.

“Somewhere around here,” Hans said, swinging his flashlight beam from the dark tunnel in front of them toward the thick wall of vegetation on the right.

Geraldo acknowledged with a wordless grunt, pulled the truck onto the high grass bordering the rutted dirt road, and hit the brake.

Hans clambered down from the passenger’s seat and dis-appeared into the brush.

Twenty seconds later, he was back.

“Yeah, here,” he said, “on the other side of that big tree.”

“They’re all big trees,” Geraldo said.

“That one,” Hans said, shining his light up and down the trunk.

Gilda Caropreso hesitated for a moment, reluctant to leave the warmth of the cab. The others started opening doors and unloading equipment. Geraldo slung on his cam-era cases, freeing his hands for the heavier work ahead. Fernando produced a thermos bottle of hot coffee. They stood around for a while, leaning against the vehicles, blow-ing into their hands, waiting for dawn.

Then they set out to recover the body.

Frost coated the samambaia ferns like a sugar glaze. Nocturnal animals rustled in the darkness. Gilda’s breath came out in white clouds, spreading and vanishing in the windless air. Twice she heard gunshots punctuating the rum-ble of traffic on the nearby belt road. The temperature was two degrees below freezing. The location was a rain forest less than twenty kilometers from the largest city in the Southern Hemisphere. The jungle that surrounded them was as thick as any in the Amazon.

Yoshiro Tanaka looked down at his feet and grunted. His weight had carried him beyond a crust of ice and into a thick ooze of red mud. The little cop stepped onto firmer ground, bent over, and started scraping at the gooey mass with a handful of dead leaves from the forest floor.