Ghosts of Havana (Judd Ryker #3)(10)
It wasn’t for lack of trying. The Deputy Director had green-lit operations to spark street riots by creating false bread shortages, to disrupt the banking system by implanting a virus in the central bank’s computers, and to plant misinformation in the local newspapers about luxury homes in the Spanish Costa del Sol owned by top Cuban politicians. He had provided seed capital to Cuban exiles in Costa Rica to create a SMS text network about the Miami Marlins baseball team that was a cover for organizing social protests on the island.
His boldest PsyOps gamble was to launch AeroLibre, a high-altitude plane to beam television broadcasts into Cuban homes. The Deputy Director had even signed off on a Top Secret plan to create BesoPeso, a new electronic currency that could be used to evade the control of the Cuban authorities and, if necessary, pay off potential friends in Havana without drawing the notice of the U.S. Treasury.
None of these plots had had the desired effect. None had even made a dent in the Cuban armor. Cuban intelligence had countermoved each scheme. They jammed AeroLibre’s signal. They uncovered and blocked his phantom BesoPeso. Oswaldo Guerrero had found a way to choke his every move. The Devil of Santiago had to be the luckiest bastard on earth, he thought. Or, perhaps, the man known as O was actually the smartest.
The Deputy Director collected the files again into a neat pile and carefully aligned the corners. He plucked every page from OPERATION RAINMAKER off the floor and returned it to the top of the pile. Then he sat back in his chair to clear his head. The long list of Agency failures was an embarrassment. He didn’t want to end up like Randolph Nye. He didn’t want the next man sitting in this chair to muse over his failings.
Most Americans had long forgotten about the fight for Cuba. Hell, most Cuban exiles in Florida had given up, too. Inside the Agency, there were only a few Cold Warriors left, only a few old men like him that even remembered the competition with the Soviets and what it really meant to wage war for freedom. The chess games they played in Poland, Romania, Chile, Angola, Vietnam, Nicaragua. The current generation didn’t even think about communism. They studied Arabic and Pashtun and Mandarin. They wrote computer algorithms and tracked terrorist bank accounts and flew satellites and built biometric databases.
Worse, the civilians at the White House and over in the State Department were going soft. They were surrendering our goals in the Western Hemisphere for the sake of taking the easy path on Cuba. No one worried about old communists on a tropical island anymore. They were only too happy to ignore history for the sake of expediency. To just roll over and pretend history didn’t matter. That freedom didn’t matter. The administration he served, like most of the country, was willing to just give up on Cuba. Open the embassy, exchange ambassadors, do the POTUS whitewash tour. Close our eyes and take a victory lap. Pretend everything was just normal. Nothing to see here, amigos. It made him sick. But he wouldn’t abandon the Cuban people.
The Deputy Director just needed a fresh idea. He needed to spark something. To break the regime. To rally the crowds. The Cubans just had to want more than what brain-dead El Comrade Jefe and his little brother El Comrade Presidente could offer. This could be redemption for Randolph Nye and for the Central Intelligence Agency. This could be our historical triumph. The Deputy Director cracked his knuckles as he thought of how, after so many decades of American failure and humiliation, he could be the man finally to break Cuba free.
But how to ensure that Operation Triggerfish wouldn’t merely join the other flops sitting on his desk? How would he outflank Oswaldo Guerrero this time? The CIA’s Caribbean Special Projects Unit was no match for O. He knew that wouldn’t do. He would need his best people to make Operation Triggerfish succeed. To free Cuba and to redeem history, he would need no one less than his very best.
He knew exactly who to call.
7.
U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT HEADQUARTERS, WASHINGTON, D.C.
TUESDAY, 11:45 A.M.
Cuba will be the Secretary’s legacy,” Landon Parker declared. “That’s why I’m worried.”
Across the coffee table from Judd Ryker sat the Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Melanie Eisenberg. As the top U.S. diplomat for Latin America, she was known as a determined, sharp-elbowed veteran of Washington, D.C. elite circles.
Parker had asked Judd to join this meeting with Eisenberg in his private seventh-floor office to talk about the State Department’s unfolding Cuba strategy. Judd knew from turf battles past that Eisenberg wouldn’t welcome his presence this morning. But since the topic was Cuba, her top policy priority, she would humor the chief of staff. Moreover, she wouldn’t want any disasters derailing her ambitions—or her next Senate confirmation hearing.
“We’ve looked like blind, bumbling fools in Cuba,” Parker continued. “For my entire life we’ve been embarrassed by Havana thumbing its nose at us from across the Straits of Florida. But this administration has committed to fixing U.S.-Cuba relations once and for all.” Parker began counting on his fingers. “We’ve removed most of our sanctions. We’ve taken Cuba off the blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism. We’ve restored diplomatic relations and cut ribbons on shiny new reopened embassies. The president’s visit was a tremendous success. After so many years of failure, it’s all finally happening.” Parker opened his arms wide. “That’s why I’m worried.”
“Landon, relax,” Eisenberg said, with a casual familiarity that Judd found out of place for the State Department headquarters. “My next round of talks is supposed to set a timetable for free and fair elections and resolve the status of our naval base at Guantánamo Bay. Our Cuba legacy plan is right on track. It’s going better than we even could have ever hoped.”