Coonts, Stephen - Jake Grafton 7 - Cuba

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