"Good. You have interrogated him?"
"Yep. "
"And?"
"That's the problem, Smitty. You'd better check back with the President."
"Why?"
"According to Zorilla, Uncle Sam's behind the whole thing."
"He said that?"
"He did. With Chiun squeezing every syllable from him. So he has to be telling the truth."
"I understand," said Smith, his gray-hued face going ashen.
Remo asked, "So what do we do? Back off until you clear this up?"
"One moment, Remo," said Smith. Cradling the blue receiver between jaw and shoulder, he attacked his keyboard. As he worked, he continued speaking.
"If there is a covert U.S. Cuban invasion in the works, it has to be a CIA operation," he muttered.
"Sounds about right to me."
"I am entering their central computer net right now."
"Don't startle any sleeping spooks," Remo said dryly.
"They have no idea I am in their system. I have super-user status."
"Goody for you," Remo said in an impatient voice.
Smith entered the deepest recesses of the CIA system. He executed a global search of keywords. "CUBA" brought up only intelligence intercepts and contingency plans.
"ULTIMA HORA" produced nothing more than raw intelligence.
"CASTRO" summoned up such an endless file of assassination senarios that Smith was forced to log off out of sheer impatience.
He broke contact and turned in his squeaking chair.
"Remo," he said, thin-lipped. "This is not a CIA operation. There is no active scenario fitting the description on file."
"Who said it has to be on computer?" Remo asked reasonably.
"Everything is on computer these days."
"Then it's somebody else. Isn't the President heavily involved in the Cuban exile community? Through his son?"
"Remo," Smith pointed out, "the President suggested this assignment."
"Maybe to cover his butt," suggested Remo.
"Remo," Smith countered, "the President would not put you and Chiun on the trail of these people if he had a stake in their eventual success. I have explained the situation to you. Cuba is hands-off. We do not wish to ruffle the Russian bear's fur."
"Are they still a bear?" Remo wondered. "I thought they were just cubs now."
"Never mind," Smith said. "Give me five minutes." And he hung up.
Smith cleared his throat and lifted the red receiver. The dedicated direct line opened automatically, causing a matching red telephone in the Lincoln Bedroom to begin ringing.
As he waited, Smith turned down the sound of Fidel Castro haranguing a world that no longer had a place for him.
The President's voice was hushed when it came on the line. "Smith. Progress?" he hissed.
"Slight progress. We have located the comandante of the operation. He is a Cuban defector."
"Good."
"He insists that Washington is behind his efforts."
"That is insane! Unless . . . unless there's a rogue CIA effort under way."
"Not possible, Mr. President," Smith said crisply. "I have just gone through the CIA computer net. It is devoid of any such operation. Furthermore, the agency itself shows no activity or message traffic that would be consistent with the management of an ongoing operation of this magnitude."
"You have access to CIA files?" the President said, blank wonder in his tone.
"Part of the mission, Mr. President."
The President's voice grew disturbed. "Did you have it when I was in charge over there?"
"You may conclude that if you wish," Smith said flatly. "But the matter at hand is what should concern us now."
"Of course. Obviously this Cuban defector is lying through his teeth."
"Impossible. He has been subjected to an interrogation technique that is one-hundred-percent irresistible."
"But he implicated Washington," the President of the United States pointed out.
"Specifically, Uncle Sam."
"That could be anyone from a renegade senator to-"
"-to a person with high connections claiming to be operating with presidential sanction," Smith finished.
"Good point. But who?"
"Mr. President, I must ask you this question in the name of national security. You have a son who is active in the Cuban community in Miami. Can you vouch for his recent activities?"
Indignation rose in the President's tone. "I certainly can."
"If you are certain, that is enough for me," Smith said.
"Good," the President said tightly.
"Still," Smith went on, "it might be advisable to get him out of Florida if he happens to be there now."
"Why?"
"Because I am about to order my enforcement arm to terminate everyone connected with this operation."
"I didn't hear that."
"Contact your son, Mr. President. I am about to pull the plug on Ultima Hora forever."
Smith hung up and checked on the progress of the Castro speech. He was in the "History Will Absolve Me" phase. That meant the speech was coming to a climax. No more than an hour remained.
The blue contact phone rang and Smith brought the handset to his grim gray face.
"Remo," he said. "I want you and Chiun to render Ultima Hora completely and totally immobile."
"That mean what I think it means?" Remo asked.
"It does."
"And Zorilla?"
"Make sure he wakes up among the fallen."
"Yeah?"
"Then follow him to whoever he reports to."
"And lead us to his control, right?"
Smith sighed. "Let us hope. Otherwise, knowing the U.S. news media, Fidel Castro will become the next Bart Simpson."
"Huh?"
"His speech is into its fifth hour, with every network and CNN carrying it live with subtitles."
"For crying out loud, why?"
"I believe it is sweeps month," Smith said sourly. "Report when you have penetrated the next echelon."
Smith hung up. He turned up the sound. As he watched the bearded man rant on, his mind went back over the years.
The President of Cuba had been a thorn in the side of the United States for as long as Harold Smith had been sitting at this anonymous desk. Longer. Smith had once been a CIA bureaucrat, and Castro had been a CIA obsession even in those early days. Smith had been privvy to the Bay of Pigs plan, and his advice that the operation was ill conceived and would prove counterproductive if not carried out correctly was pointedly ignored.
The ultimate failure of the operation had made Smith a man with an uncertain future at the CIA. Then had come the summons to the White House and the offer to head the agency that did not exist.
Within a year, the young President had been assassinated. To this day, there were those who pointed the finger of blame for that heinous act at Havana.
But Smith wasn't thinking of that. He was thinking of the global turmoil this one driven individual had caused. The Cuban Missile Crisis had simply been the earliest and most dangerous incident.
Smith knew, because recent revelations had brought it to light, that Havana had attempted to egg the Soviet Union's Khrushchev into nuking the U.S. to protect a tiny island that had never contributed anything more important to the world than sugar and tobacco, one that had been built on the slave trade and was the last in the Western hemisphere to renounce it.
The memory made Harold Smith shudder. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. nuking themselves, and human civilization, into hot smoking ash-over a useless green speck in the Caribbean. All because of one man's rabid antiAmericanism.
Smith thought of the events of his life since 1961, of the people who had been born, the scientific and cultural achievements of mankind. None of them Cuban. And none of them would have happened had Havana gotten its way.
While the first man was walking on the moon, Havana was overturning elected governments in Latin America and Africa. While human hearts were first being successfully transplanted, Castro was ordering Cuban cows to mate with zebu in defiance of elementary genetic logic, in an insane gambit designed to produce an animal that produced both meat and milk.