The Paradise Prophecy

moment for his eyes to adjust, and when they did he saw that what he was holding was a diamond earring.

But this wasn’t just any old piece of jewelry. It belonged to the woman he’d met at Bayou Bill’s last week. The one who had walked into the bar looking as if she’d just stepped out of a movie or a magazine. A redheaded, translucent-skinned wonder who had sent a stuttering spike of electricity through just about every man in the room. And Batty may well have heard angel trumpets the moment he saw her.

He’d met his share of beautiful women over the years-Rebecca foremost among them-but none of them had prepared him for the pure sexuality that had emanated from this one. She was the kind who instantly made your groin stir and your gut ache, with a body so taut and perfectly proportioned that it should have been declared illegal in at least thirty of the fifty states.

Batty was by no means a letch, not even close. Was not the type to sit around with the guys remarking about women’s physical attributes, pro or con. But this woman managed to bring out the beast in him the moment she walked into that bar. And he couldn’t help thinking about laying her across his bed, or on the living room couch, or atop the dining room table-hell, he didn’t care where, as long as it was sometime very soon.

For the first time in as long as he could remember, he’d actually been able to relegate his grief over Rebecca to another part of his mind. The spell this redhead had cast was so strong that the animal came forth, begging him to take action.

And to Batty’s surprise, he did, right here in this very house. The redhead had turned out to be more amazing than anything he could have imagined, a woman so free of inhibition, so willing to give him carte blanche to her limber little body, that he had almost felt guilty about making love to her.

Almost.

She was, he later realized, his anesthesia that night. An escape from the darkness that haunted him.

Unlike the whiskey, however, she didn’t dull the senses. She heightened them. And she had returned his aggression in kind, doing things to him with her teeth and tongue and fingers that defied description. She was the most sexually adventurous creature he had ever encountered, and as he moved inside her, feeling her grip on him, her feverish flesh against his, he didn’t want her to ever let go.

But then, when they were done, both of them slick with sweat, she surprised him even more. Had turned out to be so much more than just a willing body.

They had spent the rest of the night talking politics and religion and history-all the things that Batty had once felt passionate about, all the things that he and Rebecca would often argue about, right here in this very bed. The conversation took so many twists and turns that he could barely remember it with any specificity now. And, unlike his brain-dead students, the redhead had listened to him with an open mind.

And, it seemed, an open heart.

But it was what she hadn’t done that got to him the most. When she saw the angry red scars on his wrists, the ones Edith couldn’t help staring at, the ones he refused to hide, she didn’t flinch, didn’t ask about them, didn’t judge him in any way. And later, she simply kissed them, very gently, one after the other, then climbed atop him and made love to him again.

As he looked up at her, he felt tears dampening his eyes. And for one brief, blissful moment, he thought he saw Rebecca there, smiling down at him the way she always had, her angelic face filled with a love that was meant only for him.

The next morning the redhead was gone.

No note. No good-byes.

He had been back to the bar several nights since, waiting for her, hoping to see her again, but she hadn’t returned. And by the fourth night, Batty had wondered if he had dreamed it all. Had merely conjured up the fantasy in a drunken haze.

But, no.

This little diamond earring confirmed it.

She had been here. In this bed.

And the oddest thing about the whole experience, he realized, was that she had never told him her name.

8

SAO PAULO, BRAZIL

Callahan hadn’t been to Brazil in more than five years.

Her last trip to Sao Paulo had been an overnight job, a quick and dirty snatch of a weapons manufacturer’s laptop that hadn’t given her time to fully appreciate the city’s finer points. She had always hoped to come back here one day, but her gut told her that this trip wouldn’t be much different from the last.

Except for the chaos.

It was apparent the moment she stepped off the plane that word of Gabriela Zuada’s death had finally been unleashed. Television screens in the lobby flashed video of Gabriela’s latest tour, along with a montage of interviews with her devastated fans. And every headline in the airport newsstands seemed to scream her name.

Callahan wasn’t surprised. The death of a superstar is not the kind of information that can be easily controlled or contained, and there would undoubtedly be a dozen different harebrained theories surrounding this one, most of them postulated by self-aggrandizing cable TV pundits.

Callahan had learned long ago that what you saw on television news was little more than cheap soap opera theatrics, good old-fashioned storytelling designed to keep the viewers watching and the advertisers paying. Its relationship to the truth was often nonexistent and, depending on which network you chose, slanted to appeal to a specific demographic.

Callahan’s approach was to always, without exception, treat such news as complete and utter bullshit and, when necessary, try to ferret out the truth for herself.

Assuming that was even possible.

But then her own job was all about deception, wasn’t it? The veracity of the intelligence community wasn’t exactly beyond reproach. And while she was often forced to compromise her beliefs, she was smart enough to know that the world was built on compromise, along with heavy doses of rationalization and deceit. Very little would ever get done without them.

Of course, looking at the sudden rise in unrest over the last several months had Callahan wondering if they were still working. While Section had always been an agency that played under the radar, priding itself in its ability to clean up the messes that politicians and the more visible intelligence agencies managed to create around the world, lately there was a sense within the community that there might well be too many fires to put out. Not that they all gathered around the water cooler and talked about it. But people did talk, and despite her relative isolation, Callahan knew that the concern they felt was quickly turning into panic-and that couldn’t be good for anyone.

Despite this, the world kept turning, as it always had. But she had to wonder how much of it would be left in a few years.

The Sao Paulo airport was even busier than she remembered it, and navigating her way through the crowd took a seasoned agility that came only with years of traveling experience.

The customs lines were a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam. The heightened feeling of unrest around the globe was no doubt putting security personnel on full alert, looking for any possible contraband, and more people than ever were being pulled out of line and seeing their baggage X-rayed and carefully searched.

Not all of them appreciated the gesture and tempers were heated.

It was times like this that traveling under State Department cover came in handy. With a flash of her credentials and passport, Callahan was able to bypass the line and head straight for the lobby.

When she traveled by air-which was about 90 percent of the time-Callahan rarely carried more than a backpack and a small airplane-friendly overnight bag. All she needed were a few toiletries, some comfortable