Storm Clouds Over Havana by Mike Marino (novel24 .txt) 📕

I had spent the day in the office with Jorge, getting educated on the political landscape of the island with a lunch break and a few tequila’s at Sloppy Joe’s (I’d finally meet Hemingway here as it was his favorite bar. I’d also hired the young sports journalist, Hunter Thompson while he and I got smashed at Joe’s after 5 hours of drinking after which we ended up with two prostitutes in a room at the Tropicana courtesy of Meyer Lansky)  

Jorge filled me in on Castro and have to admit, found him to be a fascinating character. The best description I could muster was a Errol Flynn swashbuckler leading a band of jovial pirates on a plunder and pillage mission. I hadn’t met him yet, and when I did I found him to be cold and calculating. Not a Hollywood stereotype at all.

When we got word of the campus riots we made tracks for the campus as fast as we could, with our photographer, Enrique in tow. Pilar’s meeting turned out to be a march instead, a fact she neglected to tell Jorge or myself. The whole event was over in 20 minutes, two wounded, (both would die later from their wounds) and 53 arrested including Pilar. There goes dinner!

The CIA,  ever vigilant knew about Pilar and the fact that she held the key to getting me to Castro. As Jorge and I went to police headquarters (with a substantial bribe in pocket) a CIA man fronting as a US Embassy official was already there and secured her release on the grounds that she was a journalist who was writing for an American newspaper. I found out later that the company had already arranged her release through Batista himself, as he was aware of her mission to get me to Castro, a mission that would only benefit Batista and his band of merry men. The fix was in. If Batista was keeping a watchful eye on Pilar, then I knew those same eyes would be locked on me as well. I was now in the spotlight, or was it the crosshairs? In Havana these days you can never be sure.

Pilar was released at 6:27 P.M. into our custody swearing like a Portuguese sailor and yelling at every policeman in the building. I could see the angry fire of revolution in her eyes. She was a fortress of energy and determination. When we got back outside and onto the street, Jorge bid us good evening. I looked at Pilar and my heart was pounding fast...she was absolutely beautiful and fiery. A real Cuban mixture that spells sex appeal. My eyes were forced open today, wide. Politics in Cuba were a volcano ready to erupt and consume the entire island in revolution. Pilar was already consuming me, but, before every revolution...dinner as planned. It was still early and Sloppy Joe’s was nearby.

Food and drink would fortify us.  Cuba was ready to erupt at any moment.  I ended up following her into that volcano and it was the best thing I ever did.

A month had passed since the campus riot erupted. The student protest had effectively receded from the  forefront of the proletarian mind, much as the semi-diurnal low tides cleanse the beach of it’s seaweed, shells, empty beer bottles refuse from the “family of man”   along with the  discarded debris from passing freighters from the Black Sea leaving in it’s  frothy wake  mollusks and sea sponges exposed.  

The remainder of 1957 was spent creating an illusive front  that would gain  us entry into Castro’s camp without suspicion. Once there I felt I could get someone, in a loose drunken moment at least  to admit to the groups culpability in the assassination of Francisco Santiago. What good it would do was negligible, but would give closure to Blake as well as  to Santiago’s daughter, Sienna, wherever she was. Mexico, Florida, New York. It was anyone’s guess. This whole spy business was a crapshoot at best, best not played by amateurs such as myself. I felt I was being squeezed like an orange in a juicer and all that would be left is the pulp.

The students political clubs were shut down. No more distribution of “questionable” pamphlets on the campus were allowed. Under these circumstances snitches abound hoping to curry favor and cash rewards by turning in anyone who smelled in the least leftist.  Indeed they  were as plentiful as maggots on a dead carcass of a water buffalo in a rice paddy in Indo-China.

Havana was a tinderbox ready to go off when Pilar and the students initiated their small peaceful march.  As a direct result of the severity of the reactive brutality the police displayed that day had a collateral effect. More  rural people, farmers and peasants were now joining Fidel Castro's army in the mountains and at one point a collective of  college students, intellectuals and workers  stormed the presidential palace. It was a violent day as protesters were killed or wounded in the streets. It was heating up and getting bloodier by the day,

The lefty students on campus were devouring the words of  Karl Marx. The Ides of Marx I suppose. I noticed too they were emulating the jaunty Greenwich Village black beret look of the charismatic Che Guevara, already becoming a mythological icon. To me these students  looked like leftover beatniks after a poetry reading and a bongo concert pissing  cheap wine by the gallon. (As for Che, decades later his face would be on t-shirts in every head shop in America. By 1967 he’d be a dead Argentinian in Bolivia)

Exactly one week after  Pilar’s march and arrest, I was finally approached at my apartment by my CIA handler in Havana, Jack “Buster” Scalisi who was the overseer of all clandestine CIA activities on the island.  I never trusted, nor will I ever trust, a grown man who goes by the name of Buster or Junior just as I avoid women named Muffy and three legged dogs named Tripod.

“This is a perfect cover, Mickey, me boy,” he said over a  bottle of Puerto Rican rum he offered by way of  an introduction. He must have known of my proclivity for  drink. They probably had a thick file on me under “Debauched Drunks” in a cabinet deep in the basement bowels at Langley.

“Pilar was busted and the newspapers all over the island have featured the protest and her arrest,” he laughed as he expounded. “That along with your stories favorable to Castro breaking in  New York and the rest of the national news syndicate are the perfect marriage!”

“Why is this perfect?” I queried.  “We could get killed. Do I need a machete for protection or can I count on you guys to throw me to the lions yourself?”

“No, you don’t understand. Castro’s spies in the cities here will make sure the news gets to him. In fact it already has. She is a hero and becoming  a Pilar pillar of the leftist youth movement!” The ecstatic smile on his face was as brilliant as Times Square on New Year’s Eve>

“Your stories in New York are being sent here by Sean and Blake. You’re getting featured Section A, and I’ll make sure they are seen by the right people, well, they are the wrong people on the wrong side of the fence, but you see, you’ll come off as a Castro friendly as well...paving the way for you to get close to him for your “profile and biographical features” to get his side of the story to an international audience. This is too good. We couldn’t have planned this better!”

I wanted to bring his exuberance level down to a reasonable earthbound level. “Students died that day, Buster. Others were beaten bloody. Some arrested and  held for God knows what type of interrogation. Pilar was released only because the CIA, excuse me, the State Department and Embassy, excuse me again, YOU interceded on her behalf with the blessing of your buddy Batista.”

“He’s not my buddy. Let me get that straight. He’s a pawn on a large chess board, we call the shots down here. As for the camps incident, well, hat’s all behind us. It’s working out beautifully. Now what we want, no, what we need you to do, is to talk Jorge into letting the students of Pilar’s group meet in the basement of the Record Bulletin under the guise as a group of journalism students studying your craft. The perfect ruse.”

“With Batista’s blessing no doubt,” I added. There was a pause, not quite pregnant, whatever a pregnant pause is, after which he said in a tone to serious for my comfort zone. “Yes, he will look in the opposite direction this time. He wants Castro squashed, erased, eliminated and by getting into bed with him you and Pilar can put the final nail in his political coffin. Of course eventually we will have to bust the meetings up in due time and arrest both you and Pilar to reinforce both of your positions and to eliminate any qualms Castro may have. We need complete believability in this.”

I had to admit, it was coming together. We had talked out the details and finished the bottle. Buster left and as soon as he did I called Pilar to tell her to meet me at the Record-Bulletin office early the next day to fill her in on the plan. She agreed and explained to her group how it would work. I was beginning to feel guilt overwhelming me. She had no idea she was a pawn in the dirty game of international politics and I was dragging her into it. I had to admit to myself.  I felt protective of her...but another emotion kept tugging at me...I was also falling in love with this firebrand of a woman. Latin Heat was melting my heart, but I had a job to do. Maybe when it was all over she would forgive me or damn me to the eternal fires in hell. We’re both Catholics so Hell has been force fed to us since our first Communions.  

We still needed to make this charade known to Castro, and this was the easy part. The apartment manager, Franco Reyes was a sleazeball, just as Sean described him to me back in October. I was told to leave copies of the New York papers with my articles in the open knowing he would snoop around anyway and sell information to the other side. As Buster said, “He’s the perfect conduit to feed misinformation to the right people on the wrong side.” He was right.

It was almost Christmas now, and our target was to be in the rebel camp by March. Hurricane season would be well behind us and the dry season would be underway...good weather conditions if you are battling military forces or just going to the beach for