Killing Castro

by Lawrence Block

  In December of 1958 Fidel Castro was an outlaw, had been an outlaw for five and one-half years. In January of 1959 he was a national hero, an acknowledged leader. A greater man might have shaved his rebel beard, might have stepped down from the pedestal on which his country had placed him, might have denounced the Communists in his mushrooming band —as he had once accepted help from the Communists at the university and then turned against them—and then called at once for honest elections and for an end to terror. But most men would have done exactly what Fidel Castro did. Power was waiting, and he accepted it.

  He was a hero now, known the world over. American magazines placed his picture on their covers. Cubans cheered his every word. Khrushchev fed his ego. The South American countries feared him. The United States, unfortunately, handled him with kid gloves, immobilized by concern over world opinion.

  But Fidel charged forward, sure he was invincible, the man of the hour. Sure he had made promises, promises which seemed simple enough when he was a brigand in the hills of Oriente, broadcasting words of hope over the rebel station to hopeful listeners everywhere. But now that Batista was out and Castro was in, those same promises were much harder to keep than they had been to make.

  In May of 1958 he had told Cuba: “Personally, I do not aspire to any post and I consider that there is sufficient proof that I fight for the good of my people, without any personal or egotistic ambition soiling my conduct. After the revolution we will convert the movement into a political party and we will fight with the arms of the constitution and the law. Not even then will I aspire to the presidency because I am only thirty-one years old.”

  Had he meant that, or was it his way of blinding Cubans to his real purpose? At first, his words seemed genuine, for he appointed Manuel Urrutia as provisional president of Cuba, with general elections planned within the year. Then he deposed Urrutia and postponed those elections indefinitely. They were never held.

  It seemed simpler to take the quick way, the easy way. He had the power and the nation was willing to follow wherever he led. Why bother with elections? Why wait for laws? He excused himself, saying that he would have to retain power until the revolution was a reality and until all reforms had been achieved. He kept his beard and went on wearing the uniform of a guerrilla fighter. Liberty and freedom could wait—or be shunted aside forever.

  This was the first step, the suspension of the machinery of democracy. Next came the elimination of judicial processes. The country overflowed with former associates and lieutenants of Batista. Fidel had a simple answer. He put them before the firing squads. It was, once again, revolutionary justice. The term called into being with executions in the hills was revived now. Trials were dispensed with, the excuse being that they took time. Men were arrested quickly and systematically. They were brought before a revolutionary tribunal which pronounced them guilty. Then they were taken to the courtyard where the firing squad waited.

  There were precedents, of course. The Committee of Public Safety, with its reign of terror that sent thousands to the guillotine in eighteenth-century France. The Russian Revolution, with mass executions of czarist officers. Castro called the process revolutionary justice, but it turned out to be another name for terror. He was no better than the man he had deposed—Batista.

  The executions drew protest and alienated supporters, particularly in the United States. Fidel Castro could not understand the criticism. “Batista never gave anyone a trial,” he said. “He just had them killed, and there were no protests or criticisms then. These men are murderers, assassins. We are not executing innocent people or political opponents. We are executing murderers and they deserve to be shot.”

  Perhaps they did, but Batista executed for the same reason—to kill opposition. And methods which are legitimate for a guerilla band are not legitimate for a government.

  Just as Castro’s domestic policies gave democracy a back seat, so did his foreign policy draw him further and further from the United States. He had stated frequently that he would confiscate no foreign property, that he was not a Communist, that the United States was no enemy of his. But his position began to change. American business interests kept leveling a charge of Communism at Castro. The American press echoed this charge. Castro denied vehemently these accusations.

  But he seized oil refineries and took over land owned by Americans. He accused the United States of crime after crime, using America as a convenient scapegoat to justify every extreme measure of his own. Every day saw him drawing further from the West and moving closer and closer to the Communist bloc. He saw an enemy in everyone who disagreed with him, a potential danger in every casual opponent.

  He had thrown out a dictator. Now he had become a dictator himself. The Cuban people still backed him, still worshipped him. But the seeds of discontent had been sown.

  NINE

  Señora Luchar was talking. They were in the living room, she and Turner and Hines, and they were drinking the inevitable demitasse cups of strong black coffee. Hines couldn’t stand the coffee, or Señora Luchar, or Turner, or anyone else in the world, himself least of all. His fingers gripped the small white cup so tightly he was afraid it would break in his hand. He wished he was a smoker; a cigarette would be good right now, but it seemed a silly time to start.

  “Today is the twentieth of July,” Señora Luchar was saying. “Tomorrow Castro makes his trip across the island. Thursday he speaks in Santiago, a speech to workers and peasants. Then he returns here, to Havana, in time for his speech commemorating the anniversary of the Twenty-sixth of July Movement. He’ll be speaking Sunday, in the main square. That’s not far from here. You know where it is?”

  Hines nodded.

  “So that’s the time,” the Luchar woman said. “There will be a huge crowd, too huge for the police to do much good. You’re using bombs, right? Bombs that you throw?”

  “That’s right,” Hines told her.

  “So you mingle with the crowd and throw the bombs. Then you get away and return here. We’ll get you back to the mainland.”

  “It sounds shaky,” Turner broke in.

  “Mr. Turner?”

  “Yeah,” Turner went on. “Yeah, it sounds shaky. We’re right in the middle of it. It’s not tough tossing the bombs. It’s tough getting away.”

  The woman looked at him.

  “We’re taking a chance,” Turner said.

  “Of course. And you are being paid how much to take this chance? Twenty thousand dollars? You would not be paid so much if there were no chance, Mr. Turner.”

  She turned, left them. Turner shrugged and headed for the stairs to the basement. Hines got up, not particularly anxious to follow Turner. But where the hell else was he supposed to go?

  Turner said: “What do you think of the setup?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We’ll be sitting ducks. If we play it the way she calls it, we’ll be deader than hell before the bomb goes off. I don’t like it.”

  “So?”

  Turner hesitated, then stated boldly, “I want out, Jim.”

  “You must be kidding.”

  “No, I mean it.”

  “You?” Hines was on his feet now, his eyes amazed. This was too much, he thought. Big old Turner, tough guy Turner, the desperate desperado. He wanted out.

  “Me.”

  “Why? Getting cold feet, for God’s sake? Going chicken?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, I don’t get it.”

  Turner shrugged. “There’s not a hell of a lot to get. I took this job to beat a stateside murder rap. I was going to run for Brazil. Well, why Brazil? I’m in Cuba. I can stay here.”

  “Stay here?”

  “Get work, find a place to live. I don’t know. I like it here, Jim. And I’m here already. Why commit another murder so I can start running all over again?”

  “Jesus Christ. What would you do here, for God’s sake?”

  “Anything. There’s a lot of new construction going up—and I’ve s
wung construction work before. I know how to handle heavy equipment and they’re short of that kind of labor.”

  “So you’ll throw away twenty grand to work a steam shovel? That doesn’t sound like you, Turner.”

  “Maybe not. Or maybe it does, I don’t know. And there’s a guy I got friendly with, a grifter type. He wants me to throw in with him. He works some semi-legitimate cons and he makes a living. And it sounds a hell of a lot better to me than tossing bombs around like an imitation anarchist. Castro’s not my enemy. He may be bad, but it doesn’t make a hell of a lot of difference to me. All I want is a nice quiet place to live, food to eat, liquor to drink and a woman when I need one. I can get all those no matter who’s in charge here.”

  “So you’re quitting.”

  “Maybe.”

  Hines went over to his bunk, sat down. He was sweating. First the truth about Joe and now Turner doing a fadeout, gumming up the works by quitting cold on him. It was all falling apart at the seams—his whole little world.

  He didn’t know how to tie it together again.

  “Jesus,” he said. “What am I supposed to do now?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  “I can’t go ahead and throw the bomb—”

  “Sure you can. I’ll put it together for you. It only takes one person to heave it. If we both go, it only makes it easier for them to spot us.”

  “But—”

  “You can even take my share of the dough. That makes it forty thou instead of twenty.”

  “I don’t care about the money!”

  “Hey,” Turner said. “Calm down, kid.”

  “You don’t know, damn you. You don’t understand a goddamn thing.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “About everything. Joe was my brother, damn it, and Castro killed him. So I have to kill Castro. Can’t you get that into your fat head?”

  “So kill him! I don’t care—”

  “Goddamn it! You know what I found out, Turner? Castro had a right to kill Joe. Joe was a turncoat, he got power happy and tried a coup of his own. Do you hear what I’m saying? I’m over here getting some kind of cockeyed revenge for my hero of a brother who had it coming all along! Isn’t that one for the goddamned books? Here I am living in a cruddy cellar and scheming like some kind of comic-strip character and it’s all for revenge. And Joe doesn’t deserve being avenged in the first place. How do you like that, Turner? And what the hell am I supposed to do now?”

  He sat there, glaring. He was waiting for Turner to say something but the older man was silent, watching him with cool eyes. He felt like a nut now, like some kind of an idiot. He’d been shouting at the top of his lungs like a kid with a tantrum.

  “Jim—”

  “I’m sorry, Turner. I lost control.”

  “Forget it. Jim, get the hell out of here. I didn’t know about Joe. How did you find out?”

  “From the Luchar broad.”

  “Are you sure she was telling it straight?”

  “Yeah. I’ve checked around and … oh, hell, she wouldn’t have any reason to lie to me. If she was going to lie she’d do it the other way, Turner. She’d want me to stay revenge-happy so I wouldn’t blow the assassination. She wasn’t lying. It’s straight. Joe must have gone a little nutty or something. He probably lost his edge the same way Castro did. Power does that to a person. It happens all through history. But it takes a little of the steam out of … out of me, damn it. It’s like shooting the governor because your brother went to the chair for a murder he committed. It makes it silly.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Turner? What do I do now?”

  “What I told you. Get the hell out.”

  “Out of Cuba?”

  “Uh-huh. Get the first boat back to the States and stay there. You’re not a criminal, kid. You’re young, you can go back to school and start fresh. You’ve got a story to save up and tell your own kids someday. In the meantime you can live instead of dying. Because if you stay in Havana they’re going to kill you, Jim. This game was a last chance for me. I figured there might be a nice easy way to bump Castro and stay alive. But there isn’t, and I can stay alive without it.”

  “But—”

  “And so can you. Look, you don’t care about the money. Remember? And the revenge seems kind of pointless now. So throw your hand in.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Turner took out a cigarette, lit it. He took a deep drag, let the smoke out in a thin stream. The air in the cellar was dense and the smoke stayed in a long, snakelike column as it rose slowly to the ceiling.

  “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” he said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I’m staying right here until Saturday. There are three other guys in on this, don’t forget. God knows where they are, but they’re supposed to be somewhere around here in Cuba. Ray Garrison, Matt Garth, Earl Fenton. You remember them?”

  “I remember.”

  “Yeah. Well, there’s no law saying we have to be the ones to hit Castro. They might get him first. If that happens, we have our twenty grand apiece without any risk. So I’m sticking around to see if maybe that’ll happen. It would be nice.”

  Hines didn’t say anything.

  “Saturday night,” Turner went on, “I clear out. Don’t ask where I’m going because I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I’ll hole up somewhere for the time being so that Lady Luchar and her hired hands can’t decide they don’t like me any more. Then I’ll apply for Cuban citizenship. I’ll go straight to the government and tell them I’m wanted for murder in the States and I like the climate better in Cuba. I’ll have a work permit the same day and a set of citizenship papers within the week. And I’ll be set.”

  “And what should I do, Turner?”

  “Stick around until Saturday. You don’t want to miss out on twenty grand, do you?”

  “I told you—”

  “That you don’t care about the money. I got that. But you wouldn’t throw it away if someone dropped it in your lap, would you?”

  “No,” Hines admitted.

  “Fine. So you hang around until Saturday. Then you grab a boat or a plane, go to the Swiss consulate and tell them you’re an American refugee, something like that. They’ll get you back to Miami and you can go it alone from there.”

  “That’s the sensible way, huh?”

  “Sure.”

  Hines nodded to himself. There was always a sensible way, and there was another way that seemed more honest. He decided it was a hell of a shame that the honest way was never the sensible way.

  “Will you put those bombs together? And explain to me how they work?”

  “Why—”

  “Saturday night,” Hines went on desperately, doggedly. “Saturday night you’ll show me how the bombs work. Sunday you can disappear. I don’t care. Because Sunday I’m going to blow the hell out of Castro.”

  “Didn’t you hear a thing I said? Don’t you remember what you said, goddamn it?”

  “I remember.”

  “Then—”

  “I don’t even want to talk about it. I know—I’ll be getting killed, maybe, and all for a brother who had it coming. But I don’t want to think about it, it only makes my head ache. I can’t take it any more. I don’t know what’s right or wrong, Turner. I can’t tell the heroes from the villains. It’s not black and white like a morality play. It’s all kinds of shades of gray.”

  Turner dropped his cigarette to the floor. He covered it with his foot and ground it out. He did not say anything.

  “All shades of gray,” Hines went on. “And it all boils down to the same thing. He killed my brother and I’m going to kill him. That’s what I keep winding up with. I can’t take the boat back to the States, I can’t run like a rat to the Swiss consulate. I have to wait here and I have to blow that bastard in two with a bomb. That’s all I can do.”

  It was Wednesday morning. Maria boiled a huge pot of water over a small fire of brush and twigs. She
tossed a cup or two of coffee grounds into the pot and let it boil for ten minutes. Then she ladled out cups of the hot, black coffee. Fenton took one and walked a short distance away with it, sat down and got a cigarette going while the coffee cooled a little.

  It was Wednesday morning. Castro would pass along the road late in the afternoon or early in the evening. A young boy had brought the news the night before, a twelve-year-old kid with hollow eyes and beads of perspiration on his brow, who ran through the underbrush like a startled deer. Late in the afternoon or early in the evening—that was the word from the underground, passed from mouth to mouth in whispers, brought this last step of the way by this boy with hollow eyes.

  Late in the afternoon, early in the evening. Fenton sucked smoke from his cigarette, took a tentative sip of the steaming coffee. He burned his mouth and cursed quietly. Late in the afternoon, early in the evening. He was as tense as a tightly coiled spring, jumpy as a hand grenade with the pin pulled. Late in the afternoon, early in the evening.

  Tomorrow Castro spoke in Santiago. Or, if they were successful, tomorrow Castro spoke to the dead, spoke to other corpses in the language cadavers speak. Castro lived or died, and this would be determined soon—late in the afternoon, early in the evening.

  The whole camp was rigid with a mixture of anticipation and brittle fear. The days had been bad ones lately. Tuesday, around noon, a Jeep with two soldiers in it had rolled slowly down the road. A pair of Castristas on patrol. Manuel had ordered everyone to let Jeep and soldiers pass. They could not risk exposing their position, not until the big game was in the sights of the Sten guns. A Jeep with two soldiers was no target at all when Fidel Castro himself was due to come into firing range.

  But Taco Sardo forgot the order, or else ignored it. His Sten gun belched bullets over the formation of rock and the Jeep halted, a tire gone. The soldiers came out with automatic rifles in their hands, and they had to be killed at once. They could not be allowed to escape, could not be permitted to pass the word to the garrison that rebels lay in ambush along the road to Santiago.

  It had been a short, desperate fight. One of the new recruits had died, a Castrista rifle bullet tearing half his face away. Garth got one of the soldiers with a Sten gun blast but the other was back in the Jeep suddenly, ready to ride to Santiago on the rims if he had to.