See You Later, Alligator

by William F. Buckley

  “Che, we are committed to the Soviet Union. The home of international socialism, for one thing. You know that as well as I do. Indeed you have lectured me on the subject. And Raúl here can put anyone to sleep talking about it—”

  “I was not talking about where our sympathies lie, Fidel, but what kind of a deal we could succeed, even hypothetically, in making.”

  “We know,” said Fidel, tapping his cigar on a large ashtray, “that great events are unfolding. The United States is planning a military operation against us. The Soviet Union will make of that operation a total farce! A total farce. Not only will it be a farce, the politics of the hemisphere will change. Change forever. The Yanqui colossus will be something we read about in the history books. Because its great nuclear firepower will be neutralized by”—he liked this image, which he had picked up from Adzhubei on Adzhubei’s second visit—“a 746-mile-long aircraft carrier anchored just off the United States, with enough missiles to reduce its principal cities to ashes. A carrier called Cuba. Jesus Mary and Joseph, to think I shall live to see that day!”

  Dorticós spoke. “You forget one important thing, Fidel, which is that we need to forestall the invasion until the missiles are emplaced—”

  “And that exactly is where your friend Sr. Caimán comes in, Che.” Fidel was now speaking earnestly, with those charismatic accents that worked as well with two or three people as addressing a million. “Every device we can use to delay the American military operation brings closer the day of deployment. They began, in Moscow, by saying it would take six months. It will be more than that. The first antiaircraft missiles should be in place by June or July. I have only recently learned that the interval between their emplacement and the emplacement of the offensive missiles has been greatly reduced by feats of Soviet engineering. By September, Cuba shall be forever impregnable.” Fidel had slid into the declamatory mode.

  “Now that” he wheeled his torso around to Che Guevara, “means that any encouragement we give to Caimán, relayed to Washington, might have the effect of postponing their attack. That is a reason why you must on the one hand delay Caimán, since we have no intention of concluding any pact with the gringos, and on the other hand you must make him feel he is making progress so that, in Washington, they will continue to feel that there is a possibility of—an Understanding. We are not dealing with very bright people, Che, remember that. Bright people would not have launched the Bay of Pigs.”

  “Now easy, Fidel, easy. While you are at it, bear in mind that even very dumb people are not going to sit around and let the Soviet Union place nuclear missiles on their front porch.”

  “They will not detect those missiles until it is too late.”

  “I grant that possibility. But you must also grant the possibility that they will detect them. Missiles come rather large, you know.”

  “A military question; a security question; a question of Soviet know-how.” Fidel puffed on his cigar—little puffs, which meant he had switched gears from his ruminative, philosophical mood to a mood more combative. “We do not need at this point to go over the precautions being taken, do we?”

  “Except insofar as they have a bearing on what we are talking about. My point is that it is in the interest of the Cuban revolution—in your interest, Fidel—that we should vigorously pursue every possibility. I mean, without closing the door, at the outset, to the possibility that under certain circumstances we might have to move in one direction rather than another—”

  “Bullshit,” said Raúl Castro.

  “Ah, good evening, Raúl. You have been taking elocution lessons.”

  Fidel suppressed a smile. “Raúl is right, Che. It is inconceivable we should ever make a deal with the United States. But that does not alter the tenor of what we are concerned with. Which is that you must put on the greatest private show on earth. I give you considerable liberty to improvise—gestures of good faith, that sort of thing. We will, of course, advise General Malinovsky what we are up to. But always, always bear in mind this: There are exactly five men in Cuba who know about the missiles. Four of them are in this room. The other is Ramiro Valdés. The Cuban military thinks we are dealing exclusively with antiaircraft weapons, ground-to-air weapons—‘SAM’ missiles, they are calling them in Russia. They will continue to believe that until the great unveiling. That great unveiling must come,” he pounded his fist on the table, “and you will help to make it come. Take Caimán under your wing. Give him a good time. Make him feel he is progressing. Shall we consider the subject closed? We have other matters to deal with.”

  Castro wanted to know why Che’s most recent projections on sugar production were so abysmally low, why there was no coffee in Cuba, why there were no oranges in Cuba, and he wanted to know from Raúl what was it exactly that was going on in Camagüey—why hadn’t the pocket of counterrevolutionary resistance been wiped out? Did he, Fidel, need to don his Sierra Maestra fatigues and go back into military work to show Raúl how to dispel a few dozen guerrillas? And Dorticós should consider a state visit to Mexico—you can’t overemphasize the importance of Mexico. They’ve been terrific and have reacted in exactly the right way to the April invasion and subsequent events. Had he told them that he had decided to cancel Easter? It would no longer be a holiday, even as Christmas was no longer a holiday. In fact, he was considering canceling Sunday as a regular day off, as Mao Tse-tung had done. Mao is probably the wisest of them all as a pure Marxist theorist. It was a great tragedy that Mao and Khrushchev had fought; it was of course fitting that admiration for Mao should be expressed only discreetly, given Cuba’s special relation with Khrushchev, but the more Fidel read about the requirements of introducing socialism, the greater his admiration for Mao. He would give some more thought to the Sunday business—naturally there would be a lot of opposition to it—but he especially enjoyed the thought of how the Vatican would react. Henry VIII had retaliated against his excommunication by founding Protestantism, and perhaps he, Fidel, would retaliate against his excommunication by eliminating Sunday.

  “You will be known as Fidel the Sunday-killer,” Che ventured. Eventually the meeting broke up, sometime after four.

  Twenty-one

  Wednesday was another of those awful, long days, leavened only by Joe Bustamente’s “surprise package” of six flashlight batteries, which activated Blackford’s radio. They listened to the station in Miami for much of the day, and at night they were able to hear, though the reception was wobbly, a station in New York. The Soviet Union, Blackford was especially interested in hearing, had come up with some formula or other (there had been static) on the German question that was conciliatory in not asking the United States to cede rights of access to West Berlin.

  A United Nations tribunal reported that the protracted inquiry revealed that Patrice Lumumba had in fact been murdered—by Katanga President Moise Tshombe. (“Notice how they call it ‘murder’?” Blackford turned to Velasco. “All Lumumba ever did was make war against Tshombe.”) And General Taylor had returned from his investigative mission in South Vietnam, reporting that he was confident that the South Vietnamese had sufficient resources to defend themselves against the communists. Both the New York and the Miami stations had carried the subsequent statement of President Kennedy, relayed to the press by his press secretary Pierre Salinger. The President’s message, issued on the sixth anniversary of Vietnam’s Independence Day, pledged that “the United States is determined to help Vietnam preserve its independence, protect its people against communist assassins, and build a better life.” Blackford tucked that one away in his memory. It might prove useful under the relentless inquisitions of Guevara and his jibes about Western and capitalist irresolution.

  But another news item he almost regretted hearing. A New York Times scoop. One Mariano Faget, identified as a secret police official for twenty years for Fulgencio Batista, had been employed by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to “interrogate Cuban refugees passing through the Opa-Locka detention center ne
ar Miami.” His job, the announcer said, was to “weed out” Castro agents, and his last post under Batista had been that of “Director of the Bureau of Repression of Communist Activities.” Blackford looked over at Velasco.

  Velasco beat him to it. “Mierda,” he said.

  “Ugh,” Blackford said. “Some Americans can be so goddam dumb.” And added, “Anyway, you would think that anyone who had been in charge of suppressing communism in Cuba would have a hard time establishing his credentials as competent to do anything.”

  And so another day swimming and reading. Blackford had started his penultimate Agatha Christie, Testigo del Cargo. He knew that testigo meant witness.

  “What’s cargo, Cecilio?”

  “How is it used?”

  “Testigo del cargo.”

  “Witness for the prosecution.”

  “Have you ever read it? The book? Agatha? Agatha Christie?”

  “No, but I would be suspicious of the witness.”

  “Good point,” Blackford said, and began reading. After a while he wrote a letter to Sally, reminding her that a couple of years down the line they were scheduled to be married, and on second thought, might they advance the date, to be married on Saturday? “You could get a friendly Mexican jet to bring you to me, no? I would then tell you where I am; what do you say, Señora Professor?”, and remembered to attempt to devise a faster means of getting it to her than through Switzerland.

  Manuel came back into the living room, en route to the kitchen and his own quarters. The orderly was looking very much the worse for wear. Two police officers had come into the cottage during lunch and summoned Manuel outside to talk to him. He returned to apologize to Blackford that he had been called to give testimony at a police station and would not be able therefore to finish serving lunch. “Never mind,” Blackford had said.

  And now, three hours later, Manuel was looking disheveled and frightened. He spoke not a word, merely going to the kitchen and beginning to wash the lunch dishes.

  “I can guess what he was questioned about,” Blackford said, keeping his voice low.

  “Oh?”

  “Your wretched stomachache. You remember, the one you nearly died from yesterday? I hope our friend Manuel doesn’t become a testigo del cargo.”

  “You do worry so sometimes, Blackford,” Cecilio said, seated, and resuming his reading.

  The following morning Bustamente delivered a letter. It was from Che Guevara. He would pick Blackford up at two. Velasco was to stay behind, for reasons Che would explain that afternoon. Blackford would be gone “for several days, in connection with Sr. Caimán’s mission,” and so should bring along whatever he might need. “You may bring along your Agatha Christie collection, if you like.”

  Blackford was inclined to reply there and then that no, he would not travel without Velasco, who was his aide as well as his interpreter, and whose presence had been specifically authorized by the Cubans. Cecilio proposed that they listen, instead, to the reasons Che Guevara would give for not taking him along, deferring a decision until then.

  “Catch that ‘you can bring your Agatha Christie’ business. What’s he trying to demonstrate, that they’ve been through our bags? Why?”

  “I don’t know. There is a lot I don’t know about Comandante Guevara.”

  Joe Bustamente had been waiting, as the Comandante had requested a reply from Sr. Caimán.

  Blackford went to the typewriter: “Dear Che: I am here on official business together with Cecilio Velasco. I see no reason why I should be separated from him. Whatever reason you have for not taking him with us will need to be compelling. I’ll look for you at 2 P.M.—Caimán.”

  Guevara arrived at two-forty. It no longer made much difference, since punctuality was not expected.

  Che Guevara was unchanged, in dress and in manner. He sat down on the couch, pointed to Manuel who was in the kitchen, and signaled him to go outside. He wanted to be alone with the CIA. Catalina was dressed in slacks and wore, like Che, a beret, except that hers was red. Her voice, when she was engaged in translating, was mechanical. When she was herself speaking to Che it was vivid and mellifluous.

  Che announced that he had discussed the entire project with Fidel Castro the night before last and had been authorized, indeed encouraged, to proceed with the negotiations. But in order to do this, Che said, he needed to give Blackford some idea of what the march from Sierra Maestra had been like. And not merely for sentimental reasons. He wished for Blackford to see the actual circumstances of guerrilla warmaking, concerning which, Che said, he had written a manual. An objective reason was for Blackford to know what it was that other progressive socialists in other Latin-American countries might resolve to do, and what were the difficulties in isolating such guerrillas, or in establishing whether they were in fact being aided by the Cuban Government, “which, if our understanding goes into effect, we would pledge not to do.”

  Blackford said he was perfectly willing to accompany Che, but what was the difficulty in bringing along Cecilio Velasco?

  “Oh, that. Very simple. We shall be traveling a great deal by helicopter. I wish I could report that we have as many helicopters as we would like to have. But we shall have to do with one, and that model, the Bell 47-J, holds only four people.” Che pantomimed a pilot at the controls of a helicopter, together with the pilot’s slow turn of his head, from far left to far right, looking out of the cockpit window for traffic. Then he lifted the index finger of his left hand and pointed to it with his right hand. Then to himself with the middle finger. Then to Blackford with the third. And, finally, to Catalina with his little finger. “That makes four.

  “But there is something else,” Che added quickly, “a second reason. I spoke to Mr. Goodwin about compensation. I desire for Mr. Velasco to spend some time with our accountants. It will take a while to put together the papers evaluating the assets we have … seized. The American assets, you understand. There will obviously need then to be a trip back to Washington—you, Caimán, and Velasco—to go over the figures, as well as the other matters we shall be discussing. Velasco, then, is needed here, in Havana. As for translation, Catalina is perfectly responsible. Beside that, she is a lieutenant in our military intelligence organization we now call ‘Jiménez’—borrowed, my dear Caimán, from your term G-men—and she will from time to time conduct directly some of the conversations if, for instance, I am suddenly needed back in Havana.

  “So,” he said, rising, “you say you are in a hurry to get started. So am I. Shall we get started?”

  “I wish to confer with Velasco,” Blackford said.

  Che bowed, extended his right arm operatically to Catalina, as though to escort her to a ball, and the two went outside and mingled with the bodyguards.

  Blackford sat down. “What do you think, Cecilio?”

  “I think there is a design in everything that comes from Che Guevara. No, not quite everything. He is a fluent and orthodox ideologue, but he can be impulsive. I suspect there is a plan in separating us.”

  “Yeah. On the other hand it is true that the Bell holds only four people …”

  “Frankly, Blackford, I don’t think we are in a position to say no. He is, after all, the second most important man in Cuba. And what he is asking is not unreasonable.”

  “Do you know anything about company balance sheets?”

  “I am not an accountant. But it will not be hard to note down the difference between Cuban evaluations and American evaluations. Differences that will simply have to be negotiated.”

  “Hm.” Blackford harbored a dark thought: Velasco, and his stomach illness. And his disappearance on Tuesday. He thought it wiser not to say anything about it.

  “Tell you what. In moments like these you get minor concessions. Why don’t I tell Che that life in the Walden-Hilton is too damn claustrophobic and that you would like to be able to get about the city when you’re not doing your paperwork?”

  “That would be pleasant.”

  Blackford went
to the door and hailed the Comandante, as he was careful to call him in the presence of any Cuban other than Catalina.

  Che and Catalina came in.

  “Okay, Che, but on behalf of my comrade I would like to make a simple request.”

  “Name it.”

  “It is very confining in this cottage day after day. I hope you will permit Velasco, when he is not here going over the financial documents, or wherever you plan to do the paperwork, to stretch his legs. Walk about the city of Havana?”

  “I think that can be arranged,” said Che. “I know Mr. Velasco likes to walk about the city. I mean, I should have guessed it. It is very Spanish.”

  The icicle had done its work. The quick dislodging note about the peripatetic habits of the Spanish attenuated the impact of it. But Velasco now knew. Knew, at least, that he was a suspect. He merely puffed again at his cigarette, sitting on the arm of the sofa methodically translating Blackford’s words; difficult, when their subject was himself. He wondered whether Blackford, whom he had labored to shield from direct knowledge of what his mission had been on Tuesday, had caught Guevara’s guarded insinuation. He would not open the subject up by asking him.

  “Yes,” Che continued. “But of course for security reasons there will need to be an escort. I shall advise Bustamente that he is to be at the personal disposal of Mr. Velasco and to take him everywhere it is authorized for him to go. Some parts of Havana are not designed for guided tours for CIA agents.”

  Blackford went into his bedroom and was back in a moment with a canvas bag. “Might I need a typewriter?”

  “We will have them, as required,” Che answered.

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Blackford turned to Velasco, who extended his hand and said to him softly in Spanish, “Hasta luego, Caimán.” Blackford shook Velasco’s hand with unusual firmness, looking the aging Spaniard directly in the eye. Velasco looked up at Oakes as he might have done to his son. For a very brief moment they were frozen in a posture that was nevertheless almost kinetic; quickly Velasco disengaged to reach over to the ashtray, to retrieve the burning cigarette to his lips; and everything now was normal again, as Blackford walked out and gave his bag to the orderly who reached for it.