“So, maybe you should join me for dinner,” Jake said, “since Toad is temporarily indisposed and Callie is temporarily not here.”
“I’ve already eaten, and tongues might wag, Admiral,” she said with mock seriousness.
“And probably will. Won’t do me or thee any good.”
“I’m not going to live my life to please pinheads,” Rita replied. “I’ll join you for a drink.”
After they gave their orders to the waiter, Jake said, “Tell me about the V-22. I’ve been wondering about that plane but haven’t had the chance to talk to you.”
Away Rita went, talking about airplanes and flying, two subjects they both enjoyed immensely. The breeze coming through the open doors of the dining room stirred the curtains and made the candles on the tables flicker in the evening twilight.
They were drinking after-dinner coffee when Rita remarked, “Toad says that you still haven’t heard from Washington about your next set of orders.”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t want to talk about something you would rather not discuss, but he says they may ask you to retire:”
“They might. I’ve thrown my weight around a few times in the past and made some enemies, in uniform and out.” He shrugged. “Every flag officer gets passed over for a promotion at some point and asked to retire. My turn will come sooner or later. Maybe sooner.”
“Are you looking forward to retirement?”
“Haven’t thought about it that much,” he said. “To be honest, the prospect of spending more time with Callie has great appeal.” He rubbed his forehead then grinned ruefully. “It’ll hurt if they don’t find me another job, give me another star next year. Yet even a CNO gets told it’s time to go. When it happens to me, Callie and I will get on with the rest of our lives. The truth is, when I decided to stay in the navy after Vietnam I never expected to get this far: thought it’d be terrific if I made commander or captain. Here I am with two stars in charge of a carrier battle group.” He snorted derisively: “Guess it all goes to prove I’m an ungrateful bastard, huh?”
“It goes to prove you’re human.”
“You are very kind, Rita.”
“You’ve really enjoyed the navy, haven’t you?”
“Every tour has been a challenge, an adventure. Every set of orders I’ve had, I’ve thought, Oh, wow, this will be fun. I can’t say I’ve enjoyed every day of it, because I haven’t, but it’s been a good career. Like most people who have worn the uniform, I did the best I could wherever they needed me. I’ve worked with great people all along the way. I have no regrets.”
One of Jake’s aides came over to the table, smiled at Rita, then whispered in the admiral’s ear. “The ship that left here four days ago carrying biological warheads to Norfolk never arrived. It is overdue.”
“Civilization begins when the strong finally realize they have a duty to protect the weak. That duty is the foundation of civilization, the bedrock on which everything else rests.”
Hector Sedano stood in the pulpit and looked at the sea of sweating, glistening faces that packed the church to overflowing. He could feel the heat from their bodies. There must be close to two hundred people jammed in here.
Hector continued: “For centuries we, the people, have abdicated our duty to a few strong men. Rule us, we said, and do not steal too much. Do not be too corrupt, do not betray us too much, do not shame us beyond endurance. Protect the weak, the elderly, the helpless, the sick, the very young, protect them from those who would prey upon them. And protect us. If you grant us protection you may steal a little, enough to become filthy rich, as long as you do not rub our faces in it.
“We give unto you the strong one a great trust because the faith to face the evil in the world is not in us.
“O strong one, protect us because we lack the courage to protect ourselves.”
The crowd was rapt, wanting more.
Hector Sedano had given this very same speech more than a hundred times. Only the faces in the audience were different. He leaned forward, reached out as if to grab the people. They had to understand, to feel his passion, or Cuba would never change. Perspiration ran down his face, soaked his shirt.
“I say to you here tonight that our duty can be ignored no longer. The hands that made the universe are delivering our destiny into our very own human hands. We must seize the day when it comes. We must acknowledge before God and before each other that the future of this nation is ours to write, ours to invent, ours to live, and ours to answer for before the throne of heaven on Judgment Day.”
A thunderous applause shook the tiny church.
When it died, Hector continued, “I say to you that the future of our families is on our heads, that the fate of this people is our responsibility and our destiny.
“We shall drink every drop that God pours for us, be it sweet or bitter, be it thin or full, be it a tiny trickle or a great river. We shall not turn aside from that righteous cup.”
The applause swelled and swelled and filled the room to overflowing; it spilled through the open doors and windows and rushed bravely away to do battle with the silence and darkness of the night.
“We pulled it off,” Admiral Delgado told Alejo Vargas. “Nuestra Señora de Colón is stranded on a rocky reef near the entrance to Bahia de Nipe. Santana is ready and waiting.”
“What took so long?”
“When she left Guantánamo the Americans sent a destroyer to accompany her. The captain was beside himself—he thought the destroyer would accompany them all the way to Norfolk. He faked an engineering casualty in the Windward Passage, crawled along at three knots. Of course, then the destroyer refused to leave. He finally had to announce that he had fixed the problem and steam off at twelve knots before the destroyer turned back.”
Vargas smiled. “If this works, I will be very grateful to you, Delgado.”
“There are real problems, which we have discussed. I give this operation no more than a fifty percent chance of success.”
“Fifty percent is optimistic,” Alejo Vargas replied. “I suspect the odds are a lot worse than that. Yet they are good enough to take a chance, and if we don’t do that, we have only ourselves to blame, eh?”
“Doing business with the North Koreans is an invitation to be double-crossed. How do you know they will perform?”
“We need long-range ballistic missiles, the North Koreans want well-designed, well-made biological warheads. The exchange is fair.”
“I still do not trust them,” Delgado countered. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime deal.”
Vargas changed the subject: Delgado was not a partner, he was the hired help. “Tell me about your evening cruise with Maximo Sedano.”
“He wants political backing when Castro dies.”
“What did you promise him?”
“I told him you buy people or blackmail them, that he has no chance.”
“And Alba?”
“He agreed with my assessment.”
Vargas smiled. “Let us hope Maximo stifles his ambitions. For his sake. You told the man the honest truth; if he chooses to disregard it the consequences are on his head.”
Delgado said nothing. He suspected Vargas had already talked to Alba: the admiral hoped the general didn’t try to dress up the tale. Telling Vargas the truth was the only way to stay alive.
Toad Tarkington was sitting by the window in the BOQ room thinking about biological weapons and marines dug in around a warehouse when Rita unlocked the door and came in. She was still in uniform. His head was thumping like a toothache and he felt like hell.
“Some anniversary,” he said. “I feel like an ass.”
She came over to the chair, knelt and put her arms around him.
“This wasn’t the way the evening was supposed to go. I’m sorry, Rita.”
“Our life together has been terrific, Toad-man. You’re still the guy I want.”
He hugged her back.
“Let’s go to bed,” she said.
The emotional impact of what he had done didn’t hit Maximo Sedano until the jet to Madrid leveled off after the climbout from Havana airport.
He took the transfer cards bearing Castro’s thumbprint from his inside left breast pocket, and holding them so no one else in first class could read them, studied them carefully.
He was holding $53 million in his hands and he could feel the heat. Hoo, man! He had done it!
He took a chance, a long chance. When he walked into Castro’s bedroom he had had the real transfer cards in his left jacket pocket and the ones bearing his bank account numbers in his right. Mercedes wasn’t there that second time he was admitted, which was a blessing. His former sister-in-law was too sharp, saw too much. She might have decided something was wrong merely from looking at his face.
So it was just Fidel and a male nurse, a nobody who handled bedpans and urinals. There wasn’t a notebook or ledger anywhere in sight, and Fidel certainly was in no condition to closely scrutinize the cards. He signed the cards, transferring the money to Maximo, then let Maximo put his thumb in an ink pad and press it on each of them.
Fidel said little. He had obviously been given an injection for pain and was paying minimal attention to what went on around him. He merely grunted when Maximo said good-bye.
The Maximo Sedano who walked into that bedroom was the soon-to-be unemployed Cuban finance minister with a cloudy future. The Maximo Sedano who walked out was the richest Cuban south of Miami.
Just like that!
The icing on the cake was that the Swiss accounts should have perhaps a million more of those beautiful Yankee dollars as unpaid interest. Every penny was going to be transferred to Maximo’s accounts at another bank in Zurich. It wouldn’t be there long, however. Tomorrow morning after he turned in these transfer cards to Fidel’s banks, he would walk across the street and send the money from his accounts to those he had opened in Spain, Mexico, Germany, and Argentina. These were commercial accounts held by various shell corporations that Maximo had established years ago to launder money for Fidel and the drug syndicates, accounts over which he had sole signature authority. The shell corporations would quickly write a variety of very large checks to a half dozen other companies Maximo owned. After a long, tortuous trail around the globe and back again, the money would eventually wind up in Maximo’s personal accounts all over Europe.
The scheme hinged on the bank secrecy laws in various nations, not the least of which was Switzerland, and the fact that anyone trying to trace the money would see only disorganized pieces of the puzzle, not the big picture.
Maximo smiled to himself and sighed in contentment.
“Would you care for a drink, sir?” the flight attendant asked. She was a beautiful slender woman, with dark eyes and clear white skin.
“A glass of white wine, please, something from Cataluña.”
“I’ll see what we have aboard, sir.” She smiled gently and left him.
Maximo told himself that he would find a woman like that one of these days, a beautiful woman who appreciated the finer things in life and appreciated him for providing them.
His wife was expecting him to return to Cuba in three days: “I must go to Europe in the morning,” he had told her. “An urgent matter has arisen.”
She wanted to go with him on this trip of course—anything to get off the island, even for a little while.
“Darling, I wish you could, but there wasn’t time to make reservations. I got the only empty seat on the airliner.”
She was not happy. Still, what could she say? He promised to bring her something expensive from a jeweler, and that promise pacified her.
The flight attendant brought the glass of wine and he sipped it, then put his head back in the seat and closed his eyes. Ah, yes.
He had a new identity in his wallet: an Argentine passport, driver’s license and identity papers, a birth certificate, several valid credit cards, a bank account and a real address in Buenos Aires, all in the name of Eduardo José Lopéz, a nice common surname. This identity had been constructed years before and serviced regularly so that he might move money around the globe when drug smugglers sought to pay Fidel Castro. Becoming the good Señor López would be as easy as presenting the passport when checking into a hotel.
He had the papers for two other identities in a safe deposit box in Lausanne, across the lake from Geneva.
Maximo Sedano fingered the bank transfer cards one more time, then reclined his seat.
How does it feel to be rich? Damned good, thank you very much.
Lord, it was tempting. Just walk away with the money as Señor López, and poof! disappear into thin air.
And yet, the gold was there for the taking. His plans were made, his allies ready … all he had to do was find the gold and get it out of the country.
He reclined his seat, closed his eyes, and savored the feeling of being rich.
Doña Sedano was sitting on her porch, inhaling the gentle aroma of the tropical flowers that grew around her porch in profusion and watching the breeze stir the petals, when she saw Hector walking down the road. He turned in at her gate and came up to the porch.
After he kissed her he sat on the top step, leaned back so he could see her face.
“Why aren’t you in school, teaching?” she asked.
He made a gesture, looked away to the north, toward the sea.
There was nothing out that way but a few treetops waving in the wind, with puffy clouds floating overhead.
He turned back to look into her face, reached for her hand. “Ocho went on a boat two nights ago. They were trying to reach the Florida Keys.”
“Did they make it?”
“I don’t know. If they make it we won’t hear for days. Weeks perhaps. If they don’t reach Florida we may never hear.”
Dona Maria leaned forward and touched her son’s hair. Then she put her twisted hands back in her lap.
“Thank you for telling me.”
“Ocho should have told you.”
“Good-byes can be difficult.”
“I suppose.”
“You are the brightest of my sons, the one with the most promise. Why didn’t you go to America, Hector? You had plenty of chances. Why did you stay in this hopeless place?”
“Cuba is my home.” He gestured helplessly. “This is the work God has given me to do.”
Doña Maria gently massaged her hands. Rubbing them seemed to ease the pain sometimes.
“I might as well tell you the rest of it,” Hector said. “Ocho got a girl pregnant. He went on the boat with the girl and her father. The father wants Ocho to play baseball in America.”
“Pregnant?”
“Ocho told me, made me promise not to tell. He did not confess to me as a priest but as a brother, so I am exercising an older brother’s prerogative—I am breaking that promise,”
She sighed, closed her eyes for a moment.
“If God is with them, they may make it across the Straits,” Hector said. “There is always that hope.”
Tears ran down her cheeks.
It was at that moment that Dona Maria saw the human condition more clearly than she ever had before. She and Hector were two very mortal people trapped by circumstance, by fate, between two vast eternities. The past was gone, lost to them. The people they loved who were dead were gone like smoke, and they had only memories of them. The future was … well, the future was unknowable, hidden in the haze. Here there was only the present, this moment, these two mortal people with their memories of all that had been.
Hector stroked his mother’s hair, kissed her tears, then went down the walk to the road. When he looked back his mother was still sitting where he had left her, looking north toward the sea.
Ocho was probably dead, Hector realized, another victim of the Cuban condition.
When, O Lord, when will it stop? How many more people must drown in the sea? How many more lives must be blighted and ruined by the lack of opportunity he
re? How many more lives must be sacrificed on the altar of political ambition?
As he walked toward the village bus stop, he lifted his hands and roared his rage, an angry shout that was lost in the cathedral of the sky.
The pain was there, definitely there, but it wasn’t cutting at him, doubling him over. Fidel Gastro made them get him up, had them put him in a chair behind his desk. He wanted the flag to his right.
Mercedes and the nurse helped him into his green fatigue shirt
He was perspiring then, gritting his teeth to get through this.
“Do you know what you want to say?” Mercedes asked.
“I think so.”
The camera crew was fiddling with the lights, arranging power cords.
“I want to say something to you, right now,” she whispered, “while you are sharp and not heavily sedated.”
His eyes went to her.
“I love you, Fidel. With all my heart.”
“And I you, woman. Would that we had more time.”
“Ah, time, what a whore she is. We had each other, and that was enough.”
He bit his lip, reached for her hand. “If only we had met years ago, before—”
He winced again. “Better start the tape,” he said. “I haven’t much time.” He straightened, gripped the arms of the chair so hard his knuckles turned white.
With the lights on, Fidel Castro looked straight into the camera, and spoke: “Citizens of Cuba, I speak to you today for the last time. I am fatally ill and my days on this earth will soon be over. Before I leave you, however, I wish to spend a few minutes telling you of my dream for Cuba, my dream of what our nation can become in the years ahead … .”
The door opened and Alejo Vargas walked in. Behind him was Colonel Pablo Santana.
“Well, well, Señor Presidente. I heard you were making a speech to the video cameras this afternoon. Do not mind us; please continue. We will remain silent spectators, out of the sight of the camera, two loyal Cubans representing millions of others.”
“I did not invite you here, Vargas.”
“True, you did not, Señor Presidente. But things seem to be slipping away from you these days—important things. The world will not stop turning on its axis while you lie in bed taking drugs.”
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