Comrades in Miami

by Jose Latour

  She considered it. “I guess I could live with ‘my love.’”

  Steil smiled.

  Not another word was spoken. Once in the apartment, they exchanged a few inconsequential remarks about getting ready for the next day. Already in bed, Fidelia turned to Steil.

  “You know what’s the most intelligent decision you’ve ever made?”

  “Falling in love with you?”

  “That’s not a decision.”

  “Right. Then you tell me.”

  “To quit the booze.”

  Steil considered it. “You are probably right.”

  “Sweet dreams, my man.”

  “Same to you, my woman.”

  Two

  1994 marked a new phase in the lives of Victoria Valiente and Manuel Pardo in which simulation, hypocrisy, contrivance, and a measure of concern fleshed out their textbook notion of the psychological pressures spies experience.

  Pardo had full knowledge about the computer systems used in all XEMIC divisions, whose premises, managing structure, and business processes he gradually came to master. Although the Internet was in its infancy at the time, it was part of his job to browse it and learn as much as possible about data transmission and computer security. Over the years he became proficient in intrusion-detection techniques, programs that snatch passwords, digital certificates, authentication and authorization software, and in finding holes in computer security.

  He paid special attention to Banco Financiero Internacional, XEMIC’s bank, and to FINXEMIC, its credit card operator. He gleaned the patterns of deposits and withdrawals, the procedures followed for bank transfers, and kept an eye on the balance of several accounts abroad. Seven were with offshore banks offering tax havens, in Caribbean states with liberal bank secrecy laws that turned a blind eye on money laundering schemes.

  In 1995 he learned about a Dutch company that used digital blind signatures for the transfer of electronic money, thus making the cash untraceable. Pardo realized that ordinary money was in intensive care. If somehow he was able to electronically siphon money from XEMIC, he would have to (1) disguise the trail to foil pursuit and (2) be able to retrieve it in the future. He began extensive research on money laundering.

  The partly integrated, partly manual system used by Tiendas Panamericanas, XEMIC’s nationwide chain of stores, to purchase goods and services and pay for them caught Pardo’s eye, too. He detected duplicate invoices that had been settled, overpayments, and underpayments. Bogus invoices seemed possible, and also creating a false vendor or modifying a legitimate one in the accounting system. It looked as if there was more than one way to skin a cat.

  That same year, the retired major made trips to Panama, Cancún, and the Bahamas. Barefoot Mayans tilling the soil in Mexico and the poor residents of Panamanian shantytowns showed him the ugly face of capitalism, but he felt sure that abolishing private property would make matters worse for the underprivileged. Unlike Cuba, those countries would not have a Soviet Union to pay for hospitals, schools, and electricity. And like in his homeland, efficiency and productivity would drop dismally once their economies were wholly nationalized. Pardo concluded that individuals should not expect anything from politics; every person had to fend for himself. From his meager allowance he saved on meals and hotels to buy as many software magazines (books were too expensive) as he could afford.

  The General Directorate of Intelligence regained its respect and consideration of the 1960s by foiling attempts on the Chief’s life during his travels abroad, expanding the global network of agents and informers, and contributing to the security, scientific research, and economic recovery of the Cuban state.

  The Chief, though, was returning to the remarkable lapses of judgment he had been showing since the early 1960s. He insisted on limiting the private businesses he had authorized in 1993 to the bare minimum, remonstrated against intermediaries, and launched thinly veiled attacks against all those who sought independence from the state in self-employment. When the United States put out feelers about ending the embargo after President Clinton’s reelection, the Chief ordered to shoot down two Miami-based civilian airplanes that tried to disseminate anticommunist propaganda over Havana.

  “Who could he blame for communism’s failure if the embargo ends?” Pardo asked rhetorically to his wife two days after the four pilots crashed into the sea. “It’s his only remaining excuse. All his claims that the embargo should end are a smoke screen. Everybody suspected that in his second term Clinton would ease or even end the embargo. So the geezer realized he had to do something outrageous to make Clinton backtrack. It’s amazing how he plays American presidents. And those hapless guys in Miami gave him the perfect excuse.”

  Victoria nodded thoughtfully. It had been plain murder. In a moment of early confusion, the Ministry of the Interior revealed in Granma, the official newspaper, that a Miami-based Cuban secret agent had flown to Havana the day before the downing and warned that the planes were coming.

  “Do you know who Pola Negri was?” Victoria asked her husband.

  “Who?”

  “Pola Negri.”

  “I haven’t got the slightest idea.”

  “Pola Negri was a Polish actress who died in 1987. She was a big Hollywood star in the twenties and thirties.”

  “So?”

  “Remember that name. Have you settled on a safe way to … divert funds your way?”

  Pardo blinked twice before nodding. Sixteen months earlier, in a long conversation, he had explained to his wife the existence of holes in computer security that created opportunities for him to steal XEMIC funds and deposit them abroad. They had agreed that she would start considering how to combine her expertise with his. They should not hurry; they had all the time in the world, Victoria had repeated over and over. Haste unavoidably led to errors, errors to failure. She would let Pardo know when she was ready to make her contribution. Since then she had told him about the IQ test, her promotion to lieutenant colonel, and what she perceived as her increased influence in the decisions being made by the directorate’s top guns. Now it seemed she was ready. Maybe what gave her the final push was the downing of the planes, Pardo thought.

  “I still have to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. I’ll let you know when I’m ready. Then I’ll need money to open bank accounts abroad,” Pardo answered.

  “Don’t you need IDs?”

  “Sure. Some I can arrange by myself. You’d be surprised what can be done with a good laser printer, a late-model photocopier, scissors, and glue. But if you could get me a real passport, and one or two American electricity bills …”

  “I’ll see what I can do. How much money do you need?”

  “Minimum thirty thousand United States; fifty would be best.”

  “Okay. Maybe Pola Negri can make us a loan.”

  “Her ghost?”

  “Sort of. Would you like to make love, macho?”

  …

  Without making of it a fixed routine, Maria Scheindlin began visiting the headquarters of IMLATINEX, a very large warehouse on Seventeenth Avenue and 171st, North Miami Beach, two or three times a week, always in the afternoon.

  The first day, escorted by Plotzher and Steil, she paced the three-hundred-foot-long building from one end to the other. Her eyes roved about with natural curiosity by the tire section, the ball- and roller-bearing section, the spools of wires and cables at the building’s end. This was Plotzher’s turf and he acted as guide. The forklift operators watched her with respectful inquisitiveness from the aisles, maybe wondering about the color of her skin, Steil supposed. She seemed as out of place as a butterfly floating in the private office of a Wall Street tycoon.

  Steil found it difficult to believe that, in the many years she had been married to Scheindlin, she had never visited the warehouse. Once she left, he asked Plotzher.

  “Hey, Sam, is this the first time she comes here?”

  “First time I’ve seen her here.”

  “Don’t you find that strange
?”

  “Strange? Why?”

  “They were married for what? Twenty-five, thirty years? In all that time she never got curious about her husband’s business? Never wanted to surprise him with a present or something?”

  “I’ve been working here for twenty-seven years,” Plotzher began after a deep sigh, “and my wife has never come here, either.”

  Steil nodded, to pretend that Plotzher’s explanation had cleared up his perplexity. Then he grunted and turned to his desk. He wanted to ask: “Do you forbid her to?” “Doesn’t she give a damn about your job?” “Is this some Jewish custom?” But it was not his concern and he tried hard not to pry into other people’s affairs. Suddenly it came to him that, after an eight-year relationship, at no time had Fidelia shown curiosity about IMLATINEX, not once had she visited his place of work, seldom called him there. Was trading repulsive to women?

  It was Steil’s turn to guide Maria the second time she came to the firm. First, he introduced her to the three-man office staff in the ceilingless eight-foot-high glassed-in cubicle. Next, he provided an overview of the business: subsidiaries in Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Recife, Santiago de Chile, Bogotá, Caracas, Panama, and Mexico, D.F. He mentioned that a two-man office in San José de Costa Rica covered Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. He gave her a computer printout with the names of the people in charge in each country, their phone and fax numbers, and e-mail accounts, too.

  Well aware that his knowledge of the company’s financial condition was empirical and insufficient, Steil arranged a meeting between Maria and the firm’s auditor, Leshkowitz and Bramson, at their offices in the Sabal Chase Professional Center. Out of discretion, he advised her to go unaccompanied, but she insisted on the presence of her other two partners. The Enron and Andersen scandals raged on; accountants and auditors were in disgrace, and they entered the meeting with misgivings. For a little over an hour, Ari Leshkowitz showed them the computer graphics and printouts on which he based his opinion that IMLATINEX enjoyed an enviable financial condition. Although unable to grasp the finer points, they were reassured by a few basic, indisputable facts and left the building in high spirits.

  In their next meetings, Steil guided Maria through the paper trails of simple transactions. Export first, import later. He hoped to impress on her that trading companies operate on very narrow margins and that sales volume is not necessarily indicative of significant profits. His years as a teacher made Steil didactic without becoming pedantic, and one evening Maria commented on this. She, Plotzher, and Steil were in the office; the night watchman was sitting by the warehouse’s main sliding door. Under the fluorescent light, her suntan made a striking contrast with Plotzher’s mane of white hair. She had on a light green sleeveless dress and brown pumps, but wore no makeup. Just the same silver strips in her hair, gold studs in her ear-lobes, the expensive watch on her left wrist.

  “You two make a great team. I bet you were a good teacher, Elliot. And Sam? You would’ve been a great teacher, too. You guys explain things very clearly.”

  “Thanks, Maria,” Steil said. Plotzher signaled his appreciation with a courteous nod and a flicker of a smile. Then he added: “You are a very bright student.”

  Maria waved aside the compliment. She sat behind her late husband’s desk, in the swivel chair in which Scheindlin had collapsed the day he died from massive cardiac arrest. For a while Steil was lost in recollections. He had lifted the old man in his arms and dashed out of the cubicle, clamoring for a car at the top of his lungs. The old Jew had died instantly, though. Even as he waited for Plotzher to steer his car into the warehouse, Steil had sensed he was holding a corpse. The body was heaved in the passenger seat, held in place with the seat belt. Steil had sat in the backseat, gripping Scheindlin’s shoulders, feeling his chest every few blocks in search of heartbeats. Plotzher had kept cursing in Yiddish and hitting the wheel with the palm of his hand all the way to the hospital. That evening, as he watched Maria, Steil thought that not even she should sit where her husband had sat. Nobody should, ever.

  “I’m just a housewife. My understanding is a credit to your capabilities as teachers.”

  “You don’t take notes,” Steil observed.

  “I trust my memory. Besides, why should I? Every significant piece of information is stored somewhere. A computer, a floppy disk, a filing cabinet. What would be the point? I can’t even dream of catching up with you guys as far as managing the company. But I trust you, both of you.”

  Plotzher nodded, staring at the floor. He had folded the cuffs of his shirt back a couple of turns. The dial of his old Swiss watch looked Lilliputian on his heavily muscled left wrist. Steil felt a mixture of affection and compassion for him. Although he drew a two hundred thousand yearly salary, the company’s jack-of-all-trades was a millionaire only on paper; his 20 percent of company stock was the result of many years of hard work. He could sell his shares if he wanted, but Scheindlin’s heirs had first option. He wouldn’t, though, Steil suspected. It would kill him to be idle. Long illness notwithstanding, he guessed that Sam would die like his late boss and friend: on the job or a few hours after getting home. Men who become one-dimensional as the final curtain descends on them.

  Plotzher reminded Steil of his Cuban grandfather. As Maria listened to the older man’s advice on the superiority of periodical external audits over trust, Steil flew in time to Santa Cruz del Norte. In his late fifties, his grandfather had lost interest in fishing, reading books, listening to music, or playing dominoes. He seemed happy only at the refinery’s quality control lab: measuring pH, polarization, and sucrose in the bagasse; washing beakers, flasks, and test tubes; remonstrating that under socialism most young people have no work ethic. He died one week after complaining of pain in the abdomen that he attributed to indigestion and tried to cure with bicarbonate. The pathologist who performed the autopsy could not believe that a patient so devoured by intestinal cancer could have kept working until seven days before passing away. He harmed no one with his single-mindedness, though, Steil admitted to himself. Only those elders whose unilateralism consists in ferociously clinging to power torment others with their sick craving.

  “Don’t you think, Elliot?” Plotzher asked.

  Steil had lost track of the conversation, but years of daily contact had taught him that whenever Plotzher posed that question after explaining something to someone, he found himself in total agreement. “Absolutely,” he said.

  “Yes, I’ve heard that before,” Maria said, then heaved a deep sigh. “There’s a German saying: Trust is good, control is better.”

  “In business, that’s a truism,” Steil said, thinking that he had already been silent for too long and should contribute something.

  “And what about in other spheres of life?” Maria asked, rotating the swivel chair to better face the Cuban.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what about trusting your relatives, friends, your physician?”

  Steil thought for a second. Plotzher looked interested. “It seems to me that trust, like love, evolves over time. Sometimes it grows, sometimes it wanes,” Steil said.

  Maria pondered implications. “Trust is a feeling, isn’t it? So, its evolution depends on human interaction.”

  “Probably. And maybe on events external to the relationship as well.”

  “Like for instance?” Her challenging expression was softened by a smile.

  For the first time ever, Steil noticed that she had a nice smile. Curiously, Plotzher seemed engrossed in this part of the conversation.

  “Marital infidelity,” Steil said, lifting his gaze to a fluorescent lamp for inspiration. “Medical malpractice.” Then, leveling his eyes at her, “Legal proceedings have turned relatives into mortal enemies.”

  “Like when an inheritance is contested,” Maria commented, unable to resist the temptation to remind the Cuban of his odyssey.

  “Right.”

  Maria nodded and bit her lower lip. Then she dr
ew a deep breath. “So, friendship is the feeling less …” she groped for words, “prone to involution, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe. I’m not so sure, Maria. You trust a friend, then one day he steals money from you, rapes your daughter, or in some other way betrays your confidence. Trust is in crisis all over the world. It’s the scarcest of all …” it took him a couple of seconds to find the right qualifier, “expectations. People distrust next-door neighbors, politicians, lawyers, doctors, insurers, priests, bankers, accountants, corporations, you name it. It’s a crazy world.”

  Plotzher stood and began unfolding his cuffs. “If you don’t mind, I’ll hit the road. It’s been a long day.”

  “No, I’m through, too,” Maria said, standing. “Thanks for this training session. Is it okay if I come back next Thursday? Around four?”

  “No problem,” Plotzher agreed. “But I didn’t mean to cut short your talk. It’s just that I’m a little tired.”

  “So am I,” she said. “Philosophizing is one of the red lights that turns on when I’m feeling frazzled. Is next Thursday okay with you, Elliot?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Okay, gentlemen, let’s call it a day.”

  …

  In June 1996, six hours before Manuel Pardo left Havana for Mexico’s Federal District, while sitting in her kitchen, Victoria Valiente typed and printed a letter using the laptop and printer that XEMIC had loaned to Pardo. She folded, then sealed the single sheet of paper around the edges with Scotch tape. On the inside right corner of a plain white envelope she penciled a number 8, placed the letter and two demonetized ten-peso Cuban bills with Che Guevara’s signature into it, ran a wet dishtowel over the gummed side of the flap, and closed it. She stood up, sighed, and for a moment let her gaze rove over the view of Havana from her kitchen window.

  Victoria knew where she would end up should it be discovered that she was using her position for personal gain. She would not be sentenced to death, no woman had ever been executed, but she would be given life behind bars. She tried to see herself in a cell of the Havana prison for women she had visited once. She would not spend the rest of her life there. After the fall of communism, she would be pardoned, for sure. But how far away was that? Five years? Ten? And her accomplice would be executed by firing squad, for sure. They were playing for enormous stakes.