Authors: Ross Sidor
The fact that
Durante even mentioned that implied a threat, the Viper realized. She’d need to
discard her Venezuelan-supplied travel documents.
“As another sign
of good faith, and hopefully to discourage you,” Durante continued, “I will
also tell you that according to signals intelligence provided by the Russians, the
Americans know you are coming, and they are already looking for you, with help
from their loyal Colombian dogs. The intelligent thing to do would be to abort
and forget about all of this, but I know you will not do that.”
Russia had
recently re-opened the Cold War-era Lourdes SIGINT station near Havana, once the
largest signals intelligence facility in the world. Over the past forty-eight
hours, Lourdes observed a surge in message traffic amongst American embassies,
CIA bases, and SOUTHCOM facilities pertaining to the Viper, and the Russians
had shared this information with Caracas.
Durante studied
Arianna Moreno closely for several seconds but was unable to gauge her
reaction. “Do you understand the situation?”
The Viper fought
to contain her vitriol. She didn’t give a damn if she ever returned to
Venezuela or if SEBIN threw her to the wolves. But it was the principal of the
matter. At that moment, she wanted badly to slice Durante’s throat open.
Unfortunately
the worst part of it was that she still needed his help.
“Once my
business here is through, you will never see me again.”
In beautiful, sunny Havana, the first
session of the Colombian peace talks was underway after Operation Phoenix. ANIC
sources warned that members of FARC’s Secretariat had been in contact with
representatives from Caracas the previous week and intended to use public
outcry over the military raid in Venezuela to their advantage, to make threats
and demand further concessions from the Colombian government or, if the peace
talks broke down completely, attribute blame to President Santos as an
imperialist warmonger.
Among those in
attendance, heading the delegation of the Republic of Colombia was President
Santos’ deputy interior minister, a forty-nine year old former lawyer and
career diplomat who was widely criticized by the media for his apparent lack of
interest in the peace talks and his unwillingness to give any leeway to FARC’s
demands. From the deputy interior minister’s perspective, the point of these
talks wasn’t political reconciliation, but to negotiate the terms of FARC’s
surrender, demobilization, and disarmament.
The deputy
interior minister was delayed that morning on his way to the Palace of
Conventions because President Santos had instructed him to first stop at the
Colombian embassy to see the ambassador and the ANIC station chief. The latter
presented him with a note in a sealed envelope and instructed him to discretely
pass it to Antonio Lascarro, the chief of the FARC delegation. The deputy
interior minister was vaguely briefed on the content of the note and assured
that it was a matter of the highest national security.
Fifteen minutes
later, the deputy interior minister left the embassy in his official car for
the ten minute drive to the Palace of Conventions, the massive, square-shaped
glass and concrete building one mile south of the Straits of Florida where the
National Assembly of People’s Power, the Cuban legislative branch, convenes.
The building’s modern look was a stark contrast to the fifty year old cars
driving past on Calle 145, belching black and gray exhaust into the air.
Although only
members of the Colombian and FARC delegations would be allowed inside the
locked, climate-controlled conference room, the hallways and reception floors
of the Palace of Conventions was filled with representatives from other
countries with a stake in Colombian politics.
There were many
players with an interest in the outcome of the Colombian peace talks. Colombia
has massive reserves of oil and natural gas, production of which has been
stymied by the ongoing conflict, allowing Venezuela’s and Ecuador’s own
petroleum industries to prosper in the past decade. There was further concern
over the integrity of shared borders and the future of certain FARC factions,
like Commander Dios’s intransigent 34
th
Front, that were expected to
oppose any ceasefire or reconciliation.
As a result, amongst
the diplomats and reporters from Ecuador, Venezuela, Spain, the United States,
and elsewhere, there were also intelligence officers, as there invariably were
at any diplomatic function. This in turn drew the attention of Cuba’s Directorate
of General Intelligence, which was also responsible for providing security for
the Colombian peace talks.
Modeled after
the Soviet-era KGB, DGI is one of the most professional and active intelligence
agencies in Latin America. Throughout the eighties, DGI was heavily involved in
communist revolutionary and insurgent movements in Bolivia, Honduras,
Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Puerto Rico, while taking part in Soviet
interventions in Yemen, Angola, Zaire, and Mozambique. DGI remains active in
the US, where it had compromised or bribed a number of reporters, government
employees, and congressman, resulting in the pro-Castro American news reports,
legislation, and policies.
As security
officers escorted him to the conference room, the Colombian minister ignored
the questions reporters threw at him. Questions concerning the army raid into
Venezuela and how he expected that to affect the peace talks. He gave reporters
little attention and, when he did, his words were often derisive, accounting
for the less than favorable portrayal of him in Latin American media.
The DGI men
closed and locked the doors behind the deputy interior minister after he
entered the conference room.
Today’s session began
with the usual formal handshakes exchanged amongst the members of the opposing
delegations. Then everyone took their seats, one delegation seated across from
the other at the table positioned in the center of the vast hall.
The Colombians
thought the Secretariat members looked out of place, clean shaven, in ties and
business suits, exchanging their jungle fatigues and rugged guerilla fighter
look for the façade of respectability and political legitimacy.
Seated at the
ends of the table were the Cuban mediators, one of whom was in actuality an
intelligence officer reporting directly to Raul Castro after each session.
The air
conditioning kept the room’s temperature at just below seventy, to allow the
negotiators to keep cool and maintain composure during the often heated
discussions. A table against the far wall had water coolers, plastic cups,
muffins, and fruit, plus notepads and pens.
These talks have
long since grown tiresome for the Colombian diplomats in attendance, having
dragged on for over three years. The Colombian government accused FARC of
intentionally dragging out the talks to protect senior FARC commanders, who
were guaranteed safety from Colombian security forces while in Havana and in
transit to and from the conferences. Meanwhile, as the talks took place,
government troops continued to engage FARC forces across Colombia.
There are six
main topics on the peace talk’s agenda: land reform of rural territory
controlled by FARC, political participation and rights of disarmed insurgents,
total FARC disarmament, repatriation for victims’ families, and cocaine
production and trafficking, as well as the implementation of these items. Once
the terms and conditions in all of these areas are agreed upon, the plan would
go to Colombian voters for ratification.
The tedium that
morning was offset by the excitement that came with carrying out a task,
however small, on behalf of the intelligence service, a first for the deputy
interior minister. He could hardly wait to tell his wife when he returned to
Bogotá.
After spending
too long over thinking and planning how to pass the note, the deputy interior
minister finally slipped the sealed envelope across the table to Antonio
Lascarro.
The FARC
negotiator accepted the note with a befuddled expression and examined the
envelope in his hand. When he looked up at the deputy interior minister across
from him, the Colombian official’s focus was set on his copy of the morning’s
agenda, his face bored and impassive as if nothing had happened.
Lascarro tore
the envelope open, withdrew the folded piece of paper, and read the text
printed on it.
“Inform Rodrigo
Echeverri that we are fully aware of Plan Estragos and the intended use of SA-24.
We will hold Senor Echeverri personally responsible for any action taken by the
Viper against the Republic of Colombia or her allies. Order the Viper to stand
down at once and have her delivered into the custody of government authorities
or the negotiations are over and there will exist a state of total war. There
will be no quarter granted to anyone wearing the FARC banner. We will hunt down
every last member of the Secretariat and the Central High Command and execute
them where our soldiers find them.”
The color
drained from Lascarro’s face.
Rodrigo
Echeverri is the commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia. He is more commonly known by the
nom de guerre
Timoshenko,
taken after the famous Red Army general who commanded Soviet forces during
World War II. In 2011, Echeverri/Timoshenko replaced Alfonso Cano, who was
killed by the Colombian army, as the man at the very top of the FARC chain of
command. Because of his involvement in the production and trafficking of cocaine
to the United States, the US State Department continued to offer a $5 million
reward for his capture.
Timoshenko had
perhaps more at stake in the peace talks than anyone else. Without a
reconciliation offering amnesty to FARC leaders, his options for the future
were limited to death by Colombian government troops or life imprisonment in an
American maximum security penitentiary, whichever came first.
Four hours
later, after the session adjourned for the day, Lascarro and the other members
of his delegation left the Palace of Conventions without stopping to make a
statement and espouse the standard political rhetoric to the waiting reporters.
Escorted by a uniformed police security detail, they walked the short distance
to the Palco Hotel.
Lascarro called
his DGI contact and said he needed to speak to him in person right away.
An hour later
the Cuban intelligence officer and the FARC delegates gathered in Lascarro’s
suite. He showed them the ominous note from the deputy interior minister.
The other FARC
delegates knew the Viper was General Andrés Flores’s top assassin, but the DGI
officer was perhaps most familiar with her. After all, his service helped
create the Viper. The Cubans were likewise already aware of Iranian arms sales
to FARC brokered through Caracas. But no one present in Lascarro’s suite was
able to make sense of the context of the note and the Colombian government’s
threats.
As Timoshenko’s
personal emissary at the peace talks, Antonio Lascarro was a prime target of
the American, British, and Colombian intelligence services in Havana.
Two weeks ago,
during a security sweep in Lascarro’s suite, the DGI discovered covert audio
surveillance gear manufactured by an American firm known to do business with
the CIA.
The previous
month, another member of the FARC delegation bedded an attractive young Spanish
reporter, who he later caught inserting a specially modified USB drive into his
laptop to spike his hard drive. The DGI quietly picked the reporter up and
detained her for a couple days before declaring her
persona non grata
and expelling her from the country. The incident was kept quiet, but there was
no doubt the woman was from Spain’s National Intelligence Center.
Consequently,
Lascarro turned to the Cubans to securely transmit messages to Timoshenko, who
did not use computers or cell phones. Far too often he’d seen how electronic
fingerprints became the undoing of the revolutionaries in the Middle East, and
it had also led to the downfall of more than one FARC commander.
Lascarro composed
the text of a message to relay to Timoshenko. He coded the message using an old
school method known as a book cipher. The correspondents simply substitute the
plaintext of the message with the words from a book each party owns (in this
case it was
The Power of Blood
by Miguel de Cervantes; 2005 Whitaker
House expanded edition) in a pre-determined pattern known only to the
correspondents. It was an additional security measure Lascarro took to prevent
the Cubans from reading his communications with Timoshenko, as well as a
precaution in case the courier on the ground was intercepted by Colombian
agents.
Later at DGI
headquarters, which houses a modern array of secure signals and electronic
gear, thanks to FAPSI, Russia’s SIGINT agency, he cabled the message to the DGI
station at the Cuban embassy in Bogotá.
There, the
message was decrypted, leaving the actual substance of Lascarro’s message coded
by book cipher and unintelligible to anyone in the world other than Timoshenko.
Immediately after receiving the message, the Bogotá-based DGI officer texted
his FARC contact with the code word for requesting a meeting. Upon leaving the
Cuban embassy, he conducted an expertly crafted surveillance detection run, to
find and then lose his separate Colombian and American tails, before completing
the drive to Zipaquira, thirty miles north of Bogotá, where he transferred the
coded message to the FARC courier. The message was handed off three more times
before finally reaching Timoshenko at his jungle hideout on the Colombian-Venezuelan
border the following night. Outraged and confused, Timoshenko immediately
summoned General Andrés Flores.