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were. For the first time, I forced myself to contemplate the unthinkable -- that we just might not be able to do it. Henry and I passed days sitting lethargically in the lobby, drinking beer and feeling "eyes" on all sides. Worst of all by far was the humiliating thought of returning to Chicago without the story.
    But, as it happened, just then our luck broke. The guerrillas got word through one of the contacts I'd made and contacted me by phone (in Guatemala, at least then, phone-tapping was not a problem) and we spoke in German. Since our skinny detective guards went home for lunch and dinner every day, I made a date to meet the envoys -- two very young, very polite students -- in a coffeehouse during the lunch hour. This ruse somehow worked. I suggested we leave the country (to El Salvador), and leave very obviously and ostentatiously, as though we had given up. They gave us the name of a third-class hotel in which to stay upon our return and arranged to contact us there on the following Sunday morning. When we left, we kissed so many people good-bye, it was like a Mafia wedding. And we draped ourselves in such a sad air of failure that our hunters apparently were properly confused.
    In El Salvador we rented a Volkswagen and, in a frenzy of activity, prepared immediately to start the eight-hour drive back to Guatemala. But when we went to the Guatemalan embassy, we had another moment of terror. It was Saturday and the consulate was closed; we couldn't get our Guatemalan tourist cards until Monday and our rendezvous with the guerrillas was on Sunday. If we missed this meeting, it would be virtually impossible to re-create it.
    Henry looked at me. I looked at him. I almost cried, and then he got an inspiration.
    "We'll go to Pan American and buy plane tickets to Guatemala and get our tourist cards from them," he said. And the next morning we were indeed in our third-class hotel in Guatemala City talking to Miguel, the German-speaking, upper-class guerrilla who would be our guide.
    Now we could only wait -- until that moment when they would come for us. The hotel, one of those back-street hostelries that seemed created deliberately for intrigue, was our prison. We did not dare go out for fear of being seen. The staircases creaked. The dining room was always deathly silent, and everyone entering was followed by suspicious looks that slid and slithered from eye to eye and from table to table. And then there was the bellboy.
    It was perhaps not unnatural that my nerves were on edge. One night I heard a slight movement at my door -- just enough of a rustling to terrify me. I looked out the keyhole and looked into two eyes. For a moment I thought I might faint. Then I swung open the door to find myself facing the little, pockmarked, phantomlike bell boy, who, I had noticed, had a certain feral look about him. We finally decided he was simply a twenty-three-year-old voyeur -- exactly the next thing I needed.
    By this time no one except one Guatemalan friend knew where we were. We were out of touch with the office and I left dated letters to be sent to my family, who had no idea what I was doing. If anything had happened to us, only my friend would have known or could even have guessed it.
    Then one day they came for us. "This is the time," Miguel said with a strange smile, half excited and half wistful. But there was still more waiting. In a small bodega , or bar, they left us for four hours that seemed an eternity. "This is some kind of ruse," Henry kept insisting, suspended between anger and frustration. And in many ways it was this last waiting that turned out to be the most frustrating: Could it be that even now it might not work?
    But I also knew that we had gone too far now to turn back -- and that gave me a strange new feeling of repose. A major rule of dealing with revolutionary movements is this: You put yourselves in their hands and you demonstrate every kind of trust. (This, of course, comes after you have made all your