Castro's Daughter

by David Hagberg

  “Okay, so what’s all this about?” Louise asked.

  “Not now,” McGarvey said from the backseat. “They may have bugged your car.”

  “The Bureau?” she asked.

  “Our people,” McGarvey said. The Cuba thing was just too big a deal, so out of the ordinary, that if he were in Marty’s shoes, it’s what he would have done.

  “Shit,” Louise said, but she held her silence all the way through the city and across to Georgetown, where they maintained a three-story brownstone that Otto had bought and sanitized a year and a half ago to use as a safe house. The Company didn’t know about it, nor was it reasonable to think they could discover it, because Otto had been very thorough with the transfer of deed and with the monthly maintenance and utilities fees that were paid from a Paris bank on the account of a doctor with Médecins Sans Frontières who was always out of the country.

  She pulled around to the back of the house, where she parked to the left of the small garden she maintained whenever they were in residence, and they went inside.

  Otto motioned for them to keep quiet until he entered a code on a keypad in the mudroom just off the kitchen, and after a few moments, a green light came on.

  “We’re good here,” he said. “No bugs.”

  Louise put on a pot of coffee for them, then went upstairs to take a shower and change into some clean clothes. She looked beat up, and twice on the ride from Andrews, she had mentioned Joyce Kilburn’s death at the preschool. “It made absolutely no sense.”

  “Could have been you,” Otto suggested.

  “Or one of the kids, if the bullet had missed.”

  They could hear the shower running upstairs, and Otto brought a bottle of brandy over and poured some into their coffee. “How much do you want to tell her?” he asked. He leaned against the sink, facing McGarvey, who was seated at the counter.

  “Everything.”

  “Okay. What about tomorrow, how much do we tell Marty? And the Bureau is bound to want some answers.”

  “We tell them that it was a rogue operation to dig me out in retaliation for what I did at Guantánamo Bay.”

  “Marty might swallow it, mostly because he won’t have much of a choice. He can’t send us to Saudi Arabia for interrogation. But Page will suspect that we’re being less than honest. He’ll press.”

  “The woman is nuts. Her father was dead, which meant for the first time in her life, she was on her own, so she pulled this crazy stunt to make a big name for herself.”

  “But it backfired, and the only real casualty was the teacher at Audie’s school. We can make them buy it. And then what, because if what you told me in Key Largo wasn’t just idle speculation, we could end up in some really serious shit? Not that I’d mind, if we had a chance of pulling it off.”

  “First we have to find out if there really is any gold buried somewhere on, near, or across the Mexican border.”

  “There’s gold, all right,” Otto said. “I did some more research on the flight up here about the mountain in southern New Mexico that I told the colonel about. It’s actually a part of Holloman Air Force Base and the White Sands Missile Range, about fifty miles north of the Mexican border, and about the same distance south of Trinity, where the first atomic bomb was tested in ’45. Anyway, a lot of gold and other stuff was found buried in some caves dug into the mountain. But nothing much came of it, and so the story goes the air force pulled out the gold and shipped it away. That’d be sometime in the early sixties.”

  “So it’s gone,” McGarvey said. “And its information the colonel could have gotten online herself, right?”

  “Right. But that’s not all. There’ve been rumors and legends about caches of gold all over the place in the same general area.”

  “Rumors.”

  Otto was nodding. “But rumors are all we’ll need for the first part of what you want to do, so long as we can find some sort of a paper trail.”

  “Mexico City,” McGarvey said.

  “Or Spain.”

  “And the second part is, what happened to the original gold the air force took away?”

  Louise appeared at the kitchen door in fresh sweatpants and a T-shirt, a towel wrapped around her wet hair. “What gold?” she asked.

  “Castro’s daughter’s gold,” McGarvey said. “I think she’s going to come looking for it, and when she does, she’s going to be in for a very nasty surprise.”

  “Two surprises,” Otto corrected. “One of which will come when the deal she’ll have to make with one or more of the Mexican drug cartels turns sour.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  In his office in the CIA’s Old Headquarters Building, Marty Bambridge brought up the encrypted Skype for Windows on his desktop computer, and in seconds was connected with Rául Martínez back in Miami.

  “Are you someplace where we can talk?” Bambridge asked. It looked as if Martínez was seated at a table in a busy restaurant or coffee shop, using an iPad. It was noisy and people passed behind him.

  “Sure.”

  “You’re not alone.”

  “No one is paying attention, Mr. Bambridge. Believe me, they’re more interested in their dominoes than in someone’s phone call.”

  Bambridge was vexed because Martínez was independent like McGarvey, and a difficult man to deal with. But his presence, watching Cuban dissident movements in Miami and keeping an eye on the DI field officers running around the Calle Ocho was absolutely indispensable. Without him keeping a lid on things in Little Havana by cutting off the right people at the right time, the entire place could erupt in riots. The dissidents had been waiting for a very long time—some of them for their entire lives—to go back to Cuba. Many of them didn’t think of themselves as American citizens; they were exiles. Volatile at the best of times.

  “What the hell happened down there?”

  “Mac asked for my help to get Otto out.”

  “One of our birds picked up what looked like a pretty fierce firefight just off the beach last night. Make my day and tell me that you weren’t involved.”

  “I had help setting it up, but no, I personally didn’t fire a shot.”

  “Well, thank God for small favors—”

  Martínez cut him off. “A lot of very good people lost their lives. Without them, Otto and Mac would still be there.”

  Bambridge forced himself to calm down. “The ones who survived will talk,” he said.

  “No.”

  “They won’t be able to help themselves. The DI is pretty good.”

  “There weren’t any survivors.”

  And Bambridge wanted to ask how Martínez could know for sure, but the look in the man’s eyes was cold. “Did they explain what they wanted with McGarvey?”

  “You’ll have to ask Mac about that,” Martínez said. “If he’ll talk to you guys.”

  “He says that he’s coming over tomorrow,” Bambridge said. “I’d like you here as well, so we can get this mess resolved. I don’t want any fallout.”

  “I don’t have the time.”

  Bambridge was angry. “That’s an order, mister.”

  “The word that some of our people were shot to death outside Havana has already reached the streets, and there are some seriously pissed-off people around here who need calming down. And I expect that within the next twenty-four hours, we’ll have some DI goons running around, looking for the same answers you want. So I’m sincerely sorry, Mr. Deputy Director, but I have my hands full at the moment.”

  Bambridge’s monitor went blank, and a moment later he was staring at his own image before he hit the DISCONNECT tab. “Sincerely sorry, my ass,” he muttered, and he called to see if Page was in his office.

  * * *

  “The question is why Colonel León pulled off some harebrained stunt like that in the aftermath of her father’s death,” Bambridge told the DCI.

  “Hopefully Mac will shed some light on the matter in the morning,” Page said.

  They were sitting in the director’s offic
e on the seventh floor of the OHB, the big bulletproof and vibration-resistant windows looking over the wooded Virginia countryside. “If he and Rencke actually show up.”

  “If he says he’ll be here, he will. But we’re going to take it easy with him. I’ve had a chat with three of my predecessors who worked with him, and they all said the same thing: Treat the man with respect—after all, he was the DCI, and he’s given a lot for his country. But if you lean on him, he’ll lean back. Hard. And that, we want to avoid.”

  Bambridge had also talked to some people who had worked with McGarvey, and they had the opposite opinion. In their view, the man had always been a wild card, totally out of control. And as soon as his name popped up in an ongoing mission or investigation, bodies immediately began to pile up. But he kept his thoughts to himself and nodded. “I understand.”

  “The thing is, we either trust the man or we don’t. Either way, we don’t have much choice.”

  “I don’t trust him any farther than I could throw this building,” Bambridge said.

  “I know,” Page replied.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  María, in a fatigue uniform with bloused combat boots, entered Raúl Castro’s office, came to attention in front of his desk, and saluted crisply. “Colonel León reporting as ordered, Señor Presidente.”

  The message to report had been on her desk when she arrived a half hour ago, and it did not come as a surprise. There was going to be some serious fallout after last night, and depending on how this went, she figured that she would have to make some tough choices.

  Raúl was writing something on a pad, and he let her hang there for several seconds before he looked up. But he did not tell her to stand at ease or to sit down.

  “Tell me what progress your department has made investigating the disappearance of the Amercian who showed up for the funeral.”

  “The investigation is ongoing, sir. And I am happy to report that my department is nearing a successful resolution of the matter.”

  “I’m told that you made a visit to your father’s house last night. Has it anything to do with your investigation?”

  “No, sir,” María said.

  “You are not to go there again without prior permission.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “Because I’m ordering it,” Raúl said, raising his voice.

  A little bird had been whispering in his ear. Either her chief of staff or the little pansy Funetes or both of them. “I’m at a loss, Señor Presidente. What have I done to anger you, or bring my directorate’s policies or actions into question?”

  “I don’t know yet. But I’m going to find out. I think you’re involved in something that very nearly cost you your life last night, and it was only through your chief of staff’s intervention that you were not assassinated.”

  “I have not had the chance to thank him, or debrief him,” María said, sidestepping the issue. “I had no idea that such an attack was coming, nor did Major Ortega-Cowan say anything to me about it.”

  “I want a full written report on my desk before the end of the day, including the real reason why you went to your father’s house, and what you took, if anything, because a full inventory is taking place at this moment.”

  “As you wish, sir,” María said, and she saluted again, but didn’t bother to wait for Raúl to return it before she turned and went to the door.

  “What bothers me is the coincidence of the timing,” Raúl said to her back. “That and the possibility that a light plane may have landed in the water near your compound. Include an explanation in your report.”

  “Naturally, Señor Presidente.”

  * * *

  At that moment, Ortega-Cowan showed up at Fidel’s compound and was allowed to pass the guard post and drive up to the house, which was a beehive of activity this morning. Fuentes met him at the front door, and they walked together around to the pool.

  “There were no survivors out there last night?” Fuentes asked.

  “We made sure there were none,” Ortega-Cowan said. “And we had a bit of luck with the timing, her coming back to her house right in the middle of it. She called off the air strike before I had a chance to do it in her name myself.”

  “Another nail in the bitch’s coffin,” Fuentes said with satisfaction. “Raúl will want to ask her about it.”

  “His office called first thing this morning, and I personally put the message on her desk before coming out here,” Ortega-Cowan said, and he glanced over his shoulder. “Have you found out what she was looking for?”

  “Fidel kept journals from the days before and during the revolution. We haven’t found those yet, so there’s a good chance she took them. And we’re sure that she went through his personal files.”

  “How can you be sure?” Ortega-Cowan asked.

  “Her file was missing.”

  “What was in it?”

  “I don’t know. I just know that the file was there after the funeral, and so far as we can tell, it’s the only one missing this morning.”

  “You had the chance last week, and you didn’t read it?” Ortega-Cowan asked. He was astounded.

  “I had more important duties to attend to. I didn’t think it was going anywhere. Anyway, it probably doesn’t contain much of interest for our purposes.”

  “There’s no way of knowing that for sure,” Ortega-Cowan said. “What about Fidel’s journals? Did you ever get a look at what they contained?”

  “He showed them to me once. Just after his second stroke, when he retired. He was sitting in his study, in his pajamas, when I came in to give my daily security report. ‘Take a look at this, Manuel,’ he told me. And he handed me the notebook, which was just about falling apart. ‘We were so young and foolish then.’”

  “Did you find anything interesting?”

  Fuentes shook his head. “Fascinating but useless. The usual day-to-day stuff about the revolution and about the early days with Che and the others in Mexico City. And his obsession with the gold. I didn’t read much of it.”

  Some fabulous treasure had been something of a hobby of his, in the early days of the government. Ortega-Cowan remembered reading something about it a number of years back, when he’d worked in the Directorate of Intelligence as a junior officer whose duties had included keeping current files of foreign press clippings about Fidel. He had mentioned something about lost Spanish gold both times he’d been to the UN in New York, but no one had taken him seriously.

  A glimmer of an idea came to Ortega-Cowan. “Can you be more specific?”

  “About what?”

  “The gold.”

  Fuentes laughed. “Don’t be an ass. It’s a fairy tale. Right now, we need to concentrate on how to use this situation with the Americans to bring her down.”

  “The real question is, why did she go to the trouble to arrange the kidnapping in Washington in order to lure the CIA computer expert here in the first place? She didn’t share her reasons with me. But they had to be important.”

  “You’re her chief of staff,” Fuentes said. “Find out.”

  “She’s staying at one of our safe houses in town until the mess at her compound is cleaned out. She’ll need new bodyguards and perhaps some new surveillance equipment.”

  “And you’re just the man to supply them,” Fuentes said with admiration. “Keep watch on her—she’s bound to make a mistake.”

  * * *

  María was at her desk, fabricating a report that would make some sense to Raúl without revealing the actual details of the Rencke–McGarvey operation, when her chief of staff passed her door. She called him back.

  “What the hell was that all about last night?” she demanded before he had a chance to sit down.

  “Saving your life, Colonel. And it was damned lucky you weren’t at home when the attack began, because we might not have been on time.”

  “They came after McGarvey and Rencke?”

  “That’s what I was led to believe by my informants, who said the
man who’d come ashore with McGarvey was Raúl Martínez, who’s been running our Miami operators around in circles for years. It was he who got some Cuba Libre bastards to attack from the highway while he came by boat to ferry the Americans out to the float plane.”

  “Who are your informants?”

  “A couple who run a small paladar near the waterfront. We had them in Quivicán a few years ago, where they learned that if they cooperated with us from time to time, we would allow them their freedom.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I only just found out last night, and when I tried to reach your cell phone, it was dead, something wrong with one of the towers. At any rate, they’re back in the States now, so can you tell me what the hell it was all about?”

  “Not yet, Román,” she said. She didn’t think that she could trust him. He’d willingly helped set up the kidnapping, but he was a devious man, and it was more than possible that he’d covered his tracks so that when the time came, he would have something on her. And at this moment, she was hanging out in a very stiff breeze.

  “Well, at least did you find out whatever it was you wanted to find out?”

  “I’ll let you know as soon as I can. But for now, my biggest problem is Raúl. I have to write him a detailed report that’ll make some sort of sense.”

  “Raúl may not be your only problem. Fuentes is gunning for you. He said you took something from Fidel’s study last night, and he’s threatening to make it public, along with the fact that you’re one of El Comandante’s illegitimate daughters.”

  Her office was suddenly cold. “He doesn’t want to fight with me. He’ll lose,” she said quietly. “I want him here this afternoon. Six o’clock.”

  “Now that he thinks he has something to use against you, he might refuse.”

  “Then arrest him,” María said. “Who knows, maybe he’ll get shot trying to escape.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Page was waiting in his office with Bambridge and the Company’s general counsel, Carleton Patterson, when McGarvey came up with Otto and Louise a few minutes after nine in the morning. They all stood around a grouping of couches and chairs in front of a coffee table.