by Jeremy Scott
As testimony to Zsa Zsa’s worldly sophistication the party scores high; in all other respects the whole PR extravaganza is a disaster. Its timing could not have been worse judged.
Back home in the Dominican Republic, where all power is concentrated in one man, the administration is incapable of joined-up government. Ramfis has been kept ignorant of the detail of his father’s wholesale embezzlement, while in Paris Rubi was too busy with his social, sexual and sporting life to stay closely in touch with events on Capitol Hill. Neither is aware that the Dominican Republic has just received $10 million in emergency aid from the US, despite objections in the Senate.
Zsa Zsa gets a call from a reporter at United Press. Is it true she received the gift of a floor-length chinchilla coat worth $80,000 from Ramfis, as well as a Mercedes convertible?
‘Why yes,’ she answers.
And did Kim Novak also get a Mercedes roadster from the same donor?
Again she answers yes. Ramfis bought her the car and one for himself at the same time; but why the interest?
She’s always excited interest, even without meaning to, but this time it’s official: the US Senate. She learns that, during a debate, Senator Wayne Hays has made a blistering attack on the manner in which the government conducts its foreign relations. He’s suggested that, in order to cut down the paperwork and make it easier for everyone, emergency aid for the Dominican Republic might just as well be sent directly to Zsa Zsa and Kim Novak. He calls her ‘The most expensive courtesan since Madame de Pompadour.’
Zsa Zsa’s outrage last only for seconds. Most expensive courtesan since Pompadour? On consideration she finds the information flattering, the valuation no more than acknowledges her true worth.
CHAPTER 19
ODILE RODIN, PARIS, 1957–61
Odile Rodin’s marriage to Rubi coincides with a radical advancement in her career and good fortune. The fates are generous in the dowry they bestow on her. The play she’s in, Fabien, is received with acclaim. Her name is flagged in its reviews and her talent recognised.
It’s hugely gratifying. She loves her art and is exhilarated by her own and the play’s success, but she’s uneasy with the fact that she is obliged to go to work every evening just when Rubi is gearing up for the night’s entertainment. Constitutionally unable to be alone, he is not a homebody, nor can he be relied on for an instant not to stray. He too is dissatisfied that his wife is not available to hit the town with him. He is unquestionably in love; there was no other motive for him to marry her. She’s young, pretty, unspoilt, unneurotic and smart as a whip – the perfect pal and playmate for an ageing rake.
For Rubi, the most self-centred of men, it is inconvenient that Odile should be unavailable to him because she works. But is it also possible that he is jealous of her success? And the independence that her talent gives her? Certainly that had never been the case with any of his previous wives. But he’s a waning stud and no longer the fresh bull in the field. Odile recalls, ‘Rubi made me cancel my contract with my impresario. He told Rubi, “You are doing the most foolish thing because she would have a great future.”’ Others too who had spotted her talent regretted its renunciation in such an unworthy cause.
In poor exchange for giving up her career, he takes her to the island of his birth, whose unspoilt beauty he has often described to her. There Odile is presented to the Benefactor. Evidently on one of his good days, for the meeting passes without incident. They fly on to Havana, where Rubi has had his Ferrari shipped from Paris so he can compete in the Cuban Grand Prix. The drama of the event is raised to a high pitch by the kidnapping of its pole-position driver, Juan Fangio, by bandits commanded by their till now unheard-of leader, Fidel Castro. Yet the snatch is not seen as a political statement but for reward. A ransom is paid and he’s released unharmed after the race, in which Rubi fails to finish. The Ferrari is not the latest model and he’s pushed it hard in the past. Nor are his own reflexes what they were.
From Havana the couple move on to Los Angeles to attend Ramfis’s coming-out party hosted by Zsa Zsa Gabor which we are familiar with. Briefly Odile gets to examine in the flesh the 38-year-old woman of whom she’s heard so much, and who in character is Rubi’s closest equivalent to a female twin. Then, leaving Beverly Hills, the two continue to New York, where Odile meets with the metropolitan smart set while Rubi and Igor Cassini, now PR adviser to Trujillo, plot together on how to serve their master and themselves.
The task of obtaining the Nobel Peace Prize for the dictator is clearly impossible, but the two are committed to the job of rebranding him. After deliberation, Cassini approaches the Mutual Broadcasting System, a major news distributor in the US owned by Alexander Guterma, who is under indictment for fraud and pressed for ready cash. Cassini obtains from him a guarantee that Mutual will transmit seven hours per month of favourable news and feature footage on the Dominican Republic and Trujillo – unedited and in the form that it is provided to them – for the next one and a half years, in return for a payment of $750,000. The deal has to be concluded quickly before Guterma is sent to jail. But Trujillo pays up. Rubi skims $50,000 for himself, Cassini takes his arrangement fee and the rest goes to Guterma, his to enjoy only for the next few weeks before incarceration.
The Benefactor is pleased with the deal and rewards Rubi and Odile with a prize. He is made up in rank and named ambassador to Cuba. The post is a delicate assignment and for once in his career Rubi is required to do some effectual work.
Cuba’s President Batista – whose patron is the US, as Trujillo’s had been until recently – has succeeded with his country where Trujillo has failed. Havana is a thriving resort only a short hop from Miami and attracts many American visitors for weekends and vacation. The place is not high-tone like Monte Carlo or Cannes, but instead rackety, colourful and alive. Gambling and prostitution form the main lure, but Havana possesses a louche shabby glamour and it is hot. Its casinos are very efficiently run by the US mafia. There is little crime and seldom any trouble. Cuba is an extreme right-wing country which has the death penalty for practically everything. The place continues to attract US investment: the sugar-cane industry, tourism and gaming have caused its economy to prosper. The other face to this coin is that a force of communist guerrillas is hid in the Sierra Maestra mountains, led by Castro and descending to carry out increasingly blatant attacks in the heart of Havana.
Rubi’s instructions as ambassador are to connect with someone close to Castro, offering to sell the rebels arms, while maintaining close relations with the reigning dictator, Batista. Most importantly, he is briefed to cosy up to the US ambassador, Earl Smith, and repair the breach between the Dominican Republic and its patron. In this Odile’s a considerable asset. She is so vivacious and charming, so quick, her accent so enchanting … she and Rubi make up a most attractive couple who enliven the tone of any group around them. She becomes friendly with Smith’s wife Florence and soon the Rubirosas are regular guests at the embassy. It’s a convivial venue, for Havana is a favoured spot for quasi-official junkets. Among other visitors, she and Rubi strike up an acquaintance with another attractive young couple, Senator John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie. Rubi and Kennedy get along at once. Both are instinctive womanisers and they have a rakish mutual pal in Igor Cassini. Jackie loathes Rubi on sight.
On New Year’s Eve 1958 Odile and Rubi spend the evening at a party at the American embassy. When they leave to go home Earl Smith warns them, ‘You are going to maybe have a problem. Be ready, something is going to happen.’
Driving away from the well-guarded compound, very quickly they find themselves in a war zone. Hysterical people are running down the street while from close by comes the sound of rapid fire and the thud of grenades. They reach the Dominican embassy to find the telephone ringing. Earl Smith is on the line saying, ‘Listen, come over now to my embassy, Batista left the country and has just landed in the Dominican Republic.’
A well-armed force led by Castro’s deputy, Che Guevara, has attac
ked the city, capturing the radio station. They have many supporters among the inhabitants. The police are demoralised by Batista’s abandonment, the national army is leaderless. Very soon the rebels are in control of the capital.
Odile and Rubi stay for a week under asylum at the American embassy, which is guarded by US marines. They then return to the Dominican embassy, where their situation is more fraught. As Odile tells it, ‘We went through hell. They were yelling outside that Rubi was a murderer … one night … there was this boom. They threw hand grenades. They made a hole in the patio and were shooting through all the windows…’
Castro takes over power with huge popular support. Batista’s stooges have fled, are in jail or have been shot. Under the new rule the casinos are shut down and the mafia shipped out. US corporations own 80 per cent of Cuba’s utilities, 90 per cent of its mining and half the sugar industry. Now Castro starts on a programme to nationalise every one of those 400 American businesses, together with all banks and industries on the island. The US withdraws its ambassador and closes its embassy. The Dominican embassy follows suit, and Odile and Rubi fly back to Paris.
Odile is twenty-two, Rubi fifty, a significant marker for a man. He has slowed down, he takes whole days and nights off to rest his liver and catch up on his beauty sleep. He orders a new Ferrari 250 GT but makes another significant concession to a new regimen, he sells the mansion Doris Duke gave him and buys a house in the suburbs. It is a classy burb – their neighbour in Marnes-la-Coquette is Aly Khan – but Odile is not on record about what she thinks of the move from town. Some nights while Rubi stays home watching TV and drinking mineral water, she accepts invitations to go out alone. He doesn’t appear to mind.
He is in good standing with Trujillo, thanks to the fact he doesn’t have to deal with the deranged tyrant in the flesh. He is appointed ambassador to Belgium – an empty title since the Dominican Republic has no links, political or commercial, with the country. His job is to watch over Ramfis who is in a clinic there, undergoing detox and psychiatric treatment. He is addicted to both alcohol and drugs. After several months he is released. Emotionally dependent on Rubi, for although he has a ragged court of hangers-on he has no real friends, Ramfis buys a house at Neuilly, close to Rubi and Odile. He and Rubi play polo regularly, but in other respects his close company is not an asset. He’s soon drinking again and back on drugs. But Ramfis is a necessary cross to bear for he’s close to the Benefactor’s throne and heir apparent when Trujillo finally gets his, as increasingly looks inevitable.
Trujillo’s iron hold upon his country has not slackened but his judgement has. US sanctions against the republic deny the sugar industry its guaranteed market, the crop has been sold off piecemeal at knock-down price. No investment is coming in. American-owned businesses have been driven out by extortion; the US has closed down its embassy in Ciudad Trujillo, withdrawing its ambassador and staff. When the elderly American bishop, Thomas Reilly, issues a Pastoral Letter denouncing the abuse of human rights, ordering priests to read it to their congregations, a gang of police in civilian clothes break into his church and rectory to wreck them. Reilly narrowly escapes with his life to hide out in a convent school. Trujillo orders the island’s radio station to play dance music throughout Holy Week. On the GOD AND TRUJILLO posters displayed all over the island hoardings, God’s name is removed from the credits.
The Benefactor’s behaviour has become a public embarrassment. He is sixty-eight and suffering prostate trouble but this has not diminished his sexual urge. He maintains several young mistresses living at home with their respectable parents who are rewarded for their complaisance; one of them only fourteen when thus honoured by his favour. These liaisons are not secret, gossip makes them the property of everyone.
Trujillo had always lived by a regimen of little and plain food, no alcohol during the day. Now that isn’t so. Splendidly uniformed, on occasions he strides around the presidential compound haranguing his attendants in words that make no sense; his thoughts and meaning temporarily lose their link. Yet his pronouncements demand acknowledgement from his clique; they applaud automatically. He attends evening parties where he now drinks heavily. His enlarged prostate has resulted in incontinence. At several gatherings he’s been seen to soil his pants.
When John F. Kennedy is elected President in November 1960 he learns that he’s inherited a specific CIA mission authorised by the previous Eisenhower administration, which by now is fully prepared and waiting only on his approval to go into action. Three foreign dictators, Castro, Patrice Lumumba of the Congo and Trujillo, have been targeted for political assassination prior to regime change. Dissident forces already exist in the Dominican Republic, as does a pirate radio state unstoppably preaching revolution to the island’s listeners. The likelihood is that Trujillo will be toppled anyway, but unless this is orchestrated by Washington the country risks falling into the hands of pro-Castro communist radicals.
At this moment Igor Cassini proposes to old Joe Kennedy – the President’s father whom he knows well – that the two of them open a direct line between Trujillo and the White House to effect an expedient solution to the problem.
In result, the President sends his old pal from Congress, Senator George Smathers, to sound out the possibility of Trujillo relinquishing power and moving out before it is too late. But even the prospect of an open road to retirement in Switzerland with fortune and dignity intact fails to persuade Trujillo to stand down. It would seem that power not only corrupts but possesses, its owner cannot renounce it. Nevertheless, Smathers testifies, ‘Trujillo was a very very interesting character. He pulled out a .45 pistol and he laid it right out on the desk, pointed right at me, and we started talking…’
Rubi’s polo team Cibao La Pampa notches up three wins in a row at the start of the French season in 1961. Ramfis is a member, along with his brother Rhamades and Rubi’s nephew Gilberto. On 30 May they win again against a private team, Les Mousequetaires. At the party afterward Rubi has only a token drink before making a date to ride with Ramfis next day, then goes home to Odile.
The following morning he arrives at Ramfis’s house at 10 a.m., dressed in riding clothes. He finds the place in uproar. Ramfis had been woken by an early call from his mother in the republic. She was in hysterics, begging him to come home at once, but unable to say why. In high alarm, he put a call through to his brother-in-law, Chesty Estevez, but neither could Estevez explain the urgency, no line in Ciudad Trujillo is secure. He would only say, ‘Everything is under control but your presence is absolutely necessary. Do you understand?’
When Rubi walks into the house, Ramfis is in a state close to hysteria. He says, ‘They’ve killed my father.’ It is decided to charter a plane and fly home immediately. Ramfis takes with him a party of seven, including Rubi still in riding breeches. Odile has gone to the hairdresser and her husband gets through to inform her of his departure only just before the plane takes off from Orly. Their flight is unregistered and traffic control at Puerto Rico instructs them to land, airspace over the Dominican Republic is closed. Ramfis, with Rubi by him in the cockpit, switches off the radio, ordering the charter pilot to continue or Rubi will take over. From above the airport at Ciudad Trujillo they see the runway to be lined with tanks. Switching on communication, they hear from Estevez in the control tower who assures them the army is loyal. They put down. Ramfis and Rhamades are first off the aircraft. Someone passes Rubi a pistol and he steps onto his native soil just behind them.
The evening before, Trujillo had dined with his daughter Angelita in town, leaving her house at 9.40 p.m. He was on the way to his favourite beachfront home Hacienda Fundacion when they’d got him.
He was not in one of his official cars but a Chevrolet Bel Air with fancy twin-fender horns and distinctive whitewall tyres. He sat in the back on the right, the nearside. On the seat beside him was a briefcase containing 100,000 US dollars and a loaded .45 revolver; he never went anywhere without both. At the wheel was Captain de la Cruz, his
driver for the last eighteen years, by him two automatic rifles and a revolver. A Thompson sub machine gun lay hid beneath the seat.
As the Chevrolet went by the fairground on the outskirts of the capital a black sedan pulled out to follow it. The car contained seven mid-ranking army officers, who with a half-dozen others had plotted this ambush and subsequent coup. Only two days previously they had approached General Papo Roman – Secretary for the armed forces and married to Trujillo’s niece – to propose he should lead the country after the Benefactor’s death. His acceptance had cued this attempt.
Once clear of town and on the now-unlit expressway, the black sedan closed the distance between the two cars. It pulled out to overtake… but held steady alongside. The blast of two sawn-off shotguns shattered the side windows of the Chevy. One spray of shot disabled Trujillo’s left arm, the other struck the driver in the shoulder. The car slewed sideways, skidding to halt broadside on the highway. The black sedan continued past, braking hard. It came to rest angled across the traffic lane. Four of the assassins leapt out and flattened to the ground to continue shooting. Those remaining inside the vehicle fired from the windows with machine carbines. The weapons had been provided by the CIA.
