The Seeds of Fiction (60 page)

Graham at the Panama Canal, 1978, with (above) José de Jesús Martínez, known as Chuchu, a Panamanian poet and professor of mathematics who was one of the men closest to Torrijos

Graham with Torrijos on one of several visits he made in 1978 to Torrijos's house at Farallon on the Pacific coast; they enjoyed one another's company.

Graham and Chuchu rest against the sea wall at Portobelo, Panama, where Sir Francis Drake's body had been buried at sea; in 1978 Graham, Bernard Diederich and Chuchu had set out to try to locate the coffin. Torrijos provided a helicopter for the trip.

Above: Having given up the ‘search for Drake', the party set off in search of Nombre de Dios, the Spanish town at the end of the Camino Real. They came across an Indian village where Graham rested.

Graham as co-pilot in Chuchu's Cessna flying to Farallon to visit Torrijos in 1978

On his last fleeting trip to Havana in 1983, Graham and Gabriel García Márquez drank whisky while they waited for Fidel Castro. They had previously met in Panama, and both were friends of Torrijos.

Left: Graham in a market in Panama City with Chuchu, 1980; Graham and Bernard Diederich were waiting to meet the legendary Salvadoran guerrilla Salvador Cayetano Carpio to arrange for the release of the kidnapped South African ambassador Archibald Gardner Dunn.

Graham was decorated with the order of Vasco Nuñez de Balboa by Panamanian President Ricardo de la Espriella (second from right) in 1983; Torrijos's two sons also attended (Martín Torrijos, far left, won the presidency in 2004).

Graham is honoured for his literary work by the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, 1987; they awarded him the Order of Rubén Darío, named after Nicaragua's most famous poet.

Bernard Diederich with Aubelin Jolicoeur — on whom the character Petit Pierre of
The Comedians
was based — in 1986 after a popular uprising finally forced Jean-Claude ‘Baby Doc' Duvalier to flee to France

This painting of Baby Doc was in the lavatory at Graham's Antibes apartment.

Graham with his pen and midday martini at his writing desk in Antibes, 1989