Six Minutes To Freedom

by John Gilstrap

  But under the circumstances, no amount of warmth could begin to trump the anger that boiled in his belly. When he thought about all that he’d left behind in Panama—Nana and Papi and the business—and when he thought that it had all been wrenched from his hands becauseJunior G-Man Kurt Muse couldn’t keep his head in the game, it was all he could do to keep from exploding.

  The CIA had found them reasonable hotel accommodations here in Miami—they were staying in a Holiday Inn with all the trimmings—but the Agency reps refused to answer any questions that had anything to do with the future. How long would they be allowed to stay as guests of the U.S. government? How was he supposed to find work once they parted ways?

  There was some talk among the others that the government dole would continue for some time—perhaps without end, or at least until the situation in Panama was stabilized; but that talk was all overheard gossip.The truth was, the Skinners were not accepted as equals among the other refugees. The Panamanians were already being called patriots and heroes by their government handlers. He was merely a relative, and the clear disdain he felt for Kurt’s shenanigans did nothing to ingratiate him.

  For them, from where David sat, this was turning into a kind of impromptuparty with an unlimited expense account. There was talk among them of unseating Manuel Noriega in the coming elections and of a bright future for Panama. David thought that was all lovely, but for the life of him he could not understand their sense of optimism. Did none of them have business to return to? Did none of them have family who might have been jeopardized by what they’d been doing?

  As his thoughts turned in these dark directions, he knew that he had to wrestle them back. He had no right, he realized, to criticize their politicalactivism. They were, after all, Panamanians, born into their nationalityas surely as David was born into his allegiance to the United Kingdom. Passions ran high when national priorities and sympathies were in play. He understood that. He respected that.

  What he could neither understand nor respect was the fomenting of such passions by outsiders, by guests of a host country. It was somethingfor which he would never forgive Kurt. Who did he think he was, subjecting his extended family to this sort of strife? The Agency still was not allowing them to make phone calls and was still stressing the necessity of keeping a low profile to stay invisible in this place that was allegedly replete with Noriega informers.

  Of course, despite all the pep talks and scare tactics, who was the one who chose to up and disappear from the hotel, causing a huge hullabaloo?None other than Kimberly Muse—she of the shoes and the makeup. While the rest of them were huddling in their rooms, lurking naked under the covers one at a time while their clothes were washed in the sink, there she was wandering the beach, off the hotel grounds, just like she belonged there. It was infuriating.

  These last days since arriving in the United States had been a whirlwindof activity. Irrespective of the manner in which a person enters the country, an immigrant is still an immigrant, and the keepers of immigrationrecords cannot be ignored. Over the past seventy-two hours, they’d pencil whipped paperwork that took other people months to complete, and, thanks to whatever strings could be pulled by Father Frank, approvals that normally would have taken weeks or months came in just a couple of days.

  And what about Father Frank? Who was this old man with all the answers? What was he really about? And if he was such a superspy, how was it that he traveled on his own name and that he’d been foolish (or addled) enough to leave his boarding pass stuffed in a seat pocket where it could be (and was) picked up by one of the refugees? They all knew his real name now, but they’d decided among themselvesto keep that a secret, perhaps as a hole card, or perhaps because it moved them one step closer to having some measure of control over their own lives.

  Truth be told, there was something off-putting about the old man. David and Carol had talked about it at some length. It was the way he looked at you, the way he dismissed questions without so much as a moment’s consideration. Whatever it was, it was yet another wedge betweenthe Skinners and the rest of their party.

  David weighed these thoughts as he rode the elevator down to the pool level to meet with Father Frank. He’d been summoned, and the tone in the old man’s voice had led David to believe that it was somethingserious.

  David saw Father Frank from across the lobby, standing exactly where he’d promised that he would be, near the pool, but far enough away to be immune to errant splashes. David hadn’t closed half the distance when they made eye contact. The old man waved, but made no effort to close some of the gap himself.

  When they were close enough, David allowed himself a smile. “Good morning,” he said.

  “Good morning to you,” Father Frank replied, but there was no smile. No frown either; just a businesslike tabula rasa. Reaching into an inside coat pocket, he produced a thick white envelope and handed it to David. “This is for you.”

  David hesitated, his stomach tumbling. “What is it?”

  Father Frank answered by bouncing the envelope once in the air. “Please, take it.”

  He did take it, and as soon as he felt the heft and the thickness, he knew that it was cash. He peeked inside and saw a stack of hundreds. He scowled.

  “That’s five thousand dollars,” Father Frank said. “With Uncle Sam’s regards. Good luck to you. From this moment on, you’re responsiblefor your own expenses.”

  It was like being slapped. “Excuse me?”

  Father Frank had already started walking away.

  “Hey!” David said, louder than he’d thought, and much louder than Father Frank had anticipated.

  The old man turned. If it was possible, his expression had turned even more bland. He looked utterly bored.

  “This is it?” David asked. “This is relocation? What am I supposed to do with five thousand dollars?”

  Father Frank let the question hang as he pondered not answering it at all. “This is a free country, Mr. Skinner. You’ve got your green card, you are free to go wherever you wish whenever you wish.”

  “Except home. Except to Panama.”

  “No, including Panama, but for the foreseeable future, we recommendagainst it.”

  “So, you’re just letting us all go? Just like that? You bring twenty-oddpeople away from their homes, into a foreign country, and then hand them a few dollars and you wash your hands?” This was unbelievable.The nightmare only got worse.

  Finally, something changed in the old man’s expression. It was a fleeting thing, there for a second and then gone, but David saw it plainly. Father Frank started walking away again.

  “Wait a second,” David said, putting it together. “It’s just us, isn’t it? It’s just my family that’s being sent away.”

  Father Frank stopped again, turned to face David. “You’re not beingsent away.”

  “No, we’re just being cut off.”

  “If you wish.”

  “I don’t wish. I don’t want to be here at all. And I don’t understand why we are being singled out among all these people to be dismissed after we’ve abandoned everything we have ever known.”

  Father Frank inhaled deeply and scowled. Clearly, he was about to share something against his better instincts. “Mr. Skinner, it makes perfect sense, if you think about it. Please try not to take it personally. The taxpayers of America have saved your life, and that of your family.We’ve made entry into this country and assimilation into our societya thousand times easier for you than it is for any other visitor, but the fact remains that you are a citizen of neither the United States nor Panama. We have no authority to hold you and no jurisdiction to protectyou. You have performed admirably. So have your wife and your daughter. But now it’s time for you move on and go about the business of stabilizing your lives, to the degree that that is possible under the circumstances.”

  David’s scowl deepened as he tried to force the words into place in his head. “We have ‘performed’? What does that mean? I didn’t know that I had a
role to play. You guys were the ones who made it sound so damned important that we come here. That wasn’t my idea. Now you’re telling me—”

  Suddenly it dawned on him. “Wait a second. You needed us. For the children. For Kimberly and Erik.”

  The blankness returned. Father Frank gave a little shrug. “It all went much more smoothly than it might have. Dealing with kids, it’s always best to have family around. When the grandparents refused to leave, you were the natural choice. Again, we are all very grateful for your assistance. Try to keep a low profile.” He turned one more time and started walking.

  This was unbelievable. The very concept of being so deliberately manipulated was larger than David could comprehend. How dare they? How dare they put so much at risk? “Wait a minute!” he called. He had more questions, a thousand of them, but at this moment in time, he couldn’t make them form into a coherent mass in his head.

  It didn’t matter anyway. This time, once Father Frank started walking,he didn’t turn back.

  26

  The unknown is a beast of unspeakable power. When you’re deprived of your freedom—when your future is placed entirely in the hands of people who exist for the purpose of tormenting you—the unknown takes on a life as surely and as treacherously as the most venomous snake. As they led Kurt from Correa’s office into the bowelsof this horrific place, he could hear the beast’s growl and feel its hot breath on the back of his neck.

  The ghastly faces of those men he’d seen at the DENI jail and here at Modelo peering out of the windows would not leave Kurt’s imaginationas guards led him up a flight of concrete steps toward God only knew what.

  The guts of Modelo Prison vibrated with a misery that was palpable,reverberated with a level of noise that he’d never experienced. There were no discernable voices, nor audible screams, yet the rumble was distinctly human. If Kurt had been inclined to supernatural thoughts, he might have succumbed to visions of lifeless spirits who continued to linger long after their earthly bodies had given in and given up to the tortures of so many decades without hope.

  Kurt had actually seen pictures. He couldn’t remember the context, but he distinctly remembered pictures from the inside of Modelo Prison where squalid cells were packed with dozens of men wearing the tatteredremains of the clothes that had no doubt fit them on the day they were arrested, but which now hung on their emaciated bodies like burialshrouds. He remembered the images of the hammocks these desperatemen used as beds, and somehow, somewhere, he remembered hearing how easy it was to kill a man in his sleep under those circumstances.He remembered thinking as he read the article what an impossibilityit would be to close one’s eyes in such conditions.

  And here he was. His future had arrived, and it brought with it the combined stench of excrement, sweat, and his own fear.

  He tried not to show the terror, tried not to give these assholes the satisfaction, but he knew that it had to be obvious. It had to be.

  The concrete steps through the middle of the prison took hard turns at every landing. The heat of the place was stifling, getting progressivelyworse with each step toward its center.

  On the third floor, they turned, and the guard led him down a hallwayof heavy closed doors that he would later come to learn were the officers’ quarters and interrogation rooms, stopping finally in front of a twelve-by-twelve-foot cell whose front wall was constructed of iron bars. The guard produced a large key, removed the heavy-duty padlock from its hasp, and ushered Kurt into his new home. Five seconds later, the door closed, the lock slipped home again, and he was alone.

  A filthy thin foam pad on the floor would serve as his bed. There were no other furnishings in the room. In an odd twist, though, his suitcase lay on the floor waiting for him, as if placed by some bellman in a twisted theme hotel.

  At the rear of the cell and off to the left, he found a toilet and shower area. He had his own little concrete apartment.

  His suitcase had been ransacked, but the basics remained. He still had toiletries, socks and underwear, and the kinds of clothes that one would wear to visit a dying relative and to make plans with governmentoperatives. What he didn’t have were clothes that were appropriatefor imprisonment in a tropical hellhole.

  The windows in his cell—there were three of them in all, along the back wall of his cell and his lavatory, looked out onto the prison yard, where inmates walked, played basketball, or talked among themselves. On the inside of the far wall—the wall that faced Kurt’s cell from fifty yards away—someone had painted a lengthy quote from Manuel Noriegatouting the importance of a fair judicial system to the well-being of a civilized society. Next to that mural-sized quotation, someone had painted the words “Jesus Saves.”

  It was hard to tell by looking what the population of the prison was, but it had to be in the hundreds. The yard, with its basketball courts and wandering spaces, was perpetually crowded in the way that New York subways were crowded in rush hour, people jammed shoulderto shoulder in some corners as they tried to absorb the best of what could barely be described as fresh air in a place like this.

  Looking out the front of his cell, toward the concrete hallway, he could see nothing but a blank wall. As he moved closer to the bars, however, and when he pressed his head against them, he could see wooden doors on the other side of the hall. They were closed now, but he could hear muffled voices.

  And that was it; that was his life until something happened or someone did something to change it. Truly, for good or for ill, his entirelife lay in the hands of others. He’d done all he could to screw things up of his own volition, thank you very much.

  He wandered to the part of the cell that seemed farthest from the bars, pressed his back to the wall, and slid till he sat on the floor, hugginghis knees in front of him. It was time to take inventory on the number of lives he had succeeded in screwing up and the depths to which they had been screwed.

  A desperate sadness washed over him in that moment, a sense of helplessness that would not be denied. Kurt felt the tears coming, but he willed them away for another time. For the nighttime. Under the circumstances, tears were probably good, and they probably could not be denied, but he would save them for the privacy brought by darkness.

  Dignity above all else, he thought. They had his body, and one day they might conquer his mind, but denying the bastards his dignity was the last battle over which he had complete control, and he wasn’t about to surrender without one hell of a fight.

  Time in prison does not pass. It creeps. One moment evolves into anotherwithout form or meaning.

  After the first couple of days, Kurt came to envy those hopeless men crowded into the prison yard. They knew how long they would have to endure their confinement, and they had other human beings with whom to share the pressures of their incarceration. For Kurt, there was only the vividness of the present, the hopelessness of the future, and the uselessness of the past. He’d cast his whole life aside in pursuit of a ridiculous plan that had never really had a chance to succeed. Now, it was time to atone for his foolishness, and the penalty was unending solitude and the terrible depression that solitude brought. He had no lawyer, and they had yet to officially level charges against him. He had no way of knowing in those early days, but it would be months before charges were filed, and when they were, they would be as meaningless as the pretense of justice under the thumb of Noriega’s dictatorship.

  Interrogations continued after Kurt arrived in Modelo Prison, but the character of them changed. No longer pressed to find out who the hell he was, the PDF and the DENI were more interested in filling in the details. Where were all the transmitters located? Where were they purchased? And, of course, who were his compatriots? On that latter point, he continued to maintain that he had acted alone.

  The interrogations happened mostly at night now, sometime betweenmidnight and four in the morning, and despite the imposing threat of violence, no violence was inflicted on him. Instead, they told him over and over again that his family would suffer as a res
ult of what he had done and that the suffering was made all the worse by his refusal to cooperate. They told him that he would be forgotten here by the government they thought he had once served, and once forgotten, they would be able to do anything to him that they wanted. Major Moreno—the same man who had run the search of Kurt’s house on the night of his arrest—conducted all the interrogations. Professional in his demeanor, but with violence lurking behind every expression and word, Moreno would shout and blather, but there seemed to be a line he would never cross, and that was the line that separated Kurt from physical harm.

  It was hard not to be swayed by their words and threats. Aloneness is a powerful motivator, and no place is as lonely as a jail cell.

  The good news—if there was such a thing under the circumstances—was the fact that Kurt’s primary guard, a Lieutenant Dominguez, wasn’t a bad guy at all. A career civil servant in the PDF, Dominguez spouted none of the political bullshit of the Noriega dynasty and kept his harassment of Kurt to a minimum. He seemed to have sympathy, in fact, for the misery of Kurt’s plight, and while he was no pushover, he was no zealot, either. He greeted his charge every morning with a friendly hello and a smile that seemed genuine. He had a scowl in his kit bag as well, of course, but he seemed somehow uncomfortable usingit.

  On the fifth day of Kurt’s incarceration, Dominguez came to his door in the middle of the day and announced that he had a visitor. They led him out of his cell and down the hall to a small dispensary, a cell that was twice the size of his own, but outfitted with a sheet-drapedtable and various jars of medical supplies. He was there for maybe a minute when two men entered, one in an Air Force uniform and the other in civilian attire. Kurt instantly recognized the man in the uniform as Dr. Ruffer, the lieutenant colonel who had conducted the brief exam during the day of his perp walk.