“Fuck him. He would have made a lousy President,” Mahler said. “You brought my jeep?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a winch in the back. I hid it so that it wouldn’t be stolen. You can use that to drag it out of here. I want my cut. When you get it sold,” he said. He was sucking on his lip now because of the pain.

“Okay,” Russell said. “I’m meeting Carl’s brother at Puerto Barrios. Tomorrow.”

“Then you take the luggage rack off the top and you drag it on that,” Mahler said. He was a genius, it was true. Russell knew he would never have thought of that.

“That’s a good idea,” Russell said. “It might work.”

“Fucking right it is. How do you think I found the Red Jaguar? I want my cut,” Mahler said again. He was a little drunk now. “I found it, didn’t I?”

“Yes. You found it. And you’ll get your cut,” Russell said. He wasn’t smelling the leg so much now; the rain was blowing fresh air through the temple door.

“I’m smart, aren’t I?” Mahler asked.

“Yeah,” Russell said. “You’re smart.”

“Fucking right,” Mahler said, looking at him.

There was a shot; the bullet hit Mahler in the forehead. Mahler’s body twitched violently for a moment, as if he were trying to get up.

“Now, amigo, I don’t want to kill you, too. But I will,” Coffee Pete said. He was standing in the entrance of the temple, wearing a black rain poncho and a cowboy hat. His .45 was pointed at Russell.

“Now that’s what I call a stinking kraut,” Pete said. He walked over and gave Mahler’s chest a hard kick. “I heard that last part about dragging it. I just don’t know what the fuck you boys are up to. But I guess it’s in here. Right? What is it?”

Russell had been crouching very close to Mahler, his hand on the lamp. He could smell the acridness of the gun shot. Mahler was staring at him.

“Well, lift it up! The light, asshole, so I can see what you got in here!” Russell didn’t move. “Listen, kid, I don’t have a lot of time here. You got half the Guatemalan army out looking for that General, and they’ll get here sooner than later. So lift the motherfucking LAMP!”

“He was dying anyway,” Russell said finally. “You didn’t have to shoot him.”

“Yeah, well, I spared him the wait,” Pete said. “Now, amigo, lift the lamp.” Russell did what he asked. “That’s right; why don’t you stand up, too. Are you carrying a gun?”

“No,” Russell said.

“I bet you’re lying. Drop your pants. And take your shirt off,” Pete said. “Go on, don’t be bashful.” Russell put down the lamp and took off his shirt, then dropped his pants. “Okay. I hope that was as good for you as it was for me,” Pete said. “Now pick up the lamp.”

Russell didn’t say anything. He pulled his pants up and lifted the lamp as Pete asked.

“Jesus. Fuck me, boy. I got to see that a little better. Get closer. What is that down there?”

“What’s it look like,” Russell said. He had hoped Pete wouldn’t see it.

“Fucking giant pot of money, is what it looks like to me. That’s what you two have been up to, then?”

“That’s right,” Russell said.

“And what about the sack of money in the jeep? What’s that about?” Carlos had paid him for the Jaguar in cash and he’d brought the money with him. “I was going to leave with that, but then I saw the light up here. The girl at Tres Rios, she’d said something about digging out here, and I thought fuck it. I had to know what was up here. For all I knew, you two had found the fucking lost Dutchman mine,” Pete said.

“What girl?” Russell asked. He thought of throwing the lamp at him but he decided against it.

“The girl the kraut here tried to send to her maker a couple of days ago. See, I’ve been staying in the village next to Tres Rios since I met you. I started thinking about it. Why would anyone buy a coffee plantation nowadays? It didn’t make any sense. I started wondering what was going on. So I went back to the village and put my ear to the ground.

“That girl had to walk all the way out of here with buckshot in her ass, but she lived. I heard about it yesterday. Then today, I heard Selva had been kidnapped by a lot of exguerrillas when he landed at Tres Rios. You’re a busy motherfucker, kid, I’ll say that. I’m just guessing now, but I guess that’s the general’s money in the jeep. But it don’t matter to me whose it is now,” the old man said.

“You’re awfully quiet, Price. You must be trying to figure out how to kill me. I’m seventy years old, son, and there’s a lot of men that’s tried, and I’m still here. You best figure out another plan.”

“All right,” Russell said. “Help me get the Jaguar out to the asphalt and you can keep the money in the jeep.”

“How about you help me get the Jaguar out of here, and I don’t kill you. That’s what’s on the menu today. Take it or leave it.” The old man raised his pistol.

“I’ll take it,” Russell said.

“Good. I thought you might. You won’t mind if I don’t shake your hand,” Pete said. “I think that might not be such a good idea. Now, drag that dead motherfucker out of here, because he stinks.”

THIRTY-FOUR

Two jaguars had been watching Russell from the edge of the clearing. Sometimes they would move, but he knew they were jaguars and he knew there were two. Coffee Pete had left him chained to a ceiba tree. Pete hadn’t killed him, he said, because he liked him. He told Russell that the army might find him, or someone might happen along before he starved to death. The old man said he thought Russell had a fifty-fifty chance of living. He’d promised to let someone at Tres Rios know where Russell was, and then he’d driven off in Mahler’s jeep, dragging the Red Jaguar behind him, covered with a canvas. Russell thought that was two days ago.

The jaguars entered the clearing on the evening of the second day. Russell yelled something to try to scare them, and one of them had jumped in the air like an electric current had passed through it. It landed on the run and both animals tore into the jungle again, but he knew they would be back. It was only a matter of time.

His arms tied behind him, he looked up into the sky and saw the blue tint of afternoon. The huge limbs of the ceiba tree waved above him. He wanted to climb the tree, see the river, and see Beatrice again, but he knew he would probably never do any of those things, now. In sudden fury he struggled against the chain. Finally, exhausted, he stopped.

He dropped his head and searched the clearing for the jaguars. They’ll come back at full dark, he thought. They’ll come then, and I might not see them until. . . . He stopped thinking about that, because it terrified him. He closed his eyes.

No one ever believes they’re lost until it’s too late, he thought. No one finds that one important map that will make their life clear, the map that would show you where you really stand in the world.

He had been a fool. He knew that now, but it was too late to change anything. He’d tried to find one thing, just one thing, to make it all better. That’s all he’d done. Something to make him forget that life was the joke it was. Everyone searches for that one thing that will fix it all. A love affair, a coffee plantation. Something else that becomes a reason for living. Maybe you find it, and maybe you suffer as a result. He certainly had.

He opened his eyes and looked at the temple entrance on the cleared hillock above him. It was getting darker. The muddy track left by the dragging of the Red Jaguar was disappearing in the gray-green twilight.

He’d been lost in so many ways for so long that he was glad that he recognized the road before him now. He supposed that being alive, really alive, was allowing yourself to become completely lost. That was the irony. He would have liked to tell Beatrice that all his fear of being lost was gone now. He would have liked to have told her that. He wished she was there with him. They were two of a kind, she and he, he realized. He wondered if she’d gone to Barrios. He’d asked Coffee Pete to let him use his phone so he could tell her not to wait for him but to go on to Honduras—but Coffee Pete didn’t have a cell phone, and he’d destroyed Russell’s. He wondered what would happen to Beatrice and the children.