“Bloody friggin’ hell,” was his reply.
Sometimes, insubordination is a matter of viewpoint. I decided to ignore his comment. After another ten minutes of walking along a dirt trail, we found the railroad track and turned east, searching for the main road crossing. Just as I vaguely saw it ahead, we heard the crack of a twig snapping ahead of us and to the left of the track bed.
It was loud, as in a man’s boot breaking a thick twig. Not good. Insurrectos, our ostensible allies if we were given enough time to prove our identity, were too poor to have boots. They also were masters of silent stalking and walked carefully. My guess was unsettling: voluntarios.
We both instinctually dove into the ditch on the right, where some tall weeds gave some concealment. Normally, our movement would be a good idea. Most men are right-handed and their shots frequently wander to the right of their target. Thus we would be to the left of where their rounds would impact.
A solid volley of gunshots roared out, but not from the other side of the track, where the twig cracked. The blaze of gunfire came from our side, right down the line of the ditch ahead of us. I registered it wasn’t the deep booms of the older rifles and shotguns carried by the voluntarios. No, they were the high-pitched cracks of Mauser rifles.
That meant our opponents were regular Spanish army troops. This wasn’t some unmotivated draftee outfit either. They were out patrolling at night, responding to quiet commands, and aggressively filling the dead ground with bullets. The twig had been a decoy, and their rounds were most definitely not wandering to the right—they were incredibly accurate, scything the air within inches above us. We pawed down into the slimy mud.
“Where’s the Extra?” I yelled to Rork, referring to a special dynamite explosive I’d insisted on bringing with us.
“In the bloody sea bag right next to you.”
I frantically searched our sea bag. After what seemed an eternity, I found what I wanted at the very bottom.
Another volley blasted down the ditch toward us, the bullets zipping like bees. One thudded into the sea bag. Another severed a cane stalk next to my face. The flashes were at ground level and I realized how they had targeted us so effectively—the Spanish had lain low as we approached them, silhouetted nicely against the moonlit horizon. “Damn it all to hell, those bloody bastards’ve nicked me arse!” I heard beside me.
We hadn’t returned fire yet and the Spanish would rush us any second. We had to get out of the ditch.
“Dammit Rork, can’t you be a little quieter when you’re shot? And I need a match for the Extra. I seem to be out.”
“Cor blimey, how in hell can you be without a bleedin’ match to light the dynamite? Here.” There was the sound of a scratch but no flame. “Friggin’ thing’s wet as a diaper.” Another scratch, and a whoosh. “Here, this one’s workin’ fine. Hand me the damned stick.”
I heard an officer calmly order some soldiers to circle our right flank. We were getting boxed in against the railroad bed. Handing the stick of dynamite to Rork, I soon heard a sizzling fuse.
“Hand it back. I’m a better pitcher,” I said, which he did.
“Run to the right when it goes off,” I added, closing my eyes at the final moment to preserve my night vision. “And keep running!”
The explosion went off above the ground where the Spanish officer’s voice had been, about sixty feet away from us. A solid mass of searing hot air slammed into me. I jumped up, put the sea bag to my shoulder, and ran out of the ditch and away from the tracks, Rork loping along next to me. No reaction came from the Spanish at first, then stray shots began to ring out.
We ran until we could run no more and dropped gasping into another drainage ditch. I was now hopelessly lost—somewhere north or east of the main tracks was all I knew. Neither of us spoke for some time. We couldn’t get enough air to form words.
“Welcome back to hell, me boyo,” croaked Rork after a while. “Cuba’s just too bloody much fun, ain’t it?” Another gasp. “Oh Lord, me bones’re far too old for this sort o’ thing anymore. An’ me arse is still bleedin’—there’s no artery there, right?”
“Not an important one. It’ll stop when we rest. By next week your arse’ll be fine.”
We were looking for a place to stretch out when I heard the baying of a hound from behind us. Two more dogs joined in.
“This isn’t getting any easier. Those’re bloodhounds, Rork. Let’s go.”
Rork groaned again. “Ah, hell. Let’s just sit here an’ shoot the whole damned lot o’ `em, an’ then ourselves.”
I was about to explain the folly of that idea when the bushes rustled to our left and a voice called out in French-accented English. “Good morning, my sons. May I offer you a ride?”
I spun around with my revolver leveled, but didn’t fire.
It was R7.
17
Too Much Fun
Near Jibacoa, Cuba
Tuesday evening
18 January 1898
In my shock, I blurted out, “Jacques Lizambard, you beautiful old son of a bitch!”
“Now Peter,” he answered with mock severity. “Is that any way to address a well-respected septuagenarian Jesuit priest? Especially from an officer and gentleman such as you, named after one of our most beloved saints.”
Rork leaned over and shook the priest’s hand. “Aye, Father Jacques, we shan’t expect much at all from me boyo here. He’s a heathen heretic o’ the worst sort—a Methodist, o’ all things. Will ye please pardon a good Catholic lad such as meself, the sin o’ associatin’ with the likes o’ `im?”
“Asked and done, Sean. But you really should get Peter on our team. I think he’d be happier.”
The hounds bayed again, this time far more excitedly, and much closer. I estimated a hundred yards, at the most.
“Can we postpone this religious discussion to another time, gentlemen. Jacques, you said something about a ride?”
“Of course, Peter. My carriage is right over there.” He pointed fifty feet away, where a landau with two horses waited in the moon shadows cast by some trees. We ran to it.
I couldn’t believe what I saw when we got close. The landau was parked in a palm grove, adjacent to the main Aguacate-Santa Cruz road where it crossed the tracks. There was even a large sign post for the locomotive driver. I must have led Rork within a hundred feet of it and still missed the rendezvous point.
Someone shouted an order and the dogs were released, the baying mixed with growling. A gunshot cracked toward us. Then another.
“He was here the whole time? Bloody damned friggin’ hell . . .” grumbled Rork as we climbed aboard and got under way. “You’re gettin’ daft as a donkey, Peter.”
“Sorry, Rork,” was all I could think to say as the carriage accelerated away from the scene. Jacques seemed amused by the entire experience. Ignoring the mortal chaos behind us, he quipped, “We all make mistakes, Peter. Did I ever tell you about the time I accidently shot the bishop of Santa Fe during a bird hunt? I think we have time, because we’ve a long way to go.”
As we hurdled down the faintly moonlit road, Jacques proceeded to regale us with his self-deprecating tale of peppering a bishop with birdshot, and the ensuing transfer to a small church in the jungles of the Philippines. As we held on during the bumpy ride, I thought about our remarkable rescuer, a very unlikely spy.
Father Jacques Lizambard, originally of Bordeaux in France, had been a priest of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, for a long time. He was a tall thin man, still in good physique at seventy-one years of age. The lined face was ruggedly handsome, framed by thick snow-white hair and a thin goatee and mustache, with eyes tinged by a latent sadness. A life in the more perilous parts of the Catholic world had produced a sense of perspective about danger, and calm in the face of death. Extracting us from the clutches of the Spanish Army did not even rise to the level of worry
for Lizambard. He’d been through far closer calls.
With a suave Continental charm to match his looks, Father Jacques was a frequent dinner guest among the Cuban, Spanish, and foreign elite in Matanzas. Fluent in Italian, Spanish, English, and French, not to mention classical Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, like all Jesuits he was highly educated and could hold his own in conversation with any academic, theologian, politician, or mogul.
After a lifetime of dedicated service around the globe, he’d found a final home in Cuba, the climate of which was beneficial for his increasing rheumatism. The culture was agreeable to his tastes and his devotion to the people of the island and their eventual freedom was genuine. That was why he agreed to help me and became Agent R7 fifteen years earlier. His role in my Cuban network was facilitator of transport and information, never anything lethal.
Naturally, women inwardly lamented Lizambard’s life choice, but clearly loved to be around him. So would Theodore Roosevelt, I estimated. The two of them could have long discussions on flora and fauna, for Jacques was a teacher of biology at the university, and specialized in tropical birdlife. The priest would be utterly fascinated by Theodore’s dead animal zoo at Sagamore Hill. They would have, as Theodore likes to say, a bully of a good time together.
Jacque and I first met when he worked for Father Benito Viñes, a mutual friend who taught astronomy and meteorology at the Belem University in Havana. Two years later, Rork and I were on the run from Colonel Marrón, following a quite chancy operation which had completely fallen apart. Benito helped us escape the island. Jacques had assisted.
Since then, Jacques and I corresponded regularly. From the beginning, it was more than an acquaintanceship. Occasionally, we shared information pertinent to our interests and needs, which every now and then converged. The information he gained went to Rome. Mine went to Washington. It was “an unlikely symbiotic relationship,” to use his scientific description.
Sometimes this was accomplished via coded messages in cables or letters, sometimes in person at the bar of the Victoria Hotel in Nassau. He preferred the latter, it being far more enjoyable, and the evening would go late indeed. Meeting Jacques in Nassau was always a considerable burden on my expense account, but it frequently yielded substantial intelligence of Spanish and Cuban activities. One of his gems was that he knew the names of all the disgruntled girlfriends of the married Spanish authorities in Havana and Matanzas.
There was yet another aspect to Father Lizambard. Though he was outwardly obedient to the official political position of the Church that Cuba should stay in the Spanish Empire, I knew his personal leanings. Jacques was quietly in favor of the Cuban rebels’ cause of freedom.
Unlike most of my other agents, money never changed hands between Jacques and me. Our exchange of information and assistance was a matter of mutual professional courtesy. Among spies, it is the best kind of bond.
18
Blue Mold and Black Shank
Sagua Grande, Cuba
Wednesday
19 January 1898
It was very a long ride, done mainly on the coastal road, sometimes known as the King’s Highway. Several civil guard or voluntario roadblocks were encountered en route, but Father Jacques was always waved through when they saw his collar and cross, for the Church and the Crown were intertwined. Senior Jesuits were almost untouchable and Jacques was the well-known rector of Jesuits in Matanzas. Exchanging horses at several churches and small liveries along the way, we arrived the next morning, Wednesday, at a rural monastery.
Once there, we were cared for by the resident Franciscans who, after a closed-door conference with Father Jacques, never asked our names, nationalities, or the reason for our odd accoutrements. I expected sullen hostility, but was wrong. Quite the contrary, they were quite pleasant. Rork’s embarrassing flesh wound was treated. Our bodies and attitudes were rejuvenated by decent food and wine, served by smiling monks who quietly padded around the place. Only the head fellow actually spoke to us. The others were observing a period of contemplative silence. Most importantly of all, Rork and I got total rest in real beds. It was nothing short of heaven on earth.
The monastery was in the province of Santa Clara and located near Sagua Grande, over 150 miles east of where Jacques had rescued us. This was fortunate for our mission, because Sagua Grande was where I was to meet my next agent, R94, who held an important nexus in the espionage network. It was Jacques, in fact, who had brought R94 into the fold, back in November, recognizing the potential benefit of the man’s occupation and political leanings.
At eight o’clock the next morning, our recuperation ended and Jacques, Rork, and I were back in his landau, heading for a tavern in the center of town. There we would meet R94.
Rork and I were clad in middle-class attire appropriate to our new roles. I was a Canadian tobacco broker of Danish heritage named Peder Fisker, and he was an Irish shipping broker named Patrick Clooney. We had the identity documents, business papers, and belongings to prove ourselves to any inquiring policeman. Our sea bag of weapons, both long and short, was padlocked and labeled “hockey sticks—McGill University—Montreal.” The label was my idea, which I thought rather inspired. Our revolvers were under our coats and ready for use. Our excuse for possessing them was “to ward off the notorious rebel bandits of Cuba.”
During our ride into Sagua Grande, a town of fourteen thousand, I asked Jacques for a briefing on how the war had affected the local area. He reported most of the sugar plantations, and nearly all the sugar grinding mills, had been destroyed by General Gómez’s forces. The tobacco plantations had fared slightly better, some being owned by Americans and Germans who paid “taxes” to the Cuban army. Much of the livestock everywhere was dead, taken for food or transport by both armies. Many of the countryside peasants had gone over to the Free Cuban side—that way they could find something to eat. In summary, the area was devastated financially and commercially.
A major military factor in the area was the trocha, or north-south barrier line of Spanish fortifications extending from the Caribbean southern coast to the Straits of Florida on the northern coast. There were several trochas across Cuba, each one a theoretical wall beyond which the Cuban rebels could not pass. In reality, they were traversed by small Cuban units frequently. Still, I recognized them as a military obstacle to be reckoned with in any war.
We entered the town, which immediately impressed me by its layout, much more orderly and city-like than most towns in Cuba. The streets were wide, with modern sidewalks and solid-looking buildings. But you could tell it had seen better times, for the avenues and buildings were mostly deserted. Paint was peeling. Trash lay in piles. Vehicular traffic was sparse, with few carriages in the class of ours.
The tavern, which lacked a name on the front, was emblematic of the forlorn atmosphere. The place was falling apart, with wide gaps in the boards of the walls and a front door barely attached by one hinge. It was located on a side street down by a railroad bridge across the eighty-foot-wide Sagua Grande River, a grandiose title for the sluggish stream I saw. I asked Jacques for details about the river, couching my inquiry in a bored tone to hide the fact it might be of vital importance.
He said it made its way ten miles north to the coast, where there was a little village called Isabela on the west side of the mouth. Jacques shook his head when explaining the village, saying it was a nondescript collection of structures on pilings along the edge of a swamp, populated by mostly rough lower-class types who were known for their “aversion to societal norms.” I asked for clarification.
“They are mostly drunks, prostitutes, and thieves. A modern day Sodom and Gomorrah in Cuba. Very bad place.”
But, he announced, Isabela did have a significant attribute. There was a wharf, used by medium-sized cargo ships of less than a thousand tons. A twenty-foot-deep ship channel meandered south from the Straits of Florida, through the coastal mangrove islands, across a bay to th
e Isabela docks. Sugar and tobacco were the main cargos out, coal and manufactured goods were the primary import. Alongside the well-used road between Isabela and Sagua Grande was a parallel railway line. Just south of Sagua Grande, it connected to the main railway and thus cargo could go to and from the interior. In the last three years of war, however, the docks and railway had been little used.
The tavern was empty of patrons when we walked in. A woman of indeterminate age, and in serious need of a shave, was desultorily cleaning bar glasses. We waited for her welcome, but none came. She did pause to swat some large purple flies on the wall, after which she wiped her nose on the cleaning rag, which then was used for more glasses.
I had been a bit thirsty until I saw that. Rork, who is not known for being picky on the subject of female company, looked at her and winced, suggesting breakfast at an abattoir might be more appealing.
“Please remember we are all God’s children, Sean,” admonished Father Jacques, who then nodded ruefully and quietly added, “I do see your point, though.”
The woman grunted something unintelligible and gestured to a table near the back corner. When we sat down, Father Jacques tried to take the social high road, flashing his best smile at her, but it didn’t work. She glowered at him and grunted another phrase, which I believe was something about breakfast. Irked by his rare failure at charming one of God’s children, Jacques curtly acknowledged her and held up four fingers. She grunted something else, sounding none too pleased.
“Obviously not a good Catholic,” he muttered to the floor. Rork soberly nodded his concurrence. I tried not to laugh, more than a little afraid of her.
Agent R94 arrived a few minutes later. From Jacques’s cables, I knew the basics about him. Raul Gonzart was the twenty-five-year-old son of a Cuban widow who recently married the elderly German owner of a small tobacco farm. Gonzart had been to school and spoke English fairly well. He was a quiet supporter of the insurrectos and had the important post of senior telegraphist at the post office in Sagua Grande. Even more important for my purposes, he sometimes worked at, and always had access to, the telegraph station at nearby Santo Domingo, which was where the cable lines from both north and south coasts intersected the main line from Santa Clara to Havana.
An Honorable War Page 9