Cornucopia

by John Kinsella

  1. Mark Twain’s Notebooks & Journals, Volume I: (1855-1873)

  Daily Alta California, Volume 19, Number 7084, 17 February 1867

  PAT KENNEDY

  The Canal Company’s office in Managua informed Lili her husband had set of for the Rio San Juan, a river that formed the border with Costa Rica, adding telephone connections were sometimes difficult. After three days without news Lili called Tom Barton, she was frantic with worry by the absence of news and implored Tom to set out in search for her husband.

  Pat was an adventurer, it was in his skin. After his studies and work experience in Boston, Massachusetts, life in his newly established accounting firm in Limerick City soon became routine, it was not an absence of interest in his business, but a desire to discover new things.

  As the only child of parents who knew their modest place in Irish society, Pat had been straight-jacketed and pressed into studying for a career that would assure him of a better material life than they themselves had known in Limerick.

  His mother had never ceased to hammer into him the need to succeed, the effect of which spurred him on, sharpening his value of hard work and diligence, but at the same time he nursed the idea that once success was ensured he would one day explore the mysterious corners of the world that had beckoned him from the pages of his childhood encyclopedias.

  Once established, his first business forays overseas led him to Amsterdam and Hamburg to meet firms that had set up businesses in the Shannon Free Tax Zone. Amongst his discoveries were the lurid attractions of those cities, that only went to stimulate his thirst for the exotic.

  That led him to Michael Fitzwilliams’ uncle, David Castlemain, head of the Irish Union Bank at that time, who set Pat on the path of an adventure he was never to forget. An adventure that had led him to Cuba, Mexico and Colombia and to the brink of disaster.1

  Some people were dogged with bad luck, but for Pat Kennedy it was the opposite. As he put it, he came out of his near disastrous brush with Irish justice smelling of roses, going on to a banking career with Fitzwilliams which led him to Russia and China.

  His new life had not however dampened his adventurous spirit and Lili was not surprised when her husband announced his interest in Wang Jing’s project in Nicaragua and his plans to visit the country for a first hand investigation.

  1. Offshore Islands published by the author in 2001

  *

  Although Barton was not overly concerned about Kennedy’s safety he could not refuse Lili’s appeal for help. The next morning he set out in Don Pedro’s Cessna Citation, destination Managua, a one thousand four hundred kilometre flight via Panama City. Barton’s task was complicated by border disputes between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and between Colombia and Nicaragua over maritime boundaries and islands, which explained the need for a short stopover in Panama where the Cessna was registered.

  After formalities in Managua the Cessna then headed in a southwesterly direction over a vast region of virgin forest and mangroves to San Juan de Nicaragua, otherwise known as Greytown, situated on the Caribbean at the southern end of the Mosquito Coast.

  Barton was met by a representative of the Canal Company at Greytown Airport, a desolate airstrip surrounded by dense jungle, Gomez informed him there was no news of Kennedy’s whereabouts. That people went missing for days in the vast jungle covered region was nothing unusual, he told Barton. Their first step would be a stop in Greytown, where he could explain his plan to locate the Irishman.

  Barton nodded his agreement and climbed into the waiting Landcruiser, setting off along a dirt road in the direction of a jetty where a launch was waiting to take them to San Juan del Norte, a one street town lined by a motley collection of typical wood built Caribbean houses with their ubiquitous corrugated iron roofs.

  They took lunch at a guest house where Gomez produced a series of river maps explaining it was possible to take a fast launch to El Castillo, the midpoint between Greytown and San Carlos on Lake Nicaragua, a distance of about fifty kilometres, which could be reached in two or three hours. From there they could continue if necessary to San Carlos where the river joined the lake.

  The journey was monotonous. Barton was little interested in the wild life Gomez pointed to from time to time on the river banks which were covered by impenetrable jungle. It was difficult to image Kennedy or his guide attempting to explore by foot. If they had had a problem with their boat it would have been best to wait until until one of the local pangas or botes passed, which would have surely spotted them.

  Gomez told him the river was full of crocodiles, but it was rare they attacked humans. Another possibility that could not be ruled out was foul play.

  As the boat made its way down the Rio San Juan, Gomez hummed the tune of the Eagles iconic Hotel California, voicing the last lines:

  We are programmed to receive.

  You can check-out any time you like,

  But you can never leave!

  Barton enquired at San Carlos and Castillo where they were told plenty of gringos passed by there, they all looked the same, backpackers and adventurous tourists.

  They overnighted in San Carlos, then decided to make their way back down the river. At Castillo they stopped to eat in a ramshackle posada. The owner said he remembered a man of Kennedy’s description who had talked with a Chinese, or was it a Japanese, who had overnighted there. He checked his guest-book and showed it to Barton, who, although he was no specialist in Oriental languages, recognised the words written as Japanese.

  He snapped the comments with his cell phone and texted them to Lili. A couple of hours later his telephone buzzed; it was a message from Lili confirming the name was Japanese but nothing more.

  A few more inquiries and Barton learned they must have passed the two men on the river as had left in the direction of San Carlos early the same morning. He was puzzled, he was well aware of Pat’s unpredictable nature, but not his absence of communication.

  He immediately informed Lili of what little he had discovered, then as there was no point in hanging around on the San Juan River they returned to Greytown where after thanking the company man Barton flew to Managua where he hoped to glean more information at the HKND offices.

  EL CASTILLO – NICARAGUA

  Ken Hisakawa told Kennedy he was an American, a Japanese-American. His family had come to the USA in the thirties and had been interned in California during WWII. After the war they moved to New York where his father studied medicine and set up practice in Upper Manhattan. True to tradition Hisakawa’s father married a Japanese-American from California and Ken was born in 1953.

  Hisakawa grew up like any other American kid and after graduating from high school attended Colombia University, where he studied history and archaeology before going on to specialise in Pre-Colombian history. After a period of field research in Mexico and Central America, he returned to his university to teach and to carry out research in his field.

  Ken Hisakawa had the studious look of an Oriental academic, polite, sometimes talking with his hand in front of his mouth, and slightly bowed. That was misleading, he was in reality explosive and in spite of his slight figure he was ready to confront any perceived aggression in pure American style, baseball bat in hand and questions asked after. It had earned him more than one beating in New York when he bit off more than he could chew, but it never deterred him from defending what he considered right.

  He unnerved Pat when to demonstrate a point he pulled out a vicious looking automatic after el dueño de la posada warned them of river pirates and other denizens of the Gracia a Dios.

  Ken Hisakawa was convinced that the Chinese had been to the Americas before the Europeans. His proof was a map purchased in 2001, by a certain Liu Gang, a Chinese attorney, from a Shanghai antique dealer. According to notations on the map it was a copy made in 1763 by a Chinese cartographer, Mo Yi-tong, of an original map Ming-dynasty dating from 1418. Reference was made to early navigators from the Ming and Yuan dynasties as well as Arab explorers.
Hisakawa believed evidence of these first explorers could be found at Central American sites where they would have landed, brought by the same winds that opened the route to the Philippines in the sixteenth century, to and from Central America.

  The fortuitous meeting with Hisakawa set the banker in the unexpected direction of the northernmost point of La Moskitia, which adjoined the Mosquito Coast in Honduras. As an expert on pre-Colombian archaeology, Hisakawa had been hired by Environmental Resources Management to work on the environmental and social impact assessment commissioned by HKND relating to the possible path of the canal. As a result thousands of artefacts dating from pre-Colombian times were handed over to the Nicaraguan government in a well publicised demonstration of the canal company’s goodwill.

  Notwithstanding the gesture, Hisakawa not only disapproved of the methods, he perceived the report as a cover-up, biased and designed to hid the facts. Not wanting to enter into open conflict with the authorities who backed the project, which was not only a dangerous undertaking in Central America, but would prejudice his ability to work in the region - one of the great centres of pre-Colombian civilisations - he left to join the team being put together to investigate the legendary City of the Monkey God across the border in Honduras.

  Pat’s meeting with Hisakawa, just as the archaeologist was en-route to join the archaeological expedition in Honduras, was one of those strange chance meetings that changed lives. The dramatic discovery of a lost civilization deep in the remote Honduran jungle and the discovery of the legendary City of the Monkey God presented a once in a lifetime opportunity Hisakawa told Pat. The existence of extensive plazas, earthworks, mounds and pyramids, pointed to the existence of a hitherto unknown culture that had it seemed suddenly vanished from the face of the earth more than a thousand years before.

  Hisakawa had been putting the finishing touches to his work and gathering his material at El Castillo after several months in the jungle. Recognising Kennedy as not being the usual kind of backpacker or tourist, Hisakawa had responded to what seemed a first casual curiosity about the canal project. But quickly the two men found themselves carried away by the intensely passionate history of Central America.

  E

  l Castillo – Rio San Juan – Nicaragua

  As the archaeologist enthused about the vestiges of pre-Colombian civilisation and lost cities Kennedy became enthralled and was soon begging to join the American on his journey to join the expedition in Honduras.

  They talked deep into the night carried away by their enthusiasm. It was not an exchange fueled by alcohol, neither of the two men drank more than two or three beers, what bore them through the night was their common passion for adventure and exploration. Hisakawa, realising Kennedy was a very unusual man, with considerable financial resources, the kind of patron scientists like he dreamed of, quickly acquiesced; on the strict condition that Kennedy swore to absolute secrecy. The fear was the site of a hitherto unknown civilisation, in a country as lawless as Honduras, would attract the attention of looters and bandits.

  BRUSSELS

  The leaders of the European Union were gathered in a last ditch attempt to find a solution to the interminable Greek crisis. It was a drama that threatened not only the future of the euro but the cohesion of the entire Union.

  It seemed as though men had learnt nothing. Leaders were prepared to play brinkmanship regardless of the consequences, where the slightest slip could precipitate Europe and its financial system, along with that of the world, into an abyss.

  Financial experts, eager to avoid frightening markets into a headlong panic, assured investors the risk had been built into their calculations. However, the Lehman collapse, which had been precipitated by the Fed in response to the banks catastrophic situation, resulted in a chain reaction the almost brought about a systemic collapse of world’s banking institutions.

  The poor judgement of Europe’s leaders; the astonishing naïvety of the Greek government; the petulance of the IMF; the intrusive schadenfreud of Putin, were signs of the collective folly that had descended on Europe, as British eurosceptics fiddled, and Berlin together with the ECB played with matches over a powder keg

  Some cried for castigation of the profligate Greeks, others demanded a return to sovereignty, whilst madmen in the UK compared the European Commission with Hitler’s Nazi regime or Stalin’s Soviet tyranny. The very system built to prevent European conflict was in peril, threatened by little men without vision. Where were the Churchills, the de Gaulles?

  The spectacle was astonishing: the Syriza government had been elected by the Greek people desperate to solve the crisis, not to plunge Europe into turmoil. Greece had blindly blundered into a disaster, which to a large degree was of its own making. Its leaders had failed to reform the country’s institutions, pushing difficult decisions to the future behind a growing mountain of debt. They were not alone, Britain, France, Italy and Spain found themselves in a similar impasse and risked paying for the consequences.

  The ignorant saw the Greeks as Klephts, the critics fancifully saw themselves as vengeful Armatolikia. The reality was more complicated, any solution would be no more than a temporary expedient. It would require men of vision to sooth the pain before an enduring compromise could be agreed by all parties.

  Certain European leaders would no doubt take advantage of the discord to advance their own short term electoral ambitions. Not only extremists, but leaders like Cameron, whose Scottish referendum opened the way to many dangers, dividing the UK, ranging Scottish independentists against eurosceptics and disillusioned reactionaries, many of whom imagined England as kind of Singapore or Norway, or even the centre of an imaginary Commonwealth, as though India or Australia would heed London’s not very Churchillian call.

  The British capital was seen by certain rich and powerful foreigners as an offshore safe haven for doubtful capital. The UK, beyond London, was unknown to them and their servitors who juggled hedge funds and managed investment banks. Little did they care for the North, or the plight of those who had settled there - immigrants from independent nations that had formed a once glorious empire, in search of a better life.

  As the days passed and uncertainty grew, ordinary Greeks withdrew their euros from ATMs, hiding them under their mattresses, fearful of waking up without the means to buy their daily bread. It was a slow motion bank run. In the weeks and months leading up to the denouement tens, thousands, millions and billions had been pulled out of Greek banks, bleeding them dry, and much of it had gone to Austria and Germany.

  The procrastination of governments and institutions had contributed to the debacle, as the stubbornness of Syriza risked leading to Greece’s ejection not only from the euro, but even from the Union with unimaginable consequences for the Greek people and the future of Europe.

  Regretfully it was not the first time Europeans had forced themselves into a corner. The fact was they would never be able to recoup their money and the stubbornness of creditors only reinforced destructively radical groups such as the leftist Podemos movement in Spain and the right-wing National Front in France.

  Anarchy threatened as the rich became richer and as ever at the expense of the poor. In 1821, Shelley wrote, the vessel of the state is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism. Two centuries later little had changed as an increasing number of ‘haves’ sought to deprive the people of their rights in a winner take all society.

  The Greek people were unwilling to be the scapegoats of unviable behind door deals in Brussels or Berlin, and their anger would not be appeased by crumbs thrown at them while banks were bailed out by EU emergency funds.

  *

  From afar Tom Barton looked on aghast. After the Greek extreme-left party’s stunning electoral victory with just two seats short of an absolute majority, its leader, Alexis Tsipras, faced an an uphill battle if he imagined Marxist ideas could be applied in Greece.

  He had been elected to solve an economic problem, not foment a politically obsolete revo
lution. In 2015, Greeks wanted jobs, young and old sought the benefits of the consumer society, they were not interested in ideology, or religion, a Marxist state was the furthest thing from minds, and even less did they want to see Russian imperialists on the streets of Pyraeus or Athens, Orthodox co-religionists or not.

  As the interest rate on Greek ten year bonds leapt, shares of the country’s leading banks plunged. Trápeza Pireós, the country’s largest bank, had lost more than ninety eight percent of its value during the five years leading up to the Syriza victory, with the rest of the country’s banks not doing much better.

  Disaster was on the horizon, capital flight and savings withdrawals exploded, deposits fell to a mere trickle, as Tsipras spoke of large scale nationalisations, an increase in minimum wages and the rehiring of recently dismissed public sector workers.

  Only firm action could save Greece and prevent Europe and its institutions, banks, and industries from being dragged into the quagmire.

  But to the Greek people Alexis Tsipras was a messiah. The trouble was the world had acclaimed messiahs before, only to discover that nothing ever changed; the latest in date was Barack Obama, whose achievements, which were an improvement when compared to George Bush’s warmongering, fell far short of the hopes and aspirations of many of those who had elected him.

  Barton, a ringside spectator of another saviour’s calamitous policies in nearby Venezuela, looked on as Nicolás Madura, who had succeeded his charismatic predecessor, Hugo Chavez, struggled to fulfil his electoral promises. His fiery rhetoric was of little avail as the United Socialist Party’s policies, built on the price of oil, collapsed. Madura was forced to call in the army to control the lengthening lines outside supermarkets, where shoppers in Caracas fought for basic essentials: rice, sugar and toilet paper, where even McDonald’s ran out of French fries.