THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC’S NEW MILITARY ATTACHÉ in Guatemala, Johnny Abbes García, arrived in the country clandestinely. He hadn’t notified the ambassador of his arrival. He caught a taxi at La Aurora airport and ordered the chauffeur to take him to Sixth Avenue, to the San Francisco Mansion, a seedy hotel that he would soon turn into his center of operations. He asked the man at the front desk if there was a Rosicrucian temple in the city, and on receiving a disconcerted, uncomprehending stare in reply, he continued, “Don’t worry about it.”
After unpacking the little clothing he’d brought in his suitcase and hanging it in the old wardrobe in his room, he called Carlos Gacel Castro on the phone, anxious that the only person he knew in the country might not be around. But he got lucky. Carlos answered the phone himself. He was surprised to hear Abbes García was in Guatemala, and immediately accepted his invitation to dinner. He would pick him up at San Francisco Mansion at eight that night.
Carlos Gacel Castro was Cuban, not Guatemalan. Abbes García had met him in Mexico when Trujillo was footing the bill for him to take those classes in police science and spy for the Generalísimo on the Dominican exiles residing in the land of the Aztecs. Gacel Castro, himself an exile, was well acquainted with these people.
Carlos’s boast that he was the ugliest man in the world had endeared him to Abbes García: compared with such a monster, anyone was presentable, even him. Gacel was tall, muscular, pale, with a fleshy, malproportioned face covered in pockmarks, massive ears, nose, and mouth, and orangutan hands and feet which, viewed against his garish tropical dress, made him a tacky, repellent figure. Worst of all were his icy yellowish eyes that probed others, especially women, with aggressive impertinence. He swaggered like a goon, flaunting his physique, in tight pants that showed off his buttocks. He’d been a gangster in Havana, gotten blood on his hands, and had to leave the country to keep from going back to prison, where he’d already done his fair share of time. When Abbes García met him in Mexico and began employing his services, he hadn’t wanted to know much about all that. Gacel was eternally broke, so Abbes managed to get Trujillo to send him a small monthly stipend, along with the occasional gratuity when, apart from informing, he took part in violent actions against some exile or other, always careful not to leave any clues. With time, Gacel had to leave Mexico as well, because the government was about to extradite him to Cuba, where the courts were clamoring for him. That was why Johnny Abbes was able to get his number. Gacel had gotten a job here in the security services as a part-time snitch and part-time bruiser under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel Enrique Trinidad Oliva.
Gacel came to pick him up at eight o’clock precisely, and they had dinner at a tavern, starting with a few beers and moving on to tortillas and roasted chicken with chilies. When the Cuban found out his friend was now a lieutenant colonel and his country’s soon-to-be military attaché in Guatemala, his eyes lit up. He hugged him to congratulate him.
“If I can do anything for you, I’m at your service, pal,” he said.
“There certainly is something,” Johnny Abbes replied. “I’m going to put you on the payroll for two hundred dollars a month, more for special tasks. Now, let’s go somewhere you can really take the country’s pulse.”
“Old habits die hard, no, compadre?” Gacel replied. “Don’t get your hopes up though. The whorehouses in this country are like a morgue.”
Brothels were the former horse racing journalist’s great weakness. He visited them assiduously to gather information, and they gave him a feel for what was going on in town. He felt good, comfortable, at ease in those flea traps dense with smoke and the stench of alcohol and sweat, in the company of tipsy, aggressive men and women you didn’t have to pretend with, who responded to orders: Open your legs and give me that asshole, whore, I’m here to have fun. It wasn’t easy to get the hookers to suck his cock, he had to negotiate every time, and often they flat-out refused. But none of them objected when he wanted to suck on their gash. That was his weakness. A dangerous weakness, sure, he’d been warned about it more than once: “You could get syphilis or who knows what infection. Almost every one of those whores has got the drip, crabs, or something.” But he didn’t care. He liked risk, any risk, but especially this one, which came with pleasure attached.
Gacel knew the cathouses in Guatemala City like the back of his hand. Most were scattered around the rundown Gerona neighborhood. They weren’t as rowdy or violent as the ones in Mexico, and were light-years away from the ones in Ciudad Trujillo, with their spirited merengues, deafening music, and intrepid Dominican hookers, lusty phrases ever on the tip of their luscious tongues. The girls here were surlier, more distant, some of them were Indians who blabbed in their dialects and could hardly get out a word of Spanish. Gacel took Abbes to a bar-cum-bordello on a narrow street in Gerona overseen by Miriam, a woman with a long mane she dyed red or platinum blond, depending on the occasion. Abbes bedded a black chick from Belize who spoke to him in a mix of Spanish and badly mumbled English. She was delighted to part her legs and let him drive his tongue into that red, humid cavity with its succulent stench.
When Gacel left him at San Francisco Mansion at dawn, Abbes García had learned two things about Guatemala: first, no one had a good word to say about President Castillo Armas and in all the political gossip he heard, there wasn’t a single person who would give a quetzal for his life. Second, even if Guatemala’s whores left a lot to be desired, Zacapa rum was just as good as the Dominican Republic’s.
He waited two more days before presenting himself at the embassy. But he didn’t waste those forty-eight hours. He was working, getting the lay of the land in that unknown city full of unknown people. He read all the newspapers from cover to cover, El Imparcial, the Diario de Centro América, the Prensa Libre, and La Hora, listened to the news on Radio Nacional, TGW, and Radio Morse, and walked ceaselessly through the streets, squares, and parks, stopping in occasionally at the cafés and cantinas he came across. He conversed with people, and though it wasn’t easy—many of them looked at him askance when they heard his foreign accent—he got bits of information out of them. At night he returned to his hotel, weary and certain of something he’d already guessed at that first evening in his conversations with Carlos Gacel Castro: no one liked Castillo Armas, many thought he was a flunky, lacking character and authority, a consummate mediocrity only respected by a handful of friends, most of them opportunists and ass-kissers. Not even his anticommunist convictions were all that firm; word had it that he was talking now about giving back some of the lands they had taken from the Indians. He hadn’t done it yet, but the rumors were spreading, probably thanks to his enemies. Everyone said his lover kept him under a spell, and that Marta was the one who called the shots, even at the highest level of government. How different from Generalísimo Trujillo! Who in the Dominican Republic would dare say a word against him the way everyone here did against Castillo Armas, even in the cantinas! That was the reason for all the disorder, the uncertainty in Guatemala City, that was why no one seemed to think things could go on like this indefinitely.
On the third day, he showed up at the Dominican Embassy. His sudden appearance surprised everyone, starting with Ambassador Gilberto Morillo Soto, a renowned psychiatrist at home who was already aware of Abbes’s promotion. They had been waiting for him, they would have gone to the airport to pick him up if they had known the hour of his arrival.
“Don’t worry, Ambassador,” Abbes García responded. “I wanted to take a look around town, make a few contacts, before getting to work.”
Morillo Soto showed him the office he had prepared for him in the embassy building. Abbes García thanked him, at the same time letting him know he wouldn’t come there often, as his mission demanded he spend much of his time on the streets or traveling in the country’s interior. For now, he said, he would like to interview two high-level figures in the Guatemalan government, to convey his personal greetings: Carlos Lemus, the civilian head of the security services, and Lieutenant Colonel Enrique Trinidad Oliva, chief of the various bodies charged with public order and safeguarding the regime.
Both of them gave him an appointment almost immediately. His interview with Carlos Lemus left him disappointed—he struck him as a bureaucrat, incapable of independent thought, so timid he refused to give a personal opinion about anything and only responded to questions with commonplaces and evasions—but he took a great liking to Lieutenant Colonel Enrique Trinidad Oliva. He was a tall, wiry man, with dusky skin and an enormous crocodile mouth. From the first, it was evident he was a person of action, ambitious, resolute. His responses were clear because he thought for himself, and like Abbes García, he was willing to take risks and to talk openly, without reservations.
Abbes García took him a bottle of Dominican rum—So you can see, Lieutenant Colonel, it’s as good as the finest Zacapa—and they opened it immediately. Though it wasn’t yet midday, they toasted and drank two or three glasses each in the course of their conversation. Afterward, Trinidad Oliva invited him to lunch at El Lagar, a restaurant that served traditional Guatemalan cuisine.
Trinidad Oliva was a great admirer of Generalísimo Trujillo and could recognize, having been there himself, how he had transformed the Dominican Republic into a prosperous, modern country with the best armed forces in the entire Caribbean. Your boss is a man of character, he affirmed. A great patriot. And he’s got a pair of balls as big as an elephant’s. He paused, lowering his voice, then added: We could use some of that around here. Abbes García laughed, and Trinidad Oliva laughed, too, and from that moment, it was clear that they were friends, maybe even accomplices.
They saw each other the next morning and the morning after, and soon, apart from drinking and eating together, they were going whoring at establishments of a rather higher class than the ones Carlos Gacel Castro frequented. From their many outings, Abbes García drew a number of conclusions that he passed along to the Generalísimo in detailed reports: Lieutenant Colonel Trinidad Oliva was a man who was aiming high. He felt the government had unfairly pushed him aside. He’d been imprisoned under Jacobo Árbenz for conspiring against the regime and had no love for Castillo Armas, which meant he could be key to their project. Then again, it was hard to get a sense of his position in the armed forces, an institution apparently rife with divisions, with groups conspiring one against the other. That was the reason Castillo Armas’s government was unstable, held together by stopgaps, prone to collapse at any moment, whether from outside action or through erosion from within. Another important thing: Marta Borrero Parra, nicknamed Miss Guatemala, a young and very beautiful woman, did indeed have the president mesmerized, and she exercised a great deal of power over him. He had given her a house and consulted her about everything, people said, including matters of state. Abbes García would therefore try to meet her as soon as possible, to establish a relationship advantageous to his diplomatic maneuverings in the country. The fact was that the principal division that existed in the government—incredible as it seemed—was between the supporters of the first lady, Mrs. Odilia Palomo, and those of the president’s mistress. This rivalry might make conditions favorable to his undertaking. Johnny Abbes sent all his reports to the Generalísimo in coded messages.
While wandering the city in constant search for information, the lieutenant colonel discovered that another of the topics of the day was the debate on the opening of casinos, which the government had announced with the intention of encouraging tourism, but which the Catholic Church had declared its opposition to. Archbishop Mariano Rossell y Arellano himself had railed against gambling, which he said would extend corruption, vice, and crime, attracting gangsters and mafiosos to Guatemala just as it had in Havana. The arrival of casinos had turned their sister nation of Cuba into one big brothel, a hotbed of criminals and fugitives from North America.
Abbes García was struggling with these controversies when Gacel Castro told him Ricardo Bonachea León had escaped from Mexico to Guatemala and that he needed his help, having entered the country covertly. Bonachea León was an expatriate gunman in Mexico, where he had occasionally collaborated with Abbes García and Gacel Castro spying on Dominican exiles. Trujillo had ordered him to liquidate one of them, Tancredo Martínez, the former Dominican consul in Miami, who had run away to Mexico seeking asylum. Bonachea León made a mess of it, going to the insurance company where the target worked and shooting him square in the face. He maimed him terribly, but the man survived. That was his reason for absconding to Guatemala, and now he needed a hand. Abbes García talked with Lieutenant Colonel Trinidad Oliva, who not only arranged papers for him, but even said he could offer the Cuban certain jobs in the same line as Carlos Gacel Castro that would earn him a living.
At one of their weekly lunches, the Dominican made a bold offer to his Guatemalan friend: the two should open a casino together. The dark, wiry officer stared at him, disconcerted.
“You and me, half and half,” Abbes García went on. “I’ve got no doubt it’s a solid business, one that will bring in a good deal of cash.”
“Have you seen the commotion in Guatemala about this issue of casinos?” Trinidad Oliva asked, carefully measuring his words. “Castillo Armas ordered the Beach and Tennis Club closed and expelled the owners, a couple of gringos, from the country. And the archbishop will fight any other casinos tooth and nail.”
“Hearing that is what gave me the idea,” Abbes García said. “If worst comes to worst, they could be casinos exclusively for foreigners, if that will mollify the archbishop. Let him save the citizens; the tourists can go to hell: more than one priest thinks that way. Who gives the permits to open a casino? You, right?”
“It’s dicey,” Trinidad Oliva said, turning grave. “I would need to consult the president.”
“Consult him, no worries. Besides, even if we are the owners, there’s no reason for your name or mine to appear anywhere. Don’t you know someone who could serve as a front man for us?”
The lieutenant colonel reflected for a moment.
“I’ve got the perfect person,” Trinidad Oliva said. “Ahmed Kurony, the Turk. He deals in jewelry, precious stones, shady business. They say he moves contraband, he’s some kind of gangster, that much is obvious.”
“There you go then. Sounds like our guy.”
But the operation fell through, and only deepened the antagonism between Castillo Armas and Enrique Trinidad Oliva. When the Lug told the president he was going to authorize a casino for Ahmed Kurony, the president categorically forbade it. He had enough problems with the Catholic Church, he explained, and not only with the casinos. At the archbishop’s instigation, many priests had been pounding the pulpit and railing against men who keep concubines and call themselves Catholics, and he’d just heard that the cathedral would soon be holding a week of prayer to prevent the devil’s taking hold of the city through the casinos; so for now, another gambling den was out of the question, especially if a known contrabandist and thug like the Turk was going to be behind it. Didn’t this Ahmed Kurony have a nasty reputation? And so Trinidad Oliva had to tell Abbes García:
“For now, we’ll need to forget that plan. In the future, we’ll see.”
Getting to Miss Guatemala was more difficult. The famous Marta rarely set foot outside, never mind going to gatherings or high-society cocktail hours; she only met with trusted friends, and Abbes García wasn’t invited. But one afternoon, at a reception at the Colombian Embassy, he was lucky enough to run into her. As soon as he saw her, he was certain Generalísimo Trujillo’s intuitions were correct: that woman would be essential for what he had come to Guatemala to do.
Laying eyes on her, the lieutenant colonel realized she was a woman he would like to be with. She was prettier than the legends circulating about the president’s lover had led him to believe. And very young: to all appearances, hardly more than an adolescent. Not tall, but marvelously proportioned, with a natural coquettishness in her way of dressing—she wore a sinuous skirt that showed off her shapely legs and ankles, sandals, and a blouse that revealed her shapely chest—and when she walked, she moved her shoulders savvily and each step made her buttocks and breasts quiver. What was most attractive about her was her strangely tranquil gaze, which forced her interlocutors to look down, as though the gentle insolence of those penetrating, greenish-gray eyes had caused them to flag and admit defeat. Abbes García did the impossible to win her favor and strike up a friendship with her. He praised her, congratulated her, asked if he might pay her a visit; she said yes, and even gave him a date: next Thursday at five in the afternoon. That night at the brothel, as he got hot and ejaculated with a run-of-the-mill tramp, he kept his eyes closed and dreamed of undressing Miss Guatemala and having his way with her.
On the lieutenant colonel’s first visit to the house Castillo Armas had given his lover, not far from the Casa Presidencial, Miss Guatemala sealed her friendship with Johnny Abbes García. An odd current of sympathy united Marta and the Dominican. He brought her gifts, sent her flowers, thanked her fulsomely for receiving him. He told her that, since his arrival in Guatemala, he had heard from all quarters about the sway she held over the president and how the most important things Colonel Castillo Armas had done for his country were thanks to her advice. As they drank their tea, he told her of the marvels Trujillo had carried out in the Dominican Republic and invited her to come see them herself whenever she liked: she was always welcome as the Generalísimo’s guest. She could enjoy the beaches, the music, the tranquility, and when she learned to dance to the merengue, she would realize it was the happiest music in the world.
After that visit, he wrote a detailed report to his leader about his relationship with Miss Guatemala, including an enthusiastic description of her physical attributes. At the same time, he said: That is not the end of her attractions. Despite her youth, she possesses obvious intelligence, a great deal of curiosity, and political intuition. In his response, Generalísimo Trujillo told him the relationship was an opportune one and that he should cultivate it. But for now, he needed to make contact with the CIA’s man in Guatemala, a gringo who called himself Mike and had some kind of association with the Yankee embassy. He should look for him there, or leave his name and address for Mike to get in touch with him.
Abbes García was still living in the San Francisco Mansion, the same drab hotel he’d checked into on arrival. He had lunch and dinner out, and at night, if he had no other commitments, he’d go with Gacel and Bonachea León to some brothel or other. A routine life, in appearances, but at their core his activities had no other goal than fulfilling the task Trujillo had set him.
Just as Abbes García was asking himself how to get in touch with this gringo whose name was probably something other than Mike, he received (not through the Dominican Embassy, but at the hotel where he was staying, which no one but Gacel was supposed to know) an invitation to dine at the Hotel Panamerican two days later from a gentleman whose card read: Mike Laporta. Specialist in climate, biogeography, and the environment. United States Embassy, Guatemala. How the hell had he found out his address? Undoubtedly, here was proof the CIA was functioning as it should.
Mike Laporta couldn’t look more like a gringo if he tried, but he spoke good Spanish, with a slight Mexican accent. He must have been somewhere between forty and fifty. His blond hair was thinning, and he had a heavy, strapping build, with red hair on his arms and chest. He wore glasses to correct a short-sightedness that lent a certain vagueness to his stare. His manner was natural, sympathetic, and he seemed to know everything about Guatemala and Central America in general. But he didn’t make a show of it, indeed he had a timid, discreet air about him. Abbes García asked him how many years he’d been there, and he waved one arm as he replied curtly, “Quite a few.”
Mike confirmed what Abbes García already knew in broad outlines, but added numerous details about the various factions the army was divided into, and revealed that several conspiracies were already afoot. He surprised him by saying that among Castillo Armas’s presumptive successors, the one with the best chance was Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes. He was living outside the country at present, apparently prevented from returning on the instructions of Castillo Armas, who feared him. Despite his retirement, he still had many supporters among the officers and enlisted men, and the Guatemalan people admired his spirit, energy, and strength of character. The same reasons Castillo Armas refused to let him return.
“What I mean to say is, he has everything this president doesn’t,” Mike concluded. “I suppose Generalísimo Trujillo will be pleased to hear that.”
“It’s true, he has a very fine impression of General Ydígoras Fuentes, the two men are friends,” Abbes García said. “But what interests Trujillo in any case is what’s best for the Guatemalans.”
“Of course,” Mike said, with a sardonic little laugh. “I’m under the impression General Ydígoras is a great admirer of Trujillo as well. He considers him a model.”
They talked about this and that, and the Dominican confessed to the gringo that though he’d been in Guatemala for several months now, he hadn’t managed to arrange a private meeting with President Castillo Armas. As if remembering something all of a sudden, Mike told Abbes García he wanted to ask an important favor of him. What? Could he introduce him to Martita, Miss Guatemala, the president’s beloved?
“Yes, of course, I’d be happy to,” the Dominican said. “How strange that you don’t already know her.”
“She’s not an easy woman to meet,” Mike told him. “The president is deeply jealous, he won’t let her go out alone. Only with him, at receptions and dinners, and apparently even that’s very rare. Rarer than a bishop’s funeral, as they say around here.”
“So she’s the one who really holds the power,” Abbes said. “Not Mrs. Odilia Palomo.”
“Of course,” Mike affirmed, then adding immediately afterward, “at least, that’s what people say.”
“I would be very happy to introduce you to her,” Abbes said. “We could go visit her one afternoon. You’ll notice she’s quite a beauty.”
“Hopefully she’ll see us.” Mike sighed. “Up to now, all my attempts have failed.”
She did see them, at her home, and offered them each a cup of tea with sweets made by the Clarist sisters. Seeing Marta’s perplexity as she looked at his card, Mike explained his profession and his responsibilities at the embassy: he advised the National Meteorological Service on the latest advances in weather forecasting and on the best policies for protecting cities from the seismic shifts so frequent in this country covered in volcanoes.
As he left, Mike asked Miss Guatemala if he, too, could come visit her again.
“Not too often,” she replied frankly. “Carlos is quite jealous, and a man of the old school. He doesn’t like me seeing other men, even in the company of their wives, if he isn’t here.”
They laughed, and she added with a flirtatious smile:
“It would be best if you come see me together.”
And so they did. Every two or three weeks, Johnny Abbes García and the man whose name wasn’t Mike and who was probably not even a meteorologist came to the home of the president’s lover, with bouquets of flowers and boxes of chocolates, to have tea with pastries made by the Clarist sisters. Their conversations, anodyne at first, turned increasingly to politics.
Abbes García noted that on each visit, as though inadvertently, Mike subtly extracted information from the young beauty. Did she realize? Of course she did. Abbes García found out for certain one afternoon when Mike left the two of them alone for a few moments to go to the bathroom. Lowering her voice to a whisper and pointing to the departing American, Marta said:
“That gringo’s from the CIA, right?”
“I’ve never asked,” Abbes said. “Anyway, if he was, he’d never admit it.”
“He’s trying to get things out of me, like I’m an idiot and I don’t realize it,” Martita said.
On the way out of Miss Guatemala’s house, it struck Abbes García that he should warn Mike, and he told him what Marta had said. The gringo nodded.
“Of course she knows who I work for,” he said, giggling once more. “She even asked me for money for the information she’s giving me. She and I have a deal. But perhaps it would be best if you and I didn’t discuss such delicate matters.”
“Understood,” Abbes García said. And he made the sign of the cross over his lips.
They went to see a cowboy film at the Variedades. The gringo loved them. It was a slow one, featuring the lovely Ava Gardner and plenty of shoot-outs. When they left, they went to dinner at a small Italian restaurant. They had a glass of rum to finish, and Abbes García indecorously proposed to Mike that they end the night at a whorehouse.
Mike’s face flushed purple, and he looked at him severely.
“My apologies, but I never go to such places,” he said, grimacing with disgust. “I’m faithful to my wife and my religion.”