WHERE ARE THE goddamn keys?” Nachman said after he had removed the broomstick. Gloria had vanished with the first explosion.
“There’s a drawer,” said Tony. “Look in there.”
“I can’t see a damn thing.” The power was blown. Aircraft were roaring five feet overhead. Bombs going off right and left. “Fucking whore was probably in on the whole thing,” said Nachman. “Wait, this may be the ticket.”
As soon as he unlocked the handcuffs, Tony curled into a fetal ball.
“Get up, Tony. We’ve got to make a run for it. What’s your plan?”
“My plan?”
Another explosion rattled the room. “Yes, your plan! You’ve got a contingency plan, don’t you? The goddamn gringos are blowing the shit out of this country. Where are you supposed to be? Where’s your remote command headquarters? Who’s the contact with the civil defense squad?”
“There is no plan,” Tony admitted.
“No plan? Tony, you got the fucking United States knocking down your door, and there’s only one thing they want. You.”
But Nachman’s words were drowned out by the screeching of jets overhead and the awesome sound of a 105-millimeter howitzer blowing holes in the planet.
Tony started to put on his uniform. He was having a little trouble making his legs work.
“Wait!” said Nachman. “You can’t wear that! Everyone will know who you are. You need a disguise.”
Just then Scar came into the room, pushing the longhaired American ahead of him. “He was trying to run off,” said Scar. “I thought maybe he knew something.”
“No sabe nada! I’m a fuckin’ hippie, man!”
“You’re an American,” said Nachman. “Your goddamn army is blowing the shit out of this country.”
“Like, I’m highly aware of that, dude. I was just tryin’ to get the fuck out of Dodge.”
“First, give the General your clothes.”
The flash of a nearby explosion illuminated Tony in his red silk underwear.
“Okay,” said the American reluctantly as he stripped off his Bermuda shorts, “but what am I gonna wear?”
“Put on the General’s uniform.”
“I don’t know, man. That could be unwise.”
“I can’t find my ribbons,” said Tony.
“We don’t have time for that,” said Nachman. “You got to get dressed and out of here—now!”
The men rushed outside, cursing Dr. Demos, who had taken the Mercedes, along with a suitcase of cash that Tony kept in case of emergency. The only car left in the lot was a tiny white Hyundai covered with bumper stickers. Save the Whales. Visualize World Peace. Onward Through the Fog.
“See if the keys are in your pocket,” said Nachman.
Tony found the keys in the Bermuda shorts just as the American came racing out of the whorehouse, wearing Tony’s uniform. “Hey, don’t steal the car, dude!”
“It’s not stealing,” said Tony. “It’s war.”
“But it’s still my car!”
“And it stinks,” said Nachman as he got into the driver’s seat, which was draped with a seat cover of wooden beads. “Tony, roll down the window.”
“What about me, Chief?” asked Scar.
“We’ll meet at La Playita,” said Nachman.
“No, they’ll know about that,” said Tony. “Our friends will help us. Check with Señora Morales—she’ll know where we are.”
Nachman spun the Hyundai onto the highway. “I should have guessed that they would wait for the full moon,” he said. The city was in a yellow twilight of fires and tracer bullets. The air churned with half-seen aircraft. Noise fell on them like an avalanche.
“My God—look!” cried Nachman. All around them, paratroopers were landing and pulling in their billowing parachutes, and above them the sky was filled with thousands more. The undersides of the silken chutes glowed from the reflected explosions.
Nachman swerved and jammed the car into reverse. “Tony, pull your hat down!” The paratroopers were close enough for Tony to see the camouflage on their faces. He crammed the Yankees hat down over his eyes.
Nachman drove through the luminous night without his headlights. When they arrived on the airport highway leading out of town, they saw people scattering everywhere, racing for home or looking for cover. Nachman navigated through the disoriented mob. Cars passed indiscriminately on both sides of the highway. Tony had never seen such madness.
“Look—they’re fighting back!” Tony cried excitedly. An antiaircraft battery fired into the sky from the barracks at Tinajitas, on a hilltop above the Río Curundú. “The men are still with me!”
Nachman shook his head in soldierly admiration. Tracers flew out of the fort like a fireworks display.
“Do you want to go up there and give the men some courage?” asked Nachman. “They need leadership.”
“As an officer, I agree,” said Tony. “On the other hand, I am also the leader of the country. I think my first duty is to protect myself.”
Above them, the immense black shadow of an aircraft Tony had never seen before suddenly darted into view and then roared low overhead like a passing Death Star. In its wake, the mountain flew into the air in a blinding red-orange flash. Everything was gone—like that! The armory ignited in a secondary explosion. The guts of his defense! Gone!
“Jesus,” Tony muttered.
Nachman drove quietly through the chaos.
Ahead of them was a queer sight—the baseball stadium was filled with people in the stands and on the field. They were staring into the sky, watching the war. Whenever a new explosion shook the fundament, they cheered.
“They think they’re at a rock concert,” said Nachman. “It’s crazy, completely fucking crazy.”
“They’re cheering for the Americans,” Tony said glumly.
“Maybe you better lie down in the backseat.”
FATHER JORGE WAS awakened by what sounded like surf crashing against the walls of Our Lady of Fatima. He sat upright in a panic. A tidal wave? he wondered. But then he heard the sound of the helicopter hovering directly overhead. He threw open the window and looked outside. The backwash from the helicopter blades blew the curtains off his wall.
It was midnight, and the rest of Chorrillo had never gone to bed. The apartments across the street were brightly lit. Father Jorge could see the silhouettes of his neighbors standing on their balconies. They were looking into the sky and waving and shouting, but their words were drowned out by the powerful mechanical drone. Then came an even louder sound, the accented voice of an American soldier broadcasting in Spanish from an immense amplifier on Ancón Hill. “Soldiers in the Comandancia! You must surrender! We have you surrounded.”
There was no answer until the defiant sound of a machine gun erupted from the Comandancia. The helicopter abruptly swerved out of the line of fire. Instantly three aircraft converged on the Comandancia from different angles, firing rockets into the center of the structure. Father Jorge had never seen anything so sudden and frightening—and exciting. Then the lights of the city abruptly went out.
Father Jorge groped in the dark for his clothes and sandals. By the time he was dressed he could see that dozens of refugees were already headed toward the parish, many of them carrying children. He rushed downstairs to let them in.
Nuns entered the sanctuary in bathrobes and immediately set to work attending to shrieking babies. The orphans from the parish house wandered around in their pajamas, wearing dizzy expressions of amazement. When Father Jorge opened the patio door another river of people flowed inside.
“Why are you coming here?” he asked.
“The gringo soldiers told us to come,” a woman in a flowered housecoat said.
Father Jorge muttered a quick prayer and then stumbled into the kitchen. Two harried nuns were making coffee and tamarind tea by candlelight. “Sisters, have we enough food for these people?” he asked.
“We don’t even have enough water, Father,” one of them replied. “The utilities are dead. We have no milk for the children. And we were supposed to go to the market this morning, so the pantry is virtually empty.”
An explosion rattled the walls and sent spices flying off the shelves. Father Jorge heard screaming coming from everywhere in the parish complex—from the orphanage, the dining room, the sanctuary, the basketball court, the home for the elderly—hundreds of voices from every room and corner. He pushed his way through the frantic hordes. All around, mothers were crying out, seeking their lost children. Elderly people vomited in panic. Fear was transforming itself into illness and passing through the crowd in a sudden contagion.
“Father, come here!” a voice cried. “There are wounded people here!”
The priest pressed his way toward the jammed patio between the orphanage and the sanctuary. Overhead the voice in the helicopter was again calling for surrender. Father Jorge could make out the shapes of hundreds—perhaps thousands—more people massed outside in the street, pushing to get in. The confusion was multiplied many times by the darkness. Near his left ear a match was struck. Terrified faces stared at him, looking for him to tell them what to do. At his feet there was the body of an old man whom Father Jorge knew as a beggar he often encountered outside the Economic Café. The front of his shirt was soaked in blood, which appeared black and full of bubbles.
“The gringos have killed him,” someone said.
“But I’m not dead!” the beggar protested.
“No, no, it was the Digbats who killed him,” another person said. “They’re in the streets, everywhere, firing into our apartments. It’s crazy! No one is safe out there.”
“I’m not dead!”
“Take him into the dining room,” Father Jorge said. “It will serve as our hospital.”
He started to follow them, but he noticed a little girl with a red bow in her hair.
“Renata, where’s your mother?” he asked. Even in the dimness he could see that she was pale and frightened. She looked at him but couldn’t respond. “Have you seen her?” he asked.
She shook her head no.
“Do you think she may be looking for you?”
Renata burst into tears and clung to Father Jorge’s side.
“Don’t worry, little one, I’ll find her for you,” he said.
He knew it was wrong to leave the parish when so many depended on him, but he couldn’t do otherwise. He was drawn by a force he couldn’t resist and hesitated to name. The streets were filled with a strange yellow light. The sound of small arms and machine-gun fire erupted nearby. He heard glass breaking and footsteps skittering over the cobblestones. A huge flash suddenly turned the world into a yellow afternoon, and then it went dark again—even darker, it seemed. Father Jorge blindly pushed his way through the tide of refugees who were coming to the parish from all directions. Some of them looked at him as if he were mad. “They’re killing people, Father! Where are you going?” But he scarcely heard them. He ran through the shadows calling Gloria’s name.
He could smell the fire in Mariners Street even before he saw it. There was a bright glow coming from one of the apartments. The fire had gotten onto the balcony and was creeping along the sagging timbers. For a moment, it seemed to rest there, faltering, but suddenly another flame appeared in the upper story of the apartment building next door. There was nothing to stop it now. Chorrillo was made of matchsticks. Glimmering cinders flew into the air—tiny emissaries of destruction.
Voices inside the apartments cried out for help, but Father Jorge could not stop for them. People were dragging their belongings into the street. Two men were absurdly trying to shove a piano through a doorway. The people trapped behind them were screaming in terror and rage. The strangeness was so powerful that he was not even sure which entrance led to Gloria’s apartment, but when he stumbled into a doorway, he recognized the broken bicycle in the ruined foyer. He tripped on the missing steps and vaguely registered that he had cut himself somehow. But he could think of nothing else but her.
Her door was open. Glass from the windows lay scattered all over the floor and the wall was pocked with bullet holes. The Christmas tree had been knocked to the floor, its ornaments strewn around the room. He looked in the closet. She was nowhere. He ran back into the smoke-filled hallway and stumbled downstairs into the blazing street.
She must be looking for Renata at the convent school, down by the bay on Avenida de los Poetas. Father Jorge ran through the dark street where the fire had not yet arrived. There were television sets and odd appliances lying around that people had tried to carry with them but then had jettisoned in the confusion.
Ahead of him the shadows moved. A figure stepped forth, and then a dozen more. The priest could see the darker outlines of their weapons.
“Who are you?” The voice was very young.
Father Jorge wanted to rush on past them, but there was something predatory and taunting in the way they held themselves, like a pack of wolves. He identified himself and slowed down but decided that stopping altogether was dangerous.
They demanded his money. He was surprised to find that he had a few dollars in his pocket, which he tossed onto the street.
“Are you really a priest?” one of them asked. The tone of his voice was insistent, not curious. “Stop, I want to talk to you.”
Father Jorge kept walking.
“Are you a priest?” the boy repeated.
“I said I was.”
“Am I going to hell, Father?”
Father Jorge stopped. He looked at the boy. In the light of the fires and the moon it was difficult to tell how old he was, but he looked no more than fifteen. No facial hair. Still some baby fat in his features. His youth served only to make him more menacing. Father Jorge asked the boy his name.
“You don’t need to know my name, Father. Just answer my question.”
“The answer is yes.”
Father Jorge heard them all giggling like children as he hurried away.
The convent school was closed. The windows had been broken and the school vandalized. Father Jorge thought he heard some noise or movement inside. He pushed the broken casement of a shot-out window and the entire structure collapsed into one of the schoolrooms. He stepped into the room and again called Gloria’s name.
Every room appeared to be empty, yet the chapel was still lit with candles. Father Jorge took one of the candelabra and walked through the wrecked hallway. Then he heard something quite distinct and he went into the small gymnasium.
It wasn’t easy to see beyond the glow of candlelight, but he made out two figures on the bleachers.
“Gloria?”
“Is that you, Father?” It was Teo’s voice.
He was sitting on a bleacher. Gloria was lying against him. She seemed to be staring at him, but when he could see her more clearly he realized that her eyes were fixed and no longer full of questions. Teo was holding her bloody head in his lap, like some perverse Pietà. Father Jorge knelt beside her and took her hand, which was already cold as marble.
Teo was stroking her hair and staring into the candlelight in a trance. The Boba Fett doll hung around his neck.
“Who did this?” Father Jorge demanded.
Teo turned his dull eyes toward him, then looked back into the candles. “Does it matter?”
The priest fought an impulse to slap the boy. “How did it happen?” he asked.
“It was just a mistake,” said Teo. Some kind of automatic weapon lay at his side.
“Tell me,” the priest insisted.
“We were doing our business, and she got in the way.”
“You killed her?”
“No, one of the boys. She was running toward us, shouting something. He just shot her. It was a mistake. It was all a big fucking mistake.”
For a moment, Father Jorge hated him. He hated the stupidity, the anger, the craziness of the mob. He hated Teo for being a part of it. Then he realized he was angry at God, not at Teo. It was God who had tempted him with the prospect of an ordinary happy life. Now God had taken that possibility away. He wanted to scream and cry. Instead, he put his hand on Teo’s, which were sticky with his mother’s blood, and the boy fell sobbing into Father Jorge’s embrace.
GENERAL HONEYCUTT entered the command center of the Tunnel to the sound of a great ovation. His officers were cheering and slapping high-fives, along with a contingent of civilians that the general had never seen before.
A huge relief map of Central America dominated the room, with the individual units of American and PDF forces indicated by flags. No one was paying attention to that, however. The real interest was directed to the bank of television monitors on the wall that broadcast the war from low-orbit satellites and high-flying observation aircraft in infrared and with special thermo-sensitive devices. The atmosphere in the room was like that of a sporting event. On one of the monitors there was real-time footage of the wounded soldiers stumbling about in the dark ruins of the Comandancia. The thermal images of the dying men were gradually fading from the screen.
“Resistance is very spotty, General,” said Lieutenant Cheever. “Mainly at the airport. A squad of SEALS got hit when they tried to take out Noriega’s jet. No casualty report yet. Other than that, about a dozen broken legs in the Eighty-second.”
“What about Panamanian casualties?”
“Too early to tell. Some Digbats are shooting up the place.”
“When this settles down, there’ll be hell to pay to get those characters to disarm,” said the general.
“That’s when the new modifications we made to the Sheridans will really show their stuff, General,” said one of the civilians, who wore a beautifully tailored khaki shirt with epaulets and a watch that cost as much as a cruise missile.
“The invasion really does appear to have been a complete surprise,” said Cheever.
“A slam dunk,” said another civilian, who was wearing some kind of safari outfit from L. L. Bean.
“Who are all these people?” the general asked under his breath.
“Industry people,” Cheever replied. “Pentagon sent ’em down. Lockheed, TRW, Northrup, General Dynamics—this is a huge tryout of new products, after all.”
“But these guys aren’t engineers.”
“No, sir.”
The general realized with a start that he was in a roomful of lobbyists.
“We’re particularly proud of our new F-117A stealth fighter,” said a man who therefore would have to be from Northrup. “Absolutely no radar picture at all. Slipped into local airspace like a cat burglar. They never knew what hit ’em.”
“Unfortunately, that aircraft bombed the wrong facility,” said Cheever. “It appears to have struck a school a thousand feet from the air base we targeted.”
“Oh, my God—a school?” the general said.
“We’re trying to get casualty figures now.”
“Pilot error,” the Northrup man said. “Even the best piece of equipment can’t overcome human frailty. But we keep trying!”
“How ’bout them AC-130 SPECTREs?” said the Lockheed representative. “They turned the Comandancia into Swiss cheese in seventeen seconds. I timed it.”
“Terrific success, General,” said the safari suit. “A really great war.”
“Operation Just Cause is not a war,” the general snarled. “It’s not even a proper invasion. It’s a goddamn abduction, and so far it’s been a catastrophic failure. Unless one of you geniuses has a gizmo that will kidnap a foreign leader and extradite him to Miami, then I’ll ask you to keep out of my way.”
General Honeycutt turned and stormed out of the Tunnel, muttering to himself. Thirty years had passed since he’d been in combat, and now, as he came out on the hillside, the actual war lay at his feet, unfolding in front of him in earsplitting splendor. Irregular spats of gunfire erupted in pockets all across the city. Madness was afoot as always in war, and yet the fighting was scheduled to end in forty-five minutes. After that, it was a matter of mopping up, keeping the looters under control, and finding the man who had brought this all down on himself.
“I’ll find you, you moonfaced son of a bitch,” the general vowed. Then he said a quick prayer, asking for forgiveness. He had forgotten how much he loved war.
IN THE MIDDLE of the night, the American ambassador’s car picked its way through the potholes and debris on Avenida Fourth of July. The fires of Chorrillo were still burning, illuminating the entire city in an orange glow and brightly outlining the looming shapes of the office buildings. Christmas decorations—bells and angels and stars—festooned the unlit streetlights.
As he watched Chorrillo burn through the darkened windows of the ambassador’s Lincoln, the Nuncio worried about Father Jorge and silently prayed for him—and all the desperate citizens of that accursed neighborhood. He also wondered what fresh catastrophe would be awaiting him at the nunciature. He steeled himself for the worst.
“It looks bad now, but it’s all cosmetic,” Ambassador Tarpley was saying. “Insurance will cover most of the damage. No doubt my government will provide emergency loans and reparations as well. In a few months, this place’ll look better than ever.”
Tarpley had been a real-estate developer in San Diego, and the Nuncio supposed his assessment was correct. On the other hand, he remembered the dozens of body bags that were laid out in a field outside the gates of Albrook Field when he arrived an hour ago. Death was not a recoverable asset, even for the mighty United States.
Downtown there was a blaring traffic jam. Except for the headlights of the cars and the floodlights that the Americans had established around their positions and the spooky beams of helicopters roaming between the skyscrapers, there were no lights. Despite the fact that it was three o’clock in the morning, people were swarming all over the streets, plodding along under tottering loads of merchandise. Some were wearing five or six layers of clothing, with the tags still attached. The Nuncio watched as looters brazenly sledgehammered shopwindows and loaded grocery carts with cameras, furs, and electronic equipment. Burglar alarms screeched and clanged. A cabdriver waited patiently as a young woman filled his trunk with dresses still on hangers. At a Texaco station, a team of men methodically removed the gasoline pumps. A dozen young boys emerged from a sporting-goods store riding brand-new bicycles and carrying scuba tanks and water skis. Not one of the boys could be older than ten. They must think that the Americans have come to turn them into Americans, the Nuncio decided ungraciously, considering the courtesy the ambassador had extended him and the delirium with which Panama welcomed the invasion. Several times, as the Lincoln stopped in traffic, people had come up to the ambassador’s car and pressed their joyous faces against the tinted glass. Another gang of looters rushed out of a bank and ran right through a nativity scene, knocking over a statue of Joseph in their haste to break into another store. Across the street a shopkeeper with a pistol in his hand nervously watched the thieves, who were also armed. Then the shopkeeper and the looters both noticed the American flag on the Lincoln and they spontaneously burst into applause. The Nuncio thought it was the strangest encounter he had ever seen.
On the corner several soldiers stacked sandbags around a machine gun. Two American military policemen, their faces painted in camouflage, sat in a Humvee at an intersection, listening to the radio and chatting with a pair of schoolgirls as looters paraded by, modeling their new outfits. “It’s a damn disgrace,” said Tarpley, “but my people tell me it’s the best way of defusing resistance. Half the looters are PDF or Digbats, and we’d rather have them out stealing stereos than fighting us. In the meantime, our troops will consolidate control. On balance, it’s less costly in human terms.”
The Nuncio breathed easier when the ambassador’s car turned into the drive of the still-standing nunciature. The residence was completely dark except for candlelight coming from some of the rooms.
“I’ll see you to your door,” said Tarpley.
Sister Sarita answered the knock carrying a kerosene lamp. “Oh, Señor Ambassador! Welcome!” she said in a stage whisper. “And Monseñor—I can see you are so tired from your trip. Let me get Manuelito to help you with your bag.”
“I wish I had a bag, Sister. Unfortunately, it was lost,” the Nuncio said testily.
“We had to put the Nuncio on an air force transport from Miami to get him here,” Tarpley explained. “Somehow, in all the confusion . . .”
“Invading small countries is such a lot of trouble, it’s no wonder that luggage gets lost,” the Nuncio said. “Here, I won’t require your bullet-proof vest any longer.” As he removed the cumbersome object, the Nuncio felt embarrassed and somewhat cowardly for wanting to keep it.
“Remember, Padre, if you hear any news about that rascal’s whereabouts, you must give me a call.”
“I’m flattered to think that the United States of America, with its listening devices and satellite reconnaissance and its army of paid spies, would have any need for the intelligence of a simple man of God.”
“Well, if you actually were a simple man of God, I wouldn’t bother asking,” said the ambassador.
As the ambassador left, the Nuncio followed Sister Sarita into the reception hall. The lamp in the nun’s hand cast spectral shadows onto the walls.
“Is everyone safe?” the Nuncio asked. “Where is Father Jorge? I’ve been—”
“Shhh! Lower your voice, Monseñor.”
Only then did he notice the shapes of bodies splayed out on the floor of the hall and lying on the couches and chairs. “Lord above! What have we here?”
“Narcotraffickers, police torturers, members of Noriega’s death squad, a Basque terrorist group, even the minister of immigration,” said the nun in a hushed tone. “The nunciature is overflowing with them.”
“Señor Ortega?”
“Apparently the gringos found a cocaine laboratory in his office. Also President Solís Palma and the head of the secret police. He climbed over the garden wall about an hour ago.”
“How many are they?”
“Around three hundred,” the nun replied, “and they continue to come. Every hour there is another knock on the door.”
The Nuncio sighed in resignation. Cardinal Falthauser would never believe this.
Fortunately his library remained sacrosanct. Sister Sarita set the lantern on the Nuncio’s desk, beside a pile of mail and newspapers. Despite the circumstances, he was relieved to be back in this comfortable room. He realized how much he was going to miss it when the reckoning came.
He spent an hour sorting through urgent messages from other diplomatic missions, reporting their own distressed situations, and from desperate Panamanians looking for missing family members. Although he was exhausted from travel and confusion, there was no time to rest. Food and bedding for the refugees had to be secured, new quarters found for most of them, medical aid rendered, and then the inevitable report to Cardinal Falthauser written. The Nuncio wished that he had been able to sleep on the bumpy air force transit; it was hard to know when he would be able, in good conscience, to lay his head down again.
At dawn there was a tap on his door, and the Nuncio looked up to see the haggard face of Father Jorge. The two men embraced and then stared at each other wordlessly for a moment. The Nuncio immediately detected that there was something deeply changed in the young man’s expression. For the first time since he had known him, his secretary appeared no longer young. But there was no time to explore this now. “I can’t tell you how worried I was about your safety,” the Nuncio said. “Is everything in the parish destroyed?”
“The entire neighborhood has burnt to the ground,” Father Jorge said mournfully. “And yet somehow the church and the parish buildings escaped damage. There was a small breeze that kept the fire moving west. Had it gone in the other direction, we would have lost it all, but God chose to spare us, apparently. Despite that, the gringos shut the church down and ordered us to stay out of the neighborhood.”
“What happened to the refugees?”
“The Americans set up centers for them at the high school in Balboa. There are thousands of them camped on the football field.”
The Nuncio sat heavily in his library chair. “We’ve got a refugee camp of our own, evidently. I suppose we can put some of them in the convent school, at least until the new government gets a chance to establish itself.”
“But they are seeking sanctuary. I doubt they will want to leave the nunciature.”
“In fact, the nunciature is wherever I say it is. If I wish to extend its province to the convent school, that is within my power. And certainly we cannot support three hundred refugees. We will have to find other embassies willing to accept them. This must be made clear to everyone in the morning.”
“I’ve already spoken to the Cubans and the Nicaraguans,” said Father Jorge. “They’re overwhelmed as well.”
“Then we must turn to the Europeans. Believe me, the Vatican is not going to supplement our meager allotment, no matter how great the catastrophe. At this rate the nuns will be reduced to pilfering the grocery stores like everyone else. We cannot have it.”
“I’ll make some calls right away,” said Father Jorge.
“What about Noriega? Do we have any idea where he is?”
“People say he is in the jungles calling for armed resistance.”
The Nuncio laughed. “More likely he’s in a Colombian whorehouse calling for a whiskey soda.”
“In either case, the borders are sealed, his army is collapsing, even his closest aides are making deals with the prosecutors. He has no one to turn to. I hear the Americans have placed a million-dollar bounty on his head. He’s a cornered rat.”
“And do we have any idea where this cornered rat will turn?”
“His wife and daughters have taken sanctuary in the Cuban embassy.”
“Too obvious. The Americans will be waiting—with their rat traps.” The Nuncio stroked his unshaven chin. “There is, unhappily, a more likely alternative,” said the Nuncio. “He will come here.”
“And what if he does?”
“It’s a diplomatic disaster! We could be stuck with him forever! Remember Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty? He took refuge in the American embassy in Budapest in nineteen forty-eight, and the communists wouldn’t let him out for twenty-three years!”
“But how can we deny Noriega sanctuary if he asks for it?”
“We can’t let it get to that point. We must tell the Americans to put a cordon around the nunciature. Under no circumstances is Noriega to believe this sanctuary is available to him. I can see by your expression that you disapprove of this,” said the Nuncio, acknowledging Father Jorge’s pursed lips. “I know that international standards of diplomacy require us to protect political refugees. But the fact is that the Church does not wish to be involved in political matters, not at all! Unfortunately, everyone in Panama now sees us as an asylum for fugitives. When it was just an occasional political dissident who needed to be out of circulation for a few months—well, that was a different matter. Now we’re housing crooks and terrorists and even assassins. I can guarantee you that the Vatican will be furious! And despite the fact that Noriega is the de facto head of state, he is also a wanted man.”
Father Jorge got up to make his calls. “By the way, Monseñor, what I feel is not disapproval but relief. I’ve never hated a man so completely. I am ashamed to admit it. If he were here, I don’t know how I might behave.”
“Be careful, Father,” the Nuncio said gently. “In my experience, it’s exactly the questions we don’t wish to face about ourselves that God likes to pose.”
CITIZENS OF PANAMA! Join me in resisting the Yanqui invader! Rise up and kill the enemy! A vast army of resistance is forming. Join with your neighbors and the patriots of Panama!” Tony’s dim, scratchy voice played across the airwaves of a pirate radio station on the other end of the phone line. “Together we will drive the gringos back into the canal and reclaim our country. Follow me! In the names of Bolívar, Guevara, Sandino, Villa, Martí—resist the imperialist! I salute you! This is your maximum leader, Manuel Antonio Noriega, signing off on Radio Free Panama!”
“Tony, would you like another California roll?” asked Mrs. Escobar. She was standing beside the pool with a platter of sushi when Tony hung up the phone. In the background Elvis Presley was singing “Blue Christmas” on the stereo.
Tony helped himself.
“You don’t think they can track the call, do you?” asked Mrs. Escobar.
“They need at least three minutes,” Tony told her authoritatively, pleased to be able to display his technical expertise.
“They don’t know who they’re dealing with, do they?” she said admiringly.
Tony was a bit alarmed by the fact that Mrs. Escobar was so young and beautiful and yet he was unmoved by her. The tension must be getting to him. Here he was in hiding, with a million-dollar bounty on his head and thousands of American soldiers hunting for him, and all he could think of was Carmen. Carmen Carmen Carmen. In all likelihood he would never see her again. She was probably lying in the sun in Miami Beach with her nose in a book, not giving him another thought. He had come so close to real love—or at least he thought he had. Carmen had saved his life, but she had done it more out of pity than love. Or out of obligation. Or whimsy. Who knew why women did what they did? Now he would never know. But at the time Tony had thought it was love. It felt like love might feel. And having experienced that feeling, even if it was a one-sided illusion, he could think of nothing else.
Scar had been listening to Tony’s broadcast with an excited look in his eye. As soon as Mrs. Escobar returned to her chaise longue and began coating her long brown legs with cocoa butter, Scar leaned over and whispered eagerly, “Is that what we’re gonna do, Chief? Go to the jungles and fight the gringos?” He clapped his hand over his heart. “All my life, this has been my dream! You only have to say the word and I am at your side!”
Tony looked at him wearily and took another sip of his drink. Mrs. Escobar made a clever little concoction of rum and crème de mocha in a coconut shell. Pablo called it a Poison Pussy. Pablo was currently floating in the pool like a small island.
At first the sound of diesel engines did not cause alarm in the poolside coterie, but suddenly the clatter of boots caused Tony to leap out of his deck chair. “How do I get out of here?” he cried.
Mrs. Escobar motioned him toward the cabaña. Tony and Scar ran inside and hid behind the bar, but of course it was the most obvious place imaginable.
There was a deafening pounding, which Tony recognized as the sound of the front door being battered down. Then a Blackhawk helicopter leapt above the house out of nowhere; it seemed to have sprung out of the grass like a jaguar.
“What are we going to do?” Tony asked frantically.
“Go over the fence?” said Scar.
“They’ll shoot me as soon as I show myself. Besides, it’s too high.”
“We can fight it out.”
“Your Uzi versus the American army?”
Tony heard the door give way. The soldiers were racing through the house now. Scar made a motion and then dashed toward a pair of garbage cans in an alcove behind an acacia tree. Tony paused for a millisecond, then raced to the other can, clambering into it and placing the aluminum top on his head like a Chinese hat. He scrunched himself into as small a space as possible. The can was already partially filled with kitty litter and shrimp shells, and the top would not quite close. He could just see out a crack as the soldiers broke open the French doors and spilled onto the patio—about twenty of them, wearing armored suits and futuristic headgear and carrying weapons that Tony had never seen before. They looked like visitors from the twenty-second century.
He noticed that Mrs. Escobar had taken off her bikini top and was painting her toenails on the chaise longue. You had to admire that woman.
The soldiers stumbled to a breathless halt. “We are American soldiers,” the platoon leader said in halting Spanish.
Mrs. Escobar looked up blankly. “Yes, you are.”
The soldiers stared at her for a moment, taking in her terrific breasts. She went back to painting her nails.
“We are looking for General Noriega.”
“Yes, I know,” said Mrs. Escobar.
“Is he here?”
“Do you see him? Then he’s not here.”
“Who’s that?”
Pablo waved lazily.
The platoon leader motioned for his men to fan out and search the area. Tony stopped breathing. The soldiers followed the barrels of their weapons in different directions, poking into the cabaña and the garden and the back side of the house. One of them fired into the dense foliage of an overhanging guayacan tree, spewing branches and the remnants of a squirrel nest into the sky and prompting a furious burst of curses from Mrs. Escobar. Tony suddenly got smaller. The lid of the trash can closed. He shut his eyes and crossed his fingers and began to pray.
“Nothing?” said the platoon leader’s voice.
“Zip. Nada.”
“Okay,” said the platoon leader. “But we’ll be watching. First sign of him, we may drop a bomb on this place. Comprende?”
“I’m sending you a bill for my door,” said Mrs. Escobar.
Tony sat in the garbage and a pool of his own urine for another six hours, waiting for dark. There was a nearly constant whapping of helicopters passing overhead. Finally the lid was lifted and Tony looked up at Pablo Escobar. “This is it, Tony,” said Escobar. “You got lucky. Now you got to get gone. Jesus, what a smell.”
“Are you sure they’ve left?” Tony crawled out of the garbage, casting an envious look at Scar, whose can had nothing but paper trash in it.
“The street is blocked at both ends,” said Escobar. “Look, don’t ask me to do anything else. You already brought too much trouble on my house.”
“But the Yanquis are everywhere!”
“I’ve thought about this before,” said Escobar. “There’s a manhole in the street. I don’t know where it goes, but it may be your only chance.”
“Be careful, Tony,” Mrs. Escobar whispered.
Tony and Scar crept through the house and the shattered doorway, which the servants had already begun to repair. Outside, they hid in the shrubbery while a helicopter passed overhead, shining its theatrical searchlight through the treetops. Beyond the gate was an old cobblestone street bathed in shadows. Barricades blocked either end of the street. Less than fifty feet away soldiers were talking to one another. One of them stood in front of the rearview mirror of a Humvee, applying a fresh coat of camouflage to his face.
“There it is,” Scar whispered.
Tony could just make out the darker circle in the shadows, like a puddle of oil in the street.
“Wait for me to open it,” said Scar. He crawled into the street, struggled with the manhole cover, then suddenly rolled back into the shrubbery as a Humvee at one end of the block started up and filled the street with its headlights. The soldiers were coming directly at them. Tony and Scar squeezed against each other. Scar clicked off the safety on his Uzi.
Clink, clink! The Humvee rolled over the half-opened manhole. But the soldiers in it did not seem to notice. They were listening to a report over their radio. “Roger, confirm the capture of General Noriega at twenty-two hundred hours,” the radio said.
“But that’s not possible,” said Scar as the vehicle passed.
“Of course not.”
The men stood there for a moment. “It must be that American in the whorehouse,” said Tony. “They’ve captured one of their own people!” He began laughing out loud.
“Shh, Chief. I don’t think they’ll be fooled for very long.”
Scar wrestled the cover off the manhole, then insisted that Tony enter first so he could close the lid behind them. Tony balked. It was utter blackness down there. A light, funky breeze from the sewer blew into his face. Tony already smelled so bad himself that this new degradation seemed foreordained. He—who had once been so mighty! so charmed!—was being dragged back into the gutters whence he came. He placed a foot on the rusted ladder and began his descent. Every step echoed in the darkness. He sensed water somewhere below, but it was impossible to gauge dimensions. He looked up and saw stars glimmering in the sky, as bright as they might be if he were looking through a telescope. He was leaving the surface of the planet for some new chthonic existence in the netherworld. When Scar pulled the cover of the manhole back in place, even that little circle of light was snapped out. Now there was nothing. Foul oblivion.
And sewage. Tony felt the liquid rushing into his tennis shoes. He drew his foot back and clung to the rungs of the ladder. Mixed into the sewage smells was some ammoniacal odor that cut through his sinuses like a switchblade. He wanted to cry out in despair, but he was so numbed by fear and disgust and the shock of the smell that he couldn’t speak. He was also gripped by a sudden chill. Plus he was becoming aware of a high-pitched squeaking noise that he desperately wanted not to identify.
“Chief, keep going. I don’t want to step on you.”
Tony drew a short breath, then stuck his foot back into the sewage. He did not feel the bottom.
“We can’t just stay here,” said Scar several minutes later.
Oh, to hell with it. Tony let go. The sewage was not as deep as he had feared—up to his crotch, no more. He waded a few cautious steps, waving his hands in front of his face as he groped for a wall. Every breath felt like acid down his throat. Moreover, the squeaking was hard to ignore. Tony sensed motion all around him. He heard Scar drop into the water behind him.
“Chief?”
“I’m here,” said Tony. “Have you got a match?”
A few seconds later, Scar struck a match. A thousand beady bat eyes caught the reflection.
Scar screamed. The match died in the gutter breeze.
“Stop that,” Tony commanded.
Scar choked and coughed.
“Apparently we’re at an intersection,” said Tony. “There are four directions. How many more matches do you have?”
Pause. “Three.”
Strangely enough, Tony was beginning to feel resourceful. “We want to head toward Río Abajo. Nachman will meet us there.”
“Gee, Chief, that’s miles away, and I don’t even know what direction we’re facing.”
“This way is west,” said Tony. “At least we’re safe here. All we have to do is keep walking.”
He turned into the flurry of wings and began to slog through the turbid liquid.