Getting to Know the General by Graham Greene Read Free Book Online Page B

other side to the Colombian border, crossed only by smugglers’ paths. Here we could hold out for two years – long enough to rouse the conscience of the world and public opinion in the States. And don’t forget – for the first time since the Civil War American civilians would be in the firing line. There are 40,000 of them in the Zone, apart from the 10,000 troops.’
    There were areas of jungle in the Zone itself where the Americans were training their own special troops, as well as troops from other Latin American states, in guerrilla warfare, but he regarded this training, from personal experience, with some contempt. Recently when the Americans were holding jungle manoeuvres inside the Zone they were surprised to encounter a patrol of the Wild Pigs who had penetrated the Zone unobserved because, as their officer explained with courtesy, something had gone wrong with his compass. The General added, ‘I know the Pentagon advised Carter that they would need 100,000 men, not 10,000, to defend the Canal properly.’
    Our conversation was interrupted by the noise of the General’s small jet plane arriving from Venezuela. He had sent it off that morning with a letter to the President and it was returning with the President’s reply. (The only support on which the General could count in South America during his negotiations with the United States was from Venezuela, Colombia and Peru.) Communications were much as they had been in the seventeenth century – by messenger; a jet plane had taken the place of a horse. As the American Zone was packed with electronic equipment any telephone call could be tapped and a telegraphic code could be broken in a matter of hours.
    General Torrijos read the letter from the President of Venezuela and afterwards the conversation took a completely different turn. I had the impression that what came now was the real reason why he wanted me to stay – not me in particular perhaps, but any listener who would understand his emotion. He said, ‘Yesterday a most important thing happened.’
    I wondered, ‘Is he going to disclose some secret message from old Mr Bunker – or from those international characters whom Mr Drummond’s supporters called Gerry and Henry?’
    He went on, ‘Yesterday I had been married twenty-five years, but when I married – I was only a young lieutenant – my father-in-law, who is a Jewish business man living in New York, swore that he would never speak to his daughter again. It has been very hard for my wife all these years, for she loves her father dearly. A few days ago I asked General Dayan to intercede for me in New York. My father-in-law wouldn’t even listen to Dayan. Panama had voted at the United Nations in support of Israel over the Entebbe affair. We were the only state in Latin America to do so, and afterwards the Israelis were grateful and they offered me all sorts of help, but I told them that I had asked Dayan for the only thing I needed and he couldn’t help me. Then suddenly, yesterday, my father-in-law telephoned from New York and asked to speak to my wife. Today she has gone off to see him – after twenty-five years. I said to the old man on the telephone that he had a wonderful daughter and that I owed everything to her.’
    What he had told me was the more moving because he would have known that by this time I would be aware he was not the kind of man to be sexually faithful to one woman. But he was a man who had a deep loyalty to the past, and was faithful above all to friendship.
    10
    Chuchu and I had planned to fly off to the island of Taboga for a rest after our travels, but it was not to be. The General wanted me back at Rio Hato the next day to go with him to a meeting of farmers and rural representatives. It was to be an example for me of how his type of democracy worked.
    We took a small military plane and flew out to sea, making a wide sweep before returning to the coast. The General said, ‘You can tell today that we have a young