The market maker (37 page)

She straightened up and began to walk down the hill slowly.

I looked across to Nelson, who gave Francisco ^i/Zio a rough shove. He stumbled up the hill toward her.

I would guess it was about four hundred yards between us and the farmhouse. Despite the fact he was going uphill, Francisco filho was covering more distance, and he was soon farther away from us than she was from them.

Suddenly a figure broke out of the farmhouse and began to run down the hill. He was tall, lithe, fit. Francisco followed, shouting.

"Run, Isabel!" I screamed.

She looked up, turned to see the man bearing dov/n on her, and only then began to hurry. Francisco/J/Zio was quicker off the mark. He broke into a run straightaway.

Damn! I couldn't shoot the boy, but if I let him go, we'd lose our chance to free Isabel. I'd have to catch

him before he reached the kidnapper who was hurtling down the hill toward him.

I sprinted.

I heard two shots behind me, as Nelson fired at the kid, and saw dirt leaping away to his left. Nelson was firing to miss, and was only scaring the kid into running faster.

But not as fast as me. I had some distance to make up, but I was closing on him, the gim in the waistband of my trousers biting into my groin with every stride. He had no power in his long legs, and he was finding the gradient difficult. His hands were still bound and his gag must have made it difficult to breathe. Above me, the man had caught up with Isabel, throwing her to the ground. As they struggled to their feet only a few yards ahead, I dived and grabbed for the boy's ankle. He tripped, and I was on him, gun out, to his temple. I flicked the safety catch off.

He lay still, scared, his chest heaving. With the gim pressed to his head, I looked up at Isabel. She was on her feet now. A man was holding her around her neck with his left arm, pointing a gim at her head with his right. He was breathing heavily. Her brown eyes stared at me wide with fear. I caught them for a second, trying to give her reassurance, tell her she could still be free. Then she was yanked backward up the hill by the man. He was in his thirties, wiry and capable-looking.

"Stop!'' I shouted. ''We can still make the exchange."

"No! I take her!" He pulled Isabel up the hill with him.

The voice was deep and authoritative, and I would have recognized it anywhere. Zico!

I pulled Francisco filho to his feet. "Let her go!" I shouted. "We'll let you escape."

"How do I know that? Perhaps the police wait for us. No, Isabel goes with me!"

He dragged her up the hill. I followed with the boy. At the top I could see Francisco and another man, who looked little more than a kid. A fellow kidnapper, presumably.

We were nearing the farmhouse and a red pickup truck.

"Stop!" I said. "Or FU shoot him!"

"No!" cried Francisco.

Zico laughed. "Go ahead. Shoot him. I don't care. He's not my son." |

He looked into my eyes, mocking me. Of course I j wasn't going to shoot the boy. I released my grip on the j kid, and let my gun fall to my side. He ran up the hill to J meet his father. ?

Zico dragged Isabel toward the pickup truck. She i looked back at me, her eyes helpless, pleading with me i to do something.

There she was, just a few feet away. The elation that I j had felt seeing her walk out of the farmhouse had \ turned to almost unbearable anxiety. I was so close to ! freeing her and now Zico was simply going to drive \ away right under my nose. I couldn't try to shoot him. i He'd kill her first, and probably me too. The only expe- ] rience I'd had with a handgun was the five minutes \ Nelson had taken to show me how^ it fired. Now it felt ^ heavy and useless in my hand. \

I saw movement some distance behind the pickup. \ Thin black limbs scurried across the ground to a water \ drum. A moment later a head and a short gray barrel | peeked out from behind it. Euclides! And he had the i gun Nelson had given him! Where did he get that? ; He must have hidden it on himself somehow. Oh, shit! ] The last thing I wanted was some cockeyed heroics i from a twelve-year-old. Someone would get killed, and j it would most likely be Isabel. i

Zico glanced at me as he neared the truck, and I quickly switched my eyes back to him, not wanting him to realize I had seen something. I moved slowly closer.

"Keep away!" he shouted.

I stopped.

Behind him, Euclides ran from the drum toward the pickup truck. I still don't know what he was trying to do. Hide in there probably, and surprise Zico later on. But he trod on some old corrugated iron that gave out a sharp clatter. Zico spun around. Euclides stopped in his tracks, caught in the open. He shifted his gun toward Zico and hesitated, presumably afraid of hitting Isabel. Zico whipped his weapon away from Isabel's temple and pointed it at Euclides. Two shots rang out, and Euclides uttered a sharp cry.

I had no time to think. Instinct made me raise my arm. I looked down the short barrel straight into Isabel's terrified eyes. I jerked my arm to the left and pulled the trigger in one motion as Zico turned back toward me. I hit him in the right shoulder, throwing his arm back. His gun went spinning to the ground.

He let go of Isabel and bent down to pick it up. I ran toward him. There was another shot, Zico's head jerked sharply to one side, and he fell.

Euclides lay on the ground, gun pointing toward the crumpled figure of Zico, a broad smile on his face. There was a dark patch on the grass around his chest.

I ran to Isabel, who was squatting on the ground, sobbing.

"Are you OK?"

She looked up, and a smile broke across her tear-stained face, the smile I had played through my mind so many times over the last few weeks. She nodded.

I turned and ran over to where Euclides had fallen.

He was lying in a pool of blood, which grew in front of my eyes. It was pumping out from somewhere underneath him. I hesitated, unsure what to do. Euclides was ] struggling to keep his eyes open. His lips moved. I bent | down to listen. j

" I hit him, meester," he whispered. f

"Yes, you did," I said. |

I turned his small body over and tried to use his | flimsy shirt to stanch the flow of blood from the hole in \ his chest. It was hopeless. Within a minute life had J drained away into the damp grass. 1

29

Isabel was slumped in the other comer of the backseat of the car, watching the road ahead absently. Ronaldo was driving us back to Rio, leaving Nelson to clear up the mess we had left behind.

And there was quite a mess. Nelson and I had decided to let Francisco and his son go. We had after all promised as much to him when we had set up the exchange for Isabel, and he had kept his part of the bargain. It was Zico who had run after Isabel at the last minute. And implicating Francisco with the kidnapping would involve prolonged wrangling with the authorities. We thought it was better to wrap things up as quietly as possible. Nelson had, however, promised to bring back Euclides's body for a proper burial.

Isabel didn't look too bad after her ordeal. She was thin, but then she'd always been thin. Her skin was paler than it had been, after so many weeks away from the sun, I supposed. And there was a sort of fragility to her. But basically she looked unharmed.

"Are you OK? "I asked.

She looked at me and smiled, reaching out her hand for mine.

"I'm OK," she said. "I'm just so glad to be free."

There was so much to say, so much to ask her, but 11 wanted to do it at her pace, so I kept silent. |

" Where's my father? " she asked. |

"In London." I

" In London? " She raised her eyebrows. |

"Yes, it's a long story. But Cordelia's waiting at his ■ apartment."

"How is she? I mean ..."

I smiled. "Don't worry, she's fine. She's growing big- ; ger every day." j

Isabel smiled. "Good." Then after a moment. "Did he ) pay a ransom?" i

"That's a long story too." |

"Tell me."

"I can tell you later, when you've had some rest."

"No, tell me now. That's all I've been thinking about j over the last two months. What's been happening at j -home. Tell me." j

So I told her everything. About the initial ransom de- ] mands, about the long silence after the failed police I raid, and then about the renewed demands once I had J suggested Bloomfield Weiss take over Dekker. I told j her how Ricardo and Eduardo must have been in league j with Francisco first of all to have Martin Beldecos mur- ; dered, and then to have her and me kidnapped to pre- \ vent the discovery of Francisco's money-laundering : operations. And finally I described how we had snatched Francisco's son to force an exchange.

She listened in amazement. "So Ricardo was behind it all?" she said quietly.

I nodded. "I'm afraid so."

She looked out of the window at the Rio suburbs drifting slowly by. "Bastard," she whispered. She turned to me. "It looks like you were right about him after all."

''Right now I don't care who's right or wrong," I said. "I'm just glad you're alive."

She squeezed my hand. "Thank you. Thank you for all you did for me."

There were loud squeals when we reached Luis's apartment. Cordelia hugged her sister hard and long, and Maria danced around. Fernando was there as well. The excitement roused Isabel out of the daze she had been in since her release, and she became more animated. Within a minute she was on the phone with Luis at the Savoy in London. Tears flowed. Portuguese words were spoken at a hundred miles an hour. I watched with a huge grin on my face.

The one sour note was Euclides. Cordelia was shaken by news of his death. It had affected me too. But it wouldn't have surprised the boy himself; I doubt he had expected to reach adulthood. Cordelia had been right, he was brave. He had been stupid to take Nelson's gun with him, and to try to sneak up on Zico. But he was only twelve, how could you blame him? He had been trying to save Cordelia's sister and impress us. In fact, he had died with a gun in his hand, having just shot a bad guy; by Euclides's reckoning that probably was a good way to go. But it was a waste. We were all responsible: the Brazilian government and middle class who allowed such poverty and violence in their midst, and more particularly. Nelson, Cordelia, and me, who had armed him and encouraged him on his last adventure. I wouldn't forget Euclides.

Isabel had a long bath, and then told us about her ordeal. She had been guarded well. For the first couple of weeks she had been kept in a tent inside a basement. Then she had been hurriedly moved up to the farm, and had been imprisoned in a bam with only one window tliat was fixed shut. She had had heat. Light,

adequate food and drink. She was allowed to wash once a day, and had been given a radio, books, and newspapers. She had only seen her captors wearing masks, until that last day when she had finally seen Zico, but of course she had soon grown to recognize their voices. There seemed to have been five of them who looked after her in shifts.

Right from the beginning she had decided that her best chance for survival was to cooperate with them, and they had treated her well. She had frequently asked about the progress of negotiations but they had told her nothing. The only indications she had had that there had been any communication with her father were the two proof-of-life questions she had received. The first, asking the name of her teddy bear, had made her sm^ile. It was typical of the sentimentality of her father, and it reminded her of the security of her childhood.

But through it all she kept calm. She knew that kidnappings could take months, but she also knew that her father would find a way to pay her ransom. It was clear that she had been a lot less worried than we about her safety.

She told us all of this in a mixture of English, for my benefit, and Portuguese for Maria's. But when her story had finished, and the conversation had broken up into rushed questions and answers, I left them to it. Despite all the time I had spent with them, I wasn't really part of their family. I grabbed a bottle of beer and went out onto the balcony to watch the sunset, glad that Isabel was finally free.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up.

"HaUo," said Isabel.

"Hi."

She bent down and kissed me, her hair falling on my face. Then she stood up and looked out to sea. ''You

can't believe what it's like to see the sea again/' she said. "This view. These people." A pause. "You."

A warm glow of happiness ran through me. It was just what I had hoped to hear. I reached up and pulled her lips down to mine again.

Eventually she broke away. "What will you do now?" she asked.

"I don't know. I haven't thought about it." And in truth I hadn't. My plans had gone no further than Isabel's release.

"Is Papal really going to take over Dekker?" she

asked.

"We'll soon find out. The auction is tomorrow afternoon. It's between him and Bloomfield Weiss."

"So Ricardo has finally lost? I still can't believe he did that to me. Had me kidnapped. I know our relationship was over, but I thought I meant more to him than that."

"You know what he's Uke," I said. "With the survival of Dekker Ward at stake, he'd do anything. And at least you're still alive."

Isabel frowned. "I guess you're right."

It was getting dark quickly. The floodlights were on, picking out the white spume of the waves on the beach. I had stared out at this view often, worrying about Isabel in captivity. And now she was here, next to me.

My thoughts turned to Luis in London, and the auction tomorrow. I prayed he would be successful. I badly wanted Ricardo to see that he wasn't invincible. That he couldn't mess up so many people's lives, especially mine and Isabel's, and get away with it.

Isabel was obviously thinking the same thing. "Let's go and help Papal," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"Let's go to London. Tonight. To help him with his

bid tomorrow."

"It's too late, isn't it? And shouldn't you rest?" "I've been resting for weeks! I want to see my father. This is an important time for him. There's a flight that leaves at about ten o'clock, I think. We've plenty of time." I grinned. "OK. Let's go."