,” she said, chuckling.
“But what about Henri Dijon?” I asked.
General da Silva groaned. “Not again, Jack. That was no attack. No evidence of intentional harm was found.”
“Because the autopsy was not exactly thorough.”
“You blame the doctors for not wanting to risk their lives if there were no other incidents of infection?”
“Can I speak freely?”
“I’ve never known you not to.”
“You guys wanted the way Dijon died to be hushed up.”
Da Silva went stone-faced, said, “We wanted to avoid a panic if it was unnecessary, and history has proven us right. Dijon and those two children were the only ones who contracted that virus. You and Tavia didn’t get it, did you? The nurse didn’t get it, did she? If the mysterious plastic surgeon had gotten it, we would have heard, but we didn’t, did we? In fact, there were absolutely no new cases after Dijon, isn’t that so?”
“Correct,” I said.
“There you go. End of story.”
Tavia said, “But General, you have to admit it’s strange that two kids from a favela and one visiting dignitary were the only victims.”
“Why strange? Who knows where Dijon had been in the prior few days? And again, it doesn’t matter. No new cases in more than two years now.”
Tavia’s cell rang. She looked at it, said, “The office.”
She got up from the table, answered, and walked away.
I said, “I still think you’d be smart to beef up the number of hazmat teams at the venues.”
The general thought about that, shrugged, and said, “My budget is stretched thin as it is, thanks in part to Private’s exorbitant fees, but I’ll see.”
I had no time to respond to the not-so-subtle charge of price gouging because Tavia came back, highly agitated. “Sorry to dine and dash, General, but we have a problem with another client.”
Da Silva looked mightily displeased. “I didn’t know Private had another client in Brazil during the Olympics.”
“During the games, we don’t,” Tavia said. “These clients are supposed to leave next Wednesday night, before they start.”
I blinked, felt hollow in my stomach. “The twins?”
She nodded grimly. “They’ve gone missing, Jack. And Alvarez and Questa are dead.”
Chapter 12
FIVE MINUTES LATER, Tavia and I were in a cab speeding through tunnels and over bridges and down highways toward northwest Rio and the Alem?o favela, one of the biggest slums in the city.
“This wasn’t how I’d hoped the evening would go,” Tavia said wistfully.
“I had other plans too,” I said, and squeezed her hand.
“You want me to make the call to Alvarez’s and Questa’s wives?”
“I’ll do it,” I said. “But let’s get the facts straight first.”
She nodded. “I think you did the right thing.”
“Not telling da Silva all of it? I don’t know. I may live to regret it.”
When the general had asked about our clients, I’d told him that the nineteen-year-old Warren twins, Alicia and Natalie, were from Ohio and that their father was an old college friend of mine who’d asked me to look after them while they were in Rio on a church mission. Most of that story was fabricated, and it had to be. Our contract stated that we could not reveal their true identities unless the family gave us permission to do so.
Still, I didn’t like misleading General da Silva. He’d been a big supporter of Private’s involvement in security for the Olympic Games and for the World Cup before them, and I did not want to alienate him in any way. If I got permission from the parents to tell him, I would. Until then, I wouldn’t.
To keep my mind off that dilemma, I said, “Tell me about the favela where they were taken.”
“Alem?o’s one of the biggest and oldest favelas in Rio,” she said. “Close to four hundred thousand people live there on six steep hills spread out over, I don’t know, eight square miles?”
“Pacified?”
“About as well as Rocinha. There’s still a constant battle to keep it clean.”