Body of Truth (35 page)

Haydon said nothing. He was tempted to talk with this man about Lena Muller, what he himself knew and suspected about her life, but something made him hold back. It might have been his own uncertainty about what he really knew of her. After all, within just the past two days he had learned things he hadn’t known before, and he suspected if he spent a year talking to people, or even to Lena herself, he would never get to the bottom of it. One never did. You could only talk about someone from your perspective at the present, at a given point in time, acknowledging your limitations, acknowledging that you could very well change your convictions tomorrow. But perhaps that was putting too fine a point on it, an excuse for cowardice. There was a very real possibility that Dr. Grajeda already knew Lena Muller better than Haydon did, even without knowing some of the more significant facts. If Haydon had learned anything over the years, it was that facts often had very little to do with what people were really “about.”

“These people have agreed to take Lena out of the country,” Dr. Grajeda said, changing the subject. “I am telling you this because I know you have come down here to take her home.”

“No,” Haydon corrected him. “I came only to see that she was alive. Does she want to go home?”

“I only know that now she’s trying to save her life. If you wish, these people can tell you where, at what border crossing they plan to deliver her, and you can pick her up there. I myself do not know the facts in this. It was difficult enough to arrange this meeting with you. These people stay alive by not taking chances. Any arrangement with them will have to be between you and them.”

Haydon had no commission from Germaine Muller to bring her daughter back. He had no commission from the Houston Police Department to do anything. It was a matter of personal responsibility. As for Fossler, he was at a loss.

“Do these people know anything about Fossler?” Haydon asked.

“I’ve already inquired. Nothing.”

It was as if Fossler had vaporized. It was the kind of “disappearance” that was always attributed to the death squads.

“What about the American embassy?” Haydon asked. “I don’t understand why Lena hasn’t gone to them in order to protect her life. I can see—maybe—why she didn’t want to involve them in the Vera Beatriz affair. She wouldn’t be the only American who was skeptical about what the U.S. State Department can and will do about such things. But I don’t understand why she wouldn’t call the embassy when she knew her life was in danger. Most people would do a lot of things to save their lives that they wouldn’t do otherwise.”

He was particularly interested in Dr. Grajeda’s response to this. Haydon feared that the answer might lie in a circumstance that he knew should have been a secret, Lena’s relatively recent recruitment by Pittner. If there was some other reason, Grajeda should know it. If there wasn’t, Grajeda should be in the dark about it.

“I think you should ask the embassy about that,” Dr. Grajeda said. “I don’t know.” He hesitated. “I presume you don’t have to be cautioned…”

“No,” Haydon said. “I don’t.”

“Then what do you want to do?”

“Does Lena want me to pick her up at a border designation?” Haydon asked. “Does she want to return to Houston? It would help if I could talk to her.”

“I knew you would say that.” Dr. Grajeda nodded. “I am trying to negotiate it. They are beginning to complain that I am asking more than we originally bargained for. Everything for them is a risk; they are always at risk. It is a nerve-wracking way of life, emotionally exhausting. I don’t know. I’m trying to arrange it.”

Haydon looked at Grajeda and lowered his voice. “The little girl who brought me to your clinic. Has she done any other errands for you…regarding this…regarding Lena?”

Dr. Grajeda’s eyes stirred in alarm, but he remained calm. “No. Why? Have you seen her?”

“No, I haven’t seen her,” he said. “Can we stand up and talk. I’ve got to stretch my legs.” He wanted to get away from the table, from the sofa and the chairs, which easily could be wired.

“Of course, of course,” Grajeda said, and as he stood he spoke to the man and the woman telling them they only wanted to stand for a while, that they were tired of sitting.

They moved away from the small collection of furniture in the center of the cavernous room and walked over to one of the stone walls and then away from it, to a point roughly equidistant between the wall and the furniture, and stood together on the bare wooden floor.

“Janet Pittner received a message late last night at her home,” Haydon said. He and Grajeda were side by side, facing the windows. “It was delivered by a child, a little girl.” Haydon quoted the message verbatim.

“Jesus God,” Grajeda said. “No. I can swear to you that these people would never have allowed Lena to do that. This did not come from her.”

“Janet Pittner swears it was Lena’s handwriting.”

“I don’t care what she swears,” Grajeda said. “It did not come from Lena.”

“I don’t know why anyone else would want to do that,” Haydon said. “I don’t know who would want to lure me into anything. I’m no particular threat to anyone.”

“This would be strictly prohibited by these people,” Grajeda said. He had yet to name who “these people” were. Haydon could only surmise he was working with one of the many guerrilla groups who persisted in Guatemala despite thirty years of the army’s brutal counterinsurgency operations.

“Okay, fine,” Haydon said. “I needed to know. I’ll be careful with it.”

Dr. Grajeda did not seem comforted by Haydon’s acceptance of his convictions. Haydon had planted a seed of doubt in the doctor’s mind, which he regretted, but which also told Haydon something of the doctor’s circumstances. Perhaps he was not as sure of his guerrilla friends as he wanted Haydon to believe, or even as he wanted to believe himself. Haydon was slowly learning that no one could be sure of anything in Guatemala, not even of the workings of one’s own mind.

CHAPTER 35

L
eaving Dr. Grajeda was almost as complicated as meeting him in the first place. The woman who had taken Haydon’s weapon and radio on the landing outside had changed clothes and was now wearing a honey-colored wig. Haydon guessed that she had changed clothes because she had been somewhere on the streets during the time he was working his way to the shoe store—another “faction” monitoring his approach—and did not wish to wear anything that might have been spotted earlier by the competitor surveillants. She looked good in the wig, and Haydon wondered if she had a blond one as well. Dr. Grajeda’s story about how “they” had gone to the morgue in Huehuetenango to claim the body of a blond woman made Haydon wonder how they could have done that if they were clearly Guatemalans themselves. Surely, to claim an Anglo body from a Guatemalan morgue required something of a good story if the claimants were Guatemalans. Or perhaps Haydon was making assumptions, being too logical for a society where the vast majority of the people were so desperately poor that virtually everything was negotiable, virtually everyone was open to graft simply as a means of survival. In such an environment the word “graft” almost lost its meaning and took on an entirely different definition by virtue of its skewed context.

“We’re going to take you out a different way than you came in,” the woman said, tucking the last of her jet hair up under the honey wig. Haydon was surprised that she spoke to him in English and that she hadn’t the slightest trace of an Hispanic accent despite the fact that she was obviously Guatemalan. “They know you’re here somewhere, somewhere on 18 calle, and they’re all over us.”

“Who are ‘they’?” Haydon asked.

“We’re going to go down the stairs the way you came up,” she said, ignoring his question. “And then we’re going to leave by the back of the courtyard instead of through the shoe store.” She was wearing 18 calle clothes, a skirt that fit her poorly, a dingy mauve blouse that hung loosely over her waist. She raised the blouse and unfastened a strap on a leather holster held with a tight elastic band stretched around her naked midriff.

They were standing by one of the beds on the floor of the warehouse, and she had dropped down on one knee on the mattress and was filling several clips, which she then put in a yellow plastic purse. Bullets and clips and silencer tubes and flashlight batteries and a couple of Uzi’s were laid out neatly on the bed together with Haydon’s automatic, which lay on a shred of blue towel. She picked it up as she stood.

“Do not be tempted to use this,” she said, handing it to him. “We’re going to keep the radio. Sorry, but they’re hard to come by sometimes, and this is one of those times.” She smiled a crooked and not unattractive smile. Her face was rather oblong, with a pretty mouth and a mole that was very much a beauty mark just to the right of her lips. “Okay?”

“That’s fine,” Haydon said needlessly. He was grateful, and surprised, to get the gun back. He turned up the butt, saw the clip, popped it and saw that it was full. “Thanks,” he said, “I appreciate it.”

“
De nada,
” the girl said. “Let’s go.”

Haydon turned once again toward Dr. Axis Grajeda, who had not moved away from the collection of soiled furniture in the center of the warehouse. “Take care of yourself,” Haydon said.

“
Y su también,
” Grajeda said. He was standing with his arms crossed, one small hand toying with his salt-and-pepper goatee. “
Hasta la vista
,” he said, and he tilted his head in a gracious bow and smiled kindly. He looked like a man out of place, and yet at the same time philosophically at ease. Dr. Axis Grajeda was not a man who flinched at hard decisions.

nor did he grieve for himself when it came time to live with the consequences.

The guerrillas had not survived for thirty years in Guatemala—though some would say only barely survived—without at least a modicum of expertise. Haydon did not doubt that the route they would be taking was lined with invisible
compas
with those hard-to-find radios who had already cleared the way as much as possible. They were operating in a very dicey territory, and Haydon wondered if they were truly risking all this solely for the benefit of having a doctor at their disposal for a couple of years. He wondered, too, how Dr. Grajeda had come to have such an easy relationship with these people. The man and the woman with Haydon were close to the doctor’s age, and the woman at least, was well educated. It wasn’t hard to imagine that the doctor’s connections were old ones.

“What we want to do,” the woman said, as the three of them walked out of the warehouse onto the veranda outside, “is to get you several blocks away from here before we let you ‘surface.’ We don’t want to taint the neighborhood. The fact that you came to 18 calle to make your connection does not mean that the meeting itself actually took place here. The busy street life here makes it a favorite place for losing tails before going on to other locations. We gambled by setting the meeting here. We want to make sure we don’t burn a nice touch, you know.”

The man went down the stairs first, followed by Haydon and then the girl. They descended the same flight Haydon came up, setting foot in the courtyard near the three jade parrots. Haydon glanced at the foot of the stairs on the other side and saw that someone had scattered sand over the blood at the foot of the steps.

The girl saw Haydon glance at the steps.

“Did you know the guy?”

“No,” Haydon said. “But I think I know who he worked for.”

“Who?”

“Sorry,” Haydon said.

“Okay. Look,” the girl said as they stopped at the head of the damp path that led into the banana trees, “when we get to the door at the back of the courtyard, he’s going to go first. I’ll tell you when to go after him, and then you maintain that same distance, and I’ll keep the same distance behind you. You just follow him, and then you’ll know when you’re on your own. Okay?”

“Okay.”

They wound through the banana trees for fifteen or twenty meters before they came to a heavy wooden door in the high wall at the back of the courtyard. Above them, clinging precariously to the old stone and stucco building, the veranda ran gray and rickety, turning at the back of the courtyard and crossing above their heads at the back door. The man said something into his radio and got a response and then opened the door without hesitation and walked outside. The alley-like lane was one of those narrow corridors that ran between high walls and emerged onto a busy street that could be seen fifty meters farther ahead. Without saying anything to Haydon, the man stepped out into the lane, taking a long stretching step over a rivulet of sewage that dribbled down toward them from the main street above. The girl moved in front of Haydon and watched until it was time for Haydon to follow.

“Okay,” she said. “He’s on the street. When you get to the end of this lane, turn left. He’ll be waiting for you at the newsstand. It’ll be right in front of you. When he sees you come out and is sure you’ve spotted him, he’ll move on. Keep that distance. Do what you know how to do.”

Haydon did as he was instructed. The narrow alleyway smelled of soured fruit and urine, and he had to watch his step. Everything went like clockwork. The man in front of him did as the girl said he would do, Haydon did as he was told to do, and the girl behind him did as she said she would do. They went on like this for one block, turning a corner, playing catch-up, then another block and another block. Haydon watched the crowds as best he could, wondering if he could spot fellow
compas
. He never did, not that he knew anyway.

They turned another corner, went another block, and at the next turn Haydon suddenly realized he had lost his lead man. He quickened his pace, his eyes picking apart the people in the crowds. When he knew he’d lost him for good, he stopped to rake something off his foot on the curb and glanced back down the sidewalk to see if the girl was showing concern. She was gone. He hadn’t lost anybody. They had cut him loose.

He had been so intent on keeping up with his guide that he had lost his orientation. Continuing to the next corner, he checked the calle and avenida. He was deeper into Zona 1 and about twice as far from his car as he had been when he entered La Santuario de la Sagrada Madre. And in the opposite direction.