Comrades in Miami

by Jose Latour

  It contained a key and a two-line computer-printed note in Spanish:

  Locker B-035. Bus terminal at the end of Avenida Balboa, near Avenida Central, Panamá City.

  Pardo lifted the phone, asked the reception desk to call him a taxi, then flushed the note down the toilet.

  The retired major sauntered into the terminal at 8:35, located the bank of baggage lockers, inserted the key in B-035, and extracted a paper bag folded and stapled at the top. He thrust it in his tote bag and, clutching the bulging piece of baggage as if it held Aladdin’s lamp, returned to the hotel in another taxi. By now Pardo felt sure he had not been born to be a spy. Despite Victoria’s assurances that everything would run like clockwork, the palms of his hands were sweaty and he had to fight off the impulse to check whether he was being followed or not.

  Back in his hotel room, dreading hidden cameras, he shut himself in the bathroom to open the paper bag. It contained fifty thousand dollars in stacks of fifty- and twenty-dollar bills, an electricity bill in the name of Jesús Ortega, a resident of 6405 SW 10th Terrace, Miami, FL 33144, and a Costa Rican passport issued to Evaristo Consuegra, born in 1963, with the bearer’s photograph expertly removed. Mr. Bonis, the Miami landscaper, had an agreement with a Guatemalan window cleaner at Miami’s International Airport. He paid the man five hundred for every passport he found and thus got hold of two or three every year.

  By 10:35, Pardo had divided the greenbacks into five packets of eight thousand dollars each; the remaining ten thousand went to the inner breast pocket of his jacket. He stole a glance at his watch. From his wallet he extracted a passport-sized photo of himself, then returned to the room, fished a tiny tube of glue from the flapover of the tote bag, glued the back of the photo very lightly, and pasted it on the passport. As he let it dry for ten minutes, Pardo placed into the tote bag the five stacks of cash, committed to memory the Miami address on the electricity bill, then slipped it into his jacket. It was 11:02 when he left the hotel.

  The plane returning Mr. Eugenio Bonis to Miami took off from Panama’s Tocumén International Airport three minutes later.

  Pardo hailed a taxi and asked the driver to head for the corner of 50 Street and Aquilino de la Guardia, to Banco Continental. There he opened a personal account under the name Evaristo Consuegra and deposited eight thousand. The bank manager that took care of the new customer photocopied his Costa Rican passport and typed on his keyboard the Miami address the man gave for his place of residence. At 12:45, Pardo finished opening a second account with Banco del Istmo. In Panama, banking hours were from 8:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M., so he had to wait until next morning to open the other accounts he needed.

  Havanatur had no agency in Panama; others represented it. Since he didn’t have to clock in or out, Pardo was not subject to the scrutiny of Cubans. After a hamburger and a soda, the retired major went to work at a tour operator’s office and stayed there until it closed at five.

  The next morning Pardo had the Miami electricity bill scanned in an Internet café, then opened three accounts, with Banco Internacional de Panamá, Bancafé, and Banco Alemán Platina. He spent the afternoon at another tour operator. In the evening, using his laptop in his hotel room, he visited the Internet sites of five online banks in the Bahamas, Gibraltar, and in Jersey, Channel Islands. Pardo completed and printed out the personal account forms from each of the five banks under the names of the Chilean nationals whose passports he had photocopied in Santiago. Then he typed in the same names in the scanned version of the electricity bill and printed five electricity bills, to furnish proof to each online bank that the applicant resided at 6405 SW 10th Terrace, Miami, FL 33144, USA. On a separate page, he made clear that he was spending a two-week vacation in the Las Vegas Hotel Suites, at Calle 55 and Eusebio Morales Avenue, Panama, where correspondence should be addressed until February 24.

  On Wednesday morning he sent the forms by courier—along with the photocopies of the Chilean passports, the electricity bills, and reference letters from Chilean lawyers and accountants—to each online bank. Pardo was proud to have forged all kinds of documents so expertly. In Havana he had scanned the letterheads of legitimate correspondence received at XEMIC, written the glowing references in English, and stored everything in diskettes. In Toronto he had them printed, then bought the tote bag to carry everything around.

  On Friday afternoon the desk clerk delivered to the guest of room 205 five cardboard envelopes with the logo of three different couriers. In his room, Pardo opened them one by one. Each contained a letter welcoming the new client to So-and-So bank, saying he could make his initial deposit at his earliest convenience and naming the bank official who most gladly would field his calls and messages. A computer disk with the client’s digital signature, login, and password was also provided.

  Next Monday morning Pardo transferred different amounts from the Panamanian banks to the online banks. In the afternoon he visited the online banks’ sites and confirmed that the transfers had already been successfully completed.

  “In plain language, what does that mean?” Victoria asked three days later, on Thursday night, following intercourse.

  “Having five Internet-based bank accounts means that from anywhere in the world, using a computer, I can electronically deposit and withdraw money and nobody can trace the operation to me,” Pardo said.

  “How so?”

  “It’s called Telneting. Telnet is a basic command that involves the protocol for connecting to another computer on the Internet. You lease an account from any Internet service provider to actually order the online banks to transfer the funds, thus concealing your real identity.”

  “But your real identity is unknown in any case,” Victoria frowned. “The non-Internet bank accounts are under the name of a Costa Rican; the Internet-based accounts are under the names of five Chilean nationals.”

  “Right, but keep in mind that the Panamanian banks have my photograph on the Costa Rican passport.”

  “It’s true, coño.”

  “There was no way to get around that, so I’ll leave those accounts alone from now on; close them during my next trip to Panama. Their only purpose was to provide a legitimate source to transfer the initial funds to the online banks.”

  “How much is left from the fifty thou?”

  “I deposited forty in Panama. The online banks required minimums between five hundred and two thousand to open an account. I exceeded the minimum always and transferred seventeen thousand three hundred fifty. I spent around two hundred in taxis and couriers that I couldn’t charge to XEMIC and have with me nearly ninety-eight hundred, for emergencies and future expenses.”

  Again Victoria frowned. She considered something before speaking. “I think you should take the cash to your parents’ farm in Pinar del Río. Bury it, hide it, I don’t know, but don’t keep it here. Keep here only what you can say you saved from your allowance, forty or fifty bucks.”

  “Okay.”

  Victoria went to the bathroom to douche herself and Pardo finished the beer he had taken from the refrigerator after sex.

  “Will we be able to pay back Pola Negri in six months?” Victoria asked after returning to bed as she slapped her pillow.

  “I hope so. Maybe sooner. After I transfer XEMIC money to two of the online banks, let’s say A and B, I’ll shuffle amounts from A to B and from B to A before transferring most of it to banks C and D, where I’ll move the money around some more prior to letting it rest in the fifth bank, E. I have to create a web of transfers so complex that the original source of funds will be un-traceable. It’s called layering.”

  “How will we pay her back?”

  “With something that costs fifty-five thousand. I told you: It’s impossible to spend digital money on the Internet now. She has to make a choice between real estate, a car, or a boat; something she can sell later on, or keep if she wants to.”

  “I don’t think you ever got around to telling me why it has to be property.”

  “Conside
ring your prodigious memory, if you don’t remember, I didn’t tell you.”

  Pardo paused and, supporting himself on his elbows, sat up straight to belch. Then he lay back again. “In the United States, Canada, and most First World countries, a property seller must file a currency transaction report for any cash transaction over ten thousand dollars,” he began. “This report has to indicate who the buyer is. But if the payment comes in digital cash, neither the bank holding it nor the seller that accepts it has the means of identifying the purchaser. So, the seller can’t be accused of aiding and abetting a money launderer. They don’t know who the buyer is.”

  Victoria sighed. “Which goes to prove that people always find a way to foil legal measures. But how do we pay back Pola?”

  “With the property we’ll buy. We’ll have the deed transferred to her.”

  Victoria slid her hand down to her husband’s groin and pulled at his pubes while considering something. His scrotum contracted, his penis awoke. “Are you positive that she can’t be connected to us in any way?”

  “I am. Grab my cock.”

  “All in good time. Nothing should connect Pola to Cuba. Hey, what’s this getting up for?”

  “Blow me.”

  “I said all in good time.”

  “Blow me now or I’ll slap you.”

  “I dare you.”

  He slapped her twice, not too hard. They liked engaging in controlled S and M once in a while.

  “I’ll fill myself with you now,” an imploring look in her eyes.

  “Blow me first.”

  “Okay. Next time you do what I say,” slithering down to take him in her mouth.

  His fingers found her folds, slid inside, and began playing with her clitoris.

  …

  Wheeling the carry-on that Fidelia had given to him three or four years earlier, Steil ambled into Miami International Airport at 3:05 A.M. on April 14. His chartered flight was scheduled for 8:30 A.M., but passengers had been asked to arrive at 2:00 A.M. The embargo red-eye, Steil was thinking. I took the embargoed from Miami, he could say.

  Having been there a few times when he or his late boss had traveled abroad, always in daytime or early evening, Steil was astounded to find the huge terminal, reportedly the third busiest in the United States, dimly lit and almost empty. Airline counters were vacant, duty-free shops and cafeterias closed. No customs or immigration officers, pilots, or flight attendants were to be seen. Cleaners wiped floors and emptied trash cans.

  Looking around, he spotted a queue of fifty or sixty people about a hundred yards away, waiting to be checked in. My fellow countrymen, he felt certain as he approached the line. The last man confirmed in pure Cuban Spanish—filtered through a bushy and unkempt salt-and-pepper mustache—that, yes, they were all flying to Havana. The guy, and those ahead of him, appeared angst-ridden. The floor was strewn with all sorts of baggage, predominantly those known to Cubans as “worms”—cheap sacks made from hard-wearing fabric with a heavy-duty, longitudinal zipper—favored because their comparative lightness adds inestimable pounds to the airline’s baggage allowance.

  Getting ready for the long wait, Steil felt the sting of discrimination. For most international flights, passengers were asked to arrive at the terminal two hours before departure; those flying to Cuba from Miami were supposed to be there six and a half hours ahead of takeoff time. Thorough baggage searches were not a consequence of September 11; they began in the late seventies. No citizen or resident of the United States could travel abroad with more than $10,000 in cash, but if the place of destination was Cuba, they were allowed a mere $180 per day of stay.

  Steil sighed in resignation. He knew that such unfair treatment was not aimed at Cubans as a race or nationality. He had traveled to Central American countries without experiencing limitations of any kind. It was all politics. Yet, politics become personal whether you want it or not. He was carrying a money belt with $8,000, which was $6,600 more than he legally could, and if searched … But what would the purpose of his trip be if he could not help his relatives and friends? Well, for a 15 percent commission, dozens of Mexicans and Central Americans living in Miami frequently traveled to Cuba and delivered thousands of dollars to designated recipients. He would save money that way. But the truth was, he wanted to see things with his own eyes. It was rumored that the situation had improved considerably since he had left in ’94. Although he would not even think about giving up his job, Fidelia, or the freedom and business opportunities he enjoyed in Miami, he missed Havana and Santa Cruz del Norte.

  “Hi, buddy,” a familiar voice said in Spanish.

  Steil turned and was pleasantly surprised to find Tony Soto. “What the hell are you doing here?” the traveler asked. His pal was wearing civilian clothes, which possibly meant he was not on duty. He had come to see him off. It was a nice gesture of affection and maybe a little concern as well.

  Tony’s grin seemed forced. Then Steil noticed two men standing behind his friend, their eyes fastened on him.

  “I, uh, came to see you off … and to introduce you to these gentlemen. They want to have a word with you,” the cop said, now in English and moving sideways to clear space for the strangers.

  The weirdness of the situation left Steil speechless. He stared at the tallest man, who proffered his hand. Black, five-feet-eleven or so, early forties, neat looking in a beige sports jacket over a green shirt and jeans. His face glistened with a sheen of perspiration. Steil shook hands, muttering, “Pleasure” after the man said, “Glad to make your acquaintance,” and in a reflex response turned to the other guy—white, mid-fifties, overweight, bald with a close-cropped fringe around his head. He wore a white T-shirt under a deep blue, short-sleeved shirt, and baggy khakis. His lips were in brackets. Second shake.

  “Pleasure.”

  “All mine.”

  “Mr. Steil,” the black man said in his deep voice, “we’ve asked Mr. Soto to introduce us because we know you are good friends and we want to ask a big favor from you. But we need privacy. Would you mind giving us some of your time in our office? Upstairs?”

  Elliot was gathering his wits. Who were these guys? Had they coerced Tony into coming to the airport? “Friends of yours, Tony?” he asked, jerking his thumb toward the pair.

  “Sure. They want to have a word with you, and I strongly suggest you hear them out.”

  “Who are they?”

  “We’ll show you our IDs as soon as we reach our office,” the black man butted in. “We don’t want to do it in front of all these people.”

  So, they were cops, Steil inferred. It was his first brush with the law in a long time. Somehow they had found out he was carrying too much cash. That had to be it. But why was Tony mediating? Maybe to intercede on his behalf. In any case, it was decent to spare him the embarrassment of being questioned, maybe even searched, in front of all those people. Suddenly his trip had been wet-blanketed. Ask a big favor from him? Did the sonofabitch think that was funny?

  “Listen, this is a check-in line,” Elliot argued. “If I lose my place …”

  “We’ll take care of that,” the smiling black man interrupted. “You won’t miss your flight.”

  Steil shook his head, clicked his tongue, grinned, took a deep breath, and nearly said something inappropriate. “Okay,” he mumbled instead as he reached for the handle of his carry-on.

  The white man made a sweeping arm gesture toward a bank of elevators and the two Cubans followed him. The black man brought up the rear. Steil was thinking that if this snag had to do with the cash, the strangers were probably Treasury agents. He could afford a sixty-six-hundred-dollar loss, but the trip made no sense if he went empty-handed. A Latin-looking guy loped off across the lounge, took Steil’s place in the line, and said something to the mustachioed man.

  Elliot was more curious than angry when he was led into a second-floor office-cum-living area. Two metal desks with PC screens, keyboards, files, papers, and phones atop them, two swivel chairs, and a fili
ng cabinet, stood by the rear wall. Such furniture hopelessly mismatched the nice leather sofa and two armchairs, wooden coffee table, and lamps on side tables positioned near the entrance. There were modern prints on the walls, a small refrigerator, a coffee machine on an auxiliary table, and a TV set on a pedestal table in a corner. Three unseen video cameras and five microphones started functioning the instant the door was closed.

  The black man motioned Elliot and Tony to the sofa. The cop chose the right side, Elliot the left. The strangers eased themselves in the armchairs.

  “Thanks, Mr. Steil. We really appreciate your devoting some of your time to talk to us,” the black man began as he unbuttoned his jacket. “My name is Brent Hart. I’m with the FBI.” He extracted a badge holder from the inner breast pocket of his jacket, flipped it open, and flaunted the badge at Elliot, who fought to conceal slack-jawed amazement. FBI? This wasn’t about the cash? “This gentleman,” pointing to the white man, “is Paul McLellan and he’s with the Treasury Department.” McLellan showed his badge, too. Ah, so it is about the cash.

  Elliot had learned that men in positions of power don’t respect the fainthearted. Accept them, yes; respect them, no. “I want to see IDs, not badges, if you don’t mind,” he said.

  Hart and McLellan exchanged a glance and Hart nodded. He was the first to pull out his wallet and hand over his identification. While Steil glanced at it, McLellan searched for his. The stony-faced Tony stared at the T-man. When Steil returned Hart’s ID, McLellan reached over to surrender his. Looking at it, Steil thought, I’m fucked. But what has the FBI got to do with it? He gave back the plastic card.