Selma quickly diverted the conversation back to Las Casas. “Then we’re agreed. We know Las Casas saw it and was somebody who would have wanted a copy. If he made one, then it was almost certainly kept with his own books and papers rather than, say, submitted to the Spanish court. His books and papers are in Valladolid, Spain. If the copy existed, and if it’s been in a library in Spain all this time instead of the hot, humid Guatemalan jungle, then it will probably have survived.”

David Caine said, “That’s a lot of ifs. But to bolster the argument a bit, we know he would not have left any susceptible or incriminating papers in the New World, where his enemies, the Franciscans or the encomiendas, could find them. He definitely would have taken them with him to Spain.”

Remi said, “A lot of ifs, all right, but each one has a lot of arguments in its favor and not many against.”

“Let’s call it an educated, long-shot guess,” Selma said. “It really should be checked.”

Sam said, “Okay, Selma. Please make arrangements to get Remi and me to Valladolid. Make us a copy of the letter so we can recognize his handwriting if we see it.”

Sarah Allersby sat in the giant office of the Empresa Guerrero in the old part of Guatemala City. It had once been the business office in the capital of the powerful and wealthy Guerrero family. They had occupied the building from colonial days, until the modern civil war bled many of its businesses and made the younger generation leave for lives of leisure in Europe. The office was near the Palacio Nacional because the big ranching families, of necessity, had been involved in the government.

Through all of the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, a man in the Guerrero family would push out his chair from the big mahogany desk in the office, take his hat and cane from the rack near the door, light a cigar, and walk up the street to government headquarters to protect and further the interests of the Guerrero family companies. The building had an impressive but low baroque façade, a set of double doors that were so heavy that Sarah Allersby had to have an electric motor installed to help her push them open, and floors of antique tiles made and decorated by the same craftsmen who had done the Iglesia de La Merced. The ceilings were fifteen feet high, and every few feet a big lazy fan still provided the proper subtropical atmosphere even though the air it circulated was air-conditioned to seventy-two degrees.

Sarah used a 1930s-era desk telephone with a scrambled line that was checked by her security people twice each day to detect a change in ohms of resistance that would indicate a listening device. She said, “Good morning, Russell. This line is safe so you can speak freely.”