David Unger - The Mastermind

He stays on the Cymbalta but starts weaning himself off the other medications, reducing the dosage a little each day. For the first two nights, Guillermo’s sleep is interrupted — he has horrible, violent nightmares — but then he sees an improvement. He is beginning to heal.

Despite the physical recovery, Guillermo’s desire to live does not return. He wishes he were dead, though the thought of actually going through with the planned suicide still gives him the chills.

Meanwhile, Miguel works full throttle to arrange the filming for Friday night. No one will ever suspect his apparent murder was a suicide. It will be another sleight-of-hand trick, something common in Guatemala, where the audience, fed up with violence, becomes a willing and necessary participant in the success of a totally fabricated production.

Throughout all the planning, Guillermo realizes that for the first time in his life he has given up total control. He has always seen himself as the driver of his own destiny, a mastermind who controls all the buttons and levers. Now he has ceded control to Miguel Paredes, and this makes him nervous. Since their last meeting at Café Europa, Guillermo feels like a machine programmed to respond to the other man’s slightest provocation.

What troubles Guillermo most is that Miguel is not as transparent as he acts — there’s something of the manipulator about him. But Guillermo is so alone now, he is grateful that someone has taken any interest in his life, his ideas, and what he has lost. He could not plan this act alone, and has come to need Miguel.

Guillermo also doesn’t like that he has to involve others in the arrangement of his own death. He fears it will not be executed exactly as planned. He wonders why he can’t just put a bullet in his brain or overdose — he has the pills — and leave a suicide note. Why bother to engage others? What will that do? According to Miguel it will transform his death into a salutary movement, ridding Guatemala of disease.

And by dying he will also refocus scrutiny on the circumstances surrounding Ibrahim and Maryam Khalil’s deaths, and perhaps flush out the real killer. Though he still wonders if Samir was somehow behind it all, Miguel has all but convinced him the president was involved. He welcomes the idea of surprising and exposing him.

He is not afraid of dying. In truth, he is afraid of living, of continuing to live a life that holds no meaning. A life without Maryam.

* * *

Guillermo continues to have disjointed dreams of her, especially as his body works to eliminate the alcohol from his system. He breaks into night sweats, and his breathing is hard and sporadic.

Once he finds himself standing in the middle of his living room, sleepwalking. In a deep sweat. With a fork in his hand.

He has a recurring dream in which he sees Maryam walking across a foggy landscape. He tries to grab hold of her arm, but she slips away — she always manages to escape his grasp. He sees her walking to a cliff, seconds away from jumping over the edge, or he sees her ejected without a parachute from a small plane.

He is troubled by her lack of corporeality. And the fact that she is always beyond his reach.

* * *

The filming of the video is planned and will be carried out downtown. Miguel has decided it is best done in a two-room storage facility above a barbershop in Zone 1, on 9th Street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues, very close to Café Europa and Guillermo’s father’s old lamp store.

At first, the idea is to film Guillermo sitting on one of the barber chairs in storage, but Miguel worries that the comical staging will undermine the seriousness of the video. He wants to set up the filming as innocuously as possible, without too many details, so that the recording has a sense of authenticity, and so that no one can locate the actual filming site.

Only three people will be at the filming: the cameraman, Guillermo, and Miguel.

* * *

The cameraman constructs the set in one room: camera on a tripod, spotlights pointing to an empty black folding chair before a card table, and a dark blue sheet in the background. The only contrasting color is the red microphone on the table.

Once the room is set up, the cameraman calls Miguel, parked on 9th Street, and tells him it is safe to bring Guillermo upstairs. Both of them wear wolf masks over their heads so the cameraman won’t recognize or remember them. He sits Guillermo behind a six-foot table, and does a test run while Guillermo still wears his mask. The sound and light are tested; there’s no problem. The cameraman suggests that Guillermo relax, which he does by trying to sit as comfortably as he can on the folding chair.

The test run complete, the cameraman resets the video recorder and goes to sit in the anteroom so that he cannot hear or see what is going on. He is sworn to secrecy, and amply paid for it, but Miguel doesn’t want any mistakes. Once the recording is completed, Miguel and Guillermo will replace their masks before the cameraman comes back in to shut off the camera. They will make multiple recordings until they get it right.

With the video running, Miguel sits on a chair by the door and signals for Guillermo to start. Guillermo hesitates for a second. He has spent many waking hours thinking about what he wants to say on the tape, since it will be his final will and testament. Not only will it be his opportunity to set the record straight, but he will be able to tell his countrymen what he believes is ailing Guatemala. With any luck at all, he might actually be the spark for real institutional change.

Guillermo takes off his mask. He is dressed in a natty dark blue suit and a light blue silk tie; he is very nervous at first. He feels awkward looking straight ahead into a video camera, with the lights on and only Miguel present. He is sweating in the windowless room and aware of moisture dripping from his armpits into his shirt.

He begins by identifying himself and saying that if the public were unfortunately watching this tape it is because he has been killed by the president. His opening statement is delivered in a stiff monotone, as if he is reading from a poorly edited transcript. His eyes seem unfocused, his tongue tied. Sweat patches form on his temples. After about a minute, he slows down and his comments become deliberate and clear.

He reveals that the only reason he’s dead is because he was the personal lawyer of Ibrahim Khalil, who was cowardly killed along with his lovely daughter Maryam in a hideous drive-by shooting and that their murder was planned by the president and his wife.

Deaths like theirs have been occurring in Guatemala for decades, year after year. It’s the same old story. Guatemalans do nothing because there’s nothing to be done. Whoever kills does so with impunity and with the protection of gangs that control the government, or military cells intent on camouflaging their true identities. Guatemala no longer belongs to the people, but to corrupt government officials, narco gangs, and the individual murderers and thieves who have jointly conspired to destroy the country. He contrasts the intentions of these malevolent forces with the goodness of individuals like Ibrahim Khalil, a man who showed up to work at six forty-five a.m. every day because he felt a personal responsibility to all his employees. Industrialists and factory owners were defying the endemic corruption in Guatemala by showing they could be transparent and honest, work for the betterment of society, and still turn a healthy profit — something they were entitled to.

He eulogizes Maryam Khalil as an obedient daughter and a beacon of goodness in an increasingly corrupt country. Once a week she would come pick up her father at twelve thirty and bring him home for lunch. She doted on her father and served her husband in the same proper way.