The men—Vargas, young Emil Draga, Luz, the rest—climbed into the two sedans and Cielo watched them draw away. Beside him Julio hoicked and spat. “The old man is worked up.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“He’s angry, I mean.”

Cielo opened the car door and noticed approvingly that the interior dome light didn’t go on. Disconnected. Julio was good at that sort of detail.

The money was heavy. There was so much of it in the back of the station wagon that the car bottomed on the ruts. Julio drove very slowly and without lights until they got onto the paved surface. Then he turned it east, built up the speed and switched on the headlamps in a hollow. The Michelins hissed metallically.

Cielo leaned back against the headrest and rolled his head to the left to watch his brother’s profile. Julio just now was possessed of a sort of Wagnerian sadness. It meant very little; in a moment he might be bursting with laughter. Cielo watched him squint against the oncoming headlights of a truck. Julio had skin like rough concrete, large greasy pores on his nose, a drooping mustache like a Mexican bandit’s. He’d gone mostly bald; there was a black monk’s fringe around the back of his head. He was two years Cielo’s senior but had always deferred to Cielo’s intellect, even when they were children.

“How did the old man’s grandson behave?”

“He went wild once—killing the American boy.”

“Perhaps it was for the best.” Abruptly Julio glanced at him and smiled. He had a very good smile: It changed his face radically, surprising strangers, often changing their minds about his character. “Is it really that much money?”

“We counted it.”

“Dios. Hard to believe.”

“It’s not as if it’s ours to piddle with.”

“No. Not yet, anyway.”

Julio wrenched the wheel and a battered car shot past on the left, going too fast for the curves. “Christ. Puerto Ricans make the worst drivers in the world. It’s a wonder they’re not all dead.”

Cielo had been watching the overtaking car but it shot on out of sight and he relaxed. He was thinking how ironic it would be to be hijacked here on the highway by petty robbers. What a surprise they’d get when they went into the back of the wagon.

Every security precaution was laid on, no matter how redundant. Julio drove clear into Rio Piedras and eased the wagon into the down ramp of an office building’s garage; stopped at the automatic lift-bar, extracted the computer ticket from the machine, waited for the bar to rise, drove in and parked in a vacant slot. Then Cielo waited by the wagon, a bit unnerved, while his brother walked among the parked cars in the dim silent cavern and disappeared beyond a thick pillar. Shortly thereafter a four-door Mercedes slid forward through the gloom and stopped in the aisle just behind the parked wagon. Julio unlocked the trunk, throwing the lid open. They had a look around to make sure they were unobserved; then with a good deal of grunting and whooshing they transferred the money sacks into the trunk of the Mercedes. It made a tight squeeze and the sedan went right down on its springs. Julio slammed the trunk lid, tested it and grinned. They drove out of the garage at dawn, paying at the booth, merging into the light early traffic. They ran westward, retracing their route as far as the Dorado turnoff; Julio turned toward the sea, driving with one eye on the mirror. No one followed. Julio said, “No trouble besides the American boy?”

“One of the Marines wanted to be difficult. We had to keep reins on him. But he wasn’t hurt. I’m amazed how well it all went. I mean, one or two got dysentery—that’s unavoidable. I don’t like to think about how their families suffered. But it’s over now, for them.”

Cielo picked at a fingernail, squinting through the windshield. Everything was murky in the half light. A tentative drizzle misted the glass. They drove through the palm forest and up past the private airfield and the entrance to the Dorado Beach resort; on along a rutted dirt side track, several miles looping toward the cliffs—undergrowth scratched the sides of the car and Julio said, “Maybe someone forgot something, left a clue behind. We won’t know that for a while. The old man’s plans remind me of those guaranteed roulette systems, you know? The roulette wheel never heard of them.… I’m just nervous, pay me no attention. The boy shouldn’t have died, but …”

“No,” Cielo agreed, “the boy shouldn’t have died. We’ll all do some time in Purgatory for that.”

“But tactically it may have been right.”

“Maybe we should tell the old man to his face that he’s dreaming.”

“We can’t do that.”

Cielo changed the subject. “Have you seen Soledad?”

“No, I told you, I just got in from Mexico. I did talk to her on the telephone. She’s anxious about you. I told her you’d see her today.”

“I wonder if Elena got rid of her cold.”

“You’d better stop in town and buy presents for them.”

“You’re right, I’ll do that. Thanks.”

“I know,” Julio said. “You’ve had a lot on your mind.”

The gate guard recognized the car of course but it didn’t cause him visibly to relax; he wasn’t paid to take things for granted. Julio rolled the window down and the guard stooped to search their faces. No words were exchanged. The guard merely retreated to his post out of the rain. There was the noise of electric motors, gears gnashing; the iron gates swung open with stately slow ease and Julio steered the stocky car through them, up the winding drive amid oleanders and bougainvillea, palms and cacti, the oversized rock garden that served, as if by coincidence, to screen the house from the view of anyone on the landward side of it. A man in a gray uniform and black Sam Browne was walking two Dobermans on leashes. He watched the car go by and dipped his head an inch and a half to Julio, who said, “You’d think the old man was already in Batista’s palace.”

“He never will be,” Cielo said.

“You think we should tell him that, don’t you.”

“Somebody ought to.”

“He wouldn’t listen.”

Cielo got out of the car and looked up at the house. It wasn’t excessive or even prepossessing; whitewashed stucco, curved red tiles on the low roof.

The old man came out to meet them. Julio opened the deck lid and the three of them contemplated the money. The old man opened one of the sacks and fingered a few banknotes. Then his eyes flicked at Cielo like a lizard’s tongue. “Well done.” Then he turned away—he’d seen money before, “Come inside. Have you had breakfast?”

They ate on the terrace overlooking the sea. The veranda roof and the screen kept the rain out. The breakfast came in courses; with rigid Old World courtesy the old man refrained from discussing affairs of importance until the dishes had been cleared away and the second coffees served.

The old man, Jorge Felipe Vandermeer Draga-Ruiz, was a sly figure, full of calculation and insinuation. He was gaunt and had once been quite tall; now he stooped. The backs of his hands were flecked with cyanotic age spots and his flesh hung a little loose. His hair was a bit thin but hadn’t receded and he kept it dyed black. He had a ropy chicken neck and a querulous way of thrusting his jaw forward and chewing on his teeth. An engaging grin and an archaic manner of gallantry; pride, and a capacity for cruelty, and the vanity of polished shoes and good clothes and cared-for fingernails.

“It was Emil who disrupted the plan? Tell me the truth.”

“It was Emil.”

The old man snarled. “What, have the termites got at his brain?”

A woman with a well-developed mustache came out of the house with a pot of coffee and warmed their cups. Cielo had never seen her before; the old man had a staff as big as a hotel’s. Three quarters of the house was underground, buried back in the cliff, and there were coach houses and servants’ quarters scattered around the property—the place was like an iceberg, you didn’t see much but there was a lot of it.