Guatemala – Journey into Evil

by David Monnery

  After the war, he told himself. Nothing lasted for ever.

  He looked at his watch – it was half-past four. He had been in the same place now for ten minutes, and heard nothing. Slipping out of his hiding place, he started out for the opposite corner of the square, turning right, then left, then right again, through the labyrinth of empty stalls.

  He was two-thirds of the way across when the spotlights came on, and for a second he stood half blinded in the glare, before his survival instinct kicked in, and sent him scrambling into the shelter of a stall.

  It was only then, crouching in the dark, that he realized no gun had been fired. They wanted him alive.

  ‘If you surrender yourself, you will be well treated,’ a voice shouted. Its owner could hardly keep the amusement out of his voice.

  Tomás could hear soldiers all around him now, talking, shuffling their cramped legs – they had no need to be silent any more. From every side of the square he seemed to hear a hum of expectancy.

  I am a dead man, he thought. There is no way out of this, none at all. I made what is mine. Including this death.

  Razor would have seen the light flooding the square, known that it had all gone wrong. Tomás idly wondered what the Englishman would do next. It was no longer his concern. He had just joined the end of a line which stretched back hundreds of years, a line of deaths which brought pain to the living, that pain which life dulled to an ache and new death resharpened. He felt the pain his death would bring to his sister, but also a sense almost of relief, almost of vindication. He had stayed true, he had not faltered.

  He got slowly to his feet, and stepped out once more into the light. He was sure they wouldn’t shoot him – the death they had planned would take weeks, even months.

  ‘Lay down your gun,’ the same voice shouted from the shadows.

  As Tomás looked up at the cross atop the church and smiled to himself, the voice in the darkness was shouting something else, but Tomás didn’t hear what it was. With great care he slid the barrel of the gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  11

  On the hill above Chichicastenango, Razor had seen the square below suddenly drenched in light, and had sought in vain for an optimistic explanation. Now, hearing the single shot echo out across the town, he feared the worst.

  He fought back the urge to follow the other man down. If Tomás was still alive and free then he would return. If he was captured or dead then there was nothing Razor could do.

  It was now after five o’clock, and it would begin to get light within the hour. Razor studied the road which ran alongside the ravine through his binoculars and found no sign of either Tomás or the enemy moving in his direction.

  He couldn’t sit on this hill for ever, but for the moment at least he seemed to be safe.

  The minutes went by, slowly eroding what Razor’s instinct told him was already a forlorn hope. The birds began singing in the pines around him, and light filtered over the eastern wall of the valley. Pascual Abaj stared back at him with supreme indifference, and not for the first time Razor considered liberating the small bottle of brandy which had been placed before the stone idol as an offering.

  He decided it would probably be a bad career move to anger the local deity.

  Tourists came up this hill, Tomás had said. Gringo tourists. And what came up had to go down. If he could somehow attach himself to a group, Razor decided, then he should have no trouble entering the town unobserved. Always assuming there wasn’t some bastard down there counting the tourists out and counting them in again. Finding the house where Hajrija was being hidden might be more problematic, but he could worry about that when the time came.

  After all, what other choices did he have? Surrender? Heading back north with his tail between his legs? A call to International Rescue?

  He walked across the brow of the hill to the side furthest from the town, used his hands to dig a hole under a bush for the two Uzis and packs, and then returned to the stone idol, wondering how long he would have to wait. Tomás had told him that it was the market which brought most of the tourist buses, and the market was only held on Thursdays and Sundays. Today was Monday, which didn’t bode well.

  A few minutes later he saw an Indian girl toiling up the path towards him. She was surprised to find him at the top, but lost no time in trying to sell him some of the potential idol-offerings she was carrying. Buoyed up by her presence – she obviously expected tourists that day – he bought a bunch of flowers and laid them out in front of Pascual Abaj.

  An hour went by, and another. She cast the occasional curious look in his direction, but generally seemed content to whittle away at a piece of wood, and Razor began to think she had climbed the hill more in hope than expectation. He was starting to consider brazenly entering the town on his own when three women and two men appeared on the path below.

  As their conversation became audible it became apparent that at least some of the party were English. This raised other questions in Razor’s mind. Should he give them a message, for the embassy? And if so, what should it say?

  No, he decided. It was too complicated, and if they were to look like innocent tourists then they had to be innocent tourists. If he wanted to ring the embassy he could do it himself.

  On reaching the summit the fivesome greeted him with nods and then inspected Pascual Abaj, laughing at the gifts of cigarettes and brandy. One of them suggested taking a photograph and selling it to a tobacco company for an advertising hoarding. Razor let them get used to his silent presence and then, while one couple was engaged in bargaining with the Indian girl, he approached the other three and asked if they could recommend a hotel in the town. He had intended to come just for the day, he explained, thinking the famous market would be open seven days a week.

  The man, who looked all of nineteen, studied him pityingly, as if no true traveller could have made such a mistake. ‘Our hotel is OK,’ one of the women told him, ‘though the waiters are a bit creepy – they all wear traditional costume.’ She walked across to where they could see the town spread out below, and showed him where it was.

  Razor asked her about herself and where she was from and where they were all going, and by the time they started back down the hill he was almost one of the family.

  ‘I think there was trouble in the night,’ the girl told him. ‘We heard what sounded like a gunshot and this morning the square was sealed off.’

  It didn’t seem to have upset them very much. They stopped to buy and consume Cokes at a shop on the ravine road, while an Indian boy watched from the doorway, anxious to make sure no one escaped with an empty bottle. No soldiers appeared on this road, and none were visible as they entered the town. ‘The hotel’s down there,’ the girl said, pointing out a large, white building with black-shuttered windows about a hundred metres down the street. ‘We’re going to a café. See you later, maybe,’ she added almost wistfully.

  Razor reached the hotel without mishap, and went straight to the desk to ask for a room. The receptionist, a plump Ladina with a big smile, asked for his passport.

  He reached for his pocket and stopped himself. ‘I’ve left it in the car,’ he improvised.

  ‘We have to see it,’ she said, her smile still fixed in place.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ he said, turning away, and found himself staring down the barrel of the gun in Major Romeo Osorio’s hand.

  Hajrija had spent much of the night awake, waiting for the desperately desired knock on the door, but around four o’clock the old woman had appeared and she had allowed herself to drift off into sleep. The shot had jerked her back to consciousness, and for a moment she thought herself back in Sarajevo, sleeping on the floor of an abandoned high-rise while her partner scoured the buildings on the other side of the Miljacka for signs of a Serb sniper.

  The terrible truth had then dawned, and she had braced herself for more distant gunfire. When none came the need to find out what had happened was almost irresistible. She knew it would be a
fatal error, endangering not only herself but also her hosts and potential rescuers, but it still cost every shred of her self-discipline not to go rushing out into the night.

  What if he’s dead? she asked herself over and over. What if he was dead without even knowing he had a daughter?

  When the day finally dawned the old woman had gone out in search of information. She came back an hour later looking upset, but still managed a comforting smile for Hajrija. Several minutes of desperate mime failed to clarify what had actually happened, and the next few hours were the longest of Hajrija’s life. When Lara finally appeared shortly before eleven she felt as if she had been waiting for days.

  Lara also looked upset, but wasted no time in explaining why. ‘The news is bad,’ she said, ‘but not the worst for you. The compañero who accompanied your husband is dead. He was surrounded in the market and he took his own life…’

  ‘Oh no…’

  ‘Your husband was taken by the Army about an hour ago, in a hotel in the town. We think Tomás – the compañero – must have left him outside the town, and when Tomás did not come back…’ She shrugged.

  Hajrija felt panic threatening to overwhelm her. ‘What can I do?’ she said. ‘Where have they taken him?’

  ‘Be calm,’ Lara said, taking both of Hajrija’s hands in her own. ‘He is a foreigner, and not just a tourist, and they will think two times before they treat him badly. And while they do this thinking we must tell your government what happens.’

  ‘I understand,’ Hajrija said, and took a deep breath. ‘I am sorry, I…you are right, we must phone the embassy in Guatemala City…’

  ‘We try already. The line is busy, and one minute after we try the soldiers appear at the public phone we use. They listen to all calls that leave the town.’

  ‘Then what can we do?’

  ‘I hope you have answer.’

  ‘We cannot call England direct?’

  ‘Yes, but it take half an hour to connect – the soldiers will arrive in two minutes.’

  Hajrija ran a hand through her hair, anguish on her face. ‘I don’t know what…’ she began, and then an idea struck her. ‘How about Chile?’ she asked. ‘Can you call Chile?’

  ‘Chile?’ Lara asked, surprised. ‘Yes, but…’

  ‘We have a friend in Chile. If you pass him a message, he will call England from there.’

  ‘Does he speak Spanish?’

  ‘Yes, and his wife too. She is Argentinian.’

  ‘You have the number?’

  Hajrija experienced a sudden sinking feeling, and then an equally strong surge of relief when she realized that the Dochertys’ number was in the small address book she had brought with postcards in mind.

  Postcards! she thought, reaching into the travel pouch for the book. ‘Just tell him Razor has been…’ She searched her mind for the English slang which her husband was so fond of. ‘Banged up,’ she said triumphantly. ‘Tell him Razor has been banged up in Chichicastenango. Tell him to call Barney, who will know what to do. And tell him the bird-watcher and Razor’s wife are not together.’

  ‘Is this all?’ Lara asked, her ballpoint poised.

  ‘Yes, yes, I think so,’ Hajrija said. She wondered how ‘banged up’ would translate into Spanish, and whether Docherty would be able to translate it back again. She thought about the man or woman who would be chosen to make the call, and how they would wait to be connected, listening all the while for the sound of soldiers’ boots. And she thought about the man who had already died for them that day.

  In his office in the Palacio Nacional, Colonel Serrano listened to Major Osorio’s report and blew smoke at the ceiling, a satisfied smile on his face.

  ‘Do you want him brought to you?’ Osorio asked.

  ‘No,’ Serrano said instinctively. He wanted at least a modicum of distance between the Englishman and his embassy, not to mention the foreign press.

  ‘So where?’ Osorio asked.

  ‘Let me think about it,’ Serrano said. ‘Wait there, and I’ll talk to you in a few minutes.’

  He placed the receiver face up on the desk and walked across to the window. Another bunch of tourists were being shepherded around the courtyard below, camcorders whirring.

  Before taking a decision on where to take the Englishman, Serrano realized, he needed to take another – on what they were going to do with him. No doubt the Kaibiles had first claim – the man had murdered their colonel, after all. But the man had been arrested in a hotel lobby, in front of both local and foreign witnesses, and if the Kaibiles decided to dismember him piece by piece then there would be repercussions. Manageable ones, no doubt, but repercussions all the same.

  And Wilkinson might have other uses than the simple indulgence of a few men’s pleasures. A military trial and execution could offer dramatic and much-needed proof of the regime’s commitment to the rule of law.

  Serrano smiled to himself at the elegance of the thought, but decided that for the moment he would keep his options open. The first priority was to discover the whereabouts of the other two fugitives, the soldier Martinson and the wife.

  He walked back to the desk and picked up the phone. ‘Osorio? Take him to the San Pedro facility for questioning. Use Goicouria. We need to know where his partner is, and his wife.’

  He listened for a moment.

  ‘You may. But don’t leave any physical evidence. No burns or amputations. This may be one body we will need to put on public display.’

  In the third-floor apartment in Santiago de Chile, Jamie Docherty put down the phone, a bemused expression on his face.

  ‘Who was it, Daddy?’ eight-year-old Marie asked him.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said absent-mindedly, his mind busy going back over what the woman had said. She had spoken Spanish, but Docherty had received the definite impression that it was not her first language.

  ‘Was it a man or a woman?’ Marie asked.

  ‘A woman. Let me think for a moment, sweetheart.’

  Docherty borrowed one of the coloured pencils his daughter had been using and, feeling like he was taking an SAS memory test, wrote down everything he could remember on a spare sheet of paper. It all made sense except the one phrase, which suggested Razor had been lifted into the air by an explosion.

  Docherty wished Isabel was there, rather than away on business in Buenos Aires. He stared out of the window at the snowcapped Andes, as if he could see through them to where she was.

  He read through the message again, and noticed how little had actually been spelt out. The ‘bird-watcher’ was probably Chris Martinson, the ‘wife’ presumably Hajrija, ‘Barney’ the Regimental CO in Hereford. Detonación levantado, he thought. An up bang. Bang up. Banged up. Razor had been arrested.

  In Guatemala that was not good news. Docherty went through to the other room, rummaged through the desk for his British address book, and cast a despairing glance at his day’s work on the computer screen. Maybe he should use this call to tell Barney Davies he was writing his memoirs, he thought. And maybe not.

  As he waited for the international operator to make the connection he wondered what the hell Razor and Chris were doing in Guatemala. If Hajrija was there as well it could hardly be on SAS business. He remembered the couple of weeks he and Razor had spent there in 1980, and grimaced. He had not enjoyed dealing with the Guatemalan military, which seemed officered by men with brains, education, culture – and all the moral sense of sharks. The only enjoyable part of the business had been his talks with the leader of the guerrillas, who had gone under the name El Espíritu. That old man had known a thing or too about the military arts, and the other arts as well. And he had been a damned good chess player.

  The phone was ringing in Barney Davies’s cottage, and Docherty felt a surge of pleasure at the prospect of talking to his old CO, whatever the circumstances.

  A woman answered, and seemed to sigh with resignation when he asked to speak to Lieutenant-Colonel Davies. The CO didn’t sound much more welcoming,
or at least not until he realized who was calling him.

  Docherty told him about the phone message from Guatemala, and offered his translation.

  Davies listened, and uttered a short commentary when the Scot was finished: ‘Christ almighty, what a fucking mess!’

  ‘I expect you’ve got people to call,’ Docherty said, ‘but when you’ve got a minute it would be nice to know what this is all about.’

  ‘Give me your number,’ Davies said, ‘I’ll call you back later tonight.’

  Docherty did so, feeling, not for the first time, an absurd longing for the life he had been glad to leave behind.

  Martin Clarke was sipping a between-acts drink at Sadler’s Wells, wondering whether to plead extra work and send his wife home in a taxi at the end of the opera, when an employee materialized between them and informed the junior minister he was urgently required on the phone.

  Clarke made a helpless gesture to his wife and followed the man downstairs, hoping to God that whatever the problem was it would save him from another hour of ludicrous plotting and overweight warbling. He was shown into the manager’s office, where an open phone was waiting on the desk.

  ‘Martin Clarke,’ he told the unknown caller.

  ‘Lieutenant-Colonel Davies,’ a familiar voice replied. ‘Sergeant Wilkinson has been captured,’ he said without preamble, ‘and I assume you’ll want to get your people in Guatemala City on the job right away. If the Guatemalans think we don’t know he’s been taken…’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Davies explained about the message which had been received via Chile.

  ‘Sounds like some stupid stunt MI6 would pull,’ Clarke commented. ‘Why didn’t whoever it was just ring the embassy?’

  ‘Christ only knows. Does it matter?’