Crusty is a friend and associate of Doc’s from back in the day—not quite from when the navy was still using sails, but close. A chief petty officer when he retired, Crusty was never a SEAL or a frogman. He was a samurai in the fine art of procurement, however, one of Doc’s inspirations, a recommendation all to itself.
Most important, Crusty could speak Cuban Spanish like a native. His parents and a number of other relatives had come from Cuba during Batista’s reign. They weren’t fooled when Fidel came to power, and fled, mostly to America. A few hardy souls remained, including an uncle whom Crusty had visited two years before.
While he’s in good shape for his age—still runs about two miles a day, not counting what he spends chasing women—Crusty was not only too old to be a shooter but had never trained as one besides. But he could handle a weapon, and was more than willing to help out. Danny had already used him in Miami to gather information, and when I called to ask if he’d be willing to visit his sick (and nonexistent) aunt in Havana, he said his bags were already packed.
The rest of us—myself, Doc, Red, and Mongoose when he landed—headed back to Jamaica to regroup and plan our next move.
I caught an hour nap waiting for our plane to take off in Miami, and snoozed for another hour on the way down to Jamaica. I wasn’t exactly fresh as a baby when I woke—I ached in ten million places—but my brain cells were working again. And by the time I landed, I realized that our original premise could very well be wrong.
The Cubans were talking to Trace because they suspected she might be somehow involved in the death of a black-market thug. That could mean that she wasn’t at Villa Marista at all—the regular police would be the ones interested. The distinction was important, and went beyond where she might be held—the Cuban authorities have traditionally been easier on common criminals than they have been on political prisoners.
Security is also less substantial. I feel pretty confident that Red Cell International can get into any installation, including Fort Knox, but even so, slipping in and out of a police station, even in Havana, would be orders of magnitude easier than worming our way into Marista.
“We’re still going to need muscle,” said Doc when we started looking over the street maps and satellite photos of the various police buildings in the city. “We need more people on the street, more backups, more safe houses. We need fresh faces. And serious firepower if Murphy shows up.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “All we need is to have them look the other way. We have to give them something to do. Something big.”
“What are we going to do? Relaunch the Bay of Pigs?”
Not a terrible idea, if done right, and against a smarter target. But I had something much simpler in mind.
“We’ll just kill Fidel.”
I wasn’t really going to kill Fidel. What I had in mind was simply broadcasting the fact that he was dead on the national Cuban television station. Within minutes the police would be responding to spontaneous outpourings of joy or sorrow—take your pick—and getting Trace out of the police station would be easy. And as easy as taking over the police station would be compared to taking over the home of Cuba’s political police, the television station would be a hundred times easier. Cameramen tend to carry less guns than patrolmen.
Still, Doc was right. We needed manpower to deal with any possible contingency. And we needed it right away, if not sooner.
That was one of the reasons I called Ken to say I’d help him save Panama from the Chinese. The other was that I wanted to see if the Canadians would tell him where Trace was, since they wouldn’t tell me.
“The Canadians are very antsy about being involved in any of this, Dick,” said Ken when I called.
“I’m still waiting for you to tell me something I don’t know.”
“I can try, but no promises.”
By contrast, I was more than willing to promise: I’d do nothing until I had the information.
There was grumbling. Ken told me I drove a hard bargain. He used colorful navy language to do it.
“Sweet talk isn’t going to change my mind,” I told him.
Two hours later, Ken called and told me Trace was a “guest” of the Cuban government in a small detective bureau just outside Havana.
I caught a flight to Panama forty minutes later.
( IV )
At that very moment, Trace Dahlgren was reveling in the storied hospitality of the Cuban police, criminal investigation section. Immediately after her detainment,32 Trace was taken to a local police station and searched. Her personal belongings, including her satellite phone, were confiscated. She was taken into a back room and searched by a pair of older Cuban women armed with latex gloves. It was a full inspection, and while the women didn’t rough her up, it was neither pleasant nor gentle.
The matrons declined to give her her clothes back. Instead, Trace was handed a blue cotton work gown and some slippers and brought upstairs to a very cold interrogation room. There she was met by a frumpy detective in his mid-fifties who began by asking her to recount everything she had done since landing in Havana.
He wasn’t Sherlock Holmes, nor did he look all that interested in being there, so Trace played the role she figured he expected to see: a dazed and confused documentary producer who had no idea what she had gotten herself involved in. When he started questioning her about her credit cards, Trace immediately realized that they were somehow involved and became both vague and overly helpful, supplying details designed to make her look like a financial ditz.
The Cuban detective didn’t waterboard her or beat the soles of her feet. He did take down everything she said, writing it out in Spanish and working very slowly.
He also asked her to repeat the entire narrative four times.
By the fourth time she was getting testy. She knew it was part of a plan—the more someone tells a story, the larger the chance that discrepancies will creep in. Trace wasn’t too worried about being tripped up. Not only did she shorten the narrative each time around, but everything she said was true—she just left out the good parts of her visit. But Trace hates wasting time, and she had to fight against her natural inclination to deck the son of a bitch.
Finally around three in the morning she was shown to a cell in the basement and told she could sleep for a few hours.
“I want my clothes back,” she demanded. “And turn out the damn light.”
She did get her clothes back, but the light remained on. Someone came with breakfast at six the next morning. Breakfast was cold, watered-down coffee and a piece of bread so old it could have been baked by Columbus.
Trace demanded to see the Canadian ambassador. The man who took her tray said nothing. When no one appeared after an hour or so, she began repeating her request with shouts loud enough to rumble the walls. No one answered. In fact, for several hours the Cubans seemed to have completely forgotten about her. No lunch came, and there was no interrogation. Finally, around three or four—she had to guess at the time, since the authorities still had her watch—one of the policewomen who had searched her the night before came down to the cell, threw her shoes in, and told her to get her “fat ass” off the cot and follow her.
Trace Dahlgren has many assets, but a fat ass isn’t one of them. Still, she tried to stay in character, giving a fake quiver as she put her shoes on and followed the Cuban up the stairs. The policewoman had violated an important tenet of prisoner handling—never turn your back on the person you’re escorting—but Trace thought it was possible she was being released and decided not to jump her. That proved to be a good decision, not because the Canadian ambassador was waiting upstairs—he wasn’t—but because there were six men with AK47s between her and the door.
Another four were waiting to pack her into the back of a van. Once safely locked in, she was driven to San Miguel del Padrón, the section of Havana where the detectives responsible for “economic criminals” had their headquarters.
The detectives had a serious problem. Their
comments during the interrogation made it clear to Trace that they didn’t particularly like our friend José Martí, whose real name turned out to be José Martinez. But the ersatz Martí had probably been paying them off, and no one likes losing a source of easy income, especially in a place like Cuba. Meanwhile, his rivals were almost certainly paying the cops under the table as well. Their continuing to do so depended very much on their staying out of jail. Which wouldn’t happen if they were implicated in his death or any of the crimes that led up to it.
So at first blush, the arrival of a foreigner on whom everything could be blamed was perfect. The detectives didn’t even need to question her—they decided they would make up what they wanted and then forge her signature to a confession. She wasn’t even worth torturing.
But the attack on Fidel complicated matters. Before the detectives could pull everything in line, an order came from above to find the connection between the Martí incident and the attack on Fidel. The detectives “knew”—or thought they knew—that there was no connection. But that wasn’t going to be good enough for their boss, who saw this as an opportunity to outshine his opposite number in the political police, who were conducting their own inquiry.
Their dilemma was reflected in the questions they asked Trace when she arrived.
How long have you hated Fidel Castro?
How much did the Yankee imperialists pay you to kill him?
Who were the Cubans who were going to help you escape?
Trace kept her head and stayed to her original script, acting bewildered and confused. The detectives hounded her with questions for about an hour and a half before giving up, just in time for happy hour.
Junior had never been to Havana, so he spent the first several hours after landing there orienting himself to all the tourist highlights: every jail and police station within twenty miles of the center of town. By early afternoon, he had a reasonable understanding of the city’s layout . . . and the police precincts that went with them. We still hadn’t gotten word on where Trace was, so he turned his energies to procuring bicycles and motorbikes and stashing them around the city. Then he went back to his hotel to wait for Shotgun and Crusty.
Crusty didn’t get his nickname because he likes thick Italian bread. Rumor has it that even in his youth he was a cranky son of a bitch, and his mood hasn’t aged gracefully. He can charm the pants—literally—off women when he wants, but cross him and you’ll be grabbing for an asbestos bodysuit.
There’s only one thing worse—being late when you’re meeting him.
Shotgun and Crusty were supposed to meet at the Havana airport, near the large bank of doors leading to the parking lot and street. According to their planes’ schedules, Shotgun should have arrived about ten minutes ahead of him. But Shotgun’s plane was delayed by mechanical troubles, and by the time he finally got to Havana, Crusty had been waiting nearly ninety minutes. He’d never met Shotgun before, but we’d e-mailed him a couple of photos before he left Miami, and Shotgun is not exactly hard to pick out in a crowd.
“Where the hell have you been?” growled Crusty as Shotgun sauntered through the small crowd. “And what the hell are you eating?”
“Have you seen your aunt?” said Shotgun, using the code phrase we’d settled on so he could identify Crusty.
“Fuck my aunt. You know I’ve been waiting here for almost two hours?”
Shotgun started to laugh.
“What are you laughing at? And what the hell are you eating?”
“Crusty, right?”
“What are you eating?”
“Oreos. Want one?”
“What the hell would I want an Oreo for? You know what those things do to your digestive system? You want me to go irregular?”
“How’s your aunt?” said Shotgun, which was the backup question.
“She’s a dried-up old bitch. How’s yours?”
“Bakes a hell of a cheesecake,” said Shotgun. “Want to share a cab?”
“They’re all thieves,” said Crusty, starting for the door. “This place is worse than New York.”
Crusty haggled with the drivers until he found one willing to take them for half the going rate. But he didn’t haggle at the illegal hotel he’d picked rooms at—the proprietress was a curvaceous fifty-some widower who looked at least ten years younger.
At six, Crusty and Shotgun rendezvoused with Junior at a small restaurant in the old section of Havana. They were all together when I called them with the information about where Trace was.
“I want you to watch the place,” I told Junior. “Get a feel for who comes in and out, the routines, you know the drill. If Trace is moved, I want you guys to follow her. And we’ll need transport to the southern part of the island, and a couple of backups.”
“Got it, boss.”
“You’re just gathering intelligence,” I emphasized. “The whole team will be in tomorrow night. Be ready to move.”
Pretty clear, right? No ambiguity in those instructions.
I wasn’t in the restaurant with them, and none of them have been particularly candid about what happened after Junior killed the talk button on his phone. So I don’t know exactly what happened when. But I do know there was a conversation, and I’m guessing it went something like this:
JUNIOR: I know that place. It’s tiny. There are two floors and a basement.
SHOTGUN: Is there a fast-food place nearby?
JU NIOR: We can get her out ourselves. Why wait for Dick?
CRUSTY: There’s no reason at all. All officers think they’re God’s gift on earth. Everyone knows chiefs really run the navy.
SHOTGUN: I’ll do it if there’s a place I can get some Twinkies on the way.
There may have been more to it than that. Maybe Crusty acted as the voice of reason, trying to talk them out of doing anything rash, suggesting that they wait until I was there. It’s possible Shotgun wanted cupcakes instead of Twinkies.
Whatever exactly they said, by 6:30 they were on their way to spring Trace out of jail.
Their intentions were honorable, even admirable. But so are the paving stones on the road to hell.
( V )
I landed in Panama City about 3:00 P.M. The embassy sent over a marine in plainclothes to act as my driver. So much for any chance of acting below the radar.
Those of you following along at home probably think that Ken made such a big deal out of getting a “nongovernment” person in to help the Panamanians as part of the gum-ba-mint’s general reflex toward outsourcing dirty-hands jobs. I know that’s what I thought. But the reasoning turned out to be more complicated.
Or maybe a lot simpler. Because as the marine drove me to an industrial park outside Panama City, I realized that the operation had all the makings of a goat fuck. Not just a plain vanilla goat fuck, but a truly royal goat fuck, with bows, ribbons, and a fifty-piece brass band.
Make that 60 Minutes, congressional commissions, and general shoe stomping at the United Nations.
The surefire sign was a big-ass Cadillac with American flags on the fenders. The ambassador himself was involved in the “project.”
Wait, I’m libeling the wrong person. The deputy ambassador was calling the shots.
In the interests of brevity, I will spare you the well-deserved diatribe against the rolled-cuff denizens of Foggy Bottom. I will also admit, for the purposes of the legal deposition, that there are some hardworking, right-minded people in the State Department.
Two at last count, but one was nearing retirement age.
The deputy ambassador in question—we’ll call him Deputy Dog—was a sawed-off runt of a man in his mid-forties who thought of himself as a combination of Napoleon and Henry Kissinger. He spoke with a European accent, though he’d been born and raised in the Midwest. Even the sane states produce nut jobs every so often.
Deputy Dog strode across the large hallway at the front of the building as I entered. I put my hand out to shake. He put his on his hips.
“You’re Mar-c
hinko?” he asked. He came to about my chest.
“That’s Marcinko.”
“You’re an expert?”
“I’ve been around.”
He frowned, turned on his heel, and walked back across the room toward the open door at the far end. I turned to the marine and told him to grab a beer.
“I don’t drink, sir.”
“We’ll work on that later,” I told him. “For now, go relax and wait outside.”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
Don’t you love them when they’re young and corruptible?
The room Deputy Dog had disappeared into was a quasi-command center, complete with laptops, top-shelf communications gear, and more maps than Rand McNally prints in a year. Three or four dozen Panamanians, half in civvies, half in national police uniforms, scurried back and forth looking important, but probably doing about as much work as your typical Can’t-Cunt’s aide back at our Pentagon.
At the center of the room sat a table with a massive map of eastern Panama. Little plastic markers held various positions around the table.
Deputy Dog was restaging D-day.
Or at least he thought he was. He called the group to order, introduced me to his Panamanian “staff,” then proceeded to give a pep talk about how freedom, justice, and the American way hung in the balance.
Fortunately it was in English, so it’s possible a few of the Panamanians missed the nuances.
In my younger days, when I was bold and reckless, I would have sat and listened to maybe ten minutes of the speech before interrupting. Now I’m older and wiser, calmer, and even Zen-like in patience. I stopped Deputy Dog no more than sixty seconds after he started.
“Let’s cut all the bullshit here and tell what you’re planning,” I said. “And you can do it in Spanish. I understand enough to get the highlights.”
The Panamanians brightened. Deputy Dog reddened.
“I’m afraid you don’t understand the situation here, Marcinko,” he blustered. Still in English.
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