The Dutch couple carried on quarreling but I was no longer listening. However, when Heather and I returned to the dining room to select our desserts, I said I wanted to sit somewhere else. But she took her flan caramel went back to join the Bakkers. “I like listening to other people arguing,” she said.
Caruthers, who was also serving himself dessert, spoke to me as soon as Heather left.
“I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation,” he said. “Rens can be such a bore — always arguing with his wife and going on about free love. Why don’t you join my table? My wife’s not with me and I’m sitting with the Claes’.”
As we walked back to Caruthers’ table, he said his wife rarely attended the lunches or evening drinks and dinner, but always showed up for tennis. “She has her own circle of friends outside the Hemingway Club.”
I didn’t learn much about Caruthers’s background as we ate our desserts. He said he’d been a captain in the infantry during the war and later served at British missions in Berlin, Prague, and Moscow — or so he claimed.
“After serving in European posts like those,” I asked, “why come to Havana?”
After thinking for a moment, he said, “I often ask myself the same question,” and left it at that. On the other hand, he squeezed from me details about my early life in Penetang, my years at university, and my time in Colombia with an expertise in interrogation I hadn’t encountered since my dinner with the CIA station chief in Bogota. He asked about Heather but he learned nothing about her from me. I think he already knew her background.
After Caruthers finished with me and began toying with his coffee cup and looking bored, Damien Claes took over. But instead of asking me questions, he talked non-stop, with frequent nervous glances at his wife, whose name was Kimberly, about their lives in the Belgian Congo. He said he’d met and married his wife at Ostend on the coast of Flanders in mid-1933, before joining the Belgian colonial service and being posted to Africa. They had loved the colonial way lifestyle — friendships with always respectful houseboys; a sense of pride in uplifting ignorant Africans from their state of savagery; the hospitals, schools, clean water, sanitation, roads, railways, and honest administration; the journeys back home by steamer; shuffleboard on the deck by day; formal dinners at the captain’s table in the evening; bridge with like-minded partners late into night; summers among the dunes with family. He was deputy to the governor of Katanga province, he said, when Lumumba became president, and his world had collapsed.
During a pause in the monologue, I changed the subject. “Don’t you ever get tired of life in Havana?” I asked.
“No we don’t,” Damien said, looking at Kimberly for confirmation. “And that’s because we have Club Hemingway.”
“What’s so special about Club Hemingway?”
“Why, it’s special because it’s exclusive. Nobody but the deputy ambassadors of Italy, France, Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, and of course Canada, can become members.”
“Don’t forget the wives can be members too,” Kimberly said, mildly admonishing her husband.
“Your club doesn’t seem very democratic.”
“It might not be democratic, but that’s the rule. From time to time, African colleagues — deputy ambassadors — ask to join, but we always say no. We want to maintain our exclusivity. We politely tell them they can establish their own club if they want — nobody would stop them. They go away angry, but rules are rules.”
“What’s the reason the group is called Club Hemingway?”
“’The name arose out of quite extraordinary circumstances. Just after the Cuban missile crisis, the atmosphere in Cuba was tense. MININT was up to all sorts of nasty things to make life difficult for the Western embassies left in Havana, and one of the only means of entertainment available to diplomats was to get together Saturday mornings to play tennis at your embassy….”
“This sounds like it’s going to be a long story.”
“Take pity. I can’t go any faster. I’m not as young and quick-witted as you. And so to add some variety to their lives, someone came up with the idea of creating a club restricted to the deputy ambassadors from the Western embassies who had lived through the crisis. That’s how Club Hemingway was born.”
“You still haven’t said why it’s called Club Hemingway.”
“The reason is self-evident. The founders wanted to name it after Hemingway because he was the most famous Western writer ever to live in Cuba, the embodiment of the western spirit, the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, the author of The Sun also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea…”
“And ‘Ten Little Indians’ and ‘The Indian Camp.’”
“What do you mean?
“Those are just two of his short stories about drunken squaws and morally bankrupt, suicidal Indians. He’s an embodiment of nothing noble as far as I’m concerned.”
“You’re a Métis aren’t you?” said Caruthers, intervening in the conversation.
“Yes I am. But so what?”
“It shows.”
Before I could challenge him, Damien continued his story as if my tiff with Adrian hadn’t occurred. “And that’s why the founders named the group Club Hemingway and expanded its activities from tennis to include luncheons to discuss the Great Ideas of the Western World and social drinks and dinner at Hemingway’s favourite restaurant and bars — the Bodeguita del Medio and the Floridita in the old city. Club members used to go Marlin fishing as well, but interest faded and that stopped along with the discussions on Great Ideas.”
11: The Ministry of the Interior
That evening around nine, Heather and I took our newly arrived car to the old city to rendezvous with the others at the Bodeguita del Medio. The members of Club Hemingway were already drinking mojitos among a crowd of off-duty Russian soldiers at the bar. By that time, determined not to be an object of ridicule ever again in Cuba, I had shed my green pants and shirt forever in favour of beige cotton slacks and a silk guayabera. I was more preoccupied than usual, worried whether my plan to break away from the others to investigate the deck cargo of the SS Kama would go off without incident, and I wasn’t good company.
Heather loved the place and went around pointing out signatures that authors such as Pablo Neruda, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as well as, of course, Ernest Hemingway, and movie stars like Ava Gardiner and Errol Flynn, had scribbled on the walls. But where she saw art, I saw graffiti, and there was no meeting of minds. I thought the dinner of overcooked pork, beans in watery sauce, and fried bananas was awful, and she considered it authentic. By the time we left for the Floridita to drink daiquiris, she was at the Dutchman’s side. I wasn’t that surprised when I returned from my spying mission, when the others told me she’d left with him.
Heather made no apologies when she returned home the next morning. “I told you I’d sleep with anyone I wanted when we met,” she said. “And sex is just sex — it scratches an itch but means nothing.”
Unable to control myself, I went to Bakker’s house, barged in like an aggrieved husband in a cheap romance novel, and would have hit him if his wife hadn’t intervened and made me leave. The Dutch ambassador called my ambassador to complain. After Cook hung up on him, he summoned me to the safe room to deliver a reprimand, saying my behaviour was as bad as that of Heather’s. “If you weren’t working for the CIA,” he said, “I’d send the both of you home.”
Fortunately my first effort as a spy had been a success — I confirmed there were no missile launchers under the netting of SS Kama — as were my subsequent expeditions on behalf of the CIA — or so I thought at the time. My attempts to effect reconciliation with Heather were less fruitful. I did everything to make her see reason, eventually coming up with the idea of getting her a dog. But not just any old dog, I wanted to give her a loyal companion that would somehow make her believe that the affection it showed to her was really coming from me. Aware that diplomats at the ends of their postings often sought good homes for t
he pets they couldn’t bring back to their home countries, I asked Rolly to pass the word to Western embassies to let them know that I wanted a dog. Before long, a diplomat at the Swiss embassy gave me a lovable, three-year-old chocolate Lab named Bella. But Heather didn’t get the message and moved to a guest bedroom and left Bella with me. I even showed up for tennis one Saturday morning and went through the motions of shaking hands with Bakker, hoping Heather would appreciate the gesture. But she didn’t, and neither did Bakker and the other members of Club Hemingway. Nobody, with the exception of Caruthers, would speak to me — and all he said was, “I told you so,” before I gave up and went home.
It was only a matter of time before MININT, which was obviously monitoring what was going on, took action. They had already tried their standard means of enticement to see if I was bribable — attractive women approaching me on the street or at the diplomatic free shop to hand me their telephone numbers, telephone calls at home from unknown persons offering me gold for next to nothing. But I had the impression these approaches were perfunctory, as if MININT assumed I was unassailable. But a few weeks after the start of Heather’s affair with Bakker, a Cuban official I hadn’t seen before came up to me at a reception, asked to see me alone, and handed me photos of Heather and Bakker naked and making love in bed.
“These are the only copies, and we’ll destroy them if you’ll work for us,” he said, lying brazenly. “If you don’t cooperate, we’ll send them to your ambassador.” I just pocketed them and said nothing. I nevertheless told the ambassador what had happened, and he made no comment other than to tell me to warn Bakker MININT would probably try to blackmail him as well.
“They’ll be after you next,” I said to Bakker, who laughed and said someone from MININT had already shown the pictures to him and threatened to tell his wife and Dutch government if he didn’t cooperate. “I told him the same thing I’m telling you. My wife knows and doesn’t care, or at least she puts up with me. My ambassador knows and doesn’t care. My authorities back home know and don’t care. You know and I don’t care. Nobody can blackmail me. Now go away and leave me alone.”
Heather was just as dismissive when I tried to talk to her and went out of her way to spite me. When I came home one day for lunch, I found her chattering away with the sour-faced woman from the VIP room. “I’ve invited our friend for lunch since I knew you wouldn’t mind,” she said. “Afterwards, we’re taking the car and she’s going to show me around. And tomorrow I’m going for lunch at her place.” I ate quickly and left for the office with a cold goodbye.
Heather even took another lover — apparently Bakker encouraged her to do so — a Cuban tennis coach who came from time to time to give lessons to Club Hemingway members. Caruthers, who knew from his own sources about the pictures with Bakker, told me the tennis coach was a member of MININT and dangerous. I spoke to her again, but she still wouldn’t listen. We then got into a raging argument, dragging up every slight, real and imagined, that we had inflicted on each other since we had met. I crossed the line, however, when I told her I was sorry I’d ever met her. “You’re not half as sorry as me,” she said. “I know for a fact you betrayed Rojas to the Colombian army.”
“Who told you that?” I said, hoping to be able to discredit her source.
“That’s what my CUSO friends from Colombia said last summer at their place in the Gatineau Hills. They didn’t know how I could live with a monster like you. I was going to leave you but I didn’t want to give up my chance to taste life in the only true democracy in the Americas. Our marriage has been dead since that time.”
Matters came to a head when I was away on a three-day trip for the CIA to Santiago de Cuba on the eastern side of the country. MININT sent photos of Heather in bed with the tennis coach to Ambassador Cook, but made no demands. They were passing some sort of message having to do with me. Whatever their reason, the ambassador didn’t wait for me to come back and went straight to our house and told Heather she was behaving disgracefully and had to leave Cuba immediately.
Heather didn’t want to go and told him she was a Canadian citizen and had no right to banish her. “If you don’t go willingly, he apparently said, “I’ll take away your diplomatic passport and change the locks on your house; after all, your passport is the property of the Canadian government and the rent is paid by the embassy.” Ambassadors don’t have authority over dependants, but Heather packed up her things and went back to Winnipeg anyway. She didn’t even leave me a farewell note.
I returned home a day or two later with only Bella to greet me at the door. I had angry words with the ambassador, but he told me Longshaft should never have sent us to Cuba in the first place. I was immature and she was irresponsible. If I didn’t like his decision, I could leave as well. I sent a message to Longshaft in which I provided all the ugly details of Heather’s dual infidelity. In reply, he took my side. Husbands and wives were always getting into trouble in the Department, he said. No secrets had been passed to the Cubans because Heather didn’t know any. I was better off without her. Give Cook time to calm down and all would be well. Above all, carry on with the good work for the CIA.
I stayed on, knowing full well her departure was for the best, but nurturing the hope we could get back together some day. In those days, telephone connections to Canada from Cuba were virtually non-existent, so I wrote her letters but she never answered. Thankfully Bella was there to keep me company as winter turned into spring, then summer. She sensed I was upset and followed me around the house, slept on the floor beside me and did her best to comfort me. I took her for long walks and started bringing her to the embassy as I carried out my deputy ambassador duties.
Carruthers was the only Club Hemingway member I continued to see. We met occasionally for drinks. By that time, I was convinced he worked for the SIS and I admired his professionalism. As usual, he left it to me to do most of the talking. He never probed for information on my work for the CIA but was always interested in my impressions of developments in the parts of the country I visited. I assumed he incorporated them into the reports he sent back to his headquarters. Then one day, he mentioned I might find a visit to the bar of the Havana Riviera Hotel useful, but didn’t say why.
I knew the hotel well, and had been dropping in from time to time because I liked its 1950s Las Vegas gambling décor and strange history. Meyer Lansky, the notorious mafia boss, built it and opened its doors to the public in December 1957, and it became the best known hotel-casino in the Caribbean basin. Each year, tens of thousands of American tourists came to play roulette, craps, and blackjack under its giant crystal chandeliers and to take in shows starring headliners such as Frank Sinatra, Ginger Rogers, and Nate King Cole. It was also where, in 1970, the Cuban government lodged visiting delegations of Third World revolutionaries — Freedom Fighters, if you like. Occasionally, I came up with a tidbit the CIA found helpful at the Riviera. I even saw Caruthers there once, talking animatedly with a rough-looking, full-bearded character, but we pretended not to know each other.
Assuming Caruthers had given me a good tip, I went that night to the Riviera, ordered a beer at the bar, and looked around the room. Four unshaven men in their mid-thirties, dressed in creased work pants, rumpled T-shirts, and running shoes, were sitting by themselves at a corner table drinking rum and cokes, smoking cigars, and talking. From their accent and turns of phrase, they were Quebekers. Craving company, I picked up my beer and went to join them. They stopped speaking and eyed me warily as I approached, but they said yes when I asked them in French if I could sit down.
“Where you from in Quebec?” said the first questioner, greeting me with the special warmth and trust Quebeckers accord to anyone met abroad who speaks French the same way they do.
“I’m not from Quebec, but from Penetang — that’s on Georgian Bay.”
“I know where Penetang is. A lot of Métis live there.”
“I’m a Métis, but I don’t live there.”
“You here on holiday?”
“No I live here. I work at the Canadian embassy.”
“What’s your job?”
“I’m a spy for the CIA. No I got that wrong. I’m really a spy for the Canadian government.”
I burst out laughing when I said that, and they joined in, howling at the absurdity of my answer.
“And I bet you’re here to spy on us,” someone said.
“Only if you’re dangerous terrorists.”
That precipitated another eruption of laughter and someone raised his glass and proposed a toast to Canada’s spy in Havana. I raised my glass but in honor of the Métis people of Canada. Someone else raised his glass and toasted Louis Riel, and I told them he was my hero.
“Now let’s talk serious,” one of them said. “Why don’t your people get together with the Indians and revolt against the English colonizers. You’d soon bring the government to its knees.”
“Because Canadians have always preferred peaceful change,” I said, using a platitude to fend off a discussion that would lead nowhere.
“You’re just repeating the stuff they tell you in English schools. Why don’t you think for yourself?”
“I do my best.”
“Your best isn’t good enough! Look at the facts. Didn’t the English conquer Quebec by force of arms? That’s not peaceful change. Didn’t the Canadians seize and colonize the lands of the Indians? That’s not peaceful change. Didn’t Sir John A. Macdonald send troops out west to take the land of your ancestors? That’s not peaceful change. And look at what peaceful change brought Riel? He played the game and got himself elected to Parliament. But the colonialist-imperialist government refused to let him take his seat in Parliament and hanged him when he dared lead a revolt.”
“Castro didn’t make that mistake when he overthrew Batista — he took up arms, mobilized the oppressed, and set up a true communist society in this country,” someone else said. “But we won’t make that mistake when our turn comes.”
Exceptional Circumstances Page 15