But the captain was out of immediate earshot she saw as she raised her head from the effort to inspect the manacles behind her.
Then she looked in front of her, and now she knew. “¡Madre de Dios!” were her last words.
Forty-four
Tuesday morning in Havana was for official Cuba—the top cadre, really, who quickly assimilated the dimensions of the events made public by Kennedy’s broadcast—something of a letdown. The excitement that the night before had confronted them with had substantially dissipated as the consensus grew that it was unlikely the Soviet Union would answer immediately the American challenge. Meanwhile all of Cuba knew, suddenly, that Fidel Castro had made a deal which, if it had succeeded, would in effect have made Cuba into something of a superpower. It was not widely ventilated that Castro had actually ceded to the Soviet Union ownership of the land on which the missiles sat, something Castro later heatedly denied was the case, when confronted with the allegation. The feeling that morning was that the island was safe, for the moment, from any American invasion and that, really, the unresolved issues were now between the Soviet Union and the United States, and it was unlikely that Cuba would suffer directly. Not unless the Soviet Union was defiant. If Soviet submarines began challenging American naval vessels, then presumably there would be war. But since President Kennedy had given the distinct impression that the Soviet missiles were not yet armed, Cuba would not likely be a bloody battleground of a third world war. It all argued, for that part of the population that gave the crisis thought, a kind of tranquillity. There was simply nothing to be done.
Castro’s mood was dour, in part because he was rather hung over from the elation of the night before, an elation he had been careful to modulate over television. He did not want to give the impression that he had sat out an entire week in silence while knowing that the United States had three substantial military areas in Cuba between the cross hairs of its mighty air force. Or that he was privately overjoyed that no invasion or bombardment was imminent. He did what he could, without implying any estrangement, publicly to challenge the Soviet Union to prove that it was the true friend of liberation movements everywhere. He had spoken for ninety minutes. And when, the next morning, he asked his press attaché to give him reports from foreign capitals on reactions, he was chagrined to be told that not very much time or attention had been devoted to his speech.
“Not even in Mexico?”
“The radio in Mexico carried an account, and it is of course too early to know what the afternoon newspapers will do.” Castro dismissed him.
It was then that Raúl Roa, Castro’s Foreign Minister and a longtime member of the Communist Party, telephoned him. He had, he told Castro, just finished receiving the Swiss ambassador, a distinguished old bird who had demanded a personal audience for the purpose of bringing to him a cable from the President of the United States.
“From the President of the United States!” Castro exclaimed.
“Not exactly. But not far from it. The cable is from his brother, the Attorney General. But it might as well have come from the President and there cannot be any doubt that the President himself ordered it to be transmitted.”
Castro tensed himself on his chair. “All right, Roa. Read it to me.”
The Foreign Minister did so.
Oddly, Castro was glad to have something concrete to do. He instructed Roa to call a meeting for two o’clock at the INRA at which he wished Che Guevara to be present and also Avila Bacarro, the Solicitor General, and of course Ramiro Valdés, from Interior. He shut down the receiver and put a call in to Che. He was annoyed that he could not find Che until very nearly twelve. “Where on earth have you been?”
“There was trouble down at the bay. Canadian cargo ship with vital spare parts. The captain had a cable from his Toronto office, didn’t want to unload until after the crisis was over.”
“What happened?”
“I persuaded him. It wasn’t hard. But it consumed most of my morning. What’s up, Fidel?”
Castro recounted, with some perturbation, the telegram from the U.S. Attorney General. “Your friend Caimán is well connected.”
“Well, he came here under high auspices in his own government and, if you will permit me, also here.”
“Yes. Have you had a chance to check out the information he gave you yesterday?”
“Fidel! That will take two weeks, at the least.”
“In two weeks Caimán will be dead.”
“In two weeks he will be rotting. He is scheduled to die on Thursday.”
“Yes. Well, I have called a meeting at the INRA for two o’clock—Roa, Valdés, and Bacarro. I want you there. I don’t suppose you happen to have the answer to the question of whether our getting Caimán on the high seas makes having him here illegal under international law?”
“I don’t. I know we have no legal rights outside the twelve-mile limit.”
“How far out were we?”
“Fifty miles.”
“I suppose we could say we were only ten miles out.”
“We could. We would need to doctor a lot of logbooks. And then there is the possibility that U.S. radar fixed the position of the Aguila and the País. And then, too, we know that Caimán gave an exact navigational position in his telephone call to New York.”
“He could have been lying.”
“Imagine!”
At the meeting, Fidel Castro was not in the least hortatory. But he was clearly exercised. He listened to a dry lecture on the law from Bacarro and cut it short by saying he had got rather confused. “I am a qualified lawyer,” Castro reminded him, drawing on his cigar. “And it would appear to me that we have a metaphysical problem here. I understand the law says that a tribunal need not concern itself with the means by which a defendant’s presence in court was effected. But in our case, 1) the tribunal passed sentence while the American was in Cuba. Now, 2) he escapes, and our forces go out and 3) get him in neutral waters. The question is whether the finding of the tribunal that tried him legally is voided by the subsequent illegal apprehension. If that is so, would it then follow that if he were retried, and the court declined to listen to arguments concerning the illegality of that apprehension, the court could then proceed to find him guilty, and proceed with the execution?”
“That would be a contention we would be prepared to make, Comandante. But there then arises the question of damages: illegal apprehension is an offense under international law. To proceed with an execution following that illegal apprehension would be to make impossible the most appropriate damages, which would be, of course, the return of the person illegally apprehended.”
“Thank you, gentlemen.” Castro pointed to Bacarro and Roa. This meant that they were to leave. And that Valdés and Che were to remain. They left.
“Forget the law,” Castro said. “Let us ask only this: If the President wants Caimán back so badly, what can we get from him? Alternatively, what can he do to us? No, not what can he do to us. He could, theoretically, cause the City of Havana to cease to exist. But what is he likely to do if we proceed with the execution? Che?”
“Mr. Kennedy is said to have something of a temper.”
“On the other hand,” Valdés observed, “this is hardly the time for him to be governed by temper. A third world war may be in the offing.”
“Taking another approach,” Castro said, “what—forgetting the missiles for the moment—would we most usefully have from Washington that Washington would conceivably give us?”
“I have a list I worked up with the prisoner over a period of six months which amounts to one billion dollars worth of industrial items we need very badly.”
“He is not going to give us one billion dollars for Caimán. It must not look like blackmail,” Castro said. “He would not engage in any exchange of that order. The quid pro quo must have a symbolic value.” Fidel looked out of the window, distracted.
“We will think about it. Meanwhile, Che, if we haven’t solved the problem by T
hursday don’t execute him. Every day, just have him told it has been postponed by one day.”
“What message will you return via the Swiss Embassy?”
“Nothing,” Castro said. “Nothing for the moment. We are presumably very busy. Caught up in our crisis.” Suddenly the distraction was over. Fidel pressed on his buzzer and an aide came bounding in. “Anything from Moscow?”
“Not yet, Comandante.”
Driving back to his office, it came to Che, slowly but surely. Fidel is scared. He is scared of what John F. Kennedy might do to him, Fidel Castro, if he does not return Caimán. Therefore Caimán will be returned.
The change from yesterday! Che Guevara had studied Fidel for over four years. He was at once a brave man and—a coward. Or, perhaps, call it—prudent.
All that had gone on during the past hour, all of it was sham. Fidel Castro had received a personal ultimatum from the President of the United States. It had not threatened the end of Cuban sovereignty or anything on that order. It involved the life of one miserable young American agent whose involvement in Cuba after all had been impossibly complicated, diplomatically and legally. Yesterday Fidel would gladly have tortured him to death. Today he was resigned to giving him up. What he wants is a face-saver. And—Che reflected—given the sticky background of this mess, I had better be the person to come up with it.
That afternoon, Che sent a messenger to the INRA. The envelope, marked “Strictly Personal from Che Guevara,” was delivered instantly to Castro.
The covering note read, “Fidel: What would you think of something like this? Here is a draft of a cable Raúl Roa might send back via the embassy.”
Castro began to read:
ATTORNEY GENERAL
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
WASHINGTON DC
THE PRIME MINISTER OF CUBA, HIS EXCELLENCY LICENCIADO FIDEL CASTRO, HAS DIRECTED ME TO REPLY THAT AN INVESTIGATION PRELIMINARILY TENDS TO CONFIRM THE ALLEGATION THAT THE CUBAN PATROL VESSEL FRANK PAÍS INADVERTENTLY STRAYED BEYOND CUBAN WATERS ON SUNDAY OCTOBER 14. THE PRIME MINISTER IS UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES DISPOSED TO GRANT THE REQUEST OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. BUT THIS ONLY UPON RECEIPT OF A WRITTEN DECLARATION BY THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES THAT HE WILL GIVE PERSONAL ATTENTION TO THE CLAIMS OF 23 CUBANS IN JAIL IN MIAMI, FLORIDA, WHO HAVE BEEN ILLEGALLY ARRESTED. A LIST OF THESE VICTIMS OF U.S. JUDICIAL INJUSTICE WAS READ OUT AT A PROTEST MEETING HELD IN MANHATTAN BY THE FAIR PLAY FOR CUBA COMMITTEE IN SEPTEMBER 1960 BY THE DISTINGUISHED ATTORNEY LEONARD BOUDIN. THE PRIME MINISTER WOULD REQUIRE THAT THE DOCUMENT PROMISING TO GIVE PERSONAL ATTENTION TO THESE CLAIMS BE SIGNED BY THE ATTORNEY GENERAL. THE DOCUMENT WOULD NEED A FURTHER FRANK, TO WIT, “APPROVED:” FOLLOWED BY THE SIGNATURE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. UPON RECEIPT OF SUCH A DOCUMENT AT THE BASE AT GUANTÁNAMO, THE PRISONER OAKES WILL BE TURNED OVER TO U.S. AUTHORITIES.
Following the text of the proposed cable Guevara had written in longhand: “Let me have your reaction, if you feel like it.”
The telephone rang.
“It is brilliant, Che. Brilliant! You have succeeded in coming up with something the President is not likely to want to exhibit. But which we are free to exhibit at any time we choose. A document that contains the signatures of both the Attorney General and the President! Do you think they will agree?”
“I don’t know, Fidel. That business about also requiring the approval of the chief of state is pretty rough stuff. I’d hate to be in a position of having to ask you to write ‘Approved’ to warrant the authority of one of your own ministers.”
“I see your point. But all the more exquisite if they agree, eh, Che? If they draw the line at the President’s signature, we can always reconsider. I shall have the message substantially in the form you recommend delivered to the Swiss Embassy this afternoon.”
“Any other news, Fidel?”
“No. Well, not quite no. A message from Chomón”—Faure Chomón, the Cuban Ambassador to the Soviet Union, had been bearing the brunt of Castro’s displeasure. “Chomón spent a half hour with Gromyko. He reports that the Politburo is in continuous session and that, of course, we will be the first to learn what their response will be. But we are not to expect anything for several days.”
“I see. I am at your service, Comandante.” Che hung up the telephone.
He had been right about Fidel. Fidel was scared and nervous. That telegram had, in a strange way, got to him.
And he guessed the Americans would comply.
Forty-five
At eight in the morning on Wednesday the usual clanging announced a visitor. Not the guard who brought in breakfast, if that was what he could call one slice of black bread and one glass of water with something orange dropped into it, just enough to spoil the taste of the water. That had come an hour earlier. Blackford was lying on his bed, waiting for the sun to get bright enough to permit him to resume reading his detective story.
It was Major Marzo.
“Sr. Caimán, I have been assigned to … supervise … you until … I am relieved of duty, and therefore it falls to me to advise you—” and he went through the identical routine regarding requests of prisoners to be executed to which Blackford had submitted ten days earlier.
He gave the same answers. And when Major Marzo came to the last question, Did the condemned have any requests? Blackford said, once again, that he would like to visit with Catalina Urrutia.
Major Marzo looked up.
“The prisoner Catalina Urrutia was executed yesterday morning.”
Blackford sprang up from his bed, his eyes blazing. He approached to within inches of Major Marzo, who fell back toward the open door.
“What did you say, Marzo?”
Major Marzo repeated that the condemned Urrutia had been executed the preceding day.
“You are crazy, Marzo,” Blackford fairly shouted at him. “Catalina Urrutia had a pardon from Che Guevara countersigned by Fidel Castro.”
“The Comandante en Jefe,” said Major Marzo, behind whom two of the outside guards had rallied, “evidently changed his mind.”
Blackford raised his arms, straining the brace on the right shoulder, and lunged at the officer, who ducked to one side, making room for a guard to thrust the butt end of his carbine hard into Blackford’s stomach. A second drove the butt of his carbine into Blackford’s crotch. The two guards continued their beating until Marzo stopped them.
They left him on the floor, gasping for breath and spitting blood.
When they brought him the lunch tray he was still on the floor, his face only a few inches removed from his vomit.
Comandante Citrón was notified, and made a call to Guevara.
“Hospitalize him,” Guevara said.
Blackford Oakes’s near-lifeless body was lifted back onto one of those stretchers. His eyes were closed, and he responded to not a word asked of him by prison official, doctor, or nurse.
He didn’t know when it was that he was taken from the bed—was he drugged? He supposed so. He remembered nothing, except vague and desultory exertions involved in placing him into an airplane, and becoming airborne. Eventually the engines stopped. He was lifted up and, with one guard on his left shoulder, another managing his right side without putting pressure on the shoulder, he was maneuvered down a gangway into a car. Someone put a cap on his head, tilting down the visor to keep the sun away. There was a pause, an exchange of papers of some sort. He was, all of a sudden, in yet another hospital, except that here they spoke more English.
He woke before dawn, his mind slowly regaining lucidity. He did not know where he was, but focused his eyes on a bell pinned to the side of the bed. He tried with his right hand to reach up to it, but the pain stopped him. He moved his left hand across his body, reached the button, and depressed it.
A nurse arrived. “And are you feeling better, Mr. Oakes?”
“Where am I?”
“You are at the Naval Hospital at Guantánamo.”
“What are they going to do w
ith me?”
“Ah, you will need to ask the doctor that question. He will make his rounds, as usual, at seven. You can talk to him then, and I’m sure he will answer all your questions. Meanwhile you are obviously improving, and that is very good news. Can I get you a glass of milk?”
“No. Nothing. Thank you.”
He closed his eyes, and woke when the doctor came in.
Four days later he was in Maryland, sitting, warmly clothed, in a garden. It was noon, and the weather was brilliantly sunny. On the iron table to his right was a glass of iced tea.
“It is a real Indian summer we are having, Blackford. Really quite unusual, and most welcome.”
“It is very pretty, Rufus, a very pretty day. And your rose garden looks fine, even in October.”
“I think you should stay until May, Blackford. That is when the roses really show off.”
Epilogue
Five years later, on October 8, 1967, Blackford Oakes flew into La Paz. He had left Washington for Bolivia the afternoon before with instructions to superintend, to the extent he would be permitted to do so, arrangements involving the debriefing of Ernesto Che Guevara, whose capture was confidently predicted as imminent. “Colonel Zenteno has got them surrounded,” the Director advised Blackford. “Tomorrow, or the next day at the latest, they’ll have him. Have the lot of them. Che Guevara may have written the classic on guerrilla warfare, but he has certainly made a fiasco of this one. Eleven months in the field and he has exactly twenty-two men, and not one single recruit from the Bolivian peasantry.”
See You Later, Alligator Page 31
