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death,” Mishwe said. “Your father has preached that they who worship idols are lost; not soulless, like the Innocents, but lost. You were not squeamish about Project Labor. Why do you squirm over this?”
    “There will be an investigation,” Casey sighed. “The new woman. . .” He turned his palms up in helplessness.
    “The new woman may very well take Bartlett’s place,” Mishwe said. “Her work is meticulous, and her Sunspots, the product of genius. If she sees too much, she’ll simply have to stay with us forever.”
    “Get out,” Casey croaked. “Get below where you belong, and don’t let me see you topside unless I call for you.”
    Mishwe’s only response was an underbreath chuckle as he strode out the door.

Chapter 6

    Colonel Toledo stood aside from the handful of mourners at Red Bartlett’s funeral, his full-dress uniform tighter and hotter than he’d ever remembered. The cloudless afternoon glared back at the Colonel watching Sonja Bartlett circle the little biplane from the El Canada coffee plantation into position. She carried a canister of her father’s ashes along with her.
    Sonja and Harry, he thought. They’re like brother and sister.
    Sonja loved Red Bartlett, that had been clear. Her father was Rico’s best friend since before Harry and Sonja were born. Sonja and Harry grew up together. Their parents had spent hundreds of weekend evenings together, playing pinochle, barbecuing. Red stayed at the ViraVax facility during the week and came home most weekends.
    Maybe if I’d worked it that way, Harry and I. . . .
    The Colonel didn’t like thinking about maybes. Harry hated him, and there wasn’t much the Colonel could do about that. Not any more than he could control his own anger, or the drinking that brought it on.
    Rico Toledo reflected on his son’s antagonism—the embassy counselor called it teenage rebellion syndrome. Rico recalled their many Saturdays in the gym, how he taught the boy to fight and to navigate the embassy’s elevators from the secret controls on top. They were good memories, but not recent memories.
    The Colonel stood alone and reviewed his failing marriage, his drinking, his bad standing with the Church since the ViraVax fiasco years ago.
    It all started with the mission that led him to meet Red Bartlett in the first place. The Colonel—a lieutenant then—created a character with the guerrillas in what was then Belize. This character lived on now in legend throughout the region, even to the Rio Grande and Texas. “Jabali,” they had called him then: “Wild Boar.”
    Colonel Rico Toledo watched Red Bartlett’s ashes puff for a moment and disappear behind the yellow biplane. The dead man’s wife had returned from her hospital stay just this morning. Her blonde hair framed that classic, oval-faced beauty, but her blue eyes remained unfocused. The Colonel’s wife, Grace, supported Nancy Bartlett on one arm. Nancy’s step was unsure and her mind confused, but no sign of her ordeal remained.
    No one from ViraVax came for the service because Saturday was their Sabbath, and Colonel Toledo, a notoriously bad Catholic in a country where it mattered, knew their customs entirely too well.
    ViraVax was none of the Colonel’s business now. This he had been told clearly and repeatedly, and with that understanding he initiated his own investigation of Red’s death. The Colonel knew that it wasn’t a who that killed his friend Red Bartlett, it was a what. He wanted to find out who made the what, and how it got into Red Bartlett. Somebody was making sure that he didn’t.
    Just yesterday the Colonel had stood apart from mourners at the funeral of Henri Vasquez, known member of the Peace and Freedom underground and one of Colonel Toledo’s principal contacts with the guerrillas. Henri Vasquez was the man that the Garcia government accused of Bartlett’s murder. The Hacienda Police offered ample opportunity for the press to photograph the rebel’s body. They had