abandoned in the 1930s. After the war, Germans arrived and a small settlement sprang up. They live up there and hardly ever come to town. The Germans down here don’t like them, say they’re Nazis.” Mendonca laughed heartily.
“But you don’t believe it.”
“Here in Brazil, people think they see Nazis everywhere. It’s a national pastime. If there are five old Germans in a town, everyone says,
Another big puff of cigar smoke, then another, leaving two clouds drifting behind the boat.
“Some people seem to think the murders in Alsdorf originate from Nova Godoi,” the naturalist said, offhandedly.
“Murders? Oh, you speak of the rumors going around town. People here are so provincial. You ask around in any town in Brazil, and they’ll tell you the next town is all bad people. I lived in Queens, so I don’t fall for that talk.” He laughed again, making light of the rumors. He was surprised the naturalist had picked up as much as he had. No point in spooking the man until he had collected his final thousand.
“How about the
At this, Mendonca froze. He had heard that rumor, but it was a deep one, only whispered about. How in the world had the naturalist heard of it?
“I don’t know anything about that,” he said.
“Surely you do. They say the town is freakishly populated with twins, mostly identical. They say there have been experiments, genetic experiments.
“Where did you hear this?”
“In a beer hall.”
That seemed improbable. Mendonca felt a small chill. This naturalist was beginning to give him the creeps. “No, I don’t know anything about that. It’s not true.” He cast about, hoping to change the subject. “There’s an old ruin up there, though. A fort. Do you know the history of that?”
“No.”
“It was built by the Portuguese in the late seventeenth century.” Among many of his other jobs, Mendonca drove a tour bus in Blumenau; he knew almost everything. “A group of Franciscan missionaries built a monastery on an island in the middle of the Godoi crater lake and converted the Aweikoma Indians. Or at least they thought they did!” He gave a belly laugh. “One day the Indians rose up. They were tired of taking care of the monks’ gardens. Killed them all. So the Portuguese military moved in, turned the monastery into a fortress, killed off or drove away the Indians. And when there were no more Indians, the soldiers left. Later, it was turned into a plantation.”
“Why are there so many Germans in this region?” the naturalist asked.
“In 1850, the Brazilian government started a program of German colonization. You know about that? Germany was overcrowded and nobody had any land, and Brazil had land that needed settling. So Brazil offered any Germans who wanted to come free land in remote areas of the country. That’s how Blumenau was settled, along with Alsdorf, Joinville, and several other cities in Santa Catarina. Thirty, maybe forty percent of our citizens here are of German descent.”
“That is most interesting.”
“Yes. The colonies were so isolated that they developed completely along German lines, with German language, architecture, culture—everything. That all changed completely in 1942, of course.”
“What happened?”
“That is when Brazil declared war on Germany.”
“I never knew that.”
“Very few do. We joined with the Americans in World War Two. Brazil made it a law that these German colonists had to learn Portuguese and become Brazilian. Most of them did, but some in the remote areas did not. And a lot of Germans left Brazil to go back to Germany and fight for the Nazis. And then some came running back again, to hide from the Nuremberg courts. Or so people say. But that was a long time ago. They are all gone now. As we say in Portuguese,
“No Nazis in Nova Godoi?” The naturalist almost sounded disappointed.
Mendonca shook his head vigorously. “No, no! That’s all a myth!” He underscored that with another series of vigorous puffs before jettisoning the chewed cigar stump overboard. Of course, the rumors about Nova Godoi never seemed to end, all sorts of ridiculous, superstitious nonsense. But Mendonca had lived twenty years in Queens. He had seen the world. He knew the difference between rumor and fact.
The boat continued on at a steady pace, the fields now disappearing completely, the araucaria forest closing in, casting a pall of darkness over the brown river. And despite having lived in Queens, Mendonca felt a distinct chill of fear creep down his spine.
THE FIRST SHOT HAD CAUGHT JACK SWANSON IN THE shoulder as he’d leapt for the cover of the shrubbery at the rear of the cabin. A second shot passed over his head.
He lay on the ground for a moment, stunned, listening to the nearby sounds of struggling, a grunt of effort. Then came the slamming of a car door. And with that, Jack was up and running into the woods. The sky was dark and a wind rattled the branches, shaking the dense thickets of mountain laurel that formed the understory.
He knew these woods. And the laurel, an evergreen shrub, made for perfect concealment. He charged into the laurel, bashing through the thicket, putting as much distance between himself and Foote as he could. When he felt he was deep enough, he dropped into a crouch and began moving laterally, zigzagging through the thickest stands, worming his way ever farther into the thicket. He already sensed, with growing relief, that he’d gotten away—Foote would never find him in this dense underbrush, riddled with low animal trails that formed many escape routes. But what had gone wrong? Why Foote? Foote was trying to help them…
A voice rang out.
“Jack!”
He froze. It was Foote.
“Jack! We need to talk!”
He stopped, crouched, breathing hard. Reality began to rearrange itself in his mind. It was true, then—it had to be true. Foote was part of the scam. Everything he’d told them was a lie. And now Foote had Corrie.
“Can you hear me, Jack? I’ve got your daughter! Hogtied in my car. So we’ve got a lot to talk about, right?”
Jack could hear Foote walking into the forest now, crunching through the thickets of mountain laurel. “Oh,
Jack moved laterally, away from the line that Foote was taking into the woods. Christ, he had to think, to collect his thoughts.
That thought threatened to undo what little rationality he had managed to gather. What was he going to do? He couldn’t run. Somehow he had to overcome Foote, save his daughter. Except that the bastard had a handgun, and he himself had nothing beyond a penknife. As he crouched, he realized with a certain sense of surprise,
What was he going to do?
Jack tried to think, but as he did so he could hear Foote getting closer, crashing through the brush.
He began moving laterally again, as silently as possible, keeping low and threading his way through the bushes. The gusts of wind covered his movements, masking both the sound and the motion of the brush caused by his passage.
