Russell turned and watched Katherine climb out of the car. The sunroof man’s foot hit her shoulder. He ran around the front of the Ford to help her. She was wiping her face with the back of her hand; she hadn’t said a word. She put her arms around him.

“What do we do now?” Mahler said from the car.

“I don’t know. I’m taking her up to the house.”

“We can’t just leave them here,” Mahler said. “What if their friends come looking for them?”

“I don’t know,” Russell said. He slung his shotgun over his shoulder and walked Katherine back up the road in the dark.

There was the sound of howler monkeys high in the canopy above their camp site. Mahler threw cold coffee on the fire, and it began to smoke. They sat in a jungle clearing, the air above them hazy, tinted blue by the smoke and the humidity.

Russell looked at Katherine. She had spoken very little since the death squad had come for her the night before. Mahler looked at her, and then smiled. The automatic he’d used the night before was stuck in the front of his jeans.

They’d taken the weapons from the dead men before they’d driven them and the Ford to the outskirts of Colomba and left them. They were better armed now. They’d found an M16 with a grenade launcher and several grenades, as well as the Steyr and the Kalashnikov with a hundred-round drum.

Russell looked up into the canopy, but there was no sky. And there was no sound now from the river, either. They knew what time of day it was only from the half-light that penetrated the greenish-blue canopy. He looked at his watch; it was six in the morning, and it was warm already. He pulled off his filthy T-shirt

“I would go back through Belize. That’s the way I’d do it. Rio Dulce, and then cross over to Belize. Then it’s easy. It’s lightly manned, that crossing,” Mahler told her. “You’ll be okay.”

“The airport is out of the question now. Maybe he’s right,” Russell said.

“If I leave, they win,” Katherine said. It was the first thing she’d said since they’d woken up and fixed breakfast. Mahler had been going on about the reach of the death squads and how they worked. He didn’t seem to care that he was scaring her. Katherine had just stared at him. She was grateful, Russell imagined, because Mahler had saved her life, but she was obviously horrified by Mahler’s insensitivity.

“Thank you for what you did. . . .” she said. She put her cup down on the ground. They’d brought cold coffee in a Thermos.

“I didn’t do it for you. I didn’t even know you were in the car. I thought it was Russell. I thought they’d come for him.” She nodded. “I couldn’t afford to see my partner leaving with a death squad just now,” Mahler said, cigarette smoke pouring out of his nose. “It wasn’t convenient.”

Russell stood up and walked to where they’d hobbled the horses. A jaguar had attacked one of the horses during the night, and its leg was scratched up. Five red claw marks ran along its rear flank. The red stood out in the early morning light. Russell had woken up and heard the commotion. By the time he and Mahler had lit a flashlight—Mahler firing his pistol in the air—the jaguar had gone, looking back at them once. It had been a very big male.

Everything on the ground smelled of rot. They were leading their horses back down the path that had been cut through the jungle down to the river. Russell could hear the river first; then suddenly the ground went soggy, and he was staring out at it through the tunnel they’d cut that first day.

Katherine was behind him and Mahler behind her, with the injured horse. They had left for the jungle late the evening before, deciding that the safest place was here in the bush. There would be hell to pay for killing those men, Russell thought, watching his horse drop its head and drink from the pewter-colored river. He swung up on the horse and rode out into the river. He saw the banks of the other side, bright green and higher, and overhead a strip of sky, soft-looking, marred by clouds. He felt safe here. Even if they came looking for them, it would be almost impossible to spot the hole they cut

in the bank that led back to their camp, he thought.

He made way for Katherine’s horse. She glanced at him.

“You can’t stay in Guatemala now,” he said almost automatically. “It’s suicide. They were going to murder you.”

“I didn’t know you were so chummy with her husband. What about you? Do you think Carlos isn’t going to find out about you and his wife?”

“That’s got nothing to do with this. You have to leave,” he said.

“How about I leave, if you do?” she said.

“Jesus Christ.”

“I’ll leave, if you come with me. You can’t stay with him.” She nodded toward Mahler. “He’s obviously crazy.”

Mahler came down the path with the injured horse. He was good with horses. The German seemed to have a special sympathy for them. They made way again; Mahler waded out into the river and bathed the horse’s injuries, then took out a topical antibiotic and spread it carefully over the horse’s deep scratches. The animal, sensing it was being helped, was still.

“Well, aren’t you going to ask what the hell we’re doing out here?” Mahler said. He stood up, capped the ointment, and shoved it into his army pants.

“It’s none of my business,” Katherine said defensively. “But I suppose it has something to do with antiquities. Bakta Halik is only over those mountains,” she said, “and I met you at Carl Van Diemen’s house. It’s not difficult to put it together.” Her horse brought its head up, its withers shaking. The sky— the bit they could see above the river—was already starting to cloud up.

Mahler looked at her and made a Jack Nicholson ain’t-thisall-grand face, and then looked at Russell.

“I don’t really give a damn. I mean, about whatever it is you’re doing out here,” she said quickly. “Stealing from the country, I suppose.” She shot a glance at Russell.

“Oh!!!! You see, Russell. . . . We’re stealing from the country!” Mahler’s voice boomed across the river and echoed back. STEALING FROM… STEALING FROM… STEALING. “Do you really think anyone in this rotten country gives one shit about what we might find? Do you think they would have found Tikal? Or any of it! They’re always too busy killing each other, or didn’t you notice last night?

“If it wasn’t for me, everything at Bakta Halik would have been carted away by the military and sold off. Everything! Who do you think went to the world press and stopped it? Huh?” Mahler yanked the injured horse around, its hooves clomping on the rocks. He came back out of the river, leading the horse, and faced her. “Let me tell you something. You’ve been here how long, a few months? Maybe a year? You don’t know anything about this country. Nothing,” he said angrily.

When it began to rain in the afternoon, they got only drips at first, then a kind of filtered dew-like rain, very soft, that clung to their skin and clothes. The floor of the jungle where they worked became a kind of insect-infested steam room, where even breathing was difficult. Russell looked back to where they’d brought the horses, far below him. They had climbed a hill where Mahler said he’d found something. There was a wall of green in front of them. The hill seemed especially overgrown. Mahler had said it might be something. So they’d begun, after a breakfast of cold tortillas and farmer’s cheese, to hack into the hillside.

Because of the heat, the three of them were working without their shirts on. Stripped to the waist, the sweat pouring off them, they hacked away. When it happened, they all heard it. Russell’s machete struck something. They heard the hard sound of steel on stone.

The machete handle vibrated in his hand. He pulled the blade back and saw where it had been bent. He thrust his hand into the wall of vines, and felt the damp stone.

“I found something,” was all Russell said. Mahler scrambled towards him, his long hair undone and wild.