He nodded, his grin broadening, and spread his arms wide in surrender. “Of course I did. What did you think? You flew in with the director of the NSA. You think nobody was watching?” He laughed. “Director Mark Kilpatrick shows up in Brasília accompanied by Neil Johns, who just joined the NSA a few months ago. So why is a brand new employee hanging out in Brasília with the director? Ah, maybe because he used to be an amigo of the son of the deputy commander of the Agência Brasileira de Inteligência. And so no one is surprised when you show up on campus.”
“Your father warned you I might be calling.”
“He did.”
I looked around. “Are there agents watching us?”
“Almost certainly.”
There were plenty of university students, but I didn’t see anyone in dark suits or sunglasses. In fact, nobody seemed to be paying any attention to us at all. The idea that I had probably been followed from the hotel creeped me out, though I had to admit that it gave me a thrill at the same time. I felt like a spy, even though I was just relaxing on the grass with a friend and eating churrascos.
“Sorry,” I said. “Pretty lousy of me, I guess.”
His smile was like a flashlight. “Forget about it. My dad’s an ass most of the time, and it sounds like your director is, too.”
We walked the campus and bought coffees and talked about his engineering degree and campus life and why neither of us had a girlfriend. I told him about my three failed attempts to get a college degree, and he told me all the reasons his dad was an ass, especially in how he treated Celso’s mother. The five years I hadn’t seen him seemed to melt away, and we were best friends again, simple and easy and comfortable together.
Celso asked me again about my family. Hadn’t my father been sick? And suddenly I was spilling the whole story, about Paul’s infection in the Amazon, his friend’s death and his recovery, his sudden and unexplained powers of intelligence and memory, his work in the mycology lab. Finally, I told him about my father’s Alzheimer’s, about Paul infecting him with the fungus without asking anyone, and about my dad’s miraculous recovery. All the anger and frustration came bubbling to the surface, and I spoke freely, though I kept the NSA and the Ligados and Melody’s granddaughter out of it.
It felt good to talk. “How can he be so smart all of a sudden, and yet so stupid!” I said. “What kind of person gives an experimental drug to his own father? Wouldn’t being smarter make you more careful? More aware of the risks? He’s acting like a teenager, like nothing can possibly go wrong.”
“Or like someone who cares more about his research than about the risks,” Celso said.
“Yes. That’s it exactly. But it’s not like him. He cares about the science, sure, but he’s always been a take-it-slow, don’t-publish-till-you’re-ready kind of guy.”
“Has he been acting strange in other ways?”
I shrugged. “He never seems to sleep. He trounces me at games I used to win easily.”
Celso grew quiet. He seemed to be brooding on his own troubles, but when I asked him what was wrong, he just flashed me his brilliant smile.
That evening, we ended up at Pôr do Sol, a nearby bar packed with university students. We sat at one of the square red tables and ordered Heinekens and Brasília’s staple bar snack, chicken croquettes. By the time the beer arrived, two girls had joined our table, friends of Celso, whom he introduced as Gabriela and Talita. Talita was dark-skinned, with her hair in thin braids, and reminded me of Shaunessy.
The girls were fun and laughed a lot, but other students gave us dirty looks. One guy went so far as to push roughly past, knocking into me and almost spilling my drink. I let it go, not wanting to get into a bar fight in my first field assignment for the agency. But the animosity worried me. It was completely counter to anything I’d experienced during my decade growing up in the city. A passion for Amazon conservation didn’t seem sufficient to explain it.
We tried to keep things light, but I could tell Celso wasn’t in the mood. Finally, we left the girls and slipped out into the street, which was nearly as crowded, with students drinking and laughing and dancing to the sertanejo universitário music piped through speakers from another bar farther down the street. Celso walked through the crowd like he didn’t see them. At the end of the road, he turned left, then climbed up a steep embankment.
When I reached him, he was standing at the rail of one of the thoroughfares that cut the city into straight lines. Cars thundered past, buffeting us with displaced air. From this vantage, we could just see the administrative region of the city, where the major government buildings stood. Celso looked out across six lanes of traffic like he might just make a run for it.
I put a hand on his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
He didn’t look at me. “I’m not supposed to tell you. He doesn’t want me to tell anyone anything, least of all an American agent.”
“Then don’t tell me,” I said.
He turned to face me, and the easy smile was gone. His eyes looked haunted. “My father has changed. He was never a nice man. You remember that. He was strict and had a temper. But now…” He looked back at the traffic, and his muscles bunched. “I think he’s been using his power to control who takes office. Putting surveillance on congressmen, blackmailing. Maybe even killing.”
“You know this?”
“I suspect. And it’s crazy nonsense. Suddenly he’s concerned about the environment, wants more protections in place for the Amazon, revoke logging rights, that kind of thing. He’s trying to ban all foreign tourism to the Amazon, can you believe that?”
“He’s killing people for this?”
“He never gave two reais for the environment until this year. And that’s not all.” Celso’s skin looked drained of life, the passing cars’ headlights casting strange, moving shadows across his face. “My mother has been missing for two months.”
“She disappeared?” I tried to say it gently. “Have you called the police?”
“The police are afraid of him, I think. He just tells them it’s nothing to worry about, that she went to visit her sister Rafaela in Salvador. But she’s not there. And she wouldn’t have left my father, not without a word to me.” He let the alternative hang in the air.
I stared at him, shocked, with no clue what to say. “Isn’t there a higher authority you can go to? Anyone who will listen?”
“I’ve tried. Anyone with enough power is too busy to care, or else needs his support. And what can I say? I have no evidence. I can’t even prove she’s dead.”
“Celso, I’m so sorry,” I said. Suddenly all my concerns about my father seemed trivial. I was embarrassed for sharing them, when Celso had a burden like this weighing on his soul.
“Another thing,” Celso said. “He’s too smart. My dad. Just like you were saying with your brother. He remembers everything he reads, does math in his head. He doesn’t sleep. And he figures out what I’m thinking before I say it.”
“Has anyone else noticed? Your sisters?”
“I don’t know. My sisters are in São Paulo, and they should stay right where they are.” Celso slapped the guard rail with his palms. “He scares me, mano. I think he killed my mom, and I’m afraid I might be next.”
“What about all your mom’s family? They must know she hasn’t been visiting her sister.”
“Most of them live around here, and they don’t talk to Rafaela, not since she married a Candomblé priest. They just believe my dad. That or they’re afraid of him, too.”
A muted thump sounded in the air, like thunder, but with deep enough tones to rattle my chest. “What was that?” I scanned the freeway, thinking there might have been a collision, but Celso grabbed my sleeve and pointed. Toward the southeast, in the direction of the capitol buildings, a column of black smoke rose into the sky.