Assassin: The Terrifying True Story Of An International Hitman

by Robbins, Christopher

  There were also people who stood firmly in Dr Sosa’s path. The most dangerous was Colonel Luis Ney Tejeda, the chief of police, whose position carried immense power. The president was particularly careful to choose a man he trusted for this key job. Tejeda took a special interest in intelligence reports submitted to the president and also had serious misgivings about the calibre of Dr Sosa.

  It was intensely uncomfortable for the doctor to have this sort of attention paid to him and at first he suffered the inconvenience in silence. But it was inevitable that the two men should clash. The police chief wandered at will into the intelligence offices in the palace and issued orders direct to agents which Sosa furiously cancelled as soon as his back was turned. The position deteriorated to such an extent that Sosa decided to move his offices from the palace to his own home. ‘Otherwise I would have to kill that dog and to avoid that I had better come to the palace as infrequently as I can,’ he explained to Perez, who approved of the move as he found the new offices quieter and more comfortable.

  Life at Sosa’s villa was eccentric but less taxing than at the palace. The doctor was very casual and spent most of each morning in bed after which he would wander about his assistant’s office dressed in pyjamas, the tops and bottoms of which never matched. But vast political ambition and inordinate greed stalked behind the homely and amateur atmosphere.

  In the days of the Trujillo régime the Intelligence Department had existed purely as a tool of the dictator himself but with Balaguer as president, Sosa intended to use it to his own ends. But he needed cash if his ambition was to bear fruit and the government only provided a modest allowance as there were a score of other Intelligence departments to finance. Dr Sosa turned to the Americans.

  He decided to offer the services of his small outfit to the CIA. One afternoon three men came to the villa asking to see the chief. One of them, who spoke excellent Spanish but with an American accent, explained that his name was Link Stewart and that he had come on important business. As the doctor was confined to bed with a hangover, Perez tiptoed into his bedroom and told him of the men’s arrival.

  ‘Shit,’ Dr Sosa announced, nursing his head, ‘those Americans are here already.’

  Stewart and Sosa met in the special room set aside for important meetings. This room had a door on to Perez’s office which he was always careful to leave ajar. In this way he was able to create the impression of knowing little of Sosa’s intimate plans, while learning almost everything. ‘The blessed door,’ as Perez refers to it, was to be the fount of his inside knowledge of the devious plots of his chief.

  On the occasion of the Americans’ visit Perez’s eavesdropping stunned him. As the men spoke it became clear that Stewart was a member of the CIA and was attached to the U.S. embassy in the city and had come to tell Sosa that the Agency was willing to foot the bill for a squad of Cuban agents. In exchange they insisted on being informed of all the activities of the Presidential Intelligence Department 24 hours in advance. Sosa was to send them outline reports describing briefly their intentions and would later meet with a member of the CIA to talk things over.

  Stewart stressed the importance of the strictest security on all written messages and the need for very secret information to be passed on verbally. In this way compromising data would not have to be put in writing. The CIA wanted this procedure established, Stewart continued, to protect their activities in the Republic. They also expected the support and co-operation of the department at all times.

  Sosa replied that the arrangements suited him perfectly and told Stewart that he would discuss the details with his colleagues and meet him later the same night.

  The implications of this agreement were enormous. It meant that the Dominican intelligence operation was geared to provide information to the CIA before the country’s own president. As things developed, and Sosa became increasingly powerful, it came to mean that the CIA and the department worked contrary to the knowledge and wishes of the president and without his authority.

  Following the discussion with the Americans, Sosa ordered his assistant to organize an immediate meeting with his three cronies: Dr Jose A. Quezada, Administrative Secretary to the president; Colonel Arseno Regalado and General Melido Marter. (The unfortunate general, though partial to the liberal tumblers of Scotch handed out by Sosa, had to mix his drinks with medicine as he suffered acutely from a stomach ulcer.) When they arrived he repeated the conversation that he had held with Stewart. As usual Perez was in his office, sitting quietly at his desk and involved in typing out reports, while he cocked one ear in the direction of the open ‘blessed door’.

  Sosa told his men that it was important that Stewart should be allowed to interrogate prisoners the department brought in, and generally advocated a close liaison. There was a violent reaction from Colonel Regalado who completely disagreed with the whole idea. He felt that the department could not possibly trust people who were ‘intellectually responsible’ for Trujillo’s assassination and that the whole plan should be dropped (a reference to the CIA being responsible for planning the assassination of Trujillo, something that was common knowledge among the informed, military hierarchy).

  Dr Sosa knew his men and could handle them. He operated on the belief that every man had his price and that his own particular followers were eager to sell. He talked Regalado slowly round to his way of thinking and hammered home his argument by telling the colonel that at any moment he would be named chief of the Secret Police. Regalado dropped his objections and the men sealed their new agreement with large amounts of Scotch.

  Thirteen

  The first of the Cuban agents arrived within days. Several cars drew up outside of the villa and a motley gang, most of them carrying cardboard suitcases tied up with string, clambered out. These were the Cubans who were to form the ‘elite’ of Dr Sosa’s troops, a crew who would go anywhere and do anything if the price was right. Eventually, there were to be 64 Cuban agents working for the department and paid by the CIA. Every one of them had been in exile in Miami and had previously worked in various capacities for Batista’s intelligence outfit. After the men were issued with Dominican passports in false names - issued to the department by Eva de Cirano of Immigration - they were treated to a stirring speech from Dr Sosa, their fellow-countryman, while his assistant moved among them with glasses of sweet wine and wedges of sponge cake.

  The doctor had a definite plan for his new force and it was impressively simple - the Cubans were to become bank robbers. The germ of this plan had originally been sown by Dr Quezada who needed a large amount of money to buy arms in Miami, and it was important that the sum involved did not appear on any government books.

  ‘I have an idea but it could be dangerous,’ Sosa told him. The Cubans were to carry out a series of armed commando raids on the capital’s major banks. They would be dressed in the olive-green combat gear that the communist guerrillas favoured, so that the press, the public and lie police would hold the left responsible for the robberies. The department could then arrest ‘suspects’ and gain credit in the eyes of the president for its competence and zeal.

  Quezada was impressed and the chief lost no time in putting the plan into action. First he ordered Lt. Cedano, a member of the Presidential Escort, to provide olive green army fatigues and deliver them to Quezada’s home. Later in the week Perez had to send a written report to the head of the CIA in the Republic, Anthony Ruiz (coded as A1), outlining the department’s imminent plans. The report stated that the Cubans would be carrying out a series of actions designed to discredit the extreme left and ‘totally destroy it’ but failed to mention that the money was to be used to buy weapons.

  Another report was prepared for President Balaguer. It said that the department had received information that the extreme left was planning a series of robberies and terrorist actions with the aim of raising money to finance guerrilla activity within the country. It was a memo which would later seem to explain events and earn the praise of the president for its pr
ecise information.

  The plan was then outlined to the Cubans. The robbery was to take place near the Fortalaza Ozama, a military camp in the city. One group of agents was to cause confusion while another carried out the raid, which was planned for the day when money from the national lottery was carried to a bank near the military camp in an armoured vehicle. A map of the fortress had been drawn up and was given to each man who was also provided with an escape route and instructions on where the money was to be taken.

  Perez was in the office when the first outside report of the raid came in: a lorry belonging to the National Lottery had been held up outside the fortress and robbed of its entire cash load. None of the men involved had been captured.

  Dr Sosa immediately ordered the mobilization of all agents not involved in the robbery. It was a hard day and Perez worked into the night compiling the false information these agents reported back to him until it was turned into a memo for the president.

  The report, which was also sent to the Secret Police, said that the robbery was the work of the ‘14th of June Party’ and the MPD - two communist movements. Dr Sosa called a meeting of his agents and gave them a list of members of these parties who were to be eliminated. Meanwhile, the newspapers carried stories of the robbery decrying it as a communist outrage. The National Police hunted down all known political extremists and displayed even more zeal than the department and arrested many of the men on Sosa’s list before the chiefs own men managed to get to them.

  ‘That is how Dr Sosa fooled the president of the Republic, the National Police and the press,’ Perez wrote, ‘and some of the people arrested then are still in prison.’

  Perez really does seem to have been disgusted by the affair and deplores the injustice of persecuting men ‘whose only crime is to belong to an ideology which they believe is good and can save them.’ His troubled conscience kept him awake at night and he habitually swallowed a sleeping draught to forget.

  The afternoon following the bank raid was a time of curious celebration. Dr Sosa, who was a firm believer in Haitian spiritualism to the extent that he had a room at his villa converted into a voodoo temple, told Perez to stop work and join him in the celebration of his ‘Being’ anniversary. In the days of Trujillo the doctor had made several espiritista pilgrimages to Haiti and it was to become a regular practice of his to drive 200 miles out of Santo Domingo to El Lago Extriquillo where he conferred with Haitian witch-doctors. On this particular afternoon three Haitians arrived to conduct the candlelit ‘Being’ ceremony which Perez sat through with a growing terror at the occult connection in Sosa’s evil bid for power.

  The next day things were back to normal and the chief’s attention was fully devoted to money. The original idea behind the robbery was to supply Dr Quezada with cash to buy arms from Miami but in reality there was no intention of ever handing the money over. Quezada had been told that the money had been sent direct to Miami with an agent on the first available plane.

  Later he was summoned to the department to be told that the agent had double-crossed them and absconded with the cash. The chief put on a good show, ranting and raving against the agent and calling for his death, but added sadly that the department could do nothing officially as the agent knew too much. Quezada was enraged but swore to get hold of more money through one government department or another. ‘What a poor bastard this Quezada is,’ Sosa said, letting out a belly laugh as his friend left.

  It took him several months to arrange further funds, but he confided in Sosa at every stage of his activities and eventually told him that the weapons were to arrive from Miami at any time. There was one problem in that the police commander at the Punta Caucedo airport was defying national tradition and refusing to take bribes. Dr Sosa undertook to frame the man and replace him with somebody simpatico to the department.

  Agents concocted reports that they had discovered him in a plot to smuggle arms into the country for General Wessin y Wessin, a deposed military leader who was known to want to overthrow the government. Lt. Cedano, the presidential escort, was induced to plant the incriminating weaponry. A final report giving the exact date and time that the arms would be at the airport was drawn up and delivered to the President by Dr Sosa himself.

  In all of these manoeuvres the chief was diligent in keeping his patrons informed. He sent a note to Anthony Ruiz of the CIA informing that the police commander of the airport was to be replaced because the department had discovered him too ‘negativo’. It was in the interests of the CIA to have a good corrupt contact at the airport and they understood the sinister shorthand of the intelligence department. The term ‘negativo’ covered a multitude of sins.

  On the date when the contraband arms were supposed to arrive at the airport, the president went personally, accompanied by Lt. Cedano, to look for the weapons. The lieutenant surpassed himself by discovering the arms in less than no time at all. The repeated pleas of innocence by the police commander put the president in a temper, and he was dismissed from his post on the spot while his brothers were later deprived of their government positions for good measure.

  Three days later, at the recommendation of Dr Quezada, the president appointed one of Sosa’s men as the police commander at the airport. The new appointment was celebrated in a flood of whisky.

  It was a period of high living. Sosa spent the morning nursing his hangovers while at night he gambled at the Embajador and bestowed his favours on a variety of expensive whores, and would disgust the slightly prudish Perez with his descriptions of the previous night’s pleasures. Apart from all this the doctor was acquiring land and generally spending money at a phenomenal rate.

  ‘We need some money in a hurry,’ Sosa told the Cuban Juan Aguiler one morning while Perez was filing papers. ‘We’re going to do a little job.’ He produced a large map of the capital which he had drawn on in crayon. ‘Look, I’ve got a map and all the instructions here. It’s a good plan, with inside information brought to me by someone I know and trust.’

  Juan Aguiler studied the map and discussed the plan with his chief. ‘It seems easy enough,’ he said. ‘But the site is awkward because it’s on its own and isolated, which doesn’t really help. But anyway let’s have a go.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a bit of a gamble,’ Sosa agreed. ‘But the map is clear and we can carry it out in the same way as last time - a military operation with the men dressed in olive-green. I’ll have a word with Meneito and see if he can get us an army jeep. If any of your men are recognized you’ll have to bump them off because this job must be done without any risk of identification.’

  The men were talking of a robbery on a branch office of the Royal Bank of Canada which was situated in the open ground called the Ensanche Naco. The raid was to be followed by yet another of Sosa’s relentless purges of the left. Perez inwardly groaned at the thought of another operation and records his usual qualms of conscience. This time, he says, he thought of going directly to the president and telling him everything. Inevitably, he managed to talk himself out of it.

  The bank raid was carried out according to the plan and Perez settled down to his task of going through the phoney process of making mock enquiries. As only a small section of the department knew of the Cuban bank robbers, even their own agents were convinced it was a communist action. Agent Pullita was sent to the scene and returned to tell Perez, ‘It was the communists again. They were dressed like soldiers, in olive-green battle dress, and I heard they got away with 80,000 pesos.’

  In fact, they had got away with 83,000 pesos. Later in the day Perez went to the scene of the crime himself, and talked to a policeman who was outraged by the robbery. ‘It was those bloody communists. They ought to shoot the lot of them. They are just raiding banks and shops to get money for their party. They’re thugs - they shot and beat up one of our men on duty here.’

  ‘After listening to the policeman’s entirely wrong interpretation of the raid, I went home,’ Perez writes in his diary. ‘I went to bed without any dinner I was
in such a state of nerves - took two sleeping tablets and finally fell asleep.’

  G-2 (Military Intelligence) brought charges against the left even before the department had time to trump them up. Major Gary of G-2 informed them that the instigator of the raid was Andres Ramos Peguero, a revolutionary who had been accused of terrorist attacks on shops before. This information suited Sosa well enough. He told Perez to draft out reports to the president and the Chief of Police. If others were willing to provide the scapegoats without the department lifting a finger it was all for the better.

  But there had been a slip. The police had arrested Fernando Arias, the man who had provided the map and inside information for the raid. The arrest badly shook Dr Sosa’s complacency and he paced anxiously around his office. ‘We must get him out of gaol. He could be a real danger to us if he gets scared.’

  Arias was told to keep quiet at all costs and that somehow the department would see that he was all right. The police had a good case against the man, who was an ex-inspector of a local government department and was employed at the Pearl of the Antilles racecourse, and had filed proper charges. It was only after he had spent three months in La Victoria prison that the department provided a police captain and two employees of the racecourse to give false testimony to an appeal court. Arias was released.

  Bank raids were risky business and Dr Sosa turned the department’s talents to the comparatively easy livings of blackmail and protection. He spared his assistant’s sensitive feelings by explaining his carefully thought out system in a less sinister way. Sosa told him that the department needed to buy new radio transmitters and receivers for the staff cars but the equipment was so expensive that they simply could not afford it. The chief explained that he did not want to ask the government for a special allocation as the matter was urgent and there was not enough time. Instead, he was going to ask various businessmen in the capital for money and the favour would be returned in the form of special licences and dispensations. It was also clear, although not written or even suggested, that if they did not co-operate the department could not be held responsible for what might happen to them.