A rapid exchange ensued between Delaney, Robredo and one of his men. ‘It’s a bushmaster, Cooper,’ the CIA deputy said. ‘It’s deadly. Very aggressive.’
I found myself wondering if it had killed the British agent before von Weiss applied his handiwork. Robredo’s man, who seemed to know what he was doing, took out his knife and slashed at the snake, lopping its head off. He then kicked it scudding across the floor. The serpent’s headless body immediately slid into tight coils before falling off Shilling’s body and writhing beside it.
‘He told her it was a python,’ I said.
‘How do you know that?’ Petinski asked.
‘She told me some things.’
I made a pact with myself at that moment that I was going to kill von Weiss, and I was going to do it mean.
Petinski was down on her haunches, examining Shilling’s eyes. ‘Doing this – pulling shit like this out of his father’s handbook. It’s a challenge of sorts. He has to know we’ve dug into his past.’
Robredo spoke into his shoulder mike and a couple more BOPE officers came in, stared at the naked woman on the floor and then began searching the room. Another man walked in with a blanket and threw it over the body. The cop in me thought about the crime scene being compromised, but after what we’d seen, all of us were beyond that now. Shilling was a casualty of war.
‘You’d have t’ say von Weiss is out of the favela business permanently,’ Delaney remarked. ‘After this shit, the asshole’s burned his bridges. There ain’t a man in a BOPE uniform that wouldn’t shoot the fucker on sight.’
‘You had a tail on von Weiss, right?’ I said. ‘So let’s pull him in.’
Delaney glanced at the ground and looked anywhere other than at Petinski and me. ‘We . . . er . . . we took the tail off him yesterday.’
‘Why?’
‘Washington told us he was no longer a person of interest.’
I stared at him.
‘The Rio desk’s not big. We got resources issues, other priorities . . .’ He chose not to finish this mealy-mouthed bullshit. Maybe he heard what he sounded like.
‘What about a couple of von Weiss’s low-life associates, Falco and Charles White?’ I asked. ‘You know them?’
‘Yep – arms dealers, former US citizens, and now residents of Brazil. We don’t have a watch on them neither, but we know where they live.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘In a ritzy apartment block beside the Copa Palace – your hotel. They both keep penthouse suites there.’
‘You’re shitting me,’ I said, although it did explain why I’d seen them breakfasting at the hotel. For all I knew, the brothers had egg-white omelettes poolside at the hotel every other day. All this time I could have just strolled next door, taken a ride in a lift, knocked on Charles White’s door and evened our account with a little lead deposited between his ears. ‘Meet us there in an hour. Bring a fuckin’ sledgehammer.’
*
It was early but already hot, the sky a misty blue, the beach across the road filling fast. The folks on the sand were mostly too preoccupied oiling themselves up to notice a BOPE van with roof-mounted gun turret squeal to a stop in the forecourt of the Excelsior, the apartment block overlooking the pool at the Copa Palace.
The rear doors flew open and Robredo’s troops almost threw themselves out, itching to get to the men in the two rooftop apartments who, they’d been briefed, were involved in the killing and wounding of their comrades at the Sky City gun battle a short while ago. They ran at the double to the main glass doors and burst straight through them. The concierge attempting to block the way with a raised hand was brushed aside. The men charged up the fire stairs while Delaney, Petinski and I took the elevator, accompanied by two detectives from the local PD who were armed with a warrant to make the search legal. We arrived on the top floor in time to see a length of railway track with handles take the door clean off its hinges at apartment number two. The door to apartment number three got the same treatment. Flash bangs were thrown in to make a statement. After the splintering crash and the aftershocks of breaking glass ceased, men surged into both apartments, shouting, weapons shouldered, ready for violent retribution.
Unfortunately, no one was home.
The apartments were on the spare side of comfortable: white leather couches, African art, zebra-skin rugs, designer touches, lots of dark wood and plenty of glass, most of which now crunched underfoot.
‘There are wall safes,’ said Delaney as the railway-track battering ram was called up. ‘PD says their warrant’s good for us to take a look inside.’
The first one, in Falco White’s apartment, withstood two blows. Inside, fuck-all of significance – some share certificates, rental agreements and so forth. The boys had their technique down pat on the second safe and stove the door in with one hit. The detectives took over and removed a handful of documents, most of which appeared to be on various bank letterheads. Large envelopes containing cash of different currencies were also removed along with three passports. One of them, a Brazilian passport, was Charles’s. The other two had his photo, but the names and nationalities were different.
‘Passport violations,’ I muttered. Emma Shilling would’ve rubbed her hands together.
Wearing gloves, Petinski leafed through one of the passports. ‘Everyone involved in this is going to be traveling on false documents.’
Robredo handed an elaborate leather box to Delaney along with a fancy printed envelope. ‘This was found on the dresser in the bedroom,’ Delaney said, lifting the envelope flap and extracting a card with childlike printing on it. He read aloud: ‘“A small tocan of my apreesheashon.” It’s signed Gamal. Who’s Gamal? From the spelling, an English major, obviously.’
I was surprised he had to ask, but then I remembered he had no need-to-know.
‘Gamal Abdul-Jabbar,’ replied Petinski.
‘A spider from Somalia,’ I added, ‘fond of knitted shirts. He’s here on business. What’s in the box?’
Delaney opened it and whistled. ‘A Patek Philippe.’ The box held a man’s wristwatch.
‘I take it that’s a good one.’
‘If expensive is good, then this baby’s around forty-five-thousand-dollars worth of good.’
Gamal had bought the watch for White to show ‘apreesheashon’ for the entertainment provided – Sugar. And I was sure she’d earned every cent.
‘You’re going to have to coordinate a sweep of all the known residences kept by von Weiss,’ I said. ‘Will your station chief cooperate?’
‘She’ll be fine with it.’
‘What about city hall?’
‘After what happened up at Céu Cidade?
Não
problema, senhor
.’
‘Another avenue that might be worth checking: von Weiss has a pilot by the name of André LeDuc, alias Laurent Duval. You can check him out further with Interpol and the Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure
.
Might be worth seeing if the asshole’s recently lodged any flight plans.’
‘Sounds like you know him.’
‘Only well enough to want to kill him,’ I said.
A
side from a brief catnap, we’d been up the best part of twenty-four hours. I yawned wide and long and leaned against the wall while I waited for Petinski to locate the key.
‘I’m going to bed for an hour,’ she said as she unlocked the door to our suite. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I can join you for a few minutes if you like,’ I said.
‘I’ll be in a coma within a few seconds.’
‘That’s okay.
I’ll
still have fun.’
‘On the couch, Cooper.’
*
I came awake, ripped from sleep, eyelids fluttering open. The room was quiet, the sun a little higher, the air a little warmer than it was when I fell onto the couch. I lay still and listened to the sounds coming through the open balcony doors – friendly sounds of the pool filter gurgling, kids splashing, the beat of a bird’s wings in the enclosed courtyard, the toot of a distant horn out on the street. Sleep had been an exhausted shutdown, like the kind that follows combat. I shouldn’t be awake, and yet I was. Nightmarish images began to drift across my mind from the night before: the cored cranium of a dead BOPE officer; the man on the balcony with his throat cut, stiff with rigor mortis; the heel of my boot kicking the axe blade through a man’s spinal cord; the puffed-up security guy who reminded me of the Michelin Man; and, of course, Shilling . . . These were images I’d be trying real hard to forget, but there was resistance. They were demanding some daylight hang time before slipping into my sleep to fester among my dreams.
I felt a weight across my shins move slowly. I wondered what it was, and then it moved fast. My brain was about to ask what the fuck when, suddenly, a black mouth appeared inches from my face, lunging, a dark cavern of death with curved white hypodermics on either side. I lifted the sheet to protect my face, pushed up and back and those fangs went straight through the fabric, a clear drop of oily fluid splashing onto the webbing between my fingers. A powerful sinuous cable writhed, making a sound that was half hiss, half gag. I stumbled out of bed with the sheet, a long length of uncaptured snake waving around between my legs, and ran across the room toward the bathroom.
‘What are you doing?’ Petinski asked, sitting up in bed, angry about the rude awakening.
‘The laundry,’ I shouted, wrestling the bedclothes into the bathroom. Opening the glass shower door, I threw the bundle into the recess and slammed the door shut. Within seconds the snake had disentangled itself. The body was long and yellowish green and it lifted its head up and out of the sheet, circling the glass cubicle, rising ever higher, hunting for a way out.
‘Jesus,’ said Petinski, her hair a fright, a mixture of exhaustion and fear on her face. ‘Is that a black mamba?’
What else? What I wanted to know was how many black mambas there were in this city. I doubted they were at plague proportions, regularly turning up in five-star hotel rooms. This had to be the same reptile that lived in a glass case in von Weiss’s study, the snake that had made a run for it and subsequently attacked and killed two people. We’d been paid a visit, another attempt to conclude unfinished business, namely the deaths of Petinski and me.
With each circuit of the glass cubicle, the thing was learning, pushing off the corners. I remembered Petinski’s commentary about these fuckers. They were fast, aggressive and lethal. They’d been known to get into village huts in Africa and kill everyone just because their disposition was mean. I went back into the bedroom and searched for a broom. No luck. What was I thinking? They had staff for that here. I went to one of the closets, pulled Petinski’s clothes off the rack and ripped out the length of pole.
‘Cooper. Get in here . . .’ Concern rippled through Petinski’s voice. I went back into the bathroom. The snake had used the hot and cold taps for leverage along with the showerhead coming out of the wall above them, and its head was now waving around the top edge of the glass. Shit, the fucking thing had to be well over twelve fucking feet long! I whacked its small head with the pole and it slipped back into the recess, its body sliding off the taps, forked tongue lashing the air in front of those fangs. It fell and banged against the opposite glass wall and immediately began its climb all over again, only this time more aggressive, more determined. More fucked up.
‘Call room service,’ I said.
‘And tell them what?’
‘I dunno – get ’em to send up a snake charmer.’
‘Just tell me where you put the Walther.’
I gave the reptile another whack on its scone. ‘Is it hot in here?’ I asked.
‘Not especially,’ she said. ‘The Walther. Where is it?’
If it wasn’t hot, then why was I was sweating like old dynamite? Jesus . . . The room spun a hundred and eighty degrees and suddenly I was sitting on the floor, my left hand feeling as though it had been dipped in lava. I held it up, expecting to see burns. A red stain had spread across the back of it, a yellow sweating blister forming in the webbing between my first and second fingers. Also, my arm had blown up and it reminded me of a thick uncooked sausage. I thought of the Michelin Man – the guy we’d discovered in von Weiss’s playroom. Had I been bitten? My heart was beating weirdly fast. I fell sideways, unable to keep myself upright.
‘Cooper . . .’ I heard from somewhere far away.
My mouth and eyes were open; couldn’t move my tongue. Arms heavy. Vomit gushed out from between my teeth. Then the diarrhea started.
Breathing hard, I could blink only with difficulty. I felt myself being dragged backward out of the bathroom, the door slammed shut. I tried to move, but couldn’t. Everything too heavy. Breathing in short breaths. I was moving on a gurney, in an ambulance, wheeled under hard, white lights. Catheter, fluids, hypodermics. Shilling, yellow eyes . . .
*
As far as I was concerned I was awake for the whole ordeal, but apparently I was out cold for three hours or so. And when I say cold, I’m talking ice bath, a full hour immersed like a big lime in an even bigger caipirinha.
I remember asking Shilling what was going on, the MI6 agent sitting on the end of the bath in her shimmering yellow dress, which her eyes now matched.
‘You should be dead, y’know,’ she said. ‘They’ve given you two shots of epinephrine, three bags of saline and two shots of black mamba anti-venom.’
I wondered why Shilling was now talking with an American accent. Either seconds or hours passed before I opened my eyes again and Shilling was gone. In her place was Petinski. ‘Am I dreaming you?’ I asked her.
‘No.’
‘Where’s Shilling?’
‘You don’t know?’
‘She’s dead,’ I said.
‘You had me worried. Not so long ago you thought I was her.’
‘Was it you who told me they gave me two shots of epinephrin?’
‘You remember that.’
I nodded. ‘Did I get bitten?’
‘No, black mamba venom’s unbelievably potent. You got some of it on your hand where you had a cut. The doctors believe you’re hyper-allergic to it. They thought you were going to have a heart attack.’
‘But I didn’t.’
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘It was lucky for you they had anti-venom on hand. And they only had it because of the trouble the snake caused here a couple of days ago.’
‘What happened to it?’
‘The snake?’
I nodded.
‘I dragged you out and shut the door on it. Then I called Delaney. He called the Rio Zoo. The ambulance took you away, and a couple of herpetologists arrived not long after and captured the snake.’
I took a deep breath and did a sense check and felt remarkably okay, almost refreshed. I flexed my hand, a catheter taped to my wrist.
‘The book’s gone,’ Petinski said.
‘What book?’
‘
Mein Kampf
. Whoever put the snake in our room took it.’
‘Lucky I read the last page so I know how it turns out.’
Petinski looked at me blankly. Right. I gave a mental sigh. The skin on my palm felt tight, itchy. ‘So now what?’ I asked her.
‘They’re keeping you overnight for observation.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You’re not.’
‘And von Weiss?’
‘Disappeared.’
‘So we’ve got nothing?’
‘Maybe, maybe not. Delaney put out some feelers on your old friend, André LeDuc. Nothing came back. But then some bright spark on the Buenos Aires desk searched the flight records of all aircraft owned by known von Weiss corporations, noted the various aircraft your friend had been flying lately, and ran a search on all the tail numbers. Flight plans for two aircraft owned by von Weiss companies had been submitted within the last twelve hours. One was a smallish twin-engine Baron on a flight from Asunciön, Paraguay, back here to Rio. The other, a Gulfstream, was flying Buenos Aires–Jo’burg–Dar es Salaam. Your friend LeDuc is checked out on the type.’
Dar. Someone else had mentioned the place recently. But who? And why?
‘What’s the matter?’ Petinski asked.
‘Do you know anyone who lives in Dar?’
‘No.’
‘Does Delaney?’
‘How should I know?’
‘Dar es Salaam has come up in conversation recently. I’m just trying to pin it down. You haven’t mentioned the place before?’
‘No.’
I closed my eyes and tried to will the connection into my head. But the harder I tried the more the vague sense that Dar was significant began to fade. I gave up. Maybe I just got it wrong. Maybe I wasn’t all here yet, my body still fighting off the effects of the snake venom.
‘Try not to stress about it. You’ve been through an ordeal.’ She gave me a there-there look.
‘You make it sound like I’m an old guy with dementia who can’t remember where he put his diaper.’
‘Fine. Whatever.’
‘That’s more like it.’ I noticed she was wearing makeup – lipstick, eye shadow and so forth. ‘What’s with the war paint?’ I made a gesture over my face and the tube hooked up to my wrist rattled against the bed frame. ‘You going somewhere?’
‘Home.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘On a plane in four hours.’
‘What about the case?’
‘What case?’
‘Didn’t von Weiss just make another attempt on our lives? Doesn’t that make you want to even the score?’
‘I work in intelligence. I don’t even scores.’
‘How do you know von Weiss isn’t hunkered down in some other Rio hideout?’
She shook her head. ‘Forget it, Cooper. He’s gone.’
‘Who put the snake in our room? Who stole the book we stole?’
‘It wasn’t von Weiss. We’ve got surveillance footage of an unidentified man in a jacket and ball cap stealing a room-service passkey, taking the elevator to our floor, opening the door to our room, throwing in a paper bag and leaving. The snake was in the bag.’
‘And the book?’
‘Also gone. There’ve been simultaneous raids on all von Weiss’s known addresses throughout Brazil since you’ve been in here. They found nothing except dazed employees who believe he’s left the country. BOPE, CIA, you name it, everyone agrees he’s gone.’
‘What about his boat? What was his boat called?’
‘
Medusa
. It’s fallen through the cracks too.’
‘It’s a big boat. Must be a hell of a crack.’
‘Brazil has a million uninhabited rivers and tributaries to hide it in.’
I let it go. Charles and Falco White and that asshole LeDuc had also slipped through the net, not that the pathetic attempt at surveillance could be called a net. Gamal Abdul-Jabbar had left town. Shilling had been killed. And whatever was going down appeared to have moved to a new address.
This was pissing me off. I jerked the saline line out of the catheter. Then I pulled out the catheter and pressed down on the hole the needle left behind to minimize the bleeding.
‘Hey! What are you doing?’ Petinski demanded, appalled.
‘Going to Dar es Salaam.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’ She looked about the room a little panicked, clearly wondering what to do, who to call.
My clothes were in a neat, washed pile on the visitor’s chair. ‘Where’s the rest of my things?’ I lowered my feet to the floor.
‘At the Palace. For Christ’s sake, get back into bed, Cooper.’ Petinski stepped toward the door, I figured to rat me out to the nurses’ station.
‘No, gotta go.’
‘Jesus . . .’
‘Am I under arrest?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
I sat on the edge of the bed and felt lightheaded. The real test would come when I stood up. A nurse walked into the room, shrieked a little when she saw me out of bed and ran off – I assumed to get help, or a hypodermic with a sedative, or both. The lightheadedness passed and I took the steps to my clothes without further difficulty. I picked up the pile and took it back to the bed. Petinski turned away when I dropped the nightgown.
‘Don’t think you’ll be able to hold yourself back, huh?’ I said. ‘If you like we could just pop into the bathroom together, take a shower and say goodbye properly.’
‘Are you finished?’
My pants were on. ‘Yes.’
‘I can’t stop you?’
‘What do you think?’
She sighed deeply. ‘Okay, well, I’ve enjoyed working with you. It’s been an education, I’ll say that much.’
I felt myself getting stronger with all the activity. I threw on socks, pushed my feet into boots and tied the laces. Outside, wind lashed the trees and lightning flashed, the thunder following a split second after. ‘What’s up with the weather?’ I remembered it being sunny.
‘Nothing serious. Afternoon thunderstorm. It’ll pass.’
A flash of lightning grounded somewhere out in the parking lot just beyond the window, the almost instantaneous thunderclap vibrating the pane. And then it hit me. ‘Dar. Hey, I remember now. Ed Dyson – the nuclear weather forecaster guy. He flew to Dar es Salaam a couple of days ago.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Shilling told me. I didn’t think much of it at the time. But now von Weiss’s G5 is headed there too. In the land of no coincidences, that’s significant.’
‘Not to me it’s not. I can’t do anything about being reassigned. And if I were you, Cooper, I’d contact my supervisor immediately.’
‘If you were me you’d ignore that advice, because I am me and that’s what I’m doing.’ I stood up and, like a drunk, almost fell back as the nurse and a doctor rushed in, ready for action. Holding up my hand to stop them I said, ‘I’m fine, and I’m going.’