The Well had been built in the shape of an inverted bell. It was sunk deep into the earth like a mine shaft. It was both sacred and profane: a place of blood sacrifices and the home of unknown gods, terrifying in their different guises. The gods were Monroe, St. Vincent, and his handpicked cadre of behavioral scientists, forensic psychiatrists, as well as experts in the art of persuasion. The blood sacrifices were the ones who never made it out of the Well, the terrorists captured, renditioned in blood-soaked fury, then disappeared. Interrogators were gods. Though their dominion was tiny, they were, in their way, very real masters of life and death.

None of this history Monroe told to Lucy as he guided her from room to room. Actually, “room” did not come close to describing the spaces inside the Well, which were designed to instill in the “visitor” a violent dislocation, disorientation, and, finally, vertigo, destroying the “visitor’s” equilibrium. The impossibly high metal walls leaned in or out, or both, with no logic or adherence to the tenets of architectural integrity. The curved spaces abruptly gave way to walls angled sometimes less than ninety degrees, sometimes more, never squared off. It was not only their vertiginous dimensions, but also the distinctive fug of the spaces, comprised of paranoia, despair, and terror. Though these viciously elicited emotions did not have scents per se, Lucy was well enough acquainted with all three to detect their presence in every square inch of the Well. Monroe led her like a docent at a museum, through spaces long and narrow, elliptical and triangular, all with floors that tilted one way or another. Their footsteps fell like hammers on an anvil, with dull, metallic echoes.

At last, they came to the waterfall, and stood before it. Lucy was silent, looking at the glittery glyph carved into the stone wall, visible now and again through the cascade of water.

“This is the Well,” Monroe said.

“Or as the Maya called it, a cenote. It’s where they disposed of the bodies of their sacrificial victims. The one at Chichen Itza is known as the Well of Souls.” Lucy glanced down. “You built this?”

“No, it was here, it’s natural. We built the Well around it.”

“Limestone. Probably been here for ages.” She craned her neck. “Like all cenotes this one seems very deep.”

“I understand you have a facility for killing.” Monroe said this as if he were pointing out a favorite sculpture of his.

Lucy looked up, glanced at him speculatively. “Is killing what’s required of me?”

Monroe nodded. “It may be. On occasion.” He eyed her. “Will that be a problem?”

“Hardly,” she said. “I’ve been aching to get my hands wet.”

“Grudges to settle.”

“Exactly.”

Monroe grinned. “A woman after my own heart. What do you drink?”

“Tequila, mezcal. Period.”

“Beautiful.” He put a hand lightly at the small of her back. “I know just the place.”