Hunting Che

by Mitch Weiss

  Now it was Che’s turn to call out Rodríguez. It was obvious both men were fighting a proxy war in Bolivia, and neither one cared much for the fate of the South American country. Theirs was a bigger fight.

  It was democracy versus communism.

  It was good versus evil.

  It was the United States versus the Soviet Union and China.

  In the fall of 1967, it was a fight being waged all over the world.

  “You are not Bolivian,” Che said. “You know too much about Cuba and me.”

  “No, I am not,” Rodríguez said. “Where do you think I am from?”

  Che didn’t hesitate. “I believe that you work for the intelligence service of the United States.”

  Now it was Rodríguez’s turn to smile.

  “You’re right, comandante,” Rodríguez said. He told Che that he was Cuban. That he had been a member of the 2506 Brigade. In fact, he was a member of the infiltration teams that operated inside Cuba before the invasion at the Bay of Pigs.

  “What’s your name?” Che said.

  “Félix. Just Félix, comandante,” Rodríguez said.

  Rodríguez wanted to say more, but he held back. No, what good would it do at this point? Rodríguez knew he needed to get back to the table and continue copying the documents. As he left the room, he told Che he would return.

  At the table, Rodríguez continued snapping pictures of the papers. He stopped when the village’s schoolteacher approached him.

  “When are you going to shoot him?” she asked.

  “Señora, why do you say that?” Rodríguez asked.

  She told Rodríguez she saw him take a photo with Che. But the radio was reporting that the guerrilla leader had already died from combat wounds.

  Shit, he thought. With news reports of Che’s demise already broadcasting, he could no longer stall the inevitable. It was time.

  Before Zenteno had left La Higuera, he had asked for two volunteers to execute the prisoners. Warrant Officer Mario Teran and Sergeant Huanca, whose actions in battle had led to Che’s capture the day before, stepped forward. The plan was simple: Huanca and Teran would simultaneously enter the separate classrooms. Huanca would shoot Willy; Teran would kill Che. But Willy was already dead. Only Che was left.

  Walking back down the hill to the schoolhouse, Rodríguez went into the classroom where Che was still sitting on the little bench. Rodríguez stood in front of him. Teran, meanwhile, was waiting outside the door.

  “Comandante,” Rodríguez said. “I have done everything in my power, but orders have come from the Supreme Bolivian Command.”

  Che’s face turned pale. He knew at that moment that death stood at the door.

  “It is better like this, Félix,” Che said. “I should never have been captured alive.”

  “If I can, is there anything you want me to tell your family?”

  Che replied: “Tell my wife to get remarried and try to be happy.”

  Che approached Rodríguez. They shook hands and then embraced. Che was a man—a man facing his end with dignity. Rodríguez didn’t hate him anymore.

  Rodríguez released Che and walked outside. He stepped over to Teran and gave the Bolivian his instructions. “Don’t shoot from here up,” Rodríguez said, pointing above his neck. “This man was supposed to die from combat wounds. Don’t shoot at the face.”

  “Sí, mi capitan,” Teran said.

  Rodríguez walked fast up the hill to finish photographing the documents, putting as much distance as possible between himself and the schoolhouse. No, he didn’t want to see it. As a soldier he’d never killed a prisoner in cold blood.

  A few minutes after he reached his table, Rodríguez heard a short burst of fire. He looked down at his watch and recorded the time: 1:10 P.M.

  * * *

  After a firefight and sweep of the canyon, Prado and his men headed back to La Higuera to regroup. He was proud of his soldiers. They didn’t panic during the skirmish. They had lived up to their billing as an elite fighting unit. He was thrilled that Zenteno had watched them in action.

  As Prado approached the village, Ayoroa greeted him, but something was wrong. Ayoroa blurted out the news: Che had just been executed on the “highest orders.”

  Prado was stunned. That wasn’t what he’d been expecting. Prado picked up his pace, moving faster and faster, until he arrived at the schoolhouse. He rushed inside and saw the body. He knew Che was dead, but nothing could have prepared him for this. The body was riddled with bullets. Blood was spattered on the floor and walls. The schoolroom was a slaughterhouse, and it now was filling up with spectators.

  Prado examined Che’s face. His eyes were open, staring into his own. Prado shook his head in disgust. Just hours ago, Che was here, discussing imperialism and Bolivia. Now this was all that remained of him, a face gray and distorted. Prado was outraged. It’s one thing to kill in combat. That’s what soldiers do. But this was flat-out murder. Killing a prisoner in cold blood violated everything Prado had been taught about treating prisoners with respect.

  Prado didn’t like what Che stood for, or what he had done to his country. But that didn’t mean they had to use the same brutal tactics he did. That’s why they had courts. That’s why they had courts-martial.

  Without warning, one of the officers in the room struck Che in the face above his eyebrow, opening up a small gash. Some soldiers put their feet on the body.

  “You son of a bitch,” one soldier screamed at the lifeless figure on the ground. “You have killed so many of my soldiers.”

  Rodríguez and Prado looked on. Neither man felt the need to desecrate the corpse.

  To prevent further deformation of Che’s face, Prado took his handkerchief and placed it around the guerrilla leader’s lower jaw. Then he tied a knot in the handkerchief at the top of Che’s head. Someone remarked that Che looked as if he had a toothache. Nobody laughed at the joke. Rodríguez called for a bucket of water. Kneeling next to Che’s body on the muddy floor, he cleaned the guerrilla’s face.

  Time was short. Rodríguez dashed to the telegraph office and shot off a short message to the CIA station in La Paz about Che’s execution. His boss, John Tilton, wasn’t there, but surely someone would get the message and pass it along. Rodríguez had done everything he could. The news was on its way to Langley and the White House. He gathered his things and headed back to the school. The two o’clock helicopter was landing.

  A group of soldiers arrived with it and loaded Che’s body onto a canvas stretcher. They carried it to the airstrip and secured it to the helicopter’s landing skid. As he was helping tie the rope, Rodríguez’s hand slipped under Che’s body. When he pulled it out, it was covered in blood. Rodríguez wiped it on his pants.

  He clambered into the back of the helicopter and waited for it to take off. But the helicopter stood still, its rotors turning. Rodríguez spotted a mule trotting up the road, a priest on its back. The old man stopped short of the spinning rotors and scuttled, head bowed, over to the body. He made the sign of the cross and gave a benediction. Rodríguez was amazed at the irony. A hardened Communist and atheist was receiving the last rites.

  The helicopter lifted off for Vallegrande. Prado watched it go, and pondered the empty feeling in his chest. The image of Che’s torn body would stay with him for years.

  CHAPTER 24

  End Game

  Rodríguez’s head rang with helicopter din as he stared at the tangle of jungle below. Perched on the narrow bench behind the pilot, he shifted his weight to balance out the helicopter’s flight path. Che’s body was tied like a package on the right landing skid. Rodríguez hoped they’d fastened it tight enough. The last thing they needed was for the corpse to plummet into the forest. It was going to be hard enough explaining how Che died.

  Rodríguez remembered what the schoolteacher had told him: Official radio broadcasts claimed that
Che was killed in battle. Killed in battle? How the hell were they going to pull this off? Journalists would soon be crawling over La Higuera like cockroaches. They would uncover the truth in no time. Rodríguez didn’t know how the Bolivian government was going to cover its ass.

  Rodríguez took a deep breath. With Che dead, this was the first time since he’d arrived in Bolivia that he had time to reflect. He was twenty-six years old, but he had fought the Communists for almost a decade. Now he was bringing back one of the ultimate prizes. His three months of hard labor had borne strange fruit.

  Crammed inside the helicopter, Rodríguez had a hard time keeping his thoughts on the job. His wife and two young children didn’t know where he was, or when he would come home. Rosa wasn’t naive; she had a good idea of what he was doing. But Rodríguez wondered if he would ever be able to tell his kids the whole story. It couldn’t be easy for them, having a dad who disappeared and reappeared for months at a time.

  He loved those kids. But deep down, Rodríguez knew he would always be a soldier. He had fought Castro and the spread of Communism for most of his life. Che’s death was just one small victory in a longer war. Rodríguez would go where he had to in order to fight it.

  The jungle soon melted into mountain as the helicopter approached Vallegrande. Rodríguez hoped they would land near the barracks and not at the airport, where there would undoubtedly be a crowd.

  “Landing soon?” he asked Guzman.

  He nodded his head yes. “But not where you thought,” he screamed over the rotor. “They ordered us straight to Vallegrande Airport.”

  Since the hunt for Che started, Vallegrande had been teeming with journalists. What Rodríguez didn’t know was that two stories had already been published in Bolivian newspapers about Che’s capture. From the air, Rodríguez spotted the airfield. It was mobbed—at least two thousand people. Reporters and photographers pushed as near as they could to the landing zone.

  Rodríguez’s mission was still secret. None of the Bolivians knew his real name. Rodríguez didn’t want to be photographed with the body. There were already rumors that the CIA was helping the Bolivians. Rodríguez didn’t want to give them confirmation.

  The helicopter descended at 5 P.M. The mob surged forward to catch a glimpse of the body. The craft settled onto the pavement, and the crowd took a step back—no one wanted to get hit by the rotor. Time to escape. Tugging his Bolivian army cap down over his eyes, Rodríguez exited the left side of the helicopter. The crowd moved toward the body on the right landing skid. Moving as quickly as possible, Rodríguez disappeared into the crowd. To onlookers, he was just another Bolivian officer.

  Villoldo waited on the other side of the chopper. He’d returned to Vallegrande earlier that day and met with Zenteno. They discussed how to handle the press, and now he had to help dispose of the guerrilla leader’s body. When the helicopter landed, Villoldo and the Bolivian soldiers untied the stretcher and loaded it into an old gray ambulance. It was whisked down the narrow dirt and cobblestone streets to Neustra Señora de Malta Hospital.

  Instead of taking him inside the main building, the soldiers carried Che to a laundry room, a small structure on the hospital grounds. The building was open on one side and housed a long concrete basin with a spigot and hose. The staff started work on Che’s body. They removed his jacket and shirt, opened an incision in his neck to drain the tissue fluid, then washed down the body.

  Drs. Moises Abraham and Jose Martinez Caso examined the body and took notes on a small pad. Villoldo stood in the back and watched. In his green army fatigues, he blended in with the other officers.

  Che had gunshot wounds in both collarbones, with a compound fracture in the right one. Three bullets had peppered his rib cage, another had struck his left breast. The shots smashed into his lungs. Slugs were found in his vertebrae. The autopsy report listed eight wounds in all. The doctors determined that Che had died from “chest wounds and consequent hemorrhage.”

  Villoldo stared at the body. He thought about the thousands of other bodies washed and blessed and buried, all the lives this man had stolen and destroyed. Che was responsible for so many deaths. But most of all, Villoldo thought about his father’s body, the way it had looked curled up on the guest-room bed. This man had hurt his family. And now it was Villoldo who’d helped put an end to his deranged revolution.

  With the examination complete, the army permitted journalists and the thousands of curious Bolivians waiting outside a glimpse of Che, the mysterious guerrilla leader who had terrorized the nation for months.

  Quiet, stern campesinos filed past the makeshift bier. Flashlights danced along the walls and floor as they shuffled inside the laundry room. Once inside, the flashlights eventually stopped on the gaunt figure with the thick beard. Che looked remarkably Christ-like in death. His chest was bare, his wounds fully displayed. His hair was matted, his mouth slightly opened, and his dark eyes stared into oblivion. Even the Bolivian soldiers who had hunted him for so long were spooked. They paused to stare at the dead revolutionary until the guards ordered them to keep moving.

  Hours later, when the crowd thinned, the soldiers blocked off the room.

  Then the doctors did the unthinkable—they cut off both of Che’s hands. Castro could deny Che’s death, they said. This way they had proof that Che was really gone. Prints were lifted from Che’s amputated hands, which were then placed in jars of formaldehyde for safekeeping.

  Now they would have to find a way to get rid of the rest of the body.

  * * *

  Rodríguez could see the lights of Santa Cruz in the distance. It had been a long night. Hell, the last twenty-four hours had been a blur.

  After he left the helicopter, Rodríguez searched the crowd for Serrate, the operations officer, and Saucedo, the intelligence officer. The trio embraced. Rodríguez told them about his conversations with Che. They listened intently to the story and congratulated Rodríguez. Che was dead. The mission was a success. They could all move on.

  On the walk back to the safe house he shared with Villoldo, Rodríguez felt an odd sensation grip his chest. He wheezed as his lungs tightened—he could draw a deep breath in but couldn’t seem to push it out. Asthma. He’d never had an asthma attack before. Che had asthma. And every attack ever after took Rodríguez back to that day, to his “end of mission” moment of strange panic.

  He couldn’t relax yet. Rodríguez had to get the film with the Che materials to the CIA. He was tired, but he couldn’t take a chance of his cameras falling into the wrong hands—they were pure gold, spy-wise, and Bolivia hosted almost as many spooks as journalists. The Soviet agents tailed the Americans, the Americans kept tabs on the Soviets, and the Chinese followed everyone.

  Rodríguez jumped in his car and headed north to Santa Cruz Airport, hoping adrenaline would kick in soon. He boarded a flight to La Paz and from the airport took a cab to a hotel. There a CIA officer finally greeted him.

  “Here,” Rodríguez said, handing the man his briefcase with all of the film inside.

  “No, no, no,” the CIA officer said. “We’re going to take you to a place where you can talk to John Tilton. But first you have to shake your surveillance.”

  Damn, Rodríguez thought. He wasn’t in the mood for spy games.

  “You see anybody following you, put your briefcase on the left side and you shake them,” the CIA man said. “When you shake the surveillance, then you put it on the right side and we’ll pick you up.”

  Sure enough, when Rodríguez left the hotel, he picked up his tail, a Chinese. He’d been in Santa Cruz for too long; he wasn’t used to the thin air of La Paz. His lungs burned as he walked a zigzag route into the marketplace labyrinth. He needed to shed his tail and pick up his ride.

  Rodríguez headed for the thickest crowds, increasing his pace to a slow jog. He ducked into a carpet shop stacked with rugs and pillows. He ducked down as if to tie his shoe, and saw
the Chinese man trot past the shop entrance, his brow furrowed in consternation. Moments later, Rodríguez emerged from the market the same way he’d gone in. He switched his briefcase to his right side. A Volkswagen glided to a stop at the curb. The whole thing was a training mission, he found out later, testing to see if he followed directions. Rodríguez sat wheezing in the passenger seat as the car whisked him to a safe house.

  Debriefing took several days. Rodríguez gave the agency a detailed account of the guerrilla leader’s capture and execution, and accounts of his conversations with Che. He explained the contents of the diary—how important they were to the Che puzzle. He briefed the CIA officials on what Che did in Bolivia, his movements and critical tactical mistakes. When Rodríguez was done, he said his good-byes and headed home to Miami.

  * * *

  It was midnight in Vallegrande. Villoldo changed out of his usual fatigues, pulled on a gray sweater and a pair of jeans, slid his 9mm Smith & Wesson pistol into his pants. Che’s body had lain in the laundry for two days now. It was time to put him away.

  Che’s brother, Roberto Guevara, was expected the next day.

  Villoldo left his jeep at the safe house and walked the route to Señora de Malta Hospital. He passed outside the Hotel Teresita, where dozens of foreign journalists were holed up, drinking Bolivian beer. The streets were empty. Clouds blocked the moon.

  At the hospital gates, Villoldo met the truck driver and the Bolivian soldier sent to provide security. The hospital caretaker waved them through. They loaded the ripening bodies of Che and two dead guerrillas—Willy and Chino—into the truck and covered them with canvas. For this load, Villoldo didn’t want anyone to see the cargo.

  With the bodies secured, the three men climbed into the truck. Villoldo noticed that the driver’s hands were shaking. The soldier sat in the middle. Villoldo rode shotgun.

  They headed toward the Eighth Division Engineer Battalion headquarters at the airport. Just past the headquarters building they turned right onto a pockmarked dirt road. A new runway was under construction, and other parts of the airport were being refurbished or repaired. They rolled past a bulldozer and toward the east gate, an older part of the airport complex.