The Cuban Affair

by Nelson DeMille

  I mentioned my concern to Sara—without the analogy—and she assured me, “According to Marcelo, the Tráficos—the highway patrol—are underfunded, and they don’t want to burn gas or put miles on their cars if they don’t have to.”

  Good that Sara learned so much from Marcelo last year. But all it takes is one Tráfico waking up from his backseat siesta to cause a problem.

  She reminded me, “You have a gun.”

  “Right.” And I’d use it if I had to.

  I pushed the wagon up to what I estimated as sixty miles an hour and it handled okay, despite its ethnically diverse body parts. Which made me think again of our cargo, and do some fact checking.

  I wasn’t sure how Eduardo knew that those property deeds were hidden in a church in Havana, and not in the cave at Camagüey as Sara had told me. I could assume that Eduardo knew Sara’s father and/or grandfather, though he didn’t say that, and neither did Sara. Eduardo also didn’t tell me or Sara how the skulls from Villa Marista came into his possession, though the less we knew about that the better. Bottom line, there was a lot of dark matter that held this universe together.

  In any case, those exhumed skulls were now sitting next to a trunk of exhumed documents that were to be reunited with the families who’d lost their property, and the skulls were to be reunited with the families who’d lost and loved these men in life. There was something in this for everyone. Mostly loss, unfortunately, but also maybe hope and closure.

  We continued on the straight highway, and I hadn’t seen a police car yet, though I’d seen military vehicles in the oncoming lanes. The Buick dashboard had lots of old gauges and instruments, but none of them were working, so for all I knew the engine was overheating, the oil pressure was dropping, and the generator had stopped working. A mechanical problem on the road was basically a survival problem.

  “You’re not saying much.”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Are you angry?”

  “No. I’m saving that for when we’re on the boat.”

  She put her hand on my arm. “I’m sorry I lied to you.”

  Didn’t we have this conversation?

  “Mac? You understand why I had to lie.”

  “I can answer that question if you can answer the question of what you actually knew and when you actually knew it.”

  “I honestly wasn’t sure that Eduardo would be here . . . or that we weren’t going to Camagüey. Or that either of those trunks would be waiting for us in Havana . . .”

  I didn’t reply.

  “I really thought we’d be able to fulfill my grandfather’s promise to his clients.”

  Not to mention her promise to me of three million dollars. I thought back to my boat, to when she was pitching this to me. It was, as I suspected, a story too well told, but . . . “I can believe that Carlos and Eduardo were not completely honest with you. And we both know that you weren’t completely honest with me.”

  She didn’t respond directly but said, “What we’re doing . . . it’s important . . . and sometimes the ends justify the means.”

  I had a flashback to some bad days in Kandahar Province, and I advised her, “Don’t become what you’re fighting.”

  She nodded.

  “Are there any new surprises in Cayo Guillermo that I should know about?”

  She stayed silent for a few seconds, then replied, “When you ask a question like that, you know the answer.”

  “Then why would I ask?”

  “The answers are all there. I told you, you’re very smart. You just need to take what you know and come to a conclusion.”

  This was sounding like Cuban Zen. “Is it something that will please me more than the money?”

  “No.”

  So that ruled out me killing time on a nude beach in Cayo Guillermo before our 7 P.M. rendezvous at the hotel. Well, I didn’t want to ruin my surprise, so I dropped the subject.

  We drove in silence, then Sara said, “I am sorry about the money.”

  Not as sorry as I am. But right from the beginning the money seemed more illusion than reality; like El Dorado, the City of Gold, shimmering in the distant hills. How many men died looking for that?

  I said, “I’m sure that the exiles and their families will be even sorrier to hear that their money is still in Cuba.”

  “We’re going to come back for the money someday. Soon.” She asked, “Will you come with me?”

  “No.”

  “Think about it.”

  “Okay. No.”

  “Think again.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You have adventure in your soul.”

  And rocks in my head.

  CHAPTER 44

  It was 1 A.M., and the traffic was thinning, and there were fewer signs of human habitation along the highway. The terrain was getting hilly and I noticed that the engine strained on the uphill. Was it ironic that this wagon was powered by a boat engine? Was it Karma? Or was it just Chico’s cheapest option? Well, you get what you pay for. Except in Cuba.

  Sara said, “Two things have made this trip more important than money.”

  “The day at the organic farm, and—?”

  “Us, Mac. We found each other.”

  “Right.” With some complications.

  “And we are bringing home the remains of those men.”

  No argument there. But like everything else in this country, there was undoubtedly a price tag on those skulls, and that made me think of a nation of people who were so desperate that they had become accomplished scammers to survive. Like Antonio. And it occurred to me that maybe those skulls weren’t those of American POWs murdered in Villa Marista prison; that some con artists had capitalized on the story and sold Eduardo and his friends a bill of goods and seventeen random skulls. There was no shortage of executed prisoners in Cuba, and no shortage of Cuban American exiles who’d believe anything that would help topple the regime. But would Eduardo be so gullible? Well, when—or if—we got those skulls out of Cuba, we’d find out, scientifically, what we’d risked our lives for.

  And while I was not taking anything at face value, what about those twelve steamer trunks filled with money and hidden in a cave in Camagüey? Did they really exist? And if they did, were they still there?

  This country was like an elaborate magic show, a grand illusion, a game of three-card monte, and a Hogwarts for con artists. And I thought the Afghanis were slippery.

  Well, the property deeds seemed real enough.

  I glanced at Sara. She was real. And she had confessed all her lies. What more could I want?

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “I’m thinking about Antonio coming to your room at midnight and seeing the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign.”

  “Do you think he’ll notify the police?”

  “That depends on whether or not he wants to tell them he had a date with you, and that you jilted him.”

  She nodded.

  “I myself would be embarrassed, and probably not tell the police that I’d been scammed. But if he’s a good police informant, he might make that call and give the police a heads-up, and by seven A.M., when we don’t show up at the pier, there’ll be no question that we’re gone.”

  She thought about all that and replied, “We didn’t get much of a head start.”

  “No.” And we were already on a police watch list, thanks to Antonio. And we had a few other problems with this road trip. Like if the police had already made the connection between me and Fishy Business, which would lead them straight to Cayo Guillermo. And we wouldn’t know we had that problem until we got to Cayo, and by that time . . . Well, as they say, you should never travel faster than your guardian angel can fly.

  Another problem with this Misión Imposible was us arriving in Cayo and discovering that the fleet had been booted out of the country. And the third possible problem was Eduardo, wandering around Havana, or beginning his cross-country walk home.

  Eduardo was the only person in Cuba—except
for Jack and Felipe—who knew where Dan MacCormick and Sara Ortega were going, and he even knew what we were driving. And if the police picked him up, and ID’d him as Eduardo Valazquez, the notorious anti-Castro enemy of the state, they’d ask him why he was in Cuba as they were electrifying his nuts. Eduardo had assured us he would take the poison—but you never know.

  And then there was Chico and Flavio, both of whom knew a little more than I wanted them to know. And I shouldn’t forget the old man with the cane. I was sure that Eduardo’s amigos in Miami and Havana had vetted all three of them, but . . . everyone in Cuba, as Antonio said, had a second job. And everyone sold each other out.

  Sara said, “Someday, Antonio and everyone like him in Cuba will face a day of judgement.”

  Actually, I would’ve liked to have been in Sara’s room at midnight to deliver my own judgement to Antonio’s nuts. But the mission comes first.

  Sara was looking in her sideview mirror, and now and then she glanced over her shoulder.

  I asked her, “Do the Tráficos use unmarked cars?”

  “They do.” She added, “They drive mostly Toyota SUVs.”

  Sara was a wealth of information. Some of it obtained from Marcelo last year. Some of it obtained from her briefing officer, the retired CIA guy. And some information had come to her from Eduardo, Carlos, and their amigos in the exile community. I wasn’t as well-informed as she was, but I noticed that if I asked, sometimes I got an answer. So I asked, “Did Eduardo know your father or grandfather?”

  “He knew both.”

  “Right. So one or both of them must have told Eduardo that those property deeds were hidden in a church, not in the cave.”

  “I guess.”

  “But you didn’t know that.”

  “I . . . may have known. But forgot.”

  “Or those deeds were in the cave, and someone has already been to the cave and cleaned it out.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “I’m suggesting that Eduardo has been playing this game long before you or I were even born.”

  “This is not a game.”

  “It is. But who’s calling the plays?”

  “Not you.”

  “Right. I’m just the running back. You’re the quarterback, and Eduardo is the coach.”

  “Good analogy.” She advised me, “Don’t think about this too much.”

  “Okay.” But I was thinking about who owned the team. And I concluded that the Company owned the team.

  It occurred to me that cyanide is not that easy to come by. They don’t sell it in Walgreens. I thought, too, about Eduardo’s forged passport, and about his friends in American intelligence. And the more I thought about all this, the more I saw the hand of the Company in some of this mission—the CIA. I mean, any normal American boy raised on conspiracy theories sees the hand of the CIA in everything. Even my father, who blames his bad golf game on CIA mind control. I had worked with the CIA in Afghanistan, and seen them at their best in Special Ops. Cuba, however, was another story. The CIA had been intimately, obsessively, and unhappily involved in Cuban affairs even before Castro took over. The careers of CIA officers had been made and broken in Cuba—mostly broken. That was a long time ago, but the pain and institutional embarrassment of those failures lingered on. I mean, the exploding cigars had become a joke, but the Bay of Pigs Invasion was a historic catastrophe.

  I assumed, therefore, that the CIA wanted a win. And I suspected that the CIA was no fan of the Cuban Thaw, which would legitimize the regime and help keep the Castros and the Communists in power. And to allow the Thaw to go forward would be a betrayal of all the dissidents risking their lives in Cuba, and all the exile groups in America who still had a relationship with the CIA—people like Eduardo Valazquez and his amigos. So, yes, I could see the hand of the CIA in this mission, and if true, it never was about the money in the cave; it was always about recovering the skulls and the stolen property in the back of this Buick, and stirring up a shit storm that would send the diplomats home, or at least give them more to argue about.

  And if all this was true, what was also true was that my three million dollars was just bait—and not even a real hunk of meat; just a shiny lure. Well, as Sara said, I shouldn’t think about this too much. But it explained some of the bullshit. And maybe prepared me for my surprise in Cayo.

  Bottom line, though, I felt good about getting out of Havana and sitting behind the wheel of my own car with a loaded Glock in my belt. It was still a long way to Key West, but we were heading in the right direction, and I was in the driver’s seat for a change. The Havana bullshit was behind me. From here it was all balls, all the way.

  Sara had retrieved a bottle of water from her backpack and we shared it. She said, “I’ve been thinking about the Yale alum group.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Be serious, Mac. I hope we don’t cause them any problems.”

  “That’s nice of you to think about them.” While we’re running for our lives. “Any problems they have will be caused by the Cuban government. Not us.”

  “I feel that we used them.”

  “We did.” I reminded her, “That was your plan.” Or maybe the CIA’s.

  “They may be questioned by the police.”

  “The highlight of their trip.”

  “And kicked out of the country.”

  “Or worse. Another week with Antonio. Unless the police beat him up.”

  “Be a little sympathetic.”

  “Okay, I liked Tad,” I admitted. “And Alison, and Professor Nalebuff, and some of the others, like . . .” Pretty Cindy Neville. I reminded Sara, “I left my Hemingway T-shirt for Richard.”

  She ignored that and said, “I wonder what Tad is going to do when he discovers we’re missing.”

  That was the more important issue. “Hopefully, he’ll alert the embassy, who will call the Ministry of the Interior, who will deny we are in their custody but will be put on notice that the U.S. Embassy is aware of our absence and concerned.”

  She nodded.

  “Unfortunately, before Tad makes that call, Antonio will have made his call to the police sometime before dawn, and the Ministry of the Interior will e-mail our airport photos to every police station, military installation, airport, and seaport in the country, including Cayo Guillermo.”

  She stayed silent, then asked, “Do you think we’re going to make it?”

  “We are going to give it our best shot.”

  She nodded. “Do you remember what I told you in our room at the Nacional?”

  “About . . . ?”

  “About us sitting on the bow of your boat, with Jack and Felipe in the cabin, looking at the horizon as Key West comes into view.”

  “Right.”

  “And I said that our mission is blessed. And that just as you returned home from Afghanistan, you will return home from Cuba.”

  “I remember that.”

  “You need to believe that. That is what got you home from the war.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “When you are blessed, and when your cause is just, God is with you, and you are strong.”

  I nodded. And I recalled something handwritten on a piece of paper that had made the rounds among the troops: Fate whispered to the warrior, “You cannot withstand the coming storm.” And the warrior whispered back, “I am the storm.”

  “We’re going home. Jack and Felipe are going home. And the warriors are going home.”

  CHAPTER 45

  It was about 2:30 A.M., and we were almost three hours out of Havana. I hadn’t seen another vehicle for awhile, and I was feeling conspicuous by their absence.

  On another issue, if I was getting about fifteen miles to the gallon, we had, theoretically, enough fuel to drive a few more hours. But that was based on two assumptions: that Chico had topped off the tank, and that he hadn’t swapped the standard twenty- or twenty-five-gallon tank for something smaller.

  Also, without a working speedometer or odometer, the math had too ma
ny unknowns. But based on my estimated speed of 60 mph, and three hours on the road, I figured we were about one hundred and eighty miles out of Havana—about three hundred kilometers. It was about another three hundred kilometers to Cayo Guillermo, though a lot of that was on secondary roads, and that could take over four hours.

  But my main concern at the moment was hearing the engine sputter. Then having a Tráfico stop to see what our problem was.

  The interior lights didn’t work, so Sara was reading the road map by the light of her otherwise useless cell phone. “We should be approaching Santa Clara—a fairly big town.”

  “Will they have all-night gas stations?”

  “Yes. But . . . us pulling into a gas station at three in the morning might not be a good idea.”

  “Right. But I’m not sure of our fuel situation.”

  She thought about that and said, “I think we need to get off the road and continue at dawn when we won’t be the only car on the highway.”

  We probably had more gas than I thought, but the real issue now was a police car pulling up behind us. “Okay.”

  The signage on the Autopista was either nonexistent or unlit, but we looked for the Santa Clara exit.

  Meanwhile, Mama Inés’ ropa vieja was just a distant memory and my stomach was growling. “Did you pack anything to eat?”

  “I have some chocolate from the minibar that I might share with you.”

  “I’ll give you a hundred thousand pesos.”

  She retrieved a Kit Kat from her backpack and we split it. I wondered who was going to pick up our minibar charges at the Parque Central. Well, they had our luggage and all our clothes. My suitcase alone was worth at least fifty dollars.

  We drove on, and we were definitely pushing our luck regarding police cars. I would have gotten off the road anywhere, but there were deep drainage ditches along the shoulders and we were basically stuck on the limited-access highway until the next exit.

  Meanwhile, I was listening for the sputter of the engine, and looking for headlights in my rearview mirror.

  And sure enough, I saw headlights cresting the hill behind us. Sara also saw them in her sideview mirror, but didn’t say anything.