God's Favorite (19 page)

“NORIEGA's more immediate problem concerns his relationship with PABLO ESCOBAR, the ruthless drug chieftain of the Medellín cocaine cartel. The cartel paid the General a substantial sum of money to avoid extradition and to set up a giant cocaine processing plant in Darién Province, on the Colombian border. The Americans found out about it and shut it down. Since then, Escobar has threatened to have the General murdered. It is believed that FIDEL CASTRO is negotiating between the parties, but the matter remains unresolved and highly unstable. As long as the General is threatened by drug lords, he will be unwilling to negotiate his own departure from power; it would be like signing his death warrant.

“The situation is made even more volatile by an ongoing American investigation into Panamanian corruption. This seems wildly hypocritical, given the several dummy corporations established here by the Central Intelligence Agency to launder drug money from the Contras. One of Noriega's pilots, FLOYD CARLTON, a well-known narcotrafficker, was arrested recently in Costa Rica and flown to the U.S., where it is presumed he will offer evidence to the American Congress about NORIEGA's involvement in the Central American drug trade. Others who might have provided additional testimony have disappeared or been found dead. The brutality of these people is difficult to overstate.

“If you will permit a personal aside, once again I would like to request reassignment to a European country . . .”

The Nuncio always added a petulant note at the end of his missives, just in case anyone happened to read them. He had
learned that the best way of keeping his enemies at bay was to allow them to believe in his continued misery. He was just finishing this complaint when he heard Father Jorge's knock.

“Am I in time?” the young man asked as he came into the library. His face was still flushed from his vigorous walk.

“Don't worry. Roberto called not two hours ago. He said the interview will not air until six. We've got a few moments yet.”

Everyone in Panama was talking about Roberto's sudden revelations. He had given an interview to
La Prensa
that afternoon, in which he accused Noriega of Spadafora's murder. The whole country was waiting to see what else he had to say on television that evening.

“Did he ask you to come to his house?” Father Jorge asked. Roberto had surrounded himself with prominent people, especially churchmen, in an attempt to protect himself from Noriega's wrath.

“I declined,” the Nuncio admitted. “The last thing the Vatican wants is to have its emissary caught up in the middle of a civil war. That is why all our contacts with the opposition must be kept in strict confidence. Something like this, with press and television—” He shrugged and drew down the corners of his mouth, staring heavenward—a Gallic gesture of complete hopelessness.

Promptly at six Roberto came on the screen, looking weirdly exuberant in his white robes as a nervous interviewer asked questions that had never been publicly posed in Panama. “First, let me confess my own sins,” Roberto said. He pointed to his palatial living room, with its Louis XV furniture and Rubenesque frescoes on the walls. “Look at my beautiful home. It's at least half-stolen. I say that because much of my own fortune has come from selling Panamanian passports to poor Cubans. And this is just my share! Everybody on the general staff made fortunes. It was expected! It was the nature of things! But I can't take my millions to heaven. I ought to be in jail, I know that. Only I do not
wish to go there alone. Noriega should go with me. And many, many others.”

The Nuncio and Father Jorge exchanged an amazed look.

“Why are you telling about this now?” the interviewer asked in a shocked whisper.

“Because I am a little crazy, and you know what they say about crazy people—they always tell the truth.”

Roberto then began to ramble about “mystical guerrilla warfare.” He showed a plaque, which he propped up against his feet, that contained the symbols of all the world's great religions—it was a spiritual shield, he said, to guard him against General Noriega's voodoo. “There are people who are concentrating their mental powers to crush me, but they will fail! My own power is far greater than theirs. See how I extend my hands with the palms facing upward? As I do this, I am receiving the positive energy from the universe. Now you can tell me what you wish to talk about. Anything. Anything at all. For instance, I am quite prepared to discuss the fraud that elected Nicky Barletta. In fact, the final preparations were made by General Noriega and myself right here in this room.”

“Here?” said the interviewer. “You planned it all right in this place?”

“It's historic, no? The truth is that the real president of Panama is Arnulfo Arias Madrid, the man people voted for by a great majority.”

“This is quite shocking,” the interviewer said.

“If you are so easily shocked, I am worried for you,” said Roberto. “The murder of Spadafora, do you want to hear of that? Some have said that I am the intellectual author of this assassination, but I can tell you the truth: General Noriega planned this action personally, just as he also conspired with the American air force and the CIA to murder our beloved Omar Torrijos.”

“Torrijos!” the interviewer gasped. But then the power was
cut to the central part of the city and the nunciature plunged into darkness.

I
MMEDIATELY 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.”

T
HE INVITATIONS
, T
ONY.
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.”

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 Dobermans 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.