Forever (66 page)

'Oh no. No. You will have to fly out to
Sitto da Veiga, of course, and plan to stay there for a few
days.'

'I'm hoping five days will be enough,'
Stephanie said.

'Good. We've got business out of the way,
then. Now to more exciting things. I take it everything is still
set for our weekend trip tomorrow? Or did you forget?'

'Forget?' Stephanie laughed. 'How could
I?'

'Then you are still planning to go?'

'Of course!'

'Good. To get an early start, we will leave
directly from here at noon tomorrow. Bring your luggage in to work
with you so we can go directly to the airport.'

'That's a good idea. And Eduardo?'

'Yes?'

She lowered her voice. 'I'm looking forward
to it.'

And with that, she hung up.

Just then there was a knock on the open
door. She and Lia both looked up.

Barbie poked her head into the office. 'I
hope I'm not too early?' she called out to Stephanie. 'But I'm
starved!'

The call came that night, while Barbie was
helping Stephanie pack for the weekend.

'I'll answer it,' Stephanie said, expecting
it to be Eduardo, and picked up the bedside extension. 'Hello?'
There was only the rush of static.

Stephanie frowned at Barbie, who was
standing there, a half-folded blouse in her hand, waiting. 'Hello?'
she said again.'Hello?'

Then a genderless voice hissed in her ear.
'Die!' it said in English. 'Die, die, die!' And the phone went
dead.

Ilha da Borboleta • Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

As sleek and predatory as a shark, the
silver executive helicopter raced its shadow north along the coast,
barely skimming the tops of the emerald humps that were the coastal
islands.

Inside, the aircraft was cushiony.
Sound-proofed. And decorated like the chairman of the universe's
conference room. All maroon glove-leather and matched burl veneers
and custom-woven wool carpeting and executive-style leather swivel
armchairs.

Aboard was a cockpit crew of two, plus a
flight attendant, seven mobile telephones and three fax
machines.

'Don't tell me!' Stephanie had quipped as
she and Eduardo boarded. 'This is the only way to fly?'

'The only way to fly there,'' he'd
explained. 'The ilha does not have a landing strip, and the ocean
is often too rough for amphibious planes.'

Now, at three thousand feet, they approached
the island from its easternmost tip and the pilot put the
whirlybird into a wide, sweeping westward curve. 'We're above it
now,' Eduardo said, pointing out the window.

Stephanie put her head next to the Perspex
and looked down. From this high up, the shape of the island was
clearly discernible. It really did look like its namesake, a
butterfly. A closer inspection showed it to be green with verdant
jungle and overgrown volcanic cliffs, and white with surrounding
sugary sand beaches. In one of the two natural harbours, where the
wings of the butterfly met and the land mass was thinnest, she saw
a familiar shape riding the waves: the
Chrysalis
.

Then the chopper was coming down, giving the
illusion that the Eden-like island was rising up to meet them. At
first Stephanie thought it looked uninhabited. Then, suddenly there
it was, in a clearing surrounded by immaculate swathes of lawn, the
two-storeyed
quinta
with its blue-and-white tiles and
Moorish- style arches and columned loggias and weathered terracotta
roofs. Fronted by a green pond with a horseshoe of
balustrade-encircled grottoes and a cupolaed temple rising from its
midst. Backed by the aquamarine rectangle of a swimming pool and
scattered lawn furniture.

'God,' Stephanie exclaimed softly as the
helicopter skimmed the treetops and made a quick pass before
whirling around and doubling back. 'It's paradise!'

'Or as close to paradise as man could make
it.'

Having detected irony in Eduardo's tone, she
glanced quickly at him, but his face was expressionless.

Now the helicopter slowed to a hover in the
vicinity of the ornamental pond. The wash of its rotors sent
quivers and ripples through the brackish water below, caused palm
trunks to bend pliantly, fronds to shake, rattle, wave. Slowly the
craft turned on its axis and descended. Stephanie felt a queasy
lurch in the pit of her stomach, sure the craft was plummeting out
of control. But a moment later it settled down on the grass, smooth
as a feather on a down pillow. The whine of the engines decreased;
the rotors began to slow.

The attendant was quick to open the cabin
door and unfold the steps.

Eduardo unbuckled his seat belt, stood and
stretched.

Stephanie followed suit. 'You know
something?' she said faintly. 'I don't think I like helicopters.
First, all that shaking . . . and then coming straight down . . .
I'm not much for amusement park rides, I'm afraid.'

He smiled. 'You will feel better as soon as
you get your land legs back. And after a few more helicopter rides,
you will think nothing of them.'

'I'm not so sure,' she said dubiously.

As soon as they were outside, Stephanie saw
two canopied golf carts headed their way.

'Let me guess,' she said. 'Ground
transportation?'

Eduardo laughed. 'That's right.'

'Let's walk instead.' She hooked an arm
through his. 'I need to get my equilibrium back.'

They headed across the lawn. It was soft and
springy underfoot, and as soon as they got far enough away from the
petrol fumes of the helicopter, the air was fragrant with perfumes:
bougainvillaea and jasmine, passion flower and hibiscus. It was an
Eden, with roses and clumps of birds-of-paradise rising regally
from huge serrated leaves, and yellow guapuruvus, and lush moist
ferns. But underlying it all, just beneath the flowery scents, was
the faint but unmistakable odour of the tropics - of ever-present
decay, and life recycling, of the old constantly becoming mulch for
the new.

Stephanie looked around as they skirted the
stone coping of the pond, which was once again placid. To the left,
along the treeline, she spied a guard with a shouldered rifle
holding the leash of a German shepherd.. And passing beneath a palm
tree, she happened to look up and notice a roaming video camera
mounted thirty feet up the trunk. This might be Eden, she thought
soberly, but it's Eden without privacy. Big Brother's monitoring
every move.

They were approaching the house from the
front. It looked Mediterranean in style, and sprawled comfortably,
as though its foundations had long sunk solidly into the ground,
and as if it had been added onto in stages over the years.
Constructed of brick, wood, and stucco, its vine-covered facade had
mellowed to a beautiful shade of fading yellow that went well with
the antique blue-and-white tilework that clad the ground floor.
Half the white shutters over various windows were closed, giving
the house a torpid, deceptively sleepy look. Deferential royal
palms swayed around it in the blossom-fragrant breeze.

They climbed weathered stone steps flanked
by marble lions and were on the terrace when a large cloud of
sapphire-blue butterflies fluttered towards them, enveloped them
completely for a few seconds, and then were abruptly gone.

Stephanie whirled around to watch them
disappear. 'Did you see that?' she whispered, wonder in her voice.
She touched her face. 'I could actually feel their wings tickling
my skin!'

'Morpho peleides,' Eduardo murmured by
reflex.

'What did you say?' She looked at him.

'Morpho peleides.' He smiled. 'That is the
name of that particular species. My father introduced them to this
island.'

He cupped a hand under her elbow, led her up
a few more steps, and then they were in the cool shade of the
arched gallery where Colonel Valerio and a woman waited on either
side of the open front door.

'Sir. Ma'am.' Colonel Valerio stood stiffly
at attention, his face the ubiquitous mirrored mask.

But the woman smiled with genuine pleasure
and reached up and touched Eduardo's cheek gently.

'Senhor!' she whispered.

She appeared to be in her late fifties and
was strong and full-breasted, and had the kind of poise that
indicated an inner strength. Her greying red hair was pulled back
into a loose knot and she wore her genealogy proudly on her face.
Her complexion was the pale, milky skin of the Europeans, the shape
of her head was from the local Indians, and her flat features were
negroid, from long-ago ancestors who had come to Brazil as slaves.
She wore a severely tailored black dress and had a diaphanous
purple chiffon shawl wrapped around her shoulders like a stole,
which she held clutched together in front of her. Little garnets
dangled from her ears.

'This is Joana,' Eduardo explained to
Stephanie. 'She has run the household here at the
quinta
ever since I can remember. In many ways, she was like a nanny to
me. Joana, I would like you to meet Ms Monica Williams.'

Stephanie stepped forward. 'How do you do?'
she said.

The woman smiled at her, politely speaking
to Eduardo in heavily accented English instead of her native
Portuguese. 'Your parents and the doctor are still on the
Chrysalis
,' she told him. 'They will be there for another
hour or so.'

Then she turned back to Stephanie.

'And Zaza asked me to personally convey her
apologies for not being able to greet you herself. She is upstairs
having her afternoon nap. She asks that you meet her in the Sala de
Hercules at four o'clock for tea.'

'Zaza seems to have taken quite a liking to
you,' Eduardo told Stephanie. And his eyes added, So have I', and
she felt a glow.

'In this house,' Joana told Stephanie,
'dinner is served at the traditional hour of ten. If you are hungry
in the meantime, you have only to ring for a servant. It will not
be an imposition; there are kitchen staff on duty around the clock.
Breakfast is usually served at eight in the morning, and lunch at
noon.' She paused and smiled. 'Now then, if I might show you
upstairs to your room? I'm sure you will want to freshen up.'

Stephanie turned to Eduardo. 'I'll see you
later?'

'By the swimming pool in half an hour,' he
promised. 'If you forgot your swimsuit, don't worry. There are
plenty in the cabana.'

Stephanie smiled at him and followed Joana
into a vast centre hall and up a magnificent curving staircase. On
the piano nobile, the even grander second floor, they went down a
wide gallery-corridor lined with windows on one side and stone-
lintelled doors on the other. The floor was bare; pale and smooth
from daily scrubbings.

But what Stephanie found rather unsettling
was that every twenty feet or so, video cameras mounted near the
ceiling panned slowly left to right, right to left, their Cyclops
eyes ever watchful, monitoring every movement in that
gallery-corridor, no doubt recording it on tape.

Joana stopped at a tall door, opened it, and
stepped inside. 'This is your room,' she said pleasantly. 'Your
luggage is on its way up. If you need anything, anything at all,
please do not hesitate to call. It really is no trouble.' And with
a friendly smile, she left Stephanie and briskly went back the way
they had come.

Stephanie stood there for a moment, then
walked inside and closed the door. She wandered around the room. It
was quite grand in a country-manor sort of way: perfectly
proportioned with a dado of splendid rococo tiles, carved wooden
palmettes over the French doors, generously proportioned gilt
chairs with rose silk upholstery, and scrubbed, bare wood floors.
The carved four- poster bed was massive, like a room within a room,
and was hung with its original tattered yellow silk hangings. The
antique lace linen, Stephanie saw, was spotless: freshly laundered
and in perfect condition.

She opened a door and discovered a luxurious
old-fashioned bathroom. It had two pedestal sinks, a large
Edwardian tub, and beautifully polished brass fixtures. Soaps,
lotions, combs and brushes, towels, perfumes, robe: everything had
been anticipated for a pleasant stay.

Closing that door, she crossed the bedroom
and went out through one of the open French doors, finding herself
on the second level of the broad gallery which banded the front of
the house. Here the blazing sun was subdued, filtered by the
clinging vines which, over the decades, had crept up the supporting
columns and around the railings and eaves. The vista through this
bower of dappled green was enchanting - she could look straight out
over the terrace below to the cupolaed temple, reflected like some
flooded relic from antiquity in the centre of the green pond.
Beyond it was the helicopter. As she watched, its rotors started up
again for lift-off, and the wash of wind tore at the temple's
reflection, scattering it like a million pieces of a watery jigsaw
puzzle.

Hearing soft voices coming from within her
room, she went back inside. A houseboy had brought up her two cases
and a maid was already in the process of unpacking them. After
exchanging pleasantries, Stephanie retired into the bathroom to
freshen up.

Ten minutes later, she was outside. In her
bikini. Eyes shut and luxuriating drowsily on a chaise by the
pool.

She didn't know how long she'd been lazing
there when a splash of cold water hit her like an icy shock.
Letting out a yelp, she jumped to her feet. Eduardo was in the
water, clinging to the edge of the pool and grinning up at her.

'That's mean!' she accused.

'I can be even meaner,' he grinned, and she
shrieked as he lunged and grabbed her by her right ankle.

'Eduardo!' she screamed. 'Oh, don't! Don't!
The water's too cold -'