“I hope while you were a monk you prayed for me,” Blackford said to Pano, seated comfortably at one end of the couch, fanning himself with Blackford’s issue of Life.
“The monk needs to pray for you, Blackforrd, but mostly for the whole situation. It is a most awful desarreglo.”
“Yes,” Blackford said, picking up the morning paper from the coffee table. “Do you know José Miró Cardona personally?”
“I know everyone personally.”
“Do you know the Pope personally?”
“Ah, dear Pope John. Of course I know him. In fact, he baptized me. He was for many years my mother’s lover.”
“I thought J. Edgar Hoover was your mother’s lover?”
“That was, uh, pre-Pope. No, post-Pope. No, anti-Pope.”
“Shall we cut the mierda?”
“We shall cut out the mierda, if you wish, Blackforrd.”
Rufus, Blackford said, would be with them within the hour. The events of the past two days, Blackford wanted reassurance, had not shaken the determination of AM/LASH.
“It does not help very much, Blackforrd, to have Fidel Castro give a speech to one hundred thousand Cubans on the second anniversary of the Bay of Pigs and quote Miró Cardona, until two days ago the president of the Cuban Revolutionary Council in Miami—quote from Miró Cardona’s ten-thousand-word statement saying that President Kennedy promised a second invasion of Cuba and has betrayed that promise—and then hear from Kennedy at a press conference that although the United States cannot coexist with a Soviet state in this hemisphere, he does not plan to let the exiled Cubans make U.S. foreign policy from the state of Florida. And what does Castro then say to the roaring crowd? That although Kennedy has given up the idea of invading Cuba, he is working hard to assassinate Cuban officials!”
“And, of course, this has been denied.”
“Yes, of course it has been denied. But it also happens to be true. Now AM/LASH must assume even tighter security arrangements around Castro.”
“You say LASH ‘must assume.’ But you must know. I mean, you have been in touch, right?”
“Yes. But ‘in touch’ with LASH is not exactly the way to put it. He is profoundly determined and faithful. But he is also supremely cautious—”
A faint noise from the monitor arrested their attention.
It was one of Rufus’s wonderful endowments that he had no singular feature of any kind. Even his clothes were, somehow, unnoticeable. He wore no disguise; but, on ringing the door, he twice adjusted his fedora. Rufus’s identification signal.
Pano went through the closet to 9-D and led him in. Blackford reached out intending to take Rufus’s jacket, but Rufus shook his head, then his hand. Rufus did not take off his jacket, Blackford reminded himself, except—presumably—when going to bed, or working in his rose garden. He accepted the Pepsi Blackford handed him.
From the straight-back chair in the dining room, he began to speak. He had been that afternoon with the Attorney General, who was “raging mad” at Castro for his speech, “raging mad” at Miró Cardona for releasing his ten-thousand-word allegation against the President, and only a “little less mad at Mongoose for the failure to get the job done.” Bobby Kennedy had warned that Castro’s charge that the U.S. Government was plotting his assassination made any contemplated arrangement even more precarious than anything heretofore attempted.
Rufus looked at Blackford and managed to communicate that on this particular point he would elaborate when they were alone. “But the Attorney General’s final words were, ‘For Chrissake, you and Hicock should get on with it.’
“I reminded him that I was not involved in the Hicock operation, did not desire to be, and did not wish to know any details about it.” Blackford knew better than to remonstrate on the theme of the Elusive Distinction.
“But I am here to listen, with Blackford, to you, Pano,” Rufus said. “You know the specific plans of AM/LASH? Tell us.”
Pano took the rest of his beer slowly. All the usual jocularity had faded from his face.
“LASH declined to confide the details to me.”
There was silence.
Blackford spoke. “To whom does he intend, then, to talk?”
“He will talk either with you, or with Rufus.”
Pano paused. “In Mexico.”
“In Mexico?” Rufus frowned. “Does LASH get to travel about at will throughout Latin America?”
“It is more complicated than that, Rufus. The meeting is to take place in Mexico. His demands will be made known in Mexico, and the details of his operation will be made known in Mexico. But not by LASH.”
Blackford’s impatience showed. But Rufus was merely reflective. He was presumptively understanding of anyone else’s concern for security.
He asked, “With whom are we to speak in Mexico?”
“I have a name—‘Consuelo’—and a telephone number. That is all I could get. And, Señor Rufus, there is no such thing as bargaining with LASH. He moves at his own speed, makes his own demands—I have up to now found them reasonable—and determines his own movements.”
Rufus looked again at Blackford. Pano understood. He got up and went to the closet for his monk’s cowl and the hairpiece.
“That is all that I can do for you, gentlemen. Blackforrd will let me know your decision?”
He shook hands with them both, and was let out of the safe house.
They sat over a chicken-and-rice TV dinner and a bottle of wine. The two electric fans in corners of the room worked well, and from the fire escape window cool air entered into the bathroom and flowed into the living quarters. Although they discussed the situation in general for several hours, with speculation as to the internal meaning for Cuba of the bellicose exchanges of the past few days between Kennedy and Castro, on specific matters in hand there was, really, only the single question before the house: Which one of them would go to Mexico?
Rufus finally addressed the question. “I think you had better go, Blackford. I’m getting regular reports from Anthony Trust and others on related matters, communications that sometimes require a quick response. And then there is the Attorney General. When he desires to see me, he desires to see me right away.”
“Okay. The other approaches I’ve been working on are pretty attenuated compared to LASH, and I’m briefed already on what the Cubans are planning for the next few days. I’ll get in touch with Pano and go to Mexico tomorrow.”
Consuelo, as he was known in this operation, stood by the window of his office in downtown Mexico City after receiving the cryptic telegram from Miami. In fifteen years of professional life Consuelo had engaged in interesting, even engrossing enterprises, most of them concerning Mexicans, often Mexicans seeking ways, legal and penumbral, of taking out of Mexico sums of money accumulated by political activity Consuelo never inquired into. But the assignment he had from Rolando Cubela was, to say the least, startling, and Consuelo had done heavy-duty reflection before, finally, agreeing to cooperate. As a professional, he decided, he had little practical choice: he could hardly turn to someone else and say, “Would you be good enough to cooperate with a friend of mine in Cuba who seeks help in arranging the assassination of Fidel Castro?”
And—Consuelo did not disguise it—he thought the idea of replacing the aggressive, atheist, murderous regime in Cuba greatly overdue. It was providential, Consuelo thought, looking out of his office window, from which he could see the entrance to the grand Palacio de Bellas Artes, that Rolando Cubela should find himself in such intimate circumstances with Castro.
He remembered making that appointment to meet with Fausto Cubela, Rolando’s father, years ago. It was three months after the accident. Cubela had left the hospital in Mexico City after six weeks, and had been flown to Havana in a stretcher aboard the plane. He was back at his farm but needed, in his semiparalyzed condition, day and night care. The little ranch had been put up for sale, Consuelo had found out, but as a farm it had never been more, really, than something from
which the bullfighter eked out his spartan income. And now Fausto Cubela would never again be able to work on his farm, let alone resume his profession as a picador.
What had happened one Sunday, three months earlier, was, as the taurino press called it, “a true tragedy.” The picador will normally gore three times before closing out that episode in the three-act drama of a bullfight.
But there are variables. The matador, fearing a particular bull, may stand by uncomplainingly during three lances visibly enfeebling. Or the crowd may roar its disapproval of the damage being done to the bull after the very first lancing. The matador has the option of appealing to La Presidencia to abort the procedure. If he agrees, the president will fling a white handkerchief over the front of his box, a signal to the trumpeters to sound the advent of the next episode with the banderilleros. Some bulls, as they charge into the ring, unscathed and ferocious, catch the special fancy of the crowd, as “Estrellito” had done (all bulls are given names; everything in Latin America is given an individual name). Here was a proud bull indeed, weighing over 400 kilos, every ounce of which was mobilized to kill. The crowd cheered him on as he dauntlessly charged the peones, who performed their graceful but cautious passes, permitting the matador to observe the bull’s mannerisms. And then the matador himself had had a triumphant series of verónicas, urging a great faena, the final spectacle at which the matador would first lead Estrellito through the dangerous, exhilarating paces showing off the matador’s special skills, and, finally, thrust the fatal sword into the same spot the picador had softened.
Fausto Cubela had entered his long lance a second time at exactly the correct point in the bull, and Estrellito charged mightily against his attacker, pushing Cubela and his horse back several meters. Cubela continued with all his might leaning into the lance. The crowd began to howl. A huge cataclysmic roar of disapproval at the excessive damage being done to the bull, whose fighting spirit might extinguish under such heavy punishment. Why didn’t the stupid president order the fornicating trumpet to sound!
Still nothing from the presidential box.
At this point the matador dashed from his observation post into the ring, to join the protest of the crowd—psychologically important, lest he give the impression that he desired the picador to disable the bull, or dispirit it. The matador gesticulated wildly at Cubela to back away with his pic. Cubela, desperate under the conflicting pressures—obey the judge, or the crowd and the matador—twisted on his waist to look at the matador. At that moment three things happened: The trumpet finally sounded; the bull suddenly withdrew from the picador, who had been standing up in his stirrups leaning to one side far out over his horse with all his strength; and Cubela, unbalanced, his eyes turned elsewhere than on the bull, fell head forward from his mount. The bull charged him.
It was only five, perhaps eight seconds before the matador succeeded in distracting Estrellito, causing the bull to charge him and leave the gored Cubela lying on the ground. But it was time enough for the horn to sever the spinal cord in Cubela’s neck, and although at the hospital they were able to control the bleeding, Cubela could not move his head, or his left arm and leg. He was paralyzed for life.
The insurance company gave him a lump sum of one thousand pesos, and he would not qualify for his Cuban Social Security for another fifteen years. The payments necessary to keep his son Rolando in medical school were now a financial burden quite simply out of the question.
All of this Consuelo knew when he arrived in Havana on a sticky day in August. The following morning, the appointment having been made with Señor Cubela via his wife, he drove to the little finca. Fausto’s son, Rolando, opened the door. Consuelo introduced himself and asked whether it would pain the younger man’s father if Consuelo were to speak to him directly. Rolando turned to his mother to permit her to reply to the question.
“Mejor, señor, hablar entre nosotros.”
Better to do his business with mother and son: Fausto had not yet got used to company, and it embarrassed him to speak without control of his lips.
They sat down and Consuelo opened his briefcase, withdrawing two envelopes. The first—he counted out the bills—contained ten thousand pesos, more money than the entire finca was being offered for. The second envelope contained a check. “This will be deposited at the Trust Company Bank in Havana. The trustee of this account has been instructed to pay all tuition, medical, and incidental expenses of Rolando Cubela until he receives his medical license.”
Rolando and his mother stared at the young visitor, open-mouthed.
“Sir, to whom do we owe this—this salvation?” Rolando asked.
“My client,” said their guest, “is Luís Miguel Dominguín. He feels responsible for having distracted the attention of Señor Cubela from his duties at the fight in February.”
Señora Cubela begged him to stay and eat something, quietly convinced that so distinguished a visitor would not share a meal in such indigent surroundings. She and her son were surprised when he replied that he would be honored to stay for lunch. He was there for two hours.
When finally he rose to go, Rolando asked for the address of Señor Dominguín. The lawyer raised his hand and said that the matador’s express wish was that no member of the family should write to thank him.
“He considers it his own delinquency in the bullring, and does not wish to be reminded of it.”
Rolando asked if he might have the lawyer’s address. Opening his wallet, Consuelo handed him a card with his office address.
Standing in his office, Consuelo reflected that that meeting had taken place in 1956. In seven years, he had not heard the name of Rolando Cubela. But, arriving in Mexico a week ago with a delegation of Cubans to attend a Pan-American Marxist congress, Rolando Cubela had pleaded Mexican dysentery. After his colleagues had trooped off to the auditorium, he slipped away from his hotel room and was waiting in the office at Cinco de Mayo to meet with Consuelo. Consuelo had recognized the young medical student, though he looked now fifteen years older. He greeted him warmly and brought him into his office.
That was at ten. After a few minutes, other appointments were canceled. Lunch was brought in at one. No calls were taken. At six, Cubela left the office. Consuelo felt a great weight.
But he had said yes.
Yes, under the name of “Consuelo,” he would agree to meet with a high executive of the CIA; yes, he would reveal the plans his client “AM/LASH” had made to proceed with the assassination of a chief of government; and yes, he would specify exactly what AM/LASH expected of the American government.
The telephoned telegram from Miami had informed Consuelo that he would be meeting with “Bledsoe”—as AM/LASH knew Blackford Oakes—who would leave word at what hotel and in which room Bledsoe could be reached. It would be up to Consuelo to dial the hotel and ask for the room number.
With a deep sense of an irreversible engagement in an enterprise that could haunt him for the balance of his life, Consuelo turned from the window, went to his telephone, dialed the number of the Hotel Geneve, and asked for Room 322.
22
On the second evening of his state visit in Moscow, Fidel Castro had been carried way by an oleaginous toast in his honor delivered by Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev. He had begun by replying in kind with ardent generalities about the wisdom, courage, compassion, and vision of his hosts. He went on. And suddenly Colonel Yitzkah, who as Chief of Protocol was in charge of Castro’s hour-by-hour schedule, found himself half-listening to a florid invitation by Castro to “all the relatives of all the Soviet patriots now in Cuba helping us with our revolution: I wish to meet you all, and shake your hands on behalf of the people of Cuba.”
All the relatives of all the Soviet patriots helping Cuba with their revolution! Colonel Yitzkah’s reaction was: The dumb sonofabitch is talking about—well, maybe ten thousand people! There were—the colonel didn’t know the figure exactly—somewhere between six and eight thousand Soviet technicians still in Cuba, even afte
r the return of eight thousand with the missiles evacuated in the October fiasco. Figure half of them bachelors, that still makes—he calculated as Fidel Castro rhapsodized on the theme of his and his country’s debt to these “great masters of their defensive craft”—that makes, half, say, of eight thousand; that makes four thousand married. That madman has just managed to issue a public invitation to four thousand Russians to come and greet him! Come greet him in my country! Castro has just invited us to put on, with a couple of days’ notice, a reception larger than the diplomatic party we give on May Day! Does this dumb bearded bastard know what he is doing?
Yitzkah hoped Castro would simply forget about the whole idea, after his windy expansiveness wore down. But a half hour later Castro, still talking, stressed again that he could not return to Cuba without making this “gesture.”
“Some gesture,” Yitzkah thought: It will only tie up my office night and day and cost maybe a hundred thousand rubles.
At the exclusive reception after the banquet, Castro, from the center of the knot of officials and celebrities surrounding him, motioned to Colonel Yitzkah to approach him. Kindly arrange matters so that he could do as he had promised, he said matter-of-factly.
Colonel Yitzkah replied that his job was to do anything His Excellency desired, but that it would be extremely difficult, on such short notice, to round up anything like all the relatives of all Soviet personnel in Cuba.
Castro stared at him as though he had not heard him. Imperial gestures are not the subject of cost accounting, his stare seemed to be saying. Then Castro said, “When?”
Colonel Yitzkah bowed and left Castro, who resumed his animated talk to aides and Soviet officials. The interpreters labored impatiently so that Malinovsky and Gromyko could understand and react appropriately. Colonel Yitzkah moved to another little knot of Russian luminaries, standing by the bar, bowed his head deferentially and asked Nikita Khrushchev if he might have a word with him. Khrushchev drew away from his entourage.
Mongoose, R.I.P. Page 18