Джеймс Паттерсон - The Games

“They’ll stop us,” she said.

“They’re not stopping me.”

Estella looked unconvinced but said, “Okay.”

We left the depressing little room. She went to change, and I did too. I waited and waited until I thought she might have chickened out or run for it. But just as I was about to go looking for her, she appeared near the locker room, dressed in a shapeless black cotton maternity dress and looking more frightened than ever.

“Just follow me and let me handle it,” I said.

I threw Bug-Eyes one hundred reais , said, “Keep the change.”

He spotted Estella, said, “Where do you think you’re going?”

Estella rubbed her belly mournfully. “I’m sick. My friend drives me home.”

“Don’t work like that.”

“It does today,” I said.

His hand shifted under the desk. I knew he was going for a gun, so I lunged forward, reached through the window hole, grabbed him by his collared shirt, and yanked. His knees cracked against the desk. His face smashed against the window, and he crumpled.

A woman started screaming. I glanced back into the brothel and saw Vitoria raising hell.

Taking Estella by the arm, I said, “We’ve got to go, fast.”

We went through the glass door, took a hard left on a rug of synthetic grass, and headed down on a slight slant toward the entrance. I’d hoped to reach it before the bouncers came in, but no such luck.

When we were halfway down the ramp, the Brick and the Boxer came through the doors. The Brick carried a police baton. The Boxer had a sap.

I pushed Estella back as the Boxer moved into range. I sprang at him, blocked his arm before he could clobber me, and kneed him hard in the gut.

The Boxer made a puhhh sound and crashed. I spun toward the Brick. His overhand baton strike just missed my head but smashed hard against my left shoulder. My arm felt jolted electrically and went numb.

When he raised his arm back to strike me again, I punched him in the triceps with my good hand. It threw him off balance. He slashed the baton at me. I dodged it and punched him in the windpipe. He staggered, dropped the baton, and went to his knees, choking.

“C’mon,” I said, picking up the baton and holding out my hand to Estella.

Estella was wide-eyed as she stepped around the bodies of the fallen bouncers. I pushed open the front door and saw a third bouncer charging me. I cracked the baton off his forehead and knocked him senseless.

Tavia came screeching up to the curb. I put Estella in the back, got in front.

“How’d it go?” Tavia asked, throwing the car in gear.

“I feel like I just escaped some perverse level of hell, but I think we’ve got the break we—”

Boom! The rear window shattered.

Tavia stomped on the gas. I twisted in my seat.

Through the blown-out window I saw a bleeding Bug-Eyes running down the street after us, trying to get another shot.

Thursday, August 4, 2016

7:30 p.m.

Twenty-Three and a Half Hours Before the Olympic Games Open

The moon was but a sliver low in the eastern sky. The small jungle clearing in the shadow of the Dois Irmãos Mountains was barely lit by the glow of Leblon and Ipanema far below. Amelia Lopes stood for a long minute listening to the sounds of the rain forest, the peeping of tree frogs, the sawing of crickets, the rustle of birds on the roost. There was balance there. It was all so natural.

Then she heard a distant car horn and looked out over the glittering lights of the superwealthy to the favelas, seeing everything she considered unnatural about Rio and the world in one long, sweeping glance.

The megarich. The megapoor. You couldn’t find a country or city on earth that displayed the income gap as glaringly as Rio de Janeiro did. The city went from ultrachic to squalor in a matter of miles. These brutal facts and more had caused Amelia Lopes to start thinking of herself as Rayssa.

Rayssa the warrior. Rayssa the revolutionary.

She wore the name like armor. As Amelia, she was rather passive, risk-averse, and incapable of violence. As Rayssa, she was visionary, audacious, cruel, and, if need be, deadly.

A billion dollars, she thought as she climbed toward the cluster of shacks in the trees at the top of the clearing. She went to the smallest hut, the one where Andrew Wise was being held. Think of what good a billion dollars could do in Rio’s favelas. Think of what forces for good would be unleashed.

Fervent now, she nodded to one of Urso’s men standing guard. He pulled open the door. Wise was sitting in the chair, his hooded head lolling on his chest. But when Rayssa stepped inside, the tycoon must have heard her because he raised his head groggily.

“Water,” he said.

Rayssa ignored the request. “Thought you might want to know the vote count with two hours to go.”

“I don’t care. I want water. I want food.”

“For hash tags WiseGuilty and PayTheBillion, total stands at twenty-three million and counting. For hash tag WiseDecision, it’s eleven point two million,” Rayssa said, and she turned to go.

The tycoon called after her, “Please. It’s inhumane.”

That stopped her. She looked over her shoulder, spitting mad, and said, “Welcome to hungry and thirsty, Mr. Wise, the plights of the poorest poor.”

She left him then, and closed the door. She told the guard to feed and water the prisoner in an hour or so. Give him some time to come to his senses.

The generator kicked to life, masking the jungle sounds with a constant thrum. Rayssa was barely aware of it as she returned to the largest shack, the one with all the satellite dishes on the roof. She entered and found the pickpocket Alou at his keyboard and screens.

For a moment, she gazed at the boy genius in wonder. So young and so brilliant, but because he was born in the slums, this society would have thrown him away. How fortunate he was to have found a bed in Mariana’s orphanage. How fortunate he was to have played with a computer at such a young age. How smart Rayssa had been to encourage—

Her cell phone rang. She frowned when she saw it was her mother calling.

“Mom?”

“You actually picked up,” Mariana Lopes said in a disapproving tone.

“I’ve been busy,” Amelia said. “Wrapping up the fieldwork. I told you.”

“A mother longs for her daughter’s voice every once in a while.”

No matter how much kindness and empathy she dispensed in the course of a day, Amelia’s mother was always putting guilt trips on her daughter.

“You don’t have time for me now?” Mariana said. “I understand.”

Rayssa would have hung up, but Amelia was sensing that Rayssa’s existence was coming to an end. And for the first time, she realized the dire consequences of her actions.

“I have ten minutes, Mom,” she said. “Let me get somewhere I can talk.”

“Can you hear me, Mom?” Amelia Lopes said.

We’d put Amelia on speaker. Mariana Lopes looked at Sci and Mo-bot, who were trying to track Amelia’s location, and then at Tavia and me. Tavia nodded.

“Loud and clear, dear,” Mariana said, but there was a tremor in her voice. She was still shocked by the fact that her daughter was the ringleader of the Favela Justice plot. She had refused to believe it until Estella, Urso’s woman, told her what she knew: that Amelia met, slept with, and brainwashed the Bear after he was driven from Alemão favela.

“She made him believe that the way we live is a crime,” Estella said. “She made him believe that not fighting the situation was a worse crime.”