Spy in a Little Black Dress - By Maxine Kenneth Page 0,84
joined by a third man, and the three of them were standing together. The newcomer appeared to be about five years younger than Castro and a head shorter. He was Hispanic but had almond-shaped eyes that made him look Chinese.
“Señorita Bouvier, this is my brother Raúl,” Castro said, surprising Jackie with this introduction because the family resemblance between the two was so slight.
“So nice to meet you, Raúl,” Jackie said. She gave him a friendly smile, but the young man, apparently shy and no match for his older brother in the charisma department, mumbled, “Buenas noches, señorita,” and looked down at this feet. Then he said something to Castro in Spanish and hurried out the door.
Emiliano went off to change his clothes, and now Jackie was left alone with Castro.
“Have a seat,” he said, motioning to one of the barrels that served as dining room chairs around the rough-hewn table. “May I offer you something to drink?”
It amused Jackie that Castro seemed determined to play the gracious host, even in these makeshift surroundings and with some mysterious pressing matter waiting in the wings, but she went along with it.
“Yes, I could use a drink, if you don’t mind,” she said. She couldn’t resist adding, “Being abducted at gunpoint leaves one’s mouth rather dry.”
Castro ignored the jibe and went on fixing drinks. At least he didn’t get mad, Jackie thought, nervously eyeing his rifle, which was now resting against a wall.
“This should help,” he said, offering her a glass filled with an orange liquid. “It’s a fruit juice called prú. We make it ourselves.”
Jackie took a sip and recognized the sweet-tangy taste of mangoes. “I like this,” she said. “It’s very refreshing.” Actually, she would have preferred a healthy shot of the pungent rum that Castro was drinking, but she didn’t want to ask for it and appear rude.
Castro sat down at the table across from her, puffing on his cigar. Normally, Jackie hated the smell of cigar smoke, but like the earthy aroma at the cigar factory, this was not unpleasant.
She waited for him to speak, but he just sat there, puffing quietly on his cigar and staring at her. He seemed to be biding his time, mulling over something to say until Emiliano came back and Castro could divulge his big secret to them. The awkward silence made Jackie turn her head away from him, and her eye fell on a color photograph nailed to the wall. It was a picture of Castro and his bride on their wedding day. Jackie was struck by how American looking his beautiful, blond-haired bride was and how her bridal gown might have come straight out of the pages of Vogue. It certainly didn’t look like something stitched together by a poor Cuban seamstress or snatched off the rack in a local department store.
Deciding to break the ice with small talk, Jackie said, “Your wife is very pretty. What’s her name?”
“Mirta Diaz-Balart. And she is beautiful. One of the most beautiful women at the University of Havana, where I met her. She was a philosophy student.”
“The name Diaz-Balart sounds familiar to me,” Jackie said, furrowing her brow as she tried to remember where she had heard it. “I think someone with that name was at the Mitchells’ party.”
“You’re right, Jacqueline. Mirta’s father, Señor Rafael Diaz-Balart, was at the party,” Emiliano said as he rejoined them, Ricky’s stylish tuxedo having been replaced by baggy camouflage fatigues. “Mrs. Mitchell probably introduced him to you. He’s the main lawyer for the United Fruit Company and an ally of Batista’s.”
That’s strange, Jackie thought. She knew how much Castro hated the United Fruit Company for exploiting his country and its campesinos, yet his own father-in-law was a key player in helping the American company avoid Cuban labor laws and taxes by paying off Batista. She tried to hide her puzzlement, but Castro caught it.
“The Castros and the Diaz-Balarts were like the Capulets and Montagues in Romeo and Juliet,” he said with a small smile. “They were two powerful families who lived a half hour apart from each other and were completely at odds, but the parents couldn’t stop their children from falling in love with each other and, in our case, getting married. Mirta’s father was politically connected but not wealthy, and my father made a lot of money as a landowner, but he was a guajiro from the countryside.”
Jackie was beginning to get the picture. Castro had married a society girl, but he would never be accepted