Aleksei chortled, sort of, and said that indeed the Chairman seemed about to pull off one of the greatest political upsets in history. “If only they do not find out about it.”
“Find out about it? The CIA, my dear Aleksei, is incompetent. I told Castro—actually, it was you who told him—that there was no substantial risk in going ahead with our design, so careful we would be—we have been—with security arrangements and camouflage. Their weekly U-2 flights haven’t spotted anything. We’d hear about it if they had. And Castro believed us; he has faith in us, and quite right. Che Guevara was not so sanguine, but Guevara—I don’t know. Guevara is in so many ways what Lenin called a ‘sectarian.’ On the one hand he wants revolutions all over the world, on the other hand he is naïve enough to think that every revolution can run itself without any direction from us. Hah. Can you imagine even our revolution managing on its own? You need leadership. Enterprise. Did you know, when I was at school I was named the ‘most enterprising’ student in the class? In the first place they will not find out about the missiles; in the second place when they do it will be too late. And then!”—he nodded his head when offered more vodka—“and then we will say, with great calm, with great solemnity we will say, ‘What was that you were “demanding” about Berlin? And demanding about the testing in the atmosphere? Oh yes, and speaking of demands, we want to talk to you about your missiles in Turkey.’ Oh I can see the expression in that young matinee idol’s face. We will say, ‘What was that again about your “demands”?’” The Chairman laughed, and gulped down his drink.
Aleksei said he thought a diversionary maneuver might be in order, something that would distract the attention of the Kennedy White House, get the political candidates with Cuba on the brain to lay off.
“Like what?”
“Perhaps something aggressive about Berlin? There are several theaters in which the Soviet presence could be reinforced, no, Nikita Sergeyevich?”
Khrushchev pondered the question. “No, I do not think anything aggressive is desirable, not at this moment. Although it might distract attention, it might have the effect of mobilizing Kennedy’s—his hostility. Actually, he can be tough, never mind the impression I had at Vienna, where I cremated him, dear Aleksei, cremated him with my arguments, but I told you that. Ho-ho—ask Adlai Stevenson if John Fitzgerald Kennedy can’t be tough! Besides, to be truculent now, this close to the American elections, runs the risk of encouraging blasts of bravado.
“No. I think maybe a speech, or even better a letter. Something soothing. Perhaps even directed at all the talk about the Soviet arming of Cuba.
“Good idea. I’ll personally reassure him everything going to Cuba is purely defensive. And then, when the day comes and they find out, we can use that wonderful phrase of Castro’s—a winner, Castro, provided I don’t have to sit through too many of his speeches; mine are bad enough—that in fact all we sent to Cuba were ‘strategic defensive missiles.’ Yes. I love that. Draft me a letter to Kennedy, Aleksei. Take your time. If I have it by noon tomorrow that will be soon enough.
“And now,” he said, getting up, “I will join my wife and your wife, and perhaps we shall have another toast to the birthday of my grandson. I do hope he will not grow up looking like you, Aleksei. Even though I like you personally, you are really—quite ugly to look at. You must have something else, to appeal to Rada. On the other hand, I haven’t seen that something else. Ho-ho!
“Well, let’s go and pay some attention to the ladies.”
Thirty-four
Some courtroom. There were three judges, sitting roughly as judges at a military court-martial would sit, behind a single table. On the left, Raúl Castro. In the center, Osvaldo Dorticós. On the right, Ernesto Che Guevara. None had on the costumes in which, however studiously casual in cut, they frequently appeared on formal occasions. They wore instead their fatigues, though Raúl Castro had something that smacked of insignia on the lapel of his shirt, and Dorticós had a blathering of red and yellow over his shirt collar. Presumably whatever it was that indicated that he was the President of the Cuban Republic. Che Guevara wore only his fatigues.
A few feet diagonally to the left of Raúl was a card table, a white cloth covering it. On it was a pile of disordered papers. There Ramiro Valdés sat—Minister of the Interior, and, on this occasion, state prosecutor.
A few feet removed from the prosecutor sat Catalina. She was dressed in yellow prison garb, an amorphous robe that reached down halfway between knee and ankle. Her hair was disordered, her complexion pale. Her hands lay on her lap, handcuffed. Opposite her, on the right side, sat Blackford Oakes. The military policemen had brought them into the room, fetid with cigar smoke, sat them down on their chairs, and left. Almost immediately the prosecutor and the judges had entered from a door at the far end. Blackford estimated that the room was about the size of the living room-dining room of the Walden-Hilton. There was a single window, the shade drawn.
It would hardly have mattered, since it was after ten at night. He had been led out of his prison cell by Major Joe Bustamente and driven to wherever they now were—a residential house, it seemed. When led, handcuffed, into the comfortably furnished room outside the court chamber, he had seen Catalina, already arrived, standing in her handcuffs. They had not spoken, had hardly time to speak, as they were instantly led into the inner chamber.
Valdés rose. He began by saying that inasmuch as the matter at hand involved the highest considerations of state security, no one else would be present during the proceedings, which in any event were proceedings the factual background of which was established beyond any question of bourgeois cavil. He looked up at the tribunal and said:
“Gentlemen, excellencies, as Minister of the Interior I am in charge of state security, and I level against the defendants here the charge of high treason.”
He then proceeded, for whose benefit Blackford could not imagine, to say that just twenty-four hours earlier—“indeed on this very day, just after midnight”—the defendant Catalina Urrutia Sánchez had conspired with an agent of the American CIA, knowing that to do so was to violate the most explicit laws of Cuban security, for the purpose of divulging a secret that bore most directly on the security of the state. That woman, he said pointing to Catalina without looking at her face, led the CIA agent to a military installation and revealed to him the nature of Cuba’s most confidential defensive weapons. Happily, a conscientious Cuban patriot assigned to follow the movements of the American agent had followed them, at a safe distance, to their remote destination, had done so undetected by them, had with great resourcefulness radioed with his walkie-talkie to the State Security Office, which had instantly got into touch with the prosecutor himself, who had given orders to reinforce Major Bustamente, which orders had resulted in a military vehicle’s being dispatched from the military installation to follow the traitor and the spy as they returned to Havana, and to abort what had obviously been a treasonable attempt to communicate Cuba’s military secrets to the American imperialists, which attempt had been foiled by the resourceful and ingenious behavior of Major Bustamente and three other Cuban patriots, acting under the close radio supervision of—well, himself.
I demand, he said, that she be given the sentence of death.
He turned, then, to Blackford Oakes.
This spy, he said, who was invited to Cuba by Comandante Guevara to explore possible matters of mutual convenience between the United States and Cuba had so far exceeded his commission, both as a representative of the government in Washington and as a guest of Comandante Guevara, that even his own government had canceled his commission, and moreover had done so over two months ago. Notwithstanding, and prevailing on the good nature of Comandante Guevara, he had feigned a sincere interest in the independence and security of Cuba while secretly maneuvering to penetrate Cuban defenses. He had been guilty of enticing the defendant Catalina Urrutia into acts of treachery, had conspired with her to deceive Comandante Guevara, a great hero of the revolution—
“Forgive me, Comandante Guevara, if it embarrasses you if I speak thus of your historical reputation”—and had suborned her—“One can only guess how many imperialist dollars have been paid to her either directly, or through her parents, who live with other Cuban traitors in Miami”—into colluding with him in an attempt to subvert Cuban defensive precautions. Although he was here in the first instance under the protection of Comandante Guevara, that protection had lapsed at the moment that his diplomatic mission was ended. Under the circumstances, the prosecutor said, he is no more than a foreign spy—“out of uniform!” These words he very nearly shouted. (Blackford dazedly wondered whether he could remember exactly when last he actually had worn a uniform. Sometime in the late spring of 1945, after returning from a fighter mission over Germany.) As for this American, who goes appropriately by the name of Caimán, his real name”—the prosecutor needed to consult a paper on his desk for a moment—“is Blackford Ohks, and it is known about him from friendly sources in the Soviet Union that he has a protracted international record of attempting to thwart the popular revolutionary will.” As regards Blackford Ohks, he, the prosecutor, demanded that he also receive the death sentence, as is appropriate for any spy caught in an act of espionage against the Cuban people.
He sat down.
President Dorticós spoke. His words were enunciated in studied humdrum, as if he were calling for a cup of coffee.
“As to the defendant Urrutia, do you have anything to say?”
Catalina looked perplexed. She spoke softly, “Am I supposed to stand?”
“You may remain seated,” the President said.
“I have always backed the 26th of July Movement,” she said. “I do not see that movement, which stressed the independence of Cuba, represented here.”
“Is that all, Defendant Urrutia?”
Catalina opened her mouth as if to say more. But then, slowly, she closed it. And, very slowly, looking down at her handcuffs, shook her head.
“And the defendant Ohks. Have you understood the charges leveled against you?”
Blackford nodded his head.
“Do you have anything to say?”
Blackford cleared his throat. No point, he figured, in not making the old college try. “I demand to see the Swiss ambassador, the Honorable Guy de Keller, who, by agreement with the Cuban Government and the government of my own country, has undertaken to expedite such affairs as claim the joint attention of our two countries.” Blackford had not quite got this right in Spanish, and, spontaneously, Catalina spoke out the necessary correction.
“Request denied. There are no legal representatives in Cuba for foreign spies. You have no diplomatic credentials in Cuba, Sr. Ohks. Do you have anything else to say?”
Blackford thought for a moment.
“Señorita Catalina took me last night to where she did only because I told her that Comandante Guevara had told me, while she was in the kitchen and we were still at the dinner table—he had dined with us—that I should ask Catalina to take me to a military site the better to understand what I needed to know in order to pursue my attempts at negotiation. I lied to her. She understood herself to be acting on Comandante Guevara’s orders. All she can be blamed for is for believing in my own—deception.”
Catalina, experiencing difficulties of several orders, transmitted the exact meaning in Spanish of what Blackford had said.
The prosecutor rose in all his fury. “This is a contemptible effort to shield the defendant—whore! Yes, gentlemen, that is the primary role Catalina Urrutia has been playing for many weeks. She is nothing more than a Mata Hari.”
Che Guevara raised his voice. “We are not, Mr. Prosecutor, engaged in a theological trial. The Inquisition is not a part of our revolutionary heritage.”
Valdés paused, wondering whether a polemic with Che Guevara was indicated. He decided against it. “What you are hearing, honorable judges, is nothing more than the routine sentimentalities of protective lovers detected in treason. I demand, sirs, that you pronounce a verdict.”
President Dorticós rose and gestured to his fellow judges to retire to their antechamber for consultation.
The door closed, and Valdés was left alone with his papers. He did not turn his face to the defendants. Blackford spoke to Catalina in English, hoping that Valdés knew no English. He decided to begin by asking exactly that question. He spoke as rapidly as he could, using circumlocution and obliquity.
“Does our friend in charge of the proceedings follow what I say in my own language?”
“No,” she replied. “He speaks not at all in that language.”
“Will our friend on the court protect you?”
“I honestly do not know. He made no attempt to reach me during the day.”
“I will attempt to raise holy hell. I can’t tell you that I am very hopeful about it. But I will make a speech after the sentences are handed down. My guess is they’ll give us prison terms. I’ll demand this, demand the other, give indications that if I am not heard from in a day or two inquiries will be initiated in you-know-where, that sort of thing, and that perhaps those inquiries will themselves initiate the kind of surveillance that will reveal what they are up to. Of course all of that is better said alone, to our friend, than to the entire court. Would you guess he will be visiting either of us privately, perhaps right after the verdict?”
“Again I don’t know. He may be in a little hot water himself. After all, he just routinely brought me along when—when—the younger brother of the Big Chief took him out to … that secret installation a week ago.”
“Is it likely our friend will try to cover for himself by voting stiffly? Twenty-years-in-the-clink kind of thing?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. At this point you probably know him about as well as I do.”
But at this point the prosecutor decided that for all he knew, supplementary subversion was going on under his very eyes. He turned and ordered, “Silencio!” They obeyed.
And, in the silence, they found that raised voices from the judicial antechamber could be heard through the door, however indistinctly. There was, for Catalina, the indisputable accents of Raúl Castro in high dudgeon. Blackford recognized the metallic voice of President Dorticós and, of course, the argumentative, seductive, provocative sound of Che Guevara. But there was a fourth voice. It came first to Catalina whose it was, and, not much later, to Blackford. Fidel Castro was in that room. Which meant that the verdict of the judges would be the verdict of Fidel.
The door opened, and President Dorticós led the three judges back to the long table, where they took their seats.
The prosecutor rose.
“Your excellencies. As regards the defendant Urrutia, have you reached a verdict?”
The President replied, “We have.”
Following judicial procedure, the prosecutor turned toward Raúl Castro. “Comandante Castro, your verdict?”
“Guilty.”
“Your recommended sentence?”
“Death. By firing squad.”
The prosecutor, visibly unshaken, turned to Dorticós. “Mr. President: Your verdict?”
“Guilty.”
“Your recommended sentence?”
“Death by firing squad.”
The prosecutor was animated. “And Comandante Guevara, your verdict?”
“Guilty.”
“Your recommended sentence?”
Blackford drew his breath. In the silence, it was audible.
Che Guevara did not hesitate. “Death by firing squad.”
It was all repeated for the defendant, Blackford Oakes. Guilty, firing squad. Guilty, firing squad. Guilty—Che Guevara treated himself to a leisurely puff on his cigar before answering: “Death, by firing squad.”
Thirty-five
The hilltop prison to which they were taken, arriving after midnight, was El Príncipe, perhaps a half hour away from central Havana. Again they were logged in, and this time led to adjacent cells. After taking off their handcuff
s outside their cells, the guard permitted Blackford to press Catalina’s hand on her way into her cell. In his own cell, Blackford looked about and was glad to see that there was electric light. A single overhead bulb, but unlike the night before, it was possible to see. There was a little desk, with a pad of paper and a pencil, and three volumes of Castro’s speeches and a life of Lenin. There was no way to communicate with Catalina. The walls between the cells were too thick even to attempt the basic prisoners’ code, the rat-tat-tat by which gradually one learns to break down the alphabet. A process, Blackford reflected ruefully, that in any case takes longer to learn than they probably had to live.
In the morning he heard his cell door open. It was a captain attached to the Ministry of the Interior. He advised Sr. Ohks that an appeal would automatically be made on his behalf, and that it would probably be acted upon that very day. If his sentence was commuted, he would be taken to more permanent prison quarters … Short pause.
“If not, what?”
“If not, the sentence will be carried out at dawn tomorrow.”
Blackford thought wildly.
“I have a communication for Comandante Guevara. Extremely urgent and extremely important. He will be very disturbed if he does not have it, or if there is any effort made by any other person to read its contents.”
See You Later, Alligator Page 22