Spycraft - Melton [151]
Searches of cells, called requisa, were frequent. Following an attempted escape by one of the prisoners, the authorities moved all 1,400 men to the ground floor to stand naked in a semicircle, while their cells were searched. “We were there all day and if you lifted your head up, they made you lie facedown in this gunk on the floor,” said Andy. “And people were defecating, taking leaks because we were there for fourteen hours with necks bowed and that was very painful. It got dark and the center tower was lit with what looked like 3,200 bulbs, and that was the only light in the circular. They had all the guards with Czech carbines, a box magazine, and a flip-out bayonet that fit along the stock on the side. The guards, young kids, were nervous, too. All of a sudden, we heard them chamber rounds. The prisoners were tired, and many started crouching. We said we aren’t going to cower like that, we’re Americans. We were the only three standing, but if they started shooting, we’d be the first to get hit.”
Riots over food and fights were common. When one hunger strike produced better rations, a second was organized. The response to this second protest was swift. Military personnel with bayonets were brought in and a requisa included throwing the contents of cells down from the tiers to the floor below while trigger-happy guards sent shots ricocheting through the facility to intimidate and control the prisoners.29
Suicides, as the three would soon learn, were routine. Prisoners would climb over the railing on the fifth floor and jump to their death. One day, when a newspaper astrologer named Dr. Carbell, who was serving two years for predicting Castro’s downfall, started to climb over the railing, Wally and Andy pulled him back to safety. “The Cubans all stepped back because they were afraid of being linked with him. Andy and I moved fast and managed to grab him,” recalled Wally. “He was educated somewhere in Europe and spoke with a cultured accent. He was also overweight and filthy as hell.”
An American soldier of fortune, Richard Allen Pecoraro, had been swept up with anti-Castro plotters. Prison life drove Pecoraro mad; living in filth he huddled alone in his cell. Occasionally Cuban prisoners would come by and poke him with sticks, eliciting an animal growl. The techs befriended Pecoraro, a fellow American, cleaned him up, and brought him into one of their cells. They found a Cuban psychiatrist among the prison population who agreed to analyze the American through an interpreter. Eventually, they were able to get a supply of Valium shipped in from the outside for Pecararo.
The prisoners most acclimated to incarceration were the common thieves. One trick the thieves showed the political prisoners was how to smuggle contraband into the circular. Guards at the prison’s front door often slept, and trash was piled up among the high weeds surrounding the structures. With contraband hidden by friends in the weeds just beyond the walls, two prisoners would sneak out and walk around the perimeter of the circular in opposite directions to conduct countersurveillance. From inside a cell, a matchbox propelled via a slingshot-type device fashioned by the prisoners would fall at the feet of one of the men on the outside. He would then pretend to bend down to tie his shoelace and tie the newspaper or other contraband to the line to be reeled in.
To pass the time, the techs made a Monopoly board and taught fellow prisoners the game. “Wally had a bunch of Cuban friends who regularly came in to use our Monopoly set,” remembered Andy. “And one day all the pieces came flying out of the cell and there was a lot of shouting. What happened was, Ernesto, a civil engineer who built the tunnels in downtown Havana, landed where someone had about four hotels.