Miami is similarly informal. It’s easy to forget that people actually work here. We’re staying at a grand hotel called the National on South Beach. The lobby has a marble floor and mosaic ceiling. You walk straight through the bar to glass doors opening on to the garden, which in turn backs on to the beach. I love palm-trees, their trunks so straight, their fronds so animated. I think M was rather shocked by its glamour when we arrived; it had been recommended to us by the Ambassador as his favourite in the city.
We spent most of yesterday in Coral Gables, at the JM/WAVE HQ. It’s a mini-complex within the university campus, dressed up to be a technical company – at least that’s what the nameplate says. But it’s surrounded by a huge fence, patrolled by men wearing sunglasses and ostentatious weapons. Even on a Saturday, there was a hubbub, busy-looking people carrying clipboards and sticking pins into wall charts of Cuba, talking rapid Spanish. M spent much of the day cloistered in Lansdale’s office. Again, I was not required and instead I went for a walk through the woods to the main university campus – more sprinkled lawns and palm-trees. When I returned, I sat under a tree outside the building reading my book. As I stood up to go back in, I realised that I hadn’t thought about Zach for over a week. I feel miraculously liberated. For now, anyway.
Monday, 27th August, Miami
At last, a message from 007, smuggled out with an escaping Cuban émigré and dated a week ago. I know M had been anxious about having had no contact with him. At least he is alive, albeit in a precarious situation with the local security forces. He requested as a matter of urgency that we send him a radio transmitter.
The captain of a small fishing vessel, the Mohito, is en route to Miami Bay Marina to collect it. His name is Alain Rodriguez and he expects to arrive, all being well, before dawn on 29th August. He will greet the welcoming party with the phrase ‘The sea is calm this morning,’ to which the reply should be ‘Yes, it is good fishing weather.’ I have promised him $250 as the assignment carries some risk. I believe him to be trustworthy, but the sea around Cuba is full of sharks, not all of the fishy variety.
M spun into order mode. ‘Excellent, at last we’ll be able to contact him. Find out what Q Branch recommends. It’s too late for them to get any of our equipment over here, but perhaps our hosts can help. Q Branch can liaise. Then contact the Embassy and see if they have an operative available in Miami to meet the ship. I’m going to have to go back to London tomorrow morning – but perhaps you could stay an extra day to make sure everything goes off smoothly.’ It was more of an order than a request, but one which I was more than happy to fulfil. An Embassy chap is due down here tomorrow afternoon. Until then, I’m going to enjoy holding the fort.
Wednesday, 29th August, Miami
The agent from Washington never arrived. At six in the evening, I received an urgent message at the hotel to say that he had been involved in a motor accident. There was no one available to take his place, no one anywhere near Florida. ‘What about the transceiver?’ I asked.
‘We made independent arrangements for it. The CIA are sending it to Miami under guard in one of their planes. It’s their latest model,11 top secret, lent to us only under duress and after promises that we would keep it safe. It should arrive in Miami within the hour. They’re due to deliver it to the hotel. The paperwork has been cabled ahead. Look, how can we help? Shall we ask the Agency for assistance?’
‘Negative, thank you,’ I replied. ‘I’ll contact London and ask for orders.’
As luck would have it, 006 was the duty officer that night. When I explained the situation, he just said blithely, ‘Then Penny, you’ll have to step in yourself.’
‘Me?’
‘Of course. Come on, it’ll be a piece of cake. You just have to turn up, say the code and give him the box. It couldn’t be easier.’
‘Don’t you think you should get authorisation for this?’
‘From whom? The Old Man’s not back yet and Bill’s been up for the last three nights working on some hush-hush crisis and said only to disturb him in a situation of national urgency. This isn’t exactly a Russian plot to kill the PM. You’ll be fine. Take a torch and flask of tea, or whatever the Americans drink instead, and enjoy the night sky.’
‘Well, if it’s an order, I’m more than happy to obey.’
‘It’s an order.’
I waited in my room for the transceiver to arrive, which it duly did, along with a full guard of hefty men. Once they’d left, I thought I might as well get to the port ahead of time. I picked up a cushion and walked out through the garden, turning right along the beach until I reached the small park on the southern point of the peninsula. There was a long wooden jetty, from where I could clearly see the boats rounding the point into the port area. At this time of night, there were very few, maybe one every hour, and the moonlight was strong enough for me to be able to make out their names. The marina was only about fifty yards into the bay to my right. I wandered around it for a while, peering into the berthed yachts bobbing in the gentle sway, feeling a little self-conscious at carrying my heavy lunch box with the transceiver inside. It was a beautiful, cloudless evening, mercifully cooler than the day had been. There was nothing that resembled a Cuban fishing vessel moored in the marina, so I took my book back to the jetty and sat down to wait.
The night slipped past slowly. Every hour or so, I got up to stretch my legs and to walk along to the marina to check that the Mohito hadn’t slipped in unobserved. It was only when the darkness started to lift that I became anxious. Something had gone wrong.
September
For some years now, Cuba had been the proverbial thorn in America’s side. Just ninety miles south of the tip of Florida, and with an educated population and a large army, it was close enough to be threatening if not ‘onside’. Its previous leader, Fulgencio Batista, although nominally an ally of his powerful northern neighbour, had become increasingly corrupt and despotic, to the point where the United States was not unhappy to see him deposed. However, it was less than enthusiastic about his successor.
Fidel Castro Ruz, a lawyer, scion of wealthy landowners from the south and leader of a group of revolutionaries known as the 26 July Movement, seized power at the stroke of midnight on 1 January 1959. He was greeted with rapture by the majority of Cubans. There were reports of wholesale executions of former Batista officials. Over the next few years Castro set about systematically cutting the close ties – economic and, by extension, political – between Cuba and the United States. While it was not until several years later that he declared himself openly to be a committed ideological Communist, his actions – and those of his circle of ‘Barbudos’, the bearded ones – had already begun to strike fear into the heart of Washington. The number of Cubans under arms swelled, along with the bureaucracy. A network of informers was set up to report on anyone who was ‘gusano’ – wormlike – in spirit (not in favour of the revolution). In the three years following the revolution, tens of thousands were imprisoned. Foreign-owned companies were nationalised, and private beaches were opened to all. Before the end of 1959, diplomatic and trade relations had been forged with the Soviet Union. In April 1960 Khrushchev elected to send Cuba a gift of weapons.
Towards the end of his term of office President Dwight D. Eisenhower drew up plans for a US-led invasion of Cuba. He lost the election before he could see them enacted, and the baton was passed to the new Democratic presidency. In January 1961, days before Kennedy’s inauguration, diplomatic ties between the two nations were severed. Three months later, on 17 April, the attempted coup met with failure on the beaches of the Bay of Pigs. Over a thousand men were taken prisoner. The same day, the Cuban secret police found a cache of eight tons of weapons belonging to the CIA in Havana, and for the first time, Castro revealed to his people his vision for a socialist Cuba. The mistrust between the two nations had hardened into active enmity.
In the United States, the Kennedy administration set Operation Mongoose into action, intending to hasten Castro�
�s downfall by a more covert route. Castro cemented relations with the Soviets. One by one, the glittering lights of Havana were dimmed and the casino doors closed for the last time. Instead of chandeliers there were cannon; instead of masked balls there was drill practice. Another invasion by the US was regarded as inevitable. It was a matter of when, and how best to beat it off. For Castro, the only hope for his small nation – and for his presidency – was to harness the full military might of the opposing superpower.
Sunday, 2nd September, Miami
An extraordinary few days. I don’t know quite how to describe what I’ve just done; I’m not sure I believe I did it. I was worried when James’s boat failed to arrive for the transceiver. Instead of waiting for another night, I started canvassing the fishing-boats as they came in with their dawn haul. I was eventually directed to a scruffy craft, captained by a large man with an expansive moustache and a gold front tooth. His name, he told me, was José Piñero and he had just returned from a tuna-fishing expedition round Cuba.
I asked him if he knew a fellow Cuban captain named Alain Rodriguez. ‘Of course, I know him well. I see his boat in Mariel before I leave, but I no see him. There were soldiers on it. I not know why.’
I must have looked upset, because he invited me aboard his boat and made me a cup of gritty black coffee. ‘Now why you want Alain Rodriguez?’
‘He was coming to collect something for a friend who is in Cuba now,’ I told him.
José looked concerned. ‘Your friend – he is Cubano, or Ingles?’
‘No. He is European,’ I said. ‘A Swiss businessman.’
‘I am glad he is not Ingles or Americano.’
When I asked why, he told me that three nights previously, he’d stopped at the port of Mariel to visit his family. The harbour area had been closed, so he’d moored along the coast and made his way into town by foot. There he heard that a man had been seen being marched on to a Russian cargo ship by soldiers in black uniforms. ‘They say he mebbe Ingles, mebbe Americano. He was shouting, he not want to go with the men,’ José told me.
I asked if he knew what this man looked like.
‘They say big man, dark hair, pale skin.’
It was enough. Without thinking, I told José I would give him $250 if he took me to Mariel.
‘OK, mebbe tomorrow,’ he said.
‘No,’ I insisted. ‘I must go now.’
It took a few hours to unload the tuna and refuel the boat and then we were off. Seventeen hours on a rolling, bucketing ocean, clutching the transceiver, in an unsteady boat stinking of engine oil and old fish. I had time then to think about the consequences. I would face disciplinary action for sure, probably lose my job. I know I should have signalled HQ before I left, but they would only have told me to stand down and wait for an agent to arrive and that could have been too late. I acted on instinct, and even then I did’t regret it.
I managed eventually to fall asleep for a few hours, wedged between coiled ropes and fish tanks, and when I woke we were approaching the lights of a small port. ‘Mariel,’ José informed me. ‘Soon it will be light. We have breakfast, then I take you to my mother’s. You can rest there.’
We docked quietly. I could smell the tropics; wet heat mingling with palm-trees, thickly scented flowers and rotting rubbish. As we walked into town, José pointed to a ghostly silhouette, which dwarfed the flotilla of fishing-boats and tugs bobbing in the harbour. ‘Omsk.1 Ship your friend was taken on.’
In the half-light, I could just make out her name, painted on the hulk of her stern below a string of Cyrillic letters. We walked along the esplanade to a small cafe, already open and serving the fishermen thick dark coffee and spicy fish stew. There was a constant soup of Spanish chatter and no one paid me much attention. José lent me his binoculars and as we ate I watched the buzz surrounding the Omsk. I could soon make out the bosses – four men, dressed in black military-style uniforms with green epaulettes, issuing commands. A host of scurrying workers – large, fair-haired men in civilian clothes – were off-loading huge crates. Ten of them walked beside a vast trolley as it rolled slowly down the stern ramp. Strapped to it was a metal tube, at least sixty feet long. This they carefully loaded on to a string of attached trailers, pulled by a truck with tracked wheels. As I watched, five more of these tubes were unloaded, installed on to trolleys and driven away. By the time dawn had broken, the dockside was quiet.
Then the soldier-types vanished into the bowels of the ship. Just as we were about to leave, they reappeared, marching a tall man between them. I stopped and strained my eyes. I felt my heart leap. The man’s head was bowed and he was stumbling a little, but it looked like James. As they approached the wheelhouse, he suddenly turned and struck out at one of his captors, kicking another at the same time. It was a token attempt and he was quickly overpowered, but it was enough to convince me it was him.
The reality of my situation hit home – it was as if, up until that point, I’d been riding the wave of a fantasy, pulled along by the need to rescue James. Now, all at once, I felt scared and alone and far out of my depth.
Somehow, I needed to find a way to get him off the ship.
On his return, Bond later filed a detailed report2 describing the events leading up to his capture:
I was at the Floridiana waiting for my contacts to arrive when I overheard two men, clearly Cuban security police, laughing about the deaths of the two CIA agents. ‘They were dead meat from the minute they stepped into the country,’ they sneered. ‘GG was playing them like puppets.’ I managed to make their acquaintance through some judicious generosity at the bar. Over the course of several nights of drinking together, I ascertained that the GG they had mentioned was their chief, Geraldo Gil, the head of Castro’s secret intelligence unit.
I asked them to arrange a meeting with GG, hinting that I had some military hardware for sale at basement prices. ‘Amigo, he would like to meet you too,’ one of them replied. ‘He always likes to meet foreigners.’ They both laughed. ‘Particularly capitalist ones. He went to school in London. He speaks very good English. You speak English, Swiss man?’ I nodded and bought them another drink.
I was sure I was on to Caballo. Even his initials, GG – horse; caballo in Spanish – pointed towards it. It all added up. I needed to meet him to confirm it. This wasn’t as easy as I had hoped. Over the next ten days, several meetings were set up and then cancelled. I was taken to a cock-fight outside Havana, which disintegrated into a brawl. I managed to prevent one of my hosts from being wounded – I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that my loyalty was being tested. Shortly after, I received a message from Gil in my hotel room, setting up a meet for midnight in the night-club of the Havana Libre hotel. I arrived early and waited, but he didn’t show. At two, as I was preparing to leave, one of his henchmen came in and beckoned me to a side-room. ‘Our boss will be along in a minute. He said to offer you one of these.’ He passed across a fat cigar, which I refused. ‘My boss says you are to smoke a cigar.’ His voice was threatening. I refused again, pleading a dislike of cigar smoke. But he smiled and said, ‘This time, my friend, you will. They were a gift from your capitalist imperialist friend America.’
I protested that I was from Switzerland, a neutral country, and that my only interest lay in finding a good buyer for my products. He laughed. ‘We do not believe you are who you say you are, Mr von Kaseberg, and soon we will discover your true identity. If you want a chance to get out of here, you will light this cigar.’
I remembered the Operation Mongoose memo about the exploding cigars. I took the one he offered and got out my lighter, but at the point of contact I threw them both across the room at one of the guards by the door. It made a tremendous bang. After another minor scrap, I managed to make my excuses and leave.
Still without proof that Gil was Caballo, Bond followed the security men back to a tall concrete office block near the Plaza Cívica and waited until they came back out of the building, this time with a large, red-bearded man who
m they treated with some deference. They got into a jeep and headed off on the western road out of Havana, Bond following them at a safe distance:
I had to drive much of the way with my headlights off. There were few cars on the road and I couldn’t risk being seen. They drove fast – it was only when we left the highway and took a small road north to the coast that we were forced to slow down, to make way for a long convoy of army trucks and tractors pulling trailers laden with goods covered in tarpaulin, heading away from the coast. There was a large accompanying guard and I pulled off down a side-track just in time.
I kept the Cubans in view, and before long they drew up at a small coastal town, dominated by the belching chimneys of a cement factory. When the clouds parted, I could see from a sign on the factory gate that we were back in the town of Mariel. The jeep approached an iron gate, set into a tall wire-mesh fence. It was waved through with a salute. I hid my car off a track leading into the hills behind the town and went down on foot to investigate the port. I found a gap in the perimeter fence and a good vantage point, from where I observed the Cubans approach a large freighter named the Omsk. I could read a sign on the fore gangway, which said it was bringing grain from Siberia. But there were also rocket launchers on the deck – which seemed superfluous for the load it was meant to be carrying. A reception committee of uniformed soldiers trotted down the gangplank and saluted Red Beard, before leading him aboard. I made a careful approach to get a better look. When the coast was clear, I climbed a ladder at the bow and attempted to secrete myself in one of the lifeboats. Unfortunately, I came face to whiskers with a napping Russian sailor, who let out a loud shout before I was able to silence him. Despite some energetic resistance, I was soon subdued by a phalanx of armed Russians.
Moneypenny Diaries: Guardian Angel Page 16
