Джеймс Паттерсон - The Games

This evidently sounded like something Amelia would say because Mariana’s shoulders slumped and she wept, and then she agreed to help us.

She got more confident the longer the conversation with her daughter went on. They chatted about challenges at the orphanage. They talked about Mariana’s hip, which had been bothering her enough that she was considering hip-replacement surgery, and about when Amelia might be finished with her field research and able to come back to Rio to see her.

“Soon,” Amelia said. “After the Olympics are over. When it’s less hectic.”

Mariana looked over at us. I made a spinning motion with my finger and she tried to talk about Amelia’s field research some more.

But after two minutes in that vein, Amelia said, “Mom, I’ve got to go now.”

“Oh,” Mariana said, growing nervous. “Of course. Call me tomorrow?”

“If I can,” Amelia said. “Mom?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Are you proud of me? Of the way I’ve lived my life?”

Mariana looked at us. Tavia nodded and I twirled my finger again.

“Mom?”

“Of course I’m proud of you,” Mariana said, tears welling in her eyes. “You’re a woman of great learning, conviction, and kindness.”

We heard a sniff over the speaker. “Thanks, Mom. I needed to hear that.”

“Are you okay, Amelia?”

“I’m fine,” her daughter said, and sniffed again. “Love you.”

“I love you too.”

The line went dead. Mariana began to weep again.

“Did you get her?” I asked as Tavia moved to comfort Mariana.

“Wait a sec,” Mo-bot said, not picking up her head.

Sci didn’t look up either. They both pounded at their keyboards and then suddenly, virtually in unison, they stopped.

“Got her,” Mo-bot said with a satisfied grin.

Sci said, “Give the software a minute or two and we’ll have a position for you within ten feet of where she was standing.”

“You did fine,” Tavia was saying to the orphanage director when I walked over beside them.

“I feel like Judas Iscariot,” Mariana said.

I said, “What you did was noble. A mother looking out for her child.”

Mariana glanced up. “Don’t kill her. Please? She’s my only child.”

I frowned, said, “Senhora Lopes, we are not assassins. We will not intentionally harm your daughter. But she is a kidnapper, a murderer, and a terrorist. She’ll be brought to—”

“There she is,” Sci said.

“Throwing it on the screen now,” Mo-bot said.

At the far end of the conference room, Google Earth appeared showing a satellite view of Rio de Janeiro. A red pin blinked off the north flank of the Two Brothers Mountains.

Sci manipulated the image, zoomed in, and tilted the perspective so we could see that Amelia had been in the jungle five or six hundred yards east of the Rocinha favela and close to the bottom of a cliff that went up two thousand feet to the top of the second mountain.

Sci zoomed in again, and a blurred view of the slope below the cliff appeared. Mo-bot used filters to clear the image, and we saw the pin blinking at the upper end of a long narrow clearing just off the spine of the slope. Near the pin, in the trees up the hill and closer to the cliff, there were several shacks.

“If that’s where they’ve got Wise, it’s going to be a bitch getting in there quietly,” Tavia said. “If we go in on foot we’ll have to go through Rocinha or Vidigal, and that will raise all sorts of alarms. They’ll no doubt have sentries, people watching the trails to and from the favelas. And they’re probably in the trees all around the clearing.”

“You could go in by helicopter,” Sci said.

“We’d lose the element of surprise,” Tavia said. “And depending on how fanatical Amelia has turned her followers, we could be in for a firefight. But it’s the lesser of two evils. We really don’t have a third choice.”

Looking at the sheer faces of the Two Brothers, I flashed back twenty-four months and said, “Maybe we do.”

Dr. Lucas Castro waited until dark before he went to get his car from the parking garage. He took several detours to make sure he wasn’t being followed and finally pulled into the light-industrial complex around eight fifteen.

Less than twenty-three hours now, Castro thought as he drove through the complex. It will be worth the sacrifice. It will change everything.

The doctor pulled around the corner and hit the brakes. There was a small red Fiat Palio parked in front of his lab. He couldn’t see anyone inside.

A voice in his head screamed: Back out. Turn around. Get lost.

But Castro needed to get into his lab and retrieve the pack.

He drove closer and was parking when a head popped up in the red Fiat. A young woman blinked and squinted in his headlights.

He knew her!

Leah? Yes, Leah, that was her name. Ricardo’s friend from school. Why was she here? How in God’s name had she come to be here?

Castro had no choice now. He had to find out what she knew.

The doctor climbed from the car, leaving the headlights on, came around, and stood in the beams. She recognized Castro then. Her mouth opened in confusion.

“Leah?” he said, smiling. “Is that you?”

After a moment’s hesitation, she rolled down the window. “Dr. Castro? What are you doing here?”

“You’ve found where Ricardo’s been hiding,” he said cheerfully. “C’mon in, I know he’ll be happy to see you.”

She brightened. “Ricardo’s here? Inside?”

“Finishing up some work. He’ll be done in an hour.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this the other day?” she asked.

“Ricardo asked me not to,” Castro said. “He was swept up in our research and didn’t want to be interrupted. Great minds are like that. Don’t take it personally. The important thing is you’re here now. Let’s go inside.”

He turned and fumbled with the key at the door. He heard the window roll up, the car door open, and then the crunch of her weight on gravel.

“Ricardo is supersmart, isn’t he?” she said.

Castro felt the lock click open and looked over his shoulder, seeing her smiling, relieved, anticipating Ricardo. Young love. It can turn suspicion into eagerness, can’t it?

He opened the door, reached in, and flipped on the lights, revealing the empty office.

“Ricardo sleeps in the main lab most nights,” he said, stepping inside. “We’ve got experiments that require twenty-four-hour monitoring, but I’m here for the night. Why don’t the two of you go out, catch up?”

“That would be nice,” Leah said, coming in behind him.

He turned, held his car remote in his hand, turned the headlights off. She went past him into the room, and he shut the outer door.

“Hold on,” he said as she moved to the inner door. “If he’s done his job, he’s locked it from the inside.”

Leah tried the knob, said, “He’s done his job.”

“Good man,” Castro said, smiling. “I sensed right away he was special. How did you figure out Ricardo was working here?”

“Oh,” Leah said. “The police found his scooter not far from here, and then I had a friend who works for TIM Cellular ping his last known location before his phone died. And he was right there, outside your door.”

So someone else knows about Ricardo and now Leah being at my door, Castro thought. Did it matter? Not after tomorrow. Before then? Yes, it mattered very much.

He opened the inner door, stepped down into the warehouse space with the clean room in the middle.

“Wow,” Leah said, coming in behind him. “That’s impressive.”

“Isn’t it?” Castro said. “Ricardo came up with a few of the ideas.”