like. The door was steel, with a little peephole. He was naked, but not cold. The room, in fact, was uncomfortably warm.
He tried to put two and two together. The big guy with the fucking Flamengo medallion had picked him up. He’d called Silva from the back of the van. He’d drunk something, eaten something, and then. . and then he couldn’t remem-ber anything more.
The bastard must have drugged him. But why? What the hell was going on?
He started to get up, but movement made his head spin and he sank back onto the sheets, sheets only, no cover, no pillow, a thin mattress. He put his aching head in his hands and looked down. The floor was concrete, the metal bed frame fas-tened to it with bolts, bolts with large hexagonal heads.
The music went on. Something classical. It might have been an overture, the way it slipped from melody to melody. And the volume was turned up far too high. The sound was driving daggers into his head.
He stuck his fingers in his ears, lifted his head, and let his eyes sweep around the room.
There was a toilet in the corner, a stainless steel toilet without a seat. Next to it, bolted to the wall, was a sink, also stainless steel, with a single tap. No shower. No other furni-ture, only the bed. No windows. No indication whether it was day or night.
The music changed. A woman began to sing, but not in Portuguese.
It sounded to Arnaldo like some fucking German opera.
* * *
The indian baby’s heart wasn’t much larger than one of his tiny fists. Cutting it out was a delicate business, and it took Bittler longer than usual. When he’d finished, he told Teobaldo to go upstairs and anesthetize Raul Oliveira.
Three hours later, Raul, too, was dead.
Bittler’s surgical mask concealed his nose and mouth, but not his anger. Claudia could read it in his eyes. He looked at the dead child as if it had displeased him and was deserving of punishment.
“Shock him again,” he said.
“It’s no use,” she said. “He’s gone.”
“Shock him, I say.”
So she did. The little heart contracted once. But only once.
“Damn,” Bittler said.
“His parents are outside,” Claudia said.
“You think I don’t know that?” Bittler replied testily. “Go out there and lie to them.”
“What?”
“Tell them we’re finished. Tell them the operation was a success. Tell them he’ll be in intensive care for the next twenty-four hours, and that we never allow family or friends into intensive care.”
“They won’t believe it.”
“Why shouldn’t they?”
“We’ve only been in here for the last two and a half hours. They must know that a successful procedure takes-”
“They don’t know a damned thing,” he snapped.
Teobaldo’s eyes were twinkling above his mask. It was a rare thing for Bittler to lose his temper, and the anesthesiol-ogist seemed to be enjoying the spectacle. Bittler glanced at Teobaldo, noted his amusement, and flushed. Then he took a deep breath and went on in a calmer voice.
“They’ll believe you because they’ll
Ten minutes later, Claudia found her employer in his office. She came in with a sour expression on her face. Bittler took it in with a certain degree of satisfaction.
“I was right, wasn’t I?” he said smugly. “They believed every word.”
“They’re gone for the moment,” she admitted grudgingly. She closed the door and leaned against it. “But it doesn’t solve anything. We’ve won a few hours, nothing more. We can’t keep them in the dark forever.”
“A few hours is long enough,” Bittler said. “Stick your head outside and tell Gretchen to summon Roberto.”
Claudia shook her head.
“He’s not here.”
“Not here?”
“I wanted him to incinerate the remains of the Indian brat. When I couldn’t find him, I asked Gretchen if she knew where he was. She said he didn’t come in yesterday, and he isn’t here today. She’s called his cell phone re- peatedly. She keeps getting his voice mail, and he doesn’t call back.”
Bittler frowned.
“There’s no time to waste. We can’t just sit around and wait for him to turn up. You’ll have to do it yourself.”
“Incinerate the Indian brat?”
“No. Teobaldo can attend to that.”
“Then what?”
“Kill the Oliveiras.”
* * *
“Dr. Andrade, ” Ana Carmen said when Claudia showed up at the apartment unannounced. “Oh, my God, is there anything wrong?”
The chain was on the door, reducing the opening to just a few centimeters. Claudia could see little more than one of Ana Carmen’s eyes. The eye was blue-and huge with fear.
“Raul’s fine,” Claudia reassured her. “Your place is on my way home. I’d thought I’d stop by and give you a progress report.”
Claudia heard Ana Carmen breathe out a long breath and realized, only then, that she’d been holding it in. The eye was returning to normal size, but the woman still wasn’t quite over her shock.
“May I come in?” Claudia asked.
“Oh, of course. Forgive me.”
Ana Carmen fumbled with the chain and opened the door. She was wearing a bathrobe over a nightgown. Behind her, the corridor was unlit. In the dim light the smudges under her eyes looked like badly applied makeup.
Claudia crossed the threshold. Ana Carmen locked and chained the door. It was Sao Paulo, after all. One had to take precautions.
“Where’s your husband?” Claudia asked.
“In the bedroom,” Ana Carmen said, “trying to get some rest. Please, come this way.”
Claudia followed her down a hallway lined with Indian artifacts: bead necklaces, feather headdresses, bows, arrows, spears, wooden knives, and some other objects she didn’t recognize.
The hallway opened onto a small living room. Two arm-chairs, a sofa, and a coffee table crowded the narrow space. Watery sunlight spilled through the blinds and illuminated a painting on the opposite wall, a watercolor of some baroque church. Claudia approached the work, as if she were admiring it.
“Very nice,” she said.
“We bought it on our honeymoon. The church is in Ouro Preto. You’ve been to Ouro Preto?”
Ouro Preto was deep in the mountains of Minas Gerais, a jewel of eighteenth-century colonial architecture.
“Yes,” Claudia said.
“But you’re not here to talk about travel or art,” Ana Carmen said, obviously anxious to get to the subject of her son.
