Buried Strangers

“Who’s him?”

“Bittler. Horst Bittler. He’s a doctor. He’s got a clinic in Morumbi.”

“Where in Morumbi?”

“Rua das Tulipas, number ninety-seven.”

“And the woman?”

“She’s a doctor, too. Claudia Andrade. She works with him.”

“And the people?”

“Lots of people. I can’t remember. Look, I’ll tell you every-thing, just let me go to the shithouse before I-”

“What did they do to them? What did they do to the peo-ple you helped to find?”

“Kept them in cells under the building.”

“And then?”

“Harvested them. That’s what he called it, harvesting them. Like they was corn or something.”

“Their organs? He harvested their organs?”

“Not all their organs, just their hearts. He only does hearts.” Roberto’s face was getting red with the effort of con-taining himself. “Let me go to the toilet,” he said. “Please. I’m gonna lose it.”

“Does Bittler have people in those cells now, right now?

Maybe.”

“What do you mean, maybe?”

“Well, I. . I talked to him. Told him you were after me. Told him I was on the run.”

“And how, exactly, did you happen to know that? Know that we were after you?”

“I can’t tell you. Look you gotta-”

“You’d better tell me. And I don’t gotta anything. Not even let you live.”

“My mother.”

“What about her?”

“She lives across the hall. She told me that a couple of federal cops broke down my door.”

“She own a cat?” the cop leaning against the door asked.

“Yeah, a cat.”

“How long ago did you talk to Bittler?”

That from Silva.

“An hour or so ago. Maybe more.”

“Okay, back to those cells of his. Who might he still have in there?”

“An Indian baby from the Xingu, maybe two.”

“How did he pull that off?”

“There’s this wimp who works for the FUNAI. He stole a couple of babies from some Indian tribe. One of them was supposed to be used for his sick kid. The other one was a kind of payment, or maybe a reserve in case the first one didn’t work, I’m not sure.”

“This wimp,” the cop leaning against the door said, “was his name Oliveira?”

“Yeah. Oliveira.”

“Alright,” Silva said, “so there’s a baby, maybe two. Any-one else in those cells?”

“I really gotta go. Now.”

“Answer my question.”

“Just some old. . some guy about your age.”

“And how did he get there?”

“There’s this travel agency Bittler uses sometimes. They arrange trips for people who want to get into the States and can’t get a visa. Every now and then one of them winds up at the clinic. They think they’re going to Mexico, but they get harvested instead.”

Silva leaned in close, got right into Roberto’s face.

“Tell me more about this guy about my age,” he said, his voice as cold as ice.

And that was when Roberto finally lost control of his bowels.

Ribeiro knew the location and layout of Bittler’s Clinic, and there was no time to lose. Ribeiro’s presence on the raid would be a plus, but traveling with a man whose pants were full of excrement wasn’t a pleasant thing to contemplate. Silva tasked Hector to take Ribeiro down the hall to the bathroom so he could clean himself up.

While that was happening, he called their pilot and told him to preflight the helicopter. Then he alerted ERR1.

The Brazilian federal police had four elite hostage rescue units (Equipes para o Resgate de Refens) designated ERR1 through ERR4. The first of these, based in Sao Paulo, was composed of twenty-two men and two women. One of those women, Gloria Sarmento, commanded it. Gloria was a bril-liant tactical leader, a crack shot, and highly skilled in jujitsu. She was also known to be absolutely fearless. Even Arnaldo Nunes, a macho to his fingertips and generally contemptuous of women bearing arms, was once heard to remark that Gloria had more balls than a pool hall.

Her first word to Silva was, “Where?”

“Morumbi,” he said. “Ninety-seven Rua das Tulipas. A clinic belonging to a doctor by the name of Bittler.”

From the way his voice echoed back to him, he knew she’d put him on a speaker phone. He could hear scrambling in the background, people assembling their equipment.

“What?” Gloria said.

“Hostage situation. An infant child, maybe two, and Arnaldo Nunes.”

“Nunes? That Neanderthal? Man, I’d love to save his ass. I’d never let him forget it. Where are you?”

“Guarulhos. I’ve got a helicopter. I’ve also got a man familiar with the location.”

“Bring him, and get him to make a sketch of the interior of the building. If he has any idea where the hostages are being held, tell him to mark it. If there are multiple possibil-ities, tell him to rank them and write in numbers. One for the most likely, two for the second most likely, and so on. I’ll pick a staging area where you can land. My people will fol-low in a couple of vans. You have a cell phone?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the number?”

He gave it to her. She fired it back at him. He confirmed it.

“I’ll call you in fifteen minutes,” she said.

And hung up.

Chapter Forty-eight

They were already in the air when Silva and Gloria spoke again.

“There’s a vacant lot about a kilometer to the northeast of the target,” Gloria said. “Tell the pilot to follow the river. When he’s directly above the Morumbi Bridge, he should alter his course to three hundred and forty degrees. That will bring him in over the bluff. Look for a white cross and my helicopter. I’m already down. And tell him, for God’s sake, not to fly over the clinic. The noise may tip them off. It’s a large building with a mansard roof, parking lots in front and back, about three hundred meters beyond the landing site, the only house on the street without a swimming pool.”

Silva relayed her instructions to the pilot, who asked him what the hell a mansard roof was.

In the rear seat of the Aerospatiale Squirrel, Hector was sitting next to one of the windows. Ribeiro was on the other side of the aircraft. There were two empty seats between them, but judging by the expression on Hector’s face, it wasn’t far enough. If the helicopter had had wings, Hector would probably be sitting on the tip of one.

Silva sympathized. He had one of the air-conditioning vents pointed toward his face, but even with his nose in the slipstream the smell of excrement was overpowering.