afternoons are a little nuts around here, weekly reports due and all, and it's getting late." When he glanced at his watch again, making sure I noticed, I found myself wanting to yell at the guy. "I mean it's been two years since this woman you're looking for filled out a landing card. We might have something in the files, but. . . would it be possible for you to come back tomorrow?"
"No, it will not be possible," I lied. "I've got a plane back to New York tomorrow." I felt my frustration rising. I wanted to just grab him and shake him.
My first thought was to tell him I make documentary films and maybe he'd like to end up in one about how my country's Guatemala City embassy didn't care about its citizens. But then I decided to go in a different, probably more productive, direction.
"Just for five minutes," I declared, reaching for feigned helplessness.
"Well, let me call upstairs," he muttered, realizing, I suppose, that the best way to get rid of me was to kick me up the chain of command, "and see if Mr. Morton can take a moment to meet with you."
It worked. The next thing I knew, I was in the office of a good-looking diplomat named Barry Morton—gray temples, tailored suit, rugged face of a sixty-year-old soap-opera heartthrob who plays tennis and keeps a mistress. Chief Information Officer.
"Actually, I do remember her, vaguely," Morton declared, flashing me his professional smile. "The Crenshaw girl was an unfortunate case. To begin with, anybody who overstays their visa that long gets us in a lot of hot water with the locals. They always tend to blame us, Ms. . . ."
"James. My name's Morgan James."
"Ms. James." Another of those smiles. "Frankly, I don't know what to tell you, though." He shrugged, exuding helplessness. "It's hard to keep track of every American tourist who comes and goes through this country. Some of the hippie types end up in a mountain village somewhere, gone native. In this instance, as I recall, we got her out on a medevac."
"Her landing card gave her destination as someplace called 'Ninos del Mundo,' up to the Peten. That ring a bell? Any idea how I could find it?"