Meadows held his eyes closed, concentrating on the morning sounds. He listened to her footsteps from the bathroom to the kitchen. Soon he smelled coffee. His stomach stirred irritably, but he didn’t move from the bed. Meadows permitted himself his old identity for a few moments. He longed for Terry’s comfort, seethed over losing the Ecuadorean oil ministry project, prayed that his parents and his friends were not calling out the National Guard to hunt for his body. He had left word at the office and with his service, inventing an architects’ convention and other obligations that would officially keep him out of town for weeks. He had also cabled friends of his parents in New York, asking them to assure his relatives that he was alive and well. Meadows rubbed his sore eyes and stared up at the bedroom ceiling and wondered if he was out of his goddamn skull. This is Disneyland, he told himself. It will never work. If he could corner José Bermúdez today, tonight, this minute, and do what he planned— who would believe his story later?
