Havana

Chapter 46

Lieutenant Sarria dreamed of caramel-skinned beauties, with white teeth and flowers in their hair. He was fifty-four years old and much darker than caramel. His hair was salt and pepper, his body long and sinewy and his eyes sad. He dreamed of young ladies often. The way they walked, with music in their steps. The jiggle of their breasts under their blouses. Their behinds, proud and sassy. The magic in their smiles, their eyes. Their toes, long and slender and pink below, caramel atop, their―

He was jerked awake by a noise.

"What was that?" said Corporal De Guama, making coffee.

"It sounded like a shot," said Private Morales.

All three men wore the green-brown uniforms of the Cuban national police, though without ties and much in need of cleaning and pressing. They were normally stationed at Sevilla, just a few miles inland, but with all this madness of the insurrection at Moncada, they had been sent out to set up an outpost on the outskirts of Siboney, the beach town. When they got to the beach town, though, the lieutenant decided it was unlikely the fleeing man would come this way, where it was so populated. So he had moved west down the beach by jeep and been unable to locate quite the perfect place until, well beyond Siboney, they came upon an old planter's shack, where they'd been for a day, out of radio contact or telephone contact, but ready to defend Cuba and the president with their lives, meanwhile catching up on much-needed sleep. Sarria would never rise above lieutenant-high enough for a negro-and the other two were men whose ambitions had been ground into indifference by the rigors of avoiding duty. All three men were armed, but two of the three revolvers carried between them were empty. Only the lieutenant's held ammunition, though as it had held that same ammunition since 1934, he wasn't entirely certain that it would fire.

"Well," said the lieutenant, "I suppose we'd better go do something."

"I suppose," said De Gauma, sadly. It seemed that something always interrupted his coffee. "May I finish my coffee first?"

"He always wants the coffee," said the corporal. "He lives for the coffee."

"Well, De Gauma, actually, no, I'd prefer if you just went along this time. Would that be all right?"

Sarria wasn't being sarcastic. He wore the mantle of command somewhat unsurely. He genuinely wished to know if it was all right with the private.

"No, no, it's fine," De Guama said.

The three men rose. Morales could not find his cap, and De Gauma had taken his boots off.

"I'll have to stay in the sand, where it's soft."

"Yes, yes, that's fine," said Sarria.

They stepped out and saw only what they had seen for two days: the blinding brightness of the beach, the blinding blue of the bay, the blinding though lighter blue of the sky, and the dark green of the forest here where the Sierra Maestra plunged so precipitously into the water. The sun was hot, the wind was still. Prickly sweat came at their hairlines immediately and began to run down their cheeks. The air had been superheated by the sun and to breathe was not pleasant. It was July, after all.

"I think it came from there."

"Is this dangerous? A man with a gun? Maybe I'd better run back to town and call for reinforcements." De Guama was not the bravest of policemen.

"It's just a hunter," said the private, Morales. "He's cornered a boar, he's finished him, that's all."

"The boar don't usually come down this far," said Lieutenant Sarria. "They like it up the mountains, where it's cooler."

The three walked along the beach for a while, but could see nothing of consequence. Birds, flowers, the sand, the floating gulls, a trawler of some sort fishing close in.

"I've never seen them come in that far," said Morales.

"Maybe they were the ones who fired?"

"A gun on that old tub? I doubt it. It certainly is low in the water, though. Maybe it's taking sea."

"We should inquire."

They walked ahead and though they would later argue about it, it actually was Morales and not De Gauma who saw a flash of movement off to the right, in the trees, and alerted the others.

Speshnev had squirmed into the trees and gone to dead, still calm. He waited and waited. No soldiers appeared. None at all.

He tried to reconstruct the last several seconds in his brain. He and the boy, kneeling in the water, letting it soak, drinking slowly, not glugging like fools. The boat a few hundred yards away. No soldiers yet at the crest. No noise, no sense of approaching men, no nothing.

He soaks his handkerchief, hands it across and at that moment feels the whisper of hot air as a bullet roars by. Simultaneously, his handkerchief is torn from his hand to flutter across the pond, and at the same second the surface of the pond explodes in a bright plume of water.

The size of the blast, the noise of the shot, the force by which the handkerchief was ripped from his grip all indicated a heavy-caliber military bullet. Yet why had the bullet not struck head, his or the boy's? He realized the handkerchief was shot from his hand on purpose, for a shooter gifted enough to put his round into it could have just as easily shot either through the eye or the ear.

But that mystery was quickly enough forgotten. What had to be done now was more exact and specific. Find the boy. Get the boy to the boat. Yet how could he do so with a marksman about, possibly hunting him, possibly playing tricks on him. And why would a marksman play a trick on him?

And then of course he knew. It could only be one man. And the message was: you must fail. Fail and live, attempt to succeed and you die. I will have to kill you. But this time, I only make you fail.

Well, he thought, you are a clever man, a brave man, but I have a duty to do as well, and if I have a chance, then I will kill you, too.

He realized with perfect clarity the man wouldn't shoot him. He just wouldn't, he knew, at least not to kill him. He would watch from his perfect hide and if Speshnev seemed about to do it, then he would shoot.

Speshnev realized that―

But then movement caught his eye. Through the screen of trees, he saw three policemen. Where the hell had they come from? From the sloppiness of their clothes and the indifference of their postures, he determined that they were not the army troops being driven forward by Captain Latavistada. In fact, they moved so tentatively upon the beach it was as if they'd prefer to be anywhere else. The sound of the shot could not have delighted them.

Yet here was the comical part. The manhunt was run by the best of Cuban intelligence with advice from the CIA, and it had failed completely. These three idiots had succeeded.

For he now saw that they approached a clump of rags hunched trembling behind a knot of trees, and that clump of rags could only be Fidel Castro.

"Is it a man?" De Guama asked.

"I think it is. A bum. He is sleeping."

" You!" cried the lieutenant. " You! Wake up!"

The figure, indeed a man and not a clump of rags behind a glade of palms, stirred. Eventually a raggedy mop of hair came up, a pair of wet brown eyes, a broad axe of a nose, a pinched mouth, a whole face.

"It is him!" said De Guama. "Good Christ, it is Fidel!"

The young man assembled himself slowly, then got up, his hands raised.

"I thought you would be a negro," said Lieutenant Sarria. "I thought only a negro would have the strength to fight the president."

"I am fighting for the negroes as well as all other Cubans," said Fidel. "I fight for you all."

A whistle sounded far off.

All four of them looked up the hill. There, at its crest-line, troops were assembling, an officer was shouting orders smartly, dogs were barking, and then the unit started to move.

"They will kill me," said Castro. "Please don't give me to them. The man in charge, he has cut the eyes out of many of my friends. He will cut my eyes out and then shoot me."

"Yes," said Lieutenant Sarria, "Ojos Bellos, of SIM. I know his reputation. De Guama, Morales, you run back and bring the jeep. We will transport this bad boy into Siboney."

The two turned and ran off.

"You may as well sit down," said Sarria. "It'll be a few minutes yet."

"Thank you," said Fidel.

The two sat. Sarria held his pistol in his hand, but did not point with it or gesture with it dramatically. Frankly, it scared him a little.

"You won't try anything, young man? I'd hate to have to shoot you. In twenty-seven years as a policeman, I have hurt nobody. I would hate this to be the day I had to kill a man."

"I'm too tired," said Castro. "I've been running forever. I need to sleep and eat. They will kill me eventually, I know, but I am beyond caring."

Kill him! Speshnev ordered himself.

He had finished a long squirm through the brush, reached a creek and loped along, leaving the shooter far behind but keeping a bearing on the three policemen and Castro. Three: too many. Pray for a miracle.

He crawled forward, sliding through the earth itself, the floor of jungle rot, feeling the coolness just beneath the surface. He'd shimmied up an embankment, low-crawled some feet, and now was just ten feet away from them.

Then the officer sent the two men off. Now there were just the two of them, the boy and the old negro.

He looked back, and could see the soldiers easing their way down the mountainside, still forty minutes away.

He thought: kill him. Kill the old man.

Work back through the brush, staying out of the sunlight, the open. Reach the boat. It can still be done. The shooter cannot see me, he will not track us.

Kill him!

He reached into his pocket and withdrew a flick knife. With a snap of his wrist, three inches of naked blade spurted out like a lizard's tongue, and locked in place.

Kill him!

At this point it was so easy. The old negro policeman had his gun out, but it rested easily against his thigh, the finger not even on the trigger. Speshnev recognized it as an old Colt revolver, but so beaten and ancient it was clearly not the gun of a pistolero. The man held it so sloppily and with so little tension that it seemed strange to him.

Speshnev looked at him. He was in his fifties, with a face much ravaged by a hard life. Yet his eyes were milky with moisture and depth, surely the sign of a humane man. The men with feelings, they all had eyes like that unless they were insane, and Speshnev had really met few who were completely insane.

He saw how it would happen. He would be upon the old dog so fast, the man would not have time to look up. The knife would flick out, go to the throat, probe and cut the carotid, and the old man would bleed out in seconds.

Then grab the boy, hold him in the treeline, and race along it till their waving and screaming caught the attention of the men in the trawler. Then they could race into the surf, swim outward, and the boat would pick them up.

Do it, he commanded himself.

Yet the old man was so relaxed and without aggression in his body, Speshnev could not find it in himself.

Do it! he commanded again, trying to find the energy for this last, horrible thing.

He was so damned good. God, he was good.

"Shoot him, for Christ sakes," said Frenchy. "Shoot someone."

"If he moves on the cop, I'll shoot him, Junior. Then and only then."

"He's a Red agent."

"He's a man doing a job. We'll see how hard he does it. If I have to, I will. You shut up and keep on the glass."

Through the scope Earl could see the little drama playing out. The sitting policeman with the revolver, the failed, beaten revolutionary, and the Russian agent crouching in the shadows. Earl had picked him up moving west just inside the treeline, a shape flitting through shadows. It took a great game eye to pick up prey like that, through a scope, but Earl had read the land and knew how he'd have to travel to close on the fleeing boy.

He and Frenchy had moved a few hundred yards down the shoreline. They'd gone inland just a bit, where the land rose, and now were two hundred feet up and three hundred yards to the rear. They could see the two men sitting on the beach, and the shadow that had moved into place not long ago, crouching, gathering his strength.

Don't go, Earl thought. I will kill you if you move on him.

He held the rifle just over the head, so if the Russian lurched, he'd rise into the crosshairs, and Earl would fire and the bullet would take him in the spine. He didn't want to, but he also knew that he would.

"You could kill them both, still," Frenchy said. "Do you know what this could mean? It could mean everything for us. It could―"

"Shut up," Earl said.

"Earl, if you don't do this, I can't protect you. You know that. You are on your own. There will be consequences. There are always consequences. Oh, wait, he's getting ready to move."

But Earl had caught it. He watched as the form of the crouching man seemed to settle as if coiling to gather strength. Earl saw one hand low, the other high, and guessed that with one he would block and with the other, he would cut.

But it wouldn't come to that.

I will kill you, Earl thought.

Now. The policeman rose. He leaned over the boy and gave him a touch on the shoulder as if to cheer him up. His defenses were completely relaxed. His mind was far away. He was reaching out in his compassion to settle the boy, who had begun to sob, out of delayed reaction to the events of the last few days.

"There, there," said the old negro lieutenant. "It'll be all right. You are so young. You have plenty of time left."

Do it, Speshnev compelled himself.

He gathered his strength for the spring and the kill and the race to the boat, he drew the knife hand back, he studied the three steps it would take him to close the distance, he took his breath, he calmed himself, he―

He saw the ships.

Two white vessels, closing fast on the trawler, each bearing the flag of the United States of America. Coast Guard cutters.

Speshnev knew he had been betrayed, that killing the policeman to free the boy was pointless. He knew there was no exit. He knew it was over. The cutters surged toward the trawler, blocking its escape.

Speshnev faded back.

Not today, he thought.