Authors: John Gilstrap,Kurt Muse

Six Minutes To Freedom (16 page)

BOOK: Six Minutes To Freedom

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The images of Annie and the kids tried to invade his consciousness, but he pushed those thoughts away, choosing instead to concentrate on the next few minutes. This wasn’t a time to think about the dark side of his actions. It wasn’t a time to think about the suffering of family members. Now was the time to think about the present, about the missionat hand. This was bigger than his family. This was about the survivalof God only knew how many people. He needed to keep his thoughts focused. His world had taken on entirely new definitions in the past hours. The future no longer comprised years and decades. Now, the future was defined as whatever was coming next, in ten- and twenty-minute blocks. And this next little portion of the future was goingto be very, very interesting.

As he saw it, he’d have one shot at this, and one shot only. If he blew it, it was blown forever, because even the PDF, in all of its idiocy, was too smart to make the same mistake more than once. If he was un-derguardednow—he only counted two—then after he made his move, he’d be overguarded for sure.

After what felt like forever, his thumb told him that he had enough of a sharp point on his pen to make his move.

He set his mind on his mission. He tensed himself, easing forward on his chair. He said a quick prayer. Then he launched himself.

He sprang from his chair, as if ejected, and sprinted toward the table. All he saw was the disk. All he thought about was destroying the magnetic surface—until he cleared the threshold between the doors. Then all he thought about were the three extra guards he hadn’t seen from the other room. He thought about their rifles, too.

The darkness wasn’t absolute after all, not after Kimberly’seyes adjusted, but it was darn close. The world was a jumbled collection of opaque shadows. The runway was a black stripe against the lighter black of the chest-high elephant grass, which itself was offsetfrom the purple night sky. Black silhouettes of her fellow refugees moved about against the purple tableaux as well, their features completelyconcealed in perpetual shadows.

The silence wasn’t absolute, either. With the noise of the airplane engines gone, the songs of the nighttime insects, frogs, and other creatureswas nearly deafening. Only nearly because there was no drowningout the sound of people crying. One woman in particular seemed convinced that they had been taken someplace to die.

“Where is this place?” Erik whispered, his grip on Kimberly’s hand so tight that he was causing real pain.

She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I have no idea.” But it was a place she wanted to leave, and quickly. She pulled her brother closer and tried to think it through. They were in the middle of a desolateplace, all by themselves, with no means of transportation, and no means by which to take care of themselves. Kimberly didn’t know about the others, but she didn’t have any money, not even enough to buy a hamburger someplace. It wasn’t exactly the ideal circumstance from which to launch an escape.

Kimberly wanted desperately not to be scared. She wanted desperately to be one of the very few refugees in the crowd who kept her wits about her and did not sink into the desperate fear in which so many of her new companions were wallowing, but it was hard.

No, it was impossible. Nothing is more terrifying than the unknown,and never had Kimberly Muse found herself in a circumstance that was less known than this one: No home, no parents, no money, and no idea of what lay ahead. It wasn’t
fair
.

Her mind started to take a very dark turn when Tomás Muñoz stepped from the middle of the crowd and tried to get everyone’s attention.Because he was Tomás, and because there was no one else to turn to, people quieted down enough to hear him speak.

It was silly, but what Kimberly wanted to hear was a monologue on how everything was going to be fine. She wanted to hear someone with an authoritative presence say aloud that no matter what was going on, no matter what lay ahead, that they could all feel comfortable that no harm was going to come to them. No matter how hollow the words, no matter how contrived and empty, it would have meant something, she thought, just to hear them uttered.

But Tomás did nothing of the sort. Instead, he led them in the Lord’s Prayer. “
Padre nuestro que estás en los cielos, Santificado sea tu Nombre. Venga tu reino Hágase tu voluntad En la tierra como en el cielo
...”

Some joined enthusiastically, while others mouthed the words and mumbled, their hearts lagging behind their heads. For Kimberly, the sudden arrival of prayer startled her. Frankly, it was the furthest thing from her mind in that particular moment, but then, as she let the words pour over her, she found strength from them that she’d never experienced before.

When Tomás transitioned into the Hail Mary, the words started to flow more easily, and soon she found her fear balanced by hope. “
Dios te salve, María, llena eres de gracia, el Señor es contigo. Bendita tú eres entre todas las mujeres, y bendito es el fruto de tu vientre, Jesús. Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros, pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. Amen
.”

It was a moment of beauty ensconced in the madness and confusion of events spinning out of control. It wouldn’t occur to Kimberly until many years later, but that moment in time, awash in all the fear and uncertainty, was one of the most spiritually peaceful moments of her life. Having no choice but to surrender herself to powers beyond her control, she found the peace and clarity of faith for which many peoplespend their entire lives searching.

Lights on the horizon broke the reverie and once again introduced an element of fear. At first, she couldn’t tell what they were, but after a few seconds, after her ears adjusted to a new generation of sound, she realized that they were vehicles, and that they were approaching very quickly.

Kimberly’s first instinct was to run, but as she turned, she could see that the vehicles were coming from all directions. She had no idea how many. Five? Seven? They approached from every compass point, and as they drew nearer, the lights that preceded them became blinding. The refugees all huddled together, perhaps out of fear, or perhaps just to escape the piercing glare of the headlights.

After a few seconds, though, it became clear that these weren’t headlights at all, at least not in the sense of lights mounted in the grill of a vehicle. The lights were too high in the air. As they approached even closer, she could see that they were all mounted on the roll bars of some kind of backcountry four-wheel drive vehicles.

The vehicles slowed as they closed to within twenty yards and stopped when they’d formed a circle that was maybe thirty feet across.

Kimberly had never felt so exposed, so vulnerable. Whoever these people were, they could do anything to them now that they wished. Why hadn’t she run? Why hadn’t she made some effort to get away?

The refugees stood there like that for the better part of a minute, with no one moving, until finally they could see movement in the shadows.

A lone man walked in their direction. At first, he was only a silhouetteagainst the headlights, but as he moved closer, it was possible to see some of the details emerge. Kimberly’s first thought was that he was
old
. He was this little bald old man, and as he approached, she could see that he had a very kind expression.

“Does anyone speak English?” the man asked in overly pronounced English.

As a chorus, the refugees said, “I do.” Tomás took a step closer to the man. Able to see facial details now in the glare of the headlights, Kimberly noted a confused expression in Tomás’s face. She didn’t know him well enough to interpret his features, but her thought was that it appeared to be something between relief and recognition.

The stranger smiled. “Hello, Tomás,” the stranger said. “Welcome to the United States of America. Welcome to all of you.” He paused a moment to let it sink in; to let those who needed translation receive it. He went on, “I’m here to make sure that you’re well taken care of. My friends call me Father Frank.”

The endless night finally terminated in a block of rooms that had been reserved for the refugees—there were officially twenty-four of them in all—at the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge in, of all places, Panama City, Florida. More than one of the new fugitives had been startled to see the road sign announcing their first stop.

The rules, as explained by Father Frank, were exquisitely simple. The U.S. government was picking up the entire tab for the next few nights. They all had unlimited access to the Waffle House on the far side of the parking lot; they had only to say that they were “with Frank.”

That said, they also needed to be keenly aware that they were still in Florida, only a thousand miles from their homeland, and a part of the country where Noriega spies flourished with the abundance of Palmettobugs. “I don’t have to tell you,” Frank said, there on the unnamedtarmac in the middle of nowhere, pausing for the Spanish translation, “that Mr. Noriega is a vindictive sort, and if he finds out where you are hiding, he may well take extraordinary actions to hurt you—either here on the spot, or after a ride back to your homeland. We can give you a start here in America, and we can be there to help you with some of the challenges associated with a relocation such as this, but we cannot provide you with protection. I urge you to understandand be aware that every time you step outside, there is a certain risk of you being seen and recognized. As time passes, the risk diminishes,but some risk will always remain.

“Please keep this in mind as you make certain lifestyle choices. You can choose, for example, to be loud and boisterous in a crowd, or you can choose to be quiet and refined. One is far more likely to draw inordinateattention, and I will leave it to you to figure out which.”

Kimberly didn’t know what to make of this man, this Father Frank. On the one hand, he appeared to be kind and grandfatherly, while on the other, he seemed to be all-business in a business that frightened her.

Kimberly had no idea what time it was when they finally arrived at the motor lodge but she knew that it was late—or early, she supposed; two or three in the morning. The keys were all ready for them. They didn’t have to go to the front office or anything. Nondescript people in nondescript clothing were there on hand to pass out the keys to the preassigned rooms. The Panamanians, Kimberly noted, were kept separatefrom her and her family. As before, at Howard Air Force Base, and again on the flight out to the United States, everyone seemed particularlyofficious in their pampering of Kimberly and Erik.

The motel itself was the same layout as a thousand others of its ilk, laid out in a giant two-story square with interior rooms that faced a courtyard and the swimming pool, and exterior rooms that faced the parking lot. The Muse children were assigned a room facing the parkinglot. Father Frank opened the door for them and ushered them inside.

“This is your home away from home for the next couple of days,” he said. “Relax and get some rest. You’ll be perfectly safe. We have people outside whose job it is to make sure that everything is perfectly safe.”

“Thank you,” Kimberly said. The beds looked impossibly inviting. For the first time since the ordeal began, she felt the weight of exhaustionpressing down on her.

“Sleep as late as you want,” Father Frank said. “We’ll be sure to get you fed.” His eyes fell to Kimberly’s filthy outfit and her bare feet. “Tomorrowwe’ll get you some new clothes, too. There’s a store right across the street.”

Kimberly scowled and leaned out the door, past Father Frank to have a look for herself. “Where?” she said.

“Where what?”

“Where’s the store?”

Father Frank seemed confused. Could it be any more obvious? “Right there,” he said, pointing to the brightly lit store on the far side of the parking lot.

“What, the K-Mart?”

Father Frank nodded. “They’re open all night, but I thought you’d prefer to get some rest.”

Kimberly gave him a look that made him wonder if maybe he’d grown an extra nose. “K-Mart,” she said, tasting the very concept.

“They’ve got pretty good stuff.”

Kimberly snorted, “I am
not
shopping at K-Mart.” Before Father Frank could say a word, she closed the door.

The next day, they went shopping at the mall.

Back in Panama, nearly forty-eight hours had passed since Kurt Muse had been spirited away from the airport, and no one in the American government had any idea where he was. It was as if he had evaporated. Feelers had been put out through diplomatic channels, but they’d turned up nothing. In Washington, D.C., people in high places were waking up other people in high places trying to find the string to pull that would locate him.

Primary coordination for all these activities on the Isthmus fell to the provisional lawyer Kurt didn’t yet know he had: Marcos Ostrander.And he was getting pretty pissed about being jerked around.

Kurt never had a chance, really. The extra guards had arrivedwithout him knowing, and their reaction as he came bolting out of his closet—raising their slung rifles to their shoulders, ready to fire—convinced him to break off his charge early. In the process, he saved his own life.

Sheepishly, without saying a word, he retreated back to his closet, sat back down in his chair, and returned the pen to his pocket. Outside,in the main room, two guards positioned themselves just outside his door and stayed there. The general consensus, from what Kurt could glean from overheard conversation, was that he was cracking under the pressure of confinement.

Maybe they were right. He’d been stupid to try something so bold. Vowing to be more careful in the future, he wrote it off to overexuber-ance.From now on, he’d be much more staid.

Perhaps if they’d allowed him to sleep, even a little, his head would be clearer about these sorts of things. The couple of times he had started to nod off, someone had poked him in the head with a pencil to wake him up. They played blaring music from a boom box wheneverhe was alone. He was discovering how effective an interrogation device sleep deprivation really was.

But he had other concerns to think about. He’d been chewing on this damn hotel receipt for a half hour now, and it refused to reduce to a size that he could swallow. They must have made the paper out of plastic!

He had to do something with it, though. The time was coming when they were either going to move him, or notice that he had somethingin his mouth. The receipt itself was incriminating enough; imaginehow quickly their interest would peak if they discovered that he was trying to swallow it.

He had another wild thought. The corner of the room where he was sitting was constructed of concrete block, right? Well concrete block—he’d always called them cinder blocks when he was growing up—had thousands of little nooks and crannies in them. What perfect hiding places for soggy, spit-drenched pieces of a Holiday Inn receipt.

Removing the spitball from his mouth, he went to work tearing tiny bits of paper off the wad and stuffing them into the irregularities of the wall.

It took every bit of half an hour, and more than a few of the paper crumbs fell out of their crannies onto the floor, but he finally got the task done.

Hours passed before they finally summoned him again.

Your mind starts to play games with your body when exhaustion is unrelenting, and for Kurt, the most debilitating symptom of exhaustionwas a deepening sadness over all that had transpired in the past several days. His mind kept sinking back into that crushing sense of guilt over all that he had wrought against his family and friends.

He tried to fight the darkest of the thoughts, but the exhaustion would not let him silence them altogether. Every time he felt that he might be getting a handle on rationality, the relentlessness of the boom box somehow wrenched it from his grip. He knew he was losing his edge, and he feared that there was nothing he could do about it.

The door to his closet flew open, startling him. He could tell just from the expression on the guard’s face that there had been a significantdevelopment. “Come,” the guard said.

It occurred to Kurt for the first time that they had started to address him with the same words and the same inflection as the one he used for his dog. The room tilted a little as he stood, but he didn’t stumble. He did his best to stand tall as he followed the guard back to the officewhere his last confrontation with the captain had taken place.

As he stepped across the threshold, he felt the color drain from his face. They had the gym bag. That meant they had everything.

It’s amazing what you never think about when you think you’ll never be caught. From the earliest days of their clandestine operations, Kurt had kept all their tradecraft tools (such as they were) stuffed in a black athletic bag, which he in turn kept well hidden under the backseatof his Jeep. In it were his two-way radio, the PDF code book, the keys to all the apartments where the transmitters were stored—everythingthey would need to nail him to the wall.

“From the look on your face, I presume that you recognize these toys,” the captain said.

Kurt didn’t bother to respond. What could he say?

The captain motioned to a chair. “Sit,” he said.

Kurt sat. The charades and the gamesmanship were all over. Now it was only the darkness of the future.

The captain produced two more signed leases and dangled them in the air in front of Kurt. “How many mistresses can one man have?” the captain asked.

He was toying, and Kurt chose not to rise to the bait.

Next, the captain displayed the radio, the code book, and a set of apartment keys. “I’m sure that these have something to do with your mistresses as well? The time has come for you to start talking openly and honestly with us, Mr. Muse. With your help or without it, we will match these keys with the appropriate apartments, and we will know what you are hiding. Make it easier on yourself by making it easier on us.”

Kurt’s heart felt as though it had been gripped by an invisible hand. What would stalling for time do now? How much time could it possiblybuy? Two, three hours maybe? Surely his friends and family had had the time to get away by now. There are elements of chess in every negotiation, and as in chess, there comes a moment to surrender.

“I am Radio la Voz de la Libertad,” Kurt said.

The captain did not appear to be surprised.

Kurt went on, “Those leases and those keys are for the apartments I rented to house the transmitters. Give me the keys and I’ll tell you which keys go to which apartments.”

The captain made no effort to hand the keys over. “Who else is involved?”

The invisible hand made a fist. “No one,” he said.

The captain’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t lie to me.”

Kurt looked away. He’d been a terrible liar his entire life. Whenever he’d tried, people always knew. His only defense was to cast his eyes downward. No matter what, he would not betray his friends. He would not give out their names.

“You work for the CIA,” the captain said.

Kurt’s head snapped up. “No.”

“Yes,” the captain said. “Your computer uses a different operating system. Did you really think that we wouldn’t find out?”

Silence.

“Answer me, Mr. Muse.”

“I never gave it much thought,” he said, honestly enough. “It’s an Apple computer. Right off the shelf.”

“Provided to you by the American CIA.”

“No!”

“We know that you are a spy, Mr. Muse. We know that they have been supplying your equipment.”

“I am not a spy,” Kurt insisted.

“You are an employee of the CIA.”

“I am not!” His voice climbed an octave in indignation. “I am an employee of Intergraphic, Incorporated. It’s my family’s company.”

“That is your cover.”

This was absurd. “You’re out of your mind.”

The captain slapped the desk. “Don’t lie to me!”

“I’m not lying! I do not—”

“Explain this!” The captain reached to the floor behind his desk, out of sight, and lifted a cardboard box, displaying it as if doing a commercial.

Kurt recognized it instantly. It was a box for one of the three batterybackups that Father Frank had provided to them after their meetingin the park. “That’s a box,” Kurt said. He could hear the petulance in his own voice.

“We found it in your garage.”

Kurt shrugged, continuing to look indignant. “There are many boxes in my garage.”

“Indeed there were,” the captain said. Kurt did not miss the use of the past tense. “We’ve determined that this box held radio equipment. A battery backup.”

It would have been more impressive detective work had the box not said
BATTERY BACKUP
. “It’s for the transmitters,” Kurt explained. “I alreadytold you that.”

The captain rotated the open box to display a label that had been affixed to the bottom, and in that instant, Kurt understood.

“What do you read here, Mr. Muse?”

Kurt dropped his head, thoroughly deflated, thoroughly defeated.

“Read it,” the captain said.

Kurt cleared his throat. “It says, ‘Program Development Group.’ ”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Muse, I couldn’t hear you.”

“It says ‘Program Development Group.’ ” This time he nearly shouted the words. Jesus God, he couldn’t believe the stupidity. The entire world recognized the Program Development Group (PDG) in Corozal to be the euphemism for the Central Intelligence Agency in Panama. They all knew it because Manuel Noriega was so thoroughly ensconced in the daily doings of the PDG over the years that he probablyknew his way to all the coffee pots in the place. Noriega’s primary currency with the United States had been his ability to tap every phone in Panama, and as a result, he’d accumulated countless millions in his personal fortune. What the Agency thought it was hiding when it addresseditems to the PDG was beyond Kurt.

His mind raced back to the day just a few weeks before when they’d taken delivery of the battery backup from a go-between sent by Father Frank. Kurt had blown his stack with the CIA operative when he’d found half a dozen PDG labels all over the box. Kurt had torn them all off by the fistful as he chided the go-between for having been so reckless. “We’re trying to keep a low profile here,” Kurt had ranted. “This kind of shit can get people killed, you know? Suppose I had this box in my car and some goon pulls me over for a traffic stop. You want to see me get arrested? My God. This is precisely why we’ve never done business with you in the past.”

Well, apparently, he’d missed one of the stickers.

“Why don’t you sign this, Mr. Muse, and we can let you get along with your life, such as it will be.”

The captain slid a confession across the desk. For the first time since he’d started interrogating Kurt, he was smiling.

BOOK: Six Minutes To Freedom

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