Havana es-3

by Stephen Hunter

  "I think it came from there."

  "Is this dangerous? A man with a gun? Maybe I'd better run back to town and call for reinforcements." De Guama was not the bravest of policemen.

  "It's just a hunter," said the private, Morales. "He's cornered a boar, he's finished him, that's all."

  "The boar don't usually come down this far," said Lieutenant Sarria. "They like it up the mountains, where it's cooler."

  The three walked along the beach for a while, but could see nothing of consequence. Birds, flowers, the sand, the floating gulls, a trawler of some sort fishing close in.

  "I've never seen them come in that far," said Morales.

  "Maybe they were the ones who fired?"

  "A gun on that old tub? I doubt it. It certainly is low in the water, though. Maybe it's taking sea."

  "We should inquire."

  They walked ahead and though they would later argue about it, it actually was Morales and not De Gauma who saw a flash of movement off to the right, in the trees, and alerted the others.

  Speshnev had squirmed into the trees and gone to dead, still calm. He waited and waited. No soldiers appeared. None at all.

  He tried to reconstruct the last several seconds in his brain. He and the boy, kneeling in the water, letting it soak, drinking slowly, not glugging like fools. The boat a few hundred yards away. No soldiers yet at the crest. No noise, no sense of approaching men, no nothing.

  He soaks his handkerchief, hands it across and at that moment feels the whisper of hot air as a bullet roars by. Simultaneously, his handkerchief is torn from his hand to flutter across the pond, and at the same second the surface of the pond explodes in a bright plume of water.

  The size of the blast, the noise of the shot, the force by which the handkerchief was ripped from his grip all indicated a heavy-caliber military bullet. Yet why had the bullet not struck head, his or the boy's? He realized the handkerchief was shot from his hand on purpose, for a shooter gifted enough to put his round into it could have just as easily shot either through the eye or the ear.

  But that mystery was quickly enough forgotten. What had to be done now was more exact and specific. Find the boy. Get the boy to the boat. Yet how could he do so with a marksman about, possibly hunting him, possibly playing tricks on him. And why would a marksman play a trick on him?

  And then of course he knew. It could only be one man. And the message was: you must fail. Fail and live, attempt to succeed and you die. I will have to kill you. But this time, I only make you fail.

  Well, he thought, you are a clever man, a brave man, but I have a duty to do as well, and if I have a chance, then I will kill you, too.

  He realized with perfect clarity the man wouldn't shoot him. He just wouldn't, he knew, at least not to kill him. He would watch from his perfect hide and if Speshnev seemed about to do it, then he would shoot.

  Speshnev realized that―

  But then movement caught his eye. Through the screen of trees, he saw three policemen. Where the hell had they come from? From the sloppiness of their clothes and the indifference of their postures, he determined that they were not the army troops being driven forward by Captain Latavistada. In fact, they moved so tentatively upon the beach it was as if they'd prefer to be anywhere else. The sound of the shot could not have delighted them.

  Yet here was the comical part. The manhunt was run by the best of Cuban intelligence with advice from the CIA, and it had failed completely. These three idiots had succeeded.

  For he now saw that they approached a clump of rags hunched trembling behind a knot of trees, and that clump of rags could only be Fidel Castro.

  "Is it a man?" De Guama asked.

  "I think it is. A bum. He is sleeping."

  " You!" cried the lieutenant. " You! Wake up!"

  The figure, indeed a man and not a clump of rags behind a glade of palms, stirred. Eventually a raggedy mop of hair came up, a pair of wet brown eyes, a broad axe of a nose, a pinched mouth, a whole face.

  "It is him!" said De Guama. "Good Christ, it is Fidel!"

  The young man assembled himself slowly, then got up, his hands raised.

  "I thought you would be a negro," said Lieutenant Sarria. "I thought only a negro would have the strength to fight the president."

  "I am fighting for the negroes as well as all other Cubans," said Fidel. "I fight for you all."

  A whistle sounded far off.

  All four of them looked up the hill. There, at its crest-line, troops were assembling, an officer was shouting orders smartly, dogs were barking, and then the unit started to move.

  "They will kill me," said Castro. "Please don't give me to them. The man in charge, he has cut the eyes out of many of my friends. He will cut my eyes out and then shoot me."

  "Yes," said Lieutenant Sarria, "Ojos Bellos, of SIM. I know his reputation. De Guama, Morales, you run back and bring the jeep. We will transport this bad boy into Siboney."

  The two turned and ran off.

  "You may as well sit down," said Sarria. "It'll be a few minutes yet."

  "Thank you," said Fidel.

  The two sat. Sarria held his pistol in his hand, but did not point with it or gesture with it dramatically. Frankly, it scared him a little.

  "You won't try anything, young man? I'd hate to have to shoot you. In twenty-seven years as a policeman, I have hurt nobody. I would hate this to be the day I had to kill a man."

  "I'm too tired," said Castro. "I've been running forever. I need to sleep and eat. They will kill me eventually, I know, but I am beyond caring."

  Kill him! Speshnev ordered himself.

  He had finished a long squirm through the brush, reached a creek and loped along, leaving the shooter far behind but keeping a bearing on the three policemen and Castro. Three: too many. Pray for a miracle.

  He crawled forward, sliding through the earth itself, the floor of jungle rot, feeling the coolness just beneath the surface. He'd shimmied up an embankment, low-crawled some feet, and now was just ten feet away from them.

  Then the officer sent the two men off. Now there were just the two of them, the boy and the old negro.

  He looked back, and could see the soldiers easing their way down the mountainside, still forty minutes away.

  He thought: kill him. Kill the old man.

  Work back through the brush, staying out of the sunlight, the open. Reach the boat. It can still be done. The shooter cannot see me, he will not track us.

  Kill him!

  He reached into his pocket and withdrew a flick knife. With a snap of his wrist, three inches of naked blade spurted out like a lizard's tongue, and locked in place.

  Kill him!

  At this point it was so easy. The old negro policeman had his gun out, but it rested easily against his thigh, the finger not even on the trigger. Speshnev recognized it as an old Colt revolver, but so beaten and ancient it was clearly not the gun of a pistolero. The man held it so sloppily and with so little tension that it seemed strange to him.

  Speshnev looked at him. He was in his fifties, with a face much ravaged by a hard life. Yet his eyes were milky with moisture and depth, surely the sign of a humane man. The men with feelings, they all had eyes like that unless they were insane, and Speshnev had really met few who were completely insane.

  He saw how it would happen. He would be upon the old dog so fast, the man would not have time to look up. The knife would flick out, go to the throat, probe and cut the carotid, and the old man would bleed out in seconds.

  Then grab the boy, hold him in the treeline, and race along it till their waving and screaming caught the attention of the men in the trawler. Then they could race into the surf, swim outward, and the boat would pick them up.

  Do it, he commanded himself.

  Yet the old man was so relaxed and without aggression in his body, Speshnev could not find it in himself.

  Do it! he commanded again, trying to find the energy for this last, horrible thing.

  He was so damned go
od. God, he was good.

  "Shoot him, for Christ sakes," said Frenchy. "Shoot someone."

  "If he moves on the cop, I'll shoot him, Junior. Then and only then."

  "He's a Red agent."

  "He's a man doing a job. We'll see how hard he does it. If I have to, I will. You shut up and keep on the glass."

  Through the scope Earl could see the little drama playing out. The sitting policeman with the revolver, the failed, beaten revolutionary, and the Russian agent crouching in the shadows. Earl had picked him up moving west just inside the treeline, a shape flitting through shadows. It took a great game eye to pick up prey like that, through a scope, but Earl had read the land and knew how he'd have to travel to close on the fleeing boy.

  He and Frenchy had moved a few hundred yards down the shoreline. They'd gone inland just a bit, where the land rose, and now were two hundred feet up and three hundred yards to the rear. They could see the two men sitting on the beach, and the shadow that had moved into place not long ago, crouching, gathering his strength.

  Don't go, Earl thought. I will kill you if you move on him.

  He held the rifle just over the head, so if the Russian lurched, he'd rise into the crosshairs, and Earl would fire and the bullet would take him in the spine. He didn't want to, but he also knew that he would.

  "You could kill them both, still," Frenchy said. "Do you know what this could mean? It could mean everything for us. It could―"

  "Shut up," Earl said.

  "Earl, if you don't do this, I can't protect you. You know that. You are on your own. There will be consequences. There are always consequences. Oh, wait, he's getting ready to move."

  But Earl had caught it. He watched as the form of the crouching man seemed to settle as if coiling to gather strength. Earl saw one hand low, the other high, and guessed that with one he would block and with the other, he would cut.

  But it wouldn't come to that.

  I will kill you, Earl thought.

  Now. The policeman rose. He leaned over the boy and gave him a touch on the shoulder as if to cheer him up. His defenses were completely relaxed. His mind was far away. He was reaching out in his compassion to settle the boy, who had begun to sob, out of delayed reaction to the events of the last few days.

  "There, there," said the old negro lieutenant. "It'll be all right. You are so young. You have plenty of time left."

  Do it, Speshnev compelled himself.

  He gathered his strength for the spring and the kill and the race to the boat, he drew the knife hand back, he studied the three steps it would take him to close the distance, he took his breath, he calmed himself, he―

  He saw the ships.

  Two white vessels, closing fast on the trawler, each bearing the flag of the United States of America. Coast Guard cutters.

  Speshnev knew he had been betrayed, that killing the policeman to free the boy was pointless. He knew there was no exit. He knew it was over. The cutters surged toward the trawler, blocking its escape.

  Speshnev faded back.

  Not today, he thought.

  Chapter 47

  By the time the soldiers got them back to Santiago, and Frenchy had made his report to headquarters, another day had passed. Moncada still bore signs of the gunfight waged there almost a week before, except that by now the burned cars had been removed and the shot-out windows boarded up. From there, they caught a cab to go back to the hotel.

  It was a time of much revelry, as if carnival had been extended magically. On all the newspapers, the headlines screamed: FIDEL FINITO. There was a famous picture, taken at the village of Sevilla, of the hangdog young revolutionary and his humane captor, the negro lieutenant named Sarria, now as famous as Fidel himself. The radios blared with official announcements from the president stating his pride in the security forces of Cuba, and saying that after the Cuban way, the bad son Fidel would receive a fair trial-this to counteract all the terrible news of the torture and murder of the revolutionaries. Meanwhile the communists, the laborites, the socialists, the ortodoxos all denounced Castro as a putschist, unwilling to apply the principles of democracy to the process of change, and demanded excessive punishment. Everybody hated him, except of course the people.

  Maybe that is why the streets were so full and the music so loud, maybe that is why the rum flowed so freely and the fireworks detonated so brightly. Whatever, it was a slow journey through the packed streets to the great Hotel Casa Grande at the Plaza de Armas. Both men were exhausted and dirty and wrung out from what had passed. But finally it was Frenchy who spoke.

  "I just want you to know what you threw away. You threw away any chance of succeeding with the Agency, of rising in it. Do you understand that, Earl? You are a very great man, a hero, but you are a stubborn son of a bitch and you have betrayed me and made me look foolish."

  Earl let him blare on.

  "Do you realize that this means no move to Washington? No big house in McLean? No good school for your―"

  "Are you done yet? I'm tired."

  They reached the hotel.

  "Earl, I'm very sorry. I tried to help you. I still can't believe you did this to me. Earl, I can't help you any more."

  "You see this rifle gets back to the marines at Gitmo, right?"

  "Fuck the rifle. There's more important issues than the rifle."

  "Not to me. You see this rifle gets back or I'll take it personally."

  Frenchy swallowed at Earl's hard glare and the implied threat, and said nothing.

  Earl turned, left the car, and climbed up the stairs to the porch. He needed a shower and a night's rest before heading back to Havana, by what means he was not yet sure. He just knew that's where the airport was.

  "Senor?"

  "Yeah?"

  Three Cuban state policemen in those brown-green uniforms were waiting up there for him.

  "You have a visa?"

  "What?"

  "A visa, senor?"

  "I came in with a congressman. It was an official―"

  "You have no visa, senor, you must come with us. This is against the law."

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "It is the law, senor. In Cuba we always obey the law."

  Then two other policemen joined the three, then three more. Swarming him, they moved him to the black paddy wagon that had just arrived, and took him away.

  Chapter 48

  The cab dropped Frenchy at the United Fruit Company executive mansion up in Vista Alegre, above the hot and fetid city, where he was staying in a VIP suite. He walked in, dragging the carbine and the sniper rifle, the Super.38 hanging in his tanker's holster in plain sight, hot, sweaty, dirty, his young face covered with stubble, aware exactly of how glamorous he was.

  People looked, people gasped, people pointed. He seemed to have become the man he had always dreamed of being: cool, elegant, wary, tough, savvy, capable. A hero. There were several young American women staying there, various daughters or mistresses or new young wives of important United Fruit execs, and he could tell that at least two or three of them watched him as he sauntered into the bar and ordered a quick beer, the two rifles leaning against the next stool. He knocked back the cold drink and settled in for a moment or two of reflection. What he was thinking, however, was: They think I'm such a cool customer!

  God, he enjoyed his little performance!

  He knocked down the last of the beer, picked up the rifles, sauntered back through the lobby to the concierge and said, "Luis, don't wake me. I'm going to sleep for the next six years."

  Luis nodded, but alas also had something himself to present Frenchy. The Medal of Honor, like Earl's? Not quite. No, it was a yellow telegraph message. He looked at it.

  HELO FLIGHT SET GITMO 0900 HRS STOP

  MEETING AMBASSADORS OFFICE HAVANA 1500 HRS

  STOP MANDATORY YOU ATTEND STOP EVANS

  Shit.

  Already it was beginning. How would he explain? Was it a failure with total catastrophic ramifications or was it
just a setback of some sort? He didn't know. He'd been out of the America House so long he'd picked up no gossip or context. He had no idea what was going on, what was being said, what he could expect.

  He went upstairs, peeled off the dank jungle clothes, and climbed into the shower. The water, piercing and furious, restored in him the illusion of good health, and he dried.

  He thought he ought to call Roger. He didn't like the tone. MANDATORY YOU ATTEND. Roger almost never spoke harshly or gave direct orders, so it bugged Frenchy that he was taking such an attitude. He picked up the phone, dialed the number and waited. And waited. And waited. Nobody picked up.

  All right. He dialed Roger's apartment. No answer there either.

  He checked his watch. It was about four. There was no reason for Roger not to be there, unless he was off at a match somewhere, and it seemed unlikely he'd be playing tennis so soon after the Moncada business, but you never knew.

  He dialed a secretary he knew.

  "Hey, Shirley, what is―"

  "Walter," she hissed. "What are you doing? You can't call me." The phone clicked as she hung up.

  He dialed back.

  "What the hell is―"

  "If I get caught talking to you, I'm screwed, too."

  "What?"

  "Call me tonight at my place."

  The line went to dial tone again.

  Frenchy slept for a few hours, went out for a late dinner, ate alone in the nicest restaurant he could find, and then thought about, but decided against, a whore. He finally got back in around eleven. He dialed Shirley at her apartment.

  "What is going on?"

  "There's a big flap. The word is, you're out."

  He didn't say a thing for a while. It did happen: a big screw-up, a blown assignment, especially if you weren't one of the old boys with the Harvard/OSS pedigree, could spell the end. They didn't like it when other people failed. They were allowed to fail, but nobody else was.

  "Who says?"

  "Walter, everybody says."

  "Shit."

  "There's a guy here."

  "A guy?"