In the Pirate's Den: My Life As A Secret Agent for Castro

by Jorge Masetti

Prologue: Havana, June, 1989

       About a month before the events I'm about to describe, I had returned from Angola, where I had stayed for four months. It had not been a visit like the ones I usually carried out. Previously I had always left alone, secretly, under a false identity, as befits someone involved in "special operations." But this time I had traveled legally, representing a commercial enterprise and accompanied by my wife Ileana.

       As soon as I got back to Havana, I went to meet with Col. Antonio de la Guardia — "Tony" to his friends —my boss, who, in addition to being a friend, was also my father-in-law. He looked the same as always—short and stocky with a shining bald head and handsome face. For those of us involved in Cuban intelligence operations, he was a legendary figure. He was the commander of Cuba's Special Troops —Fidel's equivalent of America's Delta Force. During the euphoric days when we convinced ourselves that a hemispheric revolution was possible, he had organized a personal bodyguard of Cubans for Salvador Allende and was there when Allende was overthrown and committed suicide. He also had fought along side the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Now he was in charge of an operation simply called MC (for moneda convertible), the crucially important effort of Cuban intelligence to earn foreign currency for the failing Cuban economy.

       As always, Tony greeted me with a smile—a tough smile to those who had run up against him in his work as fund raiser for the revolution. Tony was always cheerful, even in the most difficult times. On this day, he seemed even happier than usual. We sat down on the patio of his house, under a beautiful climbing plant where we always met when we had to deal with delicate matters. You reached the patio after passing through the terrace where Tony had hung the brilliantly colored canvasses he had painted as relief from his years in politics and espionage.

       "Now we will not have to play being businessmen anymore," he smiled, alluding to the work I'd been doing in Africa under his direction. "Fortunately I have been relieved of the commercial functions and I shall only have to occupy myself with special assignments. You too will come to work with me in that section." Tony knew that I did not like commercial jobs either. He was happy because Fidel had reversed his decision, made because of the economic crisis, to use the international experience and operational expertise we professional revolutionaries had acquired in commercial activities designed to prop up the Revolution.

       Now it was back to our real work, the "black" work of espionage and covert action. I had repeatedly asked Tony to return me to such missions. At last it seemed we were ready to go.

       "Rest up for a few days and get your documentation ready, because soon you'll leave for Spain, where you'll set up a base of operations. I'll give you more details later," he said, concluding the conversation.

       I was intrigued and would have liked to find out more about my special missions but I didn't ask him anything further. I was accustomed to getting instructions instead of explanations when it had to do with that type of work. Our conversation turned towards family when Mari, Tony's wife, and my wife Ileana, joined us. Tony seemed particularly affectionate toward Ileana. It had been months since he'd seen her. She had traveled with me to Angola, not as the daughter of Tony de la Guardia, but simply as the wife of one of his officers, without enjoying the special privileges that would have been accorded to a family member of someone who was part of the Cuban power elite. Ileana had gone with me despite the fact that at first Tony had appeared reluctant about the trip and especially concerned about her accompanying me.

       "Mari, bring a little drink so that we can toast both the return and the wedding of these two," he said.

       When Ileana and I married a few days before leaving for Angola, Tony couldn't attend because he was away on business. Now he seemed happy, proud of his daughter and of me too. He hugged and kissed her with great affection, as if he were trying to make up for the time he had not been able to devote to her when she was a girl because of his constant secret missions abroad —so secret that he wasn't even allowed to write home. Now he had her at his side and he doted on her, he gave her what he couldn't give her before, and—though he didn't know it yet—what he would never again be able to give her.

       After that emotional meeting, we went to the home of Tony's identical twin brother Patricio—General Patricio de la Guardia. Ileana and I had been in touch with him more than with Tony lately. He had been the chief of the Cuban Ministry of Interior's mission in Angola for the last three years, and had returned to Havana just a few days earlier.

       "Did you talk with Tony already, Terrorist?" Patricio always called me this. "You should be very happy. You are going to be able to do what you enjoy." he slapped me on the shoulder evidently aware of what kind of work I would be doing, although not yet telling me anything about it.

       The conversation with him was less formal than with Tony. Patricio was not my direct boss, and not my father in law. He had always treated me like one of his own, someone he could talk with, reveal his doubts, and stop being a general for a moment. I asked him what the new mission would be. He responded with a loud outburst of laughter.

       "Now they've really gone crazy," he said, referring to Fidel's spymasters. "Working under Tony, you're going to set up a base of operations in Spain. You're going to use it to launch operations in the United States. Believe it or not the first objective is to blow up the transmission balloon of TV Marti."

       I froze. It was one thing to operate in Latin America, where I had worked for years, or even in Europe or Africa, and quite another thing to work in the United States, especially against TV Marti, a multi million dollar project begun by the Reagan administration a few years earlier to beam a strong television signal into Cuba with programs of information and propaganda against the revolution and against Fidel Castro personally. I imagined the layers of protection such a project must have. Nevertheless, I knew that if this was Tony's job, he'd get it done. He had made a career out of fulfilling missions even more complex than this one, and he had always come back victorious. He was, without a doubt, the most qualified man in Cuba to direct this operation.

       I relaxed. If they had chosen me it was because Tony had confidence in me, Patricio had confidence in me, and the Revolution had confidence in me. It meant that I had won the right to participate in such a delicate mission. After our talk, Patricio and I decided to meet for dinner with our wives later on.

       He came to pick us up at eight. He brought back a bag that I had loaned him when he last left for Angola. In it was $10,000 that Tony had told him to give me as the first installment of the money I would need to set up shop in Spain. After storing the money we went to a restaurant, and then Ileana and I decided to spend the night at the home of the parents of Tony and Patricio who were the center of this large patriarchal family.

       The next morning, when we returned home, we noticed that our apartment had been searched. Nothing had been taken, but the intruders had obviously gone to great lengths to leave everything exactly as it had been. What they did not anticipate was that out of a habit acquired over the years, I had left a small, wadded-up piece of paper near the door. The little ball had been moved, which meant that someone had been there in our absence.

       I immediately went to Patricio and told him what had happened. Laughing, he answered: "Come on, Terrorist, don't forget you're in Cuba. Who is going to search you here? You're not in Argentina or Colombia. This is our country, our rearguard. Don't be paranoid."

       What he said seemed reasonable. Nevertheless, I knew that someone had come in, and that they weren't thieves, because nothing was missing—not my guns, and not my money. I had a queasy feeling.

       That afternoon, still shaken, I went with Ileana to her great aunt's place at the beach. I wasn't the only one who felt things weren't quite right. Ileana spent our last night at the beach crying. She said she felt that something horrible was about to happen. Since I have always allowed myself to be guided by my own presentiments and those of others, I began to fret, thinking that the operation in the United States was going to go wrong, or that maybe the Americans would find out what we were up to and perhaps kill one of us in Cuba.

       During the next three days, at various times I thought I saw, in different places, a white car with the same faces inside, but told myself that Patricio was probably right and so many years of clandestine rigor had ended up making me a bit paranoid. What was I worried about? I was in Cuba after all.

       We returned to Havana for Tony and Patricio's joint birthday party. Everyone was looking forward to the event. Because they were so rarely at home, it had been years since the twins had both celebrated the occasion with the family. Who knew when they'd have another chance?

       We were supposed to be there punctually at lunch time, but since it was the 13th and I'm superstitious, I drove particularly slowly and we were an hour late. When we pulled up at the grandparents' house, the whole family was there except for Tony and Patricio. Grandmother Mimi was furious. "How is it possible," she said, "that after so many years of separation, these boys leave me with lunch on the table on their own birthday?"

       At 89, Popin, the grandfather, was more patient. He told her to wait, that surely they had been held up by some urgent job. But by the time it got to be afternoon and neither of the twins had come, everyone agreed that something was wrong. The grandmother's bad mood worsened, and I also began to get concerned. Tuesday the 13th, an unlucky day…

       Finally, Ileana and I decided to go to Patricio's house, which was closest, to see what was up. We rang the bell several times. Strangely, all the windows were closed, which prevented us from looking inside. After a while, a tall, light-skinned black man opened the door. He was dressed in civilian clothes, but he had the unmistakable look of a policeman. I understood that the situation was grave, and in a solemn tone, I asked for "the General," not "Patri," as I usually called him. Instead of answering, he asked us who we were. I didn't know how to answer.

       And then we heard the voice of Patricio's wife Isabel, a young woman with olive skin and chestnut hair who had a plum job selling items to tourists for hard currency.

       "Let them in," she said, coming to greet us. "It's Tony's daughter and her husband. Weeping, she said to us, "Tony and Patricio are prisoners in Villa Marista."

       Villa Marista was a name to cause shivers. Formerly a Marist monastery, it had been taken over during the revolution and made into the headquarters of the Cuban political police, where they imprisoned dissidents.

       "I don't know what's happening," Isabel kept saying as her face sagged in despair. "I just don't know what is happening."

       I will never forget the interior of the house. Possessions were scattered all over the floor. A group of five or six men was systematically searching, dismantling, and prying into every corner of the house. I was stunned to see revolutionary symbols being thrown about indiscriminately with other trivial things. There, spread out on the floor and trampled, were the olive-drab and camouflage uniforms Patricio had worn on so many campaigns, his general's stars, and the medals he won on international missions; the hand guns, even an enormous portrait of Che Guevara beneath which Ileana and I had been photographed on the day of our wedding to seal our commitment to continue fighting for the revolution.

       I felt as if I were chewing broken glass. Among the litter on the floor I imagined that I could see the body of my father and those of my companions who had also fallen in the struggle for the Revolution: Santiago, Pedro Pacho, Belomo ….

       Without thinking, I stammered: "This is incredible!"

       But the cold voice of the light-skinned black man returned me to reality: "Why 'incredible'? Don't you have faith in the Revolution?"