by Cuba (lit)
gun crews on five-minute alert, ammo on the
trays, no liberty. After three days she can pull
the hook and join us, and another cruiser can come
anchor here."
- "Yes, sir."
"There's a marine battalion landing team
aboard
Kearsarge,
which is supposed to rendezvous with us tomorrow. I want
Kearsarge
to stay with
United States.
We'll put both ships in a race-track
pattern about fifty miles south of here, outside
Cuban territorial waters, and get on with our
exercises. But we'll keep a weather eye peeled
on this base."
"What about the base commander, sir? He may know more
about this than we do."
"Get on the ship-to-shore net and invite him to have
dinner with me tonight. Send a helo in to pick him
up."
STEPHEN COONTS
"Sir, your instructions specifically directed that
you maintain a business-as-usual security
posture."
"I rememberea"...Jake said dryly.
"Of course, "business as usual" is an
ambiguous phraseea"...Toad mused. "If anything
goes wrong you can be blamed for not doing enough or doing
too much, whichever way the wind blows."
Jake Grafton snorted. "If a bunch of
wild-eyed terrorists lay hands on those warheads,
Tarkington, you and I will be fried, screwed, and
tattooed regardless of what we did or didn't
do. We'll have to will our bodies to science."
"What about the CO ef the cruiser, Admiral?
What do we tell him?"
"Draft a top-secret message directing him
to keep his people ready to shoot."
"Aye, aye, sir."
"Nuestra Senora de Colon
is sailing this evening for Norfolk. Have a destroyer
accompany her until she is well out of Cuban
waters."
"Yo."...Toad was making notes on a small memo
pad he kept in his hip pocket.
"And have the weather people give me a cloud-cover
prediction for the next five days, or as far out as
they can. I want to try to figure out what, if
anything, the satellites might be seeing."
"You mean, are they keeping an eye on the Cuban
military?"
"Or terrorists. Whoever."
"I'll take care of it, sir."
"I'm going to run a couple laps around the
deckea"...Jake Grafton added.
"May I suggest putting a company of marines
ashore to do a security survey of the base
perimeter? Strictly routine."
"That sounds feasibleea"...Jake Grafton said. "Tonight
let's ask the base commander what he thinks."
backslash
CUBA 17
"Terrorists or the Cuban Armywanna bet ten
bucks? Take your pick."
"I only bet on sure things, sir, like
prizefights and Super Bowls, occasionally a
cockroach race."
"You're wise beyond your years, Toadea"...the admiral
tossed over his shoulder as he headed for the hatch.
"That's what I tell Ritaea"...Toad shot back.
Rita Moravia was his wife.
Jake Grafton didn't hear the rest of
Toad's comment. "And wisdom is a heavy burden,
let me tell you. Real heavy. Sorta like
biological warheads."...He put the binoculars
to his eyes and carefully studied the naval base.
The night was hot and sultry, with lightning playing
on the horizon. From his seat on"...the top row of the
stadium bleachers Hector Juan de
Dios Sedano kept an eye on the lightning, but
the storms seemed to be moving north.
Everyone else in the stadium was watching the game.
Hector's younger brother, Juan Manuel
"Ocho"...Sedano, was the local team's star pitcher.
The eighth child of his parents, the Cuban fans had
long ago dubbed him El Ocho. The family
reduced the name to "Ocho."
Tonight his fastball seemed on fire and his curve
exceptional. The crowd cheered with every pitch. Twice
the umpire called for the ball to examine it. Each
time he handed it back to the catcher, who tossed it
back to the mound as the fans hooted delightedly.
At the middle of the seventh inning Ocho had faced just
twenty-two batters. Only one man had gotten
to first base, and that on a bloop single just beyond the
fingertips of the second baseman. The local team
had scored four runs.
Hector Sedano leaned against the board fence behind him
and applauded his brother as he walked from the mound.
Ocho looked happy, relaxedthe confident, honest
gaze of a star athlete who knows what he can do.
As Hector clapped, he spotted a woman coming
through the crowd toward him. She smiled as she met his
eyes, then took a seat beside him.
Here on the back bench Hector was about ten feet
fro'm the nearest fans. The board fence behind him was
the wall of the stadium, fifteen feet aboveeathe
ground.
"Did your friends come with you"..."...he asked, scanning the
crowd.
"Oh, yes, the usual twoea"...she said, but didn't
bother to point to them.
Sedano found one of the men settling into a seat five
rows down and over ab* thirty feet. A few
seconds later he saw the other standing near the
entrance where the woman had entered the stadium. These
two were her bodyguards.
Her name was Mercedes. She was the widow of one of
Hector's brothers and the current mistress of
Fidel Castro.
"How is
MimaThat'
Tomorrow was Hector's mother's birthday, and the clan was
gathering.
"Fine. Looking forward to seeing everyone."
"I used the birthday as an excuse. They don't
want me to leave the residence these days."
"How bad is he?"
"Estd tojodio.
He's done in. One doctor said two weeks,
one three. The cancer is spreading rapidly."
"What do you think?"
"I think he will live a while longer, but every night
is more difficult. I sit with him. When he is
sleeping he stops breathing for as much as half a
minute before he resumes. I watch the clock,
counting the seconds, wondering if he will breathe again."
The.home team's center fielder stepped up to the
plate. Ocho was the second batter. Standing in the
warm-up circle with a bat in his hands, he scanned
the faces in the crowd. Finally he made eye
contact with Hector, nodded his head just enough to be seen,
then concentrated on his warm-up swings.
"Who knows about this"..."...Hector asked Merc"...des.
"Only a few people. Alejo is holding the lid
on. The doctors are with him around the
clock."...Alejo Vargas was the minister of the
ulterior. His ministry's Department of
STEPHEN COONTS
State Securitythe secret policeinvestigated
and suppressed opposition and dissent.
"We have waited a long timeea"...Hector mused.
>
"Ese cabron,
we should have killed Vargas
years"...agoea"...Mercedes said, and smiled at a woman
who turned around to look at her. *
"We cannot win with his blood on our hands."
"Alejo suspects you, I think."
"I am just a Jesuit priest, a teacher."
Mercedes snorted.
"He suspects everyoneea"...Hector added.
"Don't be a fool."
El Ocho stepped into the batter's box to the roar of the
crowd. He waggled the bat, cocked it, waited
expectantly. His stance was perfect, his weight
balanced, he was tense and readywhen he batted
Hector could see Ocho's magnificent talent.
He looked so ... perfect.
Ocho let the first ball go by ... outside.
The second pitch was low.
The opposing pitcher walked around the mound, examined
the ball, toed the rubber.
The fact was Ocho was a better batter than he was
a pitcher. Oh, he was a great pitcher, but when he
had a bat in his hands al caret his gifts were on
display; the reflexes, the eyesight, the
physique, the ability to wait for his pitch....
The third pitch was a strike, belt-high, and Ocho
got around on it and connected solidly. The
ball rose into the warm, humid air and flew as if
it had wings until it cleared the center field fence
by a good margin.
"He caught it perfectlyea"...Mercedes said,
admiration in her voice.
Ocho trotted the bases while everyone in the
bleachers applauded. The opposing pitcher stood on
the mound shaking his head in disgust.
Ocho's manager was the first to greet him as he
trotted toward the dugout. He pounded his star on the
back, pumped his hand, beamed proudly, almost like a
father.
"S
CUBA 21
"What else
is
happening"..."...Hector asked.
"The government has signed the casino agreement.
Miramar, Havana, Varadero and Santiago.
The consortium will provide fifty percent of the cost
of an airport in Santiago."
"They have been negotiating for whatthree years?"
"Almost that."
"Any sense of urgency on the part of the Cubans?"
"I sense none. The Americans were happy
with the deal, so they signed."
"Who are these Americans?"
"I thought they were Nevada casino people, but there were people in
the background pulling strings, criminals, I think.
They wanted assurances on prostitution and
narcotics."
The Cuban government had been negotiating
agreements for foreign investment and development for
years, mainly with Canadian and European
companies. Tourism was now the largest industry in
Cuba, bringing 1.5 million tourists a year to the
island and keeping the economy afloat with hard
currency. Now the Cuban government was openly
negotiating with American companiesea.with all deals
contingent upon the ending of the American economic
embargo. Fidel Castro believed that he could put
political pressure upon the American government
to end the embargo by dangling development rights in
front of American capitalists. Hector
Sedano thought Fidel understood the Americans.
"The tobacco negotiator, Chancehow is he
progressing?"
"He is talking to your brother Maximo. Then he
is supposed to see Vargas. Tobacco will
replace sugarcane as Cuba's big
crop, he says. The cigarettes will be
manufactured here and marketed worldwide under
American brands. The Americans will finance
everything; Cuba will get a fifty-percent share of the
business, across the board."
"Is this Chance serious?"
"Apparently. The tobacco companies think their days
are numbered in the United States. They want
to move off-
shore, escape the regulation that will eventually put
them out of business."
Hector sat silently, taking it all in as the
uniformed players on the field played a game with
rules. What a contrast with politics!
Mercedes was a treasure, a person with access to the
highest levels of the Cuban government. She brought
Hector Sedano information that even Castro
probably didn't have. The big question, of course, was
how she learned it. Hector told himself repeatedly
that he didn't want to know, but of course he did.
He glanced at the woman sitting beside him. She was
wearing a simple dress that did nothing to call
attention to her figure, nor did it do anything
to hide it.
She was a beautiful woman who needed no
makeup and never wore any. Every man she met was
attracted to her, an unremarkable fact, like the
summer heat, which she didn't seem to notice.
Extraordinarily smart, with a nearphotographic
memory, she had almost no opportunities to use
her talent in Cuban society.
Except as a spy.
"Will Maximo be at
Mima's
party tomorrow?"
"He said he would."
"Should I be shocked if he acts possessive?"
Mercedes glanced at him, raised an eyebrow.
"He would not be so foolish."
Well, just who was she sleeping with? Hector glanced
at her repeatedly, wondering. She appeared to be
concentrating on the ball game.
The only thing he knew for sure was that she wasn't
sleeping with him, and God knows he had thought about
that
far more than any priest ever should. Of course,
priests were human and had to fight their urges, but
still...
Castro ... Of course she slept with himshe was his
mistressthat was how she got access. But
did she love liim?
Or was she a cool, calculating tramp ready
to change horses now that Castro was dying?
No. He shook his head, refusing to believe that of
her.
Where did Maximo fit in? As he sat there
contemplating that angle, he wondered how Maximo
saw her?
Mercedes left after watching Ocho pitch an inning.
He faced three batters and struck them all out.
When the game was over, Hector Sedano stayed in
his seat and watched the crowd file out. He was still
sitting there when someone shouted at him, "Hey, I
turn out the lights now."
The darkness that followed certainly wasn't total.
Small lights were illuminated over the exits, the
lights of Havana lit up the sky, and lightning
continued to flash on the horizon.
Sedano lit another cigar and smoked it slowly.
After a few minutes he saw the shape of a man
making his way along the aisle toward him. The man
sagged down on the bench several feet away.
"Good game tonight."...The man was the stadium keeper,
Alfredo Garcia.
"Yes."
"Your brother, El Ocho, was magnificent. Such
talent, such presence."
&
nbsp; "We are very proud of him."
"Why do you call him El Ocho?"
"He was the eighth child. He has the usual half
dozen names, but his brothers and I just call him
Ocho."
"I saw that she was here, with her security guards
circling. ... What did she say?"
"What makes you think she tells me anything?"
"Come, my friend. Someone whispers in your ear."
"And someone is whispering to Alejo Vargas."
"You suspect me?"
"I think you are just stupid enough to take money from the
Americans and money from Alejo Vargas and think
neither of them will find out about the other."
STEPHEN COONTS
"My God, man! Think of what you are
sayingff"...Alfredo moved closer. Sedano could see
his face, which was almost as white as his shirt.
"I am thinking."
"You have my life in your hands. I had to (rust you
with my life when I first approached you. Nothing has
changed."
Sedano puffed on the cigar in silence,
studying Garcia's features. Born in America
of Cuban parents, Garcia had been a priest.
He couldn't leave the women alone, however, and
ultimately got mixed up with some topless dancers
running an "escort"...service in East St.
Louis. After a few months the feds busted him for
violation of the Mann Act, moving women across state
lines for immoral purposes, i.e.,
prostitution. After the church canned him, he jumped
bail and fled to Cuba. Garcia had been in Cuba
several years when he was recruited by the CIA, which
asked him to approach Sedano.
Hector Sedano had no doubt that Garcia had the
ear of the American governmentin the past four years
he had supplied Sedano with almost a million
dollars in cash and enough weapons to supply a small
army. The money and weapons always arrived when and where
Garcia said they would. Still, the question remained, who
else did the man talk to?
Who did his control talk to?
Hector had stockpiled the weapons, hidden them
praying they would never be needed. He used the money for
travel expenses and bribes. Without money
to bribe the little fish he would have landed in prison
years ago.
Hector Sedano shook his head to clear his thoughts.
He was living on the naked edge, had been there for
years. And life wasn't getting any easier.
"Castro is dyingea"...he said. "It is a matter of
weeks, or so the doctors say."
Alfredo Garcia took a deep breath and exhaled
audibly.
"I tell you now man-to-man, Alfredo. The
records of Alejo Vargas will soon be placed in