See You Later, Alligator

by William F. Buckley

  The next day Colonel Ochek was utterly unambiguous on the subject. “The answer,” he said in his office to his two subordinates, the short, wry Spaniard and the plump, wholesome Russian who stood stiffly in front of him, “is quite simple. It is No. The KGB does not run a dating service or a marriage bureau here in Mexico. We are engaged in a great revolutionary struggle. I expect you not only to remain unmarried but to see less of each other so that you will not be distracted in your work. Otherwise I shall simply transfer you.”

  Oh how they had talked about the alternatives, that night at dinner, and about the need to exercise great care. But the central objective was taken for granted. They would marry.

  This required clerical footwork inasmuch as, in Mexico, foreigners who work for embassies require employer approval on their applications for a marriage license. But Raúl Carrera had become accustomed to the ways of Mexico, and he surmounted that problem with a mere one hundred pesos. The next problem was to consider living quarters that would not come to the attention of the colonel. They resolved, forlornly, that it would be necessary to continue to maintain their separate apartments. They could not afford a third apartment. They would need to run the risk of visiting each other in their separate abodes, always careful not to arrive, or leave, jointly. And, at work in the embassy, they would affect a gradual alienation from each other. No more joint lunches or shared jollity. Ochek and the general staff must be given the impression that it had been a temporary infatuation.

  On the twenty-third of September a magistrate in Villa Obregón issued them a marriage license, and they spent the weekend, beginning at noon on Saturday, in Xochimilco, among the flowers, holding hands, and the two nights in each other’s very loving arms.

  Carrera was surprised when he was reached by telephone at his home by Colonel Ochek four months later—Ochek seldom telephoned. “You are to meet me in Room 51 of the Hotel del Valle in Cuernavaca at 10 P.M. tomorrow, Tuesday night. You will make no reference, during office hours tomorrow, to our forthcoming meeting. If anyone suggests any meeting with you after hours you are to say that you have made plans to do work in the library and will not be home until very late. Is that clear?”

  Carrera said that that was clear.

  “There are buses, as you probably know, every hour to Cuernavaca. You should be able to make the six o’clock bus after work, but even if you take the seven o’clock bus, you will arrive in plenty of time to make our engagement.”

  At exactly ten, Raúl Carrera knocked on the door at the Hotel del Valle. There were three men in the suite, two of them strangers to Carrera. Ochek did not give out their names. He merely pointed to one, then to Carrera: “Carrera,” he said. And to the other, the same thing: “Carrera,” he said. And then to Carrera, directly: “Sit down.”

  He deferred now to the first of the two men, younger than Ochek by perhaps ten years. Forty, Carrera guessed. But Ochek referred to him as “General.” He was smoking a cigarette, as was the third man.

  “Your record shows, Carrera, total fidelity to the Party for a period, now, of over fifteen years.”

  Carrera nodded.

  “We have a most grave commission to execute. You will, I assume, be satisfied of my credentials if I inform you, as I have Colonel Ochek, that the orders I bring were given to me by—Comrade Stalin himself.”

  The mere mention of the name caused the voice of the general slightly to alter. He cleared his throat. And went on to say that evidence, of an incontrovertible character, had come to the attention of the KGB in Moscow that Ambassador Oumansky was a double agent.

  Carrera was astonished. He had seen pictures of the great Oumansky with almost every dignitary in Moscow, including Stalin himself. He was the ganglion of communist activity in the hemisphere. Everything that happened in Latin America happened because Oumansky authorized it to happen, or didn’t happen because Oumansky did not authorize it to happen. He had been at least twice to Washington to confer there on matters of common purpose—for instance nazi submarines fishing in Mexican and Caribbean waters. The whole idea of Oumansky as double agent was unimaginable.

  The general continued. He was seated now, peering at papers on a desk.

  “Your record shows that you received training in Moscow in demolition. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, General, that is correct.”

  “Your instructions are to prepare an explosive force of about ten pounds of dynamite. The decision, you will have gathered, is not to stage a public trial. It would be too demoralizing to too many of the comrades who have trusted the traitor Oumansky.”

  The traitor Oumansky. Carrera breathed deeply at the force of this apparent oxymoron.

  “Do you have the necessary materiel?”

  Colonel Ochek interrupted. “General, please. Of course we have access to it.”

  “Where is it to go?” Carrera asked.

  “It is to go in the diplomatic pouch, having been set to explode on reaching eight thousand feet of altitude. The altitude in Mexico City being seven thousand feet, the plane will reach eight thousand feet in approximately three minutes, at which point the bomb will go off.”

  Carrera did not need more details.

  That was Tuesday. On Wednesday after work Carrera, ever so careful to tell Mariya nothing of what it was that would keep him from going to her apartment that night, even as he had not told her why she must not come to him the night before, went to a designated street corner where a car waited. Colonel Ochek was in it, and together they drove to a remote, inconspicuously guarded shed in the Guadalupe area near the railroad station.

  It might better have been designated a small armory. Everything anyone could need in the way of explosives. “And all of it made in America,” Colonel Ochek said, with a leer. “Useful, in case fragments are picked up.”

  It was simple enough, as Carrera retained what he had been taught and on several occasions, retreating from General Franco’s juggernaut, a bridge or a railroad would need to be bombed, and if the regular people weren’t there they would call in Carrera.

  Carrera selected one of the wooden boxes, of which there were several in different sizes. This one would have berthed two magnums of champagne. He grouped together thirty-six sticks of dynamite, which would occupy about three quarters of the space within the box. With great care to make the opening smooth, he detached the lid from one end of a soup can, lightly filing the edge to remove abrasive surfaces. He cut with metal shears a thin metal strip ten inches long and just under a half inch wide from the same tin can. And a second piece six inches long. Again, light strokes of a fine file to smooth the surfaces.

  He cut cardboard into a disk that would fit snugly inside the can, and clipped out two one-foot sections of insulated light wire, removing the insulation from an inch at either end. With care he applied strips of tape inside the can to strengthen the explosives’ insulation. He took the shorter metal strip and bent it in half, rounding the insulated lip of the soup can like a clip. He completed the taping and then, forming a kind of U shape out of the original strip, inserted it into the can seating it across the bottom. He fastened a wire to the outside end of the first metal strip, anchoring it firmly into place. Now the current between the two wires could be made to flow only through the junction of the two strips at the rim of the can.

  He blew up a child’s round balloon to its full capacity to test it. Letting the air out, he slipped it into the can’s center and blew up the balloon until there was enough pressure to press the bent tip of the wire to within a tiny distance of the contact on the can’s edge. He had calculated that approximately 1,000 feet higher than the current altitude, air pressure would swell the balloon, bringing together the firing cap’s leads. And effecting the explosion.

  The bomb finished, Carrera was escorted to within a few blocks of his apartment by Colonel Ochek, who was friendlier to him than he had ever been before. (That often happens, Raúl ruminated, when someone shares with you, however unwillingly, a major secret.) Raúl l
earned on the car trip home that he would serve yet another function on the following day. He was one of four officials who had personal clerical access to the pouch, both after it arrived—when it was Carrera’s responsibility to pull out and distribute material for the KGB section—and when it left, it being Carrera’s responsibility to insert material compiled by KGB–Mexico. The pouch, as it was loosely called, was more like an indefinitely expandable canvas sack. Indeed sometimes it was several sacks, as it was frequently used by high officials as conduit for small gifts; Ambassador Oumansky regularly received his caviar in the pouch. Colonel Ochek explained to Carrera that he did not wish the bomb to be placed in the pouch in the embassy, as there was always the possibility that someone else, at the last minute, might desire to put something into the pouch and trip across the lethal parcel. Carrera’s instructions were to take with him the office seal, go out to the plane when it was almost ready to board the ambassador, and go to the pouch with his package, advising the plane orderly that Colonel Ochek had neglected to enclose a mechanical specimen he wished analyzed in Soviet laboratories. “It will be routine,” Ochek said, reassuringly.

  And so it was. The diplomatic pass to go through Mexican Immigration to the aircraft was handed to him, on examination of his identification tags. Inside the C-47 transport Carrera turned to the compartment where the pouches of the various embassies were regularly placed, and exchanged an amenity with the orderly, identifying himself. The orderly asked if Carrera needed help. No, Carrera had said, the package was light. The Mexican pouch was, understandably, on top of the heap. Carrera broke the seal, inserted his package, and resealed it with the hand press he carried in his pocket, which he had also shown to the orderly.

  He left the plane then and headed toward the little group of embassy officials off at the windowed enclosure on the other side of Immigration. They were expected to show up whenever the ambassador flew away, or when he arrived from abroad. Carrera surrendered the temporary pass, entered the room with his fellow officials and waited. Not for long. The ambassador and his wife emerged from the diplomatic door of the Immigration room and strode out to the aircraft, waving at the goodbye party in the enclosure. Carrera noted ruefully that three staff members were accompanying Oumansky.

  And then his heart stopped.

  For a moment it was as though he had been blinded by snow. Everything was white except for barely discernible movements of photonegative skeletons climbing up a companionway. The last person to climb into the aircraft before the door shut was Mariya Pleshkoff. Mariya Carrera.

  Carrera gave out a shout and threw himself against his startled companions in a race for the Immigration corridor. The propellers were now revving up and it was hard over their noise to hear exactly what he was saying, something on the order of his having to get to the airplane. An Immigration supervisor grabbed the little man by his lapel but Carrera felled him with a karate chop. With that a half-dozen Mexican officials dived at him and held him down on the floor and he heard the airplane engine’s noise, as the plane taxied out to the runway, recede. He struggled with all his might, shouting to be released.

  And then, abruptly, he was quiet. The rudimentary human engine that speaks of survival had choked off his voice. You cannot stop the plane. If you shout out that there is a bomb in it you will be liquidated by the KGB. And it will not stop the plane. He lay there, face down, two Mexicans holding down one arm, two Mexicans the other, three more on his legs. Several minutes went by as they waited for the police. He asked in a quiet voice if he might rise, and was cautiously permitted to do so.

  “I am sorry,” he said. The official he had floored was still brushing himself off, and his subordinates looked to him for instructions. Should they hold him until the police arrived? “Forgive me, sir,” Carrera addressed him. “I was in great distress, and wished to wave to my wife who is on that airplane.”

  It was then that their attention was caught by the surrounding cries. The word reached them in moments. The Russian diplomatic plane! Exploded! Right over there! Just to the left of Popo. Could see it plain as day! A burst of flame! ¡Jesús, María y José, qué barbaridad!

  His chest heaving with pain, Carrera managed in the confusion to rush out to his car and drive to the office. There was already a crowd on the street. A dozen reporters, trying to get in to interview the deputy, or anybody; cameramen were arriving. Carrera fought his way through the crowd and was admitted by the guard into the building. He walked to his office and spotted, right away, on his typewriter a sealed envelope with his name written in her hand. He tore it open. “My darling. This is indiscreet, but I had to risk it. Believe it or not exactly half an hour ago Colonel Ochek told me I was to accompany the ambassador back to Moscow in case I could be of any service to him. No time even to go home and pack. But don’t worry. He said he would make certain that I wasn’t detained but would return with the ambassador within one week. It will be unbearable without you. Oh my darling, how much I love you. M.”

  Mechanically, Raúl Carrera put the letter in his pocket. He opened the door to his office a mere crack. By just standing there and looking through the slit he could see officials coming and going into the office of Colonel Ochek down the hall, opposite. This went on at a hectic pace for two hours, slowly lessening until, at about seven, Carrera reasoned that Ochek was alone, or very nearly alone.

  He walked across the hall and opened the door. Ochek’s secretary, Anna, was in the outer office, bent over her typewriter. She looked up, muttered “What a day!” and went back to her furious typing. Raúl Carrera walked over to the door of the private office, opened it, and closed it behind him. Ochek was seated at his desk, telephone in hand. When he saw Carrera he hesitated, then dived for a drawer. Too late. Carrera thrust two stiff fingers into Ochek’s eyes. His scream was short-lived because the chop at the neck brought him prostrate. And then, summoning all the power in his 120-pound body, Carrera kicked Ochek in the temple; and knew, as he turned to walk out, that he was walking away from a dead man. Anna sat frozen at her typewriter.

  “What is going on?” she asked hoarsely.

  Carrera looked at her, said nothing, and walked out, using the back exit.

  He never did return to his apartment, reasoning that it would be many days, weeks maybe, before Mexican security gave up waiting for him. He couldn’t even remember exactly how it was that he made his way to San Antonio, or why, or how long the trip took. Arriving there and adopting the name Cecilio Velasco, he put his services as a clerk-translator to immediate use in huge Fort Sam Houston, groaning with Mexican-American recruits who did not know English, in a city greatly in need of white-collar workers to replace those who had been drafted.

  He worked quietly in San Antonio, living in a one-room apartment, seeing no one but grieving and following the foreign news.

  The war ended, he found that he had qualified for U.S. citizenship which he proceeded to take out, paying more than routine attention to his pledge (hand raised) to defend the Constitution of the United States. When Czech Radio reported that Jan Masaryk had killed himself in Prague—thrown himself out the window of the foreign office, just like that, pity—before the day was over, the press, and indeed the entire world, were on to what quickly was called the “Czechoslovakian coup.”

  Cecilio Velasco stared down at the San Antonio Express’s front-page picture of Jan Masaryk. He cut the picture and accompanying story out of the paper and folded them into his pocket.

  He drove then to Fort Sam, but not to the War Department Personnel Center where he worked, but to the main administration building opposite the huge parade ground, named several years before in honor of General Arthur MacArthur. He walked into the building and asked the receptionist for the office number of General McIver, head of the Intelligence Division of the 4th Army. He went to the office and there told the receptionist he needed to see the general, identifying himself with his Fort Sam badge, on a personal matter. A half hour later he was in the office of the general, who l
ooked up at the slim, taut man in his late forties, and then said, “What can I do for you?”

  “My name is Cecilio Velasco,” he said. “And I wish to work for the United States Government. I was formerly a major in the KGB.”

  The general told Velasco to sit down.

  Nine

  Mac and Dulles weren’t so hot on the idea of my meeting personally with Oakes, but so they didn’t think it was such a hot idea and so I did, so what? There’s no reason why my National Security Adviser and my Director of the Central Intelligence Agency should know more about these things than I do. Besides—the President rang the buzzer. “Get me a Coke, would you please?”—besides, if you’re not the President of the United States you can’t, let’s face it, realize what talking directly to the President does to some people. Just to be talking to you. I mean, I didn’t realize what it meant until it happened to me. But you pick these things up.

  He rose from his desk and walked over to the rocking chair, scooping up the afternoon’s Washington Star from the coffee table. But although he spread the paper out on his lap, he didn’t read it. He continued to think …

  It’s going to have an effect not only on Oakes but on Che Guevara, my seeing him personally. Interesting guy, cool, self-assured. If I hadn’t gone to Harvard, he might have made me feel ill at ease. Bulldog bulldog bow wow wow. I like giving young people I trust big jobs. I didn’t get Allen’s permission to select Bobby for Attorney General or Ted Sorensen over here. I size people up fast. So did Alexander and Napoleon, come to think of it.

  I like the way he keeps the issues distinct: we don’t like those Cuban communist bastards, and it would help if we could derail them, but that doesn’t mean we can’t accomplish more by being civil to them. I’m not asking Oakes to seduce any Cuban. Huh. I wonder if there’s a Cuban he couldn’t seduce? I wish Castro were a she.