Castro's Daughter

by David Hagberg

  “They have a shooter on the roof. Looks like José took a couple of shots, and the last I saw as I made the corner was him falling back. And I think he dropped his rifle on the street.”

  “Turn around right now,” Fuentes ordered. “I think they’re trying to get out from the front.”

  “On my way.”

  “Rápido,” Fuentes said. He speed-dialed Murillo’s number, and the agent hiding behind the Pepco van answered on the first ring.

  “They have a shooter on the roof,” he said. “José is down. And the imbécil dropped his rifle on the sidewalk. What do you want me to do?”

  “Vásquez is on his way to back you up. Has anyone taken notice?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Stay where you are. I think there’s a good chance they’re going to come out the front way.”

  “They’d be fools.”

  “Don’t underestimate these people, especially Colonel León.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m at the alley, in case they come this way,” Fuentes said.

  “That’s a comfort,” Murillo said, and before Fuentes could respond, the agent broke the connection.

  Garcia called. “I saw gunfire from the roof across the street.”

  “Start the van and get ready to go,” Fuentes said. “I think they’re going to try to leave the front way.”

  “They’d be fools.”

  “I’ve heard that before. Just start the van and stand by.”

  “Sí.”

  Holding his pistol tightly, Fuentes started down the alley toward the brownstone, his stomach sour, his mouth dry. His ace in the hole had been the sniper on the roof across the street, who was supposed to keep them bottled up, leaving them only one way out. Right into his arms, where he would have been waiting at the corner to take them out one at a time as they came over the wall.

  But Cobiella had made a mistake and they’d taken him down, and Fuentes was seething with rage. He knew the colonel’s plan, and as insane as it was, he thought that with Ortega-Cowan’s help, they might be able to pull it off. But not before learning where the treasure was hidden. Somewhere in southern New Mexico, they knew that much, but they needed the exact location. It was the one piece of information apparently known only to McGarvey, Rencke, and Louise Horn.

  No matter what, then, McGarvey and the colonel had to be eliminated—priority one, because they were too dangerous. Which would leave only Rencke and his wife—an egghead and a woman.

  FIFTY-NINE

  María took her time coming up the stairs from the basement, and when her head and shoulders emerged, she looked up directly into the muzzle of McGarvey’s pistol and reared back, her eyes wide in the darkness. “Are you going to shoot me?” she asked, keeping her voice low.

  McGarvey was having a hard time reading her. Right now she was cautious but not fearful. And the corners of her mouth turned up in a half smile. Triumph? “The thought occurred,” McGarvey said, lowering his gun.

  “May I come up?”

  “Yes. What about Otto and Louise?”

  “Out of danger for the moment,” María said. “I took out the sniper. Do you mean to take the fight to them, or will you wait until they come over the wall?”

  “A little of both,” McGarvey said. He still didn’t know if he could trust her, which on the face of it was stupid. She might be running for her life, but she was Castro’s daughter, and following her father’s deathbed request. For Cuba’s salvation, or for her own personal rescue. She had to figure that if she actually pulled this off, actually got at least some of the treasure across the border and back to Cuba, she could return to Havana on a white charger, a hero of the state.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Cover the rear wall,” McGarvey said. “I’ll be right back.”

  He headed to the driveway and, keeping low and as much as possible in the shadows, reached the gate. The Pepco van hadn’t moved from its spot about thirty yards on a diagonal across the street, nor did the shooter hiding behind it show himself.

  After screwing the silencer on the end of the Walther’s barrel, he yanked the gate open as he fired two shots, aiming for a spot on the pavement beneath the van just behind the front tire. But if the ricochet shots found their mark as he thought was only an off chance, the Cuban agent didn’t cry out, nor did he return fire.

  He hurried back to the house. “It’s me,” he called softly around the corner.

  “Clear,” María replied.

  She was watching the top of the wall from where she crouched in the shadows behind Otto’s car when McGarvey came around the corner and went to Louise’s Toyota SUV and opened the driver’s-side door.

  “Get ready to move,” he told her. “We’re going over the wall in about one minute.”

  “We’re not driving out?”

  “No,” McGarvey said. Pocketing the pistol in the waistband of his jeans, he got behind the wheel, started the engine, backed out from where the car was parked nose in to the wall, and when he got it turned around, dropped it into drive and headed toward the open gate, jumping out only at the last minute just before the nose of the vehicle cleared the opening.

  Several silenced shots hit the windshield as the SUV slowly moved across the street, where it came up against a parked Chevy Impala and stopped.

  McGarvey raced back to where María was still crouched. “We’re going over the wall now.”

  “Me first?” she asked.

  “Together,” he said. “Before they figure out the Toyota was a bluff.”

  SIXTY

  Fuentes ran to the end of the alley and, making sure no traffic was coming up the street, hurried around the corner, past the van where Garcia was waiting with the engine running.

  He was still connected with Murillo across the street from the brownstone.

  “Bruno. What’s going on? Talk to me.”

  “I’ve been hit in the leg,” Murillo came back.

  “Did they get past you?” Fuentes demanded. “Are they gone?”

  “No, no, it was a trick. They opened the gate, someone fired a couple of shots, and a minute later the SUV came out of the driveway and I started shooting at the driver. But there was no one behind the wheel. The bastard just came across the street and crashed into a parked car.”

  “Have you attracted any notice yet? Anyone come snooping to find out what’s going on?”

  “Not yet,” Murillo said, and he sounded steady, but in pain.

  Fuentes ducked behind a parked car three down from the florist van and looked back to check the shadows toward the alley. But so far, there was no movement. “Stand by,” he told Murillo.

  “What do you want to do, Captain? This situation will not last more than a few minutes.”

  “Stand by,” Fuentes repeated, and he speed-dialed Garcia. “Have the police been notified?”

  “I’m picking up nothing yet,” Garcia came back. He, too, sounded steady. “Where are you?”

  “Behind a car about twenty meters to your south. I think they might be coming from the back after all. Are you getting anything from the house?”

  “Nothing. But listen, Captain, I think we need to get out of here.”

  “Hold your position, you bastard, until I say we head out!” Fuentes shouted.

  He speed-dialed Vásquez in the Yellow Cab. “Where the hell are you, Hector?”

  “At the end of the street from Bruno’s position, still covering the front of the house. What do you want to do, Captain?”

  “Just hold where you are until I give the order to move out. This is still my operation.”

  “The hell it is—”

  “Hijo de puta, do as you’re told or I’ll have you in front of a firing squad in Havana for dereliction of duty, failure to obey the direct order of a superior, and for cowardice in the middle of an operation vital to the state.”

  Murillo made no reply.

  Fuentes turned again to watch where the alley opened to the street,
but still saw no one coming out. It was possible that they had crashed the SUV to get someone’s attention, figuring that they would call the police. Time was running out and he was frustrated and fast losing his patience. Everything was falling apart.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying?” he sputtered. “Answer me!”

  “I’m calling López.”

  “Hold your position!” Fuentes shouted, when the muzzle of a pistol was placed against the back of his head.

  “Tell him and the others to leave,” McGarvey said. “Or I’ll put a bullet in your brain.”

  Fuentes froze for a moment. “We have a development,” he told Vásquez. “Leave right now, and tell the others to pull out.”

  McGarvey grabbed the cell phone out of his hands, tossed it across the street, and stepped back. “Your man in the florist van?”

  “Sí,” Fuentes said, and he looked over his shoulder at McGarvey, whose face he’d only ever seen in photographs. But he’d not been prepared for the man’s bulk, or the look of confidence and even contempt in the American’s eyes. And instantly, he realized that he had made a very large mistake underestimating the man.

  “You were in Mexico City and then Miami—why did you come here?”

  Fuentes hesitated.

  “Give me one good reason not to blow you away.”

  “We came for Colonel León. She’s a traitor to the state.”

  “To arrest her or kill her?”

  Fuentes came down a little. Evidently, McGarvey was more interested in information than anything else. “It didn’t matter which, though we would have preferred to take her back to Cuba to stand trial.”

  “Because she no longer has her father’s protection?”

  “Qué?”

  “She’s Castro’s daughter.”

  Fuentes laughed. “She is simply a traitor to the DI, and to the state. She’s been stealing and extorting money from a wide range of low- and midlevel government officials for years. Trading on her father’s name, threatening them with arrest and even torture if they refused to cooperate. What story did she try to sell you?”

  “That’s not a matter for the U.S. court system, whoever the hell you are and what your real purpose here is, but the murder of three people in Miami is.”

  “Traitors,” Fuentes said, but then he glanced across the street and saw María standing between two parked cars. She was holding something in her right hand.

  “She wants to kill you,” McGarvey said. “She told us some story about a treasure of gold somewhere just across our border with Mexico. She claims that you’ve come here to kidnap her and force her to tell you where it is.”

  “And you believe that?”

  “We’re looking into it,” McGarvey said. “Which leaves you two choices. And two only. Leave now, return to Cuba immediately, and you’ll have your freedom, because at this point my government is not involved nor should it be.”

  “What about the people in Miami you claim I shot to death?”

  “I didn’t say anything about how they were killed.”

  “What’s my second choice?”

  “Die.”

  PART

  FOUR

  SIXTY-ONE

  First thing in the morning, the CIA’s Deputy Director of Operations Marty Bambridge powered down the rear window of his chauffeured black Cadillac limousine and showed his credentials to the guard at the White House’s West Gate, who waved him through. The driver let him off at the West Entrance, where he was met by Doris Sampson, who was the secretary to Frank Shapiro, special adviser to the president on National Security Affairs, and she took him back to the NSA’s office.

  Shapiro, a husky man in his mid-fifties with thick dark hair and childhood acne scars, was just finishing a telephone call and he hung up. He seemed harried and moody. “What brings you across the river this morning?” he asked.

  “We have a developing issue that I think you need to know about,” Bambridge said. He and Shapiro were not on a first-name basis, but they knew each other from a number of security briefing sessions here in the West Wing at which the DDO had made presentations.

  “Walt Page send you?”

  “No.”

  Shapiro looked at him for a moment, but then nodded. “Close the door,” he said, and he phoned his secretary to tell her he was not to be disturbed for the next few minutes.

  “I’m not going behind anyone’s back. But it’s a situation involving Kirk McGarvey for which I—the agency—could use a little guidance.”

  “He’s been of some service to the CIA and to this country. The president has a great deal of respect for him.”

  It’s not the reaction Bambridge had expected, and he nodded. “Perhaps it would be better if I fully briefed the director.”

  Shapiro waved him off. “You’ve come this far—tell me what’s bothering you.”

  “I’m not sure this is the correct time.”

  “I am,” Shapiro said coolly.

  “There’ve been five shooting deaths—one in Georgetown last night, three in Miami the night before last, and one of a museum curator in Mexico City—all of them involving McGarvey and Colonel María León, who heads the Cuban intelligence services Directorate of Operations.”

  Shapiro was definitely interested. “This have anything to do with the kidnapping of the wife of one your officers?”

  “We’ve learned that it was ordered by the DI in order to force her husband, our Special Projects officer Otto Rencke, to fly to Cuba with the State Department delegation that attended Castro’s funeral.”

  “Jesus Christ, why weren’t we briefed?”

  “We didn’t know all of the details ourselves until yesterday, and then there was a shooting last night in Georgetown. The victim has been tentatively identified as a Cuban national who we think works for a DI cell here in Washington.”

  “Precisely how is McGarvey involved?”

  “By his own admission, he’s actually working with Colonel León. In fact, he flew clandestinely to Cuba to rescue Mr. Rencke, where he met with the colonel, who apparently arranged for the two of them to escape.”

  Shapiro shook his head. “Do you realize just how crazy this sounds?”

  “Yes, but it’s even worse.”

  “Page knows all of this?”

  “Yes, he and I were briefed by McGarvey and Rencke yesterday.”

  “And?”

  “The director gave them forty-eight hours to finish what they’d started,” Bambridge said. “But since the incident last night, I don’t think we can afford to wait.”

  “What did McGarvey have to say about it?”

  “He and the colonel plus Mr. Rencke and his wife have disappeared. Again.”

  “Okay, Martin, tell me the worst.”

  And he did, leaving nothing out, including everything that was said in the meeting with Page after McGarvey and Rencke returned from Spain.

  Shapiro was silent for several beats, until he shook his head. “If McGarvey wasn’t involved, I would have to say that you’re talking utter rubbish. But why did he want the forty-eight-hour delay before he talked to the Bureau?”

  “He expected the DI to trace Colonel León to Washington, and I think that he wanted to see what they would do.”

  “They tried to kill her, which you think validates her story in McGarvey’s mind?”

  “Exactly, as does the fact that he and the others disappeared sometime before the police showed up to investigate the shooting.”

  “How do you know McGarvey was in the middle of it? Were there witnesses?”

  “No, but a SUV was involved, probably as a distraction, and we traced it to Louise Rencke. From there we gained entrance to a brownstone across the street from where the DI shooter’s body was found. The place was filled with sophisticated computer and countersurveillance equipment. A lot of it CIA gear. Along with some personal effects belonging to Rencke and his wife. We think it’s where they were hiding the colonel. Somehow the DI found out and apparently tr
ied to smoke them out by cutting the electrical power to the house.”

  Shapiro was thoughtful. “So now what?”

  “I think that McGarvey means to help Colonel León find the treasure and somehow get at least some of it to Cuba.”

  “That makes the least sense of all. McGarvey may be many things, some of them contrary and certainly not pleasant, but he’s never betrayed his country, at least not in the long run.”

  “I’d like to ask him to explain himself, but as I said, he’s disappeared again.”

  “That would be up to your people,” Shapiro said. “But you did the right thing coming to see me.”

  “What would you like me to say to the director?”

  Shapiro smiled. “That’s up to you, Martin.”

  And Bambridge smiled inwardly, because he had gotten exactly what he wanted. A friend in the White House who would help bring McGarvey down off his high horse. It was a first step.

  * * *

  When Bambridge was gone, Shapiro walked down to the Oval Office, where President Joseph Langdon standing behind his desk was talking with John McKevitt, his chief of staff, and Howard Pursley, his chief speechwriter.

  “I need a couple minutes whenever you have the time,” Shapiro said.

  “Anything earth shattering?” the president asked. The press had dubbed him the Dapper Dan when he ran successfully for the Colorado governorship ten years earlier, because he habitually wore three-piece suits, the ties always proper, the bottom buttons of the vests always undone, the same as this morning.

  “No, sir, but interesting.”

  “Okay, let’s take this up later,” he told his speechwriter. “Anything John needs to stay for?”

  Shapiro shrugged. “That’s up to you, Mr. President.” It was a code that he wanted some one-on-one time.

  “Give us a couple of minutes,” Langdon said, and his chief of staff and speechwriter left, closing the door behind them.

  “We have a developing situation involving Kirk McGarvey and the colonel in the Cuban DI that frankly beats the hell out of me,” Shapiro said.