Castro's Daughter

by David Hagberg

  A new incoming message came in from the same Venezuelan remailer, and with the same encryption algorithm, but this one was live, and headed only with his name.

  Otto touched the screen. His camera activated, but the monitor remained blank.

  “Good morning, Mr. Rencke,” a man said. His accent was slight, but definitely Hispanic. “We mean your wife, or you, no harm. Nor will we in any way retaliate for the information she passed to you before we could end the transmission.”

  “What does the Cuban government want with us?” Otto asked.

  “El Comandante’s funeral will be held this afternoon at four o’clock. An aircraft from your State Department will leave from Andrews three hours from now. We want you to be on that flight.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Nevertheless, it is what you will do. Someone will meet you in Havana with further instructions. If you do not comply with our instructions, your wife will be shot to death and her body dumped in the CIA’s driveway.”

  Otto was on camera, and he kept his expression neutral though he was hemorrhaging inside.

  “Do you understand, Mr. Rencke?”

  “No,” Otto said. One of his search engines was working to pinpoint the Venezuelan remailer, and he needed to keep the kidnappers online as long as possible.

  “Five days ago, a CIA operative working as a yard boy at El Comandante’s compound in Miramar took a series of photographs of a woman who attended Fidel’s deathbed. No doubt, your Directorates of Operations and Intelligence are trying to identify the woman. Her name is María León. She is Colonel León, chief of the DI’s Directorate of Operations. She is also an illegitimate daughter of El Comandante.”

  “His daughter is Alina Fernández, and she lives in Spain.”

  “This is a second one. Unknown.”

  “Why me?” Otto demanded.

  “In trade for your wife’s life, of course.”

  “I understand that part, but what does Cuban intelligence want from me? I go down there, you take me to some interrogation center, feed me some drugs, and then what? What do you think I know that would be of any use to you?”

  “You must know that you are considered a high-value target because of your specialized knowledge of the CIA’s computer systems.”

  “Even if I drew your people pictures, you have nobody with the technical expertise to fully understand what we’re doing here.”

  “Nevertheless, you will come to Havana this afternoon if you wish to see your wife returned to you alive.”

  Otto held up his hands. “All right, I’ll be there. But what am I supposed to tell my people here in the building? Or the FBI? Or, for that matter, the State Department whose delegation you want me to join?”

  “I’m sure you will think of the proper things to say.”

  “That somebody totally out of their gourd inside the DI has ordered a high-ranking CIA officer’s wife to be kidnapped in order to lure the officer to Cuba? Christ, do you guys want to start a war. Won’t be another Bay of Pigs.”

  “I understand your confusion, señor. Nevertheless, you will come to Havana.”

  The instant before the connection was broken, one of his search engines brought up the remailer, which belonged to SEBIN—Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia—Venezuela’s national intelligence service.

  This was a legitimate, well-thought-out intelligence operation, not some harebrained scheme dreamed up by a lunatic.

  He was going to Havana—he had to—but the problem was what the hell he was going to say to his boss, the new DCI, Walter Page, that would make any sense.

  SEVEN

  Louise sat on the edge of a narrow bed in a small room with a tiny attached bathroom, her head still swirling from the drug they’d injected into her neck. She’d been awake enough however, to give Otto a little information that the Bureau might be able to use to track her down.

  But her captors hadn’t seemed to mind, though they’d pressed the SEND button on the laptop they used to record the message before she could say anything else.

  And then nothing—they’d just walked out. They hadn’t hit her, or shouted at her, or threatened her, which was in itself ominous. That, and the fact they’d made no effort to hide their faces, led her to believe that when this operation was completed, they would kill her. She was no field officer, but in their shoes, it’s what she might think had to be done.

  But she had no intention of making it easy for them. For Otto’s sake. For Audie’s sake.

  They hadn’t taken her wristwatch. It wasn’t nine yet, and the entire kidnapping from the day care center to here had taken a little less than two hours. She turned her head and stared at the window, which was boarded over, and in her mind’s eye she saw Joyce Kilburn violently shoved back into the school, surprise on her round face. She was the center’s director, and was married with three children of her own. Sweet. Gentle. And tears wanted to well in Louise’s eyes.

  They needed Otto to do something for them, or tell them something. But they couldn’t have any real idea whom they were dealing with. And the enormous risk they had taken to carry out something like this, so incredibly dangerous, with so many unintended consequences for them, and for whoever was directing them, had to mean that whatever they wanted was super important.

  Something topical, she figured, because she didn’t think whoever they worked for had merely gone on a fishing expedition. Venezuela was the most likely. SEBIN was directly under Chávez’s thumb, and he hated the United States with a passion that went beyond reason.

  The room was mostly in darkness except for what little light seeped in around the edges of the plywood covering the window, and from a small light over the sink in the bathroom. But it was sufficient for her to take stock of her surroundings.

  The narrow bed was covered with a dirty blanket and filthy pillow, and she had to hope that whatever they wanted would happen before nightfall so she wouldn’t have to sleep here. The floor was bare plywood, on which someone, probably a child, had drawn stick figures in yellow and green chalk. A mother and father, two children and a dog standing in front of a small house with a one-car garage and a big tree. Another showed a swing set and a picnic table under another large tree: in the backyard?

  Louise started to struggle to her feet off the low bed, when someone was at the door unlocking it, and she sat back, tensing. By now Otto had gotten the video, and her captors had probably talked to him about the terms of her release. He almost certainly would have agreed to their demands or he would have stalled them—either way, she figured she still had some time.

  The man who’d driven the Caddy came in with a bottle of Evian, which he handed to her. “The drug sometimes makes the mouth dry,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Louise said, and she took a deep drink.

  “We mean you no harm, señora.”

  “Right. It’s why you jabbed a needle in my neck, filled me with a sedative that had a fair chance of killing me, and brought me here.”

  “It was necessary—”

  “To kill an innocent woman at the day care center?”

  “That was also necessary,” Cruz said without apology.

  “You could have hit one of the children inside—did your man think about that? Or didn’t he give a shit?”

  Cruz shrugged.

  And Louise suddenly got the feeling that she knew these guys. They weren’t Venezuelan intelligence officers; they were nothing more than thugs off the streets of Miami. “What does the DI want with my husband that they were willing to send someone like you to force his hand?”

  Cruz showed only a flicker of surprise.

  “Fidel is dead, so is this something that Raúl hatched to show that he was in charge?”

  “Your husband was more cooperative when we talked to him a few minutes ago. Perhaps you should curb your tongue.”

  “Or what?” Louise demanded. “You’ll beat me up, starve me? Or bore me to death with your sad tales of woe in Cuba, all brought on by us?” Sh
e wanted to get him angry, force him to make a mistake and say something he didn’t mean to say—reveal something, any little scrap of information that she could use.

  But he just gave her a long stare, then shook his head and turned to go.

  “You’ve made a mistake.”

  Cruz turned back and nodded. “Qué?”

  “My husband and I have a friend who will find you, if something happens to us. And when he does, he will kill you. Comprende, señor?”

  Cruz smiled but then left the room, relocking the door behind him, and Louise lowered her head. The effort to goad the man had made her a little dizzy and sick to her stomach. And she had learned nothing from it, except that this was almost certainly a Cuban operation. But for the life of her, she could not think of why they would take such a risk.

  The problem was that Kirk McGarvey had gone to ground again—to try to heal his wounds, physical and especially mental—and only Otto knew where he was. Certainly not at his home on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Last year, his wife, Katy; their daughter, Elizabeth; and their son-in-law, Todd Van Buren, had all been assassinated in an effort to keep Mac away from an investigation into a powerful lobbyist group here in Washington with its tendrils in just about every important governmental agency, including the Pentagon and the CIA itself.

  A Washington Post reporter had uncovered the essential parts of the story and brought the evidence to Todd, who worked for the CIA, because he felt the operation was too big for him. And in part because Todd’s father-in-law had once been the director of the agency.

  And the killings had started that very day, with Todd’s assassination and with murders of the reporter and his wife and their son. In the end, of course, Mac had been a driven man, pushed to his breaking point, and he had taken his revenge, bringing down a security firm second only to Blackwater, and causing the deaths of more than two dozen crooked power brokers and Washington insiders whose actual fantastical aim had been to bring down the government.

  When it was over he had disappeared, almost as if he had dropped off the face of the earth, and only Otto knew for sure where he was. Or at least she hoped he did.

  She took another drink of water, then struggled to her feet and tottered to the window boarded over with a sheet of thick plywood held in place by a dozen screws. She figured that from the outside, this place probably looked like an abandoned house, or perhaps one that had been foreclosed on. It had to be somewhere in the Washington area, but in the two hours since the kidnapping, they could easily have gone fifty miles or more.

  Although some light seeped in from around the edges of the plywood, she couldn’t see much of anything outside except for what might have been the color green, perhaps the tree from the chalk drawing, but no indication if this was a room at the front of the house or at the rear.

  The bed, actually a metal cot, was the only piece of furniture in the small room. Its legs were attached to the frame by nuts and bolts, none of which were loose enough for her to remove, which was too bad because one of the legs would have made a great weapon.

  The bathroom had an old-fashioned claw-foot tub, a toilet, and a sink with a medicine cabinet above it. The cabinet’s mirrored door had been removed and the shelves were empty, and the small window had been boarded over as well.

  Her head was spinning fast enough for her to nearly be sick to her stomach, and she sat down on the toilet seat and closed her downcast eyes for a moment or two. If she had to fight them by hand, she would do so, because there was no way in hell she was just going to lie back meekly and allow them to kill her.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw the edge of a small piece of metal, or something, under the tub, and she reached down and got what turned out to be a small nail file, the kind often found in personal grooming kits. One end was pointed, but the other was nearly flat across.

  She got up, went back into the bedroom, and looked at the screws holding the plywood on the window frame.

  Nearly as flat across as the blade of a screwdriver.

  EIGHT

  The kidnappers had given him a three-hour window, which didn’t leave much wiggle room and especially no time for fretting—that would come later, on the flight down to Havana. Even so, Otto’s hand shook as he called Bob Packwood, the director of the Farm, which was the CIA’s training facility at Camp Peary, just south of Richmond.

  Todd had been a codirector of the Farm, along with Mac’s daughter, Liz. Audrey was their daughter, and had become the camp’s darling girl. Everyone down there thought of themselves as aunts and uncles to Audie, whom Otto and Louise had adopted.

  “Send somebody up to the day care center to get Audie. Louise and I are going to be busy for the next few days.”

  “I’ll send Mary Beth,” Packwood said without a trace of hesitation. Mary Beth Stroble was the camp’s shrink. “It’ll be good to have her back, even if only for a few days. Let them know we’re coming to fetch her.”

  “My next call. But it’d be best if you sent Mary Beth up as soon as possible. There was a shooting there this morning.”

  “Was Louise in the middle of it?”

  “Three men kidnapped her and shot one of the teachers.”

  “Shit,” Packwood said. “What can we do?”

  “Get Audie out of there, and send someone to fetch Louise’s car—it’s probably still in the driveway.”

  “What’s the Bureau saying?” Packwood asked.

  “Nothing yet,” Otto said, and he cut Packwood off from asking anything else. “Thanks for your help,” he said.

  He phoned the day care center, and one of the teachers answered. She sounded nearly hysterical.

  “Oh, Mr. Rencke, it’s just terrible. They murdered Joyce, and then they took Louise—Mrs. Rencke—away, and the police are here and they want to talk to you. I don’t know what to do. All the parents are coming to get the children, but we only had Louise’s contact number, not yours.”

  “Mary Beth Stroble is coming to get Audie. She works for the CIA, and she’ll want you to see her credentials, but she will not be giving the police a statement. Let them know I’ll contact them later this morning.”

  “They said that the FBI was coming here, too.”

  “That’s all right, just tell them what you know, and say that I will call.”

  “Yes, sir. But I just don’t know what to do next.”

  “Let the police handle it,” Otto said.

  He phoned Walter Page and told the director that he was on the way up, and needed their meeting to include Marty Bambridge, who was the Deputy Director of Operations, and Carleton Patterson, the CIA’s general counsel.

  “Something important?”

  “I need to get down to Havana for Castro’s funeral.”

  * * *

  Page, a stern-looking man who’d been the CEO of IBM before the president tapped him to run the CIA, was seated on an upholstered chair across a coffee table from Bambridge and Patterson on the couch when Otto walked in.

  “Good morning,” the DCI said, motioning to an empty chair. “You’ve piqued our curiosity.”

  “The State Department flight to Havana leaves from Andrews at noon,” Otto said, remaining standing. “I need to be on it. Castro’s funeral is tomorrow.”

  “Not such a good idea,” Bambridge said. He was a narrow-shouldered man who wore a perpetual look of surprise on his dark features. “You have the keys to the fortress in your head.”

  Otto had expected the DDO, who was nominally his boss, would say something like that. “They don’t have anyone down there who’d understand even if I drew them a picture. So that’s a nonissue.”

  “What is the issue, then?” Page asked. “Why are you so interested in attending Castro’s funeral?”

  “The DI kidnapped Louise just after she dropped Audie off at the day care center less than two hours ago.”

  “My God,” Patterson said. He was a pale old man, in his late seventies, who had been called from academia to act as the Company’s general coun
sel several presidents ago. The job was supposed to last through just the one administration, but he’d stayed on and no president or DCI since had found any need to replace him.

  “Does the Bureau have this?” Page demanded.

  “They’re at the day care center now. I’ve sent someone up from the Farm to get Audie out of harm’s way.”

  “We’ll have to get them over here to debrief you,” Page said, but Bambridge broke in.

  “You said it was the DI that kidnapped her. Have they already contacted you?”

  “A few minutes ago. They sent a video of Louise, who told me that she wouldn’t be harmed if I cooperated. Soon as I’d seen it, one of the kidnappers contacted me and said that I was to be on the plane to Havana, where someone would meet me.”

  “Did you trace either ISP?”

  “A SEBIN remailer in Caracas, but they were using an old encryption algorithm that only the Libyans and Cubans still use.”

  “Okay,” Patterson said. “Why do they want you in Havana? They might take the risk of kidnapping your wife, but they’d never risk luring a high-ranking CIA officer down there to kidnap or kill him, unless the stakes were very high.”

  “What’d they offer you?” Bambridge asked.

  “My wife’s life.”

  “In exchange for what?”

  “Five days ago, one of our people in Castro’s compound took photographs of a woman who’d been at the dictator’s side when he died. Possibly the only one in the room.”

  “We haven’t come up with an ID yet,” Bambridge said. “But one of our people in the city swears he’s seen her in Government Square. She’s probably a functionary of some sort. Our current thinking is that she might be one of Raúl’s aides or maybe a personal secretary. Did they mention her?”

  “She’s one of Fidel’s illegitimate kids.”

  “Did they give you a name?”

  “María León. She’s a colonel in the DI, apparently chief of their Directorate of Operations. She wants to meet with me.”

  “Jesus Christ, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard in my twenty years,” Bambridge said. “No way in hell are we going to allow you anywhere near Havana.”