See You Later, Alligator

by William F. Buckley

  It was after two in the morning. The wind retained its Force 7 velocity; the Aguila absorbed the beating but with considerable physical discomfort to its passengers.

  “Cecilio, I’ve got to go and relieve the captain. What is his name?”

  “Eduardo.”

  “Resistance fighter? Mercenary?”

  “The latter.”

  “Quick background.”

  “Sixty-five. His ship was nationalized by Che in that last edict. Very bitter. Income way down. I propositioned him after one of my friends said he was a likely collaborator.”

  “Money?”

  “Yes. A lot. Fifty thousand dollars if he delivers us to Miami.”

  “Did you have a chance to size him up? Family problems?”

  “That’s the good news. No children. Wife died two years ago. He is convinced that if the doctor she had used for thirty years had been around she’d have made it. But the doctor had been shot. Because he had also been the doctor of Batista’s wife, and had volunteered to look after the wounded Cubans on the beach at the Bay of Pigs.”

  “Well. Doesn’t sound as if Eduardo would turn around and go home at the first sight of a Cuban patrol. Would hardly do him much good. I’d like to be there at his court-martial in front of Ramiro Valdés, Osvaldo Dorticós, and Che Guevara.”

  “I want to hear about that.”

  “Any firearms on board?”

  Velasco smiled around the cigarette in his mouth. “One .22-caliber rifle. And even that had to be sneaked on board at the last minute. The resistance gentlemen who brought us here declined to part with their guns.”

  “I was hoping you would say, ‘Six hand grenades and two Ak-17’s’—what is that complicated Spanish word for machine guns?”

  “Ametralladoras.”

  “Right … One .22, and that’s it?”

  Velasco puffed on his cigarette. “There are the makings, here and there, of some nuisance weapons. There is kerosene, there are rags, there is a rather sophisticated inventory of distress flares. Put it this way: there isn’t anything that would keep a well-stocked patrol vessel out of our way for very long.”

  Blackford reflected. “Let’s have a quick drink, compañero.”

  Velasco’s face brightened. He reached over the prostrate body of Catalina to a locker, opened it, and brought out a bottle of rum. Grappling with the seas he tossed the bottle to Blackford and walked his way, clutching the guardrail, to a locker opposite the chart table, which disgorged two coffee cups. He tried at first to hold a cup steady, while Blackford poured.

  “That doesn’t work at sea,” Blackford said, reaching for one cup. Bracing one foot against the table leg between the two saloon couches, he managed to pour a few jiggers into the first cup and jerkily to convey it to Velasco. He took the second cup, did the same, and returned the bottle. Velasco wedged it into the galley-locker. They looked at each other.

  “To you, Cecilio. My thanks.”

  “To you, amigo. Para servirle.”

  They drained their drinks. “Okay, let’s go. Foul-weather gear?”

  Velasco stood and made his way to the standing locker on the starboard side of the companionway, opened it, and fished out two sou’westers. He tossed one at Blackford, who said, “I’ll relieve the skipper. You go forward and get some sleep. I’ll call you if there’s any reason to call you.”

  Cecilio smiled his half smile, visible and then invisible against the shifting illumination of the kerosene lamp by the chart table. “I will have no problem in staying awake. My problem would be in trying to sleep.”

  “Okay,” said Blackford appreciatively.

  They donned their gear and climbed up into the howl. It wasn’t cold, but it was blowing hard, and the spray of the pounding boat reached back into the cockpit more or less continuously, sometimes as little needles of salt water, sometimes as great tumblerfuls.

  “I have come to relieve you, Eduardo,” Blackford had to speak loudly against the engine noise. He thought to add his thanks, but decided the moment inappropriate, and the circumstances conceivably dangerous. This was, theoretically, a commercial venture by Eduardo. “You had better go below, grab some cheese or whatever, and try to get a little rest. Mr. Velasco and I will take over. What is your course?”

  “Until we hit the Gulf Stream, Zero Three Zero. After that we’ll need to compensate. Are you familiar with boats, Señor?”

  “Yes. We can make the Gulf Stream calculations as late as 6 A.M. Do you have a radio direction finder?”

  “Sí Señor.”

  “Where is it?”

  Eduardo pointed to a locker under the chart table. “I put in new batteries yesterday.”

  Blackford said he would check for drift on the course to Key West at four, and every hour after that.

  Eduardo said, Good sailing, in monotone, and made his way below, sliding the overhead hatch back to let himself down, then closing it again and raising the bulkhead to the companionway to its two-thirds level.

  “Call if you need me. At eighteen hundred rpm we would be doing eight knots normally. In these seas we will be doing under seven knots.”

  “Thanks,” Blackford said at the wheel, lifting his hood over his head. “Eduardo,” he called out.

  The captain looked up through the bulkhead aperture.

  “Can I borrow your cap?” Blackford asked him.

  Eduardo tossed it to Cecilio, who handed it to Blackford. It helped deflect the spray.

  Blackford had beckoned to Cecilio to come closer, so that they could converse over the engine noise. He did so happily, though his sacrifices were minor and major. He lost the windward protection of the canvas dodger, which shielded him, though only in part, from some of the spray. The major problem was his cigarette. There was no longer any way of keeping it lit.

  “What did you do when I left you?”

  “Do you really need to know, Blackford?”

  “No. But I want to know.”

  “Very well. After Castro’s DC-3 let me off at Guantánamo, I was ushered through the gate, the usual business. Two hours later, after leaving a note for the commandant that I had a sick Spanish-Cuban relative I had decided to look after before returning to the States, I went back the way I came, gave the usual signals, and told the guard, who had seen me only two hours earlier, that apparently my car was late, but that didn’t matter, I would wait, as I had been instructed to do, at the village tavern. No problem, as it turned out.”

  “And then?”

  “I made my way back to Havana. I had done the scouting, and I had pesos and dollars, plenty of them. Once in Havana I met with one of our assets.”

  “One of the people you knew during the Bay of Pigs business?”

  “Yes. He is very well placed. In fact he told me that the day after I left you, reports had come in from the KGB on my activities in Spain and Mexico. That must have confused them. But the scene was quiet because, after all, I was supposedly back in America.”

  “And then?”

  “I organized a quiet watch to keep track of you.”

  “Where did you stay?”

  “In a room in the apartment house opposite Catalina’s.”

  “God.”

  “I had help. Very encouraging. Castro thinks that the Camagüey guerrillas were all liquidated. That is three quarters true. There are remains, and many live in Havana.”

  “Did you see me go out that night—Thursday night—with Catalina?”

  “Yes. But there wasn’t time to follow you. I had access to a car and driver who had very well-placed papers, but getting him would have taken a half hour. So I made some calculations. I waited in my apartment, and I had one of my friends, in a truck, waiting opposite the Swiss Embassy. He reported to me your arrest.

  “The problem then was to locate you. My collaborator watching the Swiss Embassy did not have a car, so he couldn’t follow the military. So I figured the likeliest way to find you was to keep eyes on Che Guevara. That was not so difficult. When you
left the Swiss Embassy with Catalina, under guard, and headed away, we didn’t know where. Then we were lucky.”

  “How?”

  “I called your pal Rosaria at headquarters the next morning, just like old times. I told her that the Comandante had asked to see me on the Caimán question. If she had frozen I’d have hung up, backed away. But she said first ‘hello,’ and then that Caimán had been detained at El Príncipe prison and would appear at a judicial proceeding with the Comandante at ten o’clock that night.

  “We followed the military van to El Príncipe. We prepared a guerrilla strike for the next morning—for this morning—after we learned of the death sentence. Then, watching the entrance to El Príncipe, we saw the military truck drive up. One of my friends—he is very good at that sort of thing—made friends with the driver. Told my man he’d be there ‘until they brought out the American.’ I got the word in my truck, and substituted the ambush for the guerrilla action—which, my dear Blackford, I deceive you not, would have involved a stolen helicopter. My duties were greatly simplified. At one point I had sixteen men prepared. We did it with four—”

  Blackford pointed: “What’s that?”

  Velasco strained to see in the direction Blackford was looking. He could not focus on whatever it was.

  “I forgot to bring up the binocs. Do you know where they are?”

  Velasco clambered below and returned with them. He took the wheel and handed them to Blackford, who looked two points to port and stared for a full two minutes.

  “No problem. Merchant vessel, I’d guess. I can see his green running light, and he is headed well east of our course.”

  Blackford peered about him. The waves had reached five to eight feet, and the boat’s way was sluggish, up against the heightening headwinds. The vessel continued to plod down on the water, as if expressing punctuated resentment over the helmsman’s headstrong course. “I’d be tempted to head for the Bahamas in this wind,” Blackford called out. To himself he muttered, “If there weren’t other considerations to worry about …”

  And, relaxing again, he returned to the interrupted narrative: “A helicopter. God almighty, Cecilio!”

  “Perhaps you forget I had a great deal of contact with Cuba only eighteen months ago. I have my friends there.”

  “But not every friend has a helicopter.”

  “I have to admit that the pilot who was prepared to go to the air force base—to Ciudad Libertad—and simply step into a helicopter and fly it off as he used to do routinely was not the most self-assured man I ever met. He had not flown a helicopter in two years. But he had been in prison for two years; and that turns out to be very good substitute training. He amused himself in solitary, he told me, by imagining emergency situations in a helicopter and training his mind—he did this hour after hour, day after day—on just how he would cope with them.”

  “Don’t give me too many details now, because it’s a strain to hear. But tell me, what was the plan?”

  “Orthodox. I saw variations in Spain. Huge diversion outside the gates. They used dive bombers. We planned to enter the helicopter with two machine gunners. A lot of dead men, but two live prisoners. Anyway, that was the plot.”

  “And then?”

  “Simple. A run for Key West at low altitude. Surprise was essential. Executions are scheduled for 6 A.M. That isn’t an hour at which Cuban fighters are quickly summoned. And remember, today is Sunday. By helicopter we’d have had you in Key West in fifty minutes.”

  “I guess right now I wish you had hung on to that helicopter.”

  “That was emergency action. A hundred things could have gone wrong. One well-aimed shot at the pilot at Ciudad Libertad, for instance.”

  “How strong is the resistance, Cecilio?”

  “Only just about strong enough to attempt to rescue two prisoners.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “I spent much time with the Resistance, Blackford. Castro broke their back at Camagüey. There are many left. But they become fewer day by day. Maybe you will be glad to know, Blackford, that since the unfortunate death of the poor radio operator, Nogales, the rate at which Castro has detected Resistance members has slowed. Slowed considerably. Still—I must go below and have a cigarette, Blackford—still, the freedom fighters are few. I do not know exactly how many. But today’s exercise was, well, very—ingratiating. Is that the right word?”

  “It will do,” Blackford said, turning the wheel to avoid head-to-head confrontation with a huge oncoming wave. “Go get your cigarette, compañero.”

  And so Velasco went below. But stayed there much longer than it takes to smoke a cigarette; even two cigarettes. At one point Blackford simply concluded that Cecilio had succumbed to fatigue. But then he saw the shadow moving about in the way of the two dim lights.

  It had got cold, and Blackford remembered his light sweater below. One hand on the wheel, he stretched toward the companionway bulkhead.

  “Cecilio?”

  There was a shuffle below. Cecilio had been sitting over the chart table.

  “Yes, Blackford.”

  “On the settee, somewhere, is a sweater. Could you hand it to me?”

  The sweater was thrust through the open part of the companionway. Ducking under the dodger, leaving the wheel unattended for a moment, Blackford took off the jacket of his sou’wester and pulled the sweater over his body. The sou’wester back on, he went to the wheel and made the minor adjustment necessary to resume course, and his mind turned to navigation, and to the radio direction finder. He looked at his watch. It was four. He called again to Cecilio. “I’d better check the RDF. Will you take the wheel for a bit?”

  “In a moment, Blackford.”

  The moment turned out to be ten minutes. Velasco finally emerged, cigarette in his mouth. It was twilight, and the gray seas were now clearly visible. The skies were less than cloudy, more than merely misty. Visibility was perhaps five miles.

  “Stick to 0-3-0 degrees,” Blackford gave his relief the conventional instructions. “I’ll give you a correction after I’ve got a bearing. When I call out Mark, make a note of your bearing.”

  Below, Blackford pulled out the five-pound RDF, sat it down on the chart table, aligned it to the boat’s long axis, turned it on and quickly consulted his log, where he had written down the primary radio beacon numbers in that area. The signal from Key West had a range of up to 100 miles. He found, and brought in, the signal three separate times, bracketing the null, and shouting out: Mark! each time he fastened on it. He got the ship’s headings from Cecilio: 0-3-5. 0-2-8. 0-3-2. He made his calculations, turned off the instrument, lowered the cockpit bulkhead and climbed back into the cockpit.

  “We’ve been set to the east. Not surprising. Alter the course to 0-2-2 degrees.” North-northeast was only a few compass points from where they could expect to see the sun through the mist, coming up off the starboard bow. When it came, it gladdened them. Now they experienced its psychological warmth. Soon they would feel its physical warmth. That was when they heard the airplane.

  Each man looked up.

  It was flying at about three thousand feet of altitude, headed in their direction. It began a descent, directly toward them. It looked for a moment almost like a fighter diving at a target.

  “Grab the wheel!” Blackford shouted.

  He dived below, shouted to Eduardo and Catalina to get up, and turned on the radio full volume. He flipped from channel to channel, hoping to stumble over the line the airplane overhead was using. He heard only static.

  “Eduardo. Relieve Velasco. Send him down here.”

  To Velasco: “Were you able to spot any identification on the plane?”

  “Yes. Cuban Air Force.”

  “Okay. Then the orders evidently aren’t as simple as to drop a bomb or release a torpedo and simply sink us. They’re probably not happy at the prospect of doing that kind of thing fifty miles from Key West. But we’ve got to assume they’ve given our position to Cuban patrols.” Blackf
ord paused for a moment. And then, to Cecilio, “Tell Eduardo to keep scanning the horizon. Catalina, put something on”—he pointed to the hanging locker “—and go forward with the binoculars. Keep looking for any signs of a boat headed our way. Or for any boat.”

  Without a word she reacted. In two minutes, foul-weather gear on, she had bounded to the cockpit and crawled forward, against the wind and seas, to the foredeck. In another two minutes she had returned. Through the hatch opening she shouted, “No good up there. Too much spray. I can monitor better—see better—from the cockpit.”

  “Okay,” Blackford said. And to Velasco, “Remove that hatch cover. We don’t need to shield the lights anymore.”

  He itched with the anxiety he had publicly discussed a few hours earlier.

  Should he attempt a radio communication? He decided to share his quandary.

  “Cecilio. Do we have any doubt that they now know where we are?”

  “No, Blackford. They know where we are.”

  “It follows that to use the radio isn’t going to do us any harm as far as identifying our position is concerned. Though it’s true that if they hear us trying to get through to Washington, and if there’s time to stop us, the fighter may be ordered to sink us. What the hell. Let’s use the goddam thing and try to get a connection.”

  It was just after five-thirty. His contingency log spoke at him his premeditated decision to call first, if the emergency should come between four and eight in the morning, to Anthony Trust’s home telephone; failing that, to the CIA Duty Officer.

  He turned to Channel 40. “This is the vessel Aguila, the vessel Aguila calling Key West. Our Calling Number is Whiskey Able George 9042, Whiskey Able George 9042. We are fifty miles south of Key West. Do you read me, Key West?”

  Silence.

  The whole thing repeated again.

  Silence.

  The whole thing a third time.

  Silence; and static. Blackford turned the squelch knob up, to drown out the static.

  A fourth try. He was interrupted by a cry from the cockpit: