David Unger - The Mastermind

Still, his dislike of Samir — who is almost his own age — does not justify pairing Guillermo with Maryam. But he enjoys having the younger man around, and there is no doubt that these lunches please him, if only to make Samir remotely jealous.

Guillermo wants to invite Maryam for drinks or dinner without her father as chaperone, but he suspects she would laugh in his face. She is not the kind of woman he can simply invite for a romp in bed at the Stofella, or so he thinks — she is much more elegant, and comes from a decent, if conservative, Maronite Christian family. In this, Ibrahim’s family more closely resembles Rosa Esther’s than Guillermo’s.

What he especially likes about Maryam is that she has a desire to know what is going on in the world. While most Guatemalan women read Vanidades and Cosmo , she has a subscription to the Economist and Poder , and is comfortable reading novels in both English and Spanish.

They talk politics, especially about the Middle East. Maryam is convinced that Iraq will end up like Lebanon — dozens of competing factions held at bay by a cold peace once the Americans leave. Or it could be worse: civil war.

The embarrassing thing is that during these lunches, Guillermo sits at the table sporting a huge and painful erection. Going to the tea table for dessert, for example, has become an awkward maneuver for him, and there have been several occasions when he has noticed Maryam glancing at his bulky crotch.

There is another issue too. Since Guillermo has begun having affairs, he has divided the women he knows into two separate types: the proper, marrying kind, and the cavorting sort. He wants nothing to do with the former, whom he can spot immediately, so he gravitates to those women who are either single, divorced, unhappily married, or only interested in a physical encounter. Guillermo cannot imagine finding a woman who is independent and sensual simultaneously unless, of course, she is unhappily married. He can foresee bedding down with Maryam, if he can get her alone, but only after several expensive lunches at Tamarindos and lots of tiny gifts of chocolate and perfume. At the same time, he realizes she is his intellectual equal, having secured a degree in economic history at the Universidad del Valle.

From the first day he saw her in her perky tennis outfit, he knew she had a luscious body, one built to please him — short but shapely legs, full breasts, a kind of sassy spring to her movements. He suspects that her vulva tastes of mango, or something sweeter.

He is afraid to take things to the next level because of his budding friendship with Ibrahim and the complications with Maryam’s husband and Rosa Esther. He imagines that the next step might be off a cliff.

And how could he even arrange the next step? He doesn’t have her phone number, and sending her a letter at home is much too risky. What he would like to do is slip a note into her pocket asking her out for lunch at La Hacienda Real and let things go from there. He is now fantasizing about her all the time. She has become a kind of obsession, even though nothing has happened between them but a mild, almost sardonic tease. He is becoming so sexed up that he begins masturbating again, simply to keep his attention on his work. And he has begun seeing one of his lovers, Araceli, at least twice a week, even at the risk of Rosa Esther finding him out.

Maryam must know that he is constantly staring at her with something more than desire. He is in fact undressing her, and she seems to like it, this lust, though he knows she will not act on it. In Guatemala, a woman rarely hankers after a man, especially a married man, more so if she herself is married. The woman is never the aggressor.

* * *

One Wednesday, as soon as he steps into Ibrahim’s office for their weekly meeting, the older man grabs him by the forearm.

“Guillermo, I have to confess something to you. I know that we respect one another, but what I have to say to you now cannot be shared with anyone, especially not with Maryam. I need you to swear it on your life.”

Guillermo is unflinching. “More than my client, you are now my friend.”

“And you are mine. But all the same, I need you to promise me. Do I have your word?”

“You don’t even need to ask.”

Ibrahim drops Guillermo’s arm and goes over to the window, which looks down from his third-floor office above his textile factory to the parking lot and the surrounding fence. It is an ugly view of cars, concrete, and loading docks in an area that lacks plants and trees. He then walks back and signals for Guillermo to sit across from him at the table in his office. They were supposed to discuss the possibility of moving his company’s accounting offices to El Salvador. Since banks there operate strictly in US dollars, it would be easier to transfer money to Ibrahim’s accounts in Miami. Also, the president of Guatemala has begun talking about nationalizing the banks.

“Besides the occasional threats, someone is now tapping my house and my cell phone conversations.”

“Are you sure?”

“I used to have clear connections on both but now there is static, and a kind of muffled echo. I called Guatel to complain. They claim there is nothing wrong with my phone lines or connections. I brought my cellular to be examined, but the serviceman says it is in perfect working order. And I continue to get strange calls with the heavy breathing. This isn’t normal.”

“Well, these winter rainstorms have been a nuisance,” Guillermo says, unconvinced by his own words.

Ibrahim stands up and grabs his forearm again. “Guillermo, I am trying to tell you something and you are trying to calm me down by giving me silly explanations. I don’t need a lawyer for that.” He sits back down. “At our last board meeting, Ignacio Balicar — the president’s representative and the chairman of the Banurbano advisory board — interrupted my presentation on the suspicious dispersal of public funds to say that it is dangerous to make wild accusations I cannot prove. He says that the president’s enemies are acting more boldly, and he has asked his staff and associates to be careful with what they reveal to the press, especially in this climate.”

“What climate is that?” Guillermo asks.

“Balicar said that everything is very combustible — in case I didn’t know it. Combustible, I said back to him, that’s an awfully charged word . Balicar smiled and just kept nodding. Then he said — almost as an afterthought — that the president and his wife are upset because they sense there are members of the opposition party who are trying to encourage the army to overthrow him. And he is not going to let that happen.”

Guillermo whistles. “That’s quite a conversation.”

Ibrahim goes on: “He was looking straight at me when he said it. Actually, I don’t think you know that Ignacio is also a vice president of Banurbano. He is both an employee and an advisor, something I consider objectionable.”

“So his opinions aren’t really objective.”

“Exactly. Ignacio went on to say that independent accountants from Pricewaterhouse have already audited the bank’s financial statements for the last three quarters. The board was convened simply as an informational courtesy to assure Congress that there is transparency at Banurbano. He reiterated that the accountants are quite content with the books and that our role is not to question them.”

“My. I am surprised that they were audited. I’m certain he didn’t produce any Pricewaterhouse documents to prove compliance. Cooked would have been the more appropriate term.”

Ibrahim sticks his finger at Guillermo and wiggles it in his face. “Touché, my friend, touché. I wasted no time in saying, I may be seventy-four years old and a bit forgetful, but I have never rubber-stamped anything in my life. I am an honest man, an honorable man. When I was asked to serve on the board, I told Ignacio it was with the understanding that we would be independent of management and that we would be able to question or address anything that seemed controversial or unseemly. That is, we could challenge and even overturn any unusual loans the government was making to private businesses or nongovernmental agencies. Since I joined the board I have also challenged the president’s wife’s policy of giving monthly cash payments to the poor. First of all, she was not elected to office to oversee these expenditures, and secondly, I have never believed in a social welfare state. There is no way to know who is getting the bulk of this money, nor if it is being used to buy votes for her run for the presidency. . But never mind, with this we were talking about expenditures of ten or eleven million quetzales a month, but when I saw monthly transfers on the level of forty to fifty million quetzales. . that’s why I hired you. Can the government be involved in a money-laundering scheme? Are they using strange maneuvers to deposit money in overseas accounts or are they simply placing money in national dollar accounts they secretly control? This is what you and I have been looking into.”