The Paradise Prophecy

no-prisoners top-of-the-totem-pole priority.

Rumor had it that such assignments came directly from the White House.

Callahan had only been given a -078 once before in her career-a particularly sketchy op conceived by the previous administration. She’d been instructed to pose as a British millionaire’s mistress, vacationing in the south of France, where she cozied up to a local businesswoman believed to be having an affair with a ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

No pun intended.

Callahan’s objective was to gather embarrassing evidence against the senator, to help secure what would be the deciding vote on a highly controversial defense bill. In other words, pure politics of the most underhanded, self- serving kind. The kind Callahan despised, even if the idiot was cheating on his wife.

At least she hadn’t had to kill anyone.

Killing always complicated things.

This current -078 was a puzzler, however. It was disconcerting enough that she was going in with very little cover, using her own name instead of an alias. She’d be representing herself as a State Department investigator, which, according to government payroll records, was technically true, although she had never once stepped foot inside the building on C Street or any of its branches.

But even more disconcerting was the nature of the incident she’d be sticking her nose into. According to the dossier, that incident was currently being referred to by Brazilian authorities as a morte de minha desventura or death by misadventure.

This could mean a dozen different things, of course, but the local policia had decided that the victim’s demise was either accidental or, more likely, a suicide.

So why on earth did Section give a damn about it?

Especially in Sao Paulo, of all places?

It made only slightly more sense when you considered who the victim was.

Gabriela Maria Abrino Zuada.

Normally, Callahan didn’t know a pop star from a New Jersey car salesman. Her musical tastes leaned toward indie rock and euro-punk with a side of alternative jazz. And her interest in bubble-gum-smacking, coke-snorting, drunk-driving, party-loving, viral-video-making, IQCHALLENGED, Twitter-happy twentysomething pop icons had reached its peak somewhere south of the Britney Spears head shave.

But Gabriela Maria Abrino Zuada-or simply Gabriela to her fans-was something altogether different. At twenty-three years old, the Brazilian native had established herself as a worldwide phenomenon, the highest charting no-apologies Christian pop diva in the known universe. And even Callahan, who had long ago shed her Irish Catholic roots, knew who she was.

The announcement of Gabriela’s death-which was wisely being delayed as long as humanly possible-would undoubtedly send a tsunamisize shockwave around the world, a la Michael Jackson. But as far as Callahan knew, nobody in the president’s inner circle had sent a black ops emissary to check out Jackson’s corpse.

So what exactly was going on here?

Callahan had no idea. And she hated like hell being kept in the dark.

She also had to wonder why her talents weren’t being utilized more productively. Thanks to a tanking economy and a series of natural and not-so-natural disasters that had plagued the U.S. and the world of late, the international mood was about as sour as moldy rice. The world seemed to be going to hell in a hand basket and nobody knew quite what to do about it. People from all walks of life were scared and frustrated.

And, as always, the power brokers used that fear as a tool. Hysterical politicians were shouting fire at every opportunity, and those who shouted the loudest seemed to be getting most of the votes.

Countries that were normally fairly docile threatened aggression against their nearest neighbors and those who wanted a slice of the ever-shrinking economic pie-which, of course, was everyone- were starting to make Armageddon-like noises.

Such noises were what prompted the fearful to flock to people like Gabriela. Rather than look for real solutions to their problems they simply wrapped themselves in the cloak of faith and abdicated all responsibility for their actions to false prophets and the Great Holy Whoever.

To each his own. None of that much mattered to Callahan.

All she cared about was the job.

But to her mind, she should be out in the field helping hunt down terrorists and the frighteningly high number of missing nuclear warheads that were floating around out there.

Instead, she was stuck on a plane headed to Sao Paulo, staring at a dossier on a dead pop star.

Which made no sense at all.

At the moment, however, she was too fried to try to figure it all out. She was only four hours into her flight and all she wanted was to forget about pop divas and politics and -078 file codes, and simply sleep for a while.

She had tried closing her eyes a few times at the beginning of the flight, had managed to doze once or twice, had even thought she’d made it all the way home for a moment there. But then a baby started crying back in the economy compartment, and Callahan had bolted awake as if she’d been slapped squarely across the face.

Before boarding the plane, she had taken a moment to Google sleep deprivation, and the news wasn’t good. Not only did lack of sleep cause a myriad of health problems, including hypertension, heart disease and slower reaction times, severe deprivation could often lead to death.

Looking up from her smartphone, Callahan held out a hand again and checked for the tremor. Not only was it still there, it had gotten worse.

The guy on the seat next to hers was passed out, snoring slightly, a small bubble of spit in the corner of his mouth.

Callahan envied him. Spit and all.

The crime-scene photos were pretty grisly, even on the smartphone’s screen. The pop star looked like a crispy piece of bacon. She had been found in an empty storage room by her manager and bodyguards after the manager had smelled gasoline and heard her screaming.

Unfortunately, they’d found her too late.

It looked to Callahan like a case of self-immolation, and judging by the condition of the body, the victim had used a lot of gas to do the job.

But this bothered Callahan.

Self-immolation wasn’t unheard of in Brazil, but it wasn’t exactly commonplace either. Had Gabriela been an abused wife in Afghanistan, the scenario might make more sense. Afghan burn hospitals were full of such victims.

But given Gabriela’s profile, this particular method of suicide raised a big red flag.

An even bigger one, however, had nothing to do with the victim at all.

These photos could only tell Callahan half the story, and she’d have to take a look at the room and body herself before coming to any definitive conclusions-assuming she ever could.

But what she saw here was strange.

Very strange.

There seemed to be a complete lack of damage to the walls and floor surrounding the body. They were untouched by the flames. As if the victim had been burned somewhere else, then placed on the floor of this room.

Was this a murder?

Judging by the witness statements, that didn’t make any sense either. And as strange as all this was, it still didn’t tell Callahan why Section was interested in the case.

Her mandate was to “aid and assist the Sao Paulo Civil Police in conducting their investigation” and report her findings. An easy enough task on the face of it, but Callahan had a sinking feeling this assignment wouldn’t be easy at all.

It was times like this that she regretted ever allowing herself to be recruited for the job. She should have stayed in graduate school and actually done something with this brain she’d been blessed with.

Or maybe she should have disappeared to some lighthouse somewhere and cut herself off from the world, blissfully ignorant of the growing turmoil around her. And every night, the moment her head touched the pillow, she