Benedicto also shares some details about the murder of the German ambassador, Karl von Spretti, in 1970. Not all members of the Rebel Armed Forces group that kidnapped him wanted to execute him when the government refused to release the political prisoners that were part of the negotiation. “They almost started shooting at each other,” he tells me, “because they could not come to an agreement.” This is something that was told to him by a friend of his who belonged to that group, and who later disappeared. He was among those who opposed the execution. “Upon getting the news that he had been captured, his girlfriend called me. I went to her house, and she showed me, among other things, letters that Von Spretti had written during his abduction. She kept them hidden behind a mirror. I read them, and then we burned them. Saving something like that in those days was too compromising.”

He also talks about a Swiss journalist who visited Guatemala in the time of Ubico. Accused of being a communist, he was executed by firing squad at the penitentiary in the capital. While in prison, he had become friends with Benedicto’s father, who did not think he was guilty. Before being executed, the Swiss man gave him a portable typewriter, which Benedicto’s son still has today.

At noon, on a cloudy day, with the smell of rain, in the silver Lexus, between traffic lights, I think about my weaknesses. I have a light sense of remorse, and as a result, the thought that perhaps one has to be a bit immoral to be a moral person, at least in certain aspects, in order to understand the “mechanism” of morality.

Friday.

Long interview with Uli at Taco Bell. He’s still thinking of making a documentary about La Isla. The mother of his “partner” who works at the Archive, he tells me, was captured by agents of the National Police many years ago and was never seen again. They are still seeking her whereabouts. It seems that, among the documents at the Archive, there is something about her capture. As a result of this, Uli visited the general cemetery in La Verbena. In the entry books, he tells me, there is data of great interest “if one is looking for the disappeared,” with details about the origin and general features of the corpses. I speak to him extensively about Benedicto Tun.

Sunday. Father’s Day.

In the afternoon, after a strange and pleasant day, but with a bitter end, B+ tells me by phone that she does not want to see me tomorrow, or for a few days—that she needs “time to think.”

Monday.

In the morning I call Tun. He had the tapes analyzed, he tells me, and he believes that it is the same voice. “It is not irrefutable proof, mainly because the samples are not from the same period, right? But it is pretty certain.”