Not surprisingly, Jesus Bernal picked the first weekend of July in 1981 as the time of attack: the weekend Fidel would finally fall. In Little Havana, the air filled with intrigue and jubilation.
But not for long. On July 4, 1981, a low-flying DC-3 cargo plane dumped six metric tons of anti-Castro leaflets on the resort city of Kingston, Jamaica. The townspeople were baffled because the literature was printed in Spanish; only the words Castro and syphilis seemed to ring a bell among some Jamaicans. One of the leaflets was shown to the island’s prime minister, who immediately cabled Fidel Castro to express sorrow over the president’s unfortunate illness.
Later, under scornful grilling by the comandante, Jesus Bernal admitted that no, he’d never studied aerial navigation at Dartmouth. Bernal argued that it had been an honest mistake—from thirteen thousand feet, Kingston didn’t look that different from Havana. Then Jesus had flashed his trump card: a copy of the New York Times. Three paragraphs, page 15a, in the International News roundup: Tourist Bus Damaged by Falling Air Cargo.
But the comandante and his men were not mollified: Jesus Bernal was purged forever from the First Weekend in July Movement.
“I know all about the bombs,” Viceroy Wilson said as they drove to Miami, several years later. “You’re just doing this to redeem yourself.”
“Ha! I am a hero to all freedom fighters.”
“You’re a pitiful fuck-up,” Wilson said.
“Look who’s talking, goddamn junkie spook.”
“What you say?”
Thank God the music was up so loud.
“Nothing,” Jesus Bernal said. “You missed the damn exit.” He was getting mad at Viceroy Wilson. “You never even said thanks.”
“Thanks for what?” Wilson asked from behind his sunglasses.
“For slicing that guy back in the swamp when he tried to strangle you.”
Wilson laughed. “A mosquito, man, that’s all he was.”
“You looked pretty uptight when that mosquito grabbed your neck. Your eyeballs almost popped out of your chocolate face, that little mosquito was squeezing so hard.”
“Sheee-iiit.”
“Yeah, you owe me one, compadre.”
“You’re the one should be thanking me. You been waitin’ your whole Cuban life to stab somebody in the back and now you did it. Guess that makes you a man, don’t it? Say, why don’t you call up your old dudes and see if they’ll take you back.” Viceroy Wilson grinned nastily. “Maybe they’ll make you minister of switchblades.”
Jesus Bernal scowled and mumbled something crude in Spanish. “I spit on their mothers,” he declared. “If they got on their knees I wouldn’t go back. Never!”
This was a total lie: Jesus Bernal yearned to abandon Skip Wiley’s circus and rejoin his old gang of dedicated extortionists, bombers, and firebugs. In his heart Jesus Bernal believed his special talents were being wasted. Whenever he thought about Wiley’s crazy plan he got a sour stomach that wouldn’t go away. Somehow he couldn’t visualize the masses ever mobilizing behind El Fuego; besides, if Wiley had his way, there’d be no masses left to mobilize—they’d all be heading North. These doubts had begun the day Ernesto Cabal hanged himself; guilt was a deadly emotion for a stouthearted terrorist, but guilt is what Jesus Bernal felt. He didn’t feel particularly good about feeding strangers to crocodiles, either. It wasn’t that the Cuban sympathized with gringo tourists, but Wiley’s peculiar method of murder did not seem like the kind of political statement Las Noches de Diciembre ought to be making. And if nothing else, Jesus Bernal considered himself an expert on political statements.
“This is the place,” Viceroy Wilson announced.
Great, thought Jesus Bernal. He wished Wiley would just let him alone with the typewriter and plastique.
Wilson parked the car in front of a two-story office building on Biscayne Boulevard at Seventy-ninth. A sign out front said: “Greater Miami Orange Bowl Committee.”
“Comb your hair,” Wilson grumbled.
“Shut up.”
“You look like a damn Marielito.”
“And you look like my father’s yard man.”
The lady at the reception desk didn’t like the looks of either of them. “Yes?” she said with a polite Southern lilt unmistakable in its derision.
“We’re here about the advertisement,” Viceroy Wilson explained, shedding his Carreras.
“Yes?”
“The ad for security guards,” Jesus Bernal said.