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| The first thing we revolutionaries lose is our wives. |
Once at LAX, I tagged along with Kuka to the
airline counter. Much to her discomfort, I’d bought a ticket with cash from my
unemployment check. Kuka gave in, and, against her better judgment, she pulled
the forged passport, visa, and press card, from her pack she’d kept for me. I
abandoned the Datsun in the parking lot and we were off.
I usually needed to have extra fortification
just to board a normal flight. The first leg of the journey was to Mexico City
on a normal airliner. Pride kept me from the airport bar and Kuka eased my fear of flying by holding my hand. The flight from there was on a rickety Taca Airliner which warranted more than a shot or two in that it was a sheer horror. Yielding to Kuka’s
supervision forced me to fly dry. I was resigned to certain death by
the time our plane careened into what seemed to be a crash landing approaching
the airstrip.
We were greeted by thick humid air at the
Toncontin Internacional Aeropuerto in Tegucigalpa. Old military C-47s and
C-123s were lined up on the other side of the landing strip from where a few
civilian airliners were docked… well, not docked but parked. From there, we
walked across the dusty tarmac towards the shed that passed for Customs. Kuka
went through the turnstile first to a stand where customs officers waited
like hungry spiders. Several soldiers in pilots’ glasses loitered in the open
air lobby and, though they appeared to be relaxed, I sensed that they were
watching us for reasons other than checking out Kuka’s body.
My passport, forged press card, and visa, were
scrutinized by an intimidating officer in Gucci pilots’ glasses. I supposed the glasses were not Government Issued; those along with this guy’s perfectly tailored uniform.
The officer was also as lean as he was stern. The reflection in his sunglasses
demanded, “¿Maricón, are you man enough to be here?” The fucker would just as
soon castrate me and hang my balls on the wall, than to allow me into his
precious country. It wasn’t much of a hidden fact that this was an observation
grounded in a profound truth. Americans are not welcome in Central America,
even by allies. From what I could see from the airport and the rough landing,
this country was a dump.
“¿Qué va a
hacer en Honduras, Sr. McGee?” Eyes I
couldn’t see masked behind pilot’s glasses were scanning every tic and
hesitation in my reaction to the machismo of official testosterone driven
intimidation. I outweighed the officer by 20lbs and stood a good three inches
taller but sensed it was a bad idea to try to play a macho card in this moment.
All of this was running through my head and I
wasn’t ready to answer questions in Spanish.
“¿Por lo tanto, usted es un periodista, Señor
McGee?” he sneered the words while opening the case of my antique Remington.
I stood nervously, not knowing exactly what he
was being asked but rightly assumed periodista meant journalist. I was about to
answer when Kuka cut-in to explain, “Él no habla español.”
The officer tapped on the desk at my picture on
the passport. It seemed like an eternity, another Tibetan Bardo, before he
handed it back.
He spoke in clear English, “Where are you going
in Honduras?”
Kuka explained that she had a letter, signed
and stamped, from an official important in the government affirming we were
connected.
He waved us through. The other soldiers,
outside the small room that passed as a lobby, observing from behind dark
glasses, undressed Kuka and castrated me. A Volkswagen taxi pulled up, the
driver swiftly loaded our luggage into the front boot with one neat motion,
circled to the driver’s seat, and slammed his door. The soldiers might have
been curious because the luggage amounted to little more than a couple of small
valises, my typewriter, and an aluminum camera case. One soldier was about to
approach.
“Get in quick, don’t look back,” Kuka ordered.
The driver didn’t speed but drove away as
quickly as he could without drawing undue attention. I could hardly bear the
familiar odor of rotten eggs. The soldier walked back to a payphone and dialed
a number as we left.
Kuka gave the driver an address. The driver,
steering wildly through a zig-zag maze of side streets, made sure that if
anyone was following they would have been hard pressed to tail us. He didn’t
talk much… he just drove until he casually glanced back at Kuka and said, “It’s
plan B now, Señorita?”
Kuka gave the driver another address. She put a
hand on my thigh. “Give me your note book.”
She handed it back to me. She had written on an
open page and whispered in my ear as though we were once more lovers, “I’m
going to give him an address. Let him go a couple of blocks and then give him
this one. The phone number is for emergencies only.”
“What, you won’t be with me?”
“Maybe later. He’s with us,” She nodded towards
the driver, “but don’t trust him. Your contact’s name is on the table by the
window. Ask him for his name in English. Burn the note and the page
immediately. If he gives you any other name than that one, don’t go with him
and get out of there any way you can. Call the phone number when you get a
chance. Don’t worry, arrangements have been made.”
“Don’t worry?” was this a Woody Allen flic.
“Are you afraid?”
“Maybe.”
“Fear, respect it,” she assured. “But keep your
wits.”
“I’m okay.”
“You’ll
have several other guides. The Bird Dog’s old but he is the best in the
business, follow his suggestions.”
“Bird Dog? I thought you and I… that we’d be
together.”
“Later, but not now. Honduras is a dangerous
place. We’ve been spotted together. Stay inside. Don’t go anywhere. You will
stand out like a sore thumb as the only gringo on foot if you leave the house.”
“Spotted? How do you know?”
“The soldier, as we left the terminal, is an
officer from the UNO. We always have a plan B.” She was no school marm at this
point.
The driver stopped, she paid the fare, and Kuka
kissed me with a simple peck on the cheek before exiting the cab, “Ciao, Max.”
“What is your name, driver: ¿Cuál es su
nombre?” I asked in tour guidebook Spanish. I knew I’d slaughtered the
pronunciation of cuál.
“Luciano,” he simply nodded, “I speak English.”
He continued driving with his eyes on the rear view mirror.
I gave Luciano the new address as directed and
was dropped off after winding through some more streets, “How much do I owe
you?”
“La Señorita paid your billete,” he said and
then added almost seductively, “but I have a pinta of rum to sell you if you
want… for you, only cinco Lempiras.”
“No thanks,” I was glad that I only had dollars
but I still regretted saying it. I was resigned to trying to stay sober.
As if the driver read my mind, he offered his
services again, “I gladly take dollars.”
“No thanks,” I said out of reflex remembering
Kuka’s warning not to trust him.
I was the only occupant of the safe house. It
was in what would be considered a good neighborhood down there. The fact that
it had a toilet, shower, and a walled-in yard, testified to that. Trucks with
soldiers patrolling could be heard passing by throughout the night. I wondered,
why all the secrecy? Wasn’t Honduras an American ally? A base for Contras?
Perhaps not… not all the contras are allies. Some are enemies worse than the
Sandinistas. I felt more ignorant than ever before. I thought of Kuka and lit a
cigarette, staring out the window into the yard. Yes, I was jealous of Kuka and
felt betrayed and abandoned. I had to let go.
I checked a packet of Lempiras on the table by
the window and looked for a note with my contact’s name. Wondering what the
rate to the dollar was, I found the name mysteriously inside a message
scribbled on the envelope: “Diego.” That was the only name I saw. Okay, if a
pint of rum is five Lempiras, shit that looks like a good rate of exchange. I
played around with Kuka’s admonition, “Stay in the house…” Shit, I concluded, a
pint would never be enough.
I wore, as a prop, one of those
photo-journalist vests with all the pockets. I took out my wallet from the top
pocket. The press-pass in it, even though it was forged, made me feel like a
“somebody”. This kitchen table was a good place to set up for the night and
become the fiction I pretended to be. I spoke into the tape recorder Kuka had
given me saying, “I will write what I see and that is all: who, what, where,
when, and leave out why.”
I was now, by hook or crook, a journalist.
I might as well act like one. I opened the Remington’s case, though I had no
training as a journalist and only a rudimentary grasp of English grammar, it
was worth a try.
I am alive and on an adventure. I’m resigned to
the understanding that nothing I believed or knew before this sojourn would
amount to anything, I typed.
Leaving out the why would prove to be the
hardest part as I typed two or three pages.
I hadn’t even thought about drinking since
boarding the plane until Luciano offered the pint. I couldn’t get tanked up
with rum before the flight. Kuka insisted I stay sober and I was willing to
appease her for the moment… any moment I was with her. Stay inside was Kuka’s
command. I checked the cupboards and under the sink… nothing. I gave up and
took a shower. I sniffed the armpits of my shirt and was grateful I’d stuffed
in a spare pair of trousers, a few changes of underwear and socks, and a
Berlitz Spanish dictionary, into the pack before leaving LAX.
The sun hadn’t risen when I heard the knock. I
opened the door in my jockey briefs. A short stocky man dressed in a Hawaiian
shirt stood there.
“Who are you?” I asked, as instructed but
regardless, I envisioned being taken by the authorities, kidnapped, or otherwise
violated.
“Diego,” the man answered.
Relieved, I relaxed but tensed up after Diego
spoke, “There has been a change in plans. You have enough provisions to keep
you a month.”
“How about cigarettes? And Kuka… what has
happened to her?”
Diego dropped a New York Times (May 31, 1984)
on the table. The front page covered an attempted assassination on Comandante
Cero. Several top commanders and journalists injured or killed in a bomb blast.
“What’s this got to do with Kuka?” then it
dawned on me that there might be more to her than I’d imagined up to this
point. “Where’s La Penca?”
“Don’t worry, she wasn’t there,” Diego assured,
“Stay here. You can get sunlight in the courtyard but don’t… don’t under any
circumstances, don’t go out on the streets. I’ll bring you a carton of smokes.”
“How about some entertainment. I don’t have a
TV or radio. How about a liter of juice… tequila, rum, vodka… even beer?”
That afternoon Diego appeared at the door with
a radio and a box containing a TV.
“Anything else?”
“You mean booze? No.” Diego pointed to the New
York Times that was still on the table, “We’ll see. But you need to be alert.”
I hadn’t heard a word more from Diego about the
bombing at la Penca. I didn’t like the idea of waiting without any way to pass
time without some companionship or distraction from the obsession to drink. I
felt a strong urge to delay Diego’s departure so I tried to strike up a
conversation, “Who do you think planted that bomb, the Sandinistas?
“I would put the Sandinistas last on the list
of suspects.”
“Who would be first?”
“The Somocistas? Had him expelled from ARDE…
one of Robelo’s, maybe CIA. It doesn’t matter. Some of the Miskitos have quit
and it is clear that Pastora is marginalized.” Diego answered sadly and waved,
“Adios. Hang tight a few more days, Max. Changes are everywhere. No one knows
much of anything.”
I watched Diego leave and resigned to isolation.
I knew as much from Kuka’s lectures that ARDE was a loose coalition of Contras
and that at least two thirds were ex-National Guards or mercenaries. Eden
Pastora was a thorn in the sides of those who wished to restore the Somosa
family to power in Managua and had little concern for the Miskito tribes of the
east coast.
The TV had rabbit ear antennae and only one
state run station in Spanish on which I could catch a word here or there that
it was news about the bombing in la Penca. A week passed with no word from
Diego. No booze… nothing but my journal for a companion. I searched the airways
for any English language stations and found a few; one from Costa Rica and one
night I caught a radio talk show from KGO in San Francisco. I remembered
listening to that station as a teen in Spokane. Les Crane and Ira Blue came
through all the way to Spokane on my transistor radio and opened my mind to the
big giant world beyond. I was delighted to hear it break through my exile
twenty years later between waves of static in the middle of the night.
Another week went by and I was running out of
cigarettes. The admonition to stay in the house grew weaker as time and tedium
set in. I began to tear up pages of the New York Times to make cigarette paper
and emptied tobacco from butts into an empty tuna can… just in case. There had
to be a place nearby where I could find cigarettes and booze to help make the
waiting bearable. Nightfall seemed the best time to venture out.
It was quiet and eerily dark and there were no
stores of any kind in the surrounding blocks of the neighborhood. A pickup
truck approached and I instinctually knew to duck behind a wall as it passed.
Several armed soldiers rode in the back where a fifty caliber machine gun was
mounted. It didn’t seem like a good idea to explore any further the
neighborhood of this prison.
I’d gotten up pre-dawn to roll a cigarette from
the tobacco in the tuna can. A tall man, an older American, in a grey crewcut,
sports coat, and chinos came through the gate by the street. I was still
adjusting my eyes to the dark and didn’t see Diego at first. I began putting on
my trousers before I answered the heavy knock at the door.
Diego along with a tall man entered. I stood at
the opened door where, once in the light, I could see that the tall man’s
crewcut was white and the lines on his face were well travelled. He had an aura
of vigor that telegraphed he was one bad hombre that it would be wise not to
fuck with even though he must have been in his late sixties or early seventies.
Diego spoke first on his way to the kitchen,
“Don’t worry, Max, this is the Bird Dog.”
The Bird Dog pulled up a chair at the table,
lit and passed, a cigarette to me. I sat down with him.
“This is what we know about you, Max McGee. You
served in the Navy from ’65 to ’69.” The Bird Dog bluntly began a synopsis of
my life. “No combat experience.”
“Yeh”
“You participated in the November Moratorium in
Frisco with Vietnam Veterans Against the War as soon as you got out.”
“Yeh, who’s we?” I wiped my eyes wondering who
the fuck was this guy.
“Your activities didn’t end there. You were
busted selling acid in the Florida panhandle and got religion after that…
married… graduated from UCSB and from there you belonged to a radical anti-nuke
group and helped organize a sit-in at the Diablo nuke plant. In fact, you were
a radical among radicals.”
“You left out divorced deadbeat dad. Can I have
coffee before we grill?”
Diego was already spooning grounds from a can
into the electric percolator. Ever since reading Dostoyevsky’s account of
facing a firing squad, I had been fascinated with where the mind goes when
faced with fear or obvious danger. Though not before a firing squad, this Bird
Dog was so damned intimidating that my mind had to focus on something. It chose
to focus on the fact that I’d found myself in one of the richest coffee growing
regions of the world and was being served an American blend of bitter crap from
a can. I barely heard the Bird Dog add, “You played the role of a non-political
artist to get the job at Vacaville.”
“Yeh, did you find out I’m circumcised too. I
don’t see how that matters.”
The old man handed over a cup and continued,
“We also know that your press card is bogus.”
“Before I drop dead stunned at what you know,
may I ask again, who’s we?”
Diego handed me a can with lumpy sugar for the
bitter coffee, “Don’t worry, Max. This old man is the Bird Dog. He’s here to
help you,” he said with a sense of awe that was mystifying.
“Yes, I’m here to cover your wise-ass,” he
pulled up a chair next to the bed, “and I wonder how a leftist pinko would use
a ruse to cover a right-wing rag.”
“Kuka arranged that but, technically, I’m still
a journalist, credentials or not. Kuka can vouch for me.”
“Oh, yes, Kuka.” He lit and passed another
cigarette to me as he put out the first one. “You’ve gotten yourself involved
in something much bigger than your pea-brain can handle. But we know you’re a
drunk. It wasn’t your pea-brain that drew you here. No,” he quipped and tapped
the side of his head with a forefinger, “it must have been some other part of
your anatomy because there isn’t much going on up here,”
“I’m here to write what I see. I have no
preconceived notions about…” I recited.
“No, Max,” he smirked, “you’re here because you
had nowhere else to go.”
“What if you’re right? I’m not a journalist
but…what are you getting at?” I didn’t like it that he used the descriptor,
pea-brain, more than once.
“Do you think you could have passed customs
without being vetted, eh?”
“I don’t know about that. I just came to see,”
I reacted, wondering how the man knew so damned much about me. But I tried to
explain nonetheless. “My principles have been challenged, you might say.”
“I might say this… this is what I might say,”
he said as he took the cigarette out of my hand and drew a long pull.
He handed the butt back and continued, “Don’t
give me any shit about principles. The Sandinistas have twelve-year old girls
that can out-fight and out-fox you and they too have principles. Agendas trump
principles in Nicaragua. Either way; both will get you killed, and I’m supposed
to keep you alive.”
I protested. “I’m not here to fight,” I wasn’t
sure if the old man was impatient more so than hostile but, either way, I felt
diminished. When I felt intimidated I usually resorted to wit, and, when wit
failed, what came out of my mouth was empty bravado and snarky sarcasm. “Are
you, CIA? Tell me kind sir, what is it you expect of me?”
“If I was CIA, you’d be dead. Get dressed, I’ll
fill you in where you don’t catch on as we go.”
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