“Sounds okay. I don’t know how much time Castro is going to have to give to the Oakes matter after tonight, or even whether Oakes is alive.”
“You’ve got it wrong, Bobby, remember? Castro isn’t going to have anything at all to do for a good while now. Just sit, and wonder what Khrushchev is going to do. He should have time to look after not only Blackford Oakes, but Cuba’s sugar harvest.”
“How’re you coming on the speech?”
“I’m not coming on it at all while I’m talking to you. See you, Bob.”
“Good luck, Jack.”
Forty-one
Blackford was lifted from his bed in the prison hospital in the special room in which he was being treated—and guarded—onto a stretcher bed. The major in charge of security spoke to an orderly who maneuvered a four-sided curtain that prevented Blackford from seeing anything except the curtain’s white material, and kept anyone else from laying eyes on Blackford. The stretcher was then drawn on its coasters through the general population ward to a corridor, down in an elevator, out on what seemed to be the ground floor—Blackford could hear outdoor traffic—and, finally, into a private office outside of which two guards stood. The curtain material was withdrawn and an orderly turned the bed winch, lifting Blackford up to a near-sitting position. His throat felt very dry and he wondered whether all the drugs that had been given him were medicinal. He asked for a glass of water, which was handed to him. He had a little difficulty in focusing his eyes. With his left hand he reconnoitered his right shoulder. The pain was gone, except where he probed. His problem was his weakness, the difficulty in thinking, in concentrating, in focusing. But he knew the voice right away.
And he could understand that the nurses and attendants were leaving the room at the gesture of the man who was now speaking to him.
“You are a soldier, Caimán. And I have always understood soldiers. Your records may reveal, if you have bothered to look at them, that I—and indeed all of us associated with Operation Granma—were never vindictive toward the soldiers of Batista.”
“Good morning, Che. Or is it afternoon?”
“It is late morning.”
“What day?”
“Saturday.”
“Am I in good shape?”
“The doctor advises me that you will be able to face the firing squad standing up.”
Blackford closed his eyes. He had heard something very unpleasant but didn’t have the strength to sort it all out.
“I am prepared to resume the conversation that was interrupted last Saturday.”
“You mean, when Velasco came?”
“Yes, that is what I mean.”
“What has happened?”
“What has happened where?”
“On the international front.”
“Oh, I see what you mean. Nothing has happened. Evidently your friend in New York, Mr. Trust, was not believed in Washington.”
Blackford summoned all the energy he could to think through the implications of this. No, it was not possible. Not at all possible.
“I don’t think, Che, that I believe you.”
Che stepped back and eyed Blackford. He felt he knew Caimán well. Caimán was having genuine difficulty in talking, in thinking. He went to the door and told the major to fetch the doctor. He turned back to Blackford, whose eyes now were closed. In due course there was a light knock on the door. Che went to it and stepped outside to confer with the doctor in a low voice.
“I was under the impression the prisoner would be completely lucid.”
“He is lucid, Comandante, but he is still very weak.”
“I find he has difficulties in concentrating.”
“That is a combination of fatigue and the drugs.”
“What drugs?”
“He has been given antibiotics, and they have controlled the infection. He has also been sedated to arrest any unnecessary and inflammatory movement in the wounded area.”
“How long do those drugs take to wear off?”
“Eight to twelve hours.”
“Was he scheduled to have more drugs?”
“Yes, at noon.”
“Cancel that order. Figure out another way to keep his shoulder quiet. I will be back here at eight o’clock and I expect to find him mentally alert.” The doctor, without expression, gave instructions to the nurse he summoned, and saluted the Comandante. Che hesitated. Should he go back into the room and tell Caimán he would be back at the end of the day? No. Let Caimán repair the fatigue. If he knew that in a matter of hours they would be conferring again he might not rest. Che Guevara left the hospital.
When he woke in the afternoon, Blackford complained of the binding that strapped him down on his bed. The doctor was summoned. Blackford spoke to him in Spanish and asked that the strap be removed. The doctor said he would order it taken away but that the prisoner was not to exercise his right shoulder. And if he felt he was slipping off to sleep, he was to advise the nurse to strap it on again in case during the night he was restless and did himself damage.
“Tell me, Doctor, when will I be able to leave the hospital?”
“In two or three days,” the doctor replied. “If you are careful.”
“And when will I be able to use my arm again?”
“It will take two days to three weeks before you reacquire normal use of your right shoulder and arm. The progress will be day-to-day.”
“Suddenly I feel quite lively. And even hungry. What am I allowed?”
“You can eat cereals and sugar, and the regular hospital fare.”
“Can I have a radio?”
“That is a decision for the military. I shall ask Major Marzo to attend you.”
Blackford looked at the little bearded doctor, and wondered whether he was twenty-five years old or maybe twenty-six. He must have spent all twenty-five years studying how to be professional. Absolutely no expression of any kind had crossed his face.
“Thanks, Doctor.”
“Para servirle.”
Major Marzo was matter-of-fact. No the prisoner could not have a radio. No he could not have a newspaper. No he could not have a magazine. No he could not make a telephone call to the Swiss ambassador. No he could not write out a message for the prisoner Urrutia. No he did not know where the prisoner Urrutia was. Yes he could have something to read.
“Now wait a minute, Major. You know that I am protected by the Geneva Protocols?”
The major was startled. He did not, in fact, know what the Geneva Protocols were, but there was a ring of authority both to the sound of said Protocols, and to the way in which the prisoner referred to them.
“What about the Geneva Protocols?” he asked, cautiously.
“They stipulate that no Western prisoner of war can be made to read anything written by Marx, Lenin, or Castro.”
Major Marzo wondered how exactly the Comandante would want him to reply to a jest.
“I will get you something from the prison library.”
“Is there anything there by Agatha Christie? I’ve become accustomed to her.”
“I will see.”
“Be a good—” good what? If Major Marzo became known as a “good fellow,” they’d probably execute him too. Be a “good soldier”? No, probably demeaning to a major. Be a “good sport”? No. He might take that as suggesting he had been bested. “Be a good major, and get me an Agatha Christie, or if she isn’t in the library, any novela policiaca, preferably one that was originally written in English.”
The pretty black nurse, who did not hesitate to smile at the prisoner as she removed the strap, said she would bring him some cereal, and Blackford suddenly felt preposterously high. Then his mind began to focus. And he thought back.
He had indeed had a conversation with Che Guevara. He half closed his eyes and he could visualize Che, beret on, cigar—unlit, wasn’t it?—in his mouth, at the end of the bed. When would that have been?
And then he had spoken. They had spoken. And Che had said something about
—yes. That there was no news on the international front. And that—yes, yes … yes. Che was obviously rescheduling the session toward which they were headed when Velasco—Velasco. Blackford clenched his fists under the covers. Then quickly released the right fist, because the tautness pained his shoulder … When Velasco had picked them up. And now, whether the message had got through to Washington or whether it had not got through to Washington (of course it had got through. Either that or the whole government of the United States was bent on suicide), he and Catalina were under sentence of death. And what he had put together to tell Che last Saturday—how would it sound now, with Washington alerted to what was going on in San Cristóbal, and God knows where else in Cuba?
He must give them something, enough to spare Catalina.
But wait. Of course. The terms were that he would not talk with Che until he had a paper in his hand commuting the sentence against Catalina. Right. And that would buy some time, surely, because it was unlikely that he would bring the paper to the hospital, let alone the paper and Catalina.
So tonight they would fence. The next day would be critical. Critical as regards his own life. By tomorrow he should have managed the commutation of the sentence of Catalina. He must rehearse himself carefully.
Che Guevara, driving to the prison, reflected on the day’s events. Fidel was getting angrier and angrier at the failure of Moscow to say anything publicly designed to brake aggressive action by the Americans or to communicate its intention to do so soon. That was bad enough. But during the past forty-eight hours Castro had not succeeded in getting anybody in the Kremlin of any consequence on the other end of the telephone. Castro, by now, was too sensitive to protocol to content himself to speak to just any Soviet menial. He wanted Khrushchev or Mikoyan or Gromyko.
By noon Thursday he had lowered his sights, and told the radio operator he would consent to speak with Aleksei Adzhubei. On being told, twenty minutes later, that Comrade Adzhubei was on vacation in the Crimea and could not be reached, Fidel Castro had had a genuine, uncontrolled, uncontrollable fit of rage and, in the presence of Che and Raúl and Dorticós, had spoken such words about the Soviet Union as had not been heard since, in Wheeling, West Virginia, twelve years earlier, Senator Joseph McCarthy inaugurated the age of McCarthyism. Beyond taking the precautions that had been taken on Wednesday to remove sensitive Cuban personnel from the three areas likeliest to be the targets of an American strike, there was literally nothing to be done; but it was psychologically impossible to address themselves to other problems, even though Cuba was groaning with other problems, from an abrupt scarcity of toilet paper—suddenly, as if at “the ass-end of a providential countdown,” as editor Carlos Franqui had put it, there was no toilet paper in all of Cuba—from that to the threatened strike of the fishermen. Castro would show them who was running the fishing industry, little kulak Cuban fishing capitalists, or the people.
But nothing, nothing seemed to engage the attention, pending the awful, inscrutable silence from Washington. The only relief Castro could get was to telephone five times a day to the Russian general in charge of the installations. But he always got the identical response, namely that the work was proceeding “on schedule.”
On Saturday, Fidel had actually gotten drunk in the middle of the day. Fidel tended to drink only ceremonially, and had no particular taste for the staple of the Cuban spirit, rum. But this afternoon he had sat and drunk daiquiris as though he were Ernest Hemingway. Almost anything to distract him. One of the things that, suddenly, he thought to dwell on was the matter of the American. Caimán. He had sent for Che.
“Did you get any information from him?” Castro asked sarcastically.
“I saw him for the first time this morning. The doctors said there would be no point in seeing him earlier. And even this morning there was no point. He was not lucid.”
“Has it occurred to you he might be faking his lack of lucidity?”
“It has, Fidel. That is why I called the doctor and spoke to him, and the doctor said he was still under heavy sedation.”
“I suppose he will stay under sedation until after the gringo invasion?”
“I told the doctor to take him off sedation.”
“When?”
“Immediately.”
“So that you will be questioning him when?”
“Tonight.”
“Good. Then we should be able to execute him tomorrow. No. I don’t want him executed tomorrow. I don’t want him executed until twenty-four hours after he is told that the execution will take place. It hurts more that way.” There followed a smile of sorts.
“What if he gives us valuable information?”
“That will make up for the deaths of the prison guards who were ambushed last Saturday.”
“Fidel, there is the matter of the girl. You remember that Caimán said he would not talk unless we granted a reprieve of sentence to the girl.”
“Grant it, and then execute her. No. Don’t execute her right away. Same rule as the American. Let her sweat a day.”
Che decided he would make one more pass. “Fidel, when we last spoke about it you agreed that if we gave our word the girl would not be executed, we would have to keep it. Remember that she had nothing to do with the ambush—as a matter of fact, neither did Caimán—so do you think it right that she should then be executed?”
Fidel returned the moral cavil with a stare. It was intended to be withering. “Sometimes you talk like the fucking Jesuits at Belén. ‘Do you think it right …’ Do you, mother of God, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, think it right for me, Fidel Castro, to serve as Comandante en Jefe of this fucking revolution which aims to serve the people of Cuba? Or are you determined to import your mysterious moralities … from—from whom? Mao Tse-tung? Who do you really worship, Che? We know that God does not exist. So suppose I tell you that Mao Tse-tung would not ask the question, the mincing question”—Fidel Castro was going about as far as one could go with Che Guevara—” ‘Do you think it right?’” Castro imitated a well-known nightclub transvestite of pre-revolutionary days. Then with all his might he stamped his fist on the desk. “Yes, I, Fidel Castro, think it is right to punish our enemies. Do you understand, Che?”
“I understand, Comandante.”
The prison was too near at hand, so Che ordered the driver to take a turn and head for the bay. He did not want to see Caimán until after he had cooled off. He needed very much to cool off, after that session.
It was just eight; the sun had set but the night was bright and warm, and Che drove down the Malecón, past the wharves—busy, as usual, extruding the fruit of Soviet technology. He drove all the way down to the northwest end of the bay, soothing his nerves, and then told the driver to return to the prison. The adjutant, seated next to the driver, signaled the order to the jeep behind, the jeep with the bodyguards, and at 8:35 they drove into the prison courtyard.
Blackford was waiting for them, sitting up in his bed. His eyes were distinctly clearer than they had been that morning.
“Good evening, Caimán.”
“That remains to be seen, Che.”
Good, Che thought. Caimán sounds normal. He looked at Blackford and suddenly noticed: he had shaved his beard and had got his hair cut. He looked, now, thoroughly American: the well-formed features, blue eyes, the expression of intelligence, acuity; warm, attractive. His prisoner, thought Che, was as poised as if he were preparing, by elfin circumstance, sitting on a stretcher bed, to interrogate an Argentine guerrilla caught in a general’s uniform in Cuba.
“You are obviously better, Caimán.”
“Your nationalized hospitals are in good hands, Che.”
“Well, a lot has happened since we had our original engagement.”
“Yes. And a lot, I feel sure, is about to happen.”
“Yes.” Che thought it appropriate to squirt a little cold water into Caimán’s high spirits. “And some of us will live to see it happen.”
“Ah, Comandante Che. How differently
you speak now from the days—from the weeks and months—when we spoke about the Acuerdo, and what our countries might do for each other.”
“That is not on the evening’s agenda.”
“No. It was very much on the agenda, however, that while I was struggling to bring together an Acuerdo along the general lines you—you, Che—had sketched out in Montevideo, you—you, Che—were busy importing nuclear weapons.”
“It is wrong to assume that all Cuban decisions are my decisions.” Che reflected for a moment. And quickly added, “It is right to think that all Cuban decisions are decisions that bind me. I too am a soldier.”
“Do you believe in the Nuremberg Doctrine?”
“If you are asking me, Would I have obeyed Hitler, the answer is, No, I would not have done so. If you ask me, Is obeying Castro the same thing as obeying Hitler, I have a simple answer: No. Because Castro is not a nazi careerist. He is a revolutionary.”
“Seems to me Hitler was something of a revolutionary himself. But never mind, Che, never mind. I don’t dispute certain … existential things. One of them is that you’re in charge here.”
“You know why I have come. To hear your secret information.”
“And you know that I said that my willingness to talk was based on two things: a reprieve of her death sentence, and the presence of Catalina.”
Che paused. He had come prepared for the business of the written pardon. He had forgotten that Catalina’s presence in the room had been a part of the package.
“I am prepared on the matter of the commutation of the capital sentence. I do not see why Catalina need be here. In fact”—Che was extemporizing now, and was pleased he had happened on the tack—“it might be more comfortable for you if you proceeded without her presence.”
See You Later, Alligator Page 28