Coonts, Stephen - Jake Grafton 7 - Cuba

by Cuba (lit)

  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 coining. Surely by now if he

  were searching the terminal he would have looked into this

  restroom.

  Coukfit 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

  hi 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, par 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 Vargasea"...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.

  "Whereea"...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 roomthe 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,

  CUBA

  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

  who7"

  "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

  accessonly 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

  Maximoif the man had the money he would have run like

  a rabbitbut 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 Rail. Maximo Sedano

  killing Railwell, the world is full of

  unexpected things.

  He left Maximo Sedano sitting in the chair in

  the niterrogation 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

  roomea"...Santana said. "Here is his statement."...He

  passed it across. Vargas read it in silence.

  "The money is not hi the accountsea"...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 aroundhe 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

  inventedea"...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 happenea"...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."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Some pain, I think. Nothing permanent, nothing

  lifethreatening. 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

  AI'S gathered around a television monitor.

  "A P-3 took this sequence a few hours

  agoea"...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 warheadsea"...he said.

  'The people on the

  Coldn

  dumped them here in the ocean for the North Koreans

  to pick up later."

  Jake stepped forward, studied the picture on the

  televi-

  sion screen. "Can this picture be computer

  enhanced?""...They are working on that hi 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 Senora de Colon

  appeared to be resting on a sandy ocean floor in the

  Bahamas, with a North Korean freighter anchored

  nearby.

  "The good newsea"...the briefer said brightly,

  "is that the freighter seems to be in Baharaan

  territorial waters."

  "Do you have a plan"..."...the president asked General

  Totten.

  "Yes, sir. At our request, the Bahamans have

  formally requested that a United States ship board

  and search the North Korean freighter, which has

  violated their territorial waters. The nearest

  U.s. ship will be there in three hours."

  "And if the North Koreans raise the anchor and

  sail away?"

  "We'll stop the ship anyway, remove any

  United States government property mat we

  find."

  "Another international incidentff"...the president

  grumped. "The North Koreans will shou
t bloody

  murder, then the Cubans will join the chorus."

  The national security adviser jumped right in.

  "Sir, the Cubans can't prove we had CBW

  warheads in Gitmo."

  "Can't prove? If Fidel Castro doesn't have

  a stolen artillery shell on his desk right now

  I'll kiss your ass at high noon on the

  Capitol steps while CNN"

  "Sir, we think"

  "Let me finish!

  Don't interrupt! I'm the guy the congressmen are

  going to fry when they hear about this fiasco. Let me

  finish."

  Silence.

  The president swallowed once, adjusted his tie.

  "And nowea"...he said, trying to keep the acid out of his

  voice, "we learn the Cubans have a biological

  weapons lab in a building in the heart of

  Havana, at the university there. Is that

  correct?"'

  "Yes,, sir."

  "What I would like to know is this: Have the Cubans got

  any way of using biological weapons on the

  United States right now? Today? Have they got a

  delivery system?"

  "Sir, we don't know."

  "Well, by God, in my nonmilitary opinion we

  ought to find out just as fast as we can. Does anybody

  in this room agree with that proposition?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Another thing I want to know: Somebody explain

  again how the goddamned Chemical Weapons Treaty

  will make countries like Cuba decide not

  to build biological and chemical weapons."

  The silence that followed that question was broken by the

  chairman of the joint chiefs, General Tater

  Totten:

  "The Chemical Weapons Convention Agreement

  won't dissuade anyone who wants these weapons from

  building them. All it will do is force us to rid ourselves

  of the weapons that deter others from using these things.

  Chemical and biological weapons are only

  employed when a user believes his enemy cannot or will

  not retaliate in kind. Your staff knew that and

  wanted the treaty anyway so that you could brag about it

  on the stump and win votes from soccer moms who

  don't know shit from peanut butter."

  The president eyed General Totten sourly, then

  surveyed the rest of them. "At least somebody around

  here has the guts to tell it like it isea"...he muttered.

  The chairman continued: "Doing the right thing isn't the

  same as getting the right result. We could use more

  of the latter and less of the former, if you ask me."

  "Don't push it, Generalea"...the president snarled.

  The gray-haired general motored on as if the

  president hadn't said a word. "To get back to your