Текст книги "Red Jungle"

Автор книги: Kent Harrington

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

TWENTY-SIX

Russell rang the bell on the landing. He remembered it from his childhood, a brass lion’s paw with a large motherof-pearl button. It was considered very modern when his great-grandfather had had it installed. He rang it twice.

He remembered very well coming up the stairs to the apartment with his mother. Sometimes they raced up the white marble steps together, more like brother and sister than mother and son. He realized, waiting for the door to open, that his mother had been just a girl then. He moved his finger off the button.

Olga answered the door. His aunt had sent Olga to take care of the family’s apartment, agreeing to take her back.

“Buenas tardes, Don Russell,” Olga said. She touched his arm as a sign of her affection for him, and her gratitude for what he’d done for her. She knew it was his doing that the family had taken her back and allowed her to resume her old duties.

He was shocked, but he didn’t pull his arm away. Instead, without knowing exactly why, he embraced her, then patted her on her shoulder, the one that scared people, the one that had been smashed under the tires of the truck on the road to the Cruz plantation. She had foolishly run after a cheap plastic ball; the truck driver had been drunk.

“The streets are dangerous now,” Olga said. “You have to be careful, Don Russell.” She smiled at him, showing her bad teeth.

“I hope my aunt called, Olga, and warned you I was coming?”

“Yes, Don Russell. I’ve cleaned your mother’s room, and everything is ready.”

He didn’t know what to say. No one but Olga seemed to mention his mother to him.

“Or you could have your uncle’s room, if you prefer?” she said.

“No. . . My mother’s room. Yes. That would be fine.” He’d told his aunt that he wanted to use the family’s apartment, without explaining why. He hadn’t intended to stay there, but wanted only to use it to meet Beatrice. He’d thought of the family’s apartment as safe – at least, safer than the Camino Real, or the Hilton where they’d been meeting.

Olga led him to his mother’s bedroom. The ceilings were high. The wallpaper hadn’t been changed since she’d died. It was yellow, with fleurs-de-lis. The room had big, beautiful French doors that opened out on to a narrow wrought iron balcony with a view of a statue of Ubico on a white marble horse.

Olga threw open the heavy curtains. The room smelled of wax and decay. He put his briefcase on the bed. Across the room was a blond bird’s-eye maple chest of drawers, with glass top and hair brushes.

He heard the bedroom door close behind him. He’d meant to tell Olga that he was going to meet a friend here, but she’d left. He turned back and walked to the chest of drawers, and looked at what were probably his mother’s hair brushes.

•••

1988

“Do you see, Mother, why I had to do it? I mean the Greek,” he said.

It was the last time he ever saw his mother. They were having lunch in Palo Alto. He had told her the whole story very calmly. He’d gone and put the pistol back with the others, and afterwards, when questioned about the incident, had denied everything. Even the police had come to the school, since the Greek’s father had insisted that they investigate.

But all the boys had backed Russell. No one—not one boy, not even the boy who had shared the Greek’s room—had said anything to the police. Russell had lied, telling the police he was asleep and hadn’t heard or seen anything.

But he told his mother everything that day at lunch. He wore his dress uniform, sky blue with a gold cord he’d gotten for academic achievement. His father had come to the lunch too, and he was sitting open-mouthed, not knowing what to say or do. His father thought that Russell was a criminal and probably insane, and that it was all Isabella’s fault. Now what would they do with him? (Later, he concluded it was the result of bad blood—those savages and outlaws Isabella was descended from.)

When they were walking back to his father’s car—his father still inside the restaurant, paying—Russell’s mother put her arm around him. They walked down the sidewalk alone together. The trees were shedding their leaves; the big wet golden leaves, with their dark spines, looked like etchings pressed into the sidewalk.

“You did the right thing, my love,” his mother said. “I know you’re a man now, and that’s all I ever wanted for you, to be a man. Someone who wasn’t afraid. Your great-grandfather was never afraid. That’s why he was a great man, and why we have what we have.” She said this last part proudly. “And my father was that way too. You have to be brave in this world.”

“Well, I’m not afraid, mother,” he said. “Not at all.” And he wasn’t, it was the truth. Later, though, he would have to go back and constantly redefine himself as fearless—pushing himself to risk everything, money or life, just to double-check, never satisfied with what he found. No proof of courage would ever be quite good enough.

“Well, it’s all settled then. Nothing to worry about,” she said.

“I love you,” he said. He didn’t get to say that like other kids did, but he said it now, holding her around the waist, because he considered himself a man now. At school, he never said it because he had no one to say it to. He never said it to his father, and his father never said it to him. It was true: they had, in the end, different blood. But he and his mother shared the same blood. Russell knew his father thought he was too much like his mother, too Latin, too “hot-blooded.” His father was a fool. Russell had known it from the moment he laid eyes on him.

“Mother, will we ever get a house here in the States? Maybe here in Palo Alto, and I could walk to school,” he said. But then his father caught up with them, and his mother never answered. His father was worried that she’d overtipped. He was always scolding her when she was spending her own money, as if he had the right to simply because he was a man.

•••

Russell touched the edge of one of his mother’s hairbrushes. He heard the doorbell ring, and turned away from the chest. He stopped for a moment and felt something odd pass over him, something that came to him in the sound of the bell, a loneliness finely defined, a longing that he’d pushed away until now. It was the feeling he had always considered a malaise, but now he finally realized what it was: it was the loneliness he had felt as a child. Was that what it had been all these years? Was it that sense of loss that had come to him so strongly when he came back here? Was it simply missing her? Was it just that this country reminded him of his true psychological circumstance, which had been so papered over back there in the States?

He realized, going to the door, inhaling the smells of the Cruz apartment, that he’d had an essential nature, and it had something to do with this country. Maybe his father had been right, always accusing him of being too much like his mother. As he walked down the hall and stopped in front of Olga, he knew that he would do whatever he could to help his mother’s country out of this crisis—it was what his mother would have wanted of him. All of his loneliness, his training and his education had been for a purpose. Finally, he saw his purpose and his destiny. He was a Cruz, and his mother’s son.

They sat in the living room. Russell watched Olga open the room’s curtains, filling the living room with a slanted pulverized light. Beatrice, not sure how to act around Olga, smiled, and Olga smiled back at her.

“My friend Beatrice Selva, Olga,” he said. Beatrice nodded. “Olga was my mother’s friend,” Russell said in Spanish. Olga smiled in a pleased way.

“Can I get you something, Don Russell, Doña Beatrice?” Olga asked.

“Coffee. Please,” Beatrice said. She’d come from playing tennis, and was wearing a brown velour track suit. Her hair was down. She looked like a college girl, not a wife and mother.

The wood floor creaked as Olga went towards the kitchen. As soon as they were alone, Beatrice fell into his arms and they kissed, going to the couch. It had been a week since they’d seen each other, and they let the kiss go on.

“Will she say anything?” Beatrice said finally.

“No. I don’t think so. She’s loyal to me. To our family. She was devoted to my mother,” he said. “I’ll ask her not to.”

“Good, then we can be as we really are.” Beatrice smiled and cuddled up in his arms. It was surprising, how small she felt. When they were making love, she felt bigger.

“I’m going to join the government,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I think I can help,” he said.

“But you’re an American.”

“Technically. Antonio is getting me my Guatemalan passport. They say I’m entitled to it, because of my mother. Then he’s announcing my joining the party. What’s so strange about that? You have two passports.”

She looked at him, her cheeks rosy from the tennis. She put her hand on his chest.

“I’m glad then, if it means you will stay here with me,” she said. “I worry that one day you’ll leave and not even tell me.” She smiled. “Would you leave me? Could you?”

“No. That’s what I want to talk to you about.” He heard Olga coming back. Beatrice moved slightly in his arms, but not much, so when Olga put the coffee tray in front of them, it was obvious to her what was going on.

Beatrice smiled at her and took a cup from the tray. Olga left them without saying anything.

“Was she shocked?” Beatrice asked when they heard the door close, holding the cup and saucer on her lap.

“I think so. She’s seen you on TV, I’m sure. She knows who you are.

“I want to marry you,” he said. “I want you to leave Carlos and come with me.” He’d been planning to tell her, and now he knew he had to, before the crisis got any worse. “I had to tell you now . . . there’s going to be a fight. I don’t think the crisis can be resolved peacefully.” He noticed the zipper of her running jacket was pulled down to where he could see the white of her bra.

“I don’t understand?” she said.

“There’s nothing to understand. I want you to leave Carlos. I don’t want to sneak around anymore. I want us to get married. This can’t go on the way it has been. Anyway, he’ll find out soon. People are already talking. It’s only a matter of time now.”

“He’ll kill you,” she said. She sat up straight, moving away from him.

“I don’t think so. Why? I’m not that important.”

“You don’t know him. He’s liable to kill us both.” She put her cup down.

“He’s not going to kill the mother of his children,” Russell said.

“He’s a monster,” she said.

“I love you. I know living here is out of the question. We’ll leave. I thought, New York. . . . I’ve planned it all. I’ll have money, too, if that’s what you’re worried about. I understand, if you are. I know what you expect. I mean, I’ll be able to take care of you. And the children, too . . . of course,” he said. “I promise you.” She looked at him. “I wouldn’t expect you to live . . . I mean, to leave this for something small.”

“I don’t care about money,” she said. “Is that what you think of me? That I married Carlos for his money?”

“Well . . . I do care. It’s important. Money, I mean. I don’t care why you married him. I could care less.”

“I could never take the children from him,” she said.

“They aren’t his property.”

“You’re a fool,” she said angrily, and got up and went to the window.

He knew it was going to be a shock, but he couldn’t go on the way things had been. He was in love with her, and he wanted a family. He wanted to have children with her, their children. He wanted to have a home, and he wanted to be her husband, not her lover. He wanted to take care of her.

The clouds broke. Bits of late afternoon sunlight hit her velour jacket and her hair that was so blonde.

“Look. I know it’s a shock, what I’m saying. But we haven’t exactly been discreet, not really. And you know . . . sometimes you don’t seem to care if he knows or not. It’s better my way,” he said.

“I’m not well,” she said. She turned from the window and looked at him.

“What do you mean?”

“Something’s wrong with me. My brain, the doctor says.” She came back from the window and sat down, her knees pressed together at the far end of the couch. “The doctor says that it’s the drugs I took. The ecstasy, when I was dancing. In London. There’s something that makes me impulsive. He says that there’s some kind of scarring, or something. I don’t know. I’m scared. I wanted to tell you. I went to someone in Miami, Carlos insisted. He said that there had to be something wrong with me . . . that I’d been acting strange.” She turned to look at him. “It’s true . . . I have been. I know that.”

“Everyone takes that drug. I’ve taken it. Countless times,” he said.

“Well, some people get this,” she said. She touched her head.

“I don’t care. I love you.”

“You shouldn’t.” She dove into his arms. “You shouldn’t—” she said.

He kissed her. She smelled of perfume and coffee. They held each other. He could hear the afternoon traffic outside on La Reforma.

“It doesn’t matter. At all,” he said.

“I can get better,” she said.

“Of course.”

“I know I can. I’m young.” He didn’t answer. “I want to be with you.” She stood up. “I want to be with you. Everything you want, I want,” she said. He looked toward the kitchen. “I want to be with you now.”

“All right. But Olga…”

“I don’t care about Olga,” she said. “Please.”

“I have to say something, even if it’s for her not to bother us,” he said.

“Well then, tell her a crazy English girl wants to sleep with you. Where’s the bedroom?”

He nodded down the hall. “The second door.”

She went down the hall, turned at the door, and held her hand out. He got up and turned towards the window. He could see a tank crawling down the avenue, cars trying to pull around it. He heard the phone ring. It was Beatrice’s cell phone. She’d left it on the table by her coffee cup.

“Don’t touch it,” he heard her say from the hallway. “Just come here.”

He knew it didn’t matter; the fact that she might be sick, or whatever, didn’t matter. He loved her. It was a simple love, really.

When he got to the bedroom, she was standing next to a pile of her clothes on the floor. He closed the door quickly, afraid Olga might see.

It rained again that afternoon, and more tanks came out on the street as General Blanco was preparing himself. He’d been in politics a long time and knew someone out there wanted him dead, he said to an aide as he watched the central plaza from the palace office. Three tanks stood guard. The traffic outside was lighter than usual.

“The thing about this country is, when it feels quiet, like this, that’s when things happen to you,” Blanco said. He picked up the phone, acutely aware of what had happened to one of his predecessors in this very palace. He was too old for this intrigue; he called Carlos Selva.

“Carlos? It’s Manuel Blanco. I’m stepping down. I’ve just appointed you President of the glorious republic, et cetera, et cetera. I wish you all the best in the upcoming election.

“By the way, the currency just collapsed in New York. Completely gone. You couldn’t buy a bus ride from the Miami airport with a million quetzales. The IMF said they won’t lend any more. Can I help you get your dollars out of the country? No, mine are already gone. Yesterday. Yes I’ll see you at the club Alemán. Why not. Squash? Why not? And a good lunch afterwards!” he laughed.

Blanco called his contact at the American embassy and told them he was retiring. They had expected it.

Carlos called Beatrice immediately after getting the news, but she couldn’t be found.

•••

Mahler shot the two men who had found it. Really, he thought as he ejected the round from his shotgun, he’d had no choice. He heard the parrots noisily cawing as they escaped through the jungle canopy, frightened by the shooting. He looked up into the enormity of sunlight and tree limbs; it was a beautiful green lace, with just the tiniest bits of blue showing here and there. A howler monkey chased across the tree tops above him. Tree limbs sagged violently under its weight.

He looked down at the two dead men, and then stepped forward to look at the head of the Red Jaguar. Gloria, the girl from Tres Rios who had fallen in love with him, came running from the campsite. Mahler had bought her jeans and a new shirt. She’d tied her hair back.

He turned, and could see her coming up the hillock towards the temple. He could see the smoke from their cooking fire. He was pleased with how much they had cleared. It had taken weeks, but they’d cleared a lot of jungle. He’d always liked the feeling of uncovering things, ever since he was a child in his parents’ garden and they’d given him a toy shovel and beach bucket.

He watched the girl run toward him. He felt for a shell in his jacket pocket. She was a good girl, and he loved the way she looked naked. And he knew she loved him. He liked Indian women; they were quiet. He’d spent so much time in the bush these last five years, they were the only women he knew anymore. This one running towards him was the prettiest he’d ever had.

He knelt down and wiped his brow. He’d been hacking nearby with a fat machete, caught in a daydream. He was back in Germany, teaching. The students were listening, and he was telling them that he was probably the greatest living expert on Mayan culture anywhere in the world.

Gloria was getting closer. He turned to look at the dead men.

They had yelled something, and he’d dropped his machete and come around to this side of the hill, the temple only partly uncovered. The two Indians he’d hired were standing looking at the jaguar’s red jade face, inside the temple where the jungle had invaded.

For a moment, no one had said a word. The electric light they’d rigged off a portable generator shone on the Jaguar’s partially uncovered face. Even though he believed he’d find it, Mahler had had his moments of doubts. Everyone had. But when they’d found the temple, he was sure the Red Jaguar was close.

“That’s it,” he said in German. He’d run to the men, and all three of them began clawing at the thing with their fingers. He told them in Spanish to be careful, his voice echoing against the stone walls. They worked frantically. In a few minutes they’d uncovered the left ear, then the whole jaw, then the entire face started to show through the vines. It was then, after he was sure it was the Red Jaguar, that Mahler stepped away from the two men, picked up the shotgun, and killed them.

Mahler looked back at the girl, who was standing where he’d stood when he’d first seen it. She said something in her native language. He answered her in Quiché, saying that it was the Jaguar and that the head was much bigger than he’d expected. He said then, in German, that it was at least ten tons. It was twice the size he’d expected. He had no idea how he would move it alone.

“I’ll have to use the horses to pull it out,” he said in English. “That’s the way to do it now. I’ll be alone, and how else can I do it?”

The girl turned to look at him, not understanding what he just said. She read his intent in his eyes. It was suddenly very clear to her that he was going to kill her, too. She instinctively turned and ran down the hillock towards the camp.

Mahler watched her run. He noticed she was barefoot. It didn’t matter, he thought, watching her. She was running towards the river, and he would catch her easily, he told himself. He watched her run in a desperate, almost falling way. She did fall, and when she got up, Mahler calmly trotted out of the temple and down the hillock. The temple entrance loomed behind him, its dark gray stones hit by the rain. He carried the shotgun over his shoulder casually.

He called Russell on his cell phone with the good news on the way back to camp from the river, where he’d caught up with the girl.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Russell raised himself on one elbow and glanced out the tall windows, their glass thick and blurry. It was raining violently. Cars sped through the downpour, their yellow headlights signaling late afternoon.

He turned and took his wristwatch from the nightstand. It was almost six. They’d both fallen asleep. It was the first time, he realized, that they’d felt safe enough to fall asleep together.

He sank back into the pillow. Beatrice was facing him, her face angelic. She had a girl’s face, something about it precious and cherubic, like a nineteenth-century print of an idealized young girl.

He had an important appointment that evening with the IMF country team. Antonio was to accompany him. But he didn’t want to get up. Somehow he felt that this was the last calm that he and Beatrice would know until he took her away.

He pulled up the sheet and looked at the ceiling. Lines in the plaster made odd-shaped countries, turning the ceiling into a map of some lost world. And if she was sick? he wondered. Disturbed. The idea frightened him, but it didn’t change the way he felt about her. After all, wasn’t he mad? He was planning to assassinate the president of the country.

He rolled over and held Beatrice. Her body was warm and delicious. He had no desire to leave her, but knew he had to.

It was he who had suggested, out of the blue, that someone put a bullet in Blanco and get it over with. It was just like the Greek when he’d been a kid. It was the obvious choice. Blanco was a murderous thug who stood in the way of progress. It had just come to him. Was it wrong? Antonio, Rudy Valladolid, everyone had stopped speaking and just stared at him. They could see he wasn’t joking.

“You sound very sure of yourself, young man,” Senator Rudy said after a long silence.

“I am,” he said. “I’m certain it’s what should be done. If you let Blanco appoint Carlos Selva president, it will be a catastrophe. He plans on doing everything the IMF suggests, and you’ll have another Argentina here. Selva would like nothing better than a return to war with the communists. That’s all he knows.” Everyone was looking at him; Russell didn’t know whether it meant that they agreed, or that they were afraid. Then it dawned on him why they were still staring.

“I’ll do it myself, if that’s what you’re asking,” Russell said. “I’m not afraid. It’s what you want, isn’t it? A solution, for God’s sake.”

“You know what that means?” Antonio said.

“You probably wouldn’t survive, boy,” Rudy said. “You must be suicidal.”

He supposed he lay in this very bed as a child. He wondered what his mother would think of what he was going to do. He would assassinate a dictator, and perhaps die in the process. Would she approve? Would she try to stop him? Would she tell him he didn’t have to risk his life? Would his great-grandfather, the great risk taker himself, be proud of him?

“What are you thinking about?” Beatrice said, looking at him.

“Where we’ll live once we leave this miserable country,” he said, lying. She moved her body completely against his.

“I fell asleep; it’s late,” she said.

“So did I.”

She reached for him. Her hand felt warm on his chest. “Do you really want me?” she asked. “To marry me?”

“Very much,” he said.

“I’m afraid.”

“So am I,” he said. “But you haven’t told me yes or no.”

“And if I say no?”

“Then I’ll become a priest. Or maybe a circus performer in Poland. . . . You have to, because we love each other,” he said, holding her.

“All right,” she said. “I can’t have you dancing with bears, or whatever they do . . . the circus people.” She lifted herself out of the blankets and kissed him. He felt her breasts press against his chest. “You tell me what to do, and I’ll do it,” she said.

They made love again. It was different than before. He felt safe. He was no longer afraid of losing her. She was going to be his.

He walked into the kitchen. It was dark now. The lights were on, and the room seemed very bright to him after the twilight of the bedroom. Olga was doing the ironing. She seemed to love the work, or at least get some peace out of it. When she’d been with him, she’d been very deliberate about it. She was standing on an old wooden box and using the old marble counter as an ironing board. The iron was a huge mid-century thing.

“Olga?” He continued to tie his tie. She looked up at him, her face slightly wet from the heat of the iron. “Olga, I . . . could I ask you a favor?”

“Of course, sir,” she said, concentrating on her work.

“I don’t want you to mention to anyone that Doña Beatrice was here with me today. Or that she was ever here.”

Olga smiled like a pixie.

“Why, señor.” She was teasing him. He was grateful and felt connected to the woman in a way he hadn’t before. Seeing her now, as she must have been with his mother, somehow made his mother’s memory more real to him. “The señora is very, very beautiful,” Olga said.

“Yes she is, Olga.”

“I’ve seen her in the newspapers,” Olga said. She touched her index finger to her tongue, then touched the bottom of the iron quickly. It hissed. “Beautiful, like your mother.”

Olga served them sandwiches in the dining room. It was an elegant room, with the original furniture. His uncle hadn’t gotten around to changing it before he’d left for Paris.

They spoke very little as they ate. Already Russell could see the fear in Beatrice’s face. She’d promised him something that she might not be able to carry out, he realized.

She brought her cell phone out from the living room.

“Carlos has called me six times,” she said, looking at the screen. “I hope it’s not the children. I shouldn’t have stayed so long.”

He watched her punch in her husband’s number. He put the cup down and listened. She stopped talking. A strange expression came over her face as she listened to Carlos.

“I can be there in half an hour,” she said finally. “Yes, of course. No. I’ll just drive myself. Don’t send anyone . . . I’m at the club Alemán and I don’t want a fuss. Besides, it would just take time.” She closed the phone. “He’s the bloody president,” she said, picking her things up from the couch.

“What?”

“Blanco’s just appointed Carlos president. Blanco’s leaving for Miami this weekend, and he’s appointed Carlos president until the election. I’ve got to go.” She picked her handbag up off the floor. “It’s impossible now. How can I leave him now? He’ll never give me a divorce now,” she said. “Not now.”

•••

“It’s so good to see you, Carlos,” Rudy Valladolid said. He was in his bathrobe. He’d been drinking a brandy, watching Larry King speak to Governor Connally’s widow about the Kennedy assassination.

Valladolid’s butler brought Carlos into the room and asked whether the general would care for anything.

“What would you like, Carlos? It’s late; how about a brandy?”

Carlos looked at the old man. The general was in uniform, and Valladolid realized that he wasn’t there on a social call.

“Please sit, Carlos. How is your mother, my dear sister? And your beautiful wife?”

“Oh, God, my mother won’t leave Miami now. I mean, with the news,” Carlos said. He smiled, finally, and sat down in one of the senator’s chairs.

Rudy didn’t sit down again. The room felt suddenly hot. He looked at the big screen TV, and at Larry King. He’d always wanted to meet Larry King and ask him how he could be so perfectly blasé about everything.

“Well, if you don’t mind, a scotch on the rocks then,” Carlos said. “Beatrice is fine; she’s in shock. I mean about the news.”

“Bring the general a scotch. The Glenlivet,” the senator told his butler. “Of course she is. We are all very proud of you.”

“Yes, I suppose so. My sister has got something on for the weekend at Puertos. Horse jumping. We’ll go, of course,” Carlos said. “President or not, she’ll kill me if I don’t come.”

“Of course,” Rudy said. He turned to look at his man, who looked worried. “Well, Manuel, go on. The president of the republic is thirsty.” The butler, after hesitating, turned and left the study.

“I’ve had him since he was a boy. Loves me like a father,” Rudy said. Carlos looked at him, his head slightly cocked to one side. Rudy put his cigar down on the large ashtray. He took the control to the TV and hit the mute button. “Do you like Larry King, Carlos?”

“Of course. Everyone loves Larry King . . . Rudy, I’m afraid there’s a situation,” Carlos said. “A delicate affair.”

“Congratulations, by the way. I’m jealous, of course.”

“Yes. I was as surprised as everyone.”

“I think Blanco has been ready to leave for months. He has so many interests abroad now.” Rudy sat down on the beautiful brown leather couch. He felt old, ancient in fact. He was slightly drunk; he really didn’t feel good any more unless he was slightly inebriated.

The trouble was that he’d never been able to click off his intellect, he thought, looking at Carlos. He’d known Carlos since Carlos was a child, and he’d never liked him. The problem with so many of his countrymen was that they had no conversation. Not really. They were talkative, but said absolutely nothing.

“Situation?” Rudy asked.

“I’m afraid so, uncle.”

“Well, there’s always a situation in this country, Carlos.”

“It seems the embassy thinks that there’s a plot against the government.”

“Really? That would be silly.”

“They seem to think that you’re in the middle of it.”

“Me?”

“Yes. I’m afraid so,” Carlos said.

“Oh, dear. Well, the Americans have very active imaginations, don’t they? I mean, they’re worried about everything these days. I hope they don’t think I’m al-Qaeda or something. I think we had an Arab in the family somewhere. No—a Persian, but then, they don’t count, do they?” He tried to smile, but Carlos wasn’t smiling now. The old senator allowed himself to realize what his intuition had told him the moment the general had walked into the room: you’re in trouble.

“They said that you had cooperated with them in the past. I was a little surprised by that, Rudy. I mean . . . given your attitudes.”

“Well, I have lent the embassy a hand once or twice,” Rudy said. “Of course, they always pay one for that.” The senator looked at Carlos in a level, all-business way.

“Yes. Well, they want to know who is plotting against the government. They said that they could make another arrangement with you.”

“Did they? They’re always so kind to me. Did they say what kind of arrangement?”

“A hundred thousand dollars.”