They told the driver to go back to the colonial district. Antonio had thought of something, and once they were in the old city, they told him to turn onto Calle Espaillat from Billini. Generoso Fernández, an attorney whom they both knew, lived there. Antonio recalled hearing him say the most bitter things about Trujillo; perhaps he could get them a car. The lawyer came to the door but did not ask them in. When he recovered from the shock—he looked at them in horror, blinking—all he could do in his indignation was berate them:
“Are you crazy? How can you compromise me like this? Don’t you know who went into the house across the street just a minute ago? The Constitutional Sot! Couldn’t you stop and think before doing this to me? Get away, go on, I have a family. For God’s sake, leave! I’m nobody, nobody.”
He slammed the door in their faces. They went back to the cab. The old black was still sitting docilely at the wheel, not looking at them. After a while he mumbled:
“Where to now?”
“To Independencia Park,” Antonio told him, just to say something.
Seconds after he pulled away—the streetlamps at the corners had turned on and people were coming out on the sidewalks to enjoy the cool air—the driver alerted them:
“There are Beetles behind us. I’m really sorry, gentlemen.”
Antonio felt relieved. This ridiculous trip to nowhere was finally ending. Better to go out shooting than like a couple of assholes. They turned around. Two green Volkswagens were following them at a distance of about ten meters.
“I don’t want to die, gentlemen,” the driver pleaded, crossing himself. “By the Blessed Virgin, please!”
“Okay, get to the park however you can and drop us at the corner by the hardware store,” said Antonio.
There was a good deal of traffic. The driver maneuvered his way between a truck and bus with clusters of people hanging from the doors. He braked hard a few meters from the large plate-glass windows of the Reid hardware store. When he jumped out of the cab, with his revolver in his hand, Antonio noticed that the lights in the park were coming on, as if to welcome them. There were shoeshine boys, street peddlers, cardplayers, bums and beggars leaning against the walls. It smelled of fruit and fried food. He turned around to hurry along Juan Tomás, who was fat and tired, and could not keep up with him. At that moment, shots broke out behind him. There were deafening screams all around him; people ran between cars, and automobiles drove onto the sidewalks. Antonio heard hysterical voices: “Surrender, damn it!” “You’re surrounded, assholes!” When he saw that Juan Tomás was stopping, exhausted, he stopped too, beside him, and began to shoot. He fired blindly, because
caliés
and guards were hiding behind the Volkswagens that crisscrossed the road like parapets, blocking traffic. He saw Juan Tomás fall to his knees and raise the pistol to his mouth, but he couldn’t fire because the impact of several shots knocked him down. By now Antonio had been hit by a number of bullets, but he wasn’t dead. “I’m not dead, shit, I’m not dead.” He had fired all the rounds in his clip, and as he lay on the ground, he tried to slip his hand into his pocket and swallow the strychnine. His damn fucking hand did not obey him. No need, Antonio. He could see the brilliant stars in the night that was just beginning, he could see Tavito’s smiling face, and he felt young again.
When the Chief’s limousine pulled away and left him in the stinking mudhole, General José René Román was trembling from head to toe, like the soldiers he had seen dying of malaria in Dajabón, a garrison on the Haitian-Dominican border, at the start of his military career. For many years Trujillo had been brutal with him before family and strangers, making him feel how little respect he had for him, using any excuse to call him an idiot. But he had never carried his contempt and insults to the extremes he had shown tonight.
He waited for the trembling to pass before walking to San Isidro Air Base. The guard on duty was shocked to see the head of the Armed Forces appear on foot and covered in mud, in the middle of the night. General Virgilio García Trujillo, commander of San Isidro and Román’s brother-in-law—he was Mireya’s twin brother—was not there, but the Minister of the Armed Forces called all the other officers together and reprimanded them: the broken pipe that had enraged His Excellency had to be repaired immediately or the punishments would be severe. The Chief would come back to check, and they all knew he was implacable with regard to cleanliness. He ordered a jeep and driver to take him home; he didn’t change or clean up before he left.
In the jeep, on the way to Ciudad Trujillo, he told himself that his trembling was not really due to the Chief’s insults but to the tension he had felt since the phone call letting him know the Benefactor was angry with him. Throughout the day, he told himself a thousand times over that it was impossible, absolutely impossible, that he had found out about the conspiracy plotted by his compadre Luis Amiama and his close friend General Juan Tomás Díaz. He wouldn’t have phoned; he would have had him arrested and he’d be in La Cuarenta now, or El Nueve. And yet the little worm of doubt did not allow him to eat a mouthful at supper. Well, in spite of the terrible time he had been put through, it was a relief that the Chief’s insults were caused by a broken sewage pipe and not a conspiracy. The mere thought of Trujillo finding out that he was one of the conspirators made his blood run cold.
He could be accused of many things, but not cowardice. From the time he was a cadet, and in all his postings, he had shown physical daring and displayed a courage in the face of danger that earned him a reputation for machismo among officers and subordinates. He was always good at boxing, with gloves or bare fists. He never allowed anyone to treat him with disrespect. But, like so many officers, so many Dominicans, before Trujillo his valor and sense of honor disappeared, and he was overcome by a paralysis of his reason and his muscles, by servile obedience and reverence. He often had asked himself why the mere presence of the Chief—his high-pitched voice and the fixity of his gaze—annihilated him morally.
Because he knew the power Trujillo had over his character, General Román’s immediate response to Luis Amiama when he first spoke to him, five and a half months earlier, about a conspiracy to put an end to the regime, had been:
“Abduct him? That’s bullshit! As long as he’s alive nothing will change. You have to kill him.”
They were on Luis Amiama’s banana plantation in Guayubín, Montecristi, sitting on a sunny terrace and watching the muddy water of the Yaque River as it flowed past. His compadre explained that he and Juan Tomás were organizing this operation to keep the regime from ruining the country completely and precipitating another Cubanstyle Communist revolution. It was a serious plan that had the support of the United States. Henry Dearborn, John Banfield, and Bob Owen, at the legation, had given their formal backing and made the head of the CIA in Ciudad Trujillo, Lorenzo D. Berry (“The owner of Wimpy’s Supermarket?” “That’s right”), responsible for supplying them with money, weapons, and explosives. The United States, uneasy about Trujillo’s excesses ever since the attempt on the life of the Venezuelan President, Rómulo Betancourt, wanted to get rid of him; at the same time, they wanted to be sure he would not be replaced by a second Fidel Castro. This was why they were backing a serious, clearly anti-Communist group that would establish a civilian-military junta and hold elections within six months. Amiama, Juan Tomás Díaz, and the gringos were in agreement: Pupo Román should preside over the junta. There was no one better to secure the cooperation of the military and an orderly transition to democracy.
“Abduct him, ask him to resign?” Pupo was appalled. “You’ve got the wrong country and the wrong man, compadre. Don’t you know him? He’ll never let you take him alive. And you’ll never get him to resign. You have to kill him.”
The driver of the jeep, a sergeant, was silent, and Román took deep drags from a Lucky Strike, his favorite brand of cigarettes. Why had he agreed to join the conspiracy? Unlike Juan Tomás, in disgrace and cashiered from the Army, he had everything to lose. He had reached the highest position a military man could aspire to, and though things weren’t going well for him in business, his farms still belonged to him. The danger that they would be seized had disappeared with the payment of four hundred thousand pesos to the Agrarian Bank. The Chief didn’t cover the debt out of respect for his person, but because of his arrogant feeling that the family must never look bad, that the image of the Trujillos and their relations must always be spotless. And it wasn’t an appetite for power, the prospect of being named Provisional President of the Dominican Republic—and the possibility, which was very real, of then becoming the elected President—that led him to give his support to the conspiracy. It was rancor, the accumulated effect of the infinite offenses to which Trujillo had subjected him since his marriage to Mireya, which had made him a member of the privileged, untouchable clan. That was why the Chief had promoted him over other men, appointed him to important positions, and occasionally presented him with gifts of cash or sinecures that allowed him to enjoy a high standard of living. But he had to pay for the favors and distinctions by accepting arrogance and abuse. “And that matters more,” he thought.
During these five and a half months, each time the Chief humiliated him, General Román, as he did now while the jeep was crossing Radhamés Bridge, told himself that he soon would feel like a whole man, with his own life, even though Trujillo went out of his way to make him feel absolutely worthless. Luis Amiama and Juan Tomás might not suspect it, but he was in the conspiracy to prove to the Chief that he wasn’t the incompetent fool Trujillo believed him to be.
His conditions were very concrete. He would not lift a finger until he saw with his own eyes that the Chief had been executed. Only then would he proceed to mobilize troops and capture the Trujillo brothers and the officers and civilians most involved with the regime, starting with Johnny Abbes García. Luis Amiama and General Díaz must not mention to anyone—not even the head of the action group, Antonio de la Maza—that he was part of the conspiracy. There would be no written messages or telephone calls, only direct conversations. He would cautiously begin to place officers he trusted in key posts, so that when the day arrived all the installations would obey his orders.
This is what he had done, naming his classmate and close friend General César A. Oliva as the head of the Fortress of Santiago de los Caballeros, the second largest in the country. He also arranged to appoint General García Urbáez, a loyal ally, as commander of the Fourth Brigade, stationed in Dajabón. And he was counting on General Guarionex Estrella, commander of the Second Brigade, in La Vega. He wasn’t very friendly with Guaro, an avid Trujillista, but he was the brother of Turk Estrella Sadhalá, who was in the action group, and it was logical to suppose he would side with his brother. He hadn’t confided his secret to any of those generals; he was too clever to risk a denunciation. But he was sure that as events unfolded, they would all come over without hesitation.
When would it happen? Very soon, most likely. On his birthday, May 24, just six days earlier, Luis Amiama and Juan Tomás Díaz, whom he had invited to his country house, assured him that everything was ready. Juan Tomás was categorical: “Any day now, Pupo.” They told him that President Joaquín Balaguer had probably agreed to be part of the civilian-military junta over which he would preside. He asked for details, but they couldn’t give him any; the approach had been made by Dr. Rafael Batlle Viñas, married to Indiana, Antonio de la Maza’s cousin, and Balaguer’s principal physician. He had sounded out the puppet president, asking if, in the event Trujillo disappeared suddenly, “he would collaborate with the patriots.” His reply was cryptic: “According to the Constitution, if Trujillo were to disappear, I would have to be taken into account.” Was this a good piece of news? That suave, astute little man had always inspired in Pupo Román the instinctive distrust he felt for bureaucrats and intellectuals. It was impossible to know what he was thinking; behind his affable manners and eloquence lay an enigma. But, in any case, what his friends said was true: Balaguer’s involvement would reassure the Yankees.
By the time he reached his house in Gazcue, it was nine-thirty. He sent the jeep back to San Isidro. Mireya and his son Álvaro, a young lieutenant in the Army who had come to visit them on his day off, were alarmed at seeing him in that condition. He explained what had happened as he removed his dirty clothes. He had Mireya telephone her brother and told General Virgilio García about the Chief’s outburst:
“I’m sorry, Virgilio, but I’m obliged to reprimand you. Come to my office tomorrow, before ten o’clock.”
“Shit, and all for a broken pipe,” Virgilio exclaimed in amusement. “The man can’t control his temper!”
He took a shower and soaped his entire body. When he came out of the tub, Mireya handed him clean pajamas and a silk bathrobe. She stayed with him while he dried himself, splashed on cologne, and dressed. Contrary to what many people believed, beginning with the Chief, he hadn’t married Mireya out of self-interest. He had fallen in love with the dark, timid girl, and risked his life by courting her despite Trujillo’s opposition. They were a happy couple, and in twenty years together they’d had no fights or separations. As he talked to Mireya and Álvaro at the table—he wasn’t hungry, all he wanted was rum on the rocks—he wondered what his wife’s reaction would be. Would she side with her husband or with the clan? His doubts mortified him. He had often seen Mireya indignant at the Chief’s insulting manner; perhaps that would tip the balance in his favor. Besides, what Dominican woman wouldn’t like to be the First Lady?
When supper was over, Álvaro went out to have a beer with some friends. Mireya and he went up to their bedroom and turned on the Dominican Voice. There was a program of dance music with popular singers and orchestras. Before the sanctions, the station would bring in the best Latin American performers, but due to the crisis of the past year, almost all the programs on Petán Trujillo’s television station featured local artists. As they listened to the merengues and danzones of the Generalissimo Orchestra, conducted by Maestro Luis Alberti, Mireya remarked sadly that she hoped the problems with the Church would end soon. There was a bad atmosphere, and her friends, when they played canasta, talked about rumors of a revolution and Kennedy sending in the Marines. Pupo reassured her: the Chief would get his way this time too, and the country would be peaceful and prosperous again. His voice sounded so false that he stopped talking, pretending he had to cough.
A short time later, there was the screech of brakes and the frantic sound of a car’s horn. The general jumped out of bed and went to the window. He made out the sharp-edged silhouette of General Arturo (Razor) Espaillat coming out of the automobile that had just pulled up. As soon as he saw his face, looking yellow in the light of the street-lamp, his heart skipped a beat: it’s happened.
“What’s going on, Arturo?” he asked, leaning his head out the window.
“Something very serious,” said General Espaillat, coming closer. “I was at the Pony with my wife, and the Chief’s Chevrolet drove past. A little while later I heard shooting. I went to see what was happening and ran into a gunfight, right in the middle of the highway.”
“I’m coming down, I’m coming down,” shouted Pupo Román. Mireya was putting on her robe as she crossed herself: “My God, my uncle, don’t let it be true, sweet Jesus.”
From that moment on, and in all the minutes and hours that followed, when his fate was decided, and the fate of his family, the conspirators, and, in the long run, the Dominican Republic, General José René Román always knew with absolute lucidity what he should do. Why did he do exactly the opposite? He would ask himself the question many times in the next few months, without finding an answer. He knew, as he went down the stairs, that under these circumstances the only sensible thing to do, if he cared anything about his life and did not want the conspiracy to fail, was to open the door for the former head of the SIM, the military man most involved in the regime’s criminal operations, the one responsible for countless abductions, acts of extortion, tortures, and murders ordered by Trujillo, and empty his revolver into him. In order to avoid going to prison or being murdered, Razor’s record left him no alternative but to maintain a doglike loyalty to Trujillo and the regime.
Although he knew this all too well, he opened the door and let in General Espaillat and his wife, whom he kissed on the cheek and tried to reassure, for Ligia Fernández de Espaillat had lost her self-control and was stammering incoherently. Razor gave him precise details: as his car approached, he heard deafening gunfire from revolvers, carbines, and submachine guns, and in the powder flashes he recognized the Chief’s Bel Air and could see a figure on the highway, shooting, maybe it was Trujillo. He couldn’t help him: he was in civilian clothes, he wasn’t armed, and fearing that Ligia might be hit by a stray bullet, he had come here. It happened fifteen minutes ago, twenty at the most.
“Wait for me, I’ll get dressed.” Román ran up the stairs, followed by Mireya, who was waving her hands and shaking her head as if she were deranged.
“We have to let Uncle Blacky know,” she exclaimed, while he was putting on his everyday uniform. He saw her run to the telephone and dial, not giving him time to open his mouth. And though he knew he ought to stop that call, he didn’t. He took the receiver and, as he buttoned his shirt, he told General Héctor Bienvenido Trujillo: