“Yes, you said that before. So what happened then?”
“After Plínio and I spoke?”
“Yes. After you spoke.”
Stella toyed with her empty cup, considering her reply. Outside the window, between the television tower and the hotel, an executive jet glided by, descending into its final approach to the nearby airport. When she finally spoke, it came out in a rush.
“I stayed in the car. I refused to participate, refused to mount the podium with him. Ask the bodyguards. Look at the videos. You’ll see I wasn’t there, the first time in the whole damned campaign I wasn’t there. I sat, turning the situation over in my head, until I heard the shots. Not the single shot I was expecting, but four. I got out of the car to see what had happened. They let me through. I cradled Plínio’s head in my lap, but it was too late. They didn’t announce he was dead until after he’d arrived at the hospital, but I knew it even then. There was only a little hole in his forehead, but the wound in the back was a lot bigger. It blew out a piece of his skull. He was already gone by the time I got to him.”
Fiction or truth? He’d probably never know, Silva thought. And, in the end, did that part of it really matter?
“What else did Nestor tell you?” he said. “How did he come to shoot Cataldo? How did he come to be shot himself?”
“He saw that woman. What’s her name? The one that gave all those interviews?”
“Nora Tasca?”
“Yes. Her. She was elbowing her way forward. He saw her strike Cataldo’s arm, throw off his aim just as he pulled the trigger. Cataldo wasn’t more than two meters away, and Nestor could see this shocked, horrified expression on his face when he realized what he’d done, how he’d screwed up.”
“And?”
“And, to hear Nestor tell it, his training kicked in. He reacted instinctively, shot Cataldo before he gave it conscious thought.”
“And Cataldo, realizing he’d been shot, which wasn’t supposed to happen, acted to defend himself?”
“That’s right. He shot Nestor.”
“At which point, Nestor shot him again and killed him.”
“That’s what he told me, yes.”
“Had you reason to disbelieve him?”
“Well …”
“Well what?”
“It occurred to me, Chief Inspector, as it has undoubtedly occurred to you, and as I’m sure it occurred to Nestor, that Cataldo had become a threat.”
“You think Nestor might have killed him to keep him quiet?”
She paused, and he could see the doubt in her eyes.
“Nestor said he didn’t.”
“And you believed him?”
She smiled faintly. There was no humor in it.
“We’ll really never know, will we? So that’s it. That’s the story. Coming forward with it now wouldn’t do anyone any good. My husband ended his life with many faults, but he began it with many virtues, and I’m not about to destroy his legacy.”
“I have to tell you, Senhora, that there was some talk of him becoming involved in the smuggling of automobiles into Paraguay.”
She showed no surprise, grimaced in distaste, but also nodded, as if it was old news.
“It was stupid. We’d gone into debt, deeply into debt, during the campaign. He thought he saw a way out. I convinced him it would undermine everything he’d ever stood for. In the end, he agreed with me.”
“So he was going to back out of the deal with Al-Fulan?”
“He was. I’m sure Senhor Al-Fulan would have been bitterly disappointed.”
“Did Nestor know about their negotiations?”
“No. And that was another factor. Nestor hated Al-Fulan, and the feeling was mutual. He never would have stood for it. I think Plínio knew without me telling him, but I told him anyway. The deal was dead in the water.”
“Does Nestor’s wife, Bruna, know anything about this? About the plot? About your husband’s conversations with Al-Fulan?”
“No. And you mustn’t tell her. There’s Nestor’s memory to consider. How do you think Bruna would feel if she knew? As for me, I’d have to resign, so I’d be abandoning my chance to do any good in Paraná, and leaving the field to Abbas and his gang of crooks. What’s done is done. I’d change it if I could, but I can’t. So all I can do now is to make the best of it.”
“How about Cataldo’s widow? His children?”
“Collateral damage, Chief Inspector. I can’t help that.”
“I think you can, Senhora, and you must.”
“Is that some kind of threat?”
“Senhora, I’ve been in the service of a corrupt legal system for all of my working life. I’m nothing if not a pragmatist.”
“That’s what Luis said. That’s why I’m telling you all this.”
“But I’m also an idealist. And any evil I do, I attempt to do for the greater good.”
“I feel the same way. You see? We’re alike, you and I.”
“So let’s say I accept all your arguments,” Silva said, and his tone was cold. “Let’s also say I accept that you weren’t involved in your husband’s schemes and that you discovered the plot when it was too late to stop it—”
“You still don’t believe me, do you?”
“—and that I further accept that no good can be done by sullying the memory of Nestor Cambria, and even that your motives for accepting the mantle thrust upon you are entirely philanthropic.”
“Assume it,” she said, setting her jaw and attempting to stare him down, “because it’s true.”
Silva didn’t break eye contact.
“I have already given you all of that. And yet a problem remains.”
“Which is?”
“The position you’ve left Senhora Cataldo in.”
Both of her eyebrows moved toward her hairline. She seemed genuinely surprised.
“The position I left her in? I’ve just explained to you that I had nothing to do with it. To participate in the plot was her husband’s decision. He’s to blame, not me.”
“So you’re an innocent victim of circumstance, while she and her two children are not?”
“All three of them may well be innocent, but I can’t help that. At this point, there’s nothing I can do to help them.”
“I think you can.”
“You have a suggestion?”
“As it happens, Senhora, I do.”
Chapter Forty-Six
ARNALDO LOOKED AT SILVA over the rim of his coffee cup. “You’re not going to tell the Director, are you?”
“Not on your life,” Silva said.
It was an hour later. He was back in his office. The door was closed, and they were alone.
“If I mentioned any of this to Sampaio,” Silva said, “he’d only start thinking about how he could use it. And, in the end, he would use it. And it would all come out.”
“You think Bruna knew?”
“I don’t think so. I hope not.”
“She’s not in on the money deal, is she?”
“No. She doesn’t need it. Bruna’s family is wealthy. It was Senhora Cataldo I was worried about.”
“So what’s Stella going to do for her?”
“There’s an insurance company, based in Curitiba. Cataldo had a policy with them. They’ve been refusing to pay out on it, told the widow he’d committed suicide by cop.”
“So?”
“Stella’s going to get them to approach Jessica Cataldo, tell her they’ve reconsidered their position about suicide by cop, tell her, too, that Cataldo brought the value of the policy up to a million Reais the week before he died.”
“They’re going to pay Cataldo’s widow a million Reais?”
“Uh-huh.”
“After initially telling her they wouldn’t pay at all? What possible excuse could they offer for having changed their minds?”
“A lawyer is going to accept Senhora Cataldo’s case pro bono. And he’s going to find a loophole in the new policy.”
“Wh
at lawyer?”
“A friend of Diogo Mariano’s, Stella’s new Chief of Staff.”
“What loophole in what new policy?”
“The loophole Stella’s going to write into the policy Cataldo squirreled away and nobody’s been able to find.”
“But if nobody’s been able to find it—”
“It will be discovered, by one of their sterling employees, in the company archives. That employee, in turn, will bring it to the attention of a concerned directorate. It’ll be a nice public relations ploy for the company, show how honest they are, how dedicated to their policy holders.”
“Jesus Christ, Mario, you do have a devious mind.”
“Thank you.”
“What makes you think Senhora Cataldo will believe all this claptrap?”
“Why should she not? Why should she look a gift horse in the mouth?”
“Where’s the money coming from?”
“Plínio had a policy, a big one. If it wasn’t with the same company as Cataldo’s new one, Stella will make sure it’s transferred. She’s not giving Senhora Cataldo all the proceeds, though, just half.”
“Sounds to me like there are too many people involved in this little scheme. What if someone talks?”
“Stella isn’t worried.”
“Why not?”
“Because, if it comes out at all, which it may not, everybody’s going to think she’s a wonderful person for treating the family of her husband’s killer with such charity and tying herself into such knots to do it.”
“And Stella would come out smelling like roses.”
“Sure. The money is hers. She can do whatever she wants with it. There’s no real fraud, only a subterfuge to help the widow Cataldo.”
“Pure genius,” Arnaldo said with admiration. “You know, Mario, I sometimes think you should have been a politician yourself.”
“What a rotten thing to say,” Silva said.
Author’s Notes
POOR PARAGUAY.
In the nineteenth century, she suffered the bloody War of the Triple Alliance, which cost her 70% of her population and 140,000 square kilometers of her territory.
In the twentieth, she suffered Alfredo Stroessner, the longest-ruling dictator in the history of South America.
And now, in this book, she might seem to be suffering calumny.
Not so.
In fact, I wish there were more fiction in what I have written about her in these pages.
The contribution of smuggling to Paraguay’s economy cannot be overestimated. It exceeds by five times the country’s official GNP.
More than half of everything brought legally into Paraguay is exported as contraband.
Seventy percent of the 600,000 automobiles circulating in the country are there illegally.
Her factories produce more than 65 billion cigarettes a year, most of which go directly to Brazil, where they drain the equivalent of US $2.5 billion a year from badly-needed tax revenues.
Paraguay is the continent’s biggest importer of whisky from Scotland. Only 5% of it is consumed locally.
She is Brazil’s principal source of illegal weapons. As of this writing, a criminal can walk across the Friendship Bridge, enter any one of the 32 specialized shops in Ciudad del Este, buy a fully automatic AK-47 without showing any form of identification, and have it delivered to him in Foz do Iguaçu. The whole process takes less than 24 hours and costs US $400, a mere trifle for the drug dealers who are the illicit arms industry’s major clients.
More than US $1,000,000,000 a year is laundered by Paraguayan banks and exchange businesses.
Along one strip of the river forming the border between the two countries, a strip barely 200 kilometers long, more than 3,000 clandestine ports have been identified by the Brazilian authorities. Identified, but not controlled—partly due to insufficient staffing and inadequate resources, but also due to corruption. Many customs agents, and many cops, earn more in bribes than they do in salary.
The porosity of its borders has allowed Brazil to become the principal conduit for the supply of cocaine to Europe and Africa. It enters Paraguay by way of Peru and Colombia, and enters Brazil by way of Paraguay. From there, it moves eastward by ship and airplane.
The area where Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil meet, often referred to as the Tri-Border-Area (TBA), is home to one of the largest Muslim communities in all of South America—and the one most closed to outsiders. Documentation concerning the TBA has been found by U.S. forces searching captured Al Qaeda facilities in Afghanistan.
Islamic terrorist groups with a presence in the region reportedly include Egypt’s Al-Gamaá Al-Islamiyya and Al-Jihad, Al-Muqawamah, al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hizballah.
In March of 1992, a TBA group linked with Hizballah staged an attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires. Two years later, in July of 1994, they followed up with an action against a Jewish community center, also in Buenos Aires.
From the sketchy information law enforcement authorities were able to piece together, there was disagreement about both actions within the TBA’s radical community. One wing, the more pragmatic one, wanted to reserve the area as a safe haven. They defended the position that operations traced back to the TBA would call down the wrath of the authorities. The other wing, the more idealistic one, held that actions shouldn’t be prohibited for fear of reprisal.
The debate was settled when the pragmatic group’s position got a stamp of approval from Osama bin Laden.
Reports of a visit to the region by bin Laden himself remain unconfirmed, but Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was there in 1995, a fact that came to light following his capture in Pakistan in March of 2003.
It is unclear, at this moment, how much trouble might be brewing in the region, but all it would take to tip the balance would be the emergence of a few dedicated fanatics.
Santana do Parnaiba, SP
Brazil
April, 2012
Turn the page for a sneak preview from the next
Chief Inspector Mario Silva investigation
THE WAYS
OF EVIL MEN
Chapter One
SUNRISE IS A BRIEF affair in the rainforests of Pará. No more than a hundred heartbeats divide night from day, and it is within those hundred heartbeats that a hunter must seize his chance. Before the count begins, he is unable to detect his prey. By the time it ends, his prey will surely have detected him.
The boy timed it perfectly. The dart flew true. A big male muriqui leaned to one side and tumbled out of the tree. The others screamed in alarm. The boughs began to heave, as if struck by a strong wind, and before Raoni could lower his blowgun, the remaining members of the monkey tribe were gone.
THE WOOLY spider monkey, golden in color and almost a third of Raoni’s weight, was a heavy load for a little boy, but he was a hunter now. Right and duty dictated that he carry it.
Amati helped his son hoist the creature onto his narrow shoulders. To make sure it didn’t fall, he made what he called a hunter’s necklace, binding its long arms to its almost equally-long legs by a length of vine.
The hunt had taken them far. The sun was already approaching its zenith when they waded through the cold water of the stream, stepped onto the well-worn path that led from the fishing-place to the heart of their village, and heard the sound that chilled their hearts: the squabbling of King Vultures, those great and ugly birds, half the size of a man, that feed exclusively on carrion.
* * *
WHEN RAONI’S father was a boy, the tribe had numbered more than a hundred, but that was before a white man’s disease had reduced them by half. In the years that followed, one girl after another had been born. Girls, however, didn’t stay. They married and moved on. It was the way of the Awana, the way of all the tribes. If the spirits saw fit to give them boys, the tribe grew; if girls were their lot, the tribe shrank. And if it shrank too much, it died.
The Awana were doomed, they all knew it, but for the end to have come so suddenly was a horrible and
unexpected blow.
Yara was lying in front of their hut, little Tota wrapped in her arms, while vultures pecked out their eyes.
Yara’s husband, Raoni’s grandfather, Atuba, had fallen across the fire, felled in his tracks as if by a poison dart. His midriff was charred and blackened. The smell of his flesh permeated the air.
The tribe’s pajé lay face-down below a post from which a joint of roast meat was suspended. The tools of his rituals were spread about him: a rattle, a string of beads, some herbs—clear signs he’d been making magic.
But his magic had failed.
The father and his son went from corpse to corpse, kneeling by each. Signs of life, there were none.
They came to the body of Raoni’s closest friend, Tinga. The little boy’s favorite possession, his bow, was tightly clutched in his hand—as if he couldn’t bear to abandon it, as if he planned to bring it with him into the afterworld.
Raoni was overcome with fury. He picked up a stone and flung it at one of the vultures. Then another. And another. But the birds were swift and wary. He didn’t hit a single one, nor could he dissuade them. They simply jumped aside and settled, greedily, upon another corpse.
The anger passed as quickly as it had come, replaced by a sense of loss and an emptiness that weakened his legs to the point where he could no longer stand. When they collapsed under him, he threw himself full-length upon the pounded red earth and cried.
Chapter Two
JADE CALMON PARKED HER jeep, uncapped her canteen, and took a mouthful of water. It tasted metallic and was far too warm, but she swallowed it anyway. One did not drink for pleasure in the rainforest. One drank for survival. Constant hydration was a necessity.
The perspiration drenching Jade’s skin had washed away a good deal of her insect repellent. She dried her face and forearms and smeared on more of the oily and foul-smelling fluid. Then she returned the little flask to the pocket of her bush shirt, hung the wet towel over the seat to dry, and retrieved her knapsack. Inside were her PLB and GPS, both cushioned to protect them from the jogs and jolts of the journey.
Perfect Hatred Page 25
