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9

Mobilization

Havana, Cuba
Before dawn, Wednesday
26 September 1888

After creeping slowly up the creaking stairs in the darkness, Rork paused at the apartment door and listened. No sound emanated from within, but a dim light shone under the door from inside, presumably from the lamp. The door was locked. The building was unusual for Havana, since most had a central patio with mezzanines above, onto which opened the surrounding apartments. This particular one had no central patio and mezzanines and was instead built in the North American fashion, with a hallway spanning each floor, along which opened the apartments. Either end of the hallway had a window.

Pondering the situation, Rork had a premonition not to knock on the door. Instead of a frontal approach, he decided to flank the position, going out the second-floor hall window to a narrow, open-air balcony that wrapped around the exterior of the building.

Sidling along the ledge, he came to the window of Casas’ apartment and looked inside. It was in extreme disarray, with furniture cushions ripped open, cupboards emptied onto the floor, and clothing strewn—obviously the result of a detailed search. A man’s form darted through the far side of the apartment, slamming the entry door behind him as he exited. Rork decided against breaking the window open and doing his own search, not knowing whether the apparent burglar, who he assumed was one of Marrón’s agents, would return or might have an accomplice remaining inside. In any case, it was clear that Casas was not residing there, so he determined to visit the second Aficionado on his list.

Rogelio, a forty-four-year-old bachelor bon vivant, lived over his rum brokerage office in a building at Officios and Santa Clara Streets, two blocks north of Casas and close to Plaza Luz. The richly appointed apartment, in an ornate French-styled building, was a symbol of his success in selling raw molasses and rum to the U.S. Sugar Trust, run by the famous Henry Havermeyer, a man of considerable political influence in the United States. Rogelio didn’t know Havermeyer personally—I’d checked—but he was the type to enjoy dropping the man’s name in conversations. Fully cognizant of his shallow nature, I used him for minor information on the social and political scene in Havana, thinking that someday he might provide something significant.

Having attended the theater that evening and consumed a fair amount of brandy, Rogelio was none too happy to be suddenly disturbed at such an early hour of the morning, especially by one of the American agents to whom he sometimes gave his minor information. In fact, his hostility was barely concealed when Rork asked why he had not replied to our inquiries by telegraph. “I have been very busy with my real work, Mr. Rork, and had no time for your silly questions.”

Rork, as the reader can well imagine, was by this point in the evening no longer interested in the long-winded civility expected within the Latin culture. He bluntly asked Rogelio if he knew what happened to a Señor Paloma from the naval yard, who seemed to be missing lately. Rogelio, who had always been the most mercurial and marginal of my Havana operatives, declared he neither knew nor cared about Paloma’s whereabouts.

He added that he would be quite thankful to be left alone by the yanquis in the future, since times were politically difficult in Havana and perceived traitors were not being treated lightly. In normal times, I would have agreed to his request and severed our relationship. But I’d had my suspicions about Rogelio. Was he an informant for the Spanish? I wanted to see him face to face, to gauge his eyes, hear his voice, watch his hands. If I judged him to be indeed a double agent, that was fine, for he could be useful to me in unwittingly disseminating false information back to the Spanish.

Rogelio was truly incensed by Rork’s next comment, which came in the nature of a command: Be at house number five at dawn Thursday morning for a meeting with Commander Wake. This was, it should be remembered, two hours later and half a mile east of where the other Aficionados would be gathering—for the meeting with Rogelio was to be far different in nature and required there be no witnesses. And I should explain here that there were no rendezvous points numbered one, two, or four. Nor was house number five a real house. The numbering designation and house descriptor were simple subterfuges to confuse and divert any counterintelligence.

Rogelio proceeded to curse in Spanish, loud enough for the neighbors to hear. Then he announced with a defiant tone that he wasn’t going to meet Commander Wake at all. That was a mistake, for Rork decided that a stronger argument was needed.

Like most navy bosuns, he can be quite persuasive with recalcitrant subordinates, especially those who have forgotten they are subordinates. Accordingly, he leaned over the diminutive businessman and growled, “Lookee here, ye uppity little slacker. Paloma was jus’ the first to disappear. Them Spaniardo dons probably’ve already got a suspicion o’ ye ownself by now, an’ the bastards’re jus’ waitin’ fer their own good time to come an’ arrest yer fat little arse.”

Rork leaned even closer. “Aye, an’ won’t that be cute, when they drag you out o’ here by yer pencil neck, blubberin’ like a baby for yer mummy. Mark me words, yer only hope for survival is with me an’ Commander Wake. So now’s the time when you say, nice an’ quiet-like, ‘Aye, Mr. Rork’—an’ then shut yer damned hatch an’ get the friggin’ job done. Remember, dawn—that means sunrise—on Thursday morn at house number five. Don’t be late.”

Rogelio mumbled an acknowledgment, but its genuineness wasn’t convincing, so Rork included an addendum while putting that heavy left hand of his on Rogelio’s shoulder. “An’ if ye’re thinkin’ o’ doin’ us wrong an’ turnin’ stoolie for Marrón, then know this, Señor Rogelio . . .” The rubber hand came off, unveiling the still-bloody spike, only inches from Rogelio’s face. “Ye do that, an’ by the end o’ the week, ye’ll be lashed to a plank in some Havana cellar, dyin’ real slow an’ real painful—with me enjoyin’ every friggin’ hour o’ it.”

The man’s next assent had far more sincerity to it. Concluding that his efforts had been successful, Rork departed seconds later, leaving a still-shaken Rogelio sitting on his embroidered satin sofa, staring at the parquet floor.

The next Aficionado had the most unusual address. For thirty years, Leo had been a clerk at the ancient monastery on Luz Street, where it intersects Compostela. Now, at age fifty-one and in worsening health, he was the senior administrator, a lay position of some authority, at the Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Belén. Home of the Jesuits since 1842, this monastery was the residence and office of my friend Father Viñes and his astronomical observatory.

Benito Viñes was the Jesuit leader in Havana, president of the Catholic college, and world-renowned for his work in tropical cyclone meteorology. In ’86, at the request of influential Jesuit friends of mine in Italy, he was the one who arranged for me to be rescued from Marrón’s clutches. Most improbably, he used a notorious bandit to accomplish the mission. In the years since, we’d maintained a correspondence and friendship. But at present, he wasn’t available to me, for Benito was at a scientific exhibition in Barcelona.

Here I believe an explanation is due about the religious situation in Cuba, which is assumed by many in North America to be devoutly Catholic. It used to be, but times are changing, and not in the Church’s—or the Madrid government’s—favor.

The Spanish colonial government, whose institutional paranoia knows no limits, allows very few island-born priests to serve in Cuba. And they allow no native-born people to ascend to a rank above a clerk within the colonial administration. The joke is that “the one thing a Spaniard cannot do in Cuba is raise a Spanish son,” for once they are born there, they are no longer eligible to hold Spanish office on the island.

There is no separation between church and state. Priests serving in Cuba are paid by—and for the most part are politically loyal to—the government in Madrid. Some, like Father Viñes, have friends on both sides of the independence issue, but then the Jesuits are known for their liberal tolerance, sometimes thereby incurring the wrath of the senior establishment of the Church.

Many Cuban Catholics have joined the burgeoning Protestant churches, particularly the Episcopal and Methodist. This trend—there are now some 8,000 Protestants in Havana and Matanzas alone—is very alarming to the regime. There are rumors the government may try to harass the Protestant churches off the island, especially since so many of the independence supporters attend them.

These colonial policies—and many others about taxes, tariffs, and individual liberties—have infuriated many Cubans. That anger led them to support the independence movement and any other efforts that might act against what they see as their foreign Spanish occupiers. Leo is very much a loyal and devout Catholic, but he is a Cuban and disgusted by what he sees. As long as it does not violate the Church, he quietly does what he can to help independence. One of his efforts is to assist me with bits and pieces of what he hears, something his employer and my friend, Father Viñes, does not know.

The vigilante commotion about the murder in the streets apparently over, Rork made his way through the still-rainy night along Luz Street to the monastery. Slipping the night watchman ten pesos and explaining with a cocked eye and sly smile that he was delivering a note from a lady, Rork made his way through the dark central patio to the stairs leading to the upper mezzanine.

He’d never been to Leo’s quarters but remembered the man’s general description of their location once. The problem was that it was pitch black and there were six doorways in that area, each opening to a sparsely decorated room containing several snoring bodies. He couldn’t tell which was Leo’s. Proceeding to check them one by one, in the fourth room he saw a form that resembled the Aficionado and reached down to wake him, but stopped at the last moment. Wrong man. Too thin.

The sixth room held only one man, a very big one, whose face was buried in the pillow. Rork surmised that Leo’s seniority would give him that privacy and the form was the correct size, for though dear Leo had few possessions, he loved good food and wine, as anyone could deduce upon sight of him.

Fervently hoping it was the right person, Rork jostled a shoulder and was rewarded with a surprised Leo, who, unlike Rogelio, was not hostile but bemused by the clandestine visit. In the subsequent whispered conversation by lamplight, Leo reported he had heard a rumor that Paloma was missing from his office but had no further information on where he might be. However, he did have a bit of news Rork found interesting.

The young man who’d exploded the bomb at the palace had been identified. He wasn’t from one of the main Cuban independence groups but was part of the anarchist faction in Havana, led by a Spanish anarchist who’d come to Cuba a few years earlier, Roig San Martin. Martin published a broadsheet called El Productor and was a confederate in the socialist workers’ organization, Circulo de Trabajadores.

Leo explained that the Circulo de Trabajadores, which had donated money to the defense fund of the Haymarket anarchist bombers in Chicago two years earlier, was currently supporting a tobacco workers strike against several factories in Havana and soliciting funds for their behalf. Demonstrations were planned around the city for that very week. So far, the anarchists had not been violent. Leo thought the bomber’s actions were probably not sanctioned by the group but said that frustrations among workers were building to a level where similar ad hoc attacks might occur. Giving Rork a questioning glance, he said that there were rumors that a yanqui naval officer had thwarted the bomber at the palace, saving many lives. Rork admitted it was me. Leo promised to try to have more information for us at the meeting the next night.

Rork’s last contact was Marco, who lived near the main cathedral, at Chacon and Cuba Streets. Marco was the thirty-nine-year-old son of a Protestant German mother and Catholic Cuban father who had met in Paris during the revolutionary days leading to the French Second Republic, an intriguing story he’d promised to tell me some day. A supplier of food provisions and dry goods supplies to both the Spanish army and navy, Marco lived in an unpretentious but quite comfortable apartment very close to his clients at the colonial government offices. He was one of my most valuable assets in Havana, with contacts everywhere in the military. Rork and I had been there once before.

The house servant, roused out of his bed, was reluctant to do the same to his employer for some disheveled and blood-stained American who smelled like rum and sweat and whom he only recognized as one of his boss’s many business acquaintances. His concern was understandable, for by then it was almost one o’clock in the morning.

Rork, displaying his disarming Gaelic charm, prevailed over the man’s wariness by explaining that yes, he’d been drinking all night but had won at gambling and was honoring the promise he’d made to immediately repay a loan the man’s squire had given him six months earlier. All of that was total nonsense, of course, but Rork can conjure such blarney and let it roll off his lips as if it were the holy gospel. The next moment, he had the servant laughing with him about the whole thing for, after all, his boss would love the gesture and also the money.

Rork and Marco quickly got down to the business at hand.

“Paloma, the administrator?” he replied to Rork’s question. “Last month there was a rumor he is a prisoner in the cells below the Audiencia, arrested for diversion of treasury funds, and would be sent home in disgrace as an example to the others. I thought that a very unusual situation for a man of Paloma’s status. Of course, everyone in authority takes a little, but he probably did not include his superiors in the diversion. I will discreetly ask around tomorrow and see if I can learn more for our meeting Thursday morning.”

It was after two a.m. and still raining when Rork, soaked, soiled, and very sore from his ordeal, avoided any of Marrón’s men in the lobby and returned to our room the hard way—by scaling, mostly one-handed, the outside of the building onto the balcony, for Obispo Street was finally deserted. In the dark, he collapsed in the chair close beside my bed and whispered a report of what all had happened to him. He ended it with a “Damned sorry to the hilt, sir, about muckin’ up our plans with that damned fight.” He added sheepishly, “Truly thought the lass was bein’ molested an’ did what came natural-like ta defend her, but now me knows it was bloody friggin’ stupid o’ me. One o’ the oldest traps in a harbor town.”

Rork clearly needed bucking up. “Well, my friend, I’d wager you’re not the first foreigner she’s pulled that stunt on. I’d also wager she got you to drink most of that aguardiente. But it’s done and over, so we’ll adapt and move on.”

He nodded. “Aye, an’ me’s thinkin’ she’ll not come back ’round here to work in the morn.”

“Yes, I agree on that. But the word’s out about a gringo who killed a local, so we need to take that into account with our plans. Get some sleep, and come morning, deep-six those clothes someplace so they won’t be found. We’ve a lot to get done and only four more days to do it.”

I heard snoring moments later—Rork can fall asleep in a gale—and spent the next few minutes analyzing his episode with Cornelia and her acquaintances. Was she in the employ of Marrón? No, probably not—Rork had initiated the contact with her. But the incident had considerably complicated our freedom of movement. Rork could no longer go out in the daylight, lest he be recognized as the suspected murderer by the crowd and the police.

That led me to a solution Rork wouldn’t like at all, but his preferences weren’t important anymore, for we had no other alternative. I needed him to accomplish several other things in the four days remaining to us in Havana, for I would be occupied with my own duties. Thus far, I had been on the defensive, reacting to the adverse events affecting us in Havana, never a comfortable scenario for me. Now it was time to go on the offense, to make things happen in our favor.