He worried about the hotel room. He wanted it to be nice. He was worried Beatrice wouldn’t like it.

“He’ll see you now,” he heard Nesbitt say. Russell stood up automatically and followed the American down the hall.

Experience had taught Russell that interviews with very important people, very wealthy or powerful people, usually started in one of two ways. The interviewee was either distant and seigniorial, wanting to commit to barely anything—even a handshake seemed to compromise their stature. Or they were blustering, finger-jabbing types, trying to get you to reveal yourself first, so they could then lay down their defense.

De La Madrid’s barber was still working on him when Russell followed Nesbitt into the grand office. De La Madrid seemed chagrined about the snafu in communication. Russell decided to ignore the moment and pretend that he interviewed men getting their hair cut all the time.

They’d put a chair out in the middle of an enormous office where the barber was working. The would-be president was covered with a short blue nylon sheet. He was getting his neck shaved. The barber was using an old-fashioned straight razor. The barber was an older man who looked at Russell and immediately seemed to disapprove of him. The barber rested his razor in the air for a moment, then went back to work, deciding to ignore the interruption.

Nesbitt and Antonio spoke a minute about a call from the American Embassy that Antonio was to return as soon as he could. While they spoke, De La Madrid kept looking at Russell in a curious way, as if they’d met before and he was trying to place him.

They were suddenly alone except for the barber: two men with a secret. Madrid’s was a small one, probably to do with the embassy, Russell guessed. His was a big one: he was sleeping with De La Madrid’s opponent’s wife. Antonio divulged his right away.

“It’s the bloody US ambassador. She’s quite childish; if you don’t call her back within an hour, she thinks you are mad at her. I think she’s charming; hell of a golfer too. Some people are like that, too sensitive.” Madrid smiled. “I don’t dare go to a barber shop anymore; my bodyguards get very nervous.”

“I understand,” Russell said. The barber was cutting De La Madrid’s sideburns with one flick of his wrist.

“Well, are you one of those red meat Americans?” Madrid asked, joking. “But then, you couldn’t be. If you work for the Financial Times. They’re all. . . . What do the Americans call them? Brainiacs. Who eat salads.”

“Bookish, the English would say. And I eat meat,” Russell said.

The barber looked up. He was doing the other sideburn now and said in Spanish that Antonio wasn’t to move. “There have been two attempts on my life, Mr. Price, did you know that?”

“Yes. I read about them both. You were quite lucky.”

“No. It’s my bodyguards. I have the best. They are fearless. I think they actually enjoy the attempts because they get so damned bored standing around the rest of the time.” The barber smiled, and Russell realized the barber spoke English.

“You’d think they’d just pay off Nico here. He comes up and uses a straight razor and there’s no bodyguard in sight. Right, Nico? You could buy a place in Miami,” Antonio said.

“I don’t like Miami,” the barber said in English. “Too many fucking Latins. Now if they said New York, maybe I’d do it.”

They made small talk until the barber finished. By the time the barber finally left, Russell had decided that he liked Antonio. He was relaxed and affable. There seemed to be no particular agenda. Russell had thought De La Madrid would somehow disappoint him, and instead he found him charming and intelligent. Their conversation ranged from Greenspan to Tiger Woods’ sex life.

“And are you enjoying yourself? I mean, it’s not all work. Is it? Any girl friends? Latin women are on you gringos like flies at a barbecue,” Antonio said.

“An American girl,” he lied.

“What’s she like?”

“Altruistic. Anti-free trade, you know the type. Tall and charming,” Russell said.

“You know what I like about American women? They feel guilty when they cheat on their husbands. Really. Latin women don’t feel guilty. Everyone here is expected to have affairs and just keep it quiet. But American women, they really suffer . . . I should know.” He chuckled. “Is she intelligent?”

They went to a wall of couches and a panoramic view of the city and sat down.

“Yes,” Russell said. “She wants to save the world. I think she just might. Someone should, I suppose. It’s long overdue.”

“Those young NGO girls that come here have the energy of twenty men,” Antonio said.

They looked at each other for a moment. Russell was about to make light of his remark, but caught Antonio studying him again in that strange way.

“Would you like to help me save the world, Mr. Price? Save Guatemala from itself?” Antonio said unexpectedly.

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m running for the presidency of the country.”

“I know that. I think most of the world does by now,” Russell said. “You’ve done a good job getting name recognition.”

“I’ve hired a PR firm in New York.”

“That’s where you got Nesbitt, I suppose?”

“Nesbitt is a fool,” Antonio said. “He’s no good for what’s coming.”

“I don’t understand?”

“War.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Elections are wars in Latin America, Mr. Price. It’s the way it’s always been. The difference is that I actually want to do something for the country. I want to drag it out of the dark ages and make it run like it should have been run from the very beginning.”

“I’m a little lost,” Russell said.

“No, you aren’t. You know exactly what I mean. I need your help. I need the support of all the important decision-making papers in Europe and America. You write for one of the most important. I need your help. I need you to support me. That dumb thug that’s running against me is a danger to the country. The military here are bought and sold like so many cows. I want you to help me win. What do you say? I read your editorial concerning the privatization option. I was very impressed with your ideas.”

“I’m a journalist,” Russell said. “Not a politician.”

“Don’t pull that objective crap with me. I’ve looked into you, Mr. Price; we are very similar. Anyway, none of you journalists are really objective. You all have your agendas. It just so happens that you and I share one. I want to bring financial stability and prosperity to millions of people who have known nothing but war and corruption for almost a hundred years. Are you going to help me do that or not?”

Russell had taken out his neatly typed list of questions. He had his pen in his hand, and he opened it. For some reason he thought of Flora, his secretary, the way she’d come to his office so lost, looking for a job. He thought about the hundreds of thousands of peasants that every day were being thrown off the land because coffee prices had crashed and plantation owners were turning their plantations over to the banks. No one knew how those people were going to eat. There were no jobs in the cities; the maquiladoras were all shutting down and moving to China and Vietnam, where they paid half of the miserable wage they paid here. He, better than most, knew the extent of the crisis and its aftermath of misery.

“I’d like to ask you these questions, if I could, about the crisis,” he said calmly.

“But you’re on my side? I can tell. If you weren’t, you’d be giving me the asinine speech about objectivity, and the Fourth Estate, or some other plate of bollocks,” Antonio said.

Russell didn’t answer, but he knew that he was going to help him. By the time they’d worked their way through his questions, he knew that De La Madrid probably could, with a little luck, and help from people like him, get the country going in the right direction, and avoid becoming an Argentina. There wasn’t much time; the forces of economic chaos, both men agreed, were moving in on the country in a hurry.