and, like I said, most of the tourists were English, so they sent in a couple of their soldiers from Belize, men from that group which had handled the Iranian Embassy siege in London a few months earlier…’
‘The SAS.’
‘Yeah, that was them. Anyway…’
‘There’s one of them here now,’ Vincenzo interjected. ‘In Antigua.’
Alvaro was surprised. ‘Doing what?’
‘That’s what we wanted to know. He picked up a tail at the airport – the usual routine – and on his first night here he had dinner with the British Military Attaché, which isn’t routine for tourists. So we kept the tail on him and had the London Embassy check him out. He’s still on active service with the British Army, the SAS Regiment, but not for much longer. And he is currently on leave, improving his Spanish at one of the schools in Antigua.’
‘Your people have checked that out?’
Vincenzo looked hurt. ‘Of course. He’s doing just what he’s supposed to be doing.’
‘How old is he?’ Alvaro asked.
‘Thirty-two.’
‘Then he couldn’t have been one of the men at Tikal.’
Vincenzo smiled. ‘Now that would have been a coincidence.’
Alvaro shrugged and gulped down the rest of his beer. ‘I have to get back,’ he said as he got to his feet.
‘I thought you were finished for the day.’
‘I just remembered something.’
Alvaro walked briskly across the street to where the big Mercedes with smoked-glass windows was parked, and drove it slowly back to G-2 headquarters, his brain mulling over the idea which his cousin had unwittingly presented to him. The two English officers, whoever they were, had not only seen El Espíritu, but presumably had also heard him speak. And perhaps, in the spirit of co-operation between armed forces, one or both of the Englishmen could be persuaded to identify the voice on the tape.
Less than a mile to the north, Tomás Xicay was one of five Indians sitting in the back of an open truck, but the only one among them who was keeping an impatient watch out for their driver. Logic told him he was in no danger of apprehension – there was no Army major’s body hidden in this truck – but he couldn’t help feeling vulnerable. Beyond the cathedral, which loomed into the sky above the market, lay the city’s main square and across that stood the Palacio Nacional, which housed, among other things, the offices of the dreaded G-2.
Guatemala City was not easy on the nerves, and Tomás found himself wondering for the tenth time in as many minutes why he had chosen to stay the extra couple of days once their mission had been accomplished. To see his uncle was the obvious answer, but his uncle had hardly been at home, and his aunt had been turned into a nervous wreck by his mere presence in the house. There would be no next time, Tomás decided. Or at least not until the war was won.
It was getting dark now, and even a couple of his fellow travellers were beginning to stir with impatience, muttering to each other in Cakchiquel. This wasn’t a language Tomás was fluent in, but the gist of the conversation was clear enough – where the fuck was the driver?
Tomás rearranged his legs on the wooden floor. Judging from detritus scattered across it, the truck had arrived at the Central Market that morning loaded with squash, but now, like the many others waiting nearby, it was empty save for those taking passengers back into the Western Highlands.
On the nearest truck three Indian women were wearing the traditional skirts of San Pedro La Laguna and conversing in his native language, Tzutujil. Tomás had grown up in Santiago Atitlán, another large village on the shores of Lake Atitlán, and thought perhaps he recognized one of the women. But he made no attempt at contact – it had been almost ten years since he had lived in his home village, and he had no desire to draw attention to himself.
The driver arrived at last, wearing the smile of several beers on his face. But his driving skills seemed unimpaired, and soon the truck was threading its way out of the capital and on to the Pan-American Highway. As it climbed the first of many winding inclines the last slice of setting sun was briefly visible between distant volcanoes, and then night descended, reducing the world to those stretches of tarmac, verge and cliff face which fell within the glare of the truck’s headlights.
Staring out into the darkness Tomás found himself studying a mental picture of his father.
Miguel Mendoza Xicay had been tall for an Indian, five feet nine inches by the American count, and he had worn his hair long, the way he believed their Mayan ancestors had always done. He had not been an educated man – how could he with no school in the village of his childhood? – and it seemed likely that he had been too good-hearted to understand the realities of life in Guatemala. The family had access to a little land on the slopes of the volcano behind the village, and they had grown beans, coffee, corn and various fruits. The prices they received were always derisory, and no money could ever be saved, but the family only rarely went hungry, and there was usually the additional cash the children earned from making and selling handicrafts to help them through the worst times.
Then the Army had come, and established a camp only a couple of kilometres outside the town. The amount of land available to the townspeople shrank as Indian deeds went mysteriously missing and other claimants appeared with deeds which the local Spanish-speaking authorities fell over themselves to approve. The local people protested and the most vocal swiftly disappeared, never to be seen again, either dead or alive. Rumour had it that most of them had been thrown from helicopters, still conscious, into the smoking maw of San Pedro.
Through all these troubles Miguel Xicay had tenaciously clung to the hope that somehow the Army’s behaviour was an aberration, that if the authorities only knew what was really happening then they would step in and put a stop to it. No one expected life to be fair, and no one expected the rich Ladinos to behave like true Christians, but he found it hard to believe that such a campaign of brutality and murder could be sponsored by a government.
It was no accident that the man whom Tomás’s father most admired was the local priest, an American named Stanley Rother. The father had arrived in Santiago Atitlán in the mid-sixties, and like Miguel Xicay he had watched the escalating brutality with a mixture of horror and disbelief. When the Army called a meeting of all the village leaders he had listened with mounting rage as the local commander blamed all the killings, the rapes, the tortured corpses, on the communist subversivos, and furthermore demanded that the villagers report any suspicious behaviour to the Army.
He had got slowly to his feet, and in a silence pregnant with dread, told the Army commander that no one was fooled, that everyone knew it was the soldiers who raped and killed and tortured, and that they must stop these acts against man and God.
The next morning Stanley Rother had been shredded by automatic gunfire in the doorway of his church.
Tomás’s father had gone out that evening to talk with his friends, and had never been seen alive again. His body had been found on the volcano slopes a week later, minus tongue, eyes and hands. The twelve-year-old Tomás had not been meant to see it, but he had, and he was not sorry. He had needed to imprint it on his brain like a scar, because only then could he be sure never to forget.
And nor would he, he thought, as the truck laboured its way up another slope. Not that he needed that one dreadful memory any more. In
