Topaz

by Leon Uris

A delighted crowd gathered.

  “You leave me for that other woman and get drunk! Liar! Dog!”

  She grabbed his ear, literally jerking him free of the militiamen’s grip.

  “I worked to the bone to send you through medical school and this is the thanks I get! Bum!”

  The crowd laughed and whistled as she banged him around the arcade. Arnaldo doubled up, shielding his face and stomach.

  “I promise I’ll study. Day and night I’ll study!”

  “He goes to the station.” One militiaman asserted his authority.

  “No,” the crowd groaned. “No!”

  “He’s getting a beating enough.”

  “Dog! Bum!”

  “Let him go,” they chanted.

  Anita kicked him down the street and around the corner as the crowd gathered around the militiamen and argued heatedly. By now the police were dumbfounded. As they shrugged and continued their rounds, they were applauded for gallantry.

  In her room, Anita wept and kissed him for every blow she had rendered. “I almost lost my mind,” she cried, “I almost lost my mind. Oh, my darling, darling, darling.”

  They kissed and rolled in the bed and fell to the floor. He laughed convulsively. “I saw them! I saw them!”

  And she sat beside him on the floor and laughed with him until their sides ached and tears drenched their cheeks.

  27

  THE APARTMENT OF TERESA Marín was but a block away from the French Chancellery. Teresa was one of Fidel Castro’s most trusted personal secretaries. In fact, he had her placed in the exclusive building in order that she might oversee an apartment on the floor below belonging to Fidel. It was a place where he entertained his mistress of the moment.

  The first loyalty of Teresa Marín, however, was to the activities of Juanita de Córdoba.

  Midway between the French Chancellery and Teresa’s apartment house stood the Chinese Embassy on an acre of land surrounded by a high pink wall. Its flat roof held a field of radio antennae, which delivered high-frequency transmissions around the clock to China.

  With the Chinese cluttering up the air, it was impossible to monitor the area. What better place than in the apartment of Teresa Marín for the French espionage ring to place their own transmitter?

  Near the end of the third week of André’s visit to Cuba, Juanita paid what appeared to be a normal social call to her old friend, Teresa Marín. One floor below, Fidel Castro made love to a new woman.

  At the moment Fidel was making his conquest, a high-speed, low-frequency transmitter came from its hiding place in Teresa’s apartment and flashed a message to a receiver in Miami:

  CONFIRMING THE INTRODUCTION OF SOVIET INTERMEDIATE RANGE MISSILES AT FINCA SAN JOSÉ AND PERHAPS REMEDIOS AREAS. MISSILES NOT YET OPERATIONAL. BASES APPEAR TO BE IN EXCLUSIVE HANDS OF SOVIET TROOPS.

  The message was signed with André’s ININ code name, Palomino.

  28

  MUÑOZ AND THE SOVIET Resident, Oleg Gorgoni, stared into the eternally black, angry eyes of Rico Parra, who appeared intense even when drinking his morning cafecito.

  The Russian hammered home his position. “Both Devereaux and the French Ambassador have a history of complete sympathy to the Americans. Devereaux has been in Havana almost three weeks. For what?”

  Rico played with his beard. “Routine business.” “In the light of our present activities,” Gorgoni continued, “we cannot consider his visit to Cuba at this time as coincidental.”

  “Well, Muñoz,” Parra said, “you’ve had him under watch. What do you think?”

  “We could find nothing specific. Only suspicions.”

  “Since when do we let suspicions stop us?” Gorgoni demanded.

  “Since we started playing with high-ranking diplomats, Comrade Gorgoni.” Rico threw up his hands. “I have no love lost for the Frenchman but I am reluctant to act without proof.”

  “There will be proof enough when you open his attaché case.”

  “And if there isn’t? He’s just hot for Juanita de Córdoba, and when he gets to Cuba he finds reason to stay.”

  “Is their affair such an innocent little game?” the Russian said.

  Rico’s eyes seemed even blacker. “You’re treading on quicksand, comrade. She is a great and respected woman. But ... suppose we do get rid of Devereaux. What about French-Cuban relations?”

  “Did Castro give you authority to act or not?”

  “Yes, but I’m giving the damned authority right back to him.”

  “Comrade Parra! The Frenchman cannot be allowed to leave Cuba with a suitcase filled with intelligence.”

  Parra shrugged and gestured. “So, what if the Yankees discover the rockets? Just what will they do? What did they do when the surface-to-air missiles were installed? Eh? Nothing, they did nothing.”

  “SAM’s are defensive weapons,” Gorgoni answered; “this is different.”

  “What about the Soviet jet bombers in Cuba? Are they defensive? Again the Americans didn’t do anything, and they won’t do anything now,” Parra bragged.

  “Moscow is very concerned. Once we make the missiles operational it will be an accomplished fact. But they must be made operational first. You know as well as I of the increased American U-2 flights over Cuba. What are they looking for? Bananas?”

  Rico Parra slammed his fist onto the desktop. “Do the Yankees have missiles in Turkey pointing at the Soviet Union? Yes or no?”

  “One question does not answer the other. We must have time to make them operational. Devereaux leaves tomorrow. What will Castro say to you when the Americans threaten to invade Cuba? What will become of Rico Parra then? Think, comrade ... think of the consequences to you if Devereaux carries out information of this.”

  Rico Parra thought. “Uribe!” he shouted.

  His fragile secretary, Luis Uribe, hurried into the room.

  “Did you reach Castro?”

  “I called the apartment, also Che and Raul. He is on his way to Santiago for a speech but apparently stopped off en route to see one of his woman friends. He can’t be located.”

  “What kind of crazy country are you running here when you can’t find your own President!” the Russian said angrily.

  “Comrade Gorgoni,” Parra answered indignantly, “we are Cubans. Uribe, keep trying to locate Castro. Muñoz, you will go to the airport tomorrow. As soon as Castro gives me the green light I will call you. Pick up Devereaux and take him to the Green House.”

  A slight smile crossed the baby face of Muñoz.

  “And when you get him there,” Parra continued, “save him for me. I have an account to settle.”

  29

  ANDRÉ KNOTTED HIS ROBE, PERCHED on the rail, and gazed toward the sea consumed by the terrible feeling that he would never see Juanita de Córdoba again. His fear for her life took his thoughts away from his own thorny problem of getting out of Cuba in the morning. He was not certain he would leave the country alive. Desperate men were obviously making plans for him. But he was more frightened about leaving her behind. This then was to be the final reward but one does not whimper about the cruelty of it all. You win ... you lose. The game goes on. The angel of death circles overhead.

  Juanita came to the veranda in a hostess gown looking particularly stunning. He was always amazed at this soft woman who never gave up being a woman in the company of cutthroats. She poured their cognacs with her particular grace and they hemmed in and contained the flooding desperation to cling to each other and weep.

  “Well, here’s to your next trip,” Juanita said. “When do you suppose that will be?”

  “It’s difficult to say.”

  “Difficult to say when, or just difficult to say?”

  “You’re the one woman who doesn’t play games. You know that I’ll never get back into Cuba.”

  “Yes ... I know....”

  She fitted into his free arm in a way that blended them. A way of saying, look how we belong, you and I. And she said, “We’ve had so many wonder
ful nights here. How nice it is when you make a woman believe that you and she are the only two people who can sleep together in a single bed with room to spare. I think of all the wonderful things you taught me and you brought out of me. Thank you.”

  “Juanita ... I won’t accept this finality.”

  “May I break our pact? About wives and sentiment? You are not going away without knowing that I’ve loved you completely. When we started this work I would have waited for you forever or taken scraps without complaint or condition. But ... if I had loved you so obviously there would have been suspicion cast on us. And if I had declared myself to you I was a bit wary that you, as a man, would have been too proud to consent to what I could impose without your permission. I took up company,” she said shakily, “with other men in order to protect what we were doing. I did it to keep suspicion away from us ... so that I could go on seeing you. But there was never a moment I didn’t long for you....”

  “... Juanita ...”

  “It was no sacrifice. It’s only a part of the way I love you. André ... no man, not even my husband, has given me what you have.”

  Juanita’s eyes were glassy from the ordeal of her words. She kissed the fingers that touched her cheeks and traced the lines of his neck.

  “I love you that way too and I don’t intend to give you up. Now listen ... the minute I arrive in Miami I’m setting up plans to send a boat for you. Alain Adam will know the time and place.”

  She put her finger to his lips to stop him and she shook her head. “Don’t you understand that I can never leave Cuba?”

  “I saw the destruction of my own country but I left France in order to fight for her. You have to do the same thing now. You are more valuable to the cause outside Cuba.”

  “I will make that decision....”

  “What about your sons?”

  “André ... don’t ask me anymore.”

  “Yes, I will, and you’re going to promise me.”

  “I will promise you that I will believe in you and love you. If God wills it, then perhaps there is a life for us, together ... but don’t dream.”

  “I want to know your reasons.”

  She shook her head. “My dear ... please don’t sound like G-2 on our last night together.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I suppose that all I really wanted for us was to have just one week alone. There are islands in the Caribbean where two people can be away, except to each other. You know them all.”

  “I’ve only seen them,” he said. “Other people know them. Oh Lord ... I wish I could believe there was one for us .... I’d give anything ... oh, Lord....”

  She saw her man waver for the first time. And she was stern.

  “Come now, darling. We knew from the first day that we would have to come to this night and face it.”

  “That doesn’t make me like it!” Then, shamed by her strength, he managed a smile. He took her hand and held it long and patted it, then put it to his lips. “You are a beautiful lady,” André said.

  The alarm rang at four-thirty in the morning. The KLM flight was not due to depart until noon, but it was obligatory under Cuban regulations that all passengers present themselves at the airport six full hours before departure.

  They took breakfast in total silence, then finally got around to a last-minute bit of business. André always carried out a briefcase of letters to Cuban refugees to be delivered in Miami and elsewhere about the country. A valise of tears and hope. The authorities would examine the letters before delivery, then see that they got to the rightful recipients. Juanita gave him the locked valise.

  “The mail,” she said.

  André hefted the valise, then looked at her curiously. “What the hell have you got in here this time? It weighs a ton.”

  Juanita shrugged. “Who knows? The mail just gets heavier as the revolution goes on. This time, please don’t wait. Open it as soon as you can after you arrive in Miami. You’ll understand.”

  What André understood without question was that he had received an instruction and would follow it. He nodded that he would comply.

  At a quarter past five there was a knock on the door of the villa. Juanita was stunned to see Alain Adam waiting with the Embassy car. It was the very first time he had ever arisen at that early hour to take André to the airport. Obviously, she thought, something was wrong ... and a sickening wave of fear passed through her ... they are going to kill him!

  His bags were loaded into the car in silence, the only sound being their feet shuffling on the gravel and the slam of the trunk lid.

  André kissed her cheek. “When I send for you ... come.” He got into the front seat next to the Ambassador, dared a last look at her, and closed the car door.

  She grew smaller and smaller as the car pulled out of the circular driveway past the iron gates. He looked back desperately and caught the last wave of her hand.

  “Vaya con Dios,” Juanita de Córdoba whispered as they passed from sight.... “Go with God.”

  In a moment a pair of G-2 men down the way in an unmarked car radioed the information that Devereaux had left the villa. Muñoz received the message at the Green House. He called Rico Parra at his office.

  Parra had been up all night trying unsuccessfully to reach Castro. He was bedraggled and given to fits of temper.

  “Devereaux is heading for the airport,” Muñoz reported.

  “You get down there,” Parra snapped, “and you wait. Wait for my call. And God damn you, Muñoz, don’t screw it up.”

  “Yes, compadre.”

  “Compadre, my ass ....” He hung up. Luis Uribe, his secretary, set a cafecito before him. Uribe’s family had somehow skipped Cuba but he had no time for the man now. Rico bolted down the cafecito with a flick of the wrist and grunted. “Fidel!” he screamed, “where are you, you bastard!” He stared long at the unanswering telephone. “Uribe. Have you called all of his women?”

  Uribe made a gesture of total helplessness.

  Rico Parra cracked his knuckles nervously. Everything to take care of Devereaux was planned and in motion. He only needed Castro’s signal to go. When the phone rang, Rico heaved a sigh. Uribe lifted the receiver, answered, looked puzzled to his boss.

  “It’s ... Señora de Córdoba....”

  “Juanita ... at this hour ... of course.”

  He snatched the phone and waved Uribe out of the room. “Hello, Rico Parra speaks.”

  “Hello, Rico. This is Juanita de Córdoba. I wish to see you.”

  Rico waited until the thumping of his heart slowed. “I’ll see you later, at a more decent hour.”

  “No. I must see you now.”

  “Very well. Come to my office.”

  “No. I want to see you alone ... to discuss something confidential. Could you come up to my villa?”

  It smelled bad to Rico. A trap. He crouched in his chair and drummed his fingers on the desktop. “Juanita,” he said. “Do you know the Bahia del Sol?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have a villa there. You will come?”

  “Yes.”

  “At the entrance take the right fork and follow the bay for exactly two kilometers. You can’t miss the place. A big white stone wall and the name Casa de Revolutión over the gate. In front there is a caretaker’s house. He will give you the key. Women have waited for me before, so it will not seem unusual. If you leave Havana now you should be there within an hour.”

  “I will see you there.”

  Parra hung up, puzzled. “Uribe!”

  “Yes, Señor Parra.”

  “I am going out for a while. If Muñoz calls, nothing is to be done until I personally give the word.”

  “Yes, señor.”

  “You keep trying to reach Castro.”

  “Yes,” Uribe said, retreating to the adjoining office.

  Parra placed a telephone call to Casa de Revolución which was answered by the chief of the guard detail. “It is Rico,” he said. “I am expecting a woman to arrive in an
hour. Take her and search her for weapons, then hold her in the main building until I arrive. Stake out the guards around the grounds.”

  “What is up?”

  “It may be a trick of the underground ... maybe not.” Rico Parra took his pistol belt from the hat rack and strapped it to his waist and left his office.

  30

  BORIS KUZNETOV DEVELOPED A passion for Pepsi-Cola. As often as not he put away a six-pack during each interrogation session. He drained the bottom of his glass, asked the nurse for another, and looked into the familiar faces of Jaffe, Kramer, W. Smith, and Dr. Billings.

  “In 1950,” he continued, “I was assigned to East Berlin as the Resident of the Soviet Embassy under the cover of being a member of the purchasing commission. Under my office, the communications, dead-letters boxes, and control of operations were directed. I also kept surveillance over all the people working in the Soviet Embassy.”

  “You directed espionage operations?”

  “Yes. Mostly in West Berlin.”

  “Outside of West Berlin?”

  “Not much. I recruited illegals.”

  “Will you explain that?”

  “We looked for young Germans of fifteen to twenty years of age whose parents had Communist backgrounds or ones who were otherwise suited for illegal work. These people were sent back to Moscow to a special German school for training that goes on sometimes for a decade. We have such schools for illegals from most Western countries. The master plan is to slip these people into Western Germany or Italy or France for a year to familiarize themselves completely with the area where they will work later on. Then after another eight years they will go back to the West with a complete set of false documents. They will be skilled enough to obtain highly placed positions in government, science, industry, or the military. With the planting of this seed of illegals there will be a great harvest of agents in the future of a caliber better than anything known.”

  “How many did you recruit?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Were others recruited from Germany?”

  “I think the school in Moscow has forty Germans.”