October's Ghost

CHAPTER NINE PARRY AND THRUST

“You’re going over when, Thursday next week?” Bud asked.

“Leaving late Wednesday,” Secretary of State James Coventry answered. He lifted his briefcase onto the coffee table in the NSA’s office and opened it. Pieces of furniture meant for more congenial purposes had been warped into usage as map tables, surrogate desks during crises, and, most commonly, as feeding troughs for the assorted visiting non-dignitaries. Bud’s dark cherry model was piled with stacks of briefing and position papers on the proposed retargeting agreements. “Here,” Coventry said, unloading another stack for the wide-eyed NSA.

“Thanks,” Bud said, running his hand over his head to the back of his neck, where he pressed tightly on the muscles. A quick neck rotation completed the attempt at relief.

“This is everything I have on the British side of this. There’s some interesting stuff going back to parliamentary discussions about the initial Polaris deployment.” Coventry was well known for his level of preparedness, a process he seemingly accomplished with ease. Bud knew better. The man worked his ass off, rarely relying solely on his staff to research important matters. As such, he expected that everyone else would be as prepared. It was motivating, and, at times, maddening.

“You want me to look it over?” It was an unnecessary question, Bud knew. But at least he could hope.

“If you could. Let me know if there’s anything you think should be—”

The NSA’s phone buzzed. He stood from the small couch and went around the desk, sitting before picking it up. “DiContino.”

“Bud, it’s Gordy. I’ve got a call you better take.” FBI Director Gordon Jones sounded out of breath.

“Sure. What is it?”

“One of my agents in Los Angeles has something you had better hear. His name’s Art Jefferson.”

Jefferson. Yeah. Bud remembered from the debriefing conferences after the Flight 422 hijacking. He was the guy in L.A. who found the person who helped the assassins and… Had a heart attack after his partner was shot. Went back to street duty. Supposed to be a pit bull when it came to investigations. “Yeah, I remember him.” Bud checked his watch. It was already after ten on the East Coast, nearing the end of another nineteen-hour day. “Urgent?”

“I’m afraid so, Bud.” Jones went very quiet. “We may have big trouble in Cuba.”

Cuba? Bud looked at the phone. The call had come in on a secure line. “What the hell is going on?”

Coventry perked up and was waved over by Bud. The NSA reached into his desk drawer and retrieved a plug-in headset for the phone. He attached it and handed it to the secretary.

“Jefferson’s on another line. I’m going to put him through.”

“Okay. I’ve got Jim Coventry here on the extension.”

“What’s up?” Coventry asked.

Cuba, Bud mouthed, for which he got an appropriate Oh, shit in response.

“Hello?”

“Jefferson? This is Bud DiContino. How is the connection?”

“Fine, sir. I’m in the Los Angeles field off—”

“Director Jones told me where you are. What is going on?”

“You’re not going to believe it.”

Five minutes later, after a call to the White House Library to soothe his doubts, Bud had no choice but to believe that which he would rather have dreamed.

Art Jefferson sealed the original cassette in a security pouch and handed it to two agents. “LAX fast. A plane is waiting.”

The investigation was no longer only the search for the murderers of a federal officer. It was now much more, though only the three agents who had heard the tape and the Deputy A-SAC were privy to what was actually happening. All the others knew was that the Melrose Hit was now something beyond even a priority-one investigation.

Art turned to the eight teams remaining around his cubicle. The rest had already been dispatched on various assignments. “Okay. We don’t have much time. We have to find the shooters, and we have to find Sullivan. You all have a picture of him, and Frankie passed around the computer sketches of our perps. But the best thing we have on them right now is the car. License is no good, but they had to get it somewhere. If it’s a stolen, there’s probably a report. No one with a new car would not miss it if it was gone this long.”

“Unless they were quieted, too,” one of the agents surmised.

“We’ll deal with that if we come to it. If it’s not a stolen, then it probably was a rental. We have a good description, so the rental agencies might give us something on that front. What we need are names. Names.” Art’s stare was motivating and somewhat frightening. “We need to know who these guys are.”

“What about the van you saw at the hit?”

“Nothing there,” Frankie answered. “Haven’t been able to locate the R.O. of it. Your thought about a dead owner not saying anything may be true on this one, but we just don’t know.”

The time was slipping away. Art knew the bureaucrats in D.C. would be playing their games, wasting time before acting, but he was not about to let that happen here. He had heard the tape. It was real to him. Let them debate its authenticity, he thought. He had better things to do. “You have your assignments. Let’s get to it.”

Within a minute the teams were gone from Art and Frankie’s area. Two would be going directly to Parker Center, headquarters of the LAPD, to begin running computer checks on stolen vehicles that might match the one they were after. The other six would be hitting the phones, contacting every car-rental company in the county and some outside of it.

Art and his partner had another avenue to follow.

“Did Bill give it to you?”

Frankie handed it over. “Quite a list. Sullivan is the consummate bar-hopper.”

The list was twenty names long, denoting every watering hole or lounge Sullivan was known to frequent by his co-workers. “We won’t make it any shorter by sitting here.” Art took the keys from the desk. “I’ll drive.”

“Good,” Frankie said. “Not my favorite thing, you know.”

“Driving?”

“No. Looking for some drunk at a bar.” Frankie put her coat on. “Did enough of that shit with my ex.”

“Well, you don’t have to take this one home with you.”

Thank God for small miracles, Aguirre thought.

“What does he want?” Merriweather asked, noting that it was ten minutes past the time he had planned to leave for his late flight down to Florida to meet with the CFS representatives.

Greg Drummond sat across the room from his boss, the long fingers of clouds backlit by the moon visible through the DCI’s seventh-floor office window. “He said it was urgent. He can make calls like this.”

The DCI grunted. He had little time for men like DiContino, and afforded even less to those lower on the political totem pole. His office, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, was a Cold War relic that could be done away with in Merriweather’s estimation.

“Pete’s back tomorrow?” The DCI inquired. Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Pete Miner, the Agency’s number-two man, was in Seoul to brief the new South Korean president on the elusive, but very real, nuclear weapons program in the North. Miner was the occupant of an equally unnecessary position in the DCI’s mind. An agency properly run could do with fewer layers at the top. Oh, well. He still had plenty of time to turn Langley’s 1950s-vintage machinery into a more efficient operation for the turn of the century.

“A week from tomorrow,” Drummond corrected. So he’s no use to you, either. “He’s stopping off in Japan after Seoul.”

“Of course.” The intercom buzzed, but it was not to be answered. “He’s here. About time. I asked the desk to give me some warning. Ready for the show?” Merriweather smiled as if he expected the DDI to understand.

Bud DiContino walked in, his hands empty. He closed the door behind with a forceful shove. Easy, Bud. “Anthony. Greg. Your Cuban operation just walked through my door.”

“What?” the DCI asked, not really caring what the NSA was about to say, but curious as to what would motivate a desperate display such as this. You weren’t supposed to be a hothead, DiContino.

Bud took a seat in one of the wing backs next to the DDI. “The Russians may have left Cuba in ‘62 one missile short.”

“What!” Drummond practically yelled, looking to his boss. The man had an almost bewildered stare on his face.

“And where did you come upon this information, James?” Merriweather inquired, instinctively jotting notes on his legal pad, his manner still outwardly cool.

“The FBI in Los Angeles was investigating the murder of one of their agents and of another man — actually more of an elimination — who turned out to be an assistant to Castro’s Russian-language interpreter during the missile crisis. His killers were apparently after a tape he was in possession of, but they didn’t get it. The agents did.”

“And you believe this man’s assertion of who he was.”

“I checked it out, Anthony. The library pulled the Officials, Officers, and Contacts for ‘62. Listed as the number-two man for Russian translations was Francisco Portero, now a very dead corpse in the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office. He also had diplomatic status with the UN until a year ago. That was when he defected.”

The DDI stood and picked up the phone on Merriweather’s desk without prompting, calling the Records Section of the Latin America Desk to confirm the information himself. Leak or no leak, this he had to ask.

Merriweather was genuinely unconcerned, for his own reasons, and it showed. He was going to play this out just for the NSA’s benefit, and at the end there would be a very clear lesson in it for him: Don’t screw with my ops!

“So just how did this happen? The Russians miscount or something?”

All right, asshole. “The Cubans took one. Snatched it just before the pullout was supposed to happen.” Bud went on to explain the contents of the tape, portions of which he had heard over the phone with an FBI agent in Los Angeles translating.

“Wait right there.” Merriweather laughed openly. “Are you trying to tell me you believe the Russians would have allowed Castro to steal one of their nukes? Well, James, take me through the looking glass. I’m waiting.”

It was time for some reciprocation. “History, right, Anthony?” He knew it was. “How long did Khrushchev last after the crisis? Eh? Less than two years. Tell me, do you think he would have lasted that long if he’d had to go to war with an ally? Christ, he just had his face slapped by Kennedy, practically, and you think he had the wherewithal to face something even more embarrassing?”

“Confirmed,” Drummond said, hanging the phone up. “Francisco Portero was the backup interpreter. Trained by Sergei Leonov,” the DDI added, referring to the headmaster at Moscow’s Higher Institute of Languages in the fifties.

Bud looked to the DCI. His expression had changed a bit.

Parry and thrust. “Your point is well taken, but how would Khrushchev have kept this quiet? His inner circle, particularly the military, would not have accepted him just saying ‘Oh, by the way, the Cubans have decided they wish to retain one of our nuclear weapons.’” He smirked, seemingly unconvinced.

“The tape indicates that Castro forced Khrushchev into a cover story, something about an explosion just before the pullout was announced. That was how he could explain the loss of the missile crew and the warhead. Just burned up in a fireball.” Bud wondered if the Soviet government of the day had questioned the potential of fallout from a good amount of plutonium going up in smoke. Right — the same folks who tested aboveground weapons just fifty miles from populated areas. The care factor was never much to mention on their part.

Fireball? Missile crew? Something clicked in the DDI’s head, but he wasn’t sure what exactly it was.

“It is a very engaging story, James, but more fable than thesis, I would say.” So far there was nothing, Merriweather knew. Nothing to worry about. It was all right to push a little. “But, given the seriousness of the possibility, I suppose you are planning to confirm this.”

“And just how do you propose we do that?” Bud asked angrily, tired of the DCI’s minimalization of the risk.

“We?” Merriweather laughed, an event uncharacteristic enough to be noteworthy. “You, James. The Agency is quite busy at the moment. I mean, an entire missile! Not everything went up in smoke in that fireball, I presume. There must be something to corroborate the story.”

That’s it! Drummond shouted inwardly. “There may be.”

Merriweather’s head swung sharply toward his deputy. “What are you talking about?”

The DDI looked to both men, choosing the NSA to explain to. “Our man down in Cuba reported coming upon a graveyard with a couple dozen Russian names on the headstones. No birth years, but the date of passing was ‘62 on those he could read.”

The NSA saw Merriweather bite his lip. “You were part of the review conference back in ‘92, Greg, weren’t you?”

“Yeah. Thirtieth anniversary and all. I also did a paper for the study group on the basing scheme chosen by the Soviets back then. Jeez, that was ‘78, I think.” The DDI had come right out of the Air Force and into the Agency, working his way up to chief analyst, Soviet Desk, in a very short time. His position now was the culmination of a hell of a lot of hard work and some risky calls that had panned out.

“Where was the burial site?” Bud asked.

“South of Santa Clara.” The DDI paused, verifying the information in his mental register. “Yeah. An old Jesuit monastery was there. The section chief is still running all the stuff down for the reports.” Drummond lit up. The NSA’s train of thought was now apparent. “Did he know where the missile was taken from?”

“There was mention of ‘associated units’ departing from La Isabela. North central coast, I think.”

“Right.” Drummond’s mind checked the information just presented with the data he still retained from his research for the basing report. “Sagua la Grande. Just south of La Isabela. Dammit, yes. The Russians had several MRBMs in the area. The one known as MRBM Site One carried out a full mating exercise the day before the pull out. It went on into the evening. The low-level recon couldn’t see it anymore after that.”

“Mating what?” the DCI demanded more than asked. His cool hold on events was starting to slip.

“Part of a readiness check,” Drummond began. “They bring the warhead out of storage and mate it up with the booster. Then they fuel the thing and put it on the pad.”

“KGB had the warheads, though,” Merriweather countered. “How would you get them out of the way?”

The DDI thought for a moment. “This was the night before the pullout. If I remember correctly, the KGB units started a move to secure the ports late that evening. We always suspected they had some advance warning before the Radio Moscow broadcast the next morning. Anyway, they had to split their force, leaving only a token force with each warhead. Remember, most were in storage, all grouped together. They had fifteen-man details augmented by Cuban forces when they did one of these mating exercises. Cut that in half, and you have seven men, plus twenty or so generally unarmed missile crewmen.”

“Cubans helped in the security?” Bud asked. Merriweather met the look the NSA shot his way this time.

“Right.”

“They had opportunity, Anthony,” Bud said. “I doubt you’ll argue that Castro had the motivation.”

How could he? The DCI knew his history better than most. The Cuban leader had been furious when the Soviets pulled out their missiles, at one point even demanding that they fire the weapons at the United States if an invasion appeared imminent. Castro’s knowledge of the withdrawal before it occurred had been alleged, even substantiated, by former Soviet Politburo members. Why wouldn’t Castro have wanted to humiliate Khrushchev, and get his hands on a very big bargaining chip in the process?

“Motive and opportunity, Anthony. And a smoking gun,” Bud said.

The DCI could say nothing. His parry had been negated and his thrust had dissipated to nothingness. Could it really be? “That’s pretty thin smoke you’re blowing.”

“Thin, my ass!” Bud exploded. “You want to wait ‘til he has an opportunity to use it?”

“If it actually exists,” Merriweather shot back. He wasn’t going to go so easily. Couldn’t go easily. “All you have is a recording alleging to portray the events you described. It’s a good story, I’ll grant you, but it’s more fable than thesis. And the names in the graveyard— they’re Russian. So what? How many Russians have served in Cuba? Maybe a plane went down, or a truck turned over. Why don’t you try and confirm that they aren’t just a platoon of infantrymen killed in a crash?”

He would have to do that, the NSA knew. But the reality of that was not a hindrance; it was an opportunity. How to do it was the problem that was mated to the opportunity. How would he do it? They couldn’t just ask the Russians for the information, because that would likely lead to a revelation of what had been discovered. Not good timing, telling the Russians that the Cubans had one of their old nukes when their radars were down. Plus there were enough hard-liners in government that any revelation to the Russian president might find its way through them to Castro. One more stab at the imperialist West. And if this turned out to be a real threat, what would Castro do if he discovered that his enemies to the north were aware of the missile? Use it or lose it. No, anticipating that it was credible, their best defense at the moment was secrecy. To get the Russians to open up their records was just not… Of course!

“A good idea, Anthony. That way we’ll have corroboration.”

What? “How…?”

Bud explained for just a minute.

“You can’t just go off and use my people to play your games! I sure as hell won’t authorize it, and that means your only hope is with the—”

“With the Man,” Bud completed the sentence with his own twist. “But first he has to be filled in.” The NSA stood. “You want to join me, Anthony?”

This ride to the White House, though silent and filled with contemplation of a very serious matter, would be one of the most enjoyable Bud DiContino had ever taken. Welcome to my turf, Mr. Director.

Two BTR-60PB armored personnel carriers led the way along the road. It was paved, much to the delight of the convoy’s commanding officer. His unit had been running supplies since the opening of hostilities, and most of those runs had been on the overused dirt tracks that cut through the more vegetated, and less open, areas of the countryside. The cover he was thankful for, but the speed was a third, at best, of that which he could make on the paved surface.

This time, however, it had been not a decision of choice, but of necessity. The ten fully loaded tank trucks behind his escorting BTRs would have bogged down before passing through Cienfuegos. That was not the stretch of the journey that concerned him, though. It was the road he was on now. And he was running it under a bright moon.

“Lieutenant, the troops at the rear of the convoy report that one of the tankers has broken down.”

“Damn!” the lieutenant swore at the situation reported by his driver. “Leave it. Tell them to have the driver try and repair it. We must move on.”

“Yes, sir.”

The lieutenant, standing in the BTR’s open hatch, looked to the bright white ball that was sinking slowly toward the hills northwest of Cienfuegos and willed it to hurry into its rest for the night. Darkness was a convoy runner’s friend. Darkness and speed, he reminded himself, adding luck almost as an afterthought.

“Wait for the escorts to pass,” the sergeant told the gunners just in front of him. It was a perfectly laid ambush using just twenty men, though he could have done it with ten. The targets, after all, were like whales upon the beach.

The thirteen vehicles had been spotted an hour before by a two-man scout unit overwatching the refinery facilities at Los Guaos. Then there had been one more, but the disappearance of one vehicle was not to be worried about.

What was-approaching was plenty to make quite a noise.

“Ready…”

The lieutenant saw the flashes just an instant before he felt the hot sting on his right side. He turned that way but never completed the move, a second volley of machine-gun fire from the hillside ending his life and sending him sliding downward into the BTR. An RPG antitank rocket fired from close in on the opposite side of the road farther up finished off the vehicle itself, the HEAT warhead impacting just forward of the fuel tanks. The white-hot jet of explosive gasses was sufficient to ignite the normally stable diesel. The green vehicle disappeared into a ball of orange-yellow before anyone could get out.

The second BTR made it a bit farther, its driver jinking to the right away from the smoke trail he had seen swoop down on his commander’s vehicle. But the farthest he got was the soft shoulder of the two-lane highway. Another RPG came straight down at the BTR’s front and punched a hole directly into the driver’s compartment, incinerating the upper half of his body instantly and causing the vehicle to continue awkwardly over the roadside. It ended its roll at a nose-down attitude, its hatch-covered top exposed to the hillside. APCs, like all armored fighting vehicles, are lightly armored on top, the thickness in proportion to its thicker side armor. The BTR’s side armor was pathetic.

Two heavy machine guns sprayed the top of the BTR simultaneously from opposite sides of the road, opening its roof up like a sieve. A fire started quickly, followed by several small explosions as the soldiers’ ammo began to cook off in the heat. No one from either lead escort survived, a similar fate befalling the single BTR at the rear.

The convoy was doomed.

It took little time for the hunter squads to turn the long line of tank trucks into a burning snake of twisted metal. Several of the trucks, strangely, did not burn as furiously as the others, their refrigerated contents venting into the atmosphere as a river of fire flowed down the slightly inclined road from the front to the back.

“Done,” the sergeant said. “Let’s get…”

The sound came from behind. It had been masked by the roar of the raging inferno below, and smoke had obscured any view that might have warned them. The sergeant saw it first and wanted to run, but it was no use. They had killed everyone below, but someone had obviously not died quickly enough.

“Bastards!” Major Orelio Guevarra screamed, his weapons officer in the front of the Mi-28 Havoc giving a thumbs-up at the sight before them on the FLIR display. “Destroy them, Chiuaigel!”

Sergeant Chiuaigel Montes did just that. A salvo of rockets leaped out of the pods on each side of the attack helicopter as it approached the ambush from the west. Before the first salvo impacted, Montes rippled off another. This he continued as the Havoc flew fast over the length of the burning convoy. Fired from three hundred feet, the rockets spread out to a hundred feet on either side of the highway and created a zone of almost certain death the entire length of the destruction below.

After the first pass, the Havoc turned and approached from the east. Its rocket pods empty, Montes switched to the 30mm cannon that hung like a robotic appendage below the insect-like Havoc’s nose.

“Two o’clock,” Guevarra reported, this time in a more controlled voice, over the helicopter’s intercom. “Right. Right.”

The lone figure, represented by a ghostlike white image on the FLIR, was running up the hill, dodging between the trees that provided a lush canopy most of the year. Early autumn, however, was a time of growing sparseness. He had no chance.

“Take this!” Montes said loudly, depressing the Fire button on his directional fire stick at the cockpit’s side.

A hundred 30mm rounds burped out of the cannon in less than a second, creating a trail of dust and flying vegetation on the hillside below that ended at the running man’s back. Twenty of the high-density rounds connected, literally disintegrating the unfortunate rebel above the waist.

They circled the area for five minutes more, firing on anything they suspected of being alive. A few minutes later it became overkill. Nothing was left. The Havoc turned southeast, heading for its base with no weapons of consequence or ammunition remaining. Just the two AA-7 air-to-air missiles hung beneath its wings, no targets having presented themselves for their use. The major was ever hopeful, though.

The President looked squarely at Bud, letting the possibilities of what he had just been told sink in. His next look was for the DCI. “Anthony, you obviously disagree.”

“Vigorously, Mr. President.” Merriweather scooted forward in his chair, his chin almost even with the edge of the President’s desk. To his left was the NSA. To his right were the secretaries of state and defense. To his front was the man he had to convince. “Sir, this is so farfetched that it really is ridiculous. I am supposed to be on a plane to the Cape right now. My meeting with the CFS representatives is in six hours. Would I really be thinking of this if these crazy assertions were credible?”

Things had gone well so far, the chief executive knew. The DCI hadn’t steered him wrong yet. “Bud, you say there’s a way to confirm this to a greater degree?”

“Yes, sir. What we have to do is compare those names our officer in Cuba found with the supposedly murdered missile crew. If they match, then we cannot dispute this. We can’t afford to.”

It made sense, the President thought. But it was a hell of a big pill to swallow. “All right, how?”

“We have several people working on the archives project with the Russian Ministry of Defense in Moscow.”

“Right,” the President said, “trying to verify the existence of any POWs.”

“And to confirm deaths,” Bud said, expanding on the President’s observation. “Well, sir, one of the archivists is an Agency employee.”

“Hold it.” The President’s expression went immediately to the far side of serious. “We have a spy among the group of archivists? Do you know what the Russians will do if they find that out? Bud, you, of all people, should realize that right now. This is supposed to be the age of trust!”

“Not blind trust,” Bud objected, his disagreement careful in its tone. “The Russians, as much as we would like to think not, are still running heavy intelligence-gathering activities on us. The modernization program for their BMEWS does not negate that. What we have in their archives is benign by comparison. Benign and, thankfully, in the right place to help us here.”

This wasn’t what the President had bargained for when SNAPSHOT was envisioned. It was not supposed to involve outside parties, particularly the Russians. “So what do we do with this man in Moscow? How does he get what we need?”

“We already know from his reports that the death records of the Red Army are stored, by year, in the same area as records concerning POWs and other foreign nationals in prison camps. They’re not considered sensitive. We can notify our agent through the Moscow station chief immediately.” Bud glanced at his watch. “It’s almost seven-thirty in the morning over there, so we can get word to him before he leaves the embassy for the workday.”

“Mr. President, I have to object,” the DCI said before the Man could make a final decision. “To use our agent in Moscow risks not only endangering the modernization program if he should be discovered, but also alienating the Russians in a larger sense. It does not matter if his work is minor, if valuable; they will still see it as a breach of trust. You are correct to be leery of that. Plus, the story purportedly told on that recording — which none of us has heard, I remind you — is factually deficient in several respects.”

“How so?” the President inquired, hoping that the DCI could lay a good case. He didn’t like opposing his NSA on things with as much potential for trouble as this, but what was taking place in Cuba was historic. He wanted nothing to interfere with its successful completion if it could be helped.

“First, there is the last line on the tape, at least as it was reported to us. It instructed the interpreter to lock it away.” The DCI sat back and straight, his expression signaling puzzlement. “How did this supposed assistant get hold of the tape and keep it?”

Bud wanted to smile, but to do so would make it seem as though he were gloating at anticipating Merriweather’s questions. He didn’t even have to look at the secretary of state.

“Sir,” Coventry began, “I thought much the same thing when I heard of this, so I had our Records Section at State check on Cortez’s status. We did the same thing earlier for the Bureau concerning Francisco Portero. It would seem that Cortez was not seen after the last week of October in 1962. No word of a death, or retirement, though the latter would not be likely when we consider he was but forty-one years old.”

“It’s very convenient, Mr. President,” Bud said. “Too convenient. Cortez disappears, and Portero steps in. Maybe Cortez filled him in before he disappeared.”

“That proves nothing,” Merriweather commented. “Just because State can’t locate some old Cuban government worker, we can’t say ‘Hey, this means this.’ It could mean a good number of things.”

“Such as?” Bud asked heatedly.

“Not my job to prove the negative of your theories, DiContino.”

“All right, enough,” the President said. “Anthony, you said there were several reasons to doubt the validity of the story. What else?”

The DCI nodded emphatically. “Yes. More important than the question about the tape is the reality that a missile left in ‘62 would most definitely be out of repair by this date. Long before, actually.”

What? Bud thought. How would he…?

“Drew, is that a credible observation?” the President asked.

The secretary of defense wanted to choose his words carefully. “A weapon such as the SS-4, which is what the Russians had in Cuba at the time, would have required maintenance over the years.”

“Which does not rule out that the Cubans were able to do such,” Bud pointed out. “We know that Castro had Chinese and North Korean technicians in his country over the years after he got that crackpot idea to build a space launch facility like the French have in Guyana.”

“But that never—”

“Of course it never flew,” Bud interjected, cutting off the DCI. He was determined now to not let the President be wooed by Merriweather’s comforting analysis. “Castro has had all kinds of nutty schemes. Biotech. Perfect cattle breeding. You name it, he’s tried it. He’s unpredictable. We never know what he’s going to do next. He doesn’t do the logical things.” Bud turned his attention directly to the President. “We have never known what he is capable of. Therefore it behooves us to be prepared even for that which we are not sure he is capable of doing.”

A neat operation! That was a crock, the President thought. Down the toilet. “All right, Bud. Confirm this. If it turns out to be credible, then I want options. Fast options, because it scares the hell out of me to even think that this may be true. In the meantime, we keep things in motion down in Cuba. I’m not going to put the brakes on this without confirmation. Is that clear?” He looked to each man, ending with the DCI. “You get down to your meeting. I expect your deputies can handle this archive thing?”

“Of course.” Damn. “No problem.”

“Mr. President, there are two things that need to be done to prepare for the eventuality that we will confirm the information,” Bud said, his plan thought out on the drive over. It took him just a minute to explain it.

“I see,” the President said. He was somewhat surprised by the second of Bud’s proposals. Bringing the man back one more time was almost too much, considering. As President, he felt some responsibility for what had befallen the man a year before, and still he’d never met him. If he was being brought back again, that fact would have to change. “That sounds acceptable. But, Bud, I want to see him before anything happens.”

“All right, sir.”

“Anything else?”

There wasn’t. The President left with his advisers standing. Merriweather departed immediately after him without a word to his equals in the Oval Office.

“Thanks, Drew. You could have nailed it shut for Anthony.”

“Hey, you and I may not see eye-to-eye on everything, but he needs some serious help.”

Bud gave the secretary of defense a much deserved slap on the shoulder. “Hope you didn’t mind my stepping into your territory there.”

Meyerson laughed. “Stepping in? Hell, Anthony damn near appropriated my CT force for his own damn escort service. Your use of them would be a whole lot more up their alley.”

“If it becomes necessary.” Bud’s thoughts drifted back to something the DCI had said a minute before. “Did it seem strange to either of you that Anthony practically started quoting Missile Maintenance One-oh-one?”

Coventry had caught that also. “I didn’t know his knowledge ran so deep.” The words were not spoken flatteringly.

“Yeah.” Bud didn’t know what it meant, but something wasn’t kosher about it. That could wait, though. “Can we run through this for a moment?”

The three men sat again. Two floors up, the chief executive would hopefully be getting to bed. He was the decision maker and therefore had to be rested and clear headed. His advisers were the ones who could do without sleep.

“Okay, if this turns out to be true, what are our options?” Bud was acting in familiar territory now.

“The idea you outlined for the Boss is right on,” Meyerson said. “Let’s say we confirm this and that we find the thing — anticipating it still works.” The secretary had been careful not to give the DCI an ironclad response to his “missile-won’t-work” theory. “We can’t launch a preemptive air strike.”

“Why not?” Coventry asked, leaning back on the couch and straightening Ids tie. It was a habit, the others knew. Looks mattered little at the moment.

“Decoys,” Bud answered for the secretary of defense. “The same kind of problem you run into once a modern ICBM goes terminal. Things called ‘penaids’. They’re basically decoys that you’d be forced to take out or discriminate from the real warheads if SDI ever got off the ground. The same thing applies to ground-based missiles. We might see something, but we wouldn’t know if it was the something we wanted.”

“Makes sense,” Coventry admitted. “Ground troops, eh?”

“You heard it,” Bud confirmed. “Up close and personal. It’s the only way to know for sure.”

Coventry suddenly thought of the worst-case scenario. “What if we don’t find it? He could fire it.”

Meyerson’s eyebrows went up at the thought. “Not much we can do there.”

“What about Patriot?” Coventry asked, thinking back to the anti-ballistic-missile capability the Patriot missile system had demonstrated during the Gulf War.

“No way. First, we don’t know where he’d fire it. Second, we don’t have enough batteries in CONUS to cover all the possible targets.” CONUS was military jargon for Continental United States. “Third, the Patriot has an upper-altitude envelope of eighty thousand feet, and these wouldn’t be Scuds popping up. We’re talking about a warhead in terminal phase. Too fast and too small. Fourth, how would we explain SAMs parked on the Mall, or on Ellis Island? You get the picture. It would be like advertising that he should shoot it before it’s too late.”

“Our only hope is to keep this quiet,” Bud said. “Airtight.”

“No argument from me,” Meyerson said, his thoughts shifting to preventative actions. “You know, time may become a concern in this.”

“Meaning?” Bud probed.

“Castro may be motivated to use the missile if things get more desperate.”

“It’s already pretty bad,” the NSA observed accurately.

“But more pressure could set him off. I mean, why hasn’t he used it yet?” Meyerson shrugged.

It was a good question. “Jim?”

“If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, you can set it aside. You haven’t met the rebel leader. I have. When Anthony and I arranged the conference two months ago in Antigua, all he could talk about was the way he was going to destroy Castro. He despises the man. This coup is as much motivated by hate for Castro as it is by desire for a new system of government.”

“But even just a slowdown of their advance?” Meyerson suggested. “Just to buy us some more time?”

The secretary of state’s head shook knowingly. “Listen, when Castro executed General Ontiveros after the hijacking, he alienated a lot of his military. Ontiveros was respected, and he was loved. And the only reason he was made to suffer was because Castro perceived him as protecting…”

The realization hit Bud and Coventry first.

“Vishkov,” Bud said.

“Christ!” Meyerson’s head fell into his hands.

“He needed someone with the knowledge to maintain a missile,” Bud pondered aloud. “Guess he got him. Son of a bitch!”

“Defection, eh?” Coventry mused, knowing they had all been fooled. They and the Russians, it appeared. “Sounds more like an arranged marriage.”

It was the simplicity of design that made some secrets so unbelievable, and made them equally possible. “Castro arranges for Vishkov to come visit the island, probably with an offer of money or whatever if he decides to stay. He might have even allowed him to peddle his nuke designs unhindered. When he meets the general’s sister, Ontiveros probably encouraged their get-together. He must have seen it as a way to turn the tables on Castro, to get Vishkov in his camp.” Bud laughed, but there was little humor in it.

Coventry saw it all unfolding also. “We knew that Ontiveros was a dissenter in the military. I wonder if he knew about the missile? That would make even more sense. If he has Vishkov on his side, he could literally dictate the physicist’s use to Castro. Then when the hijacking happened, Castro saw it as a perfect opportunity to get rid of Ontiveros. Vishkov was just an excuse.” Coventry remembered his part in the affair and his suggestion to the Cuban leader that he could deal with Vishkov in his own way. I might as well have signed Ontiveros’s death warrant.

“You said that Ontiveros was executed,” Meyerson said. “What about his sister and Vishkov?”

“We don’t know about the sister,” Bud answered “But Vishkov was imprisoned. That’s the intel the Agency got through their exile contacts.”

“Another check in the value column for him,” Coventry observed.

They still needed the confirmation from their agent in Moscow, but this was adding almost undeniable credibility to Bud’s belief.

“Bud, you better step up our reconnaissance of the island,” Meyerson suggested. “Damn the budget on this one.” He knew that Coventry wasn’t cleared for Senior Citizen, so mention of Aurora was out of the question. The NSA would get his drift.

Coventry still had a hard time fathoming it. “Do you realize what this means? We could have a nuclear attack on a U.S. city at any time.” His own words scared and frustrated him. “And anything we do to prevent it might just precipitate it.”

“I think we realize it, Jim,” Meyerson said.

“This will not happen,” Bud said forcefully. The phone call he was soon to make would be a step toward that end.

“Lost!” Fidel Castro screamed. “How?”

Raul waited, his silent signal for his brother to calm himself.

“How?”

“An ambush. The rebels destroyed the vehicles providing security, then the tank trucks themselves. A total loss.”

The president looked disbelievingly at his brother. “The shipment must get through to Asunción. It must!”

“It will, Fidel. Los Guaos is preparing another shipment.”

“This time with ironclad security,” Fidel said, making a fist in the air.

Raul wanted to add something positive to the event. “We did kill all the rebels who ambushed the convoy.”

“How did they…?” The president’s eyes lit up, and a smile appeared upon the gray-bearded face. Yes. They wouldn’t know that there was… “Excellent.”

Raul nodded. The surprise would not stop the rebels, but it would bloody them. Guevarra was a madman. The perfect madman to fly under these circumstances. “Fidel, soon we must speak of a target.”

“Yes. Soon.”

“Captain Cresada reports that the patrol never returned,” Manchon explained. Night had come to the island, and with it some respite from the day’s advance. He, Ojeda, and Papa Tony sat quietly beneath a hastily erected tent in a field outside Aguada de Pasajeros.

“None returned?” Ojeda asked for clarification. “Not a single man?”

“Not one.”

Antonio held the latest report from Langley on his lap. The colonel was concerned, obviously at the apparent loss of several men, but also at something Antonio couldn’t identify.

“None?” Ojeda asked again, a single nod all the response needed. There could not be. We made certain. His thoughts drifted back to a decade before, training with the Soviets in the land that became their own Vietnam. Not one man… Decimation of the Mujahedeen ambushes had been commonplace there also, though not common enough to stave off defeat. “I want any patrols who are out of protective range to be issued shoulder-fired SAMs.”

“You think…?”

“We will not take the chance.”

It was cheating, but who gave a damn? He owned the lake, the fifty acres around it, and all the fish in it stupid enough to bite at his shiny lure in the dark hours approaching midnight. The light shining down from the dock didn’t hurt, of course, but Joe Anderson had convinced himself that if he was going to leave this earth anytime soon, he was going to take as many of his favorite quarry as he could with him, regardless of laws banning night fishing.

Correction…second-favorite quarry.

“Phone, hon’,” his wife yelled from the back door of their house, which was nestled in the trees in Minnesota backwater country. She had gotten quite used to his late night expeditions to thin out the aquatic population.

Joe looked greedily down at a northern pike hovering below the surface. In a few weeks it would be too cold to fish from the dock, and soon it wouldn’t matter at all. So what? He smiled at the fish. “You’re mine. Just wait.”

He laid his Zebco rod down and went to the back door, picking the receiver up off the dinette table just inside.

He looked to his wife. “This time of night?”

She just shrugged.

“Hello.”

“Captain Anderson?”

Shit… Joe thought, knowing before another word was said that the fucking northern pike was going to get away.