After about half an hour, the taxi came to a stop, and Morgan paid up and got out. He had asked the driver to drop him off a few blocks from his destination. It was a safety precaution, and kept the driver from knowing more than he ought to.
He was in the affluent neighborhood of Leblon. He had looked over a map in the taxi, and knew the turns he’d have to take to get where he wanted to go. He walked the sidewalks, which had remnants of sand in between the stones. The heat made him start sweating, but it wasn’t a long walk. Soon enough, he spotted Conley standing in front of a building, waiting for him.
Conley smiled as Morgan approached, and they embraced.
“It’s good to see you, my friend,” said Morgan.
“Likewise,” said Conley. “I never thought I’d see you come here.”
“What does Bloch have you doing down here?”
“I’ve been working the drug trade. It’s deeply entrenched in the city, embedded in the slum communities. The whole situation is delicate, and cracking down on it isn’t as simple as swinging a big stick. I’m working with a special local squad, the BOPE. They’re used to going into the drug-dealer-controlled favelas. They see as much action as any soldier. I should know. I’ve been out with them on operations before.”
“What do you think’s the point?” asked Morgan. “I mean, why is Zeta interested in the drug trade in Brazil?”
“I couldn’t tell you,” said Conley. “Of course, it’s relevant to global security. But why here specifically? No idea.”
“Hmm.”
“Speaking of,” said Conley, “have your investigations turned up anything new?
“Nothing much,” said Morgan. “Not even Fastia could help me. Except one thing. Ever heard of a thing called Aegis?”
“Aegis?” asked Conley. “Like the shield of the Greek goddess Athena?”
“Well, I guess that’s the idea,” said Morgan. “Something to do with protection. The name of—well, of something. Some kind of entity. But I can’t tell you what it means. Or what the organization does.”
“But I guess you’re going to want to find out,” said Conley.
“Like a dog with a bone,” Morgan said. “So, tell me. Why did I fly five thousand miles?”
“What I’ve got to show you is a crime scene. A local forensic team got to it earlier, but it’s mostly preserved. We’ve managed to keep the media buzzards at bay for now. We’ve had a little less luck with the real ones, though. Look, you’d better brace yourself. It’s not pretty up there.”
“Are you kidding me? I’ve seen my share of violence, same as you.”
“Not like this. Trust me, Dan, you are not ready for this.”
CHAPTER 42
Rio de Janeiro, February 15
This much Conley had right: it was the grisliest scene that Morgan had ever laid eyes on.
“Holy hell,” he said.
“Nothing holy about it, buddy.”
Morgan had put on a biohazard suit, helped by a Brazilian forensic investigator who had eyed him suspiciously but said nothing. Conley, in his own suit, led him to the stairs. Each apartment in the building took up one entire floor, so the investigators had set up camp in the apartment immediately below, in order not to disturb the crime scene. They climbed the stairs carefully in their big rubber boots, and then they walked in through the laundry room. That led into the kitchen, and Morgan saw the first of it.
The kitchen was spacious, with an island in the middle. On the island were two bodies. On top was a woman, whose hair had been mostly pulled loose from a bun and who was wearing a loose-fitting dress. Her face was mangled and broken, and a large chef’s knife had been pushed into her skull though her right eye. Still, for all the damage, she wore an expression of pure, unmitigated fury on her face. Under her was a man, arms still locked in the position of pushing her away, his face clawed—Morgan now noticed that the woman had blood and pieces of flesh on her fingernails—and a large chunk of his neck was torn out.
“Is this what you call—”
“Trust me,” said Conley. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
And then they moved into the living room, and Morgan knew exactly what Conley had meant.
They were in the penthouse, so the living room opened up into a spacious sunlit terrace. Just about everything about the decoration was white: the walls and ceilings, the carpets, the couches and armchairs, even the lamps. Which, of course, just made the blood all the more stark. And there was a lot of it. Morgan counted eleven bodies between the living room and the terrace. All of them were dressed in what had once been expensive semiformal clothing, but had in most cases been torn to shreds, and all of it had been dyed crimson.