After a moment, the doorman approached the car and leaned into the passenger door and said something to the driver, who responded with explosive rage. The doorman spoke again, gesturing imploringly toward the area in front of the car. After another minute, the driver let the car roll forward at its own length, clearing the space in front of the entrance.

Merrill moved back from the telephone booth, away from the hotel. He was thinking that the older man could be Ruiz, but if Ruiz was going to reveal something about his intent, Merrill wanted his own opportunity to see it. Merrill was a half-block down the street, twenty feet from the corner, when two jeeps full of baby-faced soldiers pulled up to the hotel, behind the BMW. Assembling in double file, but without wasting a second, all but two of the soldiers trooped double time into the hotel.

Merrill stared at the door like a hypnotized chicken until he was distracted by one of the two on the sidewalk pointing in his direction. No, at him! The other headed into the hotel as the first yelled at Merrill in Spanish. Merrill did not have to know the language to understand that the soldier was not a friend. Merrill backed up.

The soldier raised an AK-47. Out of the entrance came the older man and his younger partner in time for the older man to push the barrel of the AK-47 into the air as it went off and for the younger to punch the soldier hard enough in the kidney to drop him to the sidewalk and then kick him viciously in the ribs.

People began to run, women screaming. The older man hurried awkwardly to the BMW and Merrill turned to get going. Men were shouting. The car tore away from the curb. The corner was ten feet in front of him. Bullets stitched a sign above a darkened tobacco shop as the BMW pulled alongside him, bouncing on the curb, and the rear door opened and the old man huffed, “Get in! I’m Ruiz!” as Merrill glanced back at the soldiers aiming their rifles at them. He pushed into the back seat as the driver stomped the accelerator and the man in the front passenger seat tossed a dark, fist-sized object out of the car behind them.

More bullets tore into the soft stucco wall of the building in front of them as the car turned the corner and the intersection lit up with a sudden explosive roar, glass shattering, people screaming, and alarms sounding in shops all along the street.

“Senor Merrill,” Ruiz said amiably, extending his hand.

“Why are they shooting at me?”

Ruiz shrugged. “They work for Chino.”

They were pushing through an intersection, weaving through noisy cross traffic. “Is this well-known?”

“Believe me, everyone knows. Including your nitwits in Washington, whether they want to admit it or not.”

“Do you know an American consular official named Cody?”