“So were you court-martialed?”

“No. The government was taking a lot of heat for still having troops in Vietnam, and the last thing they wanted was the press getting wind of a bunch of soldiers smuggling dope back to the US. Trust me, I wasn’t the only one who was caught. I was given a general discharge—which is the worst they can do without court-marshaling you—and told to keep quiet.”

“So how did you end up in South America?”

“Spent a few years back in Reno after I got out, but I found myself doing the same shit I did before I left. Had a friend who wanted to backpack through South America. Planned it all out, then he went and flaked at the last second. I went alone. Started in Peru, then ended up in Colombia. Got introduced to some folks, and next thing I know, I’m flying fifty kilos of cocaine to Miami every two weeks.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, stupid. Drug smuggling, illegal mining, archaeological looting—you name it, and I was doing it.”

“Archaeological looting?”

“Yeah, there are ruins all over South America. People pay big money for artifacts, statues, relics.”

“Is that how you ended up being Jonathan Roth’s fixer?”

“Don’t get me started on that asshole.”

“Yeah, my six minutes sitting next to him on the plane was pure torture.”

He laughed.

I asked, “How did you get mixed up with him?”

“Fifteen years ago, I met a Bolivian girl living in Colombia. First time I had to think about anybody but myself in my whole life. We moved back to her hometown, La Paz, and I went legit. Had to find a way to make money the old-fashioned way. Didn’t plan on becoming what they call a fixer, but because I knew the language and had a good idea of how bureaucracy worked in South America, people—Americans mostly—started coming to me to get things done. Bolivia is the poorest country in all of South America, but if you have money, there’s money to be made.”

“So when Roth needs a permit to look for Paititi, you’re the man for the job.”

Roth’s eyes twinkled. “You know about Paititi?”

“Just what the anthropologist told me on the plane. Which wasn’t a whole lot.” I didn’t share that our time was pharmaceutically cut short.

“I can’t tell you how many of these expeditions I’ve seen come through here.”

“All looking for Paititi?”

“Not Paititi,” he said, shaking his head. “Most of those searches have been in the jungles of eastern Peru. But there are tons of undiscovered ruins all over the place. In the jungle, you could be two feet from what could’ve been a city teaming with thousands of people four centuries ago and not even know it’s there.”

“Thank God for lidar.”

“Now you’re just showing off,” he said with a laugh.