David Monnery - Guatemala – Journey into Evil

‘Don’t think so.’

‘Are you OK?’ she asked, turning towards him, feeling slightly worried. He didn’t seem his usual ebullient self.

‘Fine. I just don’t like watching things on a screen the size of a postage stamp.’

‘You should have your eyes tested,’ she said.

He nodded and grinned.

Satisfied, she put the headphones back on and left him to the guidebook. Razor squeezed it back into the pocket and sat back with his eyes closed, thinking how strange it was to be heading out on a job like this with her beside him. Still, this whole trip had a strange feeling to it. For one thing the CO had driven them to Gatwick in person, which had to be a first. And for most of the journey Razor had had the feeling Davies was biting his tongue rather than saying what was on his mind. His last words had been: ‘Remember, if you feel the need to press the ejector button, just do it. And we’ll just have to deal with the political fall-out.’

That was all very well, Razor thought, but he preferred Jamie Docherty’s epigram: ‘When the shit hits the fan, it’s too late to turn the fan off.’

What the hell. He looked at his watch, and saw that the Tottenham versus Blackburn game was an hour away from kick-off. Just his luck, he thought – the day they played the League leaders and he had to miss it. If there was ever a nuclear war, Razor was convinced it would come with Tottenham one point short of their first League title since the Middle Ages.

He closed his eyes again, and let the hum of the jet engines lull him into sleep.

Chris Martinson and Ben Manley sat in the coffee bar which overlooked the arrival hall at Guatemala City’s Aurora International Airport, and watched a plane-load of American tourists and returning Ladino families pluck their luggage from the carousel.

‘Is this guy a friend or just a brother-in-arms?’ Manley asked.

‘A friend, I suppose,’ Chris said. He had always been something of a loner, and since Eddie Wilshaw’s death in Colombia he had got used to the idea of not having friends, but over the past couple of years he had felt closer to Razor than anyone else, male or female.

‘Well, that should help,’ Manley said. ‘But these Guatemalan Army guys, they’re not half as bad as the press they get. Most of the officers come from good families, and most of them have been trained in the States. There are a few psychos, like there are in any army, ours included.’

‘What about G-2?’ Chris asked.

‘They had a bad reputation in the eighties, and I suppose it’s still not good. But you won’t have to deal with them. We’ve been promised this is a strictly Army affair.’

Chris sipped at his coffee, wondering who Manley was trying to kid. There didn’t seem much left of the wide-eyed innocent Chris had first known in the Green Howards. Manley was a fellow East Anglian and another bird-watcher, and they had spent a lot of time together in those days, both in England and Germany. But their career paths had diverged, and Manley seemed to have acquired the blinkers necessary for following his. He hadn’t changed, simply narrowed his focus.

Maybe he had himself, Chris thought, but he didn’t think so. ‘What’s the social life like around here?’ he asked.

‘Restricted. Just the other embassies, really. Most of the locals you meet are too rich to notice you. There’s only the junior officers, really, and some of them are OK. They know where the action is, anyway.’

‘And the women?’ Chris asked.

‘Difficult. This is a Catholic country, so any female over fourteen is either a wife, a Virgin Mary or a tart. The only real exceptions are students, and you have to be pretty careful what you’re getting into with them as well.’

‘What about the Indians?’

Manley snorted. ‘Another world altogether. It’s like apartheid,’ he added, without any apparent moral judgement. ‘The two worlds just don’t mix.’

Except when it comes to hiring servants, Chris thought to himself, just as a growing roar outside announced the arrival of another flight.

‘That’ll be the Miami flight,’ Manley said, getting to his feet. ‘We’d better get down there.’

Razor and Hajrija were still on the plane when a smiling young man in a uniform arrived to escort them through the entry formalities. These consisted of a single brief conversation between their young man and another uniform in a booth, who thereupon attacked both their passports with a fearsome-looking stamp. Their bags, which included two SAS uniforms and two Browning High Power 9mm semi-automatics with extra magazines, had already reached the arrival hall, where Chris Martinson and another man were standing guard over it.

‘Look what the wind blew in,’ Chris said.

‘It’s good to see you too,’ Razor said. ‘I was wondering who was going to carry the luggage.’

Manley thanked the Guatemalan and led the other three across the cavernous hall and out through the exit. On the other side of the road Hertz and Budget car rental offices sat beneath a huge hoarding advertising Lucky Strike cigarettes. ‘I love exotic countries,’ Razor said, as Manley opened up the embassy limousine.

The Wilkinsons slumped into the back seat. ‘The hotel’s good,’ Chris said from the front, just as a huge roar sounded to their left and two Chinook military helicopters loomed above the row of offices and lifted away out of sight. They reminded Razor of Apocalypse Now . Nice omen, he thought.

A few moments later they were passing under an old stone aqueduct and entering the city. At the first major intersection a large building announced itself as Chuck E Cheese’s Centre Mall, and behind it were ranged several residential high-rises. It all looked like the Lea Bridge Road translated into Spanish, Razor decided.

Things improved as Manley turned the car down a broad, tree-lined boulevard. There were donkey rides for children in the wide central reservation, and one local entrepreneur was doing a roaring trade in Batman T-shirts. Most of the buildings lining the road seemed to be either hotels or offices, and all of them flew the sky-blue and white national flag.

‘There’s a logic to their flag,’ Manley told them. ‘The blue on either side symbolizes the Pacific and Atlantic, and the white in between is the peace the conquistadors brought to the land. Hence the quetzal holding the olive branch.’

Irony, blindness, or plain conceit? Chris wondered. Probably a combination of the last two.

‘One of the more endearing things about this place,’ Manley was saying, ‘is the number of rich crazies it seems to produce. People with more money than sense. Look at this church on the left…’

They all stared out at the bizarre building, which seemed to have been constructed as a monument to several different architectural traditions. It looked like a cross between the Kremlin, Westminster Abbey and a Venetian palace.

‘There’s a copy of the Eiffel Tower a couple of streets over,’ Manley went on, ‘and in one of the parks there’s a relief map of the country the size of a tennis court. This is a strange town.’

‘I see what you mean,’ Razor said, as they drove past a huge statue of two fighting bulls. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, as they passed a large, castle-like building, complete with battlements and armed guards.

‘Police headquarters.’

‘Figures.’

They passed under a railway bridge and across a wide open space between parks before burrowing into a narrower street festooned with advertisements.

‘This is the oldest part of the city,’ Manley said.

It looked more interesting, but not a lot more welcoming. There didn’t seem to be many people on the streets, and most of those seemed to be hurrying along, heads bowed down, as if keen to reach home before something bad happened. There was something distinctly shabby about the capital of Guatemala, Razor thought. And perhaps sinister as well.