I turned to frown at the bearded preacher, intending to shush him, but his eyes were so wild and dark that I quickly averted my own.
“Are they sure it was him?”
“That’s what we need to find out. And, oh, Lottie needs to talk to you. She’s back in photo. Thanks much, Britt. I’ll transfer you. When will you be in?”
“I don’t get involved in Cuban politics…” I sighed. “An hour.” Amazing how polite Gretchen had become.
“… as a scroll when it is rolled together; and…”
Lottie came on the line demanding to know where I was.
“South Beach, having breakfast with a gorgeous man.”
“… every mountain and island were moved out of their places!”
“That him?”
“No, it’s that crazy street preacher, you’ve seen him.”
“Not that I can recollect.”
“Of course you have, what do you need?”
“Your buddy, Jorge Bra—”
“I know, I know,” I muttered, “the feds are after him again.”
She lowered her voice. “But didya know he’s trying to reach you?”
“What?” I turned, and the street preacher was gone and there was only casual chatter and laughter from the cafe and the sounds of the Atlantic throwing its huge salty body onto the beach. I stared up and down the side streets but he had vanished.
“When he couldn’t get you, he called me,” Lottie was saying. “Said he needs to talk to you right away.”
“Oh, swell.” Wants to tell me his self-serving side of the story before he gets busted, I thought. “So he’s back from … wherever he was last night. Give him my beeper number if he calls again. Is, uh, everything else okay?” Seeking nonexistent shade, I paced three tiny steps back and forth, as far as the phone cord permitted. The scalding pavement burned the bottoms of my feet through the thin soles of my sandals.
“Couldn’t be better,” she said. “I’m shopping for cruisewear later, if I can get a break.”
“It’s only a day cruise. For Pete’s sake, Lottie.”
“I know,” she said happily, “but I’m in a mood to shop.”
Lottie normally hates shopping and does hers by catalog. “I’m impressed,” I said. Amazing what love does.
“Did you see where that street preacher went?” I asked Hal, back at our table.
“Who?”
“The guy with the beard, spouting doomsday stuff, making all that noise.”
He frowned. “Didn’t notice ‘im,” he said. “I was watching you.”
“I’ll call,” he said, as he dropped me off at my apartment. “But I need your home number.”
“I never share it with story subjects,” I said briskly. “Bad policy.”
I smiled at his expression. “But you’re an exception. I have good news and bad news,” I said, scribbling my number onto the back of a business card. “Remember why you called me last night?”
He blinked. The big breakfast, or maybe the busy night preceding it, had slowed his thought processes down to a crawl.
“The inquest. You wanted me to cover the inquest.”
A shadow reappeared behind his eyes and I regretted mentioning it on this beautiful cloudless morning.
“Well, the bad news is that I can’t report it because we now have a … personal relationship. But the good news is that I’ll be there if you want me to, maybe bring my friend Lottie along, too, for moral support. Then we can go out for a drink or something.”
“Deal.”
Our good-bye kiss lingered.
The “war communique” issued by Jorge Bravo and his organization, A Free Cuba Regiment, was waiting at the office. Foreign tourists were ordered off the island and warned that future travel to Cuba would be at their own risk. Faxed to the newsroom at 2 A.M., the statement was addressed to the paper and marked to my attention. An accompanying press release announced an AFC raid on a “military target” in Cuba twenty-four hours earlier. Radio Havana had confirmed an attack on a Spanish-owned hotel in Varadero, Cuba’s leading tourist resort in Matanzas Province about sixty-five miles east of Havana, on the north coast.
In an attempt to make up revenue lost when the Soviet Union collapsed, Castro focused on rebuilding the country’s once thriving tourist trade. Spanish investors had poured millions into Cuba’s hotel industry.
Hit-and-run raiders in a twenty-eight-foot boat had fired machine guns and lobbed grenades at the oceanfront Vista del Mar resort hotel. No deaths, but several security guards, a police officer, and a busboy at a poolside bar had suffered minor injuries.
The shapes under the tarp in Jorge’s living room haunted me. The wires buzzed with protests from Havana, accounts from the State Department. My pager sounded. The number was one I didn’t recognize. Taking a deep breath, I dialed.
“¡Hola!”
“Jorge?”
“Si, ¿Montero?”
“Yes. Where are you?” I demanded.
He paused. “Little Havana.”
“Where?”
“Little Havana is anywhere that two or more Cubans are gathered together in the cause of freedom.”
I sighed. “Jorge,” I said sharply, “are you aware that the FBI…”
“I cannot speak on this telefono. It is too dangerous. Did you tell anyone?”
“No, Jorge, but I think the FBI wants to talk to you.”
“I have nothing to say to them. It is you I must talk to.”
“Talk.”
“Face-to-face.”
Why did I know he would say that? “Where?”
“The Torch of Friendship.”
“In Bayfront Park? Isn’t that rather public, under the circumstances?”
“I must hang up. This telefono…” His voice grew distant. I could hear the din of traffic in the back-
The local cops probably couldn’t trace a call successfully with six months’ advance notice. I was not so sure about the FBI. They were probably better at it.
“I’ll be there. When?”
“Now.”
What am I getting into? I asked myself. Exactly what I swore I wouldn’t, the murky undertow of Cuban exile shenanigans.
I found a parking spot on the Boulevard and walked across to the Torch, built in 1960 and rededicated in memory of President Kennedy in 1964. The eternal flame was not burning. The eighteen-foot-tall symbol of hemisphere solidarity and goodwill had been deliberately rammed by a huge rental truck ten days earlier.
A Cuban flag draped around him, a sixty-year-old refugee was driving the cargo hauler, fitted with a heavy-duty bumper, when it mounted the curb, roared through the flower beds and a black olive hedge, and smashed into the bronze torch. Gas lines feeding the perpetual flame ruptured. The symbol of unity buckled, and witnesses fled for their lives, fearing an explosion.
The driver didn’t seem to care that his next stop was jail. He and several accomplices were painting “Cuba Will Be Free” on the memorial wall behind the torch and shooting snapshots of their handiwork when the cops arrived. The torch would be restored when the city figured out how to appropriate the money.
Jorge was nowhere in sight. I stood for a moment, sun beating down on my face, shriveling the ends of my hair into burned wisps. Sweat wormed its clammy way down the middle of my back. I needed a hat, I needed sunscreen, I needed my day off.
Nobody around but a few of the homeless who have virtually taken over the park. I checked my watch. A teenage girl in cut-offs and a black midriff top strolled by. She smiled persistently as I looked away, annoyed and impatient. Was she going to ask me for money?
“Britt Montero?”
“Do I know you?” No more than sixteen, she was slim, in straw sandals and mango-colored lipstick, her eyes concealed behind dark shades.
“Luisa, AFC especialista. The comandante asks that you join him.”
“You’re a member?”
“Si,” sh
e said proudly. “Since I was born.”
We strolled toward the Boulevard as I realized that an upper floor of the aging hotel across the street was an excellent vantage point from which to determine whether I had arrived alone or leading a phalanx of federal agents. I assumed, as we picked our way through traffic, that we would continue into the lobby and board the elevator to some small room overlooking the park. Instead an old Lincoln, black with rust spots, glided to the curb.
The girl steered me toward it as I resisted. “It is the comandante,” she said. Sure enough the back door swung open and Jorge Bravo beckoned. He wore a military bearing, a white guayabera, and a sunburned face. Like someone who’s been out on the water, I thought grimly. A skinny middle-aged man with black shoe-polish hair and dark glasses sat behind the wheel. With major misgivings, I climbed into the backseat.
“¿Estàs loco?” I greeted him.
“We are at war,” he announced dramatically, as the car lurched away from the curb, leaving Luisa on the sidewalk.
“You can’t wage war on tourists, Jorge.”
“It was a military objective,” he said, his jaw square.
“It was a resort hotel, for Christ’s sake! Kill some tourists and see what happens. You want to create an international incident? If the feds prove you planned it here, you won’t see daylight again.”
“We must frighten them, so they stop traveling to Cuba, spending their tourist dollars, strengthening Castro and keeping him in power.” He spoke matter-of-factly, as though explaining the only commonsense course of action to a child.
“I know what you’re saying, but if you kill innocent foreigners, you only succeed in making Castro’s position stronger. And what about you? What about the neutrality laws?”
Because the law forbids launching military expeditions from U.S. soil, freedom fighters on missions usually make pit stops in the Bahamas in order to claim that their operations actually originated there. They don’t fool anybody.
“This country cannot tell an oppressed people that they are not permitted to wage war on tyrants,” Bravo said stubbornly.
“You know the Cubans will shoot you if you’re caught. And you better hope they find you first. The Justice Department is already involved. You know what Janet Reno will do. She doesn’t fool around.”
“These are the same people, CIA, FBI, who gave us money and weapons to fight Castro. Now they say it is a crime.” Bravo threw up his hands. “I was not a criminal then! I am not now. I am a patriot!” He shook his fist. “We are at war, it does not end because somebody is taken into a courtroom. I have no fight with the United States. My fight is with Fidel.”
“This is loco,” I said, looking out to see where we were. I wanted to go back to my car. This was hopeless.
“Some day, Montero, you will learn what your father knew, that freedom is more than the lack of bars around you. Si, this is loco, so loco that if he still lived, he would stand with us.”
He said it like he believed it. Was he right? Was my father this deranged?
“Are you going to talk to the FBI?”
“Of course not. I am underground. They will not find me.”
Maybe I should just jump from this moving car now, I thought irritably, scanning traffic for undercover cars.
“You can’t run around acting like a goddamn terrorist.”
“Why not?” he said angrily.
“First,” I said, “you are too old to run.”
He smiled ironically. “I am too old not to run. I have spent my life fighting for Cuba. The spark never dies. That is how I will die. I want to be buried in a free Cuba.”
He put his maimed and calloused hand over mine. “Our goal is to spark a rebellion among the Cuban people. That spark could be ignited by the words in Antonio’s diario. We must find it before Reyes seizes it. If we can broadcast it to the people—”
“My father’s diary?”
“Si.” It is in the possession of a man named Armando Gutierrez. Reyes has his criminales searching for him now.”
“Reyes is an international businessman, he is politically connected, why would he—?”
Bravo’s ominous look cut me off, reminding me of the wild-eyed street preacher spouting doom and disaster.
He leaned forward. “If Gutierrez contacts you, you must contact me at once. Luisa is my liaison officer. Here is her number.” He shoved a scrap of paper at me and I stuffed it absently into my purse.
“How old is she? Shouldn’t she be in school?”
Bravo ignored me, thinking aloud. “If the diario is lost, perhaps we could plant a bomb at the Morro lighthouse. Si, extinguish the beacon that has burned for four hundred years. Perhaps that is the spark that would ignite the Cuban people.”
“¡Si, comandante!” the driver said enthusiastically. “¡Explota el faro del Morro!”
I rolled my eyes.
“When it happens and the people take to the streets, we will be ready. Our mission is twofold,” Bravo said earnestly. “We will put an end to Fidel and prevent Juan Carlos Reyes from becoming Cuba’s new dictator.”
There is no stopping this madness, I thought. Just when I thought this day could go no further downhill, it did.
“¡Comandante!”
We had just run an amber light on U.S. 1 in Coconut Grove. A beige late-model Ford Crown Vic occupied by two men jumped the red and was rapidly closing in on us.
“Eloy, ¿es el FBI?” Bravo said.
“No sé.” He shrugged.
Swell, I thought. How am I going to explain this to the FBI and to my bosses? I had told Gretchen I was going to lunch. I would have to display my press identification and explain to the agents that I was merely a reporter interviewing a newsmaker. I would have to involve Mark Seybold, the News’s attorney. I should have known this was a mistake.
Instead of pulling over, Eloy floored it. The old Lincoln leaped forward. “Wait a minute!” I cried. “Pull over!”
“¡Rápido! rápido! Step on it, Eloy!” Bravo said.
“¡Si, comandante!” He spun the wheel, veering around a crowded jitney, as I looked over my shoulder in horror.
“You can’t run from the FBI!”
“What if it is not the FBI?”
“Who else?”
“Castro agents or Reyes’s men.”
“That’s ridiculous!” I cried, groping for my seat belt and finding there was none. Now, I thought, the situation can’t become any worse. I was wrong. Bravo pulled a .45-caliber semiautomatic out from under his guayabera. And Eloy came up with a sawed-off shotgun, looking over his shoulder as we overtook a lumbering school bus at high speed.
Will my mother be sorry I am dead? I wondered. Probably not. But Hal will, and maybe even Kendall McDonald. Gretchen won’t. Lottie will.
“Look out!” I screamed. “School bus!”
Eloy steered around it, two wheels on the curb.
“That’s it!” I screamed. “Stop the car! I’m getting out.”
Bravo and the driver ignored me, conversing in rapid-fire Spanish that I only picked up in parts. One thing was clear. They had no intention of stopping.
Taking both hands off the wheel, Eloy racked one into the chamber of his sawed-off. Bravo used his good hand to do the same with the automatic.
“You can’t shoot at the FBI!” I screamed. My annoyance and anger had given way to true terror. The best I could hope for now was to wind up handcuffed, face down on the pavement with the barrel of an FBI semiautomatic Sig 226 to my head.
We hurtled south on U.S. 1. I watched frantically for a City of Miami patrol car. Only startled motorists standing on their brakes, leaning on their horns, and careening out of our way as we cut them off, ran red lights, and skidded through intersections. Broad daylight. Where are the cops? I glared at Bravo and Eloy, gritted my teeth, and held on. These were the same clowns who got my father killed. Now I was next.
“Don’t worry,” Bravo said. “You a
re safe with me.” He opened a battered satchel at his feet, took out a box of shotgun shells, and tossed it into the front seat.
Traffic jammed ahead of us and Eloy took to the median, the big car mowing down plantings and young trees. Green fronds obscured the windshield. I prayed that a sprinkler head would puncture one of our tires. No such luck. The Crown Vic was gallomping over the median behind us, still in hot pursuit. Gaining, it swung around a line of traffic and came up alongside. I glimpsed the men in front, both wearing dark glasses.
The push-button window on the front passenger side rolled down and Eloy raised the sawed-off. “No! No! No!” I screamed, clamping my palms over my ears. The deafening blast created shock waves around me and I saw the huge front plate-glass window of an auto dealership disintegrate in slow motion. The car fishtailed all over the road as Eloy struggled for control. Why aren’t they bleeding from the ears? I wondered. Their eardrums were probably already damaged from years of war games in the Everglades. The Crown Vic dropped back a car length but stayed right on our tail.
Oh no. A solid wall of traffic loomed ahead. Eloy swung into the parking lot of Coral Gables High School. “Not a school!” I cried. I could barely hear myself; my voice sounded as though I were under water. He skidded around the building into the big back lot. A driver’s ed class was in progress. Rows of folding chairs occupied by about forty waiting teenagers. In the center seven or eight cars, two school kids to a car, maneuvered at slow speeds through lanes of orange traffic cones set up by an instructor.
“Look out!” I shrieked, ears still ringing, unable to hear myself. The Crown Vic spun out on a stretch of lawn behind us, then backed up and roared toward us. “Look out!”
We raced straight through the class in progress. The trainer cars scrambled, two collided. The instructor, several teens on foot, and the kids seated on the chairs all assumed it was a drive-by and instinctively hit the ground. Bodies flat, heads down, no running for cover, just as taught in their drive-by shooting drills.
We flew out the far side of the lot. Looking back I saw a folding chair bounce off the hood of the Crown Vic as it hurtled in reverse rather than try to navigate the obstacle course of kids flat on their stomachs all over the parking lot.
Act of Betrayal Page 18