The Novel

The Ministry of Finance hired Carlos Navarro to drag Guatemala into the computer age. IBM shipped the hardware. The Americans paid the bills. And somewhere inside the machine he built — beneath the payroll runs and the tax rolls — something else is running. A hidden program. A list of names. And money, moving in the dark.

Carlos is no spy. He is an engineer, a husband, a father — a man who believes in clean systems and honest work. But he built this machine, and he knows it better than the men who are using it. When he understands what it's for, he faces the choice that will shape two generations: look away, or go to war with the ghost inside the machine.

Set against the terror and beauty of 1970s Guatemala and drawn from a true family story, Ghost Code is a novel about a father and son, the CIA, and the first great crime ever hidden inside a computer.

In the tradition of le Carré, Furst, and Littell.

The Cast

Carlos Navarro: An engineer in Los Angeles who trusts only what can be measured, called home to build the machine his country has never seen — and who goes looking, alone, for what is running inside the one partition he was told never to open.
Rikki Navarro: The engineer's youngest son — seven when the family left Guatemala, sixteen when it returns — who begins asking out loud the questions everyone around him has learned not to.
Seca Navarro: Carlos's wife, who counts the soldiers on the road home from the airport, remembers exactly why the family left Guatemala the first time, and is the one who finally works out which quiet American the whole room is deferring to.
David Sterling: The unfailingly precise American partner who can open any door in the government — and asks only that one sealed partition of the machine stay sealed.
Mark Johnson: An American attached to an embassy modernization program, a man who never rushes a room and never needs to raise his voice — and whose program quietly produces a list of names.
Benito Carrillo: Carlos's oldest friend, from San Carlos and the highway ministry — the man who made the telephone call that brought the family home, and who is greeted by name at the officers' table.
Julio Pensamiento: A reporter at La Nación who prints the names the other papers leave out, and who steps into the evening heat one July dusk with the ink still on his hands.
Mateo Álvarez: Rikki's history teacher, twenty-two and already the reason a classroom fills on Wednesday nights, who asks not which newspaper is lying but why the two of them saw the same day so differently.
Miriam de Gutierrez: Carlos's second-in-command, who tells a room full of ministry men that an estimate can never be called an actual report, who decides which problems deserve Carlos and which go back with instructions to try again — and who is left holding the machine after he is gone.
Tío Juanito and Tío Mesho: Carlos's younger brothers, who meet the plane with a Volkswagen microbus and nine years of saved-up jokes — and who answer the question nobody wants to ask out loud: yes, the war has gotten worse since you left.
Padre Willy: One of Carlos's thirty-nine cousins, a parish priest who tends candles, keeps confidences, and hears what the family cannot say out loud.

The machine was real. → Step into the world

From the Prologue

Outside the offices of La Nación

Guatemala City — July 19, 1975

Julio stepped out of the newspaper office just before dusk, the heat of the day still trapped in the street. The air carried the smell of exhaust and frying oil from somewhere down the block. A long, battered camioneta lumbered past, windows open and passengers crowded behind the glass, its horn cutting through the noise. A woman called out prices from a fruit stand set up against the wall.

He paused just outside the doorway to light a cigarette, turning slightly to block the breeze. Ink still left traces on his hands. Inside, the argument had not died with him leaving. Someone raised his voice again about the column—about names that should not be printed, about lines that should not be crossed. Julio had heard it all before. He did not turn back.

He took a drag, then headed toward the stop at the end of the block, keeping pace with the others heading in the same direction.

Across the street, a trim, dark-haired man in his early thirties watched. His short-sleeved white shirt was already darkening beneath the arms in the afternoon heat, his black hair combed carefully to one side. As Julio lifted the cigarette, the man slipped a photograph from his pocket and held it low against his thigh, glancing down only long enough to confirm the face. He put the photograph away and stepped into the same flow of people several meters back, keeping his distance.

The watcher crossed the street, dodging traffic, and stopped at a payphone mounted on the outside wall of a storefront. He lifted the receiver, dropped in a coin, his eyes never leaving Julio.

The line clicked.

"Target in position. Waiting for the camioneta to Zona 7."

The office on the other end was small, the paint worn thin and uneven along the walls. A fan turned in the corner, clicking once with each rotation. On the desk were a telephone, an ashtray crowded with cigarette butts, and three folders stacked beside a yellow legal pad.

The man holding the receiver pulled the top folder toward him. He opened it to a typed sheet filled with names, one beneath another, each followed by a single letter. Some had dates written beside them in pencil. Others had been crossed through with one straight line.

His finger traveled down the page until it stopped.

Beside the name was a single letter.

He studied it for a moment.

"Proceed."

He replaced the receiver and left the folder open on his desk.

The camioneta pulled in with a hiss of brakes. Julio dropped the cigarette, crushed it under his shoe, and stepped forward with the others. He took the rail and climbed inside. A short line formed behind him at the curb, and the other man joined it, close enough now to see the back of Julio's neck and the collar of his shirt darkened with sweat.

He boarded with the others and worked his way toward the back, letting the movement of passengers carry him until he was standing beside Julio. The driver pulled into traffic, throwing everyone slightly off balance before the bodies around them settled into the familiar sway of the ride.

Julio held the rail with one hand. The argument at the newspaper was still with him, all the things his editor had said and the things Julio wished he had said back. He barely noticed the man beside him.

The man waited until they were moving steadily through traffic. His hand came up from below, fast and controlled, driving the blade beneath Julio's ribs and pulling it free in the same motion. The knife disappeared before Julio understood what had happened.

He turned, confusion arriving before the pain. For an instant he searched the stranger's face as though there might be an explanation there. His mouth opened, but nothing came out. Then his legs gave way and he hit the floor.

For a beat, the people around him simply stared. Then a woman screamed.

"¡Ay, Dios mío!"

Someone shouted, "¿Qué está pasando?" as another passenger pushed forward and saw the blood spreading across Julio's shirt.

"¡Lo apuñalaron! ¡Ábranse!"

The driver hit the brakes. People stumbled into one another as the doors opened and the panic found somewhere to go. Some pushed toward the street, others toward Julio, voices rising over one another until no one seemed to know what had happened or who had done it.

The man who had stood beside Julio went out with the first rush of passengers. He stepped into the street without looking back and disappeared into the evening crowd.

Back in the office, the man looked at his watch and wrote the time beside the name. Then he drew one straight line through it, closed the folder, and placed it beneath the others at the edge of his desk.

By morning, it would be entered into the system.

Read the rest when it launches.