“My Spanish has got pretty good now. And anyway, when I’m with Guevara Catalina will always be there for when I get stuck.”
And so Velasco had packed his bag, and Joe Bustamente drove them both to the same airport he had met them at in October of the year before. There was little left to say when Blackford walked with Velasco to the companionway of the old DC-3.
“I will pray for you every day, Blackford. And be careful. Do not trust Guevara.” And, under his breath, he added, “Or Catalina.” There was an awkward moment. And then Blackford threw his arms around the little Spaniard, and Velasco’s tears flowed. That hadn’t happened to him since that day in Mexico in January of 1945. Velasco turned sharply and stepped up the companionway. He did not look back when the door closed, and the aircraft revved up its engines.
The next six weeks were alternately frustrating and exhilarating. Blackford lived with Catalina and she became for all intents and purposes his confederate. She was given leave from her regular duties and pursued much of the work Velasco had been pursuing. On a typical morning she would leave the living room they had transformed into an office to wrest from this official or that the lists and the supplements. More systematic than Blackford, she kept a formal ledger. It contained, on odd pages, “Cuban Concessions,” on even pages, “U.S. Concessions.” The even pages ran a good bit longer than the odd pages. The list of U.S. goods the Cubans desired had now reached a figure the working value of which (pending tomorrow’s addition: every day, it seemed, another item was added) was something on the order of eight or nine hundred million dollars. “We may as well think a billion,” Blackford said after the addition in mid-September of “24 crop-dusting light aircraft.”
The Cuban Concessions list, while shorter, at the constant prodding of Blackford and now Catalina was increasingly specific. In many conversations Catalina would reassert her faith in the socialist alternative. But increasingly as she talked of it she would talk of a vision very different from what lay about her. And the encroachments of the Soviet Union she particularly resented; in this she was, Blackford thought and hoped, particularly influenced by Che Guevara, whose anxiety to avoid the complete subordination of Cuban communism to the Soviet Union had prompted the endless mission.
So that it became emphatic, in their ledger. There would be no military missions attached to any Cuban Embassy in any Latin-American country. Only defensive weapons sent by the Soviet Union would be received. Where there was ambiguity about the purpose or use of a projected or hypothetical military machine, a board was to pass judgment on whether, at the margin, it was defensive or offensive. Whiskey-class submarines, for example: Che argued that submarines, particularly those whose range and firepower were limited, should be classified as defensive. Blackford demurred. The board that might make the decision would be made up of three representatives from neutral nations, even as three nations were then supervising the implementation of the Laos treaty.
There was a three-day wrangle on what it was that constituted a “neutral” nation, Che Guevara insisting that, for instance, Sweden would not qualify because although it was not a member of NATO, Sweden was “clearly” a “Western power.” On the other hand, he said, Ghana was notoriously neutral. “Cut it out, Che, Nkrumah has been kissing communist ass for three years.”
And so the days went by, but the ledger was growing in specificity. And then one day Che said:
“Of course, Guantánamo will need to be returned to Cuba.”
Blackford said that he doubted this would be a political possibility even if President Kennedy were satisfied that a fair exchange had been worked out. “I can’t,” Blackford said, “go to the Swiss Embassy and send a telegram to McCone and say, ‘By the way, is it okay if we give up Guantánamo Bay?’ He might wire back, ‘Sure. If they will give us back the Platt Amendment.’” The Platt Amendment, rescinded in 1934, was the Cuban equivalent of “Remember the Alamo” for Texans. Enacted after the conquest of Cuba in which Theodore Roosevelt became prominent, it authorized U.S. intervention in Cuba in perpetuity whenever Washington held that Cuba was not behaving.
One evening in early October Che stayed on after a working session and had dinner with Catalina and Blackford. He had been suffering acutely from his chronic asthma, and was having problems in breathing normally. He spoke distractedly about this and that, about his reverence for Ho Chi Minh, about the military-industrial complex in the United States. And suddenly he asked, bluntly: Was the United States preparing to invade Cuba?
“Not that I know of,” Blackford said, peeling his mango.
“If it were planned, would you know about it?”
“Not necessarily.”
“I should confess to you, Caimán, that when your mission was deactivated in July, we surmised”—he left the “we” unspecified—“that Mr. Kennedy was ready to launch an invasion. Such things are planned in America, are they not, with some reference to congressional elections?”
“In democratic countries, Che, with which you have had limited experience, elections do mean a good deal because the idea is to formulate policies that appeal to the people. But you should know this: The United States is no longer an imperialist power. We gave the Philippines their freedom and walked out of a half-dozen countries we had taken over after the war. There aren’t six Americans alive who want to take over Cuba for the sake of taking over Cuba—”
Che interrupted him. “There are a lot more than six Americans who would like to invade Cuba right now.”
“I don’t deny that. But that is so only for one reason, and that is that Castro appears to be forming irreversible ties with the Soviet Union and no country has ever done that and then gone on to reestablish its own sovereignty, with the exception of Yugoslavia and China. What we want is a Cuba independent of the Soviet Union. And then you can be as free to undertake your own domestic policies as Papa Doc is in Haiti.”
Che tilted his head to one side and, to ease asthmatic pressure, sniffed on an inhaler. He said, “You may be surprised, but I substantially agree with you.”
“I am not surprised. It’s been a long time since it became pretty clear to me that you’ve been pushing a set of proposals very different from the kind of thing others around Castro want. The question is, What does Castro want? Right?”
Che rose and lit a cigar. He looked down at his cigar case: “I should give these up. Especially when the asthma is raging. Yes, Castro is the supreme leader. But that is to say something a little bit less than that he can move in absolutely any direction he desires. That isn’t true even of Khrushchev. I think that when he feels safe against an invasion from the United States he will be more reasonable.”
“But how can he ever feel ‘safe’ unless we go forward with the Acuerdo? Castro’s Cuba is not about to become a superpower.”
Catalina got up rather brusquely, collected the coffee cups, and disappeared into the kitchen.
“No, certainly not a superpower with nuclear weapons, if that’s what you mean. But we are much stronger today than we were one year ago.”
“So are we. We have crushing power. And the idea is, or ought to be, to keep us from using it against you, and to keep you from becoming so provocative that there is no alternative for us than to use it.”
“Are you telling me, then, that if the Acuerdo does not go through, you will invade us?”
“No. Only that it doesn’t make sense to encourage relations between Cuba and the United States to deteriorate. If you will think back to a glacial age ago in Montevideo, that exactly was the point you advanced to Goodwin.”
Che put out his cigar. “Ah well, we can only try to make progress. If I could tell Fidel that the Americans were willing to give up Guantánamo, that might be the crucial consideration. Perhaps you should think of getting some reaction from Washington on this point. Are you willing to do that?”
“Sure. But unless that was told to Washington in context of”—he held up Catalina’s ledger—“the list of Cuban reciprocal concessions
, they would take away my citizenship.”
“I will make you a Cuban in that case. And you can then be an American-Cuban. Like Catalina”—he called out to her—“Do you like the idea, Catalina?” She didn’t reply. “I will think about that, and then maybe you can send the Guantánamo cable.”
“Take care of your asthma, Che. Why don’t you take a trip to Lourdes?”
He laughed. “Both Lourdes and I would lose our reputations.” He put on his beret. “Hasta luego, Caimán.”
Blackford sat back on the couch and called out to Catalina. Once again, she didn’t reply. He got up and walked into the kitchen. It was empty. He went then to the bedroom and knocked softly.
“Come in.” Her voice was preternaturally quiet.
She was seated on the edge of the bed, looking out at the bright moonlit night.
“Catalina, what is the matter?”
He approached her. Her features were set grimly. She did not turn her face to him. “I can’t go on. No, that’s not right. I could go on. I don’t intend to go on.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The time has come to tell you. No. To show you. But you will have to come with me in the car.”
He caught the deadly seriousness in her voice and resolved to do exactly as she asked. He went into the closet and took a light sweater from the shelf. “It is getting chilly. You’d better wear something too.” She put on a light jacket, and together they walked down three flights of stairs, out of the apartment, and outdoors where, in the little parking lot on the right, her jeep sat.
They drove for almost an hour. Out of Vedado, up the Vía Blanca, over the Almendares River, past Miramar. The moon’s fullness bathed the exposed part of the island in light, and it was only after they reached the beach at Santa Fe that Blackford, looking back, lost sight of the lights of Havana.
She came upon a road on which was posted a large sign, TERRENO DEL PUEBLO—ENTRADA PROHIBIDA. There was visible a guard in a sentry post, reading from a dim light. Catalina drove past about a kilometer, turned off the lights, and slid the car under the protective covering of a large ceiba tree. “From here we will need to walk. Try to be quiet.”
She led him in the direction of a small cluster of lights a kilometer or so away. The area was wooded, but the path was clear. The trees’ shadows hid their own, and Catalina walked toward what seemed a vast hangar. At one end it was dark, at the other, opposite, were some lights. “We’ll see if there is a door at this end,” Catalina said, pointing to the dark side. “When I was here last week I was taken through the other door.”
There was a door. Locked.
She took him by the hand and under the shadow of the great hangar they moved toward the opposite end. At the corner of the building she stopped, looked, and listened. There was no sound coming from the illuminated office twenty yards across the road. The night watchman was either asleep or making his rounds. Catalina held her breath and whispered, “Come!” Just around the corner was the door to the hangar. She rushed to it, momentarily exposed in the moonlight. The door was open. She walked quickly through it, leading Blackford by the hand. She shut the door, opened her purse, took out a flashlight. She shed its light on the floor, again drawing Blackford along until they had walked, he calculated, a third of the length of the hangar. She stopped then, and pointed the ray of light above her.
On two huge cradle mounts was a 50-foot-long white object, torpedo-shaped. She swept the room with her light. The object was one of four in the hangar. Blackford drew in his breath. “Do you know what we’re looking at?”
“Yes,” Catalina said. “A Russian medium-range ballistic missile capable of carrying a medium payload of about a megaton a distance of twelve hundred miles.”
“My God!” And then he hissed, “Let’s get out of here.”
Again she turned the flashlight toward the concrete floor to guide them, and when they reached the door turned it off completely. She opened the door a crack and again looked and listened. They rounded the corner quickly, into the safety of the hangar’s shadow. And then back across the forest toward the car. They missed it and were confused whether to turn left or turn right. “It’s safer to walk in a direction away from the sentry,” Blackford said. They did so and, quietly, came on the car within a few minutes.
For a while, driving slowly, careful not to arouse attention of a police patrol, they headed back to Havana, the moon still bright, the shadows along the road still black, the air warm but no longer hot, the odor of the forest green and tangy. Blackford was silent. Then he spoke.
“How did you know it was there?”
“Because last week Che made a scene at a meeting with Raúl, after I reported what you told me about Washington. About Washington’s getting itchy—about the scale of Russian arms imports. Che demanded to know whether the Russian missiles had actually arrived. When Raúl said yes, the first batch were already here, Che demanded to lay eyes on them. Raúl said all right. And Che just brought me along—Raúl didn’t raise any objection. I guess he knew if he had, Che would have made a scene.”
“Then Che has known—”
“The whole time.”
“And all of this business all the time on the Acuerdo was a ruse?”
“Not the whole time. He did hope to sell the Acuerdo to Castro, even up to a month or so back. But no longer. That’s why I couldn’t stand to hear him when he was talking to you tonight, the things he said that now weren’t so. Especially he knew the Acuerdo wouldn’t go after last Monday, when he actually saw the missiles. That’s why I wanted you actually to see them: that is the effect seeing them has. Last Monday he knew that Fidel wasn’t actually afraid of an American invasion anymore. The Acuerdo was dead from the moment the missiles actually arrived.”
“Then why continue our discussions?”
“Because they want Washington to have the impression that there is still a possibility of an Acuerdo. Until the missiles are in place—mounted, with their warheads on. At that point Castro figures he is permanently secure. At that point, I calculate the Russians figure Washington will take orders from Russia.”
“And when will that be?”
“Raúl told Che about ten days.”
“You know what I must do, Catalina?”
“Yes. And I want you to do it. That’s why I brought you here, for God’s sake. I didn’t join the socialist revolution to take orders from Moscow and maybe help start a nuclear war. We must go quickly to the Swiss Embassy.”
“It is three in the morning.”
“That hardly matters. I’ll stay parked outside and make sure they let you in. You deliver the message”—Catalina had been calm, was speaking now excitedly—“then don’t leave the embassy. A patrol officer might spot you, pick you up. I will drive by”—she looked down at her watch—“at exactly … let’s say three-thirty and pick you up. Does that give you enough time?”
“If it doesn’t, drive off and come back exactly one half hour later.”
The streets were nearly empty as they approached the city. An occasional car, once in a while a bus carrying night workers to or from late shifts. Their route took them by Havana Bay, and at the commercial wharf there was much activity. One large wharf was tightly cordoned off by military policemen. Coming down the Malecón, Catalina was waved to a side street to be out of the way of the unloading, on twin lorries, of what Blackford now assumed was another missile. The streets approaching the embassy were again almost empty.
When they reached the embassy she dimmed the headlights, pulled up outside the iron gates and, after Blackford had sprung out, waited to make sure that someone would wake up, emerge, and let him in.
The spotlight blinded Blackford just as he reached for the buzzer. A second searchlight was thrust at the face of Catalina. Four men, two with pistols drawn, a third with a machine gun, finger on the trigger. The fourth, carrying the walkie-talkie, barked out their orders. Blackford was thrust into the back of the second car, the pistol in his ri
bs motioning the direction he was to take. Catalina was thrust, handcuffed, into the back of her jeep by the second pistolero and the man with the tommy gun. The fourth, the man with the radio, got into the driver’s seat of Catalina’s car and gunned the motor. His voice was heard as the car eased forward:
“You think Joe Bustamente is just a joke, Sr. Caimán.” The voice was all acid.
The cars proceeded in sequence to La Cabaña. There was some quick paperwork done at the adjutant’s desk, a few words exchanged. Catalina was led off down one hallway, Blackford down another. A cell door opened and Joe Bustamente shoved him inside, locking the door with a triumphant thud.
Blackford could detect from the darkness through the high little window that the moon had spent its course. He found the cot, got down on his knees, and prayed for divine help. He rose much later and lay down on the cot. His sleep was drugged from fatigue, tormented by his incommunicable knowledge of catastrophe impending.
Thirty-three
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was jubilant. The day’s news had brought reports of angry denials by several contenders for reelection in the American political campaign that President Kennedy had been anything less than absolutely observant of all relevant developments on the Cuban front. One senator was quoted in the Christian Science Monitor as saying that the very idea that the Soviet Union was going to stick its neck out by sending arms to Cuba on such a scale as would make Cuba a threat to “Republican yachtsmen floating about Caribbean waters” was an indication of how hungry the Republican military-industrial complex was for “one of those blustering, breast-beating confrontations with the Soviet Union” that could lead to war.
Khrushchev patted his son-in-law on the back, reached for an hourglass sitting on Aleksei’s desk in his study at his home, turned it upside down and said, “Aleksei, imagine that hourglass representing not one hour but one month. In exactly one month, the politics of the world will have changed. Now the Americans will know what it is like to have their own Berlin at their doorstep. And anything we then choose to do to West Berlin—why, that will be like sliding downhill on a virgin breast! You know that expression? Ukraine. Not the kind of thing you would pick up reading Izvestia. Does Izvestia have to be so boring? I suppose so, otherwise I would send you to Gulag, if Izvestia were more interesting. But then I would not do that to the husband of my dear Rada. I don’t know, maybe it would cool you off. I must ask Rada whether you need cooling off. Or maybe you need a little”—he laughed uproariously—“‘heating up’ in bed! In that case I could send you to be our ambassador to Ghana. Lovely, the weather in Ghana, as Pasternak has no doubt said in one of his interminable poems. How is that tall jellyfish? Unhappy, I hope. Like everybody in his novels—which I do not read. Say something else unpleasant about him in Izvestia. If I had time I would write it myself.”
See You Later, Alligator Page 21