October's Ghost

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  “How so?” the President inquired, hoping that the DCI could lay a good case. He didn’t like opposing his NSA on things with as much potential for trouble as this, but what was taking place in Cuba was historic. He wanted nothing to interfere with its successful completion if it could be helped.

  “First, there is the last line on the tape, at least as it was reported to us. It instructed the interpreter to lock it away.” The DCI sat back and straight, his expression signaling puzzlement. “How did this supposed assistant get hold of the tape and keep it?”

  Bud wanted to smile, but to do so would make it seem as though he were gloating at anticipating Merriweather’s questions. He didn’t even have to look at the secretary of state.

  “Sir,” Coventry began, “I thought much the same thing when I heard of this, so I had our Records Section at State check on Cortez’s status. We did the same thing earlier for the Bureau concerning Francisco Portero. It would seem that Cortez was not seen after the last week of October in 1962. No word of a death, or retirement, though the latter would not be likely when we consider he was but forty-one years old.”

  “It’s very convenient, Mr. President,” Bud said. “Too convenient. Cortez disappears, and Portero steps in. Maybe Cortez filled him in before he disappeared.”

  “That proves nothing,” Merriweather commented. “Just because State can’t locate some old Cuban government worker, we can’t say ‘Hey, this means this.’ It could mean a good number of things.”

  “Such as?” Bud asked heatedly.

  “Not my job to prove the negative of your theories, DiContino.”

  “All right, enough,” the President said. “Anthony, you said there were several reasons to doubt the validity of the story. What else?”

  The DCI nodded emphatically. “Yes. More important than the question about the tape is the reality that a missile left in ‘62 would most definitely be out of repair by this date. Long before, actually.”

  What? Bud thought. How would he...?

  “Drew, is that a credible observation?” the President asked.

  The secretary of defense wanted to choose his words carefully. “A weapon such as the SS-4, which is what the Russians had in Cuba at the time, would have required maintenance over the years.”

  “Which does not rule out that the Cubans were able to do such,” Bud pointed out. “We know that Castro had Chinese and North Korean technicians in his country over the years after he got that crackpot idea to build a space launch facility like the French have in Guyana.”

  “But that never—”

  “Of course it never flew,” Bud interjected, cutting off the DCI. He was determined now to not let the President be wooed by Merriweather’s comforting analysis. “Castro has had all kinds of nutty schemes. Biotech. Perfect cattle breeding. You name it, he’s tried it. He’s unpredictable. We never know what he’s going to do next. He doesn’t do the logical things.” Bud turned his attention directly to the President. “We have never known what he is capable of. Therefore it behooves us to be prepared even for that which we are not sure he is capable of doing.”

  A neat operation! That was a crock, the President thought. Down the toilet. “All right, Bud. Confirm this. If it turns out to be credible, then I want options. Fast options, because it scares the hell out of me to even think that this may be true. In the meantime, we keep things in motion down in Cuba. I’m not going to put the brakes on this without confirmation. Is that clear?” He looked to each man, ending with the DCI. “You get down to your meeting. I expect your deputies can handle this archive thing?”

  “Of course.” Damn. “No problem.”

  “Mr. President, there are two things that need to be done to prepare for the eventuality that we will confirm the information,” Bud said, his plan thought out on the drive over. It took him just a minute to explain it.

  “I see,” the President said. He was somewhat surprised by the second of Bud’s proposals. Bringing the man back one more time was almost too much, considering. As President, he felt some responsibility for what had befallen the man a year before, and still he’d never met him. If he was being brought back again, that fact would have to change. “That sounds acceptable. But, Bud, I want to see him before anything happens.”

  “All right, sir.”

  “Anything else?”

  There wasn’t. The President left with his advisers standing. Merriweather departed immediately after him without a word to his equals in the Oval Office.

  “Thanks, Drew. You could have nailed it shut for Anthony.”

  “Hey, you and I may not see eye-to-eye on everything, but he needs some serious help.”

  Bud gave the secretary of defense a much deserved slap on the shoulder. “Hope you didn’t mind my stepping into your territory there.”

  Meyerson laughed. “Stepping in? Hell, Anthony damn near appropriated my CT force for his own damn escort service. Your use of them would be a whole lot more up their alley.”

  “If it becomes necessary.” Bud’s thoughts drifted back to something the DCI had said a minute before. “Did it seem strange to either of you that Anthony practically started quoting Missile Maintenance One-oh-one?”

  Coventry had caught that also. “I didn’t know his knowledge ran so deep.” The words were not spoken flatteringly.

  “Yeah.” Bud didn’t know what it meant, but something wasn’t kosher about it. That could wait, though. “Can we run through this for a moment?”

  The three men sat again. Two floors up, the chief executive would hopefully be getting to bed. He was the decision maker and therefore had to be rested and clear headed. His advisers were the ones who could do without sleep.

  “Okay, if this turns out to be true, what are our options?” Bud was acting in familiar territory now.

  “The idea you outlined for the Boss is right on,” Meyerson said. “Let’s say we confirm this and that we find the thing—anticipating it still works.” The secretary had been careful not to give the DCI an ironclad response to his “missile-won’t-work” theory. “We can’t launch a preemptive air strike.”

  “Why not?” Coventry asked, leaning back on the couch and straightening Ids tie. It was a habit, the others knew. Looks mattered little at the moment.

  “Decoys,” Bud answered for the secretary of defense. “The same kind of problem you run into once a modern ICBM goes terminal. Things called ‘penaids’. They’re basically decoys that you’d be forced to take out or discriminate from the real warheads if SDI ever got off the ground. The same thing applies to ground-based missiles. We might see something, but we wouldn’t know if it was the something we wanted.”

  “Makes sense,” Coventry admitted. “Ground troops, eh?”

  “You heard it,” Bud confirmed. “Up close and personal. It’s the only way to know for sure.”

  Coventry suddenly thought of the worst-case scenario. “What if we don’t find it? He could fire it.”

  Meyerson’s eyebrows went up at the thought. “Not much we can do there.”

  “What about Patriot?” Coventry asked, thinking back to the anti-ballistic-missile capability the Patriot missile system had demonstrated during the Gulf War.

  “No way. First, we don’t know where he’d fire it. Second, we don’t have enough batteries in CONUS to cover all the possible targets.” CONUS was military jargon for Continental United States. “Third, the Patriot has an upper-altitude envelope of eighty thousand feet, and these wouldn’t be Scuds popping up. We’re talking about a warhead in terminal phase. Too fast and too small. Fourth, how would we explain SAMs parked on the Mall, or on Ellis Island? You get the picture. It would be like advertising that he should shoot it before it’s too late.”

  “Our only hope is to keep this quiet,” Bud said. “Airtight.”

  “No argument from me,” Meyerson said, his thoughts shifting to preventative actions. “You know, time may become a concern in this.”

  “Meaning?” Bud probed.

  “Cast
ro may be motivated to use the missile if things get more desperate.”

  “It’s already pretty bad,” the NSA observed accurately.

  “But more pressure could set him off. I mean, why hasn’t he used it yet?” Meyerson shrugged.

  It was a good question. “Jim?”

  “If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, you can set it aside. You haven’t met the rebel leader. I have. When Anthony and I arranged the conference two months ago in Antigua, all he could talk about was the way he was going to destroy Castro. He despises the man. This coup is as much motivated by hate for Castro as it is by desire for a new system of government.”

  “But even just a slowdown of their advance?” Meyerson suggested. “Just to buy us some more time?”

  The secretary of state’s head shook knowingly. “Listen, when Castro executed General Ontiveros after the hijacking, he alienated a lot of his military. Ontiveros was respected, and he was loved. And the only reason he was made to suffer was because Castro perceived him as protecting...”

  The realization hit Bud and Coventry first.

  “Vishkov,” Bud said.

  “Christ!” Meyerson’s head fell into his hands.

  “He needed someone with the knowledge to maintain a missile,” Bud pondered aloud. “Guess he got him. Son of a bitch!”

  “Defection, eh?” Coventry mused, knowing they had all been fooled. They and the Russians, it appeared. “Sounds more like an arranged marriage.”

  It was the simplicity of design that made some secrets so unbelievable, and made them equally possible. “Castro arranges for Vishkov to come visit the island, probably with an offer of money or whatever if he decides to stay. He might have even allowed him to peddle his nuke designs unhindered. When he meets the general’s sister, Ontiveros probably encouraged their get-together. He must have seen it as a way to turn the tables on Castro, to get Vishkov in his camp.” Bud laughed, but there was little humor in it.

  Coventry saw it all unfolding also. “We knew that Ontiveros was a dissenter in the military. I wonder if he knew about the missile? That would make even more sense. If he has Vishkov on his side, he could literally dictate the physicist’s use to Castro. Then when the hijacking happened, Castro saw it as a perfect opportunity to get rid of Ontiveros. Vishkov was just an excuse.” Coventry remembered his part in the affair and his suggestion to the Cuban leader that he could deal with Vishkov in his own way. I might as well have signed Ontiveros’s death warrant.

  “You said that Ontiveros was executed,” Meyerson said. “What about his sister and Vishkov?”

  “We don’t know about the sister,” Bud answered “But Vishkov was imprisoned. That’s the intel the Agency got through their exile contacts.”

  “Another check in the value column for him,” Coventry observed.

  They still needed the confirmation from their agent in Moscow, but this was adding almost undeniable credibility to Bud’s belief.

  “Bud, you better step up our reconnaissance of the island,” Meyerson suggested. “Damn the budget on this one.” He knew that Coventry wasn’t cleared for Senior Citizen, so mention of Aurora was out of the question. The NSA would get his drift.

  Coventry still had a hard time fathoming it. “Do you realize what this means? We could have a nuclear attack on a U.S. city at any time.” His own words scared and frustrated him. “And anything we do to prevent it might just precipitate it.”

  “I think we realize it, Jim,” Meyerson said.

  “This will not happen,” Bud said forcefully. The phone call he was soon to make would be a step toward that end.

  * * *

  “Lost!” Fidel Castro screamed. “How?”

  Raul waited, his silent signal for his brother to calm himself.

  “How?”

  “An ambush. The rebels destroyed the vehicles providing security, then the tank trucks themselves. A total loss.”

  The president looked disbelievingly at his brother. “The shipment must get through to Asunción. It must!”

  “It will, Fidel. Los Guaos is preparing another shipment.”

  “This time with ironclad security,” Fidel said, making a fist in the air.

  Raul wanted to add something positive to the event. “We did kill all the rebels who ambushed the convoy.”

  “How did they...?” The president’s eyes lit up, and a smile appeared upon the gray-bearded face. Yes. They wouldn’t know that there was... “Excellent.”

  Raul nodded. The surprise would not stop the rebels, but it would bloody them. Guevarra was a madman. The perfect madman to fly under these circumstances. “Fidel, soon we must speak of a target.”

  “Yes. Soon.”

  * * *

  “Captain Cresada reports that the patrol never returned,” Manchon explained. Night had come to the island, and with it some respite from the day’s advance. He, Ojeda, and Papa Tony sat quietly beneath a hastily erected tent in a field outside Aguada de Pasajeros.

  “None returned?” Ojeda asked for clarification. “Not a single man?”

  “Not one.”

  Antonio held the latest report from Langley on his lap. The colonel was concerned, obviously at the apparent loss of several men, but also at something Antonio couldn’t identify.

  “None?” Ojeda asked again, a single nod all the response needed. There could not be. We made certain. His thoughts drifted back to a decade before, training with the Soviets in the land that became their own Vietnam. Not one man... Decimation of the Mujahedeen ambushes had been commonplace there also, though not common enough to stave off defeat. “I want any patrols who are out of protective range to be issued shoulder-fired SAMs.”

  “You think... ?”

  “We will not take the chance.”

  * * *

  It was cheating, but who gave a damn? He owned the lake, the fifty acres around it, and all the fish in it stupid enough to bite at his shiny lure in the dark hours approaching midnight. The light shining down from the dock didn’t hurt, of course, but Joe Anderson had convinced himself that if he was going to leave this earth anytime soon, he was going to take as many of his favorite quarry as he could with him, regardless of laws banning night fishing.

  Correction...second-favorite quarry.

  “Phone, hon’,” his wife yelled from the back door of their house, which was nestled in the trees in Minnesota backwater country. She had gotten quite used to his late night expeditions to thin out the aquatic population.

  Joe looked greedily down at a northern pike hovering below the surface. In a few weeks it would be too cold to fish from the dock, and soon it wouldn’t matter at all. So what? He smiled at the fish. “You’re mine. Just wait.”

  He laid his Zebco rod down and went to the back door, picking the receiver up off the dinette table just inside.

  He looked to his wife. “This time of night?”

  She just shrugged.

  “Hello.”

  “Captain Anderson?”

  Shit... Joe thought, knowing before another word was said that the fucking northern pike was going to get away.

  CHAPTER TEN

  CONVERGENCE

  “Bourbon, Ted.” Sullivan pushed the glass closer to the mirrored wall of beautiful bottles, some clear and others filled with the dirty brown liquid he craved.

  “Still early, George,” the bartender said. “You gonna pace yourself this time?”

  This time? Was he insinuating...? It wasn’t worth arguing, George knew. Ted was the guy with the liquor. Ted was his friend right now. Almost his best friend. “Nice and slow tonight.” Last one in this joint, you lousy, overprotective ass.

  The sound was more than beautiful, a sweet, refreshing swish as the bourbon reached down from the neck of the bottle and filled the glass only to the point where the optimist/pessimist debate could ensue. Never enough, the naysayer in Sullivan decided, lifting the glass to his lips, taking in the first taste of the liquid that helped him to relax. Helped him to think. There w
as much to think about, much to plan. A story to get. His story. To hell with Bill.

  “Yank my story,” Sullivan muttered, downing half of what remained in his glass.

  “What?”

  Sullivan lifted his head, eyeing the bartender. Not only was he a mother, he was a nosy mother. “Nothing. Trouble at work.”

  Surprise, surprise. “Maybe you should change your line of work.”

  “I like being a reporter,” George disagreed. “I’m good at it.”

  “I was talking about your moonlighting,” the bartender said, looking at the glass that was nearing empty. Give it up, guy. Regulars were good for business, but he hated watching the pathetic ones drink their lives into a toilet.

  “I’m good at that, too.” George looked away, back to his drink.

  Too good, the bartender thought to himself, wondering if this regular put the same amount of effort into the job that paid his tab.

  * * *

  “Strike eight,” Frankie said, scratching the establishment known as the Tree House off of their list after getting back in the Chevy.

  “Nice place,” Art commented. “Remind me never to go there unless I’m drunk first. That way it won’t look so bad.”

  “It’s not the looks, partner,” Frankie said, wiping the tip of her nose. She looked up at the flashing sign as Art pulled away. “A urinal with neon.”

  They were getting a good taste of what Sullivan required in a place to get shit-faced, namely “not much.” Bottles, bar stools, and a bathroom, sometimes all in one room, according to Aguirre’s discriminating nose. Art’s was less affected. His additional years in the Bureau, particularly his time working the OC hits in Chicago, had seen him observing many an autopsy, where the term “smell” took on meanings it was never intended to represent.

  “West we go,” Art said without enthusiasm. “Where to?”