Juan Felipe

JUAN FELIPE

by Ricardo Cabeza

Introduction

This is a story for Hallowe'en... last Hallowe'en. Obviously it wasn't finished in time. I knew the direction it was taking and the ending was already set... sort of like fate, if you believe in that stuff... but how the characters managed to get there was up to them. They took their time deciding. The tale involves a few complications and twists, but if you've read my other story, Larry of Arabia, you know what to expect... or maybe you don't. After all, it is a horror story... among other things.

Chapter One

Juan Felipe

The box arrived the day before yesterday. I knew what was in it, of course, and I should have phoned the police right away. But I didn't want to admit it to myself, I guess. I didn't want to know for sure that what had happened, had happened. I guess I figured I owed that much to Juan Felipe.

That's why it took me two days to open the box. I had to wait until I couldn't stand it anymore... until I'd had a chance to go over the whole damned thing in my head... until I knew that there was nothing else that could be in the box.

I kept it in the freezer, of course. It had a message in Spanish on the side of it warning that the thing should be kept refrigerated. That surprised me. I didn't think that Oscar would have bothered to try to preserve it. Then I realized that it was probably just another safeguard... the only reason it made it through Customs unopened.

Los Gatos, San Martin... Los Gatos means the cats. It refers to the mountain lions that used to inhabit the area and used the trees to sharpen their claws.

It's not a real place you can find on any map. It is only a meeting place on the side of a hill in a clearing. Nobody lives there. There's no signs to lead you to it. But it is Fernando's address. It's the only place you can ever actually meet Fernando... unless he comes to your place. And you don't want Fernando to come to your place, because if he does, it means that your place will soon be ashes... and so will you... one way or another.

Not many people know where Los Gatos is... well, not many people from this side of society. All of Fernando's men know it of course. I know it too, but the knowledge came with a price tag... a big price tag... a price that I haven't paid... yet.

I went to San Martin to report on the revolution there. It was a minor skirmish in the grand scheme of things, but important to the people involved. The only thing that raised it to prominence in the eyes of the world was the murder of a U.S. marine who'd gone on a sight-seeing tour. Evidently he had seen too much. That's what the local people said when they found the body. The message had been clear. Oscar had a knack for sending clear messages, like removing the marine's eyes with the point of his machete and putting them in the guy's shirt pockets... just before he killed him. Oscar was like that. I doubt that Fernando had ordered the execution. Oscar always looked after those things.

Fernando was the idealist, the thinker, the philosopher. He didn't actually muddy his hands with day to day operation of the revolution. He set the agenda and laid out the methods, but Juan Felipe assured me that Fernando never carried out any of the operations himself. He had no taste for it. He left all that to Oscar.

Sometimes Oscar went too far. That's when Fernando would step in and veto any missions that Oscar had planned more for his own sadistic pleasure than for the good of the revolution. But he always suggested alternative targets more in keeping with the goals they had set for the revolution. He didn't leave Oscar without a bone to chew on.

I got there three days after the marine's body was found. It was a hot and steamy Saturday afternoon when my plane touched down on the tarmac and taxied over to the airport buildings... there were two of them... one for the passengers and a hangar for the plane. A rickety set of stairs was trundled to the side of the aircraft and the flight crew smiled sympathetic smiles at the five of us who had made San Martin our destination.

By the time I made it to the Customs and Immigration table in the airport I had already managed to soak through my clothing with perspiration. The agent checked through my one piece of luggage and oohed satisfactorily when I showed him my laptop and camera... the tools of my trade. I received a page-filling stamp in my passport... the smaller the country... the more impressive the stamp in the passport... and moved into the main body of the airport where a tall, pleasant-looking young man half-smiled at me, relieved me of my suitcase and deposited it and me in a jitney bus that looked like it might almost be able to make the five mile trip into town. I peeled off a few pesos to compensate the young man for his two and a half minutes of work, but he had already disappeared. I chalked it up to some sort of government scheme to cater to the tourist trade so adversely affected by the revolution. The young man had been simply dressed in a white shirt and tan shorts and wore!

sanda ls on his otherwise large and naked feet. But he had been clean-shaven and well-groomed. I also detected a rather expensive smelling cologne as I walked behind him to the bus, but my mind, like the rest of me was suffocating from the heat, and the incongruity of this did not register in my synapses until much later.

I had to wait a few minutes in the bus while the other passengers made their arrangements, and as I did I noticed what I could about the airport and the people who worked there. Mostly I noticed how few of them there were. The airport itself was not up to much. The lounge was a row of chairs. The bar was a horse-drawn cart that was parked outside the main entrance. Other vendors supplied food from charcoal burners that they carried with them. Fried plantain seemed to be the only choice today. I was happy that I had eaten on the plane.

Just inside the main door of the airport a young man in tan shorts and white shirt lounged against the wall talking on the only pay phone in the building. His back was to me, so I was unable to tell if he was the same tall, young man who had been my porter. I imagined that he was, however, since height was not a physical trait that ran rampant in San Martin.

The bus pulled away before the young man turned around. We lurched towards town on a gravel road that could have used more gravel. The driver did not seem to notice the spectacular number of potholes. He hit about half of them. I imagined he had lambasted the other half on the way to the airport.

We had only covered about two miles when we were passed by a small red motorcycle with two people on it. The driver of the bike wore what looked like battle fatigues. Behind him his passenger clung to his waist. Neither of them wore a helmet. The passenger wore a white shirt, tan shorts and sandals. His long brown legs dangled from time to time as the bike sped along. They were more careful of the potholes than the bus driver, and navigated a zigzag route as they disappeared quickly in front of us.

The road twisted and turned through the slums on the outskirts of the city following a whim, it seemed. Eventually we reached the hotel, where I would have my base of operations. It was the largest building on the square, a square that also hosted three cantinas. I could guess what the main preoccupation of the town was.

My room overlooked the square. It was large enough with a big double bed that had seen better days. The furnishings were old but adequate. The sheets were clean and smelled of the phony freshness of fabric softener. There was an odor of tobacco about the rest of the place and I opened the window a little wider to clear the air as much as possible.

I wouldn't have noticed anything in the square if I had not heard the motorcycle start up and drive away. It was the same bike that had passed the bus. I knew this because the driver wore fatigues. He was alone though. I watched him go, and then my eye was attracted to some movement across the street where the bike had been parked. A waiter stepped out of the cantina with a tray of drinks. He distributed them to several tables. At one of the tables a young man in a white shirt and tan shorts took one of the drinks and threw some coins onto the tray. He was alone. He did not appear to communicate with any of the others who habited the sidewalk cafe. And there was no doubt in my mind that he was the same young man who had assisted me at the airport. He watched me watching him.

And suddenly I had a hunch that there might be a reason why I was being watched. There was nothing surreptitious about the way he was doing it. And there were two possible reasons for it that I could come up with. I didn't like the one reason... being the subject of a mugging or robbery. But it didn't seem to fit. The young man was not trying to conceal himself as a burglar would do.

The motive I favored was that the young man was a hustler. He was making himself available. And he had picked me out of all the travelers at the airport as the most likely candidate, but for what?

I decided to find out.

I snapped a few photos of him from a little deeper in the shadows of the room and slipped the disk into my laptop. No sense being a complete idiot about it. I found the picture I wanted and encoded it. Then I hooked into the phone line and shipped a copy of the file to my InterNet address. A couple of minutes later it was done and I folded up the laptop and headed for the cantina.

I felt more than one pair of eyes watch me as I crossed the plaza and found a table twice removed from where the young man sat and idly watched. I ordered a beer, "Una cerveza, por favor," and set to work there in the hot sun recording my observations of San Martin and its inhabitants, stuff that would be edited out of the printed article, but might be useful if the story was picked up by N.P.R. for one of their magazine programs. I could hear Bob Edwards introducing me. I tried to bring my prose up to a worthy level. My beer arrived in another shipment from the back of the bar. I threw a couple of pesos onto the tray as I had seen my young friend do, then I sipped at it and winced. I recorded a message to Bob Edwards. "Don't drink the local beer in San Martin. It tastes like burro piss... Bob."

"You should try the rum, senor," a voice advised me in a thick accent from two tables away. It had not been my young friend who spoke. The voice came from the other direction. It continued, "The beer of San Martin is an acquired taste."

"Si," another man at the table in front of me agreed. "And you should only hope and pray that you never acquire it."

Everyone in the small corral had a hearty laugh at this latest rebuke for the local brewer. I joined in and took the opportunity to look about me, first away from the young man who still sat in the same spot he had occupied ever since my arrival. Then I looked in his direction. He was the only one not laughing, but his face wore a pleasant expression. It was the same expression that it had carried at the airport, the same expression I had photographed and sent on its way to Washington to await my safe return. The expression was almost a smile, I decided, not a half-smile as I'd believed before. Its bearer had other things on his mind besides the local cerveza. He did not fit with this crowd. He looked like the designated driver, the guy who had to put up with the shit and abuse and would really rather be anywhere else. He met my gaze and never wavered. He was watching me and he didn't care who knew it.

I nodded to him. He nodded back. That was it. I went back to work. Moments later the beer disappeared and the bartender placed a rum and coke down in its place. When I reached to pay him for it he shook his head and told me it had already been taken care of. I nodded my thanks to the men at the next table and they smiled back at me as I lifted the glass in salute.

Obviously the young man in the white shirt and tan shorts was not going to embarrass himself in front of the local yokels. I needed to offer him a different avenue if I was ever going to find out what he was up to. So I set to work at the word processor and designed a notice seeking the services of a guide/driver to show me around the countryside I would need to explore if I were ever to find out what was going on, and why the marine had been killed. I didn't put all that in the notice. I just mentioned that I needed someone to take me different places and I set an interview time of ten o'clock the following morning in my hotel room. I printed the notice a couple of times and asked the bartender to post one for me. The other one I took back to the hotel lobby.

When I got back to my room I glanced out the window and was not surprised to notice that my young friend had departed. I wasn't surprised... but I was a little disappointed. I guess I had been hoping that I would have someone to spend the night with. I'd hoped it would have been him. I'd been to Latin American countries before. That's how I'd learned the Spanish I knew... Spanish that would get me by, but would not win me any awards in Spain.

On my previous trips to the Dominican Republic and Mexico I had always found plenty of companions for the night, young men who would share a bed and their bodies for a modest sum and a chance for a shower. There were some in San Martin, I was sure. The lobby of the hotel was the usual hangout and I had noticed one or two poorly dressed youngsters whose eyes sought mine as I passed to the desk and asked the clerk to post my notice somewhere prominent. I kept my gaze averted though. I had set my sights higher for that night. Besides, it was hot and sticky. I didn't need another body in the bed with me, unless it was a body with long brown legs, large feet, and a smile that was not quite there.

But instead, I set myself to work that first night. There were a number of background papers I hadn't had a chance to look through. They were loaded on my computer. But I found myself, instead looking at the picture I had taken that afternoon of the young man with the self-assured attitude. I cropped the image until his face almost filled the screen. Then I stared at it as it seemed to stare back at me.

It was dark by the time I noticed what time it was. I would have to hurry if I was going to get any dinner anywhere that night. I showered quickly and went down to eat in the hotel dining room.

It was after eleven when I returned. I knew immediately that there had been somebody in my room. He hadn't been gone long, either. I could still smell the expensive cologne that he used.

In spite of the heat and the lack of air conditioning, I shut the windows and barred the shutters.

The next day, being Sunday, there was a lot of early morning activity through the plaza. The whole town seemed to be headed to early mass... everybody but my young friend, that is. He sat brazenly in his familiar spot, but there was a coffee cup in front of him now. I didn't see him drink anything. All the while I looked at him, he stared back at me as he had done the previous day. Only one thing about him was different today, he wore a yellow shirt instead of the white one he'd worn the day before. I closed the window and went down to breakfast before the morning heat could take away my appetite.

I got back about nine thirty. On the way upstairs I was amazed by the number of young men in their Sunday finery who lined the steps. There were more of them in the hall. I would have no trouble hiring a guide, it seemed.

My young friend was not among the prospective employees. He still slouched at his table across the square. I showered and redressed and set the room to rights for the first interview. Then at precisely ten o'clock there was a rap on the door. I braced myself for the onslaught and opened it.

"My name is Juan Felipe," he said. "I'm here to be your guide."

He wore the same expression that I had always seen him wear. He spoke English with precision and enunciated each word. And there was no doubt in his mind that I would hire him.

"Come in," I said... needlessly. He was already in the room and seeking out the chair I had arranged for myself. He sat in it and began to play with the keyboard of my computer... idly... as if born to it. Oddly, I didn't have any concerns about this. His bearing told me that he was confident about everything he did. I glanced into the hallway. There was no one there.

"Where did the others go?" I asked.

"I don't know," he replied. "They left when I got here."

"Why?" I pursued.

"You'd have to ask them," he answered and registered a hint of ennui as he did.

"Are you from San Martin, then?" I closed the door.

"Originally, yes."

"But not anymore?"

"I'm at school in France."

"You speak French, then?"

"Of course... How about you, monsieur?"

It was the way he said it that impressed me. Each word resonated individually from his mouth and carried with it a message that made me believe that he was truly interested in the answer I would supply.

"No, not much, anyway." I tried to regain control of the interview. "Does your family live here then?"

"My parents live in France now. I am here to visit my brother during the school vacation."

"So you have relatives in San Martin."

"Just one."

"Do you have a car?"

"No, I do not drive."

"But that was one of the jobs I advertised..."

"Senor, you are not too familiar with San Martin. There are very few roads that you would want to drive an automobile over. It does not make sense to own a car. When we need to go somewhere, we will take a taxi. I will pay for it from my wages if you like."

He answered my objection so easily that I began to respect his level-headed approach. He seemed to have prepared for every contingency. I was on the verge of losing control of the interview again. I needed a question that would throw him. I went with an observation instead.

"You were in my room last night."

He looked at me with a hint of respect. Then, for the first time, I saw him smile.

"Was anything missing, monsieur?"

"No."

"Good, I feared that you might blame me."

"Why would you be afraid, if you didn't steal anything?"

"I was not the only person who was in your room last night, monsieur." He interlaced and folded his long fingers together and sat forward. "But tell me, how did you know?"

"You wear a unique cologne."

He smiled again. "My brother was right," he sighed as he leaned back in his... my chair. "My one indulgence will be my downfall."

"Who else was in here last night?" I asked.

"Unfortunately, I do not know," he confessed. "I think my arrival was the reason for their departure. But I suspect the local constabulary."

"Why?"

"Why not?" he responded. "They seem to need to know everything about everybody."

"I get the feeling that they don't know everything there is to know about you, though."

He smiled again and left the observation unchallenged.

"What's your family name, Juan?"

"My family name is not important... and I prefer to be called Juan Felipe."

"You don't want to give me your family name?"

"No, it's not necessary."

"What name will I write on your check?"

"I prefer cash. The bartender across the street will change a check for you. I have told him that he can trust you."

I didn't know whether to thank him or kick his insolent ass.

"Where do you live, Juan... Felipe?"

"Here with you. I imagine that would be best."

Why I didn't challenge this, I don't know, but I'm happy I didn't. I imagine that he would have met any of my objections with pre-formulated answers of his own that would have made my concerns seem stupid.

"I'll see about getting you a room," I answered absently.

"But, why, monsieur?" Why did I get the feeling he was rubbing my nose in his French? "The bed is big enough for two."

Was my fantasy of the previous night about to become reality? But why had he just assumed that I would not mind sharing my accommodations? Was I that transparent?

I got my answer moments later when he brought up the picture of himself on my computer screen.

"This is a very good likeness," he commented. "Would you mind if I sent a copy of it to my parents?"

"Not at all," I answered, a little non-plussed about his ability to work my machine. But how had he known about the picture and how had he discovered its location so quickly?

His fingers flew over my keyboard and I realized from the squawks that the machine was making that he had found my InterNet access as well.

"Your machine was on when I got here last night. When I moved the trackball I saw myself looking back at me," he explained absently as he tapped out a message to his mother. It was as if he was reading my mind. "Now for the attachment. We must be very careful to get the right file, eh, monsieur? There are others in that directory that would cause my mother some concern, n'est-ce pas?"

Evidently he'd seen my collection of pornographic photo files as well. I smiled a weak smile in return. Juan Felipe would bear watching. He finished his transmission and shut down the computer. Once again he was smiling.

"And now, monsieur, if you are finished with the interview and have no objections, I will take a shower and try to remove any remaining hint of my cologne. Then Armando will bring me my things. Do you have anything planned for this afternoon?"

"You seem to know why I'm here. Why don't you tell me?"

"The articles in your computer are very thorough," he acknowledged, nonchalantly flipping a three and a half inch disk from his shirt pocket and tossing it onto the bed. His shirt followed it, and the tan shorts came too as he peeled down to silk boxers in front of me.

"I imagine that you will want to ask the local chief of police a few questions. It will be a waste of time, but it is your time, and I expect you will not feel satisfied until you waste it. When you have learned everything that the police know, which will not be much, you will then want to talk to some people who know the history of the area. Professor Aquilar lives a little way out of town. He will be able to explain what is behind the revolution."

"I thought I might like to interview the people who found the body."

"Why? There have been a lot of bodies, Senor. They are all found in the same way. The people who find the bodies can tell you nothing. Only the killers know what happened. The killers are sometimes the police. More often than not the revolution is used to cover the atrocities that neighbors visit upon each other. Regardless of who the killer is, however, the rebels are always blamed. It is why they have taken to marking their victims in a special way, each time differently as suits the case. They have a man who is very good at that... a poet with a machete, you might say."

He selected a towel from the rack behind the door and wrapped it modestly about his waist. Then he lowered the boxers and kicked them into the air, catching them deftly and depositing them with his other clothes on the bed.

"May I use your razor, monsieur? Mine is still at Armando's house."

I took the opportunity to look through his clothing while he showered. There was a substantial amount of money thrust casually into his right hand pocket. It was all folding money. There was not a coin at all. The only other item was a key. He carried no identification of any kind which of itself was peculiar. All persons over the age of twelve in San Martin are required by law to carry a cedula at all times. Without it they are subject to arrest at the whim of the police. I moved his things to a chair. The chances were good that Juan Felipe had a photographic memory to go along with his other impressive attributes. He would probably notice that I had rearranged his garments. I didn't try to conceal the fact that I had.

The boxers were fine silk and probably had cost more than most peasants in San Martin would make in a year. They were fresh on that morning, I was sure, but he had worn them for a few hours now and they carried his personal odor. It was that slightly musty odor that one encounters just before oral sex. I sniffed them and found that I was getting an erection.

The water stopped and moments later Juan Felipe opened the bathroom door. He was dripping wet and wrapped in the towel again. He wiped the mirror with his hand and lathered himself extravagantly. I watched him change the blade in my razor and set the used one onto the edge of the sink.

"How old are you, Juan Felipe?"

"Nineteen, monsieur, and how about you?"

He used the same round vowel sounds that one hears on the continent. Each word was spoken separately, like pearls on a necklace.

"Twenty-six," I replied. "You speak English a lot better than I speak Spanish."

"I speak English a lot better than I speak Spanish too, monsieur. I learned to speak English in England. I learned French in France. Next year I am going to study Italian in Italia. Unfortunately, I learned Spanish in San Martin."

"Your family must be well off."

"Yes, they must... it seems." It sounded more like an indictment than an answer.

"What does your father do for a living?"

"He is a doctor. So is my mother." He seemed to think of something that he found humorous. "I've never been sick a day in my life."

"And what about Armando?" I asked. "Is he a doctor too?"

Juan Felipe regarded me in the bathroom mirror for a moment.

"Why do you want to know about Armando, monsieur?"

"I was just asking. You told me about your parents. It was just natural for me to ask about your brother..."

"Ah, my brother... Non, monsieur... Armando is not my brother. I was staying at his house for a few days. He is just... a friend..." He cocked his head and listened. The only thing I heard was the roar of a motorcycle somewhere in the distance. "...and if I am not mistaken that will be Armando now, with my things."

Juan Felipe stepped from the bathroom and walked to the open window. He stood there for a moment as the sound of the motorcycle drew closer. The machine slowed and Juan Felipe leaned out the window. His towel parted revealing a lily-white ass cheek. Then he straightened once more and pulled a backpack through the window. He adjusted his towel as the motorcycle sped away in the same direction it had come.

He dropped the backpack onto the same chair that now held his clothing and smiled to me as he resumed the bathroom.

"And now, monsieur, I will close the bathroom door once more to give you the opportunity to go through the rest of my things. Do not be alarmed when you come across the hand gun. Everyone in San Martin owns one. It is only for defensive purposes."

"I don't want to go through your things, Juan Felipe," I protested.

"But I insist, monsieur. After all, I have already gone through yours." And the door closed.

Needless to say, I didn't go through his backpack.

Chapter Two

The Pinata

Juan Felipe was right about the police. They pretended to know even less than they did. I was surprised to find the chief of police working on a Sunday, but he had been waiting in his office when we arrived. Juan Felipe did not go into the small building that housed the police headquarters. He preferred to wait across the street.

I can't say that I blamed him. The atmosphere in the jail had been cool although the chief, himself had been cordial. But I was, after all, asking them questions about things that I knew they were not too anxious to discuss.

There had been allegations made against the police. The police had investigated these allegations and found them to be groundless. Their answer to the charges was that the rebels had frightened the inhabitants of San Martin. If the rebels said that something was so, the people whose farms and villages the rebels called their territory, would not dispute their claims. Everyone, it seemed, feared Fernando... or more precisely, they feared that Fernando would loose Oscar upon them.

I asked who Oscar was and the chief sighed and smiled at me.

"Senor," he answered, "hope and pray that you never meet him."

I rejoined Juan Felipe who was sipping at an iced tea across the street.

"Was I right?" he asked.

"Oui, monsieur," I answered. "I spoke to the chief, and..."

"The chief was there?" Juan Felipe interrupted. "... on a Sunday?" This last he seemed to ask himself. He looked suddenly nervous. Then just as suddenly his smile returned. But there were still traces of furrows in his normally smooth brow.

"Yes," I answered. "He treated me like a child."

"That is what you are to him," Juan Felipe shrugged. "Would you like a sip of my tea before we visit Professor Aquilar?"

"Are you sure he won't mind us dropping in on him?"

"Of course not," Juan Felipe smiled. "I spoke to him a few minutes ago and he is looking forward to meeting you. He has a place just south of here a couple of miles. We could take a taxi, but the road is not that good. I suggest that we walk." He placed his glass onto the table and lifted himself easily from the wicker chair. I could not help admiring his graceful movements as he strode away before me, certain that his suggestion would be acted upon and I would eschew a taxi solely on his recommendation. I was tempted to order one up anyway, just to show him who was boss, but as he walked away from the police station and never once looked back to see if I was following, as I watched those long legs flex and his ass sway ever so slightly, I decided that it might not be a bad idea to let him think that he was in charge... especially if we were to sleep together this evening. So I snapped a picture of him and set out on foot to follow him. Besides, I convinced myself!

, I co uld use the exercise.

I caught him up at the end of the block where he had to wait for a truck to maneuver around the corner of a narrow street. It carried something foul-smelling in it and seemed to take its time departing. But soon we had reached the outskirts of the city and were lost in a virtual jungle with only the road, such as it was, to confirm the relative proximity of civilization.

As we went, Juan Felipe told me about Professor Aquilar. He spoke of him in reverential tones, and it soon became apparent that he had a deep love for the man. The Professor had taught Juan Felipe and his brother. Indeed he had been hired by their parents as the boys' tutor. They had not attended the public school system. Even in those days there was an understirring of resentment against the rich. Juan Felipe's parents had tried to protect their children from the world.

"Is that why they moved to France?" I asked.

"Not really, monsieur. France has troubles too, you know," he answered. "My mother is French." He smiled to himself. "I guess that makes me half-French too."

"My father met my mother here in San Martin," he volunteered. It was the first information I had not had to drag out of him. His usual insouciance was gone as he spoke of his parents. His diction softened a little too. It was almost like his Spanish half was taking over. Hispanics are invariably insufferable romantics. "He was working at a clinic in the mountains. There had been an outbreak of something or other and the doctors were swamped. They needed help and that's when my mother arrived. She came with the Doctors Without Borders organization. Have you heard of them?"

He did not add a "monsieur" or a "Senor." I almost believed that he was talking to someone other than me.

"I think I remember something about..."

"They go wherever they are needed," he continued, sure, no doubt that I knew nothing about the organization. "My mother was just out of medical school. She was looking for a little adventure. She found it... and a husband. Then, a little later, 'nando came along..." He grinned a little. "...then me."

"'nando is your brother?"

"Yes, monsieur... my older brother. Five years older. After he was born my mother got sick. They didn't think that they would be able to have another child. But nobody told me that, so I decided to be born anyway. I was her miracle baby." He looked at me and grinned. "What do you think, monsieur? Not too shabby for someone who's not supposed to be here, eh?"

I had been thinking as much for the past day and a half. But I still had no idea about the relationship that was to exist between us. The only thing I knew for certain was that the more time I spent with this young man, the more time I wanted to spend with him.

"You certainly are tall enough," I fudged. "Does that come from your mother?"

"Both of them... My father is tall. So is my mother."

"How about 'nado?"

"'nando..." he corrected and smiled a broad impish grin. "Not so tall as me," he announced proudly and distinctly.

"What does 'nando do?" I asked innocently.

"You are a reporter in every sense of the word," Juan Felipe snapped, his mood suddenly angry. "You seem to have a preoccupation with my brother."

"No, I..."

"He is a student of politics," he spat. "He wants to be a leader of his people."

"What's wrong with that?"

"They are not his people, monsieur. They exist for themselves. That is why there is so much trouble. Everybody wants to be in charge."

"And now," he decided, "we will speak no more of my brother's business."

We walked a little way in silence. Then he apologized for his flash of temper. He asked me if there was anything I wanted to ask him. I decided to steer clear of his brother... and politics, if I could.

"Tell me more about this professor?"

"Professor Aquilar has documented the history of San Martin," Juan Felipe began. "There is nothing about the country that he does not know. In fact there is nothing much of anything that he does not know about. As I have told you he taught my brother and me when we were in grade school. We received a far superior education from him because he showed us how to learn... he whet our appetites for knowledge. He taught us to question, and once we questioned, how to find the answers. Our days were spent examining why things are so and not just learning the Latin labels. He prepared us for life."

"Life in San Martin?" I asked.

"Heavens, no!" Juan Felipe laughed. "Nothing can prepare you for life in San Martin."

"And yet you are here."

"My brother is here, monsieur. I am but visiting."

"Will I get to meet your brother?"

"Most likely not," he answered sadly. Then he brightened. "But in a moment or two you will meet Professor Aquilar. This is his house."

We had passed out of the trees into a clearing that was just big enough to accommodate a large ramshackle house and the surrounding gardens. No allowance had been made for a driveway or lane, but there was a flagstone walkway that led from the front gate to the verandah that covered the front of the house and disappeared around the ends of it. I imagined that it would be a pleasant place to sit and discuss cerebral matters during the seemingly endless rains that fell for half of the year in places like San Martin.

Juan Felipe led the way to the gate and through it. It announced our arrival with a loud squawk that I imagined could be heard halfway back to the city. We were expected, according to Juan Felipe, but in spite of the noise we made there was no answering commotion from the house.

"He must have gone out back," Juan Felipe allowed. I guessed that meant the house didn't have indoor plumbing. He knocked on the screen door that rattled with every thump. But still there was no answer. Finally he pulled it open and stepped inside.

I heard a strangled choke escape him and hurried in to find Juan Felipe frozen in horror. He was staring at the Professor's feet. They didn't quite touch the floor. They pointed at it, but the noose around the old man's neck had stopped his fall six inches short of the floor. The old man's head was held at such an angle that it was impossible for his neck not to be broken. His body was quite dead, but his eyes still lived... at least they were open and seemed to accuse us, the living.

The kitchen was to my left and I hurried to it to find a knife. When I returned Juan Felipe was holding the professor's body up, trying to push it back through time and the noose. I swiped at the rope with a butcher knife and the two of them collapsed in a heap below the beam to which the rope had been fastened. The professor landed on top of Juan Felipe. I hurried to pull him off, and was a little stunned when Juan Felipe refused to let go.

"No! No! No!" he cried and the tears flowed from his eyes. He had been saying "No" for a long time now, ever since discovering the body, but I guess I had blocked it out in my haste to find a knife and cut down the hideous pinata. His voice thumped in my head like the blood that pumped thickly through my brain trying to assimilate the outrage and finding nowhere to put the message... nowhere that wanted it, anyway.

Realization set in as I tried to free the corpse from Juan Felipe's grasp. The professor was quite dead. The body was cooling. Rigor mortis had not yet set in, however, and that was in keeping with Juan Felipe's assurance that the professor had been alive less than one hour before.

None of this was registering with Juan Felipe... but it would. He had totally lost his grip on reality. I struggled with him to loosen his grip on the professor's body. When I finally managed to wrest it from him he sat in the middle of the floor with his long legs pulled up to his chin and cried.

I sliced the noose from the professor's neck and tossed it away. Then I tried to straighten the head... the grotesque lolling head that refused to co-operate until I propped it with a couple of cushions. I pulled the legs straight and folded the arms into a natural position, one that the body would now assume through eternity, and it was as I was doing this that I noticed the marks on the thumbs.

I tried not to stare at them, but I found it hard to avert my gaze when I realized the importance of my discovery. It was impossible for me to believe what I had discovered, so I turned my attention to Juan Felipe, who, after all, needed me more than the professor ever would... now.

"Gracias, senor," he said through teared eyes.

"Rick," I answered.

He looked up at me. I guess I had waited a little too long to introduce myself.

"Thank you, Rick... from me and for him."

"Juan Felipe, I have to ask you a question. It will be hard, but it is very important. Are you up to it?"

"Yes, Rick."

"Who would want to kill the professor?"

"That is not the question, Rick. The question is who would need to kill the professor?"

As I considered this, a siren became audible in the distance. Juan Felipe leapt to his feet.

"I do not like to have to do this to you, Rick, but I must not be here when the police arrive. You do not know me. You have never heard of anyone named Juan Felipe. If they ask you why you have a photograph of me on your computer, tell them that I was a hustler who had sex with you for money. Tell them that I told you my name was... Roberto. You came here this afternoon to talk to the professor because you had heard from friends in Washington that he was a man who knew San Martin. You did not have an appointment. It is too bad that he chose this time to make his suicide. It was a suicide, Rick. You are a man who asks questions for a living. You will now have to answer some. Your answers must make them think that you believe the professor's death was a suicide. Forget, my friend, anything that would cause you to doubt it. And pretend to believe whatever they tell you. I tell you this for both of our sakes."

He looked once more at the poor broken body on the floor.

"It doesn't make any difference to him now anyway."

"Will I see you again?" I asked, unsure of what he was trying to tell me.

"If there is a God in heaven, and he is fair, yes, you will." Juan Felipe looked at me as if he would say more, but the sirens were drawing close and there was too much to be said in the little time remaining. He looked exasperated and anxious. He turned away as if to leave.

And then he did a strange thing. He turned back and stepped towards me. He looked at me, for the first time unsure of himself, and his mouth opened as if to say more, but instead he leaned over the dead body of the professor and kissed me... on the lips... then raced out through the back of the house.

I turned towards the front door, light-headed by this latest surprise, or perhaps it was the shock of dealing with the "suicide." I wanted only to flee... to follow Juan Felipe into the jungle and disappear with him, but I had been left to take care of the body. I had my instructions and I tried to remember what they were as I opened the door and prepared myself to deal with the police.

It was a surreal experience. The Chief himself led the way in and he was a little annoyed to find me there. I told him how I had come to be in the house, how I'd found the body dangling and, not knowing how long it had been up there, how I'd cut it down, hoping to revive its owner. I told them I'd been on the verge of calling the police, after my attempts to revive the man had failed, but their arrival had precluded the need to make the call.

I didn't ask them how they knew about the suicide, but they volunteered the information... a little too eagerly. A neighbor of the old man had called and discovered the body. He had hurried to town after phoning the police, leaving the old man strung up in his haste to depart.

They asked me a few questions and eyed me suspiciously, but I maintained my innocent demeanor and added frequent lamentations that the man should choose the day of my visit to commit suicide.

In the end, I think they bought it. The doctor, who showed up shortly after the police did, gave an estimate of the time of death that corresponded to the time I had been in the office of the chief of police The police photographer snapped a few photos of the corpse and one of me as well. By now, the chief had come to the conclusion that my being there had been a lucky break for him. It meant that I could corroborate the story for a disbelieving public. I was that best of all witnesses, a disinterested bystander. When they had finished and padlocked the doors of the house, he offered me a lift back into town. I gladly accepted.

But as we drove away I couldn't help thinking about what Juan Felipe had said a few hours before on this very road, "Nothing can prepare you for life in San Martin."

The chief and I made small talk as we bumped along the trail that passed for a road in San Martin. He had never seen a digital camera. The one I had hanging around my neck intrigued him. I explained how it worked, and showed him the computer disks that it used to store images. Then I took his picture and promised to send him a copy of my newspaper's article when it was published.

There was a message waiting for me at the desk when I got back to the hotel. It was written in a hasty hand, in English. It advised me to order dinner in my room this evening. It stipulated that I was to order enough for two, and it advised me to procure a large bottle of white wine to go with the chicken parmigiana that was the special of the evening.

Evidently Juan Felipe would be joining me for dinner. I breathed a sigh of relief and left my instructions with the head waiter... actually, he was the only waiter... then I raced upstairs to bang out the events of the day and ship them off to Washington. As I was e-mailing the article I noticed another message with a strange address... a message to France had been sent late that afternoon. Juan Felipe had obviously broken the news of the professor's death to his parents.

I shut the machine down and took a shower. The hot water felt good. The cool water I finished with felt even better and I was revitalized. I strode naked out of the bathroom and that was when I noticed that Juan Felipe had joined me.

He had stripped down to his boxers again and seemed to be waiting to take a shower. There was no trace of his usual detached smile. He looked very sad. That pre-empted my complaint about his being able to gain access to my room seemingly at will. He stood and came to me. He hugged me and seemed to need to be held. I put both arms around him and knew that if we did no more together than that tonight, I would feel fulfilled.

Then he released me and removed his shorts. He stood back to let me look at him casting his eyes down to avoid mine, letting me examine him without fear of reproach. My eyes feasted on one of the most beautiful young men I had ever seen, unblemished by age or scars, a long smooth light brown body with chocolate nipples and a very long uncircumcised endowment. His tan faded in the shape of a bikini. I imagined that he only used the bikini for sunning himself. He had just too much dangling between his legs to fit into a bikini... or jockeys for that matter... and do it comfortably. I remember wanting him more than I have ever wanted any other man in my life. But I stood aside and let him pass into the bathroom to take his shower. He left the door open though, and when the water had begun to steam the room, he called for me to join him and wash his back.

His ass, as I mentioned previously was lily-white, and the only part of him that might have been considered out of proportion by a casual observer. I spent a lot of time caressing it during my second shower of the evening. I massaged it and slipped my hand between its cheeks. I found the sensitive membrane of his anus and slowly worked around and over it with my middle finger. I was admitted to its inner sanctum and my finger felt his sphincter contract clutching it and holding it in its warmth and mystery until I knew that I had to withdraw or face the prospect of never being able to abandon its pleasure.

I extricated myself and returned to my original task. I soaped him luxuriously from his neck to his heels, and that was where I was when he turned to rinse his back in the flow of water. I was on my knees in front of him, facing an erection that yearned for me to minister to it. From the look on his face, I knew that the rest of Juan Felipe was yearning for the attention too. His eyes were half-closed and his mouth was half-open and he breathed shallowly and waited anxiously for me to prove to him that I would love him.

I kissed him on the end of his glistening shaft and I lavished attention on the two eggs that dangled in his scrotum. He responded with moans and irregular breathing and a gasp and a shudder when I swallowed all nine inches... and just about choked myself.

I gasped myself as I pulled off the thing and tried to regain my composure.

"Not bad... for a Frenchman," I complimented him.

He smirked and smiled. "That part's Hispanic," he explained.

"It's also huge," I complained. "Do you mind if we get out of the shower? I'd hate to drown while I'm choking."

He smiled and lifted me to my feet. "Perhaps, in a moment," he agreed. "But first, you must let me reciprocate."

His hands slid across my chest and down my body as he knelt in front of me. He repeated what I had done to him, only he did not seem to encounter the problems I had faced. That part of me is not Hispanic. As far as I have been able to determine, it is Norwegian... with a little Irish... a very little Irish... okay, a leprechaun, all right?

I shuddered as he had, though, when I felt myself disappearing down his throat, and as I watched the spray of water bouncing off his white ass cheeks that were now spread as he lounged in the tub beneath me, I knew that if I didn't stop him, round one would be over very soon.

I pulled out of his mouth and lifted him to his large perfect feet. We kissed and this time it was not the brotherly kiss he had given me that afternoon. This time it was a long, probing, succulent, and very wet kiss full of passion and hunger and the anguish of a young man who had had a very hard day. When it was finished I wanted it to continue. I kissed his eyes to relieve them of the things they had seen that day. I kissed his ears so that they would only be filled with sounds of love. I kissed his nose to take away the stench of death. Then I returned to his lips so that they would never have to speak of the atrocities of hate.

We turned the water off and dried each other, exploring each other's bodies and picking out our favorite parts. Then I carried him to the bed and placed him onto it.

His face assumed a coquettish grin as I stood back and admired him. He raised himself to one shoulder and cocked his head.

"Rick what?" he asked with those perfect vowels of his.

"What are you talking about?" I inquired, lost as usual in a conversation that he controlled... as usual.

"What is your family name?" he clarified.

"It is not important," I replied giving him a taste of his own medicine.

He smiled a knowing smile and said, "Rafael."

I returned the smile and said, "Larsen."

"Did you order dinner, Rick Larsen?"

"It will be here soon, Juan Felipe Rafael."

"That is too bad," he said. "I don't really feel like eating right now. I thought we might... share each other."

"I'm not hungry either," I acknowledged. "What did you have in mind?"

Juan Felipe fell back onto the bed, his perfect naked body inviting me to explore it.

"I'll leave that up to you," he sighed and closed his eyes. But he opened them again when I began to suck on his toes. Somehow, I don't think he had anticipated that. But I'm the kind of a guy who likes to start at the bottom and work his way up.

For the next hour we forgot about the heat, the revolution, the murder of the professor, dinner and everything else that normally occupies a normal day. Our evening was filled with love-making and pure raw uninhibited sex. I bathed his whole body with my tongue and he responded, ramming that nine inch piledriver into me through any available orifice. We each came off a number of times and finally lay exhausted in each other's arms and gazing into each other's eyes... mine are blue, his were brown... communicating wordless whispers of love with our every breath.

When fully recovered, we bathed each other again, retrieved the wine that had been left outside our door along with the now cold chicken, and drank it in the tub that we somehow managed both to squeeze into... I got the end with the taps. He played with the wine bottle by sticking each of his toes into the opening whenever I tried to take a drink, until he found the toe that would just fit in the neck, but for some unknown reason he could not then extricate.

That ended our bath. I spent the next ten minutes trying to get his toe out of the bottle. Then the heat, the wine, the exertions of sex and the soothing relaxation of the bath all took their toll and we went back to the bed again and fell asleep. But just before I drifted off, I remember thinking that I could not recollect ever having been happier. It seemed almost a sacrilegious thought when I recalled the afternoon and the tragedy it had contained. That's when I pulled Juan Felipe closer to me and kissed his neck.

He adjusted his body to fit closer to mine and I knew that we had become partners in every sense of the word. I would find out the next day just how true this was.

Chapter Three

The Impossible Photograph

It does not matter to the murder victim who killed him. Nothing much matters anymore to the murder victim. He is only a memory after he is buried, and in San Martin he is buried right away. Investigations are usually inconclusive. There are never any witnesses. Most people prefer not to meet the same fate as the man they are being asked about. Life, regardless of where it is lived, regardless of the situation it is lived in, is still preferable to death... usually.

But death in San Martin is looked on as a consequence of life. Half of the babies born do not make it past their first year before being recycled as fertilizer. An old man like Professor Aquilar was lucky to survive as long as he had... especially when you consider what he was mixed up in.

The newspaper article speculated about the reason for Professor Aquilar's suicide. It listed the professor's affiliations and lauded his many achievements. Then it repeated the charge so often brought against the man, that he was the spiritual head of the revolution, if not the political head of it. None of this was substantiated, of course, but the police had expressed an interest in inspecting the contents of the professor's filing cabinets, all of which had been moved to a storage area in the police building.

The suggested reason for his suicide was remorse over the death of the marine, a death he had not anticipated when filling the heads of his young charges with revolutionary ideas.

The newspaper article would have been the last anyone ever heard of the professor, had it not been for one glaring mistake, the photograph that they published along with it. Of course, there was no way for the newspaper editor to know that the photograph he published would have the effect it did. He didn't realize that it was impossible for it to have been taken... when it was supposed to have been taken.

I didn't realize it right away either. That's the problem with photographs, they may be worth a thousand words, but those words are sometimes whispered... are not always obvious... nor is their importance, right away.

The first person to pick it up was Juan Felipe. He was the one who picked up the newspaper, too, and brought it to the hotel room early Monday morning.

I was still asleep when he got back. He pushed me awake and shoved me over. Then he sat on the edge of the bed facing me and read the article, translating it into English as he went along.

"They say the doctor has established the time of death as two fifteen to two forty-five," he puzzled. "That means it would have had to happen about the time we were leaving town."

My trained journalist's eye spotted a discrepency.

"I'll bet the ranch that it happened before that," I said. "I'd be willing to wager that it happened before two o'clock."

Juan Felipe let the paper drop to his lap. He looked at my confident expression and his eyes narrowed as he tried to detect the reason for my smugness. Finally, though, he could not resist any longer.

"And how, monsieur, do you know that? Have you been studying medicine behind my back?"

"No," I smiled. "It's elementary, my dear Rafael. I simply looked at the newspaper. There is a rather large and vulgar photograph of the professor's body dangling from its rope. Behind the body on a table there is a mantle clock. The time is visible on the clock. It reads one fifty something."

Juan Felipe's gaze slowly started to turn into a smile. His eyes met mine and I think I detected a hint of admiration in them just before the look of horror crossed his face and he ripped the paper back open and sought the front page photograph.

"I am stupid!" he cried. "Stupid! Stupid!! Stupid!!!"

He gazed long and hard at the photograph. Then he suddenly leapt to his feet and strode to the window, the paper crushed in his left fist and hanging at his side. He held the window frame as if he needed the support.

"It's all right, Juan Felipe," I tried to console him. The clock might have stopped... perhaps it wasn't working..."

"The clock was working," he said in a trembling voice. "It was my brain that had stopped." He turned and looked directly at me. "The photograph was taken by the police photographer. It says so in the article. The police would not allow anyone else to enter the house."

"I know, Juan Felipe," I answered. "I was there when the police arrived. That was almost three o'clock. The photographer was taking the pictures while I was there. He took one of me. They sealed the house when they left."

Juan Felipe looked at me. His eyes looked frightened. He held up the wrinkled paper and I saw again the horrid photograph of the professor's body swinging from its rope exactly as we had discovered it.

"Rick, where was the professor's body when the police photographed it?"

"Why it was... omigod!" I guess I turned white even under the sunburn I had managed to get the previous day. I swallowed and found my mouth had turned dry. I was barely able to hear myself when I said, "It was on the floor."

Juan Felipe nodded. "Whoever took this photograph was probably one of the bunch who killed the professor... right after they tied his thumbs behind his back." He whipped the paper across the room and it separated into its individual pages in flight. "And you and I are not the only ones who will notice, my friend. But unfortunately for you, you are the only one who can say that the man who took that picture is a murderer... and he knows it... or he will when he sees the photograph that the newspaper used."

"The police took the picture..."

"That is what I am saying! That is why the chief of police was in his office yesterday. He was expecting a call. You interrupted his plans. He probably had someone investigate you after you left. He could afford to let Professor Aquilar hang. He was already dead. It must have happened right after I finished talking to him. Do you remember seeing the photographer when you visited the chief of police?"

"No, I don't think... I don't know... I can't say for sure."

"I can. You did not see him until you met him in the professor's house. You came out of the Chief's office at two o'clock." He scampered across the room, picked up the front page of the newspaper and gazed intently at the photograph. "At one fifty-seven the photographer was in the Professor's house... and I doubt very much that he was alone."

"Then we have proof that the Professor was murdered..."

"We have proof that your life is in jeopardy, monsieur," Juan Felipe intoned. Then I think he smirked a little as he added, "And what is worse... so is mine."

That had made me think. And of course it was true. We had walked into... at least, I had walked into the middle of a police operation designed to appease the United States, whose military advisors were in San Martin surreptitiously advising the police, there being no army, about the best way to handle the revolution that they faced. Now that one of the marine advisors had been executed by the rebels, it was important for the police to discover and deal with the killer.

They knew who he was, of course. His name was Oscar. He had done time in their jail cells. He had killed many men. He had been condemned in abstentia and was to be shot on sight. The only trouble was, you never saw Oscar until it was too late.

And so another offering had to take the place of Oscar. Professor Aquilar had been that sacrifice. His suicide would serve two purposes. It would make the military advisors believe that the revolution could be made to fall apart with the infusion of just a little more aid, and it would send a signal to the rebels that they could not possibly ignore.

But now there was someone in San Martin who could prove that the whole thing was a hoax. Not only was it a hoax, it was a cold-blooded murder. There was a witness as surely as if he had stood in the room while they had pulled the chair from beneath the professor's feet. That person could not be permitted to live. That person was me.

My predicament became even more obvious when Juan Felipe called me to the window and pointed to the uniformed policeman carrying an armful of newpapers from the newstand across the square. He tossed them into a police four by four and then he headed to the front of the hotel. Instinctively his eyes sought our window. He probably didn't realize that he was doing it. We pulled back a step into the shadows of the room. Moments later, the policeman became visible again, once more laden with newspapers. He climbed into the four by four and drove quickly away.

They had already figured it out.

"What'll I do?" I asked Juan Felipe.

"Don't you mean what will we do?" he answered. "The man who sold me the newspaper will remember that I bought it. There were at least a dozen people who have seen us together. Every other man who came to apply for the job will remember me arriving. You aren't in this alone, Rick."

"Juan Felipe, I'm sorry..."

"Don't be sorry. The professor was my friend. I suggested that we go to visit him. I'm the one who found him. Remember, it was me who ran out on you and left you to face the police alone."

"Okay, then, what'll we do?"

"We will give them a chance to find the evidence they need."

"What evidence? And what do they need it for?"

"The evidence that will prove that it was you who killed the professor."

"They can't prove that! I didn't do it!"

"That does not make any difference. They won't dare to arrest you."

"Well, that's a relief..."

"They will have to kill you..."

"What!!!"

"Don't worry, they will have to kill me too."

"Juan Felipe, don't take this personally, but that isn't a hell of a consolation."

"I know, mon ami, it doesn't make it any easier for me to accept either. That is why it is important that we do not lose our heads. What they do is only important because we must avoid it. But they are many and we are only two... for now."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"We must disappear."

"I wish I could. Do you think they're watching the airport?"

"Undoubtedly. They do not want to take you... that is, us... alive. Alive, we would be able to talk. They do not want anyone to hear what we have to say."

"Then where will we go?"

"There is only one place we can go... the professor's house."

"But the police padlocked it. There's no way to get in."

"There is always a way to get in," Juan Felipe smirked. "And if the police think that we can't get into his house, they probably will not bother to watch it."

"I'll pack right away," I said, flinging the sheets off and climbing nakedly out of bed. But Juan Felipe pushed me back into it. Then he stood over me with that half-smile of his in place, and quickly pulled off his clothes.

"There is still time," he assured me. "We will not be accosted this morning. They will have to prepare a plan to deal with us. But one thing is certain. We will be watched at every move we make today. We must do nothing to make them suspect that we know their predicament."

"But we can't..."

"Would you not want to have sex with me if you were not aware of the situation?"

"Yes, of course I would..."

"Then that is what we should do. I apologize that I have not showered since returning from my errand..."

"Shut up and kiss me."

"Monsieur, you are so authoritative..."

"I told you to kiss me."

We kissed a long while and I drank in his flavour and noticed a complete absence of french cologne. Indeed, he had a faint odor of perspiration about him. I found it stimulating and when the kiss was done I turned him onto his back and gave him a tongue bath in spite of his protestations that he was filthy from the street and the exertion of his morning run.

When I got to that magnificent member of his, I had almost forgotten that I was a marked man... marked for execution. If I had to die, there was no one I would rather die with than Juan Felipe. That was when I realized that I had fallen in love with a nineteen year old boy.

But it was more than that. I trusted Juan Felipe with my life. He had proven himself an able young man. He had knowledge of the country, even though he himself was a visitor to the land of his birth. He seemed to have an awareness of what was going on and how it would unfold. It was more than I had, anyway. I was just plain scared... scared of dying, I guess... but more than that, afraid that I might lose Juan Felipe, who now moaned beneath me as I gulped at his erection and sent shivers of excitement through him, just before he unloaded down my gullet.

I lapped him up like a dog drinks water, cleaning his shaft and sucking the spillage out of his thick tangle of pubic hairs. Then I finished bathing him with my tongue, as I licked down his lightly haired legs and finished with his toes. He laid quite still and did not protest as he had the night before when I had started at his feet. By this time he was used to and accepting of my peculiarities, and I had quite fallen in love with his. We laid together in the early morning coolness and I wrapped an arm around him and held my hand over his left breast. It was then that I realized that I could not feel his heart beating.

"I don't know how to break this to you," I whispered into his ear. "You don't seem to have a heart... at least one that works."

My announcement did not seem to surprise him. In response he rolled onto his back and held my head down to his right breast. The familiar thumping was strong in my ear.

"What the hell is it doing over there?" I asked.

"Pumping blood... I hope," he answered and smiled a self-conscious smile at me. "I told you that I was a miracle baby."

"You're just full of surprises," I said looking down into his eyes. I leaned down and kissed him, but he made a face and quickly turned his head away.

"Argh," he complained, "your breath smells like feet!"

I rolled him over and kissed him between his other cheeks.

"Now guess what it smells like," I laughed and tried to roll him onto his back once again. This time he fought me in earnest, leaping from the bed and barricading himself in the bathroom.

At times like this it was difficult for me to realize that the both of us were under a sentence of death. I guess that kind of information is kind of hard to absorb. It took me until the early evening to finally grasp it.

We had set out together to photograph the countryside surrounding the city and to see as much of the rebel held territory as we safely could.

Juan Felipe did not seem too concerned about the rebels, but they still caused me some alarm, especially when I recalled the photos I had seen of the marine, whose body had been discovered one morning in a milk cart by the side of the road. Our paper had decided not to publish the pictures from San Martin, opting instead for a portrait of the young man in his dress whites. The photographs from San Martin would have served no purpose other than to cause pain for the family of the young man. Their memory served to keep me on my toes while we walked the trails that the rebels used.

I found myself longing to be back in the city. I managed to put out of my mind the peril that awaited us there. As we inched up the mountain side and then broke out into the clearing that was Los Gatos, I tried to rationalize the danger that awaited us back in town.

We passed through the clearing and found another trail that headed down the mountain. This led us to another road that seemed even worse than the one we had used to leave town. Juan Felipe paused at a farm just outside town and went in to talk to the owners.

A few minutes later he returned wearing long dirty white pants and a nondescript jacket. He handed me a poncho and a hat and told me to try them on. Then he made me pull on a pair of peasant pants similar to the ones he now wore. When he was sure that everything fit, we changed back to the clothes we had previously worn, shoved the others into a canvas bag that Juan Felipe now wore over his shoulder, and trudged into town.

It was dark now, and we made for the hotel. We dined together in the dining room after a brief stop in the room to turn on the lights. We did not go in. Juan Felipe would not permit it.

After dinner we adjourned to the lobby. But instead of going to the room, Juan Felipe found a broom closet and we changed into our other clothes.

"Go over to the cantina and wait for me there," he ordered.

"Why? Where will you be?"

"I will be there in a little while," he assured me. "I have something to do. Buy two beers, and try to look like you are half-drunk. That way, nobody will bother you. But whatever you do, stay in the cantina. Do not come back to the room, no matter what happens."

"What are you going to do?"

Juan Felipe regarded me the way a teacher regards a particularly stupid child.

"I must turn out the lights of course." Then he kissed my nose and was gone.

I pulled my hat low and tried to remain inconspicuous as I made my way out of the hotel and through the square to the cantina. I found a table in the shadows and ordered the beer as I had been instructed. I could see the room perfectly from my table. The light remained on. At least ten minutes had passed since we had parted. I began to fear that Juan Felipe had been apprehended... or worse... when I felt a hand on my shoulder as a tall man with long pants too short for his long legs slid into the chair beside me.

"I thought you were going to turn out the lights," I spoke in Spanish.

"Be patient, mon ami..." Well at least we had gotten away from the "monsieur" business. "...everything is under control. Remember you are drunk. Do not speak so precisely."

"What about you?" I inquired. "Aren't you drunk?"

"But of course not. I must guide my older brother home... after the festivities."

"Just my luck... the designated driver doesn't have a driver's licence... or a car..."

Juan Felipe smiled at me. He sipped at his beer. It was impossible to gulp the vile stuff.

"If you will turn your attention to our room's window," he remarked, "you will notice the lights going out right about now." He didn't look himself. His back was to the hotel. But he smiled when my reaction told him that the lights had followed his orders and extinguished themselves. "They will think that we have gone to bed," he advised. "We will see what happens next, eh, monsieur?" I guessed I had spoken too soon.

"What do you think is going to happen?" I asked.

"I have no idea," Juan Felipe assured me. "But we will be able to see from here, n'est ce pas?" He moved his chair around the table towards mine, turning it to face the hotel. I didn't know what to look for anymore than he did. I supposed, however, that one of us would recognize it when it happened.

I guess I expected something subtle, a few men in dark clothing entering the hotel, the light in our room going on, a dark figure appearing at the window cursing the gringo who had managed to elude his assassins.

So it was a bit of a shock when the whole side of the hotel blew out and landed in the square.

The newspaper would say that the blast had been centered in my room. They would report that I was, in reality, a bomb expert who had been hired by the rebels to destroy public buildings in San Martin, in a stepped up offensive.

The police would be quoted as speculating that my presence in San Martin the day of Professor Aquilar's strange suicide was curious. They would state that Professor Aquilar's body was being exhumed to look for signs of foul play. It was possible, they said, that Professor Aquilar had been murdered by the rebels when he balked at the campaign of terror that was to be unleashed on San Martin.

In a related article the newspaper reported that the previous day's edition had been confiscated by the police. A photograph of the professor's body hanging in his home had been given to the newspaper anonymously. It had not been chosen by the editor to fill the front page, but had somehow found its way in when the newspaper was printed. An examination of the photo had been done by the police and compared to the files on a disk that had miraculously survived the explosion the previous night. It was obvious that the photograph had been taken by me as well, just after I single-handedly killed the old man. Employees of the newspaper were being questioned to determine how the rebels had managed to get their repulsive message into the newspaper.

But Juan Felipe and I had not waited for the newspaper to be published. We were on our way out of town before the debris finished landing in the square.

Chapter Four

Into the Fire

I awoke beneath a mosquitero that I vaguely remembered having helped Juan Felipe hook over the four posts of the big double bed. Through the fine mesh of the net the room took on an ethereal look. It would have been as unfamiliar to me even without the mosquito netting. I had never seen it before.

We had crept into the house in the darkness of the night and Juan Felipe had led me to this room without the benefit of illumination. It was important, he had reminded me, that we give no sign of our presence. And so the lights had remained off, even though we were in a house in the middle of the jungle.

We had clung to each other most of the night. I was certain that he had felt my nervous trembling. I had felt his. It was impossible for us not to be afraid now. The explosion in our hotel room had confirmed Juan Felipe's assertion that we would not be taken alive.

We listened for any sound that might betray the arrival of the police. None came. At four in the morning I heard the Professor's mantel clock chime for the last time. After that, sleep took over, but it was a fitful sleep filled with nightmares and dire premonitions whispered into my subconsious by the events of the day. I remember them coming for us and dragging Juan Felipe out of the bed and away from me. That's when I awoke in a cold sweat and sat up straight.

Juan Felipe was not in the bed. This did not alarm me after the initial panic wore off and I began to reason logically. He had started out there the night before. If someone had taken him in the night they would have taken me too. We were known to be together. And, more importantly, I was the one they were after.

I pulled away the netting and rolled out of the bed... the Professor's bed, as it turned out. I was naked, of course, but by now Juan Felipe and I had become very casual about our nudity. His clothing lay on the floor beside mine, so I knew that, wherever he was, he too was naked. I set out to find him.

The bedroom was in the back of the house. I found myself in a long hallway that was like a gallery of Professor Aquilar's life. There were photographs of the man with many groups of people. Some of the people were famous. Others were notorious. But most were just anonymous.

There were other rooms off the hall, including a bathroom. In the bathroom there was a lot of heavily steamed chrome that attested to its recent use. A damp towel hanged heavily from the shower curtain rod. I guessed that Juan Felipe had showered while I had slept soundly.

Then I spotted the clothing on the floor. There was a green and brown shirt, a pair of reddish brown socks, one of which seemed to be missing part of the toe, a small pair of black army boots that needed polish, and... worst of all... a pair of pants that were quite small and could not possibly fit Juan Felipe... or me either, for that matter.

That's what stopped me. I didn't know what I would find at the end of the hall. But, I supposed that whatever I found would not be wearing any clothing. I guess that's why I didn't go back for mine.

I inched along the corridor until I began to hear their voices. Their was no mistaking Juan Felipe's of course. I would know his rich full enunciation anywhere... even speaking Spanish as it was now. The other voice was softer, lower, somehow sweeter as it whispered vows of love in Juan Felipe's ear. It spoke in short phrases truncated and seemingly uttered in time to physical exertion that told me before I could see into the room that the young man who owned it was receiving the full and undivided attention of Juan Felipe.

I peered into the livingroom cautiously. Juan Felipe's naked back was to me. There was no fear of him seeing me. He was bent over the naked body of a smaller man whose legs were high in the air and wrapped around Juan Felipe's neck.

The young man's face was partly visible to me. Like his body, his complexion was tanned, but not darkly. Juan Felipe's own tanned skin was darker. Deep brown eyes gazed up at Juan Felipe from a face that struck me as androgynous and beautiful. There was none of the sneering macho expression I had seen almost exclusively on the male faces I had seen since my arrival. The nose was angular and elegant. It flared a little over lips moist with perspiration... lips that barely moved as they formed the words that encouraged Juan Felipe to harder and faster love-making.

What I could see of his body suggested that although body-building had not been one of his main pursuits, care had been taken to ensure that he remained fit.

I did not feel jealous. I felt envious... but not of the young man. I envied Juan Felipe. I wished that it was me in Juan Felipe's shoes. Then I realized, of course, that he wasn't wearing any.

That's when the young man noticed me standing there.

His head fell over to the side, and as it did, he regarded me. He said nothing about my presence to Juan Felipe, but continued to watch me and urge his partner to probe him deeper. His lips formed a smile that told me it was all right for me to watch. I guess I smiled back. Anyway, his head turned back to Juan Felipe, who was now devoting himself with a single-minded purpose to finishing what he had started.

I watched a moment more and then retreated to the bedroom as quietly as I could and crawled back under the mosquitero. The vision of their love-making burned in my mind. I closed my eyes and it swam before me as only a memory can, at once perfect and yet improved somehow by my own imaginings of the event... my own desire to have been a part of it. I found myself erect and utterly frustrated. I rolled over and buried my head in Juan Felipe's pillow, inhaling deeply the scent he had left there.

"Rick, wake up. I want you to meet Armando."

Two nude bodies faced me through the diffusion of the mosquitero. The one I knew well by now. It belonged to Juan Felipe. The other was the body of the young man who had been with Juan Felipe in the livingroom.

"Armando says he wants to meet you."

Armando was a short man. The top of his head was level with Juan Felipe's shoulder. His slender nude body angled down from curved shoulders to rounded pectorals, but it was the penis and testicles that met my eye as I lifted my head from Juan Felipe's pillow. Above them Armando's stomach protruded, not that it was a large stomach or a gut... it was just the way he was standing, resting his body's weight on his left leg and shifting his stomach forward. He had an innie navel. His chest was not developed and his nipples, although not tiny, were not large either. There was nothing exceptional about the young man's body, and yet, when you got to that face, the whole package came together... at least it did for me... and I longed to know him intimately.

"We've already met," I said.

Armando smiled again the smile he had smiled when he had noticed me watching him. I pulled up the mosquitero and pushed my right hand through towards him. He grasped it, but not firmly. He sort of held it and did not seem to feel the need to let it go.

Juan Felipe was looking perplexed. I was happy about that. Usually I was the one who looked perplexed.

"He drove you in from the airport on his motorcycle the day I arrived," I explained. Juan Felipe smiled.

"Oui, monsieur, you are correct."

"I'm happy to finally meet you, Armando," I smiled my most genuine smile.

"Enchante, monsieur..."

"Oh, Jesus, not another one!"

"I am teaching him French, monsieur," Juan Felipe laughed. "But his English is very good too. Will you not get up, monsieur?"

"I can't right now."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm sporting a raging hard-on."

"Well, then, perhaps we should join you," Juan Felipe smiled and pulled the mosquitero up far enough to admit the two of them. He pushed Armando towards me and jumped in behind him. I still wasn't certain if Armando had told him that I had seen the two of them having sex, but I decided that it was probably a moot point when he turned Armando around and the young man's head found my engorged penis. As I felt his ministrations begin I pulled his crotch to my lips and did my best to reciprocate as my fingers played with his asscheeks and one of them slid in between the membrane so recently vacated by Juan Felipe.

Then the dynamite under the bed exploded and we were all falling into the square in front of the cantina, where two old men lifted high their cervezas and toasted our descent.

I sat bolt upright in the bed.

"Ah, you are awake at last, monsieur," Juan Felipe remarked, tucking his t-shirt into his shorts and fastening the clasp that held the front of his pants together.

I wondered how much of the morning had been a dream. Then a young man in a brown and green camouflage shirt and pants appeared from a room that I now knew to be a bathroom. He carried a pair of scuffed army boots in his left hand. I lifted myself up and peered over the foot of the bed. One of his socks was leaking a few of his toes. I pulled the mosquitero back.

"Buenos dias, Armando," I said when I saw that Juan Felipe was on the verge of making introductions. "Parlez vous francais?"

A familiar smile spread itself across Armando's lips. And then it was etched with an impish grin as he spoke in a low soft voice, "Non, monsieur... but I do speak a little English."

"Good," I answered and returned his smile.

Juan Felipe regarded the two of us. His haughty sneer betrayed his annoyance that perhaps he had missed something as he looked from me to Armando and then back to me.

"Does my french bother you that much, monsieur?" he intoned.

"Well, it does get a little trying from time to time..."

He looked down his elegant nose at me.

"Bon!" he answered. "I would suggest that you get some clothes on... monsieur."

"Why? Are we going somewhere?"

"Not too far... But we do have to set up a camp. The police will be looking for us. We should let them find the place where we passed the night. Bring everything you brought with you. We may have to leave them some clues."

"I take it we are going to throw them off the scent."

"That is correct, monsieur. It is always best to let them find what they are looking for... but not what they need. Armando has kindly consented to assist us. He knows the countryside even better than I do."

"How did he know where to find us?"

"I told him yesterday where we would be. Until recently you were wearing his father's pants. He heard the explosion last night and he knew that we would need his help today. That is why he came."

I guess I grinned at Armando. He smiled back at me. Armando's presence had more to do with his infatuation with Juan Felipe than it had with any desire to assist me. I knew that for a fact... and he knew that I knew. Then it dawned on me that my presence in San Martin had probably interrupted Armando's love affair. Juan Felipe had found it necessary to take me under his wing. In doing so he had been forced to abandon Armando's bed.

But why? Juan Felipe was not poor. He obviously did not need the job I had to offer as much as I needed him. And yet he had been at the airport to take my luggage from me without so much as a "May I?" He had made no effort to conceal himself as he watched me from the cantina. When Armando had delivered his belongings to the hotel it had been after the interview, but before Juan Felipe had been availed of any opportunity to phone him and tell him the results. I got the feeling that Juan Felipe had been playing me like a bad song with predictable lyrics. It was not a good idea to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I found myself again wondering why he had hired on to help me.

There was no doubt in my mind that Juan Felipe had my best interests at heart... in spite of our current predicament. But I did doubt that he was acting on any altruistic desire to keep me out of trouble. I was sure now, more than ever, that someone else had sent Juan Felipe to look after me. Someone else was orchestrating our moves. I was also certain that the someone else was not affiliated with the police. That left very few other possibilities.

It might have been Professor Aquilar who had requested that his former student take on the extra-curricular activities. The man certainly had enough friends, judging from his hallway gallery, to indicate involvement in the community. Knowing the situation in San Martin, he might have feared for my safety and sent his star pupil to make sure that I lived to tell my tale. But I suspected that if Juan Felipe was acting at the professor's request he would have told me so after finding the man murdered in his home.

I was certain that other forces were at play here, and since it was not the police, it most certainly had to be the rebels. That was not necessarily a bad thing. The police had turned out to be a disappointment.

If it was the rebels who had asked Juan Felipe to be my bodyguard, it would explain his lack of concern while touring the rebel territory... had that only been yesterday? But did that mean that Juan Felipe was a rebel? And what about Armando? Surely these two cherubs were not involved in a revolution.

But they were in San Martin. So was I, for that matter. And I doubted that there was any way I could have become more deeply involved in the revolution than I had managed to become in just three short days.

As it turned out, I was wrong.

I finished dressing and we left the house through the cellar that held more than the professor's preserves. It also contained an entrance to the cave that Juan Felipe and I had used to access the building without having to break any of the locks the police had placed on the doors and windows. He was quite talented at gaining access... well, I guess I'd found that out on my first day in town.

The first thing we had to do was climb a mountain... a volcano, as it turned out. There are a lot of them around. Most of them are extinct... at least that's what Juan Felipe assured me. The volcanic ash is evidently good for growing coffee. But we did not see any coffee plantations. We stuck to the jungle, where our progress would go unwitnessed... we hoped... and where the spongy undergrowth would not record our passing.

Armando led the way. Juan Felipe brought up the rear. I walked behind Armando and spent most of the time fantasizing about his lovely young back. His ass swayed ever so slightly back and forth on the level spots and outlined itself against the camouflage pants admirably when he climbed.

We did a lot of climbing, both up and down, and whenever Armando would have difficulty with an ascent it was my job to give him a push. This invariably meant that I had to position my hands on his small rounded butt. I became very well acquainted with it that day. I think he enjoyed it as much as I did. He seemed to anyway. Some of the ascents that he asked me to help him with weren't that difficult.

Once up, he would not hesitate to turn and offer assistance. I held his hands a lot that day as well. They were soft hands that did not know manual labor, hands with long tapered fingers and long finger nails that had been carefully maintained, possibly manicured, although I doubted that they had been done by a professional manicurist. There would not be a lot manicurists in San Martin. He probably did them himself... or perhaps he had Juan Felipe do them.

The clothes were a contradiction. I decided that he most likely wore them to put off casual observers who might mistake him for a hustler if he dressed more attractively. The clothes were clean, however, and smelled of Juan Felipe's cologne. I added one more check to the list of evidence that told me Armando and Juan Felipe were lovers.

We had come about five kilometers when Armando seemed to have difficulty with a tree that had fallen blocking his way. He appeared to be waiting for my help to send him up onto it. I made to step behind him when I felt myself being pushed roughly out of the way. Juan Felipe's hands then shoved roughly at Armando's butt sending him up onto the trunk of the tree and down the other side where he made a three point landing.

Juan Felipe had not shown me until then that he could be jealous.

I thought that Armando would protest, but he said nothing as he picked himself up and glanced over his shoulder, a bashful smile in place. Juan Felipe brushed past him and brusquely took point. Armando fell in behind him after offering me an embarassed grin and a shrug of his shoulders. With Juan Felipe now in front of him, he took the opportunity to glance over his shoulder from time to time and smile at me when he noticed that I was once again watching his butt. Once he even laughed when he caught me adjusting myself. He had a pleasant laugh. It was soft, deep and throaty.

We came at last to a clearing that seemed to have been our destination. It was situated on the side of a hill, but the area was level and large enough to lay down comfortably... so we did. By this time it was almost noon. We did not need a fire, but after we had compressed the areas where we might have slept the previous night, we lit a small fire to indicate that we might have needed warmth during the night.

"And now, monsieur," Juan Felipe smiled as he reached into his pocket, "We must leave positive proof that it was we who passed the night here." He tossed me a condom.

"What's this for?"

"It is really quite simple, monsieur. Now that the marines have arrived in San Martin, we know that the police have access to the laboratories of the United States government. They will be able to analyse all of the evidence they find here today. We need a sample of your D.N.A."

"And how do you plan to get it?"

"You are going to ejaculate into that little balloon."

"Why?"

Juan Felipe regarded me. He seemed to have missed the point.

"Juan Felipe," I reminded him. "If I was to ejaculate into this little balloon, it would not be something I would do by myself. I would have no use for this little balloon if I was only jacking off. And if someone is to find this little balloon and run tests on it, don't you think that they would test both the inside and the outside of the thing?"

He looked uncomfortable. Obviously his thinking hadn't taken him that far.

"I don't mind filling this for you," I pursued, "but I can't do it by myself. Are there any volunteers from the audience?"

I think we were both a little surprised when Armando stepped forward.

"Un momento..." Juan Felipe seemed a little anxious. Armando was already unbuttoning. He stopped and looked at Juan Felipe. Juan Felipe looked at the two of us. I could see what was going through his mind. He was still just a teenager and obviously still a little inhibited when it came to public sex. He came from a protected environment, whereas Armando, who appeared even younger than Juan Felipe, was, if not a child of the streets, at least a little more experienced. For Juan Felipe this was just a little too much. He turned and stalked away into the trees.

Armando resumed his unbuttoning. I was now faced with a dilemma of my own.

"Why do you not undress, senor?" Armando asked as he pulled off his shirt and undid his belt.

"I... uh..."

"Do you not find me attractive, senor?"

"Of course I do," I stammered. "I just have to ask you though, how old are you?"

"How old do you think that I am?"

"I have no idea. I hope you're over eighteen."

"Yes, senor, I am over eighteen. I haven't been eighteen for nine years."

"You're twenty-seven?" I asked, doing some quick mental arithmetic.

"Yes, senor. Would you like to see my cedula?"

"You're older than I am?"

"Does that make a difference?"

"No, of course not. One of us has to be younger. I'm just glad that it's finally me. You and Juan Felipe are lovers?"

"Do you find that hard to believe?"

"No, not at all."

"Well, then, perhaps you would take your clothing off..."

"Yes, of course." I pulled off my shirt as he finished removing his pants. He wore no underwear. He was not large. His penis was uncircumcised, but the foreskin did not quite cover the head. His testicles were small too. I could have devoured his genitalia in one mouthful. His body was as I had expected it to be when I'd seen him beneath Juan Felipe that morning. I longed to have him and hurried to remove my clothing. But there was still something troubling me.

"Is this going to cause trouble between Juan Felipe and you?"

"No more than the trouble that has already been caused by you having been with him," Armando answered a little too truthfully. Then he smiled at me. "Juan Felipe is still a child in many respects, senor. He will pout for a while. Then he will think of something else and forget that he was angry. Our relationship has endured many troubles. He does live in France now. I do not think that he refuses many young men who wish to have sex with him while he is away from me. He cannot expect me to be a priest, can he?"

"It's just that I don't want to be the cause..."

"Do not think that way, senor. If you must think about this at all, think that you are performing an act for the revolution."

I hadn't thought of it in quite those terms.

"Is that what you're doing?" I asked him.

"No, senor," he answered with a smile. "I'm taking advantage of a situation that has presented itself. Juan Felipe will not permit himself to be fucked. I will."

"Is that all we're going to do?" I asked.

"We are going to recreate a night of passion," he reminded me. "We are going to do what you and Juan Felipe would have done. What would you do first, senor"

"I would kiss him."

"Then that is what you must do to me."

"After that I would lick his body all over and suck him until he came down my throat," I went on feeling emboldened by Armando's apparent willingness.

"Then," he gulped, "you must do that to me as well."

"After that, I'd..."

"Why don't you surprise me, senor? I think you said you wanted to start with a kiss."

I leaned over that beautiful face and Armando's lips parted as mine touched his. I felt his tongue enter my mouth. Hands found my genitals as I concentrated on his ass cheeks, lifting them and feeling between them the membrane that I would soon be filling. I wrapped my arms about him and lowered him to the bed that had been made by our clothing. He was gasping for breath and so was I when I finally broke off the kiss and began to work my way down his chest to his right nipple.

His penis was stiff when I finally got to it after lavishing a lot of attention on his navel. I massaged his balls as I swallowed his erection and felt his pubic hair forcing against my lips. Then I felt him pulling me around until I was within reach of his lips and he did to me what I was doing to him.

Eventually I felt him pulse and discharge into my mouth. It was all that I could do to contain myself. I pulled quickly out of his mouth and concentrated on devouring him. I didn't miss a drop. He laid for a while where I had positioned him as he recovered his sensibilities. I laid down beside him and kissed him lightly. Then I lifted him and guided him until his ass nested just above my face. As he smoothed the condom onto my erection, I licked at his hole and tasted the funky flavor of another man's anus. There is something about the taste that is almost addictive. I don't imagine they'll ever put it in a chewing gum, but it is not repulsive as a lot of people might think.

By the time I had him slippery enough, he had me sheathed and we switched places. He guided me in and I felt him shudder as I buried myself in his delights. It wasn't long before I filled Juan Felipe's little balloon.

I pulled the thing off.

"What should I do with it?" I asked.

"Throw it away as you normally would. They will find it," Juan Felipe answered from his vantage point three meters to our left. "Then put your clothes on and say good-bye."

"Good-bye?" I asked. "Why good-bye?"

"Because Armando has work to do... and so do you."

"What are you talking about?"

"Armando has to lead the police away from us long enough for you to write the story you came here to write."

"You're overlooking a couple of things, aren't you?" I inquired.

"I don't think so," he answered.

"But we're on the run," I pressed. "I have no way of communicating. My computer was blown up last night. Even if I could write the story, I'd never be able to get it out of the country."

"Your computer is back at Professor Aquilar's house. Armando was keeping it for you. We could not let the police have access to it. The computer in the hotel room was a stolen one. It held nothing important. Armando brought your camera too. Everything you will need to write your story... names, dates, everything... is at Professor Aquilar's house... he kept track of everything."

"But the police took his filing cabinets.."

"That is one of the benefits of living in a backward little country, monsieur. Even the police do not know the importance of computers. But Professor Aquilar realized it early on. He kept anything of value on his own machine... a machine that the police never even considered when they went looking for information. They took the filing cabinets, yes, but they missed the files... the really important files. Please, put your clothes on."

"Juan Felipe, I want to apologize if what we did here has hurt..."

"Please, monsieur, do not speak of what happened. It has not changed anything between us..." He regarded Armando sadly. "... any of us. But I think that you can now appreciate that I came to San Martin for reasons other than to see my brother."

"I watched the two of you make love. I would not have been able to watch if it had only been sex. I am happy that you like my lover. I am happier still that you seem to love him... and respect him. After all the two of us are lovers too, n'est ce pas?"

He smiled the same sad smile he had smiled when I had found him in my room after the professor's body had been found. I knew what Juan Felipe loved about Armando. But I knew much better what Armando loved about Juan Felipe. I pulled on my clothes and so did Armando. We gave him some papers that I carried in my wallet, a pair of my socks and a couple of disks from my computer with some pictures on them to seed the trail that we hoped the police would follow. Then we kissed good-bye. Armando headed north towards the border. We retraced our steps back to the house in the jungle.

I found myself missing the young man I hadn't known until this morning. I could only imagine how Juan Felipe felt.

Chapter Five

It Never Rains But It Pours

Life would have been idyllic during the next few days were it not for the work we had to do and the constant reminders all around us of the deadly seriousness of the game we were playing. I felt that I was being watched. It was probably just my imagination, but Juan Felipe's sudden shush and his increased attentiveness before racing from the room where we worked to check an imagined noise, or a real one did little to put me at ease.

We worked together in the professor's study, a small room made much larger by the absence of a number of large fully-stuffed filing cabinets that were now under arrest at the police station. Well, better them than me...

Juan Felipe interpreted the files on the computer from Spanish into English and as he did a litany of corruption unfolded before me, which, if substantiated, would have been enough to indict the entire police force and all elected officials from the local mayors on up to the current president and all of his predecessors. Our evidence showed they were all guilty of essentially the same thing, misusing their offices to line their own pockets.

I expressed this to Juan Felipe after about an hour of dictation.

"Perhaps in the United States, monsieur, but not here in San Martin," he answered quietly and with a hint of defeat. "Here the cancer has gone too far to be surgically removed. It has infected just about everybody."

"'Nando too?" I asked. I braced myself for another diatribe about my unprofessional interest in his family. But it didn't come. Juan Felipe looked at me. His eyes showed moistness as he considered his reply.

"'Nando more than most," he answered sadly. I felt emboldened by his response.

"You said that 'Nando was in politics. Can he not help us?"

"I am counting on just that, monsieur."

"Does he know where we are?"

"Undoubtedly..."

"Juan Felipe, who is 'Nando? Is he the one who told you to look after me?"

"Yes, monsieur. He wanted you to tell your story. He wanted you to find the truth. He sent me to make sure that you did."

"Because he couldn't do it himself," I added. Juan Felipe nodded.

"Did he also tell you to sleep with me?"

Juan Felipe's head snapped around and his angry eyes burned into mine.

"I am not my brother's whore, monsieur! Do you think that I would have sex with you because he told me to?"

"I don't think that anybody could tell you to do anything you did not want to do. I didn't mention sex, Juan Felipe, you did. I was only wondering why you would have volunteered to leave Armando to spend your nights with me."

"Forgive me, monsieur, I misunderstood," he answered abjectly. "It was my decision to stay with you. I think it proved to be a wise one. You might be dead now otherwise..." He seemed to reconsider. He smirked a little before he added, "...although, had you not met me at all, you might be in a better predicament."

He twisted his chair around to face mine.

"I decided that I would stay with you when I found the picture that you had made of me. You had noticed me, as I had noticed you. I knew that we could be friends. I hoped that we could be more than that as well. It didn't take long for that to happen. Anyway, things are not all well at Armando's house," he reflected. Then he added, "But it had nothing to do with my brother..."

"Whose full name is Fernando Rafael."

"Fernando Alberto Rafael," he corrected.

"The leader of the revolution," I added.

"You are very astute, monsieur. But do not believe that he leads the revolution so much as he is caught up in it, as is everyone else. My brother is an idealist. He seeks to remove the criminal element from power in San Martin. Unfortunately he has learned, and perhaps too late, that in order to rid the country of those who would treat it as their own, he has had to join forces with elements that are equally distasteful. And for what? So that others may follow into power and repeat the crimes of their predecessors?"

"That's a pretty cynical outlook, isn't it?" I asked.

"It is a realistic one as well, monsieur," he answered defensively. "Nothing much ever changes in a country where the only lessons that are truly learned are the lessons of survival. This is not the United States, monsieur... nor is it France. When the only jobs that are available are picking coffee beans and bananas, the people do not educate themselves to be electricians and plumbers. Most of the houses in San Martin lack these amenities anyway. In the city there is a daily power failure because most people get their electricity from an extension cord that is hooked into an illegal outlet... and their water comes from a polluted river. These are not conditions that would be tolerated in your country or mine, monsieur. But here, they are a way of life."

"Things can change, Juan Felipe..."

"Of course they can," he agreed. "But that does not mean that they will. And how many people must die to make it happen?" He seemed to suddenly remember something that caused him to shudder. "At least two more that I am aware of." I felt an involuntary shiver travel my spine too. "But even after we are dead, monsieur," he continued, "there is no assurance that anyone will note our passing... except as terrorists who met the fate that they deserved."

"But the people who know us will..."

"They will be thankful that it was not they who met our fate. My parents will protest, of course. Your family will do the same. But we will be no less dead... monsieur."

I couldn't answer that. I couldn't bring myself to think about it anymore. So I didn't. I felt empty inside. I guess I looked it too.

"We are not dead yet, monsieur," Juan Felipe smiled. "And I will let you in on a little secret. I do not intend to die until I am very old. That is why we must continue to work, eh? These files contain very sensitive information. Professor Aquilar knew that they might be the cause of his death should the police ever find that he had them. For us, however, who are already condemned to death, they might have the opposite effect. Shall we continue, monsieur?"

And he turned back to the professor's machine and once again began to translate the documents that appeared one after the other. We worked until the light failed, which was late afternoon. There was still plenty of sunlight left, but the jungle around us shaded it from our use. We stopped for dinner and then Juan Felipe stepped out into a shed at the rear of the house. I heard a lot of squawking. It sounded like he was torturing chickens back there so I opened the door to the shed to see what was going on.

Juan Felipe was working a long wooden lever back and forth. The lever was attached to a metal box that stood away from the wall of the house, but was connected to it by metal pipes.

"What the hell is that?" I asked.

"It is the water for your shower, monsieur," he grinned. "This handle operates a pump which brings the water from the earth up to a tank that the professor had placed on the peak of the roof. It holds enough water for a day or two. When I studied with the professor, it was my job to fill the tank every morning. That way there would be lots of hot water for his evening bath."

"What did he use to heat the water?" I asked naively. "Did 'nando have to build a fire under the tank every day?"

Juan Felipe regarded me as if I was the stupidest person on the face of the earth. Then he smiled and shook his head.

"You are right about the fire, monsieur. But 'nando did not have to build it. It was always there where it is right now, ninety-six million miles away. The water is solar heated, and because you did not figure that out for yourself, you may finish filling the tank."

He left me there and went in to look for the key to the professor's liquor cabinet. I felt like a fool... an over-educated fool, who had been out of touch with the real world for far too long.

That night we drank a small bottle of red wine while we showered and bathed by candle light. The water was cool and the wine was warm, but Juan Felipe was as hot as ever and managed once again to jamb one of his toes into the neck of the bottle.

"You'd think that you'd learn..." I observed as I helped him hobble to the professor's bed. "Next time we'll use a carafe... or we'll get some cans of beer..."

"The beer of San Martin is unpalatable, monsieur."

"So's the wine when you get through with it."

He laughed as I laid him onto the bed and pulled the mosquitero over the four posts. I retrieved the candles from the bathroom and set them around the bedroom.

"You had better pull the curtains if you intend to illuminate the room, monsieur."

I drew the drapes over the window and checked for gaps. Then I turned to find Juan Felipe sitting at the bottom of the bed holding the bottle in his hand and pouring wine into two stemware crystal wine glasses.

"You will pardon, I hope, that the wine has acquired a new bouquet," he smiled as I slipped in opposite him and accepted the offered glass. "It is one that you seem to have appreciated in the past however..."

"And will again, very soon, I hope..."

"Monsieur, do you mean to imply that you wish to have sex with me?"

"Yah, something like that..."

"But after you already had sex this very afternoon with Armando?"

"Why not? You had sex with him this very morning," I imitated.

"Ah! You were spying on us," he accused

"I watched... for a few minutes... you did too. And besides, you have an erection."

"Touche, monsieur..." He sipped at his wine and frowned at the flavor before adding, "but so do you."

"So what do you suppose we should do about them?"

"I am eager to find out what you have in mind," he answered. He raised the mosquitero far enough to reach through and deposit his wine glass and the bottle on the floor. I followed suite. Then we were looking at each other in the flickering light of the candles. He appeared so much younger in the half light. His bronze skin seemed to glow and there was an anxious expectancy on his face as we gazed into each other's eyes.

Then, all of a sudden, there was a large foot in my face. I sucked the toe that had been trapped in the wine bottle before kissing the others and working my way up his leg to his inner thigh.

"I want you to do to me what you did to Armando this afternoon... what I did not do to him this morning."

"What was that?" I asked as I licked at his erection.

"I want you to lick me where you licked him. Lie down on your back please."

I complied with his request and soon saw his ass cheeks descending on my face. I lapped eagerly at them, spreading them and admiring what lay between them before rushing to it and burying my tongue into it. I heard him gasp as his body shuddered with the experience. I felt his hand begin to work that long shaft of his that now stood at its fullest. My chin felt his nuts slapping against it as he worked himself to climax. I wrapped my lips around his anus and sucked at it. He moaned and beat himself furiously. My tongue dived in again and again. Each time he permitted it to penetrate him further. I got to the point where I could not get further into him without biting him. I bit him. This only caused him to work harder at his masturbation. I wished that I had a longer tongue. I felt the first jet of jism hit my chest and fill my navel. It was quickly followed by another... then another...

Then I felt a strange thing happen. I felt my erection being wrapped in one of Juan Felipe's little balloons.

"What are you doing?" I asked. His nuts were hanging directly in front of my mouth and interfering with my diction.

"I am preparing you to have sex with me."

"You never made me wear one of these things before."

"You never fucked me before, monsieur."

"But you won't let yourself be fucked..."

"Would not... past tense... I think that I am ready. I suppose I should have asked however. Would you like to fuck me, monsieur?"

"Sure," I swallowed... hard. "I think you're slippery enough... but are you sure?"

"No, however I am willing to try if you are."

"But why now, Juan Felipe? Why me?" Then I hastened to add, "Not that I don't want to or anything..."

"I suppose it's a lot of things... being hunted... not knowing which breath may be the last that I take... But mostly, I think it's because I watched you doing it with Armando. I had never seen it happen before. I'd done it, of course... many times... but I'd never watched two people making love. It was beautiful. I want to try it."

"Well, okay..." I stammered. "I guess I'd better massage your sphincter muscle a little. That involves inserting my finger in your..."

"I know what it involves, monsieur. You have had your finger up there before. I am ready."

I rubbed my finger around the pucker that I so desperately desired. I massaged it and felt it become familiar to my touch. Little by little I parted it and whenever I met resistance I backed away. I tried to achieve a rhythm that he could use to anticipate my thrusts. Each time I got a little deeper until, at last, I felt his sphincter grasp my finger at the first joint. I felt around inside and he gasped, clutching my finger hard with his anus. I could not move it. Then he relaxed a little and I continued to massage him, this time from the inside.

It wasn't long before I was fucking him with my finger. Then I added a second digit and managed to work it in. He was ready. We exchanged places and I moved between his legs. It was the first time I'd seen the expression on his face. It was uncertainty... and a little fear. I lifted his legs to my shoulders and prepared to boldly go where no man had gone before. But the expression on his face haunted me... that and the way his body was contorted to give me access to his pleasures made me begin to think. This was, after all, his first time. I shouldn't go slamming into him without thought for his state of mind.

I leaned down and kissed him. His expression changed after that. He winced.

"Is something wrong?" I asked.

"Your breath... is terrible. Your mouth tastes horrible," he answered.

"That's not my breath, you're tasting, monsieur," I grinned.

I think that's when the realization dawned on him about where my lips and my tongue had been just prior to our kiss.

"Argh!" he grimaced. "Don't kiss me again until you brush your teeth."

"Oui, monsieur. Are you ready?"

"And do not speak French to me."

"It is the language of love, monsieur."

"That is a myth created by French people. They think that they are the world's greatest lovers. But they are the only ones who believe it."

"You are French, monsieur," I reminded him.

"I am but half French. The other half is where my abilities as a lover reside."

"So, you're saying that Spanish people think they are the world's greatest lovers?"

"No, monsieur, they do not think that at all. When something is a fait accompli, why would they think about it? They just do it... which is more than I can say for you."

"I'm an American. Where are we on this list of yours?"

"Forty-third. I might be willing to raise you to forty-second if you will consent to begin."

"Hmm," I reflected as I raised first his left leg, then his right back up onto my shoulders. "I had no idea I was involved in some sort of sexual olympics. Oh well," I sighed, "anything for my country..."

I parted his ass cheeks and massaged him again with the tip of my now limp penis. It didn't take long before I was up again, though. I eased into him and watched his expression for any sign of pain. None came. There was a sort of stupid open-mouthed anticipation of pain look that eventually left him, but, to my chagrin, he seemed to have no trouble accomodating me. At least, he didn't have as much trouble as I had experienced accomodating him.

When I realized this I started driving him hard and fast. The only thing that accomplished was a premature pull out just as I was about to fill the second of Juan Felipe's little balloons. I tried to get back in, but he had shut the door... it was too late. I was condemned to beat off... as usual, with Juan Felipe watching me... as usual.

We laid there a while, side by side, in the romantic glow of the candles. Then I pulled the condom off and tossed it under the mosquitero.

"Well?" I asked. I didn't expect him to hold up a score card with five point nine on it, but I thought he might tell me how he felt.

"Go and brush your teeth," he said.

I took it to mean that he might be going to kiss me. That was a good sign, I figured. I cleaned up in the bathroom and even used some of the professor's mouthwash. When I got back to bed Juan Felipe was already asleep. I guessed this meant that I had failed to make the cut and would remain on the receiving team. I blew out the candles, opened the curtains and crawled under the mosquitero.

When I awoke I was surprised to find Armando asleep where Juan Felipe had been. Juan Felipe was gone again... probably, I figured, investigating another noise. There was a lot of noise to investigate. It was raining heavily and clattering on the metal rooves of the out buildings.

Armando looked to be competely whacked out. I decided to let him sleep and go find Juan Felipe. I located him in the study transferring image files from the professor's machine to mine. I leaned over to kiss him good morning. He shied away from me.

"Did you brush your teeth?"

"Yes, and I gargled too."

He allowed the kiss.

"When did Armando get back?" I asked.

"About an hour ago... It started to rain, so he headed home. He set up two camps. He'll set up two more tonight. He left your socks at one, a letter and two piles of shit at the other."

"Two piles of shit? How'd he manage that?"

"He hadn't gone for a while and the second camp is about twenty kilometers from here."

"He made pretty good time."

"He used his bike. Oh, by the way, I took some money out of your pants. He needs to get some gas."

"Yah, all right... Does he need anything else?"

"About eight hours of sleep and a bath... damn!"

"What's the matter?"

"Your hard drive is full."

"You can erase my picture directory."

"I already did."

"Well, then, maybe we should send some of this stuff back to Washington."

"And how do you plan to do that?"

"By phone... He has a telephone around here somewhere, doesn't he?"

"Oui, monsieur, but if we use it we will be alerting the police to our presence here."

"Well, we will eventually have to hook up the modem..."

"But not right now, monsieur. If we are careful we will have another three days here. And with the rain falling, I do not relish the idea of walking through the jungle. No, we will have to compress as many files as we can."

He set about doing it and I went to the kitchen to round up some breakfast for the two of us. I prepared a plate using the last of the bread and sliced some of the hard cheese that I found in the refrigerator. Then I pulled the plug on the refrigerator and plugged in the hot plate to make coffee, just in case someone was watching the power consumption of the house.

There's only one thing that can wake me out of a deep sleep... well, maybe two... but the smell of coffee is definitely one thing that I cannot sleep through. I guess that Armando is the same as me.

"Is there enough for me, too, senor?" he inquired sleepily from the doorway.

"Oh, hey, man, sure! Did I wake you up?"

"No, senor. I think the rain did that. Will you call me when it's ready? I'm going to take a bath."

I did him one better. I took the cup to him in the bathroom. As he sipped it, I washed his back and he told me where he had gone and what he had done. It was essentially the same stuff Juan Felipe had told me earlier, but I listened attentively and lathered him luxuriantly.

I dried my hands and left him to soak for a minute. The water had been barely lukewarm, almost cool, so I boiled a kettle on the hot plate and added it carefully to his tub, while he stirred the water to mix it in.

"Should I boil another kettle?"

"No, senor. It's just right. Muchas gracias."

I dared not dally too long. Juan Felipe was still waiting for me and his promised breakfast in the study. But he had already dressed and Armando was presenting me with a damned good view. I found myself looking for a reason to delay.

"What's your full name, Armando?"

"Luis Armando Perez, why?"

"I want to make sure that I get it right in the article I'm writing."

"No, senor. I must ask you not to write about me."

"Don't worry, man, I won't tell them about making love to you..."

"That's not the thing, Rick. The sex I prefer is of little consequence to anyone, but I can't have anybody know who I am. There are people who would use the information to make life impossible."

"You mean the police."

"Them too. I have managed to make enemies on both sides because I have tried to remain neutral. I do not need them to know that I am helping you."

"I guess I know how you feel," I agreed.

"People do not like it when you fail to agree with them," Armando explained. "But if you agree with one side the other side becomes angry. Most of the people who are involved became involved because someone made it impossible for them to remain uninvolved. There are very few idealists in this struggle."

"There's only one that I know of," Juan Felipe contributed from the doorway. "Don't worry, Armando. Rick will leave your name out of the article."

Juan Felipe had managed to clear enough space on my hard drive to continue our work. After breakfast, Armando went back to bed while we continued our translation of the professor's notes and evidence.

Juan Felipe didn't seem as jumpy now that he knew where Armando was. I felt better too. Our task seemed to have become almost routinely mundane... almost nine to five. Not once during the rest of the morning did Juan Felipe get up to inspect a noise... until he heard the unmistakeable squeak of the professor's front gate. Then he jumped up... well, we both did.

The study was a small room off the main living room. It took only a few steps to gain the front door and peer out through the window. What we saw made our hearts skip a beat. There was a policeman making his way up the path from the gate to the house. We hurried to the kitchen. It offered more places of concealment plus access to the hallway that led to the back of the house.

From our vantage point in the kitchen we could see the officer arrive at the front door and test it. Juan Felipe dropped to his hands and knees and began working his way towards the hallway. I followed his lead. I followed it so closely that my nose was all but rammed up his butt. Then, when he stopped suddenly, that's exactly where it went.

He turned and whispered hoarsely in my ear that we had forgotten to turn off the computers. I realized immediately the importance of this. If this was a tour of inspection, a glowing computer monitor would be a dead giveaway that the house was occupied. He sent me back to the study to turn them off while he crawled back to the bedroom to waken Armando and get him out of the bed.

When I reached the end of the hall I did not see the officer at the door. But before I entered the room I did a quick reconnoitre. I listened and heard the heavy footfall of military boots on the verandah that surrounded the house. They were moving to my left, in the direction of the study. I saw him pass the living room window. He stopped and looked into the house. After what seemed five minutes, but was probably only as many seconds, he moved on towards the end of the house. There was another window at the corner of the room. Before he reached it and glanced in once more I had managed to crawl to the concealment of the sofa. I listened for him to move on. Eventually he did. I checked that he was no longer at the window and made a dive for the study as he was passing behind the chimney of the fireplace that occupied almost the entire end of the room and separated the two windows on either side of it.

I killed the professor's monitor. The machine was still sporting a few glowing lights so I felt for the box's off button. Juan Felipe had always been the one to operate the professor's machine. I wasted a lot of valuable time trying to find the switch. Then I yanked the power bar's plug out of the wall. I heard the officer arrive at the study window as I was closing the lid of my portable computer. I waited under the desk, not daring to even breath.

He tried the window. It was locked. He examined the glass and the frame carefully. I heard him curse softly to himself. He moved a few feet further along and then returned, looking once more through the study window, before returning again to the front of the house.

From my vantage point under the professor's desk, I saw him pass the large front window again. I crawled to the doorway and peered out. Juan Felipe's head was visible at the end of the hall. He was staring intently at the front door of the house. The door rattled as the officer tried it again. I glanced once more at Juan Felipe who was now holding a handgun in front of his face and pointing it at the front door. Armando's face appeared in the entrance of the kitchen. It looked frightened. He glanced from Juan Felipe to the door. I saw him swallow hard. His naked shoulder became visible. I glanced back at the door.

That's when the mantle clock struck noon. It did this because I am a fool. The professor had been dead for almost four days. His mantle clock had run down and stopped the night before. I had noticed this and rewound it, setting it to the right time using the clock in my computer... a clock that is set for Washington time, eastern standard time... while San Martin is one hour behind. In fact, it was eleven o'clock.

The chiming clock seemed to set the policeman into motion, however. He turned and quickly descended the steps to the path. A moment later three faces were at three different windows watching him walk quickly down the path to the gate. It squawked again as he passed through it and it clattered shut moments before the door of the police four by four slammed.

Seconds later the vehicle disappeared into the jungle rain. We all breathed a sigh of relief as we gathered in the living room and tried to bring our pulses back to normal.

Along about two in the afternoon the rain stopped and Armando prepared to leave for the northern border. We loaded him with food and I gave him the rest of my money to buy some groceries. He kissed us both goodbye and promised to be back before morning.

We puttered about the big house when the light had once again failed in the study. I filled the rooftop tank again while Juan Felipe made a dinner of sorts from the remnants of food in the refrigerator that I had neglected to plug back in. We polished off another bottle of the professor's favorite wine as we bathed. This time Juan Felipe kept his toes out of the bottle, but managed somehow to get one of them stuck up my ass.

That's the closest we got to sex that night. We crawled into bed like an old married couple and kissed each other good night. We both knew what the problem was of course. We both missed Armando, and we hoped that he would be all right.

"Why does Armando not leave San Martin?" I asked Juan Felipe. The darkness had swallowed him and his voice came back at me like a ghost's whisper... it was there, but it was hard to tell just where.

"He cannot right now, monsieur. His parents are not well. He says he cannot leave them in the way of danger while he himself seeks refuge and safety."

"Then you've talked about it?"

"Oh, yes, monsieur, we have talked. We have yelled. We have screamed. We have spent many hours on the subject."

"I can't imagine Armando yelling and screaming..."

"I did most of that, admittedly..."

"You really love him."

"Oh, yes, monsieur."

"I think I'm jealous."

"It is strange that you should say that, monsieur."

"Oh? Why?"

"Because it is precisely what he said when I told him of my decision to move in with you." I felt his hand search out and grasp mine. His long fingers interlaced with mine and we became one again.

As I laid there in the darkness considering my good fortune and my bad fortune, the rain began again.

We didn't like to think of Armando out there in the dark night on the roads of San Martin in a driving rain storm. He didn't even have a helmet. We were both worried about him. As we later found out, we had good reason to worry.

Chapter Six

First Encounter

I awoke to the sounds of an argument. Juan Felipe was once again missing from the bed, his voice was one of the two involved in the argument that seemed to be coming from the front of the house, but I was not alone in the room.

A short, very darkly tanned man with a moustache, a green canvas hat and what appeared to be a small arsenal of ammunition strapped to him, sat in a chair at the foot of the bed. Across his lap lay a very shiny machete.

I decided that bed was not the best place for me to be. I crawled out Juan Felipe's side mostly because it was farthest away from the machete. Then I discovered that I had to pass the guerilla in order to retrieve my clothing, none of which I was wearing, of course. I dressed quickly and left the room. As I did I noticed that the dark little man was following me. I headed towards the sound of Juan Felipe's voice.

The other voice belonged to Fernando. Of that there was no doubt. They sounded like brothers. Fernando shared Juan Felipe's rich baritone. They used the same inflections. They attacked each other without regard for the niceties of polite conversation. All of these things made me believe I was in the presence of the rebel leader even before I reached the big front room. And yet I hadn't understood a word. They were speaking... or more precisely, they were yelling in French.

Obviously they did not want me to understand what they were saying to each other, but I got the impression that the real reason they were using another language was to keep their words away from the man who now trailed behind me. Had they wanted only to make sure that I did not understand, they could have used Spanish. My command of that language is not good enough to follow an animated conversation like the one they were having. It would, however, have excluded only me from their exchange.

The conversation stopped when I entered the room. Fernando was the first to notice me standing there. He put a hand up in an authoritative way to hush Juan Felipe who had not yet seen me. I made a mental note of the gesture. It seemed to work.

Fernando was unmistakeably Juan Felipe's older brother. It would not take a geneticist to establish that relationship. They shared many of the same features. Both were tall, but as Juan Felipe had already remarked, Fernando was not so tall as he. Both of them shared the same lips... lips that seemed to pout regardless of the mood of the owner of the lips. Both were tanned beautifully... disgustingly beautifully.

But there was no mistaking which of them had been first born. Fernando bore the presence of the older brother. His manner was authoritative and commanding. Juan Felipe, for all his protestations and confidence, was still the younger sibling... still a child, really, in spite of the situation in which he now found himself.

Fernando regarded me. He seemed to evaluate me. Juan Felipe turned and there was a redness about his eyes that I had not seen since the day of the professor's death.

"Rick, they've arrested Armando."

I looked from Juan Felipe to Fernando. I sought only a confirmation of the news that I did not want to believe, but I realized later that it must have appeared to Juan Felipe that I was dismissing him in favour of the older brother.

"Arrested?" I asked, and I was looking at Fernando when I asked it. He nodded in reply.

"Si, senor," Fernando stated. "They stopped him on the highway leading north. It seems he had a piece of paper that belonged to you. They took him in for questioning."

"I am Fernando, senor," he continued when he realized that Juan Felipe was not going to make introductions. "You are, of course, Senor Larsen." He held out his hand, but he did not make any move to step towards me. He stood as a king or a president would... awaiting the approach of the supplicant.

Naturally I crossed the room to take his hand. As I did he turned me to include me in his conversation with Juan Felipe and I realized that the short dark man had been standing directly behind me in the hallway. What I had perceived at first to be an uncompromising attempt to establish our relative positions had been, in reality, Fernando's way of getting me away from his companion, the man with the machete... the man he did not trust.

"What will happen to Armando?" I asked.

"He will have a hard time for a while," Fernando answered cooly. "It is to be expected when one fights a revolution, Senor."

"But he isn't involved..." I found myself speaking before I had thought. Fernando's eyebrows went up.

"Everyone is involved in the revolution, Senor... whether they wish to be or not. I did not think I would have to tell you that."

"What I meant to say is that he was only trying to assist us."

"And by doing that he took a stand, n'est-ce pas, mon frere?" Fernando looked directly at Juan Felipe. I guessed that we had somehow made it full circle to the topic of the discussion I had interrupted when I made my appearance.

"Will they hurt him?" I pressed.

"They probably have done that already," Juan Felipe sneered. "They are not men who waste time."

"Then we have to get him out of there," I proposed.

"And how do you propose to do that?" Fernando inquired.

"I thought you might have a few ideas."

"He does," Juan Felipe allowed. "Unfortunately, none of them ever work." He looked at his brother. Fernando's annoyance was evident. He returned Juan Felipe's level gaze, but did not refute his statement. Finally he turned to me.

"We came to tell you that you must leave this place immediately, Senor. There is no telling when the police may get your hiding place from Armando. He might have already given it to them. They might be here at any minute."

"Armando will not talk," Juan Felipe asserted.

"Be not so certain of your little friend's devotion to you, my brother," Fernando warned. "His devotion to his own life will be far greater, I expect."

"Do you mean to say that they might kill him?" I asked.

"If they have not already done so..." Juan Felipe answered under his breath.

"Then we have to get him out!" I argued. Juan Felipe's eyes shone either with tears or with gratitude. I got the feeling, however, that I was supporting his stand. "Don't you have enough men to attack the police station?" I asked.

"What good would that do?" Fernando demanded in exasperation. "As it stands now, one man may die. If we were to attack the police station, I will guarantee that many will die on each side. It is possible that Armando would be killed in the attempt to save him. Would you want that to happen?"

"But we can't just leave him there," Juan Felipe protested.

"My dear brother," Fernando answered levelly, "that is precisely what we have to do... unless you can tell me how to do it."

They stood glaring at each other and would have launched into another argument had not the car outside stopped directly in front of the professor's gate. Moments later the gate squawked. We each took a window and peered out.

It was the same man that had come the day before. This time however, the policeman was not alone. A young boy walked beside him... the man's son, it appeared from the easy way the man's hand rested on the boy's shoulder. The policeman's humor appeared to have changed from the day before too, or perhaps it was his relationship with his son that made him happy. We didn't ask. We were too busy concealing ourselves.

The pair mounted the steps of the house and made straight for the front door. The man knocked. A few seconds went by and we heard him say something to the boy. I couldn't make out what it was. Then we heard the unmistakeable sound of a key being inserted into the lock.

The door opened and the man led the way in. He acted as if he owned the place. The boy followed him at a respectful distance looking about at the strange surroundings. From my location behind the sofa I could see the two of them reflected perfectly in the glass of the mirror that hung by the hallway. They would have seen me too had they been looking. I prayed that they wouldn't.

The boy asked the man who lived in the house. The policeman answered that it was a friend of his. He said that he must have gone out, but that he had given him a key to the house because he knew that Pablo was eager to have the machine that he no longer needed. He led the way to the professor's study. Pablo followed him.

Moments later we heard an exclamation from the boy. He had obviously seen the machine that his father had promised him. They talked a little more, but for the most part they worked at disconnecting the professor's computer from the electrical power, and the various components from each other. I didn't pay attention to what they were saying because I was watching Fernando. He was inching his way down the hall. Juan Felipe had appeared at the door of the kitchen. He was once again holding his hand gun. I waited nervously and wondered what would happen next.

It was obvious that the policeman thought that the house was empty. That meant that Armando had not talked. It was equally obvious that the policeman was stealing the professor's computer. He was not taking it to the police station for examination. He had promised it to his son. One thing was certain. I would not be spending another night with Juan Felipe in the professor's bed.

Juan Felipe and his brother were waiting for the man to come out of the study. They did not want to encounter him in a confined space. They needed to maintain the element of surprise to prevent him from escaping through the study window. I did not see the small dark man with the machete anywhere. Something told me, however, that he would not be far away.

At long last the policeman and his son seemed to have everything disconnected. They came back into the livingroom carrying not only the professor's computer, but mine as well. They got to the middle of the room before Fernando spoke in spanish.

"You will stop please, Senor," he said.

The policeman froze. His son looked about him. The boy evidently still had no idea that they were doing anything wrong.

"You will please put the computer down," Fernando requested as he stepped into the room. That was when the boy recognized him and noticed that he was carrying a gun. Juan Felipe stepped through the kitchen door. "Now, please!" Fernando ordered.

The policeman slowly lowered the computer and monitor to the floor in front of him. His son bent and deposited the keyboard, mouse and my portable machine beside them. I felt that I could now safely reveal myself and stood behind the couch. Pablo's head whipped around when he noticed me. Then he saw the front door which still stood open. With the impetuousness of youth he leaped over the computers at his feet and hurtled towards the door and through it.

I heard the policeman's anguished voice call, "Pablo!" and at that moment in time I felt a heart-wrenching sympathy for him. It was short-lived. So was Pablo's flight to freedom. Moments after he burst through the front door he returned through it under the arm of the small dark man in the green canvas hat.

"Oscar!" the policeman gasped and began to silently cry.

We hid the car and closed the door and considered our next move. Our prisoners were bound in the bedroom and under the watchful eye of Oscar. Fernando, Juan Felipe and I drank coffee in the kitchen.

"You asked me, brother dear, if I could tell you how to get Armando out of jail without any loss of life," Juan Felipe smiled smuggly. "Well, I do have a plan... and I think that it will work."

We spoke English to keep our plans secret from all of the inhabitants of the bedroom. Fernando no longer felt the need for immdiate flight. He deigned to listen to his brother's plan, although I don't think that he had any intention of acting on it. He had already abandoned the idea of an attempt to save Armando, but Juan Felipe and I had not.

"It is really quite simple," Juan Felipe smiled. "They have one of ours. We have two of theirs..."

"And you think that they will be willing to make a trade?" Fernando answered. "I do not have to remind you that they have never responded well to hostage takings, do I? Do you not recall the incident at San Miguel?"

"What happened at San Miguel?" I asked.

"The rebels were trapped in the church," Juan Felipe explained. "The priest and two women from the village were in the church at the time. The rebels tried to use them as hostages to make their escape."

"And the police didn't go for it?" I inquired.

"No," Juan Felipe admitted quietly. "They burned the church to the ground and shot everybody who tried to escape."

"And you think they will bargain now?" Fernando inquired.

"No, of course they won't," Juan Felipe responded. "But he will..." He pointed to the bedroom at the back of the house. "...especially if we throw in the computer. I am sure that if we ask him nicely enough he will agree to bring Armando to us."

Fernando regarded his brother.

"And in the meantime, we keep his son."

"Oscar keeps his son. We will have to drive to town with him. If Armando has been injured, it will be necessary to transport him. For that we will need the automobile..."

"But is it wise to leave the boy with Oscar?" Fernando wondered aloud.

"It is the only option," Juan Felipe assured him. "Besides, Oscar's reputation will serve to focus his father's attention. He will be sure to know what will happen to his son should he fail us. When we are well away we will let him go and you will telephone Oscar to leave the boy and return to Los Gatos to await us."

"Perhaps we should leave Senor Larsen here as well," Fernando mused. But Juan Felipe vetoed the idea.

"There is no reason. It would mean that Rick would have to accompany Oscar to the camp. Anything might happen. And the story he is writing has still not fallen under the eyes of those you wish to see it. No, Rick must go with us. The boy will have to take his chances."

"What about you? Could you not stay with them?" Fernando asked his brother.

"Do not even suggest it," Juan Felipe sneered. "If Oscar and I were to stay together I guarantee that you would have a corpse in the morning... although I cannot guarantee which one of us it would be. Besides, Armando is my friend. I will not stay."

"I imagine it would be best to move at night," Fernando seemed to speak to himself. I guessed that he had accepted Juan Felipe's plan. "After midnight would be best. We will park behind the jail. He can bring Armando out the back way. It will attract less attention."

"Maybe we should explain to him what he is going to do," Juan Felipe suggested. "He might need some time to accustom himself to the idea and plan how he will accomplish it. We do not want him to be caught."

"For once you are right," Fernando smiled. Juan Felipe regarded him disdainfully. "I will explain it to him... and to Oscar." He pushed back the chair from the table and rose to his feet. "Then we will all get some rest. We will most likely be occupied all night."

Juan Felipe watched his brother's disappearing back, then stood and stepped to the doorway of the kitchen to assure himself that we were, indeed, alone. His expression took on a worried look that I had never seen before as he hurried back to my side and leaned close to my ear.

"Do not let them know that we have become lovers," he instructed me. "Do not mention that Armando has had sex with either of us. Do not talk of sex or love or anything that might bring the subject to discussion. Do you understand?"

"Yes, but..."

"No buts, monsieur. I am in earnest. Do you understand?"

"Yes. Do they know that we slept together?"

"That was what we were arguing about earlier, monsieur. I told them that we slept together for safety. My brother pointed out that our nudity might be misconstrued. He said that it was not a safe way to sleep. He argued that it might have been wiser to wear at least a pair of undershorts in the event that we were forced to run away in the night."

"You don't want your brother to know about..."

"My brother knows all about me, monsieur. He would prefer not to know, but he is condemned to possess the knowledge. It is not him that I am worried about. Promise me that you will say nothing. It is very important."

I promised.

I went to charge the batteries of my computer. I figured that we might be away from an outlet for a while.

But I also needed to escape. I needed to leave behind the tragedy. I needed, most of all, not to have to look into the eyes of our captives... especially the boy's eyes.

Pablo had been through a lifetime of emotion in a space of a few minutes. He had gone from the joy of an outing with his father, the man he trusted more than any other, to ecstatic happiness when he had seen the machine that would be his, only to have his world filled with doubt and now terror as he sat bound in the midst of a company of rebels and came to the rapid realization that his father was a thief... and probably worse.

No, I could not look into Pablo's eyes. I could not bear to confirm what he feared. And I knew as well that Pablo's father was having the same problem.

There is no joy in winning when the lot of your opponent is losing everything he's ever held dear and sacred.

But obviously, no one had ever been able to convince Oscar of this. At least he didn't appear to have any such thoughts on his mind when I ran into him in the kitchen. He was smiling again... a broad conspiratorial grin that seemed to include me in his world... a world I wanted no part of. We still hadn't spoken to each other. For my part, I did not want to talk to him. There seemed to be something missing from the man. More than likely it was a conscience. I suppose that's what made him so valuable to Fernando.

I took a drink of water to explain my visit to the kitchen and then headed to the bathroom. The door was closed, but I didn't have to go anyway, so I did not try to open it. There would be someone using it and I was seeking solitude. I could not go into the professor's bedroom, of course. The policeman and his son were in there.

I opened the closet door and lifted the false wall. It was the entrance leading to the modified ladder that served as a stairway to the large crawlspace under the house. I climbed down welcoming the darkness of the basement and stood for a long time in the quiet coolness before reaching for the chain that lit the bulb that served as the only illumination.

Juan Felipe was there already and he had been crying. That much was evident from the redness around his eyes. He looked at me and there was a hopelessness about his expression that scared me. I pulled the chain again extinguishing the light. Then I inched my way across the rocky floor of the excavation to where he sat. I lowered myself to the ground beside him and pulled my legs up under my chin the same way his were. Moments later I felt my hand being taken in his. We sat there in the dark and hid away from the world as best we could.

"I don't understand this macho bullshit," I observed after a while. "It just doesn't seem to accomplish anything."

Juan Felipe sighed.

"You Americans have trouble with the simplest concepts," he said eventually. "And yet you can invent something as complicated as a computer. Even your football is complicated. You run around for a few seconds, and then you stop and try to assess what has happened. To understand macho you have to understand football as it is played in the rest of the world. You call it soccer. It is the simplest of games and arguably the most elegant. All you really need to play it are a pair of shoes. It is the essence of macho."

"I never thought of you as particularly macho," I observed.

"I'm not... I hate football," he answered. "But I love computers. That is probably the French side of me again."

I felt his hand tremble and he squeezed mine a little to conceal it.

"You are frightened, Juan Felipe."

"Oui, monsieur, I am frightened," he sighed.

"Why are you frightened?"

"I am frightened because of those upstairs," he answered. "It is a bad mixture, monsieur."

"Do you not have faith in your brother?" I asked.

"Of course, monsieur. But I fear the alliances he makes are evil. I can think of no good coming from them... especially that thing upstairs."

"Getting Armando free will be good," I contradicted.

"If we get him free..." Juan Felipe rejoined. "It is not a certainty, monsieur. Many things could go wrong."

I felt his hand tremble again and this time he did not try to conceal it. This time I squeezed his hand and pulled it into my lap. I'm not sure how long we sat down there in the darkness, but sometimes I wish that we had never left that cool musty hole in the ground. It felt like a grave around us and we both were sure in our hearts that we would soon enough be in real graves, but still, it was better than being upstairs where Fernando and Oscar were plotting to use an innocent boy's love against his own father. Sure, it was Juan Felipe's plan... but it was a plan that none of us particularly liked and, as it turned out we had good reason for our trepidation.

Chapter Seven

Junta

We knew when it was time to go. The anguished pleading of the policeman told us that he was being separated from his son. I climbed the ladder steps and gathered my things.

They had moved the boy to the front room and I had to pass him to retrieve my computer. I tried not to look into his eyes, but his panicked gaze darted everywhere and it was impossible not to look... impossible not to try to instill a little calmness into him. I don't think I succeeded. I'll never know though. The last I saw of him his pants were wet where he had pissed himself. Oscar pointed it out to me. He thought it was a great joke.

I was glad to be leaving Oscar behind. But I hated myself for not being able to help the boy.

We gathered our things and set out shortly before midnight for the ride into town in the policeman's car. I had to drive. Neither Juan Felipe nor his brother had ever learned how, and it was a lead pipe cinch we weren't going to let the policeman drive. He was having a difficult enough time keeping himself together. He sat in the back with Fernando who kept talking to him all the way to the police station. His voice was low and earnest and soothing. I couldn't hear what he was saying to the man, but I imagined that he was going over the important points of our plan to try to impress them on him.

Juan Felipe sat beside me in the front seat and was very quiet all the way in to town. I tried to talk to him, but all I got out of him was an occasional grunt... and directions. He did not hide his fear well... not as well as his brother did anyway.

We arrived at the police station and I pulled around to the rear of the building. It was a little after half past twelve when Fernando clasped the policeman on his shoulder and sent him into the building. We all slid down in our seats and watched for signs of trouble. I worked the shift into first gear and kept my hand on the ignition and my foot on the clutch just in case we had to make a quick getaway.

The alley behind the police station was more like a parking lot. In fact there were no other buildings adjacent to the one that housed the lockup. I supposed that this was to be sure that no one could assail the position without crossing open space. It was a fortress mentality that probably had something to do with the fact that the chief of police, and half, if not all of his force, were anything but sworn defenders of the peace. The police station was a castle and the chief of police was the king of the castle. That left only one role for us to play... the dirty rascals. It reminded me of feudal times and it didn't take too much intelligence to realize that that was exactly the situation that prevailed in San Martin. I suddenly had an inspiration for the article I would write... if I survived to write it.

We sat there in the tangerine glow of the mercury vapour lamps that lit the building all around and had time to consider our folly. Three of the four most wanted men in the country sat in a policeman's car outside a police station waiting to be apprehended. I prayed that the policeman loved his son more than he loved his career.

Evidently he did.

After what seemed like hours, but was probably only a matter of minutes, I saw two figures appear in the driver's side mirror that I had trained on the rear entrance of the police station. One was definitely our policeman. The other was smaller and clung to him limping piteously. I lifted my head and looked at the young man's face. It was Armando all right, but I had never before seen the twisted expression on his face. He was in a lot of pain. It was all I could do to restrain myself from leaping from the car and racing to help him. I know that Juan Felipe felt the same anguish.

We watched the two men cover the distance to the car. We expected that at any moment there would be a cry of alarm go up, but none did. As they finally neared the automobile, Fernando kicked the door open and prepared to receive Armando. I turned the key in the ignition.

Armando was dumped unceremoniously onto the seat by our policeman, but the man did not himself get into the car right away. Instead he closed the door and circled around to the other side of the car. Fernando seemed to be expecting this. He opened the door. The policeman stood in the doorway of the car and submitted to a cursory frisk before finally taking a seat beside Fernando. I was driving away before the door closed.

That was when I realized that I had no idea where I was going. It did not matter, however. Juan Felipe had found his voice again and directed me through town while he kept a watchful eye on the rear seat.

The policeman too was talking... actually he was pleading with us to find a telephone and call off our man. He begged us to take the car but to let him out of it.

Fernando would not hear of it. He had already decided where the policeman would be let off and he did not intend to compromise our safety by giving up our only hostage before he was sure that we were not being followed. He spoke soothingly to Armando and asked him pointedly about the policeman's actions while in the jail.

Juan Felipe, on the other hand, was more interested in Armando's physical condition. I could understand some of his questions, but I could not hear Armando's answers, most of which were delivered through clenched teeth. Finally Juan Felipe turned around and faced forward again.

"What happened to him?" I asked.

Juan Felipe looked at me. There was a perplexed look on his face and I think he smirked when he finally said, "He fell off his bike. The road was washed out. It seems that if the police hadn't come along and found him he would have died. His left arm is fractured, but the biggest problem is a rupture. They sewed him up today."

"That doesn't sound too life threatening," I puzzled.

"No, but he landed in a ditch full of water. He couldn't move and would have drowned if they hadn't pulled him out. He's a little perturbed with us."

"Why?"

"He isn't feeling too good. He wishes that we had waited a day or two to rescue him."

"What did you tell him?"

"The truth, of course. I told him that we were afraid they might kill him."

"And..." I prompted.

"He said that he feared that we might do that ourselves. He asked me to tell you not to hit so many bumps."

"So the police didn't torture him?"

"No, they couldn't. It seems that there was a U.S. marine there all day. He didn't let Armando out of his sight, and he told the guards that he expected to find him in the same condition in the morning or there would be hell to pay. Evidently they want to question him about the marine who was murdered."

"So, when Armando's not there in the morning..."

"The marines will think that the police killed him during the night," Juan Felipe finished. "The shit is going to hit the air conditioner, monsieur." He smiled at me. I let his fucked-up idiom pass unchallenged. "Turn to the right here," he directed.

We had gone about ten kilometers when Fernando ordered me to pull the car over. We were at a crossroads. There was a combination general store and service station on our right and I pulled into it. Fernando ordered the policeman out of the car and then slid out himself. Juan Felipe moved to the back seat and helped Armando to lay more comfortably across the seat with his head in Juan Felipe's lap.

I kept the engine running while Fernando strode to the door of the service station and hammered on it. The policeman stood at his side. Eventually a light came on and the door opened. The two men went in. It only took a couple of minutes to make the call and when they reappeared the policeman began to run back in the direction we had come. He didn't cast a sideways glance as he passed his car and trotted away down the middle of the road.

Fernando slid in beside me and shut the door.

"And now, senor," he smiled, "if you would not mind, we must drive back to town... or almost..."

"Are we going to the professor's house?" I asked.

"No, Senor, we will none of us be able to go back there again. I will give you directions... and," he pointed at the rapidly receding back of the policeman who was making pretty good time, but sticking, for some reason, to the center of the road, "be careful that you do not run over our friend."

I pulled the shift into first and turned the car back in the direction we had just come.

Dawn was still a couple of hours off when Fernando directed me to conceal the car behind a large shed on the outskirts of a small town. Saying the town had outskirts is really misleading. There were just a few houses crudely constructed from cinderblocks and sheets of galvanized metal. The air was also a little thinner and it didn't take me long to figure that we were high up on one of the volcanoes that dotted the little country like freckles. For the first time since arriving in San Martin I felt a chill, and I was grateful for it.

Juan Felipe carried Armando to the closest house and through the door that Fernando held open. I passed through behind him. The first thing that I noticed was the absense of a floor. It was dismally dark in the shack until a match was struck on the far side of the room... there being only one room. The match found a kerosene lantern and gradually the room was illuminated and the gloom was eliminated.

There were beds everywhere and all of them were occupied. Some of the beds were hammocks strung between poles that served two purposes. They held up the hammocks and the roof. There were regular beds as well, however, and one of these was quickly vacated to accept Armando. The young boy who gave up his place without a hint of protest was deposited into the large bed that his parents used at the end of the room.

I quickly became the center of attention. I felt all eyes in the shack staring at me. The children did it openly. The adults were more furtive and quickly glanced away whenever we made eye contact.

The lady of the house attended to Armando and checked his bandages. In spite of his protests in the car that we were trying to kill him, there was no excessive bleeding. A drink was brought for him and he settled in quite nicely.

Fernando was having a conversation with the man of the house. They spoke in hushed tones. The man seemed to almost revere Fernando who maintained his imperial attitude even here... or perhaps it was seeing him in this setting that made me think his attitude was imperial.

Juan Felipe saw to Armando and then, when he was satisfied that his friend was well and truly out of danger, he turned his attention to me. He graciously accepted a couple of blankets from the lady of the house and led me once again into the crispness of the open air.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"Out of danger... for the present," he responded. "This is a village that the police do not visit anymore."

"It's certainly high enough," I observed expecting to see my breath vaporize as I spoke.

"And the coffee is good here too," Juan Felipe smiled. "You will discover that in the morning."

"Is this where Fernando lives?" I asked.

"Sometimes... He lives in many places, monsieur. We, however, must sleep either in the automobile or in the barn. I choose the barn. My legs are too long to allow me to stretch them in the automobile."

"Then, I'll sleep in the barn too. Where is it?"

"You parked behind it. Follow me, monsieur."

The barn was really just a lean-to open on one side and already occupied. A couple of cows and several goats shared the small building with us. We felt our way in and found our way to a raised platform where we spread one of the blankets. We stripped off our clothes quickly and pulled the other blanket over us. For the first time since arriving in San Martin I welcomed Juan Felipe's warm body against mine... and appreciated it for its heat.

Naturally our proximity to each other quickly led to our both achieving erections. His was already between my ass cheeks since he was cuddled up to my back and I felt him jockeying for position as the thing grew to its full potential. Mine was already up and slapping at my belly when he reached around me and took hold of it.

"What are you doing, monsieur?" I asked coyly.

"It is very cold tonight," he answered equally coyly.

"Yah? So?"

"It would seem that sexual activity would generate more body heat," he suggested.

"You're already pretty hot," I countered.

"But you, monsieur, are not," he shot back. "Am I to be a furnace for you all night while you do nothing to reciprocate?"

"Well, since you put it so romantically..."

"Monsieur," he replied in exasperation, "we are in a barn. It is cold. We are being looked at by cattle. Neither of us have bathed since this morning. I do not have a bottle of wine to set the mood and candles would almost certainly prove to be catastrophic. Here we do not make love. Here we fuck!"

"I love it when you talk dirty."

He threw off the uppermost blanket and rolled me onto my back. He threw my legs up onto his shoulders and slammed me with that piledriver of his. I travelled further and further along the platform as I worked to provide resistance to his thrusts. In the thin mountain air the two of us worked up a sweat and we were covered with dust which fell all over us from the walls of the barn which seemed to move with each thrust that Juan Felipe made.

The moonlight filtering through the gaping cracks in the walls of the barn illuminated the scene and we gave the cows and the goats a hell of a show... and a bit of a scare. The temperature shot up a few degrees before we were once again cuddled under the blanket.

"Merci, monsieur," he breathed in my ear.

"You don't have to thank me, Juan Felipe. I enjoyed it as much as you did."

"I was not thanking you for the sex, monsieur. I was thanking you for helping to get Armando out of jail," he replied. Then he seemed to reconsider. "But thank you for the sex too."

"You're welcome," I answered. Soon his heavy regular breathing told me that he was asleep. I felt his sweet warm breath on my neck as I too drifted off to sleep just as the sun began to rise.

It was not, therefore, with a great deal of enthusiasm, that I opened my eyes what seemed to be only minutes later to find a young boy seated on a stool about ten feet from me milking a cow. He, however, seemed to think it was a great joke and grinned broadly at me. The cow did not share his mood. It was used to our presence by now and contentedly chewed its cud.

The boy did not pay too much attention to her. He had a rhythm going. He was more interested in us... or more precisely, me. Then I noticed why. Juan Felipe had pulled the blanket off me. I was showing the kid everything I'd been born with and a few things I hadn't. I quickly tugged the blanket back over myself. This caused Juan Felipe to awaken. He looked around stupidly and apprised himself of the situation. Then he spoke to the boy haltingly in a strange dialect I had not heard before. He asked him a few questions that the boy answered directly and unhesitatingly. The kid reminded me of Pablo, the boy we had left in Oscar's care. He was about the same age. I found myself wondering if everything had gone all right after our prisoner exchange.

Then, without warning, Juan Felipe stood up and took our topmost blanket with him. I was exposed again... and the kid was laughing again. I quickly wrapped myself in the other blanket and followed Juan Felipe, who was also laughing... until I pulled his blanket from him. I grinned at the kid over my shoulder and he smiled back and a giggle bubbled out of his chest as Juan Felipe snatched back his covering and finally looked embarrassed.

"Where are we going now?" I inquired when we were clear of the barn and walking away from the village, still barefoot and wrapped only in our blankets.

"We are going to take a bath, monsieur," he answered a little patronizingly, "as you would already know if you had listened to what I said to Paco."

"That wasn't Spanish," I objected.

"Some of it was," he contradicted, "but you are right too. A lot of it was a language spoken by the Indians of this area. I learned it from a friend of mine when I was very young."

"These people are Indian?"

"Some of them have Indian blood, monsieur. But calling them Indians is really mis-speaking. They are not from India. They are believed to have come from Asia when there was a connection between this continent and Asia."

"I know the background, Juan Felipe. Where are we going to take our bath? I didn't notice any plumbing in the house we were in last night."

"That is because it is not necessary. Everything these people need is provided for them by nature. There, monsieur, is your bath tub."

We had been walking down a sloping path. Juan Felipe stopped and stretched out his arm to indicated a beautiful slow-moving river. He smiled and let drop his blanket then stepped carefully down a stairway of yellow rocks to the water's edge. I followed him.

We submerged ourselves in the surprisingly warm flow and swam out a way into the stream before returning to a flat rock upstream. Here Juan Felipe pulled himself out of the water and strode to a paint bucket that hanged from a limb of an overhanging tree. He removed the lid and fished around in the bucket. Then he tossed me a piece of a bar of soap. He took another for himself and returned the bucket to its place.

We lathered ourselves and the parts of each other that only another person could comfortably reach. Then we dived back into the river to rinse. It was the most invigorating bath that I had ever taken. I found myself envying the mountain people and their simple way of life.

"Do you know why the water is so warm, monsieur?" Juan Felipe sang out from a point half-way out in the river. Even with the exertion of treading water there was a self-satisfied look on his face.

"There are two possibilities that I can think of," I gasped in return by the river bank. "Either you peed in the river, or it is solar heating." I felt smugly proud of myself for not having forgotten my lesson of earlier in the week. Juan Felipe, however, was looking at me once more like a long-suffering teacher.

"I will admit that I peed in the river, monsieur," he intoned, "but not in sufficient volume to raise the temperature of a mountain stream. Nor can the sun claim credit for all of the heat that you feel around you. The water comes from the mountain. It is a volcano which is still active, you know. A lot of the water is rain water, but some of it is pushed right out of the mountain in geysers. Upstream it is far too hot, but here it is just right, do you not agree?"

I could not disagree. There was one thing that disturbed me, however.

"When you say that the mountain is still active, Juan Felipe, just how active do you mean?"

He grinned at me.

"Do not fear, monsieur. The mountain is venting itself harmlessly. It has been doing so for many years. The geysers are a safety valve. They allow the mountain to release its pressure before it builds up too much. An added benefit of this is the warm water which we use to bathe." His voice trailed off and he appeared distracted and a bit worried. "Unfortunately, the women of the village also use this spot to do their laundry, and we seem to have picked their laundry day to take our bath."

I turned to follow his worried gaze and saw to my chagrin, four young women descending the same trail we had used. They carried large baskets of laundry on their heads. Before we could act to save ourselves from our predicament they discovered and retrieved our blankets.

Juan Felipe swam in to shore and joined me in the shallow water. He motioned for me to follow and led the way up stream away from the flat rock. When we were well out of view he found another trail that led along the river. We followed it until we once more came upon the women doing their laundry. Now, however their backs were to us and we crouched in the bushes that grew between the trail and the river. The women were knealing on our blankets. There was no hope of snatching them back.

I looked at Juan Felipe and marvelled at his lack of concern. He smiled at me and sat on a mossy rock. I almost expected him to lay back and close his eyes. I did not share his equanimity. We were barely concealed from view and had no difficulty seeing the women. I must have conveyed this to Juan Felipe by my expression. I couldn't do it otherwise. We were too close to speak. He waved a nonchalant hand and assured me with his expression that everything was under control. I crouched beside him and shivered.

Before too long, one of the women stood from her labors and gazed up and down the river. I feared she was looking for us and would soon turn in our direction. She did, but she did not see us. She was now intent on gathering some of the finished laundry, having evidently forgotten about us. Juan Felipe tensed like a cat watching an approaching sparrow.

The woman carried a large basket of wet clothing up from the flat rock and set it down where the bushes began. She stooped to retrieve a few articles of clothing and tossed them onto the bushes. She worked her way closer and closer to us emptying her basket only a few meters from our hiding spot. Then she turned and trudged back down to the flat rock again where the other three women scrubbed and talked and kept their eyes peeled for a couple of naked men.

Juan Felipe rose with a broad smile on his face and selected from the array of soggy clothing. I got up too and took the piece he held out to me. But before I could pull on what turned out to be a dress, Juan Felipe called out "Merci, mesdames!" and trotted away up the path, providing the women who were quick enough to turn and watch with a glimpse of his disappearing ass through the bushes. I darted after him and showed them a whole lot more.

We dressed when we were once more out of view. It was the first and last time that I have ever worn a dress in spite of Juan Felipe's protestations that I looked beautiful in it.

Juan Felipe had managed to procure for himself a pair of pants that were far too small for him. I argued that they would have fit me better but he would not trade. He squeezed himself into the garment which resisted him even more because it was wet and clung to him in more ways than one. I secretly hoped that the ass seam would give way, but it held until we got to the barn where Fernando and the man whose home we had used were busy exchanging the battery of the car for one that they assured me was dead.

I wondered why, but not enough to stay and argue, especially after Juan Felipe pointed out how nice I looked in my new dress. We changed quickly. By the time we returned to the car, the men had already finished and were carting the car's battery up to the house. We trotted along behind them.

Armando had passed a quiet night and was awake when we entered the home. He smiled at me and apologized for his distracted behavior of the previous night.

I sat beside his bed and Juan Felipe sat on it as the men finished connecting wires to the battery. Moments later a television flicked on and everybody seemed happy that the new battery still had some juice in it. But the mood quickly changed when the news came on later that morning.

Fernando gasped and went pale. Armando cursed. And Juan Felipe stood and strode out of the house as if he would never return to it. My Spanish was not good enough to follow the newscaster's rapid delivery. Everyone in the house seemed stricken though by what he had said. I followed Juan Felipe through the door, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Chapter Eight

An Angel Passes

I knew that something was dreadfully wrong. I knew as well that I would not find out about it from the inhabitants of the house, most of whom wanted to say nothing and seemed lost in their private thoughts. I knew that I would have to find Juan Felipe and drag it out of him.

But he was nowhere to be seen. I scanned the neighborhood for any sign of him. There was none. I had almost begun to believe that he had gone straight up when I heard the starter motor of the car whining feebly. It was not getting enough juice from the battery to turn over. But at least I now knew where Juan Felipe was. I pulled the passenger door open and slid in beside him.

"Do you want to tell me what's up?" I asked.

He turned to me and there were tears streaking down both cheeks. His eyes were a milky sort of transparent and tinged with red. He was fighting back a sob when he said, "Pablo is dead."

It took a while for it to register. Pablo was the policeman's son. We had left him in Oscar's care. I lept to the obvious conclusion.

"Oscar killed him?"

"Oh, no," Juan Felipe snarled, "that would not be Oscar's style. Oscar arranged it. That much is clear beyond any doubt. The boy was still very much alive when Oscar left him. It was Pablo's father who killed him."

"You're crazy!" I snapped.

"I will not dispute that," he answered. "I have felt so for a long time now. It is as if my life is no longer my own and other people are controlling my very existence. I cannot vouch for their motives any more, and that is what disturbs me. I am their puppet. I dance when they pull my strings. But I have always told you the truth and what I tell you now is the truth. The hand that killed Pablo was the hand of the man who brought Armando from the Jail last night... the man who owns this car which will not move." He slapped angrily at the dash of the car.

"Juan Felipe, tell me what happened."

"I cannot. I must move this recalcitrant car onto the road."

He thrust the door open, lept out and braced his shoulder against the frame of the automobile. I felt it rock as he pushed it and realized that I was only adding weight to his task. I got out too.

"Why do you have to get the car onto the road?" I asked as I too shouldered the frame and the car began to move towards the gravel.

"They must not find it," he answered. I guessed he meant that if they did spot the car they would almost certainly know where we were, and now they might be a little more anxious to find us. I pushed a little harder and we made it to the mountain road. Juan Felipe jumped in to set the emergency brake. Then he got out once more and looked at me sadly across the roof of the car.

"Will you please tell me what happened?" I asked.

His expression did not change. He looked at me as if he was trying to memorize my features. His voice was soft and sad when he finally spoke.

"You must ask the others to tell you. I cannot. I do not wish to speak of it again." He settled into the driver's seat and waggled the stick shift into first. "Tell my brother that I am ready to get rid of the car, will you?"

His eyes were fixed on the windshield. His left hand clutched the wheel tightly. His right hand held the gear shift. His breathing was deep and regular. But I was still concerned.

"Are you going to be all right?" I asked.

He looked at me, nodded and smiled reassuringly, but I was anything but reassured. I hurried back to the house to deliver his message.

I was half-way there when I heard the sound of gravel crunching under the car wheels. I turned in time to see the car moving down the mountain road, gaining speed exponentially. The passenger door slammed shut just before the car lurched and the engine engaged. I turned and pursued it. I might have caught it too. At least I had a hand on it when Juan Felipe ground it into second gear and picked up even more speed wrenching the bumper from my grasp and sending me sprawling in the gravel. I called for him to stop, but he disappeared around the side of the mountain. I lifted myself to my feet and raced back to the house.

"Juan Felipe's taken the car!" I announced. Fernando was immediately roused from his own depression. Armando sat up and winced.

"Where'd he go?" Fernando snapped.

"Down the mountain," I answered and felt stupid. There was no other direction for him to take. "He said he was going to get rid of the car."

Fernando gathered his gear and strode out of the house. Armando tried to raise himself out of the bed, but he was still too weak. He motioned for me to draw near.

"Rick, you have to stop him."

"I don't even know where he's taking it."

"He's not taking the car anywhere," Armando insisted. "He's gone to Los Gatos."

"I don't know where that is," I confessed.

"It's where Oscar is. You have to follow Fernando. Take this."

He pressed a revolver into my hand. It was the first time I had ever held a gun. I marvelled at the weight of the thing... just before I dropped it back onto Armando's bed.

"I've never used one of those things. I wouldn't know how..."

"Take it anyway," Armando insisted and pressed it once more into my hand. "You will need it when you meet Oscar. And do not hesitate to use it."

"Armando, you've got to tell me what happened. Juan Felipe told me that Pablo is dead..."

"Si, senor, he is dead."

"But how? He said that Pablo's father killed him..."

"It is true, senor Rick. But it was Oscar who arranged it. He left the boy tied with a rope around his neck and weights around his feet. He left him standing on a step ladder. The step ladder was tied to the front door by another rope. When Pablo's father entered the house he pulled the ladder from beneath his son's feet. The boy's neck was broken in the same manner as the professor's. To Oscar this seemed like an appropriate revenge."

I sank to the floor beside the bed and would be there yet had Armando not prodded me and told me that I must leave... that I must hurry if I was to save Juan Felipe from a similar fate. I clambered to my feet and he showed me quickly how to work the gun. I was determined to use it should Oscar and the opportunity present themselves. Then I was racing after Fernando, although I do not recall how I managed to find him or to keep up with him. My brain still reeled with Armando's parting words, "Pablo's father has already joined his son. He swallowed the barrel of his gun this morning and blew his own brains out."

I would find out in the next few hours that Juan Felipe had an impressive background in the martial arts. It was his father's passion and both he and his brother had been enrolled at an early age in the town in Gard where they had their home. Fernando was not interested and only attended because he had to, but Juan Felipe excelled and won several championships partly because he had a natural ability, but mostly because he wanted to please his father.

His training did not help him that day however. He was dealing with an enemy who did not attack. His enemy laid in wait for him. Indeed he had followed his progress through a pair of binoculars as the car lurched along the road that led to the base of the mountain. From his perch in Los Gatos, Oscar watched and waited. He knew that he would be hunted. He knew that the police would want to take him. But they would not dare to stalk him here in his own lair. The one who would stalk him would be the one whose plan he had ruined by carrying it to its natural conclusion, a conclusion that had not been anticipated by its creator.

They had left him out of the planning. They had presented him with it only when they had thought it to be complete. They hadn't even allowed him to be in the same room. But that was all right, because in their desire to avoid him, they had left him alone in the room where he had discovered them that morning, naked and stained with the sin of their lust. He had been all for killing them on the spot, sending them to the hell they deserved for their unnatural act, but his hand had been stayed. They were not to be killed, the one because he was to tell the story of the revolution to an uncaring world, the other because he was brother to the man who thought he was in charge.

And so he had waited. He had guarded the prisoners while the others had decided their fate. And while he had guarded them he had discovered the proof that he needed to condemn them all to hell. He would send them there one at a time. The boy was there already. His father had joined him shortly thereafter. Now, it seemed, it was the tall one's turn. And he didn't seem to notice that he was walking straight into a trap.

The jungle trails had one advantage over the roads of San Martin. They did not wind down the sides of the mountains or double back upon themselves. They plunged straight down and crossed ravines on bridges made from vines and hemp. Even though we were going down it was hard going, through brush and branches that whipped and scratched us ripping our clothes and digging into our skin till we bled freely from countless wounds. I was hindered by the gun I carried, but I dared not shove it into my waistband. I had heard of safeties and triggers and I knew where the bullets came out. But I was not familiar enough with the workings of the weapon to know if it might discharge by itself. I had no desire to blow my own nuts off.

I kept Fernando in front of me mostly by listening. Occasionally I would catch sight of him in a clear area, but mostly I was following his echo. We skirted the town, giving it a wide berth, and finally I found myself following the sound of a man climbing a steep mountain path. Soon the sound disappeared. I kept myself moving in the direction I had last heard Fernando, and was soon rewarded with a glimpse of Los Gatos.

It was a weird panorama that greeted me. Fernando stood in the centre of the clearing torn and bloody from his forced march through the underbrush. On the edge of the clearing stood Oscar, his machete hanging in his left hand at his side. But it was the third person in the clearing that made my breath, what there was left of it, hitch in my chest. Both of his arms were outstretched and tied to two trees. His legs were similarly bound.

His hair was grasped in the right hand of Oscar who held Juan Felipe's head back at a painful angle exposing his long neck. Fernando was speaking to Oscar. I inched my way towards the edge of the trees and tried to hear what was being said.

I was amazed at the expression on Juan Felipe's face. There was none. He seemed resigned to his fate... almost uninterested. This could not be true, however. A small gesture gave away his inner turmoil. Each time that Oscar brandished the glinting machete and waved it close to him, Juan Felipe flinched. Still, I could not but admire him, so otherwise calm and seemingly unperturbed. Perhaps he knew something that I didn't... undoubtedly he did. He had been instructing me since my arrival in San Martin.

Oscar was occupied with Fernando. He strode towards him a step or two and reached his right hand into his right pants pocket. They spoke in Spanish and hurled the words at each other like grenades. Fernando looked perplexed by this. It was unusual. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Suddenly the roles had been reversed and Oscar was in command. Fernando was the supplicant seeking an audience, begging a favor, and Oscar held what appeared to be a trump card in his unarmed right hand.

It was a condom... it was a used condom... and it had been tossed out of the bed Juan Felipe and I had used the night that Armando had been arrested. I know because I was the one who had discarded it... full of my seed. I had not given it another moment's thought until I saw it in the ungloved hand of the executioner.

Oscar spat a final insult at Fernando thrust the condom into his pants pocket and strode back to Juan Felipe. He spit in his face and raised his machete. There is no doubt in my mind that he would have struck a fatal blow had it not been for the shot that rang out as his machete was at its apex. The bullet struck the trunk of one of the trees to which Oscar had tied Juan Felipe. Everybody looked in the direction of the sound of the gunfire. They were all looking at me, but I was concealed by the brush of the surrounding jungle. The kick of the revolver had been unexpected and caused me to stagger backwards. I tripped over some underbrush and now lay concealed in it.

As it turned out, this was the best thing that could have happened for Juan Felipe, for Fernando, but most definitely for me. I became an unseen enemy. Oscar could not know who or where I was. He could not know, therefore where or when the next bullet would come. Neither could I... I had dropped the gun when I fell.

I raised myself up to peer out into the clearing once more. Fernando had seized the advantage and was telling Oscar that he was not there alone. He gained the upper hand and held it. But that didn't stop Oscar from hurling one final warning Juan Felipe's way.

Then he was gone. The jungle seemed to swallow him. Fernando stood his ground for many minutes though, listening for a sound from the jungle that would tell him whether Oscar was well and truly gone. Then cautiously he approached Juan Felipe and cut the bonds that held him tied to the trees. A moment later I broke into the clearing having found the gun and my senses in about the same place.

Juan Felipe smiled at me.

"Thank you, Rick," he breathed in a non-typical moment of completely genuine gratitude. "That was exactly the right time to fire a warning shot."

"That wasn't a warning shot," I replied. "I was trying to kill him. I missed."

A smirk formed on Juan Felipe's lips and in a more typical voice he shot back, "I accept the results, monsieur, but it is unacceptable marksmanship. You might have killed me."

"I wasn't aiming at you," I retaliated.

"That is true enough," he allowed, "but neither were you aiming at the tree. Give me the gun, please."

I was grateful to be able to finally relinquish it.

"What was that all about?" I asked.

"My little brother seems to have incurred the wrath of Oscar," Fernando supplied. "It is not a wise thing to do."

"I was trying to kill him," Juan Felipe countered. "It was only natural for him to want to kill me."

"And that is just what will happen if he ever crosses your path again, dear brother. I suggest that you lay low for a while. I would not want Oscar to carry out his threat."

"What threat?" Armando asked.

We had driven back up the mountain in the dead policeman's car... well half-way up. The car we had sent back down the side of the mountain where they would undoubtedly find it and trace our finger prints.

"He threatened to cut off Juan Felipe's head and send it and all the useless ideas in it to his friend in Washington." Fernando had regained his composure and spoke once more like the leader he wanted to be. But I noted that few in the hut regarded him with the same awe they had shown only twenty hours before.

Armando wore the worried look of one who knows the truth but is unable or unwilling to share it. He was sitting up in a chair, but still weak from his recent ordeal.

The silence was deafening. Everyone was lost in their private thoughts... none of them good. Finally Juan Felipe broke the silence.

"In France, when there is a long silence, we say that an angel has passed by. Perhaps it is my guardian angel... what do you think?"

The question had not been directed at any of us in particular. None of us felt like answering it. Juan Felipe surveyed the room and knew that none of us would respond.

"I am not dead yet..." he snapped, "but it appears that you are all holding my wake." He grabbed a blanket and strode from the building.

I looked at Armando. His eyes betrayed the fear he held for Juan Felipe.

"What is it?" I demanded.

"It is simply this," Armando stated flatly. "No one who has ever been threatened by Oscar has ever lived the week out."

There was another lull and I swear I heard wings fluttering in the rafters of the building. It was probably just a bird, but I could not shake the angel analogy that Juan Felipe had mentioned.

"You must get him out of San Martin and as far away from Oscar as possible, Rick. Please do it for me."

I picked up my computer, accepted a blanket, nodded my thanks to the woman who supplied it, and followed Juan Felipe to the barn.

"What will you do now?" I asked the darkness. A shadow crossed in front of the slats of moonlight that penetrated the wall. The shadow was arranging its blanket on the platform where we had passed the previous night. Juan Felipe did not answer. Perhaps he had no answer to give. If not, it was the first time.

"There must be a lot of angels out tonight," I observed. The shadow snorted and moved directly in front of me.

"And you are my guardian angel, monsieur," the shadow observed. I felt myself being undressed. He was already naked.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I am unbuttoning your shirt," he supplied.

"Do you really think you ought to do that to an angel?" I asked.

That's when he covered my mouth with his and pulled me down onto the platform and himself.

"Juan Felipe, you have to have a plan. You have to know what you are doing."

"We will do whatever you want to do. Do you want me to fuck you, monsieur?"

"Juan Felipe, be serious..."

"I am serious." He pulled at my belt and unhitched my pants.

"No, man, I'm talking about Oscar..."

"I do not want to fuck Oscar. I want to fuck you. I want to kill him."

"And he wants to kill you..."

"Oui, monsieur, he pointed that out to me this afternoon."

"So, what are you going to do?"

"I am going to do what my brother told me to do. I am going to lay low." He sighed. "But I want to do it with you, Rick. Right now I need to be held... I need to be loved... What I don't need is a lot of people reminding me that I do not have a future."

Several more angels whizzed through the barn before I could answer that one.

"I'm going to the airport tomorrow to see the marines," I decided finally.

"They are working with the police," he reminded me.

"I am going to give them my computer and request that they arrest me and take me back to the states for trial. I want you to come with me. We will make them understand that you are a French national and desire the protection of the United States since there is no French Embassy for at least five hundred miles."

I waited for him to answer. He didn't.

"Well?" I prodded. "What do you say?"

"I will answer you tomorrow morning, monsieur." I felt his lips brush against mine. "Do not treat me as a ghost tonight. I need you, Rick. Accept that I appreciate your concern for me, and let it go. I need a lover more than I need a saviour."

I pulled off my pants and boxers and pulled the blanket over us. I felt the tremble of excitement that passed through him and I kissed him hard on the lips. I let him do to me what he wanted that night, not just because he wanted to, of course... I wanted him more than I can tell here. I was in love with him... every single part of him... and all of the parts made a whole that I loved more than I loved myself.

If I had known that it would only be for one day more that we would be together, I could not have endured that night. Many people wish to know the future, but I am content to leave it where it is. I live now only for the moment. And each moment that passes is filled with memories of Juan Felipe, our last night together, and what might have been.

Chapter Nine

Tell It To The Marines

The day started promising enough. I awoke with Juan Felipe's eyes watching me from approximately six inches away. There was a cool mist in the air that encouraged us to cuddle in the blanket and he quickly turned me and snuggled up to my back. The warm sunshine had yet to make it over the peak of the mountain and I welcomed his warmth. I drifted back to sleep content to be once again in his arms.

When I awoke the second time, Juan Felipe was gone. The boy was back, milking the cow, but this morning his mood was different. He was all business. There was no joy in his face. I took it to mean that the problems of the day before had affected the whole village. Usually children pick up on that sort of thing from the adults.

I gathered my things and dressed outside. Then I hurried to the house to find out where everybody was.

Armando was up when I got there. The woman of the house was inspecting his bandages.

"Where is everybody?" I asked.

"Fernando left last night," he answered. "I thought Juan Felipe was with you."

"He was," I confirmed, "but he was gone when I woke up."

This caused Armando's expression to change, but not much. He hadn't looked too happy to begin with. He moved to get up from his chair and managed on the second try to lift himself to his feet. I helped him to the door where he stood for a moment taking in the scene. The boy was returning to the house with his bucket. Armando called to him.

The boy answered in the same dialect he had used the previous day with Juan Felipe. Armando's worried expression eased somewhat and he turned to me.

"He says that Juan Felipe is down at the river. Maybe you should check on him."

I didn't need to be told twice. I found Juan Felipe in the same spot where we had bathed the day before. He was sitting on a submerged rock.

"You should have let me know where you were going," I complained.

"You were sleeping soundly, monsieur," he answered, but the usual flippancy was gone from his voice. He sounded almost like a normal human being. He looked somehow smaller too, sitting there up to his waist in the water. "I decided to let you sleep." He looked over his shoulder at me but did not quite make eye contact.

I pulled off my clothes and slipped into the stream. The warm sulphury water felt good after the initial sting to my fresh wounds.

"You have a lot of scratches," Juan Felipe observed. "I am sorry. That too would appear to be my fault."

"Let's just say it wasn't the brightest thing you've ever done," I commented. "What about the marines? Will you go with me to the airport?"

"It would seem that I must," he commented. "You would hardly be able to make it there on your own."

"I don't want any half-promises, Juan Felipe. You know what I mean. I'm not just looking for an escort."

He didn't answer.

"You told me you would let me know this morning... well, it's morning..."

"You are right, monsieur," he admitted and slid off the rock and out into the river, "it is morning."

He swam to the middle of the river.

"I am still alive, monsieur," he noted, pausing to tread water. "Do you not think that Oscar would have found me by now, if he intended to kill me?"

"I think you are worth more to him alive than you are dead... monsieur..." I shot back. "That's why you have to leave San Martin."

He looked puzzled. But he swam back in to shore.

"What do you mean?" he asked when he had found his footing and struggled in to my spot by the shore."

"I mean that you and I are a major embarrassment to the revolution," I told him. "You have become a weight around your brother's neck. Oscar is not the type of man who will fail to take advantage of that."

The recognition of the situation slowly dawned on Juan Felipe. He had been too close to it, too involved in his own problem, to see the bigger picture. Of course, seeing the big picture is my business.

"You must have noticed the way everybody changed. Nobody believes that Fernando is in charge of anything anymore," I pressed. "He has a credibility problem. It's us that's the problem. Why do you think he left last night?"

"I was not aware that he had gone. I assumed that he was still here."

"He's gone, Juan Felipe. If he's smart, he's half-way back to France by now."

"I doubt that he would consider that alternative," Juan Felipe sighed. "He is not one to give up, monsieur. He thinks that he owns the revolution. He thinks that it will fall apart without him. He is very egocentric... It is a family trait... I am afraid."

"Yah... I noticed."

His eyebrows arched slightly at this observation, but he let it pass unmolested.

"Don't you see, Juan Felipe? Oscar does not want to share power with anyone. He is using Fernando the same way Fernando uses him. As long as Fernando is respected, Oscar is willing to stay in the background. But now he may seek to discredit him. The best way to do that is to parade you in front of everybody and point out that you are Fernando's brother."

There was no change in Juan Felipe's face, but his lack of response assured me that he was weighing the information carefully.

"The best thing for us to do is to leave San Martin," I pursued. "The only way out is the airport. The marines are our only chance."

"But I am not an American, monsieur."

"No, you're not... but you're my friend... and it's time for me to start protecting you for a change."

"What about Armando?"

"He'll have to turn himself in later... when he's feeling better. Oscar isn't looking for Armando... the police are... We'll tell the marines where he is and they can come and get him."

"I will have to tell him that I am leaving. It will not be easy. We are very close."

"I know that, Juan Felipe," I answered. It was the first hint that I had that he would accompany me. "If it will make this easier for you, Armando asked me to get you out of San Martin last night."

"He did?"

"Yah, he's worried about you too."

"Yes, I suppose that he would..."

We dried ourselves off, pulled on our clothing, and hurried up the path to the little cluster of houses perched on the mountain. I waited by the barn while Juan Felipe went to the house to say goodbye. When he returned he still looked unsure of himself, but he strode past me without looking back and said, "We had better make a start, monsieur."

I picked up my computer and fell in behind him.

The hike to the airport might have been enjoyable had it not been for the constant threat of danger. We were now trying to avoid two separate armed camps, the police and Oscar. We skirted the mountains rather than descending them and kept as closely as possible to the edge of the jungle that seemed to overtake the small patches of coffee that had been carved out of it.

The airport was located on a natural plateau between two of the lesser peaks. The short runway was built on the diagonal to permit the planes to miss the mountains, but it made the approach a tricky one, and one that the larger planes were unable to attempt. This kept San Martin somewhat isolated from the world and made investment money think twice about locating there. The revolution did not, therefore, mean much to the outside world. It was just another nail in the already well-sealed coffin of the small country.

These were not thoughts that were going through my mind as we descended the slope to the north of the airport. I was thinking about what I would say and wondering how I would convince the Marine commander to include Juan Felipe in whatever amnesty I could secure for myself. I told Juan Felipe that he should answer the questions that he would be asked truthfully There was no sense lying about anything. He assured me that he never lied. I wondered if he was lying. Anyhow, that was what was on my mind when we were ordered to halt. The command came in english. That was a good sign.

The first thing the marines did was frisk us. They relieved me of my computer and Juan Felipe surrendered his handgun. We both relinquished our passports. The next thing they did was separate us. We were taken in on foot to different rooms in the airport's large hangar. Here we were questioned separately and at different times. The officer handling the questioning used every trick in the book to catch us in a lie. He even lied to each of us about what the other had said. He told me that Juan Felipe had told him that I was personally responsible for the death of the policeman's son. I told them that Juan Felipe would not say that. They told him that I had said that the professor's death was probably orchestrated by the rebels to make the police look bad. He told them that they were full of shit. He knew me too well by then to swallow that.

They asked us about our relationship. We told them the truth. Then we explained why Oscar was also after us. I pleaded Juan Felipe's case and told them that it was he who had kept me alive when the police of San Martin had attempted to silence me. I told them to look on my computer. I told them what they would find. They listened to everything we said, then late in the afternoon they brought us both to the office of the commandant, a man named Rodriguez... a man I knew, as it turned out. Unfortunately, he knew me too.

Rodriguez was half Puerto Rican and half Filipino. He had joined the army to get off of the streets of New York City and had managed throughout his career to keep jumping from the frying pan into the fire. He wasn't stupid or lazy. Quite the contrary, he worked his way up. But he represented two minority groups and this affected his rise almost as much as his work ethic and natural abilities. The army needed a positive image and, in Rodriguez, they found a double exposure. This led to him being given visible posts... posts the army could point to whenever it was accused of not advancing minorities through the ranks. They were also posts that constantly brought him before the public... or more accurately, before the press.

That's where I'd first met him. We'd had a run-in in Washington. I had been at a press conference that he had held to explain away a fragging incident in the Desert Storm theater. A sargeant had been killed during the initial assault on the Iraqi defenses. His wound was in the back and, as it turned out, he was the only casualty. He was the most hated man in the army and to make matters worse, they had been attacking an undefended position. The bullet was American and nobody in his right mind believed that it was anything other than outright murder.

Rodriguez had the unenviable job of trying to convince a suspicious press that it was an unfortunate incident of friendly fire. That was the army's position, and he was forced to stick to it. I made his day a living hell, I'm sorry to admit. There was no doubt that he remembered me.

But, if nothing else, Rodriguez was a professional. He resisted the urge to open the interview with a comment like, "So, we meet again..." or "What goes around comes around..." but I knew damned well that he wanted to point something out along those lines. What he actually said was, "Good afternoon."

I think I managed a reply, but I'm not sure what it was. Juan Felipe, of course, knew nothing about Rodriguez. His voice was a little clearer.

"Bonjour, monsieur."

Rodriguez looked at him and his eyebrows shot up as he did. Juan Felipe had that effect on a lot of people. He created a unique first impression.

"You would be the Frenchman," Rodriguez observed fingering the European passport in the stack of papers that he had brought with him to the meeting.

"Yes I would," Juan Felipe agreed, and I thought I detected a hint of a smile invade Rodriguez's otherwise professional demeanor. It seemed like a good sign.

"You don't look French," Rodriguez commented and lowered his eyes back to his paperwork.

"And you don't look American..." Juan Felipe observed. Rodriguez's eyes and eyebrows shot up again. "...except for the uniform..." Juan Felipe added and attached a quick smile to his addendum. Rodriguez seemed to be mollified.

"It seems," Rodriguez went on, "that the two of you are wanted by the police of San Martin." He glanced at one of the papers. "Something about murder and sedition..."

"That would be us... yes..." Juan Felipe answered earnestly. "But we did not do it. It was a plot by the police to conceal their involvement in the death of Professor Aquilar. You see, we discovered the body before the police expected it to be discovered. We also discovered that it was not a suicide. Professor Aquilar's thumbs had been tied together behind his back. We cut the body down before the police arrived. That is all we did. The explosion in our hotel room was an attempt by the police to kill us because we knew that it was they who had killed the professor. We committed no crime."

I glanced at Juan Felipe. I wanted him to shut up. I wanted to explain the difference between being truthful during questioning and telling the man everything we knew. He misunderstood my intent.

"Excuse me," Juan Felipe blithered on, "I seem to have misspoken.We did kidnap one of the policemen and force him to free a friend of ours from jail. Of that we are guilty, sir. Of that and nothing more..."

"And car theft..." Rodriguez noted casually glancing down at his sheaf of papers.

"Oh yes," Juan Felipe responded. "We did borrow the car. That had slipped my mind."

This time Rodriguez did smirk.

Juan Felipe looked a little flustered and turned to me. "Rick," he inquired, "Can you think of anything else we might have done?"

"We both tried to kill Oscar," I reminded him. It seemed like a good time to make a clean breast of things.

The smile disappeared from Rodriguez's face. I'm not sure whether it was because of me, what I had said or the name I had mentioned. It was probably a mixture of all three.

"I do not believe we could be accused of doing anything wrong if we had killed him," Juan Felipe responded. "Our only transgression is that we failed." He looked directly at Rodriguez and confessed, "It is because of this that I am here today. It would seem that my life is in jeopardy."

"So it would seem..." Rodriguez responded absently. Then he did the one thing I would not have expected him to do. He excused himself and left the room.

"I think that went quite well," Juan Felipe observed with a smile.

Evidently it had. We waited there alone for another fifteen minutes before a marine came in and told us that we were being assigned a room in the hangar where we could get washed up and rest for a while. He mentioned that a meal would be provided when we were ready to eat. He also mentioned that, under no circumstances were we to leave the room.

I asked if we were under arrest. He answered that in marine parlance the term was "confined to quarters." There could be any number of reasons for it, he speculated, but the net result was the same. We had been sent to our room and we were expected to stay there.

There were two cots in the room. Normally I would not consider them comfortable, but I had just spent two nights in a barn that didn't even have a hayloft to stretch out on. The cot suited me fine. Juan felipe found his a little too short.

There was a shower stall, sink and toilet in the room as well. The shower stall was very small, so we took turns in it. We relaxed a little before dinner and as we were eating Rodriguez showed up to tell us his decision.

"Mr. Larsen, I want you to be aware that I am speaking off the record now. This is background only. Do you agree not to use anything I am now about to tell you in your newspaper article?"

"Yes, sir," I answered. "I agree." What other choice did I have?

"Well, then I can tell you that we have been watching the situation in San Martin very closely. We are aware of the problems. We know who the players are. We have tried to serve in an advisory capacity here now for a number of months, but to tell you the truth, our advice is not being accepted too well."

"We have not taken sides in the dispute for the simple reason that neither side appears to be an acceptable ally. It is more of a gang fight that got out of control, and the interests of the United States... well, gentlemen to be perfectly honest, until Sargent Clements was murdered, we really weren't interested. Our main purpose here was to keep things from spilling over into the surrounding countries..."

"The domino effect?" I inquired.

Rodriguez looked at me strangely.

"That term is no longer considered politically correct," he informed me. "These days we think along the lines of the HIV effect. We're even cautious as a nation about whom we get into bed with... now. Officially, we weren't even here... until Sargent Clements' body turned up one morning in a milk cart."

It dawned on me that the discovery of the marine's body had been the first time that I too had ever given a second thought to the conditions that existed in San Martin. I had heard of it, of course, but only as a bit of a joke in the international scheme of things. I reflected as Rodriguez spoke that now it seemed to have become the center of my universe... well San Martin and France. I was lost in this reverie and almost missed it when Rodriguez finished by saying, "The State Department has authorized me to offer Mr. Rafael passage to the Mexico City airport where he will be met by officials of the French government and be escorted to the Embassy there. The aircraft will leave tomorrow morning. You will be our guest here until then."

"You, Mr. Larsen, will continue on to Washington where you will be debriefed. I would urge you to co-operate with us, this time, Rick," Rodriguez smiled. "We do have the right to detain you... and let me assure you that we can be every bit as nasty as you can."

I nodded my assent. "I'll be happy to co-operate in any way I can," I assured him.

"Well, then," Rodriguez smiled. "If that's settled... I suppose I should ask if either of you have any questions."

"Just one," I pressed. "What day is it?"

Rodriguez smiled again. Then he looked at his watch. "I think it's Saturday, but I'll have to get back to you on that."

Saturday... Had it only been one week since my arrival... since I'd first laid eyes on Juan Felipe? And now, to consider a day without him was like a blasphemy... like cutting off your own arm or leg... unthinkable...

I wondered if I had ever truly loved anyone in my life before I met him. I wondered how long it would be before the French Embassy in Mexico would let him rejoin me in Washington.

We finished our dinner in silence. Both of us were lost in the private thoughts that were forced on us by Rodriguez's announcement. After dinner I watched a little television while Juan Felipe wrote a letter. I asked him what he was writing. He said that it was a note saying goodbye. I asked him who he was writing to. He told me it was personal. Naturally, I guessed right away that it was to Armando.

"Tell him I love him too," I said.

Juan Felipe looked up when I said that. He looked sad, but he said nothing. He finished the letter, turned off the television and the lights and slipped into my cot.

"Do you have a brother or a sister, Rick?"

"No, man, I'm an only child."

"You are fortunate. You have only yourself to worry about."

"Not true, monsieur," I answered. "I have you... now."

"Yes," he answered absently, "yes, you do."

"I thought I had lost you yesterday," I told him.

"I thought you had too," he agreed. "Were it not for you, I would be dead now."

"Don't talk about death now, Juan Felipe. Tomorrow we will be out of here. We will be safe."

He kissed me. Then he turned me and snuggled up to my back. I felt his genitals find their place in the crack of my ass and his arms wrapped around me. Then I felt his chest shudder and I heard the breath hitch in his throat and I knew the moisture on my cheek was from his tears.

The next morning when I awoke, Juan Felipe was nowhere to be found. His cot had not been used and on his pillow lay the letter he had written the night before. It was addressed to me.

Chapter Ten

Alone Again... Naturally

Rick,

You know that I cannot accompany you while my brother remains here and in jeopardy. I could tell you everything else, my friend, but I could not tell you "goodbye." Forgive me for sneaking out this way, but it is for the best, I am sure. I will be careful to avoid the danger that we both know is still here in San Martin.

You will forgive me also for not having told you that I love you. It is not because it is not true. I do love you more than I can say here. Your friendship is special to me and there is nothing that I would rather do than go with you. Unfortunately I was born into the same family as my brother, and so I must try to convince him to leave with me for France. It was you after all who pointed out to me the danger that he is in. You could not have expected that I would be able to ignore your warning.

You must know too that Armando will need me now. It would seem that his life has been ruined by me as well.

If you are able to pray for me, Rick, please do it. I will need your prayers, as will Armando and Fernando. Know too that I pray for you and that we may some day find each other again, if not on earth, then in heaven.

Your friend,

Juan Felipe

I folded the paper and slipped it into my pocket. I was numb. I felt stupid. How could I have failed to know what was going through his mind? Was I in so much of a hurry to save my own skin that I had forgotten the others? Or was I so afraid of losing Juan Felipe that the others didn't matter?

The door opened and Rodriguez came in.

"Are you guys ready?" he asked. Then he looked around the room. "Where's the French guy?"

"He left last night," I reported.

"No, that's impossible. Nobody reported anyone leaving. He would have been stopped."

"He isn't here," I reiterated.

"Well, where is he?"

"I wish I knew. He probably went to find his brother."

"He couldn't just walk out of a locked room..."

"Why not? A locked door never stopped him from getting in," I answered.

Rodriguez looked at me like it was my fault. Then he called a marine into the room and ordered him to have the airport searched. I knew it wouldn't do any good. When Juan Felipe wanted to go somewhere or do something a little detail like a locked door or a guarded gate would not stop him.

I looked at Rodriguez. Rodriguez looked at me.

"There was a little disturbance, last night, at the place you told us you were staying," Rodriguez volunteered eventually. "Do you suppose your friend had anything to do with it?"

"What happened?" I asked.

"Some houses were burnt out," he offered.

"Burnt out? How many?"

"All of them."

"Was anybody killed?"

"There were no bodies discovered," Rodriguez answered, but he averted his eyes. "It looks like you got out just in time."

Rodriguez departed after carefully locking the room. He had alternate arrangements to make.

The search of the airport yielded nothing, but it did force a delay in the takeoff of the Hercules. We left at noon instead of ten o'clock. As the plane lumbered down the runway and fell into the air I found myself pressed to the tiny window. A few seconds after takeoff as we circled up into the sky I was able to identify all of the landmarks that I had come to know only from the ground. The city laid like a map in the little valley. I recognized the scar that was Los Gatos on the side of the mountain south of town. I think I detected the roof of the professor's house hiding in the jungle, but I could have been mistaken.

I found the little village on the volcano where we had spent the two nights in the barn. There was smoke rising from the houses. It was not the smoke of cooking fires. It was the smoke of burning rubble. A little speck that was a human being lifted its head to look at the plane, just before a cloud swallowed us and blotted out the sight of the destruction. When we finally made it out of the cloud we had left San Martin far behind, but the image of the fresh devastation had been permanently burned into my brain by then.

I remembered Juan Felipe's request to pray for him. I prayed for him. I prayed for Armando and Fernando too. Then I prayed for all the people who were still in San Martin... all but one. I prayed that they would soon find someone who would lead them out of the middle ages and on to lives that meant something to them.

I asked if Rodriguez had sent my computer on the flight. I was told that it was on the plane, but was to be delivered to the Army Intelligence people when we landed in Washington. I didn't point out that I was being delivered to the same folks. A sense of humour seemed to be the only thing that had not been brought on the flight.

We had everything else. The marines gave me my meals and they even managed a bottle of red wine to go with it. It was the same wine the professor had stocked at his home in the jungle. But somehow the bouquet was different and so was the flavour. I decided that I didn't like it as well. Something was missing.

We landed in Washington that night. The plane was towed into a hangar at Andrews and I was escorted to a waiting van. A locked silver-colored case was carried to the van by my escort. I imagined my computer was inside.

The Washington air was as muggy as it had been in San Martin. The van was air conditioned though and I found myself chilled as we drove the fifteen or so miles to the building I would call home for the next two days.

Although I had bathed daily, my clothes were the same ones I had been wearing since the explosion at the hotel which had sent all of my shirts and shorts into the street along with a quarter of the building itself. I was grateful to find a fresh pair of slacks on the bed and a drawer full of underwear in the chest of drawers.

A late dinner was brought in shortly after my arrival and I ate it while I watched television. I searched the news channels for any word about the situation in San Martin, but it had been well over a week since the discovery of the marine's body, and the world had moved on to more important things... the All Star Game, a child's game played by millionaires, whose only complaint seemed to be that they were not yet billionaires. I switched off the set and turned in... alone... except for the small camera in the corner of the bedroom.

I was not alone all night though. Juan Felipe joined me in my dreams... dreams that found us running... always running... and always running in place as those who would kill us gained little by little until I awoke in a cold sweat and reached out to grasp Juan Felipe back from whatever precipice we had managed to come upon... but he was never there. The dreams were so vivid that it took me many minutes to realize that I was now safe. And when I realized that I was beyond the danger, I felt immediately like a Judas. I had abandoned Juan Felipe... and I had no idea if he was dead or alive.

I experienced what could only be called panic attacks when I realized that I had probably seen him for the last time this side of heaven. I wondered if it had been him looking up at the plane when we passed over the remains of the little village on the volcano.

The next day I was brought to a spartan office a few doors down from the suite of rooms I now called home. The questioning began early in the morning and I was asked first of all about my experiences in San Martin. I related the events in chronological order to the best of my ability. The officer conducting the interrogation interrupted me a few times to clarify a point or two, but on the whole, I was allowed to relate the events as they happened.

We broke for lunch at noon and went back at it shortly after one. I concluded the story of my involvement in the revolution of San Martin at about three thirty. They asked me if I would mind returning in the morning to answer a few more questions. I told them that I had already assured Colonel Rodriguez that I would cooperate with them in any way I could. They thanked me and sent me to my room.

My dreams that night were even more vivid, strengthened, no doubt, by my forced reliving of the events that propelled them.

The next day we had a slide show. They had pictures of everybody... Oscar, Fernando, the professor, the Chief of Police, a few people I did not know and a few that I had seen, but was unable to identify. The last picture they showed me was the one I had taken the first day I was in San Martin. I guessed they had downloaded it from my computer.

The picture showed a young man with a beautiful tan lounging in a cantina across the street from a hotel room that did not exist anymore. His clear brown eyes gazed back directly and languidly at the camera. A half smile concealed any thoughts he might have been thinking.

"Why was this picture on your computer?" my interrogator inquired.

"It's Juan Felipe," I answered and found I had almost no voice to do it. I cleared my throat.

"Yes," the interrogator nodded. "He is the brother of Fernando. We have been unable to determine his role in the revolution."

"He was my guide," I said quietly unable to take my eyes from the screen. "I hired him the second day I was in San Martin."

"Only your guide?" the man asked. I wondered what he meant. I wondered how much he knew.

"No, he was my friend too."

The screen went black. The interrogator looked at me. He seemed to be having difficulty phrasing his next remark.

"No," he finally said, "I meant, did he play any other role in the revolution?"

"He was against the revolution... at least he was upset with the leadership. He thought that a bunch of rotten apples was being replaced by a swarm of locusts."

"His brother led the revolution," the man reminded me.

"Not so much as he was caught up in it," I contradicted remembering Juan Felipe's assessment of Fernando's acitivities. "Juan Felipe was in San Martin visiting a friend."

"He told you that?"

"Yes."

"Did you believe him?"

"I met the friend..."

"Did he seem well-connected?"

"Who, Armando?"

"No, Juan Felipe... who's Armando?"

"The friend... How do you mean 'well-connected?'"

"Did he know what was going on?"

"He knew his way around... he was born there."

"Did he seem able to get things done without any trouble?"

"What things?"

"You're a reporter. Did he get you access to the right people?"

"Two days after I got there we were both almost killed by the police. If he had connections, he didn't get a chance to use them."

"But you met the brother..."

"Fernando? Yah, he came by to tell us we'd have to leave the professor's house because Armando had been arrested."

"The friend?"

"Yes."

"Why was he arrested?"

"He had some things from my wallet."

"He stole your wallet?"

"No, I gave it to him. He was trying to lead the police away from us."

"And what was his full name?"

I suddenly remembered Armando's request that he should not have his name involved in my article.

"I just knew him as Armando," I lied. I was glad that I had not been hooked up to a polygraph.

The interrogator looked at me. I tried to figure out whether or not he believed me. We stared at each other. I remembered the angels and looked up at the ceiling. I glanced back down in time to see that my interrogator had also looked up. When he saw me looking at him again, I noticed that he appeared a little rattled. I couldn't help smiling at him. He didn't return it. Perhaps that's the effect that angels have on interrogators.

Anyway we broke for an early lunch.

After lunch I was escorted to a different office. It was a lot nicer than the ones they had used to interrogate me. For one thing, there was no one way mirror in it. There was a more senior officer there. I don't know his rank, because he wore a suit, not a uniform. He smiled... sort of... I didn't see his teeth actually get involved and it didn't take too much of his precious time. It was more of an acknowledgement of my presence as he listened to an aide who was filling one ear with what he probably considered to be the goods on me.

Finally the aide finished his narrative and was dismissed with a wave of the man's hand. The other hand made a swooping sort of a gesture to indicate that I should take the chair it had encompassed in its arc. I sat down and waited for him to begin.

I was used to the game now. I was not intimidated by uniforms anymore. The police of San Martin had pretty much taken care of any previous respect I might have had for uniforms. Now I gauged the man in the uniform. I did it by looking inside his head through the portholes of his eyes. If he wouldn't give me access to his eyes, I pretty much discounted anything coming out of his mouth.

The man in front of me wore tinted glasses. So much for operational imperatives...

He gathered himself into a leather swivel chair behind an oak desk and pursed his lips in my direction again. Then he opened a file folder that had been on his blotter since my arrival and pretended to read what had been written on the single piece of paper it contained. Either he was a slow reader, or he wanted to impress me with his importance by keeping me waiting. It didn't matter to me one way or the other. I had already figured out that he was the check out clerk. They had all that they were going to get from me, and we all knew that. It was this man's job to impress on me the importance of not telling anyone what I had just told them.

It didn't matter what they wanted me to sign. I was ready to write my story. I only had one question.

"Do I get my computer now?"

"Hmmm?" He looked up from his perusal of the paper... and he looked annoyed that I had interrupted him. More particularly, he looked pissed that I had guessed the purpose of our interview. I hoped that my impertinence did not mean that he was going to start reading again from the top.

"My computer... you have it..." I urged.

"Yes we do," he answered. "There is a lot of information on it. We'll have to keep it a day or two more." He returned to his reading.

"Why?" I had interrupted him again.

"It has a lot of information on it," he repeated glancing up momentarily.

"You could copy it."

"We need to verify the information. We can't do that with a copy." He didn't bother to look up this time.

I figured I knew the real reason they were keeping the computer. It was a reason he would not readily divulge, though. They were going to go over my hard drive with a fine tooth comb. They no longer needed the evidence that Juan Felipe and I had worked for almost three days to accumulate. They wanted to get the goods on me. They would have to be good though. Juan Felipe had wiped out all of my graphics files but one. It only existed because it had been transferred to another directory... the directory I used for attaching files to e-mail.

Finally he looked up... of his own volition. He didn't smile... he sighed. Nice touch...

"There are some serious charges that have been brought against you by the police of San Martin, Mr. Larsen." He looked like he was waiting for me to say something. I didn't.

"Murder, sedition..." Oh, God! He was going to list them! "Kidnapping, Forcible confinement, Aiding and Abetting..."

"Yah, I know... Don't forget Grand Theft Auto." Now I was pissed. "You know what happened. Your own men can verify my story. They were there. They know who we're dealing with there..."

"We are not dealing with anybody in San Martin, Mr. Larsen. We are dealing with you... here... now."

"I know what you're doing," I snapped back. "Just give me the paper. I'll sign the thing for you. I just want to go home. I have things to do."

You cannot command respect. You have to earn it. The man in front of me had not earned my respect and he was not going to get it. I could fear him, but I could not respect him. I don't know why I found myself so suddenly cocky facing the government I had respected all my life. Perhaps it had something to do with the anguish I felt over the loss of my best friend. I knew that there was nothing they could do for me about that.

He shoved the paper across the table. I stood and scratched my name on the bottom of it.

"We'll be keeping your passport awhile too," he informed me as he pulled the paper back and stuffed it into his file folder. I opened my mouth to protest. He went on. "You just agreed to it in this undertaking." He waved the folder in what was at once a gesture of triumph and dismissal. "The officer outside the door will take you to your home."

I walked out without a backward glance. It wasn't the first time I'd outsmarted myself.

Home for me is a two bedroom, fourth floor apartment in one of the less fashionable parts of town. I would tell you which part of town, but it doesn't make any difference, and there are a few people who don't like me a lot who might want to come and see me. Let's just say that a lot of airplanes just manage to make it over the roof of the building, and you eventually get used to the noise. I won't tell you whether the airplanes are coming or going.

One was passing over when the van dropped me in front of the building. I waited to see if it would make it before I entered the lobby and jambed my key into the security door. I had to wait a couple of minutes for the elevator. When it got there it contained another man.

"Rick!" the man said. "You're back!"

This was obvious to me, but I tried to return the smile and ignore the stupid greeting.

"Hi, Carl." Carl was a friend. Carl was more than a friend on occasion. He didn't live in my building, so I imagined that he was here to see me. The prospect was not entirely unpropitious. After two days of answering questions, strangely enough, I needed someone to talk to. "Did you want to come up?"

"Yah, all right," he agreed. "I really came over to see if you wanted to go out tonight."

"Where are you headed?" I asked.

"There's this new dancer..." That's all I needed to hear. Carl has this thing about hot humpy numbers. He can't rest until he has explored any new dancer that turns up at the strip bars with a chest greater than forty inches and a waist less than thirty-six. Other measurements enter his calculations, but the chest and the waist are the two primary considerations.

"What dismal little dump are you taking me to tonight?" I inquired as the elevator jerked to a stop at the fourth floor.

"Oh Tools," he announced proudly.

"Never heard of it..."

"It just opened. They're having all sorts of specials this week... half price table dancing... two for one drinks... bop the bouncer..."

"Wha...?"

"I just threw that in to see if you were paying attention." Carl grinned an infectious grin as I unlocked the door. Then he pushed it open and walked in ahead of me. "I figured we'd bring Tyler back here. My place is being fumigated."

"Your place is always being fumigated. Why don't you stay there and die like the cockroach you truly are?"

"But your place is so much nicer, Rick," he ignored my insult and flopped onto the couch to wait for me.

"Tyler is the new dancer?"

"Yah, but I don't think it's his real name."

"It never is," I commented. Where's this one from? Lithuania?"

"Albuquerque..."

"New Mexico, huh? Then Tyler might be his real name." I was in the bedroom now and changing. "What should I wear?"

"As little as possible..." Carl answered. "It's very informal."

"I'll need to visit a bank machine on the way. Are you driving?"

"Oui, monsieur. Your limousine awaits you below."

I guess Carl couldn't have known. I hardly knew what hit me.

"Rick, are you all right?" Carl was at the bedroom door. I was sitting on the foot of the bed. The tears had come quickly. With them came an uncontrollable hitching in my chest as I struggled for breath racked by the spasms of anguish that I had felt for two days and not been able to vent until now. Carl sat down beside me and I felt his arm go round me. I cried into his shirt. I soaked it. Snot bubbled out of me like a volcanic geyser.

"Please, Carl, don't speak French," I implored him when I found that I could once again speak.

"Sure, honey," he answered. "Do you want to talk about it?"

I shook my head. I composed myself. I went to the en suite and washed my face... a couple of times.

"Let's go have a look at Tyler," I suggested.

"Not until I get a fresh shirt." He stripped off the soggy one and threw my closet door open. "Jesus, Rick, where are all your clothes?"

Chapter Eleven

The Box

Tyler was okay... well, he was better than okay, he was gorgeous. But I didn't feel like having an affair with someone whose love for himself far outdistanced any love I could give him. Carl didn't seem to share my reticence. He hunkered down with Tyler in my spare room. They stayed there until Wednesday. This was okay with me. Tyler would venture out in the morning to raid my refrigerator, and he conducted these forrays in the nude. It was a pleasant diversion as I dressed for the day at the office. Carl worked too, but he and Tyler were always there when I left and when I returned. I don't know if Carl was calling in sick, but each night they went to the bar, and each night they came back, until Thursday when Carl showed up alone and asked if he could borrow fifty bucks.

After that I was alone. I didn't even have my computer until the weekend came around twice again. It was dropped off unceremoniously at my desk on the Friday afternoon. I signed for it before I switched it on and discovered that nothing worked. The bastards had formatted my hard drive. Everything was gone. I had known they would remove the stuff from San Martin. But I had dared to hope that I might be able to restore the deleted files and still piece my story together.

When I got over the initial loss, I realized that what really bothered me was that Juan Felipe's picture was also gone.

Then I remembered where I could get another copy of it. That's what lifted my spirits and kept me going.

It took most of the weekend to get the damned thing up and running again. I must have gone through a couple of pots of coffee reloading all of my progam files from the original disks. I cursed the programming teams who all seemed to have different ideas about the best way to load programs.

It was late Sunday night when I finally managed to get through to the InterNet office and pick up my mail. I had a stack of it and I methodically worked through it, answering what I could with promises to write later. I kept at it and purposely did not open the mail I had addressed to myself... the file that now sat in my inbasket directory... the photo of Juan Felipe. I knew that if I once got looking at it, I would be unable to do anything else, so I answered the mail with familiar addresses and left the rest for another time.

I wondered if his face would look familiar in the picture, or if I might find it the face of a stranger. It had been a two weeks and a bit since I'd seen him. Before I clicked the mouse button I opened the bottle of French wine I had picked up the day before, and poured myself a splash. I tasted it and approved it, the way Juan Felipe always did, then I poured a glass for him and filled my own.

Click.

It was as if we had seen each other only moments before. The next thing I knew, it was two in the morning and I still hadn't had dinner. The wine was gone, except for his glass.

"Well, if you aren't going to drink it, Mr. Rafael, I will." I toasted him and tossed it back. Then I shut the computer off and laid down on the floor in front of it. I was still there the next morning. It was about ten o'clock and I didn't care if I ever worked again. The telephone was ringing. I decided to let it ring.

I got up and went to bed. It had been two weeks and more since I had last seen Juan Felipe. But my dreams about him kept coming stronger and stronger. All I wanted to do was sleep... just so I could be near him again.

Carl came by again that night. He came alone. He brought my mail and the fifty he had borrowed and asked me what the hell had happened to me. I told him I was a little under the weather. .

"That's obvious," he said as he parked himself in front of the computer, "Who's the dude?"

"Juan Felipe."

"Is he from around here?"

"He was my guide in San Martin."

"Hmmm... nice-lookin'"

"Did you want something?"

"I wouldn't mind a crack at him. Did you two make it?"

"Is that all you think about?"

"Most of the time... yah... Why? What else is there?"

"My passport..."

"What's that got to do with..."

"They sent my passport back. It was in the mail you brought up."

"Why? Who had it?"

"The marines... They brought me back from San Martin."

"Why did they have your passport?"

"They like to prove that they can control the press. If they can't do it in the field, they do it at home. I guess I must be okay again."

"So?"

"So what?"

"So... did you two make it?"

"Every night and twice a night on the weekends..."

"Kewl!"

"You really are an asshole, Carl."

"I have one... yah."

"Jerk..."

"Is that an invitation?"

I had to laugh. Carl was insufferable. But he was a friend too.

"What the hell happened down there?" he asked.

"I fell in love," I confessed.

"Again? Is this the dude?"

"Yes."

Carl waited expectantly. I didn't know where to begin. It was very quiet. So I told him about the angels. Then I told him about Juan Felipe. Then I told him to get lost.

"It'll work out, Rick," he said as I pushed him to the door. "The guy sounds like he knows what he's doing. If I was that Fernando guy, I'd be glad I had him for a brother. It sounds like his heart is in the right place."

"Actually, it's not," I answered and slammed the door behind him.

I was alone again with Juan Felipe's picture... and that was just the way I wanted it.

I had received news from San Martin. Colonel Rodriguez had given me his number and I had used it. The revolution had taken a turn. There were new hands guiding it. Nothing had been heard from Fernando or his brother since Juan Felipe's disappearance from the airport. But the violence had also stopped.

It was an eery peace... if peace was what it could be called. There were still disappearances, quite a few in fact. But there were no more bodies. One of the strangest disappearances was the Chief of Police. No one seemed to know what had happened to him, until a manifesto pinned to the front of the police station announced that he had been tried and found guilty by a jury of his peers. The manifesto then went on to list the charges against him and the verdict in each case. Some of the charges were dropped because of lack of evidence. But the majority of them had been proven to the satisfaction of the court, and the Chief of Police was being held in prison, the location of which was not specified in the manifesto.

It didn't sound like Oscar's way of doing things. I had a little hope there for a while... until the box arrived. It's in the freezer now. It's been there two days now. I tried to ignore it at first and I even tried to get on with my life.

I figured a good place to start would be with my e-mail. I still had quite a bit to get through, so I switched the computer on and opened the "in" mailbox.

I don't know why I hadn't seen the message before. It was an unfamiliar address to be sure, but I still should have put two and two together. The name was grafael@gard.fr. The date was the day after I landed in Washington. It was more than two weeks old. My hand trembled on the mouse as I positioned the pointer over the line the message inhabited.

The message was from Juan Felipe's parents. It was a request for information about the whereabouts of their sons. I read the fractured english phrases over and over again. They had received my address on a message from their youngest son, who had also sent a picture of himself. The message seemed to be from Washington. They did, however, recognize in the background of the picture, a sign advertising the local beer of San Martin, the beer with the taste I had not been able to acquire. Was their son in San Martin or in Washington? Did I know where Juan Felipe's brother was? Had I met him? Who was I?

It was the most difficult message I ever answered. I took it point by point and explained why the message appeared to come from Washington, when in fact it had been sent from San Martin. I explained what I was doing in San Martin. I told of my involvement with Juan Felipe and how he had come to work for me. Then I laid out the specifics of the death of the professor and how we had come to be blamed and hunted by the police. I told them of our kidnapping attempt and how it had gone so dreadfully wrong. I related the story of Juan Felipe's attempt on the life of Oscar, and the disastrous consequences to the village where we had been hiding. I explained that Juan Felipe's devotion to his brother was stronger than his fear for his own life. I told them of my anguish over his disappearance. Then I typed my phone number and told them to call me if they received any word at all about the fate of their sons.

I must have read, re-read and edited the message twenty times before I finally clicked the "send" button and committed it to its trans-Atlantic trip. I had tried to ease the words... words that would be doubly difficult for the recipients to understand... hard to decipher and harder to believe. What I never mentioned was the box in my freezer... or the last words I heard Oscar speak, when he threatened to send Juan Felipe's head and all the useless ideas in it to me in Washington.

I knew that I had to write the story of Juan Felipe before I opened the box. As long as it remained sealed it kept its awful secret. I knew that I would break more than the seal when I opened the box. The revelation would destroy me. That was certain. That was Oscar's plan. He would kill two birds with one stone. What he didn't know though, was that I have decided to join Juan Felipe wherever he is, and take Oscar along for the ride... if I can.

The phone has been ringing for two days now. The box is on the kitchen table. I seem to be looking for excuses. Well, perhaps one more. I will answer the phone before I open the box...

It is later now. I don't know where to begin. I have to share with you the surprise I felt when I answered the telephone. Surprise and shock... confusion too... God, where to begin... The phone call... of course, the phone call. I picked it up and said hello.

A voice on the other end spoke in beautiful round vowels. It said, "Hello, Rick. It is Juan Felipe. I am in France. Fernando is here too."

"Juan..." My breath was gone. I felt faint. I sat on the floor. I'd heard that makes the fall a lot less dangerous if you do pass out.

"Juan Felipe..." he corrected. "We met in San Martin. I was your..."

"I know who you are!" I shouted... and I think I laughed. "You're alive!"

"But of course, monsieur. Otherwise I would not be talking to you... unless I was an angel. Angels sometimes talk to mortals, I believe."

"Juan Felipe, you're no angel."

"Ah,yes, well you would know, monsieur..."

"How did you manage to get to France?"

"It is a long story, monsieur..."

"I have time..."

"It is long distance..."

"What's your phone number?"

"Why do you want my phone number?"

"I'm going to call you back." He gave me his number and I rang off. I had the devil's own time getting him back. He hadn't told me the routing codes. Eventually I got them from the long distance operator.

"Allo?"

"Juan Felipe?"

"Oui monsieur..."

"Oh, God! It's so good to hear that word again!"

"You sound excited," he observed. "What has happened?"

"I thought that you were dead. Tell me how you got to France."

"We came on a banana boat."

"Where did you find a banana boat?"

"In the harbour at Puerto Barrios."

I reviewed my geography quickly.

"That's in Nicarauga isn't it? How did you get up there?"

"In the back of a truck. We also walked a long way."

"You and Fernando?"

"Just so, monsieur."

"How did you manage to convince him to leave?"

"I did not convince him... Oscar did. They burned the village the night we left. I went there the next day. Everything was gone."

I wondered if it had been Juan Felipe I had seen standing amid the destruction.

"Did a plane fly over while you were there?"

"Oui, monsieur. I saw you leave. Forgive me for not waving, but at the time I was regretting my decision. I was wishing that I was on it with you."

"So was I..."

"Just after the plane disappeared, I met Fernando. He had seen the fire and had come back to look. It was apparent that Oscar had done it. We found his machete in the ruins. There was blood on it. The only thing that seemed strange was that there were no bodies."

"Yes, that's what Colonel Rodriguez told me."

"Ah, you have talked to him?"

"Just about every day. He told me there was no word of you."

"There would not be. Oscar's outrage convinced Fernando that the only thing he could now give the revolution would be his life. He was not prepared to do that."

"So you booked passage on a banana boat..."

"We had no money for that. I was also missing my passport. I believe Colonel Rodriguez still has it. Fernando, of course, would not have been able to use his without being picked up and returned to San Martin. So we waited until evening and climbed up the side of the ship."

"You stowed away?"

"I believe that is the term, yes. The trip took ten days. I counted each one."

"What did you eat?"

"We were on a banana boat, monsieur. I never want to see another banana as long as I live. The ship was bound for Marseilles. We knew this because we had checked the manifest in the office the night before. When it arrived and dropped anchor it was night time. We slid down the anchor chain and swam to the breakwater. When the sun came up we got on a train for Nimes. We know some people in Nimes."

"I thought you said you didn't have any money."

"We didn't. We were prepared to be arrested. It would have saved us the trouble of turning ourselves in. But the conductor never came through the car. We got off and went to see Gerard... our friend... and he gave us food and drove us home in his air-conditioned Renault."

"Then what's in the box?" I asked myself as much as I asked Juan Felipe.

"What box are you talking about?"

I quickly explained how the box had arrived from Los Gatos. Juan Felipe's voice was immediately subdued.

"He must have found Armando..." There was a long silence on the other end of the line. "You must open the box, Rick. But please, do it carefully."

"You think he killed Armando?"

"I fear so... Armando was very outspoken in his hatred for Oscar."

"Everybody hated Oscar," I rejoined. I didn't want to open the box and find a piece of Armando in there anymore than I wanted to find a piece of Juan Felipe.

"Everybody feared Oscar," Juan Felipe corrected me. "Armando hated him. Oscar is his father's brother."

"His uncle? His uncle would kill him?"

"Without batting his eyeball," Juan Felipe answered. I let it pass. He'd obviously gone for a baseball analogy and struck out. "Please open the box, Rick."

I'd run out of excuses and time. But I took Juan Felipe with me to the table and held the receiver between my head and shoulder as I slipped the tip of the knife through the tape that sealed the flaps of the box, a box that had been constructed out of cardboard from a beer case, the same beer that Juan Felipe's parents had noticed advertised in the picture of him I had snapped from my hotel window. The knife slipped and the contents of the box wobbled obscenely.

"Arrgh!" It was an involuntary reaction.

"What is it?" Juan Felipe demanded. "Is it Armando?"

"I dunno. I haven't opened it yet. The knife slipped."

"Did you hurt yourself?"

"No, but thanks for asking. I'm opening it now. Ugh!"

"What?"

"It's a head."

"Whose?"

"I dunno. I can only see the hair. It's black and greasy."

"Greasy?"

"Yah, y'know, oily... it smells like rancid butter..."

"It doesn't sound like Armando. His hair was always clean... is always clean..."

"He might have been through a lot before he... you know..."

"Then you must take it out of the box, Rick."

"I knew you were going to say that." I grimaced and tried to figure out where to grab the thing. "How does one take a head out of a box?"

"It doesn't matter, Rick," Juan Felipe soothed, "he won't feel a thing."

"Maybe he won't," I argued, "but I most definitely will. God I'm glad I haven't eaten in two days."

"I would do it for you if I was there," Juan Felipe assured me.

Somehow that braced me. I held my breath reached into the box and lifted the grizzly trophy. The box came with it. The neck was stuck to the bottom. I prised it loose and the box fell away.

"Well?" Juan Felipe asked when I had been silent too long.

"It isn't Armando." I could hear the relief from a quarter of the world away, even though Juan Felipe said nothing. "It's Oscar."

"Oscar?"

"Oscar, and he has a little balloon sticking out of his mouth."

"A balloon?"

"Yah, you know, a condom..."

"In his mouth?"

"Yup."

"What is it doing in his mouth?"

"Not much... I think it's a message..."

"From whom?"

"There's only one person it could be from. Who else knew about Oscar's threat?"

"Armando... only Armando. We talked about it in English so that none of the others would hear."

"That's what I was thinking. It explains a lot about what has happened in the past few weeks."

"How so?"

I told Juan Felipe about the manifesto that had been found on the door of the police station. I told him about the disappearances that Rodriguez had describe to me and the fact that the rebels claimed to have placed the Chief of Police in prison after trying him in their court.

"I think that Armando has finally become involved in the revolution," I finished.

"If he has, it would appear that there is perhaps a chance that the revolution will be successful."

"He seems to be taking it in a new direction, all right. Rodriguez tells me that the police are pretty shaky. There have been a lot of resignations. They must think that they will be next if they don't step down. The ones that are left seem to be acting a little more responsibly."

"Sometimes a threat is all that it takes. It will be interesting to see what happens next."

"You seem to be forgetting something, Juan Felipe."

"Oh? And what is that?"

"I'm standing here holding Oscar's head! What the fuck do I do with it?"

"Put it back into the box and send it back to San Martin."

"What? You want me to mark 'Return To Sender' on it and just throw it into the mail?"

"No, take the condom out of his mouth first..."

"You've got to be kidding! Anyway, there's no return address on it... just 'Los Gatos, San Martin.'"

"Well, then, send it to Colonel Rodriguez... but make sure you remove any trace of your address from it."

I gingerly slipped the condom from between Oscar's lips. "How did he get my address anyway?"

"You gave him everything in your wallet, monsieur. Armando still had some things of yours left when they arrested him. He is very resourceful."

"What should I do with the condom?"

"Throw it away... I have more. My parents are both doctors, monsieur."

"Humph!" I slipped the head back into its box. Even two doctor's could not help Oscar now. All the king's horses and all the king's men... and all that!

"What is funny, monsieur?"

"Nothing... I'm just suddenly hungry. I haven't eaten in over two days."

"What? Nothing?"

"Nothing but coffee... Now I'm standing here in the middle of my kitchen with a head in a box and nothing in the refrigerator."

"Well, be sure you fill your refrigerator before I get there."

"You're coming to Washington?"

"But of course, monsieur... as soon as I get a new passport. My school holidays are not over and I have to collect my money."

"What money?"

"Why, monsieur, the money you owe me. You hired me over three weeks ago, but you neglected to pay me. Since I never quit and you did not fire me, I believe I have three weeks pay coming to me. Am I not correct?"

I started to laugh.

"Monsieur, does your reaction mean that you do not intend to pay me?"

"You'll be paid, Juan Felipe. Never fear. But do me a favor will you?"

"What is it monsieur?"

"Forget the condoms... bring some Cote Du Rhone wine instead."

"It will be my pleasure, monsieur."

Author's Note:

Juan Felipe is my latest story. I have received a lot of positive mail about it and I hope that you will let me know what you think of it. Write to me at cmurray@adan.kingston.net

Ricardo

August 6, 1996