Your own men, the mestizos, they're caught in the middle. Their hatreds are vertical-they hate up and down. You're not going to change all that just by taking a jungle girl for a mistress. Concentrate on your own enemy.

He wanted to make love, right away. She wasn't in the bedroom. He called, "Soledad?" She wasn't there. The phone rang, Mirko.

"We just got a fax from Garza in Medellin. One of his people got into a problem with one of Cabrera's people."

"What kind of a problem?"

"A shooting problem."

"Christ, I told Garza, no contact. What happened?"

"Garza's man thought Cabrera's man knew he was being followed, so Garza's man shot him."

"Idiot."

"A shooting, in Medellin, it's no big thing. They shot two judges there just last week. Who's going to miss a sicario?"

"Cabrera! That's who. Jesus. Look, tell Garza, ask Garza if there's some way of making it look like an unofficial DAS job. A police revenge shooting for the judges. Something."

"Good idea, Niño. I'll get on it."

"Mirko, don't use the fax. And tell Garza he shouldn't be using the fax for these kinds of communication."

"He used that code of his."

"Garza's code could be deciphered by a goat. A stupid goat. Use the scrambler. I paid a fucking fortune for it and no one uses it."

"It makes your voice sound like a maricon's, Niño."

"Mirko."

"Okay, Niño."

Things were falling apart; the center was not holding. The men are demanding whores; Garza's people have fired a shot that might turn out to be like Princip's at Sarajevo; and Mirko won't use essential security equipment because he thinks it makes him sound homosexual.

He called out, "Soledad!" Where the hell was she? He needed urgently to make love.

He found her in the solarium, sitting cross-legged on the rattan sofa. She was wearing an aikido outfit. It was loose above the belt and showed the soft brown valley between her breasts, thank God, as he approached, swelling.

Her coloring books were next to her. She looked up, surprised, reached for one of the books, put it over her lap.

"I love you," she said.

He knelt. She embraced him, took two fistfuls of hair and pulled him to her. There was something diversionary in this.

"What have you got there?"

She caught his tongue in mid-sentence with her teeth.

"Kthhhhh."

He tugged. She held. He pulled. She held. He pulled. Her teeth clicked hard as he got free. He tasted stickiness, salt, blood.

"Why do you bite me?"

"I love you."

"I love you. What are you hiding?"

"I love you."

"Show me."

"I love you."

"What are you doing with this? I told you. This is bad."

"I love you."

He was tempted to roll it up and give her a good swat with it.

"This"-he waved it in front of her angrily-"no!" He flung it across the room, pulled open her aikido suit and took her, roughly, joylessly, in truth, cruelly. He left her lying on her stomach on a bed of crumpled coloring books, looking back at him-there it was again, this time with the eyes open-the look of Gauguin's kanaka, Tehura. "The night is loud with demons, evil spirits and spirits of the dead… perhaps she took me, with my anguished face, for one of those legendary demons or specters, the Tupapaus, with pale lips and phosphorescent eyes, who fill the sleepless nights of her people."

"I love you," he said. She turned away. He picked the troublesome object off the floor and continued out the door.

25

It lay on his desk, still rolled up from being clenched in his fist, as if it were afraid to unfurl in his presence.

What garbage. But what did she see in it?-she who had never been beyond the mountains, to whom even relatively primitive Yenan was a metropolis. What was the fascination, for her, in Julio Iglesias, the transvestite Lupe Maldonado or ex-King Simeon of Bulgaria?

¡Mira! hadn't changed much since Papa banished it from the pantry. Except now bosoms were permitted. Indeed, bosoms had been making up for decades of strict catolicismo. They bounced and jiggled on almost every page. Advertisements in the back promised larger ones, but you had to go pick them up at clinics in Buenos Aires. Morgan Fairchild, Joan Collins-Macchu Chu Chu-Oprah Winfrey, Ann-Margret, Jane Fonda, Maria Shriver, Carmen Cremosa-ah, after the bosoms come the serious journalism. SORAYA KHASHOGGI: ADNAN ES INOCENTE. King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia Enjoy a Vacation in the Balearic Islands with Their In-Laws, Ex-King Constantine of Greece and Queen Anne Marie of Denmark. Oho. His Majesty water-skis. His Majesty falls. His Majesty gets up again. His Majesty enjoys a lunch of grilled sardines and octopus and afterward he will take a nap, as is his custom. Their Majesties are "concerned" about skin cancer. Aha. They use a sun block on their skin. Amazing. Stop the presses. The King and Queen are humans, like us. Just like we do. Her Majesty prefers it from a "tube instead of a jar." She is "rumored" not to like the "very greasy kind." Fascinating. And you would have thought just the opposite. An interview with Dolores Fontana, the astrologer. She says that Principe Felipe of Spain is secretly conducting a love affair with Duchess Fergie of York. It's his child Fergie is pregnant with. The English Queen "knows" about this and there is a plot in Buckingham Palace to say the child died at birth and to send it back secretly to Spain. The Pope knows about it. He's threatening to break diplomatic relations with England. Jupiter is aligning with Mercury, causing some problems for Virgo, and Capricorn is taking a shit on Aries. ZSA ZSA GABOR, JUZGADA POR ABOFETEAR A UN POLICIA. Ah, more bosoms. Good. We haven't had tits for at least four pages. Mother Teresa. A Turkish girl with no arms has had a vision of Mother Teresa, and Mother Teresa wants her to build a pedestrian overpass on the outskirts of Munich where she lost her arms after a car hit her. Senator Gallardo Visits with the American Billonario Charles Becker in Iquitos. He Is Flown from Lima in Becker's Private Jet to the Private Yacht and Back Again. Honestly, Gallardo, your country is falling apart and you're spreading your legs for a gringo with a big boat. Look at the two of you together. The billonario looks like he's screwed a few proles in his day too. Well, you two must have had a lot to talk about. How many people you've screwed between you?… Christ, "The Absinthe Drinker"!

"There's something about it. A boat like that, here. It's too out of context."

"He's a rich bastard," said Virgilio, looking through the magnifying glass. "Like Jota Erre."

"Who?"

"On Dallas."

"Dallas?"

"A program. It's… the men watch it sometimes."

"Gringo TV? They're watching gringo television, here, in Yenan?"

"Just sometimes. They're a little bored with the Chinese and Cuban films. They've seen them all a hundred times."

"Virgilio."

"I'll take care of it. Did you notice something in all the pictures?"

"What?"

"No girls."

"Maybe they're going to pick up girls in Tingo, Virgilio."

"They don't look rich. They look more like bodyguards to me. Especially this one. Bundy. And this one. He looks like he's been through the shit, eh?"

The ascots tied around the necks were wrong, somehow, like silk scarves on pit bulls. The names in the captions, Bundy, McNamara, Rostow, sounded familiar, and also wrong.

He put the magnifying glass over the Manet once again. He knew the original was in the Ny Carlsberg Glypotek, in Copenhagen. The Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris had an engraving. It was unlikely this was a fake. Rich bastards like this didn't usually go for fakes. He's got Dufys and Picassos in there, a Vlaminck, a Gainsborough, obviously real. So this-my God, it had to be authentic. There was something different about it, but the photo was too grainy to tell. He needed to call Bendinck, in Brussels.