Fidel's Last Days

by Roland Merullo

  At fifteen minutes before noon he told Véronique he was going home to have lunch, and walked downstairs and out to his waiting car. Jose was smoking. He seemed relaxed, unconcerned. On the ten-minute drive to one of Castro’s semisecret residences, his driver and friend talked about baseball, some new shortstop in Matahambre who was said to be the best player the island had produced at that position since Renteria. “The norteamericanos steal our finest. They dangle money and women in front of them and steal them away.”

  “They steal everything,” Carlos said. “They have always stolen everything.”

  It was a kind of game they were playing, Carlos thought. It was meant to relax him, get him into the proper frame of mind for his meeting with Fidel. Jose was more clever—and better connected—than he had ever imagined.

  At the former palacio, Carlos went confidently through the grand doors, carrying his black medical bag. He had an appointment, of course—but Fidel varied his schedule constantly, revealing it to only his closest aides and those he was actually meeting with, sometimes keeping his promises, sometimes not. Carlos was concerned, for a moment, that the guards were going to ask to look into his bag, something they had never done. There was nothing to hide there, not yet; still, it would signal a change. But they only saluted stiffly and went back to their half-bored watchfulness.

  Up the grand, sweeping marble stairs he went, carrying his great burden. At the top of the staircase were more uniformed guards, and then, beyond them, as he approached the doors of the Presidential Suite where Fidel sometimes slept and where they often met for these monthly checkups, two bulky thugs wearing no uniform. Olochon’s men. These men did not salute, and there was not a scrap of boredom in their expressions. They eyed him calmly, giving away nothing. They stepped aside to let him pass, but it seemed to Carlos that they did so reluctantly, without respect, without affection, without the smallest bit of warmth in their Cuban blood. Where, he wondered, were such creatures bred? And after Fidel was gone how would anyone ever get past brutes similar to these, to kill the paranoid Olochon? And who, he wondered, what fool or hero, would be charged with that task in the hours ahead?

  Beyond the doors was an opulent living room with long red curtains closing out most of the midday sun, armchairs, a thick carpet, and propaganda oil paintings on every wall. With Olochon’s men following at a discreet distance, Carlos approached a set of gilded, three-meter-tall doors and knocked three times in a slow rhythm. There was a long pause—too long; unnaturally long—and then Fidel’s voice, calling him in.

  Fidel had become the prince of contradiction. The communist who lived in luxury like this. The octogenarian genius of strategy who refused to prepare for a successor. The man who had always boasted of his strength and unshakeable good health, and yet insisted on frequent checkups and medications for illnesses he did not have. His stomach troubles were nothing, really, a bit of diverticulitis, common enough in a man his age.

  When Carlos closed the doors behind him—even Olochon’s men would not dare to follow him into one of these medical examinations—he found el Comandante in his usual posture: pacing the carpeted floor with his hands clasped behind him, upper torso tilted forward, eyes searching the colors beneath his feet as if the key to his life and death lay in the various shades of red there.

  “Buenas,” Fidel said, without looking at him.

  “Buenos días, Comandante.”

  Fidel looked up abruptly. Carlos wondered if something in his voice had already given him away. His palms were perspiring; he waited for Fidel to look at the floor again, and then rubbed them, one by one, on the cloth of his pants. When he spoke he tried to make himself sound optimistic, garrulous, another hopeful and fierce defender of the Revolution. “Feeling well?”

  “My health is unblemished,” Fidel said. It was his favorite term. Unblemished. Sin mancha. He seemed to believe the word would cleanse even the faintest stain of doubt from those around him, and from the people he ruled. Perhaps he even thought the word would chase off death itself.

  “And may it always be so,” Carlos said. He walked over to the desk and set his medical bag down there, trying to pay close attention to every movement. Tomorrow he would have to do this again, and do it exactly this way. “Let us begin the examination.”

  Reluctant as a boy expecting an inoculation, Fidel removed his combat-fatigue shirt and then the undershirt beneath it. Carlos put the stethoscope around his neck, placed the two plastic knobs in his ears, and listened to the pulse of the nation. It thumped there with the steady rhythm of history. The Supreme Leader was remarkably fit. His lungs were sound, even after years of cigar smoking, his blood pressure 124 over 88, excellent for a man his age.

  “No blood-taking today,” Fidel said.

  “We should check the cholesterol.”

  Fidel shook his head. He was not a fan of needles.

  Carlos tapped along Fidel’s spine, looked into his ears and mouth and nose, helped el Comandante remove his boots and socks and felt of the slightly swollen feet, running his thumbnail across the tough skin to be sure no feeling had been lost. “My mother had diabetes,” Fidel told him, for the thousandth time. “No sign of diabetes?”

  “None. Any tingling in the hands and feet?”

  “Absolutely nothing.”

  “Good.”

  Carlos then went carefully over the skin of Fidel’s face, neck, and forehead. El Comandante was bored with the ritual by this point, or pretending that he was bored. The skin of his forehead, especially, was spotted, a few moles growing there. Eighteen months earlier, he’d had a surgeon remove some cancerous lesions from the hairline, and afterward, Fidel had not used the required medicine and the scars had not healed well. That piece of information had been, as it turned out, the kind of small fact the conspirators had been waiting for. Carlos had mentioned it to General Rincon, in passing, carelessly, before Rincon had been anything to him besides the deputy head of the Glorious Cuban Armed Forces. And with that remark, it seemed, everything had started. A few days later, Rincon had taken him on a walk and had begun the series of strange conversations, probing gently, carefully suggesting small complaints about the state of the nation. Every other day or so they had another conversation, more probing. Two weeks of this and Rincon had raised the idea of a change.

  During this part of the examination, with Fidel beneath his hands, Carlos emitted one small grunt of concern.

  When Castro was dressed again, Carlos half sat, half leaned on the front of the carved mahogany desk in a posture of confidence. Fidel resumed his impatient pacing. “What?” he said at last. “Something’s wrong.”

  “You are in superb health. Almost unblemished.”

  “Almost,” Fidel said, turning his eyes up to him finally. “Casi. What is this ‘almost’? What was that noise you made?”

  “There are some small new growths on the skin of your forehead, just at the hairline.”

  “Show me.”

  Carlos took out a hand mirror and held it so that Fidel could examine his own skin.

  “These?” Fidel snapped. “This is worth talking about?”

  “Your heart is as solid as a young stallion’s. Your lungs, the same. Your blood pressure is better than mine and your spine and musculature also those of a much younger man. But these moles are things we cannot neglect. Cancerous cells double in a week. Next week there will be twice as many as there are now. The following week, four times as many. We are seeing this kind of thing with more frequency now because of the deterioration of the ozone layer.”

  “And who do we have to thank for that?”

  “Yes. Still. It seems like a very small thing to you, and it is, in a way. These kinds of cancers are usually relatively weak, in the systemic sense. But they are cancers all the same, and I would be neglecting my duties if I didn’t counsel you to treat them. Immediately.”

  “Fine,” Fidel said distractedly. “Treat them, then. I am here. You are here. Treat them.”

  “It will tak
e me some hours to get the proper cream.”

  “Why?”

  “It is not commonly available. And, frankly, I didn’t expect to see the moles at such an advanced stage.”

  “Didn’t expect? You see me four times a week.”

  “I don’t always make a close inspection of your hairline, Comandante. We can have the medicine prepared by the end of the day. Tonight or tomorrow I can apply it.”

  “I can’t apply it myself?”

  “Not as well as I can. There’s a certain technique. You dab some on, wait a bit, wipe it off with a clean cotton cloth, dab on a second time, so that it sinks in deeply. But if you’d like—”

  Castro waved an arm. “Fine, tomorrow. Noon again. Here. So much bother over nothing.”

  “There are no major side effects. No danger to you whatsoever.”

  “Fine, tomorrow.”

  Carlos put the stethoscope back into the bag and zipped it closed. He stood and was on the point of leaving, when Fidel stopped him with the wave of one hand. “Sit,” he said. “Sit opposite me.”

  They occupied two of the high-backed chairs, a few feet from each other, facing at a slight angle. “We need to talk about something.”

  “My campaign?”

  “Not health. Something. How long have you been with me?”

  “Since just after your visit to Nuevitas. The stomach flu.”

  Fidel nodded as if he didn’t remember the stomach flu. “How close have we been?”

  “Brothers.”

  Fidel nodded. “Only Felix and Raul have been with me longer, in so close a capacity.”

  “Yes. Felix, your brother, and Augusto Rincon.”

  Fidel nodded again. “Rincon is away. Some sort of organizational troubles in Pinar. But what about Olochon, my other close associate?”

  “What about him?”

  “Yesterday you saved his life. Is this true?”

  “I reacted spontaneously. We were at the Oriente as part of my campaign. A mental patient there—”

  “Foreign?”

  “I don’t know. A mental patient there fired two shots. I reacted. Pushed Felix behind the sofa. I doubt the man would have hit him in any case.”

  “But it was very close. I’ve heard the bullet nearly struck him.”

  Carlos shrugged in what he hoped was a modest way.

  “Is he good?”

  “Who?”

  “Olochon.”

  “Good in what way?”

  Fidel bore his eyes into Carlos’s eyes without blinking. Carlos felt the twitch in his left leg again but Fidel did not seem to notice. “Good in the sense of what?” he repeated.

  Fidel seemed disappointed or angry. He tugged at his graying beard, narrowed his eyes. He let the silence press in against them for a few seconds. “Loyal. True.”

  “Olochon?”

  Fidel nodded.

  Carlos tried to run his mind over all the possibilities that could stand behind a question like this. Fidel did not blink, did not move his eyes. He had to speak. “Absolutely, in my opinion. Sometimes, I think . . .”

  “What?”

  “Sometimes, perhaps, a bit too enthusiastic, bordering on the paranoid. There are dangers, of course, naturally; we all know this. But he sometimes, I think, sees dangers where there are none.”

  “Better to be safe.”

  “Of course. I didn’t mean it as a severe criticism. His loyalty is unquestionable. His judgment is good, sound, with the occasional excess.”

  Fidel nodded, but some evil new wind had entered the room. Carlos cursed himself. He should have been absolute in Olochon’s defense. They did not need complications now.

  “And Rincon?” Fidel said suddenly.

  “Rincon? Loyal?”

  Fidel nodded, staring into him.

  “In my opinion, beyond a doubt. Beyond the tiniest shadow of the smallest doubt.”

  Another nod, more tugging on the famous beard. Fidel looked away and seemed to ponder for a moment, his eyes clouding, his mind drifting. He had what Felix Olochon only claimed to have—a sixth sense for danger. Everyone knew that. It had gotten him through the first arrests in Mexico, through the disastrous landing at Santiago de Cuba, through the battles of Sierra Maestra. Again and again, he had cheated death.

  At last he waved his hand and Carlos stood. Before turning his back he said, “Tomorrow, then. Noon, if that suits you. It will take me all of two minutes to apply the ointment.” He gave a short bow, and left the room with a cool sweat breaking out beneath his shirt.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  When she had to, Carolina had the ability to put herself into a state of semi-hibernation. In this state, she almost stopped thinking. It was as though her spirit took her outside of time for a few hours, gave her a kind of deep rest in preparation for the moment when she would have to act.

  It was that way in the Museo de la Revolución in downtown Havana, where their muddy-haired guide nattered on about one politicized painting after the next, a series of tributes to the Revolution and its courageous leader. The only relief came in the form of acrid comments from one member of their tour group, a young man with a thin moustache, who kept asking questions like: “Excuse me, but if things are so wonderful in Cuba, why do people so often risk their lives to flee to the United States?”

  “Those are mental patients,” the woman replied. “Every culture has them.”

  “In a few years I’m sure you won’t,” the young man persisted. “You will have found the cure for that, too.”

  After all this charade of tourism—the bus rides and diatribes, even the decent lunch—the relative solitude of the beach was a great relief. She could feel herself come part of the way out of her hibernation there, feel a lining of nervousness beneath her hot skin.

  She thought about the lotion in the lipstick tube, how it required a little time to penetrate the three layers of human skin and work its way into the bloodstream. Twenty to forty minutes, Volkes had told her. The more surface area it covered, the better its chance for effectiveness, so if you had some on the tip of your finger you’d likely experience only a brief dizziness and disorientation. Spread more widely, however, it would reach the blood in sufficient dosage. The chemical would first paralyze the digestive system, then thicken the blood; a few minutes later, clots would form and travel to the brain and heart, and the body would cease to function. Which made her a murderer, or at least an accomplice to murder.

  She swam out into the surf to keep from thinking too much about it, but the idea nagged at her. “Nothing is accomplished by violence,” her priest, Father Ricardo, often told her. “Nothing but the creation of new anger, and anger is the soil from which more violence grows.” She felt torn, at moments, between his pacifist view of the world—a view in which each individual soul had to seek its own salvation—and the worldview she’d grown up with and embraced: One had to struggle against the evil forces in the world, and sometimes that struggle meant doing things a priest would not approve of. In certain moods she nourished a fantasy of setting her professional ambition aside, taking early retirement after one last great accomplishment, and living the life of a domestic would-be saint, a life filled with love and tenderness, not killing and deceit.

  Now was not the time for a dream like that.

  They ate dinner as a group: rice, beans, and fresh tilapia in a private dining area that was all gleaming wineglasses and white linen napkins. It seemed to her like a display of all the things the average Cuban did not have. She watched the women who served them. Whom did they know, she wondered, what hero of the Revolution were they related to, in order to have landed a plum job like pouring wine for well-off Spanish tourists? What kind of anger roiled behind their dark eyes? Or had all that been crushed long ago?

  Once the meal was finished, the ability to hibernate left her completely. She could feel her heart working, feel herself climbing into a cold steely persona, setting aside all fear, all compassion, all softness. She went upstairs and change
d into her dancing clothes, the bright crimson shirt and patterned skirt. She removed the contact lenses, slipped the dark-red lipstick into a pocket in her skirt. The phone had not rung again.

  She had stayed at the Oriente on previous visits, and she knew that the bar/nightclub was located on the hotel’s lowest floor, partly below ground level. As she stepped out of the elevator there she heard a decent mambo band playing, and saw some of her acquaintances from the tour group sitting at a table near the bar. Some of them had already had more than a little to drink. Carolina joined them, nursed one mojito and watched everyone in the room without seeming to. She was curious now, completely alert. How, she wondered, would Ulises find his way to her here, with the free-form dancing, the asking and accepting, all the getting up and sitting down again? And how could he have access to the hotel in the first place? Any Cuban who managed to get into this bar would have been carefully screened by the guards. Or would have had to bribe his way in. Or would be working for the Dirección General de Inteligencia. Or would have some high-level connection that protected him. “He will approach you and you’ll know immediately that it is he,” Volkes had told her. No other information given—not his looks, no code word, nothing but his odd name, which, she was sure, was not real.

  One of the men in the group, another teacher, twenty years her senior, asked her to dance. He was a capable dancer, and they stayed on the floor for several numbers until she pleaded tiredness and wandered back to the bar for a drink. The older man got the message. Standing at the bar, sipping a mango juice and watching everything in the mirror behind the bartender’s back, Carolina saw a stocky man with short hair moving toward her across the room. He was handsome in a rough-looking way, and carried himself with confidence, like an athlete. She watched him in glimpses, and then, when he was a few feet away and obviously approaching her, she looked directly at his reflection. There was a scar slicing across part of his cleft chin, some kind of fire in his eyes. If this wasn’t Ulises, she thought, then she was going to be in trouble.