Cuba

by Stephen Coonts

  The professor looked startled, as if the possibility had not crossed his mind.

  “Come, come, Professor, don’t tell me you thought your work here in Cuba would remain a secret forever.”

  “I am a scientist,” the American said. “Science is my life.”

  Vargas snorted derisively. “Your life!” he said softly, contemptuously.

  The professor lost it. “Fool!” he shouted. “Idiot! You sit in this Third World cesspool and think this crap matters—fool!”

  “Perhaps,” Vargas said coldly. He was used to Professor Svenson, an unrepentant intellectual snob, the very worst kind, and American to boot. “I would like to stay and trade curses with you today but there is no time. The workers are waiting outside. You are going to show them how to clean up the lab, then you will determine exactly what happened to the viruses. You will write down all that must be done to check the warheads. You will have the report hand-delivered to me. If you fail to do exactly what I say, you will go into the crematorium with the lab worker. Do you understand me, Professor?”

  “You can’t threaten me. I’m—”

  Alejo Vargas flicked his fingers across the professor’s cheek, merely a sting. He stared into his eyes. “You suffer from a regrettable delusion that you are irreplaceable—I can cure that. If you wish, you can go to the crematorium right now. Two body bags are not much more trouble than one.”

  When Vargas left, Olaf Svenson sat and hid his face in his hands.

  He had never thought past the scientific problems to the ones he now faced. Oh, he should have, of course: he knew that Vargas intended to put the virus into warheads. He shut his mind to the horror—he wanted to see if the mutation could be controlled. No, he wanted to see if he could control the mutation of the viruses. The scientific challenges consumed him. Vargas had the money and the facilities—Olaf Svenson wanted to do the research.

  He was going to have to get out of Cuba, and as soon as possible. The university thought he was in Europe—that was where he would go. The CIA probably had no evidence, or not enough to prosecute him in an American court. If he went to the airport and took a plane now they probably would never get enough—Vargas certainly wasn’t going to be a willing witness.

  He waited a few minutes, long enough for Vargas to clear off upstairs, then stood and took a last fleeting look at the lab. With a sigh he turned his back on what might have been and walked to the elevator. In the lobby he took the time to give detailed instructions to the workers who would clean up the lab, answered the foreman’s questions, then watched as they boarded the elevator. When the elevator door closed behind the workers, Professor Svenson nodded to the guards at the entrance of the building, set off down the street and never looked back.

  The P-3 Orion antisubmarine patrol plane flew over a sparkling sea. The morning cumulus clouds would form in the trade winds in a few hours, but right now the sky was empty except for wisps of high stratus.

  The glory of the morning held no interest for the P-3’s crew, which was examining an old freighter anchored in the lee of an L-shaped cay. A few palm trees and some thick brush covered the backbone of the little island, which had wide, white, empty beaches on all sides.

  “Whaddya think?” the pilot asked his copilot and the TACCO, the tactical coordinator, who was standing behind the center console.

  “Go lower and we’ll get pictures,” the TACCO suggested. He passed a video camera to the copilot.

  The pilot retarded the throttles and brought the plane around in a wide, sweeping turn to pass down the side of the freighter at an altitude of about two hundred feet. The copilot kept the video camera on the freighter, which was fairly small, about ten thousand tons, with peeling paint and a rusty waterline. A few sailors could be seen on deck, but no flags were visible.

  “I’ll get on the horn,” the TACCO told the pilot, “see if the folks in Norfolk can identify that ship. But first let’s fly over the ship, get the planform from directly overhead.”

  The TACCO knew that the computer sorted ship images by silhouettes and planforms, so having both views would speed up the identification process.

  Professor Olaf Svenson was standing in line at Havana airport to buy a ticket to Mexico City when he saw Colonel Santana arrive out front in a chauffeur-driven limousine. Through the giant windows he could clearly see Santana get out of the car, see the uniformed security guards salute, see the plainclothes security men with Santana move tourists out of the way.

  Svenson turned and rushed away in the other direction. He dove into the first men’s room he saw and took refuge in an empty stall.

  Was Santana after him?

  The acrid smell of a public rest room filled his nostrils, permeated his clothing, made him feel unclean. He sat listening to the sounds: the door opening and closing as men came and went, feet scraping, water running, piss tinkling into urinals, muttered comments. Sweat trickled down his neck, soaking his shirt.

  Slam! Someone aggressively pushed the rest room door open until it smashed against the wall.

  The minutes crawled.

  Santana was an animal, Svenson thought, a sadist, a foul, filthy creature who loved to see fellow human beings in pain. Svenson had seen it in his eyes. Even the smallest of bad tidings was delivered with a malicious gleam. Svenson suspected that as a boy Santana had enjoyed torturing pets.

  What would Santana do to an overweight, middle-aged scientist from Colorado who tried to escape the country?

  The door slammed into the wall again, and Svenson jumped.

  Torture? Of course. Santana would want to inflict pain. Svenson felt his bowels get watery as he thought about the pain that Santana could dish out.

  Every sound caused him to move, to jump.

  He consulted his watch again. Just a few minutes had passed.

  0 God, if you really exist, have mercy on me! Don’t let Santana find me. Please!

  Home. He wanted to go home so badly. To his apartment and cats and flowers in planters. To his neat, safe little haven, where he could shut out the evil of the world.

  Someone slapped the side of the stall, said something unintelligible in Spanish. Probably wanted him to hurry up, to get out and let the next man in.

  Svenson made a retching sound. And almost lost his breakfast.

  He tried retching audibly again, less forcefully.

  The person standing beside the stall walked away, the door to the rest room opened and closed.

  Where was Santana?

  Maybe he wasn’t coming. Surely by now if he were searching the terminal he would have looked into this restroom.

  Could it be?

  Or perhaps Santana was standing outside, waiting for him to come out, for the sheer joy of dashing his hopes when he thought the coast was clear. Santana would do a thing like that, Svenson told himself now.

  He felt so dirty, so wretched. He wiped at the sheen of sweat on his face, wiped his hands on his trousers.

  He watched the minute hand of his watch, watched it slowly circle the dial, counted the seconds as it moved along so effortlessly.

  With every passing minute that Santana didn’t come he felt better. Yes. Perhaps he wasn’t looking. He must not be. If he were looking he would have been in this restroom, would have opened the door, would have jerked him from the stall and arrested him and put the cuffs on him and dragged him across the terminal and thrown him into a police car.

  But Santana didn’t come.

  After an hour of waiting, Olaf Svenson began thinking about how he was going to get out of the country. He needed another passport. If he used his own, the security people might not let him through the immigration checkpoint.

  He pulled up his pants, washed his hands thoroughly, and went out into the main hall of the terminal. Keeping an eye out for Santana, he went to the ticket desk for Mexicana Airlines and stood where he could watch the agent. When handed a passport, the man glanced up, comparing the face to the photo. Just a glance, but a glance would be enough. Using
a stolen passport with a photo that didn’t match his face was too much of a risk. Svenson knew he would have to use his own, dangerous though it would be.

  Screwing up his courage, Olaf Svenson got in line. “Ciudad Mejico, por favor.” He handed the passport to the agent, who glanced into his face, then handed the passport back.

  An hour later Svenson went through the immigration line. The uniformed official didn’t look up, merely compared the passport to a typed list that lay on his desk, then passed it back. He did not stamp the document.

  Olaf Svenson took a seat in the waiting area and used a filthy handkerchief to wipe perspiration from his forehead.

  A reprieve. The powers that rule the universe had granted him a reprieve.

  He would have liked to have had the opportunity to study the latest viral mutation, but the risk was just too great. A lost opportunity, he concluded. Oh, too bad, too bad.

  When the plane from Madrid touched down at Havana airport with Maximo Sedano aboard, Colonel Santana and two plainclothes secret police officers were there to meet him. They stood beside Maximo while he waited for his luggage, then the two junior men carried it to the car while Maximo walked beside Santana.

  Colonel Santana said nothing to the finance minister, other than to say Alejo Vargas wanted to see him, then he let the bastard stew. He had learned years ago that silence was a very effective weapon, one that cost nothing and caused grievous wounds in a guilty soul. All men are guilty, Santana believed, of secret sins if nothing else, and if left to suffer in silence will usually convince themselves that the authorities know everything. After a long enough silence, often all that remains to do is take down the confession and obtain a signature.

  One of his troops drove while Santana rode in the back of the car with his charge. Not a word was uttered the whole trip.

  Maximo seemed to be holding up fairly well, Santana thought, not sweating too much, retaining most of his color, breathing under control. The colonel smiled broadly, a smile that grew even wider when he saw from the corner of his eye that Maximo Sedano had noticed it.

  Ah, yes. Silence. And terror.

  The car drove straight into the basement of the Ministry of Interior, where Maximo Sedano was hustled to a subterranean interrogation room.

  “I demand to see Vargas,” Maximo said hotly when they shoved him into a chair and slammed the door shut.

  “You demand?” asked Santana softly, leaning forward until his face was only inches from Maximo. “You are in no position to demand. You may ask humbly, request, you may even pray, but you don’t demand. You have no right to demand anything.”

  Santana seated himself behind the desk, across from Maximo. He took out the interrogation form, filled out the blanks on the top of the sheet, then laid it on the scarred wood in front of him.

  “Where,” Santana asked, “is the money?”

  Maximo Sedano inhaled through his nose. He smelled dampness, urine, something rotting, meat or vegetable perhaps … and something cold and slimy and evil. It was here, all around him, in this room—the very stones reeked of it. Before Castro the secret police belonged to Fulgencio Batista, and before him Geraldo Machado, and so on, back for hundreds of years. This was a secret room that never saw the light, where justice did not exist, where force and venality and self-interest ruled. Here shadow men without conscience or scruple wrestled with the enemies of the dictator. The room reeked of fear and blood, torture and maiming, pain and death.

  Maximo pushed the images aside. With a tenuous composure, carefully, completely, honestly, he explained about the accounts and the German and the people at the bank. He related what they said to the best of his memory. He told about the ice pick and the men’s room, everything, withholding only his intention of transferring the money to his own accounts.

  Santana had questions, of course, made him repeat most of it two or three times. When the colonel had it all written down, Maximo signed the statement.

  “Where are the transfer cards?” Santana asked.

  “In Switzerland. I left them at the bank.”

  “Why?”

  “If there has been some mistake, if the money was stolen by someone at the bank, then the banks have valid, legal transfer orders they must honor. They must send the money to the Bank of Cuba.”

  “So where is the money?”

  “It is not in those accounts, obviously. I think the money has been stolen.”

  For the first time, Santana was openly skeptical. “By whom?”

  “By someone who had access to the account numbers. El Presidente insisted on keeping a record of them in his office. I would look there first.”

  “Why not your office? Is it not possible one of your aides learned the numbers, passed them to someone who—?”

  “All the numbers of the government’s foreign accounts, including the accounts controlled exclusively by el Presidente, are kept in a safe in my office under my exclusive control. None of my staff has access—only me.”

  Again Santana smiled. “You realize, of course, that you are convicting yourself with your own mouth?”

  Maximo threw up his hands. “I tell you this, Santana. I do not have the money. If I had fifty-four million dollars I would not have taken the plane back to Cuba. I would not be sitting in this shithole talking to a shithead like you.”

  Santana ignored the insult and jotted a few more lines on his report. Personally he believed Maximo—if the man had the money he would have run like a rabbit—but to say so would give Maximo too much leverage. And Maximo said that he killed a man with an ice pick, which certainly seemed out of character. Santana raised an eyebrow as he thought about Rall. Maximo Sedano killing Rall—well, the world is full of unexpected things.

  He left Maximo Sedano sitting in the chair in the interrogation room while he went to find Vargas. The minister was in his office listening to a report of the laboratory burglary from one of the senior colonels, who had just returned from the university.

  Santana knew nothing of the burglary, had not been informed before he went to the airport. He stood listening, asked no questions, waited for Alejo Vargas.

  An hour passed before Vargas was ready to talk about Maximo. “He is downstairs in an interrogation room,” Santana said. “Here is his statement.” He passed it across. Vargas read it in silence.

  “The money is not in the accounts,” Vargas said finally.

  “So he says.”

  “And you think he is telling the truth?”

  “Sir, I don’t think Maximo Sedano has what it takes to steal that kind of money and come back here to face you. He knew he would be met at the airport. He was expecting it.”

  Vargas said nothing, merely blinked.

  “Actually, his suggestion about the account numbers at the president’s residence is a good one. If there was a leak, it was probably there. Fidel probably left the book lying around—he had no organizational sense.”

  “And?”

  “I know of no one in Cuba with the computer expertise to get into the Swiss banks electronically and steal that money, but there are plenty of people in America who could. A lot of them work for the American government.”

  “People were stealing money from banks long before computers were invented,” Vargas objected. “Anybody could have bribed a bank officer and stolen that money. The Yanquis are the most likely suspects, however.”

  Vargas well knew that everything that went wrong south of Key West was not the fault of the United States government, but he was too old a dog to think that the people who ran the CIA were incompetent dullards too busy to give Cuba a thought.

  “The Americans say that shit happens.”

  “They often make it happen,” Vargas agreed, and stood up. “Let us talk to Maximo. Perhaps we can save a soul from hell.”

  Going down the stairs Vargas said to Santana, “Maximo has been plotting to get himself elected president when Castro passes: Today would be a good time to let him know that such a course is futile.”
r />   “Yes, sir.”

  “Some pain, I think. Nothing permanent, nothing life-threatening. We will need his expertise in finance later on.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A petty officer came to find Jake Grafton. The sailor led the admiral to the Air Intelligence spaces, where he found Toad and the AIs gathered around a television monitor.

  “A P-3 took this sequence a few hours ago,” Toad told the admiral, “in the Bahamas. It’s an anchored North Korean freighter. The P-3 is going to fly directly overhead here in a minute and get a shot looking straight down. We’ll freeze the video there.”

  The perspective changed as the plane came across the top of the ship. The clear blue water seemed to disappear, leaving the ship suspended above the yellow sandy bottom. Just before the P-3 crossed above the ship, Toad froze the picture.

  He stepped forward, pointing to dark shapes resting on the sand under the freighter. “I think we’ve found the rest of the stolen warheads,” he said. “The people on the Colón dumped them here in the ocean for the North Koreans to pick up later.”

  Jake stepped forward, studied the picture on the television screen. “Can this picture be computer enhanced?”

  “They are working on that in Norfolk right now.”

  “How certain are they about the identification of the ship?”

  “Very sure. Undoubtedly North Korean.”

  When the National Security Council met to be briefed about developments in Cuba, the president’s mood was even uglier than it had been a few days before. He listened with a frozen frown as the briefer described the biological warfare research laboratory in the science building at the University of Havana. He covered his face with a hand as the briefer explained that some of the warheads from Nuestra Señora de Colón appeared to be resting on a sandy ocean floor in the Bahamas, with a North Korean freighter anchored nearby.

  “The good news,” the briefer said brightly, “is that the freighter seems to be in Bahaman territorial waters.”

  “Do you have a plan?” the president asked General Totten.