At 6:30, Juba, freshly showered and dressed casually in slacks and sweater, ambled to the vast room to find Menendez by himself, reading a book in front of the fireplace. The room was a museum of images and objects from cowboy movies. Sculptures of wild animals, their muscles ripped in strain as they galloped or reared or fought. Massive paintings of the knights of the plains at full gallop across the sagebrush, dust a-rising, neckerchiefs a-fly. Buffalo and elk heads, all with massive spans of knurled, polished horn. Tapestries in tribal patterns, gaudy colors in zigzags like lightning bolts. Polished wooden tables of thick oak, wrought-iron lamps, two sofas and four massive chairs, all in burnished leather and swaddled in tribal blankets. It was a cowboy fantasyland.

“How nice of you to visit,” said Menendez, rising. “I understand why you must remain solitary—it’s for your concentration. You must shoot even more precisely than you did at Wichita, though that was breathtaking. But I appreciate, now that our relationship is ending, the pleasure this last time of your company. I know you do not drink, but perhaps just his once. It’s a very fine Spanish wine, Sierra Cantabria Teso La Manja Toro.”

He spoke so fast, Alberto had trouble keeping up.

Juba shook his head.

“No? That is fine. A man as hard as you can make no concessions to appetite, I understand. Your true test is upcoming. I feel mine has passed, with the elimination of the witness. It is time for me to relax for a bit. Soon, I will leave here—one cannot stay in any one place too long, alas—and go to houses perhaps in the Caribbean or the South of France or in Cancún. I have always said my true headquarters is, literally, my head—ha—and I can administer my responsibilities from anywhere, which is the one pleasure of the modern age and all its communications genius, though I do think, my friend, that you and I might have been better suited to an earlier age, you as a general, in silk caftan and turban, mighty scimitar in its sash, ready to go against the Crusaders at Acre or Tours or wherever, myself a king of Old Spain, as our humble peninsula achieved domination over the world, due to the guts of her conquistadors and her admirals.”

He seemed flushed tonight, a bit florid, pausing now to sip while Alberto caught up. Maybe he was tipsy. Maybe he was blotto. The fire crackled, sending flickers of light and shadow into the room, which, in any event, was lit from behind ochre shades so that the illumination everywhere was gold. He smiled. He drew his arm around Juba, pulling the sniper closer.