The captain carried in his two hands, held it across his thighs, a short and polished stave of ceiba wood. He held it tight and flexed his fingers round it and the whites of his knuckles showed. He had called her obstinate. The captain was correct in his judgement of Alex Pitt.
‘You should be off the base area within five minutes, out of Playa Grande within thirty minutes. Shit woman, understand me, Playa Grande could be a dangerous place . . .’
‘There is no need to add crude threats to insults, captain. I am merely seeking your co-operation in locating the grave of this woman’s husband. It is a justifiable request . . .’
‘Hear me, five minutes.’
She stood her ground. The captain glowered at her. There were armed men behind him. The widow tugged at her wrist. The widow wanted to be gone. The husband of the woman had been disappeared for four years. She had heard the story: men had come after dark to the house of wood and tin sheets and taken her husband and driven away with him, disappeared him. He would have been killed a day later, or a week later, or a month later. She was familiar with the case history: the man had had the courage to protest that land he farmed had been appropriated for the spread of a cattle finca, had complained to the owner of the finca. She felt the bone fingers stabbing in her flesh. She thought there was no more that she could do. She turned. Their loathing of her speared into her back. She tried to walk straight, as if they should not have the satisfaction of intimidating her. She stepped down from the verandah of the command centre of the military base at Playa Grande. She walked across the parade ground, past the soldiers, and past the armoured cars with their machine guns loaded, and past the sentry’s sandbagged wall. She should never show fear. She held the widow’s hand and felt the fright tremble of the small fist. She walked past the coiled barbed wire of the perimeter fence. The dog in the Land Rover roared for her, bounced at the back window. The widow broke Alex’s grip and scurried, elfin small, to other women who waited outside the camp gate. They were close to each other, the bright-dressed women, talking and gesturing. She tried to stay composed. Her safety was bluff. If she thought all the time of her safety then she might as well take the next flight out to Miami, turn her back on Guatemala and this widow, and the other widows. She poured water from a plastic bottle into the dog’s bowl and let it drink and fondled its neck. The widow came back to her.
‘It was not the right day to come . . .’
‘Any day, any different?’
It was the third time that Alex had accompanied the widow to the army base in the attempt to find the unmarked grave of the disappeared. The first time the captain had laughed at the request for information. The second time he had first kept them waiting five hours, then coolly given a statement that the killings were the work of the communist subversives. She hoped she had hidden it, her fear.
‘Not the right day. There has been a battle. There are many soldiers killed. The battle was in the Petén jungle. Many killed, it is why they were angry, Miss ’Lex. Not the good day.’
She put the water bottle away. She quietened the dog. She helped the widow into the passenger seat of the Land Rover and started the drive back up the wet dirt road to the village.
She talked. ‘It is absolutely idiotic of the guerrillas to go on killing soldiers. It is totally stupid. It makes life so much harder for people like you, your family, your friends. When soldiers are killed by the guerrillas then it is you and your family and the rest of a village that suffer. Guerrilla violence only creates army violence . . .’
The widow seemed not to hear her.
‘They say, Miss ’Lex, that many soldiers were killed.’
‘Solves nothing,’ Alex said sharply, impatient.
‘It is what the women talked of.’
‘It’s Schultz, right? Tom Schultz? You got a moment?’
Tom swung in his chair. He was nearly through. He had a headache from the coffee. Ahead of him the Country Attaché’s office was dark through the frosted glass at the top of the door, and the other desks in the DEA’s work area were empty. They would have gone back to their little women and their little kids. There was no little woman in the life of Tom Schultz, and no little kids, and not much chance of it while he carried a scar from his ear to his jawbone of reddened skin, the best a field surgeon could do . . . He gestured for the man to sit. He was two Huey bird skids short . . . Now, how the hell did a flier, his predecessor, lose two skids in a pranged touch-down and replace them and forget to note it? Last week in the dining room the Chemist had pointed out Kramer, from the Agency.
‘Be my guest.’
He thought Kramer might have been a college man. Looked more like a classics scholar, maybe mathematics/physics, than a field man of the Agency. Dead pale skin, and eyes magnified by pebble spectacles.
‘I hear you were up in Petén district. I hear you found a crashed aircraft. Be grateful if you’d talk me through, tell me what you saw.’
‘There’s an Intelligence Analyst, there’s a Treasurer and a Chemist and a Liaison. Wouldn’t you do better there?’
‘Heh, come off your high horse. They don’t give me the time of day. Please, just talk me through what you saw.’
Tom did. Kramer had a pocket recorder on the desk, didn’t interrupt. The Antonov, the fire, the evidence of the cargo, the tracks of the second aircraft, the prisoners . . .
‘. . . There were the prisoners. I’d have thought when Arturo sat them down to tea and cakes they’d have told him what they’d seen.’
Kramer sniggered, high-pitched, like that was stupid. He switched off the recorder.
‘Thanks, I appreciate it.’
‘Why the interest?’
The shrug. ‘Just, there was an action up there today. Nothing has even farted in that area for a year and a half, and a plane comes in, and some government troops get pretty efficiently put alongside their Lord and Maker . . . and, of course, when I file then it shows them at Langley that I’m a busy little boy . . . It was well done, so I hear, a professional attack. Good night.’
7
His opinion was not asked for. Tom Schultz was the punchball. The Country Attaché had told him that the Ambassador gave good parties and had the habit of inviting along, just the once, each junior grade federal employee assigned to Guatemala City. They came to him, where he stood by the bulletproof window, and lectured him, and moved on.
A cattle rancher with twenty-four square miles of grazing land in the distant Franja Transversal del Norte.
‘. . . I think you Americans have seen the light, and it’s not before time. The old days, you were forever telling us how we should live. You’ve put that out of your system. The “America First” policy is so much more appropriate, look after yourselves and let us look after ourselves. We are a democratic country that has seen off the threat of a communist insurrection, and we had no help from Washington. That is the justification for us to stand together as equals, the United States of America and Guatemala. Mutual respect achieves so much more in results. What I am saying is that I believe your administration in Washington should continue to leave us alone, get off our backs. I tell you who I would like you to meet, my future son-in-law, in the army, an excellent young man, a real patriot . . .’
The Ambassador’s wife was radiant in an off-the-shoulder dress.
‘. . . You’ve no family here, Mr Schultz? A pity. Such a lovely country for wives and for children. Herbie and I, we’ve been all over, but I tell him that this is the most beautiful country we’ve ever been privileged to be stationed in. You should get up to Lake Atitlán, so restful, such tranquillity. And such friendliness from the people . . .’
The evangelist preacher was from Louisiana and wore polished cowboy boots and a wide buckled belt and 150-dollar jeans.
‘. . . You won’t have been here long enough to realize it, but this is grand country for missionary work. The Catholics have had the free run at the Indians for five hundred years and they’ve taught them subversion and dissent. They’
ve had their time, and we’ve a government here that is wise enough to realize that the evangelist movement is what this country needs. We’re teaching the Indians the true word of the Bible, not this liberal nonsense that’s peddled by the Catholic Church. What the Indians need is God, not Catholic politics. I tell you, Mr Schultz, it’s a fine government here. All this talk of human rights violations is based on the lies of the Jesuits and the liberals back home. They’re very dear people, the Indians, all they want is a roof over their heads and enough maize for the cooking of tortillas, this talk of freedom is just communist crap that bewilders them. My church is the Bethel Temple, my call is “Jesus Loves You”, we’re up at Chichicastenango and you should call by one Sunday morning and you’ll find what a grand little country this is . . .’
The general in uniform had a chest of medal ribbons and introduced himself as i/c G-4 (Logistics).
‘. . . It’s the strength of this country, Mr Schultz, that we saw off a communist-inspired revolution without having to beg for American help. You can go to any country in Central or Latin America and they will tell you that we have the finest trained and motivated armed forces, we are the best. We won the argument on the battlefield and we won it in the political arena. We broke the guerrillas militarily, and we dumped that shit – you excuse me – about the “freedom struggle” in history’s trash can. I note that we now have the support of the United States because at last your government has shown the wisdom of recognizing its true friends in this region. Let me ask you, what would have happened if the communists had won in Guatemala? No, I will tell you, there would have been another Cuba here. I believe you liaise with Mario Arturo, an excellent officer, a most dedicated man . . .’
The businessman’s suit looked to be from New York, expensive, and he mixed the champagne with orange juice from the waiter’s jug.
‘. . . I like Americans. I have some very good friends in the steering committee of AmCham, that is the American Chamber of Commerce. You should know, when it was difficult for us here, when we faced an unprincipled policy of isolation from Washington, it was the American Chamber of Commerce that was steadfast in their support of us. They understood that all of the liberal talk about trades unions and workers’ rights was just destroying this country. We pay generous wages in Guatemala, we have good conditions of employment. People who have never been to Guatemala will tell you that our Indians are exploited and live in poverty. What does the Indian want? He wants work and a roof over his head and food in his belly. Do you know Florida, Mr Schultz? I take my family twice each year to Florida, in the spring we stay at the Sheraton Key Largo and in the autumn we are at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress . . .’
None of them, not the cattle rancher nor the Ambassador’s wife nor the evangelist preacher nor the general nor the businessman, had asked about his scar. They hadn’t made a big thing of it, and neither had they made light of it. All had damn well looked at it, scalpelled it with their eyes. He felt like he should have cracked two glasses together, made the salon quiet. ‘Hear me out. I was busted out of the sky by a shoulder-held SAM, lost an Apache and I lost a weapons man. Bad shit landing, bad fire. It’s not the big-shot way, getting blown down, it’s fucking failure . . . And what burns the failure is the scar and you bastards looking away from it.’
It was raining when Tom Schultz left and he had to run to the back of the parking lot behind the residence, past the lines of limousines and waiting chauffeurs and clustered bodyguards.
The first night after the action, when they had made camp in the confusion of darkness, Gord had recognized the new confidence in the group.
There had been thunderclaps above them and sometimes the nearness of the sheet lightning had thrown pale light onto the small clearing they had made for the bivouac. Gord had sat away from the group, that was his fashion, and had heard the excited whispering of Harpo and Groucho as they told Zeppo what they had achieved. And he thought Jorge had strutted for the first time, as if a conceit ate at him. The Archaeologist wanted to talk with him, and was ignored by Gord, too tired and too much running in his mind; he would have said that the Archaeologist had walked well under the load that had been given him, and he had made a mental note to get boots for him when they hit the civilization trail, but he couldn’t bother himself to talk with the man.
The next morning, moving off after the camp site had been cleared and the latrine pit filled in and the rubbish buried, Gord had seen that the performance on the march was reduced. He had taken the role of routemaster. He alternated between leading with Eff and Vee and Zed, slashing alongside them when there was no trail and when there was no possibility of crawling under low growth, and taking the back-marker where he could push and chivvy at Zeppo and Harpo and Groucho.
He believed their loathing of him was building.
Zeppo sitting down when they were stopped ahead and when the column had moved again he had stayed sitting, massaging the weight of his stomach, stroking it as if it were a cat’s back, and complained to Gord that it was time for the rest halt, and it was four minutes and twenty-eight seconds short of the schedule for the next rest halt. He dragged Zeppo up, propelled him forward.
‘. . . We never needed you. Better you had not come . . .’
The middle of the morning, and Harpo in mid-march unslinging his pack and bitching at the opened sores on his shoulders and calling for the new recruit Indians to carry his pack for him, smearing with a muddied cloth across the hairless width of his scalp, and the shouting match had developed because Gord would not tolerate it and Eff and Vee and Zed and the new recruits were already laden beyond their fair share and had the cart of the flame thrower.
‘. . . You think you know everything. You know nothing. We are better without you . . .’
The early part of the afternoon, and Groucho stopping and contorting his face, supported by the sympathizing Archaeologist, and whining at the cramps in his stomach, and Gord had thought him genuine and made a play of coldness because there was no alternative to pressing on, and snapped at the Archaeologist to mind his own business and load, and punched Groucho in the small of the back to get him again going forward.
‘. . . You push too hard and you will break us, and what is then achieved? We showed in the action we could fight . . .’
It would burst, he knew that.
They stumbled ahead in the suffused green shadow light, and the rain was more regular.
Always, as they moved, there was the creaking action of wheels on the axles of the cart.
Each time that they stopped, slumped down for water, Gord would go to Jorge and ask him for the map and he would spend the ten minutes studying it and checking with his compass, and each time his finger would trace the phantom route from the lime colour of the jungle to the primrose of the ground rising from 450 feet above sea level to the ochre of the foothills that started at 900 feet above the shoreline of the Caribbean, and on towards the browns and mauves of the Cuchumatanes where the peaks were 9000 feet and upwards. It was his Grail, to reach the cool uplands, to leave behind him the stinking fetid clinging bloody mess that was the Petén jungle.
They had done twelve miles in two days and Gord rated that as a miracle.
And it would be worse the next day. As they made the evening’s camp, Jorge was huddled with Eff and Vee and Zed.
Before the groundsheets had been spread, before the mosquitoes had found them, before Groucho had searched in his emptying ration sack, before the latrine hole had been dug, the three Indians moved out.
A rendezvous had been set. They would be gone for twenty-four hours. They had moved out to forage for recruits.
The rain ran on their heads and their shoulders and gathered in their laps, fell heavy from the upper leaves. They were together in a small circle as they ate the gruel meal of dehydrated powder mixed with rainwater. It was not possible that Jorge did not realize the tension volcano growing but he set himself apart from it. Jorge talked quietly of his father, of the legend. A soft voice,
touching the mystic, and they heard him in quiet.
Gord let it ride until the meal was finished. He could not see their faces . . .
He whipped them.
‘Right, that was just fine, and that was an indulgence, and out of indulgence comes complacency. If any of you believe that anything that has been achieved so far is meaningful, then you are totally wrong. We are nowhere and have achieved nothing. We have the first of the rains, and the wet season, I reckon, is our best chance. The wet season gives us two advantages. We are going for high ground, and the rains and low cloud will reduce the hours fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters can operate. We need them grounded by weather, most particularly when we leave jungle conditions. On the high ground, in bad weather, the roads will foul up, wash away, they will have problems moving armoured vehicles . . . We are on a charge. We always have to be further forward than they believe it possible for us. That is the basis of the military operation . . .’
He heard Harpo’s snort of derision.
‘. . . And there is my personal position. I can turn round now. I can leave you here, now. I can walk across the Petén and I can cross into Belize. In Belize I will get from my own army a good bath and a hell of a good meal and as many cans of beer as I can drink. I can get a flight back to Britain any day I want it. If I do not hear it from each and every one of you that I am wanted, that I will be heard, then I am gone. I want to hear it . . .’
The Archaeologist muttered, nervous, ‘Not my place, but it’s a hell of a way to run a revolution . . .’
A silence. The mosquitoes droned in flight around him.
Jorge said, ‘You are wanted.’
The coughing shriek of a wild turkey.
Zeppo said, sour, ‘You should stay.’
The stampede flight of a pheasant.
Harpo said, grudged, ‘We can work together.’
The dripping rain spattered a drumbeat.
Groucho said, hesitant, ‘We are as one man.’
Six guerrillas joined them in the morning. They were skeletal thin, their clothes were rags and they wolfed the food that Groucho gave them.
The Fighting Man (1993) Page 14
