“Take us to the stadium,” da Silva said finally, and he called in for an update on the police presence in the streets between Maracanã and the jungle.
As the sun sank below the western mountains, it turned the sky an intense magenta color that was breathtaking.
My cell phone rang. I tucked it in under the headphones and said, “Jack Morgan.”
“It’s Sci, Jack. I’m with the forensics team at Castro’s lab.”
“Go ahead.”
“Did you see all the thumbtacks with the little corners of paper left above one of the workbenches?”
“Yes.”
“I found the papers in a dumpster behind the lab,” Sci said. “Some are weather maps of Rio that show wind speed and direction. The rest are printouts of wind data going back ten years, all in the month of August.”
“And I’m interested in this why?” I said as we swung over the lines of opening-ceremony ticket holders still trying to clear security and get inside.
“Because of what else I found,” Sci said. “Balsa wood, stout cardboard tubes, and sheets of aluminum with finlike shapes cut from them.”
“What do you mean, finlike?”
“Like the kind that stabilizes a model rocket,” Sci said.
“Like a kid’s hobby thing?”
“Exactly, except some of the discarded cardboard tubes I found were five inches in diameter and four feet long.”
We were coming in for a landing and it all started to hit me. Historical wind direction and speed. A huge model rocket. Capable of carrying...
“Jack?” Sci said as the helicopter landed.
“What’s the prevailing wind direction and speed in Rio in August?”
“Southeast at eight to ten miles an hour.”
“Which means he was thinking about trajectory, which means he doesn’t have to be here at the stadium to...”
“Correct,” Sci said. “He could be a mile or more away.”
“Well done,” I said, and hung up.
The second the pilot signaled it was safe to get out, I did and told da Silva and Acosta about my conversation with Kloppenberg.
“A rocket?” the general cried.
“The wind’s southeast right now, eight miles an hour,” I said, glancing that way and seeing the silhouette of the closest mountain. “He could be up there, just waiting for the right time to launch.”
Da Silva thought about that and looked ready to throw a fit.
“How the hell are we going to defend against something like that?”
“I have no idea,” I said.
Chapter 94
After the door had closed and Pietro had thrown the bolt, Dr. Castro stood there in the pitch-dark cavity of the statue, taking a moment to be grateful for having gotten this far.
Then he flipped the headlamp on, fitted it to his head, and checked his watch. Right on schedule. He paused to smear his face, neck, and hands with the gray makeup.
He started the eight-story climb up a narrow iron staircase anchored into the inner wall of the Christ. He took his time, not wanting to bump the pack or make any noise that the two NBC workers might hear and report.
At 5:44 p.m., Dr. Castro reached the top of the staircase. He was inside the chest of the Christ, right at the junction of the two outstretched arms. Dropping the pack on the catwalk, Castro took a minute’s rest and then carried the pack into the hollow interior of the Redeemer’s right arm and the folds of his sleeve.
When the doctor started, the ceiling of the passage was more than eight feet high. But by the time he reached the elbow, it had dropped to less than five feet. It featured in the crook of the arm a large hatch that workmen used to maintain the statue exterior.
He checked his watch. It was 5:52.
Dr. Castro knew he should wait, knew he should focus on assembling a few things, but now that he was actually here, with the hatch right there, unexpected excitement seized him and he gave in to impulse. He threw the lever that unlocked it and felt the hatch door ease.
Heart pounding, Castro gently pushed on the hatch and felt it go up. Wind came whooshing in. So did blazing light, which concerned him.
He shouldn’t risk a look. Not yet. But then he realized the winds had shifted, gone southeasterly, eight or nine miles an hour, which was exactly what he wanted. He needed that wind direction and speed if this was to happen tonight. Now everything was perfect, and everything he’d planned for two years was about to move from dream to reality.
That made him feel blessed, powerful, and, well, righteous. He was doing this for Sophie and the Gonzalez kids. He was doing this for every other man, woman, and child who’d died needlessly of poverty.
Castro pushed the hatch up another inch and then another. He peeked out, seeing just the lights and the top of the arm. When he’d raised the door eight inches, he could see down to the terraces and spotted the NBC guys with their backs to him, drinking beer and watching the network coverage on an iPad.
They had no idea he was there. That emboldened Castro. He pushed over the door and laid it carefully on the Christ’s upper arm. Then he stuck his gray hat, gray face, and gray shoulders up out of the gray elbow of the Redeemer.
The sun was a ball of fire in the haze, and the sky to his west was an incredible dun-red color that seized his attention for several moments. Off to his east, several hundred yards, yet another helicopter circled the summit, but he wasn’t concerned.
All of Rio lay below the doctor now. The lights were going on, twinkling like so many jewels and charms. But Castro was interested only in that part of the Marvelous City that lay past the outstretched right hand of the Christ, five miles off, below a circling blimp.
Maracanã Stadium was lit up like the ultimate gem, no doubt already filled with a crowd of the people wealthy and powerful enough to afford one of only forty-five thousand tickets to the opening ceremony. They had to be eagerly counting down the minutes until the big night began.
I know I am, Dr. Castro thought before ducking down inside the arm and getting to work.
Chapter 95
Friday, August 5, 2016
6:40 p.m.
Twenty Minutes Before the Olympic Games Open
“You can’t get some kind of radar in here?” Lieutenant Acosta asked. “At least so we know something’s been launched?”
“On this short notice?” General da Silva shot back. “Impossible.”
We were standing in the parking lot of the stadium, watching the thousands of people still pressing to get inside and looking off into the breeze, to the southwest toward the closest mountains.
“Then you better go tell your president,” I said. “You’ve got twenty minutes until the ceremony starts. Let her decide. But she better be quick about it.”
The Olympic security chief struggled, then swore in Portuguese and hurried off.
Lieutenant Acosta got a phone call and listened while I stared at the sky, which had gone from fire red to fading charcoal ashes. I didn’t know what to do. Common sense said to grab one of the hazmat suits from the helicopter and wear it all night. But part of me wanted to be defiant, to show that I would not be controlled by a threat.
“We had a second sighting of Dr. Castro in Laranjeiras,” Acosta said, pocketing his phone. “The security guard at the College of St. Vincent de Paul saw him carrying a heavy backpack toward the back of the campus. He said Castro went through a gate there and disappeared into the forest.”
“Where’s the college?” I asked. “Show me on a map.”
He pulled out his iPhone and called up the map, showed me.
I studied it, said, “That’s the wrong way.”