Guatemala – Journey into Evil

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He was probably right. After all, Lake Atitlán had continued to draw tourists no matter how bad things got. And if they could move the Indians back from the shoreline, and simply bus them in to work in the hotels and sell the stuff the tourists loved so much, then the sky was probably the limit. The place could become another Acapulco.

Morales steered the car round a bend in the slope, and drove through a small but stubborn patch of mist, emerging just above a sheer drop of several hundred metres. He could feel the nervousness of the soldiers beside and behind him, and rather enjoyed the sensation. In the rear-view mirror he was watching for the following jeep to materialize out of the mist when figures loomed out of another patch almost directly in front of him.

As he applied the brakes Morales instinctively reached for his holstered automatic, and then brought his hand away empty. It was only a bunch of Indian holy men – cofradías, they were called; he was always running into them on the roads, carrying their holy dummies to one of their countless festivals. And this bunch of idiots had managed to drop their dummy – he could see it, a child’s version of the Virgin Mary, lying face down on the road, next to the overturned cabinet in which they had been carrying it.

One of the old men was walking towards the Cherokee, probably to apologize for getting in the Army’s way. Morales took note of the ridiculous costume – the knee-length shorts and the rag wound round the man’s head – and wondered why the tourists found this anything other than pathetic.

The weather-beaten face of the old man was smiling apologetically at him as he approached the car window. And then, as if by magic, a revolver was boring into Morales’s ear.

‘If you want to live another second,’ the old man said in perfect Spanish, ‘tell your men to leave the jeep without their weapons.’

Razor closed the guidebook and tried stuffing it into the pocket on the back of the seat in front of him. This was not easy, as the slim pocket already contained his Walkman, two airline magazines, instructions on how to behave if the airliner suddenly plummeted 30,000 feet into the Atlantic, a Ruth Rendell mystery and a half-empty quarter-bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.

He had learnt one thing from Hajrija’s guidebook – the rest of Guatemala had little in common with the bit he had visited in 1980. The ruins of Tikal were situated in the thinly populated northern half of the country, a mostly flat area of jungles and swamps, but most of the country’s people lived either on the Pacific coastal plain or in the vast swath of mountains, plateaux and valleys which formed the country’s backbone. It sounded like Chris Martinson’s descriptions of Colombia, and like nothing Razor had ever seen.

In the window seat next to him Hajrija was happily giggling at Blackadder, which was showing on the tiny screen. Razor reckoned he’d already seen the episode about half a dozen times, and watching the final scenes without the benefit of headphones, he found he could lip-read the dialogue.

He sneaked a glance at Hajrija’s happy face, and wondered yet again at his luck in not only finding but also holding on to her. Her lustrous black hair was pulled loosely back in a ponytail, making her look younger than usual, and her high cheekbones were faintly glistening in the sunlight. The first time he had seen her, standing in the corridor of the Sarajevo Holiday Inn, those cheekbones had jutted from a face made gaunt by stress and an inadequate diet.

The credits started to roll, and she took off the headphones. ‘The English are completely crazy,’ she said, readjusting her hair.

‘It’s all we have left,’ Razor said. He retrieved the guidebook from the crowded pocket. ‘What first made you want to go to Guatemala?’ he asked.

She lifted both shoulders in the familiar shrug. ‘I don’t remember,’ she said. ‘You know how it is – some countries just seem appealing. Some don’t. Maybe I saw some pictures when I was a child, or a programme on TV. I can’t remember. But I always wanted to see Lake Atitlán. I mean, how many big lakes are there with volcanoes all around them? And I grew up in mountains. The air is so clear in places like that, and the colours. I love it. I want to see Peru as well, and Kashmir.’

She was switching channels as she spoke, in search of further entertainment. ‘Are you going to watch a movie?’ she asked.

‘Don’t think so.’

‘Are you OK?’ she asked, turning towards him, feeling slightly worried. He didn’t seem his usual ebullient self.

‘Fine. I just don’t like watching things on a screen the size of a postage stamp.’

‘You should have your eyes tested,’ she said.

He nodded and grinned.

Satisfied, she put the headphones back on and left him to the guidebook. Razor squeezed it back into the pocket and sat back with his eyes closed, thinking how strange it was to be heading out on a job like this with her beside him. Still, this whole trip had a strange feeling to it. For one thing the CO had driven them to Gatwick in person, which had to be a first. And for most of the journey Razor had had the feeling Davies was biting his tongue rather than saying what was on his mind. His last words had been: ‘Remember, if you feel the need to press the ejector button, just do it. And we’ll just have to deal with the political fall-out.’

That was all very well, Razor thought, but he preferred Jamie Docherty’s epigram: ‘When the shit hits the fan, it’s too late to turn the fan off.’

What the hell. He looked at his watch, and saw that the Tottenham versus Blackburn game was an hour away from kick-off. Just his luck, he thought – the day they played the League leaders and he had to miss it. If there was ever a nuclear war, Razor was convinced it would come with Tottenham one point short of their first League title since the Middle Ages.

He closed his eyes again, and let the hum of the jet engines lull him into sleep.

Chris Martinson and Ben Manley sat in the coffee bar which overlooked the arrival hall at Guatemala City’s Aurora International Airport, and watched a plane-load of American tourists and returning Ladino families pluck their luggage from the carousel.

‘Is this guy a friend or just a brother-in-arms?’ Manley asked.

‘A friend, I suppose,’ Chris said. He had always been something of a loner, and since Eddie Wilshaw’s death in Colombia he had got used to the idea of not having friends, but over the past couple of years he had felt closer to Razor than anyone else, male or female.

‘Well, that should help,’ Manley said. ‘But these Guatemalan Army guys, they’re not half as bad as the press they get. Most of the officers come from good families, and most of them have been trained in the States. There are a few psychos, like there are in any army, ours included.’

‘What about G-2?’ Chris asked.

‘They had a bad reputation in the eighties, and I suppose it’s still not good. But you won’t have to deal with them. We’ve been promised this is a strictly Army affair.’

Chris sipped at his coffee, wondering who Manley was trying to kid. There didn’t seem much left of the wide-eyed innocent Chris had first known in the Green Howards. Manley was a fellow East Anglian and another bird-watcher, and they had spent a lot of time together in those days, both in England and Germany. But their career paths had diverged, and Manley seemed to have acquired the blinkers necessary for following his. He hadn’t changed, simply narrowed his focus.

Maybe he had himself, Chris thought, but he didn’t think so. ‘What’s the social life like around here?’ he asked.

‘Restricted. Just the other embassies, really. Most of the locals you meet are too rich to notice you. There’s only the junior officers, really, and some of them are OK. They know where the action is, anyway.’

‘And the women?’ Chris asked.

‘Difficult. This is a Catholic country, so any female over fourteen is either a wife, a Virgin Mary or a tart. The only real exceptions are students, and you have to be pretty careful what you’re getting into with them as well.’

‘What about the Indians?’

Manley snorted. ‘Another world altogether. It’s like apartheid,’ he added, without any apparent moral judgement. ‘The two worlds just don’t mix.’

Except when it comes to hiring servants, Chris thought to himself, just as a growing roar outside announced the arrival of another flight.

‘That’ll be the Miami flight,’ Manley said, getting to his feet. ‘We’d better get down there.’

Razor and Hajrija were still on the plane when a smiling young man in a uniform arrived to escort them through the entry formalities. These consisted of a single brief conversation between their young man and another uniform in a booth, who thereupon attacked both their passports with a fearsome-looking stamp. Their bags, which included two SAS uniforms and two Browning High Power 9mm semi-automatics with extra magazines, had already reached the arrival hall, where Chris Martinson and another man were standing guard over it.

‘Look what the wind blew in,’ Chris said.

‘It’s good to see you too,’ Razor said. ‘I was wondering who was going to carry the luggage.’

Manley thanked the Guatemalan and led the other three across the cavernous hall and out through the exit. On the other side of the road Hertz and Budget car rental offices sat beneath a huge hoarding advertising Lucky Strike cigarettes. ‘I love exotic countries,’ Razor said, as Manley opened up the embassy limousine.

The Wilkinsons slumped into the back seat. ‘The hotel’s good,’ Chris said from the front, just as a huge roar sounded to their left and two Chinook military helicopters loomed above the row of offices and lifted away out of sight. They reminded Razor of Apocalypse Now. Nice omen, he thought.

A few moments later they were passing under an old stone aqueduct and entering the city. At the first major intersection a large building announced itself as Chuck E Cheese’s Centre Mall, and behind it were ranged several residential high-rises. It all looked like the Lea Bridge Road translated into Spanish, Razor decided.

Things improved as Manley turned the car down a broad, tree-lined boulevard. There were donkey rides for children in the wide central reservation, and one local entrepreneur was doing a roaring trade in Batman T-shirts. Most of the buildings lining the road seemed to be either hotels or offices, and all of them flew the sky-blue and white national flag.

‘There’s a logic to their flag,’ Manley told them. ‘The blue on either side symbolizes the Pacific and Atlantic, and the white in between is the peace the conquistadors brought to the land. Hence the quetzal holding the olive branch.’

Irony, blindness, or plain conceit? Chris wondered. Probably a combination of the last two.

‘One of the more endearing things about this place,’ Manley was saying, ‘is the number of rich crazies it seems to produce. People with more money than sense. Look at this church on the left…’

They all stared out at the bizarre building, which seemed to have been constructed as a monument to several different architectural traditions. It looked like a cross between the Kremlin, Westminster Abbey and a Venetian palace.

‘There’s a copy of the Eiffel Tower a couple of streets over,’ Manley went on, ‘and in one of the parks there’s a relief map of the country the size of a tennis court. This is a strange town.’

‘I see what you mean,’ Razor said, as they drove past a huge statue of two fighting bulls. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, as they passed a large, castle-like building, complete with battlements and armed guards.

‘Police headquarters.’

‘Figures.’

They passed under a railway bridge and across a wide open space between parks before burrowing into a narrower street festooned with advertisements.

‘This is the oldest part of the city,’ Manley said.

It looked more interesting, but not a lot more welcoming. There didn’t seem to be many people on the streets, and most of those seemed to be hurrying along, heads bowed down, as if keen to reach home before something bad happened. There was something distinctly shabby about the capital of Guatemala, Razor thought. And perhaps sinister as well.

‘Most of the guidebooks tell tourists not to waste any time here,’ Hajrija said, as if sharing his thoughts.

The hotel, though, was as good as Chris claimed. A small corridor led into a covered courtyard, whose walls were lined with samples of the woven designs of different Mayan tribes. Razor and Hajrija sat down at one of the tables and looked at them while Manley and Chris checked them in.

Having done his job, the embassy man left, and a hotel employee showed them to their rooms. The doors were numbered, and on the wall beside each one there was a small painting of a Mayan god. ‘That’s Ixchel, the Goddess of Medicine,’ Hajrija said, looking at the one by their door.

Razor was impressed.

‘Some people sleep on planes, some read,’ she told him.

‘I’m going to have a stroll around the main square,’ Chris announced. ‘You two probably want to get some rest.’

‘Yeah…’ Razor began.

‘We’ll come,’ Hajrija said. ‘I need to stretch my legs after all that sitting.’

‘How far is it?’ Razor asked hopefully.

‘Just round the corner,’ Chris said.

Five minutes later they were crossing the road which surrounded the square, and entering an expanse the size of two football pitches. At the end away to their right a large, twin-towered, cream-coloured church seemed to glow against the darkening sky, while directly ahead of them a much larger building of similar vintage was already brooding in the twilight shadows. More noteworthy than either, the square itself was packed with people, some selling a variety of wares but most simply taking the early-evening air. The majority were in Western dress, but there was also a significant number of people wearing traditional Indian costume. After the half-empty streets of their drive from the airport this much life seemed almost intoxicating.

The three of them wandered through the throng in the general direction of the church, past women cooking corn-cobs on small charcoal braziers, men hawking bursts of candyfloss that were displayed like trophies on large wooden crosses, and more women sitting with little piles of herbs arranged on cotton sheets. Children sucked lollipops, chewed on tortillas and drank from the elegant glass Coca-Cola bottles which Razor remembered from his childhood. A tide of noise, of conversation and laughter and children crying, rolled over them. A series of overlapping smells rose and faded in their nostrils.

A rapid-fire succession of deafening explosions almost made them jump out of their skins, but there was only excitement on the faces all around, and the clouds of smoke billowing into the air above the western end of the square came from nothing more threatening than fireworks. The threesome grinned sheepishly at each other, and joined the crowd in its drift towards the scene of the action.