Sam Bourne 4-Book Thriller Collection. Sam Bourne

heard distant breathing and could not be certain if it was his own.

      Slowly he felt his ears unblock and strength return to his arms and legs. He stayed slumped on the ground, unable to face hauling his body upright. If they wanted him to sit to attention, they would have to drag him up themselves.

      Lying there, he detected a change, another person in the group around him. There was new activity, whispered exchanges. The new member of the circle seemed to be breathing heavily, as if he had just been running. He could hear the Rebbe’s voice, though he seemed to be distracted, his voice aimed downwards, as if he was looking at something, reading.

      ‘Mr Mitchell, Moshe Menachem, who was with us a few moments ago, has just completed an errand.’ Redbeard. ‘He ran from here to Shimon Shmuel’s house. He has returned with a wallet. Your wallet.’

      They had rummaged through his bag; now it was surely over. His wallet would give him away. What was in there? No business cards; he was too low down the food chain at the Times to have any. No credit cards either; he kept those in a separate wallet, zipped into a pocket of its own in his bag. He had left them in there, calculating that even if Sara Leah could not resist a peek at his belongings, she would hesitate before doing a full probe.

      What else was in there? Tons of cab receipts, but anything with his name on it? He had kept all the hotel bills and credit card slips from the Northwest in a separate envelope, for a later expenses claim. Maybe he would be OK. Maybe he would get away with it.

      ‘Take the blindfold off. Let go of his hands. Lead him back into the Bet HaMidrash.’ Will could feel the confusion in his own adrenal gland: was this a cue to produce yet more adrenalin, ready for the ordeal to come or, at last, a sign that the danger was receding? Was this good news or bad news?

      He could feel hands fussing behind his head and then an increase in light as the sodden cloth covering his eyes was removed. Instinctively he shook off the drops as he opened his eyes. He was outside, in a small area surrounded by a wooden fence – the kind of space large buildings use to keep their trash. There were a few pipes and, at his feet, the glint of water. He barely had a chance to look, his two handlers were already turning him away. But he guessed that this was the housing for some kind of outdoor storage tank, a big vat used to collect rainwater.

      Now he was heading through a door and back inside, though something told Will this was not the way they had come out. It seemed to be quieter for one thing, away from the crowds. Will guessed that this was a separate building, perhaps a house adjoining the synagogue.

      Inside it did not look that different: the same functional floors and rabbit warren of classrooms and offices. With Redbeard, Moshe Menachem, and the Israeli flanking him, they headed into one of them and Will heard the door shut behind him.

      ‘Let him sit down. Untie his hands and give him a towel. And find a dry shirt.’

      The Rebbe’s voice; still behind him. The blindfold was off, but clearly Will was not going to see everything.

      ‘OK, we should begin again.’

      Will braced himself.

      ‘We need to have a talk, Mr Monroe.’

EIGHTEEN

       Friday, 7.40pm, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

      It was the end of an exhausting week; Luis Tavares could feel the fatigue spreading through his joints. Even so, he would climb one more level: there were other people to see.

      Some money had just come in. He could see that all around him. Suddenly this street was paved, the asphalt fresh enough to smell. Kids were buzzing around a TV set, visible through the open, doorless entrance to a shack. Luis smiled: his pestering of the authorities had worked. Either that or someone had bribed the power company to connect this row of huts to the city grid. Or a few people had clubbed together to find a cowboy electrician who would do it for a few reais.

      Luis felt a familiar spasm of ambivalence. He knew he was meant to advocate respect for the law and condemn all forms of theft. Yet he could not help but admire these outlaws, these entrepreneurs of the favelas, who did whatever it took to provide for their communities. He applauded their determination to provide a stretch of road or desks for a classroom. Could he condemn them for breaking the law? What kind of pastor would deny people who had next to nothing the little that makes life bearable?

      He wanted to rest, but he knew he would not. Even the briefest pause made Luis feel guilty. He felt guilt when he awoke: how much more work could he have done if he had not slept? He felt guilt when he ate: how many more people could he have helped in that half-hour he had spent feeding his face? And in Favela Santa Marta there was never any shortage of people needing help. The poverty was unstoppable, insatiable, like waves on a beach. And Luis Tavares was the local Canute – standing on the shore, raging at the sea.

      He continued upward, heading for the view he knew would stun him, even after all these years. From that vantage point, he would be able to see both the city and the ocean, stretching out ahead. On nights like this, he liked to gaze at the glittering carpet of light, the sparkle of other favelas in the distance. Best of all, he was close to the sight that had made Rio de Janeiro famous: the giant statue of Jesus Christ, watching over the city, the country and, as far as Luis was concerned, the whole world.

      As he climbed, the pastor noted for the thousandth time how the housing deteriorated with the altitude. At the bottom of the hill, there were homes that were recognizable as homes. The structures were solid; they had walls, a roof and glass in the windows. Some had running water, a phone line and satellite TV. But as you moved up the hillside, such sights became rarer. The places he passed now barely qualified even as shelters. They were thrown together, perhaps a wall made of rusty steel, a sheet of corrugated plastic serving as a roof. The door was a gap; the window a hole. They were jammed together, one leaning on the other like a house of cards. This was one of the main shantytowns near Rio’s wealthy beach district and it was abject.

      He had been here for twenty-seven years, ever since he first graduated from divinity school. Baptist clergy were always meant to see some searing deprivation early in their career, but not all became transfixed by it as he had. He would not learn its lessons and move on. He would stay and fight it, no matter how unequal the struggle. He knew poverty on this scale was like a garden weed: you might banish it today, but it would be back tomorrow.

      Even so, he refused to feel that what he had done here was futile. There were close to ten thousand people crammed on this hillside, each one of them a soul created in the image of God. If even one had a meal he would otherwise not have eaten, or slept under a roof rather than in a tiny, fetid alleyway – there was no room for anything so grand as a street – then Luis’s entire life’s work would have been justified. That was how he saw it, at any rate.

      He felt frustrated that he was not engaged in that kind of activity this evening: the direct business of care – ladling out soup to a hungry woman, draping a blanket over a shivering child – where a change is made every second. No, his task tonight was to gather evidence for a report he had been asked to submit to a government department.

      That they even wanted to see a report counted as an achievement, the result of nine months of Luis’s lobbying. Government – federal, state and municipal – had given up on places like Santa Marta years ago. They did not visit them, they did not police them. They were no-go areas where the writ of the state did not run. So if people wanted something – a hospital, say, or a yard where the kids could play football – they either organized it themselves or they had to harangue and nag government until it finally paid attention.

      Which is where Luis came in. He had become Santa Marta’s advocate, lobbying the state bureaucracy one week, a foreign charity the next, demanding they do something for the people of the favela, for the kids who grew up sidestepping sewage in the alleys or scavenging food from the trash mountains nearby. His favourite tool was shame. He would ask people to look at Lagoa, the neighbourhood just over the hill which was proud to be one of the wealthiest districts in Latin America. Then he would show them