‘Britain, I mean. Or the Americans. Why aren’t we stopping them? What are we for if we don’t do that?’

She shook her head as if she were a teacher explaining arithmetic to an uncomprehending child. ‘The Americans finance our enemies,’ she explained. ‘Train them. Arm them. Give them images from their satellites. Your British, they permit Guatemalan soldiers, squads of assassins with no other responsibility than to hunt and kill – they permit them to enter Belize and hunt for those who have escaped the torture chambers and the guns.’

I shook my head. ‘No, why would we do that?’

‘Communists,’ grunted John. ‘Same as all that Cuba stuff twenty years ago. They don’t want communists in their back yard, do they? The Americans either support the government or they have to be OK with the people rising up and governing themselves, and if they do that, they might just choose communism. So they have to pick a side.’

‘And the side they have chosen is responsible for a silent genocide,’ said Sera, a quiet malice adding barbed wire to her words. ‘They talk about evil empires while funding the men who kill my people as if they were worth nothing at all. Our president, he is a religious zealot. He believes his actions to be ordained by God. I am a godly person. I believe in peace and humility and loving our Heavenly Father with acts of kindness and charity. Our president believes in a different god. He is born again, or so he claims. Communists are atheists, and atheists are the minions of Satan. And so he declares himself to be at war with the devil and all of his demons. Whatever he does in pursuit of crushing Satan is ordained by his god and the American evangelists who crow in his ear approve of whatever steps he takes to rid the world of the godless.’

I looked to John. ‘Did you know about this?’

He shrugged. ‘I just read the sports pages.’

‘But you’re here to tell our government the truth?’ I asked, catching up.

‘That was what I believed. Now, I believe I have placed myself directly in the hands of the very people who seek to kill and kill and kill again. A man I once knew, a good man who lost his life in a fight that was not his own – he told me of the man who was, in his words, “on the side of the angels”. I sought him out and told him what I knew, risked my life, lost my family. And now I am here, in a stranger’s home, waiting to see my brother’s body before the bullet ends my suffering.’

John breathed out, a big greasy puff of cigarette smoke and bad air. ‘Jesus,’ he said, and reached out to put his hand on the wall for support.