The Seeds of Fiction (46 page)

Through 1977 Graham continued to struggle with his Panamanian novel. It often seemed that the key to unlocking his writer's block was to remind him of Bocas del Toro, the ancient dilapidated Panamanian banana port of which Graham had read in
The South American Handbook,
‘No tourist ever goes there.' Precisely for that reason he wanted to go there, literally to follow Columbus's footsteps to the ‘Mouths of the Bull'. After several false starts, on his 1980 trip Graham finally got to fly — through a tropical thunderstorm — to Bocas del Toro. He found it a dismal place, with the cats in his decrepit hotel too busy having sex to bother chasing the free-roving rats. He wrote that he had awakened in Bocas del Toro after a long night's discussion with an independent political candidate, an impressive black Panamanian, with a new book in mind. No longer would Omar or Chuchu be characters in the novel, and instead of Panama it would all happen in an imaginary Central American country. A year later not only was the General dead but so was this latest inspiration for a novel.

The first chapter of the initial version that Graham had written in Anacapri did, however, appear as a short story the year following Omar's death, in a publication called
Firebird
and entitled ‘On the Way Back'.

Then, as a tribute to his friendship with the General, Graham decided to write a non-fiction book about that friendship. The book proved also to be a tribute to Chuchu. In
Getting to Know the General
Graham noted, ‘As we drove I told Chuchu of the novel which I was planning, and perhaps that is the reason why it never came to be written beyond the first chapter. To tell a story is much the same as to write it — it is a substitute for the writing.'

Even while in Central America, where war was very real, Graham was seriously preoccupied, even obsessed, by his own war at home. Many an evening would end with his talking of his anxiety and fears about what ‘the scoundrel from Nice with Mafia connections' would do next. He worried aloud about Yvonne and her daughter Martine, and his thoughts were often with them on the faraway Côte d'Azur.

Graham would become uncharacteristically emotional and angry in telling the story of his war. Stoking the fires of controversy and provoking polemics in the exogenous realm were not new to Graham, but this was different. The matter was so serious that he had gone public and was forced, he said, to use his own literary guerrilla tactics.

Graham recounted that Martine had become fed up with the horrible man to whom she was married. She had obtained a divorce as well as custody of their child. (She was pregnant at the time of the divorce with their second child.) ‘But the conditions of the divorce,' Graham explained, ‘restricted Martine to live with her children within a five-mile radius of her angry ex-husband. The injustice of it all was outrageous.'

Graham had called Guy Daniel, the ex-husband, to his small apartment to discuss Martine's rights. Daniel was adamant. She and the two children must remain within the restricted area. Graham claimed that the ex-husband was making all their lives impossible, in fact terrorizing the family. The French police, he said, did nothing. It was then, he said, that he began his own inquiry and learned the depth and pervasiveness of corruption and organized crime in Nice where Martine's ex-husband lived. The family skirmish had turned into a political war that engulfed Nice. One evening in Panama City Graham talked at length about the then-mayor of Nice, Jacques Médicin, and his alleged ties to the ‘Mafia mob', as well as Daniel's purported connection. He was extremely worked up about the lack of recourse and what he termed ‘justice'.

Indeed when Graham read our
Time
cover story (23 November 1981) on South Florida entitled ‘Paradise Lost — Trouble in Paradise' and headlining the fact that Miami had been hit by a hurricane of crime, drugs and refugees, Graham saw a parallel to the underside of the picture-postcard French Riviera city of Nice. In a letter dated 29 November 1981 he wrote:

Congratulations on your story in
Time
about Florida. It reminded me only too uncomfortably of the position here with Nice. As I think you know I have been engaged with my friends in a war which has lasted nearly three years with the criminal
milieu
there. It has involved an Inspecteur Général coming down to Nice from the Ministry of Justice and a Controlleur General from the Ministry of the Interior. A few days ago I was in Paris and we saw the Inspecteur Général of the Police at the Ministry.

He went on to describe the situation in Nice as

a wall formed by corrupt police officers, corrupt magistrates and corrupt
avocats
which it is very difficult to pierce. You mustn't quote this. All the same if your man in Paris wants one day to do a story of Florida in France we can give him lots of material but I must have due warning and have confidence that nothing will be printed which I feel undesirable … I am thinking indeed of writing a book which Max Reinhardt would publish in French and English called like Zola's
J'accuse'

I did as Graham suggested and passed on word to my editors in New York to advise our Paris bureau that Graham was prepared to talk to them about his personal war. Then on 18 February 1982 Graham wrote:

Many thanks for your letter of February 3. As you will have seen
Time
did a small and rather ineffective story I thought but a nice a Dutchman called Van der Veen came to see me. However as a result of his visit I did have one that was rather more important from Madame Le Roux whom perhaps you know lost a daughter who has disappeared probably forever during the war of the Casinos here. She is a valuable ally and a very formidable woman. The counter-attack is taking form now … I shall have to go to Paris in a few days to see my allies.

In May Graham published
J'accuse: The Dark Side of Nice.
The book actually made it to the bookstores on the Riviera, but every copy was purchased and burned. The French courts then banned the book, and Martine's ex-husband won a libel suit of 52,000 francs against Graham and his publisher.

An Englishman attacking the French judicial system was not popular in France. Graham was attacked in some French newspapers. In a page out of the small-world encyclopaedia, Richard Eder, the
New York Times
correspondent whom Graham had met in Port-au-Prince during the Haiti crisis in 1963, had
by now become the
New York Times's
bureau chief in Paris. Eder flew to Antibes, interviewed Graham and filed a story on the troubles Graham termed the ‘criminal
milieu
of Nice. Both Graham and Eder were sued, but the case was eventually dropped.

The war had ballooned into a war of principle, and Graham had unleashed his talent and every other resource at his disposal to fight what he branded as an evil. When Eder asked the 77-year-old author, who had just finished
Monsignor Quixote,
whether he didn't think what he was doing was a parallel to the book's protagonist, a parish priest in Spain, and duelling with windmills, Graham smiled and replied, ‘I wrote a sonnet when I was 20. It was about the peace of old age. Now I find it not so peaceful at all!'
(New York Times,
3 February 1982).

A month earlier Graham decided to send a copy of
Monsignor Quixote,
his book about faith and doubt, to the Mayor of Nice, the notorious Jacques Médecin. In return he received a copy of an expensively printed book entitled
Cuisine niçoise
by Médecin himself. The author thanked Graham for his book and in his dedication stated, ‘To Graham Greene, to whom the title
Cuisine niçoise
keeps a lot of secrets'. ‘
Cuisine niçoise
can have a double meaning and imply more than cooking.

In his letter of 18 February 1982 Graham had also written:

Chuchu rang me up about a week ago from Panama. He says that he knows that Omar was killed by a bomb in the plane but that he couldn't give me the details over the telephone. He is very anxious that I should come back in the summer, but I doubt whether I will be able to. I am not keen on doing so now that Omar has gone and I'm not anxious to lose my life in El Salvador.

P.S. I also wonder whether the war with the
milieu
will allow me to leave Antibes. I can't leave Yvonne on her own to deal with things. My letter to
The Times
[about the situation in Nice] caused a bigger explosion than I had expected and I am rather exhausted with journalists, telephone calls and parlaphone calls. For the moment I wouldn't ask
Time
to do any more about the Antibes story.

By the following month, on 29 March, Graham had changed his mind about the
Time
stringer-correspondent and was in a combative mood, describing him as ‘an awful little man' who had published after a ‘poor piece in
Time
a really nasty piece in
People,
packed with inaccuracies and venom. I long to see him down here because then I will give him a couple of blows on the ears. But I think you might warn your office that he is a thoroughly unreliable reporter who shouldn't be left at large.'

‘Yes, the battle still continues,' he wrote on 30 August,

and it's impossible to make many plans for the summer. I have escaped to England for about ten days and have now started a book on Torrijos called
Getting to Know the General
— a very personal one which I hope will come off. I shall get you to read it in proof if it gets so far. I had read your story about Cuba in the European edition of
Time,
but I enjoyed reading it again. I do think the Reagan administration is badly mishandling Fidel. I get telephone calls occasionally from Chuchu who urges me to return to Panama, but I feel it would be like going to see Hamlet played by an understudy. The other day he told me that there were two Salvadorean guerrillas in Paris who were coming down to see me in Antibes, but I had to tell him I was away that weekend and they never showed up. He also sent Gaetano's [Cayetano's] regards! He's convinced that Omar was killed by a bomb. If that was the case I suppose it was the
junta
in Salvador who were responsible. I'm asking my sister to send you a copy of
J'accuse,
but she is away on holiday at the moment and it will be some time before it arrives. I do wish
Time
magazine wouldn't keep on sending me the appalling Dutchman whom they have in Marseilles. I won't speak to him.

‘Many thanks for the cuttings about Panama,' he wrote on 4 October. ‘I have started a book called
Getting to Know the General
in which the General and Chuchu will be the main characters. If it is ever finished (I have done 15,000 words so far) of course I'll let you see the typescript as you play a part in the story. I hope you won't lose your life in Haiti.' Graham was concerned about the danger of being ‘bumped off' by Interior Minister Dr Roger Lafontant, who opposed my return in 1980 to interview President-for-Life Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier. Reporting from Haiti in subsequent years I took particular care to keep out of the way of Lafontant and other Macoutes.

Then on 7 October Graham reported, ‘I have done more than a quarter of the book about Omar and I will certainly call on your help and criticism if I ever get it finished. I had a telephone call from Nicaragua and old Father Cardenal a few nights back inviting me on behalf of the
junta
to go there. I hedged because I am very busy here and said it might be possible in November but I doubt if it will.'

Still later he announced in a letter dated 22 December that he was returning to Panama on 3 January 1983 and would ‘then go on with Chuchu to Nicaragua. The
junta
are inviting me there. It would be good if there was a chance of your visiting at the same time, but I realize that it is no longer your field of action.'

Chuchu had finally succeeded in persuading Graham to pick up a ticket from the KLM office in Amsterdam that Omar had ordered for him and been held there since his death. Chuchu would not take no for an answer. In January 1983 Graham flew to Panama, and when the pilot announced that they were about to land at the newly renamed Omar Torrijos Herrera International Airport, Graham recalled, he had a somewhat comforted feeling. The fact that the airport, which Omar had rebuilt, now bore his name filled a little of the void. However, when he found he was booked not in the old Continental Hotel but in the plush new Marriot's presidential suite, and had been assigned a member of the Panamanian National Guard's G2 as bodyguard, he wondered what had happened to Omar's proletarian Panama.

Graham was soon to learn that the struggle to fill Torrijos's boots had begun even before his demise. At his death Omar left his youthful former education minister, Aristides Royo, in the presidency and Colonel Florencio Florez as chief of staff of the National Guard. In March 1982 Colonel Florez, a gum-chewing career officer with a reputation for honesty, had been easily shoved aside by a trio that included Deputy Chief of Staff Colonel Rubén Darío Paredes, Intelligence Chief Manuel Noriega and the Guard's secretary-general Colonel Roberto Díaz Herrera. On 30 July 1982, the eve of the first anniversary of Omar's death, Paredes made his move. He replaced President Royo. In resigning the presidency Royo explained to a national television audience that he was suffering from a sore throat. It became a historic removal of a president in Panama in what instantly became known as the
‘gargantazo'—
‘sore-throat coup. With Paredes's nod, Vice-President Ricardo de la Espriella, a former chief executive of Panama's national bank, moved up to the presidency. Behind the scenes Noriega was consolidating his power and combining both the police and National Guard into what became known as the Panama Defense Forces (PDF). The Guardia was in effect turning its back on Omar's promised transition to democracy and popular rule.

Graham liked Ricardo de la Espriella but didn't particularly take to Paredes, who was known as a heavy-footed right-winger and who later proved no match for the more nimble Manuel Noriega (whom Graham didn't like either). Chuchu did not feel it was necessary to fill Graham in on the Byzantine intricacies of the Guardia power play that was now part of the Panamanian landscape. The new leadership, Chuchu said, wanted Graham to go on to Nicaragua and then to Havana to sprinkle a little stardust of friendship. Panama's new strongmen were in need of friends. None of the ambitious Guardia officers, Graham later told me, could hold a candle to Omar. Paredes had moved into Rory's house on Calle Cincuenta and was acting like the new leader.