The name Roger Harris meant nothing to McGarvey, but he knew the type. They were almost a legend in the Company. The agency was fairly new at the time, and a lot of bright young case officers, many of them recently out of the military service, some of them transferred from the State Department, were trying their best to carve niches for themselves. The heights never loomed so brightly for the right young man as they had in those days.
“I loved that man,” Basulto said softly. “I want you to know that Roger Harris was absolutely first rate in my book … the very tops … a real man.”
5
“They left Cuba in early June of 1959,” Trotter said. “Harris returned to Washington, but our friend here got a car and drove out to San Diego, where he entered Mexico at Tijuana.”
“It wasn’t so easy getting out of Havana,” Basulto said. “Uncle Fidel hated Americans. He was telling everyone that Batista was an American puppet.”
“Our friend here was on the hit list, of course,” Trotter interjected. “He had supplied Batista with information.”
“That was playacting.”
“He couldn’t have lasted very long. Perhaps Harris felt he owed it to him,” Trotter said. He shook his head. “No way of knowing for sure. But Harris got back to the Latin American desk and our little scumbag here was on the loose.”
“I don’t have to take that!” Basulto cried. “Goddamnit, Mr. Day, I don’t have to sit and listen to that kind of talk, do I?”
Day leaned his head back on the couch and closed his eyes. He crossed his legs. “Sorry we had to bother you like this, Mr. McGarvey,” he said apologetically. “John, I want you to take Mr. McGarvey back home, and then I want this scumbag on the very next flight back to Dade County. I don’t ever want to see his miserable face again.”
“Yes, sir,” Trotter said.
“No,” Basulto cried in real terror. “Goddamnit, listen to me. I’m not kidding around here.”
McGarvey admired the technique, but he wondered what it was for.
“Then stop your nonsense,” Day said equably.
“I put my life on the line for this. They all think I’m ratting about the coke train. They don’t know. My life is on the line if I go back.”
“Your life is on the line here,” Day replied.
Basulto’s nostrils were flared, his eyes wild. He was panting. “All right,” he said, holding out his hand. “I just don’t like being called names. Especially when I’m with friends.”
Everyone looked at him. The man was amazing. Hope springs eternal, McGarvey thought, and sat forward.
“Excuse me, may I ask a question here?”
Basulto eyed him warily, but Trotter nodded.
“When the end came, you went home. What happened next? Did Harris drive down and pick you up? Telephone you? What?”
“I had a wireless. He told me to come.”
“He told you to come to him. Told you: ‘Come along to Havana, Artimé, I am taking you away from all the bad things.’ Is that it?” McGarvey asked.
Basulto seemed at a loss for words.
“I just want to get this early stuff straight. I want to get the picture very clear.” McGarvey could hear the mean edge in his voice.
“There was a code word,” Basulto said weakly. “We had a regular schedule.”
“Christ,” McGarvey said, shaking his head. “You lying bastard.”
“Goddamn you, you sonofabitch,” Basulto cried, jumping up, his fists clenched, his knuckles white.
“Sit down,” Trotter shouted.
“You were going to burn Harris, weren’t you,” McGarvey continued calmly. “You were going to trade your case officer’s safety for your own!”
“I loved that man!”
“I’m sure you did, once you were back in Miami with him,” McGarvey said. “The wonder of it all is that Harris went along with you. If it had been me, I would have shot your miserable ass.”
“I couldn’t stay in San Luis … sonofabitch. They would have come after me. Any day. I was dead meat for sure. It was just a matter of time.”
“You radioed Harris you wanted out?” McGarvey asked.
“I tried, but there was no answer,” Basulto admitted. “He had apparently shut down the station. I buried my radio and went up to Havana.”
“In June,” Trotter interjected. “Is that right?”
Basulto nodded. “I knew where he was staying. I went to him. He was easy. Told him I wanted out. Told him I’d do anything for him. Anything.”
McGarvey held his silence.
“We drove down to Matanzas that afternoon and flew out that night.”
Day opened his eyes and sat up. “Why didn’t Harris just leave him?”
Trotter explained it. “The bastard didn’t have to say a thing to Harris, don’t you see? He could act the innocent and get away with it. He knew he was being followed. Harris knew it as well. So he had to get them both out.”
A car, moving very fast, passed outside on the road. They could hear the driver changing gears somewhere farther up the hill, and then it faded.
Basulto grinned, his sudden mood swing dramatic. He sat down with a flourish and crossed his legs. McGarvey had the urge to get up and smash out his teeth.
“I’ll tell you, Roger was a good man. I did what I had to do. You would have done the same. I got no apologies to make. Without me you’d still be in the jungle with your pants down.”
“He must have been an embarrassment to Harris,” McGarvey said.
“He had a job for me,” Basulto was saying. “Wanted me to go to Mexico City for him. I told him no problem, I would do anything for him. Anything!”
“I don’t care,” McGarvey said. He was tired. It was time to go. He started to get up.
“Wait,” Trotter said sharply. “Please, Kirk, just let’s finish this. Then you can decide.”
“You can’t believe this miserable bastard.”
“Maybe not in all the details. But if we send him back he’s dead, and he knows it. He’ll tell the truth from now on.”
“Absolutely—” Basulto started, but McGarvey cut him off.
“What’d Harris tell you in Miami?”
Basulto blinked. “He was mad at me. Said he had saved my ass, and now I was going to have to save his. I remember it as if it happened two days ago.”
“What’d he hold over your head?”
“Nothing … I swear on my mother’s grave!”
McGarvey just waited.
“There was this assignment,” Basulto blurted. “There’d be money and girls and action. Mexico City is a big place.”
“He gave you money? Bought you a car?”
Basulto nodded. “And papers, too. I was an American.”
“In exchange for what?” McGarvey asked. “What exactly was it you were to do for him in Mexico City?”
“There was a place on Morelos Avenue called the Ateneo Español. I was to set up shop any way I wanted and just see what I could see.”
“What was this place?”
Basulto shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. There were a lot of Communists there.”
“Cubans? Mexicans? What?”
“Them. And Russians, too.”
“How were you supposed to report to Harris?”
“There was a café I was supposed to go to on Wednesdays at noon if I had anything. I could leave it in cipher with the waiter.”
“If there was an emergency?”
“There was a number in San Antonio, Texas. I was to call long distance.”
“Harris’s sister,” Trotter offered.
“He was working outside his charter?” McGarvey asked.
“Apparently.”
Basulto set himself up in a small apartment just off the Plaza de la Constitución y Parroquia de San Agustin de le Cuevas, in an area called Tlalpan on the south side of Mexico City. The forboding walls of Morelos Prison were a couple of blocks away on the Avenida San Fernando, and even though it was no longer used as a lockup, it gave him the creeps.