Her Mother's Daughter (93 page)

“You know how Alpha 66 contaminated all that sugar in the warehouses with chemicals,” Alex said between clenched teeth. “Wrecked the fuckers' economy. We contaminate the reservoirs, water storage tanks, we got 'em.”

“No the water,” Ettore pleaded.

Cyrus laughed. His narrow teeth were yellow, which was unexpected in a man with the tan, the physique, the carriage of a California surfer. “They gave the bastards swine flu, they gave them dengue….”

Philip picked it up, laughing too. “They unloaded a ton of infested mosquitoes on them.”

“What about their oil pipelines?…” Noel put in.

“You do what you like, I go for the barracks,” Clemente said to Lope.

“There is gasoline at dee pier,” Ettore offered ominously.

“Most important,” Jack announced, “fuck off the soft targets, head for the hard stuff. We're only a dozen….”

“Oh,” Alex yearned, “if only we could get some C-4!”

The argument broke into splinters, with two or three guys fighting another, in a set of nasty little groups.

“Yeah, you use a whole satchel charge when you only need a couple of sticks, I know your kind….”

“If we had pineapples…”

“We could make juice. Forget it.”

“Shit, there's only eight fucking BARs, everybody else'll have to carry M-14s.”

“But what I'd like to lay my hands on is some MK-2. Think our contacts…?” Woody looked questioningly at Noel, who didn't respond.

“I'd like an M-60 myself,” Jack muttered.

“Some eighty-one-mm mortars….”

“A satchel charge apiece, half a dozen bazookas, and some M-16s. We'd wipe 'em out!”

“No, a law! A couple of laws!”

I turned to Woody. I whispered, “What the hell is a law?”

He gave me a disgusted grimace, grabbed a paper napkin, pulled out a fancy ball-point pen and scribbled “LAW: light antitank weapon.” He passed it to me, I read it; he crumpled it up in his hand. He turned back to the men. “Listen, if we are making up a shopping list, what I want is a couple of MACs.”

I knew MACs weren't Macintosh apples. I didn't dare ask him what they were.

By ten-thirty, they were no longer arguing. “We blow it all up!” Huge laughter. “All of it!”

They were too drunk to do serious planning—nor did this seem the place to do it. It would be safe for me to go to bed. I leaned over to ask Woody if we would be leaving tomorrow. He shook his head. “Problem with the boat. Maybe the next day.” I excused myself, but I don't think any of them even noticed my leaving. They were having too good a time.

Before going to my room, I went into the phone booth—there were no phones in the rooms—and called Toni. I spoke to the kids, too. They were still up, playing Scrabble. It was a holiday week. My heart ached when I heard them laughing together, and I couldn't tell them anything except that I was okay and things were progressing, but we hadn't gone yet.

I went upstairs feeling uneasy. I had no idea how expeditions like this should be run, but it did seem that the guys should not talk so loudly about the mission, especially in a hotel patronized by Cubans. But maybe they were all on the same side. The
way
they talked bothered me too—it was like sitting over coffee, listening to a bunch of women moon over their dream houses: what would yours have? A dishwasher, a dryer, a stainless-steel sink? A garbage-disposal unit! These guys wanted bigger and better killing machines. But they had about as much chance of getting them as most women did their dream houses: that much was clear. Could these men really be professional soldiers? Was this the behavior of professional soldiers? They were so
silly
! Oh, what did I know about such things? Only what I saw in the movies. Maybe
World
should have sent a man. Maybe a man would know things like this….

I thought maybe I was uneasy because I felt like a traitor. I admired Castro, who had saved his country from Batista, that hideous dictator. In my heart I didn't support what the men I was covering were doing. And that made me feel guilty, an intruder, a person acting in bad faith. I reminded myself that I was a photographer, impartial, a professional, and that there was no reason not to cover what one didn't agree with, that you couldn't do news that way, but still…

Eventually, I fell asleep.

The next afternoon, we all met in Mi Tierra again. Most of the guys were wearing khaki trousers and T-shirts, but Woody wore a freshly pressed safari suit and the rich Cubans wore immaculate white linen. We were drinking beer and the guys were repeating the conversation of the night before almost word for word, arguing over the respective merits of the radio station, the reservoir, the police stations, the barracks, the telephone company, and yearning after dream weapons, when two men came in wearing suits and ties and wary expressions, and I thought, oh-oh, CIA or FBI, what's going to happen now?

The men in suits looked around, stared at Woody, nodded; he nodded back, and they asked if they could join us. Much noise, scraping of chairs, as half the guys at the table got up to make room for them. They acted as if they were in the presence of royalty. The men in suits accepted this as their due, and sat down next to Woody. The one closer to him turned and said something in a soft voice I couldn't hear. Woody nodded and in an equally soft voice sketched his plan: the boat, the hidden weapons, the point of landing, the points of attack. I was surprised—I hadn't realized that while the others were going on and on, Woody, Alex, and Noel actually
had
a plan. As Woody talked, he occasionally glanced at Alex or Noel for confirmation or addition, and that one would lean forward and fill in what was needed. For once, everyone was whispering. The men in suits listened, nodding.

I looked around the room. There was an old man at a corner table, nodding over his aperitif. He looked harmless, but who knows? And two toughs were sitting in a booth drawing plans on paper napkins, looking as if they were planning a robbery. There was a handful of men at the bar. I felt extremely agitated, but the men in suits paid no attention to the others in the room. I must be foolish, I thought: after all, these guys really were experienced.

The guys in suits nodded, eyes lidded, expressionless. When Woody was finished, they whispered to him for a few minutes. I only caught “Alpha 66” and “Dominguez.” I was thrilled: I imagined they were laying out the master plan and filling Woody in on it. He kept nodding, his eyelids down too, face expressionless. After a time, they stood up. Woody nodded at them, they nodded at the table, and left.

That night, Woody and Alex and Noel and I drove in a borrowed car—an old dented, rusting, rattly Buick—to a stucco bungalow set among blocks of similar shabby peeling houses on the outskirts of the city. Everyone was quiet, tense: we were going to a secret meeting set up with a defector, Castro's former minister of defense, Dominguez. He had information on where things were located—arms, tanks, airplanes, men. This was an important meeting, and they had included me!

Alex parked the car a block away from the house and we walked down the poorly lighted street to number 27, which was completely dark. Alex gave a signal knock. The door opened on a dark hallway; we couldn't even see who had opened it, but we entered. Noel closed the door behind him, quietly, then a thick, short figure shuffled along in front of us and threw open a door to a lighted room. The light illuminated the figure—a woman, aged, ageless, shapeless, grey. She pointed, and we entered.

The room was heavily draped so no light showed outside. It was also hot, stifling, and filled with cigar smoke. In a shabby easy chair a man sat in a bright blue bathrobe that fell open from the belt tied at his waist. He waved us in, asked—in Spanish—if we wanted a drink. Alex translated for us. (Woody spoke Spanish too, I knew; but he was the commander, not the translator.) The men asked for rum; I requested a Coke. The man rapped out the order to the woman, who was wearing bedroom slippers. After ten long hot smoky minutes, during which we sat in silence, she returned carrying three cloudy glasses half full of rum, and a glass of cola with one small melting ice cube floating in it.

We drank. Woody took over. “Excellency,” he began deferentially, “we are honored to have you with us.”

Alex translated.

Dominguez nodded, then began to talk. He spoke for a long time, rapidly, with passion, pounding the little rickety table beside him so that it shook, pounding his chest, rolling his eyes. His statement was translated rather cursorily by Alex, who probably could not remember all of what was said. His Excellency had believed in the Revolution, had believed in Fidel; his heart was entirely with the cause. But now Fidel had become a betrayer: he was imprisoning people, murdering people, putting people in camps like the Russians, expropriating property (including Dominguez'), making dictatorial laws. He had betrayed the revolution; he was ruining the country.

Tears ran down the old man's cheeks. He did not bother to wipe them away.

He, Dominguez, had probed his heart, his conscience, his soul, and out of loyalty to his homeland had finally defected. He now believed The Devil was ruining it. The Devil had betrayed him, and was now betraying Cuba, his motherland, his sacred soil….

Woody's face lifted in exaltation as Dominguez spoke. His chin lifted, his eyes began to flare.

“Excellency, you inspire us, we who are about to die, for Cuba, for your cause, for
FREEDOM
!” Then he took a sip of rum—after first toasting Dominguez with his glass, which, when he held it up to the light, was really very dirty and smudged. Alex and Noel lifted their glasses too, and His Excellency, who was already drinking, thrust his glass toward them slightly, sloshing rum over his bare knees.

Then Woody began to speak, and this time he spoke in Spanish. His speech was long, and from the bobs of his head at its opening, I gathered he was offering kudos to the minister. Later, he seemed to be asking questions, and Dominguez answered, but then something seemed to be wrong, Alex joined in the conversation, and the three men looked around as if searching the room.

At last the minister shouted something, and no one spoke until the silent woman shuffled to the door and opened it. He gave her another order, and ten minutes later she appeared again with a large ordnance-type map of Cuba. The men all got down on the floor on their hands and knees. Dominguez began to pinpoint important sites.

I didn't join them. I knew they would resent my intrusion, that Woody would act as if I were trying to pry into State Secrets. Besides, I didn't speak Spanish. I told myself my job was to absorb the atmosphere totally, to study the minister, to try to read his character on his face. It was a fine face—deeply lined, sad, with traces of sensuality—but it is difficult to be confident about a face when you do not understand the words that come from it. I yawned. I felt overwhelmingly sleepy. It came on me that I was bored. Again. How could that be? I was almost never bored. Well, there is so much waiting, I thought. And this room is airless.

I sat there sipping my lukewarm Coke, head spinning from the heat, while they argued and exclaimed and pounced on spots on the piece of paper on the floor.

I was feeling faint. I tapped Woody on the shoulder and told him I'd be outside on the doorstep, getting some air. He looked alarmed, and turned swiftly to Alex.

“Ask him if it is safe if she goes outside!”

Alex did. Dominguez shrugged. I got up and left the room, I peered down the dark hallway, searching for the woman, but did not see her. The back rooms of the house were dark. (Did the woman sit in the dark? Why? Did she have lights, and a television set on in a cozy back room with all the drapes drawn? I hoped so. Was she his sister, his wife, his servant? Maybe just his landlady. I knew these questions would hold no interest for the others.)

I opened the front door, went out, sank to the step. I lighted a cigarette, inhaled deeply. I looked up at the stars, brilliant in the southern sky. I waited.

It was after midnight when they came out, silent, tense with elation and a sense of importance. We walked back to the car in silence. Only when we had driven well away from the house did Woody explode: “Great! Just great! We got it now!” and Alex and Noel assented, all of them laughing, lighting up cigarettes, relaxing. Woody glanced at me. “We leave tomorrow,” he said between clenched teeth. “Be ready at six.”

A
T SIX O'CLOCK ON
the morning of December 30, 1961, I was sitting in the lobby with my knapsack and camera case, wishing I had a cup of coffee. Woody, Alex, and Noel appeared and disappeared. They were making telephone calls, sending messengers, trying to find a car. It seems José had not got the message, and Orlando's car had broken down. At seven, the hotel restaurant opened, and I went in and ordered coffee. We did not get on the road until eight. Eleven of us crammed ourselves and our gear into two cars, a Ford station wagon and the rattly Buick from the night before. (What had happened to the red convertible? Whose car was it?) Sebastian and Ettore were to meet us with a third car at a Mobil station near the road to the Everglades. Some people from each car would move to Sebastian's, so we would not be so crowded during the long drive to Key West. It suddenly occurred to me that there were thirteen of us.

It was a beautiful day, and lovely driving down the two-lane highway to the Keys. Sand, sky, narrow necks of land connected by bridges threaded water blue, blue-grey, Winslow Homer blue-green, depending on the sky, the clouds. There were only a few poor shabby settlements along the road, but they were—to me, at least—utterly appealing: shacks along the beach, small trailers with tattered canvas awnings, people in straw hats, barefoot, sitting on the bridges or piers dangling a fishing line. Sun. Silence.

We reached Key West in the early afternoon. We drove straight to the pier where the boat was anchored. It was a cabin cruiser with sleeping accommodations for six. Its name, somewhat faded, was the
Argo.
An unshaven Cuban was standing by the boat, smoking a cigar. We all clambered out; Woody and Alex went to talk to the man—Luna?—while Noel supervised the unloading of our gear from the trunks of the cars. The other men disappeared.