Havana Harvest (49 page)

For New Year's Eve the Tremblays invited Mr. and Mrs. Granda and Juan, a bachelor, to the party for
estrangeros
at the Hotel Internacional, where the food was delicious, the drinks copious, and the foor show spectacular. During the night Tremblay ran into an old classmate, Marie. She and her husband, a keen yachtsman, had sailed all the way from Montreal to Havana to spend Christmas in Cuba. The couple invited the Tremblays to come sailing with them the following week on their forty-five-foot sailing yacht, the
Vagabundo.

Everybody had a wonderful time at the party. Juan, who stayed over at the boarding house for the night, woke up on New Year's Day around noon with a tremendous
crudo
, or hangover. It took him until late afternoon to settle his stomach, and Roger Tremblay, worried about Juan's health, insisted on driving him back to Havana and staying with him overnight to make sure he was all right.

Micheline remained in Varadero.

execución

Monday, January 2
Havana, Cuba

The Casas-De la Fuente drug trial was a frst in Cuban revolutionary history: a public admission that, although the Socialist Revolutionary Movement subscribed to high moral principles, its leaders were no less immoral and corrupt than their counterparts in America.

To the man in the street General Patricio Casas Rojo had been an idol in the past, a brave and highly decorated soldier. But now, public opinion was divided. There were some who felt an innocent Casas was being used as a scapegoat by a government with its hand caught in the cookie jar. There were others who shrugged and said they had known for years that the ideals of the Revolution had been compromised long ago.

And then there were those who were convinced Casas was being framed because he had become too much of a rival of Fidel.

The people were troubled and restive. Childlike graffiti in red chalk of little houses appeared overnight on the walls of public buildings everywhere. Red houses—
casas rojas:
an obvious indication that General Casas Rojo had wide-spread public support.

This concerned the government. Under no circumstances could the trial end without the vindication of the government, the condemnation of the guilty and the unmasking of the true villain, the one pulling the strings behind the scene: the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

For the CIA, such an ending would mean acute embarrassment and yet another failed operation; for the Republican president yet another diplomatic flasco; for Smythe, speedy retirement into oblivion. Unless, of course, Castro failed in his efforts to prove CIA involvement.

Lonsdale concluded that Smythe's best interest lay in the mission succeeding, but only if it succeeded before De la Fuente opened his mouth on the witness stand. With CIA involvement unproven, Castro would look very bad and Smythe's stock within the Agency would rise, perhaps enough to carry him through nomination for DCI. Thus, Smythe needed the mission to succeed and the sooner the better. He would, consequently, keep the operation a secret from Reyes Puma.

Of course, there remained yet another alternative for Smythe: silence Casas and De la Fuente by having them terminated with extreme prejudice by Q Division. Lonsdale thought that such a scenario was unlikely: too many checks and balances would be affected within the Agency, the operation, even if it succeeded, would damage the CIA's public image considerably, and Smythe's image with it.

Juan stuck his head into the bedroom. “I'm back.”

Lonsdale looked at his watch: a few minutes past seven a.m. “Where have you been?”

“Had to go to the bakery early this morning.”

“What for?”

“For bread, of course. And this.” He handed Lonsdale a piece of paper, a coded message from Colonel Bellon from one of the dead-letter drops. Decoded, it read

Day 1: Casas Military Tribunal of Honor.

Day 2: Trial of all accused begins, Casas first.

Day 3: De la Fuente accusations against Casas, who will be present.

Security tight Day 1 and 2 with helicopters

overhead. Day 3 plus, no helicopters, or military

escort. Only civilian convoy of 2 cars,

leaving prison at random times. Authorities

want to play down military presence in front

of international press.

Lonsdale was pleased. Bellon's message helped him make up his mind. He would swing into action on Day 3, Wednesday, and forego the diversionary attack. With the military escort absent, his team of eight fighting men would come up against a maximum of six guards, three in each car. Manageable odds, given the element of surprise. As for the random departure times, as long as Colonel Bellon could narrow the window to a two-hour span, Lonsdale's satellite imaging capability would take care of the rest.

He had Juan drive him to the Canadian Embassy where he visited the commercial counselor and used the embassy telephone. Lonsdale pretended to call a partner in Paspebiac and then acted out the role of partner while waiting for the commercial counsellor to step out of the office. He left a message on the answering machine at the number he had called, advising that he had an appointment with the Cuban Fisheries people on Wednesday and asking if his partner would please arrange for the shipment of a refrigerated container of salted cod ready to go on a moment's notice.

Ramirez, the accountant, to whom the message was relayed as soon as it came in, interpreted it correctly to mean that the
Barbara
was to be in position just outside Cuban territorial waters within thirty-six hours, and that the Brothers to the Rescue, who had been on standby since New Year's Day, should organize the inaugural fight of the Argentine patrol on Wednesday.

Ramirez contacted the Captain of the
Barbara
, also on standby in Jamaica, and got him underway. Then he called José Basulto to advise that the Argentinean donors had arrived as planned and would like to patrol with the Brothers on Wednesday morning at daybreak from six thirty to eight thirty, after which there could be a light breakfast and a brief ceremony at the Brothers' hangar. The Argentineans would catch a plane to New York at noon where they had business.

Ramirez's last call was to a Washington unlisted number where he left a message for Patricio Patriciano, advising of the date on which the inaugural fight of the Argentine patrol would take place. Mr. Patriciano was none other than James Morton, who then arranged that two Agency people, pretending to be Argentinians, turn up at Basulto's offce at the appropriate time.

Juan drove Lonsdale from the embassy back to Varadero. Just this side of Matanzas, they acted as if the cab had broken down again. They left a note on the cab's windshield and waited for the prearranged truck to pick them up.

Squeezed into the back of the truck with Gal, his two Israeli team leaders, and the two Cuban drivers, Lonsdale outlined his plan of attack in just under ninety minutes. The briefing was thorough, precise, and graphic, illustrated with maps and photographs that were then destroyed.

By four in the afternoon, Lonsdale was back in Varadero, walking on the beach with Micheline.

“What's the next move?” she asked, sounding nervous. The strain was getting to her.

“Miche, when I allowed you to talk me into bringing you here, we agreed that you will go home before the real hanky-panky starts.”

She began to protest, but he cut her off. “There is no discussing it. I should have sent you home on Saturday, but I didn't, and that was a mistake—”

“OK, OK. But what now?”

“Remember I told you I had a secret escape plan just for the two of us. Well, I will be activating it for you tomorrow.”

“Does that mean you are not coming with me?”

Lonsdale lifted her hand to his lips. “Hear me out darling and humor me. You remember Marie, my so-called classmate, and her husband with the sailboat?” She nodded. “Marie is no classmate. They're pros I've hired for getting you away from this place before it becomes too dangerous.”

Micheline would have none of it. “I'm not leaving without you!”

“Darling, we made a deal. I've kept my side of the bargain, now you keep yours.”

“But I love you.”

“I know you do, sweet lady.” Lonsdale pulled her toward him, his arm encircling her waist, “and I adore you, which is the very reason why I want you off this island. Besides, changing plans this late in the game would upset everything.”

“How?”

“When I visited the embassy this morning I told them we wanted to sail to Nassau with our friends who were leaving by boat tomorrow. The consul called the Ministry of the Interior and arranged for our exit visas.”

Micheline cut in “What are they? Why do we need them?”

“When you travel by private yacht, you have to get permission to leave this island before they let you get off it, and it is the Ministry of the Interior that grants this permission. It's called a
Permiso de Salida.”

“You said exit visas. Does that mean that you are coming with me?”

Lonsdale looked at her and smiled. “Up to a point, yes.”

They walked back to the boarding house.

Tuesday and Wednesday, January 3 and 4
Havana, Cuba

On Tuesday morning, Lonsdale and Micheline left Cuba on board the
Vagabundo.
The vessel was intercepted, as arranged, by an Agency cigarette boat in late afternoon near the Bahamas, at Salt Key.
Vagabundo
continued her journey toward the Bahamas while the cigarette boat took Lonsdale back to Cuba under cover of darkness.

Juan picked him up in the middle of the night on the coast near Pablo de la Torriente Brau and handed him Colonel Bellon's latest message. It was laconic. “Transfer between six-thirty and eight on fifteen minutes' notice. 2 prisoners, 2 cars, 6 guards. No 'copters, no jeeps.”

While Lonsdale was being driven to Havana by Juan, the maintenance truck “responded” to two breakdown calls on the outskirts of the city during which the arms, ammunition, grenades, tear gas, and other gear were distributed so that, by four a.m., all team members were fully equipped and operational.

On Wednesday at 0430 hours Lonsdale met Reuven Gal, who was driving the maintenance truck, near the entrance
of La Monumental
. He changed into battle gear and tested the electronic equipment on board. Everything was functioning perfectly.

At 0530 sharp the truck joined a military police jeep, provided by General Casas's army supporters, mobilized by Colonel Bellon. The jeep was parked on the periphery road above the northern entrance of the tunnel that links the Havana proper with the Havana del Este/La Cabaña Prison district. The seven-hundred-and-fifty-meter-long tunnel, built by a French company in the 1920s, was wide enough to accommodate four lanes of traffic: two northbound and two southbound. To eliminate the risk of head-on collisions, the two two-lane sections are separated by a wall that effectively divides the tunnel lengthwise.

Gal followed the jeep north on the periphery road then made a sharp right turn onto the main highway, the
Via Monumental
, leading into the tunnel.

The jeep stopped just inside the entrance. Gal drove around it and stopped the truck a hundred meters down the road where he helped Lonsdale unload two sections of “dragon's teeth” while the military policemen halted the sparse traffic. Lonsdale and Gal laid the two sections across the tunnel end-to-end and anchored them into place with giant explosive rivets so that the teeth, when deployed by radio command, would face the oncoming traffic. They repeated the operation five hundred meters further into the tunnel. Once the two barricades were in place the jeep backed out of the tunnel and parked on the soft shoulder about fifty meters from the mouth of the tunnel behind the cab containing Team A. The jeep's hood was up—yet another “mechanical breakdown.”

Gal and Lonsdale exited the tunnel on the Havana side, rounded the Maximo Gomez monument and worked their way back into the tunnel, northbound this time. They saw that Team B's cab was in position on the soft shoulder of the southbound lane.

By 0615 hours the maintenance truck, lights extinguished, was once again on the periphery road above the northern entrance to the tunnel. While Gal acted as lookout, Lonsdale powered up his computer, which he then linked to the satellite imaging and communicating system. The eerie light from the LCD screen lit up the inside. Open boxes of ammunition were stacked along one wall, specially rigged smoke canisters lined the racks fastened to the rear doors. Two assault rifles and two helmets lay on the floor to Lonsdale's left.