“Right,” was all Russell had said. “Seventy dollars would do it, all right. Things would be much better.”

“We’ll get it by next January, when the harvest comes in. You watch. The Brazilians can’t keep dumping coffee into the market. You’ll see that you made the right decision, young man. You’re at three thousand feet here. That’s quality coffee,” the Frenchman said. “Don’t forget that.” Don Pinkie turned to look out the window at his wife and children out in the garden, saying their goodbyes to some of the workers. “I left Europe without a penny thirty years ago. I was a Legionnaire in Africa. . . .”

Don Pinkie’s wife, a tiny, attractive Frenchwoman, was much younger. Russell watched her walk to their old Willys Jeep with a box. She’d thanked him for allowing them to stay in the guest house while they made arrangements to move to one of their other plantations. Don Pinkie talked on nervously about the coffee market while his children played for the last time near the fountain the family had built in happier times. Russell listened respectfully while he watched the wife and one of her maids pack the car.

“Could you take our picture?” Don Pinkie said, finally standing up. “By the fountain. We liked this place the best. It was our home.” He seemed upset, but was trying to hide it.

“Of course,” Russell said, standing too. Russell and Don Pinkie went out on the veranda. Don Pinkie’s wife was crying. She was a pretty woman with red hair cut very short, in her early forties, Russell guessed, and her eyes were blue. She looked at them and said, laughing, that she’d been crying all morning. She’d kissed several of the workers goodbye one more time. The workers, mostly old men, had come to the big house and paid their respects, and she’d kissed the old men and embraced them. They had been embarrassed but moved by her gesture. They all embraced her and shook the Frenchman’s hand, and wished him luck there by the fountain.

Russell took the family’s picture. The Frenchman looked done in, he thought. He’d gotten older, it seemed. Mahler came out and stood on the veranda watching them.

“My wife says that you have a kind face and people like you always have good luck in business,” Don Pinkie said, taking the camera from him. They all walked back towards the family’s cramped jeep. The two children, boys, in short pants and white, well-pressed shirts like French schoolchildren, were gathered around their parents, looking sad. Their father took their picture again standing by the jeep. Years later, the boys would look at the photo and say that they’d been very happy there.

“I’ve let go of the administrator, so you’ll have to get someone if you’re going to be living in the capital. And there are only about ten families left working here. It was all I could afford. We didn’t bother to clean this year, or fertilize. I hope you can keep them on? Of course you have the right, according to the new employment laws, to. . . .”

“Yes… I’ll keep them on,” Russell said, and they’d shaken hands the way men sometimes do, earnestly, from the shoulder. The wife shook his hand too.

“And the ex-guerillas. They have the plantation next door,” Don Pinkie said as he opened the door to his jeep.

“I didn’t know that,” Russell said, surprised.

“I should have told you. I’m sorry. But they’re harmless. The government gave them the plantation as part of the peace settlement. I’ve been over to help them with technical advice.

They were very good neighbors, but they don’t know much about coffee. They won’t bother you, but I thought you should know. Goodbye then,” Don Pinkie said.

He and his family got in their jeep and drove away, the children very quiet in the end. Russell realized, after they left, that he had forgotten even to ask to see the office or the books.

He stood up now and looked at the girl. The fountain had brought it all back. He’d wanted to confess to the Frenchman that he had bought the place only to find the Red Jaguar and that he had no interest in the coffee, or the coffee business, but that had seemed cruel. He told himself he was taking an incredible gamble and that he shouldn’t feel guilty about paying good money for the place.

“Yes, of course,” he told the girl. “If you like. I need someone in the kitchen. What’s your name?”

“Gloria Cruz. Gracias Patron,” she said. The girl turned around and walked toward the house. He called to her and she stopped, her hair silken and so black on the yellow of her tattered dress, her breasts heavy against the fabric. She reminded him at that moment of a great painting.

“Gloria…? What do you want? Your salary?” he asked her. She looked at him a moment, nonplussed.

“I don’t know,” she said, smiling, and turned around. He let her go. He tossed out the rest of his now cold coffee on the ground. It made a dark spot on the sand, and he followed the girl to the house. She was born here, he thought. She was afraid he would send her away from the only thing she’d ever known. She just wanted to stay there. The idea of the city probably scared her to death.

“I’ve ordered two horses,” Mahler said. “I take you to where I want to start digging.”

“Fine,” he said. Gloria cleared away the breakfast dishes. They’d come back to the dining room, with its view of the fountain and gardens. Mahler flirted with the girl as she cleared up, asking her where she was born, about her mother and father, if she was married. Each question drew a girlish smile. Russell stayed out of it. Rather than be sexually attracted to the girl, he felt protective of her. He doubted Mahler felt the same way.

Mahler, shirtless, lit a cigarette. The wife of the Frenchman had put up new wallpaper in the breakfast room. It was bright yellow with white roses, very elegant.

“What are you looking for? I mean, it’s daunting isn’t it? So much jungle,” Russell asked. He watched his partner inhale and settle back.

“Hills, that’s what we look for,” Mahler said. “That’s what we look for. Clearings and then small hil… hills that don’t look right. Geo…logi…cally out of character.”

“Look, I’m no expert, God knows that, but I’ve been out here in the bush and I know you can’t see shit—much less clearings. There are no fucking clearings… How could there be?”

“You’re nervous. Since you came here. Re…Relax… I find the jaguar,” Mahler said, letting the smoke pour out of his nose.

“There’s a hundred and ten acres. Half of that Don Pinkie said was jungle. Never been planted with coffee and no roads into it. It’s virgin jungle,” Russell said.

“I said relax, old boy.”

“I’ll need more than that, old boy,” Russell said quickly.

“Water,” Mahler said, and winked at him.

“Water. And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“The Mayans worshipped water. They needed water to irrigate their crops and they didn’t build if there was no good source of water nearby. They were very smart people,” he said.

“And?”

“There are three rivers on this plantation, one is very small. What you call a. . . .”

“Creek,” Russell said.

“Yes. Creek.”

“That leaves two. One runs through the cafetales and is used for hydro power here. They would most probably ha…have found any ancient building site of size when they were putting in the coffee years ago. The workers would have been all over that river.

“Okay.”

“That leaves the other one. Rio Amargo. We look there,” Mahler said, flicking the ash off his cigarette. “It’s virginal, like that beautiful girl in the kitchen.”

“Okay. Sorry. It’s just—I’ve never owed $200,000 I can’t pay,” Russell said. “I have to make a payment next month. Twenty thousand dollars. I’ve got to pay it to Banco Industrial by the twentieth of the month. And I don’t have it. I don’t even have half of it.” The enormity of what he’d done hit him. He had no idea how he was going to raise the next payment.