Comrades in Miami

by Jose Latour

  “You think she denounced Eagle?” he asked. Eagle was the cryptonym of a senior DIA intelligence analyst recruited by the Directorate. Seven months earlier, the FBI had arrested her.

  “No, Chief. Micaela didn’t know about Eagle.”

  The man nodded. “Why the fuck did she call you? To repent?”

  “She said someone had shot and killed her husband. She suspected I had ordered them killed. She threatened me with making a scandal, saying we order people murdered and so on.”

  The Chief rested his eyes on his kid brother. He had the sheepish, resigned look he always had in his presence. The minister of the interior, pen poised over the notebook, wished he could have a quick one.

  “What proof do you have, Lastra?”

  “I recorded her call, Commander in Chief.”

  “I want to listen to what she said.”

  Bending laterally to his right, Lastra picked up a briefcase from the floor, opened it, and produced a mini tape recorder. He pressed a button, then closed the briefcase, returning it to the floor.

  For six minutes the Chief listened to a composite of the recording made at Victoria’s apartment the night Pardo “confessed,” and fragments of her last phone call. The very professional job had required twenty-nine hours of fine-tuned adulteration and corresponded exactly with Lastra’s version.

  Audiotape played.

  The Commander knew that recordings could be doctored; he suspected this call may have been altered, but he could not prove it. The best experts were under Lastra; under no circumstance would they admit having conspired to deceive him. And should they admit it, he would have to sentence them to death by firing squad. That Micaela had betrayed had to be true; these three would not be here otherwise, he reasoned. In a few days or weeks, the American media’s field day would confirm it. It was a given that she had fled elsewhere. He would never learn why she had betrayed, though. Another mystery. The list of things he failed to comprehend kept growing. Maybe he had created too many Lastras. He had taught them to manipulate people and information; now he, his brother, and other geezers who still thought they were in charge, like the minister of the interior, were being unscrupulously manipulated. They were told only what was impossible to conceal or what their subordinates thought they should know.

  “Furry.”

  The minister of the interior dropped the pen, tried to jump to his feet, failed, seized the edge of the conference table, then pulled himself up. “At your service, Commander in Chief.”

  “As of this minute, General Lastra is sent into retirement. Six hours from now, I want to read a report on what has been done and what remains to be done to bring back our comrades in Miami before the FBI has them arrested. Spare no expense. In two days I want to read a study on how to rebuild our networks there. Are we clear?”

  “Yes, Commander in Chief.”

  “Lastra.”

  “At your service, Commander in Chief.” The general had expected it. The man had to take it out on somebody and he was the best possible culprit.

  “Will you manage with four boxes of Lanceros a month?”

  Lastra could not repress a sad smile. The Maximum Leader’s parting gesture. He felt sure this was the last time he would see the man. In a few moments he would cease to exist for him. “Yes, Commander in Chief.”

  “Raúl.”

  “Yes, Fidel,” said the Chief’s kid brother as he got to his feet.

  “Make sure Lastra gets four boxes of Lanceros delivered to his home every month.”

  “Thank you, Commander in Chief,” Lastra muttered. He knew that later today, probably during the early morning meeting, the minister would be instructed to keep him under 24/7 surveillance for the rest of his life.

  The Chief shuffled back to the door to his office thinking his favorite comforting thought. One out of twelve followers had betrayed Jesus Christ. He had millions of devotees, so he should not let a few thousand Judases depress him. Traitors were part of politics and politics was his life. Before operating the lock, he turned to face the three men standing static.

  “I don’t want to hear the name Micaela ever again,” he dead-panned. Then he went into his office and closed the door behind him, wondering which team had won that evening’s baseball game.

  Gabriel sent into retirement. Report on rescuing Miami agents at 06:15 A.M. Report on rebuilding networks: 48 hours. Meeting ends 00:16 A.M. May 15, 2002.

  …

  On the very same day that Victoria Valiente was admitted to the Jackson Memorial Hospital, a fine medical institution and the nearest to Steil’s apartment building, Smith had been warned that the prognosis was dismal. The bullet had fractured her first rib, pierced the intercostal artery, injured her bronchi, and collapsed the left lung. As she was being operated on, it was reported that an asthma inhaler had been found in the patient’s purse. Such respiratory insufficiency was another discouraging factor, the physician on duty had warned. Therefore, when four days later the hospital called to report that the patient had passed away, Smith wasn’t surprised. He drove there and an intensive-care nurse spent five minutes reading to him from the patient’s medical record, a long, incomprehensible list of acronyms and abbreviations.

  “But when a patient refuses to get well, medical science is powerless,” was how she concluded, then closed the file’s metal covers.

  “What do you mean?” asked Smith.

  “This patient,” tapping her fingers on the file, “refused to live, sir. I’ve seen too many cases. Her eyes said she wanted out.”

  David Szady, the bureau’s chief of counterintelligence, had asked to be kept informed of new developments, which was why, back at the bureau’s Miami division, Smith recapitulated before calling him.

  Forensic examinations had proved that the bullet that killed Maria Scheindlin was fired by the Beretta. The same gun had ended Carlos Capdevila’s life. Eugenio Bonis, already dead or dying from a slug fired by the Tokarev, had been shot in the head at very close range with the Beretta. The Russian gun had Berta and Capdevila’s fingerprints. The Beretta had Berta and Bonis’s. Swabs of Berta’s hands taken at the hospital detected primers, nitrites, and nitrates from the two different kinds of ammunition the guns had. Conclusion: She had fired the Tokarev and the Beretta. He and Hart shared the theory that the couple had met Bonis at the airport garage, the gardener and Capdevila shot each other, then Berta, out of anger or in cold blood, gave Bonis the coup de grâce with his gun. What had caused the dispute? The impounded cash was one possibility.

  Based on the circumstantial evidence available, Smith and Hart had made a few embarrassing assumptions. Although nothing having to do with handguns or espionage was found at Bonis’s home, they had felt reasonably certain of two things: The gardener had murdered Maria Scheindlin, and he was a spy. His records proved he was the landscaper of choice of many rich Cubans, including several directors of the Cuban American Foundation. He had been doing the Scheindlins’ garden for over ten years. The videotape established he was the only visitor Maria had received on the morning of May 7. The residence’s gate had remained open after he took off. Two airline attendants remembered he had been at their counters, asking for a ticket to Ottawa. He had run a disk wiper to delete the master hard disk of his computer. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it just may be a duck. However, with him, Maria, and Micaela dead, finding out much more seemed quite a long shot. The reason for recruiting a housewife who lacked connections with the Cuban community was not clear. Maybe, Smith speculated, CuIS hoped to learn her husband’s plans with regard to Cuba. Hart had doubtfully tilted his head sideways at this.

  For the bureau, however, Bonis and Maria were small fry when compared with Berta-Micaela. The cryptonym she had given during her phone call to Havana made them believe she had been the fabled head of the CuIS Miami desk. Hart defended the theory that she and Capdevila, whose real name had apparently been Pardo, were genuine defectors and Lastra, CuIS general director, h
ad ordered Bonis to execute both, plus Maria Scheindlin, whose cryptonym had been Pola Negri. Apart from that, the special agent had argued, CuIS seldom sent desk chiefs abroad, and when it did they were given diplomatic cover.

  Playing devil’s advocate, Smith had disagreed. He argued that loyal officers choose death before dishonor, which was what she had done. Berta-Micaela had come to Miami to carry out an important mission for which she needed the hundred Gs, maybe reconstructing the Wasp network, he hypothesized. The code page and the key to a safe-deposit box found in her purse furnished proof of her intentions. The perforated CD, diagnosed unreadable by the bureau’s technicians, probably stored information related to her mission. Having failed, seeing her comrade and possible lover dead, she had committed suicide. Berta-Micaela’s case broke the mold, he argued.

  Hart, considering this possibility far-fetched but not wanting to say so, had opened a desk drawer, extracted a mini cassette that he fed to his tape recorder, then turned the gizmo on.

  “All we wanted was to get the hell out, Lastra. We were sick and tired of the repression, the hypocrisy, the lies, the personality cult, and the ever-deepening economic crisis. And yes, Pardo had the brains and the balls to screw you. But let me tell you: Turning in the fools we have here risking their freedom so His Majesty and his courtiers can live the good life never crossed my mind. Behave and I won’t. They are just a pack of manipulated puppets, like you and those under you are, like I was until a few days ago. But be warned, Lastra, I’ll make a full report, naming all the names and giving all the addresses. You can bet your life that if something happens to me, it’ll reach the Gypsy. And you know, Lastra, you know perfectly well that the scandal will make headlines from here to Nepal. So, it’s your call, General.”

  “The scorn and hatred in that voice, Chief, sound pretty real to me,” Hart said as he pressed the stop button. “The scorn of someone who had to pretend for too long and at last can speak her mind; the hatred of the lover who addresses the man responsible for the death of her loved one.”

  Smith enjoyed playing devil’s advocate but disliked being considered a dork, so he disabused himself of the “important mission” hypothesis and accepted the defection theory as being the most probable. “I wonder who the Gypsy is,” he had mused before concluding the give-and-take.

  Having completed the mental summation, he lifted the phone and dialed the Gypsy’s number an hour after Victoria was pronounced dead. He gave his superior the news.

  “Why did she kill herself, Nathan?” asked Szady. Smith knew it was not a rhetorical question.

  “I guess we’ll never know, sir,” Smith said. “In her phone call to Havana, which she couldn’t possibly imagine we were taping, she made very clear she had defected. But would anyone defect and then commit suicide? It doesn’t figure.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Maybe the clincher was our presence. She may have feared being tortured to death.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Nathan. She was Cuban, remember? Not an al-Qaeda fanatic.”

  “Well, sir, you know communists. Children are indoctrinated from kindergarten. We capitalist pigs are bad, we torture and give shots of truth serum and apply electrodes to genitals. That sort of ideological garbage surfaces in critical moments. Losing her man, if this Capdevila or Pardo was her man, may have been a contributing factor to her pulling the trigger. They were sexually involved, for sure. We found sperm on the bedsheets of their room. She termed Pardo her husband, but Hart says in Cuba the word marido applies to a lawful wedded husband and to a lover, too. Maybe she doted on him. I don’t think we’ll ever find out if they were married.”

  “You think she may have been planning to contact us?”

  “Only as a recourse of last resort. In her phone call to Lastra, she said she wasn’t planning to turn in her compañeros here. But I wish that CD were intact, or that my request for consultation with DGSE is approved. Any news on that?”

  “Not yet, no.”

  “I would appreciate it if you discuss it with the director. Our guys are sure the key belongs to a French safe-deposit box, but we can’t determine which bank or branch. There may be fresh evidence there.”

  “Okay. I’ll see what I can do. Shit, I was hoping she’d recover. We’ve lost a great source. Can you imagine that woman spilling the beans?”

  “A watershed. The consummate defector. We would’ve cleaned South Florida. You know what Hart said when I told him she had died?”

  “No.”

  “Heaven-sent has gone back to heaven.”

  Szady chuckled. “Nice one-liner,” he said. “I don’t think I’d heard it.”

  “The staff at Jackson Memorial did all they could,” Smith said. “They pulled her out of cardiac arrest twice.”

  “I’m sure they did. Well, it’s over. I’ll let you know what the director says about consulting DGSE. Take care, Nathan.”

  “You too, sir.”

  Ten

  Fidelia got a call from Hart around noon on May 29, a Wednesday. They had finished with her passport; she could pick it up that same afternoon, if she wished. He would be in his office until seven, the special agent added.

  While in Cuba, Fidelia developed a strong dislike for people in positions of authority. This disposition had worsened in the United States. Her dealings with all sorts of government officials, police officers, court clerks, and bureaucrats in general were of an adversarial nature. For this reason, she asked Hart to have her passport delivered to her home, which was where they had taken it from, she argued. The special agent had practice in dealing with uncooperative people. Her home? he asked. To the best of his recollection, Ms. Orozco’s passport had been found in the purse of a kidnapper. Apart from that, had Ms. Orozco changed her place of residence to Mr. Steil’s apartment? Her registered home address was other than Mr. Steil’s. All choked up, Fidelia next learned that a receipt had to be signed, too. Knowing when she had lost fair and square, Fidelia left the law firm earlier than usual, drove to the bureau’s building, and picked up her passport. She reached the apartment feeling belligerent.

  Elliot’s day had not been nice, either. People from the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control had begun an investigation to determine whether IMLATINEX was the parent company of Trans-Caribbean, the Panamanian firm set up by Scheindlin to front for him in his trade with Cuba. Should it be found in violation of existing rules and regulations, IMLATINEX might be fined to the tune of millions, their executives sentenced to prison. Their lawyers had assured Elliot and Plotzher that Ruben Scheindlin had covered his tracks masterfully, that both Panamanian front men were ready to testify in court should the need arise, and that IMLATINEX would receive a clean bill of health, but Elliot was wary of lawyers’ assurances.

  That evening the dishwasher was humming quietly in the kitchen and Elliot was at the desk, reading the New York Times on his laptop, when Fidelia, sitting in a loveseat, concluded revising one last time a brief she would file the next morning.

  “I got my passport back this afternoon,” she announced.

  Elliot turned in his seat. “Oh, did you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You went to the FBI?”

  “I did.”

  “Did you see Hart?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he say something new about … what happened?”

  “To me? Are you kidding? Why should he give me any news if he sees you keeping me in the dark?”

  Elliot saw it coming but failed in his attempt to pour oil on troubled waters. “That’s not fair, Fidelia. I told you the whole story.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Elliot. Stop bullshitting me. I’m not mentally retarded, you know?”

  “I am bullshitting you? Are you saying that I didn’t meet Berta and Capdevila in Havana? That I invented the story of Scheindlin buying medicine for Cuba?”

  “What I’m saying is that what you’ve told me is the tip of the iceberg. I hate overused analogies, but that describes it pretty well.
You are keeping from me the chicken of the rice-with-chicken. (Oh, shit, there I go again.) I wouldn’t mind, you know, I wouldn’t mind at all, really, because our relationship doesn’t give me the right to stick my nose into everything you do. I hate seeing you get into deep water because I care for you, but you are a big boy and your life is yours to conduct. However, when I’m threatened, kidnapped, and rescued by a SWAT team, I reckon I have the right to know what the hell is going on. Then you get slippery and mysterious with me, and I just have to stand by and read in the eyes of certain people, like Mr. Great Super Special Agent Hart, ‘The dame’s a nitwit, Steil sidelines her.’”

  Steil logged off and turned in his seat to face Fidelia. “We’ve been over this before. I’ve told you all there is to tell. This whole situation began as one thing and ended as another. It seems Berta and her husband were Cuban spies and the FBI was after them. I don’t know how they entered the country. She said she had to pick up the money, you heard her, and all the time she had it in her holdall. Did the man who murdered Maria Scheindlin give it to her? I don’t know. The dots connect, that’s for sure, but how? I don’t fucking know. How can I tell you? It would be stupid of me to go see Hart and say, ‘Hey, Fidelia and I want to know what went on. Tell me.’ The guy would laugh in my face. So, I’m not asking. But one thing I can make pretty clear to you.”

  He raised and shook his right forefinger.

  “I’ve never gotten involved in something knowing that it would put you at risk. However, I’ve put your life in danger twice. I know. I apologize.”

  “Apology accepted. But don’t wag your finger at me.”

  “Oh, I’m sooo sorry,” sardonically now. “Thanks for being so understanding. Now, I don’t know …”

  “Do I detect a note of sarcasm in your voice?”

  “For God’s sake!” rolling his eyes in exasperation. “Let’s get serious. I was about to tell you that I don’t know what the future has in store for me. OFAC is investigating the company.”