Free Senor Nice by Howard Marks

flights to Panama from Europe. You might have to change in a South or Central American country or the Caribbean.’
    ‘No worries, Jeanette. I can live with that.’
    A return ticket arrived in the post. I was changing planes in Jamaica. Fantastic! It was only an overnight stop each way, but it would be long enough to get a taste of rum, an earful of reggae and a lungful of reefer. And it was Henry Morgan’s favourite place in the world.
    I called Leroy to give him my good news. ‘Hey, Leroy, it looks like I’m going to Jamaica next week.’
    ‘Yo na go widout mi, mon. Da place wi eat yo alive.’
    ‘I’m only transiting there, Leroy, on the way to and from Panama.’
    ‘Shit! Hail up Manuel fi mi.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Noriega, mon. Yo nu remember im ina Yankee prison?’
    I had indeed forgotten the last Panamanian I had met was General Noriega. We were companion inmates of Miami Metropolitan Correctional Center, and our 3.30 a.m. rude awakenings by US marshals to shackle and take us to court sometimes coincided. Trained by former CIA chief George Bush (the old one), Noriega had switched loyalties and begun selling arms to Cuba and trafficking drugs with Colombian cartels. For the first time, the United States adopted the now familiar policy of invading an entire country to capture one opponent. Just months before I met Noriega, the USA had killed thousands of Panamanian nationals and dumped them in mass graves, burned residential neighbourhoods, crushed families in their cars with tanks, and left tens of thousands impoverished and homeless. As a result, Manuel Noriega became the first leader of a country to declare war on the United States since the Second World War.
    I was looking forward to my first transatlantic flight since being deported from America, my first visit to Jamaica and my first visit to Panama for over fifty years. I had recently rented myself a bedsit in London’s Shepherd’s Bush in an attempt to have a life separate from my failing marriage and to lessen the impact of its perpetual emotional and financial haemorrhages. Bedsits are the homes I like best and the rooms, including prison cells, in which I have written most. My books, my sounds, my decks, my drugs and the kettle were close, begging to be used twenty-four hours a day.
    I carefully packed, wondered whether I should hide a small piece of Nepalese hashish, decided against it, and scrupulously checked the suitcase to remove all evidence of my habit: no cigarette papers, no clothes with joint burns and no ripped-uppieces of cardboard from which roaches had been fashioned. I threw in a few guidebooks to Central America and the Caribbean, a toilet bag of creams to prevent me burning and itching, my laptop connections and peripherals, and a random selection of shorts, sandals and summer clothes. I locked the door, took the tube to Paddington, tried unsuccessfully again to smoke at the sushi bar, and caught a mid-afternoon Heathrow Express.
    I was eager to be off but my excitement swiftly evaporated when I read the notice in bold type on the airline ticket given to me at Terminal Three’s Jamaican Airlines check-in desk: ‘ YOU CAN HELP . Report drug smuggling to U.S. Customs 1-800-etc.’ Why, I wondered, should anyone flying non-stop direct from the United Kingdom to Jamaica be requested to consider, let alone blindly assist, enforcing another country’s disastrous prohibition policies? But at least the Jamaicans hadn’t bothered to reveal the full telephone number. They probably knew that a few dozen goats were more effective and cheaper than US Air Force helicopters in discovering marijuana plantations.
    At the security gates passengers were asked to hand in their cigarette lighters. Whether they were considered capable of being used as weapons or whether the airline simply wished to ensure that no one infringed the strict no-smoking rule was not made clear. Every seat was occupied and I was next to a couple of Jamaican children. One of