by Ross Kemp
‘Councillor Cruz,’ one of the reporters called out, ‘I’ve been told that the police suspect the Barbosa murder was the work of the same gang responsible for the looting of the jewellery store in Ipanema – a gang calling themselves the Comando Negro. Can you confirm or deny these reports?’
The bald man held up his hands. ‘The police are still carrying out their investigations and I’m not prepared to comment directly yet. What I will say is that – whatever name they call themselves – this pack of favela hoodlums has extinguished the life of one of Rio’s most promising young men. Be assured that I will not rest until the animals responsible are in prison.’
Luiz shook his head. Councillor Jorge Cruz was always on the television bad-mouthing the favelas. He made it sound as though everyone who lived in the shanty towns was a member of a gang. Luiz’s foster parents reckoned that there was something fishy about Cruz himself – his dad had investigated several shady business deals that had the councillor’s fingerprints on them but could never prove anything. Not everyone in Rio had such a bad opinion of the favelas, but idiots like Cruz didn’t help matters.
Luiz changed the channel to MTV and slumped down on the couch with a sandwich. He was dozing through an R&B video when he heard the front door open. Finally, Ana was back.
‘You took your time,’ he called out. ‘You’re late for your own party!’
‘No one said anything about a party,’ a man’s voice replied.
Luiz sprang up from the sofa as three strangers walked casually into the room. Dressed in business suits, they carried themselves with the calm self-confidence of policemen. None of them bothered to flash any ID cards, however, and they had just walked uninvited into Luiz’s house.
‘Who are you?’ he said.
‘Nice place,’ one of the men said conversationally, ignoring the question.
Shorter than his two companions, he was wearing dark sunglasses. He picked up a vase Luiz’s mum had brought back from a trip to Europe and inspected it curiously.
‘What do you want?’ Luiz asked, his heart beating loudly.
‘Just a chat. Nothing to get excited about,’ the man replied. He glanced around the room. ‘Perhaps here isn’t the best place, though.’
‘I can’t go anywhere,’ Luiz said, stalling. ‘My sister’s gone to the shops and she hasn’t got a key.’
The man glanced up sharply and put down the vase. ‘That’s not a good start,’ he said. ‘All we want is a chat and already you’re lying to us. Ana’s not at the shops. What you should be asking yourself, Luiz, is – where is she?’
He knew their names. Luiz’s blood froze.
‘What do you mean, where is she? Is Ana all right? What have you done with her?’
‘Such a lot of questions!’ the man said, smiling. ‘Why don’t you come with us and we’ll talk about it?’
‘I’m not going anywhere until you tell me where Ana is,’ Luiz replied stubbornly.
One of the other men clamped a hand down on Luiz’s arm.
‘Get moving, you little shit,’ he said.
Luiz didn’t even think about it. Instinctively he swung his left elbow into the man’s face, felt his nose crumple on impact. The man cried out and staggered back, clutching his face. Immediately Luiz was on his toes, vaulting over the couch as the man with the sunglasses leaned over to grab him. As the third man raced to cut off the doorway, Luiz kicked him hard in the kneecap. He was rewarded by a loud curse and a clumsy punch thrown in his direction. Stepping neatly out of the way, Luiz caught the man on the side of the head with a punch of his own and watched him drop to the floor. Then he whirled round to take on his final assailant.
Too late.
The man with the sunglasses was standing right behind him, a black taser in his hand. He pressed the trigger, firing two darts through Luiz’s clothes and into his skin. A sheet of white pain enveloped Luiz, and he screamed in agony as he fell to the floor. As he lay there, limbs trembling, unable to fight back, the man produced a cloth from his pocket and pressed it over Luiz’s face. For a second he was overwhelmed by a sickly sweet smell and then everything went black.
3. Trojan Industries
Luiz came to, and immediately wished that he hadn’t. There was a thundering pain in his head and a sour taste in his mouth. It felt as though someone had dropped an anvil on his skull.
Blearily, he took in his new surroundings. He was stretched out on a couch in a small office, the air conditioning humming softly above his head. The room was dominated by a burnished wooden desk, upon which a laptop lay open next to a jug of water. A row of filing cabinets ran the length of the left-hand wall, while a leafy plant pot had been positioned in the far right-hand corner. Through the blinds in the window, Rio’s skyline was darkening with the onset of evening.
Struggling to sit upright, Luiz found himself face to face with a man in a chair that had been reversed so he could rest his arms upon its back. He was tall and black, wearing a crisp shirt and pinstriped trousers. A diamond stud gleamed in his left ear. Although no longer a young man – his short black hair was flecked with grey – he was well built, his clothes failing to disguise his muscular physique. The man watched Luiz intently through a pair of angular glasses.
‘Headache?’ he asked, in a deep American accent.
Luiz nodded, the motion sending shooting pains through his skull.
‘My apologies. My men were told not to hurt you, but it appears you caught them off guard. You broke Freddie’s nose.’
It was said matter-of-factly, without reproach. The man stood up and walked over to his desk, pouring a glass of water from a jug and handing it to Luiz.
‘You pack quite a punch for a young man,’ he continued. ‘I’m guessing you’ve had some martial arts training?’
‘Capoeira,’ mumbled Luiz. ‘My parents thought it would help my temper.’
‘And did it?’
‘Most of the time.’ Luiz took a cautious sip of water. ‘Where am I?’
‘In my office. My name’s Jordan. Darius Jordan.’
‘What do you want with me?’
Jordan leaned against his desk, his steely gaze never wavering from Luiz.
‘There was something I wanted to discuss with you. A business arrangement, if you will.’
Luiz gingerly touched the swollen bump on his head. ‘You’ve got a funny way of doing business,’ he said ruefully.
Jordan smiled, taking him by surprise. ‘Not everything can be done by the book, Luiz. I should have thought you of all people would understand that.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Let’s just say I know more about you than you realize.’
Moving over to the filing cabinet, Jordan removed a large brown folder and began leafing through it.
‘What’s that?’ Luiz asked curiously.
‘You,’ Jordan replied, pursing his lips as he scanned a piece of paper. ‘This file contains the life history of Luiz Alves: birth certificate, adoption papers, arrest record…’
‘Where did you get that?’
‘You can get hold of anything if you ask the right people.’ Jordan glanced up at Luiz. ‘Do you know what I find interesting about this file? There are two different people here. The Luiz who lives in Botafogo now with his foster parents seems like a nice, quiet kid. Perhaps not the best at school, but he keeps his head down, doesn’t cause any trouble.
‘But then there’s another Luiz, a younger kid who grew up in Santa Marta. He wasn’t such an upstanding citizen. In fact, that Luiz was arrested several times – fighting, breaking and entering, even a car theft.’
‘Hey!’ Luiz protested. ‘They couldn’t prove anything on the car thing. They dropped the case.’
‘Do you like cars, Luiz?’
Luiz shrugged, folding his arms obstinately. Jordan eyeballed him for a few seconds, then returned to his folder.
‘So I was wondering, what happened here? Have you really gone straight, or have you just got smarter?’
‘Ah, yes. Ana Alves.’ Returning to the filing cabinet, Jordan pulled out an identical brown folder. ‘There are no such skeletons in Ana’s closet. Studies hard at school, good grades, community work…’
‘She’s a good kid,’ Luiz said fiercely.
‘Undoubtedly. Which makes her arrest all the more inexplicable.’
Luiz paused.
‘Arrest?’ he said quietly. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Last night police apprehended Ana in a car outside the Borel favela. They found half a kilo of cocaine in the boot. She’s in custody now, on charges of drug possession and intent to supply.’
Luiz laughed incredulously. ‘You’re lying! Ana wouldn’t touch drugs!’
‘OK,’ Jordan said mildly.
‘I’m not listening to any more of this shit,’ Luiz said, getting groggily to his feet. ‘I’m out of here.’
‘I understand completely,’ Jordan replied smoothly. ‘Though, if you don’t believe me, you could always ask Ana yourself.’
He took out a slim mobile phone from his shirt pocket and tapped in a number. When a voice answered at the other end, Jordan wordlessly handed Luiz the mobile. The boy accepted it cautiously, handling the phone as though it were an unexploded bomb.
‘Hello?’ he said.
‘Luiz?’ a girl’s voice replied. It was his sister. Usually breezy and ebullient, right now Ana sounded young and frightened. Her voice was echoing loudly, giving the impression she was in a very large room.
‘Yeah – it’s me. Where are you?’
‘I don’t know… a police station somewhere, I think. Luiz, I’ve made a terrible mistake.’
Luiz’s heart sank as Ana’s words came out in a sudden flood.
‘I thought I needed a big story to impress the editors at O Globo, so I started digging around. There’s a guy at Sacred Heart who’s always boasting that he buys cocaine in the Borel favela, so I pretended to like him and we started hanging out. Last night we were supposed to be going to a party together, but just before we reached the warehouse he stopped the car and got out. He said he was only going to buy beer, but he didn’t come back. The next thing I knew there were police everywhere. I told them I was working on a newspaper story, but they wouldn’t listen to me. I didn’t know that there were drugs in the boot, Luiz, I swear.’ Ana suddenly paused. ‘How did you find out about me?’
Luiz glanced up at Jordan. ‘A friend told me. Look, are you OK?’
‘I guess,’ his sister replied. ‘But they say they’re going to charge me with drug dealing, that there’s going to be a big court case and I’m going to go to prison, and I don’t want to go to prison, Luiz. Mum and Dad are going to be so ashamed when they find out.’
With that, Ana broke into halting sobs.
‘Don’t worry about that now,’ Luiz said soothingly. ‘I’m going to do everything I can to sort this out.’
‘What can you do?’
‘I’m not sure yet. But there may be a way out of this. Don’t talk to Mum and Dad until I get back to you, OK?’
‘OK,’ sniffed Ana. ‘I’m sorry I dragged you into this. It’s all my fault.’
‘You are an unbelievable pain,’ Luiz agreed, trying to sound upbeat. ‘But then, you are my sister. I’ll speak to you soon, OK? Look after yourself.’
He ended the call and handed the phone back to Jordan, his head spinning.
‘So you were telling the truth,’ Luiz said. ‘Ana’s in trouble. What do I do now?’
‘What do you think you should do?’
‘I dunno – go home, I guess, and call my parents. They’re away at the moment, but they can get in touch with a lawyer.’
‘Good plan,’ said Jordan. ‘That sounds like a very sensible course of action.’
‘So I can just walk out of the door?’ Luiz asked suspiciously. ‘You’ll let me go?’
Jordan laughed. ‘Take the elevator down to the ground level. No one will stop you. You’re not a hostage.’ As Luiz made for the door, he called out, ‘Although, if you do speak to your parents, it means I won’t be able to free Ana.’
Luiz stopped in his tracks. ‘You can do that?’
‘Like I said,’ Jordan said calmly, ‘you can get anything you want – if you ask the right people.’
Luiz looked again around the neat office, bemused.
‘What sort of business is this?’
‘You’re sitting in the main office of Trojan Industries. Here at Trojan, our business is very specific. We are interested in one thing and one thing only.’
‘What’s that?’
Jordan took off his glasses. ‘Gangs,’ he said.
‘Gangs?’ echoed Luiz.
‘Trojan Industries is a shell, a facade. It pretends to be a multinational trading company, but in fact we’re a covert operation. Our mission is to travel from country to country, infiltrating and bringing down the most vicious gangs in the world.’
‘And you’ve come to Rio?’
Jordan gestured for Luiz to sit down again. ‘You’re a local boy. You know the deal. This is a beautiful city with a big problem: drugs. The drug market in Rio alone is worth around one hundred and fifty million dollars a year. That kind of money tends to attract the wrong sort of people, Luiz. Every day, gangs in the favelas fight and kill one another for the right to sell the drugs and to maintain control of their territories.’
None of this was news to Luiz. Baffled, he ran a hand across his forehead. ‘What’s this got to do with me and Ana?’
‘You ever heard of a gang called the Comando Negro?’
‘I guess,’ Luiz said, shrugging. ‘Saw that murder on the news the other day.’
‘That’s how they operate. Even by Rio’s standards, this is one seriously violent gang. Wherever the Comando Negro goes, death follows. To make matters worse, somehow they’ve secured a way of transporting large amounts of cocaine into Rio, and it’s good stuff. Now they’re making a killing – literally. At this rate, they’re going to become the biggest gang in the city.’
‘And you want to stop them?’
Jordan nodded. ‘Indeed I do. The problem is that nobody knows anything about them. They seem to have sprung up from nowhere, like some sort of killer virus. We’ve had snatches of information, but it’s mostly hearsay and rumour – and we need cold, hard facts. The only thing we know for sure about the Comando Negro is that they’re based in the Santa Marta favela.’ Jordan tapped Luiz’s file, his eyes narrowing. ‘Where you grew up.’
‘Wait a second,’ Luiz said, the truth slowly dawning upon him. ‘Are you saying you want me to go back to Santa Marta? And, what, spy on the Comando Negro?’
Jordan nodded deliberately.
Luiz laughed. ‘That’s crazy. You must be nuts.’
‘I’m perfectly sane,’ Jordan replied calmly. ‘And perfectly serious.’
‘Do you know what the gangs do to spies and informers? Haven’t you heard about the microwave?’
Jordan raised an inquisitive eyebrow. ‘Microwave?’
‘They cut off your arms and legs,’ said Luiz, ‘while you’re still alive. Then they cut off your head. Then they set fire to what’s left. You think I want that to happen to me? I’m not going to spy for you, man.’
‘I never said there wouldn’t be risks, Luiz,’ Jordan said seriously. ‘Outside the favela, Trojan can provide you with all the technical support you’ll need, but inside you’ll be on your own.’
‘And if I do this for you, you can get Ana out of custody?’
Jordan nodded.
‘How do I know you’re for real? Do it now. Get her out.’
‘Much as I’d like to help your sister right now, this is business. You don’t get anything for free, Luiz. But if you do agree to help us, we can arrange for her to be held in a cell on her own until your mission is complete. Give us the information that will bring down the Comando Negro and the charges aga
inst Ana will disappear.’
‘But what about school? Our parents? Someone’s going to find out what’s going on.’
‘Well, we know that your parents are in São Paulo for a fortnight, and we can organize things with your school so that the teachers don’t ask any questions about you missing class. After that, it’s up to you. Phone your parents whenever you want to. But remember, if you give the game away, I can promise you two things. One, you’ll never see me again; and two, your sister will end up doing some serious jail time. Do we have a deal?’
Luiz blew the air from his cheeks. ‘Doesn’t look like I’ve got much of a choice,’ he said finally.
‘There’s always a choice,’ Jordan replied softly.
He slipped the phone back into his pockets and pressed an intercom buzzer on the desk. A slim, elegant woman, her hair scraped back into a tight ponytail, walked into the office. She sized up Luiz in one efficient glance.
‘Luiz, this is Valerie Singer,’ said Jordan. ‘She’s head of Human Resources here at Trojan. She’ll fill you in on your mission details.’
‘Come on,’ the woman said crisply, in heavily accented English.
‘Where are we going?’
‘I’ll tell you on the way.’
As he trailed out of the office after Singer, Luiz looked back over his shoulder. Jordan was still watching him. And, for the first time since they had met, Luiz saw a shadow of concern in his eyes.
4. Crash Course
As Valerie called the elevator in the hallway outside, Luiz’s head was bursting with questions. There was so much to take in – too much, in fact. Part of him couldn’t help wondering whether this was all some kind of elaborate practical joke. Something about the woman’s brisk manner, however, told him that it was wise to keep his mouth shut for now. He stood in silence as the doors pinged open and the elevator purred down to the ground floor. There was no one in the large, marble-floored lobby – no receptionists behind the front desk, no security guards watching the doors. No one saw them leave.
Although it was early evening, the streets of Rio were still hot and humid. Luiz’s school shirt clung damply to his back and his head was groaning in protest from the blow it had received. Outside the front of the building, a sleek white Mercedes with tinted windows was waiting for them. Scanning the street, Valerie opened the rear passenger door and gestured for Luiz to climb in. As she followed him, Luiz was surprised to see a pistol holster poking out from beneath her suit jacket. He bit back another question.