The Orchids by Thomas H. Cook

no copper to be had in that region of the Republic. Believe me, it has been investigated.”
    â€œSomething else then, perhaps.”
    â€œNo, nothing,” Don Camillo says with certainty. “It’s their nature, that’s all. Mountain people. Uncivilized. Sometimes I think that we will never have peace in the northern provinces until every last one of them has been killed.” He looks at me knowingly. “A process, I believe, in which you have some expertise, Doctor.”
    My machine pistol rests in the top drawer of my desk. It is only a few inches from my hands.
    Don Camillo laughs, but his eyes do not. “Perhaps you have a plan for the northern provinces.”
    It would be a matter of opening the drawer, one quick, deft movement, and he would dance until the clip emptied.
    â€œI would not want to be involved,” I tell him.
    â€œOnce is enough for anyone, I suppose,” Don Camillo says with a malicious wink.
    I stand. “Tell El Presidente that I am waiting for him with great eagerness.”
    Don Camillo wipes the shimmering beads of sweat from his mustache. “And you tell Dr. Ludtz that I regret not seeing him.” He offers me his hand. I take it and shake it briskly. “So nice to have seen you, Don Pedro,” he says.
    â€œAnd you, Don Camillo.” In the Republic, civility is important.
    Don Camillo turns and moves down the stairs. His bodyguards watch me, and two other bodyguards a little ways distant watch them. In the Republic, no one can be trusted.
    I raise my hand. “Adiós, Don Camillo.”
    Don Camillo turns before entering his mud-caked limousine. “Y usted, tambien,” he calls to me. Then he steps inside the car, surrounded by his sloe-eyed janissaries in their dark green uniforms. They stare out the window, their eyes cruising the river bank or rising to riffle through the trees searching for blue rifle barrels peeping from the vines like the heads of wary serpents.
    Don Camillo’s car pulls away quickly, heaving up a trail of swirling orange dust. In the distance, I can see Esperanza watch the limousine. She is wearing a dark red rebozo that falls over her shoulders and drops almost to her knees. Ritually, she claps her hands three times as the car passes. I do not know if this is a blessing or a curse.
    I walk off the verandah and into my office. The cut crystal goblet sits on top of the large wicker cabinet against the far wall. The light pouring through the bamboo curtain shatters in the crystal, sending a spray of mottled light across the room. Retrieving it from its place, I turn it in my hand and observe the delicacy of the pattern, the exquisite design. It was once the prized possession of my father, a family heirloom passed down through generations of uninspired petty officials and weary civil servants who sat with their noses buried in provincial paper and their minds in middling bank accounts. Warming their feet at tidy, bourgeois fires, they passed the crystal goblet down as something like a grail for the Langhof family. On holidays or family gatherings they would remove it from its sheltered vault and pass it carefully from hand to hand as if it were the heraldic shield of the Hohenzollern princes. But here in the Republic, the sense of the holy is reserved for certain raw materials that, when sold, support the titanic waste over which it is El Presidente’s function to preside.
    I walk to my desk and place the goblet in a small cotton sack. I raise the marble paperweight in the air and bring it down. There is a small crunch as the glass shatters beneath the blow. I open the mouth of the sack and sprinkle the bits of crystal across the desk. Even in this fallen state, they sparkle with a blue and silver light. I select a few of the pieces and begin to file them down, putting each sculptured gem into a small red velvet pouch. Then I take the pouch and stuff it in my trousers.
    I rise from the desk. Esperanza is