Cuba (19 page)

hour, trying to rig it as a sail. It wasn’t

really a sail, but an awning. Finally die

fisherman said maybe it was best used

to catch rain and protect people from die sun, so they

rigged it across die boom and tied it there.

Ocho dragged as many people under it as he could, then lay

exhausted on die board deck in die shade, his

tongue a swollen, heavy, rough thing in his dry

mouth.

Sweating. He was going to have to stop sweating like this, stop

wasting his bodily fluids. Stop this exertion.

Nearby a child cried. She would stop soon, he

thought, too tiiirsty to waste energy crying.

He sat up, looked for Dora. She was sitting in

die shade with her back against die wheelhouse. Her

father, Diego Coca, lay on die deck beside her,

his head in her lap. She looked at Ocho, then

averted her gaze.

“What should I have done”…”…he asked.

She couldn’t have heard him.

He got up, went over to where she was. “What should

I have done?”

She said nothing, merely lowered her head. She was

stroking her father’s hair. His eyes were closed, he

seemed oblivious to bis surroundings and die

corkscrewing motion

of the drifting boat. His body moved slackly as the

boat rose and fell.

Ocho Sedano went into the wheelhouse. Above the

captain’s swollen corpse the helm wheel kicked

back and forth in rhythm to the pounding of the sea.

Ocho held his breath, turned the body over, went

through the pockets. A few pesos, a letter, a

home-made pocketknife, a worn, rusty

bolt, a stub of a pencil, a button … not much

to show for a lifetime of work.

Already the body was swelling in the heat. The face was

dark and mottled.

He dragged the captain’s stiff body from the

wheelhouse, got it to the rail and hooked one of the

arms across the railing. Then he lifted the feet.

The dead man was very heavy. -

Grunting, working alone since none of his audience

lifted a hand to help, Ocho heaved the weight up

onto the rail and balanced it there as the boat

rolled. Timing the roll, he released the body and

it fell into the sea.

The corpse floated beside the boat face up. The

lifeless eyes seemed to follow Ocho.

He tore himself away, finally, and watched the top

of the mast make circles against the gray-white

clouds and patchy blue.

When he looked again at the water the

captain’s corpse was still there, still face up. The

sea water made a fan of his long hair, swirled

and

back and forth as if it were waving in a breeze.

Water flowed into and out of his open mouth as the corpse

bobbed up and down.

The long nights, the sun, heat, and exhaustion

caught up with Ocho Sedano and he could no longer

remain upright. He lowered himself to the deck, wedged his

body against the railing, and slept.

“That freighter that left Gitmo last week, the one

carrying the warheads?”

“I rememberea”…Toad Tarkington said. “The

Colon,

or something like that.”

“Nuestra Senora de Coldn.

She never made it to Norfolk.”

“What”…”…Toad stared at the admiral, who was

holding the classified message.

“She never arrived. Atlantic Fleet HQ is

looking for her rightJiow.”

Toad took the message, scanned it, then handed it

back.

“We sent a destroyer with that shipea”…the admiral

said. “Call the captain, find out everything

you can. I want to know when he last saw that ship and

where she was.”

In minutes Toad had the CO on the secure

voice circuit “We went up through the Windward and

Mayaguanan passagesea”…Toad was told. “They

were creeping along at three Joiots, but they got

their engineering plant rolling again and worked up

to twelve knots, so we left her a hundred

miles north of San Salvador, heading

north.”…The captain gave the date and time.

“The

Coldn

never arrived in Norfolkea”…Toad said.

“I’ll be damned! Lost with all hands?”

“I doubt that very muchea”…Toad replied.

Toad got on the encrypted voice circuit,

telling the computer technicians in Maryland what he

wanted. Soon the computers began chattering.

Rivers of digital, encrypted data from the

National Security Agency’s mainframe computers

at Fort Meade, Maryland, were bounced off a

satellite and routed into the computers aboard

United States.

On the screens before him he began seeing

pictures, radar images from

satellites in space looking down onto the earth.

The blips that were the

Coldn

and her escorting destroyer were easily picked out as

they left Guantdnamo Bay and made their way

through the Windward Passage.

The screens advanced hour by hour. The three-knot

speed of advance made the blips look almost

stationary, so Toad flipped quickly through the screens,

then had to wait while the data feed caught up.

Jake Grafton joined him, and they looked at the

screens together.

The two blips crawled north, past

Mayaguana, past San Salvador, then they

sped up. The destroyer turning back was obvious.

As Jake and Toad watched, the blip that was the

Colon

turned southeast, back toward the Bahamas

archipelago. Then the blip merged into a sea of

white return.

“Now what?”

“It’s rainea”…Jake said. “There was a storm. The

blip is buried somewhere in that rain return. Call

NSA. See if they can screen out the rain

effect.”

He was right; the rain did obscure the blip. But

NSA could not separate the ship’s return from that

caused by rain.

“See if they can do a probability study, show us

the most probable location of the

Coldn

in the middle of that mess.”

The computing the admiral requested took hours, and the

results were inconclusive. As the intensity of the

showers increased and decreased, the probable location of the

ship expanded and contracted like a living circle.

Jake and Toad drank coffee and ate sandwiches

as they waited and watched the computer presentations.

Jake wandered around the compartment looking at maps between

glances at the computer screen and conversations over

another encrypted circuit with the brass in the

Pentagon. The White House was in the loop nowthe

president wanted to know how in hell a shipload of

chemical and biological warheads could disappear.

“What do you think happened, Admiral”…”…Toad

asked.

‘Too many possibilities.”

“Do the people in Washington blame you for not having the

Coldn

escorted all the way to Norfolk?”

“Of course. The national security adviser wants

to know , why the destroyer left the

Colon.”

Toad bristled. “You weren’t told to escort that

ship, you

were told to guard the base. Escorting that ship out of the

area wasn’t your responsibility.”"”

“Somebody is going to second-guess every decision

I makeea”…Jake Grafton said, “all of them.

They’re doing that right now. That comes with the stars and the

job.”

“Hindsight is a wonderful thing.”

“I’ll be out on the golf course soon enough, and the

only person who will second-guess me then will be

my wife.”

Despite the best efforts of the wizards in Maryland

and aboard ship, the location of the

Colon

under the rain of the cold front could not be established.

Jake gave up, finally.

‘Tell them to move forward in time. Let’s see where

the ship was after the storm.”

But when the rain ceased, the computer could not identify the

Colon

from the other ship returns. There were

thirty-two medium- to large-sized vessels in the

vicinity of the Bahamas alone.

Toad stayed on the encrypted circuit to the NSA

wizards. Finally he hung up the handset and turned

to the admiral.

“They can assign track numbers to each blip,

watch where they go, and by process of elimination come up

with the most likely blips. There is a lot of

computing Involved. The process will take hours,

maybe a day of* two.”

Jake Grafton picked up the flight schedule,

took a look, then handed it to Toad. “Put the

air wing up in a surface search pattern.

Let’s see what we”…c find out there now.”

Toad turned to the chart on the bulkhead. “Where do

you want them to look?”

“From the north coast of Cuba north into the

Bahamas. Look along the coast of

Hispaniola, all the way to Puerto Rico. Do

the Turks and Caicos. Have the crews

photograph every ship they see. Have NSA

establish current ship tracks, then match up

what the air crews see with what the satellite

sees. Then let’s run the current plot

backward.”

“Someone got a lucky break with the rain

stormea”…Toad

commented. “Maybe they were playing for the break, maybe

it just happened.”

“Send a top secret message to the Gitmo

base commander. Find out everything they know about die

crew of that ship.”

Jake Grafton tapped the chart. “The

president gave everyone in uniform their marching

orders. Find that ship.”

Maximo Sedano flashed his diplomatic

passport at the immigration officer in the Madrid

airport and was waved through after a perfunctory

glance. His suitcase was checked through to Zurich, and of

course customs passed his attach@l case without

inspection. Traveling as a diplomat certainly

had its advantagesairport security did not

even x-ray a diplomat’s carry-on bags.

- The Cuban minister of finance wandered the airport

terminal luxuriating in the ambiance of Europe.

The shops were full of delicacies, books,

tobacco, clothes, liquor, the women were well

turned out, the sights and smells were of civilization

and prosperity and good living.

In spite of himself, Maximo Sedano

sighed deeply. Ah, yes…

Spain or one of the Spanish islands would be his

choice for retirement. With Europe at his feet,

what more could a man want? And retirement seemed

to Maximo to be almost within reach.

What was the phrase? “Fire in the belly”? Some

Yanqui politician said to win office one must have

fire in the belly.

After a morning of thinking about it, Maximo concluded

he didn’t have the fire. After Fidel died,

Fidel’s brother, Raiil or Maximo’s

brother Hector, or Alejo Vargas, or

anyone else who could kill his rivals could rule

CubaMaximo had given up trying for that prize.

He’d take the money.

And all the things money can buy: villas, beautiful

women, yachts, gourmet food, fine wine,

beautiful women

…

Someone else could stand in the Plaza de la

Revolution in Havana and revel in the cheers of the

crowd.

He filed aboard the plane to Zurich and settled

cheerfully into his seat. He smiled at the flight

attendant and beamed at the man across the

aisle.

Life is good, Maximo told himself, and

unconsciously fingered his breast pocket, where the

cards were that contained Fidel’s signature and

thumbprints.

Why go back?

Fifty-three or comfour million American

dollars was more than enough. To hell with the gold!

As the jet accelerated down the runway, Maximo

told himself that the only smart thing was to take the money

and retire. Now was the hour. Reel in the fish on

the line don’t let it off the hook to cast for

another.

He could transfer the money, spend three or four

days shuffling it around, then leave Zurich on the

Argentine passport as Eduardo Jos6 Lopez.

Maximo Sedano would cease to exist.

Off to Ibiza, buy a small cottage

overlooking the sea, find a willing woman, not too

young, not too old…

Yes.

He would do it.

The sudden death of Fidel Castro caught Alejo

Vargas off guard. The dictator’s death was

supposed to be days, even weeks, away.

Unfortunately Vargas’s political position was

precarious, to say the least. He really could have used

Fidel’s endorsement, however obtained. At least

now no one would get it.

Although he had lived bis whole life in his

brother’s shadow, Raiil Castro nominally held

the reins of government. Alejo Vargas thought that

without Fidel, Raul was completely out on a

limb, without a political constituency of his own.

While he tried to analyze the moves on the

board, Vargas had Colonel Santana lock

Mercedes in a bedroom, seal

the presidential palace, and put a security

man on the telephone switchboard. He didn’t

want the news of Fidel’s death to get out before he

was ready.

Vargas left Santana in charge of the palace and

took his limo back to the ministry. Of course he

refrained from using the telephone in his limo to issue