God's Favorite Read Free

the corner of Avenida Balboa and Via Italia, where they might wait out the latest government purge. At this very moment the Nuncio was harboring at Vatican expense a columnist for La Prensa as well as two former members of the cabinet who had been there for nearly seven months, draining the wine cellar of many of its finest labels.
    Aside from his network of political refugees and the deeply guarded but sometimes surprisingly useful information garnered from the confession box, the Nuncio had trained his staff to cultivate sources. Even the nuns brought in useful bits from time to time, rumors picked up from the schoolchildren—it was surprising what you could learn about a country by listening to its children—or complaints in the marketplace. But the Nuncio’s prize student in the art of espionage was Father Jorge Ugarte, a handsome young Salvadoran whose talents reminded the Nuncio of himself nearly fifty years ago—cool, intelligent, and dispassionate. With training and encouragement, Father Jorge might attain the offices that the Nuncio himself had once aspired to. In fact, it was Father Jorge’s step that the Nuncio recognized echoing in the marble hallway, and presently the handsome priest entered the room and shut the pocket doors behind him.
    â€œIt’s raining,” Father Jorge announced superfluously. He was drenched. “Just the walk from the bus stop.” Without asking, he took a seat in the silver brocatelle wing-back chair opposite the desk.
    The Nuncio started to protest, but thought better of it. He knew he had a reputation for being finicky; and besides, his affection for the young man inclined him to forgiveness. He thought Father Jorge one of the most interesting, attractive, and original young men he had ever met. Father Jorge had been orphaned in El Salvador during the cruelest civil war in CentralAmerica and had taken refuge in a Catholic orphanage. The nuns, seeing his extraordinary promise and his natural piety, had arranged to send him to Madrid for schooling, where he was Europeanized and fashioned into an intellectual. A mestizo with dark Indian skin and liquid black eyes, which he hid behind round tortoiseshell glasses, Father Jorge still bore a slight trace of Castilian accent, which somehow added to his charm without making him appear at all pretentious.
    â€œYou’ve heard the news, of course.”
    The Nuncio nodded. That very morning the city had been electrified by the report that Panama’s most famous revolutionary, Dr. Hugo Spadafora, had been murdered.
    â€œHe was on his way to the capital to make charges against Noriega,” said Father Jorge. “Everybody knew that he had been promising to reveal the connections between the General and the narcotraffickers.”
    â€œYes, I heard him on the radio last week. He said he had a briefcase full of evidence. What do you know about it?”
    â€œThese remarks come to me privately, but they are not under seal,” Father Jorge said, betraying no emotion behind the shiny, round lenses. “Let us say they are observations of one who was intimate with a certain lieutenant.”
    The Nuncio had given his secretary permission to spend part of each week ministering to the poor in El Chorrillo, a vast slum in the center of town that surrounded the Panamanian military headquarters. He thought it might add to his protégé’s portfolio when the Holy See began looking for prospects. Happily, there was an unexpected dividend in this part-time assignment: many soldiers came to the Chorrillo parish to pray, as did their women—the wives and girlfriends and mistresses who were such invaluable sources of intelligence, especially for Father Jorge, whose dark good looks and scrupulous chastity made him a sought-after curiosity in female society.
    â€œAs we know, Hugo left Costa Rica on Friday, the thirteenth,” Father Jorge continued. “He took a taxi across the border andhad a