God's Favorite

  Father Jorge said, “I’ve been considering retirement as well.”

  The Nuncio was rarely caught so completely off guard. “You? But you are a fine priest with a golden future! I can’t imagine what would make you think otherwise. I’ve seen how your congregation has grown, how they value your spiritual leadership. I realize that you are politically at odds with the Holy See, but the Church is not so rich in talent that it can afford to ignore a priest with a following.”

  “It’s not the politics that concerns me,” said Father Jorge hesitantly. “In the past few months, I’ve made some unhappy discoveries about myself. I’m a weak man, weak in spirit and in flesh. Until recently, I thought I had a certain moral authority. I believed I knew how the world worked and what was right and what was wrong. Now I realize that the world is more mysterious than I thought. I don’t know anymore what is right or wrong. I used to think I was a force for good, but now I’m worried that I’m actually doing harm. I’m not a moral authority, I’m just a poor naive priest with a good education and a very limited experience in the world.”

  “We’re all limited by our experience,” said the Nuncio. “Perhaps you have made some mistakes—I know you hold yourself responsible for poor Giroldi—but you acted in good conscience. He would have done what he did with or without your guidance. The consequences would have been the same.”

  “My mistakes are more than just errors of judgment, I’m afraid,” he said. “I’ve violated my vows.”

  The Nuncio looked at his secretary with great concern. He knew that there was more that the younger man wanted to say, but he was desperate to keep him from saying it. “Whatever is on your mind, I urge you to wait until this chaos subsides. We’re all depleted by the press of events. Things that are said in the confusion of the moment cannot always be taken back.”

  Just then Sister Sarita come running into the garden. “It’s him,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “On the phone. The Little General. Pineapple Face.”

  The Nuncio and Father Jorge exchanged a meaningful look. “It’s just as I predicted,” said the Nuncio. When he picked up the phone, he heard the familiar grating tenor of the fugitive dictator.

  “Merry Christmas,” said Tony.

  “How kind of you to call,” said the Nuncio. “Merry Christmas to you as well.”

  “I understand you’ve taken in many of our friends. We wanted to thank you for that.”

  “Indeed, we’re deluged, as you know,” the Nuncio replied. “Crammed with refugees. We’re sleeping in shifts and nearly starving. Everything is rationed, down to the razor blades and toilet paper.”

  “Still, you do the right thing,” said Tony.

  “The bare minimum. Only what international law requires, no more.”

  “And yet everyone in Panama appreciates your hospitality.”

  “Not everyone, I hope, although we’ve served far more than our share.”

  “If another refugee sought sanctuary, would he be safe?”

  “Some refugees are more conspicuous than others,” the Nuncio said, silently praying that the Americans were monitoring his phone. “Moreover, there is the matter of protocol. In certain cases I would have to submit a request to the Vatican.”

  “How long would that take?”

  “Perhaps three days, if it is expedited.”

  “I don’t think you have such high requirements for your other guests. However, I understand the need for consultation. So I propose to allow you ten minutes to make the call. We can do the paperwork afterward.”

  “Ten minutes! One cannot even get a Roman operator in that time!”

  “I find myself at a crossroads, Monseñor. There are two directions open to me. One is to seek the sanctuary of a friendly legation. The other is to go into the jungles with my ragged army and wage years of guerrilla warfare against the imperialist puppet regime. Who knows how many will die in the struggle? It would be a tragedy if you felt personally responsible for the death of so many brave soldiers.”

  “Indeed,” the Nuncio said reluctantly.

  “So I leave it in your hands, Monseñor. Merry Christmas.”

  The Nuncio hung up the phone and without a pause he picked it up again and began to dial a number.

  “What are you doing?” asked Father Jorge.

  “I’m calling the Americans. I warned them he would be coming here, but apparently they didn’t believe me.” He listened incredulously as the phone rang and rang. “Have they no one in the entire embassy?” Finally he hung up and turned to Father Jorge. “What’s the name of your contact at the CIA?”

  Father Jorge was too shocked to answer.

  “Quickly, there’s no time for temporizing,” said the Nuncio.

  “Rollins,” said the priest.

  “Call him immediately and tell him the situation.”

  Father Jorge dialed the number and asked for Rollins.

  “Who shall I say is calling?” said the secretary.

  “Thumper,” the priest said under his breath, but not so quietly that the Nuncio failed to hear.

  “Not a good time to talk, Thumper,” said Rollins, when he got on the line. “Everything’s gone to hell around here.”

  “I just wanted to let you know that General Noriega is seeking refuge in the nunciature.”

  “By all means, give it to him,” said Rollins.

  “What?” Father Jorge said stupidly.

  “I’ll even cut you another check for your church.”

  “But aren’t you trying to arrest him?”

  “Not us. As far as the agency is concerned, he’s one of our own. I hope we’d do the same for you, Thumper.”

  Father Jorge hung up and started to say something to the Nuncio, but the expression on the priest’s face said enough. “Well, in that case, we’ll have to think of something else,” said the Nuncio. “Our obligation is to keep the pope from inheriting this . . . time bomb! Believe me, the Vatican will want nothing to do with this. Whatever justification we use will be lost on Cardinal Falthauser. Moreover, we will have to hand him over to the Americans in the end, so we will wind up looking like cowards. They have a warrant that appears to be perfectly legal.”

  Father Jorge sank into the wing-back chair. “I suppose we could hand him over to the Panamanians.”

  “Excellent idea,” said the Nuncio. “Either they put his head on a stick or they let him run the country again. Which of these outcomes do you prefer?”

  The phone rang again.

  “Hello, General,” the Nuncio said unhappily. “I don’t believe it has been ten minutes.”

  “And yet I think you have had time to make your decision,” said Tony.

  The Nuncio sighed.

  “You will need to pick me up in the embassy car,” Tony continued. “I don’t trust the Americans to let me in if I just show up. It’s too dangerous.”

  When the Nuncio hung up, he sat at his desk and glowered. Father Jorge had never seen such an expression on his mentor’s face.

  “So you agreed?”

  “He’s waiting at the Dairy Queen,” the Nuncio said.

  “Shall I have your car brought round?”

  “Yes,” said the Nuncio, “but I’m not going. You are.”

  “I distinctly heard you say that you were meeting him.”

  “It’s far more important that I reach the ambassador and get the Americans to intercept him. You put on my vestments. No one will guess you’re not me.”

  “Noriega will! He knows us both. He’ll suspect a trick, and frankly I don’t like to think what he might do.”

  “Don’t worry, he has no choice. When the flood comes, even the goats climb the trees. Here—” The Nuncio took off his skullcap and placed it on Father Jorge’s head. “I promote you. Go get my robe and take the papal Toyota. I’ll call the Americans. Don’t worry. They’ll ride to your rescue like the cavalry.”

  THE STREETS OF Panama City looked like the aftermath of a hurricane—nearly deserte
d except for the American soldiers, who were at long last arresting looters. As the Toyota cruised slowly out of town, Father Jorge passed several hog-tied young men lying on their bellies on roughly torn strips of corrugated cardboard. There seemed to be no urgency about collecting them; they were just deposited there, like trash. The priest was growing accustomed to extraordinary sights. He no longer exclaimed at the weirdness all around him. Even his imposture of the Nuncio seemed somehow natural and understandable. He was attired in the full splendid regalia—the collar, the cassock, the velvet cincture, and even the same cordovan moccasins that the pope favored. Father Jorge couldn’t keep from surreptitiously stroking the satiny cassock. There was promise in it.

  But these thoughts were interrupted by a bing! bing! bing! coming from the dashboard.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked Manuelito, the white-haired driver whose head did not quite reach over the perimeter of the steering wheel.

  Manuelito said something, but Father Jorge couldn’t understand. Manuelito slowly pulled over to the curb, then reached into the glove compartment and took out a set of false teeth. “It’s about to run out of petrol,” he said when his teeth were in.

  “Isn’t there a station nearby?”

  “Many.”

  “What? Are they all closed?”

  “It’s Christmas Eve, Father.”

  “Ah.” Father Jorge thought for a moment. The Dairy Queen was still some distance away, on the outskirts of the city. “Do you think you can make it to the Benedictine abbey? The monks may have a car. Or some petrol at least.”

  Manuelito maneuvered the Toyota along the bay toward Old Panama, where the Benedictines maintained their small monastery. The tide was out and predatory terns congregated on the glistening rocks of the shoreline. At the edge of the rain forest stood the ruins of Old Panama. The graceful spire of a gutted cathedral rose above the loamy jungle soil. There was something spookily alive and emergent about the ghostly city that the pirate Morgan had put to the torch three hundred years ago. Father Jorge reflected on the fact that there was nothing more charming than seeing the wreck of a former civilization—but then he remembered the charred remains of Chorrillo and the heartbreak of his parishioners. Soon, no doubt, the entire neighborhood would be razed and planted over with far superior apartments, financed by American reparations, but it still seemed a loss that nature wasn’t allowed to reclaim some part of modern civilization—to dignify it by letting it go to ruin. These guilty thoughts were interrupted by a coughing from the engine. The Toyota lurched forward violently, sputtered, and lurched again before slowing to a halt and expiring in a last frustrated burp. Father Jorge got out and walked the last half mile.

  He turned down a cobblestone path. Here the walking became precarious, especially since the Nuncio’s shoes were rather too small for him. They were little more than carpet slippers anyway—thin, Italian made, so that every pebble made an impression underfoot. A boy passed by pushing a bicycle cart and nearly fell off as he observed the spectacle of Father Jorge in the Nuncio’s grand costume; then the boy laughed and began honking his rubber horn.

  At the end of the street there was a rotten wooden gate, with the seal of the Benedictine Order hanging from a single rusty nail. The abbey itself was quite old, a colonial remnant, with the charm of great age but the liability of being situated in a swampy backwater. Fewer than a dozen monks remained, most of them contemplatives with little connection to the world. Father Jorge strained to remember the name of the abbot, who had invited him to a barbecue once, not long after he arrived in Panama—a thoroughly dismal social occasion.

  “Brother Martín!” The name came to his lips the moment the door creaked open and the owlish, gray-bearded monk squinted out of the gloom.

  “Your Reverence,” the monk said uncertainly, taking in the impressive vestments.

  “It’s Father Jorge,” the priest reminded him.

  “I hadn’t heard the news of your promotion.”

  “It’s only temporary,” said Father Jorge. “As it happens, I’m in somewhat of a rush. Do you by any chance have a car that I can borrow? The papal Toyota has run out of petrol.”

  “Ah.” The monk stood in the gateway, rocking back and forth on his sandals as if he were waiting for instruction. “I never trusted the other fellow anyway,” he said.

  “Well, yes, however, the matter of the moment has to do with petrol and automobiles. I have a very pressing appointment and most urgently require your help. This goes to the highest level,” Father Jorge said, and then emphasized, “the very highest level.”

  The monk’s eyes grew wider with the implication. “But there’s none of us here that drives, you see, Your Holiness. Now there is a housekeeper that buys the groceries, but she isn’t here at present.”

  “If you had some petrol, that would suffice,” Father Jorge said impatiently.

  “We might have.”

  “Might?”

  “Petrol is quite dear, as you know.”

  “Is it?”

  “To a poor order such as ours. We cherish the little that we have.”

  “I assure you that you will be repaid,” said Father Jorge, who then felt the need to add, “with interest.”

  That seemed to be exactly the incentive Brother Martín was waiting for. He opened the gate and permitted Father Jorge to enter.

  “It’s only that we have some sizable expenses. Just look at the broken glass,” the monk said as he led Father Jorge through the dim mission. “We have more than a score of windows to repair. It’s been one window after another with all these strange explosions. I don’t know where we’ll get the money for all the repairs.”

  “The whole city is in a shambles,” said Father Jorge.

  “I’m not surprised. It’s been boom, boom, boom.”

  “Well, there was a war.”

  “Really? There’s a war?”

  “Was a war. It’s over now.”

  “You hear so little news here,” Brother Martín said regretfully.

  Twenty minutes later Father Jorge drained the contents of a five-gallon can into the Toyota’s tank. He kicked the side of the car to wake up Manuelito and said his farewells to the insufferable Brother Martín, who held the empty petrol can and cast a gloating look at them. “Remember the windows, Your Reverence!” he called. “We are dependent on the charity of our fellows!”

  “Merry Christmas,” Father Jorge said sullenly. Charity, indeed! Father Jorge now had a list of requisitions that ran on to a second page. He sighed and stuffed the list into the pocket of the Nuncio’s cassock.

  Manuelito peeked through the spokes of the steering wheel and pointed them toward Via España.

  The Dairy Queen was well attended for Christmas Eve. Seven or eight cars waited at the speaker stations, which were entwined with plastic poinsettias, while roller-skating waitresses whizzed among them like bees going from blossom to blossom. One of them stuck her head partially in the window and stared ironically at Father Jorge. “What would you like?” she asked.

  “Uh, Coke, please.”

  “That’s all? What about you, Grandpa?”

  “I’ll have a Beltbuster and a large fries and a medium Dr Pepper,” said Manuelito.

  As they waited for their order, Father Jorge called the Nuncio on a pay phone and told him of their delay. “I may have missed him altogether,” he said.

  “It’s just as well, since I haven’t been able to rouse the Americans anyway. Apparently there has been some sabotage of their phone lines. You may as well return.”

  But first Manuelito had to eat. He put his teeth back in and began to nibble.

  Thirty minutes later, Father Jorge noticed that a Land Cruiser with tinted windows was passing by for the second time. It slowed, then pulled into the slot next to them just as Manuelito was finishing his last french fry. The driver’s window lowered and a man with a ferocious facial scar peered out. Suddenly both doors opened and two men abruptly got out and jumped into the Toyota, th
e scarred man in the front seat with Manuelito and the other man in back with Father Jorge.

  Tony recognized Father Jorge immediately. “Is this some kind of priestly trick?” he demanded.

  “Yes.”

  “Where is the Nuncio?”

  “He was indisposed. He sent me instead.”

  “Even the Church betrays me,” Tony said furiously.

  “If you want to go to the nunciature, you can come with me. Otherwise, we’d be happy to drop you elsewhere,” Father Jorge said. “The Libyans, the Iraqis?”

  Tony clenched his teeth. The men rode in silence for a while. This was actually the first time Father Jorge had seen the General up close. He seemed remarkably harmless despite the weapon that was visible under his T-shirt.

  “What are you looking at?” Tony said sharply.

  “I didn’t realize you were so small.”

  Tony turned away in disgust. “I had a file on you. You were the pig who was always preaching against me. I could have gotten rid of you like that.” He snapped his fingers.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because my heart is soft.”

  Father Jorge smiled slightly. “I can’t imagine that my humble sermons caused you such distress. I was only saying masses for Hugo. My reputation for being outspoken is more than I deserve.”

  “You look a bit like him, you know,” Tony observed. “Pretty.”

  “Thank you,” said Father Jorge.

  “Handsomeness is a serious fault in some men. They think that because of their looks they are morally superior, that God has cast them in the leading role. That was Hugo’s problem. He had the face of a movie star but the mind of a chorus girl. I don’t really think he was destined for greatness in life.”

  “Perhaps he would not have been so important if you had not had him killed.”