Guatemala – Journey into Evil

by David Monnery

  Unfortunately, this place reminded her of her Bosnian home in more ways than that. Over the last few days she had felt the old despair clawing at her heart again, and this time around the anguish which came with seeing how badly humans could treat each other had been sharpened by her fears for the man she loved, the man whose child she was carrying.

  Razor had been taken, and she had no idea where. She didn’t know if she was walking away from him or towards him. She didn’t even know if he was still alive. And there was nothing to do but keep on walking, keep on hoping.

  They were close to the ridge-line now, and minutes later Hajrija found herself gazing at the view from the crest: the shining lake sitting in the vast bowl of mountains beneath the shimmering night sky. And despite the weight of her fears she found the sight still stirred her soul. The star-filled heavens and the vast mirror of water seemed so tranquil, so full of benign certainty.

  And, somewhat to her surprise, she saw from their faces that the compañeros were experiencing similar feelings to her own. Here in the mountains the Mayan Indians still breathed deeply of the natural world, for where else could they find the sustenance they needed for the struggle against the common enemy?

  Chris and Emelia dug in for the day on a wooded slope high above the small town of Chinique, and she announced that she was taking the first watch in a tone which did not invite discussion.

  In practical terms it had been a successful night – they had made better than the expected speed, and seen no sign of Army patrols, much less encountered any. But Chris was too worried about his companion’s state of mind to feel much satisfaction. Emelia had hardly spoken since their departure, and if it hadn’t been for his insistence she would hardly have eaten either. He needed to find a way to let her mourn, or else he feared she would throw her life away, either in some defiant act of sacrifice or out of sheer carelessness.

  But lying there in the scrape he could think of nothing to say, nothing to offer or do. How could you comfort someone who had lost each member of her family, one after the other, until only she was left? By telling her that they had died for something noble? What possible goal could be worth such sacrifice?

  He crawled across to where she was sitting and took her in his arms. For a moment she beat a tattoo of rage on his back, then carried on mutely sobbing for a minute or more, clinging to him.

  Then, abruptly, she pulled herself away, rubbed her tear-stained eyes and said: ‘You must sleep – we will need all the strength we have.’

  He started to protest, but she was adamant. He lay down again, and the singing of the birds as the sky lightened seemed as cruel as anything he had ever heard.

  Woken by the key in the door, Razor looked up to see the two guards entering and feared the worst. They dragged him to his feet and led him down the corridor to the outside world, where the barely risen sun was still battling with the chill of the morning air. There was scarcely time to take in the surroundings before another building loomed, another corridor, and another room. Here the guards removed the wire bindings which had secured his wrists for almost twenty-four hours and then left him, all without saying a word.

  He explored his new home. This room, though much the same size as the one he had just left, boasted not only a mattress but also a small adjoining room complete with flush toilet. The former might be ragged and stained, the latter dry and dusty, but it was the thought that counted. Either his prospects were improving or they were trying to soften him up for another session with the capucha.

  Just the thought of it seemed to make breathing more difficult.

  As if on cue, he heard more footsteps in the corridor outside. The key turned, the door opened, and in came breakfast: a small bowl of chilli, a stack of tortillas and an Atlanta Braves mug brimming with brown liquid which looked like coffee but was probably faking. One of the guards even smiled at him before withdrawing.

  Razor ate his way through the food, drank the brown liquid, and did a more thorough security check on his prison. Through the small window in the door he could see an armed guard half asleep on an upright chair in the corridor. The door itself was not particularly solid, but Razor could see no way of breaking it down without alerting the guard. He went across to the window, which was protected by bars and an interior grille. In the distance he could see the coils of razor wire glistening with menace on top of the breeze-block wall.

  ‘Breaking out is hard to-oo-oo do,’ he sang softly to himself. He thought of Hajrija and switched songs. ‘The best part of breaking out is the making out, ooooh!’

  The guard’s puzzled face appeared at the window in the door. Razor gave him a friendly wave and lay down on the mattress, wondering what was happening in the world outside. Did anyone other than his hosts know where he was?

  It was another two hours before he got his answer. He heard the arrival of the helicopter, and spent five minutes wondering whether it augured well or ill before Ben Manley was ushered into his cell.

  Razor felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He let out a deep sigh of relief, and might even have kissed Manley if the man from the embassy hadn’t looked so…so fucking English. He was even wearing a suit and tie.

  ‘They seem to be treating you all right,’ Manley said, looking round for somewhere to sit and finding nothing. ‘By their standards, that is.’

  Razor suddenly realized why his room had been changed. ‘Last night they put a rubber hood over my head and tightened it until I couldn’t breathe,’ he said deliberately. ‘And when I was nearly unconscious they took it off and threw water on my face. Then they started again,’ he added, looking Manley straight in the eye.

  The embassy man looked away. He didn’t want to deal with this, Razor decided. He works in Guatemala and he doesn’t want to know.

  ‘Are you all right now?’ Manley asked, still examining the walls. ‘No ill effects?’

  Razor took a deep breath. ‘I’m OK.’

  ‘Good, that’s good. Needless to say, we’ll deliver the strongest protest we can, but the Guatemalans have already promised London that you’ll be treated according to accepted international standards. When did this, er, business take place?’

  ‘Yesterday evening.’

  ‘Ah, well, that must have been before London contacted the locals.’

  ‘That’s all right then,’ Razor said sarcastically. ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘Your CO in England got a call from an ex-colleague of yours. Name of Docherty. Someone had phoned him from here, said you’d been arrested and that your wife and Martinson were still free.’

  Razor felt another surge of relief. ‘Do you know where my wife is?’ he asked.

  ‘No idea. According to the Guatemalans both of them have disappeared into thin air. But what I need to hear from you,’ Manley went on, taking a notebook from his pocket, ‘is your version of what happened last Wednesday.’

  With a conscious effort Razor pushed his worries over Hajrija to the back of his mind and tried to give an accurate account of the events up to and including his fatal encounter with Cabrera. But accuracy wasn’t going to be enough, he realized, as he watched Manley’s face. The man from the embassy had not seen the villages above Zavik, or the dead villages of Guatemala. He hadn’t lived with the Kaibiles for a week, or heard the tell-tale scream emerge from the Uspantan barracks. He might be one of Her Majesty’s men in Guatemala, but he knew next to nothing about the real situation here.

  ‘I see,’ Manley said, when Razor had finished. ‘But even if the Guatemalans accepted your story – which they don’t, of course – they will argue: “But why didn’t you file a protest with the colonel? Why didn’t you say you would go to his superiors? Why didn’t you even threaten him with the gun, rather than simply shoot him?”’

  ‘It wouldn’t have worked…’ Razor began.

  ‘Perhaps, but why didn’t you try?’

  Razor held on to his temper with difficulty. ‘If I had done anything else – anythin
g – that village would have been destroyed and all the people in it…’

  ‘You can’t make yourself responsible for every village on the planet…’

  ‘And,’ Razor continued, ‘once they had destroyed the village they would have had to kill me and Chris. We were potential witnesses. Once I’d fingered their guerrilla leader for them, there was nothing else we could offer them but grief.’

  Manley sat there, pen thoughtfully poised. ‘You can’t prove any of that,’ he said finally. ‘The Guatemalans deny there was ever any intention to destroy the village, and if there wasn’t, then what motive could they have for killing you and Martinson? You see what I mean?’

  ‘I don’t give a flying fuck what the Guatemalans think. I know what happened.’

  Manley sighed with frustration, as if he was dealing with a particularly obtuse child. ‘They also claim that you shot down an unarmed helicopter.’

  Razor shrugged his acquiescence.

  ‘Was it unarmed?’

  ‘Probably. It was on a recon mission.’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘Because if the pilot had managed to report our position we would have had armed helicopters to deal with, and probably troop carriers as well.’

  Manley made another note. ‘Do you have any idea where Martinson is?’ he asked.

  ‘Nope.’

  Manley sighed again.

  ‘So what happens next?’ Razor asked.

  ‘I don’t know. We’ll try and get you moved to the capital, where we can keep a better eye on how you’re being treated. The locals don’t seem to have decided what they want to do with you yet; they may want to put you on trial, or we may be able to buy you out one way or another. Maybe a promise to keep a lid on the whole business will be enough – it’s hard to say at this stage. And there’s always Martinson to consider…’

  ‘And my wife.’

  ‘Technically she’s not our problem. But yes,’ he added, seeing the look on Razor’s face, ‘naturally we have to bear her in mind.’ Manley put his notebook back in his pocket. ‘Is there anybody you want me to contact?’ he asked.

  Razor thought for a moment. ‘Am I likely to be on the Nine O’Clock News?’

  ‘Not if we can help it.’

  ‘Then no. If it goes public, I’d like my mother to know I’m OK. But there’s no point in worrying her until then.’

  ‘Will do. Anything else?’

  ‘Yeah, ask the warden if I can have some toilet paper.’

  In England it was almost five o’clock when Martin Clarke called to give Barney Davies a full report of the conversation. The junior minister seemed more cheerful than usual, but Davies could find little reason for optimism in either the facts or the way in which Clarke downplayed the ill-treatment which had already been meted out.

  The only welcome news – which was so predictable that it hardly qualified as news – was that Razor had indeed had a good reason for shooting the Guatemalan colonel.

  He asked where exactly the SAS man was being held.

  There was a hesitation, and the sound of papers being shuffled. ‘A place called San Pedro Norte,’ Clarke said at last. ‘It’s a few miles west of Lake Atitlán. Manley thought it looked like a deserted prison.’ The sound of a chuckle. ‘But don’t get any ideas, Lieutenant-Colonel,’ Clarke added. ‘This government will not be sanctioning any SAS rescue mission.’

  ‘I realize that,’ Davies said obligingly. He knew full well that those days were gone. Maggie Thatcher might have been one of the more obnoxious Prime Ministers in British history, but she had at least been willing to take the odd risk. Her successor had all the gambling instincts of a small-town banker.

  After putting the phone down he sat and thought for a few moments, watching the mass of dark-grey cloud looming over the distant Black Mountains. More bloody rain.

  Clarke’s whole tone had been almost self-congratulatory, he thought. As if the difficult part was over. They had been promised that the SAS man would be treated as well as any prisoner in England, and now the game of diplomatic poker could begin.

  Davies looked at his watch, struggled with the arithmetic of time zones, and realized that there was only twenty minutes to spare before the time set aside for a possible call from Guatemala to Chile. He picked up the phone and punched out Docherty’s number.

  The Scot answered himself.

  ‘It’s me,’ Davies said. ‘I’ve been talking to the Foreign Office and thinking about what we said yesterday and…well, I have a bad feeling about this.’ He told Docherty about the call from Clarke, text and sub-text.

  ‘So what can you do?’ Docherty asked.

  ‘Not a damn thing, as far as I can see. I can create a stink, but the bastards will just hold their noses. Hell, the way the Government behaves these days one more stink will probably not even get noticed.’

  ‘What about Chris?’

  ‘We’ve no idea where he is. But that’s the main reason I’ve called you. The people who contacted you must have got your number from Chris or Hajrija…’

  ‘I don’t know Chris that well, and I don’t remember ever giving him this number.’

  ‘Well, it must have been Hajrija then. She may be in contact with Chris by now. They’re obviously both in with the guerrillas. Maybe they can do something. This is where Razor is being held – got a pencil?’

  Docherty wrote down what Davies told him. ‘So you want me to pass this on with our best wishes.’

  ‘It’s about all we’ve got to offer. Tell them to tell Chris not to expect any help from outside. There probably won’t be anything one man can do, but that’ll be up to him to judge…’

  ‘And her,’ Docherty reminded him. ‘I wouldn’t underestimate Hajrija when it comes to a fight, not when Razor’s life is at stake.’

  Hajrija and the four compañeros arrived at the guerrilla camp an hour or so before dawn. She felt completely exhausted, but managed a smile when she saw the man she knew as Mariano coming forward to greet them. At least there would be someone she could communicate with.

  He even had news. ‘The Englishman Chris is coming here. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next day.’

  Hajrija supposed this was good news, but it also made her anxious. With his height and spiky fair hair Chris was even more noticeable than her husband, who had been caught. ‘Do you know about the call to Chile?’ she asked. ‘Can you…?’

  ‘It is all arranged,’ Mariano said. ‘A man in the City will make the call this evening, and if there is a message for you we will receive it by radio.’

  The thought that she was connected, however tenuously, with the outside world, made Hajrija feel better.

  ‘And now you need sleep,’ Mariano was saying.

  A few minutes later she was closing her eyes in a hammock strung between trees, and almost immediately sinking into a deep slumber.

  Eleven hours later she woke to find the light already beginning to fade. But she felt better rested than she had for several days, and ravenously hungry. After half falling out of the hammock she went in search of Mariano, and found him sitting on a rock overlooking the lake, eating a tasty-looking stew. Seeing the look in her eyes, he told her to stay there and went to get her a plate.

  From the direction of the setting sun, she judged that they were halfway up one of the two volcanoes on the south-eastern side of the lake. Panajachel would be the cluster of brightening lights on the far shore, and the town almost directly below her was Santiago Atitlán. She could see the square where she had rested, and remembered staring up at this very volcano.

  Mariano came back with a plate of stew. It was mostly vegetable with just a flavouring of chicken, but after ten hours of walking and eleven of sleep almost anything would have tasted wonderful. He watched with a smile as she devoured it all, wiping up the last drops with the last tortilla.

  His face grew more serious as he passed on the message from Chile.

  Hearing that Razor was alive and not being mistreated, she closed her eyes and let th
e relief flood through her body.

  ‘He is being held at San Pedro Norte,’ Mariano went on. ‘It used to be a prison camp, but now, according to your man in Chile, it is almost empty.’ He smiled. ‘It is strange, yes, that we hear about the prison next door from a man who is four thousand miles away?’

  ‘It is near here?’ Hajrija asked excitedly. ‘Where?’

  He turned towards the lake. ‘Over there, behind San Pedro,’ he said, indicating the volcano which rose up beyond the inlet, blocking the view to the west. ‘Maybe twenty-five kilometres as the hawk flies, in the hills beyond San Pedro La Laguna.’

  She stared out, picturing Razor in his cell. Maybe he was even watching the same sunset. ‘Was that the whole message?’ she asked.

  ‘No. The man in Chile says not to expect any help from London.’

  Hajrija turned her eyes back to the distant view, and for almost a minute she was silent. ‘I need to talk to your leader,’ she said quietly.

  He smiled. ‘That will not be difficult. I am the comandante of this unit.’

  She supposed she should have realized. ‘Then I need to talk with you,’ she said, gathering her thoughts. ‘Your people have already taken many risks for me,’ she began, ‘and at least one man has died, and I have no right to ask for more. But I must.’ She turned to meet Mariano’s gaze. ‘Can you find out about this place – how many men there are, what the defences are like? And when the other Englishman arrives here, can you give us a guide to take us there?’

  Mariano considered. ‘It does not seem likely that there will be so few men that you and your friend…’

  ‘The message says it is almost empty,’ Hajrija interrupted him.

  Mariano raised a hand in acknowledgement. ‘That is true.’ His face cracked in a smile. ‘So we will find out exactly how empty. OK?’

  With Manley gone Razor’s only human contact was with the guards who brought him food and took him for his daily exercise. He spent most of the Tuesday day-dreaming, and on Wednesday decided to sharpen up his act, setting himself a string of mental and physical exercises. The main danger lay in growing complacent – there was no guarantee that the current benign regime would continue, and if things changed he wanted to be as mentally prepared as was humanly possible.