He’d said it while he’d gathered up the crabs and tossed them into the center of the expensive pink beach towels she’d brought for them. She’d listened quietly. He told her he wanted her to leave Carlos, that he wanted to take her and the children away, maybe to Europe, that he could afford to take care of them, that he was doing something that would make it possible.

She’d sat there naked on the bench as the ocean’s current pushed them into the shade of the mangroves, where huge roots, big ones like claws, hooked into the water.

He told her he would do anything to have her, that he had to have her forever, and he promised to take good care of her. There was nothing else he wanted in the world but her, he said, both of them in shadows now. He spoke at the end standing up, looking at the crabs as they silently struggled inside the knotted towel. He looked into the mangroves, their black trunk-shapes a delicate and seemingly endless abstraction.

“Will you come with me? When I’m ready?” he asked. “That’s all I want to know.”

“I’m scared, Russell. I’m not brave,” she said. “I’m scared for the children. You know what he will be like if I leave him. You haven’t seen him when he’s angry.”

“I don’t give a fuck what he’s like,” he said. “This isn’t about Carlos.”

“He’s murdered people, Russell,” she said. “Near here. He’s taken people out and shot them. On the road to Tilapa.” She looked away into the swamp, where they said big jaguars lived and hunted at night. The people here said that they were the biggest jaguars in all Central America. Sometimes, people said, they would swim out to canoes and drag fishermen into the swamp.

“All right, he’s killed people,” Russell said. “Do you want your children living with a murderer?”

“I don’t know what I want. I want you, but I don’t know, Russell. I don’t know about taking the children from him; it seems so unfair, doesn’t it? He loves them. He’s a good father. And they have a place here. What will their place be with us?”

“I promise you, I’ll have plenty of money,” he said. “If that’s what you’re worried about.” He knew it was. He knew she didn’t want to live her life the way she had lived it before. She’d been poor, the child of a single working mother.

“It’s not the money, it’s their country. They’re Guatemalans. They speak Spanish. They don’t speak English that well, Russell. Do you understand? They’re not English children, not at all. I’m English, but they aren’t.”

“Then leave them,” he said, pulling at the motor. “We’ll have our own.” And he meant it.

He had let her come into his cabana only because she said she wanted to talk. But she’d gone into the bathroom, shut the door, and showered. He had sat on the bed waiting for her to finish, his sunglasses still on, nervous that she was again doing something she shouldn’t be. She shouldn’t be in here using his shower. The maids had looked at one another when they’d stopped to talk in the courtyard, handing off the crabs they’d caught to the cook. He heard the shower running and wondered what the hell he’d say if anyone came to the door looking for her.

“You’ve got to go,” he said when she came out. She had wrapped herself in a fresh white towel. “Now,” he said. “Please. I’m serious.”

“I can’t do it,” she said. “I can’t leave the children. Don’t ask me to do that. But you can’t ever leave me, either.”

“He’ll find out, Beatrice. Look at you, you’re in my room showering. The maids are talking. We made love today and could have been seen by anyone out there. He’ll kill me when he finds out. It’s only a matter of time.”

She walked to the cabana door and kicked it shut with her foot. It slammed shut. He went immediately to open it again, but she stopped him. She dropped the towel. Even then, afraid and angry, she still took his breath away.

“Stop it, Beatrice. They’re just outside,” he whispered.

“I can’t live without you. You don’t understand!” she said. “He can’t make love.”

“What?”

“Carlos. There’s something wrong with him lately.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know what it is.” There was a knock on the door.

“Señora?”

“Sí,” Beatrice said. “Sí, dígame, Carmen.” Russell recognized the children’s nanny’s voice on the other side of the door.

“Your cell phone, señora . . . the general’s mother,” the nanny said.

“Go get the phone and bring it here to me,” Beatrice said, calling to her. She bent down, picked up the towel and walked towards him. He had no idea what they were going to do now. She put the towel around both of them and held him. He felt his pants get wet from touching her.

“I want to marry you. Do you understand? I’m taking you away. I don’t care what you say.”

“All right,” she said. “All right . . . all right.”

TWENTY-THREE

He’d spent the afternoon in his room at Carlos Selva’s beach house, trying to put on paper the economic plan Madrid and the coup leaders could use for the privatization of key industries. After securing power, they would have to go to New York immediately to cajole the U.S. bankers to extend credit. They would have to convince Citibank and the rest of them that they could defend their currency if they sold off the national telephone company. The New York bankers, he knew, would be eager to get the investment banking fees from the privatization of the country’s utilities, and could be convinced to cooperate if the Madrid government persuaded them they were pro-capitalist. That was step one.

He couldn’t know what the American State Department would think of the coup, or what kind of response they would get. But because Madrid’s forces were all pro-business, it would be difficult for the Americans to denounce them publicly. After all, he reasoned, they would be doing what the World Bank and the IMF had been asking Latin American countries to do for decades: Open up their markets. The U.S. State Department, he calculated, couldn’t come out and say they supported right-wing generals over capitalist, free-market businessmen who promised to hold elections as soon as the “economic crisis” was over. The Americans would be forced to swallow the coup, he gambled.

Russell wouldn’t be going with them to Washington. He no longer had any interest in anything but Beatrice and the Red Jaguar. He would help Madrid and his party organize themselves, tell them what they needed to do, but that was all. He would take Beatrice out of the country as soon as they secured what treasure he and Mahler could. When Madrid took power, Russell would be in the jungle with Mahler. The confusion in the capital, he hoped, would allow them to get away with their treasure unnoticed. If Carlos were arrested, so much the better.

Was it why he’d suggested the coup? he wondered, stripping off his bathing suit. No. He’d been appalled by the idea of the devaluation. But he realized, turning on the shower, that the country would be too busy fighting with itself—at least for a few days—to be able to stop him and Mahler. He stepped into the shower and let the tepid water hit him. He tried to feel guilty about stealing the Red Jaguar, but couldn’t. The country owed him that much for taking his mother from him.

He saw that Beatrice had stupidly left her bikini bottom on the shower floor. He bent down to pick it up. As he bent to pick it up, he remembered something he’d read at university, something Sartre had said about Algeria. There comes a moment of boomerang when the oppressed become the violent, wild men the colonizers insisted they always were. Would his plan engender a great violence?

It was almost five o’clock in the evening when a maid tapped on his door saying that drinks would be served on the veranda. Russell closed up his computer and left his room. He could see guests coming from other houses down the beach, some of them on fat-wheeled motorcycles. He hadn’t expected it to be so pleasant, seeing his mother’s extended family, all of them excited that he’d come to the party. Several older women spoke to him about how wonderful and elegant his mother had been. Everyone reminded him that she’d owned the house they were standing in. They all spoke to him as if he had never left. He was accepted—this was his place, their expressions seemed to say.