God's Favorite

by Lawrence Wright

  “Monseñor, you have a visitor,” she said.

  “Is it important? You know I’m not receiving until after four.”

  “This visitor I think you should see.”

  When he entered his library, the Nuncio found President Delvalle sitting at his desk with a shoe box in his lap. Ordinarily, Delvalle had the look of a dark-eyed 1950s Latin movie star, with slicked-back hair and flared nostrils, but now his large, fleshy face was pale with anxiety and his eyes were red and puffy—from either sleeplessness or crying, the Nuncio thought, perhaps both.

  “Mr. President,” he said politely. “May we offer you some refreshment?”

  “Vodka tonic,” said the morose president. The Nuncio placed the order with Sister Sarita.

  “Everything is coming apart,” Delvalle said.

  “I completely agree. But is there something more that I don’t know?” the Nuncio asked.

  “Of course you know about the secret American plan?”

  Everyone knew about the secret American plan. The Reagan administration was desperately trying to lure the General out of power with offers of luxurious exile. The results were so far quite predictable.

  “Tony is only playing along with them,” said Delvalle. “First he said he might resign, but now he says he won’t. And this is after he has sent his own negotiators to Washington to make an agreement. They actually came to terms. And Tony turns down his own deal! It’s becoming unbearable, I tell you. I suppose he has not responded to your request.”

  Twice the Nuncio had called Noriega’s office on the president’s behalf, seeking to arrange an appointment. “I’m sorry,” said the Nuncio. “Apparently he chooses not to meet you, for whatever reason.”

  Delvalle sighed deeply. “You can’t know what my life has been like these past several months. The humiliation, the insults. I never thought that public life could be so vulgar. I myself am losing money with this new sugar quota that the Americans have imposed. It’s been a disaster, personally and professionally.” The president took a long sip of his drink and then pressed the cold glass to his forehead. “I’m at the end. Really, the very end.”

  “What do you propose to do?”

  “I shall simply fire him. I am the president, after all.”

  Of all the lunacy that had transpired in the last several months, the Nuncio thought that this must be the craziest notion yet advanced. He sat quietly—stunned, really—unable to respond.

  “Everything will be constitutional,” Delvalle continued. “One must do what is right.”

  “A commendable policy,” the Nuncio said hopelessly.

  “I’ve already been given assurance that the Americans will back me up.”

  “I would not be so certain of that if I were you.”

  “But they have indicted him in Florida! This has to be the end. Now we must do what we can to save Panama.”

  “I’ve observed that America is like the mythical Hydra,” said the Nuncio. “It speaks from many mouths. You must be careful to hear what each of them says.”

  Delvalle slumped deeper into the Nuncio’s chair. “I understand the point you are making, Monseñor, but I can’t endure this state of humiliation any longer. It can only end in the complete loss of everything—my dignity, my family, my money, perhaps even my life. So what is there to lose? Do you mind if I have another vodka?”

  When he had fortified himself, the president set the shoe box on the Nuncio’s desk and announced that he had a considerable favor to ask. “I must make a speech to the nation, telling the people of my decision and asking for their support. If you don’t mind, Monseñor, I’d like to tape the speech here, in your library.”

  “But—don’t you own the television station?”

  “In fact, yes, but if I tape it there, word will certainly get to the General. As you know, television personalities cannot be trusted; they will be stumbling over themselves to get to the phone to inform on me. If I go on live, it would be suicide, quite obviously. But, alternatively, if I make the tape here, it goes on the air later and I am . . . somewhere else.”

  “But, my dear Mr. President, what reaction do you expect?”

  “My hope is that the people will take to the streets and support me. I realize very well that many of them do not regard me highly, but I am their leader, after all. I’m only trying to do honor to my country and my high office.”

  Seeing that there was little hope of dissuading the president from this course of action, the Nuncio agreed to let him use the library. “Would you like to stay in the nunciature once the speech has aired?” he asked gently.

  “I’m afraid you are already housing too many government critics to make me feel welcome as a houseguest. In fact, I have a retreat of my own. I can wait there for the people to make their feelings known. Once they have declared themselves, I will emerge and together we will restore democracy to our shattered republic.” The president then opened the shoe box and removed the tricolor presidential sash, which he draped across his chest. “There happens to be a cameraman waiting at your back door,” he said as he patted down his hair. “If you would be so good as to admit him.”

  PAMPERED, STUCK-UP, white-assed bitch!”

  “Pimple-faced toad!”

  Carmen’s pillow slammed against the right side of Tony’s head just as he was taking a strategic step backward on her giant four-postered bed. He tumbled onto the mound of sheets that had been torn from the mattress in an earlier bout. Carmen fell on him and pinned his hands over his head. “Surrender,” she demanded.

  Tony stared helplessly at her shining breasts looming over him. Her neck was red and the freckles on her sternum throbbed with excitement.

  “Okay, I give up. You can have anything you want. Just name it.”

  Carmen’s eyes stared wildly at him through the cave of her unstrung yellow hair. “I want to watch the news,” she said.

  Tony groaned. Carmen was developing a depressingly active interest in current events. When they first got together she never asked about politics, but in the last several months she had been going at him with the zeal of an undergraduate, always full of questions and opinions. He suspected that there must be some law of female behavior that linked sex and complexity. Witness his relationship with Felicidad, which had become brutally simple.

  Carmen switched on a news show that was a recitation of the week’s events, starting with Delvalle’s misguided attempt to exercise power. Only eight hours after announcing that he was firing Tony, Delvalle himself was dismissed by the more prudent National Assembly. The former president went into hiding. “Under article one eighty-four of the Panamanian Constitution,” the announcer was saying, “Manuel Solís Palma becomes the minister in charge of the presidency, pending new elections.”

  “Why do you do this, Tony?” Carmen demanded. “Why do you keep making other men president? You should be president.”

  Tony laughed bitterly.

  Carmen turned her inquisitive face toward him. She was propped up in bed wearing a pair of studious-looking wire-rimmed glasses. “Is that so funny?” she asked.

  “It is not my destiny.”

  “ ‘Not my destiny,’ ” Carmen echoed. “I hate it when you make these pronouncements. You’re not making a speech. Why don’t you just say what you mean?”

  “What I mean is that the people who own this country would never let that happen,” Tony said irritably. “To be behind the scenes, okay. To pull the strings. But when they look on the stage they want to see one of their own.”

  “But, Tony, you’re just as rich as they are.”

  “I am the richest man in Panama,” he said, although remembering his Colombian guests, Escobar and the others, he added, “at least, I am the richest Panamanian in Panama.”

  “Then what’s your problem? That you’re not in the Union Club? Is that what you want? To be a part of the elite? Look, they’re not the people you think they are. I know, Tony. I’ve been around them all my life. Sometimes I think you have a
complex, you know. You think you’re inferior and it makes you crazy.”

  Tony could see that further lovemaking was out of the question. He put on his red underwear and began tying the ribbons around his ankles to ward off the Colombian hex.

  “So suddenly you get in a bad mood,” said Carmen. “I was trying to support you, and you start to sulk.”

  “Of course I’m inferior—in their eyes!” Tony snapped. “I’m not white. This is not something I’m imagining! It’s not a ‘complex.’ The plain fact is that it would be easier for you to be president than me. Look at your skin—it’s a passport for anything you desire. Me—I can’t imagine what it would be like, even though I think about it all the time—Tony Noriega, with a clear white complexion! Do you think that people would make me into their demon then? No, it’s because I’m a mestizo with this fucking pox on my face!”

  Carmen sat for a moment and then wordlessly put her beautiful white hand on his. He stared at it, feeling drained by his outburst and overwhelmed by an emotion that he fought against, the one emotion that he should never allow himself to feel. He was in love, helplessly, hopelessly in love. And that made him so furious. He knew very well how vulnerable love made him, and how foolish. For him, love was a no-win proposition. It went only in one direction.

  “You know, even when I was a boy, I understood where my life was going to lead me,” he said, examining Carmen’s lovely fingers. “I saw the white asses in their fancy cars and gigantic homes, but I knew in my heart that little Tony in the streets was smarter, he had bigger balls! And all my life I planned how I would become more powerful than they. It was like a mission from God. So I don’t care that they don’t love Tony! Nobody loves Tony! Even you don’t love me. I know this. But respect. And fear. This is my language. Without power, I don’t exist. Even for you.”

  Carmen pulled her hand away. “Honestly, Tony, sometimes I think you’re only fucking me out of revenge.”

  CHAPTER 13

  FOR MORE THAN A fortnight Father Jorge had lain in a crowded cell in the basement of La Modelo in a state of semiconsciousness. In his more lucid moments he listened to the conversation of the other prisoners, some of whom had been in this same dark, shit-stained cage since the Torrijos years. They were killers, by and large, except for a dozen political prisoners who lived in constant fear of the criminals. They huddled together for protection. Father Jorge was vaguely aware that they included him in their circle in order to guard him against the others, but he also knew that safety was out of the question.

  The priest could not talk except through his clenched teeth. The slightest movement caused his broken jaw to work itself loose, with agonizing pain. He spent most of his time lying on his hammock because his feet were swollen and infected. He tried to avoid pondering the damage that had been done to him, but there was little else to think about. His thought processes were vague and fragmentary. His legs throbbed, but his feet had no feeling at all. He could see the infection and wondered if it was gangrenous, and if so, whether he would lose his legs. He might also lose his life, but that prospect was to some extent less awful than the thought of being maimed.

  Even in his dizzy state, Father Jorge sensed the tension in the cage, the angry, unspoken currents of power that stirred beneath the interactions of the men. He had begun to understand that the central source of the conflict was him. Fear and resentment and other emotions that were not as clear to him swirled around the dim cell. One of the criminals, a bald and muscular man named Lucho, gave him a portion of his soup every day. They received only soup, beans, and bread. If soup wasn’t served, Father Jorge couldn’t eat at all, since he couldn’t chew. More important, Lucho also gave him a straw to eat with. At first the priest simply accepted it without thinking, but he noticed the hostile expressions of the other criminals and he gradually realized that their anger was connected to his use of the straw. Later, he saw them snorting cocaine with the same straw.

  The cage opposite theirs was filled with madmen. When they found out that the wounded man was a priest, they begged him to hear their confessions, but he was unable to respond because of his jaw. Now they spent hours every day screaming at him, and cursing God, and making bizarre boasts of their sins. Sometimes they pelted the cage with turds. The men in Father Jorge’s cage crowded together away from the bars, trying to keep out of range. There was nothing to do with madmen, but they looked sullenly at Father Jorge, whose presence had unsettled the fragile balance of power.

  “Don’t mind them, Father, they are animals,” Lucho said one afternoon as he gave him the straw and helped himself to the priest’s bowl of beans. Lucho wore a copper bracelet on his wrist. Since all jewelry had been confiscated from the other prisoners, this bracelet became an object of fascination and envy. Lucho was the caretaker of the straw and apparently the supplier of the cocaine as well.

  When Father Jorge sat up to eat, he felt light-headed and confused.

  “Your feet look better today,” said Lucho. “The swelling is going down. Soon your jaw will heal. In a week, perhaps. I am a patient man. I don’t want to hurt you, Father. I will be gentle with you.”

  Father Jorge realized that he was being tended like a farm animal. And it wasn’t just Lucho who watched his progress. Sometimes he would awaken to see men kneeling beside him, just staring at him or touching his hair. Sex was as common as drugs in the cage; there was little attempt among his cellmates to be discreet in their couplings.

  He wondered why he had not been interrogated. When he heard sounds of torture he expected that soon someone would come for him. His head was full of dangerous knowledge, names of people in the resistance, places of meeting, plans for the future. With every ounce of will he would resist betraying the others—but how long would he be able to hold out? He prayed for the strength to die rather than talk.

  The political prisoners were led by a wiry intellectual named Tristan Solarte. He had a vitality that made him seem like a living person among a horde of ghosts. Lucho largely left him alone, which was, in its way, a grudging homage to Tristan’s quiet dignity and his political courage—he had been one of Noriega’s most relentless critics. Tristan had “disappeared” from his house five months before, and Father Jorge was relieved to discover that he was still alive.

  Tristan began sleeping next to Father Jorge and spent much of each day at his side, chatting in a friendly fashion despite the priest’s limited ability to respond. Gradually Father Jorge realized that Tristan was guarding him against the sexual advances of Lucho and the other men. “You know what they charged me with?” Tristan told him one night. “Nothing! There’s a new calumny law that allows them to lock up a person for five years in preventive detention just for being accused of slander. Isn’t that absurd? Maybe that’s what they’ve done with you, Father. All those masses you said for Hugo—they’re getting even with you for that.”

  “Not even a hearing?” the priest asked through his clenched teeth. His only hope of getting word to the Nuncio was that he would be charged with a crime and allowed to enter a plea. That much would be on the public record. It had never occurred to him that he could remain here for years with no hope of being heard. He looked at some of the long-timers and imagined himself with a scraggly gray beard down to his navel.

  One day he lay on his hammock with his feet raised against the wall. He had tried to keep his feet elevated after awakening to find a rat gnawing at his wounds. The rats and the prisoners lived in a surly coexistence. There was so much marijuana in the prison that the rats wandered around in a half-stoned state, boldly slaking their thirst from the bowl of the toilet. The rodents had a distinct family hierarchy. For a week or so there were only three regular rat visitors to the cell, but then the fourth one reappeared. The priest noticed that her teats were enlarged; she must have a nest of babies somewhere. Soon there would be an entire new litter to contend with. He watched the mother rat sniffing about under the hammocks, looking for shoes. They ate anything leather—for the salt, he supp
osed.

  “Goddamn vermin!” Lucho screamed. He suddenly snatched the mother rat up by the tail and held it in front of his face. “You think you can get away with that?” The rat was squirming and snapping the air, but then stopped to look at Lucho as he yelled at it. They were probably both stoned, the priest thought; otherwise, the rat would not have let itself get caught. There was also something weird in the moment that passed between Lucho and the rat, as if there were a remote chance of communication, before Lucho swung the animal by its tail and brained it against the bars.

  “Fuck, Lucho, you made a mess!” one of the criminals cried, wiping rat blood off his face.

  The madmen across the hall came back to life, screaming at Lucho. They apparently regarded the rats as pets. They cursed and cried. Lucho taunted them by holding the carcass outside the cage, then he flipped it toward them. But the rat struck the bars of the other cage and then lay in the hallway, still seeping blood.

  “Great, Lucho, now it’s going to stink up the place!”

  Lucho turned and hit the man who complained, then pressed his hands against the man’s throat. “You want me to do the same to you?” The muscles swelled in Lucho’s massive arms and his copper bracelet glinted in the faint yellow light. When he let go, the man dropped to his knees and coughed up blood.

  For a while the men in the cage were quiet. They were all wary of what was going to happen next. Eventually the food cart arrived and Lucho came to the priest with his bowl of soup.

  “You need to eat more, Father, you’re getting too thin,” he said. “The others will give you their soup as well.”

  “This is enough,” the priest murmured.

  Lucho touched Father Jorge’s thigh. “You are like a broomstick. It’s not attractive. You will eat what I say.”

  “He’s doing what he can, Lucho,” Tristan said evenly. “You cannot force a man to eat more than he can keep down.”

  Lucho darkened and looked as if he were going to strike the older man, but instead he turned to Father Jorge and kissed him fully on the lips. “Remember, I’m the one who is taking care of you. If you want protection, you have no choice.” Then he glared at Tristan and walked away. Tristan looked helplessly at the priest. There was nothing to say.