The Games (Private #11)(55)

“Cherie,” I said. “I apologize, I’m hung up in the lab at Private Rio.”

“At Private Rio?” she shouted, sounding like she’d been drinking. “We have to watch this alone?”

“Stay on the phone with me,” I said. “The girls are with you?”

“You said you’d be here, Jack,” she snapped. “I thought I could count on you for that, at least.”

Tavia came over, giving me a time-out signal.

“Hold on one second, Cherie,” I said and pushed the mute button.

“That was Mariana Lopes,” Tavia said. “If she’s right, we’ve been played.”

“What? By who?”

“Urso. The Bear.”





Chapter 63



THAT AFTERNOON, THE digital controls of the brand-new subway system failed and went offline for three hours, snarling traffic from one end of Rio de Janeiro to the other just as the bulk of the international athletes were arriving.

Tavia and I were stuck in a cab heading back toward Alem?o and Spirit. Favela Justice was late delivering the video clip of Andy Wise, and I was trying to figure out how we’d been so conned.

Mariana Lopes said that earlier in the day a woman named Claudia had overdosed on heroin and was brought to her clinic near the Alem?o favela. Nurses administered an opiate antagonist and Claudia began to come out of it.

The television was on in an adjacent room, tuned to the coverage of the Wise trial and the billion-dollar penalty.

The junkie heard it in her stupor and said, “Estella says Urso’s in on that shit, big-time. The American they took…like in that trial? Just show. About the money. So much—whoo—Estella gonna be able to quit her shitty life once and for good.”

When Claudia fully awoke fifteen minutes later, Lopes pressed her about what she’d said. But the junkie said she had no idea what Lopes was talking about.

Lopes said, “She stuck to that story until she walked out my door. But when you administer an opiate antagonist, many people react as if they’ve been given truth serum. You can’t believe some of the confessions I’ve heard.”

“Who’s Estella?” Tavia asked.

“Claudia’s sister,” Lopes said. “And Urso’s longtime girlfriend.”

“You know where Estella lives?”

“I do,” she’d said, and she’d told her how to get there.

Tavia said, “That’s damn close to where we talked to Urso that first night.”

As traffic finally began to move, my cell phone buzzed. The third Favela Justice video was coming in. Tavia downloaded it to her iPad and hit Play.

We got that scene again with Andrew Wise at the center of the screen, tied to the heavy chair, and everything around him cast in black. Wise looked defiantly at the camera, but you could see the ordeal was weighing heavily on him.

Rayssa appeared in the primitive mask, said, “You’ve seen the damning evidence. You’ve had the night to think on it. Now is your chance to vote. Use Twitter and hash tag WiseGuilty or hash tag PayTheBillion if you think Mr. Wise should pay the ransom. You have five hours. The results will be released this evening at nine.”

Behind her, Wise shouted, “Don’t I get a defense? Or is this a total kangaroo court you’ve got going here?”

That seemed to startle Rayssa, who looked back at him.

“I’ll give you five minutes,” she said.

That charged up the billionaire.

Wise stared at the camera, said, “Did my company, WE, build many of the Olympic and FIFA venues? We did. We were invited to enter a global competition with many other fine construction firms. We made detailed bids, and we won.”

“You gouged the people of Brazil,” Rayssa said.

“We offered Brazil the best deal they were going to get,” Wise snapped. “The government could have turned our bid down, but it didn’t. You want someone to blame, blame them. I am in business to make a profit. You may not like that idea, but there’s our difference of opinion. And if you don’t like it, you should have put together a bid yourself with zero profit built in.”

Rayssa said, “Many of the documents we’ve shown the world are overage requests above and beyond your bid.”

“Prices change over time for basic construction supplies like rebar and concrete,” the billionaire said as if she were a naive fool. “We had a clause in the contract that said explicitly that WE could file for additional payments if supply costs exceeded a certain threshold. There is nothing shady about this. It’s how business is conducted in the real world.”

Wise fixed his attention on the camera again, said, “All this bullcrap about Favela Justice? Don’t believe it. That’s a cover game. They’re not out to help the poor. They’re just after my money. If you agree, vote hash tag WiseDecision and—”

The screen went to static for several long moments before Rayssa came back on, saying, “Believe a billionaire’s spin, or believe the cold hard facts Favela Justice has put before you. Voting is open now.”

The screen went black. I immediately called the lab.

Sci answered, said, “That was a clumsy attempt at erasing part of the tape.”

“Can you restore it?”

“Already done,” Sci said. “It’s coming your way now.”