CHAPTER 21

 

 

THE HOT BREEZE from the Caribbean blew in like an unwelcome guest at General Carillo’s table and sent his napkin fluttering skywards like a released seabird. He made a futile grab for it, but it was beyond his grasp, caught in the air and flying from his terrace into the streets below. Carillo cursed his luck and pushed away his plate of rice, pork and beans.

He was not hungry anyway. He slept poorly the previous night and was unable to rectify that with a long siesta this afternoon. Now, even though he was fatigued, he still felt fidgety and nervous. His mind raced ever since he heard the American was back in Guatemala in the company of some woman. A “blogger” whatever that was. Something like a journalist, he was told. It was confusing and unnerving. Just as he started to believe he was getting his just reward – that his life’s efforts were not in vain and unrecognized – this happened.

Still, Federico was a good man. He was loyal as a dog and could be trusted to do his duty. Any General was only as good as the men he commanded. He knew that. With Federico deployed out in the field, he knew he had options. Carillo stared out as the blue waters slowly darkened as the sun went down. A smattering of Garifuna fishing boats dotted the horizon, not yet choosing to come into the shelter of their homeport. Carillo sighed. He longed to get out of here and go home. Back to the mountains. Back to the green hillsides and cool fresh air of his youth. Soon he would have the money to grease the right palms and buy the return from exile that sheer politics itself would not allow.

He imagined his finca in his mind. One just like his grandfather had owned on the outskirts of Antigua. It would not be too big. There was no need to be greedy. It would just be a plot of good land on which the coffee beans would practically burst forth. His workers would be loyal village folk and he would be a good master to them. Perhaps he might even take a wife. It was not too late for him, even though he was past sixty. Such things were not unheard of for men of power, money and dignity. She would be a young village girl and he would fill her belly with children. He closed his eyes, sleepy at last, his mind filled with the sound of wedding chimes.

Except it was not church bells he heard. His mind snapped away from its reverie to register his phone downstairs. He hauled himself to his feet, hearing his tired bones crack in complaint, and went to answer the call.

It was Federico. “Sir, I followed los Americanos and they went to visit a church in the slums.”

“A church?” the General said and dared himself to feel a little glow of relief. “Are they just playing at being tourists?”

“I do not think it was the church they were interested in. It was the priest. Father Gregorio Villatoro.”

The General felt a stab of adrenalin at the name. It surged through his body and left him feeling like a just struck cymbal with a ringing sound in his ears. He could not find the words.

“General?” Federico asked. “What would you have me do?”

“That son of a bitch priest,” Carillo spat and at last found his voice. It was like the collapse of a dam and a torrent of emotions poured through his mind. Visions of a long ago day of blood and mayhem; of fighting a righteous cause and striking a blow against the enemy. A day forgotten for many years and that should remain so.

“I thought he was dead long ago,” Carillo shouted. “What is he doing in the slums? Stirring up trouble with his communist bullshit. It sickens me that he is allowed to preach Marxism still after all these years.”

“It is an offense against God and the Motherland,” Federico said.

An abomination, Carillo thought. But his anger was only a thin veneer for the panic he started to feel, like a slick of oil on a deep and raging ocean. Why were these Americans digging around in that part of the past? He thought they had an agreement on all that. Silence in return for money. It was simple. It was in no one’s interest to excavate old history; to dig up the bodies of the long ago dead. Were they turning on him now? Was he to be betrayed yet again?

Carillo set his jaw firm. “Federico,” he said. “We cannot let the enemy move against us. We must strike back. You know what to do.”

Federico said nothing. He did not have to. He had his orders now. His leader needed him. His country needed him. The phone line went dead.

 

* * *

 

FOR MIKE it felt like giving someone a Judas’ kiss. He and Lauren spent the last hour in the bar of the Marriott talking and drinking. She was enthralled at the revelation about Natalia and her links to Carillo. She seemed to forget Mike worked for the Hodges campaign. She believed they were on an adventure together and had stumbled upon a scoop. A story she would write and post on the Internet once the South Carolina race was over. A story to make her a household name. She was almost light-headed with the excitement and flirted with Mike by resting her hand on his arm.

Mike responded in kind, laughing and joking. But inside he felt physically sick. He wanted to come to Guatemala to exonerate Hodges. To prove his payments to Carillo were innocent. Or that Natalia was some sort of traumatized victim, driven mad by what she witnessed. But it turned out to be the opposite. Carillo was a monster. Natalia was too. They killed and slaughtered scores of people in just Santa Teresa alone. It was truly a nightmare.

He knew he could not contain himself any longer if he drank more, so he suggested they make it an early night. Lauren smiled, perhaps thinking he was suggesting something else, but he simply kissed her on the cheek at her hotel room door. He registered what he thought was a flicker of disappointment on her face, then he waited a breathless ten minutes before he sneaked out of his own room and headed downstairs.

Now he was in the car alone and trying to navigate his way back through the streets of the city to San Gabriel. He looked through the windshield at the confusing streets and lights and tried to remember the way. Slowly, after many mistakes and diversions, he headed in the right direction. He took out his phone and called the number of the church. Villatoro answered. His voice sounded sleepy.

“Father,” Mike said. “I’m so sorry but there is an emergency back home and we leave early tomorrow. Can I come and see you tonight to look at Natalia’s papers? It is very important for us to be able to see them.”

Villatoro sighed down the line, a weary sound full of resignation.

“Please, Father,” said Mike. “We have come a long way.”

For a moment Mike felt a stab of shame. He lied to a priest. It came to this, this breaking of a taboo that he knew his own mother, steeped in her Catholicism, would find shocking. But there was no choice. He was desperate and feeling his way blind now.

“All right,” Villatoro said eventually and without pleasure.

Mike breathed a sigh of relief. At last, he thought. A break. He could check out those papers without Lauren and search for any link back to Hodges, and hopefully, if he was lucky, discover a fuller explanation of why Natalia wanted to kill him. Then he could spin some bullshit to Lauren and get home. She would be furious, no doubt, but it was for the best. Best for him, best for the candidate, best for the campaign.

He thought about that as he drove down a rutted road he was not sure he recognized.

The campaign existed in another world now. He could scarcely remember the long months in Iowa in all that snow and cold, all those meetings with bored farmers and stumping through tiny college campus after campus to win over a few students. What did he tell those young kids, he wondered. He tried to summon up some of the slogans and talking points that filled his life back then. That gave him drive and ambition he barely felt before. But he got nothing. They were just words now: dead things devoid of meaning. He pressed down his foot on the accelerator as his mind raced. He thought of Hodges and the amazing love he felt for the man when he first heard him speak, but he had not felt that way for a long time now. He was sucked into this investigation instead, not realizing until too late that his head had sunk under water and into the murky depths. He was adrift of the campaign now and dealt only with bloody events of the past, desperate to both find them out and cover them up.

He saw that his hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were white. He forced himself to relax, noticing as he did so his car drove past the dark silhouette of Villatoro’s church. He pulled over, got out, and paused to look up skywards into the darkness and gather his breath. Finally, he felt calmer and he entered the church.

Villatoro waited for him, seated on a pew at the back. Mike walked up to him. To save money, Villatoro did not keep electric lights on and only a few flickering candles illuminated the darkness. The priest was like a shade or ghost, the paleness of his face melted into the dim half-light and the dancing shadows. Mike sat down next to him. The two were silent for a moment. Then, to Mike’s surprise, Villatoro spoke first.

“I am glad to have called Natalia my friend,” he said. “You should know that. She taught me more about the power of God’s love than any priest.”

His voice was low but calm.

“She helped murder all those people in Santa Teresa,” Mike said.

Villatoro shook his head. “The fact is for a time Natalia knew God’s forgiveness,” he said. “She was truly sorry for what she did and she loved her daughter as much as any woman I ever knew.”

Villatoro stared at the altar as he spoke but now he turned to look at Mike. His face was serene. “If someone with her past can do that, then we all have hope,” he said. “Do you not see the wonder of God’s work in such a thing?”

Mike could scarcely believe his ears. Yet he felt envy at the priest’s emotions and the sheer love and forgiveness that radiated from him. But that was not all. There was something else. It was Faith. Mike envied him the surety of his beliefs. That these terrible events were not proof of God’s cruelty nor his non-existence but, in fact, the opposite.

“But after that she tried to kill Jack Hodges,” Mike said. “She traveled to America and hid herself with a rifle in a school in Iowa and then tried to shoot him. I’ve followed her trail. She tried to commit murder again.”

“Yes. Not every star shines forever. But we should be glad for her period of Grace. Her choice to become angry once more was a sad one.” The priest paused.

“But your candidate was saved, no? Perhaps that shows God’s hand. You must trust that the universe unfolds as it should. Our Creator would have it no other way.”

The priest stood up and walked in the direction of his back office. Mike stared at his broad back. The feeling of envy nearly over-powered him. How was the priest not angry? How was he so sure of things? But Mike followed obediently behind him like a twig dragged swiftly over rapids by a fast-flowing stream.

In his office Villatoro sat in his chair and reached into a desk drawer. He took out the same tattered box from which he got the photograph of Natalia. He placed it on the table reverently as if it were a Bible. Then he folded his arms across his chest. Mike tried to read his face but it was impassive as stone.

“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.