Introduction

Based in part on a true story, Havana Harvest follows the maneuvers of two adversarial intelligence services in their attempts to inflict maximum damage on each other as they move through a maze of high-tension suspense.

In Cuba, General Patricio Casas must decide whether to support the revolution he has defended for so many years or do what is good for his people and challenge the selfish authoritarianism of the Castroite regime.

Meanwhile, CIA operative Robert Lonsdale is tasked with determining why a captain in Fidel's army--who recently arrived in Miami with a suitcase full of money--seeks U.S. protection from a Colombian drug cartel and the Cuban secret police. Lonsdale is quickly drawn into a maelstrom of intrigue and murder from which there seems to be no escape--unless he can convince General Casas to help.

Apparently double-crossed by his colleagues and a self-serving Agency director, Lonsdale struggles on alone in an attempt to outfox the shadowy tormentors who intend to silence him forever.

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Excerpt

Chapter One

Friday

George Town, Grand Cayman, British West Indies Captain Francisco Fernandez Ochoa recognized the woman sitting behind the counter as soon as he entered the stationery store. She was striking, even more attractive in real life than in the photo he had seen of her.

“Buenos dias, Señorita.” He tried to make himself sound as Mexican as possible.

“Buenos dias, Señor.” She gave him a friendly smile. “How can I be of assistance?”

“Do you have a special hardcover copy in Spanish of A Businessman’s Guide to the Cayman Islands?”

Her eyes flickered. “What year?”

He held his eyes on hers and replied, “1985.”

She stood up and locked the drawer of the cash register. “Let me see what I can do for you,” she said and headed for the racks.

“Puta madre, but it’s hot,” Fernandez murmured as he wiped his face with the large handkerchief he kept in his back pocket. He was wearing a T-shirt with “Team Mazda” emblazoned on it; long, baggy shorts; and loafers. He looked like a typical tourist visiting from Florida, except that he hailed from Matanzas in Cuba.

The woman was back in less than a minute.

“I am sorry, Señor, but I could only find an English version. Will it do?” The smile was gone; her look was professional, cold.

“I suppose so,” Fernandez pulled out his wallet. “How much do I owe you?”

“Thirty dollars,” she replied in English.

Fernandez paid without a word and left.

After the store’s air-conditioned coolness, the midday heat seemed almost too much to bear, but Fernandez had to make sure no one was following him. He walked about downtown George Town for a quarter hour, sweating while he pretended to window-shop.

“Downtown” in Grand Cayman meant a group of buildings measuring ten blocks by eight, a small area, yet containing the headquarters of more than three hundred banks and innumerable lawyers’ and accountants’ offices.

“Ladrones todos,” he muttered under his breath, then thought about it and added, “but what do I care? In a way, I’m a thief too.”

He passed the Cayman Arms, the pub favored by local professionals and expats, and then turned right and headed toward the waterfront. By the time he reached the parking lot where he had parked the rented Honda Civic, he was satisfied that no one was following him. He got into the car and drove back to the Holiday Inn where he had stayed the night.

He waited until he was inside his hotel room with the door locked securely behind him before folding back the front flap of the book’s dust jacket. There, in the lower left hand corner of the cover, in small, neatly penciled script resembling a catalogue listing, was the number he needed: 02-110-7063-3214.

It took him only a few seconds to decipher the coded information.

The first set of numbers indicated the type of currency in the account. The “02” meant U.S. dollars. The following three numbers stood for the account owner’s domicile; 110 meant Venezuela. The next set of numbers indicated the account number, and the last four digits corresponded with the number of one of several passports he was carrying. As he had expected, the designated bank was the Bank of Credit and Commerce International in George Town.

Fernandez tore the number from the cover and flushed it down the toilet. He slipped into his swimsuit, and headed for the pool. A powerfully built, well-tanned, thirty-nine year-old, his body formed havana harvest straight lines from his barrel chest through his powerful hips to his muscular, stocky legs. His deceptively mild-looking dark brown eyes gazed out of a pleasantly square face with a well-defined jawline. Thick, black hair and a bushy mustache rounded out the Latin American look.

Five feet eight inches tall, he had the fluid grace of movement of a well-conditioned athlete, which in a way he was. Twelve years of professional soldiering in Cuba’s mercenary army, with tours of duty in Ethiopia, Nicaragua, and Angola, had made him tough, focused, and savvy.

Barely winded after a vigorous fifteen laps, he toweled down then ordered a club-sandwich and a “Greenie,” the local name for a Heineken beer. When his meal was finished, he collapsed into an easy chair at the poolside with a satisfied groan. The temperature was in the high eighties, but a cool ocean breeze made the air feel comfortable. Fernandez relaxed, luxuriating in the tropical sun.

Too young to have fought in the Sierra Maestra with Fidel, Fernandez was nevertheless a child of the Revolution, having known no regime but Castro’s. The precocious son of a garage mechanic, he had enrolled in the communist pioneer movement at age ten, on the first anniversary of Fidel’s coming to power, motivated neither by economics nor politics. He was simply tired of watching los ricos, los gusanos, in their fancy cars whizzing past his father’s garage on their way to the luxuries of la playa: sun, sand, good food and drink, and the companionship of beautiful women.

He, too, wanted to see the world.

The remarkable leadership qualities that he developed in high school got Fernandez elected class president. Politically reliable, physically strong, with excellent eye-hand coordination, mechanically gifted, and able to score consistently high marks, Fernandez was given the option on graduation of going to university or enrolling in Cuba’s regular army, a great honor. He signed up for ten years instead of five and was promptly sent to university to study engineering as part of his army education.

He finished university with fine grades, was assigned to a logistical unit, and was sent overseas, first to Nicaragua, then to Algeria, where he demonstrated exceptional organizational abilities, and finally to Angola, where he showed himself to be a tough, brave soldier and a good leader. Having re-enlisted, he was in the second year of his second ten-year tour of duty in the army and well on his way to becoming a major.

By two o’clock, Fernandez was en route to Grand Cayman’s imposing Bank of Credit and Commerce International building. The modern, four-storey edifice housed one of BCCI’s most important branches on the ground floor, and the bank’s western hemisphere headquarters on the two floors above.

Worried about being identified as a regular customer of the BCCI—in fact, worried about being taken to be a “regular” of anything— Fernandez left his car in the nearby parking lot of Thompson’s Bakery rather than in the bank’s. He walked back to the town library, crossed the street, and was in the manager’s office at exactly quarter to three, as arranged. Though perspiring lightly, he felt confident wearing the Cayman businessman’s de rigueur uniform: designer slacks, long-sleeved shirt, and tie.

“May I see the statement for account number 02-110-7063,” he said in flawless English.

“Certainly, Sir,” Mr. Chowdry, the manager, replied after consulting his computer. “But, first, may I see your passport?” Fernandez obliged. The passport he had been given was authentic, but with a phony name and a doctored photograph—his. The manager inserted the document into the decoder on his desk, smiled, and handed it back to Fernandez. He made a few quick keyboard strokes and then said, “I’ll have your statement printed in a jiffy.”

“Great,” said Fernandez, beginning to relax. “What’s the latest I can transfer money?”

“Four, Sir.”

Fernandez looked at his watch. “Then we still have time to get a transaction done today.”

“By all means.”

“And when would the money reach its destination?”

“That depends on the payee bank.”

“The payee bank?”

“Yes, Sir, the bank to which you wish to transfer the money.”

“I want to wire some money to your branch in Panama.”

“Oh, that’s easy.” The manager smiled warmly, happy that BCCI would not lose a depositor. “Panama will have the money almost instantaneously. We’ll send it by coded telex.”

“Could you get it there by three-thirty?” Panama was an hour behind Cayman and there would still be time in the Canal City to secure the funds before closing time there. It was the manager’s turn to look at his watch. “I think so, but I’ll have to charge you for rush service.” He smiled engagingly.

Fernandez nodded. “That’s OK, as long as the charge is reasonable.”

“One-eighth of one percent of the amount to be transferred.” The manager tore off the printout, glanced at it, and then looked back at Fernandez.

“That’s too much.” The Cuban was angry. “One-twentieth of one percent is the maximum I’m willing to pay.”

“That is impossible, quite impossible.”

Fernandez got up and held out his hand for the statement. “There’s no rush. We’ll do it the regular way.” He made as if to leave.

The manager caved in as Fernandez had known he would. “Let’s make it one-tenth of one percent.” That was a thousand dollars on a million dollar transfer, requiring all of ten minutes’ work.

“Let’s make it a flat seven hundred and fifty dollars,” Fernandez retorted.

The manager handed him the two sheets. “It’s a deal. Now, can I please have the details so we can make sure the money gets there before closing?”

Fernandez was surprised when the banker handed him the information for two accounts and not one; the primary account and a recently opened sub-account.

He took his time examining the documents. The sub-account held a million U.S. dollars, which had been deposited in cash the day before. This concerned him greatly because he had been told that he was the only person who could access the 7063 account, and the account was supposed to be set up to accept money via wire transfers only, never cash deposits. Obviously, someone using the same name printed in the fake passport he was using had opened and deposited a million dollars into a sub-account. The question was, why?

The number of the sub-account also drew his attention. Unlike the numbers of his other accounts, which were all made up of numerals, the sub-account number included letters: 4321ETEV. Suddenly, he realized the letters in the account number were a message: “ETEV” backwards was “VETE,” Spanish for go away!

Whoever had put the money into the sub-account wanted him to defect, to run, and they knew that a man on the run needed to have money, and lots of it.

Without betraying the turmoil and confusion brewing within him by as much as a twitch of a facial muscle, Fernandez enunciated his words with care. “Thank you. Now here is what I want. Transfer a million dollars to your branch in Panama and give me a million dollars in cash.”

The manager was annoyed. “One million dollars? But . . . but . . . it’s almost three o’clock!”

“Five to three to be precise, Mr. Chowdry.” Fernandez’s voice was cold. “Plenty of time to phone downstairs and make the arrangements.”

While the clerks counted and assembled the money, Fernandez struggled to appear calm and relaxed though inside his nerves were screaming and his mind racing to figure out what was going on. Usually calm in a crisis, he was beginning to panic. He alone was responsible for running the Cuban government’s supersecret drug-money bank account, and the secret was now obviously out. They’re going to kill me, he thought. Either Cuban Military Intelligence or the Colombians, whose money I’m in the process of taking, or the G2. Of the three, he probably feared the G2, Castro’s notorious secret police, the most.

After almost an hour, the banker announced that his withdrawal package was ready. All of the money would not fit into Fernandez’s briefcase, so the banker had provided him with a nondescript paper bag in which to carry the remainder. As he walked back to his car with fear twisting his innards, his head spun with what he had done.

When he reached his room, he threw his gear into a duffle bag, put the money on top of his clothes, and checked out of the hotel.

He sat inside the rental car in the hotel parking lot for a while, toying with the idea of returning the money. Whoever had set up the account would see that he had withdrawn the money, but they would also see that he had returned it. He would just need to come up with a reason for the unusual transaction. Then he remembered that he was possibly in danger, and quickly dismissed the idea of trying to come across as the nice guy. This was not a time to think about others, but to concentrate on saving his own skin. He needed to disappear, which required money—lots of it.

It was also necessary to slow down possible pursuit and for this he required further information. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. The author of Havana Harvest, Robert Landori, has a very interesting background in Cuba, and was even at one point imprisoned and held in solitary confinement by Fidel Castro on false accusations of espionage. How do you feel this experience contributed to the writing of Havana Harvest?

2. When Fernandez arrived in the United States, the first person he chose to turn to was a distant cousin, Reyes Puma. What is it about the human condition that has us immediately turn to family in times of danger or stress? Who would you turn to in a similar situation?

3. Throughout the novel, there is a theme of the absences of girlfriends and wives. Robert Lonsdale's wife had tragically passed away, Fernandez's wife was estranged and remarried, and Casas' wife left him when he was assigned to further training in communist Russia. Do you feel that the author did this in order to prevent attention from turning away to the main excitement at hand? What are other reasons for the absence of women?

4. The British Secret Intelligence Service refers to the Americans as "cousins." Is there a close friend or acquaintance you have that you feel as close to as a family member? If so, what was it that strengthened your relationship?

5. Havana Harvest is filled with different forms of treachery and double-dealings. With old information, lack of communication, and uncertain political opinions of various characters, much of the book's plot is concerned with making sure all characters are on the same page. Have you ever experienced a time where you were unsure about a friend's intentions? How did you handle the situation?

6. Lonsdale underwent extensive plastic surgery to keep from being recognized in Montreal, Canada, where he and his late wife, Andrea, were attacked while recuperating in a hospital. Have you ever felt that there were aspects of your identity, appearance, or past that you would have rather kept hidden? How did you try to cover them?

7. The question of identity is a large one in Havana Harvest. Why do you feel that personal identity is so important? How would you react to having to change your identity and the life that you have created for yourself?

8. Lawrence Smythe, the Acting Director of Central Intelligence, is upset with Morton for allowing his division to mess with the ongoing investigation the CIA was already proceeding with. What does this say about the importance of teamwork? How would you suggest the two agencies merge together and solve future problems from occurring of this instance?

9. Morton is flabbergasted when he learns that Lawrence Smythe isn't always as good as his word. Why do you feel that trust is so important? Do you feel that you freely trust others, or are you usually holding something back?

Weblinks

»	Author Robert Landori's web site
»	Author Robert Landori's blog
»	Book Reviews

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