Cold Vengeance

CHAPTER 44

Thirty-five thousand feet over West Virginia

ANOTHER TOMATO JUICE, SIR?”

“No, thank you. There will be nothing else.”

“Very good.” And the cabin steward continued making her way down the plane’s central aisle.

In the first-class compartment, Pendergast examined the yellowing document he had — after hours of exhaustive and exhausting search — finally retrieved from the queerest place: rolled up inside an old rifle barrel, proving once again how little he really knew his wife. His eye traveled once again down the document.

República Federativa do Brasil

Registro Civil Das Pessoas Naturais

Certidão de Nascimento

Nome

Helen von Fuchs Esterházy

Local de Nacimento: Nova Godói, RIO GRANDE do SUL

Filiação Pai: András Ferenc Esterházy

Filiação Mãi: Leni Faust Schmid

Helen had been born in Brazil — in a place called Nova Godói. Nova Godói—Nova G. He recalled the name from the burnt scrap of paper he and Laura Hayward had come across in the ruins of the Longitude pharmacology laboratory.

Mime had said Helen’s native language was Portuguese. Now it made sense.

Brazil. Pendergast thought for a moment. Helen had spent almost five months in Brazil before they were married, on a mission with Doctors With Wings. Or at least that was what she had said at the time. As he’d learned the hard way, no assumption about Helen was safe.

He glanced again at the birth certificate. At the very bottom was a box labeled OBSERVAÇÕES/A VERBAÇÕES — observations/annotations. He looked at it closely, and then removed a small magnifying glass from his pocket to examine it further.

Whatever had been in this box had not merely been blacked out: the paper itself had been excised and painstakingly replaced with an unmarked piece of paper with the same engraved background pattern, microscopically stitched together with the utmost craft. It was an exceedingly professional piece of work.

He finally accepted, at that moment, that he truly had not known his beloved wife. Like so many other fallible human beings, he had been blinded by love. He had not even begun to crack the ultimate mystery of her identity.

With care bordering on reverence, he refolded the birth certificate and placed it deep in a suit pocket.