Richard Bratton's Mission to Cuba

The phone rang and Richard, a muscular, good-looking, black haired middle-age man answered the phone. "Hello" he said. The voice on the phone said "Are you ready?" Richard replied, "Yes, as ready as I'll ever be." The voice responded: "23:00 hours at the designated point of departure." And the phone went dead.

Richard went to his closet and took an old all leather bag and filled it with underwear, field glasses, swimming suits, toiletries, family photos, two Stuart Woods's books and magazines. He added his Canadian passport and the EPI ID tags. He also filled a folding Samsonite travel bag with two light weight suits, some dress shirts, polo shirts, two Hawaiian shirts, some jeans, one pair of dress shoes, one pair of Nikes and some sandals. He then placed his 38 Smith and Wesson revolver, along with a box of bullets he had kept in the office safe located in the den of his Bethesda, MD home, into the leather bag.

He also checked his briefcase where he had stored several files, university documents and student tests to be graded. He also included a small AM-FM radio with short-wave capabilities, an IBM laptop with coding and decoding message capabilities, and a late model IPhone. He also included a copy of his contract with EPI – Canada's Edmonton Polytechnic Institute – a one year contract to conduct research on Cuban methodology of raising coffee and sugar cane plants, as well as schemes for crossbreeding systems related to plants' care and growth, harvesting and collection of beans, and sugar cane stems.

The contract also called for study of the refining of sugar, marketing and export volume of these products. The contract showed that Richard was a graduate of Edmonton EPI in 1953 with a Master Degree in Agricultural Business (Economics, Finance, Marketing, public policy and science topics). He also had a degree in Computer Sciences from Ottawa's University. Richard was listed as an EPI Adjunct Professor, specializing in research. This was the CIA cover he'd use in Cuba. The agency had constructed a background file on Richard they felt it would stand the most intense scrutiny and vetting by Cuban authorities.

In his real life, Richard was a career CIA operative born in Dearborn, MI of immigrant parents of Canadian citizenship. Richard was an expert in recruiting spies and running clandestine rogue operations from sabotage, to misinformation, to other means of debilitating enemy governments. After years of training and intelligence undercover work in different countries, he had returned to Canada to live with a close relative. Later he enrolled at the University of Edmonton to prepare for the mission he was now assigned to implement in the surroundings of the city of Cienfuegos, Cuba.

He examined his Canadian passport issued in Ottawa, Canada on July 13, 1993 to Prof. Richard Julien Bratton, born in Halifax, N.S., April 14, 1951. A Cuban entry visa was affixed to the passport issued August 22, 1993, designation: cultural/university researcher visa issued by the Cuban Embassy in Ottawa, signed by Jose Miguel Martinez Machado, Consular Officer.

Ricardo sat at the end of his bed and reviewed in his mind the briefing received from his Control, Bob Massey, a CIA Special Operations Officer. Massey wasted no time. "Your mission is of the most importance and, it will be a very dangerous assignment. Your job will be to identify the location of what we believe are concrete silos concealed under coffee and sugar plantations throughout the Cienfuegos a