Cuba

by Stephen Coonts

  “The more warning. I have, sir, the fewer lives I am likely to lose.”

  “I will pass that on to Washington, Colonel. When I know something is up, you’ll hear about it seconds later. That’s the best I can do.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Just so we’re on the same sheet of music, Colonel, I want that warehouse defended until you are relieved or the very last marine is dead.”

  Eckhardt said nothing this time. Toad Tarkington’s grim expression softened. Eckhardt could have said something like, “Marines don’t surrender,” or some other bullshit, but he didn’t. Toad was taking a liking to the lieutenant colonel.

  “Anything you need from me,” Jake Grafton continued, “just ask. The battle group and the base commander will supply you to the extent of our resources. The cruiser will provide artillery support—I want you to interface with the cruiser people in the next hour or two, make sure you’re ready to communicate and shoot.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Which brings up a point: I see that your people are building bunkers from sandbags.”

  “Yes, sir. We’re trying to fortify some positions, create some strongpoints.”

  “Get a couple of backhoes from the base people, get someone to locate the utilities, and dig fortifications. Jackhammer the concrete. By dawn I want your people dug in to the eyes.” This order might be stretching the phrase “business as usual,” but Jake wasn’t worried. Freighters carrying weapons don’t normally turn up missing.

  “Yessir.”

  “What are you going to do if the Cubans send tanks through the fence?”

  “Their tanks are old Soviet T-54s, I believe,” Lieutenant Colonel Eckhardt said. “We’ll channel them into these two avenues,” he pointed at the aerial photo, “then kill them—cremate the crews inside the tanks.”

  “Okay. When your people are dug in, dig any tank traps that you want. You have carte blanche, Colonel.”

  “Nobody is going into that warehouse, sir.”

  “Fine. We’ll keep the Cuban Navy off your back and give you air support. The cruisers will provide artillery. Call us if you see or hear anything suspicious.”

  Toad passed the colonel a list of radio frequencies and they discussed communications for several minutes.

  Jake took that opportunity to wander off, to look at the warehouse from all angles.

  He was standing beside six large forklifts that were parked near the main loading dock when Toad and Eckhardt walked over to him. “Don’t isolate these forklifts from the pier when you’re digging up concrete,” Jake advised.

  “Of course not.”

  “One other thing,” Jake said. “You’d better break out the MOPP suits and have them beside every man.” MOPP stood for mission-oriented protective posture, a term designed by career bureaucrats to obfuscate the true nature of chemical and biological warfare protection suits.

  The colonel was going to say something about the suits, then he decided to pass on it.

  They talked for several minutes about the battalion’s problems, how the colonel was deploying it. The colonel told Jake he was putting people on the roofs of all the warehouses.

  As Jake and Toad walked back to the Osprey, Lieutenant Colonel Eckhardt turned toward warehouse nine and scratched his head. He didn’t for a minute believe that building contained chemical and biological weapons.

  He frowned. A hijacked freighter? He had been in the Corps long enough to know how the navy operated: this was just another readiness exercise but the admiral didn’t have the courtesy or decency to say so. “Let’s keep the grunts’ assholes twanging tight.” MOPP suits, in the heat of the Cuban summer!

  Yeah.

  “Cuba must learn to live with the elephant,” Hector Sedano told the crowd of schoolteachers and administrators. “Our relations with the United States have been the determining factor in our history and will be the key to our future. Any Cuban government that hopes to make life better for the people of Cuba must come to grips with the reality of the colossus ninety miles north.”

  That was the nub of his message, pure and simple. He was careful never to criticize Fidel Castro or the government, knowing full well that to do so would be the height of folly, an invitation to a prison cell. Most of the people in this room were teachers, a few were agents for the secret police. Cuba was a dictatorship, a fact as unremarkable as the island status of the nation.

  Still, he was talking about the future, about a day still to come when all things might change, a day that Cuba would have to face someday, sometime. Everyone in the room understood that too, including the secret police, so no one objected to his remarks. Hector Sedano talked on, talking about education, jobs, investment, opportunities, the building blocks of the life sagas of human beings.

  When he finished he sat down as the thunder of applause rolled over him. He thought that his audience’s reaction was not to his message, which in truth was not that new or fresh or interesting, but to the fact that he was a private citizen speaking aloud on sensitive political subjects. This his audience found most remarkable. They stood on their feet, applauded, pressed forward to touch him, to give him a greeting or blessing, reached between people to touch his clothes, his hands, his hair.

  Afterward he sat and spoke privately to a knot of people who wanted to be with him when that someday came. He was more open, spoke about specifics but still spoke guardedly, careful not to speak openly against the government or to criticize Fidel.

  In his heart of hearts Hector Sedano knew that Fidel Castro must know what he had to say, must know his message almost as well as he himself did. Everything that the government knew, Fidel knew, for he was the government.

  And still Fidel let him speak. That was the remarkable thing, and Hector had a theory about why this might be so. When he was a young revolutionary in jail, Fidel had written a political tract in defense of the Cuban revolution that became its manifesto. He entitled it, “History Will Absolve Me.” In it he defined “the people” as “the vast unredeemed masses, those to whom everyone makes promises and who are deceived by all.”

  Maybe, Hector thought, Fidel Castro was still looking for absolution from those who would come after. Maybe he was thinking about “the people” even now, thinking of the promises he had made and the reality that had come to pass.

  When he was leaving the school, on the way to the borrowed car with two friends who accompanied him, Hector found himself surrounded by well-dressed men, obviously not local laborers.

  “Hector Sedano,” said one, “you are under arrest. You must come with us.”

  He was stunned. “What am I charged with?” he demanded.

  “That is not for us to discuss,” the man said, and took his elbow. He pushed him toward a government van.

  “They are arresting Sedano,” someone shouted. The shout was taken up by others. As a crowd gathered, shoved closer, shouting threats and obscenities, the men around the van pushed Hector into it and jumped in themselves. In seconds it was in motion.

  Hector protested. He had done nothing wrong, he was not wanted for any crime.

  The man showed him a badge. “You are under arrest,” he said. “We have our orders. Now be silent.”

  The van raced through the streets of the city, then took the highway toward Havana.

  Maximo Sedano was too excited to sleep. The adrenaline aftershock of stabbing an ice pick into Vargas’s thug should have floored him, but the thought of $53 million, plus interest, kept him wide awake. That and the possibility of sirens.

  He lay in the darkness listening. Every now and then he heard a siren moaning, faint and far away. He waited in dread suspense for that moan to join others and become a wailing convoy of police vehicles converging on his hotel, followed by the stamping of a hoard of policemen charging upstairs to arrest him. He twitched with every howl in the night, though they were few and faint and never seemed to grow louder. In the silence between moans he amused himself by trying to calculate the amount of intere
st that might be due on Castro’s hoard.

  He hadn’t seen a statement in about six months … call it six months exactly, half a year. Interest at 2.45 percent, on $53 million … almost 650,000 American dollars.

  Ha! The interest alone would buy a nice small villa on Ibiza. Of course he should not rule out Majorca, nor Minorca for that matter, until he had traveled over each of the islands and seen local conditions for himself, and checked the real estate market. No, indeed. He would visit all the Balearic Islands in turn, including Formentera and Cabrera, stay at local inns, drink local wine, eat lamb and beef and fish prepared as the islanders preferred …

  Ahh, his dream was within his grasp. Tomorrow. In just a few short hours. When the banks opened he would go immediately to the one with the largest account, submit the transfer card, then to the next one, and finally, the one with the smallest amount on deposit, a mere $11 million.

  Maximo paced the room, stared out the window at the lights of the city that housed his fortune, paced some more.

  He was full almost to bursting, too excited to sleep.

  He had almost run back to the hotel from the railroad station. He had taken his time though, walked slowly and unhurriedly, paused to feed the ducks under one of the Limmat bridges, slipped the ice pick into the river when no one was watching, then walked on to the hotel so full of joy and happiness he could barely contain himself.

  At about four in the morning he began to wind down somewhat, so he lay down on the bed. In minutes he was asleep.

  When Maximo awoke the sun was up, he could hear a maid running a vacuum sweeper in the next room.

  He checked his watch. Almost eight-thirty.

  He showered, shaved, put on clean clothes from the skin out, then packed his bags. He would come back to the hotel this afternoon when he had finished his banking and check out. He wanted to be long gone if Santana showed up looking for Rall and the money.

  There was a continental breakfast laid out in the hotel dining room, so Maximo paused there for coffee and a French roll.

  Suitably fortified, with his attaché case in his left hand and the transfer cards signed by Fidel in his inside breast pocket, Maximo Sedano set off afoot for the bank that was to be his first stop. It was a mere two blocks away, a huge old building of thick stone walls and small windows, a building hundreds of years old with the treasure of the ages in its vaults.

  He spoke to a clerk, was ushered into a small windowless office to see a middle-aged man who wore a green eyeshade and spoke tolerably good Spanish. Maximo surrendered the appropriate transfer card and settled down to wait after the clerk left the room.

  The bank was quiet. Footsteps were lost on the vast wood and stone floors. Humans seemed to be the intruders here, temporary visitors who came and went while the bank endured the storms of the centuries, a monument to the power of capital.

  Five pleasant minutes passed, then five more.

  Maximo was in no hurry. He was prepared to wait quite a while for $53 million, even if it took all day. Or several days. After all, he had waited a lifetime so far. But he wouldn’t have to wait long. The clerk would be back momentarily.

  And he was.

  He came in, looked at Maximo with an odd expression, handed him back the transfer card with just the slightest hint of a bow.

  “I am sorry, señor, but the balance of this account is so low that the transfer is impossible to honor.”

  Maximo gaped uncomprehendingly. He swallowed, then said, “What did you say?”

  “I am sorry, señor, but there has been some mistake.”

  “Not on my part,” Maximo replied heatedly.

  The clerk gave a tight little professional smile. “The bank’s records are perfectly clear.” He held out the transfer card. “This account contains just a few dollars over one thousand.”

  Maximo couldn’t believe his ears. “Where did the money go?”

  “Obviously, due to the bank secrecy laws I have limited discretion about what I can say.”

  Maximo Sedano leaped across the table at the man, grabbed him by his lapels.

  “Where did the money go, fool?” he roared.

  “Someone with the proper authorization ordered the money transferred, señor. That much is obvious. I can say no more.” And the clerk wriggled from his grasp.

  The story was the same at the next two banks Maximo Sedano visited. Each account contained just a few dollars above the minimum amount necessary to maintain the account.

  The horror of his position hit Maximo like a hammer. Not only was there no money here for him, Alejo Vargas would kill him when he got back to Cuba.

  He told the bank officer at the last bank he visited that he wanted to make a telephone call, and he wanted the bank officer there to talk to the person at the other end.

  He called Vargas at home, caught him before he went to his office.

  After he had explained about the accounts, he asked the bank officer to verify what he had said. The officer refused to touch the telephone. “The bank secrecy laws are very strict,” he said self-righteously. Maximo wanted to strangle him.

  Vargas had of course listened to this little exchange. “There is no money,” Maximo told the secret-police chief. “Someone has stolen it.”

  “You ass,” Vargas hissed. “You have stolen the money. You are the finance minister.”

  “Call the other banks, Alejo,” he urged. “They are here in Zurich. I will give you their names and the account numbers. Listen to what the bank officers have to say.”

  “You are a capital ass, Sedano. The Swiss bankers will not talk to me. The money was deposited in Switzerland precisely because those bastards will talk to no one.”

  “I will call you from their office and have them speak to you.”

  “Have you lost your mind? What are you playing at?”

  This was a scene from a nightmare.

  “If I had the money I would not set foot in Cuba again, Vargas. We both know that. Use your head! I don’t have the money: I’m coming home.”

  He tried to slam the instrument into its cradle and missed, sent it skittering off the table. Fumbling, he picked it up by the cord, hung the thing properly on the cradle.

  The account officer looked at him with professional solicitude, much like an undertaker smiling at the next of kin.

  Perhaps the banks have stolen Fidel’s money, Maximo thought. These Swiss bastards pocketed the Jews’ money; maybe they are keeping Fidel’s.

  He opened his mouth to say that very thing to the account officer sitting across the table, then thought better of it. He picked up his attaché case with the pistol in it and walked slowly out of the bank.

  The van took Hector Sedano to La Cabana fortress in Havana. It stopped in a dark courtyard where other men were waiting. They took him into the prison, down long corridors, through iron doors that opened before him and closed after him, until finally they stood before an empty cell in the isolation area of the prison. Here they demanded his clothes, his shoes, his watch, the things in his pockets. When he stood naked someone gave him a one-piece jumpsuit. Wearing only that, he was thrust into the cell and the door was locked behind him.

  The journey from the everyday world of people and voices and cares and concerns to the stark, vile reality of a prison cell is one of the most violent transitions in this life. The present and the future had been ripped from Hector Sedano, leaving only his memories of the past.

  Hector was well aware of the fact that he could be physically abused, beaten, even executed, at the whim of whoever had ordered him jailed. People disappeared in Cuban prisons, never to be heard from again.

  The parallels between his situation and that of Christ while awaiting his crucifixion immediately leaped to Hector’s Jesuit mind. Not far behind was the realization that Fidel Castro had also been imprisoned before the revolution.

  Perhaps prison is a natural stage in the life of a revolutionary. Imprisonment by the old regime for one’s beliefs was de facto recognition tha
t the beliefs were dangerous and the person who held them a worthy enemy. The person imprisoned was automatically elevated in stature and respect.

  These thoughts swirled through Hector’s mind as he sat on a hard wooden bunk without blankets and gave in to his emotions. He found himself shaking with anger. He paced, he pounded on the walls with his fists until they were raw.

  Finally he threw himself on the bunk and lay staring into the gloom.

  Angel del Mar pitched and rolled viciously as she wallowed helplessly in the swells. In every direction nothing could be seen but sea and cloudy sky. The sky was completely covered now with cloud, the wind was picking up, and the swells were getting bigger, with a shorter period between them. Aboard the boat, many people lay on their stomach and hugged the heaving deck.

  Everyone on board suffered from the lack of water, some to a greater degree than others. Ocho Sedano, who had had only a few mouthfuls since the boat left Cuba and had pushed himself relentlessly, without mercy, was desperate. His eyes felt like burning coals, his skin seemed on fire, his tongue a thick, lifeless lump of dead flesh in a cracked, dry mouth.

  He wasn’t perspiring much now. Of all his symptoms, that one worried him the most. As an athlete he knew the importance of regulating body temperature.

  Dora lay in the shade cast by the wheelhouse and said nothing. She had been sick a time or two, vomit stained her dress. She seemed to be resting easier now.

  Beside her lay her father, Diego Coca. He was conscious, his eyes fierce and bright, his jaw swollen and misshapen. He hadn’t moved in hours, unwilling to let anyone else have his spot in the shade.

  Ocho sat heavily near Dora, scanned the sea slowly and carefully.

  My God there must be a ship! A ship or boat—something to give us food and water …

  In all this sea there must be hundreds of fishing boats and yachts, dozens of freighters, smugglers, American Coast Guard cutters hunting smugglers, warships … Where the hell are they? Where are all these goddamn boats and ships?

  From time to time he heard jets flying over, occasionally saw one below the clouds, but they stayed high, disappeared into the sea haze.