But after a very long silence, he said, "I think I may know the names of one or two people. But these are very, very busy people-"
"Only if I really have trouble finding my way around," I told him. "That's the only reason I would impose on them."
"I'm not certain how much they could help you."
Meaning the lives of these people were already in danger and they probably had very little authority.
I said, "I realize that, too."
Another very long silence. I could hear a sound, like a file drawer being opened, then the sound of papers being moved. Knew that, in his businessman's mind, this was final payment on a very old debt. "In that case," Armando said-and he gave me a name.
An hour later, General Juan Rivera's secretary-not that he identified himself-supplied me with another.
***
That night at dinner, I tried to explain to Dewey why she couldn't leave with me in the morning for Cuba.
"I'll be down there and back," I said. "A couple of days-unless I sail to Key West with Tomlinson. It's not like you're missing anything."
"Bullshit, Ford. You'll have to do better than that."
"Let me put it this way: I don't want you to go."
I was rewarded with a coy mock-smile. "I can see you're undecided, sweetie. Perhaps we should sleep on it." As if she might get me in bed, use sex as leverage.
"I don't know how else to put it."
"Well," she said, not kidding now, "you might try telling me the truth."
We had driven my twenty-foot Hewes Light Tackle flats boat north through Pine Island Sound to the restaurant on Cabbage Key. It was a cold and blustery night for boating, but Dewey had insisted. So now we sat by candlelight on the back porch of the old inn looking out at the heavy foliage of banyan trees, air roots twisting down. Every few minutes, Kim, the blond bartender, would come cruising by-"Need another beer? How's the grouper?"-and we could hear Jerry Shell on the keyboard playing Jimmy Buf-fett in the bar.
I said, "What do you mean tell the truth? What makes you think I'm lying?"
"Because you keep saying no and can't give me a good reason. You're the logical one. You always have a reason for everything you do." She didn't say that very kindly.
I looked across the table at her-handsome face suspended above candle flame, blond hair bright as platinum spilling onto the black turtleneck sweater she wore. I said, "It bothers you that I try to be logical?"
She folded her fingers together and rested chin on hands. "Sometimes it bothers me that you let it run your life… but I'm just realizing it bothers me a hell of a lot more when you aren't. Logical, I mean. That's what I'm saying: Give me one logical reason. You're going to go off, leave me here all alone for Christmas? You can be a shit, Doc, but you're usually not this big a shit."
I picked up my can of beer, sighed, settled back. "Okay… I'll tell you."
"Then there is a reason." Nodding like, See, I was right.
"Because it could be dangerous. I mean it. It's because I might be a dangerous traveling companion." When I saw that she was unconvinced, I added, "This won't be my first trip down there. Cuba, I'm talking about."
"I know that. You mentioned it once before. Some reference-'The time when I was in Cuba.' A long time ago. So?"
I cleared my throat. "The first time was in nineteen seventy-three-"
"Jesus," she said, "you were practically a kid-"
"Close to it. The United States sent a baseball team to Havana-actually, two baseball teams to play in an amateur world series. I was a bullpen catcher. The only time I played was in this exhibition game. Only got a couple of at-bats, didn't even get a hit."
"Cubans don't like Americans who are bad hitters? That's why it's too dangerous-?"
"Give me a chance to explain it. It's involved. See"- I wanted to word it carefully-communicate details without communicating the truth-"during the exhibition game. The one I played in? As a goodwill gesture, the teams switched pitchers. It was a meaningless game. The coaches played; one of their military people, a guy named Ochoa, was at second base. A very gifted officer and a first-rate man…" I caught myself. She didn't need to know about Arnaldo Ochoa… now the late Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa. I said, "The point is, Castro pitched two innings for our team."
I watched her eyes widen. "Fidel Castro? You were Castro's catcher? Damn, Doc, you never told me this before." Like I had been holding out on her. She leaned forward on her elbows. "How was he? Any good?"
"He was terrible. Worse than terrible. At the time, he was like forty-four, forty-five years old. Even so, I could tell the man had never been any good. Zero velocity, no control, clumsy motion. If a guy really played, he can pick up a ball twenty years later and you can tell, right? Just the way he handles himself."
Dewey was taking it in-she understood sports. She said, "The same with tennis. Exactly the same."
I said, "So there I am catching Fidel Castro and I'm calling pitches-nothing but fastballs, because he can't throw anything else, but he keeps shaking me off. He wants to throw the curve. Understand, he's pitching against his own guys who, of course, keep striking out. A ball over their head, they swing. Two feet outside, they swing. Like they're praying they won't hit the ball by accident and offend the Maximum Leader-which is what he likes to be called.
"Finally, he waves me to the mound. Castro with the beard, wearing this floppy uniform that says Sugar Kings on the front. In the stands-this was the main stadium in Havana-there are at least thirty thousand people and he's trying to act like he's not pissed off, but he's fuming. When I get close enough, he grabs my shoulder and whispers, 'I think you are calling a terrible game; a shitty game-"'
"He said that?"
"In English, too. Pretty good English. He says, 'I think I will call my own pitches. No more signals from you!' "
"Yeah? What did you say?"
I had to smile, remembering it. "I said what a catcher is supposed to say in that situation. I said, 'Pitchers aren't supposed to think. First time you cross me up, I'll make you look like the rag arm you are.' "
Dewey's expression described shock and delight. "You really said that?"
Had I? Something similar-"Be quiet or I'll make you look worse than you are." Pretty close. Nodding, I said, "He was so mad he was shaking. But what could he do? All those people in the stands, watching us. So he pitches the rest of the inning, never says another word."
"And you didn't call a single curveball."
"No, I called three. Just to make him happy."
"You're telling me that's it? That's why you're dangerous; why you can't go back to Havana again?"
I had to say the next part very carefully. Could I tell her about Mariel? No… there was no way to disguise what had occurred in Mariel. I said, "That and something else that happened. When Castro called me out to the mound, turns out some guy in the stands chose that moment to drop a gun he'd been hiding. Dropped it right in front of one of the security people. Bad timing."
"Yeah, but what's that have to do with you?"
I said, "This guy, the one with the gun, was a Cuban-American in the country illegally. Somehow he'd slipped in, like he was a member of the team or something." Trying to remember what Junior Santoya had looked like-I'd met him only once-I said, "Later, some people claimed they'd seen me talking to the guy. That's why the State Department made me and a couple of other players take a special plane home. That the guy and I had been seen together the night before, drinking beer at a hotel called the Havana Libre."
"Were you?"
I said, "Maybe. It's a busy bar. What matters is, they believed I was. Plus, their president wasn't a fan of mine after our conference on the mound."
"Like this guy was planning to shoot Castro."
"That's what they apparently thought."
"And you think they're still after you… what? Twenty-some years later." Her tone said: I don't buy it.
"They'd still have my name on file. You can be sure of it." Not my real name. I'd never
used my real name in Cuba, but I didn't tell her that. In 'seventy-three, I'd gone as…? It took me a moment to recall the last name I'd used-an absurdly ironic choice, as it turned out.
Dewey said, "What's so funny?"
I said, "Nothing, just something I remembered. So you see why you can't go."
She had a little bit of wine left-becoming quite the cosmopolitan drinker. She tilted the last of it down, showing me her pale throat, shaking her head at the same time. "What'd that friend tell you? Go as a tourist?"
I hadn't mentioned Juan Rivera's name, but I'd told her that was what I planned to do.
She said, "Who looks more like a tourist? A big blond nerdy gringo traveling alone, or a guy and his girlfriend- his mistress, maybe-who want some private time in the tropics?"
She had a point.
Dewey placed the wineglass back on the table; picked up the napkin and dabbed at her mouth. Said, "Doc, for once in your life, try to be logical."
8
As the sun-bleached old Soviet-built Tupolev jetliner strained to free itself of the smudge, the frenzy, the diesel and mango stink of Panama City, Panama, Dewey looked down upon the toy cars and the horizon of rooftops and she said, "I could see you were right at home; knew your way around that place, but I've got to tell you, buddy, I'm glad to be in the air again."
We'd arrived the day before, Sunday, and I'd spent the evening showing her the sights; took a couple of private hours to renew one or two old contacts. Then it was dinner at the Continental Hotel on Via Espana. Avenue which, prior to the fall of Noriega, had been run by Panama's Defense Forces. I liked the irony of that-sitting beneath crystal chandeliers, among tuxedoed waiters, in a restaurant that had been the late-night meeting place for Noriega and his Cuban advisors
… lots of cigar smoke and nervous Spanish as they coordinated weapons shipments in advance of the U.S. invasion.
Now Dewey fidgeted in her seat and said, "You give a pretty good tour, but I feel a lot more comfortable up here than I did down there."
The veteran of an international tennis tour that focused myopically on the world's big-money glamour cities, Dewey had been unprepared for the slums and the noisy poverty of what, in comparison, was one of Central America's wealthiest, healthiest cities. That she was glad to be in the air also told me that she didn't know a damn thing about Tupolev jets.
We were side by side on threadbare seats, sitting port side, forward of the engines, in a fuselage not much wider than a commuter bus. Two broad-shouldered Americanos among forty, maybe forty-five Latinos-business types and embassy types wearing suits or guayabera shirts-in an aluminum tube crammed with seats for more than a hundred.
The door of the forward bulkhead was open and I looked through into the cockpit. Saw the co-pilot-maybe the pilot-standing there, smoking a cigarette, laughing with a stocky, busty flight attendant whose body was too pudgy for her gray Cubana Airlines uniform. Watched him pull out the pack-Marlboros-and offer her one. Watched her lean to his lighter.
"Holy shit!" Dewey had grabbed my arm. "What's happening?"
White vapor was pouring out of the overhead vents like steam from a fire hose, filling the cabin with a haze dense as sea fog.
I patted her hand. "Relax-it's because they just turned on the air conditioning. It's the way these planes are built; the way the system works."
"You sure? Geeze-oh-Katy!"
"Notice anyone else getting nervous? They've flown Cubana before."
She was beginning to relax her grip on my arm. "Hell, I can't even see anyone else."
I smiled. The fog wasn't that bad. No one else even seemed to notice. People settling back with magazines… a man sitting to our right shaking open Granma, the national newspaper of Cuba… a couple of women forward of us peering into a sack, pulling out bananas and an ata-moya. Even so, there was no vacation giddiness; none of the we're-headed-for-paradise cheer that is the hallmark of other island flights.
Dewey said, "Long as the plane's safe, I don't care."
How was I going to reply to that? Cuba, like all former Soviet bloc countries, was suffering the gradual breakdown of its mechanical infrastructure. The Tupolev, its replacement parts, and its technicians all came from a place that no longer existed. The same was true of Cuba's bulldozers, harvesting machines, power plants, buses, medical hardware, oil refineries, radios, televisions, and windup toys- the entire metal-electrical scaffolding upon which modern civilization is built. A couple of years ago, a friend of mine, who happens to be a National Security Agency research analyst, explained it to me. "By the late eighties, there were nearly thirty thousand Soviets living and working in Cuba," she said. "They kept the machines going, kept the systems working. The Russians didn't mix much with the Cubans; they never learned the language. They had their own clubs, their own restaurants, schools, and sports facilities. There wasn't a lot of knowledge exchanged. Why bother? The Soviet Union and its satellite countries were going to last a thousand years, right?
"But then the U.S. came up with the Strategic Defense Initiative," she said. "Remember how the press called it Star Wars?"
Yes, I remembered. I remembered that time all too well.
She said, "Our people laughed at it, but the Soviets weren't laughing. They believed SDI would work and all but went bankrupt trying to come up with their own version. Perestroika was a result. The Soviets began to withdraw financial support from Cuba. Then the collapse came and all the technicians were called back to Mother Russia. Left the Cubans high and dry." She chose an interesting metaphor to illustrate the predicament. "Years back, when VCRs first came out? A few people, a very few, chose Beta-and ended up on a dead-end street. Well, Castro chose Beta."
I decided that, with Dewey, evasion was the kindest course. I patted her knee and said, "I've flown these jets before, never had a problem." I had, too. Out of Saigon, out of Hanoi, out of Shanghai-always tight-sphincter flights filled with dread; the kind of flights that dissolve our public personae, forcing us to reassess as we peer over the tippy-toe edge of the black abyss, wondering: Has my life been of value? Have I contributed some tiny piece to the puzzle
…?
Dewey relaxed a little; shifted in the cramped seat. Said, "Well, if you're not scared, I'm not scared."
Pretending to ignore the creaking wings, the hydraulic whine of frayed cables, I told her, "Know what might help? When that flight attendant finishes her cigarette, maybe she'll bring us a couple of beers."
Through the starred Plexiglas, from 21,000 feet, I watched the mosquito coast of Central America slide by: sea as luminous blue as a country club swimming pool; jungle a green so dark that it implied the gloom of caverns, the silence of a great void.
"I don't get it. Is that Jamaica or what?" Dewey had a little map open on her lap-"Might as well make it a learning experience," she had told me-and she was looking from the map's coastline to the coastline outside the window.
I told her, "It's the northern border of Nicaragua. Where it humps out?" I touched the map. "A couple of more minutes, we'll be right over the capitol of Masagua-" I had to stop mid-sentence, realizing where we were… that I'd be only-what?-four miles above Pilar and her young blond son. It was the closest I'd been to her in slightly more than six years; the closest I'd ever been to him. I wondered if the Christmas present I had sent anonymously, always anonymously, was down there under the palace tree. A Rawlings Heart of the Hide catcher's glove, Gold Glove series. More likely, Masaguan security had piled it with the public's other gifts to the royal heir. Probably distributed them to the poor kids on Christmas Day, which would be just like Pilar. And besides… that damn Juan Rivera was teaching him to pitch anyway…
"Then what I don't understand," Dewey said, "is why we're flying up the coast first when it'd be a hell of a lot closer to fly straight north across the ocean."
"Nope, it's about the same distance," I said. I didn't want to tell her the truth: Aware that the Tupolev was a bad risk, the Cuban pilot probably didn't want to stray
far from an emergency runway. I said, "This way, you get a look at Central America. See? That's Masagua City down there."
She was looking, shaking her head-it was a how-do-you-know-so-much mannerism with which I was growing familiar. "You've been there, too, I suppose."
"A couple of times. You'd like the parks and there's a palace tour. Some pretty spectacular Mayan ruins, too." As if I'd visited as a tourist. Even so, I could feel the question coming; the same question she'd asked me in Panama City.
"A marine biologist who spent all his free time traveling." She said it quizzically, thinking it over. Yesterday, my reply-"I used to travel a lot"-hadn't put the subject to rest. I could see her wondering: Why is he being evasive?
So I decided to stop it before it went any further. "Traveling in my free time? I never said that. I went to these places, Panama, Masagua, some others because it was part of my work."
Dewey nodded, listening. Finally, it was all going to start making sense.
I said, "See, what happened was, when I got out of school, I was recruited by a company to do research-"
"This was after you played baseball."
"Yeah, just after I played ball, but pretty close to that time, though." Already lying to her. "This company, they'd pick a research area then provide funding so I could set up a research station. Usually a small house or shack, and money for a boat and a lab. Or the host country would provide me with a place, like a kind of educational exchange. I'd be there a few months or sometimes as much as a year or more."
All true.
She said, "We'd send them our people, they'd send us theirs?" Not doubting it, just asking.
"Right. But usually it was just this company, the one I worked for, setting me up, paying the bills, while I did my work. For a biologist, it was a great opportunity." Also true. I said, "I was able to spend time in places, do the kind of serious work that most people in my field only dream about. Like Masagua-" It was gone from the window now; once again I was leaving Pilar behind. "-I spent more than a year in Masagua. I had this great beach shack and lab on a deserted stretch of shore about fifty kilometers from the city. The fishermen there-same as the fishermen in Honduras-had a legend about a place off the coast. They called it the Magic Mountain-"
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