The Laughing Falcon (12 page)

Maggie gave up. “How did you and Gloria-May meet?”

Walker smiled, his eyes taking on a distant look as he offered a story similar to Glo’s, though less sexually candid: he had wooed and pursued, properly proposed, sought acceptance from her parents, “a gracious Christian couple from the great state of Alabama.”

Boyer nodded approvingly.

“I loved her from the day we met, and still do. Deeply.”

The interview yielded a few tender accounts of their life together, a paean to Glo for her sacrifices in support of his political career, and a peppering of homilies about preserving family values (America was at a “moral crossroads”). While in Vietnam he had adopted — in the loose sense — three orphaned children, and paid for their schooling and several visits to the States. “We regularly correspond.” He showed her photographs of two lovely women and a young man, and despite herself Maggie felt slightly misty. He became livelier, more intense, when discussing his war record. President Lyndon Johnson had pinned the Medal of Honor on him after he had rescued his platoon from an ambush in a Vietnamese rice paddy.

When they found themselves shouting to be heard over a sudden clamour of rainfall, they retreated indoors; Maggie decided she had enough to satisfy “the ladies.”

In the main room, a banner had been hung: “Happy Lucky Seventh, Chuck and Glo.” To bulk up the crowd, the Nieuwendoorks and their staff had joined the ceremony. Ed Creeley lifted two glasses of champagne from Miguel’s tray, handed one to Maggie, saying, “Here comes a bunch of malarkey, but I have to file it anyway. Guess we’re going to hear from the two pilot fish first.”

Schumenbacker and Boyer tried to be jocose in offering toasts to future president and first lady, but the effect was cloying. Creeley muttered asides to Maggie: “That clonged.” “These guys really know how to serve up the goo.”

The senator responded with a brief oration: he was the luckiest man on earth; without Gloria-May, he could not have attained this point of his career let alone survived the trying times ahead; his only regret was they never had children. “But, off the record, it wasn’t for want of trying.” How inappropriate, Maggie thought; she felt embarrassed for him.

“It’s been a true love, an exceptional love.” The senator put his arm around Glo, who looked stunning in a mini-Armani cocktail dress. Maggie still had on her hiking boots and her khaki outfit – despite Walker’s admonition to wear casual clothes, she wished she had changed into her dress.

Glo, playing to Boyer’s camera, planted a lush kiss on her husband’s lips, then pantomimed fainting in his arms.

“Give us a word, Gloria-May,” said Schumenbacker.

“Well, all I can say is I surely wish I hadn’t married such a milksop.” Though Walker must have known she was teasing, he winced. “He’s shiftless, no ambition.” She shoved him playfully. “Love you to tiny little bits, Chester. I’m there for the long haul, and you know it, Mr. President. To long-lasting love, for God and the Republican party.”

The two pilot fish smiled – Maggie couldn’t believe they were so credulous as not to detect the sardonic tone. Ed Creeley grinned and joined the toast.

Glo drained her champagne, and when Boyer switched to a video camera she began mugging: still the professional entertainer. She did a bump and grind, and, with a hibiscus clenched between her teeth, danced a fandango around Walker with fluid grace. Everyone cheered, but Walker’s mirth seemed strained.

Glo put her arms around her husband and kissed him again. All her audience but Creeley applauded. After a last Latin dance step, she said to Boyer, “Okay, cut, I need a drink.”

“I’d like to get the real story on that dame,” Creeley said. “Can’t tell me she hasn’t been around.”

Maggie wandered off to a table where a banquet had been spread for lunch. As she picked from a bowl of fruit, she watched Glo pull Agent Johnson toward her and put an arm around him. “Loosen up, Ralph, have a drink.”

Johnson declined with a smile. The other agent, Hollisson, was in his cabin with a high temperature.

Senator Walker kept checking his watch, as if he had somewhere to go. His holiday had not relaxed him much, and Maggie sensed he was revving his engine for tomorrow’s return to politics.

Suddenly there came a commotion at the doorway, and Agent Hollisson staggered in, as if being flung – he was in his underwear, a blanket thrown around his shoulders.

“Ever’boddy, hands opp!” shouted a voice from behind him. “No fonny beezness.”

Maggie’s passing thought was that she was witnessing a burlesque — a comedy troupe had been hired as entertainment. But reality set in with the sudden invasion of five masked people waving savage-looking guns; they were dressed in jungle fatigues with belt holsters; only their eyes showed behind red kerchiefs.

A burst of submachine gun fire into the rafters sent her reeling.

A woman was screaming: Celeste. Everyone but Ralph Johnson froze in shock — he was edging behind a table, slowly moving his hand toward the firearm under his shirt.

“You, stop, hands opp!” screamed one of the masked men, brandishing his automatic weapon at Johnson. “Or I make you holes like cheese!” Johnson raised his arms. “We keel nobody,” shouted the man, short and wiry and frantic. “You no make trobble, nobody he gets hurt.”

After a flurry of commands in Spanish, one of the invaders put a gun to Johnson’s back, and another motioned Hollisson to lie on his stomach; others produced lengths of rope and began to bind the agents’ wrists and ankles.

The bandits would steal and be gone, Maggie prayed, quick and efficient. She felt faint, but was determined to stay alert; she still could not accept that this was happening. One of the group was a woman, so rape did not seem on the agenda.

Now a sixth intruder strolled into the room, with a languid, graceful gait. He also wore military fatigues and was taller than the others; the kerchief tied around his face was not red but navy blue. He held no gun but was obviously the leader: the others deferred to him, nodded as he gave orders in a low voice, his eyes sweeping the room.

“Ever’boddy lie on floor face down, arms behind back,” said the short, wiry man, who seemed to be acting spokesperson. One of the gang had addressed him as Zorro.

Maggie lay down on her stomach and found herself almost bumping noses with Chuck Walker. His face was twisted with rage and shock as one of the raiders spun a rope around his wrists.

Zorro spoke to the leader, then turned to the captives. “Greetings to Senator Walker and other Yankee imperialists! We are Commando del Movimiento Cinco de Mayo. You are preesoners of war by Geneva Convention!”

“Viva Benito Madrigal, viva la libertad!”
came a shout, followed by ragged cheers from the others. Another burst of gunfire, and the CB radio shattered.

The female guerrilla grasped Maggie’s wrists and looped rope around them. They were prisoners of what war, Maggie wondered, and who was Benito Madrigal? These were not ordinary thieves, but what was their mission?

One by one, she and the other guests were directed first to their feet, then onto wooden chairs fetched from the dining room, their wrists then retied behind them to the cross rails. Attempts to speak were silenced by curt orders from their captors, though they talked animatedly among themselves. They were disparate in appearance: a stooped leathery older man, a plump fair-skinned short fellow, another tall and gangly,
wearing glasses – he seemed barely in his twenties, though it was difficult to tell. The woman was squat in build, ebony in colour, frizzed hair. The leader was slightly less dark skinned, his hair clipped short, military style.

Frightened and confused, Maggie obeyed directions to swivel her chair about; ultimately, after some arranging, she and her fellow guests found themselves facing forward, as if an audience to some entertainment. Next to Maggie was Glo, astonished, speechless. Chuck Walker, still red-faced, was at his wife’s other side; his attempts to speak were cut off by barked orders.

The knot binding Maggie’s wrists seemed bulky and inexpert; she could wiggle her hands. She had not been treated roughly, and although scared was managing to keep her head. She still felt a vague sense of unreality, as if she was living her own fiction. A fleeting thought: What would Fiona do?

Jan and Celeste Nieuwendoork were among those on chairs, but their dozen staff were made to sit on the floor, tied in pairs, back to back, wrist to wrist, shaking and sniffling and moaning in fear; behind Maggie, Celeste was crying. She could hear Walker urge in a low voice, “Everyone just be calm.”

The man in the blue kerchief — Halcón, they called him — talked for a few moments with Zorro, who then studied a page of notes as if about to deliver an address. Others were collecting watches, jewellery, and money, and placing them in an empty rice sack.

“Senator Chuck Walker! Ladies and gentlemen! “Zorro was about five-foot-three, with a fanatic’s hot eyes, and he seemed to need to shout. He first addressed those in the back, the Eco-Rico staff, in a mix of Spanish and English.
“Trabajadores!
Exploited workers of Costa Rica!
Somos amigos
, we are your frands.
Somos revolutionarios, no somos criminales.”
Addressing those on chairs, he added, “We come because Costa Rica ees dying from Yankee imperialist influence.”

He studied a phrase on his handwritten sheet, then conferred with the thin young guerrilla, who, in his thick wire-rim spectacles, looked like an owlish college student.

“Manipulated,” pronounced the young man.

“Maneepulated,” Zorro repeated. “No longer we are maneepulated by Disneyland America. We take our contry back.” He proceeded through a list of confusing complaints: their children were being exposed to the corrupting influences of American television; their best farmland was being stolen by rich Yankees, whose monopolistic practices also kept the price of rice and beans artificially high. “You know what ees costing coffee at Starbucks? — two days slavery for worker in mountains.”

Through the front window, Maggie could see the short, portly guerrilla standing by the tractor. Maggie started as he fired a round of submachine bullets at its tires, then at the engine, the racket drowning Zorro’s words — a tirade against the U.S. Immigration Service that seemed out of context. “They are feelthy dogs, not human!”

He ended with: “I have message for America. At thees moment, Costa Rica declares independent democratic socialist republic.” With an extravagant gesture, he hoisted a half-filled bottle of champagne, gulped from it, then threw the bottle at the wall.

“Viva Benito Madrigal, viva la libertad!”
came a chorus behind him.

Halcón, the leader, stayed in the room’s shadows, issuing soft instructions. Maggie was uncertain about the hierarchy of the others: Zorro seemed second in command, but when he tilted another bottle to his lips, the woman wrested it from his hands and scolded him. All but Halcón seemed pumped with feigned bravado, disorganized and jumpy.

Now the bespectacled young man addressed them in fluent English. “I am placing here the list of our demands.” He laid a typewritten sheet on the dining room table. “We will take
two Americans with us. They will not be harmed if our just claims are met.”

Halcón said one word:
“Mujeres.”

“Si, mi capitán
. Two women must come with us.”

As the guerrillas deliberated, Maggie tried to become invisible. But they would not take her; she was not an imperialist — she wasn’t even American.

“Señora Walker,” Zorro said.

Glo’s mouth went wide open. “Aw, now, look -”

“Keep calm,” Walker said. “Let me talk to these people. I think I understand where they’re coming from.” Despite Zorro’s shouted demands for silence, Walker spoke forcefully in Spanish. Maggie gathered he was urging that their demands could be negotiated.

Halcón spoke sharply to Zorro, who put a stop to the speech with a shot into the floor from his automatic pistol — just in front of Walker’s toes.

“Señora Walker!” Zorro screamed.

“Easy, easy, everyone,” Walker said. “I’m sure they’d rather have me.” He rose awkwardly, tied to his wooden chair, and shuffled forward, remonstrating, offering himself in exchange for Glo. Zorro kicked at the chair, and Walker toppled over on his side.

Glo swore as two guerrillas set upon her: “You mangy shits, get your hands off!” They silenced her by tying a bandanna over her mouth, then, huffing and grunting, carried her outside, chair and all. Walker was shouting with fury as he struggled to right himself. “You bastards! She is only a woman!”

Zorro knocked over his chair again, then conferred with his boss, who looked fleetingly at Maggie, then gestured at Celeste. She screamed.

“No! Jan! Don’t let them!”

Now Jan was talking rapidly in a choked voice, begging. Celeste fainted as two of the guerrillas began to untie her. Maggie heard Jan repeat the word
embarazada: “Cinco mesas
embarazada, por favor, señores.”
Maggie took it to mean pregnant.

The revolutionaries seemed insistent on taking Celeste, and suddenly Maggie heard herself, to her utter amazement, saying, “Take me instead.”

Another whispered conference, then the young bespectacled man addressed her: “Who are you?”

“Margaret Schneider. I’m a writer. I will … tell your story to the world.”

She heard a scuffling noise outside, saw Glo being released from her chair, but still gagged and her wrists bound. She was refusing to rise from the ground.

Halcón butted his cigarette, checked his watch.
“Muy bien,”
he said.
“Una escritora, ella. Vámonos, amigos.”

Freed her from her chair, Maggie was led to the door. Her knees locked and her legs gave way and she stumbled over the sill. Arms grasped her, pulled her upright. She cast one last look about at the many staring eyes. Senator Walker, who had managed to regain a seated position, was hopping in his chair toward the door, crying Gloria-May’s name; grief and fury were in his eyes.

Maggie’s watch had been taken, so she was guessing that she and Gloria-May and their six masked captors had been trudging for an hour along one of the lodge’s trails, en route, it would seem, to the towering waterfall under which she had bathed a few days ago. The rain made the ground slippery, and from time to time one of the guerrillas would lose footing, and fall and curse.