Buried Strangers

“Short for Miranda.”

“Okay. Suppose I get in there and make her acquaintance. Then what?”

“Before you even approach her, you do what I did. You get on the Internet and learn all about Wicca. Then you strike up an acquaintance, find a way to steer the conversation around to religion and express an interest. If she bites, you get her to introduce you to her coreligionists, find out if there are any grounds for us to be concerned.”

“In other words, I’m supposed to find out if these. .”

“Wiccans.”

“. . these Wiccans are mass murderers?”

“Exactly.”

“What if they are? What if they come after me?”

“You want to wear a wire?”

“Hell, no. What if she finds it?”

“How would she find it? What do you have in mind?”

“You want me to get close to her don’t you?”

“See?” Arnaldo said. “What did I tell you? Kid’s already thinking about how he can get her into her pants, and he hasn’t even met her yet.”

“It’s purely professional,” Goncalves sniffed. “How else do you expect me to extract. . uh, confidential information? How about expenses?”

“What about them?” Silva said.

“The girl’s the daughter of a minister, right? So she must be accustomed to the good things in life. I might have to buy her champagne, treat her to dinner in a fancy restaurant, that kind of stuff.”

“Shower her with presents,” Arnaldo said, “take her on a cruise.”

“No jewelry, no cruises,” Silva said. “I’ll be going through your expense reports with a magnifying glass. You’d better be able to justify every damned item.”

“I look forward to the opportunity,” Goncalves said.

Chapter Sixteen

“Lieutenant Soares,” sergeant Blessa said, approaching his side of the service window, “How’s that CD player? Still working okay?”

“Working fine,” Soares said.

“And what can I do for you this time?”

Soares rested his briefcase on the counter and regarded Blessa through vertical bars evocative of a theater’s box office.

“You can start,” he said, “by letting me in there.”

Sergeant Blessa slipped him a clipboard. Soares signed in, picked up his briefcase, and walked over to the steel door. There was a rattling of keys and the door swung open, squeaking on hinges long devoid of oil. Blessa motioned Soares inside and locked the door behind him.

Directly ahead, a long, dimly lit corridor stretched into darkness. There were parallel corridors to the right and left. Lining them, up to ceiling height, were metal cupboards. Each cupboard bore a number, a heavy steel hasp, and a pad-lock. The two men were standing in the evidence locker, sit-uated in the basement of the delegacia central, headquarters of Sao Paulo’s policia civil.

Orestes Blessa, the man who ran the operation, had a skin bleached by the sunless light in which he spent his days. He had virtually no neck, a wide mouth, and bulbous eyes, all reminiscent of a toad, an albino toad in a police uniform.

With concrete walls, a steel door, and only one entrance, the evidence locker gave every appearance of being secure.

It wasn’t.

Blessa had been working there for fifteen years and for most of that time he’d been running the place like a shop.

“What’s your pleasure?” Blessa asked, sounding, as he usu-ally did, more like a merchant than a cop.

“I want to be alone with that”-Soares pointed to Blessa’s computer-“and I want access to the cupboards.”

Blessa nodded agreeably.

“Okay, Lieutenant, but remember, if whatever you need is something that might attract attention-”

“It won’t. You won’t even miss it. And it’s small. I’ll be taking it away in this.”

Soares hefted his briefcase.

“I run a special for cases that require, uh. . a certain degree of discretion,” Blessa said. “Five hundred reais and no questions asked.”

“Five hundred?”

Five hundred was nothing. The deal Soares had negotiated with Claudia Andrade was for ten thousand, but it was against the lieutenant’s principles to accept the first price he was offered. He lifted an eyebrow and waited for Blessa to crumble.

And after a few seconds, Blessa did. He was, after all, only a sergeant. Soares was a lieutenant and the brother-in-law of the secretary of public safety, to boot.

“Normally, yeah,” Blessa said, “five hundred, but for you, being a special customer and all, four fifty. A twenty percent discount.”

“I’ll take it.”

Blessa opened a drawer in his desk, took out a brass ring holding a single key, and went over to pull down a shade over the service window.

“Fifteen minutes?” he said, offering Soares the ring.

“Twenty,” Soares said, taking it. “This is the master key?”

“Yeah,” Blessa said. “Fits all the padlocks.”

Blessa might have been a crook, but he was an efficient and extremely well-organized crook. Items in his cupboards were always in their proper place and meticulously listed in his database. The computer allowed searches by name (of both the victim and the accused), by case number, by date of entry into the locker, and by item. Soares started searching by item.

When he couldn’t find the listing he was looking for, he opened his briefcase and took out the notes he’d made dur-ing his search of the archives. The man who styled himself Abdul Al Shakiri was a terrorist, arrested fifteen months ear-lier while in transit through Guarulhos airport.

International pressure, mostly from the Americans, had resulted in a speedy trial. An appeal was under way, but it wasn’t likely that the exhibits used to convict Al Shakiri would be required any time soon, if at all. Soares typed in Al Shakiri’s name and hit ENTER.

Nothing.

He referred back to his notes and tried the man’s real name, Muhammad Wahabi.

And got a hit.

When he’d done the search by item, he’d tried “explo-sive,” “plastic,” “plastico,” and “plastique.” Now he could see why he’d been unsuccessful. The stuff Al Shakiri/Wahabi had been arrested with was listed under its brand name: Semtex. The detonators were in the same cupboard as the explosive. Both were securely stored away in his briefcase by the time Sergeant Blessa knocked on the door.

“Find everything you need?” Blessa asked.

“Four fifty, you said?”

Blessa nodded.

Soares fished out his wallet and counted out nine bank-notes of fifty reais each. Blessa put them into his hip pocket and smiled.

“A pleasure doing business with you,” he said, looking very much like he’d just snapped up a fat and