Castro's Daughter

by David Hagberg

  FIFTY-SIX

  After his walk around the block, Fuentes ended up back at the van, where Garcia was about to call him on the phone. The surveillance technician had shoved his headset off one ear and had the Nokia out, ready to dial, and he was excited. Fuentes slipped into the seat next to him.

  “Something’s finally coming through,” Garcia said.

  Fuentes snatched a headset, and though he was hearing voices and some other sounds, it took several seconds for him to begin to make some sort of sense of exactly what was coming from the house, and he suddenly recognized María’s voice, and that of a man, perhaps McGarvey. “I hope you’re recording this,” he said.

  “It kicked on automatically,” Garcia said. He adjusted something on one of his panels, and the voices became clearer. “I’m getting bounce from one of the rear windows—a kitchen, I think. They’re having something to eat.”

  “You’d need the help of the drug cartels along the border,” McGarvey was saying. “That might create a problem.”

  “Not at all,” María said. “Tell me one segment of your society where someone doesn’t at least smoke pot, or better yet, snort cocaine? And who better to spy for us than the boots on the ground, small-time dealers?”

  “In exchange for what?” Louise asked.

  “Safe haven when it’s needed and transportation from Colombia to more than a dozen airstrips, some within fifty miles of the U.S. border. Which is how we’ll get the gold out, using the cartels’ own aircraft but with protection once they enter our airspace.”

  “Does anyone on Campus know about this?” McGarvey asked.

  Otto answered. “I didn’t.”

  “The CIA doesn’t have a lock on intelligence operations,” María said. “Sometimes the DI stages its own little coups.”

  “Big coups,” Louise said. “We’ve been monitoring the air activity for the past three years, but we figured the flights from Cuba were smuggling Cubans who could get across our border into Texas, New Mexico, or Arizona, easier than across the strait into Florida. And we catch a few of them every now and then. Mostly convicted felons.”

  “It’s background noise. You’re supposed to catch them.”

  “Still leaves you two problems,” McGarvey said. “First you have to convince the cartels not to simply take the gold away from you when they get it across the border from New Mexico.”

  “You know where it is?” María asked.

  Fuentes held the earphones closer, barely able to contain his excitement. He’d hit the jackpot. Maybe even something bigger for him than the Operations Directorate.

  “Yes.”

  “Even if we managed to take a lot of gold out of there, those guys won’t risk an ongoing business that nets them in excess of forty billion dollars per year. They’ll let us keep our gold, and continue to spy for us, because we’ll continue to work as their state-sponsored support mechanism.”

  “An arrangement that even your own directorate wouldn’t interfere with, no matter how high a priority bringing you down is for them,” McGarvey said.

  “Something like that,” María said. “You said two problems.”

  “Where do they usually land once they reach Cuba?”

  “They’re coming back empty most of the time, so they land wherever their next drug pickup is scheduled, which can be just about anywhere for security reasons, but usually somewhere in the southwest. It’s a thousand kilometers from there to Columbia’s north shore west of Riohacha, and about eight hundred if they use the route through Nicaragua. No reason for the DI to suspect the inbound aircraft aren’t empty.”

  “We’re talking about several hundred tons of gold that the U.S. is going to want back—assuming you manage to get it across the border,” Otto said. “Means you’re not going to have a lot of time before the Mexican army drops in to find out what’s going on. You’ll have to send an armada of aircraft to get in, load the gold, and get out all in one night.”

  “And if the army does show up in force, it won’t make your cartel pals very happy,” Louise added. “Have you figured out how you’re going to handle that issue?”

  “We’ll assemble the planes at a half dozen airstrips a few at a time over a period of several days, before we grab the gold and bring it across. We can have it distributed and loaded in twenty-four hours or less.”

  “It would be cutting it close,” McGarvey said.

  “Even if we get only half of it out, I’d win.”

  “I’d win?” Louise asked.

  “I meant we.”

  “What happens after you get the gold back to Cuba? Have you figured out how to distribute it?”

  “I’ll need your government’s help.”

  “You’ve already said that,” McGarvey said. “But exactly what help? Physically, what are we supposed to do?”

  “First we need to get the gold to your base at Guantánamo Bay, and from there it can be auctioned for hard currencies, which can be distributed to the people.”

  “Naïve,” Louise muttered. “What about the political fallout? Or do you expect your government will sit on its hands? And even if you could pull off this stunt, and actually get some of the money to the people, what would stop your military from simply confiscating it?”

  “From a population of ten million?” María asked.

  “Put it in any bank, and it would be gone in a heartbeat.”

  María sounded frustrated. “Fly over and drop it from the air like propaganda leaflets. Send it ashore in bales. Distribute it with the marijuana and coke. I don’t have all of the answers.”

  “Why should we cooperate?” McGarvey asked.

  But Fuentes knew what the answer would have to be, and he had to admire the woman. Like her father, she was just as devious as she was ruthless.

  “Think about what that kind of money would do in Cuba. Certainly Raúl’s government would fall. When the army moved in to try to grab whatever it could, the people would fight back. And the army is made up of ordinary Cubans who would themselves share the wealth, so I think mass desertions would speed up the overthrow. And it wouldn’t cost the U.S. a centavo. Maybe even make a profit by brokering the auction.”

  “Revolution,” Fuentes whispered.

  “Revolution,” Otto said. “Just like in Egypt.”

  “What Washington has tried and failed to do ever since the Bay of Pigs fifty years ago,” María said. “No reason for your government not to cooperate.”

  Fuentes pulled the headphones away and called the two people López had sent. They were waiting in a Potomac Electric Power Company maintenance van two blocks away. Bruno Murillo answered on the first ring.

  “Sí.”

  “Move in now,” Fuentes said.

  “Give us ten minutes.”

  “When you’re finished, I want you to stand by for backup.”

  “As you wish,” Murillo replied.

  He and José Cobiella were highly trained to hack into and disrupt any sort of electronic signals, fiber-optics or ordinary copper phone lines, cell phone towers, and in this case, electrical service to individual buildings or entire blocks or neighborhoods. López had guaranteed that, in addition, they were both more than competent marksmen.

  Fuentes donned the headset again in time to hear Louise Horn speaking.

  “… where the gold is buried in New Mexico, and getting to it are two different things. How in the world do you expect to bring in the trucks you’d need to get it across the border without detection?”

  The room fell silent and it was nearly a full minute before María answered, and when she did, Fuentes could do nothing more than laugh. The coronel was devious and ruthless, and even brilliant, but she was crazy—certifiable.

  “The Mexican people are going to invade the United States, and your government is going to allow it to happen.”

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  The lights went out, pitching the kitchen in near absolute darkness. The refrigerator motor stopped working, but all the alarms, motion senso
rs, and antisurveillance gear switched over to emergency battery power, and they were once again safe from eavesdropping.

  Otto switched on a small penlight, but directed its beam at the floor, which made it less likely to be seen outside through the blinds. “Just what you figured, kemo sabe.”

  McGarvey went to the hallway, which ran the length of the house, and cocked an ear to listen before he went to the front door and carefully peered out one of the flanking narrow windows in time to see one man in dark coveralls and a hard hat jump out of a Pepco utility van and enter an apartment building across the street. He carried a nylon bag slung over his shoulder. The van parked a few yards away, and the driver in the same type of uniform got out and hid behind it.

  Otto stood at the kitchen doorway. “Company?”

  “A Pepco van twenty yards away. Two men in coveralls. One just went into the building across the street, probably heading for the roof. The other is behind the van.”

  “The guy you spotted earlier wasn’t wearing coveralls, was he?”

  “No,” McGarvey said. “So there’s at least three, and probably more. Is there a basement exit to the rear?”

  “West corner. What do you have in mind?”

  “I’m taking the fight to them as soon as you and Louise and María are out of here. But stay low on the roof, because the guy across the street was carrying a bag, probably a sniper rifle. He’s most likely covering the front door and windows, but if he spots you, he’ll let the others know and you’ll be stuck.”

  “I’ll call for backup,” Otto said, pulling out his cell phone.

  “Not unless you absolutely need it,” McGarvey said. He wanted at least one of them to get away and get the message back to Havana, and he could see that Otto understood the reason why. “Just get out of here. I’ll give you five minutes.”

  “My life’s on the line,” María said at Otto’s shoulder. “Give me a gun, I’m going with you.”

  “Not a chance,” McGarvey said.

  But María pushed past Otto, her features barely visible in the dim penlight. She seemed driven. “I know how they operate. Fuentes is out there, but he’s almost certainly got the help of Carlos López. He’s our Washington station chief. Good man. Conservative. Won’t waste his assets on a short-term operation.”

  “His people kidnapped Louise.”

  “Wasn’t him. He didn’t want to jeopardize the long-term mission here, so we had to use a team from Miami,” María said. “I’m telling you that these guys aren’t going to stick around if there’s any chance that the cops are going to show up.” He turned back to Otto. “Use your cell phone and call nine-one-one.”

  Otto shook his head. “I’m getting no signal.”

  “Whatever,” María said. “You want to take the fight to them, fine. Give me a pistol and I’ll go with you. If we make enough noise, they’ll cut and run. If that’s what you want.”

  “Fuentes, too?”

  “Especially him. The flojito has no stomach for a standup fight.”

  McGarvey considered what she was saying. In order for his plan to work, someone needed to get word back to Cuba. If the DI had monitored their conversation over the past several minutes, which Mac was sure they had, María had become expendable as far as they were concerned. DI operations under her chief of staff’s direction could conceivably take care of the situation in Mexico with the drug cartels, including the invasion of New Mexico, as completely crazy as that concept was.

  And maybe she knew it or felt it. The timing of the team’s move immediately after she’d stated her plan was way too coincidental. She had to expect surveillance equipment had picked up at least some of it. Her only option at this point was to take them out, or at least take Fuentes down.

  “Give her your gun,” he told Otto.

  Otto handed over the Glock, which María expertly checked, and then the silencer and two spare magazines, which she pocketed. “How do you want to play this?” she asked.

  “You’re going up on the roof.”

  “I’m coming with you—”

  “You’re going to do as you’re told for a change,” McGarvey said. “My friends are going into harm’s way for the second time because of you. And now you’re going to make yourself useful by taking out the sniper on the roof across the street. Or at the very least, keep him busy. And make all the noise you want.”

  María said something under her breath, but then glanced over her shoulder at Louise right behind her. “Show me the way,” she said.

  “Careful where you aim,” Louise told McGarvey. “We have a lot of innocent neighbors.”

  “Give me the keys to the Toyota,” McGarvey said.

  “What have you got in mind?” Otto asked.

  “A diversion.”

  Louise fetched her car keys. “Think they’ll buy it?”

  “Might make them wonder about what’s going on. Just keep your heads down,” McGarvey told them as they headed upstairs.

  “I’ll be seeing you in a few minutes, so don’t shoot me when I show up,” María called back.

  “Don’t tempt me,” McGarvey muttered.

  He waited until they had disappeared, then went to the window and checked out the street again, but nothing had changed. So far as Fuentes’s people were concerned, the front of the brownstone was covered from street level as well as from above.

  Which left the rear courtyard, where Louise’s Toyota SUV and Otto’s battered old Mercedes sedan were parked. The only way out was the driveway around the east side of the house to the gate that opened to the street. Or over the tall brick wall to the narrow alley.

  The stairs to the basement were off the back pantry in the kitchen, but before he went down, he checked out a window, but nothing moved yet in the courtyard, though he was pretty sure that Fuentes had to have placed at least one shooter, maybe more at the rear. The problem was his intention.

  By now he knew María’s plan—the timing of the power cut was not coincidental—so it was almost certain that he wanted her dead. But he would also understand that the only ones who knew where the treasure was buried were McGarvey and Otto and possibly Louise. So at all costs, one of them would have to be taken alive. And if it were McGarvey’s choice, he would pick Louise again.

  A dim light showed through a narrow, dusty window high on the rear wall just beneath the ceiling joists. Except for the oil furnace, water heater, and washer and dryer, plus a workbench in one corner and what had probably served as a wine rack along the opposite wall, the basement was empty. No crates or boxes or old furniture. Everything of interest to Otto and Louise, including each other, was upstairs.

  The door to one of the bedrooms on the third floor had been open when McGarvey passed and looked in earlier. A tiny bed with side rails and a bright pink elephant spread that matched the curtains were waiting for their adopted daughter, Audrey, when this business was all over and she could come back home.

  Pretty much most of his adult life, he had moved from one crisis—like this one, in which his friends and family had been put in harm’s way because of him—to another, in a seemingly never-ending stream. Sometimes, like just then looking at his granddaughter’s bed, he got the feeling that he’d had enough of it. Yet a number of years ago, he told someone who’d asked why he just didn’t turn his back and walk away that he did what he did simply because it was who he was.

  But then and now, he was brought up against a question he’d asked himself from the beginning: Had he made a difference?

  He hoped so.

  But even if he hadn’t, it was impossible for him to walk away from this situation.

  The exit out of the basement was tucked in the west corner. The steel door lifted upward at an angle, and McGarvey, expecting that Fuentes or at least one or more of his people would be either coming up the driveway or most likely over the wall from the alley, switched the Walther’s safety lever off and eased the door open far enough so that he had a clear angle on the back wall.

  But as bef
ore, nothing moved. Fuentes was either very slow, or he was very smart and had laid a trap.

  McGarvey opened the door the rest of the way, hesitated for just a moment—expecting to take incoming fire—but nothing happened so he slipped outside and, keeping low and in the deeper shadows next to the house, hurried to the east side, where he checked the driveway.

  The electrically operated gate was unlatched, but still closed. A Yellow Cab passed slowly as if the driver were looking for an address. No one was in the backseat.

  McGarvey started to turn away when he caught two muzzle flashes from the roof of the brownstone across the street, and he was in time to see the silhouette of the shooter falling back, a rifle pitching over the edge of the roof and landing with a clatter on the curb, just missing a parked car.

  It had to be María’s doing. Exposing herself to draw the two shots, and then taking the sniper down. Twenty-five yards with a silenced pistol. A damned near impossible shot unless it had been a setup, but for the life of him, he couldn’t understand why, or what the arrangement with Fuentes could be.

  He went back to the basement door and waited for her to show up, all his senses heightened. The woman was the head of the DI’s Directorate of Operations, and by all accounts plus what he’d witnessed firsthand, she was bright, devious, and extremely driven to secure her own survival in the new Cuba. Most telling was the fact she’d used the silencer.

  “Kirk,” she called softly from inside the basement.

  McGarvey raised his pistol. “Come.”

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Fuentes, standing in the shadows at the opening of the alley from where he had a clear sight line to the wall behind the brownstone, answered his cell phone on the first ring. “Sí.”

  It was Vásquez, who’d just made a pass in his Yellow Cab. “José is down.”

  “What do you mean, down?”