Murder in Havana (29 page)

He continued to keep an eye out for Celia, the blond one, and anyone else of recent acquaintance. He remembered that Jessica had told him Mac Smith was in Havana with the Price McCullough delegation, and
strained to see him among the VIPs gathered in front of the podium. He had a vague recollection of what Smith looked like, although he wouldn’t swear he could pick him out of a police lineup with certainty. It didn’t matter. He was still a little too far away to distinguish individual faces in the VIP section.

When it seemed that the noise level in the plaza couldn’t become any louder, it did, a different sort of noise, one filled with expectation and excitement. A deafening cheer went up as Fidel Castro, dressed in his signature combat fatigues and wearing his green fatigue hat, appeared from nowhere and stepped to the podium. He held his hands high above him and uttered a rapid-fire greeting in Spanish. Pauling noted the security officers in his area, and thought they’d never cut it in the U.S. Secret Service. Their attention had turned from watching for potential assassins to their leader, who’d transformed Cuba from a hedonistic playground for the rich into a Communist state ninety miles off the shore of the mighty United States, and done it with arrogance and bravado that had perplexed president after president and generated heated public discourse for more than four decades.

Pauling tried to translate what Castro was saying.
What does this guy possess to have pulled it off and kept it going for so many years?
Colleagues at the CIA and State had offered many explanations in the past. “He’s the best TV actor in the world,” was one. “He’s a dictator,” was another. “He gave his people hope,” a more sanguine colleague offered. “He’s smart, knows what buttons to push and when,” said another. Castro’s close friend, the Nobel Prize–winning Colombian author, Gabriel García Márquez, explained Castro’s success this way: “His rarest virtue is the ability to foresee the evolution of an event to the farthest reaching consequences. He is a masterly chess player.”

One thing was certain, Pauling knew. The man could talk—and talk, and talk. An ancient entertainment. The people in the plaza seemed spellbound as their leader went on, stopping only to allow a chorus of schoolchildren to sing to him, their sweet voices bringing smiles to everyone. When the children were finished, a chant went up: “Fidel! Fidel! Fidel!” And he picked up where he’d left off, to the crowd’s seeming delight.

Although Pauling understood little of what Castro was saying, he found himself drawn into the forceful, passionate delivery, fascinated by the man’s presence even at that distance. He maneuvered through the crowd to get closer, a moth drawn to a summer candle.
“Perdón,”
he said as he squeezed by people. “Sorry. Excuse me.” He reached the rope separating the VIP section from the main crowd. A burly Cuban officer glared at him. Pauling smiled and nodded to indicate his approval of what Castro was saying. He slid to his right, away from the guard, stopped, and looked up at the podium where Castro was making what was obviously an important point, his voice rising and falling in passion, a finger jabbing at the air.

Pauling now took in the assembled dignitaries behind the ropes, but saw only their backs, their attention turned to the speaker. One man moved for a moment; Annabel Lee-Smith’s husband? Pauling couldn’t be sure, but he did recognize Price McCullough. He looked closely at Castro. No matter how the assignment turned out, he’d gotten within twenty feet of the man. He felt like a groupie, a fan club member trying to catch a glimpse of a pop idol. As that unflattering thought ran through his mind, he realized again how dangerous someone like Fidel Castro was, able to whip a nation into patriotic frenzy through the power of his words and ferocity of his delivery.

People to his left and right began to sway in rhythm to
Castro’s vocal cadence, bumping into Pauling. He decided it was time to leave. He’d had enough. He peered over heads on his left, in search of Celia, then tried the right. As he did so, the man pressing next to him drew his attention. He was middle-aged and considerably shorter than Pauling. His eyes seemed to be glazed, his face expressionless, unlike the smiling, humming people under Castro’s verbal spell. Celia had told Pauling that in advance of the celebration, the police would sweep the streets of suspicious types and corral them somewhere until Castro was safely offstage. Pauling wondered why
he
hadn’t been included in that group; this guy certainly should have been.

Pauling turned to begin the tortuous route back through the crowd and out of the plaza, but something unstated caused him to look again at the man with the crazed expression. He was reaching slowly beneath his white guayabera and pulling a handgun from his belt. Pauling froze for the second it took for the man to raise the weapon in Castro’s direction and to shout “Murderer!” Pauling lunged, his hand hitting the weapon and turning it from its target. It discharged once, then again. Other people pounced on the shooter and immediately began punching and kicking him. Castro had been flung to the stage floor by bodyguards. VIPs within the roped area hit the ground, too. Pandemonium broke out in the plaza. The cheers and chants changed to screams and wailing, a swelling chorus of curses and questions and accusations. A nervous soldier on the rooftop of the Minint building opened fire into the crowd. People tried to run from the square and soon were knocking each other down, stepping on and over the fallen, panic as thick in the air as the aroma of food and the density of the speech had been.

A security guard, who’d seen what had happened,
began speaking loudly and quickly with a fellow officer, pointing at Pauling. Mac Smith, who’d gone to the ground at the sound of the first shot, stood and looked in Pauling’s direction. He was certain it was Jessica’s boyfriend. He shouted the name “Pauling,” but his words were drowned by the din in the plaza.

Others who’d been standing close to Pauling and the gunman when it happened started yelling things at Pauling that he didn’t understand, but they sounded angry.
Did they think
he’d
been with the shooter? That he was part of the plot?
He didn’t wait around to find out. He pushed past them, sending an older man to the ground, found some open room, and began to run, dodging knots of people, searching for other breaks in the crowd, trying to move away from security forces who seemed as confused as the rest of the people. Then he reached a narrow
solar
and ducked into it, his breath coming hard, his sides aching. Soon, he reached the opposite end, thankful it wasn’t a dead end, crossed a wider street, and entered a small park. He found an iron bench nestled in a thick clump of trees and bushes and sat down. The sound of police sirens reached him in this temporary haven. He drew deep breaths and shook his head in an attempt to clear it. The last few minutes had been a blur. Now things returned to focus.

An attempt had been made on Fidel Castro’s life, and he, Pauling, had been there to thwart it. It probably wouldn’t have made any difference whether he’d knocked the gun away or not. The shooter was unlikely to have hit his target from where he was standing. The gun looked like a cap pistol. Not a very creative approach to taking out the Cuban leader, but Pauling’s former agency’s high-
and
low-tech attempts at the same target hadn’t been effective either.

Pauling tried to think. Who was the guy with the cap pistol?
Jesus!
He had shouted, “Murderer!” A nut looking to make a name for himself? Was the failed assassin on his own, or was he part of a larger conspiracy? If it had happened in the States, he’d soon be branded a lone assassin with no ties to anyone, no matter how illogical that might be.
Governments don’t like conspiracy theories; “the people” can’t handle it, they rationalize
.

Who
was
the guy? Was he still alive?

Pauling stood and looked through the bushes at the street. Sirens continued to wail, and there was the sound of people shouting from outside the park. He tried to get his bearings. Once he had them, a decision had to be made where to go next, Celia’s apartment or his hotel? His first inclination was to rule out the latter. But he decided there was no reason not to go there. He hadn’t done anything to make anybody mad, unless saving Castro’s life was sufficient. Hell, they ought to give him a medal and a year’s supply of free
mojitos
.

He made his decision based upon which place would more likely put him in touch with Celia. Had she been in the plaza? If so, he reasoned, she’d probably go back to her friend’s apartment.

As he made his way carefully, staying off major streets in favor of smaller, less populated ones, Celia Sardiña got out of a taxi in front of the art gallery on Calle Obispo. The blinds on the windows were tightly shut, and a sign in the window said
CLOSED
. She rang the bell and waited. A minute later the gallery owner peeked through the slats and unlocked the door. She followed him to the back room.

“It failed,” the owner said.

“Of course it did,” she replied. “Did you think sending someone with a pistol would succeed?”

“The message had to be sent that all Cubans are not happy with Castro. The world will know.”

“The world will know we are inept when trying to rid ourselves of him.”

The owner hung his head. “I must report to Miami,” he said, looking up. “The tape? McCullough? What is new with that?”

“That is not a problem,” she said. “I am taking care of it.”

He looked at her quizzically.

“I must go. Roberto is in custody?”

“
Sí
. They beat him, I am told. An American hit him, pushed his gun away.”

“An American?”

“
Sí
. You were not there?”

“I had things to do.”

“You can stay for dinner?”

“No,
gracias
. I have other plans.” She checked her watch. Ex-senator McCullough would be back at his suite by now. “I will be leaving Havana shortly.”

He nodded.

“This is a crucial period for us,” she said. “Huge changes are about to take place. We must be ready for them.”

“I will do what I can.”

She embraced him, left the gallery, and told the taxi driver to take her to Hotel Nacional.

This is Lolita Perez reporting from Cuba. An attempt was made today on the life of Fidel Castro as he spoke during his annual birthday celebration. The attempt by a lone gunman, who fired two shots at President Castro, failed, and the assailant was taken into custody by the police.”

Footage taken at Plaza de la Revolución during the celebration aired, with the correspondent talking over it. When it was finished, her face again filled the screen.

“I’m at Havana’s famed Hotel Nacional where former senator Price McCullough and a trade delegation he’s led to Cuba are staying. The senator and his delegation were at the birthday celebration when the assassination attempt took place.”

The shot widened to include McCullough standing next to the reporter.

“Senator McCullough, what happened today during President Castro’s speech? What did you see?”

“What I saw, Ms. Perez, was a crazed gunman try to take the life of President Castro. Fortunately, he missed. I understand a member of the security forces was hit by one of the bullets, but wasn’t seriously injured.”

“Were you and your delegation in danger?”

McCullough laughed gently and patted her shoulder. “No, young lady, we weren’t in danger. I’m just glad that
aside from a few minor injuries in the crowd—and my goodness, it was some crowd to wish President Castro a happy birthday, wasn’t it?—I’m glad that a tragedy of international proportions didn’t occur here today.”

Annabel Lee-Smith had been watching CNN while making a key lime pie. When the report of the attempt to kill Castro came on, she dropped the pie plate to the counter and stood close to the TV set. Behind the reporter and Price McCullough stood members of the trade delegation, including, thank God, her husband, Mackensie.

The report ended and CNN went on to other stories. Annabel tried to place a call to Havana, but all circuits were busy. “Damn,” she muttered, returning to the pie. She’d try the call again in a few minutes.

At CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Zachary Rasmussen, the agency’s director of covert ops, watched it on a TV in his office.

“That’s the best they could do?” Rasmussen said, slowly shaking his head.

“They had something better planned, Zach,” Tom Hoctor said, “but it got derailed at the last minute. At least that’s what we get from Miami.”

“Who’s the guy they sent to do the job?”

“I don’t know. A sacrificial lamb, I suppose. They wanted to take a shot at Fidel during his birthday bash to make a statement. If by some chance they actually hit him, that would have been a bonus.”

“We told them it would be a wasted effort,” said Rasmussen.

Hoctor shrugged and rubbed his right eye. He’d come to Rasmussen’s office carrying a sheaf of papers and now handed one to him. Rasmussen frowned and chewed his
cheek as he read. He handed it back to Hoctor and said, “
He
saved Fidel’s life?”