The Games (Private #11)(51)

“Sounds like you’ve got it all covered,” I said. “The helicopters will help, but it’s a blow to Rio’s global image.”

“Unless we stamp it out now,” da Silva said. “They want to protest, they can do it peacefully. That’s all we’re saying. No rights get trampled if we—”

His cell phone rang. The general grabbed it and listened as he walked a short distance away.

“What?” da Silva demanded.

He listened again, and as he did, a vein at his temple began to bulge and quiver. Then, his face reddening, he barked, “We’ll be right there.”

He punched off his cell, looking shaken. “That was the medical examiner. Some test results came back on Luna Santos. He says they’re frightening.”





Chapter 59



IN THE PATHOLOGY department in the basement of Hospital Geral, Dr. Emilio Cardoso scratched at his belly while waiting for a computer file to open on a large screen on his office wall.

“There,” Dr. Cardoso said after the screen jumped to two side-by-side images. “The cells on the right are from Luna Santos’s liver. The cells on the left were taken two years ago from Henri Dijon.”

Every cell looked like the shell of an alien insect with a coiled, snakelike body and multiple heads.

“Hydra,” I said. My stomach reeled. I took an involuntary step back.

Tavia was also rattled. Our exposure to the deadly virus at the tail end of the World Cup had been a terrifying affair, one we did not want to repeat.

General da Silva’s face was sweaty and stony. “Are you sure it’s Hydra?”

“No doubt,” Dr. Cardoso said. “A mutation of the virus killed Luna Santos before her blood was drained and before she was shot and burned. But the thing to notice is that in Dijon’s liver cells, there are six heads. In the sample from Luna’s liver, there are nine. It certainly makes poor Castro look like a prophet.”

“Poor Castro?” I said, staring at the images with a foul taste in my mouth.

“Dr. Lucas Castro,” Cardoso said. “He was the first in the world to diagnose Hydra. He saw a four-headed version in the upper Amazon when he was working for the World Health Organization. He was also the doctor who diagnosed the six-headed cases two years ago. Those two children and Dijon.”

“We were there, Tavia and me,” I said. “Didn’t he want to quarantine one of the favelas?”

Dr. Cardoso nodded. “Castro feared that the outbreaks weren’t over, that Hydra would return stronger and deadlier than ever. And no one listened. He got so upset about it, he quit his job at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute because no one there took his warning or his work seriously.”

“I remember him,” General da Silva said. “Where does he work now?”

“Here,” Cardoso said. “Upstairs. I’ve been waiting for your permission to show these images to him.”

General da Silva chewed on that a moment before saying, “Can’t stick my head in the sand. Let’s get Dr. Castro involved pronto.”

We arrived at Dr. Castro’s door a few moments later. Brazilian dance music played inside. The medical examiner knocked sharply.

“Yes, yes, just a moment,” a man’s voice called out, and the music was turned off. The door opened.

Tall, bearded, late thirties. The man’s eyes flitted over us. “Can I help you?”

“Dr. Castro?” General da Silva said, and he identified himself as the chief of Olympic security. “We have something you need to see.”

“Oh?”

“You discovered Hydra?” I asked.

A cloud came over the doctor’s face. “If that’s what this is about, I’d rather not discuss it. No one was interested after the last outbreak, so I—”

Castro stopped, gazed around at us, said, “Has it surfaced again?”

“A mutation of it,” Dr. Cardoso said. “We’d like you to take a look at a tissue sample, tell us for sure.”

“Now someone’s going to listen to me?” Castro said bitterly. “Now you want my help?”

“Better late than never,” the medical examiner said.

The doctor thought about that and then sighed. “Of course. Let me look. Where are these samples?”

“Down in pathology.”

“Right here in Hospital Geral?” Castro said, surprised, as he finished locking his office door. “I hope to God safety measures have been taken.”

“The tissue was recovered from a badly burned body,” Dr. Cardoso said. “The heat would have killed any remaining live virus.”

Dr. Castro relaxed, said, “If it was hot enough, that’s right.”

As we walked back to the pathology lab, we filled Castro in on Luna Santos and the discovery of her burned corpse.

“Barra da Tijuca?” he said. “That’s far from the favelas.”

“What’s the significance?” da Silva said.

Castro said, “The outbreaks have always come in small clusters in dense populations, people living all over each other. Even in the early outbreak in the Amazon, the victims all lived within yards of one another in the jungle. So my thinking is, why does someone like this Luna and not one of the favela people get infected? And how? And are there others?”