Donald Westlake - High Adventure

After half an hour’s walk, he crossed an invisible line on the Earth and was no longer in Belize. He couldn’t tell precisely where that point was, but eventually he knew he was safely in Guatemala and away from possible discovery — except for the return trip, of course — and 20 minutes later he came out to a dirt road, not far from the Guatemalan town of Alta Gracia. To his right, a tall stocky man in high-ranking military uniform stood pissing on the left rear tire of a dusty black Daimler. The man’s head turned, he gazed through extremely dark sunglasses at Vernon, and he nodded a hello as he went on with his tire wash.

Vernon waited quite a long while, watching the Colonel piss. He was aware of two people in the car — a soldier-chauffeur in the separate driver’s compartment in front, and a woman with a mass of black hair in back — but the Colonel was the only one who mattered.

This was Colonel Mario Nettisto Vajino, of the Army of Guatemala, until recently a vice minister of defense in the last government but one. The Guatemalan political system alternates rigged elections with American-sponsored coups, but no matter the route of accession the man at the top is always an Army man, always a general, and usually a previous minister of defense. Colonel Nettisto Vajino could reasonably expect to become minister of defense (and a general) in some future government, if he weren’t assassinated along the way.

This was not the colonel who had once publicly said that Guatemala would deal with the large black population of Belize by “expanding the cemetery,” nor was he the colonel who had dealt with the problem of peasant Indian sit-in strikers in the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City on February 1st, 1980, by sending the police and army to firebomb the embassy, killing 38 people inside, peasants and employees and visitors alike, everybody but the Spanish ambassador himself, who got out with his clothes on fire and left for Spain as soon as he could. This was a different colonel, but not very different.

The Colonel shook himself, paused briefly to admire himself, tucked himself away in his trousers, zipped up, and approached Vernon, saying, “You’re a bit late.”

Reflecting how lucky it was that the Colonel didn’t regard him as an equal, and would therefore not offer to shake hands, Vernon said, “I thought I heard a patrol.”

Nettisto Vajino grimaced, unwillingly looking eastward, toward the lost province. There were no colonels of his sort over there. There was no such thing as a Belizean army as such, only the rather casual Belizean Defense Force, the BDF — known locally as the Bloody Damn Fools — a mere 300 strong. There were policemen as well in Belize, but they didn’t carry guns. In Guatemala, on the other hand, there was the ordinary Army, plus various unofficial private armies, plus three police forces, every one of them armed to the teeth. The busy death squads in their woolen masks and army-issue boots were also well equipped with guns. But when Nettisto Vajino looked eastward, what his mind’s eye had to see was the British peacekeeping force and the Gurkha patrols and the Harrier jets and the memory of the Falkland Islands, and no wonder he grimaced. How Guatemala would love to spread its culture and democracy to Belize!

Nettisto Vajino shook his head, returning his attention to Vernon, saying, “You’ve brought me something?”

“Yes.” From a long pocket in the left leg of his fatigue pants, Vernon took a map, which he opened out to a square almost three feet on a side. “I circled the camps in red,” he said.

“Mm.” Nettisto Vajino carried the map back to the Daimler, where he spread it on the large curved trunk and pursed his lips as he studied it. Vernon, standing beside him, was extremely aware of the woman in the car looking through the rear window at him. She was exotic looking, like Rita Hayworth in “Gilda,” but wilder. She never looked toward the Colonel at all.

Vernon was also acutely aware of the large Colt .45 in its holster on the Colonel’s right side. It had been his fear — one of his fears — since the beginning of this relationship, that the Colonel would some day pull that gun and simply shoot Vernon dead, as a way of ending the association. Once his usefulness was over.

Well, his usefulness wasn’t over yet. And when the time came, Vernon was determined that he would resign in his own way. He’d be very quick about it, too.

Nettisto Vajino tapped his knuckles on the map. “These are all new settlements?”

“Within the last six months,” Vernon assured him. “That’s what you asked for.”

The Colonel grunted, continuing to brood at the map, his mind working in some slow and labyrinthine way. Vernon wished he knew what the Colonel’s scheme was, but he didn’t dare ask about it directly. Out would come the Colt, no question.

What Vernon had brought the Colonel today was a large topographical map of Cayo District, one of Belize’s six districts, one of the three next to Guatemala. The new capital of Belmopan is in Cayo and so was all of Vernon’s trip today until he’d crossed the border. In recent years, refugees from Central American bloodshed, mostly from Guatemala and El Salvador, have made their way in the thousands to Belize, where they have been offered land free for the tilling and have started tiny new communities, mostly in the southern half of the country. The Department of Land Allocation, in which Innocent St. Michael was Deputy Director, was of course involved with this aspect of the immigration, so it hadn’t been hard for Vernon to collect the data on the most recent arrivals.

“Very good,” the Colonel said, though noncommittally, as though it were merely a polite kind of cough he’d learned. Folding the map, his hooded eyes unreadable behind the dark glasses, he said, “And the pictures?”

“Oh, yes, certainly.”

From a shirt pocket Vernon removed a roll of Kodacolor film, in its gray-capped black plastic canister, which he placed in Nettisto Vajino’s waiting palm without a word. Why the Colonel wanted photos of Gurkha soldiers and Gurkha patrols, with details of uniform and equipment, Vernon neither knew nor cared. Sufficient that the pay was good, and that by pretending to be a tourist he had received the amused cooperation of his subjects.

The fact was, Vernon, like most Belizeans, was convinced the Guatemalan claim was just nonsense, old history. The Belizeans wouldn’t permit Britain to give their land away, and the British wouldn’t permit the Guatemalans to just come in and grab it, so that was that. So if some crazy Guatemalan Colonel shows up with money in his hand, willing to pay for a lot of dumb things like maps and photographs, why not take his money? Vernon knew what was going on here was a simple con job, himself giving worthless trash for real cash, but he also realized that to an outsider it could possibly look like, give the impression of, even appear to be...

... well, treason.

Expressionless, the Colonel closed his hand around the film roll, making a casual fist. “Wait there,” he said, and turned away, returning to his car. When he opened the right rear door of the Daimler, Vernon caught a glimpse of long bare legs against the black plush. His heart ached in his breast. He wanted to live in a country where he could be a colonel. Maybe the crazy Guatemalans would pull this off after all, and he...

No. That wasn’t a future he could think about.

The driver’s door of the Daimler opened and the blank-faced soldier came around the rear of the car with a white envelope in his hand. He gave it to Vernon, turned about, and went back to his place in the car, while Vernon lifted the flap and looked at the sheaf of U.S. greenbacks inside. He couldn’t count it now, not with them still here. Lifting his eyes, he saw the woman looking at him again out the back window. She didn’t gaze with normal curiosity, as one human being looks at another, but with a flat and feral expression, as though she were an animal staring out of its cage. Or was he the animal, and she among the humans?