The Prisoner of Guantanamo (10 page)

“You did well today,” Gonzalo said in greeting. “Almost to Bermuda.”

Harbin smiled, toweling off as the tags clinked.

“One of these days maybe I'll head south, stop off in Cuba.” He grinned, an opening for Gonzalo to offer more. But Gonzalo wasn't in the mood today, so he just smiled and said, “Make sure and say hello to my father then.”

Harbin wouldn't have dared ask whether Gonzalo's father was still actually alive, just as Gonzalo wouldn't have dared ask whose name was on the extra set of tags. Maybe the man was childless and gay. It certainly would have been an easy fit with the culture of South Beach.

“Have you seen the Lespinasses?” Harbin asked.

“Charles said last week they might not make it today. A family birthday to celebrate. Some aunt of theirs in Overtown.”

“Ah. Thursday won't be the same without them. Sort of like a Friday without the Stolzes. They're moving back to Germany, you know.”

“No. I hadn't heard.” Another little tremor in his safe world.

Harbin nodded.

“Saw them over the weekend at the Publix.” Odd to think of ever bumping into each other anywhere but here. Gonzalo wasn't sure he would even know how to act.

“Brigitte's homesick, I think. Misses her sons.”

“Who I gather have stopped visiting, now that they have children.”

“Yes. Just when you want to see them more.” The tags clinked again as Harbin fell silent. So perhaps they had belonged to a son.

“Well,” Harbin said, neatly rolling up the towel as he always did, forming a bundle as tight as a sausage. “See you tomorrow.”

“Until then.”

No sense mentioning that he wouldn't be there, perhaps not for days. It was going to be hard enough telling Lucinda. Speaking of whom, there she was now. Gonzalo's heart lifted at the sight of her as she stepped from the park sidewalk onto the sand. She was waving now, golden eyes flickering like candlelight, her emotions playing in them like a flame.

“You're a lucky man, Gonzalo,” Harbin said.

“As usual, you are right again, GI Joe.”

Harbin laughed as he left the beach. Gonzalo watched him pause to speak with Lucinda. For the briefest moment he wondered what they were saying, and the slightest pang of mistrust registered in some quadrant of his mind that had been trained to be suspicious. He could never quite shut it down, especially after a message like this morning's. He would be edgy all day. Lucinda would notice and ask why—she always noticed, and he always made up something about the boss at his regular job. He was a security deskman at the South Bay Club, a condo high-rise overlooking the bay, which Lucinda liked because it gave them pool privileges. They had enjoyed many nice evenings grilling steaks out by the water, on a patio redolent with chlorine and sun lotion, a salt breeze stroking the palms. Perhaps that would be their destination tonight.

Harbin continued on his way, and Lucinda smiled toward Gonzalo with a generosity that melted every doubt and made him ashamed.

Her full name was Lucinda Bustillo. She was Venezuelan, having moved here as a teen when her father bought an apartment block on Key Biscayne. She had a slow smile and thick wavy hair that was a deep bronze, the sort of color you might come across in an old box of heirloom jewelry, although she never seemed happy with it—streaking it one week and frizzing it the next, a master of disguise without even trying.

“No bicycle,” she said, looking around. “You took the bus today.”

She liked it better when he brought his bike, even though it meant he had to push it alongside them as they walked to lunch. She thought the extra exertion was good for him, helping melt the little roll of fat around his belly, which she often pinched in bed. But that was a quibble. The only time she truly got irritated with Gonzalo was when he did volunteer work for the Cuban American organizations that he liked to keep tabs on.

“Right-wing crazies,” she called them, hating them far more than Gonzalo did, not that he could ever confess his loathing. As a Venezuelan she found the politics of the expat Cubans ridiculous. During the Elián González fiasco she hadn't spoken to him for a week after hearing that one of the groups he worked for was at the forefront of the daily rallies and protests.

He had suggested that they stop discussing these matters altogether, in the interests of peace. So far she had been happy to oblige him, although lately she had begun to talk of a different solution. Why didn't they move, she suggested. Get away from South Florida and all of the whining.

She first brought it up when they were out walking on Calle Ocho, during one of their rare excursions as a couple into the heart of Little Havana. When they passed Domino Park she of course reminded him of the way the local merchants had tried to drive out all the old men and their game boards, by complaining that too many bums and drug dealers were hanging around. When they strolled across the “Walk of Fame,” a latinized version of Hollywood's Walk of Fame, she couldn't resist joking about the way its sponsors had been accused of kickback schemes and of trying to arrange a hit on a city commissioner.

“And these are the geniuses who think they should be running Cuba instead of Fidel?” she said, her laughter filling the street.

“Nothing was ever proven,” Gonzalo said testily, feeling as if he had to stand up for all Cubans, even the moronic ones. “No one was ever charged.”

“No,” she said. “No one is ever charged. But they keep on making the same stupid mistakes. And if we didn't live here anymore, we'd never have to argue about them again.”

Moving was out of the question for Gonzalo, of course, but he couldn't tell her why. So instead he hemmed and hawed about wanting to stay close to his roots, and to the way he grew up. Rather than argue the point she had shaken her head.

“Someday,” she said slowly and in a tone of deep sadness. “Someday you will tell me the real reason you continue with this fiction.”

At that moment he realized she knew him better than anyone. Personally he was enchanted. Professionally he was alarmed.

Lucinda was predictably displeased when he told her that he would be busy for a while because he had just taken on a new assignment for the crazies in Little Havana.

“So you won't be staying over tonight?”

“There's too much to do. At least for a few days.”

“Fanatics and fools. Always calling for change when they haven't been to Cuba in years. What do they know about what it's really like anymore?”

True about him as well, Gonzalo supposed. With regard to his homeland he felt like a pen pal who hadn't written in ages. The Havana of his boyhood—his father flinging the net, his mother working as a hotel maid for pennies an hour—now seemed closer to him than the Havana that had existed just before he left for America, when he had been a young man brimming with the passion of the cause.

“So you'll be doing some job for them,” she said with a sniff.

“Please. No politics. We agreed.”

“Just don't expect me to be so understanding. Not when they're taking so much of your time. Will you be finished by Sunday?”

“I wish I could say.”

“This won't be dangerous, will it?”

She had never asked that before, but Gonzalo had already pondered the same possibility. He had also been wondering if he might need help this time, not from the Directorate's regular stable of operatives but from his own personnel, which he had personally recruited. They were illegal immigrants from other Latin American countries who didn't know his real name, much less his real employer. They knew only that he was the fellow who had provided them with fresh identities stolen from tombstones in Texas and California, from dead persons who shared their same years of birth. It made your employees more loyal that way, especially if you called on them for only one chore and then set them loose, which was Gonzalo's practice.

So, yes, maybe this job would be dangerous, and Lucinda had apparently picked up on his anxiety. The way she could read him was almost unnerving, even though it was part of her appeal. He would have to lie to her all the same.

“Oh, no,” he answered. “Nothing dangerous. Just busy. And I'm not the boss.”

“Please. I don't want to know any more.”

“That's the last you'll hear. Let's at least enjoy the afternoon.”

Which they did, followed by an evening at poolside with a big porterhouse on the grill. Then he drove her back to her place off Alton Road, a quiet building in the shade of ceiba trees, perfumed by orange blossoms.

She opened her front door just enough to let him smell the essence of the place—the bouquet of her cleaning, her cooking, her soaps and scents, a combination that only made him want to step inside.

“Are you coming in?” she asked, her eyes offering a night of sweetness and languor. Behind her he saw the amber light of the lamp next to her couch, the same color as her hair. It was safe and comfortable here, and for a few seconds he wavered in a way that he never had before when duty called. How easy it would be to say yes, and to let the message from Havana rot in its mail drop while he slept, resting against her back while the noise of the traffic came in through the jalousies and the ceiling fan thrummed. A Cuban lullaby right here on Alton Road.

But his conscientious nature prevailed. And, truth be told, he was curious. Something important was waiting just around the corner, and he had to find out what.

“I'd better go,” he said, braving her eyes a final time. “There's a lot to do, even tonight.”

She scowled, not knowing it was for all the wrong reasons.

“Those crazy Cubans,” she said, as if Gonzalo was from a different country altogether. “Always stirring things up.”

Once again, her intuition was right on the mark.

CHAPTER SEVEN

T
HE SLEEK LITTLE
G
ULFSTREAM
approached Guantánamo from the south like a mosquito, needling through the rosy dusk on the narrow flight path that pilots loved to hate. It was a toss-up as to what was the greater hazard—violating Cuban airspace or plunging into the Caribbean. Yet everyone always seemed to arrive in one piece.

The jet taxied to the yawning mouth of the airstrip's cavernous pink hangar, where Falk waited with General Trabert alongside the group commanders for detention and intelligence. Joining them were a few mechanics and an active cloud of midges. It was their feeding time, and Falk slapped one on his neck. They were tiny, yet drew blood and left a welt the size of a nickel—the perfect welcoming delegation for a team from Washington, as far as he was concerned.

The three visitors stepped to the tarmac, their hair blowing in the ocean breeze. Two wore suits, as if they'd been lifted right off K Street. The third wore a dark green Army dress uniform with enough campaign ribbons to cover a dashboard.

Bokamper, one of the suits, was the last one off. He spotted Falk immediately, signaling recognition with a familiar glint in his eye, the barely contained glee of a frat boy who has just short-sheeted every bed in the house. But, as always, he maintained an air of command—the upright carriage, the stride that was almost a swagger, an ease of movement radiating calmness and control.

Their friendship dated to the unlikeliest of beginnings. During basic training Bokamper had been the bright young officer to Falk's rebellious recruit. Without the guidance of the former, the latter might well have washed out. Without the prodding curiosity of the latter, the former might have settled into a military career path. Or so Bokamper later claimed.

They developed enough mutual respect that three years later Bo was the first person Falk turned to for fellowship and counsel when he left the Marines to enroll at American University in Washington. When Falk had shown an aptitude for foreign languages, it was Bo who steered him toward Arabic—“the real up-and-comer, just watch.” And by then he was in position to know, as a new Foreign Service officer working just around the corner at the State Department.

From there, both men hit the road, Bokamper to a succession of embassies in Jordan, Managua, and Bahrain while Falk spent two years at American's campus in Beirut, for further studies in Arabic and Middle Eastern cultures.

A high priest of Foggy Bottom pegged Bokamper as a rising star and brought him home for grooming as an acolyte of the inner circle, that ring of professionals which forever steers diplomacy no matter who is installed at the helm. Falk spent a few more years abroad working as a corporate security consultant, and then signed on with the Bureau, which was desperate for his language skills. He arrived back in Washington within a year of Bokamper's return, which proved to be fortuitous timing. Without Bo's influence, Falk might have found his new masters a bit too gray and rigid, even though his polished Arabic virtually guaranteed a fast track. Falk's shared insights on the Arab world, meanwhile, helped Bo widen his audience of patrons among State's burgeoning influx of neoconservatives, even though Bo believed that that fashion, like many before it, would soon come and go.

Since then, their paths had occasionally crossed elsewhere—in Yemen during the
Cole
investigation, for example. Busy schedules permitting, they still got together in Washington every month or so.

Falk was nonetheless a little disconcerted that the fates were bringing them together at Guantánamo. They had a common link to this place, one with its own odd and unsettling history, which Falk would rather have left undisturbed. He would also be playing the unaccustomed role of host and mentor, after years of letting Bo set the tone.

“Let's make 'em feel at home,” Trabert said as the three members of the delegation strolled forward. “You're to give them everything they ask for. You in particular, Falk.”

“Yes, sir,” he answered, a shade too quickly.

The general returned the salute of the Army officer, then announced, “Gentlemen, welcome to Guantánamo, the Pearl of the Antilles.”

Bokamper was the only one to chuckle, which drew an irritated glance from the other suit, who Falk learned during introductions was the team leader, Ward Fowler, from the Department of Homeland Security. The uniform belonged to Colonel Neil Cartwright, from the office of the secretary of defense. Bokamper was presented as the new liaison to Task Force Guantánamo from the secretary of state, meaning he must still be moving up in the world.

Trabert introduced Falk not as an interrogator but as “the special agent investigating the Ludwig affair,” which drew a smile but fortunately not another laugh from Bo. By the time the grip and grin was over, the atmosphere was already stiff and formal, and the general didn't exactly lighten the mood with his next remarks.

“The MPs will be using a canine to check your luggage for explosive materials. Then we'll take the ferry to the windward side, where you'll be shown to your quarters. For those of you who wish to socialize this evening, MPs are available to escort you wherever you like. But I'd offer a caution. Throughout your stay, bear in mind that there are operational matters we don't dialogue about in the open. We give no aid and comfort to the enemy. Questions?”

There were no takers, lest anyone accidentally offer aid and comfort.

“Then I'll be seeing you at my office tomorrow, per your schedule, at oh eight hundred hours.”

He turned smartly on his heel to lead the way, everyone silently falling into formation.

         

F
ALK LEANED ON THE PORT RAIL
as the chunky gray ferry plowed through the luminous chop on its twenty-minute crossing. Sternward, the last of the sunlight bled into the hills, and to the north the distant lights of a Cuban village twinkled on the horizon. Only eight passengers were aboard, which left plenty of room to spread out on the steel deck. Bokamper sidled up on Falk's left.

“Congratulations on the promotion,” Falk said.

“Not sure I'd call it that.”

“Sounded like one when I heard about it from the general.”

“Do I detect an edge?”

“I'm not that hard to get in touch with.”

“Maybe I wanted it to be a surprise. What with this being your old stomping grounds and all that.”

“Yeah. All that.”

Only they would have understood the freight carried by those words, but Falk glanced around anyway to make sure no one else was within earshot. It was the perfect opening for mentioning the letter from Elena that had arrived that morning, but he decided to wait for more privacy.

“The general's got quite a bedside manner,” Bo said. “Really knows how to put the troops at ease.”

“Figured you guys would hit it off. So what's with your bunch? Who are these guys, anyway?”

“Where do you want me to start?”

“How 'bout the top. The guy from Homeland Security.”

“Fowler? If I had to pick his three biggest heroes I'd say George Patton, John Madden, and Dale Carnegie. Hit 'em hard, play to win, and always keep the customer satisfied. Bit of a prude, but a true believer.”

“In what?”

“The Mission.”

“Which is?”

“Whatever his boss tells him but doesn't tell me.”

“But you're part of the team.”

“Yes and no. Beyond that, I shouldn't say too much. They're already worried I'll spoil the party.”

“Trabert said there would be surprises.”

Bokamper nodded, gazing at the foaming wake. There was no sound but the rumble of the engines, which sent shuddering vibrations up through the deck. Bo tipped his head to the north.

“Those lights. Cuban?”

“Yeah. Caimanera, I think. Maybe some other village. You'll get used to it. What about the uniform, Neil Cartwright?”

“Fowler's errand boy. And considering that he's got the full power of the secretary of defense behind him, he should be a pretty handy errand boy.”

“What's he like?”

“The quiet type.”

“Meaning dangerous?”

“Or stupid. I don't know. Could be a cipher, could be the next deputy secretary. Seems like a good enough guy. About as warm as an undertaker, but that comes with the territory. He's been designated the chief springer of surprises. The one who'll light the candles on the cake.”

“When's the party?”

“Soon. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Am I invited?”

“You better hope not. But I haven't seen the full guest list.”

It was a little too indefinite for comfort, or maybe Bokamper was just teasing, as someone who knew Falk's weaknesses all too well.

“What else?”

“That's the extent of my knowledge. I've known Fowler for a while, but Cartwright I hadn't even heard of until yesterday. Met him on the plane.”

Falk raised his eyebrows.

“Like I told you, I'm not an original member of the Brady Bunch here. Last-minute adoption. The boss wanted me to get my feet wet, and this seemed like a good opportunity.”

“Speaking of the Bradys, how are Karen and the kids?”

“Growing up too fast. Karen's great, volunteering for everything in sight. Turning into a Democrat, but I guess that's a hazard of living in Bethesda.”

Bokamper had four children and counting, with each seemingly more contentious and rambunctious than the last, just like dear old dad. He was building a big, noisy brood along the lines of the one he'd grown up in. A visit to their home a year ago had been one of the few times when Falk had been tempted by the idea of being married and having children, of settling in one place long enough to watch your seeds grow and flourish while you pruned and weeded and prayed for the grace of the elements.

In visits to the homes of other friends he often glimpsed quarrels and attitude, the dammed-up pressures of overscheduling, or the bitterness of a wife whose career had been trampled in the stampede of child-rearing. He usually departed with relief, taking deep breaths all the way home. After leaving Bo's he felt only envy, having witnessed that fierceness of love that develops when every turn of fortune is embraced at full energy, both spouses working at close quarters, too busy protecting each other's flanks to notice any threats to their own.

It was the children's bedtime ritual that moved him most. Tiny heads poking from pajama tops as they dressed for sleep. A look of complete trust and comfort on their faces as Bo tucked them in. Falk supposed he could have all that, too, if he worked on it, tried harder. But some people weren't cut out for that life, even if they wanted it.

They talked a while longer about Bo's kids, until the ferry bumped the pilings at Fisherman Point, engines churning in reverse. Schools of striped fish hovered in the current below, illuminated by the dock lights.

In the neighboring slip, four members of a Coast Guard crew were putting covers on the deck guns of their Boston Whaler, a tidy patrol boat that Falk coveted whenever he saw it zipping nimbly around the bay. With a boat like that you could make a living out here. A woman, tall and blond, toweled sea spray off the biggest gun, a .50-caliber cannon mounted at the bow.

“Got many of those here?” Bokamper asked.

Falk knew he wasn't referring to the boat or the gun. The family man had never lost his roving eye.

“Not nearly. But if you want to see the entire field, I know the place. You guys had dinner?”

“They catered one for the flight. Not half bad.”

“Meaning not half good.”

“You know me. Palate of a stevedore.”

“When you're finished unpacking, come down to the Tiki Bar. The place to be and be seen on the Rock.”

“What's with the transportation? Do we get cars, or is the general going to have us driven everywhere?”

“I'd guess the official line will be that everything's rented out, which is true. But also convenient.”

“You think he wants to keep tabs on us?”

“Wouldn't you?”

“If I was a nosy, insecure little hard-ass paratrooper like him, yeah, I guess so.”

The boarding ramp thudded onto the shore. The voice of General Trabert piped up as the new arrivals reached for their bags.

“Gentlemen, I've got work to complete, so I'll be taking my leave.” He gestured toward his office at Task Force Guantánamo headquarters—the so-called Pink Palace—which was just above them atop the facing coral bluff. “Your billets are a few miles from here. That's your bus waiting with the headlights on.”

“First class all the way,” Bokamper muttered.

“Get used to it, soldier,” Falk said.