Inside the warehouse, Jan Lang was dead-lifting the navy blue Packard Super-Eight. He had driven it all the way from Brownsville and wondered how heavy it was. They had stopped at a filling station and asked the attendant -- 3500 pounds.

"I don't understand…" he grunted between lifts, "…why we have to wait."

The Old Man batted at a fly and took a pull from his Cerveza. "Seems strange, does it?" he asked, in his Schleswig-accented German. "Time's a funny thing, Lang."

Lang let the car settle above him and pulled himself out from under, rubbing his arms. "What difference does it make if we go now or later? We arrive at exactly the same place, exactly the same time."

The Old Man shrugged. "It's like catching a trolley. Makes perfect sense that it goes from here to there, but you have to wait for it to arrive, don't you?"

Lang stood up and stretched, not a drop of sweat on his deeply-etched muscles. He hadn't been working that hard, he realized. "Well, I'm a soldier, I do as I'm told. But this waiting is hard. How can you be sure we won't be discovered?"

"Because we weren't", the Old Man said simply. Lang sighed and dropped into one-handed push-ups. "Now let's review the words, Lang, shall we?"

The huge man grunted in assent, and continued to exercise.

"Fire," the Old Man intoned.

Lang didn't hesitate. "Mawa," he replied.

"The demons."

"Kwätepasol."

"The One Who Blackens."

Lang looked up at the Old Man. He was dressed in a sloppy linen suit, collapsed in a wicker chair, every inch the crumbling colonial aristo. A dangerous man, possibly a madman. "Chichinowa," he said, "I have them all memorized perfectly."

"Place of scorpions."

"Kölötlan, for God's sake, and mumuwistli, and kechtsakwa. I've got it."

The Old Man finished off his drink and sent the bottle rolling across the concrete floor. "See that you do," he said. "See that you do."