Operation DOUBLEPAYBACK Read online

  “Yeah, we’ll see what the Review Board have to say about all this and who should carry the can. There was a big budget line for this exercise. I guess we won’t get further stunts funded for a while. Anyway, I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes, buddy. My guess is it’s a desk in DC for you, for a while.”

  Chapter 13 Cuban agenda Mark 2

  After four months of paperwork behind a desk at DC, Max arrived at 7 a.m. on an already hot and highly humid June morning, after a breakfast of coffee and cigarettes in his small apartment, and found a memo awaiting him with an order to meet the Head of Western Hemisphere operations, Col. Joe Kingman at 8 a.m. Over a mug of Company machine coffee, in his office, Max wondered what might be waiting. He had been cleared of negligence or any fault regarding the failed mission to take out Castro and Guevara. However, no promotion or bonus was to come his way for 1958. Maybe 1959 would be better. He knew that the high ups were ever more concerned that Castro and his group were indeed Communists and early indications pointed that way. Since Castro had taken over Cuba in January 1959, press restrictions were growing, expropriation of businesses and farms was looking likely and other groups that had contributed to Batista’s overthrow were being sidelined. All the top positions were going to Castro’s July 26 Movement people. The Second National Front Escambray guerrillas were being slowly eased out of the picture and their middle of the road programme was being ignored. Max was pretty sure Kingman wanted him back in Cuba to keep an eye on developments at least and maybe to do something more active.

  Kingman beckoned Max to enter his open door and gestured for Max to close it and sit down. Kingman ran a hand over his severely crew-cut hair and then polished his gold rimmed spectacles before speaking.

  “Well, Blue, you screwed up the last mission. I know the Review Board ruled that it wasn’t due to negligence or recklessness or any other disciplinary category, but whatever the reason it was a mess. Lucky for you, it was completely deniable. The dead guys weren’t Agency and their identities were never established by Castro’s Reds. As far as they know, the dead guys were goons hired by Batista and they don’t have any knowledge of you and your part. So, we’re going to give you a chance to redeem your sorry ass and get some glory by stopping Cuba going Red. Guevara we’re sure is a Commie and Fidel seems to be going that way. His latest stunt is backing an invasion of the Dominican Republic by anti-Trujillo exile groups. This is being crushed at this very moment. El Jefe, Trujillo, is going apeshit and will retaliate in kind against Fidel. I’ll tell you more about that later.

  There are plenty Cubanos who fought against Batista in other groups apart from his July 26 movement, say the Escambray group, and these people are not happy with the way things are going down there.

  So, you will be going over there to contact anti-Red forces and find out what they want in help and how we can get that help to them.

  The cover will be that you’re a journalist for a way out lefty magazine that we actually fund - though most of the saps that work for it don’t know that. We have a lot of front organisations and use some of them to make big donations to this magazine called The New Firebrand. It harks back to an anarchist rag from many years ago, is generally known as the NF and takes all kinds of anti convention stuff from beatniks, kooks, vegetarians, back to nature types and so on. Its readers probably think Castro and company are great, because they look like beatniks, even though any beatniks who popped up in Cuba would be in the pokey or shot pretty soon, if they tried their usual spouting on a Havana street corner. Castro’s jails are bursting with people who thought he was their buddy including beat poet types. Guevara’s going to ease overcrowding in the jails by simply bumping off a good portion of the political inmates.

  Anyway, we have an Associate Editor of the NF on a retainer and he will take you on as a Cuba correspondent doing monthly pieces on how great it all is over there. You’ll be equipped with all the usual papers and the background story you’ll need to show you are a bona fide journalist. You can have a month in New York City to get to know the Associate Ed., learn the ropes of the job and meet enough beatnik types to seem convincing.”

  “That all sounds good , Sir. Are there any particular targets to go for in Cuba ?”

  “Yes, indeed. You will probably have heard of William Kidd, soon to be an ex United States citizen and a rebel commandante with the Second Front group in Escambray. He is known as Billy the Kid for obvious reasons and he is quite a character. He is very unreliable as far as we’re concerned, although he has been helpful sometimes on Company business. He’s a died in the wool rebel type, like Marlon Brando in that Wild One movie. Remember that movie? Somebody asks the Johnnie character “What ya rebelling against Johnnie?” and he says “Whaddya got?.” Well this Billy’s like that and he even looks a bit like Brando, come to think of it. Billy’s from Michigan. He’s been a lot of things, he was a high school drop out, a juvenile delinquent, a booze smuggler and a dock union enforcer. He joined the Marines to avoid a jail rap. He did kill Commies in Korea but ended up in the stockade, bust out, was recaptured, and did 3 years hard time for that one. When he got out he joined a circus, believe it or not, as thrower in a knife act, he married a fire-eater lady, quit the circus, pretty soon left the little woman and a kid, then got involved in a gun running operation with Mafia types out of Miami. On a run to Cuba, with supplies for Fidel and his bunch, he had a skirmish with Batista’s guys. Billy got away and back to Miami, but his associates died painfully in a Havana interrogation centre and Billy went back for revenge. He made his way into the hills of Escambray and joined up with the Second Front there. His army training paid off and eventually he became one of their top men, in fact became a commandante no less.

  Now, he and his companeros in the Second Front are getting sidelined. There are no fancy jobs with luxury pads and on demand hookers for them. Our boy is in charge of developing the bull frog industry down there. Yep, no kidding. They use the little fellas’ skins for bags, shoes and stuff, the legs for gourmet dining and the rest for fertiliser. The Second Front guys like Billy, were never Commie, maybe a bit left, a bit socialist but not full blown Commies, so they are getting pissed at the sidelining, the being written out of history as of no importance to the revolution, and about how their nice ideas about democracy, free speech, political freedom, free markets and so on are looking to be trashed by Che and company pretty soon. We hear that the Second Front could well resume ops but this time against the Fidelistas. Billy will be a good place for you to start.

  One other thing you need to know. Presidente Trujillo, our good friend in the Dominican Republic is stirring the pot as we speak, and is behind a plan to land anti-Castro Cubans on the island, who would then, he hopes, be supported by local groups including Second Fronters. Trouble is, Castro has wind of this too. Billy was approached by Trujillo to take part in the anti-Castro uprising, and is going along with the plot but – and here’s the kicker- Billy is actually in cahoots with Fidel and is going to lure the counter revolutionaries in and then wham! Sell them out. So, Billy becomes a hero of the Revolution all over again…”

  “Wow...but why the hell aren’t we backing the counter revolutionaries on this?”

  “Well, we were and are still, to some extent. But at a very early stage, the general shape of the plot became known to Castro. He must have a mole in Trujillo’s camp. So the plan developed that when Billy was approached by Trujillo’s plotters, as we suggested to them, he appear to go along with it, but actually betray the local elements in it to Castro. This way he will be really in with Castro and then he can betray Castro worse a bit later. It’s a long game, my friend!”

  “Jesus Christ. Well I just hope this Billy doesn’t decide to betray me when I start on plot mark 2.”

  “No, no, we’re sure he is ultimately on our side, or will be when the time comes. We’re sure Castro will screw him again, even after he helps bust the Trujillo plot. Castro can’t cross his July 26 Movement buddies or they’ll depose him in favour
of Guevara. So after a moment of glory, it will be back to the frog farm for Billy and the Second Fronters will soon see that if nothing is done they will surely end up executed, jailed or in exile.”

  “OK. I’ll make a start now on getting ready to be an NF correspondent. I’ll grow my hair long, maybe not develop a beard, though. I’ll have to get the right clothes too. Can I take it dope smoking is ok as part of the cover?”

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever it takes. We’ll spring you if the local New York cops get difficult. Though, from what I hear they have more to worry about than a few pot heads posing around the Village as rebels.

  Now, in Cuba, you have an Embassy contact, Jack Johnson. I think you have met him before. He can exfiltrate you if you need that. As a journalist, it won’t seem odd you meeting Embassy people from time to time. We’ll put you up in the Capri in Havana. I hear it’s not been ruined yet. Used to be great in the old days. Babes on tap, if you know what I mean?”

  “Great. I’ll try to enjoy the Capri without jeopardising the whole mission.”

  A week later, Max was installed in a Company apartment on West 80th Street , New York City. This was a quiet residential street of brownstone row houses convenient for Central Park meetings and drop-offs, and for the offices of The New Firebrand down in the Greenwich Village. The apartment was decorated and furnished in Company bland, had two bedrooms, a good size lounge and a well appointed kitchen with almost no cockroaches. “It wouldn’t be New York City without those little guys,” Max thought, as he put out the roach traps.

  Next day, Max caught the crowded subway downtown. Graffiti over the subway walls and even the on the carriages was new since his last time in New York. Maybe, doing your own thing is getting out of hand, wondered Max, as he felt some dismay at this abuse of public space. He then walked through the Village to The New Firebrand office on 4th street. There, in a small cluttered room, he met Fred Reich, the associate editor retained by the Agency as a source of information on the home grown protesting classes. Strictly, that was FBI business, but someone at the Company had decided it could be Company business too, since protest movements often had international involvements and could be commie fronts, which meant Soviet fronts. Fred was short, with long but thinning hair compensated for by a full black beard. He wore black horn rimmed spectacles and a black turtleneck sweater with black crumpled jeans to complete the prototypical beatnik look.

  “Hey, man. Welcome to New York City and the New Firebrand! You come well recommended from our mutual friends in Virginia. I’ve got your credentials sorted out. I gather your nom de plume will be Mike Brown and officially you have worked for a number of left leaning magazines over the years. We have even prepared a portfolio of previous articles. You are a bit of an expert on the Beats it seems. Let’s say you take a week or two to mug up on Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Burroughs and all those guys, for your cover. You might bump into some of them if you hang around the Village long enough.

  I’ll see about getting your permissions from the Cubans to do journalistic work in Cuba as soon as possible. Right now, our Cuban friends are keen to get good coverage in the US and someone with Mike Brown’s record in protest movements would be expected to be sympathetic to the Revolution.”

  “Thanks. That’s all great. So, my first assignment will be to interview Billy Kidd, the Americano who became a top honcho among the rebels. Although he wasn’t in Fidel’s group, we believe he is in close with Fidel and should be a good source. He’s sure got a great story. It’s almost unbelievable what he’s got up to in his short life. The Beats will love the story. It’ll do wonders for the NF circulation,” laughed Max.

  “OK, man, don’t say too much. I honestly don’t want to know what you might be really up to. But a great story will definitely help. Maybe we can sell it on to other places, maybe the New Yorker or foreign outlets. Oh yeah, this will be cool.”

  Within two weeks, Max had a good enough grasp of the beat and protest scene to hold his own in Village Coffee House rap sessions. To his surprise, he came to feel that the Beats were on to something. Their stress on spontaneity and improvisation was refreshing after years in which careful planning and evaluation applying explicit analytical methods had become his standard approach to everything. It was the Company style. The Beat approach to life and art connected strongly with Zen Buddhism and so to the Way of the Samurai. That was especially interesting for a professional warrior, which is how Max saw himself. Spending time in the Village, he felt he was absorbing the Beat ethos from the air of the coffee houses, the bars, the folk clubs and the record shops. He was sure he had even seen Jack Kerouac and Bill Burroughs coming out of a bar. Kerouac was well on his way to an alcohol induced nirvana. “Still, a great writer,” thought Max, “On the Road, reading it is like a drug trip without drugs. Cool. The Dharma Bums keeps up the good work. Burroughs is harder work. But cool.”

  In mid-August Max met Jack Johnson in the air-conditioned ground floor café at the American Museum of Natural History just off Central Park for a final briefing. He ordered coffees and a plate of chocolate cookies.

  Jack was already at a table in a far corner of the room beneath a vast hanging skeleton of a whale.

  “Hi Jack,” said Max, “This is a good spot. It’s quiet and not overlooked, except by a dead whale. So, you haven’t been kicked out of Cuba yet?”

  “No, no. I’m still hanging in there. But, if things go on the way they’re going I might be out of there pretty soon. Still, we’re planning that things will change direction over there before it comes to that.

  Phase one of the current operation has gone well. Billy easily lured in the Trujillo backed counter-revolutionaries and they are now all awaiting revolutionary justice in East Havana’s Combinado del Este prison. It was funny in a way. Billy got the top guys in the plot assembled in a luxury hotel suite to sort out which of them would have which Ministry after their victory, when in strolls old Fidel and starts making fun of them. It must have been sickening for the plotters to realise they had been had, had been taken in and betrayed by what they thought was their main asset in Cuba, our boy Billy. We hear Trujillo is mightily pissed about this and he’s put up a big bounty for Billy’s head, literally. He wants that boy’s head in a box. His sick psycho security chief Johnny Garcia is itching to win that prize. What’s more, we’re doing Billy a favour by revoking his United States citizenship and that will boost his standing with the Fidelistas to even greater heights.

  So, Billy is in great favour with Fidel right now and is a Hero of the Revolution all over again. It’s been agreed that you can go over and have any number of interview sessions with Billy in September. This will give plenty opportunity to sound him out and offer help with the real revolution within the revolution. Of course this action is not to bring Batista back, that wouldn’t work anymore, but just to get more middle of the road types in charge, types who won’t go Commie, won’t seize our sugar mills, our properties and even our Coca-Cola factories and more or less hand the island over to the Soviets. If it all works out, we can always get Billy’s citizenship back again and give him a medal.”

  “That’s all sounding good to me. I’ve got all my visas, permissions and so forth as a campaigning reporter and chronicler of the Beat scene. Mike Brown is my new name for this job and I will be over in Cuba in two weeks or so. I’ll contact you at the Embassy number if need be. If it all goes wrong, I may need smuggled out in a hurry.”

  “Ok...that’s what we’re there for.”

  Max felt that the plan was looking good as he walked through the humid and crowded sidewalks in search of a cold beer in a dark air conditioned bar. Kidd sounded as though he had his heart in the right place and ultimately should get that medal from Congress that Johnson mentioned rather than be stripped of his citizenship. He was definitely looking forward to meeting this guy.

  Jack reported back to his superiors that the operation to back the anti-Castro counter revolution with Kidd as a leading figure was progressing
well and that Max was now ready to contact Kidd in Cuba.

  Chapter 14 Billy the Kid

  By mid-September, 1959, Max had a suite at the Capri hotel, Havana, under the name of Mike Brown. This hotel was well known to be a Mob owned establishment and so far the Revolution had had little impact on the running of the place. To keep them well-disposed, senior figures in the Revolution were granted complimentary rooms and suites and so, nowadays, more guests wore green fatigues than wore the shiny suits, wide ties and white shoes of Batista’s day. Otherwise all the previous recreational opportunities were there, including music, drugs, exotic dance shows, casinos, pornographic films, live sex shows, bars, pools, hookers and rent boys.

  On the blazingly hot afternoon of September 15th, Max sat out on the balcony, hoping for some sea breezes, while reading a newspaper account of how the Soviets had that week crashed a space craft onto the moon and by means of an elaborate procedure, had ensured that pennants with Soviet regalia would survive the impact.

  Max thought, “Shit. Now, they’ve got the Hammer and Sickle on the moon. I suppose they think that makes it theirs. We’ll have to see about that. Next thing they’ll have missiles up there that they could rain down on the world. Maybe in ten years I’ll be up there battling the Sovs, it’ll be like Flash Gordon. It’s time Ike woke up and got us up there too.”