Graham Greene’s niece and last secretary, the late Amanda Dennys Saunders, was the first person to encourage me to write this book. She was an inspiration, and I owe dear Amanda, her husband Ron and daughter Lucy much gratitude. Yvonne Cloetta, Graham’s companion, had cheered me on in spite of being a target of malicious attacks and did not live to read the book.
There are many who helped me along the road to telling the story of a man who over the years had become a father figure and to whom I turned for advice, which I treasured. I wish to thank Graham Greene’s Estate, and especially Francis, for permitting me to use my correspondence with his father. As a compulsive note-taker — as was Graham — I recorded the dialogue between Graham and myself for stories, some published and others shelved, but to this day I can recall our journeys together.
There are many I must thank, beginning with our writer son Phillippe, my editor, who deserves credit for making me break with my long-held view that a journalist should not become the story and who weeded out so many distracting details that had overloaded earlier versions of this book. I also thank my son Jean-Bernard, who was privileged to know Graham — and several of the photographs he took during our last visit to Graham appear in this book — and, of course, my wife of fifty years who put up with my bringing dictators into our various homes and courageously faced several of them down.
Professor Richard Greene (no relation) wrote the book Graham Greene: A Life in Letters that is among the best editing of Graham’s correspondence. The late Peter Glenville, although retired, was forthcoming in his interview with me. Haiti’s Foreign Minister, François Benoît, allowed me to photocopy the Ministry’s only remaining copy of Graham Greene Démasqué — a 92-page Haiti Foreign Ministry bulletin that turned to dust in the January 2010 earthquake. Tel Scott of the Havana Post had kept me informed of Graham’s 1954 antics in Havana. Reverend Jim McSwigan, in charge of the Redemptorist Mission Home at Las Matas de Farfán, saved us from dying of thirst on our border trip in January 1965. I would also like to thank the lawyer Sauveur Vaisse for being generous with his time in a Paris interview in 1986.
In Haiti there are so many to whom I am indebted — peasant neighbours, fellow journalists, Haitians of all ranks of society and our extended family. As a journalist I needed to break the heavy hand of Papa Doc’s censors to send my stories out to the world. Among those who took great risks were RCA Cable employees, especially Josseline Bazelais Edline at West Indies Cable, the only international telephone company. My friend the late Albert Silvera, the owner of El Rancho Hotel, kept me informed of Graham movements during his 1954 and 1956 visits. The late Aubelin Jolicoeur was a great asset to my newspaper, the Haiti Sun; he liked to embroider his stories about Graham during his three visits to Haiti but was nevertheless a good witness. My friend Dick Eder of the New York Times was a superb journalist whose story on Graham in Haiti in 1963 was loved by all. Manny Freedman, Foreign Editor of the New York Times, wanted to know whether I had become a guerrilla when I was among the Kamoken denounced to the United Nations Security Council by Papa Doc but accepted my reasoning that a journalist must go to extremes sometimes to get the story. Mambo Lolotte was understanding and showed great kindness in arranging a red cushion and miniature rocking-chair for Graham’s bottle of vodka.
I am indebted to my employers at Time-Life News Service (TLNS), who understood the importance of my close ties to General Omar Torrijos, not only because Panama was a major story but also because of Torrijos’s knowledge of the crisis in Central America. They also knew that my time with Graham Greene produced stories. Editor-in-Chief Hedley Donovan, whose visit with other Time notables to Panama I had to arrange, produced an excellent editorial on South America that is quoted here. John Dinges’s excellent book The Underside of the Torrijos Legacy is recommended for anyone interested in that period. My colleagues who covered the same beat, such as Karen de Young of the Washington Post and Alan Riding of the New York Times, shared the safe house in Managua during the war and were tireless reporters, and their reviews of Getting to Know the General: The Story of an Involvement gave a different perspective of General Omar Torrijos. I would also like to thank my late friend and colleague Gloria Emerson.
Gabriel (Gabo) García Márquez, a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature who believed Graham Greene should also have won the prize, quietly played an important humanitarian role in Central America, unknown to the general public.
Thanks to my London publisher Peter Owen and especially to Simon Smith who welcomed me to their prestigious house.