Havana, Cuba
2 a.m., Thursday
27 September 1888
Our departure from the hotel room was accomplished an hour after we had returned from the soiree, from which I had used my wounded hero status to beg off early. During that hour, we snored heavily for our friends manning the peephole, depicting the very view they expected—two drunks sleeping off a prodigious evening of carousing. Not far off the mark, in my case.
Our egress was made without the advantage of illumination from a lamp, for I wanted the “peepers,” as Rork and I had come to humorously call them, to rest easy thinking we were semi-comatose. Once out on the dark balcony, things became far more difficult, even though we had the dim light of a waning moon. Both of us are not as agile as we once were. Plus, my body seemed to be composed mostly of alcohol right then and responded slowly to cerebral commands.
We found a gap in the dwindling pedestrian traffic and lowered the seabag containing our long guns to the street. The pistols were concealed in our waists under our light jackets. Then we carefully climbed down the protrusions on the wall, Rork leading the way. My left arm and leg let me know they weren’t healed yet, but once you start down there is no stopping, so I had to endure it. I was not looking forward to the painful challenge of our return ascent.
Upon alighting on terra firma, we darted into the shadows and quickly got ourselves away from Obispo Street. It was dark and mostly deserted by then, but there was no sense in taking chances of being seen by a police patrol walking that main thoroughfare. A stroll of two minutes up nearby Aguiar Street got us to the park in my plan. Sitting low against an alley wall where we could see everything, we searched for anyone else doing the same, but all appeared quiet until the clatter of hooves on paving stone signaled the arrival of our conveyance—the hay wagon. Amazingly for Cuba, it was punctual, which naturally made me suspicious.
The driver sat there, waiting and looking irritated at the whole thing, a good sign in my view. We let him stew for a few more minutes while still checking for any foes watching us in the blackness. At last, he let out a Cuban oath and snapped the crop to get his mule moving, its course heading in our direction.
As it appeared not to be a trap, my suspicions were allayed and Rork sent out a bird whistle—a towhee, I believe—which attracted the driver’s attention. My hand extended beyond the shadows and beckoned him to the entrance of our alley. He complied and soon Rork, the seabag, and I were buried in the hay with whispered instructions to our chauffeur to take us into the Chinatown section of Havana.
There are about fifty thousand Chinese, mostly men, in Cuba. The majority live in Havana, mainly in the slum known as Chinatown, or Barrio Chino. Brought in during recent decades to supplement the slave labor force, they are an odd addition to the city. Their impoverished community is understandably wary of non-Orientals. Entry into Chinatown is always noted and sometimes not tolerated.
At the corner of Dragones and Rayo, I handed some coinage up to the driver and we subsequently slipped out the back of the moving wagon. Hastening halfway up the block, we ducked through a double door set into a building, hence into a narrow lane running west between two dilapidated buildings. At the end of this lane, we tacked to port in an even narrower alleyway filled with laundry hanging on lines between the walls and refuse scattered on the ground. Soon we arrived at our proverbial house number three, which was, in fact, not a house at all. It was a room within a jumble of tenements that rose to a height of four stories, one constructed ad hoc atop another for the last hundred years by various inhabitants, none of whom evidently had the remotest idea of how to do it correctly. Our lair was on the ground floor of all this.
The resident mongrel spotted us and roused himself into barking, a half-hearted effort that made me sympathetic—he sounded as if he’d had too much to drink also. The dog wasn’t that drunk, however, for he remembered me and my habit of bringing him something to eat, which he snatched quickly out of my hand. Then he lay back down athwart the path. An old rule of espionage is to always take care of the sentry, by a blade across the throat if you have to, but far more preferably by a bribe. That way you can reuse him.
The sole exterior entry to our rendezvous was a badly hung door at the end of a passageway only the width of a man’s shoulders. As we entered, the door creaking frightfully, a quick glance astern assured me the dog was on the job and no one was following.
We sat on the floor in the far corner of the room, backs against the wall, near an interior door that led to the neighbor’s place—our emergency exit should things become unpleasant. One always stays low when waiting in a building, for if it turns out to be an ambuscade, your adversary will usually aim too high and illuminate himself with the gun’s flash. I was pleased to hear snoring, the raucous kind that can’t be faked, from next door, as I kept my Spencer shotgun balanced on my knee and leveled at that interior door. Rork watched the exterior one.
After what seemed at least an hour but was more likely thirty minutes, we heard the dog grunting, then the door squeak open, and the weak light from outside was blocked by a familiar large figure, corpulent, not brawny. Leo, the other man who routinely fed the dog, had arrived. He took his place on the floor next to me, gasping for breath and irritated by the mile-long walk and what he termed “this unnecessary drama.”
I took the opportunity to ask Leo if he knew of any auxiliary entrances to the Audiencia. “Supposedly there is a tunnel from the barracks beside it,” he replied unsurely. “But that was only a rumor I heard years ago.”
I thought that eminently logical. From their earliest days in the New World, the Spanish always built escape tunnels under their churches and forts, for coups and rebellion are not recent inventions.
In another thirty minutes, the dog awakened with a startled snarl, and soon Marco, who never fed the dog—thus the snarling—appeared. Though Leo and Marco had been members of the Aficionados for more than two years, they had, as the reader may recall, never met. While the three of us whispered introductions, Rork circled the outside perimeter again to check the canine sentry and the passageway beyond. Then he made sure our neighbors inside were truly dormant. He reported that all was well. I lit the lamp on the solitary table in the room, around which were three chairs.
There were no windows for anyone to spy inside, and Rork stood near the outside door, shotgun pointed down the alley. We’d gotten started late. My watch said it was precisely 4:14 a.m. We had ten minutes, no more.
Leo and Marco eyed each other warily as I began. “Thank you for coming this morning, gentlemen. I know it wasn’t easy for you. We don’t have much time, so listen carefully. I have several questions.”
They both focused their attention on me, naïve as yet to the subject matter.
“First one is for Leo. What do we know of the anarchists and strikers’ plans to disrupt the Saint Michael’s Day procession on Saturday?”
“The strikers are loyal Catholics and will not do, or condone, such a thing. As for the anarchists, I have heard no information about their plans, but it is assumed that they will make a demonstration. They are, as you know, atheists and have no respect for the solemnity of the day. They may do something violent, or at least cause a riot.”
“Probably in the area of the Martyrs’ Place, near the Audiencia, as the procession gets close,” opined Marco. “That is where I would do it, if I were an anarchist.”
The Martyrs’ Place was the location where the infamous executions of 1871 had occurred. The Spanish publicly shot eight Cuban medical students from the university as retribution for desecrating the tomb of a Spanish journalist who had written against independence for the island. The accusations were later confirmed to be false, but that revelation was too late for the dead students. The Martyrs’ Place has been a flash point for annual anti-government demonstrations ever since, generating severe responses from the colonial authorities.
Leo concurred, and I had to admit Marco had a good point. “I didn’t think of that location. I thought it would be near the queen’s statue in the central park. But you’re right, Marco. The anarchists would use the martyrs as their rallying point. I have another question: Does either of you know anything about a circus that day?”
Leo did. “The one from Africa?” he said. “Gran Circo Africano comes to Havana once a year. I’ve met the headmaster of it, an African mulatto named Cesar Melosa from the Rio Muni in Spanish Equatorial Guinea. He brings small animals over to the old people’s home at the monastery for their entertainment at no charge. Quite a colorful character. Not enamored of the Spanish, but he takes their money gladly.”
“Sounds interesting. Now, two final questions before I give you your orders. What do you know about the Freemasons of Cuba?”
“The heretics?” asked Leo. I glanced at Rork, who smugly smirked toward his co-religionist.
“If that’s what you call them, Leo,” I said.
“Yes, there are a few in the city. They have several secret meeting places. I think many of the patriots are members, but, of course, as a good Catholic, I am not, nor do I want to be, privy to their activities.”
“I know some of them,” said Marco. “There are more than a few, Señor Leo. I am told there are more than eight thousand in Cuba right now. And yes, many of the patriot leadership are members, or brothers. There is a group of them—what they call a lodge—somewhere in the old quarter. It has been there for many years. They meet in secret at various places because if they are caught, they will be arrested. During the first war for independence, the Ten Years’ Wars, the Spanish government decreed the death penalty for being a Mason in Cuba, since so many revolutionaries were brothers in Freemasonry.”
“But you don’t know where this lodge meets?”
“No, only their brothers know where they meet. I do know it is called the Union Iberica. I am told that is where the Spanish Freemasons, some of whom are in the government and army, meet weekly. You know, there are rumors that Sagasta himself is a Freemason.”
I found that very interesting. Práxedes Mateo Sagasta was the prime minister of Spain. He was with the Liberal Party and known to be more progressive in his views toward Cuba. His fellow party member and minister of war, Arsenio Martinez-Campos, was a former Captain-General of Cuba and had negotiated with the rebels in 1878 to end the first war of independence.
“Is Martinez-Campos a Freemason? Or Don Sabas?” I asked Marco.
“I have no idea. I am not even sure about Sagasta. It is just a rumor, but it would make sense, given his views. I am certain that Cánovas is not a Freemason, though. From what little I understand of the order, no Freemason would do what Cánovas has done to Cuba. I fear what he will do when he gets in power again.”
I agreed on that. Cánovas was currently the opposition leader in Spain and was remembered for his policy of severe repression in Cuba when he was Spanish prime minister in the seventies. He’d been prime minister again in ’86 when I was put briefly in the Audiencia. Colonel Marrón was affiliated with Cánovas’ political party. I’d heard that his family was from Málaga in Spain, the birthplace of Cánovas.
Now to the next question. “Very good, gentlemen. Thank you. And what do you know of a dove under an eight-pointed cross? Is that a symbol you are familiar with?”
Marco gestured in the negative, but I could tell Leo recognized it right away. His words contained the same denigrating tone as he used to describe the Freemasons.
“It is the symbol of the French heretics who left the Mother Church a few centuries ago. The renegades styled themselves as Huguenots. Many went over to Protestant England. The cross is a version of the Maltese Cross, with an upside-down dove under it.”
Huguenots. So that was the answer to the riddle. I’d heard of them but wasn’t knowledgeable in any detail. Another glance at Rork showed he was as ignorant as I.
“Are there any in Havana?”
“No,” replied Leo flatly. Too flatly, for my taste. Marco shrugged.
My watch showed we were behind schedule, so I forged ahead. “Very well, now for your orders. Leo, can you find a hiding spot for seven people in the cathedral on Saturday morning, just before the Mass? We’ll be there for the length of the Mass and some time afterward.”
“Yes. That should not be too difficult. It is an ancient church, with many tiny places to hide. However, it will be crowded.”
“We will be there at forty-five minutes after eleven o’clock. Where should we meet you?”
“The door on the east side.”
“No, that’s the side facing the Spanish military headquarters. Is there another small door?”
“There is only one other small door, the episcopal entrance at the rear, the one the bishop uses. His procession will arrive there about the same time.” Leo paused and thought about that. “Only priests and deacons will be at that door, attired in their finest regalia.”
Only clergymen? Hmm. I was about to comment when Leo read my mind and blurted out, “No! I cannot allow you to be dressed as anointed clergy of God. No, I tell you now that I absolutely refuse.”
This was when Rork, God bless him, walked over to the table and chimed in with his easygoing manner. “Ooh, Leo, me dear friend. Let me tell ye that me own soul’s as Catholic as yers, an’ there’s nary a doubt in me heart that our divine Lord Jesus him ownself is smilin’ down on this wee endeavor. After all, sir, ’tis only a piece o’ cloth or two, but the real thing is we’re savin’ lives here, an’ a higher duty isn’t known to man. Aye, ’tis our responsibility as Christians o’ the true faith—yers an’ mine—to help how we can. An’ that, me boyo, ain’t no blarney nor blather.”
Frowning, Leo relented enough to say, “I don’t know. It is too irreverent. Blasphemous!”
“No, no. Nothing sacrilegious at all, Leo,” I added gently. “No robes or collars of ordained priests, just some plain cassocks. You can get them at the monastery easily. We’ll be seminarians, just students, there at the cathedral to assist. Nothing disrespectful or profane. And as Rork said, this is about saving lives.”
“Just seminarians? Well, I suppose that wouldn’t be blasphemous, would it?”
I was thinking fast now. “No, of course not. Please leave them no later than nine o’clock in the morning in a bag by the . . . the northeast side of that church, I forget the name, at Monserrate and Chacon. We’ll pick them up there.”
“It is called the Church of the Holy Angels,” Leo said begrudgingly. “And I will leave the bag by the laurel tree no later than nine o’clock.” He looked up at the ceiling and added, “Lord, I hope that I am right in doing this and beg you to forgive me for this transgression.”
Rork put his right hand on Leo’s shoulder. “Leo, God’ll be pleased as punch ye helped.”
Leo didn’t look convinced.