David Unger - The Mastermind

* * *

Guillermo keeps a low profile in the days that follow. He eats out in inconspicuous greasy places near his pensión, like a simple bookkeeper or unemployed accountant, with no apparent — there’s that word again — expectations that his life will ever change. He takes long walks in the mornings through the many parks in downtown San Salvador, peruses newspapers, and dips deeper into The Grapes of Wrath . Once he even walks down the crowded Salvadoran streets to the rather large Parque Cuscatlán a good kilometer away from his pensión. It is almost a forest in the city, the vegetation so thick that, though it starts raining, Guillermo stays dry under a canopy of trees. He realizes that San Salvador is really a tropical city.

He has many observations that contradict his expectations of what living in El Salvador would be like. Despite all the reports in Guatemala about the dangers of gangs and a left-wing government incapable of maintaining law and order, Guillermo is never assaulted or even bothered. Of course, he makes sure to be back in his room every evening by eight o’clock. He finds the Salvadoran people to be open and helpful, not the beguiling traitors Guatemalans think them to be.

Guillermo’s life starts changing in so many ways. Where before he owned dozens of expensive slacks, shirts, and sweaters, for work and pleasure, he now buys simple, functional clothes appropriate for the heat and humidity. Dacron instead of gabardine and wool, cotton in place of silk. It is tactical not to stand out in the largely working-class neighborhood where he lives, but his purchases also suggest his new preferences. He is glad to be downsizing.

He buys light colorful guayaberas and multiple packages of Fruit of the Loom underwear and socks from vendors on Plaza Barrios. He is starting to drink less, and is losing weight — the two pairs of pants he traveled with are already too big on him. He buys three meters of light poplin and takes the material to a tailor on the second floor of a building on Avenida España to make him four pairs of pants. He purchases new brown and black shoes from the store across from his pensión. They cost twelve dollars each and are imported from Brazil.

He wants to be totally inconspicuous: a thin middle-aged man working quietly, staying below the radar, seeking a job as an accountant or bookkeeper in a small business in downtown San Salvador. A man with no family and little ambition, pleased to be alive and enjoy his next meal. He wants to blend in and be ordinary — as common as his father Günter was.

He knows he can change, he can learn to take pleasure from simple delights. And if he wants sex — after all, he’s a healthy man — there are plenty of whorehouses on 8 Calle Poniente where the microbuses to Comalapa Airport line up.

Guillermo is becoming a new man, shedding old layers of being, like a lobster discards its carapace once a year. What he cannot change is his desire to understand what has happened. This much he knows: his elaborate and meticulous murder-suicide plot has been foiled by a series of coincidences.

Had his assassin killed Boris Santiago by mistake? More unbelievably, had Miguel hired an assassin to kill both Guillermo and Santiago to at once bring down the president and take control of the Guatemalan Zetas? The murder of Santiago has led to many new killings among drug dealers according to the newspapers. Obviously there’s a struggle to see who takes control of his business.

In the meantime, Guillermo would like to think that his old associates, clients, friends, neighbors, his ex-wife (for the sake of their children) — all the people who’d had no role in the plot but who were extensions of his own life — would want to know what happened to him. If nothing else, simply to close the chapter on his worthless life. But nothing of this appears in the press. Despite his assumptions about his own importance, Guillermo is of no more interest than the salesman who gets killed for not giving part of his salary to the local gang.

Guillermo realizes he cannot spend the rest of his days reading books and newspapers on park benches or watching television in his air-conditioned room. He will, in time, run out of money. He needs a plan.

He cannot return to Guatemala, now or perhaps ever. It would not be safe. His coconspirators have invested too much time and money trying to overthrow the president and his wife to simply fold their cards and say, Oh well, let the chap go .

This is why he must assume that Miguel has assigned some of his foot soldiers to find him and have him silenced. Guillermo alive is undoubtedly a risk, especially if Miguel wants to hatch another, more successful plot against the president. Guillermo even wonders if Ibrahim Khalil’s appointment to the Banurbano board was part of the plot that Miguel Paredes had hatched to pressure the president to resign. There is no way to know now, but this possibility underscores the danger that Guillermo would be in should he decide to casually reappear.

He knows too much. Miguel would be smart to want him dead; he has become a huge liability.

* * *

One evening Guillermo lies in bed assessing his options. One idea would be to go to Mexico City and try to be a good father to his children, far away from the dangers of Guatemala. He would have to be willing to truly devote his life to building some kind of relationship with them. His Columbia University degree would help him get permission to be employed in Mexico; he could even volunteer to do legal work for the Guatemalan exile community.

But he knows this happy reunion would last for no more than a few days, and then Guillermo would begin screwing up again, out of despondency or heartache. He misses Maryam too much to assume he could turn around his life with Rosa Esther. It would be a lost cause from the start. And besides, Mexico City would be one of the first places Miguel would be looking for him.

Thinking of Maryam, he once again thinks back to the night many months earlier when they had vowed to meet — or try to meet — on May 1 in La Libertad should they ever become separated. It is mid-June and he would have to wait nearly ten months before seeking an imagined reunion in a town named Freedom, in a country called The Savior. How ironic. Perhaps he should go there simply as a way of remembering her.

How long, Guillermo asks himself, can he live under the radar? He could wait a couple of years and simply emerge in El Salvador, convincing the world that he has been living here all along, that he’s happy with his new life. He could willingly come out of the fog like Assata Shakur did in Cuba forty years ago. But even that might be too dangerous. It had been dangerous nearly sixty years earlier when members of Árbenz’s cabinet, having been granted asylum by the Mexican government, had gone happily into exile only to be beaten up by Guatemalan goons collaborating with the Mexican police. Memories are very long, especially for those who feel double-crossed.

Payback would be Guillermo’s fate no matter how many years have passed. Miguel would make sure of that.

So for the moment, Guillermo needs to get a job and stop languishing. After all, he’s a corporate lawyer who speaks two languages, and has a law degree from Columbia University! Even without his actual diploma with him, perhaps he could use his skills to advise others on how to legally establish new businesses. But it would be too risky to open an actual law practice in downtown San Salvador. Miguel would first sniff and then snuff him out.

After two months of staying at the pensión, Guillermo decides it’s time to find his own digs. He rents a small furnished apartment on Calle Rúben Darío across from the Parque Bolívar. The furnishings are not to his liking, but it doesn’t matter. He is far beyond caring whether his mattress is firm or not, if the sofa is covered in soft leather or naugahyde, if he has real art or framed posters on the wall.