Red Jungle (38 page)

Crowley, in his sixties, was near retirement. He’d posed as an AID official all his career, and was the most innocuous-looking man Katherine had ever met. Quite small, almost tiny, Mr. Crowley, as he was called, was the last man in the world anyone would have thought could be an intelligence officer, much less Head of Station. He looked like a back office bank clerk. In fact he was very experienced, having started out as a young man in Vietnam and then Cambodia. Tonsured, his small bald head gleamed in the electric lights. Natty, he looked like one of those people who never allowed himself to get dirty. He wore golf clothes, but never golfed. It was rumored that he was bisexual. But looking at him now, Katherine didn’t think so. There was something too square, and far too cunning for him to be caught up in sordidness like that.

Still on the phone, Crowley came and sat at the head of the table and motioned for her to sit down next to him.

The CIA had been using this house since the 1950s. It was still filled with bamboo furniture and mid-century touches bought years before. Watercolor paintings of scenes from the highlands decorated the wall.

The house had served as the military command center during the Bay Of Pigs invasion. This was the very living room that old American Coffee Pete had worked from forty years earlier, coordinating the air support the Cuban invaders had expected. The planes that would have carried the day, waiting on an air base in Nicaragua, were grounded by Kennedy himself at the eleventh hour.

“Now I want you to tell us again about Cruz-Price and what he’s up to,” Crowley said, looking at her and smiling, settling into his chair. He put the phone down on the polished table. She realized that it could still be on and that others might be listening. She took a breath.

“Cruz-Price is part of a group that’s going to assassinate Blanco. They think that will incite a coup that will allow Antonio De La Madrid to seize power.” She tried her best to sound indifferent, to keep the emotion out of her voice. Crowley reached over and made a show of turning the phone off. “They’ll call back. You seem to have gotten everyone’s attention, dear.”

“And what do you think of young Cruz-Price and his band of merry men?” Crowley said after what seemed like an eternity. He’d been looking across the room, but suddenly turned and looked at her full on.

“I suppose they’re desperate,” she said quickly. She was frightened of him, and felt her heart start to race.

“Killing Blanco won’t make a difference, you know. Not a bit. Only make it easier for our man to take over. Selva. Eye of the storm and all that. He’ll rush in and bring stability to the chaos. Everyone wants a soldier at times like that, dear. No good at all killing Blanco, as far as that goes.”

“We could stop it . . . Blanco’s killing,” she said. She was sorry she’d said it, and wanted to pull the words back.

Crowley stared at her for a moment. Each time he’d called her dear she wanted to slap him.

“Dear
. You know very well we aren’t allowed to interfere in the internal politics of sovereign nations. Isn’t that right?” He said in a fatuous tone, finally bothering to look down the table at the others. The phone rang and he reached for it.

“ . . .They’d like to speak to
you
,” Crowley said.

She took the phone from him. She told the head of the CIA’s Central America desk exactly what she’d learned about the plot against President Blanco. When she finished, she was told to put Crowley back on the line.

Katherine glanced at her watch. It was almost four o’clock. Blanco was scheduled to come to the penthouse at 6:00. She’d arranged everything the way Russell had asked her to. Then she’d come here. She wanted to save Russell’s life, and she still thought she could. She believed she’d done the right thing by telling Crowley. She didn’t care about the mission anymore; she was in love, and desperate to save him. She’d only mentioned Russell once during the phone call to Virginia, making a point of calling him “the American.”

“If they decide not to interfere, you’ll have to stay out of it,” Crowley said. “Up to a point, I suppose. We can’t legally help him, but we can support Cruz-Price. He might be useful in the future. You can always use someone like that.” Crowley looked at her evenly. It was obvious that he didn’t care about Blanco one way or the other. His murder would be a policy decision.

“I’ve never
really
understood Cruz-Price. What do you think he wants, Katherine . . . just this
girl?”
Crowley said, leaning forward. “You seem to know him fairly well?” He dropped his gaze slightly as if he’d said something off color.

Does he know?
Katherine wasn’t sure what they knew about her and Russell. She supposed they might suspect she had gotten involved with him. It was something about the way they were all looking at her now, suspicion tinged with envy. She noticed one of the younger men wore a wedding ring.

“Have you told us everything about Cruz-Price’s motivations?” Crowley asked. “It is crunch time. We wouldn’t want to be taken by surprise.”

“He simply believes Selva is wrong for the country and that the communists will take advantage of the chaotic economic situation. He hates the communists. I think it’s something personal, something to do with his mother,” she said. She stopped talking for a moment. Crowley’s expression was passive. “He believes Madrid has a chance of winning, if they can get a fair election.” She said it quickly, as if it were the key and she were betraying him again. She wanted so desperately to protect him, she felt insecure.

“I think he can be very useful in the future. If Madrid is elected, he’ll be part of the government,” she said. “I’m sure he’d cooperate with us. I’m sure of it.” This was a lie, but she didn’t care. In fact, she had no idea what Russell would do.

The satellite phone rang. It made her jump. Crowley took up the receiver and listened. He listened for quite a while.

Katherine felt the two younger officers in the room boring a hole in her. They both, she believed now, thought she’d “hooked up” with Cruz-Price. It was obvious to her, as she glanced at them. Neither one of them would look straight at her.

“I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do,” Crowley said finally, hanging up the phone. “We’re to stay out of it.”

Katherine was shocked. She’d been sure they would protect Blanco, stop it somehow.

“The important thing is to get Selva in place,” Crowley said.

The two younger officers in the room were obviously surprised. They had nothing but contempt for Selva. They wanted De La Madrid to win the election, because he was a democrat and all their intelligence indicated that he wasn’t hostile to the US in any serious way. But the officers were all young and for the most part still idealistic, if no longer naive. Selva, they knew, was predictable and completely compromised. He would take orders from the embassy, and that’s all that mattered to Washington. Everyone knew Selva was a pig, but he would be their pig.

“The clandestine people are very concerned about your safety . . . under the circumstances. There’s no reason for you to go back to the hotel. In fact, they’d like you to come home now,” Crowley said. She’d gone pale. Crowley thought she was frightened because they might have asked her to be in the room when Russell Cruz-Price shot Blanco.

“I’d like to go back and get my things out of the hotel. Personal things,” she said. “Of course,” he said. “We can have someone go with you if you like.”

“No. That won’t be necessary,” she said. “I’ll need an excuse to leave the commission . . . I’ll tell them I’ve gotten a call from my mother… tell them that my father’s gravely ill,” she said. “How’s that? No, I suppose not. That. . . .” She stood up. It was a silly suggestion, but she was upset.

It was raining hard outside now. She could see the rain bending the birds of paradise and battering the orange bougainvillea that grew along the garden wall.

“Langley has already arranged to have the NGO call you back to New York,” Crowley said. “Do you want to take my umbrella?”

“No. No, thank you, sir.”

She turned and left. She felt the doorknob in her hand and then she crossed the garden in the rain, warm on her face. She went to the garden gate and felt herself trembling. She’d never expected that Washington would go for Selva like that. She’d been wrong, and she didn’t know what to do now but go back and try to stop it somehow.

She was two blocks from the hotel when they shot her from a passing car; she was dead before she hit the ground. They believed Katherine Barkley was a communist. She’d fooled everyone.

Most of the important European newspapers, including
Le Monde,
reported that a young American woman, part of a UN human rights delegation visiting Guatemala, was shot and killed, probably by a government-connected death squad, in Guatemala City.
Le Monde
reported that military elements were angry with the Commission’s interference in the country’s internal affairs. The head of the UN Human Rights Commission issued a formal complaint against the Blanco government in protest, and left the country immediately.

There was no mention of the killing in any of the American newspapers. The story had been quashed by someone at Langley whose job was liaison with the
New York Times
and other major newspapers.

•••

Russell waited in the enormous suite alone all afternoon, dressed in a blue suit and a black silk tie. He’d kept a pistol stuck between the pillows of the couch. But no one from the commission had showed up, and neither had Blanco.

When he’d tried to call Katherine’s room, she hadn’t answered. She didn’t answer her cell phone, either.

He watched the sun start to set, the ice melting in the ice bucket in front of him. She had betrayed him, he supposed, or simply become frightened. He didn’t really blame her. Strangely, he felt no anger towards her. It was his fate that things would end this way.

He’d taken off his jacket and tie, because the room was warm. He watched the rain come and go through the windows, with their view of the Volcanoes of Water and Fire. He walked to the balcony and watched the rain beat against the face of the hotel’s pool 12 stories below, the pool’s lights on now. The rain fell so hard and intense it seemed the world was ending.

There had been a tremendous silence in him as he listened to the beating of the rain on the window. He was going to have to kill Blanco when he came to give his speech in the hotel’s ballroom, and that meant he was certainly going to die. He didn’t want to die, not really, but he felt he had a duty. He would change history. It would be a little piece of history, but it would be his piece. It would do some small good.

He didn’t feel lost anymore. He’d had an epiphany when he realized he was going to die. He felt, finally, as if it all had meant something. His life had a purpose. That terrible feeling he’d had since the day he’d heard about his mother’s death was gone at last. In its place, for the first time, was a strange and cleansing resolve that he couldn’t have explained to anyone. It would have sounded idiotic, since he had no more desire to die than anyone else,
now
.

And this was the great irony. He’d finally found himself. He wasn’t sure whether it was a new self or a self he’d had as a child that was buried in the avalanche of his mother’s death. Old or new, he welcomed it. He was certain to die because of this thing he had to do, and yet it was precisely this moment that was responsible for his finding himself. He had to kill Blanco. And there was nothing that would stop him.

He called Antonio and asked him to go to his mother’s apartment on La Reforma and take away all his things. He didn’t want there to be any connection with Beatrice or his family. He’d kept a book of Rilke’s poems Beatrice had bought him in Antigua. She’d written “For my love” in the flap, and signed her name. He wanted nothing left that could hurt her. No connection with him. He’d been so sure that he was going to see her again. Now he was sure he would not.

“It’s going to have to be tonight, then,” Russell said to Antonio cryptically. They couldn’t speak in too obvious a way.

“You are at the hotel?” Antonio asked. Madrid was in his car, leaving his office.

“Yes. At the hotel,” Russell said. “I’ll have to go down to the lobby. . . . He didn’t come for the meeting. Something’s happened.”

“Are you sure? I mean, sure that you want to do it?” Antonio asked. He sounded upset.

“I want you to go get my things. They’re at my mother’s. I want you to pick them up and make sure that they are destroyed. There isn’t much. On my mother’s dresser. A book of poems. Can you do that for me? I want you to make
sure

that it is destroyed. Take all my things. The maid will help.” “Yes, of course,” Antonio said. “But are you sure…?” “Very sure,” Russell said. “Goodbye. . . . Will you be there

tonight, when he comes?” “Yes,” Antonio said. “Goodbye, then.” Russell hung up; he didn’t want to speak any more.

THIRTY-TWO

The bell rang twice. It had been thirty years, or more—Antonio couldn’t remember exactly how long it had been since he’d climbed the stairs to Isabella’s apartment. He’d thought about Isabella every day of his life, but the memory was soft now, just their talking and their making love, nothing about her death.