He had to have practiced these expressions.
“You’re being paid to…!” I burst out, astonished. What had I imagined? I pressed my lips together. I really had to watch it. If I betrayed my real naïveté about the world, these guys would dump all over me.
But at that moment, Woody seemed to enjoy my ignorance. He leaned one thick arm on the table, he smiled benevolently at me with all-knowing superiority.
“There’s a lot of patriots in the States, ma’am,” he enunciated firmly, a government representative addressing a reporter. Then he winked.
“You mean private citizens contribute to what amounts to war against whomever they don’t like?” It was hopeless for me to try to pretend: he already knew I was an innocent, and that knowledge was adding to his pleasure. “Isn’t that against the law? I mean, doesn’t Congress have to declare war?”
He laughed. “War? Who said anything about war?” He lifted his glass to toast me. “You’re a sweet kid, Stace, but you shouldn’t be covering this story. You should be home having kids or something. This kinda thing’s too rough for you.”
I wanted to say I was experienced in war, that I’d covered war in Algeria (but I’d already used that line, and besides it wasn’t quite true), I just wasn’t experienced about a new kind of corruption, the alliance of private citizens for private wars which the government seemed to tolerate. It had to: my assignment had been okayed by the State Department, which meant so had Woody’s. But I thought it politic to shut up and listen.
“So tell me about this kinda thing, Woody. What’s so rough about it?”
He did. For hours. He had fought in wars in places I’d never heard of, and he rambled on from story to story: I might have doubted the tales in which he was the hero, except that he told some in which he was the butt, and told of being frightened too. His way of describing fear was to say “I wanted to shit in my pants.” Men often say things like that. I wonder if that’s just an expression, or if fear really hits men that way. I’ve been frightened, but it has never made me feel like that.
I listened. I didn’t try to believe or disbelieve. I was listening not just to the stories, which after a while grew repetitious, but to the way Woody saw the world. For him, all of life was power. He loved the Marines—and the United States—not for reasons of principle or even just because he was at home in them, but because to him they represented the most powerful institutions on earth. Power was an automatic good, an absolute almost. There was no one in the world who didn’t either have power or want it, and what fascinated him was watching the struggle for it, knowing the behind-the-scenes machinations, the ins and outs, who’s in this year who was out two years ago, who was on top a decade ago and is now in the pits. Most of all, obviously, he loved being on the side of someone who won, but in a way, he didn’t really care who won or lost, he enjoyed being part of the struggle. It amused him. Underneath the bravery, the heroism, the starkness of some of his stories—and I didn’t doubt that part, he had known incredible physical hardship, he’d lived in filth, infested with vermin, sat in the blood of a dying comrade for hours, waiting for rescue—under that there was a hollowness that terrified me. Because if you weren’t fighting for something that mattered—the only thing I could think of that I’d fight for was my kids, my home, my right to think and speak—then what was the reason to live in filth and vermin, what justified that dying comrade’s blood, why was Woody’s life heroic? As he certainly felt it was.
Oh, I know that governments always paste reasons on wars, label them so they’ll appear decent, like whiskey bottles kept in boxes made to look like books one can properly keep on one’s bookshelves. But didn’t people know better, didn’t the men who fought know better? Woody was fighting for fun. What kind of person finds such a life fun?
My ruminations kept me quiet—not that I had anything to add to the conversation (he would surely not be interested in my experience of childbirth). But he was enjoying himself, just like the boys I’d hung out with at college, who loved having me—or any female—for an audience.
We finished late, sitting over brandies. Woody smoked a cigar, still talking. Then almost in midsentence, he stopped, announced, “Enough. Time for bed,” and stood up. Just like that. Orders.
He walked me to my room, patted my head as if I were a child and said, “’Night, kid,” and winked and marched off with his military posture. I stood for a moment at my door watching him, partly regretting and partly relieved that he hadn’t made a pass.
Woody had told me he would be busy the next day until two, when the newcomers were to meet us at the café; so I slept late, had coffee and a roll in my room and went out with my camera. I wandered the streets, staying within the Cuban neighborhood, looking for shots that would show the character of the place. I shot old men sitting in the sun, children playing in the streets or lolling, empty-eyed, on the front steps of shabby houses. There were no women around. They must all have been working—at home, in shops, factories, greasy spoons. They would probably appear later in the day, five or five-thirty, looking worn, shabby, shapeless, lugging string bags stuffed with vegetables, giant tins of oil, big cotton bags of rice. The few younger men on the sidewalks mostly paraded around in tight pants with great bulges at the crotch, looking dangerous.
I had lunch in a restaurant no better than the one in the hotel, then went to the café Woody, Alex, and Noel were sitting with two strangers at two tables pushed together in the middle of the room. No one smiled or greeted me, but Woody made Alex move so I could sit beside him. Neither Alex nor Noel showed any reaction to this.
Woody introduced the newcomers, Philip and Cyrus. They were in their mid-thirties, both with deep tans and athletically trim bodies. I studied them, trying to figure out why they were here, what they did, but I sensed that questions about people’s backgrounds were taboo. I listened. The men were talking with great familiarity about Indochina, Iran, the Congo. They were apparently soldiers of fortune, adventurers, mercenaries. But Philip and Cyrus looked classy in a way the other three did not; and they sounded as if they’d gone to schools like Groton or Exeter, Princeton or at least Dartmouth.
At two-fifteen, two more men drifted in, middle-aged Cubans in white suits: Clemente and Orlando. Jack, another American, tall, gaunt, with eyes that never met others’, arrived a few minutes later. Three younger Cubans appeared at quarter of four, and one of them—Lope—told us that another man, Ettore, would arrive soon. Ettore arrived at five-thirty. I wondered if they would be this cavalier when the time came to attack. I was tired of sitting there, and I was bored.
From the conversation, I deduced that Clemente and Orlando had been prosperous before Castro expropriated their land, and that Lope had had some property. They may have exaggerated their wealth, but these men seemed easy in a way that comes with wealth—they were used to authority, or command, used to being seen as legitimate. Three of the Cubans were heavyset, all had mustaches. And they were intense, serious, driven, almost. Clemente said they had managed to smuggle out some of their money with them, and could afford to buy weapons. Orlando had brought along a paid subordinate, Jose, who came swaggering in a little after I arrived, looking dangerous and suspicious, reached a hand inside his white jacket, and pulled out a package of cigarettes and handed them to Orlando. He was an errand boy; he looked like the boys out on the streets—young and tough, a cock looking for a barnyard to rule. Ettore was a small, plump, voluble man with warm brown eyes that filled with tears whenever he mentioned his wife, his children, his farm, and Cuba. His family was still living outside Havana, and they were to help us in some way.
I was interested in these men although their conversation bored me. It was an argument about the excellences and flaws in an entire range of weapons—semiautomatic guns, rifles, even tanks, planes, military boats. They talked as if they were outfitting a regiment, and I wondered which of these supplies they actually possessed. Woody rarely spoke, but when he did, announcing that C-4 was the best (what was a
C-4?), the others shut up.
We broke for dinner at six, and I went back to my room and napped; again I was awakened by a rapping on my door, and again it was Woody. This time I didn’t rush getting downstairs. But we all had dinner together at a big round table in the center of the room. A seat had been left vacant for me next to Woody. A handful of hotel guests was scattered around the room. The guys drank and blabbed.
“Me, I gonna blow up the telephone company and after that I go for the radio station,” said Lope.
“Listen, we gotta prioritize,” Jack countered bitterly. “The radio station is number one. We gotta get the police stations, they’re up to their asses in weapons. We gotta split into three teams, get the radio station first….”
“What about the barracks?” Orlando screamed.
“The generator, that’s the thing,” Philip put in precisely.
“We should get their water! Really fuck the bastards up!” cried Sebastian.
“No!” Ettore pounded the table. “No water!” He had a family in Havana.
“You know how Alpha 66 contaminated all that sugar in the warehouses with chemicals,” Alex said between clenched teeth. “Wrecked the fuckers’ economy. We contaminate the reservoirs, water storage tanks, we got ’em.”
“No the water,” Ettore pleaded.
Cyrus laughed. His narrow teeth were yellow, which was unexpected in a man with the tan, the physique, the carriage of a California surfer. “They gave the bastards swine flu, they gave them dengue….”
Philip picked it up, laughing too. “They unloaded a ton of infested mosquitoes on them.”
“What about their oil pipelines?…” Noel put in.
“You do what you like, I go for the barracks,” Clemente said to Lope.
“There is gasoline at dee pier,” Ettore offered ominously.
“Most important,” Jack announced, “fuck off the soft targets, head for the hard stuff. We’re only a dozen….”
“Oh,” Alex yearned, “if only we could get some C-4!”
The argument broke into splinters, with two or three guys fighting another, in a set of nasty little groups.
“Yeah, you use a whole satchel charge when you only need a couple of sticks, I know your kind….”
“If we had pineapples…”
“We could make juice. Forget it.”
“Shit, there’s only eight fucking BARs, everybody else’ll have to carry M-14s.”
“But what I’d like to lay my hands on is some MK-2. Think our contacts…?” Woody looked questioningly at Noel, who didn’t respond.
“I’d like an M-60 myself,” Jack muttered.
“Some eighty-one-mm mortars….”
“A satchel charge apiece, half a dozen bazookas, and some M-16s. We’d wipe ’em out!”
“No, a law! A couple of laws!”
I turned to Woody. I whispered, “What the hell is a law?”
He gave me a disgusted grimace, grabbed a paper napkin, pulled out a fancy ball-point pen and scribbled “LAW: light antitank weapon.” He passed it to me, I read it; he crumpled it up in his hand. He turned back to the men. “Listen, if we are making up a shopping list, what I want is a couple of MACs.”
I knew MACs weren’t Macintosh apples. I didn’t dare ask him what they were.
By ten-thirty, they were no longer arguing. “We blow it all up!” Huge laughter. “All of it!”
They were too drunk to do serious planning—nor did this seem the place to do it. It would be safe for me to go to bed. I leaned over to ask Woody if we would be leaving tomorrow. He shook his head. “Problem with the boat. Maybe the next day.” I excused myself, but I don’t think any of them even noticed my leaving. They were having too good a time.
Before going to my room, I went into the phone booth—there were no phones in the rooms—and called Toni. I spoke to the kids, too. They were still up, playing Scrabble. It was a holiday week. My heart ached when I heard them laughing together, and I couldn’t tell them anything except that I was okay and things were progressing, but we hadn’t gone yet.
I went upstairs feeling uneasy. I had no idea how expeditions like this should be run, but it did seem that the guys should not talk so loudly about the mission, especially in a hotel patronized by Cubans. But maybe they were all on the same side. The way they talked bothered me too—it was like sitting over coffee, listening to a bunch of women moon over their dream houses: what would yours have? A dishwasher, a dryer, a stainless-steel sink? A garbage-disposal unit! These guys wanted bigger and better killing machines. But they had about as much chance of getting them as most women did their dream houses: that much was clear. Could these men really be professional soldiers? Was this the behavior of professional soldiers? They were so silly! Oh, what did I know about such things? Only what I saw in the movies. Maybe World should have sent a man. Maybe a man would know things like this….
I thought maybe I was uneasy because I felt like a traitor. I admired Castro, who had saved his country from Batista, that hideous dictator. In my heart I didn’t support what the men I was covering were doing. And that made me feel guilty, an intruder, a person acting in bad faith. I reminded myself that I was a photographer, impartial, a professional, and that there was no reason not to cover what one didn’t agree with, that you couldn’t do news that way, but still…
Eventually, I fell asleep.
The next afternoon, we all met in Mi Tierra again. Most of the guys were wearing khaki trousers and T-shirts, but Woody wore a freshly pressed safari suit and the rich Cubans wore immaculate white linen. We were drinking beer and the guys were repeating the conversation of the night before almost word for word, arguing over the respective merits of the radio station, the reservoir, the police stations, the barracks, the telephone company, and yearning after dream weapons, when two men came in wearing suits and ties and wary expressions, and I thought, oh-oh, CIA or FBI, what’s going to happen now?
The men in suits looked around, stared at Woody, nodded; he nodded back, and they asked if they could join us. Much noise, scraping of chairs, as half the guys at the table got up to make room for them. They acted as if they were in the presence of royalty. The men in suits accepted this as their due, and sat down next to Woody. The one closer to him turned and said something in a soft voice I couldn’t hear. Woody nodded and in an equally soft voice sketched his plan: the boat, the hidden weapons, the point of landing, the points of attack. I was surprised—I hadn’t realized that while the others were going on and on, Woody, Alex, and Noel actually had a plan. As Woody talked, he occasionally glanced at Alex or Noel for confirmation or addition, and that one would lean forward and fill in what was needed. For once, everyone was whispering. The men in suits listened, nodding.
I looked around the room. There was an old man at a corner table, nodding over his aperitif. He looked harmless, but who knows? And two toughs were sitting in a booth drawing plans on paper napkins, looking as if they were planning a robbery. There was a handful of men at the bar. I felt extremely agitated, but the men in suits paid no attention to the others in the room. I must be foolish, I thought: after all, these guys really were experienced.
The guys in suits nodded, eyes lidded, expressionless. When Woody was finished, they whispered to him for a few minutes. I only caught “Alpha 66” and “Dominguez.” I was thrilled: I imagined they were laying out the master plan and filling Woody in on it. He kept nodding, his eyelids down too, face expressionless. After a time, they stood up. Woody nodded at them, they nodded at the table, and left.
That night, Woody and Alex and Noel and I drove in a borrowed car—an old dented, rusting, rattly Buick—to a stucco bungalow set among blocks of similar shabby peeling houses on the outskirts of the city. Everyone was quiet, tense: we were going to a secret meeting set up with a defector, Castro’s former minister of defense, Dominguez. He had information on where things were located—arms, tanks, airplanes, men. This was an important meeting, and they had included me!
Al
ex parked the car a block away from the house and we walked down the poorly lighted street to number 27, which was completely dark. Alex gave a signal knock. The door opened on a dark hallway; we couldn’t even see who had opened it, but we entered. Noel closed the door behind him, quietly, then a thick, short figure shuffled along in front of us and threw open a door to a lighted room. The light illuminated the figure—a woman, aged, ageless, shapeless, grey. She pointed, and we entered.
The room was heavily draped so no light showed outside. It was also hot, stifling, and filled with cigar smoke. In a shabby easy chair a man sat in a bright blue bathrobe that fell open from the belt tied at his waist. He waved us in, asked—in Spanish—if we wanted a drink. Alex translated for us. (Woody spoke Spanish too, I knew; but he was the commander, not the translator.) The men asked for rum; I requested a Coke. The man rapped out the order to the woman, who was wearing bedroom slippers. After ten long hot smoky minutes, during which we sat in silence, she returned carrying three cloudy glasses half full of rum, and a glass of cola with one small melting ice cube floating in it.
We drank. Woody took over. “Excellency,” he began deferentially, “we are honored to have you with us.”
Alex translated.
Dominguez nodded, then began to talk. He spoke for a long time, rapidly, with passion, pounding the little rickety table beside him so that it shook, pounding his chest, rolling his eyes. His statement was translated rather cursorily by Alex, who probably could not remember all of what was said. His Excellency had believed in the Revolution, had believed in Fidel; his heart was entirely with the cause. But now Fidel had become a betrayer: he was imprisoning people, murdering people, putting people in camps like the Russians, expropriating property (including Dominguez’), making dictatorial laws. He had betrayed the revolution; he was ruining the country.
Tears ran down the old man’s cheeks. He did not bother to wipe them away.
He, Dominguez, had probed his heart, his conscience, his soul, and out of loyalty to his homeland had finally defected. He now believed The Devil was ruining it. The Devil had betrayed him, and was now betraying Cuba, his motherland, his sacred soil….