Assassination in Santo Domingo

By Barry Jay Freeman

Assassination in Santo Domingo is a combination of political satire and action/adventure taking place in the Dominican Republic, a banana republic with a blotchy history of dictators and military takeovers. It is the story of Raphael Trompero, a narcissistic dunce with autocratic ambitions and a corrupt mentality, who is elected president of the country in furtherance of a nefarious plan by Iran to gain influence in Central America. When Trompero outlives his usefulness to Iran, the Iranians decide to kill and replace him with an Iranian general. As their plan unfolds, Ari Stern, an aging Mossad agent, his wife, Leah, and their close American friends, the Bensons, arrive in the Dominican Republic for their winter vacation at the suggestion of their young friend, US Naval Ensign Sam Goldberg, who urges them to stay in his parents’ (Carlos and Carlotta Goldberg’s) palatial home in Santo Domingo (the Dominican capital). Their vacation is disrupted when they bump headlong into the Iranian assassination plot, and it becomes Ari Stern’s mission to eliminate both the plot and Trompero with the help of the cast of friends gathered at the Goldbergs’, including Sam, Stella (Sam’s Mossad agent new love) , and a dear friend summoned from US protective custody. : Any similarity between Trompero and a president of the United States is purely intentional.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barry Jay Freeman
• Release date: Feb 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005683412

Barry Jay Freeman

Barry J. Freeman is a retired Chicago attorney, who now lives in suburban Lincolnshire, Illinois, with his beautiful, curly-haired wife, two face-licking, overindulged dogs, and two love-but-ignore-you cats. He and his wife have improved the world by giving it two female and two male children, who have in turn given them five wonderful grandsons destined to do great things. Since his retirement, the author has published two collections of his light poetry (Never Pull A Lion’s Tail and I Finally Pulled A Lion’s Tail (both of which are illustrated by awesome photos),and five novels (And Other Immoral Purposes, A Tale of Two Lawyers, The Wanted, Ahmed's List and Assassination in Santo Domingo). His first two novels explore the law business (a subject about which he knows well). He has also published two short books primarily for kids containing two illustrated short stories in verse (Nero the Hero and Who Are those Strange Creatures? The former is about a captured African elephant, and the latter is about a baboon, both of which become heroes. Writing has taken him out of the jaws of retirement and has become his full time passion.

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ASSASSINATION IN

SANTO DOMINGO

A Novel

By

Barry Jay Freeman

Registered for Copyright 2021

by Barry Jay Freeman

All Rights Reserved

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE: Trompero

CHAPTER TWO: Hacienda Goldberg

CHAPTER THREE: Santo Domingo by Night

CHAPTER FOUR: Saturday Night at the Palace

CHAPTER FIVE: Comprimate

CHAPTER SIX: The Candidate

CHAPTER SEVEN: President Trompero

CHAPTER EIGHT: The Plot

CHAPTER NINE: Sunday Santo Domingo

CHAPTER TEN: Trouble in the Tropics

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Homecoming

CHAPTER TWELVE: Stella

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Meanwhile, Back at the Palace

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Stella and Sam

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Sounds Like a Plan

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: The Search

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: General Trujillo

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Tuesday Night

CHAPTER NINETEEN: Wednesday Morning

CHAPTER TWENTY: Calle El Conde

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Alias Abraham

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Flaky’s Bar

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: The Love Scene

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Salemi’s Plan

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Ari’s Counterplan

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Deli and Discussion

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: A Trompero Bad Day

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: A Trompero Worst Day

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Ding-dong

Preface

I started this novel well into the first (and last) term of Donald J. ′Trump as president of the United States. My story takes place in a Central American country, the Dominican Republic, just before Trump made his serious appearance on the US political stage. All of my characters, some from past novels, are fictional as is the story.

At first, Trump was a joke. He was vaguely known to the public because the Trump name gaudily appeared on several towering buildings developed by his company in large cities of the world, and because he was the featured so-called business tycoon in a popular TV reality series. Out of the blue, he ran for and won the Republican nomination for president by working a vicious and dishonest campaign that played to the baser instincts of white Americans. Unbeknownst to most voters, he was assisted in his endeavor by illegal Russian cyber influence, which he secretly welcomed and most probably himself aided and abetted. He was no longer a joke.

In 2016, he unfortunately succeeded in winning a majority of electoral votes over Hillary Clinton while receiving three million less popular votes. It soon became apparent that the United States had elected a seriously flawed, clinically insane, paranoid narcissist bent upon leading the country into autocracy. Never in history has our constitutional democracy been more threatened by a president and those who have supported him, and it will take years to repair the damage he has done.

He has attempted, almost successfully, to turn the United States into a typical banana republic autocracy, where the assassination of dictators is all too commonplace. Thus the Dominican Republic becomes the banana republic setting for this novel, and Raphael Mentirosa Trompero becomes the subject dictator chosen by Iran. Banana republics solve their leadership mistakes by assassination, whereas democracies remedy theirs by legitimate elections and peaceful transfers of power. With the help of the gods and an intelligent electorate, the United States need never go to such lengths as the former, and the rule of law, with no single person above it, will always prevail for the good of its citizens.

Assassination in Santo Domingo

CHAPTER ONE: Trompero

It was January of 2011 in the Dominican Republic, one of two small Central American countries on the tropical island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea. Raphael Mentirosa Trompero, now well into his third chaotic year as head of state, semi-reclined in his plush leather desk chair amid the sparse furnishings of his oversized office in the Santo Domingo Palacio Nacional. Oblivious to the assassination plot being concocted against him by his two top generals, he inhaled a strong-smelling, super-sized, Dominican cigar while staring at a giant flat television screen hanging on the wall opposite him. Carmen, his third first-lady, massaged his smallish, whitish feet, which he rested atop his grand desk for her loving manipulation. Carmen was a plumpish Spanish import, a former model of oversized underwear with very red hair.

The diminutive, rotund, balding, and thinly mustachioed Presidente half-smiled as he watched a satellite-enabled Fox News rendition of the latest political highlights from the United States. The top of his 4' x 8′ modern mahogany desk was totally devoid of everything except his bare feet and a shiny brand-new telephone communication console loaded with rows of undesignated buttons. On an impulse, he unexpectedly lurched forward and lifted the telephone handset, causing the third First Lady to lose her balance when the toes upon which she was intensely working withdrew from her kneading hands. He then reached for and pushed the one red button on the console.

El Presidente shouted in Spanish into the phone: I want a television station for the education of this country solely dedicated to the display of my fine work as its president. It will all day and every day broadcast un-fake news—which I will control totally. I want a meeting tomorrow with the heads of the Dominican television networks to start this in motion. See to it right away. He slammed the phone down on its cradle and replaced his feet on the desk.

I will show the corrupt news media how to run a television station. The enemy of the people—and they are the enemy of the people—will no longer fill my country with their fake news against me. It will be the voice of truth, the Fox News of Santo Domingo, and the electorate will damn well listen. Do you see what I am doing, Carmen?

Carmen's eyes rolled with doubt and disbelief as she regained her balance and resumed her obligatory foot message. Yes, of course, my husband. I believe your idea is genius. It will be the best television station in Latin America. Will you put me on television, my love? She spoke a purer native Spanish than the Latin American variety of her lord and master.

You be a good girl, and I will make you a star, He smiled, which hurt his face. Now get out of here. I have extremely critical thinking to do.

*****

As Presidente Raphael Mentirosa Trompero sat in the National Palace dreaming of the creation of his television station, Ari Stern sat in a limousine watching the passing tropical seascape along the highway from Las Américas International Airport to Santo Domingo (the capital city of the Dominican Republic). His legs were outstretched, and the toes of one sandaled foot touched the shoeless foot of Leah, his comfortably-seated, agelessly beautiful, likewise window-gazing wife.

Why do I feel there are spies peering at me from behind every one of those passing palm trees? Ari asked Leah and fellow passengers, Bruce and Sarah Benson. All four of them—good friends on vacation—sat and stared, trance-like, out of the gray-tinted windows of the limo as it sped along the miles of unspoiled, sand-covered, palm-lined coast, beside a scenic expanse of the deep blue Caribbean Sea.

Because this is a real living and breathing ‘banana republic’—though it's actually not a big banana exporter, Bruce remarked. "Its current Presidente, Raphael Mentirosa Trompero, is kind of ‘bananas’—un poco loco—and there probably are spies behind every tree. Besides, you’ve undoubtedly been in the Mossad for too long, Sir James—James Bond, that is. I haven't noticed any such spies, but I’m not an Israeli spy-guy like you."

Yes, when I start seeing spies behind trees, maybe fifty years with Israel's finest is a bit too long. But who else would keep me employed at the tender age of seventy-five?

I would, said Leah. We could leave Israel and move to the USA, to Highland Park in Illinois, and live forever with Sarah and Bruce. We could go to law school in our dotage and add our names to the Benson & Benson law office door. Then I could keep better track of you, my husband.

Leah was referring to the Bensons’ home in Chicago’s north suburbs, where she and Ari had spent most of the preceding May. During that stay, her Mossad husband took on the task of engineering the defeat of an ISIS plot to mount a terrorist assault on a nearby United States naval base during its Memorial Day ceremonies. Now, seven months later, the two couples were in the Dominican Republic to spend their well-deserved annual winter vacation together, seeking only reinvigoration, rest, and relaxation.

At the age of seventy-five, Ari was Mossad's (the national intelligence agency of Israel) oldest, still best, and most trusted agent, and had so proven himself time after time. His ever-watchful eyes again distinctly saw a man with a hat sitting on the top of a roadside picnic table eyeing their speeding limousine and talking on his cell phone. Ari was certain the man had waited for them to pass and was reporting their progress to some local authority. Still, he said nothing to the others, knowing his observation would only meet with more sarcasm from his travel companions.

Before leaving on his trip, Ari had received the Mossad intelligence briefing typically given agents embarking on a vacation to a foreign country. The agency would briefly inform them, among other subjects of interest, about the political and security situation in their chosen destination and of relevant information regarding its place in the crazy, danger-filled, subsurface world of intrigue. Mossad thus briefed Ari on the Dominican Republic and its current peculiar government. Specifically, it warned him of President Raphael Mentirosa Trompero and his system of tracking all visitors coming into the country. The Israeli Embassy had depicted El Presidente in several reports to its government as being in the throes of psychotic paranoia to add to his troubling chronic sociopathic narcissism.

In his Mossad briefing, the agency included leaked cables written by a former British ambassador who saw fit to resign from his post. He wrote: "Trompero is devoid of class, charm, coolness, credibility, compassion, wit, warmth, wisdom, subtlety, sensitivity, self-awareness, humility, honor, and grace. And while Trompero may be laughable, he has never once said anything even faintly amusing—not ever. I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. His idea of a joke is an illiterate insult or an act of cruelty. He never laughs; he only crows or jeers. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness, a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum." (White, 2021)

So Ari was well aware of the current political state of this country through which they now drove. But international politics were irrelevant to their motivation for being there. Their primary reason for picking the Dominican Republic for this winter’s vacation was Sam Goldberg, a Jewish young man of color from Santo Domingo. He was an aide to the base commander and a member of the US Navy stationed at the Naval Station Great Lakes, which was a few miles from the Benson's Highland Park residence. Sam had recommended a visit to his country and graciously extended to them an invitation for a stay at his parents’ home in its capital city.

However, after so many years with Mossad, Ari's second nature was to remain on the alert for trouble, regardless of where he was—even while on vacation. During their last winter’s vacation together in Costa Rica, his casual observation while fishing incidentally resulted in the breakup of a drug ring plaguing that country.

The Bensons and the Sterns became close friends during the late 1970s. They first met when Bruce Benson was a young Assistant US Attorney in Chicago, when he brought Ari from Israel to testify in a Russian spy case he was prosecuting. A few years later, after Bruce had achieved some success in the private practice of law, he and Sarah made it a point to spend their annual warm-weather vacations together with the Sterns in one exotic, mutually desirable location or another.

During their last winter’s vacation together in Costa Rica, Ari learned from Sarah of Ahmed Hamed. He was a young exchange student from Yemen and a Benson & Benson law office client who Sarah suspected of involvement with an Islamic terrorist group. Her suspicion brought Ari and Leah to the United States, where Ari discovered incriminating evidence proving her hunch correct. Ahmed, along with his love, Fida, changed alliances, cooperated, and became valuable United States assets, now living under government protection in an undisclosed location under false identities. As a result of that ordeal, the Sterns and Bensons developed a close friendship with Ahmed and Fida, but their parting left little reasonable chance of ever seeing them again.

Another crucial actor in the Great Lakes episode was the previously mentioned young Dominican dark-skinned native with the unlikely last name of Goldberg. It was to Sam’s parents’ home the Sterns and the Bensons now were headed. Sitting there in the Goldbergs’ luxurious, air-conditioned limousine looking out of the window, it was hard for Ari to believe only seven months had passed since those events had taken place. It seemed more like several years.

Ari spoke in a reflective tone as he continued staring out of the limo window. "I was last here on assignment in the Dominican Republic many years ago—in April and May of 1961. I was just a young pisher at the time, with Mossad only three years. Bruce, as I remember, it was a few years before we met. Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina was president—how well I remember that name, El Jefe, they called him. He had been the Dominican's questionably elected president during long stretches of the 1930s and then again in the ’40s to the early ’50s. He skipped the elections of 1952 but continued to rule as an unelected dictator for the rest of his time on earth—until a covert operation, which involved the CIA, finally got him. His years as boss here are considered the bloodiest ever in the Americas.

I clearly remember that monuments to El Jefe were all over the place, Ari continued. "His punim (‘face’ in Yiddish) graced every bare wall in the country. When I was here, Santo Domingo had even changed its name to Ciudad Trujillo, Trujillo City, by order of you-know-who. I was here on assignment up to the day of his assassination in May of 1961, and I quickly got the hell out, lest the world blame Israel for taking part in the dirty deed—not saying one way or the other if we did. Trujillo and his regime were responsible for many deaths, including 20 to 30 thousand Haitians in the infamous Parsley massacre in 1937.

You may ask, how come I’m so smart and know all this.

Yes, said Sarah. I do ask.

Because I read up on it before we came, Ari replied. "I do, however, remember some things from the time I was here. For instance—talking about spies behind the trees—I was aware of being followed everywhere I went in those days. Suspicious looking guys with hats were always listening to conversations between people, no matter who the people were. The hats were everywhere. They were so obvious that everyone knew who they were and what they were doing. They were like ‘thought police,’ and the natives were afraid to think or speak publicly, or even privately, about Trujillo or his government. We called them ‘the hats.’

"Lots of people disappeared during those days. If anyone developed a profitable business, they would soon have a partner—maybe a generalissimo or perhaps a relative, or old El Jefe himself. Anyone who smelled like an objector to the government or the revered chief could suddenly find himself or herself as food for the sharks on the bottom of the Caribbean.

The one nice thing Trujillo did was to welcome Jewish immigration during and after World War ll, unlike other countries including the US and the British occupants of Israel. Of course, he had an ulterior motive. He wanted to bring commerce to the country and knew the Jews were good at it. We would build successful businesses, which he could steal. He also wanted the Jewish immigrants to build an agricultural community in Sosúa, on the north coast and gave them land and resources for farming. The venture was somewhat successful until the appeal of the big city lured most of the Jews away. Sosúa is now part of a blossoming tourist industry but still produces dairy products and cheese for the country. I do believe, no surprise, that Trujillo became a partner in cheese during his reign of terror.

The limo slowed and turned away from the scenic seaside toward the northwest, into densely populated slum areas teeming with dark-skinned people living in tiny flimsy shacks under mud-patched straw and corrugated tin roofs. An overabundance of noisy and dirty little children ran around and played in the streets, naked and innocent in the sweltering tropical heat.

We drive now through a very poor city part, into very nice place where live Goldbergs, the chauffeur said in his loudest speaking voice, turning his head a bit to address his riders.

Are we almost there? yelled Sarah.

We are there in ten minutes. said the chauffeur.

"Como se llama?" Ari asked the driver in his best Spanish. Ari was fluent in several languages, including Spanish, which he could speak with the appropriate dialect depending on his location in the Spanish speaking world.

"Me llama Ernesto. Soy de Iran. I am from Iran." Ari had noticed at the airport that he appeared to be a Spanish-speaking Middle-Easterner as opposed to a native Central American. Still, he thought little of it, since this country, like many in this part of the world, was a safe harbor for immigrants with a need to leave their native lands.

Ari switched to English. You are from Iran? When did you get here in the Dominican Republic?

I come when ten years old with mother and sister. My father was killed in Iran because he opposed Ali Khamenei's people in the election of 1992. I have now twenty-nine years. Growing old. I work for Mr. and Mrs. Goldberg since eighteen. You know Sam?

Sure we know, him, Bruce said, leaning forward toward the driver's seat to join in the conversation. Sam is now stationed at a base near our home, and he’s the reason we came here for our vacation.

Sam is my friend since I come here. He is a good man, and I like him very much. I like the Goldbergs, all of them. All are very nice to me—like my family. I hear Sam might come for his vacation soon. I no see him for two years.

It would be nice if he came here now, while we are here, Ernesto, said Sarah. He saved our lives last May by shooting a terrorist who was about to shoot us. He suggested we come down here, and now we are the guests of his parents. We owe him big- time.

I no understand, but we are just coming to the Goldberg hacienda. They are waiting.

CHAPTER TWO: Hacienda Goldberg

Ernesto pulled the big car into a lengthy paved and landscaped driveway and drove to the closed iron gates at its end. He stretched his arm from the front car window to a box attached to the gatepost and pushed several buttons, after which the gates, in no particular hurry, swung open, revealing a white stucco, tile-roofed, Mediterranean-style mansion behind colorful tropical gardens and flowering trees. On the few front steps in front of an arched massive wooden door stood the Goldbergs hand in hand, smiling graciously at the slowly approaching limo.

Though Ernesto made a valiant attempt to run to the right-side rear passenger door to perform his chauffeur routine, Ari was already out and shaking Carlos Goldberg's hand. Ernesto was able to take the hands of the lady passengers and help them awkwardly exit the vehicle and move to greet their gracious host and hostess.

"Bienvenidos a nuestra ciudad, amigos! the smiling, tall, slim, salt-and-pepper–haired Carlos said, as he greeted his other guests and accepted their extended hands with a welcoming Mucho gusto" in response to their self-identification. Carlos had the gentlemanly good looks of a middle-aged, Spanish-Caucasian, Latin American, mixed over several centuries with darker-skinned local native Caribbeans. He was wearing a white Polo golf shirt over sharply creased, cream-colored, cotton pants and sockless, white soft-leather loafers.

From the more socially aggressive Carlos, the four travelers moved to the attractive, more genteel lady of the house, Carlotta. She had the same light bronze skin complexion as her husband and similar black hair, though hers was curly, with streaks of gray scattered generously throughout. She was nicely-dressed in a simple white dress, yellow sandals, and understated jewelry, as an upper-class old traditional family female of the Dominican elite would dress for receiving guests on a hot Saturday afternoon in January.

In Dominican Spanish, Carlotta politely asked Ernesto to bring the suitcases to the guest rooms in the house, and he secured all four medium-sized pieces of luggage in the grasp of his arms and hands and disappeared into the front door. She then, in perfect English, addressed her guests. "I welcome you all to Casa Goldberg. We have been excited about your visit and look forward to being with you. You come highly recommended by Samuel. Please enter and make yourself at home. Mi casa es su casa." She gestured for them to enter.

They followed Carlotta, and Carlos followed the group through the massive old wooden front door into a large reception area filled with Spanish colonial antiques. The walls were rough stucco, and six massive wooden beams running parallel from wall to wall supported the very high ceilings. Large stained glass windows, near the top of each of the two outside walls, supplied the room with subtle light, which was enhanced by electrified old-world sconces spread along the pale-yellow stucco walls. Also decorating the walls were several large oil paintings by sixteenth-century Spanish masters. Some were dark portraits of costumed aristocrats, and some had early Christian religious themes. There were antique chairs and tables arranged on the earth-toned tile floor for weary travelers waiting to be received by the master and mistress of the hacienda. The room looked and felt as if the builders had plucked it directly from seventeenth-century Spain.

All of the things in this room, like the plans for the room itself, Carlos explained, "have been handed down from my ancestors over the centuries. We came to this country from Spain during the time Columbus claimed it as a Spanish colony. My family fled the Inquisition for reasons we never really knew, and they built their fortune in tobacco. We now have good reason to believe our ancestors were Spanish Jews who avoided the Inquisition by accepting Catholicism. For many years we practiced a weird brand of Catholicism, while at the same time, we strangely preserved many Jewish traditions but didn’t realize why. When we figured it out, our name, Castillo, was changed to Goldberg— just ten years ago.

"Carlotta’s family came over on the same boat—would you believe?—and her brother, Eduardo Santos, has such a room in his house in another part of town. Her family started the first sugar cane plantation and has maintained its Spanish name.

Let us continue to see the rest of the house, and we will tell our stories over a cold Dominican rum drink very soon. I know you are tired from travel and are probably very thirsty.

Sounds good to me, said Bruce. I am in love with your home already.

The house had lots of rooms. In addition to