God's Favorite (4 page)

With Hugo's death, people sensed that some final barrier of civility had been crossed and that they were rapidly hurtling toward barbarity. Rumors about the aborted investigation of Hugo's death flew around the city. The bus driver and several passengers who had ridden with Hugo the morning of his capture had spoken to the press. They had talked about the soldiers who had taken Hugo away. But they recanted their stories after being interrogated at PDF headquarters. An elderly woman who refused to change her story disappeared. Later, her body was found. She, too, had been decapitated.

Occasionally someone in the crowd would start a chant, which would go on for some minutes, soaking up the anger and frustration, but then it would lose conviction and the people would shift about nervously, casting glances at unfamiliar faces. Everyone knew that names were being taken. Had Hugo been there, the living Hugo, he would have given them the courage to express their defiance, but the image of their mutilated hero settled into their minds, dousing their ardor and shaming them with the knowledge of their faint hearts.

The priest that the Spadafora family originally had sought for the occasion pleaded illness, and perhaps he really was ill, people joked: he had the Noriega virus. The diocese subsequently offered several alternative priests, most of whom were on the take from the PDF and one who was so elderly and addled that he drooled and stared into space for long periods between sentences. Finally the family settled on Father Jorge, who was practically unknown outside the Chorrillo slum. His association with
the Nuncio compensated for the fact that he was an Indian. Besides, there was something about the young priest's looks and demeanor that reminded Hugo's father of his own martyred son.

And so Father Jorge found himself in the position of celebrating the funeral mass for a famous man he had never met. He rode to the city of Chitré in the third row of seats of a ponderous Chevrolet Suburban. Hugo's younger brother, Winston, an attorney in Panama City, sat up front with the driver, and the priest sat with Hugo's father. Don Melo was the former mayor of Chitré and governor of Herrera Province. He was a popular figure in the country, well thought of, with a reputation for honesty that was quite remarkable in this congenitally corrupt society. There were six more cars immediately behind them filled with Spadaforas—Don Melo had twelve children by various wives—and behind them came the cousins and in-laws and then the thousands of friends. The Spadaforas were one of the most prominent families in Panama, and the farther the caravan proceeded into the heart of the country, the larger it grew and the more absurd Hugo's murder appeared to be. Father Jorge did not consider himself a political sophisticate, but it was obvious even to him that the Spadaforas were not easily intimidated. They had friends and resources that could not be discounted.

The procession picked up friends and relatives at every turn in the road. Sometimes the entire funeral cortege came to a halt because of the crowds that surrounded the cars in the little villages they passed along the way. Crying faces were pressed into the windows. Women stood on the corners screaming oaths at the government. A group of schoolchildren took up the chant “Death to Noriega!”

Father Jorge sat quietly, feeling a bit carsick from the undulations of the road through the jungle. He was also suffering misgivings about the mass. Without really dictating what he should say, the Nuncio had begged him to be restrained, to minister to the spirit but to avoid addressing the political explosion that had followed the atrocity. Whatever he said, the Nuncio reminded
him, would be heard by the entire country, and certainly by Noriega and his PDF thugs. No purpose would be served in making some brave statement that resulted in Father Jorge's body being found with
F-8
—the signature of Noriega's death squad—carved into it.

The sermon Father Jorge intended to deliver was much as the Nuncio advised, a plea to God for compassion and mercy and understanding. Of course, the occasion also demanded a call for justice. He and the Nuncio had discussed terms that would not be too offensive to the government but that would serve to appease the crowd. Father Jorge realized that if he followed the Nuncio's advice to the letter, he would be politely despised by Hugo's admirers; moreover, he would think himself a coward. Hugo's sacrifice was too great to be discreetly acknowledged. Father Jorge could sense Hugo's spirit hovering over him, urging him to take up his cry for vengeance and revolution.

He suddenly shivered and blocked the memory of his parents lying dead in the sawdust on the floor of his father's workshop. The scene was like a snapshot that never changed—the strange arrangement of their limbs, the curlicues of planed wood caught in his mother's bloody hair. They had not been brave and reckless rebels like Hugo. Their death meant nothing. There were no fawning crowds to grieve their passing. Father Jorge was not even sure who had killed them. Some said the military, but there were also rebels who assassinated anyone thought to be against them. Revolution gave license to murder on all sides.

Father Jorge was a man of faith, not of action—at least that is how he thought of himself—and therefore he regarded Hugo with mixed feelings of admiration, envy, suspicion, and disdain. All his life he had avoided such men with their contagious passions. Politics held no interest for him. When he entered the priesthood, he had hoped to close the door on the world as it is. And yet he had been pushed back into it, apprenticed to a semidisgraced Vatican bureaucrat in a country that was just beginning to heave itself into a political cataclysm.

“Of course Nicky made assurances, but what of it?” Winston was saying. He was speaking of President Barletta, who had called for a complete investigation of the murder.

“Talk,” Don Melo said hopelessly. “They talk, they offer sympathy . . .” He trailed off into the silence that had consumed him from the moment his son's body was discovered.

These people don't just want me to make sense of their grief, Father Jorge thought. They want me to bring their son back to life. He stared out the tinted window at the Indians who stood silently on the roadside watching the funeral procession go by. The priest saw his own sober reflection passing over their faces. He belonged out there with them, he thought, not inside the car with these upper-class whites.

“What do you think, Father?” Don Melo was asking him, interrupting his thoughts. It took a second for the priest to mentally retrieve the bits of conversation that he had been overhearing without really listening to it. Don Melo had been complaining about the propriety of burying Hugo's body without the head. This was an obsession with him.

“From the Church's point of view, it makes no difference,” said Father Jorge. “His soul does not reside in one portion of his body or another. Our Hugo is no longer on this earth at all. He is safely with his Lord and Savior in heaven.”

It was clear from Don Melo's mournful eyes that he did not accept this line of thinking. “If it offends me so much, it must offend God as well,” he said.

“I am sure God shares your suffering, but be assured that he understands the sacrifice that Hugo has made. He will surely judge those who committed this horrible deed.”

Don Melo nodded doubtfully.

When they reached Chitré, the crowd was spilling out of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist and standing in the light drizzle in the plaza. They had been waiting restlessly for hours.

Finally the casket entered the cathedral on the shoulders of Hugo's comrades, and at last the mass began. Father Jorge would
not remember all the words he said that afternoon, but he would never forget the faces of the mourners and how they had sought him out, how they had turned to him for solace and meaning. And for some reason, his words did console. They were his words; they did not belong to the Nuncio or to Hugo. He had spoken of the majesty of God's gift of life and the nobility of Hugo's sacrifice. He reflected on Jesus' entry into Jerusalem in his last week of life, placing himself willingly in the hands of the Roman despot. Like Jesus, Hugo had accepted death as an inevitable consequence of a radical life, and the torture and humiliation that he had endured did not diminish him; rather, it raised him up in the eyes of God. “Hugo's head is missing,” said Father Jorge, “but his soul is not—it is here with us. It is inside everyone who yearns for justice and freedom. We must honor Hugo by remembering his sacrifice; but we must also honor Jesus by remembering his example of nonviolence. For earthly justice is transitory and imperfect, but divine justice is eternal.”

Afterward, the mourners remarked on the mysterious power of the occasion and the healing words of the young priest that no one knew. “He came when others refused,” Don Melo said later. “He is one of us, even if he doesn't know it yet.”

O
N TOP OF
New York, Tony reclined in the four-poster, king-sized bed, wearing a white terry-cloth robe embossed with the regal seal of the Helmsley Palace Hotel, listening to President Nicolás Ardito Barletta on the speakerphone. Half a dozen chairs were pulled up to the foot of the bed to accommodate the retinue of CIA officers and State Department officials.

As it happened, the Panamanian president was only fifteen blocks away, at the U.N. Plaza Hotel. The fact that he had not been invited to be present in person at this meeting was a fillip of humiliation evident to everyone in the room, and of course to the president himself. “What are you saying?” Barletta
asked in an aggrieved tone of voice. “That the U.S. position has changed?”

“We can only speak for the agency,” said Rollins, the chief of the Panama station. He was a small, wiry man with bad teeth and nicotine-stained fingers and weak blue eyes that floated like balloons behind thick, dirty glasses. “The agency is behind you, Mr. President. Isn't that right, Ginny?” He turned to the crisp brunette in a chintz armchair.

“From Casey on down,” she agreed.

“But from a public-relations point of view, it's a disaster.” This came from Mark Ortega, the executive on the Panamanian account at Nocera, Lemann & Fallows, a top-dollar Washington public-relations firm.

“Agreed,” said Ginny.

“Is that your view, Rollins?” asked Tony.

“That's why we brought Mark with us, General,” said Rollins. “I think you ought to listen to him.”

Tony sized up the bulky suit with the pushed-up sleeves and the round black glasses. “The whole Spadafora thing is undermining the image of Panama,” said Mark. “We've got to make a dramatic gesture that will reassure the American people that the Panamanian government is not involved in political assassination. And by the way, I hope that's true.”

“I assure you that our hands are clean,” said Barletta.

“What do you suggest, Mr. Mark?” asked Tony.

“Elections. Press loves 'em.”

“But we
had
an election,” Barletta said plaintively over the speakerphone. “I won.”

Tony thoughtfully scratched his balls while the others stared at their shoes.

“Free and fair elections,” Mark said gently. “Supervised by international monitors, like the U.N. or—”

“Jimmy Carter,” suggested Gabriel Vargas, the white-haired Panamanian ambassador to Washington.

“Great idea, Mr. Ambassador!” said Mark. “Brokered the canal treaties. Both the Americans and the Panamanians trust him, even though the Americans don't like him very much. Actually, that could be an advantage.”

Tony shot a glance at Vargas. The old man had never been reliable. He was one of those white-assed aristocrats who had made a fortune off the backs of fruit pickers.

“We've got another problem in Washington,” said Ginny. “Senator Jesse Helms is asking for an investigation into the Spadafora business.”

“We
welcome
an investigation!” Barletta said defiantly. In the silence that followed, Tony signaled to his doctor, who was quietly reading a comic book in the corner. Tony rubbed the center of his forehead, and the doctor reached into his bag for a bottle of Excedrin.

“Helms—he's loco, right?” asked Tony.

“Completely berserk,” said Mark. “That's what makes him so dangerous. But it's not just Helms. You got Kerry on the Left saying the same stuff. Lot of people on both sides of the aisle are worried that Panama is turning into some kind of refuge for drug lords. They don't want to see the canal fall under the control of narcotraffickers.”

“Drugs! Drugs!” Tony shouted. “Don't they read the newspapers? Don't they see the television? We just raided the biggest cocaine plant in Central America—in Darién! Twenty-three narcos arrested!”

“You're right, General, and kudos to you,” said Mark.

“Noriega is a leader in the war on drugs. A rock!” said Tony.

“We know that, General.”

“A fucking rock!”

“We know that you're a good guy, an anticommunist democrat,” Mark continued, “but you've got to realize–the American people perceive you as something other than that. And, frankly, the Spadafora business hasn't helped.”

“How do they see me, Mr. Mark?”

“They see you as a little tin-pot fascist, which, Lord knows how they got that impression, but—” Mark threw up his hands. “Bad PR management in the past, I suspect. But we're here to change that, General.”

“We've got to make a gesture, Tony.” This from Vargas, who seemed immune to Tony's icy stare.

“You know, I have already anticipated this myself,” said Barletta. He had a slightly giddy note of triumph in his voice. “Even before you called, I have taken action.”

The people in Tony's suite exchanged worried glances.

“Yesterday, I appointed a commission to investigate this crime,” Barletta chirped from the speakerphone. “A blue-ribbon commission, composed of the most respectable men in the country.” He named half a dozen people, all of them, like Vargas and Barletta, members of the white upper class. “Anyone would have to say that these men are incorruptible. Moreover, I have invested this panel with subpoena power. I think you will see us getting to the bottom of this terrible business quickly. Senator Helms should be congratulating us! He will see who is in charge in Panama—the narcotraffickers or the true democrats!”