Comrades in Miami

by Jose Latour

  “So, why don’t you set course north seven degrees west one of these nights and start living the good life?” he had asked jokingly.

  “You think we haven’t discussed it?” had been Amieba’s serious reply.

  Pardo admitted to Victoria that the “we” had been no less surprising to him than the admission of the ensign having considered it. Amazing! Had the rest of the crew been reluctant to defect, the use of force would have been unavoidable, but if all were in agreement … From then on things had been as easy as pie. The other three sailors were young, single, and the word “Miami” made their eyes sparkle madly. Pardo had promised to pay Amieba ten thousand dollars for two tickets, one for himself, the other for his wife, a secretary in the Ministry of Basic Industry. Additionally, Pardo would give each sailor a thousand bucks. The ensign figured the money would tide him over until he found a nice job, skipper of a pleasure yacht, for instance. He knew his crew would cheer, embrace him, jump in with both feet on D-night, but Pardo had insisted on not telling them in advance. On April 27, 2002, Amieba already had spent nine weeks anxiously waiting for Defection Night.

  “Okay, this is it,” he said coming back into his living room and unfolding a map that he placed on the coffee table. “You take a bus to the town of Cabañas, go to 92 Maceo Street, and stay the night at Perla’s. Don’t mention my name, say someone recommended her. Then, tomorrow evening, you get to the coastline west of the town. Following a dirt road that begins here, one kilometer past the last house, you’ll see an empty wooden house on the beach, its windows boarded shut …”

  …

  On the three-foot-tall, cedar credenza behind General Lastra’s desk, seven telephones were aligned. The red set communicated with the Commander in Chief, the blue one with his brother, and the green with the minister of the interior. The white set linked Lastra with the chief of counterintelligence, the yellow one with the chief of military intelligence, and the gray phone connected the general with the chief of military counterintelligence. The black set was used to call or answer calls made by lesser mortals. Each had a tiny light that flashed intermittently when ringing. General Lastra was reading a message sent by an illegal based on Isla Morada ever since 1979, when the white set rang and blinked on and off at 11:23 A.M. on Sunday, April 28.

  “Lastra,” he said into the mouthpiece.

  “How are things going, Mr. Cloak-and-Dagger?”

  Lastra smiled. “I’m not complaining, you contemptible repressor of independent journalists and human-rights activists.”

  The man on the other end of the line, Gen. Edmundo Fernández (cryptonym Timoteo), head of counterintelligence, chuckled. “They haven’t seen anything yet,” he sneered. “I’m told the Chief’s patience is wearing thin. He may unleash us anytime. I’m considering bringing back a couple of the Batista geezers and have them teach us how to conduct interrogations.”

  In 1958, Fernández’s father had been tortured to death at a police station. His poorly concealed desire to avenge his dad had made him a star in counterintelligence in the sixties. His thirst for revenge hadn’t been quenched yet. Lastra thought it prudent to change the subject.

  “Don’t talk trash. So, what have you got for me?”

  “It seems this genius of yours didn’t sleep at her place last night, neither did her husband. The car is not in the building’s garage, either.”

  Lastra frowned. “You sure?”

  “It’s what the super reports.”

  “Reliable guy?”

  “Quite.”

  Lastra had to think a moment. “Okay. I’ll look into it. Thanks a lot, Edmundo.”

  “Take care, Lastra.”

  “Bye.”

  After hanging up, the head of Intelligence lighted his midmorning cigar for the third time and mulled things over for almost ten minutes. Two weeks earlier, dreading that Pardo could hurt Victoria, he had asked Counterintelligence to keep an eye on the dude. He had not made that decision lightly. High-ranking Intelligence officers or their spouses are not kept under surveillance for any but the most compelling of reasons. Although Pardo did not strike him as being prone to violence, he nonetheless wanted to play it safe. So, Lastra had dropped by General Edmundo’s office, explained things to him, and asked him to tap his informers at the Institute of Meteorology and the apartment building. No round-the-clock, full-fledged surveillance was deemed necessary. He just wanted snitches to report whether Pardo was absent from work, or if loud-voiced arguments or strange sounds came from their penthouse. Watching the video with Pardo’s confession had lessened his concern; he had not called off the monitoring, though.

  Today was Sunday, he remembered. Maybe Victoria, playing the part of the loving wife reveling in the prospect of fleeing Cuba, had taken Pardo somewhere for a second honeymoon. No, she would have let him know in advance. Maybe their car broke down, or they had an accident. No, he would have been notified by now. Lastra got to his feet and strode purposefully to a filing cabinet, opened the top drawer, and extracted Victoria’s file. He flipped its pages on the way back to his desk, then used the black phone to dial her home number.

  “Leave your message,” said the psychologist’s machine after the fourth ring.

  Lastra hung up, scanned the personnel file some more, then lifted the white phone and punched zero.

  “Edmundo.”

  “Ah, listen, Edmundo. Could you ask the police to be on the lookout for a light blue Tico, plate number HM-83212.”

  “Sure. Your genius’s?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nationwide?”

  Lastra considered it. “Might as well, yeah.”

  “You want the driver followed, intercepted, questioned, arrested?”

  “No, no, I just want to know where it is and the driver’s description.”

  “Okay. Will let you know.”

  When asking their checkpoints, cruisers, and traffic cops to locate vehicles, Cuban police had established priorities: State Security requests had top priority. State Security was how the General Directorate of Counterintelligence was popularly known; the IDs of its officers had the letters DSE in green diagonally superimposed—initials for Departamento de Seguridad del Estado in Spanish, the name first used by the services in post-Batista Cuba. El boniato, the sweet potato, was how lower-rank SS officers called the most frightening identification that could be flashed to Cuban citizens, including police officers. All of which explains why less than three hours after talking to Edmundo, at 2:17 P.M., as he was having lunch at home, General Lastra’s cell phone vibrated.

  “Gabriel.”

  “Timoteo. Give me a call.”

  Having been warned that the U.S. Interests Section in Havana had installed technology to monitor cell phone calls, high-ranking government officials were under orders not to talk about sensitive matters “over the air.” Lastra pocketed his cell phone. His wife gave a deep sigh of resignation: Once again, her husband’s meal would get cold. The general fished a small phone book from his shirt pocket and, while approaching his secure line, looked up General Edmundo’s office number. He lifted the receiver and punched it.

  “Edmundo.”

  “Why still in the office?”

  “I’ve got my hands full. Fucking Jeffrey is wining and dining a few counters this evening.”

  Jeffrey was Jeffrey De Laurentis, political counselor at the U.S. Interests Section. “What do you got for me?” Lastra asked.

  “Your Tico is parked in front of Teatro Sauto, in Matanzas. It’s locked up.”

  Lastra remained silent for a minute, mental wheels churning at top speed.

  “You there?” asked a somewhat impatient Edmundo.

  “I’m here.”

  “So, what do you want?”

  “Thank the police and get them out of this. And if you can spare a couple of men in Matanzas, ask them to keep the car under observation and to let me know the minute someone gets into it.”

  “Consider it done.”

  “And Edmundo …
”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t like this. I may have to call you back in a while.”

  At 5:41 P.M., General Lastra finished his report to the minister of the interior.

  “And what do you suggest, Lastra?” prompted the minister. He was quite pissed off. There seemed to be a concerted effort to spoil his Sunday afternoon drinking habit.

  “An immediate, top-to-bottom search of the apartment and, if we don’t find clues as to where she might be, a nationwide all-points bulletin. I recommend faxing photos of her and Pardo to the police, Coast Guard, and Immigration. Suspects wanted for questioning on a murder case, to scare everyone into immediate action. We’ll give Victoria a false name.”

  The minister frowned. “Coast Guard and Immigration, Lastra?”

  The general nodded.

  “Why?”

  Sure that this question would be asked, on his way to the ministry Lastra had come up with a plausible reason to mask his worst fear. “Because I suspect Pardo somehow discovered Victoria had taken him for a ride and has kidnapped her, Lieutenant General. He may try to steal a boat or a plane, holding her hostage.”

  “Okay. Go ahead. I’ll call Operations and order the apartment searched. Meanwhile get the all-points bulletin and the photos ready.”

  “Yes, Comrade Lieutenant General.”

  A few minutes past 7:00 P.M., the man in charge of searching the apartment reported the place empty. At first sight, no bloodstains or signs of struggle were visible. The team would begin combing the place immediately. Lastra returned the handset of his black phone to its cradle and locked gazes with his secretary and jack-of-all-trades, summoned to the office two hours earlier. Amado Pernas, a not-too-bright, fifty-five-year-old captain and dyed-in-the-wool Maoist, had been with Lastra for eleven years now. Maintenance and cleaning staff were denied access to his boss’s office for security reasons, and Pernas was also in charge of cleaning up, polishing the furniture, changing light bulbs, whatever.

  “Fax the all-points and the photos to the officer on duty at the ministry. They’ll take it from there.”

  …

  Victoria and Pardo stealthily approached the tumbledown, empty vacation home described by ensign Amieba the previous night. They wore black jeans and boots, long-sleeved shirts—hers olive green, his dark blue—and black gloves. Their faces were mud-caked. She carried the now lighter duffel bag. As a boy at his parents’ farm, Pardo had grown accustomed to hearing owls calling, bats screeching, and crickets chirping at night, whereas Victoria found every animal sound slightly unnerving. The seabreeze had died after sunset; half an hour later an inland wind started blowing.

  They had been furtively watching the sequestered house from a distance for nearly two hours, making sure no hobo had taken refuge in it and that none was lurking in the immediate vicinity. They had sat on the ground by a huge mango tree on the other side of a four-thread barbed-wire fence. Feeling his wife tense, once again Pardo explained why Amieba was so sure he could sneak into Key West undetected. Simple reason: He had done so twice, on official trips to bring back state-owned fishing boats stolen by other escapees. Considering those trips excellent opportunities to put to the test U.S. naval detection techniques, Cuban Military Intelligence ordered Pardo to furtively approach Key West in the middle of the night. The U.S. Coast Guard had been informed beforehand of the day of arrival, not the time. And they failed to pick up his craft on the first two trips. On his third, the U.S. Interests Section in Havana had peremptorily demanded his estimated day and time of arrival.

  The beach house had fallen in disrepair over the years, but if refurbished inside and out it would be habitable again. The biggest problem its owner faced, Pardo supposed, was how to get his hands on the necessary planks of wood, as lumber ranked first on the list of hard-to-find building materials. They went around the house and, exactly as Amieba had predicted, weak moonlight revealed a rustic, five-yard-long by two-feet-wide wooden platform sticking out from the land into the sea, a ten-foot boat moored to it.

  The sea was calm, the tide ebbing, and tame waves licked the shore with a lover’s gentleness. Fleeing crabs and scurrying rodents sought refuge in the scarce wild coastal vegetation. Pardo relieved his wife of the duffel bag before testing the platform’s firmness with a step-by-step careful approach. Waiting on the shoreline, Victoria looked back a couple of times and found it comforting to touch the inside-the-pant holster that nestled her Tula-Tokarev, 7.62mm semi-automatic pistol. Her husband boarded the boat and found, to port and starboard, resting lengthwise on the boards for oarsmen and passengers to sit, two eight-foot-long oars. He sat with his back to the bow, hauled the duffel bag in, and waved Victoria to come over. Moving swiftly, in less than fifteen seconds she was sitting astern, facing Pardo, who then released the mooring line, pushed the boat away from the platform, affixed the oars to the outriggers, and began rowing into the open sea. It was 10:19 P.M.

  As her husband sculled, Victoria cast worried glances at the shore. To the east, the faraway lights of Cabañas could be seen. To the west and north, all was dark. The clear sky was simply spectacular. She gripped the duffel bag firmly and tried not to think what would be happening to her and Pardo if Amieba turned out to be a military counterintelligence agent. Following instructions, Pardo stared fixedly at the darkened house to keep the boat on a straight course, perpendicular to the coastline.

  “Time?” he asked, breathing hard.

  Victoria took off her gloves before pressing the light button of her Casio. “10:27.”

  Pardo nodded and kept rowing.

  Nearly two minutes later they began hearing the chug-chug of low-revved marine engines growing louder.

  “Get ready,” Pardo warned.

  Victoria pulled out a penlight from a pocket of her shirt. Again, she pressed the light button of her watch and fastened her gaze on the dial. The boat was rocking slightly now and her stomach churned. At 10:30:00, she pointed the penlight west and turned it on for two seconds.

  On board the cigarette boat, Amieba lowered his infrared binoculars and made a tiny course correction.

  Victoria dropped the penlight into the duffel bag, tightening its drawstring. Encouraged by the rising crescendo of the approaching cigarette, Pardo stopped rowing. The swaying increased notably. Victoria began washing her face with seawater. Pardo imitated her. Suddenly she vomited all over the bottom. Out of the blackness, the dark silhouette of the patrol boat loomed. A mooring line fell behind Pardo, who turned, grabbed it, and pulled. A second line fell on Victoria’s lap. She breathed deeply, swallowed hard, and hauled. Both vessels joined sides.

  “Welcome aboard, comrade,” a young sailor said as he extended his arm to Victoria Valiente. Smiling at the “comrade,” Victoria hauled the duffel bag and passed it on to him. When he stretched his arm out for a second time, she closed her fingers over his wrist and, in one swift motion, was hoisted over the gunwale.

  …

  The cockpit had bolster seats, two behind the windshield for the pilot and the copilot, a backseat for three passengers. To starboard, sitting at the helm and facing numerous dials and switches, Amieba half turned to stare at his passengers. A Chinese Tokarev pistol in a hip holster hung from his webbed belt. To port, an AK-47 lay at the feet of the crewman acting as copilot. The two coastguardsmen who helped the couple aboard sat on the back, where a second AK-47 lay. The blue lights of the light bar were off. The Cuban flag flew astern. The radio babbled in Spanish.

  “You seasick?” Amieba asked Victoria.

  “A little, yeah. I’ll be okay,” she said with a rueful smile.

  “Fine, go to the cabin. Both of you. We’ve got work to do here. Sit down and brace yourselves. In a few minutes this baby will take off.”

  In the dimly lit cabin, Pardo and Victoria found a custom leather wraparound sofa, a small dinette area, a V-berth, a stainless steel sink, a cooler, and freshwater outlets. Pardo served Victoria a glass of water. As she was drinking it, the engines revved
up notably and they sensed a change of course. Pardo sat by her side and they held hands. The din of the twin outboards was bearable until, at 10:54, they were thrown against their seats as “the baby took off.” Lights were then turned out. The ensuing uproar, vibration, and occasional jumps as the patrol boat bounced over waves were too much for Victoria. She threw up the water she had drank and added some of her bodily fluids. Pardo careened her to the V-berth and she lay down feeling physically exhausted. Every half an hour or so, she took out an inhaler and pumped it twice.

  The ordeal lasted one and a half hours. At 12:20 the outboards were gradually taken down from full tilt to the barely audible chug heard earlier.

  “Have we arrived?” Victoria probed.

  “I don’t think so. We should be close, though.”

  A minute later, soaked to the skin, Amieba entered the cabin. Having their eyes adjusted to darkness, his smile reassured them. “We’re almost there, guys, almost there. How are you feeling, ma’am?” Sniffing the vomit made his smile vanish. “Not well, right?”

  “To tell you the truth, not well at all. But getting better. Why are you drenched?”

  “Every time the hull hits the water at fifty miles an hour and there’s a little headwind, the cockpit gets sprayed out.”

  “Of course. How stupid of me.”

  “It’s okay. Now, let me explain what I’m going to do. We are sixteen nautical miles or so from Key West. I’m monitoring the U.S. Coast Guard frequency; their radar hasn’t picked us up. So, I’ll try to sneak in. Lights off, slow approach, it’ll take an hour, maybe more. If we suddenly pick up speed again, it means they are coming after us and I’m trying to run aground on Higgs Beach, South Beach, wherever, so we classify as “dry feet” arrivals. If you are going to wash and change, do it once I get back to the cockpit. Not easy in the dark, especially for you, ma’am. But we can’t turn on the lights.”