Ghosts of Havana

by Todd Moss

  “I’m not supposed to say either, Sunday.”

  “I understand. I’m sorry to have to ask you a favor. A big favor.”

  “Okay, shoot.”

  “In Zimbabwe, you had a Department of Justice official on your delegation, didn’t you?”

  “Isabella Espinosa?”

  “She’s the one. Is she . . . any good?”

  “Isabella is five feet four inches of twisted steel who hunts war criminals. If you’re a bad guy, she’s one hundred and five pounds of pure devastation. Are you chasing monsters?”

  “Not exactly. But I’m tracking a suspect and I’ve hit a brick wall. I need someone inside Justice to help me break through. Someone at DOJ who might be willing to take a risk and help a friendly CIA analyst on the side.”

  “An unofficial inquiry?”

  “Yes. Someone discreet. Someone I can trust.”

  “That’s Isabella. I’ll set it up.”

  42.

  ALLIGATOR ALLEY, FLORIDA

  THURSDAY, 11:19 P.M.

  The chill was turning to pain. Jessica pulled off the highway at an empty rest stop, parked off in the shadows near a picnic table, and killed the engine on the Kawasaki Ninja. Jessica lifted off her helmet and shook out her hair. Some fucking vacation, she thought.

  The swamp in front of her was pitch-dark. The loud croaking of frogs and clicking of cicadas filled the night. Damn, it is late. She still had over an hour of riding left to get back to Fort Lauderdale and her children. She knew she still had to call Judd. Now was as good a time as any.

  “Hello?” he answered.

  “Hi, sweetheart, it’s me,” Jessica said.

  “Oh, thank God . . . What number is this?”

  “Oh, sorry. Yeah, my phone died. I’m using a new one.”

  “Died? What happened? I’ve been leaving you messages.”

  “It got wet,” she said, imagining her phone sitting at the bottom of the Florida Intracoastal. “I picked up a burner to use while I’m still down here on vacation. I’ll get a new phone when I’m back in Washington. I’m sorry, I didn’t get any of your messages.”

  “A burner?” Judd scoffed. “You sound like a drug dealer.”

  “You’re cute.” She forced a laugh. “Everything’s fine, Judd. I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier. You know how crazy it can get putting Noah to bed.”

  “I’ve been waiting to hear what happened at the fund-raiser,” Judd said impatiently.

  Jessica paused. “Yes, I went to your party in Las Olas. It was quite a house. A palace, really.”

  “Did you find anything? Did Adelman-Zamora show her face?”

  “Yes, she was there. Gave a rousing stump speech. Lots of cash changing hands. I’m sure she raised lots of money tonight.”

  “So, what did you find? Any connections to Ruben Sandoval?”

  “I’m sorry, sweetie, I . . . didn’t see any. There were so many people there . . . so many rich people . . . I could have missed him. I don’t think I found you any new leads.” Lie Number Six.

  “What about Richard Green? The maintenance guy on The Big Pig that you told me about. Any links to him?”

  She paused again. “I’m . . . not sure. I mean, I gave you his name, but I don’t know what he looks like.” Lie Number Seven. “I thought you’d be looking into him, Judd. What have you found out?”

  “Me? Nothing yet. I’ve been focusing on the hostages for Landon Parker. I’m working on a plan for some kind of quiet diplomatic negotiations.”

  “I’m sorry, Judd, I wish I had more for you.”

  “I’m sorry, too, Jess. I’m sorry I had to ask you to go to some stupid party while you’re on vacation with the boys. I shouldn’t have asked you to do it. I broke our rules of engagement by dragging you into my work problem. It was wrong. It won’t happen again.”

  “You didn’t break our rules,” Jessica said. “We’re allowed to help each other. Assist, remember?”

  “I’m just glad you called and you’re okay. I was starting to get worried.”

  “I can handle myself,” she said, glancing down at the motorcycle.

  “How did your phone get wet?”

  “I was on a boat,” she said with a wry smile, thinking of the bowrider, now bits of scattered flotsam on the waters of Port Everglades.

  “A boat? Whose boat?”

  “Judd, sweetheart, I’m exhausted,” she said. “Maybe we can talk tomorrow?”

  “Uh, yeah, that’s fine.”

  “Love you,” she said.

  “Love you, too.”

  After ending the call, Jessica twisted her fingers in her hair, deciding if she should make the next call or not. There was only so long you could avoid the inevitable. She knew that was true at home—and at work.

  She punched in a number that she had long ago memorized.

  “Coney Island Pizza,” a bored woman answered.

  “Coney Island Pizza? I have a special order for urgent delivery,” Jessica said.

  “Would you like our special—pineapple and Italian sausage?” the woman asked flatly.

  “Yes, extra-spicy,” Jessica replied.

  The phone beeped twice, she heard a click-click, and then a gruff voice said, “Where the fuck’ve you been?”

  “In Marathon,” she said, “running your little errand.”

  “And?”

  “I can’t work this issue.”

  “What? Why the hell not?” the CIA’s Deputy Director of Operations snarled.

  “I told you I won’t play my own husband. I told you I won’t run him. That was part of our deal.”

  “Who’s asking you to run your husband? He’s not even in the game. Jack’s a goddamn civilian.”

  “It’s Judd. And he’s working on Cuba,” she said.

  “Not my goddamn fault. You were on this Cuba business first. Tell your Jack or Judd to go complain to Landon Parker.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “He doesn’t know. He still thinks I’m on vacation.”

  “Again, not my problem,” he said. “What’d you find in Marathon?”

  Jessica paused. “Looks like four fishermen got lost.”

  “That’s all? You’ve been missing for the past eight hours and that’s all you got?”

  “As far as I can tell, it looks like a straight-out mistake. Just like they said on the news.”

  The Deputy Director grunted into the phone.

  “What aren’t you telling me, sir?”

  “Compartmentalized information, Jessica. You know that.”

  “Is this an operation? Are these lost fishermen your guys?”

  “You should know better than to even ask that question.”

  “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what you’re trying to do here, sir,” she said.

  He paused, then coughed, before speaking again. “You ever heard of O?”

  “The letter O?”

  “The man O!” the Deputy Director snapped.

  “No, sir.”

  “O is Oswaldo Guerrero. The one who cracked Operation Rainmaker.”

  “I wasn’t part of that operation, sir.”

  “So you’ve never heard of him?”

  “Not really. I’ve heard there’s a ghost called O. A creation of the Cuban intelligence services. Just something to keep us guessing. But I never thought he was a real person.”

  “O’s no ghost.”

  “Is that who you’re chasing?” Jessica whispered, “Is that why I’m down here in Florida?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “I can stand down, sir?”

  “You want off, you’re off. Enjoy the rest of your vacation. We’ll talk about what’s next once you’re back online.”

 
“Yes, sir.”

  He sighed and his voice softened. “Have you had a chance to try out my bowrider yet? Isn’t she a beauty?”

  43.

  LUANDA, ANGOLA

  FRIDAY, 5:38 A.M. WEST AFRICA TIME [THURSDAY, 11:38 P.M. EASTERN STANDARD TIME, + 6 HOURS]

  The frantic beat outside his window was loud enough to wake him. Ernesto rolled over gently, brushing against the mosquito netting hung above and around his bed. He checked the clock: 5:38. It was a bit earlier than he normally arose, but he didn’t mind. The sudden music wasn’t an annoyance; it was a soothing comfort. The sounds that filled his ears, an eclectic meld of Cuban rhumba and African techno pop, was a calming reminder of where he was living. And where he was from.

  Lying in his bed, the doctor listened to the musseque, the shantytown that had been his home for so many years, coming alive for the day. The banging pots, the chatter of old women, the crowing roosters—they all reminded him of his childhood. The smells of burning charcoal and rotting garbage also invaded his bedroom through the bars on his window and evoked memories of his previous life.

  —

  Dr. Ernesto Sandoval had been working in Angola so long that he had begun to wonder if he would ever return to his true home. The sprawling capital of Luanda had been a disaster when he had first arrived all those years ago. The war, the corruption, the dysfunction, had all conspired to create one of the world’s most desperate and unhealthy places. That’s why his government sent armies of doctors to Angola. To help the sick. To show solidarity against the imperialists. To broadcast the benefits of Cuba’s socialist revolution. Ernesto was one of the foot soldiers in the battle against tropical disease and, coincidentally, Cuba’s ideological war against the Americans.

  Not long after Ernesto arrived in Angola, so, too, did a tidal wave of oil money. And everything began to change. Extravagant high-rise hotels sprang up along the luscious cove of Luanda Bay. Luxury SUVs crowded the palm-lined Avenida 4 de Fevereiro, the beachside parkway honoring the start of the war of independence from colonial Portugal and the beginning of thirty years of nearly endless conflict. The grand avenue celebrating Marxist popular revolution was now synonymous with flashy opulence. Grilled lobster and imported French champagne could be consumed in a pescaderia in the shadow of Fortaleza de São Miguel, the fort built by European explorers nearly five centuries earlier. The hub of the transatlantic slave trade, a symbol of all that was supposed to be wrong with global capitalism, had become a scenic backdrop for lavish excess. This was the affluent new Luanda, the modern capital of oil executives, sovereign wealth fund managers, and mind-bogglingly rich politicians. Too much money.

  The glitzy waterfront of the capital wasn’t the real Angola, Ernesto knew. A closer look at the skyline revealed many skyscrapers were only half built, teeming not with beautiful people but packed tight with poverty-stricken squatters. These crowded vertical slums housed thousands of the poor, the very ones his government had sent him to help. These people, living in the real Angola, were his patients.

  —

  Ernesto stared at a water stain on the ceiling and wiggled his toes, thinking about the many flights of stairs he would climb yet again today. He groaned as he sat up in bed. It was meaningful work, he knew. His life’s passion. At least for now.

  Ernesto slipped out of bed and began his usual morning routine by turning on a small gas stove to heat water for coffee. As he brushed his teeth, he noticed the lines on his face had grown sharper and patches of his short hair had become grayer. He spat in the sink and stared at himself in the cracked mirror. He wondered how much longer he could wait. Was he getting too old? Would the call ever come?

  No time for such doubts. He had too much work today. His patients needed him. Checkups, vaccinations, perhaps he might even deliver another baby. Yesterday he helped deliver a healthy baby boy in the stairwell on the fourteenth floor of a half-finished building that will one day be a bank headquarters. The mother, out of gratitude for the doctor’s care, named the boy Che. His nickname. The thought made him blush.

  Despite the poverty and desperation of the slums, Ernesto loved the work and loved his patients. And the views. From the upper stories of the squatters’ towers, he could see across the city, behind the soaring buildings, to what felt like the entire world. He could see the open spaces that had once been the dense shacks of those fleeing the countryside for the relative wealth and safety of Luanda. The problem was too little money.

  From the top of the towers, Ernesto could also recognize the place that had once been his first assignment, his first home in Africa. Boavista had been one of Luanda’s poorest slums, but it was erased. The official orders from the Minister of Public Health claimed the bulldozers were deployed to protect the people from cholera and rainy season mudslides. But Ernesto, like everyone else in the capital, knew that the true reason was to clear land for a new commercial real estate project by a member of the ruling party’s politburo. Again, money.

  Ernesto could also spy, up high on a ridge overlooking the waterfront, what had once been Roque Santeiro, Africa’s largest open-air market, where not long ago one could buy everything from used shoes to the latest satellite dish. No more. Now it was fenced off and crowded with construction cranes covered with Chinese lettering.

  Although these changes made him angry and sad, he knew the future of Angola was not his fight. He would have to wait for his chance for that. For now, he consoled himself with small victories, keeping his patients alive, bringing babies into the world, and waiting patiently for his chance to do something great. To be consequential.

  —

  Ernesto finished getting dressed, grabbed his medical bag and stethoscope, and stepped out into the noisy street. His neighborhood was a series of narrow, densely populated alleys. The homes were made of sand-colored concrete, interspersed with specks of yellow and pink, the peeling paint of a more hopeful time. In between the formal structures were inventive shacks of plastic and liberated bricks, topped with rusty metallic sheeting. Down the center of the dirt road ran a steady stream of milky water and cellophane wrappers. At this early hour, the roads were not yet jammed with people and the battered blue-and-white minibuses, but Ernesto knew they were coming.

  As Dr. Ernesto Sandoval began his hike to his clinic, tiptoeing through garbage, the cell phone in his pocket buzzed. The number was a series of zeros, something he had never seen before. He decided to answer anyway.

  “Alo?”

  “Hermanito?”

  “Ruben?” Ernesto’s pulse quickened.

  “Mi hermanito Che? Is that you, my brother?”

  “Ruben? Is that you?”

  “Yes, Che. It is me.”

  “How are you, Ruben? Is there news?”

  “It’s time.”

  “Now? Are you saying this is it?” Ernesto’s heart pounded in his chest.

  “Yes, mi hermanito. This is it.”

  Ernesto’s eyes began to water. “I can’t believe it, Ruben. After all these years and so much dreaming. Are you certain it is now?”

  “Yes, Che. This is the call. It’s finally time for us to all come home.”

  44.

  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT HEADQUARTERS, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  THURSDAY, 11:42 P.M.

  Judd Ryker had finally decided that the best approach to the Cubans would be through baseball. The Cubans were obsessed with baseball. And what was more American? And how could Congress possibly object to a State Department diplomatic effort built around sports? Yes, that would be his pitch to Landon Parker—a low-key initiative to diffuse tensions, build confidence, and allow secret negotiations for the hostages from The Big Pig. It sounded stupid, but maybe stupid just might work. The U.S. helped break the ice with China with Ping-Pong, so why not baseball in Cuba?

  More to the point, he didn’t have anything else. And it was nearly midnight. Judd began drafting talking
points for Parker about the potential for baseball diplomacy:

  Abner Doubleday, inventor of baseball

  Baseball and apple pie

  American troops bring baseball & democracy to Japan

  Ping pong détente with China

  Chance of success: 25% 50%

  What would Landon Parker think about this? Judd wondered.

  “What do you have for me, Ryker?” Parker said. Judd spun around to find the Secretary’s chief of staff standing in the doorway.

  “Mr. Parker. I wasn’t expecting you. I am just finishing talking points to present to you.”

  “So what do you have?”

  “I’ve been digging into the archives to see what’s gone wrong with so many previous attempts to talk quietly to the Cubans.”

  “I don’t need a history lesson, Ryker. I need a plan.”

  “I’m developing a four-phase strategy. It starts with a low-profile good faith gesture, something noncontroversial. And then we use that as a cover for negotiations. If it all goes wrong—”

  “What’s your good faith gesture?” Parker interrupted.

  “Baseball.”

  “Sports, Ryker? I asked you for creative and you’re giving me—”

  “Yes, I know. Baseball doesn’t sound like much. But sports worked in the past,” Judd tried to explain. “When the Nixon administration needed a way to talk to the Chinese—”

  “No time for that, Ryker.” Parker shook his head. “It’s a hell of an idea. I love baseball as much as the next man. I’ve got box seats at the Nats, for God’s sake. But your plan will take weeks. We don’t have weeks. We need something right away.”

  “Okay, sir.”

  “I thought S/CRU was built for speed?”

  “It is. That’s the whole point of the Crisis Reaction Unit. But you asked me to strategize a way—”

  “What’s the final phase?”

  “Sir?”

  “Your strategy, Ryker. Maybe we can jump straight to your final phase. What is it?”

  “Incentives to deliver.”

  “You’re back to Adam Smith? I thought we agreed there’s no time for academic theories inside government.”