David Unger - The Mastermind

A bigger issue is whether the municipal police will ask the federal government to convene a grand jury to investigate why Ibrahim and his daughter were killed. Indeed, as soon as their murder is made public, there is substantial speculation as to why they were killed. When Guillermo is interviewed by the detectives, he suggests that there has to be a formal inquest to determine who killed them, and to bring the guilty parties to justice.

He knows he cannot cast a shadow on Samir.

* * *

Four days after the murders, Samir organizes a small memorial service for his wife and father-in-law at the San Francisco Church in downtown Guatemala City. Guillermo knows that his presence is not wanted, but there is no way he will not attend. He is consumed with sorrow and feels entitled to grieve as if his own wife has died.

He drives downtown alone. He sits in the back of the church and stares in disbelief at the two urns placed side by side on a table by the altar. Guillermo is stunned that Samir has chosen to collect their ashes in urns and entomb them in a wall at the Verbena Cemetery, rather than pony up for two stately coffins and a decent Christian burial.

Father Robeleda barely knew the deceased and his comments are of a generic nature, commending the good souls of Ibrahim Khalil and Maryam Khalil Mounier to the kingdom of God. There are perhaps a total of sixty people in attendance: a handful of Lebanese friends; former associates of Samir and some girlfriends of Maryam; the cook Hiba; about a dozen illustrious leaders of the Lebanese community; Maryam’s tennis instructor; some high school friends who have read the obituary in Prensa Libre and El Periódico ; a couple of government officials who seem nervous and impatient, including a representative from the presidency who keeps looking down at his watch. Guillermo guesses that he has another three funerals to attend that day and simply wants to get away.

There are also four men — plainclothes detectives? — sitting near Guillermo in the back, off to the side, constantly checking their cell phones.

After the priest delivers the funeral oration and says a few words about the deceased, Samir gets up and begins to speak to the guests from a lectern surrounded by glass vases with sparse flowers.

“We are gathered here today to pay homage to two wonderful people, Ibrahim Khalil and his lovely daughter Maryam, my wife, who were prematurely and unjustly murdered for reasons we may never know. For those of you who didn’t know this extraordinary little family, Ibrahim came from the Levant to Guatemala in 1956 with his brother Leo to seek their fortunes in their adoptive country. They arrived with no money in their twenties, but with the desire to make their mark in the new world. Leo started a photography studio on Sixth Avenue while Ibrahim opened a fabric store in the downtown area, on Fifth. The business began modestly but continued to grow as Guatemalans realized Ibrahim was honest and reliable and worked incredibly hard. A few years later Ibrahim went to Cobán to look at a small café finca he considered purchasing and met Imelda Beltrán, the pretty daughter of a papaya grower. They married in 1965. Their first child died in childbirth, but two years later, in 1970, Imelda gave birth to a lovely daughter. Maryam, whose name means beloved , and was also the name of Moses’s sister, came into this world when Ibrahim was already thirty-six years old, and she became his pride and joy.

“When Ibrahim decided to open a textile factory, he practically gave the old store to Leo, which Leo continued to manage in Ibrahim’s style until — well, you all know what happened to this lovely downtown area. He was forced to abandon the store and moved back to Tripoli, in Lebanon. Now the whole area on Fifth Avenue is a series of cheap Chinese stores and cantinas. It breaks my heart—” Samir gasps for breath and brings tears to the eyes of many of the attendees.

“Imelda died of cancer in 1980, when Maryam was only ten years old. Ibrahim loved his daughter — he doted on her the way any proud father would, and gave her whatever she needed to grow up a loving girl, one without a mother.

“I don’t need to tell you that Maryam was completely devoted to her father and, in fact, had lunch with him every week, especially when Ibrahim began to suffer from vertigo, which made it impossible for him to drive. She would pick him up at the office in the factory by Roosevelt Hospital every Wednesday and bring him to our apartment for lunch. The devotion she showed to Ibrahim was beyond dispute.

“And it was during one of these lunchtime pickups that I lost my wife and my father-in-law in a cowardly attack. As I said earlier, we may never know the motives for their murder, but we do know we have lost two remarkable human beings—” Samir becomes overwhelmed with tears again, and the priest holds him, then escorts him down to his seat in the front row.

It is clear to Guillermo that the priest is in a rush to finish the service. He now knows why. One of the government officials is circling a finger in the air, as if to tell him to wrap it up. Glancing across the pews, Father Reboleda asks the mourners if anyone else wants to say something.

Guillermo is shocked by the silence, by the fact that no one — absolutely no one — gets up and speaks a word about Ibrahim or Maryam. Maybe it would have been different if Samir had gotten a Lebanese Maronite priest to lead the service.

Few of the mourners know of Guillermo’s existence, and he suspects that Samir will be angry if his wife’s lover gets up to speak — even if he were the only one to know of his role in Maryam’s life. But little by little, Guillermo is realizing that, with his love gone, he has nothing to lose. He looks at the statue of Christ at the rear of the altar and shakes his head. He then stands up and walks down the central aisle of the church and up the steps to the lectern. He wants the audience to know that Ibrahim was an honest man and that Maryam was an exceptional human being, a person who was cultured and educated, who read the Economist while many of her girlfriends read Vanidades .

He glances at Maryam’s urn and gasps. Tears begin to choke him and he is unable to speak. A church beadle approaches him with some tissues, and whispers a few words in his ears, trying to help him regain his composure. Guillermo glances at Samir, who is sitting hunched and silent; he knows that he can’t confess his love for Maryam in front of her supposedly grieving husband and friends, but he does want to say a few words about the woman he has just lost. To some degree it will be an open confession, and he realizes he needs to focus his remarks more on the death of his friend Ibrahim.

Guillermo grabs the lectern with both hands to steady himself. Finally he begins to speak: “As some of you know, I was Ibrahim Khalil’s private attorney. He had many legal counselors to handle his varied interests: a real estate lawyer, a tax lawyer, and even a corporate lawyer who handled the petty suits that were filed against him each year by aggrieved employees and customers. I had a special distinction: I was his privileged friend and his personal lawyer. I also happened to work with him on issues related to his appointment to the Banurbano advisory board — I will talk about that more, later, but I want to say that I was more than a lawyer: I considered Ibrahim a close friend.

“I can assure you that in the coming weeks I will provide you with new, uncontroverted evidence supporting the revelation — I won’t call it a theory — that Ibrahim and Maryam were murdered. While I was aware of some rumors regarding Ibrahim’s purchase of textiles and cloth from Germany and England, I believe these were a smoke screen perpetrated by his true assassins. When I have gathered the appropriate evidence, you will hear the truth. I will provide proof that he was on the verge of exposing dozens of questionable if not illegal transactions at Banurbano involving elected officials at the highest level of government — perhaps going as high as the president himself.”