The Human Division #12: The Gentle Art of Cracking Heads Read Free

be part of Brazil’s United Nations mission, which was where she had been serving for six years before she took on the Clarke mission, where she murdered Liu Cong.
    Like all Brazilian foreignservice workers, Carvalho was questioned annually by her superiors about her associations and activities and also consented to be randomly “examined” (that is, followed and bugged) by the Brazilian intelligence services to make sure she wasn’t doing anything untoward. Aside from some questionable sexual liaisons—“questionable” in terms of taste in partners, not in terms of national security—therewas nothing out of the usual.
    Carvalho had no associations or friends outside of the foreign service community. The only trips she took were Christmastime visits to Belo Horizonte to spend the holidays with her parents. She took almost no time off except for two years prior to her death, when she was hospitalized for a case of viral meningitis; she spent four days in the hospital and then anothertwo weeks at home recovering. And then it was back to work for her.
    No pets.
    â€œThis woman is boring, ” Lowen said, out loud but to herself. The courier coughed noncommittally.
    An hour later the courier had left, file in hand, and Lowen was left with nothing but a feeling of unsatisfied irritation. She thought perhaps a drink might fix that, but a check of her fridge informed her that the onlything in that appliance was the dregs of some iced tea that she couldn’t recall making. Lowen grimaced at the fact that she was coming up with a blank concerning when she had made the tea, then grabbed the pitcher and poured it out into the sink. Then she left her Alexandria condo and walked the two blocks to the nearest well-lit suburban chain theme restaurant, sat at its central bar and orderedsomething large and fruity for no other reason than to counteract the taste of boring that Luiza Carvalho had left in her mouth.
    â€œThat’s a big drink,” someone said to her a few minutes later. She looked up from her drink to see a generically handsome-looking man standing a few feet from her at the bar.
    “The irony is that this is the small size,” Lowen said. “The large margarita here comes ina glass the size of a hot tub. It’s for when you’ve decided that alcohol poisoning is a way of life.”
    The blandly handsome man smiled at this and then cocked his head. “You look familiar,” he said.
    â€œTell me you have better pickup lines than that,” Lowen said.
    “I do,” the man said, “but I wasn’t trying to pick you up. You just look familiar.” He looked at her more closely and then snapped hisfingers. “That’s it,” he said. “You look like that doctor at the Brazilian consulate bombing.”
    â€œI get that a lot,” Lowen said.
    â€œI’m sure you do,” the man said. “But it couldn’t be you, could it. You’re here in D.C. and the consulate was in New York.”
    â€œSound logic,” Lowen said.
    â€œDo you have an identical twin?” the man asked, and then gestured at the bar stool next to Lowen. “Do you mind?”
    Lowen shrugged and made a whatever hand movement. The man sat. “I don’t have an identical twin, no,” she said. “No fraternal twin, either. I have one brother. I pray to God we don’t look the same.”
    â€œThen you could be that woman’s professional double,” the man said. “You could hire out for parties.”
    â€œI don’t think she’s that famous,” Lowen said.
    “Hey, she got a call from the president,” the mansaid. “When was the last time that happened to you?”
    â€œYou’d be surprised,” Lowen said.
    â€œCuba libre,” the man said to the bartender as she came up. He looked over to Lowen. “I’d offer to buy you a drink, but…”
    â€œOh, Lord, no,” Lowen said. “I’ll have to hire a taxi to get home after this thing, and I only