Zapatistas then?”
Marchese looked around nervously at the mention of the name. There were a few small conversations still going at the funeral, but the families were gone and most of the cops had left too. He lowered his voice to a whisper.
“Of course it was the fucking Zapatistas. Listen,” he continued, “I’m only here a day or two longer but take my cell phone number just in case. I’ll be here in Tuxtla and maybe we can go for a beer—just us—before I head home.” He gave me a card that had nothing but a phone number written on it in blue ink.
As Chavez and I walked back to the car, I said: “Marchese was very keen to avoid you.”
Chavez started the car in silence. He turned the radio on and changed the station until he found mariachis. Then he cranked the volume and drove us back to the base.
When we got back we took bag lunches from the mess hall. Cold tamales, and plenty of them.
I had two hours before my meeting with Saltillo. I asked Chavez if I could have Gonzalez and Diaz’s personnel files and any records of when Marchese was at Hatuey. He said he could get the former right away and maybe find some logs on Marchese in an hour. I asked him to leave it all on my desk and went for a walk in Tuxtla.
I found a cybercafe by asking on the street. They gave me a Windows machine in a cubicle for half an hour with no protections against installing my software. I loaded the keys on, wrote a bland and decrypted message to Hoffman saying that I had arrived and all was well, and wrote an encrypted one to Maria.
“Hi honey. All is well here. I ended up dropping in at Uncle's house in the city earlier. They seemed like they were ready for guests, but did we not call ahead to say we were coming? Or maybe they had invited us but I forgot that I had been invited? Miss you, love, Timothy.”
I signed off using the ambassador's first name. Between that and “uncle's house in the city”, I figured her and Hoffman could figure out that I was talking about the embassy. I also took advantage of the role-play to add some affection.
I uninstalled the program and deleted all other signs that I'd been there. If serious computer people got this machine, they would get evidence of what I'd done, maybe even be able to recover the keys, but unless there was a keylogger already installed, they wouldn't get my passphrase. And I wasn't going to be coming back to this cybercafe, much less this computer. I paid in dollars, got pesos back, and went back out into the street.
Tuxtla bustled with car engines, buses honking horns, trucks announcing everything from water for sale to political patronage opportunities. I followed the crowd, letting my mind and my feet wander.
Neither personal vendetta nor family feud accorded with the precision of the bullet holes I’d seen in Gonzalez and Diaz. They were victims either of organized crime or of the guerrillas.
Conditions were not favourable to the guerrillas for starting a hot war this summer. The Mexican army had 70 000 troops here in 266 positions, well supplied and armed, logistically supported. In every skirmish the army took more casualties from friendly fire than any other kind.
On the other side, the Zapatistas had probably 2000 firearms in the whole state. Their main advantage was being dispersed all over the territory, impossible to find when they were in the jungle, indistinguishable from the people when they were in the villages. Good for not losing, but not so good for winning. For a force like that to go on the offensive would be foolish, and to have survived six years in a situation like this, the Zapatistas were not.
I lost myself near the centre of town and realized I’d have to take a cab back. I stopped for a cup of sliced coconut, mango, and banana, the kind American tourist guides warned against.
“Dame una de estas,” I said.
“?Estas?” he said, pointing to the cup. “Seguro?”
At my own risk, I know , I thought, paying with a large
Marchese looked around nervously at the mention of the name. There were a few small conversations still going at the funeral, but the families were gone and most of the cops had left too. He lowered his voice to a whisper.
“Of course it was the fucking Zapatistas. Listen,” he continued, “I’m only here a day or two longer but take my cell phone number just in case. I’ll be here in Tuxtla and maybe we can go for a beer—just us—before I head home.” He gave me a card that had nothing but a phone number written on it in blue ink.
As Chavez and I walked back to the car, I said: “Marchese was very keen to avoid you.”
Chavez started the car in silence. He turned the radio on and changed the station until he found mariachis. Then he cranked the volume and drove us back to the base.
When we got back we took bag lunches from the mess hall. Cold tamales, and plenty of them.
I had two hours before my meeting with Saltillo. I asked Chavez if I could have Gonzalez and Diaz’s personnel files and any records of when Marchese was at Hatuey. He said he could get the former right away and maybe find some logs on Marchese in an hour. I asked him to leave it all on my desk and went for a walk in Tuxtla.
I found a cybercafe by asking on the street. They gave me a Windows machine in a cubicle for half an hour with no protections against installing my software. I loaded the keys on, wrote a bland and decrypted message to Hoffman saying that I had arrived and all was well, and wrote an encrypted one to Maria.
“Hi honey. All is well here. I ended up dropping in at Uncle's house in the city earlier. They seemed like they were ready for guests, but did we not call ahead to say we were coming? Or maybe they had invited us but I forgot that I had been invited? Miss you, love, Timothy.”
I signed off using the ambassador's first name. Between that and “uncle's house in the city”, I figured her and Hoffman could figure out that I was talking about the embassy. I also took advantage of the role-play to add some affection.
I uninstalled the program and deleted all other signs that I'd been there. If serious computer people got this machine, they would get evidence of what I'd done, maybe even be able to recover the keys, but unless there was a keylogger already installed, they wouldn't get my passphrase. And I wasn't going to be coming back to this cybercafe, much less this computer. I paid in dollars, got pesos back, and went back out into the street.
Tuxtla bustled with car engines, buses honking horns, trucks announcing everything from water for sale to political patronage opportunities. I followed the crowd, letting my mind and my feet wander.
Neither personal vendetta nor family feud accorded with the precision of the bullet holes I’d seen in Gonzalez and Diaz. They were victims either of organized crime or of the guerrillas.
Conditions were not favourable to the guerrillas for starting a hot war this summer. The Mexican army had 70 000 troops here in 266 positions, well supplied and armed, logistically supported. In every skirmish the army took more casualties from friendly fire than any other kind.
On the other side, the Zapatistas had probably 2000 firearms in the whole state. Their main advantage was being dispersed all over the territory, impossible to find when they were in the jungle, indistinguishable from the people when they were in the villages. Good for not losing, but not so good for winning. For a force like that to go on the offensive would be foolish, and to have survived six years in a situation like this, the Zapatistas were not.
I lost myself near the centre of town and realized I’d have to take a cab back. I stopped for a cup of sliced coconut, mango, and banana, the kind American tourist guides warned against.
“Dame una de estas,” I said.
“?Estas?” he said, pointing to the cup. “Seguro?”
At my own risk, I know , I thought, paying with a large
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