Forth Book Posting - Chapter 5

Chapter 5 – October 5, 2010

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Temper of the Will

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“Well, Robert, what's your read on the statements from this Jackson guy,” asked the President of the United States.  “What do we know about him?”

The National Security advisor closed the door to the Oval Office as he entered and opened a briefcase and extracted a paper, which he handed to the President.  “Here's a translation of his speech.  The document is pretty clear and it is probably what we would do here if the same thing happened. But governments in South America have a history of takeovers and it is usually the military that is involved.  We don't have any real information and I have asked the agency to prepare us a report as quickly as possible.”

Robert Landau poured himself a cup of coffee as the President read the communication.  “As for this Jackson, we don't know much about him but I have asked for a profile as quickly as possible.  I think I read somewhere that truly understanding the character of a man is one of the real mysteries in life, and Jackson is not your ordinary man. As I understand, he is a minor member of the cabinet.  Most of what we have now is from before all of the communication links were lost, plus some stuff from CNN and some Brazil experts that we had monitoring their television broadcasts.”

“This Jackson says that the military is not involved,” said the President putting the report down on the top of his desk.

“I don't know how he could be so sure of that, Mr. President.  I don't think they have any idea of what is really behind these events.  The plane that hit the Congress was military, Brazilian Air Force, and that can't be ignored.  The crazy thing about all of this is that I had a call from one of the people in terrorist assessment at the agency and he said that this crashing of a plane loaded with aviation fuel is almost a carbon copy of a scenario written by that novelist Tom Clancy in one of his books. We have always suspected that Bin Laden got his idea from Clancy’s book as well but they didn’t have access to a flying tanker full of avgas, just passenger planes.”

“Wherever the idea came from,” said the President; “it looks like it worked, and Bin Laden certainly set a precedent.  CNN reports that there were probably over thirty thousand killed in the explosion.”

“We lost Ambassador Todd and probably some American journalists.  I think that you should call a press conference for the evening news.  Even if we haven't much, I think you should make a statement.”

“I've already asked the Chief of Staff to make the arrangements, Robert.  I have a bad feeling about this one.  It looks a little too planned.  First the President is killed and then blowing up the Congress.  Then all the com links are gone. This isn't just some splinter terrorist group with few resources.  You know, I am probably the first President to ever have a special interest in Brazil, although Clinton and Bush did make trips there.”

“Yes, sir,” answered the National Security advisor.  Landau saw that there would be a little wool gathering but it usually occurred over breakfast when he delivered his early morning report.  He settled back into his seat on the sofa and decided to enjoy his coffee.

“Has the agency any operatives in Brazil, Robert?”

“No, sir.  I checked.  It hasn’t been considered an area of high risk since the sixties.  Their economy has always been the unstable factor over the last five decades and the political situation has been a result of that instability.  We have had more than a small presence in the country back in the 60s when the military took over, but that has changed during the last few decades.  Our interest has been more economic for the last ten years.  Back in the Clinton Administration, the issues were the Mercosul Accords and the forming of a South American economic trade bloc called ALCA in Portuguese.  Then there was the Asian crisis in 98 and 99, so most of our information comes through organizations like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the embassy. Today’s troubles in South America usually come from Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and that socialist president in Bolivia.”

The President rose and poured himself another cup of coffee from the silver coffee service on the table near his desk.  "I probably have a better understanding of the Brazilian economic situation than most politicians.  Back when I was in college at the University of Illinois I was part of a program that specialized in the Brazilian economy and I even spent some time as a student and went to Brazil and did some courses at the University of São Paulo.

“Our concentration has always been either on Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. Latin America has always been in the background.  James Monroe pretty much set the policy for Latin America when he told the European nations that we would not allow any expansion on either of the American continents. It didn’t work too well for the Kennedy’s and Cuba but we took care of things in Panama.”

"Well, sir, I think that events have just changed the situation.  Americans have a lot of money invested in Brazil and things started to go bad when President Da Silva and his Workers’ Party came to power and got worse when this last president took office.  The area was destabilized by the Argentine Crisis in 2002 and of course that had a negative effect on the entire region, especially Venezuela and Hugo Chávez’ administration.  It is difficult for us to understand, but the objectives of socialists while laudable, are mostly pipe dreams that can't be practically put into application.  Some people never seem to learn that human nature is probably one of the aspects that have changed little since the beginning of time and all of the experiments in socialism have come to nothing.  Even in Sweden, their economy is supported by their international corporate entities like Scania, not their internal socialist economic policies.  I think that we are going to see some radical changes in Brazil and we had better be prepared.”

“What you are telling me is that you think we should have some agency presence in place in Brazil,” said the President looking over his reading glasses.

“I'm saying that the only group in Brazil that is capable of a takeover is the military, even if it is in conjunction with others.  If they weren’t responsible for what happened in Brasília, they are the only ones capable of holding the country together at a time like this.  The agency has shifted emphasis to economic and technological surveillance since the end of the Cold War and we have few trained operatives for the groundwork and none for Brazil.  We are always playing the game of 'catch up.'  The world is just too big for us to have in-depth information on everything and everybody and South America has never really been a priority for previous administrations.”

“Not to mention, that the American public dislikes funding intelligence work,” said the President with a grin.  “It now looks as if we will have to reassess our priorities.  Latin America has just jumped to the front of the list of critical areas and it is a lot closer to home than Europe and the Middle East.”

*        *        *

Ninja turned off the television set in the warehouse that was usually set up so that his men could watch the soccer games when they were not dealing crack cocaine in the streets.  It was one of the extras that he provided his dealers, much like regular companies who found it necessary to allow their employees access to soccer if they wanted them to come to work during the World Cup or the national soccer championships that were a mania in the country.  The assassination of the president and the events in Brasília had hardly changed his life. He still distributed his product but it was the presence of the increased police and Army in the streets and martial law concerned him. With the curfew his dealers would have to take extra precautions and he began to restrict his deliveries to the daylight hours. He had decided to watch the situation and try to keep his men from getting picked up and lose their product, not to mention their freedom.  He called out to one of his lieutenants whose street name was Amazonas because he came from the state of Amazonas

"Amazonas, get your ass in here.  We've got trouble!"

The young man opened the door to the glass enclosed office in the rear of the warehouse and threw himself down in the old stuffed chair in front of the desk where his boss was sitting.

"The son of a bitch that declared martial law because of the shit at the Congress is starting to cause us some trouble. We have to get word to our people that they are to stay off the streets, even in the daytime, until we see what this is all about."

"Why would they bother us, Ninja?  Were not bank robbers and we don't steal cars," answered the dealer with a grin.

"These damn military have started stopping everyone on the street.  Were supposed to make that delivery of half a kilo today and that is too much weight to lose because we think that no one will bother us.  They'll be stopping everyone.  Call Carlos and tell him that we will deliver tomorrow morning around ten."

"Right boss, but why wait? I think you’re being paranoid."

"Maybe I am, but I am careful about things that I don't know anything about.  None of us know anything about politics and you know that shit always rolls down hill.  Nobody cares about us and what we have to do to survive, so I always worry."

*        *        *

He just sat there at his desk unable to collect himself.  The feelings of guilt seemed to roll over him like waves on the beach.  The archbishop was dead and he could have prevented it.  He had been warned and had ignored the warning.

"Padre Jesuino," said a voice from behind him.  "Padre, the Cúria is being flooded with calls wanting to know about the Archbishop."  The priest walked into the room and stood in front of the desk.  Jesuino looked up and then seemed to recognize that he had been asked something.

"What did you say,” he said in a low voice.

"I would like to know just what to tell people who are calling about the archbishop."

"Padre Flàvio,” he said, “What can we tell them?  The Archbishop is dead.  The entire Council of Bishops is dead.  Tell them the truth and say that we have no more information than that at this moment.  Say that I have sent an email and a fax to the Vatican with the news and that now we must wait for some word from the Pope.  Nothing like this has ever happened before."

"But what are we going to do, Father?"

"We are going to continue to do the things that we do every day.  We are going to pray for guidance and we will wait.  The Church is greater than any single person, it is eternal.  Now go back to your work, Padre and let me continue with mine.”

The priest walked out of the room and Padre Jesuino continued to stare at the window, his mind going over once again the phone call he had received.  He picked up the remote control of the television and turned it on to see if he could get some more news of what had happened.  The feeling of dread filled him and he knew that there were difficult times coming for all.  As a Brazilian, this feeling of always being on the edge of the precipice was never far from one's day-to-day reality.  The country always seemed just on the verge of bankruptcy, or some political crisis or scandal and this sensation affected almost every citizen. But they always seemed to deal with it in some way and survive.

Brazil, as the largest Catholic nation on the planet, was also going through a spiritual crisis and the Church had been losing ground to the Protestant religions for decades.  Few young men or women were choosing a life in the Church and it was a particular sad reality that the Church had to close down some of the local churches for lack of attendance and funds and some of them had even been sold to the Protestant religions.  Now with the loss of the leaders of the Church in the terrorist bombing in Brasília, Padre Jesuino saw that the crisis would become aggravated.

The history of the Catholic Church in Brazil had been less dark than the history of its counterparts in Mexico or Peru.  The conquering Spaniards became wealthy on the gold of the Incas and the Aztecs and the Church had been in constant conflict with the secular authorities over the status of the indigenous populations and slave labor, despite the fact that the Church also believed that those who did not accept Christianity were deserving of death.

In Brazil there was no gold discovered until 1690 and it was agriculture and sugar production that dominated the first two hundred years of the Portuguese colony.  The Church had acquired large tracts of land and there were still many cities in the state of Minas Gerais where the Church owned the entire municipal land area and many citizens paid their rent to the Church.  Jesuino realized that the problems were as old as the Church itself.  As far back as the fourteenth century a battle raged over the power of the Church that involved the wealth of the institution and the corruption that not only individual bishops and cardinals imposed to line their own pockets but went as high as the Vatican itself.  Today the Church, Jesuino felt, was once again out of step with the people it was supposed to serve.  Pope John Paul, before he died, had been what most secular authorities in Brazil called a dogmatic ultra-conservative and his rulings on issues like women in the Church, birth control and his luke-warm apologies for the sins of the Church in the past set the tone, but the Church was losing ground daily and Jesuino knew that even in this crisis the new Pope and the Vatican did not move quickly. The new Pope was even more conservative and there was talk of his again ordering the mass to be said in Latin rather than all of the secular languages throughout the world.

*        *        *

Robert Landau sat in his office at the White House reading the profile of Jaime Reinhardt Jackson that had just been delivered by one of the CIA people. The header of the document showed that the source of most of the information came from a television program that had aired just a short time ago on one of the Brazilian television networks.  The photos of the Brazilian Minister of Planning had been pulled from the television broadcast and he examined the face that had been cropped from the screen showing a head and shoulders view.  Jackson was in his mid-thirties, and appeared to be tired.  The CIA had also delivered a video that had been compiled of various interviews of Jackson and though he spoke no Portuguese, the tape had subtitles and it would also serve to observe the body language of the minister and enable the technicians to do voice analysis.

Reading through the profile he saw that the minister came from a city called Americana in the state of São Paulo. There was a footnote at the bottom of the page that said that Americana had been established by American Civil War veterans who had left the South rather than swear allegiance to the Union government. Jackson was thirty-six years old and had attended the American School in São Paulo during his grade school and high school years.  He had studied economics at the University of São Paulo and had an MBA from the Wharton School of Business in the United States.  He was a member of the Workers’ Party (PT) and had been affiliated with the party since his university days, returning to Brazil after receiving his masters to work within the party structure.  The analysis of his character was very limited but did appear to indicate an almost fanatical interest in political reform and the elimination of government corruption.  Most of his public statements that had been taken from interviews with the media were related to punishing corruption and the author of the analysis classified him as a "super patriot."  He was unmarried, not known to use drugs or alcohol, was seldom seen in public with any woman in particular and seemed to maintain a low profile.  The last few pages of the report were quotes taken from interviews with the media and Landau read them carefully.

Interview in the newspaper Folha de São Paulo – July 1999

Comments on corruption in the Municipal government of Guarulhos.

(Guarulhos is a municipality and part of the megalopolis of Greater São Paulo.)

“Why is the media surprised that over half of the city councilmen of Guarulhos have been caught receiving bribes?  All it probably means is that 50% of the other half probably hasn’t been caught yet. The surprise should really come if it was discovered that they were all honest.  This country has had 500 years of political and financial corruption; corruption is a part of our culture.  The country is corrupt from top to bottom.  If the country's leaders are corrupt, then those who have fewer advantages have to be corrupt just to survive.  Bribery and extortion are the normal tools of elected officials in our country and it continues because these criminals know that it is very unlikely that they will be punished. The poor man who robs a convenience store will go to prison, but the banker or politician who steals millions remains free."

Interview on Record Television Network – January 2003

Comments on taking office as the Minister of Planning

"The difficulty in assuming the post of Minister of Planning is the lack of a viable budget for improving the infrastructure of the nation.  But it must be remembered that the citizens of this country are as much to blame for the financial conditions as are its leaders of industry and the elected officials. Please remember that only about 15 or 20 percent of the population pays personal income tax, either because they do not make enough money or because they are involved in activities where it is easy to evade taxes.  The parallel economy of Brazil could be as high as 60 percent and the government receives no tax revenues from these activities.  Yet, the public complains that there is no money for social reform, education, hospitals or even for repairing the holes in the streets of our cities.  These activities require tax revenues but every Brazilian evades taxes whenever possible, as if this was a right of the citizen.  He excuses this tax evasion by convincing himself that all public officials misuse or steal tax revenues, so he feels he is justified in not paying taxes to the government.

There are thousands of illegal camelôs[1] in every city and town in this country, all selling stolen, pirated or contraband goods.  These stands are not registered with the municipal governments; they pay neither tax on the goods they purchase for resale or any tax on their profit, either as small businesses or as individuals.  They set up these stands in front of legitimate business, blocking the entrances to those businesses, thus reducing the revenues of legal firms that pay rent, taxes and do business in a legal manner and when the municipal government attempts to remove these stands, the people who run them appear in front of the offices of City Hall and protest to the mayor that their rights are being infringed. Our citizens all seem to have rights but no deveres[2].

In our country we forget that all have responsibilities as citizens to participate in the well being of the state. And even you people in the national press never mention that rights are only possible through meeting our responsibilities.  Though it pains me to say this, culturally we are a nation of egocentric petty criminals.  And until we learn to treat each other with respect, honesty and compassion, we cannot expect that any of our institutions will be able to meet the needs of our society.  How can a country that has a million children without homes, schooling and enough to eat, shut down the nation and stop work to watch a soccer game?

I have been appointed as this administration's Minister of Planning, but all of the plans in the world will not suffice if this nation, each and every individual citizen, doesn't begin to understand that we are all responsible for our actions, for the honesty of our public officials, for paying our taxes and for the future of our children.  There is an old saying, that every nation has the government that it deserves, and if we are displeased with our government and its officials, every citizen in Brazil will first have to admit that they are responsible for that government and they must bring about the changes that will make the government more effective.  So, the next time that you begin to complain about corruption, and how unfair things are in this country, it would be well to remember that each of you is to blame for the situation in which we find ourselves.”

Interview with TV Cultura – March 2010

Comments on the nationalization of industry and infrastructure by the Brazilian government instituted by President Machado and the Workers’ Party

Narrator:   Minister Jackson, you have often been quoted, as saying that socialism will not solve Brazil's financial and social problems.  Isn't this a departure from the policies of the Workers’ Party of which you are a member?"

Jackson:     Yes, I suppose that it is, but there is a reason for saying that.  It has often been stated that for democracy to work fifty percent of the population needs to be middle class and for socialism to work, eighty percent of the population need to be middle class.  What this means is that by being middle class, a family has a certain level of education, culture and income.  It means that they are also aware of their responsibilities to the society in which they live.  Socialism requires a greater social consciousness than a capitalistic democracy and in a country like Brazil, where it could easily be said that sixty percent of the population of 190 million can do little more than write their own name, there is not much in the way of social consciousness, and therefore, socialism is an exercise in futility.

Narrator:   Minister don't you think that many Brazilians will be insulted by your comments and opinions?

Jackson:     I would rather hope that they would be insulted by starving children, corruption, and people living under bridges or in favelas in Rio and São Paulo and the nation's inability to develop a stable economy.  Unfortunately, many in my party are intellectuals who dream of a utopian socialist state and seem unwilling to admit that this small planet of ours is dominated by the capitalist system.  We as a people, Brazilians, seem to have a penchant for ignoring reality.  After half a millennium we cling to our colonial heritage, our colonial culture and even the Workers’ Party believes that we must protect the citizen from himself and others, instead of creating the conditions for him to stand alone and be the master of his own destiny.

Narrator:   Then how can you continue to be a member of a party that you criticize in this manner?

Jackson:      How many political parties do we have in Brazil?  Over thirty.  Too many, if the truth be known.  And not one of them has managed to solve the problems of our country. Each one is only interested in its power base. The problem is not one of "isms."  The problem is cultural.  We are a nation that has not learned the simplest respect for our fellow countrymen.  Now everyone will really have a reason to be insulted.  Look at the way that we drive our automobiles.  Half of our transportation problems stem from lack of courtesy and good manners.  I am not denying that we do not have enough good roads, subways and railroads, but we all drive our automobiles like rabid animals, killing each other to a total of a hundred thousand a year.

We waste water, electricity and food.  We throw our garbage on the streets yet we all complain about traffic, power blackouts, dirty streets, crime, hungry people and the cost of living and, worse yet, how foreigners are taking advantage of us.  It is the responsibility of Brazilians to put this country to rights.  But all of my life I have heard nothing but how others are responsible for our troubles.  It is either the fault of our neighbors, the government, the rich, the poor, the foreigners, everyone, the fault of all but the one doing the complaining.

Narrator:   Then you are against the nationalization of the foreign energy and telecommunications companies that has been carried out by the Machado Administration of which you are a part.

Jackson:     Nationalization didn't resolve our problems in the past. It only served to retard our national growth because we didn’t have the financial wherewithal to expand our telecommunications system, and nationalization will not resolve them today.  Our economy doesn't permit us to finance infrastructure growth and foreign loans need to be paid back.  Driving foreign capital out of Brazil will only aggravate our problems, but there are those who work up the populace with buzz words like ‘nationalism’ and ‘protecting Brazil against foreigners’ and all it does is drive us back into the past and deeper into poverty.  Most of our work force is not qualified to do any more than dig ditches or be office boys or waiters. Our universities do not produce graduates that are willing to remain in Brazil if they are well educated and our economic problems coupled with an ignorant and ever increasing population would seem to ensure that we will never get out of the hole that we have dug for ourselves. Sometimes I think that the word mediocrity was invented to describe Brazil.

Foreign capital and companies provided jobs, training, and money circulating in the economy and even forced our national industries to learn to compete for the consumer, and no one seems to be willing to mention that competition improved the quality of the goods that our industries produced.  It is my opinion that we must learn to live in the globalized economy and learn how to compete.  Nationalization is a concept that borders on the medieval.

No one cares to remember that every company, every worker, every person does as little as they can to get by. By that I means that few act like professionals, learn their trade and consequently almost every job has to be done twice or three times because it wasn´t done correctly the first time. Have you ever been able to take care of a bureaucratic problem with your cable company or the telephone company the first time you called them? Isn´t there always some document missing every time you go to the electric company or government office? This is because people aren´t trained properly and have no ethic for doing their jobs properly, so the result is that every aspect of our society does things by half measures, haphazardly and incompetently. Each job ends up being tá bom assim[3] and must be redone. Just maybe we should change the phrase on our national flag that Says Ordem e Progresso[4]´to ´Tá Bom Assim.

Narrator:   Minister, do you expect to be censured by members of your party for your remarks?

Jackson:     Of course.  Even in this respect we Brazilians haven't learned that loyalty doesn't mean that one closes their eyes and parrot the party line.  I believe that most human beings today think that free speech and criticism are necessary to the political party process.  Of course, in the past the Workers’ Party was always the opposition party in Brazil.  Actually, I think that even you journalists fail to realize that now that our party has finally gained power, we are no longer the opposition and what that means is that we shall have to stop complaining and actually come up with some solutions to the country’s problems.  We have all bowed our heads to those in power for too long.  The Americans say that people who live in glass houses should not throw stones.”

* * *

Landau continued to read the profile on Jackson but could not shake off the feeling of uneasiness.  This man was virtually in control of the Brazilian government at the moment and there was little to do but wait and watch events as they unfolded.  He felt that the United States usually erred on the side of inaction when it came to interfering in the internal affairs of other countries and despite the fact that most people throughout the country believe that the CIA had spies everywhere, he knew that there was no real hard intel to be had from any in-country assets located in Brazil.

Most Americans wanted to believe that the world had become a more peaceful place since the end of the Cold War. But Landau as National Security Advisor seldom wasted his time with what the American public believed unless there were major political ramifications to the administration that he served.  He knew that it was only the forms that had changed, not the number of threats that were of concern to the United States.  In his job he had to be a realist.  He smiled at the thought and wondered if Henry Kissinger, who had held the combined post of National Security Advisor and Secretary of State in the Nixon Administration, ever wondered if his habit of making decisions based on realpolitik was totally out of step with American values and the general public’s almost sophomoric attitudes towards foreign policy.  The US of the post-Cold War was totally different than that of the new millennium but what had not changed was the moral imperative that had been defined first by Theodore Roosevelt and then by Woodrow Wilson.  The firm belief that nation states were to be judged by the same moral concepts that were applied to individuals had no doubt colored the foreign policy of the United States, but the difficulties that it created for the American State Department and presidents over the last seventy years were endless.  The idea that the United States had a moral obligation to make the nations of the world over in its own image, complete with democratic and capitalistic institutions ran head on into realpolitik.  

The refusal of many countries like China, Iran, and Cuba to accept what most Americans believed to be a God-inspired truth not only confused them, but seemed to reinforce the belief that because their nation was the richest and most powerful, it was the ultimate proof that their system of government was the best for the entire planet.  The charges of American imperialism by many nations fell on deaf ears in middle-America, whose values matched Wilson’s and when they thought about it, were still in line with the early Protestant colonizers who firmly believed that Judeao-Christian ethics should be imposed on others, for their own good.

Landau broke the law by lighting a cigarette in his office at the White House and returned his mind to the problem of Brazil and Jaime Jackson.  He was certain there was no real government in Brazil at this time, all of the elected officials were probably dead and now this man had declared martial law.  And it always comes down to what these guys call a matter of internal security, and that is a traditional cry of the oppressor. The difference between a committed individual willing to die for his beliefs and a madman is quite illusionary. 

His last thought before leaving his office for the day was that he needed more information on this man.  It was a situation tailor-made for trouble.

* * *

---

[1] Camelôs: Small stands that sell almost any kind of item on the streets. Most of these stands are illegal and many of them sell contraband or stolen goods.

[2] Deveres: duties, also, by extension, tasks or responsibilities.

[3] Tá bom assim: It is OK like that or That’s good enough.

[4] Ordem e Progresso: Order and Progress.

Third Book Posting - Chapters 3-4

Chapter 3

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Firestorm

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Security at the Brazilian Congress in Brasília was tight.  As it neared 2:00 PM there was still large numbers of legislators and dignitaries standing in line waiting to gain entrance into the Chamber of Deputies.  Most of those who were in the line had already been passed through the first level of security to ensure they were on the list of people who were to be allowed to participate in the official ceremony.  Geraldo Rocha had just allowed the Ambassador of the United States to pass and here was that angry Workers’ Party senator from the Northeast standing in front of him.  She had replaced Mara da Silva Reis from the state of Acre who had died in an automobile accident just a few weeks earlier.  Now there had been a real lady, he remembered.  This bitch, he couldn’t remember her name, acted like all of the Congressional security people were there just to make life difficult for her.  Last week, she had tried to have one of the female agents at the Senate fired because she wanted to inspect her purse.  The young agent hadn’t known that she was a senator and the sorry excuse for a politician had raised hell with the head of the Senate for two days.  He noticed the chief of the security detail coming over to him.

“Geraldo, we have to get these people moving faster.  Let everybody that you recognize through immediately, anybody else, check their identity cards.  This thing has been badly organized, as usual” he said his eyes scanning the lines of people.

Geraldo turned to the woman in front of him.  “May I see your identity card, Senhora?”

“I’m Senadora Neide Soraes from Acre,” she said scowling at him.

“Yes, Senhora, may I see your Senate pass, please?”

“I just told you, I am the Senadora from Acre.  Didn’t you hear me?”  She just stood there and glared at him.

“For Christ’s Sake, Neide, show the man your pass,” said Senator Duarte Ribeiro, another senator from Acre.  “We’ve been in this line for almost an hour.”  The woman snorted and pulled her Senate pass from her purse.  Then she bent over and made a point of reading aloud the name on his identification badge, “Geraldo Rocha,” as if it was a promise that she would remember him and see that he paid for his insolence.

He just smiled at her in a non-committal way and turned to the man behind her and said, “Go right in Senador Ribeiro, sorry for the delay but there are so many people here we don’t know.”

Ribeiro nodded and walked past the metal crowd control railings that had been set up near the door that led to the Chamber of Deputies.  Security Guard Geraldo Rocha turned back to his task and the two senators walked into the Chamber.

“Can you imagine the work that went into taking out all of the seats and desks in the Chamber,” asked Senator Ribeiro.  “We’ll still be packed in here like Sardines.”  The room was almost filled with tightly milling people.  He turned to look at the second floor gallery that circled the large room.  It was already filled with military uniforms, and a whole section was filled with priests.  Right in the center of the gallery there were banks of lights and TV cameras in an area that had been roped off and designated the press area.  He heard that TV Globo had won the draw for the press pool and that they would be supplying a feed to all of the other networks of the images of the ceremony.  Looking back to the area in front of him, in the center of the room, the closed casket of President Moura rested on a raised platform draped in black velvet and a Brazilian flag.  People were milling about the large room waiting for the remainder of the officials to be admitted.

“I guess that he has found his place in the history books.  At least he won’t be around when things really turn ugly, but who knows,” said Senator Ribeiro.  “At this point it’s really doubtful that we will win the next election.  But then, just maybe his death will be enough to get us another four years.”

“He was one of the leaders of our party, Duarte.  Those rich filhos da puta[1] that have always run this country had him killed and now they are going to try and make him into some kind of Saint.  At least we will have a woman running the country now. But we have to get rid of those party intellectuals and put real people in their place.”

“You know, Neide, you really are a pain in the ass.  I don’t believe that I have ever heard you say anything nice about anyone.  How does your husband put up with you?”

“My husband sells used cars and he isn’t very good at that.  I didn’t get where I am today by being nice, to him or to anyone else.”

“Well, this is the seat of the federal government, not your home, and here we try to work together despite party differences, and we try to accomplish a few things and even at that, it is damn difficult.  You are going to have to learn how things work around here and trying to take on the entire security force has already given you a bad name.  Let me give you a little advice.  If you want to be effective here, you have to learn to work with people.”

“I’ve heard Senator Ribeiro that the worst vice is advice, so I thank you to keep yours to yourself.  It is time that we had some good old socialism in this country and I am not going to waste my time and the country’s money at cocktail parties and making compromises with those who have always kept the Workers’ Party out of power.  We’re in now, and we´re going to stay in even if we have to change the Constitution every six months to get what we want. I’m here to make changes!”

“Well, good luck, Neide,” said the senator shaking his head and returning his attention back to the crowds that were milling about the chamber.  He could see the Vice-president on the podium with Dom Everaldo, the Archbishop of São Paulo.  He had been told that the First Lady wanted the Archbishop to read the eulogy and wondered if he would also administer the oath of office to Vice-president Heloisa Helena.  This was usually done by the President of the Supreme Court.  Dona Heloisa Helena’s new party, the PSOL, hadn’t been very successful at drawing people away from the PT rank and file and it really was a clever move getting her to run as PT vice presidential candidate in the last election. It brought back all of the disaffected members and showed the other parties that the PT truly intended to present a united front in Congress. Fate sure had some funny twists. Now she would be president.

*        *        *

Major Ramos and his men in the fifteen vehicles on his side of the main road leading to the Congress watched the crowds of mourners as they moved slowly towards the paved access that led to the rows of ministry buildings.  There appeared to be 80 to 100 thousand people moving in the direction of the Chamber of Deputies and the going was slow so he turned on the blue and white flashing lights that were on the top of his vehicle.  He glanced in the rearview mirror and Saw that each of the Veraneios that were following him did the same.  There was no need for the sirens and he saw that by honking his horn the crowds quickly moved out of the way when they noticed his vehicle behind them.  Upon reaching the access road he turned right and then right again, moving into the road to the Ministry that was furthest from the Congress buildings.  Each of the Veraneios moved to one of the Ministry buildings and the last vehicle in the procession stopped and blocked the access road.  The men came out of the vehicles and formed a straight line across the road, standing with their automatic weapons held at port.  When each utility vehicle had reached its assigned ministry, all moved forward and drove around to the back of the building and parked out of sight from the crowds that were moving along the main avenue.  The remaining men left their vehicles and began to closely inspect the surrounding area, moving out of the area any of the people that were within the perimeter that they had determined was necessary for their mission.  Each man knew his job and soon the area was secured with an additional five men at the mouth of the access road on the far side of the buildings.  Each building had an armed guard sitting at the entrance desk just inside of the buildings and one of the soldiers went into each building and informed the guard that they had been ordered to reinforce the security around the buildings and that they would be taking a position outside the front entrance.

Major Ramos checked his watch.  It was 13:20 and now they had to wait another ten minutes before beginning the operations.  His troops had just a half an hour to plant their explosives and move toward the last building where he would be waiting for all the units to converge and then they would leave together as if they had been ordered to evacuate the area under orders.  He removed his binoculars from the case which was hanging around his neck and scanned the crowds and the area in front of the Congress building.  He was amazed to see just how many people had come out for the funeral ceremonies of the assassinated president and the swearing in of the new one.  He checked the cellular phone that was in a case on his hip.  The number of Jaime Jackson’s apartment was already keyed in and all he had to do was press one button to complete the call.

“We are ready,” he thought.  He raised his hand and the signal was passed to the next man down the line in front of each ministry, who passed it on to the next.  The men who were positioned as guards moved toward each of the buildings, leaving one man from each squad at the end of each long rectangular building to act as a sentry.

*        *        *

Daniela Meurer checked the link with Brasília on the monitor and moved into the control room of the studios of Rede Globo in São Paulo.  The Satellite feed was stabilized and she checked with the production manager to see whether the audio was functioning in the studio yet.  He shook his head and she went back out to the area where she would be sitting at the desk with Senator Eduardo Suplicy.  The senator from the PT would be providing commentary during the ceremony that would give Brazil its first female president.

She remembered in the briefing the jokes about whether Heloisa Helena should be called ‘presidente’ or ‘presidenta’.  Was the feminine of the word for president in Portuguese ‘presidenta?’  Heloisa Helena was one of those thin women that looked as if they had lived a life on hard work and poverty, a pinched face that always wore a disapproving confrontational look and flashing black eyes that seemed to challenge whomever she was talking to.  Daniela hadn’t voted for her and Moura, and the press preferred to ignore her whenever possible. They certainly wouldn’t be able to do that now. Personally, she didn’t believe that this extreme leftist was qualified to run the country, let alone deal with the international issues that the country faced but there were those who had said the same thing about Lula when he first became president. It was said that Heloisa knew nothing of foreign policy, or macro-economics, despite having fought her way up the state political ladder to the position of Senator. The leaders of the PT had enough trouble controlling Lula and his successor; and making this woman toe the party line would be almost impossible. Daniela wondered if her presidency would take Brazil completely out of the community of nations and isolate it as Cuba was isolated by Fidel Castro. But like many Brazilians, she did want to cast a vote against all of the traditional politicians who never seemed to solve any of the problems of the country.  Like most young adults her age she disliked and mistrusted all politicians, but now she was worried that Heloisa would turn out worse for the country than Lula. The Brazilian people had learned a few lessons after eight years of Lula and the PT running the country. Near the end of his second term, he had distributed thousands of refrigerators to the poor, justifying the action by stating that all of the poor had old refrigerators that consumed too much electrical energy and that by giving away new ones he was saving energy. Even the politically naïve Saw through that maneuver and there were times when she felt embarrassed for her country. She had actually voted for him when he first won the presidency, hoping that the PT just might be able to make some meaningful changes after so many years as the opposition party, but to her way of thinking, they turned out to be just as corrupt as all of the others who had run the country in the past.

Daniela was proud of the fact that she was one of the youngest political commentators on Brazilian television, holding a position with Rede Globo, the largest and most important television network in the country.  She was one of the few who had reached the top in her field of broadcast journalism.  Of course it was her good looks that got her foot in the door, but at twenty-seven she was well paid and she liked the fame that came with the job.  She didn’t consider herself a feminist but she did believe that women were just as capable as men, maybe even more capable.

She looked past the cameras that were being positioned for the show and she saw the makeup artist putting the finishing touches on Senator Suplicy.  Despite being from one of the elite families of Brazil, this man had aligned himself with the Brazilian left, had been educated in France and was considered one of the intellectuals of the Workers’ Party. 

“His political star had risen just so high and then,” she thought, “it seemed to reach some plateau.  There was a lack of charisma there, that something special that took a person beyond the normal reaches of their ability and propelled them to the top and the senator just didn’t have it.  His wife Marta, on the other hand, did have that something extra.  She had got herself elected as mayor of São Paulo and did better than Daniela had expected considering how the good old boys of the Workers’ Party tried to control her. Maybe it was because she was willing to take on those issues that were so controversial, to defend the fringe element in Brazilian society.”

“We are almost ready, Daniela,” said the voice of the producer from inside the control room that carried over the speaker.  Daniela took one last quick look at her makeup in the mirror and moved into the bright lights that had just been turned on and were focused on the desk that was shaped like a ‘V’ and carried the logo of the network on one section and the name of the program, ‘Political Perspective’ on the other.  She seated herself and plugged in the microphone that was attached to her blouse.  A technician guided the senator to his seat and helped him make the microphone connection.  They settled in and watched the monitor that was bringing them the feed from Brasília.  Henrique Serrano, Globo’s chief political reporter was providing the seemingly endless commentary on the many politicians who had arrived for the ceremony in the Chamber of Deputies and they watched the camera move in to provide a close-up of the Vice President speaking with the president of the Chamber of Deputies, the Archbishop of São Paulo and the widow of the dead president.  They were on the platform that overlooked the floor of the Chamber and the raised platform where the closed coffin of the president had been placed.

“There are still people entering the Chamber of Deputies and I have been told that many of the dignitaries have been held up by the security measures that have been installed at the entrance of the Congress,” said the voice of Serrano.  “We are going to switch to the cameras that are outside the Congress building now so that we can get a look at the incredible crowds that have come to Brasília from all over the country to pay their last respects to President Jorge Moura.”

 The camera made its change over and Daniela watched it pan from right to left over the crowds that must have numbered in the tens of thousands.

“The Federal Police issued a statement that they were still investigating the assassination and that they expected to make an arrest soon,” continued the voice of Serrano.

“Which means that they haven’t any idea who was responsible for the shooting,” said Daniela, more to herself than to the senator who sat by her side.  Before he could answer a voice came through their earpieces informing them that Serrano was about to switch the network to the studio so that the senator could take over the commentary during the period that included the eulogy for the President and the swearing in ceremony of the Vice President.

Daniela watched the lights that would indicate that they were live and on the air, as it switched from red to green she straightened herself and said, “This is Daniela Meurer in the studios of Rede Globo in São Paulo.  We have with us in our studio Senator Eduardo Suplicy, Senator from São Paulo.  Senator, Brazil has never had a female president in its history, although women have held political positions in both state and municipals governments.  The assassination of President Moura by a professional and the swearing in of the nation’s first female president are unprecedented.  The country is floating with rumors and it is openly spoken on the streets that it was the PT itself that had the president assassinated, to ensure that they would win the next election and maintain power in Congress.”  The camera switched from the view that held both Daniela and the senator to one that was at an angle to the senator’s left and pulled in tighter on his head and shoulders.  It was obvious that the senator had not been expecting that question and he hesitated for a moment.  A small frown crossed his face and he stroked back his thinning hair.

“Well, Daniela,” he said slowly as if collecting his thoughts, “as I am aware that all of the networks have already reported these unproven accusations, a special Congressional Commission was instituted the day after the President was assassinated to determine who is responsible.  Actually it wasn’t held until the second day, as most of the senators and deputies were on their break and it took them another day to get back to Brasília.  These unfounded accusations, as usual, are little more than attempts to discredit the party and gain political advantage. But you know as well as I do that people love rumors and conspiracies.”

“There have been comments from the opposition parties that this is a time-honored tactic of the European left to make a leader a martyr and gain enough public sympathy to ensure that they will win an election.”

“The Federal Police have stated that the shooting was the work of a professional assassin, probably someone hired from abroad.  The president was loved and respected by everyone in the PT and I personally find it an insult to have to deny that our party assassinated our own president.  More important is that it was the concern of both houses of the legislature that the government was without someone at the helm and we needed to swear in the new president to ensure stability.”

“Senator Amorim of the state of Paraná told the media yesterday that this ceremony today was nothing more than a cheap bit of political maneuvering to ensure that the PT would remain in power and that if presidential elections were called today the Workers’ Party wouldn’t stand a chance of maintaining power in the presidency or in the Congress.”

Senator Suplicy smiled.  “Well, Daniela, I think that is a pretty safe statement for the Senator from Paraná to make, being as there is no way of proving whether it is true.  I just think that we will have to wait for the next round of elections to see if his statements have any basis on fact.”

*        *        *

Major Cavalcanti lifted his shoulders and raised his head to relieve the tension and pushed himself back into his seat as the heavily loaded airplane crawled into the air.  The KC-10A was a McDonnell Douglas military conversion of the DC-10 which was developed to allow increased mobility for American forces and was used extensively during the first and second Gulf Wars.  The aircraft moved 475 million liters of fuel and thousands of troops in the Persian Gulf and reduced operational costs for the military.  Brazil had purchased two of the KC-10 Extenders in the late nineties from the American Air Force and signed a logistics support contract with McDonnell Douglas for the craft.

Cavalcanti slowly eased back on the yoke reducing the 23,814 kgs of takeoff thrust on the three General Electric CF6-50C2 turbo fan engines and felt the tightness in his shoulders relax.  He smiled to himself.  After many years of flying the tension of takeoffs and landings had never disappeared.  It was a given that these two operations were the most dangerous part of flying but like most pilots, it was part of the thrill of being a pilot, whether it was a small single engine Embraer training plane or this immense tanker that Brazilian military pilots called the ‘whale.’  Actually the plane was little more than a military version of an aircraft that was used by the commercial Brazilian carriers like Varig and Tam. One of the three engines was mounted on the tail above the aft fuselage and the other two were attached to each of the wings.  The tanker was fully loaded with 90,000 kilos of aviation gas and he had to use maximum thrust to get the lumbering craft that had a takeoff weight of over 265,000 kilos into the air.  He eased back on the throttle, which reduced the rate of climb as he began to turn the tanker to come about to his heading of true north.  His flight path was set to take him north for an hour before turning to the east, to the ordered destination of Recife in the state of Pernambuco.  The flight plan has been designed to keep his plane out of the commercial lanes of air traffic though there were few commercial flights today and most of those had been reduced because all those who were coming to Brasília were already in the federal capital.  At the end of the day many flights were scheduled to resume, taking the dignitaries back to their respective homes across the great expanse of Brazil that was larger than the continental United States.  But today they would not be going home.  Before he turned the aircraft over to his copilot his eyes quickly ran over the instrument panel, checking that all was as it should be.

“After you reach altitude, José, drop it into autopilot.  Even though it is just a simple ferry flight, we received a message from the manufacturer that there was some deviation in the navigational package when the plane is fully loaded and I would like to check it out.  Tell the navigator when you go auto and he will take a fix and then we will check it again before we turn east.”

“Yes, sir,” answered José Simões looking straight forward, keeping his eyes on the instruments and continuing the climb to their designated altitude.

Cavalcanti worked his way into the interior of the plane and back to the chemical toilet.  Entering, he closed the door and unzipped one of the pockets on his flight suit, removing a small packet wrapped in foil.  He took the two codeine pills and placed them in his mouth and then poured himself some water in a plastic cup and swallowed the pills.  He unzipped the front of the flight suit and removed the Ruger 22 automatic and from another pocket the silencer which he quickly screwed into the barrel of the weapon.  At the time he was passed the weapon he thought the silencer a ridiculous precaution.  There was a lot of noise in the plane and his crew was all wearing head sets, but he supposed that it was better to follow the plan to the letter.  He turned and opened the door of the toilet and stepped out, hiding the gun out of sight behind him.  His crew was sitting at their stations and he walked forward, a little closer, and from a distance of three feet he quickly and efficiently put a bullet in the heads of his communications officer, the navigator and his fuel transfer technician.  One of them must have gasped or made some sound in the microphones of their intercoms because Simões turned around in his seat just as Cavalcanti started to move forward with the gun in his hand.  There was a look of disbelief on his face as his eyes settled on the weapon in his pilot’s hand and the look quickly turned from questioning to fear as his eyes glanced toward the slumped bodies of the other crew members.  He attempted to unbuckle himself from his harness when the round entered his head and Cavalcanti watched as his body slipped forward across the control yoke.  Cavalcanti looked down at the body of his copilot and friend, dropped the gun on his seat and reached over and finished releasing the harness.  Slowly he worked the body from the seat and dragged it back deeper into the interior of the plane.  He left the other crew members where they were, after checking that each one was dead.

“Wouldn’t do to have them come to and try and stop me,” he thought.  He remembered that Ramos had told him that 22 calibers were notorious for not getting the job done but the low caliber weapon was the Safest to use inside the aircraft.

He returned to his seat and tossed the gun on the floor, strapping himself in, jerking the harness tight and then lighted a cigarette with trembling hands.  “What difference if I brake the rule about smoking after killing my friends,” he thought. His eyes automatically scanned the cockpit instruments to ensure that all was normal.  The air speed was set at 600 mph and then he looked at his watch.  Another ten minutes and it would be time to turn his aircraft back to Brasília.  Just about now the two ground crews were taking out the circuitry of the radar units at the commercial airport and the military base insuring that there would be no warning of his approach.  He placed one hand on the control yoke and reached forward and turned off the autopilot.  He felt the aircraft respond and yaw a little to the right.  He compensated and held it on its course taking a deep breath and shook his head.  He was totally committed.  “I am doing this for my children,” he thought and began to turn the large lumbering craft in a slow circle until the compass showed that he had come the full 180 degrees and was on a reciprocal bearing, bringing it back up to the altitude that was lost in the turn.

*        *        *

The young man Sat down at the table and began to take the brown paper wrapping off the package that he had removed from the plastic woven shopping bag with handles.  He ripped the paper where the package had been sealed with cheap scotch tape that could not be unstuck from the paper.  He spread the waxed paper open wide on the table top revealing two packages wrapped in clear plastic and he smiled.

“Now to make sure that the weight is correct,” he thought as he raised the electronic scales from the floor beside the chair and checked to ensure that it was plugged into the extension cord that ran across the floor to the wall socket.  He placed the first package on the scale and looked at the red numbers rapidly changing as it settled to a stable readout.  One kilo and 30 grams. He replaced this package with the second that instead looking like white powder appeared to be white rocks of various sizes and was the form in which crack cocaine usually arrived to the distributor.  He smiled.  Always just a little overweight, that special favor provided for those distributors who always sold the product well and always paid up front for the product they purchased.

His street name was Ninja and he was the drug king of Jardim Angela, Angela Garden, one of the suburbs in East São Paulo.  He would be eighteen years old tomorrow and this was an important event in his life.  Not because he had reached any state of recognizable manhood or because he would have been seen by his associates in the drug trade as being of greater importance.  If anything it was a negative birthday.  It meant that by turning eighteen he could now be treated as an adult in the courts and could no longer receive the special treatment accorded to minors by the legal system of the country.  Minors never had their names printed in the newspapers when arrested or when they were involved in some crime, they could not be sent to prison and at worst, they were incarcerated in Febem, the Fundação de Bem Estar do Menor[2], something like a reform school for minors and it was not difficult to escape from these institutions.  His birthday also meant that now the police would come after him with a vengeance, have learned that it was a waste of their time trying to incarcerate him as a minor when there were so many other bandidos to deal with.

“So what,” he thought.  “That is the way life is and there is no changing it.”  The fatalism that comes from being poor was a part of his reality and although he had never managed to get past the fifth grade he knew he was not stupid.  He was far from poor now and for the last five years he had supported his mother and three sisters, bought them a house in the suburb of Jardim Angela where they lived and more important had the respect of all on the street.  What did it matter if that respect came from fear?  Respect was respect.  He had become a player when he was twelve.

He remembered the day that his life had changed.  He had skipped school when he finally had enough money to purchase ten grams of crack from the dealer who worked the area between the public school and the commercial district ten blocks away.  It had never been his intention to ever use the crack himself; he knew too well what happened to those who used it and he hated being trapped by anything.  He had been trapped by school, and he had been trapped by the poverty of his family when his father had abandoned them when he was ten.  He was trapped because he was too young to get a job and too young to get him a gun and rob banks, bank robbery was where the big money was, at least to the thinking of a ten year old.  So he saved half of his money that he had acquired stealing the sound equipment from cars and selling it, giving the rest to his mother.  When he had enough money to make his crack purchase he believed that he would now be able to make enough money to support the family.  He had stood on the street day after day watching the dealer in his suburb.  He followed him whenever he was on foot and learned everything he could about the business.  He was small for his age and most of the time he wasn’t noticed, just another poor street kid.  Then came the day when he made his purchase and he was on his way to the school where he planned to sell the ten grams to those he knew used the drug for a little less per gram than the street dealer charged.  As he neared the school he had been dragged into the alley by three teenagers who were much older than he was and then they took his crack and beat him soundly just to teach him a lesson.  Lying there in the alley he told himself that he would give back a lesson for the one that he had just learned.  They believed that because he was young, small and inexperienced, he was weak and without power.

He knew that his next purchase would not be crack, but a gun.  In a matter of weeks he had robbed enough cars to be able to purchase an old Taurus 38 caliber pistol from an older boy, a crack head who had robbed a home and found the gun during the robbery.  The boy had needed crack to support his habit and so had decided to sell the gun.

José Maria de Jesus da Silva, for that was his real name, had also learned that he would never again make a purchase in his own suburb, so he bought the gun and his next ten grams of crack in a suburb called Santo Amaro, near the large market of illegal stalls in Largo Treze that sold almost anything imaginable.  The gun had only six bullets and the boy that sold it to him didn’t have any more.

The next day, back in his own neighborhood, he went directly to the block near the commercial center where the three boys who had robbed him always seemed to hang out.  All three were sitting at a table in a covered area just outside of the bar.  They had glasses of beer in front of them and there were four or five empty bottles on the table.  He walked calmly up to them and took out the gun and fired a bullet into the chest of each one.  They had been so surprised that they had not even reacted at the sight of the gun.  With all three on the ground Ninja took another few steps so that he was standing over them and put a bullet in the head of each one.  He then looked up at those who had come out of the bar and stared at him.

“If anyone tells the police, or if the police find out my name I will come and kill each of you and then I will kill your family.”  He had spoken softly and made eye contact with each of the men staring at him.  Then he calmly shoved the 38 into the pocket of his shorts and pulled the oversized T-shirt over the weapon and walked off.  He had disappeared for a week and afterward came back to Jardim Angela and began his business.  He had eliminated the dealer who undoubtedly told the three young men that he had purchased the ten grams and soon he had built an organization that controlled the drug trade in his suburb of Greater São Paulo.

“José,” called his mother from the kitchen.  “You must eat something before you leave.”  She stuck her head into the dining room and saw the packages of drugs on the dining room table and frowned, but said nothing.  She knew that this was how her son supported the family and while she hated it and knew that someday he would probably come to a bad end because of his involvement in the drug trade, now there was food on the table and she and her daughters never wanted for anything.  Six years ago, during one of the periods that her husband had disappeared from their home, she had put a small plate of boiled rice and beans on the table one evening and told her children that there was nothing else to eat and began to cry.  The girls had cried with her but José had sat there and refused to eat anything.  He had waited until his sisters had eaten and then followed his mother into the kitchen and told her he would get food for them.  That is when he had started to assume responsibility for the family and though she felt the presence of disaster every day and each morning went to check if her son was in his bed, assuring herself that he hadn’t been killed the night before, she learned to say nothing.  Then each day she went to the small Baptist church three blocks from her home and prayed.

José did not answer his mother, just continued to wrap the packages again and put them in the good leather briefcase and locked it.  He then put the scales in the closet and picking up the briefcase, passed through the kitchen of the small house, kissed his mother on the cheek and walked out to the car that was parked on the curb.  He looked up and down the street and then jumped into the car and drove off to the warehouse that he had rented and where he would meet with his men to break the crack and granulated cocaine down into small packages for delivery to those who would sell them on the street.

*        *        *

The soldiers moved in a tightly knit group toward each one of the seventeen ministry buildings, each carrying a large canvas ssack.  The guards that had been placed by the doors Saw them coming and opened the glass doors to each building and asked the guard on desk duty if he had any coffee and then raised their silenced machine guns and fired a burst into the chest of the man at the desk.  They quickly checked that the guards were dead, then moved to the power panels and cut the electricity to the buildings and tore open the panels for the telephone communications.  They removed small battery powered Saws and severed the thick cables that went into the phone junction boxes.  Returning to the entranceway they moved to assist the other soldiers who were wrapping the shaped charges around each large inverted cement triangle that supported and suspended the building in the air.  Within fifteen minutes all of the charges were placed, connecting wires ran between each set of charges on each post and the single electronic timer was set for 14:40. 

Ramos, from his position at the command car, heard each group pass the word that all was in readiness and the teams worked their way back to their vehicles.  At that moment he noticed a military police car coming down the access road heading directly toward him.  He glanced around at his men who were moving their Veraneios to the edge of the access road and stopping.  He glanced at his watch, 13:54.

“We have ten minutes to get out of here and we can’t leave these men behind to set off the alarm,” he said to the lieutenant next to him.  The police car pulled up to the Veraneio and Washington Oliveira got out of the vehicle and Saluted Ramos.

“Didn’t know there were going to be any special units here this afternoon, sir.  We have been patrolling the ministries and keeping out the crowds.”

“It looks as if the crowds are going to be bigger than anyone expected, Corporal, so they sent us over in case things got out of hand.  We have had reports that some of the MST were going to invade the ministries during the ceremonies,” said Ramos.  He pulled his radio off his leather belt and keyed it.  “This is Ramos, are all units in their positions?”

“My God,” exclaimed Oliveira, “that’s all we need today, a bunch of farmers and troublemakers invading government buildings.”

Oliveira watched the major as each unit reported in.  He looked at the black berets on the heads of the soldiers and didn’t recognize the unit.  There were also no unit patches on their camouflage utilities.

“Have you seen anything suspicious on your patrol, Corporal,” asked Ramos?

“No, sir, we have been patrolling the area and the streets on the adjoining quadrants and all is quiet.  What is your unit, sir?  I don’t recognize it?”

“We are a new unit that was set up two days ago, Corporal.  We will be assigned to provide additional security for the Congress and they haven’t given us our uniforms and patches yet.  It seems that the politicos[3] are a little nervous these days and we get stuck with garrison duty nurse-maiding civilians.”

“I’ve been doing that for years, sir,” said Oliveira with a grin.  “Well, I think we should get back to our patrol.  We’ll be in the area sir, if you need us.”  He turned back to the car and Ramos walked behind him.  As Oliveira was getting into the car Ramos pulled out his handgun and fired two shots into Washington Oliveira and his partner.  Then he reached into the vehicle and ripped out the microphone from the radio.  Quickly he turned and spoke into his handset and said, “Move out, now!”

*        *        *

Senator Ribeiro moved back toward the entrance of the Chamber of Deputies and leaned against the wall.  At least the press of bodies wasn’t as bad as in the center of the large room.

“Everybody and his brother want to be seen here today,” he thought.  “I’d rather be home, but then the party needs the show of solidarity.”  Despite all of the problems he was sure that the party would be successful in electing another president from the PT but he doubted that Heloisa Helena would be the candidate.  He smiled to himself and thought, “Maybe the party could get Fernando Henrique Cardoso to switch parties.”  The press had been concentrated on the assassination and the public went about their daily tasks and talked about plots and takeovers.  Now Brazil would have its first female president who was a left-wing radical and totally unpredictable.  Something no ever expected.  That is why he liked politics.  Anything could happen and usually did.  He watched the people as they entered the large double doors, all of them stopping when they saw the number of people inside and then advancing slowly into the crowd.

Someone tapped a microphone and the voice of the President of the Senate came over the sound system asking all to be quiet for a prayer from the Archbishop of São Paulo.  Ribeiro watched the aging archbishop step up to the microphone and he glanced at the crowds who seemed more interesting than what was taking place on the podium.  All of these people here, dealing with a rite of passage, passing on and renewal.  He thought of how all of man’s institutions were just reflections of the realities of life and death, that seemed to imprint patterns on human DNA, recorded somewhere on the double helix, constructing rituals and symbols around the inevitable.

There was very little that was spiritual about government in the twenty-first century despite all of the rumblings by the occult about the Age of Aquarius and the end of the world predicted by Nostradamus or the Mayan Calendar that ends in 2012 or 13.  Government, as much as it thrilled him, was about wielding power and controlling people and if all of the teachings of all of the spiritual leaders of the past were correct, it was an effort in futility.  All of them, even Christ spoke of throwing off dogma and rendering unto Caesar and the government was Caesar.  He doubted if the man in the casket had been very spiritual, few politicians were.  In his own way he had probably been a decent and good man, but it was God that would do the judging there.  In terms of politics he had been much more than anyone ever expected, causing consternation in the party and the nation and now he was raised to the heights that he could never have reached if he had lived and completed his presidential mandate.  Martyrdom is an interesting concept and the public that wept for Tancredo Neves as his body was taken by motorcade along Avenida 23 de Maio to the airport had all but forgotten him.  It takes a politician like Saint Paul to make a man be remembered for two thousand years.  The archbishop rambled on and he realized that he was not listening to anything that he said and felt guilty for thinking that he had heard all of these platitudes and overused phrases of the Church during his whole life.  He heard a loud roar and looked up to see where it was coming from and then noise, light and heat seemed to encompass his whole being and then there was nothing.

*        *        *

Corporal Sergio Rodriguez regained consciousness to find himself sitting in his patrol car and couldn’t seem to remember what had happened.  For a moment he thought that he was in the hospital where he had been taken when he had been shot after attempting to stop a bank robbery three years ago.  Then his mind focused and he realized that that had been a long time ago and now he was in pain.  He looked around and Saw his partner Washington slumped in the seat next to him.  His head was against the car window and his eyes were open and there was blood running from the corner of his mouth.  Sergio moved his hand to reach out for his friend and the pain shot through his body and he looked down.  The front of his shirt was covered in blood and then he remembered.  He remembered that the Army major had walked with Washington to the car and then had shot both of them through the open car door.  The first bullet had gone through his shoulder when he had turned his body toward the window and the second had caught him on the right side, glancing off his rib.

“I’m alive,” he thought.  “I have to report this to command.”  His eyes went to the radio and then he saw that the microphone was missing.  He looked out the front windshield and saw that there was no one close to the patrol car.  Ignoring the pain, he reached across his wounded body and managed to open the car door.  Slowly he inched himself out of the vehicle and pulled himself erect, holding onto the door for a moment.  It was closer to the ministry building than it was down the access road to where the lines of people were walking slowly toward the Congress buildings.  He would go there and have the guard call in the report and get him an ambulance.  He started taking careful steps and gritting his teeth against the pain.  Soon he was able to walk a little faster and the only thought in his mind was getting to the building.  “If I get to the building I will be fine.  Got to get to the building.”

He stumbled three or four times as he approached the entrance and he leaned against one of the pillars but failed to notice the canvas packs of explosives that were wrapped around the post.  All of his concentration was on getting himself to the glass doors where the guard would be able to help him.  The closer he came to the door the stronger he felt and he pushed forward.  Leaning against the doorframe he saw that the guard was not at his desk and he thought that he must be making his rounds.  He moved himself toward the desk to get to the telephone and as he reached it he saw the body on the floor behind the desk.  Reaching for the telephone he couldn’t take his eyes off the guard and then he thought that he had better be prepared for there could still be someone in the building.  He pulled his Taurus from his holster and it fell to the floor, slipping from his bloody hand.  He winced from the pain as he lowered himself to pick up the gun and then reached again for the telephone and brought it to his ear.  The line was dead.  For a moment he was at a loss as to what to do.  “First I must rest a little,” he thought as he worked his way around the counter and slipped into the chair that was next to the fallen guard’s body.  He rested both of his forearms on the desktop and took a deep breath despite the pain, looked around at the area outside the building through the large glass windows that covered three sides of the entranceway to the ministry.  He knew that the phones must be out throughout the building. 

“What were they doing here?” he asked out loud.  He knew a soldier when he saw one, so these men were not terrorists or people from the MST.  The MST didn’t kill people in the buildings that they invaded, it was bad press.  He brought his right hand up to his shoulder and pulled the bloody shirt from where it was stuck to his skin.  He was feeling dizzy and weak and he knew that he had to get out of the chair and find someone who could help him get word to the command center.  He started to get up from the chair and then realized that things were going dark and hazy.  He passed out, falling from the chair to the floor next to the body of the security guard.

*        *        *

“The archbishop, Dom Everaldo, was asked by the wife of the President if he would hold the short service and the eulogy for her husband, Daniela,” said Senator Suplicy.  On the monitors the scene was of the Chamber of Deputies and the Archbishop was mounting the podium to join the late President’s wife and was followed by the President of the Senate, André Monteiro and Vice-president Heloisa Helena.  The Archbishop began to speak and the camera moved to a close up of the face of the Church leader from São Paulo.

Daniela kept one eye on the monitor and glanced toward the control room where the producer was watching the scenes from the other monitors that were placed both inside and outside of the buildings.  The crowds were backed up almost to the first ministry building and the camera on top of the truck panned almost a full 360 degrees to show the masses of people on all sides of the Congress.  Then the camera tilted upward and a large military aircraft appeared on the television monitors.  Daniela watched as it approached and the cameraman kept backing off on the focus as it neared the Congress.  Then the plane went off camera as it lowered its nose and the cameraman quickly reacquired focus and it soon became apparent that the plane was headed downward, directly at the Congress.  She watched fascinated as the camera followed it in toward the two domes of the building and there was nothing she could do.

“My God, they’re going to crash into the Congress,” she said softly and then the screen went blank on all of the monitors as the feed was lost from Brasília.

*        *        *

The lake near the Congress was now in sight and Captain Cavalcanti eased forward on the control yoke of the KC-10A Extender and it began to lose altitude.  He knew which of the domes housed the Chamber of Deputies and that was the point of impact.  He also knew that he would be dead instantly when the plane hit the cement of the dome and set off the high explosives that had been placed in the nose. Then the explosion would ignite the 900,000 liters of aviation fuel and that it would cover the entire Congress, much of it finding its way to the inside of the Chamber through the hole that the exploding plane would punch in the rebarred concrete, instantly incinerating the people inside as well as spreading out over the crowds that surrounded the building.

He was almost there and he reached forward and increased the power to the three jet engines bringing the speed of the aircraft up to the maximum airspeed of mach 0.825, increasing with every second of the power dive.  His heart was beating rapidly and for the first time he did not feel the constant pain of his illness.  He felt lightheaded and then he pushed fully forward the yoke and aimed the aircraft at the bowl-like dome of the Chamber of Deputies.  An image of World War II Japanese kamikaze pilots flashed through his mind and then he saw the rapidly approaching building and it soon covered his entire vision through the cockpit window and he died instantly as he had expected.

The impact of the aircraft set off the 20 kilos of plastic explosives in the nose of the aircraft, combining with the force of the impact of the plane hitting the building.  The fuel that was stored in the seven fuel cells, four aft of the wing and three forward ignited and spread out like a napalm attack, enough of it entering the Chamber of Deputies to instantly incinerate every person in the building.  The aft fuel cells spread out, rolling over the building and spilling out onto the outside area in front of the Congress, burning alive thousands of onlookers.

* * *

Chapter 4

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Stepping out of the shower, the young woman reached for the towel and wrapped it around her body and ran into the living room of her apartment trying not to slip on the wet tile floor of the bathroom.  As she reached for the phone it stopped ringing and she stood there for a moment hoping that whoever had called would ring again.  Her hair was dripping on the rug and after about a minute without the ring of the phone she turned back to the bathroom.

“Damn,” she thought.  “Maybe that was Jaime calling.”  She unwrapped the towel from her body and rewrapped it around her long blonde hair that had been darkened by the water and returned to the bathroom.  She then reached for a second towel and began to dry her body.  When she had finished, she examined her figure in the full-length mirror that was attached to the back of the bathroom door.  She smiled.  She lifted her breasts with her hands, raising them higher.  Then she frowned.  She knew that gravity was going to get her eventually and her heavy breasts would begin to fall and her hips and thighs would thicken.  Still, there were men that liked her big breasts and she was pleased that the nipples were not large like some of the big breasted women she had seen.  She then checked her thighs for cellulite as she did every day, shrugged and turned back to the sink and began to rub herself with the heavy towel.  When she was dry she donned a terrycloth robe and returned to the living room of the apartment that she had been living in for two years now.  She didn’t pay for the apartment and it had been there ready for her when she had arrived from Porto Alegre.  It had been a present from Jaime Jackson, the Minister of Planning and she had meant him in a hotel in Porto Alegre and he had paid her for sex that evening.  The next morning he had asked her if she wanted to come to São Paulo and be his mistress.

Her thoughts turned to Jaime and his last visit, which had been almost a month ago.  She wondered if he was growing tired of her.  He claimed that it was work and then on the evening of the assassination of the President he hadn’t even come to the apartment that night as arranged.  She had received a call from Brasília the day before that had made her happy and she planned a dinner, gone to the import store near the house and bought his favorite white wine. When the news came that the President had been shot she continued to watch the television and finally his call had come, two hours after he was supposed to arrive.  He had to return to Brasília for a meeting with government officials and then talk with members of Congress about the succession.

She really didn’t like living in São Paulo but she had been glad to get away from Caixas do Sul.   The small town located in the mountains of Brazil’s southernmost state was the wine capital of Brazil and she had been filled with dreams when she had been elected the queen of the wine festival four years ago when she was just sixteen.  She remembered how proud her father had been.  She was an only child and her mother had died when she was seven and her father had never remarried. Then came the humiliating incident with her father.  She didn’t like to think of it, but knew that she would never be able to forget.

She had known by the time that she was thirteen that sex was very important to her and though she never mentioned it to her friends, she never stopped thinking about it.  At first she had just masturbated and had not felt particularly guilty about it.  When she was sixteen a girlfriend had lent her an artificial penis that she had purchased in one of the sex shops in São Paulo and her father had walked in on her while she was using it one afternoon after school.  At first he had been so shocked that he had just stood there and looked at her as she quickly pulled up the bedcovers to hide her nakedness.  Then she remembered that he had screamed at her and the beating began.  She didn’t remember how long the beating lasted but at some point she passed out and when she regained consciousness, she was alone in her bed, her body a mass of pain and the pillows and sheets covered in blood.

In her shame she had gone to the bathroom wrapped in the bloody sheet, taken a shower and then returned to her room and packed a suitcase.  She removed all of the money that her father had in the metal box he kept under the floor paneling and stuffed it into her purse.  Her father was no longer in the house when she left and she walked down to the bus station and caught the first bus to the state capital, Porto Alegre.

On her arrival in the city, she realized that the little money that she had taken wouldn’t last long.  Before the week was out it was gone and she was hungry for the first time in her life and like many young women before her, she took the only solution that was at hand.  The first time was with the owner of the small hotel where she was staying.  The man accepted her in exchange for her overdue hotel bill, then throwing her out before his wife discovered what he had done.  She was in the street with a single suitcase and her shame.  Antonia Maria Guazzelli had become a prostitute and now she was the mistress of a powerful man.

She pulled her robe closer about her body and turned on the television and watched in fascination as the reporter spoke of the death and destruction in Brasília and her first thought was that Jaime might be dead.  She quickly turned to the phone and dialed the number of his apartment in Brasília.  It rang three times and then she heard his voice as he answered.

*        *        *

The noise of the explosion was heard in the restaurant of the Kubitschek Palace Hotel and coincided with the loss of the television signal on the monitors just a few feet in front of them.

"What to hell happened," asked Harrington.  "That noise and flash could have only been an explosion!"

"I don't know," answered Kevin Kowalski getting up from the table and hurrying over to the window in attempt to look toward the Congress.  The view was blocked by another hotel and they were only three floors above ground. Then he saw the heavy black smoke rising into the air and he quickly returned to the table and picked up his laptop computer from the chair next to the table.

"Let's see if we can get up to the roof top and see something.  If there was an explosion at the Congress we don't want to be in the middle of the mess."

Harrington rose from the table and they both made their way to the door of the restaurant with many of the other diners.  Kevin hit the elevator buttons for up while most of the others were interested in going down.  No one spoke as they waited for the elevators to arrive and Kevin looked closely at the faces of the people.  All showed concern and a few, open fear.  The bell rang and both men entered the elevator.  Kevin hit the button for the top floor.

"Maybe you were right, Mr. Harrington.  I didn't think this thing through.  If someone exploded a bomb in the Congress this could be the beginning of a coup d’état."  The elevator reached the top floor and Kevin Saw that it was a floor with guestrooms.  He looked around for the exit to the stairway, feeling sure that the stairway would lead to the roof of the building.  Harrington was attempting to look out the window but the view of the Congress was still cut off by the other building.

"The stairway is over here," called Kevin from the hallway.  He moved down the corridor and pushed open the heavy metal door, turning and waiting for the older man who followed him at a distance.  The two men ran up the stairs and out the access door to the roof of the building.  Moving to the building's edge they stopped and stood silent as they stared at the great cloud of black smoke that hovered over what had been the Congress.

"That must have been one hell of a bomb," commented Harrington softly.  "It looks more like the place was hit by napalm than blown up from the inside."

"There are still fires down there," said Kevin.  The once green parkway in front of the Congress was littered with bodies and people running like ants away from the area.  Kevin could see some vehicles that had been overturned by the blast and the Congress itself appeared to be a twisted mass of steel and concrete, the familiar domes of the building totally destroyed and blackened.

"Thousands must have died in that," said Harrington.  "Every Brazilian politician of importance must have been in that building."

"I would Say that everyone of importance in the country was there.  My camera is in my room but I think that we had better call this one in as quickly as we can, sir."

"Your right, son.  Let's get back to my room.  I'll call New York.  This will be on CNN within the hour and it is probably the international story of the year. Christ, it is like September 11^th all over again."

Just as they were turning back to the doorway they heard another series of explosions.  Looking back in the direction of the Congress they were surprised to hear a low sound of explosions and the row of ministry buildings beginning to fall to the ground as if in a slow motion film.

*        *        *

Jamie Jackson sat by the phone in his apartment.  The calls had been coming in all afternoon long, reports of the operations that had been coordinated with the explosion of the Congress building.  He had spent the day in front of his television set watching the reports of the media on the bombing in Brasília.  Within an hour the local television stations had reestablished hook ups and mobile units were on the scene at the Congress, reporting live on the devastation.  The nation was in total shock and it was the media itself that seemed to be the most organized, but all of their concentration was on the disaster itself.  There was little speculation on who had committed the act but the explosions that destroyed every ministry building made it clear that that this was more than the act of a single individual.  Early reports indicated that no one survived the explosion of the Congress and there were many thousands of dead and wounded outside of the building itself.  No one knew who was running the country, and there were no lists of the causalities or even of those politicians who had survived the blast or were not in Brasília at the time. 

The phone rang again and Jackson picked up the receiver.  "Jackson," he said.

"This is Ramos," said a voice at the other end.  "I am at the Communication Center.  The teams are in place and I am waiting for word that all of the television and telephone uplinks are cut to the datellites and marine cables."

"When will things be initiated," asked Jackson.

"All is set for ten this evening.  The other teams are rounding up the other politicians around the country.  They are being contacted by military officers and police and asked to fly to Brasília.  We will transport them to the airports and then we will fly them to the base in Mato Grosso do Sul[4].  They are being told that they are needed to form the new government and help prevent panic throughout the country and that the military will be declaring a curfew and martial law and that they are needed to make a public statement to the nation to ensure calm."

Jackson was silent for a moment.  "I will be going to the studios of Rede Globo within the hour to make the announcement.  I want the word out about the curfew and the martial law before all of the communications go down."

"Tomorrow we will begin the operation with the newspapers.  We have to make sure that all of the telephone links from the Internet service providers no longer exist so that there is no communication abroad.  Also, it has occurred to me that there must be ham radio operators that must be registered with the Ministry of Communications.  We will never be able to totally seal off the country, but I am sure that we can take care of a good 90% of the installations."

"Good," said Jackson.  I want you to keep me posted by calling my answering machine while I am out.  I will listen to everything when I return from the TV announcement.  Talk to you later."

*        *        *

"This is Daniela Muerer at the studios of Rede Globo in São Paulo.  Once again we interrupt our regular programming to bring you an update on the devastating events that have left the country in shock.  Just three hours ago, at the funeral services of President Telma Maxhado, a plane of the Brazilian Air Force deliberately crashed into the Congress building, killing perhaps all of the legislators and mourners who were gathered there.  It is not yet known just how many died in the blast that virtually wiped out most of the leaders of the Brazilian nation but in reviewing the tapes it seems certain that almost all of the senators and federal deputies were in the Chamber of Deputies for the ceremony.  Guests included all of the state governors, and vice governors, the entire leadership of the Catholic Church and many of the leaders of the Protestant churches, the entire leadership of the Brazilian military, all of the ministers of state and the most important members of their staffs as well as thousands of citizens who were gathered outside of the Congress to pay their last respects to the assassinated president.

“At this time it is not known just who in the government has survived this crime unparalleled in the history of Brazilian politics but it is apparent that this action goes well beyond the acts of just a few individuals.  Just minutes after the explosion at the Congress the seventeen buildings that make up the ministries of the Brazilian government we destroyed by explosives that brought the buildings to the ground.  The images that you are now watching are those of the ministries coming live from our mobile unit in Brasília.

“I have just been informed that Jaime Reinhardt Jackson, the Minister of Planning, will be making an announcement from our studios in Brasília.  Minister Jackson was not attending the ceremonies at the Congress due to sickness and at the moment it would seem that he is the only high-ranking cabinet member of the government to have survived the attack that killed most of the Brazilian government.  We are waiting for the hook up with our Brasília offices for this important announcement."

Daniela waited for the signal from the producer hardly realizing that the cameras were still projecting her image and she sat there in silence.  It all seemed unreal yet she had been on the air almost constantly since the early afternoon providing commentary on what she knew was the most important event of her career, maybe even her entire life.

The face of Jaime Jackson appeared on one of the monitors and she brought her thoughts back to the events of the moment.

"We now take you to Brasília for an announcement from the Minister of Planning, Jaime Reinhardt Jackson."  The camera pulled in for a close-up and framed the head and shoulders of the minister.

"People of Brazil.  It is with great sorrow that I speak to you this evening.  Today there occurred one of the most heinous crimes in the history of Brazil, perhaps the world.  It can only be compared with the terrorist bombing of the New York World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. 

As I am sure you have heard by now, most of the leadership of our nation was murdered when a plane was deliberately crashed into the Congress during the funeral ceremonies for the late president.  We do not know how many have died or even if any have survived this attack on the political leadership of our country."

Daniela watched as the minister paused and ran his hand through his hair.  She could see the circles under his eyes and he did not look well.  He confirmed her thoughts as he continued to speak to the nation.

“Forgive me," he continued.  "I have been sick and I have left my bed to speak to you today.  First, let me say that this event is not the act of a foreign power and I would like to put to rest the possibility of any rumors that we have been attacked by another country.  Unfortunately, this means that it was the act of some of our own citizens, however misguided they may be.

“Second, I can state that it was also not initiated by the Brazilian military.  Most of our military leaders were also killed in the explosion at the Congress and I have spent the afternoon maintaining contact with the principal military installations throughout the country in an attempt to ascertain if they were involved.  I can assure you this is not the case.

“It now seems clear that the assassination of President Machado, the explosion at the Congress and the destruction of the ministries are all connected and are part of a well planned action that can only be part of an attempted coup d’état.  That can only mean that we can expect these terrorists or revolutionaries, whoever they are and whatever they represent, will continue in their attempt to gain control of our nation.

“I now ask all members of Congress who were not in Brasília today to contact the Palácio de Planalto as soon as possible.  I am making arrangements for you to be transported to Brasília as quickly as possible so that we may form a cabinet for the succession of power that will enable the government to function until new elections can be held and the government restored to normal operation.  It is also necessary that each citizen aid us in the establishment of a new government that can act against the perpetrators who have launched this attack against Brazil and its people.  The telephone numbers that you see on your screen are for the use of elected government officials and I would ask that only elected officials use these numbers.  I also ask those who are in state and municipal government to follow our lead and restructure their local administrations as quickly as possible as we have lost many of our governors and mayors.  I promise that I will keep everyone informed of events and I have asked the television networks to set up a transmission station at the Palácio so that I can keep the nation informed during this period of transition.”

Daniela watched as Jackson paused, and again ran his hand through his hair and took a deep breath.

“Now, I must tell you of the difficulties that we will face” he continued.  “As always there are those who will attempt to take advantage of the civil disorder that this criminal action has caused.  There are those, like the criminals in the PCC[5], who have already demonstrated that they believe this is an opportunity to commit robbery and other crimes of violence.  But I would like to remind all Brazilians that despite the terrible consequences of today's events, all of our institutions are functioning.  The police are still in the streets protecting us, the factories are still producing goods and the farms and truckers are still bringing food and supplies to our cities.  This is not like the trucker’s strike that almost left São Paulo paralyzed some years ago.  We must not lose confidence in our nation and its ability to overcome any problem that is placed before us.  I ask all citizens to return to their jobs tomorrow, for life goes on, and we all need to help each other in these times of danger and peril.

“There is no doubt that there are those who would attempt to bring us to revolution or civil war and I promise that the military, the police and I will do all in our power to restore the nation to peace and prosperity.  For this reason I again ask all citizens to help me in this task.

“Already there have been acts of violence, bank robberies and looting reported in some of the major cities and we cannot allow this to happen for it will only aggravate our problems.  I have asked the military to call all personnel to report to their posts and the military will patrol the streets of our cities along with both the civil and military police, to hold this violence and crime in check.  I am declaring martial law at this time to prevent matters from getting out of hand and in an attempt to find those responsible for the crimes committed today here in the capital against all Brazilians.  We do expect these political criminals to continue their efforts to gain control of our nation, for what would be the purpose of the acts they have already committed if not to take control of the government.  Rest assured that your government will not allow this to happen.

“I also am declaring a curfew beginning each day at 8:00 PM and lasting until daybreak in an effort to reduce crime and restrict the movement of these revolutionaries and allow us to capture them.  All airports and national borders will be closed to prevent the perpetrators of these crimes from leaving the country.

“Again, I ask all citizens to help me in this effort, for if we can control the crime and violence, order will be restored faster and we can return to normalcy.  This curfew does not mean that those who have a real necessity for movement at night will be restricted.  Many deliveries are made at night and there are those who need to take family members to hospitals and these types of movements will not be restricted.  I have instructed both the police and the military to aid citizens who have the need to travel during the curfew.  What I am asking is that all bars, clubs, restaurants and cinemas be closed at the coming of evening, that you refrain from visiting friends and relatives, use the telephone if you must communicate. I have also suspended all sports events and under the Constitution I have restricted the right to strike and hold mass gatherings and meetings in the street. This is to reduce the possibility of these gatherings turning into mob violence and looting.

“Now a warning.  Crimes of violence will not be tolerated.  Thieves and looters will be dealt with harshly.  This government has the responsibility to protect the nation and its citizens and this shall be done.  Do not error in thinking that we shall not do all in our power to impede those who are responsible for these types of crimes and for those who will see this as an opportunity to turn to criminal behavior.

“Once again let me say that this is not the end of anything.  Our entire infrastructure still exists and the people of this nation have gone through greater difficulties than those we are facing today.  I will not tell you that all that has occurred today is unimportant, nor will I say that there are no dangers, but we Brazilians are a strong and hardy people and we shall pass through these difficulties and restore the peace and dignity that is the right of each citizen of this nation.  Those responsible for these criminal acts will be apprehended and punished for their crimes against the nation.

“I shall speak to you all again tomorrow at midday.  Thank you for your patience and God bless Brazil."

The monitor light showed that the link had been returned to São Paulo and Daniela quickly picked up the flow of the programming.

"You have just seen a public statement from Jaime Jackson, the Minister of Planning that was broadcast nationwide on all television and radio networks.  Despite the short message from the minister, this is the first communication from the government since the disaster that took place a little over four hours ago.  It is not clear whether Minister Jackson is now the only remaining high-ranking member of the federal government and has assumed power with the death of most of the Congress, but Jackson did call for all members of the government to contact Brasília to form a cabinet.  The minister also declared martial law and a curfew and confirmed that there was some attempt to overthrow the government but he made no mention of just who might be attempting to gain control.  Minister Jackson did state that the military was not behind the attempt and that it was not the action of a foreign government.

“I have just been handed a message that Senator Eduardo Suplicy who was with us here at Rede Globo at the time of the bombing of the Congress, will be flying to Brasília this evening to meet with Minister Jackson and he has urged all of his fellow senators and deputies to get to Brasília as quickly as possible.

“I have also been informed that there will be a special report on today's events at 8:00 PM this evening and it will include a profile on Jaime Reinhardt Jackson, the Minister of Planning who appears to have stepped forward to assume control of the government and declared martial law.  I now return you to our studios in Rio de Janeiro for comments from our political editor and the latest reactions to the events in Brasília.”

*        *        *

Eduardo Suplicy unlocked the door to his São Paulo apartment, turned the lights on, walked to the living room and fell into a chair.  He hadn't been able to get his mind to work since watching the plane crash into the Congress and destroy the Chamber of Deputies.  They were all dead.  His wife was dead for she had gone to the ceremonies with some of the other PT leaders from São Paulo.  He had left the studios of Rede Globo near the ring road along the Pinheiros River and had just driven his car around the city for hours.  Finally he returned to his apartment building knowing that he needed to get in touch with his children and the rest of the family but he just felt too exhausted to start dealing with it all on the phone.  It seemed that his life had always included his wife in one manner or another, even though they were separated and had been for some time and he could not imagine not having her presence nearby.

The phone rang.  He got up from the chair and answered it.

"Is this Senator Suplicy?" the voice asked.

"Yes, who's speaking please?"

"This is Major Santos of the Brazilian Air Force.  I have been trying to reach you for the last two or three hours, Senator."

"Yes, well what can I do for you, Major?  I am rather busy just now and I need to contact my children and tell them what has happened to their mother."

"I understand, sir.  Then you haven't heard the declaration on TV by Jaime Jackson, the Minister of Planning."

"Yes, I heard it on the radio in my car and I called the TV station and told them that I would be going to Brasília this evening."

"Well, it seems that no one really knows who is running the government and Minister Jackson has asked all federal legislators who were not in Brasília today to come to form a new cabinet.  We have a flight leaving from Guarulhos Airport tonight at 21:30 and I have been trying to contact people to get this flight.  I know that it must be difficult for you, but your needed in Brasília, sir."

"Yes, I understand, major.  I will be there."

"We can send a car to pick you up at your home.  Minister Jackson has declared a curfew so it would be better if we took you to the airport in an official vehicle.  We can have a car there within a half an hour if that is fine with you."

"Thank you, Major.  I'll be ready."

The senator hung up the phone and went to the bedroom to pack a suitcase.  He knew that he should contact his children but for the first time in his life he really didn’t know what he could say to them that would make them feel that the loss of their mother could be set aside.  He himself was not sure of how to deal with this and he realized that work was the only solution for the moment.

*        *        *

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[1] Filhos da puta: sons of bitches.

[2] FEBEM – Fundação de Bem Estar do Menor: the Foundation for the Well Being of Minors. This foundation worked basically as a reform school system throughout Brazil and was controlled by the state and municipal governments, and operated under the federal laws governing the criminal behavior of minors.

[3] Politicos: politicians

[4] Mato Grosso do Sul: a state in western Brazil.

[5] PCC – Premeiro Comando da Capital: The name of a criminal organization that operates with a headquarters inside Brazilian prisons with a large following outside the prisons. The group is responsible for drug trafficking, kidnapping and extortion.