Джеймс Паттерсон - The Games

That annoyed her. “Slum dwellers? Mr. Morgan, they prefer the term favela people. This group... what did you call it?”

“Favela Justice,” Tavia said.

“Well, I don’t know who they are, but I’m inclined to believe their charges.”

“Why?”

“Government contractors overcharging and paying off politicians in Brazil? It’s been a constant story since, I don’t know, the beginning of Brazil.”

I glanced at Tavia, who shrugged, said, “That’s true.”

Lopes fought a yawn.

“We should go, then,” Tavia said. “And you should sleep, Mariana. We appreciate the help.”

“Have I been of any?” she asked, getting up wearily.

“Some,” I said.

“Well, as I said, call Amelia,” Lopes said. “She knows more about the girls than I do.”

The eleven o’clock news in Brazil and the cable news shows were dominated by Favela Justice and the plight of Andrew Wise. Several broadcasts featured aerial images of various World Cup and Olympic venues that Wise Enterprises had helped build, including the athletes’ village in Barra da Tijuca.

“The charges are price gouging and financial oppression by a man who benefited greatly from the construction boom,” one newscaster brayed. “What’s next in this strange story? Stay tuned as it unfolds.”

“Enough,” Tavia said, and she shut off the television.

I handed her a glass of excellent Argentine Malbec. “Here you go. Decompression, stage one.”

Her cell phone rang. She sighed, looked at it. “Amelia Lopes, finally.”

Like her adoptive mother, Amelia spoke excellent English, and Tavia put her on speaker.

“Yes, of course I remember the Warren girls,” Amelia said. “Very sharp and very — how do you say? — sympathetic.”

When we told her the girls’ real surname, she figured it out fast. “They are the daughters of this guy who’s all over the television news right now?”

“The same,” Tavia said.

“They told me they came from a privileged background, but I had no idea they were...”

I asked, “Was there anyone at the orphanage who was particularly close to them, someone they possibly confided in?”

“You mean someone they might have told about their real identities?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I thought I was close to them, or as close as you can get to people you’ve known for a week, but they never mentioned having a different last name,” Amelia said. “I think I’d remember that.”

“I’m sure you would,” I said. “Your mother says you’re doing fieldwork.”

“Almost got it wrapped up. Another two or three weeks and I’ll be ready to start writing.”

“And what are you studying?”

She paused, yawned, said, “I’m sorry, it’s been a long day. I’m pursuing a doctorate in socioeconomics, focusing on one town in southern Brazil for my dissertation. How are the girls?”

“They’re both going to be fine,” Tavia said.

“Would you tell them hello from me if you see them?” Amelia asked.

“We certainly will,” I said. “And we appreciate the call back.”

“Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”

“If you think of anything, you’ll give us a call?” Tavia asked.

“I can do that,” Lopes’s daughter said. “Thank you.”

The line went dead. We returned to our Malbec, and my hand found Tavia’s. Her hands were beautiful. Her fingers were long, slender, and expressive. She used her hands when she talked, like they were speaking another language.

My thumb rubbed her palm. “You calm me down, you know. Even when things get crazy, having you near calms me down.”

“So you’re saying I’m a sedative?”

“No,” I said, and laughed. “More like a glass or two of, I don’t know, spectacular Malbec?”

“I can live with that,” she said with a slight, sly smile as her index finger trailed up my forearm. “Do you want to finish our wine and go to the second stage of decompression before we sleep?”

“Decompression, stage two,” I said, leaning in to kiss her. “Best idea I’ve heard all day.”

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

3:00 p.m.

Fifty-Two Hours Before the Olympic Games Open

Cherie Wise walked to the window in the sitting area of her suite at the Marriott and looked out through a narrow gap in the curtains.

“I feel like food,” she said.

“You can order room service,” I said.

“No,” she said. “I feel like I am the food, and the mob out there is salivating at the idea of eating me and my family.”

I could see how she’d feel that way. Matt Lauer, the Today show host already in Rio for the games, started off early that morning with a live stand-up in front of the hotel; he gave a brief synopsis of Wise’s life intercut with sections of the Favela Justice video and references to the billion-dollars-in-gold penalty.

At last count there had been fifteen cameras on Avenida Atlântica aimed at the Marriott and twice that number of journalists on the sidewalk and white-sand beach.

The front desk had received calls requesting interviews with Cherie from dozens of reporters, including Lauer, who was the most persistent. Either he or his producer left a message every hour on the hour.

Tavia and I had spent the morning interviewing the man who’d overseen the Wise girls at the sanitation project in Campo Grande and the woman who ran the Brazil branch of Shirt Off My Back, the NGO they’d been working for at the time they were kidnapped.

The sanitation guy had called the Wise girls “distracted,” which seemed to mean he didn’t think they worked hard enough. That ran counter to Amelia’s and Mariana’s descriptions of the twins. But then again, latrine duty is nothing to get excited about.

The woman in charge of the NGO said she’d never met Natalie or Alicia. Left with no idea how or where the girls had been identified and targeted, Tavia and I split up. I went to be with Cherie while Tavia fetched the girls, who’d been given the okay to leave the hospital.

At three fifteen, there was a knock on the door. I opened it, and Natalie entered. She looked high on painkillers and pressed an ice pack to her bruised face as she walked by me in search of her mother. Following her, Alicia looked miserable. She was paler, and her eyes were sunken.

“Why release them from the hospital?” I muttered to Tavia as she came in behind Alicia. “They look like hell.”

“The doctors figured it would be fine as long as they were monitored by a nurse,” Tavia said. “There’s one on the way.”

We joined the Wises back in the suite’s sitting area; the girls sat on the sofa flanking their mother, who had her arms around both of them.

“My head still hurts,” Alicia said. “Why can’t I have something like Natalie’s getting? She’s sitting there with that goofy smile and I’ve got, like, the worst headache ever.”

Tavia said, “The doctors don’t like to use narcotics with concussions.”

“When the nurse gets here, we’ll see what we can do,” Cherie promised.

My cell rang. It was Sci.

“We got a Zip file just now from Favela Justice,” he said.

“Forward it to Tavia’s e-mail and then get to work on it,” I said.

“Coming right at you.”

I hung up, looked at Cherie, said, “It’s here.”

Wise’s wife blanched, said, “Girls, there’s something you’re going to see that you won’t like, but Jack and I think it’s important for you to watch in case you recognize anything or anybody.”

“What kind of thing?” Natalie asked.

“You’ll see,” Tavia said, getting out her computer and calling up her Gmail account. “By the way, we talked to a friend of yours last night.”