For once in my life, I took my time getting off an airplane. But the
instant I felt that first burst of humid tropical air against my face,
like a gush from a sauna, I found myself wondering what Sarah had felt
the moment her feet first touched the ground of Guatemala. In fact, I'd
decided to try to think like her, to better understand why she might
want to come back. Truthfully I didn't have a clue.
But first things first. Not knowing whether I was being stalked by
Ramos or his proxies, I decided the idea was to see and not be
seen--which actually was easier than I'd expected, at least during the
initial pell-mell stages. Turned out the self-centeredness of Homo
sapiens blossoms under those circumstances. Ignore thy neighbor, goes
the credo. I just buried myself in the crush.
When I got to "Inmigracion," I labored through the "formalities" (as
all countries love to call the suspicious looks you get from their
airport bureaucrats) along with all the other gringo passengers on AA
Flight 377, paranoid I might be arrested on the spot for some spurious
reason. The purpose of my visit, I declared, was tourism. Just a nod at
my passport and a stamp, which looked exactly like the one in Sarah's.
I stared at it and felt a renewed sense of purpose. In fact, the photo
in my passport looked more than a little like her. Maybe, I thought,
I'm getting carried away with the identity issue, but there it was.
As I emerged through the wide glass doors of the arrival area, which
fronted out onto the steps leading down to the parking lots and the
humidity, I spotted a black Land Rover with tinted windows right in
front. Uh-oh. That was, Steve once told me, a vehicle much favored by
the notorious Guatemalan G-2 military secret police, who had retired
the cup for murderous human-rights abuses over the past two decades.
Then two middle-aged men with Latin mustaches and nondescript brown
shirts began getting out through the door on the far side. They next
walked around to the terminal side of the car and glanced up the steps
in my direction, as though looking for somebody. It was a quick survey,
after which they turned back and nodded to the vehicle before it sped
away.
What's that about? Am I imagining things already?
By the time I reached the bottom of the steps, I was being besieged by
clamoring cabbies, so it was difficult to keep an eye on the two men,
who were now walking off to the side of the main commotion, toward a
shady grove of palms at the end of the arrival drive, lighting
cigarettes.
Get out of here. Whether you're fantasizing or not, the thing to do is
grab an unsuspecting cab and get going.
I strolled toward the other end of the long row of concrete steps till
I reached an area where cabs were parked, more drivers lurking in wait.
They all looked the same way most cabbies in Third World lands look:
shabby clothes, with beat-up cars, an expression in their eyes
somewhere between aggression and desperation.
Just pick one whose car looks like it might actually make it to
downtown.
I spotted a dark blue Chevy that seemed clean and well maintained, its
driver young and full of male hormones as he beckoned me to his
vehicle, all the while undressing me with his eyes. Yep, he was
definitely my guy.
I ambled by his car, acting as though I was ignoring the innuendos of
his pitch. Then I bolted for the back door, opened it myself since he
was too startled to help, threw in my carry-ons, piled in behind them,
and yelled, "Let's go. Rapido."
As we sped away, I realized his greatest surprise was that I hadn't
raised the subject of price. At that point, it was the last thing on my
mind. I looked back to see the two guys from the black Land Rover,
together with two others, heading for a car that had been double-parked
right in front.
Had I been right after all?
We made a high-speed turn onto the highway, and I immediately ordered
the driver to take a service road that led off toward a cluster of gas
stations and parking lots with falling-down barbed-wire fences. I
figured I had about half a minute of lead time, whatever was going on.
We dodged massive potholes and the loose gravel flew, but then we
reached a ramshackle gas station and I ordered him to pull in. Then I
watched the line of traffic speeding by on the main highway for several
minutes. Nobody pulled off. Good.
My driver finally got around to asking where I wanted to go, and as
calmly as I could, I told him.
"The Palacio Nacional."
"_Si_."
With that he gunned his engine and spun out. Jesus!
"_Mas despacio, por favor_."
"Okay," he said, showing off his English as he donned his sunglasses.
"I go more slow. No problem."
The initial destination was part of my new plan, hatched while I was on
the plane. When I was reading my guidebook and filling out my entry
card I'd had a bright idea. I knew exactly how I wanted to begin.
Heading into town, the time now the middle of the afternoon, I leaned
back in the seat and tried to absorb the view, to get a feeling for
where I was. We first traveled through the suburban fringes, the
heavily guarded luxurious mansions of the landholding and military
elite, the one percent of Guatemala who own ninety-nine percent of the
country. Iron fences and wide expanses of lawn, protected by Uzi-toting
security, guarded whimsical architectural conceits topped by silver
satellite dishes. A twenty-foot wall shielded their delicate eyes from
the city's largest shanty-town, makeshift hovels of bamboo and rusted
tin, with no signs of water or drains or toilets. Guatemala City: as
Steve had put it once, a million doomed citizens, the rich and the
poor, trapped together side by side in the most "modern" capital in
Central America.
Why on earth had Sarah decided to come here? Even if she did travel
with the mesmerizing Alex Goddard it was hard to imagine a place less
spiritual. Couldn't she feel that this was all wrong? One of us had to
be missing something major.
Fifteen minutes later I was passing through the fetid atmosphere of
downtown, which seemed to be another world, Guatemala City's twin soul.
It was an urban hodgepodge of Burger King, McDonald's, discount
electronics emporia, an eye-numbing profusion of plastic signs, filthy
parking lots, rattletrap buses and taxis, stalled traffic. Exhaust
fumes thickened the air, and everywhere you looked teenage "guards" in
uniforms loitered in front of stores and banks with sawed-off shotguns,
boys so green and scared-looking you'd think twice about letting one of
them park your car. But there they were, weapons at the ready,
nervously monitoring passersby. Who were they defending all the wealth
from? The ragged street children, with swollen bellies and skin
disease, vending single cigarettes from open packs? Or the hordes of
widows and orphans, beneficiaries of the Army's Mayan "pacification"
program, who now begged for centavos or plaintively hawked half-rotten
fruit from the safety of the shadows?
My bright-idea destination was a government office in the Palacio
Nacional, right in the center of town, where I hoped I could find
Sarah's old landing card, the record of when tourists arrived and
departed. When I'd filled mine out on the plane, I'd realized you were
supposed to put down where you'd be staying in Guatemala. I figured the
best way to locate her this time was to find out where she went last
time. . . .
As my cab pulled up in front, a black Land Rover was parked in a
"Prohibido Estacionarse" zone by the front steps. To my eyes it looked
like the same one I'd seen at the airport. Shit.
But nobody was around, so I decided maybe I was just being paranoid
again.
The Palacio turned out to be a mixture of Moorish and faux Greek
architecture, with a facade of light green imitation stone that gave
off the impression of a large, rococo wedding cake. I took a long look,
paid off the driver--who had turned out to be very nice--and headed in.
It was, after all, a public building, open to tourist gringos.
Nobody in the lobby appeared to take any particular notice of me, so
after going through their very serious security, uniforms and guns
everywhere, I checked the directory.
It turned out the president, cabinet ministers, and high military
officers all kept offices there, but it didn't take long to find the
bureau I was looking for. Going down the marble-floored hallway on the
third floor, I passed by the Sala de Recepcion, a vast wood-paneled
room of enormous chandeliers, stained-glass windows, and a massive coat
of arms. Quite a place, but not my destination. At the far end of the
hallway, I found the door I wanted, went in, and tried out the Spanish
question I'd been practicing in the cab. Not necessary: English worked
fine.
"_Senora_, the records for that time were only kept on paper," a Ladino
woman declared shrugging, her nails colored a brash mauve, her hair a
burst of red, "but you are welcome to look." She'd been on the phone,
chatting in rapid-fire Spanish, but she quickly hung up and got out her
glasses.
"Thanks."
The welcome mat was obviously a little thin. The woman was trying to be
friendly, but very quickly her nervousness began to come through.
"We're always glad to accommodate Americans searching for friends or
relatives," she went on, attempting a smile. "Some of your American
press has been printing distortions, that the Guatemalan Army conspired
with the CIA to cover up murders. It's a total lie."
Right. Maybe you ought to see some of the photos Steve has of the
"Army-pacified" Maya villages up in the mountains.
The search took an hour and a half of leafing through dusty boxes,
which chafed my hands raw, but then . . . voila.
There it was. The crucial piece of information Lou had missed. A
hastily scribbled-in landing card for an American, with the name Sarah
Crenshaw. I stared at it a moment, feeling a glow of success. Was it an
omen?
It was definitely her. She'd even dotted an "i" with a smiley face, one
of her personal trademarks.
Then I looked down the form. What I wanted was the address she'd put
down as a destination in Guatemala.