“Checked out?”
“No, sir. I asked the desk clerk, after. They just walked. Nobody saw them go.”
Was that pure luck, or had somebody put a bug in Cooper’s ear? He would’ve been expecting company, after the ruckus in Belém, but not so soon. How could he know they’d pin him down that fast?
He couldn’t, Downey thought.
Luck, then—or else, the kind of skill that made dumb luck superfluous.
“All right, here’s what you do,” he said. “Get after them. I don’t care what you have to do, just find out where they’ve gone and follow them. You understand.”
“Yes, sir. But—”
“But nothing,” Downey cut him off. “You have one job and only one. Find Cooper and the woman. If they’re hiding in Cuiabá, root them out. If they’ve gone native and they’re swinging from the goddamned trees, you grab a vine and follow them. I hope you’re reading me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And when you find them, liquidate the problem, Sutter. Rub it out. Until that job is finished, you and Jones will not return. Under no circumstances known to God or man will I accept one more report of failure. Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Then move your ass and get it done.”
Downey put down the telephone receiver, then immediately lifted it again. The urge to share his misery was irresistible. He dialed the number of security police headquarters from his memory, one of perhaps five hundred crucial numbers filed inside his head, and waited while his call was passed along to Anastasio Herreira’s desk.
“Está?” Herreira greeted him.
“Está, yourself. Are we secure?”
“Of course.”
“I’ve got bad news.”
“It’s the only kind you ever bring to me.”
“Somebody screwed the pooch this morning, in Cuiabá,” Downey said. “I’m not assigning blame, you understand. Mixed signals, who knows what it was. Long story short, we missed the woman and her friend at the hotel.”
“I see.” Herreira’s voice was glum.
“Now, what we need to do is find out where they’re going. Either head them off or trail them to their destination. Maybe wrap it up once and for all.”
“You make it sound like meeting old friends in the park,” Herreira said. “You think they’ll leave a trail for us to follow?”
“Everybody leaves a trail. It’s a fact of life. The trick is knowing what to look for, how to read the signs.”
“Mato Grosso is the third-largest state in Brazil, Senhor Downey, and the most sparsely populated. Outside Cuiabá—”
“I don’t need a geography lesson. I need hunters who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty.”
Herreira lowered his voice as he asked, “What is it you propose?”
“We have a chance to wrap this up once and for all, within the next few days, if we’re not squeamish. We’ve already missed our chance to stop the woman slipping past with her hireling, but the mistake may work for us if we’re quick enough.”
“You think they’ll lead us to the doctor?”
“That’s exactly what I think. Of course, we have to find them first.”
“And I must say again—”
“Don’t tell me what you can’t do. I need a can-do attitude for this job. Think about the money Langley’s pumped into your service, and the cut you’ve skimmed off for yourself.”
“Senhor—”
“Nobody’s faulting you,” Downey said. “Hell, I know the way things work. All I’m suggesting is that you should earn a little of that money, now and then. You need to work a little overtime, put extra bodies on the street.”
“What am I looking for?” Herreira asked, resigned.
“Smart money says they’ve left Cuiabá. If we find out how they went, we also find out where they’ve gone. Get those coordinates, a drop-off point, and we can start to hunt for real.”
“All right,” Herreira said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“And let me know, ASAP.”
“Of course.”
“Good man,” Downey said, smiling even as he broke the link.
THE FIRST HOUR on foot was the worst, Enriquez thought. It still surprised her, after all this time, that her body was forced to reacclimatize each time she returned to the jungle from a trip away. Even a weekend in Cuiabá, with its running water, fans and air-conditioning could tip the balance of her metabolism it seemed, and had her sweating like a rank tourist when she came back home.
Moving along the narrow, unmarked trail, she made a point of watching Cooper on the sly, quick glances from the corner of her eye or underneath an arm when she paused to wipe her brow. He seemed to bear up well, with both the heat and the equipment that he carried. He was cautious, yet almost casual about it, not like one of those big-city “sportsmen” who clutched his weapon as if danger waited behind every tree.
Though it might, she admitted.
They hadn’t left danger behind by escaping from the city and the men who hunted them through the streets. Those hunters would follow, or send others in their place, and still more peril waited on the trail ahead.
Marta hoped Matt Cooper was equal to the task, and for a moment she almost felt guilty for bringing him into the jungle.
Almost.
Dr. Weiss—her Nathan—needed help to stay alive. If that meant taking him away, so be it. She would either find some means of joining him, or she would stay behind and nurture fading memories of what they’d had together.
Either way, the most important thing was his survival and the good work he could still do elsewhere, if he lived.
He had such talent, such compassion, and it would be wasted if he died here, clinging to a futile hope that he could change the hearts and minds of common men.
“Within two hours,” she told Cooper, “we should reach the village.”
“Is it yours?” he asked.
“The people are Tehuelche and they welcome me,” she answered, “but it’s not my home. A smallpox epidemic killed most of my people years ago, while I was in the residential mission school. I’ve seen where they were heaped and burned together for the public good. My parents have no graves.”
“I buried mine,” he said. “The markers aren’t much help.”
“You may think I was lucky to be off at school.”
He shrugged beneath his heavy pack. “You’re still alive.”
“The residential schools were meant to break us, wipe out old beliefs and fill our heads with something new.”
“It looks like you outsmarted them,” Bolan said.
Grim-faced, Enriquez shook her head. “They broke me with the rest,” she answered. “Only in the past few years have I recovered what was lost.”
“Still, that’s a victory,” Bolan replied. “They knocked you down but couldn’t beat you.”
“Oh, they beat me,” she corrected him. “Nobody in the mission schools escaped beatings—and worse. You’ve heard the stories, I suppose.”
“From Canada,” he said. “Not