Leon Uris - A God In Ruins

“I’ve spoken personally to our main man inside the Church hierarchy. There are no official records in Church adoption files about O’Connell’s birth. Two people were intimately involved in the adoption, namely, Cardinal Watts of Brooklyn and a Monsignor Gallico, both deceased. They did this on behalf of a priest who was Siobhan O’Connell’s brother but gave him no details. He is also deceased. The convent that raised and delivered O’Connell to Colorado could not give us any information as to the child’s biological parents.”

I liked what I was hearing. Some kind of moral blister was ready to

pop, the kind the media could seize on to devour whomever. Sure,

Horowitz and O’Connell were connected. Yes, I have turned a corner,

and the polls in a few days would see me back in the lead. The miracle

of my reelection would happen. It would be an upset even greater than

Truman’s defeat of Dewey. I was chomping at the bit. Was there a way

to find out what O’Connell was going to say before he went on? If so, we could be planning our counter strike right now.

“You’re drooling, Thornton,” Darnell said.

“You bet I am. If Horowitz senior was an academic teaching Russian, there has to be an FBI file on him.”

Darnell gave me a “shit for brains” look. “Wait, for Christ’s sake. Do not fart with FBI files. Do not jump the gun and step into a pile of shit. We will know in a matter of a few hours. I believe O’Connell has painted himself into a corner. It has to be good news for us.”

COLON, PANAMA, 2007

The free-trade zone at Colon was a long hour’s drive from Panama City. The zone sat plunk in the middle of the north south axis of the Western Hemisphere and was the transit point of anything and everything going up to North America and down to South America. Anything, everything.

The town itself epitomized a thieving, seedy, peeled, steamy, muddy-floody, baking, dangerous Central American place where eyes and ears seemed behind every corner and wall in a greedy hunt for deals.

Red Peterson, an old West Texas wildcatter, was scarcely moved to perspire even though the overhead fan grunted its last days.

Across from Red sat Moshe Rosenthal in ear locks beard, yarmulke, and prayer shawl. He took an envelope from his safe and handed it over the desk to Red.

The envelope contained a blue-white seventeen-carat diamond, in a diamond cut. The stone was a blinder.

“Now, which South American dictator’s wife did this little gem come off of?” Red asked.

Moshe held up his hands in innocence.

“Did you set your price on this?”

“Mas o’ minus.”

“For you and only you, a hundred and fifty thousand.”

Red replaced the diamond in its envelope, folded it securely, placed it in his top shirt pocket, and buttoned it. He signed an IOU marker to Rosenthal which the jeweler could cash later at Villa Hans Pedro Oberg, one of the main clearinghouses and banks of Colon.

“You made a good buy,” Rosenthal said. “It might be a little risky to sell it as one stone. If so, it could fetch over a half million. I’ll give you the name of a tip-top merchant on Forty seventh Street in New York. He can figure out the cuts like no one else. He’ll double your money.”

“Moses, you know I don’t deal in this crap. This is just a little present for the big, tall Swedish bombshell I’m married to.”

“Such a stone for your wife! Well, it will look beautiful in a necklace setting.”

“It’s like this, Moshe. I got her this G-string.”

“A G-string, you know, a G-string?” Red said tentatively.

He stood up and pretended he was wearing a G-string. “Up the left side, I call that first base, the string has a row of little rubies. Up the right side, I call that third base, a row of emeralds. This diamond is going right in at home place.”

“You’re such a romantic,” Moshe said.

The teakettle whistled. How the fuck can he drink hot tea? Red always wondered. He never winced, but it annoyed him whenever he saw Moshe Rosenthal’s concentration camp tattoo. Moshe produced a bottle of Red’s stuff. They clicked on the deal; prayers would be said tonight at shul.

“You delivered a hell of an order here. Some guys were around this morning looking for your pilot, Cliff Morgan. Apparently some kind of parachute drop.”

“Smells like CIA, doesn’t it, Moshe?”

“The guns are going into the Sierra Maestra Mountains in Cuba to a half

dozen anti-Castro guerilla bands. Strange, I remember in fifty-nine or sixty when the Americans parachuted guns to Castro back in the Sierra Maestra.”

“Nothing changes,” Red said. He looked outside. It was darkening for the daily downpour. “Guns coming out of the United States, sold to the CIA in Colon, and flown into rebel Cuban camps. At the same time I’m going to buy Bulgarian AK’s for shipment from Colon to the United States.”

Red caught forty seconds of hard rain and reached Kelley’s Klub dripping. Cliff Morgan occupied a table with a half-dead bottle and a dancer on his lap. Christ, Red thought, that little concita reminds me of why a fellow can never go on a diet of straight blondes.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your little friend?” Red said on entering.

“This is Choo-Choo,” Cliff said. “Her and her sister, Candi, do a real artistic number together. They’d like to be broadened by a mature man.”

Red took his hotel key out and handed it to ChooChoo. “Arrange to get off about nine or ten o’clock,” Red said, “I’ll square it with Kelley.”

She took the key. Red’s hand felt the beautiful curve of her hip and she left.

“Thanks,” Red said to Cliff.

“My treat,” Cliff answered. Red wished to hell Cliff Morgan had paid the installment on his jet.

“I hear the CIA was looking for you.”

“Yeah, they want me to fly our delivery in a transport and drop them in the Sierra Maestra. Fifty thousand in it.”

“You take the job?”

“After I finish up our charter. When we leaving?”

“I’ve got a little business at the Villa. Was going to leave tonight, but Choo-Choo and Koo-Koo .. . well, tomorrow morning. File a flight plan for Lubbock.”

The guards passed the Villa Pedro Oberg’s limo through the gates. Red emerged and with Hans Pedro disappeared into the safe room that had no eyes or ears. It was one of the most protected civilian buildings from the Rio Grande to the tip of Argentina.

The fucking little Swiss banker, Claus Von Manfried, was at hand to pick up droppings of the deals. Could he operate! He spread the large accounts into a half dozen to a dozen banks, all numbered and inaccessible accounts.

“Let’s see what I’ve got here,” Hans Pedro said. “I have a verification of the pieces you sent down. Payable to you in the sum of two million, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Minus four hundred and seventy thousand you owe for the Bulgarian AK’s.”

“Yeah, I owe Moshe Rosenthal a hundred and fifty thousand.”

“Have you verified your purchase?”

“Yeah, I checked this morning. They’re all there. They’ll be going up on a Greek freighter, Kaspos. What have I got left over?” Clauf Von Manfried’s calculator added in bribes, transportation, Hans Pedro Oberg’s clearinghouse fees.

“Slightly under a million.”

“What’re my total deposits?” “Thirty million in eight accounts.”