Cuba

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Maximo Sedano spent the night aboard his yacht in Havana Harbor. He heard the planes and the explosions of bombs falling around La Cabana Prison, but he didn’t go ashore. He had worked until night fell hunting for the gold that he was sure lay on the floor of Havana Harbor.

He found a great deal of junk and trash, but no gold.

As the bombs were falling he drank some rum, idly studied the skyline, thought about gold.

Thirty-seven tons of gold. My God, what a man could do with a fortune like that! Cars, yachts, women, all the good things in life.

He was filthy from the muck and pollution of the harbor. The water tank on the boat was not large, so he sponged off as best he could and resolved to take a shower ashore at the first opportunity.

The next morning he began diving as soon as the sun came up. Boats came and went and Maximo worked steadily. He changed tanks once.

The work was maddening. The most probable location for the gold was the marina anchorage, where Fidel and Che must have spent the nights they were anchored. Here is where they must have dumped the gold overboard!

Yet it wasn’t on the floor of the harbor. He thought mud and sediment might have covered the ingots, but even when he dug, he could find nothing.

He wasn’t being systematic enough, he decided as he lay exhausted on the deck of his boat, his broken fingers aching like bad teeth.

He knew he couldn’t go on today, so he took the dinghy and motored ashore. He had his empty tanks along for the harbormaster to fill.

Tired, working one-handed, Maximo took several minutes to get the small boat tied up and the empty air tanks onto the dock. He picked them up and carried them toward the harbormaster’s shack.

The man was sitting inside reading a newspaper.

“Can you fill these?” Maximo asked.

The harbormaster looked up to see who was asking, then brightened. “Señor Sedano, of course. I am so delighted to hear about your brother. Congratulations.”

“What?”

The look of surprise on his face must have shocked the harbormaster, who held out the newspaper. “Surely you know,” he said. “Your brother Hector is the new president of Cuba.”

Maximo took the paper, sank down into the only empty chair, stared at the headlines.

“What a night!” said the harbormaster, beaming like the sun. “History in the making. Hector and El Ocho, what a team!”

“Amazing.”

“And look! The newspaper published a letter from your sister-in-law, Mercedes. Forty years ago Fidel hid the peso gold under the floor of the presidential palace. It’s still there, every ounce of it. Sixty tons of gold the nation owns, eh! Isn’t that amazing?”

The gray U.S. Navy ammo ship anchored in the bay and put a launch into the water. The coxswain brought the small boat around to a gangway. In a few minutes the trill of a bosun’s pipe could be heard, then a series of bells over the ship’s loudspeaker.

A group of officers and sailors in white uniforms came down the gangway and climbed aboard the launch.

The town of Antilla, Cuba, lay baking in the sun. The waterfront was lined with fishing craft. The only ships at the pier were two small coasters, about a thousand tons each. The launch maneuvered against the pier and Rear Admiral Jake Grafton stepped ashore. Gil Pascal and Toad Tarkington followed him onto the pier.

“That’s the warehouse over there,” Toad said, and pointed.

Jake just nodded. He waited as a knot of Cubans came walking out on the pier toward him.

“Where’s the translator?”

“Right here, sir,” said an enlisted man, who stepped forward beside Jake. He too was togged out in his best white uniform.

After the usual diplomatic greetings, Jake, Captain Pascal, and the translator went with the Cubans toward the warehouse, leaving Toad alone on the pier.

Tarkington strolled along, looking here and there, his arms folded behind his back.

He was standing near the head of the pier when he heard a noise. He stepped to the edge, leaned over.

A man in a black diving suit covered with muck and slime was dragging his gear out from under the pier into the sun.

“I was wondering where you guys were,” Toad said conversationally.

“Some days you’re the pigeon, some days you’re the statue,” the navy SEAL said. “Three days we’ve been living under here like harbor rats, watching that warehouse. We searched it the first night, Commander — the warheads were in there. And they’re still there; the Cubans haven’t taken anything out.”

“Where’s your partner in crime?”

“Over on the other side of those coasters. He’ll be along in a bit. Think we could get a ride out to the ship? I’ve been dreaming of a hot shower, a hot meal, and a clean bunk.”

“I think that can be arranged.” Toad reached down, helped lift the diving gear onto the pier.

When the SEAL was standing on the pier beside him, dripping onto the splintered boards, Toad said, “How’d you like your Cuban vacation?”

“I want better accommodations for my next visit.”

As the president of the United States feared, the aftermath of the second Cuban missile crisis, as the press called it, was a political disaster in Washington, with howls of outrage from the press and demands from frightened senators and congressmen for investigations and the resignations of everyone in the executive branch.

The president watched General Tater Totten retire from a distance, didn’t go to the small Pentagon ceremony, let the White House spinmeisters whisper that Totten was somehow partially responsible for the journey to the brink of the abyss. Sensing that he couldn’t win a whisper war, Totten kept his mouth shut and departed with dignity.

Amid the impassioned breast-beating and public denunciations, the director of the CIA decided that he too had had enough of Washington. He had a final conversation with the president in the Oval Office after he submitted his resignation but before the White House announced his departure.

“Sorry to see you go,” the president muttered politely, not meaning a word of it. The director nodded knowingly.

“Don’t know if this congressional investigation can be derailed or not,” the president said, not willing to look the director in the eye. “A lot of what happened will be classified forever, so I don’t really see what they stand to gain by stirring through the ashes.”

“They’ll investigate anyway,” the director predicted gloomily. “That’s what I want to talk to you about. At one of those meetings during the crisis you asked for the name of our top man in Cuba, and I wrote it down for you. I don’t know if you ever looked at that name, but it would be absolute disaster if that person’s name were revealed to a congressional investigator.”

“After you wrote it down, I looked at the name,” the president said, speaking slowly. “Not at the meeting, but later. Didn’t expect to recognize it, but then was amazed that the last name was the same as the priest who was thrown in prison.”

“Mercedes Sedano was Castro’s mistress and an intelligence treasure. She told us of drug deals, Vargas’s blackmail files, Fidel’s secret bank accounts …. When she wanted the tape made of Fidel naming Hector as his successor, there wasn’t time to go through the usual drops and cutouts, so she went directly to the American Interest Section of the Swiss embassy. None of this must come out, Mr. President. If the Cubans find out she was whispering to us, Hector Sedano’s government might fall. And she might lose her life.”

“That sheet of paper no longer exists,” the president said. “I suggest you destroy the files.”

A few minutes later as the director was preparing to leave, the president said, “I have never understood spies. Why did that woman betray her country?”

The director blinked like an owl. “I don’t know that she did,” he replied, and walked out of the Oval Office for the last time.

On a Wednesday morning in November Tommy Carmellini parked his car in a large parking garage in downtown Denver and got his backpack from the trunk.

The weather was gorgeous, a sunny, mild day with air so clear the peaks of the Rockies looked close enough to touch. Autumn leaves lay packed in gutters and windrows waiting for tomorrow’s wind to blow them around.

Carmellini walked two blocks to the Sixteenth Street mall. While he was waiting for a free shuttle bus he bought a copy of the Denver Post from a vending machine. Like so many of the young people, he was dressed in tennis shoes, faded jeans, and a threadbare pullover sweater. An unzipped windbreaker was tied around his waist. A backpack hung over one shoulder. The shuttle bus stopped at the end of every block to let people on and off. Hanging from a strap, Carmellini kept his backpack pressed against the rear window of the bus.

At the western end of the mall Carmellini let himself be swept along with the flow of people into the regional bus depot. He found a bus to Boulder, climbed aboard, and dropped the fare into the change box, then eased into a window seat five rows behind the driver. He kept his backpack on his lap.

The bus filled quickly. In minutes the driver closed the door and pulled out of the station.

Tommy Carmellini opened the newspaper and examined the front page. All U.S. sanctions against travel and commerce with Cuba were lifted, and the U.S. was opening an embassy in Havana. There was a photo of the president of the United States shaking hands with Hector Sedano at a news conference in Washington.

Tommy flipped through the paper. On page four he found a short item reporting a Florida grand jury indictment of El Gato, a Cuban exile living in Miami, charging him with selling unnamed equipment to the Cuban government in violation of the laws existing at the time. According to the newspaper, El Gato was the only person indicted.

Carmellini folded the paper and tucked it in the seat pocket in front of him.

Cuba was long ago and far away. Of course he still read the news and classified summaries, and heard people talking about Cuba and the people he met there. Microsoft and Intel were building big factories in Havana, and Phillip Morris was buying one of the oldest cigar companies for beaucoup bucks. Rear Admiral Jake Grafton was now an assistant to some bigwig in the Pentagon, Commander Toad Tarkington went with him as an aide, and Toad’s wife, the newly promoted Commander Rita Moravia, was the executive officer of a fighter squadron. Hector Sedano was doing an enviable job running Cuba, and some fighter pilot nobody ever heard of named Carlos Corrado had been promoted to general and put in charge of the Cuban Air Force.

Life goes on.

Most of the seats on the bus to Boulder were occupied. The sun coming through the windows and the motion of the bus were very pleasant, and many people dozed. The seat beside Carmellini was empty, so he relaxed his grip on the backpack and closed his eyes.

He was awake when the bus crossed Davidson Mesa into Boulder, roaring down the turnpike at seventy-five. He marveled at the upthrust granite slabs of the Flatirons which formed a spectacular backdrop behind the town.

As the bus cruised by the university on its way downtown, Tommy Carmellini walked to the door by the driver and waited. He got off at the next stop and stood looking at the red stone buildings of the university as the bus accelerated away in a cloud of diesel exhaust.

He had a map in his hip pocket, but he had studied it so much he didn’t need to refer to it today. He strolled along, readily recognized the student union, and went from there.

The buildings were built all of a pattern, and with throngs of students coming and going, seemed to proclaim the glory of man’s quest for knowledge in the bright November sunshine.

Carmellini glanced at his watch a time or two, then strolled along with his hands in his pockets. He found the building he wanted, opened the door, and went in. He took the stairs up to the top floor.

The hallway was lined with doors, lots of doors. He walked along, examining them. Each door bore the name of a faculty member, and most had a small card advertising the faculty member’s office hours taped to the frosted glass.

He found the one he wanted, checked the hours. He was early, by ten minutes.

He knocked.

No answer.

Should he wait here in the hallway, or … perhaps the library? The hallway was empty, but someone could come along at any moment.

Of course the professor might not come at all. Carmellini recalled his own college days: a student could spend weeks trying to waylay a tenured associate professor in his office.

Well, if this didn’t work he would try something else. Just what, he didn’t know.

He decided on the library. He turned and started down the hall. He had taken three or four steps when the door opened behind him and a man in his sixties stuck his head out.

“Did you knock?”

“Yes.”

“Got a watch? Can you read? Office hours don’t start for ten minutes.”

“Yes, but—”

“Oh, come on in.”

Carmellini carefully closed the door behind him. The office was tiny, merely a cubbyhole with a desk and computer for the professor and one extra chair. Bookshelves filled with books lined both side walls. A shelf under the window behind the professor was piled willy-nilly with papers, manuscripts, files. The glass in the window didn’t look as if it had been cleaned in years.

“If this is about your thesis, we’re going to need more time than I have available today, so—”

“You’re Professor Svenson, right?”

“That’s right.” The professor had seated himself behind his desk. He looked up into Carmellini’s face and adjusted his glasses. His features twisted into a frown.

“Your face doesn’t … You’re …?”

“Your name is Olaf Svenson?”

“What do you want?”

Tommy Carmellini unzipped the backpack, pulled out the pistol with the silencer. He thumbed off the safety.

A look of terror crossed Svenson’s face. “The government has no evidence,” he said. “They decided not to prosecute. They—”

Tommy Carmellini shot Olaf Svenson in the center of the forehead from a distance of four feet. Svenson collapsed in his chair, his head tilted back.

Carmellini stepped around the desk, put the muzzle of the silencer against the side of the professor’s head and pulled the trigger twice more. Two little pops.

He bent down, retrieved the spent cartridges that had been ejected from the pistol, pocketed them, then safetied the weapon and returned it to his backpack.

He had touched only the doorknob. He extracted a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the interior knob carefully, then pulled the door open. He pushed the little button to lock the door, then stepped into the hallway and pulled it shut. One hard twist of the cotton handkerchief on the outside knob, then he was walking away down the hallway and no one could ever prove he had been there.

Surrounded by young adults strolling, laughing, and visiting with each other on the sun-dappled grass, Tommy Carmellini walked across the campus with his head down, the backpack over his shoulder, thinking of Cuba.