Authors: David Hagberg
“Are you sure it’s there,
Coronel
?” Lieutenant Ruiz asked.
“Sí.”
“What if we run into opposition?”
“Get the samples out and meld back into the crowd,” María said, and before the lieutenant could speak, she answered his next question. “Whatever it takes, but quietly.”
* * *
At that moment, Ruiz passed by but didn’t look over to see who was parked in the Hummer, and within minutes he was lost in the crowd on the bridge.
She got out as Fuentes walked up. Like most of the others choking the roadway, he was dressed in jeans and a loose shirt.
“Any trouble from the other side?” María asked.
Fuentes was in cell phone contact with one of the DI operators near the lead. “The cops and Texas National Guard are there, just like you said they would be, but they’re not blocking the roads, just directing the parade through downtown toward Highway 54.”
“Any sign of the media?”
“They’re all over the place, also just like you said they would be.”
María had phoned Ortega-Cowan and given him the word to start calling the media in the States immediately after she’d talked to McGarvey.
The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times
, plus all the wire services, including the AP and Reuters, online sites such as AOL Latino, and the television networks CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, Fox, and the local television, radio, and newspapers.
“Treasure march for the people.” The catchphrase had grown overnight, as Ortega-Cowan promised it would, because the average non-Cuban American was frankly sick of what seemed to be a senseless embargo against an island just ninety miles south of Key West. Cubans were pleasant, if desperately poor, the tropical nights were fantastic, the rum even better. And who really remembered Batista, the revolution, even the Bay of Pigs or the missile crisis? If some Spanish treasure could be shared, why not?
None of this ever really had a chance of success, not from the beginning. And yet what else was there? María figured that if she made it to the treasure cache, whether it was there or not, and then made it back across the border, she would have won. In the end, Rosales would make it right.
And yet María had a gut feeling that she had lied not only to everyone else but to herself as well. Lied all her life, because as corny as it sounded even to her inner voice, all she ever really wanted was to fit in somewhere, to love and be loved, to be appreciated for—as a lover had once said—her inner beauty.
But she had always denied it.
“Shall we take a walk?” she said to Fuentes, and she joined the crowd moving slowly across the bridge, a mother with a crying infant in her arms, and two others hanging on to the hem of her dress just ahead.
The power of a mother and child, indeed.
SEVENTY-TWO
McGarvey stood just below the crest of the hastily bulldozed mound on the east side of the first trench, binoculars raised as the first of the crowd estimated at seven thousand people began to appear on Highway 54. The sun had set fifteen minutes ago, and many of the people carried flashlights or torches, but they made no noise. The panorama was nearly surreal, otherworldly, or from another time; Egyptian workers marching in protest on the pyramids.
“What do you want to do?” General Gunther called up from the base of the mound, where he was waiting next to a Hummer.
“Let them come ahead,” McGarvey said, lowering the binoculars.
“Sure you don’t want backup?”
“It’s okay, General. They’ll be gone by first light. Some even before that.”
“What about the media? They’re all over the place.”
“Don’t interfere with them,” McGarvey said absently. It was just as he figured it would turn out. Gunther had given his people strict orders not to contact the press or television networks. It meant that María or someone directed by her had leaked the word to the media.
“How about when the marchers get here,” Gunther shouted. “Do you want me to set up a perimeter?”
María was out there; he could practically feel her presence. And she had almost certainly brought muscle with her. For just an instant, he caught an image of her face as she had emerged from the basement of the brownstone in Georgetown. She’d been wide eyed, her lips pursed, excited, maybe even a little frightened. And vulnerable. She was in a place that for her was badland with some serious people gunning for her.
McGarvey lowered the binoculars. “No,” he called down. “Just keep them from spreading out, especially east toward the airport.”
“How long do we keep the highway closed?”
“Until they clear out.”
Gunther turned away, then looked back up. “There’re a lot of them.”
“I’d hoped there might be.”
“Some of them are probably armed.”
“Almost certainly,” McGarvey said.
The general shook his head, got back in his Hummer, and his driver took off.
McGarvey phoned Martínez. “Where are you?”
“Close. A few hours.”
“How many people?”
“Maybe three or four thousand. I didn’t stop to count.”
“It’ll have to do,” McGarvey said. “Good luck, Raúl.”
“You, too,
comp.
”
Otto called almost immediately. “I’m in.”
“Did you find it?” McGarvey asked.
“Looks like it.”
SEVENTY-THREE
Except for the four-man swing shift crew in the operations center, Ortega-Cowan was alone on the fifth floor in his office watching the events unfolding in Texas as reported by CNN. So far, everything was going exactly as planned. The American authorities were doing nothing to block the marchers who were beginning to enter Fort Bliss along a narrow road south of the National Cemetery, which was just as incredible and unprecedented to him as the correspondent was terming it.
“… nothing short of a so far peaceful invasion of the United States, for what purpose no one is saying yet.”
The only difference in his sister’s plan was the ultimate outcome for her. At some point in the confusion tonight, Fuentes would shoot her to death. An unfortunate accident, but one with some poetic justice. Colonel León had become unstable over the past weeks. She’d even been called before El Presidente to explain herself.
Of course, it was the unfortunate passing of her father that had sent her over the edge, caused her to defect to the United States, and led to her current delusion that by somehow staging some mass demonstration in Texas, she would find the salvation she’d preached she was seeking.
“But salvation from whom or what?” Ortega-Cowan had written in his daybook. It was an answer she couldn’t or wouldn’t give to him, at which time, he wrote, he’d become deeply concerned for her sanity and loyalty to the state.
He happened to glance up when the elevator, which had been on the ground floor, stopped on the fifth and two very large men, wearing khaki slacks and plain white guayabera shirts, got off and marched down the hall to his office.
He got to his feet. “This is a restricted area,” he said. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” But he knew.
Both of them were dark, with the solid build of rugby players. One held up an SDE identification booklet with the name
ERNESTO NUÑEZ
. It was the Seguridad del Estado—the state police under Raúl Castro’s direct control. “Major Román Ortega-Cowan, you are under arrest.”
“On what charge?”
“Treason.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ortega-Cowan said, but his heart froze. The incredible bitch had done it to him.
“Are you armed at this time, Major?”
Ortega-Cowan, who was dressed in plain olive drab fatigues, spread his arms. “No.”
He was handcuffed and taken downstairs past the evening security officer, who looked away when they passed, and outside was handed into the backseat of a Gazik with military markings.
Not really paying much attention to where he was being driven, Ortega-Cowan tried to work out his next moves, because there was no way he was going to face a firing squad on such a charge, although it did have some truth to it. It could be proved that he had helped with María’s scheme, but he could and would argue that everything he had done was to prove that she—not he—was the traitor. And it was she and Captain Fuentes who were at this moment marching on a military installation in Texas, while he was still here in Havana at his desk doing his job.
But before this was allowed to go much further, and definitely before he was locked up in some cell, he needed to speak to the president, and he started to tell that to the officers when he realized that they were on the Malecón, evening traffic just beginning to pick up.
“Where are you taking me?”
“You know where,” Nuñez said without looking over his shoulder.
Two minutes later, they pulled over and parked in front of the apartment building where he’d last spoken with María and Manuel and the attorney Rosales, and he was hustled out of the jeep and taken upstairs to the safe house, a very sour taste in his mouth.
The place was in a shambles: the furniture was cut apart, the tables and chairs and appliances in the kitchen and even the fixtures in the bathroom had been dismantled, the wallpaper stripped, holes punched in the walls.
Raúl Castro stood in the middle of the mess and he turned around. “Here you are at last.”
Ortega-Cowan’s heart soared. He still had a chance. “I’m glad that you’re here,
Señor Presidente
, I have so much to tell you.”
“Sí,”
Castro said. “But first I will tell you what I have learned about you and your plotters of treason, including Colonel León, Captain Fuentes, and two spies who have worked for you from their
paladar
downstairs in this very building. Fidel and Margarita de la Paz, I believe their names are.” Raúl brushed it aside. “But they have already confessed and have been taken care of, along with Julio Rosales—a personal friend and an exceedingly sad surprise.”
This was even worse than Ortega-Cowan had feared. “If you will let me explain—”
“I will explain to you about the plot you hatched with Colonel León to kidnap the wife of a senior CIA official to lure her husband here, who in turn was used as bait to lure a former director of the CIA. All of it culminating in a march of innocent Cuban citizens, most of them simple farmers and shopkeepers, some of them old women, others women with their children, across the Mexican border into Texas.” Castro’s voice steadily rose. “For what?” he shouted. “Some mythical Spanish treasure that even if it ever existed, would only deepen the embargo against us if we tried to steal it?”
Ortega-Cowan said nothing. There was nothing he could say.
Castro turned away and looked out the window toward the water. “What to do,” he muttered. “How to repair the damage you have caused us?”
“May I speak in my defense?” Ortega-Cowan asked.
“No,” Castro said. He turned back, stared at Ortega-Cowan for a long moment, then walked out, not bothering to close the door.
Ortega-Cowan could hear the president’s footsteps down the hall at the same time he realized that Nuñez was pointing a pistol with a silencer on the end of its barrel directly at his head from just a few feet away.
He started to raise his hand, but a thunderclap burst inside his skull.
SEVENTY-FOUR
President Langdon and a half dozen of his staff, including his National Security Adviser Frank Shapiro, his Chief of Staff John McKevit, and the Director of the FBI Gavin Litwiller, were in the Oval Office watching the CNN reports on the events unfolding in northwest Texas when Mrs. Stubbs, his private secretary, appeared at the door.
“Mr. President,” she said. “Raúl Castro wishes to speak with you.”
Everyone except Langdon looked up in surprise. McGarvey had predicted this.
“You might want to hold off taking his call until we know how this shakes out, and until we can get someone who speaks Spanish in here,” Shapiro said.
Langdon had been leaning against his desk. He motioned for someone to mute the sound on the television, and when it was off, he punched the number for the line that was lit and hit the speakerphone. “Good evening, Mr. President,” he said.
“Good evening to you, Mr. President,” Castro said in English, no translator. “Undoubtedly you are monitoring the events that are taking place outside of El Paso, Texas.”
McGarvey had not only raised the possibility that Castro might call and why, but how to respond. Nonetheless, just now it was extraordinary to Langdon.
“Yes, we are, with great interest. From what we’ve been able to gather, some of the marchers may be Cuban citizens.”
“They are,” Castro said with no effort at diplomacy. “Which is why I have made this call to personally give you my word that neither I nor anyone in my government allowed such an operation. In fact, it just came to complete light a couple of hours ago. Before this evening, my only knowledge was of the kidnapping of the wife of one of your CIA officers and the interrogation outside of Havana of that officer and another at the hands of my director of intelligence operations.”
“Which would be Colonel María León.”
“Yes, Mr. President. You also may know that she was my late brother’s daughter. Unhinged, I fear, by her father’s death.”
“Are you telling me that she is leading this march across my border?”
“Yes.”
“With the help of President Calderón?”
“No. It is my understanding that Colonel León and others in her ring of traitors enlisted the help of a number of drug cartels to not only transport Cuban citizens to Mexico, but to force ordinary Mexican citizens to participate.”
“To what end, Mr. President?” Langdon asked.
Castro was silent for several beats, and for a moment Langdon thought the call had been disconnected. But then the Cuban president was back.