Castro's Daughter

by David Hagberg

  “I don’t expect it will,” McGarvey said. “What about gunfire?”

  “About twenty minutes of it after we restored cell phone service, but since then it’s been quiet.”

  When Mac had been coming in from the air, the lights surrounding the depository were like a necklace around a black hole. “Have the Mint Police at the gate gotten back to the building okay?”

  “That’s the part that has us the most nervous,” Bogan said. “The guards got out of there okay, but less than ten minutes later, we spotted the infrared images of two men running down the access roads right up to the open gates.”

  “Did they go inside?”

  “No, they stopped at the guard post, and it looks as if they’re waiting for something or someone.”

  “Me,” McGarvey said.

  The Hummer headed to the depository.

  “We can verify that at least one of them is armed.”

  “They’ll both be carrying,” McGarvey said, checking the load and the silencer on his own pistol. When he looked up, the general was watching him. “They’re Cuban intelligence agents sent here to either disrupt the demonstration or somehow make their own claim. It’s what I was counting on.”

  “Are there others in the crowd?”

  “They’re all dead.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes,” McGarvey said. “Now I want you to get me as close as you can, I’ll go the rest of the way on foot.”

  “I’ll take you where your friend was shot,” Bogan said. “From inside the crowd. Wasn’t us.”

  “I understand,” McGarvey said. “How about the depository officials with the combinations?”

  “Four were inside the building when this started, five are standing by in an armored Hummer, and the tenth is being choppered down from Louisville International. Should be here within twenty minutes.”

  “Hold them until I give the word.”

  “You can reach my tactical cell phone,” Bogan said.

  “Yes,” McGarvey said, and he phoned Martínez. “I’m in the Hummer approaching your position, is one of your docs standing by?”

  “At the end of the access road, along with a couple of escorts. You sure you don’t want some backup?”

  “They have to be twitchy by now, so this isn’t going to have much of a chance if I bring help.”

  The Hummer pulled up beside the lead tank where Otto had been shot. “Once I give you the all clear, have the guys with the combinations sent in, but keep the media out until afterwards,” McGarvey told the general.

  “Then what?”

  “Then we’ll make an announcement, and the people will go home.”

  “I meant the two at the gate. You’re going to kill them.”

  “I just want to talk to them, and when the dust finally settles, I want them flown down to Guantánamo, where’re they’ll be released.”

  “Jesus,” Bogan said, but then something came across his face as he finally caught a glimmering of what was actually going on. “Jesus,” he said again.

  McGarvey got out of the Hummer and walked across the road to where Martínez was waiting for him by the bus at the edge of the crowd. The people had been told who he was and why he had come here, and they were happy now and smiling.

  “You wearing a vest?” Martínez asked as they headed through the crowd toward the access road.

  McGarvey shook his head. “They’re pros, so if it comes to that, they’ll go for head shots. It’ll be at nearly point-blank range, because I’m going to have to crowd them. It’s the only way I’ll have a chance of pulling it off.”

  “Doesn’t have much of a chance anyway,” Martínez said. “You do know that.”

  “We can’t live forever.”

  “That’s supposed to be my line, comp. This is for Cuba. Should be me going in there, why you?”

  “For Cuba,” McGarvey said. “Anyway, I want you guys to get the hell out of Miami and go home.”

  Martínez laughed. “Where would the tourists go for go for a good cup of coffee?” he asked, and McGarvey laughed with him.

  “Havana. I’ve always wanted to smoke a good cigar. Legally.”

  They stopped at the access road. “Seriously, Mac, watch your ass. Those guys won’t hesitate to pull the trigger.”

  “Neither will I,” McGarvey said. He took out his pistol and, holding it out of sight just behind his right leg, headed to the open gate and the guard post the length of a football field away.

  About fifty feet from the inner fence, a DI operative stepped out from behind one of the concrete structures flanking the gate. He was holding what looked like a compact automatic weapon of some sort.

  “Do you speak English?” McGarvey called out, not stopping.

  “Yes.”

  “The shooting is over, your associates are all dead. I’m here to talk.”

  “We’ll talk to the newspapers and television.”

  “First you have to talk to me. Do you know what happened in Texas?”

  The Cuban was dark, with thick black hair, dressed in jeans and a denim jacket over a dark shirt, making him nearly invisible. “We heard.”

  “The gold is here, not in Texas or New Mexico.”

  “That is our understanding, señor,” the DI operative said. “Please stop where you are.”

  McGarvey took a couple more steps before he stopped less than ten feet away from the man. “You’re here on behalf of your government to stake a claim. Which you have done. Now it’s time to go home.”

  “We want to see it with our own eyes.”

  “I’ve arranged for you and your partner, still hiding like a pansy, to have safe passage through the crowd to the army officer in charge of this installation.” He needed the second agent in plain view; otherwise, if there was a shoot-out he’d be at a sharp disadvantage.

  The other operative, also armed with what McGarvey recognized was a silenced MAC 10, the same as the weapon the DI had been equipped with at Fort Bliss, stepped into view. “Never happen, you bastardo.”

  “Nevertheless, it’s the only way you’ll get out of here alive.”

  “Hijo de puta!” the man shouted, and he raised his weapon.

  McGarvey shot him in the forehead, driving his body backwards, bouncing off the concrete structure, dead before he hit the pavement.

  The other operative raised his weapon at the same moment McGarvey switched aim to him. But the man hesitated.

  “Believe me, I do not want to kill you, but if I must I will,” McGarvey said. “Comprende?”

  The Cuban said nothing. He was tense but not out of control.

  “I want you to return to Havana to make your report that the gold has been found. The Cuban government can make its claim, just as the people here tonight are making theirs.”

  The agent looked beyond McGarvey to the crowd. “They’ll never let me pass.”

  “The military will escort you to their airstrip here, from where you’ll be flown to Cuba.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not,” McGarvey said, but he was close enough to see the tightening muscles around the man’s eyes and mouth.

  The operative shouted something in Spanish, but an instant before he pulled the trigger, McGarvey fired one shot, catching him in the right kneecap, knocking him down, the MAC 10 firing into the sky, the thirty-round magazine empty in under two seconds.

  McGarvey was on him in three steps, kicking the empty gun away, and immediately the Cuban understood that he had lost, and though he was in pain, he laid his head back. “Qué?”

  “You’re going home, a cripple, but probably a hero. Mission accomplished. But if you return, for any reason at all, I’ll kill you. Understand?”

  “Sí.”

  “Medic!” McGarvey shouted, and he got on the phone to General Bogan.

  EIGHTY-THREE

  Unlike the other vaults, which were compartmentalized almost like hardened cubicles in a very large office, vault C was a big room behind a massive do
or that swung ponderously outward, a metal ramp sliding into place over the thirty-inch gap in the concrete floor.

  The ten combination holders, four of them women, all of them fifty or older, most of them dressed in ordinary business clothes even though it was the middle of the night on a weekend, and all of them anonymous, had entered their personnel data into the computer system on the ground floor. To reach the actual vault, they went through the same procedure three more times, and were subjected to hand and retinal scans.

  More than gold was and had been stored here at one time or another, including the original Declaration of Independence and Constitution during WWII, the reserves of several European countries, jewels given to American soldiers to keep them out of Soviet hands, one of four known copies of the Magna Carta, and before the invention of synthetic painkillers a vast supply of processed morphine and opium, in case our supplies of raw opium were to be interrupted.

  When the door was fully opened, the two Mint cops who had accompanied the group stepped aside to let McGarvey and Martínez cross the ramp.

  The room, a box actually of reinforced concrete and steel brightly lit with fluorescent fixtures recessed in the ceiling, measuring about twenty feet on a side, was totally empty and spotlessly clean except for a light coating of dust on the floor.

  Martínez had gone first and left footprints. There was no treasure here, and nothing had been in this room for a long time, at least twenty or thirty years.

  McGarvey started to laugh, and Martínez turned back to him.

  “Where is it?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” McGarvey said.

  Martínez looked again at the empty space. “Did it ever exist?”

  “The gold and other stuff they found in Victorio Peak existed. Otto established that much. And it was moved.”

  “But not here.”

  McGarvey turned and looked at the Mint cops, whose expressions were neutral, and then to the combination holders, none of whom seemed the least bit surprised.

  “Are you satisfied, Mr. McGarvey?” one of the women asked.

  “Where is it?”

  “If you’re talking about our gold reserves, some of it is here in the depository while a slightly larger amount—about five thousand metric tonnes—is stored in a vault beneath the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. But if you mean some mythical Spanish treasure dug up somewhere in New Mexico, it does not exist here.”

  “We could look inside the other vaults.”

  “Yes, you could,” the woman said reasonably. “But still you would not find your treasure.”

  “What do I tell the crowd?” Martínez asked.

  “The truth, that it’s not here.”

  “Or the truth, that it doesn’t exist, or never did?”

  “Oh, it’s somewhere, tell them that,” McGarvey said. “And tell them that we’ll just have to keep looking.”

  * * *

  “It could have been good,” Martínez said before he went to talk to the people and to the media.

  When McGarvey got to the dispensary, Otto was already out of bed and getting dressed, a thick bandage on the side of his head. He was worried.

  “Louise doesn’t answer her cell phone, and no one in the Building can reach her.”

  “Call security,” McGarvey said, but Otto shook his head.

  “María León disappeared, and a passenger by the name of Ines Delgado flew to Atlanta last night, and caught the last flight to Washington, which landed just before one this morning. Delgado is the name she used to get out of Cuba.”

  “There’s no reason to her to go to the McLean house.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Otto said. Anyway, this is something you and I have to handle. We get security or the Bureau involved, it could end up in a shoot-out. I’m counting on you, big-time, Kirk.”

  “Call our pilot,” McGarvey said.

  “Already have.”

  EIGHTY-FOUR

  It was nine in the morning by the time they touched down at Andrews Air Force Base, borrowed a plain blue Ford Taurus motor pool car and, McGarvey driving, headed the thirty miles on the Capital Beltway to McLean. Otto hadn’t said much on the flight, except to try Louise twice without luck before they touched down.

  “Keep trying,” McGarvey said when they crossed the river to Alexandria.

  “I’m afraid,” Otto said. “She’s the only woman in my entire life who ever loved me for who I was. All the warts and dirty sweatshirts, even my Twinkies and heavy cream.”

  “You’re not going to lose her, because the colonel wants the gold so that she can go home a redeemed apparatchik, and she knows that won’t happen if she does something to Louise,” McGarvey said. “And she knows that I would hunt her down and kill her, priority one. Try again.”

  Louise answered on the first ring, and relief and joy spread across Otto’s face. He put the call on speakerphone. “We were worried about you. Are you okay?”

  “Just dandy,” Louise answered, her voice obviously strained. “Where are you?”

  “On the Beltway, maybe twenty minutes away.”

  “Is Mac with you?”

  “He’s driving, and you’re on speakerphone.”

  “Just a minute,” Louise said, and the sound changed. “You’re on speakerphone, too. Mac, someone wants to talk to you.”

  “Colonel León, I expect,” McGarvey said.

  “We’ve been watching CNN,” María said. “No gold in Texas and none in Kentucky. Where is it?”

  “I don’t know, but we’re still looking.”

  “I want answers.” María’s voice rose a little. She sounded ragged. “I’ve come too far to go home empty-handed.”

  “I think that we need to talk about that, figure out what’s best for all of us—because making it a DI mission to keep kidnapping the same woman won’t work.”

  “Got your attention. It’s all I want.”

  “Stand by, Louise, we’re almost there,” McGarvey said.

  “We’re in the kitchen having some of your cognac—” Louise said, but the connection was broken.

  “What do you think?” Otto asked.

  “She’s running scared. If she goes home empty-handed, she’ll face a firing squad. If she stays here, she’ll spend the rest of her life in prison.”

  “What’re her options?”

  “She only has one,” McGarvey said. “Talk to us.”

  * * *

  It was Monday morning, and McLean’s residential streets were quiet, everyone was either at work or in school. Nothing moved on the cul-de-sac that backed into Bryn Mawr Park, and McGarvey pulled into the driveway of the Renckes’ secondary safe house and after a moment or two switched off the engine.

  “Concentrate on Louise,” he told Otto. “Let me do the talking, and if you see an opening just bug out of the line of fire with her.”

  “I’m not leaving you.”

  McGarvey turned on him. “You’ll goddamn follow orders for once,” he said harshly. “I’m not losing any more people I care about. Capisce?”

  Chastised, Otto nodded, and the two of them got out of the car and walked up to the house. The front door was unlocked, and McGarvey pushed it open with the toe of his shoe as he drew his pistol.

  The place was deathly still.

  “We’re here,” McGarvey called out.

  “In the kitchen,” Louise responded.

  “What’s your situation?”

  “Pistol on the table. I think it’s a compact Glock.”

  “Coming in,” McGarvey said, and taking the lead, his pistol pointed down at his side, he moved down the hall, where he stopped at the open doorway.

  “Good morning, Kirk,” María said, making no move for the pistol on the table in front of her. She looked disheveled, as if she hadn’t slept in a couple of days, which she probably hadn’t.

  “Pick up the gun, Louise,” McGarvey said, but María snatched it up first and switched the safety off.

  “I can’t allow that,�
� she said. Her pistol was pointed a little to the left, not at Louise or at McGarvey, but she was wired.

  “Will you allow Louise to leave the kitchen?”

  “No. For the moment, she’s my only bargaining chip.”

  The kitchen was large, with a lot of big windows that overlooked an expansive backyard with a swing set and elaborate-looking children’s play station, or gym, with slides and bars and even a tree house of sorts. McGarvey could see Audie playing here, and he could hear her laughter. And he was finally beginning to see himself back in the picture.

  He stepped the rest of the way into the kitchen, and María stiffened when she saw he was holding a gun. But moving slowly, he holstered the Walther under his jacket at the small of his back and then sat down at the table across from her. Otto came in a moment later and sat down next to his wife, and put an arm around her shoulder.

  “Okay?” he asked.

  Louise was looking at his bandage. “They were a lousy shot, thank God.”

  “You came here to get my attention,” McGarvey said. “What’s next?”

  “Where’s the treasure?”

  “I don’t know if we’ll ever find out.”

  “But it exists.”

  “I’m almost certain of it,” McGarvey said. “But none of it will ever get to Havana, at least not to the government.”

  “Which you think you can bring down.”

  “Not me alone,” McGarvey said.

  María nodded. “You are a man at once formidable and pavoroso.”

  “What?”

  “She means fearful,” Louise said, and she looked at María. “You can’t imagine the half of it.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “So I’ll ask again, what’s next?” McGarvey said.

  “If you don’t know where the treasure lies, or are unwilling reveal it, then there is nothing left for me.”

  “Nothing in Havana, but if you agree to be extensively debriefed on DI operations and long-range planning, something might be worked out. Maybe a plea bargain.”

  But María was shaking her head, a sudden infinite sadness in her large dark eyes. “I could never do such a thing, never stay here for the rest of my life in or out of jail.” She looked out the windows at the swing set. “I am what I am. A product of my genes and my upbringing, my training. I’m a Cuban, and the only man who ever wrote that he loved me was my father.”