When the phone rang I picked it up. Luisa had put Susan straight through. Susan was in one of her serious moods.

“Do you think a real outsider could win this election?”

“Yes, I do. I told you that.”

“I have someone,” she said.

“I hope you didn’t make him give a garden party.”

“I’m serious. We’ve been watching him for some time. I’d like you to look at him.”

“What’s his name?”

“He’s the governor of La Rioja province. He’s called Menem. He’s originally Lebanese or Syrian or something. He looks like a cowboy, but he’s dead serious.”

“It sounds unlikely,” I said. “La Rioja is very remote and very strange. But if he’s governor, at least he has a machine. And he’s an outsider, and even here in Buenos Aires, people hate the capital, and they’d love to vote for a man from hicksville, they hate themselves, I can see it in their faces. My secretary hates herself. Even I hate myself.”

“Have you finished?” She was trying to sound exasperated.

“Let’s find out more about this guy,” I said.

“There’s a rally on Saturday in La Rioja,” she said. “Have you been there?”

“No.”

“I don’t quite understand the reason for it, something about a new Argentina, and he’s speaking and there’s a sort of dinner afterward. I think they cook a cow in a field and we all sit around eating it being good Argentinians. Anyway, I want us to go to the rally and I have tickets for the asado afterward. I’m going up on Friday and maybe you could fly up on Saturday. There are two flights that day and you could come up on either of them and then we’ll travel back together on Sunday. Maybe this will come to nothing, but it’s time we started to look at anyone who’s got a chance.”

After I put down the phone, I rang the offices of El Mundo and asked for the library. I had done this a few months earlier when I was looking for a back issue. I had explained who I was—a political and economic adviser to various American oil companies—and asked if I could have a look at their files. Once more the voice at the other end was intensely polite and helpful; suddenly I felt happy and warm as I arranged to call at the offices of El Mundo within half an hour.

The librarian was standing with his back to me at a table when I came in. When he turned, he smiled and shook my hand. I told him that I was looking for any files or cuttings he might have on Carlos Menem. He laughed in a half-puzzled, half-knowing sort of way. I have it here in front of me, he said. You’re the third person to ask for it in a few days. It’s just been put back. Is he in the oil business too, he asked. No, I said, he’s a politician.