Cuba

CHAPTER THREE

The F-14 Tomcat hung suspended in an infinite blue sky, over an infinite blue sea. Or so it seemed to Jake Grafton, who sat in the front cockpit taking it all in. Behind him Toad Tarkington was working the radar, searching the sky ahead. The air was dead calm today, so without a visual reference there was no sensation of motion. The puffy clouds on the surface of the sea seemed to be marching uniformly toward the rear of the aircraft, almost as if the sky were spinning under the airplane.

The fighter was cruising at 31,000 feet, heading northwestward parallel with the southern coast of Cuba, about a hundred and fifty miles offshore.

“I sure am glad you got us off the ship, sir,” Tarkington said cheerfully. “A little flying helps clean out the pipes, keeps everything in perspective.”

“That it does,” Jake agreed, and stretched.

He had the best job in the navy, he thought. As a battle group commander he could still fly — indeed, an occasional flight was part of the job description. Yet his flying days would soon be over: in just two months he was scheduled to turn over the command to another admiral and be on his way somewhere.

He searched the empty sky automatically as he thought again about where the next set of orders might send him. If the people in the flag detailing office in the Pentagon had a clue, they certainly weren’t talking.

Ah, it would all work out. The powers that be would send him another set of orders or retire him, and it really didn’t matter much which way it went. Everyone has to move on sooner or later, so why not now?

Maybe he should just submit his retirement papers, get on with the rest of his life.

With his right hand he hit the emergency disconnect for the autopilot, which worked as it should.

Without touching the throttles, Jake Grafton smoothly lifted the nose and began feeding in left stick. Nose climbing, wing dropping … rolling smoothly through the inverted position, though with only seventy degrees of heading change. The nose continued down — keep the roll in! — and the G increased as the fighter came out of the dive and back to the original heading, only 1,400 below the entry altitude. Ta-ta! There you have it — a sloppy barrel roll!

Jake kept the stick back and started a barrel roll to the right.

“Are you okay up there, sir?” Toad Tarkington asked anxiously.

“You ask that of me? The world’s finest aerobatic pilot? Have you no respect?”

“These whifferdills are not quite up to your usual world-class standards, so one wonders. Could it be illness, decrepitude, senility?”

They were passing the inverted positon when Jake said, “Just for that, Tarkington, you can put us on the flight schedule every day so we can practice. An hour and a half of high-G maneuvers seven times a week will tech you to respect your elders.”

“You got that right,” Toad replied, and moaned as if he were in pain as Jake lifted the Tomcat into a loop.

“War Ace One Oh Four, this is Sea Hawk. You have traffic to the northwest, one hundred miles, heading south at about 30,000.”

“Roger, Sea Hawk.”

Coming down the back side of the loop, Jake turned to the northwest.

“Admiral, I know you think I was loafing back here,” Toad said obsequiously, “but I had that guy on the scope. Honest! I was just gonna say something when that E-2 guy beat me to the switch.”

“Sure, Toad. These things happen. If you’re going to nap, next time bring a pillow.”

“This guy is coming south, like he’s out of some base in central Cuba, about our altitude. Heck of a coincidence, huh?”

The F-14 had an optical camera mounted in the nose that was slaved to the radar cross-hairs.

“Tell me when you see him,” Jake murmured.

“Be a couple miles yet. Let’s come right ten degrees just for grins and see what happens.”

Jake again had the fighter on autopilot. He pushed the stick right, then leveled on the new course.

At fifty miles Toad had the other airplane on the screen of his monitor. A silver airplane, fighter size, with the sun glinting off its skin. The electronic countermeasures (ECM) panel lit up as the F-14’s sensors picked up the emissions of the other plane’s radar.

“A MiG-29,” Jake said.

“What’s he doing out here?” Toad wondered.

“Same thing as we are. Out flying around seeing what is what.”

“I thought the Cubans had retired their MiG-29s. Couldn’t keep paying the bills on ’em.”

“Well, at least one is still operational.”

Even as they watched, the MiG altered course to the left so that he would have a chance to turn in behind the F-14 when their flight paths converged.

Jake Grafton was suddenly sure he didn’t want the MiG behind him. The Soviets specifically designed the MiG-29 to be able to defeat the F-14, F-15, F-16 and F/A-18 in close combat; it was, probably, the second-best fighter in the world (the best being the Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker). Jake altered course so the two planes would converge head-on.

What would the MiG pilot do?

If the Cuban pilot opened fire over the ocean, over a hundred miles from land, who would ever know?

“Sea Hawk, One Oh Four, are you getting this on tape?”

“Yes, sir. We’re recording.”

“This bogey is a MiG-29.”

“Roger that. We’ve been tracking him for twenty-five minutes now.”

The range was closing rapidly, but still Jake didn’t see the MiG. He looked at the target dot in the heads-up display, but the sky was huge and the Cuban fighter too far away, although it was almost as large as the F-14.

The MiG was about four miles away when Jake finally saw it, a winged silver glint that shot by just under his right wing. Jake Grafton disconnected the autopilot and slammed the stick over.

He pulled carefully, cleanly, craned his head and braced himself with his left hand as he kept the turning MiG in sight.

The Cuban fighter rolled out of his turn heading north. Jake leveled out on a parallel course. Careful not to point his nose at the Cuban, Jake let the Tomcat drift closer on a converging course.

When the planes were less than a hundred yards apart, he slowed the closure rate but kept moving in.

Finally the two planes were in formation with their wingtips about twenty yards apart.

“Look at that thing, would you?” Toad enthused. “Have you ever seen a more gorgeous airplane?”

“I hear it’s a real dream machine,” Jake agreed.

“Oh, baby, the lines, the curves … The Russians sure know how to design flying machines.”

“If this guy has to jump out of that thing,” Jake asked Toad, “do you think Cuban Air-Sea Rescue is going to come pick him up?”

“I doubt it,” Toad replied. “And I suspect he knows that.”

“He’s got a set of cojones on him,” Jake said. “Bet he can fly the hell out of that thing, too.”

In the Cuban fighter, Major Carlos Corrado took his time looking over the American plane. This was the first time he had ever seen an F-14. Amazing how big they were, with the two men and the missiles under the wings.

Carlos was lucky he had this hunk of hot Russian iron to fly, technical generations ahead of the MiG-19s and 21s that equipped the bulk of Cuba’s tactical squadrons, and he damn well knew it. Cuba owned three dozen MiG-29s and had precisely one operational — mis one — which Corrado kept flying by the simple expedient of cannibalizing parts from the others.

He checked his fuel. He had enough, just enough, to get home. Sure, he had no business being out here over the ocean, but he wanted to fly today and the Cuban ground control intercept (GCI) controller said the American was here. One thing led to another and here he was.

Now Carlos Corrado was on course to return to his base near the city of Cienfuegos, on Cuba’s southern coast. He checked the compass, the engine instruments, then turned back to studying the American plane, which hung there on the end of his wing as if it were painted on the sky.

A minute went by, then the man in the front seat of the American plane raised his hand and waved. Carlos returned the gesture as the big American fighter turned away to the right and immediately began falling behind. Carlos twisted his body in his seat to keep the F-14 in sight for as long as possible. Big as it was, the F-14 disappeared into the eastern sky with startling rapidity.

Carlos Corrado turned in his seat and eased the position of his butt.

The Americans were two or three technical generations beyond the Cubans, so far ahead that most Cuban military men regarded American capabilities as almost superhuman. They had read of the Gulf War, of the satellites and computers and smart weapons. Unlike his colleagues, Corrado was not frightened by the Americans. Impressed by their military capability, but not frightened.

If I were smarter, he thought now, I would be frightened

But the Americans and Cubans would never fight. They had not fought since the Bay of Pigs and doubtless never would. Castro would soon be gone and a new government would take over and Cuba would become a new American suburb, another little beach island baking in the sun south of Miami, Key Cuba. When that happy day came, Carlos Corrado told himself, he was going to America and get a decent flying job that paid real money.

Doña Maria Vieuda de Sedano’s daughters arrived first, in the early afternoon, to tidy up and do the cooking for the guests. They had married local men who worked the sugarcane and saw her every day. In truth, they looked after her, helped her dress, prepared her meals, cleaned and washed the clothes.

It was infuriating to be disabled, to be unable to do! The arthritis that crippled her hands and feet made even simple tasks difficult and complex tasks out of the question.

Doña Maria managed to shuffle to her favorite chair on the tiny porch without help. Her small house sat on the western edge of the village. From the porch she could see several of her neighbors’ houses and a wide sweep of the road. Across the road was a huge field of cane. A cane-cooking factory stood about a half mile farther west. When the harvest began, the stacks belched smoke and the fumes of cooking sugar drifted for miles on the wind.

Beyond all this, almost lost in the distance, was the blue of the ocean, a thin line just below the horizon, bluer than the distant sky. The wind coming in off the sea kept the temperature down and prevented insects from becoming a major nuisance.

The porch was the only thing Dona Maria really liked about the house, though after fifty-two years in residence God knows she had some memories. Small, just four rooms, with a palm-leaf roof, this house had been the center of her adult life. Here she moved as a young bride with her husband, bore her children, raised them, cried and laughed with them, buried two of the ten, watched the others grow up and marry and move away. And here she watched her husband die of cancer.

He had died … sixteen years ago, sixteen years in November.

You never think about outliving your spouse when you are young. Never think about what comes afterward, after happiness, after love. Then, too soon, the never-thought-about future arrives.

She sat on the porch and looked at the clouds floating above the distant ocean, almost like ships, sailing someplace ….

She had lived her whole life upon this island, every day of it, had never been farther from this house than Havana, and that on just two occasions: once when she was a teenage girl, on a marvelous expedition with her older sister, and once when her son Maximo was sworn in as the minister of finance.

She had met Fidel Castro on that visit to the capital, felt the power of his personality, like a fire that warmed everyone within range. Oh, what a man he was, tall, virile, full of life.

No wonder Maximo orbited Fidel’s star. His brother Jorge, her eldest, had been one of Castro’s most dedicated disciples, espousing Marxism and Cuban nationalism, refusing to listen to the slightest criticism of his hero. Jorge, dead of heart failure at the age of forty-two, another dreamer.

All the Sedanos were dreamers, she thought, poverty-stricken dreamers trapped on this sun-washed island in a sun-washed sea, isolated from the rest of humankind, the rest of the species ….

She thought of Jorge when she saw Mercedes, his widow, climb from the car. The men in the car glanced at her seated on the porch, didn’t wave, merely drove on, leaving Mercedes standing in the road.

“Hola, Mima.”

Jorge, cheated of life with this woman, whom he loved more than anything, more than Castro, more than his parents, more than anything, for the Sedanos were also great lovers.

“Hola, my pretty one. Come sit beside me.”

As she stepped on the porch, Dona Maria said, “Thank you for coming.”

“It is nothing. We both loved Jorge ….”

“Jorge …”

Mercedes looked at Maria’s hands, took them in her own, as if they weren’t twisted and crippled. She kissed the older woman, then sat on a bench beside her and looked at the sea.

“It is still there. It never changes.”

“Not like we do.”

The emotions twisted Mercedes’s insides, made her eyes tear. Here in this place she had had so much, then with no warning it was gone, as if a mighty tide had swept away all that she valued, leaving only sand and rock.

Jorge — oh, what a man he was, a dreamer and lover and believer in social justice. A true believer, without a selfish bone in his body … and of course he had died young, before he realized how much reality differed from his dreams.

He lived and died a crusader for justice and Cuba and all of that … and left her to grow old alone … lonely in the night, looking for someone who cared about something besides himself.

She bit her lip and looked down at Dona Maria’s hands, twisted and misshapen. On impulse leaned across and kissed the older woman on the cheek.

“God bless you, dear child,” Dona Maria said.

Ocho came walking along the road, trailed by four of the neighborhood children who were skipping and laughing and trying to make him smile. When he turned in at his mother’s gate, the children scampered away.

Everyone on the porch turned and looked at him, called a greeting as he quickly covered the three or four paces of the path. Ocho was the Greek god, with the dark hair atop a perfect head, a perfect face, a perfect body … tall, with broad shoulders and impossibly narrow hips, he moved like a cat. He dominated a room, radiating masculinity like a beacon, drawing the eyes of every woman there. Even his mother couldn’t take her eyes from him, Mercedes noted, and grinned wryly. This last child — she bore Ocho when she was forty-four — even Dona Maria must wonder about the combination of genes that produced him.

Normally an affable soul, Ocho had little to say this evening. He grunted monosyllables to everyone, kissed his mother and Mercedes and his sisters perfunctorily, then found a corner of the porch in which to sit.

Women threw themselves at Ocho, and he never seemed to notice. It was almost as if he didn’t want the women who wanted him. He was sufficiently different from most of the men Mercedes knew that she found him intriguing. And perhaps, she reflected, that was the essence of his charm.

Maximo Luis Sedano’s sedan braked to a stop in a swirl of dust. He bounded from the car, strode toward the porch, shouting names, a wide grin on his face. He gently gathered his mother in his arms, kissed her on both her cheeks and forehead, kissed each hand, knelt to look into her face.

Mercedes didn’t hear what he said; he spoke only for his mother’s ears. When she looked away from Maximo and his mother she was surprised to see Maximo’s wife climbing the steps to the porch. Maximo’s wife — just what was her name? — condemned forever to be invisible in the glare of the great man’s spotlight.

Another dominant personality — the Sedanos certainly produced their share of those — Maximo was a prisoner of his birth. Cuba was far too small for him. Amazingly, because life rarely works out just right, he had found one of the few occupations in Castro’s Cuba that allowed him to travel, to play on a wider field. As finance minister he routinely visited the major capitals of Europe, Central and South America.

Just now he gave his mother a gift, which he opened for her as his sisters leaned forward expectantly, trying to see.

French chocolates! He opened the box and let his mother select one, then passed the rare delicacy around to all.

The sisters stared at the box, rubbed their fingers across the metallic paper, sniffed the delicious scent, then finally, reluctantly, selected one candy and passed the box on.

One of the sisters’ husbands whispered to the other, just loud enough for Mercedes to overhear: “Would you look at that? We ate potatoes and plantains last month, all month, and were lucky to get them.”

The other brother-in-law whispered back, “For three days last week we had absolutely nothing. My brother brought us a fish.”

“Well, the dons in government are doing all right. That’s the main thing.”

Mercedes sat listening to the babble of voices, idly comparing Maximo’s clean, white hands to those of the sisters’ husbands, rough, callused, work-hardened. If the men were different, the women weren’t. Maximo’s wife wore a chic, fashionable French dress as she sat now with Dona Maria’s daughters, whispering with them, but inside the clothes she was still one of them in a way that Maximo would never be again. He had traveled too far, grown too big ….

Mercedes was thinking these thoughts when Hector arrived, walking along the road. Even Maximo stopped talking to one of his brothers, the doctor, when he saw Hector coming up the path to the porch.

“Happy birthday, Mima.”

Hector, Jesuit priest, politician, revolutionary … he spoke softly to his mother, kissed her cheek, shook Maximo’s hand, looked him in the eye as he ate a chocolate, kissed each of his sisters and touched the arms and hands of their husbands and his brothers, the doctor and the automobile mechanic.

Ocho was watching Hector, waiting for him to reach for his hand, his lips quivering.

Mercedes couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing, Hector hugging Ocho, holding him and rocking back and forth, the young man near tears.

Then the moment passed.

Hector refused to release his grip on his brother, led him to Dona Maria, gently made him sit at her feet and placed her hands in his.

Ah, yes, Hector Sedano. If anyone could, it would be you.

“They do not appreciate you,” Maximo’s wife told him as they rode back to Havana in his car.

“They are so ignorant,” she added, slightly embarrassed that she and her husband should have to spend an evening with peasants in such squalid surroundings.

Of course, they were his family and one had duties, but still … He had worked so hard to earn his standing and position, it was appalling that he should have to make a pilgrimage back to such squalor.

And his relatives! The old woman, the sisters … crippled, ignorant, dirty, uncouth … it was all a bit much.

And Hector, the priest who was a secret politician! A man who used the Church for counterrevolutionary treason.

“Surely he must know that you are aware of his political activities,” she remarked now to her husband, who frowned at the shacks and sugarcane fields they were driving past.

“He knows,” Maximo murmured.

“Europe was so nice,” his wife said softly. “I don’t mean to be uncharitable, but truly it is a shame that we must return to this!”

Maximo wasn’t paying much attention.

“I keep hoping that someday we shall go to Europe and never return,” she whispered. “I do love Madrid so.”

Maximo didn’t hear that comment. He was wondering about Hector and Alejo Vargas. He couldn’t imagine the two of them talking, but what if they had been? What if those two combined to plot against him? What could he do to guard against that possibility, to protect himself?

Later that evening Hector and his sister-in-law, Mercedes, rode a bus into Havana. “It was good of you to stay for Mima’s party,” Hector said.

“I wanted to see her. She makes me think of Jorge.”

“Do you still miss him?”

“I will miss him every day of my life.”

“Me too,” Hector murmured.

“Vargas knows about you,” she said, after glancing around to make sure no one else could hear her words.

“What does he know?”

“That you organize and attend political meetings, that you write to friends, that you speak to students, that most of the priests in Cuba are loyal to you, that many people all over this island look to you for leadership …. He knows that much and probably more.”

“It would be a miracle if none of that had reached the ears of the secret police.”

“He may arrest you.”

“He will do nothing without Fidel’s approval. He is Fidel’s dog.”

“And you think Fidel approves of your activities?”

“I think he tolerates them. The man isn’t immortal. Even he must wonder what will come after him.”

“You are playing with fire. Castro’s hold on Vargas is weakening. Castro’s death will give him a free hand. Do not underestimate him.”

“I do not. Believe me. But Cuba is more important than me, than Vargas, than Castro. If this country is ever going to be anything other than the barnyard of a tyrant, someone must plant seeds that have a chance of growing. Every person I talk to is a seed, an investment in the future.”

“‘Barnyard of a tyrant.’ What a pretty phrase!” Mercedes said acidly. The last few years, living with Fidel, she had developed a thick skin: people said the most vicious things about him and she had learned to ignore most of it. Still, she deeply admired Hector, so his words wounded her.

“I’m sorry if I—”

She made sure her voice was under control, then said, “Dear Hector, Cuba is also the graveyard of a great many martyrs. There is room here for Vargas to bury us both.”

He was remembering the good days, the days when he had been young, under a bright sun, surrounded by happy, laughing comrades.

All things had been possible back then. Bullets couldn’t touch them, no one would betray them to Batista’s men, they would save Cuba, save her people, make them prosperous and healthy and strong and happy. Oh, yes, when we were young …

As he tossed and turned, fighting the pain, snatches of scenes ran through his mind; student politics at the University of Havana, the assault on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago, guns banging and bullets spanging off steel, off masonry, singing as they whirled away …. He remembered the firefights on the roads, riding the trucks through the countryside, evenings making plans with Che and the others, how they would set things right, kick out the capitalists who had enslaved Cuba for centuries.

Che, he had been a true believer.

And there were plenty more. True believers all. Ignorant as virgins, penniless and hungry, they thought they could fix the world.

In his semiconscious state he could hear his own voice making speeches, explaining, promising to fix things, to heal the people, put them to work, give them jobs and houses and medical care and a future for their children.

Words. All words.

Wind.

He coughed, and the coughing brought him fully awake. The nurse was there in the chair watching him.

“Leave me, woman.”

She left the room.

He pulled himself higher in the bed, used a corner of the sheet to wipe the sweat from his face.

The sheets were thin, worn out. Even el presidente’s sheets were worn out!

A sick joke, that.

Everything in the whole damned country was broken or worn out, including Castro’s sheets. You didn’t have to be a high government official to be aware of that hard fact.

On the dresser just out of reach was a box of cigars. He hitched himself around in bed, reached for one, then leaned far over and got his hand on the lighter.

The pain made him gasp.

Madre mia!

When the pain subsided somewhat he lay back in the bed, wiped his face again on the sheet.

He fumbled with the cigar, bit off the end and spat it on the floor. Got the lighter going, sucked on the cigar … the raw smoke was like a knife in his throat. He hacked and hacked.

The doctors made him give up cigars ten years ago. He demanded this box two days ago, when they told him he was dying. “If I am dying, I can smoke. The cancer will kill me before the cigars, so why not?”

When the coughing subsided, he took a tiny puff on the cigar, careful not to inhale.

God, the smoke was delicious.

Another puff.

He lay back on the pillow, sniffed the aroma of the smoke wafting through the air, inhaled the tobacco essence and let it out slowly as the cigar smoldered in his hand.

The truth was that he had made a hash of it. Cuba’s problems had defeated him. Oh, he had done the best he could, but by any measure, his best hadn’t been good enough. The average Cuban was worse off today than he had been those last few years under Batista. Food was in short supply, the economy was in tatters, the bureaucrats were openly corrupt, the social welfare system was falling apart, and the nation reeled under massive short-term foreign debt, for it had defaulted on its long-term international debt in the late 1980s. The short-term debt could not be repudiated, not if the nation ever expected to borrow another peso abroad.

He puffed on the cigar, savoring the smoke. Then he shifted, trying to make the ache in his bowels ease up.

Of course he knew what had gone wrong. When he took over the nation he had played the cards he had … evicted the hated Yanqui imperialistas and seized their property, and accepted the cheers and adulation of the people for delivering them from the oppressor. Unfortunately Cuba was a tiny, poor country, so he had had to replace the evicted patron with another, and the only one in sight had been the Soviet Union. He embraced communism, got down on his knees and swore fealty to the Soviet state. With that act he earned the undying hatred of the politicians who ruled the United States — after several assassination attempts and the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion debacle, they declared economic warfare on Cuba. Then the cruelest twist of the knife — the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990-91 and Cuba was cut adrift.

Ah, he should have been wiser, should have realized that the United States would be the winning horse. The Spanish grandees had bled Cuba for centuries, worked the people as slaves, then as peons. After the Americans ran the Spanish off, American corporations put their men in the manor houses and life continued as before. The people were still slaves to the cane crop, living in abject poverty, unable to escape the company towns and the company stores.

A few things did change under the Americans. The island became America’s red light district, the home of the vice that was illegal on the American mainland: gambling, prostitution, drugs, and, during Prohibition, alcohol. Poor Catholic families sent their daughters to the cities to whore for the Yanquis.

The capitalists bled Cuba until there was no blood left — they would keep exploiting people the world over until there were no more people. Or no more capitalists. Until then, the capitalists would have all the money. He should have realized that fundamental truth.

He had grown up hating the United States, hating Yanquis who drank and gambled and whored the nights away in Havana. He hated their diplomats, their base at Guantánamo Bay, their smugness, their money … he despised them and all their works, which was unfortunate, because America was a fact of life, like shit. A man could not escape it because it smelled bad.

God had never given him the opportunity to destroy the Yanquis, because if He had …

Fidel Castro was intensely, totally Cuban. He personified the resentment the Cuban people felt because they had spent their lives begging for the scraps that fell from the rich men’s table. Resentment was a vile emotion, like hatred and envy.

Well, he was dying. Weeks, they said. A few weeks, more or less. The cancer was eating him alive.

The painkillers were doing their job — at least he could sit up, think rationally, smoke the forbidden cigars, plan for Cuba’s future.

Cuba had a future, even if he didn’t.

Of course, the United States would play a prominent role in that future. With the great devil Fidel dead, all things were possible. The economic embargo would probably perish with him, a new presidente could bring … what?

He thought about that question as he puffed gingerly on the cigar, letting the smoke trickle out between his lips.

For years Americans had paraded through the government offices in Havana talking about what might be after the economic embargo was lifted by their government Always they had an angle, wanted a special dispensation from the Cuban government … and were willing to pay for it, of course. Pay handsomely. Now. Paper promises … He had enjoyed taking their money.

He had made no plans for a successor, had anointed no one. Some people thought his brother, Raúl, might take over after him, but Raúl was impotente, a lightweight.

He would have to have his say now, while he was very much alive.

But what should the future of Cuba be?

The pain in his bowels doubled him up. He curled up in the bed, groaning, holding tightly to the cigar.

After a minute or so the pain eased somewhat and he puffed at the cigar, which was still smoldering.

Whoever came after him was going to have to make his peace with the United States. They were going to have to be selective about America’s gifts, rejecting the bad while learning to profit from the good things, the gifts America had to give to the world.

That had been his worst failing — he himself had never learned how to safely handle the American elephant, make the beast do his bidding. His successors would have to for the sake of the Cuban people. Cuba would never be anything if it remained a long, narrow sugarcane field and way point for cocaine smugglers. If that was all there was, everyone on the island might as well set sail for Miami.

Maybe he should have left, said good-bye, thrown up his hands and retired to the Costa del Sol.

Next time. Next time he would retire young, let the Cubans make it on their own.

Like every man who ever walked the earth, Castro had been trapped by his own mistakes. The choices he made early in the game were irreversible. He and the Cuban people had been forced to live with the consequences. Life is like that, he reflected. Everyone must make his choices, wise or foolish, good or bad, and live with them; there is no going back.

There is always the possibility of redemption, of course, but one cannot unmake the past. We have only the present. Only this moment.

When the pain came this time, the cigar dropped from his fingers.

He lay in the bed groaning, trying not to scream for the nurse. If he did, she would give him an injection, which would put him to sleep. The needle was going to give him peace during his final days, but he wasn’t ready for it yet.

The pain had eased somewhat when he felt a hand on his forehead. He opened his eyes. Mercedes.

“You dropped your cigar on the floor,” she whispered.

“I know.”

“Shall I call the nurse?”

“Not for a while.”

She used a damp cloth to wipe the perspiration from his face. The cloth felt good.

“Light the cigar.”

She did so, put it in his hand. He managed one tiny puff.

“You talked to Hector?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He was surprised. He didn’t know it would be so soon.”

“That was your impression?”

“Yes.”

“And the tobacco deal with the Americans? What did Hector say when you told him about it?”

“Just listened.”

“The birthday party, Maximo came?”

“Yes. Brought a box of French chocolates and his wife, who wore a Paris frock.”

Fidel’s lips twisted. He could imagine what the other people at the party thought of that. Maximo could charm foreign bankers and squeeze a peso until it squealed, but he was no politician.

“Did you warn Hector about Alejo?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He made light of it.”

Fidel thought about that. Remembered the cigar and took another puff.

“He thinks the threat will be the generals,” he said finally, “but it won’t. The generals don’t know it, but the troops will follow Hector. Alejo Vargas is his most dangerous opponent, and if Hector Sedano doesn’t understand that, they will bury him a few days after they bury me.”

“Admiral, next weekend when we’re in the Virgin Islands, what say we put the barge in the water and go water-skiing?”

The person asking the question was the admiral’s aide, a young lieutenant who flew an F/A-18 on her last cruise. Her boyfriend was still in one of the Hornet squadrons; the last time Jake Grafton approved the barge adventure, the boyfriend was invited to go along.

Now Jake sighed. “I’m not sure where we’re going to. be next weekend, Beth.” He had no intention of getting very far from Guantánamo Bay while those warheads were still in that warehouse, but of course he couldn’t say that. “Check with ops, Commander Tarkington.”

“Yes, sir,” Beth said, trying to hide her disappointment.

The new Chief of Staff, Captain Gil Pascal, Toad Tarkington, and the admiral had put their heads together, carefully listed the forces available should an emergency arise, and drafted a contingency plan. “Nothing’s happened in all these years,” Jake told them, “but Washington must have had a reason for telling us to keep an eye on the place. They must know something we don’t.”

Gil Pascal met the admiral’s gaze. He had reported to the staff just a week ago. “Sir, as I recall, the orders said to ‘monitor’ the loading of the weapons onto the container ship.”

“‘Monitor’?” muttered Jake Grafton. “What the hell does that mean? Is that some kind of New Age bureaucrat word? It doesn’t mean anything.”

“I guess my question really is, how much force are you willing to use without authorization from Washington?”

A faint smile crossed the lips of Toad Tarkington. Only a man who didn’t know the admiral would ask that question. Anyone who started shooting in Jake Grafton’s bailiwick had better be ready for a war, Toad thought. He had managed to wipe off the smile by the time the admiral answered:

“Whatever it takes to keep those warheads in American hands.”

Pascal took his time ordering his thoughts. “Shouldn’t we be talking contingencies with Washington, Admiral?”

Jake Grafton opened a top-secret message folder that lay on his desk in front of him. “I already sent a query to CNO. This is the answer.”

He passed the message to Pascal. “Monitor weapons on-load diligently, using your best judgment,” the message read, “but do not deviate from normal routine. Revealing presence of chemical and biological weapons in Cuba not in the national interest. Risks of transfer have been carefully considered at the highest level. Should risk assessment change you will be informed.” The final sentence referred to the original message.

“Five sentences?” Toad Tarkington asked when he had had his chance to read the message. “Only five sentences?”

Reading naval messages was an art, of course. One had to consider the identity and personality of the sender, the receiver, the situation, any correspondence that had passed before …. The situation in Washington was the unknown here, Jake concluded. If the CNO had been at liberty to say more, he would have: Jake knew the CNO. The lack of guidance or illumination told Jake that the chief of naval operations wanted him to be ready for anything.

“We’ll have to do the best we can with what we have,” the admiral said now to Pascal and Tarkington. “I want a plan: we need someone watching at all times, a quick reaction force that can meet any initial incursion with force, a reserve force to throw into the fray to absolutely deny access, and flash messages ready to go informing Washington of what we have done.”

Toad and Gil Pascal nodded. A plan like this with the forces that the admiral had at his disposal would be simple to construct. No surprises there.

“There is always the possibility that we may not be able to prevent hostiles from getting to the warheads, if they choose to try. We also need a plan addressing that contingency.”

“Surely this nightmare won’t come to pass,” Gil Pascal said. “Your assessment of the risk differs remarkedly from that of the National Security Council.”

“I’m sure the powers that be think it quite unlikely anybody will try to prevent us from removing the weapons from Cuba, and I agree. On the other hand, they must know something they can’t share with us. If the risk were zero, they wouldn’t have sent us here with orders to monitor, whatever the hell that is. Gentlemen, I just want to be ready if indeed we win the lottery and our number comes up.”

Toad thoughtfully put the message from Washington back into its red folder. He pursed his lips, then said thoughtfully, “One thing is for sure — something is up.”