Cuba (40 page)

scholar, mediocre hi every sense, employed here hi

Cuba because I tired of the publish-or-perish

imperative of the academic world. My work is of little

import to the United States government or anyone

else. still

do not work for the CIA.

There has been some mistake.”

Mercedes maintained a polite silence until he

ran out of words, then she said, “Fidel and I

watched an American movie a few months ago,

about dinosaurs in a parkan extraordinary story and

an extraordinary film. We marveled at the

magic that could make dinosaurs so lifelike upon the

screen. It was almost as if the moviemakers had some

dinosaurs to film. Perhaps the magic had something to do

with computers. However they did it, they made something

mat had been dead a very long time come back

to life.”

Bouchard didn’t know what to say. Agency

regulations did not permit him to tell anyone

outside the agency who

his employer was. He twisted his hands as

he tried to decide how he should handle this woman who

refused to listen to his denials.

“Did you say something”…”…she asked.

“I don’t like moviesea”…Bouchard muttered. “There

are no good actors these days.”

“Perhaps not livingea”…sd Mercedes Sedano. “But you

must admit the magicians have given new life to some

dead ones. You and your friends could perform a great

service for Cuba if you would take these

videotapes to the moviemakers and let them bring

Fidel back to life. For just a little while.”

Bouchard picked up the cassettes,- held them in

his hands as he examined them.

“I dissuppose the cultural attach caret might

be able to pass these things alongea”…Bouchard admitted.

“What is it you wish Fidel had lived to say?”

Mercedes nodded. She looked Bouchard straight in

the eyes and told him.

Maximo Sedano huddled in bis great padded leather

chair at the Finance Ministry staring out at the

Havana skyline. He took another sip of

rum, eased the position of his injured hand. He was

holding it pointed straight up. The doctor who

set the broken bones in bis fingers assured him

elevating the hand would help keep the

swelling down.

That pig Santana! He whipped out his pistol and

smashed it down on the fingers of Maximo’s left

hand so quickly Maximo didn’t even think of jerking

it away. Three broken fingers.

Then the son of a bitch laughed! And Vargas

laughed.

Vargas had whispered in his ear: “You aren’t going

to be the next president of Cuba, Maximo. You

have no allies. Delgado and Alba will obey me

to then- dying day, as you will. You have a wife and daughter

and your health. Be content with that.”

He said nothing.

“Your brother Hector is in prison charged with

sedition. I suggest you meditate upon that fact.”

Maximo sipped some more ram.

His fingers hurt like hell. The doctor gave him a

local anesthetic and a half dozen pills when he

set the fingers, but now the anesthetic was wearing off and the

pills weren’t doing much good.

He probably shouldn’t be drinking rum while taking

these pills, but what the hell. A man has to die

only once.

Where was the $53 million?

Somewhere on the other side of the black hole that was the

Swiss banking system.

Face facts, Maximo. You can kiss those bucks

good-bye. Those dollars might as well be on the

back side of the moon.

He spent some time dwelling on what might have been

he was only humanbut after a while those dreams

faded. The reality was the pain in his hand, and the fact that

he was stuck hi this Third World hellhole and would

soon be out of a job. Whatever government followed

Fidel would appoint a new finance minister.

He had no chance of succeeding Castro, and he let

go of that fantasy too. He didn’t have the allies

hi high places, he wasn’t well enough known, and

if he had been he would be in a cell beside Hector

this very minute.

Hector’s plight didn’t cause bun much

concern. He and Hector had never been close, had

never had much in common. Well, to be frank, they

loathed each other.

A pigeon landed on the ledge outside his window.

He watched it idly. It searched the ledge for

food, found none, then took eff.

Maximo watched it. The pigeon circled the

square hi front of the ministry and landed on

a statue that stood near the front door. Maximo

had never liked the statue, some Greek goddess with a

sword. Still, it gave the building a certain tone,

so he had never ordered it moved.

Statues. At least he got the goddess instead of

that

larger-than-life bust of Fidel that the Ministry of

Agriculture

He stared at the goddess. She was made of

bronze. Some kind of metal that had turned green

as the rain and sun and salt from the sea worked on it.

The bust of Fidel in front of the Ministry of

Agriculture was of course manufactured and

erected after the revolution.

So were the statues in the Plaza de Revolucion.

And some of the statues in Old Havana, at the

Museo de Arte Colonial, at the Catedral

de San Cristobal de la Havana, on some

of the minor squares.

After

the revolution! After the government collected all the

gold pesos, or before?

The Museum of the Revolution! The old

presidential palace was converted to a propaganda

temple that would prove to all generations the

venality of Batista, the dictator Fidel had

overthrown. Maximo recalled reading somewhere that

Fidel had personally supervised the renovation and

conversion of the old building.

Thirty-seven tons of gold. Fidel had

squirreled it away somewhere.

What he needed to do was go to the Museum of the

Revolution, lock himself in a room with the collection

of Havana newspapers. After the revolution, after

the gold was collected, what was Fidel doing?

Thirty-seven tons of gold.

“One sample vial from the Cuban lab contained a

new, super-infectious strain of poliomyelitis.

The viruses are so hot they kill in seconds.”

The members of the National Security Council

didn’t say anything.

“The scientists said they never saw anything like itea”…the

national security adviser continued. “The four

sample vials contained three different strains of the

polio virus. Two of the vials contained the same

type of virus.”

“Is the vaccination we were all given as children

effective against these strains”…”…The chairman of the

joint chiefs asked this question.

“Apparently jiot. The scientists will

need more time to verify that, but apparently … no.”

The president looked glum. “Talk about a

choice. We can wait until the Cubans use that

stuff on us or we can bomb the lab right now.”

“No, sirea”…the chairman said. ‘There is no

guarantee a bomb would kill that virus. Bombing

the lab would “probably just release the viruses to the

atmosphere and kill everyone in Cuba who happened

to be downwind.”

The silence that followed that remark was broken by the

secretary of state, who asked, “Do the scientists

have an estimate on how long those viruses can live

outside the lab?”

“Not yetea”…the national security adviser replied.

He took a deep breath and referred back to his

notes. “Here is the situation in Cuba as we

believe it to be: We received a report two hours

ago from our man in Havana who says he was told

earlier today that Fidel Castro is dead. He is

sending some videotapes in the diplomatic pouch.”

“Dead, huh”…”…sd the president. “I’ll believe

it when they put his corpse on display in a tomb

on the Plaza de Revolucion.”

Someone tittered.

The national security adviser continued

to read from his notes. “Review of the documents from the

safe of the secret police chief, Alejo

Vargas, indicates that the Cubans have installed

biological warheads on intermediate-range

ballistic missiles.”

“What?”

the president demanded. He pounded on the table with the

flat of his hand to silence everyone else. In the

silence that followed, he roared, “Where in hell did

those people get ballistic missiles?”

The national security adviser looked like he was in

severe pain. “From the Russians, sir. In

1962. Apparently the

STEPHEN COONTS

Russians left some behind after the Cuban missile

crisis. You may recall that Castro refused

to let the UN inspection team into the country to verify

that all the missiles had been removed.”

“How good is this information?”"…The man who sent it is

absolutely reliable.”…The president mouthed a

profane oath, which the chairman of the joint chiefs

thought a succinct summation of the whole situation.

In a country as poor as Cuba safe houses were

hard to come by. The one that William

Henry Chance and Tommy Carmellini found themselves in

was an abandoned monastery on a promontory of land

on the south coast of the island. Surrounded by tidal

flats and dense vegetation, the sprawling one-story

building was an occasional refuge for drug

smugglers and young lovers, who had left their trash

strewn about. The rotten thatched roof remained

intact over just one room, the kitchen. A roaring

fire burned in the fireplace, which apparently the

monks had used primarily for cooking.

From the window three fishing boats were visible,

wooden boats with a single mast, manned by one or

two men. The crew of two of the boats were rigging

trot lines, the other was hauling in a net. Chance

examined each through binoculars. They looked harmless

enoughhe doubted if any of the boats had an engine

or radio.

“What do you think”…”…Carmellini asked.

“We have a little time, but I don’t know how much.”

“Guess it depends on how efficient the

secret police and the military are.”

“Ummea”…Chance grunted, and after one more sweep of

everything in sight, put down the binoculars.

Tommy Carmellini sat feeding sheets of paper

from the secret police files into the fire

as fast as they would burn. He merely scanned the

pages as he ripped them from the files and tossed them

into the flames.

“Vargas and bis guys were certainly

thoroughea”…Car-

mellini commented. “They looked under every rock.”

“And found every slimy thing that walks or

crawlsea”…Chance agreed. Vargas’s laptop was

on, so Chance resumed his examination of the files.

“Sort of like J. Edgar Hoover.”

“Secret police are pretty much alike the world

overea”…Chance muttered. He moved the cursor to the

next file on the list and called it up.

“How many missiles are there on this

island”…”…Carmellini asked as he tore paper.

“I have found six missile files, so far. There

may be moreI see some references to material that

doesn’t seem to be on this computer.”

“Six? With locations?”

“Names only. Every missile has a name: Miami,

Atlanta, Jacksonville, Charleston, New

Orleans, and Tampa.”

“What about Mobile?”‘

- “Don’t see it on here.”

“Birmingham, Orlando, the army bases in

Alabama?”

“Nothing.”

“I find it hard to believe that in the decades since

1962, the Cubans have managed to keep the secret

of their ballistic missiles.”

Chance didn’t reply. He had never agreed with the

agency’s spending priorities, which were heavily

slanted toward reconnaissance satellites. The

people in Washington were sold on high-tech computer and

sensor networks for the collection of intelligence.

Hardware and software didn’t turn traitor and were

easy to justify to the bean counters. The spymasters

seemed to have lost sight of a basic truth: networks

could only collect the information their sensors’ were

designed to obtain. And they could be fooled. If

garbage goes in, garbage comes out.

Ah, well. The world keeps turning.

“How long is that going to take”…”…Chance asked,

referring to the files and the fire.

“Couple hours at this rate.”

Chance glanced at his watch. A few minutes after

one o’clock in the afternoon. The rendezvous with the submarine was

set for ten o’clock tonight, almost nine hours away. “If

we have to run for it, we’ll take everything

we haven’t burned.”

He and Carmellini and die four U.s. Navy

SEAL’S on guard in the grasses and bushes out

front would try to escape if the Cubans

attacked the place. Two speedboats were fueled

and ready inside die old boathouse, and a

submarine would meet diem fifty miles south.

Unfortunately he had no way of knowing if die

submarine was already lying submerged at die

rendezvous position or if the skipper planned