“I’ll tell him what you said.”

“Tell him to do it soon. Also, we need your bank account number so we can deposit some money for you. We’ll be able to pay you about half in cash, in dollars, but the rest, I’m afraid, will have to be above board. I hope that’s okay.”

“That’s fine,” I said.

THAT EVENING I took the train to Jorge’s house, wondering if this was one of the lines that my friends from Washington wanted to close down. I walked from the station until I came to the long road of big houses, all carefully protected. Some had armed guards at the gate; others had dogs. When I arrived at Jorge’s house, I had to stand at the gate while a sharp-toothed Alsatian barked at me. Eventually a man in a uniform arrived and put the dog on a lead. He did not smile or make any gesture in my direction. He was good-looking. I would have enjoyed it had he smiled. But he looked like a man in a bad mood, or maybe Jorge’s father paid him to look like that. He opened the gate, holding the dog on a tight rein. I walked past him toward the house. I had forgotten how much I hated the heavy furniture in Señor Canetto’s house, the hunting trophies, the terrible calf-skin rugs. Jorge and his father were in the office when I arrived and I was shown in there. I realized by Jorge’s distant, nervous reaction to my entry and his father’s vague hostility that they might easily have come to the conclusion that I was to blame for the fact that Señor Canetto was not at this moment being lifted shoulder-high by the masses as the front-runner in any forthcoming election. I let them know what Susan had said. Señor Canetto screwed up his face and then blew his nose on the folded handkerchief which he took out of his trousers pocket. How much money would they pay for the campaign if they were impressed by the fund-raising party, he asked. I said that I did not know. Was I sure that I had spoken to the people at the top who actually make the decisions, Jorge asked. I was pretty sure, I said, but if they had other contacts then they should also use them.