Raúl could hardly stand it. “The goddamn Pope couldn’t have done it better,” he whispered to Ramiro Valdés, who gave a furtive, understanding wink.
Tamayo was beside himself with pleasure. He had delivered the greatest catch to Fidel in the history of espionage. And ninety-nine percent of the power of Cuba, plus a man with a nuclear missile at his disposal, were all here, in apartment 5-B, Avenida Quinta A, home of Ingenio Tamayo. A sus órdenes.
Castro broke the spell by saying, “Let’s sit down.”
Tamayo immediately assembled four chairs and pushed his little dining-room table to the center, moving a standing lamp.
Kirov said he assumed that the Comandante would want to know the relevant details of the SS-4, and he was prepared to give these. But he felt he should first communicate the contents of a telex message that had come in from Moscow that very day.
He pulled a stretch of fan-fold paper from his pocket, reached over to focus the standing lamp on it, and began to read. He himself had to translate the Russian into English, which Tamayo then translated into Spanish, so that the operation was slow. But then, the message wasn’t long.
He would skip over, Kirov said, the “language when it is just official.” His eyes on the block-letter Russian, he began to purr …
“MAJOR ANATOLY KIROV ATTENTION … YOU ARE ORDERED RETURN TO MOSCOW AOCOUNT UNFORTUNATE WIFE … ACCIDENT … YOUR REPLACEMENT CAPTAIN NICOLAI PUSHKIN WILL … DISEMBARK HAVANA NOVEMBER 12… ON BOARD … VIA … AEROFLOT SPECIAL FLIGHT … REASON FLIGHT TO BRING CULTURAL MINISTER FURTSEVA … TO DISCUSS … CULTURAL EXCHANGES WITH … CASTRO ETC. ON NO … POSSIBILITY … ON NO CIRCUMSTANCE … INFORM CUBANS OF THIS EXCHANGE … PUSHKIN WILL ARRIVE AS CONSULTANT ON BALLET TO MINISTER FURTSEVA … PUSHKIN FULLY BRIEFED … YOU WILL FOLLOW HIS INSTRUCTIONS … PREPARE LEAVE … DEPART … EMBARK RETURN FLIGHT SAME AEROFLOT FOLLOWING DAY.… MALINOVSKY.”
Kirov looked up from his paper, and over to Fidel Castro. He no longer looked like His Imperial Highness, the Czar of International Marxism. He looked, Kirov thought, as Ivan the Terrible must have looked. His face was seized with fury at one more sign of Khrushchev’s disdain of Cuban sovereignty.
It was a very long session. Kirov arrived back at the brothel barely in time to change into his fatigues and show up for Soviet reveille at Camp Cristóbal at 7:45 in the morning.
30
After Kirov left and Fidel Castro returned to INRA, he did not sleep. And he knew that he would not sleep until a final plan of action formulated in his mind. He knew, also, that he would be restless until he had word from Perjuez in Mexico.
At eight in the morning he ordered his day’s appointments canceled. He told his valet-aide, Enrico, that he would go scuba-diving. He should summon the helicopter, as Castro would travel to the reef at Jibacoa.
It lay off La Urbita, an old seaside villa confiscated several years before from the Manzanilla family, used now primarily by Castro, and occasionally for high-level visitors—Jean-Paul Sartre had stayed there, and Aleksei Adzhubei, Khrushchev’s son-in-law. Today it was empty, and Fidel told Enrico that after he swam he would take his lunch there.
“How many will you be, Comandante?”
“One,” Castro said.
Frogmen at his side, Fidel dove the tank’s full half hour, at a depth of over a hundred feet. He liked to swim on his back, slithering over the coral and gazing way above him, on the silver of the water’s surface. A pargo and a cherna swam just over his head, at a synchronized rate of speed. Castro reached up lazily as if to fondle the cherna, which of course slid out of his grasp. It occurred to Castro that he was like the fish, always sliding out of the grasp of Kennedy and of Khrushchev, both of whom thought to use him … but things would now change, he thought … things would not again be as they were, he said to himself. He turned lazily around and checked the time meter on his wrist. Five minutes of air left. His guards did not like it when he postponed his ascent beyond the seven-minute point. And sure enough, there was Gerardo, gesturing to him to surface, his thumb pointing up. Castro wished he could smile through his mouthpiece—the only facility denied him in this wonderful wet suit brought him by the American negotiator, Mr. Donovan. He waved complaisantly, began his exhale and rose twenty feet; stopped, inhaled, began another exhale, rose another twenty feet. Three more of these and he was on the surface. He felt tired, and a little hungry, as he was dragged onto the launch, which soon zoomed in to the dock.
From his shower he emerged into the patio naked, and sat in the sun wearing only dark glasses. He had brought neither a book nor a newspaper. He simply sat and stared, halfway between the horizon and the sun. A tray was brought to him. Fresh seafood, pineapple juice, a bolillo toasted and buttered. What he had asked for. Yes, he was used to getting what he had asked for. He ate, at first listlessly, then voraciously.
Now, he said, now he would sleep. He walked back into the house, into the bedroom, onto the turned-down sheets.
It was after five in the afternoon before he woke. He dressed in slacks and a sports shirt and walked out into the terrace. “I am ready,” was all he needed to say.
At the east end of the large lawn, the rotors began to turn. Fidel climbed into the helicopter with Enrico and his personal doctor and eighteen minutes later landed at the beach near his house at Cojímar.
Inside, Raúl was waiting for him. Castro sat down.
“Well, Raúl. What is it?”
“Perjuez called just after you went diving. He would talk only to you or to me. I took the call. He spoke very guardedly, but it was plain what his message is. The American veteran is planning to go through with it.”
Castro perked up.
“Any details?”
“He said he had the details, but would not communicate them other than personally, and did I want him to come to Havana? I thought you would say yes, so I said yes. He had made a contingent reservation on our afternoon flight. He will be here within the hour.”
Suddenly Castro was animated. His eyes flashed. He stood, flicked down the lever on the telephone intercom: “A Coca-Cola.” He looked up inquiringly at Raúl, who nodded. He depressed the lever again. “Two Coca-Colas.” He slapped his hands together.
“We are beginning to move, Raúl, beginning to move. Have Perjuez brought here directly. He is to speak to no one except to you and me. In fact, he may dine with us. About nine, you say?”
Raúl nodded.
Castro went to his desk, piled high with paperwork. For the first time since the meeting at which the cigar had been shot from his hand by a bullet, he attacked his work with gusto. He did not yet know fully what it was, but a plan was crystallizing in his mind. And when this happened, he knew that the gestation would take its own course, and when it all came together, he would enjoy post-partum exhilaration.
Oliver Alejandro Perjuez was an old diplomatic hand who had taken early retirement to protest the coup that brought Batista back into power in 1952. He elected to live in Mexico and when, in 1956, Fidel Castro and his company of eighty-one guerrillas set out from Mexico on his historic voyage to Oriente on the Granma, Perjuez, however discreetly, was there to see them off, after devoting a full month to helping them secure the equipment they needed. He even managed to whisper to Castro that he wished he might be one of them, but that at age sixty, with a wife in ill health, he could not go. Castro remembered all of this, and three years later Perjuez was pressed back into duty by Castro’s President Osvaldo Dorticós, the objective being a professionally equipped diplomatic corps—loyal to Castro.
Excepting only the Soviet Union’s, Mexico’s was the most important Cuban diplomatic embassy. The government of Mexico had hailed Castro when he came to power, and unlike so many Latin American countries ultimately disillusioned by Castro’s behavior—some even closing down their embassies in Havana—Mexico, under President López Mateos, had remained hospitable to Castro and Castroism and pointedly voted, in international assemblies, against the United States on any issue in which Ca
stro’s Cuba was involved. It was important to place in charge of such an embassy someone with the greatest experience and demonstrated loyalty.
Ambassador Perjuez, who looked like an academic—a man of amorphous figure and shriveled countenance designed to bloom only in library stacks—was a man of formal habits, and when he entered Castro’s private living room-office, bowed. Fidel walked up to him, slapped him on the back, and said, “Bienvenido, compañero.”
The steward served drinks to the three men. Raúl told the servant to stay out of the room until he was summoned.
Perjuez then began, without delay. He told them about the American veteran—he so described him, he said, because although a civilian he wore military dress, however informally—whom he had listened to under the most discreet circumstances. The meeting, said Perjuez, was remarkable primarily because the American, while anxious to communicate his intentions to a representative of a government the American deeply admired, hadn’t asked for anything. “Nothing, Comandante. He did not ask for logistical help, he did not ask for money, he did not ask for sanctuary. He simply wanted to talk to me.”
“Does he know who he was talking to?” Raúl asked.
“He does not. He was told merely that he would be talking to ‘a man of authority.’ True, I must guess that he suspects who I am, though we did not meet in my office.”
“What do you make of him?”
“I knew you would ask the question, as I asked it of myself. First, of course, there was the obvious danger, that he was an agent provocateur. I will tell you how I handled that in just a moment, but first: What impression did he give? That he is not, well, one hundred percent ‘upstairs.’ But a limited intelligence is not necessarily an encumbrance in such a mission as he has in mind. He is an enthusiastic Communist, married to a Russian woman, as you know, and it was several months ago in New Orleans that he took up our cause, working for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.”
“Raúl, remind me. Which one of our operations is that one?” Castro broke in.
“That’s the one designed to get support from the—naturally simpáticos: cosmopolitan New York literary types. You remember—1959—the meeting with Comrade Slansky? You should, Fidel, since we were with him two whole days when he described the great success of the Soviet operation in England in the thirties—getting the very important Cambridge students, aiming at the middle class, cultivating the idealism of the intelligentsia—this is part of our operation, though it has suffered since the missile crisis. Anyway, its most prominent supporters include Truman Capote, a figure of significant cultural importance in New York; and, as you would expect, Fidel, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir; and Herman Mailer—he is a big star in the American literary world who keeps saying he wishes to be ‘president,’ by which he means the leading American literary figure. He adores Hemingway, which has helped us. Raúl Roa takes care of the financial problems of the Fair Play Committee.”
“Yes. Now I remember. Go on, Señor Embajador.”
“The veteran has a job now in a book warehouse in Dallas. The presidential motorcade is scheduled to travel past it, right under his window.”
“Did he tell you what kind of weapon he was planning to use?”
“He tried to. I stopped him. Yes, I stopped him. I said that the official position of the Cuban Government is as it has been stated by Premier Castro: There is no doubt that President Kennedy is an imperialist who has subsidized and continues to subsidize aggressive espionage and even assassination attempts, and although Prime Minister Castro has warned that aggression begets counteraggression, in fact the Cuban Government has yet to sponsor assassinations. I said ‘assassinations’—I conveniently swept over the incident in Miami last spring, the attempt on the CIA agent, but that did not make the papers—and said I had no knowledge that any such were being planned. I reminded him that he was an American citizen with his own views and that—I said the following, Comandante, with great care, because I thought I knew the response it would elicit from him—I said, ‘Besides which, although I honor your grievances against the foreign policy of your country, you must forgive me if I confess that I doubt very much that you plan to do as you say. Such ventures involve a great deal of risk, and the chances against their succeeding are overwhelming!’”
“How did he respond?” Fidel asked, leaning forward, anxious.
“As I hoped. His lips tightened and he said with great determination, as if I had made light of his machismo, ‘You doubt me? You will see, señor, you will see.’ Then he added, ‘I have not asked you for one thing. And I repeat, I do not wish one thing from you. But perhaps in the days to come you will honor me, whatever becomes of me. My plan is a good one. In one week you will see.’
“I greeted his reaffirmation kindly, with a trace of condescension. I then said that if I truly believed him, I would report directly to you, and probably you would pass along the word to Washington, such being your respect for international conventions on assassinations of heads of state, whatever the violations of those conventions by President Kennedy.”
Fidel could not contain his glee. He stood up and slapped Perjuez on the back. “Hijo mío, well done! Ah, well done! I wish I had a recording of that conversation.”
“You do, Comandante.” Oliver Alejandro Perjuez reached into his pocket, pulled out a tape, and dropped it on Fidel Castro’s desk.
Late that night, long after the others had gone, Castro sat staring through the window up over the roof at the descending moon. He had done so for over two hours. Castro had a feeling. One of those feelings that marked him as a man of special destiny, because always such feelings had led him toward his objectives. He had a sense that when the moon totally disappeared from view, his mind would finally fasten on his Plan (he now capitalized the word in his mind). He did not wish to cheat, and so he kept his head absolutely rigid on the pillow. Otherwise, by raising it an inch, he could prolong his view of the moon another ten minutes … another inch, another ten minutes—no. No cheating. He lay absolutely still, and when the moon was gone completely, under the rooftop at eye level, it came to him.
31
When the commandingly elegant Yekaterina Alekseevna Furtseva, Minister of Culture, arrived in Havana to spend two weeks discussing a full program of Cuban-Soviet artistic exchanges, she was greeted at the airport by Armando Hart Dávalos, the Education Minister, under whose portfolio all artistic activity went forward. She came with a substantial retinue, including a young Soviet pianist (a man) and a violinist (a woman) who were prepared to give a few unscheduled recitals, courtesy of the Soviet Ministry of Culture. A bespectacled man wearing a double-breasted gray suit of the kind that could not have been made elsewhere than in Moscow descended the ramp, and was introduced as deputy to the minister, in charge of ballet. If one followed his movements, as Ingenio Tamayo studiously did from his position at the edge of the Cuban entourage, one would have the impression that his duties were largely clerical. He was carrying his own and his minister’s briefcase, and was fussing over the baggage, indicating which went here, which there. A low-level bureaucrat was the impression he gave, which impression was the impression Nicolai Pushkin sought to give.
Tamayo had commissioned two highly trusted men from the Security Section. They were told to keep Tamayo in radio contact, advising him of the movements of the man in the double-breasted gray suit traveling under the name of “Oskar Marchenko.” Their responsibility went beyond merely keeping their eyes on Marchenko. When Tamayo gave the word, the two security men were to detain Mr. Marchenko, taking great care to separate him from his briefcase, handcuff him, and—without hurting him—put him in their car and drive to Barracks C at San Cristóbal. If he was noisy, they were to gag him. One of the security men spoke enough English to communicate to the Russian, and if Marchenko-Pushkin knew neither English nor Spanish, he would need to be instructed by hand signals.
Tamayo did not wish Marchenko detained until he was well away from Havana. His ostensible superior, pr
eoccupied with ballet, had obviously been informed that Marchenko was to acquiesce in covert arrangements involving his superior’s “aide.” So that when Marchenko left the city of Havana, the ballet master should not expect to hear from him again.
And Marchenko, Tamayo suspected, would, most surely, leave Havana, since his destination was San Cristóbal to relieve Tolstoi-Kirov. The detention would take place, on the assumption that Marchenko-Pushkin’s plan was to drive to San Cristóbal, about a half hour before he arrived there. Tamayo did not know whether Pushkin would make independent arrangements to arrive at San Cristóbal or whether he would telephone Tolstoi-Kirov to ask that a car be sent to fetch him. In the latter event, he would most likely call Kirov directly, who would, by prearrangement, volunteer to fetch Pushkin himself. In that event a second squad car, also armed with two Security officials, would come along to do to Kirov exactly what was being done to Pushkin. Captain Pushkin, in detention, would understand that he and Major Kirov were undergoing identical experiences, identical detention.
Pushkin, as it turned out, wasted no time. He did not even appear at the initial luncheon for the Soviet delegation. There were no place cards, so he was not missed. In his hotel room, shortly after arriving, he read a telephone number from his notebook to the operator. Pushkin was pleased finally to be using the Spanish he had labored so hard to learn on his last visit in Cuba. He had arrived with one of the earliest missiles in August only to leave so ignominiously three months later. During the tumultuous month since being told he would be returning to Cuba on an important mission, he had been given intensive training. But he had found time to pursue his Spanish studies. And then had come the epochal briefing the day before his departure, delivered by Malinovsky himself.
“Está en la línea,” the operator said. Pushkin was connected to the Soviet Command Center at San Cristóbal. He asked for Major Kirov. An orderly said that Major Kirov had been expecting a call and had left word where he would be. If the caller would leave his number, the orderly would have Major Kirov return the call.
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