God's Favorite (42 page)

Tony coughed. “I think I'd rather stay here,” he managed to say.

“And you are welcome. Certainly, we will enjoy your company. But do you want to know my real concern? I am afraid the Americans will let the mob break through.”

Tony stole a look at the river of people dammed behind the loops of razor wire. There seemed to be no end of them. Many were holding candles or flashlights. The line stretched all the way down Avenida Balboa until it disappeared behind the skyscrapers. He could hear the people banging pans and honking horns. They were crying out for the Nuncio to push him out the door.

“After all, why should they stop them?” said the Nuncio. “The Americans certainly don't intend to stay here forever. One day they'll leave, but the people will still be there. I would hate to see you wind up like Mussolini, hanging by your heels like a butchered hog. It's so undignified.”

T
HE
N
UNCIO FOUND
Sister Gertrude, the youngest of the nuns, puzzling over the copying machine in his library. Occasionally members of the staff came in to make copies without his permission, but it was rare, and she looked startled when he entered. “There's some problem with this machine,” she said. “The green light won't come on and I don't know how to fix it.” Her face was purple with embarrassment.

The Nuncio saw immediately that there was a paper jam. He was no expert on such things himself, but he knew enough to open the back of the machine and pull out the offending sheet—in this case, a partially copied private letter from President Endara, discussing the new government's position on Noriega's extradition. “Is this yours?” he asked the nun.

She shook her head nervously.

“May I see what you're copying?”

The nun lifted the lid and showed the Nuncio a handwritten recipe for pâté. “We were using the turkey liver,” she said. “I asked one of the Basques for a recipe. I should have written it out. I'm sorry if I've—”

“No, not at all, Sister. Go ahead, I think the machine will accept it now.”

When the nun had finished, the Nuncio unlocked his desk and found President Endara's original letter still there. Obviously someone else had a key.

At midnight, the refugees crammed into the nunciature's tiny chapel for Christmas mass. Sister Magdalena and Sister Hortensia played carols on handbells, rather inexpertly, unfortunately.

“All the loyalties fall away,” the Nuncio preached that evening. “Only God is loyal until the last minute.” When the Nuncio had finished the first part of the liturgy, Father Jorge filled the silver chalice, and they offered Communion. This was one of the ceremonies that the Nuncio had always loved, even as a child, when the mystery and the ritual of the Church had overwhelmed his senses. Whatever tatters remained of his faith, he was still devoted to tradition and to the majesty of certain ceremonies.

When Sister Sarita received the wine, she crossed herself and left the rail. She was replaced by General Noriega.

“What are we going to do?” Father Jorge muttered as they moved down the line of communicants. “He can't possibly receive Communion!”

“Why not?” the Nuncio whispered back.

“His soul is not pure!”

“How do you know it's not?” the Nuncio said. But he also felt conflicted—after all, it was a mortal sin for a sinner to receive Communion without confession, and the General hadn't practiced Catholicism for some years. But here he was, in his T-shirt
and Bermuda shorts, kneeling at the Communion rail with his mouth open and his tongue outstretched, waiting to receive the host.

The Nuncio gave it to him.

The Communion wafer reposed on Tony's tongue like a frog on a lily pad. Tony looked up expectantly as Father Jorge stood in front of him with the chalice.

“No,” said Father Jorge. “I refuse.”

A few minutes later, as they changed clothes in the vestry, the Nuncio chastised Father Jorge.

“But he must make a confession!” said Father Jorge. “It can't be right to let a man commit such a sin if a priest can prevent it.”

“It's his sin, not yours,” said the Nuncio. “We are not the judges. We are only the servants of God's will.”

“Really, Monseñor! Do you truly believe that God loves this man?”

The Nuncio looked at his protégé in amazement. “Isn't it obvious?”

G
ood morning, Panama!”

The disc jockey's voice broke through the Nuncio's slumbering consciousness like a sledgehammer. He bolted upright and then clutched his chest. The sun was not yet up. He fell back on his pillow, feeling light-headed and delusional.

“Hey, in there! Rise and shine! Doot do doodle doodle do! Doot do doodle doodle do!”

The Nuncio had never heard anything so loud. The sound transcended mere wave patterns and became a physical event, like a sandstorm or a hurricane.

“Sounds of the great lawbreakers of the past! You're gonna love it! This goes out to Tony from Uncle Sam!”

The Nuncio could not believe that the music could actually be louder than the announcer's voice. All of Panama must be on its feet. He opened the door to the corridor and saw Father Jorge stumbling into the hallway at exactly the same moment, his eyes goggled and his hair electrified. The priest's mouth moved but all the Nuncio heard was a blast of Linda Ronstadt singing,
“You're no good, you're no good, baby you're no good.”

Downstairs the refugees were running around like rats in a
cage. The nuns huddled in their bathrobes, holding their ears. The Nuncio walked past them. Everyone was trying to tell him something but he could only shake his head.

Outside, the sky was just beginning to lighten. The American general was still standing at the gate, only now he was grinning and wearing enormous earmuffs possibly designed for nuclear explosions.

“Please, General! You're only torturing a bunch of poor nuns and priests!”

The general grinned wider and pointed at his earmuffs. The Nuncio made a pleading gesture to turn down the volume, but the general affected not to know what he meant.

So this is war, the Nuncio thought as he returned to the nunciature. He was angry, but it did occur to him that he and the American general had the same object in mind: to get Noriega out of the embassy as quickly as possible. Their method might be crude, but he had to admit it might be effective. Certainly it was working on him.

Already a certain degree of order had asserted itself inside. The refugees had crammed toilet tissue in their ears. The nuns had the coffee ready and were beginning to roll out pastry dough for croissants.

These boots are made for walkin',

And that's just what they'll do.

The Nuncio wrote on a piece of paper,
“I'm going mad.”

Father Jorge nodded and responded with his own note:
“Nancy Sinatra = psych. warfare.”

“& Gen. Noriega???”

Father Jorge put his hands together under his chin and closed his eyes, imitating sound sleep. The Nuncio looked at him in disbelief.

“Narcotics?”

Father Jorge shrugged.

I
N FACT
, T
ONY
had awakened several moments before, surprisingly rested despite several vivid sexual dreams. Strangely enough, his libido had returned here in this monkish room, surrounded by the American troops and a Panamanian lynch mob. Who could account for the promptings of desire?

Also, he had never minded American popular music.

Tony discerned another beat that didn't quite accompany the music. He opened the door to find the old nun holding his clothes. They must have done his laundry in the middle of the night. Oddly enough, she was smoking a cigarette and seemed to make a point of blowing smoke in his face before he quickly closed the door.

On television there was a report from Romania. The dictator, Ceauşescu, had been murdered. A mob paraded his bullet-ridden body before a CNN camera crew. It struck an ominous note.

Tony raised the mirror to the window and studied his situation. In the reflection he could see troops everywhere, in the streets and on the rooftops. APCs and reinforced gun emplacements barricaded the streets. A thoroughly professional encirclement. Tony canted the mirror toward the front gate, where he saw the Nuncio engaged in another conversation with the American general. Both men were nodding as they conversed—another worrisome sign.

Several degrees to the east, however, Tony spotted dozens of television cameras on the balconies of the Holiday Inn across the street and a thousand reporters with binoculars trained on his window. Some of them were waving at his reflection. The whole world peered back at him on the other side of those cameras. To be so universally watched, so widely hated, so intensely sought, was perversely sublime. It was almost like salvation, Tony thought.

Then the music died.

T
HROUGH THEIR
restaurant contacts, the Basques had managed to smuggle a whole young pig into the nunciature, which they spent the morning preparing. At noon the pig went into the oven, slathered with oil and garnished with thyme, basil, sage, and juniper berries. All afternoon the smell of roasting pork wafted through the embassy. It was a dish designed to drive a vegetarian to delirium.

When the Nuncio had finished his letter to Cardinal Falthauser, he placed it in the diplomatic pouch and summoned Manuelito. The old man came into his office without his teeth. He seemed to get smaller every time the Nuncio saw him.

“Manuelito, take the pouch to the airport straightaway. If the Americans try to stop you, remind them that this is traveling under diplomatic cover and they have no legal right to restrain you. Do you understand me?”

Manuelito said something incomprehensible and took the locked bag. The Nuncio waited a few moments, then walked out the back door of the nunciature where the elderly driver was warming up the Toyota.

“I left something out,” the Nuncio explained.

Manuelito gave him an alarmed look. The Nuncio unlocked the bag and looked inside. He was not surprised to find a separate envelope there, addressed to Cardinal Falthauser, and containing, among other things, a copy of President Endara's letter.

“Hand me your keys, Manuelito.”

Manuelito actually seemed proud of himself and rather happy to be exposed. He handed the Nuncio a set of keys that duplicated every one of his own—including the desk, the safe, and the diplomatic bag.

“You are discharged as of this very moment,” the Nuncio said sternly. “Take your teeth and get out of here.”

F
ATHER
J
ORGE LAY
on the couch, staring at the water marks on the ceiling as if he were trying to divine some message therein. “You don't really think God loved Hitler, do you?” he finally asked.

“Of course he did, although Hitler failed to express God's love in his own life. It was his failure, not God's.”

“God could have stopped him.”

“But he didn't—because even Hitler was an instrument of his will. History is, after all, the expression of God's unfolding story. At least, that is our doctrine. And if we adhere to it, we must believe that God has anticipated all things, and welcomes them, just as he expected the suffering and sacrifice of his son.”

“That's different from loving Hitler, or Stalin, or Noriega.”

“You place the General in a rather exalted pantheon of villains.”

“He may differ in scope but not in kind,” said Father Jorge. “It is as if all these big European monsters fruited and left behind the seeds that produced Marcos, Somoza, Sukarno, Idi Amin—the monstrous second-generation Third World progeny that includes Tony Noriega. Maybe they didn't get to operate on the same scale as Hitler, but we are still talking about enormous evil—murder, drug trafficking, criminal enterprises on a grand scale, not to mention the corruption of a nation and innumerable lesser sins of the flesh. Surely God shuns such wickedness. How can he love the man who commits such crimes?”

“General!” said the Nuncio. “I didn't hear you knock!”

Father Jorge abruptly sat up. Tony Noriega was standing in the doorway. The General gave him a look that was hard to read.

“There was something disturbing on television,” said Tony.

“Ah, you got it working,” said the Nuncio.

“Cigar?” said Father Jorge, offering Tony a box of green-leafed Havanas. Tony drew back in revulsion. Father Jorge shrugged and lit one for himself.

“They said you made an agreement with the Americans,” Tony said accusingly.

“Yes, I did,” said the Nuncio.

“You signed a paper allowing them to invade the nunciature.”

“In the unlikely event that you decide to hold us hostage.”

“Do you really think that of me?”

“Certainly not. But it permitted the Americans to say that they have made progress in their negotiations. And frankly, if we had not come to some arrangement about the music, I would have handed you over myself.”

Tony drew a chair well away from Father Jorge's cigar. “But if you say I am not cooperating, then the Americans will say that you are my hostages. They only want an excuse, and now you have provided it.”

The Nuncio tapped ashes from his pipe and refilled it from the tin of tobacco. “Let's be honest with each other, General. This is a political matter with me, not a religious one. I don't want to die for politics.”

“For me, it's the opposite,” said Tony. “My political life is over. I've entered a new stage. I have a request, Monseñor. I want you to hear my confession.”

The Nuncio held the lit match in his hand for a second, then blew it out. “Well, yes, of course, this is a very important matter, and I am glad to hear you make such a request. But in fact I am in a bit of a bind. My role is to mediate the interests of all the parties involved and bring this affair to a peaceful and satisfactory conclusion. I don't know that I would be able to serve those ends if I was also your priest.”