The CTR Anthology

by Alan Filewod

  Harlan: And Costa Rica threw him out.

  Wade: That’s not true, Harlan.

  Harlan: They asked the U.S. government to remove him.

  Wade: We should’ve refused. The U.S. gives the Ticos a few hundred million dollars every year. You’d think it’d buy us something.

  Harlan: He’s a diplomat, Wade. He’s supposed to be diplomatic.

  Wade: You’re so traditional.

  Harlan: (pause) We’ve been in here too long. The embassy knows we’re missing now.

  Wade: Relax.

  Harlan: Like you?

  Wade: You want me to bite my nails?

  Harlan: You’re too calm.

  Wade: Look at the kid. He’s been here four days.

  Harlan: You throw fits when you run out of staples.

  Wade: My mother was like that. My brother was dying of cancer, you’ve never seen anyone as calm. But when she burned the toast, she cried for an hour. She said some things are God’s will. Burning the toast isn’t.

  Harlan: That’s not good enough.

  Wade: The truth is, Harlan, I set this up. I wanted a chance for us to talk. You know what a pain in the ass you’ve been, I thought we could have it out. (pause) Actually Ross and I set this up. (pause) Maybe Ross set this up.

  Ross: Fuck.

  Wade: Maybe he’s an undercover Sandinista. You a communist, Ross?

  Ross: Man, you fuck right off.

  Wade: What do you think, Harlan? (Wade threatens Ross.) He’s the one that said the Sandinistas set this up. You think he’s trying to throw us off? (to Ross) Who you working for, kid? How many times you been to Nicaragua? You can’t fool us. (Ross is very confused.) Look at him. You think he’s just pretending to be confused? … You’re no fun, Harl.

  (The lights fade to black.)

  SCENE FIVE

  (Lights come up. Ross and Wade are doing push-ups.)

  Wade: One, two, three, seven. One, two, three, eight. One, two, three, one. One, two, three, two. One, two, three, three. (Wade stops, exhausted. Ross continues.) All right, you’re making me feel bad. I can’t even count any more.

  Ross: (He continues, then stops.) I don’t have a passport.

  Wade: What?

  Ross: I don’t have a passport. How’m I going to get home without a passport?

  Wade: What the fuck you do with it?

  Ross: I gave it to Vega.

  Wade: We’ll get Tambs working on it. Where you from, Ross?

  Ross: Newbury.

  Wade: Where’s that?

  Ross: North end of New Jersey.

  Wade: What do people do in Newbury, New Jersey?

  Ross: Nothing.

  Wade: What’s your dad do?

  Ross: He works for Goodyear.

  Wade: Yeah.

  Ross: Yeah, he worked there thirty years.

  Wade: Long time to work for one company. (to Harlan) Don’t you think that’s a long time, Harl? (to Ross) You want to work there, too?

  Ross: My brother tried to, right? My old man figured after working there so long they could get his son a job, specially since Brady’s a vet. Goodyear said they had to go through the union, union said he was way down on the list.

  Wade: What about you, what were you doing before you came here?

  Ross: I was gonna go in for electronics after high school, but … I sold magazines for a while, then I was picked up for, I ripped off a car. So, then, well my brother was in Vietnam and I was pissed that I didn’t get to go.

  Wade: That why you came to Costa Rica?

  Ross: I didn’t care where much, I just wanted to see some action. I was in Junior ROTC and the Civil Air Patrol. I been reading The Defender for years, man, training myself.

  Wade: Did you try to enlist?

  Ross: No.

  Wade: They train you.

  Ross: I’m trained, man, I want to see action.

  Wade: You sorry you came?

  Ross: You could spend your whole life in Newbury and not meet the people I’ve met or learn the things I’ve seen. Like Jim Kemp, I never met anybody like him in Newbury.

  Wade: It’s warm here, too.

  Ross: Beats the hell out of winter in New Jersey.

  Wade: ¿Aprendes español?

  Ross: I don’t think I’m much good at languages.

  Wade: What’s Jim Kemp like?

  Ross: You don’t know him?

  Wade: What do you think of him?

  Ross: He’s doing what he wants to do, he’s good at it. I don’t know. This one time, this contra came in, right, with his whole fuckin’ leg blown right off. Jim Kemp, he bandaged him up, himself, and sent him off to the hospital in San José. After he left, Jim Kemp said he’s gonna lose his other leg too and you could see he had tears in his eyes, that’s the kind of guy he was. Sometimes late at night we’d just sit and talk, just him and me. Like he’d explain about communists in Congress, he even knew their names. He’s got one of them dish antennas and we’d watch TV, he used to watch those preachers, just like my old man. Fuck, he was really good at explaining things, like these people from the U.S.’d come, newspaper people, and like one time, you could tell she was a communist, you know, like from the questions she was asking, but Jim Kemp, he’d explain things real calm and real straight.

  Wade: Harlan tell you he used to play pro football?

  Ross: Who for?

  Harlan: I didn’t.

  Wade: I thought you did.

  Harlan: I could have played, I didn’t.

  Wade: But you were all-American, right? The Forty-niners wanted to sign you.

  Harlan: The Rams.

  Wade: You should have signed.

  Ross: Why didn’t you, man?

  Harlan: I wanted an M.B.A.

  Ross: What’s that?

  Harlan: Master of business administration.

  Ross: Fuck. You guys got any kids?

  Wade: A boy and two girls.

  Ross: What do they do?

  Wade: They’re in school.

  Ross: (to Harlan) You got kids? (Harlan isn’t paying attention.) Yo! Harl!

  Harlan: One’s an architect, my daughter’s in medical school.

  Ross: How did you get to work for the … Company?

  Wade: You looking for a job?

  Harlan: They asked me.

  Ross: Just like that.

  Harlan: I was doing a Ph.D. in economics and my uncle asked if I would put my education at the service of my country.

  Wade: You should’ve said no. You ever wonder about that, Harl? You got all this education and you’re still a fuckin’ operative. I don’t have a Ph.D. and I’m ten years younger than you. You ever wonder why my career has taken off and yours is still in first gear? I think it’s a question of attitude. (pause) So, you want to work for the Company, son?

  Ross: Yeah.

  Wade: You wanna help the contras?

  Ross: Yeah.

  Wade: You know much about ’em?

  Ross: I know that they’re fighting for freedom.

  Wade: Sort of.

  Ross: Meaning?

  Wade: Well, Harlan could tell you some stories that’d curdle your blood. Harlan doesn’t pretty things up, he’s got a mind that sees things the way they are. … But today, I don’t know why, he’s holding back. See … (to Harlan) I want you to listen to this, Harl, I want you to tell me if I got it right … (to Ross) now the contras fight two ways. In the first, hit and run, they attack farms, health centres, schools. They blow up the buildings, kill whoever’s handy. Sometimes they rape, sometimes they mutilate.

  Ross: I don’t believe that.

  Wade: Ask Harlan.

  Ross: That’s communist disinformation. That’s what Jim Kemp says.

  Wade: I’ve said that too. I’m saying this just for you and Harlan. Now the second way they fight is called take and hold. Three hundred contras sweep into a town and hold it. They make speeches, execute some Sandinistas. We like it when the contras take territory. We like it because it makes them look like a real a
rmy and people in Congress like that. But when the Nica army finds out where the contras are, they wait with those new helicopters they got from the Soviets, and rat-ta-tat-ta-tat. So before Congressional votes we got to convince the contra commanders to order take and holds. Now they’re sitting in hotel swimming pools in Honduras and Miami so they don’t mind take and holds. But your actual man on the ground, he prefers hit and run.

  Ross: Shit.

  Wade: Pardon.

  Ross: I talked to contras, man, they’re just ordinary guys fighting for their country.

  Wade: Guys like Krill, you know Krill?

  Ross: No.

  Wade: He worked with Suicida, out of Honduras. An ordinary guy, an ordinary soldier in the Guard, but when be became a contra, he changed. He turned into a natural leader of men. Strict, mind you. I understand he’s killed at least forty of his own men, some, I’ve heard, for being late. But mostly he was a quiet, thoughtful guy. He liked to go off by himself and fire his machine gun into the hills.

  Ross: I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing, man, you got some really strange things going on inside your head.

  Wade: As God is my witness.

  Ross: How come you’re putting down the contras?

  Wade: You want to fight, I’m just telling you …

  Ross: No, you’re putting them down. You’re saying the same thing as the communists …

  Wade: Help me, Harl.

  Harlan: Leave him alone.

  Wade: You’re always goin’ on about how we gotta know the truth. Ross is one of us, isn’t he?

  Harlan: What do you want?

  Wade: Stick up for me.

  Harlan: (to Ross) He’s right.

  Ross: Fuck.

  Wade: Give him some detail. Matiguas. Do it.

  Harlan: Shy?

  Wade: Trust me.

  Harlan: Matiguas. June nineteenth, 1985. A wedding party. Seven males, nine females ambushed by contra under the command of Oswaldo Lopez. Discovered by a Dutch television crew. The men and older women appeared to have thirty to fifty rounds each fired into them at close range. The girls were raped and strangled.

  Wade: Or strangled and raped. What kind of weapons did the wedding party have?

  Harlan: They were unarmed.

  Wade: And where is Oswaldo Lopez now?

  Harlan: He commands a contra camp in Honduras.

  Wade: What was the name of the guy in Matagalpa? … Harlan.

  Harlan: Gustavo Romualdi owned a coffee plantation. President of the Nicaraguan Association of Coffee Growers. Abducted from his home August nineteenth. Found dead in Matagalpa eight days later.

  Wade: Don’t hold back, Harl.

  Harlan: His arms, legs, and head were missing.

  Wade: His dick, too. But we didn’t just sit on our behinds. Now follow me here. We found out that Romualdi voted against the Sandinistas in the election. We said the Sandinistas killed Romualdi and that we had very convincing evidence they’d started a highly secret campaign to exterminate businessmen. The Sandinistas censored the story in La Prensa, but they couldn’t bury it. Papers in Costa Rica and Colombia picked it up. So did the Times in Washington. You know what happened then? Contra radio broadcast a warning from Honduras. They said, I’m translating here, “Coffee production in Nicaragua must be stopped. Anyone that cooperates with the communists will be dealt with. Gustavo Romualdi is an example of what will happen.” They ran that broadcast four times, and the Times in New York picked it up before we killed it. I just want you to understand, son. I know Rambo and John Wayne don’t rape and mutilate. But that’s the kind of war we got. You still want to fight? … Once you understood how important burning schools and mutilating corpses was in the fight against communism, shit, you’d jump right in. Death is pretty much the same from one round in the gut or fifty. So I’ve heard, anyway.

  Harlan: Why are you doing this, Wade?

  Wade: For you, Harlan. I’m trying to show you I know the difference between the lies and the truth. I know how important that is to you.

  Harlan: Why’re you doing this now?

  Wade: … Mid-life crisis.

  (Lights fade.)

  SCENE SIX

  (As the lights come up, Wade is standing in front of the door with a tray of food in his hands.)

  Wade: (He looks at the food.) Where do you think we are, Nicaragua? (He laughs.) Cigarettes! (He opens a pack of cigarettes.) You smoke, Ross?

  Ross: No.

  Wade: Good for you, (He lights one.) See, you light the end with the brand name on it. That way, when they find the butt, they can’t tell what brand it was so they don’t know who smoked it. It’s an old spy trick. You hungry? (Wade offers the food to Ross. Ross shakes his head.) Have some, keep your strength up. You know, when I was your age, no, I might’ve been a bit older, I was at university. There was the moratorium and everyone was skipping class to protest the war in Vietnam. My father came to school and sat with me. For two hours we sat all alone. No students, no teacher. One day I got a letter asking me if I was interested in an important government position. The duties included foreign travel and it would be like working for the State Department. When I was in training there was a party one night and this guy asks me what I’m doing in Washington. He was real persistent but I kept giving him the cover story, some shit about working for the Department of Agriculture. Then he went to talk to someone else. The next day there were a few of us missing from class and the same guy was there to talk to us about communism. He told us it was real important to watch who we talked to. He said the Soviets were recruiting agents all over the U.S. He said they prey on shy, lonely outcasts and recruit them into the American Communist Party. These people have no friends, no links to decent society. The Soviets brainwash and exploit these sad people to the point where they’re willing to violently overthrow our government. He told us some of them have made it into high positions in the government, even into the CIA. He said to us, you people are not going to let that happen. We used to sing the national anthem before classes then, every morning, we’d stand up and I’d close my eyes and I’d just sing. Jesus, I loved to sing it. Now the Company’s different. People fuck around. All they care about is better postings and more money. The spirit’s not the same. … We need more people like you, Ross, people with the right spirit, the right commitment … You got the makings, son.

  Harlan: For Christ’s sake, Wade.

  Wade: I’m serious. Why he’s typical Company material. He’s E-R-A, extrovert, regulated, adaptable. Mesomorphic body type. Magnetic, charming and captivating, just like you and me, Harlan. Not everyone gets recruited out of university, we still hire a few Neanderthals. You know what a Neanderthal is, son? That’s what we call the recruits that come up through the military side. Demolition, explosives, underwater techniques. The Company pays well, and they never fire you, no matter how bad you fuck up. Sometimes they even give you a family sometimes. The Company brought a whole bunch a new men into Costa Rica and they set ’em up in real nice houses in the suburbs. Two months later they decide these men’d fit in better with the neighbours if they had families. They did that for Harlan here. They moved in a Tico woman and her Tico kids. Can you believe it? Whoever did that one up Harl, must be either really stupid or a great sense of humour. You know what I want to know, Harl? Are you poking her? Was that part of the deal? Are you? … What’s with you, Harl? You’ve got no sense of humour any more. I noticed that. You know what your colleagues are saying about you, don’t you? You’re drinking too much, you’re hostile, keeping to yourself, not part of the team, and no sense of humour. That’s in your file, too.

  (Pause. Lights fade.)

  SCENE SEVEN

  (Ross is gone. Footsteps off-stage. Ross yells “No.” A gun shot. Then Ross yells “Jesus Christ.”)

  Wade: Something bothering you, Harl?

  Harlan: Why him?

  Wade: Why not him?

  Harlan: Why not you or me?

  Wade: It’s random.

  Har
lan: Come on.

  Wade: Who knows what the fuck they’re doing?

  Harlan: Two Company officers with embassy cover and they go for the 22-year-old kid from New Jersey?

  Wade: It’s random.

  Harlan: It’s absurd.

  Wade: Take it easy, Harlan.

  Harlan: They took that kid out of here and … you’re not even thinking about it. Your mind a little foggy today? … What’s going on, Wade?

  Wade: You wondering about me, Harlan? That’s good. Sometimes I wonder about you, do you know that? Do you know what I wonder about, Harlan? C’mon, take a guess. … Go on, Harlan. … I wonder about your loyalty, yeah, that’s right, Harlan. I know you been with the Company for fucking ever, how long, eighteen years? And a year and a half in Costa Rica. I know you got a fine evaluation for the time you were in Jamaica, same thing for the work you did in Chile with, what’s that newspaper called, the El Mercurio? You won a fucking merit award. Course they’re a dime a dozen, but still, for eighteen years no one’s ever had a reason to question your loyalty.

  Harlan: Loyalty to what?

  Wade: To the Company. To the United States of America.

  Harlan: You got something on me, let’s see it.

  Wade: What do you want, photographs, taped conversations with Soviet agents?

  Harlan: You’re saying I’m compromised?

  Wade: We’ll have to do a series of lie detector tests. Just routine, but we are very concerned.

  Harlan: About what, exactly?

  Wade: The questions you been asking about Company activity get out, it could blow six years of hard work.

  Harlan: Is there a leak?

  Wade: There could be.

  Harlan: There could be?

  Wade: Yeah.

  Harlan: Do you mean you think there is one or do you mean everything is possible?

  Wade: I say a simple thing, you argue. You see what I mean?

  Harlan: You’re accusing me of …

  Wade: It’s not just me, Harlan. If it was just me …

  Harlan: Who else?

  Wade: The deputy director has expressed his concern.

  Harlan: I’m concerned too.

  Wade: Good.

  Harlan: Why’re you pushing this now?