Tall, bearded, late thirties. The man’s eyes flitted over us. “Can I help you?”
“Dr. Castro?” General da Silva said, and he identified himself as the chief of Olympic security. “We have something you need to see.”
“Oh?”
“You discovered Hydra?” I asked.
A cloud came over the doctor’s face. “If that’s what this is about, I’d rather not discuss it. No one was interested after the last outbreak, so I—”
Castro stopped, gazed around at us, said, “Has it surfaced again?”
“A mutation of it,” Dr. Cardoso said. “We’d like you to take a look at a tissue sample, tell us for sure.”
“Now someone’s going to listen to me?” Castro said bitterly. “Now you want my help?”
“Better late than never,” the medical examiner said.
The doctor thought about that and then sighed. “Of course. Let me look. Where are these samples?”
“Down in pathology.”
“Right here in Hospital Geral?” Castro said, surprised, as he finished locking his office door. “I hope to God safety measures have been taken.”
“The tissue was recovered from a badly burned body,” Dr. Cardoso said. “The heat would have killed any remaining live virus.”
Dr. Castro relaxed, said, “If it was hot enough, that’s right.”
As we walked back to the pathology lab, we filled Castro in on Luna Santos and the discovery of her burned corpse.
“Barra da Tijuca?” he said. “That’s far from the favelas.”
“What’s the significance?” da Silva said.
Castro said, “The outbreaks have always come in small clusters in dense populations, people living all over each other. Even in the early outbreak in the Amazon, the victims all lived within yards of one another in the jungle. So my thinking is, why does someone like this Luna and not one of the favela people get infected? And how? And are there others?”
Tavia said, “For all we know, Doctor, she visited a favela and came in contact with someone carrying the virus.”
Dr. Cardoso said, “In that scenario, at least two people have been exposed to Hydra in Rio in the past few days.”
“Yes, if your victim contracted Hydra from another human,” Castro said as we reentered the pathology department. “But, you see, that’s been the mystery with the disease right from the start. Where did it originate? Some filthy backwater of the Amazon? From a tick on a rat or a monkey? Or in bird shit? And how does it travel now? Airborne? Blood to blood?”
“Level with me, Doc,” General da Silva said. “How contagious is it?”
“We don’t know,” Castro said. “The first outbreak in the jungle was controllable, occurring in a place where it could be surrounded and burned out. But the last time, do you remember? During the World Cup?”
“We were with Henri Dijon when he collapsed,” I said.
Dr. Castro seemed impressed, said, “You’re both lucky to be alive. Did you have symptoms?”
“No.”
“Interesting. Strong constitutions. Extraordinary immune systems.”
Tavia said, “I’m puzzled. Why weren’t you brought in to help us two years ago, Doctor? You’d diagnosed the earlier cases. You were the only one who’d ever seen it firsthand.”
The doctor’s face clouded. “This is what happens when politics control science, Ms. Reynaldo. Because I challenged an idiot who worked for the mayor, because I argued for a quarantine of the favela where the children were infected, I was persona non grata.
“This is Brazil; once I’d been pushed aside, there was no way for the politicians to let me back in without admitting they’d been wrong. That would have humiliated them. Your lives were put at risk so that would not happen.”
I thought back two years, seeing a dimension to the day of the World Cup final that I’d been blind to before. Rather than bringing in the expert, in order to save face, the politicians had left the decisions up to doctors with no experience of the disease. It worked out for Tavia and me, and I was grateful, but what had happened to Castro was unjust and reckless.
Cardoso turned on the screen again, showed the two different cells.
Cradling his elbow, tapping his lips, and transfixed by the images, Dr. Castro moved closer, whispered, “Nine heads.”
“What does that mean?” General da Silva asked.
Castro didn’t answer, but his face grew graver by the moment.
“Doctor?”
“I can’t be sure,” he said at last. “But I would think it means the virus that produces the nine heads, Hydra-9, if you will, is more deadly and contagious than Hydra-6, which was more deadly and contagious than Hydra-4.”
“Is that true?” I asked. “The more heads on the cells, the deadlier the virus?”
“Without further examination of someone who’s contracted this mutation of the disease, I can’t say for sure, Mr. Morgan,” Castro said. “But it follows, doesn’t it?”
General da Silva chewed on that before saying, “As a precaution, how do we treat something like this?”
The doctor’s cutting side returned. “You don’t, General. Why? Because my requests for grants to create a vaccine or an antiviral for it were denied repeatedly by the Cruz Institute and the government.”
There was silence in the pathology department until da Silva said, “Give me best-case and worst-case scenarios.”
Castro studied the images again, said, “You might have one or two victims and no more. Like the last time. That’s best-case. Worst-case, Hydra-9 is highly communicable and already spreading and you face a public-health crisis of monumental proportions.”
Chapter 60
“JESUS CHRIST,” DA SILVA said. “Riots and a deadly virus outbreak. It’s over. The Rio games are done.”
“Not yet,” I said. “Luna Santos died days ago and there hasn’t been another case since. Is that how it works, Dr. Castro? The outbreak, I mean? Hydra comes on in spates of activity and then, as mysteriously as it surfaces, it goes into hiding and mutates to more deadly strains?”
Castro pondered that. “The Amazon outbreak was swift, from the original case to more than thirty in less than four days. During the World Cup, there were two deaths within moments of each other and then a third the following day.”
“And after that nothing, in both cases,” da Silva said, perking up. “So, given the virus’s behavior before and the fact that it’s been days since we found Santos, could we already be beyond the life cycle of the virus? Catastrophe averted?”
Castro hesitated and then said, “I see where you’re going, but I can’t say the outbreak is over for certain. Although I would call the growing amount of time since the initial case a very positive sign.”
Da Silva beamed. “I can tell the president your opinion?”
“You can,” Castro said, bowing his head. “You’ll call me if there are other cases that flare up?”
“You’ll be the first person we call, Doc,” the general promised.
We all shook hands with the virologist and walked away with his phone number. Da Silva was on his cell already, returning his focus to favela pacification. In front of the hospital, a police officer on horseback was herding along a crowd of poor people seeking medical attention.
Something about the scene gave me pause, and then, out of the blue, I had an odd feeling, a vague inkling of something that I couldn’t name or describe. Da Silva’s car came around. Tavia and I hailed a cab and headed back to Private Rio.
“I can’t stop thinking about Hydra-9,” Tavia said. “The virus going viral, I mean. It’s just too damn…”
“Petrifying,” I said.
That odd feeling, that inkling, was still nagging at me. In my mind’s eye, I saw the cop on horseback and the crowd of desperately poor people wanting help. I saw Luna Santos, her body drained of blood and scorched by fire. Then I saw the look on Dr. Castro’s face when he first saw the images of Hydra-9-destroyed cells in the pathology lab. W
hat was revealed in that expression?
The vision of Castro at that moment became sharper in my memory the more I thought about it. Finally, I recognized the doctor’s expression for what it was, and the vague inkling became insight.
I opened my eyes, said, “Isn’t it funny how sometimes it just takes a different perspective to see things clearly?”
“How’s that?” Tavia said.
“I want to know more about Dr. Castro.”
“Why?”
“Because I think I saw admiration in his eyes.”
Chapter 61
CASTRO CLOSED THE door to his office and leaned his sweaty head against it. Catastrophe averted. Wasn’t that what General da Silva had said?
The doctor wanted to laugh and cry because it was true. Catastrophe averted. The Olympics would go on, as would his detailed scheme.
Still, he couldn’t help but think about the Private investigators, Morgan and Reynaldo. Had they seemed suspicious of him? Dr. Castro closed his eyes, replayed the entire discussion. No. Neither of them had so much as raised an eyebrow at him.
And he’d been careful, kept his separate lives separate, kept everything flying below the radar, and he would make sure it stayed that way for the next thirty hours. It was all he needed. It was all he would ever need.
A worrisome thought niggled: People wouldn’t remember that he and Luna had danced at the samba club, would they? How would people even know that Luna had been at the club?
They wouldn’t. He’d covered his tracks with Luna and with poor—
A knock came at his office door. Castro broke into a sheen of cold sweat. Had they come back? Had he missed something?
With a trembling hand, the doctor opened the door and found one of his pretty little graduate students standing there. What was her name?
“Dr. Castro, have you seen Ricardo?”
Ricardo. That was better.
“No,” he said. “Why?”
“No one’s seen him in days,” she said. “He hasn’t been back to his apartment, and he’s missing all his classes.”
“That’s troubling, but I wouldn’t jump to conclusions. He could be off with a girl somewhere, sowing his wild oats or something.”
Castro had wanted her to laugh. Instead, the thought seemed to crush her.
“Oh,” she said. “Sure, I suppose.”
Dr. Castro felt sorry for her, said, “If I hear from him, I’ll have him call you.”
“Please. Tell him Leah was looking for him.”
“I’ll do that, Leah, and again, I’m sure he’s okay. Ricardo’s always struck me as someone who can take care of himself.”
“Unless he got caught up in the riots last night,” she said.
Castro liked that idea. He looked concerned, said, “I’ll call some friends in the police department, see if they know anything.”
Leah said, “I can call the hospitals.”
“There,” Castro said. “We have it covered.”
They traded cell numbers and she left.
The doctor closed the door again, feeling like things were closing in on him, that he should act sooner rather than later. He hadn’t meant to leave until long after dark, but he felt compelled to go now as the city’s traffic began to build.
Castro grabbed the few items he needed, put them in his medical kit, and put that in a knapsack. With nary a glance at the office where he’d worked all these months, or at the hospital, or at the lines of poor patients waiting to be seen, Castro left his past life behind and set out into the teeming city, looking to disappear.
Chapter 62
Thursday, August 4, 2016
1:30 p.m.
Twenty-Nine and a Half Hours Before the Olympic Games Open
MOVING DOWN THE hall at Private Rio, talking on my cell, I told Cherie Wise that I would be at her suite by three thirty to watch the latest release from Favela Justice. Then I hung up and entered the lab.
Mo-bot and Sci had six big screens running as they helped Tavia look into the life and times of Dr. Lucas Castro. I scanned the various web pages and documents they’d already called up.
Dr. Castro seemed an all-star by anyone’s estimation. Born in a small favela in northern Rio, orphaned young, Castro defied crushing odds and won a full scholarship to the federal university, where he excelled.
Castro studied medicine and virology, graduating with an MD and a PhD, credentials that won him a place at the prestigious Oswaldo Cruz Institute, arguably Brazil’s finest medical-research facility. The doctor garnered high praise for his early research and then took a two-year leave of absence to work with the World Health Organization.
Castro worked in Uganda, Haiti, and in the Upper Amazon River Basin, where he was a member of the team that first encountered Hydra. A Brazilian physician named Sophia Martine was also on the team. Martine was a river doctor, moving up and down the Amazon’s tributaries by boat and offering medical service to the poorest of the poor. She was the first to hear of a virus plaguing the primitive peoples of the rain forest.
“That’s her,” Tavia said, pointing to a picture of an attractive young woman doctoring a baby in a jungle setting. “They married soon after meeting. Castro returned to his job at the Cruz Institute. She gave up her river practice to work for a Rio-based NGO that gets medical care into the favelas.”
“And where is she now?”
“Dead,” Mo-bot said, calling up the death certificate.
It said Sophia Martine Castro. Cause of death: Accidental. Massive blunt-force trauma.
“Car accident?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” Tavia said, pensive. “I think I remember this case.”
She went to a keyboard, typed several words into Brazilian Google, and hit Enter. Scanning the list, she said, “It’s her. I don’t know why I didn’t put the names together before.”
A clipping from the newspaper Folha de São Paulo appeared on the screen with the same picture of Dr. Martine doctoring the baby.
“What’s it say?” I asked.
Tavia said, “She was killed during a protest in a favela that was being demolished to make way for one of the World Cup stadiums. Eyewitnesses said she got too close to one of the bulldozers, walked toward it at an odd angle. The machine operator claimed he never saw her, ran right over her while razing the slum.”
“That’s brutal,” Mo-bot said.
“Maybe brutal enough to threaten her husband’s sanity,” I said.
Arms crossed, Tavia said, “I still don’t fully understand why you’re suspicious of him.”
“I don’t either,” I admitted. “Not fully. But there was that look of admiration. And what possible reason would someone have to shoot Luna Santos, drain her blood, and burn her?”
“Rage?”
“There’s that explanation,” I agreed. “It was all an expression of some deep homicidal anger we might never understand. Except Luna was infected and ravaged by Hydra-9 before she was shot and burned.”
“Okay?” Sci said.
“What if the killer was trying to hide the infection rather than the gunshot wound? If so, the killer had to have known the infection was there. And the best person to make that sort of diagnosis is Dr. Lucas Castro.”
Tavia said, “Maybe the best, but not the only.”
“Granted,” I said.
“Jack,” Mo-bot said. “You haven’t explained why Castro would shoot Luna and then burn her. And you don’t have anything that links Castro to Luna. There’s no reason why she’d go to him for a diagnosis only to have him flip out, kill her, and burn her.”
“Unless he infected her,” I said.
“Why would he do that?” Tavia asked. “How could he do that?”
“I don’t know,” I said, staring at the screens, seeing his birth certificate. “This may be nothing, but check his parents’ death certificates. I’d like to know what they died of.”
Mo-bot was already typing.
“What other Brazilian databases can you
access that might give us another look at Dr. Castro?” I asked.
Tavia thought about that, went to the keyboard, and got into property and tax records. Castro currently worked at Hospital Geral and as a virology professor at the federal medical school. He rented a small apartment in Santa Teresa. In the secretary of state’s files, she found Castro listed as principal of AV3 Research, which rented space in a light-industrial area of northwest Rio.
“Jack?” Mo-bot called. “I found Castro’s parents’ death certificates.”
Tavia left her screen, went to Mo-bot’s. As she read, her facial muscles tensed. “They died of dengue fever within a day of each other. Castro was six.”
“So maybe Castro grows up obsessed with viruses because a virus took his parents,” I said. “He spends his professional life obsessed with them. And somehow Luna crosses his path, and either she’s infected and he realizes it, or he infects her and wants to cover it up.”
Tavia’s cell rang. She turned away, answered.
“But why Luna?” Mo-bot said. “Was she random?”
“Doesn’t feel random to me. Their paths crossed for a reason.”
“We just have to find out where,” Sci said, nodding.
I thought about the manner of Sophia Martine Castro’s death and what that might have done to her husband, tried to see it from his perspective. His wife was dead. Whom did he blame?
The construction worker? No.
The construction company? No again.
The authorities behind the building of the stadiums, the people his wife was protesting against when she died? Yes, that was the scenario that felt right.
But where did Luna fit in?
“Check Luna’s husband, Antonio,” I said. “Tell me if he was working for the World Cup organizing committee at the time of Sophia Martine’s death.”
My cell rang. Cherie Wise was calling. It was 3:28, two minutes before the latest update on her husband was to be delivered.
“Cherie,” I said. “I apologize, I’m hung up in the lab at Private Rio.”
“At Private Rio?” she shouted, sounding like she’d been drinking. “We have to watch this alone?”
The Games Page 16
