“It would be a great honor, Excellency,” Abbes García responded immediately, with a confidence he had not shown until that moment.
Some time later, the Generalissimo’s former secretary, private tutor to Ramfis, and hack writer for Doña María Martínez, the Bountiful First Lady, died in the Mexican capital in a rain of bullets. There was the obligatory outcry from the exiles and the press, but no one could prove, as they claimed, that the assassination had been the work of “the long arm of Trujillo.” A fast, impeccable operation that cost less than fifteen hundred dollars, according to the bill submitted by Johnny Abbes García on his return from Mexico. The Benefactor inducted him into the Army with the rank of colonel.
The elimination of José Almoina was just one in the long series of brilliant operations carried out by the colonel, killing or maiming or severely wounding dozens of the most outspoken exiles in Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala, New York, Costa Rica, and Venezuela. Lightningquick, clean pieces of work that impressed the Benefactor. Each one a small masterpiece in its skill and secrecy, the work of a watchmaker. Most of the time, in addition to killing off enemies, Abbes García arranged to ruin their reputations. The unionist Roberto Lamada, a refugee in Havana, died of a beating he received in a brothel in the Barrio Chino at the hands of hoodlums who filed a complaint against him with the police, charging him with attempting to stab a prostitute who refused to submit to the sadomasochistic perversions the exile had demanded; the woman, a tearful mulatta with dyed red hair, appeared in
Carteles
and
Bohemia
, displaying the wounds the degenerate had inflicted on her. The lawyer Bayardo Cipriota perished in Caracas in a homosexual dispute: he was found stabbed to death in a cheap hotel, wearing panties and a bra, with lipstick on his mouth. The forensic examination determined that he had sperm in his rectum. How did Colonel Abbes manage to establish contact so rapidly, in cities he barely knew, with denizens of the underworld, the gangsters, killers, traffickers, thugs, prostitutes, pimps, and pickpockets, who were always involved in the scandals, the delight of the sensationalist press, in which the regime’s enemies found themselves embroiled? How did he set up so efficient a network of informants and thugs throughout most of Latin America and the United States and spend so little money? Trujillo’s time was too valuable to be wasted checking into details. But from a distance he admired, like a connoisseur with a precious jewel, the subtlety and originality with which Johnny Abbes García rid the regime of its enemies. Exile groups and hostile governments could never establish any link between these horrendous acts and the Generalissimo. One of his most perfect achievements had to do with Ramón Marrero Aristy, the author of
Over
, a novel, known all over Latin America, about sugarcane cutters in La Romana. The former editor of
La Nación
, a frantically Trujillista newspaper, Marrero had been Minister of Labor in 1956, and again in 1959, when he began to send reports to Tad Szulc, a journalist, so that he could defame the regime in his articles for
The New York Times
. When he was found out, Marrero sent retractions to the gringo paper. And came with his tail between his legs to Trujillo’s office to crawl, cry, beg forgiveness, and swear he had never betrayed him and never would betray him. The Benefactor listened without saying a word and then, coldly, he slapped him. Marrero, who was sweating, reached for his handkerchief, and Colonel Guarionex Estrella Sadhalá, head of the military adjutants, shot him dead right there in the office. Abbes García was charged with finishing the operation, and less than an hour later a car skidded—in front of witnesses—over a precipice in the Cordillera Central on the road to Constanza; in the crash Marrero Aristy and his driver were burned beyond recognition. Wasn’t it obvious that Colonel Johnny Abbes García ought to replace Razor as the head of the Intelligence Service? If he had been running the agency when Galíndez was kidnapped in New York, an operation directed by Espaillat, the scandal that did so much harm to the regime’s international image probably would never have come to light.
Trujillo pointed at the report on his desk with a contemptuous air:
“Another conspiracy to kill me led by Juan Tomás Díaz? And organized by Consul Henry Dearborn, the asshole from the CIA?”
Colonel Abbes García abandoned his immobility long enough to shift his buttocks in the chair.
“That’s what it looks like, Excellency.” He nodded, not attributing too much importance to the matter.
“It’s funny,” Trujillo interrupted him. “They broke off relations with us, obeying the OAS resolution. And called home their diplomats but left us Henry Dearborn and his agents so they could keep on cooking up plots. Are you sure Juan Tomás is part of it?”
“No, Excellency, just some vague hints. But ever since you dismissed him, General Díaz has been seething with resentment and that’s why I keep a close eye on him. There are these meetings at his house in Gazcue. You should always expect the worst from a resentful man.”
“It wasn’t the dismissal,” Trujillo said aloud as if talking to himself. “It was because I called him a coward. To remind him he had dishonored the uniform.”
“I was at that luncheon, Excellency. I thought General Díaz would get up and leave. But he stayed, turned pale, broke into a sweat. When he left he was staggering, like a drunk.”
“Juan Tomás was always very proud, and he needed a lesson,” said Trujillo. “He conducted himself like a weakling in Constanza. I don’t allow weak generals in the Dominican Armed Forces.”
The incident had occurred a few months after the defeat of the landings at Constanza, Maimón, and Estero Hondo, when all the members of the expeditionary force—including Cubans, North Americans, and Venezuelans, in addition to Dominicans—were either dead or in prison, and the regime discovered, in January 1960, a vast network of clandestine opposition called June 14, in honor of the invasion. Its members were students and young professionals of the middle and upper classes, many from families that were part of the regime. At the height of a cleanup operation against the subversive organization, in which the three Mirabal sisters and their husbands were very active—the mere thought of them made the Generalissimo’s blood boil—Trujillo held a luncheon in the National Palace for some fifty military and civilian figures prominent in the regime, in order to punish his boyhood friend and comrade in arms, who had held the highest positions in the Armed Forces during the Era and whom he had dismissed as commander of the Military Region of La Vega, which included Constanza, because he had not exterminated the last concentrations of invaders scattered across the mountains. General Juan Tomás Díaz had been asking in vain for an audience with the Generalissimo ever since. He must have been surprised to receive an invitation to the luncheon, after his brother Gracita sought asylum in the Brazilian embassy. The Chief did not greet him or say a word to him during the meal, and did not even glance at the corner where General Díaz was seated, far from the head of the long table, a symbolic indication of his fall from grace.
Suddenly, as they were serving the coffee, over the conversations buzzing around the long table, over the marble of the walls and the crystal of the blazing chandelier—the only woman present was Isabel Mayer, the Trujillista caudilla in the northeast—the thin, sharp voice known to all Dominicans rose, taking on the steel-barbed tone that foretold a storm:
“Aren’t you surprised, gentlemen, by the presence at this table, surrounded by the most outstanding military and civilian figures in the regime, of an officer stripped of his command because he was not equal to the task on the field of battle?”
Silence fell. The fifty heads flanking the huge quadrangle of embroidered tablecloths all froze. The Benefactor did not look toward General Díaz’s corner. He inspected the other diners one by one, a surprised expression on his face, his eyes very wide and his lips parted, asking his guests to help him solve the mystery.
“Do you know who I mean?” he continued, after a dramatic pause. “General Juan Tomás Díaz, Commander of the Military Region of La Vega at the time of the Cuban-Venezuelan invasion, was dismissed in the middle of the war for conduct unbecoming an officer in the face of the enemy. Anywhere else, such behavior is punished with a summary court-martial and a firing squad. Under the dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, the cowardly general is invited to lunch at the Palace with the nation’s elite.”
He said the last sentence very slowly, syllable by syllable, to emphasize his sarcasm.
“If you’ll permit me, Excellency,” stammered General Juan Tomás Díaz, making a superhuman effort, “I’d like to recall that at the time of my dismissal, the invaders had been defeated. I did my duty.”
He was a strong, robust man, but he had shrunk in his seat. He was very pale and his mouth kept filling with saliva. He looked at the Benefactor, but he, as if he had not seen or heard him, glanced around for a second time at his guests and spoke again:
“And not only is he invited to the Palace. He goes into retirement with full salary and all the prerogatives of a three-star general, so that he can rest knowing he did his duty. And enjoy a well-deserved leisure on his cattle ranches, in the company of Chana Díaz, his fifth wife, who is also his niece, his brother’s daughter. What greater proof of the magnanimity of this bloodthirsty dictatorship?”
When he finished speaking, the Benefactor’s head had looked all around the table. And now it stopped at the corner where General Juan Tomás Díaz was sitting. The Chief’s face was no longer the ironic, melodramatic one it had been a moment before. It was frozen in deadly seriousness. His eyes had taken on the solemn fixity, piercing and merciless, with which he reminded people who it was who ruled this country and the lives of Dominicans. Juan Tomás Díaz looked down.
“General Díaz refused to follow an order of mine and permitted himself to reprimand an officer who was carrying it out,” he said slowly, scornfully. “At the height of the invasion. When our enemies, armed by Fidel Castro, by Muñoz Marín, Betancourt and Figueres, that envious mob, had rudilessly landed and murdered Dominican soldiers, determined to have the heads of every one of us sitting at this table. That was when the military commander of La Vega discovered he was a compassionate man. A delicate man, an enemy of violent passions, who could not bear to watch the shedding of blood. And he permitted himself to disregard my order to shoot in the field every invader captured with a gun in his hand. And to insult an officer who, respectful of the chain of command, gave their just deserts to those who came here to install a Communist dictatorship. The general permitted himself, in that time of danger for the Fatherland, to sow confusion and weaken the morale of our soldiers. That is why he is no longer part of the Army, even though he still puts on the uniform.”
He stopped speaking in order to take a drink of water. But as soon as he had, instead of continuing, he stood abruptly and took his leave, bringing the luncheon to an end: “Good afternoon, gentlemen.”
“Juan Tomás didn’t try to leave, because he knew he wouldn’t have reached the door alive,” said Trujillo. “Well, what conspiracy is he involved in?”
Nothing very concrete, really. For some time, at his house in Gazcue, General Díaz and his wife, Chana, had been receiving many visitors. The pretext was seeing movies, shown outdoors in the courtyard, with a projector run by the general’s son-in-law. Those attending were a strange mixture. From well-known men in the regime, like the host’s father-in-law and brother, Modesto Díaz Quesada, to former officials who were distant from the government, like Amiama Tió and Antonio de la Maza. Colonel Abbes García had made one of the servants a
calié
a few months ago. But the only thing he found out was that the gentlemen talked constantly while they watched the films, as if they were interested in the movies only because they could muffle their conversations. In short, these weren’t the kinds of meetings where bad things were said about the regime between drinks of rum or whiskey, the kind worth keeping in mind. Except that yesterday, General Díaz had a secret meeting with an emissary of Henry Dearborn, the supposed Yankee diplomat who, as Your Excellency knows, is the head of the CIA in Ciudad Trujillo.
“He probably asked a million dollars for my head,” Trujillo remarked. “The gringo must be dizzy with so many shiteaters asking for financial aid to finish me off. Where did they meet?”
“In the Hotel El Embajador, Excellency.”
The Benefactor thought for a moment. Would Juan Tomás be capable of organizing something serious? Twenty years ago, maybe. He was a man of action back then. But he had become a pleasure seeker. He liked drinking and cockfights too much, and eating, having a good time with his friends, getting married and unmarried—he wouldn’t risk it all trying to overthrow him. The gringos were leaning on a weak branch. Bah, there was nothing to worry about.
“I agree, Excellency, for the moment I think General Díaz presents no danger. I’m following his every move. We know who visits him and who he visits. His telephone is tapped.”
Was there anything else? The Benefactor glanced at the window: it was still dark, even though it would soon be six o’clock. But it was no longer silent. In the distance, along the periphery of the National Palace, separated from the street by a vast expanse of lawn and trees and surrounded by a high spiked fence, an occasional car passed, blowing its horn, and inside the building he could hear the cleaning staff, mopping, sweeping, waxing, shaking out the dust. He would find offices and corridors clean and shining when he had to cross them. This idea produced a sense of well-being.
“Excuse me for insisting, Excellency, but I’d like to reestablish security arrangements. On Máximo Gómez and the Malecón, when you take your walk. And on the highway, when you go to Mahogany House.”
A couple of months earlier he had abruptly ordered a halt to security operations. Why? Perhaps because during one of his excursions at dusk, as he was coming down Máximo Gómez on the way to the ocean, he saw police barricades at every intersection blocking pedestrian and car access to the Avenida and the Malecón while he was on his walk. And he imagined the flood of Volkswagens with
caliés
that Johnny Abbes had unleashed on the area all around his route. He felt stifled, claustrophobic. It had also happened at night, on his way to the Fundación Ranch, when all along the highway he saw the Beetles and the military barricades guarding his passage. Or was it the fascination that danger had always held for him—the indomitable spirit of a Marine—that led him to defy fate at the moment of greatest danger for the regime? In any case, it was a decision he would not revoke.