Havana Harvest

by Robert Landori

  “The money came from the BCCI in Montreal.”

  “So when are you going to Montreal?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon. I'll use the text of the letter of introduction you gave me for Cayman, but I'll have Mrs. Weisskopf change my cover name and the address and the account numbers.” Karyn Weisskopf spoke, read, and wrote seven languages fluently and knew her way around the Agency's labyrinthine administrative setup. In her eighteenth year of service with the CIA, she ran the organizational side of Morton's department with admirable efficiency.

  “You think we ought to go fully operational on this thing?”

  “Not yet. The topic is very delicate and we don't want any leaks. We shouldn't go fully operational before I've gotten hard evidence.”

  “What's your timing?”

  “It'll take me 'till Monday or Tuesday of next week to go positive on Casas and the mystery depositor being one and the same.”

  “How do you propose to do that?”

  “I'll get some pictures of Casas and show them around Montreal.” The expression on Lonsdale's face changed. He dreaded going back to Montreal and ripping open old wounds.

  “Are you going solo?”

  “For the time being, yes. Do you mind?”

  Morton thought about the question. He was beginning to perceive the immensity of what Casas was trying to achieve—if Casas was behind the whole thing. If Fernandez was real, if the whole thing was not a reverse sting.

  Lonsdale seemingly read his mind. “Scares you, doesn't it?” He gave Morton one of his cynical smiles that the Bostonian so hated. “If we call this one wrong we're screwed, but royally!”

  “Why?”

  “Why? For Christ's sake, Jim, there are only two alternatives. Either this thing is on the up-and-up, in which case Uncle Sam has a first-class chance to topple Fidel's regime, or we're looking at an elaborate sting against us, which could make us the laughingstock of the world if we allow ourselves to get sucked in.”

  “When I get back from Montreal, we'll do a preliminary report and the Wise Men can tell us which of the two alternatives looks more likely.” The Wise Men were a committee who oversaw the activities of the CIA's Plans Division, the “wet” end of the Agency, without whose permission no meaningful operation could be initiated.

  Morton was still not convinced. “But why would you want to solo? Why not arrange for full back-up from the word go?”

  “Jim, I don't much care what happens to me anymore, not career–wise, not any–wise. If I solo, and I call the shots wrong, they'll can me and disown me. They'll be in a position, and so will you for that matter, to deny any connection between me and the Agency. Rogue agent rises from the dead, hell-bent on revenge, demented with grief and rage, that sort of thing.”

  Morton felt awkward. “Are you telling me you'd be willing to lay your career on the line for this? That you're—”

  “What career, for God's sake? I'm at a dead end and have been for years, and I'm very happy about it. I've been eligible for retirement for a long time. I've stuck around because I've got nothing better to do.”

  “That the only reason?” Morton asked softly.

  Lonsdale looked away. “At the beginning there was this desire to revenge my wife's murder, but even that faded after a while.”

  A decade earlier, almost to the day, Lonsdale had been in a Montreal hospital under guard, recovering from a bullet wound in his shoulder, the result of an Islamic terrorist's failed assassination attempt.

  It had started to snow early that day and, by evening, a full-blown storm raged outside the windows of the Royal Victoria Hospital. Lonsdale—his name had been Bernard Lands in those days—had eaten dinner with his wife, Andrea, and they had turned in early, he in his hospital bed, she in the room adjacent.

  He had been restless, tossing and turning until he dozed off around two, and had slept fitfully for about an hour and a half, awakening in a cold sweat, trembling. His spare pillow and bedcovers were on the floor, the bed sheets all rumpled. He looked at his watch: three thirty-eight in the morning and, from what he could see, a blinding snowstorm still blowing outside. He got up awkwardly, favoring his wounded shoulder, picked up the pillow and bedclothes with his good arm, and threw them onto the bed. He walked over to the window and looked out; the storm was so bad that all he could see was a white glow: the diffusion of the parking lot lights off the sheet of snow in front of his window.

  He trotted over to the bathroom to relieve himself then wiped his face and neck with a wet towel. It was at that moment that he heard a noise, as if someone had thrown a snowball against the mosquito screen covering the window.

  He thought it was the wind. But then he heard the noise again and looked over to the window. An immense shadow was sliding into view from above. His instinct and training alerted him right away to what was happening, but he was powerless to defend himself. His pistol and walkie-talkie were on the night table beside the bed. He screamed for help.

  The window exploded into a thousand splinters of glass. Bullets and the smell of cordite filled the room. He crouched down between the toilet bowl and the bathtub, and watched, frozen in place, as the assassin's weapon raked his bed with long bursts of gunfire. The good Lord must have been looking after him, because he did not as much as get nicked by flying glass or the ricocheting bullets. The firing stopped as abruptly as it had started, and he knew very well what would come next: the familiar thud and rolling noise. He screamed “Grenade” at the top of his voice and dived into the bathtub.

  And that's where they found him, temporarily deaf, stunned, and with a nose bleed from the concussion. His head and injured shoulder were aflame with pain, but otherwise he was all right.

  Pandemonium had spread across the fifth floor of the hospital. The guard in the adjacent sitting room, hearing his charge's screams, had sounded the alarm on his walkie-talkie, but had time for nothing more. He was under strict order to protect the patient first and to worry about capturing any would-be assassin later.

  In theory, it was impossible for anyone unwanted to get near the patient; however, reality often creates screw-ups.

  The attack was over in less than a minute. It wasn't much time, yet it was time enough for many terrible things to happen. Andrea, awakened by the gunfire, had rushed to her husband's room, and was killed instantly by the grenade.

  Lonsdale shook his head to chase the image away and noticed with surprise that the pain of remembering the past was no longer as sharp as it once was; the years were slowly grinding away at the edges of his grief. He heard Morton ask, “So what drove you to work ten hours a day, six days a week for the last decade?”

  “I've told you. I had nothing better to do, and I needed to keep active. I needed something to occupy my mind.”

  Morton relented. He did not want to cause more grief for his deputy. The man was still hurting. “OK, so you'll go solo. Call us when you've got something. Call us even if you've got nothing. Keep in touch.”

  “Don't I always?” At the time, it seemed the right thing to say.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Wednesday

  Havana, Cuba

  Because Oscar De la Fuente was a very bad driver he was also a cautious one, something his wife, twenty years his junior and highly temperamental, could not abide. Whenever possible she would manipulate her husband into letting her drive by insisting that they take her car. Because he was head over heels in love with her and could deny her nothing, he would give in most of the time even though it riled him to be chauffeured around by a woman.

  But Oscar always drove on Wednesday evenings, when they ate dinner at the Marina Hemmingway's best-known watering hole, El Viejo y el Mar.

  The Marina Hemmingway, an agglomeration of hotels, restaurants, and summer residences, is a seaside resort about a half-hour's drive west of central Havana along the coast, and the in-place of the capital. Government leaders, important party officials, senior civil servants, as well as distinguished foreign visitors, mainly Eur
opean businessmen, congregate in the area at night, less for the expensive meal than for the high-octane atmosphere. Oscar would not have been able to bear his colleagues seeing his wife driving on their weekly outing.

  “Oscar, you're driving me crazy, crazy, crazy.” As usual, Maria Teresa made no bones about how she felt. “You drive like an old woman. At this rate I, too, will be an old woman by the time we get there.” De la Fuente gave her a quick sidelong glance and she pouted. They both burst out laughing.

  “You are an impatient wench, Tere. I'm at the speed limit, and we only have a maximum of five more miles to go. We'll be there in less than ten minutes.”

  “You're the only man I know who takes a whole hour to drive ten miles on a first-class highway. I wouldn't be surprised if Ivan got fed up waiting for us and left with one of the girls.”

  Her husband gave her another glance and she pouted again, but De la Fuente knew better than to say anything. The trick was to get his wife to the restaurant in as good a mood as possible; otherwise she'd ruin the evening for everyone and, to add insult to injury, deny him his conjugal rights later.

  De la Fuente had married Maria Teresa Montalba two years previously, after a year of intense courtship during which she had made him suffer plenty. The daughter of Cuba's Minister of the Interior and also a member of the Revolutionary Council, Maria Teresa, a striking beauty, was thirty and spoiled rotten. Born a year after the triumph of the Revolution to parents who doted on her, Tere, as she was known to her family and friends, was denied nothing. Her teenage excesses were forgiven, and her promiscuity in her twenties never mentioned: not in the press, not on radio or TV, not even by word of mouth. Nobody dared talk about Tere's exploits—her father was too powerful.

  Though Mrs. De la Fuente kept complaining about being late, she was actually very happy when people had to wait for her. It gave her the opportunity for a grand entrance to show off her new dress, created exclusively for her by her dressmaker who, safe in Cuba, had no scruples about knocking off Thierry Mugler's latest collection numbers. Petite and curvaceous, she had the ideal figure for this famous designer's outfits.

  With all eyes on her, Tere headed for the bar at the entrance to the dining room while her husband, three steps behind her, did his best to ignore the lascivious glances cast in his wife's direction by every man and woman in the place.

  As De la Fuente expected, Ivan Spiegel, the British businessman, dressed in a blinding white, intricately embroidered guayabera, black mohair slacks, and Gucci loafers, was at the bar, accompanied by two beautiful women. At five-foot-six in elevator shoes and reminiscent of Dudley Moore, he was an impeccable dresser, wiry, excitable, and funny. Plus, he was living testimony to the adage that opposites attract. He loved tall, well-endowed women, and probably because he treated all his dates generously and with great courtesy, he was much sought after in Havana.

  “Tere,” he called out, rushing to meet her. “What a striking ensemble.” He bowed and kissed her hand. “You look beautiful as ever!” Then he grabbed De la Fuente's outstretched hand and pumped it vigorously.

  “Nice to see you, Oscar, you old rascal. What'll you have to drink?”

  In spite of himself De la Fuente laughed. Spiegel's good humor was infectious. “We'll have margaritas, as usual,” he replied, and Spiegel turned to the bartender, “And make them doubles.”

  He helped Maria Teresa hop on the barstool next to a stunning redhead, smiled, and bowed again. “This is Gladys. They call her Zanahoria, carrot-head, because of her natural, beautiful hair color.” He looked at Tere suggestively. “All over, I might add.”

  She gave a throaty laugh and smiled at the girl. “How do you do,” she said, and then turned to the blond on her other side. “And you— what is your name?”

  Ivan was quick to answer for her. “Regina is Gladys's colleague.” He grinned and winked. Tere laughed. “You're incorrigible, you know that?”

  Ivan threw up his hands in mock resignation. “Can I help it that I'm a great success with women? I love them all.”

  The margaritas arrived and the maître d' came around with the menus. A quarter hour was spent chatting, choosing the food and selecting the wines. It was close to ten by the time they sat down to dine and they continued to eat right through the floor show.

  When the lights came on again the ladies excused themselves, and Ivan turned to Oscar. “Alone at last,” he said loudly with a sigh. His mouth was smiling, but there was no humor in his steel grey eyes. “What's up?” he asked quietly.

  De la Fuente guffawed, pretending to have just heard a great joke.

  “Operation Adios is blown,” he stated in a matter-of-fact voice.

  “How?” In spite of his considerable self-discipline, Spiegel, who was De la Fuente's CIA control, turned a sickly grey.

  Spiegel had started dealing with the Castro government as soon as the U.S. embargo had come into effect. Through his Spanish company, Celsa, he supplied Cuba with goods of U.S. origin obtained in Canada, in Holland, in the U.K., and wherever available. Celsa was, in a way, a predecessor of the Ministry of the Interior's Department Z, which Spiegel helped create when it became apparent that Celsa could supply only a fraction of Cuba's needs.

  Celsa continued to flourish not only because it provided very efficient service, but also because it supplied difficult-to-obtain non-humanitarian goods: tires for Havana's aged police Harley Davidsons that required specially constructed Firestones, reliable spare parts for Fidel's fleet of Oldsmobiles, replacement parts for the industrial culinary equipment at major hotels … The list was endless.

  Fidel's people considered Spiegel to be totally reliable because they thought his economic well-being depended heavily on the Cuban government's good will toward him. Did he not demonstrate his loyalty time and again by paying in advance for material destined for Cuba and then absorbing the loss when these were seized? At least that's how the Cubans interpreted the situation. The truth was that the losses were always made up to Spiegel by the Agency, since the “seizures” were pure theater, arranged to make Spiegel's “legend” seem even more authentic.

  Spiegel had been put in place by the CIA in anticipation of the emergence of an influential mole, a deep-cover asset. De la Fuente, the mole, was hypervaluable to the CIA and arrangements to keep his identity secret were commensurate with his importance. His existence was known only to the director of Central Intelligence, to the chairman of the Intelligence Oversight Committee, and to his control, Spiegel.

  Spiegel's father, a talented Jewish tailor from Hamburg whom polio had left with one leg shorter than the other, was forced to flee Germany when Hitler came to power. He crossed into France and ended up in the mess that was Dunkirk where the British were trying to save hundreds of thousands of their troops before the Germans drove them into the sea. A kindly sergeant had thrown his coat over the trembling young refugee's shoulders and helped him get on board one of the evacuation vessels.

  In London, Spiegel senior got a job as resident tailor at a well-known West End men's wear shop. A year later he married his assistant, a Spanish seamstress. Their son, Ivan, was born ten months following their wedding.

  Ivan Spiegel was lucky. He had a great talent for languages and as a child, picked up English, German, and Spanish with ease. He was also very intelligent. This prompted his parents to send him to the best “public” school they could afford and then worked their fingers to the bone to keep him there. They hoped their son would win a scholarship to either Oxford or Cambridge thereby ensuring his social and economic success.

  But a life of hard work was not for Spiegel. He breezed through high school with excellent marks then took a year off to live with his mother's family in the south of Spain. There he found his true vocation the year the Americans tried to invade Cuba: smuggling.

  The Bay of Pigs fiasco meant that the Castroites were cut off from most of the U.S.-made goods they needed to keep their country's infrastructure going. Spiegel recognized the opportunity and bega
n to sell such goods to the Cuban government through Celsa.

  By the end of the decade, Celsa had become well established and very profitable. Spiegel turned the running of the operation over to his uncle and returned to England where he started Delta Transport in the UK. Delta became a huge success within five years, then the roof caved in on Spiegel.

  Spiegel was the most unlikely CIA agent, which is what made him so valuable. The way he was recruited was equally atypical.

  After one of his frequent business trips, mellow and somewhat tipsy from the excellent wines and liqueurs he had consumed with his midday meal on board a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to London, Spiegel headed for the immigration lane at Heathrow reserved for British subjects. He stepped up to the desk of the Immigration officer whom he knew by sight from previous trips and handed him his passport and landing card.

  From his perch, the official squinted down on Spiegel and gave him a warm smile. “Mr. Spiegel, welcome home.” He beckoned to a commissionaire standing against the wall near the exit. “I understand you have been corresponding with the Airport Authority about speeding up admission procedures at Heathrow by establishing a 'fast lane' for first-class and frequent-flier passengers. The Authority finds your suggestion has merit and would like to have more input from you on the subject.”