Red Jungle (37 page)

“Of course not. The man’s a monster. And he
has
violated human rights as head of intelligence. I should know,” she said.

“Well, if you don’t help me, Carlos is going to assume the Presidency
tonight
. Blanco is leaving the country. He’s had enough. He wants to go to Miami and appoint Carlos President. We can stop Carlos. But you’ll have to help me.”

Katherine came further into the huge room. The maid went to the servi-bar and started putting out soft drinks on the bar top. He’d ordered the bar to be stocked, and bottles of liquor to be arranged on the bar top. When he’d said the word Blanco, the maid had looked up at them for a moment

“I’m going to assassinate Blanco, and I want you to help me,” he said calmly.

She looked at him a moment as if he had said something childish.

“You’re out of your mind,” she said finally.

“No, I’m not,” he said. “You say that you want to change the world. You’ve said that since we first met. You said you’ve dedicated your life to it. Everything you do is about that, about helping people—about fighting back against evil. Well, here’s your chance. You have a real chance to do something instead of just talking about it. If I kill Blanco, he can’t appoint Selva.

“We’re going to take over the government. Madrid’s group. Antonio has promised to hold elections in 12 months. In the meantime, there’s a plan to end the economic crisis. We’re going to sell the national phone company and the oil company. Jose will be able to stabilize the balance of payments with the money.

“Carlos won’t hold elections—
ever,”
Russell continued. “You know that. And he won’t do anything about the economy except what the fools at the IMF tell him to do. The country will end up like Argentina, only much worse.

“You’re either with us or not. I promise you it will make a difference,” he said. “Otherwise, the Communists will come back, and this time they’ll win. Help me stop that from happening. We can stop all that suffering.”

The maid walked by him and nodded. He took out a ten quetzal note and tipped the woman, and she left.

Katherine hadn’t said a word. He got up, went to the bar, and took out a beer. He didn’t know what she would do. If she said no, he knew he would probably die, because he would have to shoot Blanco in front of his bodyguards and the whole world. He poured himself the beer into a tall, elegant glass, went back and sat down on the couch. For a moment he just looked at the white head of beer in the glass. He wondered whether he had the balls to shoot Blanco in front of everyone.

Katherine sat on the edge of the couch, her knees together, her purse on the floor next to her.

He didn’t want to die now. He wanted to take Beatrice and leave the country and be happy, have a family with her. He wanted to have a daughter. He wanted to see her grow into a woman. He wanted to be an old man.

“What’s the world coming to?” she said. “Do you think killing people ever really works?”

“Yes. I do. What do you think the world would have been like if Hitler had been shot in 1936? Their side does it all the time. And that’s why they win all the time. You see, they aren’t like us, always wanting to be good. You can’t be good all the time. Not with them. They don’t respect anything but power. That’s all they respect,” Russell said.

“You’re sure he’s going to appoint Carlos?”

“Yes.”

“Do you really believe Madrid is any better?
Really
?”

“Yes, I do. He’s different. You know that. He’s modern.”

“Why do you believe him?”

“Because he believes that it’s time to stop listening to the embassy and to the IMF and to the whole lot of them. He wants to make the country independent and free and capitalist, and truly democratic. That means jobs and prosperity, and not just for the rich. It’s as simple as that. Now I have to have an answer,” he said. “Will you help me?”

She sat there across from him and didn’t answer for a long time.

“Yes. I’ll help you. Because Carlos is a monster. But not because I believe in Madrid, or any of them. I’ve learnt too much about the world. That’s the irony. That’s the truth. I’ve been a kind of liar. I don’t believe, not really. I mean, that people are good. I don’t know what I believe in. I’m completely lost. I love you. I believe in that. That’s all I believe in, and you don’t love me. So you see—nothing makes sense to me.”

“You’ll help me, then?” She nodded her head.

“We’ll change things for the better,” he said

“Will we? And the other side? Do you think they will let Madrid take power just like that?” He didn’t answer. “They’ll kill him later.”

He took Katherine to her room, then went out to the pool off the lobby and dialed Selva’s cell number.

“I’ve got the Red Jaguar,” Russell said. There was a long pause.

“Good. Where?”

“It’s big. Very big. So it’s worth millions, only God knows how much,” Russell said.

“What is it you want?” Selva asked.

“We need help in getting it out of the country.”

“All right,” Carlos said.

“We want to make you a partner.”

“I want fifty percent.”

“Fine. Blanco’s coming to the Camino Real to talk to the UN people. Why don’t you come with him? We’ll talk here.”

“Okay,” Carlos said. “Good work.”

•••

The Cardinal had gotten a call from Isabella’s brother in Paris. They had been to school together. For a moment the cardinal thought that Roberto Cruz had called just to say hello, and was pleased. But then he heard the news of Isabella’s disappearance.

He promised to help. Olga came to his office and was made to wait. The Cardinal would not meet with her, but he assigned a young priest to drive her to the hospitals, where they made inquiries.

The young priest, also an Indian from the highlands, spoke to her in Quiché and Spanish. They went to the public hospital in the Cardinal’s brand new Chevy, with a driver. The young priest was sure they would find her mistress, he told Olga. Nothing escaped the knowledge of the church. Cardinal De La Tierra could move heaven and earth.

They searched the wards of the hospital, looking for people who were too ill to have given their names, or, for some reason, had been admitted without identification. They were all poor people, and Olga knew Isabella would not be there. She felt this with a certainty she couldn’t describe. It was unimaginable that her mistress could be here in these shabby, cold wards.

They tried the French hospital, which catered exclusively to the country’s wealthy. They were told that there were no Jane Does, and no Isabella Cruz had been admitted either. The difference in the two hospitals was striking. Olga insisted, in a show of pique and anger, on walking all the halls. She was allowed to only because the young priest used the Cardinal’s name. Olga had seen many of the people in this hospital pass through the apartment on the Reforma: young society women who’d just given birth, old men who’d known Isabella’s father and who were dying. Some recognized Olga and made inquiries. Olga answered politely that she was searching for her mistress. Several showed real concern.

The head of the air force, who’d been a good friend of Isabella’s mother and was dying from bladder cancer, said he would call his friend at X7, the Guatemalan equivalent of the CIA. He made a big show of it. He was in pain, but stayed on the phone, calling all afternoon to no avail. He died that evening, thinking of Isabella, about the day he first met her, how vivacious she was and how pretty. A military man all his life, he faced death well, but allowed himself to dream as he died of that afternoon on the plantation with Isabella’s father and mother, when he’d been young and strapping. He’d met his wife that day. He died happily in a morphine dream.

They stopped for lunch at a cheap restaurant near the cathedral. Olga ate with the priest at a small square wooden table. Neither one spoke. He paid for the lunch, and she thanked him. They went back to the Cardinal’s office and heard the news that a white woman’s body was being held in a church on the outskirts of the city near Antigua. They went off immediately. Olga knew that God had taken her mistress. The priest, seeing her suffering, said that there was no telling that her mistress was the one they’d found. Olga felt she was there. He tried to hold her hand, but she didn’t let him. She was mad at God. God was not fair or good. She was sure of that now.

The church near Antigua had steep stone steps. They walked quickly up them, passing the sitting Indians who’d come for market day. They entered the smoky anteroom littered with burning candles, then passed into the church itself. Afternoon light shone through the blue and yellow stained glass. Blue light fell on the empty crude wooden pews. Banks of candles lit the dark corners off the apse. There were many lit candles, as Ash Wednesday would be that week. Purple cloth had been draped over the saints.

The woman’s body had been left where it had first been laid down. The police, overwhelmed by the war, would not come. They had called an ambulance, but it had not come either. There were so many deaths from the war that the army had requisitioned all the ambulances.

Olga began to sob. The priest tried to stop her, but she rushed to the body in front of the altar. She threw back the cloth that had been laid over it and screamed, a horrible sound.

The young priest would never forget it. It was an angry scream, he thought, a scream from a person who had been cheated. The scream dented his faith in God. Men suffered so. He wondered for the first time why it had to be. Later, when the war became unbearable, and the killings crueler and crueler, he decided that God was not a benevolent God, but rather a distant cruel man with little love for his charges. He left the priesthood and became a doctor, studying in France on a scholarship. He came to believe science was the only real god. And even that god wasn’t benevolent, or even kind; at best, it was suitable.

He tried to pull Olga off the body, but it was impossible. She struck out at him. Her grief intimidated him. After a moment, he gave up. He bent down by the corpse on the cold stone floor and said an “Our Father,” then crossed himself slowly and went to find the parish priest.

They called the Cardinal for instructions on what to do. Because of the lack of ambulances, they were forced to load the body in their car and take it to the undertakers. A doctor was called to perform an autopsy, only because Isabella’s brother insisted on it.

THIRTY-ONE

It was raining lightly. The downtown traffic was heavy at noontime. Katherine Barkley, her hair slightly wet from the rain, crossed a quiet tree-lined street a few blocks from the Hotel Camino Real. It was a neighborhood of elegant older homes, built when Guatemala was still one of a handful of countries producing all the world’s coffee.

She stopped in front of a large ranch-style house. The house, well off the street, was surrounded by a huge tropical garden. Katherine could see coconut palms and birds of paradise. A well dressed Guatemalan bodyguard was guarding the entrance.

Katherine gave the guard her name. He called someone inside the house on his cell phone, then pushed a button and the gate swung open. He smiled at her, but she didn’t notice.

She was frightened now, certain that Russell would be killed. She’d sounded a mayday at the embassy and called for the meeting as soon as she’d found out about Russell’s plan to assassinate Blanco.

She made her way through the lush garden to the front door of one of the CIA’s many safe houses in the capital. Colonel Oliver North had used the house; some of the embassy’s older CIA officers jokingly called the place “Ollie’s house.”

Iran-Contra, the Bay Of Pigs, the Contra wars—until today, Katherine’s role in history seemed very vague. She’d joined the CIA, like many of her generation, on the heels of 9/11. She’d intended to go to medical school, but had joined the agency in a fit of anger and patriotism instead, because she wanted to help her country fight terrorism. Until she’d fallen in love with Russell, she’d been a fast-rising star in the agency’s covert directorate.

That afternoon, her career seemed beside the point As she approached the safe house, everything suddenly was appallingly clear to her: It was a dirty world, and this was a dirty country. And now, she felt dirty too, for being part of it all.

She walked through the heavy front door and stood for a moment in the foyer, wondering what had happened to her after only three years in the agency. She’d been a naïve, fearless girl, and now she was something else altogether. Now she was afraid.

Crowley, the station head, was on a satellite phone. The other two men, much younger than Crowley, were sitting at a table. They glanced at her nervously as she came in, a thinly veiled suspicion in their expressions. How had she ended up here, in this room, she wondered, with men who didn’t care about her, in love with someone their cables referred to as the “unpredictable American?”

Crowley nodded to her as she entered. The satellite phone’s portable cone-shaped dish sat on the floor of the simple living room, pointing towards an open French window that looked out onto the garden. There was a patter of rain on the metal roof. The two younger officers with Crowley wore casual clothes, and sat at the dining room table just off the living room.