In his room, Blackford bathed, and was surprised to find on the shelf in his bathroom, where he had laid out his razor and toothbrush, a bottle of cologne. Had it been there the night before, without his noticing it? Unlikely, he thought, though he didn’t remember for sure. He did not use cologne, but he opened the bottle with curiosity, squirted a few drops on the back of his left hand and lifted it to his nose. For an insane moment he hallucinated that he was in Paris, at a bordello. In Paris at a bordello! Was he going mad?
He went to his bed and lay down on it and closed his eyes, attempting to define the political configuration of the past week. He decided he would need to go back to Washington. He had learned a great deal, but in learning as much as he had he knew that what he needed to know most profoundly was eluding him. He needed from Washington official guidance. Needed, also, an update on what the CIA had learned from its own regular sources during the past month. For instance, about the Cuban economy, and the extent of the flow of Russian economic aid.
His mind turned to Catalina. University of Texas. Born in San Antonio and schooled in Austin. Yet thoroughly Cuban, thoroughly the Castroite, whatever her reservations about the Soviet Union. Was she a tricoteuse in the making? Would she shed those traces of liberalism—worrying, for instance, about the Russian bear—that, at this high-strung moment in Cuban-American relations, caused her to worry about sovietización? Was she a mistress of Comandante Che? There was so little that was sensual, he thought, about the Castro revolution. Operation P, to eliminate the prostitutes. Even the nationalization of the indigenous little kiosks. The public frowning on the Cuban dance-all-night fiestas. Were there still links, unbreakable, to her experiences at that oasis of liberalism in Texas, the University at Austin, whose undergraduates had voted, he recalled from something or other, in overwhelming majority for Kennedy, against Nixon? How was it that she had caused to stir so throbbingly those juices in him, not abnormal in a bachelor in his middle thirties; but normal biological impulses he managed, in most professional relations, to contain? Was Che’s absence preplanned? Was he getting from Catalina more than she was getting from him? But what could she, in fact, get from Blackford, other than that which was officially known, namely that the President of the United States was acting on an initiative of Guevara made last August?
He meditated on her mind, and then lazily allowed his curiosity to extend to her body, fastidiously garbed whether she was wearing skirts, pants, or sportswear. He permitted this to go on until he knew he had to force his mind to other things, and this he could not manage in the privacy of his own room, so he got up quickly, put on a fresh pair of khaki pants and a sport shirt, and pulled out of his suitcase a sweater he had never thought, while sweating in Havana, he would need. But now he was glad for the warmth. And then, although it was not yet seven, he opened his door and went down to the large luxurious living room, inside from the glass-fronted dining room, and looked at the bookcase, but could not find a novela policiaca by Agatha Christie. He settled for The Major Speeches of Fidel Castro, January 1959–March 1959, and began to read them. Fidel Castro was talking about freedom and orderly government and the promise of free elections. Blackford sighed. His Spanish was still so primitive, he was under the illusion he was reading John Stuart Mill. And then Catalina came down the stairs.
She was wearing a light lavender dress and high heels, and a tiny pearl necklace, and as she joined him, coincidental with the arrival of a white-jacketed waiter with a tray of daiquiris, she leaned her head forward just that suggestive little bit that demands a social kiss on the forehead, which he gave her, and he smelled the cologne.
They sat down and were served their drinks, with Marquitas, fried green banana chips, the Cuban equivalent of Fritos. “You are looking very lovely tonight, Catalina,” he said.
“That is the kind of thing they would say in Texas,” she answered.
“What’s so bad about Texas?” Blackford wanted to know. “They beat the Mexicans, didn’t they, and colonized great stretches of America that had once been Mexican territory?”
“Yes,” she said, raising her glass to her lips. “Santa Ana was no Fidel Castro.”
They lay, three hours later, in bed. During the overtures under the sheets she had begun to giggle, and then laughed softly, and rebuked the moon’s invasion of their privacy. She said that when, briefly after Operation P, she had been made to serve as an interrogator in the large schoolhouse that had been taken over as an administrative center, an aging madame was ushered into her little classroom who in her younger years, she whispered to Catalina, had been the prize lady of the Cuban streets. “I used to charge one hundred dollars,” she said. “And that was way back. In 1950! Imagine one hundred dollars in 1950!” Catalina had merely continued, asking the stipulated questions and filling out the form, as required: she had been warned by the colonel that bribery would almost certainly be attempted, by the pimps especially. Arcadia was not a pimp, but she was not without resources, and she had said to Catalina that in exchange for gentle treatment in the questionnaire (gentle treatment would diminish her rank from madame to mere prostitute, prostitutes receiving lesser punishments) she, Arcadia, would agree to tell Catalina what were one or two of the special arts she had perfected in her long career, “which will turn your lover into your slave, adoring you forever, for the great, the unique pleasure you give him.”
Greatly to her surprise, Catalina said as she fondled her lover, she had impulsively told Arcadia to go ahead, to tell her—no one else was in the room—which she proceeded to do, most graphically.
“Would you like me to do what Arcadia taught?”
“That depends.”
“On what?” she giggled.
“On whether I shall become your slave, as Arcadia said. On how many men have you tried Arcadia’s magic?”
“Oh,” Catalina giggled, “maybe just one, or two. Three, not more.”
“Well?”
“Well what?” Catalina was stroking him now …
“Well, did they become your slaves?”
“Well, let me think. Hmm. Yes as to … one. Yes as to … two. The third was shot, so I didn’t have a chance to find out.”
“Well, how can I risk it, becoming your slave?”
“You are much more beautiful than they, so perhaps you will escape becoming my slave. Why don’t you take a chance?”
He laughed, and kissed her. And she proceeded to initiate him in the arcadian mysteries, with delirious effect.
Later they lay together, silently. Blackford told her she was very beautiful and very loving. He undertook to name all the beautiful parts of her full body in Spanish, starting with her brown hair—cabello color de café, muy fino, muy bonito—and working down, slowly, until his vocabulary ran out, just where he desired to praise her most, and he cursed the limitations of Agatha Christie. After an interval Blackford rose and reached about for the light dressing gown he had in his suitcase. He did not want to turn on the light, so he dragged the suitcase into the moonlight, found it, and put it on.
“Where are you going?”
“To bring my slavemaster something to drink.”
“Bring me a cold beer.”
“Very well.”
“It will be where it was last night.”
He descended the stairs. The dim lights in the large living room were still lit, but no one stirred. With the beers he rose again, and gave her a glass, sitting down in the chair beside the bed.
“Are you a Mata Hari?”
“What is a Mata Hari?”
“Oh my God. And you are a graduate of the University of Texas. Or claim to be. And you do not know who Mata Hari was?”
“Come on, who was she?”
“Let me see, where shall we start. Do you know who Cleopatra was?”
“Caimán, tell me who Mata Hari was or I shall have you shot.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“President Kennedy would invade you.”
“I bet he wouldn’t invade me if I taught him Arcadia’s secrets.”
“Aha. Good point. Although that is precisely why he would want to invade you. I’ll throw that in.”
“Throw that in what?”
“In the package I am negotiating with Comandante Che. On top of the other Cuban concessions, you throw in Arcadia for the President.”
“Who was Mata Hari?”
“Mata Hari was a very famous spy during World War I. Maybe I shouldn’t say she was very famous, if you never even heard of her. Let’s say she used to be famous, and thirty-five-year-olds like myself know who she was. She vamped important French officials, and got secrets from them which she gave to the Germans.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“Nothing. I hope.”
“You haven’t told me any secrets. Yet. Won’t you tell me just one secret, in return for Arcadia?”
Blackford got up and slid into bed again. “All right, I’ll tell you something nobody else knows. Not even Mr. Velasco. Not even President Kennedy. Not even the head of the CIA. Not even Che Guevara.”
“What?” she laughed.
“I am going back to Washington.”
“When? For how long?”
“As soon as I can. Of course I intend to come back to Havana. And Che, as you know, has made it clear he wants me here. But then we are all at the mercy of Fidel, are we not?”
“Yes,” she said. “But do not underestimate Che Guevara. Other people have.”
“And they are all dead?”
“Not all of them. Arcadia is just fine.”
“Viva,” he said, invading her anew, “Arcadia.”
“Viva Arcadia, my dear Caimán.”
Twenty-five
Blackford was not entirely surprised when, just after breakfast the following morning, Major Hernández advised them that, unhappily, Comandante Guevara had radioed that he was delayed further, indeed that he could not even be sure he would be free to be with them on the following day, that he was held up in Havana on important national business and he recommended that Caimán fly back to Havana. Major Hernández said that the message emphasized that “there would be plenty for Sr. Caimán to do in Havana.”
“Major, are you in a position to communicate directly with Comandante Guevara?”
“I can certainly get a message to him, and would expect a reply by radio here, or by telephone at Santiago.”
“All right, here’s what you’re to do. Radio the Comandante and tell him that Mr. Caiman needs to return to Washington. Ask him kindly to make whatever arrangements are necessary to pass through the Guantánamo Gate. You take us on the helicopter to the Santiago base and arrange to have someone there take me to Guántanamo. Either the base commander or his representative can tell me after we land there what arrangements have been made.”
Catalina relayed all of this, and Major Hernández’s head nodded as he took notes. He knew the voice of authority, and assumed in any case that Comandante Che’s special guest would not be asking for something the Comandante would not readily provide.
“And oh yes, Major Hernández. In your radio report, kindly instruct the Havana office that I shall need to speak, from Santiago, by telephone with my assistant, Señor Velasco. Major Joe Bustamente is in charge of Mr. Velasco, who is staying at El Comodoro. A telephone can be plugged in to him, and he should be advised to expect my call.”
In twenty minutes they were packed and in the helicopter, the blades swirled and it began a grudging rise. A hundred yards up, the pilot tilted the aircraft on its side and Blackford looked down at the village with the conspicuous guest house at the edge of it. He wondered whether, at Yenan, Mao Tse-tung had set up something comparable. The spot from which he had set out to capture China. Probably. Professor Karl Wittfogel had written about the “megalomania of the aging despot.” Self-commemoration is popular among tyrants. And ex-presidents are not altogether immune.
It was an hour’s ride and Blackford was surprised, on being taken to the headquarters of the base, to find that the commanding officer had already received a reply from Havana. It was, first, a clearance to be driven to Guantánamo. Then a message that a telephone call to Mr. Velasco would be put through any time.
“And finally, Sr. Caimán, the Comandante desires to speak to you himself over the telephone.”
“Now?”
“I have two numbers. If it is convenient for you to speak to him now, he advises me he will be at one of those numbers. Would you care to take my office? I will stay here. You need merely pick up the telephone that rings.”
Blackford turned to Catalina. “Explain to him we’ll need an extension phone for your interpreting.” This she relayed, and it was arranged that the secretary’s telephone could come in on the same line.
Five minutes later Blackford was interrupted from his study of the huge detailed air map of Cuba behind the commander’s desk by the telephone’s ringing. He picked it up. He heard Catalina, sitting at the desk outside, say over her line, “He’s coming to the telephone.” And then the voice of Che Guevara:
“Caimán, how are you?”
“I am well, Comandante. I am sorry you were not here to complete our tour. But I think I picked up some of what you wished me to learn.”
“Why is it that you need to go back to Washington?”
“I need to get the feel of things there. It has been weeks since this enterprise began, and we have not made much headway.”
“You are not doubting the seriousness of my interest, Caimán?”
“No. But the idea of this agreement is to get on with things before certain other things—you will understand me, I know—become irreversible. I need to know what kind of tempo is okay back there, and that’s not the kind of thing you can get from a cable.”
“I understand. I simply did not want to think that you were discouraged by the delays. Cubans always delay. It is their—our—nature. When do you expect to return?”
“I would hope within a week. Now listen: It may be that they will want some specific answers in Washington before I return. If that is the case, I will communicate with the Swiss ambassador, and he can reach Velasco without any problem, right?”
“Of course.”
“And Velasco, is he making progress on the evaluations?”
“Ah, alas, Caimán, not yet, not yet. You see, Señor Velasco had an accident.”
Blackford stiffened. He felt a pang in his stomach. He spoke slowly.
“What kind of an accident?”
“Well, three men who were friends of the code clerk at the Swiss Embassy—I forget his name, the one who was killed—were stupid enough to suspect that your friend Velasco was the killer, even though they had been told that that was impossible, that Mr. Velasco was at your cottage during that whole period, nursing a bad stomach. Anyway, they grabbed him on the street two days ago, at a moment when Joe Bustamente was momentarily distracted, took him into a building, and gave him—I am afraid to say—a most severe beating. But then,” Blackford could hear Che sigh over the telephone, “I guess all we should say is that he was lucky he wasn’t killed.”
Blackford felt the sweat on his brow. He could manage only to say, “Is he all right?”
“Oh, he will be quite all right. In about a week. About when you get back. They are taking very good care of him at the hospital.”
This Blackford knew he had to say, and he did what he could to resonate indignation. “And the fucking bully-boys?”
“Ah, they will be most severely dealt with, leave that to me.”
“Can I talk with Velasco?”
“I am afraid not. Not for a few days. His jaw, you see, is wired, but the stitches, I am told, will be removed in three or four days … Well, as you gringos say, Caimán, Godspeed, and I will welcome you back on your mission. The Swiss ambassador will know how to reach my office. A word now, if I may, with Catalina. Hasta luego, Caimán.”
Twenty-six
At Guan
tánamo, after Washington had been consulted, Blackford was put on a naval plane that went cautiously out to sea twenty-five miles, then turned east until it was twenty-five miles past the eastern point of Cuba, and then headed, having given Castro Cuba a berth several times wider than international law requires, for Miami. There Blackford caught a commercial plane to Washington. For several hours he was tormented by the thought of Velasco. But ten years’ professional experience tamped down his turbulence, and he found himself predominantly grateful—that Velasco had not been simply shot. After all, he was apparently guilty not only of eliminating a very useful Cuban mole. He was guilty of murder. Murder was illegal even under Batista.
He was forced, finally and fondly, to grin. He was prepared to bet that Velasco was doing the same thing, assuming he could do so, athwart all that wiring in his jaw. Velasco owed his life to his having been in Cuba under the auspices of an understanding between Che Guevara and the President of the United States. It was that simple. He wondered—though the curiosity here was entirely professional—what Che would have done if he had been able to prove that Velasco was guilty. And, he suspected, Che Guevara, in doing what he had done to Velasco, in the way he did it, had been communicating to Blackford Oakes. Along the lines of: Do not play with me, Caimán. At the same time he expected that Guevara was understanding and, again professionally, admiring of what Velasco had done. It was, after all, hardly in the spirit of the general Guevara-Goodwin-Kennedy-Oakes agreement that copies of Blackford’s private communications to the White House and the Director of the CIA should be passed on to Guevara.
Although it was November, it wasn’t cold in Washington. Still, he could almost feel the winter straining to assert itself. He went directly to Georgetown, to an address he had got over the telephone in Miami, and rang the bell. The door was opened by Rufus.
Blackford knew that Rufus was made chronically uncomfortable by any sign whatever of sentiment, and Blackford consciously abused him when, perhaps once a year, he embraced him with a bear hug. But it happened that he felt that way about him. And Rufus, though he would never permit himself to show it, was always happiest when working with Blackford; content, also, in his company.
See You Later, Alligator Page 18
