BETA - Project Avatar, page 28
Dee jumped out and handed the promised ten-real note through the window. There were plenty of cabs around here, and much cheaper ones. Nonetheless, she found herself saying, “Gustavo, if I can find you in ten or fifteen minutes, I’ll need you again.” Better the devil you know.
No sooner had Beta translated the request than Gustavo turned off his engine and punched on his hazard lights. He slouched down in his seat, the better to ignore the rude comments and gestures of every driver who passed by his window.
The café was long and narrow, reminiscent of a Paris tabac with its black and white tiles and big overhead lights, its long counter serving strong coffee and little snacks, and its tiny round tables with tall iron chairs. The computers were in small booths along one wall, and only a few were in use.
Dee had no idea what the Portuguese word for “coffee” was, so she tried combining a big smile and the French word café, and that seemed to work just fine. Behind the counter was a remarkable array of delicious-looking pastries that looked like tiny, triangular empanadas. Impulsively, Dee ordered two at random, pointing at them since she couldn’t read the labels.
Then she rolled her carry-on bag into the ladies’ room and locked herself inside. After changing into a pair of crop stretch jeans with rolled cuffs, and a chiffon blouse in a floral print, she looked at herself critically in the mirror for a few seconds. Perfect. She looked like someone who had just flown in from Los Angeles or Miami to check out the beaches and nightlife.
Someone tried the knob, then tapped politely at the door. She called out in English, “One moment,” and continued working methodically, forcing herself not to hurry.
She dug the peripheral webcam out of her bag. It had a flat plastic case the size of a chocolate mint, with a pea-size lens on one side. Putting it behind the broad lapel of her blouse, she worked the lens through an ornamental buttonhole, letting it peek out from behind, and secured it in place with two safety pins clipped over opposite corners. Then she ran the skinny cord down the inside of the blouse, plugged it into her smartphone, and tucked the smartphone into the hip pocket of her jeans.
“Beta,” she said.
“Yes, Melody.”
“Can you see?”
“I have detected a ten-megabyte external CCD camera. The camera is operational.”
She turned to face the mirror. “Can you see my face? Can you recognize it through the disguise?”
“Facial recognition is functional. I recognize Melody Moody.”
Dee smiled with satisfaction. The lens of the concealed camera didn’t strike her as particularly obvious. As for the smartphone, it made an inelegant bulge on her hip, but it didn’t look suspicious at all. It looked like what it was: a piece of consumer electronics in her pocket.
When she came out of the bathroom, whoever had been waiting outside the door had given up. Two or three customers seemed perhaps to notice that she had changed her clothes, but other than some curious looks, she didn’t draw undue attention.
Wheeling her bag back to the computer booth, she sat down, and opened an internet browser window. The waitress brought over her hot coffee and pastries.
Checking into Abe’s dead drop, she found two encrypted messages waiting for her. She nibbled at a pastry while she scanned over the meaningless lines of letters and numbers in the code. The pastries were delicious—now she wished she had ordered more of them. A cursory inspection of the code on the screen showed her that the encryption system was one of her own.
Opening her laptop, she typed the encrypted message in by hand. Remembering that Beta now had access to all her encryption algorithms and passcodes, she said quietly into her Bluetooth insert, “Beta, decrypt these files for me.”
“Yes, Melody. I am now initiating decryption.”
She took another sip of coffee and nibbled at the pastry. A moment later, the plain-text messages appeared on screen.
She read it over, then glanced at her watch—and gasped. Abe had arranged the meeting with Lygia for right now, this very minute, and at a mountain location that sounded as though it was quite some distance away.
Hastily she brushed crumbs from her fingers, closed the laptop and tucked it away, and hustled for the door. Dropping a wadded five-real note by the cash register, she ran out the door and across the sidewalk.
Gustavo was still there, his cab holding its illegal ground in an angry river of inconvenienced drivers. When Dee jumped into the back seat, he was slouched low behind the wheel, humming along with the radio and ignoring the continuous stream of invective being poured onto him from outside his window.
“Head for Corcovado,” she told him while still trying to remove the smartphone from the pocket of her tight jeans.
Gustavo caught the name of the famous tourist attraction. He started his engine and darted out into traffic. Waving his arm insistently out the window, he cut diagonally across three lanes.
Dee managed to pull the smartphone out and turned its speaker on. “I have to meet someone, and I’m very late. Please, get me there as fast as you can.”
Gustavo got it. He gave a thumbs-up and turned left into a broad cross street, heading straight for the hills. The Fiat’s tiny one-liter engine screamed as he floored the accelerator.
Although the morning rush hour was well over, the dense city traffic still offered plenty of resistance to anyone in a hurry. The cab turned onto a large boulevard that passed through the most expensive region of the downtown area, with fountains, churches, and theaters reminiscent of a European capital. Working their way through, they drove up into the low hills adjoining downtown.
The rows of mansions gave way to a charming bohemian quarter, where the winding streets were thick with cafés, chic restaurants, and night spots. Gustavo had his window down, and any number of Brazilian music styles wafted in on the breeze as the car sped by: bossanova, pop, chorinho, and samba.
The roads grew smaller and windier, the hills steeper, as they passed through a beautifully green neighborhood perched on the hillside above the city. The area was dense with big trees and quaint old houses in Iberian and colonial styles. Despite her anxiety to reach the top of the mountain, Dee couldn’t help noticing that this was a neighborhood she might dream of living in some day. It was reminiscent of Montmartre in the hills of Paris, or maybe Russian Hill in San Francisco.
They came at last to the end of the habitable slopes. Above them, a rough terrain of vertical cliffs stretched upward. And unbelievably, the road continued, working its way up along the cliff faces on steep, narrow switchbacks.
When they hit the first curve above the last houses, the view took Dee’s breath away. The dense city was arrayed in broad patches below them, rolling out like carpets to the seashore. At the edge of the sea, the sections of city were interspersed with vast uninhabitable promontories of stone, dwarfing the high-rises that lined the shore. Beyond the high rises, an immense white beach, several blocks wide and infinite in length, sparkled gaudily in the sunshine. And beyond that, the green Atlantic, rolling out to the far horizon.
The turns in the road became regular, switching methodically back and forth along a broad bluff that was only slightly more forgiving than the others around it. A cog railway followed the same slope, angling straight up on thick beds of concrete and sturdy steel trestles. The rails crossed over and under the road at intervals.
Just once, Dee caught a glimpse of some sort of human habitation a little beyond the ridge to the right. She looked more carefully the next time the road whipped around in that direction, and was rewarded with a brief view of one of the most bizarre settlements she had ever seen. Cheap plywood houses were crammed together on terraces going straight up the mountain, practically built on top of the roofs of those below. Hundred-dollar huts with million-dollar views. She asked Gustavo about it.
“That is Guararapes,” he told her ominously. “Do not go there, miss. Too violent.”
She caught no further glimpses of the favela and was left to ponder how little she knew about this strange city.
When they finally approached the top of the mesa, the sheer cliffs along the roadside ceded ground to ledges and gullies filled with lush tropical jungle. Through Gustavo’s open window, the raucous sounds of parrots and monkeys came spilling in over the plaintive whine of the little engine. The air was balmy and misty, and the dark spaces under the big trees were full of fog and vines.
“This jungle goes on forever,” Gustavo told her, waving his hand as if there might be some doubt which jungle he was talking about. “If you get lost in there . . .” He finished the thought with a fricative sound between his lips, suggesting some unspecified but unpleasant fate.
“Listen, Gustavo,” Dee said, leaning forward over the seat. “I’m going to the overlook restaurant, but I don’t want to drive up to the door; I want to walk. So could you stop somewhere beside the road, before we come into view of the building?”
Gustavo looked back at her and frowned. He seemed to be assessing just what sort of madwoman he had in his cab. Then he gave a tolerant shrug, agreeing to go along with the strange request.
Not long after, he pulled over onto a rutted patch of shoulder, stopped in the shade of a big rainforest tree, and shut off his engine.
“The restaurant is just over there,” he said, turning his shoulders to face her and pointing at the windshield.
Dee bargained with him and paid him extra to wait one hour for her. “I’m going to leave my luggage here,” she said, tapping her carry-on bag.
He shrugged his agreement, said he would wait, and slumped down to take a nap.
She climbed out of the car and slipped her smartphone back into her pocket, then adjusted the strap of her shoulder bag, took a deep breath, and headed up the road on foot.
A whining scream came from directly overhead, and her knees buckled, nearly dropping her to the road. When she looked up, she saw a pair of pale-furred monkeys scolding her from the branches of a roadside tree. She laughed to break the tension, waved a humble apology to them for her trespassing, and moved on.
The restaurant came into view as she rounded the curve of the road. It was perched on the edge of the cliff, its dining room cantilevered out over the view with big panoramic windows. High above, on a cliff a few turns further up the road, loomed the vast statue of Jesus with arms outstretched, the Cristo Redentor, Rio’s famous art deco postcard icon.
As she walked into the parking lot, she studied the restaurant, trying to identify windows and doors, hiding places—anything that might be useful to know. She reflected in passing that the view from the dining room must be phenomenal. You could probably throw a rock out of one of those windows and have it fall cleanly two thousand feet, to land in the middle of one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the world. Overall, the restaurant seemed an excellent choice for a discreet meeting: isolated, spacious, and accessible from only two directions. Hats off to Abe.
A lone woman was sitting in a rocking chair on the narrow patio that faced the parking lot. When she saw Dee walking up, she stood hesitantly and stared at her.
“I think this is Lygia Magela,” Dee said quietly to Beta. “Do you see her?”
“I have located a subject. Positive identification is not possible at this range.”
“Well, keep looking, and let me know as soon as you’re sure.”
The woman on the porch had brown hair streaked with pale highlights. She descended the front stairs, cautiously approaching Dee to meet her halfway.
“That must be her,” she whispered.
“Positive identification has been made,” Beta replied, as Dee came closer to the woman. “The subject is Dr. Lygia Magela.”
Dee had vaguely noticed the sound of a small motorcycle kicking to life somewhere nearby. But now two more fired up in different directions, making enough racket that she looked around. The high-pitched engine sounds were loud, but the motorcycles were nowhere to be seen.
Suddenly, a rugged-looking off-road motorcycle leaped out from the cover of the trees just across the road. It was all black and chrome, and mounted high on its fork and swingarm above thick, warty tires, giving it a spidery look.
The rider was wearing camouflage jungle pants and a black leather jacket and helmet, and he had a machine pistol strapped across his chest.
Chapter 28
Lygia screamed, spun about, and ran for the restaurant. Even as she did so, another bike with an armed rider burst from hiding. Then a third. All three motorcycles turned toward Dee and accelerated hard, with a great howl of high-RPM engine noise.
Dee was just breaking into a sprint, headed for the restaurant, when suddenly she froze. If she ran into that building, she’d be cornered. For a full second or more, she stood there, looking for a better escape route. The options were slim: only the road going up and down the mountain and, on one side of the road the cliff above, and on the other the cliff below.
“Beta, I’m under pursuit!” she shouted, her voice breaking. She ran uncertainly toward the rim of the cliff that fell off below the restaurant. She could see the tops of trees poking up over the edge, suggesting that the descent might not be perfectly vertical.
“Turn twenty-five degrees right,” Beta ordered her. “Advance with maximum haste.”
The first of the bikes was racing across the parking lot, its roar growing loud in her ears. She sprinted hard toward the edge of the cliff, trending a little to the right as instructed.
To her surprise, she spotted the head of a steep little trail that proceeded down into dense cloud forest under the overhanging restaurant. Hardly breaking her stride, she leaped onto the rough, eroded trail and bounded down it in big galloping steps, watching her feet to avoid twisting an ankle.
She hadn’t gone far when she heard the moan of a motorcycle’s engine winding down, and the hard, gripping noise of knobby tires digging into the steep dirt of the trail above her.
“Attempt to achieve a higher velocity,” Beta recommended.
The trail wound downward in steep switchbacks into the dense growth, swerving among buttressed tree trunks. She cut the corners of the serpentine trail, leaping clumps of underbrush and shoving between branches. There were vines and dangling aerial roots everywhere and more than once she nearly took a fall as she cut through the thick, grasping foliage. But these little shortcuts were her only hope of staying ahead of the motorcycles.
She could hear the men shouting orders to one another. They weren’t far above her, and the trail couldn’t go much farther. In fact, it was likely to end at a scenic viewpoint over a sheer drop any moment now, penning her in. With sudden certainty, she saw how trapped she was. Her stomach clenched in terror. If they intended to shoot her, they would have ample opportunity soon, along with plenty of privacy.
“Maybe I . . . can hide,” she panted, glancing at the thickets and big tangles of vines as she raced past them.
“Do not leave the trail,” Beta replied immediately. “Attempt to achieve a higher velocity.”
The trail had hit a straight stretch, running diagonally along the hillside, and she was already running flat out. For evasion, this was about the worst possible terrain. When the first motorcycle rounded the bend behind her, it would have a straight shot at her, and it could rush down on her in a matter of seconds.
Thoughts flashed half formed through her head. If she could find a place to hide, would police arrive after a while to help her? She remembered the federal police at the airport—and then she was sure she did not want the Brazilian police to find her either.
She was about halfway down the straightaway when she heard screeching brakes and the spray of dirt and stones as a motorcycle slid around the bend in the trail behind her. Its engine gave a triumphant howl as the rider poured on the gas to launch himself straight down the hill at her back.
She heard a man’s deep voice, calling to his comrades: “I got her!”
“Turn left and advance downhill with caution,” Beta told her.
She swerved off the trail and leaped through a curtain of leaves and twigs. She found herself in freefall, and let out a shriek. She hit the ground butt-first, on a steep mat of leaf litter and muddy soil that gave way loosely under her weight, sending her tumbling down a steep defile. A very hard-looking tree rushed up at her at high speed, and it took all her considerable dexterity to roll out of its way. She curled her body around her precious shoulder bag, guarding her laptop as if it were an infant.
The slope steepened, speeding her descent, and she crashed painfully through a pair of bristly shrubs. These slowed her just enough that when she collided full-on into a small, gnarled tree trunk, she suffered nothing worse than a painful bump on the hip.
For a few seconds she lay still, too stunned to move, listening to her own ragged breath. She lifted her head and looked blearily down the length of her body, bending painful joints to confirm that nothing was broken or dislocated. Her new clothes were shredded in a dozen places, and she had lots of bleeding scrapes but, as far as she could tell, nothing serious.
She felt a gust of warm wind—a strange sensation when in the middle of a forest. She peered around the trunk that had stopped her.
The wizened old tree was clinging to the very edge of a vertical cliff. Looking down, Dee was momentarily overwhelmed with vertigo, and she threw both arms around the rough bark and hugged the tree tightly. The apartment buildings on the streets half a mile below looked like children’s toys, quaint miniatures. Their roofs appeared as perfect squares because she was looking straight down at them.
Somewhere far above her, the motorcycles were idling. She could also hear the furious cursing of grim male voices, with a lot of shouting back and forth, though she couldn’t make out the words.
“Seek concealment among the foliage,” Beta ordered her. “Attempt to gather tactical intelligence before proceeding.”
“I don’t know what that means!” she hissed angrily. “Look, I’m going to move away from this cliff. There’s some kind of animal trail or something. It’s just up above.” But she couldn’t move; she was too scared to let go of the tree trunk. She closed her eyes for a moment and stalled by asking, “Which way should I go on the trail, right or left?”
