From the window three fishing boats were visible, wooden boats with a single mast, manned by one or two men. The crew of two of the boats were rigging trot lines, the other was hauling in a net. Chance examined each through binoculars. They looked harmless enough — he doubted if any of the boats had an engine or radio.
“What do you think?” Carmellini asked.
“We have a little time, but I don’t know how much.”
“Guess it depends on how efficient the secret police and the military are.”
“Umm,” Chance grunted, and after one more sweep of everything in sight, put down the binoculars.
Tommy Carmellini sat feeding sheets of paper from the secret police files into the fire as fast as they would burn. He merely scanned the pages as he ripped them from the files and tossed them into the flames.
“Vargas and his guys were certainly thorough,” Carmellini commented. “They looked under every rock.”
“And found every slimy thing that walks or crawls,” Chance agreed. Vargas’s laptop was on, so Chance resumed his examination of the files.
“Sort of like J. Edgar Hoover.”
“Secret police are pretty much alike the world over,” Chance muttered. He moved the cursor to the next file on the list and called it up.
“How many missiles are there on this island?” Carmellini asked as he tore paper.
“I have found six missile files, so far. There may be more — I see some references to material that doesn’t seem to be on this computer.”
“Six? With locations?”
“Names only. Every missile has a name: Miami, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Charleston, New Orleans, and Tampa.”
“What about Mobile?”
“Don’t see it on here.”
“Birmingham, Orlando, the army bases in Alabama?”
“Nothing.”
“I find it hard to believe that in the decades since 1962, the Cubans have managed to keep the secret of their ballistic missiles.”
Chance didn’t reply. He had never agreed with the agency’s spending priorities, which were heavily slanted toward reconnaissance satellites. The people in Washington were sold on high-tech computer and sensor networks for the collection of intelligence. Hardware and software didn’t turn traitor and were easy to justify to the bean counters. The spymasters seemed to have lost sight of a basic truth: networks could only collect the information their sensors were designed to obtain. And they could be fooled. If garbage goes in, garbage comes out.
Ah, well. The world keeps turning.
“How long is that going to take?” Chance asked, referring to the files and the fire.
“Couple hours at this rate.”
Chance glanced at his watch. A few minutes after one o’clock in the afternoon. The rendezvous with the submarine was set for ten o’clock tonight, almost nine hours away. “If we have to run for it, we’ll take everything we haven’t burned.”
He and Carmellini and the four U.S. Navy SEALs on guard in the grasses and bushes out front would try to escape if the Cubans attacked the place. Two speedboats were fueled and ready inside the old boathouse, and a submarine would meet them fifty miles south.
Unfortunately he had no way of knowing if the submarine was already lying submerged at the rendezvous position or if the skipper planned to arrive punctually. If he was already there, Chance, Carmellini, and the SEALs could leave now. If the sub wasn’t at the rendezvous, the two boats would have to spend the afternoon and evening rolling in the swell, hoping and praying the Cuban Navy didn’t come over the horizon.
We’ll wait, Chance decided, glancing at his watch again, though Lord knows the waiting was difficult.
It would be a serious mistake to underestimate Alejo Vargas. The Cuban secret police had over forty years of practice finding and arresting people who sneaked onto the island — one had to assume they were reasonably good at it.
Chance didn’t want to get into a firefight with the Cuban military or secret police. Leaving a body behind would be bad, and leaving a live person to be captured and tortured would be absolute disaster.
If the Cubans came riding over the hill, Chance and his entourage were leaving as quickly as possible. They could take their chances on the open sea. That decision made, Chance turned his attention back to the computer screen in front of him.
Two months ago when he and Carmellini were handed this mission, William Henry Chance would not have bet a plugged nickel they could pull it off. Polish the Spanish in over a hundred hours of classes, be in the right place at the right time when the power went off, break into Alejo Vargas’s safe in secret-police headquarters, carry out the files that Vargas had spent twenty years accumulating, the files he could trade for political support after Castro’s death.
Amazingly, they had pulled it off. Every file that went into the flames was one Vargas would never use.
Chance glanced at Carmellini, who was using a stick to stir the fire, keep the paper burning.
Yep, they had pulled it off. And stumbled upon a biological weapons program and Fidel’s collection of old Soviet ballistic missiles.
Six missiles. No locations.
The locations must be well camouflaged or the satellite reconnaissance people would have seen them long ago. On the other hand, if they knew what they were looking for …
Chance went to the door, called softly to the SEAL lieutenant. “Mr. Fitzgerald, would you set up the satellite telephone again?”
“Of course. Take about five minutes.”
“Thank you.”
While the lieutenant was getting the set turned on and acquiring the com satellite, Chance continued to check the computer. When he hit a file labeled “Trajectories” he sensed he was onto something important.
The file was a series of mathematical calculations, complex formula. Hmmm … Let’s see, if one could figure out where the warheads were aimed, then one could use the known trajectory to work back to the launch site. That’s right, isn’t it?
“Mr. Chance, they’re on.” The lieutenant handed him the satellite phone.
In Washington, D.C., the director of the CIA and the national security adviser listened without comment as the voice of the agent in Cuba came over the speaker phone. He gave them the news as quickly and succinctly as he could. They had the secret-police files, were burning them now though the task would take several more hours, they had a computer containing a file of what appeared to be missile-trajectory calculations, and there were at least six ballistic missiles in Cuba, maybe more. Chance gave the men in Washington the names of the missiles.
“Well done,” the director said, high praise from that taciturn public servant.
When the connection was broken, the national security adviser and the CIA director sat silently, lost in thought. The spymaster was thinking about Alejo Vargas and the possibility he might seize control of the government in Cuba upon the death of Castro. The other man was thinking about ballistic missiles and microscopic viruses of poliomyelitis.
“Another Cuban missile crisis,” muttered the adviser disgustedly.
The CIA director grinned. “Why don’t you look at the silver lining of this cloud for a change? Fate has just presented us with a rare opportunity to clean out a local cesspool. We ought to be down on our knees giving thanks.”
The adviser didn’t see it that way. He knew the president regarded the upcoming death of Castro as a political opportunity, a chance to change the relationship between Cuba and the United States and escape the bitter past. Perhaps the president would decide to just ignore the weapons, pretend they didn’t exist. Then he could hold out the olive branch to the Cubans, get what he wanted from them, get credit for progressive leadership from the American electorate, and negotiate about the weapons later.