"I can see we've got a lot of catching up to do," she said
as I pulled out of the gates to the residence to head into town.
When I first met Mariana she was an ambitious young, twenty-one
year-old, clerk in the Regional Technical Aids Center in Mexico
City. She had discovered what she believed to be a fraud and had
reported it to me. After a long investigation that had endured
beyond my time in Mexico the American Officer who was involved
confessed. Now, Mariana was an attractive young professional
with her own consulting firm and was on the verge of getting a
large contract for a non-formal education program in the north of
Panama for the Guaymi indians.
Mariana believed, or so she
said, that she was the re-incarnation of Marina, La Malinche, the
concubine of Cortez, and that her mission in life was to relieve
the suffering of the Indians in Latin America. She divided her
time between Panama, New York and Washington, D.C.. She had one
daughter from her failed marriage to one of the Marine Security
Guards in the embassy in Mexico City.
Over dinner and drinks that night in the Patio Andaluz
Restaurant in Panama City Mariana told me that she was just
breaking up a long love affair with a Panamanian man who worked
in the Ministry of Planning. He was married and she was tired of
being a mistress.
"The only way to get over a man, Mariana, is to get another
man," I said.
"That's easier said than done," she replied. "Are you
looking to be a stand in?" she laughed.
"I'm leaving for New York in a few days, but when I get back
I'd be glad to take up your free time," I replied then took her
home to her place in the Apartamentos Plaza, an apartment hotel
not far from where I was staying.
CHAPTER 27
As I drove through the empty streets of Panama City that
night back to my hotel, everything in my life seemed in perfect
order. I had just signed a contract for what then appeared to be an
interesting and challenging job. I had no idea where it might
lead me, but I was optimistic. I had just been with a wonderful
woman, and everything seemed to indicate that we had a beautiful
and exciting future together, but I was wrong on both counts.
Things were not as wonderful as on the surface they appeared.
Over the next few days I finished my report on the shipping
company's operations and flew to New York where I presented all
of my findings and recommendations to the owners. They were
pleased with the report and anxious to implement my
recommendations, but they were very disappointed when I told them
that I had taken the other assignment. They thought I was being
opportunistic, and was leaving them because of the money, but
that was not the case. I was of course pleased that I would be
earning more money on the consulting job, but the main attraction
was that I was back in a professional area where I had more
confidence. I understood the workings of governments and the
interaction of one government with another; I was a bureaucrat
and a diplomat; working as an advisor to the government of Panama
seemed more suited to my skills than taking on the Latin American
oligarchy in a business about which I knew nothing. When I returned to Panama from New York I had a week of free
time between jobs and I called Mariana. After the usual niceties
of how are you? I'm fine, it's good to be back, I screwed up my
courage and came to the point.
"Listen, Mariana, what I really called about is to find out
if there's any chance that you could get away for a few days,"
I said.
"I think I could," she replied. "What did you have in
mind?"
"Well, I know a place down in the Caribbean, just off the
coast of Panama, where a guy that I know has fulfilled a dream."
"Oh, what do you mean?" she asked.
"It's a little island called Pidertupo in the San Blas
Archipelago where Joe and Annie Martin, some American friends of
mine, have set them selves up and done what most of us would like
to do," I replied.
"Do you mean go off and sit under a palm tree and paint?"
She laughed.
"Well, Joe doesn't paint, but he has a hell of a lot of fun.
He and his wife got fed up with the rat race in New York a few
years ago and went down there and leased an island from the Kuna
Indians. You know, the Indians who make the Molas that you see
all over Panama."
"Yes, I know about the Kuna Indians," she said. "Tell me
more, I'm excited."
"Joe and Annie, as I said, leased this island. They've
built some cottages where they can accommodate a few guests and a
main house where everybody meets in the evenings for drinks and
dinner. They live the way most people would like to live.
Annie's a superb cook, and she does all of the cooking, and Joe's
got a couple of boats that we can use to skin dive and spear fish
or water ski. Am I tempting you?"
"You're not just tempting me, I'm ready to leave right now,"
she said with excitement.
"Well we can't leave right now, but we could leave first
thing in the morning. You have to take a light plane down to the
Caribbean where there's a little airstrip carved out of the
jungle, and from there Joe takes us out to the island on his boat."
"It sounds better with every word," she said. "Let's go!"
"I'll get on the telephone and make the arrangements, and
then get back to you," I said and hung up.
The Kuna Indians are separate and distinct from the rest of the
polyglot, multi-colored people of Panama. By treaty with the
Panamanian Government the Kunas occupy an archipelago of small
islands in the Bay of San Blas off the southern Caribbean coast
of Panama. They are hard workers and much sought after as
trusted employees in both the Republic of Panama and the U.S.
controlled Canal Zone. With the aid of light planes these tiny,
gentle people commute between Panama city and their paradise-like
islands where they practice their tribal handicrafts and maintain
a fierce independence from the mainland.
With Mariana standing off to one side, dabbing at the beads
of perspiration on her forehead, I stood in the midst of
diminutive Kunas in a tiny corrugated iron shed on the edge of
Panama's Paitilla Airport, and competed with them for plane
tickets. My almost six-foot frame must have looked like a
landmark in the mob of small Indian bodies which surrounded me.
All of us held the money above our heads, and waved it at the
harried clerk behind the counter. At last I was able to press my
money into his hands.
I eased through the crowd and signalled for Mariana to
follow me after the clerk instructed me to proceed to a faded
brown-and-white Beachcraft Bonanza parked in the blistering
tropical sun on the ramp outside the shed.
"You mean we're going in that little thing," she said as we
walked across the tarmac toward a coffee-colored Panamanian pilot
standing on the wing beside the open door of the cabin.
"Yes," I shouted over the roar of another airplane's
engines. "We're going in this little thing." I helped her climb
up on the wing, and the pilot took her by the arm.
"Good morning," the pilot said. "You go to Pidertupo?"
"Yes," I replied, "to Joe Martin's place."
"Okay, get in, we're all set to take off."
Mariana slipped into the back seat, and I wedged myself in
beside her. The pilot climbed into the left seat, and a fellow
passenger, a Kuna Indian, occupied the right hand co-pilot's
position.
The pilot started the engines, taxied to the end of the
runway, pushed the throttles to the firewall and we took off. It was the
first time I had ever taken off in a plane without going through
some check-out procedures.
Mariana clasped my hand. "I thought you had to warm planes
up and check things out before you took off," she yelled over the
roar of the engines.
"They don't bother with those things on this airline," I
shouted back at her. "But what these pilots lack in procedures,
they make up for with faith."
Taking a package of cigarettes from her purse she lit one.
"I quit smoking several years ago, but every once in a while I
need one. This is one of those times," she said and lit the cigarette.
We climbed and banked to the right, and I looked down at the
ships lying in the channel waiting to transit the canal. Then we
were over land again and climbing into the cloud cover that hangs
over the mountains of the continental divide. In a few moments,
the land was no longer visible as we flew through soupy grey
clouds, and I took her hand in mine, and leaned back and closed
my eyes. I avoided thinking about the rugged mountain peaks
hidden in the clouds just outside the window.
It was not long before the pressure on my ears told me that
we were starting our descent, and a few minutes later we broke
out of the clouds over a cluster of small green islands dotting
the transparent waters of the Bay of San Blas. We banked sharply
to the left and directly in front of us I could see the red earth
of the dirt strip as the pilot lined the plane up to land. We
came in low over the treetops of the coconut palms, and dropped
down hard on the strip. Mariana breathed a sigh of relief as we
rolled to a stop be si de the bay where Joe Martin's boat was tied
up at a makeshift bamboo jetty.
We pried ourselves free from the plane and jumped down off
the wing to greet Joe Martin's broad, suntanned smiling face.
"Hi, Pete. Welcome to Paradise," he said."
"Mariana, I want you to meet Joe Martin, the happiest man in
the world.
We followed Joe to the jetty and leaped to the deck of the
boat and waited while Joe's Indian crew loaded our gear on board.
Joe unhooked the microphone of a single side band radio that kept
him in touch with his wife, Annie, on Pidertupo. "Paradise One,
this is Paradise Two, over," he said.
The radio crackled and hummed as Annie responded to his
signal. "Paradise Two this is Paradise One, go ahead, over."
"I've got our cargo of depleted diplomats on board and we're
homeward bound. Get out the ice and have the martinis standing
by, over and out."
"Ten-four Paradise Two. Paradise One out."
Pidertupo is a one-block-long sliver of fine white sand, and
under a stand of coconut palms Joe and Annie Martin had created
their utopia. A row of spotlessly clean thatched-roof bamboo
cottages face the crystalline Caribbean Sea, and after two days
we lost all recollections of the meaning of time. On Pidertupo
we ate when we were hungry; we slept when we were sleepy, and all
other urges were satisfied with equal spontaneity. We loafed,
sailed, snorkeled, read and made love at all hours of the day and
night.
In the evenings we sat on the beach in front of our cottage
and sipped sundowners before joining Joe and Annie in the main
house for one of Annie's gourmet meals, or we walked hand in hand
around the edge of the sea where Mariana picked up shells and
sand dollars. On our last evening we were sitting on the beach,
a bottle of cold Chablis between us, watching the sunset. "I
have never been so happy in my life, Pete. I honestly didn't
know that such happiness existed."
"I know, Darling," I replied. "It seems almost sinful to be this happy, doesn't it."
"Oh no, I don't think that. I think this is the way that
God intended for us to be. Happy in simple, natural
surroundings, and happy in love." Drawing up her legs in front
of her she encircled them with her arms and rested her chin on
her knees. "Pete, I haven't been exactly open and honest with
you," she said.
"What do you mean?" I asked. "Is there another man in your
life? Are you married?"
"No, I'm not married, but there is another man in my life,"
she said. "Oh God, I feel terrible telling you this."
I took her hand in mine. "Wait a minute, Mariana. I
haven't been exactly lily white honest with you. Go easy on
yourself. When I first met you in Mexico, I was married, but I'm
not now. I'm divorced. Not only that, I'm just hanging on by my
fingernails in so far as my work goes. I don't think you were
focused when I told you that I resigned from the Foreign Service
a few years ago, and I'm doing contract work now." I paused and
looked into her pale green eyes. She was crying. "If you don't
want to talk any more about this we don't have to," I said.
"No, I want to talk about it. I want you to know all about
it. I think you need to know about it," She said.
"What do you mean, 'need to know'?" I asked.
"The other man is Clay McCord," she said.
"Clay McCord! Clay McCord, the AID Mission Director?"
"Yes," she said softly.
"Holy shit!" I said. "He's married"
"I know," she said.
"Not only that, he's my boss!" I said. "Where does he think
you are now?"
"He think's I've gone back to New York, and that's what I
should have done, but I wanted to see you again." "Jesus
Christ," I said. "I can't believe this is happening to me. Do
you want to tell me the whole story?" I said and filled my glass
with wine.
"Yes, I do," she said. Clay and I have had a love affair
for years. He said that he was going to divorce his wife, but he
hasn't, and I told him last week that I wanted to end the affair.
He argued and said that he would go ahead with the divorce, and I
told him not to do it. All of this transpired at the
Ambassador's Residence just before I ran into you. That's the
reason I was standing out on the terrace by myself. Oh, Pete,
I'm so confused."
"Does he know anything about me, I mean does he know that
you know me?" I asked.
"Yes, he knows that we met in Mexico," she said.
"Do me a favor, and don't tell him anything more," I said.
"You think I'm a tramp, don't you?" she asked.
"I don't know what in the hell to think, Mariana," I said.
"Do you love Clay?"
"I thought I did," she said, "but I think I love you too."
She stood up and walked down the beach away from me. I followed
her and stood beside her. What are you going to do?"
"I'm going back to New York," she replied. "Just like that, you're going back to New York," I said.
"What about me? What about my feelings?"
She turned and looked at me. "I'm sorry, Pete, really I am
very sorry. The best thing for you is to forget about me."
"I wish you had told me that on the night that I met you at
the reception," I said and turned to walk back to our cottage.
The next morning we returned to Panama; I took over her apartment
in the Apartamentos Plaza and Mariana went back to New York.
About two months later Mariana returned to Panama, but her
arrival had a surrealistic twist to it. I was again not sleeping
well, and I had awakened at about two in the morning. I had
resumed my writing routine, but thinking that I had left my car
unlocked I opened the door of my apartment to go downstairs to
check the car and there was Mariana standing in the hallway, just
about to knock on my door. I was startled and dumbfounded.
"Mariana!" I exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"
"I came back for you," she said.
"What about Clay?" I asked.
"Clay sends his best wishes to you, and he hopes we can be
very happy," she said.
On Friday, June 13, 1975 Mariana and I were married in the
Canal Zone, and that afternoon Clay and his wife gave us a big
wedding reception in their home in Panama City. The next day
Mariana and I flew to David, Panama where we got on horses to
ride three hours into the mountains where her indians gave us
another party.
As we neared the indian village, Basilio, our guide lifted
a large conch shell to his lips and blew on it to signal our
arrival. It was like something out of Mariana's myth about
herself and the conquest of Mexico as we rode horseback through
the Indians who lined the dusty road and pressed around us.
CHAPTER 28
The political climate in Panama in those days was as intense
and emotionally charged as anything I have ever experienced.
Panama's strongman, Peteral Omar Torrijos, had successfully
carried out a campaign of propaganda to rally support from the
rest of Latin America for his efforts to regain sovereignty over
the Canal Zone, and the governments of Panama and the United
States had started negotiations toward revisions to the 1903
treaty under which the U.S. controlled the Zone.
Ambassador Elsworth Bunker headed up the U.S. team, and
periodically the two negotiating groups met on Contadora Island,
just off the coast of Panama, to conduct their bargaining
sessions. Bunker, a seasoned diplomat, was a meticulous and
tough negotiator, and the progress toward a revised treaty that
would yield more control and eventual sovereignty over the Zone
to the Panamanians was slow and tedious, and did not proceed at a
pace satisfactory to the Panamanians, especially General
Torrijos. Economic difficulties, totally unrelated to the issue of
sovereignty over the Canal, had created a general malaise amongst
the people, and were it not for the wave of popularity that
Torrijos enjoyed because of his success in bringing the Americans
to the bargaining table, he would have had considerable
difficulty maintaining his control over the Guardia Nacional,
Panama's national police force, upon which Torrijos based his
power to exercise control of the country.
Bunker's careful, meticulous style of negotiating was
interpreted by the Panamanians as foot dragging, and the
government controlled press kept up a constant campaign of anti American propaganda to not only keep the pressure on the
negotiations, but also to divert people's attention from the
other economic issues that plagued the country and keep their
attention focused on the only popular issue Torrijos had. Namely
the Canal. The city was awash with rumors of terrorist
threats against Americans, both in the Zone and the Republic.
Cocktail parties buzzed with stories of the formation of a
terrorist organization to carry out acts of violence and
destruction against the canal locks and other facilities,
especially Madden Dam, just above Gatun where the water to feed
the locks is harnessed.
Torrijos made speeches in which he accused the American CIA
of infiltrating the country and this only exacerbated the natural
tendency of the Panamanians to view Americans with fear, envy and
suspicion.
From the Avenida de los Martires (Avenue of the Martyrs, so
named after the Panamanian students who were killed in the 1962
flare up of violence) that separates the U.S. controlled Canal
Zone from the Republic, one looks, on the U.S. side, at well
manicured lawns, flowering gardens and all of the other trappings
of a colonial enclave: military bases; commissary and PX
facilities; golf courses, swimming pools and tennis courts as
well as the Canal Locks and support facilities. On the opposite,
Panamanian, side of the Avenue is a row of squalid shacks
and honky-tonk bars. Ragged children play in the streets and on
the corners drug dealers and prostitutes wait for the GIs who
come from the military bases in the Zone on weekend passes.
This chiaroscuro contrast is humiliating to the Panamanians,
and humiliation triggers strong emotional responses. I, as an
American, became a frequent target for these emotions of fear,
mistrust and suspicion by my Panamanian colleagues in the Office
of the Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives. When Torrijos
accused the CIA of infiltrating the country, the Panamanians in
the office jumped to the conclusion that I was one of the
infiltrators. The fact that I had knocked around Latin America
for several years, using what they interpreted as a "diplomatic
cover," coupled with my fluent Spanish gave them all the evidence
they needed to reinforce their judgement. Somehow they learned
that I had been in Ecuador at the time of the coup, and if they
needed any further evidence to confirm that I was a CIA agent,
that little piece of intelligence provided it.
My job became almost impossible. People stopped talking
when I walked into an office. Rather than consult with me on financial issues, about which I was supposed to be an expert,
every attempt was made to conceal information from me. Meetings
were held without my presence. Procurement actions were
initiated without my knowledge. The AID Mission asked me
questions that I couldn't answer because of my isolation from the
mainstream of activity.
Nevertheless, I hung in, and carefully studied the
operations and the Federation's financial statements to the best
of my ability, and very soon I did feel like a spy since the
picture of what was going on inside the Federation was not
pretty.
The currency of Panama is the American Dollar, and in an
effort to make Panama a "Latin American Switzerland" the
Panamanian Government had created an environment that attracted
over sixty international banks to set up and do business out of
Panama. These banks served as safe havens for a lot of "hot
capital" that flowed out of South America, from drug dealers,
greedy politicians and others who felt more comfortable having
their cash stashed in a nearby, Spanish speaking, country, than
they did putting it across the sea in Europe.
The banks were subject to pressure from the Panamanian
Government, and could be induced to make loans to "selected"
enterprises that Torrijos and the Panamanian government
recommended. The Federation was one of these "selected"
enterprises.
With a Government of Panama guaranty the Federation had
received a ten million dollar line of credit from a large
international bank, and with this line of credit, along with the
ten million received from AID, they were purchasing large
quantities of fertilizer that was subsequently sold to small
farmer co-ops.
I realized through my analysis of the financial statements
that the small co-ops were not paying for the fertilizer, and
that the Federation's Accounts Receivable from member co-ops were
mushrooming. I was further able to determine that the financial
statements were being falsified in that the maturity dates of the
notes given to the international bank were not being accurately
shown on supporting schedules. The effect of the falsification
was to make the Federation appear more solvent than it actually
was. The reason for this falsification, I learned, was that the
Federation was, on its own, but with Government support, seeking
new sources of capital from other banks against which they were
discounting notes received from the member co-ops. The proceeds
from this discount operation were being used to meet the maturity
of the notes on the first loan.
Thus the entire operation was being done with smoke and
mirrors. The only money changing hands was from the banks and
AID to the Federation, and from the Federation to fertilizer
suppliers in the United States and Europe. Moreover the
fertilizer procurement was all done on the basis of negotiated
contracts without competitive bidding. I began to feel very
uncomfortable, and I expressed my concern to my contacts in the
embassy and AID Mission. It was too complicated for them to
understand, and it was not what they wanted to hear. They were under pressure to move money, quiet anti-American sentiment and
demonstrate increased agricultural production. I soon found out
that being an advisor to a foreign government was not as easy as
I had hoped it would be, and I eased the pressure by allowing
myself a generous cocktail hour and plenty of wine with my meals.
I was enough of a professional though to realize that I had
to document my findings even though they were not well received,
and I drafted very carefully worded reports which I delivered in
person to my control officer in the mission.
One evening before, my regularly scheduled visit to the
embassy, I was sipping my cocktail and watching a television
interview on the U.S. channel which comes out of the Zone. The
interviewer was discussing the canal negotiations with a
prominent U.S Senator who was violently opposed to the
negotiations. "There's nothing to talk about," the Senator said.
"We bought and paid for the canal! It's ours, and it makes my
blood boil to hear that tinhorn dictator Torrijos threaten us
with violence and terrorism!"
I was in the embassy the next morning talking to Mike
Collins about the situation in the Federation when his phone
rang. A mob was on its way to the embassy, and a platoon of
combat equipped Guardia Nacional troops had been dispatched as
protection. Everyone should stay away from the windows and get
ready for a seige.
Mike took a pair of binoculars from his desk and looked
through them at the tree lined Balboa Avenue running along the
bay front outside the embassy. He handed the binoculars to me
and I looked through them. The mob was about a block away, and I
could hear the shouts of their angry voices. Many of them
carried placards on which the words BASES NO - YANQUIS NO had been
smeared in bold red letters.
By t he time the mob reached the embassy several small pickup
trucks loaded with rocks and bricks had pulled up on the
surrounding streets. There was a rush to get something to throw,
and shortly the first rock crashed through the window. The heavy
tropical air was filled with the sounds of shattering glass and
screams as the mob released its anger. A Molotov cocktail was
thrown but failed to ignite. Several cars were tipped over and
burned before the U.S. trained Guardia Nacional troops arrived
and dispersed the mob with teargas and shots fired into the air.
When the smoke cleared I accompanied Mike on a tour of the
embassy to inspect the damage. Shards of broken glass were
everywhere, and the offices looked as though a tornado had
struck. The floors and corridors were strewn with papers blown
from desk tops as the sea breezes swept through the gaping holes
left i n the windows. In less than twenty minutes they had
reduced the building to a shambles, and all of it sparked by one
intemperate remark by a U.S. Senator speaking several thousand
miles away.
In addition to the generalized political violence, street
crime and robberies were common place events in Panama, and my
apartment was burglarized twice. The first occasion was unusual
in that nothing was taken, but papers had been gone through and
left strewn about the room, and I suspected that it could have been the police or other Panamanian agents searching for evidence
of my alleged CIA connection. The second time the thief entered
through a kitchen window, came into the bedroom where I was
sleeping, removed my wallet and took all of the money in it. I
did not know for sure if the second intrusi on was an actual
robbery or was carried out to frighten and intimidate me.
It was a terrible time in Panama, but once again I "white
knuckled" my drinking, and managed to complete the contract with
some satisfaction. I designed a computerized accounting system
for the Federation, that if they survived the free-wheeling
financial dealings would give them better management tools. AID
and the embassy were satisfied when I left Panama to return to
Las Vegas where I had made arrangements to return to work with
the Gaming Control Board.
During most of this time Mariana had been shuttling back and
forth between Panama and New York, and on her last trip to Panama
just as I was completing my contract we agreed that since she did
not want to go to Las Vegas, and I did not want to continue in
Panama we would divorce.
A year later Clay McCord divorced his wife to marry Mariana, and
I would not have been faithful to my promise to keep to the truth
if I did not mention that during my last month in Panama, while
Mariana was in New York, I became involved with another womam.
She and I were in bed together the night I was burglurized for
the second time. We had been out to dinner and gambling in the
casinos, and when we got to her door she realized that she had
locked her key inside; it was an easy step on to my place. We
each lost about a $100 in the robbery.
On my way home to Las Vegas I stopped in Mexico City where I
visited with my children Sean and Christine. The very brief
meeting with Yvette was abrasive and tense when I went to her
apartment to pick up the children.
CHAPTER 29
The return to Las Vegas was not as traumatic as my initial
trip across the desert had been. After a year and half in
Panama, living with day to day tension and violence, I was glad
to be back home in a safe and secure environment. Even the work
on the Board seemed more satisfying since I was treated as a
professional, and I had plenty of power when I was out of the
office to deal with casino operators. It was not like the working situation that I had in Panama where I was isolated from
my colleagues because of their fantasies that I was a CIA agent,
and I did not have to deal with the powerless aspects of being a
foreign advisor.
When I returned to work with the Board I was uncertain as to
what I wanted to do in the future. I knew that if I wanted to do
further consulting work I could, but I really began having second
thoughts about living abroad without the protection of diplomatic
privileges.
The divorce from Yvette had been costly, not just in
economic, but in emotional terms as well, but by the time I got
back to Las Vegas I had healed somewhat in both areas. I had
lived a quiet frugal existence in Panama, and had replenished my
very diminished bank account to the point that I could think
about buying a place to live.
Through my friend Vince I found a small condominium
that at that time was on the edge of town. It was quiet, had a
small garden and from the upstairs there was a view of Sunrise
Mountain and the desert. I made an offer, it was accepted, and
on New Year's Eve of 1976 I moved in. This was the first house I
had owned in over fifteen years, and it was nice to be in a place
of my own. I set to work making improvements so that it would be
more than just another Las Vegas condo. I put in an olive green
enamel free standing fireplace on a slump stone hearth
downstairs. Upstairs, I converted one bedroom to an office,
installed bookshelves and paneled the walls with tongue and
groove oak. Outside I finished off the patio with redwood
decking and batten and board siding then planted shrubs and
flowers so that when it was finished I had a very livable and
charming hideaway that was tastefully decorated with the few art
works and artifacts that I had managed to save for myself in the
course of three divorces.
Once the house was finished I found myself with a lot of
time on my hands. I hated waking up alone in the mornings, but I
could not seem to find a woman with whom I was compatible. Women
in Las Vegas at that time tended to be shallow and superficial.
They were for the most part dealers, cocktail waitresses and
hotel employees who liked a lot of parties and so called fun.
They were very much into drinking and drugs, and both of these
things scared the hell out of me. I was not doing well in
controlling my own drinking, and almost every night I drank
enough to fall asleep, or less euphemistically put, pass out. I
again began having trouble with insomnia; I awakened at two or
three in the morning with the desire for companionship or a
drink, and once again I found my salvation in writing.
I started a new novel about Panama, and began rewriting the
Quito book. I took a course in transcendental meditation, and
began going to the Church of Religious Science which has a very
positive, upbeat, Unity philosophy. The church publishes a
little magazine called Science of Mind that in addition to
excellent articles on spiritual subjects, contains daily
meditations. I established a routine of arising at three in the
morning, and after meditating on my TM mantra for twenty minutes,
I read the Science of Mind message before sitting down at my typewriter.
I was not happy, in fact I was miserable, but I coped. The
glitter of Las Vegas was just as offensive to me as it had been
in the past; I was lonely, and I still had feelings of
incomprehensible demoralization; I knew that I had to be very
careful with alcohol or I would slip into an alcoholic oblivion,
and very likely never return. Thoughts of suicide frequently
entered my mind, but one way or another I kept at the typewriter
every morning and managed to maintain that image of myself as an
artist, a writer. The first indication that something new for me
was on the horizon came in late summer of 1976.
It was a beautiful morning in late August; I had finished my
stint at the typewriter and was listening to the news on the
radio as I watched the sun rising over the mountains before
getting ready to go to work at the Gaming Board when the
telephone rang. It was once again my old friend, mentor and
benefactor, Tom Blacka.
"Pete, are you free to take a contract assignment in South
America?" he asked.
"I can get free in about two weeks," I replied.
"Good, because I have a job I want you to do for me down in
Paraguay and Bolivia. It will take about a month down there, and
after that you can work here in Washington for several months.
When can you make it up here?"
"I can be there by September 15," I replied.
I took a great leap of faith. I resigned my nice secure job with
the Gaming Control Board and hoped that either I would eventually
be reappointed to the Foreign Service or that I could keep body
and soul together doing short term consulting jobs.
* * * * *
I arrived in Washington on a Friday afternoon in mid September,
checked into the Hotel Central and got on the telephone to
friends. John Shumate, a Foreign Service colleague from Ecuador,
invited me for drinks and dinner that night where I met John's
sister-in-law, Claudia.
Claudia had just come home from Europe where she had worked
as a stringer for the Paris Herald Tribune and the New York Times, and we
had a lot in common. Aside from both being Europhiles, Claudia
and I had both watched the sixties from abroad; we had both been
spared the trauma of those times, and, later I would find out, we
had both been raised in La Crescenta, California.
At the time that I met her, Claudia was working as a
contract writer for the Voice of America, and she had applied for
an appointment to the USIA Foreign Service. She invited me to
her place for dinner Saturday night and we spent the rest of the
weekend together. On Tuesday I left for South America, but by
that time we were sharing one another's beds.
Just after my return from Paraguay she received an offer to
be a VOA correspondent, and she turned it down. "I'm too
devoted to objective reality to ever be a bureaucrat," she said.
"I want to write the real truth as I see it. I don't want to just parrot the administration's distorted versions of what's
happening in America. I don't want to be a propagandist and
interpret the bizarre twists and turns of American foreign policy
to a truth starved world."
Eventually Claudia left the VOA when she received a short
term contract job at NBC in New York; her real ambition was to
break into television network news. I sublet her apartment from
her when she left for New York; when the job with NBC ended she
moved back in, and we lived together as a couple.
Claudia was definitely a career oriented woman. She had no
desire to have children, but she was a good cook and she liked to
entertain. I was her date for her dinner parties, we took trips
together, alternated between Washington and New York for weekend
trysts, and she accompanied me to occassional obligatory social
functions.
Claudia knew that one day I would have to go back overseas,
and there was a tacit agreement between us that when that day
came we would each go our separate ways.
Claudia was an adult child of an alcoholic mother, and she
was driven to not just succeed in her career, but to excel. She
was a passionate believer in Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivist
Ethics. She always said she was an atheist, or at best agnostic.
Claudia liked the idea of having a man in her life, but she
did not want to be tied down. She wanted to be free to soar off
into a sunrise when ever there was a fast breaking news story.
Her apartment was a bare bones, one bedroom pied a terre
with a minimum of furnishings. The only furniture in the living
room was a large piece of glass set about a foot above the floor
on two rows of concrete bricks. Bright, overstuffed cushions and
pillows were strewn about for her guests to sit on and eat her
gourmet dinners.
She had a lot of books, paintings and house plants, a
stereo, a portable TV and a big black cat named "Sheba" that had
been with her for twelve years. I was impressed by this little
bit of what I thought was maternal stability, but I soon realized
that Claudia was not a maternal woman.
Claudia and I were having lunch together in the Foreign
Service Club across the street from the State Department one day,
and I asked her what she was looking for out of life.
"If I heard that the French were having a revolution and
they were beheading people in Paris, I would want to cover it.
If I heard that Jesus was being tried in Jerusalem and would
probably be nailed to a cross the next morning, I would want to
be there to file my story," she said.
She wanted to stand up in front of a camera with the White
House, the Capitol, a guillotine or Christ carrying a cross
behind her to say, This is Claudia Taylor, CBS News in
Washington, Paris, Jerusalem or wherever the action was taking
place.
"That's just the way I am, Pete," she said. "I don't think
I'll ever change."
Despite the fact that Claudia loved to cook and entertain she lived as though any minute she would receive a telephone call
to fly off into the sun to cover the crucifixion or the French
revolution.
Claudia was as etherial as light and air.* * * * * *
Ten days after Jimmie Carter was sworn in as
President of the United States I was reappointed and
sworn in as a Class I Foreign Service officer, and three
days later I was flying to Cairo, Egypt. An unexpected
emergency had come up in Cairo that involved a serious
injury to a dependent child of a senior officer in the
Cairo Mission, and a temporary replacement for the
officer was needed immediately. At Tom Blacka's urging
I had already initiated my reappointment procedures, and
I had been waiting for several weeks for my security
clearance. Since it was at the change of an
administration, the FBI and State Department security
offices were swamped with work, clearing new political
appointees, but with the emergency in Cairo, Tom was
able to ramrod my clearance through the bureaucracy, and
another inexplicable phenomenon occurred in my life.
It was wonderful to be back on duty as an FSO, and
I once again had that prestigious symbol of my identity,
a Diplomatic Passport. The Cairo assignment lasted a
little over a month, and proved both interesting and
exciting in that during this time Cyrus Vance made his
first visit, as President Carter's Secretary of State,
to the Middle East to initiate the Carter Middle East
Peace Process that would eventually lead to the Camp David Accords.
Just a few months before, I had been sitting in my
condominium in Las Vegas watching the sunrise, an agent
for the Nevada Gaming Control Board, struggling to write
a novel, and trying to avoid alcohol; suddenly, there I
was, on the fringe of history. I did not, however, take
the time to reflect on the significance of all that had
happened to me; nor did I take the time to give thanks
for the blessings and good fortune that had come my way.
This shortcoming is a common characteristic of Dionysian
alcoholics who are so caught up in their own dramas, so
self centered, so intent on doing their own will that
they fail to recognize great, good fortune when it
appears, and rarely do they pause to give thanks for
their good fortune. How can they? They do not even
recognize it, or even worse, if by chance they do
recognize it, they mistakenly attribute the largesse of
the Gods to their own egos!
The stories of alcoholics are like the great heroic
myths where the heros get themselves into situations so
impossible that only the God's can save them; they pray,
or by the grace of the Gods, they are unwittingly saved from their predicament only to usurp the powers of the
Gods by claiming the credit for their salvation for
themselves. The Gods do not permit this usurping of
their powers; they are angered by such hubris, and
failure by the heros to attribute salvation to the
proper source inevitably leads to a compulsive
repetit io n un til the lesson is learned.
Just before leaving Cairo to return to Washington I
received a cable ordering me to make a stop in Amman,
Jordan, and I got my introduction into the anxiety and
tension that has come to be associated with travel in
the Middle East.
After obtaining my visa for Jordan and making my
travel arrangements, I was told to be at the Cairo
airport three hours in advance of flight time. I
learned why it required three hours, rather than the
usual one hour, after I arrived in the airport. First,
my bags were opened and inspected, more carefully than
any entry customs inspection I have ever experienced,
then they were sealed with tape. I was personally taken
into a cubicle where I was asked to remove everything
from my pockets. I was then gone over as though I were
a drug smuggler or terrorist, first with a hand held
metal detector and finally by a hands on feel down.
When we were finally ordered to proceed to the plane our
bags were sitting on the tarmac, and were placed on the
plane only after they had been identified by the
passengers.
The actual plane trip itself was uneventful even
though everyone on the plane looked to me as though they
could have been terrorists. Likewise the assignment in
Jordan was interesting but uneventful except that I ran
into an old Palestinian friend, George Ishaac, whom I
had first met during my temporary duty assignment in
Libya back in the early sixties. Like all Palestinians,
George, had been drifting around North Africa and the
Middle East picking up work wherever he could find it,
and had just recently gone to work for our embassy in
Amman as an interpreter. I mention this since I have
come to believe that these casual, seemingly
coincidental, meetings, that I have frequently in my
life, are God's way of telling me that I am on the right
path. It seems as good a way as any I can think of to
explain a world where, I have also come to believe,
nothing, absolutely nothing, happens by chance.
I spent a week in Amman and then flew to Athens
where I spent an afternoon and evening. After a time in
North Africa, Black Africa or the Mid dle East it has always been a wonderful experience for me to get back to
Athens, Rome or Madrid. In Athens I feel that I am back
in my own culture, my own environment, even though I
don't speak a word of Greek. There is something about
the sidewalk cafes, the shop windows, the retsina wine,
the men and women dressed in western garb with which I
can identify. Greece is also the cradle of Aristotelian
thinking where A is A, and B is B and upon which all
Western reasoning is based. I have always found it
comforting to be back in a world where such logic is
functioning.
After getting back to Washington I made
arrangements for a few days off from work to go out to
Las Vegas to pack my things and rent my condo. I was in
Las Vegas only a few days when Tom called me from
Washington saying that I should complete my packing as
soon as possible since he wanted me to make a trip
through West Africa as a part of survey team to study
future personnel needs of the West African Aid Missions.
I packed up, made arrangements with my friend Vince
Gianini to manage the condo, and immediately returned to
Washington where I was given a hasty briefing on the
mission to Africa. I spent the next month travelling
through West Africa on visits to Dakar, Bamako, Abidjan,
Yaunde, Ouagadougou, and Niamey and finally left Africa
for the trip home with a stop in London where my old
friend Henri Fulton, the expatriate director of theater
from Madrid, was living in a lovely flat overlooking the
Hampstead Heath.
Henri and I reminisced about our days in Spain
together, drank a bottle of whiskey, ate one of his
gourmet meals, and the next morning I flew back to
Washington.
In the course of a few weeks I had been in and out
of missions in more than half a dozen countries, and I
had been able to get myself quickly reacquainted with
the mainstream of U.S. foreign policy so that I did not
feel out of touch when I finally left Washington to take
up my new permanent post in Dacca, Bangladesh.
The cherry trees were in blossom when I left Washington
in late April of 1977 for Madrid on my way to Dacca, and
Claudia accompanied me to Dulles airport to say
goodbye. I had become very fond of Claudia, and I knew
that she had fallen in love, but I did not feel strongly
enough about her to ask her to come with me to Dacca.
She put on a brave face that day, but I knew that inside
she was crying. She was a fine woman, and I often think
about her. Like Angela, that lovely English lady with whom I spent a beautiful day in Sevilla, Claudia was the
kind of woman with whom I could have lived out the
Hemingway fantasy.
We left her apartment in a taxi for Dulles. It was
late afternoon and the Washington rush hour traffic had
already started. I held her hand in mine and we both
sat silently looking out the windows. "I'm awfully
sorry to see you go, Pete," she said. "We could have
had so damn much fun together."
"I know," I said. "It's nice to think about, isn't
it."
END OF BOOK THREEGO TO BOOK FOUR CHAPTER 30
Gene McCoy © July 1998
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