Sunday read in the historical records that President John F. Kennedy had approved the Bay of Pigs operation, but so much had gone wrong that day. The element of surprise was lost after invasion plans leaked. The Bay of Pigs was supposed to be one of America’s most covert operations, but it was spoken about openly in the cafés and bodegas of Little Havana in Miami.
On the fateful day of the operation, Brigada Asalto 2506 attacked a well-armed Cuban force and quickly ran out of ammunition and supplies. The first-wave teams on the beach were trapped and outnumbered. The underground counterrevolutionary cells were also neutralized before they could activate. The promised cash never arrived.
In the end, more than a hundred men from Brigada Asalto 2506 were killed and more than a thousand were captured. The detainees were then publicly paraded back in Havana, a humiliation that was only worsened by a show trial the following year. The leaders of 2506 were executed, while the rest were given lengthy prison sentences. Most of the men were eventually released in a prisoner exchange in late 1962. They returned to Miami, longing for home, seething with hatred for the communists, and burned by the betrayal of the U.S. government.
Sunday found several historians who concluded that Nye’s plan was doomed from the start not by operational mistakes but rather by a flawed premise of popular support. Few academics believed that the Cuban public was ready at that time to support an American-backed invasion.
But among the exiles in Miami, Sunday learned, that one factor rose above all else as the reason for the debacle: Kennedy’s denial of Nye’s request for U.S. air support. The planes never came.
Fascinating, Sunday thought to himself. But what do Randolph Nye and Brigada Asalto 2506 have to do with today? How is this ancient history possibly connected to the Americans captured on The Big Pig?
Sunday kept digging. He learned that after the Bay of Pigs failure, Nye resigned, moved to a ranch in Texas, and quietly disappeared from political life. Sunday unearthed his brief 1991 obituary in the Waco Tribune-Herald, which noted his lifelong service to the United States government but made no mention of the CIA or of Cuba. Sunday also found a photo of Randolph Nye in the 1932 archives of the Yale Daily News, but he was wearing a football helmet so his face was hidden. The only other picture of Nye that Sunday could find was in a long-defunct Spanish-language newspaper of South Florida, La Gloria. The grainy photo from February 1961 showed several men around a table at a restaurant. The caption read Líder local Héctor Cabrera se reúne con Randolph Nye del gobierno federal.
The name Cabrera lit up on the page like a neon sign. Sunday double-checked his notes and, yes, one of the hostages, the owner of the boat, was Alejandro Cabrera. Sunday quickly searched the open source database for Héctor Cabrera and found an obituary in the Miami Herald from 1979:
Héctor Cabrera, a beloved figure in Little Havana . . . Born in Santa Cruz del Norte, Cuba . . . A successful diamond dealer . . . Moved to Miami in 1959 . . . Cuban patriot active in local politics and charitable organizations . . . a champion for democracy and human rights in his homeland . . . Survived by his grandsons, Alejandro Cabrera and Ricardo Cabrera . . . Donations can be made to the Kiwanis Club of Little Havana . . .
Sunday sat back in his chair to absorb what he had just read. The captured American, Alejandro Cabrera, was the grandson of a Cuban exile linked to the architect of the Bay of Pigs. A coincidence? Or did a young Alejandro listen to the war stories of his grandfather and was somehow seeking to redeem his family’s past? Could the seizure of the fishing boat be yet another mistake in a long line of ill-advised covert operations by exiles against the Cuban government? Or by the Central Intelligence Agency? Or, most likely, was Sunday inferring conspiratorial connections that didn’t really exist?
Sunday decided he needed more information on Alejandro before taking any of this back to Jessica. He logged on to the FBI database and found that Alejandro Cabrera had a long list of minor criminal infractions but nothing serious. From what Sunday could tell, Cabrera seemed to be a genuine real estate agent from Maryland, the father of three girls, a second-generation immigrant who was living the suburban American dream. Maybe the historical Bay of Pigs link was a fluke?
Sunday carefully reread Héctor Cabrera’s obituary. What was he missing?
Héctor Cabrera . . . Born in Santa Cruz del Norte . . . A successful diamond dealer . . . Cuban patriot active in local politics . . . Survived by his grandsons, Alejandro Cabrera and Ricardo Cabrera . . .