“I understand,” Marten said, and they hiked on. Minutes passed, and then he heard a low, rumbling sound he couldn’t place. Little by little it intensified, drowning out the sounds of the birds and becoming very nearly a roar. Then he knew. Waterfalls! In the next seconds they rounded a bend in the trail and stopped before a cascade of falls that thundered past them in a rising mist to disappear into the jungle a thousand feet below. Willy stared at the spectacle for a long moment, then slowly turned to Marten.

“My brother told me you were coming, to expect you,” he said over the roar of the water. “Yet he has never met you. Never talked with you. So whether you are the man he told me about or someone else who has taken his place, I have no way to know.”

“All I can tell you,” Marten said, “is that I was asked to come to see you. To listen to what you have to say and then to go home. I know very little more than that, except that you think there is trouble here.”

The priest studied Marten carefully, still unsure of him. “Where is this ‘home’?”

“A city in the north of England.”

“You are American.”

“Was. I’m an expat. I carry a British passport.”

“You are a reporter.”

“A landscape architect.”

“Then why you?”

“A friend who indirectly knows your brother asked me to come.”

“What friend?”

“Another American.”

“He is a reporter.”

“No, a politician.”

Willy’s eyes found Marten’s and held there. “Whoever you are, I will have to trust you, because I fear my time is increasingly short. Besides, there is no one else.”

“You can trust me,” Marten said, and then looked around. They seemed wholly alone, yet he had the sense they were being watched.