There was a long period of silence. The sun had climbed into the center of the sky and hammered the livestock across the field into immobility. Rojas glanced around at the young guards standing near the table with their Kalashnikovs in plain view, then turned his attention back toward the airstrip and the workmen moving heavily between their trucks and the plane. He felt tired and depleted, and once more wished he were somewhere else.

DeVane took a small sip from his glass, then placed it carefully down on the table.

"I'd like your assistance with something, Francisco," he said. "A matter of considerable importance."

Rojas had been waiting for this moment. In most instances he would have sent a courier along with payment for a shipment of product, but when DeVane had insisted on his presence today he'd obliged without asking for an explanation--aware the American wouldn't offer one until he was good and ready.

"If it concerns the Guzman fiasco, then you may be pleased to know I've gone ahead and intervened," he said. "Give me another day and I'll have him out of his prison cell and back across the border."

"I appreciate that and will provide whatever funds are necessary to secure his release," DeVane said. "But this has nothing to do with him."

Rojas lifted his eyebrows. Eduardo Guzman was a bottom runner in DeVane's organization, an errand boy whose arrest on suspicion of narcotics and weapons trafficking had resulted from his involvement with a prostitute who was cooperating with the anti-drug police. In ordinary circumstances he would have been beneath DeVane's notice, a scrap to be thrown to the wolves, but because it was widely known that his uncle was one of DeVane's major executives in Sao Paulo, Rojas had assumed the American would want him pulled out of his own shit, and made discreet overtures to the prosecutors getting ready to arraign him on formal charges. Little to his surprise, nearly all of them had hinted they might be influenced into changing their minds for a price.

However, DeVane had just made it very clear that he did not want to talk about Guzman. Leaving what he did want to talk about a mystery.

"Forgive my confusion," Rojas said. "I'd thought--"

"There was an incident last night in the Mato Grasso, a break-in of sorts at an American industrial site," Kuhl interrupted. It was the first time he'd spoken since Rojas's arrival. "Did you hear anything about it before starting out this morning?"

"I don't think so," Rojas said. In fact, he knew that he hadn't. But as a rule, it paid to stay out of the water until you knew which way it was flowing.