The Candidate (33 page)

“You may have this. You can find your answers inside, I am sure. It is all of her personal things that she left behind. It is a small box yet it contains the mementoes of her life. But I ask you to think carefully about what you will do with it.”

Mike peered into the box. There were identity papers, what looked like a diary, bundles of military documents and dozens of photographs. Mike saw several in which Natalia stood with a young woman, her daughter, and smiled shyly in the front room of a humble-looking shack. It was a jarring moment of familial normality. Natalia’s smile was unexpected for its sheer banality. But Mike knew what history lay behind it. Villatoro closed the box.

“They are yours now. You will face a choice about what to do with them. I do not envy you that.”

Mike looked up.

“Trust in God,” the priest said.

It was Mike’s cue to leave. He mumbled a thank you and picked up the box, which was light to the touch but somehow felt weighed down by its contents. Villatoro watched him go without another word and offered no blessing to go alongside his warning.

* * *

AN HOUR later Mike sat on his hotel bed with the contents of the box sprayed out in front of him. It looked like an explosion had scattered the contents all over the room. He painstakingly tried to build up a picture of a life from the myriad of papers and pictures all around him. It was like a vast jigsaw puzzle, but one that locked together through time as well as piece-by-piece. There were a few scattered photographs from childhood, including one of a ragtag little girl standing next to a youthful-looking Father Villatoro. She wore a dirty white dress but her smile was confident and beaming. Mike thought he recognized the wall of the church in Santa Teresa behind them. There was also a picture of a glum-looking peasant, posed in black and white like an official portrait. Mike guessed he was her father. He searched the deep lines on the man’s face for some sign of the cruelty that Villatoro mentioned: the man who sowed the seeds of the monster that his daughter would become. But he saw nothing; just blank, dark eyes that stared back at the camera with a deep tiredness, not malevolence.

He sorted through the military papers and looked for order in the clutter. Induction papers showed she passed into the army in Guatemala City and a recommendation from her graduation ceremony revealed she joined the military police with an award for marksmanship. There were other citations from her police school too. Then Mike saw Carillo’s name for the first time. It was on a letter written to the General which praised Natalia’s skills at interrogation and suggested she be attached to Carillo’s own unit. Mike followed her career easily now, rapidly putting the papers and letters in the right order and tracked her movements through the past and the war. Nothing was mentioned obliquely. Just names and dates of places scattered across the highlands. A few were clearly reports of combat. They were lists of names arranged into columns: one for dead, another for wounded and/or captured. Mike wondered at the stories behind each name. They were just a random collection but he felt his breath slow in his chest as he thought of the real people behind them: farmers and revolutionaries, fighters and peasants all mixed in together, their lives crushed down to a list. Natalia’s name appeared on addendums to some of the action reports, which were brief summaries of intelligence gained from “after action questioning sessions.” All of them were from Carillo’s unit, to which Natalia was now permanently attached. The language of the reports was terse and simple. Subjects were asked for information about the guerrillas and their replies were summarized and written down. They were often “pressured” or “encouraged” to answer. Mike knew what that meant; it was a euphemism that suggested little but covered everything.

He recalled the pictures and reports he saw back in Washington. He thought of the grimy interrogation chambers, the beatings, the pins slipped under fingernails, the limbs broken by clubs and the backs churned into bleeding flesh by whips and ropes. He felt sick as he read the terse prose that detailed session after session with Natalia’s name by it. He envisioned her in her own prison now, caged in like a trapped wild beast, pacing between four blank walls. He remembered her expression as unreadable as a book in a foreign alphabet, some cruciform hint at a lost and terrifying past.

Why did she keep them? he wondered. Perhaps she was proud of her record and used them as medals of honor as she blazed her way through the civil war. Then, later, changed by motherhood and counseled by Villatoro, she used them as a reminder of her sins, a sort of mental scourge to beat herself with her bloodied past.

He scanned through more reports. Carillo’s unit was prolific and traveled across the country from village to village and slum to slum. Sometimes they carried out an action themselves and other times arrived after the army already did its work, picking up the pieces and carting off the prisoners for interrogation sessions. Carillo was everywhere in the later reports; giving orders and taking part in some of the interrogations. He and Natalia operated as some form of team, with her rapidly rising to become his most trusted lieutenant.

Then Mike froze.

A sheaf of orders from Carillo to senior commanders in his unit bore a familiar name: Capt. Arnold Andersen. Hodges’ old friend from the School of the Americas. His former comrade-in-arms. Mike remembered Andersen’s grinning, friendly visage suddenly turned to cold fury at the mention of his time in Guatemala. How Andersen ended their interview and practically threw him out of his plush Washington corner office overlooking the Mall. Now he knew why. Andersen worked with Carillo, advising him and guiding him.

Mike’s blood quickened as he read on. Then another familiar name snagged his eyes. It came out of a sheaf of papers like a rock ripping out the underside of a boat at sea: Santa Teresa. An interrogation Natalia led pinpointed the village as the site of major guerrilla support. A suspect cracked and revealed guerrilla groups from the surrounding hills stayed over-night in the village. Mike read the report grimly. The interrogation went on for hours and, at the end of it all, the subject was reported “deceased.” Whatever horrors Natalia inflicted upon the victim broke him. Carillo had handwritten a note on the bottom: “
Is this actionable? Major operation would be needed in troubled area.
”

Carillo signed it in a grand flourish, his name written in long loops and curls that expressed his ego in the midst of the ugliest of possible thoughts. But below his mark was more handwriting. It was small and neat, official and curt.

“Actionable” it read. Just one word. But below it a name.

“Lt. Col. J. Hodges.”

Hodges too was an adviser to Carillo.

Hodges knew what was going on.

Hodges gave a green light to the massacre at Santa Teresa.

Mike dropped the note like it was suddenly a hot coal. He felt the skin on his fingers sizzle and let out a loud yelp. The world swayed in front of his eyes as he staggered to the hotel window and looked out at the glittery lights of Guatemala City stretching out like a starry night sky fallen to earth.

Hodges advised government death squads.

Hodges signed off on a massacre committed by Carillo and Natalia.

Hodges read intelligence reports scraped out of torture sessions in which prisoners were murdered.

Frantically, Mike tore through the rest of the papers. Each time he found Hodges signature it was like a knife wound pierced his flesh. Written on the bottom of interrogation reports and memos from Carillo, Hodges’ tiny, impossibly neat handwriting screamed out from the past, loud enough to tear down the walls of Mike’s world.

His heart pounded in his chest and a wave of nausea bubbled up in his stomach. He ran for the bathroom, making it just in time, as bile rose in his throat and he leaned over the toilet, throwing up with a strangled yell, his eyes streaming hot, burning tears of rage and shame.

* * *

MIKE OPENED his eyes and glanced at the glowing red numbers on the clock beside his bed. It was 5:34 a.m. He supposed he must have slept for a few hours but it did not feel that way. He stared at the ceiling through a deep emotional exhaustion that was uncoupled from a physical ability to sleep. His mind kept going round in circles. What would he do with this information? What happened to the candidate he believed in like no other politician? Was that man a lie? Or had Hodges really changed since his days as a warrior who fought the Cold War in the most brutal possible ways.

He sat up and kneaded his temples with his knuckles, trying to bore his way into his skull and wrestle with his confused thoughts. But it was no use. He just felt physically sick; bleary-eyed and yet panicked. He looked at his phone. He knew he should call Dee. Perhaps she would take matters into her own hand and make some decisions for him. But how would she react now that he had information to destroy Hodges’ campaign? And was that what he wanted?

Mike thought of all those long nights in Iowa and New Hampshire, the faces on the growing crowds of hopefuls, the people who believed in Hodges and what he stood for, who were looking for him to transform their lives. Nothing changed there. Hodges could still be the candidate they needed. But he could not reconcile that Hodges with the documents he saw. Hodges’ face, which always seemed so calm and compassionate, now appeared cold and calculating. His blue eyes were those of a killer, not a hero.

Mike stood up and thought of the hotel pool down below. He would take a swim, he decided. He would lose himself in the cool waters and surrender to the rhythms of exercise. He dug out a pair of trunks and padded downstairs through the silence of the still-sleeping hotel.

The pool was empty when he arrived and he slipped in and let the water caress his whole body and engulf him into its depths. It felt good and a glow of relief lit in his mind. Somewhere deep within him, at that moment, he knew he would make the right decision. He knew he could do it, even though he still was not sure of what it was. He slid into the easy routine of length after length and kept his pace absolutely steady, never varied, turn after turn. It was a Zen-like motion and his mind cleared. It was like he became weightless in the water as the burden of his thoughts lifted. On and on he swam until he hauled himself out of the water and lay, panting and gasping on the edge of the pool. He heard a noise and looked up. A cleaner walked in. She was surprised to see someone swimming so early and she nodded a shy hello and then turned on the television above the cabana bar at the far end of the pool. The distant drone of an early morning news show filled the air as Mike toweled himself dry.

Suddenly he heard the cleaner give a loud, sharp shriek and drop her mop with a clatter. She stood with one hand clamped in front of her mouth and stared at the TV screen. Her shoulders shook as she began to sob. She crossed herself quietly and mumbled a prayer.

Mike walked nearer so he could see the TV pictures more clearly and understand the newscaster’s breathless Spanish. He saw film of flashing police lights in a chaos of cars. He assumed it must be some awful car accident, perhaps near where this cleaner lived. He was about to offer her some words of consolation when suddenly the newscaster’s words struck him and became as clear as a bell with a single name ringing out like some toll of doom.

“Father Gregorio Villatoro…” the voice said “… was found dead in his church office in the early hours of this morning. Police sources will not say how he died but friends say he was shot and killed by an assailant who broke into the San Gabriel mission. Villatoro was one of the most outspoken critics of the army during the civil war but in recent years was a beloved figure among Guatemala City’s poorest residents for his charity efforts…”

Mike was transfixed. Villatoro was dead. The man he spoke to just a few hours earlier was no more, gunned down in the very building they met in. He looked at the cleaner. “Perhaps it was a robbery,” he said.

The cleaner looked at him, her cheeks streaked with tears and her bottom lip quivered. “
Señor,
” she said “Who would want to kill such a man? A robber would only have to ask and he would give him all that he had. Everyone knew this.”

Suddenly it was as if Mike’s whole world narrowed down into perfect clarity. Someone knew he was here and that he met Villatoro. They followed him to the church last night and broke in after he left and then murdered the priest. If that was true, then they also knew he stayed in this hotel. And, he realized almost in slow motion horror, they knew Lauren was here too. He looked above the pool, up seven stories to where their rooms were. The mirrored windows glinted opaquely in the first rays of the morning sun.

He started to run.

CHAPTER 22

HODGES APPEARED, AS he always did now, to a huge cheer along the rope line. Corralled at the front, that part of the crowd always first spotted the exact moment the candidate emerged from behind the stage and out into the auditorium. They screamed like teenagers welcoming the Beatles, even here among the usually sedate Myrtle Beach crowd. Hodges strode out and soon the rest of the giant convention center took their cue and the cavernous room filled to bursting with sound. A foot taller than most people anyway, Hodges seemed to grow to fill the space. He strode to the rope line and shook hands and grinned and laughed as people thrust themselves at him, palms outstretched like supplicants looking for a cure.