The Company

by Robert Littell

  “Director, I wanted to deliver this to you personally,” Ebby said, and he dropped an envelope on the DCI’s blotter.

  “What is it?”

  “My resignation.”

  Dulles pulled the paper from the envelope and read through it quickly. He folded the letter back into the envelope and tapped it on the desk impatiently. “You serve at the pleasure of the DCI,” Dulles said with a scowl. “I refuse to accept your resignation. And I don’t appreciate people abandoning ship just when we’re going into battle.”

  “I don’t deserve that—” Ebby started to say.

  The red phone on Dulles’s desk rang. He picked it up and listened for a moment before exploding, “He wants to what?” He listened again. “Tell Hunt that’s out of the question,” he said gruffly. “The Provisional Government will hold a press conference when we tell them to, and not a minute sooner. Until then we’ll stick to the scenario we worked out…That’s correct. Hunt will release bulletins in their name.”

  Dulles dropped the phone back on the hook and looked up at his uninvited visitor. “There are two possibilities, Ebbitt. Possibility number one: This thing is going to succeed, in which case your resignation will look awfully stupid. Possibility number two: This thing is going to fail. If it fails Kennedy’s not going to blame Eisenhower for starting JMARC up, or himself for switching the landing site to the Bay of Pigs because Trinidad seemed too noisy. Kennedy is going to blame the CIA, and that’s as it should be. When things go wrong someone has to take the fall. And that someone cannot be the President or the institution of the Presidency. So I’ll be washed up, which is right and proper. Dick Bissell will be finished, too. The press will howl for the Company’s hide. Congress will form killer committees to investigate where we went wrong; the fact that we went wrong trying to combat Communism in this hemisphere and abroad will get lost in the shuffle. If JMARC is a debacle the Company will need people like you to pick up the pieces, to save what can be saved, to get on with the always tedious and often dangerous business of defending the country. God help the United States of America if the Central Intelligence Agency is gutted at the height of this Cold War. America needs a first line of defense, however imperfect it turns out to be. Are you following me, Ebbitt?”

  “I’m hanging on your words, Director.”

  “Fine. Don’t let go of them.” He thrust the envelope back at Ebby. “Now get the hell out of my office and go back to work.”

  “I love nothing better, believe me, but it’s simply not possible.”

  The woman’s voice on the other end of the phone line said, “It used to be possible.”

  “You have to understand,” Jack Kennedy insisted. “We just can’t be together as often as we’d both like. Especially here. This place is a goldfish bowl. Hold on a second, will you?” He must have covered the phone with a hand because his words were muffled. She thought she heard him say, “Tell him I can’t come to the phone just now. Tell him I’ll have to think about it. Then get Bobby over here. Make sure he understands it’s important.” The man’s voice came across loud and clear again. “You still there?”

  “I’m always here, your handy doormat—“

  “That’s not fair and you know it.”

  “How’s your back?”

  “Quiet for the moment. Jacobson came up from New York the day before yesterday and gave me one of his feel-good shots.”

  “I worry about you. I worry about whether you should be taking all those amphetamine injections.”

  “Jacobson’s a bona fide doctor. He knows what he’s doing. Listen, I have to go to New York on Saturday for a fund-raiser.”

  “Is your wife going with you?”

  “She hates these political road shows. She’s decided to take the children up to Hyannisport to spend the weekend with my parents.”

  “Any chance of me coming to New York?”

  “You took the words out of my mouth, Judy. I’ll have a room booked for you in the Carlyle under your maiden name.”

  “What time does the fund-raiser finish up?”

  “Around eleven-thirty.”

  “By midnight the last thing on your mind will be your backache.”

  “Just thinking about your coming to New York takes my mind off my backache.” He cleared his throat. “Sal around?”

  “He’s in the living room.”

  “He alone?”

  “Sal’s never alone. He’s got what the hoi polloi calls an entourage.”

  “Could you get him to come to the phone? Don’t say who’s calling in front of the others.”

  “I wasn’t born yesterday. Hold on, huh? See you Saturday.”

  After a while a door could be heard slamming and the footsteps of a heavy man could be heard approaching.

  “So what’s duh good word?”

  “How are things, Sal?”

  “I can’t complain. How’s with you, Jack?”

  “I’m all right. What’s the weather like in Chicago?”

  “Windy, like always. If I didn’t have business interests here I’d move to Vegas in uh minute. I’m goin’ there next weekend—duh Canary’ll be in town. Frank’d be tickled pink to see you. Why don’t you drop what you’re doin’ an’ join us?”

  “What with one thing or another I don’t have much time for friends these days. But I haven’t forgotten who my friends are. You get the satchel, Sal?”

  “Judy gave it to me soon as she got off duh train. Thanks, Jack.”

  “Listen, Sal, what’s happening with that little matter you were involved in?”

  “You mean duh business duh fat man asked me to take care of?”

  Jack was confused. “What fat man?”

  Sal laughed. “Duh one dat talks Sicilian. Duh one dat drinks without never gettin’ drunk. I wish I knew how duh fuck he does it.”

  The penny dropped. “I see whom you’re talking about now.”

  “I thought you would. So about dat little matter—it’s in duh bag, Jack.”

  “You’re sure? I’ve got decisions to make. A lot depends on that.”

  “What’s dat mean, am I sure? There’s only two things sure, pal, death an’ taxes.” Sal let out a belly laugh. “Hey, no kiddin’ aside, Jack, it’s buttoned up.”

  “For when is it?”

  “For anytime now.”

  “I don’t need to hedge my bets?”

  Sal sounded insulted. “Jack, Jack, would I lead you down duh garden path on somethin’ like dis?”

  “There’s a lot at stake.”

  “There’s always uh lot at stake, Jack. Everywhere. All duh time.”

  “All right.”

  “Awright. So did you catch what duh fuckin’ Russians did duh other day, puttin’ dat cosmonaut character Gagarin into orbit?”

  Jack commented wryly, “There are people here who keep me up to date on things like that, Sal.”

  “I dunno…you seem to be takin’ dis pretty calmly. I would’ve thought us Americans would’ve creamed duh Russians when it comes to things like sendin’ rockets around duh earth. Now it’s us with egg on our kisser.”

  “You take care of that business we spoke about, Sal, it’ll be Khrushchev who’ll wind up with egg on his face.”

  “Awright. So what’s dis I hear about your brother being out to screw Hoffa.”

  “Where’d you pick that up?”

  “Uh little bird whispered in my ear. Listen up, Jack, I don’t give uh shit what he does to Hoffa, long as he sticks to duh deal your father an’ me worked out. Your brother can fuck with Detroit till he’s blue in duh balls. Chicago is off-limits.”

  “Don’t lose sleep over Bobby, Sal.”

  “I’m glad to hear I don’t need to lose sleep over your kid brother. I’m relieved, Jack. No shit.”

  Jack laughed pleasantly. “Say hello to Frank for me when you see him.”

  “Sure I will. You want to talk to Judy some more?”

  “No. I’m pretty busy. Take it easy, Sal.”

  “Yeah,
I will. I always take it easy. Dat’s what I do best. You take it easy, too, Jack.”

  “So long, Sal.”

  “Yeah. Sure thing. So long.”

  Arturo Padrón pedaled his heavy Chinese “Flying Pigeon” through the seedy back streets of downtown Havana, then turned onto the road behind the Libre Hotel where rich Cubans used to live before Castro hit town. Nowadays the houses, set back from the street and looking like wrecked hulks that had washed up on a shore, were filled with squatters who simply moved on when the roofs collapsed. The wraparound porches sagged into the tangled worts and bindweeds of the cat-infested gardens. At the rear of the once-fashionable hotel, Padrón, a middle-aged man who wore his thinning hair long over his oversized ears, double-chained his bicycle to a rusty iron fence, then walked through the employees’ entrance and down a long flight of steps to the locker room. He opened the locker and quickly changed into the tan uniform and black shoes with “Made in China” stamped in English on the inside of the tongues. The shoes were too tight and squeaked when he walked, and he had been promised a new pair when the next shipment arrived. He tied his black bow tie as he made his way upstairs to the sprawling kitchen off the hotel’s cafeteria. Pushing through the double swinging door into the kitchen, he called a greeting to the four short-order cooks who were sweating over the bank of gas stoves. One of them, an old man who had worked at the Libre when it was called the Havana Hilton, looked hard at Padrón as if he were trying to convey a message. Then the old man gestured with his chin toward the door of the manager’s office. Padrón thrust out both of his palms, as if to ask, What are you trying to tell me? just as the door to the office opened and two policemen wearing green Interior Ministry uniforms motioned for him to come in. For an instant Padrón thought of running for it. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw two more Interior Ministry police push through the double door into the kitchen behind him; both had opened holster flaps and rested their palms on the butts of revolvers. Padrón forced a smirk of utter innocence onto his long mournful face and sauntered past the two policemen into the office. He heard the door close behind him. An elegantly dressed man with a neatly trimmed reddish beard stood behind the manager’s desk.

  “Padrón, Arturo?” he asked.

  Padrón blotted a bead of perspiration on his forehead with the back of his wrist. “It’s me, Padrón, Arturo.”

  “You have a cousin named Jesús who owns a thirty-two foot Chris Craft cabin cruiser with twin gas engines, which he keeps tied up in the port of Cojímar. For a price he has been known to run Cubans to Miami.”

  Padrón experienced a sharp pain in the chest, a sudden shortness of breath. He had seen photographs of the man behind the desk in the newspapers. It was none other than Manuel Piñeiro, the head of the regime’s secret police. “My cousin, he has a boat, señor,” he said. “What he does with it is not known to me.”

  Piñeiro crooked a forefinger and Padrón, prodded forward by one of the policemen, his shoes squeaking with each step, approached the desk. “Your cousin Jesús has admitted that he was instructed to keep the gas tank of his boat and spare jerry cans filled; that he was to remain next to his telephone every evening this week waiting for a signal. When a caller quoted a certain sentence from Corinthians—‘For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare to the battle?’—he was to immediately put to sea and pick you up on the beach of Miramar, minutes from here by bicycle. He was then instructed to run you across to Miami. For this he was to be paid twelve thousand five hundred American dollars.”

  By now the blood had literally drained from Padrón’s face.

  “I am not a religious man,” Piñeiro continued, his head tilted to the side and back, his tone reassuringly amiable, “though in my youth, to gratify my grandparents, I was obliged to attend church services. I recall another sentence from the Holy Book, this one from the Gospel According to Saint Matthew: ‘Woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It had been good for that man if he had not been born.’” His tone turned hard. “Empty your pockets on the desk.”

  With shaky hands Padrón did as he was told. Piñeiro separated the items with the tips of his fingers: a pocketknife, some loose change, several sticks of chewing gum, a crumpled handkerchief, some toothpicks, a depleted roll of dental floss, two lumps of sugar wrapped in the cafeteria’s distinctive brown paper, an unopened pack of Russian cigarettes, a book of matches, a wristwatch without a strap, a lottery ticket, two small keys fitting the locks securing the “Flying Pigeon” to the iron fence behind the hotel, a half-empty bottle of Bayer aspirins, a frayed photograph of a child in a crib and another of a woman with listless eyes attempting to find a smile for the camera, an internal identity card with a photograph of a younger and thinner Padrón peeling away from the pasteboard. “I will now pose several questions,” Piñeiro informed the waiter, who was gnawing on his lower lip. “One: How much were you to be paid for the assassination of Fidel Castro?”

  “I know nothing of this,” the waiter breathed. “I swear it on the tomb of my mother. I swear it on the head of my son.”

  “Two: Who gave you your orders?”

  “I received no orders—“

  “Three: Who else in Havana is in on the plot?”

  “As God is my witness there is no plot.”

  Piñeiro greeted the denials with a bemused smile. Using the back of a finger, the chief of the secret police separated the bottle of aspirin from the rest of the pile. Then he unscrewed the lid and spilled the tablets onto the desk. Bending over the pills, he opened Padrón’s pocketknife and used the blade to sort through them. At first he was unable to detect any difference between them. He glanced up and saw the terror that had installed itself in the waiter’s eyes and began again, examining the pills one by one. Suddenly Piñeiro’s mouth opened and the words “So that’s it!” escaped his lips. He pushed one of the pills off to the side, then a second, then a third. Then he straightened and, looking the waiter in the eye, said, “It will be good for you if you had not been born.”

  Padrón understood that it was a sentence worse than death.

  Piñeiro signalled for the two policemen to advance. As they started forward, Padrón’s hand shot out and he snatched one of the aspirins and turning and crouching, shoved it into his mouth and with a sob bit down hard on it. The two policemen lunged for him, seizing his arms as his body went limp. They held him up for a moment, then lowered the dead weight to the floor and looked at their chief, fearful that he would blame them.

  Piñeiro cleared his throat. “It saves us the trouble of executing him,” he remarked.

  His garish silk tie askew and stained with Scotch, his shirt unchanged in days and gray under the collar, his reading glasses almost opaque with grime and sliding down his nose, the Sorcerer leaned over the United Press ticker installed in a corner of the war room, monitoring the bulletins slipping through his fingers. “Anything coming out of Havana?” Dick Bissell called from the cockpit, the command-and-control well facing the plastic overlays filled with up-to-date tactical information. On the giant map, the five freighters carrying Brigade 2506 had inched to within spitting distance of the Cuban coast. The two American destroyers that would guide the invasion force into the Bay of Pigs that night, assuming the President didn’t call off the operation, were just over the horizon. Two CIA Landing Ship Docks—filled with the smaller LCUs and LCVPs that would swim out of the LSDs and ferry the invaders to the beaches—were closing in on the rendezvous point off the coast.

  “The usual weekend bullshit,” Torriti called back. Stooping, he retrieved the bottle of mineral water filled with vodka and poured another shot onto the coffee grounds in his plastic cup. “There’s one about the joys of deep sea fishing off Havana, another about a Cuban family that’s been making cigars for five generations.”

  Bissell resumed his obsessive pacing, prowling back and forth between the water cooler against one wall and the easel on which all the operational codes had been posted for fast refere
nce. Other members of the war room team came and went as the morning dragged on. Topsiders appeared with last-minute glitches to be ironed out and cables to be initialed. Leo Kritzky brought over the press clippings on Cuba for the past twenty-four hours; Castro had delivered another of his marathon speeches, this one to the air raid wardens association in Havana, extolling the virtues of Socialism. Leo’s secretary, Rosemary Hanks, turned up with a hamper of fresh sandwiches and a supply of toothbrushes and toothpaste for staffers who were sleeping over and had forgotten theirs. Allen Dulles checked in on a secure phone from time to time to see if Jack Kennedy had come through with the final go-ahead. The big clock on the wall ticked off the seconds with a maddening clatter; the minute hand seemed to emit a series of dull detonations as it climbed the rungs toward high noon, the deadline Bissell had given the President for calling off the invasion of Cuba.

  JMARC had gotten off to a rotten start the day before when post-strike reports from the initial D-minus-two raids against Castro’s three principal air bases started to filter through. The damage assessment photos, rushed over from the Pentagon after a U-2 overflight, confirmed that only five of Castro’s aircraft had been destroyed on the ground; several Sea Furies and T-33 jet trainers appeared to have been hit, but the photo interpreters were unable to say whether they were still operational. And they could only guess at how many planes had been parked inside hangers or nearby barns and escaped altogether. To make matters worse, Adlai Stevenson, the American ambassador to the United Nations, was bitching to Rusk that he, Stevenson, had been made to seem a horse’s ass; when the Russians raised a storm at the UN over the attack on Cuba, Stevenson had held aloft a wire service photograph of the two B-26s that had landed in Miami and had sworn that pilots defecting from Castro’s air force, and not American-backed anti-Castro Cubans, had been responsible for the air strike. The cover story, which Stevenson (thanks to a vague CIA briefing) really believed, had quickly fallen apart when journalists noticed the tell-tale metal nose cones on the two B-26s in Miami and concluded the planes hadn’t defected from Cuba after all; Castro’s B-26s were known to have plastic noses. Stevenson, livid at being “deliberately tricked” by his own government, had vented his rage on Rusk. By Sunday morning shock waves from the affair were still reverberating through the administration.