Flight from a Firing Wall

by Baynard Kendrick

  The telephone rang and I had him on the line.

  “‘M’ old chappie,” I opened in Oxonian, “this is killer agent 0-0 …”

  “Double zero is right!” he broke in and used Spanish to tell me where to go in his unruffled tone. “What’s binding you now?”

  “A girl. What’s the poop on one Liliana Medina, the night-club singer?”

  “Wait.” I could picture him riffling a file. Then: “Chico, my records show that she’s politically pure, but far too expensive for the likes of you and me. Can’t you find some nice young nurse who will help you bury your mistakes out at the hospital?”

  “Honest, jefe …” It always burned him when I called him “chief.” “I didn’t call her, she called me.” I gave him a rundown of the day.

  I could almost hear the clicking of brains in the AFAO. “Hang on!”

  Like a good obedient henchman I tightened my clutch on the phone.

  He was back very shortly, his voice sounding a little stiff.

  “Chico, I bring you a message from Che Guevara’s Guerra de Guerrillas—”

  “If you are referring to that little number in which he tells how to take over a country in three easy lessons, I’ve read it.”

  “But apparently not absorbed it all. Listen: ‘Women can play an extraordinarily important role in the development of a revolutionary process. They are capable of the most difficult deeds of fighting with the troops, and they do not cause sexual conflicts among the troops, as has been charged. They should be entrusted with carrying confidential messages, ammunition, and so forth. If captured, they will invariably be better treated than men no matter how brutal the enemy. They can cook for the troops and perform other duties of a domestic nature, teach the soldiers and the local population, indoctrinate the children, perform the functions of social workers, nurse the sick, help sew uniforms, and if necessary, even bear arms.…’”

  “And children?”

  He offended my ears with a few choice army phrases in Spanish, then went on: “‘Use women to infiltrate the enemy camp. Use trained men and women to spread rumors and sow confusion and fear among the enemy.’”

  I didn’t say anything but my hand felt sweaty on the phone.

  Luis said, “There’s just one thing more: ‘… Trust no one beyond the nucleus, especially not women. The enemy will undoubtedly try to use women for espionage. So—the revolutionary, secretly preparing for war, must be an ascetic and perfectly disciplined. Anyone who repeatedly defies the order of his superior, and makes contact with women, and other outsiders, however innocuous, must be expelled immediately for violation of revolutionary discipline.’”

  “So expel me,” I said. “I’m certainly not taking any vows of celibacy. I’d rather die for dear old AFAO. But I get the message.”

  “What message?”

  “You think that my fame as a calmer of agitators has finally reached the headquarters of the Rebel Army in Cuba, and this lovely songbird has been sent to me ‘From Fidel With Love!’”

  I could hear him chortle. “Ah, chico—so you do read some of the other great classics aside from Che Guevara? Now, bustle off like a good little agent and meet that Kerritack.” He paused. “But don’t let the song of the siren lull you to sleep. Rumor has it that the owner is a pretty tough hombre, and I’d hate to lose you. Still, there are a hell of a lot of things about that yachtsman, Orville Harrington, that we and the authorities here in Miami would like to know. I have just one suggestion …”

  He gave it to me and I went back to my brandy. I bolted the second half, but there was not a trace left in me of that rosy glow.

  4

  It cost me fifty cents to buy back my LeSabre, planned obsolescence and all. I drove up Biscayne to N.E. Fifth Street, turned in right past the Auditorium, and lucked a parking space by the City Yacht Basin. The trees in the park looked white and dusty. The few cruisers that were docked there were hanging slack in their lines. The water along the bay front and in the slips lay flat as a stove top and just as hot. There was a smell of fish, and not enough breeze from the ocean to have floated one strand on Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair.

  Evidently a temporary recession was covering the waterfront for the Dock Master’s office was empty. I went inside and took a look at the chart hanging over the counter. Orville Harrington had a spot reserved on the channel top of the “T” on Pier 3. I walked down to Pier 5 where the charter boats docked and idled along casing the ones that had signs out offering summer bargain rates for trips the next day. Business was better there, for all were out fishing except four.

  The skipper and mate on the first one were stretched out on the port and starboard bunks, hats over their eyes, snoozing in the shadow of the cabin from the heat of the day. I didn’t blame them and didn’t disturb them. Four berths farther down the dock a curly haired bronze giant in a T shirt was hosing down a fifty-footer with enough fighting chairs hung on it to have seated a squad of Marines. He had on one of those cross-anchor skipper’s caps turned backward. When he saw me stop to read his sign, which said he had two reservations open for tomorrow, he quit hosing and twisted his cap around. He stepped up on the transom, the soles of his topsiders making a squunchy sound, and stared at me appraisingly out of a pair of brown radar eyes.

  “Interested?” The eyes looked out hopefully from a million tiny wrinkles caused by a combination of good humor, sea and sun. You couldn’t help liking everything about him and his boat, the Angelus II.

  “Just gawking and wishing. If I ever get a few bucks and some time I think a day out with you would be fun. The Angelus hooked me!”

  “You like her? So do I.” He gave an affectionate pat to the hull.

  “I have a thing about boats. Especially sports fishermen. Five years ago I owned one.”

  “You sold it?”

  “No, lost it—along with my country. I’m Tony Carrillo, a doctor out at the VA Hospital in Coral Gables. Now my boat belongs to another doctor named Castro.”

  “Cuban, eh? You don’t quite figure.”

  “I’m half Yankee. My mother’s side.” I pointed to the sign. “Are you Captain Slade?”

  “To the cash customers, and my side-kick, the mate. To the syndicate that owns the boat I’m the hired man who uses too much gasoline.” He stuck out his hand and gave me a grip that could have cracked a clam. “Just call me Joe.”

  “Joe it is. I’m just Tony. How’s business?”

  “Lousy, like the fishing. It’s too darn hot and too calm.” He took a look to make sure I didn’t have spiked shoes on. “If you’re not too busy curing vets, how about coming aboard and having a chill?”

  He threw a rubber mat over the transom and I stepped on board. It seemed like a good day for having a chill, whatever that was. He pointed to a place on the starboard lounge. I sat down while he vanished into the galley. I heard the welcome pops of an opener on beer cans. He came back with two dew-dotted Millers, shoved one into my feverish grasp and sat down beside me.

  “¡A su salud!” he toasted and we clinked cans.

  I downed a long heavenly swallow and asked, “Do you speak Spanish?”

  “Taberna type only, of the Sloppy Joe’s school, just enough to start a fight in a bar, but not enough to keep out of jail. You said you’d owned a boat. Where was that?”

  “It was at my uncle’s place in Matanzas, but my home was in Havana. I’ve fished around most of Cuba since I was a boy. Have you been there?”

  “Matanzas?” He nodded. “The Athens of Cuba. What a peaceful place to have the name ‘Matanzas’—‘slaughter’! I’ve fished around those islands in Santa Clara Bay and caught some really big ones off of Cayo Coco and Cayo Romano farther east in the Old Bahama Channel. That was several years ago of course, as you say. I suppose the name of slaughter fits Matanzas better today.”

  “Maybe they should rename the whole island,” I told him. “They’re gunning down three out of four in every small boat that tries to make a getaway. ‘Women and childre
n first’ as they say.”

  “Still, some make it.” He reached in a locker, brought out a morning paper, and turned to page two. “Here’s one dated yesterday. It’s headed ‘Boat Used to Rescue 85 Cubans—A Cuban exile group, Monday, disclosed how it used a twenty-four-foot boat to rescue from Communist Cuba 85 anti-Castroites, including the brother, and other relatives of former welterweight boxing champion Florentino Fernández. The rescue of 36 women, 12 children, and 37 men was believed to be the largest from Cuba since Fidel Castro took the island. Five of those rescued were disguised as Cuban militiamen …’ Here, read it yourself while I gaff us another chill.”

  He handed me the paper. I went on with the story which filled almost a column. It told how the Coordinator General of another anti-Communist organization had gone to Cuba the week before in a twenty-four-foot boat to pick up a load of about fifty refugees. On the way out they had run into another boat carrying forty-five anti-Castroites, all packed into a twenty-one-footer which had stalled. Among those rescued were a family of 18, and a man who had fled the island with his two children, leaving his Communist wife there. The twenty-four-footer took the twenty-one-footer in tow, and they had reached Key West four days before.

  The leader of the rescue mission had refused to discuss any details, but he did loosen up enough to say that five of the rescued men got out disguised as militiamen, although the reports from Key West had erroneously said they were militia defectors. The story closed by saying: “The leader said his group had made ‘several’ other rescue trips into Cuba. He made the disclosure about the current mission, he said, because some other exile organization was trying to claim credit for it.”

  I laid the paper aside wondering grimly just how much difference it made to those eighty-five rescued Cubans who claimed the credit. I was glad to be alive although I had never known whom to thank for rescuing me. That “trying to claim credit” bit was just another clincher for the necessity of a man like Luis Martínez and the AFAO.

  Joe came back with the beers and looked at the paper. “Did you read it?”

  “Yes, I read it.”

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “About what?”

  He took a long swallow. “My brother’s in the Coast Guard at Key West. He was up here last night and we were talking about this very thing. He gave me some figures which might interest you.” He took a notebook from under the seat cushion and flipped it open.

  I said, “Shoot.”

  He consulted the book and said, “Up to the first of June this year, 1965, 177,150 Cubans have registered with the Cuban Refugee Center since January 1961. Of these, 7,879 arrived in small boats, which includes nearly everything that floats, from inner tubes lashed together on up. Of these the Coast Guard has picked up 6,862, which leaves only 1,017 who have made it to Key West or Miami on their own.”

  “So?”

  “So,” he tucked his notebook away, “you just got through saying that they’re gunning down three out of four people who try to make a small boat getaway. Wherever you got those figures I think they’re cockeyed.”

  “I’m merely quoting what the magazines and newspapers say.”

  “Nuts!” Joe finished his beer and crushed the can. “They’re probably quoting some writer who paid the expenses of a fishing trip while sitting on his can on some key. When did you make your getaway?”

  “Five years ago,” I admitted. “Nineteen-sixty.”

  “Well, maybe back then those figures were right, but not today. Then the Coast Guard had a couple of Grumman Albatross planes, and one cutter, which together with the British frigate H.M.S. Tartar patrolled that sea route called ‘Machine Gun Alley.’ That was a pushover for Cuba’s Russian-trained Coast Guard of a hundred killer boats directed from Matanzas and with a fleet of search planes.”

  I didn’t say anything since he’d made up his mind to tell me anyway.

  “Remember back in March 1963 when a bunch of you fellows carried out two attacks on Soviet ships in Cuban waters?”

  “Yeah, but don’t include me. I’m just a peaceful medico trying to make a living—like a hundred and fifty thousand other exiles.”

  “Okay. While Uncle Sam could sympathize, he didn’t like it handled that way. In the long run those forays could do no real good, and they might do plenty of harm. The Coast Guard was ordered to crack down, and given the necessary stuff to start an Outer Patrol—HU16E amphibian planes for search and rescue, new amphibious copters to back them up, and three new cutters, the Diligence, Ariadne, and the Androscoggin, which they call the Big Andy, all of them big enough to stay a long time out on patrol.”

  “So they’re doing a swell job,” I said. “In addition to cracking down on renegade raiders, they borught in forty more refugees in two boats they rescued just yesterday. Maybe I’m a fast man to miss a point, Joe, but what are you driving at? If you’re trying to enlist me in the Coast Guard, you’re wasting my time.”

  “I’m driving at those very renegade raiders you’re talking about,” he said seriously. “Lots of folks think that plenty of these refugees are shipped in here from Castro’s G-2, and that they’re responsible for stirring up all the stink and keeping you fellows from getting together.”

  “They’re all processed and interrogated by immigration officials at Key West to weed out possible Communist agents,” I told him. “Then they’re placed on a bus for Miami and further interviewed by the Office of the Coordinator for Cuban Affairs to see what possible jobs they can fill. Sure some agents slip through, but what can you do?”

  “Processed!” he gave a nasty laugh. “Here we process ’em with milk and sandwiches, and down yonder, from what I can hear, Fidel’s Security uses thumbscrews and castor oil.”

  “And you’re suggesting we do the same?”

  “Don’t be silly! I’m shooting my mouth off, that’s all. I served quite a trick in the US Marines and I don’t like to see them dying trying to clean up some Castro mess in Santo Domingo. And what about Tampa? Fidel’s bully boys have been trying out some shooting, arson and firebombs right there. Are we going to have to call out the Marines for that, too? From where I’m sitting, right here in Miami, like up in Viet Nam, we’re bloody well losing a war.”

  “Well, from where I’m sitting, and I’m right here beside you, you may be right, Joe.” I handed him the empty beer can. “I’ll even go a step further than that and tell you that a few of us are working with that idea in mind right now, trying to give what help we can to the CIA and the FBI. We need a little help ourselves. Just because they speak Spanish, it doesn’t prove that every Cuban refugee, male or female, is a Castro spy.”

  We stood up. I said, “I’m waiting for a yacht to dock, the Kerritack. She belongs to a big wheel, Orville Harrington. They called up on the ship-to-shore this morning and said they’d been out on a fishing trip and had a very sick patient on board. Do you happen to know her?”

  “Orville Harrington? The limey?”

  “I don’t know what he is, only that he has a Cuban wife named Soledad.”

  Joe Slade took time out to dispose of the empty cans in his trash bin, then came back and made a fist to pound his own chin gently. “Tony, I’ll swallow raw, whole and tail first, every fish that the Kerritack brings in.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If he’s been any place south of Key West, it sure wasn’t on a fishing trip.”

  “What kind of a trip, then?”

  “Business, pure and simple. He doesn’t waste time fishing. Harrington’s sport is pulling the shekels in. Most likely he’s been to the Ragged, Acklin, or Great Inagua Islands, or maybe contacting one of his freighters that is running some tractor parts into Nipe, in Oriente Province, or maybe Puerto Padre or Gibara. His companies are the main suppliers to Castro of spare parts for American autos and machines.”

  “Don’t the US authorities know this, too?”

  “Sure. I’ll come right back at you: ‘What can you do?’ Jokers like Harrington set up
companies in the Bahamas and the United States and export parts from one to the other. If customs get suspicious of one, they open another. From the Bahamas the parts are shipped out legally on British transires—customs documents for clearance and entry papers of coasting vessels—since trade between the Bahamas and Cuba is perfectly legal.”

  “And just what do they get paid off in?” I demanded. “Pesos, frijoles, rubles, or Red Chinese yuan?”

  “Don’t be ridic, Doc! Fidel pays off in American dollars, or a first-class substitute such as ‘pot’ from his marijuana farm, or a kilo of heroin that smuggled in here can add up to more. If he happens to be a bit short of dollars he’s been known to make a few—at his counterfeit plant at Minas del Frio, where his goons can also get courses in everything from how to rob banks to political blackmail.”

  “You seem to know a lot about Cuba, and Harrington, too.”

  “More than you think, Tony, more than you think! But if you happen to meet the s.o.b. please don’t mention my name.” He winked. “The last big blabbermouth of a skipper who sounded off about Harrington’s trade with Cuba got tangled in his own anchor chains. Nobody will ever see him again, unless they look out the porthole of a submarine.”