Havana

Chapter 47

By the time the soldiers got them back to Santiago, and Frenchy had made his report to headquarters, another day had passed. Moncada still bore signs of the gunfight waged there almost a week before, except that by now the burned cars had been removed and the shot-out windows boarded up. From there, they caught a cab to go back to the hotel.

It was a time of much revelry, as if carnival had been extended magically. On all the newspapers, the headlines screamed: FIDEL FINITO. There was a famous picture, taken at the village of Sevilla, of the hangdog young revolutionary and his humane captor, the negro lieutenant named Sarria, now as famous as Fidel himself. The radios blared with official announcements from the president stating his pride in the security forces of Cuba, and saying that after the Cuban way, the bad son Fidel would receive a fair trial-this to counteract all the terrible news of the torture and murder of the revolutionaries. Meanwhile the communists, the laborites, the socialists, the ortodoxos all denounced Castro as a putschist, unwilling to apply the principles of democracy to the process of change, and demanded excessive punishment. Everybody hated him, except of course the people.

Maybe that is why the streets were so full and the music so loud, maybe that is why the rum flowed so freely and the fireworks detonated so brightly. Whatever, it was a slow journey through the packed streets to the great Hotel Casa Grande at the Plaza de Armas. Both men were exhausted and dirty and wrung out from what had passed. But finally it was Frenchy who spoke.

"I just want you to know what you threw away. You threw away any chance of succeeding with the Agency, of rising in it. Do you understand that, Earl? You are a very great man, a hero, but you are a stubborn son of a bitch and you have betrayed me and made me look foolish."

Earl let him blare on.

"Do you realize that this means no move to Washington? No big house in McLean? No good school for your―"

"Are you done yet? I'm tired."

They reached the hotel.

"Earl, I'm very sorry. I tried to help you. I still can't believe you did this to me. Earl, I can't help you any more."

"You see this rifle gets back to the marines at Gitmo, right?"

"Fuck the rifle. There's more important issues than the rifle."

"Not to me. You see this rifle gets back or I'll take it personally."

Frenchy swallowed at Earl's hard glare and the implied threat, and said nothing.

Earl turned, left the car, and climbed up the stairs to the porch. He needed a shower and a night's rest before heading back to Havana, by what means he was not yet sure. He just knew that's where the airport was.

"Senor?"

"Yeah?"

Three Cuban state policemen in those brown-green uniforms were waiting up there for him.

"You have a visa?"

"What?"

"A visa, senor?"

"I came in with a congressman. It was an official―"

"You have no visa, senor, you must come with us. This is against the law."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"It is the law, senor. In Cuba we always obey the law."

Then two other policemen joined the three, then three more. Swarming him, they moved him to the black paddy wagon that had just arrived, and took him away.