Six Minutes To Freedom

by John Gilstrap

  Last night, in the safety of Richard’s Silver Spring, Maryland, home, the two men had tipped a few drinks and settled into the ritual of self-congratulation.They were so close to winning. Everything was in place. The old interagency rivalries had dried up in the face of a clear directivefrom the Oval Office that Noriega was no longer a friend to the United States, and it looked for all the world that a home-grown coup was about to topple one of the world’s most brutal dictators.

  As the two old friends stood outside in the April chill last night, sipping scotch and smoking an early victory cigar, Kurt had asked, a propos of nothing, “So what happens if things go badly and we’re discovered?”He’d meant the question as a throw-away, a rhetorical musingfueled by a swelled head and a loosened tongue. He’d expected to hear Richard scoff and say that it was nothing to worry about, that things were too far advanced for that to be even a remote concern.

  What he got instead was an unsettling downshift in mood. “If that happens,” Richard said, “you’re on your own.”

  It was all about politics. The Voice of Liberty had originated in Kurt’s head, not in the halls of any U.S. agency, and no one in power wanted any confusion on that point. The money and equipment Kurt had receivedfrom Uncle Sam was all off the books, and they’d accomplished more with it as amateurs than anyone had a right to expect. Uncle was pleased, but he was not responsible. That’s what “on your own” meant, and Kurt was sorry he asked the question. They’d always been on their own, for God’s sake. Why would it be any different now?

  Kurt shook the fearful thoughts away. Of all the complications inherentto a conspirator’s life, paranoia could be the most crippling if it wasn’t kept under control. Kurt longed for the day when he could stop living the charade and return to a normal life. He was tired of driving circuitous routes to make sure that he wasn’t being followed—lessons in tradecraft learned by watching James Bond films. He was tired of fearing the day when the PDF would crash his front door and brutalizehis family.

  More than that, he longed to be released from the burden of living so many lies simultaneously, constantly second-guessing every commentto make sure it was consistent with last week’s cover story. It was the stuff of ulcers.

  Most hurtful were the lies he’d told to his family. He told himself that the lies were for their benefit—to keep them out of harm’s way if things went wrong—but even he knew that it was empty rationalization.Truth was, his father (who was also his boss and the old-school family patriarch) never would have approved of La Voz de la Libertad, and by keeping him out of the loop, Kurt simply made his own difficultlife a little easier. In his father’s mind, the Muses were guests in a foreign land; internal Panamanian politics was none of their concern. What was their concern, he believed, were the livelihoods of the forty-twoemployees who depended on the Muses for their income. For Kurt to risk any of that on a naive patriotic whim would have been unconscionable.

  Annie knew the truth, of course, and Kimberly probably suspected something (you don’t come home from school to find the exiled vice president of Panama hiding in your living room and not suspect something), but they were fine with it. Kimberly knew not to ask, and Annieknew how to help.

  At last, Kurt found himself at the head of the Immigration line. He cast his gaze down, avoiding eye contact like a good Panamanian, and prepared himself to answer the questions he’d been asked a thousand times. The trip was personal in nature, to visit his wife’s sick grandmother.No, he had nothing to declare.

  Two men occupied the cramped Immigration booth. The first man, from the Immigration Bureau, took care of the basic paperwork, which he then handed to the second, a soldier who matched the passport against a thick dot matrix printout of undesirables.

  Kurt craned his neck in one last futile search for Tomás, and the instanthe looked back, he knew that something had gone terribly wrong. It was the way the Immigration guy was holding the passport. Rather than the cursory glance followed by the whack of the entry stamp, he held the little book in both hands, vertically, as if it were a Playboy centerfold. He seemed to be studying it. And then he smiled.

  As he handed the tiny book back to the soldier, Kurt followed the clerk’s gaze to a piece of paper someone had taped to the reinforced glass of his partition. At first, Kurt was confused.

  Then his guts dissolved. The sign was hand written in Spanish. He had to read it backward:

  Kurt Muse

  American Citizen

  Arrest Him

  His life was over.

  They came at him slowly—calmly, even. With a glance from the two men in the booth, two more soldiers sauntered over from their positions near the wall to close off any escape route. “Excuse me, Mr. Muse,” said the Immigration man, “but there seems to be a slight problem. Would you mind coming with us, please?”

  Kurt’s mind raced. This was the nightmare. This was the impossiblescenario. After all the fumbling and close calls at the beginning of their adventure, he’d talked himself into believing that he was invincible.This simply could not be happening.

  For an insane moment, he considered making a run for it, dashing back onto the airplane and asking for asylum, but he knew it was hopeless. Even if they didn’t shoot him down in the terminal, they’d just come on board and drag him off. He almost didn’t notice that he was going along with them peacefully.

  The first leg of his trip was all of fifty feet, just around the corner to a tiny office with a couple of chairs and a desk. “Please have a seat here,” a soldier said. “We’ll get this straightened out as soon as possible.”

  They closed the door and left him sitting there in a hardback chair. Alone.

  Staring down at him from his perch over the door was a portrait of General Manuel Antonio Noriega.

  The bastard had won.

  Out on the concourse, beyond the baggage carousels, Tomás Muñoz fought the urge to pace. It had been over an hour since he’d cleared Immigration, and there still was no sign of Kurt. Something was definitely wrong.

  The word “shopette” rolled around in his mind. He and Kurt had devised the evacuation code together over a year ago—a simple word to be transmitted if one of them was ever arrested. The Noriega prisonswere famous for their tortures, and under those circumstances none of the conspirators harbored any doubt that even the strongest among them would break and reveal the names of their partners. They needed a word that would never be used on the radio except in the direst of circumstances, and at the very moment that Kurt and Tomás had been discussing the issue, they happened to have been passing in front of the small base exchange on Albrook Air Force Station near the Canal Zone—the Shopette.

  If ever that word were broadcast, the instructions were clear: they were each to drop whatever they were doing, gather their families, and head to Fort Clayton, home of the U.S. Army Southern Command, where they would seek asylum and protection with the U.S. government.

  Even as he considered that maybe this was the time, Tomás found himself putting the brakes on his imagination. There were a hundred reasons why Kurt could have been delayed an hour. So how come he couldn’t think of any of them right now?

  Shopette.

  It was not a signal to be broadcast lightly. When the panic button was pressed, there was no turning back; it meant a one-way trip out of the country, never to return. The U.S. intelligence community in Panama was so riddled with moles that the instant any of them showed up at the gate, Noriega would know each of their names. They might as well come wearing “We Are Fugitives” sweatshirts.

  There was time, Tomás told himself. It was too early to panic.

  Perhaps it could all be settled with a phone call. He knew that Kurt’s daughter, Kimberly, was waiting at the house by herself. He’d never met the girl, but Kurt talked about her all the time. She had a good head on her shoulders. All he had to do was call over there and see if Kurt had arrived home. If the answer was yes, then Tomás could relax and have a little laugh. If the answer was no ...
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  Perhaps the question should come from a voice she would recognize.

  2

  The ceiling fan churned the air, stirring the humidity withoutcooling a thing. As music from the Arosemena’s party down the street filled the night, Kimberly Muse desperately wanted to go to bed, but biology beckoned. The midterm was coming, and if something didn’t click soon, she’d be in big trouble. Her notes lay strewn across her desk, the corners curled by the tropical moisture.

  She scooted forward in her chair, hoping to find a cool spot on the seat, but they’d all been turned hot a long time ago. Here it was going on midnight, and she was still sweating, wearing nothing more than cutoffs and a T-shirt. It was the pink Esprit T-shirt that always ticked off her dad. He was so out of touch. What was wrong with showing off a little midriff, for crying out loud?

  Daddy had become a real grouch recently. Everybody noticed it, even her cousin, Joanna. Aunt Carol and Uncle David were pissed at him, and so were Nana and Papi, and between that and the politics that made him such a madman, she wondered when he might just explode.

  He should have been home hours ago. Navigating customs was always an adventure at Torrijos Airport, and she should know better than to worry just because he was running late. But honestly, it shouldn’t ever take this long. Kimberly tried to tell herself that there were a thousand things that might have gone wrong to delay him and that he was probably just stuck on the plane on some tarmac where he couldn’t get to a phone.

  The fact was—and she’d never admit this out loud—Kimberly wasn’t keen on being home alone at this hour. Okay, so she wasn’t exactlyalone—Lala, their maid, was there, too—but let’s face it, if Jason Voorhees or Freddie Kruger decided to pay a visit, Lala would be of precious little help. Of course, there was always Gretel, but the very thought of siccing the pet boxer on an intruder made her laugh. She’d be better off throwing a teddy bear at the guy.

  There was something creepy in the air tonight. She’d been jumpy all day.

  Of course, it could just be that she hated biology. A party raged within earshot, and Erik was having fun at the Prietos’ house, and Mom and Dad were jetting off to the States, yet she was stuck here in the house studying frog guts. Where was the justice?

  Finally, she heard a car in the driveway, and she stepped outside for a peek. Even as the oldest child, she still didn’t rate an air conditioner, but at least she had the terrace. With the doors open, it was the rare night that didn’t offer a pleasant breeze. What a shame that this was one of them. Walking carefully on bare feet, she slid the door open and stepped out into the night. At least the heat hadn’t done anything to spoil the view.

  The car she’d heard was nobody, just a nondescript Toyota using their driveway as a turnaround. As the last house on a dead-end street, they got a lot of that. People got lost in Panama City all the time; it was a way of life. There were no addresses, at least not in the sense that they had them in the States. All the mail came to the post office, and if you wanted a pizza delivered, you gave directions via landmarks—gopast the old rendering plant, turn right at the pink house ...

  In fact, when Dominos Pizza first started giving away pizzas for free if they weren’t delivered within thirty minutes, Erik had used the confusionto cash in big time. He’d order a pizza when he got home from school, knowing full well that the driver would get hopelessly lost on the way. He thought he could eat for free. Kimberly thought the plan was brilliant, but when their dad caught wind of it he went ballistic, claiming that they were stealing from the pizza guy. Kimberly liked to think of it more as exploiting a loophole than stealing, but the gambit stopped immediately.

  She stayed on the terrace long enough to watch the Toyota find the party, and then headed back inside, even more pissed off than before. It was official: Everybody in the world was having a better time than she.

  She decided to study on the bed for a while. As she gathered her book and notes for the transfer, she couldn’t help but smile at the picturesthat adorned her walls: the world’s most complete collection of anti-Noriega political cartoons, plus a few drawings of her own. It was her nod toward civil disobedience, and her dad loved it. Call it their bonding moment.

  So long as Noriega’s sapos never saw them.

  Or Papi. Papi didn’t believe in meddling in local politics. He seemed not to believe in a lot of things that were important in Kimberly’s house.

  Things were not good between Dad and Papi, and from what she could tell by eavesdropping, political leanings weren’t the only issue. Things at the business weren’t going well, and even though Daddy outrankedhim, Uncle David was somehow being treated better. It all had something to do with Mom’s job with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). Kimberly didn’t pretend to understand the details, and she knew better than to mention anything, but she and her family really did enjoy advantages that were denied the rest of her extended family. The DoD connection gave her and her family access to the shopping facilities on the military bases, where there was always ample food at an affordable price. For Carol and David and Nana and Papi, life was just more complicated. These were tough times in Panama, what with the closing of the banks and all. Kimberly even got to go to the Americanschool for free, while her cousins, Joanna and Samantha, had to pay tuition to go to an Episcopal school. And now that Samantha had gone on to college in the States, they were facing an even bigger burden.

  Even without the details, Kimberly was sure that this, like everythingelse with her dad, was ultimately about principle. His whole life revolved around principle, always first in line to fall on his sword. Kimberly couldn’t swear to it, but she suspected that Dad had either quit or been fired over this stuff. You’d have to be blind not to see that Dad wasn’t going into the office anymore.

  Sometimes, she wondered if things wouldn’t be easier if they actuallylived in the United States—not that she’d ever done that—but the tensions here both inside the house and out in the street made life tougher than it needed to be.

  The telephone startled her. She hurried to pick up the receiver beforeLala could get it. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Kimberly? This is Jorge Quintero. I’m a friend of your father’s.”

  Kimberly recognized the name and the voice. He and her dad knew each other from Rotary. “He’s not here right now,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said. It was a single syllable, but it carried a dreadful tone.

  “Is everything okay?” Kimberly asked.

  “Oh, I’m sure it is,” Jorge said quickly. Again, his dark tone belied his words. “There’s nothing to worry about. I’m sure everything will be fine.”

  She’d never thought otherwise. “Mr. Quintero, is there something wrong with my father?”

  “No,” he said. “Heavens no, not at all. Well, I’m sorry I disturbed you. Good night.”

  The line went dead. Just like that. No pleasantries, no “how are you doing” or “how’s school?” None of the social niceties of Panamanian discourse. It was almost as if he’d been verifying something he already knew.

  Kimberly shivered. The night seemed to have turned colder.

  Fear had begun to alter Kurt’s sense of time.

  The PDF guards had quietly loaded him into the backseat of a white pickup truck, and with two other vehicles stationed ahead and behind, they’d taken him to a police substation out in the suburbs near his home. But for the cluster of police vehicles in front of the substation, passersby would have assumed that the squat building was just anotherhouse on the block.

  Kurt knew the truth of the place, of course, just as he knew the names of many of the officers and their patrolling schedules. Once he’d broken their codes, the rest had been easy. Over the last eighteen months, he’d dispatched quite a few of them on wild goose chases just for the thrill of messing with their minds. He wondered what they would do to him when they found out—as they eventually would—that he was the personification of the giant burr under their saddles.

  It had all s
eemed very funny at the time. The one about the fictitioussniper high on the hill had been a particularly masterful stroke, Kurt thought. Despite the gnawing fear and blossoming panic of the present, he still drew satisfaction from the memory of the PDF cowardsdashing for cover as he spoke directly to them and threatened to shoot if they didn’t disperse from the street corner where they’d been busily bashing heads.

  That had been just a few weeks ago. Their memory of the incident would no doubt be fresh and clear.

  Now, as he walked across the parking lot surrounded by goons, he told himself to stay calm, even as he prayed that Tomás would somehow figure out what was happening and get word back to Kurt’s family.

  How soon would it be before they, too, were dragged off to some squalid room for interrogation, enduring questions for which they had no answers? Nana and Papi were particularly vulnerable, he knew. Kurt’s heart raced as his mind conjured horrid images of what the PDF were capable of, and he tried to settle himself. There were many things that could happen now, and at least a few of the options had to fall short of disaster. They had to.

  Kimberly and Erik.

  The thought was too much to bear. Erik was only twelve! They wouldn’t torture a twelve-year-old, would they?

  Kurt tried to force the thoughts away. He tried to form prayers in his head for their safety, but even those words wouldn’t come. Instead, his mind filled with images of the tortures and depravities of which these animals were capable. Every newspaper in the world had carried the photos of the castrated and beheaded corpse of Noriega rival Hugo Spadafora. Everyone on the streets knew someone who had endured the rapes and sodomies that were a staple of the prisons; everyone had seen the scars that were the prize of merciless beatings. Such were the public relations tools of the regime, designed to instill terror. Why let a prisoner die in a concrete cell when you could send his maimed shell back to his family, where the stories will be told over and over?