Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

I remembered some things I had conveniently ignored over the years. Ethan Allen spent several months in fetid and cramped British prison ships, much of the time locked into thirty pounds of iron shackles, and then more time in an English dungeon. He was a prisoner of war, captured at the 1775 Battle of Montreal while fighting for the same sorts of freedom Jaime Roldós and Omar Torrijos now sought for their people. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and all the other Founding Fathers had risked their lives for similar ideals. Winning the revolution was no foregone conclusion; they understood that if they lost, they would be hanged as traitors. Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and Lewis and Clark also had endured great hardships and made many sacrifices.

And Drake and Morgan? I was a bit hazy about that period in history, but I remembered that Protestant England had seen itself sorely threatened by Catholic Spain. I had to admit to the possibility that Drake and Morgan had turned to piracy in order to strike at the heart of the Spanish empire, at those gold ships, to defend the sanctity of England, rather than out of a desire for self-aggrandizement.

As we sailed up that channel, tacking back and forth into the wind, inching closer to the mountains rising from the sea—Great Thatch Island to the north and St. John to the south—I could not erase these thoughts from my mind. Mary handed me a beer and turned up the volume on a Jimmy Buffett song. Yet, despite the beauty that surrounded me and the sense of freedom that sailing usually brings, I felt angry. I tried to brush it off. I chugged down the beer.

The emotion would not leave. I was angered by those voices from history and the way I had used them to rationalize my own greed. I was furious at my parents, and at Tilton—that self-righteous prep school on the hill—for imposing all that history on me. I popped open another beer. I could have killed Mac Hall for what he had done to Bruno.

A wooden boat with a rainbow flag sailed past us, its sails billowing out on both sides, downwinding through the channel. A half dozen young men and women shouted and waved at us, hippies in brightly colored sarongs, one couple stark naked on the foredeck. It was obvious from the boat itself and the look about them that they lived aboard, a communal society, modern pirates, free, uninhibited.

I tried to wave back but my hand would not obey. I felt overcome with jealousy.

Mary stood on the deck, watching them as they faded into the distance at our stern. “How would you like that life?” she asked.

And then I understood. It was not about my parents, Tilton, or Mac Hall. It was my life I hated. Mine. The person responsible, the one I loathed, was me.

Mary shouted something. She was pointing over the starboard bow. She stepped closer to me. “Leinster Bay,” she said. “Tonight’s anchorage.”

There it was, nestled into St. John Island, a cove where pirate ships had lain in wait for the gold fleet when it passed through this very body of water. I sailed in closer, then handed the tiller over to Mary and headed up to the foredeck. As she navigated the boat around Watermelon Cay and into the beautiful bay, I lowered and bagged the jib and hauled the anchor out of its locker. She deftly dropped the mainsail. I nudged the anchor over the side; the chain rattled down into the crystal clear water and the boat drifted to a stop.

After we settled in, Mary took a swim and a nap. I left her a note and rowed the dinghy ashore, beaching it just below the ruins of an old sugar plantation. I sat there next to the water for a long time, trying not to think, concentrating on emptying myself of all emotion. But it did not work.

Late in the afternoon, I struggled up the steep hill and found myself standing on the crumbling walls of this ancient plantation, looking down at our anchored sloop. I watched the sun sink toward the Caribbean. It all seemed very idyllic, yet I knew that the plantation surrounding me had been the scene of untold misery; hundreds of African slaves had died here—forced at gunpoint to build the stately mansion, to plant and harvest the cane, and to operate the equipment that turned raw sugar into the basic ingredient of rum. The tranquility of the place masked its history of brutality, even as it masked the rage that surged within me.

The sun disappeared behind a mountain-ridged island. A vast magenta arch spread across the sky. The sea began to darken, and I came face-to-face with the shocking fact that I too had been a slaver, that my job at MAIN had not been just about using debt to draw poor countries into the global empire. My inflated forecasts were not merely vehicles for assuring that when my country needed oil we could call in our pound of flesh, and my position as a partner was not simply about enhancing the firm’s profitability. My job was also about people and their families, people akin to the ones who had died to construct the wall I sat on, people I had exploited.