“Did you say something?” she asked.
“I don’t like movies,” Bouchard muttered. “There are no good actors these days.”
“Perhaps not living,” said Mercedes Sedano. “But you must admit the magicians have given new life to some dead ones. You and your friends could perform a great service for Cuba if you would take these videotapes to the moviemakers and let them bring Fidel back to life. For just a little while.”
Bouchard picked up the cassettes, held them in his hands as he examined them.
“I suppose the cultural attaché might be able to pass these things along,” Bouchard admitted. “What is it you wish Fidel had lived to say?”
Mercedes nodded. She looked Bouchard straight in the eyes and told him.
Maximo Sedano huddled in his great padded leather chair at the Finance Ministry staring out at the Havana skyline. He took another sip of rum, eased the position of his injured hand. He was holding it pointed straight up. The doctor who set the broken bones in his fingers assured him elevating the hand would help keep the swelling down.
That pig Santana! He whipped out his pistol and smashed it down on the fingers of Maximo’s left hand so quickly Maximo didn’t even think of jerking it away. Three broken fingers.
Then the son of a bitch laughed! And Vargas laughed.
Vargas had whispered in his ear: “You aren’t going to be the next president of Cuba, Maximo. You have no allies. Delgado and Alba will obey me to their dying day, as you will. You have a wife and daughter and your health. Be content with that.”
He said nothing.
“Your brother Hector is in prison charged with sedition. I suggest you meditate upon that fact.”
Maximo sipped some more rum.
His fingers hurt like hell. The doctor gave him a local anesthetic and a half dozen pills when he set the fingers, but now the anesthetic was wearing off and the pills weren’t doing much good.
He probably shouldn’t be drinking rum while taking these pills, but what the hell. A man has to die only once.
Where was the $53 million?
Somewhere on the other side of the black hole that was the Swiss banking system.
Face facts, Maximo. You can kiss those bucks good-bye. Those dollars might as well be on the back side of the moon.
He spent some time dwelling on what might have been — he was only human — but after a while those dreams faded. The reality was the pain in his hand, and the fact that he was stuck in this Third World hellhole and would soon be out of a job. Whatever government followed Fidel would appoint a new finance minister.
He had no chance of succeeding Castro, and he let go of that fantasy too. He didn’t have the allies in high places, he wasn’t well enough known, and if he had been he would be in a cell beside Hector this very minute.
Hector’s plight didn’t cause him much concern. He and Hector had never been close, had never had much in common. Well, to be frank, they loathed each other.
A pigeon landed on the ledge outside his window. He watched it idly. It searched the ledge for food, found none, then took off.
Maximo watched it. The pigeon circled the square in front of the ministry and landed on a statue that stood near the front door. Maximo had never liked the statue, some Greek goddess with a sword. Still, it gave the building a certain tone, so he had never ordered it moved.
Statues. At least he got the goddess instead of that larger-than-life bust of Fidel that the Ministry of Agriculture—
He stared at the goddess. She was made of bronze. Some kind of metal that had turned green as the rain and sun and salt from the sea worked on it.
The bust of Fidel in front of the Ministry of Agriculture was of course manufactured and erected after the revolution.
So were the statues in the Plaza de Revolucion. And some of the statues in Old Havana, at the Museo de Arte Colonial, at the Catedral de San Cristobal de la Havana, on some of the minor squares.
After the revolution! After the government collected all the gold pesos, or before?
The Museum of the Revolution! The old presidential palace was converted to a propaganda temple that would prove to all generations the venality of Batista, the dictator Fidel had overthrown. Maximo recalled reading somewhere that Fidel had personally supervised the renovation and conversion of the old building.
Thirty-seven tons of gold. Fidel had squirreled it away somewhere.
What he needed to do was go to the Museum of the Revolution, lock himself in a room with the collection of Havana newspapers. After the revolution, after the gold was collected, what was Fidel doing?
Thirty-seven tons of gold.
“One sample vial from the Cuban lab contained a new, super-infectious strain of poliomyelitis. The viruses are so hot they kill in seconds.”
The members of the National Security Council didn’t say anything.
“The scientists said they never saw anything like it,” the national security adviser continued. “The four sample vials contained three different strains of the polio virus. Two of the vials contained the same type of virus.”
“Is the vaccination we were all given as children effective against these strains?” The chairman of the joint chiefs asked this question.
“Apparently not. The scientists will need more time to verify that, but apparently … no.”
The president looked glum. “Talk about a choice. We can wait until the Cubans use that stuff on us or we can bomb the lab right now.”
“No, sir,” the chairman said. “There is no guarantee a bomb would kill that virus. Bombing the lab would probably just release the viruses to the atmosphere and kill everyone in Cuba who happened to be downwind.”
The silence that followed that remark was broken by the secretary of state, who asked, “Do the scientists have an estimate on how long those viruses can live outside the lab?”
“Not yet,” the national security adviser replied. He took a deep breath and referred back to his notes. “Here is the situation in Cuba as we believe it to be: We received a report two hours ago from our man in Havana who says he was told earlier today that Fidel Castro is dead. He is sending some videotapes in the diplomatic pouch.”
“Dead, huh?” said the president. “I’ll believe it when they put his corpse on display in a tomb on the Plaza de Revolucion.”
Someone tittered.
The national security adviser continued to read from his notes. “Review of the documents from the safe of secret police chief, Alejo Vargas, indicates that the Cubans have installed biological warheads on intermediate-range ballistic missiles.”
“What?” the president demanded. He pounded on the table with the flat of his hand to silence everyone else. In the silence that followed, he roared, “Where in hell did those people get ballistic missiles?”
The national security adviser looked like he was in severe pain. “From the Russians, sir. In 1962. Apparently the Russians left some behind after the Cuban missile crisis. You may recall that Castro refused to let the UN inspection team into the country to verify that all the missiles had been removed.”
“How good is this information?”
“The man who sent it is absolutely reliable.”
The president mouthed a profane oath, which the chairman of the joint chiefs thought a succinct summation of the whole situation.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In a country as poor as Cuba safe houses were hard to come by. The one that William Henry Chance and Tommy Carmellini found themselves in was an abandoned monastery on a promontory of land on the south coast of the island. Surrounded by tidal flats and dense vegetation, the sprawling one-story building was an occasional refuge for drug smugglers and young lovers, who had left their trash strewn about. The rotten thatched roof remained intact over just one room, the kitchen. A roaring fire burned in the fireplace, which apparently the monks had used primarily for cooking.