Killing Castro

ELEVEN

Garrison went to the airline office on Saturday afternoon. He was wearing the cord suit, a lightweight white shirt, a narrow tie with a quiet foulard pattern. He stopped to light a cigarette, taking a quick look at the three open ticket counters, studying the clerks on duty. One was a girl, young and attractive. A second was a man about twenty-three, bright-eyed and alert, looking proud of his uniform. Garrison went to the third, a fortyish Cuban with a soiled shirt front. The man looked easiest to bribe.

“I want two tickets on a Miami plane tomorrow night,” he said. “Got a pair open?”

The clerk checked his book, admitted that a pair of seats to Miami did in fact exist for a flight leaving Havana Airport at 7:15.

“That’s fine,” Garrison said. He pushed his forged identification paper to the clerk. The man scanned the white slip and nodded approval.

“For two tickets,” the clerk said, “you must have two papers.”

“I only have mine,” Garrison said. “My friend is not with me at the moment.”

The clerk sighed. “It is a rule,” he said.

“A rule which could not be eased?”

The clerk thought it over. Garrison reached for his wallet, managed to open it and extract several bills without making a show of it. He could have bought another forged paper from the old forger on La Avenida Blanco, but he had guessed that it would be simpler and cheaper to bribe the airlines clerk. He put two American twenties on the counter, thought for a moment, then added another twenty to the pile.

The bills vanished. The clerk produced the pair of tickets and sold them to Garrison. Garrison paid with Cuban bills, pocketed his change.

“You must be at the airport by seven,” the clerk said.

“Fine,” Garrison said. “There won’t be any problem at the airport?”

“Not if you have tickets.”

Garrison nodded. He turned and left the airline office, caught a taxi to the Nacional. He stopped at the bar for a drink and nursed it for half an hour. It was a daiquiri, crisp and cool. He sipped his drink and patted the pocket that held his airplane tickets. There might be additional trouble at the airport, of course, but another twenty dollars or so would cure the trouble.

It was all a matter of timing, he thought. Planning and timing, that was the whole thing. The guy who said you couldn’t have your cake and eat it was a man who didn’t work things out carefully enough. If you timed things right, there was no reason in the world why you couldn’t do both.

He ordered another drink, sat over it for ten minutes more, then wandered into the Nacional casino. He won thirty dollars at roulette, lost ten at the crap table, put five more into the slots. He left the casino fifteen dollars to the good, went to the hotel restaurant and spent most of his winnings on a steak dinner. The steak wasn’t quite as rare are he liked it but it was good meat and his appetite was excellent.

He smoked a cigar with his coffee. The waiter brought him an English newspaper and he read the latest story on the attempt on Castro’s life, the ambush that misfired in Oriente. Castro’s limousine had sped to safety in Santiago, leaving the rebels and a detachment of government regulars to battle it out along the roadside. Garrison scanned the story quickly. Nothing much was new—the Communists were claiming the assassination attempt was an American plot, calling attention to the American who had been killed with the rebel forces. There was no identification of the corpse, but the description seemed to fit Matt Garth.

Garrison finished his coffee, folded the newspaper. So they’d tried once, he thought. And they had failed. Well, it figured. He’d been half-hoping one of the other clowns would make things easy for him by shooting Castro and saving him the trouble. Wishful thinking. He had to do it himself, and it had been a waste of money to hire the other four men in the first place. He would kill Castro, and he would wind up with the money and with Estrella, and that would be that.

He paid his check and left a tip. He went outside, walked along the street and around the block, finishing his cigar and tossing the butt into the gutter. On the way back to the hotel he passed the plaza, saw the steps of the Palace of Justice where Castro would speak. They had erected stands where some spectators would be able to sit, had barricades to prevent a mob from starting a riot that might endanger Castro’s life.

Garrison laughed softly. They hadn’t done anything about the windows in the Hotel Nacional. And his window was in the perfect spot. All the barricades in the world wouldn’t stop his rifle bullet.

“Garth is dead,” Turner said.

Hines looked at him. “How do you know?”

“I heard the radio. It’s all over the country, for Christ’s sake. You’d be better off if you could speak the language.”

“Well, what—?”

“Rebel ambush in the east,” Turner said curtly. “It flopped. Castro got through and the ambush force was wiped out. The next day they found a dead American in the middle of things.”

“It was Garth?”

“They didn’t give his name,” Turner said. “But the description fits him. The older fellow—Fenton—was with him, the way I remember it. Fenton must have gotten away.”

Hines didn’t say anything. Turner let his cigarette fall from his lips to the basement floor. He stepped on it, his hands busy with the casing of the bomb. This was his role. He was preparing the bomb, getting it ready for Hines. Then he would leave, would fade into the city and make a home for himself there. He was out the twenty grand now. If the ambush had worked he would have collected it, but now it didn’t matter; even if Hines was successful, he himself was out of the picture. He was a Cuban citizen and that was that.

He sighed, put the bomb down. “Garth is dead,” he repeated. “Do you want to die, Jim?”

“Damnit—”

“Because you will,” he went on. “Win, lose, or draw, you’ll never get out of Cuba alive. You probably won’t get Castro in the first place. The bomb won’t go off.”

“You sure of that?”

“No. I did my best with it and it should explode on impact. But I don’t know a hell of a lot about bombs. It might turn out to be a dud.”

“And it might set off an earthquake in Chile. Don’t tell me everything that might happen, Turner. It doesn’t scare me.”

Turner shook out another cigarette and lit it. “All right,” he said. “Suppose you luck out and the bomb goes off. Suppose you heave it in the right place and you get Castro. Then what?”

“I give up. What?”

“Then they tear you to pieces, you damned fool. You won’t get out of the crowd. They’ll eat you alive.”

“You’re nuts.”

“And if you get away, you still won’t make it out of the country. You think the Luchar babe will lift a finger for you? She doesn’t give a damn if you live or die. She’s a fanatic and fanatics only care about their cause. She wants you to kill Castro. She doesn’t give a flying damn what happens to you after that.”

Hines didn’t say anything.

“Do you want to die, Jim?”

“Go to hell, Turner.”

“Jim—”

Hines was next to him now. Hines reached out a hand, took the cigarette from Turner’s lips, dropped it and squashed it. “I ought to belt you,” Hines said. “I ought to slug you in the mouth.”

“Go ahead.”

“You chickened out,” Hines went on. “Fine. That’s your business and not mine. But I made a hell of a mistake about you, Turner. I really did. Remember that first night. I had you pegged as a guy with guts. I thought, hell, here’s a guy who’s been around, who knows things. I thought you were a real man.”

“I changed a lot.”

“No kidding. You—”

“I learned how to relax. I stopped being hunted. It makes a difference, Jim.”

“You chickened out.”

Turner didn’t say anything. He hadn’t expected to convince Hines but it didn’t hurt to try. And he hadn’t expected to change Hines’ mind about going through with the bombing, but again it hadn’t hurt him to try. If Hines tossed the bomb he was going to get killed. And Turner didn’t want to see that happen. He liked the kid.

Hines said: “I’m not chickening out. You can’t scare me, damnit. You give me a load of crap about the chance of getting away. You think I don’t know that? You think I haven’t been over it a hundred times in my mind? I figure I have one chance in ten of getting away from the plaza. God knows what kind of chance I have of getting out of Cuba; I haven’t even bothered thinking about that part of it yet. I can’t let myself think any further than killing Castro. I can’t afford to. Whatever happens afterward will happen, and that’s all. But don’t try to scare me. It won’t work.”

Turner didn’t say anything for a minute or two. He lit another cigarette, smoked in silence.

Then he said: “I didn’t mean to get on your back, Jim.”

“I know.”

“I was trying to make it easier. Not harder.”

“I know that.” Hines turned away. “You want to make me save myself. I understand. And I’m sorry I called you chicken. That’s a pretty silly word, isn’t it? I don’t know anything about courage, Turner. About bravery, heroism, all that jazz. Sometimes I get the feeling that there’s no such thing as a brave man. A guy does what he has to do and no more. You’ve got an out now. You can stay in Cuba and enjoy yourself. Without that out you’d be braver than hell. If you’ve got a guy cornered then he’s brave. I guess that’s the way it works.”

“Maybe, Jim.”

Hines studied the floor, shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “You want to know something? I’m not even sure any more if I’m getting back at… at Castro because of Joe. Joe was always my big hero, you know, and I had this image of the little brother evening things up for the big brother. That part of it doesn’t fit any more.”

Turner said nothing.

“So I don’t know why I want to kill Castro. Maybe because he ruined my hero for me, maybe some cockeyed reason like that. I don’t know. It’s just something I have to do.”

“Sure.”

“Turner? That bomb’ll go off, won’t it?”

“It ought to.”

“You said something about it turning out to be a dud. Was that just crap?”

“Probably. It should work. But don’t stand around waiting for it, Jim. Throw it and get the hell out.”

“I will.”

Turner stood awkwardly for a moment. Then he clapped a hand on Hines’ shoulder. “Luck,” he said. “I hope you make it.”

“Thanks.”

He turned quickly, took the stairs two at a time.

Señora Luchar was alone in the living room. She asked him if he wanted coffee.

“No thanks,” he said. “I thought I’d go for a walk.”

“Just a walk?”

“A long walk,” he said. “I’ll be staying at a hotel tonight. I’ll meet Hines at the plaza tomorrow. It’s safer that way.”

Her eyes regarded him coolly. “Sit down,” she said. “Have a cup of coffee before you go.”

He had coffee with her. She talked about trivial matters until he had finished the coffee. He watched her, listened to her. Jim was right, he decided. She was like Madame Defarge in the book. She should be knitting a shawl.

“Castro will die tomorrow,” she said.

“I hope so.”

“He had better,” she said.

Her tone accused him of everything from original sin to the crucifixion of Christ. He pretended not to notice the implication in her words, stood up, thanked her for the coffee, left. The old man was still rocking on the porch. Turner smiled at him and kept walking.

He checked into a residential hotel. His citizenship papers were in his wallet and he looked at them in the privacy of his hotel room, smiling quietly to himself. Then he went out to meet Ernesto. He walked easily, arms swinging freely at his sides. He was a free man now. He was safe. Tomorrow Hines would live or die, and tomorrow Fidel Castro would live or die, but neither of these lives or deaths were any of his concern any longer. He had done what he could do.

Now he had his own life to live.

Garrison was alone until a few minutes after ten. This evening, however, was different from all the other evenings he had spent alone. Other nights he had relaxed, listening to music, taking things easy. Tonight he was tense. He paced the floor, walked back and forth until he thought he was going to wear out the carpet or walk the heels off his shoes. He went again and again to the window to look out across to the steps of the Palace of Justice.

It was the night before the job.

But that was no reason to be tense. He had always been the icy one, the man who could eat a heavy meal, go out and commit murder for a fee, then go home and have another big meal and sleep soundly for ten straight hours. The perfect emotionless, steel-nerved killer. The pro, with a good professional attitude and solid, perpetual calmness.

And now he was tense. Tense, nervous, edgy. Somebody down the hall slammed a window shut and he nearly jumped off the edge of the bed. Tense, nervous, edgy. Three or four times he opened the dresser drawer and took out the bottle of light rum, but each time he put it away. Solitary drinking was bad any time, especially bad the night before a job. And he didn’t need a drink that badly.

When Estrella came at thirteen minutes after ten he drew her inside, closed and bolted the door, found two clean water tumblers in the bathroom and filled them each a third of the way with light rum. They touched glasses and drank the liquor. Her eyes questioned him but he only smiled back at her.

They drank the rum, drained their glasses, put them down. Garrison reached for the girl and she came into his arms quickly and eagerly, her mouth raised for his kiss, her hard breasts thrusting into his chest. He held her close, kissed her. Her tongue darted out, plunged into his mouth. Her arms were tight around him, holding him.

He undressed her, undressed himself. She stretched out on the bed and he lay beside her, fondling her breasts, kissing her, telling her now that he loved her. He was surprised by the way the words felt to him. They felt true; more, he had to say them.

Preliminaries were over quickly. The need was too great now; he couldn’t wait to have her, couldn’t kiss and stroke, couldn’t help throwing himself upon her and stabbing into her, needing the warmth of her embrace, needing the way her passion rose to meet his own.

It was fundamentally different this time. Far more intense, although that seemed impossible to Garrison. And this time, far more necessary, far more essential. He needed the girl in his arms, needed her with him, near him.

It was the need that assured him that he was playing things correctly. Need was something new. All along, from the early years in Birch Fork through the war years to the present, Ray Garrison had never needed anyone. He was always his own man, always a lone man in an alien world. Now…

He could not leave her in Cuba.

Afterward, while she lay stretched out on the bed in the warm afterglow of love, he walked to his dresser, took the wallet from one of the top drawers.

“What you doing, ’arper?”

He took out the two airplane tickets and passed them to her.

“To Miami?” she asked, her voice uncertain, tremulous.

“That’s right,” he said. “To Miami. We’re leaving tomorrow night. You have to be at the airport by seven. I’ll meet you there.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Mañana noche. At the airport, at seven o’clock. Can you remember that?”

“I remember,” she said. Her eyes were bright, happy. “I love you, ’arper.”

“Yeah,” he said. “You’ve got to go now, honey. Put your clothes on and go back to wherever the hell you live. And don’t come here tomorrow. Go straight to the airport. Be there on time. Hell, get there early so there’s no chance of a foul-up. I’ll meet you.”

“Okay. I love you, ’arper.”

“Then why the hell are you crying?”

“Because I am ’appy.”

He sat next to her, kissed the tears from her eyes.

He held her, patted her. Her eyes adored him.

“You better get going,” he said.

“Don’ you wan’ me to stay tonight?”

“Not tonight,” he said.

She pouted.

“We’ll have plenty of nights,” he told her. “We’ll go to America. We’ll have the rest of our lives, Estrella. I have to be alone tonight, and tomorrow. I’ll meet you at the airport.”

She was a woman who knew better than to argue. She kissed him, got dressed, kissed him again, took the tickets and left. By the time she was out the door he wanted to go after her, to tell her he had changed his mind and that he wanted her to stay. He took another quick jolt of rum instead and walked once more to the window. The shade was drawn. He raised it and squinted out through the darkness.

Less than twenty hours. He would have to shoot Castro by six. Then the gun would go back into the mattress, and then he’d hurry downstairs and take a taxi to the airport. Estrella would be there. The plane would take them to Miami, where they would pick up the money from Hiraldo. It would be twenty-five grand at least, since Garth’s share would get re-distributed. Maybe more—maybe thirty-three, if Garth’s partner caught a bullet of his own.

That meant no more jobs, no more of the gun-for-hire routine. With that much capital, plus the several grand he had in banks around the country, he could open some kind of business, could buy himself a soft touch that would let him retire from the trigger-pulling racket.

He tried to go to sleep but it didn’t work out. He wasn’t relaxed enough to sleep; the job loomed in front of him, worrying him, and his eyes stayed open. He gave up, switched the light on and got a cigarette going.

He wished the job was over and done with. It scared him, this one, and it was the first job to have such an effect upon him. He’d pulled plenty of tougher ones, had filled contracts for the syndicate that made this particular hit child’s play in comparison. But this was the one that had him on edge.

He knew why.

On the other jobs, before Estrella, he had been on his own, rootless, empty. Now he had something to lose.

Saturday night Earl Fenton stormed the garrison at San Luis.

He did this alone, because he was alone now. He had been living for two days in the hills; living alone, traveling alone, sleeping alone. He had been living with cancer inside him, living with the sure foreknowledge of death and with the memory of the death of others. The memory of carnage, of Maria shooting Garth in the head, of Manuel screaming before they castrated him, of Jiminez blown to pieces by a grenade, of Maria growing weaker and weaker until she died in his arms.

He moved in silence through the hills. His Sten gun stayed always in his hands, and over his shoulder he carried a musette bag with extra clips for the gun and what food he had been able to salvage from the camp. The pain of the cancer was bad now. The disease was spreading like wildfire through his whole body, and there were times when he would cough uncontrollably while arrows of pain shot through his flesh.

Saturday, around midnight, he made his attack. San Luis was a small town a few miles to the north of Santiago. There was a detachment of soldiers stationed there. Fenton attacked them.

He killed the sentry with a knife. He crept up behind the man on silent feet, plunging the knife he had taken from a corpse into the throat of the sentry who was to become a corpse in his turn. The man died in silence and Fenton stole into one of the barracks.

He sprayed the interior with the Sten gun. He killed fourteen men before a single one of them was entirely awake. Most of them died in their sleep. The rest opened their eyes momentarily and closed them forever.

The gunfire brought soldiers from the other barracks. Fenton put a fresh clip in his Sten gun and readied himself for the charge. He threw himself under a bunk bed, sent out a burst of fire to greet the soldiers who charged into the area. Another group tried to enter through a window and he shot them dead.

They used tear gas. He ran after the first shell and threw it out at them, but the second one went off and filled the small wooden building with thick, eye-burning smoke. He knew better than to try to hold out against it. He broke open the Sten gun and fitted it with a full clip, his last. He left the musette bag behind and raced outside, his finger on the Sten gun’s trigger.

He did not stop shooting. He was surrounded and bullets came at him from all angles, but Fenton stubbornly refused to go down. He fired a full clip at the soldiers before he slumped and died.

The soldiers searched the barracks. They couldn’t believe that this one little man had been the only invader, but there was no one else around, no one but their own dead soldiers.

Someone took the trouble to count the bullets in Fenton. There were sixty-three of them. Machine gun slugs had almost torn him in half.

And, strangest of all, what was left of his face seemed to be smiling.

Hines awoke early Sunday morning. The room was dark because sunlight never reached the basement. He switched on a light and glanced at his watch. It was not yet seven. He tried catching another hour’s sleep but found it impossible. He got out of bed, washed, dressed.

At eight o’clock Señora Luchar brought him breakfast—oatmeal, fresh fruits, biscuits and coffee. She left him and he tried to eat. The food stuck in his throat. He could not possibly have been less hungry.

When she came down for the tray she saw that he had eaten nothing. “There is something wrong with the food?” she said. “You cannot eat it?”

“The food’s fine. I’m not hungry.”

“You are nervous?”

He said nothing because he did not know how to answer her. He was not nervous, not exactly. He wasn’t sure how to describe the feelings he had. He looked at his watch. The time was crawling.

“You should eat. Today will be an important day. Murder is hard work and work is difficult on an empty stomach.”

Hard work? All he had to do was toss a bomb in the air. But her words somehow intimidated him. He picked up his fork and ate some of his food. Then he drank the coffee.

“An important day,” she went on. “And you are doing something for Cuba as well as for your brother, Hines. That, too, is important.”

She left him, sparing him the need to answer her. Between then and noon he went four times to the work bench, and four times he picked up the bomb and hefted it in his hand. It was cylindrical, roughly the size and shape of a can of beer, although of course much heavier. Each time he replaced the bomb on the bench and went back to his bunk.

He no longer thought of giving it all up, of running to the Swiss consulate and asking for asylum. He was committed now, and he did not even think of backing down. At noon he left the house. It was not time yet—Castro’s speech was scheduled to start at five, the hour of bull fights. Hines remembered the García Lorca poem, the one in which every other line was a las cinco de la tarde, at five in the afternoon. A chilling, sobering poem about a bullfighter gored to death in the ring—

But he couldn’t stay around the house. He waved a hand at the Luchar woman, nodded at the old man rocking stonily on the porch. He headed for the Plaza of the Revolution where Castro would speak. Already people were gathering. He would have to arrive early to get a good position.

But how early? He found a Cuban man who spoke English, told him he wanted to see Castro speak, asked him how soon he would have to be there to get a good spot in the crowd.

The man looked at him. “You are a Yankee?”

“Yes.”

“That is good, then,” the Cuban said. “More Yankees should hear Fidel speak. There would be less trouble if you Yankees listened to our Fidel.”

The man told him three o’clock would be time enough. Hines thanked him and left the square. He walked to a small lunch counter next door to the Hotel Nacional and had a cup of coffee. On an impulse he bought a pack of cigarettes and tried to smoke one. He choked on it and put it out, leaving the pack on the counter.

He went back to the house, went downstairs to the basement. Señora Luchar brought him a fresh pot of coffee and a bottle of whiskey to spike it with. He mixed whiskey and coffee half and half and drank a great quantity of it. The whiskey did not seem to have any effect on him. He did not get at all high. But the whiskey did counteract the coffee, which made him sweaty and irritable when he had too much of it.

At two-thirty he put on a loose jacket and tucked the bomb into one pocket of it. He said goodbye to Señora Luchar and left the house. She told him she wished him good luck and he thanked her. The old man on the porch said buena suerte and Hines smiled at him.

He walked to the Plaza de la Revolution, acutely aware of the way the bomb bulged his pocket and waiting every minute for someone to notice, to tap him on the shoulder, to place him under arrest. No one bothered him. He made his way to the square where a thick crowd was already forming. He inched forward in the crowd, securing a perfect vantage point not at all far from the steps of the palace.

He was sweating. He was not sure whether it was the coffee, the crowd or the heat that made him perspire, or whether his fear was causing it. But somehow he was not really afraid. Fear ceased to have anything to do with it any more, just as logic had flown the coop not long ago. It was three o’clock. Castro would begin his speech in two hours. And the steps where he would stand were just a stone’s throw away.

A stone’s throw. Or a bomb’s throw.

Turner sat in a café on La Calle de Trabajadores. His hotel room had no television set and he wanted to see Castro’s speech. He drank bottled beer and watched the screen of the café’s set.

At four-thirty a movie ended and the channel began coverage of the speech. Castro was not yet due to arrive for an hour, but the television cameras began by panning the crowd while the announcer killed time by reading news bulletins in rapid Spanish.

Today, Turner thought. Today, while I sit here drinking this beer in this café. Today.

Maybe he was making a mistake. Maybe he should be with Hines. Maybe the kid was right to call him chicken. Maybe he was copping out, turning yellow.

But what good could he do? One man could throw a bomb as well as two. One man could blow up a dictator as well as two. And one man could surely die as well as two.

To hell with it. He had his own life to live. And if Jim Hines had his own death to die, well, that was his own damned business. And not Turner’s.

He sipped his beer and watched the screen.

At a quarter to five Garrison locked and bolted his door. He took out a small penknife and slashed his mattress open again, pulling the high-powered rifle free. His window shade was drawn. Garrison broke down the gun, cleaned it, loaded it with a single bullet. When you are paid high prices for murder, you do not need more than one bullet. Not with an expensive rifle fitted with a scope sight and zeroed in on a stationary target. One bullet was plenty.

He switched off the light in the room. That way there was much less chance of drawing attention from the street. Then he raised the shade a few inches and planted himself in a chair by the window. Castro hadn’t arrived yet but the plaza was jammed already, filled with a noisy mass of people. It was odd, sitting above them all in solitary comfort, knowing something that they could not know. Like watching a movie when you knew the ending in advance. A special feeling, a combination of superiority and, somehow, disappointment.

At five minutes to five he got the rifle in position. He propped a pillow on the windowsill, then rested the rifle upon it. The pillow would steady the gun, absorb a certain amount of the recoil, and muffle a certain amount of the noise. He knelt by the window and held tight to the rifle. He sighted in on the speaker’s platform on the steps of the Palace of Justice.

Castro appeared at four minutes after the hour. His soldiers cleared a path for him through the crowd and the big bearded man walked up the path to the platform. He wore his usual uniform—army boots, a field jacket, khaki slacks, thick flowing beard. He stepped upon the platform and the applause thundered.

The applause did not stop. Garrison watched Castro, the man he had to kill. He watched him first over the rifle, then through the sight. The hairline cross in the scope was centered upon Castro’s face, between his full mouth and his hawk-like nose. Garrison’s finger touched the trigger, gently.

Not yet, he thought. Not for an hour, maybe. Because the less time he spent in Cuba after he squeezed that trigger, the safer it was. They could figure out where the bullet came from. They could run him down, meet him at the airport—

Something else was bothering him, he realized. It took him a while to figure out what it was.

He did not want to kill Castro.

Looking at his victim through the gunsight, seeing that hairline cross that marked the bullet’s target, he knew suddenly that he did not want to kill this man. This man was not like any of his other targets, and he couldn’t expect to get away as easily afterwards. They might well catch him, here or at the airport, and if they caught him at the airport, they’d get Estrella, too.

He didn’t want to think about what they would do to her.

Before, he might have risked it. Before, when it was just him. Now, he didn’t want to.

But he had to—it was his job, wasn’t it?

Not any more. He was quitting. The Cubans—Hiraldo and his boys—were not the syndicate. He could blow the job without worrying about any backlash. They wouldn’t kill him for it the way the outfit boys would.

But the money—he needed the dough, didn’t he?

No, he thought. No, not really. He had maybe seven or eight grand set aside here and there throughout the States. With that much dough you could get set up nicely selling rifles and shotguns and shells in a medium-sized town. It wasn’t a bad business and it was one he knew inside and out. Maybe pick up a few spare bucks giving shooting lessons or taking out hunting parties. And gunsmith work, gun repair. He knew the business and you didn’t need more than what dough he already had to get started. And Estrella could help out in the store until they got going. And someday his kids could come into the business with him.

He looked through the scope sight again. Castro was speaking now. He saw the muscles knotted in the thick neck, heard the booming voice. The crowd was silent now. Everyone listened to the man, to Fidel Castro. Everyone heard his voice and followed his words.

Estrella was going to be at the airport at seven. They would catch a plane to Miami. Then they could clear out the bank accounts, look for a shop. Maybe some medium-sized town in Washington, maybe Oregon. It was good country up there. His country, the country he had been born in.

But twenty grand—

He looked at Castro. Automatically his finger found the trigger, caressed it.

No.

No, because there was too much to lose now. He brought the rifle back from its perch and returned it to its place in the slashed mattress. He put the sheets and blankets back on the bed and tucked them in. He returned the pillow from the windowsill to the bed, closed the window, drew the shade. Now to check out. Or, better yet, now to leave. If he checked out they might unmake the bed and find the gun. If he left he would be in Miami before a maid saw the inside of the room. They could keep his luggage as payment for the bill he would be skipping. All except the volume of Rimbaud. He got the book, slipped it into a pocket. He would have to try reading Rimbaud to Estrella. She might like the poems.

He was halfway to the door when the bomb went off.

The noise was tremendous. Garrison wheeled around, ran to the window. He raised the shade and stared out.

Castro was dead. That was the first thing he saw—Fidel Castro, his legs blown away, his blood flowing freely. Castro, sprawling legless across the nearly demolished speakers’ platform. Other men, near him, screaming, wounded, dying.

Then Garrison looked for the bomber. The whole crowd was in a turmoil, women shrieking, children crying, men shouting. Police officers fired their guns into the air. A riot seemed imminent.

And then Garrison spotted the one who’d thrown the bomb. It was a kid, he saw, a young kid hardly old enough to shave. And then he recognized the kid. It was Hines, one of the four others from Hiraldo’s confab in Tampa. Hines had done it—Hines had thrown the bomb and killed Castro.

Now Garrison stood watching Hines pay the penalty.

It was an awful penalty. The crowd mobbed the boy, grabbing at him, kicking at him. Garrison looked on in silence as the crowd beat Hines to death before his eyes. By the time the police forced their way through the crowd, Hines was dead. He lay on the ground. Broken, dead.

Garrison sat for a moment. He smoked a cigarette, ground it out in an ashtray. Then he left the room and the hotel.

The money was waiting for him in Miami. But he knew instinctively that it was money he would never touch. He had done nothing to earn it. Whatever fraction of the hundred thousand was his, he didn’t need it. He would manage on what he had of his own.

He waded through the turmoil around the hotel, fought his way through the screaming, anguished crowd. Three blocks away, he found a taxi and told the driver to take him to the airport.

Would Estrella be there? Would she have heard the news and fled, to whatever dim corner of the city she called her home? Or would she loyally be waiting for him, nervousness showing in her eyes, attracting the attention of airport officials around her?

Were any flights even going to be permitted, or would all planes now be grounded, all would-be passengers scrutinized by armed police officers, subjected to interrogation at any sign of anxiety or hint of guilty knowledge?

The airport building loomed in the taxi windshield.

Garrison had never been nervous before, on any of his jobs. He’d killed many men, and his hands had never shaken, before or after. Now he’d done nothing, killed no one—but he felt his palms sweating.

Estrella would be there, he told himself.

She would be there, and he would take her away with him.

He opened the door.