Hernandez had rushed to the emergency room when he heard the news about Helena falling from Cesar Gomez’s penthouse. He couldn’t describe the pain he felt when he saw her lifeless body on the operating table—the white robe soaked with blood, her limbs broken from the fall. She’d died instantly, but the doctor found scratches on her neck where her necklace had been, the pearl necklace Tyler had given her. Everyone assumed Cesar had done it, but the scratches were only minutes old. Eyewitnesses saw Cesar in a bar two hours before she fell.
To his shock, the police ruled her death a suicide. With no additional evidence, he couldn’t prove otherwise, but he convinced them to declare her death an accident. She couldn’t have killed herself, he knew it, and he wouldn’t let the Catholic Church condemn her soul. Her funeral made matters worse. Nosy journalists probed for details and wrote stories full of lies. They had no respect for their privacy. Hundreds of people who probably never knew her laid flowers—violets, her favorite—at the site of her death.
“I can’t believe she’s gone,” Hernandez said as they embraced. He allowed the pain to permeate his body. “We should have done more to help her.”
Ivonne leaned back, surprised. “Helena couldn’t have asked for a more loving father. You did everything you could. She adored you.”
Hernandez felt tears welling. “I know, but sometimes I feel like—”
“Like what?” she asked, concerned.
“Like we should have been stricter with her.”
“Honey, you can’t feel guilty. Helena was an independent woman. That’s what made her beautiful.” Her smile reversed. “The cocaine, that’s what got her into trouble. If all the love we gave her didn’t save her, nothing would.” She dried his tears. “Just make sure you put that monster Cesar Gomez behind bars.”
He nodded. They embraced. “I love you so much.”
“I love you, too,” she said.
“Starting today,” he said and wrapped his arm around her as they walked to the bedroom, “we’re going to turn this marriage around.” They stopped at the door. “Mrs. Hernandez, would you like to have dinner with me tomorrow evening?”
Ivonne sighed. “Mr. Hernandez, I’d be honored.” She kissed her index finger and touched his lips. “Wait here,” she said and arched her eyebrows suggestively. “I have a surprise.”
Hernandez felt the spark that had been missing for years. He was wasting his time with Sheena and the other mistresses. The woman he really loved all along was standing before him. Despite the pains of life, their love was the bond that held him together and gave him the strength to live.
Ivonne returned with a pillow and a blanket. “Enjoy the couch,” she said.
He flinched when she slammed the door in his face.
TWENTY-FOUR
A Panamanian National Police officer wearing a shabby khaki uniform waved Nicholas past the front gate of Fort Amador. The former U.S. military base had been a jewel of the former Canal Zone: plush base housing, a nine-hole golf course, an officer’s club, and a yacht club overlooking the southern entrance to the Canal. Now, however, preventive maintenance didn’t reign supreme. The buildings needed painting, the grass was uncut, and tree branches littered both sides of the roads.
As Nicholas waited for an oncoming car to pass through the single lane gravel road detour, he noticed the row of abandoned white cement barracks wounded with bullet holes from the U.S. invasion in 1989. AC-130 gunships had blasted the buildings before U.S. tanks forced out the Panamanian Defense Forces.
Farther down the road lay the tomb of Omar Torrijos, the dictator who participated in the coup d’état on October 11, 1968, then a lieutenant colonel. As Panama’s beloved “benevolent dictator,” he initiated massive public works projects with loans that made Panama per capita the most heavily indebted country in the world. Torrijos also invited a flood of illicit activities—drug trafficking, money laundering, weapons smuggling, whatever the mind could imagine, activities that fathered Panama’s persistent notoriety.
Torrijos’ greatest achievement was snatching the Panama Canal from Jimmy Carter in 1977. The conservatives were still bemoaning this act of treason when Nicholas joined the agency. Some reputable thinkers had decreed the 1977 treaties unconstitutional, but Carter won the day. The two treaties—one for operating the Canal, the other for the defense and neutrality of the Canal—made Torrijos a national hero. The prospect of controlling the Canal lifted the spirits of many Panamanians, but the reality of low profitability and high maintenance costs would quickly shatter their hopes for a free lunch.
Torrijos died in a plane crash. Rumors surfaced that the CIA was responsible, but the rumors were discordant with the fact that Torrijos for the most part had been a cooperative puppet, to include allowing the United States to use Panama as a staging base for the covert wars in Central America. Nicholas never met Torrijos, but he met his successor, Manuel Noriega, who was Torrijos’ director of intelligence, responsible for the dirty work, like killing those who were fighting to reestablish democracy. Noriega was on the CIA’s payroll, as well as those of many other intelligence agencies.
Nicholas remembered the meeting with Noriega well. K and Tyler were there. They’d met farther down the road past the causeway at Noriega’s home on Flamingo Island, an old World War II artillery site. K had assigned Nicholas and Tyler to transport weapons and supplies to the anticommunist guerrillas. Nicholas admired the way K arranged the deal and manipulated Noriega—Pineapple Face, as he was called, because of his acne scars. K was at master at making people understand that they worked for him. Noriega was no exception. He looked powerless in his khaki uniform, even behind his pugnacious frown, as he grunted obscenities and downed glass after glass of scotch.
The mission was a success—the U.S. eliminated the Soviet influence in Central America—and Tyler took the lead after K reassigned Nicholas to El Salvador. Nicholas never saw Noriega again, but he remembered him as a vile yet romantic creature. Despite his cruelty and failures as a leader, Noriega understood that Panama was an exploitative society where the fair-skinned oligarchs would never allow the dark-skinned masses to participate in the power structure, except at the barrel of a gun.
A dust cloud from an oncoming car forced Nicholas to roll up his window, a fitting metaphor for the dust that had settled long ago on Panama’s stage. Even though the play had ended years before, a few actors remained, performing a sequence of disjointed scenes in pursuit of a satisfying conclusion. Nicholas’ cue began after he passed through the bumpy detour, parked at the Balboa Yacht Club, and descended the stairs to the pier.
“Cesar sent me,” a swarthy man said from his taxi boat.
Nicholas nodded and hopped in. Waves from a passing cruise ship gently rocked the boat as the driver throttled the engine. Nicholas donned his sunglasses and waved at the tourists on the cruise ship. The boat driver ignored them and spat in the water. The single engine revved as the boat bounced over the waves toward the sailboat anchored about one hundred yards from shore. At the destination, Nicholas stood and handed the driver five dollars.
“Greetings,” Cesar Gomez said and stroked his mustache. “How nice of you to stop by.” He snapped his fingers. Eddy helped Nicholas into the yacht. “Welcome aboard,” he added. They shook hands. “You remember my associate.”
“Of course,” Nicholas said to Manuel.
The group looked unusually sporty in their sunglasses and tropical shirts, even Eddy. Manuel said hello, lit a cigarette, and dropped the pack into his shirt pocket.
The yacht was exquisite. The varnished wooden deck led to a pilothouse filled with advanced communications and GPS equipment. The cabin below probably slept twelve comfortably. Nicholas looked up at the sun and felt the penetrating rays on his face. Drug trafficking aside, this wasn’t a bad way to live.
“Eddy, a cold beer for our guest,” Cesar said and looked at the empty bottles on the table. “Grab a few more while you’re at it,” he added in a professional tone.
&nb
sp; The sound of women laughing escaped when Eddy opened the door to the cabin below.
“You mentioned having another shipment ready by Wednesday,” Nicholas said, getting down to business.
Cesar nodded with a smirk. “I heard your last shipment had a few problems.”
“Minor complications,” Nicholas said.
Cesar assumed a serious demeanor. “What did you have in mind?”
“Why don’t we try the same thing?” Nicholas asked. “Same time, same place.” He glanced at the cruise ship entering the Canal as his deception plan took shape. “The Colombians won’t get lucky twice in the same week,” he added.
Eddy returned with four bottles of beer. Cesar grabbed one and raised it for a silent toast. Nicholas and Manuel returned the gesture. Eddy tapped his foot nervously. Cesar groaned and gave Eddy a beer. “Leave us alone, Eddy.”
The cold beer hit the spot, but Nicholas’ thoughts changed to more important matters when Adriana and Maria ascended the stairs dressed in delectable bikinis.
“Not now,” Cesar said. “We’re discussing important business.”
Adriana and Maria glowered and turned.
“Come on,” Manuel prompted, “let them stay.”
The women stopped and looked back with hopeful expressions.
“I’m tired of looking at your pretty face,” Manuel added with a smirk.
The women sobered when Cesar snapped his fingers. “You’ll look at my pretty face when we discuss business,” he told Manuel. “Understood?” He snapped again and gestured for the women to go below.
Deciding it wasn’t politic to come between a man and his women, Nicholas got back to business. “Shall we say same size shipment and same price?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Cesar said in a tone indicating the details were clear. “Why did you choose this line of work?”
Nicholas set his beer down. Assuming “work” meant cocaine trafficking, not spying, he concluded that Cesar hadn’t disclosed his name to Manuel. The good news was he’d successfully planted the misinformation with Manuel; the shipment would not depart at the same time and place. “Easy money, I suppose,” he said and looked at Manuel, who was chuckling. “Perhaps I missed the humor.”
“I’m sorry,” Manuel said, now laughing. “That was Cesar’s way of saying he wants to tell you his theory of drugs.”
“I look forward to being entertained,” Nicholas said.
“My apologies,” Manuel said to Cesar. “Go ahead, tell him.”
Cesar looked at Nicholas calmly. “My theory stems from the premise that a genetic mutation long ago severed our link with the subconscious and created certain tribes who enslaved other tribes through violence and oppression.”
Nicholas leaned back and prepared for the worst.
“The problem was the people who maintained the link were unwilling to submit to the authority of the violent tribes,” Cesar said. “They were bad citizens.”
“I thought you said the link was severed,” Nicholas said.
Cesar shifted in his chair. “The genetic mutation affected some tribes more than others. Some people maintained the link, mostly through the use of meditation, chanting, or mind-altering substances.”
Nicholas sipped his beer and gestured for Cesar to continue.
“The diseased and corrupted tribes who raped and pillaged to build empires prohibited any drugs that allowed the masses to fuse the link with the subconscious. They also discovered that other drugs were conducive to good citizenship, such as alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, and sugar. These drugs turned the masses into docile, slavish citizens.”
“I would argue that governments should promote a strong work ethic among the citizenry,” Nicholas said. “Lazy nations tend to die out or become enslaved.”
“As a means of national survival,” Cesar said, ignoring Nicholas, “the program was effective, despite the negative effects on the human psyche. Once nations matured, however, the leaders decided to profit by selling the bad drugs to the lowest stratum. They made fortunes and created a dependent class of drug addicts.”
“Why do you sell drugs if they’re harmful?” Nicholas asked.
Cesar chuckled. “I’m beating the corrupt bastards at their own game,” he said. “A nation addicted to bad drugs can’t survive. With a bunch of drug addicts, the rich bastards won’t have anyone to work in their factories. Their fortunes will shrivel, civilization will crumble, and people will return to their natural state.” He smiled and sipped his drink. “By destroying civilization, I’m saving humanity.”
Nicholas nodded as if intrigued. “Out of curiosity, how many innocent people are you willing to sacrifice for your cause?”
Cesar’s eyes narrowed. He lifted a finger to speak but Maria poked her head out.
“Can we come out now?” she asked sternly.
Cesar groaned. “Fine, but stay up front. I don’t want to smell any of that coconut shit.”
“I like the coconut shit,” Manuel said and winked at Nicholas.
Cesar looked at Nicholas.
“I don’t mind coconuts,” Nicholas said, without a wink.
Cesar threw up his hands in defeat. “Fine, take a seat, ladies.”
Adriana and Maria, topless, strutted up the stairs and posed beside two lounge chairs. Their hands caressed their firm bodies with suntan oil until their bronzed skin glistened with the smell of coconut. Pierced bellybuttons adorned their taut abs. Maria’s ribs protruded ever so slightly as she inhaled and pulled her silky black hair back in a ponytail. Adriana ran her fingers along the inside of her leopard skin g-string and snapped it into place, tight up into her ass and riding the curve of her hips. As if orchestrating their moves, they slid on sunglasses and sat. Adriana arched her back and shifted her buns to get comfortable. Maria looked up at the sun, adjusted her angle, picked up a copy of Cosmopolitan, and flipped through the pages. In unison, they grabbed their tropical drinks in perspiring glasses, wrapped their lips around the straws, and sucked. The men sat silently and sipped their beers.
“My feet are sore,” Adriana pouted and wiggled her toes.
“What do you want me to do about it?” Cesar asked.
“You could rub her feet, asshole,” Maria retorted. She sipped her drink and returned to her magazine.
“Watch how you speak to me!” Cesar yelled.
They flipped him off in unison.
“You know I love you,” he said nervously. “You’re the loves of my life!”
“You aren’t going to rub my feet?” Adriana asked.
Cesar shook his head.
“I’m sure Nicholas wouldn’t mind,” Adriana added. She lowered her sunglasses with an inviting smile.
Hello, Nicholas thought and looked at Cesar with indifference.
Cesar frowned and gestured to Manuel. “What do I care? We have business to discuss, away from that damned coconut smell!”
Nicholas waited for Cesar and Manuel to move to the front of the boat before sliding his chair closer to Adriana. She cast another inviting smile as he approached. He didn’t want to appear excited or prudish, rather as someone who treated rubbing the feet of beautiful women as a fine art.
“Finally, a real man,” Maria said and hid behind her magazine.
Nicholas rubbed oil on his hands and worked his fingers firmly along Adriana’s feet, rubbing out knots as beads of sweat dripped down her thighs. She closed her eyes and moaned with clenched fists. Maria lowered her magazine to watch. He rubbed harder with long, firm, smooth strokes. Adriana flinched with pain.
“Behave, Nicholas,” Maria said lasciviously.
Cesar glanced back, once, twice, and finally the stare that said Nicholas had crossed the line.
TWENTY-FIVE
Nicholas arrived at Paitilla Airport. The afternoon tropical heat and humidity had blended for a steam room effect. Exhaust sputtering from bumper-to-bumper traffic permeated the air and fed the smog obscuring the skyline.
Nicholas entered the terminal. A young woman wi
th chocolate skin and cherry red lipstick looked up. Her highlighted hair was combed strait and her baby blue uniform was ragged but her eyes attempted to seduce him with the allure of a Hawaiian Tropic model. He asked her about a pilot named Alfredo, a name he’d obtained from a reliable insider. She gestured outside to a hangar. He grabbed two ice cold beers from the cooler and left a five dollar bill.
Outside, passengers boarded a small plane as sweating men tossed luggage into the storage bins. A plane sped down the runway. Heat expelled from the baked concrete and simmered the turbid air. Nicholas stopped at the hanger where a man was working on an aircraft engine. A wrench slipped loose and clanked the side of the plane.
“Carajo!”
“Sounds like you could use a beer,” Nicholas said.
Alfredo slid from under the engine and wiped his brow with a rag. “Thanks,” he said and took a swig. “Alfredo,” he added and looked at his grimy hands. His cropped hair, manicured hands, and gold crucifix didn’t suggest working class.
Nicholas admired the twin-engine aircraft. He’d consulted experts from the DEA and U.S. Customs Service to plan this mission. He’d considered the obvious aircraft variables—speed, range, reliability, and so on—but he’d also asked for a pilot with the best reputation.
“That’s a beautiful plane,” Nicholas said.
Alfredo slapped the wing. “She’s a beauty.”
Nicholas gestured to the hangar. “Perhaps we could talk inside?”
Alfredo wiped his hands on the rag and led the way.
Tools and aircraft parts cluttered the hangar. Alfredo’s cordoned-off spot was modestly organized. An expired calendar hung on the wall, and the digital clock was a few hours behind. Perhaps the g-string-clad Brazilian twins showering under a jungle waterfall from June
1994 had altered his sense of time. Alfredo shoved some papers and folders aside and gestured for Nicholas to sit.
“Do you know anyone with a speedboat on the north coast?” Nicholas asked.
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