“Torrijos!” the interviewer gasped. But then the power was cut to the central part of the city and the nunciature plunged into darkness.
IMMEDIATELY AFTER the lights went out, thousands of Panamanians took to the streets—a spontaneous, utterly disorganized outpouring. Many found themselves on the grounds of the Díaz Herrera mansion in Golf Heights. Some of them came because they were galvanized by the political moment, the sense that the destiny of their country hung in the balance, but just as many wandered through the grounds of the mansion out of curiosity and to see the way a crazy rich man lived. The following day, and then day after day for the next several weeks, people milled about on the lawn and slept on the expansive porch behind the gilded plaster lions, while Roberto wandered through the traffic with a Bible in his hand, blessing the protesters and handing out brochures listing General Noriega’s crimes.
In characteristic Panamanian fashion, the protest quickly turned into a party. Rioters barricaded the downtown streets, hoisting pineapples onto the traffic lights and banging pots and pans in a Latin clave. After a few days the riots settled into a cheerful routine: half an hour of demonstrations at lunchtime and an hour before cocktails.
“This is the most peculiar revolution,” the Nuncio observed as he escorted Father Jorge to Golf Heights in the embassy Toyota. “More revelry than revolution. I can’t decide whether it is comedy or farce.” The traffic was backed up for blocks by ecstatic young people cruising up and down the boulevards in their BMWs and Land Rovers, leaning out their windows and waving handkerchiefs. “I certainly don’t wish that the situation in Panama ever be more serious than this,” the Nuncio continued. “But still, one wonders what will happen when these happy warriors meet real resistance on the part of the government. The dirty secret in this country is that General Noriega has never needed to apply much force to stay in power. For the most part, as long as Noriega kept the Americans appeased, the Panamanians were content—especially these Panamanians,” he said as a carload of teenagers wearing gold chains and bracelets roared past in a blast of salsa music. The young people leaned out of the car windows, laughing and talking on their cell phones. “Manuelito, you must stop honking,” the Nuncio told his elderly driver. “What you do on your own time is your business, but in the papal Toyota you must conduct yourself diplomatically. We are carrying the flag of the Church, after all.”
THE INVITATIONS, TONY. Get back to the business at hand,” Felicidad commanded. “We’ve got blue embossed, which looks very head of state, or the white on lavender, which is beautiful but I don’t know if it sends the right message. They will be pasted onto bottles of Moët et Chandon—isn’t that a darling idea? We’ve already ordered two hundred and fifty cases. What do you think?”
Tony stared at the invitations to his eldest daughter’s marriage. Three thousand bottles of forty-dollar champagne and the wedding hadn’t even taken place! Along with the champagne, each invitee would receive a Baccarat crystal glass engraved with the young couple’s initials. “Which does Sandra like?” he asked.
“She’s too excited to be trusted with this decision.”
“Fela, I also have things on my mind.”
His wife shook her head sadly. “This is the biggest moment in her life, Tony. It should be one of the biggest in yours. But you don’t ever stop to think about the important things.”
“Okay, the blue one,” he said wearily.
“Really, the blue?”
“Perhaps the lavender is better.”
“For God’s sake, Tony, make up your mind!”
The truth was, Tony hated to declare himself. He felt trapped by the need to make choices. All of his life he had managed to remain in the background, like a puppet master manipulating the creatures on the stage, but now he found himself pressed into the spotlight. He was having to make decisions in full view, which was not his style.
He should never have allowed the least amount of resistance, he thought bitterly. The moment the first protester shouted Hugo’s name, Tony should have had him shot. That would have saved many lives. It would have been the most humane and economical approach. Although there would have been an outcry abroad, Panama soon would have gone back to the life it had always known. But that was not what Tony did. Instead, he was tolerant. He had allowed the opposition to build, financed by American liberals, overseen by the burgeoning corps of international press. The American Congress had just passed a resolution demanding that he resign. The CIA had cut off his paycheck after Casey died. More worrisome was the fact that the Panamanian resistance had begun to assume the form of real leadership. An alliance of business leaders, calling themselves the Civic Crusade, was meeting every morning for breakfast at the nunciature. That was no matter, but lately these business leaders had been refusing to pay their taxes and utility bills and were openly organizing among the trade unions and the hospitals and the Rotary and Lions Clubs. Even the American ambassador’s daughter was a part of it. The streets were streaming with brazen protesters playing to the cameras of CNN. Roberto’s house had become a haven for the opposition, although perhaps he should call it an asylum because Roberto had clearly jumped off the narrow ledge of sanity he had enjoyed until now. Tony blamed himself for letting things get to this point. So far, he had limited his response to arresting some of the most prominent protesters and confining them to the Hilton. But soon he would have to clean out the vipers’ nest.
And now the head of G-2, his intelligence division, called with more terrible news. “Tony, there is talk of a general strike, and I am ashamed to tell you that the day they have chosen is the tenth of July.”
Tony’s eye fell on the lavender invitation in front of him. The tenth of July, his precious daughter’s special day.
“They’ll pay for this,” Tony told his intelligence officer. “They are trying to intimidate us, to make us fear them. But it is we who will create the fear. Summon Giroldi. Tell him it is time for the Dobermans to do their work.”
CHAPTER 11
The Nunciature
Panama City, Panama
July 26, 1987
His Eminence Hans Cardinal Falthauser
Secretariat of State
Vatican City
My Dear Cardinal Falthauser:
Matters in this quaint republic have taken another turn for the worse. Early Tuesday afternoon a gang of children—most of them in their teens, but some as young as ten—attacked the Mansion Dante, the largest department store in the country. It is owned by a leading figure in the opposition, ROBERTO EISENMANN, who is also the publisher of La Prensa. The gang calls itself the Dignity Battalion. They were carrying AK-47s and gasoline bombs. As the store employees watched, the Digbats opened fire on them. Some of the children were knocked to the ground by the powerful recoil of their weapons. As it happened, the store windows had recently been replaced with bulletproof Lexan, so the bullets ricocheted wildly into the street. One of the older boys commandeered a city garbage truck, and he drove it directly into a display window full of the latest fashions. Then the Digbats rushed into the store, grabbing clothes and jewelry and setting fires. We could easily see the flames from the nunciature. A fire engine arrived and sat in the street for several hours, doing nothing.
In the middle of this chaotic scene, PRESIDENT DELVALLE appeared to personally rescue his niece, who sold dresses in the store. He waded through the looters and the mob of armed children. All this happened while the firemen sat on their truck watching the store burn to the ground.
The wedding of General Noriega’s eldest daughter, SANDRA, took place several days in advance of her announced date, quietly, in a small, highly secure chapel in Fort Amador, with fewer than a hundred guests. We were not invited to this much-reduced event. I have heard reports that the General was in such a dark frame of mind that even his friends trembled for their future. Some of them came home from the reception and promptly booked airline tickets to Miami.
Two days later, an Israeli-trained brigade called the D
obermans rolled through the streets firing tear gas and birdshot into the crowds and rounding up anyone they could find who was wearing white. Apparently the color itself has been outlawed. Even grandmothers who were waving handkerchiefs on the balconies of their apartments were shot at from helicopters. Fifteen hundred people have been arrested and jailed. Amazingly, no one was killed.
As you can imagine, the nunciature is overrun with new refugees fleeing this latest crackdown. We accommodate as best we can, but our guests have seriously taxed our budget. We are now having to feed an additional fifteen persons as well as our staff. We fervently pray that you can put in a word with the exchequer to increase our allotment on an emergency basis. We have been working with our colleagues at the Costa Rican and Brazilian embassies to handle our excessive number of guests, but for whatever reason the nunciature remains the sanctuary of first resort. I do worry that we have increased our reputation as a hostel for the opposition.
A foreboding atmosphere of dread and uncertainty hangs over the country. Some days the government declares a state of emergency, other days it rescinds the emergency and tries to carry on as usual. The constant vacillation keeps everyone on edge, waiting for the General to make his next move. One expects that it will come soon.
Until then I remain
Very sincerely yours,
H.-A. Morette
THE WEIRDNESS of the scene was beginning to take a toll on Father Jorge. For the past week he had been sleeping at Roberto’s house, along with a handful of other priests and nuns who were offering themselves as a human shield for the dwindling number of sympathizers, reporters, and hangers-on who made up the shrinking resistance movement. There were still perhaps two hundred people in and out of the mansion, however, and some nights they made enough noise that General Noriega was said to be disturbed in his own house, a couple of blocks away.
Nearly everyone here laid claim to some particular spiritual genius. There was an abundance of psychics and astrologers and, for some reason, chiropractors, who were making free spinal adjustments as their contribution to the revolution. Posters of a giggling Sai Baba were taped to the walls. Somewhat to his embarrassment, Father Jorge had been persuaded to give up his shoes and wander about barefoot like everyone else. Roberto had convinced them that only in this way could they keep in tune with the harmony of the earth. Although he recognized the absurdity of the scene, he had to admit that these people were standing up for their beliefs—unlike most of the conventional religious leaders in the country. Perhaps the revolution required a bit of lunacy to keep itself going. But who was he in this affair? He felt dismayingly sane and ineffectual.
One night, about two in the morning, everyone was suddenly summoned to look at the moon. To Father Jorge’s eyes, it was a perfectly normal gibbous moon, and yet nearly twenty people claimed to be able to see the number seven inscribed on it. “Look to the right side, Father, among the shadows. It’s very clear. Perhaps you need glasses.” Roberto then brought out the Bible and began to quote from the Book of Revelation, in which Saint John spoke of the seven stars and seven golden candlesticks, and the Lamb with seven horns and seven eyes, and the book with the seven seals, and so on. By the time the group had finished its discussion of numerology and apocalypse, the sun had come up.
Father Jorge had undertaken to have the weapons removed from the house so that the government would not have the excuse to use military force. He filled a station wagon with pistols and automatic weapons and even a bazooka that a PDF defector had smuggled into the house, and he made sure that the press was there to record it when the weapons were taken away to a neutral spot. He wanted the world to know that the occupants were defenseless and did not intend to resist with force.
Therefore he was dismayed to discover Roberto wandering around the kitchen at five in the morning, wearing his robes and carrying an AK-47.
“I thought we had an understanding,” said Father Jorge.
“Yes, we do, of course,” Roberto replied, completely unabashed. “But last night I arrested my personal bodyguards and confiscated their arms.”
“Why would you do that?”
“They were PDF. They could not be totally trusted. I let them go. We are now completely without protection. Only a few weapons remain, enough perhaps to defend the inner perimeter, if it should come to that.”
The kitchen stank of leftover pizza. Father Jorge rummaged through the dirty dishes looking for the coffeepot. “Shall I make you a cup?” he asked Roberto.
“I’m only allowed juice.” Roberto was now so thin he looked completely starved.
“You make me grateful that my vows are limited to poverty and chastity,” said Father Jorge. “If I had to give up coffee as well, I’d never have made a priest.”
Roberto pushed an empty pizza box onto the floor and sat down. “Last night we had a secret council. We assembled some very interesting intelligence on General Noriega.”
“Ah.”
“As you know, he has always kept the details of his background classified.”
“But we do know about his illegitimacy and the godmother who raised him and such things.”
“Of course. But the really useful information he has kept to himself. He would hate for it to fall into the hands of people who know what to do with it.”
“What sort of information are you speaking of?”
Roberto leaned forward and said in a quiet and meaningful tone, “His birth date, for instance.”
“His birth date?”
“A state secret.”
“I didn’t realize.”
“Fortunately, because I have my own contacts in intelligence, we have been able to learn some interesting things. The General is an Aquarius.”
“Really?”
“It makes sense, doesn’t it? Smart, nervous, a quick but unstable mind, a modernist who thrives on change.”
“So you know the date of his birth?”
“Not only the day. This is important, but it is not everything. We have managed to work it out so that we are within several hours of the exact moment of his birth. We deduced that Scorpio must be his ascendant star—he being an extremist in all things. Scorpio is also associated with strong psychic powers, which is why he is so interested in espionage. He was born to be either a great mystic or a great criminal.”
Father Jorge watched the coffeemaker as it sputtered and spewed.
“I’m sure this is a breakthrough,” Roberto said after a moment. “If Tony knew we had this information . . .” Then he laughed gleefully. “Oh, man, if he knew!”
TONY SOAKED IN the hot, sulfurous vat, mud dripping from his hair. The hut in the jungle was dark, but light broke through the cracks in the palm-thatch walls, and he could see little Indian children peeking through, trying to catch a glimpse of their naked leader.
The old bare-breasted Indian crone who was bathing him roughly slapped yellow branches of a guayacan tree across his shoulders. Tony grunted. “Enough,” he said in the language of his mother’s people.
“Wait,” the woman commanded. “Takes time. The water makes you powerful.” Her torso was painted in geometric designs and her breasts drooped down to her navel.
“And for sex, it’s good, eh?”
The crone laughed, a weird pagan whinny. Tony imitated her, which caused her to laugh louder, and then the children outside began laughing as well, like donkeys braying.
“Tony, the presentation was supposed to be at two,” said Dr. Demos, who sat in the corner of the hut, mopping perspiration from his face. His shirt was completely soaked through. A small fire flickered in the hearth, where the woman heated more water for Tony’s therapeutic bath. “It’s almost four. We’ve been here for three hours.”
“She said it takes time,” Tony said. In fact, he could feel the healing power of the minerals seeping into his throbbing bones. Outside, his bodyguards chased away the children with hisses and a few boots in the kidneys.
“This is my village, you know,” said Tony
.
The doctor nodded sleepily and fanned himself.
For some reason Tony had felt the need to return to his birthplace, and so he had accepted the invitation to speak at the dedication of a new postal station. As he had helicoptered over the rain forest, it had seemed that the entire jungle was aflame. Lent began the traditional time of burning and clearing, and plumes of smoke reached all the way to the clouds. Through the haze he could see the narrow, rotting Pan-American Highway turning to gravel and then to mud and finally expiring in the swamps and the overwhelming complexity of the jungle. From the top of Canada to the tip of South America, the only gap in the highway was here, in Darién Province. Modernity, what was left of it, stopped at his little home village of Yaviza, where the Chico and Chucunaque Rivers flowed into the broad and turbulent Río Tuira. Beyond Yaviza there were no roads and few houses other than the palm huts of the naked Chocos, who still hunted with arrows and spears. It was a paradise for monkeys, mosquitoes, and anthropologists.
“Whenever I feel lost, when I need to make a spiritual connection, I return here to my roots,” said Tony. “I don’t know, for some reason it relaxes me.”
“You should take the Valium I offered you,” said the doctor. “You’re tense, your blood pressure is high. These folk remedies can only do so much, Tony.”
Out of the murk, an old man stepped forward with his hat in his hand. His face was a wrinkled work of nature, like a jagged piece of driftwood on a beach, where the elements have had leisure to work their influence. “General, we are very honored,” the old man began.
“What do you want, Uncle?”
“The children of the village have no schoolbooks. Many times we have asked the government for assistance—”
“Take a note, Doctor,” Tony said to Demos. “ ‘Schoolbooks for Yaviza.’ There, it’s done. All Panamanian children should be educated. This is Tony Noriega’s dream. So, what else do you want, Uncle?”