Betrayed (24 page)

 Bill slowed to ease through a pothole before he admitted, “Maybe there was a certain amount of fear involved too. At least half the population here is Mayan, much of the rest Ladino and plenty of them as destitute as the Mayans. Then you have a small, largely European upper class that actually owns most of the wealth. And the expats. I think there’s always been a fear here that the Mayans would rise up someday and demand their share. Which is what happened with the guerrilla insurgency. Unfortunately, when people are afraid of losing their way of life, they tend to overreact and lash out. The army had a saying: ‘Drain the sea, and the fish will die.’   The sea was the Mayans. The idea was that by destroying the Mayan way of life, the guerrillas would have no support to keep them going.

“Believe me, we—the Americans, that is—didn’t sanction excesses on either side down here. And we
did
encourage democratic reform. But the ruling classes just weren’t ready for those kinds of changes. And they happened to be our staunchest allies in the Cold War—not just in Guatemala but across the region. The US reasoning was that whatever our disagreements with their government policies, the war on socialism took priority. Once that was won, we could go back and touch on some of the other issues. Which of course is what we’re doing now. Programs like Camden’s are a good example.”

“The Environmental Protection Unit, you mean.”

The conversation had come full-circle to Vicki’s original question. The dirt track too had curved back toward the steep slopes of the ridge that backed the plateau. On either side stretched neat rows of coffee bushes, and up a knoll to the left was a solitary one-story house with a veranda running around it. Against the red tiles of the roof, Vicki spotted the metallic gleam of a satellite dish.

Straight ahead the road ran right into the tall trunks and tangled green crowns of the cloud forest rising unbroken from the plateau up the mountainside to disappear into a mist that had settled thick now over the mountain crest.

Bill nodded in that direction. “Exactly. One thing the war did was clear out the villages from those mountains, making it a whole lot easier to turn it into a nature reserve. But that still leaves a few million land-hungry peasants, and whether it’s Camden’s UPN or the local army battalion or both working together, it’s going to take an iron hand to keep them out of the remaining rain forest. It may seem harsh to outsiders, but there is no other way if any of this is going to be left in another ten years.”

Maybe Bill was right. There was no black and white here, just so many complex shades of gray that Vicki certainly couldn’t sort them out. Then a thought struck her. “The massacre up here . . . you don’t think—?”

“Whoa!” Bill lifted a cautionary hand from the steering wheel. “Whatever you think of our local authorities, I can assure you they are long past murdering an entire village just because they’d squatted on restricted land. There
are
easier ways to run them out.”

“Then who?"

“Who knows? It could be anyone. Raiding bandits. A drug deal gone bad. A land dispute. Even a faction of the villagers themselves. That’s just the point. Too many of the combatants on both sides have never given up their arms—or the vigilante mentality.”

Bill shook his head sadly. “No, I’m afraid it’s going to take a lot more than a few signed pieces of paper before the first answer to a problem in Guatemala isn’t to pick up a weapon.”

“So does protecting the rain forest include pointing guns at coffee pickers? Or is it usual to have soldiers patrolling fields here?”

Bill chuckled. “Believe you me, with the security situation as it is, I’ve got the occasional armed guard on my land too. But the fields you’re talking about belong to the army base. Part of their appropriation when they built up here. Planting the extra land in coffee helps subsidize the base—and the officers’ salaries.”

“Your land. That’s right. Holly said you had a coffee plantation here.”

Only now did Vicki take in that the coffee plantings on either side of the road were no longer open fields but neatly enclosed behind barbed wire. She saw the gate to her left before the pickup drew up to it. Just inside the gate stood a guard shack, and from it a gravel driveway ran up to the red-tiled house on the knoll.

A tall Ladino with tight curls denoting some African ancestry and a shotgun over his shoulder stepped out to open the gate, but Bill rolled down his window to shake his head. “I have a delivery for
el centro
. I’ll be back shortly.”

“Then that’s your house up there?” Vicki asked as Bill pulled back out onto the dirt track. Ahead on the opposite side of the track she spied another shotgun. Unlike the army patrols, this security guard faced his weapon outward to watch the road and fence line.

“That’s right, and the center is just ahead through there.” Bill motioned to the wall of uncleared forest only a few hundred meters ahead. “An easy walking distance, if you get tired of nature and all those German volunteers. We can offer quiet and solitude, something you’ll find is at a high premium over there. Or to borrow some reading material. You won’t find much at the center.”

Vicki looked back at the small, whitewashed house sitting alone on its knoll and wondered again about its landlord. “It looks . . . isolated. It must have been lonely living here all those years before the center and modern communications. And dangerous too with the guerrillas and everything. You sure have a lot more courage than I’ll ever have.”

Bill’s eyes crinkled into a smile as he glanced over at Vicki. “I can see I’ve given you the wrong impression. I didn’t move here until after the peace accords, when the army started selling off some of the land it had acquired during the war. Dirt cheap too, since this was just wilderness until the army opened it up with that road and airstrip. It was a good investment, not courage.”

“Then you weren’t actually up in these mountains when my—when Jeff Craig was killed?” It wasn’t a question Vicki had intended asking.

“I’ve done business in and out of Guatemala since then,” Bill said. “This place gets under your skin, especially these mountains. I was recently retired when the land sale came along—and bored. The road and airstrip had made the area accessible to market. The army base guaranteed security. So I grabbed at the opportunity. Bought myself a Cessna, built that house, and hired the villagers to clear the land for coffee. In fact, you can blame me for most of the deforestation in this zone, I’m afraid. It was my success that prompted the base commanders to turn their remaining landholdings to profit. Of course, the area wasn’t part of a reserve at the time. Truth is, there was so much wilderness; we never thought it might one day run out.”

Vicki caught the regret in Bill’s tone as he looked out across the neat rows of coffee bushes. “But you donated the center. You pushed for the biosphere.”

“Yes, I did that much. I guess I figured it was one way to make atonement.”

He hadn’t specified what business had brought him to Guatemala so often. Did he have a family here? Had he ever encountered Vicki’s birth parents in person? The investigator in Vicki had a dozen more questions. But the dirt track was now leaving the open fields and entering a tunnel of green that was the uncleared cloud forest Bill had indicated. Around a curve and through a tangle of leaves, Vicki glimpsed stained-wood construction that must be the center.

Bill stopped the pickup and cut the engine. He turned to look at Vicki, and his deeply etched features were now grave. “Just one thing before we get to camp. May I suggest you consider keeping your relationship to Jeff Craig to yourself? At least as long as you’re at the center."

Chapter Nineteen

Vicki stared at Bill. “Why?”

She had the impression Bill discarded his first thought before he said carefully, “Memories run long, and there are a lot of scabbed-over wounds you’re not aware of. Embers of hate and revenge simmering under the surface of these so-called peace accords that wouldn’t take much to blaze into a forest fire. I know these people—how they think. The assumption will be that you’re here to open those wounds and dig up those embers. If that isn’t your intention, I can promise you’ll get a lot further in your present mission if you let the past stay buried.”

He had a point. Vicki had endured enough explosions already in her pursuit of truth in Holly’s death. Sidetracking twenty years into the past would only complicate her mission. She nodded. “I can do that. It isn’t as though it’s relevant to why I’m here.”

“Why you’re here—yes.” Bill leaned over to turn the key in the ignition. “You’re a nice person, Vicki, as Holly was. And you deserve better than maybe you’ve experienced in your life so far. If you don’t find the answers you’re looking for, I hope you will find some measure of peace and solace in these mountains—as I have.”

The remaining meters of track dead-ended in a gravel cul-de-sac. A rude wooden sign announced
Centro de Rescate
.

Bill pulled up at the door of a two-story building with large screen windows. Straight ahead was a large open-sided thatched shelter, where a number of volunteers could be seen chatting around plastic tables, typing on computers, writing in journals. Vicki’s throat tightened as she looked around. So this had been her sister’s last home.

Vicki welcomed the distraction when a group of volunteers erupted into the open, laughing and chattering in German. As they clustered around the pickup, tugging knots loose and lifting the tarp free, Vicki spotted the Australian team leader, Alison.

She rushed toward the pickup. “I’m so glad you’re here, Vicki. Now I can get back to town. Here, let me make some introductions.”

The German team was a boisterous university-age group of men and women whose English ranged from excellent to barely intelligible.

A Ladino couple appeared briefly before disappearing with Bill inside.

“Rosario and Beatriz are the center administrators. The two of them and Cesar, our veterinary resident—” Alison indicated a slight young man with solemn, dark features—“speak only Spanish. And. of course the Germans don’t. So you’ll need to translate to English. Good news: they’ll be here only another week. Bad news: we’ve got no other teams on the horizon, so that’ll leave a lot more chores for you once they’re gone.
If
you decide to stick around.”

Alison waved to the resident. “Cesar, would you please show Vicki around? I’d better get these stores checked into the dispensary before any of your medical supplies get smashed.”

Cesar wore Western-style shirt and pants, but looked more Mayan than Ladino. He obediently gestured for Vicki to follow him and introduced her to the last on-site staff member. A middle-aged Mayan woman was patting out tortillas in a smaller open-sided structure behind the communal shelter.

Here the roof overhead was tin instead of thatch, for food hygiene, Vicki guessed. Waist-high brick walls kept out chickens and a rooting pig, but Cesar shooed a spider monkey off a worktable as he exchanged a few phrases in the local Mayan dialect. The woman snatched browned tortillas from a hot plate and added fresh ones before offering Vicki a dignified nod. Behind her two huge metal pots steamed on a low gas grill.

“Maria is a very good cook,” Cesar assured Vicki. “She understands Spanish well enough, though she prefers not to speak it.”

Neat gravel paths edged with white-painted rocks connected buildings and the animal enclosures. Scattered in small clearings among the trees, these were mostly cages built up on concrete slabbing. The strong musk of animal fur and urine explained why they’d been placed out of sight—and scent—of the main living quarters. Signs on the cages identified howler and spider monkeys, a raccoon-like coatimundi, ocelots, and pumas. Two fenced enclosures held animals that could be trusted not to climb out. Mountain deer no larger than a fawn Stateside. Pig-size rodents identified as peccaries. A juvenile tapir with the thick, black thread of sutures across one brown flank.

The animals themselves were as boisterous as the volunteers, the raucous screeching of monkeys and macaws and toucans so unrelenting that Vicki understood Bill’s offer of quiet.

“They are not always this noisy,” Cesar told Vicki solemnly. Did the young resident ever smile? “They are excited by the arrival of the truck.”

Most of the animals had been brought into the rescue center by concerned citizens, the young veterinarian explained, though some were seized by authorities from illegal traffickers. An assortment of splints and bandages explained why each was here. But they looked content enough, their cages clean despite the strong odors, water and food in ample supply. All in all, a testimonial to the hard work of the volunteer team and Cesar himself.

And Holly, of course. This quiet young man must have been Holly’s closest working colleague. Definitely someone on Vicki’s interrogation list.

The gravel path continued past a row of storage sheds, and from somewhere not too far away, a rush of running water began to drown out the noise of animals. Following close on Cesar’s heels, Vicki almost ran into him when he stopped abruptly. Stepping back, Vicki caught her breath in a sharp inhale of delight. They had emerged onto a rock outcropping, and for the first time she could see more than a tangle of vegetation because the mountainside dropped steeply away. The swaying carpet below their feet was actually the tops of oaks and pines and firs.

Around them, the
chipi-chipi
still dripped from every leaf and frond, the mountain heights still gray with mist. But straight ahead over the vast, blue expanse of Lake Izabal, sunlight sparkled off dancing waves, reflected white from spread sails. To Vicki’s left, the rush of water they’d been hearing had become a stream tumbling merrily over a rock face to splash with a churning of foam into a pool some twenty meters below them.

“
El Pozo Azul
. ” Meaning "the Blue Pool". At Cesar’s gesture Vicki saw the white stones edging the path wind their way down the side of the outcropping to the pool. “You may bathe here if you wish.”

Vicki scrambled down the incline. The pool was no more than ten meters across. At the far end, the water bubbled through a pile-up of boulders to spill down the mountainside toward Lake Izabal. Flat stones had been pressed into the soft earth where the path ended to make a shelf from which bathers could step into the water. Down here the view of the lake was again hidden by vegetation. But the pool nestled like an aquamarine in its setting of ferns and flowering bushes and orchids, and despite the milky froth of the cascade, the water was clear enough to make out rocks on the bottom.

Dipping her fingers into the pool, Vicki was surprised to find the water warm, the mist rising from it not just the waterfall’s churning but steam. The volcanic activity that had forged this mountain chain still simmered somewhere deep under the surface. The height of the rock face shut off any glimpse of the center, so she might have been alone in an unspoiled paradise.

Not quite alone. Nor a paradise.

Vicki straightened to see Cesar making his way down the path. She waited until his feet touched the stone shelf before asking abruptly, “You worked with Señorita Holly Andrews, didn’t you?”

“Yes, we worked together.” Cesar’s gaze slid sideways toward Vicki as he added hesitantly, “They say you are her sister. Is this true?”

“Yes.”

“And that she is dead?”

“Yes.”

“I am very sorry. I hoped . . . I could not believe it was true.” Vicki was startled to see moisture in his black eyes. “She was a good person and a good veterinarian—very passionate about the animals. I learned more from her than in all my classes at the university.”

So here was someone else who had been touched by Holly’s death. And maybe an ally among all these strangers.

“Cesar, you must have known my sister well if you worked together with the animals. Did she ever talk to you about something—or someone— troubling her? Or do you know if she left any of her belongings behind? Maybe left them with someone to take care of? Computer disks or . . . or maybe electronics?”

She’d gone too far too fast, Vicki saw immediately. Cesar stiffened, his expression turning hostile and wary. “I do not know of what you might be speaking. Señor Taylor gathered Señorita Ho-lee’s belongings personally. If you believe one of the staff has taken some of her possessions, it is not so. We are not thieves.”

“I didn’t mean—,” Vicki began hastily.

“Vicki, there you are!” Alison’s flushed face appeared at the top of the cliff. “So you found our hot tub. I’m leaving with Bill pretty quick, so if you can tear yourself away, I need to get you registered.”

“I’ll be right up.” Vicki swung back around. “Please, Cesar, I wasn’t accusing anyone of taking anything that was my sister’s. I’m just . . . I’m trying to make sense of how and why she was killed.”

“We all are,” he responded simply.

No, you aren’t
, Vicki cried passionately to herself as she scrambled back up to Alison. In fact, just about everyone had already made what they thought was perfect sense of Holly’s death. She glanced back over the cliff. Cesar had made no move to follow her but was staring out over Lake Izabal. Vicki stopped short at his expression. Was that sorrow she’d caught on his face? Or fear?

One way or another, Cesar was definitely someone she’d be interviewing again. Vicki hurried after Alison.

“Isn’t it cool down there?” Alison called over her shoulder. “Our own little spa. Wait till you try it after a hard day’s work. For that alone, I’d consider transferring to the center. If the social life wasn’t so limited. One thing this year in Guatemala has taught me, however much I may respect the environment, I’m made for the bright lights. I’m back to the city—and next month to Sydney.”

“Uh, Alison?” Did she realize the WRC plane was out of commission? “Just how are you getting there? You did hear what happened to the plane.”

“Oh yes, Bill told me,” Alison said airily, leading Vicki in a shortcut across the wood flooring of the thatched shelter. “I’d have had to take the bus anyway, since Joe isn’t scheduled to go back in for a week. But Alpiro and his goons don’t know that, so I’m thumbing a ride with one of their choppers. They’re always dropping into the city. It’s all the apology we’ll get out of them; you can be sure.”