BLACK CITY (Ulysses Vidal Adventure Series Book 2)

by Fernando Gamboa

  “You can’t see the buildings, or the pyramids,” I said.

  “Remember they were covered with vegetation, Ulysses. It’s impossible to see them from directly above. But what you can see,” she added, pleased, “is what might be the great stone way we walked along. That really is perfectly clear, even from the sky.”

  “Are you sure it’s not fake?”

  “Don’t be a jerk,” she said, frowning. “Of course not! This was taken by a satellite in July 2003. It’s there for anyone to see.”

  “But then… how come nobody was ever aware of its existence?”

  “As Cassandra said just now,” the professor put in, “because nobody is looking for it. Most likely the only ones who had noticed it were the AZS people, while they were planning the work.”

  “I see,” I said as I tried to take in this unexpected discovery. “Speaking of the AZS… were you able to do everything you wanted to?”

  Eduardo Castillo nodded, deadly serious. “We contacted everyone we could,” he said. “We told them what had happened in the rainforest: the murders, the existence of the Black City and what was there… as well as the precarious situation of the Menkragnoti with the flooding in prospect. But neither the Brazilian government, nor FUNAL, nor the state police, nor the mother that gave birth to them all, paid the slightest attention. The moment we mentioned the AZS, they made a face and shrugged as if they blamed all the evil of the world on Divine Providence.”

  “I’m sorry to say that I guessed that’s what would happen.”

  “So did we,” he said. “But even so, we had to try.”

  “Yes, yes, of course… and the other thing?” I turned to Cassie. “Were you able to do what I asked you to?”

  “We were and we did, down to the last detail,” she confirmed, equally seriously.

  “Wonderful,” I said and smiled with pleasure. “In that case I need you to get me a plane ticket for this afternoon.”

  “What?” Cassie said, alarmed. “No! First you have to get well. You can’t go like this.”

  “I most certainly can. We’ve already wasted too much time.”

  “But the hospital hasn’t discharged you!” she insisted, and waved her hand at the aseptic waiting room all around us.

  “We can’t wait any longer, Cassie. Every minute counts.”

  “But—”

  “We owe it to Iak.”

  Cassie made no more attempts to dissuade me, but the professor asked me once more: “Are you sure you really want to do it?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Eduardo seemed to chew on my reply, which he must have been expecting, then just shrugged and said: “In that case, we’d better take you to our hotel so you can have some lunch before you go.”

  “Doc, that’s a great idea. Hospital food sucks.” I drooled at the thought of a good steak with chips. “But first, I’d like to stop at a clothes shop to get myself a good suit and a briefcase.”

  101

  Two days later I hobbled into the reception area of the AZS skyscraper. I was well shaved, wore a dark gray suit with a tie, and carried a leather briefcase. The building was steel and glass, right in the center of the financial district of Sao Paulo, and the offices occupied the whole of it.

  “Bom Dia,” said one of the receptionists from behind a counter of designer elegance. “¿Como posso ajudá-lo?”

  “Good morning,” I replied with studied poise. “I wish to see Mr. Queiroz.”

  The man raised an eyebrow skeptically.

  “You wish to see Mr. Luciano Queiroz?” he repeated in perfect English, not sure he had heard correctly. “The President?”

  “That’s correct.”

  The neat clerk looked me up and down, studying with a trained eye the suit, the haircut… but eyeing the many cuts on my face suspiciously.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “I don’t. But I am sure that Mr. Queiroz will be very interested in seeing me.”

  “Without an appointment it won’t be possible—”

  I raised my hand to interrupt him and pointed at the telephone. “If you don’t want to lose your job, I suggest that you call Mr. Queiroz at once and tell him that Ulysses Vidal is here with enough evidence to make him stop the flooding of the Xingu reservoir. You may add that if he does not wish that evidence to be made public by the end of the day, he should spare me a few minutes of his time… if that’s not too much trouble.”

  “He will probably be at a meeting,” the clerk said, undecided as to whether to call or not.

  “Well,” I said leaning over the counter and bringing my face close to his, “tell him to leave the meeting.”

  Two minutes later I went through a scanner, allowed the security staff to search my briefcase, and went up to the top floor in an enormous metal elevator under the guard of a huge man wearing an ear plug. His suit was on the point of bursting under his massive pectorals, and he had the look of someone without a friend in the world.

  I knew I was going into the lion’s den alone. In the silence of the elevator I could hear my heart beating like a racing horse, but there was nothing I could do to calm it. However, it was not nerves or fear what I was feeling, but rage. I was trying to control it, but I could feel it growing inside me at the same rate as we ascended floor after floor and the numbers rose on the little screen in the elevator.

  We finally stopped on the fifty-second floor. The door slid open without a sound, and I found myself in a luxurious waiting room with pearl gray carpet, leather sofas, and big abstract paintings on the equally gray walls.

  The thug pushed me gently forward and guided me to a desk with a spectacular secretary sitting behind it. Her hair was jet black and combed in a ponytail, she had almond eyes, and her whole mien was serious and efficient.

  “Mr. Vidal?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Will you please come in.” She indicated a massive wooden door. “Mr. Queiroz is waiting for you.”

  “Thank you.” I noticed how my chaperon took a place by the door and gave me a warning look. I held the doorknob, turned it, and after taking a deep breath I walked into the office of the man who two weeks before had sent paid assassins to kill us all.

  I had looked up Luciano Queiroz Vargas on the internet. He was a fifty-seven-year-old multimillionaire who had inherited the construction company from his father. At that time it had been just a shadow of what it was now. Behind his impeccably cut suit, cruel mouth, salt-and-pepper hair, and questioning look, I sensed an ambitious and completely unscrupulous character. But what surprised me when the President of AZS stood up behind his mahogany desk was that he was more than a hand’s breadth taller than my five feet eleven, so he must have been way past six and a half feet. Since he must have been well aware of his imposing presence, I guessed it was his habit to stand up in order to intimidate anyone who dared cross that office door.

  “Sit down,” he ordered, pointing at the armchair on my side of the desk. His voice was deep and throaty, in accordance with his size.

  There were no greetings or other courtesies of any kind, since we both knew who the other was and what he wanted. There was also the little matter that I would rather cut off my hand than offer it to that mean bastard.

  “What do you have and what do you want in exchange?” he asked dryly. “Because you do have something to offer, am I right? Otherwise there would be no point in sitting here.”

  I let a few seconds pass before I answered, holding his gaze. In the end I opened the briefcase and took out a folder with a document several pages long and placed it on the table.

  “What I want,” I said, pushing the document toward him, “is for you to sign this contract. In it you agree to stop the flooding of the Xingu reservoir immediately, buy the land that was going to end under water, and give it to the Menkragnoti tribe absolutely free and without any conditions. And finally,” I added, pointing at a specific paragraph, “to pay the survivors and the families of all those whose death you are direc
tly or indirectly responsible for, and to do it generously. The contract has been written and fully checked by a well-known legal firm in this city. So all I need is your signature to put it into effect.” I settled more comfortably in the plush armchair.

  For a moment, Luciano Queiroz remained completely silent and motionless. He had the look of a man who cannot believe what he has just heard, or else is waiting for the other party to admit it was just a joke. But when he realized that was not the case, he burst out laughing so hard he had a coughing fit, beating his hand on the table as if he had just been told the funniest story in the world. He turned so red that I feared he would have a heart attack there and then.

  “Oh, man, you’re so good…” he said as soon as he was able to speak, mopping tears off his face. “Anything else? A Ferrari, perhaps? A space shuttle?”

  “Just sign the contract. That will be enough.”

  He shook his head in disbelief. “You are wasting my time with all this nonsense,” he said regaining his composure. “Not even in your wildest dreams would I sign that document.”

  “I think you will,” I said calmly. “In fact, I am convinced that I will go out that door with the signed documents under my arm. Otherwise, the evidence I have against you and your company will be in the newsrooms of every paper by this evening.”

  Queiroz took a quick glance at the papers I had left on his desk, and then fixed his eyes on me. With a self-absorbed smile he sat back in his armchair. “What makes you think that any newspaper would be willing to publish a news item that could damage me in any way? I spend millions of dollars a year in media publicity, and as for those who are not part of my business conglomerate, rest assured that if they had to choose, they would rather keep a good client like me than publish anything you might offer them.

  “I am not only talking about the Brazilian press. I am talking about newspapers and television stations in several countries, worldwide. Not even you could influence all of them.”

  The President of AZS shook his head again without losing his smile. “You do not understand anything, Mr. Vidal. News lasts a matter of seconds in the minds of public opinion, only until it is overtaken by the latest sexual exploit of a second-class celebrity or next Sunday’s soccer match. So some Indians will become displaced a few miles to avoid the flooding?” He spread his hands wide. “Some old ruins will end up several feet under water? The truth is that nobody cares about that. Come on, wake up, you have nothing that could affect me in the least. Me or my business.”

  Trying to remain unperturbed by all this, I kept up my poker face, opened the briefcase again, took out a manila envelope, and put it on top of the documents.

  “What do you want to show me now?” Luciano Queiroz asked, nearly amused.

  “In here,” I said, laying my finger on the envelope, “is the evidence which will make you sign all the documents I have brought.”

  He leaned back into his armchair with the air of someone who has reached the end of his patience. “You insist on that? You’re thick as a brick. I have told you there is nothing that could make me sign, so I am asking you to leave my office and not make me waste any more time. Unless you want me to call security, of course.”

  Following his example, I leaned back into my seat and looked at my nails indifferently. “You can do whatever you wish. You are the one who is risking losing everything.”

  Queiroz glimpsed at the manila envelope for just a second, but I saw a trace of concern in his eyes that had not been there before.

  “If it is some embarrassing photograph of me with some young woman,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest, “I warn you that you will not get very far down that road. My wife knows of my affairs with other women and is very accommodating. As to public opinion, people would probably laugh. Remember, this is Brazil.”

  “It is nothing of that kind.” I smiled confidently. “I could not care less if you dressed up as a Playboy bunny every night.”

  The construction mogul looked at the envelope again, this time without hiding his curiosity, and studied me fixedly. “I told you I don’t care about what’s in there,” he insisted. “But to be honest, I am beginning to feel a certain amount of interest in knowing what you think you have.”

  “Open it and you’ll find out.” I said with a shrug.

  Luciano Queiroz hesitated for a moment, then finally reached for it almost disdainfully. He took the envelope, opened it, and took out a photograph.

  For a moment, this man, certainly one of the most powerful in Brazil, looked at the photo with a confused frown. Then he looked up at me, obviously angry, and turned it over to show it to me. “Will you explain what sort of foolery this is?”

  102

  I could not help feeling a certain satisfaction when the President of the AZS showed me the photo, with an expression of deep perplexity on his face.

  It was a snapshot of me smiling, waving at the camera, with a beer in my hand.

  “Don’t you like it?” I asked. This time it was my turn to smile. “I think I look quite good in this one. If you prefer I have another one in profile,” I added, reaching for my pocket.

  Luciano Queiroz rose massively to his feet and pointed to the door. “Get out of my office right now,” he demanded. “You have two seconds before I call security.”

  “Believe me, you’re not going to do that.”

  “Aren’t I?” he asked defiantly. He put his index finger on the red button of the intercom.

  “If you don’t wish to die, I wouldn’t advise you to do it.”

  “Are you threatening me now?” He almost roared as he leaned over the desk.

  “Me threaten you? Not at all. That isn’t necessary. Because you see, you’re already dead.”

  Unexpectedly, instead of responding to this, the Brazilian let forth a guffaw and dropped into his seat once again. “Oh, I see now!” he said slapping his forehead. “You’re completely nuts! For heaven’s sake, I’ve been talking to a madman for five minutes!” He laughed heartily.

  I laughed with him, but as soon as he stopped, I glanced at my watch and clicked my tongue feigning worry. “I’m glad you’re taking it so well, seeing you have less than five minutes left before you die.”

  Queiroz’s expression changed to one of confusion, then irritation. “Who do you think you’re talking to? I know for a fact that before reaching my office you’ve been through a scanner and you’ve been searched. There’s no way you could be carrying a concealed weapon on you. And if you try to attack me in any other way, my bodyguard will be through that door and shooting you in the back. So, out of mere curiosity, how do you plan to kill me?”

  I crossed my arms and put on my best fake smile. “You’re not listening to me. I didn’t say I was going to kill you. I said I already have.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I just poisoned you, Mr. Queiroz. And unless I give you the antidote I have in my pocket”—I patted my jacket—“in five… sorry, four minutes, you’ll be dead on that carpet from a heart attack.”

  “Do you take me for a moron?” he burst out furiously. “I haven’t drunk anything, and you haven’t stuck any needle in me either.”

  “Not all poisons act the same way. Some just need to come into contact with the skin.”

  “I didn’t even shake your hand!”

  My eyes went to the apparently harmless photograph still on the desktop, and a light of understanding shone in the man’s eyes.

  “It’s not possible…” he muttered, trying to convince himself as he rubbed together the fingers he had picked up the photo with and discovered a fine white dust, like talcum powder, on the fingertips of his right hand.

  “The knowledge some Amazonian tribes have of medicines and poisons is amazing,” I said, seeing his confusion. “They’re even capable of extracting one that, in contact with bare skin, causes a stroke in a matter of minutes. Unbelievable, isn’t it?”

  “No… it’s not possible,” he mumbled, still looking
at his right hand. “This is nothing more than a hoax.”

  “Well, we’ll know soon enough, don’t you think?” I said as I took a tiny crystal phial half-filled with some dark liquid from the inside pocket of my jacket. “Without this you won’t get as far as the door. In fact, you should be experiencing the first effects by now. Can you feel a certain tingling in your toes and hands?”

  By the look on his face and the way he opened his eyes wide when he heard this, I knew it was so.

  “Well, this is only the beginning. Soon, that feeling will spread through your whole body until it reaches your heart and makes it stop. And I’ll be sitting here calmly watching you as you die on the floor, foaming at the mouth.”

  “You’ve signed your death sentence,” he said standing up threateningly. “My security will come through that door, take the antidote from you, and kill you.”

  “The first and last are possible,” I said confidently, “but as for the one in between, I’m not so sure. It’s no coincidence that I’m carrying the antidote in a fragile crystal phial. Before one of your thugs lays a hand on me, I’ll break it, and then you won’t have an antidote.”

  “It doesn’t matter, my doctors—”

  “Your doctors?” I interrupted, mockingly. “Before they even know what’s happened to you, you’ll be dead.”

  He looked me up and down from under his bushy eyebrows with a rage as fierce as any shown by the Morcegos. Without a doubt, if he had thought he had the slightest chance of surviving without the antidote, he would have had me killed already. He clenched his jaw with contained fury. “But… why are you doing this?”

  “You ask me why?” I could barely hold back my own rage, as I came up to the desk. “Innocent people have died because of your greed, people I knew and cared for and who didn’t in the least deserve to die. And you have the balls to ask me why? Let me tell you, you’re an unscrupulous bastard and you don’t even deserve the chance I’m offering you which is to save your miserable life at the cost of nothing more than some money.”