Hostage in Havana - Noel Hynd

“So,” Alex asked at length, “what can you tell me?”

“Almost everything you need to know is on the drives,” he said. “Hope you don’t mind some heavy reading.”

“I don’t,” she said, “but I want to know what you know. You’ve been on Central America and the Caribbean your whole career. What stands out?”

“Well, here’s a tidbit you won’t hear from anyone else,” De Salvo said. “As Americans fled Castro’s takeover in 1959, people with connections to the U.S. Embassy dropped off a lot of stuff for safekeeping. Valuables like jewels, furs, stock certificates, antiques, even boxes of money. It’s still there to this day. The ‘U.S. Interests Section,’ located in the old U.S. Embassy, is technically part of the Swiss Embassy. But it’s fully staffed by American personnel and is an embassy in all but name. That this is a part of the Swiss Embassy is just a mutually convenient legalism, both for us and the Cubans. Everything is in a room that’s been kept locked ever since 1960. It’s so sensitive that the stuff has never been inventoried. No one knows what kind of identification accompanies the items. I doubt if there’s anyone alive who was physically on the premises to take the items in. Couple that with the fact that most of the people who dropped that stuff off are dead. The ultimate fate of such property? Who knows? Stuff like that is going to make your buried money look like an easy case.”

“All we have to do is dig and skedaddle,” she said, making a joke of it.

But De Salvo remained serious. “Look, Alex,” he said, “I’ll ramble a bit and tell you this: the United States is going to have to bite a few bullets and prepare for a reasonable transition in Cuba. We don’t have a lot of good intelligence coming from the island to guide us. That’s why someone like Violette could be important; that’s why I’m guessing the people at Langley want you to ride shotgun with Guarneri. Fresh eyes on the island. You remember how Russia and Eastern Europe crashed into ‘gangsterism’ after the fall of Communism in the 1980s? Well, imagine the Mafia returning to Cuba and doing business with the narcogobiernos of Mexico and Colombia. The U.S. would quickly find itself with the Latin American drug wars ninety miles off the coast of Florida. That would be a whole lot less convenient than a bearded old Bolshevik in an army uniform trying to hang onto the last gasp of his Commie dream.”

“The American mob pretty much ran the island before Castro, right?”

“Absolutely,” De Salvo said. “That’s why Fidel had popular support. The brutal dictatorship under Batista was completely on the payroll of the American Mafia. Meyer Lansky was the key guy. The mob wanted to establish the Cuban government as a fully owned subsidiary of their interests. They had plans to make Havana the Monte Carlo of North America. Anything you wanted that was illegal in the U.S., you could get legally in Havana. Drugs. Women. Sex shows. Gambling.”

“And the mob lost all its interests when Castro took over in 1959?”

“Absolutely,” De Salvo said. “The big shots got out of Cuba fast. A lot of their middle-to lower-level people ended up in jail or in front of firing squads.”

“Which explains why the U.S. government enlisted the mob to help kill Castro, right?”

“Absolutely right again. I was a young kid working at the Justice Department when a lot of this stuff came to light in the ‘70s,” De Salvo said. “Fresh out of law school and two years working as an assistant U.S. Attorney in Chicago. The attempts on Castro’s life from the United States go way back to Eisenhower. Ike set up ‘Operation Mongoose.’ The CIA had several hundred people working on this project, including anti-Castro people who were left-behinds in Cuba. The CIA trained a paramilitary guerilla force inside Cuba to remove Castro. But Fidel was enormously popular on the island, at least back then. So the idea was scrapped by Ike, and the job was left to Kennedy. That was the first time the Mafia was hired, during the Kennedy years. The mob wanted its businesses back and JFK had friends in the mob. So it all made sense. If Castro were killed by the Mafia, the CIA could wash their hands of the job. So you had this back-alley spectacle of the FBI working with the Mafia, offering a certain amount of immunity for a bunch of hoods in the U.S. in exchange for the death of Castro.”

“Much like the way my acquaintance Yuri Federov got his tax breaks,” said Alex.

“And much like the way Lucky Luciano got parole after World War II – for helping the United States Navy with the invasion of Sicily,” De Salvo said. “When the CIA was planning the Bay of Pigs invasion, the agency asked their contacts in Cuba to assess the chances that an invasion would set off a popular uprising. The CIA also asked the mob to identify the roads that Castro might use to deploy troops and tanks in meeting attacking forces. The wiseguys asked their old contacts who were still in Cuba to set up a network of spies. Idiotic idea. The CIA at its worst. They were dealing with a bunch of crooks. The contacts told the CIA exactly what it wanted to hear. They claimed that they’d found that an insurrection was in the works, but of course, it never came off. Still hasn’t. And you didn’t need spies to tell you about the roads near where the Bay of Pigs invasion was planned. There was only one road to the beach, and any local sugar cane farmer could have told you where that was. We were flying spy planes at low altitude over the island all the time, and the single road was visible from the air. It was the road the Cuban army used to beat back the invasion.”

Alex shook her head.

“If I remember correctly,” De Salvo said, “the whole concept of ‘Operation Mongoose’ went completely haywire. JFK put his brother Robert, the Attorney General, in charge of getting rid of Castro. They hatched out a new program called ‘Operation Freedom.’ That’s when it went from dumb to dumber to dumbest. During a United Nations meeting that Castro attended, some CIA dupe slipped a poison cigar into Fidel’s cigar case. The CIA thought it would be a certain way to knock him off, but someone inspected the cigar case and figured it out before Fidel lit up. The same CIA agents had originally planned to give Castro a cigar with a mini-bomb in it. That never went to fruition either.”

De Salvo was shaking his head and laughing now. So was Alex, laughing from the absurdity of it all.

“Another plan was to slip Castro a cigar spiked with LSD,” De Salvo said. “The plan was that after he smoked it, he would be an obvious head case and everybody would think he was nuts. Castro was also fond of scuba diving. So the CIA sprayed a scuba suit with tuberculosis bacteria. They gave the suit to an American lawyer who was going to Cuba to negotiate for the release of prisoners from the Bay of Pigs. At the last minute, they chickened out, saying that even if it did work it would be too obvious and would cause a national embarrassment to the U.S. Another half-wit idea was to set a trap at one of his favorite diving spots. The trap would be an exploding conch shell. This one wasn’t carried out because planners thought it would be far too difficult to prepare.”

De Salvo’s fingers fiddled with some paperclips on his desk.

“When one of Castro’s bodyguards turned against him and offered to kill him, the CIA gave the guy a fountain pen full of poison. It worked like a syringe, shooting poison out of its tip. That didn’t work either.”

“Why didn’t they just go the normal route?” Alex asked. “Guns. Assassins.”

“Oh, they tried that plenty of times,” De Salvo said. “The CIA sent Cuban exiles into Cuba with telescopic rifles, but Fidel was too smart. He knew what had happened with Trujillo in the Dominican Republic …” De Salvo paused. “And what had happened to Kennedy. I mean, read all that JFK assassination stuff, and the words Mafia and Cuba surface almost every other sentence.”

“So I recall,” she said.

“Last time I checked,” De Salvo concluded, “there’d been more than seven hundred plots to kill Castro, mostly involving the mob, hatched out of the United States. Imagine the odds. Seven hundred different plans against the man – and not one worked! In spite of everything, Castro lived into his eighties and ruled for more than forty years. Amazing.” De Salvo frowned. “Did you talk about any of this with your Guarneri pal?”

“Not in any detail,” she said.

“Detail,” he said repeating. “You know what they say: The Devil is in the details. You can imagine how many devils there are in the Cuban details.”

Late that evening, around 10:00 p.m., Alex phoned Guarneri.

“Hello, Paul,” Alex said. “We need to talk.”

“Always a pleasure. Talk now.”

“About that trip. Cuba. Is the role of your wife still open?”

There was a pause. “I think I have someone,” he said. “Why?”

“Looks like I might be able to do it. If we do it soon.”

“Soon would work for me,” he said. “That’s what you wanted to talk about?”

“Yes, but I was thinking we should talk in person,” she said.

“That works too. When?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Excellent. What about tomorrow evening?”

She drew a breath. “Paul,” she said, “a sniper took a shot at me yesterday. Rooftop to window. They just missed.”

It was his turn to pause. Then, following a charming expletive, he said, “Yeah, I saw that on television. That was you?”

“I’m keeping a low profile until they catch the shooter. I need to stay out of view. My boss suggested I make the Cuba trip. They can tie it to one of their assignments. I’d need to be in and out of Cuba in a week to ten days. Still want me?”

“Yes,” he said, “of course. I was about to hire another woman, but – “

“Don’t do anything yet,” she said. “It’s hypothetical until I get an official okay.”

“Where are you now? I can send a car.”

“I’ve got bodyguards,” she said. “FBI. They know how to drive.”

“Feds, huh?” He laughed. “Want to come over to Brooklyn tomorrow night? My family’s here, part of it anyway. My sister. Two of my kids, who’ve lived with me since my divorce. We can talk over dinner. We have a few guest rooms. You could stay a night or two. I’ll even put up your Feds.”

“I’ll be there for dinner. How’s that?”

“Perfect,” Paul Guarneri said.

At 11:15 that night, another shoe dropped. Special Agent Walter MacPhail phoned with a small report on his evening’s activities. He had had his minions run Paul Guarneri’s name through their computers. Guarneri may not have been perfectly clean, as Alex had suggested, but he wasn’t dirty either. He was a usable asset. He even had a family history of anti-Castro activity, which gave him a perverse pedigree with the CIA. Better still, as recently as eight days earlier, the one-time defector, Roland Violette, now in his late seventies, continued to make noises to his Swiss-American contacts about wanting to “go home,” about finishing his life in America, and being buried in American soil. It was, Violette maintained, his final wish.

If Guarneri could get himself and Alex into Cuba, CIA contacts and sources from off the island could get them out. So unofficially, the proposed trip had a green light. But like anything else involving American operations overseas, it had to be a quick hit: in and out fast or it would inevitably end in disaster.

Also, Alex learned, New York City Police and the FBI were scouring the city for Manuel Perez. So far, they’d come up cold. The man knew how to disappear when he had to.

TWENTY-FOUR

Paul Guarneri’s home was a Federal-style red-brick townhouse on Cranberry Street in Brooklyn Heights, a mini-estate behind an unobtrusive facade. MacPhail and Ramirez delivered her there by 7:30.

Guarneri, wearing a blue button-down shirt and khakis, emerged to welcome his guests personally. He and Alex’s guards sized each other up, and Guarneri offered a handshake, which the Feds accepted.

“Normally when you guys are out in front of my place it’s for a wedding. You show up to write down license-plate numbers and take pictures. I have to send my brother Sonny out to smash cameras.”

The Feds looked at Guarneri, then at each other. Then they all laughed.

“Why don’t you guys come on in for some dinner?” Guarneri asked. “You’re supposed to keep watch on Alex. You can sit at the table and watch her that way.”

It violated no rules, so they accepted.

The building was from the 1920s but had been renovated recently. The entrance area was a great rotunda with twelve-over-twelve windows. On the right, it led to a pine galley with original paintings. Beyond that, Alex could see a den. On the left, the rotunda led to a living room and a formal dining room.

Dinner was at a long table. There were introductions all around. The oldest of Guarneri’s children, Lisa, was away at boarding school in Massachusetts. “The same place one of our nitwit presidents went,” as Guarneri explained it. The other two children were at home, however; daughter Lauren, twelve, sat next to her brother, Joey, who was eight.

Guarneri’s housekeeper, a Guatemalan woman named Florence, cooked and served the dinner. Guarneri conversed with her in Spanish, as did Alex and Lauren. Rounding out the attendees was Guarneri’s sister, Diana, who lived in Glen Cove, farther out on Long Island. She often served as a parent-in-absentia for the children, Paul explained, while he was away on trips. Diana was mid-forties, childless, and divorced.

“Diana will be here when I’m in Cuba,” Guarneri said, “however long my absence may be.” Guarneri had no trouble speaking with the FBI agents present. After dinner he offered them cigars from his collection. They went outside to smoke a couple of San Cristobols while Guarneri led Alex into a den so they could talk privately.

“So,” he said, sitting in a leather arm chair, “someone took a shot, huh?”

“Right when you phoned,” she said. She settled into a plush chair across from him and distantly wondered what it would be like to live in such a lavish home. The home where she had grown up in California would fit into a quarter of this space. Yet it had been honest, warm, and happy. Her thoughts bounced back to the present. “I turned to pick up the cell phone and the bullet missed. It was your call.”

“That’s why the bullet missed you?”

“That’s the way I see it. Thanks for the call. Sorry I couldn’t take it,” she said.

“Great timing, huh?” he said.

“Providential,” she said. “I’d like to think there’s something I have left to do here on earth and so God kept me in the game.”

“You religious?” he asked.

“More than most people,” she answered. “Less than some others.”

“I’m a lapsed Catholic myself,” he replied. “I have more questions than answers. Isn’t that often the case with thinking people?”