{"id":1901,"date":"2026-09-09T06:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T06:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationallogisticspost.com\/?p=1901"},"modified":"2026-09-09T06:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T06:10:10","slug":"scott-mckays-the-necessary-men-episode-9-resuscitation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationallogisticspost.com\/?p=1901","title":{"rendered":"Scott McKay’s The Necessary Men<\/i> \u2014 Episode 9: Resuscitation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome back to the world of Mike Holman.<\/em><\/p>

If this is your first stop, here\u2019s what you need to know: Mike Holman is the independent journalist, podcaster, and inveterate maker-of-enemies at the center of Scott McKay\u2019s bitingly satirical thriller series \u2014 four novels (so far) chronicling one man\u2019s habit of ending up in the middle of the very stories the rest of the media is too scared, too compromised, or too incurious to tell. Catch up on the whole series, read past episodes, and find links to every book at \u201cThe Mike Holman Novels at\u00a0<\/em>The American Spectator,\u201d\u00a0and soon, see the video-novel version of this and the previous books at\u00a0MikeHolman.com.<\/em><\/p>

Read more 9\/11: Remembering the CIA\u2019s Failure to Protect America<\/a><\/p>

We\u2019re now serializing the fourth Mike Holman novel,\u00a0<\/em>The Necessary Men, right here at\u00a0<\/em>The American Spectator\u00a0\u2014 new episodes dropping every Wednesday and Saturday. The full book goes on sale September 26th at Amazon and the new\u00a0MikeHolman.com\u00a0site, and you can\u00a0pre-order a signed copy right now.<\/em><\/p>

Where we left off: A major obstacle to TODO\u2019s rise has been removed, Diego\u2019s tour through Eastern Cuba has gone big-time, and power is shifting more and more quickly.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>

Here are Chapters Seventeen and Eighteen of <\/em>The Necessary Men.<\/em><\/p>

\n

\"Black<\/figure>\n<\/p>

Chapter Seventeen<\/h2>

Lyford Cay, Bahamas \u2014 October 24, 2026<\/em><\/p>

I\u2019d managed to make my last trip to Gibara as part of the PGFI\/TODO project the second week of October. It was for the opening of Trent\u2019s cigar factory.<\/p>

There was a certain significance to that, because it was the first American capital investment in Cuba since Fidel seized power in 1959. There had only been one previous attempt at that, which was a tractor company out of Alabama that had looked into building a factory in Mariel during Omobba\u2019s last year in office \u2013 the Cubans ultimately rejected them.<\/p>

Nobody was rejecting Trent and Mariano. Even without Cesar and his connections, the people nominally in charge in Cuba were anxious to make sure they had friends outside of the regime. And on the eastern side of the country? I wouldn\u2019t call it the Wild West, because the interesting part was that it was pretty peaceful as far as chaos went.<\/p>

Things were happening at an accelerating pace. While we\u2019d been grinding out the template for TODO takeovers in the 25 sites of the todosphere, which we ultimately were going to turn to Diego to be the frontman for, Diego had been building out his own management team with Pierce\u2019s help.<\/p>

And in Gibara on that windy, overcast day in early October, I got a first-hand look at what that was like.<\/p>

Here, I\u2019ll back up a bit and introduce somebody I\u2019d known for a while. Eddie Scarpetta was from Alabama, and he\u2019d been the chair of the Public Service Commission there. Eddie was a big proponent of nuclear energy, which came from the fact that he\u2019d been an engineer in the Navy and had crewed on nuclear submarines for 20 years before he got out and made his money. After he did his stint on the PSC in Alabama, Eddie had gone to work in Trumbull\u2019s first administration, spending the last year as the Secretary of Energy.<\/p>

Eddie had done some lobbying work since for Westinghouse and NuScale, trying to get DOE to move on approving modular nuclear reactors. But then he signed on to work for Pierce as the Vice President for Strategic Development at Sentinel Energy, which was Pierce\u2019s newest company.<\/p>

And Sentinel Energy had built a manufacturing plant along the Essequibo River in Guyana, which built modular nuclear reactors. This was Eddie\u2019s thing \u2013 he knew those reactors from his time in the Navy, and he knew they were big winners as something you could drop into a small town in the middle of nowhere that wasn\u2019t plugged into a national power grid, and you\u2019d immediately have enough juice to make it so living in that little town didn\u2019t mean primitive poverty.<\/p>

Sentinel Energy bought a couple of Japanese and Israeli modular reactor designs and improved them, and right around the time we started the Cuba project, they\u2019d quietly deployed a few of their products in some of the small out-of-the-way towns in Guyana. The results had been good. A couple of the larger reactors the plant had built were online at Liberty Point already. And Pierce was in negotiations with the government of Guyana to build a power station off a cluster of the reactors just outside Georgetown, the capital.<\/p>

You\u2019re probably starting to understand what was underlying some of the PGFI project in Cuba. Let me flesh it out some more.<\/p>

Eddie Scarpetta was on the flight with Trent, Mariano, and me into DMIA in Gibara. Because before Trent got to turn the ignition on the cigar factory in the building Che Guevara built and named for that Japanese communist who got turned into sushi, Eddie had a show to put on.<\/p>

I hadn\u2019t noticed it on my previous trip to Gibara, but right where the NR 221 became the Ronda de la Marina on the south edge of town, almost right where the airport access road was, they\u2019d built a small nondescript little power station with a switchyard. But what I could see as the King Air 350 flew over the Bahia de Gibara on its way to landing at the airport was that there was a big barge docked in the bay not far from the switchyard.<\/p>

\u201cThat\u2019s mine,\u201d said Scarpetta.<\/p>

And when Victor, my security guy who met us at the airport and served as our driver, picked us up at the airport and deposited us first at the switchyard, Scarpetta got to throw the switch and turn on the juice that two modular nukes on that barge were making.<\/p>

Which was several times the electricity those six Caterpillar diesel generators at the power station had provided to Gibara.<\/p>

There was now enough electric power generation in that town to sustain 15,000 people running central air conditioning nonstop, surfing the web all day on desktop computers, watching big-screen TV\u2019s 24\/7 and running automated factories on every street corner. Gibara was at that moment the most power-rich city in all of Cuba.<\/p>

And when Trent got to turn the lights on and welcome the workers to the new Colon Cigar Company, Scarpetta looked down the hill at the little wind farm on the coast north of Gibara.<\/p>

\u201cYou see that?\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s a press release. That\u2019s not a power system. These poor people finally have a power system.\u201d<\/p>

Trent\u2019s factory was actually two factories. He and Mariano had a compromise they\u2019d made with each other, and it was inspired by the compromise Stan and Sam Uribe had made.<\/p>

Trent\u2019s idea was to go capital-intensive. He said he was going to bring in state-of-the-art machinery and mass-produce the greatest cigars in the world. Mariano told him that\u2019s not how cigar-making works, that if you want the real thing, you have to hand-roll them with expert rollers \u2013 torcedores, they called them \u2013 and make them out of whole tobacco leaves. There was no way to automate that.<\/p>

Trent had gone everywhere trying to prove Mariano wrong, and then he finally listened to him when Mariano said it wasn\u2019t an either-or proposition.<\/p>

So they\u2019d taken half the factory floor and installed the machinery to make the mid-tier, reasonably-priced Cuban cigars \u2013 Colon Primas \u2013 they could flood the market with, and the other half they\u2019d used to build a suite of rolling rooms where the torcedores they\u2019d hired from all over Cuba \u2013 I didn\u2019t know there were elite craftsman cigar-rollers, but apparently there were \u2013 were sitting in super-comfortable chairs listening to classical music and history podcasts as they were rolling the Colon Conquistadores Trent and Mariano were going to sell at $30 a stick.<\/p>

Scarpetta was a cigar guy, so we hung around the factory long enough that Trent gave him the first box that came off the Conquistadores line.<\/p>

\n

\"Line<\/figure>\n<\/p>

What was less than awesome was the encounter I had at the factory with an old LCTC employee.<\/p>

I recognized him as the skinny thug who\u2019d been with Cabrillo when he\u2019d come up to me at the job fair. He said, in not the best English, that his name was Lido Garcia de Jesus and that I owed him a job.<\/p>

\u201cMy boss no here,\u201d he said. \u201cThey say he die in Panama.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cPanama can be dangerous,\u201d I told him. \u201cWhat I would suggest is that you get together with Diego Maceo\u2019s folks. I can introduce you to the mayor here; he can get you started.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI no live in Gibara,\u201d he said dismissively.<\/p>

I just shrugged. \u201cI don\u2019t have any jobs open right now,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m back home in Florida now. Mr. Maceo is running TODO in Cuba, and he\u2019s got an organization. I know they need people.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cYou no just send me away,\u201d said Lido, getting into my personal space.<\/p>

\u201cHey, hey,\u201d said Victor, stepping into Lido\u2019s grill. \u201cYou\u2019re gonna want to back off, pal.\u201d<\/p>

Lido did. But he wasn\u2019t done grousing.<\/p>

\u201cManuel Cabrillo!\u201d he said loudly. \u201c\u00a1Fue asesinado!\u201d<\/em><\/p>

That elicited a bunch of looks from the folks on the factory floor, who quickly turned back to their jobs.<\/p>

\u201cI have nothing to do with that,\u201d I said. \u201cBut I\u2019m pretty sure your boss had my friend Jack Gray killed, so don\u2019t ask me to cry for your guy Cabrillo. And your job interview skills absolutely suck, Lido.\u201d<\/p>

At that, he spat on the floor in front of me.<\/p>

Cesar, who was watching, hustled up to the confrontation with a pair of security guards. They rather rudely gave Lido the bum\u2019s rush.<\/p>

Then Eddie got his humidor and we were off to Vita, and the drive didn\u2019t take us long at all because Belcher had finished his 12-week road project in nine weeks. I ran into him at the port after a 15-minute drive that used to take more than an hour on the awful roads that previously connected Gibara and Vita.<\/p>

\u201cPretty freakin\u2019 awesome, huh?\u201d he said when we saw him. A large container ship was making its way to the dock, and Scarpetta was beaming as he watched it come.<\/p>

\u201cHow\u2019d you get this done so fast?\u201d I asked him.<\/p>

\u201cYou won\u2019t believe this, but we got a lot of help from our new friends at the Ej\u00e9rcito Oriental.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>

\u201cThe Army? I thought they were into blocking roads, not building them.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cWell, it depends on who\u2019s running the thing, as it turns out.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cYou made friends with that guy Mendoza?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cNope. I made friends with Colonel Rincon, who is Mendoza\u2019s adjutant. Rincon\u00a0is the new Mendoza.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI don\u2019t know what that means, Jason.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cIt seems that if you want to talk to Mendoza, who is nominally still in charge of the Eastern Army, you have to go and see him in the stockade.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cThey mutinied?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cYes, they did. And it turns out that the Army has some road-paving equipment and a whole lot of dudes with nothing to do, so Rincon said that if we\u2019d rent their equipment and pay a decent wage to their dudes, they\u2019d be happy to expedite our project. The Army, in a joint venture with us, is now bringing the Autopista Aroldis Chapman into Holguin from where we\u2019d ended it in Gibara.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cHoly shit,\u201d I said. \u201cThat\u2019s some development. But when the Army is essentially a massive corporation in its own right, I guess it\u2019s not a surprise.\u201d<\/p>

GAESA was the military\u2019s holding company. You\u2019d think that would mean it was a defense contractor, and you\u2019d be 100 percent wrong. GAESA didn\u2019t run the Army; it ran the money, tourism, the ports, the hard currency. That meant that once Rincon and the officers below him realized which way the wind was blowing, protecting the regime was a losing proposition for them. They had a business to sell, and they were selling it very reasonably \u2013 in return for a guarantee that they\u2019d be fine when the music stopped.<\/p>

\u201cYeah, well\u2026 the phone is ringing,\u201d Belcher was saying. \u201cI know you know the regime guys who run stuff \u2013 GAESA, ETECSA \u2013 are all calling. They\u2019re looking for jobs with TODO, and they\u2019re bringing real things with them.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cWe\u2019re actually going to have a big meeting in the Bahamas in two weeks about that,\u201d I said. \u201cDiego, Stan and Trent, Pierce, a bunch of the Cuban exiles, and some American corporate folks.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cAbout the repatriation problem, huh?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cYeah,\u201d I said. \u201cStan and Trent have a plan on paper. It seems pretty sound economics-wise. Politically, I don\u2019t know how well it plays.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cThe one thing I keep hearing from the locals,\u201d said Belcher, \u201cis that they worry they\u2019ll have escaped from communism only to go right back under the thumb of the aristocrats who ran off to Miami. They hate the idea of that.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cThe problem with every post-communist country I\u2019ve been to,\u201d Scarpetta offered, as he watched the ship dock, \u201cis that the commies fall, at least politically, but they end up with their hands on the means of production anyway. So you go from communism to oligarchy and everybody is still broke.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cThe good part is that there is a plan to do this differently,\u201d I said. \u201cAnd what comes off that boat of yours, Eddie, will pretty much change everything.\u201d<\/p>

Scarpetta nodded and smiled.<\/p>

They\u2019d been offloading trucks from ships at Vita for two weeks, and the receiving yard at the port looked like a very busy truck stop. But that day, they were offloading flatbed trailers with Eagle Model 1 reactors on them. Easily two dozen came off the ship, were hooked up to those semi-trucks, and took off for various nodes in the surrounding area.<\/p>

Scarpetta explained that an Eagle Model 1 was capable of generating seven megawatts of electricity, and it didn\u2019t need water coolant or anything like that. You set it down, hooked it up to the grid, and it was good for eight years\u2019 worth of enough power to cover the needs of 5,000 American homes.<\/p>

And 25,000 Cuban homes at their current usage rates.<\/p>

\u201cWe\u2019ll make more as we need to,\u201d Scarpetta said. \u201cBut later this week, we\u2019re offloading an Eagle Model 5, and that\u2019s the one going to Holguin.\u201d<\/p>

He noted that the Eagle Model 5 was capable of generating 1,200 megawatts of electricity. And there were five of them going into Cuba \u2013 in Holgu\u00edn, in Moa in the far east, in Sancti Sp\u00edritus in the middle of the country, and in La Coloma in the southwest and Bah\u00eda Honda just west of Havana. All were TODO towns. They\u2019d be the backbone of a whole new electric generation system in Cuba. When those went online, there would be enough electric power generation to put Cuba in the same neighborhood as Spain in per-household electricity usage.<\/p>

\u201cWhat about UNE?\u201d Belcher asked him.<\/p>

UNE, Uni\u00f3n El\u00e9ctrica de Cuba, was the Cuban electric utility. It ran a bunch of old fuel-oil power plants which were in horrendous shape; the whole country was generating less than 2,000 megawatts of power. For Cuba\u2019s nine and a half million people to have a standard of living in the neighborhood of what Americans had, they\u2019d need something on the order of 11,000 megawatts.<\/p>

\u201cWhat about them?\u201d Scarpetta said.<\/p>

\u201cI mean, it\u2019s not like GAESA, which the military owns. For example, this port is owned by GAESA, and they\u2019re basically willing to sell it to us. It\u2019s pretty much a game of musical chairs for these guys \u2013 if you don\u2019t sell what you control in exchange for a job or a piece of the action or something, you get left with nothing. But UNE is run by the Ministry of Energy and Mines. That\u2019s direct to Candela. They can\u2019t sell it. So, like\u2026\u201d<\/p>

\u201cFuck those guys,\u201d said Scarpetta. \u201cIf I get a chance, I\u2019m going to junk all of their shit and start over. Switchyards, substations, transmission lines\u2026 I\u2019ll appropriate that where I have to, but generation? Forget it. It\u2019s trash. We\u2019ll build a whole new system they can subscribe to with their TODO cards, and they\u2019ll have the cheapest electric rates in Latin America.\u201d<\/p>

He wasn\u2019t kidding. Pierce had circulated an email a few days before noting that at the generation cost, once the buildout of Cuba\u2019s power system was completed, he\u2019d be making a 31 percent profit margin with Sentinel Energy in the country charging three cents per kilowatt-hour. That was more than what Cuba\u2019s shitty electric utility was charging; something like 90 percent of the power users were paying almost nothing for electricity that was more theoretical than real. But among the countries in the Western Hemisphere that had an actual functioning power grid, Paraguay, which ran on hydroelectric power, was the cheapest at 4.8 cents.<\/p>

Pierce expected that once the word got out about what Sentinel Energy was going to do for the Cuban power grid, every manufacturer in the world would come calling in order to take advantage of the dirt-cheap electricity and the labor rates that would undercut China for a good while. Even marking up the juice for the large energy users to recoup the initial outlay and buildout costs, he\u2019d still come in as the cheapest power supply around.<\/p>

Which meant Cuba was in a position to absolutely clean China\u2019s clock as a low-cost manufacturer and supplier to the U.S. market. At least, once the political risk scaring capital away was neutralized.<\/p>

And Belcher noted that his contact from GAESA who\u2019d leased him the dock space at the port of Vita had told him he and his bosses really wanted to sit down with the folks from Sentinel Ports Management about putting together a deal. And not just for Vita.<\/p>

\u201cYou realize what he\u2019s doing,\u201d Belcher said.<\/p>

\u201cYes, I do,\u201d I said. \u201cPierce does good things. He does humanitarian things. But the things he does always make him stupid amounts of money.\u201d<\/p>

\n

\"Black<\/figure>\n<\/p>

When Diego was pitching in the Cuban Serie Nacional, the Santiago de Cuba Avispas \u2013 the Wasps \u2013 were his Holgu\u00edn team\u2019s biggest rivals. And that no-hitter he threw against Santiago was a heartbreaking moment for the folks there.<\/p>

That said, the year before, in 2001, Diego was pitching for the Cuban national team in the World Cup, in Santiago, against the Dominican Republic \u2013 which was as bitter a rivalry as there was in all of the sport.<\/p>

And he no-hit the Dominicans, who had a team full of current and future major leaguers. That was what really put Diego on the radar for the major league teams and set in motion the process that led to his defection and signing with the Red Sox and\u2026 well, history.<\/p>

So Diego was very much a prominent figure in Santiago. And the day after Trent\u2019s cigar factory opened, a bunch of us \u2013 Trent, Stan, Hal, Melissa, who\u2019d flown in for it, Marisol, Sam Uribe and the whole Uribe clan, and several others \u2013 hopped on a helicopter and flew in for his tour stop.<\/p>

From the standpoint of risk, this was a little like Holgu\u00edn. It was known that the people of Santiago were with Diego. We\u2019d seen pictures and videos galore of people writing TODO de Cuba in graffiti, along with other things, like Diego Salvador and BUENO, LA BALA, on walls, on streets and pavements and so forth. And the fact that the Army was on board meant there was a blanket of protection which said Diego\u2019s thing wasn\u2019t an outlaw cavalcade like how it had begun.<\/p>

Diego had been to a couple of the other larger cities in the East and had gotten a hero\u2019s welcome. For example, Moa, from the videos I\u2019d seen of his appearance there, was a rather garish display of palm fronds. I was starting to wonder whether Cuba\u2019s royal palm trees would survive this tour, but was told that the supply of fronds was all but endless.<\/p>

\u201cDon\u2019t be dumb, Mike,\u201d said Marisol.<\/p>

Even so, this was the second largest city in Cuba, and Diego had already given something akin to a religious experience to the fourth-largest. It was sort of now-or-never for the regime to do something about his tour. He\u2019d done nothing overt to indicate a political role in Cuba, though, so the physics of attacking him were\u2026 problematic.<\/p>

In other words, it was\u2026 mostly safe to go with Diego to Santiago de Cuba.<\/p>

So we choppered into Santiago, and Diego told me to stand close after he finished his speech.<\/p>

\u201cIf you\u2019re gonna write the book about all this,\u201d he said, \u201cyou should get a good look at what happens.\u201d<\/p>

He gave basically the same talk he\u2019d been giving \u2013 about family, the memories of Cuba, his longing for home, the wonderful life he\u2019d been able to live, and his desire to give back and to produce good things for his people.<\/p>

They ate it up. They loved him. And they all knew what lay under his words \u2013 it was a direct indictment of the regime for chasing off the people who wanted to do more than simply survive, a cry for freedom and prosperity for the Cuban people and a rejection of Communism for the stifling of faith, of love, of ideas that make life worth living.<\/p>

\u201cNo s\u00f3lo de pan vivir\u00e1 el hombre,\u201d<\/em> he said, and that blew up the crowd. \u201cNo man can live by bread alone.\u201d The way Diego worked that in was by talking about how happiness comes from being able to follow your dreams, and that isn\u2019t just about money. He said that he\u2019d gotten into his various businesses not so much because he wanted to make money but because he liked creating things and watching them thrive the way a gardener does.<\/p>

And of course, he expounded on how much he loved making La Bala Cerveza, which, not surprisingly, really got the crowd going. Diego had brought 1,000 kegs of La Bala to Santiago, and all of it was gone before it was over at that stadium.<\/p>

He didn\u2019t make a single explicit attack on communism, or the virulent brand of Marxism the Cuban Communist Party espoused. But the contempt for it was just underneath Diego\u2019s sentimentality. Everybody got that. It was exquisitely crafted. And I was told he wrote it himself, but I have no doubt Essie helped.<\/p>

And when Diego was done speaking from the stage in center field in that stadium, they set up a receiving line for him. A few thousand people, out of the fifty or sixty thousand who were in the stadium \u2013 it seated 35,000; almost that many were packed in like sardines standing on the field, and there were a whole lot more who stood outside the stadium and watched on the big TV\u2019s they\u2019d set up outside \u2013 lined up and Diego greeted every one of them.<\/p>

I\u2019ve never seen so many palm fronds in my life. And as we looked around, I asked Marisol if she was sure the trees weren\u2019t stripped bare.<\/p>

\u201cPsh,\u201d was her response.<\/p>

Most of the Santiagans coming to Diego in that receiving line had baseballs \u2013 or other things \u2013 for him to sign. A few offered words of appreciation. One old man who struggled to walk up to Diego held his hand tightly and said \u2013 and I managed to pick this up without Marisol translating it \u2013 \u201cYou can\u2019t deliver us from communism only to bring back los gusanos<\/em>. It would break our hearts.\u201d<\/p>

Los gusanos<\/em> literally translates as \u201cthe worms.\u201d It was a slur that Castro used to trash the landed gentry in Cuba the revolution chased off to Miami. I didn\u2019t get the impression the old man was a communist. I don\u2019t think he even realized how his characterization of the exiles sounded.<\/p>

I could sense Sam Uribe tensing up at that word.<\/p>

But how it registered to me was that this old guy had swallowed 67 years of regime propaganda and it just came out of him like sweat.<\/p>

Diego\u2019s reaction was interesting. He looked at the man intently and said, \u201cI understand what you\u2019re saying.\u201d<\/p>

And then he gave a self-deprecating smile. \u201cLos gusanos<\/em> are all my friends in Miami,\u201d he said with a chuckle, and the old man responded with a chuckle of his own. But then he grew serious again and said, \u201cBut I understand what you\u2019re saying. Many of them want to come home, and they have the right to. And Cuba needs them. But not at the expense of the people. We have to find a way.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cGod bless you,\u201d said the old man, who kissed Diego on the cheek.<\/p>

The party secretary in Santiago was in the receiving line. He didn\u2019t ask for a private meeting. He stood in line with the regular folks. And when he got to Diego, he introduced and identified himself, and he said, \u201cSe\u00f1or Maceo, I apologize for what this government made you do. It was a terrible mistake, and it made miserable an entire people. I will bear that shame for life.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cYour life is not over,\u201d said Diego. \u201cMaybe we\u2019ll have a new chapter together and this baggage can be left by the side of the road.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI\u2019m at your disposal,\u201d said the party boss of Cuba\u2019s second largest city.<\/p>

\n

\"Black<\/figure>\n<\/p>

After a few days home with PJ, who was almost at the point of bed rest with the pregnancy and very much enjoying having a husband with a guilty conscience to make a waiter out of, I was on a plane again.<\/p>

At the James Bond villa in Lyford Cay, there was a giant confab planned with representatives of the top 10 American corporate claimants against the Cuban regime, along with some of the biggest Cuban exile claimants who were mostly in Miami. It had been estimated that, all told, the Castros had stolen some $9 billion worth of private property from people and companies both foreign and domestic when they overthrew the Batista government and turned the place into a workers\u2019 paradise; absolutely everyone recognized that the regime couldn\u2019t possibly pay that back. Not when the present value of the theft, counting 67 years of accrued interest, was over $320 billion, which was more than 30 times the country\u2019s GDP.<\/p>

And per U.S. law, they\u2019d have to in order to have the American embargo lifted against Cuba.<\/p>

The meeting at Lyford Cay was to talk about how the repatriation issue was going to get resolved, because without that, none of the plans to turn Cuba around would ever get off the ground. And in back-channel conversations with Burro, Pierce told me that getting a waiver of the embargo was politically a Catch-22.<\/p>

\u201cHe said that if there\u2019s a waiver before the regime is turned over, the Cubans in Miami and most of the Republicans will go ballistic,\u201d Pierce said, \u201cand Corporate America will lose their shit over any waiver that isn\u2019t predicated on their being paid back for what was stolen from them.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI don\u2019t blame them,\u201d I said.<\/p>

\u201cYeah, but here\u2019s the part where it gets stupid: he thinks the Democrats will filibuster any legislation lifting the embargo when the regime does turn over if there are any conditions of the embargo lifting which haven\u2019t been met.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cThat\u2019s how many figs they give about the Cuban people,\u201d I said.<\/p>

\u201cSee, they\u2019re couching this in process. What this is about is all of a sudden they\u2019re the ones who want to make sure a new Cuban regime isn\u2019t screwing over any Americans. But the same Cuban regime that\u2019s there now, they can go on screwing the same people they\u2019ve been screwing for 67 years.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI trust the world can see how idiotic that position is,\u201d I said. \u201cThen again\u2026\u201d<\/p>

\u201cYeah, exactly. Gas is still at four bucks because they can\u2019t put an end to that fight in Iran, and the Dems are at plus-6 on the generic ballot, and there\u2019s a good chance they\u2019ll take the House, so we literally have to zero out the repatriation claims in order to get this ironclad and lift the embargo.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cWithout which you won\u2019t get the capital investment in Cuba that pays the freight for recouping PGFI\u2019s investment.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cPrecisely. Lyford Cay has got to be a grand slam, and then we\u2019re going to have to fan out and make satisfied customers out of every one of the victims of Fidel\u2019s crime spree.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cHey, no pressure,\u201d I said.<\/p>

\u201cIt\u2019s not so much that it\u2019s pressure; it\u2019s that this shit is going to be highly expensive.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cWell, you knew that going in.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cYeah, I guess I did. Still. Fucking commies destroy so much freakin\u2019 wealth it\u2019s just amazing<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>

\n

\"Hammer<\/figure>\n<\/p>

Trent, Stan, and Pierce, and a few experts they\u2019d brought in to consult on the repatriation plan, had gone to the James Bond villa several days early to nail down the main draft of the plan. After his Santiago trip, Diego and I flew there to sit down with the core group of planners. The audience \u2013 the Cuban exiles and the corporate suits \u2013 were due a few days later than that.<\/p>

\u201cGuys,\u201d said Diego, \u201cI understand the thinking behind this plan. I do. But you can\u2019t sell this to the people of Cuba.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cDiego, this is the plan that lifts the embargo,\u201d said Trent. \u201cThere is nobody in Cuba who won\u2019t be greatly better off if we do it like it\u2019s drawn up.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cExcept for a bunch of Candela\u2019s commissars who get left sucking hind tit,\u201d Pierce offered.<\/p>

\u201cWhat\u2019s the specific problem you see, Diego?\u201d I asked.<\/p>

\u201cUnder the terms of this, you\u2019re doing reparations almost 100 percent by giving real estate and property assets to foreigners and people who were the aristocracy before the revolution,\u201d said Diego. \u201cAnd I get it. Doing that makes them whole in the easiest and cheapest way. But what it signals to the people, and bear in mind that I\u2019ve spent basically three weeks touring the eastern side of the country and I get hit with this over and over, is that their biggest fear is going back to Batista, when the country was ruled almost in a feudal-type system. And they won\u2019t stand for that.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cOK,\u201d said Stan, \u201cbut can we agree that getting the embargo lifted is the single most important accomplishment that TODO can produce for Cuba?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cNo question,\u201d said Pierce. \u201cGetting the embargo lifted is everything. And you have to satisfy the claims in order to get the embargo lifted. So regardless of who\u2019s happy and who\u2019s not, this is the most crucial item on the table.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI understand,\u201d Diego said, \u201cand I guess I\u2019m not making myself clear here. What we\u2019re trying to do on the ground in Cuba is present something nobody in the country can say no to. Which is a fair settlement of the claims, on terms which satisfy the local stakeholders as well as Miami and New York or wherever else, and the kind of economic future where every Cuban willing to put in the effort can have the kind of life he wants. We\u2019re bringing that not as a political solution; we\u2019re bringing it as the terms on which TODO puts down roots everywhere in the country.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cRight,\u201d said Trent. \u201cEssentially the first privately-owned nation on earth.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cLet\u2019s not get cute about that,\u201d said Pierce. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about a transition period where we do with Cuba what we did with the media business \u2013 we swallow everything, and then we start spitting it back out in small pieces, all fixed up and nicer than they were before, and in the process create a strong entrepreneurial and corporate class which is wide and deep enough that the bulk of the country is invested not in communist revolution but in creating wealth and serving the needs of the market.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cWhich we\u2019re already doing,\u201d I said. \u201cPretty much everybody in Santiago who\u2019s got a car is set up as a Lyft driver through the TODO app now, and the place only just went over to TODO the day after Diego spoke.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cThat party secretary guy?\u201d Diego said to me, \u201cLopez? He\u2019s driving Lyft to make extra money, his little assistant fella told me.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cThat guy\u2019s the worst communist I ever saw,\u201d I said. There were laughs around the room.<\/p>

\u201cThe point is,\u201d said Diego, \u201cwe\u2019re not presenting this as a political takeover. We\u2019re saying that TODO is a transitional authority which ultimately might remain as a backbone for things like banking, utilities, telecom, and other common-carrier type stuff. But it\u2019s also the incubator for a real economy in Cuba. And yeah, it\u2019ll operate as an interim government while the real functions of government get rebuilt starting at the local level.<\/p>

\u201cBut this is so new that you have to consider the politics. And if there is no way to make everyone happy, I will happily piss off the two million rich exiles who don\u2019t live in Cuba rather than the nine million poor people who do. So, as one of los gusanos<\/em>, we can\u2019t just turn Cuba over to los gusanos<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cIf you have to run for office, Diego,\u201d Stan said, \u201cI think you\u2019ll do fine.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cThe point is to go in there and just run the country so it works,\u201d said Diego. \u201cI don\u2019t want political accountability; I\u2019m not a politician. I want people to look at the numbers after I\u2019ve put my time in, and hopefully they\u2019ll say \u2018yeah, this was good work.\u2019\u201d<\/p>

\u201cYou\u2019ll definitely sell more beer if they think so,\u201d I said.<\/p>

\u201cDamn right I will,\u201d he said. \u201cBut more important than that, the people who come later will have a template that isn\u2019t from Fidel or Raul or Che.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cSo what\u2019s your idea of how to fix the plan?\u201d asked Trent.<\/p>

\u201cIt\u2019s not all that complicated,\u201d said Diego, \u201cbut there are some people who won\u2019t like it, and they\u2019ll have to be smoothed over.\u201d<\/p>

As he described his proposed changes, I watched Pierce. He looked at me and grimaced.<\/p>

\u201cLike I said,\u201d he mouthed. \u201cEXPENSIVE.\u201d<\/p>

\n

\"Black<\/figure>\n<\/p>

And then the audience came in. There were some very heavy hitters sitting at that huge dining table in the James Bond villa, and some pretty heavy hitters sitting in the chairs along the walls.<\/p>

Pierce, Diego, and I actually sat in the middle of the table on one side, so we\u2019d command the center of the room, more or less, and Stan and Trent took seats behind us \u2013 even though Trent was going to be the guy doing most of the talking as he took the folks through the PowerPoint presentation.<\/p>

As corporate confabs went, this was almost like a legit-business \u2018Appalachin.\u2019 There were bigwigs representing\u2026<\/p>