My source is meeting me here in thirty minutes. A woman, Rosa said. You know the drill. Can you set up over there? She nodded to the cantina across the busy street.
Sure. He had his hand out. But you promised me lunch.
Shaking her head, Rosa put a few bills in his palm.
I want a receipt and the change, buddy.
Marcelo winked then left Rosa, who found an outdoor cafe table with a clear line of sight for Marcelo. She put her bag on the table, adjusted her sunglasses and read her newspaper.
Twenty minutes later, a taxi stopped near the cafe, cuing a chorus of horns. As the female passenger paid the driver, a motorcycle with two people aboard growled around it. After scanning the crowded cafe, the taxis passenger approached Rosas table and stood before her.
May I help you? Rosa asked.
Gabriela?
Yes.
I am the woman who called.
She had a tight grip on the strap of her bag, running her thumb over her knuckles as she took quick stock of the busy restaurant. Rosa set her newspaper aside.
Sit down, please.
The two women filled Marcelos lens. As he prepared to take his first shot from his table across and down the street, a large truck making a delivery blocked his view. Marcelo cursed under his breath, left money for his drink, grabbed his bag and trotted toward the Cafe Amaldo, passing by the mouth of a dark alley.
He did not notice that the same motorcycle, which earlier had sped by the cab, was now in the alley, sitting back from the street. Two men stood next to it, their attention fixed on the cafe. The driver talked in low tones on his cell phone. His passenger, dressed in a suit like a downtown banker, checked his hair in the side mirror. He slid on dark glasses, then he unfastened a tan leather briefcase that was strapped to the motorcycles backrest.
At the cafe, Marcelo found a table inside, next to the large open-air window that looked out over the alfresco area. He liked the Amaldo and had used it many times like this with reporters. It had Wi-Fi wireless access. And with his cameras Eye-Fi card preconfigured, he was good to go.
Marcelo ordered a soda and sandwich then worked ever so casually, so that anyone watching would conclude he was merely cleaning his lens, when in fact he was shooting photos.
Rosa tapped her pen on her notebook while waiting for the woman to tell her story. The woman was in her twenties. She had a good figure and was pretty. She seemed educated and poised but her hand shook and she spilled some of the cream meant for her coffee.
Forgive me, please. Im nervous.
What are you nervous about?
They could be watching me.
Who?
Give me a moment. I want to do this. But I need to go to the lavatory.
Rosa was a veteran reporter, not easily frightened or fooled. She sensed something genuine about this woman and was relieved when a few minutes later she returned.
You know, Gabriela said, you should tell me whats going on.
No one will believe it. It goes beyond Brazil. Its why I chose your news agency. You must tell the world. The woman extracted a brown envelope from her bag. You have to investigate, it has to be exposed.
What has to be exposed?
Some of it is in these documents.
At that moment, a man in a suit, wearing dark glasses, navigated his way among the tables of the crowded cafe. He reached inside his jacket for his wallet but dropped it.
As he bent over to retrieve it amid the din, no one saw him place his tan briefcase under a chair occupied only by shopping bags. The chair was being saved for someone who had not yet arrived at the crowded table.
Brushing off his wallet, the man walked into the restaurant and left unnoticed by a side door. He strode to a corner while pressing several numbers on his cell phone. A motorcycle stopped next to him and he put on a helmet then climbed on behind the driver.
At her table, Rosa began flipping through the documents as her source explained the story.
At her table, Rosa began flipping through the documents as her source explained the story.
Two tables away, as a group of well-dressed women cleared the chair of shopping bags for their friend who had arrived, the tan briefcase under it fell over.
The woman nearest to it blinked in question.
One of them reached down toward it, but the briefcase disappeared in a blinding flash of hot light. Glass in buildings near and above the cafe exploded in the concussive wave. Blood, flesh and debris showered on the street, pelting people a block away.
A fireball rolled skyward.
3
New York City
The World Press Alliance headquarters is at midtown Manhattans western edge.
Jack Gannon hurried back to it, walking by the Long Island Railroad maintenance yards, where Thirty-third Street slopes into a bleak wasteland near the Hudson River. From here, he could see the helicopters lifting off and landing at the West Thirtieth Street Heliport.
Beyond that: New Jersey.
His cell phone vibrated again. Another text message: Where are you?
Be there in ten, he responded.
Nearly trotting now, he passed the graffiti-covered wall of a shipping depot where shopping-cart pushers sorted their morning bounty of cans. One man in dreadlocks and a faded Obama T-shirt was dismantling a TV for recycling.
Can you help your brother? I need food.
Gannon reached into his pocket where he still had the change from his hot-dog lunch and fished out a crumpled five.
Bless you. Have a long, happy life.
Gannon was still new to the city, and his heart had not hardened toward the hard-luck cases he saw every day.
Since hed left Buffalo for his new job at the WPA, hed taken to walking New Yorks streets whenever he could. He was on desk duty today and had come to this isolated tract on his lunch break to be alone.
To think.
He was five months into his dream of working at one of the worlds largest news organizations and he still had not landed a good story.
So far hed reported on a homicide, and helped with the coverage of a school shooting in California and a charter bus crash near the Grand Canyon. Hed inserted national paragraphs into stories from WPAs foreign bureaus. He had also been assigned to night shifts helping edit copy on the national and world desks. Soon, he realized that not everyone at WPA wanted him there, something made clear the night hed overheard two copy editors kibitzing by the features desk.
What do you make of Jack Gannon?
I havent seen any pizzazz. Hes out of his league.
Didnt the Buffalo Sentinel fire him, or something? I missed all that.
Hes one of Melody Lyons projects. She hired him after he broke that story on the Buffalo detective and the missing women.
That one wasnt bad.
Gannons got more luck than talent, if you ask me. Whats he done since?
Not much.
Thats my point. And youre right, he was fired by the Sentinel, so was his managing editor. It was a stinking mess. I heard that ONeill and Stone were against Gannons hire but that Melody wanted it done. I hear hes disappointed people and theres talk they might let him go.
Really?
Its a rumor. I think he should be punted back to Buffalo.
Didnt his bio say that hed been nominated for a Pulitzer way back for the story on the jetliner and the whacked-out Russian pilot?
A Russian-speaking guy in the Sentinels pressroom did all the talking to sources overseas, Gannon just took dictation.
That was a load of bull!
Gannon had bristled on the other side of the file cabinets, out of sight.
They were wrong about him.
Dead wrong, he repeated to himself now, as he jogged to a crosswalk to make the light. Hed earned his shot with the WPA, crawled through hell to get to New York. He belonged here and hed prove it.
Gannon entered the twenty-story WPA building, swiped his ID badge at the security turnstile and stepped into the elevator.
He checked his phone. Nineteen minutes since Melody Lyon, the deputy executive-the WPAs number two editor after Beland Stone-had summoned him with her first text.
We need to see you now.
He got off the elevator on the sixteenth floor with a measure of honor as he strode by the reception wall displaying WPA news photos of historys most compelling moments from the past hundred years.
The World Press Alliance was one of the worlds largest news wire services, operating a bureau in every major U.S. city, and two hundred bureaus in seventy-five countries, providing a nonstop flow of information to thousands of newspapers, radio, TV, corporate and online subscribers.
The WPAs demand for excellence had earned it twenty-two Pulitzer prizes and the respect of its rivals, chiefly the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Bloomberg, Chinas Xinhua News Agency and Russias fast-rising Interfax News Agency.
Gannon entered the newsroom with a sense of foreboding.
Something was breaking on the flat-screen monitors that streamed video and data from around the world. Whatever it was, it had hit the WPA. Some reporters looked shaken. A few were standing, hugging each other.
Did you know Gabriela? Poor John.
A few editors quietly cursed at their keyboards.
Gannon was headed toward Melody Lyons office when a news assistant caught up to him.
Jack, theyre all in the conference room. Go there now.
A teleconference was in progress, and solemn-faced senior editors sat around the polished table. Concentrating over her bifocals on the call, Melody Lyon, who was running the meeting, pointed at an empty chair beside her. As Gannon took it, an assistant passed him a folder.
Sign this. Her pen tapped a signature line on the documents. Gannon glimpsed the words Consulado-Geral do Brasil em Nova York-Visa Application form and a note affixed: Request for Urgency.
George Wilson, the third most powerful editor after Lyon, was in charge of WPAs foreign bureaus. He eyed Gannon, checked his BlackBerry then said to the caller, keeping his voice loud: Everyone, Reuters just moved an item claiming two journalists are among the victims. No other details. Frank, lets run through that again.
Frank Archer, WPAs Sao Paulo bureau chief, who was on the speaker phone, kept his emotions under control. He had landed in Rio de Janeiro and was at the scene. Sirens could be heard in the background.
John Esper was returning to Rio from Sao Paulo where he was helping with coverage of the U.S. vice presidents upcoming visit, Archer said. John landed in Rio about four hours ago and learned the news about the Cafe Amaldo bombing. At that time he picked up Gabrielas message saying she was headed to the cafe with Marcelo Verde-