Cuba

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Who did this to you?”

Alejo Vargas asked the question of Colonel Santana while he lay on a gurney in the hospital emergency room being prepped for surgery. He had four bullets in him and a wicked wound on his forehead where a bullet had ricochetted off his skull. His jaw and one cheekbone were severely swollen, his nose smashed, he had lost two teeth, and he obviously had a concussion. The pupil in his right eye was dilated and refused to focus.

“I don’t know,” Santana managed. He tried to swallow, almost choked on his tongue. After gagging several times, he seemed to relax.

“American?”

“I do not know. Nothing was said, it was dark. He was waiting behind the door when I went in.”

“One of the bullets penetrated the wall of his chest, Minister,” the doctor said. “We must get it out and stop the hemorrhaging. He needs a transfusion and rest.”

Vargas left the emergency room. The car drove him back to the ministry and he took the elevator to his office.

The workers had the worst of the damage cleaned up. Still, the door to the safe was standing open and the drawers within were empty.

The priceless files on the generals and top government people that had taken twenty years to compile, gone — like a storm in the night. Every sin known to man was somewhere in one of those files: marital infidelity, theft, rape, incest, sodomy, even murder. Those files were the key to his power, to his ability to make things happen anywhere in Cuba. And now they were gone.

Hector Sedano was his first suspect. Of course Hector himself was in La Cabana, but someone could have robbed the safe on his behalf.

And it could be one of the generals, or Admiral Delgado. Any one of those ambitious fools.

Raúl Castro? A possibility, but he discounted it. Then the fact that he thought Raúl Castro an unlikely suspect made him suspicious. He would have Raúl checked, followed day and night, everyone he spoke to would be scrutinized.

Truly there was much to do. Much to do.

The electrical outage made the burglary possible. Four towers down, two dead saboteurs.

There was a trail out there, and some diligent investigating would eventually lead him to the man or men who did this crime.

Not that it would do any good. Whoever had those files would undoubtedly destroy them immediately.

All his plans, all that work … up in smoke.

Alejo Vargas didn’t believe in coincidences. Whoever robbed that safe made extensive preparations. This was no spur-of-the-moment thing — the robbery was carefully, meticulously planned.

He looked again at the safe. Not a mark on it. Someone had dialed the combination. He had heard that such things were possible, but he had never seen it done. Nor heard of it being done in Cuba. Yesterday he would have said there was not a man in Cuba with that kind of talent.

And the files on the biological program were gone.

The day after the break-in at the lab.

The lab break-in wasn’t Hector’s style — he would have no reason to burgle the place, nor would anyone else — there was nothing there to steal.

Except poliomyelitis viruses. Would Hector gain political advantage by publicizing the biological weapons program, proving its existence?

The Americans …

Alejo Vargas stood looking at his empty safe, thinking about Americans.

The Americans were a possibility, he reluctantly concluded.

He got a magnifying glass from the top drawer of his desk, examined the door of the safe as carefully as he could.

There were marks, scratches, several together. He could see them. But how long had they been there? What were they made by?

There was no one to tell him, and he decided finally that perhaps it didn’t matter. The people who opened this safe and stole the keys to Cuba had brought down the power grid in central Havana. That was where the trail began.

He spent a few seconds in contemplation of his revenge when he caught these men.

“Minister, here is Lieutenant Gómez, who had the duty last night.”

“You saw these men, Gómez?”

“Two men arrived just seconds after the lights went out, sir. I saw the colonel for a few seconds in a flashlight beam. The driver, no.”

“What did this man look like?”

“He was tall, not fat.”

“His accent?”

“None that I noticed, sir.”

“Come, come, Lieutenant. Was he from Cuba, from Havana or Oriente, or did he speak Castilian Spanish?”

“From Havana, I thought, sir. He sounded like you and me.”

“What did he say?”

“That we should start the emergency generator.”

“So you did?”

“Yes, sir. Without power the alarms were disabled, we could not talk to each other on the telephone, the security of the building was compromised. My men and I went to the basement and worked on the generator. I came back upstairs once and reported to the colonel, told him we were having difficulties; he said he had faith. When we got the generator going and went back upstairs, the colonel and his driver and vehicle were gone.”

“You had never seen this colonel before?”

“Not to my knowledge, sir.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

No, he wouldn’t, Vargas decided. If this colonel thought there was a glimmer of a chance Lieutenant Gómez would recognize him then or later, he would have killed him. Gómez was alive because he posed no threat.

Vargas dismissed Gómez and called in his department heads to give them orders.

With no ceremony and no conversation, Mercedes Sedano was released from the presidential palace. A butler came to the door, suggested she pack.

The electrical power was still off. It had been off when she awoke this morning, and she was given stale bread and water for breakfast.

She put the clothes she wished to keep in two shopping bags that were on the floor of the closet, sandwiched the cassettes in between them, and took a last look around the apartment. The butler returned five minutes later and led her out. Without electricity the palace looked dark and grim. She wanted desperately to be gone, to bring an end to this phase of her life. She bit her lip to keep herself under control.

The butler paused in an empty hallway, looked around to ensure that there were no maids about, then whispered, “They’ve arrested your brother-in-law Hector Sedano. He is in La Cabana.”

Then he took her to the door of the palace, said a barely audible good-bye, and closed the door behind her.

She walked past the guards and continued down the street to the bus stop. The electrical power seemed off everywhere, yet the streets of Havana hustled and bustled as usual. Didn’t they know Fidel was dead?

She dared not ask.

On the bus she saw a newspaper lying on a nearby seat and scanned the front page. The usual stuff, nothing about Fidel.

So they had not announced his death.

She transferred to another bus, left her clothes with a friend in a shop on the Malecon. The shop was closed because of the lack of electricity, but Mercedes tapped on the window until her friend came to open the door.

Her friend was very agitated. She drew Mercedes into the tiny dark storeroom. “I have heard they arrested Hector. What does it mean?”

“I do not know,” Mercedes told her, shaking her head.

“Hector’s friends are on fire,” said the shopkeeper, “and he has many, many friends. I heard there was a riot in Mariel after he was arrested. The newspapers have nothing on it, yet the story is on everyone’s lips. People are coming in, asking me about it, because they know I know you.”

Mercedes assured the woman she knew nothing, that she was as mystified as everyone on the street.

She rode buses through the city to La Cabana.

The guard at the gate recognized her name and sent a man to fetch the duty officer, a Captain Franqui. He treated her with respect, took her to his office, a dark cubicle near the gate, and sent a note to the commandante. While the note was being delivered he apologized for the lack of electricity. “It has not been off this long in years.”

In five minutes she and Franqui were in the commandante’s office. He was a heavy-set, balding officer who looked as if he were frightened of his own shadow.

“I have my orders,” he said. “I cannot admit you. He is to see no one.”

“Fidel sent me,” she said simply, without inflection. “Hector is my brother-in-law.”

The commandante looked as if wild horses were trying to tear him in half. Obviously he knew of the relationship between Mercedes and Fidel. The blood drained from his florid face as he weighed his fear of Fidel against his fear of Vargas.

Captain Franqui understood the commandante’s dilemma. “Perhaps, if I may be so bold, sir, it might be best if you were indisposed, at lunch perhaps, and I acted on my own initiative in light of the lady’s impeccable credentials.”

The commandante grasped at this straw. “I cannot be everywhere or make every decision, can I?”

“No, sir. If you will excuse us?” Captain Franqui took Mercedes’s elbow and steered her expertly from the office into the hallway.

“I myself am an admirer of Hector Sedano,” Captain Franqui confided as they walked. “He is a great patriot and a man of God. Surely he will serve Cuba well in the years ahead.”

After several minutes of platitudes, she found herself standing in front of Hector’s cell in the isolation wing. None of the other cells contained people. Captain Franqui disappeared, leaving the two of them alone.

“Are they listening?” she whispered.

“Probably not,” he said. “The electricity is off, and they would need it to listen.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Two days. For two days I’ve been sitting alone in this hole. No one comes to see me.”

“They will admit no one. I told them Fidel had sent me, and the commandante was afraid to refuse.”

“Ah, yes, Fidel.”

“He is dead.”

“I am sorry, Mercedes,” he said softly, so softly she almost missed his words.

“It had to happen. He and I both knew it, accepted it.”

Hector sighed. “That explains my arrest, then.”

“Two days ago.”

“The cancer finally, eh?”

“Poison! He poisoned himself rather than make a tape naming Vargas as his successor.”

Hector crossed himself.

“It was not a sin,” she said, desperate to explain. “He merely speeded things up a few days.”

Hector leaned forward, let his forehead touch the cool steel bars.

“I heard there was a riot in Mariel after you were arrested.” Her voice was very soft, a whisper in church.

“I did not know that.”

“A friend told me.”

“Have you heard from Ocho?”

“Nothing. Is he not at home?”

“He went on a boat with some others. They were going to America.”

“I have heard nothing.”

Hector sagged, fought to stay erect. He looked so … so different from Fidel, Mercedes thought. He was not tall, vigorous, oozing machismo. And yet Fidel thought Hector could lead Cuba!

She got as close to the bars as she could, and whispered, “I need to talk to the Americans as soon as possible. Should I see the little man you gave the Swiss bank account numbers to? The stadium keeper?”

“He might betray you. He talks to Vargas too. I tried to frighten him, and may have succeeded too well.”

“Who, then?”

“Go to the American mission. Ask for the cultural aide, I think his name is Bouchard. He is CIA, I believe.”

“Fidel signed bank transfer orders for Maximo, who went flying off to Switzerland, just as we thought he would. I have not heard if he got the money.”

“He will not come back if he gets it,” Hector said.

“Maximo would steal it,” she agreed. “But do you think the Americans will ever give the money back?”

“I have heard their courts are fair. I would rather try to get the money back from them than from Maximo.”

She nodded at that.

“Why do you want to talk to the Americans now?” Hector asked.

She told him.

The secret police had the bodies of the two saboteurs laid out in the basement of police headquarters when Vargas saw them. Two Latin-looking males who had spent many years in the United States, from the look of their dental work. Exiles, probably.

Vargas examined their clothes, which were in a pile, and stirred through the contents of the van. He examined the chemical timers and C-4 shaped charges, the guns and electrical tape, and tossed everything back on the table.

CIA.

No doubt in his mind.

Four extra-high-voltage towers had collapsed, killing power to the two substations that fed central Havana and the government office buildings located there.

A neat and tidy operation.

And as soon as the power went off, a team of burglars entered the Interior Ministry and robbed the safe in his office, carrying away files that he had spent twenty years collecting.

The Americans.

And he had not an iota of proof, nor would he ever get any.

The burglars also stole his laptop computer, and the thought of its loss gave him pause. Certainly not as valuable as the files, the laptop had many things on it he wished the Americans did not have.

He had used the computer to derive the trajectories for the missiles’ guidance systems, which had to be reprogrammed when the warheads were changed, the new biological warheads being significantly lighter than the old nuclear ones. Still, if the Americans didn’t know about the missiles, perhaps they wouldn’t pay much attention to that file.

What the burglary showed, Alejo Vargas concluded, was that time was short. The Americans could move fast and decisively — to win the game he was going to have to move faster.

I’m ready, he told himself. Now is the hour.

“I am Bouchard, the cultural attaché.”

Mercedes Sedano smiled, shook the offered hand.

“Please sit down.” Bouchard looked embarrassed, as if he rarely entertained visitors in this small office, which was packed with Cuban magazines and newspapers. Four candles sat atop the piles. “The power is still out,” he said by way of explanation. “And the emergency generator ran out of fuel an hour ago.”

“I don’t know how to begin, Doctor,” she said.

“I am not a real doctor,” he said apologetically. “I am a scholar.”

“My brother-in-law is Hector Sedano,” she explained. “He said I should come to you.”

“My work is strictly cultural, señora. I work for the American state department studying the culture of Cuba. I cannot imagine how I could be of service to you, or anybody else. I write studies of Cuban music, literature, drama ….”

“I know nothing about the branches of the American government,” she said.

Bouchard smiled. “I know very little myself,” he confided.

“You still haven’t asked why I am here.”

“I ask now, señora. What may I do for you?”

“My brother-in-law, Hector Sedano, says you work for the CIA. He—”

Bouchard was horrified. His hands came up, palms out. “Señora, you have been severely misinformed. As I have just explained, I am a scholar who—”

“Yes, yes. I understand. But I have a problem that—”

He clapped his hands over his ears. “No, no, no. You have made a great mistake,” he said.

She sat calmly, waiting for him to lower his hands. When he saw that she was not going to speak, he did so. “I must show you my work,” Bouchard said, and dug into a drawer. He came up with a handful of paper, which he thrust at her. “I recently completed a major study of—”

She refused to touch the paper. “Fidel Castro is dead,” she said.

Bouchard froze. After a few seconds he remembered the paper in his hand and laid it on top of the nearest pile.

“I was there when he died. We were filming a statement to the Cuban people, a political will, if you please.” She produced two videotapes from her large purse and laid them on the nearest pile.

“He died before he finished his speech,” she explained. “Which is inconvenient and, in a larger sense, tragic.”

“I assure you, Señora Sedano, that I am a poor scholar, mediocre in every sense, employed here in Cuba because I tired of the publish-or-perish imperative of the academic world. My work is of little import to the United States government or anyone else. I do not work for the CIA. There has been some mistake.”

Mercedes maintained a polite silence until he ran out of words, then she said, “Fidel and I watched an American movie a few months ago, about dinosaurs in a park — an extraordinary story and an extraordinary film. We marveled at the magic that could make dinosaurs so lifelike upon the screen. It was almost as if the moviemakers had some dinosaurs to film. Perhaps the magic had something to do with computers. However they did it, they made something that had been dead a very long time come back to life.”

Bouchard didn’t know what to say. Agency regulations did not permit him to tell anyone outside the agency who his employer was. He twisted his hands as he tried to decide how he should handle this woman who refused to listen to his denials.

“Did you say something?” she asked.

“I don’t like movies,” Bouchard muttered. “There are no good actors these days.”

“Perhaps not living,” said Mercedes Sedano. “But you must admit the magicians have given new life to some dead ones. You and your friends could perform a great service for Cuba if you would take these videotapes to the moviemakers and let them bring Fidel back to life. For just a little while.”

Bouchard picked up the cassettes, held them in his hands as he examined them.

“I suppose the cultural attaché might be able to pass these things along,” Bouchard admitted. “What is it you wish Fidel had lived to say?”

Mercedes nodded. She looked Bouchard straight in the eyes and told him.

Maximo Sedano huddled in his great padded leather chair at the Finance Ministry staring out at the Havana skyline. He took another sip of rum, eased the position of his injured hand. He was holding it pointed straight up. The doctor who set the broken bones in his fingers assured him elevating the hand would help keep the swelling down.

That pig Santana! He whipped out his pistol and smashed it down on the fingers of Maximo’s left hand so quickly Maximo didn’t even think of jerking it away. Three broken fingers.

Then the son of a bitch laughed! And Vargas laughed.

Vargas had whispered in his ear: “You aren’t going to be the next president of Cuba, Maximo. You have no allies. Delgado and Alba will obey me to their dying day, as you will. You have a wife and daughter and your health. Be content with that.”

He said nothing.

“Your brother Hector is in prison charged with sedition. I suggest you meditate upon that fact.”

Maximo sipped some more rum.

His fingers hurt like hell. The doctor gave him a local anesthetic and a half dozen pills when he set the fingers, but now the anesthetic was wearing off and the pills weren’t doing much good.

He probably shouldn’t be drinking rum while taking these pills, but what the hell. A man has to die only once.

Where was the $53 million?

Somewhere on the other side of the black hole that was the Swiss banking system.

Face facts, Maximo. You can kiss those bucks good-bye. Those dollars might as well be on the back side of the moon.

He spent some time dwelling on what might have been — he was only human — but after a while those dreams faded. The reality was the pain in his hand, and the fact that he was stuck in this Third World hellhole and would soon be out of a job. Whatever government followed Fidel would appoint a new finance minister.

He had no chance of succeeding Castro, and he let go of that fantasy too. He didn’t have the allies in high places, he wasn’t well enough known, and if he had been he would be in a cell beside Hector this very minute.

Hector’s plight didn’t cause him much concern. He and Hector had never been close, had never had much in common. Well, to be frank, they loathed each other.

A pigeon landed on the ledge outside his window. He watched it idly. It searched the ledge for food, found none, then took off.

Maximo watched it. The pigeon circled the square in front of the ministry and landed on a statue that stood near the front door. Maximo had never liked the statue, some Greek goddess with a sword. Still, it gave the building a certain tone, so he had never ordered it moved.

Statues. At least he got the goddess instead of that larger-than-life bust of Fidel that the Ministry of Agriculture—

He stared at the goddess. She was made of bronze. Some kind of metal that had turned green as the rain and sun and salt from the sea worked on it.

The bust of Fidel in front of the Ministry of Agriculture was of course manufactured and erected after the revolution.

So were the statues in the Plaza de Revolucion. And some of the statues in Old Havana, at the Museo de Arte Colonial, at the Catedral de San Cristobal de la Havana, on some of the minor squares.

After the revolution! After the government collected all the gold pesos, or before?

The Museum of the Revolution! The old presidential palace was converted to a propaganda temple that would prove to all generations the venality of Batista, the dictator Fidel had overthrown. Maximo recalled reading somewhere that Fidel had personally supervised the renovation and conversion of the old building.

Thirty-seven tons of gold. Fidel had squirreled it away somewhere.

What he needed to do was go to the Museum of the Revolution, lock himself in a room with the collection of Havana newspapers. After the revolution, after the gold was collected, what was Fidel doing?

Thirty-seven tons of gold.

“One sample vial from the Cuban lab contained a new, super-infectious strain of poliomyelitis. The viruses are so hot they kill in seconds.”

The members of the National Security Council didn’t say anything.

“The scientists said they never saw anything like it,” the national security adviser continued. “The four sample vials contained three different strains of the polio virus. Two of the vials contained the same type of virus.”

“Is the vaccination we were all given as children effective against these strains?” The chairman of the joint chiefs asked this question.

“Apparently not. The scientists will need more time to verify that, but apparently … no.”

The president looked glum. “Talk about a choice. We can wait until the Cubans use that stuff on us or we can bomb the lab right now.”

“No, sir,” the chairman said. “There is no guarantee a bomb would kill that virus. Bombing the lab would probably just release the viruses to the atmosphere and kill everyone in Cuba who happened to be downwind.”

The silence that followed that remark was broken by the secretary of state, who asked, “Do the scientists have an estimate on how long those viruses can live outside the lab?”

“Not yet,” the national security adviser replied. He took a deep breath and referred back to his notes. “Here is the situation in Cuba as we believe it to be: We received a report two hours ago from our man in Havana who says he was told earlier today that Fidel Castro is dead. He is sending some videotapes in the diplomatic pouch.”

“Dead, huh?” said the president. “I’ll believe it when they put his corpse on display in a tomb on the Plaza de Revolucion.”

Someone tittered.

The national security adviser continued to read from his notes. “Review of the documents from the safe of secret police chief, Alejo Vargas, indicates that the Cubans have installed biological warheads on intermediate-range ballistic missiles.”

“What?” the president demanded. He pounded on the table with the flat of his hand to silence everyone else. In the silence that followed, he roared, “Where in hell did those people get ballistic missiles?”

The national security adviser looked like he was in severe pain. “From the Russians, sir. In 1962. Apparently the Russians left some behind after the Cuban missile crisis. You may recall that Castro refused to let the UN inspection team into the country to verify that all the missiles had been removed.”

“How good is this information?”

“The man who sent it is absolutely reliable.”

The president mouthed a profane oath, which the chairman of the joint chiefs thought a succinct summation of the whole situation.