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chairs on tables for the night. The place had aview of the roads as well as a small cemetery. Entirely appropriate in view of the evening’s activities, Jason thought grimly.
    Only when he beached the
Zodiac
did he remember Paco had the small cork attached to the keys to the sailboat, keys that not only allowed the single hatch and door to the cabin to be locked, but the ignition key to the small engine. At the moment, keys were the least of his worries.
    It took nearly twenty minutes to make his way back to the harbor on foot along the narrow street. Keeping in the shadows was not difficult with the distance between the few streetlights and the occasional vehicular traffic. He was trying to formulate a plan when he rounded a curve and faced the straight stretch of pavement that bordered the harbor.
    Half a mile ahead, the water, ships, and buildings were painted with flashing blue and red lights. The bleating of sirens bounced from the surrounding hills. Jason stopped. Dread grew in his chest like an undigested meal in his stomach—a dread that reached icy tentacles down his arms and legs.
    Forcing himself to walk at a normal pace, he approached a small crowd of police, medics, and the curious at the edge of the dock. All he could see at first was a puddle of water with a pinkish tint he assumed was a reflection from a nearby ambulance. Closer inspection revealed something at the center of the group, something large, wet, and oozing red. A fish that some nocturnal fisherman had dragged ashore?
    He knew better.
    â€œWhat is it?” an anonymous dark form with an American accent asked another.
    â€œA body,” an earlier arrival answered. “Boat was headed out of the harbor and saw it. Thought somebody had fallen overboard.”
    Fighting back the acid bile that was rising in his throat, Jason slipped between several gawking spectators. A nudebody of a man lay on the concrete, a stream of seawater and blood dripping from the jagged stump of a neck from which the head was missing. In the pulsating lights of emergency vehicles the network of scars across the chest was quite visible.
    â€œBoy, I bet this causes an uproar,” the first spectator observed as casually as though commenting on the nightly news. “A murder isn’t going to do the island any good. Particularly one this grisly.” He sounded as if he were enjoying the show.
    â€œMurder?” the second man asked sarcastically. “What murder? It was a boating accident.”
    Jason turned his back on the following snicker. Where had these people become so emotionally calloused that they could view a decapitation with such equanimity? Violence had been part of his life for a long time, and he would never become accustomed to sights like that on the dock. Did American television and movies put
that
much bloodshed in the lives of normal people?
    He looked for a place to throw up unobserved.
    Almost unobserved.
    One man in the crowd watched closely. Jason was too busy losing the afternoon’s beers to note the small digital camera with its enhanced light lens.

 
    Â 
C HAPTER F OUR
    Costa Rica
    December 26
    It was unlikely anyone would have come upon the building. It was so well concealed in the rain forest that at first sight it seemed like a jungle cat pouncing from the green curtain of growth.
    Otherwise, it was remarkable only in that it had a veneer of concrete rather than the cement block from which most native homes were built. What could not be observed in the remote chance of a passerby was that the structure was not a house at all. It concealed the entrance to an underground network. The massive ficus tree whose branches seemed to embrace the modest edifice concealed a dozen or so high-tech antennae. The strangler fig vines, thick as a man’s wrist, that draped from the tree like ropes anchoring a balloon were actually electrical wires that ran to a generator far enough away that its gentle hum could not be heard