An admirer and disciple of British psychologist Raymond B. Cattell, she had read seventeen of his forty-one books and many of his articles. Cattell was the first to postulate that the key problem in personality psychology was the prediction of behavior. He classified traits into three categories: dynamic (those that set an individual into action to accomplish a goal), ability (concerning the individual’s effectiveness to reach a goal), and temperament (aspects like dispositions, moods, and emotions). After her transfer to Interior’s General Directorate of Intelligence, Division of Personnel, Evaluation Department, Victoria developed her theory of how to perform a prospective spy’s remote psychological profiling based on Cattell’s teachings.

She studied the files of candidates submitted by field officers, rejected many, and asked for additional information about those who seemed to have latent possibilities. Then she eliminated a few more, recommended which operatives should approach each of the chosen few, and wrote scripts. With a good nose for politics, Victoria followed world events on a daily basis to choose the ones that, if reminded of a prospective or active informer, may strengthen his or her resolve to betray their government, institution, or company. She preferred the recruitment to be based on ideological affinity, but would set her scruples aside if blackmail or sex would let the cat out of the bag. In strapped Cuba, buying information was a means of last resort.

During her four years in Evaluation, Victoria profiled many possible informers: people working for MI6, the Vatican, DGSE, SISDE, FIS, the Federal Security Service, three different United Nations agencies, the European Commission, the German and Spanish Ministries of Foreign Affairs, the Mexican presidency, Amnesty International, Roche, and Aventis. All the while, she devoured books on espionage. The lieutenant in charge of Intelligence’s library was absolutely flabbergasted and eventually compiled a list: In four years Victoria read 132 books, including all the classics. She was always the first to read new titles.

Eventually her judgment was highly respected and her recommendations rarely questioned. But it had not always been like that. In the early nineties, her superior officer could not believe she was serious when she argued for taking a promising candidate to Disney World to ask him to work for Cuban Intelligence there and then. On another occasion, she suggested recruiting a pious, sixty-six-year-old priest as he listened to the handler’s confession. In both instances the officer, now retired, had asked her to convince him. She did it dispassionately, using her remote psychological profiling. She was so convincing that the two plans were approved. And they worked.

In 1993, a few weeks after she had astonished everyone by choreographing the recruitment of a top European scientist who agreed to pass on the results of his firm’s research on an AIDS vaccine, Victoria was ordered to report to a third-floor office of the State Council at 10:00 A.M., where she was asked to take the Mega Society’s IQ test.

This was quite surprising to her because, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, communist parties in power presented a rather simplistic and homogeneous official front when it came to politics, economics, sociology, and psychology. Non–Marxist-Leninist theories in the fields of social evolution and human responses were dead wrong. Dialectic materialism provided the only key that unlocked the complex behavior of individuals and societies. Having studied in the years when intelligence quotient tests were shunned as capitalist hocus-pocus, Victoria had scant knowledge about them and had never taken one.

The old man who had asked that the test be taken–simply called Chief or Commander by the members of his inner circle, Commander in Chief in public, Godfather behind his back, Comedian in Chief in Miami, and Holy Father by an abjectly submissive historian–sat back in his executive chair to ponder Victoria’s results. On one hand, it was disappointing to find out that a semi-literate carpenter and a dressmaker had presented the world with a supergenius, whereas none of his children had scored above 130. On the other, looking on the bright side of things, he found comfort in the fact that among the incompetent, groveling, mealy-mouthed bastards that surrounded him, there was an individual scientifically proven to be extremely bright.

The Chief was further seduced when he began reading her secret personnel file. Born on January 1, 1959, her parents had named her Victoria because, on that day, dictator Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba. The revolutionaries proclaimed it Victory Day. Her father’s surname was Valiente, so her full name, both in Spanish and in English, literally meant Valiant Victory, and figuratively, Gallant Victory. Without meeting her personally, he had Victoria promoted to lieutenant colonel and transferred to the Miami desk.

In her new position, General Lastra disregarded Victoria’s objections twice. Colonel Morera overruled her on four occasions. The consequences were catastrophic. Three of those six recruits turned out to be double agents, two of whom managed to infiltrate a twelve-person network in Miami that the FBI, after a three-year stint, dismantled in 1998. On the evening he learned of the debacle from his minister of the interior, the Chief had Lastra and Morera summoned to his office.

‘did Micaela approve the recruitment of those sons of bitches?” he had yelled, apoplectic with rage, when told who the FBI agents were.

Looking at their well-polished boots, the general and the colonel had shaken their heads.

“I knew it!” the Chief growled triumphantly.

In the adjoining anteroom an overzealous aide, upon hearing his idol rant and dreading that he may suffer a stroke or a heart attack, had the physician on duty come up. After hurried whispering, the physician knocked and entered the Olympus to take Zeus’s blood pressure.

“Get out of here!” the patient had thundered, arm rigidly pointing to the door, the instant he saw the newly arrived. The doctor paled, did a quick about-face, and closed the door behind him. A pregnant, six-minute pause followed as Number One hobbled around the room. Lastra and Morera kept their gazes on the floor. Finally the Chief came to a halt in front of the officers, giving them the eye.

“Look at me!”

His face flamed; his gray beard shook with ire.

“Whatever Micaela recommends, even if it is against your better judgment, you do it. You’ve made great sacrifices for the Revolution; I don’t want to send you into early retirement. But if you overrule Micaela again, you are finished. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Commander in Chief,” the culprits had chorused.

“Okay, let’s see now what we can do for our comrades.”

Victoria never learned that she had been given carte blanche, but the subtle signs that she began picking up several days after taking the IQ test–whose results were kept from her–repeated themselves in late 1998: embarrassed smiles, lowered eyes, heightened consideration for her opinions and recommendations. Clearly remembering that she had opposed the recruitment of the two FBI informers, she guessed that a big shot, maybe the minister, maybe the Commander himself, had read her reports. Paradoxically, what was a disaster for the Directorate became a feather in her cap. It was not taxing at all to pretend that she had felt sad for the jailed comrades when in fact she was exulting over her personal triumph.

The second trait that Victoria Valiente possessed in a prodigious amount was the acting capability of a universally acclaimed theatrical performer.

Like many Cubans born, raised, and educated throughout the revolutionary era, right up into the late eighties Victoria had been a true believer. She had completed her secondary education in one of seven military schools run by the armed forces–the Camilo Cienfuegos schools–where the emphases placed on the perfection of communism and on the genius of the Chief were even greater than in civilian schools. Over the years, though, as she became privy to secret information of every nature, took English and French classes, read all sorts of magazines and newspapers, paid attention to her husband’s increasingly frequent criticisms, and, from 1998 on, devoted four hours a day on average to browsing the Internet, Victoria reached the inescapable truth that communism was doomed, in Cuba and anywhere else where it had gained a foothold.

But Victoria had witnessed how the careers of many promising young people had ended abruptly because they had made the mistake of openly expressing disagreement. From the very first day that guilt gnawed at her conscience for doubting the veracity of her juvenile ideals, Victoria knew that she ought to conceal her incertitude and pretend that with each passing day she believed more and more in the Revolution and its Commander in Chief.

The third strength that Victoria Valiente had in portentous magnitude was ambition.

She had mapped out her progression. Director general and brigadier general first, minister of interior and division general three or four years later, member of the Central Committee, member of the Politburo, member of the Council of State, the sky was the limit. Victoria realized she was resigning herself to side with the losers, but all things considered, she had no choice. She was well aware that she had passed the point of no return years ago. For having a finger in every pie, she would never be allowed to travel abroad. On the positive side, sudden death notwithstanding, the Chief might be able to hold the country together for eight or ten more years. What she had to do, Victoria reasoned, was to become indispensable, steer clear of internal rivalries, never question the Chief’s orders, and, after his death, avoid siding with a faction. Everyone should see in her a top-class specialist willing to serve those in charge, not the overly ambitious woman she in fact was. These guiding principles never left the innermost recesses of her brain.

Nonetheless, as time went on, Victoria’s concerns increased substantially. Whenever the Chief ranted on television for hours on end, he made serious mistakes. He insulted any Latin American president who asked him to respect the human rights of dissenters, made rather barbed comments concerning European politicians who said that such a benevolent step would be most welcome, and termed traitors the Western European leftists who disagreed with his strategy and tactics.

Many of his half million viewers watched in dismay as he foamed at the mouth, wet his fingers in saliva to turn pages, then went on with the old litany.

He would proclaim over and over again that most Latin American governments were lackeys of U.S. imperialism, Cuba was the finest democracy the world had ever known, the Revolution had the best human rights record on the planet. Victoria and many other well-informed government officials, civil servants, and party bureaucrats watching him from their homes closed their eyes and slapped their foreheads in desperation. Had the man taken leave of his senses? Who was he trying to fool?

Around this same time, the Chief’s closest associates began to perceive, with mounting preoccupation, his gradual slide down the road of senescence. With complete disregard for the diversity of the nation’s opinions, he set forth his weirdest propositions and most extreme views with the expressions “Cuba believes,” “Cuba considers,” and “Cuba thinks.”

Knowing how grave her country’s financial difficulties were, how weak the economy was after many years of colossal mismanagement, Victoria couldn’t believe her ears whenever the Commander criticized the policies being pursued in other Third World countries. He would recite statistics on their high levels of unemployment, on the number of people living below the poverty line, and on the large external debt of these nations without ever referring to similar data for his country.

For Cuba, he invariably prophesied a golden future. The island was a beacon of hope for the rest of the world. In three or four years, watching the educational TV channel he had ordered built in record time, his people would become the most cultured on the planet. Cuban athletes, physicians, teachers, scientists, and musicians were the best, its soldiers the bravest, its workers and farmers the most patriotic. All were willing to die before returning to capitalism, the man always proclaimed at the end of his tirade. Including the several million whom you know want to emigrate, Commander in Chief? Victoria addressed the silent question to the screen of the set, turned it off, and started surfing the Internet for senescence, senility, and Alzheimer’s.