With obvious reluctance, Pedro translated. Castro nodded agreement. I handed him the cylinder. He hunched over it, examining it carefully, beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead and face and dribbling into his beard. Still the whirring noise continued.
One minute!
Castro’s fingers were trembling, but busy. Pedro crossed himself. Victoria clutched my arm, her nails digging into my flesh. I put my other arm around her and repented all the sins I hadn’t committed-—particularly the sin of carnality with Vickie.
Thirty seconds!
Twenty!
Ten . . .
Nine . . .
Eight . . .
Castro bit through his lip. His fingers tensed and he closed his eyes. Then his body sagged into relaxation and he opened them. The cylinder had been opened and he held the tiny timing mechanism in one hand, the vial of nitro in the other.
Pedro reached for the nitro before the head Red could get any ideas. He was too late. The idea was already shining from Castro’s eyes as he jumped up and took a step backwards. He held the vial of nitro shoulder-high and he stared at us threateningly.
He froze that way and so did we. It was a tableau, an impasse. Castro broke it. He took another step toward the door.
Promises, promises, I thought to myself. Right then I could appreciate the philosophy behind Castro’s whole career. He knew what to promise and when to promise it. But most important of all, he knew when to break the promise. It had worked well in his exercise of Commie politics, so why not with us, here, now?
I decided quickly that this was one time he wasn’t going to get away with it. I leveled my pistol straight at his gut. “Tell him if he takes one more step, I’ll shoot,” I told Pedro.
Castro chattered back in Spanish and Pedro translated. “He says that if you do we’ll all die just as if the bomb had gone off. He says he will not move again until you have time to think this through and see that you are trapped and surrender. But he will not give up the nitro.”
“Tell him that I’m going to count to ten and that if he doesn’t hand over the nitro by then, I’m going to fire and we’ll all go together.”
Pedro told him and I began counting: “One . . .”
“Uno,” Pedro translated.
“Two . . .”
“Dos . . .”
“Three . . .”
“Tres . . .”
At the count of nine I clicked off the safety of the revolver. It was a loud sound in the room. Fear sprang to Castro’s eyes. He quickly handed the vial of nitro to Pedro.
I took a deep breath of relief. Would I have fired?
No. I’m neither that much of a fanatic, nor that much of a hero. But if I hadn’t, Castro could have just walked out of there and we would have had no choice but to surrender to his waiting soldiers.
Now we held the trump card again-—-the joker with the beard. “Tell him our original deal still goes,” I told Pedro. “Tell him to tell his men that if they fire on us we’ll kill him. But if we get out of the hotel, we’ll set him free.”
Pedro told Castro, and he in turn shouted some orders to the men outside the bathroom. Then we opened the door and marched out. The hallway bristled with guns. But the crowd of men parted to let us pass when they saw the gun at the back of Castro’s head.
We marched him out of the hotel. There was a limousine parked in front with a soldier-chauffeur in the driver’s seat. Pedro pointed a gun at him and motioned him out. We got in with Pedro at the wheel. I sat in the back between Victoria and Castro. We sped off. Three blocks later Pedro slowed down and I pushed friend Fidel out of the car. After that we lost ourselves in the twisting, turning streets of Havana.
Finally we ditched the car near the waterfront. We went by foot to the room Pedro had rented near the Casa de la Felicidad and holed up there. We didn’t budge for over a week. We knew Castro’s cops would be tearing the city apart searching for us. But in a city like Havana, a city of over 700,000 people, it’s easy to stay lost if you want to—and we wanted to very much.
However, we couldn’t stay there indefinitely. Victoria had a job to do, and it was my job to help her do it. And it was Pedro’s job to help me help her. So, finally, we had to venture forth once again.
Pedro didn’t dare go near his contact at the Havana Libre Hotel directly. So it was necessary for him to get in touch with the man through others in the anti-Castro underground. This took time -- frustrating time, but finally we got a lead on the mysterious foreigner the Cubans had been holding. What we learned pointed pretty definitely to the fact that he was indeed the German scientist Vickie was seeking.
The night Pedro and Minetti attempted to kidnap him, there had been a particular reason why their efforts were interrupted by the squad of soldiers. The soldiers had been detailed to escort the man to a waiting helicopter in the dead of night. The Cubans had been unable to learn his secret, or why he was so important to the Chinese Reds. But they had also been unwilling to turn him over to the Chinese without knowing the importance of what they might be relinquishing.
This presented them with a delicate diplomatic problem. The Chinese knew they had the man and they couldn’t just refuse to turn him over to them outright. They couldn’t afford to incur the wrath of the Chinese. So they had come up with a scheme. They had decided to smuggle the man out of Cuba and to tell the Chinese that he had escaped. Pedro’s contact at the hotel had managed to learn that they’d taken him to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.
It was a logical place to hide him out. Castro had been busy “exporting revolution” to the Dominican Republic for a while now. Many of his agents were there. So many, indeed, that the rebel faction which had been trying to oust the military junta which had deposed the legitimate government in 1963 was being kept almost as busy guarding against Commie infiltrators as preparing for the battle to come. Later events would show that how successfully they’d done this was an accomplishment seriously misjudged by many— and by the U. S. State Department in particular11 .
At this time, however, the Dominican bubble, while close to bursting, had not yet burst. Castro, as misled as the U. S. was, overestimated his influence in the rebel camp. Had he not done so, it’s doubtful that he would have sent the German scientist to such a shaky place for safekeeping. Obviously, his influence didn’t include being informed of the rebels’ plans to attempt a coup d’état. If he had, he would have chosen some other spot to hide this man of mystery.
The result of the information Pedro had obtained was that I made contact with the CIA and arranged to have the three of us smuggled out of Havana. This was done with a small fishing schooner. When it was well clear of Havana, a helicopter floated in from the dark night to meet it. Victoria Winters and I boarded the ’copter. Pedro stood on the deck below and waved goodbye as the night sky swallowed us up.
I’d made the decision myself. Charles Putnam had not only said I was to find Vickie, he’d also said I was to help her carry out her assignment in any way I could. Whatever restrictions he’d put on the help I should give were stretchable as far as I was concerned. Thus I’d simplified matters by telling Victoria that my assignment was simply to help her carry out her assignment, without mentioning anything about the fact that Putnam might well have considered my job to be over at this point. Aside from all the other reasons, I still had butterflies for this British beauty. However, I had seen no reason to drag Pedro any further into the situation. So I’d sent him back to Miami and his jai alai games.
And we were on our way to Santo Domingo. It was night when we set down there. Dawes, the CIA man in charge back in Miami, must have wired ahead and arranged everything. I didn’t like the guy, but I had to admit he was thorough. Vickie and I were hustled off to a swanky hotel catering to American tourists. Adjoining rooms awaited us there. In the closet of each room there was a complete wardrobe for both of us. We each had our own private bathroom as well. There’s nothing like living high on the hog supplied by the American taxpayer, I told myself.