Mongoose, R.I.P.

by William F. Buckley

  Castro had greeted his ministers, as they came in, with a mere nod of the head as he focused on the broadcasts. At 11:30 he turned the radios down almost to total silence and looked about him.

  “Where is Tamayo?”

  As tends to happen when such a question is broadly posed, his four ministers began looking around, as if to focus on the member responsible for his absence.

  No one spoke.

  Castro was annoyed. He flicked on his intercom, behind him on the desk, and said into it, “I want Major Ingenio Tamayo. Look for him. Telephone his home, his office. Report back.”

  He looked about him. His ministers’ faces were uniformly grim. Time, thought Castro, to show the qualities of the leader.

  “The world will know—the world will one day know, will soon guess—that attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro is an unprofitable business. Eh, Che?”

  “Yes, Fidel. Let’s hope that’s all the world will learn.”

  Castro shrugged his shoulders and puffed on his cigar. “If it comes to that, we know what to do. The radio technician is next door. He has three dials preset. The first is to the cave.

  “The second is to our elite guard, which is at San Cristóbal at the ready. Their leader, Captain Primero, has his instructions. The third is to Pentagon Radio; they call it”—Castro looked down at his notepad—“‘the Pentagon’s Military Affiliate Radio Service.’” He had special trouble rendering “Affiliate” in Spanish.

  “I have even written the script.” He pulled it out of his pocket.

  “Of course,” he paused, “even though I have some—reputation—as an extemporaneous speaker, it is important that my message should not sound too—well, too rehearsed. For that reason I have written in one or two—well, verbal clumsinesses, the kind of thing that might be said by someone very excited. And, of course, I shall use the appropriate tone of voice. Are you ready? Where’s Tamayo? Goddammit.”

  Again his hand reached for the intercom—just as its buzzer rang. He listened.

  “Not at home? Or in the office? Well, send out a general alarm for him. No. Cancel that.” Castro thought, his hand still on the intercom switch. “Cancel that. Forget it. He’ll probably come in.”

  He looked up at his companions. “Damn. Should have put that reptile under guard. Wonder where in the hell he is? Still, there is nothing we can do about it. A general alarm is just what we don’t need during this”—he smiled—“sleepy Friday morning …

  “So, I begin. I imitate exactly the voice I will use when transmitting. Are you ready?”

  They all nodded.

  “‘Attention Pentagon Radio Attention Pentagon Radio Attention Pentagon Radio.’”

  Fidel’s voice rang out, dramatic, stentorian, allegro animato.

  “‘Extreme emergency! This is Prime Minister Fidel Castro of Cuba speaking. This is Prime Minister Fidel Castro of Cuba speaking! There has been a most terrible, a most horrible accident’— you notice,” Fidel explained, his voice now conversational, “the repetition? ‘A most terrible, a most horrible accident’? As a writer, I would not engage in such crude repetitions. But here, it gives verisimilitude to the heat with which I am speaking. I resume:

  “‘A nuclear missile has been fired toward the United States. It was fired by a secret Soviet technical detachment. My government had no knowledge of the hidden missile. When we learned only this morning of the imminent launch the Cuban Army did everything—absolutely everything’—You see,” his voice dropped again, “the sincerity? ‘Absolutely everything’—the please believe me, dear-gringos-touch; pretty good, don’t you think?” He smiled. “I resume:

  “‘To prevent launch. Engaged in massive fire fight against Soviet technicians’ inexplicable act of aggression. All were killed in Cuban effort to reach firing area in time to abort launch. We do not know if rogue missile’—‘rogue missile.’ Do you think that is too, well, too—fluent? Maybe I should say, ‘wild missile.’ Yes, that’s better, I think.”

  Castro took out his pencil and wrote over the typewritten sheet. “I resume: ‘We do not know if wild missile is an MRBM with range of eleven hundred miles or an IRBM with range of twenty-two hundred miles. The accidental firing was at San Cristóbal where last fall there were only the SS-Four missiles but perhaps there was a hidden SS-Five. Our military were never close enough to missile to identify. There is no way of knowing where missile is heading. But impact time will be ten to twenty minutes. The government of Cuba will welcome a U.N. delegation to explore this, this’—Did you notice? ‘This, This.’ Two ‘This’es, hardly the kind of thing you would hear from a finished speaker reading from a text, right? I resume: ‘most awful tragedy.’

  “Then,” Castro said, puffing again on his cigar, “I will repeat that message. I think I will repeat that message over and over until it—hits.”

  “How many minutes after the launch do you plan before making the first transmission?” Che Guevara asked.

  “Aha, Che. You are shrewd as ever. I was thinking about that. In fact, I discussed it with Tamayo. We must not forget the objective. The President must die. It would hardly do for the Pentagon to get word to Dallas and then for Kennedy to dive into some kind of bomb shelter, and we kill—and one million Texans get killed—and the only person we care about survives. So I will delay a few minutes. Raúl, you got from the Special Services people the estimated time of flight for an SS-Four traveling eleven hundred miles. It is ten minutes, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, you see, I said we did not know whether it was an SS-Four or an SS-Five—that suggests true ignorance of which of the October missiles it was. Since an SS-Five goes twenty-two hundred miles, I said ten or twenty minutes. That could be general knowledge. After all, we were surrounded by the fucking things only a year ago. It would not surprise that I would remember the length of time the SS-Fours and the SS-Fives took to reach target, right?”

  Che nodded his head. “On the other hand—” he began—

  “Quiet!” Castro’s hand blasted up the volume control on the shortwave signal.

  “… There on top of the gangway is President Kennedy. He and Mrs. Kennedy pause and smile. She is holding on to her hat. There is lots of wind out here at Love Field on this warm, humid November day. There’s a lot of hands for the President to shake down here before they go off in the motorcade to the luncheon speech …”

  Castro turned the radio down, but only for a moment. Only to say, “Now we will all keep quiet and listen.” He turned the radio’s volume up.

  38

  Pano tore into the house. “Get out! Get out! Police! Police!”

  Blackford grabbed his pistol and headed for the back door. He opened it and began to run into the tall sugarcane when he heard a shout and looked left. It was Miguel waving at him. “Señor Ohkks! Señor Ohkks! It is Jesús! Jesús!”

  The speeding car was pulling up in front of the farmhouse; Jesús bounded out, followed by two armed men, all three dressed as campesinos. Blackford turned and headed back into the house. Jesús Ferrer was trembling. All seven of them were now in the room.

  Ferrer signaled to his two fellow guerrillas. He pointed to a trapdoor in the ceiling. “Get up there. The machine guns are there. Bring them down. That,” he said to Blackford, “is why we are here. Without that firepower, we’re helpless.”

  Ferrer walked then to the corner of the room, leaned against the wall, and kept standing while he spoke.

  He addressed Oakes in English. “I don’t see any sense in maintaining security at this point. We’re going to need cooperation from everyone in this room. Urgently. Within the hour. Do you mind if I speak in Spanish?”

  “It’s your call,” Blackford said.

  Jesús Ferrer closed his eyes and kept them closed as he spoke. He looked like a drained but resolute prophet, speaking before his execution. He spoke calmly, lucidly, electrically. Everyone remained on his feet.

  “Ingenio Tamayo—who is dead now—broke an hour ago.

&n
bsp; “Castro is inflexible. He is going to avenge the attempts on his own life by assassinating President Kennedy.

  “The Cuban Embassy was approached in Mexico last week by an American veteran who told the ambassador he planned to shoot Kennedy. Castro ordered the embassy to make more specific inquiries. The effort is to be made while President Kennedy drives from his airplane in Dallas to his luncheon speaking engagement. Today. His car is scheduled to pass right by the building where the American veteran works. It is estimated that the motorcade will pass by sometime between thirteen hundred and fifteen hours and thirteen forty-five—I’m using Cuban time.

  “Castro and the four ministers who are in on the plan will be listening to the shortwave radio. If the American veteran succeeds in shooting Kennedy, Castro will telephone to the cave at San Cristóbal and instruct Kirov first to disarm the SS-Four missile, and then to go ahead and launch it and let it fall into the Straits of Florida—and that way show the Russians he, Castro, and only he, is in charge of secret missiles on Cuban soil.

  “But if the American veteran misses the President—or if he misses or changes his mind and abandons his plan, and the President arrives safely at his luncheon engagement, Castro will call the cave and instruct Kirov to arm the missile—and launch it.”

  There was a slight pause before Ferrer, who now opened his eyes, finished:

  “Five minutes after the launch, Castro will broadcast to Pentagon Radio to warn that a rogue Soviet detachment has fired a missile that the Castro government did not even know existed, that in the attempt to prevent the missile from firing, all the Soviet technicians were killed.

  “It is now twelve-thirty. We are fifteen minutes from the entrance to the camp at San Cristóbal, another two or three minutes to the cave.”

  Blackford stood up. Ferrer continued:

  “I have two good, brave men here.” He pointed to his companions, descended from the attic, the machine guns cradled in their arms. “It is too late to get Nena to rouse our people in the San Cristóbal area. There is no time for tactical refinements. We must be prepared to drive into the camp in a supply truck, and use it as though it were a tank. There is time to get a truck from Nena, I’m sure—she’s surrounded by them. Then we go to the gate. If necessary, we kill the guards—there are only four, routinely. Then as fast as the truck will go. My plan is to ram the missile. It cannot be launched on its side.” He stopped suddenly.

  “Miguel,” he said, “get in touch with Nena. Never mind radio security. Tell her to have a supply truck by the gas station outside. Use Station SC Six. They guard the channel and have access to a telephone. Tell them to telephone to Nena. And if she cannot perform this by thirteen hundred hours, tell Station SC Six to get a covered truck of any sort from anybody and have it there. Extreme emergency.”

  Jesús Ferrer turned to English. He was speaking now only to Blackford.

  “Mr. Oakes, I see that you are ready to move. We cannot predict that we can succeed in aborting that launch. We don’t know what kind of protection Castro and Raúl have arranged for the launch site at launch time. We cannot run any risk of precipitating by our presence an armed launch. Tamayo did not know whether Castro instructed Kirov to proceed to launch in the event of any outside disturbances at the camp, or whether by radio Castro would order an armed launch if he was told there was shooting at Cristóbal. There is only one way absolutely to guarantee that hundreds of thousands of Texans won’t be killed and that a nuclear war won’t be set off. And that is, if we stand by … until after the President’s car has passed the assassin.”

  Blackford said nothing. He stared dumbly at Ferrer, who could see that Blackford was struggling to assimilate what he had just been told. When Blackford did speak he did so without any clear sense that he had heard. Blackford said simply, with odd lack of conviction, “You’re full of shit—”

  “Mr. Oakes! Blackford. Please wait wait! Think, think! Just to begin with, there is the overwhelming probability that if the assassin proceeds with his plans, he will fail. Presidents of the United States do not go about unprotected. But in any event, the President is going to be just as dead if the SS-4 lands in Dallas as if a sniper hits him. And there is no doubt that if the assassin does fail, the missile will go off unless I—I, Jesús Ferrer, and five or six men—succeed in overwhelming the launch site.

  “Now the chances of our doing that are not very great. But we may succeed, and will give our lives in the attempt to succeed. But we are not going to try to abort a launch, an operation which will mean death for every one of us if the operation is meaningless. And it will be meaningless if the President has already been shot.”

  Blackford’s stare was interrupted. But Ferrer went on—

  “Now here, Mr. Oakes, are my plans. I have in that car,” he pointed to the car in which he had come in, “a reliable radio receiver and transmitter.

  “We will wait in the truck with the radio tuned to Dallas. You will stay here, also tuned in on Dallas. If the presidential motorcade arrives at its destination—if it comes close to its destination with President Kennedy unhurt—I in my truck with my guerrillas will charge into the launcher at the cave and fight to the death, which as I say is predictable, to disable the launcher.

  “But precisely because we cannot know that we will succeed, we cannot under any circumstances warn President Kennedy.”

  Ferrer looked Blackford in the eyes, all but abandoning any hope of reaching him. He finished:

  “There is not one word I can add to what I have said. And I have not one minute to lose. May the God I was named after look over us during the next hour. It could be the beginning of the end of the world. Goodbye.”

  Impulsively, Jesús Ferrer gave Blackford a Spanish abrazo.

  39

  On the advice of Captain Pushkin, Leandro attempted sleep shortly before midnight. Leandro had thought up, and was passingly amused by, the contrivance he suggested by which Captain Pushkin could jolt Leandro into life if it should happen that there was a knock on the door. In such an event, there would be a little time to spare: the door was bolted from the inside. Leandro took a ball of waxed string, reposing in the clinical hamper along with bandages, scissors, disposable syringes and needles, and the usual medical-first aid inventory. He gave one end of it to Pushkin and then strung out the roll to his desk chair where, his feet resting on the desk, he proposed with his makeshift pillow to attempt sleep. He tied the second end around his ankle. Pushkin practiced a jerk or two, succeeding in each case in jolting Leandro’s ankle sharply enough to awaken him from any prospective slumber.

  Leandro made the arrangements notwithstanding his doubts that he would ever succeed in slipping off into sleep, though he recognized that he would need to be alert during the whole of Friday, the following day. Or, more precisely, for as much as the twenty-four hours after the missile was filled with its propulsive energy. That process would take from midnight, when it was scheduled to begin, until about six; which meant that the danger period, according to Pushkin, would be between six A.M. and six the following morning; though, more likely, the missile, if it would be fired, would be fired within the first twelve hours. Between six in the morning and six at night. Leandro would need to be very busy, very alert.

  They had talked, as ever with the cell bars between them, for two hours. Pushkin would try out an idea and Leandro would meditate on its strengths and weaknesses. Leandro would then try out an idea, and Pushkin would weigh in with the same critical scrutiny.

  They went through a half-dozen scenarios, ranging from the improbable (e.g., with whatever firearms Leandro could assemble and smuggle into the prison barrack, they could emerge and descend like the Light Brigade on the cave; among the weaknesses in this plan was that they were 598 bodies short of the 600), to the super-discreet antipodes (something along the line of putting sleeping potion or poison in Major Kirov’s morning Coca-Cola. Where would they get such drugs at midnight?).

  Their minds traveled through it all, jettisoning
this as impractical, that as too reckless, the other as insufficiently conclusive.

  Eventually Pushkin said that the physical objectives of their action needed always to dominate their thinking: What were they after?

  “Either the missile must be incapacitated so that it cannot launch, ever. Or, having been launched, it must be disabled.” A hypothetical alternative would be, then, to contrive to alter the sequence of the valve handles. From Active, to Inactive.

  They agreed that there was no practical way to do this last. The moment at which—if those were Castro’s orders—the valves were mortally activated would be highly charged. It was psychologically inconceivable that it would be followed by a relaxed moment or two, let alone a period of five or ten minutes, during which the firing door was left slackly open—leaving time for a Messenger of Peace to alight, unnoticed, and simply disarrange the sequence.

  No. If and when the valves are adjusted to the deadly sequence, the very next thing is the bolting of the door. “We will simply eliminate any further consideration of that alternative, Leandro.”

  Leandro agreed.

  What if the valves were innocently configured, and the door then closed? In that event, Pushkin said, there was, quite simply, nothing to worry about. Pushkin could turn his attention to the mundane question of his release from this prison-hole. But in order to know in which order the valves were set, it would be required that someone who knew the difference between the deadly and the innocent configuration should be present at the moment of their setting.

  There were eight men in Cuba who knew the difference between the benign and the malign settings. Six of them now were in the cave, under orders from Kirov, who was taking radio orders from Castro. The other two were Pushkin and Leandro. “The other five hundred who know the difference are in the Soviet Union,” Pushkin said.

  Suppose that the door were to close on the valves without its ever having been possible to know whether the missile was deadly or castrated? “It goes off,” Leandro imagined, “and we simply do not know whether it is armed or disarmed. What are the alternatives then?”