Cuba

CHAPTER TWO

The night was hot and sultry, with lightning playing on the horizon. From his seat on the top row of the stadium bleachers Hector Juan de Dios Sedano kept an eye on the lightning, but the storms seemed to be moving north.

Everyone else in the stadium was watching the game. Hector’s younger brother, Juan Manuel “Ocho” Sedano, was the local team’s star pitcher. The eighth child of his parents, the Cuban fans had long ago dubbed him El Ocho. The family reduced the name to “Ocho.”

Tonight his fastball seemed on fire and his curve exceptional. The crowd cheered with every pitch. Twice the umpire called for the ball to examine it. Each time he handed it back to the catcher, who tossed it back to the mound as the fans hooted delightedly.

At the middle of the seventh inning Ocho had faced just twenty-two batters. Only one man had gotten to first base, and that on a bloop single just beyond the fingertips of the second baseman. The local team had scored four runs.

Hector Sedano leaned against the board fence behind him and applauded his brother as he walked from the mound. Ocho looked happy, relaxed — the confident, honest gaze of a star athlete who knows what he can do.

As Hector clapped, he spotted a woman coming through the crowd toward him. She smiled as she met his eyes, then took a seat beside him.

Here on the back bench Hector was about ten feet from the nearest fans. The board fence behind him was the wall of the stadium, fifteen feet above the ground.

“Did your friends come with you?” he asked, scanning the crowd.

“Oh, yes, the usual two,” she said, but didn’t bother to point to them.

Sedano found one of the men settling into a seat five rows down and over about thirty feet. A few seconds later he saw the other standing near the entrance where the woman had entered the stadium. These two were her bodyguards.

Her name was Mercedes. She was the widow of one of Hector’s brothers and the current mistress of Fidel Castro.

“How is Mima?”

Tomorrow was Hector’s mother’s birthday, and the clan was gathering.

“Fine. Looking forward to seeing everyone.”

“I used the birthday as an excuse. They don’t want me to leave the residence these days.”

“How bad is he?”

“Está to jodío. He’s done in. One doctor said two weeks, one three. The cancer is spreading rapidly.”

“What do you think?”

“I think he will live a while longer, but every night is more difficult. I sit with him. When he is sleeping he stops breathing for as much as half a minute before he resumes. I watch the clock, counting the seconds, wondering if he will breathe again.”

The home team’s center fielder stepped up to the plate. Ocho was the second batter. Standing in the warm-up circle with a bat in his hands, he scanned the faces in the crowd. Finally he made eye contact with Hector, nodded his head just enough to be seen, then concentrated on his warm-up swings.

“Who knows about this?” Hector asked Mercedes.

“Only a few people. Alejo is holding the lid on. The doctors are with him around the clock.” Alejo Vargas was the minister of the interior. His ministry’s Department of State Security — the secret police — investigated and suppressed opposition and dissent.

“We have waited a long time,” Hector mused.

“Ese cabrón, we should have killed Vargas years ago,” Mercedes said, and smiled at a woman who turned around to look at her.

“We cannot win with his blood on our hands.”

“Alejo suspects you, I think.”

“I am just a Jesuit priest, a teacher.”

Mercedes snorted.

“He suspects everyone,” Hector added.

“Don’t be a fool.”

El Ocho stepped into the batter’s box to the roar of the crowd. He waggled the bat, cocked it, waited expectantly. His stance was perfect, his weight balanced, he was tense and ready — when he batted Hector could see Ocho’s magnificent talent. He looked so … perfect.

Ocho let the first ball go by … outside.

The second pitch was low.

The opposing pitcher walked around the mound, examined the ball, toed the rubber.

The fact was Ocho was a better batter than he was a pitcher. Oh, he was a great pitcher, but when he had a bat in his hands all his gifts were on display; the reflexes, the eyesight, the physique, the ability to wait for his pitch ….

The third pitch was a strike, belt-high, and Ocho got around on it and connected solidly. The ball rose into the warm, humid air and flew as if it had wings until it cleared the center field fence by a good margin.

“He caught it perfectly,” Mercedes said, admiration in her voice.

Ocho trotted the bases while everyone in the bleachers applauded. The opposing pitcher stood on the mound shaking his head in disgust.

Ocho’s manager was the first to greet him as he trotted toward the dugout. He pounded his star on the back, pumped his hand, beamed proudly, almost like a father.

“What else is happening?” Hector asked.

“The government has signed the casino agreement. Miramar, Havana, Varadero and Santiago. The consortium will provide fifty percent of the cost of an airport in Santiago.”

“They have been negotiating for what — three years?”

“Almost that.”

“Any sense of urgency on the part of the Cubans?”

“I sense none. The Americans were happy with the deal, so they signed.”

“Who are these Americans?”

“I thought they were Nevada casino people, but there were people in the background pulling strings, criminals, I think. They wanted assurances on prostitution and narcotics.”

The Cuban government had been negotiating agreements for foreign investment and development for years, mainly with Canadian and European companies. Tourism was now the largest industry in Cuba, bringing 1.5 million tourists a year to the island and keeping the economy afloat with hard currency. Now the Cuban government was openly negotiating with American companies, with all deals contingent upon the ending of the American economic embargo. Fidel Castro believed that he could put political pressure upon the American government to end the embargo by dangling development rights in front of American capitalists. Hector Sedano thought Fidel understood the Americans.

“The tobacco negotiator, Chance — how is he progressing?”

“He is talking to your brother Maximo. Then he is supposed to see Vargas. Tobacco will replace sugarcane as Cuba’s big crop, he says. The cigarettes will be manufactured here and marketed worldwide under American brands. The Americans will finance everything; Cuba will get a fifty-percent share of the business, across the board.”

“Is this Chance serious?”

“Apparently. The tobacco companies think their days are numbered in the United States. They want to move offshore, escape the regulation that will eventually put them out of business.”

Hector sat silently, taking it all in as the uniformed players on the field played a game with rules. What a contrast with politics!

Mercedes was a treasure, a person with access to the highest levels of the Cuban government. She brought Hector Sedano information that even Castro probably didn’t have. The big question, of course, was how she learned it. Hector told himself repeatedly that he didn’t want to know, but of course he did.

He glanced at the woman sitting beside him. She was wearing a simple dress that did nothing to call attention to her figure, nor did it do anything to hide it.

She was a beautiful woman who needed no makeup and never wore any. Every man she met was attracted to her, an unremarkable fact, like the summer heat, which she didn’t seem to notice. Extraordinarily smart, with a near-photographic memory, she had almost no opportunities to use her talent in Cuban society.

Except as a spy.

“Will Maximo be at Mima’s party tomorrow?”

“He said he would.”

“Should I be shocked if he acts possessive?”

Mercedes glanced at him, raised an eyebrow. “He would not be so foolish.”

Well, just who was she sleeping with? Hector glanced at her repeatedly, wondering. She appeared to be concentrating on the ball game.

The only thing he knew for sure was that she wasn’t sleeping with him, and God knows he had thought about that far more than any priest ever should. Of course, priests were human and had to fight their urges, but still …

Castro … Of course she slept with him — she was his mistress — that was how she got access. But did she love him?

Or was she a cool, calculating tramp ready to change horses now that Castro was dying?

No. He shook his head, refusing to believe that of her.

Where did Maximo fit in? As he sat there contemplating that angle, he wondered how Maximo saw her?

Mercedes left after watching Ocho pitch an inning. He faced three batters and struck them all out.

When the game was over, Hector Sedano stayed in his seat and watched the crowd file out. He was still sitting there when someone shouted at him, “Hey, I turn out the lights now.”

The darkness that followed certainly wasn’t total. Small lights were illuminated over the exits, the lights of Havana lit up the sky, and lightning continued to flash on the horizon.

Sedano lit another cigar and smoked it slowly.

After a few minutes he saw the shape of a man making his way along the aisle toward him. The man sagged down on the bench several feet away.

“Good game tonight.” The man was the stadium keeper, Alfredo Garcia.

“Yes.”

“Your brother, El Ocho, was magnificent. Such talent, such presence.”

“We are very proud of him.”

“Why do you call him El Ocho?”

“He was the. eighth child. He has the usual half dozen names, but his brothers and I just call him Ocho.”

“I saw that she was here, with her security guards circling …. What did she say?”

“What makes you think she tells me anything?”

“Come, my friend. Someone whispers in your ear.”

“And someone is whispering to Alejo Vargas.”

“You suspect me?”

“I think you are just stupid enough to take money from the Americans and money from Alejo Vargas and think neither of them will find out about the other.”

“My God, man! Think of what you are saying!” Alfredo moved closer. Sedano could see his face, which was almost as white as his shirt.

“I am thinking.”

“You have my life in your hands. I had to trust you with my life when I first approached you. Nothing has changed.”

Sedano puffed on the cigar in silence, studying Garcia’s features. Born in America of Cuban parents, Garcia had been a priest. He couldn’t leave the women alone, however, and ultimately got mixed up with some topless dancers running an “escort” service in East St. Louis. After a few months the feds busted him for violation of the Mann Act, moving women across state lines for immoral purposes, i.e., prostitution. After the church canned him, he jumped bail and fled to Cuba. Garcia had been in Cuba several years when he was recruited by the CIA, which asked him to approach Sedano.

Hector Sedano had no doubt that Garcia had the ear of the American government — in the past four years he had supplied Sedano with almost a million dollars in cash and enough weapons to supply a small army. The money and weapons always arrived when and where Garcia said they would. Still, the question remained, who else did the man talk to?

Who did his control talk to?

Hector had stockpiled the weapons, hidden them praying they would never be needed. He used the money for travel expenses and bribes. Without money to bribe the little fish he would have landed in prison years ago.

Hector Sedano shook his head to clear his thoughts. He was living on the naked edge, had been there for years. And life wasn’t getting any easier.

“Castro is dying,” he said. “It is a matter of weeks, or so the doctors say.”

Alfredo Garcia took a deep breath and exhaled audibly.

“I tell you now man-to-man, Alfredo. The records of Alejo Vargas will soon be placed in my hands. If you have betrayed me or the people of Cuba, you had better find a way to get off this planet, because there is no place on it you can hide, not from me, not from the CIA, not from the men and women you betrayed.”

“I have betrayed no one,” Alfredo Garcia said. “God? Yes. But no man.”

He went away then, leaving Sedano to smoke in solitude.

Fidel Castro dying! Hector Sedano could hear his heart beat as he tried to comprehend the reality of that fact.

Millions of people were waiting for his death, some patiently, most impatiently, many with a feeling of impending doom. Castro had ruled Cuba as an absolute dictator since 1959: the revolution that he led did nothing more than topple the old dictator and put a new one in his place. Castro jettisoned fledgling democracy, embraced communism and used raw demagoguery to consolidate his total, absolute power. He prosecuted and executed his enemies and confiscated the property of anyone who might be against him. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans fled, many to America.

Castro’s embrace of communism and seizure of the assets of the foreign corporations that had invested in Cuba, assets worth several billions of dollars, were almost preordained, inevitable. Predictably, most of those corporations were American. Also predictably, the United States government retaliated with a diplomatic and economic blockade that continued to this day.

After seizing the assets of the American corporations who owned most of Cuba, Castro had little choice: he had to have the assistance of a major power, so he substituted the Soviet Union for the United States as Cuba’s patron. The only good thing about the substitution was that the Soviet Union was a lot farther away than Florida. Theirs was never a partnership of equals: the Soviets humiliated Fidel at almost every turn in the road. When communism collapsed in the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Cuba was cut adrift as an expensive luxury that the newly democratic Russia could ill afford. That twist of fate was a cruel blow to Cuba, which despite Castro’s best efforts still was a slave to sugarcane.

Through it all, Castro survived. Never as popular as his supporters believed, he was never as unpopular as the exiles claimed. The truth of the matter was that Castro was Cuban to the core and fiercely independent, and he had kept Cuba that way. His demagoguery played well to poor peasants who had nothing but their pride. The trickle of refugees across the Florida Straits acted as a safety valve to rid the regime of its worst enemies, the vociferous critics with the will and tenacity to cause serious problems. In the Latin tradition, the Cubans who remained submitted to Castro, even respected him for thumbing his nose at the world. A dictator he might be, but he was “our” dictator.

A new day was about to dawn in Cuba, a day without Castro and the baggage of communism, ballistic missiles, and invasion, a new day without bitter enmity with the United States. Just what that day would bring remained to be seen, but it was coming.

The exiles wanted justice, and revenge; the peons who lived in the exiles’ houses, now many families to a building, feared being dispossessed. The foreign corporations that Castro so cavalierly robbed wanted compensation. Everyone wanted food, and jobs, and a future. It seemed as if the bills for all the past mistakes were about to come due and payable at once.

Hector Sedano would have a voice in that future, if he survived. He sat smoking, contemplating the coming storm.

Mercedes was of course correct about the danger posed by Alejo Vargas. Mix Latin machismo and a willingness to do violence to gain one’s own ends, add generous dollops of vainglory, egotism, and paranoia, stir well, and you have the makings of a truly fine Latin American dictator, self-righteous, suspicious, trigger-happy, and absolutely ruthless. Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz came out of that mold: Alejo Vargas, Hector knew, was merely another. He could not make this observation to Mercedes, whom Hector suspected of loving Fidel — he needed her cooperation.

Alfredo Garcia found a seat near the ticket-taker’s booth from where he could see the shadowy figure on the top row of the bleachers. He was so nervous he twitched.

Like Hector Sedano, he too was in awe of the news he had just learned: Fidel Castro was dying.

Alfredo Garcia trembled as he thought about it. That priest in the top row of the bleachers was one of the contenders for power in post-Castro Cuba. There were others of course, Alejo Vargas, the Minister of Interior and head of the secret police, prominently among them.

Yes, Garcia talked to the secret police of Alejo Vargas — he had to. No one could refuse the Department of State Security, least of all a fugitive from American justice seeking sanctuary.

And of course he cooperated on an ongoing basis. Vargas’s spies were everywhere, witnessed every conversation, every meal, every waking moment … or so it seemed. One could never be certain what the secret police knew from other sources, what they were just guessing at, what he was their only source for. Garcia had handled this reality the only way he could: he answered direct questions with a bit of the truth — if he knew it — and volunteered nothing.

If the secret police knew Alfredo had a CIA contact they had never let on. They did know Hector Sedano was a power in the underground although they seemed to think he was a small fish.

Garcia thought otherwise. He thought Hector Sedano was the most powerful man in Cuba after Fidel Castro, even more powerful than Alejo Vargas.

Why didn’t Hector understand the excruciating predicament that Alfredo Garcia found himself in? Certainly Hector knew what it was like to have few options, or none at all.

Alfredo was a weak man. He had never been able to resist the temptations of the flesh. God had forgiven him, of that he was sure, but would Hector Sedano?

As he sat in the darkness watching Hector, Alfredo Garcia smiled grimly. One of the contenders for power in post-Castro Cuba would be Hector’s own brother, Maximo Luís Sedano, the finance minister. Maximo was Fidel’s most trusted lieutenant, one of his inner circle. Three years older than Hector, he had lived and breathed Castro’s revolution all his life, willingly standing in the great man’s shadow. Those days were about over, and Maximo’s friends whispered that he was ready — he wanted more. That was the general street gossip that Garcia heard, and like most gossip, he thought it probably had a kernel of truth inside.

For his part, Maximo probably thought his only serious rival was Alejo Vargas. He was going to get a bad shock in the near future.

And then there were the exiles. God only knew what those fools would do when Fidel breathed his last.

Yes, indeed, when Fidel died the fireworks would begin.

Hector Sedano was taking the last few puffs on his cigar when his youngest brother, El Ocho, climbed the bleachers. Ocho settled onto a bench in front of Hector and leaned back so that he could rest his feet on the bench in front of him.

“You played well tonight. The home run was a thing of beauty.”

“It’s just a game.”

“And you play it well.”

Ocho snorted. “Just a game,” he repeated.

“All of life is a game,” his older brother told him, and ground out his cigar.

“Was that Mercedes I saw talking to you earlier?”

“She is here for Mima’s birthday.”

Ocho nodded. He seemed to gather himself before he spoke again.

“My manager, Diego Coca, wants me to go to the United States.”

Hector let that statement lie there. Sometimes Ocho said outrageous things to get a reaction. Hector had quit playing that game years ago.

“Diego says I could play in the major leagues.”

“Do you believe him?”

Ocho turned toward his older brother and closest friend. “Diego is a dreamer. I look good playing this game because the other players are not so good. The pitch I hit out tonight was a belt-high fastball right down the middle. American major league pitchers don’t throw stuff like that because all those guys can hit it.”

“Could you pitch there?”

“In Cuba my fastball is a little faster than everyone else’s. My curve breaks a little more. In America all the pitchers have a good fastball and breaking ball. Everyone is better.”

Hector laughed. “So you aren’t interested in going to America and getting rich, like your uncle Tomas?” Tomas had defected ten years ago while a team of baseball stars was on a trip to Mexico City. He now owned five dry-cleaning plants in metropolitan Miami. Oh, yes, Tomas was getting rich!

“I’m not good enough to play in the big leagues. Diego tells me I am. I think he believes it. He wants me to go, take him with me, sign a big contract. I’m his chance.”

“He wants to go with you?”

“That’s right.”

“On a boat?”

“He says he knows a man who has a boat. He can take us to Florida, where people will be waiting.”

“You believe that?”

“Diego does. That is what is important.”

“You owe Diego a few hours of sweat on the baseball field, nothing else.”

Ocho didn’t reply. He lay back on his elbows and wiggled his feet.

“Why don’t you tell me all of it?” Hector suggested gently.

Ocho didn’t look at him. After a bit he said, “I got Diego’s daughter pregnant. Dora, the second one.”

“He knows this?”

Ocho nodded affirmatively.

“So marry the girl. This is an embarrassment, not dishonor. My God, Mima was pregnant when Papa married her! Welcome to the world, Ocho. And congratulations.”

“Diego is the girl’s father.”

“I will talk to him,” Hector said. “You are both young, with hot blood in your veins. Surely he will understand. I will promise him that you will do the right thing by this girl. You will stand up with her in church, love her, cherish her ….”

“Diego wants the best for her, for the baby, for me.”

“For himself.”

“And for himself, yes. He wants us to go on his friend’s boat to America. I will play baseball and earn much money and we will live the good life in America. That is his dream.”

“I see,” said Hector Sedano, and leaned back against the fence. “Is it yours?”

“I haven’t told anyone else,” Ocho said, meaning the family.

“Are you going to tell Mima?”

“Not on her birthday. I thought maybe you could tell her, after we get to America.”

“Está loco, Ocho. This boat … you could all drown. Hundreds — thousands of people have drowned out there. The sea swallows them. They leave here and are never heard from again.”

Ocho studied his toes.

“If they catch you, the Americans will send you back. They don’t want boat people.”

“Diego Coca says that—”

“Damn Diego Coca! The Cuban Navy will probably catch you before you get out of sight of Mima’s house. Pray that they do, that you don’t die out there in the Gulf Stream. And if you are lucky enough to survive the trip to Florida, the Americans will arrest you, put you in a camp at Guantánamo Bay. Even if you get back to Cuba, the government won’t let you play baseball again. You’ll spend your life in the fields chopping cane. Think about that!”

Ocho sat silently, listening to the insects.

“Did you give Diego Coca money?” Hector asked.

“Yes.”

“Want to tell me how much?”

“No.”

“You’re financing his dream, Ocho.”

“At least he’s got one.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means what I said. At least Diego Coca has a dream. He doesn’t want to sit rotting on this goddamned island while life passes him by. He doesn’t want that for his daughter or her kid.”

“He doesn’t want that for himself.”

Ocho threw up his hands.

Hector pressed on, relentlessly. “Diego Coca should get on that boat and follow his dream, if that is his dream. You and Dora should get married. Announce the wedding tomorrow at Mima’s party — these people are your flesh and blood. Cuba is your country, your heritage. You owe these people and this country all that you are, all that you will ever be.”

“Cuba is your dream, Hector.”

“And what is yours? I ask you a second time.”

Ocho shook his head like a mighty bull. “I do not wish to spend my life plotting against the government, making speeches, waiting to be arrested, dreaming of a utopia that will never be. That is life wasted.”

Hector thought before he answered. “What you say is true. Yet until things change in Cuba it is impossible to dream other dreams.”

Ocho Sedano got to his feet. He was a tall, lanky young man with long, ropy muscles.

“Just wanted you to know,” he said.

“A man must have a dream that is larger than he is or life has little meaning.”

“Didn’t figure you would think it was a good idea.”

“I don’t.”

“Or else you would have gone yourself.”

“Ocho, I ask you a personal favor. Wait two weeks. Don’t go for two weeks. See how the world looks in two weeks before you get on that boat.”

Hector could see the pain etched on Ocho’s face. The younger man looked him straight in the eye.

“The boat won’t wait.”

“I ask this as your brother, who has never asked you for anything. I ask you for Mima, who cherishes you, and for Papa, who watches you from heaven. Have the grace to say yes to my request. Two weeks.”

“The boat won’t wait, Hector. Diego wants this. Dora wants this. I have no choice.”

With that Ocho turned and leaped lightly from bench to bench until he got to the field. He walked across the dark, deserted diamond and disappeared into the home team’s dugout.

Although he was born in Cuba, El Gato’s parents took him to Miami when he was a toddler, before the Cuban revolution. He had absolutely no memory of Cuba. In fact, he thought of himself as an American. English was the language he knew best, the language he thought in. He had learned Spanish at home as a youngster, understood it well, and spoke it with a flavored accent. Still, hearing nothing but Cuban Spanish spoken around him for days gave him a bit of cultural shock.

He and two of his bodyguards had flown to Mexico City, then to Havana. He had always kept his contacts with the Cuban government a deep, dark, jealously guarded secret, but rumors had reached him, rumors that Castro was sick, that important changes in Cuba were in the wind. The rumors had the feel of truth; his instincts told him.

El Gato, the Cat, didn’t get rich by ignoring his instincts. He decided to go to Cuba and take the risk of explaining it away later. If the exiles in Florida ever got the idea that he had double-crossed them, money or no money, they would take their revenge.

Courage was one of El Gato’s long suits. He didn’t accumulate a fortune worth almost a half billion dollars by being timid. So he and his bodyguards boarded the plane. That was almost a week ago. He had been steadily losing money in the casinos every day since while waiting. Now the waiting was over.

Tonight he was to see the man he came to meet, Alejo Vargas. In five minutes.

He checked his watch, then pocketed his chips and walked for the door of the club, the Tropicana, the jewel of Havana. His bodyguards joined him, like shadows.

El Gato left the casino via the back entrance. The three men walked a block to a large black limousine sitting by the curb and climbed into the rear seats.

Two men were sitting on the front-facing seats.

“El Gato, welcome to Havana. I confess, I didn’t think we would ever meet on Cuban soil.”

“Miracles never cease, Señor Vargas. The world turns, the sun rises and sets and we all get older day by day. Wise men change with the times.”

“Quite so. This is Colonel Santana, head of the Department of State Security.”

El Gato nodded politely at Santana, then introduced his bodyguards, men Santana didn’t even bother to look at.

“I was hoping, Señor Vargas, that you and I might have a private conversation, perhaps while these gentlemen watched from a small distance?”

Vargas nodded his assent, pushed a button, and spoke into an intercom to the driver. After about fifteen minutes of travel, during which nothing was said, the limo pulled up to a curb and all the men got out. The car was sitting on a breakwater near Morro Castle, with the dark battlements looming above them in the glare of Havana reflecting off the clouds.

Vargas and El Gato began strolling.

“The cargo is aboard,” El Gato said, “and the ship has sailed. I presume you kept me waiting to see if that event would occur.”

“When you proposed this operation, I had my doubts. I still do.”

“I cannot guarantee success,” El Gato said. “I do everything within my power to make success possible, but sometimes the world does not turn my way. I understand that, and I keep trying anyway.”

“The waiting will soon be over,” Vargas said.

“Indeed. In many ways. I hear rumors that Fidel will not be with us much longer.”

Vargas didn’t reply to that remark.

“Change is rapidly coming to Cuba,” El Gato began, “and the thought occurred to me that a man with friends in Cuba under the new order would be in an enviable position.”

“You have such friends?”

“I am here to test the water, so to speak, to learn if I do.”

“After your years of opposition to Castro, any friends you have will not be very vocal about it.”

“Noisy friends I have aplenty in Florida. No, the kind of friends I need are the kind who keep their friendship to themselves and help when help is needed, who give approvals when asked, who nod yes at the appropriate time.”

“How much money have you given the exiles’ political movements over the years?”

“You wish to know the figure?”

“Yes. I wish to learn if you will be honest with me. Obviously I have sources and some idea of the amount. Come now, impress me with your frankness and your honesty.”

“Over five million American,” El Gato said.

This was twice the figure Vargas expected, and he looked at the American sharply. If El Gato was lying, exaggerating the number to impress Vargas, it didn’t show in his face.

“Some of that money, a small amount it is true, came directly from the Cuban government,” El Gato said. “I believe you authorized those payments.”

“You have a sense of the sardonic, I see,” Vargas said without humor. One got the impression he had not smiled in his lifetime, nor would he.

El Gato nodded.

“You had a commodity to sell, we wished to buy. We paid a fair price.”

“Come, come, Señor Vargas. Let’s not pretend with each other. I arranged for you to acquire the equipment and chemicals necessary to create a biological warfare program. What you have done with those chemicals and equipment I don’t know, nor do I want to know. But you know as well as I that if the American government found out about the sale I would be ruined. And you know that I made no profit in the transaction.”

Vargas nodded, a dip of the head.

“Nor have I asked for money for arranging to steal Nuestra Señora.”

“That is true, but if the operation succeeds, we would have paid a fair amount.”

“I do not want your money.”

“You want something. What?”

El Gato walked a few paces with his hands in his pockets before he spoke. “After Castro I envision a Cuba much more friendly to American interests, more open to a free flow of capital in and out. A great many people in the United States have a great deal of money accumulated that they want to invest in Cuba, which they will do as soon as the United States government allows them to do so, and as soon as the Cuban government guarantees these investors that their investment will not be confiscated or stolen with hidden taxes or demands for graft. A man who could guarantee that his friends would be fairly treated in Cuba could make a lot of money. He would be a patron, if you will. And if he carefully screened his friends, Cuba would get a vetted flow of capable investors who would perform as promised.”

“Something for everyone,” Vargas said.

“Precisely.”

“Just so that I understand — are you suggesting that you want to be that man, el jefecito?”

“I could do it, I believe.”

“The exiles expect to come to Cuba at Castro’s death and take over the country. They want billions in repatriations. I tell you now, you have helped fuel their expectations with your five million dollars.”

What he failed to mention was the fact that the Cuban government had played to the fears of the peons who stayed, telling them they would be thrown from their homes if the exiles ever returned.

El Gato smiled. “Like the exiles, you fail to clearly see the situation. They are Americans. They make more money in America than they ever could in Cuba. They will never return in significant numbers. In fact, if the borders are thrown open, the net human flow will be toward the United States, not back to Cuba. If the American government would allow it, a million Cubans a year would leave this island. You would be wise to let people go where they wish to go.”

“You are saying the exile problem will just disappear?”

“Except for a few bitter old men, yes, I believe it will. The young ones have gotten on with their lives. They have no old scores to settle.”

“So you betray these old ones for your own profit?”

“Señor Vargas, if they wish to nurse old grudges and dream of a time which is long past and will never come again, who am I to tell them no? Most of these people are quite harmless. Those who aren’t can be dealt with when they cause problems. A public apology to dispossessed old people, a plea for healing, a few pesos, and the exiles could be appeased.”

“Assassination plots against Castro and the like?”

“Plots that never get off the ground are harmless. Let them have their meetings and their thunderous denunciations. These people will pass from the scene soon enough.”

Vargas made a gesture of irritation. He had his own opinions and didn’t really wish to hear other people’s. “Colonel Santana will take you and your men to your hotel.”

“Thank you.”

“I can promise you very little, El Gato. I understand that you cannot guarantee the future, but the North Koreans must fulfill their part of our bargain. If they do, there is a chance, just a chance, that I may rule after Castro.”

El Gato waited.

Vargas continued: “I will not forget what you did for me, for Cuba. If the day ever comes when I am in a position to help you, feel free to ask. What I can do then will have to be decided upon that day.”

“That is more than I hoped for,” El Gato said, genuine warmth obvious in his voice. “I thank you for that promise.”