The Ambassador to Brazil. Peter Hornbostel
had popped out from behind one of them. People everywhere—their skins every shade of white, brown and black. And, of course, the hum of Portuguese, and radios, and taxis along the side of the terminal that was wide open to the street.
Although he was only a Class 3 Foreign Service officer back then, the embassy had sent a car and a secretary to meet him. The moment he got into the air-conditioned car, which seemed to be hermetically sealed against the world outside, the smells of Rio vanished, to be replaced by the acrid-sweet smell of American disinfectant. The young Foreign Service officer sent to meet him had remained in the cool of the car.
“Sorry about not getting out,” he said. “Too damn hot out there … and smelly. Did you have a good trip, sir?”
“Just fine,” he replied.
“You’ve been to Rio before?”
He was not interested in diplomat chitchat. “I think I’ll rest a bit,” he said. He leaned back and closed his eyes down to narrow slits; he hoped his escort could not see that they were still slightly open. “Wake me up when we get there,” he said.
The car drove through what looked like a light industrial zone, which also contained a surprising number of motels with names like Love Nest, King and Queen, Pussy Cat, and one called Aspen, with a large billboard showing a bundled up person heading downhill on what the artist must have thought skis looked like. Why so many motels, he mused, and why out here?
After half an hour, the factories, warehouses, and motels gave way to apartment houses and small shops, until the road emerged onto the shore of Guanabara Bay. Now they were speeding along a road skirting the bay, in front of the old elegant apartment houses that looked out onto it. In the background towered Sugarloaf, the huge gray-brown rock formation with a red cable car running up it, which appeared in every picture book he had ever seen about Brazil.
The car ducked through a pair of short tunnels and then out onto Avenida Atlantica and the beach. The beach was wide—perhaps fifty meters of white sand between the Avenue and the blue of the sea. Closer to the ocean, he could see the sun worshippers, some sitting under umbrellas, others stretched out on the sand, still others standing around and talking or playing volleyball. They stopped for a traffic light. In front of the car, dozens of beautiful tanned bodies—mostly young girls in their teens—walked across the avenue on their way to or from the beach. One, a lovely brown-skinned girl in a scanty bikini, looked into the car and smiled.
Carter’s escort officer nudged him. “We’re at your hotel,” he said. The hotel was a large white structure, dripping with Victorian ornamentation, facing the sea. A bronze plaque by the side of the front door read “Hotel Copacabana Palace 1886.” A dark-skinned liveried doorman opened the door to the car. “Welcome to Rio, sir.” he said with a perfect English accent. “Did you have a good flight … ?”
From the sidewalk behind the car, a beggar with no legs, on a plywood platform with rollers, scooted over to the car. The doorman shooed him away.
That was twenty years ago. In the meantime, he had been posted to Cairo, Portugal, Kenya, Ecuador, and one tour in Washington on the Brazil Desk. The “Desk” was not just a desk, but about twenty of them crowded into two large offices on the third floor at State, manned by thirty or more young Foreign Service officers who thought they were making the foreign policy of the United States. They reported to the head of the Brazil Desk, who reported to the assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, who reported to the secretary of state, who reported to the president of the United States. Carter had become an expert at shuffling incoming cables to the right officer within the State Department, and correcting the spelling and syntax of outgoing cables before they were sent. After two years of bureaucratic labor at the Desk, the department had finally rewarded him with the title of United States ambassador to Brazil. Priscilla and he had celebrated with dinner at Rive Gauche. It was the best restaurant in Georgetown. Priscilla was ecstatic. “Oh Tony,” she said, “it’s going to be such fun!”
It had not been such fun for her, Carter mused. It wasn’t really fair. It was all so different now.
Behind him, from the dark of the apartment, he heard the sheets of the bed rustling.
“You’re up,” Marina said.
He nodded.
“Is it still raining?”
“Sure,” he said, “it’s going to rain forever.”
“Well, then, come back to bed.”
“I can’t. I have to go to the embassy. It’s my job to be there. There’s going to be a coup—a revolution—and it’s going to happen soon. I have to go.”
She got up from the bed and walked over to where he stood by the window. She was tall, slim, with soft light brown Brazilian skin, full, perfectly shaped breasts with dark brown nipples, long straight black hair, and incredible gray-green eyes. She brought her nude body up against his and with one hand fiddled with the towel around his waist.
“Whose revolution is it?” she asked. “Is it your revolution?”
“No,” he said.
“Well then, there’s no hurry about going, is there?” she said. She fiddled a little more and the towel slid to the floor. She looked down at him approvingly. “Oh come on,” she said.
It was hopeless to argue.
Outside, in the rain, a black 1949 Plymouth sedan was slowly weaving its way down the brown torrent that used to be Siqueira Campos street, around the empty banana boxes, destroyed furniture, old tires, and other detritus washed down from the slum on the hill by the rain. The car slowed, then stopped in front of the building. The driver, a swarthy bald Brazilian with a brownish-gray complexion, opened his window, pulled out a pair of binoculars, and scanned the face of the building. There was a window open on the third floor, but no one was there. The driver cursed softly. Then he took out a camera with a long lens and, although the American ambassador was not to be seen, he snapped a photo of the open window and drove on, disappearing into the rain. The ambassador was out of sight in the back of the room, otherwise engaged.
CHAPTER 2
Carter had first seen her at a reception at the Romanian embassy. It had been another of those goddamn National Day cocktail parties. One hundred fifteen countries plus the Vatican were diplomatically represented in Brazil. That meant 115 ambassadors plus the Papal Nuncio. Of course, all of them except the Vatican had Independence Days. That was to be expected. But eighty-seven of them also had National Days, on which they would have parties as well. He had long since stopped going to these, until the foreign ministry of the government of Malta (he hadn’t even known that Malta was a country) complained to Washington that he hadn’t attended their National Day party. The idiots on the Brazil Desk sent a cable instructing him that “it is the policy of the United States that all ambassadors attend all National Day parties of countries accredited to the countries in which they were located if that is the host country.” At first he couldn’t quite figure out what the cable meant, and so decided to ignore it. Besides, since when did the Desk establish the policy of the United States? But he had to pick his fights with Washington carefully these days, so in the end he went along. Whenever he could, he sent his deputy chief of mission, Maurice A. Villepringle, in his place. Villepringle even liked those goddamn parties. But the DCM was on a reconnaissance trip to Recife in Northeast Brazil, and so Carter had gone himself.
Now he stood off to the side of the hall at the brand new Romanian embassy building, holding a champagne glass of seltzer into which he had squeezed a tiny drop of the yellow Easter-egg dye, which turned the bubbly water a pale yellow.
“So you like our champagne?” the third secretary of the Romanian embassy asked. “Frankly, I think it’s far superior to the French, don’t you?”
Carter assured him that he agreed.
“Oh, I’m so glad,” said the Romanian. He noticed someone across the hall. “Oh, there’s Ambassador Sverdlov. I’m afraid I must speak to him for just a moment. Please excuse