Flight from a Firing Wall

by Baynard Kendrick

  At any rate, it stunned him badly. I had ample time to shake my paralyzed hand twice before he straightened up and slapped me. The stars had almost cleared away by the time he had me in the seat with both legs shackled and both wrists clamped in handcuffs attached to the seat on each side of me.

  “Be sure they are good and tight, Compañero Guido,” the capitán cautioned approvingly. “Otherwise the next time you will have to kill him and we want his evidence against the imperialist CIA.”

  I said, “It isn’t necessary to treat me like a murderer.”

  “No? My information is that you have not killed one man, but three.”

  Compañero Guido got in behind the wheel, his dead cigar half gassing me. We took off westward past the warehouses and out of that dank little fishing town. The jeep sloshed its way over the ill-kept road sending out sheets of water. We passed through a stretch of swampy ground and the few night lights of the Reforma Sugar Mill.

  Sargento Méndez drove like a fiend. The springs of the jeep were nonexistent. Every bump tore at my handcuffed wrists and shackled ankles, lacerating them painfully.

  We sped through the little town of Remedios. Only a couple of yellow windows showed in the bohíos, those houses built from those pregnant-looking palm trees, baragonas, and thatched with the palmas canas which covered all the countryside around. I tried to picture the ride as I had seen it by day with the flat red earth, green cane and blue sky where even arching trees over the road couldn’t shut out the sight of more cane. Where the soil wouldn’t grow cane, or irrigation was lacking, some small grazing pastures supported humpbacked zebu and criolla, native cattle.

  We sloshed our way through more darkened villages, Vega, Camajuani, and La Cruz. For thirty miles in as many minutes we bounced and slithered through a world that was wet and empty, while everything inside of me was wrung out dry. Before I realized it we were running through the suburb of Santa Catalina, and had crossed the railroad tracks at Santa Clara. We made a two-wheel left turn into Pedro Estevez, which is a portion of the Central Highway.

  One block farther on we nearly crashed into a barrier at the junction of Marta Abreu. The sergeant jammed on brakes, almost tearing my arms from their sockets. Six soldiers armed with machine guns were waving us down with flashlights. Just three blocks to our right on Marta Abreu was the Parque Vidal, where Fidel had spoken to a quarter of a million people less than two weeks before.

  Rodríguez opened the door as a teniente came up to the jeep. He said, “We’re headed for the Palacio de Justicia with a prisoner. Let us through.”

  “Sorry, Compañero Capitán, but not now. Pull to the curb, please, and wait.” Something in his manner and voice made the sergeant obey.

  We had scarcely parked when the barrier was removed and the line of soldiers parted to let a covey of three 1960 Oldsmobiles speed by. Machine guns and even a couple of bazookas bristled through the open windows of the first and third. The middle Olds was closed up tight.

  “Compañero Fidel is riding late tonight,” the capitán said, “but I doubt, gusano, that he was hanging around here just to welcome you.”

  22

  Santa Clara, the capital of Las Villas Province, is called the hub of Cuba. The Parque Vidal, about which circulates all the traffic of the city, is most certainly the hub of Santa Clara. The parque was named for Colonel Leoncio Vidal y Caro, whose marble bust stands near where he was killed in action. A bullet which missed him made a hole in the post that holds a light burning in his memory.

  It was by an attack on the Batista army barracks in Santa Clara, July 26, 1953, that Fidel Castro first came into prominence. Once a year, on the anniversary he likes to tell all about it in one of his three-hour nonstop talks. The listening men are all surreptitiously dozing by the time he signs off, but the women are completely charmed and remain in a state of hypnotic ecstasy.

  For four o’clock on a rainy morning in the first part of August, there was an undue amount of activity, not only in Santa Clara, a city of fifty thousand, but in the public square. As the jeep drove up Marta Abreu and swung south beyond the park on Máximo Gómez, Cuba Street, wet militiamen were posted everywhere.

  I was to learn later that Fidel and his flying squadron of three Olds were apt to show up anywhere at any hour of the day or night from Pinar del Rio to Santiago. The particular location of the city, or town, made no difference. Offices of the G-2 dotted the island from end to end, connected by a network of telephones and radio. At the first suggestion of trouble, unrest, or rebellion among the happy populace, Fidel would grab his bullet-proof jacket, his Makarov automatic, and with his three cars loaded with trouble-shooting goons go rushing to the scene.

  By August, 1965, this was keeping him pretty busy. Law and order had gone out of the window. The habeas corpus had been repealed. Legislation had taken on a terroristic character by the broad application of the death penalty. All distinction between political and criminal offenses had been eliminated. Political offenders had lost the right of asylum, and were subject to extradition from one province to another. They were sentenced to forced labor in a convict’s uniform, and both men and women suffered indignities beyond the bounds of civilization. Now, after seven years of privations, promises and Communist control, the grumblings formerly centered in Havana had spread throughout the entire island. Trouble spots were everywhere.

  We turned right on the Central Highway and two blocks up stopped in front of the Palacio de Justicia. A knot of people were gathered in front drenched by the rain. A solid line of soldiers barred the entrance. If trouble was what had brought Fidel, it was obvious that patriotic Santa Clara was having more than its share.

  The captain made no move to get out. Instead, he said, “Por favor, Cabo, go and find out who is in charge here. Then go to your quarters and get some sleep. Tell the officer in charge that I have a dangerous prisoner, who is to be imprisoned here for the night and tried in the morning. Quick now!”

  Sargento Méndez climbed out and pushed down the seat back to unload the cabo. She said, “Immediately, Compañero Capitán,” and refused the offer of the sergeant’s hand. A most efficient NCO and one about whom I will undoubtedly dream as having an unfortunate accident with her tommy gun.

  Relieved, if only temporarily, from the smell of the sergeant’s stinking cigar butt, I hastily filled my lungs with fresh air. In spite of the torturing cramps in my wrists and ankles, I had an involuntary thrill when the sergeant spit it out into a rivulet and I saw it slowly seek its natural habitat in some sewer. He got back into our gas chamber but kindly left the door ajar.

  My vision was limited to the remnant of a firing wall, which carried a plaque in memory of the patriots executed there on February 4, 1888. The Palace of Justice! This was where the cabo had told me I was to receive a fair trial and be shot immediately. The jota boys had certainly plumbered things up for me. It looked like I had come to some sort of an end, even if it hadn’t been a perfect day.

  The cabo had made her way inside, unquestionably by threatening the guard on the door. The capitán lit a cigarette, one of those Cuban monstrosities made from old cigar clippings swept from the men’s room. I discovered that I had misjudged him entirely and that at heart he was most humane. Instead of burning me behind my car, as I expected, he reached around and put it between my lips.

  I drew the strong smoke in gratefully. He let me have three powerful drags before taking it back to finish it himself.

  I said, “¡Un millón de gracias, Camarada Capitán! I trust that isn’t my final smoke before facing a squad at the firing wall.”

  “It’s quite possible,” he said comfortingly. “We’ve had to cut out that final meaningless gesture. The executions have become too plentiful and the cigarettes too scarce. Furthermore, you probably won’t get a blindfold offered to you, if you persist in addressing people as camarada. Only our most noble benefactors, the Russians, are addicted to that term. Compañero is preferred around here.”

  While the distinc
tion between camarada and compañero is rather fine, I decided to keep it in mind since the Spanish language is that way. I remembered that the United States in sending the late Eleanor Roosevelt to South America, to cement Latin-American friendships, made a stupendous boo-boo. They publicized that great ambassador of good will as an enthusiastic traveler—viajera, without taking the pains to find out that viajera colloquially meant streetwalker in many of the countries she was about to visit.

  At least I wouldn’t be embarrassed if I shouted “¡Patria o muerte, Compañeros!” just before they mowed me down at the wall.

  The palacio guards parted to let out a roly-poly little man in a transparent plastic slicker. Compañero Cabo must have made contact somewhere inside for he headed straight for the jeep, pulled the door wide open, and with a pocket flashlight went over us all.

  The flash stopped and held steady on the capitán’s insignia. “Political Police, Compañero Capitán.” His voice was soft, but there was no mistaking the magisterial ring. “I don’t believe I know you.”

  “Nor I you.” The captain dropped his tiny butt and stomped it out on the floor. “I am Primer Capitán Leo Rodríguez. The driver is my aide, Sargento de Primera Guido Méndez. Both of the F.A.R. We have a prisoner here, who was arrested by Cabo Margarita, on my orders, while making an illegal entry into the country at Caibarién, less than an hour ago. I want to jail him here for the night to be tried in the morning.”

  “So.” The flashlight briefly studied me and then went out. “I am acquainted with most of the officers and personnel in Las Villas Province but you, to my great regret, I do not know. You say you are stationed in Las Villas Province? Sagua la Grande? Or Cienfuegos, perhaps. Or perhaps your credentials will show.”

  “You jump to conclusions too quickly, Compañero.” The captain’s voice was chilled steel. “I dislike having words put into my mouth, even by an agent of G-2. I did not state that I was stationed anywhere in Las Villas Province. Neither will my credentials show it, since it is untrue. Both the sargento and I are stationed in Havana, where I am the chief aide to the Assistant Minister of the Armed Forces, Augusto Pineyro, who in turn is Chief Assistant to the Minister himself, Raúl Castro.”

  “Umm, so.” The roly-poly agent bounced like a Ping-Pong ball. “Your word is as good as any credentials, Compañero Capitán. One would be foolish to travel three-hundred kilometers from home without proper papers, no? But, you will be good enough to grant me the favor of a question or two?”

  “A dozen if you wish, but pray make them quick. I am anxious to lodge my prisoner in a cell and get a few hours sleep at the Santa Clara Hotel.”

  “This is a prisoner of significance. Is that true?”

  “Naturally, since they sent me three-hundred kilometers to take him into custody personally. He is an agent of a counterrevolutionary organization of the Worms in Exile in Miami, known as the AFAO. He is of enough importance to have made the journey here alone tonight in one of the fastest boats in the country, provided for him by the CIA.”

  “Then you are taking him back to Havana with you?”

  “Since the exact time of his arrival was unknown, I am under the personal orders of Compañero Piñeyro to use my own discretion what to do, until I contact my own headquarters first thing in the morning.”

  “I am well known throughout this province as Alfredo,” the chubby man said simply. “Normally, I would be able to find accommodations in Santa Clara for all of you. You have arrived at an unfortunate time. There was an imperialist organized demonstration during and after a speech of the Premier’s here yesterday afternoon. Mass arrests were necessary. Every jail, hotel, and public building in Santa Clara is full of prisoners. Mostly standing, I fear.”

  “¡Caray!— Damn!” the captain swore. “We’ll have to push on to Camagüey. I’ll spell you at the wheel myself, Sargento, if you can’t take two hundred and seventy kilometers more.”

  “Have no worry, Compañero Capitán,” Gargantua hastened to assure him. “I can take the six hundred and sixty to Santiago if you give me the word.”

  Camagüey! Just another 167 miles! Well, at least by the time we reached there my legs and arms would have been ripped from the sockets and I’d be free of that exquisite agony. I began to look with friendly eyes on that remnant of old firing wall. I decided to risk suicide by courting another slap on the jaw.

  I said, “Look, chicos, compañeros, agentes de policía or whatever you are, I’m suffering from severe embolisms of the extremities. I’m ready to confess to all. My real name is Casanova Carrillo, and I’m known among my closest friends as the Stallion of the CIA. I was sent here on one mission: Rape of the Female Military. The only thing that saved those bandidas with the buxom behinds from a fate worse than death was that they got the drop on me.

  “I’m an imperialistic, capitalistic, counterrevolutionary who hates Russkies and Chinks, and there’s a time bomb in that black bag that will go off when anyone opens it and blow us all to hell. Now, por favor, dress me up in some chains that fit and toss me in to a nice cool sewer. Shoot me quick, if that’s the idea, but get these lousy shackles off. They’re too tight and they’re killing me.”

  That got action, all right, but not as I expected. I had overlooked one essential factor. Alfredo was a Communist cop with a built-in G-2 mentality. Instead of recognizing the embroidery work in my desperate plea, he swallowed it all quite literally. What with one thing and another, I wasn’t thinking too fast myself, or I’d never have mentioned my medical bag. I’d said that it contained a bomb. Alfredo believed me.

  Before anyone could move or speak, he had lifted half my reason for coming to Cuba out of the jeep and was waddling off with it, handling it gingerly. He disappeared into the Palace of Justice.

  “What was really in that bag, gusano?” Rodríguez demanded.

  “Contraceptives,” I said sullenly. “I’m peddling the pill.”

  This time the sergeant didn’t slap me. He drove two ramrod fingers with a single poke half an inch into the biceps of my pinioned left arm. Red-hot wires, like an electric toaster, lit up in me from my fingertips through my shoulder and down to the bottom of my spine.

  “When the compañero capitán asks you a question, gusano, answer him truthfully. The next time you get the fingers in the eyes. ¿Me entiende Ud.?”

  I understood him, all right. His meaning was painfully clear. I said, “The bag was full of medical supplies and medicine.”

  “¿Esta Ud. bromeando?— Are you kidding?”

  “Only about the bomb. I was kidding, joking, or being funny—whatever you want to call it. Anything to get out of here.”

  "¡Dios mío! A bag full of medicine!” Rodríguez exclaimed furiously. “You’ve just presented the Secret Police with ten thousand pesos in black market money. You’ll find it’s expensive to be a wise guy around here.”

  23

  The watchdog of Las Villas Province was back very shortly. The captain said, “We got the truth out of the prisoner just as soon as you were gone. That black bag is full of miracle drugs. I hope your demolition men aren’t soaking it in oil. I may need it as evidence against him in the morning.”

  He drew a blank if he hoped to deflate our bouncing boy. “I’m used to liars, Compañero Capitán. It will be waiting for you intact when you bring him here for trial, although it appears you considered the evidence against him sufficient since you didn’t see fit to open it on your own.”

  “Neither did you. Perhaps we are both overly cautious. Furthermore, I can’t recall telling you that I intended to bring him here for trial in the morning, since you are unable to take care of him now.”

  “All my apologies, Compañero. I find myself upset tonight with the disturbances. I remember now that what you say is quite true.” Alfredo was about as upset as a tiger ready to spring for a kill. “You will forgive my puzzlement, I’m sure, when you tell me you are attached to the staff of His Excellency Augusto Pineyro, Assistant Minister of the Armed Forces in Havana
, and I find you taking a prisoner two hundred and seventy kilometers in the opposite direction to Camagüey.”

  “I understand only too well that Cuba would not be safe without the constant puzzlement of its Security Police. Consequently, I forgive you freely, Compañero Alfredo.” The captain’s manner was disgustingly unctuous. I was puzzled myself, but I’d learned to clam up in a hard rough school. “Due to your zealous quest for information, I find myself in a quandary,” Capitán Rodríguez continued thoughtfully.

  “That is most unfortunate,” Alfredo murmured.

  “It is, indeed. Your prying into the affairs of the F.A.R. is forcing me to violate a point of military secrecy to avoid further delay. Let me assure you, Compañero Alfredo, if I find myself in hot water from doing so, we will boil together.”

  “Boiling is a temperature that all agents are accustomed to,” Alfredo said. “This is scarcely the time to temporize. I have certain duties to perform. My official discretion is absolute. I do what I must do.”

  “Have it your own way, then. Compañero Pineyro is in Camagüey right now on a most delicate mission. My orders were to house this prisoner here tonight and bring him on to Camagüey in the morning for questioning by the Minister himself. Lacking accommodations here, I propose to drive right on through. I warn you, if there is any leak about the Minister’s trip, the blame will evolve on you.”

  “Your confidences will be respected. There will be no leak.” Instead of getting lost Alfredo swung the door open wider. “My home is in Placetas, thirty-five kilometers from here, and for the moment I lack transportation. Since you go directly through there on the Carretera Central, perhaps you will be kind enough to take me that far.”

  “Your company will be most welcome!” Rodríguez assured him effusively. “Please do. ¡Sargento!”

  Méndez got out, lowered the seat back and helped pack him in. It was a tight fit, but with the sergeant’s help Alfredo made it. I hoped with fervor that for the next twenty-two miles, Primer Capitán Leo Rodríguez would be just half as uncomfortable as I was, and that the dripping plastic raincoat would soak him to the skin.