Chapter 91
Felix Martins lived with his mother and brothers and sisters in Rio’s Laranjeiras, squatters on the third floor of a moldering palace that once belonged to the king of Portugal’s physician. Toward midday, Felix had heard a car roll into the courtyard parking area, and he went to look.
The car took the last available space. A man in gray work clothes got out, retrieved a large gray-green backpack from the trunk, and then threw his keys inside the trunk and shut it.
“Did you see his face?” I asked.
“I recognized him from the pictures on the television right away,” Felix told us. “I went straight to the police station.”
“Is the car still there?” Justine asked.
Felix knit his brow, seemed conflicted, but then shook his head and said the car had been stolen around one o’clock that afternoon.
Acosta said, “You know who stole it?”
The boy chewed his lip. “It was almost like he wanted it stolen.”
“Maybe he did,” I said. “Who’s got it?”
“I dunno,” he said. “Some friend of my mother’s. Ask her.”
Acosta said, “I will. When was the last time you saw him?”
“When he went out the gate.”
“Which way did he turn?” I asked.
Felix thought about that and said, “Right.”
Mo-bot found the decrepit palace and put it up on the big screen, giving us the aerial view. You could see the courtyard and wall plainly. Maureen highlighted the area on the satellite feed and then pulled back to show the winding road heading north until it dead-ended in the steep and choked jungle of the Tijuca National Park.
Mo-bot highlighted Maracanã Stadium, which was north-northwest of the end of the road, and we requested the distance between the two spots.
“Four point two miles as the crow flies,” she said.
“Not on foot,” I said. “Look at the brutal terrain that he’s got to cross to get there. Up and down several thousand vertical feet here, here, and here. In some places I’d bet it’s steep enough for ropes.”
“Difficult, but not impossible for a fanatic,” said General da Silva. He gestured to the northern edge of the forest. “But look where he can exit the jungle. Somewhere above São Francisco Xavier Metrô station, not three-quarters of a mile from Maracanã Stadium.”
It did look tempting from a strategic perspective, but something about it still didn’t seem right to me.
“Could a man cross that kind of terrain in six or seven hours?”
“If he was fit and knew the paths,” Lieutenant Acosta said. “I’m sure.”
The general said, “I’m moving more police all along that front where he’d come out. In the meantime, we’ll try to spot him from the air.”
Chapter 92
Friday, August 5, 2016
4:45 p.m.
Two Hours and Fifteen Minutes Before the Olympic Games Open
When Dr. Castro judged he was about one hundred feet below the summit of the mountain he’d been climbing the better part of the day, he turned around and sat on a rock outcropping beneath an umbrella-shaped tree that hid him from above. The weight of the pack came off his back and he stifled a groan at the effort it had taken to get here.
Since Dr. Castro had reached the head of the canyon on the west flank of the mountain, the path had been nearly straight uphill. It had been backbreaking work to stay balanced with the pack while grabbing onto roots and small saplings and thorny brush, hoisting himself higher, foot by grueling foot.
But Castro had welcomed the pain and drove himself unmercifully toward the top.
Twice on the way up, he’d had to cross a winding switchbacked road. The doctor had hidden behind the guardrails until the roads were clear, and then sprinted to the other side. The sun was low over the mountains by then, casting the final part of his ascent in shadows, which suited him. He sat for a few minutes to slow his breath and slamming heart.
He heard a helicopter. He’d been hearing them off and on all day, and now he peered out through the vegetation, seeing several of them to his northeast, flying low and in formation over the jungle. Then he spotted a closer one, making a loop around the summit above him.
Castro slid deeper into the dark shadows as the helicopter passed and faded away. He heard a loudspeaker announcing that in honor of the national holiday, the area was closing at five o’clock.
By ten past, the shadows were deepening and he hadn’t heard a car go by on the road below him in a good twelve minutes. But the doctor had done his homework and knew better. At 5:20 p.m. one last car left the summit. It carried two guards, who stopped to lock a series of gates on the switchback road as they descended.
Feeling refreshed, Castro tightened down the straps on the pack and started climbing to the summit of Corcovado Mountain as the sun drifted lower and into a haze brought on by the heat. The doctor soon stopped by a fence that surrounded the observation terraces below the statue of Christ the Redeemer.
Bathed in a gold and copper light, the Redeemer was the iconic symbol of Rio and now the Olympic Games. The doctor felt, however, that the Christ had been hijacked to hawk Coca-Cola and Visa and the goods of other multinationals. He did not look up at the statue. He stayed on task.
Castro knew there were only three people left on the summit of Corcovado now. Two worked for NBC, a producer and a cameraman there to provide a long-lensed look at Rio by night. They’d be picked up later by helicopter.
The third person was Corcovado’s trusted watchman Pietro Gonzalez. Dr. Castro stood there patiently in the shadows until the watchman appeared on his rounds. Castro whistled softly to Gonzalez, whose daughter and son had died of Hydra the day before the World Cup final.
Gonzalez stopped and signaled to Castro to wait. The doctor heard another helicopter circling, filming footage of the statue for the global audience.
How many would watch the opening ceremony? Castro had heard as many as a billion people.
That would do it, he thought. A billion people will get the message shoved right down their throats.
Finally Pietro gestured to him to hurry. Castro came up and over the rail, followed the security guard to a door on the back of the pedestal that supported the statue of the Redeemer.
Pietro had a key ready; he twisted it in the lock and pulled the door open.
Castro said, “Thank you, my friend.”
“For my babies and your wife, and all of the oppressed,” Pietro said, handing the doctor a headlamp and a small jar of gray makeup.
Chapter 93
Friday, August 5, 2016
5:40 p.m.
One Hour and Twenty Minutes Before the Olympic Games Open
“We’ve got about ten minutes of usable light left,” General da Silva said, grunting in frustration from the copilot’s seat of a Brazilian army 36 AS350 helicopter, a nimble four-seater with a cruising speed of a hundred and fifty miles an hour.
Lieutenant Acosta and I rode in the back. We’d spent the better part of an hour flying over the most likely routes Dr. Castro could have taken through the mountainous jungle between Laranjeiras and Estação.
The pilot had flown us right above the rain-forest canopy, where we did our best to peer through the dense vegetation, hoping to catch a glimpse of the doctor and his backpack. In most places the cover was too thick to see anything. Even in those areas where it thinned, the winter jungle was as much gray pastels as greens. If he was wearing gray, he’d be all but invisible down there.