made himself a martyr through sheer defiance, spitting in the face of Uncle Sam. With the Cold War ended, he has used America’s outdated trade embargo to further burnish his shining star. A cunning actor, strutting across the stage of the world, occasionally luring popes, potentates, terrorists, and presidents to the little island, adding a little glamour to his cast.
This earnest, brave-hearted, little off-off-Broadway production, Castro’s Cuba, had been running for over forty years. The star of the show was still shining bright, his name still up in lights all over the world.
The secret? Manso had learned it well from Escobar. Every great hero needs an implacable enemy. El jefe had the perfect enemy. The one country the world loves to hate. America. Manso had watched, first Pablo and then Fidel. He’d learned every sleight of political hand and every brilliant move, and was now ready to implement his former masters’ concepts for himself.
Castro, at seventy-five, obviously had no idea what the immediate future held for him, or Manso would be dead. Were there even a trace of suspicion, the leader would never be up in this helicopter alone with him. So, why the tightness in Manso’s chest, the sweat stinging his eyes?
It had been a tense six months. Days and nights of endless planning and tense debate. Even this simple moment, timing a flight from the Havana Yacht Club to Telarana, had been a subject of elaborate study and conjecture.
In the beginning, the problems they had faced had seemed insurmountable. Manso’s rebellious confederates needed constant reassurance. Manso, however, had been steadfast in his belief that such an operation could succeed, and even have a kind of simplicity.
They had not been easy to convince, of course. But gradually, Manso had been able to boost their confidence: The unthinkable could be thought, and the undoable could be done. He had been unwavering, and in the end, he had prevailed.
He told them in detail about the perfect simplicity of Batista’s coup back in 1952. Like their own, the ’52 rebellion had originated with a few young military officers, mostly campesinos and middle class. They had become completely disenchanted with the corruption of President Prio’s regime and recruited Batista, a former president himself, to lead the coup that would bring down Prio.
It had gone off precisely as planned. Perfectly.
Batista had arrived in the capital at 2:43 A.M. one Wednesday morning. It was Carnaval, and the merrymakers were still reveling in the streets. Batista was wearing brightly colored slacks and a sports jacket. The guards at Camp Colombia, where nearly two-thirds of Cuba’s armed forces were housed, didn’t even notice him. He literally did a samba through the security gates with his boisterous comrades singing and laughing.
The higher-ranking officers at the camp were all sound asleep. Many had been drinking heavily and simply passed out on the floors of the barracks. At Batista’s signal, they were all arrested and driven to Kuquine, Batista’s palacial country estate outside the capital. Not a single officer had offered any resistance.
Simultaneously, rebel officers were taking over the telephone company and the radio and television stations. By sunrise that morning, the entire operation had been completed.
President Prio returned to the capital and tried to rally his supporters. But without the army or access to the radio and television, his old civilian government was paralyzed. Prio was forced to acknowledge the inevitable.
The only thing Manso always left out of the story was el presidente Prio’s addiction to morphine. When the man wasn’t sleeping, he was sleepwalking. Batista knew this, of course, and used it to his great advantage. Castro, of course, was another story. He hardly ever slept and was constantly surrounded by secret police and vigilant bodyguards.
The plotters had decided to give their operation the code name Mango after a popular song that ridiculed Fidel in his omnipresent green fatigues. Their joke was that you can’t have “mangos” without “mansos.”
Secrecy surrounding Operation Mango had been keeping Manso awake lately. The possibilities of a leak increased with every passing day. He’d lain sleepless many nights during these last months of intense planning, wondering who might betray him, even accidentally.
He had constantly reminded his band of rebels, “When you are sitting on a secret this big, be careful. Because everybody notices that there is something under you.”
And right now, he felt surely the man next to him must see the enormity beneath him. He drew his sleeve across his brow, wiping the sweat from his eyes, hoping Castro wouldn’t notice.
“Did you ever read the book The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Manso?” the voice of the comandante crackled suddenly in his earphones. El jefe had been gazing out the side window of the cockpit and Manso thought he had dozed off.
“No, Comandante,” Manso said, intensely relieved that Castro’s mind was on his books at the moment.
“Too bad,” Castro said. “There is a wonderful parable in the book. The hero, who is a young Hollywood film producer, is on a cross-country airplane trip. He is interested in learning to fly, so he goes up into the cockpit. The questions he asks, the pilots think he could learn solo flying in ten minutes, he had such a mentality.”
“Si, Comandante,” Manso said, a hot spasm of nerves suddenly sizzling at the edges of his brain. Where was this going?
“The plane is flying over a large mountain. Just like the one up ahead of us. Do you see the one I mean?”
“Si, si, Comandante,” Manso said. “It’s no problem. Our altitude—”
“Listen to the story, Manso. This mountain is important in the story. The producer tells the pilot and copilot to suppose they were railroad men. And they wanted to build a railroad through the mountains below.”
“Si, si. But the mountain is in the way, no?”
“Claro que si,” Castro said in agreement, looking down through the lexan nose of the cockpit at the green mountain now fast disappearing between his feet.
“They have surveyor’s maps. Showing three or four possibilities, no one better than the others. So, he asks them what they would do, since they have no basis for a decision. The pilot says he would clear the forest on the left side of the mountain and put his railroad there. The copilot says no, it would be simpler to go around to the right where the river has already cleared the trees. I paraphrase, of course, but this is the point. No one is sure.”
“It’s an excellent parable, Comandante.”
“It’s not finished, Manso,” Castro said sharply. He looked at his pilot. “Is something wrong? You are pale. You sweat.”
“No, no, Comandante, I feel fine. A little too much chorizo at lunch, I think. Please. Continue with the story.”
“If you’re ill, it’s dangerous. We should land.”
“Is nothing, I promise. Please tell me the end.” And, after regarding his pilot carefully for several seconds, Castro did.
“This producer, Monroe Stahr, he was a boy genius. He said to the pilots that since you can’t test the best way, you just do it. Pick a way, any way, use powder and nitroglycerine and simply blast your way right through. He said that, then he left the cockpit.”
“Ah,” Manso said.
“You do not understand the parable, my old friend, neither did the two pilots in the story. They thought it was valuable advice, but they didn’t know how to use it. It is the difference between us, Manso. I learned long ago that the best way out is always through. Never around.”
Madre de Dios, Manso thought. Does he know? Suspect? What is the point of this story if he does not?
Manso elected to make no reply, and they flew for another hour in silence. It was the longest hour of Manso’s life.
When they were some fifteen minutes away from landing at Telarana, Manso finally broke the silence.
“Comandante,” he said, “do you remember a certain Petty Officer Third Class Rafael Gomez? The American sailor Rodrigo recruited in Havana some time ago?”
“Of course I remember him. I read the reports. Rodrigo believes he could prove to be one of our most productive moles inside Guantanamo Naval Station. Is there a problem? Is he compromised?”
Manso took a deep breath and stepped off the wide platform that had been his support, his life, for almost as long as he could remember.
“More of an opportunity, Comandante.”
