She didn’t believe until the evidence drove them all half-mad in Puerto Reyes, and Juan elevated them—but especially her, because she was a Bradford—to unthinkable levels in the Order hierarchy. That was when the eyes of the Cult of the Shadow turned, suddenly and definitively, toward a mansion in the jungle surrounded by red earth.
“So, we wasted our time and money sending you a plane ticket,” Adolfo said before even greeting Juan, who had just parked his car under the trees by the front door of Puerto Reyes. Adolfo was already drunk, but it would be a while before he turned unpleasant. The sky was threatening rain, and the house, freshly painted white, was beautiful. “You always manage to escape when you want to, huh? Those bodyguards are useless.”
“I wanted to drive with Gaspar, I needed the time with him. Adolfo, how are you?”
“I’ve been better. How are you?”
Adolfo knelt down in front of Gaspar and said, Now, aren’t you going to hug your grandfather? Gaspar did, unenthusiastically. His thin arms were a bit sunburned. Mercedes emerged from the house. She walked with a limp and a cane; the femur bone she’d broken in a riding accident had never fully healed. She kissed Gaspar, who tried to pull away from her, and caressed his hair with both hands. My treasure, she said. Then she looked at Juan: the greed twisted her smile.
His in-laws didn’t know how to treat him. With the respect owed to an oracle, a medium, the one who spoke to the gods? With the nonchalance used with a family member? With the severity merited by his occasional rebelliousness? He no longer cared.
“My dear,” Mercedes greeted him. “Your room is ready. I suppose you’ll want to rest after the frightful trip you must have had. Only you are capable of driving yourself all the way here when you can take your pick between a chauffeur and a plane.”
She’d decided not to accuse him of running away. They would change the bodyguards again, as they always did when he managed to elude them. Mercedes wore dark glasses even inside the house, but she always took them off to look at him. She seemed a bit indignant and anxious.
“You prepared a different room from the one we used to use?”
“Of course.”
They walked along the airy main hallway of Puerto Reyes. The walls were decorated with Adolfo’s hunting trophies: antlers, lynx heads with their long ears. There were also some original Rembrandt etchings, small engravings in prominent frames. Mercedes always said the collection would be ruined there in the jungle, that the artworks should be conserved in Buenos Aires. And Adolfo had complied regarding most of his pieces, except for the Rembrandts and a painting of the Battle of Curupayty by Cándido López that hung in the main hall: with soldiers like black insects and, on the horizon, smoke and fire and blue sky. It was beautiful and terrible and Adolfo had roundly refused to donate it to the National Museum; nor did he want to sell it. Rosario used to shout at him, Dad, it’s an outrage that this is here, all of Cándido is in the Historical or the National, it’s a robbery, this is heritage, and he would respond, Well, let them come take it, then, the fuckers, I’m not going to give them shit. Rosario feigned exasperation, but Juan caught her smile: she got along with her father, despite the fights, despite the fact that he was a superficial and selfish man.
They went up to the first floor: Mercedes had ordered one of the rooms with a river view to be prepared, one that had air conditioning. Gaspar ran in, opened the backpack on the bed, and took out his toy cars.
“If you need anything, there’s the bell.”
When Juan looked at the room, he recognized the effort they had made to eradicate anything that would recall Rosario. No bouquets of flowers, no incense impregnating the air with sandalwood, none of the white sheets she adored or any of the objects or ornaments from the room downstairs: Mercedes hadn’t moved anything. Not the lamps or the oriental cigarette case or a single one of the photos or paintings.
“Thank you,” said Juan, and Mercedes nodded. She looked at him: her eyes were cold and distant, as if she were drugged.
“I’ll be in my room.”
“I won’t bother you.”
Mercedes took Juan by the arms with her bony hands, on which she wore only her wedding ring; she was austere, never dyed her hair. She could fool other people, but Juan knew she had the ability to kill. He knew she had no pity.
“Now, how could you ever bother me?”
The air conditioner was on, and the large window overlooking the garden was so clean it looked open. Other windows on the spacious first floor had a view of the golf course Adolfo had stopped maintaining, letting the jungle return it to a state of wild vegetation.
Juan took off his clothes in front of the window and lay down on top of the sheets, his arms behind his head and his eyes closed. He listened to Gaspar, who had appropriated the table and was drawing on paper he’d taken from the backpack. Juan had to get rid of him. The coming hours until the Ceremonial could not be shared with his son. He couldn’t take care of the boy now, not in the way he needed, the simplest way: entertaining him, playing with him, taking him on walks. Sure, Adolfo should be capable of watching his grandson, but he was drunk. And he liked guns and boats, and, especially, he liked to talk. It was too dangerous to leave Gaspar with him.
He tried to remember what Rosario had done with Gaspar during previous Ceremonials, and he realized he didn’t have the slightest idea. She hadn’t told him, and he’d never thought to ask.
That had been another mistake. How many of the Ceremonial participants—how many of the cult’s members—knew that Gaspar might have natural gifts? Now that the boy had manifested his ability to see, it was only a matter of time before his powers grew.
Juan took a deep breath and reached out to press the intercom to call Marcelina. She had worked in Puerto Reyes for years, and Juan trusted her. Marcelina was discreet and efficient and had an enormous capacity to pretend she didn’t understand what went on in the house, to convincingly act like she turned a blind eye to her bosses’ activities, and to speak only Guaraní with the other employees. She answered the intercom immediately. There was a slight tremor in her voice when she said: Yes, sir? She must feel very nervous about having to wait on him after Rosario’s death, which surely had genuinely saddened her. Marcelina, he said, could you ask Se?or Esteban to come up to my room? Right away, sir, said Marcelina, and Juan thought sir, sir, why did they make her call him that? When they were alone, she called him by his name.
Stephen insisted on being called Esteban when he was in Argentina. In Europe he used his real, English name. Juan had always called him Stephen. They’d known each other for almost twenty years, and their first, long-ago meeting had been in this very house, in Puerto Reyes. The oldest son of the Order’s leader, Florence Mathers, and her husband, the recluse Pedro Margarall, Stephen had heavy eyelids and dark blue eyes, and he was tall, though he looked small beside Juan. He came in without knocking, wearing a dark brown shirt and black pants, and was very clearly angry. Juan opened his eyes, but didn’t move from the bed. Gaspar looked at Stephen curiously, waved at him, and turned back to his drawings.
Out loud, Stephen said: “Please, tell me I’m wrong.”