Six Minutes To Freedom (4 page)
Read Six Minutes To Freedom Online
Authors: John Gilstrap,Kurt Muse
Behind Kurt, a brief knock preceded the swing of the door. A short, trim man in civilian clothes but with a soldier’s bearing stepped into the office. “Captain Cortizo is here to translate,” said the clerk. On the other side of the glass partition, Kurt could see Cortizo’s familiar face and form standing in the squad room. A graduate of West Point, Cortizowas a Noriega favorite, constantly paraded in front of the cameras as an embarrassment to the Americans.
Moreno waved the clerk off. “It won’t be necessary,” he said. “The prisoner speaks Spanish.” The clerk disappeared, and the major turned his eyes back toward Kurt. “You are lying,” he said.
Kurt cursed himself for his own guilty demeanor. He knew that from here on out nothing he said would be perceived as truth. “No, sir, I’m not. You can check these things yourself.” As an afterthought, he added, “If I were a spy, do you think I’d be traveling on my own passport?”
The question angered Moreno even more. “I will ask the questions,”he snapped.
Kurt had pushed too hard. Yes and no would be the standard from now on. His mind raced even faster now.
They think I’m a spy. They honestly don’t know who I am. How can that be? If they don’t know, then why the hell am I under arrest?
They think I’m a spy. They honestly don’t know who I am. How can that be? If they don’t know, then why the hell am I under arrest?
Movement outside the building caught Kurt’s eye through the window.A white crew-cab Toyota pickup truck slid to a halt and disgorgedfour armed men. Again, no uniforms. Kurt recognized the vehicle as the typical transportation for the Departamento Nacional de Investigaciones (DENI; National Department of Investigation—a corrupt,miserable Panamanian version of the Federal Bureau of Investigation), the dreaded secret police, and their presence seemed to disturb the officers mingling outside. Moreno saw them too, and he scowled. Whatever was happening bothered the major nearly as much as it bothered Kurt. Tempers were running hot, and he didn’t understand why.
“Wait here,” Moreno commanded. His chair shot away from his desk as he stood, and his minions jumped out of his way as he stormed out of the office into the squad room. “What is this about?” he heard the major yell, but the rest of the heated conversation was garbled by distance and the separating wall. Kurt probably could not have heard the rest of it above his hammering heart anyway.
Moreno was gone for all of ninety seconds before the door opened again. “Stand,” he said to Kurt, who complied without question. “Come with us.” To the others in the office, he added, “You stay here.”
There was a new group waiting in the squad room now, likewise all dressed in civilian clothes. As Kurt followed Moreno to the front of the squad room, and then outside, other soldiers fell in behind him. They led him to the white crew-cab pickup truck. The double-side doors were open, waiting for him. “In the back,” Moreno ordered.
Kurt steadied himself with his hands and pulled his big frame up into the vehicle. He had some difficulty pressing himself past the seats as he made his way to the back of the pickup. They closed the doors, and suddenly he was alone. The atmosphere outside buzzed with excitedelectricity. More officers swarmed around the vehicle, and as they did, many cast sideward glances his way, only to avert their eyes when he caught their gaze.
In the silence of the pickup, he tried again to settle himself down. There was a way to survive this, he told himself. First of all, as an American citizen, he had a certain advantage over regular Panamanians.The paternalism bred from the decades of the Panama Canal Treaty—the American money that helped to keep the Panamanian economy afloat and many of the residents employed—brought an intrinsicdeference, despite the increasingly hot rhetoric from the Noriegaregime. It was that deference, Kurt figured, that had kept his captors from pinioning his wrists with handcuffs and beating him for information.
All at once, as if on cue, the meeting out in the driveway broke up, and people headed for their vehicles. Six armed men joined Kurt and Major Moreno in the pickup. “Take us to your house,” the major demanded.
Kurt’s stomach fell. This was it. They were going to get his family. For the first time since the moment of his arrest, he considered spilling his guts. Anything to keep them from harming his children. The emotionalside of his brain screamed at him to just start talking, but then the rational side took over. If he talked, dozens of lives would end. Not just his, but all his coconspirators’ and all their families’. Every minute that he remained mute bought them another minute to make their escape.
“Straight ahead,” Kurt said, pointing, “and up the hill.” The total trip would be less than a mile. His mind raced for some ruse that would lead them to a false location, but a lie like that would cause far more trouble than the few seconds it would save. At least for the time being, his PDF captors seemed content not to hurt anyone. God only knew what might happen if he started sending them to far corners of the city. Hell, for all Kurt knew, this was a test to see if they could trust him at all. They had his passport, for heaven’s sake, and the passport clearly showed where he lived.
Sitting in the dark in the back of the stifling pickup, Kurt’s mind whirled out of control. A precise and orderly man by nature, he found himself overwhelmed by the unknown. Nothing made sense, not even the fact of his arrest. His captors seemed to know only that they were to arrest him on sight, but it appeared as if no one had bothered to tell them why. Clearly, they’d been waiting for him—they knew precisely what flight he would be on—yet the poster for his arrest had been hastily hand written and bore no picture. If he was such an important enemy, wouldn’t they at least have taken the time to lift the picture off his identity papers?
If you get caught, you’re on your own
. Richard Dotson’s words echoed deafeningly through his head.
On your own
. Could Richard have known that his arrest was imminent, yet failed to say anything?
. Richard Dotson’s words echoed deafeningly through his head.
On your own
. Could Richard have known that his arrest was imminent, yet failed to say anything?
No. Absolutely not. He and Kurt had been dearest friends for longer than either one could remember. If Richard had known that Kurt was in imminent danger—if he’d even
suspected
that danger lurked—he would have found a way to warn him.
suspected
that danger lurked—he would have found a way to warn him.
So, how then? How could the PDF have known to be looking for him?
Kurt checked himself. That was the wrong question. Once they knew
to
look for him, finding him would have been easy. The more appropriatequestion lay rooted in a day and a time
before
today. Someonewould have had to leak the information about his activities to the PDF, but who? Kurt didn’t work with strangers, he worked with friends—brothers, for all practical meanings of the word. Kurt ran the faces through his head: Tomás Muñoz, Jorge Quintero, Antonio Martinez,Coronado Samaniego. It simply was not possible that one of them would have turned him in. They’d have died first. But who else knew?
to
look for him, finding him would have been easy. The more appropriatequestion lay rooted in a day and a time
before
today. Someonewould have had to leak the information about his activities to the PDF, but who? Kurt didn’t work with strangers, he worked with friends—brothers, for all practical meanings of the word. Kurt ran the faces through his head: Tomás Muñoz, Jorge Quintero, Antonio Martinez,Coronado Samaniego. It simply was not possible that one of them would have turned him in. They’d have died first. But who else knew?
Pablo Martinez. Absolutely not.
Rod Esquivel. Ridiculous. Kurt had saved Rod’s life, for crying out loud. There was no way that he could have been the traitor. Who then?
Someone at the Agency? That was always a possibility, given Noriega’sinfiltration of the American intelligence community in Panama, but Kurt’s knowledge of that infiltration was the very reason why he never dealt with any of the operatives assigned to the Panama City Station.Because there were people there whom he disliked and distrusted, Kurt had to assume that there were people who disliked and distrusted him back; but surely not enough to do this. Not enough to risk getting him killed.
These thoughts raced through his mind at the speed of a heartbeat, manifesting themselves as feelings more than rational thoughts. The longer he stayed alive, the less he worried about dying. If they’d wanted to kill him, he’d be dead by now.
But there were alternatives to dying. Things could be done to the human body that would make a person pray for death. No matter how hard he tried to will himself to think reasonable thoughts, the projectorin his mind brought him back to the torture chambers about which he’d heard so much.
As their motorcade of five vehicles sped down Avenue Manuel E. Batista on their way to Kurt’s house, he couldn’t help but think that every turn of the wheel brought him closer to a nightmare.
3
Kimberly stared at the handset before hanging up, and as she did, she had to stifle the urge to cry. The fear in Jorge’s voice spread instantly through the phone line.
“Daddy, come
home
,” she whispered.
home
,” she whispered.
As if on cue, she heard engine noises out front. She knew just from the sound of the engine that it was another false alarm. Her dad’s Volvo had a sweet hum to it; the vehicle she heard out front was some sort of truck. A peek through her bedroom window confirmed her suspicion.And then it triggered a bolt of panic.
It wasn’t just
a
truck, it was a convoy of them, and they completely blocked the street in front of their house. Down to the left, at the bottomof the street, she saw more trucks. And men with machine guns. They were all looking up at her house.
a
truck, it was a convoy of them, and they completely blocked the street in front of their house. Down to the left, at the bottomof the street, she saw more trucks. And men with machine guns. They were all looking up at her house.
Suddenly, the stifling night was impossibly cold. She shivered all over and was surprised to find herself crying as she stepped out onto the terrace, just far enough to where she could see the apron of their driveway. A white crew-cab truck blocked the street, parked at an angle, flanked by two white pickup trucks—the standard elements of a PDF goon squad. Wherever they went, they left bloodstains behind.
Her brain screamed at her to run, but her body wouldn’t respond. She just stood there, trembling, her hands pressed to her mouth, certainthat this was the beginning of something terrible.
She remembered the tone in Jorge’s voice, and even though the windows on the crew-cab truck were all blacked out, she somehow knew that her dad was in there.
A few seconds later, the doors opened, and there he was. He stepped out calmly, naturally, and for just a moment she thought that maybe through some weird twist of fate he was just being dropped off. He was dressed in the casual style of Panamanian nationals, in Dockers and a polo shirt, and from this distance, he seemed as if nothing was wrong.
But then the others climbed out to join him. Five, ten, it might as well have been a hundred for all Kimberly could see. For a long time they just stood there, talking. Then, when they moved, they moved together,and for the first time, the horrifying reality hit her: he’d been arrested.
As they walked casually up the driveway, Kimberly tried to disappear;but somehow, her dad knew exactly where to look for her. He tried to appear calm, but his face looked tight—as if he was scared to show his fear.
At the first glance, Kimberly started to sob.
“Sweetheart,” he said. “Can you come down and open the door, please?” He stood shoulder to shoulder with five of his captors.
“What’s wrong?” Kimberly asked.
Kurt just shook his head. “It’s okay, sweetheart, just open the door.” He looked ten years older than the last time she’d seen him.
She didn’t believe him. Not for a second. These were the PanamanianGestapo, and they were at her house! She didn’t know what to do. Maybe if she ran really fast.
“Sweetheart,” Kurt said again, “everything’s going to be just fine. I don’t have my keys, so please just come on downstairs and open the door for us, okay?”
The world became a blur, an indecipherable swirl of meaningless action and feelings. For a long moment, it seemed as if her feet were glued to the floor, her whole body filled with concrete. Nothing moved but her heart, and it slammed like a runaway drum.
She wanted to run, but there was no getting away from the PDF. Where would she go? Everything she’d ever known was right here at the end of this dead-end street.
She had to let them in. She had no choice. If they started their invasionby breaking the door, God only knew what they’d start breaking next. A heavy fist pounded on the front door. “I’m coming!” Kimberly yelled, dashing into the hall on her way to the stairs. “I’m right here.”
This was the end of everything. Don’t ask her how she knew, but she did. When she opened the front door, she would cross a threshold from which there would be no return. And she’d be making her journeyalone.
Her mom! How was she going to tell Mom? And what about Erik? A thousand thoughts flooded her mind at the speed of panic—a velocityfor which there was no measure. Without any conscious thought, she snatched the flimsy, paperback family telephone directory off its table in the upstairs hallway and stuffed it into the waistband of her shorts. Her grandmother’s number would be in there.
As her bare feet finally skidded across the marble tile of the foyer, the invaders started pounding again.
Kimberly opened the door, and there was her father, aged yet anotherten years.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Kurt said. “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be just fine.”
She knew it was a lie.
They invaded the house like roaches, a dozen of them pouring through the front door and spreading quickly throughout the house. Kurt opened his arms to Kimberly and she hugged him tightly, so close that she could hear his heart pounding in his chest.
“Daddy, what’s happening?”
“I’ve been arrested,” he said. His voice showed none of the fear that she saw in his eyes.
She pushed herself away far enough to see his face. “For
what
?”
what
?”
He pulled her to his chest again and stroked her hair.
“Do you have weapons in the house?” one of the soldiers demanded.
Kurt had learned that this one was named Captain Quintero, and he clearly was Moreno’s right-hand man. Blessed with movie-star good looks, Quintero wore a wildly flowered blue shirt that seemed entirely incongruous with his military bearing.
“I have two guns,” Kurt said. “One is in the closet upstairs, and one is in the living room.” It sounded innocent enough, but he knew there’d be hell to pay when they found the M-1 carbine with 300 rounds of ammunition in his bedroom, and his mind was already racing for a way to explain why his 9mm Glock was poised for quick use in the top of a lamp shade near the front door.
While the goons went about the business of rounding up the guns and searching the house, Captain Quintero turned to Kimberly. “Do not be afraid,” he said. “We are not here to harm you.”
“Let her go,” Kurt urged. He was well aware of the art work in her bedroom, and under the circumstances, there was no telling what the fallout might be when it was discovered.
“She can stay,” Quintero said. He smiled pleasantly at her. “If she has done nothing wrong, then she has nothing to worry about.”
Kurt lowered his voice to a whisper. “Captain, please,” he said. “Be reasonable. She’s only a little girl. I don’t want her to see me like this.”
Quintero stewed for a long moment. The way he looked at Kimberlymade Kurt wonder if maybe the captain had daughters of his own. Finally, he nodded. “She can go,” he said.
Kurt didn’t hesitate. Taking Kimberly’s shoulders in his hands, he gripped her tightly, their noses nearly touching. “Go,” he said.
Kimberly started to cry. “Daddy, what’s going on? What are they doing here?”
“Don’t worry about that, sweetie. You just move away from here as fast as you can and get to a telephone.”
“What am I going to say?”
“You say exactly what happened. You tell Mom that the army came and arrested me. She can take care of everything.”
“But she’s not—” Kimberly cut herself off before stating that her mother was out of the country. That was probably a detail that the PDF didn’t need to know. Kurt sensed it and smiled. She had a good head on her shoulders. She’d find a way to get through this.
Please God, let that be true.
Kimberly stood there for a long moment, staring, searching for something to say that would somehow make this better. But if those words existed, she didn’t possess them. In the end, all she had left was, “I love you, Daddy.”
Kurt pulled her close to him for one last embrace. “I know you do, sweetheart. And I love you, too. Tell your brother and your mom that my heart is with you all, always.”
Kimberly wouldn’t let go. If she hugged him long enough, then maybe she’d never have to go away. If she kept her eyes closed, maybe she’d wake up and all of this would never have happened. In the end, Kurt pushed her away.
“Go,” he whispered, and he looked away. This was not the time to show the kind of emotion that welled within him. The Muses had never been criers, and Kurt wasn’t about to start a new tradition with all these people watching him.
Kimberly understood and stepped back. “Bye, Daddy,” she said, and she headed for the front door.
She didn’t think it was possible, but somehow the crowd of army and police vehicles had grown even larger outside. Even as everyone watched the front of the house, no one seemed to notice her, a white girl in a pink T-shirt and denim shorts, leaving barefoot through the front door. At first, she tried to keep herself from running, from attractingtoo much attention. By the time she got to the end of the driveway,though, she didn’t care anymore.
She started to run, and as she did, she heard one of the soldiers yell, “
Alto!
Stop!”
Alto!
Stop!”
The harshness of the order made her run even faster, and as she did, she heard the staccato beat of heavy boots following her.
“
Alto!
” he yelled again, only this time from much closer.
Alto!
” he yelled again, only this time from much closer.
Kimberly didn’t know where she was going or what she was going to do when she got there, but she was absolutely certain that above all other things in the world, she wanted to outrun this thug on her heels. She didn’t dare look. She didn’t dare slow down or change course, becauseas it was, she was charging headlong down the steep incline, and any sudden move—
She felt herself airborne even before she realized that she’d tangled her feet. When she hit the ground, it was on the concrete, and she hit hard on her knees. A bolt of pain launched all the way up to her thighs as the rough cement tore the meat from her kneecaps.
The soldier was on her in an instant, grabbing her by her arms and yanking her to her feet.
“Get your hands off of me!” Kimberly shrieked. As she yelled the words, she could see the effect they had on the soldier. He was not one of the DENI thugs; he was rank-and-file PDF, just a guy doing his job, and he clearly was not comfortable roughing up a young girl. That she would shout it so loud and draw so much attention made him very uncomfortable.
“You are coming with me,” he said to her in Spanish, tightening his grip on her arm. “I have orders to keep you at the house.”
“You do not!” Kimberly shouted back at him, in unaccented Spanishwith better diction than he. “Your captain said I could go. He said I could leave! Ow, you’re hurting me!”
The soldier blushed a deeper red, but his grip did not loosen. “Please do not make this more difficult that it has to be,” he said.
Kimberly stared for a long moment, then straightened herself and jerked her arm away. “Okay,” she said. “I’m going.” Trying her best to be stoic, she silently followed the goon back up toward the house, ignoring the tickle of the blood tracing down her shins. From the foyer, she could see the invaders inside, sifting through all the things that did not belong to them. She hated these men more now than at any other moment in her life. Her dad was nowhere to be seen, already taken into another room somewhere, for God only knew what purpose.
Over near the stairs, Captain Quintero sensed the movement and turned his handsome face to greet her. “I thought you left,” he said.
“This goon chased me down,” Kimberly spat. “Look what he did to me.” She gestured to her bleeding knees, but the captain seemed unmoved.
“I thought she was running away,” the soldier said quickly. He sounded as if he were whining. “If you said—”
Quintero dismissed the soldier’s concern with a wave of his hand. “Let her go,” he said. “She is not important to us.”
And just like that, she was free.
This time, as Kimberly ran, the soldiers stepped out of the way to let her pass. As she burst through the cordon at the foot of her driveway, she stopped and gasped as she saw a second cordon forming up at the bottom of the hill. “My God, what’s happening?” she asked to the night.
She needed a phone. She also needed a home and a bed and her books for the biology test tomorrow. She needed her mother and her father, and even her annoying little brother. For the time being, though, all she had was the still night air. And her fear.
The party. They would have a phone. She could call somebody from the Arosemenas’ house. She could call Mom. She always knew what to do.
The panic started to build exponentially now, and Kimberly found herself struggling for control. She had the phone book, didn’t she? Surely the number was there. It had to be; that was why God had prompted her to take it in the first place.
Except for the Muses, it seemed that everyone who lived on the street was related to each other, all of them an offshoot of the Arosemenafamily: uncles, cousins, grandparents, and assorted friends and hangers-on. When they threw a party, it was always packed to the rafters, and this one was no exception. Desperate for help, Kimberly knocked heavily on the front door.
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