Tegucigalpa/Safe House

   Max usually needed to have extra fortification just to board a normal flight. This one warranted more than a shot or two. The rickety Taca Airliner was a sheer horror and Kuka’s supervision forced him to fly dry. Pride kept him from the airport bar and Kuka eased his fear of flying by holding his hand. Max was resigned to certain death by the time their plane careened into what seemed to be a crash landing approaching the airstrip.

   They were greeted by thick humid air at the Toncontin Internacional Aeropuerto in Tegucigalpa. Old military C-47s and C-123s were lined up on the other side of the landing strip from where a few civilian airliners were docked… well, not docked but parked. They walked across the dusty tarmac towards the small building. Kuka went through the turnstile first to a stand where a customs officer awaited like a hungry spider. 

   Several soldiers in pilots glasses loitered in the open air lobby and, though they would appear to be relaxed. Max sensed that they were watching the pair for reasons other than checking out Kuka’s body.

   Passport, a forged press card, and Max’s visa, were scrutinized by an intimidating officer in Gucci pilots’ glasses that Max supposed were Government Issued; those along with this guy’s perfectly tailored uniform. The officer was also as lean as he was stern. Max felt as though the fucker would just as soon castrate him and hang his balls on the wall, than to allow him into his precious country. It wasn’t much of a hidden fact that this was an observation grounded in a profound truth. Americans are not welcome in Central America, even by allies. From what Max could see from the airport and the rough landing, this country was a dump.

   “¿Qué va a hacer en Honduras, Sr. McGee?” Eyes he couldn’t see masked behind pilot’s glasses were scanning every tic and hesitation in Max’s reaction to the machismo of official testosterone driven intimidation. Max outweighed the officer by 20lbs and stood a good three inches taller. Common sense dictated that it would be a bad idea to try to play the macho card with this man.

   Max wasn’t ready to answer questions in Spanish.

   “¿Por lo tanto, usted es un periodista, Señor McGee?” Macho sneered the words.

   Max stood nervously, not knowing exactly what he was being asked but rightly assumed periodista meant journalist. 

   He was about to answer when Kuka cut-in to explain, “Él no habla español.”

   The officer tapped on the desk at Max’s picture on the passport. It seemed like an eternity, another Tibetan Bardo, before he handed it back. He then spoke in clear English, “Where are you going in Honduras?”

   Kuka explained that she had a letter, signed and stamped, from an official important in the government affirming they were connected.

   He waved them through. The other soldiers outside the small room that passed as a lobby, observing from behind dark glasses, undressed Kuka and castrated Max. A Volkswagen taxi pulled up and the driver swiftly loaded their luggage in the front with nearly one motion circled to the driver’s seat and slammed his door. The soldiers might have been curious because the luggage amounted to little more than a couple of small valises and an aluminum camera case. One soldier was about to approach.

   “Get in quick, don’t look back,” Kuka ordered.

   The driver didn’t speed but drove away as quickly as he could without drawing undue attention. Max could hardly bear the odor. The cab smelled of death. The soldier walked back to a payphone and dialed a number as they left.

   Kuka gave the driver an address. The driver, steering wildly through a zig-zag maze of side streets, made sure that if anyone was following they would have been hard pressed to tail them. He didn’t talk much… he just drove until he casually glanced back at Kuka and said, “It is plan B now, Si?”

   Kuka gave the driver another address. She put a hand on Max’s thigh. “Give me your note book.”

   She handed it back to Max. She had written on an open page and whispered in his ear as though they were lovers, “I’m going to give him an address. Let him go a couple of blocks and then give him this one. The phone number is for emergencies only.”

    “What, you won’t be with me?”

   “Maybe later. He’s with us,” She nodded towards the driver, “don’t trust him. Your contact’s name is on the table by the window. Ask him for his name in English. Burn the note and the page immediately. If he gives you any other name than that one, don’t go with him and get out of there any way you can. Call the phone number when you get a chance. Don’t worry, arrangements have been made.”

   “Don’t worry?” He felt like he was in a Woody Allen comedy.

   “Are you afraid?”

   “Maybe.”

   “Fear, respect it,” she assured. “But keep your wits.”

   “I’m okay.”

    “You’ll have several other guides. The Bird Dog’s old but he is the best in the business, follow his suggestions.”

   “Bird Dog? I thought you and I… that we’d be together.”

   “Later, but not now. Honduras is a dangerous place. We have been spotted together. Stay inside. Don’t go anywhere. You will stand out like a sore thumb as the only gringo on foot if you leave the house.”

   “Spotted? How do you know?”

    “The soldier, as we left the terminal, is an officer from the UNO. We always have a plan B.” She was no school marm at this point.

   The driver stopped, she paid the fare, and Kuka kissed Max with a simple peck on the cheek before exiting the cab, “Ciao, Max.”

   “What is your name driver, ¿Cuál es su nombre?” Max asked in tour guidebook Spanish and slaughtered the pronunciation of cuál.

   “Luciano,” he simply nodded, “I speak English.” He continued driving with his eyes on the rear view mirror.

   Max didn’t argue. He gave Luciano the new address as directed and was dropped off after winding through some more streets, “How much do I owe you?”

   “La Señora paid your billete,” he said contemptuously and then added almost seductively, “but I have a pinta of rum to sell you if you want… for you, only cinco Lempiras.”

    “No thanks,” Max was glad that he only had dollars but he still regretted saying it. He was resigned to trying to stay sober.

   As if the driver read Max’s mind he offered his services again, “I gladly take dollars.”

   “No thanks,” Max said out of reflex remembering Kuka’s warning not to trust him.

  
    Max was the only occupant of the safe house. It was in what would be considered a good neighborhood. The fact that it had a toilet, shower, and a walled in yard, testified to that. Trucks with soldiers patrolling could be heard passing by throughout the night. 
   Max wondered, why all the secrecy? Wasn’t Honduras an American ally? A base for Contras? Perhaps not… not all the contras are allies. Some are enemies worse than the Sandinistas. He felt more ignorant than ever before. He thought of Kuka and lit a cigarette, staring out the window into the yard. Yes, he was jealous of Kuka. He felt betrayed and abandoned. He had to let go.

   Max checked the packet of Lempiras on the table by the window and looked for a note with his driver’s name. Wondering what the rate to the dollar was, he found the name mysteriously inside a message scribbled on the envelope: “Diego.” That was the only name he saw. Okay, if a pint of rum is 5 Lempiras, shit, that looks like a good rate of exchange. He played around with Kuka’s admonition in his mind, “Stay in the house…” 
   Damn, he concluded, a pint would never be enough.

   He wore, as a prop, one of those photo-journalist vests with all the pockets. He took out his wallet from the top pocket. The press pass in it, even though it was forged, made him feel like a “somebody”. 
   This kitchen table was a good place to set up for the night and become the fiction Max pretended to be. He opened his note pad and spoke into the tape recorder Kuka had given him saying, “I will write what I see and that is all: who, what, where, when, and leave out why.”

   Max was now, by or hook and crook, a journalist. He might as well act like one. He had no training as a journalist and only a rudimentary grasp of English grammar. It was worth a try.

   “I am alive and on an adventure. I am resigned to the understanding that nothing I believed or knew before this sojourn would amount to anything,” he recorded.

Leaving out the why would prove to be the hardest part as he filled two or three pages of notes.

   Max hadn’t even thought about drinking since boarding the plane until Luciano offered the pint. He couldn’t even get tanked up with rum before the flight. He tried explaining to Kuka that he needed it to fly. She insisted he stay sober and he was willing to appease her for the moment. She must have had some kind of magic because he hadn’t thought about drinking at all until that moment. Stay inside was Kuka’s command. He checked the cupboards and under the sink… nothing. He gave up and took a shower. He packed a spare pair of trousers, a few changes of underwear and socks, and a Berlitz Spanish dictionary, into the pack.

   The sun hadn’t risen when he heard the knock. He opened the door in his jockey briefs. A short stocky man dressed in a Hawaiian shirt stood there.

   “Who are you?” Max asked, as instructed but regardless, he envisioned being bent over and raped on the kitchen table, taken by the authorities, kidnapped, or otherwise violated. His sphincter clinched to think of it.

   “Diego,” the man answered.

   Max breathed a sigh of relief after Diego spoke first. There has been a change in plans. You have enough provisions to keep you a month.

   “How about cigarettes? And Kuka… what has happened to her?”

   Diego dropped a New York Times on the table. The front page covered an attempted assassination on Comandante Cero. Several top commanders and journalists injured or killed in a bomb blast.

   “What’s this got to do with Kuka?” then it dawned on him that there might be more to her than he’d imagined. “Where is La Penca?”

   “Don’t worry, she wasn’t there,” Diego assured, “Stay here. You can get sunlight in the courtyard but don’t… don’t under any circumstances, don’t go out on the streets. I’ll bring you a carton of smokes.”

   “How about some entertainment. I don’t have a TV or radio. How about a liter of juice… tequila, rum, vodka… even beer?”

   That afternoon Diego appeared at the door with a radio and a box containing a TV.

   “Anything else?” Max queried.

   “You mean booze? No.” Diego pointed to the New York Times that was still on the table, “We’ll see. But you need to be alert.”

   Max hadn’t heard a word from Diego about the bombing at la Penca. He didn’t like the idea of waiting without any way to pass time lacking some companionship or distraction from the obsession to drink. He felt a strong urge to delay Diego’s departure so he tried to strike up a conversation, “Who do you think planted that bomb, the Sandinistas?

   “I would put the Sandinistas last on the list of suspects.”

   “Who would be first?”

   “The Somocistas? Had him expelled from ARDE… one of Robelo’s, maybe CIA. It doesn’t matter. Some of the Miskitos have quit and it is clear that Pastora is marginalized.” Diego answered sadly and waved, “Adios. Hang tight a few more days, Max. Changes are everywhere. No one knows much of anything.”

  Max watched Diego leave and resigned to accepting his isolation. He knew as much from Kuka’s lectures that ARDE was a loose coalition of Contras and that at least two thirds were ex-National Guard or mercenaries. Eden Pastora was a thorn in the sides of those who wished to restore the Somosa family to power in Managua and had little concern for the Miskito tribes of the east coast.

   The TV had rabbit ear antennae and only one state run station in Spanish on which Max could catch a word here or there that it was news about the bombing in la Penca. A week passed with no word from Diego. No booze… nothing but his journal for a companion. He searched the AM radio airways for any English language stations and found a few; one from Costa Rica and one night he caught a talk show from KGO in San Francisco. He remembered listening to that station as a teen in Spokane. Les Crane and Ira Blue came through all the way to Spokane on his transistor radio and opened his mind to the big giant world beyond. He was delighted to hear it break through his exile twenty years later between waves of static in the middle of the night.

   Another week went by and Max was running out of cigarettes. The admonition to stay in the house grew weaker as time and tedium set in. He began to tear up pages of the New York Times to make cigarette paper and emptied tobacco from butts into an empty tuna can… just in case. There had to be a place nearby where he could find cigarettes and booze to help make the waiting bearable. Nightfall seemed the best time to venture out.

   It was quiet and eerily dark and there were no stores of any kind in the surrounding blocks of the neighborhood. A pickup truck approached and Max instinctively knew to duck behind a wall as it passed. Several armed soldiers rode in the back where a fifty caliber machine gun was mounted. It didn’t seem like a good idea to explore any further the neighborhood of his prison.

  Max had gotten up pre-dawn to roll a cigarette from the tobacco in the tuna can. A tall man, an older American, in a grey crew cut, sports coat and chinos came through the gate by the street. Max was still adjusting his eyes to the dark and didn’t see Diego at first. He began putting on his trousers before he answered the heavy knock at the door.

   Diego, along with the tall man, entered. Max stood at the opened door where, once in the light, he could see that the tall man’s crew cut was white and the lines on his face were well traveled. He had an aura of vigor that telegraphed he was one bad hombre that it would be wise not to fuck with even though he must have been in his late sixties or early seventies.