“Okay. Go on.”
“They handcuffed Zanon and led him out. The blond guy stayed with her and the kids. A while later she heard the shot. The man talked to someone on a radio, warned her not to leave the house unless she wanted her children to wind up dead. So, of course, she didn’t. She was still there when the cops came knocking.”
“And that’s all she knows?”
“In essence, yes.”
Arnaldo muttered an unintelligible word, just one and delivered just above a whisper. The times when Arnaldo was most subdued were the times when he was most angry.
For a moment, all of them were silent. Then, Silva said: “The scene?”
“On the beach, just a short walk from the house. The killers arrived and escaped by boat. It left an impression on the sand. An inflatable, apparently.”
“Can they identify the size and type?”
“They’re working on it. Also, there was an additional set of footprints, a man wearing sandals. He stayed near the waterline, pacing back and forth, until they brought him Zanon. Zanon was made to kneel. At a given point, the guy also knelt, probably to get a better look at his handiwork.”
“Handiwork?”
“Zanon’s head was beaten to a pulp.”
“Pistol whipped?”
“Probably.”
“Did they take anything from the house?”
“No.”
“Was Zanon wearing his watch when they found him?”
“Yes.”
“So that rules out robbery.”
“It was revenge,” Arnaldo said. “The beating and the shots to the knees and groin speak to that. The person behind it not only wanted Zanon dead, he also wanted to see him suffer. He was the guy on the beach.”
“I agree,” Hector said. “And I’ll take it a step further: He was waiting there, because he didn’t cover his face. He wanted Zanon to know who was torturing him, who was killing him.”
“So who do we know,” Silva said, “who not only hated Zanon enough to want to torture and kill him, but also had the means to hire people, professional people, to help him do it?”
“That filho da puta, Orlando Muniz,” Arnaldo said, slapping the coffee table hard enough to rattle the cups in their saucers.
Silva nodded and turned to Hector. “Tell Mara to call Janus, let him know he should interrogate Muniz.”
“Not that it’s going to do any good,” Arnaldo said, “Muniz is an escroto, but he’s not stupid. He’ll have an ironclad alibi, we can be damned sure of that.”
“And damned sure of something else,” Hector said.
“Which is?” Silva said.
“If it was him, he’s going to go after you next.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
IN THE EARLY SUMMER of 1983, Orlando Muniz went to Buenos Aires.
Most Brazilians, back then, visited the city to enjoy the wine, the food and the nightlife for which the Argentinean capital was justly famous.
Not Muniz. He was there for one reason alone: to make money.
The country was going through another of its periodic crises. Cash was tight. Houses and apartments, estates and businesses, could be had for a song.
In five years, or ten, Orlando figured, they’d be worth three, four, five times more than they were then. And it was highly unlikely they’d ever be worth less.
He was sitting in a restaurant on the Costanera Norte, his knife sliding through an extremely rare bistec de lomo, when his real-estate agent, a woman who was helping him to gobble up one property after another, posed a question.
“Did you notice the wall?”
“Wall? What wall?”
“There,” she said and hooked a thumb.
He glanced over her shoulder—and froze.
“Are those real?”
She nodded. “Yes, Señor Muniz, all real, every last one of them.”
He put down his knife and fork, got up from his chair, and went for a closer look. The wall was papered entirely with banknotes, most of them of one peso, but there were fives and tens as well.
She rose and stood beside him.
“The old currency,” she said. “So worthless, now, that it’s cheaper per square meter than paint, cheaper, than wallpaper. When we switched from the old to the new, these pesos antiguos”—she tapped the wall with a lacquered forefinger—“were exchanged at a rate of ten-thousand to one, ten thousand antiguos for a single Peso Argentino. And you know what the Peso Argentino has come to be worth. Almost nothing! That’s hyperinflation for you. You won’t see that in many places in the world.”
Compared to us, she seemed to be saying, you Brazilians are amateurs. We Argentineans are the real experts at destroying a nation’s economy.
Back then, before they’d been humbled by subsequent events, arrogance had been an Argentinean national characteristic. Muniz had been exposed to a great deal of it in recent days.
“But the owner of this restaurant,” the woman went on, as they returned to their table, “didn’t put those banknotes there just because they were cheap.”
“No?” Muniz picked up his fork, speared a piece of meat and popped it into his mouth.
“No,” she said. “He was making a political statement. He is a great landholder in Corrientes Province. He raises the beef you’re eating.”
Muniz didn’t care a damn about the great landholder of Corrientes Province, but he appreciated the quality of the man’s beef—and he said so.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s good, isn’t it? That’s one of the reasons I brought you here.”
“One of the reasons?” he said, a trickle of blood escaping from one corner of his mouth.
She waited for him to blot it away with his napkin, and then got down to it: “He has always been rich, and he isn’t poor now, but by buying this restaurant, and renovating it, he has overextended himself.”
“You mean he needs an influx of cash?”
“Precisely, Señor.”
She put down her knife and fork, leaned back in her chair and looked at him expectantly.
Muniz cut another piece of meat and thought while he chewed. Then he swallowed and shook his head.
“I’m not interested,” he said. “I don’t know anything about the restaurant business, and I wouldn’t trust any Argentinean to run one for me.”
To her credit, the real estate agent, a nationalist to her fingertips, didn’t even raise a plucked eyebrow at the slur. “I’m not talking about this restaurant, Señor Muniz.”
“No? What are you talking about?”
“In addition to his estates on the pampas, and this restaurant, Señor Nogales—that’s his name, Señor Nogales—also owns a hacienda in Misiones Province.”
“Misiones Province. Where the hell is that?”
“It borders on your country. Also on Paraguay.”
“He wants to sell it?”
“He does Señor, and he’s been trying to sell it for the last several months. He’s had no takers.”
“What’s the land good for?”
“Agriculture.”
“What does he grow?”
“Yerba mate.”
“That stuff gauchos drink out of gourds?”
“That’s right, Señor. A great deal of it is consumed here in Argentina.”
“In the south of my country as well. So there’s a good market for that stuff, is there?”
“An excellent market, Señor. I even drink it myself.”
“I think it tastes like shit.”
Her smile didn’t falter. “But many, many people do not. And you, Señor, are an agriculturist yourself, are you not? You grow sugar cane? Coffee?”
“What if I do?”
“I’m told the land in Misiones Province is also suitable for the cultivation of other crops.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know them all, Señor. Sugar cane is one.”
“Now you’re talking. How big is the property?”
“Big, Señor. Twelve
hundred hectares.”
“Big? That’s not big.”
“For Argentina, Señor, it’s quite big.”
“And, for us, it’s nothing, but that’s not to say I’m not interested. Any houses? Outbuildings?”
“A large house, Señor. Various barns. Servants’ quarters. Modern agricultural machines of various types. Hookup to the electric and telephone networks and located just off a paved road. There’s even an airstrip.”
“An airstrip, eh? So I could install a reliable Brazilian manager in the house and fly in and out to check on the staff growing my sugar, or whatever the hell else I choose to grow?”
“There is already a manager, a man who has lived there with his family for many years. I am told he’s honest, reliable and—”
“And, if I buy the place, he’s out of a job. I’m not about to entrust a property of mine to some Argentinean. If we go any further with this, I’ll bring a man down from Brazil.”
Her smile was getting brittle, but it was still there. “You’re interested, Señor?”
“I might be. Let’s try offering half of whatever he’s asking.” Muniz picked up his empty bottle of Quilmes and waved it under her nose. “Order me another beer.”
Thus it was that Orlando Muniz came to own a property separated by little more than a river from the Hotel das Cataratas—which made it an ideal staging point from which to launch an attempt on the life of Mario Silva.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“WHEN I THINK OF suicide bombers,” Luis Chagas said, studying Salem Nabulsi’s photograph, “I think of guys with beards, not some kid with pimples.”
Chagas headed the Federal Police’s Foz do Iguaçu field office. He’d replaced Nestor Cambria when Cambria resigned to work with Plínio Saldana.
The photo had been provided by the Paraguayan authorities. It showed Nabulsi as he’d been at fifteen, when he’d applied for his national identity card.
“You’re not alone,” Danusa said, “but it’s a misconception. Many of them aren’t much older than he was back then.”
“Really?”
Chagas was in his mid-thirties, but already balding. He scratched the crown of his head where hair had once been.
“Teenagers are just about the most selfish creatures on the face of the earth,” he said. “I know. I’ve got one. How do you go about convincing a teenager to blow himself up?”
The three of them, Danusa, Chagas and Hector were in a high-rise in downtown Foz do Iguaçu. The window of Chagas’s office afforded a splendid prospect of the minarets and dome of the Omar Ibn Al-Khattab mosque, the largest in Brazil and the pride of the city’s Muslim community. But none of them were in a mood to appreciate the view.
“By convincing him,” Danusa said, “that the rewards of Paradise are greater than anything he can expect from this world, and that killing infidels is a quick and easy way to get there.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“Not at all,” she said. “Overcoming self-preservation, which is what it takes, can’t be done overnight. It’s a question of years. And it can’t be done at all if the person being brainwashed is already locked into an adult mindset. That’s why the mullahs like to get them young.”
“Mullahs? So it’s done by clerics?”
“Mullahs aren’t always clerics. They’re Islamic scholars, respected for their knowledge of the Qur’an, but there are those among them who bend and twist that knowledge. They sell their students on martyrdom, and paradise, and the houris waiting for them there, and send them out into the world to maim and kill.”
“And they do all that in those madrasas I keep hearing about, right?”
“Generally, yes.”
So why don’t we just crack down and close them all?”
“Because most are perfectly innocent places run by well-intentioned people.”
“So there are good madrasas and bad madrasas?”
“There are. But the only way to find out which is which is by making inquiries in the Islamic community. And many of the people you talk to will tell you good madrasas are bad madrasas, and vice-versa.”
This time, instead of scratching his bald spot, Chagas rubbed it. “Depending on their personal convictions?”
“Exactly.”
“Which is why,” Hector said, finally joining in, “we’d like to know more about the Muslim community around here in general—and about the madrasas in particular.”
Chagas kept rubbing, but he moved his hand from his head to his chin.
“I’ve got just the guy to help you with that. One of my best men. Raised locally. Egyptian parents. Speaks Arabic. His name’s Abasi Ragab.”
“Sounds perfect,” Hector said. “Why don’t we get him in here?”
“He’s off today. Where are you staying?”
“The Cataratas.”
“Nice. Lovely place. I’ll arrange for a meet. What else can I help you with?”
“The explosives.”
Hector filled him in on what Lefkowitz had learned by tracing the taggants and said, “So we’ve got to talk to someone within the Paraguayan military.”
Chagas shook his head. “The man you want to talk to,” he said, “is Matias Chaparro.”
“We’ve already scheduled an appointment with him. But he’s police, not military.”
“Doesn’t matter. He’s still the guy to talk to. Matias has his finger on the pulse of everything that happens around here. Everything dishonest, that is.”
“If he’s dishonest, what makes you think he’d be willing to talk to us?”
“Because I doubt Matias would approve of the stuff having been used in a terrorist attack. If he was involved in the deal, and the odds are he was, it’s my guess they told him it was going to a drug gang. He would have found that acceptable.”
“But not that the stuff would be used by terrorists?”
“No.”
“A moral objection?”
Chagas shook his head. “Matias isn’t moral. He’s purely practical. Terrorist attacks call down too much heat. They’re not good for business. That’s what he’d object to.”
“I don’t think he and my uncle are likely to get along.”
Chagas didn’t ask who Hector’s uncle was, a sure sign he knew it already.
“You might be surprised,” he said. “Matias can be quite charming. Comes from a good family, has a university education, is well-read and all that.”
“But he’s crooked.”
“He wouldn’t have been appointed if he wasn’t.”
“Then I guarantee you, my uncle won’t like him. Have you heard of a guy named Ismail Khouri?”
Chagas shook his head. “The name doesn’t ring any bells. Who’s he?”
“A Lebanese Muslim, lives here in Foz, has a business in Ciudad del Este.”
“So he’s a crook?”
“In his case, we have no reason to think so.”
“No?” Chagas looked dubious. “Let’s see.”
He picked up his phone, gave Khouri’s name, and asked to check the files. When he hung up, he said, “Why are you interested in him?”
“He’s a possible source of information, a friend of a friend.”
“Friend or not, it doesn’t mean he’ll talk to you,” Chagas said. “If he knows anything, and he passes it along, it could get him and his whole family killed. He’ll know that. They all know that. It’s the reason that getting reliable information out of anybody in this town is like pulling teeth.”
The door opened and his secretary came in. She was Chinese, slim and elegant.
“Thanks, Mei,” he said.
“Não há de que,” she said in accent-free Portuguese. “Anything else?”
“Not at the moment,” Chagas said.
She nodded to him, smiled at the visitors, and went out. Chagas opened the file, a thin one, and flipped through it.
“Surprise, surprise,” he said. “It looks like your man Khouri is honest after all. Or, at least, what pas
ses for honest in this part of the world.” He looked up. “But that’s not to say he doesn’t make payoffs to the Paraguayan authorities. You can’t run a business around here if you don’t.”
“So I’ve heard. Let’s talk a bit about Jamil Al-Fulan.”
Chagas’s eyes narrowed, and his nose wrinkled. “That bastard?” he said. “We’ve got a file on him thirty centimeters thick. Want to see it?”
Hector shook his head. “We requested a copy as soon as his name came up. We’ve already been through it.”
“So why are you asking?”
“We want you to speculate.”
“About what?”
Hector told Chagas about the conversation with Nestor’s wife, and also about the rumor they’d picked up from Jaco Nassib concerning Plínio Saldana.
“I was aware,” Chagas said, “that Al-Fulan was behind the threats to Nestor. We couldn’t prove it, of course, much less do anything about it. But that one about Saldana being a crook? That’s new for me. First time I’ve heard it.”
“And yet you don’t seem surprised.”
“I’m not. You work here for a while, and you wind up with a low opinion of most politicians. Matter of fact, you wind up with a low opinion of most cops.”
“I don’t like to say this, but it has to be asked: Nestor worked here, and he left to work for Saldana. You think he might have been crooked too?”
“Nestor? No way! Nestor was as honest as the day is long. If he had an inkling Saldana was involved in anything dishonest, he wouldn’t have taken the job.”
“I’m glad to hear you say it,” Hector said. “I liked Nestor.”
“I more than liked him,” Chagas said. “He was a close friend.”
“So you weren’t happy to see him leave? Even though it meant a promotion for you?”
“On the contrary. I was happy to see him go. As long as he remained here his life was in danger. No doubt about it. I went out to the airport to see him and Bruna off—and I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw them going up the stairs onto the plane.”
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