by Cuba (lit)
the wheelhouse door and carefully stepped inside.
The captain worked the wheel with an eye on the
compass. The faint glow from the binnacle and the engine
RPM indicator were the only lightsthey cast a
faint glow on the captain's face and that of Diego
Coca, who was wedged
in beside him, the gun still in his hand. Both men were facing
forward, looking through the window at the sheets of spray
being flung up when the bow smacked into a swell with
an audible thud. The shock of those collisions could be
felt through the deck and walls of the wheelhouse.
"You are suicidalea"...the captain shouted at
Diego. "The sea will get worse when we reach the
Gulf Stream. We are only a mile or two from
it!"
Diego backed up, braced himself against the aft
wall of the tiny compartment, pointed the pistol in the
center of the captain's back. He held up his hand
to hold off Ocho.
"You took the moneyea"...Diego said accusingly to the
captain.
"Don't be a fool, man."
"America!
Or I shoot you, as God is my witness."
"You want to dro'wn out here, in this watery hell?"
"You took the moneyff"...Diego shouted.
Ocho stepped forward and Diego pointed the pistol
at him. "Backea"...he said. "Get back. I
don't want to shoot you, but I will."
Ocho Sedano leaned disforward. "I think they are
right, what they say. You
are
crazy. You will kill every man and woman on this
boat. Even the babies."
"The boat is overloadedea"...the captain said without
looking at Ocho. "We have to get some weight off.
Throw the fishing gear over, the baggage, everything."
Ocho pulled the door open and stepped out onto the
pitching deck. He took Dora from the fisherman,
pushed her into the wheelhouse, and pulled the door
until it latched.
"We must get rid of some weight. Everything goes
overboard but the people."
The fisherman nodded, took the bags near
his feet and threw them into the white foam being thrown out
by the bow. Then he grabbed Ocho's bag and tossed it
disbbf the young man could stop him.
Madre mia!
Walking on that bucking deck was difficult. Ocho
made
his way forward, picking up every sack and box in reach
and throwing it into the sea. Some people protested, grabbed
their belongings and tried to prevent their loss, but he was
too strong. He tore the bags from the women's
grasp and heaved heavy boxes as if they were empty.
Up the deck he went toward the bow, drenched every time
the bow went in, throwing everything he could get his hands
on into the foam created by the bow's passage.
Other people were throwing things too. Soon the deck
contained only the people, who huddled in small groups,
their backs to the spray. The nets- hanging on the
mast were lowered to the deck, men put into the sea and cut
loose.
Near the bow the motion was vicious. The salt sea
spray slamming back almost took him off his feet.
He caught himself on a line that stabilized the mast,
then worked his way aft holding on to the rail.
He thought the boat was riding easier, but
maybe it was only his imagination.
Then they got into the Gulf Stream. The swells
grew progressively larger, the motion of the boat
even more vicious.
How much of this could the boat take?
People cried out, praying aloud, lifted their hands
to heaven. He could hear the women wailing over the
rumbling of the engine, the pounding of the sea.
He tried the door to the wheelhouse.
Locked!
He rattled the knob, twisted it fiercely,
pulled with all his strength.
"Open up, Diego."
He pounded futilely on the door.
Six people were huddled in the lee of the tiny wheelhouse,
blocking the door. One of them was Dora. He
leaned over her, pounded futilely on the door with his
fist.
He looked down at Dora, who had her head
down.
Frustrated, drained, sick of himself and Diego and
Dora,
he found a spot against the aft wall of the wheelhouse
and buried his head in his arms to keep the spray from his
face.
He was drifting, thinking of his mother, reviewing scenes
from his childhood when Mercedes shook him awake.
Still under the influence of the painkilling drugs, Fidel
Castro opened his eyes to slits and blinked
mightily against the dim light.
"Maximo is here, Fidel, as you asked."
He tried to chase away the past, to come back to the
present. His mouth was dry, his tongue like cotton.
"Time?"
"Almost midnight."
He nodded, looked around the room at the walls, the
ceiling, the dark shapes of people and furniture. He
couldn't see faces.
"A light."
She reached for the switch.
When his eyes adjusted, he saw Maximo standing in
the shadows. He motioned with a finger. Yes, it was
Maximo: now he could see his features.
"Mi amigo."
"Senor Presidente,"
Maximo said.
"Closer, in the light."
Maximo Sedano knelt near the bed.
"I don't have much time left to meea"...Castro
explained. His mouth was so numb that he was
having trouble enunciating his words.
"I want the money brought back."
"To Cuba?"
"Yes. All of it."
"You will have to sign and put your thumbprints on the
transfer cards."
"The money was never mine, you understand."
"I had faith in you,
Senor Presidente.
We all had faith."
"Faith..."
"I will go to my office now, then return."
"Mercedes will admit you."
Ocho Sedano was soaked to the skin, covered with
vomit from the woman beside him, when he heard the cry.
Holding onto the wheelhouse wall with one hand and the
net boom mast with the other, he levered himself erect,
braced himself against the motion of the boat.
Waves were washing over the bow, which seemed to be lower
in the water. The bow wasn't rising to the sea the way
it did when he sat down an hour ago, or maybe
the waves were just higher.
Someone was against the rail, pointing aft.
"Man overboard!"
"Madre mia,
have mercy!"
Another swell came aboard and two people braced
against the lee rail were swept into, the sea as the
boat rolled.
Ocho turned to the wheelhouse, pulled people from against the
door and savagely twisted the latch handle. He
pounded on the door with his left fist.
"Let me in, Diego! So help me, I will
kill you if you don't turn the boat around."
The bow began turning to put the wind and swells more
astern.
> A muffled report came from inside the wheelhouse.
Ocho braced himself, then rammed his left fist against
the upper panel of the door. The wood splintered, his
fist went through almost to hisstelbow. He reached down,
un less-than - latched the door, jerked it open.
The captair caret lay on the floor. Diego
Coca stood braced against the back wall, his hands
discovering his face. The pistol was nowhere in sight.
The wheel snapped back and forth as the seas slammed
at the rudder.
Ocho bent down to check the captain.
He had a wet place in the middle of his back,
right between his shoulder blades. No pulse.
At least the boat seemed more stable with the, swells behind
it.
STEPHEN
COONTS
For how long? How long would the engine keep running?
The fisherman opened the door, saw Ocho at the
wheel, the dark shape lying on die floor.
"Is he dead"..."...the man shouted.
"Yes."
"We must put out a sea anchor in case the engine
stops. If the boat turns broadside to the sea,
it will be swamped."
"Can you do it?"
"I will get men to helpea"...the fisherman said, and
closed what was left of the door.
A great lassitude swept over Ocho Sedano.
His sin with the girl had brought all of these people here
to die, had brought them to this foundering boat in a rough,
windswept night sea with a million cold stars
looking down without pity.
Then he realized that the forward deck was empty.
Empty!
The people were gone. Into the sea... that must be it! They were
swept overboard.
"Ocho."
Diego put his hand on the young man's shoulder,
gripped hard.
"I didn't mean
to
shoot him. As God is my witness, I did not
mean for this to happen. It was an accident."
Ocho swept the hand away.
He pointed through the glass"...at the forward deck.
"They are gone! Look.
The people are gone!"
"I did not mean for this to happenea"...Diego repeated
mechanically.
"What"..."...Ocho demanded. "What disdid you not intend?
For the captain to die? For your daughter to drown at
sea? For all of those people on that deck to die? What
did you not intend, Diego?"
Oh, my God, that this should happen!
"Answer
me!"
he roared at Diego Coca, who refused to look
forward through the wheelhouse windshield.
"Look, you bastardea"...Ocho ordered through clenched
teeth, and grabbed the smaller man by the
neck. He rammed his head forward against the glass.
"See what your greed and stupidity have cost."
Then he threw Diego Coca to the floor.
The impact of the disaster bowed Ocho's head, bent his
back, emptied his heart. Diego's guilt did
not lessen his, and oh, he knew that well. He,
Ocho Sedano, was
guilty.
His lust had set this chain of events in motion. He
felt as if he were trying to support the weight of the
earth.
Maximo Sedano's office in the finance ministry
reflected his personal taste. The furniture was
simple, deceptively so. The woods were
hardwoods from the Amazon rain forest, crafted in
Brazil by masters. Little souvenirs from his travels
across Europe and Latin America sat on the
desk and credenza and hung on the walls, small
things of little value because expensive trinkets would be
impolitic.
He turned on the light, then walked to the huge
floor safe, which he unlocked attd opened. He
found the drawer he wanted, removed a stiff
document envelope, took it to his desk and
adjusted the light.
With the contents of the envelope spread out on the highly
polished mahogany, Maximo Sedano paused and
looked around the room with unseeing eyes. He
blinked several times, then leaned back in his chair and
stretched.
There were four bank accounts in Switzerland, all
controlled by Fidel Castro. The last time
Maximo computed the interest, the amount in the accounts
totaled $53 million. Castro had been very
specific when the accounts were opened years ago; the
accounts were to be denominated in United States
dollars. This choice had worked out extraordinarily
well through the years as the currencies of every other
major trading nation underwent major inflation or
devaluation. The United States dollar was the
modern-day equivalent of gold, although it would
certainly be poor pol-
COONTS
itics for any member of the Castro regime to say
so publicly.
Fifty-three million dollars.
Quite a sum.
Enough to live extraordinarily well for a millennium
or two.
Fidel kept that little nest egg in
Switzerland just in case things went wrong here in this
communist paradise and he had to skedaddle. No
sense living on government charity in some other
squalid communist paradise, like Poland or
Russia or the Ukraine, when a little prior
planning could solve the whole problem. So Fidel
rat-holed a fortune where only he could get at it
and slept soundly at night.
Now he wanted the money back in Cuba.
Not that the money ever really belonged to the Cuban
government. The money came from drug dealers, fees
for using Cuban harbors for sanctuary, fees for
being able to send shipments directly to Cuba,
stockpile the drugs, then ship them on when the time was
right.
The money was really just Castro's personal share of the
drug fees. An even larger chunk of the profits
had gone to army, navy and law enforcement personnel,
all of them, every man in the country who wore a
uniform had been paid; another chunk went
to Castro's lieutenants and political allies.
Maximo had received almost a half million
dollars himself. All in all, the deals with the drug
syndicates had been good public policythe drug
business was highly profitable, giving
Castro money to buy loyalty and so remain in
power, and the business corrupted America, which he
hated. Ah, yes, the money came from the United
States despite the best efforts of the American
government to prevent it. Fidel had savored that
irony too.
Fifty-three million.
Maximo pursed his. lips as he thought about the
life of luxury and privilege that a fortune that
size would buy. The money could be invested, some
hotels, bank stock, invested to earn a nice
income without touching the principal.
He could stay in the George V in Paris, ski
in St. Moritz, shop in London and Rome and
yacht all over the Mediterranean.
God, it was tempting!
Fifty-three million.
&
nbsp; All he had to do was get Castro's thumbprint on
the transfer order. Without that thumbprint, the banks
would not move a solitary dollar.
Really, those Swiss banks ... Maximo had
urged Castro to transfer the money to Spanish and
Cuban banks for months, ever since the dictator
was diagnosed with cancer. If he died with the
money still in Switzerland, prying money out of those
banks was going to be like peeling fresh paint from a
wall with fingernails. And the drug dealers thought their
racket was profitable!
But why be a piker? Why settle for $53
million when there was a lot more, somewhere?
From his pocket he removed a coin, a gold
five-peso coin dated 1915. There was a
portrait of Josd Marti on one side and the
crest of Cuba on the other.
Gold circulated in Cuba until the
revolution, until Fidel and the communists declared it
was no longer legal tender and called it in, allowing
the peso to float on the world market.
Maximo rubbed the gold coin with his fingers. By his
calculations, based upon Ministry of Finance
records, almost 1.2 million ounces of gold were
surrendered to the government in return for paper
money.
One million, two hundred thousand ounces ...
about thirty-seven
tons
of gold. On the world market, that thirtyseven tons
of gold should be worth about $360 million.
A man who could get his hands on that hoard
would be on easy street for the rest of his life.
Yes, indeed.
The only problem was finding it. It wasn't in the
Finance Ministry vaults, it wasn't in the
vaults of the Bank of Cuba, on account at
banks in Switzerland or London or New
York or Mexico City ... it was gone!
Thirty-seven tons of gold, vanished into thin
air.
If a man could lay hands on that gold... well,
Alejo Vargas and Hector Sedano could fight
over the presidency of Cuba, and may the better
man win. Maximo would take the gold. If he
could find it.
He had a few ideas about where it might be. In
fact, he had been quietly researching the problem
since he took over the Finance Ministry. Eight
years of ransacking files, talking to old
employees, looking at clues, thinking about the
problemthe gold had to be in Cuba, in Havana.
Thirtyseven tons of gold.
A-life of ease and luxury in the spas of
Europe, mingling with the rich and famous, surrounded
by beautiful women and the best of everything ...