Tony’s headache was ringing like a church bell.
“Well, I’m sure you’ve done the right thing, Mr. President,” said Rollins. “The problem with an investigation is you never know what they might turn up, if you don’t have control. If you know what I mean.”
“Imagewise, it’s tricky,” Mark agreed.
“We’ll get to the truth, believe me,” Barletta assured them, failing to follow the drift of their conversation. “I can make a pledge to you, a pledge to all the American people, that—”
“Nicky, hold on, I’ve got another call,” said Tony. He punched the button of the second phone line.
“General, is that you?” said the surprisingly girlish voice of the hotel proprietress, Leona Helmsley.
“Oh, Leona!” Tony made smooching sounds into the receiver.
“Did you get the flowers?” she asked.
“The room is full of their sweet aroma. And the champagne! You are so thoughtful. Now all I need is someone named Leona to share it with me.”
A trill of nervous laughter came through the speaker. Tony’s audience sat blankly as he murmured several indiscreet proposals. “You know, I love you very much,” he finally said, grasping his balls emphatically.
When he got back on the line with the president, Tony’s mood was much improved. “Don’t worry, Nicky,” he said cheerfully. “Look on the bright side. Hugo was a pest and now he’s dead. Maybe people are upset now, but they’ll forget about him soon. Why don’t you forget about this commission and just leave it to me? I know just what to do.”
CHAPTER 3
A HOLE OPENED in the sky and Panama One fell five hundred feet. Felicidad screamed and Tony grabbed the vomit bag.
“It’s the tail of the hurricane, General,” the pilot apologized over the intercom. “We’re going to try to fly above it.”
The sleek Learjet had never felt so fragile as it climbed through the bank of thunderclouds that were scurrying before Hurricane Gloria. The atmosphere was at war with itself. The little jet jerked and hawed and bounced and stumbled, its engines straining, as lightning exploded just beyond the wingtips.
Prayers and promises came rushing into Tony’s terrified mind. Thousands of feet below him the great Atlantic Ocean stretched out like bottomless death forever and forever.
There had been a sense of foreboding all along, even though the trip had been a triumph from the very start. After Geneva, he had spent a delicious lost weekend at his country house near Verdun with a former Miss Panama, whom he rewarded by appointing her cultural attaché to France and Spain. In Paris, Mitterrand had given him a medal and kissed his cheeks—in itself a surprisingly sensual experience. Then off to Washington, where Tony picked up another award from the Drug Enforcement Agency for the Darién bust. Afterward, he had drinks with his old friend Bill Casey, the head of the CIA, to talk about the Contras, Casey’s obsession. As long as the Sandinistas were running Nicaragua, Tony was the king of Central America. It was the greatest little war.
Another plunge. Tony vomited violently into the bag.
The oxygen masks dropped without warning. Felicidad cried out. Even her steel nerves were shattered. She made a cross before pulling the mask to her face. The wings of the Learjet were bending; they almost seemed to be flapping in their effort to climb over the storm. The shuddering aircraft pitched abruptly upward, popping open one of the storage bins and spilling shopping bags from Givenchy and Yves Saint Laurent.
“Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee,” Tony prayed urgently. “I regret the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all I regret that I have offended you, O Lord, who art all good and deserving of my trust.” He realized this was a pre–Vatican II act of contrition, but he was so out of touch with the Church that he wasn’t sure what the latest formulation was. He hadn’t gone to confession in nearly ten years, since he turned to Zen. But Buddhism was no consolation in a hurricane.
And then suddenly, miraculously, they burst into sunshine, a blue zone of safety. Tony and Felicidad looked at each other in mutual astonishment and relief.
“God, Tony, look at the mess you made.”
Apparently he had mostly missed the bag.
“Really, you’re going to have to do something. Clean yourself up,” she said as she picked up her novel and dismissed him.
Tony came out of the rest room wearing a crisp new uniform. He was suddenly horny—probably it was his brush with death—and he wondered if Felicidad felt the same way. He watched her drinking her Campari and soda and reading The Thorn Birds. She could stand to lose a few pounds, but the pretty young teacher he had married was still evident—preserved with all the science and magic a woman could bring to bear on the matter. Her hair was still glistening black, her teeth gleaming white, her skin lustrous pearl, her eyes—well, her eyes were weapons, one couldn’t talk about them in the same way. The adolescent, moony love-lust that Tony had once felt for her had long since been replaced by an amalgamation of other, equally intense passions—primarily awe and fear. Everybody in Panama believed that she had already killed one of his lovers—an ambassador’s daughter, a terrifically sensual girl who always smelled of jasmine—who had either jumped or been pushed off a downtown hotel balcony. Tony had never had the nerve to question Felicidad about it. He had already paid a fortune to Dr. Spracht to repair the scratch marks Felicidad had left in the face of another beauty.
Despite all that, Tony could still imagine being with Felicidad sexually, tearing into each other, biting and clawing . . .
Felicidad looked up from her novel and gave him a look of such scorn that he felt his balls slip into his body cavity, like mice fleeing the cat. He’d never known such a woman.
“I think I’ll go up front,” he said fumblingly. “I need to talk to César.”
He walked through the cabin and tapped on the cockpit door. The copilot, a grim-faced lieutenant in a PDF uniform, bumped his head on the overhead controls and made his salute.
“César and I have business to discuss,” said Tony.
The copilot quickly removed his headset and left the cockpit.
César Rodríguez looked up and grinned. His curly chest hair burst through his half-open tropical shirt. He had rough, muscular features and a face that always looked two days unshaved. A heavy gold chronometer coiled around his wrist. “What happened?” he asked as Tony sat in the copilot’s seat. “Did you shit in your pants?”
“César, why do you talk to me like this?”
César merely laughed. “I tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. That’s why you can’t live without me. Because no one else has the balls to tell you when you’re fucking up.”
Tony frowned. “And how am I fucking up?”
“Too many ways to count. You take too much for yourself, man. People get upset if you don’t leave more money on the table.”
“I give money to everybody in Panama already,” Tony said irritably.
“Plus you made a huge mistake with Spadafora. What were you thinking, Tony? Everything was going fine till all this shit happened. You look like Al Capone in the news, man. Even the Colombians are upset. Bad publicity for them.”
“I’m not afraid of the Colombians,” said Tony.
“Well, I am,” César said fervently. “That Escobar, man, he’s crazy enough to do anything. They kill people every day, and they’re not even nice about it.”
“They need me too much.”
“I’m just saying you got to watch your ass, you know what I mean? We’re not talking about rational human beings. Lay some serious money at their feet. A peace offering. Maybe they’ll forget about all the trouble you caused them.”
“You abuse me and you know too much,” Tony grumbled.
César took the warning and began to do a navigation check; the storm had thrown them several hundred miles off course. Tony looked out the window at the bright sky. He could still see the storm below them and the lightning in the clouds expl
oding like radiant bombs. His mood improved. He reached over and put his hand on César’s thigh, feeling the alarmed muscular response to his touch.
“I love to fly,” Tony said happily.
“General . . . !”
“Put it on auto, César,” said Tony. It was an order.
RAIN HAD suddenly soaked the marching band, which remained standing at attention on the tarmac through the downpour. Just as the low clouds broke apart and the rain moved on to the green mountains behind the city, Panama One appeared on a ray of sunlight, and the band struck up the “Washington Post March.” Tuba players spat out rainwater. The dignitaries rushed out of the hangar where they had taken shelter and lined up beside the sodden red carpet. The jet bounced heavily as it touched down, being so overladen with purchases that it had barely been able to take off from La Guardia earlier that afternoon.
Resplendent in his dress whites, Tony stepped onto the stairs and observed the upturned faces of the cabinet members, the judiciary, military officers, and various ambassadors, all waiting expectantly in the drenched sunset for the uncrowned head of state to descend to his native soil. Tony lingered a moment in the doorway of the aircraft and waved a white handkerchief triumphantly overhead. He always did that when he left or when he returned—a trademark gesture.
Suddenly he noticed that hundreds of citizens—well-wishers?—were surging against a line of police officers beside the terminal. Many of them were waving white handkerchiefs in response. Were they welcoming him home?
“Hey, Tony, where’s the head?” a voice cried out.
To his horror, Tony realized that people were mocking him. They were waving posters with Hugo’s picture on them, which asked the same question—where’s the head? Where’s the head?
Tony stomped down the steps. Roberto was the first to greet him. He stood with a sickly fixed smile on his face like a rictus. “I won’t forget this, Roberto,” Tony said over the jeers of the crowd. “Also, I know all about your little barracks uprising. You think because I am out of the country that I don’t know what is happening?”
Roberto wobbled and his face went pale. “What are you talking about, General?” he said anxiously. “I only moved the troops because of these demonstrators. As you can see, we need even more. I’ve been waiting for additional instructions from you!”
“It’s a good thing your balls are so small. You may be eating them for breakfast,” said Tony as he moved on to the next in line, Eric Arturo Delvalle, the first vice president. “Tuturo” was a glamorous playboy, far more at home at the racetrack than in government offices. Freshly barbered and shaved, his nails even and gleaming, the vice president grasped Tony’s limp, damp hand. “Welcome home, General. I hope you enjoyed your well-deserved trip to Europe and America.”
“You make it sound like a vacation,” Tony snapped.
“Why, no—I mean, I certainly did not think of it in such a way, only that in matters of state, it is good that Panama can be represented abroad, and who, of course, can do that better than . . .” Delvalle sputtered to a stop as Tony moved on.
Tony continued down the receiving line, greeting cabinet members and supreme court justices, each of whom trembled in his embrace.
“So, General, you came home,” the Nuncio said in as polite a tone as he could muster, when Tony finally approached the diplomatic corps.
Tony laughed. “Did you think I would become an exile? It’s not my style, Father.” The Nuncio had always amused him despite his known sympathies for Tony’s opponents. “A few malcontents—well, it’s the price of freedom, eh?”
“And it is a very small price,” the Nuncio replied over the screams of the demonstrators as the police bludgeoned their way through the mob.
The Nuncio had met Noriega many times before on official occasions such as this one. Initially, he had been impressed, as everyone is, by the General’s moonlike face, which was cratered by acne scars, and by his short stature, which made him look like a stocky child in a man’s uniform. These were the physical qualities everyone made fun of. They called him Pineapple Face because of his complexion and made jokes about his manliness, but at the same time they were terrified of him. His cold hands, and his oily skin and hooded eyes, gave him a reptilian quality. But as the Nuncio came to know him better, he had also been struck and a bit alarmed by the sheer sensuousness of the General’s presence. He exuded sexuality and power.
“In any case, I forgive all Frenchmen today,” Tony said. “You see what your countrymen have given me.”
There were so many colorful medals on Noriega’s chest, most of which he had awarded himself, that the Nuncio had not really noticed the Légion d’honneur among them. He was so astounded that for a moment he couldn’t speak. He reflected quickly on the probable cause of such a gift—France’s highest honor—and he decided that it must be a very public payment for the secret dirty work that Noriega had recently performed. The French secret service had captured six Basque terrorists and then didn’t know how to dispose of them. Panama was the only country willing to offer them asylum. Now the terrorists were living like pashas in a beach condo a block away from the nunciature. One of them, a chef, had opened a restaurant on Via Argentina with valet parking and a dress code.
Tony had started to move on to the next ambassador—a Rastafarian from the Bahamas who was about to present him with a tortoiseshell inscribed with the image of Harry Belafonte—when he turned back to the Nuncio. “One other thing,” he said.
“Yes?”
“I want to ask your opinion about something that has been troubling me. I’m asking you as a scholar and a theologian.”
“You flatter me. But if it’s of any value, I’ll be happy to offer it.”
“Do you recall when Saint Augustine made his break with the Manichaeans? They asked him how the Christian God could favor men who killed, men who had many wives, men who sacrificed living creatures. I myself have often wondered about this paradox.”
“It’s an interesting question,” said the Nuncio, “but to be honest, I haven’t read the Confessions for many years.”
“Don’t you suppose they were thinking of King David?”
“The Manichaeans?”
“He murdered women and children, he took hundreds of wives and concubines, he even cursed God, but God still loved him above all others.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s what the Bible tells us.”
“Surely there is some catechism they taught you in seminary that covers this matter.”
“I suppose your question is covered under the heading of ‘unmerited grace,’ ” said the Nuncio, a little miffed by the General’s familiarity. “I don’t know if I can adequately explain the Church’s stance on this matter here on the tarmac, but if you’d like to call me sometime . . .”
“Yes, very much,” said Tony. “I am quite sure you can enlighten me.”
As Noriega moved on to the Rastafarian, the Nuncio felt strangely let down, as if he had just failed an examination. He also realized that although he had been in Panama for years, he had just seen a human being behind the mask of power. He was intrigued and charmed—but then he remembered who he was dealing with and quickly turned away.
NOTHING IN Panama should be constructed of wood, Father Jorge thought as he walked through the streets of Chorrillo. One might as well have built this slum out of cardboard. The rotten buildings slumped against one another like a bunch of packing boxes that had been left out in the rain. They were nearly all one-room apartments built at the turn of the century to house the West Indian laborers who dug the canal and were never intended to last more than a few years. Their foundations had long since buckled under the insatiable appetite of tropical termites. Balconies and windows melted into hallucinatory angles of repose. Because the entire neighborhood had been condemned decades ago, it was against the law to charge rent. This, of course, had led to a population explosion, which made Chorrillo even more dangerous than ever before. Extended families crowded into single rooms
, cooking with hibachis and sleeping in shifts. The streets were crammed with children and aimless young men. Music rained down from the rooftops, the smell of coffee and simmering beans choked the air, and clotheslines crisscrossed the alleyways. Father Jorge jumped aside as a worn-out tire rolled out of the doorway of a mechanic’s shop into the street, where it wobbled into a gaggle of children playing stickball. In a moment, the tire had become a part of the game. No one came to retrieve it—it might sit in the middle of the street for a century.
In the heart of Chorrillo was La Modelo, a prison that once aspired to be, as its name suggested, a model reformatory. Such ambitions had long since slunk away, and now the name had a sinister ring to it. La Modelo was little more than a three-story cage, like a human zoo. Arms and legs dangled through the bars of every window. The prisoners stared vacantly into the street, idly smoking marijuana and calling listlessly to the women who tended the graves at the cemetery next door. Father Jorge had been into the foul prison many times to minister to the men inside. Once he had seen a dead man hanging from a basketball goal. The man had been handcuffed to the hoop and beaten to death by the gang members who ran the place. The guards simply left the body as a bleak reminder of the futility of resistance.
Directly across the street from the prison was the Comandancia, the headquarters of the Panama Defense Forces. Inside a low-slung wall there was a military courtyard and the barracks for several hundred soldiers. Many of them came from the same teetering Chorrillo apartments that loomed over the concrete parapet. Those who had gotten into the army, through merit or connections, considered themselves lucky. For the unscrupulous, it was a path to wealth and power. The sentries could stand on the wall and talk to their neighbors and the admiring boys on the rooftops or, for that matter, the prisoners in La Modelo, who had little more to do than sit in their windows and watch the troops march in review. Strategically, as much as Father Jorge understood such things, the fort was absurdly located, but there was an intimacy about life in Panama that pressed all experiences together.
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