Spycraft - Melton [155]
“We got the chief chemist from Bacardi, who was in the lockup with us, and we got some of the white lightning, handed it to him, and asked his professional opinion,” said Wally. “He said, ‘Yeah, man, this is good 95 proof.’ He took the gallon of alcohol and disappeared. Three days later, we’re all standing around, leaning over the edge, smoking cigarettes and talking about this and that, and he comes over and hands me a cup. I look at it, nice appearance. I taste it, and goddamn, it’s good Courvoisier. I asked him how he got the color. ‘Shoe polish,’ he said.”
The techs also improvised hand grenades. Americano was sent back down into the utility tunnel for some blasting caps and a small quantity of TNT. Melting down the TNT in a double boiler, they poured the liquefied explosive into condensed milk cans filled with nails, glass, and anything else that would serve as shrapnel. Blasting caps were attached to the top along with a length of homemade fuse.
Fuses for the grenades were created out of match heads ground into powder and impregnated into cloth. Andy, the true engineer among the three, set up a test program. A tech stood on the fifth floor, lit a fuse, and threw it over the side. A cooperating prisoner below would pick it up without attracting the guards’ attention and report how much of the fuse was burned. Eventually, the techs determined that three inches of fuse would burn in about twenty seconds before igniting the blasting cap.
Although day-to-day life in prison did not improve significantly, these acts of defiance—building the radio, defusing the explosives, creating a small arsenal—encouraged and boosted morale among the techs and like-minded prisoners.
The TSD techs were helpless observers in the fall of 1962 when tensions between Cuba, the United States, and the Soviet Union escalated into an international nuclear crisis. An overflight of Cuba by an Agency U-2 in June indicated the Cubans were preparing for installation of surface-to-air missiles, although no missiles were seen.34 Subsequently, U.S. intelligence observed both military advisors and equipment arriving in Cuba at unprecedented rates. U-2 overhead photography continued to confirm activity during September, including evidence that Soviet short- and intermediate-range missiles were about to be introduced on the island.
President Kennedy issued a national military alert on October 19 and addressed the world on October 22, explaining that the USSR and Cuba had conspired to install missile bases with the purpose “to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.”35 The threat of an international nuclear confrontation continued until October 28 when the Soviets agreed to remove their missiles from Cuba.
The world breathed a sigh of relief that nuclear war had been avoided, and on Christmas Day 1962 word began to circulate that a prisoner exchange was in the works. On March 16, 1963, James B. Donovan visited the prison. A New York-based lawyer specializing in insurance, Donovan (no relation to OSS General William Donovan) had served in the OSS as general counsel and then as a member of the U.S. prosecution team during the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals.36 In the years that followed, Donovan kept a hand in the intelligence business and at the request of the New York Bar Association, defended Soviet spy Rudolph Abel, then, several years later, negotiated Abel’s exchange for U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers.37
By the time Donovan arrived at the prison, he had already bartered the release of the Cuban members of the 2506 Assault Brigade and was optimistic about his chances for negotiating the release of Wally, Dave, and Andy. “Donovan came down to see us and brought his son,” Andy recalled. “We understood he was someone Castro apparently trusted not to attempt to undermine the Cuban government.