Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is represented chiefly through Inspector John Robbart, whose effort to find Ramondo Cardoso turns the Bureau’s pursuit of a missing cameo into a test of persistence and interagency cooperation. Robbart builds a case from clues pointing toward Cuba, but the Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine access gives it the operational lead. When the cameo disappears just as the agencies expect to recover it, the Bureau’s renewed involvement cannot resolve the object’s whereabouts. The investigation thus links law-enforcement procedure to the novel’s larger uncertainty about evidence, ownership, and the difference between tracing a person and recovering an artifact.

Robbart and the Bureau

John Robbart is an FBI inspector whose standing within the Bureau has suffered after what the narration calls the Kansas City blunder. Colleagues have held the failure against him, and he has lost sleep and weight. His pursuit of Cardoso is therefore both an investigative commitment and a chance to recover professional ground. He has sworn to track the Cuban dealer wherever he may be, and he resists the prospect of retreating into less demanding work.

The account presents Robbart’s perspective with marked individual intensity: he is eager, combative, and keenly aware of promotion, money, and institutional reputation. Those personal grievances shape how he experiences the case, but they are not presented as the Bureau’s formal position. His professional instincts and his need to prove himself run together, making the investigation a route back into a matter from which he feels he has been pushed aside.

Following the Cuban trail

Robbart reasons that Cardoso is unlikely to have traveled far beyond the Caribbean and may have returned to his home country. Cuba presents an exceptional obstacle for United States law enforcement, so he looks for an indirect route rather than assuming the Bureau can simply pursue the suspect there. A Mexican smuggler arrested for violating the United States embargo against Cuba supplies a promising lead: Robbart suspects the smuggler may have carried Cardoso from the Yucatan to Cuba.

To develop that possibility, Robbart approaches a well-placed friend, Chris, who can connect him with the Central Intelligence Agency. After months of routine work and little progress, Robbart receives an email reporting that the Agency has been told the arrested smuggler may have transported a Cuban exile wanted by the FBI. The message does not name Cardoso. Robbart nevertheless concludes that the exile must be Cardoso, and sees the information as a way to re-enter the investigation.

He is careful not to expose Chris as the source of the sensitive intelligence. Instead, he plans to bring his own theory to his superiors and connect it with information obtained from the smuggler at Guantánamo. The distinction matters to him: he wants the Bureau to act on the lead while ensuring that his friend is not compromised, and he wants to be recognized as the investigator who identified the route.

Interagency pursuit and the missing cameo

The CIA’s reporting subsequently gives the case a more concrete, if still indirect, direction. Through a Spanish double agent with access to the Castro government, the Agency traces Cardoso’s movements and learns that he has died suddenly in Cárdenas under unexplained circumstances. It also learns that the cameo Cardoso bought in Kansas City has passed into the hands of a Yoruba religious officiant, a babalao named Rodrigo Lerbier. This is intelligence gathered through the CIA’s Cuban network, not a result of the FBI acting alone.

The agencies have agreed that the CIA will turn the cameo over to the FBI once it is recovered. But the recovery fails: the stone disappears, and the operation returns to an unresolved starting point. The CIA suspects that Lerbier may have staged a burglary to reclaim the object, and has him discreetly followed. During a nationwide purge of dissidents and other perceived opponents in Cuba, its agents must proceed cautiously. The novel makes the division of labor clear: the CIA has access and surveillance assets inside Cuba, while the FBI has the domestic case and expects to receive the recovered artifact.

Setback and narrative significance

Robbart learns of the disappearance from Chris, who keeps him informed nearly hour by hour. The timing makes the loss especially galling: his superiors have agreed to return the case to him, but the object disappears just as the CIA appears close to securing it. His renewed authority therefore does not bring a resolution. He is frustrated, yet continues to regard the investigation as active and himself as not defeated.

The Bureau’s role is consequently defined by both reach and limitation. It can pursue Cardoso through leads developed in the United States, enlist a friend’s connection to another agency, and resume the case when its leadership permits. But its access to the decisive Cuban developments depends on the CIA, and its anticipated handoff of the cameo never occurs. By keeping the artifact’s fate open even after Cardoso’s death is reported, the narrative separates investigative progress from certainty: the FBI can establish a route, identify a likely suspect, and receive intelligence about the stone without possessing the stone or closing its history.