Heat creeps up the back of my neck.
“I thought—”
“You played it well. If you’d been too eager, he would have been suspicious. If it had been too easy for him, he would have dismissed you. You weren’t impulsive, didn’t blow your cover. You did better than I expected.”
“So what happens now?”
“We wait on the right timing before you move on Fidel. In the meantime, I have another offer for you. A paying one.”
“What is it?”
“The Cuban spying apparatus has proved more formidable than we anticipated. Simply put, Fidel has spies everywhere. I want you to infiltrate them.”
“I’m not a spy.”
“Which makes you even more useful to me. You move in the right circles, speak several languages, can blend in if you need to. No one will suspect you are a spy, and you will be able to insert yourself into places my professional assets might not be able to. We want you to become involved with one of the pro-Castro groups in South Florida. Someone has been feeding Fidel information on our plans to overthrow his regime, double-crossing some of the exiles you call friends. I want to know who it is.”
“And why do you think I’m capable of getting this information? Don’t you already have people in these groups?”
“I do. The problem with a double agent is that it’s difficult to know whom you can trust. I don’t have those concerns with you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re a new player on the board, if you will. And because you learn to be suspicious in my line of work, but I would bet everything I have on the fact that you will burn the world down in order to avenge your brother. I like people I can predict.”
“And I’m predictable?”
“Revenge is the oldest motive in the book.”
This will certainly pass the time spent waiting, and if I really can gather intelligence for Dwyer that’s helpful in removing Fidel from power—
“How much?”
“It will depend on the intelligence you feed us, but it will be worth your while. Was this trip not a sign of our good faith?”
They have paid me well. Like my father, I have begun to appreciate the virtues of becoming financially independent.
“We’ll work this out as we go along,” Dwyer adds. “I understand your need for discretion given your family’s reputation, their feelings about Fidel. The appearance of you colluding with his regime will be a closely guarded secret. We will do everything we can to protect you.”
“And our original plan?”
“Like I said, it will take time, but it is certainly still of the foremost importance to us. Besides, the more you infiltrate Fidel’s supporters, the more he will begin to trust you.
“It will be dangerous,” he adds after a beat. “Spying is a different beast altogether. It will force you to put your neck on the line for a long period of time, to lie to those you love, those who are close to you. Do you think you can do that?”
“That won’t be a problem.”
* * *
• • •
Fidel leaves New York days after I return to Palm Beach, his trip to the United States capped by his delivery of the longest speech in the United Nations’ history: a four-and-a-half-hour-long denouncement of the imperialist Americans he accused of plotting his government’s downfall. He praised the Soviets, his words reportedly met with enthusiastic applause from Khrushchev, who later offered Fidel a ride home on a Soviet airliner when American authorities seized Castro’s plane at Idlewild Airport because of unpaid debts to American creditors.
It’s becoming clearer and clearer which way the wind blows in Cuba, and I expect I will soon receive more instructions from Mr. Dwyer.
When the instructions arrive, they come in the form of an address scribbled on a piece of paper passed to me by a nondescript man who slipped the note into my pocket one day when my sisters and I were shopping at the Royal Poinciana Plaza.
My first order of espionage from Dwyer is to attend a meeting of suspected communists. I’m armed with an address, a name he assures me will help me gain admittance, and only my wits to guide me.
The communist meeting is held at a bright green house on a quiet residential street in Hialeah, the grass growing over the edges of the sidewalk leading up to the front steps. There are three cars parked in the driveway.
I take a deep breath, raising my fist to knock on the door.
In the distance, a dog barks.
The door opens, and a young man not much older than me stares at me across the threshold.
I had expected one of my countrymen, and am greeted instead by an American with a scraggly red beard, pale skin, and freckles, dressed in denim and a worn, paper-thin cotton T-shirt.
“Can I help you?” he asks.
I purposefully chose the plainest clothes in my closet: a pair of dark trousers and a white cotton blouse, a serviceable pair of flats. His appearance makes it clear I still missed the mark.
“Claudia sent me,” I answer, following the instructions jotted on the note below the address even though I have no clue who Claudia is, and have a sinking suspicion she has no idea who I am, either.
Does Dwyer have other spies infiltrating this meeting? If I get into trouble, will someone come to my aid, or am I truly on my own here?
The man nods, stepping back to make way for me to enter the house.
I follow him past a galley-style kitchen, into a living room filled with four other people.
He jerks his thumb at me. “Claudia sent her.”
I sit on one of the couches in the corner and listen while the man who answered the door—whose name is Jimmy—starts the meeting. From the bits of conversation going on around me, I glean that he studies at one of the universities in town; the two women in the room—Sandra and Nancy—are classmates of his.
Like Che, they are communists, not Cubans, and whatever their allegiance to Fidel, it stems from ideology, not nationality. When Mr. Dwyer gave me this assignment, I envisioned dangerous revolutionaries plotting violent attacks, not intellectuals—or pseudo-intellectuals—spouting dull rhetoric. Is this really what the CIA fears? Or is this all a test of my utility to them?
The other two men are brothers—Javier and Sergio—and from their introductions, I gather they left Cuba a few years ago when Batista was cracking down on the student groups at the University of Havana organizing against him. Of all of the group’s members, the brothers seem the most likely to have useful intelligence on Fidel, and I smile at Javier, peek at Sergio a few times during my own introduction.