Robert Fish - The Fugitive

It is not known as yet what action can be taken by American authorities should Busch decide, as other American fugitives have recently done, to adopt Brazil as his new home, since as yet there is no extradition treaty between the two countries.

He read the article through twice, carefully. It was more or less what they had decided on, but he still wondered at the precipitous release. Ah, well, he thought, maybe it wasn’t too bad after all. If he could get his passport from the American Embassy, it simply meant that he could get started sooner. Started, that is, if anyone took the bait. He left the paper face up on the dresser and left the room.

In the lobby he changed some dollars for cruzeiros and asked the doorman to call a taxi and give the driver directions. As he waited he looked about him, wondering a bit at the lack of attention; he had expected somehow crowds, reporters, the curious, possibly even the police, but other than a ragged shoeshine boy who studied his shoes judiciously and then straggled on, the scene was peaceful. Too early, he thought, and much better this way. With my passport in my pocket, I’ll be able to face them. The doorman finished giving explicit directions to the driver who had sat stolidly through the lecture, his boredom complete at this unrequested and unneeded help. As always in a land whose language was foreign to him, the little man resented the need for outside help, but Portuguese was not among his repertoire of European tongues. English, be thought; they say you can get by anywhere in the world if you speak English. That is, of course, if you never leave your hotel. Or if you stop eating.

The taxi shot through the traffic of Copacabana with practiced ease, barely avoiding the home-going bathers who dashed between the moving cars with loudly voiced but cheerful animosity for all vehicles, moving or parked. Seen from street level the ocean breakers were huge, towering over the beach to crash and roll almost to the patterned sidewalk. In the distance, rounded rocky islands poked their heads above the incredibly blue sea; a white sliver of a steamship ran jauntily for the harbor. Lovely, he thought, oh, lovely!

They cut through a series of tunnels to the open Guanabara Bay, and the full impact of the city was revealed in a breathtaking panorama. From the sky that morning, while circling to land, the tangled pattern of hills and sparkling water had held the latent promise of fulfillment of tourist-agency-poster beauty, but he had been too tired and despondent coming in from the airport to pay proper heed to his surroundings. He faintly recalled the tattered upholstery of the cab, and the fact that the rear seat ash tray was overflowing; other than that the trip from Galeao to the Mirabelle was one blank, a persistent jostling through which his drugged mind had attempted to encompass the tragedy of the lost passport. Now, a few moments away, his passport waited; he refused to consider the strange circumstances of the Embassy call, but gave himself over completely to the view.

To the left and above all, mastering and dominating the sweeping hills that fell in mottled green folds away from it, rose the majestic, sheer face of Corcovado, crowned with the hovering white figure of the Cristo Redemptor guarding in perpetual benevolence the lush vitality of the city below, watching in impersonal piety over the near saints and closer sinners that struggled through life in the sea-fringed valley at his feet. In the clear light of the lowering sun, each gaunt striation of the rocky tower could be distinguished; the mountain seemed to have been thrust out of the sea in some ancient age just for the purpose of eventually holding this calm statue.

And there, across a narrow spit of bay to the right, hovering over the yawning yachts moored in its lengthening shadows, loomed the famous Pão de Açúcar — Sugar Loaf — a huge Gulliver tethered to the land by the puny cables that led to its peak. Even as he watched, a small buglike car detached itself from the summit and slowly inched its way downward. Flocks of birds, tiny check marks silhouetted against the fading sky, dipped and swirled over the harbor. In the extreme distance across the wide water, tiny white blocks of apartment buildings marked Niteroi on the far shore, the heavy blue hills rising behind them, dwarfing them. My God! he thought. Who would have ever imagined that I would eventually actually see Rio de Janeiro! What fantastic beauty! Someday I shall have to return here as a simple tourist, go through customs with a clear conscience, and step out on the street with no problems, no worries. And one thing is definite — not as Hans Busch. Let us hope that these next few weeks will see the end of Mr. Hans Busch!

The drive led along the water’s edge. Across the tree-lined avenue luxury apartments marched in solid phalanx to the city’s downtown skyline, blocked against the afternoon sky in the distance in sweeping rectangles and squares. Royal palms towered above the checkered sidewalk, the warm breeze ruffling their broad leaves. A traffic light halted their progress; across the road from them as they waited he idly watched a gang of barebacked workers unloading sand from a battered truck parked beneath the planked façade of a construction job. Their muscled black backs shone as they rhythmically dipped and swayed with each shovelful thrown to the ground. And all of you there, he thought suddenly; what are you doing? Why aren’t you out on the beach sleeping or kicking a ball about, or else off in the shadows of these wonderfully wooded mountains, making soft love? Why do you sweat in the hot sun, building the archaeological discoveries of some future age, the ruins of a hundred or a thousand years hence? What is this vast urgency to construct tomorrow’s rubble today? The time capsule is endless, he thought sadly; it is we who are so terribly finite.

Maybe, he thought, as the taxi pulled away from the traffic light, maybe they do what they do for the same reason I do what I do. We have all been conditioned to believe that what we do is important. Is what I’m doing important? He frowned and leaned back in the swaying cab. Beauty is intoxicating, he thought. I’d better be very careful in Rio.

The taxi drew up before an imposing white building with solid glass doors set beneath modern aluminum block lettering. A neat fern-filled garden at one corner broke the stern austerity of its simple lines. Even against the clean beauty of the other Brazilian architecture about it, the edifice announced dignity and a lofty disregard for cost. It was the American Embassy, and he paid the taxi and went inside. The cool dusk of the high-vaulted entrance calmed the strange restlessness that had overcome him in the taxi, and he approached the desk with a return to normality.

The mention of Mr. Murray’s name brought neither accusing glances nor shocked surprise; he was directed quite routinely to a room on the eighth floor. Let it go quickly, he prayed; let him give me my passport and show me the door. Let him be too disgusted with my stupidity even to repeat his form lecture. He paused. Let him even give me the lecture, be thought, just so long as he also gives me my passport.

The elevator swallowed him soundlessly and deposited him with no sensation of motion in a corridor lined with black and white marble. At the far end he saw the number he wanted, but the anteroom was empty and he sat down to wait for someone to appear, too impressed by the massive inner door and heavy silence to think of knocking. Magazines were neatly stacked on a small table beside his chair, and he was considering whether or not to disturb their precise geometry when the door swung open, and he looked up to find a medium-sized, nondescript man studying him in calm appraisal.