He ordered calls placed to the President of the Republic, the head of the SIM, and the former President, General Héctor Bienvenido Trujillo. He would have the three of them come here, and arrest them. If Balaguer was part of the conspiracy, he could help in the steps that followed. He saw bewilderment in the officers, glances exchanged, whispering. They passed him the telephone. They had gotten Dr. Joaquín Balaguer out of bed:
“I’m sorry to wake you, Mr. President. There has been an attempt on His Excellency, while he was driving to San Cristóbal. As Minister of the Armed Forces, I am calling an urgent meeting at the December 18 Fortress. I ask you to come here without delay.”
President Balaguer did not respond for a long time, so long that Román thought they had been cut off. Was it surprise that caused his silence? Satisfaction at knowing the Plan was being put into effect? Or mistrust of this phone call in the middle of the night? At last he heard his answer, spoken without a trace of emotion:
“If something so serious has occurred, as President of the Republic my place is not in a barracks but at the National Palace. I am going there now. I suggest that the meeting be held in my office. Goodbye.”
Without giving him time to reply, he hung up.
Johnny Abbes García listened to him attentively. All right, he would go to the meeting, but only after he heard the statement of Captain Zacarías de la Cruz, who was badly wounded and had just been admitted to Hospital Marión. Only Blacky Trujillo appeared to agree to his call for a meeting. “I’ll be right there.” He seemed unhinged by what was happening. But when he didn’t show up after half an hour, General José René Román knew that his last-minute plan had no chance of being realized. Not one of the three men would fall into the trap. And he, because of his actions, had begun to sink into quicksands that it would soon be too late to escape. Unless he commandeered a military plane and had it fly to Haiti, Trinidad, Puerto Rico, the French Antilles, or Venezuela, where he would be welcomed with open arms.
From that moment on, he was in a somnambulistic state. Time was eclipsed, or, rather, instead of moving forward it spun around in a monomaniacal repetition that depressed and infuriated him. He would not leave that state again in the four and a half months of life he had remaining, if what he had deserved to be called life and not hell, nightmare. Until October 12, 1961, he did not have a clear notion of chronology but did have an idea of mysterious eternity, which had never interested him. In the sudden attacks of lucidity that reminded him he was alive, that it hadn’t ended, he tortured himself with the same question: why, knowing that this was waiting for you, why didn’t you act as you should have? The question hurt him more than the tortures he faced with great courage, perhaps to prove to himself that cowardice was not the reason he had acted so indecisively on that endless night of May 31, 1961.
Incapable of making sense of his actions, he fell into contradictions and erratic initiatives. He ordered his brother-in-law, General Virgilio García Trujillo, to dispatch four tanks and three infantry companies from San Isidro, where the armored divisions were stationed, to reinforce the December 18 Fortress. But immediately after that he decided to leave the Fortress and go to the Palace. He instructed the head of the Army General Staff, the young General Tuntin Sánchez, to keep him informed regarding the search. Before he left he called Américo Dante Minervino, at La Victoria. He categorically ordered him to immediately liquidate, with absolute secrecy, the prisoners Major Segundo Imbert Barreras and Rafael Augusto Sánchez Saulley, and to make the bodies disappear, for he feared that Antonio Imbert, a member of the action group, might have told his brother about his involvement in the conspiracy. Américo Dante Minervino, accustomed to these kinds of missions, asked no questions: “Understood, General.” He bewildered General Tuntin Sánchez by telling him to inform the SIM, Army, and Air Force patrols participating in the search that persons on the lists of “enemies” and “the disaffected,” which had been distributed to them, ought to be terminated at the first sign of resisting arrest. (“We don’t want prisoners who’ll be used to unleash international campaigns against our country.”) His subordinate made no comment. He would transmit your instructions exactly, General.
As he left the Fortress to go to the Palace, the lieutenant of the guard informed him that two civilians in a car, one of whom claimed to be his brother Ramón (Bibín), had come to the entrance demanding to see him. Following his orders, he had obliged them to leave. He nodded, not saying a word. That meant his brother was in on the plot, that Bibín too would have to pay for his doubts and evasions. Sunk in a kind of hypnosis, he thought his inaction could be due to the fact that although the body of the Chief might be dead, his soul, spirit, whatever you called it, still enslaved him.
At the National Palace he found confusion and desolation. Almost the entire Trujillo family had gathered there. Petán, in riding boots and with a submachine gun slung over his shoulder, had just arrived from his fiefdom in Bonao and was pacing back and forth like a cartoon cowboy. Héctor (Blacky), sitting on a sofa, rubbed his arms as if he were cold. Mireya, and his mother-in-law Marina, were consoling Doña María, the Chief’s wife, who was as pale as a corpse and whose eyes flashed fire. The beautiful Angelita cried and wrung her hands, but her husband, Colonel José (Pechito) León Estévez, in uniform and looking glum, failed to calm her. He felt all their eyes fixed on him: any news? He embraced them, one by one: they were combing the city, house by house, street by street, and soon…Then he discovered that they knew more than the head of the Armed Forces. One of the conspirators, the former soldier Pedro Livio Cedeño, had been wounded and was being interrogated by Abbes García at the International Clinic. And Colonel José León Estévez had already informed Ramfis and Radhamés, who were trying to charter an Air France plane to fly them in from Paris. This was when he also learned that the power attached to his position, which he had squandered over the past few hours, was beginning to slip away; decisions no longer came from his office but from the heads of the SIM, Johnny Abbes García and Colonel Figueroa Carrión, or from Trujillo’s family and relatives, like Pechito or his brother-in-law Virgilio. An invisible force was distancing him from power. It did not surprise him that Blacky Trujillo gave him no explanation for not coming to the meeting he had asked him to attend.
He left the group, hurried to a phone booth, and called the Fortress. He ordered the head of the General Staff to send troops to surround the International Clinic, place the former officer Pedro Livio Cedeño under guard, and stop the SIM from taking him out of there, using force if necessary. The prisoner had to be transferred to the December 18 Fortress. He would come and interrogate him personally. Tuntin Sánchez, after an ominous pause, said only: “Good night, General.” He told himself, in torment, that this was perhaps his worst mistake of the entire evening.
There were more people now in the reception room where the Trujillos had gathered. All of them listened, in grief-stricken silence, to Colonel Johnny Abbes García, who was standing and speaking mournfully:
“The dental plate found on the highway belongs to His Excellency. Dr. Fernando Camino has confirmed this. We must assume that if he isn’t dead, his condition is grave.”
“What about the assassins?” Román interrupted, in a defiant attitude. “Did the subject talk? Did he name his accomplices?”
The fat-cheeked face of the head of the SIM turned toward him. His amphibian eyes washed over him with a gaze that, in his state of extreme susceptibility, seemed mocking.
“He’s given up three,” Johnny Abbes said, looking at him without blinking. “Antonio Imbert, Luis Amiama, and General Juan Tomás Díaz. He’s the leader, he says.”
“Have they been captured?”
“My people are looking for them all over Ciudad Trujillo,” Johnny Abbes García declared. “There’s something else. The United States might be behind this.”
He mumbled a few words of congratulation to Colonel Abbes and returned to the phone booth. He called General Tuntin Sánchez again. The pa
trols should immediately arrest General Juan Tomás Díaz, Luis Amiama, and Antonio Imbert, as well as their families, “alive or dead, it didn’t matter, maybe dead would be better because the CIA might try to get them out of the country.” When he hung up, he was certain: the way things were going, not even exile would be possible. He’d have to shoot himself.
In the salon, Abbes García was still speaking. Not about the assassins; about the situation faced by the country.
“At a time like this, it is absolutely necessary that a member of the Trujillo family assume the Presidency of the Republic,” he declared. “Dr. Balaguer should resign and hand over his office to General Héctor Bienvenido or General José Arismendi. This will let the people know that the Chief’s spirit, philosophy, and policies will not be undermined and will continue to guide Dominican life.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Those present exchanged glances. The vulgar, bullying voice of Petán Trujillo dominated the room:
“Johnny’s right. Balaguer should resign. Blacky or I will take over the Presidency. The people will know that Trujillo hasn’t died.”
Then, following the eyes of everyone in the room, General Román discovered that the puppet president, as small and discreet as ever, was listening from a chair in the corner, trying, one would say, not to be in the way. He was dressed impeccably, as usual, and displayed absolute serenity, as if this were no more than a minor formality. He gave a fleeting little smile and spoke with a tranquillity that softened the atmosphere:
“As you all know, I am President of the Republic by a decision of the Generalissimo, who always accommodated himself to constitutional procedures. I occupy this post in order to facilitate matters, not to complicate them. If my resignation will alleviate the situation, you have it. But allow me to make a suggestion. Before reaching a transcendental decision that signifies a break with legality, would it not be prudent to wait for the arrival of General Ramfis Trujillo? As the Chief’s oldest son, his spiritual, military, and political heir, should he not be consulted?”
He looked at the woman who, according to the requirements of strict Trujillista protocol, was always called the Bountiful First Lady by social chroniclers. An imperious María Martínez de Trujillo reacted:
“Dr. Balaguer is right. Until Ramfis arrives, nothing should change.” Her round face had regained its color.
Watching the President of the Republic shyly lower his eyes, General Román escaped for a few seconds from his gelatinous mental wandering to tell himself that, unlike him, this unarmed little man, who wrote poetry and seemed so inconsequential in a world of machos with pistols and submachine guns, knew exactly what he wanted and what he was doing, and did not lose his composure for an instant. In the course of that night, the longest in his half century of life, General Román discovered that in the vacuum and chaos created by what had happened to the Chief, this insignificant man whom everyone had always considered a mere clerk, a purely decorative figure in the regime, began to acquire surprising authority.
As if in a dream, in the hours that followed he saw this assemblage of Trujillo’s family, relatives, and top leaders form cliques, dissolve them, and form them again as events began to connect like pieces filling in the gaps of a puzzle until a solid figure took shape. Before midnight they were told that the pistol discovered at the site of the attack belonged to General Juan Tomás Díaz. When Román ordered his house searched, along with the houses of all his brothers and sisters, he was informed that it was already being taken care of by patrols of the SIM under the direction of Colonel Figueroa Carrión, and that Juan Tomás’s brother, Modesto Díaz, turned over to the SIM by his friend the gamecock breeder Chucho Malapunta, in whose house he had been hiding, was already in a cell at La Cuarenta. Fifteen minutes later, Pupo telephoned his son Álvaro. He asked him to bring extra ammunition for his M-1 carbine (he had not removed it from his shoulder), for he was convinced that at any moment he would have to defend his life or end it by his own hand. After conferring in his office with Abbes García and Colonel Luis José (Pechito) León Estévez regarding Bishop Reilly, he took the initiative of saying that on his authority he should be removed by force from the Santo Domingo Academy, and he supported the proposal of the head of the SIM that the bishop should be executed, for there was no doubt about the Church’s complicity in the criminal plot. Angelita Trujillo’s husband, touching his revolver, said it would be an honor to carry out the order. He returned in less than an hour, enraged. The operation had gone off without serious incident, except for a few punches aimed at some nuns and two Redemptorist priests, also gringos, who tried to protect the bishop. The only fatality was a German shepherd, the watchdog at the Academy, who bit a calié before being shot. The prelate was now in the Air Force detention center at kilometer nine on the San Isidro highway. Commander Rodríguez Méndez, head of the center, refused to execute Reilly and prevented Pechito León Estévez from doing so, claiming he had orders from the President of the Republic.
Stupefied, Román asked if he was referring to Balaguer. Angelita Trujillo’s husband, no less disconcerted, nodded:
“Apparently, he seems to think he exists. What’s so incredible isn’t that the insolent little jerk is sticking his nose into our business, but that his orders are being obeyed. Ramfis has to put him in his place.”
Pupo Román exploded in anger: “We don’t have to wait for Ramfis. I’ll straighten him out right now.”
He strode toward the President’s office but had a dizzy spell in the corridor. He managed to stagger to a chair, where he collapsed and fell asleep immediately. When he awoke a couple of hours later, he remembered a polar nightmare: trembling with cold on a snowy steppe, he watched a pack of wolves loping toward him. He jumped up and almost ran to President Balaguer’s office. He found the doors wide open. He walked in, determined to make this meddling pygmy feel the weight of his authority, but, another surprise, in the office he came face to face with none other than Bishop Reilly. His eyes wide with fear, his tunic torn, his face bearing the marks of abuse, the bishop’s tall figure still maintained a majestic dignity. The President of the Republic was saying goodbye to him.
“Ah, Monsignor, look who is here, the Minister of the Armed Forces, General José René Román Fernández.” He introduced them. “He has come to reiterate to you the regrets of the military authorities for this lamentable misunderstanding. You have my word, and that of the head of the Army—is that not so, General Román?—that neither you, nor any prelate, nor the sisters of Santo Domingo, will be troubled again. I will personally give my apologies to Sister Wilhelmina and Sister Helen Claire. We are living through very difficult times, and you, as a man of experience, can understand that. There are subordinates who lose control and go too far, as they did tonight. It will not happen again. If you have the slightest problem, I beg you to get in touch with me personally.”
Bishop Reilly, who looked at them as if he were surrounded by Martians, nodded vaguely and took his leave. Román confronted Dr. Balaguer angrily, touching his submachine gun:
“You owe me an explanation, Mr. Balaguer. Who are you to countermand an order of mine, calling a military center, a subordinate officer, passing over the chain of command? Who the hell do you think you are?”
The little man looked at him as if he were listening to the rain. After observing him for a moment, he smiled amiably. And indicating the chair in front of the desk, invited him to sit down. Pupo Román did not move. The blood was boiling in his veins, like a volcano about to erupt.
“Answer my question, damn it!” he shouted.
Dr. Balaguer did not falter this time either. With the same mildness he used when reciting or giving a speech, he counseled him paternally:
“You are confused, General, and with reason. But make an effort. We may be living through the most critical moment in the history of the Republic, and you more than anyone should set an example of calm for the country.”
He withstood the general’s enraged look—Pupo wan
ted to hit him, and, at the same time, curiosity restrained him—and after he sat down at his desk, he added, using the same intonation:
“You should thank me for having stopped you from committing a serious error, General. Killing a bishop would not have resolved your problems. It would have made them worse. For what it is worth, you should know that the President you came here to insult is prepared to help you. Although, I fear, I will not be able to do much for you.”
Román detected no irony in his words. Did they hide a threat? No, judging by the benevolent manner in which Balaguer looked at him. His fury evaporated. Now, he was afraid. He envied the serenity of this honey-voiced midget.
“You should know that I’ve ordered the execution of Segundo Imbert and Papito Sánchez, in La Victoria,” he roared at the top of his voice, not thinking about what he was saying. “They were in this conspiracy too. I’ll do the same to everybody who’s implicated in the assassination of the Chief.”
Dr. Balaguer nodded gently, his expression not changing in the slightest.
“For great ills, great remedies,” he murmured cryptically. And, standing up, he walked to the door of his office and went out without saying goodbye.
Román remained there, not knowing what to do. He chose to go to his own office. At two-thirty in the morning he drove Mireya, who had taken a tranquilizer, to the house in Gazcue. There he found his brother Bibín forcing the soldiers on guard to drink from a bottle of Carta Dorada that he brandished like a flag. Bibín, the idler, the drinker, the rake, the wastrel, good-natured Bibín could barely stand. He practically had to carry him to the upstairs bathroom on the pretext that he would help him vomit and wash his face. As soon as they were alone, Bibín burst into tears. He contemplated his brother with infinite sadness in his tear-filled eyes. A thread of spittle hung from his lips like a spiderweb. Lowering his voice, choking up, he said that he, Luis Amiama, and Juan Tomás had spent the night looking for him all over the city and became so desperate they even cursed him. What happened, Pupo? Why didn’t he do anything? Why did he hide? Wasn’t there a Plan? The action group did their part. They brought him the body as he had asked.