“Are they listening?” she whispered.
“Probably not,” he said. “The electricity is off, and they would need it to listen.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Two days. For two days I’ve been sitting alone in this hole. No one comes to see me.”
“They will admit no one. I told them Fidel had sent me, and the commandante was afraid to refuse.”
“Ah, yes, Fidel.”
“He is dead.”
“I am sorry, Mercedes,” he said softly, so softly she almost missed his words.
“It had to happen. He and I both knew it, accepted it.”
Hector sighed. “That explains my arrest, then.”
“Two days ago.”
“The cancer finally, eh?”
“Poison! He poisoned himself rather than make a tape naming Vargas as his successor.”
Hector crossed himself.
“It was not a sin,” she said, desperate to explain. “He merely speeded things up a few days.”
Hector leaned forward, let his forehead touch the cool steel bars.
“I heard there was a riot in Mariel after you were arrested.” Her voice was very soft, a whisper in church.
“I did not know that.”
“A friend told me.”
“Have you heard from Ocho?”
“Nothing. Is he not at home?”
“He went on a boat with some others. They were going to America.”
“I have heard nothing.”
Hector sagged, fought to stay erect. He looked so … so different from Fidel, Mercedes thought. He was not tall, vigorous, oozing machismo. And yet Fidel thought Hector could lead Cuba!
She got as close to the bars as she could, and whispered, “I need to talk to the Americans as soon as possible. Should I see the little man you gave the Swiss bank account numbers to? The stadium keeper?”
“He might betray you. He talks to Vargas too. I tried to frighten him, and may have succeeded too well.”
“Who, then?”
“Go to the American mission. Ask for the cultural aide, I think his name is Bouchard. He is CIA, I believe.”
“Fidel signed bank transfer orders for Maximo, who went flying off to Switzerland, just as we thought he would. I have not heard if he got the money.”
“He will not come back if he gets it,” Hector said.
“Maximo would steal it,” she agreed. “But do you think the Americans will ever give the money back?”
“I have heard their courts are fair. I would rather try to get the money back from them than from Maximo.”
She nodded at that.
“Why do you want to talk to the Americans now?” Hector asked.
She told him.
The secret police had the bodies of the two saboteurs laid out in the basement of police headquarters when Vargas saw them. Two Latin-looking males who had spent many years in the United States, from the look of their dental work. Exiles, probably.
Vargas examined their clothes, which were in a pile, and stirred through the contents of the van. He examined the chemical timers and C-4 shaped charges, the guns and electrical tape, and tossed everything back on the table.
CIA.
No doubt in his mind.
Four extra-high-voltage towers had collapsed, killing power to the two substations that fed central Havana and the government office buildings located there.
A neat and tidy operation.
And as soon as the power went off, a team of burglars entered the Interior Ministry and robbed the safe in his office, carrying away files that he had spent twenty years collecting.
The Americans.
And he had not an iota of proof, nor would he ever get any.
The burglars also stole his laptop computer, and the thought of its loss gave him pause. Certainly not as valuable as the files, the laptop had many things on it he wished the Americans did not have.
He had used the computer to derive the trajectories for the missiles’ guidance systems, which had to be reprogrammed when the warheads were changed, the new biological warheads being significantly lighter than the old nuclear ones. Still, if the Americans didn’t know about the missiles, perhaps they wouldn’t pay much attention to that file.
What the burglary showed, Alejo Vargas concluded, was that time was short. The Americans could move fast and decisively — to win the game he was going to have to move faster.
I’m ready, he told himself. Now is the hour.
“I am Bouchard, the cultural attaché.”
Mercedes Sedano smiled, shook the offered hand.
“Please sit down.” Bouchard looked embarrassed, as if he rarely entertained visitors in this small office, which was packed with Cuban magazines and newspapers. Four candles sat atop the piles. “The power is still out,” he said by way of explanation. “And the emergency generator ran out of fuel an hour ago.”
“I don’t know how to begin, Doctor,” she said.
“I am not a real doctor,” he said apologetically. “I am a scholar.”
“My brother-in-law is Hector Sedano,” she explained. “He said I should come to you.”
“My work is strictly cultural, señora. I work for the American state department studying the culture of Cuba. I cannot imagine how I could be of service to you, or anybody else. I write studies of Cuban music, literature, drama ….”
“I know nothing about the branches of the American government,” she said.
Bouchard smiled. “I know very little myself,” he confided.
“You still haven’t asked why I am here.”
“I ask now, señora. What may I do for you?”
“My brother-in-law, Hector Sedano, says you work for the CIA. He—”
Bouchard was horrified. His hands came up, palms out. “Señora, you have been severely misinformed. As I have just explained, I am a scholar who—”
“Yes, yes. I understand. But I have a problem that—”
He clapped his hands over his ears. “No, no, no. You have made a great mistake,” he said.
She sat calmly, waiting for him to lower his hands. When he saw that she was not going to speak, he did so. “I must show you my work,” Bouchard said, and dug into a drawer. He came up with a handful of paper, which he thrust at her. “I recently completed a major study of—”
She refused to touch the paper. “Fidel Castro is dead,” she said.
Bouchard froze. After a few seconds he remembered the paper in his hand and laid it on top of the nearest pile.
“I was there when he died. We were filming a statement to the Cuban people, a political will, if you please.” She produced two videotapes from her large purse and laid them on the nearest pile.
“He died before he finished his speech,” she explained. “Which is inconvenient and, in a larger sense, tragic.”
“I assure you, Señora Sedano, that I am a poor scholar, mediocre in every sense, employed here in Cuba because I tired of the publish-or-perish imperative of the academic world. My work is of little import to the United States government or anyone else. I do not work for the CIA. There has been some mistake.”
Mercedes maintained a polite silence until he ran out of words, then she said, “Fidel and I watched an American movie a few months ago, about dinosaurs in a park — an extraordinary story and an extraordinary film. We marveled at the magic that could make dinosaurs so lifelike upon the screen. It was almost as if the moviemakers had some dinosaurs to film. Perhaps the magic had something to do with computers. However they did it, they made something that had been dead a very long time come back to life.”
Bouchard didn’t know what to say. Agency regulations did not permit him to tell anyone outside the agency who his employer was. He twisted his hands as he tried to decide how he should handle this woman who refused to listen to his denials.