Comrades in Miami

by Jose Latour

  The security clearance revealed that he came from a nice family of sugarcane farmers, none of whom had emigrated to the United States, applied to emigrate, or was known to be a dissenter. Recruited into the Communist Youth in 1967, Pardo had married his incredibly attractive university sweetheart in 1974. Acquiescent, mild-mannered, and with a dislike for controversy, he always participated in the voluntary works and political rallies that the party convened. He followed the standing order to not talk shop with strangers, was modest, only swilled a beer or two at parties, did not smoke. To unwind he helped the wife at home, solved mathematical riddles, or practiced pistol shooting at the university’s shooting range. The clumsy six-footer was not a hunk and went unnoticed almost everywhere.

  Summoned to a meeting at a safe house, Pardo learned that the homeland wanted to know if he would volunteer for the silent army whose mission was to defend the Revolution without expecting recognition, fame, or glory. The mathematician could not believe his ears. Really? Would he be given the opportunity to join the State Security? Maybe, the interviewer replied mysteriously. However, in the beginning, the Ministry of the Interior required his services. Well, the somewhat disappointed Pardo said, he would gladly join Interior. Maybe if he proved himself highly competent he would be admitted to the State Security, he added. For being a university graduate with three postgraduate courses, he began his military career as a first lieutenant. A month later he was handed his identification as a militant of the Communist Party.

  His life as a civilian disappeared overnight. At first his wife complained mildly; after a year she argued forcefully that their marriage was threatened. In 1985, with Pardo in Leningrad taking another full-semester postgraduate course, his spouse met a Monday-to-Friday, nine-to-five linguist, premiered for him a bedroom repertoire that her husband never got to enjoy, and once the intellectual admitted he couldn’t live without her, filed for divorce. Already a major, Pardo realized that every cloud has a silver lining. Divorced, he would be able to concentrate full-time on the latest technological revolution: personal computers. And on improving his English, something imperative for those who made a living in IT. Upon his return to Cuba, the ministry placed him in a “guest house,” sort of a communal dormitory for officers from the provinces coming to Havana for a few days, also utilized to temporarily house divorced officers who hadn’t a place of their own.

  In December 1987 he was transferred to the General Directorate of Intelligence from the ministry’s Department of Automated Systems. Intelligence featured Interior’s most coveted jobs. The brightest—and the not-so-bright with friends in high places—were sent abroad for long periods under diplomatic cover. Those spared the appalling scenes of capitalist misery in London, Paris, New York, or Rome had the risky mission of dealing with the foreigners stationed in or visiting Cuba. To properly defend the homeland they had to make great personal sacrifices: dining at the nicest restaurants, drinking the best liquors, smoking first-class cigars, and booking rooms at the finest hotels, all covered by an apparently inexhaustible budget. Pardo, however, never had to make such patriotic sacrifices. His orders were to establish a data processing bureau that would deal with everything, from accounting to decryption.

  A year and a half later the corruption scandal erupted. After having four men executed, sentencing the minister of the interior and sixteen other officers to long prison terms, and firing the vice ministers, the Chief decided that Interior needed a cleanup. In less than a year, 61 percent of its officers were retired or transferred to army units, civilian jobs, or private firms. Nine more committed suicide. The ministry did not shrink, though; substitutes came from Military Intelligence and Military Counter-intelligence. Victoria Valiente was one.

  Although he did not have the slightest inkling that high-ranking officers from the General Directorate had negotiated the use of Varadero Beach as a transshipment point to smuggle cocaine into the United States, Pardo had seen the cleanup coming. From an ethical standpoint the ministry as a whole and Intelligence in particular had gradually changed for the worse. The minister, the vice ministers, and many generals and colonels lived in mansions, went fishing aboard state-owned yachts, had two or three private cars, and bought nice clothing and delicacies at the ministry’s well-stocked discount warehouses; a few even spent their vacations abroad. A young and beautiful mistress became a status symbol, as were drinking whiskey and smoking American cigarettes. Junior officers fought to keep a straight face when their superiors harangued them about making sacrifices for the homeland and the Revolution. Now everybody knew where the money to pay for the good life had been coming from.

  After the debacle, Pardo witnessed much soul-searching at party-cell meetings. Yes, the guiltless admitted, they knew of the special advantages, benefits, and perks, but what were they supposed to have done? As soldiers, weren’t they subject to the principle of unquestioning obedience? Shouldn’t they respect the chain of command? What would have happened had they taken their criticisms to their commanding officers? Should they have written letters to the Commander in Chief? The officers from the Political Directorate of the Ministry of the Armed Forces who conducted the debates had no reply for these questions. Their ministry faced problems of the same nature and they were keeping mum.

  Throughout his years in Interior, the arrogant behavior of the big shots, the privileges they enjoyed, and the many abuses of authority committed under the excuse of defending the Revolution had reduced to nil the romantic vision of Cuban Intelligence and Counterintelligence that had been planted in Pardo, as in scores of young men and women, by the omnipotent propaganda machine. The 1989 scandal was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Pardo was left profoundly depressed and deeply cynical about institutions that surround with a veil of secrecy what they do to get away with dishonesty, immorality, and degradation. In the Soviet Union, perestroika and glasnost had progressed notably. The Soviet press available in Cuba was reporting hair-raising stories concerning the KGB. Pardo began to question the system.

  In such a spirit, he met Victoria Valiente two weeks after her transfer to Intelligence. She was one of the army officers to whom he taught a ten-week introductory course in basic programming, Windows 2.0, and what then, given the country’s technological backwardness, still seemed a fantastic dream: the Internet.

  This breakthrough fascinated Victoria. Pardo explained how the widespread development of LANs, PCs, and workstations in the eighties allowed the nascent technology to flourish. The intrigued Victoria frequently stayed after class to ask questions. What did “single distributed algorithm for routing” mean? What was the difference between interior and exterior gateway protocols? And how did the domain name system work? She started experiencing a mild attraction for the lean, angular, soft-spoken, and beady-eyed specialist with a slight stoop. He was flattered by her curiosity. As often as not they left the directorate’s headquarters together, a fifteen-floor apartment building on the corner of A Street and Línea Avenue, and once in a while Pardo escorted Victoria to her parents’ in Old Havana.

  He was divorced, she was single, one thing led to the other. To his utter amazement, Pardo discovered that the levelheaded psychologist transformed radically when making love. She became passionate, demanding, insatiable, and didactic. Talking uninhibitedly about sex, she informed him in detail what she liked most (simultaneous cunnilingus and G-spot stimulation), showed him how, and asked him to be equally specific concerning what he enjoyed most (fellatio), something at which she proved to be adept. She considerably amplified his rather elementary culture on things sexual, helped him to control his ejaculation, and almost always had multiple orgasms before he came, a first for the major.

  There was no reason to keep their relationship surreptitious. Three months after having been introduced, almost everyone in the directorate knew that Joaquín (his cryptonym) and Micaela (hers) were going steady. In June 1990, during the final stage of the cleanup, he was one of the last veterans to be sent into early retirement.r />
  Having acquired a reputation as an excellent database manager and network administrator, Manuel Pardo was shipped to XEMIC, the most important state-owned company in Cuba. Registered as a private consortium from its foundation in 1984, XEMIC imported, exported, had major chain stores, operated banks and finance companies, dealt in real estate, owned hotels and a fleet of modern buses for tourists, provided software systems, and dabbled in publicity. Much more independent than the socialist enterprises, with representatives in many countries and constantly dealing with foreigners, both Intelligence and Counterintelligence used it as a front. A significant number of XEMIC executives, managers, and deputy managers were active or retired officers who doubled as agents or informers. Pardo’s field of expertise, however, hardly ever demanded that he meet or deal with aliens, and he was free to concentrate on the improvement or design of accounting, banking, invoicing, and inventory databases.

  Manuel Pardo and Victoria Valiente got married in December 1991. She had always lived with her parents, he still roomed at the guest house, so she was assigned a one-bedroom apartment in a Ministry of the Interior building at Hidalgo Street between Lombillo and Tulipán, Nuevo Vedado. As the country’s political and economic situation deteriorated following the collapse of communism, Pardo began voicing doubts about the future of their country. For months Victoria listened in silence, occasionally nodding in agreement or tilting her head sideways in doubt. 1992 went by and in 1993 the island touched bottom. Pardo became much more critical.

  “It just doesn’t work, Victoria,” he had argued one evening. “It didn’t work in the Soviet Union, it didn’t work in China, it didn’t work in Eastern Europe, it doesn’t work here. The Chief has to reconsider, he’s an intelligent man, he’s the only one with the authority to preside over a peaceful transition.”

  Her reaction had been a deep sigh that gave away her acquiescence and, simultaneously, her misgivings that the Commander would admit having been wrong for so many years. But she believed her husband right in that the Chief could slyly achieve a peaceful transition, if he wanted to.

  Pardo greatly influenced Victoria’s political evolution just by expressing his doubts. As she had gained access to information and considered taboo subjects, she had realized why doctrinaire institutions do all they can to censor what people read. Hadn’t she succumbed to the nefarious influence of enemy propaganda? she had asked herself at some point. The fact that her husband had preceded her in questioning the system was very reassuring.

  Unexpectedly, the Chief backpedaled—big time. He decided to repeal the law that penalized the possession of foreign currencies, thus confirming that he was willing to do the most humiliating things if they kept him in power. It was an explicit recognition of total failure: The Cubans he had personally labeled worms, traitors, and consumerists for fleeing from his dictatorship were now authorized to send hundreds of millions of dollars to feed and clothe their relatives, keep the country afloat, and forestall a popular uprising. On the day the news was announced, several of the faithful who still had a sense of shame had suffered strokes or heart attacks. A member of the Central Committee shot himself in the head, survived, and a year later died from coronary failure.

  Free markets for farmers to sell their produce at prices decided by demand were created. Small private businesses, like restaurants and repair shops, also were authorized to operate. “Didn’t I tell you?” an exultant Pardo had told his wife. “He will rectify. He wants to clean up the mess before he dies.” Victoria had only smiled. She knew the Commander was personally and enthusiastically overseeing the beefing up of his worldwide network of agents and informers; quite unusual for an aspiring retiree, wasn’t it? she thought.

  In 1994, Pardo was dispatched to Toronto, Madrid, Milan, and Paris to train the staffs of the agencies of Havanatur—XEMIC’s tourist division—in the latest computer programs. Although he never before had visited prosperous cities in the West, the database manager was not so much impacted by affluence as by freedom. It amazed him to watch newscasts in which Spanish parliamentarians from different political parties openly and respectfully disagreed about what was best for their country. Nobody called his opponent a traitor, a rat, or a worm just because the other was a Nationalist, a Socialist, a Christian Democrat, a Communist, or a Liberal. Legislative decisions were made by majority; unanimity was something nobody had ever heard of. Under capitalism, many nations had achieved what he had been led to believe only communist societies could: free education and health care. Countries with people living below the poverty line, yes; considerable unemployment, yes; a serious drug problem, yes; but where the majority lived better and enjoyed a hundred times more freedom than in the egalitarian, full-employment, seemingly drug-free society he belonged to.

  After seven weeks of this, he returned to Cuba infected with the virus of freedom. Following a couple of days of pretty intense lovemaking, Victoria began to notice that her husband had changed somewhat. He acted more reserved, moody, pensive. “Is something on your mind?” she asked him a few times. “No, everything is okay” was his standard reply. Being in the trade, she first suspected that he had been ordered to do some secret intelligence work abroad. Her superiors, not wanting her to worry, or following the principle of compartmentalization, had kept her in the dark. Well, this was her man and she would not allow the sons of bitches to turn him into the sort of institutionalized paranoid schizophrenic that other officers and agents had become. She did not act hastily, though. She considered the pros and cons for almost a month before sitting down with Pardo to talk things over. Then, on a Saturday evening, she applied her psychological training to make a ten-minute introduction before asking her husband what was going on.

  “We’ve been completely taken in, Victoria.”

  “What?”

  “We’ve been lied to all our lives. Communism is worse than fascism. And the Chief must’ve known from the very beginning that it doesn’t work, ’cause he’s brilliant. He tricked our people into it because he realized it was the only contemporary political system that made it possible for him to wield power forever. But giving him the benefit of the doubt, thirty-five years have furnished enough evidence to persuade even the mentally handicapped that it doesn’t work. But he just doesn’t want to let go. He is insanely power-hungry.”

  Victoria had taken a deep breath. The moment of truth had arrived. She had considered four options: denouncing the man she loved, repudiating his views with every argument she could think of, divorcing him, or admitting to Pardo that she shared his ideas but there was nothing they could do, and they should keep their opinions to themselves. She had opted for the latter.

  “Take it easy, will you? Let’s talk this over, okay? What made you reach such a conclusion?” she had asked.

  Lacking order or method, they spent the weekend discussing the abstract categories that have kept people wondering for twenty-five centuries: things like truth, justice, and freedom, plus the state of the world in general, the Cuban present, and their future as individuals.

  Pardo related his impressions of Canada and Europe. Victoria declared that democracy and freedom do not equal wealth. Her husband could not have failed to notice, she argued, that the countries he had visited were rich nations with centuries-old institutions. Half of humanity lived in appalling poverty, whereas communism offered security to most people: a job, health care, a home. It seemed that, after the initial frenzy, some of the people in Russia, Poland, Germany, and other East European countries were missing the benefits they had enjoyed in the recent past.

  “Sure. Benefits for which you pay by becoming a slave. We are the best-educated, healthiest slaves in the whole world,” Pardo countered.

  “For three square meals a day, a job, a place to live, and access to a hospital, most people are willing to accept dictatorship,” Victoria observed.

  Pardo turned to stare at his wife.

  “Three square meals a day? Don’t you see how people in this same building have lost
weight? I’ve lost nineteen pounds in three years. Give me a break. A job? Making three dollars a month is a job for you? A hospital? Lacking X-ray films and running water? Where you have to bring clean sheets and a pillow and sometimes even food to the patient? Why did I have to bring you ten inhalers from Madrid? Give me a fucking break.”

  The strength of his arguments kept her silent.

  “Victoria, ever since we were in primary school we’ve been hearing that our government, the dictatorship of the proletariat, is the best. Bullshit! No dictatorship brings about sound government—or collective leadership. It’s always the dictatorship of a single man. And you know why? Because at the root of dictatorship lies the basic concept of absolute control. In every leadership there’s always a guy who is brighter, more cunning, more ambitious, has less moral scruples than the others, and he subjugates them and achieves absolute control.”

  “Okay, okay,” Victoria had said, extending her arms to fend off a debate that would not take them where she wanted. “I don’t have to remind you what you were and are now, nor what I am. I don’t know how many people in your place of work, or in mine, think like you. Maybe hundreds, maybe a handful. I do know that, in my unit, whoever goes on record with a fraction of what you’ve said is immediately court-martialed, and the most benign outcome is that he or she will be expelled from the party, sent packing, and kept under surveillance for as long as this government stays in power. And I suspect that, in XEMIC, the outcome wouldn’t be much different, at least not for a guy with your background. Am I mistaken?”

  Pardo had shaken his head and lowered his gaze to the floor.

  “I thought so. Now, for the same reasons, I don’t have a way out. They’ll never send me abroad. Never. You can be sure of that. And I can’t write a letter to the U.S. Interests Section here saying: ‘Hey, guys, I’ve seen the light and want to settle in Miami.’”