by Cuba (lit)
government."
"If you wish to know can I pay more than Vargas,
the answer is probably no. I am just a civil
servant. I suggest you take up the question with
Vargas."
Maximo took enough money from his wallet to pay for the
meal and a tip and dropped it into the tray on top of the
tab.
"I have a diplomatic passport. If you do not
leave I will have the waiter call the police."
"And have me arrested?"
"Something like mat"
Rail stared into Maximo's eyes. "I don't
think you appreciate your position."
"Perhaps. Have you properly evaluated yours?"
"A roaring mouse."...Rail pushed himself away from the
table, rose, and walked out the front door.
Maximo lingered, considering.
He left the restaurant a half hour later,
his right hand in his pocket around the butt of the pistol.
He looked neither right nor left, walked
purposely along the thoroughfares. He crossed the
Limmat River and walked toward the main train
station, which was well lit and still crowded with vacationing
students laden with backpacks. The students sat
around in circles, sharing cigarettes and talking
animatedly as they waited for their trains.
Maximo Sedano had no doubt that Rail was a
killer. He didn't know anything about the man
except what he had said, but he knew Alejo
Vargas. Vargas was just die man to order a
killing, or to do it himself. The list of Castro's
enemies who had disappeared through the years was
long enough to convince anyone that Vargas's enmity was not
good for one's health.
Maximo could hear footsteps behind him as he walked
through the train station.
A few students looked up at him, glanced behind
him "at whoever was following....
That had to be Rail.
What if it were someone else? What
if
Rail were not alone?
If there were two men, he was doomed. He
was'betting everything that there was only one man, one
man who thought him an incompetent coward.
Well, he was a coward. He had never had to live
by his wits, face physical danger. He was
frightened and no doubt it showed. He was perspiring
freely, his temples pounding, his breath coming in
short, quick gasps.
He entered a long, dingy hallway, following the
signs toward the men's room. The hall was empty.
He could hear the footsteps coining behind, a steady
pace, not rushed. The man behind was making no
attempt to walk softly. He was confident, in
complete control, die exact opposite of the way
Maximo Sedano felt.
He fought the urge to run, to look over his shoulder
to see precisely who was back there following him.
Time seemed to move ever so slowly. He was aware of
everything, the noise, the people, the dirty floor and
faded paint, and the smell of stale urine and feces
wafting through the door of the men's room as he entered.
No one in the room. The stalls, empty.
Maximo walked to the back wall, turned, and
faced die
door. He kept his hand in bis pocket. He
grasped the butt of the pistol tightly, his finger
wrapped around the trigger.
Rail walked into die room, stopped facing him.
"Well, well. We meet again."
Maximo said nothing. He swallowed three or
four times.
"Are you going somewhere on the train? Am I
delaying your departure?"'
Maximo bit bis tongue.
"What do you have in your pocket, little man?"
He tilted the barrel of the pistol up, so mat it
made a bulge hi bis trousers.
Rail grinned. The naked bulb on the ceiling
put the lower half of his face hi shadow and made his
grin look like a death's-head grimace.
The German reached into his jacket and pulled out
his pistol. He leveled it at Maximo.
"If you are going to shoot me, little man, go ahead
and do it."
Sweat stung Maximo's eyes. He shook his
head to clear the sweat.
Rail advanced several paces, moving slowly.
"Take your hand out of your pocket."
Now the German leveled his pistol. Pointed it
right at Maximo's face. "I will shoot you with great
pleasure unless you do as I say."
"Everyone will hearea"...Maximo squeaked, and withdrew
his hand from his pocket. Automatically he raised
both hands to shoulder height.
Rail kept advancing. When he passed under the
lightbulb his eye sockets became dark shadows and
Maximo couldn't see where he was looking.
Rail came up to him, slapped bun with his left
hand, then felt Maximo's right trouser pocket.
At this distance Maximo could see Rail's eyes.
His hands were together above his head.
"A gunff"...the German said with a hint of surprise in
his voice.
He reached for it, put his left hand into Maximo's
pocket to draw it out.
As he did so he glanced downward.
With his right hand Maximo pulled the handle of the ice
pick loose from the strap of his wristwatch and drew
it out of his sleeve. With one smooth, quick, savage
swinging motion he jabbed the pick into the side Of
Rail's head clear up to the handle.
Rail collapsed on the floor. Maximo kept
his grip on the handle of the ice pick", so the shiny
round blade slipped out of the tiny wound, which was about an
inch above Rail's left ear.
Maximo bent down, retrieved his pistol.
Rail's pistol was still in his hand, held loosely
by his flaccid ringers.
There was almost no blood on the side of Rail's
head.
Rail tried to focus his eyes. His body
straightened somewhat; one hand tightened on the pistol
in an uncontrolled reflex, then relaxed.
The German groaned. Muscle spasms racked his
body.
Maximo took a deep breath and exhaled
explosively. He wiped at the perspiration
dripping from his face. His shirt was a sodden mess.
Squaring his shoulders, he walked out of the men's room
without another glance at the man sprawled
on the floor. As he walked down the hallway
toward the main waiting room he passed two male
students carrying backpacks, but he purposefully
avoided eye contact and they didn't seem to pay
him any attention.
He walked at a steady, sedate pace through the
terminal and out into the night.
William Henry Chance sat in the back of the
van listening to the tape of Vargas's conversation with his
generals. Normally the fidelity of this system was
acceptable. Every now and then a word or phrase was
garbled or inaudible, the same drawback that affected
every listening technology. People mumbled or talked at
the same time or turned their heads the wrong way or
talked while smoking. Still, this evening he
was only
catching occasional words.
Chance strained his ears. Phrases, occasionally a
plain word, lots of garbled noise...
"Is mis the best we can do?"
"The sky was overcast, the window was in shadow with the
evening coming on."
"What about the laser?"
If the crystals were illuminated with a laser beam
in the nonvisible portion of the spectrum, the
vibrations could be read with the large
magnification spotting scope at the usual distance.
The problem was getting the laser close enough to the
crystals. Maximum range for the laser was less
man one hundred meters, so the van with the laser had
to be parked literally in front of the building.
"We didn't want to take me risk without your
permission."
Ah, yes, risk. This equipment had been brought
into Cuba by boat. The four techniciansof
Mexican or Cuban descenthad arrived the same
Way.
Miguelito was from south Texas, the son of
migrant laborers. He didn't learn English
until he was in his late
teens. He had recorded the conversations, listened to the
audio as the computer processed it "What did you
think, Miguelito"..."...Chance asked. Chance's
Spanish was excellent, the result of months of
intense training, but he would never have a native
speaker's ear for the language.
Miguelito took his time answering. "It is
difficult to say. I hear phrases, pieces of
sentences, stray words... and my mind puts it all
together into something mat may not have been mere when they said
it. You understand?"
Chance nodded.
"What I hear is a conversation about biological
weapons in Guantanamo Bay."
"You mean using biological weapons against
Guantdnamo Bay?"
"That is possible. But my impression was that the
weapons were already mere."
"Castro. Did they talk about Castro?"
"His name was mentioned. It is distinctive. I mink
I heard it"
"Is he still alive?"
"I do not know."...Miguelito looked apologetic.
"Biological weapons inside the U.s.
faculty is impossible. They must be intending to use
them against the people mere."
Miguelito said nothing.
"I'd better listenea"...Chance said.
"I will play for you the best partea"...Miguelito said.
"Give me a few moments."...He played with the
equipment. After about a minute he announced he was
ready with a nod of his head. Chance and Carmellini
donned headsets.
Noise. They heard noise, occasionally garbled
voices, but mostly computer-generated noise as the
machine tried without success to make sense
of the nickering light coming through the high-magnification
spotting scope. Every now and then a word or two hi
Spanish. "Guantanamo... attack..."...Once
Chance was sure he heard the word
"biological,"" but even then, he wasn't
certain.
Finally he removed his headset.
Miguelito did likewise.
"Perhaps they are talking about possible targets when
and ifea"...Carmellini suggested. "After all, they can
spray this stuff into the air from a truck upwind and
kill everyone on the base."
Chance grimaced. What he had here was
absolutely nothing. He was going to need something more
definite before he started talking to Washington via the
satellite.
"They did a lot of talking about political
matters, people and districts, whom they supported and so
onea"...Miguelito said, "It is not much better than
what you have just heard they talked of this before the sun went
downbut I got the impression that Vargas wanted
Delgado and Alba to abandon any commitments they
had to Raul Castro or the Sedanos and throw in with
him."
"Hmmmea"...sd William Henry Chance. He
tried to focus on Miguelito's comments and couldn't
Biological weapons were on his mind.
He recalled Vargas's face, remembered how
he had looked as Chance had sat there discussing a
CubanAmerican cigarette company. The strong,
fleshy face had been a mask, revealing nothing of
its owner's thoughts. That poker face... that was his
dominant impression of Vargas.
The man certainly had a reputation: he was
ruthless efficiency incarnate, a thug who smashed
heads and sliced throats and got answers from people who
didn't want to talk. Every dictatorship needed a
few sociopaths-in high places. He was also
subtle and smooth when that was required. Nor had
he yet surrendered to his appetites, surrendered
to the absolute corruption that absolute power
inevitably causes. Not yet, anyway.
Yes, Alejo Vargas was a damned dangerous
man, one who apparently possessed the brains and
managerial skills necessary to produce biological
weapons and the brutality to use them.
El Gato may have shipped the Cubans material
that they could use to culture bacteria or viruses,
but as yet there was no hard evidence that the
Cubans had done so.
That tantalizing word, "biological."...Why would the
interior minister and the head of the Cuban Army and
Navy use that word if they weren't talking about
weapons? Sure as hell they weren't talking about
barracks sanitation or the condition of the mess
halls.
If there was a biological weapons program,
Chance told himself, the evidence would be inside the
ministry, the headquarters of the secret police.
There must be paper, records, orders, letterssomething!
No one could run a serious project like that without
paper, not even Vargas.
The evidence
is
inside that building,
he told himself.
After Fidel died of poison she had handed bun,
Mercedes was locked in her bedroom by Vargas and
Santana. Which was just as well.
She pulled a blanket over herself and curled up
on the bed hi the fetal position. The silence and
afternoon gloom were comforting.
Amazingly, no tears came. Fidel had been
dying for months, she was relieved that he had
finally come to the end of the journey, the end of the pain.
hi the stillness she listened to the sound of her breathing,
the sound of her heart pumping blood through her ears,
listened to an insect buzzing somewhere, listened to the
distant muted thump of footfalls and doors
closing, people engaged in the endless business of living.
She saw a gecko, high on the wall, quite motionless
except for his sides, which moved hi and out, just enough to be
seen hi the dun light coming in through the window drapes.
He seemed to be watching her. More likely he was
waiting for a fly, as he did somewhere every day, as his
ancestors had done since the dawn of time, as his
prog
eny would do until the sun flamed up and burned
the earth to a cinder. Then, they say, the sun would
burn out altogether
and the earth, if it still existed, would wander the universe
forever, a cold, lifeless rock, spinning aimlessly.
Until then geckos clung to walls and God
provided flies. Amazing how that worked.
She wondered about Hector, wondered if he would
be found and arrested, or murdered and shoveled into an
anonymous grave. God knows she had done everything
possible to warn him. Perhaps the man didn't want
to be warned: perhaps he knew the task before him was
impossible. Perhaps he really believed all
that Jesuit bullshit and hi truth didn't care
if he lived or died. Most likely that was it.
The truth was that the more you knew of life, of the
compromises one must make to get from day to day, the more
you realized the futility of it all. None of it
meant anything.
Man lived, man died, governments rose and
fell, justice was done or denied, venality was
crushed or triumphant; in the long run none of it
mattered a damn. The world spun on around the sun,
life continued to be lived....
When we perish from human memories we are no
more. We are well and truly gone, as if we had
never been.
She threw aside the cover and sat up in bed,
hugging her knees. She thought again of Fidel, and
finally let him go. She-then had only the twilight,
the room falling into darkness.
Toad Tarkington was waiting for Jake
Grafton beside the V-22 Osprey on the flight
deck of
United States.
The Osprey was a unique airplane, wim a
turbo-prop engine mounted on the end of each wing.
Just now the pilot had the engines tilted
straight up so that the 38-foot props on each
engine would function as helicopter rotor blades.
The machine could lift off vertically like a
heticopter or make a short, running takeoff.
Once airborne the pilot would gradually
transition to forward flight by tilting the engines down
into a horizontal position. Then the giant props
would function as conventional propellers, though
very large ones. The machine could also land vertically or
run on to a short landing area. A cross between a
large twin-rotor helicopter and a turbo-prop
transport, the extraordinarily versatile
Osprey had enormous lifting ability and
250-knot cruise speed, capabilities
exceeding those of any conventional helicopter.
Jake Grafton stood looking at, the plane
