“Cuban air force,” Lewis said.
“Yeah, nice escort.”
“Anything you need me to ask?”
“We need the exact location of where they found the body—right down to GPS coordinates if possible, not that I’m expecting any. And the exact time of discovery, plus any medical observations they might have recorded about the body.”
Lewis nodded. They’d passed a line of red-and-gold tank barriers painted with “USMC” and reached the American guardhouse, where a Marine in full gear opened a gate just wide enough to let them pass single file. Lewis hesitated at the head of their contingent, awaiting the two Cuban soldiers now crossing the paved strip in the middle of a twenty-yard no-man’s-land. There was no sound but their footsteps.
“Our Marines would usually wait for us here,” Lewis whispered. “But General Cabral’s e-mail said to bring them along to transport the body.”
“Is that how you heard about this? By e-mail?”
“Right before lunch. Great for digestion.”
“He say anything else?”
Lewis shook his head. “He’s usually pretty chatty. But we’ll see.”
The Cubans were already waiting inside the shade of the white plaster customs office. You could hear muffled conversation in Spanish through the open window, which stopped the moment they entered through a glass door.
The room was almost unbearably stuffy. An orderly was still opening windows while another plugged in an oscillating fan that looked like something out of a Sears catalog from the 1930s. The man at the head of a small table, presumably General Cabral, kept his seat, smoking a cigar. Judging from Captain Lewis’s hesitancy, Falk guessed that the general was usually quicker to his feet. Finally the man stood, big and clean-shaven, hazel eyes brimming with questions. His uniform was olive drab, and nothing fancy except for the patch on each shoulder with a single star. Keep it simple, Falk supposed, just like the Big Boss in Havana. He took the cigar from his mouth but didn’t offer his hand.
“Asiéntese, por favor.”
The captain and his interpreter took seats in old wooden chairs, which creaked as if they’d been there since the Spanish-American War. There wasn’t a seat for Falk, so he stood next to the Marines behind Lewis, scanning the somber faces on the other side. They, too, had brought a man in civilian clothes. Maybe a doctor, but more likely from the political side, either the Intelligence Directorate or some other part of the Interior Ministry.
There was no meal, but an orderly entered with a tray of demitasse cups filled to the brim with Cuban coffee. As with the chairs, there was only enough for the two principals and their interpreters.
General Cabral then opened the meeting, apparently having decided that an introduction of lesser players was unnecessary.
“Lo siento …” he began, Falk paying attention to the interpreter, who repeated the general’s remarks in the typically stilted language of simultaneous translation.
“I am sorry for these circumstances that bring us together, Captain Lewis. In a moment we will transfer to your custody the remains of your soldier. But I must comment first that this troubles me.”
“I’m troubled, too,” Lewis answered. When Cabral heard the translation he shook his head.
“No, no. My troubles are of a different nature. You have a casualty, and for that you have my sympathy. But for me the problem is much larger. What am I to tell my commanders when they ask how it was possible for an American soldier—even a dead one—to come ashore and not be discovered for hours?”
Lewis opened his mouth, but Cabral raised a hand and continued, using the cigar like a prompter to punctuate each point.
“How are we to know for sure he was dead when he first reached our waters? Why, if he was only swimming, was he in uniform? Would that not suggest to you or to me, being military men, that he was either coming from a boat or was on some sort of mission?”
Good questions. All of them. Falk noticed the Cuban civilian taking notes.
“I can assure you, speaking for all parties on our side,” Captain Lewis began, “that Sergeant Ludwig was not on any mission, official or otherwise. As for what he was doing out there in the ocean at all, much less on your side, it is as much a puzzle to us as it is to you. But I can say with complete confidence that he was acting as an individual, and not as a soldier of the United States. In fact, he was expressly acting against his orders as a United States soldier. As I told you by e-mail earlier today, his unit had already reported him missing, and some of his belongings had been found on one of our beaches, two miles from the fenceline.”
Falk was mildly surprised by the detail of the captain’s candor, but he supposed that it was warranted.
“It is reassuring to know of the ‘missing man’ report,” Cabral replied through the interpreter, “although perhaps that, too, is a convenient circumstance for your side. But I will take it into advisement with my commanders. We have launched our own investigation into this matter, of course.”
“And we as well. Meaning that any information you can offer as to the time and place he came ashore, his initial condition, and so on, will only help us both find the answers to your questions as quickly as possible.”
“All in good time. We must first satisfy ourselves as to the nature of the sergeant’s business.”
Meaning that the wounds from this weren’t likely to heal quickly. As if to confirm this, Cabral stood, signaling abruptly that the meeting was over. Lewis still held the rolled-up magazine in his right hand. Cabral nodded to a soldier by the door, who disappeared outside.
“They will bring the body from the truck. Your Marines will take it from here.”
They’d zipped Sergeant Ludwig into a Soviet-issue body bag and placed him on a stretcher. The men in the room watched through a side window as the awkward transfer took place. Everyone stood in rigid silence, as if not daring to exit before the formalities of the transfer were completed. Lewis moved toward the door without a further word. No one shook hands or said good-bye.
“That was pleasant,” the captain muttered as they walked toward the American side, trailing the meager cortege of two Marines and the laden stretcher. Falk said nothing in reply. Glancing skyward, he saw that the vultures had drifted south, toward the better pickings of the base landfill.
Back inside the observation post, General Trabert took Lewis aside for a few moments of grim-faced conversation that Falk couldn’t hear. Lewis then made his exit as Trabert crossed the room.
“Sounds like they’re taking it badly,” the general said. “I suppose you’ll need to tie up some loose ends as well.”
“To put it mildly. We’ll need an autopsy, for starters.”
“Obviously. Although I gather the Cubans have concluded it’s a drowning, or they’d have said otherwise.”
“In the meantime I’ll need his records, access to his colleagues, both here and in the States, and also to his family. Any recent letters from home, all that kind of thing. Plus all the rota listings from his unit, to show when he was last on duty, and who he was with. We’ll need a full accounting of his movements for his last twenty-four hours.”
Trabert seemed taken aback.
“Is all that really necessary? Unless you know something that I don’t.”
Was this the same man who, less than twelve hours ago, had been talking about the need for outside help?
“Well, even if he drowned, the Cubans are right about one thing. It’s damned strange where he wound up.”
“I’m not so sure of that. Captain Lewis says those offshore currents are trickier than you think. He figures Ludwig hit a funny tide or something.”
So would this be the party line? A freak current? Maybe that was the real job of this incoming “special team.” A PR chore of glossing things over. Either way, Falk would be checking the Navy’s charts, and that’s what he told Trabert.
The general gave him a long look.
“Fine. The Navy’s port control office will have those. B
ut you look like something else is bugging you. Speak your mind, Falk.”
Speak your mind. Always a dubious proposition when it came from a man with two stars on his sleeve. He decided to be frank anyway.
“I guess I’m a little puzzled, sir. You’re the one who called in this delegation from Washington, and as far as I can tell you’d arranged it before I even got to the beach.”
At first the general looked stern, stroking his chin. Then he lowered his head and broke into a sheepish grin.
“My apologies, Falk.” He lowered his voice. “Between you and me, I was using you.”
“Sir?”
“This delegation has been in the works for weeks. I did happen to pass along word of the sergeant’s disappearance as I heard about it, of course—it’s that kind of crowd, one that wouldn’t want any surprises. But any involvement in this affair would be secondary to their real work.”
“Which is?”
“Classified. There’s bound to be talk once they’re here. The usual gossip. And if people want to believe that their main order of business is the sergeant’s disappearance, fine by me. And fine by them.”
“So will they have any interest at all in this case?”
“Only to the extent that it affects their work. Five minutes ago I would have told you that was a zero possibility. But with all that you’re asking for, it may raise their eyebrows.”
“It’s really the minimum, sir.”
“Fine. Just don’t complain to me when they come crawling up your backside. Yours and everybody else’s.”
“Just what are they coming for, sir? Between you and me.”
Trabert gave him a long look.
“Security matters. Some of it won’t be pleasant.” So maybe the rumors were true, after all, just as Tyndall had said. “But I’ll tell you what, Falk. I’ll keep them off your back as long as you do me a favor.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“Keep me posted. When they move, I want to know it. You be my eyes and ears on these people.”
“I’m not sure how much good I can do you. I’m likely to be a little, well, preoccupied.”
“You may change your mind once you’ve met them. There’s a friend of yours on board. Or so he claims. Ted Bokamper.”
For all the shock of hearing the general speak Ted Bokamper’s name, Falk supposed he shouldn’t be surprised, knowing what he did about the man. But it certainly made the nature of the team’s work seem even more intriguing.
“Yes, sir. I know him, all right. I’ll do what I can.”
“Good. Then you’ll join me in the welcoming party. Touchdown at Leeward Point at eighteen hundred hours. Be at the ferry dock at seventeen thirty.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, sir.”
For a change, he really meant it.
CHAPTER SIX
Miami Beach
WHENEVER Gonzalo Rubiero was homesick for Cuba—an almost everyday occurrence lately—he made his way by bus or bicycle to a small park at Collins and Twenty-first. It had clipped grass, stately palms, and a lush grove of sea grapes, but the real attraction was the view. It was one of the few places on South Beach where the ocean wasn’t walled off by new high-rises or Art Deco revivals.
Gonzalo preferred mornings, seating himself on a shaded boardwalk bench that stank of cat urine and gazing out at the sea. Container ships lined up offshore like targets in a shooting arcade, red-and-white cutouts inching south on the blue horizon. If he stared long enough he could place himself on board—hands gripping the wet rail, sea breeze billowing his guayabera while dolphins leaped in the swells, guiding him homeward.
Suitably pacified, he then walked down the beach, taking an hour to reach the fishing pier and stone jetty at the lower end. The sight of fishermen produced further nostalgia—memories of his father in a wide-brim straw hat, knee-deep in the shallows, flinging a net at schools of minnows. When his aim was true, the clear water fizzed like seltzer.
Spies weren’t supposed to get all mopey like this, especially old hands on hostile ground. But these were unsettling times, and the beachfront pilgrimage had become a means of collecting his thoughts amid growing disorder. That seemed especially important just now, at the close of a week that had brought two challenging new assignments in rapid succession.
The first began as a mere janitorial chore. There had been a lot of those lately—cleanup jobs and damage assessments after networks had been rolled up by raids and arrests. Cuban agents had been deported and carted off by the dozens during the past few years, and Gonzalo had always been left behind to suffer the consequences—radios gone silent, mailboxes looted, diskettes plundered. He moved stealthily in the wake of each disaster like an insurance adjuster in the wake of a hurricane, plotting reconstruction even as he scanned for leaking rooftops and cracked foundations. Too often he found both.
His employer’s current problems dated back to a shake-up in 1989, but the worst of the recent miseries had begun two years ago, when an operative who had infiltrated the highest corridors of the Defense Intelligence Agency had been identified, arrested, then sent to jail. The latest fallout from that disaster had come only two months ago, when fourteen agents working under diplomatic cover in New York and Washington had been expelled. The casualties included Gonzalo’s ostensible handler, a fluttery man in Manhattan who had played the stock market as impulsively as he had played the spy game, vainly trying to keep his four daughters in the right schools and the best prom gowns while still paying his rent on the Upper West Side. It was always nice irony when material attachments did in the enemies of capitalism.
Fortunately the man had never known Gonzalo’s real name or address, and there was no shortage of operatives still in place. Gonzalo’s boss, a wheezing old fixture of the Dirección de Inteligencia—the Intelligence Directorate, or DI—liked to joke that the South Florida payroll exceeded that of the home office.
But from Union City, New Jersey, down to Little Havana it was a good time for lying low. Which was fine with Gonzalo, seeing as how lying low had always been part of his duties. It had been his lot in life to spy on his own people almost as much as he spied on the Americans, watching carefully for weak links, chiselers, blabbermouths, and potential defectors.
Such a role, as might be expected, kept him isolated. In the upper floors of DI headquarters his existence was known to only a select few, who thought of him as one of a handful of Las Ranas del Árbol, the Tree Frogs, so named for a Cuban species that had invaded Florida’s ecosystem eighty years earlier, establishing itself as a dominant but well-camouflaged predator in the state’s dampest and darkest corners.
That is why even his handler, Fernandez—the stock player formerly of the Upper West Side—had known only Gonzalo’s operational name of Paco. Fernandez was a mere conduit, ensuring that Gonzalo’s occasional needs were attended to. His only attempt at independent supervision came just before his expulsion, when he rashly ordered Gonzalo to empty the mail drops of blown agents in Hialeah, Coral Gables, and Kendall.
Knowing it to be a fool’s errand, Gonzalo ignored the edict, although out of curiosity he reconnoitered all three locations, discovering, as expected, that each had been staked out by special agents of the FBI. Two of them he recognized from a gallery of snapshots that he’d wrapped in plastic and taped to a cabinet door beneath his kitchen sink. The first of them had been seated by a window in a diner across the street. The second was dressed in painter’s clothes at the next location, scraping woodwork at an abandoned storefront. Gonzalo recognized no one at the third drop, but eventually deduced that his rival was the fellow who kept coming and going from a Verizon van. He snapped the man’s photo for his gallery, then celebrated the acquisition with a midday feast of roast pork and a papaya milk shake at the Versailles, a Little Havana eatery garishly decked out in wall-to-wall mirrors, the sort of excessive bad taste that always made Gonzalo smile at his fellow expats—in affection, not ridicule. Such misguided striving amid the whining babble o
f their enraged politics. They never stopped voicing their zeal for deposing El Comandante, yet if they ever succeeded he doubted even one in ten would actually return to Cuba for more than a visit—unless someone was stupid enough to put them in charge, a possibility he attributed only to ideologues at the U.S. Department of State.
Gonzalo was generous with the fruits of his triumphs. By late afternoon that day he had e-mailed a JPEG of the agent’s photo to a secure intermediary in Union City, who erased Gonzalo’s cyber-fingerprints before forwarding the image to Havana from an Internet café in Passaic. By week’s end every field operative in the United States had a copy—except those among the recently disgraced, such as the luckless Fernandez, who was already packing his bags and breaking the news to his tearful daughters.
Word of Gonzalo’s newest assignments had come via regular channels. Messages from the home office arrived as needed during an 8 a.m. broadcast by high-frequency shortwave radio. Setting up the radio and tape recorder for the daily transmission was a part of his morning ritual, like making coffee. If he happened to be out, or had company, there was always a repeat performance in the evening.
The signal never lasted more than a few seconds. It produced a series of numbers that Gonzalo taped while a television played loudly in the next room, in case the neighbors were listening.
He then typed in the numbers on a Toshiba laptop, erased the tape, and retrieved a decryption diskette from its hiding place behind the bathroom mirror. A professional search would have discovered it in minutes, but Gonzalo was more worried about the hazards of random chance—a burglar, an overly curious friend, or anyone else who might accidentally discover the diskette and wonder, “What have we here?”
With a few keystrokes, Gonzalo activated the program. Seven years ago it had been state of the art, and so had the Toshiba. Now both were dinosaurs. Any Dade County teenager willing to put aside his Game Boy for a few hours could probably pick apart the encryption. But budgets were in the toilet—had been for years—and shipments of the new equipment kept going to people who were getting caught.
The Prisoner of Guantanamo Page 7