Don Chan walked into the president‘s palace, raising his leather briefcase as if he was carrying an important foreign message that needed to be delivered to the president at once. The older man behind the desk called out to him. Don Chan nodded in recognition and walked up the two flights of stairs and onto the crimson rug that softened his steps, making his entrance a silent one.

—Those guards thought I was the president of Japan, Don Chan said in a whisper so that the crowd in Los Llanos would lean into the fire and listen to every detail he fed them.

—How about the ambassador of China? one man said.

—Or the owner of Mitsubishi?

—Sí, sí, now you understand what I‘m trying to tell you.

There was a door leading to an unguarded office filled with old paintings, leather-bound books, imported rugs, and armchairs upholstered in the finest Italian fabrics. The room had an aftertaste of gunpowder and metal. The shutters were partly closed, adding a mystery to the room, which nearly unhinged him. Don Chan assumed he was inside Trujillo‘s office. And if not, how would his neighbors in Los Llanos know different? He was in the palace. That was a feat in itself. Now he only had to get out. The desk was wiped clean, except for the leather desk mat, the fine pens, and other unidentifiable objects he knew were of no consequence. The entry was too easy. The office too quiet. Maybe he had fallen into a trap. For years he‘d studied the sea and when it looked most peaceful, when the sky was at its bluest, the storm was about to come. Often the quieter the day, the more violent the storm. The guards were waiting for him to make a move. The butchers would pounce on him. They wouldn‘t kill him. That he was sure of. They‘d chop off his hands, or maybe his ear, or pull out an eye, torturing him until he disclosed names. They would want to know who sent him.

Don Chan stood in the office, recalling stories of eyes poked out with pencils, charred skin, toes chopped, shards of glass shoved inside penises. His body tightened, his jaw locked, his bladder loosened. Suddenly the palace and all its opulence terrified him. Every part of his body was vulnerable to being punctured, tortured, cut off. Would he survive to see Caridad again? Don Chan surveyed the room for a place to hide. Feeling death so close to his skin rattled him, excited him, made him leap out of his body and watch himself. Why had he taken such a risk?

Don Chan touched the thick linens in the windows, the silks of the pillows on the chairs. The ceiling three, four times his height, with gold moldings all around the wall edges. This is why people were assassinated? Why they go hungry? Don Chan almost yelled, Murderer, for the three sisters who were killed because they spoke up against the dictatorship. They were young women. Women! He wanted to scream for their husbands, and every other courageous person who dared to speak up and who lost his life because of it. What had he done with his own life but tell cowardly stories in his little village, waiting for things to change? It wasn‘t enough to talk. It was time for him to act. But first he had to show the people of Los Llanos that Trujillo could die like any other man. That while Trujillo‘s government had punished the east for their history of rebellions, and rumors of his latest victim ran rampant, Don Chan had to convince them that if they lived in fear, they would never be free.