by Joe Gannon
The Jeep slammed to a stop, the driver violently applying the brakes. Ajax saw a roadblock ahead. A bus was pulled over and a platoon of soldiers seemed to be inspecting IDs. Several of them aimed their M16s at the Jeep. There must have been fifty people crammed on the aging bus, its roof packed with their meager possessions. The passengers now lined the road, families huddled together, others standing in groups of three or four, all of them seeming to not want to stand alone. Some were country folk bringing goods to the city—canvas bags on the roof held dry goods, bags of corn, at least a dozen cages with chickens and a few of ducks. One family must’ve been pig farmers as each member held a piglet or two.
The soldiers wore basic green fatigues with baseball caps. Not regular army, Ajax thought, maybe National Guard. They were fanned out around the bus, about half of them covered the passengers, the rest faced away from the bus, toward the dense foliage that grew down the hills to the roadside. By ones and twos the soldiers checked identification, asked questions, then sent them back on the bus. None of the civilians made eye contact with the soldiers.
Little Max made a gesture to his driver who inched forward. An officer approached as Max lowered the bulletproof window. He flashed an ID that made the officer snap to attention and wave them on.
Little Max grunted and turned to his guests, a little embarrassed by the sight.
“The communists try to infiltrate using our public transportation, weapons, explosives, operatives.”
He rolled the window back up. As the Jeep made its way slowly around the scene they came to the punch line: in front of the bus, lining the roadside, a half-dozen souls knelt on the ground, their foreheads touching the pavement, thumbs tied behind their backs, as if awaiting a beheading.
But it was an unmistakable calling card—for all the killing done in Central America, only the Salvadorans had perfected this method of controlling people—a thin but sturdy cord tying the thumbs together behind the back was as secure as steel handcuffs. But it was not used merely to subdue a single suspect, but an entire nation. Thumbs tied behind the back was Terror’s calling card as surely as the guillotine had once been. If one member of your family turned up dead with thumbs tied, it meant your entire family was covered in dust.
Three men and three women were trussed like turkeys. From the looks on the faces of a gaggle of children, Ajax knew some of them were parents, some traveled solo. But he knew they were all bound for the boneyard.
They drove on in silence for a while. Ajax could not help but scan the terrain. It was a lot like home, he thought. Verdant forests growing down the slopes of the hills right to the roadside. Perfect for ambushes. The many streams running down the slopes were strewn with trash, but the roads were in much better condition than home. Billboards lined the highway advertising far more merchandise and services than Nicaragua had seen in years. Shit, Managua hadn’t even seen a billboard in ten years! Let alone the supermarkets, car dealerships, and beer these advertised. El Salvador was the bloodiest place in the hemisphere, he thought, but compared to Nicaragua’s grinding poverty it was a virtual cornucopia of consumer goods.
It was a hell of a choice: blood or Budweiser.
“So,” Max broke into Ajax’s thoughts, “what is your agenda?”
Ajax felt Gladys stiffen imperceptibly at his side, but she jumped right in. “We’d like to see some of the victims of FMLN violence, distribute the gifts we brought, do some fact finding, maybe even a little tourism. I hear you have some wonderful artisans here.”
“Oh yes, our Indians are fairly famous in Central America for their little crafts, pottery, primitive paintings,” Max said as if talking about an idiot savant cousin.
But Ajax knew our Indians were mostly famous for being slaughtered so regularly over the years they’d abandoned their culture, even their language, as a survival tactic. None would even admit to being indigenous anymore.
“We need to resume our tourism,” Max said. “You know we have wonderful beaches here. El Salvador used to be part of the hippy trail, did you know? Some of the best surfing in the region, surfers and hippies used to come here in droves in the early seventies.” He turned to the backseat and gave them a conspiratorial wink. “I used to hang out with them, smoke pot, drink beer. It was wonderful!”
“You’ll have to take us!” Gladys, Ajax was relieved, seemed to really be getting into character.
“Oh,” Little Max gave a dismissive wave, seeming to chase away the memory, “no one goes there anymore.”
And Ajax knew why. When the latest round of slaughter had begun in the mid-seventies the death squads used the main surfer beach, Playa del Rey, as a dumping ground. Once the surfers had to dodge decomposing bodies with their thumbs tied behind their backs, they had decamped.
They sped along the carratera for a while, but when they came to a roundabout with signs pointing to the city center, they did not turn. Ajax’s stomach did a little backflip.
“Max? What hotel are we at?”
Max turned on them, grinning like that Cheshire pussy, only Max’s incisors were a bit more pronounced.
“Oh you’re not going to a hotel.”
Ajax and Gladys successfully failed to register their mutual alarm at this.
“I thought we were going to the Camino Real.” Gladys’s voice did not waver.
“Por favor! My friends, the Real is full of journalists.” He said it like he was talking about venereal disease. “They’re all terrorist sympathizers. And what with their scandalous gossip about us and their whore mongering the Real is no place for such friends as you.”
“Then?”
“You’re staying with me!”
“Of course we are.”
“But I have one other surprise for you.”
Ajax watched Gladys slip a moist towelette out of her bag. Ajax placed an affectionate hand on Max’s shoulder.
“That sounds great, Max. But we’ve got to stop by the embassy first. We’ve brought some personal items from Miami, family things, you know. Just take a minute.”
16
In San Salvador, Ajax noticed, poverty, like shit, seemed to roll downhill.
They’d entered the capital from the southeast and gunned the Jeep along rutted roads through several poor barrios where the certainty of the country was on display in the bullet-pocked walls and deadly graffiti—deadly in that the penalty for spray-painting rebel slogans was death. As soon as they neared the center of the city all the streets inclined up: the houses, streets, stores, and people all becoming better-off, tidier, neater, cleaner as they rose, Ajax thought, out of the poverty if not the shit.
The embassy of the United States of America in San Salvador was much like the mission itself: a fortresslike, eyeless, blockheaded-looking thing smack in the middle of town with a constant “Fuck you, who cares?” snarl of traffic snaking around the cordon of blocks barricaded to everyone but the Americans and their exclusive guest list.
The only upside Ajax could see was that the security ring created a kind of concrete park that had been taken over by vendors, some of whom, he knew, had to be spies.
The cordon seemed impregnable, but all Max had to do was roll down his window and he was waved through. Still, Ajax thought, the detour had put Max off his game, deflated his manic bonhomie. When he made no move to follow them in, Ajax and Gladys went to the gate. There were two—one clearly for the consular offices where dozens of Salvadorans waited in the sun for a chance at a visa. The other led directly into the main building. They milled around outside the gate, the sounds of the Stars and Stripes flapping overhead in a heavy breeze.
“What’re you thinking here, Ajax?”
“His not taking us to a hotel kind of threw me.”
“Me too! He’s gonna take us to his house?”
“Yeah. Let’s get seen by someone first, eh? What’d Reynaldo say? Michaelson? Political officer?”
“He’ll vet our cover.”
“True, but if there’s been a leak, let’s fin
d out now.”
* * *
The inside of the embassy was a perfect 70 degrees and quiet as a church, owing to the bombproof glass. One wall of the main lobby was dominated by a mini-exhibition of Jasper Johns’s paintings of the American flag. Another wall had a big COMMUNITY NEWS bulletin board. Ajax figured the suits and ties had to be embassy employees. The few Marine guards wore sidearms but there was no obvious sign that the embassy was a prime target in the dirtiest war in the Americas. The Marine at the main gate had not given them a second look once they’d produced their passports. But the vehicles entering, he’d noticed, were searched thoroughly. Car bombs were the worry here.
Skip Michaelson was absurdly young to be an office manager, Ajax thought, let alone a political officer at the second-largest American diplomatic mission in the hemisphere. Maybe they wanted them that way—young, unmarried, and unmarred by too much experience in the field. But the large closet-like office seemed to signal his status.
Ajax found him and his diplo-speak easy to read.
“Gladys Batista and Martin Garcia.” Michaelson read off their passports. “Welcome to El Salvador.”
Your passports are brand new is what Ajax heard.
“Thank you. Reynaldo suggested we check in when we arrived.”
“Reynaldo. Yes. A good friend, I often see him in Miami.”
Another Cuban busybody trying to complicate my job.
He returned their passports.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you.”
What the fuck are you doing in this war-torn shit hole?
“People don’t realize from reading the news that El Salvador’s number one problem is handling the internally displaced. It is a humanitarian issue.”
We got the army to stop trying to murder everyone, but they won’t stop burning down their villages.
“So your gifts will be doubly appreciated.”
Band-Aids for bullet holes, great idea.
“But you have some assistance here, I hope?”
“Yes,” Gladys jumped in. “Maximillian Hernández is sponsoring us.”
Michaelson smiled but folded his arms over his chest, a defensive gesture Ajax knew from his cop days. “Oh, Max! I know Max, everybody does. He’s quite a card.”
He’s quite a psychopath.
“He’s from a very old and venerable family here.”
A long line of psychopaths.
“We like to register visitors; what hotel are you at?”
“We’re staying with Max…” Ajax let the statement trail off.
“Oh great! I’ve been to Max’s, he throws great parties.”
Lock your bedroom doors.
Michaelson checked his watch and opened his wallet. “So, your mission is unofficial, but if there is anything I can do, take my card and be sure to give me a call in a day or two, let me know how it’s going.”
Do not get killed on my watch. Please!
They shook hands. Ajax studied Michaelson’s face. There was no sign he knew other than he let on.
Michaelson led them back to the lobby. “You are good Samaritans and your mission will be welcomed by the people.”
Distribute your toys and go home.
“And if I may … Be sure to carry your passports at all times. And, if it comes up, with people you don’t know … maybe don’t mention you are Cuban.”
Everybody hates you.
* * *
Ajax and Gladys stood in the lobby a moment. Gladys let out a sigh.
“I feel better.”
“Me too.”
“Max’s?”
“Yeah, let me see if they’ve got a map of the city first. We need to get oriented.”
Ajax found a vivacious Salvadoran woman behind a desk while Gladys wandered over to the community board. She had only a tourist map, six years out of date, but Ajax used it to track their journey in from the airport. San Salvador was about fifteen miles from the coast—if things went south, that’d be their best bet. He memorized the names of towns and routes down to the coast, and studied the map until he felt his dead reckoning on the run could get them there.
Then the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, or bristled like a hand had passed over them. Ajax turned to find Gladys staring a hole into his head. He checked the lobby, could find no immediate threat, then treaded as nonchalantly to her as he could.
“What?”
She mouthed the word, Peck.
Ajax scanned, found nothing. Where?
She nodded to the bulletin board behind her and stepped aside.
And there he was.
Or not.
Affixed to the board was a full-color poster.
MISSING SINCE OCTOBER 31. LIAM DONALDSON. AMERICAN CITIZEN. DOB 9/22/68. 6′1″ 185 LBS. LAST SEEN AT HOTEL ESPERANZA.
There were several phone numbers, American and Salvadoran. And in the middle a clear head shot of a lanky, rather thoughtful-looking young man with almost comical red/orange hair and pasty white skin.
But not a freckle to be seen.
The shot was a medium close-up, Ajax thought, a college graduation. The boy was clearly in some kind of blue gown, and Ajax could detect over his shoulder an ivy-covered building. The eyes looked straight into the camera, an easy smile curled the lips and crinkled the blue eyes. The face in this photo was as clear and open as the face in the other photo had been pulped and dead. He pushed aside the image of that latter face before his mind could supply the sound track to the excruciating death Liam Donaldson had suffered.
“Copy down those phone numbers, Gladys, but, you know, don’t appear to be. Then go ask that pretty Salvadoran if she’s got an American phone book. Find out where the two-one-nine area code goes to.”
Ajax studied the face, knew that face—that type. He’d seen it often enough over the years in Nicaragua: the earnest American tourist with unlined face who wishes to embrace the world, the other, and fully expected their earnestness to be returned. It was a safe enough bet in Nicaragua, the Sandinista revolution loved tourists. And the worst you could expect back was a picked pocket and loosened bowels. Ajax did a quick scan of his tourist map—all the major hotels were listed and marked.
Gladys returned. “Two-one-nine is Indiana. What’re you thinking?”
“I think the odds on young Peck being alive just went up.”
“This is the guy in Reynaldo’s photos?”
“Gotta be. No freckles. Look at the picture, he’s graduating college. There’s no Hotel Esperanza on the tourist map, so he’s traveling cheap, saving money while backpacking through Central America.”
“Backpacking? Puta madre.”
“Don’t get me started on the naïveté of gringos.”
“Why didn’t you ask Michaelson about Peck?”
“He’s too low level. And be glad we didn’t.”
“Why?”
“Two gringos looking like that go missing almost on top of each other? Coincidence is too small a mule to pack that.”
“So?”
“So let’s not keep Max waiting.”
17
The rest of their ride was fairly quiet. Max seemed a little piqued, as if he’d been ditched by his friends. The only communicating had come when Gladys had dug a pen and paper out of her purse and scratched, “If not coincidence, what?” Ajax had made a sympathetic but otherwise helpless gesture with his hands. Their hope for a short ride and the privacy of their hotel rooms had been dashed and there was nothing to it but to play their roles.
The driver had made a right turn and they’d been going up a fairly steep hill for several minutes, the homes, streets, and sidewalk traffic becoming increasingly upscale as they rose toward barrio Escalon, the tony part of town where Little Max kept his lair. But they’d passed through Escalon and were nearing the edge of the city, high up the hill. The houses here were few and the driver finally slowed in front of a long white wall encasing what must be a very fine house, if the iron gates and gun towers were anything to g
o by.
At some unseen signal, or just Max’s presence, the iron gate rolled back and the Jeep rolled in. The area beyond the gate was crowded with vehicles, mostly armored Jeeps, but a few Beemers and Mercedeses. More than a score of drivers and bodyguards milled around.
“Surrrrrrrrrprise!!!” Little Max was newly ecstatic. “Anyone who is anyone is here for a little reception we planned for our VIPs.”
“A party?” Gladys did not do well hiding her disappointment.
“A reception. A small affair.”
Ajax guessed there’d be almost a hundred people inside, figuring two to four per vehicle.
“Max, you shouldn’t have.” Gladys meant it to the very depths of her soul.
“Everyone who is anyone is here to meet you.”
In a Central American country not in the grip of psychotic civil war that would’ve meant the local celebs—TV reporters, talk-show hosts, intellectuals, a few bearded poets, and alcoholic writers. In El Salvador, Ajax knew, it meant bloody-minded colonels and generals, the death squad Charlies, as Reynaldo had called them back in Miami.
The scene reminded Ajax of a film he’d watched playing on the one television back at Kilometro Cinco. A Mafioso movie where all the big gangsters arrive for a wedding.
“Thank you, Max, this is wonderful.” He knocked Gladys’s knee with his own.
“Yes, thank you.”
* * *
Max’s house was meant to be lavish, with marble floors and Grecian columns. But as the three of them entered to smiles, too-firm handshakes from the men, and air kisses from the women, Ajax noticed the house was more bombproof than palatial: more money had been invested in walls and bulletproof glass than actual marble. Max escorted them through the entryway into a large sala that looked as if it had been decorated from a catalogue—lots of white furniture with big white paper ball sculptures and white vases with white-tipped pussy willows. Where the fuck does he get pussy willows from in El Salvador? Max led them through tall glass doors to a lawn with a pool and a topiary sculpted, it seemed, by a nearsighted child with a DIY kit. There was a dancing bear with the snout of a cow, a ballerina whose arms seemed longer than her legs, and a frog that looked like it was mating with an enormous flowerpot.