Джеймс Паттерсон - The Games

Slipping to the outside of the knot of people, Dr. Castro saw a table where guests were checking in. He also noticed a second security team: a big, beautiful Brazilian woman to the left of the grand staircase, and a tall, muscular blond-haired guy on the right. Both wore radio earpieces. Both were attentive and scanning the crowd.

It took four or five minutes for the doctor to reach the table. He held up the invitation to a grinning woman wearing FIFA credentials, said, “Manuel Pinto.”

She turned a few pages on her list, found Pinto’s name, and ran a pink line through it. Then she handed him a small ID badge that he clipped to his breast pocket. He smiled, thanked her, and walked around the table.

Joining others moving toward the staircase, Dr. Castro kept that easy smile going, trying to look as if he were about to meet an old friend. He turned his head slowly toward his left shoulder and then toward his right as he got close to the second security team. The doctor was using body language; by exposing his neck to the Brazilian woman and then the blond man, he was saying, I am not a threat. Not a threat to anyone at all.

It seemed to work, as neither of them paid him much attention. He stole glances at the badges they wore: REYNALDO, PRIVATE. MORGAN, PRIVATE.

Dr. Castro stiffened as he went by them.

Private.

He vaguely knew of the company and its reputation.

What were they doing here?

Where the staircase split, the doctor went right, climbing to the mezzanine and wondering whether having Private around made going through with his plan too risky. Maybe he should just have a drink and slip out. But then he flashed on images of bulldozers and rubble and a torn, bloody lab coat and those kids dying today, and the anger came back, along with his purpose and resolve.

Dr. Castro turned left on the mezzanine and moved with the crowd past walls covered with photographs of notable guests of the Palace, almost all of them Hollywood actors, European royalty, music greats, or the superrich and powerful. He found it all of only mild interest, although he did note that novelist Anne Rice’s picture was above and in a much more prominent position than Brigitte Bardot’s.

The doctor entered a ballroom set up for a banquet and continued along with the throng out onto a terrace that overlooked Avenida Atlântica, the beach, and the ocean. Night had fallen.

Across the street, under spotlights, men were playing beach volleyball. There were drums beating and whistles blowing somewhere, and Argentine and German fans were crushed in around the open-air bars and kiosks along the waterfront.

The crowd on the terrace was much more well-heeled. Dr. Castro guessed dignitaries, FIFA officials, local politicians, and a smattering of tycoons.

Everyone who had benefited, he thought bitterly.

The majority of people he’d come in with were already pressing on toward the bars on either side of the terrace. The doctor figured he’d had enough for one night but thought he’d look out of place without a drink in his hand. He waited patiently and ordered club soda with lime on the rocks.

When Dr. Castro turned away from the bar, he glanced through the crowd and was startled to see Igor Lima six people away and to his left. The mayor’s aide was drinking champagne, talking to a blonde six inches taller than him, and looking very self-satisfied. For a long moment the doctor got so enraged he considered making Lima the direct object of his wrath.

But he restrained himself. Too obvious. And Lima might recognize him, and that would do Castro no good in the long run.

It had to be a more fitting choice, the doctor thought. A statement. A...

The party dynamics shifted, some guests leaving the terrace to check on their seating for dinner. The exodus opened up space in the celebration and revealed new faces, including another one that Dr. Castro recognized.

He felt the rightness of that choice begin to vibrate everywhere in and around him. His skin tingled. It made him shiver.

Breathe, he told himself. Breathe, and then calmly, coldly, finish this.

Castro shifted his drink to his left hand, reached into his pants pocket, found the long thin cylinder, and grasped the length of the slender barrel. With his thumbnail, he flicked off the cap.

“Please, if you will all come inside, dinner is about to be served,” a woman called, prompting the crowd, including his target, to surge toward the banquet hall.

Castro forced that easy smile onto his face and lifted his drink before him, which got people to move out of his way. He angled and slipped and sped up until he was right behind Henri Dijon.

Quick as a whip, he drew his weapon, held it tight to his body, and then...

“Ahh!” Dijon yelled.

The FIFA spokesman spun around, slapping at his butt cheek and looking everywhere. His shoulder collided with a young waitress carrying a tray loaded with cocktails. He knocked her off her feet. The drinks and the tray crashed to the stone terrace, sending booze and shards of glass flying.

During the same three or four seconds, Castro kept moving and pocketed his weapon. Far enough away now, he blended in with the other guests as they all turned to check out the carnage. Dijon looked mortified as he helped the waitress back to her feet, saying, “I’m so, so sorry. I got stung by something, and I...”

The doctor drifted off. He didn’t want to seem too interested. Besides, the job was done.

As he moved through the banquet hall, he monitored his reaction. He had crossed the line, and yet he felt no remorse and no guilt. None whatsoever.

That’s easier, he thought. Better.

Dr. Castro left the banquet room, walking with a slight hitch in his stride so he wouldn’t accidentally jab himself with his weapon. He found a men’s restroom. He took a stall, put his drink down, felt wobbly, and leaned against the wall with his eyes closed for several long beats.

Then Castro gingerly went into his pocket and drew out the syringe. He studied it, feeling more than satisfied. When the doctor had gone out onto the terrace, there had been five ccs of little Jorge’s blood in the cylinder. And now?

Now there were only three.

Sunday, July 13, 2014

6:45 p.m.

I played division 1 football. I know what it’s like to be an athlete surrounded by a raucous crowd on a big game day, how you feed off it, how the fans feed off your play.

I have also been lucky enough to be in the stands for four World Series games, three NBA Finals, two Super Bowls, a Stanley Cup contest, and the men’s hundred-meter track final at the London Olympics.

But I will tell you flat-out that I have never felt anything close to the extraordinary energy inside Maracanã Stadium after ninety minutes of nail-biting regulation play and fifteen minutes of dramatic overtime left Germany and Argentina locked zero to zero in the winner-take-all game for the soccer championship of the world.

Going to their respective benches for water and coaching before the second overtime period began, the players looked like they’d been through a war. The fans in the stadium looked like they’d witnessed a war and were holding on to one another for strength.

I got it. Like them, I’d seen twenty-two men playing beyond their hearts for one hundred and five minutes, striving for supremacy under incomprehensible pressure, while all around the globe, literally billions of fans were living and dying on their every fevered move.

This is different, I thought as I climbed up the stands and scanned the crowd. This is a whole other dimension of sport.

Don’t get me wrong. I love baseball, football, basketball, and hockey, but you can’t tell me those games yield true world champions the way soccer does. More people play soccer than the four of those sports put together, and the World Cup pits all nations against all nations, with almost every country on earth competing during the four years of qualifying that lead to the final tournament.