He lay in the darkness listening. Every now and then he heard a siren moaning, faint and far away. He waited in dread suspense for that moan to join others and become a wailing convoy of police vehicles converging on his hotel, followed by the stamping of a hoard of policemen charging upstairs to arrest him. He twitched with every howl in the night, though they were few and faint and never seemed to grow louder. In the silence between moans he amused himself by trying to calculate the amount of interest that might be due on Castro’s hoard.
He hadn’t seen a statement in about six months … call it six months exactly, half a year. Interest at 2.45 percent, on $53 million … almost 650,000 American dollars.
Ha! The interest alone would buy a nice small villa on Ibiza. Of course he should not rule out Majorca, nor Minorca for that matter, until he had traveled over each of the islands and seen local conditions for himself, and checked the real estate market. No, indeed. He would visit all the Balearic Islands in turn, including Formentera and Cabrera, stay at local inns, drink local wine, eat lamb and beef and fish prepared as the islanders preferred …
Ahh, his dream was within his grasp. Tomorrow. In just a few short hours. When the banks opened he would go immediately to the one with the largest account, submit the transfer card, then to the next one, and finally, the one with the smallest amount on deposit, a mere $11 million.
Maximo paced the room, stared out the window at the lights of the city that housed his fortune, paced some more.
He was full almost to bursting, too excited to sleep.
He had almost run back to the hotel from the railroad station. He had taken his time though, walked slowly and unhurriedly, paused to feed the ducks under one of the Limmat bridges, slipped the ice pick into the river when no one was watching, then walked on to the hotel so full of joy and happiness he could barely contain himself.
At about four in the morning he began to wind down somewhat, so he lay down on the bed. In minutes he was asleep.
When Maximo awoke the sun was up, he could hear a maid running a vacuum sweeper in the next room.
He checked his watch. Almost eight-thirty.
He showered, shaved, put on clean clothes from the skin out, then packed his bags. He would come back to the hotel this afternoon when he had finished his banking and check out. He wanted to be long gone if Santana showed up looking for Rall and the money.
There was a continental breakfast laid out in the hotel dining room, so Maximo paused there for coffee and a French roll.
Suitably fortified, with his attaché case in his left hand and the transfer cards signed by Fidel in his inside breast pocket, Maximo Sedano set off afoot for the bank that was to be his first stop. It was a mere two blocks away, a huge old building of thick stone walls and small windows, a building hundreds of years old with the treasure of the ages in its vaults.
He spoke to a clerk, was ushered into a small windowless office to see a middle-aged man who wore a green eyeshade and spoke tolerably good Spanish. Maximo surrendered the appropriate transfer card and settled down to wait after the clerk left the room.
The bank was quiet. Footsteps were lost on the vast wood and stone floors. Humans seemed to be the intruders here, temporary visitors who came and went while the bank endured the storms of the centuries, a monument to the power of capital.
Five pleasant minutes passed, then five more.
Maximo was in no hurry. He was prepared to wait quite a while for $53 million, even if it took all day. Or several days. After all, he had waited a lifetime so far. But he wouldn’t have to wait long. The clerk would be back momentarily.
And he was.
He came in, looked at Maximo with an odd expression, handed him back the transfer card with just the slightest hint of a bow.
“I am sorry, señor, but the balance of this account is so low that the transfer is impossible to honor.”
Maximo gaped uncomprehendingly. He swallowed, then said, “What did you say?”
“I am sorry, señor, but there has been some mistake.”
“Not on my part,” Maximo replied heatedly.
The clerk gave a tight little professional smile. “The bank’s records are perfectly clear.” He held out the transfer card. “This account contains just a few dollars over one thousand.”
Maximo couldn’t believe his ears. “Where did the money go?”
“Obviously, due to the bank secrecy laws I have limited discretion about what I can say.”
Maximo Sedano leaped across the table at the man, grabbed him by his lapels.
“Where did the money go, fool?” he roared.
“Someone with the proper authorization ordered the money transferred, señor. That much is obvious. I can say no more.” And the clerk wriggled from his grasp.
The story was the same at the next two banks Maximo Sedano visited. Each account contained just a few dollars above the minimum amount necessary to maintain the account.
The horror of his position hit Maximo like a hammer. Not only was there no money here for him, Alejo Vargas would kill him when he got back to Cuba.
He told the bank officer at the last bank he visited that he wanted to make a telephone call, and he wanted the bank officer there to talk to the person at the other end.
He called Vargas at home, caught him before he went to his office.
After he had explained about the accounts, he asked the bank officer to verify what he had said. The officer refused to touch the telephone. “The bank secrecy laws are very strict,” he said self-righteously. Maximo wanted to strangle him.
Vargas had of course listened to this little exchange. “There is no money,” Maximo told the secret-police chief. “Someone has stolen it.”
“You ass,” Vargas hissed. “You have stolen the money. You are the finance minister.”
“Call the other banks, Alejo,” he urged. “They are here in Zurich. I will give you their names and the account numbers. Listen to what the bank officers have to say.”
“You are a capital ass, Sedano. The Swiss bankers will not talk to me. The money was deposited in Switzerland precisely because those bastards will talk to no one.”
“I will call you from their office and have them speak to you.”
“Have you lost your mind? What are you playing at?”
This was a scene from a nightmare.
“If I had the money I would not set foot in Cuba again, Vargas. We both know that. Use your head! I don’t have the money: I’m coming home.”
He tried to slam the instrument into its cradle and missed, sent it skittering off the table. Fumbling, he picked it up by the cord, hung the thing properly on the cradle.
The account officer looked at him with professional solicitude, much like an undertaker smiling at the next of kin.
Perhaps the banks have stolen Fidel’s money, Maximo thought. These Swiss bastards pocketed the Jews’ money; maybe they are keeping Fidel’s.
He opened his mouth to say that very thing to the account officer sitting across the table, then thought better of it. He picked up his attaché case with the pistol in it and walked slowly out of the bank.
The van took Hector Sedano to La Cabana fortress in Havana. It stopped in a dark courtyard where other men were waiting. They took him into the prison, down long corridors, through iron doors that opened before him and closed after him, until finally they stood before an empty cell in the isolation area of the prison. Here they demanded his clothes, his shoes, his watch, the things in his pockets. When he stood naked someone gave him a one-piece jumpsuit. Wearing only that, he was thrust into the cell and the door was locked behind him.
The journey from the everyday world of people and voices and cares and concerns to the stark, vile reality of a prison cell is one of the most violent transitions in this life. The present and the future had been ripped from Hector Sedano, leaving only his memories of the past.