“So far,’ I said, “she and her group sound like just a different brand of fundamentalist. You know the kind—people who want to force others into their own ideas of how to live.’
“There is no need to antagonize me, Miss Knight,’ he answered calmly. “We know your…biases about sharia. You might want to remember we are the party of God in Lebanon, and our stands on women’s rights are more complex and reflective of Lebanese culture than the Western media would have you believe. Our war is with Israel—’
“At the moment, I don’t give a damn about Israel, about Lebanon or Middle East politics,’ I said. He was right. I shouldn’t have antagonized him, but I hated this mess that indicted ordinary people as culpable in foreign policy when they just wanted to get on with their lives. I was losing my patience.
“This is Brazil, right? I care about millions of innocent people here who have nothing to do with your struggle or this crazy girl’s deluded crusade. They’re the ones that will pay. You don’t have to persuade me of anything, and I won’t try with you. But I am asking you to help save lives.’
He paused a moment, conceding the point. “Very well. I say again: We are not involved with this misguided woman, and we have actually worked to neutralize these fools before they cause real damage. The problem is that what they lack in intelligence acumen, they make up for in natural guerrilla tactics. I was one of the first to warn Bailey about her volatile nature.’
“Hezbollah is top of the enemies list for British intelligence,’ I said. “Kind of bizarre that you and Graham should swap information from time to time.’
He nodded sadly. “I, too, can be disillusioned by cynical politics and bloodlust, Miss Knight, and sometimes in this shadow world…Let me just say that one must rely on human judgment.’
I heard the echo of Graham’s words. I studied this stranger, this delegate, and I could only hope there were others out there like him, who at least paused to weigh their personal conscience.
“You guys have to keep ahead of Western intelligence services,’ I said. “Do you have any idea how Haskell or Ferreira managed to figure out that Beatriz and her people were moving in this direction? I mean this whole ‘terrorist group in its infancy’ thing.’
Khalil made a dry, humorless laugh. “It would be ridiculously easy for either Haskell or Ferreira. I am sure you are aware that Beatriz wrecked Graham Bailey’s cover during one of her Don Quixote-style raids.’
“Yes, he told me about that.’
“Her fellow amateur jihadists are just as reckless—they don’t have the first clue about internal security. Several of the women involved are ex-slaves of the porn empire …’
I rolled my eyes. Of course. “The gangsters traced the group through the women. Some of them had to have contacted families, old boyfriends—they worked the communication line back to the favelas.’
“Correct.’
“Do you have any idea what their target might be?’
He threw up his hands. “True Base could pick anything. They’re delusional! You know there are Muslims all over this city who are sympathetic to Hezbollah, who, yes, send money back to Lebanon—but for the hospitals and schools we run. If these fools make an attack here, innocent Muslims will suffer in a crackdown. Listen. Can you be sure it will be in Foz do Iguaçu? That doesn’t make sense. There’s a larger population of Muslims in São Paulo.’
I reminded him of the secret military base and briefed him on what we thought was Orpheocon’s plan.
“It’s barbaric,’ he whispered. “They will just let them do it? To watch and wait for carnage …’
“But you and I won’t let that happen, will we? Do you have any idea where Beatriz is now? Could she be here?’
“I’m sorry, no. Our Rio surveillance teams lost track of her. We were caught off guard by her assassination attempt on Ferreira.’
“So were we.’
“Something else I don’t understand,’ said Khalil, gesturing that we should be on our way out of the park. “Ferreira’s lawyer, Andrade—he is in Foz do Iguaçu today.’
“He is?’
“That’s what we’ve learned. The criminal rumor mill is not quite the BBC, but it’s fairly reliable. We keep our channels open.’
“Do you know where he is?’
“We are trying to find out. Please. If Beatriz’s attack is planned for here, why would Andrade come to this place?’
That puzzled me as well for a moment—but not for long.
“Ferreira must have sent him to make sure it gets pulled off without a hitch,’ I reasoned. “If Beatriz’s group fails, there must be a second team to blow up the target and leave True Base implicated.’
“Then we can’t have much time. I will drive you back to the city. Our people will coordinate to try to find Beatriz and her people. If we can find Andrade’s exact location, can you handle him?’
I nodded. We’d better. “Unless you find her, we’ll have to hope and pray those thugs lead us to the target. We won’t know what it is until then.’
“Understood.’
As we hurried along, I asked, “You could have discussed all this with Graham. Why did you insist on meeting me?’
The Hezbollah man offered a shy laugh. “To be honest: curiosity. You’ve hurt all the right people. We were impressed. And you are quite beautiful.’
As I gave him a look, he added, “I’m a Muslim from Lebanon, Miss Knight. We admire strong beautiful women. One day you may appreciate the beauty of our faith.’
“I can,’ I said. “And I do. Give me some credit. Come on, we’d better hurry.’
14
The city of Foz do lguaçu isn’t terribly remarkable in itself besides the attractions of the nearby falls. So the logic went that a slimy lawyer like Andrade would probably prefer to live large, and there would be only a few choice places he would want to stay. Khalil rang Graham a couple of hours later, and we learned Andrade was booked into a suite on the highest floor of the Hotel Internacional. He was in the heart of the city, with a couple of Ferreira’s thugs along to keep watch amid all its marble grandeur.
Why not? Cameron Haskell was sure we knew nothing. Ferreira and Andrade probably thought the same.
Hodd and London smoothed things over with the authorities in Brasilia, and his team coordinated with the Federal Police to watch key points of interest in the city. Left unsaid was that they should tolerate Hezbollah while it did its best to find us a lead on Beatriz.
Graham was given the “less risky’ assignment of keeping an eye on Andrade. Since I wasn’t about to hang around our hotel room and I’d seen the rain forest, I tagged along. Hodd sputtered a protest about my safety, how I had done enough, and Graham laughed and told him, “Des, don’t you know by now you’re wasting your breath?’
He put an arm around my waist, and we walked out together as if heading for a picnic.
So I was with him when he tailed Andrade’s Porsche, following in the BMW borrowed from Sims. He wished we were back in the Volkswagen, he said. He trusted the Beetle. It was a scrappy old fighter of a car, and he had luck with it in Rio.
From a block down the street, we couldn’t quite see what Andrade and one of the thugs loaded into the trunk of the Porsche—a large case of some kind.
And we were totally unprepared for where Andrade led us. Down one of the main thoroughfares and into a street called Rua Palestina. I saw what looked like parkland, lovely trees and grass lawns. And I started to get a bad feeling about this. Andrade stayed in the car while the thug stepped out and unloaded the trunk. We pulled the BMW up yards away, giving him a wide berth.
“Oh, my God,’ I said. “Get Hodd on the phone. Get him quick.’
Because I saw twin white minarets in the distance.
“What? What?’
“We’re here,’ I said. “We’re at the target!’
He was dialing Hodd on his cell but looking at me, confused. “I don’t understand.’ I heard ringing.
We hadn’t realiz
ed it. We had tailed Andrade’s car right to the Omar Ibn Al-Khatab mosque. It was exquisite traditional architecture, with a Brazilian-Arab school and cultural center on the same grounds. All about to be rubble.
“That’s the target,’ I explained quickly, and now I opened the car door. “Hezbollah is Shi’a Islam. When it’s done, they’ll paint Beatriz and her gang as Sunnis or a breakaway sect or whatever. It’ll bring all the Muslim-versus-Muslim conflicts and bloodshed right here to Brazil. And we’re on the border. That’s how Orpheocon will justify barging in with their mercenaries! They’ll claim Paraguay’s security and that of the tri-border is threatened by the terrorist attack. Muslim infighting right on their border with Brazil.’
“Son of a bitch,’ muttered Graham, getting out on his side. Into the phone he said, “Hodd? Hodd, are you there? Who’s this? Well, get him!’ And as he waited, I saw the question on his lips: How? How did I guess?
“The documentary,’ I said. “The footage was reconnaissance. The artsy pans away from the mosques? All the shots of the exteriors around them? That was to find escape routes, best ways to approach!’
Graham looked off in the direction of the beautiful white structure—and towards the thug setting up some equipment. His mouth opened in shock. “That creep has an old SACLOS.’
“A what?’
He ran around to the trunk of the BMW. I watched as he pulled out the case for a sniper rifle. “He’s got an antitank guided missile! SemiAutomatic Command to Line of Sight. SACLOS. Hodd? Are you there? Listen to me—’
It would take the thug longer to set up his missile launcher than Graham to assemble the rifle, but now we had another problem. Graham was still talking frantically into the cell phone.
“I think the bastard has semiactive laser homing,’ Graham told Hodd. “I’ve got nothing to jam his radio signal, Des, I’ve got to sniper him out—’
Much bigger problem than laser homing or whatever.
“Graham!’ I shouted. I pointed to the walk leading up to the mosque.
Beatriz, already there. She wasn’t veiled or wearing robes, in just a regular white blouse and shorts, carrying a backpack. By the time those inside objected, it wouldn’t matter.
Oh, God. Khalil had said it. She loves Allah—and hates every Muslim group but her own. And more of her words came back to me from the favela house. It make no sense to me in holy texts how women are treated—we are stupid, we are second, we must be told what we do. So she was happy to do another “favor’ for the Syrian Qabbani as payment for the weapons. Traditional Muslims were enemies, just as Ferreira was an enemy, Marinho had been an enemy. Just part of her personal holy war.
Walking towards the mosque.
We had two targets.
“She’s closest,’ said Graham, taking a breath, knowing he had to do it. But the moment the bullet hit her, the guy with the missile thingy would be tipped off.
“He’ll see her shot,’ I told him, but Graham knew that already.
“No choice,’ he answered. “We’ve got one chance—he’s got an old launcher. He has to stay perfectly still and aim the thing so it can ride the beam to target. The new ones are fire and forget. It might buy us a couple of seconds. Shit. Shit, shit, shit! Better pray, babe.’
“He’ll wait for Beatriz to go in,’ I said. “He’s the insurance, right? He’ll see if she’s successful before he makes his own try.’
Graham’s eye was at the scope now, as the tinny voice of Hodd came through the cell: “We can’t be sure of that.’
I could. Yes, it was instinct, but I was sure. They wanted a patsy to be implicated for the attack—Ferreira’s thug would wait for Beatriz’s attempt, and they’d use the missile only if they had to.
Andrade sat in the car, waiting for the man to do his chore so they could speed away. I yanked the Glock out of Graham’s jacket and started running.
“Teresa!’
He couldn’t shout louder or the guy at the launcher might hear. I might not reach him in time, but I had to try. Beatriz was getting closer. Graham had to trust me to do my job while he found the nerve to shoot her.
I could guess what he was feeling. Yards away, she would never know it was him, not that this would give him any comfort. Broken, deluded, pitiful girl, so warped in her thinking, walking at an unhurried pace, and it would be even more excruciating for Graham because now he had to wait for me.
If he shot Beatriz first, the guy at the launcher would see her drop and know he’d better fire quickly.
Two targets, and no time for Graham to hit both. So it was up to me to reach Ferreira’s man and Andrade. Racing against her progress up to that door—
I ran. I ran so hard I imagined my lungs bleeding. I ran and stopped caring about the pain and saw the way the guy had his kit set up now, my sneakers were silent on the grass, and still there was no noise of the missile fired and no shot of the sniper rifle, and I tried to stop my noisy breathing as I reached the monster with his back to me. I saw him fiddle with a mechanism on this big ugly tube thing resting on a tripod.
“Don’t!’
Not that I expected the guy to listen—just to be distracted. He started in shock and turned, his face pale with disbelief.
Beatriz a couple of yards from the mosque entrance.
I lifted the Glock and fired three shots, couldn’t miss at this range. The guy’s stomach ruptured in sprays of black and red, and he crumbled to the cement on his back. Andrade gunned the engine and roared off. Damn it, getting away—
As I stood there, barely believing what I had done, there were two cracks like a couple of lazy echoes across the lawn. I didn’t pay attention to the wheezing and dying thug on the ground. I was listening to the screams of the faithful near the mosque doors, the terrible panic.
Beatriz was down on the pavement. She had turned like others when she heard my shots, and that was when Graham fired. I looked across the expanse of green, but he was already gone from his spot. Dropping the rifle, running over to her. If she was still alive, conscious, and could reach her detonator—
She lay on her back, and even from here, I could hear her agonized gurgling. Graham had been quite efficient. One shot had hit the arm she needed to set off the bomb. The other had taken her down. She wouldn’t live long. Lebanese-Brazilians were coming out, forming a circle, but I heard Graham shout in rapid Portuguese. There was a gasp from the crowd, and they turned around and rushed back inside the mosque.
He was alone again, crouched next to her.
I took a couple of steps back over to the thug on the ground. He was going fast, too, and his eyes as they lost their life looked so enraged. How dare this woman, this black woman, interfere and cut his life short? I watched him bleed to death, paying witness. Not for the sake of whatever humanity was left in this criminal, not even for Beatriz’s sake, but for my own. I thought: If you’re going to do it, then be here for all of it. See if you can live with it.
He died, failing to kill anybody, and I saw that I could live with it.
I don’t think I lost any piece of my soul, and if anything, the world’s lungs opened a little wider, breathing easier.
After a few seconds, I reached Graham. He was still kneeling over Beatriz’s body. She was gone as well. He was making sure her explosive was completely deactivated.
“She told me where the True Base militants are,’ he said quietly. Reading my astonishment, he explained: “I… I had to tell her the truth, that Ferreira wanted her to go ahead and blow up the mosque. You got the guy?’
“I got him.’
No Beatriz with her bomb. And no gangster thug there to blow up the mosque in case she failed.
“Oh, God,’ I whispered, looking down at the young woman dead at our feet. Graham understood. A terrible way to die, to realize in your final moments you were a puppet and it was all for nothing.
We heard sirens, but Hodd and his agents reached us first, all scrambling out of their cars.
Graham stood up. I saw that his hands w
ere shaking. I reached out and grasped one of them. He said, “I reminded her about the women she saved, the ones from the storage shed. And the little girl.’
“What about the little girl?’
“The one you rescued from the favela,’ said Graham. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you before. I had Hodd check on her. She’s going to be all right.’
♦
Recovery. Trying to put it behind us, killing to save lives, ugly little schemes of world domination. Back in the Beetle, driving along the Serra do Espinhaço mountain range. When I asked Graham where we were going, he would only reply coyly, “Minas Gerais.’ Since Minas Gerais is the fourth-largest state in Brazil, that meant we could wind up anywhere. I guess my spy lover knew how to keep a secret. He asked me if I liked hikes and history, and when I answered yes, he told me great, then you’ll love this. He was taking me, he said, to a place that was personally very special to him. The trip was to be our “vacation.’ We lapsed into a comfortable silence, enjoying the countryside, but my nerves hadn’t yet healed from the last few days.
“Still got Haskell to take care of.’
“Don’t worry, there’s time,’ replied Graham. “Hodd will mount his head on a wall. All is right with the world, Teresa. No mosque attack, no invasion by Orpheocon’s mercenaries, and we’ve got mop-up operations on the rest of the True Base—and at least Henrique Marinho is dead, the way he should be.’
“Ferreira is still out there, wanting my blood.’
“Let us take care of Ferreira,’ Graham urged, his hand on my shoulder. “Once you’re back home—’
“He’s probably got people in London he can send after me,’ I argued. “Hey, why are you so quick to put me on a plane?’
“I’m not!’ He laughed. “Hey, would I take you to a wonderful place if I was in a hurry to see you leave?’
“We’ll see how wonderful…’
At last he parked the Bug at the rise of a steep curve, and announced, “We’re here.’ We had already gone through several small towns, so now I was genuinely surprised. We were in the cobblestone center of a town ringed by modern granite blocks and the ever-present tuna melt tiers of favelas in the hills. As I got out and looked at him, he smiled and explained that “here’ was Ouro Prêto.
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