As the cab approached the hotel, Blackford’s thoughts turned to the last hotel he had stayed at—with Sally. The brief visit in Acapulco over New Year’s: he on convalescent leave, she on vacation from the University of Mexico, where she was teaching English literature.
He thought back on their first evening, after he had picked her up at the airport and taken her to the hotel, where he had reserved a suite of rooms. They went down quickly to the beach to swim in the ocean, returning to the suite only after the sun had set. Blackford showered in the second bathroom, entered the living room dressed in tennis shorts and a sports shirt and sat down while Sally, through the open door to the bedroom, chatted, with her wry blend of provocation and femininity. The champagne sat on the coffee table, and Blackford opened it.
“Blacky, dear, do you intend to tell me exactly what happened to you during the missile crisis? I appreciated your—occasional—letters, but you know, dear, you needn’t have devoted as much time as you did to giving me the plot of Agatha Christie’s detective stories.”
“I was studying Spanish,” Blackford said, smiling as he recalled the six novelas policíacas of Agatha Christie he had read during some of the long days in Havana. “You know, my Spanish is pretty good.”
“I am glad to hear that, Blacky. And I, Professor Sally Partridge, am competent to test how good it is. I deliver three lectures per week at Filosfía y Artes in Spanish.” She appeared briefly in the doorway in her dressing gown, affecting her didactic posture at the lectern of the English literature class.
“How do you teach Jane Austen in Spanish?” Blackford asked after she had ducked back into the bedroom.
“Well, use your imagination. I assume you have a sharply developed imagination, Blacky, because you are always devising ingenious ways of killing people, are you not? I know, I know, I am not supposed to ask you direct questions. But we can agree that your Agency specializes in imaginative work? The Bay of Pigs operation, for instance. Now not everybody could have thought of that—right, Blacky? I imagine that if the entire operation had been planned by Castro himself, it could not have worked out better for him. He got a thousand prisoners, he humiliated America, and he mobilized the Cuban public on his side. You know, Blacky darling, I just thought of something—did I ever get around to congratulating you on that achievement?”
Blackford sipped the champagne, his eyes twinkling: Sally would never change. And that was fine with him, though there were … sensitive areas, and he hoped he would not need to labor to deflect her conversation sufficiently to stay away from the subject of Catalina.
Catalina! The bravest woman he had ever known. And, he allowed himself to muse on one of their first meetings, the best instructed in arts Sally herself was certainly … ingenious? (her word)—at. Sally was still talking, presumably from her dressing table, opposite the bed. Blackford couldn’t see her, but her voice carried easily around the corner of the doorway to him.
Blackford said, “Oh, the Bay of Pigs was hardly our greatest triumph. Don’t you think the Berlin Wall qualifies as Number One?”
“Ah yes, sorry. Of course. That was absolutely triumphant, the Berlin Wall. France, Great Britain, and the United States—all they had was a sound legal case giving them access to all of Berlin, plus a solid preponderance of nuclear weapons, and Khrushchev simply goes out and builds a wall down the center of Berlin. What I thought most magnificent about it all was that the United States Government did—nothing—about—it.”
She was obviously manipulating her lipstick. Blackford thought back on the agonies of the Bruderschaft, and for a moment said, reverently, nothing by way of riposte. This quickly communicated a hint of resistance to her. He got back into his customary role, the succubus for her taunts.
“Mind you, Blackford, you did confide to me that you had had three meetings with John F. Kennedy and that you were mightily impressed with him. I’m glad of that, because that is yet another thing we have in common. I think his speech at the Berlin Wall where he said all Berliners would one day be able to say they were Berliners was one of the most moving I’ve ever heard. And then, and then”—Sally’s spirits were, well, soaring a little higher than, arguably, the rules of the game called for—“that speech he gave a few days ago. Was it last month? Just after Christmas, to the returning Bay of Pigs soldiers, you know, where he said they would have their flag back over a free Cuba? Tell me, darling, are we going to invade Cuba? I do hope we can do that without losing any men.”
“Awr … fuck you, Sally.”
“Well goodness knows you have done enough of that, darling. Or is this a fresh romantic overture, dictated by the Agency? Oh my goodness, I never thought: Is our suite—wired?” She paused.
“Another thought, a worse thought: Are there cameras hidden about? You know, it would be terribly … desconcertante—that’s Spanish for embarrassing, disconcerting—”
“I know what desconcertante means—”
“Terribly terribly desconcertante if a tape of us, engaging in intimacies, were to get out and make the rounds of the anti-American caucus at the University of Mexico. Oh, I can just see myself summoned to the office of the Rector. ‘Señorita—Profesora—Partridge—he persists in speaking to me in English, in which he is very difficult to understand, but he is very proud of his English—‘Profesora Partridge, I haff heer a tahp—eet is a tahp weeth yorr voiss on it an zee voiss of a jen-tle-man, an een it yoo arr makin ferry, ferry—extra-ordinaree souns—’”
“Sally. Enough. Are you jet-lagged?”
“Yes, dear. The Cold War has jet-lagged me for years now. Do you know that there are millions of people—I have met them all, all hundred million of them—who manage to live their lives away from the trenches? But me? I study English literature at Yale in the graduate school and am swept off my feet by a beautiful young senior—to be sure, he was two years older than I because he was delayed in his schooling by the great war to end all wars. My young Adonis is studying to be an engineer, and before you know it, he ends up being an engineer of the Cold War—”
Sally emerged from the bedroom, in pale blue cotton, with those pearls, and the radiant, amused, affectionate expression, the whole room dizzied by that special blend of her fragrance. She smiled, and sat down next to him. He handed her a glass, on second thought put it down and leaned over and kissed her, lightly massaging the sides of her face.
“You were saying?” he said hoarsely.
“I was saying, you are a puerco guerrillero, and how can we go on this way, you silly wretch, and don’t think I didn’t notice that scar on your shoulder when we were swimming. Oh, dear, Blacky—”
“Shall we talk about something else?”
He looked down at her dress, tight-fitting about her breasts and waist—“And do you need to visit me wearing an iron corset?” Suddenly he stopped, staring down at her brooch, a jeweled facsimile of the Mexican flag in small diamonds, emeralds, rubies.
“What’s that?”
“Oh, a little present. From one of my students.”
“Did he get an A?”
“He got an A for effort.”
“Sally. That thing has got to be worth a couple of thousand dollars.”
“You think so?”
“Who gave it to you?”
She replied teasingly. “A very wealthy student. His father has oil.” Then, suddenly, a change in direction. The mockery was gone. “Why don’t you come back with me to Mexico City? Just resign, it’s that simple.” She was pleading with him.
“It’s not that simple, darling.” Blackford’s voice was of congruent gravity, respect, devotion. “One day, maybe. Besides”—he felt it safer to return to the familiar mode—“we’re supposed to get married next year, remember? A solemn appointment we made at the hotel in Taxco?”
She was silent as he stroked her neck, turning her gently to one side and, with his teeth, nudging down the zipper behind her dress.
“Not here.”
She rose, and they walked into
the bedroom, where the lights were off. He closed the door to the living room. From the bed they could see through the open window the lights of the city. The air was warm, and there was the fragrance also of the sea. Soon he was naked, and she was, and, his lips over her eyes, her head turned to one side, Blackford told her her eyes were more exciting than all the lights, all the sounds, all the pleasures of Acapulco. She moaned, and hugged him, and whispered that she loved him, would always love him, no matter what.
It had been so for three days. His last hotel stay. And now the Miami Fontainebleau.
The taxi stopped, the driver opened the door. Blackford roused himself, checked into the hotel, picked up two messages, and went up in the elevator to familiarize himself with the XPando Corporation’s Suite 1202.
The living room was large and furnished as an office, with a desk and a typewriter and a couple of file boxes. Elsewhere there was the kind of thing one expects in hotel suites—the large sofa, the armchairs, the television set. Blackford opened the door out to the little lanai. He could see the waterway with the luxury yachts berthed, and, slightly farther east, the Atlantic Ocean. The view from the hotel at Acapulco a fortnight ago, he concluded, had been more glamorous. He closed his eyes and wondered whether he was truly engaged in an effort to relieve all those people, two hundred miles south, of their tyrant—or was it all about something else? He looked at his watch. Pano Iglesias was to come in, one of the messages had confirmed, at 5:30. It was 5:10. He would have a quick swim. Easy, down the elevator to the hotel lobby, and right to the beach. He swam vigorously.
Pano Iglesias was prompt. He wore neatly-ironed khaki pants, a narrow-striped cotton sports shirt, a trim dark blue blazer, and he carried a large briefcase. He was middle-sized, startlingly young in appearance (Blackford knew that Pano was thirty), his features were regular, his skin light tan, his nose aquiline. He was not wearing the mustache Blackford had seen in the picture he was shown in Washington.
“Pano,” he announced himself. “Para servirle.”
“I’m Blackford.” Oakes returned the greeting, extending his hand.
In less than fifteen minutes, Blackford felt preternaturally at home with the young Cuban designated by Rufus to be his right hand. His English, though accented, was fluent. Rather than interrupt his rhythms he would sometimes simply use the Spanish word, and sometimes they would both lapse into Spanish, with which Blackford was by now fluent.
His specialty, Pano said, pulling a cigarette from his pocket—his blazer was quickly doffed and put back on one of the chairs against the wall—was the political situation in Cuba. Seated in an armchair he asked, Had he—“Blackforrd”—seen the morning papers?
“Only in Washington.”
“Have you seen the report of Castro’s speech?”
“No.”
“Alas, not all of Washington cares very much about what is going on in Cuba. Fortunately, they care very much—that is my impression—in the White House.”
Pano sprang up and dived for the inside pocket of his blazer. “The speech yesterday by Castro.” He looked up. “I will maybe be telling you some things you know. I know you have been in Havana for many months. I don’t know if you know how enojado Castro is with Khrushchev?”
Yes, said Blackford, he knew that Castro was mad at Khrushchev.
“It has cost Castro a lot of face, and he likes face a great deal. That pulling out of the missiles by the Soviets in October—he is crying tears about it. My contacts tell me he spends almost as much time swearing at the Kremlin as he does at the White House. Listen.” Pano picked up the clipping and began to read. “‘In his speech, Fidel Castro made clear his decision to act independently of the U.S.S.R. regardless of the Soviet Union’s agreements with the U.S. to remove its missiles from Cuba.’ Ahh, nice that, no, Blackforrd? Huh? Independent of the U.S.S.R.? If he were independent of the U.S.S.R. he would just be another caudillo who calls himself a Communist and is especially practiced in sadismo.”
“I know from personal experience that he is a sadist.”
“Yes, well listen. The paper then quotes Castro directly: ‘The Soviet Government has reached certain accords with the American Government. But this does not mean that we have renounced the right to have the weapons we deem convenient and to take steps in international policy that we deem convenient as a sovereign country.’”
Pano looked up again. “‘The weapons we deem convenient.’ Concentrate on that, Blackforrd. We know what weapons he finds convenient, do we not? Nuclear missiles. But they are gone now. Where else is he going to get nuclear missiles, if he wants them? I continue the story:
“‘Castro hinted that Cuba inclined toward China in the Moscow-Peking ideological split. Cuba planned to “set an example … to the socialist family,” he said, in its reaction to the “public discrepancies that have emerged between the great forces of the socialist camp.”’”
Pano put the clipping down. “Fidel is angry with the Soviet Union, but he is suggesting how important it is that the Kremlin pursue him to stay on their side of the Sino-Soviet split.”
Over a simple dinner, brought in by room service, Blackford listened to a description of the lesser-known figures around Castro. Pano ate heartily, the chicken and mashed potatoes and peas, the red wine and fruit and cheese, though he managed without apparent difficulty both to eat and to speak, and sometimes also to smoke, at the same time.
Blackford did not need to be told anything about Raúl Castro, the Stakhanovite Communist urging more and more orthodoxy and repression on his older brother; or, God knows, Che Guevara—Blackford reflected that he probably knew as much about that strange figure as any man alive. He had, after all, spent significant parts of the preceding spring, summer, and fall bargaining with him on behalf of President Kennedy. Operation Caimán, they had called that abortive attempt to bring off a deal. Or Osvaldo Dorticós, formally the President of Cuba: Blackford had known him as a member of a military tribunal that had sentenced him—and Catalina—to death. Blackford had read all the files in Washington, and most of the names were familiar to him: Faure Chomón, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, Blás Roca, Major Juan Almeida, Armando Hart, Manuel Piñeiro. But some were not; and Pano’s knowledge was encyclopedic.
“Who is Ingenio Tamayo?”
Pano loved such questions.
“Ingenio and I were at the Managua Escuela Militar together. His father was a big sugar baron. Thousands, tens of thousands of hectares. Pure Spanish blood. Ah, the Spanish-Cubans, how they missed out on Castro. You see—I am telling you much that you know; I know, I know, but all of it very very importantísimo. The Spanish, that special breed—Bacardí, Aspuru, Arrechabala, Aróstegui—always they kept their hands away from Cuban politics. Manos fuera de Cuba! Hands off Cuba, that was their slogan. They were like the English Vicar of Bray—”
Blackford could not abort the suddenly raised eyebrow. He wondered that Pano, while at military school in Havana, had run across the colorful eighteenth-century British tergiversator. He could hear Professor Curtis at Yale intoning the famous lines: “And this is law, I will maintain, / Unto my dying day, sir, / That whatsoever king shall reign, / I will be the Vicar of Bray, sir!”
“—whoever was king in Havana, that was quite all right by them, and when they felt that Castro was about to topple Batista, they went along, even helped Castro. Don Leandro Tamayo decided early in 1958 that Batista had had it, so he wasn’t a bit sorry that he had used his influence to get Ingenio into the Managua Escuela Militar since he knew his strange son was pro-Castro even before his father decided to play the political odds. You see, Ingenio is very nearly blind, cannot see a thing—I am exaggerating, but he needs eyeglasses that look like the bottom of Coca-Cola bottles. Don Leandro spoke to the right person and whishh, Ingenio was in the elite military school. The rest of us had to have twenty-twenty vision.
“Ingenio was always a queer duck. Studious, and physically very fit except for his vision. He cheated on the marksmanship—I helped h
im. If he had a pistol and aimed it at Florida, he would hit Maine. Ingenio is a great hater. He hated most people, just for conveniencia. It was his temperament. But some people he hated especially. He hated our platoon leader, and one day during military exercises our platoon leader was at breakfast and, after eating his porridge, fell over in a convulsion and died. Big investigation. Poison in his porridge. But Ingenio was not identified. He is very clever in these matters. By this time I suspected him, but at least there was one less person in the academy that Ingenio hated, though he began then to hate the substitute. Fortunately for the substitute, we graduated.
“Ingenio Tamayo,” Pano went on, “by the time he was twenty-six, had been promoted to captain and decided to join Castro, and approached a contact. A family friend, a scholarly graduate student who was being sent by his father to Oxford for postgraduate work, whose family and Castro’s had always been friends. His name is Jesús Ferrer, and Jesús is becoming now an important figure in the resistance—he is another one of those pure Spaniards, skin blanco, blanco, like Marilyn Monroe. Jesús got Ingenio to Sierra Maestra, and he became very close to Fidel, very close to Fidel. Fidel uses him now for his most delicate operaciones. Ingenio’s specialty is to dispose of people Fidel does not like but does not want to try to execute. Fidel has two execution baterías—he has his firing squads, and he has Ingenio. After Fidel arrived in Havana and expropriated the sugar industry, then the Cuban Spaniards began to howl, and one of the loudest howls came from Don Leandro. Fidel one morning read in La Revolutión a story on a public manifiesta by Don Leandro urging Castro to get on with the restoration of the democracy he had promised. So? He calls Ingenio, and a week later Don Leandro is getting into his car to drive to his ranch house after dinner at the Vedado Tennis Club and—he never arrives home. No trace of him, or of his Cadillac. One day a diver will find a rusty Cadillac in the Almendares River. That was on a Monday. On Friday I ran into Ingenio at the Institute Nacional de Reforma Agraria and I said to him how sad about the disappearance of his father. And you know, Blackforrd, you know, he just smiled?”
Mongoose, R.I.P. Page 4