Castro a she! Boy, he’d love that, with the macho business they’ve got going there.
I made it plain to Oakes: We don’t like them, but we’re ready to deal with them. The terms are guaranteed hands off the rest of Latin America, including any deals with the Russians on Latin America. Quid pro quo: we end our economic boycott within three months. Recognize them somewhere down the line. When? Oakes wanted to know. Naïve. “When” is a political question. When the American people are in the mood for diplomatic recognition …
That was funny, the way Allen Dulles kept saying to Oakes, “Don’t promise them anything with a timetable attached to it.” He said it three times. Twice too many times. Why should he be making that point? Anyway, I don’t see anything totally wrong about a timetable. You can always change a timetable. I’d like to change the timetable for Haile Selassie’s visit to maybe 1981. No, I won’t be President in 1981. Unless the “Irish Mafia,” as they’re calling it in the gossip-critical press, can manage to repeal the 23rd Amendment. Let me see, 1964 2nd term, 1968 third term, 1972 fourth term—I’d pass FDR. Don’t think Arthur would like that, but he could write a longer book about me, which would be good. No. On second thought I think Arthur’s books are quite long enough. 1976 fifth term, 1980 sixth term. Yup. Great idea. “The President would be happy to see you in 1981, during his sixth term. Moreover, Your Majesty, you are absolutely unique in this respect, and of course in so many other respects, because only you are the Lion of Judah, and we’d appreciate it if you didn’t spread the word: You are the only chief of state the President has invited over for a state visit in his sixth term.”
Oh hell.
He picked up the newspaper and read the AP account of Khrushchev’s speech at the opening session of the Soviet Communist Party Congress.
Rusk was right this morning. That was a clear retreat on Berlin. They’ve got their Berlin Wall so now they’re easing up on the business of a deadline for a treaty with East Berlin. We’ll win on that one. We don’t need to let them forget the Wall is there—to keep those poor buggers from clawing their way out of the Workers’ Paradise.
And so now Khrushchev is going to detonate a 50-megaton bomb. Five million tons. Or is that 50 million tons? Let me see: mega means a thousand, right? So fifty times a thousand is—fifty thousand, that can’t be right. Mega must mean a million. Then fifty megatons would be fifty million. Right? Right. Head of the class, Jack. Why did God give us hydrogen bombs and communists at the same time? What the hell, while I’m at it, why did God give us Everett Dirksen?
But Khrushchev speaking six and one half hours! I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody speak for one and one half hours, not even Hubert. Nice joke at the Al Smith Dinner a couple of years ago: “What comes after a speech by Senator Humphrey on Saturday night? Sunday.” Well, maybe Hubert. But six and one half hours! What does the audience do for six and one half hours? What if they have to pee? Castro’s the same way. Over four hours at the UN. Well, at the UN they deserve it. That’s what I call massive retaliation, Castro speaking four and a half hours at the UN. But six and a half hours. I think maybe that says something about the differences between them and us. They don’t mind being bored. Hate to admit it, but that’s probably a key to their success: they don’t mind getting bored.
No, I’m glad I saw Oakes. It won’t hurt that he can tell Guevara he was in here with me, won’t hurt at all. Boy, if this works … That dumb thing we did in April, trying to take Cuba away from Castro. A half-assed operation, and I was responsible, I don’t deny it. But if we now manage to castrate Castro … (I like that). He’s making a lot of militant noises, sounds as if he was sucking Lenin’s tit.
But Dick Goodwin gave it to me straight. Guevara says they’re willing to make that exchange. We’ll see.
He picked up the paper again.
Ten
He descended from the naval cargo vessel and though it was October, it was hot. He was traveling as a civil servant, assigned to duty at the control center. Most of the passengers on board were civilian personnel returning for duty at the Guantánamo Naval Base after leave. A few were going to Cuba for the first time. Several of the younger passengers, couples and a few unmarried, made social advances in the course of the three-day journey from Norfolk, Virginia, but retreated after a while, finding the tall, handsome “John Gleason” polite but unresponsive. One woman, the chaplain’s wife, persisted at dinner, asking what exactly Mr. Gleason was going to do in Guantánamo? Blackford smiled and said he would be the happiest of all to know exactly what was expected of him, that it had not been specified other than that he would presumably be used to make recommendations to the corps of engineers, since he was himself an engineer.
“Castro threatened again last week to kick us out of Guantánamo,” the woman observed, reaching across Blackford for another roll.
“I saw that,” Blackford said, adding nothing at all.
“Well, what do you think we would do if they tried?”
“I guess we would resist them, don’t you think?”
“Damned right, we would resist them,” the base athletic director said from across the table. He reduced his voice to a theatrical whisper. “Provided the Kennedy gang can find their, excuse me ma’am, cojones.”
There ensued the fiftieth postmortem on the Bay of Pigs that Blackford had heard since last April. He affected to be interested in the conversation, but managed to convey that he was not really interested in the controversy. When his opinion was asked, he was exhilarated by his masterful evasiveness. “That’s a very interesting point. I wish I knew all the facts.” That worked, except that the athletic director thereupon volunteered to give him all the facts. After which Blackford tried out, “You certainly are convincing. I see things in a fresh light. What do you think about that, chaplain?”
Later, strolling the deck, he wondered at his maturity. Not that, ten years earlier, he couldn’t have maintained the equivalent of silence. But ten years earlier he’d have seethed at displays of ignorance, or indifference, or insouciance. Now he heard and he reacted, but his reactions were primarily reflective.
He let his mind travel back among the characters he had known, he had experienced, in his ten years; and he wondered yet again that the world could contain such purposive evil. He thought of the great bomb Khrushchev had just detonated, and of the haunting mystery that such a weapon could materialize in such hands. He then felt the same urge he had felt a half-dozen times during those ten years, the same thing he had felt that summer in Maine at camp on the afternoon he had run off without permission to swim among the breakers. He was only twelve and was certain that he was going to drown when the current began to draw him slowly but ineluctably out to sea. There was nobody about to whom he could shout, and he had come close to despairing. Suddenly he found a reserve of determination. Reason and patience fused. He calculated that he could not make headway against the current by swimming directly at the shore. And so he changed direction, swimming now obliquely toward the shore, saving his energy, and his life.
That reserve was still there, and that night he felt it. It told him that fifty megatons was not an argument, that it had no powers to validate, let alone sanctify, the evil against which he contended; he, a single soldier. A soldier who, the day before yesterday, was brought, through the Cabinet Room, into the Oval Office to talk to his commander-in-chief, in the presence of just two other men, the head of the whole intelligence establishment and the President’s national security adviser. He was engaged—he thought this could easily sound pompous, and so if ever it became appropriate to refer back to that meeting, he’d find another way to put it: he was on a presidential mission. The results of that mission could mean completely different lives for a great many people. Castro’s Cuba, smack in American home waters; on the map it looks like South America’s crown. He smiled—Senator Joe McCarthy would have termed it “a dagger at the jugular vein of our nation.” He’d have been right.
How much of Blackford�
�s success, or lack of it, would depend on his own skills? Any? Does one argue with a Che Guevara, he wondered? Does Che Guevara argue with Fidel Castro? In fact, Che Guevara had talked for three hours with Richard Goodwin, so it wasn’t that he was particularly laconic when communicating privately with Western officials. But thank God for Cecilio Velasco.
It had been three days, in Mexico, before the Cuban ambassador had called in Cecilio with the word that Yes, Che Guevara would receive the presidential emissary, and Yes, he could bring his own interpreter, if such was the self-effacing designation Cecilio Velasco chose to give himself. During those seventy-two hours Blackford had labored more intensively than ever before on any single project to learn more Spanish, and to master, to the extent that an outsider could, developments in Cuba.
By the end of the period he and Cecilio Velasco had become friends, and on the last night Cecilio had told him his story, told him about Mariya. He was dry-eyed when he came to the part about Mariya’s boarding the airplane, and about finding the note she had left for him on his typewriter. But, Blackford noticed, he had not lit a cigarette, and his hand clenched his rum and soda, but he did not drink from the glass.
“What happened to the colonel?”
“Ochek?”
“You didn’t mention his name. The KGB colonel. Your boss. The one who … gave the orders to … Mrs. Carrera.”
Velasco reached for a cigarette.
“His name was Ochek. Ochek was the victim of a purge. My last purge.”
The word having been given to Washington, it was left for the Cuban ambassador in Mexico to work out details with Velasco. This took another exasperating three days. They would both enter Castro’s Cuba via Guantánamo, but separately. The necessary credentials would be given out by the ambassador, there in Cuba. But for this he demanded to see the President’s emissary, and to photograph him. This in turn required clearance from Washington, which took another two days because the Agency decided that Oakes’s name should not be used, but that on the other hand the Cubans should not be lied to: the ambassador was accordingly informed that no fingerprints of the emissary would be given, and that a passport should be issued. Exchanges with Havana had already designated the operation as Proyecto Caimán—Operation Alligator—so that, after tedious exchanges, it was resolved to issue a passport in the name of “John Caiman.”
There had been no small talk between the Cuban ambassador and Cecilio Velasco. Security was desired as much by Che Guevara as by John Kennedy. So, late on Thursday afternoon, Velasco and Blackford met with the ambassador in a room in the embassy. A photographer appeared and took pictures. A technician took Velasco’s fingerprints. The ambassador spoke occasionally in Spanish with Velasco, some of which Blackford understood. The ambassador suddenly offered coffee or tea, by his standards practically a proposal of marriage. Both declined, and fifteen minutes later they walked out with two Cuban passports, on each of which was written out, “THE BEARER OF THIS PASSPORT IS UNDER THE SPECIAL PROTECTION OF COMANDANTE ERNESTO CHE GUEVARA AND IS TRAVELING TO CUBA ON OFFICIAL BUSINESS.” They were instructed that on their arrival in Guantánamo they were to call up the Jefe de Coordinación, Colonel Roberto Silva. Colonel Silva was in charge of the administrative center through which Cubans and Americans had such contact as it was necessary to have. They were to inform Colonel Silva that Proyecto Caimán was under way, and that Caimán and his interpreter would present themselves at the U.S. Navy–Cuba border crossing at 10 P.M. on October 4, 1961, “expecting to meet with their escort.”
“You will be taken to Havana.” The ambassador rose, extending his hand to Velasco and nodding to Blackford.
Blackford carried his canvas bag and his portable typewriter ashore. He looked about him, as he descended the hot gangway, to ascertain whether any one of that sea of faces there to welcome individual passengers might be there for him. Otherwise he had only an office number, and a telephone. And then he spotted what seemed like an endless stream of cigarette smoke coming from someone in the middle of the welcomers, and when it cleared, of course there was little Cecilio Velasco. The smile on his face seemed less cynical. He groped his way through the crowd and grabbed the bag from Blackford, who resisted him. They settled, finally, on Velasco’s carrying the tiny typewriter. They walked, Velasco directing, to a car, and got in, first taking off their jackets.
“It is good to see you, Blackford.”
“It is good to see you, Cecilio. You have been here two days. Flight okay?”
“Oh. Funny. Curioso. From the air you cannot tell that Guantánamo Bay is filled with free people and all the rest of the island is filled with not-free people.”
“They don’t make different thermals. Not in this world … Have you wondered in which category we fall? Four hours from now, I figure,” Blackford looked at his watch, “we’ll be—over there.”
“El Proyecto Caimán comienza.”
“Right. We begin. Good luck.”
“Good luck.”
Eleven
They were met at the border crossing by a bearded major who greeted them economically and told them to get into the car—he pointed to it, the one with the parking lights on. The driver got out and opened the trunk. Blackford and Velasco deposited their luggage in it. The major now pointed to the back seat, himself taking the seat next to the driver. They proceeded in silence to Santiago Airport.
“Will we be flying tonight?” Velasco asked.
“Yes,” the major answered simply. “Tonight.”
When they reached the guardhouse at the airfield the major got out and talked to the sentry. Evidently more was needed, because the sentry used the telephone, bending over the dim light in the sentry box to read from the major’s identification card. He walked out, flashed a light into the back seat, and returned to the telephone. Finally he pointed his flashlight in the general direction of a remote hangar alongside which several planes squatted, their silhouettes only just discernible. The major reentered the car and gave instructions to the driver.
Blackford looked at his watch. It was nearly midnight. The evening had brought no relief from the damp heat and he was perspiring when he pulled out his bags and followed the flashlight beam to the companionway of a DC-3 on which was painted Fuerza Aérea Cubana. The configuration was that of a regular passenger plane, and Blackford surmised that it had probably been purchased from Eastern Airlines, or whoever, before the economic lid had closed down the year before.
There was only a single pilot. The major, his job done, withdrew without any valedictory, and in a few moments they were airborne.
“We are flying right over the Sierra Maestra,” Velasco said. “Here was where Castro fought, and won Cuba.”
Won Cuba, Blackford thought. Was that the best way to put it? He looked out through the porthole, but it was basically black, except for scattered lights here and there. The steward offered them coffee from a thermos. Blackford tasted it and guessed it had been made that morning. Early that morning. He took the yellow-brown sugar and stirred the liquid. There was no milk. “I wonder if they’ll take us by the Bay of Pigs?”
“Let us just hope,” Velasco said, declining the invitation to romantic historical thoughts, “that the one pilot is healthy.”
Blackford turned to him. “I was a pilot in the Air Force, Cecilio. Don’t worry.”
“Could you fly this plane?”
“Yes. I’d have to do a little on-the-spot research. But you wouldn’t get killed.”
“Could you find Havana?”
“Depends what kind of instrumentation they have up there. I assume so. I could certainly find Miami. This thing goes 180 mph. So, another half hour from Havana to Miami—”
“They would shoot the plane down.”
“I agree. So let’s let it stay on course. PRESIDENTIAL ENVOY/HIJACKS CUBAN DC-3/RECEIVES MEDAL OF FREEDOM. I’ll wait until I hijack a plane with Castro in it.”
Cecilio Velasco reached into his pocket and drew out his rosary. “I will pray for
both of us.” He smiled, closed his eyes, and began to finger the beads on his flat stomach.
Blackford resolved to pursue the paperback ¿Quién Mató a Roger Ackroyd?, by Agatha Christie. He reached over his head for the light and clicked it on, but it didn’t work. He tried the light over Cecilio’s head; it didn’t work either. He rang the buzzer for the steward, but heard no sound. He rose, went forward and found the steward asleep in the bulwark seat.
He returned to his own seat and said to Cecilio, “Wake me when we get to wherever they’re taking us.”
They did not know the name of the field where they landed, almost three hours later, but could tell it was not the principal airport. Again the heat hit them and again there was the waiting car and the escort officer, Major “Joe” Bustamente—“my friends call me ‘Joe,’ like ‘Joe Louis.’” His English was flawless, his tone of voice conspiratorial, his manner courteous, his face, of course, bearded. In hangar-light, Blackford could not make out his age.
“I am your escort officer, Señor Caimán,” he addressed Blackford, “and will be with you throughout your stay.”
He sat next to the driver, but unlike their earlier escort, he spoke to his passengers almost without ceasing as they drove toward their destination. He was obviously proud of his English, and grateful for the opportunity to exhibit it.
They would occupy a suite of rooms, what was once a beach cottage at El Comodoro Hotel, they learned. An orderly would cook their meals, and a guard would be at the door. They would be hearing “in the next few days” when exactly Comandante Guevara would see them.
Blackford nudged Velasco in the ribs. He did not like the sound of “the next few days.” Hardly consistent with his being yanked back from Taxco and Sally, to take just one minor factor it was inconsistent with.
See You Later, Alligator Page 8
