I held up my hands, stepped backward. Shook my head. "No. That's too easy. A high's no good without the gutter in between."

I opened the door. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to Lima to look for a new drug dealer, this time hopefully someone who's not a Chinese spy." I paused. "Oh, and to celebrate the end of the world."

Ambo stood, stretched out a hand to me, but slipped and fell to the ground. He clutched his chest, gasped for air. Hak Po pushed past me, shouting for the medic.

I bent down to where Ambo lay.

His b.l.o.o.d.y fingers smeared my cheek. "There may be no G.o.d," he whispered. "There may be no priest to forgive your sins. But there is one person whose forgiveness you must have. If you are ever to find peace."

"Oh yeah?" I said. "Who's that? Pitt?"

"You," he said, and tapped his finger weakly against my chest. "You must forgive yourself."

TWENTY-FIVE.

The f.u.c.k.

G.o.dd.a.m.n f.u.c.king bulls.h.i.t. Twist my arm and send me up this G.o.dforsaken mountain. And for all I know, I might just help him press that b.u.t.ton, blow the world to kingdom come.

Boom.

No more f.u.c.king people. Human race dies off, a handful of farmers left to till the soil. Mankind back where it belongs. An end to concrete jungles and the crowds. An end to city living, city morals. An end to all the ugliness.

An end to me.

Would that be such a bad thing? I was half-dead already, destroyed in an orgy of chemical self-flagellation. My organs groaned under the onslaught of cocaine, liquor, junk food. I know what punishment feels like. I know what I deserve.

How many people had died because of me? My killing spree hit an exponential curve in the last week. It began slowly, of course. Data point one: my child, last year. What was her name again? I cringe at the thought. I've forgotten her name!

Liliana. That was her name.

Then we pick up the pace.

Lynn. Dead because of me. Because she loved me. Ambo was wrong. It wasn't his fault. It was mine. If I hadn't gotten involved with her, she'd be alive today. True, I didn't strangle her myself. But I might as well have.

Riding in the jeep to the base of the volcano, I asked Ambo, "So why did Pitt kill Lynn? It was him, after all, wasn't it?"

The heart meds the medic gave Ambo seemed to be working. Keep the b.a.s.t.a.r.d alive for a little while longer. Let him suffer with the rest of us.

He nodded. "Went to your apartment. To talk to you. I think," he said, and closed his eyes, "I suspect he wanted to recruit you for his bomb expedition."

I pinched my broken pinkie. The endorphin rush was the only drug available. "He found Lynn there. And something happened. Something snapped. But what? And why? I mean, he killed his own mother, for chrissakes."

"You were a bad influence on him, Horace," Ambo said. "I told you that the first time I met you."

A medic pinned a saline bag to the roof with his thumb.

"h.e.l.lo?" I said. "Who's the killer for hire? Not me."

"Pitt serves a useful function in society. He makes sure the herd sticks together."

"Oh," I said. "Is that what it is."

"You, on the other hand," he said, turning to me, "serve no useful function in society. A conscience like yours in incompatible with life."

"With killing dissidents, anyhow."

"Your sense of moral outrage is contagious, son. He's caught your disease. A fate I wish on no man."

I struggled to process this. "So what are you saying, he broke into my apartment to talk to me, found Lynn there, and was, what? So disgusted at seeing her half-naked a.s.s waiting in l.u.s.t for my c.o.c.k that he went apes.h.i.t?"

Ambo's head drooped, marking time to music only he could hear. "Something like that. Yeah. You remember how he killed her?"

"You don't mean that-"

But my throat convulsed and no more words came out.

Lynn, strangled on my floor.

Jump.

Pre-dawn glow creeps in the open window. Pitt stands over me, a knife in his hand, staring at my fist as I twitch and spurt. My face is purple. A hangman's noose dangles from my neck.

Jump.

How do I explain all this?

The SUV lurched over a rock. Ambo made a noise. The medic fussed. A diamond-encrusted fist pushed the man away. "That's exactly what I mean," he said. "Who did he learn it from?"

I taught him. Showed him. How to wrap his belt around his throat. Just enough to give a boost. To come, but not to kill. Weeks after the Hak Po op he came to me, noose in his fist, begged me for my opening lecture in Autoeroticism 101. I gave it to him. My own form of revenge, or so it seemed at the time.

"It's about getting as close to death as you can without dying," I told him.

"And then what happens?"

"I see things."

"What things?"

"How can I explain it to you? Life looks different afterward."

What monster of the deep had I awoken?

"It's not your fault," Ambo said. "Snap out of it, you hear me? Last thing I need right now is you out there in guilt-trip land."

I stared out the window. Razors of acid slashed at my insides. Pitt had come to confess. But I'm no priest. I'm no saint. And when he found Lynn there, and saw my sin for what it was, he knew the truth: there is no way to end the guilt. At least, none in this life.

"Is that what it was?" I asked the moon, already visible on the horizon. Night was never far off at this alt.i.tude.

"He strangled her with his bare hands. You came home before he could escape. Knocked you on the head, called the police, got the h.e.l.l out of there. The police find a naked woman, dead, the rope in your bathroom... s.e.x play gone bad. That's what Villega thought, anyway. Until I set him straight."

"Villega thinks?" I said. It was such an absurd thought, I laughed out loud. I might never see his pimply jack-o'-lantern face again. Grade his ridiculous English homework. Then I remembered those photos he'd shown me, and I stopped laughing.

Lynn dead. Because of me.

Who else?

Who was next?

The train. The Chinese vendor Red Cap murdered.

"He very good agent," Hak Po said. "Family get big pay for loss of husband father. So sorry."

So sorry.

Who else?

The dead monk in the back of the van. When they kidnapped me, his corpse leaking all over my pants.

The unnamed spy at the mine Ambo and Pitt were after, the whole point of the Hak Po op. Tortured and murdered by the DSU because of me.

Paco, skull bashed in by Umlaut while the cops looked on. He was a pickpocket, but he had never hurt anyone. Just a little kid.

The innocent guests at the Hotel Finski. I could still feel the dead flesh under my fingertips, Sven melting in the noonday sun, the shark-tooth necklace burned into the skinless meat of his neck.

"You come back now, you hear?" Aurora cried, her arms around my neck.

"Back in a jiffy," I said, turning my lips away for her to kiss my cheek, all the while thinking: maybe never. Maybe I'm the one who'll push the b.u.t.ton, not Pitt.

Then Victor's ma.s.sacre on the lake sh.o.r.e. Old men. Children. The little kid with the soccer ball, those empty eye sockets. When Will Be The Leave-Taking, the volunteer who'd volunteer no more. Michael, the CIA tool. And a score of meditating monks, fugitives from the First World, seeking no more than a decent mantra and a well-earned peace, plus a chance to blow up the world. If I hadn't sent Pitt their way, none of those deaths would have happened.

And Kate.

Oh, Kate.

The SUV zipped its way across the salt flats toward the mountain. The early afternoon sun glared through the smoked gla.s.s. The medic jabbed Ambo with a needle.

A walkie-talkie crackled. "You there, sir?"

Ambo picked up the radio. "Talk to me."

"Missed the banzai, sir," a gruff voice said.

The radio hissed. "Come again?" Ambo said.

"Banzai, sir. Dozen men in robes just went over the top. Suicide charge."

"Survivors?"

"Negative, sir."

Ambo and I exchanged glances.

"Casualties?" he asked.

"Two down, nothing serious. s.h.i.t."

A loud popping noise in the background.

"What's that?" Ambo shouted, fighting off the medic.

"Got one taking potshots at us, sir!"

"Is it a woman?" I asked. I grabbed the walkie-talkie from Ambo's hand. "I said, is it a woman?"

There was a pause. "Affirmative. Sniper is female."

"Don't shoot!" I shouted. "Hold your fire!"

Another pause at the other end. "Those your orders, sir?"

Ambo held out his hand. I gave him the walkie-talkie. He said, "Hold your fire. Keep your head down and wait for us." Ambo looked at me, eyelids drooping heavy over his eyes. "Repeat, hold your fire."

The rocky four-wheel-drive track wound upward. We lurched along in the backseat. I turned to Ambo. "Something I have to ask you."

"So ask."

"I may not come down off the mountain."

He shrugged. "In which case none of us will either."

"That's not what I mean. There's something I need to know."

Ambo waited.

I took a deep breath. "Lynn," I said. "Was that on purpose?"

"Was what on purpose?"

"The whole thing. To seduce me."