INNOCENT BETRAYAL - BY SILVIA ABARRATEGUI

CHAPTER I

     My life seems to have fallen into a dark tunnel of uncertainty. After the tests our love endured since we met, the battles Victor and I had to wage against Cuban secret police to keep that love whole before escaping from Cuba, and what we have had to struggle with here in Miami to forge our future, now Victor is adamant about returning to the island that was hell for both of us. I never thought that I would find myself in the dilemma of having to choose between my husband and the United States. 

     I barely remembered my past plagued with intrigues and betrayal until Victor started with his obsession. Despite his stubbornness, I've tried to ignore him and the painful experiences I suffered in my homeland which threaten to resurface in my memory. I believe that if I humor him, he'll forget his insane idea and I'll be able to recover my peace of mind. 

     The past, however, managed to invade the present like storm clouds overtaking a clear blue sky. When I thought I was finally regaining my balance, I ran into Carlos Pardo, an ex-commandant of la Seguridad, Cuba's secret police, in the lobby of the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach. I had gone to this iconic resort and architectural masterpiece to have lunch with friends and colleagues with whom I had worked years before. I recognized his unmistakable masculine demeanor while I walked down the white marble staircase that cascades gracefully from the mezzanine to the sun-filled lobby with its sprawling crystal chandeliers. As I looked at him filled with surprise and trepidation, I felt as if I had stepped into a time-machine and hurled back violently to my turbulent past.      

     I remember that when I met Pardo, I thought that with his lean build, striking classic features and those feline, ash-gray eyes, he should have been a model featured in a gentlemen's fashion magazine. I observed he had maintained his physique despite the years that had elapsed. Only his black hair had succumbed to time; now his thick mane was the color of his eyes.

     As soon as I saw this "ghost" of the past, all the memories that I had maintained sealed in the farthest corner of my mind escaped like moths searching for light. Although my first impulse was to ignore him, my curiosity conquered and I decided to confront Pardo. 

     He turned toward the stairs as if drawn by my eyes, but he did not recognize me at first. It was only natural, because my appearance had also surrendered to time. My characteristic long, black hair had been trimmed in a modern cut and the onyx color had melted into honey with golden highlights. 

     Despite his first reaction, he recognized me as I got closer and he came toward me smiling. 

     "Vicky, what a surprise! You're looking so well! You've hardly changed!" he said using my old nom de guerre. 

     "Hello, Pardo. Vicky no longer exists; my name is Tania. Don't you remember?" I responded without a smile. "You're the last person I would dream of meeting here..." I added. "How are you?" I asked, finally smiling. 

     "I'm sorry, Tania. Sure I remember your name. I'm all right, I guess. I arrived in Miami two months ago. The change is brutal, especially when you don't know the language well. I still haven't found work," he added with a despondent look in his eyes. 

     "All beginnings are hard. It was difficult even for me, although I speak English fluently and have family here. I felt completely out of place the first six or seven months. It was my job that helped me adapt." 

     "It's horrible to be unemployed," he insisted. 

     "Why don't you let me buy you a drink," I suggested. "Perhaps I can help you." 

     I didn't know what I would gain from reestablishing a relationship with this ex-commandant of Fidel Castro, but my instincts told me that I should continue speaking to Pardo. Maybe I would finally find answers to the innumerable questions that had tormented me all these years. 

     "Let's go to the lobby bar," I added. 

     Pardo seemed embarrassed. It was obvious that the roles were inverted. Now I was the dominant figure. Before me, I saw a humble and defeated man. At that moment, Pardo was the one who felt insecure, who was afraid. Not afraid of me, of course. His fear was caused by his insignificant role in the new environment. Besides being penniless and unemployed, he had lost all his power.      

     "What brought you to Miami?" I asked, although I assumed that his official position within the former Cuban secret police had radically changed with the recent shift in the government's policies. 

     "You know I belonged to Fidel's 'old elite.' The first to be stripped of all power and be disgraced were those who were more loyal. Although the new government assured me that there would be no reprisal, I didn't want to take the risk and managed to come to Miami as soon as I could. How I did it is a long story for another day," he explained. "One dissolves into the crowds here. It's all so different from Cuba," he added. 

     "Did you come alone, or with your wife?" 

     "Alone." 

     Because he didn't seem willing to speak about his wife or why she hadn't come withhim, I decided not to press him. I had never been able to get to know Pardo well because he had kept himself hidden in the mysterious and impenetrable shell of la Seguridad. 

     "I'm living with my cousins. At least I have free room and board, but I can't continue being a parasite much longer," he said. "What do you think a man like me can do inMiami, especially a guy who belonged to Castro's Seguridad del Estado?" he continued. His gray eyes no longer sparkled as in the past; now they seemed to have the cold hollowness of a lost soul. 

     "Pardo, the best thing about this country is that anyone who wants to work, finds work, whoever he is or has been. You'll see that you'll find a job soon," I said. 

     I was never able to hate Pardo, although he was the cause of many of my worst moments in my homeland. Despite his position in la Seguridad, he showed compassion towards me at the end of my saga in Cuba. 

     As he didn't seem to want to speak further about himself, I decided to ask the questions that were burning my lips. I asked him to give me details regarding my episode with the Cuban Seguridad, and after his first scotch on the rocks, he spoke without inhibitions as he began fitting in the pieces of the puzzle. He started in 1976 when the head of Cuba's secret police, for whom Pardo worked, was looking for a woman that would fit in the diplomatic ambiance of Havana.          

     "You were the perfect agent, Tania," he confessed. 

     "The perfect victim, you mean! I was very young and innocent. I was only twenty-three. Besides, I was anxious to make some sense of my life; to try to adapt to an island torn by the revolution. I wanted to feel useful. You recruited me by blackmailing me emotionally, and you finally caught me in your suffocating web of intrigues and espionage," I reproached him. 

     The conspiracy which I was to be thrown into without my knowing had to do with oneof Fidel Castro's pet projects of the time, a plan especial which developed the weakening local breed of cattle with Canadian stock. After the Cuban government spent millions of dollars purchasing those prize studs, they started to die mysteriously. What chaos! Fidel was furious. Of course, he immediately suspected that the CIA was behind the sabotage. After a thorough investigation, la Seguridad believed that a Canadian diplomat was involved in the inexplicable deaths. 

     "It was Capitan Morales who proposed your name to the head of la Seguridad to recruit you as an agent and infiltrate you in the Canadian embassy as assistant to Dennis Major, whom we suspected to be a spy," Pardo explained. "Morales had worked hard to come up with a list of women who had the ideal psychological profile we were looking for. Unfortunately for you, Tania, you seemed to be the best choice," he continued. 

     While Pardo spoke, I imagined the head of Castro's secret police and Morales reviewing the photos of the possible candidates, and exchanging who knows which chauvinistic remarks. 

     "You were the favorite because you are atypical. You look more Canadian than Cuban because of your Irish descent from your mother's side of the family," Pardo continued. 

     "I know that I look a lot like my mother. I'm tall and thin like her, but thank heavens I don't have such delicate, fair skin," I responded. 

     "The best thing you inherited from your mom is those moss-green eyes. I was under their spell the moment I met you. And they made such a striking contrast with your black hair!" he said. "Why did you change the color of your hair?" he added. 

     "I had no choice, Pardo. When I started seeing gray on my temples, I had to quickly find a way to make it blend with the rest of my hair, so I opted for a lighter color. We all change with time," I said. 

     "You're telling me!" he responded, laughing for the first time. "Did you get yourdetermination and courage from your mother, also?" he asked. 

     "Mom is quiet and gentle and my father was debonair and stubborn. I think I'm somewhere in the middle. I don't consider myself so brave, but I definitely inherited or at least learned determination from my grandmother Estela. She was very strong mentally. Maybe it was because she had to overcome many challenges and losses from a very young age. My grandfather Pancho, her husband, died when Mom and my uncles were only children. She had to bring them up on her own. I think pain makes you strong," I answered. 

     "Yes, I agree. Well, as I was saying, besides searching for someone that looked Anglo-Saxon, la Seguridad wanted a woman who was disciplined, obedient, relatively docile, but intelligent. Because she had to be trustworthy, it was natural that she'd be cooperating with the revolution. You had all those qualities. You belonged to the militia, you went to work in the fields —although you probably had no choice—" Pardo continued. 

     "Yes, I was considered revolucionaria at the time," I added. "Besides, no other candidate came from a Cuban-Canadian bourgeois background, or knew three languages, or had an ambiguous political standing. These were traits thatwould allow us, not only to get the Canadian embassy to employ you, but to make it easy for them as well as other diplomats in Havana to consider you a trusted friend," Pardo continued. 

     "But my husband, Rubén, was an officer of Castro's government!" "I know, and that was the greatest flaw we saw in you, that you were married to an official, but there was nothing that the power of la Seguridad could not overcome," Pardo admitted while he avoided my eyes. 

     And that's how I started learning the details of how my long nightmare in Cuba began.