Fajardie began, “The powers-that-be feel we can coordinate you into a fluid situation we’re having right now in Cuba. Part of the plan is to keep you away from whoever might be sniping at you while putting you to work in an operation.” Fajardie glanced to the others. “What do we hear from the FBI in New York?” he asked. “Anything on Perez?”
“They have a trail,” Menendez said.
“Hot? Cold?” he asked.
“Getting warmer by the day,” Menendez said. “I talked to someone on major cases just before lunch.”
“Good,” Fajardie said and turned back to Alex. “Meanwhile, we need to keep you safe and get you out of the country.” He paused. “We’ve read the background on Paul Guarneri. There’s plenty on his old man, but not much on him. He thinks there’s a pile of dough sitting somewhere in Cuba, huh?”
“That’s what he says.”
“Hard to imagine that it’s still sitting there after all these years,” Menendez said. “Fidel’s probably already spent it for him.”
Alex shrugged. “I’m just along for the ride as far as Guarneri is concerned,” she said. “My assignment is Roland Violette. I saw some initial briefing documents. I know he’s a fugitive who wants to come home. That’s the extent of my knowledge.”
“How much do you know about Cuba?” Fajardie asked. “Politics. Background. History.”
“My boss in New York brought me up to date. And I’ve got my own personal opinions that the embargo on Cuban goods has done more harm than good, particularly to the Cuban people. But that’s just me, and I have some unpopular ideas.”
“That is an unpopular idea around here,” Fajardie volleyed back. “I think the island deserved the embargo for going Commie. But we’re here to discuss something else. Fugitives. Turncoats. Traitors. That’s the order of this bright day in June, isn’t it? We’re also in the territory of these two gentlemen. So Curtis will give you the background on fugitives in Cuba in general, then Tom will bring you up to date on a dismal excuse for a human being named Roland Violette.” He paused. “We’ll give you a hardcopy file and some secured flash drives to take with you, but you can only apply them twice. You’re traveling with a laptop or do you need one?”
“I have one.”
“Secure?”
“I wouldn’t be using it if it weren’t.”
Another short beat, then, “Okay,” Fajardie said softly. To his left, Menendez was looking at an open file, glancing up and down intermittently, while to his left, Sloane sat stiffly in place.
“Sorry,” Fajardie said. “I have to ask you to sign these.”
He handed her some confidentiality bonds. She looked at the documents, scanned them, and pulled her silver Tiffany pen from her purse, the one with her name on it. She signed and laid the pen on the table. She handed the documents back to Fajardie, who then turned to Sloane and said, “Okay, Curtis, amuse us.”
Sloane cleared his throat, consulted his notes, and began. “By our count, 258 fugitives from U.S. law currently reside in Cuba. Our numbers are approximate because we don’t have that many eyes on the street in Cuba, and some of our files go back forty, fifty years. People die, they disappear, they get off the island and disappear to other places. Like Mexico or Honduras or Guatemala.”
“Even Panama?” she asked, bemused.
“Even Panama,” he said. “Particularly Panama. But every once in a while one of these individuals wants to repatriate. For whatever reason. They’re sick, they’re ailing, they want to see a parent before they die. Change of heart even.”
“All of which factor into Violette’s case, from what I know,” she said.
“Possibly,” Sloane said. “We’ll get to him in a minute. Take a recent template for his case though. Luis Soltren. That name mean anything?”
She racked her brain. A light went on. “A highjacker, right?”
“Very good!” Sloane said. “Luis Armando Pena Soltren. Age sixty-seven. Soltren surrendered to U.S. law enforcement in October 2009 after arriving on a flight from Havana. He’d been in Cuba since 1968 when, in November of that year, he and three other men forced their way into the cockpit of a Pan Am flight and diverted it to Havana. Smuggled weapons on board in a bag of disposable diapers. Such hijackings were frequent at the time, with thirty successful or attempted diversions to Cuba in 1968 alone. Anyway, there are scores of other Americans living in Cuba outside the reach of U.S. law enforcement. Most have been there for decades. Some are in plain sight; others live deep underground. The best-known American fugitive is the former Joanne Chesimard. She’s sixty-two now and was a member of the radical activist organization called the Black Liberation Army. She was found guilty of first-degree murder in the shooting of a New Jersey state trooper in 1977. She escaped from prison in 1979 and was last seen in Cuba in 1984.”
“Chesimard is definitely one of the top people on the list of fugitives,” intoned Fajardie. “If you pick up any scent, you’ll want to report it.”
“She’s been living in Cuba for decades under the protection of Castro,” Menendez added. “In the beginning, the fugitives were treated well. Fidel used them to flip a finger at the U.S. As years went by, he got tired of them. Most were common criminals, and even the political ones were troublemakers.”
“Most of these men and women have been there for a long time,” said Fajardie. “Worthless bunch of losers, if you want to know. Many of them, like Soltren, hijacked planes, sought refuge, and have been living there ever since they escaped the United States. Some were members of Puerto Rican separatist groups or black nationalist organizations.”
“So there’s no extradition treaty?” Alex asked.
“That’s a laugh,” Fajardie said. “Cuba and the U.S. have had an extradition treaty since the 1920s. In 1971, the two countries signed a pact that dealt specifically with extraditing hijackers. But the U.S. hasn’t extradited anyone back to Cuba, so Cuba hasn’t extradited anyone back to us. The biggest fish of all was a guy named Robert Vesco. Heard of him?”
“Sure. Financial crimes are my turf, remember?” she said.
“Vesco fled to Cuba in ‘82 after a series of charges were brought against him in the U.S. and throughout the Caribbean,” Fajardie said. “He stole $200 million from investors in the 1970s. After receiving the protection of the Cuban government, Vesco was sentenced to prison in Havana in 1996 and died from lung cancer in Havana in 2007.”
“The majority of fugitives just tried to lay low,” said Menendez, “hoping that when the Castro brothers finally drop dead, relations will improve. But there’s not much in the way of statute of limitations for most of these people. Murder. Air piracy. Fraud. They’re looking at prison time if they come back here.” He paused. “Then again, they get old and start to think. The right to die on one’s native soil. That’s a pretty strong pull. You wouldn’t think it would be, but it is.”
“On the contrary,” Alex said, “I would think it would account for a lot.”
“And that brings us to Violette,” Fajardie said. He turned to Menendez. “Tom, talk to us.”
“Roland Violette,” Menendez began. “Soviet mole. Traitor and first-class CIA rat.”
“I second that,” Sloane said.
Fajardie said, “And me, three, and Alex, four. Now run with it.”
Menendez threw a stack of surveillance photos onto the desk. “Here’s the ugly story,” Menendez said. Alex listened as she looked through the photos. “Roland Violette was nearly born a CIA agent. His father spied for the CIA in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Colombia during the ‘50s and ‘60s, so as a kid he learned Spanish like a native. Mixed race, by the way. His father was part-Haitian, part-Anglo, but his mother was something darker. Very pretty woman, a quarter Martinican, a quarter South American Indian of some sort, the rest Spanish. Pretty volatile mix if you ask me.”
“I didn’t, but go ahead,” Alex said.
“In 1957 Roland went to Camp Peary in Virginia. He was born in 1940, so he was seventeen at the time.” Menendez steadied his gaze at her. “You know about Camp Peary, right?” he said.
“The Farm,” she answered, “as it’s called by those who know and loathe it. It’s the CIA training facility in York County, Virginia, the one whose existence the CIA has never admitted. Specializes turning misguided, maladjusted individuals into misguided, maladjusted CIA officers.”
Nods all around, some laughter, six eyes on her, two-and-a-half smiles: Fajardie was less amused than the other two. “That’s the place,” Menendez said.
“I even know why they call it ‘The Farm,’” Alex offered.
“Okay, why?” he asked, testing her.
“During World War II, beginning in 1942, Camp Peary became a stockade for special German prisoners-of-war. Most of the POWs at Camp Peary did farm work within the camp during the war,” she concluded. “Hence, the name. But back to Violette.”
“Well, despite his family tree and years on The Farm,” Menendez said, “Violette was one of the most damaging moles in CIA history. Starting in 1974, he sold out every spy the CIA and FBI had in Central America. He began at the CIA, recruiting locals in South America to spy on their own governments, but he didn’t have much talent. Luckily for him, his assignment was with a Cuban military attache to Honduras named Rafael Figueredo. Figueredo had already been convinced to spy for the U.S., but he wasn’t useful until he was transferred to Violette’s CIA department. In Violette’s hands, Figueredo, who was code-named Vesper, was reassigned to the Cuban Foreign Ministry. There, he went to work and routinely photographed sensitive documents and files. So even though Roland Violette had never successfully recruited a single spy, his handling of Vesper earned him a promotion. He became the counterintelligence branch chief of Cuban operations, where he had access to information on every aspect of U.S. operations in Central America, Cuba in particular. So that brings us to 1977. Violette ran into skirt trouble.”
“Imagine that,” Alex said. “A man with skirt trouble.”
“Violette was having an affair with a wealthy Costa Rican woman named Rica. He brought her to D.C., and it wasn’t long before she started making trouble. She must have been one tropical storm in the bedroom, because she immediately demanded that Violette divorce his wife. Instead of dumping a troublesome mistress and cutting his losses, he did what Rica asked. You know what divorces are like: it nuked almost all of his savings and his assets. Yet Rica continued to spend money as if she and Violette were printing it at home, which, by this time, Violette was probably wishing he could do. His Costa Rican cutie quickly dug Violette into nearly $50,000 of debt. He became so desperate for funds that he borrowed from every friend he could tap, maxed out all his credit cards, and even considered robbing a bank. But then he remembered that the Soviets paid $75,000 for the identity of American spies working in their country. He arranged a meeting with Sergei Vassiliev of the Soviet Embassy in Washington. They met at a bistro in Georgetown, negotiated, and Violette gave up three CIA spies working in Moscow and one in Warsaw. Three men, one woman. In exchange for this information, Violette received $200,000.”
“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?”
“Vaguely. This Figaro – is that his cover name or one our side gave him?”
“His, I believe. Why?”
“A theory of mine,” she said, warming to the subject, “which has been borne out in recent times. The more one conceals an identity the more one reveals it.”
“And what does ‘Figaro’ tell you?”
“Well, what are the associations? The original Figaro was a character in a pair of eighteenth-century French plays, who then became a character in an opera by Mozart and an opera by Rossini. Figaro was a barber – the “barber of Seville” – who was a subversive against the ruling class. If a Cuban took the name, it suggests an unusual affinity for European culture. Unless, of course, it means nothing.”
“The Figaro issue began about two years ago. There was some sort of flap involving a Spanish passport,” Fajardie said. “I saw that part of the file. Not my department, and I’m not the case officer. I’m your case officer but not Figaro’s. I don’t suppose that connects to anything, does it, the Spanish passport?”
“It might,” Alex said.
“How?”
“I spent some time in Madrid last year. I suspect you’re referring to one of the provisions of Le Ley de Memoria Historica. Several thousand Spaniards fled Spain during the 1936 – 39 Civil War, as well as during the Franco regime, and settled in Cuba. Only a handful are still alive. But they, their children, and grandchildren now hold legal rights to Spanish citizenship. It’s part of the reconciliation process put forth by the current Spanish government. Seville, by the way, is in Spain, so there’s a subtle subtext with your Figaro. He’s not the Tailor of Saville Row in London; he’s the barber in Spain.”
She looked at Fajardie and wasn’t sure if she was connecting.
“So you think he’s a barber?” he asked.
“It’s always possible, but how would an ordinary barber have access to anything important? More likely he has an affinity for opera. Or Spain.”
“Could be,” said Fajardie.
“Before we overthink the point,” she added, “I’ll also point out that Figaro was a kitten in Pinocchio, and it’s also a chain of pizza joints in Los Angeles. So I’m as wary of overthinking as you are, okay?”
“I’m told Figaro was supposed to get a Spanish passport but didn’t,” Fajardie said, expanding. “That’s unofficial.”
“If a Cuban got Spanish citizenship and a Spanish passport, he – or she – could leave immediately,” Alex said. “Sounds like the Cuban government prevented this individual from getting a passport and exiting.”
“Only one reason they’d do that,” Fajardie said.
“Sure,” Alex said. “If he worked for the government or in defense or in anything sensitive, the government wouldn’t want him to leave.”
“That jibes with the scuttlebutt. He wanted to vamoose and they wouldn’t let him. The they in my sentence is the Castro government. And they’d have to be watching him pretty closely. So he had to be waiting for the perfect moment to slip his leash. He’s probably looking for someone from our side to contact him. He wants to find us. That’s where you come in. If he makes the wrong move at the wrong time, they’ll shoot him. And anyone helping him.”
“How do you know Figaro’s a man?” Alex asked.
Fajardie shrugged. “We don’t, but we’ve assumed it from the information.”
“Might be a foolish assumption,” Alex said. “You never know about the demure middle-aged woman who’s been a party functionary for years. She’s quiet and outgoing, but seething beneath the surface and ready to clean out the vault.”
No response. Then, “Maybe,” Fajardie said with absolute certainty, “our Figaro has already slipped us some engaging tidbits. Apparently, Figaro worked as part of a high-level Cuban delegation to Iraq in 1991. He says that, based on intelligence from a Russian spy facility at Lourdes in Cuba, the delegation had tried to convince Saddam Hussein that he could not win a war against the U.S. He claims to have met Saddam on several occasions. Do you know the name Arnoldo Ochoa?” Fajardie asked.
“No.”
“General Ochoa was the commander of Cuba’s intervention in Angola in the 1980s. He was scheduled to take over the most powerful and important command in Cuba after Angola. But he began speaking against Cuban colonialismo in Africa and in favor of glasnost, the new openness of Soviet President Gorbachev. Soon afterward, Ochoa was convicted of narco-trafficking. He was executed in 1989 with Fidel Castro’s permission. With his death, as when Che Guevara died in Bolivia, a popular and powerful potential rival to the president was eliminated. The real reason Ochoa was executed was political. We never knew that.” Fajardie laughed. “What does that tell you about Fidel and his regime? Fidel was pleased when Che died and pleased when Ochoa died. He is a low-budget Stalin who would never tolerate his Trotsky.”
“This is news?” Alex asked.
“The people on the sixth floor crave this stuff. What can I say?”
“So? What am I supposed to do about Figaro?” Alex asked after another moment.
“Keep your eyes and ears open. Be prepared to think on your noble feet, and if anything comes up while you have your boots on the ground in Cuba, rope him in. Bring him to the U.S. Getting Violette up here would be a home run. Bringing in Figaro, I’m told, would be a grand slam.”
“I assume I don’t mention any of this to my travel companion,” she said.
Fajardie laughed. “Absolutely not!” he said. “The only one you mention this to is me. And the aforesaid Figaro if you meet him.”
“If I’m lucky enough to find him,” she said.
“No,” Fajardie said in conclusion. “There’s no chance that you will find him. As I said, Figaro will find you – or it doesn’t happen at all.”