Mongoose, R.I.P.

by William F. Buckley

  There was a little static, and then the unmistakable voice. “I am Fidel Castro. I am a Cuban patriot. I am a soldier of freedom. I am dedicated, together with my loyal and patriotic companions, to liberating Cuba from the oppressive forces of the illegal government of Fulgencio Batista. I pledge you, when we come to power: freedom, democracy, liberation from all forms of oppression and imperialism.”

  Ferrer then spoke fervently and quickly for the few minutes he calculated he had before Castro’s police descended on him, to ask whether Fidel Castro had delivered on his promises.

  That episode had electrified Cuba. It made no difference that it was greeted by the official silence of the press, radio, and television. Radio Havana, an hour or two after Ferrer had fled and regular programming had resumed, made reference to an escaped lunatic who had been subdued, given sedatives, and returned to the hospital where he was, of course, receiving free medical attention under the revolutionary government.

  There were other attention-getting episodes of the kind, though none quite so dramatic. But there was rumor, rumor, rumor … Castro suffered from an incurable cancer and would be dead within thirty days … Che Guevara was disillusioned and was returning to Argentina to initiate a true Marxist democratic revolution there … The United States was planning a major military operation against Cuba which would be launched not later than July 4, America’s Independence Day.

  These were what Cubela thought of as Operation Rumors. Open-curtain-quick-close-curtain rumors; exit Castro.

  But there were rumors of an entirely different quality. Sotto voce rumors, Cubela called them. “Did you hear,” Ingenio Tamayo might say to him at lunch, without any sense of guilt for passing such a rumor along, “that the CIA is planning to paralyze all our electrical systems? They have apparently developed some satellite that has that capacity: actually to shoot down a laser beam and immobilize all our electrical generators! It’s a rumor, of course, Rolando, but not something we can afford entirely to ignore. I reported it to Fidel himself yesterday, when we met—we see each other,” Tamayo said casually, flicking his cigarette ash into the tray, “quite regularly. Of course, I know that you, Rolando, as one of his special intimates, see him all the time. Anyway, I thought I should pass the rumor along.”

  And there was the rumor—this one persistent, varying only on the question of the size of the bounty—that the CIA was offering one million, two million, three million, five million dollars for Castro’s head. That was the rumor that caught Cubela’s special attention and that led, after two months’ excruciatingly attenuated probing of contacts, to the first communication, through Pano Iglesias, between Rolando Cubela and Rufus.

  20

  Ingenio Tamayo was a mean-spirited man—who very much enjoyed performing Fidel Castro’s highly surreptitious commissions primarily because, as often as not, they called for the discreet elimination of someone Castro did not wish officially to detain and execute. Tamayo greatly enjoyed the art of contriving accidental causes of death, as he had with almost all of the men (and, yes, one woman) Castro had dispatched him to kill. It hadn’t been possible in every case, but when he could accurately report to Castro a success, it would follow a formula. “I am deeply disappointed” (he always used this device) “to have to bring you ill tidings, Comandante. José González last night, while attempting to repair the fuse box in his apartment, was electrocuted. Attempts to revive him were unsuccessful.”

  And Fidel would always act out his part. “Ah! How sad, Ingenio, how sad! José González was such a good, fine, patriotic man!”

  Usually the two men were alone when Tamayo reported that his commission had been completed. When that was so, they would both break out into raucous laughter after their histrionic exchange. When, as sometimes happened, there was someone else in the room on unrelated business, Castro and Tamayo would satisfy themselves, after the moribund dialogue, with an oblique cross-glance, an exchanged wink.

  But Tamayo was a balanced mean-spirited man. He knew, for instance, that his current assignment would require him to be ingratiating. And much else. To begin with, there was the professional preparation to be done. He had taken a full four days to read the files on the Soviet missiles, and as he drew on his cigarette after painstakingly going through the material, he amused himself with the thought that perhaps he should spend another four days learning how a) to curb his temper; b) to appear to be interested in what other people were saying; c) to express concern for others’ concerns, whatever these were; and d) to conceal his contempt for his intellectual inferiors, which—Ingenio Tamayo paused deliberatively—meant, well, just about everybody. Though Che Guevara was a very learned man; and no one had quicker insights than Fidel.

  He let his thumb brush over the spine of the Top Secret folder, leaned back in his chair, and concentrated on the question: Just exactly how should he proceed?

  The file was thick, but almost diligently incomplete. Much of it had been assembled by Castro’s own intelligence personnel, some of whom had observed the super-secret arrival of the missile tankers, followed their transportation to the preselected sites, at night, in the long trailers, and witnessed their placement in the hidden silos.

  Along with the missiles came heavy launching bases, designed to support and aim the missiles at their predesignated targets. As these launching bases were progressively installed, their compass bearing gave some clue to targets lying down-range. It was not specified, in his material, what were the targets the individual missiles were aimed at, but it was general knowledge that each missile had its programmed destination, selected in Moscow. The idea had been—had the grand operation worked—suddenly to confront the United States with the news that practically every major city in the country lay at the receiving end of the trajectory of forty-two missiles sitting in Cuba.

  Great stuff! Tamayo thought. God, what a wonderful spectacle it would have been—if they had all been fired, and nothing even worth looting was left in the major American cities! That would show the gringos! A beautiful thought, Tamayo sighed.

  Was there then a missile, or even more than one missile, still left in Cuba? Left, if the traitor Luminante was to be believed, in San Cristóbal?

  Tamayo had deduced that if indeed the missile was in San Cristóbal, then it would have been one of the medium-range ballistic missiles (SANDALs), not one of the bigger, longer-range intermediate-range ballistic missiles (SKEANs). These last, which had a range of 2,200 miles, had all been destined, according to Cuban Intelligence—and as much was confirmed by Soviet sources—for Guanajay and Remedios. In San Cristóbal (and in Sagua la Grande), the smaller SANDALs had been emplaced, with a range of 1,100 miles. The Soviets, he noted, called them simply SS-4’s, but there were numerous notices in his folder—a good many of them in English, taken from trade and technical journals published during the past few months in North America; there had been extensive coverage in particular in Life magazine—that referred to them as SANDAL missiles, the name by which they were known in NATO.

  Very well, SANDAL it will be, Tamayo thought. I am looking for a SANDAL. He poured himself a glass of rum, and began to sing. “O SANDAL mío, O SANDAL mío, sta’n fronte ate, sta’n fronte ate.…”

  He rehearsed his knowledge of SANDAL. Length: 68 feet (he had got that from the Air Force magazine. The equivalent was 21 meters, just under). Diameter: 63 inches, or 1.6 meters. Weight: 60,000 pounds—i.e., 27,000 kilos, approximately.

  He stared at a picture of it. According to Life magazine, a picture taken on November 7, 1962, in the Red Square parade … Graceful bastard, Tamayo thought. It looked like a sharpened, round pencil. Very pointed. At the base it had a flared skirt, was without tail fins, using instead what looked like delicate control vanes. In order to launch, he had learned, the SANDAL needed a transfusion of liquid fuel. Such fuel, according to one article in Air Force magazine, was highly volatile and would need to be banked in a large tank. From there it would be hosed in at huge pressure into a trailer tank. Upon ignitio
n, a mix of some kind was induced, kerosene combined with liquid oxygen, within the combustion chamber. The trailer, of which a photograph was shown taken by a U-2 flight, was unfortunately not distinctive. Long, yes, but so were some army trucks long. And the height of the tank-trailer was no more than that of a conventional Army 2 1/2-ton truck.

  So Ingenio Tamayo simply needed to look for a hidden 21 meter missile not too far separated from a tank of appropriate size, and a trailer. He had been to the huge military facility at San Cristóbal only once, but he dimly remembered that there were fuel tanks all over the place, and, for that matter, trucks and trailers all over the place.

  He finished his drink. Ah well, he thought, he might as well spend his last evening in Havana for a fortnight or so with La Huerita, “Little Blondie.” She never dared to charge Ingenio, damn right. He had got her out of one of the prostitute rehabilitation camps, and she was now well sheltered in an apartment, as what little blondie would not be well sheltered who granted her favors, among others, to Raúl Castro?

  He depressed a button which signaled to the drivers’ pool in the garage that Major Ingenio Tamayo would be downstairs within five minutes, and if his car and driver were not there waiting for him, prepare to die.

  His story was entirely plausible, and as he handed his papers to Major Gutierrez at the headquarters of Camp San Cristóbal, Gutierrez merely sighed (one more piece of visiting brass) and pressed a button for an orderly, to whom he gave instructions to come up with field-grade officer’s quarters that were empty and clean. To Tamayo he said that he, Gutiérrez, could very well understand the need for coordination, “with all those Russians running all over the place—if you threatened to shoot me dead, I wouldn’t be able right now to give you a count on how many of them are here, right now, within—twenty. Every day I ask Colonel Bilensky how many men he has here, and I have the impression he uses any pleasant figure that comes to mind to satisfy me. Sometimes he says two hundred and twenty, sometimes two hundred and seventy, sometimes one hundred and seventy. He seems to like round numbers. Of course, they live in their segregated section, they have their own mess hall, their own officers’ quarters. But—let us face it—every few days”—Major Gutiérrez pointed through the window at what looked, a kilometer away, like the mouth of an assembly plant on the distant plain, sheltered by a monstrous cave—“down from there, every few days, comes something for us. A truck. A tank. A fighter. An anti-aircraft battery. We mustn’t complain.”

  Tamayo spoke cautiously now. “But surely, Major, you have your own men inside the Soviet compound?”

  “Yes, yes, of course. It isn’t as it was during the days of the missiles. Last year, between mid-August and the crisis in October, no Cuban was permitted”—he stood, pointed again out the window, squinted, and finally sat down.

  “No use. You can’t see it from here. But half a kilometer behind the assembly plant is a second one of those caves that abound in San Cristóbal. It was actually cordoned off with barbed wire while the missiles were here. And the understanding with Castro was that only Soviet technicians would be permitted in the area.

  “But that is changed, now that the missiles are gone. Among other things, we provide the sentries at the gate. And then we have twenty, thirty men, officers and technicians, who are inside most of the time. They come back to their own quarters only to eat and sleep. Their job is to observe the assembly of the Soviet hardware and to learn. They will be the principal teachers of our own maintenance men. They are among our best men, many of them graduates of the engineering school at the University of Havana.”

  The orderly came back with a key and a voucher, which Ingenio Tamayo signed, reminding himself to say “Thank you” first to the orderly, then to the Comandante.

  Tamayo paid special attention to how the Cubans within the Soviet compound were dressed. Almost all of them wore fatigues, with their insignia of rank pinned onto floppy cotton epaulettes, their last names stenciled above the left chest pocket. Sometimes, especially among those who worked outdoors, the top half of the fatigue costume lay on the ground, and these men wore only T-shirts, making it impossible to know their names or their rank.

  Tamayo’s initial visit was short. A half hour later he was back, this time wearing fatigues. He had got the orderly to stencil his name on a pair while he waited. Impatiently. He took from his briefcase a clipboard. It held down a thick pad of yellow-paper forms. These he had personally devised and had printed. Across the top was listed the camps within which Soviet ordnance was being assembled—Guanajay, Remedios, Sagua la Grande, and San Cristóbal. He circled the first three of these, to give the impression that this was the fourth assembly plant he was inspecting. The pad was sprinkled with questions that permitted him a full range of official curiosity. Were there strategic reserves of fuel? Sufficient faucets to supply drinking water? Sufficient reserves of truck tires? Of Sizes X, Y, Z, A-prime? Much of that and, on the other side of the sheet of paper, such questions as: Were the living quarters satisfactory? Was the food well cooked? Plentiful? Was the 16-millimeter movie projector in good working order? And then a large space, headed by the universal question: “Other?”

  The Cuban lieutenant in charge of the native detachment was one Junio Barrios. Tamayo asked a Cuban soldier peering at two Soviet technicians engaged in operating a crane which was gently lowering an airplane wing onto an IL-28 bomber where he could find Lieutenant Barrios. The soldier pointed sulkily in the general direction of the cave and then spotted the major’s oak leaf, drew himself to attention, and asked did the major wish him to take him to the lieutenant? Tamayo nodded curtly and followed the soldier into the great cave, bustling with activity around a half-dozen huge crates, the first one being disassembled by what looked like fifty Lilliputians.

  They approached a young mulatto with a halfhearted beard on his chin. The soldier saluted and went back to his airplane wing. Tamayo introduced himself and sketched his mission. Lieutenant Barrios apologized and said that his orders required him to ask the major to show his credentials. Tamayo did so casually, lighting a cigarette.

  “Oh sir, I’m sorry. Absolutely no smoking. Soviet regulations.”

  Tamayo nodded and ground his cigarette under his heel, after taking a deep drag.

  He asked some questions, scribbling away on his pad, and then requested to be presented to the Soviet official in charge. Colonel Bilensky, Barrios said, was away in Havana, leaving his deputy in charge. Tamayo was introduced to a Major Kirov. Tamayo saluted, took a deep breath, and launched into Operation Ingratiation. Within a half hour Major Kirov had invited the newly jovial, congenial Tamayo to join him for dinner at the officers’ mess. Tamayo smiled his acceptance and said he would be delighted to do so. Meanwhile, he would proceed on his rounds.

  Tamayo had a practiced eye.

  There was nothing in the cave itself that could conceivably shield a 21-meter missile. The natural cave was over a hundred meters long, and half that in width. There were assorted trailers and trucks within the cave and outside it. There were six big tanks outside the cave, two within it, the latter with sentries seated at wooden desks alongside. Yet it was as easy as this: If there was a missile, it had to lie beneath the steel flooring. If there was a missile, then its liquid oxygen was contained in one of the two tanks. Tamayo’s job would be to ascertain whether the rectangular steel sections making up the flooring were large enough to permit a crane to lift out a 21-meter missile 1.6 meters in diameter. A missile below the ground would need fairly regular maintenance, primarily the regulation of humidity, but also—Tamayo congratulated himself on the patience with which he had read the technical information in Air Force magazine on the care and feeding of missiles—careful attention to the electrical jungle within each missile, including the all-important batteries necessary for in-flight guidance.

  If there was a SANDAL down there, there had to be a manhole somewhere.

  21

  An elderly man, using a cane and favoring a stiff leg, stepped
down from the bus on Flagler Street in Miami, two blocks away from the apartment house toward which he walked, slowly but steadily, the straw hat on his head tilted, when he rounded the corner, to protect his face from the sun. Underneath the rear of the hat, a tuft of white hair projected. The old man wore a weary white linen jacket, without a tie, and workmen’s coveralls with shoulder straps. From the deep left pocket of his work pants a folded copy of Life magazine protruded. His right pocket was also weighted down: perhaps a tool of his trade, a passerby would conjecture. He walked into the apartment house, took the elevator to the ninth floor, then to Apartment D. He entered the apartment, closed and double-locked the door, went into the hanging closet, full of an assortment of workmen’s clothes, removed a towel hanging from a hook at the back of the closet and, with a second key, swung open a panel at the back of the closet Closing it from the other side, he flicked on a switch. It gave him, from a monitor placed above the hidden closet door, a television view of the hallway and the entrance hall into 9-D.

  He was now in a two-room suite with an opening only to a fire escape, none to the hallway. One room was a bedroom, the other a studio-dining room. In between were a kitchen and bathroom:

  Blackford Oakes removed the magazine from his left pocket and the .32 automatic from the right pocket and took off his hat and trousers, hanging them on a hook. He replaced them with a pair of khaki pants and a cotton sports shirt. He looked at his watch. His session downtown, at which he and two other agents were briefed by the commander of Alpha 66 on the raids planned for the following week, had consumed, in all, almost three hours. Pano would arrive within fifteen minutes, with the promised word from AM/LASH, he hoped. And Rufus would arrive before five, assuming that his flight from Washington was on time.

  Pano hove in. Blackford was always faintly alarmed when he had a scheduled visit with Pano because the man whose entrance he surveilled through the television monitor, first coming into Apartment 9-D, then into the closet, and now into the studio, was never recognizable as the Pano he had last seen. This time Pano was—of all things—a monk, including tonsure and shuffle. Blackford smiled, and without being asked went into the kitchen to come back with a cold beer, by which time all traces of the cleric had disappeared.