God's Favorite Read Free Page A

serving of rabbit stew in a small cantina. Then he boarded a minibus for the capital. It appears that he got as far as Concepción. He was taken off the bus by a PDF officer and escorted to military headquarters. That is the last sighting of the living Hugo Spadafora. Three days later his headless corpse was discovered in a U.S. mailbag on the Costa Rican border.”
    â€œUnburied?”
    â€œExactly, dumped on a riverbank, obviously meant to be found. By the way, I have secured the coroner’s report,” said Father Jorge, trying to suppress the note of triumph in his voice as he passed the photocopied document to the Nuncio, who eagerly snatched it up. “As you can see, he was quite extensively tortured.”
    â€œAnd raped, I see,” the Nuncio said as he examined the report, which was slightly damp from Father Jorge’s clothing.
    â€œYes, apparently they severed his hamstrings so he couldn’t resist. And when they finished they drove a stake up his ass.”
    The Nuncio cast an uncritical but surprised look at his secretary, who never, in the Nuncio’s memory, had ventured anything like a vulgarity. The impassiveness of the young priest’s expression assured the Nuncio that he was merely speaking clinically, with his usual harrowing exactitude.
    â€œAt the end, a PDF cook cut off his head,” Father Jorge added.
    â€œAre we to make anything of that?” asked the Nuncio.
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œThe entire country is in love with witchcraft. No doubt they believe that there is some juju to be gotten from such practices.”
    â€œI think it’s just a show to terrify the masses.”
    â€œPerhaps,” said the Nuncio, “but before the drug money came to Panama, Noriega would never have stooped to this. This is not his style.” He reached for one of Sister Sarita’s sugar wafers and held it in front of him, as if it contained some vital mystery.
    â€œBut as long as he is out of the country, he can maintain that he knew nothing about the assassination.”
    â€œI doubt that will help him.” The Nuncio placed the coroner’s report in a slender drawer in the center of his desk, which he locked with a key he kept in the pocket of his cassock. “The great Hugo Spadafora,” he said meditatively. “You know, this time I think the Little General has gone too far.”
    T HREE FRIGHTENED men entered the driveway of a handsome villa in Fort Amador, a former American military base that had been turned over to the Panama Defense Forces. A high stone wall topped with shards of colored glass surrounded the grounds. As the car approached, the iron gate opened to receive it, then abruptly shut behind it with a clang of doom.
    The door chime played “Lara’s Song” from Doctor Zhivago. Presently a shirtless butler in Bermuda shorts opened the door. “Mr. Escobar is expecting you,” he said with pity in his voice.
    The three men—César Rodríguez, Floyd Carlton, and Kiki Pretelt—exchanged desperate glances, then followed the butler through the living room to the private office of Pablo Escobar, the chief of security for the Medellín cartel.
    The office was tasteful but surprisingly modest for a man of Escobar’s wealth and resources. House-decorating magazines covered the coffee table. The shelves were bookless, lined instead with eight-track tapes and exotic Oriental vases. The centerpiece of the room, Escobar’s desk, was an elegant sheet of black slate. A paused Pac-Man game blinked on the computer screen. Behind the desk was a picture window opening on a resplendent garden. Hummingbirds dodged frantically through the blossoms.
    Escobar was sitting on his Exercycle with a towel around his neck, watching CNN. He did not seem to notice the men when they came in. They stood nervously aside and listened to the reporter describing Panama as a drug haven and a sanctuary for