‘Oh, I see,’ she said, and returned to her work. She didn’t believe me, of course. I was just telling the same sort of lie that people at Dekker always did. That made me angry.
I considered telling her what I was going to do, but then decided against it. She would probably say I was foolish, I should accept what I saw. And she’d have good reasons. I’d made up my mind, and I didn’t want to have it unmade.
Jamie rushed over to me. He seemed on edge.
‘Nick, what time do you think this is? We’ve all been in since seven. You’ve got to show you can take a heavy night.’
‘No, I haven’t,’ I said.
Jamie looked at me as though I was just being difficult. ‘Anyway, about last night,’ he said, low enough for no one else to hear. ‘You know I normally don’t do drugs. Only when I have to. Like last night.’
‘I know,’ I said grimly.
‘And those girls. I didn’t do anything with any of them. Just talked, you know.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘You won’t tell Kate, will you? I mean, you should have stayed too.’
I now realized why Jamie had been sorry to see me go. He wanted me to be an accomplice in crime. Then he would feel better about it.
I sighed. ‘I won’t tell Kate,’ I said. And I wouldn’t. Even in my current negative mood, I wouldn’t stuff a friend like that.
Jamie seemed relieved. ‘Good. I’ll see you later.’
As he left, Ricardo approached. He pulled up a chair next to my desk, and sat down.
‘In a bit late this morning, aren’t you?’
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘Whatever you’ve been doing the night before, you have to be in by seven. It’s an unwritten law here. A point of pride, almost.’
‘It was two nights,’ I said.
‘Oh, yes, I forgot about your Polish friend. By the way, I was very pleased to see the devaluation come through so quickly. Good work. But the point is, sometimes you’ll have to do seven consecutive nights like that, especially when you travel.’
It was just a mild ticking-off. A preliminary warning. But it didn’t matter any more.
I had to tell him now. While I was determined. Before I thought too hard about it. It was strange, with Ricardo here in front of me, the decision suddenly seemed more personal. I was letting him down.
Enough of that. Tell him now.
But he had started talking again. ‘It’s about time you did some real work. Isabel is going down to Brazil, and I’d like you to go with her.’
I shut up and listened.
‘The City of São Paulo are very keen to go ahead with their own favela deal. And it will be a good opportunity to persuade our friends in Brazil of the merits of Mexico. You’ve heard Jamie talk about the deal all week, so you should have the story down pat.’
Go to Brazil. With Isabel. That seemed like quite an attractive idea. Perhaps the resignation could wait until I returned.
‘That is, if you’re OK with that,’ Ricardo said. ‘After what happened last time, I’d understand if you were a bit reluctant.’
I was nervous. But I’d be OK down there as long as I was careful. And, even though I was planning to resign, I didn’t want to show Ricardo, or myself for that matter, that I was a coward.
‘No, that’s fine. When do we go?’
‘Tonight.’
‘Tonight!’
‘What’s the matter? You had a lie-in this morning.’
He smiled and went back to his desk. I looked across to Isabel, who had been listening. ‘Is that OK with you?’ I said it without thinking. I suspected she had been distancing herself from me for the last week, and clearly she was not impressed with my participation in the previous night’s events.
But she smiled. ‘Of course it is. It makes a lot of sense. You know the details of the Rio deal, and Ricardo’s right, you know a lot more about the wonders of Mexico than I do.’
I caught the irony in her voice. ‘A fine investment opportunity,’ I said.
She gathered together a pile of paper on her desk and handed it to me. ‘Here, copy that. Read it. And I’ll see you at the Varig lounge at Heathrow, Terminal Three, at eight thirty. The flight leaves at ten. I’ll have the tickets.’
‘OK,’ I said, and toddled off to the photocopier.
Later, on my way out of the office, I stopped at Jamie’s desk.
‘I’m off. I’m going to Brazil tonight.’
‘Really?’ He frowned. ‘Be careful this time.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I will be.’
‘Are you going with Isabel?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, have fun.’ He grinned.
I was about to answer, ‘I will,’ but I stopped, confused. ‘We’ll see,’ I said in the end.
16
The plane began its descent to São Paulo. I looked out of the window at the second greatest metropolis on earth. Twenty million people live in Greater São Paulo. Low red-roofed houses sprawled as far as I could see. Sprouting out among them like the white shoots of early spring were hundreds, if not thousands, of skyscrapers. They were grouped in clumps, as if handfuls of seed had fallen together from the hand of a careless sower. On the horizon, between the brown and red of the city, and the blue of the sky, stretched a thick dark grey band of smog. As we descended, the landscape was broken up by a grey ribbon of river, and dozens of industrial sites. We passed low over a lake of the most extraordinary lime green. God had created Rio in a fit of inspired imagination, man had created São Paulo with a total lack of it.
São Paulo is the business and financial centre of Brazil. Paulistas are proud to compare their city with New York and, indeed, the long avenues flanked with skyscrapers did look impressively commercial. People in suits dashed back and forth, and the traffic moved urgently through the vast network of São Paulo’s highways. There was money to be made and work to be done and, although it was eighty-five degrees and humid, the paulistas would do it.
We met Humberto Alves’s equivalent in the São Paulo Finance Department. The paulistas had a different approach to dealing with favelas, which they called the Cingapura project. It was an idea that had supposedly been developed in Singapore, hence the name. It involved what they called ‘verticalization’. That meant tearing down the temporary structures and replacing them with modern high-rise hous-ing. It sounded to me more heavy-handed than the Rio project.
They were hot to trot. The Cingapura project had been under way now for several years, but the City was having problems finding the funds for more construction. Isabel’s ingenious trust idea was just the way to unlock the World Development Fund cash that was desperately needed to move on to the next stage. And now Rio’s deal had fallen through, São Paulo’s would be the first out in the market, which made the whole idea even more attractive.
It was a Friday, and we had meetings planned for that day and for Saturday, which showed how eager they were. As the day wore on, Isabel and I became progressively more excited as we realized that a deal might actually happen. Bloomfield Weiss were nowhere to be seen: after their humiliating withdrawal from the Rio deal, São Paulo wouldn’t take them seriously.
It was a hard day, but we worked well together. I had read the pile of documents Isabel had given me on the plane, through the night. I was well prepared, and we operated brilliantly as a team. I quickly got the hang of how her mind worked, and she treated me like a valuable partner. Although I had lost any loyalty to Dekker, I didn’t want to let Isabel down, and besides, her enthusiasm had infected me. I believed in what she was doing.
At last, at eight thirty, we finished, with a promise to be back in the municipal offices at nine the next morning. We flopped into a taxi, feeling both tired and excited at the same time.