Hostage in Havana - Noel Hynd

“What do you want to hear about?” he asked. “The really bad old days of the ‘40s, when Lucky Luciano came back to the island after exile in Italy, or do you want to hear about how Sinatra used to be a courier for money from the American mob to the Havana casino operators, then would sing at private performances for his mobster friends?” Sam laughed again. “Or how about when JFK was a U.S. Senator and a hood named Santo Trafficante set up an orgy for him at the Hotel Comodoro?”

“Start with JFK, but skip the rest,” Alex said.

Sam smirked. “That’s the best part. But I’m not surprised. Get down to business, no fun and games with you, Alex LaDuca.”

“Why don’t you take me to the Bay of Pigs?” she said. “Playa Giron. That’s what they call it in Spanish, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, that’s it.” Sam shrugged. “But I don’t know too much more than anyone else,” Sam said. “Kennedy was president by then because Mayor Daley in Chicago stuffed all those ballot boxes and tipped Illinois to the Dems. Anyway, it’s a year after the election, and JFK rushed an invasion plan into play on the idea that Castro would later acquire a stronger military capability and be able to defeat it. Fact was, Castro already had that capability. The CIA also told the president that Castro only had an obsolete, ineffective air force. The agency said they weren’t in combat condition and had no communications in the Zapata Swamp area and had no forces nearby. That’s where the Bahia de Cochinos is, the Bay of Pigs. Everything about the intelligence was wrong. They expected mass defections among Cuban military, and none materialized. The Cuban air force had Lockheed T-33 jet trainers, the same planes the U.S. had given to Batista to fight the rebels. We figured they didn’t have pilots, but we were wrong. They were more effective than predicted. Then Castro’s army moved to the beach and crushed the exiles with greater efficiency than any estimate had anticipated. In fact, the Cuban jets were largely responsible for the exiles’ ammunition losses. Kennedy, having approved the plan with assurances that it would be both clandestine and successful, quickly discovered that it was too large to be clandestine and too small to be successful. Ten thousand exiles might have gotten it done. Twenty thousand would have walked over the Cuban force. But fourteen hundred? Forget about it. There. That’s the front half.”

He paused. Sandwiches arrived. They fell silent. When the waitress was gone, Alex asked. “What’s the back half?”

Sam continued, “The Bay of Pigs had every element for a perfect disaster, and that’s what it turned into. Then the suits at the CIA flipped around and claimed Kennedy had betrayed them when they had set him up with implausible intelligence.”

“They came in at dawn, right …,” Alex asked, “the invasion force?”

“Yeah. And that was a problem too. The brigade relied on a nighttime landing through uncharted reefs in boats with outboard motors. South shore of the island. Even with ample ammunition and control of the air, the brigade couldn’t have broken out of its beachhead or survived much longer without substantial help from either American forces or the Cuban people. Neither happened.” He shook his head and continued. “The invasion was intended to provoke an uprising against Castro. Instead, it gave him a military victory and a permanent symbol of Cuban resistance to American aggression. Great move, JFK. Way to go, CIA. Idiots!”

“Do you still have contacts on the island?” Alex asked.

He took several seconds to answer. “Not really,” he said. “It’s been a long time. There have been so many other fish to fry in the last few years. Colombia. Venezuela. Honduras. Nicaragua.” He shrugged. “I could make some phone calls if you want. I used to know a guy named Gilberto in Old Havana. Used to sell postcards and rum to tourists – and guns, Argentine passports, and black-market dollars to people who wanted to leave the country. I have no idea if he’s still alive. If he is, he’ll talk to me; if he’s dead he probably won’t. I could do some asking.”

“If you would, that would be nice,” Alex said easily. “And look, maybe you could run the Guarneri name past a few of your old Playa Giron contacts,” she added.

Sam laughed and grabbed the notepad in front of him. “What’s the full name?”

“Joseph Guarneri,” Alex said. “G-U-A-R-N-E-R-I,” she continued, spelling it as Sam’s pudgy hand quickly wrote. “He could be down as ‘Giuseppe.’ Born in Italy.”

“Why don’t you throw the name past your friends, the Feds?” he said, throwing a glance at MacPhail and Ramirez. “Or did you do that already?”

“I always like to check the official version against the unofficial version,” Alex said. “That’s why I’m here. Can you blame me?”

“No. Call me in a week,” Sam said.

“I don’t have a week.”

“Ah. I get it. Then I’ll put some zip on it. I’ll phone you when I have something. You working on a CIA assignment?”

She was silent again. Another wink.

“Foxy fox, aren’t you?” Sam said. “I like it. You got great legs too. Did I mention that? What do you do? Run? Swim? Gym? Tight shorts and a muscle T-shirt. I bet you look hot.”

“Can I try another name on you?” she asked.

“Don’t let me stop you.”

“Roland Violette.”

Sam instantly knew the name. “Whoa. That snake! He’s been down there Havana-way doing his senorita and drinking rum for twenty years. That’s what I hear.”

“Twenty-six years.”

“I hear the man’s crazy,” Sam said. “Complete loony tune. Of course, he was always dealing with a deck that only had fortynine cards. He’s vermin, you know. Ratted out a lot of good CIA people. Why’s his name in play?”

“A little birdie told me he wants to come home,” Alex said.

“Ha! That shows you how crazy he is. The CIA has a price on his head. There’s bad, bad blood there. Be careful.”

“May I speak off the record, Sam?”

“Everything’s off the record. You see any record? There is no record.”

“Violette is claiming he has a bag of goodies that he filched from the Cuban government,” Alex said. “He might be looking to trade them for a ticket out.”

“Might be, eh? Who wouldn’t?” Sam snorted.

“Do you think Violette was ever in a position to score some good intelligence?” she asked. “Does his story wash?”

Sam pondered. “It might.” Sam then said, “Violette had access, if that’s what you’re asking. Who knows what he might have swiped?”

“Thanks,” she said.

“Don’t thank me. Thank Violette.” Sam had a faraway look, then came back to earth. “Bloody Cubans,” Sam said. “They deserve better. As much as I hate Castro and his whole red crew, I can’t say he’s worse than Batista. It’s like Russia. Who was worse? Czar Nicholas II or Lenin?”

“Depends which Russian you were.”

“Yup. Just like it depends which Cuban you were. If you were mobbed up or the owner of a sugar plantation, Batista was your man. What did they call him? El Mulato Lindo? If you were a peasant in Santiago or if your sister had been turned into a prostitute by fat American tourists, then Fidel or Che were your guys.” Sam lightened. “My kid came home with a Che T-shirt when he was twelve. I ripped it off him and threw the lousy thing away. I said, ‘Che? You want to know about Che?’ Che performed the same role for Fidel Castro as Felix Drezhinsky performed for Lenin and Himmler did for Hitler. Guevara was Castro’s chief executioner. Under Che, Havana’s La Cabana fortress was converted into Cuba’s Lubianka. Know your Russians and Russian history, Alex?”

“Reasonably well.”

“Che was a Chekist: ‘Interrogate your prisoners at night,’ Che told his goons. ‘A man’s resistance is lower at night.’ I knew this Cuban prosecutor in the ‘60s who defected: Jose Vilasuso. Jose estimated that Che signed four hundred death warrants the first months in La Cabana. I knew a Basque priest named Iaki de Aspiazu who did final confessions and last rites. He said that Che ordered seven hundred executions by firing squad during the period. Some Cuban journalists who later defected claimed Che sent two thousand men to the firing squad. Ever heard of a CIA guy named Felix Rodriguez?”

“No. What about him?”

“He was the Cuban-American CIA operative who helped track down Che in Bolivia. He was the last person to question him. He says that during that final talk, Che admitted to a couple thousand executions. But he shrugged them off. Said they were all imperialist spies and CIA agents. That’s your heroic Che.”

“You have your point of view, Sam,” Alex answered.

“Well you came to listen, right? And to learn?”

“I did indeed, Sam.”

Sam finished his drink. He glanced at his watch. Ten minutes before three. “Hey. I got to scram,” he said. “I’ll ask around about Guarneri. My man in Havana. Wasn’t that a book?”

“Our Man in Havana. Graham Greene,” she said.

“Yeah. Brit writer. That’s it. I liked that one. Do you read a lot?”

“When I have time,” she said.

“Yeah, you look like you might. Your brain’s as sharp as your body.”

They walked back along 57th Street, with MacPhail and Ramirez trailing behind. The sidewalks were crowded. Sam took a cell phone call but quickly dispatched it. When they reached the southeast corner of 57th at Fifth, Sam stopped again before going back to work. “There’s a couple of things that’d be good for you to remember.”

“Go ahead.”

“First,” Sam said, “it’s my personal feeling that the Kennedy assassination was organized by Castro. From the early sixties on, the CIA had tried to have Castro assassinated and had hired goombahs from the American Mafia to do the job. Bobby Kennedy was deep in it and so was the president. The Kennedys were trying to get to Castro, but Castro got to the Kennedys first. Payback. Oswald spent time in Cuba, remember?”

“I know the theory, Sam.”

“What do you think? Am I nuts?”

“Like all the JFK assassination theories, it has its merits and its imperfections. What’s the other thing?”

His dark eyes fixed on a point in the middle distance. “You know,” he said. “I forgot.” Then the meeting was over. Sam bounded through the doors of his retail employer and was back to work.

Later that day the other zapato dropped.

Senora Perez was in the lobby of her office building in Mexico City when three men in police uniforms approached her. They explained that there was some threat against both her and her husband and they’d been sent to protect her.

Her first question: “?Donde esta Antonio?” Where is Antonio?

“He’s gone to the airport to join your husband,” they said.

“His flight’s probably in progress as we speak,” one of the men in uniform said.

“May I call my husband?” she asked.

“Of course.”

They waited. The call was unsuccessful.

“Very well then,” she said.

They escorted her to a pair of waiting Mexico City police cars. They then proceeded to the children’s school. Only after that second pickup did these men reveal that they were not police officers. Senora Perez also learned that her husband had lied to her over many years. He was involved with a business beyond the import and export of fruits. She also learned that she and her family were in custody, as was her bodyguard. What she had no way of knowing, however, was who her captors were.

TWENTY-SEVEN

The next morning, the Department of Treasury approved Alex’s mission to Cuba. She advised Paul Guarneri, and they made tentative plans to meet in Miami before continuing on to Havana. He gave her an address in Miami where they would rendezvous. MacPhail and Ramirez’s duty would be to get her that far and probably to the sea launch to Cuba as well. After that, she was at the mercy of fate and the man with whom she would be traveling.

“I’ll make arrangements to get us to Cuba by small plane and boat,” Paul said. “I’ve had a scenario set up for months. Now I just need to put it into effect.” He worked with some smugglers, he said. Not the most upstanding of citizens, but efficient people who got the job done.

In the afternoon Alex went out for some air. Walter MacPhail accompanied her. They carried weapons. Ramirez walked about twenty feet behind. They stayed around Third Avenue and the Thirties. “We’ll be driving down to Washington tomorrow morning,” MacPhail announced as they walked. “You’ll have a conference at the CIA in Langley about Roland Violette. We’ll be in D.C. for one overnight, maybe two.”

“Makes sense,” Alex said. “Got anything yet on Guarneri’s old man?”

“Nothing yet. Still trying. Bureaucracy, you know …”

“See if you can kick-start the request,” she said. “It’s not like a year from now will do any good.”

“I’ll make another call.”

Later, Alex went back to the table that supported her secure laptop. Clad in jeans and a T-shirt, with the baby Glock on her hip, she clicked into her secure email account. Two items had arrived in the last hour.

The first was an FBI summary on Paul Guarneri’s father, Joseph Guarneri. He had been born in Sicily in 1928, confirming what Paul had said. He had jumped ship in 1944 to remain in the U.S. Records were hazy, but two younger brothers eventually followed him to Cuba. This casual tidbit had been annotated many years earlier, presumably by an agent long since retired or deceased:Examiner’s note: Salvatore Guarneri, 1931 – 1959, was a pit boss and trainer of dealers at Meyer Lansky’s Riviera Hotel; Giovanni Guarneri, 1942 – ??, last known as an active but no longer influential member of the Cuban Communist Party. SpAg P.S.D., 10/17/1973.

Noting the conflicting politics within the family, Alex continued to read. Joseph Guarneri, the file said, maintained houses in New York, Miami, and Cuba while Batista was in power and, it was believed, had two families, one official, one unofficial. The latter was obviously Paul and his mother.

Guarneri controlled criminal operations in Florida, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. He maintained links to the Bonanno crime family in New York but had been more closely allied with Sam Giancana in Chicago. In Guarneri’s day, the east coast of Florida and Cuba had been a tight conglomerate of New York family interests with links to Meyer Lansky and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. But Giancana, a former Capone associate while in Chicago, also had his fingers in the pie. So Guarneri had operated under Mr. Sam’s umbrella. This organization traced back to 1929 in Cuba and the outset of Prohibition in the U.S. Paying off members of the Gerardo Machado dictatorship, which had preceded Batista in Cuba, the New York underworld built huge rum factories on the island and contracted with Cuban sugar refineries to guarantee an endless supply of molasses, the main ingredient in rum. Upon such a firm foundation did a vast criminal enterprise rise to prerevolutionary glory.