Jesus Bernal knew he was in trouble. Frantically he'd telephoned seven Cuban radio stations and announced that the First Weekend in July Movement was responsible for the bombing. They all wanted to know: what bombing?
Two days later, on orders from above, Jesus Bernal had tried again. Another letter bomb, another mailbox. Another premature detonation. This time it had made the newspapers: Feds Seek Postal Prankster.
When Jesus Bernal had translated this headline for the comandanteof the First Weekend movement, the old man had erupted in fury, waving the newspaper with a scarred and trembling fist. We are terrorists, not pranksters! And you, Jesus, are a maricon!Make another bomb, a big one, and kill the conoon TV ... or else. The comandantewas a revered veteran of the Bay of Pigs, and was to be obeyed at all costs. Jesus worked swiftly.
It was the third bomb that made the pages of Timeand U.S. News & World Report,where Viceroy Wilson read about it years later in the stacks of the public library. The third bomb was a delicate yet extremely powerful device that was meant to blow up a car. Jesus Bernal spent four days building the bomb in the kitchen of a Little Havana rooming house. He had personally transported the device to the television station, where he'd meticulously affixed it to a forest-green El Dorado which, in the darkness of the night, appeared identical to the one driven by the seditious TV talk-show host.
Unfortunately, the El Dorado was not identical; in fact, it was not the right automobile. The El Dorado that blew up on the Dolphin Expressway on June 22, 1978, actually belonged to a man named Salvatore "The Cleaver" Buscante, a notorious loan shark and pornographer who had often played gin with Meyer Lansky.
The headline the next day said: Anti-Castro Terrorists Claim Credit for Mob Hit; Feds Puzzle Over Cuban Connection.
Jesus Bernal immediately was expelled from the First Weekend in July Movement, and ordered at gunpoint to leave Florida. He spent ten miserable months in Union City before being recalled by the comandante,who had come to miss Bernal's public-relations acumen. So what if he'd bombed the wrong guy? He got press, didn't he?
Over the protests of almost all the First Weekend in July's hardcore soldiers, the comandantehad promoted Jesus Bernal to defense minister and bought him an IBM Selectric. From then on, the First Weekend was known for having the most impeccable press releases in the hemisphere. In his new role Jesus Bernal was an innovator: he even sent communiques on embossed letterheads—italic for bombings, boldface for political assassinations. Even the most skeptical commandos had to admit that the kid from Dartmouth had style. Soon the First Weekend in July became the preeminent anti-Castro group in the United States.
In the summer of 1981, under Bernal's inspired guidance, the terrorists launched an ambitious PR campaign to discredit Fidel Castro. Although this effort again won national publicity, it also led to Jesus Bernal's second and final banishment from the First Weekend in July.
The linchpin of the campaign had been a "letter" from a renowned Swiss doctor reporting that President Castro was dying of a rare venereal disease transmitted by poultry. The malady supposedly was manifested by a number of grotesque symptoms, the mildest of which was drooling insanity. Of course the Swiss letter had been invented by none other than Jesus Bernal, but the document was accepted in Miami so unquestionably, and with such patriotic fervor, that Bernal decided to unleash it in Cuba as well. He hatched a daring scheme and persuaded the comandanteto donate $19,022—a sum which, sadly, represented the entire treasury of the First Weekend in July Movement.
Not surprisingly, Jesus Bernal picked the first weekend of July in 1981 as the time of attack: the weekend Fidel would finally fall. In Little Havana, the air filled with intrigue and jubilation.
But not for long. On July 4, 1981, a low-flying DC-3 cargo plane dumped six metric tons of anti-Castro leaflets on the resort city of Kingston, Jamaica. The townspeople were baffled because the literature was printed in Spanish; only the words Castroand syphilisseemed to ring a bell among some Jamaicans. One of the leaflets was shown to the island's prime minister, who immediately cabled Fidel Castro to express sorrow over the president's unfortunate illness.
Later, under scornful grilling by the comandante,Jesus Bernal admitted that no, he'd never studied aerial navigation at Dartmouth. Bernal argued that it had been an honest mistake—from thirteen thousand feet, Kingston didn't look thatdifferent from Havana. Then Jesus had flashed his trump card: a copy of the New York Times.Three paragraphs, page 15a, in the International News roundup: Tourist Bus Damaged by Falling Air Cargo.
But the comandanteand his men were not mollified: Jesus Bernal was purged forever from the First Weekend in July Movement.
"I know all about the bombs," Viceroy Wilson said as they drove to Miami, several years later. "You're just doing this to redeem yourself."
"Ha! I am a hero to all freedom fighters."
"You're a pitiful fuck-up," Wilson said.
"Look who's talking, goddamn junkie spook."
"What you say?"
Thank God the music was up so loud.
"Nothing," Jesus Bernal said. "You missed the damn exit." He was getting mad at Viceroy Wilson. "You never even said thanks."
"Thanks for what?" Wilson asked from behind his sunglasses.
"For slicing that guy back in the swamp when he tried to strangle you."
Wilson laughed. "A mosquito, man, that's all he was."
"You looked pretty uptight when that mosquito grabbed your neck. Your eyeballs almost popped out of your chocolate face, that little mosquito was squeezing so hard."
"Sheee-iiit."
"Yeah, you owe me one, compadre."
"You're the one should be thanking me.You been waitin' your whole Cuban life to stab somebody in the back and now you did it. Guess that makes you a man, don't it? Say, why don't you call up your old dudes and see if they'll take you back." Viceroy Wilson grinned nastily. "Maybe they'll make you minister of switchblades."
Jesus Bernal scowled and mumbled something crude in Spanish. "I spit on their mothers," he declared. "If they got on their knees I wouldn't go back. Never!"
This was a total lie: Jesus Bernal yearned to abandon Skip Wiley's circus and rejoin his old gang of dedicated extortionists, bombers, and firebugs. In his heart Jesus Bernal believed his special talents were being wasted. Whenever he thought about Wiley's crazy plan he got a sour stomach that wouldn't go away. Somehow he couldn't visualize the masses ever mobilizing behind El Fuego;besides, if Wiley had his way, there'd be no masses left to mobilize—they'd all be heading North. These doubts had begun the day Ernesto Cabal hanged himself; guilt was a deadly emotion for a stouthearted terrorist, but guilt is what Jesus Bernal felt. He didn't feel particularly good about feeding strangers to crocodiles, either. It wasn't that the Cuban sympathized with gringotourists, but Wiley's peculiar method of murder did not seem like the kind of political statement Las Noches de Diciembreought to be making. And if nothing else, Jesus Bernal considered himself an expert on political statements.
"This is the place," Viceroy Wilson announced.
Great, thought Jesus Bernal. He wished Wiley would just let him alone with the typewriter and plastique.
Wilson parked the car in front of a two-story office building on Biscayne Boulevard at Seventy-ninth. A sign out front said: "Greater Miami Orange Bowl Committee."
"Comb your hair," Wilson grumbled.