by John Grisham
Isolation settled in, slowly at first. In the midst of multitudes, he was a lonely man. He didn’t know a soul. Almost no one knew where he was at that moment, and damned few people cared. Cigarette smoke from the tourists boiled around him, and he walked quickly away, into the main concourse, where he could see the ceiling two levels above and the ground floor below. He began walking through the crowds, aimlessly, carrying the heavy briefcase, cursing Josh for filling it with so much junk.
He heard loud English, and drifted toward it. Some businessmen were waiting near the United counter, and he found a seat near them. It was snowing in Detroit, and they were anxious to get home for Christmas. A pipeline had brought them to Brazil, and before long Nate tired of their drivel. They cured whatever homesickness he felt.
He missed Sergio. After the last rehab, the clinic had placed Nate in a halfway house for a week to ease the reentry. He hated the place and the routine, but with hindsight the idea had merit. You needed a few days to get reoriented. Maybe Sergio was right. He called him from a pay phone, and woke him up. It was six-thirty in São Paulo, but only four-thirty in Virginia.
Sergio didn’t mind. It went with the territory.
________
THERE WERE no first-class seats on the flight to Campo Grande, nor any empty ones. Nate was pleasantly surprised to observe that every face was behind the morning news, and a wide variety of papers at that. The dailies were as slick and modern as any in the States, and they were being read by people who had a thirst for the news. Perhaps Brazil wasn’t as backward as he thought. These people could read! The airliner, a 727, was clean and newly refurbished. Coca-Cola and Sprite were on the drink cart; he almost felt at home.
Sitting by the window twenty rows back, he ignored the memo on Indians in his lap, and admired the countryside below. It was vast and lush and green, rolling with hills, dotted with cattle farms and crisscrossed with red dirt roads. The soil was a vivid burnt orange, and the roads ran haphazardly from one small settlement to the next. Highways were virtually nonexistent.
A paved road appeared, and there was traffic. The plane descended and the pilot welcomed them to Campo Grande. There were tall buildings, a crowded downtown, the obligatory soccer field, lots of streets and cars, and every residence had a red-tiled roof. Thanks to the typical big-firm efficiency, he possessed a memo, one no doubt prepared by the greenest of associates working at three hundred dollars an hour, in which Campo Grande was analyzed as if its presence were crucial to the matters at hand. Six hundred thousand people. A center for cattle trade. Lots of cowboys. Rapid growth. Modern conveniences. Nice to know, but why bother? Nate would not sleep there.
The airport seemed remarkably small for a city its size, and he realized he was comparing everything to the United States. This had to stop. When he stepped from the plane, he was hit with the heat. It was at least ninety degrees. Two days before Christmas, and it was sweltering in the southern hemisphere. He squinted in the brilliance of the sun, and descended the steps with a firm hand on the guardrail.
He managed to order lunch in the airport restaurant, and when it was brought to his table he was pleased to see that it was something he could eat. A grilled chicken sandwich in a bun he’d never seen before, with fries as crisp as those in any fast food joint in the States. He ate slowly while watching the runway in the distance. Halfway through lunch, a twin-engine turbo-prop of Air Pantanal landed and taxied to the terminal. Six people got off.
He stopped chewing as he wrestled with a sudden attack of fear. Commuter flights were the ones you read about and saw on CNN, except that no one back home would ever hear about this one if it went down.
But the plane looked sturdy and clean, even somewhat modern, and the pilots were well-dressed professionals. Nate continued eating. Think positive, he told himself.
He roamed the small terminal for an hour. In a news shop he bought a Portuguese phrase book and began memorizing words. He read travel ads for adventures into the Pantanal—ecotourism, it was called in English. There were cars for rent. A money exchange booth, a bar with beer signs and whiskey bottles lined on a shelf. And near the front entrance was a slender, artificial Christmas tree with a solitary string of lights. He watched them blink to the tune of some Brazilian carol, and despite his efforts not to, Nate thought of his children.
It was the day before Christmas Eve. Not all memories were painful.
He boarded the plane with teeth clenched and spine stiffened, then slept for most of the hour it took to reach Corumbá. The small airport there was humid and packed with Bolivians waiting for a flight to Santa Cruz. They were laden with boxes and bags of Christmas gifts.
He found a cabdriver who spoke not a word of English, but it didn’t matter. Nate showed him the words “Palace Hotel” on his travel itinerary, and they sped away in an old, dirty Mazda.
Corumbá had ninety thousand people, according to yet another memo prepared by Josh’s staff. Situated on the Paraguay River, on the Bolivian border, it had long since declared itself to be the capital of the Pantanal. River traffic and trade had built the city, and kept it going.
Through the heat and swelter of the back of the taxi, Corumbá appeared to be a lazy, pleasant little town. The streets were paved and wide and lined with trees. Merchants sat in the shade of their storefronts, waiting for customers and chatting with each other. Teenagers darted through traffic on scooters. Barefoot children ate ice cream at sidewalk tables.
As they approached the business district, cars bunched together and stopped in the heat. The driver mumbled something, but was not particularly disturbed. The same driver in New York or D.C. would’ve been near the point of violence.
But it was Brazil, and Brazil was in South America. The clocks ran slower. Nothing was urgent. Time was not as crucial. Take off your watch, Nate told himself. Instead, he closed his eyes and breathed the heavy air.
The Palace Hotel was in the center of downtown, on a street that descended slightly toward the Paraguay River sitting majestically in the distance. He gave the cabbie a handful of reais, and waited patiently for his change. He thanked him in Portuguese, a feeble “Obrigado.” The cabbie smiled and said something he didn’t understand. The doors to the lobby were open, as were all doors facing the sidewalks of Corumbá.
The first words he heard upon entering were being yelled by someone from Texas. A band of roughnecks was in the process of checking out. They had been drinking and were in a festive mood, anxious to get home for the holidays. Nate took a seat near a television and waited for them to clear.
His room was on the eighth floor. For eighteen dollars a day he got a twelve-by-twelve with a narrow bed very close to the floor. If it had a mattress, it was quite thin. No box spring to speak of. There was a desk with a chair, a window unit of AC, a small refrigerator with bottled water, colas, and beer, and a clean bathroom with soap and plenty of towels. Not bad, he told himself. This was an adventure. Not the Four Seasons, but certainly livable.
For half an hour, he tried to call Josh. But the language barrier stopped him. The clerk at the front desk knew enough English to find an outside operator, but from there the Portuguese took over. He tried his new cell phone, but the local service had not been activated.
Nate stretched his tired body the length of his flimsy little bed, and went to sleep.
________
VALDIR RUIZ was a short man with a tiny waist, light brown skin, a small slick head missing most of the hair except for a few strands he kept oiled and combed back. His eyes were black and bunched with wrinkles, the result of thirty years of heavy smoking. He was fifty-two, and at the age of seventeen he’d left home to spend a year with a family in Iowa as a Rotary exchange student. He was proud of his English, though he didn’t use it much in Corumbá. He watched CNN and American television most nights in an effort to stay sharp.
After the year in Iowa, he went to college in Campo Grande, then law school in Rio. He reluctantly returned to Corumbá to work in his uncle’s sm
all law firm, and to care for his aging parents. For more years than he cared to count, Valdir had endured the languid pace of advocacy in Corumbá, while dreaming of what might have been in the big city.
But he was a pleasant man, happy with life in the way most Brazilians tend to be. He worked efficiently in his small office, just himself and a secretary who answered the phone and did the typing. Valdir liked real estate, the deeds and contracts and such. He never went to court, primarily because courtrooms were not an integral part of practicing law in Brazil. Trials were rare. American-style litigation had not found its way south; in fact, it was still confined to the fifty states. Valdir marveled at the things lawyers did and said on CNN. Why do they clamor for the attention? he often asked himself. Lawyers staging press conferences, and hustling from one talk show to the next chatting about their clients. It was unheard of in Brazil.
His office was three blocks from the Palace Hotel, on a wide shaded lot his uncle had bought decades earlier. Thick trees covered the roof, so regardless of the heat, Valdir kept his windows open. He liked the gentle noise from the street. At three-fifteen, he saw a man he’d never seen before stop and examine his office. The man was obviously a stranger, and an American. Valdir knew it was Mr. O’Riley.
________
THE SECRETARY brought them cafezinho, the strong sugary black coffee Brazilians drink all day in tiny cups, and Nate was instantly addicted to it. He sat in Valdir’s office, already on a first-name basis, and admired the surroundings: the squeaky ceiling fan above them, the open windows with the muted sounds of the street drifting in, the neat rows of dusty files on the shelves behind Valdir, the scuffed and worn plank floor under them. The office was quite warm, but not uncomfortable. Nate was sitting in a movie, one shot fifty years ago.
Valdir phoned D.C., and got Josh. They talked for a moment, then he handed the phone across the desk. “Hello, Josh,” Nate said. Josh was obviously relieved to hear his voice. Nate recounted his journey to Corumbá, with emphasis on the fact that he was doing well, still sober, and looking forward to the rest of his adventure.
Valdir busied himself with a file in a corner, trying to appear as if he had no interest in the conversation, but absorbing every word. Why was Nate O’Riley so proud of being sober?
When the phone call was over, Valdir produced and unfolded a large air navigational map of the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, roughly the same size as Texas, and pointed to the Pantanal. It covered the entire northwestern portion of the state, and continued into Mato Grosso to the north and Bolivia to the west. Hundreds of rivers and streams spread like veins through the swampland. It was shaded yellow, and there were no towns or cities in the Pantanal. No roads or highways. A hundred thousand square miles of swamp, Nate recalled from the innumerable memos Josh had packed for him.
Valdir lit a cigarette as they studied the map. He had done some homework. There were four red X’s along the western edge of the map, near Bolivia.
“There are tribes here,” he said, pointing to the red marks. “Guató and Ipicas.”
“How large are they?” Nate asked, leaning close, his first real glimpse at the terrain he was expected to comb in search of Rachel Lane.
“We don’t really know,” Valdir replied, his words very slow and precise. He was trying hard to impress the American with his English. “A hundred years ago, there were many more. But the tribes grow smaller with each generation.”
“How much contact do they have with the outside world?” Nate asked.
“Very little. Their culture hasn’t changed in a thousand years. They trade some with the riverboats, but they have no desire to change.”
“Do we know where the missionaries are?”
“It’s difficult to say. I talked with the Minister of Health for the state of Mato Grosso do Sul. I know him personally, and his office has a general idea of where the missionaries are working. I also spoke with a representative from FUNAI—it’s our Bureau of Indian Affairs.” Valdir pointed to two of the X’s. “These are Guató. There are probably missionaries around here.”
“Do you know their names?” Nate asked, but it was a throwaway question. According to a memo from Josh, Valdir had not been given the name of Rachel Lane. He had been told that the woman worked for World Tribes, but that was it.
Valdir smiled and shook his head. “That would be too easy. You must understand that there are at least twenty different American and Canadian organizations with missionaries in Brazil. It’s easy to get into our country, and it’s easy to move around. Especially in the undeveloped areas. No one really cares who’s out there and what they’re doing. We figure if they’re missionaries, then they are good people.”
Nate pointed at Corumbá, then to the nearest red X. “How long does it take to get from here to there?”
“Depends. By plane, about an hour. By boat, from three to five days.”
“Then where’s my plane?”
“It’s not that easy,” Valdir said, reaching for another map. He unrolled it and pressed it on top of the first one. “This is a topographical map of the Pantanal. These are the fazendas.”
“The what?”
“Fazendas. Large farms.”
“I thought it was all swamp.”
“No. Many areas are elevated just enough to raise cattle. The fazendas were built two hundred years ago, and are still worked by the pantaneiros. Only a few of the fazendas are accessible by boat, so they use small airplanes. The airstrips are marked in blue.”
Nate noticed that there were very few airstrips near the Indian settlements.
Valdir continued, “Even if you flew into the area, you would then have to use a boat to get to the Indians.”
“How are the airstrips?”
“They’re all grass. Sometimes they cut the grass, sometimes they don’t. The biggest problem is cows.”
“Cows?”
“Yes, cows like grass. Sometimes it’s hard to land because the cows are eating the runway.” Valdir said this with no effort at humor.
“Can’t they move the cows?”
“Yes, if they know you’re coming. But there are no phones.”
“No phones in the fazendas?”
“None. They are very isolated.”
“So I couldn’t fly into the Pantanal, then rent a boat to find the Indians?”
“No. The boats are here in Corumbá. As are the guides.”
Nate stared at the map, especially the Paraguay River as it wound and looped its way northward in the direction of the Indian settlements. Somewhere along the river, hopefully in proximity to it, in the midst of this vast wetlands, was a simple servant of God, living each day in peace and tranquillity, thinking little of the future, quietly ministering to her flock.
And he had to find her.
“I’d like to at least fly over the area,” Nate said.
Valdir rerolled the last map. “I can arrange an airplane and a pilot.”
“What about a boat?”
“I’m working on that. This is the flood season, and most of the boats are in use. The rivers are up. There’s more river traffic this time of the year.”
How nice of Troy to kill himself during the flood season. According to the firm’s research, the rains came in November and lasted until February, and all of the lowest areas and many of the fazendas were underwater.
“I must warn you, though,” Valdir said, lighting another cigarette as he refolded the first map, “air travel is not without risk. The planes are small, and if there’s engine trouble, well …” His voice trailed away as he rolled his eyes and shrugged as if all hope was lost.
“Well what?”
“There’s no place for an emergency landing, no place to put it down. A plane went down a month ago. They found it near a riverbank, surrounded by alligators.”
“What happened to the passengers?” Nate asked, terrified of the answer.
“Ask the alligators.”
“Let’s change the subject.”
“More coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
Valdir yelled at his secretary. They walked to a window and watched the traffic. “I think I have found a guide,” he said.
“Good. Does he speak English?”
“Yes, very well. He’s a young man, just out of the army. A fine boy. His father was a river pilot.”
“That’s nice.”
Valdir walked to his desk and picked up the phone. The secretary brought Nate another small cup of cafezinho, and he sipped it standing in the window. Across the street was a small bar with three tables on the sidewalk under a canopy. A red sign advertised Antarctica beer. Two men in shirtsleeves and ties shared a table with a large bottle of Antarctica between them. It was a perfect setting—a hot day, a festive mood, a cold drink enjoyed by two friends in the shade.
Nate was suddenly dizzy. The beer sign blurred, the scene came and went, then came back as his heart pounded and his breathing stopped. He touched the windowsill to steady himself. His hands shook, so he placed the cafezinho on a table. Valdir was behind him, oblivious, rattling away in Portuguese.
Sweat popped out in neat rows above his eyebrows. He could taste the beer. The slide was beginning. A chink in the armor. A crack in the dam. A rumbling in the mountain of resolve he’d built the last four months with Sergio. Nate took a deep breath, and collected himself. The moment would pass; he knew it would. He’d been here before, many times now.
He picked up the coffee and sipped it furiously as Valdir was hanging up and announcing that the pilot was hesitant to fly anywhere on Christmas Eve. Nate returned to his seat under the squeaking fan. “Offer him some more money,” he said.
Valdir had been informed by Mr. Josh Stafford that money was no object during this mission. “He’ll call me back in an hour,” he said.
Nate was ready to leave. He produced his brand-new cell phone, and Valdir walked him through the procedure of finding an AT&T operator who spoke English. As a test, he dialed Sergio and got his answering machine. Then he dialed Alice, his secretary, and wished her a Merry Christmas.
The phone worked fine; he was very proud of it. He thanked Valdir and made his way out of the office. They would talk again before the day was over.
He walked toward the river, down just a few blocks from Valdir’s, and found a small park where workers were busy arranging chairs for a concert. The late afternoon was humid; his shirt was stained with sweat and stuck to his chest. The little episode back at Valdir’s scared him more than he cared to admit. He sat on the edge of a picnic table and gazed at the great Pantanal lying before him. A mangy teenager appeared from nowhere and offered to sell him marijuana. It was in tiny bags, in a small wooden box. Nate waved him off. Maybe in another life.
A musician began tuning his guitar, and a crowd slowly gathered as the sun sank over the Bolivian mountains not far away.
TWELVE
_____________
THE MONEY worked. The pilot reluctantly agreed to fly, but insisted that they leave early and be back in Corumbá by noon. He had small children, an angry wife, and it was, after all, Christmas Eve. Valdir promised and soothed, and paid a nice deposit in cash.
A deposit was also paid to Jevy, the guide Valdir had been negotiating with for a week. Jevy was twenty-four, single, a weight lifter with thick arms, and when he bounced into the lobby of the Palace Hotel, he wore a bush hat, denim shorts, black army boots, a tee shirt with no sleeves, and a shiny bowie knife tucked into his belt just in case he might need to skin something. He crushed Nate’s hand as he shook it. “Bom dia,” he said through a large, wide smile.
“Bom dia,” Nate said, gritting his teeth as his fingers cracked. The knife could not be ignored; its blade was eight inches long.
“You speak Portuguese?” Jevy asked.
“No. Just English.”
“No problem,” he said, finally releasing his death grip. “I speak English.” The accent was thick, but so far Nate had caught every word. “Learned it in the army,” Jevy said proudly.
Jevy was instantly likable. He took Nate’s briefcase and said something smart to the girl behind the desk. She blushed and wanted more.
His truck was a 1978 Ford three-quarter-ton pickup, the largest vehicle Nate had seen so far in Corumbá. It appeared to be jungle-ready, with large tires, a winch on the front bumper, thick grates over the headlights, a black shade tree paint job, no fenders. And no air conditioning.
They roared through the streets of Corumbá, slowing only slightly at red lights, completely ignoring stop signs, and in general bullying cars and motorcycles, all anxious to avoid Jevy’s tank. Either by design or by neglect, the muffler worked badly. The engine was loud, and Jevy felt compelled to talk as he clutched the wheel like a race driver. Nate didn’t hear a word. He smiled and nodded like an idiot while holding his position—feet planted on the floor, one hand clenching the window frame, the other holding his briefcase. His heart stopped with each new intersection.
Evidently the drivers understood a traffic system where the rules of the road, if any, were ignored. There were no accidents, no carnage. Everyone, including Jevy, managed to stop or yield or swerve just in the nick of time.
The airport was deserted. They parked by the small terminal and walked to one end of the tarmac, where four small airplanes were tied down. One was being prepped by the pilot, a man Jevy did not know. Introductions were made in Portuguese. The pilot’s name sounded like Milton. He was friendly enough, but it was obvious he’d rather not be flying or working on the day before Christmas.
As the Brazilians talked, Nate examined the aircraft. The first thing he noticed was the need for a paint job, and this in itself concerned him greatly. If the outside was peeling, could the inside be much better? The tires were slick. There were oil stains around the engine compartment. It was an old Cessna 206, single engine.
The fueling took fifteen minutes, and the bright and early start dragged on, with 10 A.M. approaching. Nate withdrew his fancy cell phone from the deep pocket of his khaki shorts, and called Sergio.
