Blue Labyrinth

I fear to speculate what your next move will be. The next move was obvious, of course.

Pendergast took several deep, shuddering breaths. Then he raised himself from the bed and placed his feet on the floor. The room rocked around him and the trembling turned into a painful, racking muscle spasm that slowly released. He had begun taking a regimen of self-prescribed drugs, including atropine, chelators, and glucagon, along with painkillers to keep him going during the fits that were begi

He felt his body preparing to spasm again. This would not do — not for what he had next in mind.

He waited until the second spasm was over, then made his way to a desk pushed against the far wall. His toilet kit and duty holster lay upon it, the latter containing his Les Baer .45. Next to it rested several spare magazines.

He sat down at the desk and pulled the weapon from its holster. He’d had no difficulty bringing it into Brazil; he’d checked in with the TSA at Ke

Not that it would matter if it had.

Steadying his fingers, Pendergast lifted the gun and — reaching into the barrel — pulled out a small rubber plug with his fingernails. Upending the gun, he carefully let a miniature syringe and several hypodermic needles slide out of the barrel and onto the table. He fitted one of the needles to the syringe and placed it to one side.

Next, he turned his attention to one of the spare magazines. He removed the top round, and — taking a miniature set of pliers from his coat pocket — carefully pried the bullet from its casing. Spreading out a piece of writing paper from inside the desk, he carefully turned the casing over and let its contents drain onto the paper. Instead of gunpowder, a fine white powder streamed out.

Pendergast pushed the empty shell and useless round away with the back of his hand. Reaching for his toilet kit and pulling it toward him, he fumbled inside and pulled out two vials of prescription pills. One contained a schedule 2 semi-synthetic opioid used for relief of pain; the other, a muscle relaxant. Taking two pills from each bottle, he placed them on the sheet of paper and, using a spoon from a nearby room service tray, ground each into fine powder.

There were now three small mounds on the sheet of paper. Pendergast mixed them together carefully, scooped the powder into the spoon. Taking a lighter from his toilet kit, he held it beneath the spoon and flicked it into life. Under heat, the mixture began to darken, bubble, and liquefy.

Pendergast let the lighter drop to the desk and held the spoon with both hands as another painful spasm racked his body. He waited a minute, allowing the toxic, dangerous mixture to cool. Then he dipped the needle into the liquid and filled the syringe.

He let the empty spoon fall to the table with a quiet sigh; the hardest part was over. Now he reached one last time into his toilet kit and removed a length of elastic. Rolling back one sleeve, he tied the rubber around his upper arm, made a fist, pulled the rubber tight with his teeth.

A vein sprang into view in the inside of his elbow.

Holding the elastic carefully between his teeth, he lifted the syringe with his free hand. Timing his movements between the spasms of his limbs, he inserted the needle into the vein. He waited a moment, then parted his teeth slightly, releasing the elastic. Slowly, judiciously, he slid the plunger home.

He let his eyes drift shut and sat there for several minutes, the needle drooping from his arm. Then, opening his eyes again, he plucked out the syringe and put it aside. He took a shallow breath, cautiously, like a bather testing the temperature of water.

The pain was gone. The spasms had abated. He was weak, disoriented — but he could function.

Dreamily, like an old man awakened from sleep, he rose from the chair. Then he shrugged into his holster, put on his jacket. He carefully removed his FBI shield and ID and locked them in the in-room safe, keeping his passport and wallet. With a final glance around, he exited the hotel suite.

36

The entrance to the City of Angels lay at the end of a narrow dogleg on a street in Rio’s Zona Norte. At first glance, the favela beyond did not look much different from the neighboring region of Tijuca. It consisted of drab boxes of concrete, three and four stories tall, crammed tightly together, above a warren of streets almost medieval in their crookedness and complexity. The closest buildings were gray in color, but the colors changed to green and then to terra-cotta as the vast shantytown climbed the steep slopes stretching away to the north, trailing a thousand plumes of smoke from cooking fires, hazy and wavering in the hot sun. It was not until Pendergast noticed the two youths lounging on empty gasoline drums, wearing shorts and Havaianas flip-flops, machine guns slung over their bare shoulders — lookouts, checking everyone who came and went — that he realized he was at the gates into an entirely different part of Rio de Janeiro.

He paused in the alleyway, swaying ever so slightly. The drugs he had taken — while necessary for endurance — had dulled his mind and slowed his reaction time. In his condition, it would have been too risky to attempt a disguise. Pendergast could speak only a few words of Portuguese, and in any case he never would have been able to master the patois, which varied from favela to favela. If the drug dealers or their guards in the Cidade dos Anjos took him for an undercover cop, he would be immediately killed. His only option was no disguise at all: to stand out like a sore thumb.

He approached the youths, who watched him, unmoving, through slitted eyes. Overhead, the electrical wires and cable TV lines that crossed and recrossed the street were so dense they cast the street into perpetual gloom, sagging under their own weight like some huge and ominous web. It was oven-hot in the fetid street, the air stinking of garbage, dog feces, and acrid smoke. As he approached, the youths — while not rising from their perches on the gasoline drums — let their machine guns slide down off their shoulders and into their hands. Pendergast made no attempt to pass them, but instead walked up to the older of the two.

The boy — he couldn’t have been more than sixteen — eyed the agent up and down with a combination of curiosity, hostility, and scorn. In the sweltering heat, wearing his black suit, white shirt, and silk tie, Pendergast looked like a visitor from another planet.

“Onde você vai, gringo?” he asked in a menacing tone. As he did so, the other youth — taller, with his head shaved bald — slid off his own drum, raising his machine gun and casually aiming it at Pendergast.

“Meu filho,” Pendergast said. “My son.”

The youth snickered and exchanged a glance with his compatriot. No doubt this was a common sight: the father looking for his wayward son. The shaved one appeared in favor of shooting Pendergast without asking any further questions. Instead, the shorter youth — who seemed nominally in charge — overruled this. With the barrel of his gun, he gestured for Pendergast to raise his hands. Pendergast complied, and the bald youth frisked him. His passport was removed, then his wallet. The small amount of money in the wallet was taken out and immediately divided. When the lookout found the Les Baer .45, an argument broke out. The shorter youth grabbed the gun from the bald one and shook it in Pendergast’s face, asking angry questions in Portuguese.

Pendergast shrugged. “Meu filho,” he repeated.