Tun arrives a few minutes late. He has big slanted eyes, a peaceful countenance, and straight salt-and-pepper hair, abundant and well groomed. He makes me think of a slightly overweight, Guatemalan Humphrey Bogart. Through the door that leads to the hallway, there is another door with iron grating. As he gestures to me to go first, he explains that he is remodeling. The office is divided in half with a plywood partition that is missing several panels. He invites me into his office, on the other side of the partition. I sit on a white divan in front of a desk cluttered with papers. I tell him that I assume he has a lot of work and that I do not want to impose on him. He nods with a slight smile of resignation. He goes to his desk and picks up a few old, damaged audiocassettes (which he assumes his father recorded during the last few months of his life), then hands them to me and sits down in an armchair next to the divan. I tell him that before giving them to me, he should listen to the recordings. I remember that I left the tape player in the car. I offer to get it at the end of our interview and loan it to him.

He explains that he found his father’s papers to be in a big mess, for which—he confesses—he feels a bit guilty. It seems to me that he is pleased by the interest that I show in the work of his father, of whom he speaks with obvious affection. He shows me a certificate of his father’s appointment as chief of the Identification Bureau.

“My father started earning the salary of a simple street agent, but he was serious and ambitious in his scientific pursuit. He was also not dogmatic. He was a practical man, and a scholar who was constantly studying. He created the Identification Bureau practically single-handedly.”

I ask him to tell me about the ruling on the death of Castillo Armas, former president of Guatemala, which he had mentioned during our early phone conversations.