He looks around. “I’m sorry, Tourist, I can’t say just yet. The people we’re dealing with… Later, I’ll tell you later.”
You nod but say nothing.
Viktor continues, “I must confess—I had one of my students follow you today—because I wasn’t sure if you’d go through with your end. I thought maybe you’d get cold feet… I’m sorry I doubted you; I won’t again. Still, I cannot tell you any more here. If I had you followed, it’s possible we’re not alone.”
“Okay… then, aside from eating pizza, what are we doing?”
“Nothing,” he says, his brow raised. “Have to eat, don’t you? But after….”
He clears his throat, then downs the rest of his beer. “Afterward, I think we might find something at Jane’s apartment, but we’re not going to get it with those agents prowling nearby. André will send me a text when they’ve arrived, far out of our way.”
He holds up a disposable cell phone, showing it off just as the waiter arrives with your pizza. The crust is thick and doughy, the cheese perfectly melted and browned, and the aroma makes your mouth water. You dig in, enjoying the pizza with Viktor, but after you pick up your second slice his phone buzzes.
After checking it, he looks up to you. “Finish up, it’s time.”
• Follow Viktor to the evidence.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
The Vigilante
Maria turns to Bertram, again offering her hands to be cuffed. He clicks them around her wrists.
“Let’s go, Hotshot. Grab a set of jeep keys from that security booth. We need to drop her off at local law enforcement, then I need to get straight to the Rio consulate. I can only imagine the fallout from this shit.”
“Local law enforcement?” you say. “What if there are cops on the Sugar King’s payroll? Won’t she be in danger?”
Bertram says nothing.
“A small price to pay, indeed,” Maria says. “My family will be remembered for standing up to Mateo Ferro, not as people who folded before such a tyrant. Maybe others will be inspired?”
Then she steps over to you and gives you a quick, if not impassioned, kiss on the lips. “You know, in another life…” she says.
• Part with Maria, then head to Rio.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Viktor’s Way
In a calm voice, Viktor says, “I want you to throw the chicken at them.”
Unsure how a chicken can compete against firearms, you hesitate. But the man is insistent. “Do it now, Tourist.”
You throw the chicken. It shrieks through the air, talons wildly seeking purchase. The flailing bird has the intended effect on the group, and in the chaos, Viktor grabs one of the small children, holds him tight and puts his pistol to the boy’s head.
After the chicken is subdued, the gang looks back at you. The leader’s eyes grow cold when he sees Viktor and the boy. Shockingly, without a second’s thought, the leader shoots the kid. In the immense silence that follows, he says something to Viktor in a strong yet emotionless tone. You think you’re about to be executed, but he seems to be waiting for a reply.
“What is it?” you ask.
“He says he will never be blackmailed nor manipulated. He says if we want information, we simply must pay for it.”
Viktor says something in Portuguese, and the leader bids you follow him with a wave.
“What did you say?”
“I told him we’d pay.”
“With what?”
Viktor shakes his head. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”
Oh, boy…
• Follow them to the informant.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Visitors’ Entrance
“Ah, I can get you your press badge.” He removes a clipboard and clicks the mechanism on a ballpoint pen, ready to check you off. “Name?”
“Sam…” you say, trying to make up a name on the fly. “…Adams.”
You wince, but he doesn’t notice. He scans his sheet. Come on…
“You’re not on the list.”
Damn.
You rack your brain, trying to think of a good add-on to the story. In a moment of inspiration, you say, “It was a last-minute addition. My editor is always doing this…sigh.”
“Well, give me the name of your point of contact and I’ll have him come down here and vouch you in.”
“No… I don’t want to waste his time. Really, I’m late. Can’t you just let me in?”
The guard shakes his head and says, “Protocol.”
“What? That’s ridiculous! I demand to speak to your supervisor.”
“Really?” he says. “Very well.”
The guard sets down the clipboard and picks up a radio. Wait—what are you doing? You’re supposed to be incognito. If you get discovered and the agents get wind of what you’re doing—helping the number one suspect in a murder investigation—this won’t be good. Best case? You’ll be deported back home, with a lifetime supply of no-fly orders. Worst case? Jail time.
“Hold on!” you say. “I’ll…I’ll go make a call.”
He sets down the radio, watching as you step away. There has to be another answer….
You look over to the long line of cars waiting to enter the parking garage. Each one stops at the guard shack to show proper identification. There’s one about two-thirds of the way down that sticks out—because it’s a pizza delivery guy. How the hell does he have proper credentials?
Wait, that’s it! All you need is a delivery. You don’t actually need to get inside; you just need your letter delivered. You pull out your wallet (since you don’t have a phone) and pretend to talk into it, keeping it pressed to the ear facing away from the guard shack.
“Just give a note to Agents…Bertram and Danly. Okay, will do!”
You turn back to the guard shack, quickly tucking your wallet away.
“Hi! I just need to leave a note for a couple of the agents. That okay?”
The guard says he can do that and proceeds to write down the agents’ names. You pass him the note and thank him.
“Sam Adams, right?”
“Yep, that’s me!” you say with a smile.
“Okay, I’ll get this to them right away.”
You thank the guard, then turn and leave. This had better work….
• Go meet Viktor at the restaurant.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Waking the Dead
Before the first of the armed men begins to climb the rope, you run to the back staircase, down to the mid-deck, and toward the passenger cabins. Hoping you’ve got the right cabin, you burst through the door.
Viktor immediately shoots out of bed, panting heavily. He grabs his glasses and looks at you with wild eyes.
“A boat—boarding us,” you huff.
“Is it the assassin? The Man in Black?”
You shake your head. “I don’t think so. Looks like hijackers or something.”
“Pirates,” he says knowingly.
“What do they want?”
“Usually it’s a robbery. We could try and wait them out, see if they’ll leave us alone. Or we could try and warn the captain. It’s illegal for merchant ships to carry weapons, but most keep a shotgun or at least a revolver just in case.”
• “Let’s barricade the door and wait it out.”
• “There’s still time! Let’s warn him.”
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Washing over You
Who knows when you might get a rinse-off again? Save for a dunk in the river—where there are piranhas, anacondas, camen-alligators, and countless microbial predators—this is it.
You turn on the shower, step in with your flip-flops, and as the water wets your head, you look down to the drain. Sticking out are two twisted, spindly strands of golden brown; either a clump of hair, or a pair of legs from a massive spider reaching out of the abyss. As water starts to run down the drain, they move slightly, but you’re still not sure what you’re looking at. It could be that the legs are recoili
ng from the wetness or simply it’s a clog moving with the current. The more you stare, the more you try to convince yourself you’re looking at hair in the drain, but your body tells you to flee.
As those prehensile locks of foulness reach toward your toes, you decide you’ve had enough. You flee the shower stall, back out into the room to towel off away from the hellish nightmare aborned from the drain.
Well, so much for sleeping. You dress and return out to the main deck of the boat, just in time to catch a major commotion on the starboard side.
• Go find Viktor and see what’s going on.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
Welcome to the Jungle
It’s nearly noon and you’ve finally arrived. The boat is tied securely to the dock, a small wooden walkway that floats just offshore. The whole world is wet from the previous night’s downpour, with humid raindrops clinging to every surface like a bathroom mirror after a steamy shower.
Someone has built a hut on the nearby riverbank and the collected fishing nets, clotheslines, and canoes tell of a family living off the land here—attached to the dock like a barnacle in the sea. Two small boys come out of the hut, blinking at you curiously as you step off the boat and onto the wooden panel. You have a feeling of vertigo when you go from the oscillating craft to the firm boards that are anchored to underwater pylons.
Agent Bertram steps off the boat as well, offering a wave of greeting to these river children. They duck back inside, only to return an instant later with fresh jungle fruits and jars of preserves ready to sell to the crew. With their bare-chests, bronze skin, obsidian hair, and broad features, they look much more like members of an Amazon tribe than the city dwellers of Rio or São Paulo, though their cargo shorts (and the New York Yankees cap the older one wears) show they’re a few generations removed from tribal life.
The growls of some great behemoth make the lot of you turn back toward the river, where another boat putters and churns straight for the dock. It looks like another fishing charter, ready to unload supplies—only it’s traveling far too fast. This is not docking speed; this is full cruising speed!
The crew of the Navio Destino shouts at this newcomer, waving frantic arms in gesture, desperately telling them to slow down and veer off their collision course —but it appears as if the new ship has neither crew nor passengers.
In a final realization that it’s a ghost ship headed for impact, the crewmen grab hold of their docking poles and use them as lances in an effort to deflect the projectile ship away. Father and son together on one beam, cookie and deckhand on the other, they brace for the inevitable. Both poles snap under the force, but they succeed in their mission—at least partially.
The new ship doesn’t collide into them; it simply glances off the side of their boat, rocking it back and forth and sending the crewmen tumbling: three onto the boat’s deck and young Neto into the river. For an instant, the image of a baby bird falling into a piranha feeding frenzy flashes through your mind.
Now the ghost ship heads on a new course: straight at you, full speed ahead.
“Look out!” Bertram shouts, running toward the boys to get them away from the collision.
You run down the dock, boards exploding into splinters behind you as the boat crashes through the wood and heads for your heels. In a dramatic leap, you make it to shore just as the ship crashes into the hut, demolishing the dwelling and running itself aground.
Cookie pulls Neto back aboard the ship, his father there to ensure he’s still in one piece. The deckhand is already aboard the empty vessel, shutting down the engine as fast as he can. You simply stare at the wreckage.
“I think I recognize this boat from port back in the city,” you say.
“So do I,” Agent Bertram replies. “But didn’t it used to have a lifeboat?”
“Think they abandoned ship?”
“Let’s find out,” he says, raising his weapon.
Trailing behind your comrade as he searches the ghost ship for any sign of life, you explore the vessel. There’s no evidence of a struggle, and yet there’s no sign of the people who navigated the ship so far downriver either. It’s like they all simply vanished.
Until you make it to the helm.
The captain stands at the wheel, still piloting the ship—eternally, it would seem. His throat has been slit and his lifeblood coats the floor around you. The captain had tied himself to the steering wheel, a rosary crucifix clutched tightly in his dead hands.
The crewman from the Navio Destino crosses himself and mutters a prayer in Portuguese.
The three of you, bewildered by what you see, step out of the helm and climb up to the highest point of the boat to get some fresh air and to get a better look at the ship as a whole.
“I guess… they were all killed?” you say.
“Or jumped overboard,” your partner adds. “All except for the captain.”
“But why?”
As if in answer, the crewman’s head snaps back, a crimson bullet hole suddenly in his forehead. As he falls dead into the river, you dumbly look across the way, not comprehending what’s happened. There on the opposite bank rests the ship’s missing lifeboat, and up in a tree above that, the Man in Black mercenary-assassin reloads by pulling back the bolt of his sniper rifle.
“Hit the deck!” Bertram shouts, blind-firing across the way with his own rifle before jumping.
You’re off the roof, then you’re off the boat, running down what remains of the dock. Keeping the boat as an obstacle between you and danger, you sprint into the jungle.
Agent Bertram moves fluidly despite the bulk of his bulletproof vest and tactical gear. You run just ahead of him, pushing apart the wet jungle foliage. Last night’s rainstorm has completely drenched the forest, and it’s a bit like forcing your way through a wet plastic bag.
Soon you’re fully ensconced in the rainforest, with no signs of civilization around you. The jungle is immense and breathtaking, like entering a sauna with a green filter over your eyes. Each step crunches the thick layer of decomposing plant matter, and you move forward with countless foreign smells confounding your senses. A group of monkeys calls out to one another in the trees.
“Hold up,” Bertram says as you enter a clearing.
He removes a handheld GPS unit from his vest and powers it up. You wait while he gets a fix on your position and finds a heading toward the sugarcane plantation.
The area before you sinks down into an open prairie, with bugs hovering just above the grass, but then suddenly the ground shifts. It’s not grassland at all, but a marsh. There is an acre of grass, to be sure, but no firm ground. Not anymore. The field has flooded after last night’s downpour and the deluge has transformed the sunken area into a grassy lake.
It shifts again.
You focus on the ripples of water, which surge in more than one spot but originate from the same, uniform serpentine motion. It’s as if a telephone pole was weaving through the muck. That’s when you see the dark, amber eyes of an anaconda.
It’s swimming toward you.
“We’re actually not far off,” Bertram says, still looking at the GPS. “There’s a road only a quarter-mile west of here that will take us straight to the plantation.”
You step back, trying to find enough saliva in your mouth to say, “Sssssnake!”
The tree behind you explodes with splinters of bark, right where your head was, as a bullet just misses you. Bertram instinctively turns and fires back toward the direction of the attack. You look back just in time to see the assassin-in-black slip out of view.
“Run!” Bertram shouts.
• “We can’t go into the field!”
• Snake be damned. Run!
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
We’re Not So Different, You and I
“I don’t understand,” he says. “Why would you want to help me?”
It’s a fair question, and one you’re not sure how to answer. All you can see, seared into the retina of your mind’s eye, is the bod
y of that poor woman. And if she’s this man’s fiancée, unable to grieve because he’s in danger of sharing her same fate… how can you not help?
“Do you have a pen?” you ask.
He looks at you, something boiling deep within those azure eyes, curious as to your intentions. But he reaches into the breast pocket of his thin coat without protest and produces a pen and a journal. He holds the pen out to you, but you don’t take it.
“Write down ‘pick me up.’”
“Pick you up? Pick you up what?”
“No, literally write the words, ‘PICK—ME—UP.’ As you would in your own hand. Please, just do it.”
His face is a study in confusion, but he complies, opens his journal and uncaps the pen. It’s a leather-bound notebook and as he opens it, you see the pages are scoured with equations, notes and diagrams. He must be some kind of scientist. He scrawls the phrase and hands it over to you:
“Pick me up.”
There you go; his handwriting is nothing like the note you found last night. The paper is the color of pale chlorophyll and covered with cross-hatched lines. The effect divides the sheet into tiny, uniform boxes.
You hand the notebook back to him. “I believe you. I don’t think you did it, which means that this thing is far from over. And if I’m witness to a conspiracy, I won’t be safe until it’s resolved. That’s why I’ll help you.”
“All right, Tourist. I hope you know what you’ve signed up for, because there’s no going back. You can’t even go say goodbye to your friends. Most likely, you’ll end up in a missing person’s report. Hell, they might even pin your ‘death’ on me, but we’ll have to risk it.”
You nod solemnly.
“Our mission will be three-fold. First, we’ll need to get the American agents off our trail. Then we must find Jane’s killer and clear my name. Third? I’ll have my revenge on those responsible and you’ll be free. Come, I’ve got a safe house where we can rest until morning.”
MURDERED: Can YOU Solve the Mystery? (Click Your Poison Book 2) Page 37
