Six Minutes To Freedom

by John Gilstrap

  Enter Kurt and his family’s printing business. Overnight, Tomás and friends printed themselves purchase orders for a fictitious Costa Rican fishing company. Using a credit card and the purchase order, they mailed a request for their chips to be delivered to Annie’s APO address on Albrook Air Force Station.

  By early October, they were ready to go. At least they thought they were. Truthfully, even Tomás wondered if he hadn’t forgotten something.Surely it couldn’t be so simple to hijack a nation’s national voice. They needed to test their theory.

  Using Kimberly Muse’s boom box without her permission, Tomás walked down the street from Kurt’s house, listening to Radio Nacional’snormal broadcast of news and music, while Kurt pointed their new toy toward the repeater tower in the distant hills. At a specific time, Kurt keyed the mike on his transmitter, and for just a couple of seconds, Radio Nacional was off the air.

  “Holy shit,” Kurt exclaimed when Tomás returned to the terrace. “This actually works. We own the airwaves.”

  Tomás grinned, as if to say, “Of course.”

  With the feasibility established, they now needed a date and a text. For all they knew, this one broadcast would be their only shot, and they wanted to get it right. They wanted the biggest audience possible, and that fact alone made selecting the date an easy task.

  On October 11, Loyalty Day, Noriega would swagger into a baseballstadium packed with citizens and brag about his power and accomplishments before a crowd who had no choice but to cheer. The speech would be broadcast live throughout the country. The audience couldn’t possibly get any bigger than that.

  But what would they say? It had to be something good, something that would capture the hearts and minds of the people and cause them to cast Noriega and his henchmen out of office in the next election, some nineteen months in the future. Tomás had ceded the words to Kurt. He was the one with the fleetest tongue, the one who knew how to stitch flowery sentences together. When he was done, the message was a thing of beauty.

  Finally, they needed a voice. Kurt tried a couple of takes himself, speaking into the microphone of a small cassette recorder, but he could never get the timbre of his voice the way he wanted it. It had sounded okay to Tomás, but Kurt was a perfectionist on these things, and he was determined to make a recording that sounded professional, while at the same time disguising his voice enough so that he would not be instantly recognized by all of his friends and acquaintances.

  Kurt had tried recording under a towel and blanket, hoping to get the reverb in the signal that would make it sound professional, but all he got was a muffled mess. Ditto his attempts to record through a handkerchief. There had to be another way. There had to be a trusted friend with the kind of voice they needed.

  They turned to a friend from the Rotary Club, Enrique Fernandez. Enrique was an outspoken opponent of the Noriega regime, and he came from a long line of prominent Panama City residents. He even had a background in radio, as Kurt recalled, with the kind of hypnotic baritone voice to which people loved to listen.

  The very nature of a conspiracy such as theirs required that the deepest secrets sometimes be shared. None of them liked it, but all of them agreed that the voice on the tape had to command respect. Tomás and Kurt both shared concerns about Enrique’s trollop of a wife, but what she didn’t know could never hurt them. Besides, if Enrique agreed to put his voice on the tape, neither he nor Betty would be inclined to point any fingers.

  Enrique recorded. It was perfect.

  When Loyalty Day dawned, Kurt, Tomás, and Jorge gathered in the apartment owned by Tomás’s mother—among them all, the apartment with the clearest view of the mountaintop repeater tower—and they waited for the moment to arrive. As with any major speech, even the U.S. president’s State of the Union address, pregame coverage preceded the address, with commentators saying all the right things. Finally, the moment arrived.

  The conspirators waited, all of them panting. Tomás remembered it as the most stressful moment of his life. Timing was important here. If they went too early, the government would merely shut down the radiostation, and all the effort would have been for naught. So they waited, listening as Noriega glad-handed his way up to the podium.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” the anouncer said, finally, “I now present to you our esteemed leader and commander-in-chief of our glorious armed forces, General Manuel Antonio Noriega.” The stands erupted in cheers and applause, and Kurt reached for the button.

  “Not yet,” Tomás had urged. “Wait till the noise dies down. Wait till he starts speaking.”

  Like all politicians everywhere, Noriega took his time absorbing the adulation, smiling and waving to people in the crowd. He waved his hand for silence, but of course silence takes time when a crowd is whipped to a frenzy.

  At last, the baseball stadium grew quiet. Noriega took a breath. “Thank you fellow citizens ...”

  “Now!” Tomás said, and Kurt pushed the transmit button.

  All over the nation, millions of citizens heard a soothing baritone voice intone, “We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a message of hope from the free and democratic people of Panama. Our date with destiny approaches. One day we will finally have an opportunity to cast our vote against the tyranny of General Noriega’s dictatorship. It is up to you, and it will not be easy. You know the many tools that the oppressors have to keep us from the polling places. We beseech you to be brave, to persevere. We beseech you to vote. Together we can bury General Noriega’s dictatorship under a mountain of ballots.

  “Workers, students, professionals, soldiers, housewives, unite! Cast your vote to end the dictatorship. Be courageous. Do not fear them. Remember that we are millions and they are but a few thousand thugs. The end of their dictatorship is near! Together we can run them out!

  “The free and democractic people of Panama now return this radio station to its broadcast of oppression.”

  When the broadcast was over, it was as if no one in the spacious apartment could breathe. On the radio once again, the Pineapple continuedto drone on, unaware of the sedition he had just endured.

  The next day, the hunt would begin, and within a month, La Voz de la Libertad would be interrupting morning and evening drive-time radio. There was no turning back.

  Sitting now in his living room, with Jorge at his side, Tomás rememberedthe fear in his gut from Loyalty Day. It had returned. They had been betrayed. The others could talk of hope and doubt, but in his heart, Tomás knew that it could be no other way. If Kurt were free, he would have called; if he’d been in an auto accident on his way home from the airport, Tomás would have seen it along the roadside. Arrest was the only reasonable explanation of his continued absence.

  When the phone rang, Tomás knew that the end had come. Whateverfleeting traces of hope remained in his heart evaporated when he heard Annie’s voice on the other end. She knew little more than he did, it turned out, but she knew for a fact that Kurt had been arrested. Beyondthat, the rest was more or less academic. Annie spoke hurriedly yet clearly and was off the phone in a minute or two, promising to call back when she had a chance. In the meantime, if Tomás or the others needed anything, Annie gave him her number in West Palm.

  Tomás closed his eyes when he heard the click of the receiver, takinga moment to gather himself. When he opened them again, Jorge and Helena were staring at him expectantly. Tomás wanted to say something profound, but his voice wouldn’t work. He pulled Helena into his arms and nodded to his friend.

  Jorge looked stunned as he brought his portable radio to his lips and keyed the mike.

  In five homes, scattered throughout the city, men who’d pledged their lives to a cause jumped when their receivers broke squelch. They prayed individually for news that would make them all sigh with relief.

  Instead, it was Jorge’s leaden voice delivering the message that they hoped they’d never hear: “Shopette, shopette, shopette.”

  Across town, Pablo Martinez jerked awake with a start, his sle
ep shatteredby the sound of footsteps running down the hall of his apartment.Before he had time to put the pieces together, his bedroom door crashed open, revealing the disheveled and unnerved silhouette of his twenty-seven-year-old son, Antonio. The young man was wide-eyed and breathless.

  “The DENI arrested Kurt Muse,” Antonio blurted. “Jorge just broadcast ‘shopette’ on the radio. We have to go. Pack your things.” Just as quickly as he’d arrived, Antonio was gone, back down the hallwayto his own room.

  Next to him in his bed, Pablo’s wife, Victoria, sat bolt upright. “What is he talking about? Why was Kurt arrested? Why is Antonio so upset?”

  Pablo sighed and rested his hand on his forehead. Victoria knew nothing of what they’d been doing. In his role as a leader of the NationalLiberal Republican Movement, Pablo Martinez did many things about which his wife knew nothing, and if he’d had his way, Antonio would never have been involved, either. But his son was young and wild. Antonio considered himself to be immortal, and when he’d walked in accidentally on a conversation between Pablo and Kurt, he’d put it together quickly and demanded to be made a part of it all. By all accounts, his son was one of the most active members of La Voz de la Libertad. That made him one of the first to be hunted down and killed.

  “Answer me, Pablo,” Victoria pressed. “What does Antonio mean, ‘pack your things’? Are you going somewhere?”

  Pablo sighed again, unsure even where to begin. “I’ll explain as we dress,” he said.

  David Skinner didn’t know which way was up when he replaced the telephone on its cradle and turned to face his wife, Carol—Kurt’s sister.“This is ridiculous,” he said, throwing off the covers. “Kurt’s finallygotten himself arrested.”

  Carol gasped.

  David padded to his closet in search of a pair of pants. “Apparently, they’ve got him in custody at his house. Kimberly’s by herself and Papi’s on his way over to pick her up.”

  “What happened?” Carol asked.

  “Who knows? Maybe his junior G-man fantasies finally caught up with him.” David had had about all he could take of Kurt and his self-righteousanti-Noriega attitude. Kurt called himself the general manager of Intergraphic, but he hadn’t put in a full day’s work in God knows how long. Even when he was there, he was so wrapped up in his whispered phone calls that he might as well have stayed at home. David had lost count of the number of times he’d been counting on Kurt to take care of some critical detail for the company, only to watch him sprint out on another mysterious rendezvous.

  David had long thought that Kurt was working for the CIA. He’d always dug the clandestine crap, and David could never forget the time he happened to see Kurt talking with another American in a parking lot downtown. The body language alone had told David that it was something that his brother-in-law should not have been doing. It was either spying for the CIA or it was a drug habit, and David wouldn’t entertain the latter possibility.

  What really frosted his flakes, though, were the endless speeches about what a scourge Noriega was on the country. It was like sitting in a reenactment of the U.S. Continental Congress, for crying out loud. Give me liberty or give me death!

  Give me a break.

  No amount of ignoring would get him to shut up. And what a wonderfulpulpit Kurt had! Here he was, living in a spectacular house subsidizedby a generous U.S. government housing allowance (courtesy of Annie’s job with the Department of Defense Dependent Schools), fat with food bought from the American Commissary in Corozal, and all comfy cozy in the clothes they bought at the American PX. Their health care was paid for, and no matter what happened to the Panamanian economy, Annie’s paychecks from the U.S. Treasury would keep cominglike clockwork. Who better to make speeches about liberty and freedom than an ex-pat who hadn’t a financial worry in the world?

  Meanwhile, people like Carol and David—ex-pats themselves, but he a citizen of the United Kingdom—had to eek out a living on the localeconomy. They sent their girls to Panamanian schools and did their shopping in Panamanian stores. When the banks closed down the previousyear under pressure from the Bush administration, Carol and David had had to do their shopping from the barren shelves of the Panamanian shopkeepers.

  Why was it, David wondered, that political ideologies boiled most ferociously in the guts of people who had the least to worry about?

  “Is Kurt all right?” Carol asked, bringing David back to the present.

  “I have no idea,” David said, sitting on the edge of the bed to buckle his sandals. “But what do you bet he costs us $10,000 to get him out?”

  The soldiers just kept coming, pouring onto their street and invading their house. Kimberly watched numbly from the Arosemenas’ front stoop. The party continued to rage behind her, while in the foreground, her world collapsed.

  Her phone call had rousted the Prietos out of a sound sleep, and while they seemed nearly as rattled as Kimberly felt, they promised to deliver Erik to Nana and Papi’s house. What happened after that was anybody’s guess. She just wanted to be with somebody now. Somebody who would know what to do.

  When she saw headlights roaring up from the distance, her first thought was that it was another carload of soldiers. As it came closer, it veered to her left, and for a brief moment she thought that the driver was aiming straight toward her. She clambered to her feet, preparing to jump out of the way as the car slid to a halt just a few feet away. It only took a few seconds to recognize the faces. It was Papi and David, and both of them looked mad as hell.

  “What is all this?” Papi demanded to no one in particular. With littleof the height he passed on to his sons, and none of the girth, CharlieMuse still looked like the paratrooper he once had been. Thin and wiry, his shock of white hair was uncharacteristically disheveled and he needed a shave.

  “They arrested Daddy,” Kimberly said. She walked toward her grandfather hoping for a hug, but he was locked in on the scene unfoldingup the hill.

  “Stay here,” he said.

  Together, the two men walked up the hill to engage the first officer they ran into. Kimberly guessed from the body language that Papi was demanding entry past the cordon. On most days, he was not accustomedto being denied what he wanted, but on this night—or was it morning?—things were different. Kimberly could tell from the look on his face as he stormed back to the car that he was even angrier now than he was when he’d arrived.

  “Get in the car,” Papi ordered.

  Kimberly didn’t move. Couldn’t move. She just stood there in place, gazing back at the bedlam that once was her home. “What about Daddy?” she asked.

  “In the car Kimberly,” Papi barked.

  It was all happening too fast. Kimberly couldn’t wrap her mind around it all yet. How could she climb into a car and drive away when her father was up there in the house all by himself? How could she not go back up there and sit with him? He looked like he needed a hug as much as she did.

  “Now, Kimberly! We’ll make phone calls from the house.”

  In the end, she had no choice. But as she slid into the backseat of Papi’s BMW, she knew that something had changed forever. She knew that for her, childhood had ended.

  6

  Too distraught to either sit or stand, Kurt found himself pacing; but the pacing made his guards nervous, so he tried to stand still. It was all very disorienting. He was aware of his physical surroundings,but it was as if he were watching it all in the third person. For the time being, he found himself sitting upright in a hardback diningroom chair.

  They’d been rummaging for the past hour, and he still sensed that they didn’t know what they were looking for. He thought about askingif he could help, but decided against it. At best, such a question would make him sound arrogant; at worst, it would put him in a positionof incriminating himself. He only hoped that his family and his coconspirators had started to make their way to Clayton.

  “Bring Muse up here!” someone yelled. Kurt thought it was Quintero,but he wasn’t sure. Whoever it was, he w
as angry.

  In an instant, three soldiers appeared by his chair. One of them poked Kurt in the arm, even as he was already preparing to stand. “I’m going,”he said.

  It was in fact Quintero. Kurt found him standing in Kimberly’s room, fists on his hips, staring angrily at the posters on her wall. “How do you explain this?” the captain demanded.

  “Those are political cartoons.”

  “I know what they are. What are they doing on these walls?”

  Now, just how in the hell was Kurt supposed to answer a question like that? What were they doing? They were just hanging there. Picturesare inanimate objects, for crying out loud. It was an obnoxious reply, he knew, but it was the first one that formed in his head, and in his head was where he kept it. What the captain truly wanted to know was why did he allow his daughter to hang them on her walls, and Kurt would die before he’d implicate his own child.

  “I asked you a question,” Quintero demanded.

  “I heard you,” Kurt said. He tried to keep his tone even. “But I have no answer.”

  “You’ll have one by the time the evening is done,” Quintero growled.

  A voice from the doorway made them both turn. “What is going on here?” It was Major Moreno. Deep scowl lines traversed his face. He took in the contents of the room in a single extended gaze, then turned to face Kurt. “This is your daughter’s room?”

  Filled as it was with girlish treasures, there was no sense denying it. “It is,” Kurt said.

  Moreno’s gaze shifted to Quintero. “Then we’ll let her answer for it. Bring her here.”

  Suddenly, Quintero’s face darkened. “I let her go, sir.”

  Moreno’s eyes glowed hot. “You what?”