Under Siege (24 page)

Four handguns, rifles, ammo, medical supplies, food, canned water, clothes, and those green boxes with U.s. Army stenciled all over them. Charon opened each box and inspected the contents. He went through all the other items, examining everything.

Thirty minutes later he got into the truck and maneuvered it carefully out of the alley between the storage buildings.

It was going well, he decided. Everything was there, just as it should be. Getting everything done in time and in sequence, that was the difficufty. Still, it was do-able. Now to get this truck to Philly and pick up the car.

Henry Charon grinned as he came off the entrance ramp onto 1-95 north. This was going to be his best hunt ever.

Jack Yocke was pecking randomly and morosely on his computer keyboard when Ott Mergenthaler walked by, then sat on the edge of the desk as he played with a piece of paper. “I read Your story,” Ott said, “on the Jane Wilkens murder over in the Jefferson projects.”

“Umph.”

diseaIt’s good, real good.”

“They aren’t going to mn it now. Going to save it for some Sunday when they need some filler. If they run it at all.”

“It’s still a good story.”

“Too many murder stories are bad for a paper, y’know? The matrons in Bethesda don’t want to read that cmp. The White House and political reporters take all the space anyhow. What could possibly be more important than Senator Horsebutt’s carefully staffed and massaged opinion about what the Soviets ought to do to qualify for American foreign aidt’ “So what are you working on tdt’

“Oh, just trying to get someone in the police or the DEA or the FBI or the Federal Home Loan Bank Board to say that there is a connection between the Harrington murder-he was the cashier at Second Potomac S and L-and the Judson Lincoln murder. Lincoln ran a chain of checkcashing outlets here in the metro area. Apparently they’ve just been sold to some outfit nobody ever heard of.”

“What makes you think the killings are connectedt’ “The men were shot about four hours apart, apparently

rofessionals. Both were in finance. Harrington, at least, laundering money for someone. Coincidence, maybe, I got this feeling.” con”What do the pros say?”

‘They aren’t saying anything. Absolutely nothing. They just listen and grunt ‘no comment.”” con”So what else is new?” ‘The world just keeps on turning.” con’That’s page one news.”

‘This rag needs some real reporters. Not blood-and-guts guys like me, but some dirt sniffers who will get the real news, like who Senator Horsebutt is fucking on Tuesday nights and an opinion from his doctor on how he manages. Perhaps a think-piece listing the names and vital statistics and track records of all of America’s top bimbos. Why are we scribbling stories about problems at the sewage farm when we could be picking on rich and famous assholes and selling a lot more papers?” con’Lighten up. And quit feeling sorry for yourself”

‘I’m maudlin, I know.” Yocke stretched and grinned. “But self-pity soothes a tortured soul, Ott. You ought to try it sometime.”

“I gave it up when I quit smoking.” con’What windmill are you tilting at today?”

‘I don’t see my columns quite that way, Sancho. My literary efforts, short and sweet as they are, are really the beating heart of this newspaper that you so irreverently called a rag, the newspaper that pays your generous and unearned salary, by the way.”

Ott hoisted his cheeks off the desk. He tossed the paper he was holding in Yocke’s lap and walked away. Yocke unfolded it. On the sheet was Ott Mergenthaler’s column for tomorrow’s paper, printed in three columns. Unnamed sources in the Justice Department were quoted as saying that the evidence against Chano Aldana was weak. An acquittal was a definite possibility. Ott chided, gently and eruditely, as was his style, the prosecutors and Justice Department officials who had induced a grand jury to indict on weak, hearsay evidence. He also carved off a polite piece

of the administration officials who had moved heaven and earth to extradict a man from Colombia that they probably couldn’t convict.

Yocke refolded the paper and tossed it on top of one of his piles.

Mergenthalees column in the Post the following morning should have caused a two-kiloton explosion in William C. Dorfman’s office, but amazingly, no one on the White House staff saw it that morning. No staffer had time to read anything in the newspaper until early afternoon, because at seven a.m. a thunderbolt arrived from Havana: another Cuban revolution was in ftill swing.

The evening before in Havana army troops had fired upon a mass rally of over forty thousand people protesting the government’s food rationing policies. Some reports said over a hundred people had been killed and several hundred wounded: the casualty fipres varied wildly from source to source. This morning half the army was locked in combat with troops loyal to Castro. A group of students had seized Radio Havana and were proclaiming a democracy.

The Washington Post staff, with better sources than the White House or the State Department, knew about the revolution at six-thirty a.m., only an hour after the students went on Radio Havana chanting, “Comunismo esta muerto. was Communism is dead.

Jack Yocke heard the news at eight-oh-five at police headquarters. He charged out of the building and headed for the Post.

Breaking into a conference of editors in the newsroom, he blurted, “I speak Spanish.” None of the editors discussing how to cover the Cuba story seemed to hear him. He danced from foot to foot. This was his break, the one he had been waiting for. He knew!

He scurried off to find Ottmar Mergenthaler. The columnist was not at his desk. There he was, coming out of Bradlee’s office. Yocke intercepted him.

“Ott, I got to talk to you. You gotta help me. I gotta go to Cuba.”

“Sure, Jack. Sure.”

“I speak Spanish. I’ve been taking a class. You’re noting tilde , Ott! I write good blood-and-guts. Great blood-andguts. I’ve paid my dues covering cops. I deserve a shot. Ott, you ancient idiot, I speak Spanish!”

“I’m listening, Jack. But I just write columns around here.”

“Be a pal. Go in and see Bradlee. Hell, call Donnie Graham if you have to. But get me to fucking Cuba!”

Mergenthaler stopped, took a deep breath, and rolled his eyes. Then he turned around and walked back toward Bradlee’s office. “Wait here, goddammit!” he growled when Yocke tagged along immediately behind him, threatening to step on his heels.

Ooooh boy, what a break this would be, Jack Yocke told himself as he waited. His big assets were that he was young, single, low salaried and spoke Spanish … sort of Callie Grafton would proably give, him a C for his first semester. No reason to burden Ott or Bradlee with those trivial de of course. As far as they were concerned he had no nervous family to hug the editors if he went and might even speak a little Spanish, like he claimed.

Every writer needs a war, at least one good one, to get famous in a hurry. You mix the blood and shit and booze together and anoint yourself and then, by God, you’re Ernest Hemingway.

There are just so damn few good wars anymore! A revolution in Cuba wouldn’t be a zinger like Korea or Vietnam, but Castro wouldn’t go quietly, without a fight. Whatever happened, it would be better than covering cops. Jack Yocke assured himself of that. He had the talent to make it something big if he got the chance.

Two minutes later Ott returned.

“Okay, Ben is going to talk to foreign. Better get your passport in case they decide to request a visa for you. But you’d be helping out the regulars. Remember that, Junior.”

Yocke grabbed the older man by his ears, pulled his head down and kissed him soundly on his tan, bald pate.

“Thanks, Ott,” Yocke called as he trotted away. “I owe

Y.”

That day Jack Yocke took the problems as they came. He encountered the first one when he got back to his apartment to throw some clothes in a bag.

What do you take, to a revolution? Some underwear, sure. A suit and tie? Well, maybe. Why not? Tennis shoes would be good, some slacks and pullover shirts. Cuba’s in the tropics, right? But it might get chilly at night this time of year. Maybe a sweater or sweatshirt. Socks. He wadded all this stuff into a soft, fake-leather vinyl bag and tossed in a razor and toothbrush and toothpaste.

Cuba. In Latin America. Cuba’s bacteria have undoubtedly been recycled through fifty generations of immune natives and have probably grown virulent enough to disembowel a gringo, like the bacteria the Mexicans are so proud of. Yocke added all the antidiaffhea medicine in his bathroom to the bag.

His passport was in the top left drawer of his dresser, under the hankies. He didn’t bother packing any hankies.

With the encased laptop computer that he had signed for from the Post dangling from a strap over his shoulder and the fake-leather bag banging against his leg, he hailed a cab-they, he was on the expense account-and rode with nervous anticipation back to the Post. He kept the cab waiting while he trotted into the building and rode up to the travel office.

Trying very hard to conceal his nervousness, he stood in line until he had his tickets and money. They were really going to let him go!

He didn’t feel safe until he was on his way to the airport. Then he sat back and grinned broadly. This was his chancel All the writing he had ever done had been mere preparation for this story. And he feltconfident. He was ready.

After he had checked his bag at the ticket counter and gotten his seat assignment, Jack Yocke wandered into a newsstand and bought a carton of Marlboros. He took the cigarette packs out of the carton and stuffed them around the computer inside its case. Fortunately there was room. men he went to the bar and watched the latest news on the late News Network.

While Yocke was sipping coffee from a paper cup, one of the CNN White House correspondents assured the audience that President Bush was closely monitoring the situation in Cuba.

That statement had been given out by the White House press flacks upon the order of William C. Dorfman.

Actually the President was at that very moment discussing tilde with Dorfman and the chairman of the national Republican party a matter more weighty than a revolution in Cuba. The American people had recently elected a larger Democratic House and Senate majority, and two of the loyal Republican congressmen who would be unemployed in January wanted government jobs. Dorfman suggested ambassadorships: he named several possible small nations in sub-Sahara Africa. The national chairman thought the two Republican legislators might prefer to be assistant secretaries of something or other. “Who the hell wants to go to equatorial Africa?”

The men in the Oval Office had their feet up and were in no hurry. Dorfman had canceled most of the President’s regular schedule today so he would have plenty of time to closely monitor the Cuban thing.

At noon the President went down to the White House situation room for a briefing. He was back at twelve-fifteen and when lunch was brought in turned on the television to see what the media were saying. Various loyal army units in the provinces had capitulated to mobs that had besieged their barracks shouting for food. Fidel Castro had appeared on Havana television-the show ran thirty seconds of poor-quality tape-and blamed the “riots” by “counteffevolutionaries” on Yankee imperialists. He announced that the traitors who had seized Radio Havana that morning had been captured and shot.

“There’s no organized opposition,” Bush informed his guests. “The lid just blew off.”

CNN then ran a story about several dozen major corpora182

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tiotks buying up huge tracts in West Virginia to open landfills for the entire eastern seaboard’s garbage. The President watched while he ate a BIT on whole wheat with a double shot of mayo. The governor of West Virginia, a Democrat, was outraged, but the yokels in the legislature refused to forbid landfills or even regulate them. Apparently a lot of West Virginians thought their children and grandchildren wouldn’t mind living on top of New York City’s eastside and drinking the effluvia in their water so long as they got jobs driving the bulldozers.

“Makes you wonder about democracy, doesn’t itrl the national chairman muttered. “If the Russians and Cubans only knew.”

Bush finished off the last bite of the BIT and jabbed the remote control, turning off the television. He asked the national chairman what the Democrats thought about foreign aid to the Soviets.

They were deep into that subject when an aide motioned Dorfman from the room and showed him Mergenthalees column.

Dorfinan ate three Rolaids as he read. When he finished he snapped, “Get Cohen on the phone,” and went to his office to take the call.

“I’m calling about mergenthalees column, GicLike,, “What about it?” Cohen was equally brusque.

“Somebody over in your empire told him you guys can’t convict Aldana.”

dis’That’s somebody’s opinion. I don’t know whose. It isn’t mine. @.i

“You gonna call a press conference and deny it?”

“Deny what?” Dorfman held the phone away it-from his ear and looked at it distastefully. If the man was as stupid as he sounded, he wasn’t qualified to prosecute a traffic ticket. “Are you or are you not going to convict Chano Aidanar, “I’m not a psychic.”

“You want me to tell the President thatrl

“If the President wants to talk to me about the case against Aldana, I’ll be delighted to brief him. We have

idence. Mountains of it. We’re still sifting through it page page. We think Aldana’s guilty and we’ll try to prove it.”

“The President will want you to say that in a press release.”

“Have you talked to him about it?”

“Not yet, but-was

“If the President wants a press release, we’ll do one. I don’t advise it. If we start issuing press releases to deny leaks we’re going to be as busy as the sorceress apprentice. Call me back when you find out the President’s decision.” The attorney general hung up. The President did want a press release. Dorfman had his youngest, most junior aide call the attorney general and deliver the message.

When Jack Yocke had collected his bag from the luggage carousel at Miami airport, he found a pay phone with a Miami telephone directory still attached. He looked up an address, then hailed a cab in front of the terminal.