Hunting Che

by Mitch Weiss

  Putting the codebooks aside, Rodríguez flipped open a big German-made diary. Inside were pages of notes and entries written in Che’s hand. The stylish cursive chronicled the entire revolutionary campaign in Bolivia. It was unbelievable, Rodríguez thought. He’d kept a diary. Now they could backtrack his daily movements.

  The bag also contained several Guevara family snapshots, and a black mask and medicine for his asthma.

  Rodríguez didn’t have time to carefully go through all the materials. That would come later. He returned them to the bag and followed Zenteno to the schoolhouse. Prado pointed to the door on the far left. Che lay inside on the dirt floor. His arms were tied tightly behind his back and rope bound his feet together. Nearby were the expanding corpses of two Cuban officers who had followed Che to Bolivia: Antonio and Arturo.

  Rodríguez noticed Che’s leg wound right away. Blood was oozing from the gash. For Rodríguez, this should have been a moment of celebration. Even after all his years working toward this moment, all he could feel was pity. Che was a filthy beaten dog. He looked like a beggar.

  “Why did you choose to come to Bolivia?” Zenteno asked Che.

  The guerrilla ignored him.

  “How did you enter my country?”

  Che didn’t respond.

  “Why do you fight against my government?”

  The question was again met with silence. Rodríguez could hear Che breathing, his cheek pressed against the dirt floor.

  After a few more questions, Zenteno was exasperated.

  “The least you could do is answer my questions,” Zenteno said. “After all, you are a foreigner and you have invaded my country.”

  Zenteno motioned for Rodríguez to follow him outside. As the two men stood in front of the school, Zenteno expressed his frustration. Che could fly all over the world giving great speeches about la revolución. Yet on a dirt floor—with his life at stake—he was speechless. He was a damn mute.

  Rodríguez, meanwhile, had to suppress his urge for revenge. His pity had morphed to anger. He had to keep reminding himself he was there as a representative of the U.S. government—not as an exiled Cuban freedom fighter. In his head, Rodríguez started to make a list of what needed to be done. The first thing was the documents.

  “Mi Colonel, I’d like to photograph all of the captured documents,” Rodríguez said to Zenteno.

  Zenteno agreed. He warned Rodríguez to take care of business quickly because Barrientos was anxious to see them. For the moment, Zenteno said he’d had enough of Che. He was heading out to El Churo Canyon with Prado to watch the troops hunt down the remnants of Che’s guerrillas.

  When they left, Rodríguez picked up the documents and raced to the telegraph operator’s house, the only place in the village with a telephone. On a sunlit table outdoors, he unpacked the RS-48 radio and started to spread out the captured documents.

  Rodríguez started the painstaking camera work. He had to hustle. He didn’t know how long he would have, and this stuff was dynamite.

  * * *

  The president was a bundle of nerves. Now that Che had been captured, he had to decide what to do with him. Barrientos called an emergency meeting with General Ovando, Air Force general Jorge Belmonte Ardile, and a few of his closest advisors.

  In Barrientos’s mind, there were only two choices: prison or death. There was no way they were going to send Che to Cuba. That was out of the question.

  Although very few people knew that Che was in custody, the pressure had started to mount. Ovando, Belmonte, and members of the Bolivian high command had been taking a late lunch at a La Paz country club when they received the message: Che had been captured. They rushed out, catching the attention of Ernest Nance, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency attaché to the embassy in La Paz. When Nance found out why they had left so quickly, he sent a message to Washington saying: “This is the first notification to the world of the capture of Che Guevara.” It was Sunday, and Nance was unsure whether anyone would get the message. Still, he tracked down Ovando and Belmonte and urged them to spare Che. They promised him nothing.

  At the meeting in the presidential palace, Barrientos asked his commanders for their advice. One by one, they said putting Che on trial would be a disaster. Look what happened when they arrested Debray. It brought on an international shit storm. Governments lobbied Bolivia to spare Debray’s life. The story attracted international attention. It was a public relations nightmare. All because an insignificant Marxist like Debray came to Bolivia for a taste of the revolutionary life. Imagine what would happen if they put Che on trial?

  Ovando reminded Barrientos that Bolivia had no death penalty. With a trial, the most they could give Che was thirty years in prison. “Where do we keep Che for thirty years?” Ovando asked. There wasn’t a prison in Bolivia secure enough to hold him. He would have to be kept under armed guard twenty-four hours a day. Che-inspired revolutionaries would storm the prison. Hell, Cuba might send troops to try to rescue him. They had no choice but to execute him, Ovando argued.

  Barrientos listened intently. He would have the final say. But the more he pondered Che’s fate, the angrier he became. This revolutionary had killed innocent Bolivian soldiers. He had tried to incite a revolution that would have killed thousands. Executing Che would send a clear message: Don’t fuck with Bolivia. Barrientos remembered the promise he made to the CIA’s Villoldo: It ends here.

  Death it would be.

  * * *

  Rodríguez snapped pictures like a photographer at a fashion show. He wanted to make sure that he copied every page of the diary. He heard bursts of gunfire in the distance. Nearby, two more guerrillas were brought into town. One had been shot in the face and was in considerable pain. The other one was dead. Both were placed by Rodríguez’s table and later moved to the schoolhouse.

  Around 10 A.M., a Bolivian soldier interrupted Rodríguez. “Phone call,” he said. “Headquarters, Vallegrande. They want to talk to the highest ranking officer,” the soldier said.

  Rodríguez looked around. Zenteno was still out at the command post, coordinating the battle. Rodríguez held the rank of captain and at that moment was the most senior officer present. Rodríguez grabbed the phone.

  “Captain Ramos,” he said, using his alias.

  “Ramos. You are authorized by the Superior Command to conduct Operation 500 and 600,” said the voice on the phone.

  Rodríguez knew the code. 500 was the numerical code for Che. And 600 meant dead. The Bolivians wanted to execute Che. Rodríguez swallowed hard.

  “Can you repeat your message?” Rodríguez said.

  “You are authorized to conduct Operation 500 and 600.”

  If the Bolivians wanted Che alive, the message would have been 500 and 700. Che was short by one hundred. But Rodríguez also knew the United States wanted to smuggle Che to Panama for interrogation. It was of supreme importance to the intelligence officers at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

  Shit, Rodríguez thought.

  He was in a quandary, a deep fucking hole. Rodríguez said nothing. He hung up the phone. He went back to shooting photos while his mind raced through his options.

  Zenteno returned an hour later. Rodríguez stopped his work, grabbed the colonel, and passed along the order, and then asked Zenteno to reconsider.

  “My instructions from the United States government are to keep him alive under any circumstances,” he said.

  But Rodríguez had used up his credits the night before when he asked for a ride to La Higuera. This time, the commander just shook his head no.

  “Félix, we have worked very closely, and we are grateful for all the help you have given us,” Zenteno said. “But don’t ask me to do this. If I don’t comply with my orders to execute Che, I will be disobeying my own president.”

  Zenteno needed to get back to Vallegrande. He glanced at his watch and then turned his attent
ion back to Rodríguez.

  “I know how much harm he has done to your country,” he said. But there was nothing he could do. It was eleven. The helicopter would continue flying between La Higuera and Vallegrande, evacuating the dead and wounded and resupplying the troops with food and ammunition, until it wasn’t needed anymore.

  “At two P.M., I will send back the helicopter,” Zenteno said. “I would like your word of honor that at that time you will personally bring back the dead body of Che Guevara to Vallegrande.”

  There was nothing Rodríguez could do. It was easy to give an order to keep Che alive—just look at the guys sitting behind the desks at Langley. Out here, oh God. This was a different story.

  Zenteno could tell Rodríguez was struggling. He gave him some options. “The manner in which you deal with Che is up to you. You can do it yourself if you want, as I know how much harm he has brought to your country.”

  Rodríguez understood that Zenteno was only following orders. But Rodríguez had to follow his orders, too—and they were to keep Che alive. He tried one more time. He asked Zenteno to get them to try to change their minds. “But if you cannot get the counterorder, I give you my word as a man that at two P.M., I will bring you back the dead body of Che Guevara.”

  Zenteno embraced Rodríguez, then headed to the field where the helicopter waited.

  Standing by the table scattered with Che’s diary and codebooks, Rodríguez took a deep breath. For a moment, he considered trying to break Che out and smuggle him to La Paz. There was only one phone in town. He could cut the line, severing communications with Vallegrande. And when the helicopter came back for Che, he would lie and tell the pilot they really wanted Che alive. Once back at Vallegrande, it would be harder to kill him.

  But Rodríguez remembered how wily this man was, his hands stained red with the blood of Cubans, how Castro had been jailed, too, and returned to destroy Cuba. He knew Che was more dangerous than a viper as long as he remained alive. Ideas ping-ponged through Rodríguez’s brain, but each one ended with the same conclusion. He had exhausted his ability to change the order through regular channels, and even if at the moment he was dressed like a Bolivian officer, he was just a CIA advisor, an outsider. He had no choice. This was their country. These were their rules.

  If I have to do it, I will put him in front of a firing squad and execute him the same way he assassinated so many of my friends at La Cabana Fortress, Rodríguez thought.

  But suddenly, as if someone could read his mind, gunfire erupted from the schoolhouse. Racing to the left door, he shoved it open and saw Che still alive on the dirt floor. In the room next door stood a soldier holding a smoking rifle. Willy was lying over a small table, the last seconds of his life slowly ticking away. The soldier looked at Rodríguez. His eyes were wide with fear.

  “Mi capitan, he tried to escape,” the soldier said.

  Rodríguez knew better. The soldier was making sure there were no prisoners. Like Willy, Che was leaving La Higuera a dead man. But before Che died, Rodríguez wanted to talk with him.

  Rodríguez stepped back into Che’s room. There was an uneasy silence. He didn’t have to say a word about the gunfire. Che knew what had just happened.

  Rodríguez stared at Che again and tried to reconcile the man in front of him with the dashing revolutionary depicted in hundreds of newspapers, books, and magazines. He had studied the pictures of Che in China and Moscow. In those photos, he was handsome, chic in his guerrilla fatigues. He could have had anything in the world—flashy clothes, money, fast cars, and beautiful women. Instead, he opted for life on the run, fighting, plotting, killing. But look at him now. Was it worth it?

  Rodríguez stood above Che just as the guerrilla leader had done to Nestor Pino, one of Rodríguez’s fellow Cuban patriots after the Bay of Pigs. Pino, a company commander in the paratrooper battalion, had been captured and beaten by Castro’s men. Lying in a fetal position, he tried to protect himself as blows cascaded down on him. Then they stopped suddenly. Standing over him, with polished black boots, was Che.

  “We’re going to kill you all,” Che told Pino.

  Luckily, Pino survived the beating, and he later recounted the story to Rodríguez. Now the roles were reversed. Che was lying at Rodríguez’s feet.

  “Che Guevara, I want to talk to you,” Rodríguez said.

  “Nobody interrogates me,” Che said, still clinging to the last shreds of his command.

  “Comandante,” Rodríguez said, giving full rein to his native Cuban accent. “I didn’t come to interrogate you. Our ideals are different. But I admire you. You used to be a minister of state in Cuba. Now look at you. You are like this because you believe in your ideals. Even though I believe they are mistaken, I have come to talk to you.”

  “Would you untie me? May I sit?” Che asked, eyeing Rodríguez.

  “Of course. Take the ropes from Commander Guevara,” Rodríguez told the soldier standing in the door. The man looked at him incredulously, but he followed orders. Che groaned as the ropes were loosened. The soldier helped Che onto the wooden bench.

  “Do you have any tobacco for my pipe?” Che asked.

  Rodríguez got a cigarette from one of the Bolivian soldiers and gave it to Che, who stripped the paper, stuffed the tobacco into the pipe, lit it, and inhaled.

  Rodríguez pressed Che about his operations and plans. The guerrilla leader begged off.

  “You know I cannot answer that,” he said.

  Rodríguez changed tactics. He knew the clock was ticking—the helicopter would return at 2 P.M., and Rodríguez would have no more chance of winning Che over. So Rodríguez stuck to simple, broad questions about the revolutionary’s philosophy. The guerrilla leader opened up.

  “Comandate, of all the possible countries in the region, why did you pick Bolivia to export your revolution?”

  Che took a draw off his pipe and paused for a second. It was the same question Prado had asked him.

  “We considered other places,” Che said. He rattled off names: Venezuela, Central America, Dominican Republic. But in each spot, the United States had reacted quickly to counter the threat. “We figured that by picking a country so far from the U.S., it wouldn’t appear to present an immediate threat,” Che said.

  He took another puff and admitted to Rodríguez that he had been looking for a poor country.

  One more thing, he continued, Bolivia shared boundaries with five countries. “If we are successful in Bolivia, then we can move into other places—Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Paraguay,” he said.

  Rodríguez asked why the Bolivians didn’t offer any support. Che made up excuses, including that the campesinos wanted a “comandante Boliviano,” not a Cuban, “even though I am an expert in these matters.”

  Cuba quickly became a topic. Rodríguez wanted to take Che to task over his country’s faltering economy. It was in shambles, thanks in part to Che’s leadership of the Cuban National Bank. Che blamed the poor economic conditions on the U.S. boycott. “But you helped cause that,” Rodríguez responded. “You, a doctor, were made president of the Cuban National Bank. What does a doctor know about economics?”

  The revolutionary chuckled. “Do you know how I became president of the Cuban National Bank?” Che asked.

  “No,” Rodríguez said, shaking his head.

  “I’ll tell you a funny story. We were sitting in a meeting one day, and Fidel came in and asked for a dedicated economista. I misheard him. I thought he was asking for a dedicated communista, so I raised my hand. And that’s why Fidel selected me as head of the Cuban economy.”

  To Rodríguez, it wasn’t funny. Too many people in Cuba were suffering under the harsh Communist regime. Not only were they living in a police state, they had little food or medicine. They had become totally dependent on foreign aid—most of it from the Soviet Union.

  Rodríguez and Che talked for an hour and
a half. They discussed politics and life.

  But when Rodríguez heard the helicopter approaching the village, he excused himself and went outside. He looked at his watch. It was still too early. He had promised Zenteno he would deliver Che by 2 P.M. and it wasn’t even 1 P.M.

  After the helicopter landed, the pilot, Nino de Guzman, walked over to Rodríguez and handed him a camera. He said Saucedo, the intelligence officer, wanted a picture of Che as a souvenir. Like a sportsman, he wanted to remember the hunt.

  Rodríguez helped Che limp outside. De Guzman gave Rodríguez the camera, which was set correctly. But Rodríguez didn’t want to get Saucedo in trouble, so he changed the speed and aperture, so the picture would never come out. Rodríguez pointed the camera and snapped a photo of Che with Nino de Guzman.

  Rodríguez then set the exposure on his camera to get an accurate picture for himself and gave it to Nino de Guzman.

  “Watch the little birdie,” Rodríguez said, standing next to Che.

  Che smiled, but quickly turned grim when Nino de Guzman hit the shutter. It was almost the same scowl he had worn in the Hotel Copacabana in La Paz, when “Adolfo Mena Gonzales” snapped his own portrait, a long time before.

  Back inside the schoolhouse, Rodríguez continued their conversation, asking Che about the firing squads at La Cabana.

  “We only put to death foreigners,” Che said. “Imperialistic agents and spies who had been sent by the CIA.”

  The irony was not lost on Rodríguez, who called Che on it immediately.

  “You’re not a Bolivian,” Rodríguez said. “You are a foreigner. You have invaded sovereign Bolivian territory.”

  Che was defiant, saying Rodríguez couldn’t possibly understand the reasons for revolution. Che pointed to his bloody leg. “I’m spilling blood here in Bolivia.” Then he pointed to the corpses in the room with him. One was Antonio.

  “Look at this one,” Che said. “In Cuba, he had everything he wanted. And yet he came here to die like this. To die because he believed in his ideals.”