Cuba (35 page)

who would probably refer it to the politicians.

‘The

Wonsan

is turning northeastea”…Rita observed. “She’ll

probably go between Cat Island and San

Salvador.”

“Let’s go downea”…Jake Grafton said, “hover

in front of this guy, see if he’ll stop.”…He was

sitting on the flight engineer’s seat just aft of the

pilots.

Five minutes later the Osprey was in

helicopter flight with the rotors tilted up,

descending gently hi front of the

Wonsan,

which was up to five or six knots now. Jake

Grafton could see four people on the bridge, standing

close together and gesturing at the Osprey. The

copilot was watching the clearance, telling Rita how

much maneuvering room she had.

“Closerea”…Jake said.

Rita Moravia kept the Osprey moving in.

Luckily the wind was from the west, so she could keep the

twin-rotor machine on the starboard side of the

freighter, yet pointed right at the bridge. This

kept the wind on her starboard quarter.

She stopped when the distance between her cockpit and the

bridge glass was about fifty yards. The right

rotor was still well above the top of the freighter’s

crane, which was mounted amidships.

“Closerea”…Jake said again, “but watch your

clearance.”

The copilot glanced nervously at Jake.

“Give me clearanceea”…Rita snapped at him, which

brought him back to the job at hand.

She maneuvered the Osprey until it was

completely on

the starboard side of the

Wonsan,

then she dropped it until she could see the length of the

bridge.

The captainhe might have been the captain, wearing a

dirty, white bridge capstepped through the door of the

bridge onto the wing and stood looking into the

cockpit, fifteen feet away. He had his hands

pressed against his ears, trying to deaden the mighty roar

of the two big engines. The downwash from the rotors

raised a storm of sea spray, which was soaking him,

and now it carried away his hat.

“Closerea”…Jake said one more time.

“The air is sorta bumpy coming around this

superstructure.”

“Yeahea”…the admiral said.

Ten feet separated the nose of the V-22 from the

rail of the bridge wing. Rita eased the Osprey

forward a foot at a time, until the refueling

probe and three barrels of the turreted

fifty-caliber machine gun dist protruded from the

nose were no more than eighteen inches from the rail.

“Aim the gun at the captainea”…Jake said.

The copilot flipped a switch, then looked at the

captain’s head, and the machine gun

faithfully tracked, following the aiming commands sent

to it from the gunsight mounted on the copilot’s

helrriet.

The captain’s face was nowiess than ten feet from

Jake Grafton’s. He was balding, a bit

overweight, in his late fifties. The rotor wash

lashed at him and tore at his sodden clothes, making

it difficult for him to keep his footing. Groping for a

rail to steady himself against the fierce wind, he looked

at the three-barreled machine gun, which tracked him

like a living thing, then at Jake Grafton on the

seat behind the Osprey pilots.

The captain turned and shouted something over his left

shoulder; he held on with both hands as he went through

the door onto the enclosed bridge.

“Watch itea”…Jake muttered into his lip mike.

“This guy may be fool enough to turn into you.”

Rita was the first to realize what was happening. She

felt the need to turn left to hold position. “The

ship is slowbigea”…she said. “I think he’s stopped

his engines.”

In a few seconds it became obvious that she was

correct. Rita backed away until the distance

between the cockpit and ship was about fifty

feet.

“I think he lost his nerve, Admiral.”

“Look at the stuff on his deckea”…the copilot

said, pointing. “Looks like he pulled up a bunch

of warheads.”

The freighter was drifting when the destroyer arrived a

half hour later and coasted to a stop several

hundred yards away. In minutes the destroyer had

a boat hi the water.

When armed Americans were standing on the

Wonsan’s

deck, Jake tapped Rita on the shoulder.

“Let’s go home.”

“I listened to the tape from Alejo Vargas’s

office this afternoonea”…Carmellini said to Chance. They were

walking the Prado looking for a place to eat dinner.

To have a decent selection and palatable food, the

restaurant would have to be a hard-currency place.

Although the best restaurants were in ramshackle

houses hi Old Havana, tonight Chance wanted

music, laughter, people.

“Someone told Vargas all about the break-in at the

university lab, the contamination, the dead lab worker.

They spent most of the day running the fans at the

lab, trying to lower the count of the stuff in the

air before they went in.”

“What did they say about the dead man, why he

died?”

“That had them stumped. He was vaccinated. They

called hi a Professor Svenson.”

“Olaf Svenson?”

“No one used a first name.”

“It must be him. I’ve heard of him. Damned

potty old fool. He was at Cal Tech for

years. Thought he was at Colorado now. A

genius, almost won a Nobel Prize.”…He

snapped his fingers. “That photo we gave

Bouchardthat must have been Svenson.”

“Well, he is their main man down at the lab,

to hear the conversation at Vargas’s office.”

“So why did the lab worker die? Wasn’t he

vaccinated?”

“The stuff mutated, according to the professor.

Mutated again, he said.”

“Well, what the hell is it? Did they say that?”

“Some kind of polio.”

“Polio doesn’t kill that quicklyea”…Chance

objected.

“This kind does. The lab worker wasn’t the first,

apparently. The professor wanted

to dissect him like the others but Vargas ordered the body

burned immediately.”

They paused on a corner, watched the people who filled

the sidewalks under the crumbling buildings. Just down

the walk to the left a Cuban was trying to sell

trinkets to a pah* of Germans and having no

luck. To the right a tall young white guy,

American or Canadian probably, was locked

in a passionate embrace with a local girl.

“Sun, sex, and socialismea”…Carmellini

muttered. “Makes you wonder why there aren’t more

Cubans.”

Chance closed his eyes, enjoyed the caress of the

breeze on bis face and hair. He could hear

snatches of music amid the honk of car horns and

traffic sounds. Havana was very much alive this

evening, as it was every evening.

Finally he opened his eyes, looked again at the

Cubans and tourists swirling about him. And

Carmellini standing there, quite nonchalant, looking

bored.

“Do they have any ideas about who broke in?”

“Americans. CIA scum. No evidence, but

they’re sure.”

Chance nodded.

‘There was talkea”…Carmellini continued, “of rounding

up likely suspects, doing some thorough

interrogations, just to see what might turn up. That was

Colonel Santana’s suggestion: apparently he

is a rare piece of work. Vargas overruled him.

Said they couldn’t torture tourists every time the CIA

did something they didn’t like or soon they wouldn’t have

any tourists.”

“Anything else?”

Carmellini shrugged, scratched his chin. “I listened

to almost three hours” worth of that stuff, and you know,

they didn’t mention Fidel Castro even once.”

“Didn’t say his name?”

“Nope. And the technician said he hadn’t heard

them mention Castro all day.”

“Curious.”

“It’s odd. I would have thought”

After a bit Chance said, “The lab is just the tip

of the iceberg. There must be machinery for drying out the

cultures, for packing the microorganisms

into warheads or mixing them into some sort of chemical

stew to be sprayed from planes. There must be trucks

that transport this stuff from place to place. And then

there are the weapons: where the hell are they?”

They went into one of the nightclubs and found

an empty table. Six whores were sitting around the

table beside them. The girls were drinking daiquiris and

having a fine, comloud time. One of the girls looked

the two men over while the band tuned up just a few

feet away.

“Washington wants more informationea”…Carmellini said,

ignoring the whores.

“They would.”…Chance chewed on his lip for a bit, then

picked up the wine list. “Tonight’s the night we go

into Vargas’s safe. Are you comfortable with that?”

Carmellini took his time answering. Chance was about

to repeat the question when he said, “If the alarms are

off.”

‘They’ll be off.”

“Sure.”

‘Trust, me.”

When the waiter came they ordered dinner.

“So tell me again alxwt the Ministry of

Interiorea”…Carmellini said. “Everything you can

recall. Everything.”

Chance leaned back, closed his eyes, tried

to visualize how the building looked when he had

stepped from the taxi

out front on his way to his meeting with Alejo

Vargas.

“There is a guard kiosk out front on the

sidewalk. You then walk through the front entrance to the

guard station inside. They check your credentials

again, call whoever you say you want to see. This

person comes to get you, leads you through the halls to the

office you are to visit.”

“Cameras?”

“Security cameras mounted high in corners,

monitored by the main guard station. There are two

separate systems, at least, with pictures playing

on separate monitors.”

“Infrared sensors?”

“I think so….”…The fact is he should have paid more

attention. Looked more carefully, consciously noted

what he was seeing. “Yes, I remember seeing

one.”

“Motion detectors?”

“No.”

“Laser alarms?”

“Yes, mounted at ankle height.”…Presumably

these were only on when the building was not occupied.

“Alarms on the windows?”

“Yes.”

“Vibrators on the glass?”

“No.”…If there had been vibrators, the

computer would have had a much more difficult job sorting

out the voices from the electronic noise of the

vibrators when it tried to read the light refracted

by the crystals.

“Were there internal security doors, doors that

might be closed when the building is not occupied?”

“Yes. Every hall had them, but I doubt they were ever

used.”

“And internal security stations?”

“I saw none.”

Carmellini thought about it. Closed security doors

made a burglar’s access more difficult, but they

provided a peaceful, quiet place for a burglar

to work once he had gained entry.

“Do they have backup power when the power goes

off”…”…Carmellini mused.

“They mustea”…Chance replied thoughtfully. “A backup

generator of some type. I’m going to walk in

assuming that they do, but I’ll be improvising as I

go.”

“We’ll sure as hell find out soon enough,

won’t we”…”…Carmellini said, and grinned. That was the

first grin he had managed all afternoon. The death of the

lab worker had hit him hard, but the cool execution

of the guard at the front door by William

Henry Chance had hit him like a punch to the solar

plexus. Chance just gunned the man down and kept on

trucking, as if killing another human being were something

he did every morning before lunch.

All evening Carmellini had studied the older man,

watched him for a sign that the murder of the guard was

anything more than absolutely routine. And he had

seen nothing. Nothing at all. Chance looked as if

he might be having dinner in a restaurant in the

Bronx with a Yankees game from a kitchen radio

as background noise.

Carmellini stared at the food on the plate that the

waiter put in front of him. He didn’t want

a mournful. But what he wouldn’t give for a stiff

drink! He sipped at a glass of water, felt

his stomach knot up.

“Order a drinkea”…Chance said as he used his knife

and fork. “One. Something on the rocks. You need it

We have a long night ahead.”

Carmellini looked around for the waiter, and found himself

staring at one of the whores at the next table, who

gave him a big grin. He grinned back. A

man just has to keep things in perspective.

The sun had been down for several hours when

Enrique Poveda and Arquimidez

Cabrera drove up to the fourth EHV tower they

hoped to blow. After a quick look around, they unlocked

the padlock on the gate and put bn their tool

belts. Each of the men picked a tower leg and started

up. About ten feet above the ground they found the shaped

charges of C-4 plastique still firmly taped to the

steel legs. Working in the darkness by feel, each man