“Emergency buoys, yes. They’re set to release at the captain’s command, or if the sub exceeds crush depth. There are a whole bunch of things that could prevent that, but no way to know until we locate her.”
“How many men on board?”
“A hundred and sixty,” Bud answered. “Men and women, sir.”
The President knew his feelings shouldn’t distinguish between women and men in a situation like this, but, politically correct or not, he did. “I hope this is just some major communications screw up. God, I hope so.”
“Everyone does, sir,” Bud observed. Going down in a sub had to be the worst way to go, he thought. But that was worst-case. There was still time, he tried to convince himself. By the look on the chief executive’s face, he was having as much success at that as his NSA.
The phone buzzed, and the President snatched it up. “Yes. Come on over, Anthony.” He hung up. “He’s over in Ellis’s office.”
The chief of staff’s office was just down the hallway. It wouldn’t be long. So much for a relaxing evening, Bud thought.
The DCI walked into the Oval Office with a gait propelled by whatever sense of enthusiasm the refined Merriweather allowed himself. “Mr. President, we have new images from a pass over the island. The Cubans are in full retreat.”
The pleasure was overflowing from the DCI, and the same emotion soon spread to the President, almost wiping away the less pleasing contemplation of a minute before. If the prediction was correct, he would be the first chief executive in almost forty years to set foot in the free nation of Cuba. Bud had to go along with the sentiment also, despite his misgivings. Success was success, and the naysayers who Monday-morning-quarterbacked were taken about as seriously as congressional spending limits. Credit due was credit due.
“Your idea changed the world,” the NSA said to the DCI.
Merriweather accepted the token congratulation politely. “Another wall down.”
“Wall, my ass,” the President said, beaming. “We just busted down our bitchy neighbor’s fence!”
Bud just took in the exchange between the President and the DCI for a moment. Surprises still lay ahead, but informing his boss of that reality would be fruitless right now. They would have to be dealt with soon enough. The real surprise, though, had been just how easily the government had fallen. Really, he had expected more. Some sort of parting shot. They had had intelligence for years that Castro had intended to attack such targets as the Turkey Point Nuclear Plant in Florida if ever he was threatened. But, then again, attack with what? His air force was gone, knocked out in the first hours. The survivors of that had hightailed it to the southern United States as soon as they could get airborne. The “Saddam Maneuver,” it was being called by the Air Force pilots sent to intercept and escort the Cuban MiGs to selected airfields along the Gulf Coast. “Fly to your nearest enemy.” At least that had been anticipated.
Still, that Castro went out with a whimper confounded Bud. It would certainly be researched and written about by the think-tank literati and doctoral candidates alike for years to come. Bud figured it proved that no man could be cut out in historical terms and fit into a neatly selected hole in the puzzle of his life. Existence was not only transitory, it was without a rudder. Currents pushed one to where the water flowed. Somehow they had avoided being drawn onto the rocks with the likes of Fidel Castro, a half reality that the landlubbing NSA had lapsed into, forgetting about the reefs that were more dangerous, and quite elusive, lurking just below the calm surface waters.
* * *
To free a people. To rule a land. To watch it all slip away.
Fidel Castro was in the unique position of having traveled from the valley to the mountain peak, only to be sent tumbling down the slope by treacherous footing. The work of a lifetime was coming to naught.
Strangely, though, he could accept that it was coming to pass. The fates were proving to be against him, just as they were during the assault on the Moncada barracks before the final push that had begun the Revolution. That attack had failed also, and he had spent time imprisoned at the hands of the corrupt government. Yet he had emerged from that to strike again. It was not a death knell. From that he had learned that setbacks would happen, as would outright defeats. And from those events the defining legacy was not that a man or an idea had failed, but rather that a man and an idea had persevered.
Sitting alone as he was in his library two floors above the below-ground command center where the dismantling of his nation was being fought by old men, Fidel Castro drifted back to the days of youth that had formed his character. The deprivation he suffered even though the son of a well-off landowner. The Jesuit education that had instilled in him more doubt about God than a belief in one. His sister and brother. A wife. Baseball.
All paled, though, in comparison to the Revolution. It was supreme over all, and it would be until his last breath was expended. To say more of it would be to distort its simplicity, which was the essence of its perfection. What did the Dumas characters say? One for all, all for one. Meaning could be found in the strangest places.
And so it would come to some conclusion. A failure it was certain to be, and in that he found a sense of peace. Failure, the feared consequence of a strategy gone wrong, would breed defiance, as it had already in him. To lose was not dishonorable, for it painted clearly those responsible for both victory and defeat. Sometimes the parties were one and the same. Other times, as in this case, the architect of defeat was an entity removed from the immediate fray but no less culpable. And, fortunately, as the weapons of war were expended in forestalling the inevitable, some sense of retribution could be brought against those who had deserved such for a very, very, very long time.
With that knowledge, and with a plan rich in irony, Fidel Castro could sleep peacefully, content that the Revolution would be avenged against those who had been the source of its undoing.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SKELETONS
The sign on the door said “Interview Room”, a departure from the term “interrogation” that had fallen out of favor with law enforcement agencies recently. The reality and the bullshit of political correctness, Art thought, closing the door as he left the room, leaving Sullivan alone with a pot of coffee. He was sober now, which was a blessing and a curse. It made him more lucid, but it also turned the expectedly frightened drunk they had come upon into a mildly arrogant combination of bloodshot eyes and a smart mouth. Art was glad Frankie had been elsewhere checking on the license number and keeping an eye on Mrs. Carroll, who was patiently describing the suspects to a Bureau computer artist. Aguirre would have wanted to slap the guy.
Art went straight to the communications room, which was the size of a large closet. In it were the regular fax machines for communications with nongovernmental agencies, high-speed color facsimile machines connected to secure lines that were routed through the government’s new Secure Voice Communications switching centers, and relays that spit out continuous reports from law enforcement agencies throughout the country and overseas.
“Here you go, Agent Jefferson,” the com clerk said, handing over the faxes from State and INS. They had arrived almost simultaneously.
His eyes read down the reports as he walked back toward his desk. Frankie was at hers, just hanging up the phone.
“How’s Sullivan?” she asked.
“He makes a better drunk than he does a human being.” Art laid the faxes on his desk and leaned back against the divider wall. “Anything on the car?”
Frankie nodded. “These guys are pros, Art. We ran the plate, came up with an address, and checked it out. Nice blue Lumina parked right in the driveway with—guess what?—no plates. LAPD set up a perimeter and called the residents out on the P.A. Not our suspects, if you haven’t guessed already. Just some bewildered guy and his girlfriend wondering why the cops had their guns on them. Hell of a way to spend his day off. And he was just as surprised to learn that his plates were gone.”
“Did Mrs
. Carroll take a look at the car book?”
“Pointed right to the Lumina,” Frankie confirmed.
“Smart,” Art commented. “They get a car—rented or stolen—then get plates from a lookalike car and ditch the others. How many people would notice their license plates missing?”
“Cops wouldn’t be too concerned, either,” Frankie added. “The car was new. The guy said he bought it two months ago. No plates is pretty normal under those circumstances.”
It was a clean move, Art thought, agreeing with Frankie’s belief that the suspects were real pros. And pros didn’t like to leave jobs unfinished. “Our jerk in there might still be in danger, you know.”
A loud, forceful breath escaped from Frankie’s lungs. She was tired, the lack of sleep from the night before catching up with her. It had been a thirteen-hour day already. “Anything useful from him?”
“Nothing Bill didn’t already fill us in on. I think Bill cut him loose. I was in the room when he called in. Hey, tough decision, but we both saw...the guy is a basket case when he’s lubed up.”
“Guess so.” Frankie gestured to the faxes. “Anything?”
Art handed them over. “INS has diddly. Just the standard stuff when he came over, except he didn’t request any help from the exile community. That’s kind of strange. Most of them coming over do. He did request a meeting with a representative of the government, though.”
“Doesn’t say here whether he got one or not,” Frankie noted.
“We’ll check on that later. I hear a lot of asylum seekers try and offer something for sale, and Portero at least had the background to know something.”
“The tape, maybe,” Frankie said.
“Yeah. Maybe he was going to the paper with it because he couldn’t get anyone in the government to hear him out.” That was worth looking into further. “Sullivan said that Portero kept insisting he had something terrible to share, something that could affect millions, he said.”
Frankie looked to the State Department fax. “He wasn’t lying to Bill, either.”
“Nope,” Art said, looking down the hallway to ensure that the door to the interview room was still shut. “Portero apparently was an assistant to Castro’s interpreter back in the early sixties. Russian language, it says.”
“A really busy time back then,” Frankie said, no real memories of the crisis in her consciousness. She had been in diapers then.
“My senior year in high school had just started.” Art looked away, remembering the time. “My grandma was worried to death. Hell, no one knew if we’d wake up the next day. Scary time, Frankie. Busy doesn’t do it justice.”
“Anyway,” Art went on. “State says they’ll try some other avenues tomorrow to get the proper classification of Portero.”
“Like what?”
Art smiled knowingly. “Once you’ve been through these hoops as many times as I have, you’ll learn that the term ‘share and share alike’ means little in government. Every agency and department has their own way of doing things, and their own sources of information. They’ll probably ask a liaison officer to ‘pull a favor.’ Happens all the time.”
Frankie’s head shook at the stupid bureaucracy, then yawned deeply, her arms stretching out and up. “Man, I am beat.”
Art looked at the wall clock. “You want to knock off? I can set Sullivan up with a sitter and get him bedded down.” As a material witness, one who saw the shooters pull the trigger, George Sullivan was a valuable witness. He was also a person the suspects obviously had an interest in, most likely because they thought he had something which they wanted. Something they had proved they were willing to kill for. For these reasons he would now be under Bureau protection, tucked away under constant guard.
Not really, but... “I think Cassie might want to see her mommy before she turns eight. You mind?” Cassandra was the jewel of Frankie’s life, the beautiful product of a marriage that had ended when her ex took to loving the bottle more than her.
Art’s phone rang before he could answer. “Jefferson.”
“Art, Dan. We have your tape ready, but there’s a problem.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s in Spanish and another language, sounds like Russian or something. We don’t have any Russian speakers at all, and my lone Spanish speaker left with the nine-to-fivers. Is Aguirre still here?”
Art pulled the phone away, pressing it into his chest. “Sorry, Frankie. Your genes are needed.”
She looked at her partner with a funny expression. “Jeans?”
“I’ll explain on the way down.” He brought the phone back up. “We’ll be there in a minute.”
The agents gathered their notebooks and headed not for the elevator, but for the interview room.
“You doing okay in here?” Art asked, poking his head in.
Sullivan pulled the hands away from his puffy face. His hair, a mass of thinning brown strands, was tousled and matted by sweat. What green there had been in his eyes was overcome by the fine rivers and tributaries of red that had subsided somewhat from earlier. “Wonderful.” How would you feel if you’d lost your job and had guys out to kill you?
“Good. Stay here, we have to check something out downstairs.” Art gave the man as comforting a smile as his humanity would allow. “We’ll get you to a nice, safe place in just a while.” He saw Sullivan nod with little interest and pulled the door shut.
“He’s feeling pretty low,” Art said, turning for the elevators, his partner alongside.
“At least he’s alive,” Frankie offered. “If he weren’t such a lush, he might have been on time for his meeting with Portero.”
“You calling it a redeeming quality?” Art asked, looking with some shock to his partner, the same one who had kicked her alcoholic husband out of the house and her life two years before, having had enough of his shit. “That’s mighty generous of you.”
“Not really,” Aguirre responded, the subject bringing an unpleasant past to her mind again. “ ’Cause he’d never admit that his problem saved his life. He doesn’t have a problem, remember.”
Art pushed the glowing “down” arrow at the twin elevators. “They never do, partner. Never do.”
* * *
Sullivan’s eyes were fixed on the off-white wallpaper as his hosts left, trying to pick out the tiniest specks of discoloration. The exercise hurt his already throbbing eyes tremendously, but he had to focus on something. Something to occupy his mind. Just anything that would not allow the thoughts to get in, just to keep them out. Out! Out! Out! OUT!
His fist balled up tight and came down on the table hard. The impact sent his Styrofoam cup of coffee tumbling to the floor.
“Dammit,” he whimpered softly, asking whatever supreme being there was just why these things had happened to him. Why me? It was a question he found himself asking more frequently these days, usually when he was...
No, that’s not it. That’s not it. If other people couldn’t handle their booze, too bad, but there was nothing wrong with his drinking. It was just something he enjoyed, something he had done for so long that it seemed second nature, something he...needed!
No! NO! What the hell did Sturgess know anyway? He was just like that Fields asshole in New York. “You need help, George.” What a line! It was easy to cast stones at others when you had your own problems. That was the real thing behind this, he knew. They needed a punching bag, someone to throw their shit at. A convenient target. Why not George? It was that simple and that clear.
Well, he could show them. He could prove that what they thought was a problem had no bearing on his life. It was just a... a thing. A thing he did, like lots of people. Right. If they thought he couldn’t do his job, then he’d just prove to them he could do it better than anybody.
Sullivan stood quickly from the table, putting his blazer on and eyeing the coffeemaker with disgust. He opened the door and stepped into the hall. There was no one around. He didn’t know why until the time on the wall clock caught his attention.
That late? No wonder there was no one there. He walked slowly to the elevator, aware that he really wasn’t supposed to leave, but what could they do—make him stay?
He walked out the front of the building into the stuffy air of early evening, walking down the block with a crowd before a cab came into view. Hailing a taxi in L.A. was nowhere near as easy as doing so in New York. Sullivan slid into the backseat.
“Where to?”
He thought for a moment. There was a lot to do. So much. He had to get started, but he really needed... wanted to relax first. “Freddy’s up on Sunset.”
“That a bar, fella?”
For some reason Sullivan couldn’t bring himself to answer. He simply nodded to the cabbie in the rearview mirror.
* * *
“Just hang back,” Jorge instructed, instinctively looking over his left shoulder as Tomás pulled into traffic.
“We should have taken him when he came out.” Tomás stepped on the accelerator hard, cutting in front of a stretch black limo that looked so out of place, it wasn’t even funny.
“In front of the FBI? Good plan, Sherlock.”
Fuck you, Tomás thought, as he kept their blue Chevy Lumina a half-block back from the bright yellow cab.
* * *
“I was surprised they saved it all,” Dan Jacobs admitted. “Usually don’t get it all.”
He dropped the cassette into a sophisticated triple Record/Play deck in the TS lab. He, Art, and Frankie were alone in the room, which was packed with millions of dollars’ worth of equipment, enough to give a professional sound engineer wet dreams.
“I thought you were into bullets and tire prints, Dan,” Art said with intended good humor. “Not this high-tech stuff.”
“Yeah, well, I always wanted to be a rock star. Never told you that, huh?” Jacobs plugged a trio of headsets, each with one earphone, into a splitter jack on the unit. “While I was in college and working, I used to play in a band.”
“No shit,” Art exclaimed, putting on the headset and trying to picture the straight-laced forensics agent as a long-haired musician.
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