David Unger - The Mastermind

“Now what have you done?” he snaps, lowering his window, looking around to get his bearings. He is beginning to panic.

Maryam, in the backseat, begins to stir. She is vaguely aware she should be giving directions, but she’s still half asleep.

A gray Nissan pulls up alongside the passenger side as if to offer help. Ibrahim sees its shaded windows and becomes extremely anxious.

“Stupid woman, start the car and drive off!” he yells, slapping the dashboard.

Verónica cannot find the ignition and begins to weep.

Finally she is able to start the car and Ibrahim lets out a sigh of relief. Then she inexplicably begins to lower his window to thank the Nissan for stopping.

“Raise it, you fool. Drive! Drive!” he shouts.

What happens next happens very fast. Ibrahim catches a glimpse of a man racing out of the Nissan from the passenger side. He scrambles around the front of his car and rushes toward where Ibrahim is sitting. He is sweating and waving something wildly in his hand. Ibrahim pushes the button to raise his tinted window with one hand and tries to loosen the seat belt with the other, so he can crouch down.

The gun, a nine-millimeter pistol with a detachable cartridge, is the last thing Ibrahim sees before he hears, PUM! PUM! PUM! PUM! The tinted window, three-quarters raised, immediately shatters. Verónica starts to scream but is cut short by the spray of bullets.

Then the assassin, for good measure, pumps another three shots into Ibrahim’s corpse. The explosion of shots, the shattering of glass, and the screaming all fold together into one spurt of cacophony. Maryam drops her face into the backseat and covers her ears.

A second later there is only a deafening desert silence. Maryam can hear her heart beating loudly in her chest and feels tears leaking out of her eyes and down her cheeks. She is terrified for herself, well aware that a massacre has just taken place.

This silence feels protective so Maryam slowly sits up. Through her own tinted window she sees the shooter walking casually back to the passenger seat of his car. She cranes her head forward, making sure she stays out of his line of vision, and sees that both her father and Verónica are slouched over the dashboard, and that the front windshield, miraculously intact, is splattered with blood.

Maryam feels the silence building in her ears.

She knows that her father is dead but she is in too much shock to cry. She looks back at the Nissan, which hasn’t moved an inch. It’s as if they’re in the middle of a wasteland. She sees the gunman open the back door and pull out a large plastic container. He tosses the gun into the car.

Maryam lies back down and listens. She hears some odd movements and what sounds like liquid being thrown onto the hood of the car. She knows what is happening, what will happen next, but she doesn’t know what to do. She is certain that if she says a word the man will shoot her as well. Her heart is beating so loudly it makes a thumping noise against the backseat, which she hopes the killer cannot hear.

Then there’s a flicking noise and a huge flash of light over the hood — flames shoot up into the air. She hears the flames crackling, followed in a few seconds by the noise of the Nissan screeching away. The flames begin to engulf the sides of the car.

In one motion Maryam jacks up the handle of the backseat door on the driver’s side, grabs her purse, and rolls out of the car onto the gravelly pavement. The odor of burning gas and paint is nauseating.

She stands up and begins to run to the entrance of one of the abandoned buildings when she hears the car detonate behind her, the body of her father and Verónica still inside.

Once she is safe, she turns around to see an inferno rising ten meters into the air. If she had hesitated even two seconds, she too would have roasted inside her car. She feels a bit of urine running down her legs, her eyes are a burning tear of rage and pain. Her car is a ball of fire.

Maryam is still in too much shock to cry. Someone wanted both her and her father dead. This someone has probably been aware of every single step both of them have taken. What the killers have not planned for is Maryam’s illness and Verónica’s visitation, and now Verónica is dead and she is alive.

At least for the moment.

She opens her purse and sees her passport and the tiny purse with ten hundred-dollar bills, realizing how smart Guillermo’s advice was. She thinks of calling him now, to let him know what has happened and that she is alive, but quickly changes her mind. Guillermo has told her many times that all their phones are tapped. The only way to communicate privately would have been to purchase disposable phones with untraceable numbers but they’ve never taken the time to do that. She turns off her phone, knowing she has to get rid of it.

She is so tired that she slides down the wall of concrete and sits on the ground. She needs to think clearly.

Why would anyone want her dead?

Her father has enemies, this she can understand: his advisory role in Banurbano and his constant, undisguised accusations about governmental corruption; the rumor that her father has purchased textiles from contrabandists importing bolts of cloth illegally into Guatemala without paying duties; the handful of disgruntled employees, lazier than hell, who say they will sue Ibrahim if he makes good on his threat to fire them.

Plenty of people have issues with her father.

But her? What has she done to any of them? She hates no one and no one hates her.

Well, almost no one.

Just Samir, with his cloying smile and vituperative voice.

Would he be brazen enough to kill her and her father because she wants to leave him? In a normal world, such criminality would be beyond anyone’s comprehension. But this is Guatemala, where children prey on their parents and vice versa.

There is so much unknown. So much that can’t be known and perhaps never will.

* * *

Time is passing.

Maryam pushes herself up. She is covered with dust. She brushes herself off as she hurries back toward the street. It is quiet still, save for the smoldering vehicle. The stench of rubber, plastic, and cotton is disgusting.

A huge plume of smoke billows up from the remains of the car into the blue sky, drifting toward the top of Roosevelt Hospital’s highest building and flitting swiftly as if from the end of a pipe into the surrounding hills and mountains.

Maryam begins walking away down a broken sidewalk. After three blocks, she hears sirens approaching and sees two fire trucks and an ambulance racing toward her.

She is tempted to flag them down and wants to tell them that they should just go back, that it’s too late, for the car and for everyone in it — including her beloved father, who has been rendered into a dark, flaky ash; that she is the only survivor. But then Maryam realizes she is in a dangerous predicament. The assumption will be that she is dead. She doesn’t know if she was the actual target or just collateral damage, but she understands that her next step has to be counterintuitive: that is, it must fly in the face of any sort of expectation.

As painful as it might be, she must do something completely unexpected. And what would that be?

Her mind is spinning faster than a roulette wheel, and she is trying to review her options.

Her heart is broken, but she is alive.

All of a sudden she hears the screeching of tires, the opening of doors, and the sound of people running toward her.

She rushes into the construction site. A bullet zings past her ear, then she hears shouting and screaming.

She keeps running through a maze of concrete and wooden beams.

Four or five bullets ring out. Then more sirens and burning rubber.