The John Milton Series Boxset 4

by Mark Dawson

  Paulo reached the marketplace where Estrada da Gávea swung around to the left. There was a narrow passage to the right that led between Bar da Lúcia and a store selling parts for the mopeds that were one of the favoured forms of transport for getting up and down the Hill. Paulo turned around and looked down the Hill. He was high up; from here he could see Gávea to the east and the lagoon at the foot of the Hill, the stretch of blue-green water that separated the valley of Botafogo from the gilded towers of the rich middle class who lived in Ipanema and Leblon. He thought about the banks that had their offices down there and how they would have happily lent the money that he needed to their customers, men and women who would just fritter it away on a new car or a holiday. But the banks would not entertain the likes of him. The security guards on the doors would not let him cross the threshold, so, because he had nowhere else to go, he had to find another way.

  He resumed walking. The alley was just wide enough for two people to pass, and, in those spots where barrels of cooking oil or pallets of rancid vegetables had been left against the wall, it was necessary to wait for a gap before continuing along the alley. He stepped over an open sewer and then a dead and rotting cat, and, at the next junction, he paused again. He could follow Rua Um to the southwest, where it would, eventually, deposit him at the foot of the mountain. Or he could turn left and continue into the heart of Garanhão’s domain. He looked that way now and saw the seemingly idle women and children sitting with their backs against the walls or talking animatedly with one another. Paulo had never had reason to come up here before, but he had lived on the streets for long enough to know that they were lookouts and that the news of a newcomer’s approach would, even now, be making its way to Garanhão’s guards.

  The drug trade was ferocious and vicious, with gangs always on the lookout for ways to expand into the territories of their rivals. Security was important, and this teeming district of alleys and passageways offered a natural advantage that a man like the don would be able to exploit. There was no prospect of making an armed incursion without his knowing of it, and, for anyone foolish enough to try, Paulo knew that there would be dozens, perhaps hundreds, of armed men in the buildings that fronted the passageway who would be able to flood it with crossfire and turn it into a killing zone.

  He felt sick with fear and doubt, but then he closed his eyes and pictured his daughter’s face once more.

  He couldn’t go back.

  He swallowed on a dry throat, clenched fists that were damp with sweat, and walked on.

  22

  Milton took one of the Range Rovers with Drake, leaving Berg and Hawkins to take the second. Drake tried to deflect the abrasive introduction that Milton had received from the others, but Milton told him to forget it.

  “They’re good,” Drake said, still defensive.

  “I’m sure they are,” Milton said.

  “But?”

  “I don’t have to like them to be able to work with them.”

  “True,” Drake conceded. “And it’s not like we’re going to have to do anything.”

  The traffic was heavy, and it took them thirty minutes to reach Ipanema. The Saverin family’s accommodation was on Avenida Vieira Souto, a busy road that followed the coastline from east to west and linked the middle-class districts of São Conrado, Ipanema and Copacabana. Milton looked to his right and saw the ribbon of beach and, beyond the golden fringe, the waves that rolled in and out, the sun sparkling on the water. He turned to his left and saw the buildings, a collection of glass and steel high-rises that he had no doubt were extremely expensive. As they rolled slowly onward, Milton caught the occasional glimpse between the upthrusting skyscrapers of the multicoloured habitations that had seemingly been dropped onto the flanks of the hills that characterised this part of the city.

  Drake noticed that he was staring. “The favelas,” he noted. “That’s Rocinha. And over there is Vidigal. I wouldn’t go into either of them.”

  Milton gazed at the view: a shifting parallax with the vivid backdrop of the lush green rainforest, the crazy patchwork of the favelas and, standing against both, the sleek apartment blocks and businesses of the middle-class zone. Rich and poor; luxury and penury; all of it cheek by jowl. Milton thought it an apt juxtaposition.

  Drake flicked the indicator and pulled over to the side of the road. Milton looked up at a tall building that was, judging by the sign above the door, reserved for apartments.

  “We’re here,” Drake said.

  Berg and Hawkins stayed down on the road in the second Range Rover while Milton followed Drake inside the building. The lobby area might have been smart, once, but now it was faded. The windows were dusty, and the posters and sheets of information that had been stuck to a corkboard on the wall were several years out of date. The space felt neglected and unloved.

  Drake led the way to the two elevators and pressed the button.

  “He can be quite aggressive,” Drake said as they waited for the car to arrive.

  A bell chimed and one set of doors slid apart. Drake went inside and pressed the button for the sixth floor. Milton settled next to him as the doors closed and the lift took them up.

  “He’ll want to be satisfied that you’re up to the job,” Drake went on. “He says he has to meet everyone I put on the detail. There was one guy—another American, Prince, friend of Hawkins—he didn’t like him. No idea why, but he said no, and I had to take him off the crew.”

  “So be on my best behaviour?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Take it easy. I won’t show you up.”

  The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. Milton waited, letting Drake exit first, and then followed close behind.

  The sixth floor comprised a corridor that ran to the left and right, with the elevator lobby in the middle. Drake went left and stopped outside the door for flat sixty. There was a bell, and Drake held his finger against it. Milton heard the buzzer inside and then the sound of a raised voice. Drake straightened up and put his shoulders back. He was keen to make a good impression. This was his business, Milton supposed, and the Saverins were Drake’s best clients. He was being professional. Milton had never really considered going into business for himself, and seeing his old friend making such an effort to impress someone else confirmed to him that he was not suited to it. Milton knew that he was prone to dark moods, and, knowing that, he couldn’t think of too many things that would be worse than his livelihood depending upon what someone else thought of him. That didn’t mean that he thought less of Drake—to the contrary, it was impressive what he was trying to build—but rather that a life like this was not for him. He knew what he preferred: an itinerant existence, a month or two in one place and then moving on, happy in his own company, no one to annoy, and no one to annoy him.

  They heard a key turn in the lock and then two bolts as they were pushed back. The door was opened by a woman. Milton guessed that she was in her early forties, with creamy dark skin, black hair and dark eyes that flashed with suspicion until she recognised Drake.

  “Hello, Shawn,” she said, in excellent English.

  “Hello, senhora Saverin.”

  The woman took a step back to admit Drake, and Milton saw that there was a young girl sheltering behind her legs. Milton had little experience with children, but he guessed that she was five or six. She was slender, tall for her age, and had the same brown skin and dark eyes as the woman, who must have been her mother.

  Drake knelt down so that he was at the girl’s height. “Hello, Alícia,” he said. “How are you?”

  “I’m very well, thank you, Shawn.”

  “Ready for this afternoon?”

  The girl didn’t answer, shuffling nervously from foot to foot.

  “She’s been practising all week,” her mother said, reaching around to tousle her daughter’s hair. “She’s very excited.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be excellent,” Drake said, standing.

  Milton stayed outside the doorway and observed
the conversation: it was evident that Drake had formed relationships with the two people whom he had been paid to protect. Valentina Saverin had an easy, relaxed attitude around him; Milton was impressed, especially so given that Drake was carrying a weapon and that the holstered Browning was visible on his belt. Alícia Saverin might not have realised the significance of the pistol, but, despite her shyness, it was evident that she was comfortable with Drake, too.

  Milton was still outside when a fourth person stepped into the hallway. He was tall, with thick black hair and a neatly clipped beard. He was wearing a suit, a pastel blue shirt and a dark blue tie with a subtle pattern of white dots. His eyes were as dark as the woman’s, but his stare was given weight by heavy brows.

  “Shawn,” the man said.

  “Good morning, Judge Saverin.”

  Felipe Saverin looked beyond his wife and daughter, beyond Drake, until his gaze fixed on Milton.

  “Senhor Smith?”

  “That’s right,” Milton said.

  “Come in, please. I’d like to talk to you.”

  23

  Paulo reached Laboriaux and the top of the Hill. It was quieter here, almost peaceful, the atmosphere more serene than the clamour of the rest of Rocinha. The elevated position offered a panoramic view of the city. Gávea was to the right, with its mansions and villas sliced into the rainforest, oblongs of crystal blue marking out the pools from which the fortunate residents could look back at the Hill. The lagoon was behind those residences, with the affluent districts of Lagoa, Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon encircling it. The thought struck Paulo that this was the best spot to observe the comings and goings in Rocinha. Its position, apart from providing the perfect place for a lookout, also made it easy to defend. In the unlikely event that a rival gang or the police made it all the way up here without being spotted, the maze of streets and alleys would make it easy to mount ambushes or, if the situation demanded it, effect an escape.

  There were men, women and children on the street, some seemingly going about their business while others relaxed or played. The buildings here were often built with lajes: flat concrete platforms that usually housed large water butts, strong enough to withstand additional storeys when the funds of the owners allowed. Paulo saw lookouts—olheiros—lounging on the lajes, able to monitor the comings and goings on the streets below. He felt the eyes of the olheiros on him, the itchy sensation between his shoulder blades as he set off. He followed the road around to the warehouses that he had been able to see once he was three-quarters of the way up. Everyone knew that Garanhão was based here, and that some of the warehouses were used to facilitate the drug business that had made him a very rich man.

  Felipe had sent a text with instructions on where he should go, and he followed them to a two-storey building set back from the road, opposite the row of warehouses. He approached it slowly, still entertaining the thought that he could turn around and scurry back down the Hill. Two young men—perhaps still in their late teens—idled out of the building and paused as they saw him. The man at the front of the pair was holding an AK-47 as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  “Who are you?”

  “Paulo de Almeida.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m here to see Don Rodrigues.”

  “Yeah?”

  “My uncle spoke to him.” He started to panic, and the words tripped out haphazardly. “He said I should be here for midday.”

  “Wait,” the man said, turning to his partner and saying something that Paulo couldn’t hear.

  The second man took out a phone and turned away as he made a call. He put the phone away, turned back, and cocked his finger.

  “Come with me.”

  24

  Milton and Drake followed Judge Saverin deeper into the apartment. Milton got the very clear impression that the Saverins, while comfortably off, were not rich. They had passed more opulent buildings as they had travelled east from Drake’s storage facility. This building, by contrast, was a little old and tired. The fatigue continued into the apartment. It was clean and tidy—almost scrupulously so—but the furniture was of only middling quality, and the apartment itself was small. Milton had no idea how much a judge in Brazil would be paid, but he doubted that it would be a fortune. He wondered how much it would cost to hire a four-man security detail and decided it would have to be in the order of several hundred dollars a day. Would the government pay it? If not, how hard must the Saverins have had to push the family budget in order to find the money? Milton imagined that the judge could have turned down the case that Drake had described, remained in Curitiba, and prosecuted crimes that did not have the allure—and the danger—of this particular scandal. He would have saved himself and his family a lot of money and stress. That he had not taken the easier path immediately endeared him to Milton. It suggested that he was a man of principle.

  Saverin led the way into a compact sitting room. There was space for a settee and an armchair, and, on a low stand, a large television was tuned to a news bulletin on Globo. Saverin took a remote control from the chair and, with a stab in the direction of the TV, he switched it off.

  “Please,” he said, gesturing at the settee. “Sit.”

  Milton did as he was told.

  Saverin sat down in the armchair and crossed one long leg over the other. Milton gazed at him and then at the view outside the window. The apartment might not have been the most stunning inside—it paled next to Drake’s stunning rental, for example—but the view from the window was stupendous. There was nothing between the apartment and the ocean, and, by turning left and right, Milton was able to see all the landmarks of the city: the statue of Christ, Sugarloaf Mountain, and the stick-like figures of the thousands of men and women and children who had gathered on the golden crescent of beach below.

  “Rio is beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Milton drew his focus back. “Yes,” he said. “It certainly is.”

  “Yet, if one were to walk five minutes behind this building, you would be in the heart of one of the most dangerous places in Brazil. In all of South America. It is a city of contradictions.”

  Drake had not given Milton much of an idea of what he might expect from the judge; he hadn’t warned him that he was likely to begin a conversation with someone he had never met with a philosophical flight of fancy. His English, though, was excellent; it carried a slight accent, but not an especially obvious one. Milton suspected that the judge had received his education abroad.

  Saverin let the silence persist for a moment and then gestured first to Drake and then to Milton. “Senhor Drake says that he will vouch for you. That is good of him, but you will be looking after my wife and daughter. I will need more than that.”

  “What would you like to know?”

  “How do you know senhor Drake?”

  “He’s an old colleague.”

  “From the army?”

  “That’s right. We were in the Special Air Service together.”

  “We served together for several years,” Drake interposed with just a little too much eagerness.

  Milton knew from what Drake had told him that Saverin had already been given all of this information; it appeared that the judge was cross-examining him for himself.

  “And when did you leave the army?”

  “A while ago,” Milton said, unsure of how he would answer if Saverin probed too deeply. He certainly couldn’t tell the truth, and Milton got the impression that the judge would not easily swallow a lie.

  “And since then?”

  Drake stiffened next to Milton; he didn’t want Milton to reveal to a client that he was proposing to put a cook on the team that would protect his family.

  “This and that,” Milton said. “I’ve done some private work here and there. I’ve kept my hand in.”

  Saverin pursed his lips and regarded Milton coolly. The man had an air of studiousness to him, but, beneath that, it was obvious that his character was underpinned with steel.
Milton held his gaze, finding that he had the urge to straighten his back and square off his shoulders. He wondered whether Saverin was going to tell him that his services wouldn’t be necessary, but, just as the pause was beginning to become uncomfortable, the judge gave a single short nod of his head.

  He turned to Drake. “You will vouch for him?”

  “Absolutely,” Drake replied.

  “Then it is good,” Saverin said, and Milton could almost feel the tension drain away from Drake. “The other man on your team. The man that senhor Smith is replacing. What happened?”

  “He’s indisposed,” Drake explained. “I asked John if he would stand in, and he said that he would. There’ll be no difference in the service. John has experience of close-quarters protection. Diplomats, government officials… the same as me.”

  Saverin looked at Milton. “You know who you’d be looking after?”

  “Your wife and daughter,” Milton said. “I understand the responsibility.”

  “Rio is a dangerous city. It is particularly dangerous for my family and me.”

  “With respect,” Milton said, “I’ve guarded diplomats outside the Green Zone in Baghdad. I’ll be very careful, but Rio doesn’t present anything I haven’t seen before.”

  “Fine,” Saverin said. He turned to Drake. “But you’ll still be in charge?”