Trained to Kill

by Antonio Veciana

  Others, like Matos, found themselves behind bars, serving out sentences in dank and dingy cells, rarely, if ever, allowed visitors. They remained like living ghosts, haunting reminders of what can come to pass for those the government felt threatened by—disappeared, in plain view.

  The truth is, Castro had charisma. But he was also taking measures.

  So, while the repression was nowhere near the level it would get to, where nearly everyone on the island lived in fear, it paid to be cautious. Bishop continued, in general terms.

  “Communism is a bad thing. The Communist elements in the government are gaining influence. Castro hinted at it at the May Day rally. President Urrutia complained about it when he resigned in July. Whether they name it as the reason or not, more high-ranking officials, ministers, are resigning or being removed.”

  He was right, of course. Intelligent, educated men who had flocked to Fidel’s side in his government’s opening days were now denouncing it, in word or in deed, showing their disaffection by stepping down.

  I had always been an open book about my feelings about Fidel. Even with his finance minister, my friend Rufo López Fresquet, the one who offered me a government position. When I turned him down, I said, “This guy reminds me of Porfirio Díaz, who switched from being a revolutionary to being a dictator.”

  “Castro?” Rufo responded. “You’re wrong. I know him. We are in the presence of a man who has the intellectual level of Martí, Maceo, and Máximo Gómez.”

  I was surprised, to say the least. Here was someone I would consider an intellectual, someone I knew, a man highly regarded for his knowledge, education, and acumen, one of Cuba’s leading voices on matters of finance and the national economy—even before accepting the post as minister—comparing Castro to some of Cuba’s greatest minds, our fathers of independence.

  He was my friend, so I doubt he ever mentioned my comments to anyone else. And I didn’t argue with him. But I know, in the end, he ended up agreeing with me. It hadn’t happened yet, at the time of my meeting with Bishop, but in just a handful of months, Rufo López would be out, too. And when I saw him then, he was terrified, wondering what the government might do to him next.

  Now, though, Bishop seemed to be able to see the future.

  “There will be more,” he said. “Things will get worse.”

  He looked at me steadily before continuing.

  “Things will get worse unless capable people, people like you, prevent it from happening. You can help us organize a resistance against Castro’s government. It would be a matter of time and intelligent labor. I believe you can do it.”

  He paused, locking my eyes again. “Are you willing to cooperate?”

  “But cooperate with what?” My voice dropped to a whisper. “Are you with the CIA?”

  He left the question hanging as took a bite of his food, chewed, and swallowed. I didn’t realize it then, but he was working his magic on me. His air of mystery, his confidence, the sense of joining some grand conspiracy—for good—were all seductively appealing. So was his directness.

  “I’m with an intelligence service. Don’t worry about which one. Are you willing to cooperate?”

  I was stunned. I stammered something about it being too soon, too hard to agree without knowing the details of what I was being asked to do.

  “I assure you that it’s not too soon,” he said. “The time has come to act. Your time.”

  I never thought of being of politician in Cuba. And I certainly didn’t think of being a spy. Not even of being a counterrevolutionary. I thought of being a professional, perhaps getting to an important position. I was an accountant, for God’s sake. I was surprised that they would be interested in me, that they would believe in me—an American intelligence service!

  Looking back, I think I had a double personality I didn’t realize I had. But they did. Because later, the things I did in Cuba … I would never have imagined on my own. Not without Bishop. He brought out a spirit of adventure I didn’t know I had.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  chapter 4

  A CONSPIRATOR’S COMMANDMENTS

  BISHOP SMILED.

  My answer was what he had been hoping for and, I believe as I look back now, expecting. He had led me to a place I didn’t know existed, and uncovered a part of me that was foreign.

  “Good,” he said. “I had hoped so.”

  I glanced around, trying not to look as apprehensive as I felt. “What do we do now?” I asked.

  “Now?” he responded. He leaned in, conspiratorially. “Now we finish our lunch.” He raised his glass, signaling the waiter for another. “Then I’ll be in touch,” he added. “There are certain tests you’ll need to go through before we go further.”

  “Tests? Like a written test? Or a physical examination?”

  He chuckled.

  “No,” he said. “Although we will be checking your pulse.”

  He smiled at my confusion. “We need to ask some questions,” he explained, “quite a few, as a matter of fact. To know more about you. About what you think.”

  “But you already know. You told me. You have your file.”

  “We know what you say. We want to know what you think. I’ll be in touch.”

  After lunch, we said our good-byes. I went back to the bank. I didn’t tell anyone about my meeting with Phillips, nor about the tests that I would be undergoing. I felt electrified—nervous and exhilarated at the same time. Suddenly, I could see myself becoming important in something as important as this was, standing up to the government, actually making a change. I wanted to do something—not so much for my country, but for my people. I’m not a patriot, per se. Not the flag-waving, José Martí kind, anyway. I saw people arrested. I saw people imprisoned. I saw what was happening to my people. And I wanted to do something about it.

  The days passed slowly as I waited for Bishop to reach out to me again. By the fourth or fifth day, I began to think he wouldn’t. I knew it wasn’t a government trap, that he wasn’t a Cuban security agent trying to test my loyalty. If he were, I would surely have been arrested right away. Perhaps as I stepped out of the Floridita. Or as I was getting up from the table. There would be no value in waiting.

  No, I thought he had changed his mind. Why else would it be taking so long?

  The sixth day came and went.

  On the seventh, the phone in my office rang.

  “I have a call for you, sir,” the receptionist said when I answered. “A Mr. Bishop.”

  Bishop told me to meet him the next morning at a building at the corner of 23rd and O, across the street from the Hotel Nacional. Oddly, or at least it seemed so then, he told me to have the taxi drop me off a block away. When I reached the building, Bishop was already there. He met me out front. We chatted for a few moments, until a driver pulled up in a big sedan, a Lincoln or a Caddy, black. Bishop told me to get in.

  The driver appeared to be another American. He greeted us in English. But after his quick “hello,” he fell silent.

  He drove us to an apartment building near the U.S. Embassy. He must have taken a back route, though, because I didn’t see it on our way there. And I didn’t see it as Bishop and I got out of the car and entered the building. Only after we were inside the apartment, some six stories up, and I looked out beyond the balcony, did I notice the embassy and realize where we were.

  The building was nothing fancy. And though the apartment appeared to be completely furnished, it, too, was nothing fancy. It looked like an average apartment for an average middle-class family. It was impossible for me to tell if anybody really lived there, but it was clear that Bishop felt perfectly comfortable in it. And he clearly wasn’t worried about any interruptions.

  A man was waiting for us in the apartment. I don’t know if he said his name or not. I don’t remember. He looked about thirty-five, with blue eyes and light brown hair. He was tall, slim, with strong arms. I got the sense that he was military, or had been in the military. It tu
rned out to be Dick Melton, a man I would see nearly daily for a month, although I would never know much more about him than his name. If it was his name.

  Melton asked me to take off my suit jacket and took me into a back room. That’s where I saw the balcony, and the U.S. Embassy beyond it. He pointed me to a wooden chair next to a table loaded with equipment.

  One of the machines turned out to be a lie detector. It was a big and bulky device with a number of cryptically labeled knobs and switches. Wires trailed off it, and after I sat down, Melton connected them to me one by one. One attached to a pair of metal plates he slipped onto two of my fingers. Two rubber tubes went around my chest. Melton slipped a blood pressure cuff around my arm. I felt it fill and tighten when he turned on the machine.

  “Relax,” he said. “This won’t hurt.”

  The machine hummed softly. A wide strip of paper began to move across it, under a set of pens as thin as needles that began to jiggle and leave jittery lines as the paper rolled past, like an EKG.

  “Have you taken any kind of tranquilizer?” Melton asked.

  “No.”

  Melton made a quick mark on the paper with his own pen.

  “Try to remain calm,” Melton continued. His Spanish was very bad, poorly pronounced and full of errors, but he insisted on speaking to me in my native tongue.

  “Please answer as honestly and thoroughly as you can.”

  The questions were written on sheets in a loose-leaf notebook. There were several pages of them. Later I could see that he had underlined several of them. I don’t know if that meant those were questions he had asked, or if those were questions where the answers had raised some issue. But the questions went on and on.

  I later realized there was a science to them, to the order and manner in which he asked them. There was even a science to the design of the room. I didn’t know it then, but it could have been taken straight from the CIA’s own manual on interrogation techniques.

  “The room in which the interrogation is to be conducted should be free of distractions,” it reads. “The colors of walls, ceiling, rugs, and furniture should not be startling. Pictures should be missing or dull.”

  Maybe that is why I have such a hard time remembering anything beyond Melton, the machines, and the U.S. Embassy beyond the balcony.

  “Good planning will prevent interruptions,” the interrogation manual continues. “The effect of someone wandering in because he forgot his pen or wants to invite the interrogator to lunch can be devastating.”

  Some interruptions, however, are intentional.

  At first, Bishop seemed uninterested in the questions. He sat in a chair by the wall and read some newspapers, rustling the pages loudly as they turned. He wandered in and out of the room.

  Melton ticked off questions in the notebook. He would look at the paper, ask me a question or two, then, if something interested him, or seemed to, he might ask another question or more about my answer. Every once in a while, he scribbled a quick notation on the graph paper on the lie detector, or circled a spike on the shaky ink lines.

  “Please state your full name,” Melton said.

  “Antonio Carlos Veciana Blanch.”

  “Blanch?”

  “My mother’s maiden name,” I said. “In Cuba, we …”

  Bishop cleared his throat. Melton moved on.

  “I understand,” he said. “What is your address?”

  I gave it.

  “Are you married?”

  I nodded.

  “Please answer out loud.”

  “Yes.”

  “What is your wife’s name?”

  He continued that way for a few more minutes, asking questions I knew he knew the answer to. Occasionally, he made another quick mark on the moving paper.

  The questions moved deeper—first into my past, then into my thinking.

  He asked me where I had studied. Who were the people in my circle of friends.

  They already knew a lot about me. He knew I had been with the Catholic Youth Organization. He knew I had been with the Radical Liberation Movement. Later, the group became supporters of Fidel Castro. But I was just a regular member. The movement had a radio program, but I never went to speak. I only paid the monthly dues to help keep it on the air, about two pesos a month.

  What did I think about the government? Did I have friends in the government?

  When I mentioned Rufo López Fresquet, Bishop rustled his newspaper loudly. It startled me. Melton circled a spot on the graph paper.

  “Tell me about Fresquet,” Melton said. “Are you close with Fresquet?”

  “Well, we don’t socialize frequently.”

  “Does he ask for information?”

  “No.”

  “Do you offer any?”

  “No.”

  Melton checked off a line in the notebook.

  “Who else?”

  I told him about my cousin Guillermo Ruiz, who had an important job in Cuban intelligence. Melton pressed for details: Were we close? Did I see him often? What did we talk about?

  I don’t know if they were already thinking it then, but I wondered if they were trying to find out if they could get me to become part of the government.

  “Have you ever supported the government?”

  “No.”

  “But you opposed Batista.”

  “Yes, but being against one dictator doesn’t make me a supporter of another.”

  “You think Castro is a dictator?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You ran for president of the accountants’ association.”

  “Yes.”

  “But not as a 26th of July candidate.”

  “No.”

  “Why?” Melton asked. He sounded truly perplexed. “Why would someone like you—an accountant, at a bank—stand up to them like that? Why make trouble for yourself?”

  I hesitated a moment. The answer was complicated. Curiously, I asked another friend of mine almost the exact same question a couple of years later, after we had both left Cuba. He replied, “These people don’t allow you to be neutral. If you’re not with them, you’re against them. They forced me to work for them. They couldn’t just leave me alone.”

  I was thinking the same thing sitting in that chair facing Melton. The government pushed you, until they made you an enemy.

  “They wouldn’t let me be neutral,” I said.

  Melton paused. The lie detector needles seemed remarkably still.

  “What do you think of the government?” Melton asked.

  I hadn’t yet reached the conclusion that Fidel was a Communist. I had my doubts about him, but I hadn’t arrived at that yet.

  “I think they’re a bunch of incompetents,” I said. “Dangerous incompetents.”

  The needles jumped again.

  “Have you ever received any offer for a position in the government?”

  I told him about Rufo’s offer.

  “Fresquet again.”

  “I turned him down.”

  Melton made a mark on the graph paper.

  “I have sent people to go to work in the government,” I continued, before he had a chance to ask another question. “Because the finance minister asked me for it.”

  “Friends of yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Still friends of yours?”

  “Yes.”

  He made a mark.

  Melton asked similarly penetrating questions about my schooling, about the rituals and rigors of the Marist school, about my religious practices. He asked about my involvement in Catholic Youth, and about other associations, clubs, and organizations I’d been a part of. About the accountants’ association. About the bank, my duties there, and the people I worked with. He questioned my thinking and political leanings, my critique of the actions of current government officials, including some specifically by name, whom I knew. He asked my opinions about world politics. He asked about my favorite pastimes.

  The questions seemed to go all over the p
lace. They were curious about what I had done against Batista. Were the civic organizations I was in the kind that placed bombs or did any of that?

  “No,” I said. “They were groups of people in opposition to Batista, but we would only sell bonds to finance the rebels or that kind of thing.”

  Melton’s questions about my career caught my attention. He asked about the various kinds of work I had done and the different positions I had held over the years. He was most specific about my current job at the Banco Financiero. He asked the exact time that I arrived at and left work, what kind of information I gave my supervisors.

  His goal, I would later learn, was to determine my responsibilities, habits, and routines, to know the details of my life. And more. They wanted to reveal my character, my beliefs. My sympathies. My values. They wanted to assess me as a person, to evaluate me as a candidate, to judge my capability as a conspirator. They wanted to determine how sure I was about my antigovernment feelings, how much courage I would have in difficult or dangerous times, and how much imagination I had for what they wanted to do with me.

  In short, to see if they could use me, and how.

  The questioning continued for close to two hours. Maybe more. By the time he turned off the machine, I felt drained.

  “Gracias,” Melton said. “You can go.”

  Bishop walked me to the elevator.

  “Remember,” he said, “you can’t talk to anyone about this. You can’t tell anyone. Not even your family. Nobody can know that you are in contact with us.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good,” he said. “You can catch a cab outside. I’ll be in touch.”

  He sent me down in the elevator alone.

  ANOTHER WEEK WENT by before Bishop contacted me again. This time, he picked me up at the bank. The car was different. Still large, American, but maroon, not black. He drove.

  We didn’t go back to the apartment. He drove along the Malecón, past the U.S. Embassy, through the tunnel leading to Miramar. We continued past the luxurious homes of diplomats and the wealthy, and on into the lush greenery of Country Club. Bishop parked in front of an attractive, ranch-style home.