The radio reports of the sudden tropical storm into which the freighter was heading caused the captain to order a change of course. “We’ll miss both Rio and Santos,” he told the mate. “And also the worst of the storm.” This news made little difference to the four passengers, but to the dining room steward who was traveling under a false passport it came as a sickening shock. If he could not jump ship in Rio the next day as he had intended, the fortune that waited him there would be lost... Captain Jose Da Silva of the Brazilian police unfortunately knew nothing of the steward and his problem; it might have helped him solve an equally urgent problem of his own, one which Wilson, the American Embassy’s Security Officer, became aware of when he discovered that his friend was carrying a gun. “For the next week or so,” Da Silva explained, “the entire department is under orders to be constantly armed.” Delegates from all the countries of the Americas — Ambassadors, Foreign Ministers, Secretaries of State — were converging on Rio for the meetings of the Organization of American States. And Da Silva expected trouble. If the warning in the anonymous letter he had received was true, one event on the forthcoming agenda would be — an assassination. And Da Silva hadn’t the faintest clue as to the identity of the killer or where or when he would strike. “It’s amazing,” he told Wilson, “how many alleys, and windows and doorways and rooftops there are in a city of this size. You don’t really give it much thought until you have the job of making sure that none of them are dangerous.”