In the Company of Spies

by Stephen Barlay

  Friday, October 26

  At 7:00 A.M., the U.S. destroyer Joseph F. Kennedy runs up flag signal “Oscar November.” U.S.-built, Panama-owned, Lebanese-registered, USSR-chartered freighter Marucla understands message: heave to and stop. The ship is a diplomatic choice for first boarding. Unarmed boarding party finds no weapons. Marucla allowed to continue to Cuba. Vatican’s dilemma: should Latin remain sole liturgical language?

  *

  IN A TINY OFFICE OF THE LONGHOUSE, RUST SPENT THE NIGHT in a state of shock and remorse. Occasionally, for a few seconds, he fell asleep, only to wake up to the cries and screams from somewhere a few doors away where Miguel must be being questioned. Under the floorboards, some crocodiles thumped the stilts with their tails. But in a peculiar way, Rust felt at peace with the world. He was in limbo, with decisions and action behind him, pain and death somewhere on the ill-defined horizon, even beyond care. A touch of insane euphoria made him smile: it was clever of him to leave Sylvia behind; she would take the news about the missiles in the caves to Morales, who would pass it on … pass it on to whom? Panic set in. Morales might choose the wrong man. As he himself had, at least with some of the things he had said. But was it his fault? How could he suspect them?

  Throughout the long, hungry hours of dawn, Rust tried to recall scenes in the sanatorium, particularly the day he talked about Yelena and her possible motives, her personal hatred of Khrushchev, her Ukrainian origin. Who was present? Repson, definitely. Also those two sets of interrogators. And Schramm, yes, he, too. He could not remember anyone else. But there had to be others. Listening. In another room. Technicians. Company security. Some invited audience. Charles, perhaps. Yes, Charles appeared to be well informed during that first dinner outside the security compound. One of all these must have sent a message to Moscow. By then the KGB investigators must have known a great deal about Rust’s escape and the people who had helped him. They would have an ever-shortening list of suspects. Then those few, seemingly safe and innocuous words were reported from Washington. In the right hands, they would reduce the list to one or two. To Yelena. They would pick her up and take her to the Lubyanka. Accelerated, intense interrogation. She could not hold out for long. She would give away his father. And Florian. But they would demand more from her. They would want Rust. She would give them everything when she broke completely. Everything, including the Odessa escape route. That would appear to be a promising way to get to him. They would force her to send the message, set the trap, wait for his arrival and shoot him then round up all who had helped him. But why would they send a KGB man from Moscow? They would surely have executioners on the spot. And why send Yelena? Further interrogation? Confrontation? They could not hope to learn much more from them. If only he could alert Washington that someone in that sanatorium had been working for the Moscow Center all along. To whom could he send that message? Who could be trusted?

  At 7:45, at about the time the Marucla was boarded, Boychenko entered the room. Yelena followed him with a Canaan of a breakfast tray but stopped at the door waiting for orders.

  Boychenko snapped his fingers: “Put it down and go.” Rust reached out to touch her arm, but the move alarmed her. She backed away hastily. Rust wondered if the damage they had done to her was irreparable.

  “Help yourself,” said Boychenko. “You start with that papaya? It’s not for me, I must say, although the locals say it’s very good. I’m too conservative to experiment. But perhaps you like it, do you?”

  “I’d enjoy it more if I could choose my company.”

  “That was uncalled for, Mr. Rust. But, no matter. And before you try to go too far with such an unfriendly attitude, I must warn you that armed guards are watching us.” He suddenly switched to Russian: “And they understand English. Do you mind if we speak Russian?”

  “I don’t give a shit. I share no secrets with you.”

  “Not yet, Mr. Rust, not yet. But I’m about to tell you something.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’ve created quite an impression in Moscow. And other places. We may be on opposite sides, but I’m full of respect for you. You’re a good man to have as a friend. No, no, don’t argue, I mean it. And we’ve made inquiries about you. You’re an able operator and very, very loyal. It’s the sort of loyalty we’ve always valued much more highly than the Company ever could. It’s the loyalty of the man who thinks things out for himself. Why is it that Washington doesn’t value it much more?” Rust finished his papaya and pretended to concentrate only on his breakfast. Boychenko carried on regardless. “And I admire your loyalty to friends. The way you took the risk to help Yelena. That’s the name our Colonel Muratova used in Moscow, right? So let’s stick to it. Yours was a definitely chivalrous gesture, and I respect you for that, too. In fact, I’d like to help you. Both of you. For I’m sure you’d do everything in your power to restore her health. The damage is curable, I’m told. And the great American medical science and psychiatry could do wonders for her.”

  “You want to trade her for something?”

  “A crude expression, Mr. Rust. What I have in mind is not like that at all, I can assure you. But let’s first talk about you. You have great respect for your President, haven’t you?”

  “What about it?”

  “He’s an inspiring figure. So is his brother. The whole family. Someone tells me that they account for much of the new American patriotism these days. Certainly in your case, I’m told.”

  “By whom?”

  “And I can understand. President Kennedy is a great man. Full of youthful determination. Ready to fight us if we don’t remove those missiles, right?”

  “Stop bullshitting, Boychenko,” said Rust, reverting to English.

  The Russian laughed. “Stop bullshitting. Good expression. I’ll learn that. Thank you.” He ceased laughing as suddenly as he had begun, and continued in Russian: “What a pity that your President is cheating you now as he’s cheated all along. So I’d better stop ‘bullshitting.’ I’m going to tell you something that very, very few people know about. At the moment, only Comrade Khrushchev and a dozen other people. Later today, your President will hear about it. But you’ll know right now.”

  “I’m honored.”

  “Comrade Khrushchev is sending a most confidential letter to the President directly. It’ll propose to remove the missiles from Cuba under American supervision. It’ll promise not to send others to replace them. He’ll do that if the quarantine is lifted right away.”

  “I’m sure it will be. That’s all the President has demanded.”

  “But there’s something else. We can’t let our Cuban friends down. Kennedy must promise never to attack Castro and must guarantee Cuban independence.”

  “Guarantee, no matter what? No way.”

  “And I say he’ll do it. And I have proof. That’s just what I wanted to tell you. You and all those Cuban exiles in Florida have been used and cheated all along. You all thought that the Kennedys were committed to the ‘liberation’ of Cuba. But they were just bullshitting.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “People who worked for Mongoose. The raiding parties. All who died. They died for nothing. You suffered for nothing.”

  “That’s what you say.”

  “Let’s see what you say.” With a flourish, Boychenko produced a sheet of paper and gave it to Rust. It was the photocopy of a memo to the President on Bobby Kennedy’s notepaper.

  Its date was April 19, 1961. The day when cheated and desperate Cuban exiles were firing their last bullets on the beaches near the crocodile farm, and the ignominious Bay of Pigs invasion was drawing to a disastrous end. The day that was still more than a year away from any Russian missiles going into Cuba. “If we don’t want Russia to set up missile bases in Cuba,” Robert Kennedy wrote, “we had better decide now what we are willing to do to stop it.” The memo considered possible courses of action. Invasion with American troops, already rejected but perhaps to be reconsidered
, was one of them. A strict blockade was another. International prohibition of all arms shipments was a third. And in order to enlist full international support, Robert Kennedy invented and recommended a trump card: “Guarantee the territorial integrity of Cuba so that the Cuban government could not say they would be at the mercy of the United States.”

  Rust was dumbfounded. “Bullshit,” he mumbled at last. His eyes fell on the handwritten lines at the bottom of the page. “R.K. willing to trade guarantea for promise of no missiles in Cuba.” The fat letters and cursive handwriting were Anna’s, unmistakably. So was the spelling error. It proved the genuine origin of the memo. “How long has Khrushchev had this?” Rust asked throatily.

  “There should be a date of registry at the top.” Boychenko glanced at it. “There. April 23. Good going, I’d say. And without this bit of information, Khrushchev would never have ventured to send missiles over here. But he knew what would happen. And now he knows that his offer to swap missiles for guarantees will be accepted.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Oh, just a gesture of trust. I thought it’s unfair that a man like you and many others should be forced to risk everything while being cheated all along. Think about it. In Moscow, a few people at the top are reading this memo perhaps at this very moment. And you may be the first American outside the White House to see it. That’s how highly we think of you.”

  *

  In London, a Cuban embassy spokesman declared: “It is a ludicrous idea, indeed, to think that Cuba has long-range nuclear weapons and that the Soviet Union could be interested in establishing such bases when it has been acknowledged that the USSR has a sufficient number of such weapons on its own territory to be adequate for its own purposes.”

  In Washington, the hawks were pressing for action all day. The facts were on their side. Reports were pouring in that the missile sites were now being completed one after the other.

  Khrushchev’s private emissary approached an ABC diplomatic correspondent to try to middleman a deal with the President.

  The State Department prepared a crash program to set up a civilian government in Cuba immediately after a successful attack and occupation. Kennedy supervised everything, even the contents of the leaflets to be dropped over Cuba, the assembling of the invasion fleet, and the list of Cuban doctors in the Miami area in case they were needed. The casualties of an invasion were expected to be “very heavy.” The President warned his immediate circle: “We must accept the possibility that when military hostilities begin, those [Cuban] missiles will be fired.”

  At 6:00 in the afternoon, the American embassy in Moscow started to relay a personal letter from Khrushchev. It proposed the withdrawal of missiles under supervision in return for noninvasion guarantees. It was a long, rambling disclosure pleading, hesitating, showing signs of alarm and indecision, offering to be “quite frank” with Kennedy. The style was informal, a frightened man wanting to have a real heart-to-heart. State Department specialists analyzed it in a seventh-floor office. The verdict was that Khrushchev must have been “tight or scared” when dictating it to a lone secretary off the cuff, without help or consultation, fuming, pacing up and down in his huge Kremlin office overlooking the Spassky Gate.

  Evaluation of the letter was to be continued through the night. It was decided not to publish the text itself.

  *

  Rust was left alone with his thoughts all day. Again and again he tried to convince himself that Boychenko’s flattering confidentiality was just a crafty device, and the memo was a fake. But could Anna’s handwriting be faked? In the sanatorium, she would be watched at all times, she would not have a chance to write it herself. Step by step, Rust worked himself into a blind fury. He had been cheated. Those Cubans had been cheated. The money, effort and dreams invested in Mongoose had been wasted. The raiders had bled, the dead had died in vain. Castro’s rule would be guaranteed, Khrushchev would seem to lose a battle but win the war and buy time to build better missiles that could hit Washington right from the shadow of the Kremlin wall. From about 8:00 in the evening, Rust’s painful thoughts were punctuated by horrible screams coming from somewhere far away.

  Rust did not consider his own suffering a waste. It was an acceptable price for delivering a last-minute warning about the missiles and thwarting the completion of Khrushchev’s scheme. It also unmasked Anna and, perhaps, others. But Julia-Rosa, who had given her life for that shipping list, died in vain. It would hurt her to see that memo. Miguel’s words echoed in Rust’s skull. “Fidel’s cheated us. Somebody must let him see that we know.” Somebody must let Kennedy see it, too. Why me? Rust asked himself. Why not me? Because my motive would be hurt vanity. Or was there more to it? And what could I do? Stop the news about the caves from reaching Washington? That would be high treason. Could treason be justified by the discovery that one’s idols and leaders were cheats? Was Miguel’s act of defiance against Castro justified?

  Rust fought off these thoughts as the distant screams died away. He was sure that even if the letter and the memo were real, Kennedy would never issue that guarantee.

  At 10:00, the door opened and an armed guard allowed Yelena through. She was bringing Rust some food. Her gait was like a sleep-walker’s, and the dishes kept rattling on the tray. But her eyes were alive this time. She flicked a glance of warning toward the door behind her. Rust understood. “Shut that door, bastard!” The guard shrugged his shoulders and left them. She quickly dropped the tray on the table and embraced Rust. “I love you, Helm, I love you, I love you.”

  He kissed her. “I thought you’re … are you all right?”

  “Yes and no. But there’s no time to talk. I’m fighting for survival. For both of us.”

  “Where’s my father?”

  “It’s not my fault, I swear to you.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He … he wasn’t your father.”

  It would have been difficult to condense more than two such blows in a short sentence like that. Stunned and relieved at the same time, questions flooded Rust’s throat and drowned his voice. Memory fragments of vague suspicions about the old man floated like jetsam. Discrepancies in his behavior. His limited recollections of Helm’s mother and Geneva. His apparently compulsive reminiscing about the Jeddo. Yes, somebody certainly had fed him with information, some of which must have been mistakenly too fresh to be real memories. And the worst for Rust was that he now had to face the fact: he had always suppressed his doubts in order to build himself a past, even at the cost of trusting the untrustworthy, only to give himself someone to belong to and care for. The old man was a cheat. Somebody’s carefully planned and drawn mirage to be pasted on Rust’s horizon. Who had devised him? Yelena? It did not matter. For cheat or no cheat, the loss of the father figure hurt Rust. And the past tense in “he wasn’t your father” signaled the irrevocable, the destruction of a mere puppet perhaps, but a relatively innocent death nevertheless. “Wasn’t?” he asked Yelena with the last of his hope.

  “He’s dead,” she whispered hurriedly. “I’m sorry. But I swear he wasn’t your father. I’ll explain everything when there’s time. I just had to warn you. I’m not sure what Boychenko wants from you. But don’t argue. Pretend to play whatever his game is. Then perhaps they’ll let you go.”

  “And you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why did you bring him here?” She did not answer. As she stared at him, clinging to him, he thought she would cry, silently, as when accused of being a traitor. But there were no tears. She might have no more left. “Have they tortured you?” She looked away. “You didn’t come on the Bucharest, did you?”

  “We flew to Cuba. Then went on board and into the tank at Matanzas only to trap you. I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll tell you more about the old man if you want me to. Do you?”

  “I don’t know. But I’d like to mourn him.”

/>   There were footsteps outside. And voices.

  “I love you,” she breathed and broke away from him. Her eyes lost their sparkle, her body went limp. It seemed she had to make a greater effort to maintain sanity than to pretend cracking up. Her vacant gaze that greeted Boychenko was very convincing. When she was ordered to leave, she backed out of the room.

  I must say something, thought Rust, anything to allay Boychenko’s suspicions. “You … you really think she could ever be cured?” he asked as she was stumbling through the door, bumping into the guard outside.

  “Some of our top men have assured me that a complete recovery is possible. Wish I could be so reassuring about another friend of yours.”

  “What other friend?”

  “It’s not my responsibility at all, I swear to you. She’s in the hands of the Cubans.”

  “She?”

  “It’s quite unimaginably barbaric what they’ve done to her. She’s dying. She’s begged to see you and say goodbye. I’ll take you to her if you promise not to go crazy.”

  Surrounded by half a dozen armed men, Sylvia’s naked, savagely mutilated body lay on the floor of a bare room at the far end of the longhouse. Her eyes were closed. She was too weak to scream any more, but whined incessantly. Whole chunks of her body had been torn away, and she was bleeding profusely. No such horrid injuries could have been inflicted by humans. Rust knelt beside her. She cried out, “No, please, no!” and raised her arm to protect herself before opening her eyes. He did not think she would recognize him, but suddenly the whining began to make sense: “I didn’t give you away, chico, I didn’t. They knew about you. Please don’t let me suffer anymore … please … ”