Havana

Chapter 29

The trunk of the black, unmarked 1938 De Soto, parked near the university, was nearly full: a Mexican Mendoza 7mm light machine gun and a thousand 7mm rounds; a Star RU-1935 9mm submachine gun; ten thirty-round magazines, full; three Model 97 Winchester shotguns, riot-gun configuration; three hundred double-ought shells; three Ruby revolvers in.38; seven automatic pistols in 9mm and.45, mostly Stars and Obregons. Also truncheons, bullwhips, hand and leg irons, hand grenades, flares and billy clubs, blindfolds, ropes, chains-the usual duty issue of the Cuban Military Intelligence Service.

In the front of the same car were Ramon Latavistada and Franco "Frankie Carbine" Carabinieri, both in linen suits, with open white shirts, sunglasses, and panama hats pulled low over their eyes. Though it was night, and much cooler, the two men sweated, and kept running handkerchiefs over their damp foreheads as they sat and waited and smoked and sat and waited and smoked. It never occurred to them to take off their sunglasses.

"He ain't gonna show," said Frankie.

"I fear you are correct," said Ramon.

"What the fuck?"

"Exactly. What the fuck?"

"It's like he knew."

"It is like that. It is like someone is watching over him."

"And he done gone thataway."

"What?"

"Oh, something stupid we say in the States. Meaning, he's vamoosed. From the pictures. You ever go to pictures?"

"No picture can compete with the reality of my daily life."

The crowd was thinning. The speakers had been dreary. First was Ortez, the liberal, with much praise for the paradise of England. Then Lopez, the socialist, with even more praise for Russia. Then the Senora Ramilla, who had been bombed in the Spanish War and was blind in one eye, with colorful remembrances of parades on the Ramblas and the sense of unity among the young people.

Alas, and so disappointingly, the young orator who counted, who could spellbind and inspire, who could make the blood sing and the heart throb as he laid out his vision of a Cuba for Cubans and an end to El Presidente-he did not attend, though he was on the program. And since most of the crowd had come to hear him, there was a palpable air of disillusion. A leader's first obligation was to lead, not to disappoint.

"Man, what a wasted day. My people are not going to be happy."

"Nobody will be happy till we find this cabrone."

"What does that mean, 'cabrone'?"

"Homosexual."

"Is he?"

"No, I call him that because to call him that is to spit on him."

Latavistada started the car and nudged it rudely into the street, not particularly caring whether or not he hit any members of the dispersing crowd. A few young men raised their fists against their arms to display contempt, one so rudely that the captain nearly got out and beat him senseless with a sap, but instead coolness prevailed, and the two new pals sailed out into the Cuban night.

"I will call the Political Section," said Latavistada. "Possibly they have something new on him. If not, we'll go to a fellow named Kubitsky, a newspaper reporter on the Havana Post who is known to keep tabs on things. Then we'll swing by Castro's apartment one more time. We may not get him tonight, but we will get him, and soon, I guarantee."

But the rat had fled. Nothing produced the necessary information: not phone calls, not sightings, not stakeouts, not interviews with witnesses and colleagues, willing or not. Even the man's wife, Mirta, a sullen abused creature with an unruly baby, had no idea where he was when she was approached obliquely in the laundry by a female SIM agent, and drawn out. There was no need to interrogate her more directly, for surely that information would reach the young man with the speed of light, and then he would learn he was being hunted.

"Maybe he went home."

"Where is home?"

"This is a good question. I have heard he is from the east. But where exactly is not known. Who is this man? We know what he does and what he believes, we do not yet know who he is."

"This information, would it be tough to come by? You could get it―"

"You could get it many ways," said Ramon. "You could torture for it or bribe for it, or spy for it. Alas, I find these ways uncertain as well as slow. You think Cubans are lazy and shiftless, my friend, no?"

"Pal, I never―"

"Well, I will show you the one organization in Cuba that teems with efficiency. We will have this information in―" he paused, looked at his elegant watch, and continued, "-two hours. This you will find so amusing, Frankie Carbine."

Frankie watched them go in. They arrived in six black two-ton trucks and poured out, ten men from each vehicle, with clubs and rifles, commanded by sergentos with whistles and pistols, the whole thing working with brutal precision. The soldiers liked to hurt people, that was their secret. As they thundered up the famous hundred marble steps of the University of Havana, atop its green Arcadian hill, so untouched by the tarnish of reality, they flailed at anyone who came within their range, breaking limbs, shattering noses and teeth, sending screaming students bouncing down the way amid a spray of loose papers and flung-aside books. They screamed. They were primitive men, from the country, nurtured in violence, held in monstrous discipline, seething to release themselves in brutality. They never disappointed. Now they reached the top, diverted slightly, and swarmed into the law school building.

By the time Ramon and Frankie reached the administration offices on the third floor of that building, it was pretty much in ruins. Blood splashed everywhere, like some kind of modern art painting, forming anarchistic splotches on tile and wall and window. A few poor students, bruised and bashed, still tried to crawl out, and now and then a policeman would kick them in the ribs.

"Wow," said Frankie.

"It's a good thing, generally, to teach youth that it must show respect for authority. This place is a fountain of revolution. It produces treason and sedition and liberalism with boring monotony. These young people, they think they are entitled to so much, they think so much should be changed, they have no respect for the lives their parents have built for them. I would be even harsher than El Presidente. I would shoot ten every month, regular as clockwork."

They went through torn-up office after torn-up office, at last finding the inner sanctum of record-keeping where, industriously, the two men pillaged first the C's and then the many Castros who had, over the years, applied to the university for admission. It didn't take a long time, for there were very helpful photos, and, as it turned out, Latavistada had an attribute ever so valuable to a secret policeman: a photographic memory.

"Ah, here, I think. Frankie, this? Does this seem right?"

"I ain't ever seen the guy."

"No, this would be him."

He handed over a photograph, while he studied the file. What Frankie saw made almost no impression on him, as images seldom did. He drifted a little, then made an effort to concentrate and saw an oval face not without its appeal, the eyes dark and sharp, under a crop of dense black hair. The nose was strong; the guy almost looked Italian, or Sicilian even. Yet the face also was so young. It had no lines, no strength, no passion to it, only a voluptuary's indolence.

"He looks rich."

"What an excellent observation. He is. It says here he comes from Biran, above Santiago, almost in the Sierras. His father has an estate and works, or worked, for many years for United Fruit. You see, it's always the same, this business. It's always about fathers and sons. This little prick wants to show his papa he's a bigger man, that he will amount to something. So where papa controls a thousand acres, sonny will someday control the nation."

Frankie had no idea what the Cuban was talking about.

But then he said, "And here is where he will flee. Back to Oriente and the mountains, where he is son of the favored lord, out of reach of the law. Well, Frankie, we shall reach him, no?"