positive assessment of the group as a whole. He had said that individually I was the best (I suppose he meant on a political level) but that he did not recommend taking someone Jewish. Masetti had not told Angelito that it was Leonardo who was Jewish, not me, because he did not want to spark a last-minute argument that went further than personal opinion, since it was clear the Russian general had been given improper access to inaccurate information.
On our last night in Havana, Masetti suggested we put on the smart clothes we had been given to travel in. He himself arrived unrecognisable in a dark suit and tie. Che had suggested he take us for a slap-up meal. We went in one of those impressive American convertibles to the only decent restaurant in those days, the famous Tropicana nightclub, where we ate like shipwrecked sailors, watching the hypnotic and sensual spectacle of the revolution-fired mulattas.
At Rancho Boyeros, now José Martí International Airport, Barbaroja Piñeiro, Ariel and some of our instructors, came to say their formal goodbyes in a VIP lounge away from curious eyes. They handed us our passports, prepared by the intelligence services’ forgery section. I felt as if a bucket of cold water had been tipped over me. It was farcical. The Cubana plane was leaving in half an hour. Wanting, and needing, to know who I was, I opened my new (Uruguayan) passport only to find that the photograph was of a tall man of about twenty, with blond hair and blue eyes. Although I was bald on top, I actually had a mass of black hair encircling my bald pate, and dark brown eyes. I would also be thirty-one in four months. Only a joke (a last-minute test of my role as group security chief), or premeditated sabotage, could explain this stupidity.
‘With this document’, I protested flippantly, ‘I might as well travel with the handcuffs already on.’ Masetti grabbed the passport and took Piñeiro aside. Apparently, they had had no choice, it was the only Uruguayan one to hand, and we had built a profile around my being a Uruguayan citizen. Besides, they argued, we were landing in Czechoslovakia, a friendly country. They would send another one through the embassy. This was not exactly true. We had to run the camera gauntlet at Gander and Shannon. An intelligence service used to fooling the CIA could not use such a feeble excuse, not after three months work. And in any case my final destination was La Paz, not Prague. Again, Masetti said nothing.
Leaving tropical Cuba and landing in the frozen wastes of Prague airport was like waking up as a dung beetle. Papito Serguera was aware of this and was waiting for us with a van full of winter clothes and boots. He drove us for an hour out of the beautiful city to a summer tourist hotel, for government or party members no doubt, beside Lake Slapy, buried under half a metre of snow. The hotel was closed, as was to be expected, but was looked after by a family of caretakers. While a young Czech who worked at the Cuban Embassy filled in all the forms, a beautiful twenty-year-old pushing a cart loaded with bedclothes, signalled to us to follow her. She showed us to our rooms. Doubles for Hermes and Leonardo, Federico and Miguel, and as luck would have it, singles for Masetti and myself. Furry was staying in Prague with the Havana sugar mission, so he left with Serguera. We had a planning meeting and got quickly acquainted with the Czech national miracle: beer. Masetti decreed permanent activity to stop us getting soft through lack of exercise, and this meant an extra job for me: interpreting without language.
I went to ask the girl about meal times and maps of the region. She was called Zlata. Our only common language was drawing. There was paper and pencil on the reception counter and we invented an extraordinary language. I drew a clock and a plate of food, separated by a question mark. She wrote the hour. I drew a rising sun and a steaming cup of coffee. She counted the time on my fingers. This became our means of communication: it was foolproof. Zlata lent us a scale map of paths and villages round the frozen lake. We would choose a house a few kilometres away and set off after breakfast. In this way, we kept much fitter than in Cuba even. The winter kit we had been lent was good and we could walk through deep snow. By adding a few kilometres every day, we were soon reaching the furthest villages. They were small, never more than a dozen houses and barns, but always with a good tavern where, by drawing a picture of steaks, chicken legs, cauldrons hanging over fires and spoons filling soup plates, we created a good atmosphere and, between toasts and hugs, ate some wonderful stews washed down with the best beer in the world. We would return to our hotel sated, and exhausted.
These daily manoeuvres aroused official suspicion and soon reached embassy ears. Perhaps we had unwittingly set off local intelligence’s nervous system. We had come across an area of woodland fenced off by metallic sheeting and barbed wire, in the middle of which stood a solid wooden tower with a metal thing on top pointing at the sky. Federico examined it and declared it to be a ‘trig point’, of geographical and military interest. The last thing we wanted was to upset the Warsaw Pact. Back at the hotel (this strange exclusive complex at our disposal), we dined like red princes, waited on particularly solicitously.
Papito Serguera appeared like a wet blanket with the news that we had to restrict our walks. We could have argued that our ‘innocent holiday’ was a reward, or even R&R, but Masetti chose to take us back to Prague. He was impatient with Havana’s silence, and wanted them to know. The tough marches through the snow were over. Our group split up, with Masetti and Furry going to a hotel in the centre, and the rest of us to the Hotel Intercontinental out near the airport. Every morning a tram from in front of the hotel left us in Wenceslas Square, in the heart of the old city.
We began to feel trapped. Time passed with no news of further plans. Masetti’s temperament could not stand anything underhand, any whiff of a set-up, and he unloaded his frustration by harassing his Cuban contacts. He didn’t like grumbling alone, and since he had got used to discussing things with me – or rather talking at me – I had many sleepless nights. But I was an obliging witness to his decisions.
After the group left on the morning tram, Masetti asked me to go to his hotel to help decode the messages he had been sending and receiving from Havana. He appeared to have done nothing else since we had arrived. Masetti’s antennae, sharpened by being manoeuvred out of Prensa Latina by the old guard Cuban communists, suspected a deliberate about-turn in Havana, or even a desire to abandon the plans altogether, over and above the agreement made with Che, now his sole point of contact. However, he had to acknowledge that Che’s huge workload might cause him to lose sight of how the project was doing. And don’t forget this was not a government plan but Che’s personal request for collaboration from a state facing immense difficulties. For practical reasons, both we and Che were reliant on the Cuban intelligence services, and communications were in the hands of a circle of operators with no political autonomy, or perhaps too much: time would tell. The return messages always recommended patience, but gave no timetable. Masetti wanted to take a step sideways and break our dependence on Cuba, at least while we were waiting. This was not easy in a ‘socialist camp’ country. We needed a more revolutionary base.
One night in his hotel, in the early hours, after a long diatribe questioning the role of Barbaroja Piñeira as a presumed saboteur serving Fidel’s prudence (which I found logical, even probable), Masetti decided to stop messing about and get alternative help from his Algerian friends. I slept in an armchair. By morning he was ready to leave and we sorted out his ticket and visa. By midday, he was on the flight to Algiers. He had sent a cable prior to departure and, when the plane stopped in Rome, his Algerian visa was waiting for him. Running Prensa Latina, he had got used to moving between countries on the spur of the moment. The technique, he told me, was to not get stuck anywhere. Just take the first flight in the right, or approximately right, direction, and keep sending telegrams. Every country had a telegraph office. Three days later, he was back in Prague with an open and unconditional offer of help for our group, a personal offer from the triumphant leaders of the Algerian Revolution.
In a significant and appreciative gesture, Ahmed Ben Bella, the Algerian president, and Houari Boumedienne, his defence minister, had met Masetti at the airport in Algiers. It was Masetti who had originally broken the barrier of ignorance separating the Cuban Revolution from a people facing Europe’s largest army in a cruel struggle for their freedom. He had penetrated the French defences on the Tunisian border with members of the National Liberation Front (FLN) whom he had contacted in Tunis, and reached the mountain headquarters of the leader of the rebel forces, just as he had done all those years before in the Sierra Maestra with Fidel. He had asked Boumedienne how Cuba could help them. ‘With weapons’,