The Seeds of Fiction

by Bernard Diederich

  I feel too old now to attempt Mexico on my own, and I shall probably have to stay with my daughter for Christmas in Switzerland. Anyway I’d rather be with you in Mexico and with Ginette than on my own.

  This summer, which I dread more than winter, was the first in four years when I had not escaped to South America, and it felt strange being in Europe. However, my novel is finished (called The Honorary Consul) and it should be coming out in September next year. Of course you shall have one of the first copies. I wish you could both look in here on your way back from New Zealand.

  He later told me that, of all his works, The Honorary Consul was the book he liked best. ‘An author has the right to like and dislike his own books,’ he asserted in his characteristically droll way.

  Still, I wanted him to visit Panama. It loomed as his next destination. Logistical problems had to be overcome because just visiting Panama would not be enough; he had to meet General Omar Torrijos. Fortunately for my plan, towards the end of each of Graham’s letters his plaintive cry for escape to a new setting was getting louder.

  In Mexico City I scoured bookshops for Spanish-language copies of Graham’s titles and shipped them to Torrijos. I have no idea if he read them all, but I do believe from a later conversation that he had read The Quiet American. A month later I was filing another story on Panama. In March 1973, as he had promised, Torrijos succeeded in persuading the UN to hold an unprecedented Security Council meeting in Panama. It was no secret that his motive was to bring pressure on Washington. In the first of two stories on this development which I reported, headlined ‘Omar versus the Canal Zone’, Torrijos in his twenty-minute speech to the session assailed the United States, declaring, ‘It is difficult to comprehend how a country that has characterized itself as non-colonial insists on maintaining a colony in the heart of our country. Never will we add another star to the flag of the United States.’

  In response, John Scali, US Ambassador to the UN and a former television newsman, said Torrijos was ‘knocking on an open door’ and that the ‘world knows the United States is ready to modernize our treaty arrangement with Panama to the mutual advantage of both countries’. Panama then introduced a resolution calling for the United States to draft without delay a new treaty that would guarantee Panama sovereignty over all its territory. The resolution won the support of thirteen of the fifteen delegates, with Britain abstaining. However, Scali, not at all happy, had to raise his right hand and cast the third US veto in the UN’s 27-year history. Panama’s Foreign Minister, Antonio (Tony) Tack, was jubilant. ‘The US vetoed the resolution, but the world vetoed the US,’ he said.

  In a long three-page letter dated during the time the UN meeting in Panama was under way — 16 March 1973 — Graham, who could normally say a great deal in a small missive, lamented again being immobilized in Europe.

  Unfortunately my sole excuse for visiting South America has gone now that I’ve finished my three-year-old novel (The Honorary Consul). I wish we could have another trip together like our Dominican one before you shake the dust off your feet. Have you any useful contacts, preferably English-speaking, in Panama as I really would rather like to visit that country perhaps in the summer or would it be a terrible climate then? I have managed to take Cuba in August without suffering too much …

  Our letters — mine being the one commending Torrijos to Graham — had crossed! I quickly responded, telling him about Panama and the General. A meeting was all set if Graham wanted to go to Panama. I had arranged things with the General’s friend, Rory Gonzales, to ensure that Graham would be welcomed and well taken care of.

  Had he packed his bags, Graham would have met the General years earlier than he did. But he was hesitant. It took another three years for his Panama adventure to materialize. In his 25 April 1973 reply, he wrote:

  Many thanks for your long and useful letter about Panama. I shall certainly write you if I decide to go and contact the man Rory Gonzales … I haven’t yet made up my mind as Playboy wants me to go to South Africa which I have always wanted to visit, but the problem there is that my chief friend is the Afrikaans novelist Etienne Leroux and I don’t want to get him into trouble. If I go to Panama I will try and stop off and see you. I am delighted to hear you have given up the idea of New Zealand.

  I had mentioned in my letters how our children wanted to move to New Zealand because they were in love with the farms and horses. Graham opposed the move. He was certain I would die of boredom. Boredom, he warned, must be avoided at all cost. It was life’s real enemy.

  I had found Graham’s novel Travels with My Aunt (1969), a copy of which he dispatched to me, to be thoroughly enjoyable entertainment — light and merry and for Graham a change of pace. He said he had had ‘a lot of fun’ creating the indomitable Aunt Augusta and her black lover Wordsworth, then having them traipse around the world. When the book was published in the United States, Graham’s publisher — Graham often told this story — wanted to change the title, believing it was not saleable. Graham cabled back, ‘Easier to change publisher than to change title.’ He changed publishers.

  The Honorary Consul was another matter. Little did either of us realize in 1973 that in five years we would be caught up in a kidnapping drama that could rival his fictional account in that book. In The Honorary Consul the British consul is kidnapped by Paraguayan guerrillas by mistake. They had been after the American ambassador. The setting is a river town on the Parana River, on the border between Paraguay and Argentina. I considered The Honorary Consul a much better book than many critics did at the time and wondered whether its setting, like that of The Comedians, had not affected their judgement. There is an old saying in journalism that Americans will do anything for Latin America except read about it. Yet for those of us covering the region the kidnapping was only too close to reality. The human drama Graham constructed was not unlike so many that were unfolding around us during the terrorist-ridden 1970s.

  12 | THE YEARS PASS

  Often the General would give me a signal of recognition at public sessions where his boredom was apparent as he toyed with an unlit cigar. When we met, he would ask, ‘What news from your amigo ingles? It had become almost a game between us. When I replied that there was no news regarding Graham’s visit to Panama, Torrijos would laugh, saying his public relations man, Fabian Velarde, whom he had instructed to take care of the details of inviting Graham, was as slow as a ‘Panamanian sloth’.

  Meanwhile the United States, notwithstanding its veto of the UN Security Council resolution, was moving ahead on its own with the negotiation of a revised Panama Canal Treaty. Chief US negotiator Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, at seventy-nine America’s most venerable troubleshooting diplomat, had become a regular commuter between Washington and Panama’s Contadora Island where the talks were being held. A set of eight principles, which would lay the groundwork for a new partnership, was agreed by the two countries, and on 7 February 1974 Secretary of State Henry Kissinger flew to Panama with Bunker and a group of US congressmen. Torrijos was at the airport to greet them and rode with Kissinger into Panama City. The US diplomatic team was applauded by Panamanian legislators, who were particularly elated over principle no. 4, which read, ‘The Panamanian territory in which the canal is situated shall be returned to the jurisdiction of the Republic of Panama.’

  The following year was an especially busy news year in Panama. Time’s editors allowed me a four-column story in the 28 July issue headlined, ‘Collision Course on the Canal’. In the piece Torrijos was referred to as a ‘dictatorial but populist strongman’. At a press conference in Minneapolis Secretary of State Kissinger had worried aloud that the Panama Canal Zone, the quasi-US colony harbouring the strategic waterway that links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, could become the focus of a ‘kind of nationalistic guerrilla-type operation that we have not seen before in the hemisphere’.

  As the year drew to a close the Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief Hedley Donovan and Board Chairman Andréw Heiskell decided to visit Panama a
t the end of a six-country fact-finding tour of Latin America, accompanied by their wives. When I requested an interview with Torrijos for my bosses, Omar agreed and named the venue: the island of Contadora. Ambassador Bunker was in Washington. The Time Inc. VIPs would be lodged at Bunker’s Contadora bungalow. In his Time essay following his return to New York, under the headline ‘South America: Notes on a New Continent’, Donovan wrote:

  The most interesting thing to watch in South America’s near future, apart from the obvious potential for economic growth, is the groping for political forms somewhere between all-out democracy and rigid authoritarianism. Peru and Brazil think they are exploring this ground and priests and professors talk about it in Chile. It comes near the heart of the problem that a dictator, General Torrijos of Panama, should say, ‘I feel ashamed when I notice that somebody sitting next to me starts trembling. I feel guilty that there are people who are still afraid.’

  Donovan devoted much of his essay to Panama, noting:

  The subject of the Panama Canal unites South Americans. The Zone is seen as an odious relic of the imperialist age. All the governments support the Panamanians’ demand for a new treaty granting them unmistakable sovereignty over the Zone, with details of canal operations and US military presence to be negotiated. General Omar Torrijos Herrera, Panama’s strongman, is willing to wait until after the [1976] US elections for the new treaty (he has heard of the ‘Teddy Roosevelt lobby’). But something must give in 1977. He speaks of restraining ‘the students’ (at the University of Panama) as another general might speak of withholding his paratroopers.

  Meanwhile Panama finally began to loom as a destination for Graham. His letters reflected an almost desperate yearning to travel. ‘I wish we could meet somewhere else — say in Panama. I want very much to go to Panama one day and it would be fun to do it with you.’ He went to Greece instead. Then on 25 May 1976 he replied to a letter from me in which I asked him again whether he wanted to go to Panama, a repetitive question by now:

  I certainly am still interested in visiting Panama and the pleasure would be greater if I had your company. Unfortunately the time when I am most free is the summer when I have to get away from Antibes because of the crowds. Summer, I imagine, is not very agreeable in Panama. For example the most likely times this year, as I promised to go to Spain for ten days around July 12, would be say the last week of July and the first week of August. This is the period of greatest heat in Panama, but I could stand it if you could. I would much appreciate an invitation from General Torrijos and I could probably cover my expenses with an article in the Daily Telegraph Magazine. I would probably come by KLM, and would plan to stay around two weeks. I don’t think the General would find my article unsympathetic! Oh, I have just seen in rereading your letter that July is bad for you. Would August be better?

  Then on 15 July he wrote:

  I am just off to Spain tomorrow the 16. I got your letter of July 1 but there has come no word from Mr V [Torrijos’s PR man Fabian Velarde]. Perhaps the General has changed his mind or Mr V is too lazy …

  I tried about fifty times to get you at the telephone number in Paris [where I was visiting at the time] but there was never any reply except once when I got the wrong number! It would be lovely to see you in Panama, but I don’t feel like pressing the General for the invitation. Let it come or let it not come.

  On 26 August he wrote:

  I have just got your letter of August 13 as I have been travelling around. It’s sad that we weren’t able to have a meeting in London or elsewhere for I was in England for some days. I am afraid any invitation from the general would come too late for this year now. I have too many things that I have to finish. Perhaps a good plan would be to wait until next summer when [US presidential candidates] Carter or Ford’s attitude to Panama will become clearer.

  In a letter dated 15 September he told me:

  I have at last had a telegram from Mr V and I have replied that the earliest I can go is December. There is a KLM flight from Amsterdam which I propose to take, arriving in Panama on 4 of December. I wanted to avoid passing by way of New York. Is there any chance of your being able to come up for a few days anyway and see me? I suppose in due course Mr Velarde will be booking me in a hotel etc. Have you any idea whether the government plans to pay my passage or only for my stay in the country? If all goes well I would plan to stay the best part of three weeks. It would be lovely to see you. I doubt if the CIA will enjoy having me around! They didn’t like it in Chile.

  Then on 18 October he wrote:

  I was relieved to get your letter as I had no reply from Mr Velarde to either my telegram or my letter. Anyway today I booked my seat and am due to arrive by KLM soon after 9 a.m. on the morning of December 4. How very good it will be to see you, if only for a few days. I plan to stay about three weeks if the General will continue to pay for me! I would be grateful if you would continue to send me snippets on Panama. The visit should be well timed as negotiations presumably will have begun again with either Carter or Ford. (P.S. Can you suggest anywhere for urgent letters and telegrams, if possible not in the American Zone?)

  13 | RENDEZVOUS ON A PEARL ISLAND

  Despite his years, Graham was rearing to go, prepared to explore new territory, size up new faces and match wits and tangle with whatever Byzantine politics the ‘crossroads of the world’ — Panama — had to offer. At seventy-two he dropped in on one of the most important foreign-policy issues for Washington of the time — not as just an observer but as a man who believed deeply in the rights of small nations. At issue was the new Panama Canal Treaty, a topic charged with powerful emotions and nationalistic nostalgia on both the US and Panamanian sides. It was an explosive mixture. His experience would produce a book, Getting to Know the General, which Graham described as the story of an involvement. ‘I was surprised and a little mystified,’ he wrote in the book, ‘to receive a telegram … telling me that I had been invited by General Omar Torrijos Herrera to visit Panama as his guest.’ Graham and I had an agreement. As a foreign correspondent I did not wish to become part of the story. However, Torrijos’s invitation to Graham was no mystery and certainly no surprise. It had been four years in the making.

  On 4 December 1976 my flight to Panama City from Mexico City was terribly late. I worried about Graham. If things went wrong I would feel responsible. I hoped someone would be at Panama City’s Tocumen airport to meet him. Omar’s evanescent public relations man Velarde did not answer my frantic telephone calls from the Mexico City airport. I had visions of Graham stranded, alone at the airport, waiting. Velarde was notorious for operating on Latin time, which assumes delayed arrivals for every event.

  When I finally reached the El Panama Hotel after a three-hour flight Graham had already checked in. He had been met by Velarde after all. He brushed aside my apologies and said he was relieved that I had arrived safe and sound. He had aged well. He was still as lean as an athlete, with plenty of bounce in his step. It had been nearly twelve years since we had last seen each other, after I bade him goodbye in Santo Domingo. His letters in the interim had made it seem like yesterday. He was a wonderful pen pal, never failing to answer correspondence. Like travel, he said, letter-writing was a form of therapy.

  As we chatted I realized something else. He had mellowed; he was much more talkative, open and humorous than he had been in the 1950s and 1960s. But he was still shy with strangers, and he could still be finicky. His driver spoke no English, and Graham, who spoke virtually no Spanish, didn’t think he could get along with him. Nor was Graham too happy with Mr Velarde. (Graham’s opinion of Velarde was shared by many foreign correspondents who covered Panama.)

  Travel seemed to energize him, and he dismissed the idea of jet lag. He was anxious about the chances for a new Canal agreement. The Panamanians were on tenterhooks because the newly elected US President Jimmy Carter had said during his campaign that he would never give up US control of the Canal Zone. None the less, signals out of Washington suggested that
the ‘never’ had only been campaign rhetoric.

  Meanwhile Torrijos had just returned from a non-aligned nations’ conference in Sri Lanka to find troubling headlines at home. Students had rioted over an increase in the price of milk and rice. A Zonian policeman — a tall, skinny American named William Drummond, one of the more vocal opponents of a new treaty — had filed a civil suit in the Zone’s US district court to block Canal negotiations. Three days later a series of bombs exploded in the Zone. The first partially demolished Drummond’s car. Some Americans pointed the finger at the Panamanian National Guard, saying it was an effort to intimidate Drummond, while Omar’s inner circle suspected it was all part of a gringo plot to destabilize his government. Washington believed that the National Guard had had a hand in the bombings in an attempt to speed up negotiations. Omar, angry at the suggestion that his Guardia was involved, ordered his spy chief, Colonel Manuel Noriega, to go to Washington and talk to the CIA chief, George H.W. Bush, to assure him it wasn’t so. ‘It seems like a good time to visit,’ Graham chuckled. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting the General. He must have his hands full.’

  Next morning Graham was up early and already in the hotel lobby when I came down to meet him. We had been instructed to wait for a driver. Appointments, I warned Graham, had a habit of changing in Panama at the last moment, and the General was notorious for altering his itinerary without warning. We would be playing it by ear. Smelling adventure, Graham was in high spirits — cheerful at breakfast and cheerful while waiting for the driver. We sank into the comfortable chairs on the El Panama’s open veranda, enjoying the delicious tropical morning and watching the cars come and go.