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Who, Me? Early this year, a group of junior army officers, claiming to be disgusted by the careless way in which the cynical Prío government was running Cuba, called on Batista and asked him to lead a revolt. As one of three candidates campaigning for the presidency at elections scheduled for June 1, Batista declined. But late in February, Batista got word that the army revolt might be attempted whether he led it or not. By that time it may also have dawned on him that he had small chance of winning at the polls. As the Strong Man blandly explained the situation: "The young officers became restless, and they put themselves in touch with me." Batista heeded his countrymen's importunate pleas and plunged into conspiratorial planning with some of his old comrades.
There were 27 men in the plot but, until the night before the rising, only Batista knew who all of them were. He himself wrote out the master plan and orders, employing a kind of ecclesiastical code. If any outsider got a look at the plans, they must have read like an outline for a religious pageant. Each reference to an archbishop or a priest signified an individual; each "ceremony" a place to be captured. At the final night meeting, in a house not far from Havana's all-important Camp Columbia army base, the plotters swore an oath of secrecy. Batista told the conspirators to check their watches against Radio Reloj, the Havana radio station that ticks off time signals day & night. The revolution would start at exactly 2:43 a.m. on March 10.
"Are You with Us?" Early on the appointed night, Batista returned from the old colonial seaport town of Matanzas, where he had made a routine campaign speech. At his suburban estate, Kuquine, he told his pretty wife Marta that he was tired, and went to bed. Around 2 a.m., four officers called for him. He dressed in the dark; there was a shaky laugh when a nervous aide who thought he was holding the chief's jacket tried to help him slip his arms into a pair of trousers. The conspirators climbed into a car and headed for Camp Columbia. At the gate, the driver leaned out and said: "It's Batista! Are you with us?" The sentry joined the revolt on the spot.
It was a symbolic moment; Batista had got past democracy's sentries as well as Camp Columbia's. And he had achieved complete surprise. The Prío government had not the slightest inkling that the Strong Man was on the prowl. The U.S. State Department, which takes an understandable interest in Cuba's affairs, was caught completely unaware. One Cuban, sourly reflecting on events the morning after, gibed: "The town is full of FBI agents trying to find out what happened."
Once inside the camp, the rebels' first act was to capture the "archbishop"—Chief of Staff General Ruperto Cabrera, who was taken in his ornate, cream-and-gold bed. Several "bishops" (colonels) were also arrested. Batista set up his command post at camp headquarters. Within an hour, the camp was his. The troops were roused, and Batista addressed them, swaying them to his side with one of the oldest of military maxims: he doubled their pay.