He tried to pull Olga off the body, but it was impossible. She struck out at him. Her grief intimidated him. After a moment, he gave up. He bent down by the corpse on the cold stone floor and said an “Our Father,” then crossed himself slowly and went to find the parish priest.

They called the Cardinal for instructions on what to do. Because of the lack of ambulances, they were forced to load the body in their car and take it to the undertakers. A doctor was called to perform an autopsy, only because Isabella’s brother insisted on it.

THIRTY-ONE

It was raining lightly. The downtown traffic was heavy at noontime. Katherine Barkley, her hair slightly wet from the rain, crossed a quiet tree-lined street a few blocks from the Hotel Camino Real. It was a neighborhood of elegant older homes, built when Guatemala was still one of a handful of countries producing all the world’s coffee.

She stopped in front of a large ranch-style house. The house, well off the street, was surrounded by a huge tropical garden. Katherine could see coconut palms and birds of paradise. A well dressed Guatemalan bodyguard was guarding the entrance.

Katherine gave the guard her name. He called someone inside the house on his cell phone, then pushed a button and the gate swung open. He smiled at her, but she didn’t notice.

She was frightened now, certain that Russell would be killed. She’d sounded a mayday at the embassy and called for the meeting as soon as she’d found out about Russell’s plan to assassinate Blanco.

She made her way through the lush garden to the front door of one of the CIA’s many safe houses in the capital. Colonel Oliver North had used the house; some of the embassy’s older CIA officers jokingly called the place “Ollie’s house.”

Iran-Contra, the Bay Of Pigs, the Contra wars—until today, Katherine’s role in history seemed very vague. She’d joined the CIA, like many of her generation, on the heels of 9/11. She’d intended to go to medical school, but had joined the agency in a fit of anger and patriotism instead, because she wanted to help her country fight terrorism. Until she’d fallen in love with Russell, she’d been a fast-rising star in the agency’s covert directorate.

That afternoon, her career seemed beside the point As she approached the safe house, everything suddenly was appallingly clear to her: It was a dirty world, and this was a dirty country. And now, she felt dirty too, for being part of it all.

She walked through the heavy front door and stood for a moment in the foyer, wondering what had happened to her after only three years in the agency. She’d been a naïve, fearless girl, and now she was something else altogether. Now she was afraid.

Crowley, the station head, was on a satellite phone. The other two men, much younger than Crowley, were sitting at a table. They glanced at her nervously as she came in, a thinly veiled suspicion in their expressions. How had she ended up here, in this room, she wondered, with men who didn’t care about her, in love with someone their cables referred to as the “unpredictable American?”

Crowley nodded to her as she entered. The satellite phone’s portable cone-shaped dish sat on the floor of the simple living room, pointing towards an open French window that looked out onto the garden. There was a patter of rain on the metal roof. The two younger officers with Crowley wore casual clothes, and sat at the dining room table just off the living room.

Crowley, in his sixties, was near retirement. He’d posed as an AID official all his career, and was the most innocuous-looking man Katherine had ever met. Quite small, almost tiny, Mr. Crowley, as he was called, was the last man in the world anyone would have thought could be an intelligence officer, much less Head of Station. He looked like a back office bank clerk. In fact he was very experienced, having started out as a young man in Vietnam and then Cambodia. Tonsured, his small bald head gleamed in the electric lights. Natty, he looked like one of those people who never allowed himself to get dirty. He wore golf clothes, but never golfed. It was rumored that he was bisexual. But looking at him now, Katherine didn’t think so. There was something too square, and far too cunning for him to be caught up in sordidness like that.

Still on the phone, Crowley came and sat at the head of the table and motioned for her to sit down next to him.

The CIA had been using this house since the 1950s. It was still filled with bamboo furniture and mid-century touches bought years before. Watercolor paintings of scenes from the highlands decorated the wall.

The house had served as the military command center during the Bay Of Pigs invasion. This was the very living room that old American Coffee Pete had worked from forty years earlier, coordinating the air support the Cuban invaders had expected. The planes that would have carried the day, waiting on an air base in Nicaragua, were grounded by Kennedy himself at the eleventh hour.

“Now I want you to tell us again about Cruz-Price and what he’s up to,” Crowley said, looking at her and smiling, settling into his chair. He put the phone down on the polished table. She realized that it could still be on and that others might be listening. She took a breath.

“Cruz-Price is part of a group that’s going to assassinate Blanco. They think that will incite a coup that will allow Antonio De La Madrid to seize power.” She tried her best to sound indifferent, to keep the emotion out of her voice. Crowley reached over and made a show of turning the phone off. “They’ll call back. You seem to have gotten everyone’s attention, dear.”

“And what do you think of young Cruz-Price and his band of merry men?” Crowley said after what seemed like an eternity. He’d been looking across the room, but suddenly turned and looked at her full on.

“I suppose they’re desperate,” she said quickly. She was frightened of him, and felt her heart start to race.

“Killing Blanco won’t make a difference, you know. Not a bit. Only make it easier for our man to take over. Selva. Eye of the storm and all that. He’ll rush in and bring stability to the chaos. Everyone wants a soldier at times like that, dear. No good at all killing Blanco, as far as that goes.”

“We could stop it . . . Blanco’s killing,” she said. She was sorry she’d said it, and wanted to pull the words back.

Crowley stared at her for a moment. Each time he’d called her dear she wanted to slap him.

“Dear. You know very well we aren’t allowed to interfere in the internal politics of sovereign nations. Isn’t that right?” He said in a fatuous tone, finally bothering to look down the table at the others. The phone rang and he reached for it.

“ . . .They’d like to speak to you,” Crowley said.

She took the phone from him. She told the head of the CIA’s Central America desk exactly what she’d learned about the plot against President Blanco. When she finished, she was told to put Crowley back on the line.

Katherine glanced at her watch. It was almost four o’clock. Blanco was scheduled to come to the penthouse at 6:00. She’d arranged everything the way Russell had asked her to. Then she’d come here. She wanted to save Russell’s life, and she still thought she could. She believed she’d done the right thing by telling Crowley. She didn’t care about the mission anymore; she was in love, and desperate to save him. She’d only mentioned Russell once during the phone call to Virginia, making a point of calling him “the American.”

“If they decide not to interfere, you’ll have to stay out of it,” Crowley said. “Up to a point, I suppose. We can’t legally help him, but we can support Cruz-Price. He might be useful in the future. You can always use someone like that.” Crowley looked at her evenly. It was obvious that he didn’t care about Blanco one way or the other. His murder would be a policy decision.