by Cuba (lit)
handed the earphones to William Henry Chance. They
were crammed into a tiny van with the logo of the
Communications Ministry on the side. The van was
parked on a side street near Chance's hotel, but
with an excellent view of the Interior Ministry.
Chance put on the headphones.
"We recorded this stuff early mis morningea"...the
technician told Chance's associate, Tommy
Carmeltini. "Getting to you without stirring up the
Cubans was the trick. Wait until you hear this
stuff."
"What is it"..."...Cannellini asked.
"Vargas and his thug, Santana, hi the
minister's office. They're talking about a speech
they want Castro to make in front of cameras.
A political will, Vargas called it They are
writing it, debating the wording."
"What do they want it to sayour
"They want Castro to name Vargas as his
successor, his heir."*
"Will he do that?"'
"They seem to think he will."
"Have we heard anything back from Washington about that
ship referencethe
Coldnl... Nuestra Senora de Co
backslash 6nThat
"No. Something like that will take days to percolate through
the bureaucracy."
"I was hoping the reference to North Koreans and
biological warheads would light a fire under
somebody."
"It always takes a while before we smell the
smoke of burning trousers."
CarmelUni watched Chance's face as he
listened to the
STEPHEN COONTS
tape. William Henry Chance, attorney and
CIA agent, certainly didn't look like a man
who would be at home in the shadow world of spies and
espionage. But then appearances were often deceiving.
Carmellini had been a burglarmore or less
semi-retiredattending the Stanford University
Law School when he was visited one day by a
CIA recruiter, a woman who took him to lunch
in the student union cafeteria and asked him about
bis plans for the future. He still remembered the
conversation. He was going into business, he said.
Maybe politics. He thought that someday he might
run for public office.
"A prosecution for stealing the Peabody
diamond from the Museum of Natural History in
Washington would probably crimp your plans,
wouldn't it?"' she said sweetly.
He gaped. Sat there like a fool with his mouth hanging
open, the brain completely stalled.
He had seen her credentials, which certainly looked
official enough. Central Intelligence Agency.
The Government with a capital G. But there had never
been the slightest hint that anyone was on his trail.
Not even a sniff.
"It would do thatea"...he managed.
After a bit, the question of how she knew formed hi his
mind, and he began trying to figure out how to ask it
hi a nonincriminating way.
"You're wondering, I supposeea"...she said
matter-of-factly between sips of her coffee, "how
we learned of your involvement."
Unable to help himself, he nodded yes.
"Your pal talked. The Miami PD got him
on another burglary, so he threw you to the wolves
to get a lighter sentence."
Well, there it was. His very best friend in the whole world
and the only guy who knew everything had sold him out.
"You need some better friendsea"...she said. "Your friend is
a pretty small-caliber guy. A real
loser. He got eight
years on the state charge. Moving stolen property
across state lines is a federal crime of course,
and Justice hasn't decided if they will
prosecute."
It quickly became plain that at that moment in his
life, the CIA was his best career choice.
After finishing law school, Carmellini spent a
year in the covert operations section of the agency. Now
he was an associate of William Henry Chance,
who had been with the CIA ever since he left the army
after the Vietnam War. The cover was impecca2oth
men were really practicing attorneys and CIA
operatives on the side.
Carmellini remembered the first tune he met
William Henry Chance. He was running a
ten-kilometer race hi Virginia one weekend
when Chance came galloping up beside him, barely
sweating, and suggested they have lunch afterward.
Chance mentioned a name, Carmellini's boss at the
agency. "He said you were a pretty good
runnerea"...Chance said, then began lengthening his stride.
Tommy Carmellini managed to stay with Chance
all the way to the tape but it was a hell of a workout
Chance didn't work at running; he loped
along, all lean meat, bone, and sinew, a
natural long-distance runner. Carmellini, on the
other hand, was built more like a running back or
middle linebacker.
About half of Carmellini's time was spent on
agency matters, half on the firm's business.
He was a better covert warrior than he was a
lawyer, so he had to work hard to keep up with the bright
young associates who had not the slightest idea that
Carmellini or Chance were also employed by the CIA.
Sitting in a telephone company van hi the
middle of Havana listening to intercepted conversations,
Tommy Carmellini wondered if he should have told
the CIA to stick it. He would probably be getting
out of prison about now, free and clear.
And broke, of course. His friend had fenced the
diamond
and spent all the money, never intending to give
Carmellini his share.
On the table were a set of photos the technicians
had taken of the University of Havana science
building. They had had the place under surveillance
for the last two days.
Carmellini looked at the photos critically, as
if he were going to burgle the joint. There were
guards at every entrance, some electronic alarms:
getting in would take some doing.
After a while Chance handed the headphones to a
technician. He sat looking at Carmellini with a
frown on his face.
"I think Vargas plans to kill Fidelea"...Chance
said finally.
"When?"
"Soon. Very soon. Today or tomorrow, I would
imagine."
"And then?"'
"Your guess is as good as mine."
The men left alive aboard
Angel del Mar
were unable to get the engine restarted, so it drifted
helplessly with the wind and swell. Ocho took his
turn in the tiny, cramped engine compartment. Something
down inside the engine was broken, perhaps the
crankshaft. Rotating the propeller shaft by hand
made a clunky noise; at a certain point in the
shaft's rotation it became extremely difficult
to turn. Admitting finally that repairing the motor was
hopeless, Ocho backed out of the small compartment. His
place was taken by someone else who wanted
to s
atisfy himself personally that the engine was
indeed beyond repair.
After a while they all gave up and shut the door.
Without the engine they had to work the bilge pump
manually. Fifteen minutes of intense effort
cleared the bilges of water. With daylight coming through the
hatch one could just see the water seeping in between the
planks where the sea had pounded the caulking loose.
It took about fifteen minutes for the bilges
to fill, then they had to be
pumped again. A quarter hour of work, a quarter hour
of rest.
"If we can just keep pumpingea"...the old fisherman
said, "we stay afloat."
"If the water doesn't come in any
fasterea"...Ocho added. He was young and strong, so he
spent hours sitting here in the bilge working the pump,
watching the water come in.
Twenty-six people remained alive. The captain's
body was still hi the wheelhouse, where he had fallen.
No one wanted to take responsibility for moving
bun.
After a morning working the bilge pump, Ocho
Sedano stood braced against the wheelhouse and, shading
his eyes, looked carefully in all directions. The
view was the same as it was yesterday,
swells that ran off to the horizon, and above it all
a sky crowded with puffy little clouds.
At least the sea had subsided somewhat. The wind
no longer tore whitecaps off the waves. The
breeze seemed steady, maybe eight or ten
knots out of the southwest.
One suspected the boat was drifting northeast,
riding the Gulf Stream. The nearest land in that
direction was the Bahamas.
The United States was north, or perhaps
northwest-now. A whole continent was just over the
horizon, with people, cities, restaurants, farms,
mountains, rivers... if only they could get there.
Well, someone would see this boat drifting before
too long. Someone in a plane or fishing boat,
perhaps an American coast guard cutter or navy
ship looking for drug smugglers. They would see the
Angel del Mar
drifting helplessly, give the people stranded on her
water and food, then take them to Guantinamo Bay
and make them walk through the gate back to Cuba.
Or maybe they would be taken to hospitals in
America.
Already some of these people needed hospitals. They had
vomited too much, been without water for too
long. They had become dehydrated, then-
electrolytes dangerously out of balance, and if
left unattended would die. Just
like the people swept over me side last night.
Of course, knowing all this, there was absolutely
nothing Ocho Sedano could do. He too felt the
ravages of thirst, felt the aching of the empty knot
hi his stomach. Fortunately he had not been
seasick, had not retched his guts out until he had
only the dry heaves like so many of these others lying
helpless in the sun.
The wheelhouse cast a little shade, so he dragged
several people in out of the sun. Maybe that would help a
little.
The sea seemed to keep the boat broadside to it,
so the shade didn't move around too much, which was a
blessing.
There wasn't room in die shade for everyone.
"The sailea"...sd the fisherman. "There is an old
piece of canvas around the boom. Let's see if
we can get it up."
They worked with the canvas in the afternoon sun for over an
hour, trying to rig it as a sail. It wasn't
really a sail, but an awning. Finally die
fisherman said maybe it was best used
to catch rain and protect people from die sun, so they
rigged it across die boom and tied it there.
Ocho dragged as many people under it as he could, then lay
exhausted on die board deck in die shade, his
tongue a swollen, heavy, rough thing in his dry
mouth.
Sweating. He was going to have to stop sweating like this, stop
wasting his bodily fluids. Stop this exertion.
Nearby a child cried. She would stop soon, he
thought, too tiiirsty to waste energy crying.
He sat up, looked for Dora. She was sitting in
die shade with her back against die wheelhouse. Her
father, Diego Coca, lay on die deck beside her,
his head in her lap. She looked at Ocho, then
averted her gaze.
"What should I have done"..."...he asked.
She couldn't have heard him.
He got up, went over to where she was. "What should
I have done?"
She said nothing, merely lowered her head. She was
stroking her father's hair. His eyes were closed, he
seemed oblivious to bis surroundings and die
corkscrewing motion
of the drifting boat. His body moved slackly as the
boat rose and fell.
Ocho Sedano went into the wheelhouse. Above the
captain's swollen corpse the helm wheel kicked
back and forth in rhythm to the pounding of the sea.
Ocho held his breath, turned the body over, went
through the pockets. A few pesos, a letter, a
home-made pocketknife, a worn, rusty
bolt, a stub of a pencil, a button ... not much
to show for a lifetime of work.
Already the body was swelling in the heat. The face was
dark and mottled.
He dragged the captain's stiff body from the
wheelhouse, got it to the rail and hooked one of the
arms across the railing. Then he lifted the feet.
The dead man was very heavy. -
Grunting, working alone since none of his audience
lifted a hand to help, Ocho heaved the weight up
onto the rail and balanced it there as the boat
rolled. Timing the roll, he released the body and
it fell into the sea.
The corpse floated beside the boat face up. The
lifeless eyes seemed to follow Ocho.
He tore himself away, finally, and watched the top
of the mast make circles against the gray-white
clouds and patchy blue.
When he looked again at the water the
captain's corpse was still there, still face up. The
sea water made a fan of his long hair, swirled
and
back and forth as if it were waving in a breeze.
Water flowed into and out of his open mouth as the corpse
bobbed up and down.
The long nights, the sun, heat, and exhaustion
caught up with Ocho Sedano and he could no longer
remain upright. He lowered himself to the deck, wedged his
body against the railing, and slept.
"That freighter that left Gitmo last week, the one
carrying the warheads?"
"I rememberea"...Toad Tarkington said. "The
Colon,
or something like that."
"Nuestra Senora de Coldn.
She never made it to Norfolk."
"What"..."...Toad stared at the admiral, who was
holding the classified message.
"She never arrived. Atlantic Fleet HQ is
looking for her rightJiow."
Toad took the message, scanned
it, then handed it
back.
"We sent a destroyer with that shipea"...the admiral
said. "Call the captain, find out everything
you can. I want to know when he last saw that ship and
where she was."
In minutes Toad had the CO on the secure
voice circuit "We went up through the Windward and
Mayaguanan passagesea"...Toad was told. "They
were creeping along at three Joiots, but they got
their engineering plant rolling again and worked up
to twelve knots, so we left her a hundred
miles north of San Salvador, heading
north."...The captain gave the date and time.
"The
Coldn
never arrived in Norfolkea"...Toad said.
"I'll be damned! Lost with all hands?"
"I doubt that very muchea"...Toad replied.
Toad got on the encrypted voice circuit,
telling the computer technicians in Maryland what he
wanted. Soon the computers began chattering.
Rivers of digital, encrypted data from the
National Security Agency's mainframe computers
at Fort Meade, Maryland, were bounced off a
satellite and routed into the computers aboard
United States.
On the screens before him he began seeing
pictures, radar images from
satellites in space looking down onto the earth.
The blips that were the
Coldn
and her escorting destroyer were easily picked out as
they left Guantdnamo Bay and made their way
through the Windward Passage.
The screens advanced hour by hour. The three-knot
speed of advance made the blips look almost
stationary, so Toad flipped quickly through the screens,
then had to wait while the data feed caught up.
Jake Grafton joined him, and they looked at the
screens together.
The two blips crawled north, past
Mayaguana, past San Salvador, then they
sped up. The destroyer turning back was obvious.
As Jake and Toad watched, the blip that was the
Colon
turned southeast, back toward the Bahamas
archipelago. Then the blip merged into a sea of
white return.
"Now what?"
"It's rainea"...Jake said. "There was a storm. The
blip is buried somewhere in that rain return. Call
NSA. See if they can screen out the rain
effect."
He was right; the rain did obscure the blip. But
NSA could not separate the ship's return from that
caused by rain.
"See if they can do a probability study, show us
the most probable location of the
Coldn
in the middle of that mess."
The computing the admiral requested took hours, and the
