Havana Libre

by Robert Arellano

  I clasp his shoulders in embrace. “I’ll be careful, Abuelo.”

  It is awkward taking Emilio’s orders for magazines. “Anything futból, moto, o marino.” He forces an American fifty-dollar bill on me.

  I try to refuse. “Me pagas cuando regrese.”

  “Take it with you. These things are expensive, Mano. Five dollars, some of them. Get me ten of the latest, and if there’s any money left, buy Abuelo some more chocolate.” He lowers his voice and passes me a slip of paper: “Don’t tell Abuelo, but I got this from Abuela.”

  It is an American phone number with the area code 305.

  SÁBADO, 6 SEPTIEMBRE

  The Tourist

  He makes a call with his mobile phone. To the man who answers, he says, “It’s me.”

  “Your instincts were correct.”

  “How so?”

  “Rambo is out of work.”

  “Permanently?”

  “Yes. He is beyond hope. It would take an army.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He has called me several times and is trying to get me to admit things over the phone. He is desperate. It was obvious they have him. I hung up . . .”

  “The fool.”

  “It was smart to keep him in the dark. Now just be patient a few more days.”

  “I will proceed with the client’s plan.”

  “Good man. Do not act before the appointed date in order to assure maximum impact.”

  “A very big impact. Adiós.”

  DOMINGO, 7 SEPTIEMBRE

  Manolo

  At the safe house in Havana, Caballero and Pérez brief me on the latest with the Salvadoran. None of his intelligence has yielded a good lead on the second bomber: the trail has gone cold. “Did you get a number for the pharmacy from your primo?”

  I take out the slip of paper with the 305 area code. “Yes, he gave me this and some money for magazines.”

  “What kind of magazines?” Caballero asks. I understand his implication, although the job of enforcing the pornography ban would be on Pérez’s side of the law.

  “Just soccer, motorsports, and boating.”

  “Does this check out with what you got in Pinar?” Caballero recites a telephone number and it matches exactly.

  We all smoke and drink strong Cuban coffee, which cuts through my pain from last night and the hungover drive back to Havana. Caballero drills me: “What made you want to defect?”

  “I’m in a dead-end job where for the past eight years I have been thwarted by a jealous supervisor.”

  “Why leave now?”

  “It was my plan all along, but the invitation to the conference made it possible. I might never have gotten another chance.”

  “How will you explain how you got the salida approved?”

  “By staking the clinic and my share of the house in Vedado as collateral.”

  “Now that you have made it to Miami, what is your objective?”

  “To get my physician’s license.”

  “Yes, but without your papers and the transcripts from the medical school in the Havana, you will be frustrated.”

  I think to myself: the same frustration as my father’s tragic exile.

  Pérez shows me a photo. “José Felipe Mendoza y Paredes.”

  “Mendoza.”

  “Yes. He leases commercial real estate and helped your father get his start. He is one of the most powerful men in Miami. The Salvadoran has provided credible intelligence that the recruiter in San Salvador communicates with him by e-mail drafts.”

  Pérez introduces me to the computer expert, a young mulatto named Eduardo who does not shake hands. Caballero tells me, “In the morning, after visiting Gonzalez to pick up your passport and the salida, go directly to the US Interests Section in the Swiss Embassy.”

  “Won’t I need an appointment?”

  “You have an appointment. You will be allowed through the gate between ten a.m. and noon. Shoot for ten thirty. Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  “Any last words of advice?”

  “When speaking of Cuba among the gusanos, remember to use the past tense.” He shakes my hand. “Good luck.”

  Pérez and I follow Eduardo to an alcove barely larger than a closet where a new laptop computer is set up on a desk. “Last we could ascertain, Mendoza uses an IBM ThinkPad like this one. Do not attempt to boot up a computer that is off. You cannot control the Windows 95 start-up sound, which is loud and lasts for six seconds. But if this little light is green, it’s only sleeping. Touch any key to wake it up.” Eduardo shows me how to wake it and put it back to sleep. “Here is the Explorer browser running Yahoo, the host Mendoza uses for his e-mail account. Look in this drafts folder first. Have you heard of a dead drop?” Eduardo shows me how to look in the drafts folder. “No traces of send or receive. Keep an eye out for dates and the names of locations.” On a slip of paper Eduardo gives me another number with a 305 area code. “Memorize this. It’s the number for a prepaid voice mail account that is secure. Do not have it written in your possession when you fly to Miami. Leave a brief message when you first establish contact with Mendoza, and any subsequent reports by calling from a public telephone.”

  “A cabina de teléfono? This is the technology currently in use by the DSS?”

  “You have to be a refugee in Miami, doctor. It could be awhile before you will have access to a mobile phone or computer. Use a pay phone. There will be no greeting, just a tone to signify the start of recording. Calling in a report, you must take every precaution so that nobody should see you. Find a booth in a quiet location. Make your calls at night unless you suspect an immediate threat to Cuban security.”

  “And if someone discovers I am making pay phone calls despite my precautions?”

  Pérez answers: “Tell them that you are trying to contact the conference organizers in Tampa. Explain how you felt guilty about taking the invitation when you knew all along you were going to defect. Perhaps you are hoping they will help establish your medical credentials in Florida.” He holds my gaze intently in that way he has always had of completely ignoring my lunar to make a point. “Of course, you should not really try to contact the doctors in Tampa for any reason.”

  Eduardo gives me the evacuation plan. He unfolds a map emblazoned, 1997 Greater Miami Official Map and Visitor’s Guide. “Just to the north of Calle 8 there is a park named after José Martí. See here, on Southwest 4th Avenue? Do you see how the highway crosses over the Miami River? When it is time to evacuate, you will call the number and this time there will be an announcement. You will not leave a message, but go directly to the park and your handler will make contact.”

  “This all sounds very Sylvester Stallone.”

  “Do you know how to fly a plane?”

  “No.”

  “Then when the time comes, a rendezvous at a predetermined location will be the safest, most effective way to get you back to Havana.”

  I spend some more time familiarizing myself with the laptop computer and we repeat how to check e-mail for a dead drop. It is near dawn when Pérez and his driver give me a ride home.

  When we pull up in the alley behind Calle 23, Pérez says, “Just between you and me, take these with you to Miami.” He hands me a small pile of papers in the dark car.

  “¿Qué es esto?” I flip through the small stack in the murky light from the alley. I can make out two sets of letterhead: the pediátrico and the medical school. These are unauthorized copies of my records. I do not have to say it, because Pérez knows as well as I do that it is illegal for me to have them.

  “Take them,” he tells me, “to boost your credibility. You are not a fool. Nobody would believe that you planned to leave without at least trying to get unofficial copies.”

  Pérez’s driver stares at me in the rearview. He and I and Pérez make up a tiny archipelago of trust in a vast ocean of suspicion and deceit. The back of this Toyota is a secure location.

  “With these papers,” I point out, “t
here is a much greater possibility that I could be allowed to practice medicine if I do decide to stay. Aren’t you taking a great risk?”

  “I hope not.” Pérez looks at me—really looks at me. It reminds me of that first day five years ago, when he fixed his gaze unrepentantly on the mark that has defined me since I was ten and, unbeknownst to me at the time, impassively sized me up for the first job he had in mind for me. “They will want to make you a spokesperson to tell lies about the Revolution. You need to speak the part: be disgruntled, be critical, but don’t go believing your own act.”

  LUNES, 8 SEPTIEMBRE

  Mercedes

  Mercedes awakens before hundreds of sleeping tourists in the dormitory of her new job, and it takes her breath away to remember all those floors above her. The air in the laundry room is overpowering with the fresh, clean smells of capitalism. Here in the bowels beneath a city of glass and steel—what Martí might call the belly of the beast—although the atmosphere is suffocating among the driers in the basement, it is also safe and free.

  * * *

  Yorki drops by on the second day. “So what do you think of the dormitory?”

  “It’s fine. I’m grateful to have a place.”

  She finds Yorki charmingly awkward. Hyperactive, darting eyes, and rapid-fire patter. “When guests want to complain about housekeeping,” he tells her, “they always go first to the front desk, so the manager puts the head of housekeeping where the desk captain can say curtly, I’m sorry to hear you found the condition of the room unsatisfactory. Allow me to introduce you to the head of housekeeping, and thereby pass the problem along and get back to dealing with other, happier guests, which is, after all, the objective of the front desk.” He tells her, “I told Manolo I’d look out for you while he’s in la Yuma, so let me know if I can help. I’m here Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the rest of the week at the Neptuno.”

  Manolo, she learns her second day of work, is her guardian-doctor’s first name. A small protocol that gives her great comfort is that he has never told her, Please, just call me Manolo. Neither did he invite her up to his apartment. That would have been a big red flag. She felt safe around him, in her element. She hesitated to say at home. There’s something more about him, something to do with that mark on his face. Mercedes would like to know about it, but she is naturally ashamed to ask. Instead, she accepted him as not unhandsome because of it. She closes her eyes and tries to picture him without it, and in fact he is not as handsome.

  LUNES, 8 SEPTIEMBRE

  Manolo

  I go to the pediátrico for my consulta with Director Gonzalez. We sit in his air-conditioned office. It is a window unit, the only one in the entire hospital. I once heard him justify it in an offhand comment that it helped to refrigerate irate parents into complacency when they came to make specious complaints about nurses acting surly, or overworked doctors’ malpractice.

  Director Gonzalez says, “Your salida got approved, and your passport too.” I see them sitting on his desk.

  “Yes, something of a surprise.” I am taking to my new role of pretending to be someone who is pretending not to defect.

  I know he has not even read my petition when he says, “Remind me again how long you’re gone?”

  “The conference lasts five days. I’ll travel back on Monday the fifteenth.”

  “Very well. Give yourself a rest day and we’ll put you on the schedule for Wednesday the seventeenth.” Gonzalez, not one to be only a half-cynic, cajoles me with a casual reference to finally reviewing a long-requested schedule revision, adding, “You’re one of my best doctors, Manolo. You are sure you’re coming back?” He is searching my expression. If it is to tell whether my complexion betrays any hint of duplicity, the only discoloration on my face is my Havana Lunar.

  I am amused at how calm I feel. Deceiving him is such a delight, I realize I’m being introduced to one of the distinct pleasures of espionage: the experience of betraying the small-minded people who, for superficial reasons, have pestered, pigeonholed, and procrastinated you to death if for no more motive than—than what? Envy? No, something more than that: a backward-headed misinterpretation of un dicho made into a lyric by Silvio Rodriguez: Qué no van lejos los de alante si los de atras corren bien. That is, if your mediocrity means you are falling behind, then by all means put snares out to trip up the front-runners.

  I say, “I am sure.”

  “Then enjoy the conference. Bring back new developments to share with your colleagues.” It remains unspoken, but by his expression Director Gonzalez appends his constant caution: As long as it involves no expensive equipment. He hands me my passport with the salida. In terms of what a lowly doctor is capable of exacting from his obstructive boss in the doldrums of the Período Especial, my defection will be the ultimate vengeance. Here is one person I will be glad to let swallow the deception. Go fuck yourself, Gonzalez.

  At ten forty-five I take my passport to the US Interests Section in the Swiss Embassy, and by eleven forty-five I am holding my visa.

  * * *

  On my last afternoon before leaving for Miami, I visit the Havana Libre. Sol Melina has undertaken extensive renovations of the onetime Havana Hilton. They have even restored the enormous Amelia Peláez mural over the main entrance, which has been hidden behind construction scaffolding ever since I can remember. Calle 23 slopes so steeply on the Calle L side, where guests arrive, that the entrance is three floors higher than the street behind, and the service entrance leads to a level that is mostly underground beneath a plinth that supports the rest of the hotel’s twenty-seven stories.

  I stop off in the subterranean kitchen and find Yorki. He looks around to make sure nobody is listening, a pantomime that is just for my sake, to let me know he has something on me, because there is no way anyone not standing right next to us could hear over the dishwashers’ clatter. Yorki says, “It was crazy what happened at the Copacabana on Thursday. I heard you were there.”

  “How the hell did you hear that?”

  “From one of the busboys. He was lucky—he’d just walked past the ashtray with the bomb and only got the left half of his face peppered with glass shards. He told me that after the explosion, he saw my friend with the splotch on his face.” Yorki pauses and a satisfied smile forms in anticipation of what he has to say next. “That cousin of yours started work yesterday.”

  “That was quick.”

  He shrugs. “Ever since the renovation they’ve been hiring maids, but it speeds things up when you supply the head housekeeper a lobster tail.”

  “I owe you one.”

  “Damn right you do. Mano, that girl is not your cousin.”

  I do not conceal my surprise at Yorki’s forthrightness. “Does it make a difference?”

  “Yes. For the job, no, not now that she’s in. But it seems to me it does make a difference to you. Is that old frozen Mano finally thawing out—has it been five years?—from hibernation and falling for a patient again?”

  “Look out for her, Yorki.”

  He puts a sweaty hand on the back of my neck and says close to my ear, “Is it yours?”

  “¿Qué?”

  “That seed she’s growing—you the farmer?”

  “Nice figure of speech. No, I’m not the farmer.”

  “Cuidado que no te claven otra vez.”

  “Play with a hammer and you might get nailed,” I quote Yorki’s patented comeback to the common warning. He appreciates this. “I want to say goodbye to Mercedes. Can you point me to the maids’ quarters?”

  “Careful what you see. Some of those viejas are in their sixties. Make sure to knock so you don’t get a look at anything madness-inducing. One of them has a paunch and breasts that hang so low, you can’t tell where one begins and the others end—it looks like three tits.”

  “Thanks. I’ll cover my eyes.”

  Yorki reaches into his pocket and pulls out a green bill. “Bring me a pair of tenis Americano, marca Nike—make sure they’re not fakes, either. Th
ey have to have that wave along the side and on the little tag inside. The fakes are as common as the real thing en la Florida.” He hands me a twenty-dollar note.

  Although there is no telling whether I will ever get to buy him those Nikes, I have to take it to maintain the profile. “Are you sure that twenty will cover it?”

  “Sure it will, if you don’t let yourself get ripped off like some asshole guajiro. Feliz viaje. Don’t come back without my Nikes.”

  It is surreal playing the part and pretending I will be gone just one week. No long goodbyes of uncertain future; just get it over with. You will soon hear something shocking about me, but I assure you that someday I am coming back, Yorki.

  Down in the basement, past the deafening clatter of the washers and the suffocating heat of the driers, are the maids’ dormitories. It is almost time for their shift change, so the doors are open to several rooms, dozens of bunk beds in each. I find Mercedes. She has a top bunk, spare and neat. The uniform looks good on her. She gives me a hug and exclaims, “I came in on Saturday and your friend Yorki got me the job the same day!”

  “He works fast.” My own hands are shaking from excitement or from hunger—it’s hard to tell the difference—when I tell her about the círculo infantil. “Havana Libre will give you a maternity leave, and there is a good place nearby for the baby beginning at six weeks.” I distract her with a simple printed pamphlet from the infant day care in the neighborhood of the Havana Libre because I do not wish to overwhelm her with the portentous accumulation of happy details around her destiny that fate and I have conspired to expedite. She holds the pamphlet and delicately traces the services with a finger: feedings, nap times, and just seven infants for every licensed caregiver.

  “Thank you, doctor.”

  “They will take the baby for up to eight hours a day. And you can spend a lunch break together. I want to help you find a long-term place where you can stay with the baby, when I return.”

  I say cuando regrese deliberately and emphatically. She will remember this moment in a little over a week when she hears the news of my defection, and hopefully she will guard a spark of hope inside. It could be many months, but I have to believe she will hold on.