The prisoners could not be kept; there was no place to lock them up, and no food to feed them. Guevara would not stand to have them executed, so orders were given for them to be stripped of their pants and boots. The officers would be allowed to keep their uniforms, and the entire lot would be marched out of the canyon. They would be left to stumble back, defeated, to their base.
While this was done, their weapons were carried to the storage caves. There were so many guns and so much equipment that this took until past dark. Joaquin attended to the various working parties, making sure the last of the equipment was stowed away neatly and that the caves were camouflaged and the trails brushed over.
When Joaquin returned to the encampment, he found the comandante in his hammock, serenely writing in his journal.
“Do you have some time?” Joaquin asked.
Guevara closed the book on his finger but did not put it away.
“Last of the caves are seen to,” Joaquin said.
“What about the prisoners?”
“Moro’s group escorted them as far as the river bend. They’re back, and the sentries have been rotated.”
Guevara inclined his head and shifted the journal in his hand—he considered the conversation over—but Joaquin sat down on a log next to the hammock. There was a pause. Guevara’s eyes fell on the big man as he laid his rifle across his lap.
“What’s up?”
“A couple of things.”
Guevara put the journal on the hammock. “Go on.”
“What’s with the woman?”
“What about her?”
In response, Joaquin simply raised his eyebrows.
“Our conversation is in confidence,” Guevara said.
“Of course, Comandante.”
“The resupply drop was an ambush set by the Americans.”
The news hit Joaquin like a blow to the stomach. “How?”
“Our codes have been penetrated.”
Joaquin shook his head. This at least explained Guevara’s maddening indifference about the radios. Now, even if the transmitters were fixed, it was suicidal to use them.
“Are you sure the codes are blown?”
“Tania told me.”
Joaquin looked steadily at his boss.
“She was arrested by the Bolivian National Police. The CIA brokered her release. In exchange for her life, she was to deliver Sandoval and D’Esperey into our camp, then guide us into an ambush.”
“She told you this?”
“The CIA expected her to deliver our guests and move to the banks of the Masacuri to be extracted. The Americans were going to hit us when we showed at the drop site.”
What Guevara did not say was that Tania had confessed to working for the Russians as well. He did not tell Joaquin that Tania had spied on him—on all of them—for the last seven years. The news of the blown codes was spectacular enough. The truth was too powerful to be delivered in a full dose. This small, bitter sip was enough for Joaquin. Guevara thought that the full story would make Joaquin want to abandon the whole endeavor. He watched as Joaquin sat absorbing, shaking his head and turning these revelations in his mind.
Guevara had a few long moments to weigh his deception. It had been a lie of omission. Not an untruth, technically; just part of the story. Guevara did not usually play fast and loose with the facts, but he knew, as did Castro, that truth was only a thing assembled from perceptions. No truth was absolute.
Joaquin flicked his head back at Sandoval and D’Esperey. “How come Tania knew the codes were blown and they didn’t?”
“They’re errand boys,” Guevara said. “She didn’t tell them because they didn’t have a need to know.”
“She’s a fool. Or she is one dedicated comrade. All she had to do was drop off those clowns and run off into the weeds. If I had a free ride out of here…” Joaquin’s voice trailed off.
“Where was she going to run to?” Guevara asked. “She doesn’t know that the Americans won’t just shoot her the minute she steps out of the jungle.”
“How did she know that we wouldn’t shoot her?”
“She didn’t.”
To Joaquin’s mind, this explained why Guevara had slapped her. The things he knew assembled themselves into a plausible conclusion. “They’re going to come back, Che, with more troops.”
Guevara made a half-smile and shook his head; he was certain this was true, but he was just as certain that the army would always be defeated. “First they’ll pull back.”
“For now,” Joaquin said. He looked squarely at Guevara. “They’re idiots, this major and the children they sent out with him. They can’t all be as stupid. We can’t always expect them to wander into ambushes, throw down their guns, and run away. Look, the Americans know we’re in the valley. All they have to do is squeeze. We have to pop out somewhere.”
“The Bolivians don’t know where we are,” Guevara said. “Neither do the Americans. You heard the soldiers—they wanted us to kill their officers. They can’t fight with a force like that. And you’re right, they can’t all be as stupid. The commanders will have to pull back and regroup. Then they’ll begin to concentrate forces. That means we will disperse.”
“We still have the rejects. They’re not good to anyone. And Moro’s told me that Moises is sick. Tania as well.”
Guevara inclined his head at the mention of her name.
Joaquin continued, “Moro says she was beaten by the police. He thinks she has a ruptured spleen.”
Guevara thought coldly of her betrayal. Feelings he could not control rose up. They turned themselves into words and were comprehended as thought: Perhaps she will die. Her death would make things easier, but he would not kill her, nor would he let her die of compounded neglect.
“We need to get the guests out as quickly as possible,” Guevara said. “I’ve prepared messages for Havana.”
Joaquin felt some relief. Havana would not abandon them. Help would be sent. This is what he thought; he could not know any differently.
“Tomorrow I’ll take the forward detachment and push toward Samaipata,” Guevara said. “I’ll move as fast as I can. You take the sick ones and the Bolivian rejects and fall back toward the Palmarito. I’ll drop off the guests on the Muyupampa Highway. Sandoval and D’Esperey can make their way back to La Paz.”
“What about the woman? The Americans are going to know she talked. How’s she going to get out of the country?”
“I don’t know,” Guevara said. He looked around the camp but did not see Tania’s hammock. Darkness was already creeping up from the ground. “Until she’s well, she’ll stay with your group. We’ll rendezvous in ten days at the Iripiti.”
“All right.”
Joaquin stood. He was exhausted; his body hurt down to his bones. He considered asking Guevara to reconsider the entire business. Joaquin had not wanted to set today’s ambush in the first place; he felt that contact was too close to the guerrillas’ base of operations. But morale had been lifted by their triumph and Guevara was in a better mood than he had been in weeks, so Joaquin could say nothing. Still, he did not consider the conditions favorable. Too many things had gone wrong. This business with Tania, the useless Bolivian recruits, the broken radios, the captured base. A string of mishaps punctuated by disaster. If they moved to disperse now, completely disband, they all might still be able to get to the city. They could slip back to Cuba and reorganize.
If it had been Joaquin’s call, he would have cut and run. But he was not in command, Guevara was.
“Get some sleep,” Guevara said to the big man. “We’ll get started at midnight.”
Willy came toward Guevara and Joaquin. The young man was out of breath and obviously elated. He’d come from one of the sentry posts overlooking the river.
“Comandante,” Willy said, “the army is pulling back from the Zinc House. Trucks and troops—everything. They are leaving the valley. They’re running away.”
46
HOYLE WAS ON the landing
zone when the Huey set down at Vallegrande. Charlie was with him, and both turned their faces as the dust cloud swept around the settling helicopter. Smith jumped off the skid and Hoyle stood sideways when the helicopter lifted off, the dust again coming at him in a swirling sheet. As Smith approached, everything about Hoyle seemed tense and rigid. He had the expression of a man holding a heavy object over his head. The clatter of the departing helo abated, and they walked toward the casita, Charlie following a few steps behind. The sky was dappled with orange clouds, and beyond was powder blue—a strange, startling color for a sky.
Smith cast a lingering, sideways glance at Hoyle. “What happened to you?”
Christ, Hoyle thought, do I look that bad? “I got drunk in La Paz,” he answered.
That was true enough, for after he’d left Maria, he had returned to the wiskería on Avenida Mariscal Santa Cruz and tied one on. He’d nearly wrecked the Impala, driving back to the safe house with one eye closed to combat a stunning case of double vision. It was as drunk as he’d been in a decade. The two nights since had been sleepless blurs. He’d drunk until he was sick the first night, and the second, back at the casita, he had worked all night to affix pictures to the press credentials, making up names and aliases to match the faces of Valdéz, Santavanes, Smith, and himself. His hands trembled as he did this—mostly from the booze—but it was not without gathered effort that he put away a dozen feelings, vague, hurting, self-devouring judgments about himself and everyone else.
“We heard about the ambush on the radio,” Charlie said.
Smith shook his head in disgust. They walked on a few steps, Hoyle finally gathering his thoughts and pulling together words. “El Presidente said they killed fifteen guerrillas.”
“In their fucking dreams,” Smith spat. “They got waxed and ran all the way back down the valley. It’s a miracle it didn’t get uglier.”
“Well, fifteen turns out to be the magic number,” Hoyle said. “We got a hit on the trail sensors this morning.”
Smith stopped and looked at Hoyle. His eyes narrowed behind the steel rims of his spectacles.
“Igloo White says fifteen bodies were headed north. They passed the southern pair of sensors at zero-eight-twenty-two this morning.”
Smith stood for a moment, looking into intermediate distance. They both knew the sensors could be wrong; electronic things left in the jungle could malfunction easily. “We’re gonna want to put some eyeballs on the trail,” he said.
“I already sent in Holland and a four-man team,” Hoyle answered. “They inserted on the west bank five clicks down from the oxbow. They should have eyes on the trail by sundown. They’ll check the path and count the tracks.”
Hoyle had anticipated confirmation and deployed a recon team within an hour of the signal. Smith thought Hoyle looked distracted, but he’d shown he was on top of the game.
“Forty less fifteen,” Smith said, mostly to himself. “Where are the others?”
Valdéz and Santavanes sat on the porch, leaning back on a wooden bench. Valdéz looked up from his book and nodded as they passed into the house. Santavanes, as usual, was cleaning his pistols.
Smith hung his rifle from a nail and Hoyle sat at the table in the main room and thought about having a drink. He had felt wrung out at dawn but thought himself better now. He had made himself busy the last couple of days. It was too much for him to revisit what had happened in the café, though generalized thoughts of Maria surfaced almost continuously and had to be pushed back down. He had thought it would somehow make him feel better, tossing the envelope on the table, but it had not. Action and reaction. What he’d done had made him feel small and vicious; it had made him want to go out into the jungle and live on the edge that made him forget everything else.
The curtain pulled back, and Smith came over to the table carrying the old round felt-covered canteen in which he kept a quart of Kentucky bourbon. “You think Guevara sent a team north to check out the supply drop?” he asked.
Hoyle answered, “No. I think the woman tipped him.”
Smith offered the canteen to Hoyle, who took a swig. As an afterthought, Smith waved it at Charlie, who sat next to the fireplace. Charlie didn’t drink, so the gesture was superfluous.
Hoyle continued, “If Guevara knew it was a trap, I don’t think he’d send just two squads to check it.”
Smith took a sip from the canteen. “You think she walked up to Guevara and admitted it was a setup?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Tania’s choices had been unbearable. Hoyle tried to imagine the courage it had taken to admit to a personal betrayal.
“Then he probably blew her away.”
“Probably,” Hoyle allowed.
Valdéz came in and helped himself to some whiskey. He remained quite certain about all things Communist. “Fucking bitch,” he said.
For some reason, Hoyle particularly remembered the passport, the one that Diminov had handed off to Tania in the newspaper. It was a standard Soviet escape document—Austrian, made out in the name Michel Nemick, a moniker that might belong to a man or a woman. It had been complete save for the picture. Hoyle remembered it, too, because he knew the street in Vienna: Wipplingerstrasse 23. It was nearly in the shadow of St. Stephen’s Cathedral, in the oldest part of the city, an area bombed gratuitously by the Allies and then rebuilt almost with a sense of guilt. It all seemed fitting to Hoyle, a passport to nowhere filled out with an address wandered by ghosts. It didn’t matter if Tania was dead, he thought, and the bitterness of this idea surprised him. He’d started to have flashes of cynicism, moments when he was tired of the whole nasty affair. Cynicism was the most dangerous emotion a man of his profession could harbor, for it would lead unvaryingly to brutality.
Smith announced that he would send Valdéz and Santavanes into the valley. They would travel unarmed and carry the press credentials obtained from the Ministry of Information. Santavanes would enter the valley in the south, taking the road to Pirirenda. He’d put about the story that they wanted to find the guerrilla leader and interview him. Valdéz would do the same thing, entering the valley from the north. It was not unusual for CIA operatives to use the press as cover, although it was increasingly avoided, since American journalists in Vietnam faced greater danger as a result. Smith had decided to send Valdéz and Santavanes because they were Cuban, and as a further false flag, they would carry Argentine passports and identity documents. Hoyle had reservations about sending anyone into the guerrilla zone armed with only a cover, but he did not voice them. Anyway, Santavanes could take care of himself, and Valdéz was willing, as always, to do anything that might kill Communists.
Smith expected no contact. All he wanted from their foray was reconnaissance and to put out the word that the “journalists” would pay one hundred Bolivianos to anyone with information about the location of the guerrillas. The army’s reward program had yet to produce a single lead. Those unwilling to talk to the army might be willing to talk to writers, and the “journalistas” were offering twice as much. Guevara’s first communiqué had been published only in the Santa Cruz paper. It had been pulled immediately by the military censors, and the editor had been jailed. Smith knew that publicity was vital to the guerrillas. He hoped that now it might prove irresistible.
47
SUNDAY WAS CALM in La Paz; the sky was a sapphire blank from the rim crowded with shanties by El Alto all the way to the white smudge of Huayna Potosí in the northern distance. Maria woke late, trying to outsleep the nausea that dogged her most after sunrise. Her tactic had worked this morning, and she rose a little past ten, pleased to be without the symptom. The cause was still there, she knew, and that was enough to make her thoughtful. She brewed a pot of tea and sat with it in the small kitchen. Loneliness joined her, sitting across the table, a companion who would not trouble her with words. The small apartment, otherwise quite pleasant, seemed like a place set a million miles apart from the rest of the world. Few sounds came from the street and the tolling
of cathedral bells seemed to echo from an incredible distance. She heard them only after the tips of her fingers held a teacup, unsipped and gone cold.
Maria concentrated on the things that lay ahead. Sunday morning was nearly past, and in the afternoon Alameda would come. After he had taken his wife and young son to Mass, he would arrive, sometimes in sports clothing, occasionally still dressed for church. He would open the door to the apartment with his key and call for her. She had no idea how Alameda would react to her pregnancy.
She was conscious that there was another life inside her, though she hadn’t yet felt any physical sensations beyond morning sickness. A pregnancy had seemed unreal to her, and when she first missed her period, she did everything to deny that it could be possible. Weeks passed, two months actually, before she saw a doctor and it was confirmed. Maria waited two weeks more before she even began to plan for it. She denied it to herself and told no one else. There was no one else to tell.
The evening she’d met Hoyle at the café, she was not sure that she would tell him, it had simply happened, and she wished now that she’d not said anything. She still had the thousand dollars, more money than she’d ever had at one time since she left Cuba, but the bills in the envelope gave her little comfort. Money did not give happiness unless it granted freedom, and Maria was not free. It was enough money to buy a plane ticket and to live modestly for a while. She could find work as a nurse, but she had no way to get out of the country. She had to tell Alameda this afternoon that she was pregnant, and as the moment approached, she grew increasingly fretful. Alameda could have no idea about Hoyle and would assume that the baby was his. It might be Hoyle’s, Maria thought. It struck her how different these two men were: one brash and vain, one quiet and self-effacing, one a public man who sought always more attention, and the other a man who lived in shadow and shunned publicity as firmly as he avoided death. Both were powerful. Maria knew she was a toy to Alameda, a decoration. She did not know what she had been to Hoyle. It occurred to her that she had been alone too long and that her heart had been made too hard.
Killing Che Page 37
