Fidel's Last Days

by Roland Merullo

  When Fidel finished, he turned the meeting over to Colonel Olochon, as he always did. As head of D-7, Olochon was charged with one branch of internal security, “a different kind of health minister” Castro had once called him, though some said Castro had no idea of the kind of things Olochon actually did. He was universally hated in the room. With the possible exception of Raul, everyone felt watched by him. Everyone here had known someone—a former ministry official, military officer, friend—who had been denounced by Olochon and his nest of snakes, imprisoned, tortured, killed, never spoken of again.

  “We have uncovered another conspiracy against the Revolution,” Colonel Olochon began. Though they had all heard it a hundred times, they made their faces into the shape of careful shock. “In fact, just this morning, someone at this table . . .” Olochon paused to sip from his mineral water, and to let beads of sweat appear on the faces of those around him. “Someone at this table . . .was kind enough to assist me in exterminating one of the rats involved in this conspiracy.”

  Carlos slammed his fist down on the wooden tabletop so hard and so suddenly that Castro turned and stared at him. “And happy and proud to do it,” he said loudly. “Excellent work, Olochon!”

  “Yes, yes,” the others mumbled.

  For just an instant Olochon seemed stunned by the outburst. “Carlos enjoys the work so much,” he said. “Perhaps”—he turned to Fidel, smiling his hideous broken smile—“he should take over my position.”

  Fidel went along with the joke. “Not yet, not yet,” he said, putting his hand on Olochon’s shoulder. “You’re still young.”

  The torturer laughed, then turned abruptly serious. “A web of conspiracy. We’ve only touched its edges. We believe it has reached its sticky tendrils high up into the government structure.”

  No one moved. Then Rincon started folding his paper again and said, calmly, glancing at General Adria first, “Give us the names of anyone you suspect in the military and we’ll take care of them.”

  “When I get those names I will take care of them myself,” Olochon said. “Personally. And I will get them. I am in the process of getting them.”

  “Good work,” Rincon said drolly.

  “Yes, yes, fine work,” a few other voices echoed. Carlos just watched, still shocked at what he had done in the prison; shocked by his made-up bit of drama in this room. He was not the same Carlos Gutierrez who had left his apartment this morning. He would never be that man again. As if it were a swelling in his frontal lobe, he could feel the enormous hatred that had been building up in him over the past two years. There was the horror of it, the murder of people like Ernesto, the constant fear, the cascade of lies, Olochon’s black heart at the center of it all. But there was also something so dull, so repetitive and unimaginative and dull. It was like listening to a song that you had once found interesting, and then being made to hear that song over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, at work, on the television, day after day from the mouths of demons.

  The more he sensed that the room was becoming slightly bored with him, the more Olochon embellished his news. The conspirators had imported a small band of U.S. Marines, who were, he believed, hiding out deep in the countryside receiving secret munitions support from Guantánamo. Perhaps some of the Middle Eastern terrorists imprisoned there had been released into the Cuban population. The conspirators were poisoning the food of children in the schools. Two young girls had perished. One boatload of Miami traitors had landed near the Bay of Guanabacoa and been captured.

  The best way to get people’s attention was to frighten them; everyone had learned that from Castro himself. But Olochon’s stories went from terrifying to absurd to inane. Even Fidel seemed bored.

  At last, the tale of woe came to its rousing, hopeful conclusion, and soon the meeting ended. But even then the charades went on. Carlos walked up to Olochon and said, “Why didn’t you tell me about the schoolgirls, the poisoning? I could have sent a team to investigate. We could have identified the poison and tracked it to its source.”

  “It’s been taken care of,” Olochon said.

  “But this is a case for the Ministry of Health.”

  “Done,” Olochon said, and turned away.

  Fidel left the room with the bodyguards forming a circle around him, and Carlos wondered how the plan could possibly be carried out, how Rincon was going to get inside that circle of muscle and kill him. And what, exactly, would happen once that had been accomplished? It was not as if Raul Castro, Felix Olochon, and the other worshippers of el Comandante were simply going to shake Rincon’s hand, pledge their undying allegiance, agree to support free elections, and then go happily back to work.

  On the way down the stairs, Rincon and General Adria were behind him, chuckling as if one of them had told a filthy joke. Between the front steps of the Central Committee building and the Martí Memorial, the two military men went their separate ways, and Rincon, as if accidentally, fell into step with Carlos. “Another good session,” he said heartily. Carlos nodded. He could still see Ernesto’s face in front of him; the horrible smells and sounds of that place filled his nostrils and ears. There was traffic noise in this part of the city, tourist buses and trucks, just beyond the concrete plaza. More than a year ago now, General Rincon had started becoming more friendly toward him. They’d always had a mutual respect and cordial relations, but things had become more amicable, more personal. Little by little, conversation by conversation, Rincon had sounded him out—how was his work going? What did he really think of the state of the nation? Were things actually getting better, or was it all just numbers floating in the air?

  Little by little, conversation by conversation, Carlos had found himself speaking to Rincon with an openness that surprised him. The only other person he’d ever spoken to this way had been his late wife, Teresa, and even then only in whispers in the privacy of their home. But he trusted Rincon on instinct. He’d heard of the man’s heroism in Angola, tales of him standing up to Soviet generals in the old days, refusing to risk his men in the name of some foolish Leninist triumph. He’d even been rumored to have stood up to Fidel after the arrest of Colonel Davos on charges of suspicion of conspiracy. Davos, perhaps the most popular figure in the whole armed services, had been tortured for weeks, then allowed to shoot himself, and only Rincon had had the moral fiber and physical courage to raise an objection . . . which was, of course, ignored. Little by little, Carlos and General Rincon formed a secret bond, and Rincon began telling him of an elaborate conspiracy that had been under way for months already and that involved certain sectors of the military utterly loyal to him.

  As Fidel aged, as he seemed to be losing his sharpness, this movement had gained momentum. They had been careful to keep it a Cuban matter, no interference from the outside. They limited everything to one-to-one or one-to-two contacts, so anyone arrested would have only one or two names to give up. Shocked at first, Carlos felt himself gradually drawn in. Every time Fidel ranted about economic improvement while children were going hungry, every time he spoke about liberty while another journalist was arrested; every time there was another rumor of a balsero taking a raft out into the shark-infested Straits of Florida, Carlos felt himself pulled deeper into this idea of changing things in a radical way.

  It frightened him, of course. But gradually he had made a kind of peace with the fear. Now he walked side by side with his fellow conspirator, certain that no one could guess anything from their body language. During one particularly loud honking of horns, Rincon moved slightly so that his mouth was an inch closer to Carlos’s ear and he said, or Carlos believed he said, “It is you. You are to do it. How later.”

  Surprised to the bone, Carlos did not dare look at him. He hesitated one second, two seconds, then laughed loudly, patted the general on the shoulder, and moved through a blood-drenched dream toward his waiting car and driver.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Carolina climbed the stairs slowly toward the door of the jet, s
taying in character to the last moment. She could not imagine anyone would have followed her here, but this was how the White Orchid worked: layer upon layer of backup, nothing left to chance. When she was inside, and the door was closed and secured, she saw that there was another passenger on the plane for the trip back to Florida: Oleg Rodriguez, her new boss. She sat down beside him, exhausted. It was close to midnight, and the layers of makeup on her cheeks, hands, and legs had become rubbery with sweat.

  Oleg’s handsome face carried a cheerful expression. “How did your brush with power feel, oh ancient one?”

  “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac,” Carolina said mockingly. “I could barely keep my hands off him.”

  “And I’m sure he could barely keep his hands off you”—Oleg patted the top of her leg—“in that sexy outfit.” From the moment she’d met him, there had been some kind of body-to-body tension between them. His family had fled Cuba years before; she had never heard the details. He was a glamorous, impossibly handsome man who had eliminated all traces of a Spanish accent from his speech, and who liked to dress in ridiculously expensive Armani suits. On the short side, broad shoulders, a wide, clean-shaven face marked by a straight nose, and dancing dark eyes. The eyes were full of trouble, but it was a happy trouble, inviting you to join in. She believed he felt attracted to her, too; he was always touching her shoulder or arm, making little jokes like this. Nothing, of course, would ever come of it, though in certain moods she indulged in a fantasy of the two of them taking a very early retirement, buying a small inn on Key West and raising a dark-haired brood of angelitos.

  “Everything went smoothly, I trust,” Oleg said when they were speeding down the runway toward takeoff.

  “Not exactly.”

  The small jet climbed, bumped through a bit of turbulence, and leveled off. Carolina looked down at the dark grid of lights, then the suburbs, then the black countryside. “Vice President Eddie Lincoln is not happy with our plan. He’s not happy at being unable to talk to the man in charge. At the end he threw a kind of hissy fit and said their participation was off. The U.S. government is officially out of the deal.”

  Oleg laughed quietly and she turned and looked at him full in the face. He seemed genuinely pleased. “Excellent work,” he said. “And I must say you are an extremely attractive seventy-five-year-old.”

  “Seventy,” she said. “I’m hurt.”

  “And how did your uncle react?”

  “With a great deal of suspicion at first, and then I softened him up and he came around. The idea of us sending him back there to be part of the government, that’s what did it.”

  “Amazing,” Oleg said. It was nice to please this man, nice to do her work well, nice to have the approval of her superiors. But she felt traitorous there, with him, talking about her uncle. She had felt traitorous all that long day. “Here is a man who has everything,” Oleg said happily, “literally millions upon millions of dollars, the most beautiful homes, the most beautiful women, the admiration of hundreds on both sides of the water. And the allure of power softens him.”

  “I think it was the allure of going back and helping to remake Cuba.”

  “It’s a fantasy. A return to a nonexistent childhood.”

  “I thought it was the point of our entire plan.”

  “To remake Cuba, yes, of course. To open it. To let it breathe. But to remake the Cuba your uncle remembers? Do you think that’s a realistic possibility? Or a desirable one?”

  She shook her head. “My uncle and Lincoln had a conversation, I think. Recently. At one point, when I was detailing the made-up plan for him, Lincoln slipped and said, ‘And then Anzar’s people will move.’ ”

  “It wasn’t a slip.”

  “No?”

  Oleg shook his head. He went to the bar and made two gin and tonics and brought them back.

  “Would you let me get out of this disguise, please?”

  “Not yet. We’ll take you to a hotel in Miami.”

  “Miami? Can’t I go back to Atlanta?”

  “Not at this time. We’re a bit concerned about the Atlanta location, for reasons I cannot divulge right now. It’s Miami, for tonight at least. You’ll have some clothes at the hotel to change back into. You can spend the night. Sleep as late as you want and then call me and I’ll have Evan come by and bring your hair back to normal in the morning.”

  “I feel like I’m sweating internally.”

  Oleg smiled, sipped his drink, pushed his seat back and gazed up cheerfully at the jet’s gray vinyl ceiling. “Your uncle is a man of the old world. He believes in the Old Cuba and her resurrection, as if such a thing would give him back his youth. He believes in the idea that, when it comes to Cuba, only the government of the United States is capable of acting the way we act. He understands capital and business, you see, but only in its microeconomic sense: the hiring of laborers, the bribing of politicians, the pleasing of customers, the use of the military to support a nation’s aims. The larger dimension is lost to him. It would be, I think, his only serious flaw as a true leader.”

  “And Lincoln?”

  “Edmund Lincoln is a more complicated and less trustworthy man. His mentioning your uncle’s name was a ruse to get a reaction from you. His refusing to support the plan was another ruse. He’ll support it, as will the president. He was just trying to get past your disguise and figure out how much of the truth you were telling him.”

  “Well, I didn’t react. And the whole account was only about forty percent true anyway, right?”

  Oleg let the question merge with the drone of the engine. “Lincoln wants to be president someday, you know that.”

  “Everyone in the country knows that.”

  “And if he’s seen to be a force in the creation of a free Cuba, do you think that will help him or hurt him?”

  “Help, of course.”

  “But because of international pressures, and because of his present position, he can’t be seen to be a force in the creation of a free Cuba unless it’s a guaranteed success. Your uncle won’t risk the lives of his people, again, unless it’s a guaranteed success. So naturally, they are both nervous and suspicious and envious. But there is more to it than politics. Lincoln knows, as does your uncle, that there are billions of dollars to be taken from the Cuban sugar plantations, if they could be made to function properly again. Billions to be made from tourism, if the market is opened to the United States and the infrastructure and service industries properly nurtured. Hundreds of millions still in the nickel and gold mines. The difference is that your uncle cares about the old Cuban culture, and Lincoln cares about the money. The difference between them and us is that they see the military as a key ally, when in fact, in this instance and others, the military is going to play less and less of a role in the world in years to come. Do you think it was military or economic pressure that broke apart the former Soviet Union?”

  “Both.”

  “Right. But the military’s role was largely passive, which is, increasingly, what it will be: a stick that is rarely if ever used. Look at Libya, for one good example.”

  “Whereas the economic stick will be used regularly.”

  “Exactly.”

  “All right. My uncle cares about Cuba. Our vice president cares about power and increasing his fortune. But tell me, what do we care about? Your boss’s boss’s boss. What is he in it for?”

  “You’ve been working for us what now, six years?”

  “Eight.”

  “And you just come around to asking this?”

  “I’ve always asked it. The answer I always got was that we were working for a freer, more just world. The rising tide that will lift all boats. An end to war, hunger, and selfishness. It’s why I shifted over from the CIA. The Orchid seemed less cynical. Is that what our man at the top is in it for?”

  “Men, not man,” Oleg said. He paused, and it seemed to Carolina that he was wondering how much to tell her. It was always this way with the Orchid: everything on a nee
d-to-know basis. They fed her information one drop at a time, in conversations like this, in private airplanes, penthouse suites, dusty bars in the Slovenian outback. But it also seemed that they were grooming her, giving her more responsibility, more money, more information. This appealed to her tremendously, more than she liked to admit. Part of her wanted nothing more than to prove to her uncle that leaving the CIA had been a wise decision; sometimes she thought that motivated everything she did now, every risk she took, every discomfort, every lonely day. She was only thirty-five, she had her sights set high, though there was a fog of confusion lower down, too. Moral confusion, practical, even emotional—she did not like living alone; she wanted a husband and children . . .and she wanted to be the most powerful woman in any clandestine service anywhere.

  Now, though, sitting beside Oleg, she felt the professional ambition rising up over everything else. Usually once or twice in a year she’d be given an especially tricky or dangerous assignment, and that would be followed by a bump in pay, a new boss, a few more drops of information about the Big Picture. She’d become almost addicted to the thrill of these promotions.

  Oleg sipped his drink, turned his marvelous eyes on her. “Our bosses care about making the world work as it should work. There are only a few men, a handful of men, who understand, really understand, the way the economy of the world works and where it is headed.”

  “No women?”

  “Perhaps you will be the first,” he said, and she felt a warm internal shiver. She could hold her own with vice presidents now. She was being given a key role in the Havana Project.

  Oleg went calmly on, “These men, our superiors, are the spiritual leaders of the future, you see, and that is something you have not been told before, I’m quite sure. These people have spent many years, fifty years in some cases, moving the chess pieces into place, thinking two, three, four decades in advance, while people like your uncle pride themselves on looking two seasons into the future. The world is being slowly knit together. In the largest, macroeconomic sense, there is no longer, for all intents and purposes, much real economic distinction between, say, a multinational corporation in China and one in the United States. The borders in Europe have collapsed—militarily and economically—and that collapse will spread slowly eastward. The tariffs that once separated the nations of North America are gone. Take those events and extrapolate into the future—ten years, a hundred and ten years—and what do you think you have?”