FIVE
I met John F. Kennedy once, the result of another one of Sam Clay’s surprise phone calls. I was spending Christmas Day of 1962 laid out on my backyard lounger, soaking up sun and tequila, trying to ignore the Season of Joy (it’d been a long time since I believed in Santa Claus), when the telephone started ringing and wouldn’t quit. I was able to ignore it for a while, but curiosity finally got the better of me and I staggered inside.
“I hope you’re having as shit of a day as I am,” Sam’s voice cheerfully greeted me.
I told him I was having the time of my life and he spent a few minutes grumbling about his ex-wife, how he had to spend every Christmas at her place in order to keep peace with the kids and grandkids. “It’s a goddamned misery,” he concluded. “I’d rather spend the holiday with Attila the Hun.”
“You’ve got the same gripe every year,” I reminded him.
“I get the same shit every year.”
“So stop going.”
“What the hell else am I supposed to do on Christmas?” he bristled.
“Come down here, we’ll go fishing.”
“Yeah, maybe next year,” he brushed me off. “Anyway, that’s kind of why I’m calling. I’m headed down your way in a couple of days.” I didn’t have to ask why because it’d been all over the papers for a week.
“Should be quite a show,” I said.
“Wanna come along?”
“Me?”
“That’s who I’m talking to, isn’t it?” He took a sip of something on the rocks, probably good scotch, and waited for my answer.
Going down there hadn’t even crossed my mind, probably because I didn’t think there was a snowball’s chance in hell that I’d be invited. There were plenty of reasons to stay away, that’s for sure, but my calendar wasn’t exactly jammed with social engagements. It would get me out of my T-shirt and cutoffs, anyway.
“Make up your mind, Jack, because I’ve got a very large turkey waiting for me in the other room.”
“Right. Give my regards to the old girl,” I quipped, getting a modest chuckle out of Sam. I told him I wouldn’t miss it for the world and we arranged to meet at the stadium and have a drink together afterward. Then Sam went off to carve up his bird.
The event was a kind of welcome-home party for Brigade 2506, the 1,189 Cubans who’d spent the last twenty months in a Havana prison thanks to the Bay of Pigs fiasco. The Bay of Pigs was nothing more than an obscure beach on the deserted south coast of Cuba until it became world famous in April 1961 as the site of the CIA’s first public humiliation. In an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government without obvious U.S. involvement, the agency had trained and supplied 1,400 anti-Castro exiles to hit the beach, move inland, and liberate the country. The beach was as far as they got. The brigade was cut to shreds. A few managed to swim off the island, where they were picked up by U.S. Navy vessels, but most weren’t that lucky. One hundred and fourteen were killed, the rest were captured.
Kennedy managed, after eighteen months, to buy their freedom with $53 million in food, medicine, farm equipment, and other goodies prohibited by the new trade embargo. A State Department spokesman described it as “a goodwill gesture to the people of Cuba” and Castro called it “war reparations.” If anybody had asked me I’d have said it was a good old-fashioned shakedown, but nobody asked.
Anyway, Kennedy had invited all the Cubans in Miami to the Orange Bowl one afternoon a few days after Christmas so he could take credit and try to make peace. You had to give him points for guts because he wouldn’t be facing a particularly affectionate crowd down there—the Cuban exile community had expected to have Havana’s roulette wheels spinning again by now and the fact that Castro was still taunting them with four-hour speeches didn’t really endear the young president to them. And it was a fair bet that the returning vets themselves had less than warm and fuzzy feelings for him. In their minds the U.S. government—and the White House in particular—had pretty thoroughly f*cked them over.
In truth, it was hard to disagree with them. Of course, “truth” when it came to Cuba was like light through a prism—it depended entirely on your angle, and there were a hell of lot of angles in that island gem. But I understood more than most why the Cubans felt betrayed. I was there when they were handed “The Big Lie.”
I’d been pretty heavily involved in the Cuba Project during the buildup to the invasion, running a disinformation campaign and launching special ops out of Happy Valley, the World War II airfield on the coast of Nicaragua that was being used as the main staging area. But it wasn’t until the second week of April 1961—a few days before the attack was scheduled—that I got my first look at the Cubans who were going to hit the beach. They were flown in from Guatemala, where they’d spent the last eighteen months in the jungle, being trained by agency-run Green Berets. As I watched them file off the C-54 transport planes I thought they looked young, intense, and, it seemed to me, pretty anxious. Of course, they had reason to be. Castro had a whole army waiting for them.
The commanding officer at Happy Valley was a Marine colonel named Robert “Rip” Harkin, a hulking six-foot-four-inch former All-American quarterback from Oklahoma who’d been one of the soldiers to plant the original Stars and Stripes at Iwo Jima, two days before it was re-created for the famous photo. But he was just on loan from the Pentagon. The guy actually running the show was Henry E. Fisher.
Henry was credited with conceiving the plan that overthrew the Guatemalan government in 1953. Not that it was much of a plan—a couple of dozen lightly armed farm boys were sent to shoot up a couple of villages while Henry and his crew broadcast radio reports that an army of thousands was on its way to the capital. They buzzed the presidential palace a couple of times with an unarmed warplane and the entire government fled the country. It gave Henry a lot of credibility at Langley, and after a stint as chief of station in Uruguay, he was made top field agent in the Cuba Task Force.
A tall, lanky New Englander in his early forties, he had a receding hairline, a bulbous nose, thin lips that seemed incapable of an honest smile, and a serious disposition that you could mistake for dignity if you didn’t know better. He was known as a clever, resourceful operative, but I had my doubts. Castro wasn’t gonna surrender based on radio reports.
On the day before the landing, Colonel Harkin summoned the brigade commanders to a final briefing. I went along uninvited and took a place at the front table beside Henry. The Cubans sat facing us in several rows of vintage school desks, eyes glued to Harkin, who stood at a blackboard running down the logistics of the invasion. He went into great detail about landings, communication, resupply, everything they needed to hear. Then, after about thirty minutes, he stopped, shifted gears, and told them what they wanted to hear.
“Let me add this final note,” he began, narrowing his eyes and honing in on the audience. “I’ve seen more than a few fighting forces in my time and I can tell you in all honesty that I have never seen a group of soldiers more motivated, better trained, or more vigorous than the men you will lead onto Cuban soil at dawn. You are well organized, well equipped, and well disciplined. And you are ready for battle.” He let that sink in for a moment, taking time to look every one of the young officers in the eye before hitting them with the news they’d been waiting for.
“And so are we,” he said solemnly.
The room went dead quiet, waiting for more. After a dramatic pause, Harkin gave it to them, playing it for all it was worth.
“I can report to you that at this hour there is an armada of U.S. Navy destroyers sitting twenty miles off the Cuban coast. On board those ships is a contingent of United States Marines. … And let me assure you that they are ready and eager to follow you into battle.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! And he wasn’t finished yet!
“Once you’ve held that beachhead for seventy-two hours,” he continued, “I promise you that we will be beside you for the next step.” He straightened his back, furrowed his brow, and came to the emotional climax.
“Gentlemen … God and the United States of America are with you all the way. What more could you ask for? … I wish you every success in your mission.” I thought he was going to start crying. Instead, he turned and walked out of the room to a spontaneous round of heartfelt applause.
I was stunned. There was no way in hell those Marines were going anywhere near Cuba. No way! Kennedy, the joint chiefs, the national security adviser, they’d all made that abundantly clear at every turn. And Harkin’s own telex to the White House the day before had confirmed it: The Brigade Officers do not expect help from the U.S. Armed Forces, it had said. So what the hell was this?!
I turned to Fisher, who was clapping his hands and nodding his head enthusiastically. “Why did he say that?” I whispered.
“Say what?”
“That we’re gonna send in the Marines.”
“I didn’t hear that, Jack.” He stopped clapping, turned toward me. “And neither did you.” He stood up and started shaking hands with the euphoric Cubans and I had no choice but to do the same. They crowded around, slapping us on the back and saying things like “God bless America” and “Kennedy is a man who means business.” Harkin had told them the one thing they needed to hear—the one thing that would ensure they’d have no second thoughts about stepping onto that beach. It was a brutal deception.
Don’t get me wrong. I’d been involved in plenty of deceitful behavior in my time with the Company—it was part of the game and I’d never been squeamish about it. But these men weren’t playing in our game; at least they didn’t think they were. They were soldiers, men we’d recruited, trained, and equipped to fight a battle that we couldn’t be seen to be fighting. Sure, it was their cause, too, but if they were willing to put their lives on the line, they should know what the deal was. At least that’s what was going through my mind while the Cubans slapped us on the back and told us how wonderful we were.
Fisher evaded me for the rest of the night, so at around midnight, after a few rum and Cokes, I barged into his quarters. He was spread out on his cot in a T-shirt and Jockey shorts, reading a dog-eared copy of Peyton Place.
“Don’t bother knocking,” he said, laying the book facedown on the bed.
“If I didn’t know better, Henry, I’d think you’ve been avoiding me.” I invited myself in.
“It’s kind of late, Jack….”
“Yeah, and I can see you’re busy,” I said, picking up the paperback and leafing through it. “Seen the movie?”
“About three years ago,” he moaned, snatching it back.
“I guess I’m a little behind the times.” I smiled and straddled a desk chair across from the bed. I think I just stared at him for a minute or two.
“What’s on you mind?” he asked painfully.
“I was wondering why we told those men that the cavalry’s gonna ride in and save the day when we know it ain’t gonna happen.”
“Like I told you before, it was never said.”
“Henry,” I scolded him, “You and I both know there’s no f*cking way Kennedy’s gonna send in those Marines.”
“Look, Jack.” He swung his long legs around and sat on the edge of the cot. “You’re not in the loop on this one, so just forget about it.”
“What loop?”
“Really. Forget it.”
“What happens when the Cubans realize they’ve been set up?” I persisted.
“What makes you think they’re being set up?” He pulled himself up and headed for the John.
“The White House dispatch yesterday said—”
“I know what the dispatch said,” he said calmly, taking aim and releasing. “I wrote the f*cking thing.”
“It says the brigade doesn’t expect help from U.S. forces.”
“That was true yesterday.”
“You gonna send a new dispatch?”
“I can’t get into this with you.” He flushed.
“Are we lying to the president of the United States?”
He gave me a long hard look and shook his head. “I hope you’re not gonna cause trouble, Jack.”
He stood there waiting for me to reassure him, but I just stared back at him. I guess he took my silence to mean that I might cause trouble, although I’m not sure what I would’ve done. Anyway, he must’ve figured I’d be less of a risk if I was in on it. He adjusted his Jockey shorts and poured himself a glass of water.
“You didn’t hear what you’re about to hear. … Right?”
I nodded and he went on.
“We’re not just blowing smoke up the Cubans’ ass. We have reason to believe that the president will change his mind and send in the troops … once the situation on the ground becomes clear.”
“What situation?” I asked.
“I shouldn’t be telling you this,” he stalled.
“What situation?” I repeated.
“We expect an attack on Guantánamo.” He gulped the water, watched my reaction though the bottom of the glass. He was talking about Guantánamo Bay, the U.S. naval base located on the southeastern tip of Cuba. It had been in American hands for sixty years, since Teddy Roosevelt leased the land from the government of the day.
“Castro isn’t stupid enough to attack Guantánamo—” I stopped short as the realization hit me. “Castro isn’t going to attack, is he?”
Something that almost passed for a smile started to form on Fisher’s lips. “Not unless he’s suicidal.”
“We are,” I completed the thought, hoping Fisher would laugh in my face. He didn’t.
“Not us, per se.” He dropped onto the bed and stretched out, arms crossed behind his head. He was eager to talk now, so I let him.
“We’ve been training a group of Cubans up in Louisiana for about six months. Deep-cover stuff. They’re in the Gulf now, headed for Cuba southeast, and Fidel himself would take them for Cuban army regulars, down to the buckles on their boots. All we do is point ‘em at Guantánamo twelve hours after the brigade hits the beach, Kennedy gets word that Castro’s forces have attacked the base, and presto chango, here come the Marines. Neat idea, huh?”
Neat was an understatement. It was inspired. Also dangerous, misguided, insane, and probably treasonous.
“What about casualties?” I asked, trying to stay cool.
“Sometimes you have to look at the big picture,” he shrugged.
I didn’t know what to say, so I let out a low whistle, which made Fisher a bit uneasy.
“This doesn’t leave the room, Jack. We are clear on that, aren’t we?” I ignored him, absentmindedly went to the window, and peeked through one of the wooden slats at the pitch-black world outside. “I hope you’re not gonna make me sorry I brought you in on this,” he said.
“Well…” I took a deep breath, trying to keep the lid on, then turned to face him. “I do think it’s kind of problematic.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said slowly. “I really am, but, well, it’s tough shit really. The ship has sailed, literally.”
“Let me be sure I’ve got it straight. You’ve ordered an attack on an American base … ?”
“That’s right,” he said flatly.
“Sending trained mercenaries in to kill American boys …”
He shrugged.
“And you don’t see any problem with that?”
“Would you rather those Cubans get massacred and have Castro go to the United Nations and gloat? Because that’s what’s gonna happen if the Marines don’t land. We wouldn’t have a f*cking chance.”
“Jesus Christ…” was all I could say. They had set up a suicide mission so they could scam the president into launching a U.S. invasion of a Soviet client state.
“This just isn’t right, Henry.”
Fisher narrowed his eyes and looked across the room with growing apprehension. “What do you mean by that, Jack?” he asked. “Not right in what sense?”
You couldn’t really blame the guy for not being sure. It just wasn’t a phrase that you heard very often in our business. In fact, I couldn’t recall one instance in eight years when I’d heard someone bring up the question of right or wrong in the sense of moral or immoral. There was effective or ineffective, productive or nonproductive, safe or unsafe, and a hundred other risk assessments, but never right or wrong in that sense. Of course, I’d never come across an operation where foreign nationals had been trained to kill Americans soldiers in order to con the president into starting a war. It was new territory for me.
“You know, Henry”—I tried to sound matter-of-fact about it—”to some people this would look a hell of a lot like an act of treason.”
“Treason?” He chuckled uncomfortably. “For Christ’s sake, do you think I’m running this on my own? This has support from the top.”
“But not the president…”
“That chickenshit Irish bastard f*cked this operation before it started!” He sat up sharply. “Did you know he canceled the second air strike? Castro’s still got half his air force intact and our ball-less president won’t even provide air cover! It’s a damn good thing we have a contingency plan because that cute Kennedy bullshit smile ain’t gonna win this one for us.” He reached into the drawer of his bedside table, took out a handgun, and removed the safety. I thought it would be best to ignore it. “For Christ’s sake,” he concluded, “Khrushchev will have him for breakfast!”
He pointed the weapon at my chest.
“You gonna shoot me?” I forced a laugh.
“I ought to f*cking shoot you,” he said. “But I’m just gonna arrest you for a while.”
“Arrest me? For what?”
“We’re in Nicaragua, Jack. I don’t need a f*cking reason.”
I spent the next three nights on a moldy cot, sharing an eight-foot-square cell with a variety of lizards, spiders, and large, dive-bombing mosquitoes. I devoted the first night to thinking up ways I could maim, cripple, dismember, and disembowel Henry E. Fisher. After exhausting all the possibilities, I slept for a couple of hours, waking at sunrise. I realized that the brigade would be hitting the beach about then and wondered if the Marines would be following and what might go down after that. I lay there all day, listening to the jungle, thinking how this was the perfect scenario for the suicidal end of an insane world.
A group of anti-Castro Cubans posing as pro-Castro Cubans are sent in by American spooks to kill American soldiers, forcing an unsuspecting president to order an all-out invasion. The Soviet Union takes exception, so, unable to save Cuba, their tanks roll into West Berlin. Street battles ensue and NATO forces are quickly overwhelmed by superior forces. Now Washington is faced with a choice: surrender Europe or go nuclear. No prizes for guessing which option wins the day. We launch, they launch, and within twenty minutes the insanity is over. All because some guys playing war had a “neat idea.” If it didn’t happen this time, it would the next, or the time after that. And it wasn’t just our guys—the boys on the other side were playing with the same box of matches.
I remembered Sam’s advice when I’d told him I was being assigned to the Cuba Project. “Get out of it,” he’d said bluntly. “Storming the beaches ain’t part of our job description.”
I didn’t get it then, now I did.
At some point I realized that it was over for me. I was out of the game now—not a decision as much as a realization. The agency was no place for moral dilemmas. I guess I didn’t mind that much really. My doubts had been building for a while and I’d always kept an image of me, a beach, a boat, and a typewriter tucked away for this eventuality. I just didn’t expect to face it for a few more years.
Fisher reappeared on the afternoon of the third day. He unlocked the cell and stepped inside, looking like hell. “The Guantánamo team got cold feet,” he explained. “They never got off the boat.”
“What about the brigade?” I asked.
“They made some progress at first, then got pinned down by a few militia. Nothing really, small-arms fire, that’s all. But they couldn’t break out and it gave Castro time to get his forces into place. He drove them back onto the beach, cut ‘em to shreds.” What he didn’t say, and didn’t have to, was that the brigade hadn’t tried to break out because they expected the Marines to be landing any minute. I found out later that the last radio message from the men stranded on the beach was, “Heading for the swamp! Can’t wait for you!”
Fisher leaned against the damp concrete wall. He clearly hadn’t slept in three days. “So what about us, Jack?” he asked. “Do we have a problem?”
“Let me ask you something.” I stood up to face him. “If the Guantánamo thing was approved at the top, why did you feel you had to lock me up? What did you think I was gonna do?”
He gave me a look, narrowing his eyes while he considered the question. “You were talking like you might go outside the command structure.”
“You mean outside the Company?”
“Yeah. Outside the Company.”
“You were right,” I nodded. “I might have. Or I might not have.”
“And now?”
“I haven’t decided yet.” I shuffled toward the door.
“That would be ill-advised, Jack.”
“Yeah, well, thanks for your concern,” I said as I walked out, leaving Fisher in the cell, leaning up against the wall.
As it turned out, Kennedy got a smoother ride in Miami than anyone had expected. Forty thousand Cuban exiles—men, women, and children—rose to cheer as he and Jackie walked across the field to the fifty-yard line. The first lady was the warm-up act, not that they needed warming up, but she pushed them over the edge. She spoke in fluent Spanish, breathlessly saying how much she admired the members of the brigade and how she hoped that her young son would grow up to be half as courageous as those brave combatants for freedom. She laid it on pretty thick and they lapped it up like she really meant it.
I was standing on the sidelines with Sam when I spotted Fisher on the opposite side of the field, behind the president. He was with a half dozen of the returning prisoners, men I recognized from the briefing at Happy Valley, though their faces showed the transformation of optimistic young officers into solemn men who had learned a hard lesson in reality. They watched expressionless as Jackie wrapped it up and, accompanied by thunderous applause, returned to her husband’s side. I thought Fisher spotted me, too, but he pretended not to.
I leaned into Sam’s ear. “What’s he up to these days?”
“He was working with Harvey King’s group.”
Harvey was a legendary character at the agency. A fat egomaniac addicted to booze, hookers, and guns, he was the master of “black ops”—actions that were better kept outside normal channels. In his midfifties, he was as reclusive as he was infamous, a shadowy figure who operated on the edges with few restraints.
“Why ‘was’?” I asked.
“Harvey’s out,” Sam said with a hint of a smile. “Although he doesn’t know it yet.”
“Harvey King out?” I said, more than a little shocked. It was like Disney letting Mickey Mouse go. “What the hell happened?”
“Kennedy fired him,” Sam grinned.
“No shit.” I shook my head. “What for?”
“Bobby found out he was putting Mafia hit men onto Castro.”
“Since when do the Kennedys object to doing business with the mob?”
“When it’s not their idea,” he said, in a way that meant the discussion was over.
Kennedy stepped up to the podium, ready to give his prepared speech, but he was cut off by one of the brigade officers, another face I remembered from Happy Valley. The president seemed taken aback, unsure what was going on, until the Cuban offered him a folded brigade flag. Kennedy unfurled it for the stadium and got a huge cheer. He put his notes away and turned to the microphone.
“Commander,” he said, sounding genuinely moved, “I want to express my great appreciation to you for making the United States the custodian of this flag.” Then, his voice rising with emotion, he declared, “I can assure you that it will be returned to this brigade in a free Havana!”
The place went wild. I turned to Sam and had to shout above the din. “I thought they hated him!”
“He had a meeting with the leaders yesterday,” he yelled back. “Made a lot of promises that he can’t keep!”
I looked over at Fisher, who was leaning into the ear of one of the exile leaders. It was hard to believe that the Cubans still trusted this guy, but who knows what crap he was feeding them. I thought about how they’d react when they heard Harvey was being dumped. It would be like a second betrayal, and I wondered if the Kennedy boys knew what they were playing with.
The president stepped away from the podium and walked to the sideline, where he started shaking hands with the returning prisoners. Everyone moved in on him, and suddenly we were in the crowd and Kennedy was standing right in front of us. He leaned in and spoke into Sam’s ear.
“Looks like I’m a hit!” He flashed his famous teeth and brushed his hair back.
“Yes, sir, it certainly does,” Sam agreed. Kennedy glanced over at me, and Sam pulled me forward. “This is lack Teller, Mr. President. He used to work with us, now he just goes fishing.”
Kennedy smiled and leaned over. “The spy business didn’t agree with you?”
“Let’s just say we didn’t always see eye to eye, Mr. President.”
“I know the feeling!” he said, and moved on.
The crowd started stomping their feet and shouting, “Guerra! Guerra!” War, they demanded passionately, but they would once again be disappointed by Kennedy.