2

HOWARD LOOKED LEAN, KEEN, AND VERY MUCH IN HIS ELEMENT. SINCE THE night was warm, we ate at a little open-air restaurant on SW 8th Street, which thoroughfare, he quickly informed me, was called Calle Ocho by the Cuban exile community. Our restaurant, sporting an awning, four tables, and a charred barbeque grill, had only a plump little Cuban woman for cook, and a large fat husband to serve, but the menu of blackened beef, hot peppers, plantains, beans and rice was considerably tastier than Uruguayan grub.

Hunt had just been on assignment to Cuba to get a quick feel for the land. He had picked up his operational alias, drawn his travel advance, and connected with a flight to Havana, where he had checked into the Hotel Vedado. “After which,” said Hunt, “I took deliberate survey of my most cheerless room, and having determined to my satisfaction that there were no sneakies in the mattress, and no bugs on the telephone, I embarked on a tour of the Cuban capital. Barbudos everywhere, Harry. God, I hate those bastards with their sweaty skin and those dirty beards. Their filthy fatigues! They all carry Czechoslovakian burp guns, and God, they show off—that variety of cheap macho pride when a bully has a new toy. Harry, you can smell the mentality of these cheap murderous hoods in the way they throw those weapons over their shoulders. Any angle they choose. It makes you wonder if they know enough to put the damned safety on.

“And the women. Cacaphonous as a tribe of she-goats. Ugly manifestations come out of women when you put them in uniform. A surprising number of old girls are in the milicia now, and they throng the streets, with no better purpose than to assault your ears with their cadence: ‘Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, viva Fidel Castro Ruz!’ Humorless, those ladies. Lousy cadence.”

“Sounds awful.”

He took a solemn measure of his beer. “It was even worse than I knew it was going to be. Half of Havana is trying to skip. Lines of people at our Embassy trying to get visas to the U.S. They want to get away from all the louts and vulgarians who have floated to the top.

“I went to visit Sloppy Joe’s,” he said. “I do, whenever in Havana. It used to be a lighthearted pilgrimage. After all, my father made his dramatic entrance there thirty years ago to get back that money his partner had absconded with. So, I’ve always seen Sloppy Joe’s as a brawling, warm-spirited place where you might encounter Hemingway at one end of the bar, although, truth to tell, old Ernie doesn’t show up much anymore. I also popped into the Floridita, but no luck there either. Both are desolate. Sullen bartenders, Harry, dead air. The only place still going is the bordello above the Mercedes-Benz showroom. That much for Castro’s pompous pronouncements about national purity. Why, there are more prostitutes and pimps on the street now than ever in Batista’s time. Old Fulgencio could at least police Havana. But now the whores come out like cockroaches in the hope that some tourist will toss them a morsel of business.”

“Did you provide any?” I was tempted to ask, and then to my surprise, voiced just that remark. In Uruguay, I might not have dared, but tonight I felt as if a new era was beginning for Howard and me.

Hunt smiled. “You’re not supposed to ask such questions of a happily married fellow,” he said, “but I will suggest that if anyone ever inquires why you think you’re qualified to be in espionage, the only proper response is to look them in the eye, and say, ‘Any man who has ever cheated on his wife and gotten away with it, is qualified.’”

We chortled together. I don’t know if it was the fleshy odor of cooking oil coming off that little barbeque griddle, or the divided message of the tropical sky above our awning, sullen and accommodating at once, but I could sense the nearness of Havana. Already, on my first night in Miami, watching Cuban exiles pad up and down Calle Ocho, I felt an edge of sinister exhilaration. Rum and the intoxication of dark deeds lay ahead.

“Every night,” said Hunt, “outside my hotel window at the Vedado, I could hear barbudos cackling to each other on the street. All the sounds you associate with street gangs. The worst elements of the Havana slums. Only now they swarm around in police cars. I could hear them popping into buildings, bang bang on the door if it didn’t open quickly enough—conceive of the reverberations—those massive old wooden doors in those great old Havana walls. God, it stirs the phantoms of the Caribbean. Then these barbudos come out with some poor wretch, and every mother’s son of them has unslung his burp gun just to intimidate the crowd before they drive off, siren going, flasher going. It’s sad. Havana nights used to awaken sensuous suggestions in a fellow. Something in the very sultriness of the nights. Those beautiful stone arcades on the Malecon. But now, it’s all revolutionary justice. You can’t walk on a Havana street without hearing loudspeakers inflicting hours of unwanted propaganda on the unwilling ears of the masses. People are dispirited.”

“Did you speak to many Cubans while you were there?”

“My assignment called for me to look up a few people on some classified lists. They all have the same sad story. Worked with Castro, fought with him, and now they’d like to gut the hell out of him.”

He looked around our restaurant as if to make certain we were wholly alone, a formal gesture, no more. It was 11:00 P.M., and we were the only customers left. The cook had closed her griddle; her husband, the waiter, was asleep.

“As soon as I came back to the States,” said Hunt, “I made the following recommendation to Quarters Eye: Assassinate Fidel Castro before or coincident with any invasion. Let this be a task for Cuban patriots.”

I heard myself whistle. “Quite a recommendation.”

“Well, back in Uruguay I wasn’t just vocalizing about going for the head. The problem is to get rid of Castro in such a way that we cannot be blamed. That, I would say, is tricky.”

“How did Quarters Eye respond to your suggestion?”

“I would say it is very much in the hopper.” Hunt gave off a ground wave of implacable piety. “In fact,” he said, “my suggestion is being considered right now by your father.”

“My father?” I asked all too simply.

“Hasn’t anyone told you how important your father is to all this?”

“Well, I suppose not.”

“I applaud your father’s sense of security.”

I didn’t. It was one thing not to hear from Cal for a year at a time, but it was humiliating to learn in this fashion that he was part of the operational hierarchy for Cuba. I did not know if I was sadly dented, or crushed.

“How well do you get along with Cal?” I now asked Hunt.

“We’re old familiars. I worked for him in Guatemala.”

“I never knew.” Why couldn’t I keep family pains to myself? “Cal gave me to believe he was always in the Far East.”

“Well, he was,” said Hunt, “except for the Guatemala op which he did for Richard Bissell. I must say, Harry, our security is like one of those English maze gardens. Intimates can pass within a few feet of each other, and never know that a dear friend is just on the other side of the hedge. Your father has to be one of our aces at keeping security.”

I was passing through a bitter thought: The only reason Cal didn’t tell me anything about himself was that I never won his attention long enough to receive a confidence. “Yes,” said Hunt, “I always assumed we didn’t talk about your father because you were trying to impress me with how good you were at security.”

“Down the hatch,” I said and swallowed more beer.

I was appalled, and I was overstimulated. My relation to everyone else in the Cuban project, including most certainly Howard Hunt, was now turned on its head. I had been supposing that Hunt had chosen me to come along with him because I had proven to be a first-rate young officer in Uruguay. That composed at least half of my affection for him. Now I had to face the likelihood that he saw me as a grip up the greasy pole of advancement.

On the other hand, I did feel a reflexive surge of family pride. Whom had they chosen, after all, for such a difficult and dangerous project but my father? I felt ready to get drunk on dark rum, and, in corollary, felt much impressed (and surprised) by the weight of the readiness for murder that sat in me. Much closer to the heart than I had expected. Yes, I was all for rum, dark deeds and the intoxication of the Caribbean.