When Carlos Morel defected in Montreal, he took with him a promise he made to a friend shortly before boarding the plane in Prague: ''I won't forget you,'' he'd told his childhood pal, Israel Cabrera, hoping he wouldn't be betrayed.

Cabrera, the secretary of the Cuban Communist party in Prague and supervisor of a worker collective, had suspected Morel's plans. He had begged Morel to remember him and perhaps one day to help him.

Seven months later, Morel enlisted the Cuban exile group Frente Democratico Cubano (Cuban Democratic Front) for the costly, risky task of shepherding a high-ranking Cuban official and his family to political asylum.

They didn't know Cabrera's name, what he looked like, or whether the plan was a trap, said Leonardo Viota Sesin, leader of the now-defunct CDF, but ''the Eastern bloc had been liberated from Communism and we all thought Cuba was next. We wanted to do our part.''

In Steti, outside Prague, Cabrera, his pregnant wife Loreta and infant daughter were in peril.

Cabrera said he had resigned from the party and the collective, shocking Cuban embassy officials, who, suspecting a defection in progress, ordered him back to Cuba and put him under surveillance. Under stress, his wife miscarried.

Afraid to seek asylum on his own because Czechoslovakia's newly democratic government still had Communists, Cabrera had moved his family to a fourth hiding place when Morel called him at a trusted friend's home in late September.

Morel told him help was on the way.

Oct. 2, Viota and two colleagues, Lazaro and Fernando Alvarez, landed in Prague. That evening, they took a taxi to a dingy building in Steti.

Back in Montreal, Morel and two CDF members awaited news in a hotel room. If harm came to Viota and the others, they would make sure Morel paid for it.

''On the outside, I was calm, but inside, there was a storm,'' Morel said.

In Steti, the rescuers took the stairs to a dim, dank third-floor hallway. Out of the shadows came a small black man with a full beard. ''Who are you?'' Viota said.

Cabrera's nervous response: ''I'm him, I'm the guy you're here to get!''

He had forgotten the code words, and his back-up proof -- half a picture of him and Morel posing behind a desk. Suspicious, Viota, who had the other half, turned to leave.

A panicked Cabrera suddenly blurted out information Morel had mailed him -- the names and ages of Viota's wife and daughters. That, and the presence of Cabrera's terrified wife and daughter inside the apartment, convinced Viota that he was among friends.

Moments later, everyone sped toward Prague in the taxi. The next morning, the Cabreras were safely at the Czech Ministry of Interior.

They had overcome, they say, Communism's worst legacy -- mistrust among brothers.

''Without them, I would have been lost,'' said Cabrera, who now lives in Prague.