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that.”
    Mike opened his mouth to ask another question. But at that moment the door to the interrogation room opened. He sat upright and the guard jumped off the wall to stand at attention.
    She walked in.
    The figure of the shooter – the would-be assassin of Senator Jack Hodges – seemed absurdly small. She was perhaps just over 5 feet tall with dark, tanned skin and jet- black hair. She shuffled forward slowly, between two burly guards. She wore a bright orange jumpsuit and her hands were cuffed in front of her. Her oval face was lined though, betraying that she was well into her 40s if not older. She did not look like a killer. But even here, dwarfed by the giant men around her, she had a presence. A sense of dead calm at the center of whatever was going around her, something quiet and foreboding.
    Mike looked at the woman and a mix of emotions swirled through his head, fear and awe intertwined. She sat down at the desk and gave Mike a blank stare. Mike held her gaze for a few seconds, her eyes full of black, barely any white at all, like holes in her head from which her real eyes had retreated. Then he turned away.
    “Okay,” said the guard. “We’ll get out of here. You’ve got 15 minutes.”
    The door clicked softly behind them, leaving nothing but a grim silence, like a grove deep in a forest, where even the fiercest wind cannot stir.
    Mike looked again at the woman but he was unsure if she could even see him. He understood why the guard might think she was an Indian. Her darkness and her hair resembled a Sioux or an Apache from any old Western film. Or perhaps she was from further south, over the border down in Mexico.
    “What is your name?” he asked.
    Nothing came in return. The woman, ignoring him, turned her head to look around at her new surroundings.
    ‘ Cual es su nombre ?” he tried in Spanish.
    The woman did not even glance at him. He peppered her with questions, sometimes in English and sometimes in Spanish. But at no time did she even give a hint of understanding or listening to him. Perhaps, he thought with bitter humor, he should have brought along a Comanche phrase book. Just on the off-chance. Throwing questions at her in an Indian language could not have any less impact. His voice was the only sound in the room. Eventually, he just grew quiet. He leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table and his chin propped up by the tips of his fingers. Almost as if in prayer or supplication. A distant clang signaled the opening of a door across the hallway. The guards were coming back. Just for a moment, Mike saw a flicker of something cross the woman’s face. She heard the sound too. She knew what it meant. There was something in there behind her mask.
    “Look at me,” he said firmly.
    She turned her eyes to meet his, devoid of expression.
    “I will find out who you are. I will find out why you wanted to kill a good man.”
    And then she was gone. With a burst of life, the guards entered the room, sucking the tight, taut air out of the chamber and filling it with the scraping of chairs and the stamping of boots. The woman stood up and left, without even glancing behind her, leaving Mike by himself. Silent. Contemplating a woman who seemed a human void.
     
     

 
    CHAPTER 4
     
     
    A CLOUD OF smoke hung over the half-eaten breakfast of General Rodrigo Estrada Carillo. His cigar, already burned down a third of its length despite the fact it was barely past 9:00 a.m., stuck out of his mouth like a glowing taper. He looked down with undisguised disgust at the plate of beans, fried plantain and round pink slices of sausage in front of him. His useless servant, Mohubub, never cooked well. But what could one expect of a Garifuna? Still, breakfast seemed to prove a singular challenge to him.
    The General sighed, put his cigar to one side, and reached out for a bottle of violently spicy red hot sauce. He dashed liberal amounts of the scarlet liquid all over the meal and then took another bite. He