Guatemala – Journey into Evil Read online

  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.

  Another salvo of firecrackers rent the air, noisier than any of them had ever heard, and almost immediately two rockets screamed into the sky, exploding with equally deafening effect some fifty metres above the crowd. The sticks fell back to earth, causing those at risk below to scatter with screeches of mock alarm.

  A procession was now emerging through the whirling smoke which covered the road. First came an altar boy, swinging a large tin brazier of smoking frankincense, and then twenty or so males, some looking no older than adolescents, carrying a huge, flower-decked bier on their shoulders. Above the flowers, swaying with the motion of the bier, loomed a half-size model of the crucified Christ. The cross was gold, the figure black.

  Behind the bier came a band, all brass and drums.

  ‘I wonder where they’re going,’ Razor wondered out loud.

  ‘I’d guess the church,’ Chris said. He had seen a similar, albeit smaller, procession in Antigua the previous weekend. ‘They usually start and finish where the statues live.’

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ Hajrija said, her eyes shining.

  ‘Yeah,’ Razor agreed. It was, although he was damned if he knew why. The music and the smoke and the costumes and the swaying Christ – a world unto itself, a foreign world.

  Then his eyes caught the soldiers on the other side of the road, standing in a group of four by the entrance to the large building. They were all wearing smartly pressed uniforms and polished leather boots. Each was cradling a dull black Uzi. None looked older than sixteen.

  ‘What is that building?’ he asked Hajrija.

  ‘The National Palace,’ she said. ‘The guidebook says it was built in the 1930s as a gift to the people.’

  Razor grunted. The expressions on the faces of the boy-soldiers seemed a potent mixture of envy, fear and contempt. And as if to emphasize the divide, at that moment the sounds of celebration were drowned out by the rising roar of a military transport plane, flying low across the square like a huge black bird.

  ‘Someone’s telling us all something,’ Chris murmured.

  The band played on, the black Christ continued its homeward journey, and the rockets reclaimed the sky from the enemy. The three of them walked back across the rapidly darkening square towards their hotel, saying little.

  Once back in their room, Razor decided to take a shower, and a few moments later Hajrija joined him. There was a smile on her face, but something else in her eyes, and they clung to each other in the streaming hot water, both aroused and disturbed by what they had witnessed. And as the fierceness of this feeling slowly transmuted into the more familiar blend of love and lust, they joined together with a passionate urgency which recalled their first night together in Zavik, more than two years before.

  Later, with Hajrija asleep in his arms, Razor found himself remembering the favourite book of his youth, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and wondering whether the two of them had fallen into a land of fantasy, where a sense of wonder and of evil had survived in undiluted form.

  4

  At ten o’clock the following morning the promised escort arrived at the Pan-American Hotel. The young officer, clean-shaven with deep-brown eyes and a friendly smile, introduced himself to the two SAS men as Lieutenant Ricardo Velázquez Gómez. ‘But call me Ricky,’ he added, taking each of their right hands between both of his own.

  Razor wondered whether to insist on their speaking the local language, but decided that the lieutenant’s English was probably better than his own Spanish. ‘Where exactly are we going?’ he asked as they left the hotel and walked across the road to where a black limousine with smoked-glass windows was gently purring. The driver, who was in plain clothes, eyed the SAS uniforms with interest.

  ‘We are going to the home of Colonel Serrano in Zona 14,’ Gómez said. ‘He is in charge of this business and he thought it would be a more comfortable place for getting acquainted…more informal, yes?’

  ‘Fine by us,’ Razor said, and followed Chris into the back seat.

  The limousine moved away smoothly, with both SAS men conscious of the stares pursuing them from the pavements. Gómez turned round in the front seat and gave them another friendly smile. ‘I have worked with the American Special Forces,’ he said. ‘Delta Force and the Rangers. I have good friends there, you know. But even some of my American friends tell me the SAS is the best. So I am pleased to be your liaison.’

  Razor grinned. ‘Pleasure’s mutual,’ he said.

  ‘I have read about the Princes Gate. And Las Malvinas…the Falklands, I mean.’ He grinned. ‘And the operation in Gibraltar. I would like to hear your opinion of these things when we have some time. If it is allowed.’

  ‘It’s allowed,’ Razor admitted.

  ‘Are you stationed here in Guatemala City?’ Chris asked.

  ‘Yes. It is the best place to be. Not for this,’ Gómez added, taking in the seedy-looking streets of the market district with a wave of his arm. ‘You will see – where we are going it is a very nice place, very civilized.’

  As the limousine droned down the wide avenue, past the castellated police headquarters and the statue of the fighting bulls, the smoked glass displayed the Guatemalan capital in a sinister twilight. If the authorities spent their lives looking through windows like this, Chris thought, then no wonder paranoia was rampant.

  At the Chuck E Cheese inte
rsection they turned left, away from the direction of the airport, and quickly found themselves slowing for a control booth.

  ‘Is this a restricted area?’ Razor asked Gómez, once the young officer had cleared them through.

  ‘No, it is only a precaution against terrorism,’ Gómez replied. ‘There are many embassies in this area, and the terrorists like to make big news, get on CNN. And the BBC, of course.’

  The SAS men were not convinced. It felt more like a private estate than an ordinary district of the city. The streets were virtually empty of either pedestrians or traffic, and what could be seen of the houses behind the high, stucco walls and wrought-iron gates suggested money – lots of it. And the razor wire which adorned the tops of the walls made clear the intention to hang on to every last penny. Above the gleaming coils the heads of luxuriant palms basked in the morning sun, and large white satellite dishes reached up for their signals.

  It was no wonder the bastards had built their little enclave so close to the airport, Razor thought. If the revolution came they wouldn’t have so far to run.

  ‘There is the Swiss Embassy,’ Gómez said, pointing out a villa on their left. Through the tall gates they could see a swimming pool surrounded by flowering bougainvillea, a gardener hard at work. ‘It is nice, yes?’ Gómez said. ‘One day maybe I buy for my family,’ he added with a boyish grin.

  Another fifty metres, and the limousine turned in towards another pair of gates. Gómez left the car to use the intercom, and was no sooner back in his seat than the gates swung wide. They followed a curving drive through a stand of royal palms and came to a halt outside one of the most beautiful houses either SAS man had ever seen. Set on a slight slope, the one-storey, white-stucco villa seemed to exist on several levels, as if it were a series of rooms caught in the act of cascading downhill. Wrought-ironwork adorned the windows, and gorgeous flowering plants clung to the walls. In front of the house water rippled from an intricately carved stone fountain.

  Two men were waiting on the front steps, both of them in army uniform. Gómez introduced the more thickset of the two as Colonel Cabrera. He was probably not much more than thirty-five, with neatly parted black hair and a short moustache. He was darker-skinned than either Gómez or Serrano, taller than the average Guatemalan, and looked as though he spent considerable time and energy keeping his body in trim. His welcome was jovial enough, but his eyes seemed uncertain, as if he needed a clearer statement of the visitors’ status.