Chapter One The woman who met him at the Fort George Hotel in Belize City, Belize, Central America, told him that she was a whore. She said it with a toss of her head, a quick, penetrating glare of contempt, an expression of aloof indifference that effectively communicated that she didn’t give a good goddamn what James Hawker thought of her, anyway, so why try to hide anything? Hawker sat at the bar and studied the label on the bottle of beer he was drinking. Belikin Beer, Belize Brewing Company, Ltd. Nice drawing of a Mayan ruin on the label. Hawker had studied many labels of many varied beers in the last year. He had been traveling almost continually. When a man is being hunted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency, travel becomes a way of life. For the last two months he had been living in a seaside estate in Puerto Cabello, not far from Caracas, Venezuela. In South and Central America, Hawker had discovered, a man is asked only one question of importance: Can you pay? If that question is answered satisfactorily, there are no more questions.
