War Lord

Fifteen

When we arrived at our hotel on the beach at Ipanema, Rio de Janeiro, I told the cab driver to keep driving. I liked the setting just fine, but the hotel was old and narrow, and according to a sign out front it had great dormitory-style accommodation.

‘What are we doing?’ Petinski asked, turning to look out the back window.

‘Are you a backpacker?’

‘No. Why?’

‘Me neither.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Don’t know yet.’ I leaned forward to have a word with the driver. ‘You speak English, buddy?’ I asked him. A grunt suggested he might. ‘What’s the most expensive hotel you got round here?’

‘Copacabana Palace,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘You want to go there?’

I told him yes.

‘It’ll come out of your expenses, not mine,’ Petinski warned as the driver hit the brakes, swerved and accelerated down a side street. I figured that if a nuclear bomb was set off somewhere, our hotel bill would be the least of anyone’s concerns. And if we managed to prevent it, same outcome. For once I was going first-class. ‘If you’re worried about it, we can share a room,’ I told her.

‘In your dreams.’

The Copacabana Palace on Copacabana Beach was all scallops, arches and French windows painted a pinkish shade of white. A plastic bride and groom perched on the roof wouldn’t have been out of place. A Rolls-Royce was parked in the forecourt between a Lamborghini and a stretch Hummer. Petinski gazed up at the hotel out her window as the cab driver waited for a break in the traffic to turn into the forecourt.

‘I can already see the zeros on the minibar prices,’ I said. ‘We should check in as an engaged couple.’

‘And why’s that?’

‘Might give us options down the track — cover, and so forth.’

She gave me a look that said if I had an ulterior motive, I should get it out of my head.

I answered with a look that said, ‘Who, me?’

The cab driver swung us into a gap that opened up in the oncoming traffic and planted us in the hotel’s forecourt with a squeal of brakes. I paid the fare and two guys in their mid-twenties wearing crisp gray suits and flat, round pillbox hats arrived and held our doors open.

‘You have baggage, sir?’ asked the guy holding my door.

I could’ve mentioned my ex-wife but I said, ‘In the trunk.’

Petinski and I got out. It was hot, different from the Vegas kind of heat. This was the wet, steamy variety, exhaled as if from nearby jungle. We followed our luggage to reception where we were met by chandeliers, vases painted into the recesses on the walls, smooth tiled floors and three South American glamour types working the counter.

‘Good morning, sir,’ said a tall dark-skinned woman with thick black hair, bright red lips and an exotic accent. ‘Can I help you?’

‘We’re checking in.’

Petinski gave her a brief smile then melted into the background.

‘Certainly. Name?’

‘Cooper. Vincent Cooper.’ I put my Visa card on the counter with a snap and her fingers went to work on a keyboard. Concern almost immediately began to trouble her unlined forehead. ‘Um… did I mention that we don’t have a reservation?’ I confessed, confirming her fear.

‘Oh, I’m not sure we have a room vacant, sir. We are fully booked.’

I noticed that on her finger was a gleaming engagement ring yet to be dulled by disappointment. The badge on her firm bosom told me her name was Gracia.

I dropped my voice. ‘Look, Gracia, if you can help me out, I’d really appreciate it. I was hoping to ask my girlfriend here to marry me.’ I gestured with an eye movement at Petinski, who was wandering around examining the wall art. ‘But then her purse got snatched at the airport and our romantic getaway is turning into a nightmare. I need a little help to get the job done. Just a couple of nights. Really, whatever you’ve got…’

The frown intensified, but movement at the corner of her lips told me that I might possibly have mined some empathy. Her fingers worked the keyboard harder and she exchanged a few quick words with the woman beside her. After this discussion she returned to me, looking a little pained. ‘I am sorry, we have only one room available, but the TV, it is not working…’

‘Oh, that’s okay.’ I leaned across the counter and, with a vaguely conspiratorial smile, said, ‘I was hoping we wouldn’t be watching too much TV…’

Gracia returned the smile with one of her own, a cheeky curl on one side of her red lips. ‘With taxes, the room is thirteen hundred dollars US per night. But perhaps I can give you a small discount because it has no TV. Is one thousand one hundred dollars okay?’

Eleven hundred bucks times two nights, maybe more. Arlen would pop his cork. ‘Great,’ I told her. ‘We’ll take it.’ I filled in the forms and left an imprint of my Visa.

‘Boa sorte — good luck,’ Gracia said with a wink, handing me two plastic card keys.

Petinski and I followed a short hairy guy in a pillbox hat up to our room on the fifth floor, a generous space done up like an English cottage with printed curtains, framed paintings of birds and plants, polished wood and gold taps. It was the kind of place where the other half lived, the half with money. The guy gave us a quick tour, which concluded with a set of double doors opening onto a balcony overlooking the pool and restaurant in the courtyard. I tipped our guide and he left, closing the door quietly behind him.

‘This looks expensive,’ said Petinski, hands on hips.

‘I got a discount.’

‘Half price is still going to blow my budget.’ Petinski gazed around the room. ‘The bed’s mine. Couch is yours.’

‘Better than the doghouse.’

‘Don’t push your luck, Cooper. And what did you tell the woman on the front desk? Why was she smiling at me?’

‘I told her that, as I was about to ask you to marry me, they should just leave a stack of clean sheets at our door.’

‘Jesus, Cooper…’

‘It’s called thinking on your feet, Petinski. Let’s move on. Speaking of which, what’s our next move, workwise?’

‘We’ve got a meeting.’

Shortly thereafter we were walking out through the hotel lobby. I glanced at the reception desk and my confidante there gave me a wave. I put my arm around Petinski’s shoulder.

‘What are you doing?’ Petinski asked with a hiss.

‘Playing the part. We’ve got an audience,’ I told her.

‘You got the room, Cooper. Don’t think you’re getting anything else.’ Petinski shrugged off my arm the instant we walked through the door into the afternoon sunshine. After letting a number of cabs pass, she waved one down and gave the driver an address read off her iPhone. The driver took us through a long tunnel cut through solid rock, into another part of the city. Checking out the surroundings, I caught a glimpse of the famous statue of Christ up on one of the many hills overlooking the city. From this angle, the way his arms were outstretched reminded me of Petinski’s description of Josef Mengele with his arms out wide like an angel with its wings open, saying, ‘Death to the left, life to the right…’

The shopfront said we were in a place specializing in tailor-made suits, an assertion confirmed inside by several well-dressed gents with a combined age of around a thousand years, slicked-back silver hair, pencil moustaches, and measuring tapes around their necks. But then one of them scanned a barcode off Petinski’s iPhone, led us to a clothing rack in a back room and parted the half-made suits hanging on it, and a panel opened to reveal an elevator. We thanked the old guy and stepped in, and a few jolts later the doors opened on a trim black woman framed by an über-cool reception area of stainless steel, glass and chocolate wood, a large seal of the CIA on the frosted glass wall behind her.

‘Mr Delaney is expecting you,’ she said in an internationalized American accent I couldn’t place. ‘Please follow me.’

I was happy to oblige, a large part of the reason being her ass, a round and firm ass that moved beneath her loose black skirt like any second it was gonna break into a samba. We arrived at a plain wood-grain door with no name or title on it. Behind it was a small room with a simple black Formica table, bottles of water clustered in its center. A political map of the world hung on one wall, while the other three were bare.

‘Take a seat, please,’ said the woman. ‘Mr Delaney will be with you in a minute.’ She and her ass turned and left.

Pretty much exactly a minute later, Delaney strolled in — a guy of average height and weight, medium brown hair, small brown eyes, no distinguishing marks or features, wearing Levi’s and a white shirt. He was so average even his own kids might have had trouble picking him out of a line-up.

‘Jeb Delaney,’ he said with a Jonny Hayseed drawl. ‘Assistant Deputy Director.’

Hmm. The assistant to the assistant. We’d been sent straight to the middle. He shook our hands and sat at the head of the table.

‘This place is a surprise,’ said Petinski, small talking. ‘Beneath a tailor’s. Who’d have thought?’

‘Yeah,’ said Delaney, ‘except that everyone in the Brazilian, Brit, Ruskie, Frog and Chink secret services have their shirts made by the boys topside, so I think the word’s probably out about what’s in the basement. Still, we’re centrally located and it beats the crap outta workin’ from the attaché’s office in the embassy up in Brasilia.’ He smiled. ‘Rio’s a bunch more fun than the capital in every way that counts.’

I had a sense that maybe ol’ Jeb here wasn’t talking entirely about the spy business. Petinski smiled back and flicked me a who-is-this-guy? glance. ‘Thanks for taking the time to see us, sir,’ she said.

‘The pleasure’s all mine,’ Delaney replied. ‘Fact is, ya’ll been given the highest clearance I ever seen for non-Company folk, endorsed by Langley and DoD. Makes me inquisitive what this is all about, but, ’course, that ain’t allowed.’

Petinski gave him another smile.

‘Bottom line,’ he continued, ‘we’ve been ordered to provide you every assistance. You need anythin’, just let me know. We have a line into the local PD as well as Brazil’s security agency. And we drink with the folks over at MI6.’ He took two cards from his shirt pocket and gave one to each of us, nothing on it except a cell number. ‘When ya’ll get a pickup, the codeword is “Landlock”. Forget t’ say it, ya’ll get dial tone and the number’ll be useless thereafter.’

‘Got it,’ said Petinski.

‘Online coms can be routed to us through your agency in Washington.’

Something about Jeb’s focused manner once the intros were done suggested the squeal-like-a-pig hillbilly shit he was going on with was an act. I hoped so. I wasn’t a fan of the Company, but I had a feeling we were going to be relying on it pretty heavily here.

‘Anythin’ you need right off the bat?’ he asked.

‘We’re interested in Benicio von Weiss,’ said Petinski.

Jeb allowed himself a smirk that vanished almost as soon as it formed. ‘Vee Dubyah, eh. Who ain’t? We got more assets on that fella than flies on a corpse.’

‘You’ve got a tail on him?’

‘I hope so — yeah.’

‘What’s the Company’s interest in him?’

‘Whatever our Langley masters tell us to be interested in. But aside from that, Vee Dubyah’s also rich, influential and bent like a mountain road. Actually, I’m interested in why you’re interested in him. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t like it, but your clearance entitles y’all to a big chunk of our latest intel, assuming you want it.’

‘We’ll take whatever you can give us, sir,’ said Petinski.

‘You’ve just arrived, right? How ya’ll gettin’ around?’

‘Cabs.’

‘A tip: make sure those cabs are random. Don’t pick one out of a rank.’

‘Good advice, sir.’

Duh, I thought.

‘I take it ya’ll came here first. So what’s next?’

‘Get our bearings. Perhaps take a look at von Weiss’s main registered address.’

Jeb looked at me. ‘Ya’ll don’t say much, do you?’

‘Looks like they make a nice suit upstairs,’ I offered.

‘What’s with you, Cooper?’ Petinski snapped as we watched the traffic zip by, waiting for a cab to appear. ‘You were pretty damn rude back there.’

‘I didn’t say anything,’ I replied.

‘Exactly.’

‘Look, Petinski, like it or not — and I don’t — someone’s decided I’m your trophy partner. As far as I can figure out I’m being paid to accompany you and look pretty.’

‘Don’t flatter yourself.’

‘Do you know how many residences von Weiss has?’ I asked, getting back on point.

‘He has six safe houses in Brazil alone. Unofficially, as you know, he also runs the gang that controls a major favela, which is a honeycomb of potential boltholes.’

‘That would be the guacamole dip the severed hand was mailed from?’

Petinski sighed. ‘Yes.’

‘Do we know where von Weiss is now?’

‘Twelve hours ago, before we got on the plane, he was down the coast from Rio at a place called Angra dos Reis, a seaside vacation town. He keeps his boat there. Delaney’s going to update us when new information turns up.’ She raised her hand and signaled to a cab.

‘This guy just lets himself be tailed?’

‘Look, Cooper, I know what you’re thinking, but as I told you already, we’ve got no firm proof of his connection to the theft of the nuke. We’ve got nothing other than suspicion. Von Weiss has a reputation — he doesn’t scare and he’s got enough money to buy whomever he wants.’

‘We’ve got nothing on him, but we’re sure he’s the guy?’ I asked as the cab pulled over. I opened the rear passenger door for her.

‘And I suppose you’ve never had a murder suspect with motive and opportunity who you’re absolutely positive committed the crime, only you don’t have any clues that’ll stand up in court?’

For some reason I really didn’t like it when Petinski was right.