Spy in a Little Black Dress

XVIII



Dressed in Stephanie Mitchell’s exquisite white chiffon gown was like being swathed in Queen Anne’s lace, Jackie thought, but she felt like an imposter. Wearing someone else’s dress was only half the problem. The other, more troublesome part, was keeping up the pretext Emiliano had concocted to explain their unexpected presence at the estate. Mrs. Mitchell had accepted their story of a car accident on blind faith, but what if her husband or one of the guests started probing for details? Jackie would have to employ her imagination and dissemble convincingly or the ruse would blow up in their faces. But deception, she had discovered, was a sine qua non for this CIA job, and she was surprised at her growing proficiency in it. She just hoped this talent wouldn’t carry over into her personal life.

Emiliano, too, was becoming quite adept at skullduggery. When Jackie went upstairs to get dressed, he asked her to give him the pouch with the Dracula reel in it so he could hide it in the screening room. “It’s too big to fit in an evening purse, so I’ll stow it away until we’re ready to see what’s on it,” he told her, looking around to be sure that he could not be overheard by anyone. “After dinner, when the dance starts, no one will notice if we disappear from the crowded ballroom.”

The cocktail hour was in full swing when Jackie entered the party. Her eyes swept over the crowd of elegantly dressed men and women, mostly middle-aged American industrialists and their wives, interspersed with a sprinkling of upper-class Cubans. A squadron of butlers in white jackets and black bow ties circulated among them, bearing trays of drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Emiliano was nowhere in sight, and Jackie assumed that he was in the screening room, surreptitiously finding a hiding place for the reel.

Unable to shake the feeling that she was a gate crasher, Jackie hung back uncertainly on the fringe of the crowd, nursing a glass of champagne and nibbling on flaky, cheese-filled pastelitos and caviar on toast points offered on passing trays. What was keeping Emiliano? she wondered. She hoped he hadn’t been caught in the act.

Finally, Mrs. Mitchell, her ample figure concealed in a voluminous red gown and a jaunty gardenia nestled in her hair, sailed up to Jackie and took her by the arm. “Jacqueline, dear, I almost thought you were my daughter in that dress,” she gushed. “Let me introduce you to some of our guests.”

With whirlwind speed, Mrs. Mitchell presented Jackie as a visiting American journalist to one guest after another and didn’t give her time, thankfully, to exchange more than a few words of innocuous small talk with each one. The names all went by in a blur.

It was only when Mrs. Mitchell introduced her to a short, slim, dark-haired American man who was walking toward them with the studied ease and aplomb of a performer that Jackie experienced a shock of recognition. “Jacqueline, this is George Raft,” Mrs. Mitchell said. “George is famous for all the Hollywood movies he’s starred in, and now he’s a part owner of the Capri casino and one of Havana’s most popular men-about-town.”

“What a thrill it is to meet you,” Jackie said in a girlish voice. As a film buff, she knew of George Raft’s star-making gangster role in Scarface and a string of subsequent movies he’d made with Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, and Marlene Dietrich. Incongruously, she remembered reading somewhere that George Raft had turned down the lead role in Casablanca because he didn’t want to work with “some unknown Swedish broad named Ingrid Bergman.”

Humphrey Bogart must be forever in your debt, Jackie said to herself as George Raft nodded a polite smile at her and continued on his way, and Mrs. Mitchell led her to the next guest.

“Arthur, I’d like you to meet Jacqueline Bouvier,” she said, tugging on the sleeve of an impeccably dressed man who was standing by himself and seemed deep in thought. When the man turned to look at Jackie, she immediately recognized him as Arthur Phillips, the same gentleman who had given her an impromptu lesson on the mojito when she was seated next to him at the bar in La Europa.

“I believe we’ve met before,” Jackie said. “It’s so nice to see you again.”

“Yes, and you as well,” he said, giving Jackie a bland smile.

“I’ll leave you two to chat,” Mrs. Mitchell said, seizing this opportunity to circulate among her other guests now that Jackie had found someone she knew.

Jackie smiled at Arthur Phillips as she recalled the business card that he had given her. “You’re with the Thorndyke Fund, aren’t you?” she asked, spouting a name that had stuck in her mind because she had also seen it in Robert Maheu’s notebook.

“I am indeed,” Arthur Phillips said. He looked pleased that she had remembered. “Did I tell you that I’m seeking business opportunities in Cuba?”

That sounded familiar. “Yes, I believe you did.”

“Well, I suppose that’s why I was invited to this event,” he said as though he knew Jackie was wondering what he was doing here. “Mr. Mitchell is a friend, but he’s also a big proponent of economic development in this country. He thought it would be a good idea for me to meet Ambassador Beaulac and make some other contacts that could prove very profitable for everyone involved.” He chuckled as if at a private joke. “It’s always good to be well connected, you know.”

“That’s true,” Jackie said, glancing around at the moneyed crowd of distinguished-looking men in European-tailored suits and bejeweled women in fashionable designer gowns. “What kind of business opportunities are you seeking?”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, you know, the usual kind. Everything and anything, really. The field is wide open.”

It struck Jackie that Arthur Phillips was being purposely vague and evasive in a way that suggested duplicity. Something seemed off-kilter, and she wondered what he was really doing in Havana and why she kept bumping into him in places as wildly different as La Europa and the Mitchell estate.

At that moment, the lights dimmed, signaling that dinner was about to be served, and Jackie bade Arthur Phillips good-bye and went off to find Emiliano. She spotted him standing near the entrance to the dining room, waving to her and looking heart-throbbingly dashing in Ricky’s tuxedo.

“Dewar’s White Label scotch is our official whiskey,” she heard a man say as she made her way toward Emiliano. “A man by the name of Joseph Kennedy runs the Dewar’s franchise in the States, and he’s a good friend of mine.”

That caught Jackie’s attention. It seemed that no matter where she went in Havana, she couldn’t escape the Kennedys. First the son, and now the father in absentia. When she looked back, she found that the speaker was the strapping, ruddy-faced host of the event himself, Walter Mitchell, who had met her earlier that day and welcomed her into his home as gregariously as his wife had.

“What took you so long?” she asked Emiliano when she caught up with him.

“The door was locked,” he said in a low voice. “I had to get a housekeeper to open it for me so I could leave a present for the Mitchells there. She wouldn’t go away until I gave her back the key.”

“Did she lock the door again?”

He nodded, looking crestfallen.

“No problem,” Jackie said. She patted her upswept hair. “That’s what bobby pins are for.”

When they entered the dining room, Jackie was awestruck. The crystal chandeliers that sparkled like mammoth nests of diamonds, the luxurious drapes, and a massive table with carved cabriole legs seemed like something out of Versailles. At the head of the table, flanked on either side by the Mitchells, sat Ambassador Beaulac. Although suave and statesmanlike, His Excellency reminded Jackie of Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes. The resemblance was striking. He had the same long, thin face and nose and expressive eyes that seemed to be taking everything in. All he needed was a deerstalker cap and an inverness cape to complete the picture.

Jackie and Emiliano found their place cards and took their seats. The dinner was a triumph: plump, juicy oysters as large as plums; tender, perfectly cooked venison; caramelized plaintains that tasted like candy; and an elaborate, multilayer cake lathered with a sinfully rich icing. Wine flowed like a heavy rain, goblets magically refilling thanks to the omnipresent butlers, even before the last few drops were gone.

Compared to the meal, the conversation that swirled around Jackie was a deep disappointment. The women talked about nothing except their difficulties adapting to life in a tropical climate and their complaints about the help. It seemed that each of the women had a staff of at least six servants, including a butler, cook, housekeeper, gardener, laundress, and chauffeur, and not one was anything to rave about. Jackie tried to listen attentively and clucked sympathetically at times, but it all flew in one ear and out the other without making the slightest impression other than mild annoyance. It was like listening to a Greek chorus chanting a sad song out of tune.

“Even with the fans going full blast, your makeup runs as soon as you put it on.”

“The commissary charges a fortune for tomatoes, but my family has had all the avocados we can stand.”

“The laundress shrinks everything she washes, and the cook burns everything she makes.”

“The farms here are so unsanitary, I’m afraid we’ll all get ptomaine.”

The men’s conversation didn’t seem any more scintillating, but then Jackie caught something with political overtones that made her sit up and take notice.

“Batista is a great friend of ours,” Mr. Mitchell’s booming voice proclaimed. “We pay him once a year, and we get off scot-free on taxes and tariffs. Never have to worry about labor laws and unions either. Can’t beat a deal like that.”

“Yes, but Fidel Castro and his rebels could ruin everything if Batista doesn’t squash them,” Jackie heard another man say. “He’s got the workers all riled up, and that could spell big trouble.”

“Rest assured, Castro won’t amount to anything,” Ambassador Beaulac responded in a cultured tone. “He’s just some gun-toting hooligan hiding out in the hills after he made a public nuisance of himself when Batista became president again.”

Hooligan hiding out in the hills. Nice alliteration, Jackie thought. Then she heard Mr. Mitchell say something that really gave her a start.

“Well, if Castro and his gang become too much trouble, we can ask Allen Dulles to do something about it. You know, a CIA undercover operation of some kind. Allen is a friend of mine, and he’s on our company’s board.”

Dulles, a United Fruit Company man? Imagine that. Jackie glanced sideways to see Emiliano’s reaction. His face was expressionless. She was sure that he had heard the comment, given Mr. Mitchell’s stentorian voice, but was keeping his emotions under wraps. Arthur Phillips, on the other hand, was staring intently at Mr. Mitchell with an odd look on his face. Jackie couldn’t tell what his expression meant, but it made her more curious than ever about the enigmatic Mr. Phillips, and increasingly suspicious about what he was up to.

The sounds of an orchestra starting to play trickled into the room.

“Time for some dancing,” Mrs. Mitchell called out.

Like schoolchildren obeying the teacher, the guests rose from their seats and began filing into the ballroom.

“Oh, my goodness, did you see that?” Jackie asked Emiliano when they passed the bandleader, who was waving his baton with one arm while in his other arm he held a Chihuahua.

Emiliano laughed. “Don’t you know who he is? That’s Xavier Cugat, and the Chihuahua is his trademark.”

“Cugat, of course,” Jackie said as she looked back and recognized the famous Hispanic bandleader with the arched eyebrows, smiley eyes, and pencil-thin mustache. “I’ve seen him in movies, and I saw him once in person when he was leading the band at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, but he didn’t have a dog with him then.” Her glance traveled to the curvaceous singer with the sultry voice and long, dark curls cascading down to her shoulders. “And he wasn’t married to Abbe Lane then either.”

“Would you like to dance?” Emiliano asked as the floor began filling up with company executives and their wives, who looked like Arthur Murray graduates eager to put their lessons into practice.

“I was hoping you’d ask me,” Jackie said with a smile, longing to be in Emiliano’s arms again. She remembered being pleasantly surprised at what a good dancer Emiliano was the first time she mamboed with him at the Dance Academy, before Colonel Sanchez’s raid sent everyone fleeing for their lives. That seemed like a hundred years ago, and tonight, in this beautiful place with this beautiful man, she felt perfectly safe.

The way Emiliano moved rhythmically in time to the beat and smoothly brushed his body against hers made Jackie feel that she could have danced with him until the sun came up. But when the song ended, he glanced at his watch and said, “We’d better leave now, Jackie, while the dance floor is still crowded.”

Jackie sighed. “Okay, let’s go.”

When they arrived at the screening room, in a secluded part of the mansion, Emiliano tried the crystal doorknob and found that it wouldn’t budge. “Just making sure,” he said.

“Why do you think Mr. Mitchell keeps the room locked?” Jackie asked.

Emiliano shrugged. “Who knows? My guess is that he brings his men friends here for private screenings of racy movies like the live sex acts at the Shanghai Theatre. He wouldn’t want his wife barging in on them, would he?”

“No, I think she’d be appalled.”

“But that’s not our worry. Right now we have to get the door open.” Emiliano turned to Jackie with a wave of his arm like a master of ceremonies presenting the star of the show. “And now, Señorita Houdini and her magic bobby pin.”

Jackie was ready. She slipped the bobby pin into the keyhole, maneuvered it around a bit until she heard a little click, turned the knob, and opened the door. It amused her to think that if all else failed, she could have a future as a safecracker.

Emiliano retrieved the reel from its hiding place under a thick sofa cushion, set up the projector, and turned out the lights.

Jackie took a seat and peered at the screen, determined to find Metzger’s treasure map on a wall in Dracula’s castle, even if it took all night. She tried not to be distracted by Carlos Villarías’s dreadful acting. His exaggerated walk and gestures were almost ludicrous. She was too young to have seen the original Dracula, with Bela Lugosi as the count, but she imagined that Lugosi had to be a more convincing vampire than this clownish Mexican imitation. She shook her head, forcing herself to stop thinking about the acting and concentrate on the scenery.

“This looks like a bedroom in the castle, right?” Emiliano asked.

“Yes, it’s the bedroom where Dracula put a lawyer named Renfield up for the night. That’s Renfield lying on the bed after he’s been attacked by Dracula and his wives.” Jackie sat up sharply. “Wait. Can you stop the reel and go back a little? I think I saw something on the wall above the bed.”

Emiliano rewound the reel and stopped it at the point where the object on the wall could be seen. “It looks like a picture of a crocodile,” he said.

Jackie shuddered and let out a sigh. She’d had enough of crocodiles in Havana to last her for the rest of her life. “Oh well, keep on going.”

In the next scene, Renfield, now a crazed slave to Dracula, was aboard a schooner bound for England, with Dracula hidden in a coffin. Jackie frowned. “I don’t see how we’re going to get back to the castle on this reel,” she said. “In fact, if the movie follows Bram Stoker’s book, the rest of it is all going to take place in London.”

“Do you want me to start over again?”

“Yes, please.” A thought suddenly occurred to Jackie, and she smacked her forehead with her hand. “How can we be so dumb? That picture of the crocodile? Cuba is shaped like a crocodile, isn’t it? I have a hunch that’s the treasure map we’re looking for.”

Once again, Emiliano rewound the reel and let it unspool to the spot in the bedroom with the picture on the wall.

Jackie jumped up and got so close to the screen that her nose was practically touching it. “I was right, Emiliano!” she cried. “It’s a map of Cuba. If you get close enough, you can see the names of the provinces. She pointed to different places. “La Habana… Matanzas… Granma… Holguín… Camagüey…” She stood on her tiptoes, straining to see. “It looks like there’s an X on the very tip of La Habana, right in the center. That’s where Walker’s treasure must be buried.”

“Let me take a look.” Emiliano drew closer to the screen and peered at the X on the map. “It’s on the southern coast of Oriente Province, somewhere between Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo Bay.”

“The X has some writing under it. Can you see what it says?”

Emiliano squinted and read aloud:

LEPROSARIA

CAMPO SANTO

57

AD

“Campo Santo?” Jackie repeated, picking up a nearby pen and pad of paper and scribbling down the legend from the map. “That means ‘cemetery,’ right? And ‘Leprosaria,’ that sounds like—”

Suddenly, the door flew open and the lights went on in a blinding glare, catching Jackie and Emiliano red-handed. Jackie quickly ripped off the piece of paper from the pad, turned her back momentarily, and shoved it down her cleavage.

“What are you doing in here?” Mr. Mitchell demanded, his face flushed with anger. Two other men in tuxedoes were with him, looking discomfited and ready to turn on their heels.

“I… I’m so sorry, sir,” Emiliano stammered. His apology spilled out in a headlong stream of words. “I just wanted to show Miss Bouvier a film that would help her with her work. We only used the projector. We didn’t touch anything else.”

Jackie noticed that all the while he was speaking, Emiliano was carefully removing the reel and slipping it into its pouch.

Mr. Mitchell opened his mouth to respond, but before he could say a word, a band of masked men in green fatigues burst into the room like a thunderclap, brandishing guns.

Jackie gaped at them, too shocked and terrified even to scream. Emiliano dropped the pouch and put a protective arm around her, but the two men in tuxedoes fled.

“This is outrageous,” Mr. Mitchell huffed. He looked truculent but backed away from the gun pointed at him.

The men in fatigues grabbed Jackie and Emiliano roughly by the arm. Pressing guns in their hostages’ backs, the kidnappers marched them out of the mansion and into a jeep that was waiting in the driveway. Jackie looked for the guard at the gate and saw that his mouth was taped and his wrists were bound with cords.

“Where are we going? What do you want with us?” Jackie asked querulously, but she was quickly silenced by a hand over her mouth. The driver waited for blindfolds to be tied over Jackie’s and Emiliano’s eyes and then took off with a loud crunch of tires.

In a cold sweat, Jackie sat with her arms pressed against her chest to quiet the uproarious pounding of her heart. This abduction was eerily reminiscent of being taken off the street by the East German spies and made Jackie wonder if she was fated for yet another mano a mano encounter with a pit of live crocodiles. No, not that again, please, a voice inside her pleaded. But what if it was something worse? She couldn’t imagine what that might be, but not being able to imagine the unknown made it all the more horrific and terrifying. And now she was frightened not only for herself, but for Emiliano too.

Jackie could tell from the bouncing of the tires and the turning and twisting of the jeep that they were on a narrow, winding road in the rocky countryside. When her ears began to pop and it became harder to breathe, she knew that they were ascending higher and higher above sea level.

Finally, the jeep came to a stop, and everyone climbed out. When their blindfolds were removed, Emiliano looked around and said, “We’re in the Sierra Maestra.”

Jackie saw tents pitched everywhere and figured that this was some kind of camp. The sound of footsteps approaching from behind made her stiffen in fear. Rooted to the spot, she turned her head sideways and saw a man’s hand pointing a gun at Emiliano’s back.

“Oh no,” Jackie gasped, terrified that Emiliano was about to be shot to death.

But then, inexplicably, the man lowered the gun and burst into laughter.

Emiliano whirled around to face the man and was suddenly seized with laughter too.

“What’s so funny?” Jackie asked, at a loss to understand why Emiliano and this threatening gunslinger were cackling like fraternity brothers enjoying a hilarious practical joke. She turned around to look at the man… and was dumbstruck.

It couldn’t be, but it was. She would recognize him anywhere.

Fidel Castro.