His father especially so.
I knew him and still he is there in me…
Tomás’s hand moved involuntarily towards the pocket where he kept the dog-eared copy of Neruda’s poem. It was too dark to read, but that didn’t matter – he knew all the pages, all the lines, off by heart.
‘I, who knew him, saw him go down,’ the inner voice recited. ‘Till he existed only in what he was leaving – streets he could scarcely be aware of, houses he never would inhabit. I come back to see him and every day I wait …’
Luis Serrano leaned back in his leather swivel chair, fingers intertwined behind his head, and ran his tongue along his upper lip, tasting the trace of brandy which still clung to his moustache. Through two walls he could hear the TV football match his son and friends were watching, and the faint rat-a-tat of fireworks in the distant Plaza Mayor was audible above that. Presumably the Indians were dragging one of their Jesus statues around the square, choking themselves on incense as they went.
Serrano leaned forward once more, and absent-mindedly tapped the report with his right index finger. He now felt reasonably certain that the El Espíritu who had been such an irritant in the early eighties, and the subversivo on the tape from Quiche, were one and the same man.
It was not a good time for his reappearance. The Americans wanted a negotiated settlement with the subversivos, and the Government’s ability to impose one that was lacking in any specific commitments – one that avoided any discussion at all of the land issue – rested on the Army keeping a strong upper hand in the rural areas. The last thing anyone needed was the public resurrection of some old Indian hero, and more humiliations like the Muñoz business.
Serrano reached for his Zippo lighter – a gift from a former American military attaché – and the packet of Marlboro Lights. Alvaro’s idea of asking the English soldier to identify the voice was a good one, as far as it went. The previous day he had read through the records of the business in Tikal fifteen years before, and there was no doubt that both of the Englishmen had enjoyed several face-to-face conversations with the leader of the terrorists. If anyone could definitively identify the bastard, then they could.
He had ordered G-2’s man in the London embassy to run a check on the pair of them. The older one – James Docherty – had retired from the Army, and was apparently no longer living in England, but his younger companion was still on active service. It had taken some time, and not a little money – always assuming the agent’s expenses sheet could be believed – to ascertain that Darren Wilkinson was still serving in 22 SAS Regiment. His current rank was sergeant, he was attached to the Regiment’s Training Wing, and he was stationed at the Stirling Lines barracks near Hereford, some 120 miles west of London.
Serrano watched the smoke from his cigarette curl away, remembering the woman in London on his second and last visit. She had been one of the English secretaries at the embassy, with bright-red hair and pale skin. So exotic. So aggressive in bed.
He sighed and forced his mind back to the matter in hand. Mention of the Training Wing reminded him of something…ah yes, that business in Colombia which the SAS had been involved in a few years earlier. He had heard about it from the American Military Attaché at an embassy party. The Colombian Government, busy setting up an anti-narcotics unit, had asked the British Government to send them a couple of advisers. When one of the advisers and a local politician had been kidnapped by drug barons half an army of SAS soldiers had dropped out of the sky to rescue them. Or so the story went.
It didn’t really matter how true the last part was, Serrano thought. The point was that Britain had been prepared to send advisers to Colombia to help in the fight against drug trafficking. Might they not be equally willing to send one man to help in the fight against the subversivos?
This man Wilkinson could take part as an observer in the sweep which was planned for the following week. And when they captured or killed this El Espíritu then the Englishman would be on the spot to identify the miserable little shit.
And he would also, Serrano realized with satisfaction, be a neutral witness to the old boy’s death. No one would believe an Army report that El Espíritu had been killed, but an Englishman…His testimony could lay this particular ‘ghost’ once and for all, and prevent a host of other claimants to the name springing up in the dead man’s place.
Yes, Serrano thought. He liked it. He liked it a lot.
Would the British agree? They still had a reliable enough government from all reports, though maybe not quite so reliable as in the woman Thatcher’s time. In any event the SAS was unlikely to be a haven for communist sympathizers.
But Serrano had to admit that Guatemala’s reputation in the world had suffered in recent years. All those little creeps from Amnesty International and Americas Watch, living their safe little lives in the rich man’s world and bleating on about human rights abuses everywhere else.
How could he sugar the pill? What could Guatemala offer the British?
Another Belize treaty? The last president to sign one had almost been tried on treason charges, and the idea of sticking his neck out that far was not particularly appealing. It would be better, he decided, to go through the Americans. They had a keener appreciation of what was really at stake in Central America, and they could hardly refuse to help when their own beloved peace negotiations were on the line. ‘We are so close to a breakthrough,’ Serrano murmured out loud in rehearsal, ‘and this one terrorist could undermine everything we have all worked for.’
It sounded convincing enough for the US State Department. The Americans could then bribe or threaten the British, whichever they deemed more appropriate. Serrano picked up the phone to call the Foreign Ministry, trying in vain to remember the name of the current Foreign Minister.
The request for diplomatic assistance was delivered to the State Department by Guatemala’s Washington ambassador early the following afternoon. After receiving his visitor, Sam Udovich, Acting Head of the Central America desk, stared out at the falling snow and slowly consumed a strawberry cheese croissant before reaching for the internal phone.
‘Clemens,’ a voice answered.
‘Brent, hi. The Guatemalan Ambassador’s just been darkening my office door.’
‘And what do the death squads want today?’
Udovich told him.
Clemens listened in silence, and then laughed. ‘They want some Brit soldier to look over a line-up of corpses and pick out the guilty man?’ he asked incredulously.
‘That’s one way of putting it,’ Udovich agreed. ‘It is in our interests that they get this guy.’
‘That’s what Ollie North said.’
‘He was right,’ Udovich said drily.
Clemens sighed audibly.
‘Look,’ Udovich went on patiently, ‘I’d take it as a personal favour if you could get the Brits to get with the programme on this one.’ And if you can, went the first unspoken message, then I owe you one. And if you can’t or won’t, went the second, then don’t come to me for a favour
