The CTR Anthology
Page 50
Robert Bockstael / Ross
Michael Hogan / Harlan
Tom MacBeath / Wade
SET
November 1985. San José, Costa Rica. A cell. A bunk bed, a toilet. A metal door with a small barred window.
CHARACTERS
Harlan Cole, 48 years old. He chose to do a doctorate in economics instead of playing professional football
Wade Sinclair, 38 years old, maybe from Texas. He is typical CIA material: well-built, well-educated, gregarious, and ambitious
Ross Gibson, a 22-year-old working-class kid from New Jersey, in good shape but smaller than Harlan or Wade
SCENE ONE
(As the lights come up, Ross is sleeping. Harlan has just entered and is standing in front of the closed door. It’s late afternoon. Harlan notices Ross, and looks over the cell. He moves to Ross. Ross opens his eyes.)
Harlan: Buenos tardes.
(Ross jumps away, scared, ready to fight.)
Been here long?
Ross: Who’re you?
Harlan: Harlan Cole.
Ross: What are you doing here?
Harlan: What are you doing here?
Ross: Where are we?
Harlan: Costa Rica.
Ross: I mean here.
Harlan: Looks like a jail cell.
Ross: You a lawyer?
Harlan: You need a lawyer?
Ross: You from the embassy?
Harlan: You need someone from the embassy?
Ross: Hey, what the fuck, man?
Harlan: What are you charged with?
Ross: I don’t know.
Harlan: They didn’t tell you?
Ross: No.
Harlan: But you were arrested.
Ross: No one said anything, man.
Harlan: You think you were arrested?
Ross: I don’t know.
Harlan: Why do you think you were arrested?
Ross: Hey, I don’t fuckin’ know, all right?
Harlan: Sorry.
Ross: Fuck.
Harlan: What are you doing here? In Costa Rica?
Ross: I’m a tourist.
Harlan: Yeah.
Ross: Yeah, I’m just visiting.
Harlan: The border maybe? (Harlan stands and moves towards the door. Ross freaks and jumps. Harlan calms him quickly and moves past him to check the door.) They feeding you?
Ross: Fuck all.
Harlan: Nothing?
Ross: Rice and fucking beans.
Harlan: They hit you? (Harlan is checking out the door.)
Ross: Door’s solid, man. Whole place is solid.
Harlan: They hit you?
Ross: No. You from the embassy?
Harlan: Have you been interrogated?
Ross: You’re the first.
Harlan: You talk to anyone?
Ross: I haven’t seen anyone.
Harlan: (pointing at lightbulb) All the time?
Ross: No. Who the fuck are you?
Harlan: Harlan Cole.
Ross: Were you arrested?
Harlan: No.
Ross: You here to help me?
Harlan: Yes. What are you doing in Costa Rica?
Ross: I’m a tourist.
Harlan: Sure.
(Pause. The lights fade.)
SCENE TWO
(Ross is sitting on the floor. Prison sounds. Harlan goes to the door.)
Harlan: (into the halt) Hey. Quiero ver el gerente. (He paces. To Ross.) What are you doing in San José?
Ross: I told you, man.
Harlan: Visiting. But what are you doing? Where are you staying?
Ross: A hotel.
Harlan: Nice hotel?
Ross: Yeah.
Harlan: What’s it called?
Ross: The San José Hotel.
Harlan: Luxury hotel.
Ross: So?
Harlan: Very expensive.
Ross: I got money.
Harlan: They’ve got a great bar.
Ross: Yeah.
Harlan: I go there myself sometimes.
Ross: Yeah?
Harlan: You ever talk to the bartender, what’s his name, Pedro?
Ross: No, man.
Harlan: That aquarium they’ve got, it’s beautiful.
Ross: Oh yeah.
Harlan: Nicest angel fish I’ve ever seen. (Pause) The strippers are pretty good, too.
Ross: Yeah.
Harlan: There’s no San José Hotel.
Ross: You don’t know all the hotels, man.
Harlan: I know the big ones.
Ross: Yeah, well, this one’s new.
Harlan: Where is it? At the border?
(Ross gives up)
You know Jim Kemp?
Ross: Who?
Harlan: Jim Kemp.
Ross: Never heard of him.
Harlan: How long’ve you been in here?
Ross: Four days.
Harlan: Long time.
Ross: Yeah.
Harlan: How are you feeling?
Ross: Bored out of my fuckin’ mind.
Harlan: No, I mean … let’s see your eyes.
(Harlan moves to Ross, slowly and cautiously. He looks closely at Ross and checks his eyes.)
Ross: You a doctor or something?
Harlan: (He stands.) You’re all right.
(Harlan slams Ross with the back of his hand and sends him sprawling off the bench.)
Ross: (He smiles.) Hey, you are from the embassy.
Harlan: I want to know what you’re doing in Costa Rica.
Ross: I’m not scared of you, man.
Harlan: Good.
Ross: I’ll tell you ’cause I know you’re from the embassy.
Harlan: Start.
Ross: I could beat the shit out of you if I wanted to.
Harlan: I know.
Ross: Hey, I don’t know why they picked me up.
Harlan: Who?
Ross: Hey, I’m a friend, right?
Harlan: Who?
Ross: The fucking Costa Rican government. They got to come down on someone, they take me. Big show, everyone’s happy, right? Am I right?
Harlan: Who picked you up?
Ross: The Civil Guard.
Harlan: Where?
Ross: Zapote.
Harlan: What were you doing there? (Ross doesn’t answer.) Look, if you want me to help you get out of here …
Ross: (pause) Jim Kemp sent me to pick something up. He says someone’s gonna meet me where the boat docks, right, but there’s no one there. So I start walking to Zapote, these two guys stop me, take me back up river to where their car is …
Harlan: You said Kemp wanted something picked up.
Ross: Yeah, they had a package with them.
Harlan: What was it?
Ross: I figured it was C-4 plastic and that’s why they’re coming with, cause of what happened with the last plastic.
Harlan: What happened?
Ross: To the plastic?
Harlan: Yes.
Ross: Which time?
Harlan: The first time. Before you went to Zapote.
Ross: Jim Kemp brought in six charges, right, and he tells …
Harlan: When?
Ross: Three weeks ago.
Harlan: So … Kemp brought in six charges …
Ross: Yeah, and he tells Vega to stash them. Later on he says go pick ’em up and Vega comes back and … you know Ricardo Vega?
Harlan: Yes.
Ross: Well, Vega comes back, he’s only got one charge, right? He says I can’t find the other five, I buried ’em, can’t remember where. Jim Kemp was real pissed off but he sends us across the border with the one charge and when …
Harlan: You crossed the border?
Ross: (pause) Yeah.
Harlan: Jim Kemp send you across?
Ross: No.
Harlan: Did he know?
Ross: Fuck man, I came to fight, not to be a fucking gopher for Jim Kemp.
Harlan: Did Kemp know?
Ross: No.
&nb
sp; Harlan: Go on.
Ross: We cross the border into Nicaragua to set the last charge, right, but there’s fuckin’ Nica soldiers everywhere so we go back to Amparo. Then Vega sells the last charge to some guys from Costa Rica Libre. And those fuckers blow up a power line to Nicaragua, only it turns out that the power isn’t going to Nicaragua, it’s going to fuckin’ Amparo. They blacked out Amparo and Jim Kemp’s farm too. That was real funny, cause, you know, you look at the wires and, fuck, how’s Costa Rica Libre supposed to know which way the power’s going? Jim Kemp was real pissed off.
Harlan: Did you have much contact with Costa Rica Libre?
Ross: Hey, man, when I got here I heard Costa Rica Libre this, Costa Rica Libre that, I thought they were fucking communists. Who’d think they’d have a name like that and be on our side, right?
Harlan: Did you see them much?
Ross: I saw them. They talked a lot with the contras, and Vega, he’d slip ’em guns and ammo, and even some plastic sometimes. Or they’d be at the farm, they were cool, but I couldn’t always tell if I was talking to one of them or to a Cuban or a contra. Or a fuckin’ Civil Guard. Fuck the Civil Guard though. I mean, we helped those fuckers. They knew fuck all about guns, I showed ’em how to clean ’em, how to strip ’em, even how to fuckin’ shoot ’em. We’d go drinking together in Amparo, then they fuckin’ arrest me.
Harlan: So the two Civil Guard put you in their car …
Ross: Yeah, a Toyota, you know, a jeep.
Harlan: Yeah.
Ross: Yeah, and we drive, and when we get to the cut-off to Jim Kemp’s farm they go right by. I go to say something, the one guy, he puts his M16 in my nose. They put a hood over my head, tie me up and make me lie down in the back. We drove for a couple of hours, we spend a while in the car just sitting there, then we drove for another hour and they put me in this place.
Harlan: They say anything?
Ross: To me?
Harlan: Yes.
Ross: Just what I told you, man.
Harlan: They didn’t tell you you were under arrest?
Ross: No.
Harlan: They talk to each other?
Ross: Yeah.
Harlan: What about?
Ross: I don’t speak Spanish.
Harlan: But they spoke English.
Ross: Yeah, one of them.
Harlan: Good English?
Ross: Yeah.
Harlan: Accent?
Ross: Yeah.
Harlan: Did he speak good English or not? Was it a strong accent or not?
Ross: I don’t know, he didn’t say that much. Look, it was the fuckin’ Guard, man.
Harlan: Maybe.
Ross: It was them.
Harlan: How do you know?
Ross: Million fuckin’ spics runnin’ around in camouflage, how you supposed to tell ’em apart.
Harlan: What if it wasn’t the Guard?
Ross: Then who?
Harlan: You tell me.
Ross: No, it was them, man.
Harlan: If it wasn’t?
Ross: Then you wouldn’t be here.
Harlan: What’s your name?
Ross: Ross.
Harlan: How old are you?
Ross: Twenty-two.
Harlan: Why did you come to Costa Rica?
Ross: To fight communism.
Harlan: That the best work you could get? … What job did you quit to come fight communism in Costa Rica? You come to Costa Rica and get your head blown off or maybe you don’t. What do you do next?
Ross: Vega said he’d look after me, maybe get me work in a training camp in Florida.
Harlan: Good job.
Ross: Hey man, I came down to fight communism, that’s what I’m doing here. If we don’t stop them in Nicaragua they’ll be in Salvador and Costa Rica and then all over Central America. That’s the plan, don’t you know that? Jim Kemp says when Mexico goes communist there’s gonna be five million refugees crossing into the U.S. and that’ll wreck the U.S. without the Russians even firing one single shot. It’s guys like me and Vega and Jim Kemp that are the ones putting our asses on the line. You guys, you sit in your fucking air-conditioned rooms at the embassy and you move your little papers around. You think that’s gonna beat the communists? Fuck that.
Harlan: Jim Kemp say that too?
Ross: No, man, that’s what I say.
Harlan: How did you meet Kemp?
Ross: Vega brought me.
Harlan: How did you meet Vega?
Ross: In Miami.
Harlan: What was he doing there?
Ross: Hey, I thought you knew him, man.
Harlan: I don’t know him, I just heard of him.
Ross: He lives in Miami.
Harlan: So he’s Cuban.
Ross: He’s a Cuban-American.
Harlan: Who set it up for you to meet him?
Ross: There’s a difference, you know.
Harlan: Okay.
Ross: His old man was at the Bay of Pigs thing in Cuba.
Harlan: Yeah.
Ross: Yeah, he died on the beach there ’cause Kennedy wouldn’t give them air support even though the CIA planned the whole fuckin’ operation. That Kennedy was a communist.
Harlan: How did you meet Vega?
Ross: You think Kennedy was a communist?
Harlan: How did you meet Vega?
Ross: Do you?
Harlan: Yes. How did you meet him?
Ross: I answered an ad in The Defender magazine. Someone called me up and asked me what I could do, and they said okay.
Harlan: What can you do?
Ross: I can fly backwards.
Harlan: (pause) Then what?
Ross: I took the fuckin’, twenty-six hours on the fuckin’ bus to Miami. Vega met me in this restaurant, Los something, really fancy, right. I even met the guy that owns it, uh, shit, I forget his name and some guys who were soldiers in Nicaragua before the communists took over.
Harlan: Did Vega tell you he was acting officially?
Ross: Oh yeah, he was.
Harlan: How do you know?
Ross: Well, he was always with Stassen and Martin Holme. You know them?
Harlan: No.
Ross: Oh, well, Martin Holme, he’s from The Defender. And Stassen, he’s real high up in the American Council for Freedom. I met all those guys, man. Stassen even had a letter from the President.
Harlan: From Reagan.
Ross: Yeah. I saw it, man, the fuckin’ seal and everything. He said he read it out loud at an American Council for Freedom dinner.
Harlan: Did you read it?
Ross: He read it to us at the restaurant. It said “Dear Bob …” It said Stassen was doing God’s work and that Reagan personally thanked him for everything he did. And, oh, Stassen told me about all these guys who had lots of money in Nicaragua, and then when Vega took me to the airport this guy took our bags, right, and Vega was joking with him in Spanish and then Vega says to me, you know that porter I was talking to, that man owned a fuckin’ castle in Nicaragua, he was a colonel in the National Guard and he had four sons and, get this, each son had a Mercedes fuckin’ Benz. Now his wife makes tamales at home and the sons sell them on the street in Miami. That’s what the reds did to them.
Harlan: So Stassen had a letter from Reagan.
Ross: Yeah.
Harlan: That’s it?
Ross: That’s what?
Harlan: Vega’s official connection. Stassen’s letter from the President.
Ross: You don’t think a letter from the President’s good enough?
Harlan: It doesn’t prove he’s acting officially.
Ross: Come on, man, no one moves in Miami without the CIA sanctions it. They’re all the time bitching about it, too. Vega doesn’t trust the U.S. this much ’cause of what they did to his old man, shit, he didn’t like taking orders from the CIA, but he fuckin’ took ’em.
Harlan: Why did Vega meet with Holme and Stassen?
Ross: Holme and Stassen raise money for gun
s. Vega moves ’em.
Harlan: Why did he take you?
Ross: Because he wanted me to meet these people.
Harlan: Why?
Ross: Just to see them.
Harlan: Twenty-two-year-old kid comes down from …
Ross: … New Jersey …
Harlan: … to fight communism. Now why does he take you with him?
Ross: C’mon, man, he just took me with, all right?
Harlan: How long were you in Miami?
Ross: Six days.
Harlan: Did they train you?
Ross: Vega took me to see one of the training camps but he said I already knew enough.
Harlan: About what? … Look, I have to know about this. You want me to help or not?
Ross: Explosives.
Harlan: Where’d you learn that?
Ross: On my own. I got a feel for it.
Harlan: Yeah?
Ross: They didn’t believe me neither.
Harlan: So they checked you out.
Ross: Yeah.
Harlan: But they didn’t want you to teach in the camps.
Ross: Vega said they needed me in Costa Rica.
Harlan: For what?
Ross: I don’t know.
Harlan: Ross …
Ross: I don’t know, man.
Harlan: Did you ask?
Ross: He just said don’t worry.
Harlan: And when you got to Costa Rica, he didn’t tell you what he needed you for?
Ross: No.
Harlan: Did you ask?
Ross: Fuck, man, I told ya.
Harlan: Vega tells you in Miami they want you for something special. But he doesn’t tell you what. He doesn’t get you to teach the contras in Miami how to use explosives. And then you get to Costa Rica and he still doesn’t tell you what he wants you for.
Ross: Yeah.
Harlan: And you’re pissed off because no one’ll let you fight.
Ross: Yeah.
Harlan: But you didn’t ask him.
Ross: He never said.
Harlan: You want me to help you?
Ross: Fuck, man, I told you.
Harlan: How did you get into Costa Rica?
Ross: Just walked off the plane.
Harlan: Sure.
Ross: This guy in a blue uniform meets us and we walk right in, didn’t check our papers or nothing. Someone’s waiting for us, he takes us to San José. Then another guy takes us to Jim Kemp’s farm. And then Jim Kemp checked me out, said if there was anything I needed, to clear it with him.
Harlan: He was in charge.