The Paradise Prophecy

14

SAO PAULO, BRAZIL

What you are about to experience, senhors and senhoritas, is the Wild West of Sampa.”

Callahan had crowded into the back of the ancient tour van, finding herself pressed up against a fat American tourist and his wife.

Their driver and tour guide was a middle-aged Brazilian woman who wore a wireless headset that piped her voice over speakers mounted throughout the van. She gave her spiel only in a thickly accented English, so if you didn’t speak or understand the language, you were shit out of luck.

“Keep your cameras ready,” she said. “This is a sight you will want to remember.”

Callahan had spent the previous afternoon and part of the morning reinterviewing witnesses-Gabriela Zuada’s crew, her bandmates, her security team-leaning on them with questions about the pop star’s potential enemies, especially those who might be involved in Satanic worship. But the only name that consistently came up was Jose de Souza. The drug lord Gabriela had once worked for.

Which only confirmed that, dangerous or not, the man needed to be questioned.

And Callahan would have to do the questioning.

So here she was, feeling the bump of the road beneath her as the van rolled along the highway at the edge of the city.

Off to their left were the beginnings of Favela Paraisopolis, a ramshackle shantytown, its multicolored, dilapidated metal-and-plywood shacks lining the highway, looking as if they might collapse at any moment.

The favela was located in the heart of the Sao Paulo suburb of Morumbi, one of the richest in Brazil. The contrast between unapologetic wealth and abject poverty was stark, visceral and depressing. Callahan wondered what it must be like to live in the shadow of such wealth, waking every morning and looking out at the glass-and-steel high-rises knowing they represented a world you would never be invited to enter.

She had to give Gabriela credit for managing to pull herself out of this rat hole. It couldn’t have been an easy thing to do.

The van made a turn, pulling onto a narrow, debris-strewn street. There was a dumping ground off to the right, mounds of rubble and trash piled several feet high, blocking the view of the highway.

They rolled past it and stopped as a pack of teenagers on battered mopeds buzzed by, shouting obscenities and flashing what Americans would think of as the “A-okay” sign. In Brazil, however, it meant something quite different.

Ahead, the street was teeming with favelados-residents of the favela-young and old alike, some parked in rickety metal chairs, others looking down onto the street from second-story windows, still others standing in front of crude storefronts, hawking candy and bottled drinks to passersby.

Two boys, who couldn’t have been more than nine or ten, stood near an open doorway, passing a joint between them in blatant disregard of authority. Assuming there was any around here.

Laundry hung from windowsills. Bundles of frayed electrical and telephone lines were strung between the buildings, crisscrossing the sky above the street like multicolored spiderwebs. The street itself was littered with old car tires, chunks of loose cement and overflowing garbage cans, one of which had been overturned by a mangy dog, hunting for food.

Overall, it looked to Callahan like a war zone, and probably was from time to time.

The driver rolled slowly forward through it all, weaving past the debris, giving the passengers a taste of what it meant to live in a country that was ill-equipped to handle its poverty.

“Each year, Sao Paulo’s middle class becomes poorer and poorer,” she said, “and the favelas grow in response. Many favelas have their own schools and day-care centers, but most of the children grow up in the streets, and must learn to be quick-witted and stealthy if they are to survive. Some people call this the Devil’s playground.”

God’s dirty little secret, Callahan thought. The forgotten people, left to rot in their own waste, with little or no chance of ever moving beyond this hole they called home. They were born, grew up and died here-often violently-barely a blip on heaven’s radar screen.

The van’s driver would likely tell you that Barbosa Tours was helping these people by bringing visitors with cash to the slums. But the truth was, the tour companies who had come up with this hefty rationalization for their greed were nothing more than traffickers in human misery. These weren’t tourists, but voyeurs. And Callahan didn’t doubt that a large percentage of every dollar spent went into some fat cat’s pocket.

The van turned a corner onto a slightly wider but no less desolate street, then pulled to the side and stopped next to an open storefront. Inside, the store’s shelves were lined with cheap manufactured and home-crafted trinkets, along with a selection of local sweets like beijinho de coco, brigadeiro and olhos de sogra.

The favela’s version of a tourist trap.

The driver set the brake and stood, calling for the passengers to exit the van, explaining that they’d be traveling on foot now. Callahan filed out along with the others, making sure to fall in behind the Long Island duo, knowing that this was her time to slip away.

Across the street, to the left, was a narrow alleyway. As her fellow passengers marched dutifully into the trinket shop, she circled behind the van and crossed to the alley without a backwards glance.

She had carefully studied satellite images of the favela and had much of the layout committed to memory. Martinez and his crew had pinpointed what they believed to be de Souza’s compound, and she knew she was headed in that general direction.

As she emerged on the other side of the alley, however, she was confronted by an almost impenetrable maze of tenement-lined streets. The earthbound view was much more intimidating than the satellite version and a wrong turn might impede her progress.

Pulling her smartphone out of her backpack, she called up her GPS app and studied the route she’d mapped out earlier that morning. She had hoped to navigate the less busy streets, to lessen the chances of being watched, but as she made her way through the maze, she knew now that this was a practical impossibility. The place was packed with favelados. She already felt eyes on her and was sure that it wouldn’t be long before de Souza knew exactly what she was up to.

She turned a corner, moving into another alley, then stopped short.

A shirtless old man lay in the middle of it, flies buzzing around his head. He wasn’t breathing, and Callahan couldn’t tell if he was the victim of violence or had simply collapsed and died.

Whatever the case, she didn’t like looking at him.

As she carefully stepped around him, something flickered at the periphery of her vision, and she whirled, catching only a glimpse of undefined movement, as if someone had just darted past the mouth of the alley.

Somebody following her?

The old man’s attacker?

Callahan wasn’t prone to paranoia, but this was the kind of place that nurtured it, and a sudden sense of unease washed over her. She knew how to handle herself in a fight, but she’d always taken the attitude that it was best to avoid one if at all possible.

Especially when she wasn’t functioning at her optimum level. Lack of sleep had a way of dulling your senses, slowing your responses. She’d managed a couple hours last night, but it hadn’t been enough to drive away the tremors.

If anything, they were getting worse.

Checking the GPS, she moved to the far end of the alley and took a right. But the map couldn’t tell her what she’d find here, and directly ahead of her was a barrier-a huge, makeshift wall, cobbled together out of plywood and rope and corrugated sheeting.

A crude mural was spray-painted on the wall, featuring a stark landscape that was dominated by a large, rotting tree. The blackened fruit of the tree lay on the ground around it, amidst a litter of human bones.

Four words were spray-painted across the wall in English:

Welcome to Paradise City

Callahan’s unease deepened as she stood there, staring at the mural. There was a gap in the middle of the tree, a hole in the wall, and she wondered if she should go through it or find another way in.

No point in wasting time.

Stepping forward, she angled her body sideways and squeezed through the gap, only to discover that the wall was much thicker than it looked. This was actually a kind of tunnel, formed by tightly packed piles of debris, and for a moment she found herself enveloped by near darkness.

She emerged on the other side to a narrow, pockmarked street crowded with yet more shacks made of cheap wood and corrugated aluminum.

To her surprise, however, the street was nearly empty. The only sign of life was a lone girl, about ten years old, who stood in a doorway several yards away, a cigarette burning in one hand, a sawed-off autoloader in the other.

The girl took a drag on the cigarette and looked at Callahan with hard, defiant eyes.

Come on, they said, try and fuck with me.

Callahan had no intention of taking her up on the invitation, but she knew this meant she was getting close to de Souza.

Moving to her left, she stepped into a narrow passageway between two shacks, hoping to pass through to the adjoining street. But the moment she entered, she slowed her pace.

Ahead and to the right was an open doorway, nothing but blackness beyond, and Callahan couldn’t shake the feeling that someone-or something-was watching her from inside, waiting for her to get close.

There was no rational reason to believe this, but her scalp started tingling and her body instinctively shifted into survival mode. What she felt wasn’t fear, exactly, but was certainly something akin to it. A gutlevel awareness that all wasn’t right here, and she should proceed with extreme caution.

Pulling her backpack off her shoulder, she unzipped a pocket and reached in, wrapping her fingers around a Glock 20. She’d found it and a backup waiting for her in her hotel room yesterday afternoon.

A gift from Section.

Keeping her hand on the grip, she continued forward, feeling the skin on the back of her neck prickle in anticipation with each new step, her heart thumping a few beats faster than normal.

Then a voice behind her said, “You’re here because of us.”

Callahan hitched a breath and whirled, dropping her backpack as she yanked the Glock free.

She froze the moment she saw who it was.

The little girl. The ten-year-old.

The girl stood about seven yards away, her cigarette gone, the autoloader held loosely at her side. Her gaze remained defiant, but there was something strange about her eyes now. A vague, amber luminosity to them that deepened Callahan’s unease.

“You’re part of Michael’s army,” she said. “He sent you here to spy on us.”

She was speaking English, and Callahan had no idea what to make of this. In fact, now that she thought about it, the girl didn’t even look like a favelado. She didn’t look Brazilian, for that matter.

Why hadn’t she noticed this before?

Callahan wasn’t exactly comfortable pointing her Glock at a ten-year-old, but she had no intention of lowering it. Not with that shotgun in the kid’s hand.

“Easy now. I don’t mean you any harm.”

“You are with Michael, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know anyone named Michael.”

“He thinks he can save us. Bring us to God. But he’s wrong. There’s no saving us now.”

The girl lifted the autoloader, and Callahan did what she knew she shouldn’t-she hesitated, didn’t engage, fully aware it could well mean the difference between walking away from this and landing facedown in the dirt.

But something about this little girl held her back.

She looked so . . . familiar.

Then the girl surprised her. Instead of pointing the weapon at Callahan, she pressed its two barrels against her own temple, her eyes softening now, the amber tint fading.

“There’s no saving any of us,” she said wistfully.

And as the realization of what she was about to do sank in, true fear thudded in Callahan’s chest.

“No!” she shouted, and sprang forward-

– as the girl wrapped her finger around the trigger and pulled.