The third book in the Michael Forsythe series, 2007

State LY Plum P. Buck Mulligan.” Hector handed me this message on the cliffs at Miraflores.

I set the binoculars on the wall, took the note, and put it in my pocket. Hector was watching my face to see if there was annoyance or even dread in my eyes, but I was giving nothing away.

The sun was rising over the Andes, turning the Pacific a pinkish blue. The sky to the east was a long golden gray and in the west the Southern Cross and the moon had set into the sea.

I thanked Hector with a nod and put my sunglasses on.

Wild lilacs were growing among the cacti and a warm breeze was blowing through the poplars. There was, as yet, no traffic and normally it would be peaceful up here. Just the cliffs and the beach and the whole of the sleeping city behind me. Fog burning off the head-land and a few early-morning dog walkers demonstrating that Latin love for miniature poodles and Lhasas.

“Lovely, isn’t it?” I said in English.

Hector shook his head uncomprehendingly.

I smiled, watched the usual dazzling collection of seabirds rising on the thermals off the cliffs. Occasionally you’d see an albatross or a peregrine falcon and rarer still sometimes a lost condor or two.

The smell of orange blossom and oleander.

“Lima has a bad rap, but I like it,” I said in Spanish.

Especially this time of day before the two-stroke motors and the diesel engines and the coal fires really got going. Hector nodded, pleased with the remark and happy that he’d found me before I retired to bed. He knew that after the night shift I liked to come here with a cup of coffee. Last week I came to watch the first transit of Venus in living memory but mostly it was either to do some amateur ornithology or, he suspected, to stare through the binocs at the pretty surfer girls catching the big rolling breakers at the meeting of the continent and the ocean.