The man who ran the covert side of the business was a Cuban who had never set foot inside the U.S. Interest Section and probably never would. He owned a wholesale seafood operation on the waterfront in Havana Harbor. Every day the fishing boats brought their catch to his pier and every day he purchased what he thought he could sell. Both the price he paid and the price he charged were set by the government: had there not been a black market for fish he would have starved.
The cover was decent. A Cuban fishing boat could meet an American boat or submarine at sea, passing messages or material in either direction. The spymaster’s delivery trucks visited every restaurant, casino, and embassy in the capital. With people and things coming and going, the old man could keep his pulse on Cuba. He was called el Tiburón, the Shark.
William Henry Chance had no intention of ever meeting el Tiburón unless disaster was staring him in the face. The CIA man in the American Interest Section was another matter.
“Ah, yes, Mr. Chance. Delighted to meet you, of course.”
Dr. Bouchard shook hands with Chance and Carmellini as he peered at them over the top of his glasses. He led them down several narrow hallways to a tiny, windowless cubicle in the bowels of the building.
“Sorry to say, this is the office. Security, you know. They used to store food in here. Damp but quiet.” He took a stack of newspapers off the only guest chair and moved them to his desk, extracted a folding metal chair from behind his desk and unfolded it for Carmellini, then settled into his chair.
The knees of all three men almost touched. “So how are you enjoying Cuba?”
“Fascinating,” Chance muttered.
“Yes, isn’t it?” Professor Bouchard beamed complacently. “Six years I’ve been here, and I don’t ever want to leave. I don’t miss the snow, I’ll tell you, or the faculty politics, feuds, dog-eat-dog jealousy over department budgets — thank God I’m out of all that.”
Chance nodded, unwilling to get to the point.
“We met once or twice before, I think,” Chance reminded Bouchard.
“Oh, yes, I do seem to recall ….”
They discussed it.
“My associate, Mr. Carmellini. I don’t think you’ve met him.”
The pleasantries over at last, Chance edged around to business. “You have a few items in your storeroom that we need to borrow, I believe.”
“Certainly. The inventory is in the safe. If you gentlemen will step into the hall for a moment …”
They did so and he fiddled with the dial of the safe. When he had the file he wanted and the safe was closed and locked, he seated himself again at his desk. Chance sat back down. Carmellini remained standing.
“This is the inventory, I’m sure. Yes. What is it you want?”
“Two Rugers with silencers, ammunition, two garroting wires, two fighting knives, a dozen disposable latex gloves, two self-contained gas masks—”
“Let’s see …” The professor ran his finger down the list. “Guns, check. Ammo, okay. Knives … knives … oh, here they are. Wires, garroting, check … gloves … masks. Yes, I think we have what you need. Do you want to take this stuff with you?”
“I think so. In a suitcase of some kind, if you can manage that.”
“I’ll have to give you one of mine. You can return it or pay me for it, as you prefer.”
“We’ll try to return it.”
“That’s best, I think. The accounting department is so difficult about expense accounts. You gentlemen wait here; I’ll see what I can do. While you’re waiting, would you like a cup of coffee, a soft drink?”
“I’m fine,” Chance said.
“Don’t worry about me,” Carmellini said.
“This will take a few minutes,” the professor advised. “Would you like to wait in the courtyard? The flora there is my hobby, and the eagle from the Maine Memorial is a rare work of art.”
“That’s the big eagle over the doorway?”
“Yes. After the revolution Castro demanded it be removed from the Maine Memorial. That was about the time he announced he was a communist, before the Bay of Pigs. Difficult era for everyone.”
“Ah, yes. We’ll find our way.”
“I’ll look for you in the courtyard when I have your items,” the professor said, and scurried off.
The eagle was huge. “Quite a work of art,” Carmellini muttered.
“Too big for you,” Chance said.
“I don’t know about that,” Carmellini replied, and glanced around to see if there was any way to get the thing out of the mission ground with a crane. “Run a mobile construction crane up to the wall, send a man down on the hook, haul it out. I could snatch it and be gone in six or seven minutes.”
Chance didn’t even bother to frown. Carmellini had a habit of chaffing him in an unoffensive way; protest would be futile.
“The professor is the most incurious man I’ve ever met,” Tommy Carmellini said conversationally a few minutes later.
“He doesn’t want to know too much.”
“He doesn’t want to know anything,” Carmellini protested. “People who don’t ask obvious questions worry me.”
“Hmmm,” said William Henry Chance, who didn’t seem at all worried.
The professor came looking for them a half hour later. After he had scrawled an illegible signature on a detailed custody card, Chance offered the professor a photo of a man that his surveillance team had taken outside the University of Havana science building. The man was in his sixties, slightly overweight, balding, and looking at the camera almost full face. He didn’t see the camera that took the picture, of course, since it was in the van.
“If you could, Professor, I would like you to send this to Washington. I want to know who this man is.”
“American?” Dr. Bouchard asked, accepting the photo and glancing at it.
“I have no idea, sir. We’ve seen him around here and there and wondered who he might be. Would you have the folks in Langley try to find out?”
“Of course,” the professor said, and put the photo in his pocket.
Toad Tarkington was in a rare foul mood. He snapped at the yeomen, snarled at the flag lieutenant, fumed over the message board, and generally glowered at anyone who looked his way.
This state of affairs could not go on, of course, so he went to his stateroom, put on his running togs, and went on deck for a jog. The tropical sea air, the long foaming rollers, the puffy clouds running on the breeze, the deep blue of the Caribbean — all of it made his mood more foul.
None of the leads to find the Colón had borne fruit. The ship was still missing, the captain and crew had stayed aboard her all the time she was tied to the pier in Guantánamo, the gloom seemed impenetrable. The air wing was still searching, but as yet, nothing! And of course the temperature of the rhetoric coming from the White House and Pentagon was rising by the hour.
Toad was jogging aft from the bow when a petty officer from the admiral’s staff flagged him down. “The AIs have a photo of the Colón!”
“Where is she?”
“Aground on a reef off the north shore of Cuba.”
Toad bolted for the hatchway that led down into the ship, the petty officer right behind.
The photo was of the Colón, all right. The ship looked as if it were wedged on some rocks, almost as if it grounded during a high tide. Now the tide was out and the Colón was marooned.
“When was this picture taken?” Toad demanded of the air intelligence officers.
“Yesterday.”
“And no one recognized it?”
“Not until today.”
Toad growled. “Have you passed this to the admiral?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Show me the location.”
The AI pinpointed the location on a sectional chart.