“If it keeps you employed and out of trouble, it’s fine with me. I’d miss you if they took you off my case. But, how about this? What if I’m running a CIA con to divert scarce KGB resources into a blind alley?”
“Dastardly!” he spat with a chuckle. “That’ll keep my staff busy, getting to the bottom of that.”
“But on the other hand, why should I believe your cockamamie yarn about setting up your own KGB department to keep tabs on me, when you might just be using me in some way or setting me up for something in the future?”
“There’s no reason why you should take me at my word. Since I’m in the KGB, you’d be foolish to do so. If I’m in the KGB, of course. I could show you ID, but you never know, it might be forged … Maybe you’re a sleeper?” he asked hopefully.
“Negative,” I said, “and there we are. Since neither of us knows what’s really going on here, let’s shrug it off and return to the matter we were discussing before you asked me to explain my interest in the election. I think if a few things fall right, we can come out with some win-wins here. It’s clear that the Filipinos would be better off without Marcos. If Cory Aquino captures the vote, I’d like to help her secure the presidency. That’s where your useful idiots would come in—organizing demonstrations, diverting the Marcos forces, creating an anti-Marcos popular movement that the rest of the opposition can rally around. Getting Marcos to leave will probably take some maneuvering on the inside, but I have contacts and maybe I can push things in the right direction. That’s my win—Marcos gets shitcanned. If your useful idiots succeed, you can claim that you thwarted my CIA mission to keep Marcos in office. That’s your win—you countered Jake Fonko, superspy. Cory Aquino has the public behind her, so if she becomes president, that’s the Filipinos’ win, and hers also.”
“What about the CIA’s agenda?”
“Four out of five ain’t bad,” I said.
“I can contact some people and set things in motion,” Grotesqcu said. “Do you have a plan in mind?”
“We’ll have to play it as things unfold. The next move depends on how the election goes. Best case: Aquino wins outright, Marcos steps aside, and they won’t have to do much at all. Keep your guys on low profile until after Election Day. Marcos is trying to link Aquino to the Communists, and we don’t want to give him that kind of ammunition until the votes are in.”
We stood under the lee side of the canopy, so few raindrops reached us, and soon the squall passed. Our conversation was over, and we acted like we’d reached the point of boring each other. Grotesqcu nodded a polite “good day” and wandered back into the cabin to get a beer. I stayed topside, appreciating the cooling breeze. We landed on Corregidor and took the tour separately, with no further contact for the rest of the trip. Until the election results were known, there was nothing further for us to do.
*
As Election Day drew near Manila teemed with Americans. An unruly mob of journalists—estimates reached 1000—arrived to cover the election, most of them hoping for a shooting war to break out. Some media played the election in a horse-race format, like they do American election campaigns. Others used a more Hollywood-style approach, a morality play template with, thanks to Imelda, some soap opera mixed in. The situation was more tangled than that, of course, but except for the “prestige press,” reporters fitted it whichever model had worked for them in the past.
And not only news and TV crews clogged the hotels and bars. Marcos had such confidence in his victory and the righteousness of his cause that he invited observers from the four corners of the globe to monitor the election. President Reagan sent a group that included Richard Lugar (head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee) and Admiral Robert Long (former Commander in Chief of the Pacific Command). A local volunteer group called NAMFREL—The National Movement for Free Elections—took upon itself the task of bringing to light voting fraud and other irregularities.
Among the visiting firemen a carnival atmosphere prevailed. One night I wound up at a raucous American Club bash. I recognized a few faces from the Manila Hotel and hither and yon in my wanderings. I spotted Beth Romulo, whom I hadn’t seen since the do at Malacanang Palace. She was in animated discussion with a husky man with a shaggy shock of brown hair falling over his brow. She noticed me and beckoned me over. “Jack, meet a fellow American, P. J. O’Rourke. Rolling Stone magazine sent him to cover the election. We were swapping notes, comparing journalism in my heyday—the Edward R. Murrow era—with the present gonzo version a la Hunter Thompson. I contend we’ve lost something, and Mr. O’Rourke says it’s a living.”
O’Rourke, half in the bag, extended a friendly hand. “Jack claims he’s an investment banker here to loan money to Marcos,” Beth continued. “Not everyone in Manila buys that yarn. Some doubts pervade the Palace, I hear. Oh, excuse me, boys. I see someone over there I simply must say hello to. Nice meeting you, P. J.—good luck with your story. I’ll see you later, Jack.”
“So you’re an international man of mystery, eh?” said O’Rourke with a wink-wink nudge-nudge intonation, but revealing a newshound curiosity.
“Didn’t you used to write stuff for National Lampoon?” I asked him.
“Guilty as charged,” he said.
“It was good. That mag really cracked us up back in the 70s. Everything was fair game. Come to think of it, I’ve seen your stuff here and there. Seems more conservative than I’d expect from an Ivy League humor jockey.”
P. J. O’ROURKE’S STORY
“I came to regret the follies of my youth,” he said. “What can I say? At Harvard in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, shit, at just about every college in America, it was chic to be a radical, and college kids are herd animals. Rampaging with the peaceniks was a great way to meet easy girls, and for guys facing the draft, it offered vain hopes of heading off that prospect.”
“You were drafted, then?”
“No, I dodged it, got a sympathetic doc to certify me as mentally unsuited. Which I think I actually was, and the Army psychiatrist who interviewed me agreed, but anyhow, I floated through the sex/drugs/rock and roll era in the usual haze. What’s that they say, ‘If you can remember the ‘60s, you weren’t participating.’ I notice your look. No, casting back over my misspent youth, I’m not proud of it. One anti-war demonstration I was in, some clean-cut guy punched me in the nose, just decked me, for being a hairy peace creep. When later I sobered up it occurred to me that, because I ducked out, some other guy had to go in the place I would have occupied. I sincerely hope he was the guy who punched me, and I’m glad he came back okay.”
“You’re here to cover the election, then?”
“Yeah, I’m trying to drum up a Rolling Stone slant on it, find some hip angle or uncover some salacious slime underneath a rock. Mostly, I drummed the trip up for a pretext to make a junket to the Philippines. I fell in love with the place when I was nine years old. My dad was a chief petty officer in a Naval Construction Battalion, the famous Sea-Bees. He’d been a salesman but always wanted to be an engineer, and for a couple years he was one, building docks, warehouses, barracks here. You ask around, the Filipinos still remember the CBs fondly. They were about the only people that ever could get anything done here. I saw his photos of palm trees, and warships, and sailors and natives—to a nine-year old boy it looked like paradise on earth.”
“Does it meet your expectations?”
“No, but I’ve only been here a few days, and so far I haven’t seen anything outside Makati and Ermita. Manila’s the biggest city, and it’s full of modern buildings Marcos put up, though I’ve gotten a glimpse of some pretty rotten-looking slums. I’d think the other islands would be closer to the tropical paradise vision, as I hear they’re poor and undeveloped. Have you seen much beyond Luzon?”
“Only Mindanao, for two days.”
“Tropical paradise-ish at all?”
“Tropical, not any kind of pa
radise. More like piss-poor rural, but they do have a lot of coconut palms down there, if that’s your idea of exotic. The biggest city on the island is Davao. You say you’ve seen some slums in Manila? All cities have slums, but Davao is slums.”
“Good line,” he said. “See any subversives there? I’ve heard Mindanao is crawling with Commies, Muslims, the New People’s Army…?”
“What I saw of the NPA couldn’t subvert anything.”
He paused to let that digest, then tried a different tack. “You’re in the Philippines to do banking, Beth said?”
“Sounding out the possibilities for loans to the government.”
“How’s it look, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Why should I mind him asking? It wasn’t as though I was a banker. “I personally wouldn’t lend Marcos a dime,” I said.
“Any prediction for the election?”
“It looks like Cory’s going to win it, and Marcos is going to steal it,” I said.
“If he loses the vote he’ll claim it was because of the Communists.”
“That’s the consensus,” O’Rourke agreed. “Say, if you’d excuse me, there’s some writers over there I need to touch base with. The mainstream press is playing it up as ‘The Thrilla in Manila.’ In this Corner: Ferdinand Marcos the Bad Guy, a ruthless dictator. In That Corner: Cory Aquino the Humble Heroine, she of the God-fearing iron will. In The Center of the Ring: Imelda Marcos the Femme Fatale, the flamboyant, attention-grabbing ex-beauty queen. Those guys have been out canvassing in the streets, maybe picked up some off-beat thread worth following. Journalism’s an incestuous business, you know.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said. “I’ll be looking for your story in Rolling Stone.”
I jawed with a few more people, gathered some useful intel, which I’d need if Emil and I had a hope of warding off election theft. Before long I was hearing the same things over and over again and washing it down with more San Miguel than my capacity. Called it a night, hoping that the International Man of Mystery wasn’t a thread the journo-pack deemed fit to follow.
I caught a cab back to the Manila Hotel, weaved through what seemed like a lot of police presence parked out front, and stepped into my room to find it already occupied by Imelda’s brother, Kokoy, and his five sharp-suited buddies. They took their ease on every chair in the suite, with Kokoy sprawled across the bed I’d looked forward to crashing into. “Good evening, Mr. Philco,” Kokoy said with a smirk. “Out carousing with your meddlesome countrymen, were you?” Kokoy kept his place, but the other five thugs rose and moved to closely surround me.
“I was hoping you guys would drop in again,” I said. “You owe me some gold trinkets.”
“Oh, has something gone missing from your room?” Kokoy said with a contemptuous grin. “You should be careful in Manila. Thieves lurk everywhere, even in our premier hotels. Unwary foreign visitors often have problems with thieves, I am sorry to say. You should have reported any missing items to the police at the time, and they would have found the thief for you. We will do what we can to help now that you have brought it to our attention, but chances of retrieving your missing items are slight at this late date. The thief has no doubt already disposed of them. But we’re wasting time. To the business at hand. My sister wants to see you again, immediately, so we have come to fetch you. Let’s go.” He sat up and drew an automatic pistol from a shoulder holster, and his buddies closed up around me.
They marched me down through the lobby to a pair of Mercedes sedans waiting out front, along with a police escort. With sirens a-wail and lights a-flash, our drive to Malacanang Palace took no time at all. I’ll give Kokoy and his boys this: for lazy, insouciant Filipinos, they were pretty damned efficient. They took me straight to Imelda’s office, where she sat imperiously behind her desk. “Take a seat, Mr. Philco,” she commanded, pointing to a chair across from her. “Kokoy, send your men away. You stay here. Sit there,” she said, indicating the couch by the coffee table. The goon squad left the room, closing the door behind them.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of this summons?” I asked. At least she wasn’t fuming angry this time.
“You said you had come to Manila to help Ferdinand win his election,” she said. “May I ask what you have been doing to help since the campaign began?”
“ I said that I’m here to assess the possibilities of a syndicated loan to your government,” I replied with as much indignation as I could muster. “Your faulty information came from some obscure government clerk whom I’d never met and whose motives for spreading lies escape me. Having your goons drag me to the Palace for these unwarranted interrogations does not raise your government’s credit rating,” I added with a huff.
“Your government shipped my informant back to the States immediately after he spilled your beans, proving to me that he told the truth. Which is more than I can say for you. Tell me this: what were you doing on Mindanao recently? Surely poking around the New People’s Army cannot have anything to do with syndicated loans. Why did you visit our enemy, Cardinal Sin?”
“Simply performing due diligence, Mrs. Marcos,” I replied calmly and formally — we’d long since dropped “Imelda” and “Jack”. “Cardinal Sin provided me with perspectives on the stability of the Philippine economy. My investigation of the NPA reassured me that your government faces no serious threat of an insurrection.”
“Glib answers,” she grunted, but with waning dudgeon. “You haven’t been doing anything to help us with the election, then?”
“I’ve seen no evidence that Ferdinand won’t win it with ease,” I said. “Even if that were my job, what would be the need?”
“Yes, that is so,” she said. “All indications are that Ferdinand will win handily, despite the great amount of effort the American government is exerting to defeat him.” She hesitated. “It is very saddening,” she went on. “And also very annoying. We’re hounded at all hours by your obnoxious news reporters, all looking to dig up something with which to further embarrass us. Your politicians come and accuse us of every kind of corruption and thievery, despite that we invited observers from all over the world to monitor the election. All along Ferdinand has been a most steadfast ally of the United States, right from the beginning with his assistance to General MacArthur. Is this how your country repays its friends?”
Thinking back on things we’d done with regard to Vietnam and Iran, it was a more astute question than she might realize, but I wasn’t about to debate geopolitics. “Mrs. Marcos, I’m just an investment banker, a numbers guy, strictly dealing with dollars and cents. I must confess that my government’s foreign policies have always been a mystery to me.” The first true thing I’d said.
“Well . . .” She paused uncertainly. “After the election is over, we will need your loan more urgently than ever. To repair the damage done to our stability by Corazon Aquino and her lackeys, and to repay the Filipino people for their loyalty. I hope nothing has happened to dim our prospects for a loan from your bank?”
“I can promise you that once Ferdinand’s tenure in office is secured, your government will receive not one penny less.” Another true thing.
“Thank you, Mr. Philco, I feel much relieved,” she said. “These are unsettling times, but Ferdinand and I hope and pray for the best. God willing, he will breeze to a win on Election Day and life will return to normal. Kokoy, please return Mr. Philco to his hotel.”
Which he did, with grudging courtesy and great self-restraint to not rough me up on the way out. He dispatched me in one of the Merc sedans, no police escort this time. In my absence a maid had tidied up my room, leaving the bed with no sign of having been disheveled by night visitors.
*
On February 5 Marcos and Cory Aquino had another American TV face-off, this time on ABC’s “Nightline,” Ted Koppel moderating. I heard a crew from 20/20 was on the ground in Manila, but Dana wasn’t with them. One mo
re day of rallies and demonstrations passed, and then it was Election Day. In Manila Filipinos mobbed the polls, particularly in the more upscale districts. As for the other islands, who knew? NAMFREL dispatched volunteers, most of them priests and nuns but including a population cross-section, to watch polling places all over the country. Rumors of obstruction and intimidation buzzed around, but Filipinos love to gossip, making it up if they’re short on facts, so facts were scarce. Finally the polls closed and the frenetic day ended, leaving nothing to do but wait. Unlike elections in America these days, where the statisticians call the outcomes even before the machine curtains close after the last vote is cast, it would be days before all votes were collected from rural districts and the out islands. Marcos controlled the airwaves, precluding any possibility of an accurate idea of the voting. NAMFREL made their own quick counts, while the government insisted on waiting for the election commission’s results. NAMFREL’s provincial coordinators convened in Manila to compare personal accounts, and on the basis of that, the Catholic bishops denounced the election as a fraud unparalleled in Philippine history and wrote a letter to that effect. Imelda Marcos pounded on the door of the bishops’ headquarters at two in the morning, pleading that they not release the letter, but they did anyhow on February 13.
Despite that, on February 15 the National Assembly declared Marcos the winner and President for six more years. From a lobby pay phone I immediately dialed up the Intercontinental Hotel and was connected with Evgeny Grotelov. “The balloon’s gone up,” I said. “We’d better get rolling.”
“We have people on Corazon’s staff. I’ll make a call and get them started. There are some standard tactics we can use in this situation. Let’s put our heads together tomorrow morning.”
The Jake Fonko Series: Books 4, 5 & 6 Page 40
