History, it seemed, was composed of just such unlikely events.
From where she stood she could clearly hear the surf washing up on shore. It was easy to get her bearings from the sun. There were no houses in sight. No sound of traffic. Even with her battered feet, she could make it to the coast now without much trouble, she knew that. Once she reached the water the only question would be whether she should turn right or left; whether she’d traveled more than five miles during the night or less.
Though her face, arms, and legs were badly scratched, it was her feet that really concerned her. As an employee of the Agency, and later of the Orchid, she’d had all kinds of training, everything from using handguns to resisting interrogation. She’d studied languages and Okinawan karate. But there was no way to practice being in pain like this. The shoes pinched her feet so badly they’d rubbed raw lines on either side.
She forced herself to stand and begin walking, hoping the pain would diminish after a while. When she’d traveled only a few hundred yards she came upon another house. She saw it first as colors between the trees, flashes of white, red, and gold there in the distance. She crouched and approached it, a few feet at a time. No dogs barked out an alarm. The metal roof sparked into view. Another fifty feet and she saw that the colors were pieces of clothing strung on a line to dry in what was now a fierce sun. She went only another few feet then remained still, hidden behind some kind of flowering shrub, the smell of which made her think of Miami. A heavyset woman in a red bandana was hanging the clothes to dry—shirts and dresses. Carolina remained absolutely still, watching. When the woman was finished, Carolina crawled another fifty feet closer, still hidden by the dense undergrowth. She heard a wooden door slap closed, then slap again a few minutes later. She watched the red bandana moving off away from the house, along a road or a path she could not see.
When the woman had walked out of sight, Carolina crept closer. It would not do to go promenading on the beach in broad daylight in her ruined, expensive dress. People here, trained by a lifetime of poverty and suspicion, would notice such things, would spot her as a foreigner from half a mile away. If the National Police had sent out any kind of alert, if they were combing the area questioning residents. . . . She crept forward, only a hundred feet from the clothesline now. After watching for a while, she crept still closer, picked up a stone, and flung it into the yard. Nothing; no barking dog, no sign of people. She tossed another stone so that it clanked on the tin roof and rattled down its slope. Nothing. Hurrying now, wincing with each step, she crossed the small, rutted path, stepped over a low wall made of coral stones, pulled one of the dresses off the line, pinned some money to the rope, and was back in the trees in under a minute.
She pondered for a long moment, then decided to leave her shoes. She’d be on the beach very soon, and then on the Orchid’s boat, speeding north to safety. The shoes meant only more pain now.
Barefoot, she made straight for the water, going along at a turtle’s pace, stepping gingerly, splinters of pain running up her calves. Soon the undergrowth thinned. Not far from the edge of the trees she stripped off her ruined, $485 dress, crawled into what seemed like a rainbow-colored tent, then took the contents of her pocket into her hand and transferred them carefully into the huge pocket. The owner of the dress had to weigh three hundred pounds, Carolina thought, but it was better this way. She tore a large enough piece off the good dress to make a bandana. She found a length of branch that would work as a cane. She fashioned a crude pair of sandals from two folded-up breadfruit leaves wrapped around her swollen feet with more ribbons of torn dress. She rubbed dirt on her legs in the hope that they might seem, from a distance, older, more like an islander’s, then she hobbled across another small road and onto the bright, burning sand. Not two hundred yards to her left, she saw a pier with one broken piling. Guanabacoa Bay. Limping, leaning on the cane, she set off toward the pier, looking, she hoped, from a distance at least, like an indigent Cuban woman hobbling off to gather some mother-of-pearl to sell, or to scrape for edible sea snails in the shallows.
She reached the pier, her feet screaming with every step, the blisters broken and already infected, oozing pus. She opened the tube of lipstick and pressed hard on the transmitter inside. Its red light flashed . . . the battery had not died. That done, she hobbled around the end of the pier and sat crouched in its meager shade, staring at the blinding sea, a woman waiting for the spirit of death to come and fetch her.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Oleg thought it slightly strange that Volkes had been keeping him so busy over the past several days. He wondered if the schedule had been speeded up. He’d flown back and forth to Atlanta twice, carrying sealed documents, and was now going across the Everglades, after dark—in what he had been told was a former U.S. Army helicopter—with yet another envelope in the inside pocket of his suit jacket. This particular document was going to be delivered to someone from the Department of Defense, he knew that, but how important a someone he wasn’t sure. The secretary or an undersecretary, he guessed, judging by the bodyguards in the seats behind him. The message he was carrying would have something to do with the U.S. government’s actions in the hours and days following Fidel’s murder, and he was curious about the envelope’s contents to the point of distraction. If he’d thought he could have gotten away with it, he would have slipped into the bathroom at the back and had himself a quick read.
But things were going along well. The gullible Carolina, half in love with him, out to rescue Cuba from itself, was in Prague now; D-7 had someone tracking her movements. Volkes and the others were so confident in his loyalty that they were promising him what amounted to a partnership. Decades it had taken him to earn this kind of confidence. Years of leading a double life, of setting up an absolutely secure and secret line of communication back to DGI, of watching every word he spoke, controlling every facial expression and emotion, constantly looking in his rearview mirror. It would be over soon enough, and they would find a place for him back in the motherland, and when Fidel did pass on, who knew to what heights Oleg Rodriguez might climb? Head of D-7 maybe, or even something larger.
He looked down at the utter blackness of the central Everglades. Panthers still ran there, or so he had heard. A dozen varieties of poisonous snakes called the place home, alligators, the huge and vicious Belizean crocodile. He did not like such places. He would be glad when the lights of the Gulf coast came into view.
He was looking for them through the vibrating windshield when he thought he heard—over the whump-whump-whump of the rotor blades—a shifting of weight behind him. A shifting of weight, and then a sound like a whisper in both ears, and he felt something brush his chin. Too late by a fraction of a second, he reached up his powerful hands to try to get them between his throat and the piece of cable. But the man behind him was immensely strong, and then so quickly, so terribly quickly, everything in Oleg Rodriguez’s world turned the most hideous shade of red.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Fidel Castro was a man of moods, a sinking soul wrapped in paranoia and the past. Carlos had been Fidel’s personal physician for six years, and in that time he had seen the Great Leader fidget and complain like a young child over the smallest discomfort, and sit stoically and endure his skin being sewn up without anesthesia. The man had not a milliliter of patience, but he had a massive pride, and sometimes the pride was enough to keep him still.
Carlos walked past the guards, gave his signal knock on the tall doors, and could tell, instantly, just from the sound of el Comandante’s voice, that his noble leader was in a good mood this hour. “Ah, Doctor,” he said, when Carlos entered the room carrying his black leather bag. “You slept well?”
“Perfectly, Comandante, and you?”
“I was tossing in the bed all night worried about this injection.”
“It’s not an injection, just some topical ointment.”
“Ah, yes; let me see.”
Carlos tried to keep his hands steady as h
e opened the bag and took out the small tube. What in his past, a past of healing and complicity, had made anyone believe he could kill his president in cold blood? But it seemed that he could. He handed the small tube over for Fidel’s inspection as calmly if he were handing over a new toothbrush.
The first thing Fidel did was open it and lift it to his nose. “Smells of tobacco,” he said.
“My hands. Jose and I had a smoke on the ride in this morning.”
“A smoke? And you a physician?”
This was as close as Fidel came to making a joke. Always his humor involved a slight meanness, a joust to keep the other person off balance.
“A few puffs.”
“Ah.” Castro sniffed at the tube again and then spent a long time examining the label with his glasses. He never wore the glasses in public anymore the way he had when he was younger, never admitted to even the smallest frailty, rarely allowed his illnesses to be reported in the official Cuban press or mentioned aloud in his presence. His famous stumble and broken wrists had made the news, of course, but had quickly been followed by absurd reports that he’d undergone surgical treatment and bone-setting without anesthesia. His health was always “unblemished,” always, every day, every hour. He narrowed his eyes and asked, “So what is involved?”
Carlos lifted his eyebrows once as if having to work to call to mind the treatment regimen from the jumble of his other duties. “I rub it on. We wait two minutes; I wipe it off. Then I rub it on again and leave it for one hour and you can then wipe it off yourself, though most of it will have soaked into the skin.”
“Aha. And its purpose again?”
“To reduce the size and density of the moles in preparation for treating them with a mild dose of radiation. Also, to help the healing of the skin where other moles have been removed.”
“And the side effects?”
“A bit of drowsiness during the second application. If you need to take a short nap, you can. Two hours after it is applied, you will no longer feel these side effects.”
“Ah.” Fidel would not release the tube. There were, in total, four or five words and perhaps ten numbers printed on the label, but he kept going over them, studying them. He was famous for his intuition. Some people talked about his great luck, but it wasn’t luck, really, as much as a kind of sixth sense that alerted him when his life was in danger. Carlos could feel small rivers of sweat dripping down the sides of his ribs. His left leg was trembling. Fidel did not seem to notice; he was nodding his large head, eyes closed as if the drowsiness had already come over him. “Very good,” he said. “Muy bien. Muy bien. But I want . . .”
He paused, lifted his eyes to Carlos and held them there, unblinking, for what seemed like half a minute. “But I want you to take the treatment first.”
“Happy to,” Carlos said. “But I have no moles.”
Fidel was waving his empty hand in a grand sweep. “No matter, no matter,” he said. “For the protection of the head of state, it’s part of your job, no?”
“Of course.”
“Who knows what demon might have had access to this tube before it came into your possession. For the protection of the head of the Cuban state, you rub it on your forehead exactly the way you will rub it on mine. We’ll wait and see what happens, and then proceed. There’s enough for both of us, isn’t there?”
“If I don’t use too much, yes.”
“Bien. Vámonos. Let’s go then.”
Fidel was holding out the tube. Carlos took it in his hand and to his horror he saw that his fingers were shaking slightly. “Coffee and cigar for breakfast,” he said. “Not wise.” The words came out beautifully, perfectly, just the proper combination of self-deprecation and humor. He squeezed a bit of the yellowish cream onto his fingertip and wiped it briskly across his forehead, trying to keep the layer as thin as possible. Fidel was watching him, staring at him. Instead of immediately taking his turn he swiveled on one boot, marched toward the window and stood there looking out at the morning. Carlos was tempted to wipe off the cream when Fidel’s back was turned, but he did not.
“What you said about Olochon yesterday, I won’t forget it.”
“What did I say?”
“That he is too, how did you put it? . . . overly enthusiastic. I disagree.”
“He’s loyal; he’s a friend. In his position I would do the same.”
“Ah. But you think him sometimes too enthusiastic. How can someone be too enthusiastic in protecting the Revolution?”
“Now I will wipe off the cream and then reapply it, just as I will do for you.”
“Wait a few more seconds. You said two minutes. I have a clock in my head, you know. Eleven seconds more. . . . And you didn’t answer me.”
A clock in his head. Fidel had never been on time for an appointment in his life. If he had a clock in his head, the clock had ninety-second minutes. “Here’s what I meant,” Carlos said. And again, to his astonishment, the words came out of his mouth with a clarity and force, a confidence that he did not know he possessed. “If you respond to too many false threats, it eventually hurts you in responding to real ones.”
“But how do you know the false from the real?”
“A question of judgment.”
“Ah. Well, you risked your own life to save Olochon’s. You must have at least a fairly high opinion of him.”
“Very high, Comandante. Now I shall wipe this off. It does smell a bit, makes me want to have another smoke.” Smiling, Carlos took out his handkerchief and rubbed the cream away.
“Any effect?”
“Nothing.”
“Good. Now rub it on again and we’ll leave it for a while.”
Fidel watched him put the second small dollop onto his finger, watched Carlos smear it across his forehead. Now, already, he thought he felt a small warmth there, and a tiny change in his perceptive abilities. The powerful poison was already working its way into his bloodstream. All his university training came back to him, the layers of epidermal cells, the permeable lining of the capillaries, the chemistry of blood absorption. Fidel watched and watched, turned away, paced to the window and back. “Anything?”
Carlos smiled. “A warmth. Perhaps the smallest bit of sleepiness. If I can’t wipe it off I’ll have to go back to the office and nap.”
“No wiping it off,” Fidel said, and there was a slight hardening in his voice. “If you have to sleep, sleep. You are the ministro. Who is going to report you for sleeping during the working day? And to whom?”
Carlos laughed. Again, it came out in the most natural way. So natural, in fact, that he started to finally comprehend what General Rincon had seen in him, something he had not seen in himself. He was capable of doing this. More than capable. If it meant that he had to die, he would die, but he would not give himself or anyone else away; he would not waver now. Several minutes passed. Fidel began musing aloud about the sugar harvest, then about the copper mines. It seemed he would go on forever. But then, abruptly, he stopped and waved Carlos over. “Apply it,” he said bravely.
Carlos smeared on a thick coat of the ointment, rubbing it into the dark moles and finding imaginary scars to treat. He checked his watch. At exactly two minutes he vigorously rubbed the cream away.
“Are you rubbing it off or rubbing it in?” Fidel asked. He raised a hand to his forehead and peered at Carlos. “Do you feel anything?”
“Nothing.” The warmth remained, but the sleepiness seemed to have been an illusion. The drug was supposed to take between twenty and forty minutes to work. He wondered how long it would be before irreversible damage was done. The digestive system would go first, Jose had told him. Then the heart. After that, the final sleep.
Fidel waited. His eyes shifted back and forth along the carpet. At the point where Carlos thought he was going to tell him to leave, that he’d do the rest of the application himself, he motioned to his forehead. Carlos approached. Squeezed out as large a dose as he thought he could get away with, and applied it liberally to
the Great Leader’s skin.
“Bien,” Fidel said.
“Feel anything?”
“The warmth. Nothing. I’ll have a coffee. Tell them outside to bring me a coffee. You can go back and nap, but I need to work.”
Carlos closed his medical bag. Just as he was preparing to take his leave, Fidel spoke up: “The campaign goes well?”
“It’s just begun. It’s a matter of propaganda, of raising awareness. The results will take time to materialize.”
Fidel watched him without speaking. There was something different in his eyes, and Carlos wondered if somehow he knew, if he sensed the truth in the same way an animal senses it is about to be slaughtered. For a few awful, endless seconds nothing was said, and Carlos felt a flood of sorrow seeping through his thoughts, a river of guilt. At one time, this man, this man whom he was now in the process of murdering, had held the hopes of millions of people in his hands. In a world where the rich did not look twice at the poor, this man had been a kind of messiah, and Carlos had been one of the worshippers. Even with all his flaws, Fidel had at least spoken for the poor. Who would speak for them now? The lunatic Chavez?
Time seemed to stall, as if one immense note was about to be struck in human history. At last, the great Fidel Castro, slayer of dragons, saint to the poor, betrayer of his own cause, said “Gracias”—something he never did after a medical procedure—and nodded his dismissal. Carlos made a quick salute, turned, and was out the door. He did not tell the guards about Fidel’s coffee. The instant he was past the first set of them and trotting down the curling stairway, he took out his handkerchief and, careful to use a dry patch, careful to make certain that no one could see, wiped away the cream that had not yet been absorbed.
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