By JOHN DORSCHNER
Herald Staff Writer
A year later, Ana Margarita Martínez can still feel the whispers and stares in the supermarket, at the mall, wherever she goes. She knows what they're saying. ``Say, isn't she the one who . . . ''
Yes, she is. The woman who was married to the spy, Juan Pablo Roque, an apparent double-agent, working for both the FBI and Cuba's Communist government. A year ago, he suddenly disappeared from Miami and emerged in Havana, praising the revolution and denouncing Brothers to the Rescue as a group of terrorists two days after Cuban MiGs destroyed two Brothers planes, killing the four people on board.
The former Ana Roque has obtained a court-ordered annulment, changed her name, and at age 36 has tried to get on with her existence. But so much baggage remains that her life is still far from normal.
For one thing, she's hesitant to start dating again. ``It's really hard now to trust people.''
In December, deciding she had to start socializing, she invited a childhood friend to the Christmas party of the Coral Gables bank where she works. Later, a colleague teased her: ``Well, this new guy -- is he 008?''
She grins as she tells this anecdote. ``I've got to be able to laugh,'' she says. ``Laughter's about all I've got.''
For four years, she thought Juan Pablo was in love with her. An ex-MiG pilot who defected from Cuba in 1992, he met her at University Baptist Church. He wooed her in Sunday School. Finally, in the spring of 1995, they were married.
``He was great to me,'' she says. ``Very protective.'' And he was great to her son and daughter from a previous marriage. ``He used to pick them up after school. Help them with their homework. . . . And then this person I loved betrayed me, betrayed this country and four people lost their lives.''
Declaring she had ``nothing to hide,'' she dutifully sat for interviews with any reporter who wanted to talk to her. At first, she vehemently defended Juan Pablo, suggesting there must be a yet-to-be-revealed explanation for his sudden change of ideologies.
``I was in denial. I just couldn't face the idea that four years had been a complete lie, that I was used, that I was just a tool to infiltrate the community.''
For those first several days, she was desperate to get some kind of tranquilizer, but she didn't want journalists following her to a pharmacist, and so she waited till things died down. She also began seeing a therapist.
It took her several sessions before she realized that she had been duped. ``Before that, I just couldn't handle it.''
Though she has no proof now, she has become convinced that everything Roque did in Miami -- going to church, forming an organization of ex-Cuban military officers, informing for the FBI, joining Brothers to the Rescue -- was part of a long-range plan to infiltrate the community.
She believes his pushing for marriage, and then urging her to have a child with him, ``just meant that he expected to be here awhile.'' She guesses that his Cuban handlers pulled him out suddenly, because they needed his claims about the Brothers' plans to plant bombs and assassinate leaders to justify Cuba's destruction of the two Cessnas.
``I had a tremendous loss,'' she says emphatically, ``but I want to make clear that it wasn't as big as the loss the families of the dead pilots suffered.''
Like Jose Basulto, the Brothers leader, Ana thinks that the U.S. government, representing the most powerful nation in the world, must have known what Roque was doing with Cuba.
``This stinks really high up. I can't imagine the FBI was fooled. Don't you think that they were aware he was a spy? I was used by this man, by this tyranny they call a government, and by my own country. What am I? Totally insignificant. So who cares if a spy marries me and used me to carry out his mission?''
Her information about Roque's activities in Cuba has all been second-hand: A photo in Diario las Americas last summer showed Roque standing in line to purchase items at a Havana dollar store. When Roque's aged father became seriously ill, Ana heard, Roque was able to get him into one of Cuba's best hospitals, but in late January, the father died.
Ana still lives in the house that she shared with Juan Pablo, though the only visible remnant of his time there is a print of a color portrait of José Martí that hangs on her living room wall -- a present from the artist to all members of Brothers to the Rescue.
When a writer asks about his comment, she reveals her still-uncertain feelings: ``It hurt, but not a whole lot. At first, I interpreted it as he was protecting me, or both of us. He couldn't show a weakness toward me -- the Cuban government wouldn't appreciate it.''
Later, when she convinced herself he had always been an agent: ``I see he was probably protecting himself. . . . '' Pause. ``Or he did miss the Cherokee.''
Then she adds, a bit flustered: ``I can't imagine there was no feeling at all toward me. That's so hard to accept.'' Suddenly, she switches gears again: ``Some people don't love. They use people.''
After a moment of silence, she offers a final thought: ``I have cried too much for him. I will not shed another tear for Juan Pablo Roque.''
Copyright © 1997 The Miami Herald