Dead Silence

Randy Wayne White
PROLOGUE

On a moonless winter night, after working late in the lab, Marion Ford anchored his boat and swam to a yacht owned by a killer.

Ford wore swim fins, a black wool cap and cargo pants. His glasses were around his neck on fishing line, as usual. He had a tactical light in one pocket, a broken wristwatch in another.

Aboard the forty-three-foot Viking was a man named Bern Heller. Heller had played two years in the NFL, then sold Cadillacs while living a secret life as a serial rapist. He’d murdered a Cuban fishing guide, one of Ford’s friends.

Heller was free after eleven months in Raiford spent lifting weights, talking sports with the brothers, waiting for his idiot attorneys to get him a retrial.

Sometimes, alone in his cell, Bern would fantasize about women, the noise they made when they’d given up. A mewing sound. The way their thighs went limp-total submission. After years on steroids, remembering that sound was the only way it worked, unless Bern had his fingers on a real live girl. Something he planned to do soon.

Ford had spotted Bern that afternoon. Huge man, beer in hand, Bermuda shorts and an orange ankle monitor that looked heavy. Ford had approached, smiling, thinking Bern might take a swing, but hoping he wouldn’t because Ford knew then, looking into the crazy man’s eyes, what he would do.

“The beating I gave you wasn’t enough, I guess. You want more?”

Ford had straightened his glasses, eyes shifting from a marina-foreclosure notice to Heller’s gold Rolex. “I could use the work. It’s been a while.”

“Is that supposed to mean something?”

“Not to you. I was thinking of Javier Castillo.”

“Your dink fisherman pal. If I was guilty, you think they would’ve let me out of Raiford?”

Ford was thinking, He’s stoned, as he said, “Okay. I’ll give you a second chance.”

“I don’t want shit from you. Damn weirdo with your microscopes and dead fish. You gonna stand there talking or take your shot?”

“Maybe later. I’ve got an early flight.” Now Ford was looking at the yacht where Heller lived. “I’ll knock first.”

“ Sure you will. I won’t hold my breath.”

When Ford said, “You’ll try,” Bern blinked.

Ford knocked now, standing outside the yacht’s salon, ready when Heller pushed the door open, wearing shorts, no shirt, a stubnose revolver in his hand.

Ten minutes later, Heller was in the water, trying to say, “Let’s talk about this. Seriously, ” but there was a rag stuffed in his mouth.

He tried to say, “My goddamn elbow’s busted!,” knowing what it felt like because of that game in Green Bay when he got blindsided by one of the Frozen Chosen. But not as cold then as now, with water sloshing in his ears, his wrists tie-wrapped, floating on his back as the weirdo biologist towed him, kicking with fins.

Bern tried to wrestle free but inhaled water up his nose. Tried again, panicking, and felt the ammonia sting of salt water.

He screamed, “Please,” but made only a mewing noise because of the gag. The sound-a helpless-kitten sound-scared him. It was familiar. Thinking about it, Bern stopped struggling. When he remembered, his muscles went slack.

Ford continued swimming from the lights of the marina, kicking harder, using his right arm to pull.

He had a plane to catch.

At 6:45 a.m., Ford was aboard Delta’s direct to Newark, sitting starboard side, first class, reading the Miami Herald. A story about Cuba. Secret documents were surfacing, now that Castro was gone.

Disturbing.

Ford had worked in Cuba. He had also worked in Central America, South America, Asia and Africa.

Ford had told Bern the truth. His skills were rusty.

As the plane banked over the Gulf of Mexico, he folded the Herald and cleaned his glasses. Below, wind glittered on water a mile from shore, where Ford had untied Bern Heller, then pushed him overboard, yelling, “Swim!”

At 3:30 a.m., the lights of Sanibel Island were bright.

By five, Ford had returned to his home and lab on Dinkin’s Bay, secured his boat, was showered and packed. He’d also stowed cash from Heller’s safe and the Rolex in a hidden floor compartment.

Thinking about it now, Heller’s voice- “Don’t leave. I’m begging you!”- Ford felt an unfocused anxiety that startled him. A sinking sadness-a dense, unlighted space beneath his heart.

It passed.

An emotional response? No… a paralimbic reaction. The distinction was interesting-but unimportant.

Ford was working again.

Below, green water became granite as the jetliner ascended.

They’ll think Heller fell overboard, escaping to Mexico… if the cops find him.

They might not.

That orange ankle monitor looked heavy.

HOTEL NACIONAL, HAVANA, CUBA

Farfel told the Venezuelan, “More than a month ago, I warned you. Now it’s too late. The U.S. government has Castro’s files.” He exhaled through his nose, touching a finger to his glasses: Amateurs.

The young Venezuelan, his face lathered, sat reading the Miami Herald, Spanish edition. Farfel, the hotel barber, could see over his shoulder.

SENATE SUBPOENAS CUBAN DOCUMENTS

There was a photo. A good-looking woman, weight of breasts beneath her charcoal blouse. A powerful man with teeth. Cochairs of an intelligence subcommittee, they’d been

bickering about the files for months, mostly with the world political community, but also with the CIA.

“Five weeks ago. What did I tell you?”

The Venezuelan had a partner, an aloof New Yorker. What Farfel had told them was, “You want the files? Bury one of the politicians alive. Bury them with oxygen, a little water. Enough for a couple of days. It’ll work, I read about it in a book. The Americans will give you anything you want.”

They’d thought he was joking.

Now, because Farfel had a razor in his hand, the Venezuelan closed the newspaper. He sat straighter, thinking, He has cut men’s throats. I wouldn’t be the first.

True.

Farfel began stropping the razor fast-a rare display of emotion for the precise little man with silver hair, mustache and glittering silver eyes. They were alone in the shop with Koken chairs, mirrors, combs in blue disinfectant, the smell of powder and cigars, a calendar on the wall showing Havana’s skyline.

“The article means nothing,” the young Venezuelan said. He was worried the barber would be insulted if he stood and wiped lather from his face but was thinking it over as he added, “I have good news.”

“Save your breath. No more excuses.”

“At least listen.”

“Why bother? I should be looking for a way to disappear. They will hunt me the way Jews hunt Nazis. A boat, maybe.”

The Venezuelan stood and found a towel. To hell with etiquette. He gave it a moment for effect, but also to move closer to the door. “Yesterday it was decided,” he said, “the grave will be dug.”

Farfel folded the razor slowly.

“We were going to tell you.”

“The coffin, too?” The barber’s dentures made a clacking snap sound.

“Yes, as you ordered. A wooden box with an oxygen bottle. A container for water-a canteen, I think it is called.”

“Where?”

The Venezuelan said, “Only two people know.” Said it in a way that implied the New Yorker knew but the Venezuelan didn’t. He lobbed the newspaper in the trash, his confidence returning. “There’s something else. We also have the senator’s schedule.”

He was talking about the good-looking woman in the charcoal blouse. Farfel had told them, “Abduct the female. Snap photos with the coffin open, the woman staring up. The FBI will soil their pants, do whatever we want. Old files in exchange for the life of a senator? Force the Americans to react, not act.”

Farfel’s former assistant, Hump, the son of a dead friend, had made a cinematic gesture, framing the scene. “I like photos,” he said in his simple way. “I own a camera.”

The Venezuelan ignored the man. His deformity was unsettling.

This was back in December, Hump and Farfel, former members of the Cuban Socialist Party, talking with the young Venezuelan and the New Yorker on a seawall where the Gulf Stream swept close to Havana, a river of green on a purple sea.

“Maximum leverage without killing. You told me no one can be killed.”

“But burying a woman-”

“Exactly.”

“You’re asking me to imagine-”

“To imagine the worst way to die. People will say fire. They will say falling from the sky in a plane. Cancer… a few will speak of disease.”

Hump and Farfel had exchanged looks, as if old pros on the subject of torture and death. They were.

“To understand fear, listen to your spine, not your brain.”

The idea had floated in silence. Buried alive.

Even the New Yorker, a cold one, had grimaced.

“When FBI agents get the assignment, they’ll feel like they’re suffocating. If we tell them to shit, they’ll ask what color.”

“I don’t know…”

Hump had said to the Venezuelan, “We do,” as he removed his cap, looking at the man’s face for a reaction.

He got it.

The Venezuelan swallowed and turned away. “I’m not criticizing. But as a practical approach-”

Farfel said, “You’re an expert? In Florida, a convict buried a rich man’s daughter. This was years ago. A fan for air, some water. She was buried four days. The rich man delivered the cash. The FBI helped him deliver the cash. They concentrated on saving the girl. Not searching for the kidnappers. Understand the concept? We put the victim’s life in their hands. They’ll be so busy, they won’t waste time looking for us.”

“Did the daughter live?”

Farfel took a deep breath, his expression asking Why do I bother?

Hump answered, “Yes, the girl lived,” speaking in his simpleminded way, sounding disappointed.

For five weeks, the foreigners had delayed, insisting on more time. Even the New Yorker, who’d started it all, appearing in Farfel’s shop one morning, then pressing a note in his hand instead of a tip.

Reading the note, Farfel had felt like a man again. He’d told Hump, “I don’t care if it is a trap,” as they walked to their first meeting.

It wasn’t a trap.

Castro’s personal possessions, files included, had been stolen by the Americans and shipped to Maryland in industrial cartons. Four cartons to a container, thousands of items and documents that had been grouped, not cataloged. Collectively, the Americans were calling them the Castro Files.

A carton labeled C/C-103 (1976-’96) contained details of experiments the Soviets had conducted on American POWs in Vietnam, then Angola, Panama and Grenada. Administrators of the study, working as private contractors, had continued the experiments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pain and fear: What were the human limits? The study ended in 1998 when the last POW from Vietnam finally gave-up and died.

The Cuban Program. The Soviets called it that because Castro had provided three unusual interrogators with special skills. The men were scientists, in their way, and were so determined, so exacting, that they soon usurped control from their Russian bosses.

One of the interrogators was a small, fastidious man named Rene Soyinka Navarro. He was the son of a Russian mother and a Cuban KGB officer.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, Navarro had been hired by Al-Qaeda as a expert contractor, an interrogator who could obtain information from even the most determined prisoners. To those countries, he had brought along an apprentice, the son of a fellow interrogator named Angel Yanguez, Jr.

From his late father, Yanguez had inherited a genetic deformity- Seborrheic keratosis -in the form of a cutaneous horn just beginning to grow. He’d also inherited the nickname Hump, which he didn’t mind, unlike Navarro who despised his nickname, Farfel. It had shadowed him since Hoa Lo Prison in Vietnam, where POWs had named him for the Nestle’s Quik TV puppet that clicked his wooden teeth shut at the end of every sentence. Navarro, who wore dentures, made a similar sound when he wanted to emphasize a point.

In Vietnam, prisoners had referred to the Cubans, collectively, as the Malvados -fiends.

The New Yorker’s note had read: “Americans once begged for your mercy. Are you willing to beg for theirs?”

How could the New Yorker know the truth about Navarro if the documents didn’t exist?

The New Yorker and Venezuelan weren’t partners. They were working for someone. Farfel had overheard them whisper a name in English. The name sounded like Tenth Man. Possibly Tenman.

The Venezuelan was a twenty-three-year-old maricon, his face smooth, like an angel’s. He was a Communist, a young fool with ideals. The New Yorker was a Muslim who used whores and marijuana but not alcohol. They had no interest in the Cuban Program. Carton C/C-103 contained something else their employer wanted. Something worth only money, Farfel believed, if they weren’t willing to kill for it.

Didn’t matter.

The grave will be dug.

Since the Soviet collapse, Farfel and Hump had been in government protection, living like peons in Havana. False identities, menial jobs. Humiliating after living like gods in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq.

Now, though, they were working again. Professionals with unusual skills.