Noel Hynd - Hostage in Havana
“When I was at the university, or maybe even earlier,” Alex said, “I learned the multiplication tables. Four times seventy five is three hundred thousand.”
“The Russians bargained him down,” Menendez said. “What do you expect when slimeball meets slimeball?”
“What happened to the blown spies?” Alex asked.
“Shot, three of them,” Fajardie said, interjecting sharply. “That was the men. The woman was raped by several members of the Polish KGB. When they were finished with her, she was hanged by a piano wire at the Mokotow Prison in Warsaw.”
Alex drew a breath. A deep, involuntary shudder of revulsion went through her. God help any Western woman who fell into the hands of such brutal enemies. Then a second wave of disgust went through her, one for Roland Violette and his various paths of betrayal, followed by a third wave, which had to do with the occupants of the room. She wondered, on a personal level, whether anything was worth a piano wire around the neck or a bullet in the back of the head.
“So who was Violette working for?” Alex asked. “The Russians or the Cubans?”
“Both,” Fajardie said. “As well as himself. But face it. The Cubans were just the paw of the Russian bear. The cubanos didn’t do anything big without the consent of their Russian masters.”
There was a pause. “So, go on,” Alex said. “I’m sure there’s more.”
Menendez continued. “Violette’s tale might have ended there, except for the arrest in 1979 of another turncoat, U.S. Navy Warrant Officer Thomas Gosden, who was caught selling surveillance information to the Cubans. Violette was so afraid that Gosden would rat him out that he decided to go for a final score. He contacted his Cuban handlers first, said he wanted to go for that big grand salami to end the game. The Cubans turned him over to the Russians. Vassiliev came across with a suitcase full of dollars. A big suitcase. Maybe a million. Cash. In return, Violette squealed out every ‘human asset’ the CIA had in Russia that he could finger. Violette also snitched out an Italian spy and turned over twenty pounds of photocopies of documents he carried out of CIA headquarters in his briefcase. For his ‘good work’ in the Evil Empire days, he was privately awarded the Order of Lenin and given a bonus of another $250,000. Final total, Violette named three dozen spies. All were apprehended by either Soviet or Cuban authorities, and at least eighteen were executed. Meanwhile, the CIA transferred him to its office in Madrid.”
“Been there,” Alex said with detached irony. “Nice office. Right in the embassy. I know some of the people.”
“You’ve been around, haven’t you?” Fajardie said.
“You could say that.”
“Just curious,” Fajardie said to Alex. “How many languages do you speak?”
“English, Russian, French, Italian, and Spanish. And I fake Ukrainian.”
“No Icelandic?” Sloane asked as a mild tweak.
“Not yet,” she answered. “Ask me again in six weeks.”
“Ever had a notion to come work for us directly?” Fajardie asked. “Don’t you get bored crunching numbers at Treasury?”
“Not when bullets come flying through my window and I have to get smuggled into the only Marxist country in the hemisphere just to keep the rifle sights off me.”
“Good answer,” Fajardie shrugged.
He glanced to Menendez to indicate the latter could continue.
“Violette felt Rica would be happier in Spain, language and all,” Menendez said. “He also wanted to distance himself from all his felonies and make things easier if he needed to make a break for an escape. He did not, however, distance himself from the greenbacks the Russians were paying him. He and his Costa Rican broad lived lavishly. His CIA salary was $80,000 a year, but Violette wore a $20,000 Patek Philippe watch on his wrist and drove a maroon Mercedes Benz 450 SL to work. And Rica, she could always find a way to burn more money. She started smoking these little gold-tipped cigarettes. Not gold paper, mind you. Tipped with gold leaf. No filter. She had them specially made by a tobacconist in Madrid. It only took the CIA five years to notice that something didn’t add up. They started looking at him crosseyed in 1982, and the crap hit the fan in ‘84. Arrest warrants were issued for both Violette and his wife.”
He paused. Then he continued. “Somehow, however, Violette got wind of it ahead of time. They cleaned out their bank accounts and caught a plane to Tunisia, just hours ahead of the Spanish police. Everyone expected them to head to Moscow, but they had fake Bolivian passports stashed for a rainy day – and it was starting to drizzle. So they used them to fly to the Dominican Republic from Tunisia. From there, they continued on to Havana via Mexico City. Arrival: November 1984. Same day Ronald Reagan got reelected.”
“And they’ve been there since?”
“As far as we know. Both went underground – one in one way, the other in another.” Menendez paused. He smirked. “There were stories that Rica had left him, threw him over for a Frenchman named Jean Antoine who ran a restaurant in Havana. Jean Antoine was one of Violette’s friends but apparently stole his wife. Or maybe just rented her. She wasn’t seen with Violette for several years, but if she had a fling, it didn’t last. She came back before she died. Our reports are that Violette forgave his friend. Other reports say that he didn’t. But he did take his wife back before the little gold-tipped cancer sticks killed off Rica in 2004,” he said. “She’s buried in the Cementerio de Cristobal Colon in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana. She’s got her own mausoleum. Violette paid for it even though his money was running out.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t have her stuffed and mounted,” Sloane said. “You know? Like Juan Peron did for Evita and Roy Rogers did for Trigger.”
“Knock it down a level, would you?” Fajardie said.
Alex looked back to Menendez. “Okay. So then where are we?”
“Violette’s making noises about coming back to the United States,” Fajardie said. “This you know, and this is where you come in. We got several messages through the American-interests section of the Swiss Embassy in Havana,” Fajardie said. “He’s seventy-eight years old, cuckoo, and his wife’s dead. He has an aging mother here in the U.S., a brother, and a sister. We get the idea his health isn’t good. He’s ready to make a deal and come home. He’s been gone for a quarter century. A little more, actually.”
“That’s not so long ago in terms of the intelligence community’s memory,” Alex said. “I notice that some people would still like to have his head on a plate.”
“Three of them are in this room,” said Menendez, “not just for what he did but to serve notice to anyone who does something similar in the future. A roulette wheel has no memory but this agency has a long one.”
“I follow that part,” Alex said. She turned to Fajardie. “But how do you know Violette really wants to defect back? Maybe he’s just teasing. Or he’s got some final double-double game going.”
“American-interests section of the Swiss Embassy,” Fajardie said. “As I said. They assess it as serious, although everyone agrees that the man is completely unstable. One day he wants to come back, next day he’s not so sure. So he needs enticement.”
“He’s been negotiating a deal,” Menendez said.
“I understand that,” Alex said, “but how do you know he really wants to defect back? Maybe your information’s wrong. Dare I say, it often is.”
“It isn’t,” Fajardie snapped. His tone was frosty. “It isn’t, and we want him back. If we can coax him onto a plane, we need to do it.” He paused. “We’re told that he still has an eye for the ladies. So what better way than to send someone like you, Alex – good-looking, obviously in our employ, versatile in English and Spanish – to entice him onto an aircraft off the island? Bringing with him,” Fajardie added in conclusion, “any goodies he might have for us. Anything he’s toting would be just a bonus. Much appreciated, but a bonus.” He paused. “So if you could drop in on a meeting with him and get him onto the small aircraft that we’re going to arrange to lift you and him and your Mafia pal out of there …? Well, that would be a wonderful thing for everyone, wouldn’t it?”
Alex watched the eye contact between the three men shoot around the table, like the ball in an old arcade game. Pinball wizards, all of them. The Who’s deaf, dumb, and blind kid would have loved this trio. But in the eye contact, she wondered what she wasn’t being told. What and how much.
“What are you going to do with him once you get him back?” she asked. “Take him out to tea? Pin a medal on his chest? Push him out a window?”
“Don’t be silly,” Fajardie said.
“I’m not being silly. I’m asking. I know it’s unusual for someone with a sense of ethics to be sitting in front of you, but that’s what you have here. So maybe you could answer my question?”
“There’s not much we can do if he sets foot on American soil, Alex,” Fajardie answered. “He’s worked out a deal through lawyers in New York. I’m not even a party to it, but I do know that if we violated it once he’s back, we’d be looking at criminal and civil suits for a decade, from him or his dear relatives. He’s not worth it, Alex. We’re just trying to button up some old business.”
Alex was about to ask more when Sloane resumed. “It’s all in the file we’re going to give you. Everything that we know. Take it with you. You’ll move toward Cuba the day after tomorrow.”
“We want Violette before he changes his mind,” Fajardie said, “which he changes as quickly as he changes his underwear, assuming anyone has spare underwear in Cuba these days.”
“And you’re sure the man you’re dealing with is the real thing?” Alex asked. “Ronald Violette?”
“There are some correspondences,” Sloane said, easing slightly, “handwritten. Violette’s proposals to us via the Swiss. We had the handwriting analyzed. It’s him. We know that.” He paused. “There are scans of the letters. You can take a look.”
“Just curious. Are they in English or Spanish?” she asked.
“English. Does it matter?”
“No,” Alex said.
“Good,” Fajardie said. He plopped a bound file on the table between them, plus a smaller envelope containing the flash drives.
“Take a look at this stuff tonight,” he said, “and call me with any questions. Meanwhile, tomorrow morning, the agency will outfit you for your trip. Passport. Weapon. Money. After that, you’re on your way.”
Fajardie eased back for a moment, appearing as if he was proposing to say something further. Alex held onto the silence.
Finally, Fajardie uncorked. “Ronald Violette,” he said, “the shrinking Violette. He won’t be forced, Alex. He must be nursed along. Prodded and cajoled, charmed, tricked, or bamboozled. He flirts with leaving the island, then never does. But the time might finally be right. So he needs to be goosed, juiced, reduced, deduced, or seduced – or anything to get him onto that aircraft. Clear? Opaque? Transparent? That’s your assignment, Alex, and you’ll probably have one roll of the dice over his morning shot of rum. Anything. Just get his filthy traitorous butt on that plane out of there in any way you can. Fun, right?”
“Fun,” she said.
“Which reminds me, if you can get us some Havana Club or a handful of Cohibas or Bolivars, it wouldn’t be a bad thing, either.”
“I thought you disagreed with the embargo,” she said.
“I do. But I have my own personal needs as a drinker and a smoker, all right?” He winked. She eyed the file, her mind a warren of doubts. Then, for some reason, her own brief career flew before her mind’s eye, as well as that of Roland Violette. What did she have in front of her, sandwiched between the covers of a manila envelope, other than a testament to an aging man’s life?
How should he be seen, and how should she see him if she found him in Cuba? As a man who had set out to achieve one set of goals but then had worked toward the opposite? A man who had betrayed others? Or, in his bizarre fidelity to his lifetime companion, Rica, was he a man who had found a higher loyalty and been true to that instead? For a moment, she tried to push ideology aside. Surely, Violette could see through capitalist values much the same way she could see through Communist ones. She wondered what it could have been like to make such a step of loyalty to one’s partner that one was obligated to spend the back end of one’s life in a place as isolated as Cuba.
“I’m still not buying this completely. If Violette is so widely hated here, why bring him back at all?” she asked. “Other than to prosecute him. Why cut him any sort of a deal?”
“We make deals with people we hate every day,” Fajardie said. “Plus, if you want me to be ornery, it’s not your job to wonder about such things. It’s your role to either accept the mission, argue out of it, or resign. The choice is yours.”
“I figured you’d explain it that way,” she said, thinking about the two million dollars in the bank, then thinking about the bullets that crashed through her apartment window.
“Is there any other way to explain it?” Fajardie asked graciously.
“None at all,” Alex said with a sigh. “I get where you’re coming from.” She reached forward and accepted the files, and with them the assignment in Havana. “Okay,” she said. “I don’t like it, but okay.”
“That’s kind of my attitude every morning in this place,” Fajardie said. “Why should you be living a different life than I am?”
“No reason I should,” she said. They missed her sarcasm.
Fajardie turned to Sloane and Menendez. “Thank you, gentlemen,” he said. They rose and were out the door in another minute. Alex would have followed, but she felt Fajardie’s hand on her wrist. Then he released. He glanced back to the table and indicated she should sit again.
“A final detail or two, Alex,” he said. He moved to the door and closed it.
It was obvious to Alex that Fajardie had something significant to add. She sat.
“A couple of creeps those guys,” he muttered of the duo that had just left.
“Imagine that in this agency,” she said.
“Yeah, right,” he agreed. “And now I’m going to be one too.”
“Want to spit it out?” she asked.
“I’m going to tell you your real assignment in Cuba.”
Alex stiffened slightly.
“There’s a larger issue there,” Fajardie said. “Potentially a huge one. It will most likely develop on your visit, but it’s absolutely at the top level at this moment. Well beyond the purview of those two clowns who just left.”
“Wait a minute,” Alex asked. “Is the Violette operation genuine or not?”
“Absolutely,” Fajardie said, “and it’s the perfect cover within the agency for your second task in Cuba. There is, in fact, a second defector, a much more important one, who is holding a top-drawer bag of goodies for us. ‘Figaro,’ we’re supposed to call him, until we learn more. I am not even sure who he is, but the package he’s selling is quite impressive. Potentially a first-rate defector with two eyes on the future, whereas Brother Violette is of the third-rate variety with one bleary eye on the past. Follow?”
