Flight from Brazil

To be a successful writer, you have to have a little bit of the detective in you, and once I was back in my hotel room, that part of me came out in force.

The whole experience stunk to high heaven in my opinion. It wasn't like I'd accused anyone at the place of anything. I'd just asked to talk to somebody in charge. No legitimate business would have shut me down so fast, and it was especially odd that a simple receptionist had done it. She was there to greet the public, or at least, that's what receptionists are supposed to do.

It was obvious to me that she'd signaled the guard, and obvious that he wasn't in a mood to negotiate. There was something going on at Investimenta da JDD Sao Paulo, and it wasn't just investing like the name would indicate. I had the feeling that if I'd refused to leave I'd have ended up as one of those tourists who get "lost" in some South American country.

The other thing you have to do to be a successful writer is you can't give up just because someone tells you to stop. The situation I'd just experienced didn't make me want to go back to the US and find another subject for my novel. It made me want to know exactly what was going on at Investimenta da JDD Sao Paulo. I wasn't sure how I was going to find out, but I was going to try like hell to do so.

The hotel had internet access, so I opened my laptop, started my browser, and then typed in Investimenta da JDD Sao Paulo.

The search engine ground away for a couple seconds and then showed me three URL's. The first was the website of Investimenta da JDD Sao Paulo, and didn't tell me much. It was just a listing of the investment and banking services they offered along with a listing of the names of the CEO and CFO. The CEO's name was José Noronha. The CFO's name was Tristao Noronha.

The second URL was basically useless. It was just a review site with all very positive reviews. My suspicion was that this site was generated by the corporation because the home page had the same pictures as the corporate web site. I also found it unlikely that every customer had been completely satisfied. There would always be a few who thought they got screwed and were outspoken enough to tell other people.

The third URL was the website of a consulting firm located in NYC and had a listing of Brazilian investment firms they recommended to their clients. Investimenta da JDD Sao Paulo was there along with a short history of the corporation. That brief history told me some of what I wanted to know.

Investimenta da JDD Sao Paulo began in 1866 as Banco Blanco and was founded by William Abraham Daniels. In 1931, Banco Blanco was renamed as Investimenta da JDD Sao Paulo when Jefferson Davis Daniels, William Daniels' son, bought out several other banks and corporations that were bankrupted by the Great Depression.

The corporation now was into banking, investing, and several industries including mining and the manufacture of military equipment. It was also still owned by the Daniels family, with Jefferson Davis Daniels the third being the principle shareholder.

There was no doubt in my mind now that William Abraham Daniels had started Banco Blanco with at least some of that missing Confederate gold. I'd found out enough to make that at least plausible and I'd made up my mind that my novel was going to include that theory as fact. I'd change all the names, of course, but that was going to be my main plot.

I had two more things I needed to check out. One was the names of the manager and assistant manager of Investimenta da JDD Sao Paulo. I knew that in some countries, there are surnames that are very common, but I thought it was more than a coincidence that both the manager and assistant manager had the same surname.

The other thing I wanted to check out was where Jefferson Davis Daniels the Third lived. In my novel, I was going to write that William Abraham Daniels had bought a huge estate and built a mansion as soon as he arrived in Brazil. I wanted to see the current residence so I could write the description into my novel.

Answering the question about surnames was pretty easy. I'm a member of two genealogy sites. They come in handy when I'm trying to write about multiple generations of a family. While a generation is usually assumed to be about twenty years, at times in the past and in different countries, people didn't marry as young so a generation might be thirty or even forty years.

I just signed onto one of the sites and typed "Daniels" into the search field. Daniels is a pretty common name, so it took a while to find a genealogy that included a William Abraham Daniels, but I finally did. As I scrolled down through the generations, I found my answer.

William Abraham Daniels had one son he named Jefferson Davis Daniels. Jefferson Davis Daniels, the First, had one son he named after himself. Jefferson Davis Daniels, the Second. He had one son, Jefferson Daniels, the Third, and that son had two daughters, Elizabeth and Elaine. Elizabeth had married a Brazilian man named José Noronha, and her sister Elaine had married José's brother, Tristao Noronha. It looked to me as if Jefferson Davis Daniels the Third was keeping all control of his corporation in the family. It also probably looked better to any Brazilian investors if the corporation appeared to be run by Brazilians.

Finding the estate took me two days of searching the internet before I gave up and tried what had sometimes worked for me in the past. I had the girl at the hotel desk call me a cab with a driver who spoke English.

When I asked the driver to take me to where Jefferson Daniels lived, he gave me a funny look, and then said in broken English, "I know place you want go. Are sure you want go there?"

I said I was and off we went. Half an hour later, the driver stopped at a paved lane that led off the main highway and between two fields of coffee bushes.

"You get out now. I back Sao Paulo."

There was a wrought iron gate that blocked the lane and a white sign with red letters that read, "Propriedade Privada Manter Fora". A quick look at my Portuguese/English phrase book told me the sign said "Private Property Keep Out". I figured I had the right place.

I asked the driver if he would wait on me and he said he'd wait for half an hour if I paid him for the trip out and half the trip back. I paid him and said I'd be back in about twenty minutes.

The gate was there to keep out cars and trucks, but there was no actual fence so it was easy to just walk around it and then walk down the lane until I could see the house and other buildings.

The house was completely out of place in Brazil. It was one of those houses you go through on a tour of an old southern cotton plantation. There were white pillars that supported a roof over the cobblestone-paved drive that ran in a circle from the paved lane to the front door and then back to the drive. In the center was a round, stonework base with what looked like the same statue of General Robert E. Lee on his horse that I'd seen in Dallas. There were tall trees that had to be at least a hundred years old that shaded the house from the sun.

The house was huge. From the number of windows, I estimated it probably had at least a dozen bedrooms on the second floor. If it was like the surviving southern mansions I'd toured, the first floor would be an entryway that led to a living room, dining room, and parlor on one side and a ballroom on the other. The kitchen would be in back. It looked to me as if there were slave quarters behind the house and beside a large barn, though they looked to be unoccupied.

I took a couple of pictures with my cell phone to give me a view of the whole place and was starting to walk closer when someone grabbed my arm and pulled me into the coffee bushes. When I started to ask who the hell this person was and why they'd done what they did, a soft hand clapped over my mouth and a woman's voice whispered, "Don't talk. They'll have seen you by now, and we have to get out of here. Stay down and follow me."

It was only a couple of seconds later that the first burst of machine gun fire ripped through the coffee bushes where I'd been standing. I heard the definite zings of that one and the next burst and right after that, pieces of coffee bush hit me on the side of my face. The shooter hadn't figured out where we were because we were on our hands and knees and the coffee bushes hid us. He was just aiming in our general direction and hoping to hit us.

The woman stopped and raised up enough she could see over the coffee bushes, then turned to look at me.

"He's gone inside to get more men. We'll cut across the field instead of running down the row of bushes. We need to make it to the highway before they catch up."

She stood up then and started running on a diagonal through the rows of coffee bushes. I was right behind her until she dropped down again to watch the house. After a few seconds, she whispered, "There are three of them and they're starting down the row where we were running. We need to stay low until we get over that hill up ahead."

We started crawling again on the same diagonal away from the lane. When we topped the low hill, the woman stopped again. After looking for almost a minute, she whispered, "I can't see them so they can't see us and we're almost to the highway. Once we get there, we'll run to where I left my car and I'll take you back to Sao Paulo. They probably won't leave the estate to chase us, but you have to get out of Brazil as soon as you can. They will look for you and they will find you because they have your face on their surveillance video. When they find you, you will just disappear."

The woman's car was about half a mile from where we came out of the coffee field, and she didn't stop running until we got to it. The woman yelled at me to get inside, then got in the other side, started the engine, and spun the wheels when she drove off. She didn't slow down until we passed a road sign that said "Sao Paulo 10 km". When we passed by the gate to the estate I wasn't surprised to see that the cab had already left.

I still didn't know who the hell she was, how she got to me or why. Once she slowed down I asked her all those questions. She was still driving pretty fast, but she did give me some answers.

"My name is Felicia Mendez and I came to get you out of Brazil because you're in really serious trouble. I know of your visit to Investimenta da JDD Sao Paulo. We photographed you when you went in and when you came out. Our facial recognition software matched your picture to your Illinois driver's license photo, so I know who you are.

"It was pretty simple to find out your internet searches over the past few weeks. Since you're a writer I assume you think you're researching a new novel. What you're really doing is trying to get yourself killed. That's all you need to know about me and why I'm here.

"You have to leave Brazil as soon as you can. If you don't, Daniels' men will find you and when they do, you won't live long enough to write any more novels. Please believe me about this. I've seen it happen before."

What I figured was that Felicia was somehow involved in the intelligence gathering organization in Brazil. I wasn't sure what that organization was called, but every country has one and it would be pretty easy for them to find out about me once they had my name.

No matter what that organization was, Felicia seemed to be very serious so I believed her. When Felicia dropped me off at my hotel, I called the airport and booked the next flight for the US. Then I finished writing up my notes, such as they were, and packed my suitcase. I was confident that though I hadn't gotten the information I sought, the lack of that information was almost as good for the purpose of writing my novel. Once that was done, I emailed the photos I'd taken to my self, and then went down to have dinner.

It was about ten when there was a soft knock on my door. When I opened it, there stood Felicia with a frown on her face.

"She didn't say anything. She just pushed past me into the room. I closed the door and asked her what was going on. Felicia put her hands on my shoulders and squeezed hard.

"I know you've booked a flight for tomorrow, but that isn't going to be soon enough. There are two men downstairs and they're waiting for you. When you leave for the airport, they'll force you into a car and you'll never be seen again.

"They didn't see me before I saw them, so I turned around and walked back out of the building, and then came in through the service entrance. There was no one watching the stairs, so I took them to your floor. We have to leave the same way. I have a car waiting behind the hotel. Don't take anything except your passport and what you can carry in your pockets. I'll take care of anything else you need."

Five tense minutes later, I was sitting beside Felicia as she drove through the streets of Sao Paulo. When we passed a sign that said, "Aeroporto Internacional de São Paulo", she didn't take the turn. I said I thought we were going to the airport and she shook her head.

"There will be men waiting for you there too. By the time they figure out you're not in your apartment, we'll be half way to a cattle ranch about two hundred kilometers west of Sao Paulo.

"They won't know where we've gone, but they'll assume we must have gone to the airport in Rio. That's why we're driving west. We'll be safe at the cattle ranch tonight. Tomorrow we'll drive to another cattle ranch about four hundred kilometers further west. That ranch has a landing strip and I have a plane waiting for us."

We'd been driving for about an hour when Felicia whispered, "Damn", then asked me if I knew how to use a pistol.

It seemed like an odd question to ask, but then, the whole day had been pretty odd.

"Yes, I was in the US Army and did a tour in Iraq. I can handle an M-4 pretty well, and I played around a little with an AK. I know how to use a Beretta 92 and a 1911, but I'm not very good with either one much past ten yards. Why?"

"Because another car has been following us since they caught up to us about fifteen minutes ago. It may be just some farmer coming back from shopping in Sao Paulo, but that's not very usual for this time of night.

"Feel under your seat. There are two Taurus copies of the Beretta 92 with fifteen round magazines in carriers there and four loaded fifteen round magazines. Take them out and make sure both pistols are loaded with a round in the chamber.

"There is a turn-off about half a kilometer from here. If the other car turns off, we'll be OK. If it doesn't I'm going to slow down. If the other car slows down too, it means they don't really know if it's us or not and will follow us until we stop so they can make sure. If it keeps coming, it means they know it's us. They might take us somewhere and ask us some questions first, but in the end, we're going to wind up dead and dumped in the jungle someplace where we won't be found.

"If I stop, hand me one of the pistols, butt first with the safety off, and put two of the extra magazines in my lap, then get out and behind the door with the other pistol and the other two magazines. You'll be reasonably safe there unless you stand up because the doors are lined with armor plate.

"Don't fire until I do, but when that happens, aim for the windshield on the passenger side first. There will be at least three, maybe four, and we might kill them before they can get out. If they get out, they'll stay behind the doors so aim there. The bullets in these rounds are designed to go through a car door unless it's heavily armored. They'll have more recoil than you're used to, so be ready for that.

"Aim each shot and don't stop firing until I tell you or until you have one full magazine left. If they're not all dead by then, they'll probably at least be hit bad enough we can finish them off."

What Felicia had just told me was I, an American, was going to shoot Brazilian nationals in Brazil, and then shoot them again if they weren't dead. I was having visions of spending the rest of my life in a Brazilian prison, and I'd read somewhere that Brazilian prisons aren't nearly as nice as American prisons.

"I don't think I can do this, Felicia. If we're caught, I'll spend the rest of my life in prison down here."

Felicia reached over and squeezed my arm hard.

"Don't get soft on me if we have to do this. They wouldn't be. They'd kill you in a heartbeat and not think anything of it. Besides, there isn't much traffic on this highway, so it will be several days before they're found. There will be no witnesses and no evidence linking either of us to anything."

About then we passed the turn-off. I was watching in the right side rear view mirror and hoping the car would turn off. It didn't.

Felicia was watching too, and when the other car didn't turn off, she started slowing down. I was watching out the right side rear view mirror and hoping the other car would slow down. It did for a second or two, but then kept on coming.

Felicia kept slowing down until the other car was maybe five meters behind us. She shifted into neutral and slammed on the brakes then, and held out her hand for one of the pistols. I handed it to her, dropped two of the four extra magazines in her lap, and then grabbed my door handle. When the car stopped, I bailed out and ran behind the door just as a bullet crashed through the back window of our car.

From that position, I could see that the other vehicle wasn't a car. It was a Toyota SUV. A second later, I heard Felicia fire and then saw the left headlight on the SUV flare and then go dark. She hit the right headlight as I was aiming at the windshield of the SUV. My first shot and her third punched holes in the windshield and the SUV swerved off to the shoulder.

I couldn't aim at the windshield then, so I put three rounds through the right side front window and another three through the right side rear window. The SUV was still moving, but I could tell nobody was driving it because the engine was just idling and it was moving mostly from momentum. After a few meters, the car rolled off the shoulder and then stopped moving.

Felicia had stopped firing, so I had too. We waited almost five minutes to see if anyone inside the car was going to stir, but they didn't. In a quiet voice, Felicia said, "You stay here but keep your pistol aimed at the car. I'm going to go check to see who it is and if they're all dead. If you see anybody move, you shoot until they stop moving."

I saw the beam of a very bright flashlight shine on the windshield of the other car then. I hadn't seen Felicia take it with her, but she must have. She moved the beam of the flashlight to every window of the SUV and I followed the beam with the sights of my pistol.

When nothing happened, Felicia went through the same procedure I'd learned in Iraq. She kept her pistol pointed at the car and slowly walked around to the passenger side fender of the SUV. She was keeping herself out of my line of fire, but could still see inside the SUV through the windshield.

She checked both front seats and then the back seat before coming back to my side of the car.

"There are three of them and I know who they are. They are supposedly guards at Investimenta da JDD Sao Paulo, but in reality, they are part of Daniels' private army. We've been watching them for about a year.

"I think they're all dead, but we need to make sure. You open the doors one at a time while I watch for movement. If I see any, I'll take care of it."

By then, I was shaking like a leaf. It's funny how that happens. It happened to me in Iraq too. Knowing something was going to happen, like seeing women rush their children inside the houses when we walked through a village, always gave me the shakes. Once the first round was fired at us, the shakes would go away and all I did was watch for muzzle flashes and fire at that spot. Once the shooting stopped, I'd get the shakes again for a while.