Pedro Nogales stepped out of the car and turned left toward 8A.
At the moment Velasco approached him from behind, the doors of 8B and 8C suddenly swung open. Out of 8C a six-year-old boy was led by his mother, laughing and singing, to 8B, which had somehow burst out in song: “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you …” There was the sound of a piano and of a dozen children’s voices singing out their congratulations to Bobito.
Pedro Nogales, his key already in the doorlock, turned his head toward the jubilation. Velasco struck. A combination he had been taught in Barcelona and had—he was not so calloused as to forget exactly how often he had summarily executed—six times used, that had never failed him. The quick pile driver’s chop with the hard edge of his left hand across the upper temple, while his right hand drove the razor-edged letter opener up through the rib cage into the heart.
There was not a sound, merely the collapse of a few score pounds of flesh. The mother ushering in her child was momentarily distracted by the disorder in front of 8A, but the welcomes shouted from 8B recaptured her attention, to say nothing of Bobito’s, who kept puffing into his paper blow-out. Velasco leaned over the fallen figure, as though administering first aid, for the few seconds required as her concentration went back to the birthday party and she shut the door behind her. Leaving the body slumped on the floor, he entered the elevator, burying his face in a newspaper. The elevator stopped at the third floor, but Velasco continued reading, in doing so becoming undistinguishable from a hundred thousand Cubans who could not be distracted from their preoccupation with Revolutión, the jaunty, exuberant tabloid edited by the renowned friend of Fidel, Carlos Franqui, veteran of Sierra Maestra.
Outdoors, Velasco walked down Séptima Avenida, and two blocks away found a taxi. He gave an address ten minutes’ walk from the Walden-Hilton. He approached the cottage with caution. He was relieved to see that Blackford was sitting in a chair on the beach, Alejandro behind him in the blazing sun, his carbine on his lap. Velasco slipped into the cottage, got into his formal beach clothes (baggy short pants, a T-shirt, and a kimono of sorts). Magazine in hand, he walked casually toward the beach and sat down on the sand by Blackford.
“Gee, Cecilio, it is so nice to see you. Are you entirely over your awful seizure?”
Cecilio performed like a trained seal.
“Yes, thank you Blackford. It must have been something I ate. Absolutely terrible. But I think it is out of my system. Thank you for the trouble you took.” His statement was a clear interrogatory.
“After I saw your note,” Blackford lowered his voice, though it was not really necessary, “I went to the door of your bedroom and though it was obviously hard for you to talk, sitting in the can, I made out to Manuel that you were alive. I then went to the beach every fifteen minutes and stayed there for fifteen minutes, before walking back to catch up on your ‘condition.’ It was necessary for me to speak rather loudly to you from the living room. Almost had to shout, but at least I established that you were among the living. Then back to the beach—so damn hot in the cottage. Good old Alejandro walked right back to the beach with me every time. It meant access to the cottage for fifteen minutes out of every half hour, to give the impression I was looking after you, fifteen minutes on the beach to give you a chance to slip in, Manuel having taken his usual afternoon off. Figured that would be useful. You son of a bitch, what in the hell have you been up to?”
“I’ll tell you when it makes sense to tell you,” Cecilio said, lighting up a cigarette. “Meanwhile, if I may suggest it, I think it would be appropriate to call in Major Bustamente on the grounds that you have another message to send in to our principals.”
Blackford turned and looked at Cecilio, sitting on the beach chain-smoking, his beachwear so totally, preposterously unsuitable. He suddenly understood. As plainly as though he had been given it all in words of one syllable.
He said, as if talking into a KGB loudspeaker, “I am glad you reminded me. I have supplementary thoughts I should add to this morning’s message.”
They walked together in silence back to the cottage, dragging their effects behind them in the sand. They no longer bothered to bring back the beach chairs, as they now referred to them, and Alejandro seemed content to let them stay there in the broiling sun, just this side of the high tide, so that they would not float out to sea.
Nineteen
Joe Bustamente was the last cheerful thing Cecilio Velasco saw on that Tuesday afternoon. Joe arrived at the Walden-Hilton the soul of good cheer to take Velasco once again to the Swiss Embassy. On the way he chatted that Washington must be ever so obliged at being kept so current on the matters Sr. Caimán was engaged in, whatever those matters were—“Joe keeps his mind on the things Joe is told to keep his mind on,” Bustamente said, smiling. And anyway, was Mr. Velasco feeling better, after the seizure Manuel, the cook, had told Bustamente Velasco had suffered that morning? What on earth could it have been, since the water at the hotel was crystal-clear; indeed Havana had never had any trouble with its water, in particular now that the imperialists had been … invited to return to the United States, no offense intended. What on earth could it have been? Velasco said he was still feeling a little bit weak, but that he had suffered from a weak stomach “ever since getting typhoid as a boy in Spain”; he had learned to control it, and now he would drink only bottled water—no offense intended on the subject of Cuban water—but water and soup, and perhaps a little boiled chicken, and he would be a new man tomorrow, etc., etc.
At the embassy Bustamente was surprised to find, there in the enclosure outside the entrance, a corporal’s guard of soldiers and plainclothesmen—Castro’s plainclothesmen of course wore fatigues, but without insignia. Velasco seemed unperturbed. He walked through the informal barricade, explaining that he had an appointment with the ambassador, not exactly correct, but he could say that he had been invited by the ambassador to come by any time before six o’clock if he had any cables to send out. When the door was opened, he saw three guards in the hallway. Again paying them no heed he asked for the ambassador. Instead of being taken directly to his office as before, he was taken to a waiting room and told to wait. The commotion was quite general, and Velasco affected, finally, to be disturbed, and quietly inquired of the receptionist whether M. de Keller was all right.
“The ambassador is quite well, thank you,” she said. “Pedro Nogales is not. Pedro Nogales is dead.”
“Dead?” Velasco’s face was solemn, his eyes questioning. “But I was with him here this morning! He seemed so well. Heart attack?”
The receptionist, a middle-aged lady with a heavy German accent, began to whisper something, but then saw the door to the ambassador’s office opening and said nothing. Guy de Keller appeared outside the door to his office and signaled to Velasco to come in.
“I just heard,” Velasco exclaimed. “Mr. Nogales …”
“Murdered.” Guy de Keller sat down heavily at his desk, motioning Velasco to sit down. “Murdered. Right outside the door of his apartment.”
“Murdered! Did they catch him?”
“No. The police—the G-2—are asking a great many questions. It is not clear to me why the G-2 are involved. No doubt because Nogales was involved in diplomatic work. The G-2 can be very conscientious, you have to hand them that. I have never been troubled here in transacting official diplomatic business. Of course, my burden has been greatly increased since I have had to attend to United States business. But no, they tell me they have leads, and that they are certain to apprehend the culprit. But everyone is searching for a motive.”
“Was he married?”
“In a manner of speaking. I make it a point not to inquire into these things—I mean, after the normal security checks. He is—he was—a widower, but he has kept company with a lady who lived with him. I have never met her.”
“If it is not too painful, what exactly happened?”
“I know only that shortly after noon—I think I told you—yes,
I did, didn’t I?” the ambassador looked up, then resumed, “Pedro went regularly home for his lunch. It is only a half-dozen blocks from here. Anyway, there was a children’s party, and traffic between the two adjacent apartments, and one of the children saw this—body. The mother rang the bell of his apartment, and Nogales’s—lady—came out, and screamed. They called an ambulance. But he was dead.”
“Why, then, ‘murdered’?”
“Because, Mr. Velasco, there was a knife wound that had pierced his heart.”
“Dios mío de la vida!” Velasco relapsed into Spanish. “I am so very sorry … But, sir, I must kindly ask that—was it your deputy, you said? The gentleman who can work the codes?—I must ask, inasmuch as this is important official business, that you be good enough to permit me to consult with him on the matter of a cable …”
Guy de Keller sighed, and picked up his telephone. In German he relayed his request, and in a few moments a young man whom he introduced as Beathe Jutzeler walked in, looking harried. Jutzeler spoke to Velasco in Spanish and told him to follow him into the code room.
Velasco did so, and the door having closed, he gave the code number and pulled out of his pocket the cable Blackford had written that morning, on which he had typed a fresh introductory sentence, FURTHER TO THE CABLE OF THIS A.M. “Sir, I am embarrassed to ask this question, but can we assume that, the commotion notwithstanding, this cable will go out with normal security arrangements?” Velasco was tempted further to ask whether abnormal security arrangements might not be more appropriate.
“Of course,” Jutzeler said, extending his hand for the cable. “And, as ever, this piece of paper will be shredded after it has been dispatched. Good day, Mr. Velasco.”
“Good day, Mr. Jutzeler. And permit me to express my sympathy over the loss of your … colleague.”
“Thank you.”
He made his way back through the soldiery and signaled to Bustamente, who was talking in excited gestures with a lieutenant.
In the jeep, on the way to the cottage, Bustamente spouted incessantly, repeating mostly details Velasco had heard from the ambassador. “We live in a violent world, Mr. Velasco.”
“We do indeed,” Velasco sighed deeply, under the crushing impact of Joe’s profundity.
In his office, the Deputy Minister of the Interior, Nemesio García Naranjo, stormed up and down. From his desk, behind which was a huge picture of Fidel Castro, to the opposite end of the room where the large bay window overlooked a square. There were three men in the room, seated on an assortment of chairs; all of them were, like García Naranjo, bearded. They were in their thirties and forties, senior officials.
“Goddamndest thing. Middle of the day. Middle of Havana. Middle of a most extraordinarily useful career. Months it took to get him in there. And one month—one month—after Nogales gets installed in the Swiss Embassy, where he might have been useful to us in such matters as how many cuckoo clocks Switzerland plans to export this year, the embassy takes on the whole business of traffic to the United States! Granted most of the traffic is ours. But then the nuggets! Nuggets! Washington asking the Swiss to hold messages for a dozen Cubans. Counterrevolutionaries they are! They were, I mean. Nogales dead. How? Who? You have your orders. Every counterrevolutionary who had any contact with the Swiss Embassy during the past four months. Round them up. Bring them in. C-o-a-x them into cooperating with us. Who was the last outsider to use the Nogales facility?”
“Sir, that was the American, the Spanish-American, one Cecilio Velasco, the man who brought the cable that Nogales made available yesterday to Comandante Che. There was a second cable this morning, also made available to Comandante Che. The last service Nogales performed for us. How much do we know about Cecilio Velasco?”
“Velasco is here under the special protection of Comandante Che. We do not need to know more than exactly that about him.” García Naranjo looked out the window.
“Has Comandante Che been informed?”
“I have an appointment with him at the Industry Ministry in one half hour.” He looked at his watch. At exactly that moment the door swung open. García Naranjo very nearly shouted out his indignation at being thus disturbed. Nobody entered the office of Nemesio García Naranjo without his permission …
In came General Espinosa, grim-faced. He said nothing, wheeling about to make way for the man he was escorting.
Comandante Che Guevara.
Everyone rose to his feet. Guevara did not motion them to sit down. He walked to García Naranjo’s desk and, without a word, sat down. No one spoke.
“Where was Cecilio Velasco at noon today?”
García Naranjo said that Bustamente had, as usual, driven Velasco back to the cottage after the morning cable had been filed.
“I did not ask you where he was at 10:30 this morning. I asked you where he was at noon.”
García Naranjo said he was presumably in the cottage, under guard.
Che Guevara spat into the wastebasket. “Find out where he was at noon. You are rounding up the friends of the counterrevolutionaries we recently liquidated?”
“Yes, Comandante.”
“You will attempt to replace the Swiss code clerk with a suitable substitute?”
“Of course, Comandante. We are preparing a list—a very short list—for the consideration of the ambassador.”
“It might be appropriate to advise the ambassador that we hold him partly responsible.”
“How exactly shall we phrase that, Comandante?”
“Pedro Nogales was a Cuban citizen engaged in delicate work. It greatly harms the reputation of Cuba that a diplomatic servant should be murdered. The Swiss ambassador should accept some responsibility for not providing proper … security.”
García Naranjo knew better than to press the question of just how this would be communicated to Guy de Keller, an experienced diplomat who had held posts in Ghana, Ireland, and elsewhere and was presumably familiar with security responsibilities.
Guevara lifted his hand and said to García Naranjo, “Clear the room.”
The general and the three aides left the room hurriedly.
“I have a hunch,” Guevara said. “Velasco did it.”
“But Comandante, how could he have known?”
“I have an idea how he might have found out about Nogales, but it is not relevant. Dig out what you can.” He paused, speaking now to himself. “Bloody clever. Goddamned plucky. You have to admire it, if it’s so.” And then, picking up his voice, “What do we have on Velasco? Background?”
“Not much, Comandante.”
“Get our people in Moscow and in Madrid to make inquiries.”
“But sir, what more do we need to know? After all, he is a CIA operative. He is—the enemy.”
“I want to know more. I like to know what I can about my enemies.” Guevara pulled out a cigar and lit it. He thought. And smiled. In due course he noticed that García Naranjo was still standing. He motioned him to sit down, and resumed smoking. Suddenly he got up.
“Get on with it, García Naranjo. And report to me tomorrow. And tell Ramiro to call me when he gets back from Santiago. Tomorrow I shall be spending some time with Caimán. And Señor Velasco.”
Twenty
It was just after midnight, a time Fidel Castro enjoyed. To spend with his intimates (defined as those who had known him for a long time and who saw him frequently, rather than as those who know a man well and give advice and friendship), but also to spend with others whose company, for a variety of reasons, he might desire. Diplomats he deigned to see (few, infrequently) were often summoned to meet him at that late hour, and even later. But today it was just his brother Raúl, Che Guevara, and Osvaldo Dorticós, nominally the President of Cuba. On the table in the study at the apartment on Calle Once in the Vedado district, the most inconspicuous of his three regular residences and the smallest, was carbonated water, ice, rum, fruit, and cakes. Castro was absentmindedly chewing on a cake and drinking from a soda-water bottle. The others
were chatting. They had known Fidel Castro in every circumstance, in the days since, on December 2, 1956, the vessel Granma had arrived from Mexico with eighty-two young men determined to liberate Cuba from the dictator Fulgencio Batista. Twelve had survived that awful, seasick voyage and the subsequent ambushes, and there had begun the renowned and triumphant saga of Sierra Maestra. Twelve survivors of the Granma. One or two had died in battle, one or two before Castro’s own firing squads, one or two were in prison. But all had known Fidel in circumstances of almost connubial intimacy, one consequence being that though they were blindly loyal to him, they were not in the least overawed by him. They spoke to him using the familiar voice, and argued with him; argued with him until it became clear that he had made a decision. After that, the arguing stopped. So that it was not in the least unusual that until Fidel chose to address them, they should be chattering among themselves (or to him), not especially mindful of his dominating presence. But now, the cake finished, Fidel Castro lit a cigar and said, in such a voice as to bring instant silence, “Very well then, Che. Let us have a report on what you call Proyecto Caimán. How does that all go?”
Guevara had prepared himself carefully for what he knew would be a difficult session.
“Fidel, Caimán is very anxious to bring the discussions to a more formal level.”
“Ah-hah. It is clear to me why that is so, is it not to you, Che?”
“What is on your mind, Fidel?”
“Kennedy knows that we are getting from the Soviet Union increasing supplies of the kind we especially need. And Kennedy knows that there is much lack of sympathy in Latin America with his policies toward us, especially since the Bay of Pigs. So he is anxious to negotiate with us while he has the advantage. But every week that goes by, that advantage diminishes as we get the time to reorder our economic house and get aid from the Soviet Union.”
“Fidel, I see exactly what you mean. But I do not see what is the purpose of neglecting to establish how far exactly it is that Kennedy is willing to go. Why not see his whole deck, how he will play?”
See You Later, Alligator Page 14