“ Uh-huh.’
“He’s all right, Tig. I’ve got Walter and Allen checking in on him every other day.’ Trusted friends. “Have to advise you to wait a little before calling him.’
“They’ve tapped his phone.’ I didn’t need to make it a question.
He nodded.
“Bastards.’
“Right,’ he said as he put down his drink. “Where do we start?’
“We don’t.’
He smiled patiently at me. Distance and time don’t erode the family shorthand—not if you’re close, and we are. You can have an entire heated argument in silence, trade points and anticipate what each other will say, all in a few seconds. The obvious didn’t need to be said: that I’d want to work the case alone. Yes, but he knew the country better than I did, he could muddle through better in Portuguese and he was here after all. And I would counter that it was my mess to clean up. Our parents used to say I was more stubborn than Isaac. They were right.
A final plea, the protective-brother argument all packed into my name: “Teresa …’
“Hey,’ I said. Not very logical but equally concise.
“You’ll need me.’
“I need you to pull strings for me in London,’ I argued. “Listen, I distinctly remember you having those psycho ivory poachers after you five years ago. When I offered to fly in, you said stay put, didn’t you? And what about when you and Dupuis nearly got shot in Slovakia? And whoever heard of a Slovakian transsexual assassin anyway?’
“Well, Dupuis always surrounds himself with colorful people,’ Isaac pointed out. “I think we stayed alive just out of sheer dread of how the obituary might read.’
I should mention my brother solves problems for people, too, sometimes. When he’s not trying to start restaurant chains, found magazines, or deal in large foreign exchange trades. He always seems to hold on to his fees longer than I do, but Isaac was always smarter with money. He’s either very rich for a long while or suddenly skint, needing to go out and drive a cab or unlock a few investments.
But I never worry about my brother. To me, he’s invincible. I think of the way he greeted me in Brazil, casual yet stylish, ready for war but not stepping into it without looking damn good, fully briefed and yet cocky as hell because I was the innocent, and no one should mess with us and so of course, we’d win. I’d win.
But I needed him in the other hemisphere.
“After you’ve conquered the forces of evil,’ he said, waving the bartender to bring another round, “how about back to Geneva? For a vacation? At least we both have friends there.’
I couldn’t think that far ahead.
“I don’t like leaving you like this, Tig.’
“You’re not. I’m shooing you off.’
We downed our drinks and hugged goodbye.
“Well, I’m going to waste some of the prince’s money on a flight to New York,’ he informed me. “I don’t think it’s wise to stray too far while all this is happening to you. Anything you want while I’m there?’
I thought about it. “No, I don’t think so. But go and check out the new planetarium for me.’
“Since when do you like astronomy?’
“For a while,’ I answered. “Someone got me interested in it the last time I was there.’
Watching him go was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do in my life. Still. My brother did business here occasionally. He had friends here. I suspected I was about to enter a shadow world, what with Henrique Marinho’s operation and José Ferreira’s operation, and even though my brother is probably my most trusted ally, fully capable of taking care of himself, I’d put him and perhaps his network of beloved friends and associates at risk.
Our father already had one child drop off the radar. It was unfair to risk us both.
♦
The problem never was tracking down the enemy in Brazil. Silky Pictures had its corporate headquarters right in Rio’s Western Zone, and as Helê had shown me, Henrique Marinho was in a staff photo on the company’s Web site as if he had no shame to feel. I was sure he didn’t. I saw this young business type in his open-necked shirt and jacket, this grinning jackal who thought the world was a dim sum cart wheeled around for his personal appetites. And I remembered Matilde.
Watching him through a high-powered lens, I studied how Marinho dealt with people as a managing director, his disguise for being a thug. I saw that the tumblers were always clicking, Marinho folding his arms when he listened, unfolding them, fidgeting, and though I couldn’t hear what was said, I watched the pauses after he gave a reply, or what body language seemed to indicate was a decision. That was when he finally stood still. And whoever he was with froze in place, too.
Because of something Marinho said.
The threats that curdle your bowels come in quiet whispers, very gentle, very soft. Those who know what they can do don’t need to yell.
Henrique Marinho was scary to me because he didn’t even seem to enjoy their fear. He just clearly wanted the job done, and then he moved on to intimidate someone else. I remembered that quiet, almost toneless voice demanding information when the needles were close to my eyes. As if life as a street criminal had bled almost all emotion out of him except for his precious furniture catalogues and pleasure of acquisition. When he touched a woman here on his home ground, two fingers slightly lifted her chin or rested on the small of her back, and the woman always stiffened. She went mannequin still, as if knowing from experience not to flinch or shudder.
Someone who didn’t flinch was the peculiar visitor Marinho welcomed to his house.
This was a couple of days after I’d begun watching him. By then I already knew Marinho lived in Barra da Tijuca, one of the priciest and most sought-after upper-and middle-class neighborhoods. His mansion was a sprawling two-floor beast, with as many bodyguards as his fleet of cars, plus a canopied pool. And he had dogs. Dobermans.
I know I shouldn’t generalize, but invariably the choice dog breed of your hard-core creep, asshole, wanker—take your pick—is a Doberman. Or another dog that can be bred and trained to be vicious. I don’t get this and never have, the whole mean-dog thing as male status symbol. But then I also can’t imagine walking around with a phalanx of guys who look like they walked off the set of 300 to put on shirts and ties.
Marinho was well protected, well insulated. Probably thought he was invincible.
He wasn’t—that’s what I wish I could tell you. That I already had a well-considered plan for how to get past his thugs and that I would break in on Marinho with more than harsh language. The truth was, I had no idea how to bring him down, especially since it was growing clear that in this country I would have zero credibility with any authorities.
I know, I know. How on earth could I think of running to the authorities now?
The visitor. Right. Back to the visitor. He arrived one afternoon, emerging from a chauffeured limousine, and I saw him gasp at the heat after coming out of his nice air-conditioned car. He and Marinho shook hands, but there were no smiles, no warmth. Business was done between the two, but it looked like they preferred to keep their distance.
The stranger looked to be in his mid-fifties, with a paunch, and he was much taller than Marinho. He had a hawk nose, his black hair was in a severe widow’s peak, and his complexion was far too pasty to be Brazilian. European perhaps? Wearing a dark suit that was wrong for the weather and paying for it, his face shining with perspiration.
He and Marinho strolled the grounds of the mansion in pensive circles, yet the man refused to take off his jacket, collecting gin and tonics from a servant’s tray like he was being handed communiqués. Marinho got visibly annoyed at whatever he was being told.
The man was good with the dogs. He knelt and petted them, and they didn’t dare growl at him.
I took out my digital camera, which had a decent zoom, and snapped away.
The visitor only stayed for an hour, and then he gestured to his driver—who never got out of the
car—to start the engine. Marinho leaned on the open door as the older man got back inside, making what looked like a final grumbling complaint. Then the car pulled out and drove off for the comforting parks and neat avenues in the rest of Barra da Tijuca.
Interesting. Marinho didn’t fear his visitor, that much was clear. His body language, his temper, were kept under control in front of his dour guest the way he dealt with people in his office. All this suggested to me he was one taut watch spring. Henrique Marinho didn’t like chaos. True, he didn’t follow routines, never arrived or left his office at set times like other obsessives, but he clearly liked things in their place. He liked people not to disappoint him. He liked order. This gave me a vague idea of an approach.
Marinho sold sex slaves. To be a slave is to live in constant fear. I wanted to teach Marinho what real fear was. I wanted to lure him out of his nice safe house and then harass him, annoy him and eventually terrorize him, right to the point where he would think of running back to his bunker, believing he was safe. And then he’d discover he wasn’t. First step: Learn more. I had no other starting point, really, except for my enemy’s base camp, the office. That would be tricky. I couldn’t just walk into Silky Pictures here and apply for an editing job as I had done in London. The boys from Brazil had known who I was. Suicide to just walk through the door, even pretending to be Susan Braithewaite.
Good thing I have a talent for burglary.
Mum tried to teach me to sew and eventually gave up, and my brother Isaac’s a better cook than I am. I disappointed our father because of dropping out of university. But hey, if you forget your keys and lock yourself out of the house, I’m your gal.
Like many newer design blocks, the Silky office in Rio boasted these long picture windows that were absolutely perfect for me to look in. Took me a whole day and a half to find vantage points from every direction, but I was able to narrow down the closed-circuit security cameras inside.
There were a couple that checked the foyer by the receptionist’s desk, keeping tabs on who bothered to visit them. There was another set near the modest locker area just outside the actors’ changing rooms, probably to discourage petty theft. And there was a third camera that watched the parking lot just below a fire escape exit from Marinho’s private office. He must have recognized it as a potential weak spot, where maybe José Ferreira and his men could drive up, climb the fire escape, and shoot holes in him unless he had men watching his back.
I wouldn’t try to disable the cameras—well, not most of them. Not necessary. Yeah, I had to take out one or two, because I didn’t want Marinho and his thugs to be sure of exactly why I’d come here. But it wouldn’t bother me that he knew I’d broken in. What could he do? Call the cops? I wanted my visit to disturb him. I wanted him rattled.
I timed my entrance to coincide with the security guard’s patrol outside the building. He was overweight, lazy, and his idea of a perimeter check was a fifteen-minute cigarette break. Good for me, because I didn’t expect to take longer than fifteen minutes.
The front and parking lot entrances had doors with electronic keypad locks. That was fine, because the building also had a basement with a window around the side, with only a wire mesh grille in front of it. I was there with a waistband money belt holding wire cutters, a small battery-operated screwdriver, and my lockpicks.
I had eyeballed it correctly. I was small enough to crawl through the window, especially since it was so warm that I wore only a bikini-style top, shorts and sneakers, so no clothing to catch on loose bits. The window frame gave my back a nasty scrape, but no blood lost. Then the challenge of the door leading upstairs.
It would be locked, but I anticipated that. They kept nothing down here except broken lights and their older videotape products, now all transferred to DVD. So this lock wouldn’t need any keypad, it was a regular Chubb with pins, and I had my trusty set of lockpicks.
The guard would be on his second cigarette now.
From all that staring through windows, I had worked out a rough layout of the building and its offices. The pecking order always has your pawns near the front, your big important types deeper in. I walked briskly through the hall, not in a rush but with purpose, and I noticed an overhead camera where it was inconvenient.
Men’s shaving gel. Big and blue and gloppy. Can’t see anything through it. I got on a chair and sprayed it all over the lens.
Then I sat down at the administrative assistant’s computer. I used hers because Marinho no doubt had all kinds of protection and security on his, but people are less scrupulous with the underlings. You’re right that I could be taking a bungee jump with my huge assumptions, and if the bungee snapped…But I was sure I understood the way this creep thought.
He guarded his cash, not his product, not here on his home turf where no one cared about the next missing Matilde. His enemies would kill him for revenge or for his money in a safe, not for DVDs that still needed to be sold to make a profit. Hence all the thugs loitering by his pool. That’s where the bank was, I’d bet.
I tapped away, fingers making the keys mumble in soft plastic crunches. Come on, come on, come on—
This was another moment when I wished I had taken up Isaac’s offer to stay and help. I had gotten a couple of tips from Jiro on cracking in and getting by passwords, since programming code is reasonably universal and, thanks to economics, tends to be done in English, but once I was in, I was back to Você fala Inglês? All their invoices, their banking, their shooting schedules, everything was in Portuguese.
Fortunately, I had brought along a USB flash drive with sixty-four gigabytes of storage, my little lorry to dump all this stuff into and examine later. When it was done—and it worked pretty fast—I did my best to figure out what I got out of a straightforward keyword search of files. The Portuguese word for Muslim was easy enough: Muçulmano.
But I let out a groan as I discovered the same raw footage I had screened on the computer at Helê‘s house in Twick enham. The lovely camera shots panning from the mosque minarets to the modern and secular Brazilian landscapes, the same interviews with imams… There was nothing new for me to learn here. I tried documents, and what wasn’t there was more enlightening.
No shooting schedules for any documentary on Muçul -manos.
No Arabic-sounding names listed in interview transcriptions, no production notes or research details on Muslims or Islam at all.
But here was the footage.
My time with Luis had demonstrated one thing to me. You make any kind of film, and you are an old-fashioned baggage caravan on an exodus. You must organize. You must include camera people, technicians, assistants, and drivers. You must keep records.
Suppose there is no documentary, I thought. Suppose there never was.
But if I was right and there wasn’t, why create the outlandish fiction—highly improbable for a porn manufacturer—that one was planned? And why get footage and interviews?
While I was mulling on that, I got on-line and checked a Portuguese phrase for what it meant in English. Thank you, Babel Fish Web site. When I opened another document and tried to copy a paragraph to check, I read: File is read only, file in use, STN 5. Of course. I was on the assistant’s computer, which was networked.
And if the file was in use then someone else was here. Shit.
A moment of panic, and then my brain woke up, and I realized this stranger wasn’t supposed to be here either. Could be someone working late, but I doubted it, not this late. Whoever it was, this person could screw up my escape.
I had gone to a lot of trouble to time all this, and when the guard came back to his desk and noticed the fogged-up camera looking over the admin assistant’s workspace, he’d probably check the wiring first. By the time he got off his arse to come down and take a look, I was supposed to be heading out the way I’d come, through the side basement window. This second intruder could draw the guard’s attention , and the guard could wind up finding me instead. Thanks for landing me in it. Cheers,
mate.
Smart of the admin assistant to keep an office diagram with each terminal numbered. This “Station Five’ was down another hallway. If the guard took that route, he would cut off my escape.
I had to get to the intruder first.
It occurred to me the admin assistant might get a closed circuit feed of the security cameras, and sure enough, she kept it as an icon on her bottom task bar. I brought it up.
I don’t believe it, I thought. The guard was still in the parking lot with a taxi driver, obviously an acquaintance, both of them sharing a bottle and chatting away, killing their break together. Maybe that would buy me another two minutes.
Move, Teresa.
I found the intruder in one of the combination studio and editing rooms, the kind Luis had back in London. There was no security camera watching him here, but no matter which hall he took to leave, he would pass a camera.
I paused to watch him for a few seconds, seeing what he was up to. Tall guy with his back to me. He had a shaved head and mahogany skin, a black shirt and gray trousers, and was rummaging through DVD cases and playing one of the features on the monitor.
“Policía!’ I barked.
His body was racked by a shudder of panic, but as he turned, brown eyes glaring, he tilted his head at a weary-wise angle. “Oh, please! Unless the Rio police wear bikini tops and white shorts, I don’t think so.’
British. Fairly posh accent, like he went to the right universities.
“Eu não entendo,’ I said, trying to keep up the bluff. “Vocé poderia par favor—’
“Give it up, darling,’ he said, smiling. “Your accent’s wrong for one thing. Like Berlitz for a weekend in Lisbon.’
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