Thomas Hoover - Life blood

Had I been right after all?

We made a high-speed turn onto the highway, and I immediately ordered the driver to take a service road that led off toward a cluster of gas stations and parking lots with falling-down barbed-wire fences. I figured I had about half a minute of lead time, whatever was going on.

We dodged massive potholes and the loose gravel flew, but then we reached a ramshackle gas station and I ordered him to pull in. Then I watched the line of traffic speeding by on the main highway for several minutes. Nobody pulled off. Good.

My driver finally got around to asking where I wanted to go, and as calmly as I could, I told him.

"The Palacio Nacional."

"Si."

With that he gunned his engine and spun out. Jesus!

"Mas despacio, por favor."

"Okay," he said, showing off his English as he donned his sunglasses. "I go more slow. No problem."

The initial destination was part of my new plan, hatched while I was on the plane. When I was reading my guidebook and filling out my entry card I'd had a bright idea. I knew exactly how I wanted to begin.

Heading into town, the time now the middle of the afternoon, I leaned back in the seat and tried to absorb the view, to get a feeling for where I was. We first traveled through the suburban fringes, the heavily guarded luxurious mansions of the landholding and military elite, the one percent of Guatemala who own ninety-nine percent of the country. Iron fences and wide expanses of lawn, protected by Uzi-toting security, guarded whimsical architectural conceits topped by silver satellite dishes. A twenty-foot wall shielded their delicate eyes from the city's largest shanty-town, makeshift hovels of bamboo and rusted tin, with no signs of water or drains or toilets. Guatemala City: as Steve had put it once, a million doomed citizens, the rich and the poor, trapped together side by side in the most "modern" capital in Central America.

Why on earth had Sarah decided to come here? Even if she did travel with the mesmerizing Alex Goddard it was hard to imagine a place less spiritual. Couldn't she feel that this was all wrong? One of us had to be missing something major.

Fifteen minutes later I was passing through the fetid atmosphere of downtown, which seemed to be another world, Guatemala City's twin soul. It was an urban hodgepodge of Burger King, McDonald's, discount electronics emporia, an eye-numbing profusion of plastic signs, filthy parking lots, rattletrap buses and taxis, stalled traffic. Exhaust fumes thickened the air, and everywhere you looked teenage "guards" in uniforms loitered in front of stores and banks with sawed-off shotguns, boys so green and scared-looking you'd think twice about letting one of them park your car. But there they were, weapons at the ready, nervously monitoring passersby. Who were they defending all the wealth from? The ragged street children, with swollen bellies and skin disease, vending single cigarettes from open packs? Or the hordes of widows and orphans, beneficiaries of the Army's Mayan "pacification" program, who now begged for centavos or plaintively hawked half-rotten fruit from the safety of the shadows?

My bright-idea destination was a government office in the Palacio Nacional, right in the center of town, where I hoped I could find Sarah's old landing card, the record of when tourists arrived and departed. When I'd filled mine out on the plane, I'd realized you were supposed to put down where you'd be staying in Guatemala. I figured the best way to locate her this time was to find out where she went last time…

As my cab pulled up in front, a black Land Rover was parked in a "Prohibido Estacionarse" zone by the front steps. To my eyes it looked like the same one I'd seen at the airport. Shit.

But nobody was around, so I decided maybe I was just being paranoid again.

The Palacio turned out to be a mixture of Moorish and faux Greek architecture, with a facade of light green imitation stone that gave off the impression of a large, rococo wedding cake. I took a long look, paid off the driver-who had turned out to be very nice-and headed in. It was, after all, a public building, open to tourist gringos.

Nobody in the lobby appeared to take any particular notice of me, so after going through their very serious security, uniforms and guns everywhere, I checked the directory.

It turned out the president, cabinet ministers, and high military officers all kept offices there, but it didn't take long to find the bureau I was looking for. Going down the marble-floored hallway on the third floor, I passed by the Sala de Recepcion, a vast wood-paneled room of enormous chandeliers, stained-glass windows, and a massive coat of arms. Quite a place, but not my destination. At the far end of the hallway, I found the door I wanted, went in, and tried out the Spanish question I'd been practicing in the cab. Not necessary: English worked fine.

"Senora, the records for that time were only kept on paper," a Ladino woman declared shrugging, her nails colored a brash mauve, her hair a burst of red, "but you are welcome to look." She'd been on the phone, chatting in rapid-fire Spanish, but she quickly hung up and got out her glasses.

"Thanks."

The welcome mat was obviously a little thin. The woman was trying to be friendly, but very quickly her nervousness began to come through. "We're always glad to accommodate Americans searching for friends or relatives," she went on, attempting a smile. "Some of your American press has been printing distortions, that the Guatemalan Army conspired with the CIA to cover up murders. It's a total lie."

Right. Maybe you ought to see some of the photos Steve has of the "Army-pacified" Maya villages up in the mountains.

The search took an hour and a half of leafing through dusty boxes, which chafed my hands raw, but then… voila.

There it was. The crucial piece of information Lou had missed. A hastily scribbled-in landing card for an American, with the name Sarah Crenshaw. I stared at it a moment, feeling a glow of success. Was it an omen?

It was definitely her. She'd even dotted an "i" with a smiley face, one of her personal trademarks.

Then I looked down the form. What I wanted was the address she'd put down as a destination in Guatemala.

The answer: "Ninos del Mundo, Peten Department."

My hopes sank. Great. That was like saying your address is Children of the World, lost somewhere in the state of Montana.

The home address was equally vague. Just "New York." So much for the high level of curiosity at "Inmigracion."

However, the carbon copy of the landing card, which you're supposed to surrender when you leave, was not stapled to it, the way it was on all the others in the box. Naturally, since she'd left in a medevac plane, half dead.

"What does this mean?" I got up and walked over to the woman's desk, carrying the card. Mainly I just wanted to get a rise out of her. "The carbon copy is missing. Does that mean she could still be here?"

Red alert. She glanced at the arrival date a moment and her eyes froze. Then, doubtless with visions of another CIA scandal looming in her consciousness, she brusquely announced that the office was getting ready to close for the day.

"You'll have to pursue any further inquiries through the American embassy, Mrs. James, which handles all matters concerning U.S. nationals."

"Well, thanks for all your help." I was finally getting the police-state runaround I'd expected all along. I guess I needed her to care, and it was obvious she didn't.

Okay… I'd planned to go to the embassy anyway. Maybe they could tell me about this place she'd put on her landing card. Could it be the local name for Alex Goddard's clinic?

As I picked up my things, I thought again about the prospect of showing my face on the streets of Guatemala City. Would there be more loitering men in grungy brown shirts waiting to watch my every move? More black Land Rovers? As I marched back out through the ornate lobby, I decided not to let my imagination get too active. It was now late afternoon, but I was making progress. I also was thinking about Steve, wondering if he'd gotten into town yet. Probably not for another couple of hours, but just thinking about seeing him again, and having him for support, was boosting my energy.