Trujillo had been calling on the radio all night. Cars were pulling into the driveway. People were coming to the door. Olga didn’t care that Morgan was busy. She wanted to know what was going on.
Morgan had spent so many hours on the radio that he lost track of time. He knew she wasn’t going to like what he had to tell her. But it had to happen: They were ready to move forward. Day after day, Trujillo had been agonizing over the plan. The longer Castro remained in power, the more difficult it would be to take him out. It was time to pull the trigger.
Morgan would go to Miami to firm up the details and gather more weapons. He would return by boat just in time to lead the charge. But Morgan wasn’t going alone. He had left so many times without her. Not this time.
“I am going with you,” Olga said.
“You’re pregnant,” he replied.
She wasn’t going to budge. “Then I will have the baby in the United States. That would be even safer for us.”
He had seen that look on her face before. He couldn’t tell her no. But he insisted that she travel with Alejandrina, their housekeeper, and Olga’s fifteen-year-old sister, Irma. He would send them back by plane after a couple of days. That was the deal.
“I am ready to pack my suitcase,” she said.
Morgan let the Trujillo people know that he was on his way, but they weren’t the only ones prepared to meet him when he arrived. In the Miami FBI office, Stafford had been working late into the night to track down details of the impending plan when he got a tip from an undisclosed source. Morgan was flying into Miami International.
Bingo.
Finally Stafford would be able to lay hands on the man he had been investigating frantically. He had read everything he could about the Americano: from the background information dug up by other agents to newspaper and magazine articles profiling him in the United States and Cuba. What struck the agent was that Morgan had been everywhere from the time he was a teenager. He had been a runaway. He had been in the circus. He had worked on ranches in Arizona. He was always on the run. When Morgan arrived, Stafford had one goal: Stay on him.
Morgan had one more meeting with Trujillo’s people. For months, he had held his ground and kept his secret. He would meet with Ferrando to iron out the final details, from the arrival of the weapons to the invasion in southern Cuba. Then he’d rendezvous with the Batista people to make sure the boat in Miami was ready, that it had the weapons on board.
As the plane lifted into the sky, Olga clutched Morgan’s arm. She wanted it to end. If Morgan could pull it off, maybe they finally could find the peace that had eluded them for so long. It had been nearly six months of around-the-clock meetings, phone calls, and radio sessions that lasted until dawn. More often than not, he had circles under his eyes from not sleeping. But through it all, he kept his composure, assuring her at every step that it would be over soon, that they’d finally ensure that the Second Front had a place in the new Cuba. Then they’d move on with their lives.
As the plane descended through the skies over Miami, Olga should have been excited about visiting the United States for the first time. Instead, she was anxious. She knew her husband was about to meet with people who wanted him dead.
As the plane touched down on the runway, Morgan was thinking through his next move. As they walked down the concourse, two men in suits and sunglasses dashed across the walkway toward them.
Stafford flashed his FBI badge. With him was FBI agent Thomas Errion.
“Are you William Morgan?” Stafford asked.
“Yes,” answered Morgan.
Morgan told Olga and the others to head to the Moulin Rouge Motel on 41st Street and Pine Tree Drive in Miami Beach. He would catch up with them later.
“Don’t worry,” he said to Olga.
Stafford and Errion escorted Morgan into the immigration offices in the airport. Morgan remained calm. He had learned long ago how to deal with cops. The same rules applied for federal law enforcement agents. In another time, he would have been dodging questions about gambling raids and illegal proceeds from sawdust joints. But this was different. No one could tell him that what he was doing now was wrong. No one could tell him that he was breaking the law.
“What do you want?” Morgan asked.
Stafford had a litany of questions. For starters, what was Morgan doing in Miami? If his life was in Havana, why come here?
Morgan wasn’t going to reveal his mission to Stafford, and he didn’t care what Stafford did to try to force him. His reasons for coming were strictly personal, he said.
Then Stafford, jotting notes the whole time, wanted to talk about the Cuban revolution. Much had been written about Morgan’s role in the rebellion. What did he do during the fighting? What was he doing now?
The agents didn’t stop. They wanted to know who he was going to see in Miami. Where else he was going. Morgan responded to their questions, one by one, but he avoided any hints of what was about to unfold. Halfway through the interview, Morgan suspected the agents knew about the plan. But he wasn’t going to break. They’d have to find out on their own. He would tell them this much, though: A representative of a foreign government had approached him to overthrow the Castro government for one million dollars, but he had turned down the deal.
Stafford pressed him: Who? Which government?
Morgan looked intently at each agent. He had said enough. His wife was waiting.
Stafford and Errion knew they had to let Morgan go. They had no legal right to hold him. But they would be trailing his every step.
He needed to act quickly. Morgan had little time to solidify the plans, and now he had federal agents following him. There was no way he would be able to finish if the FBI decided to arrest him on some trumped-up charge. Instead of saying at the Moulin Rouge, he would get rooms at the Montmartre Hotel just over the bridge on Collins Avenue.
They ducked into a waiting Cadillac in the parking lot and were whisked away by the driver down 41st Street and then onto Collins. Even in the dead of summer, Miami Beach was teeming with tourists milling in and out of the Art Deco hotels along the popular drive.
Whoever had been trailing them was now lost in the night traffic. Morgan needed time—time to finalize everything. As soon as he checked into their suite, he picked up the phone and called Bartone.
The Cleveland mobster had made a killing on the sale of guns to the project. Trujillo and Batista both ponied up more than a million dollars, most of it going to buy .30-caliber and .50-caliber machine guns and automatic rifles. Bartone was staying at the Eden Roc down the road. He told Morgan to sit tight. He would send over two cars in the morning, one for Morgan and the other for Olga and her sister to go sightseeing. Bartone himself would play tour guide.
Morgan and Olga looked out over the ocean, the stars scattered like diamonds in the night sky. Olga had envisioned that they would visiting her husband’s country—but under far different circumstances.
In just days, their baby would be born. More than ever, she wanted to move to America, where she and Morgan had a chance to build a life together. She didn’t care if it was in Miami or even Ohio. She was willing to take that leap forward so they would all survive.
“I wanted so much to have peace,” she recalled.
With pressure mounting, Augusto Ferrando waited for Morgan at a corner table in the Toledo Restaurant on Biscayne Boulevard. Nothing had gone right for the Dominican consul. Trujillo had been pestering him. The Batista people were constantly complaining. Now he had word that the FBI might be following Morgan. They didn’t have much time to talk. From now on, every step was critical.
Out of earshot of everyone in the restaurant, Ferrando and Morgan agreed that the invasion would start in Trinidad. It was the perfect place: the center of the country, albeit to the south. By taking the old, storied city, they could keep the fighting away from Castro’s power center in Havana and then work at cutting the country in half. No different from what the rebels did when they took Las Villas Province during the revolution.
At the same time, the Second Front would launch an uprising in the nearby Escambray with the goal of drawing Castro’s forces into the mountains for a showdown. By plane and boat, Trujillo’s people would drop off weapons to the fighters at secret spots. As icing on the cake, Trujillo would send in his foreign legion, at least two thousand men, to help Morgan and Menoyo on the ground.
Giddy at the prospect of victory, Trujillo began picking Castro’s successors. The generalissimo tapped Arturo Hernández Tellaheche, once one of Cuba’s most powerful senators, for president. Arturo Caíñas Milanés, a millionaire cattleman stripped of his land by the new government, would be vice president. Ramón Mestre Gutiérrez, founder of a major construction company, would be the next premier. All three had pledged their hearts—and of course their money—to the cause.
In a day or two, Ferrando would have a boat with weapons stockpiled in the cabin. It wouldn’t be all the weapons needed for the invasion, but enough to get started. Much of the money to pay for the guns would be given to Morgan in a paper bag.
But the biggest part of the plan was in Cuba. Another cache of weapons was coming from the Dominican Republic, and those would be dropped at other locations. Batista’s people had promised there would be people scattered in Havana in safe houses ready to take up arms.
Morgan nodded. Trujillo was making good on his end in grand fashion. Morgan was doing his best to show that he, too, was a player, that he would go along as long as the money was being paid out generously.
But he was wearing thin. Every conversation was getting more difficult for him to play the part. The reality was that he was deeply troubled by everything he was seeing in the operation, from the Trujillo operatives who were trying to curry favor with a corrupt and deadly dictator to the Batista people all trying to jockey for power. None of them gave a damn about the Cuban people or whether they ate tomorrow or even lived another day. Most of them just wanted to line their own pockets while seizing power.
Morgan would do his best to hold up his end by making sure everyone was armed and ready in the Escambray, he told Ferrando. But when this was over, there would be a day of reckoning for everyone.
The game of chess had begun.
No sooner did Morgan get back to his hotel than he received a message: Call the FBI. Despite all his careful moves, including switching hotels, Stafford wasn’t going away. Agents were watching the hotel and the traffic going in and out. If Morgan was going to keep the plot moving forward, he needed to get the feds completely off his track.
Unless he met with Stafford, he would be hounded every day. The best thing he could do was go directly to the FBI offices. If he could convince them that he truly was on vacation and answer their questions, maybe they’d back off. He needed to buy more time.
When Morgan walked into the FBI’s downtown Miami offices, Stafford and Errion were waiting for him. Since the first interview at the airport, they had gathered more information about the suspected coup attempt in Cuba. They demanded that Morgan come clean. Otherwise, they were going to slap handcuffs on him. Americans couldn’t serve in the armed forces of a foreign army, and Morgan had done just that.
Morgan stared across the table at Stafford. First, he hadn’t served in the military of a foreign country. He had fought in a rebel force during a revolution that had nothing to do with the Cuban army. He had helped the people in the mountains and was still trying to help them—far more than anyone in the US government. Second, the Second Front had been disbanded—albeit on paper—after the fighting ceased, so he wasn’t serving in the Cuban revolutionary army either. “I’ve done nothing wrong,” he said.
Stafford shook his head. If Morgan wasn’t serving in the military, how was he supporting his wife and living in an upscale home in Havana?
Stafford wasn’t going to let it go, but Morgan wasn’t going to help him. Morgan’s answer was Menoyo. Whatever money he was getting came from his comandante. Right now, in his pocket, he was carrying $350. Back in Cuba, he had about $159 in the bank. “That’s it,” he said.
Stafford looked over the notes on his desk. If he could nail down Morgan in the Cuban military, then he’d have him. There was too much scuttlebutt about the ongoing plot. Stafford wasn’t going to take any shit.
“What’s going on with Trujillo?” he asked.
Morgan dug in. He didn’t need Trujillo. He didn’t need Batista. If he believed that Castro was selling out the Cuban people, then he would chase him into hell personally. He had plenty of problems with people like Che Guevara—a stone-cold Communist—but he had no problems with Fidel. Morgan had heard the talk about Castro being a Communist, but he hadn’t seen proof of it. If he did, he’d fight Fidel himself.
Morgan had said enough. As far as he was concerned, he had broken no US laws, and no one was going to put him in jail.
Both men stared across the table, sizing each other up. Stafford could see that Morgan wasn’t going to crack. The session was over. He had no option other than to let him go. But their time together wasn’t over.
