Red Jungle (29 page)

“The tide is coming in,” Carlos said. It was cool out on the water, much cooler. Carlos was still looking at him. “I suppose I should have the gun now,” Carlos said, smiling at him. “Just in case.”

“I want to thank you . . . for what you did for Katherine,” Russell said. He was gripping the stock of the Mossburg. He slid his hand on the pump end. He wanted to shoot Carlos Selva, who stood in the way of the country’s progress; he was sure of it. He’d cleaned the shotgun and oiled it before leaving his apartment. There was that feel of the oily metal he’d first experienced in military school. He heard the sound of the outboard, felt the water give way under them as the boat speeded up.

He remembered the Greek.
He’s just another bully.
He turned and looked at the dark shadows of the houses, along the beach.

Don’t I have to?
Carlos knew now about their plan and he would, being a good army man, tell President Blanco. He, Russell, could start the coup right now. Carlos was head of the intelligence service.
Why not kill him?
Russell let his eyes move along the shore
.
Could he shoot a man in cold blood?
Fuck him
, he thought. He knew Carlos wouldn’t hesitate to kill him if he knew the truth about him and Beatrice.

“Where are we going?”

“There’s a bar on the town side of the beach. It stays open . . . for the smugglers,” Carlos said.

“How many people have you killed?” Russell asked. He said it over the sound of the motors. He couldn’t just shoot him. He wanted to know. He wanted to tell him that he had to die, or the country would never change.

“Why do you ask?” Carlos said. He didn’t seem shocked by the question.

“I just want to know,” Russell said. “For myself.”

“During the war, you mean? Is it for your article? Not a good idea.”

“No . . . I want to know. Just for myself.”

“Are you going to interview me now? Why not . . . I don’t know how many. Many. You can write that. I killed many communists. People will like to read that in Europe, especially in America. Why not, I’m not ashamed of it. The Americans would have been next. We aren’t that far away from Texas, you know. They’re like cockroaches—the guerillas, you see one, and you know you’ll see more,” Carlos said.

Russell’s cell phone rang. It was surreal, the sound of it now, when he was on the brink of shooting someone. He let it ring. Carlos sat facing him, his right hand steering.

“Can’t get away anymore, can you?” Carlos said. They were going fast, and Selva cut the motor down so he could take the call. Russell glanced at the screen and saw it was a number from the States. He opened the phone.

“I’m coming back.” It was Katherine. He looked at the general.

“Don’t,” Russell said.

“I have to,” she said. “I love you.”

“I can’t talk right now,” he said.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” she said. “I’ve gotten myself on the human rights delegation, a UN plane. Tomorrow. They wouldn’t dare keep me out of the country. I’m coming with the commissioner herself.”

“Please don’t. It would be a mistake,” he said.

Katherine hung up. He could see the lights now of the little town of Tilapa. They were near the mouth of the lagoon, where it met the ocean. They couldn’t be seen from either the wharf at Tilapa, or the houses on the spit. If he was going to kill Carlos, he had to do it now.

“Who was that? You look upset,” Carlos said.

“It’s the girl. The American girl. She’s coming back. With the UN Commission for Human Rights. She had herself put on the commissioner’s staff.”

“She’s a smart girl. They won’t stop her at the airport. And they won’t dare touch her as long as she stays with the delegation, either.”

“And if she doesn’t stay with the delegation?” Russell said.

“That would be a bad idea,” Selva said. “But love makes people do dangerous things,” he added. “You have to admire her.”

The place where he should have done it passed. It was where he could see the current moving out towards the mouth of the lagoon, towards the ocean. Maybe the body would have been taken out to sea, Russell thought.

The dope boats saved Selva. The first one Russell watched coming through the boiling surf, the men standing very still because they were so overloaded. Two others with twin outboard motors followed the first. They were all overloaded. The lead boat was a big twenty foot
tiboronaera
with three men aboard, and the words
Dios Es Amor—God is Love
in red letters on the prow. The gunwales of the boat hovered near the waterline as they approached. Russell could see the bales of coke wrapped in black plastic. One of the young men in the boat, an AK 47 strapped high on his chest, gave them a sardonic wave. The heavy wake rocked them violently as the boat cruised quickly by. They had all recognized Selva, and wouldn’t have dared to touch him.

“They meet the twelve o’clock from Bogotá,” Carlos said. “You could set your watch by that plane.”

I should have killed him,
Russell thought. He glanced towards the dark mouth of the lagoon, where the full moon lit the white breakers, which were carrying two more dope boats.

•••

Olga had sat in the kitchen for hours. Her mistress gone— although she had always thought of Isabella as her sister, never her mistress. This was the strangeness of it, the perversity of their relationship. In Olga’s eyes, they were sisters despite all the differences so obvious to the outside world.

The conquest should have made them enemies; the guerrillas had come to the plantation one afternoon. They’d come to find Isabella and kill her. They’d come in two trucks they’d stolen. The trucks had had some passengers who had been born there and knew everyone, so that later they could have been identified but never were, because they were the sons of the plantation. It was the sons of the plantation who had come to kill the owner and it was the sons of the plantation who had been talked out of the killing by their own brothers and sisters, who told them that killing was wrong and that Doña Isabella was their
patrona
.

They told the guerillas that killing her would be a sacrilege. Some of the other guerrillas, who weren’t born there, laughed when they heard this. They’d been to Cuba, or they’d been educated in Russia and come back to Guatemala, and they knew that the old bond between master and servant was ludicrous. But when they faced it that evening, in the twilight, with the woodfires and the people’s faces looking at them, they knew that ludicrous or not—absurd even as it was—the oppressed
believed
in the very system that had enslaved them. Somehow the system represented something eternal and Christian to them. It was as if God himself had come to Guatemala and written down the feudal arrangement on a tablet.

The guerillas patiently argued their case. They reminded the people that the whites had never thought twice about slaughtering them or cheating them, or raping them, or exploiting them, or keeping them ignorant. Some agreed, but none of the arguments worked. It was God’s will, the peasants said. The guerillas were mystified. They finally left, confused by what they’d witnessed.

After they’d left, the people opened the doors of the plantation church, lit candles and prayed to God that they would never come back.

At 9:00 A.M. Olga had gone to Isabella’s bedroom with a breakfast tray, looking for her mistress. The bed was empty and still made. At first she thought that Isabella had come in so late that she hadn’t gone to bed at all, but was in the living room and somehow Olga had missed her. She smiled at herself and carried the tray into the living room that over looked
La Reforma,
but the curtains were still closed. The room, full of Victorian furniture, gloomy and smelling of wax, was empty.

“Doña Isabella?” Olga said, slightly bewildered. Olga put down the tray and wiped her hands on her apron. It was something she would do again and again that day and for years to come, every time she thought of Isabella.

Isabella’s naked body had been left on a dirt road that led to Antigua.

Antonio and the Minister of Health had made a call to the chief of the Guatemala City police, who happened to be the minister’s brother-in-law. The American woman, sober now and frightened, was on her way to the embassy. The idea of holding an American embassy worker for murder was out of the question, of course. No one, not even the president of the republic, could afford to offend the American embassy. The minister and Antonio assumed the woman would be protected.

They waited for a call from the embassy, standing by the phone in the minister’s study while Isabella’s body lay on the floor of the minister’s living room. The study’s door was closed, so they couldn’t see it. No one wanted to look at it. It was horrible because Isabella’s face looked stunned, as if she knew what had happened to her but couldn’t quite believe it.

“I’ll have someone come for the body,” the minister’s brother-in-law said. “We’ll have to list her as a Jane Doe.” The minister, too shaken to go on with the call, passed the phone to Madrid.

Madrid had been drinking heavily, and was just now feeling somewhat sober. The sight of Isabella with half her skull bashed in had made him vomit out the alcohol.

“It’s me, Antonio.” The two men had gone to school together.

“Antonio?” The police chief said.

“Yes. Felix, what do we do?”

“You have to take her identity, her purse, and destroy it. I’ll send someone for the body. She’ll be a Jane Doe when she’s found. It’s the best way.”

“I don’t understand,” Antonio said.

“She’ll be found and be unidentified. The unidentified are cremated in two days. That will be the end of it,” the policeman said.

“There’s an autopsy, certainly?”

“Sometimes, but I’ll take care of that,” the policeman said.

“What about her family?”

“I’m afraid this has to be kept between us. That’s what the embassy wants. They’ve already called.”

“They called you, too?”

“Yes. Just now. I spoke to them. They’re sending the girl back to the States tonight. . . . Antonio, it has to be this way. You understand . . . they don’t want an incident. Not with the war on. Isabella’s family is famous. People here would be insulted.”

“Yes. Of course. I understand.”

“I’ll send someone right now,” the policeman said.

“Please.” Antonio put the phone down. It was a very old-fashioned phone, from the twenties, black and heavy. “They’re sending someone right now. He wants us to take . . . Isabella’s purse.”

“What do you mean?” the minister asked him.

“We have to take her purse,” Antonio said again.

“What about the family? We have to call her brother. I know him. You know him. We have to call Pedro, for God’s sake. Antonio, she has a son,” the minister said.

“We have to do what Felix says. The embassy has already called him. They’re sending the girl back to the States tonight.” He watched the minister fall into a brown leather club chair that had been bought years before, in London, and shipped to Guatemala.

“She didn’t deserve this,” the minister said. They had both known Isabella since they were children.

“It’s my fault,” Antonio said.

“What do you mean?”

“I was involved with the American girl. I should have taken Isabella home when I saw she was here. It was stupid. She told me she was jealous . . . I thought . . . I thought it was just
talk,”
Antonio said.

The minister got up and left the room. He said that he was going to leave, that he didn’t want to be here when they came for the body, that it was too gruesome.

“He said we have to keep our mouths shut,” Antonio said.

“Yes, of course. Of course,” the minister said. “It’s the American Embassy, after all. They’re helping us win this war.” He said that almost as if he were talking to himself.

“Yes,” was all Antonio said. “The war.”

TWENTY-FIVE

The currency had collapsed the week before. President Blanco declared a state of emergency and shut down the country’s banks, amid rumors that Blanco had precipitated the crash by emptying the treasury of dollars. The army had been called out to keep order in the capital.

The state of emergency had driven the foreign tourists out of the Camino Real hotel. The hotel’s pool, usually crowded by this time of the morning, was quiet when Russell passed. Military filled the hotel’s famous coffee shop. A few Americans from the embassy, in Gap pants and well pressed shirts, shared a joke with a group of high-ranking officers. But the laughter had a mirthless tone, Russell thought as he was shown to Mahler’s table. No one in the army knew exactly how it might go in the next few weeks, only that the Americans would reshuffle the deck and come out winners. The generals had simply come to the café to sell themselves, as they always did, like whores at a bar.