The message produced a sigh of resignation.
K out. Janitor requested.
Another one bites the dust, he thought. A safe house in Kendall was about to be compromised, probably because of an arrest that had yet to hit the papers. It was Gonzalo’s job to launder the premises, a chore about as touchy as a domestic call for a beat cop. It was a nuisance that could turn dangerous at any second. The sooner he got it out of the way, the better.
He wore painter’s clothes for these occasions, and had after-hours access to a contractor’s panel truck parked in Coral Gables. The house in question was in one of those bland condo subdivisions that looked pretty much like a hundred others in the flat, broiling suburbs off Dixie Highway.
Gonzalo arrived just after dark to find the place a mess—ashtrays full, unwashed pots in the sink, coffee rings on countertops. Dust covered every surface, and the digital displays flashed on the microwave and VCR, meaning they probably hadn’t been reset since the last power outage. You could never teach spies to be good housekeepers, but this level of neglect was especially egregious.
The dirt and dishes, however, weren’t his concern. His mission was a glorified scavenger hunt, to round up any and all traces of intelligence activity. The only mail to collect was a pile of ad flyers and pizza coupons that had been pushed through the front slot and now lay on the carpet, just inside the door. Judging by the postmarks, no one had been here for at least four days.
Next he checked for stray videotapes, finding the VCR empty. Then he methodically collected four tiny concealed microphones from their customary locations—one behind the bathroom mirror, one beneath the corner of a coffee table in the living room, and one behind the headboard in each of the upstairs bedrooms.
He dropped these treasures into a cloth sack as he moved from room to room, the Cuban Grinch here to steal the FBI’s Christmas. In an upstairs hall closet he checked the recording equipment. Ideally the tape should be clear. Yet after rewinding it for a few seconds he heard muffled conversation on playback. He sighed but somehow wasn’t surprised. He ejected it with a click and dropped another prize into the sack. The recorder went next, an angular bulge making the sack heavy enough that he had to shift the weight across his right shoulder. Now he really did look like Santa.
In the second bedroom he discovered the biggest security breach yet, after flipping back the dust ruffle on a queen-sized bed to spot a cardboard box hiding on the floor beneath the bed. He slid it across the carpet into the open, and saw to his dismay that it was half filled with papers—cables and faxes, e-mail printouts, just the sort of baubles that might bring down an entire network. Stupidity writ large. No wonder someone associated with this location had been caught. Another ex-military man, if Gonzalo had to guess, one of the hires during the big purge of ’89 when Raúl Castro—El Comandante’s brother, and the head of the military—had reached across the upper levels of Havana bureaucracy to install one of his generals atop the Interior Ministry, which ran the Directorate. The general, in turn, had recalled some of the Directorate’s best and brightest, replacing them with loyal but untrained military hacks. Field men like Gonzalo had been paying for the mistake ever since. In recent years the Directorate had begun hiring back some of the older and steadier hands who’d been purged, but the damage was done.
Gonzalo hefted the box carefully, as if its contents were radioactive. If there had been a fireplace handy—about as likely in Miami as a jalousie window in Alaska—he would have burned the contents on the spot. He briefly considered dispatching the load to the oven, or checking outside for a grill. But the former would take too long, and he was too uncertain about the neighbors for the latter.
So he dumped the papers into the sack, and as he did so one of the sheets toward the bottom of the pile slipped free, oscillating like a parachutist to the floor. He was about to stuff it into the bag when the subject line caught his eye.
From: MX
Re: Desert Rose, via Guadalupe.
Well, now.
MX was the Directorate’s top man, and the subject in question had been the source of abundant speculation and internal rumor during the past few months. He knew that if he held this document in his hands any longer that he would read it, and he didn’t want that kind of knowledge. Too burdensome—the sort of information that might get wrapped around your ankles and drag you to the bottom of Biscayne Bay. He dropped the paper daintily into the sack, then bunched the top and slung it across his back, heading for the steps. Why would someone have kept a memo like that? And it was a photostat no less, suggesting that some local imbecile had actually run off a few copies for wider circulation.
Gonzalo was sweating by the time he was downstairs, partly from exertion but also from an onset of nerves. The sound of a slamming door stopped him halfway across the living room. Tensed and silent, he heard voices—the light chatter in English of two women, followed by laughter. They were outside, probably having just left the condo next door. Paper-thin walls and shabby construction were an unavoidable hazard of South Florida safe houses. During Hurricane Andrew they’d lost the roof off one near Homestead Air Force Base. The place stood open to the elements for a full week before anyone did a thing. Fortunately, the neighbors and insurance adjusters were slower to move than their operative, and the waterlogged equipment had been carted off as if it were just another ruined stereo system. If a hurricane had hit this place it might have sent those papers fluttering for miles.
Gonzalo peeped through the front blinds. The two women were getting into a Mazda parked at the curb, apparently harmless, but a reminder that he might soon have company. To be on the safe side, he dropped the sack by the door and quickly retraced his steps through the house, checking one last time for anything he might have missed. Almost as an afterthought he picked up the phone receiver and pressed the Speed Dial button and the number one. It beeped into action, dialing to God knows where. He immediately hung up, and then flew into a rage.
“Stupid, careless, lazy bastards! Fucking idiots!” After twenty-two years in Florida, Gonzalo now cursed mostly in English.
He wasn’t quite sure how to deprogram the phone, so after fumbling with the buttons for a few seconds he simply unplugged it and tossed it into the sack. Then he retrieved the upstairs extension and opened the door to leave, checking his flanks from the small porch. The street was clear. The worst of the day’s heat was melting into the streets and sidewalks, conserving its energy for morning. Gonzalo decided not to lock the door behind him. If thieves came along and ransacked the rest, all the better. Who knew what sort of mail might arrive in the days ahead, judging from the monumental foolishness already in evidence? Nothing he could do about that, however.
He tried not to drive too carefully on the way back, although he compulsively checked his mirrors for anyone following. The only thing more likely to attract the attention of a cop than drag racing up Dixie Highway would be scrupulously observing the speed limit. Blending in required tailgating, excessive acceleration after stoplights, and generally making an ass of yourself with frequent lane changes. If no one honked at you at least once every five miles, then you probably weren’t meeting the standard.
He switched back to his own car, a nine-year-old Corolla, in the parking lot. He felt like a thief loading his sack into the car, and as he headed home he eyed it on the seat beside him. Somewhere inside it, perhaps growing like a tumor, was the memo from MX. It wouldn’t have surprised him if it suddenly burst into flame, spontaneously revealing its presence to other drivers. There was a charcoal grill out back at his apartment building, and his neighbors were accustomed to his using it. He would light the papers beneath a pile of briquettes and destroy them. It would take only a few minutes, and the ashes would drift in the nightly breeze that would carry them out over the ocean. A burial at sea, all those forbidden secrets safe at last. Then he would grill some sausages, open a beer, and relax. He could deal with the phones and electronic gear later.
But by the time h
e was upstairs and safely indoors his curiosity had gotten the best of him. If MX was sending urgent memos and, worse, if station chiefs were daring to make copies for careless field men, then why shouldn’t he at least know the latest, if only for self-protection? While his relative autonomy as a “Tree Frog” generally worked to his advantage, it also made him an easy dupe for supervisors eager to employ his services to undermine their rivals. What his taskmasters failed to realize in making such assignments was that in the process Gonzalo often learned as much about their weaknesses as about those of their targets. By imparting such knowledge they were violating the single most important rule of their trade: No one should ever be told more than he explicitly needed to know. Of course, Gonzalo would be making the same mistake by peeking at the forbidden memo.
He knew enough from previous findings that any directive from MX involving source Guadalupe and operative Desert Rose was a likely precursor to renewed upheaval. But as he stared at the sack on his kitchen table, he supposed that for a change it might be better to know more than he was supposed to.
He easily found the document, since it had been the last one into the bag. It was a little crumpled from its voyage across town, so Gonzalo smoothed it on his kitchen table.
First he checked the date. Nine days ago. New enough to be fresh, old enough to have been overtaken by events. He wondered if the imminent exposure of the local field man was somehow related.
The circulation list was intriguing. Besides Miami the memo had gone to station chiefs in Madrid, Khartoum, and Damascus. Madrid was the hub for Europe, Khartoum was at the heart of the current troubles in Sudan, and Damascus was a frequent clearinghouse for operations in the Middle East, although that theater had long been dormant, ever since the days of the Directorate’s close relations with various Palestinian factions, some of which had long ago sent fighters to Cuba for training in arms and explosives.
The message was brief:
Guadalupe reports abort incomplete. Desert Rose, José 1, and three others incommunicado. Request immediate assistance all locations. Utmost urgency.
Guadalupe, he knew, was a sort of glorified freelance, with duties similar to Gonzalo’s but on a wider field of play. Desert Rose was a name he hadn’t come across in years, dating back to the busiest days of cooperation with the Palestinians. José 1 didn’t ring a bell, but seemed to have thrown in his lot with Desert Rose and the “three others.” The Directorate was apparently trying to stop this quintet from whatever it had gotten up to, but so far had failed. If all five were now considered off the leash, then they must have crossed the bounds of Directorate orthodoxy.
Figuring there had to be more information on a subject of such importance, Gonzalo plowed through the rest of the pile, but it was all junk, as worthless as the pizza coupons shoved through the mail slot. Expense vouchers and office logistics. A few mild reprimands for over-spending countered by a few plaintive requests for more money. The usual give-and-take between headquarters and any regional office, whether the product is shoes or secrets.
The memo was the only important item in the whole stack, so he reread it, in case he might have missed some implication the first time. The circulation list continued to intrigue him. He shook his head, figuring that he had better light the fire. Whatever was going on here, it seemed like a good time to keep his head down.
But he couldn’t, thanks to the message that arrived the very next morning on the shortwave. Two in two days, like the bouncing needle of a seismograph. And the second, in its way, was every bit as disturbing:
Peregrine in nest. Arrange meeting. Highest urgency. Further details Puma.
Gonzalo usually erased his messages as soon as he’d read them. This one he left on his screen for several minutes while he paced the kitchen and turned on the coffeepot. He lit a cigarette and returned for a second look. He pressed the Delete key, but only once, then retrieved the message a final time, if only to convince himself that it wasn’t a mirage, a malfunction.
Peregrine was a name representing one of his most intriguing triumphs and dismal failures, although his superiors still held a generally rosy view of the operation. He had long hoped for an opportunity to salvage something from the wreckage, so in that sense he was gratified. But how strange that Peregrine had somehow returned to his original roost, or, as the message described it, “the nest.” Perhaps the further details, soon to arrive at mailbox Puma, would clarify the circumstances of this mysterious development.
At any rate, he sensed that because of the names involved he would soon have to take risks. And in calculating the risks he realized something alarming: He was comfortable here. Settled. Happy, even. That, he now realized, was at the root of his recent bouts of homesickness. They were separation pains, an acknowledgment that he was breaking away. For all its faults, enemy territory had become home, a dangerous development in his profession.
He was also troubled by the timing of this message. Its arrival only ten days after the date of the MX memo led him to believe they must be connected in some way, even if Havana would never have wanted him to know about the former. Whatever storm was brewing, he had just been swept into it.
Gonzalo deleted the message for good, taking a few extra steps that the techies had assured him would wipe it from his hard drive. He hoped they were right. In the wrong hands, those few words would be as damning as a bag of cocaine or a bar of yellowcake uranium.
Then he got down to business, heading out of the parking lot in his Corolla, crossing MacArthur Causeway to Biscayne Boulevard, where he turned north and began scouting for a phone booth. None of the ones he had used before would do. But they were increasingly hard to find, especially ones that took coins. Some agents, he knew, had begun using generic phone cards. Sloppy. He finally spotted a phone in the parking lot of a Denny’s. He decided to make the call, then enjoy an American breakfast, the greasy hash browns he’d developed a taste for. At $3.99, how could he resist?
After scanning the parking lot for anyone within earshot, he plugged in a few quarters, then punched in the number for a beeper in Long Island. All the Manhattan lines had been deemed too hot to handle. At the sound of a recorded prompt he punched in a sequence of numbers, a code of acknowledgment that would tell Havana, “Message received, urgency acknowledged, awaiting instructions.” He figured that the postman for the Puma mail drop might not arrive until noon, so he decided not to risk a premature visit.
Now all he could do was wait. So he ate breakfast while reading both the English and the Spanish editions of the Miami Herald, amusing himself as always by the rightward drift of the politics in the Latin version—niche pandering at its worst. He then decided that a long walk on the beach was in order for sorting things out. Besides, he was due to meet Lucinda at noon, down by the jetty. Thinking of her, he smiled for the first time all morning. Then he frowned. Yet another reason to fear this assignment. Lose this time and he lost everything.
Gonzalo had found much to sneer at when he had first arrived in America. He had come ashore with the Mariel Boatlift, blending easily with the ten thousand refugees who had come north in the giant flotilla. It was now well known that Castro had released a few thousand prison inmates into the mix, helping set off a South Florida crime wave of epic proportions. Less well known was the dictator’s insertion of a few dozen select operatives such as Gonzalo.
Miami offered plenty of easy targets for someone eager to find fault. So much wealth alongside so much misery. Gated communities of feudal poshness. He watched causeway drawbridges open for huge yachts while thousands waited in sweltering cars. Public officials squandered millions on sports arenas for rich athletes and their top-dollar fans while, blocks away, entire communities rotted. On a visit to Fort Lauderdale he watched a ragged Haitian fisherman trying to net dinner on a tidal canal from the edge of a parking lot where a sign said, “Valet only. No bills larger than $20.” It was easy to see this place as Rome in decline, Babylon on the Bay. Gonzalo could be as smug as he liked.
/> The people in the middle ranks were the ones he couldn’t comprehend, so in the evenings he often drove through their trim warrens of one-story homes in the suburbs, as if seeking entry through a last unlocked door. If only he might penetrate their stucco walls, join them on their couches before the flickering TV screens, or at their smoldering grills, or on their rumbling mowers.
No such luck. It was as if they existed in a different dimension, and he always arrived home thwarted and resentful, or cursing the traffic. So he gave it up, kept his head down, tended to his duties, relaxed, and slowly blended into the scenery. And look at where he had wound up—a man with a girlfriend, a steady income, and an apartment he liked on Washington Avenue, only four blocks from the beach at $550 a month. So what if his parking space was next to the Dumpster out back, and there were security bars across his windows, and his car insurance cost him an arm and a leg even for a nine-year-old Corolla. He had everything he needed over there on the beach, and all of it was within range of his bicycle, locked to a rack downstairs.
In thinking back, he supposed he had gotten the first inkling of his current predicament a few weeks ago, during one of his first trips to the park bench at Collins and Twenty-first. A snatch of graffiti scrawled on an emergency phone box had caught his eye: “Castro Fall—You Go Home”—a typical semaphore of rage from some Anglo fed up with Miami’s bilingual bazaar. But to Gonzalo the message offered an unsettling truth. El Comandante wouldn’t live forever, and when he went, so might Gonzalo’s job, income, and passport. You go home? Yes, he just might have to.
The Prisoner of Guantanamo Page 8
