The maid walked by him and nodded. He took out a ten quetzal note and tipped the woman, and she left.

Katherine hadn’t said a word. He got up, went to the bar, and took out a beer. He didn’t know what she would do. If she said no, he knew he would probably die, because he would have to shoot Blanco in front of his bodyguards and the whole world. He poured himself the beer into a tall, elegant glass, went back and sat down on the couch. For a moment he just looked at the white head of beer in the glass. He wondered whether he had the balls to shoot Blanco in front of everyone.

Katherine sat on the edge of the couch, her knees together, her purse on the floor next to her.

He didn’t want to die now. He wanted to take Beatrice and leave the country and be happy, have a family with her. He wanted to have a daughter. He wanted to see her grow into a woman. He wanted to be an old man.

“What’s the world coming to?” she said. “Do you think killing people ever really works?”

“Yes. I do. What do you think the world would have been like if Hitler had been shot in 1936? Their side does it all the time. And that’s why they win all the time. You see, they aren’t like us, always wanting to be good. You can’t be good all the time. Not with them. They don’t respect anything but power. That’s all they respect,” Russell said.

“You’re sure he’s going to appoint Carlos?”

“Yes.”

“Do you really believe Madrid is any better? Really?”

“Yes, I do. He’s different. You know that. He’s modern.”

“Why do you believe him?”

“Because he believes that it’s time to stop listening to the embassy and to the IMF and to the whole lot of them. He wants to make the country independent and free and capitalist, and truly democratic. That means jobs and prosperity, and not just for the rich. It’s as simple as that. Now I have to have an answer,” he said. “Will you help me?”

She sat there across from him and didn’t answer for a long time.

“Yes. I’ll help you. Because Carlos is a monster. But not because I believe in Madrid, or any of them. I’ve learnt too much about the world. That’s the irony. That’s the truth. I’ve been a kind of liar. I don’t believe, not really. I mean, that people are good. I don’t know what I believe in. I’m completely lost. I love you. I believe in that. That’s all I believe in, and you don’t love me. So you see—nothing makes sense to me.”

“You’ll help me, then?” She nodded her head.

“We’ll change things for the better,” he said

“Will we? And the other side? Do you think they will let Madrid take power just like that?” He didn’t answer. “They’ll kill him later.”

He took Katherine to her room, then went out to the pool off the lobby and dialed Selva’s cell number.

“I’ve got the Red Jaguar,” Russell said. There was a long pause.

“Good. Where?”

“It’s big. Very big. So it’s worth millions, only God knows how much,” Russell said.

“What is it you want?” Selva asked.

“We need help in getting it out of the country.”

“All right,” Carlos said.

“We want to make you a partner.”

“I want fifty percent.”

“Fine. Blanco’s coming to the Camino Real to talk to the UN people. Why don’t you come with him? We’ll talk here.”

“Okay,” Carlos said. “Good work.”

•••

Spring 1988

The Cardinal had gotten a call from Isabella’s brother in Paris. They had been to school together. For a moment the cardinal thought that Roberto Cruz had called just to say hello, and was pleased. But then he heard the news of Isabella’s disappearance.

He promised to help. Olga came to his office and was made to wait. The Cardinal would not meet with her, but he assigned a young priest to drive her to the hospitals, where they made inquiries.

The young priest, also an Indian from the highlands, spoke to her in Quiché and Spanish. They went to the public hospital in the Cardinal’s brand new Chevy, with a driver. The young priest was sure they would find her mistress, he told Olga. Nothing escaped the knowledge of the church. Cardinal De La Tierra could move heaven and earth.

They searched the wards of the hospital, looking for people who were too ill to have given their names, or, for some reason, had been admitted without identification. They were all poor people, and Olga knew Isabella would not be there. She felt this with a certainty she couldn’t describe. It was unimaginable that her mistress could be here in these shabby, cold wards.

They tried the French hospital, which catered exclusively to the country’s wealthy. They were told that there were no Jane Does, and no Isabella Cruz had been admitted either. The difference in the two hospitals was striking. Olga insisted, in a show of pique and anger, on walking all the halls. She was allowed to only because the young priest used the Cardinal’s name. Olga had seen many of the people in this hospital pass through the apartment on the Reforma: young society women who’d just given birth, old men who’d known Isabella’s father and who were dying. Some recognized Olga and made inquiries. Olga answered politely that she was searching for her mistress. Several showed real concern.

The head of the air force, who’d been a good friend of Isabella’s mother and was dying from bladder cancer, said he would call his friend at X7, the Guatemalan equivalent of the CIA. He made a big show of it. He was in pain, but stayed on the phone, calling all afternoon to no avail. He died that evening, thinking of Isabella, about the day he first met her, how vivacious she was and how pretty. A military man all his life, he faced death well, but allowed himself to dream as he died of that afternoon on the plantation with Isabella’s father and mother, when he’d been young and strapping. He’d met his wife that day. He died happily in a morphine dream.

They stopped for lunch at a cheap restaurant near the cathedral. Olga ate with the priest at a small square wooden table. Neither one spoke. He paid for the lunch, and she thanked him. They went back to the Cardinal’s office and heard the news that a white woman’s body was being held in a church on the outskirts of the city near Antigua. They went off immediately. Olga knew that God had taken her mistress. The priest, seeing her suffering, said that there was no telling that her mistress was the one they’d found. Olga felt she was there. He tried to hold her hand, but she didn’t let him. She was mad at God. God was not fair or good. She was sure of that now.

The church near Antigua had steep stone steps. They walked quickly up them, passing the sitting Indians who’d come for market day. They entered the smoky anteroom littered with burning candles, then passed into the church itself. Afternoon light shone through the blue and yellow stained glass. Blue light fell on the empty crude wooden pews. Banks of candles lit the dark corners off the apse. There were many lit candles, as Ash Wednesday would be that week. Purple cloth had been draped over the saints.

The woman’s body had been left where it had first been laid down. The police, overwhelmed by the war, would not come. They had called an ambulance, but it had not come either. There were so many deaths from the war that the army had requisitioned all the ambulances.

Olga began to sob. The priest tried to stop her, but she rushed to the body in front of the altar. She threw back the cloth that had been laid over it and screamed, a horrible sound.

The young priest would never forget it. It was an angry scream, he thought, a scream from a person who had been cheated. The scream dented his faith in God. Men suffered so. He wondered for the first time why it had to be. Later, when the war became unbearable, and the killings crueler and crueler, he decided that God was not a benevolent God, but rather a distant cruel man with little love for his charges. He left the priesthood and became a doctor, studying in France on a scholarship. He came to believe science was the only real god. And even that god wasn’t benevolent, or even kind; at best, it was suitable.