Minetti impressed me from the first. He was fortyish, a dark-skinned Italian and quite good-looking. When Pedro had pulled me from the basement where I’d been trapped, the first thing I noticed was the impeccable style of Minetti’s appearance. Pedro and Bregaria wore the practical garb of the guerilla fighter-—short-sleeved cotton shirts and dungarees -- but not Minetti. He was dressed in a tropical blue worsted of any expensive cut. His shoes were shined and the edge of a white handkerchief peeped out of his breast pocket. His tie was watered silk, a subdued stripe of blue and gray which wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Harvard Club. Even the tiny stickpin securing it was in perfect taste, a flawless ruby, expensive but not ostentatious. Minetti looked ready to preside over a board of directors’ meeting of an ultra-conservative corporation. Yet, despite the ruggedness of the jungle country around us, there was nothing ludicrous about the man. His mirthless smile, the cold pinpoints of his nearly black eyes, the economy of movement with which his small, slender body moved-all these added up to the manner of a man who must be taken seriously, to a man who calculated his risks before acting and then acted with precise deadliness.
He received his instructions from Bregaria and then left without a superfluous word. Pedro followed. “I will see you soon in Havana, Mr. Victor,” he promised, flashing me his usual smile of camaraderie. A half-hour later I too was on my way.
I rode in an ox-drawn cart, hidden under a load of stalks of sugar cane. I don’t recommend this mode of transportation. It’s not exactly my idea of traveling first class. I bounced around like a pinball with an overactive thyroid, and with every bump in the road my flesh was assaulted by the coarse, bilious green stalks covering me. Worst of all was the sickeningly sweet odor of the raw sugar.
I was damn glad when, after some hours of this, the cart pulled to a halt. We were at the outskirts of Havana, and the driver of the oxcart had paused for inspection at one of the Commie checkpoints. The cane above me rustled and I saw the glint of a bayonet as it was plunged among the stalks about an inch from the tip of my nose. Then I heard sounds of muffled laughter. I found out later that the driver had produced a jug of wine and passed it among the soldiers. As a reward, they stopped molesting his cargo. His papers were stamped, and he was allowed to pass into the city.
He went straight to a warehouse where we were expected. Here I was transferred to the back of a motor lorry. This lorry was labeled with the name of a liquor distributor. Its first delivery that day was at the Casa de la Felicidad.
Minetti was already there. We waited together for Pedro. He was silent, as chary of words as he had been at our first meeting. Finally Pedro arrived.
“She is being held in the cellar under the north wing of the hotel,” he told us.
Minetti reached in his pocket, drew out a large sheet of paper and spread it out on the table before us. It was a detailed diagram of the Havana Libre Hotel. On closer examination it proved to be an actual copy of an architect’s blueprint of the place.
“How did you get that?” I exclaimed.
“Simple. It was removed from the hotel safe on New Year’s Eve of 1958, the night before Fidel moved in. While everybody else was wailing and worrying about what he’d do, some of us kept our heads.”
“The Havana Libre used to be the Havana Hilton,” Pedro explained further when Minetti fell silent. “Castro took it for his headquarters that first day, January 1st, 1959. And it was only a day later that the roof fell in on Señor Minetti and his associates.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“His first official act was to close all the gambling casinos and bordellos. Immediately the employees of the gaming houses descended on the hotel to plead with him for their jobs. But Castro wouldn’t be moved.”
“Did the prostitutes appeal to him?”
“Not directly,” Pedro told me. “They wrote him very dignified letters, demanding that he give them back the right to exercise their profession.”
“They should have gone in person,” I said, thinking fondly of my experiences with the quartet of harlots in the bombed-out cellar. “I’ll bet they would have gotten a lot further than the croupiers.”
“Gentlemen, we haven’t got time to discuss history,” Minetti said, just the slightest edge of annoyance in his voice. He turned to Pedro. “Show me on this diagram, if you can, exactly where the girl is being held.”
Pedro studied it and then pointed with his finger. “Here.”
“It figures,” Minetti said. “This used to be a cold storage box where they hung sides of beef. The walls are three feet thick and lined with steel. A perfect prison. All they had to do was put the right kind of lock on the door. And that lock is the crux of the problem. I want you to find out everything you can about it,” he told Pedro. “And also find out when they change the guards.”
The following evening Pedro was back with the information. “The door is double-locked,” he told us. “There is a heavy iron bar across it which locks it from the outside. And there is a stout lock fitted into the door itself which opens with a key. Only the key isn’t entrusted to either of the two guards outside the cell. It is held by the captain of the guard at all times.”
“And where is he?” Minetti wanted to know.
“There’s no telling. Different places at different times. He has no set schedule of inspection.”
“Doesn’t he have to unlock the door when they feed her?” I asked.
“No. There’s a slot high up in the door through which they pass her food. This too is kept locked. But one of the guards has the key to it.”
“They sure aren’t taking any chances,” I observed. “Maybe the best thing would be to tunnel through to her from underneath.”
“Don’t be silly, Mr. Victor.” Minetti looked at me scathingly. “That floor is three feet thick and solid concrete.” Having dismissed my suggestion, he turned back to Pedro. “Did you find out when the guard is changed?” he asked.
“Si. Twice a day. At four in the morning and four in the afternoon.”
“Four in the morning. That’s the best time,” Minetti mused to himself. “Tell me everything you know about the guards’ barracks,” he told Pedro.
Pedro complied, and then Minetti sat back. He shut his eyes. He was obviously weighing various aspects of a plan.
During the next two days Minetti finalized this plan. Pedro helped him work it out, step by step. I myself, although I was theoretically in charge of the operation, had little to contribute.
On the afternoon of the third day the three of us were smuggled into the Havana Libre. Despite the fact that the hotel bristled with barbed wire, machine-gun nests and sentries, this was accomplished very simply. We were taken in by a laundry truck delivering fresh linens. The truck had a false bottom and we rode over the axle, only a scant few feet from the guards who stopped the truck and searched it at the entrance to the hotel.
After this the truck pulled up at an unloading chute at the rear of the hotel. Pressed linens were unloaded and sent hurtling down the chute. Then the washed but unpressed underwear of the soldiers stationed there was sent down the chute in laundry bags. The last three sacks contained Pedro, Minetti and myself.
Pedro’s contact was waiting. He untied the sacks and freed us quickly. Then, without words, he led us through a service passageway to a hall. Checking carefully to make sure we weren’t observed, he waved us across the hall one by one to a large linen closet. When all three of us were inside it, he closed the door and left. After that there was nothing to do but wait. We had committed the layout of the hotel to memory and I suppose the other two, like myself, were going over it in their minds. We didn’t dare talk, so there was nothing else to do but think of what we were going to do—and wait.