Castro's Daughter

SIXTY-ONE

First thing in the morning, the CIA’s Deputy Director of Operations Marty Bambridge powered down the rear window of his chauffeured black Cadillac limousine and showed his credentials to the guard at the White House’s West Gate, who waved him through. The driver let him off at the West Entrance, where he was met by Doris Sampson, who was the secretary to Frank Shapiro, special adviser to the president on National Security Affairs, and she took him back to the NSA’s office.

Shapiro, a husky man in his mid-fifties with thick dark hair and childhood acne scars, was just finishing a telephone call and he hung up. He seemed harried and moody. “What brings you across the river this morning?” he asked.

“We have a developing issue that I think you need to know about,” Bambridge said. He and Shapiro were not on a first-name basis, but they knew each other from a number of security briefing sessions here in the West Wing at which the DDO had made presentations.

“Walt Page send you?”

“No.”

Shapiro looked at him for a moment, but then nodded. “Close the door,” he said, and he phoned his secretary to tell her he was not to be disturbed for the next few minutes.

“I’m not going behind anyone’s back. But it’s a situation involving Kirk McGarvey for which I — the agency — could use a little guidance.”

“He’s been of some service to the CIA and to this country. The president has a great deal of respect for him.”

It’s not the reaction Bambridge had expected, and he nodded. “Perhaps it would be better if I fully briefed the director.”

Shapiro waved him off. “You’ve come this far — tell me what’s bothering you.”

“I’m not sure this is the correct time.”

“I am,” Shapiro said coolly.

“There’ve been five shooting deaths — one in Georgetown last night, three in Miami the night before last, and one of a museum curator in Mexico City — all of them involving McGarvey and Colonel María León, who heads the Cuban intelligence services Directorate of Operations.”

Shapiro was definitely interested. “This have anything to do with the kidnapping of the wife of one your officers?”

“We’ve learned that it was ordered by the DI in order to force her husband, our Special Projects officer Otto Rencke, to fly to Cuba with the State Department delegation that attended Castro’s funeral.”

“Jesus Christ, why weren’t we briefed?”

“We didn’t know all of the details ourselves until yesterday, and then there was a shooting last night in Georgetown. The victim has been tentatively identified as a Cuban national who we think works for a DI cell here in Washington.”

“Precisely how is McGarvey involved?”

“By his own admission, he’s actually working with Colonel León. In fact, he flew clandestinely to Cuba to rescue Mr. Rencke, where he met with the colonel, who apparently arranged for the two of them to escape.”

Shapiro shook his head. “Do you realize just how crazy this sounds?”

“Yes, but it’s even worse.”

“Page knows all of this?”

“Yes, he and I were briefed by McGarvey and Rencke yesterday.”

“And?”

“The director gave them forty-eight hours to finish what they’d started,” Bambridge said. “But since the incident last night, I don’t think we can afford to wait.”

“What did McGarvey have to say about it?”

“He and the colonel plus Mr. Rencke and his wife have disappeared. Again.”

“Okay, Martin, tell me the worst.”

And he did, leaving nothing out, including everything that was said in the meeting with Page after McGarvey and Rencke returned from Spain.

Shapiro was silent for several beats, until he shook his head. “If McGarvey wasn’t involved, I would have to say that you’re talking utter rubbish. But why did he want the forty-eight-hour delay before he talked to the Bureau?”

“He expected the DI to trace Colonel León to Washington, and I think that he wanted to see what they would do.”

“They tried to kill her, which you think validates her story in McGarvey’s mind?”

“Exactly, as does the fact that he and the others disappeared sometime before the police showed up to investigate the shooting.”

“How do you know McGarvey was in the middle of it? Were there witnesses?”

“No, but a SUV was involved, probably as a distraction, and we traced it to Louise Rencke. From there we gained entrance to a brownstone across the street from where the DI shooter’s body was found. The place was filled with sophisticated computer and countersurveillance equipment. A lot of it CIA gear. Along with some personal effects belonging to Rencke and his wife. We think it’s where they were hiding the colonel. Somehow the DI found out and apparently tried to smoke them out by cutting the electrical power to the house.”

Shapiro was thoughtful. “So now what?”

“I think that McGarvey means to help Colonel León find the treasure and somehow get at least some of it to Cuba.”

“That makes the least sense of all. McGarvey may be many things, some of them contrary and certainly not pleasant, but he’s never betrayed his country, at least not in the long run.”

“I’d like to ask him to explain himself, but as I said, he’s disappeared again.”

“That would be up to your people,” Shapiro said. “But you did the right thing coming to see me.”

“What would you like me to say to the director?”

Shapiro smiled. “That’s up to you, Martin.”

And Bambridge smiled inwardly, because he had gotten exactly what he wanted. A friend in the White House who would help bring McGarvey down off his high horse. It was a first step.

When Bambridge was gone, Shapiro walked down to the Oval Office, where President Joseph Langdon standing behind his desk was talking with John McKevitt, his chief of staff, and Howard Pursley, his chief speechwriter.

“I need a couple minutes whenever you have the time,” Shapiro said.

“Anything earth shattering?” the president asked. The press had dubbed him the Dapper Dan when he ran successfully for the Colorado governorship ten years earlier, because he habitually wore three-piece suits, the ties always proper, the bottom buttons of the vests always undone, the same as this morning.

“No, sir, but interesting.”

“Okay, let’s take this up later,” he told his speechwriter. “Anything John needs to stay for?”

Shapiro shrugged. “That’s up to you, Mr. President.” It was a code that he wanted some one-on-one time.

“Give us a couple of minutes,” Langdon said, and his chief of staff and speechwriter left, closing the door behind them.

“We have a developing situation involving Kirk McGarvey and the colonel in the Cuban DI that frankly beats the hell out of me,” Shapiro said.

“John said that he saw Marty Bambridge entering your office.”

“Yes, sir. He came to talk to me without Walt Page’s knowledge.”

Langdon’s expression darkened. “I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I, Mr. President. But you might want to know what he told me. At the very least it’s interesting.”

“And at the very worst?”

“Could very well either solve the Cuban problem once and for all, or escalate it almost to the point of another Bay of Pigs.”

Langdon sighed in resignation. “What are the bastards up to now?”

And Shapiro recapped everything that the CIA’s Deputy of Operations had told him, including the apparent fact that McGarvey and Otto Rencke had disappeared with the colonel.

Langdon took just a moment to come to his decision. “First of all, we’re not sure that any of it is true. So the first order of business is to find McGarvey. But quietly. I’m told that he’s a man who does not like to be sneaked up upon.”

“I’ll have Nick put someone on it,” Shapiro said. Nicholas Wheeler was director of the U.S. Secret Service. They worked directly for the president and would make a lot less noise in such an investigation than would the FBI.

“When you find him, find the colonel and take her into custody. She ordered the kidnapping. Let’s hear what she has to say for herself, after which I might telephone Raúl Castro to find out what he thinks he’s up to.”

“You might want to hold off before making that call,” Shapiro said. “Because there is the matter of a possible Spanish treasure buried somewhere in southern New Mexico.”

“I’ve read some of those stories, which hold about as much weight as alien abductions, or the Bermuda Triangle.”

“Yes, Mr. President, but this time there may be some validity to the claim. The colonel is an illegitimate daughter of Fidel, who on his death made her promise to find the treasure and bring it back to Cuba, where he felt it rightly belonged.”

Langdon laughed without humor. “If there is such a treasure — which you admit is more than far-fetched — it won’t be going anywhere except Fort Knox. And just maybe Castro’s daughter will be shot to death trying to escape.”

“I’ll see what should and can be done,” Shapiro said.

“Yes, do that,” the president said.

SIXTY-TWO

A half hour later, an aide ushered Kirk McGarvey into Walt Page’s office on the seventh floor of the CIA’s Old Headquarters Building, where the DCI was waiting with Gavin Litwiller, the director of the FBI.

“From what I gather reading the overnights, you’ve already struck a nerve, if that was you,” Page said.

“It was me,” McGarvey said. “We set a trap and they took it.”

“You know Gavin, I’m sure,” Page said.

Litwiller was a tall, senatorial-looking man in his late sixties with white hair and wide, expressive eyes that made it seem as if he was seeing absolutely everything for exactly what it was. Actually, it was a skill he had perfected as a lawyer in military intelligence, from where he’d been elected to the bench in Denver. The president had picked him to head the Bureau three years ago, and by all accounts he’d done an outstanding job. He and McGarvey shook hands.

“Only by reputation,” McGarvey said.

Litwiller smiled faintly. “I’d have to say the same,” he said. “Walt told me that you wanted this meeting, just the three of us, and here I am. My people still want to interview you about the kidnapping of Louise Horn, and then of course this business last night in Georgetown. And you have our attention because we’ve tentatively identified the dead man as DI. Makes us curious about what’s going on between you and Cuban intelligence.”

“It has to do with a deathbed request by Fidel Castro that could involve a substantial dollar amount in a Spanish treasure from the sixteenth, seventeen, and eighteenth centuries buried somewhere in New Mexico. The Cuban government wants a piece of it, but a DI colonel who’s apparently defected claims she wants the money for the people.”

“Good Lord,” Litwiller said. “That’s quite story to swallow in one bite. Who is the colonel, and where is she?”

“María León, and she’s right here in Washington. In fact, it was she who the DI came for last night. And it was to her that Castro made his deathbed request.”

“The obvious question is why her?”

“She’s one of his illegitimate children.”

Litwiller and Page exchanged a glance.

“As my oldest son used to say when he was a teenager, this is rad, or fringe, or something like that,” the FBI director said. “Do you believe her?”

“We’ve established that a cache or caches of gold and silver and perhaps other things of historical value might have been buried in southern New Mexico. Some of it could still be there — we haven’t established all of that yet.”

“Yes, but do you believe her motivations? Or has she merely involved you in some elaborate scheme to get your help?”

McGarvey shrugged. “I honestly don’t know, or least I’m not sure. The DI had traced her to Miami, where they killed three people and very nearly got to her. Then they traced her here to Georgetown, where they nearly got to her again. But it was she who took down the DI officer whose body you found on the roof across from where we were staying.”

“Rather convenient of them to have traced her so easily,” Litwiller said. “Any chance she was leaving a trail of bread crumbs?”

“It would have been easy for her to do in Miami, but here in D.C., it would have been tough.”

“But not out of the question?”

Louise had picked her up from Andrews, and the two of them had been alone together for most of the day. “Not out of the question.”

“From what I understand, the DI managed to cut the power to the house. How many of them were there, besides the one on the roof who we took to be a sniper?”

“Four, maybe five,” McGarvey said.

“And they just turned around and cleared out when you took down one of their people?”

“I created a diversion on the street in front of the house and went over the back wall, where I managed to come up behind the guy I took to be their point man and told him he had two choices: go or die.”

“So you let them go,” Litwiller said.

“I wanted at least one of them to report back to Havana that the Spanish treasure did exist in New Mexico and that the colonel and I knew where it was.”

“Do you honestly think that once whoever came here to arrest or kill this colonel of yours gets back to Havana and tells their bosses about the treasure, the DI will actually mount an operation to grab it?”

“It’s going to get a little more complicated than that, Mr. Director, but yes, that’s essentially what I think will happen.”

Litwilller sat back and eyed McGarvey for a long beat. “I received a call from Nick Wheeler in my car on the way over here. He’s director of the Secret Service. The White House had just asked him to find you and this Cuban colonel. I won’t say who made the suggestion, but they thought it wouldn’t be a bad thing if the colonel were shot to death trying to escape.”

This one took McGarvey by surprise, and he turned to Page. “Did you give the president or anyone from his staff the heads-up on what Otto and I discussed after we got back from Spain?”

“No,” the DCI said. He went to the phone on his desk and asked his secretary to reach Mr. Bambridge. After a moment, he thanked her and hung up.

“He’s at the White House?” McGarvey asked.

“On his way back,” Page said. “But my secretary didn’t know from where. So where does it leave us, Mac?”

“I want the Cubans to go after the treasure in New Mexico, and I want our government to cooperate.”

Litwiller almost laughed. “You’re talking about an invasion?”

“Yes, but if you’ll let me explain at least that part of it, we just might be able to put a big dent in two of the problems we have down there.”

“Which are?”

“The massive amounts of drug smuggling across the border, and the drug cartel violence in northern Mexico.”

Again, Litwiller held his peace for a beat or two, until finally he shook his head. “I knew that coming here to meet with you this morning was going to prove interesting at the very least, but just not this sensational. And I suppose it would be foolish of me to ask that you and Colonel León voluntarily submit to interviews, under the Bureau’s protection. The Secret Service is quite good at everything it does. If they have a White House directive to find you and the colonel, someone might get hurt in the process.”

“We’re leaving Washington tonight, or no later than tomorrow morning.”

“The first places they’ll stake out are the airports and train stations.”

“But not Andrews,” McGarvey said. “We’re flying out on a CIA aircraft. Miami first, then Mexico City, and finally Holloman Air Force Base.”

“New Mexico,” Litwiller said. “To the treasure.”

“You’ll have one of the jets, but first I’ll have to know what you’re up to,” Page said.

“I know where the gold is buried, or at least I have a pretty good idea, and I have an idea how get to it so that no one innocent should get hurt.”

“You don’t seriously believe that if such a treasure exists — on U.S. soil — and if you find it, that any of it will actually be sent to Cuba,” Litwiller said.

“The Cubans could make a pretty good case based on historical facts that one third of it belongs to them, but not one ounce of it will ever make it to Havana. And that I’m willing to guarantee.”

“Okay, you’ve got the aircraft and crew,” Page said. “But you have to tell us how you’re going to pull this off and, even more important, why. After all, it was nothing more than the deathbed request from a dictator to his daughter, herself a spymaster who’s been responsible for dozens of deaths, probably hundreds or more in her career. Why are you helping her?”

“First the how, and then the why,” McGarvey said. And he told them.

SIXTY-THREE

Just before noon, Román Ortega-Cowan was admitted into the office of the President of Cuba, where he stopped directly in front of the desk and raised a crisp salute. Raúl Castro — seated behind his wide desk strewn this morning with dozens of files, documents, international newspapers, and magazines — finished jotting something on a notepad before he looked up, his eyes narrow, the expression on his face not pleasant.

The room, not changed much since Fidel had turned over the government to his brother, felt more like the study of a college professor with a lot of books on built-in shelves than a government office: a studious place of intellectual work.

“I received two disturbing reports this morning,” Raúl said. “One from Washington and the other from Miami that should have come to me directly from your office. Can you tell me why I had to go to the effort to find out for myself what you should have brought to my personal attention?”

Ortega-Cowan lowered his salute, knowing exactly what two reports the president was talking about, though he had no idea who’d sent them over. “I’m sorry, sir, but routine operational reports aren’t usually sent to you — otherwise, it would be necessary for you to spend every waking hour reading them.”

“Don’t toy with me, Major,” Raúl warned. “You know what I’m talking about, unless the department you are presently overseeing is even more inept and inefficient than I’m coming to believe it is.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. President, I’m at a loss—”

“Miami is in an uproar. The traitors there are close to a revolution, which has caught the attention of Washington.”

“There is always some sort of trouble in the Calle Ocho.”

“Not like this, or truly has your intelligence apparatus there not made a report?”

Ortega-Cowan really was at a loss, and worried that something else was going on that he didn’t know about, something involving the funneling of information like this directly to the president’s office. “There was a disturbance a few days ago, perhaps three deaths that may have involved the dissidents’ crude intelligence apparatus.”

“Were you also not aware that Colonel León was traced to Washington, and that a DI operation to arrest her last night not only failed but resulted in the death of one of our people as well, and focused attention on our intelligence-gathering unit?”

“One of my overnight staff received a brief call from Carlos López, who heads our Washington operation, that a minor disturbance may have taken place, and that as soon as he had all the facts, he would send me a report.”

“I’ve read it,” Raúl said. He picked up a file and handed it across the desk to Ortega-Cowan. “Both incidents are there. And can you guess who the two common denominators are?”

“I’m assuming Colonel León and Captain Fuentes, who was sent to Mexico City to find her. He traced her to Miami and yesterday to Washington. His orders — my orders — were to bring her home, where she could be charged with espionage and high treason. It’s possible that his and the colonel’s presence in both cities created the problems you speak of.”

“Indeed,” Raúl said.

Ortega-Cowan had learned early in his career that when a lie was necessary, make it a very large lie that was laced with just enough verifiable truth to make the entire thing believable, at least in the short run.

“Captain Fuentes has become something of a problem,” he said. “Since El Comandante’s death, he’s talked about becoming Minister of Foreign Affairs. In my estimation, he’d become expendable, which is why I sent him after Colonel León. I thought at the very least he might flush her out where the dissidents in Miami might kill her, and the same in Washington, where Major López could take her in. Apparently neither happened.”

“Where is Captain Fuentes at this moment?”

“If not still in Washington, where he might have gone to ground, then on his way here.”

“If he shows up here, arrest him,” Raúl ordered. “And tell me what further plans you have to find and arrest Colonel León.”

“That depends on what is in these reports, Mr. President, and what Captain Fuentes will tell us when we have him in custody. Much will depend on why the colonel defected. She was up to something before she escaped, but she wouldn’t share it with me.”

“Something involving the CIA officer or officers whom she allowed to leave from her compound?”

“Presumably,” Ortega-Cowan said.

“I want this matter to be resolved, Major. Soon.”

“Of course Señor Presidente,” Ortega-Cowan said. He saluted, which Raúl returned, then turned and headed for the door.

“Your career depends on this,” Raúl said. “Maybe even your life.”

Over the past few years, Ortega-Cowan had developed the habit of taking a cab up to the Malecón whenever he was bothered and had something to work out in his mind. He would walk along the waterfront and sometimes stop for a coffee in the horribly run-down Hotel Deauville, which still evoked something of the old, grander Havana.

The day was pleasantly warm, the streets comfortably anonymous, and deep in thought about what he would have to do to keep Raúl at bay, he was unaware that he had picked up a tail, until Fuentes came up behind him.

“Good afternoon, Román.”

Ortega-Cowan almost stumbled, but he recovered smoothly. “Your name just came up no more than fifteen minutes ago.”

“Let me guess, in the office of El Presidente, who wants both of our heads on a platter for allowing the colonel to simply fly away like a little bird.”

“Mostly your head for the debacles in Miami and Washington. Apparently, you had her in your sights and you lost her both times.”

“Where’s he getting his information?”

“I don’t know,” Ortega-Cowan said, and he held up the file Raúl had given him. “Only this matters.”

“I have something much better,” Fuentes said.

“I hope for your sake you do, because El Presidente wants you arrested and interrogated vigorously, and I have to agree with him. If you were to be taken down, most of my problems would go away.”

Fuentes stopped and faced the older, much larger man. “Román, what do you want? What’s in your wildest dreams?”

Ortega-Cowan considered Fuentes for a long moment. Castro’s former chief of security seemed more confident than ever before, even excited and happy. “Raúl off my back, and then the directorship of the DI. For starts.”

“Well, you’ll have all of that and more. And I’m going to give it to you.”

“The treasure exists, and you know how to find it,” Ortega-Cowan said, keeping his suddenly raging emotions in check.

“El Comandante’s gold exists, and I know exactly how to find it and bring it back here. But I’ll need your help, and we’ll have to act fast.”

They found a small paladar with a few tables on the broken sidewalk a few doors down from the Deauville. After they ordered coffees, Fuentes explained everything that had happened in Miami, and then the operation in Georgetown. “We managed to penetrate the computer freak’s security systems and listen to the conversation they had with the colonel, and it was nothing less than illuminating.”

“Any chance they knew you were snooping?”

“Doesn’t matter, the treasure does exist in southern New Mexico — McGarvey and his pals know exactly where — and the bitch told him how she planned to grab it and get it back here. Only we’re going to beat her to the punch.”

“How?” Ortega-Cowan asked, and after Fuentes explained everything, he began to think that they might just have a chance of pulling off the biggest coup for Cuba since the Bay of Pigs, or even the revolution. But he also came to the realization that he now had all the information he needed; Fuentes was just about superfluous.

“One more thing,” the captain said sitting back, grinning. “I have another piece of information for you. Something I learned from El Comandante’s files. Something I decided not to share with you until the time was right. Until now.”

Ortega-Cowan could imagine what Fuentes was talking about, but he felt the first stirrings of unease. “I’m listening.”

“Do you know your mother?”

The question was startling, and Ortega-Cowan almost didn’t answer. But he was intrigued. “She died in a car wreck when I was five, but I remember her telling me that my father had been a hero of the revolution and would one day come for me.”

“But he never did.”

“No.”

“Nor did he ever come for the coronel, your half sister.”

SIXTY-FOUR

They had rented a couple of cars, including a plain Ford Taurus and a Chevrolet Impala from Hertz at Dulles, and had taken up residence at a small two-story colonial in McLean that Otto had purchased almost two years ago. The house at the end of a cul-de-sac backed to a stand of trees that would provide cover if they needed to make a run for it. And although the neighborhood was quiet, the four of them kept out of sight so far as it was possible.

After his meeting with Page, McGarvey had spent most of the rest of the day on the phone with a number of contacts, including, and especially, Martínez in Miami, who fed him up-to-the-minute reports on not only what the DI was up to, but also what the mood of the exile community was.

“Caliente and growing,” Martínez said.

“And you’re fanning the flames.”

“Of course. But you might have to come here soon and talk with a few key people before they’ll commit as a mob. You understand?”

“Do you have a leak in your organization?”

“There’re DI spooks all over the place. We work around them.”

“The word is out about the treasure?”

“Yes,” Martínez said.

“We’ll be down first thing in the morning.”

“Not sooner? They need to know what this is really all about, and what their chances will be.”

“I still need to make sure of one more thing.”

“The coronel?”

“Sí.”

“There, you do speak Spanish.”

“Claro que sí.” Of course I do, McGarvey said. “Tomorrow. Early.”

By late afternoon, he’d taken his plans about as far as he could from Washington, and he went into the kitchen and opened a Pils Urquell beer and sat at the counter drinking and looking out the window at the woods and darkening evening and thinking that Katy would have liked it here, at this hour with a glass of nice merlot.

“A centavo,” María said at the doorway.

McGarvey looked up. “Actually it’s a penny for your thoughts. Are you ready to leave?”

“Louise and Otto have pinpointed at least one site near Victorio that looks very promising. I assume we’re going to take a look before I go to Ciudad Juárez to start everything in motion.” She looked bright, fresh, even animated.

And naïve despite her hard experiences, McGarvey thought. “First Miami, we need to put out a few fires. Your Captain Fuentes evidently assassinated three key people. The entire Calle Ocho is in an uproar.”

“It’s not part of the operation—”

“It is now, because you’re the cause of it,” McGarvey said coolly. “You’re here, and you’ll do as I tell you to do. Comprende, Señora Coronel?”

She turned and stalked down the hall as Louise and Otto came back to the kitchen.

“Tantrums?” Louise asked.

McGarvey laughed. “Just the start, I think. What’d you two find out?”

Louise glanced over her shoulder to make sure María had gone upstairs. “Victorio Peak was all but hollowed out sometime back in the sixties. If there was any treasure buried in the caves, it’s long gone by now.”

“Hollowed out by who?”

“The military, of course. It’s what you expected, wasn’t it?”

“Counted on, actually,” McGarvey said. “She doesn’t know?”

“Probably does, but there’re a dozen conflicting accounts,” Otto said. “Take your pick.”

“What about the topographic maps of the vicinity? Did you find anything promising?”

“Oh, yeah,” Louise said. She’d brought her laptop with her, and she opened it on the counter in front of McGarvey, and pulled up a satellite view of the southern New Mexico desert just northeast of the border. “Fort Bliss Military Reservation land about fifty miles south of Victorio Peak. Looks really promising.”

“We’ll need permission for what we want to do.”

“I spoke to Walt Page fifteen minutes ago,” Otto said. “He’s going to the president with it first thing in the morning.”

McGarvey sat back. “Castro’s gold,” he said. “I would never have believed it actually existed.”

“Oh, but it does, kemo sabe,” Otto said, and he began hopping from foot to foot.

They were leaving for Andrews around four in the morning, and after an early dinner of Cuban pork roast with rice and plantains — the ingredients for which Louise and María managed to find in a small bodega in Alexandria and which María cooked for them — McGarvey turned in early.

Being on the hunt and with friends like this, he’d turned a little morose; he missed his old life with Katy and Liz and Todd. Standing now in jeans but no shirt at the window in his second-floor bedroom around midnight with a snifter of brandy, one part of him was engaged with his memories, while the other professional part was going over his plan, and everything that could go wrong — which was just about everything.

Dealing with thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people was unpredictable. Anything could, and probably would, happen. But it was going to come together very soon now, and he honestly had no feeling for how it would turn out. Too many variables, most of which were out of his control, he told himself, and yet for the first time in a long time, he thought that he had a shot of changing something important — not just the elimination of some expediter or even some cabal, but something even more important, more fundamental for a lot of innocent people whose only misfortune was being born in the wrong place.

Someone came to his door, and he resisted the automatic urge to reach for his pistol lying on the nightstand a couple of feet away. This place was a safe haven.

“I didn’t know if you were asleep,” María said.

“It’s late and we have an early start. Get some sleep.”

“I can’t. I’m frightened.”

“You should be — after Miami, you’re going back to Havana sooner or later.”

“Don’t be a fool. They’ll arrest me the moment I step off the plane, and I would just disappear as if I’d never existed.”

“You should have thought about it before you started this thing,” McGarvey said.

“Goddamnit—”

McGarvey turned. “Shut up before you wake up the house,” he said. “What the hell do you want? Who the fuck do you think you are? How many people have to kiss your ass while you send them to be tortured or murdered? How much is enough for people like you and your father and all the other insane bastards who think that the only way to lead a country is to put it in chains? Bullies, all of you, even worse than the Taliban. They only want to take away women’s rights — you want to take away everyone’s.”

“I want to make amends,” María said in a small voice. She came closer. “I want it to stop. Honest to God. Finally. I need your help.”

McGarvey turned away. “And you’re getting it.”

She came to him and laid her head on the back of his shoulder. Just that and no more.

He could feel her heat and smell her scent. “As long as they’re convinced that you know how to retrieve the treasure, they won’t touch you,” he said. “But we’re dropping you off in Mexico City, and from there it’ll be up to you.”

“Where will you be?”

“In New Mexico, waiting for you.”

SIXTY-FIVE

Ortega-Cowan picked up his bedside telephone at the same time he glanced at the clock. It was a little past four in the morning, the sun not yet up. “Quien es?”

“Ernesto,” a man said softly. “I have news.”

“Sí,” Ortega-Cowan said. He got out of bed, glanced at his eighteen-year-old ballet dancer, Giselle, lying curled into a ball tangled with the damp bedsheets, and padded nude out to the balcony of the eighth-floor penthouse looking out over Havana harbor to the northeast and the wooded Maestranza Park that paralleled the Avenida del Puerto, formally known as the Avenida Carlos Manuel de Céspedes.

Ernesto Cura had lived in Miami as an exile, where he owned a small coffee shop just off Southwest Eighth Street (Calle Ocho itself) and Ponce de León Boulevard, and was a reasonably trusted if somewhat fringe observer of the local power structure. He heard things. “There is a development.”

“I’m listening.”

“Colonel León is on her way back with her CIA friends. Should be touching down at Homestead in the next hour or so. I thought that you might be interested.”

It wasn’t quite what Ortega-Cowan expected, at least not if Fuentes’s report about the conversation he’d surveilled in Georgetown was true. But he was very interested. “How do you know this?”

“CK Alpha’s people were at my shop and they were talking.” CK Alpha was the DI’s designator for Raúl Martínez. “Still talking. The entire district is in an uproar.”

“Because she’s on her way back?”

“That and something else.”

María returning to Miami, where she was a woman marked for assassination, made no sense — unless Kirk McGarvey had somehow convinced Martínez that she knew where the treasure was and had a plan to retrieve it, and she meant to include the dissidents. But if that were the case, it might mean that she had something else up her devious sleeve. Another misdirection for which she was an expert, well trained by her Russian instructors.

“What else?” Ortega-Cowan demanded.

“The whole place is practically going crazy. Trash fires in the streets, people singing and marching. No vandalism yet, but it almost feels like a religious festival, except—”

“Except what?”

“It’s crazy.”

“Madre de Dios,” Mother of God, Ortega-Cowan said. “You’re not making any sense!”

“They’re chanting the number seven over and over. Seven cities. And they’re all happy.”

Ortega-Cowan’s heart began to race. Cíbola and the Seven Cities of Gold. “Are they getting ready to take a trip?”

“What?”

“Are they getting ready to leave Miami? Maybe ordering buses, or getting their cars ready, or buying train or bus tickets?”

“I don’t know,” Ernesto said.

“Find out,” Ortega-Cowan said.

Giselle didn’t stir when he went back into the bedroom and got dressed for the day in his plain olive drab military fatigues. They’d both done too many lines of coke last night with Maximo Extra Añejo rum chasers, but she had a lot less body mass than he had and she was still zoned out, whereas his own head was crystal clear.

Outside, he got in his old Chevrolet Impala, kept in good running condition by one of his operational planners who happened to be a master mechanic on the side, and headed to his office in Plaza Havana. If María was on the move, he had a lot of work to do before the distraction of regular hours. And he would need to set Fuentes to the hunt.

His cell phone vibrated. “Sí,” he answered.

It was Ernesto in Miami, and in the background, the crowd noises were loud. “You were right, they’re getting set to leave in the next twenty-four hours. A convoy.”

“To where, exactly?”

“I haven’t been able to find out. I don’t think most of them know where themselves.”

That final detail actually didn’t matter, because Ortega-Cowan knew exactly where they were going — New Mexico. But he was a man of completeness, of elegant endings just like the operas he so loved. “Find out. And let me know when Colonel León arrives, and especially where she goes, who she talks to and what reaction she causes.”

“I think that if she shows her face here, the mood of the crowd, they’ll tear her limb from limb.”

“Keep your eyes and ears open,” Ortega-Cowan said, and he phoned Fuentes, who was staying at the same DI safe house on the Malecón where María had stayed before she made her run for Camagüey.

“Sí,” Fuentes answered on the first ring all out of breath, as if he’d been waiting for the call.

“Can’t sleep, either?” Ortega-Cowan asked.

“Has something happened?”

“María should be touching down in Homestead in an hour or so with McGarvey and Rencke.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It might, but listen. All of Calle Ocho is in an uproar. People in the streets, chanting about seven cities, singing, partying.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Cíbola. The Seven Cities of Gold. They’ve been told about the treasure and apparently they’re getting ready to go after it.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, either. The only way they’d know about it is if the bitch somehow got McGarvey to convince Martínez that the traitors and defectors could go directly to New Mexico to grab the gold themselves. No need to involve the Mexican cartels or try to bring it to Guantánamo.”

“It’ll take them time to get organized, and at least two days to get across country,” Ortega-Cowan said.

“We’ll need to beat them to the punch,” Fuentes said.

“Exactly. And I’ll tell you how we’re going to do it.”

SIXTY-SIX

The CIA’s Gulfstream G650 biz jet touched down at Homestead Air Force Base twenty miles south of Miami just before the sun began to rise, and the pilot was directed to immediately taxi to a hangar across the field from flight operations. Louise remained in McLean to backstop them, so it was just McGarvey, Rencke, and a highly agitated María aboard.

Martínez was leaning against his car inside the hangar, his arms crossed, an unlit cigar at the corner of his mouth. He looked dangerous this morning.

“I can understand going back to Havana to pull this off,” María said. “I still have enough clout in the DI to at least make my chief of staff listen long enough to put everything in place. After all, the only way I could have found out what I needed was by supposedly defecting. But why this now?”

It was the same thing she’d been saying since early this morning. But in fact, McGarvey thought that she’d agreed way too easily. It was nearly impossible to read anything usable from her eyes, yet he was almost certain he detected something there, maybe something disingenuous.

“You’re going to explain to Raúl just how you mean to keep the treasure away from your government and make sure that it gets to the people.”

“You know,” she said.

“But he doesn’t, and the explanation will have to come from you,” McGarvey told her. He glanced out the window as they came to a stop and the jet’s engines began to spool down. “And by the looks of his mood, I suggest you tell the truth. It was because of you that three of his people were gunned down.”

The young male flight attendant in a crisp white shirt and dark blue blazer opened the hatch and lowered the stairs, then got something from a forward galley and brought it back to Otto.

“Will this do, Mr. Rencke?” he asked.

It was a small digital video camera, and Otto quickly checked it over and nodded. “Just fine,” he said.

And María understood the real purpose for this stop, and realized there was nothing she could do about it. “Blackmail,” she said.

“Maybe you’ll turn the gold over to the navy at Guantánamo, and do exactly as you said you wanted to do — get the money to the people. But then again, maybe you’ll change your mind. Maybe a video of your cooperation with the DI’s most wanted man might show up on Castro’s desk, or better yet broadcast over TV Cubana or Cubavision on the Internet so that the people could see what had been promised and been taken away from them — by you.”

Martínez pushed away from his car, pocketed his cigar, and started for the aircraft stairs.

“I’ve told you want I want to do and why I’m doing it, but what about you?” María asked. “If you know where the gold is, why not just tell the military and grab it for yourselves?”

“We’re going to take most of it, but you’ll get away with at least a third. A lot of money by any account, but for Cubans a king’s ransom.”

“If the money gets to the people, there’ll be a real incentive to topple the government.”

“And you’ll be the one who did it for them.”

“Along with the help of your government.”

“Something like that,” McGarvey said.

María glanced over at Otto, who’d already begun recording. “How much of that do you want me to tell Martínez?”

“He knows most of it already, so don’t hold anything back. This is just a stage drama that we may never have to use.”

“Colonel León, back so soon?” Martínez said from the open hatch.

The attendant had gone into the cockpit with the flight crew and closed the door.

“She has something to tell you before she goes back to Havana,” McGarvey said.

“Better not try to get her out through MIA, the mood up there just now is ugly,” Martínez said, and he sat down across the aisle from her.

“We’re flying her to Mexico City soon as we’re finished here.”

Martínez nodded. “I’m all ears, Colonel. And believe me, I do wish you the best of luck when you get home.”

“Mr. McGarvey tells me that you’ve been told everything, so I won’t go into the details—”

“Ah, but by all means, please do.”

“Bastardo,” she said, but she told him the same things she’d laid out for McGarvey in Georgetown, including the use of the Gulf Cartel based in Matamoros, the Sinaloas who used to be Gulf’s main opposition, Los Zetas, all of them ex-military and their main allies the Beltrán-Leyvas, to gather ordinary Mexicans and herd them en masse across the border. “No guns,” she said. “No one will get hurt.”

“And you think that your ordinary Mexicans — as you call them — will actually do it? I mean why?”

“Fear.”

“What’s in it for the cartels?”

“Without us, a major link in their supply chain would suddenly disappear. They’ll want to protect it.”

“Have you talked it over with any of them?” Martínez asked.

“With all of them,” María said.

“And you think you can pull this off right under the noses of your chief of staff and that little prick Captain Fuentes?”

“That’ll be easy part. The rest will be up to Washington.”

Martínez seemed to consider her words for a moment, then looked at McGarvey. “What happens after you drop her off?”

“We’re going to Holloman. The main cache of the treasure is to the south, we think somewhere on Fort Bliss. Not too far from the border. We’ve got it pinpointed to two or three spots within a mile or so of each other. Should take us less than twenty-four hours to check out all three.”

“So you find this treasure, then what?”

“Dig it up.”

“You sure of this, comp?”

“Sure enough about what it means to us and to Cuba,” McGarvey said.

Martínez got to his feet. “Then I truly do wish you the best of luck, Coronel,” he said. He nodded to McGarvey and Otto and left the aircraft.

Four hours later, they were allowed to taxi to an empty slot at Benito Juárez International Airport’s Terminal 2, which serviced international flights. A pair of nervous customs agents came aboard to check everyone’s passport, and they visibly relaxed when they learned that only María, under a work name, was getting off and would be flying to Havana on the next available commercial flight. The aircraft did not have CIA written on its tail, but the number came with diplomatic immunity from an unspecified agency that was not affiliated with the U.S. Department of State. Nothing was said about the warrant for McGarvey’s arrest because Otto had temporarily blocked it from the Mexican police computer system.

“Do you wish for us to stamp your passport, Señora Delgado?” one of the uniformed agents asked.

“As a courtesy, no,” María said.

“Sí, señora,” the agent said, and he returned her passport.

“How long do you wish to remain in Mexico?” the other agent asked McGarvey.

“We’ll leave as soon as we refuel and have clearance to take off.”

“Have you filed a flight plan?”

“Yes, for Albuquerque, New Mexico.”

María gathered her purse and bag, and before she followed the customs officers off the aircraft, she turned back to McGarvey. “I want this to work.”

“So do I.”

“I have your sat phone number — I’ll call you in a day or two to see what you’ve found. And maybe I’ll see you in New Mexico in a few days, maybe sooner.”

“Can your Mexican contacts round up enough people to storm the border in that short a time?”

“They guarantee that they could do it even faster. Do you think you can find the treasure and convince your government not only to dig it up, but allow us to cart it off as well?”

“I’m working on it.”

“To bring down my government.”

McGarvey didn’t bother to answer, and at the open hatch, María hesitated again and looked back.

“This is crazy, you know?”

“Certifiable,” McGarvey said.

In the air again, heading northwest, with Bloody Marys as they waited for the attendant to rustle up some breakfast, McGarvey phoned Page in his office at CIA headquarters.

“Everything is just about in place now. Time for you to see the president.”

“The colonel is on her way back to Havana?” Page asked.

“We dropped her off in Mexico City a couple hours ago.”

“Where are you now?”

“About two hours from Holloman, Mr. Director, so you’ll have to hustle — because these guys aren’t going to go along on my word alone. And we’ll need the New Mexico Army National Guard and probably the border patrol.”

“And someone who can assume overall command,” Page said. “This is insanity — you do realize it, I hope.”

“Convince the president, because if we can pull this off, it just might solve our problem with Cuba once and for all.”

Page was silent for several beats. “I’ll do my best, Mac. But give me three hours.”

“You got it,” McGarvey said. Using the aircraft interphone unit, he called the flight deck. “Can you slow us down a little? I don’t want to get to Holloman for another three hours.”

“No problem, Mr. McGarvey,” the captain said. “In fact, I’ll let air traffic control know that we’ve run into an unexpected head wind.”

“Good man,” McGarvey said, and he put the phone down.

Otto was staring at him, obviously troubled.

“Do you think this is a mistake?” McGarvey asked.

“Tons of stuff could go wrong, kemo sabe,” Otto said. “I mean, why not just dig up the treasure and somehow convince the president to share it with the Cubans? Wouldn’t have to involve Colonel León — she was lying back there, by the way.”

“Yeah, I know. There’s no way she could have struck some kind of a deal with the Mexican cartels that fast. She was on the run.”

“She’s got help, and I’m betting it’s her chief of staff, because she didn’t seem overly worried about going back to Havana.”

“Which leaves Captain Fuentes,” McGarvey said. “I have a feeling he has his own agenda. Probably part of the internal struggles going on ever since Fidel died.”

“So, back to my original question,” Otto said. “Why not just dig up the treasure and convince the president to share it?”

“In the first place, it wouldn’t be likely the president would be convinced, leastways not right now, not with pressure from the Mexicans or from Havana.”

“And in the second?” Otto asked.

“There is no treasure in New Mexico. At least not on Holloman or Fort Bliss.”

SIXTY-SEVEN

María’s credentials under the work name Ines Delgado raised no eyebrows at Havana’s José Martí International Airport passport control nor had she expected they would, though it seemed a little strange to be coming home like this. As anonymously as she had left just a few days ago.

She had only her carry-on bag, which was given a cursory check by customs, and then she was outside — where Ortega-Cowan, in tan slacks and a crisp white guayabera shirt, was waiting with his Chevy, the top down.

“Your call from the airplane came as a surprise,” he said. “Welcome home.”

“Intrigued?” she asked. She dumped her bag in the backseat and got in the car as Ortega-Cowan slipped behind the wheel and they took off. The traffic was light and the weather fabulous, warm, the air silken and the breeze light.

“Somewhat. But I thought you’d defected — we all did. Though I couldn’t fathom why.”

“I did defect,” she said. “It was the only way to maintain the illusion for McGarvey and Rencke.”

Ortega-Cowan glanced at her. “Illusion?”

“I needed to seem sincere.”

“By flying to Miami and putting your life in danger?”

“Exactly. Just as I’ve returned and put my life in danger again. I’m sure that El Presidente was quick to issue orders for my arrest for treason, which right now puts you in his crosshairs.”

“You were never the one to mince words, Comrade Colonel,” Ortega-Cowan said. “You’re back, which means you believe that there’s something to this business with a treasure somewhere in New Mexico.”

And she had him, as she knew she would. No one, especially not a man of Ortega-Cowan’s appetites and ambitions, could resist a good treasure story. “It’s there all right, Román, and the Americans are going to help us get part of it.”

“Does it have anything to do with the agitation going on in Miami right now?”

“Sí, they’re also going to help us.”

They drove in silence for a time, but Ortega-Cowan kept glancing at her. “You’ve changed,” he said.

It surprised her. “What do you mean?”

“Your father’s death, and then the attack on your compound and McGarvey and your defection and now the gold. Manuel said that you truly were a traitor.”

“How would that little bastard know?”

“He recorded your conversation with McGarvey and Rencke and the man’s wife you had kidnapped.”

“Impossible,” María said. Louise had showed her the antisurveillance systems, promising that they were perfectly safe from eavesdropping.

“Nevertheless, it’s true. He’s back and we’re going to him right now so we can figure out what comes next.”

“The bastard tried to kill me,” María flared. “He’s not a part of this. I want him behind bars.”

“It’s too late for that,” Ortega-Cowan said mildly. “He knows about the deals you made with the Mexican drug cartels, and he’s spent every waking hour since he got back cementing those deals for you. All we need now are the precise location across the border and the time you want the invasion to start.”

“Listen to me, Román. If need be, I’ll tell the president everything and recommend that both Manuel and you be placed under arrest.”

“As I said, sister, it’s too late for that.”

It took a moment for what he had called her to sink in, and she looked at him, really looked at him. He was smiling, and he glanced over at her and nodded.

“It’s true. Manuel told me about it, and showed me the records. Actually we’re half siblings. Different mothers, same father. It explains why we’ve worked so well together over the past few years since you got back from Moscow.”

She wanted to argue, but looking into her own feelings, she realized the truth of it. They had too many similarities in tastes and ambitions. And she remembered staring at him every now and then, wanting to say something or ask him something; it was always on the tip of her tongue, but she’d never been able to give voice to it.

“Papá was a very busy man,” she said at last. “Five sons and a daughter, plus you and me.”

“Who knows, maybe there’s more of us,” Ortega-Cowan said. “In the end, what it comes down to is that you and I have to trust each other.”

María chuckled. “What trust?” she asked. “We’re Castro Ruz’s. We have the genes for intrigue and scheming and double-crossing.”

And Ortega-Cowan laughed again. “Well, I promise not to try to stab you in the back, at least not until we actually get our hands on the gold. And I agree with you about Manuel. But for now he knows too much — or thinks he does — so we might as well use him.”

“And if something goes wrong, we can always lay the blame on his doorstep. Or is he also related to us?”

“I very much doubt it. But he said that you planned on giving the treasure to the Americans at Guantánamo. You weren’t serious, were you?”

“What do you think, brother?”

Ortega-Cowan nodded. “I think that this will turn out to be an interesting operation, no matter what happens. At the very least, if we come back empty-handed, we’ll give the international lawyers something to do, suing in The Hague for our share.”

María turned over in her mind what else her half brother and the little prick Fuentes knew and what they might be planning. “Where are we going?”

“The Malecón safe house.”

Fuentes, in jeans and a T-shirt, was talking on the phone when María and Ortega-Cowan walked in. A Russian-made 5 .45 mm PSM semi-automatic pistol was lying on the coffee table in front of him. He looked up. “I’ll call you later,” he said, and closed the cell phone.

María’s anger spiked, and before he could move, she snatched the pistol, checked to make sure that a round was in the firing chamber, and pointed the gun at his face.

“This came from my office safe,” she said. “How did you get it?”

Fuentes blanched.

“I brought it here,” Ortega-Cowan said. “It was necessary for me to clean out your safe to find out what documents and credit cards you had taken so that you could be traced, and to keep anything incriminating out of El Presidente’s hands, in case he sent someone over to make an independent check.”

“I thought that I was marked as a traitor.”

“One can never be certain of everything.”

María had the almost overwhelming urge to shoot both of them. But getting out of the country with them dead would be difficult, maybe even impossible, depending upon what safeguards Román might have put in place. Something she would have done, were she in is shoes.

“Would you mind pointing that gun someplace else?” Fuentes asked.

“Yes, señora, please do before there’s an unfortunate accident,” an older man with neatly trimmed gray hair said, coming from the kitchen. He was impeccably dressed in a white linen suit and open-collar white shirt.

María’s hand shook, but she lowered the pistol. “Who the hell are you?”

“Julio Rosales,” Ortega-Cowan said. “He is the Ministry of Justice’s chief counsel for international law. He knows everything, or at least as much and Manuel and I know.”

María tried to figure out what Ortega-Cowan and Fuentes had been busy doing while she was gone. But this was starting to get seriously out of hand, and yet she’d known almost from the beginning that she needed McGarvey and Rencke — especially McGarvey — to make the operation work in New Mexico, and that she would need at least Román’s best efforts here.

“Please, señora, put the gun down,” Rosales said. “And let me tell you the only way in which this project of yours will have any chance whatsoever of success.”

SIXTY-EIGHT

Holloman Air Force Base is located about sixty miles north of Ciudad Juárez on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande and El Paso on the north, which straddles the Texas — New Mexico border. And when McGarvey and Otto arrived in the CIA’s Gulfstream, the day was hot, dry, and dusty.

Captain John Whitelaw, the base public affairs officer met them as they got off the plane that had pulled into an empty hangar, and they shook hands. He was in his late twenties or early thirties and acted nervous. “Gentlemen, welcome to Holloman. Have you eaten lunch yet?”

“We had something on the plane,” McGarvey said, and he and Otto followed the captain to a large table set up near the rear of the hangar.

“Our base CO, Lieutenant Colonel Ron Endicott, is on his way, and so is Brigadier General Melvin Gunther, the CO of Fort Bliss, and I have to warn you that neither of them is in a particularly receptive mood.”

A topographic map of the desert and narrow mountain ranges that also included Alamogordo to the east, White Sands Missile Range to the north and south, and the army’s vast Fort Bliss Military Reservation that stretched from New Mexico to Texas was spread out on the table. Overlaid on the map was a transparency that showed the roads — including unpaved tracks — towns, bases, and a dozen other military facilities scattered here and there, and even the few abandoned cattle ranches, most of them bought or seized by the government during or after WWII.

“We’re not equipped to handle what Colonel Endicott says you want,” the captain continued.

Studying the map, McGarvey could see that the major problem they were faced with was the distance. If the Mexicans, and presumably a fair number of Cubans, were to cross the border west of El Paso, they would have a twenty-mile trek across the desert just to reach the Rio Grande, and another sixty to Holloman. Impossible without some sort of transportation. However, if they crossed the Rio Grande into Texas well southeast of El Paso, they could be on Fort Bliss in well under ten miles.

“What’s down here?” McGarvey asked, pointing to the area on the military reservation between the museums and study center and the National Cemetery.

Whitelaw studied the chart. “Desert, mostly scrubland.”

“Anything like a hill?”

“Lots of them, but no real mountains, unless you go farther east and north.”

McGarvey looked up. “All I need is a hill.”

Otto set up his laptop at one corner of the big table, powered it up, and got online.

Whitelaw watched him. “Sir, this is a secured area, you’re not authorized to use our Wi-Fi connection.”

“I’m connected via satellite with my own server in Washington,” Rencke said without looking up. “It’s a whole bunch more secure for some things, you know.”

“Anything yet?” McGarvey asked.

“No. But Page has his BlackBerry on, and I’ve located him at the White House. West Wing.”

“Good,” McGarvey said.

A Hummer with air force markings pulled up outside, and a lieutenant colonel in desert BDUs jumped out and strode into the hangar. He was an athletic-looking man with a long, narrow face, and he was mad as hell. His name tag read ENDICOTT.

Whitelaw saluted. “Colonel, these are the gentlemen from the CIA.”

Endicott returned the salute without looking at the captain. He glanced at the map and at Rencke and the laptop, and finally at McGarvey. “I suppose you’ll tell me what the hell you’re doing on my installation, and what sort of sheer bullshit you’re trying to pull off.”

McGarvey didn’t have the patience to put up with the man’s bluster. “Turns out, I probably won’t need your installation, Colonel. I’ll probably have to commandeer some Fort Bliss real estate on the Texas side.”

Endicott thought it out for a second, then turned to Rencke. “Turn that goddamned machine off, mister,” he ordered.

Rencke looked up with a mild expression. “Sorry, I can’t do that. The president will be wanting to talk to us shortly, and in any event, I think that General Gunther is about to land.”

At that moment, they all heard the sound of an incoming helicopter and a half a minute later, a UH-60 Blackhawk with army markings sharply flared and touched down just in front of the Hummer. Almost immediately, a one star also in desert BDUs jumped down from the open hatch and marched into the hangar, where Whitelaw and Endicott came to attention and saluted.

Gunther was a large man about forty-five years old with a pleasant look and slight smile. He could have been a younger brother to Colin Powell. “Kirk McGarvey?” he asked.

“Yes, General,” McGarvey said, and they shook hands.

“I gave you a briefing on a new satellite hardening system when you were the DCI, no reason for you to remember.” He glanced at the map. “So what brings you down here, you need something from Ron?”

“Actually from you, General,” McGarvey said. “I need to borrow one of your hills for a day or two, plus some earthmoving equipment and the crews who know what they’re doing, along with a video and audio system, and five hundred armed troops led by someone who knows what he’s doing when he’s under the gun, especially how to follow orders that might not seem to make a lot of sense.”

Gunther didn’t blink. “The hill, the earthmovers, and the audio/visual system are no problem. As for the rest, I’m going to need to get some orders. Damn specific orders.”

“Otto?” McGarvey said.

“Not yet, but he’s still in the West Wing, I’m guessing the Oval Office.”

Gunther and the other two officers were taken up short when Otto mentioned the Oval Office, and they were suddenly very interested.

“You’ll get your orders, General, but first let me explain what’s going to happen and why and how you can help,” McGarvey said.

“You have my attention, Mr. Director,” Gunther said.

“Everything I’m about to tell you is not strictly speaking classified yet, but I’m sure that when the president talks to you, it’ll be mentioned. At the very least, what I’m about to share with you is diplomatically highly sensitive, and totally crazy.”

“Ron mentioned something about some people coming across the Mexican border. But that will be handled by the CBP, not us.” CPB was the U.S. Customs and Border Protection service, which was an agency of Homeland Security.

“Not some people, more than a thousand — and very possibly a lot more,” McGarvey said. “Most of them will be ordinary Mexican citizens, but there’ll probably be some Cubans in the mix, and I want the confrontations to be kept to a minimum, and no arrests if possible unless I give the word.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Gunther demanded. “What do these people want? Can’t be immigration status. We’ll round them up for you and ship their asses right back across the border.”

“You won’t have to do that, because within twenty-four hours, probably less, they’ll turn around and leave of their own accord. All I want you to do is contain them.”

“If they make it across.”

“They will because you’ll let them,” McGarvey said.

Otto turned the laptop around so that they could all see the image of President Langdon seated behind his desk in the Oval Office.

“Good afternoon, Mr. President,” McGarvey said. “Has Mr. Page briefed you on what I want to do with your help and why?”

“Yes, he has, and he’s here now with Frank Shapiro,” Langdon said. “I understand that you and Mr. Rencke are at Holloman. Who is with you at this moment?”

“General Gunther who runs Fort Bliss, along with Colonel Endicott who is the CO here and Holloman’s public affairs officer, Captain Whitelaw.”

“Can they all see and hear me?”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Gunther said, stepping into view so that the laptop’s camera could see him.

“Has Mr. McGarvey explained what he wants to do?”

“Yes, sir, and I think there is a very great possibility for any number of things to go wrong.”

Langdon didn’t hesitate. “I completely agree with you, nevertheless you and Colonel Endicott are going to give Mr. McGarvey every assistance within your power, short of starting a all-out shooting war. Do you understand?”

“Frankly no, Mr. President. But we will do as we’re ordered.”

“Good. And until you hear otherwise — from me personally — this mission is classified top secret.”

“What about the media, Mr. President?”

“That’ll be up to McGarvey, how close they’re allowed to come, but under no circumstances will they be briefed by your people.”

“Yes, sir,” Gunther said.

“Very well. Wherever you are, I want you to clear out for a minute or two. What I have to say next is for McGarvey’s ears only.”

SIXTY-NINE

The Cubana de Aviación Yakovlev-40 refueled at Mexico City’s International Airport at three in the afternoon local and made the eight hundred miles up to Ciudad Juárez’s Abraham González International Airport a little under two hours later.

María, dressed in jeans, Nikes, and a light New York Yankees jersey against what she figured would be a relatively cold desert evening, got up from her seat in the front row as most of the other thirty passengers who’d flown up from Havana with her and Fuentes shuffled past. They would be taken to a staging area closer to the border to wait for the word to pull out. The four who remained in their seats were DI field officers, handpicked by Ortega-Cowan, well trained, dedicated to the mission and the state, all of them expert shooters and hand-to-hand combat killers.

“No telling what that bastard McGarvey and his CIA pals will have waiting for you,” Ortega-Cowan had told her.

“You’re sending bodyguards to protect me?”

He’d shrugged and smiled, and she thought at that moment that she’d never trusted anyone less in her life. Power corrupted and absolute power corrupted absolutely, and he wanted the whole enchilada.

It was ballsy flying one of the VIP jets that her father, El Comandante, had used for diplomatic trips around the Caribbean and South and Central America, but again she’d agreed with Ortega-Cowan, who suggested that not only didn’t Raúl and his people suspect that she was back, they would never dream that she was flying out again on a supposedly government-sanctioned trip.

“Listen up, compadres, the mission will begin in the next eighteen hours or so, but I want you to remain alert because we could get orders to move out at a moment’s notice,” she told them.

Most of them were young, in their early to mid-twenties, and this afternoon they were dressed in ordinary civilian clothes, mostly jeans or khakis, dark jackets to cover the holstered or pocketed pistols, and sneakers or boots.

“We understand, Coronel, but can we finally be told our mission?” a young lieutenant by the name of Ruiz asked.

“We’re ready to kick ass, señora, just tell us whose and where,” someone else added, and they all laughed.

“You’ll have plenty of opportunity,” she told them. If it came down to it, they would be her rearguard getting back across the border. “Two hints: We’re heading a few kilometers north of here, and the opposition’s headquarters is at a place called Langley just outside of Washington.”

“About time,” someone said.

María turned, and she and Fuentes went up the aisle to the main hatch where the pilot and copilot where waiting on the flight deck.

“You and my people will stay at the DoubleTree Hotel downtown,” María told them. “But be ready to return here within a one-hour notice.”

“How long do you contemplate our time on the ground will be?” the captain, a former air force major, asked.

“I don’t know,” María said, and she turned to the open hatch, but then came back, her tone softening. “I really don’t know. But I suspect it’ll be at least twenty-four hours, but very probably less than forty-eight. I just need you to look sharp twenty-four/seven.”

“Sí, Señora Coronel.”

A gray Hummer was waiting for them at the arrivals area outside, a driver and another man riding shotgun in front, but neither of them said a word when María and Fuentes climbed in the backseat. Nor did they speak or even look over their shoulders for the fifty-mile drive southwest, the last few miles of it on a dirt track to a palatial compound on the shores of Laguna Guzman, which was a fair-sized lake in the middle of the desert.

The place was well lit up from inside, and armed guards in pairs continuously patrolled the perimeter all the way out to five hundred yards. Infrared and motion detectors monitored every square inch of ground out to one mile, and active radar based at the five-thousand-foot paved runway a half mile to the west watched the sky out to fifty miles. The compound had its own cell phone tower, and two secure microwave links via satellite with advanced surveillance units hidden in the deserts, hills, and mountains of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Tens of millions of dollars had been invested for security here; money well spent, considering the multibillion-dollar-per-year return.

María had been here twice over the past six years, setting up the drug routes in Cuba, along with coastal waters and airspace for promises not of any significant money, but for intelligence the cartels’ various dealers and distributors across the border could supply about U.S. federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities as well as military installations along the southern tier of states.

It had been something of an uneasy truce, but neither the DI nor the cartels wanted to break it. The money and intel were simply too good.

They were passed through a tall iron gate in the razor wire — topped concrete walls only after they surrendered their weapons and were expertly patted down. Even the Hummer was searched with dogs for explosives and electronically for bugging devices.

Fuentes was impressed and he started to say something when they finally pulled up in front of the main house, but María squeezed his knee, and he bit it off. They got out of the car and walked up to the house, where a short, slightly built man in his mid-forties, with dark hair, thick eyebrows, and thin mustache was waiting for them.

“So good to see you again, señora,” he said, and they embraced. He was Juan Callardo, leader of the Los Zetas cartel, whose compound this was, and son of Miguel Angel Félix Gallardo, the godfather of all Mexican drug lords.

“You’re looking fit, Juan,” she said.

“And you more beautiful than ever. And still devious.”

They laughed and María introduced Fuentes, to whom Gallardo only nodded before they were led inside to a windowless conference room in the center of the sprawling one-story Spanish hacienda-style house. Three other men, all of them dark and serious looking, were seated around an ornately carved stone conference table that had once served as an Aztec altar, bloodstains epoxied over but not removed.

Gallardo introduced them, only by single names and the cartels they represented: Muñoz-Torres of the Sinaloas, Gonzáles of the Beltrans Leyvas, and Sigfredo of the Cartel Golfo. Only Gallardo’s name was real, because María had dealt directly with him from the beginning. The others chose to remain anonymous.

María went to a sideboard and poured a small glass of what she took to be tequila from an unlabeled decanter. Ignoring the pitcher of water, plate of limes, and a small dish of sea salt, she knocked the drink back, smiled, poured another, and sat down at the table across from the others, with Fuentes on her right.

She sipped delicately this time. “Añejo, without a doubt,” she said, and she sipped again. “Herradura Suprema?”

Gallardo threw his head back and laughed loudly, while the others smiled. “Exactly right, of course,” he said. “I wish I had the same sensitivity and discerning tastes for your excellent rums.”

“I’ll send you a few mixed cases of our best, when we are finished.”

The humor left the room. “So tell us exactly what you want us to do and what’s in it for us?”

María finished her drink and set the glass down on the table. “Over the next twenty-four hours, I want your help to mass at least one thousand people, hopefully five or ten times that many, along the New Mexico — Texas border. Some of them will be ordinary Cuban citizens whom you will fly up from your distribution airstrips in my country.”

“For what reason?”

“We are going to invade the United States.”

No one laughed.

“Why?” Gallardo asked.

“For a Spanish treasure of gold and silver,” Fuentes blurted, but María waved him off.

“There may be no gold where we will be going,” she said. “Though almost certainly gold does exist somewhere in New Mexico.”

“Then why the operation?” Gallardo asked.

And María told him.

SEVENTY

The hill about a mile and a half southwest of the Fort Bliss National Cemetery rose barely two hundred feet above the general elevation of the desert scrub. Bulldozers had been working all through the night since late afternoon, and a little before dawn, McGarvey sat nursing a cup of coffee on the tailgate of an army pickup truck, watching the activity.

He’d given General Gunther twenty-four hours to complete the job of carving three intersecting trenches in the hill, and building two large mounds of dirt ten feet apart straddling the main trench. At this point, it looked as if his engineers were ahead of schedule.

Anyone approaching from the south would be funneled into the narrow opening between the hills in order to reach the trenches. Lights and large projection screens were to be set up on top of each mound, which would rise to at least twenty-five feet.

McGarvey put his coffee down and stood up on the bed of the truck. A couple of miles to the east, El Paso’s International Airport, its rotating white and green beacon flashing in the sky, was well protected by tall fences. Sometime later this morning, the manager would be informed what was going to happen in the next twenty-four hours so that he would have time to beef up his security in case some of the crowd spilled over from here.

Spread out to the south of Fort Bliss, the city of El Paso was brightly lit from the University of Texas and Centennial Museum to the west, and the zoo and the Coliseum to the east, cut through by Interstate 10, which even at this hour had traffic. But across the Rio Grande, which the locals called the Río Bravo del Norte, dividing Mexico from the United States, the city of Ciudad Juárez, with more than twice the population of El Paso, was relatively dark. And very often from even this far, the sounds of gunfire wafted across the river on a chance breeze.

Northern Mexico was at war with itself, mostly over the drug cartels’ desire to control the entire border from Tijuana to Matamoros, and the army’s inability to stop them.

The general had been out here a few hours ago to check the progress his people were making, and he’d shaken his head when McGarvey gave a couple more pieces of the puzzle.

“The border people aren’t going to like it, and El Paso’s cops sure the hell aren’t going to welcome five or ten thousand people walking across the Bridge of the Americas and strolling up the middle of Highway 54 to get here. That’s four, maybe five miles, and it’s going to take them several hours to make it that far. Traffic will be disrupted.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

“Doesn’t matter, because the first time someone pulls out a gun and takes a shot, all hell will break loose.”

“I don’t think they’ll be coming across with guns,” McGarvey said.

“I’m not talking about the Mexicans.”

“This is going to be nothing more than a march across the border by ordinary people, who are coming here to stage a nonviolent sit-in.”

“For what?”

“For something they think rightfully belongs to them.”

“Cut the bullshit, McGarvey,” Gunther said. “You commandeer my base, you talk in private with the president, who orders me to do whatever the hell you want, and that’s apparently going to involve Homeland Security, the local and state cops, and National Guard, and have my people dig up a hill and set up a drive-in movie. Then you tell me five or ten thousand people are going to come here for something they believe is theirs. Which is what?”

“Gold,” McGarvey said. “Spanish treasure from the seventeenth and eighteen centuries.”

Gunther was taken aback for a moment. “There’s no gold here. Never was.”

“Was up on Holloman.”

“Victorio Peak. A legend.”

“There was gold there — that much we know for sure.”

“Then why are they coming here?” the general demanded. “You’ve set up an elaborate ruse, why?”

“I can’t tell you that part. You’ll just have to trust me for the next twenty-four hours or so.”

The general shrugged after a bit and he turned away, but then turned back. “Are you armed? Are you carrying a weapon?”

“Yes.”

“If you’re not expecting trouble, then why?”

“Because there’re probably going to be two people, maybe a few more, who are not going to like what they find, and they’re going to want to take it out on me.”

“Do you want some backup?”

“Nope,” McGarvey said, and now looking in the direction of Ciudad Juárez, he clearly remembered the general’s last words.

“An angry mob is a whole lot more than the simple sum of its parts. Best you remember it.”

But the rewards, he’d decided as early as Spain, were worth the risks. And if they could pull it off with a minimum of damage and casualties, nothing in Cuba would ever be the same again — not for the government, not for the people, and not for the exiles in Miami who only wanted to go home.

He telephoned Otto, who was set up in a suite at the Radisson Airport Hotel, and his old friend answered on the first ring.

“It’s started.”

“Tell me,” McGarvey said.

“Lots of private air traffic across the Gulf, landing at airstrips within a hundred fifty miles of Ciudad Juárez. At this point, Mexican air traffic control is only just beginning to take notice. But it’ll be at least twenty-four hours, probably longer before the army is sent up to investigate. I’ve tried to task a bird to look for infrared signatures across the area, but Louise says there won’t be anything in position until at least noon, and by then, we should start getting visuals. But my guess is they’re putting it together and are heading this way.”

“Stick it out until noon, three at the latest, and then take the jet and get out of here.”

“I still haven’t got a lock,” Otto said. “But I’ll keep trying. Have you talked to Raúl this morning?”

“Not yet.”

Otto hesitated for a moment. “Take care of yourself, kemo sabe.”

“You, too.”

Like Otto, Raúl Martínez also answered on the first ring, as if he’d been holding his cell phone waiting for the call, but unlike Otto, he sounded wound up. And in the background McGarvey could hear a lot of noise, a chanting crowd, a lot of people shouting all at once, and someone on a bullhorn, the voices distorted.

“Are you just about ready?” Martínez asked.

“Within the next twelve hours,” McGarvey said. “Are you getting any hassles yet from the cops or anyone else?”

“The locals are keeping clear, and so far the federales have not interfered, thanks to you, but the situation here is nearly at the breaking point. I can’t hold it together much longer.”

“How about the DI?”

“There’ve been a couple of incidents, but nothing we can’t handle,” Martínez said. “Give me the word, Mac.”

“How many people do you think you’ll be able to move?”

“Between the trains, buses, and private cars and vans, at least two thousand, probably more once we actually get started. A lot of people down here have heard this kind of shit almost from the beginning. They’re skeptical. They want to see something concrete for a change, and I can’t blame them.”

“I want them in place in twenty-four hours,” McGarvey said. “Can you manage it?”

“You’re damned right, comp!”

“No guns.”

“I can’t guarantee that.”

“Goddamnit, Raúl, this isn’t going to work if there’s even a hint of violence. This has to be a peaceful demonstration.”

“I’ll do my best,” Martínez said. “But they’re fired up. What about Otto?”

“He’s still working on it.”

“This is goddamned tight.”

“Tell me about it,” McGarvey said. “I’ll see you sometime tomorrow.”

“Where will you be? Exactly.”

“Around.”

“Good luck.”

“You, too,” McGarvey said, and he phoned María.

She, too, answered on the first ring. “Is it time?”

“Twenty-four hours. Where are you?”

“Just outside Ciudad Juárez. Have you actually found it?”

“It’s not in New Mexico, it’s a lot closer than I thought,” McGarvey said.

“Is it fabulous?”

“More than you’d think,” McGarvey said. “How many people will you have?”

“At this point, it looks like at least five thousand, possibly more.”

“No guns, no violence. This is going to be a peaceful sit-in. It’s the only way it’ll work.”

“I understand.”

“I shit you not,” McGarvey said. “The first shot fired, and all bets are off.”

“I told you that I understood,” María said sharply. “You said closer. Where do you want us?”

“You’re to cross the Bridge of Americas on foot. And from there, it’s a little less than five miles to Fort Bliss. I’ll send a map to your cell phone.”

“It’s actually there?” María asked, and she sounded breathless.

“Twenty-four hours,” McGarvey said.

SEVENTY-ONE

Waiting on the Mexican side of the Bridge of Americas across the Río Bravo del Norte a little past three in the afternoon, María sat in one of the four Hummers blocking the northbound lanes to all but foot traffic as thousands of people, most of them Mexicans, but more than one thousand of them Cubans flown in by the cartels, walked by. And she couldn’t help but think of the colossal chance she was taking.

She had lied to Ortega-Cowan about her intentions from the beginning, and of course she had lied to Captain Fuentes and to Raúl Castro and to McGarvey and his geeky computer freak friend Otto Rencke. Getting the gold to the people had never really mattered to her, nor had McGarvey’s efforts to find the treasure, going so far as to Spain and to track it down.

All along her goal had actually been a simple one: Ever since she’d learned as a child who she was, she’d wanted power. Not the same as her father or uncle, but real power and especially wealth that she could hide from the people and yet still enjoy.

For that to happen, she’d always figured that she would need a cause célèbre, something so big that it would attract the attention of not only the government, but the people as well and propel her to a seat on the Council of Ministers — even a seat as one of the vice presidents on the Council of State just a few ranks beneath the president himself. But the years had passed with nothing on the horizon until her father died and set her on a quest to find Cuba’s salvation with the help of Kirk McGarvey.

And her time was now, yet she was uneasy, unsatisfied.

The pock-faced driver glanced at her. “Are you going to walk with your people, señora?” he asked, and he laughed roughly. He was one of the Los Zetas, a Glock pistol holstered on his chest, a Kalashnikov assault rifle in the rack between the seats.

In the end, the cartels had agreed to take on the job of getting the crowd to the border and across for the continued cooperation of the Cuban government, but so they could get more of their own people across the border in relative anonymity, so that they could slip away and filter north to manage to drug pipelines within the United States. Too many interruptions in the distribution network were happening, and a new order needed to be put in place.

“Of course I am,” she said. “But you’re staying here.”

The driver turned away. This wasn’t his battle.

“Doesn’t matter if you actually find any gold,” the lawyer Rosales had explained to her and Ortega-Cowan and Fuentes at the safe house. “Even though you’re certain such a treasure actually exists, and you can enlist Mr. McGarvey’s aid.”

“It’s there,” she’d said.

“Be that as it may. But if a sufficient number of Cuban citizens can be somehow gotten across the border into the U.S. to stage a peaceful demonstration on the site of one of your treasure caches, the U.S. military will move in, as will Homeland Security, the FBI, and certainly the local authorities. And as long as no Cuban raises his or her hand — and there should be some mothers with children in arms, and old women — this will have a chance of working. Of course, it would be infinitely better if the U.S. authorities were pushed into firing on the crowd, with luck killing someone — a mother and child, an old woman.”

“You mean to get this into the international courts,” Ortega-Cowan had said.

“It’s the only way,” Rosales said. “If there is gold there, none of you can certainly believe that the crowd would be allowed to stuff their pockets and simply return home.”

“You’re talking about a three-way split — us, Spain, and the U.S.,” María said.

“It’d probably be more complicated than that. The treasure has been on U.S. soil for several centuries now, and much of what was hidden by the monks, if the stories are true, was bound for the Vatican.”

“Doesn’t matter, most of the gold that was lost at sea went through Cuba. There’s a treasure off the U.S. East Coast, a portion of which also belongs to us.”

Rosales had nodded patronizingly. “Your job, Señora Coronel, is not exploration and mining, it’s simply making a claim loudly enough that the international press will sit up and take notice.”

But the gold could be there after all, and she had given her DI operatives one simple instruction: “No matter what happens, you’ll make your way under cover of darkness to wherever the treasure exists and simply take any samples you can find. Doesn’t matter how much, just bring back something that we can use for proof.”

“Are you sure it’s there, Coronel?” Lieutenant Ruiz asked.

“Sí.”

“What if we run into opposition?”

“Get the samples out and meld back into the crowd,” María said, and before the lieutenant could speak, she answered his next question. “Whatever it takes, but quietly.”

At that moment, Ruiz passed by but didn’t look over to see who was parked in the Hummer, and within minutes he was lost in the crowd on the bridge.

She got out as Fuentes walked up. Like most of the others choking the roadway, he was dressed in jeans and a loose shirt.

“Any trouble from the other side?” María asked.

Fuentes was in cell phone contact with one of the DI operators near the lead. “The cops and Texas National Guard are there, just like you said they would be, but they’re not blocking the roads, just directing the parade through downtown toward Highway 54.”

“Any sign of the media?”

“They’re all over the place, also just like you said they would be.”

María had phoned Ortega-Cowan and given him the word to start calling the media in the States immediately after she’d talked to McGarvey. The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, plus all the wire services, including the AP and Reuters, online sites such as AOL Latino, and the television networks CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, Fox, and the local television, radio, and newspapers.

“Treasure march for the people.” The catchphrase had grown overnight, as Ortega-Cowan promised it would, because the average non-Cuban American was frankly sick of what seemed to be a senseless embargo against an island just ninety miles south of Key West. Cubans were pleasant, if desperately poor, the tropical nights were fantastic, the rum even better. And who really remembered Batista, the revolution, even the Bay of Pigs or the missile crisis? If some Spanish treasure could be shared, why not?

None of this ever really had a chance of success, not from the beginning. And yet what else was there? María figured that if she made it to the treasure cache, whether it was there or not, and then made it back across the border, she would have won. In the end, Rosales would make it right.

And yet María had a gut feeling that she had lied not only to everyone else but to herself as well. Lied all her life, because as corny as it sounded even to her inner voice, all she ever really wanted was to fit in somewhere, to love and be loved, to be appreciated for — as a lover had once said — her inner beauty.

But she had always denied it.

“Shall we take a walk?” she said to Fuentes, and she joined the crowd moving slowly across the bridge, a mother with a crying infant in her arms, and two others hanging on to the hem of her dress just ahead.

The power of a mother and child, indeed.

SEVENTY-TWO

McGarvey stood just below the crest of the hastily bulldozed mound on the east side of the first trench, binoculars raised as the first of the crowd estimated at seven thousand people began to appear on Highway 54. The sun had set fifteen minutes ago, and many of the people carried flashlights or torches, but they made no noise. The panorama was nearly surreal, otherworldly, or from another time; Egyptian workers marching in protest on the pyramids.

“What do you want to do?” General Gunther called up from the base of the mound, where he was waiting next to a Hummer.

“Let them come ahead,” McGarvey said, lowering the binoculars.

“Sure you don’t want backup?”

“It’s okay, General. They’ll be gone by first light. Some even before that.”

“What about the media? They’re all over the place.”

“Don’t interfere with them,” McGarvey said absently. It was just as he figured it would turn out. Gunther had given his people strict orders not to contact the press or television networks. It meant that María or someone directed by her had leaked the word to the media.

“How about when the marchers get here,” Gunther shouted. “Do you want me to set up a perimeter?”

María was out there; he could practically feel her presence. And she had almost certainly brought muscle with her. For just an instant, he caught an image of her face as she had emerged from the basement of the brownstone in Georgetown. She’d been wide eyed, her lips pursed, excited, maybe even a little frightened. And vulnerable. She was in a place that for her was badland with some serious people gunning for her.

McGarvey lowered the binoculars. “No,” he called down. “Just keep them from spreading out, especially east toward the airport.”

“How long do we keep the highway closed?”

“Until they clear out.”

Gunther turned away, then looked back up. “There’re a lot of them.”

“I’d hoped there might be.”

“Some of them are probably armed.”

“Almost certainly,” McGarvey said.

The general shook his head, got back in his Hummer, and his driver took off.

McGarvey phoned Martínez. “Where are you?”

“Close. A few hours.”

“How many people?”

“Maybe three or four thousand. I didn’t stop to count.”

“It’ll have to do,” McGarvey said. “Good luck, Raúl.”

“You, too, comp.”

Otto called almost immediately. “I’m in.”

“Did you find it?” McGarvey asked.

“Looks like it.”

SEVENTY-THREE

Except for the four-man swing shift crew in the operations center, Ortega-Cowan was alone on the fifth floor in his office watching the events unfolding in Texas as reported by CNN. So far, everything was going exactly as planned. The American authorities were doing nothing to block the marchers who were beginning to enter Fort Bliss along a narrow road south of the National Cemetery, which was just as incredible and unprecedented to him as the correspondent was terming it.

“… nothing short of a so far peaceful invasion of the United States, for what purpose no one is saying yet.”

The only difference in his sister’s plan was the ultimate outcome for her. At some point in the confusion tonight, Fuentes would shoot her to death. An unfortunate accident, but one with some poetic justice. Colonel León had become unstable over the past weeks. She’d even been called before El Presidente to explain herself.

Of course, it was the unfortunate passing of her father that had sent her over the edge, caused her to defect to the United States, and led to her current delusion that by somehow staging some mass demonstration in Texas, she would find the salvation she’d preached she was seeking.

“But salvation from whom or what?” Ortega-Cowan had written in his daybook. It was an answer she couldn’t or wouldn’t give to him, at which time, he wrote, he’d become deeply concerned for her sanity and loyalty to the state.

He happened to glance up when the elevator, which had been on the ground floor, stopped on the fifth and two very large men, wearing khaki slacks and plain white guayabera shirts, got off and marched down the hall to his office.

He got to his feet. “This is a restricted area,” he said. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” But he knew.

Both of them were dark, with the solid build of rugby players. One held up an SDE identification booklet with the name ERNESTO NUÑEZ. It was the Seguridad del Estado — the state police under Raúl Castro’s direct control. “Major Román Ortega-Cowan, you are under arrest.”

“On what charge?”

“Treason.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ortega-Cowan said, but his heart froze. The incredible bitch had done it to him.

“Are you armed at this time, Major?”

Ortega-Cowan, who was dressed in plain olive drab fatigues, spread his arms. “No.”

He was handcuffed and taken downstairs past the evening security officer, who looked away when they passed, and outside was handed into the backseat of a Gazik with military markings.

Not really paying much attention to where he was being driven, Ortega-Cowan tried to work out his next moves, because there was no way he was going to face a firing squad on such a charge, although it did have some truth to it. It could be proved that he had helped with María’s scheme, but he could and would argue that everything he had done was to prove that she — not he — was the traitor. And it was she and Captain Fuentes who were at this moment marching on a military installation in Texas, while he was still here in Havana at his desk doing his job.

But before this was allowed to go much further, and definitely before he was locked up in some cell, he needed to speak to the president, and he started to tell that to the officers when he realized that they were on the Malecón, evening traffic just beginning to pick up.

“Where are you taking me?”

“You know where,” Nuñez said without looking over his shoulder.

Two minutes later, they pulled over and parked in front of the apartment building where he’d last spoken with María and Manuel and the attorney Rosales, and he was hustled out of the jeep and taken upstairs to the safe house, a very sour taste in his mouth.

The place was in a shambles: the furniture was cut apart, the tables and chairs and appliances in the kitchen and even the fixtures in the bathroom had been dismantled, the wallpaper stripped, holes punched in the walls.

Raúl Castro stood in the middle of the mess and he turned around. “Here you are at last.”

Ortega-Cowan’s heart soared. He still had a chance. “I’m glad that you’re here, Señor Presidente, I have so much to tell you.”

“Sí,” Castro said. “But first I will tell you what I have learned about you and your plotters of treason, including Colonel León, Captain Fuentes, and two spies who have worked for you from their paladar downstairs in this very building. Fidel and Margarita de la Paz, I believe their names are.” Raúl brushed it aside. “But they have already confessed and have been taken care of, along with Julio Rosales — a personal friend and an exceedingly sad surprise.”

This was even worse than Ortega-Cowan had feared. “If you will let me explain—”

“I will explain to you about the plot you hatched with Colonel León to kidnap the wife of a senior CIA official to lure her husband here, who in turn was used as bait to lure a former director of the CIA. All of it culminating in a march of innocent Cuban citizens, most of them simple farmers and shopkeepers, some of them old women, others women with their children, across the Mexican border into Texas.” Castro’s voice steadily rose. “For what?” he shouted. “Some mythical Spanish treasure that even if it ever existed, would only deepen the embargo against us if we tried to steal it?”

Ortega-Cowan said nothing. There was nothing he could say.

Castro turned away and looked out the window toward the water. “What to do,” he muttered. “How to repair the damage you have caused us?”

“May I speak in my defense?” Ortega-Cowan asked.

“No,” Castro said. He turned back, stared at Ortega-Cowan for a long moment, then walked out, not bothering to close the door.

Ortega-Cowan could hear the president’s footsteps down the hall at the same time he realized that Nuñez was pointing a pistol with a silencer on the end of its barrel directly at his head from just a few feet away.

He started to raise his hand, but a thunderclap burst inside his skull.

SEVENTY-FOUR

President Langdon and a half dozen of his staff, including his National Security Adviser Frank Shapiro, his Chief of Staff John McKevit, and the Director of the FBI Gavin Litwiller, were in the Oval Office watching the CNN reports on the events unfolding in northwest Texas when Mrs. Stubbs, his private secretary, appeared at the door.

“Mr. President,” she said. “Raúl Castro wishes to speak with you.”

Everyone except Langdon looked up in surprise. McGarvey had predicted this.

“You might want to hold off taking his call until we know how this shakes out, and until we can get someone who speaks Spanish in here,” Shapiro said.

Langdon had been leaning against his desk. He motioned for someone to mute the sound on the television, and when it was off, he punched the number for the line that was lit and hit the speakerphone. “Good evening, Mr. President,” he said.

“Good evening to you, Mr. President,” Castro said in English, no translator. “Undoubtedly you are monitoring the events that are taking place outside of El Paso, Texas.”

McGarvey had not only raised the possibility that Castro might call and why, but how to respond. Nonetheless, just now it was extraordinary to Langdon.

“Yes, we are, with great interest. From what we’ve been able to gather, some of the marchers may be Cuban citizens.”

“They are,” Castro said with no effort at diplomacy. “Which is why I have made this call to personally give you my word that neither I nor anyone in my government allowed such an operation. In fact, it just came to complete light a couple of hours ago. Before this evening, my only knowledge was of the kidnapping of the wife of one of your CIA officers and the interrogation outside of Havana of that officer and another at the hands of my director of intelligence operations.”

“Which would be Colonel María León.”

“Yes, Mr. President. You also may know that she was my late brother’s daughter. Unhinged, I fear, by her father’s death.”

“Are you telling me that she is leading this march across my border?”

“Yes.”

“With the help of President Calderón?”

“No. It is my understanding that Colonel León and others in her ring of traitors enlisted the help of a number of drug cartels to not only transport Cuban citizens to Mexico, but to force ordinary Mexican citizens to participate.”

“To what end, Mr. President?” Langdon asked.

Castro was silent for several beats, and for a moment Langdon thought the call had been disconnected. But then the Cuban president was back.

“I hesitate to tell you what I have learned. The story is almost too fantastic to believe. But it involves the quest for a Spanish treasure of gold and silver that may have been buried in the deserts of southern New Mexico and perhaps northwestern Texas.”

“Yes, I, too, have heard something of the same fantastic story,” Langdon said. “But it isn’t true.”

“No, Mr. President,” Castro said. “But it brings us now to the problem at hand. We wish no harm to come to any of our citizens, nor any to yours in El Paso or on your Fort Bliss. I’m told that the demonstration will be peaceful, and by morning the marchers will return across the border.”

It was almost exactly word-for-word what McGarvey had said might happen. “You are asking for restraint.”

“Yes. Mr. President, I’m asking for exactly that. And you have my personal word that once the situation has calmed down that I will discover all the facts, and report them to you.”

“You say that this Colonel León may be among the marchers?”

“Yes, along with a Captain Manuel Fuentes, who is her coconspirator.”

“If we find them, they would be subject to arrest and prosecution,” Langdon said.

“Of course, Mr. President. But if they manage to return here, they will be harshly dealt with as traitors.”

“I understand,” Langdon said. “Thank you for this call, Mr. President.”

Again Castro hesitated for a few beats. “Perhaps this could be the beginning of a useful dialogue between us.”

Langdon didn’t hesitate. “Certain difficulties would have to be overcome first.”

“Naturally.”

“In the meantime, there is something that you can do to help resolve the situation in Texas.”

“Anything within my power, Mr. President,” Castro said without hesitation.

And Langdon explained what he wanted.

“Extraordinary,” Litwiller said when Langdon had hung up.

“I spoke with Kirk McGarvey, who predicted something like this might happen, and if it did how he suggested I handle it,” Langdon said. “And he was right.”

Shapiro looked a little uncomfortable. “Mr. President, I should have said something earlier, but I wasn’t aware of all the facts when Marty Bambridge came to me two days ago with a story about McGarvey and the Cuban Colonel León and the Spanish treasure in New Mexico. Marty thought it likely that McGarvey was actually going to somehow help the Cubans recover some of the gold.”

Litwiller had walked away to receive a cell phone call, and before Langdon could respond to Shapiro’s admission, the FBI director interrupted.

“I’m sorry, Mr. President, but we have another situation developing. This one in Kentucky.”

SEVENTY-FIVE

The mob had been gathering for several hours, and now that it was finally dark and only a few last stragglers were coming in, McGarvey was ready to make his move. He’d been waiting in the deeper shadows between the two mounds, watching the people gathering, almost all of them obviously nervous and uncertain. Crossing the border, they’d not been hassled by the police or National Guard, and here on the base, General Gunther’s people were at least one hundred yards out around the perimeter, but the marchers had come across the border illegally, and there were cops and soldiers everywhere.

María was just ten yards from where McGarvey was standing. She said something into a cell phone, then started to raise a bullhorn when he stepped out of the shadows.

“I have a much better sound system set up for you,” he called to her.

She turned around, surprised at first, but then relieved when she saw who it was, and she put the bullhorn down and came back to him. “I didn’t know if you would be here.”

“I told you I would,” McGarvey said. “Do you want to talk to your people?”

“I was just about to,” she said.

“Come with me,” McGarvey told her, and they went to the rear of the east mound, where they scrambled up a ramp that had been bulldozed then stabilized with a light wire mesh.

At the top, McGarvey took out a remote control that Otto had set up, pushed a button, and suddenly the bases and front slopes of both mounds were softly illuminated. He handed María a microphone, stepped back out of camera range, pushed another button, and María’s image was projected on the big screens. A collective sigh swept across the crowd.

“Is it here?” she asked. “Did you find it?”

“They’re waiting,” McGarvey said, and for just a moment, María hesitated, but then she turned back to the people and keyed the microphone.

“My name is María León, and I am a Cuban who with your help wants to save her people from poverty. And I have a story to tell you how. It has to do with a fabulous treasure of Spanish gold and silver buried right here. A treasure that in part belongs to us.”

McGarvey went down the base of the mound and phoned Otto. “Are you in place?”

“Yes. How about you?”

“It’s just started. But before I showed myself, she called someone on her cell phone.”

“Stand by,” Otto said. He came back ten seconds later. “Looks like some sort of a network call. One number for maybe four or more phones.”

“Who’d she talk to?”

“Unknown. But she said only two words: ‘Go! Go!’”

“Son of a bitch,” McGarvey said when someone jammed the muzzle of a silenced weapon into the base of his neck.

“Mac?” Otto asked.

“The mission’s a go, but I have company,” McGarvey said. He broke the connection and pocketed the phone. “Unless I miss my guess, Captain Fuentes has decided to cooperate with Colonel León after all.”

The crowd out front suddenly cheered.

“She’s a convincing woman,” Fuentes said. “But she’d have to be to get you to cooperate like this. The problem is that none of us can understand your motive. What’s in it for you?”

“Justice.”

Fuentes laughed. “That’s the one thing your government knows nothing about. You’ve kept Cuba in the dark ages for half a century. Before that, you supported that hijo de puta Batista.”

“I meant for kidnapping the wife of a friend of mine,” McGarvey said.

“Not my doing.”

The crowd cheered again. María had said something about gold and silver in Havana.

“Let her talk,” Fuentes said. “Right now, we have something more important to do.”

“What’s that? Why’d you come here?”

“The gold, of course. And you’re going to take me to it.”

“There’s no gold here,” McGarvey said. “Never was.”

Fuentes jammed the silencer harder into the back of McGarvey’s neck. “You’re lying.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“No!” Fuentes shouted.

At that moment, María’s voice was replaced by that of Raúl Castro, whose image would now be on the big screens. President Langdon had evidently managed to convince the Cuban president to do this to try to defuse the situation, and Otto had set it up.

“What’s happening?” Fuentes demanded.

“You have been duped,” Castro’s voice rolled over the crowd. “Traitors in my government have used you to help smuggle a large number of drug runners across the border into the United States. Without America’s insatiable appetite for cocaine and marijuana, the Mexican cartels would not exist, and the killing of innocent Mexicans would come to an end.

“What I do care about are the traitors who have used you for their own financial gain. The only treasure there tonight is the money the cartels are willing to pay to get their people across. And now that it has happened the way they planned it, it is time for you to come home.”

The crowd was ominously silent, and at this point, María’s microphone and the camera were locked out so she could not interfere.

“The woman who is leading this traitor’s act is María León, a colonel in the Dirección de Inteligencia, who along with coconspirator Captain Manuel Fuentes, is there now, and will be arrested the moment they return to Cuba. The others — Román Ortega-Cowan, a major in the DI, and Julio Rosales, who was a trusted man in our Ministry of Justice and, I am sad to say, a personal friend of mine — have already been arrested and have confessed to their crimes.”

“I’d tell you to put your gun down and go home,” McGarvey said. “But you might want to consider asking for asylum here. You were Fidel’s chief of security — you might be able to trade information for safety.”

“I’ll make a deal, but it’ll be with El Presidente, when we bring back samples of the treasure. Enough to convince him that we were not traitors after all.”

“She lied to you.”

“No,” Fuentes said. “There was no reason for it. Besides, I heard everything you talked about in Georgetown.”

“I know,” McGarvey said. “We set it up so you would.”

SEVENTY-SIX

Raúl Martínez stood smoking a cigarette next to his Caddy not two hundred yards from the U.S. Bullion Depository on Fort Knox, a series of razor wire fences protecting it from intruders.

Otto had set up his laptop on the hood of the car, his fingers flying over the keyboard. Apache gunship helicopters from nearby Godman Army Airfield were incoming, along with more than one thousand soldiers from the Third Brigade Combat Team of the First Infantry Division, and fifty officers from the U.S. Mint Police force. But they were late to respond because Otto had interfered with their initial security alert system.

It was early evening, but the squat, prisonlike concrete structure and the open grounds around it were lit up like day, as were the roads that surrounded it, including Gold Vault Road and Bullion Boulevard, now completely choked by buses and cars and vans and pickup trucks and even a number of motorcycles, some with sidecars, that had streamed up from Miami and more than a dozen other communities in Florida, among them Sweetwater, Palm Springs, and Coral Gables, plus West New York, in New Jersey, and even some by plane from Houston, where they’d rented cars in Louisville for the short drive down.

And Martínez and several of his organizers had been clever enough to bring the four thousand Cuban exiles and their families to Fort Knox from all different directions, a lot of them up I-75, where they spread out along I-64 and a bunch of secondary highways; others as far west as I-65, from where they used other secondary highways to approach from the west. Everyone stuck to the speed limits, stopping only for bathroom breaks or to switch drivers. They were on a mission; they were dedicated.

Most of them were out of their vehicles, a lot of them singing some old Cuban folk songs, a lot of them with guitars and even some trumpets and other instruments. But no one littered or created any disturbance.

The first police had arrived only ten minutes ago, but generally everyone in the crowd politely ignored them, offering only their driver’s licenses, registration, and proof of insurance.

But now the military was on its way in force.

Otto looked up. “Okay, you have three choices,” he said, handing Martínez a cell phone. “Press one for Ronald Campagnoli, who is the Director of the U.S. Mint, Fort Knox; two for Colonel Leonard Chalmers, who runs the U.S. Mint Police here; or three for Brigadier General Thomas Bogan, who is in overall command of all Fort Knox operations.”

“What about Mac?”

“I’ll try to reach him again.”

Martínez pressed three, and after one ring, General Bogan came on. “Who’s on this secure number?”

“My name is of no importance for the moment, General,” Martínez said. “But if you want to avoid a bloodbath tonight in which a lot of innocent civilians will be hurt or killed, listen to what I have to say. I won’t take up much of your time.”

The general was silent for several long seconds, but there was a lot of noise in the background. Martínez figured the general was in a helicopter somewhere near, surveying the situation on the ground.

“I’m listening,” he said at last.

“We are Cuban exiles, mostly from Miami, here to stage a peaceful demonstration. None of us is armed, none of us mean any harm to the facility.”

“A demonstration to what end?” the general demanded.

“We believe that a portion of the gold and silver bullion that has been stored in either vault B or C since the late fifties belongs to the Cuban people.”

“Start making some sense, whoever the hell you are, or I will order your people to be removed, by force if necessary.”

“Don’t turn this into another Tiananmen Square, please.”

“You have five minutes.”

“For three hundred years, the Spanish in Mexico, Cuba, and throughout the Caribbean and South America collected huge amounts of gold and silver — stealing it from the natives, then forcing them to work in the mines as slave laborers. This treasure was sent back to Spain, most of it through Havana, where very little of it was given to the people who produced it. Maybe as much as four to five hundred tons were stolen from the Spanish in Mexico City and buried in several locations mostly in southern New Mexico. One such place was inside a small mountain on what’s now Holloman Air Force Base. It’s the treasure from Holloman that was excavated and brought here.”

The general was silent for a long time, and when he came back, he sounded somewhat subdued. “Approach the fence or the front gate and you will be shot.”

“You have my word,” Martínez said, but the connection dropped.

He tried Campagnoli, who was director of the Depository, and then Colonel Chalmers, who was chief of the Mint Police, but neither number answered after five rings.

The dozen or more helicopters that had been incoming minutes ago took up station, hovering two hundred feet above the perimeter of the mob.

“Looks like we’re okay for now,” Otto said. He’d brought up a Google Earth image of the Depository and the crowd surrounding it. Tanks blocked every road out, and soldiers were deploying from Hummers and APCs, completely surrounding the open fields all the way to the edge of the woods. No one else was getting in, and for the moment, no one was getting out.

“I think I threw the general a curve,” Martínez said, looking over Otto’s shoulder.

“Just like Mac said they would take it. But it won’t last long. We’ll have to be out of here by morning.”

“So far, so good — but we’re going to need him here long before then, because there’s no way in hell the general or anyone else is going to do much more talking other than order us to get out.”

Otto looked up from his computer. “Contact your unit leaders and let them know we need to hunker down for now. Meanwhile, I’ll try to reach Mac.”

The crowd had been roughly divided into a half dozen sections, and Martínez had picked six lieutenants in Miami to ride herd on them. He phoned them now and brought them up to date.

“It’s party time, but nobody even thinks about getting anywhere near the fence line or even looking like they’re thinking about it.”

“How long do we need to hold them here?” all of them wanted to know.

“Until first light, and no matter what’s happened or not happened by then, we’re going home.”

“A lot of these gente aren’t going to like it, Raúl. They’ve come a long way on a promise, and the road home is going to be ten times as long as it was getting here.”

“It’s not over for us even if we go home empty-handed,” Martínez said. “This is just the start. And remind everybody that the road home leads not just to Miami, but all the way to La Habana.”

Within five minutes, Martínez could hear the chant rolling through the crowd, echoing off the depository building: “Viva la liberación! Viva la liberación!”

SEVENTY-SEVEN

The president had moved his staff into the situation room down the hall from the Oval Office, where it was easier to monitor the two developing situations — the one he’d expected in Texas and the other, at Fort Knox, which had blindsided them all.

Audio and visual feeds were displayed split screen, on the flat-panel monitors, and actually seeing the two crowds, listening to them chant and sing, did nothing to dispel Langdon’s sour mood even though there was apparently no violence.

“Unless this is handled with a delicate touch, and not a sledgehammer, the situation could go south in a blink of the eye,” McGarvey had warned. But that was for Texas; he’d not mentioned Kentucky. And just now he was missing.

In Langdon’s estimation, Raúl Castro’s speech had been short and to the point, effective. And yet the crowd on Fort Bliss had made no move to disperse. They seemed to be waiting — watching the two big screens blank now atop the twin mounds, waiting for someone to tell them exactly what they were supposed to do.

Shapiro picked up an incoming on one of the phone lines, had a short conversation, and then caught Langdon’s attention. “Mr. President, we have General Bogan.” The general was in overall command of all army units at Fort Knox, including Godman Army Airfield.

“Put him on the speakerphone,” Langdon said. When the call was switched, there was a lot of background noise. “General Bogan, Joseph Langdon. What’s your situation?”

“Good evening, Mr. President, but I’m sorry to report that I don’t really know except that I have about five thousand civilians who’ve surrounded the depository and are demanding their share of some Spanish treasure that was supposedly moved here in the sixties from Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. My people checked, and apparently there was such a cache out there — or at least there were legends about it, but nothing concrete.”

Langdon’s anger began to rise. McGarvey had lied to him. “Did these people identify themselves, do they have a spokesman?”

“They claim to be Cuban exiles, and one of them somehow managed to hack into my tactical comms system. Said they were mostly from Miami, and they were here because some of the gold belonged to them.”

“Did you get a name?”

“No, sir,” the general said. “But he claimed theirs was a peaceful demonstration. Told me he didn’t want another Tiananmen Square. I can remove them, but people are bound to get hurt, and I certainly don’t want to open fire unless they actually try to storm the depository. Their spokesman said that they were unarmed, but I have no way of verifying it.”

“Can you contain them, can you keep them there for the time being?”

“We’re in control of the perimeter, but by morning the situation will almost certainly began to deteriorate. Unless they brought their own food and water, it’s bound to get a little dicey around here. At the very least, there are no sanitary facilities.”

“Stand by, General,” Langdon said, and Shapiro put the speakerphone on mute.

“If they can’t get out of there, we need to set up portable toilets and water stations,” John McKevitt, the president’s chief of staff, who’d come out from Cincinnati after the campaign, said. “Bad PR otherwise.”

“Has the media become involved?”

“Not yet, but they’re all over it in Texas.”

“McGarvey lied to me.”

“I think he might have felt that it was necessary, Mr. President,” the CIA’s director Walter Page said, and Langdon glared at him.

“Care to explain that to me, in one easy sentence, Walt?”

“A dialogue has finally been opened between us and Cuba. I think that counts for something.”

Langdon held back a sharp retort because in his gut he had a feeling that Page might be right. But presidents were not to be manipulated. “What about this nonsense with the Spanish treasure?”

“I don’t think it matters if it ever did exist outside of legends, local folktales,” Page said.

“Get me McGarvey,” the president said, and he motioned for Shapiro to unmute the sound. “Are you still there, General?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re to open fire only in self-defense or if an attack that seems to have some chance of success is made on the depository. In the meantime, I want portable comfort stations and drinking water delivered.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” General Bogan said with only the briefest of hesitations.

“I’ll have further orders for you before the night is over.”

“Yes, sir.”

Langdon nodded and Shapiro tried to reach McGarvey in Texas.

“I think I might have an idea who’s at Fort Knox,” Page said.

“Who?”

“The general said someone hacked into his tactical communications system, could be Otto Rencke.”

“Your computer expert and a close personal friend of McGarvey’s,” the president said.

“Yes, sir. And if it is him, it means McGarvey probably had this planned from the beginning. Texas was just a diversion mostly to get Castro to cooperate. It also means that the spokesman for the Cuban exiles at Fort Knox will be Raúl Martínez, who runs our counter-DI operations in Miami.”

“Another friend of McGarvey’s?” Langdon asked. And he was beginning to boil. Presidents definitely did not like to be manipulated.

“Yes, sir,” Page said.

Shapiro was holding the phone. “Still can’t reach McGarvey.”

Page gave him another number. “Try this one.”

Langdon nodded, and Shapiro made the call, which Otto answered on the first ring.

“Oh, wow, you’re calling from the White House situation room. Is that you, Mr. President?”

“Mr. Rencke, I presume?” Langdon said.

“Yes, sir,” Otto said.

“Is Mr. McGarvey with you?”

“No, he’s still in Texas, but one of our aircraft is standing by at Fort Bliss and I expect him to show up here sometime tonight.”

Langdon looked at his advisers, who seemed just as mystified as he was, just not as angry. “Then I want you to explain what the hell is going on. Because I spoke with the commanding general, who has you surrounded and is ready to disperse you by force if he’s given the slightest provocation. And I gave my authorization to do so.”

“Believe me, Mr. President, this is a peaceful demonstration.”

“I hope for your sake that it remains so.”

“You’ve been briefed about the Spanish gold in New Mexico, sir?”

“Yes. It was supposedly found at a place called Victorio Peak on Holloman Air Force Base. But it was either never there or it was looted a long time ago.”

“Yes, Mr. President, excavated by the air force, possibly by presidential order, and transported in secret here to Fort Knox, where it’s been stored in either vault B or C.”

“I have no knowledge of any such thing.”

“I’ve found pretty convincing evidence, sir.”

“For the sake of argument, then, let’s say that you’re right and the gold is there, and the demonstration in Texas was just a diversion to force Raúl Castro to speak to his people — what are five thousand Cuban exiles doing at Fort Knox? What do they hope to accomplish? Do they actually believe that we’ll open the vault and let them stuff their pockets?”

“No, sir. What Mac wanted to accomplish was to get Raúl Castro to make a public statement, and to give the Cuban exiles here the possibility of eventually getting a share of something they believe was stolen from them.”

“McGarvey has turned them into treasure hunters. To what end?”

“If a court can be convinced to release even a small amount of the treasure, and if it could be converted to U.S. dollars and if the money could find its way into the hands of ordinary people in Cuba, it’s very possible the regime could change. Solve our problem.”

“You’re talking about a long court battle, because I’m sure that Spain and Mexico will make their claims.”

“A few hundred million dollars would do it, Mr. President. And it wouldn’t cost us one cent.”

“Far-fetched,” Langdon said. “Exactly what do you and McGarvey want?”

“Nothing more than confirmation that the treasure actually exists.”

“And then what?”

“Then the people will return to their homes and wait for the courts to decide,” Rencke said. “What it will give them is hope, Mr. President.”

“How did they find out that the gold might be there?”

“Mac and I told them.”

“As soon as McGarvey shows up, I want to talk to him,” Langdon said. “And whatever happens, no violence there. Not even a hint of it.”

“I can guarantee it,” Otto said.

But then everyone in the situation room heard the gunfire, a few shots at first, and then what sounded like controlled bursts from automatic weapons, and the call was terminated.

SEVENTY-EIGHT

At the bottom of the first trench, which was about two hundred feet back into the hill and about thirty feet below the level of the field where the mob was spread out, only dimly illuminated from the lights outside, Fuentes grabbed the collar of McGarvey’s jacket and pulled him up short. Two men, armed with U.S.-made Ingram MAC 10 ultra-compact submachine guns slung over their shoulders, were just coming out of the intersecting trench to the right — and they, too, pulled up short.

“What did you find?” Fuentes asked in Spanish.

McGarvey understood only a couple of the words, but the meaning was clear.

“Nada,” the taller of the two said. “What’s going on out there? It sounded like El Presidente.”

“It’s nothing,” Fuentes said. “Just a recording that Colonel León brought with her.”

The DI operatives were skeptical.

“Where is the gold?” Fuentes demanded in English, jamming the muzzle of his weapon in McGarvey’s neck.

“It’s not here.”

“Bastardo!” Fuentes raged, and he slammed the handle of his weapon into McGarvey’s skull.

Bright stars flashed in front of McGarvey’s eyes as he was driven to a knee. His head cleared almost immediately, but he stayed down as if he were still out of it.

Fuentes kicked him in the ribs, and he went with the blow, rolling over on his side.

“Where is it?”

McGarvey didn’t respond.

“Pick him up! Get him to his feet!”

The two DI officers came over, grabbed McGarvey by the upper arms, and dragged him to his feet, but at the last second, McGarvey lurched to the left, pulling them momentarily off balance.

It was time enough for him to draw his pistol from the holster at the small of his back beneath his jacket, get off one shot into the side of the head of the officer to his left then pull the other man around as a shield, jamming the muzzle of his pistol in the back of the officer’s head.

“No one else needs to get hurt here tonight,” McGarvey said.

Fuentes had his silenced MAC 10 pointed directly at his own officer. He was breathing hard and his weapon hand shook badly. Any moment, he was going to open fire.

“You don’t have to go back to Havana,” McGarvey said.

“Fuck you.”

“Something can be worked out.”

“I want my gold. Just one bar. Anything to bring back.”

“It’s not your gold.”

“Don’t tell me that!” Fuentes screamed. “Don’t lie to me, you bastard!” He was waving his gun all over the place.

“Captain, you don’t want to die here tonight,” McGarvey said, trying to calm the man down.

“Listen to him, Captain,” the officer McGarvey was holding at gunpoint said. “We can go home.”

“Not without proof.”

“It isn’t here,” McGarvey said.

“One third of it belongs to Cuba!” Fuentes screamed. “Colonel León promised. So did Román.”

“You may be right,” McGarvey said. “But the gold is not here.”

“Where, then?”

“Fort Knox, in Kentucky, and the Cuban people are there right now, making their claim.”

Fuentes digested this thing slowly as if he had been fed something strange and totally inedible, and yet something that he knew he was going to have to digest. And when the taste of it finally hit him, he was physically rocked back on his heels and he went ballistic, lurching forward and opening fire, the 9 mm slugs slamming into the body of the DI officer.

McGarvey shoved the man away as he feinted to the left and fired one shot on the move, catching the captain high in his left cheekbone, just below his eye.

Fuentes fell back, dead before he hit the ground.

Two more DI officers came around the corner in a run, their silenced MAC 10s in hand, and they pulled up short.

McGarvey let the pistol fall from his hand, no way possible for him to outshoot a pair of submachine guns. “This is as far as it goes tonight.”

They looked like professionals, not so excitable as Fuentes had been. “What has happened here?” one of them demanded in heavily accented English.

“There is no gold.”

“Yes, we know that. What happened?”

“Captain Fuentes did not believe me, so he opened fire, killing one of his own men, and I was forced to shoot him.”

“What about Lieutenant Jiménez?”

“The situation is what it is. I was defending myself.”

One of them said something in Spanish to the other, which McGarvey didn’t catch.

“What about the colonel?”

“If we can resolve this situation, I’m going to offer her amnesty. She can’t return to Cuba now.”

“And us? Will you have us arrested?”

“The crowd is going to disperse sometime tonight. You’re free to go back across the border with them. No one will be stopped.”

“There are soldiers out there.”

“You’re on a military reservation, but they have been instructed not to interfere with anyone so long as the demonstration remains peaceful.”

Both men looked pointedly at the three bodies.

“Leave your weapons and get out of here,” McGarvey said. “Go home.”

The men exchanged a glance, then slowly laid their weapons on the ground and disappeared back down the trench to the north side.

McGarvey picked up his pistol and holstered it, then speed-dialed Otto’s cell phone, which wasn’t answered until three rings.

“We’ve got big trouble here, Mac!” Otto shouted, all out of breath.

And in the background, McGarvey could hear the sounds of sporadic gunfire. “I’m on my way!” he said, his gut tied in a knot, but the connection was terminated. And when he tried to call again, he could not get through.

SEVENTY-NINE

María had brought a subcompact Glock 36 Slimline .45 Auto across the border this afternoon. It held only a six-shot magazine, but even with the silencer attached, it was very small and deadly at close range. Walking away from the crowd in the darkness, she checked the action by feel, then took out her DI credentials booklet as she approached an unmarked Ford Taurus with plain hubcaps and government plates about one hundred yards out.

A slender young man in a business suit was leaning against the car, and when he spotted her coming out of the darkness, holding up her credentials, he straightened up and tossed his cigarette away.

“Federal District Chihuahua Police,” she said from ten feet away, and the cop — she took him to probably be FBI — relaxed.

“Looks like it’s about over.”

“FBI?”

“Don Schmidt from Albuquerque,” he said, and he reached for his credentials.

María brought the pistol round from behind her right hip, and before the agent could react, she pointed the pistol at his head. “Throw your gun to the ground, along with your cell phone and your badge, and walk away or I will shoot you.”

No one from the crowd still gathered in front of the two mounds waiting for something to happen, maybe someone else to talk to them from the big screens, could see what was happening here, and as far as she could tell, the nearest Fort Bliss soldiers were at least one hundred yards away in the opposite direction, and the cops had stopped at the military reservation limits. Only a few FBI agents had come in closer. No one wanted to spook the crowd.

“Who the hell are you?” the agent demanded, but he was nervous.

María motioned toward the crowd that was already beginning to head back to the highway. “You’re going to join them.”

The agent held for a moment, like a deer caught in headlights, but then he pulled out his pistol and dropped it to the ground along with his identification wallet and his cell phone, and turned and headed toward the crowd.

Shoving the pistol in her purse, she picked up the agent’s badge, pistol, and cell phone.

Checking one last time that no one was coming her way, she got behind the wheel and headed for the west checkpoint on the narrow two-lane Forrest Road that ran straight across the base from Airport Road to Highway 54, which in turn would take her a few miles south to I-10 and from there only three miles farther to El Paso’s international airport.

Even if McGarvey came looking for her, no one would suspect she’d used the local airport to make good her escape instead of returning across the border to Mexico.

She had been standing in the shadows at the bottom of the trench, just a few feet from where Fuentes had taken McGarvey, and she’d heard everything. The gold was at Fort Knox, not here, and the traitors from Miami had gone there to claim it. It all had been a gigantic ruse that had claimed the freedom and probably the lives of Román and the attorney Rosales. Fuentes was dead, by McGarvey’s hand, and there was a good chance that she would be assassinated if she ever returned to Cuba, unless she could make another end run. God, how it rankled, how it hurt, how it was so stupidly embarrassing. She’d reached high — El Comandante’s daughter had — and she was on the verge of failure. No going back for her. Not now, not like this. No settling in with the traitors in Miami, either. They would kill her the moment they saw her.

Unless she could make one final deal. A desperation move, but she figured it was her only avenue.

A Hummer was parked on the side of the road, and María held the FBI badge out the window, and the soldiers waved her through.

As soon as she hit Highway 54, she used her BlackBerry to connect with an airline booking agency for any flight direct to Atlanta, and she got a first-class seat on Delta flight leaving at nine this evening. She paid for it with her Ines Delgado credit card, which she thought would raise no red flags anywhere except Mexico City and Havana. With luck, the FBI agent would not be believed by the army units without identification long enough for her to get away, and his car wouldn’t be discovered in the airport parking garage until morning, by which time she would be long gone.

Her father had made her promise: for salvation. He’d meant Cuba’s salvation, or at least that’s what she thought he’d meant. But now it was for her own salvation, and maybe her personal retribution, because she was angry that she had been so easily used.

Her grip tightened on the steering wheel as she made the connection with I-10 and headed east. She had been angry for as long as she could remember, and for just a few beats now, she wondered if it had been worth it. If she’d ever accomplished anything worthwhile because of it.

And another thought crossed her mind — so sudden, so compelling, and so alien to everything that she believed in, it almost took her breath away.

She realized, just then, that she had fallen in love, which in a way made her even more angry than she’d ever been. It was a weakness that she despised.

EIGHTY

The gunfire had been reduced to sporadic shots around the nearly three-quarter-mile perimeter just outside the depository’s fence line. Raúl was hunkered down behind his Cadillac with Otto, who was trying to establish contact with someone, anyone, via computer.

“Anything yet?” Raúl asked.

“Cell phones have been blocked.”

“I know, I can’t contact my lieutenants to find out what the hell is going on. But I think the goddamn DI infiltrated us in Miami. What about your sat phone?”

“I’m searching who on Fort Bliss has one. Maybe I can get patched through to Bogan.”

Minutes after the first shots had been fired, the tanks blocking access to the roads leading off the base had rumbled closer, and the one on Bullion Boulevard to the east had moved to within twenty or thirty yards of the line of cars and buses that stretched along Gold Vault Road.

“Whatever it is, do it fast,” Raúl said. He pulled out his 9 mm Beretta and checked the load.

Otto looked up from his computer and blinked furiously. “Where are you going?”

“The DI has infiltrated us, and someone has to take care of it, because most of these people aren’t armed.”

“What about your lieutenants?”

“I told them no shooting unless their lives depended on it.”

Otto cocked an ear. “Well, it’s calmed down for now, but if you go out there and get into some kind of a gun battle with the bad guys, the general is likely to send his troops in, and then we’ll have a big mess on our hands.”

“We’ve already got a big mess,” Raúl said.

“Mac said that he was on his way before we were cut off.”

“That’s a thousand miles or more to Louisville and twenty miles by road here. So even if he’s already in the air, I don’t think we can hold out that long — maybe until two this morning — unless we do something right now.”

Martínez was a lot like McGarvey: almost impossible to argue with once his mind was made up.

“Don’t get yourself shot to death,” Otto said. “Mac would never let me forget it. Besides, you’ve got a lot of work to do after you get back to Miami.”

“Try to reach Bogan,” Raúl said, and keeping low, he scrambled to the two dozen people flat on the ground behind the bus that had brought them north. Many of them were women with a few children. But most were men and they were angry.

“You said there would be no gunfire!” one of them shouted.

“Keep it down,” Raúl said. “Did you see anything?”

The man, who was at least in his mid-seventies, noticed the pistol in Raúl’s hand. “Muzzle flashes about fifty yards maybe a little closer to the west, but that was fifteen minutes ago.”

“I maybe saw something on the other side of the depository,” another man said. “But it’s quiet now.”

“What about the military?” the old man asked. “Are they going to try to arrest us, or move us out?”

“They will if this shit keeps up.”

“Is it the DI bastardos?”

“I don’t know who else,” Raúl said.

“Where is he going?” one of the other men said, pointing down the road.

Raúl turned in time to see Otto marching along the line of cars, past where people were huddling, directly toward where the tank had taken up position.

“Dios mío!” Raúl shouted. He jumped up and raced back, catching up to Otto who was just coming abreast of the last bus before the intersection with Gold Vault Road which went left.

Otto had his hands up and Raúl grabbed his arm and tried to stop him, but Otto pulled away. “Get your pistol out of sight, and stay right here. I might have a chance to buy us some time.”

“You’re going to surrender to the tank commander?”

“What do you think he’s going to do, order his crew to shoot me?”

“He just might,” Raúl said. But he stuck his pistol in his belt beneath his jacket. “I’m coming with you.”

“Stay here,” Otto said, but Raúl shook his head.

“If I let you get shot to death, Mac would for sure never forgive me.”

“Let me do the talking,” Otto said, and keeping his hands up, marched past the bus and across the intersection, Raúl right behind him, the people behind the bus watching them as if they were muy loco.

The tank’s turret swiveled so that the main gun was pointed right at them, and they stopped about ten yards away.

“Either shoot me, or pop out of there so that we can talk!” Otto shouted.

The Abrams M1A2 battle tank’s engine rumbled softly, and in the distance they could hear other engines, but most of the helicopters had landed in the field near the woods to the east, only one in the air at least a half mile south.

“I don’t think they know what to do with us,” Raúl said at Otto’s shoulder.

The tank’s top hatch opened, and a man with lieutenant’s bars, a tank commander’s helmet, and headset appeared. “Gentlemen, state your names and business.”

“I’m Otto Rencke, and I work for the Central Intelligence Agency. Please relay to General Bogan that I was the one who hacked your communications system and unless you pull your heavy hardware back, we could have a serious situation here.”

“Yes, sir, stand by,” the tank commander said. He spoke into his headset for a bit. “Who is the other man?”

“My associate,” Rencke said. “Kirk McGarvey should be here in two or three hours, at which time the entire situation will be explained.”

The lieutenant was relaying Otto’s words. “General Bogan asks that you immediately disperse, return the way you have come.”

“That’s not possible at this time.”

“You will be subject to arrest and prosecution.”

“I think that General Bogan has other orders from President Langdon.”

In this instance, the delay between the time the lieutenant relayed Otto’s words and the general’s response was longer. Almost a full minute.

“There has been gunfire from your group.”

“We believe that several Cuban intelligence officers have embedded themselves within the exiles. So far as we understand, none of it has been directed at your people or at the depository.”

“Why are they here?”

“To stop us,” Otto said. “Mr. McGarvey will explain everything as soon as he arrives. He’s flying up from Fort Bliss aboard a CIA Gulfstream, and he’ll want clearance to land at the nearest airstrip. I would expect Godman.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Tell the general that the president will in all certainty direct otherwise.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Rencke, but the general again orders that you immediately disperse.”

Otto took two steps forward, when he was flung face-down onto the pavement, and seconds later, the sound of a rifle shot whip-cracked from somewhere behind.

EIGHTY-ONE

In the air, McGarvey tried twice again to reach Otto’s cell phone with no response, and he was beginning to get seriously worried. It was a little after nine in the evening Mountain Standard, and the pilot had given him an ETA at Godman Air Field of 12:45 A.M. Eastern, two hours plus, during which a lot of bad things could happen.

“We still don’t have clearance to land at Godman,” the pilot, Roger Darling, told him.

“They give a reason why?”

“No, sir. But from what I’m reading between the lines, something big is happening out there, and they’ve got the entire complex on lockdown.”

“Who’d you talk to?”

“I managed to get a relay from Cincinnati Center direct to Godman’s chief air traffic controller.”

“Can you get him back?”

“Yes, sir, but he won’t talk to you,” Darling said.

There’d been resistance — it was the only explanation McGarvey could think of. He and Martínez had discussed the possibility that the DI might embed agents in the crowd and once at Fort Knox might try to start some trouble. The real problems were how Martínez and his lieutenants would handle it and what the military response would be.

“Get me the president,” McGarvey said. “I’ll take it in the back.”

He went aft and sat down at the communications console, and waited until the call came through a couple of minutes later. The flight attendant had made himself scarce.

“Good evening, Mr. President. I think we may have a developing situation at Fort Knox.”

“We certainly have. There’s been gunfire and casualties, including Otto Rencke, a friend of yours, I believe. The army is on the verge of moving in and breaking up the crowd by force.”

For several long beats, McGarvey could feel his sanity slipping away, and he didn’t know how he could possibly bear another loss, and what would it do to Louise and to the baby they’d adopted? Or how he could keep from going on a killing rampage?

But then the aircraft’s interior came back in focus and he loosened his iron grip on the phone. “What’s his condition, sir?”

“I’m told a bullet grazed the side of his head, but other than headaches and some blurred vision for a day or two, he’ll be fine,” Langdon said. “Where are you?”

“In the air about two hours from Godman Air Field for which we’ve been denied clearance to land,” McGarvey said. The relief was sweet. “And apparently cell phone traffic has been blocked.”

“On General Bogan’s orders, he didn’t want the dissidents to coordinate any sort of an attack.”

“Exiles, sir,” McGarvey said. “I’d like to talk to him, three-way with you, Mr. President.”

“Would you mind explaining what the hell you have in mind?” Langdon demanded.

“It’ll be easier if I explain it to both of you at the same time, sir.”

“Just a minute,” the president said, and it was obvious he didn’t like being talked to this way.

A minute and a half later, the president was back. “General Bogan?”

“Yes, Mr. President,” the general said. He sounded tense, and there was a lot of noise in the background — what sounded like radio traffic.

“Kirk McGarvey is on the line with us. He’s incoming in about two hours aboard a CIA aircraft, and he will be given clearance to land at Godman.”

“Sir, I can’t guarantee that he won’t receive ground fire.”

“Mr. McGarvey?” the president prompted.

“We’ll take our chances,” McGarvey said. “I’ll instruct my pilot. In the meantime, there’re a number of things that I need you to do for me, so that we can get through this night with no further casualties.”

The general started to object, but Langdon cut him off. “Mr. McGarvey is operating under my orders.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is there any gunfire from the crowd at this moment?” McGarvey asked.

“Not for the past ten or fifteen minutes, and then only a single shot here and there.”

“Then it’s not an all-out assault.”

“No,” the general said.

“You will order your troops to stand by but not to open fire for any reason — any reason — other than to defend their own lives.”

“What if they storm the fence?”

“I’m hoping they’ll do something to get inside — in fact, I’m counting on it. But even if they actually reached the depository, there’s no chance they could get inside. At some point in the next two hours, I want all the lights cut, and under cover of darkness, I want the gate opened and the Mint Police manning it to go to the depository and wait inside.”

“Mr. President?” Bogan asked.

“You have your orders,” Langdon said tightly.

“And I want the cell phone network restored. The leader of the exile group has arranged lieutenants to keep the peace. Without communications, they cannot coordinate any effort to take out the embedded DI operatives.”

“Is there anything else, sir?” General Bogan asked briskly.

“The next part will be up to you, Mr. President,” McGarvey said.

“I’m listening.”

“You understand what’s at stake, so I want two things. From what I understand, it takes ten members of the depository staff to dial separate combinations to actually get into the vault area.”

“I don’t know that for a fact at the moment, but providing you are correct, what is it that you want?”

“Access to vault C at first light for me and one representative from the exiles.”

Bogan started to protest, but again the president cut him off. “For what purpose? What do you want?”

“Just to look, nothing more.”

“I’ll consider it.”

“And I want the media to be allowed access to the crowd immediately after we’ve seen the vault.”

“And then what?” Langdon asked.

“What we talked about will have a chance,” McGarvey said.

The area cell phone service was resorted ten minutes later, and McGarvey was able to reach Otto at the hospital near Fort Knox Headquarters.

“Oh, wow, I think I got lucky.”

“Sounds like you did. How do you feel?”

“Like a computer with a badass virus,” Otto said. “Are you close?”

“Less than two hours. Langdon’s going along with everything, so we’ll know by dawn.”

“I hope it’s there.”

“So do I,” McGarvey said. “Take care.”

He phoned Martínez, who answered on the second ring, all out of breath. “I hope this is Mac.”

“Two hours out with Langdon’s blessings. What’s your situation?”

“We just got cell phones back, and my guys are working the problem. We might have a half dozen live ones left. That many have already met with unfortunate accidents.”

“How about your people?”

“Our people,” Martínez corrected. “We’ve taken a few serious hits, but we’ve been at war long enough to understand casualties. And we brought a couple of doctors and several nurses with us, so we’re okay for now.”

“Listen up, because you’re going to stop being hunter killers, to hunter herders.” McGarvey said. “And this is what I have in mind.”

EIGHTY-TWO

General Bogan, a man with a very large, gruff voice and manner, turned out to be in his early forties, slightly built, mild looking, with thinning sand-colored hair and pale blue friendly eyes. He was standing on the tarmac dressed in sand-colorerd BDUs with two bodyguards beside a Hummer when the CIA Gulfstream pulled up to a halt, and the engines spooled down.

He came forward when the stairs opened and McGarvey thanked the crew and stepped down.

“McGarvey, you’ve for sure put our tits in a ringer.”

They shook hands. “Didn’t say this was going to be easy, General. What’s the situation?”

They headed to the Hummer, the bodyguards’ heads on swivels. “The media started descending right after your call,” Bogan said. “We’ve managed to hold them back with a little creative bullshit, but it won’t last.”

“I don’t expect it will,” McGarvey said. “What about gunfire?”

“About twenty minutes of it after we restored cell phone service, but since then it’s been quiet.”

When Mac had been coming in from the air, the lights surrounding the depository were like a necklace around a black hole. “Have the Mint Police at the gate gotten back to the building okay?”

“That’s the part that has us the most nervous,” Bogan said. “The guards got out of there okay, but less than ten minutes later, we spotted the infrared images of two men running down the access roads right up to the open gates.”

“Did they go inside?”

“No, they stopped at the guard post, and it looks as if they’re waiting for something or someone.”

“Me,” McGarvey said.

The Hummer headed to the depository.

“We can verify that at least one of them is armed.”

“They’ll both be carrying,” McGarvey said, checking the load and the silencer on his own pistol. When he looked up, the general was watching him. “They’re Cuban intelligence agents sent here to either disrupt the demonstration or somehow make their own claim. It’s what I was counting on.”

“Are there others in the crowd?”

“They’re all dead.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes,” McGarvey said. “Now I want you to get me as close as you can, I’ll go the rest of the way on foot.”

“I’ll take you where your friend was shot,” Bogan said. “From inside the crowd. Wasn’t us.”

“I understand,” McGarvey said. “How about the depository officials with the combinations?”

“Four were inside the building when this started, five are standing by in an armored Hummer, and the tenth is being choppered down from Louisville International. Should be here within twenty minutes.”

“Hold them until I give the word.”

“You can reach my tactical cell phone,” Bogan said.

“Yes,” McGarvey said, and he phoned Martínez. “I’m in the Hummer approaching your position, is one of your docs standing by?”

“At the end of the access road, along with a couple of escorts. You sure you don’t want some backup?”

“They have to be twitchy by now, so this isn’t going to have much of a chance if I bring help.”

The Hummer pulled up beside the lead tank where Otto had been shot. “Once I give you the all clear, have the guys with the combinations sent in, but keep the media out until afterwards,” McGarvey told the general.

“Then what?”

“Then we’ll make an announcement, and the people will go home.”

“I meant the two at the gate. You’re going to kill them.”

“I just want to talk to them, and when the dust finally settles, I want them flown down to Guantánamo, where’re they’ll be released.”

“Jesus,” Bogan said, but then something came across his face as he finally caught a glimmering of what was actually going on. “Jesus,” he said again.

McGarvey got out of the Hummer and walked across the road to where Martínez was waiting for him by the bus at the edge of the crowd. The people had been told who he was and why he had come here, and they were happy now and smiling.

“You wearing a vest?” Martínez asked as they headed through the crowd toward the access road.

McGarvey shook his head. “They’re pros, so if it comes to that, they’ll go for head shots. It’ll be at nearly point-blank range, because I’m going to have to crowd them. It’s the only way I’ll have a chance of pulling it off.”

“Doesn’t have much of a chance anyway,” Martínez said. “You do know that.”

“We can’t live forever.”

“That’s supposed to be my line, comp. This is for Cuba. Should be me going in there, why you?”

“For Cuba,” McGarvey said. “Anyway, I want you guys to get the hell out of Miami and go home.”

Martínez laughed. “Where would the tourists go for go for a good cup of coffee?” he asked, and McGarvey laughed with him.

“Havana. I’ve always wanted to smoke a good cigar. Legally.”

They stopped at the access road. “Seriously, Mac, watch your ass. Those guys won’t hesitate to pull the trigger.”

“Neither will I,” McGarvey said. He took out his pistol and, holding it out of sight just behind his right leg, headed to the open gate and the guard post the length of a football field away.

About fifty feet from the inner fence, a DI operative stepped out from behind one of the concrete structures flanking the gate. He was holding what looked like a compact automatic weapon of some sort.

“Do you speak English?” McGarvey called out, not stopping.

“Yes.”

“The shooting is over, your associates are all dead. I’m here to talk.”

“We’ll talk to the newspapers and television.”

“First you have to talk to me. Do you know what happened in Texas?”

The Cuban was dark, with thick black hair, dressed in jeans and a denim jacket over a dark shirt, making him nearly invisible. “We heard.”

“The gold is here, not in Texas or New Mexico.”

“That is our understanding, señor,” the DI operative said. “Please stop where you are.”

McGarvey took a couple more steps before he stopped less than ten feet away from the man. “You’re here on behalf of your government to stake a claim. Which you have done. Now it’s time to go home.”

“We want to see it with our own eyes.”

“I’ve arranged for you and your partner, still hiding like a pansy, to have safe passage through the crowd to the army officer in charge of this installation.” He needed the second agent in plain view; otherwise, if there was a shoot-out he’d be at a sharp disadvantage.

The other operative, also armed with what McGarvey recognized was a silenced MAC 10, the same as the weapon the DI had been equipped with at Fort Bliss, stepped into view. “Never happen, you bastardo.”

“Nevertheless, it’s the only way you’ll get out of here alive.”

“Hijo de puta!” the man shouted, and he raised his weapon.

McGarvey shot him in the forehead, driving his body backwards, bouncing off the concrete structure, dead before he hit the pavement.

The other operative raised his weapon at the same moment McGarvey switched aim to him. But the man hesitated.

“Believe me, I do not want to kill you, but if I must I will,” McGarvey said. “Comprende?”

The Cuban said nothing. He was tense but not out of control.

“I want you to return to Havana to make your report that the gold has been found. The Cuban government can make its claim, just as the people here tonight are making theirs.”

The agent looked beyond McGarvey to the crowd. “They’ll never let me pass.”

“The military will escort you to their airstrip here, from where you’ll be flown to Cuba.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not,” McGarvey said, but he was close enough to see the tightening muscles around the man’s eyes and mouth.

The operative shouted something in Spanish, but an instant before he pulled the trigger, McGarvey fired one shot, catching him in the right kneecap, knocking him down, the MAC 10 firing into the sky, the thirty-round magazine empty in under two seconds.

McGarvey was on him in three steps, kicking the empty gun away, and immediately the Cuban understood that he had lost, and though he was in pain, he laid his head back. “Qué?”

“You’re going home, a cripple, but probably a hero. Mission accomplished. But if you return, for any reason at all, I’ll kill you. Understand?”

“Sí.”

“Medic!” McGarvey shouted, and he got on the phone to General Bogan.

EIGHTY-THREE

Unlike the other vaults, which were compartmentalized almost like hardened cubicles in a very large office, vault C was a big room behind a massive door that swung ponderously outward, a metal ramp sliding into place over the thirty-inch gap in the concrete floor.

The ten combination holders, four of them women, all of them fifty or older, most of them dressed in ordinary business clothes even though it was the middle of the night on a weekend, and all of them anonymous, had entered their personnel data into the computer system on the ground floor. To reach the actual vault, they went through the same procedure three more times, and were subjected to hand and retinal scans.

More than gold was and had been stored here at one time or another, including the original Declaration of Independence and Constitution during WWII, the reserves of several European countries, jewels given to American soldiers to keep them out of Soviet hands, one of four known copies of the Magna Carta, and before the invention of synthetic painkillers a vast supply of processed morphine and opium, in case our supplies of raw opium were to be interrupted.

When the door was fully opened, the two Mint cops who had accompanied the group stepped aside to let McGarvey and Martínez cross the ramp.

The room, a box actually of reinforced concrete and steel brightly lit with fluorescent fixtures recessed in the ceiling, measuring about twenty feet on a side, was totally empty and spotlessly clean except for a light coating of dust on the floor.

Martínez had gone first and left footprints. There was no treasure here, and nothing had been in this room for a long time, at least twenty or thirty years.

McGarvey started to laugh, and Martínez turned back to him.

“Where is it?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” McGarvey said.

Martínez looked again at the empty space. “Did it ever exist?”

“The gold and other stuff they found in Victorio Peak existed. Otto established that much. And it was moved.”

“But not here.”

McGarvey turned and looked at the Mint cops, whose expressions were neutral, and then to the combination holders, none of whom seemed the least bit surprised.

“Are you satisfied, Mr. McGarvey?” one of the women asked.

“Where is it?”

“If you’re talking about our gold reserves, some of it is here in the depository while a slightly larger amount — about five thousand metric tonnes — is stored in a vault beneath the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. But if you mean some mythical Spanish treasure dug up somewhere in New Mexico, it does not exist here.”

“We could look inside the other vaults.”

“Yes, you could,” the woman said reasonably. “But still you would not find your treasure.”

“What do I tell the crowd?” Martínez asked.

“The truth, that it’s not here.”

“Or the truth, that it doesn’t exist, or never did?”

“Oh, it’s somewhere, tell them that,” McGarvey said. “And tell them that we’ll just have to keep looking.”

“It could have been good,” Martínez said before he went to talk to the people and to the media.

When McGarvey got to the dispensary, Otto was already out of bed and getting dressed, a thick bandage on the side of his head. He was worried.

“Louise doesn’t answer her cell phone, and no one in the Building can reach her.”

“Call security,” McGarvey said, but Otto shook his head.

“María León disappeared, and a passenger by the name of Ines Delgado flew to Atlanta last night, and caught the last flight to Washington, which landed just before one this morning. Delgado is the name she used to get out of Cuba.”

“There’s no reason to her to go to the McLean house.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Otto said. Anyway, this is something you and I have to handle. We get security or the Bureau involved, it could end up in a shoot-out. I’m counting on you, big-time, Kirk.”

“Call our pilot,” McGarvey said.

“Already have.”

EIGHTY-FOUR

It was nine in the morning by the time they touched down at Andrews Air Force Base, borrowed a plain blue Ford Taurus motor pool car and, McGarvey driving, headed the thirty miles on the Capital Beltway to McLean. Otto hadn’t said much on the flight, except to try Louise twice without luck before they touched down.

“Keep trying,” McGarvey said when they crossed the river to Alexandria.

“I’m afraid,” Otto said. “She’s the only woman in my entire life who ever loved me for who I was. All the warts and dirty sweatshirts, even my Twinkies and heavy cream.”

“You’re not going to lose her, because the colonel wants the gold so that she can go home a redeemed apparatchik, and she knows that won’t happen if she does something to Louise,” McGarvey said. “And she knows that I would hunt her down and kill her, priority one. Try again.”

Louise answered on the first ring, and relief and joy spread across Otto’s face. He put the call on speakerphone. “We were worried about you. Are you okay?”

“Just dandy,” Louise answered, her voice obviously strained. “Where are you?”

“On the Beltway, maybe twenty minutes away.”

“Is Mac with you?”

“He’s driving, and you’re on speakerphone.”

“Just a minute,” Louise said, and the sound changed. “You’re on speakerphone, too. Mac, someone wants to talk to you.”

“Colonel León, I expect,” McGarvey said.

“We’ve been watching CNN,” María said. “No gold in Texas and none in Kentucky. Where is it?”

“I don’t know, but we’re still looking.”

“I want answers.” María’s voice rose a little. She sounded ragged. “I’ve come too far to go home empty-handed.”

“I think that we need to talk about that, figure out what’s best for all of us — because making it a DI mission to keep kidnapping the same woman won’t work.”

“Got your attention. It’s all I want.”

“Stand by, Louise, we’re almost there,” McGarvey said.

“We’re in the kitchen having some of your cognac—” Louise said, but the connection was broken.

“What do you think?” Otto asked.

“She’s running scared. If she goes home empty-handed, she’ll face a firing squad. If she stays here, she’ll spend the rest of her life in prison.”

“What’re her options?”

“She only has one,” McGarvey said. “Talk to us.”

It was Monday morning, and McLean’s residential streets were quiet, everyone was either at work or in school. Nothing moved on the cul-de-sac that backed into Bryn Mawr Park, and McGarvey pulled into the driveway of the Renckes’ secondary safe house and after a moment or two switched off the engine.

“Concentrate on Louise,” he told Otto. “Let me do the talking, and if you see an opening just bug out of the line of fire with her.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

McGarvey turned on him. “You’ll goddamn follow orders for once,” he said harshly. “I’m not losing any more people I care about. Capisce?”

Chastised, Otto nodded, and the two of them got out of the car and walked up to the house. The front door was unlocked, and McGarvey pushed it open with the toe of his shoe as he drew his pistol.

The place was deathly still.

“We’re here,” McGarvey called out.

“In the kitchen,” Louise responded.

“What’s your situation?”

“Pistol on the table. I think it’s a compact Glock.”

“Coming in,” McGarvey said, and taking the lead, his pistol pointed down at his side, he moved down the hall, where he stopped at the open doorway.

“Good morning, Kirk,” María said, making no move for the pistol on the table in front of her. She looked disheveled, as if she hadn’t slept in a couple of days, which she probably hadn’t.

“Pick up the gun, Louise,” McGarvey said, but María snatched it up first and switched the safety off.

“I can’t allow that,” she said. Her pistol was pointed a little to the left, not at Louise or at McGarvey, but she was wired.

“Will you allow Louise to leave the kitchen?”

“No. For the moment, she’s my only bargaining chip.”

The kitchen was large, with a lot of big windows that overlooked an expansive backyard with a swing set and elaborate-looking children’s play station, or gym, with slides and bars and even a tree house of sorts. McGarvey could see Audie playing here, and he could hear her laughter. And he was finally beginning to see himself back in the picture.

He stepped the rest of the way into the kitchen, and María stiffened when she saw he was holding a gun. But moving slowly, he holstered the Walther under his jacket at the small of his back and then sat down at the table across from her. Otto came in a moment later and sat down next to his wife, and put an arm around her shoulder.

“Okay?” he asked.

Louise was looking at his bandage. “They were a lousy shot, thank God.”

“You came here to get my attention,” McGarvey said. “What’s next?”

“Where’s the treasure?”

“I don’t know if we’ll ever find out.”

“But it exists.”

“I’m almost certain of it,” McGarvey said. “But none of it will ever get to Havana, at least not to the government.”

“Which you think you can bring down.”

“Not me alone,” McGarvey said.

María nodded. “You are a man at once formidable and pavoroso.”

“What?”

“She means fearful,” Louise said, and she looked at María. “You can’t imagine the half of it.”

“Yes, I can.”

“So I’ll ask again, what’s next?” McGarvey said.

“If you don’t know where the treasure lies, or are unwilling reveal it, then there is nothing left for me.”

“Nothing in Havana, but if you agree to be extensively debriefed on DI operations and long-range planning, something might be worked out. Maybe a plea bargain.”

But María was shaking her head, a sudden infinite sadness in her large dark eyes. “I could never do such a thing, never stay here for the rest of my life in or out of jail.” She looked out the windows at the swing set. “I am what I am. A product of my genes and my upbringing, my training. I’m a Cuban, and the only man who ever wrote that he loved me was my father.”

For a long time her statement seemed to hold in the air, but then she turned again and smiled wistfully.

“You are a formidable and pavoroso man among men, Kirk McGarvey. In another time and place, under different circumstances, I could have loved you more than my country. More than my life itself.”

“Whatever you do next, just no more killing, no more blood,” McGarvey said. “Something can be worked out.”

María got to her feet. “Give me the keys to your car.”

“They’re in the ignition.”

“If you try to follow me, or send the police after me, I’ll defend myself. And I am a very good shot.”

“I’m sure you are.”

She gave him another long, searching look and then, keeping her pistol trained in their general direction, backed out of the kitchen and disappeared down the front hall and out the door.

“Aren’t you going after her?” Otto demanded.

McGarvey shook his head, and it seemed to him that he hadn’t slept in days, maybe not in years, maybe not since his first kill in Santiago when he was nothing more than a very young husband with a baby daughter at home. Now they were all dead and buried, just as so many others who’d become close to him were.

“We’re just going to let her go?”

“She has nowhere to run,” McGarvey said.

And maybe he’d finally had his fill of it all. Maybe if he thought hard enough about it, his life had been pretty much a waste.

Otto and Louise were watching him. And after a beat, Louise reached across the table and put her hands on his.

“Think about Audie,” she said.

“I do all the time.”

“Then it should be enough.”

“I’m not following you.”

“You’re feeling sorry for yourself — I can see it in your eyes from a mile away.”

Coming from Louise just now it stung. “You’re probably right. And it’s why I let her go. I’m tired of the blood. Up to my neck in it, and it’s time for me to back off.”

“Go back to your Greek island to lick your wounds?”

“Something like that.”

“And then what?”

McGarvey wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

“There’ll be something else for you,” Louise said. “You do know that much at least.”

“I’m getting out.”

“No,” Louise blurted.

“It’s over.”

“What about the rest of us, what are we supposed to do? Me and Otto?”

McGarvey held his silence.

“You have a gift, Kirk. Rare and terrible as it is, we need you.”

“All the killing.”

“All the lives you’ve saved. What about them, or don’t they count?”

“My wife and daughter were murdered because of my gift, as you call it,” McGarvey shot back. His anger was rising. “I’m done.”

“What about your grandchild? Are you going to just walk away from whatever comes her way?”

“That’s not fair, goddamnit.”

“No it’s not,” Louise said. “But it’s the hand you were dealt.”

She was right, of course. He knew it in his heart of hearts, just as he knew that he would have to go back to Serifos at least for a little while. A month or two, before he could work up the courage to come back to Casey Key, reopen the house he’d shared with Katy, and pick up the threads of his life. If he had the courage.

But Louise was smiling gently now, sadly. “Anyway, Happy Birthday, kemo sabe,” she said.

McGarvey looked at her. “What?”

“It’s your birthday today, Kirk. Otto and I were hoping that this business would be done soon enough, because I planned a party. With Audie. Turns out she likes chocolate cake, with chocolate frosting, chocolate ice cream, and chocolate milk.”