such a feeble excuse, not after three months work. And in any case my final destination was La Paz, not Prague. Again, Masetti said nothing.
Leaving tropical Cuba and landing in the frozen wastes of Prague airport was like waking up as a dung beetle. Papito Serguera was aware of this and was waiting for us with a van full of winter clothes and boots. He drove us for an hour out of the beautiful city to a summer tourist hotel, for government or party members no doubt, beside Lake Slapy, buried under half a metre of snow. The hotel was closed, as was to be expected, but was looked after by a family of caretakers. While a young Czech who worked at the Cuban Embassy filled in all the forms, a beautiful twenty-year-old pushing a cart loaded with bedclothes, signalled to us to follow her. She showed us to our rooms. Doubles for Hermes and Leonardo, Federico and Miguel, and as luck would have it, singles for Masetti and myself. Furry was staying in Prague with the Havana sugar mission, so he left with Serguera. We had a planning meeting and got quickly acquainted with the Czech national miracle: beer. Masetti decreed permanent activity to stop us getting soft through lack of exercise, and this meant an extra job for me: interpreting without language.
I went to ask the girl about meal times and maps of the region. She was called Zlata. Our only common language was drawing. There was paper and pencil on the reception counter and we invented an extraordinary language. I drew a clock and a plate of food, separated by a question mark. She wrote the hour. I drew a rising sun and a steaming cup of coffee. She counted the time on my fingers. This became our means of communication: it was foolproof. Zlata lent us a scale map of paths and villages round the frozen lake. We would choose a house a few kilometres away and set off after breakfast. In this way, we kept much fitter than in Cuba even. The winter kit we had been lent was good and we could walk through deep snow. By adding a few kilometres every day, we were soon reaching the furthest villages. They were small, never more than a dozen houses and barns, but always with a good tavern where, by drawing a picture of steaks, chicken legs, cauldrons hanging over fires and spoons filling soup plates, we created a good atmosphere and, between toasts and hugs, ate some wonderful stews washed down with the best beer in the world. We would return to our hotel sated, and exhausted.
These daily manoeuvres aroused official suspicion and soon reached embassy ears. Perhaps we had unwittingly set off local intelligence’s nervous system. We had come across an area of woodland fenced off by metallic sheeting and barbed wire, in the middle of which stood a solid wooden tower with a metal thing on top pointing at the sky. Federico examined it and declared it to be a ‘trig point’, of geographical and military interest. The last thing we wanted was to upset the Warsaw Pact. Back at the hotel (this strange exclusive complex at our disposal), we dined like red princes, waited on particularly solicitously.
Papito Serguera appeared like a wet blanket with the news that we had to restrict our walks. We could have argued that our ‘innocent holiday’ was a reward, or even R&R, but Masetti chose to take us back to Prague. He was impatient with Havana’s silence, and wanted them to know. The tough marches through the snow were over. Our group split up, with Masetti and Furry going to a hotel in the centre, and the rest of us to the Hotel Intercontinental out near the airport. Every morning a tram from in front of the hotel left us in Wenceslas Square, in the heart of the old city.
We began to feel trapped. Time passed with no news of further plans. Masetti’s temperament could not stand anything underhand, any whiff of a set-up, and he unloaded his frustration by harassing his Cuban contacts. He didn’t like grumbling alone, and since he had got used to discussing things with me – or rather talking at me – I had many sleepless nights. But I was an obliging witness to his decisions.
After the group left on the morning tram, Masetti asked me to go to his hotel to help decode the messages he had been sending and receiving from Havana. He appeared to have done nothing else since we had arrived. Masetti’s antennae, sharpened by being manoeuvred out of Prensa Latina by the old guard Cuban communists, suspected a deliberate about-turn in Havana, or even a desire to abandon the plans altogether, over and above the agreement made with Che, now his sole point of contact. However, he had to acknowledge that Che’s huge workload might cause him to lose sight of how the project was doing. And don’t forget this was not a government plan but Che’s personal request for collaboration from a state facing immense difficulties. For practical reasons, both we and Che were reliant on the Cuban intelligence services, and communications were in the hands of a circle of operators with no political autonomy, or perhaps too much: time would tell. The return messages always recommended patience, but gave no timetable. Masetti wanted to take a step sideways and break our dependence on Cuba, at least while we were waiting. This was not easy in a ‘socialist camp’ country. We needed a more revolutionary base.
One night in his hotel, in the early hours, after a long diatribe questioning the role of Barbaroja Piñeira as a presumed saboteur serving Fidel’s prudence (which I found logical, even probable), Masetti decided to stop messing about and get alternative help from his Algerian friends. I slept in an armchair. By morning he was ready to leave and we sorted out his ticket and visa. By midday, he was on the flight to Algiers. He had sent a cable prior to departure and, when the plane stopped in Rome, his Algerian visa was waiting for him. Running Prensa Latina, he had got used to moving between countries on the spur of the moment. The technique, he told me, was to not get stuck anywhere. Just take the first flight in the right, or approximately right, direction, and keep sending telegrams. Every country had a telegraph office. Three days later, he was back in Prague with an open and unconditional offer of help for our group, a personal offer from the triumphant leaders of the Algerian Revolution.
In a significant and appreciative gesture, Ahmed Ben Bella, the Algerian president, and Houari Boumedienne, his defence minister, had met Masetti at the airport in Algiers. It was Masetti who had originally broken the barrier of ignorance separating the Cuban Revolution from a people facing Europe’s largest army in a cruel struggle for their freedom. He had penetrated the French defences on the Tunisian border with members of the National Liberation Front (FLN) whom he had contacted in Tunis, and reached the mountain headquarters of the leader of the rebel forces, just as he had done all those years before in the Sierra Maestra with Fidel. He had asked Boumedienne how Cuba could help them. ‘With weapons’, the Algerian had replied. Masetti retraced his steps to Havana, talked to Che and Fidel, and on the basis of his detailed report, Fidel had said: ‘There’s a Cubana flight to Europe this morning, be on it. Ask Boumedienne where he wants the weapons sent.’ Without sleeping, and almost without breathing, Masetti flew back. A ship loaded with enough weapons for a battalion left Havana for Algeria. The ship’s captain received a telegram giving its destination while at sea. Masetti was one of that special breed of men, as Che had once said of Frank País. Not for nothing were they friends.
We made hasty preparations to leave Prague for Algiers, with a stop in Paris on the way. We still had our same documents. I bought a bottle of bleach and some cotton wool. I tested various strengths and applied it to my hair. Nothing happened. Then, suddenly, my hair lit up like a light bulb and turned an angry yellow. My face looked like a mask beneath it, and I had to dye my eyebrows to compensate. Masetti, whose humour was pretty dark, said we looked like a cabaret troupe, complete with transvestite. Passport controls were not as rigorous in those days as they are now, so visual details were very important. At the best of times, a flight from Prague to Paris would be expected to be carrying a cargo of potential spies coming to infiltrate the ‘free’ world. Getting through immigration was where the thin bit of our thread could snap. I let the group pass before I stood in line. The gendarme looked at my ridiculous dyed hair, stamped my passport and handed it back to me, saying ‘Allez, allez …’.
It was 30th December 1962. We arrived in the country I had dreamed of when I was an adolescent. In my eyes, it was not a new city. I had just been slow to open them. The bus from Orly dropped us at Les Invalides, and a huge taxi took us to a hotel a few blocks away along the Seine: the Palais d’Orsay, at the station of the same name. On the other side of the river were the Tuileries Gardens, with the Louvre to the right. When I opened the blind in my room, the Eiffel Tower was to the left.
The
