Act of Betrayal Read Free

he repeated. “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to build a bomb, you just have to be careful. It’s premature to speculate at this point. We’ve just begun our investigation.”
    â€œWas it high explosives?” asked a TV reporter.
    â€œWhat do you classify as high explosives?” asked another.
    â€œC-Four, TNT, Flex-X,” Yates said patiently, as the crowd of reporters grew larger around him, like seagulls flocking to a food source. “As opposed to low-grade explosives like dynamite, gunpowder, or a reloading propellant for firearms.”
    I didn’t remember smelling anything like gunpowder.
    â€œHell all Friday,” Lottie muttered. “Everybody wants to know if it was high explosives or low, was it sophisticated? High, low, sophisticated or not, it don’t matter when it kills you. Dead is dead.”
    â€œHere’s what I’ve got,” announced PIO Sergeant Danny Menéndez, who approached, notebook in hand. Drawn to the new source of information, the wave of reporters turned like the tide away from Yates, who seemed relieved. Homicide detectives had “ascertained,” Menéndez said, in the stilted jargon apparently required of police spokesmen, that “the victim” had been the target of many threats in past months after his editorials on immigration, open trade with Cuba, and other controversial topics. Police had kept a watch order on his house because of threats. The dead man’s name had not yet been publicly released, pending official identification and notification of his next of kin, but everybody in the press pack knew it. The victim, Menéndez said, had waved at a female employee, a secretary, the woman I had spoken to, as he stepped into his Mustang. He closed the door, turned the ignition key, and the car exploded. The horrified woman and other witnesses had seen dark smoke arid flames. The car’s hood had been hurled a hundred feet in the air before landing on the building’s roof.
    I left the crowd, trailing after Yates for one last question. “You think this is an isolated incident or the start of something?” The last wave of bombings had ended almost eighteen months earlier.
    â€œHow would I know?” he said, already weary of the press, including me. He paused. “I hope we don’t see more. Last thing we need is another bomb boom. But this stuff brings out all the kooks, people who in the dark recesses of their minds always had the desire to do this type of thing.”
    Almost every organization or leader in the exile community had felt the sting of Alex’s commentary. I hoped his death was unrelated to exile politics. I have no patience with people who think the way to free Cuba is to blow up South Florida. Their reasons are obvious. It’s safer. My father would probably be alive today had he conducted his anti-Castro missions on Flagler Street instead of in the Sierra Maestra mountains of Cuba.
    There was a flurry inside the roped-off crime scene. A bomb squad tech had discovered something in the rear seat of a car with blown-out windows, parked three slots away from the Mustang. Alex’s right hand. It had to have been close to the bomb, I thought, shivering, to be torn off and hurled so far.
    Back at the office, I settled in at my desk and checked the folder in my top drawer. Miami terrorist groups amuse themselves by issuing official communiques sentencing their enemies to execution, then distributing the names to the media. Occasionally somebody on one of the death lists is killed or injured. Alex’s name did not appear on any of them. Then I called a roster of Cuban exile leaders and politicians for their comments on his demise.
    â€œA brave man,” the mayor called him. “A martyr.”
    I called Juan Carlos Reyes, powerful leader of the Grupo para la Libertad de Cuba and a frequent target. An outspoken and macho veteran of Brigade 2506, the exile force