talent. Luckily for him, his assignment was with a Cuban military attache to Honduras named Rafael Figueredo. Figueredo had already been convinced to spy for the U.S., but he wasn’t useful until he was transferred to Violette’s CIA department. In Violette’s hands, Figueredo, who was code-named Vesper, was reassigned to the Cuban Foreign Ministry. There, he went to work and routinely photographed sensitive documents and files. So even though Roland Violette had never successfully recruited a single spy, his handling of Vesper earned him a promotion. He became the counterintelligence branch chief of Cuban operations, where he had access to information on every aspect of U.S. operations in Central America, Cuba in particular. So that brings us to 1977. Violette ran into skirt trouble.”
“Imagine that,” Alex said. “A man with skirt trouble.”
“Violette was having an affair with a wealthy Costa Rican woman named Rica. He brought her to D.C., and it wasn’t long before she started making trouble. She must have been one tropical storm in the bedroom, because she immediately demanded that Violette divorce his wife. Instead of dumping a troublesome mistress and cutting his losses, he did what Rica asked. You know what divorces are like: it nuked almost all of his savings and his assets. Yet Rica continued to spend money as if she and Violette were printing it at home, which, by this time, Violette was probably wishing he could do. His Costa Rican cutie quickly dug Violette into nearly $50,000 of debt. He became so desperate for funds that he borrowed from every friend he could tap, maxed out all his credit cards, and even considered robbing a bank. But then he remembered that the Soviets paid $75,000 for the identity of American spies working in their country. He arranged a meeting with Sergei Vassiliev of the Soviet Embassy in Washington. They met at a bistro in Georgetown, negotiated, and Violette gave up three CIA spies working in Moscow and one in Warsaw. Three men, one woman. In exchange for this information, Violette received $200,000.”
“When I was at the university, or maybe even earlier,” Alex said, “I learned the multiplication tables. Four times seventy five is three hundred thousand.”
“The Russians bargained him down,” Menendez said. “What do you expect when slimeball meets slimeball?”
“What happened to the blown spies?” Alex asked.
“Shot, three of them,” Fajardie said, interjecting sharply. “That was the men. The woman was raped by several members of the Polish KGB. When they were finished with her, she was hanged by a piano wire at the Mokotow Prison in Warsaw.”
Alex drew a breath. A deep, involuntary shudder of revulsion went through her. God help any Western woman who fell into the hands of such brutal enemies. Then a second wave of disgust went through her, one for Roland Violette and his various paths of betrayal, followed by a third wave, which had to do with the occupants of the room. She wondered, on a personal level, whether anything was worth a piano wire around the neck or a bullet in the back of the head.
“So who was Violette working for?” Alex asked. “The Russians or the Cubans?”
“Both,” Fajardie said. “As well as himself. But face it. The Cubans were just the paw of the Russian bear. The
There was a pause. “So, go on,” Alex said. “I’m sure there’s more.”
Menendez continued. “Violette’s tale might have ended there, except for the arrest in 1979 of another turncoat, U.S. Navy Warrant Officer Thomas Gosden, who was caught selling surveillance information to the Cubans. Violette was so afraid that Gosden would rat him out that he decided to go for a final score. He contacted his Cuban handlers first, said he wanted to go for that big grand salami to end the game. The Cubans turned him over to the Russians. Vassiliev came across with a suitcase full of dollars. A big suitcase. Maybe a million. Cash. In return, Violette squealed out every ‘human asset’ the CIA had in Russia that he could finger. Violette also snitched out an Italian spy and turned over twenty pounds of photocopies of documents he carried out of CIA headquarters in his briefcase. For his ‘good work’ in the Evil Empire days, he was privately awarded the Order of Lenin and given a bonus of another $250,000. Final total, Violette named three dozen spies. All were apprehended by either Soviet or Cuban authorities, and at least eighteen were executed. Meanwhile, the CIA transferred him to its office in Madrid.”
“Been there,” Alex said with detached irony. “Nice office. Right in the embassy. I know some of the people.”
“You’ve been around, haven’t you?” Fajardie said.
“You could say that.”
“Just curious,” Fajardie said to Alex. “How many languages do you speak?”
“English, Russian, French, Italian, and Spanish. And I fake Ukrainian.”
“No Icelandic?” Sloane asked as a mild tweak.
“Not yet,” she answered. “Ask me again in six weeks.”
“Ever had a notion to come work for us directly?” Fajardie asked. “Don’t you get bored crunching numbers at Treasury?”
“Not when bullets come flying through my window and I have to get smuggled into the only Marxist country in the hemisphere just to keep the rifle sights off me.”
“Good answer,” Fajardie shrugged.
He glanced to Menendez to indicate the latter could continue.
“Violette felt Rica would be happier in Spain, language and all,” Menendez said. “He also wanted to distance himself from all his felonies and make things easier if he needed to make a break for an escape. He did not, however, distance himself from the greenbacks the Russians were paying him. He and his Costa Rican broad lived lavishly. His CIA salary was $80,000 a year, but Violette wore a $20,000 Patek Philippe watch on his wrist and drove a maroon Mercedes Benz 450 SL to work. And Rica, she could always find a way to burn more money. She started smoking these little gold-tipped cigarettes. Not gold paper, mind you. Tipped with gold leaf. No filter. She had them specially made by a tobacconist in Madrid. It only took the CIA five years to notice that something didn’t add up. They started looking at him crosseyed in 1982, and the crap hit the fan in ‘84. Arrest warrants were issued for both Violette and his wife.”
He paused. Then he continued. “Somehow, however, Violette got wind of it ahead of time. They cleaned out their bank accounts and caught a plane to Tunisia, just hours ahead of the Spanish police. Everyone expected them to head to Moscow, but they had fake Bolivian passports stashed for a rainy day – and it was starting to drizzle. So they used them to fly to the Dominican Republic from Tunisia. From there, they continued on to Havana via Mexico City. Arrival: November 1984. Same day Ronald Reagan got reelected.”
“And they’ve been there since?”
“As far as we know. Both went underground – one in one way, the other in another.” Menendez paused. He smirked. “There were stories that Rica had left him, threw him over for a Frenchman named Jean Antoine who ran a restaurant in Havana. Jean Antoine was one of Violette’s friends but apparently stole his wife. Or maybe just rented her. She wasn’t seen with Violette for several years, but if she had a fling, it didn’t last. She came back before she died. Our reports are that Violette forgave his friend. Other reports say that he didn’t. But he did take his wife back before the little gold-tipped cancer sticks killed off Rica in 2004,” he said. “She’s buried in the Cementerio de Cristobal Colon in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana. She’s got her own mausoleum. Violette paid for it even though his money was running out.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t have her stuffed and mounted,” Sloane said. “You know? Like Juan Peron did for Evita and Roy Rogers did for Trigger.”
“Knock it down a level, would you?” Fajardie said.
Alex looked back to Menendez. “Okay. So then where are we?”
“Violette’s making noises about coming back to the United States,” Fajardie said. “This you know, and this is where you come in. We got several messages through the American-interests section of the Swiss Embassy in Havana,” Fajardie said. “He’s seventy-eight years old, cuckoo, and his wife’s dead. He has an aging mother here in the U.S., a brother, and a sister. We get the idea his health isn’t good. He’s ready to make a deal and come home. He’s been gone for a quarter century. A little more, actually.”
“That’s not so long ago in terms of the intelligence community’s memory,” Alex said. “I notice that some people would still like to have his head on a plate.”
“Three of them are in this room,” said Menendez, “not just for what he did but to serve notice to anyone who does something similar in the future. A roulette wheel has no memory but this agency has a long one.”
“I follow that part,” Alex said. She turned to Fajardie. “But how do you know Violette really wants to defect
