The Games (Private #11)(74)

“I get it,” I said. “But I don’t have a choice in the matter, do I?”

“Sure you do,” Justine said, irritated.

“How’s that?”

“You have a choice,” she said. “But as usual, Jack, you just plow ahead, never thinking of the consequences.”

“I have thought of the consequences,” I shot back. “The consequences of not going, especially what that would do to Private’s reputation.”

“And how is Private going to look after the untimely death of its leader and driving force?”

Before I could reply to that, an excited Lieutenant Acosta came toward us with a wide-eyed and shabbily dressed boy who looked about eleven years old.

Acosta said, “This young man has a very interesting tale to tell.”





Chapter 91



FELIX MARTINS LIVED with his mother and brothers and sisters in Rio’s Laranjeiras, squatters on the third floor of a moldering palace that once belonged to the king of Portugal’s physician. Toward midday, Felix had heard a car roll into the courtyard parking area, and he went to look.

The car took the last available space. A man in gray work clothes got out, retrieved a large gray-green backpack from the trunk, and then threw his keys inside the trunk and shut it.

“Did you see his face?” I asked.

“I recognized him from the pictures on the television right away,” Felix told us. “I went straight to the police station.”

“Is the car still there?” Justine asked.

Felix knit his brow, seemed conflicted, but then shook his head and said the car had been stolen around one o’clock that afternoon.

Acosta said, “You know who stole it?”

The boy chewed his lip. “It was almost like he wanted it stolen.”

“Maybe he did,” I said. “Who’s got it?”

“I dunno,” he said. “Some friend of my mother’s. Ask her.”

Acosta said, “I will. When was the last time you saw him?”

“When he went out the gate.”

“Which way did he turn?” I asked.

Felix thought about that and said, “Right.”

Mo-bot found the decrepit palace and put it up on the big screen, giving us the aerial view. You could see the courtyard and wall plainly. Maureen highlighted the area on the satellite feed and then pulled back to show the winding road heading north until it dead-ended in the steep and choked jungle of the Tijuca National Park.

Mo-bot highlighted Maracan? Stadium, which was north-northwest of the end of the road, and we requested the distance between the two spots.

“Four point two miles as the crow flies,” she said.

“Not on foot,” I said. “Look at the brutal terrain that he’s got to cross to get there. Up and down several thousand vertical feet here, here, and here. In some places I’d bet it’s steep enough for ropes.”

“Difficult, but not impossible for a fanatic,” said General da Silva. He gestured to the northern edge of the forest. “But look where he can exit the jungle. Somewhere above S?o Francisco Xavier Metr? station, not three-quarters of a mile from Maracan? Stadium.”

It did look tempting from a strategic perspective, but something about it still didn’t seem right to me.

“Could a man cross that kind of terrain in six or seven hours?”

“If he was fit and knew the paths,” Lieutenant Acosta said. “I’m sure.”

The general said, “I’m moving more police all along that front where he’d come out. In the meantime, we’ll try to spot him from the air.”





Chapter 92

Friday, August 5, 2016

4:45 p.m.

Two Hours and Fifteen Minutes Before the Olympic Games Open



WHEN DR. CASTRO judged he was about one hundred feet below the summit of the mountain he’d been climbing the better part of the day, he turned around and sat on a rock outcropping beneath an umbrella-shaped tree that hid him from above. The weight of the pack came off his back and he stifled a groan at the effort it had taken to get here.

Since Dr. Castro had reached the head of the canyon on the west flank of the mountain, the path had been nearly straight uphill. It had been backbreaking work to stay balanced with the pack while grabbing onto roots and small saplings and thorny brush, hoisting himself higher, foot by grueling foot.

But Castro had welcomed the pain and drove himself unmercifully toward the top.

Twice on the way up, he’d had to cross a winding switchbacked road. The doctor had hidden behind the guardrails until the roads were clear, and then sprinted to the other side. The sun was low over the mountains by then, casting the final part of his ascent in shadows, which suited him. He sat for a few minutes to slow his breath and slamming heart.

He heard a helicopter. He’d been hearing them off and on all day, and now he peered out through the vegetation, seeing several of them to his northeast, flying low and in formation over the jungle. Then he spotted a closer one, making a loop around the summit above him.

Castro slid deeper into the dark shadows as the helicopter passed and faded away. He heard a loudspeaker announcing that in honor of the national holiday, the area was closing at five o’clock.

By ten past, the shadows were deepening and he hadn’t heard a car go by on the road below him in a good twelve minutes. But the doctor had done his homework and knew better. At 5:20 p.m. one last car left the summit. It carried two guards, who stopped to lock a series of gates on the switchback road as they descended.