“I am ready to pack my suitcase,” she said.
Morgan let the Trujillo people know that he was on his way, but they weren’t the only ones prepared to meet him when he arrived. In the Miami FBI office, Stafford had been working late into the night to track down details of the impending plan when he got a tip from an undisclosed source. Morgan was flying into Miami International.
Bingo.
Finally Stafford would be able to lay hands on the man he had been investigating frantically. He had read everything he could about the Americano: from the background information dug up by other agents to newspaper and magazine articles profiling him in the United States and Cuba. What struck the agent was that Morgan had been everywhere from the time he was a teenager. He had been a runaway. He had been in the circus. He had worked on ranches in Arizona. He was always on the run. When Morgan arrived, Stafford had one goal: Stay on him.
Morgan had one more meeting with Trujillo’s people. For months, he had held his ground and kept his secret. He would meet with Ferrando to iron out the final details, from the arrival of the weapons to the invasion in southern Cuba. Then he’d rendezvous with the Batista people to make sure the boat in Miami was ready, that it had the weapons on board.
As the plane lifted into the sky, Olga clutched Morgan’s arm. She wanted it to end. If Morgan could pull it off, maybe they finally could find the peace that had eluded them for so long. It had been nearly six months of around-the-clock meetings, phone calls, and radio sessions that lasted until dawn. More often than not, he had circles under his eyes from not sleeping. But through it all, he kept his composure, assuring her at every step that it would be over soon, that they’d finally ensure that the Second Front had a place in the new Cuba. Then they’d move on with their lives.
As the plane descended through the skies over Miami, Olga should have been excited about visiting the United States for the first time. Instead, she was anxious. She knew her husband was about to meet with people who wanted him dead.
As the plane touched down on the runway, Morgan was thinking through his next move. As they walked down the concourse, two men in suits and sunglasses dashed across the walkway toward them.
Stafford flashed his FBI badge. With him was FBI agent Thomas Errion.
“Are you William Morgan?” Stafford asked.
“Yes,” answered Morgan.
Morgan told Olga and the others to head to the Moulin Rouge Motel on 41st Street and Pine Tree Drive in Miami Beach. He would catch up with them later.
“Don’t worry,” he said to Olga.
Stafford and Errion escorted Morgan into the immigration offices in the airport. Morgan remained calm. He had learned long ago how to deal with cops. The same rules applied for federal law enforcement agents. In another time, he would have been dodging questions about gambling raids and illegal proceeds from sawdust joints. But this was different. No one could tell him that what he was doing now was wrong. No one could tell him that he was breaking the law.
“What do you want?” Morgan asked.
Stafford had a litany of questions. For starters, what was Morgan doing in Miami? If his life was in Havana, why come here?
Morgan wasn’t going to reveal his mission to Stafford, and he didn’t care what Stafford did to try to force him. His reasons for coming were strictly personal, he said.
Then Stafford, jotting notes the whole time, wanted to talk about the Cuban revolution. Much had been written about Morgan’s role in the rebellion. What did he do during the fighting? What was he doing now?
The agents didn’t stop. They wanted to know who he was going to see in Miami. Where else he was going. Morgan responded to their questions, one by one, but he avoided any hints of what was about to unfold. Halfway through the interview, Morgan suspected the agents knew about the plan. But he wasn’t going to break. They’d have to find out on their own. He would tell them this much, though: A representative of a foreign government had approached him to overthrow the Castro government for one million dollars, but he had turned down the deal.
Stafford pressed him: Who? Which government?
Morgan looked intently at each agent. He had said enough. His wife was waiting.
Stafford and Errion knew they had to let Morgan go. They had no legal right to hold him. But they would be trailing his every step.
He needed to act quickly. Morgan had little time to solidify the plans, and now he had federal agents following him. There was no way he would be able to finish if the FBI decided to arrest him on some trumped-up charge. Instead of saying at the Moulin Rouge, he would get rooms at the Montmartre Hotel just over the bridge on Collins Avenue.
They ducked into a waiting Cadillac in the parking lot and were whisked away by the driver down 41st Street and then onto Collins. Even in the dead of summer, Miami Beach was teeming with tourists milling in and out of the Art Deco hotels along the popular drive.
Whoever had been trailing them was now lost in the night traffic. Morgan needed time—time to finalize everything. As soon as he checked into their suite, he picked up the phone and called Bartone.
The Cleveland mobster had made a killing on the sale of guns to the project. Trujillo and Batista both ponied up more than a million dollars, most of it going to buy .30-caliber and .50-caliber machine guns and automatic rifles. Bartone was staying at the Eden Roc down the road. He told Morgan to sit tight. He would send over two cars in the morning, one for Morgan and the other for Olga and her sister to go sightseeing. Bartone himself would play tour guide.
Morgan and Olga looked out over the ocean, the stars scattered like diamonds in the night sky. Olga had envisioned that they would visiting her husband’s country—but under far different circumstances.
In just days, their baby would be born. More than ever, she wanted to move to America, where she and Morgan had a chance to build a life together. She didn’t care if it was in Miami or even Ohio. She was willing to take that leap forward so they would all survive.
“I wanted so much to have peace,” she recalled.
With pressure mounting, Augusto Ferrando waited for Morgan at a corner table in the Toledo Restaurant on Biscayne Boulevard. Nothing had gone right for the Dominican consul. Trujillo had been pestering him. The Batista people were constantly complaining. Now he had word that the FBI might be following Morgan. They didn’t have much time to talk. From now on, every step was critical.
Out of earshot of everyone in the restaurant, Ferrando and Morgan agreed that the invasion would start in Trinidad. It was the perfect place: the center of the country, albeit to the south. By taking the old, storied city, they could keep the fighting away from Castro’s power center in Havana and then work at cutting the country in half. No different from what the rebels did when they took Las Villas Province during the revolution.
At the same time, the Second Front would launch an uprising in the nearby Escambray with the goal of drawing Castro’s forces into the mountains for a showdown. By plane and boat, Trujillo’s people would drop off weapons to the fighters at secret spots. As icing on the cake, Trujillo would send in his foreign legion, at least two thousand men, to help Morgan and Menoyo on the ground.
Giddy at the prospect of victory, Trujillo began picking Castro’s successors. The generalissimo tapped Arturo Hernández Tellaheche, once one of Cuba’s most powerful senators, for president. Arturo Caíñas Milanés, a millionaire cattleman stripped of his land by the new government, would be vice president. Ramón Mestre Gutiérrez, founder of a major construction company, would be the next premier. All three had pledged their hearts—and of course their money—to the cause.
In a day or two, Ferrando would have a boat with weapons stockpiled in the cabin. It wouldn’t be all the weapons needed for the invasion, but enough to get started. Much of the money to pay for the guns would be given to Morgan in a paper bag.
But the biggest part of the pl
an was in Cuba. Another cache of weapons was coming from the Dominican Republic, and those would be dropped at other locations. Batista’s people had promised there would be people scattered in Havana in safe houses ready to take up arms.
Morgan nodded. Trujillo was making good on his end in grand fashion. Morgan was doing his best to show that he, too, was a player, that he would go along as long as the money was being paid out generously.
But he was wearing thin. Every conversation was getting more difficult for him to play the part. The reality was that he was deeply troubled by everything he was seeing in the operation, from the Trujillo operatives who were trying to curry favor with a corrupt and deadly dictator to the Batista people all trying to jockey for power. None of them gave a damn about the Cuban people or whether they ate tomorrow or even lived another day. Most of them just wanted to line their own pockets while seizing power.
Morgan would do his best to hold up his end by making sure everyone was armed and ready in the Escambray, he told Ferrando. But when this was over, there would be a day of reckoning for everyone.
The game of chess had begun.
No sooner did Morgan get back to his hotel than he received a message: Call the FBI. Despite all his careful moves, including switching hotels, Stafford wasn’t going away. Agents were watching the hotel and the traffic going in and out. If Morgan was going to keep the plot moving forward, he needed to get the feds completely off his track.
Unless he met with Stafford, he would be hounded every day. The best thing he could do was go directly to the FBI offices. If he could convince them that he truly was on vacation and answer their questions, maybe they’d back off. He needed to buy more time.
When Morgan walked into the FBI’s downtown Miami offices, Stafford and Errion were waiting for him. Since the first interview at the airport, they had gathered more information about the suspected coup attempt in Cuba. They demanded that Morgan come clean. Otherwise, they were going to slap handcuffs on him. Americans couldn’t serve in the armed forces of a foreign army, and Morgan had done just that.
Morgan stared across the table at Stafford. First, he hadn’t served in the military of a foreign country. He had fought in a rebel force during a revolution that had nothing to do with the Cuban army. He had helped the people in the mountains and was still trying to help them—far more than anyone in the US government. Second, the Second Front had been disbanded—albeit on paper—after the fighting ceased, so he wasn’t serving in the Cuban revolutionary army either. “I’ve done nothing wrong,” he said.
Stafford shook his head. If Morgan wasn’t serving in the military, how was he supporting his wife and living in an upscale home in Havana?
Stafford wasn’t going to let it go, but Morgan wasn’t going to help him. Morgan’s answer was Menoyo. Whatever money he was getting came from his comandante. Right now, in his pocket, he was carrying $350. Back in Cuba, he had about $159 in the bank. “That’s it,” he said.
Stafford looked over the notes on his desk. If he could nail down Morgan in the Cuban military, then he’d have him. There was too much scuttlebutt about the ongoing plot. Stafford wasn’t going to take any shit.
“What’s going on with Trujillo?” he asked.
Morgan dug in. He didn’t need Trujillo. He didn’t need Batista. If he believed that Castro was selling out the Cuban people, then he would chase him into hell personally. He had plenty of problems with people like Che Guevara—a stone-cold Communist—but he had no problems with Fidel. Morgan had heard the talk about Castro being a Communist, but he hadn’t seen proof of it. If he did, he’d fight Fidel himself.
Morgan had said enough. As far as he was concerned, he had broken no US laws, and no one was going to put him in jail.
Both men stared across the table, sizing each other up. Stafford could see that Morgan wasn’t going to crack. The session was over. He had no option other than to let him go. But their time together wasn’t over.
Pages from Morgan’s FBI file National Archives and Records Administration
35
Olga had been dreading this moment. The driver was about to take her and her sister to the airport. In just a few hours, she would be back in Havana.
She knew she had to leave the United States, but she didn’t want to go. She had found peace in her brief time in Florida. She didn’t have to worry about Castro. She didn’t have to fret over Che. She didn’t wake up every morning with strange people sleeping on her floors, the phone calls, the cars pulling into the driveway at night.
“I will see you in Havana,” Morgan said, his arms around her.
He was about to take on as dangerous a battle as he had faced in the revolution, including the ambushes he executed in the final days. Olga felt crushed by forces working against them. The worst part was that she recognized the land mines as much as he did. Once again, she had to wait for him to come back, alive or dead. She had grown tired of that same sinking feeling.
“After this, no more,” she said.
A week or more might pass before she would see him again, and she knew that she probably wouldn’t hear from him during that time. The waiting was worse in this case because at least there were messengers in the mountains. Here, she had nothing.
Morgan was going to check out of the Montmartre and rent a room at the Eden Roc for a couple of days. The move to the luxurious hotel just down the street would provide a bit more cover. When Olga arrived back at the house, Morgan’s men would watch out for her. At that point, all she could do was wait.
When Stafford arrived at the office, a message was waiting on his desk. Morgan had called to say he would be boarding a Pan Am flight for Havana in just twenty-four hours, on August 5. Don’t worry. He’d phone the FBI before he left.
Stafford had no plans to talk to Morgan over the phone. He was going to make sure he was in the terminal building well before the 5:00 p.m. flight.
Stafford had just gotten off the phone with a confidential informant who had been divulging details of what Morgan had been up to in Miami—and it was anything but a vacation. Morgan’s entire trip was about a secret plot to overthrow Castro with the help of Trujillo and his people. He had met with Bartone, and he had met with Ferrando. From what Stafford had gathered, thousands were waiting in the Escambray for Morgan to give them the cue to rise up against Castro.
At this point, Stafford had heard enough. He had been duped. For all intents and purposes, Morgan had obstructed justice. Between now and tomorrow, the FBI agent was going to make sure that everyone’s story checked out. Then he would confront Morgan at the gate. This time, he had enough to tighten the noose.
One agent went to the Pan Am gate. Another stood sentinel outside the terminal. A third was scoping the people from inside the doors.
Stafford had doubled-checked everyone’s story. Cuba was on the brink, and Morgan was ready to thrust it over the edge. There was no way Stafford was going to let him leave Miami.
The terminal was bustling, but even as the passengers were getting ready to board, there was no sign of Morgan. Stafford angled over to the ticket counter to make sure Morgan was coming. But when he asked the agent to see the manifest, Morgan’s name wasn’t on the list. By the time the passengers were lining up to board the 5:00 p.m. flight, Morgan wasn’t in the terminal.
Stafford waited until the flight gate was shut. He had lost Morgan again.
He immediately rounded up the agents and ordered them to head to the Eden Roc. Stafford was steaming. As he sped through the traffic, he realized that Morgan was much smarter than anyone in the FBI had figured. That’s something Stafford didn’t glean from the field reports or the background investigation. Every agent had underestimated him. If they didn’t find him, they all would have a lot of explaining to do.
The car pulled up to the hotel, and Stafford rushed to the front desk. Just as he thought: Morgan was gone. Stafford had
to put out an alert and let headquarters know that Morgan had slipped away.
The teletypes were coming in from Washington. The embassy in Havana was preparing for the worst. US Ambassador Philip Bonsal leaned over his desk and read the messages. It wasn’t just that a plot was unfolding to assassinate Castro and overthrow his government. An American was leading it. If the plan succeeded even partially, every US citizen in Cuba—thousands—could be in danger.
The fifty-six-year-old career diplomat—a Yale graduate whose father had covered the Spanish-American War for the New York Herald—had spent weeks struggling to restore relations with Cuba.
Bonsal picked up the phone. He needed Cuban Foreign Secretary Raúl Roa to get an urgent message to Castro. The FBI had uncovered critical information about a coup under way to topple the government and kill Castro. No one knew when it would happen, but it was supposed to take place in just days. The man leading the plot: William Morgan.
Roa needed to know that the American government had nothing to do with this, Bonsal said. From the ambassador’s perspective, it was better for the United States to disclose subversive behavior from one of its own citizens. His biggest fear was that the coup would be blamed on the United States. That, in turn, could jeopardize the lives of American citizens in Havana.
The ambassador also had to draw up an emergency plan, including the possibility of bringing in ships to evacuate Americans. The intelligence community was on high alert. The only way to stop the plan was to find Morgan.
But no one had a clue where he was.
A cool breeze blew off the dark waters and across the fishing boat. Ahead lay the port of Miami, just beyond the last barrier islands. If they could pass Virginia Key without the Coast Guard spotting their craft, they’d be on their way to Cuba.
The Yankee Comandante Page 17