Puerto Rican Independence: The Cuban Connection
 

                  By EDMUND MAHONY

                  Victor Gerena was getting his orders at a beat-up bank of pay phones bolted
                  to the back wall of Arthur Drug on Hartford's Asylum Hill. He was plotting the
                  country's biggest cash robbery from a 24-hour urban bazaar -- an unkempt
                  collection of small-time drug dealers and uptown hustlers who referred to the
                  phones at Arthur's as "The Office."

                  Juan Segarra Palmer was always on the other end of the line, 1,650 miles
                  away from Hartford's damp and dirty spring in Santurce, Puerto Rico. At first,
                  the men spoke from their homes -- Gerena rented an apartment two blocks
                  north of Arthur Drug at Sigourney Street and Asylum Avenue. They switched to
                  public pay phones, figuring the police would never be able to unearth records
                  from those phones.

                  They were wrong.

                  Segarra was the young, influential Machetero who recruited Gerena, a Wells
                  Fargo guard, to be the inside man on the robbery. No one knows exactly how
                  Segarra, the Ivy Leaguer, found Gerena, the dropout. Some, notably agents of
                  the FBI, think he must have located him through Gerena's mother, Gloria, a
                  committed independentista.

                  "Victor volunteered himself to the movement through a mutual friend," is all a
                  coy Segarra will say.

                  Like everyone else in the Machetero organization, Segarra was consumed with
                  planning Aguila Blanca -- "White Eagle," the group's code name for the
                  robbery -- through the spring and summer of 1983.

                  There were logistical issues still to be worked out with "Los Juanos," the
                  independentista's code name for the Cubans. Someone would have to slip into
                  Cuba. Segarra had to go back to Mexico City, another Cuban stronghold,
                  which Los Macheteros referred to by the code name "Cholo." Everything was
                  being coordinated by Filiberto Ojeda Rios, the Machetero founder who almost
                  single-handedly shaped the violent Puerto Rican independence movement in
                  1970.

                  In records generated by Los Macheteros executive committees, Ojeda was
                  referred to as the "First Comrade in Charge." The organization voted to commit
                  its "leadership and the best cadres" to the "expropriation." The Wells Fargo
                  robbery was to be the year's "economic operative for the benefit of the
                  revolution."

                  In August, Ojeda and Segarra flew from Puerto Rico to New England to
                  personally oversee the robbery.

                  They rented a hotel room and rehearsed Gerena on how events should unfold.
                  Segarra got a watch and a car and timed escape routes from the Wells Fargo
                  depot at 21 Culbro Drive in West Hartford. Ojeda bought a Yamaha motorcyle
                  in Framingham, Mass., that Gerena was to use to flee the depot. Segarra told
                  a girlfriend he thought of the Yamaha because "no one would ever think to look
                  for him on a motorcycle."

                  On the morning of Monday, Sept. 12, 1983, Gerena and his fiancee, Ana Soto,
                  left their apartment and climbed into a dilapidated, 1973 Buick LeSabre
                  Gerena rented two days before from the Ugly Duckling rental car agency a
                  short distance from the depot. He swung by city hall on the way to work,
                  pecked Soto on the cheek and dropped her off.

                  Soto was taking a day off from beautician school. She was going to pick up a
                  marriage license. She and Gerena were to be wed Friday. He said he would
                  see her after work. He lied.

                  He headed west and pulled into the Wells Fargo depot at about 11 a.m. His
                  boss said he could go ahead and park the rustbucket Buick in one of the
                  depot's loading bays, where, incidentally, Gerena knew the car would be out of
                  public view.

                  As always, the Wells Fargo depot was understaffed. It was difficult to get
                  people to take the thankless, low-paying jobs.

                  Gerena and another man were assigned to collect millions of dollars during a
                  string of boring, repetitive stops on a run to Bridgeport and back. Gerena's
                  boss took another truck north to collect $5 million or so in Springfield.

                  Gerena's truck was the last one back, returning at about 9:30 p.m. Everyone
                  was annoyed -- not at Gerena, but at their lousy jobs. And, the first Monday
                  Night Football game of the season was on television that night. The three men
                  remaining at the depot -- Gerena, his boss and one other worker -- were saying
                  that they wanted to get home to watch it. But everything was behind schedule,
                  and a half ton of cash still had to be counted and stacked.

                  Gerena and his boss should have been the only two remaining at work. But the
                  co-worker hung around, saying he wanted advice on how to navigate through
                  some highway construction. He didn't want to miss what was left of the football
                  game.

                  The boss was sitting at a table, attacking a pile of paperwork. Gerena stepped
                  behind him, reached into the boss's holster and slipped out his pistol. Then he
                  told his two co-workers that he was deadly serious. They should do exactly as
                  he said. Get on the floor, he ordered.

                  Gerena had one pair of handcuffs. He snapped them around his boss's wrists.
                  Perhaps because he didn't expect the third man to be there, he tied him up
                  with tape and rope. Then he injected them both with a substance that has
                  never been identified. Neither of the guards was knocked out, again perhaps
                  because Gerena had to split a single dosage between two men.

                  The two Wells Fargo guards lay wide awake on the floor for 90 minutes,
                  listening to the shuffle of Gerena's footsteps and the sounds of heavy metal
                  zippers, like those on sleeping bags or athletic equipment bags.

                  At 11 p.m. or so, Gerena called it quits. He had crammed as much cash as he
                  could into his Buick. He loaded a pistol and a shotgun into the car and pulled
                  out of the depot. Outside, he sounded the horn twice -- a signal to an
                  accomplice.

                  When the police found the LeSabre at the Susse Chalet hotel in Hartford's
                  South Meadows, the Dallas Cowboys had just beaten the Washington
                  Redskins in a squeaker, 31-30. The car was empty but for a Smith & Wesson
                  model 36 revolver and a 12-gauge Remington pump action shotgun.

                  After the robbery, exhibiting something like pride of ownership, Segarra
                  bragged to his girlfriend that Gerena had been whisked to Springfield on a
                  motorcycle and then driven by car to Boston. The money was taken to
                  Springfield in separate cars and hidden.

                  The West Hartford police were absolutely baffled by the Wells Fargo robbery.
                  All they knew was that a nobody from Hartford was the inside man on what
                  was then the largest cash robbery in U.S. history. And he and the money
                  seemed to have vanished without a trace.

                  A tabloid in Boston was calling the robbery the "Big Sleep Heist," a reference
                  to Gerena's attempt to drug his co-workers. The police waited for Gerena to
                  pop to the surface of the Connecticut River. The odds seemed overwhelming
                  that he would prove expendable to whoever used him to grab the cash.

                  No one in Connecticut even dreamed a group of Puerto Rican nationalists had
                  stolen the money to finance a Caribbean revolution -- at least until Los
                  Macheteros did something astoundingly stupid.