The Seeds of Fiction (39 page)

‘Perhaps,' Graham replied.

After ten months in the hands of the FPL guerrillas, the life of South African ambassador Gardner Dunn seemed lost. It was, Graham noted, eerily similar
to the human tragedy he had written about in
The Honorary Consul —
almost like life imitating art. Kidnapping had become a thriving industry for the Salvadorean guerrillas. Ransom money from the rich was needed to make war on them. Unknown to us at the time, a fund had been set up by friends of the hapless Dunn in both South Africa and El Salvador to try to meet the ransom conditions. The guerrillas were demanding an incredible $20 million and the publication in sixty-five languages in 110 countries of their manifesto.

They were also demanding that El Salvador's ruling
junta
sever diplomatic ties with South Africa, Israel and Chile. Ironically, on 28 November 1979, the day ten young guerrillas had seized Dunn as he left the South African embassy in San Salvador, the
junta,
which had been in power only six weeks, was actually in the process of severing diplomatic relations with Pretoria and Dunn was about to retire from a long diplomatic career.

For three days we had been waiting in Panama City for the rendezvous. We assumed it would happen in a safe house, perhaps outside the city. Graham thought it wouldn't entail blindfolds and that sort of rubbish, because he could be trusted. However, extreme precautions would still have to be taken in meeting with the most wanted and active guerrilla leader in all of Latin America, a man who had been seldom seen and we suspected had a large price on his head — dead or alive — by the Salvadorean and perhaps American intelligence agencies.

‘It's so boring waiting,' Graham repeated over and over. We also had a date at some point in Managua, so we decided to go ahead and plan that trip. Besides seeing revolutionary Nicaragua, Graham wanted to visit Belize again and discuss with Premier George Price the status of its independence from Great Britain. Graham had recently written a letter to
The Times
stating his distrust of the Guatemalan military, which he feared might gobble up their little neighbour once Britain pulled out. Nor did he have much confidence in British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who, Graham believed, just wanted to dump Belize, even if it was into the lap of the Guatemalan military.

On Friday morning, as we waited for Chuchu to arrive, Graham read aloud his horoscope in the
Miami Herald.
He'd had breakfast alone in his room, reading the proofs of
The Letters of Evelyn Waugh,
a 664-page book edited by Mark Amory, a well-known author and journalist. I tapped on his door and handed him the
Herald.
He chuckled as he read out loud. ‘Breakthrough occurs — green light flashes for new project, adventure.' Graham was a Libra, born on 2 October 1904. He marvelled at the forecast and read on. ‘Take cold plunge into future; let go of imagined security blanket!' ‘Well,' he sniffed, ‘superstitious I am, but I've never had need of a security blanket. It's the opposite with me.' The
Herald
's horoscope had been prepared by Sydney
Omarr, a syndicated columnist. Laughing at the name, Graham mused, ‘I wonder if our Omar didn't have something to do with this.'

Our Omar could indeed make things happen. My horoscope was even more intriguing. ‘Time is on your side. Know it and play waiting game. See places, people in realistic light. Scenario abounds with clandestine arrangements, mystery, temporary seclusion and romance …' My editors at
Time
would have been impressed, since I was in Panama on the off-chance Graham's presence would produce a story.

We spent the morning with Chuchu rummaging about the waterfront market expecting to make contact at any moment. Knowing Omar's enjoyment of pranks, we half expected him to arrange the ‘contact' as they do in the movies, complete with secret passwords.

Several
curanderas
(healers) pointed out the merits of their herbs, and one began to tease Graham, proclaiming that a certain plant possessed just the right rejuvenating qualities for him. Chuchu, our womanizing Marxist, insisted that the
curandera
was right and that her concoction was known for its aphrodisiac power, which ensured that a man of a hundred could enjoy sex. Graham, his hands folded behind his back as if not trusting them with the medicinal plants, laughed and tactfully changed the subject. Pointing to black vultures perched on nearby wharf pilings, ‘I can't stand those horrible creatures,' he said. Chuchu suggested that instead of aphrodisiacs we seek an antidote for his fear of vultures.

The evening before we were supposed to depart to Managua we went to meet Omar at Rory Gonzalez's house at Calle Cincuenta for a small party. One of the visitors that evening was the General's oldest daughter, Carmen Alicia, who was studying to be a dentist. Looking very prim and proper in a school-style blazer, she came in and kissed her father, who was obviously very proud of her. She shook hands with each of us and left. Another guest was Omar's pretty former secretary who arrived with their baby daughter, only a few months old. ‘When I can communicate with her [the baby],' Omar joked to the distress of his mother, ‘I won't need you.' She spoke excellent English and engaged Graham in conversation. ‘What will happen to our child if something happens to the General?' she asked.

‘Nothing to worry about,' Graham said.

Graham, who was seemingly immune to the effects of alcohol, had been handed a special edition of Black Label scotch dubbed ‘Swing' by the General. Graham looked at the bottle and suggested ‘swig' was a more appropriate name. The General and I were drinking champagne, a gift, someone mentioned, from Tony Noriega. The General was wearing sandals and a sports shirt. He had come out of his rustic retreat at Coclesito just to see Graham.

The mood was convivial, and there was plenty of laughter. At this point we
were all getting a little drunk. Close to midnight we sat down to a Chinese takeaway, and after dinner the General switched to cognac.

Omar asked Graham about the characters in his book,
Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party,
but the plot was just a little too foreign for him. We settled it by saying it was just like our party but set in Switzerland. The conversation moved on to poetry, prose, philosophy and politics. There was an especially emotional discussion on what would happen to the region if Ronald Reagan won the US presidency. ‘Carter listened and understood us. Reagan will not try and understand us if he is elected,' Torrijos said. ‘Without trying to be an election prophet, these elections will be won by Carter by a close margin, but I would prefer Reagan emotionally as it would allow me to put my spurs on again and see if he is as
macho
as he claims to be.'

Concerning the principal purpose of Graham's visit to Panama, the General advised us to put off our trip to Managua for a day as he was sure the Salvadorean guerrillas, despite the delays we had encountered, wanted to talk with Graham. He added that representatives of the five guerrilla groups were at that very moment holding a unity meeting in Panama City. By now we were alone with the General; it was already early morning. He was stretched out on the sofa, his eyes closing.

Buenas noches, mi General,'
we each said and he offered his hand, unable to rise. He was sound asleep before we left the house.

The lobby of the Continental Hotel was empty, and only a few dedicated gamblers remained in the casino. ‘Let's have a nightcap,' Graham suggested. He appeared astoundingly fresh, displaying no sign of weariness. He wanted to discuss our remarkable evening with the General. It was his habit. No matter how late or liquid an evening had been he liked to go over the day's activities in case he had missed something. It was a sort of end-of-the-night debriefing. When he returned to his room, he told me, he usually wrote up a few notes.

Later that afternoon as we watched the elephants there was a sharp knock on the door of Graham's hotel suite. We looked at each other. It couldn't be Chuchu; he normally called from the lobby before he came up. There was a second sharp knock, full of authority. I went to the door. I glanced at my watch. It was 5.45 p.m. I opened the door. A small nondescript man and a young woman stood in the hallway waiting. The man, his face the texture of old leather, peered at me through rimless spectacles. Only recently I had seen a photograph of the man, but even without seeing his picture I sensed that I would have known him. He was the legendary Salvadorean revolutionary, Salvador Cayetano Carpio, code-named Marcial. Cayetano was a tough ideologue of the left who believed in the theory of prolonged popular war. He was widely regarded as El Salvador's Ho Chi Minh. The unsmiling young woman, obviously a guerrilla herself, turned and left without a word.

I welcomed him, introduced myself and Señor Graham Greene, the celebrated English author. Cayetano sat on the sofa, his small feet dangling. He had been a baker as a young man and entered politics through El Salvador's bakers' union. He was one of the most successful guerrilla leaders in Central America, an almost mythical figure, but one would hardly have guessed it from seeing him in Graham's hotel room. Maybe it was the spectacles, but Cayetano looked more like a kindly grandfather with an air of wanting to please. He appeared much older than his reported age of sixty-one. Sitting in a chair opposite him, Graham had become suddenly brittle, all business. He leaned forward just a little menacingly, like a wound-up clock or an over-alert MI6 officer.

I told Cayetano that Graham had covered guerrilla wars elsewhere, and I mentioned Indochina, the Malay Emergency and Kenya during the Mau-Mau uprising.

Graham became irritated by the direction the introduction was taking. ‘I'm not a reporter,' he snapped.

His annoyance was obvious, but Marcial's expression didn't change. There was not even a twitch in his sagging cheeks.

‘I am a reporter,' I said and explained that Mr Greene was not. Then I went on to tell Marcial that I would not be taking part in any formal talks or negotiations but that Mr Greene would. I was interested in a story and wished to interview him at some later date.

‘Yes,' Cayetano said, adding that he very much wanted to talk to me. I was excited by the prospect of an interview. I had a lot of questions about El Salvador's guerrilla war.

As we sat there I wondered whether Graham was actually angry at the man. The day before, Graham had read a bullying ‘interview' with Ambassador Dunn, which had ostensibly been conducted in a ‘people's prison' somewhere in El Salvador. The interview was published in the 14 February 1980 English-language edition of the Cuban Communist Party daily,
Granma.
The pain of it had deeply affected Graham. He had let the paper drop to the floor, declaring angrily, ‘Abominable, abominable.' His face twisted in disgust. ‘I'll never read that newspaper again. This is filthy treatment of anyone who is obviously sick.'

The
Granma
article was accompanied by a photograph of Ambassador Dunn lying in bed with a tape-recorder thrust next to his face. The caption read: ‘Dunn is a veteran officer of the Pretoria intelligence service in Central America.' The interviewer was the Mexican newsman Mario Menéndez. He was a descendant from an old Mérida newspaper family, a leftist who in the 1960s had provided me with photographs of Latin American guerrilla leaders for
Time
and
Life en Español.
Menéndez had interviewed most of those guerrilla chieftains in the mountains of Central America and Venezuela. He had since
moved to Havana and was reporting for
Granma.
He had written a whole series on El Salvador. Despite his other attributes he was not a sensitive interviewer, nor was he a doctor. Menéndez's opinion, expressed in the Dunn interview article, was that ‘ He [Dunn] thought that by playing sick he might be able to exert psychological pressure on his captors through the press. So he refused to get out of bed. The content of his statements, the tone of his voice and his cynical laugh before the tape-recorder revealed him to be the individual described by South Africa's Freedom Fighters.'

Menéndez grudgingly reported that Dunn had withstood the verbal attacks of his inquisitor, who had blamed him for his government's sins. ‘Why don't you speak, Mr Dunn?' the interviewer asked. ‘Once again, the cynical laugh. Then Dunn said, “The problem is that people don't understand my country's government”‘ Despite the obvious bullying by the interviewer, Dunn struck a note not unlike a Greene character in one of his human tragedies. ‘Look, let's get something straight,' Dunn was quoted as saying with a touch of finality and defiance. ‘I have consciously served the government of South Africa; I identify with its apartheid policy; and I don't care what they do to me.'

Suddenly, there was another knock at the hotel room door. I stood and quickly moved to the door. ‘
‘ Quien
es?' (‘Who is it?') I asked.

The voice was muffled by the closed door. All I could understand was that the visitor was on a special assignment for General Torrijos. There was a deep urgency to the voice. I opened the door slowly. A young overweight lieutenant of Panama's National Guard, sweating profusely, burst into the room and stopped short before Marcial. ‘My God,' he exclaimed. ‘I found you!' The old man's face brightened in a fleeting smile of triumph. He had managed to elude the young intelligence officer. Four other Salvadorean guerrilla commandants were waiting downstairs. It was time to talk.

The meeting moved into Graham's bedroom where Cayetano sat at the bedside, separated from the Graham by proofs of
Evelyn Waughs Collected Letters.
The young Panamanian officer was excluded from the session. Marcial asked whether the other guerrilla representatives downstairs could join the meeting with Graham as the guerrillas were discussing a unified command of the five guerrilla factions. This now concerned all of them, and at least one of them spoke English and could act as interpreter. (Out of their historic unity meeting in Panama came the formation of the guerrillas' umbrella group, the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación National, or FMLN). Graham acceded to the request. I closed the door behind the guerrillas and with the young lieutenant waited in the living-room hoping that we would have no unexpected visitors.