22

November 15, 1962

Dear Kittredge,

You complain that you felt an odd “air” to my last letter. It left you “truncated.” I would offer a reminder that your promised account of the missile business remains nonexistent. The longer you wait, the more all that is bound to become nothing but history.

I will say that my brief sojourn in Cuba left me with intense animus against Castro. I would expect the worst from Khrushchev no matter how he has mellowed (if turnips, that is, can mellow), but by Castro I feel betrayed. How could he have jeopardized his country and mine by accepting such an adventure?

The other night I received a little illumination on this matter that I would like to pass on to you. Since our expedition, Butler and I have been getting along fairly well and now eat and drink together a good bit. Much of the old mutual tension—about as easy to live with as the edge of a razor blade—has abated. So I went so far as to attempt a reclamation project. You see, Harvey assigned Chevi Fuertes to him a few months ago, and they don’t get along. Fuertes, by my lights, is brilliant, and I’m trying to get Butler to recognize as much, for Chevi will give more of his best when he can thrive on applause. The other night I invited him to join us for dinner at an expensive restaurant in Fort Lauderdale where no Cuban any of us know is likely to pop his head in. I foresaw it as a treat for Chevi to dine out with his old case officer and his new one, but to give an idea of how crude Butler can be, the first thing he said as Chevi joined us was, “Get it straight, you are taking care of your end tonight. We pay enough for you to afford it.”

“I will treat you both,” replied Chevi, just a bit too grand in style, and so succeeded merely in irritating Butler further. Chevi, by Dix’s view of things, was competing, and Dix is so prodigiously competitive that I would wonder at his sanity if I did not understand his rationale. He is monumental enough in his own eyes to be President of the U.S. If he is contemptuous of Kennedy, it is because Jack, by Butler’s lights, is a rich pretender. Whereas if Dix ever gets into politics, he will go all the way on his own.

At any rate, it was no good beginning. I wanted to receive Fuertes’ analysis of the missile crisis, for he has an insight into Khrushchev’s and Castro’s motives that we do not get from Agency folk or exiles, but Dix has only one ear at best. It fires him up that Fuertes knows more about Latin America than he does. Butler has his own critical powers, but hates to encounter superior insight on any subject. Chevi, in turn, having to stomach a good deal of hectoring from Butler over the jobs he performs for him, was not at all unhappy to stretch his intellectual wings.

With my aid and Butler’s grudged interest, Fuertes managed to give an exposition that I will summarize together with occasional interruptions by Butler.

The key to the entire episode, Fuertes told us, is that, in the beginning, Castro did not want the missiles. He argued with Khrushchev that they made no military sense. The U.S. would always have overwhelming superiority. No, said Castro, give us sophisticated instructors and up-to-date ordnance. Let the Americans be obliged to recognize that a land war could cause them many casualties.

“How do you know all this?” asked Butler.

“You are aware of the nature of my sources.”

Fuertes was referring to his Miami contacts in the DGI. Butler, however, shook his head. “There is no way they could keen in on this stuff authoritatively.”

“Culture offers its own authority,” said Fuertes. “I have pondered the nature of Castro for years. I comprehend Communist psychology. I have natural powers of synthesis.”

“I never met a man with natural powers of synthesis,” said Butler, dicing the words, “who was not ready to abuse them.”

“Let us say,” I interrupted, “that Chevi will offer us a hypothesis.”

There were further interruptions of this nature, but the above is exemplary. Let me give you the notion as it finally emerged. According to Fuertes, Khrushchev convinced Castro to accept the missiles, but only by appealing to his honor. “That is the secret to manipulating Fidel,” said Chevi. “Castro likes to perceive himself as a phenomenally generous person.”

Up to this point, Khrushchev suggested, he had been helping Castro. Now, Fidel could help him. His own Politburo had become critical of the Soviet Premier’s middle course with the United States. As they saw it, a mockery existed in world balance when the United States could maintain missiles just across the border from the U.S.S.R. in Turkey, and the Soviets could offer nothing comparable. So Khrushchev was looking to make a dramatic shift in the way that the world perceived the two superpowers. Be assured, dear Fidel, the United States would never go to war over missiles in Cuba. He, Khrushchev, knew this. After all, the Soviets had seen the impracticality of a showdown on Turkey. Together, therefore, said Khrushchev, Fidel and he could steal the imperialists’ lightning.

“This is what you learned from your sources?” said Butler.

“It is what they have heard. They are close to people who are close to Castro.”

“I call that gossip.”

“No, Mr. Castle,” said Fuertes, “it is gossip fortified by close scrutiny. No one is of more interest to Habaneros than Fidel. His passing comments, his private disclosures, his moods, are all open to the surrounding world of his intimates.”

“And on the basis of your profound understanding of Fidel Castro and Cuban culture, are you prepared to tell me what you think, personally, of Castro’s acceptance of the missiles?”

“More than ready,” said Fuertes. “In my opinion, morally speaking, Castro had a fall from grace. Castro was correct in the first place; Cuba has no need for missiles.”

“You are saying that he acceded,” remarked Butler, “merely to return Khrushchev a favor?”

Fuertes had the opening he needed. He now delivered the lecture behind the lecture. What has to be understood, he explained, is the immensity of the glamour attached to the possession of nuclear missiles. There is not a leader in a Third World country who does not covet them. “It is equal to sex with a movie star. When Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in return for the United States forswearing any future invasion of Cuba, Castro was not pleased but enraged. He was losing his missiles.”

“He had been taken,” said Butler. “First Khrushchev lied to Kennedy; then he lied to Fidel. All Khrushchev wants is to get American missiles out of Turkey. We know the White House will give him that. We have a pussy for a President.”

“I hear,” said Chevi, “democracy in action.”

“You bet,” said Dix. “Now you tell me. Why do I have the impression you still cotton to Castro?”

“I may work for you, but I do not have to imbibe your prejudices. I like Fidel, yes. He is sympathetic. Yes! He is like all of us in Latin America who would change the given. There is one difference, however. He is more manly.”

Within the objective of the evening, Chevi was not being responsible. I broke in long enough to say, “If you admire Fidel, why do you not join him?”

“Because I detest the Soviets. Unlike Fidel, I spent my youth in the Communist Party. I know just what he has gotten himself into. And, may I say, that is the fault of all of you.”

Butler slapped his fist on the table loudly enough to turn a few heads in the restaurant. “Haven’t you learned, Chevi, how to talk to Americans? You put a drop of oil on a piece of flannel. Then you wipe our ass carefully. I am tired of being told what is wrong with this country.”

My mission was now dead in the water. We drank our coffee, paid up, and left in three separate cars. Ten minutes after I reached my apartment, Chevi rang the bell.

“Is it wise for you to be seen here?” I said.

He shrugged.

I poured a brandy and he talked. He was miserable with Butler; he was afraid of him; he kept waiting for Dix to turn on him physically. “It is not a stable environment.”

“Why do you provoke it?”

“Because I would lose all respect for myself if I did not. Miami is worse than Uruguay. There, I merely double-crossed people I had grown up with. Some of them deserved it. Here, I am betraying brave men.”

“The DGI?”

He nodded. “They are in danger of their lives every day. The exiles tear them apart as fast as they discover them.”

“Do you come to visit me so that the DGI will kill you?”

He shrugged again. Now I understood the gesture. It was the saddest he could have made. A piece of paper is blowing down the street; why bestir oneself to pick it up?

I poured him more brandy and he talked for the next two hours. I was tired, but I must say, Kittredge, I was also beginning to wonder if our good double agent Fuertes was not working for the DGI more devotedly than for us. The fact that he had come to my apartment disturbed me. That could mean he was indifferent to his own welfare, or—just as likely—the DGI was well informed about his work with us. I was depressed by the knowledge that it was my duty to pass this suspicion on to Butler.

Still, I listened to Chevi. I had to. He has insight into matters I find puzzling.

Deep in brandy, Chevi’s mood improved. He talked a good deal about Cuba. It startled me how close he sounded at one moment to your husband. “What is to be said of a country,” remarked Fuertes, “that built its economy on African slavery and sugar? Consider its other products: rum, tobacco, brothels. Sexual specialty acts. Santería. When you live in a land where every day you have to ask yourself whether you are as evil as your economic roots, then, of course, you generate superhuman pride as a species of compensation. That is why Fidel is always seeking the all-but-unattainable, the gem concealed in history.”

I am afraid I repeated, “The gem concealed in history?”

“There is a vision some of us seek that is beyond the limits of danger.”

“I do not follow.” (Kittredge, I did.)

“Fidel looks to what is unattainable.” Chevi belched delicately over his brandy. It made an odd hissing sound. Perhaps his demon had just broken wind out of the wrong aperture. “Yes, you all try to kill Fidel,” he said, “but I am the one who knows how.”

“Why would you? You love him.”

“I am operatic by nature. Dostoyevskian. I would kill him to come a little closer to the monstrosities in myself. Then I would weep for him. As it is, I laugh at all of you. So many attempts, so many failures.”

“What makes you think we are making such attempts?”

“It is common knowledge in the DGI, Robert Charles, or whatever your name is this year.” He laughed unpleasantly. “I do not know why you keep trying. I could do better.”

“Yes. How would you go about it?”

“I repeat: By appealing to what is best in him.”

“That is a principle, not a plan.”

“Oh,” he said, “you are looking for a procedure. Why don’t you find a seashell of exceptional beauty. Fidel likes to scuba dive.”

“I understand,” I said.

“No, you do not. You would fill such a seashell with explosive plastic and put it on a reef where Fidel goes spear-fishing. You would enlist an accomplice to lead Fidel to the precise place. Then you would expect him to seize it. Close, Chico, but no cigar. His inner warning system—which is absolutely remarkable—would tell him to hesitate. The great rationalist of materialism, Fidel Castro, who kicks a wall, breaks his toe, and smashes a mirror when he hears that the Russians will take away his missiles, is yet so sensitive to American plots that even as he puts forth a hand to pick up an exceptional seashell, he will withdraw that hand. You need more than beauty to capture the fellow.”

“I wish you would keep talking,” I told him. “You create movies with your mouth.” I was getting a little drunk myself. I was also beginning to feel ugly toward Fuertes in a way I could not quite name. He was so corrupt; he was so sure of himself.

“Yes, yes, movies. Excellent! Here is a concept for film. I would not only place the seashell in a coral cave, and use a paid servant of the CIA to lead Fidel to it, but I would have a mayombero cast a spell on a manta ray. The creature would fall in love with the seashell and never leave it. There it is, guarding the shell. That is when Castro might lose his awareness that this is a provocation. He would look to kill this dangerous opponent in order to obtain the prize.” Fuertes began to laugh. “Yes,” he said, “all you have to do is find a mayombero in Miami, or a marine animal trainer in Langley.”

I let him finish his drink, then showed him the door.

Please write soon and in full. Is something amiss with you?

Devotedly,

Harry

Bemused by Chevi’s scenario, I passed it on to Cal. In his answering letter from Tokyo, he wrote:

The manta ray business is wilder than pig squeal, but I must say I now feel a personal interest in pulling every hair out of the big Cuban’s beard. How does he dare to live with himself? We will get him yet, thee and me. Soon.

HLFX