“Oh, he keeps tabs on me, but I leave it alone as long as I don’t see his people. With these guys around I can’t say boo without my father knowing. But at least one of them has to come with me when I travel.” He shrugs as if to say, What are you going to do? This is how I roll.

“Don’t you have a report to file or something?” I ask Ivan. A muscle jumps at the corner of his mouth. He excuses himself to use the restroom before the plane takes off. One final line of coke to get him through the flight. Lucky bastard.

I watch him go, knowing that Lam didn’t inform him of his travel plans far enough in advance for him to medicate appropriately. I didn’t spend enough time in the military to serve overseas—had left too early for that to even be a possibility—but I do know something about what military types who go into private work go through in order to function in the real world. What they go through is a good portion of their incomes on uppers and downers so they can sleep when they need to and wake up when they get the call.

Like Ivan must have when Lam informed him of our spontaneous trip.

Lam laughs as he, too, casts a glance at the closed restroom door. “Will you marry me?”

“Aren’t you already married?”

“Oh yeah,” says Lam, a little too easily. “I forgot about that.”

“Must be easy to forget when you don’t wear a wedding ring. Did you also forget about Clementine?” I ask, having learned the name of his dead pregnant girlfriend from Brazuca.

There is a brief, tense moment of silence. Lam’s entire demeanor changes, hardens. “Don’t ever say her name again,” he says quietly. “You got that?”

“I got it.” And it’s a relief. This is what I’ve been waiting for. I wouldn’t trust Lam the playboy for a fraction of a second. But Lam the grief-stricken lover is more my style.

“Good,” Lam says. “We’re waiting for one more person.”

“Who?”

“You’ll have to wait and see.”

Ivan returns from the restroom and takes up his position by the door. I choose a window seat at the back of the plane and ignore the flight attendant who comes around to offer us drinks. I’m riveted by the view outside the window. A man is walking up to the plane with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. The man has a slight limp and moves with all the energy of a sea slug out of water.

Of course it’s Brazuca.

Part 3

33

I’m not in a jungle, I tell myself.