Джеймс Паттерсон - The Games

“This is Brazil; once I’d been pushed aside, there was no way for the politicians to let me back in without admitting they’d been wrong. That would have humiliated them. Your lives were put at risk so that would not happen.”

I thought back two years, seeing a dimension to the day of the World Cup final that I’d been blind to before. Rather than bringing in the expert, in order to save face, the politicians had left the decisions up to doctors with no experience of the disease. It worked out for Tavia and me, and I was grateful, but what had happened to Castro was unjust and reckless.

Cardoso turned on the screen again, showed the two different cells.

Cradling his elbow, tapping his lips, and transfixed by the images, Dr. Castro moved closer, whispered, “Nine heads.”

“What does that mean?” General da Silva asked.

Castro didn’t answer, but his face grew graver by the moment.

“Doctor?”

“I can’t be sure,” he said at last. “But I would think it means the virus that produces the nine heads, Hydra-9, if you will, is more deadly and contagious than Hydra-6, which was more deadly and contagious than Hydra-4.”

“Is that true?” I asked. “The more heads on the cells, the deadlier the virus?”

“Without further examination of someone who’s contracted this mutation of the disease, I can’t say for sure, Mr. Morgan,” Castro said. “But it follows, doesn’t it?”

General da Silva chewed on that before saying, “As a precaution, how do we treat something like this?”

The doctor’s cutting side returned. “You don’t, General. Why? Because my requests for grants to create a vaccine or an antiviral for it were denied repeatedly by the Cruz Institute and the government.”

There was silence in the pathology department until da Silva said, “Give me best-case and worst-case scenarios.”

Castro studied the images again, said, “You might have one or two victims and no more. Like the last time. That’s best-case. Worst-case, Hydra-9 is highly communicable and already spreading and you face a public-health crisis of monumental proportions.”

“Jesus Christ,” da Silva said. “Riots and a deadly virus outbreak. It’s over. The Rio games are done.”

“Not yet,” I said. “Luna Santos died days ago and there hasn’t been another case since. Is that how it works, Dr. Castro? The outbreak, I mean? Hydra comes on in spates of activity and then, as mysteriously as it surfaces, it goes into hiding and mutates to more deadly strains?”

Castro pondered that. “The Amazon outbreak was swift, from the original case to more than thirty in less than four days. During the World Cup, there were two deaths within moments of each other and then a third the following day.”

“And after that nothing, in both cases,” da Silva said, perking up. “So, given the virus’s behavior before and the fact that it’s been days since we found Santos, could we already be beyond the life cycle of the virus? Catastrophe averted?”

Castro hesitated and then said, “I see where you’re going, but I can’t say the outbreak is over for certain. Although I would call the growing amount of time since the initial case a very positive sign.”

Da Silva beamed. “I can tell the president your opinion?”

“You can,” Castro said, bowing his head. “You’ll call me if there are other cases that flare up?”

“You’ll be the first person we call, Doc,” the general promised.

We all shook hands with the virologist and walked away with his phone number. Da Silva was on his cell already, returning his focus to favela pacification. In front of the hospital, a police officer on horseback was herding along a crowd of poor people seeking medical attention.

Something about the scene gave me pause, and then, out of the blue, I had an odd feeling, a vague inkling of something that I couldn’t name or describe. Da Silva’s car came around. Tavia and I hailed a cab and headed back to Private Rio.

“I can’t stop thinking about Hydra-9,” Tavia said. “The virus going viral, I mean. It’s just too damn...”

“Petrifying,” I said.

That odd feeling, that inkling, was still nagging at me. In my mind’s eye, I saw the cop on horseback and the crowd of desperately poor people wanting help. I saw Luna Santos, her body drained of blood and scorched by fire. Then I saw the look on Dr. Castro’s face when he first saw the images of Hydra-9-destroyed cells in the pathology lab. What was revealed in that expression?

The vision of Castro at that moment became sharper in my memory the more I thought about it. Finally, I recognized the doctor’s expression for what it was, and the vague inkling became insight.

I opened my eyes, said, “Isn’t it funny how sometimes it just takes a different perspective to see things clearly?”

“How’s that?” Tavia said.

“I want to know more about Dr. Castro.”

“Why?”

“Because I think I saw admiration in his eyes.”

Castro closed the door to his office and leaned his sweaty head against it. Catastrophe averted. Wasn’t that what General da Silva had said?

The doctor wanted to laugh and cry because it was true. Catastrophe averted. The Olympics would go on, as would his detailed scheme.

Still, he couldn’t help but think about the Private investigators, Morgan and Reynaldo. Had they seemed suspicious of him? Dr. Castro closed his eyes, replayed the entire discussion. No. Neither of them had so much as raised an eyebrow at him.

And he’d been careful, kept his separate lives separate, kept everything flying below the radar, and he would make sure it stayed that way for the next thirty hours. It was all he needed. It was all he would ever need.

A worrisome thought niggled: People wouldn’t remember that he and Luna had danced at the samba club, would they? How would people even know that Luna had been at the club?

They wouldn’t. He’d covered his tracks with Luna and with poor—

A knock came at his office door. Castro broke into a sheen of cold sweat. Had they come back? Had he missed something?

With a trembling hand, the doctor opened the door and found one of his pretty little graduate students standing there. What was her name?

“Dr. Castro, have you seen Ricardo?”

Ricardo. That was better.

“No,” he said. “Why?”

“No one’s seen him in days,” she said. “He hasn’t been back to his apartment, and he’s missing all his classes.”

“That’s troubling, but I wouldn’t jump to conclusions. He could be off with a girl somewhere, sowing his wild oats or something.”

Castro had wanted her to laugh. Instead, the thought seemed to crush her.

“Oh,” she said. “Sure, I suppose.”

Dr. Castro felt sorry for her, said, “If I hear from him, I’ll have him call you.”

“Please. Tell him Leah was looking for him.”

“I’ll do that, Leah, and again, I’m sure he’s okay. Ricardo’s always struck me as someone who can take care of himself.”

“Unless he got caught up in the riots last night,” she said.

Castro liked that idea. He looked concerned, said, “I’ll call some friends in the police department, see if they know anything.”

Leah said, “I can call the hospitals.”

“There,” Castro said. “We have it covered.”

They traded cell numbers and she left.

The doctor closed the door again, feeling like things were closing in on him, that he should act sooner rather than later. He hadn’t meant to leave until long after dark, but he felt compelled to go now as the city’s traffic began to build.

Castro grabbed the few items he needed, put them in his medical kit, and put that in a knapsack. With nary a glance at the office where he’d worked all these months, or at the hospital, or at the lines of poor patients waiting to be seen, Castro left his past life behind and set out into the teeming city, looking to disappear.