The Betrayal Game - [Mikhal Lammeck 02]

by David L. Robbins

  “You’re not bothered that Calendar died in there?”

  “No. Quite the opposite.”

  Lammeck and Johan let a hushed minute pass, both gazing into the night. Lammeck wondered if the captain, a man accustomed to such violence as what lay behind them, was standing here like him, appreciating life more, the small miracle of standing here. Or was Johan simply imagining what he might plant in this yard, how he would furnish the porch?

  Johan said, “I will inform Fidel. You are a free man, Professor.”

  “Sort of.”

  “When events slow down, I will return Agent Calendar’s body to the CIA. Perhaps even a man like him had a family.”

  “How’re you going to explain what happened?”

  “Simple. I will tell them what they already know. His plot to assassinate Castro collapsed. He did the brave thing for a covert agent in a foreign country and took his own botulinum pill. He will be a hero.”

  “Very tidy. You’ve got a gift for that sort of thing. Half-truths.”

  “We all have our abilities, Professor. Come.”

  In the dark, the two walked out of the yard, back to the road.

  “I will have the body taken away in the morning,” Johan said.

  “Can’t you do it tonight?”

  “No. There are procedures. And please, do not come back over here.”

  “Not in a million years.”

  Johan eyed him. “You are a fascinating man. You are hesitant and squeamish, but when pushed can be formidable and dangerous. You are brilliant, but will disregard what is right in front of you. I have never met another man with such a spectrum inside him. I should enjoy playing chess with you. Let me see your palm.”

  Lammeck turned his hand up and set it in Johan’s. The policeman shined the light into it. With his thumb, he prodded the red streak of Lammeck’s wound.

  “This will not leave a scar.”

  “No.”

  “When this is healed, there will be nothing left of what happened between you and me. Alek and Rina do not know. Only us. Please, Professor, keep our secrets. Do not write the book you came to research. It would not serve either of our interests. Let Calendar rest. And let him rest alone.”

  Lammeck took back his hand. “Is that your opening move of our chess game, Captain?”

  “Very clever, my friend. Yes.”

  Lammeck patted Johan’s arm. “Good. I’ll enjoy playing you, too. Buena suerte.”

  “Y tu también.”

  “By the way. I asked Calendar what Alek’s real name is.”

  “It is an average name, nothing noteworthy. Why did you care to find out?”

  Lammeck flicked a hand in the air. “Just curious. In case I hear from him again. I don’t think I will.”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  April 15

  Miramar

  LAMMECK AWOKE TO KNOCKING. He answered the front door to find Blanco holding a mesh bag of fruits and vegetables, a loaf of bread, and meats wrapped in butcher paper.

  “Turn on your television.”

  Lammeck set the groceries on a kitchen counter, then joined Blanco in front of the RCA. The screen took moments to warm, green sizzles swarmed its face. A reporter appeared at a desk in a bare studio, sheets of paper in his hands. Reading from the pages, he seemed hasty, chased by the news he was reporting. He pronounced the names of several Cuban air bases, and the word, over and over, ataque. Attack.

  The image shifted to a scene of smoke and wreckage, an airfield. A dozen aircraft coughed flames and smoke, their wings askew, wheels melted.

  Blanco spoke over the commentator’s voice, impatient for Lammeck to know what had happened.

  “At dawn this morning, B-26’s hit three air bases in Havana and Oriente. It’s the invasion, Professor. It’s starting. I went to get you some groceries first thing before there was a run on the stores.”

  “Thank you. How much damage?”

  “The first reports say five planes were destroyed on the ground. That’s almost half our air force.”

  “Half?”

  “They will not get the rest. Fidel has ordered all pilots to sleep under their wings. And we still have a few jets left.”

  “Who flew the raids? Americans or Cubans?”

  Blanco laughed without mirth at this. “Watch, it will come up in another minute. You will not believe your eyes.”

  Lammeck settled into the sofa. Blanco, youthful and eager, rose to turn up the volume.

  The news program continued describing the carnage. So far, seven deaths were reported, fifty-two wounded from the bombs. Castro had put all militia and army units on alert. The Cuban U.N. delegation was instructed to directly accuse the government of the United States for the aggression.

  “Here,” the policeman said, pointing at the tube, “here, Professor. Watch this.”

  The picture had switched to footage of a B-26, one of the American-built bombers that made up most of the Cuban air force, given to the island in the days of Batista. The plane sat on a runway, wings and fuselage punctured by small-arms fire. The camera zoomed in for close-ups of the bullet holes.

  The narrator went on to say that at 7:00 a.m. that morning, a B-26 bearing the markings of the Cuban FAR air force had landed at Miami Airport. The pilot, named Mario Zuniga, claimed that he and three of his comrades had defected from the Cuban air force. On their own initiative, they’d strafed Castro’s airfields. Damaged by antiaircraft fire, low on fuel, they flew across the Florida Straits to seek asylum in America.

  “Look!” Blanco almost whooped, jumping off the sofa when the damaged B-26 was shown in full. Zuniga stood next to it, surrounded by American reporters. “See the cowling?” With his finger on the television screen, Blanco circled the plane’s nose. “Solid metal. See? The FAR’s B-26’s all have clear Plexiglas there.”

  Lammeck was stunned. “That’s not a Cuban B-26.”

  “It is an American plane!” Blanco fell back onto the cushions, rocking the sofa under Lammeck. “Ridiculous.”

  Blanco was right. This was a preposterous, transparent mistake to make, Keystone Kops. Was this the best the CIA could do? Once Castro’s delegation at the U.N. made this known, the whole world would see America’s fingerprints all over the invasion of Cuba. Kennedy was going to have a fit. Castro was probably having one right now.

  Lammeck shook his head, amused at the ingredients of history. He imagined history seated with him, an old admirer, watching herself happen. You are everything possible, Lammeck would tell her, everything human. Somewhere, some low-level bureaucrat forgot to check one small fact. History, you are folly.

  The television coverage switched to Castro, shouting into a bank of microphones at a press conference. The man launched into a peroration against the United States, labeling the attack on the Cuban airfields worse than Pearl Harbor. He called America liars, cowards, and aggressors.

  Lammeck listened half-heartedly beside Blanco’s rapt attention. He hearkened back over his last month spent trying to murder, then save, this man shouting into the microphones. In his mind, Lammeck silenced Castro, shot him or poisoned him, it made no difference. His gaze wandered away from the champing beard on the television set, his ears blocked out the stream of eloquent spleen. In his mind, Lammeck dug one good hole with straight walls and put dead Fidel Castro in it. He covered the grave, tamped it down. Then he asked history, standing there in his imagination with him, the question he’d put to her countless times. Just one more grave. What will be different?

  Finally, after a lifetime, she spoke. Lammeck had his answer.

  Todos, she said.

  Everything.

  * * * *

  I. ANNOTATIONS

  Page 11—Cuban assassination team trained by CIA

  Dozens of assassination and sabotage squads, called Grey Teams, consisting of CIA-trained Cuban exiles, were landed secretly by air or sea onto the island throughout the 1960s and ‘70s. Often these units were discovered and arr
ested soon after arrival due to massive infiltration by Castro’s G-2 into the Cuban underground. Upon discovery, these men and women faced imprisonment or execution. However, successes were also frequent; much sabotage was accomplished on the island by returning covert exiles, and communications were kept open with the exile leadership based in Miami.

  ~ * ~

  Page 31—alliance between CIA and Mafia to kill Castro

  The partnership between the Mob and CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro has been well documented by a number of excellent historians. The question of whether President Kennedy knew of the alliance, code-named ZR/Rifle, remains unanswered. What is clear in the record, however, is that others in the administration, as high up as Attorney General Robert Kennedy, were briefed.

  The original contact between the Mob and the CIA was facilitated by Robert Maheu, a former FBI agent and private security expert employed by Howard Hughes. Maheu acted as liaison between CIA agent James O’Connell and Mafiosi John Roselli (born Francesco Sacco), Sam Giancana, and Santo Trafficante.

  According to the 1967 CIA Inspector General’s Report on Plots to Assassinate Fidel Castro (Ocean Press, 1996), neither Maheu nor O’Connell knew the true identities of the two men Roselli brought to Miami in early 1961 for the purpose of discussing the assassination of Castro. After the initial meeting, Maheu brought O’Connell’s attention to a Sunday Parade supplement in a Miami newspaper that showed photos of the pair: “Joe the Courier” was, in fact, Santo Trafficante, and “Sam Gold” was Sam Giancana, two of the most powerful warlords in the American La Cosa Nostra.

  ~ * ~

  Page 41—CIA preference for gunning down Castro; Mafia insists on pills

  According to a comment in the CIA Inspector’s Report (ibid.), the mobsters voiced a serious objection to a gangland-style gunning down of Castro:

  Giancana was flatly opposed to the use of firearms. He said that no one could be recruited to do the job, because the chance of survival and escape would be negligible. Giancana stated a preference for a lethal pill that could be put into Castro’s food or drink. Trafficante (“Joe, the courier”) was in touch with a disaffected Cuban official with access to Castro and presumably of a sort that would enable him to surreptitiously poison Castro.

  ~ * ~

  Page 68—New York Times articles detailing impending invasion of Cuba

  Preparations for the Cuban exiles’ invasion of their homeland was a poorly kept secret. In addition to an immense and indiscreet rumor mill in Miami where the exile resistance was based, newsmen had little problem ferreting out reports of the rebel brigade’s training regimens in Florida, Louisiana, and Guatemala.

  On January 10, 1961, the New York Times ran a front-page story titled: “U.S. Helps Train an Anti-Castro Force at Secret Guatemalan Air-Ground Base.” The article stated that “Commandolike forces are being drilled in guerrilla warfare tactics by foreign personnel, mostly from the United States.”

  On March 17, the Times ran a story claiming that, in the coming weeks, coordinated exile invasions would take place at various sites in Cuba.

  The Times ran a related story on April 7 written by Tad Szulc, titled “Anti-Castro Units Trained to Fight at Florida Bases.” The article reported the invading Cuban brigade’s strength at 5,000 to 6,000 men (in fact, it was no more than 1,500), and claimed that training had been halted because the brigade had reached a point of sufficient readiness. Szulc sited sources at CBS as uncovering irrefutable signs that preparations for the invasion were in their last stages. Kennedy, alerted in advance of the article by Times publisher Orvil E. Dryfoos, managed to have the story reduced from a front-page, four-column lead to a single column in the center of page one. After reading the report in the Times, Kennedy commented that Fidel had little need of spies in the U.S.; all he had to do was read our newspapers.

  ~ * ~

  Page 108—the Sorí Marín plot of March 18

  On this date, leading officers of the Cuban underground, including Humberto Sorí Marin, Manuel Puig, and Rogelio Gonzalez Corso, were captured in Miramar. The meeting was held to complete the plans for an assassination attempt on Castro by placing a petaca (plastic bomb) beneath a viewing stand alongside a parade route where Fidel was scheduled to appear on March 27.

  While Cuban historians maintain the clandestine meeting was broken up as a result of keen intelligence work, the truth is probably closer to serendipity and bad luck, seeming constants in the history of the anti-revolutionary movement on the island. A routine foot patrol in the Miramar neighborhood caught sight of a woman and child running through an alley from a home they were approaching. Curious members of the patrol followed the woman and child to a yellow home down the street. The woman had no idea a meeting of the military wing of the opposition was taking place in the back room.

  Entering the yellow house, the patrol happened upon the meeting. Sorí Marín and his cadre exchanged gunfire with the soldiers before surrendering. Sorí Marín was wounded. He and eight others in Unidad were all captured. On April 19, on the day the rebel invasion surrendered to Castro’s defending forces around the Bay of Pigs, Sorí Marin, Puig, and Gonzalez Corso were executed for treason.

  ~ * ~

  Page 161—Dr. Manuel Antonio de Varona y Laredo

  Tony Varona was part of the last democratically elected government in Cuba. He had served as president of the Cuban Senate, and took part in the effort to overthrow Fulgencio Batista. Though he worked with Castro early on, Varona was forced to flee to Miami because of his dedicated anti-Communist stance. In Miami, Varona remained a political force in the Frente. He developed relationships inside the Mafia for their shared wish to remove Castro from power. Varona also made a favorable impression with the Kennedys; he was selected to be part of the new government to be installed on the island after the invasion of the exiles in April 1961.

  Regarding the many attempts to assassinate Castro, Tony Varona’s story is another in the long tradition of myth blended with fact. In early 1961, Varona was approached by Trafficante with an offer of a large payoff in return for the death of Castro. In return for expense money of $10,000 provided by the CIA, delivered to him in cash by Johnny Roselli, Varona accepted botulinum pills. He caused them to be delivered to a Havana restaurant for the purpose of poisoning Fidel. If successful, Varona stood to reap a million-dollar bounty offered by Meyer Lansky in addition to a triumphant political return to Cuba.

  Legend has it that Varona instructed the Havana restaurant worker not to execute the poison plot until a signal was received by telephone from Varona. However, on the eve of the invasion, he, along with other Cuban Revolutionary Council leaders, was sequestered by the CIA at Opa-Locka Air Base near Miami. This precaution was in anticipation of the Frente leaders being flown to the island to set up a provisional government after the rebel brigade had secured a beachhead. Because Varona was incommunicado at the American base, the story goes, the word was never sent out to the restaurant, allowing Castro to survive the plot.

  (Author’s Note—This is a popular, but likely apocryphal, explanation. The CIA agent responsible for the poisoning plot, Sheff Edwards, stated on the record that he believed the scheme failed simply because Castro stopped frequenting that particular eatery. It strains credulity to assume that, had Varona merely mentioned his role in initiating the poison plot, he would not have been handed a telephone by his CIA guardians to call Havana.)

  In 1964, Varona left Miami for New York City, where he sold cars and became a language teacher for Berlitz. He died in 1994.

  ~ * ~

  Page 180—Juan Orta Córdova receives botulinum pills in Havana

  Juan Orta was the asset of Santo Trafficante. When the gangster gave this name to the CIA, Orta was touted as a high-level connection: the Office Chief and Director General of the Office of the Prime Minister (Castro), a man with access to Fidel. Trafficante explained that, prerevolution, Orta had been raking off a fortune from gambling operations, but became disgruntled when Fidel evicted the Mob fro
m Cuba, shutting down his windfall. Trafficante had assured Orta that the return of the Mafia to Havana would be to his benefit.

  In fact, Orta had lost his position as Castro’s secretary on January 26, 1961. This was not reported to the CIA. A couple weeks after receiving the pills in Havana, Orta asked out of his assignment and returned the pills. He recommended a replacement for the operation who, the gangsters reported to the CIA, made several more unsuccessful attempts to poison Castro. (Author’s Note—For the requirements of simplicity, I have stuck with Orta as the sole conduit for the pills.)

  ~ * ~

  Page 190—raid on Heitor Ferrer’s house

  The fictionalized facts of this scene are based on the same set of circumstances of the actual raid on the Sorí Marín meeting of March 18, 1961.