Castro's Daughter

by David Hagberg

  “You didn’t look too happy up there, Manuel,” Ortega-Cowan said. “Mind sharing with me what’s going on?”

  “She wants to get rid of me,” Fuentes said bitterly. He needed to complain to someone.

  “I meant about the shooting.”

  And Fuentes told him everything, leaving out no detail, including the photographs of María and her car that had presumably been transmitted to Langley, and about her reaction.

  Ortega-Cowan was impressed. “This just might be what we need to take her down.”

  “What are you talking about? She means to use the fact that I let a spy so close to El Comandante to have me demoted, possibly even court-martialed.” And she’d be well within her rights and duties, the errant thought flashed in his head. But the kid’s eyes were enchanting, and Fuentes had seen him a couple of times tending the less prickly of the plants while wearing nothing but brief shorts and sandals. He’d been dazzled.

  “Use your head. Until now, the identity of all our directorate chiefs has been kept a secret. Just like in the Mossad. But if the CIA has her photographs, especially in connection with Fidel’s compound, on the very morning of his death—within minutes of his death—and pictures of that goddamned fancy car of hers, they’ll sit up and take notice.”

  “So what?”

  “If she’s identified, she’s out,” Ortega-Cowan said. “And maybe I can help.”

  “How?”

  “Never mind for now. But what exactly was she doing out there this morning? Who called her?”

  “El Comandante asked for her.”

  “By name, or simply as the director of operations?”

  “By name, and he even knew her private number by heart. Told me to tell no one else, just fetch her.”

  “And no one else was alone with them in the bedroom?”

  “No.”

  “Which, of course, you had not bugged.”

  Fuentes flared, and for a moment he forgot himself. “He was going to come back and I was going to be his new Minister of Foreign Relations.”

  Ortega-Cowan smiled, but not derisively. “He told you that?”

  “No, but it was obvious he wanted to return to government. And my English is nearly letter perfect.”

  Ortega-Cowan looked away. They could hear the traffic around the plaza, and already the parking lot was beginning to fill as the call-up continued. The coming days were going to be a frenzy of activities. “That was then and this is now,” he finally said.

  “But you have something in mind.”

  “Of course. If I can pry the colonel out of her position, I’d have a good shot at taking over the directorate. No one else is qualified. If that’s the case, would you serve as my chief of staff?”

  “It’s not what I wanted, but I’d take it.”

  “But I’d have to watch my back, right?”

  Fuentes smiled. “Naturally.” What he really wanted, what he’d realistically hoped to get, was the directorate. And a promotion to chief of staff would put him only a heartbeat away. “Do you have a plan?”

  “Yes, but you’ll have to be patient. First we need to get past the funeral, and stand down from the general alert. Could be weeks. And then we can find her weakness.”

  “Might not be so easy.”

  “You’re wrong,” Ortega-Cowan said. “Uncle Fidel didn’t call his chief of DI operations to his deathbed to discuss Miami signals intelligence. The question is exactly what they talked about.”

  Fuentes was at a loss, but Ortega-Cowan was waiting for an answer. “A deathbed confession?”

  “You may be close, because what does a person knowing he has only hours, maybe minutes, to live, want to talk about? Want to get off his chest? It’s either a confession of some past wrong—an infidelity, maybe?—or some last-minute instruction. One last order?”

  “But what?”

  “We’ll find that out eventually, but first we need to learn why it was Colonel León he called.”

  And Fuentes had a glimmering of an idea. “Perhaps El Comandante did not call Colonel León to his bedside. Perhaps he called María León. One of his mistresses?”

  “Somehow I don’t think so. Word would have gotten around, especially because of the difference in their ages. She’s young enough to be a daughter.”

  “Dios mio,” Fuentes said softly, not sure if he was being manipulated, and he watched the cars and bicycles streaming into the parking lot.

  Ortega-Cowan smiled. “It would explain her schooling and her promotions,” he said. “She’s one of the only female colonels in the service, and the only woman to be in charge of an entire directorate.”

  “If that’s true, she’s just lost her protector. Leaves her wide open.”

  “That depends on what Raúl knows and how he feels about it,” Ortega-Cowan said. “If we’re right about this, we might not have to do anything at all, just sit back until she’s fired.” He smiled again. “Let’s just wait and see what happens. And if it needs a little nudge here and there, we’ll find a way.”

  “Yes, we will,” Fuentes said. His heart was much lighter than it had been in months, perhaps ever.

  PART

  TWO

  FIVE

  In Washington, it was a couple of minutes past seven in the morning when a late-model Cadillac Escalade with heavily tinted windows carrying three DI field officers from Miami operations parked across the street from the Lil’ Tots Day Care Center for the third day in a row.

  Rodrigo Cruz, driving, was not happy with this assignment, which had been so hastily put together that, in his estimation, it had almost no chance of success—with a high likelihood that the three of them would end up in a federal holding cell before noon. But the highly secret orders came directly from the top, and had he not known better, he would have been certain that the colonel was loca. The story they had been given was completely crazy.

  “Maybe it’s true,” Julio Cabrera suggested in Miami before they boarded the plane to get up here.

  “Not likely,” Cruz had told him, but the more he thought about it, the more it made some kind of sense to him. Only a fantastical story like this one would have any chance of convincing the woman and her husband to cooperate with them. Out of simple curiosity, if for no other reason.

  And Esteban Álvarez, perched in the backseat, watching the activities across the street through a pair of binoculars, had doubts. “There’ve been rumors,” he’d said. “We’ve all heard them even in Miami.”

  “Especially in Miami,” Cruz said. “Those bastardos will believe just about anything.”

  The three men were slightly built, typical of a lot of Cubans, with dark hair and eyes and almost handsome good looks. They’d worked in Miami for the past four years, getting back to Havana for only one week each year. After this crazy assignment, they were due home for their seven days, and they were looking forward to it. Miami had glitter, plenty of good food, and nice cars, but it was far too frenetic a place for them. And this city was worse. They felt off balance.

  A steady stream of cars came up the short driveway; the parents, mothers for the most part, took their children inside and came back out and drove away. The first half hour was the busiest, and by seven thirty there was almost no traffic until the next rush around eight.

  Louise Horn was the exception; yesterday and the day before, she’d shown up at precisely 7:45. Not much to go on, Cruz thought, but they’d not been given the time to do a proper job of surveillance in order to establish a pattern. If she were late this morning, it would put her at the start of the next rush, which would make snatching her impossible.

  The Washington bureau had provided the SUV and the safe house just off Massachusetts Avenue between Lincoln Park and the D.C. General Hospital—less than four miles away, as the crow flies—keeping their exposure to a minimum. Plus their untraceable weapons and a syringe filled with methohexital, a powerful sedative they’d used in several Miami operations over the past couple of years. When methohexital was inje
cted directly into a subject’s vein, the victim would be out in less than five seconds. In a muscle, it could take five minutes, during which time the target would put up a struggle. If it were a man, they could have some difficulty. But they’d seen the tall, slender—almost anorexic—woman, and they’d gained a little confidence. Handling her would be fairly easy.

  And she was a high-value target. In addition to the weapons, an informational packet had been left for them at the house. The woman was the wife of Otto Rencke, the Director of Special Projects for the CIA, and she herself was a high-ranking satellite image analyst working for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency with an office attached to the CIA’s Old Headquarters Building. The husband was the primary objective; kidnapping his wife was merely to assure the man’s cooperation. But the abduction could also result in a firestorm of federal and local cops coming after them, and despite the propaganda, every DI field officer here in the States understood just how effective, and sometimes ruthless, the FBI functionaries could be.

  Cruz glanced in his rearview mirror in time to see the battered dark blue Toyota Land Cruiser come up the street and turn into the day care center’s driveway, Louise Horn driving.

  “It’s her,” he said.

  “She’s early,” Cabrera said. “Wait until tomorrow?”

  Two women who’d dropped off their children came out of the day care center, waved as Louise got out of her Toyota, got into their cars, and drove away. No one else was arriving at the moment.

  “We’ll go now,” Cruz said, watching nervously in his rearview mirror and out the windshield. They had been given three days for the job. This morning was it, or this afternoon, but then they would have to deal not only with the woman but her two-year-old child as well. Involving the toddler was something he wanted to avoid at all costs; he had two small children of his own in Havana. “No shooting.”

  Louise unstrapped the child from the car seat and walked her through the gate. The moment they disappeared inside, Cruz drove across the street and backed the wrong way into the driveway so that they were directly in front of the Toyota.

  Cabrera and Álvarez got out of the Cadillac and walked back to Louise Horn’s SUV just as she came out of the day care center. She was out of the gate, obviously in a hurry when she noticed them, and she pulled up, a look of concern on her narrow features.

  Cabrera held up an identification wallet. “Ma’am, I’m Ulises Rodríguez, CIA Security. Mr. Rencke sent us.”

  Louise was suspicious, but she came the rest of the way toward them. “Is there some trouble?”

  “Not at all. We were just ordered to pick you up and bring you to the Campus.”

  Louise glanced at the ID. “What about Joann?”

  “I was told the child’s name is Audrey. She’ll be fine here.”

  “I’ll just call,” Louise said, taking a cell phone out of her pocket. She turned to look back at the day care center.

  “That’s not possible,” Cabrera said. He pulled out a Glock 17 with a suppressor and pointed it at her. “Believe me, I do not want to shoot you. But you are coming with us right now.”

  “Shit,” Louise said, and she started to back up, but Cabrera was close enough to grab her arm, and before she could pull away, Álvarez came around and took her other arm.

  One of the teachers appeared in the doorway about ten meters away. “Louise?” she called out. “Are you okay?”

  Cabrera turned and, still holding Louise’s arm with his left hand, fired two shots, both of them hitting the teacher in her torso and driving her back inside.

  “No!” Louise screamed. “Help!” But just at that moment, there was no traffic on R Street, no one to witness the struggle or hear her cries, and they half dragged and half carried her back to the Cadillac.

  Cabrera yanked open the rear door, but when he tried to shove her inside, she managed to half turn and brace her hip against the doorframe. For just an instant, she was nearly motionless, though she was still screaming, and Álvarez managed to plunge the needle into her carotid artery and depress the plunger.

  Louise yelped as if she had been shot, but almost immediately she began to sag, her legs giving out, and Cabrera was able to roll her onto the backseat, far enough inside so that he could close the door.

  Álvarez got in on the other side and shoved Louise to the floor as Cabrera got in the front passenger side, and even before he had shut the door, Cruz had taken off down the driveway and was around the block on Q Street, merging with traffic heading toward Massachusetts Avenue.

  Cruz checked the rearview mirror, but no one seemed to be taking any particular interest in them. And although someone inside the day care center had probably gotten a good look at the car, they couldn’t have read the license number, nor could they have known which way the kidnappers had gone.

  The first thirty minutes were the most critical in cases like this, but before that, they would have reached the safe house and hidden the Caddy safely out of sight in the garage, where it would remain until the operation was completed.

  “How is she?” he asked, looking at Álvarez’s image in the mirror.

  “She’s out, but her heart is steady and her breathing is normal.”

  “That was damned fast.”

  “I managed to hit an artery.”

  Cruz turned back to his driving. “I told you no shooting. ”

  “The woman at the doorway saw our faces. She would have called the authorities.”

  “Someone has by now, so keep your eyes open,” Cruz said. And already in the distance, he thought he could hear sirens.

  SIX

  Otto Rencke had lost a lot of weight in the past year, in part because of the diet Louise had put him on—no more heavy cream out of the carton to wash down Twinkies, his favorite food in all the world—and in part because the CIA doc had put him on a loose regimen of exercise: thirty minutes on the treadmill every weekday morning. Now, a few minutes after eight thirty and coming up from the gym to his third-floor office in the OHB, he thought he had looked a little bony in the big mirrors, although he had to admit that he felt pretty good. He still dressed badly—mostly baggy jeans and sweatshirts, plus unlaced sneakers—and his long frizzy red hair was always out of control: like an aura around a spirit medium, one of the kids in the Directorate of Intelligence had quipped. And Otto had actually caught the joke.

  He keyed his code into the door reader and entered his suite of offices that were filled nearly to capacity with computer monitors, keyboards, and one horizontal touch screen monitor nearly the size of a conference table. All the equipment ran 24/7, though the screens were usually either blank or showed blinking cursors, which indicated incoming messages or sometimes announced that a search engine had come up with results.

  Maps, file folders, books, magazines, and newspapers—most of them from obscure cities and paper archival centers around the globe that had not gone digital yet—were scattered just about everywhere; on tables, the one desk, on chairs, on the floor, and pinned up on walls. Field officers sent him a steady stream of the stuff, based on his shopping lists sent out to the chiefs of stations in places of interest to him.

  He touched the encrypted incoming message screen, and sat down as a list of eighty-seven e-mails came up, all of them overnights, except for one just a minute ago. A video from Louise.

  He called her number upstairs in Geospatial. One of the clerks picked it up on the third ring. “Louise Horn’s desk.”

  “This is Otto. Is my wife handy?”

  “Sorry, Mr. Rencke, she’s not here yet.”

  Rencke brought up Louise’s video, the first hint of trouble niggling at the back of his head. “Have her call me when she gets in.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Louise’s image appeared on the monitor and Otto nearly dropped the phone before he could hang up. She looked like hell: her face had sagged, her eyes were half-closed, and a line of drool oozed from the side of her mouth.

  “I’ve been kidnapped,
” she said, the words slow and slurred to the point she was barely understandable.

  Otto split the screen, and with his heart hammering, his fingers flew over the keys, opening a program that would search for the source of the message—but almost immediately it came up from somewhere in Venezuela. A remailer, because as of six thirty or so this morning, his wife was here in the city.

  “Audie’s not been harmed. She’s at Lil’ Tots.”

  According to his analysis program, the encryption algorithm was an old one that hadn’t been used by any U.S. intelligence agency in at least ten years. He started a search for likely users—certainly not civilians, because although the protocol wasn’t so secure as modern ones in use, it was still very sophisticated.

  “I was drugged. They told me that it was methohexital, but it’ll be completely out of my system very soon. No side effects.”

  The Russian Federal Security Service had used the same algorithm until eight years ago, before selling it to Libya’s Military Intelligence Force and to Cuba’s DI.

  “No harm will come to me if you do exactly as you are told.”

  Fidel Castro’s death, the photographs of the unknown woman who’d apparently been the last to visit him—sent from one of their sources in Havana last week—and now this kidnapping were not coincidental.

  Louise looked up into the camera, her eyes still half-closed, and she winked. “Three Hispanic males, white Caddy Escalade, shot one of the day care—”

  The message abruptly ended, and Otto remained seated staring at the screen, which had gone back to the list of incoming e-mails. The goddamned Cubans because of the photographs of the woman? What sense did that make? And why the hell hadn’t they edited out Louise’s last words?

  Security had to be given the heads-up, as would the Bureau, and Audie would have to be taken somewhere, probably down to the Farm, where she was practically the official mascot. He wished to hell that Mac were here. But he wasn’t.