“Mason is a little strange,” I say. “Most U.S. operators are”—I make a fist—“more supportive of us.”
Sofia doesn’t respond. Maybe she will like him. Valencia will definitely like him. Vale wants to be a lawyer, and Mason should have been a lawyer. Every operation, every request, from him I get nothing but questions, constant questions, half the time questions with no answers, or no good answers, or answers that are designed for politicians and diplomats to think about, not soldiers. For a while, I’ve been debating with myself whether or not this means he’s weak. Nothing is certain with him, the ground is always shifting, which is terrible in any partnership, but especially in one that involves violence.
“Just,” I say, “be careful what you say around him. He’s not so easy as the last one.”
Mason arrives on time, an irritating habit American military have. Sofia barely has her makeup on, and Vale is still in the bathroom. Mason, leaner than most Special Forces but still a big, thick-necked man, walks into my sitting room and takes a chair, as if it were his apartment, and we’re his guests.
“Beautiful,” he says, staring out at the room, the paintings on the wall, the battered crucifix my father had recovered from a destroyed church during his war in Medellín, the photos of Valencia.
Sofia offers drinks, and we talk about the weather, about how comfortably Natalia is settling in to Bogotá. Mason’s Spanish is flat but clear, easier to listen to than the previous SFLi, a Dominican who chewed on the last syllable of every word he gargled out of his mouth. When Valencia emerges, in a red dress I have never seen before and which her mother would have picked out for her, she greets Mason with a touch of formality. I remember our conversation about the Colombian pig and the gringa chicken and wonder again what she is being told at that school. Perhaps, I think, I should try to avoid talk of politics tonight. It is a delicate time. The peace treaty with the FARC goes up for a vote in October, and though most of my colleagues and family members will be voting no, everyone expects it to pass. The guerrilla will leave the jungle and end the war. Which means both a changing security environment and a changing relationship with the U.S. military. What happens in the next few months will shape the future for men like Mason and myself. This means it will shape Valencia’s future, too, and perhaps I should have explained all this to her beforehand but it’s too late now—the evening will proceed how it will. And then Sofia claps her hands and calls us to the table.
• • •
After both courses there’s much praise, and wonder, and a little bragging on Sofia’s part. “You can imagine how hard it is to find authentic stracchino in Bogotá,” she says, knowing he has no clue what stracchino is. I don’t know what stracchino is, I only know that I just ate it, and it was delicious. And then, over Sofia’s homemade limoncello, Mason ruins the mood.
“Are you worried about the peace?” he asks me.
“Why would I worry about the peace?” I say, though of course I’m worried, and everyone knows it.
“I want to say . . . are you going to vote yes, or no?”
Mason’s government is very much in favor of the treaty. So is mine, of course, and I tell him so.
“Then . . . you will vote yes?”
“He won’t tell you,” Sofia says, smiling slightly and circling a finger over the rim of her glass.
“I’m a soldier,” I say.
“The treaty is trash,” Sofia says. “I hate that they even call it a vote for peace. ‘Vote yes for peace!’ Only a monster could be against peace. But I’ll tell you a secret . . .”
She smiles seductively and leans forward, her chest on display, a silver pendant gleaming between her breasts. “You’re dining with monsters.”
She goes over the usual reasons. That it lets the FARC off too easily for their crimes, it lets them keep their drug money, it lets them have representatives in Congress when all they deserve is prison. She points out that even left-wing organizations like Human Rights Watch are attacking the peace for allowing guerrillas who have killed civilians, kidnapped civilians, committed widespread sexual violence, and forced children into military service not to spend a day in prison if they confess.
“There is a saying in America,” Mason says. “No justice, no peace.”
“I like that,” she says. “No justice, no peace.”
“What do you think?” Mason says, his eyes casually fixing on mine.
“I’m a soldier,” I say, not liking the turn the conversation has taken. What I want from Mason has nothing to do with the guerrillas, and nothing to do with the so-called peace. “Soldiers don’t have any business thinking about justice.”
“No?” Mason shakes his head. “What do you mean?”
He waits, and I’m not sure what I want to say. That war is like love, that the world is chaos, so two people say to each other, Everything is uncertain. Friends become enemies, health becomes sickness, wealth becomes ruin. But we two, we will create one small space of order in the chaos. I will rest on you, you on me, and we will not break.
