My mind returned to the situation at hand. I watched the informant enter the Saint Francis Inn’s garden courtyard. Seconds later, Rork followed him in from the street. Ensign Jefferson and Lieutenant Singer were in their positions at separate tables in the courtyard, scanning for any strangers. Their duty was to prevent interference, by force if need be. After a final check of the streets, I vacated the balcony, went into my room, and made a last-minute survey of our preparations. All was ready.
The two chairs and a coffee table were arranged just inside the west window. In the southwest corner, behind my chair, stood a table, atop which were two potted geraniums. Between them was a new Kodak box camera—precisely six feet, six inches away from the chair across from mine. Maximum effective range for this scenario. The camera’s lens was aimed exactly at the far chair, which would be the informant’s. At that moment of the day, a shaft of sunlight focused on the chair as if one of Mr. Edison’s electric searchlights had been trained upon it.
Draped over a table in the background of the Spaniard’s chair was a vividly new American flag, surrounded by red, white, and blue flowers. It was displayed artfully as a patriotic commemoration of the upcoming one hundred and twelfth anniversary of our nation’s declaration of independence, to be celebrated in five days. It was also nicely within the view of the camera. I wanted there to be no doubt as to the location of the transaction.
A new-fangled photographic device, the Kodak is an amazing implement, a true wonder of our age. The thing can record one hundred pictures on a length of papered film rolled up inside the boxlike apparatus. It requires no tripod and hood, no wet plates dripping in chemicals, and no complicated development process.
One simply depresses a button to capture the scene. When you desire to make another photograph, you merely turn a tiny crank to advance a new section of film to the aperture. When you reach the end of the roll, you send the box off to the company in the mail. In a few days they send you the photographs and the box with a new roll of film. No longer is photography the realm of the few. In fact, the designer, an energetic young man named George Eastman, touts it as a camera for the general citizenry and sells his invention for twenty-five dollars each.
I’d met Eastman when he came to Washington a month earlier, in May, to present one of the first of his Kodaks to President Cleveland. Commodore John Grimes Walker, chief of the Bureau of Navigation, and thus of the operations at the Office of Naval Intelligence, was with me at the time. After hearing Eastman’s explanation of how the camera worked, the commodore turned to me and quietly said, “Get one of those for us. ONI could use it.”
I did, and now was using it clandestinely for the first time, in a role I’m sure its creator never imagined. To make sure it would work properly, a week earlier I had photographed Rork sitting in that same chair, illuminated solely by the sunlight at the exact moment of its maximum intensity. It had come out a bit darker than optimum, but was recognizable enough for our purposes.
Most importantly, we’d heard just the tiniest click from the trigger button, which had been modified by Eastman before we’d left Washington to make it smoother. He didn’t know the camera was being used for cloak-and-dagger purposes by the intelligence service—Rork told him it was for his elderly grandmother in Boston who lacked the strength to depress the standard button. A shameless lie. Rork’s grandmother died in Ireland thirty years ago.
Everything in the room appeared ready, but my insides were churned up like a bilge in a storm. This scenario was the culmination of dangerous work in Havana, Nassau, and now, Saint Augustine. In five minutes, it would finally be done. The contents of the valise would be in my hands. By the next morning, they would be in a sealed navy envelope guarded by Jefferson and Singer aboard a train heading for the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington.
In two days, Commodore Walker and Admiral Porter would be reading the material. I would be on a well-deserved annual leave at my island in southern Florida. I should have been contented by the situation, but I wasn’t.
So far, everything was going much too well.
2
The Coup de Grâce
The Saint Francis Inn
Saint George Street
Saint Augustine, Florida
Saturday, 30 June 1888
I’d chosen the Saint Francis Inn because it was small and away from the center of town, but close enough to the army barracks on the waterfront two blocks away, if things got deadly. Not that we told the army about any of this. They didn’t need to know, and would only complicate it if they did.
As far as civilians in the area were concerned, by June tourists were gone and there was little other activity. I was lucky the inn was still open this late into the summer. My informant might have been noticed, or even worse, recognized, if he’d stayed at the more aristocratic Ponce de Leon or Alcazar hotels.
He’d done exactly as told, contriving a furlough and trip to New York to see a distant relative and the opera, a passion of his. Taking the Ward Line steamer from Havana to New York, he’d gone ashore at her first port of call in Nassau and there met with one of my network. Then, instead of continuing onward with the Ward ship to Charleston and New York the next morning, he’d quietly boarded the weekly steamer from Nassau to Jacksonville that carried the highly prized roses of New Providence Island to the American market.
It was a journey calculated to deceive any of his compatriots who doubted his reasons for departing Havana, and to facilitate an alert to my operatives if the Spanish had men following him. Neither had evidently occurred. The ruse had worked.
Inside the valise was supposed to be the 1888–89 repair schedule of the Havana naval yard for the Spanish navy’s squadron in the West Indies, along with the naval coal depot reports from Havana and Santiago de Cuba. With it in our possession, we could see dramatic proof of the true state of readiness of our potential enemies, instead of relying on rumor or anecdotal third-hand indicators. Periodic war scares with Spain over the previous fifteen years had engendered the need for such factual intelligence. Rather than basing decisions upon what the press blathered or the diplomats simpered, real knowledge of an adversary’s capabilities is invaluable in planning political responses, or naval actions. The endeavor to obtain such knowledge was judged to be worth the risk.
***
Three solemn knocks sounded on my room door—Rork’s signal. I opened it and ushered the two of them inside. Closing the door, Rork remained there, arms folded as he glared ominously at our guest. The Spaniard hesitated, his eyes on Rork’s imposing form, then crossed the room and slowly sat in the chair I indicated.
I kept my voice firm, the volume low, to better set the atmosphere. I wanted him intimidated, not terrified. Intimidated men perform as expected. Terrified men do not.
“Señor Paloma, please enjoy some orange juice after your long journey. This won’t take long, and then you’ll be on your way. Did you bring what we discussed?”
Paloma’s eyes lingered on the American flag arrayed behind him, then quietly answered, “Yes.”
He ignored the pitcher of juice on the table between us and handed over the valise, which I opened, withdrawing three files. Over the next ten minutes, I read each of them twice as he sat there fidgeting. The files confirmed what I’d suspected, but hadn’t been able to prove to my commanders until then.
The Spanish fleet was not in a state of preparation for war. It was, in fact, in dire need of maintenance and replacement of its ships and equipment. The schedule at Havana’s naval arsenal had been prioritized to work on ships in the worst shape, allowing the others to lapse into a state of decrepitude. The marine railway was inadequate to handle anything more than a small gunboat and the floating dry dock was down for repairs. Incredibly, there was no way the Spanish Navy could work on their hulls in the Western Hemisphere.
I noted that the time allocated for repairs on a ship was three times lon
ger than a similar period at one of our naval facilities, suggesting that the Havana base’s tool, iron, and boiler shops were in need of upgrading also. Some of Spain’s ships based in the West Indies were relatively new and powerful, but they, like all modern machines of war, required constant skilled attention to remain ready for battle. According to what I was reading, that attention wasn’t available.
The files on naval coal stocks at both Havana and Santiago de Cuba showed they were too low to fuel the entire squadron simultaneously on a war sortie. No more bituminous or anthracite coal was scheduled to be deposited at either depot for another six months. The loading rate for Havana was only 500 tons a day, for Santiago it was even less, at 100 tons.
This was telling information that no country would want public. But we already knew the approximate coal reserves through another source—I used it as a check on the accuracy of Paloma’s repair yard data, to ascertain if we were being given false information. We weren’t. Paloma had not been turned into a double agent against us.
All in all, what I held in my hand was an extraordinary intelligence coup.
I looked up at him and willed my tone to be unimpressed. His English was halting, but he could understand well enough. “This appears to be what was expected. Señor Casas has explained what you are to do next, now that this is delivered to me, correct?”
After a resentful sigh, he mumbled, “Yes.”
I didn’t care if he was upset. I needed to be certain he knew what to do. His life, and far more importantly, the future of the operation, depended on it.
“Then explain it to me.”
He spoke slowly. “This afternoon, I am to take the train north to Jacksonville, just as I took it down to this place. At the station in Jacksonville, I take another to the city of Charleston. There, I take the . . . the Atlantic Coast Line train to Richmond, in Virginia. At that place, I take the . . . the Richmond . . . Fredericksburg, and Potomac train to Washington. There, I get on the Pennsylvania Railroad train to New York. I will be in New York on the morning of . . . Tuesday, the third day of July.”
“And Casas advised you what would happen if you did not fulfill your future obligations to me?”
He looked at the floor. “Yes. If I fail to do what is expected, my superiors will know of my . . . personal life.”
“Very good. You understand. And now I will give you your expense money, Señor Paloma. One hundred dollars, as agreed.” I took out a wad of five-dollar greenbacks and laid it on the table.
He looked at it for a time, then put the wad in his pocket, his body slumping as he did so. Paloma was resigned to his fate—assisting the despised norteamericano gringos. Good, it was time to let him know what was coming next.
“In November, you will get Casas a job at the naval arsenal in Havana. It will be a foreman’s job, with access everywhere. We will be in touch as to exactly how and when.”
He barely moved his head in assent. When he spoke it was a whisper. “You said you would give me my photographs back.”
Paloma fancied himself an artist with the camera, developing his own plates at his home. But his artwork was nothing that would appeal to the public. It was for his own private use. “Yes, I did, Señor Paloma. Here are your photographs. And I want you to count that money in my presence right now—just to show that I have not cheated you.”
The Spaniard brought out the bills and began counting them as I shoved three photographs across to him. In the background, Rork had quietly moved across the room to the corner table behind me. He yawned and stretched his arm out over the table, then coughed just as Paloma finished counting and picked up the photographs.
Money in one hand, photographs in the other, with the American flag in the background—an instantaneous fragment of time that would incriminate the Spaniard beyond any plausible explanation. Rork timed it perfectly. I heard the Kodak click faintly. Preoccupied, the Spaniard didn’t.
He looked at one of the photographs I’d given him, then put them all inside the valise, his hands trembling.
“I am not a bad person, Commander Wake.”
“I never said you were, Señor Paloma. But I doubt whether your superiors would share my tolerance. Mere homosexuality goes against the teachings of the Church. But your sexual preference is sometimes known as a crime against innocence. You might want to destroy those pictures.”
He was shaking, about to cry. A very different deportment from the first time I saw him, arrogantly berating a waiter at the Hotel Inglaterra in Havana for failure to display proper respect to a senior official.
It was time to end this, before he lost all self-control—and ability to function as he was expected. I stood up. “Mr. Rork will escort you to your train. Good luck, Señor Paloma. Until we meet again. Don’t forget to destroy those photographs.”
He lifted himself out of the chair, but the attitude suddenly changed. No longer were his eyes timid. Now they smoldered at me. The old Paloma was emerging. Humiliation had reached its limits. Now he was fighting to retain his dignity, his power.
The rising tone had an edge to it. “I will destroy them, Commander, so you cannot use them against me in the future. And for your information, Fernando is gone, out of my life.”
Obviously, my intimidation needed some reinforcement. I’d anticipated that he would destroy the photographs, of course, and had copies of them made. But I also had something else for him as motivation to continue to assist us. Something with considerably more weight. I’d held it in reserve until now. The moment had come to end Ignacio Paloma’s sudden cockiness and preclude any future notions of double-dealing.
“Oh, yes, we know that Fernando got away from you,” I said pleasantly, lowering the dialogue back down to a conversational level. I didn’t want others in the hotel to hear a row in the room and start asking questions. “Fernando left you a month ago—after you beat him almost to death. A thin little seventeen-year-old boy, who now has a disfigured face. He had to flee Havana . . .” I counted out two seconds and added, “for the safety of America. You wondered where he’d gone to, didn’t you?”
Paloma’s jaw lowered, now realizing we knew far more about him than he’d thought. I let that sink in for a few more seconds, then delivered the coup de grâce.
“But it turns out that poor little Fernando was not the only one, as you originally claimed to me in April. In fact, we have a sworn statement from Pedrito Arena about his love affair with you last year. I understand he was even younger at the time than Fernando is.”
Rork had shifted position to stand beside Paloma, looming over him as I continued. “Señor Paloma, young Pedrito wasn’t appreciative at all of the way you treated him. No, he was very angry, though we made sure to let Pedrito know that he was actually very lucky—you didn’t beat him senseless. And when Pedrito saw a photograph of Fernando’s face after you were done with it, he understood just how fortunate he’d been to escape your wrath.”
From my coat pocket I pulled out the photograph of Fernando and put it on the table in front of Paloma. His eyes grew panicked, then looked away.
I continued. “For such a young boy, Pedrito became very resolute, realizing what a victim he’d become at your hands. Very resolute, indeed, for a fifteen-year-old. His testament included everything you did with him.”
That hit the target. I thought Paloma was going to collapse. Pedrito Arena was the nephew of the social secretary to the Captain General of His Most Catholic Majesty’s Ever Faithful Isle of Cuba—the personal representative of the king of Spain on the island.
“No . . .”
“Oh, yes, Señor Paloma. I think you need to reflect somberly upon your personal deficiencies and resolve upon ending them—if you want to stay alive. Perhaps a confession with your priest would be a good start. No? Well, that’s your choice. But for now, it is time for you to go. And by the way, you should fervently hope that Pedrito Arena does not become
even mildly ill, or someone would suspect you have harmed him. You do not want anyone to think that, do you?”
“No.”
I pointed at the door. Rork allowed his heavy left hand to fall on Paloma’s shoulder as I said, “Do what is expected of you. We will be in touch.”
Thus was the manner in which I obtained the Spanish Navy’s most sensitive information about its readiness from the number-two man in charge of their naval repairs in the Americas. The method I employed did not make me feel proud of myself and my profession. The revulsion went beyond the use of blackmail. In the past, I have had to consort with the lower forms of humanity in order to accomplish assignments, but never someone as squalid as Paloma.
After Rork guided the stunned Spaniard out of the room, the sickening photograph of Fernando’s face caught my attention. I wondered how long I could play this foul game. Up in Washington, the operation had seemed grim but academic—a perception that quickly disappeared when looking into Paloma’s evil eyes, knowing what he had done and wondering how many victims there really were.
And so I ended up spiritually weakened at precisely the place and time where my distant past could confront me. Was it God giving me a chance to redeem my self-worth with a life-saving quest?
I will let those who read this account form their own opinions.
3
God’s Will
Grace Methodist Episcopal Church
Honor Bound Page 2