Sam had spoken to Amy Costa on a conference call. “He agreed to that? What caused the change of heart?”

“It’s always hard to know,” said Amy Costa. “We ask for cooperation and we always hope to get it. This time we will.”

After Sam and Remi hung up, Remi rolled her eyes. “You really didn’t notice?”

“Apparently not. Notice what?”

“She walked us past about thirty offices full of old married cops and went right into the office of this handsome guy about her age who couldn’t keep his big brown eyes off her.”

“You’re saying our State Department official is fraternizing with a Guatemalan cop?”

“No, I’m saying she’s every bit as smart as she looks.”

Now they were back in Guatemala, and both of their satellite phones were programmed with the embassy number and the office of Commander Rueda. The lake was thirty-one miles long and sixteen miles wide, and as they reached the end at El Estor, Sam and Remi both felt good. Sometimes covering thirty miles in the highlands could take several days of hard climbing.

At El Estor, they hired a small boat to take them up the Polochic River, which fed the lake from the west side. It was one hundred fifty miles long, a winding, narrow stream bordered by jungle that came all the way down to the water like a green wall. It was navigable upstream as far as the town of Panzós, with an unpaved road to take them on from there.

As they moved up into the heart of the region, the forest was deeper and thicker, and the few settlements they saw seemed random, like places where people’s gasoline or enthusiasm had run out and they had decided to build shelters and stay.

Once again, Sam and Remi had come armed. They still had their Guatemalan carry permits, and Selma had arranged to have four semiautomatic pistols purchased and waiting for them in Punta Gorda. As they had on their first trip, they carried one each in their packs and the others in bellybands under their shirts. They brought considerably more nine-millimeter ammunition, including ten loaded magazines each.

Now that they were in central Guatemala, whatever they had brought in their packs would have to do. There was no going back to pick up one more item. The closest place where Selma could have anything delivered was far away in Guatemala City. When Sam and Remi reached the end of the navigable section of the river at Panzós, they saw a loaded coffee truck parked along the dirt road above the river and pointed west. They asked their boatman to serve as interpreter to ask the driver for a ride, and learned that he was the boatman’s friend. They arranged to pay him a few Quetzales in exchange for a ride to the end of the road.