The bearded man smiled at Faust, who smiled back. “Qué tal, Nacho,” Faust said.

“Nada, Jefe,” the man said, and slipped the Glock into a holster behind his back. “All quiet on the western front. Have a look for yourself.”

Faust gently removed Kaminski’s hand from his bicep and followed Nacho to a window. She let out a long breath and looked around. The large loft apartment—brick walls, high ceilings, exposed beams and ductwork, shiny plank floors, and little in the way of furniture: a card table, some folding chairs, a dim floor lamp, and heavy white drapes across the windows. There was plenty of technical equipment: three laptops; several cameras wearing long lenses; and two massive, tripod-mounted binoculars. They were pointed at a narrow gap in the drapes, and now Nacho fiddled with one of them.

“Got the image intensifier on this one, Jefe,” he said as Faust bent to the eyepieces.

“When was the last delivery?” Faust asked as he looked.

“This afternoon. Maybe five o’clock.”

“You know what it was?”

Nacho looked at Kaminski and switched to Spanish. She tried to follow it, but it came too fast and the accents were strange, and anyway it sounded scientific to her, chemical terms maybe. She walked slowly to the binoculars while Faust and Nacho spoke. The men saw her but seemed not to care. She peered into the eyepiece.

Outside, the world was tinted green, as was a brick building, low and long, that seemed very close. It had a lot of windows, all shuttered, and she thought it looked abandoned. There was a loading dock in the center of the image, and the only thing that moved was a plastic bag, blowing in the warm night breeze.

Nacho pulled the drapes and the outside images went black. He looked at Kaminski and nodded his head at a chair in the corner. She sat, still straining to catch the conversation. It was less technical now, Faust asking something about someone—does he know . . . Does he know what? Horario. Was that like orario, meaning schedule, timetable? And who was this he?

It seemed as if Nacho was uncertain too. He shrugged at Faust and moved to a large closet’s double doors. He put his hands on the knobs. “Maybe you have better luck than me, Jefe,” he said in English, and swung the doors wide.

Kaminski screamed.

The man on the closet floor stared at her, though he was bound with wire and gagged with duct tape, and bleeding from a gash on his shaved head, which, she noticed, was tattooed with the likeness of the jack of spades. Nacho pressed a forefinger to his lips and made a shushing noise at her.