Dead or Alive

Knowing Allah would take it as a sign of faithlessness, Hadi had always resisted believing in omens, but the proximity of Rio’s Botanical Garden to the O Cristo Redentor, or Christ the Redeemer statue, was unnerving. But then again, he reminded himself, in Rio everything seemed close to the O Cristo Redentor. Sitting at 2,300 feet atop Corcovado Mountain, gazing down at hundreds of square miles of jungle and urban sprawl, the 120- foot, 600-ton soapstone-and-concrete monolith was the city’s most famous landmark-and a reminder to Hadi that he was in a largely heathen country.

Hadi had made good time after parting company with Ibrahim and the others, but he’d spent the first two hours of the journey with his hands clenched white on the wheel and looking in his rearview mirror every twenty seconds.

An hour after dawn he had pulled into the municipality of Seropedica, on the far eastern outskirts of Rio. Thirty miles to the east he could see Rio proper: five hundred square miles of city holding some twelve million souls- almost half the population of Saudi Arabia in just one city. Sao Paulo was larger still, but he’d landed there at night and driven around the northern edge of the city on his way to his hotel in Caieiras.

At the garden’s entrance he bought a ticket and a brochure/ map from the cashier. The brochure gave him the highlights of the gardens-350 acres, 7,000 species of tropical plants, research laboratories… He flipped through the pages until he found the listing for specific sites. The aviary was at the top of the list. He oriented himself on the map and started walking. It was a bright, sunny day, and the humidity was already unbearable. Far to the south, he could see the cap of black smoke over Sao Paulo, so dense that it looked like night had fallen over that section of the coast.

Halfway to his destination, he was passing an ice cream shop and glanced in the window. A small television mounted in the corner of the shop was tuned to Record News. Images of the refinery fire, some taken from the ground and some from a helicopter, were playing beside the anchorwoman’s face. She turned to face another camera, a change of topic, and suddenly a sketch appeared on the screen. The likeness was not perfect but was close enough that Hadi felt his heart lurch in his chest.

This can’t be, he thought. Who saw me? They’d left no witnesses, of that he was certain. The refinery security truck that had passed by while they were setting the charges had been too far away to see him. A surveillance camera, perhaps? No, that wasn’t right. If they had a real image of him, they would have broadcast that, not a sketch.

He continued to watch the report, expecting to see his sketch followed by one of Ibrahim, then Fa’ad, then Ahmed, but his alone stayed on the screen.

Think, think…

He spotted a souvenir shop across the food court. He walked across to the shop and stepped inside. He checked for television sets or radios; there were none, so he browsed around, not wanting to appear in a hurry, before selecting a baseball cap emblazoned with the Botanical Garden’s logo. He paid cash for it, declined a bag, then walked out and put on the cap, pulling it close to his eyebrows. He checked his watch. He was early for the rendezvous by almost seventy minutes. He walked over to a concrete ledge surrounding a fern bed and sat down.

Had Ibrahim and the others heard about the sketch? If so, they may not show up. They’d discussed contingencies for pursuit, for capture, and for the death of team members during the mission, but not this.

He sat for five minutes, staring into space and thinking, then made a decision. He paged through the brochure until he found what he needed.

The Internet cafe was on the eastern side of the gardens. He paid the barista for a half- hour, and she assigned him one of the terminals. He sat down in the cubicle and opened the Web browser. It took him a moment to remember the site URL. It was the fifth today, so he’d rotated to… bitroup.com.

When the site came up on the screen, he logged in and tabbed to the messages area. He was surprised to see a text file sitting in the “uploaded “section. He double-clicked on the file; it contained two lines of alphanumeric pairs. He jotted the pairs on the back of his brochure. There were 344. He signed off and left.

It took him thirty minutes to create the grid, and another twenty to decode and double- check the message:

Saw TV sketch. Suspect compromised, one of your team. Break contact. Proceed Ta Ligado Cyber Cafe on Rua Braulio Cordeiro for instructions. 1400 hours. Acknowledge this message by encode: 9M, 6V, 4U, 4D, 7Z.

Hadi read the message twice. Compromised? His mind spun. It wasn’t possible. Ibrahim or one of the others had betrayed him? Why? None of it made sense, but the message was authentic. Break contact. He checked his watch: 11:45. Hurrying now, he encoded the acknowledgment pairs, then returned to the cafe, typed the response into a text file, then uploaded it.

Ibrahim passed both Fa’ad’s and Ahmed’s cars as he pulled into the parking lot. He found a spot, pulled in, and shut off the engine. Fa’ad and Ahmed had parked one row behind him, separated by half a dozen cars. Out his passenger window he saw Hadi exiting the garden’s main gate. His pace was hurried, his posture tense. Police? Ibrahim wondered. He kept watching, half expecting to see men running after Hadi, but nothing happened.

What’s this?

Hadi reached his car and got in.

Ibrahim made a snap decision. He waited until Hadi’s car was headed toward the entrance driveway, then backed out and followed. He slowed beside Ahmed’s car and gestured for him to follow.

What are you up to, my friend?

80

THEY HOOKED HIM,” Chavez said, punching off the satellite phone. “Two o’clock, an Internet cafe on Rua Braulio Cordeiro.”

“Great, where the hell’s that?” Dominic replied, swerving their car as a taxi swept them, the driver honking and yelling. “Not that it matters. We ain’t gonna get there in one piece anyway.”

Chavez was tracing his finger along a city map. “Keep heading east. I’ll steer you.”

“I assume we’re not grabbing him there?”

“Nope. First we gotta make sure he’s alone. We told him to break contact, but who knows? Plus, we’re gonna need some privacy to get done what we gotta get done.”

“Which is?”

“Whatever it takes.”

Dominic smiled grimly.

They found the cafe and circled the block twice to get the lay of the land, then found a parking spot on the street fifty yards to the north on the other side of an intersection. They got out and walked south. Between a pharmacy and a tire repair shop they found a short alleyway that led to a makeshift junk-yard full of rusted washing machines, car axles, and stacks of old sewer pipes. Chavez led the way to the back of the yard and behind a trash heap. Through a wide-slatted fence they could see the Internet cafe across the street.

“Shit,” Chavez said.

“What?”

“Just noticed that walkway to the right of the cafe.”

“Back entrance, maybe,” Dominic said. He checked his watch. Still twenty minutes to go. “I’ll circle around, see if I can get a look.”