I had begun to understand that Ernest Hemingway gave his full attention to the sea the same way that he focused his attention on what women—or at least women who interested him—were saying to him. And perhaps he did so for much the same reason: he thought that they had something to teach him.
And Hemingway learned quickly, that much I had already gleaned. In our conversation, it had become apparent that he’d had no contact with the real ocean as a boy and little as a man, except to cross and recross the Atlantic in large ships—first to go off to war as an ambulance driver, to return as a wounded veteran, to go back to Europe as a reporter, then to return as a married man planning to settle down in Canada with his wife, and so on. It was not until 1932 that Hemingway began going to sea regularly in a small boat, Anita, belonging to a friend of his named Joe Russell who lived in Key West. Russell had taught Hemingway the rudiments of navigation and boat handling—as well as running bootleg liquor, according to the writer—and then had introduced him to deep-sea fishing and the island of Cuba.
Recently, according to Ibarlucia and others, Russell had come to Cuba to visit his friend and had been treated like a beloved grandfather by Hemingway, who took the old bootlegger out on the Pilar, served him lemonade and kept asking, “Are you comfortable, Mr. Russell?” Hemingway had honored his old teacher, though the roles of teacher and pupil had long since traded places.
This, I realized, was another attribute of Hemingway’s that tended to be overlooked and underestimated by those around him. The writer was one of those rare individuals who allowed others to introduce him to a passion of theirs—bullfighting, say, or trout fishing, or big game hunting, or deep-sea fishing, or appreciating fine wine or gourmet meals, or skiing, or reporting a civil war in Spain—and within years, sometimes months, it was Hemingway who had become the expert, who reported to others on the beauty and private aesthetics of whatever sport or activity had absorbed him and which he had absorbed in return. And then even his former teachers would bow to Hemingway’s expertise, treating the obvious amateur as the expert he had become.
Hemingway was still a dilettante in espionage; so far he had been creating everything out of whole cloth. What would happen if I began tutoring him in the realities of the game? Would his playacting become deadly expertise in a matter of months? Would he begin to understand the intricacies of spying and counterspying the way he understood the deadly, indifferent vagaries of the ocean now?
Perhaps. But I had no reason to teach him. Not yet.
DELGADO WAS NOT SLOW to see the irony in my being in charge of the Crook Factory during the writer’s first ten-day mission to the Camagüey archipelago. “You were sent down here to observe this idiocy,” said Delgado. “Now you’re running it.”
I had no response to that. I was too busy to argue.
The finca was relatively quiet with Hemingway and his friends gone. Pichilo, the gardener, puttered around in the flower beds and hedges, Pancho Castro, the carpenter, was hammering and sawing, building more bookcases and cupboards for the house, Ramón, the cook, could be heard shouting curses on occasion, and René Villarréal, Hemingway’s chief servant, moved cat-quiet around the grounds, keeping the other servants on task and overseeing the compound in the absence of Roberto Herrera, the finca’s usual manager. Roberto was currently at sea with the boss.
All through May and early June, Hemingway and Gellhorn had continued their pattern of long Sunday parties at the finca. The gatherings were gay and crowded, with the usual people filling the grounds on Sundays—Ambassador Braden and his wife; a mob of Basques, including the usual core of jai alai players; contacts from the embassy such as Ellis Briggs, Bob Joyce, and their wives and children; some Spanish priests—often including Don Andrés Untzaín—as well as some millionaires, Winston Guest and Tom Shevlin were regulars, but also visiting yachtsmen. Helga Sonneman had attended two or three of the Sunday gatherings while the Southern Cross was being repaired, but Theodor Schlegel never returned to the finca. In addition, there would be colorful sorts who just happened to drop by and stay for dinner and evening drinks—Shipwreck Kelly, famous local fishermen like Carlos Gutierrez, and old friends who had crossed from Key West just to spend the day with the writer and his wife. Now the parties were in hiatus and Sunday afternoons were so quiet that I could hear the bees buzzing in the garden as I read reports in the guest house.
We had solved the problem of keeping Maria Marquez out of Lieutenant Maldonado’s clutches by hiding the whore in plain sight. Xenophobia… I had begun to think of her by that nickname… still slept at Grade A, but during the day she worked at the finca as part of the domestic staff. Martha Gellhorn had insisted that the young prostitute never touch any of the food being prepared, but other than that restriction—and the fact that Gellhorn did not want to see the girl—Maria blended into the schedule and rhythm of work at the farm. When Gellhorn was absent—which she was much of the time in June, Juan Pastor Lopez, the chauffeur, driving her off to Havana in the big Lincoln in the morning and not returning until late in the evening—Xenophobia was allowed to relax near the pool or wander the grounds between simple housekeeping duties.
Lieutenant Maldonado had not come hunting for the girl. I knew from the Crook Factory reports that the National Police were still looking for the missing Havana whore, as were some of Theodor Schlegel’s Falangist contacts in Cuba, but I also knew from those reports that both Maldonado and the Abwehr agent were too busy to spend much time in personal pursuit of the murder suspect.
As I collated reports from Hemingway’s operatives and began to take a more directive role in the operation, I began to appreciate the writer’s spy network in a new light. There are two ways to create an effective espionage or counterespionage ring. The first and most common is to partition the field agents into “cells”—each cell autonomous and ignorant of the other cells, with those controlling the cells knowing names, contacts, codes, and mission objectives on a strict “need to know” basis. This was effective in the way that watertight compartments on a big ship could be effective: a breach in one or more of the cells could be contained and sealed off, allowing the ship to survive. The other way to create an effective group—especially for counterespionage—is to have everyone know one another. Such a cadre solves many security problems because it is almost impossible to infiltrate or subvert such a group and different agents can share information and objectives. Professional spy groups rarely use this form—the British Security Coordination group was an exception—because a breach of one of these watertight cells would sink the whole group.
But in the case of the Crook Factory, the motley arrangement was working astonishingly well.
It became apparent that neither Lieutenant Maldonado nor his boss, Juanito the Jehovah’s Witness, was making much progress in finding Maria Marquez because they were too busy accepting bribes and running errands for both the FBI and German intelligence.
At first I was dubious of these conclusions, but as the Crook Factory surveillance reports began to overlap and then re-overlap, a mosaic of Caballo Loco’s corruption became more visible. But none of it made sense.
It seemed from the reports that Hemingway’s amateur operatives missed nothing in and around Havana. The bellman at the Hotel Plaza reported that Lieutenant Maldonado and Teddy Shell, aka Theodor Shlegel, had met six times in a suite Shell maintained at that hotel. Each time, the National Police lieutenant had left with a heavy briefcase. Twice, a girl who worked in the beauty parlor on the Prado had followed Maldonado to the Banco Financiero Internacional on Linea Street. Four other times, Maldonado was successfully followed from the Hotel Plaza to the bank by one of Hemingway’s operatives known only as Agent 22. I did not know who Agent 22 was, but he was effective at surveillance, although his written reports were so poorly spelled and crudely done in pencil that it looked as if a ten-year-old was writing them. A former Spanish nobleman who now served on the board of directors for the Banco Financiero Internacional reported that Lieutenant Maldon
ado had no private account at that bank but that there was a special account set up under the name of Orishas Incorporated—literally, “Gods Incorporated”—and that Maldonado had deposited sixty thousand American dollars into that account, while his boss, Juanito the Jehovah’s Witness, had deposited another thirty-five thousand.
Why was the Abwehr paying the Cuban National Police? Not protection money, I was sure. The Cuban police already looked the other way when it came to Nazi sympathizers and Falangist right-wingers and German agents in the country.
But then the FBI came into the picture. A Chinese waiter at the Pacific Chinese Restaurant twice had seen Caballo Loco meeting an American named Howard North in front of their establishment. The blind old man in the Parque Central knew the sound of Howard North’s 1936 Chrysler and reported that it had headed northeast down the Prado toward the Malecón on both occasions. On that second occasion, our intrepid Agent 22 had somehow followed the Chrysler out Quinta Avenida to the port town of Mariel and then managed to get close enough to watch the National Police lieutenant and Señor Howard North walking alone on the empty docks there. North had given Lieutenant Maldonado a small, brown briefcase. That same afternoon, according to our contact at the bank, Maldonado had deposited fifteen thousand American dollars in the Orishas account. There had been an identical deposit on the date of the first meeting with Howard North.
Howard North was a special agent for the Havana field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
I had not asked Delgado to confirm this fact. On Thursday of the week that Hemingway was in the Camagüey archipelago, I had brought the weekly report to Bob Joyce at the embassy and asked casually if there was a new FBI agent in town.
“How did you know about that?” said Joyce, looking at the sanitized report I had typed up for him. He looked up and grinned. “Raymond Leddy, the Bureau’s top guy and our liaison here at the embassy, is quite upset about getting a new man. Special Agent North. Sent down from Washington ten days ago. I guess he wasn’t asked for and really isn’t needed… there are already sixteen agents here in Havana.”
“Is Special Agent North here on some important business?” I asked. “I mean, don’t tell me if it’s classified, of course. I was just curious if it might relate to Hemingway’s operation.”
Bob Joyce chuckled. “I don’t think that Special Agent North is going to be involved in any operation,” he said. “He’s some sort of accountant. That’s why Leddy and the other guys at the Havana field office are ticked. They think that North was sent down here to go over their books… make sure all the pennies and pesos are accounted for.”
“Somebody has to do it, I guess,” I said.
Tens of thousands of dollars flowing from both Theodor Schlegel and the FBI to the Cuban National Police. What the hell was going on? One had to assume that the Abwehr’s bribes related directly to the intelligence operation being run out of the Southern Cross, but what was an FBI accountant doing paying off Caballo Loco and his boss? And what made it more curious was that it seemed as if the local Bureau people did not know what was going on.
In the third week of June, just before Hemingway and his pals returned from their secret mission, I called in Agent 22.
It was Tuesday, June 23, and I happened to be at the finca sitting in the shade with Dr. Herrera Sotolongo and discussing the Crook Factory when Agent 22 finally reported.
The doctor knew about Hemingway’s spy activities, of course, but he had refused to be enlisted in the campaign the way his brother had.
“Ernesto insisted,” said the doctor, “but I refused. He had even chosen a code name for me—Malatobo—but I only laughed and refused again.”
I laughed as well. A malatobo was a type of fighting cock.
“Ernesto and his code names,” mused the doctor, sipping at his gin and tonic. “Did you know, Señor Lucas, that he calls himself Agent Zero-eight in this spy game he is playing?”
I continued smiling. I did know that Hemingway signed all of his reports “Agent 08.”
“Why is it that you do not wish to participate in these activities, Doctor?” I asked. I knew that Herrera Sotolongo hated fascism more than most of the men who were out on the Pilar with Hemingway that day.
The quiet doctor set down his drink and surprised me by pounding his fist against the arm of the chair. “I won’t be a policeman!” he said in adamant Spanish. “God damn it, I was a soldier and I would be a soldier again… Hippocratic Oath or no Hippocratic Oath… but not a policeman! I never liked police or spies!”
I had nothing to say to that. Then the doctor picked up his drink again and looked me straight in the eye. “And now Ernesto is surrounded by spies. Surrounded by people who are not what they say they are.”
Returning the doctor’s steady gaze with my own, I said softly, “What do you mean?”
Herrera Sotolongo swallowed the last of his gin and tonic. “This millionaire… this friend… Winston Guest.”
I admit that I blinked. “Wolfer?”
The doctor snorted. “These nicknames that Ernesto awards us with. It is like a sickness. Did you know, Señor Lucas, that Señor Guest has told Fuentes and the other less-educated members of Ernesto’s crew that he, Guest, is Winston Churchill’s nephew?”
“No,” I said.
“It is true,” said the doctor. “Señor Guest was a much-respected polo player in England. He was also a much better big-game hunter than Ernesto. You know that they met in Kenya in… I believe it was 1933?”
“Señor Hemingway mentioned that they met in Africa, yes.”
“It is true,” said Dr. Herrera Sotolongo, “that Señor Guest is muy preparado. You know this phrase?”
“Sí,” I said. “Highly cultured. Well educated.”
“More preparado than Ernesto knows,” muttered the doctor. “Señor Guest is a spy.”
“Wolfer?” I said again, just as stupidly as the first time. “For whom, Doctor?”
“For the British, of course. Everyone in Havana has seen him—”
That is precisely the moment when a ten-year-old street urchin in rags came up to us at the pool and touched his forehead in what I later realized was a salute.
“Yes, what is it, boy?” I said softly. I recognized the boy as the child who had run ahead of me to the Finca Vigia on my first visit there. If one of Hemingway’s people was sending in a report via this child, I would have to call them in and give them a lecture on security and sanity.
“I am Santiago Lopez, Señor Lucas,” said the boy. The child’s shirt was open—it had no buttons—and his ribs were clearly visible. It looked as if he had not eaten for days. Whatever he wanted, I was going to send him in to the kitchen and tell Maria or one of the others there to make him a good meal before he went back to panhandling in the streets of Havana.
“Yes, yes?” I said, trying not to be cross with the child.
“You sent for Agent Twenty-two,” continued the boy, his voice firm, although I could see his legs shaking slightly.
I looked at Dr. Herrera Sotolongo and rolled my eyes. Any hopes I had been harboring about the effectiveness of Hemingway’s Crook Factory were evaporating with the fact of this child’s being sent with a report.
“Could he or she not come in person?” I said.
“He or she did, Señor Lucas,” said the child. “I mean, sir, I did. As soon as I received your order, sir.”
I looked at the good doctor again, who returned my blank gaze with his wise but weary smile, and then I took Agent 22 into the shade of the ficus trees to question him further about the comings and goings of the murderer, Lieutenant Maldonado.
17
THE WEEKS THAT FOLLOWED were relatively uneventful ones for the Crook Factory, and rather seemed dominated by Hemingway’s family matters. Later, however, I would look back on that June and July as a calm before a storm… and though I had no idea what—if any—storm was brewing, I remember every day as colored by the same kind of tension any sailor feels as he watche
s thunderheads massing on the horizon while racing for home.
Hemingway turned forty-three on July 21, 1942. I spent much of that night and the next talking with the writer in the cabin of the Pilar.
We had been out on antisubmarine patrol for six days. Hemingway’s sons were aboard—Patrick and Gregory, or Mousie and Gigi, as he called them—but the only other crew consisted of Fuentes, Winston Guest, and me. For three days we had stalked the Southern Cross on its seemingly aimless and endless sea trials, monitoring the radios, occasionally hearing the static-lashed communications of sub captains talking to one another in German, us keeping in contact with the small base at Cayo Confites, and generally waiting for the Viking Fund yacht to make the first move. Then, on the fourth day, we lost the big ship in a serious storm. But following radio and direction-finder hints of a sub broadcasting from the vicinity of Key Romano, we turned in that direction on the evening of the fifth day.
Hemingway helped me with the tricky navigation as we approached Key Romano in the dusk. First we crossed the mouth of Punta Practicos until we raised the lighthouse at Maternillos on Key Sabinal. Then we cut the throttle far back as we crept through the treacherous Old Bahamas Channel. Fuentes stood on the bow then, keeping a sharp eye out for reefs and sandbars.
Once in the inner zone of keys, the way became a maze of shallow waterways—often drawing two feet of water or less—many of these channels turning into streams and shallow rivers that ran out from the key. In a small harbor there was the village of Versailles—half a dozen houses, most on stilts, and half of those abandoned. We anchored there at a point called the Punta de Mangle and spent three days exploring the inlets and channels in the Tin Kid, asking the few local fishermen if they had seen a huge yacht or motorboat in the main channels, and trying to triangulate on coded transmissions we were picking up.