Maximo tried to stifle his disgust and concentrate upon the displays before him.
Fidel and Che Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos, the other immortals … The university, the Moncada Barracks, the trial, prison, handwritten letters, exile, guerrilla days …
He carefully looked at everything, then wandered on. He came to a room devoted to the fall of Havana; Fidel riding into the city on a tank, ecstatic children. Then Fidel the ruler; Fidel the baseball player; Fidel and Che fishing in the Gulf Stream; Fidel with Hemingway, Richard Nixon, Khrushchev, Kosygin, the famous and the infamous, always togged out in those abysmal green fatigues; dozens of shots of Fidel with his mouth open in front of crowds … God, how the man could talk to a captive audience!
Maximo was in the next room looking at photos of Fidel eating rice and beans with schoolchildren when the incongruity of the photo of Fidel and Che fishing struck him. Odd, that.
He went back to it. The two were on some kind of fishing boat, with fighting chairs and big rods, fishing for marlin probably.
Wait a minute … The marina where Maximo kept his boat … When he first moved it there the harbormaster had once told him that Fidel used to leave from that marina to fish.
Now he remembered. Yes. The old man said Fidel and Che fished often, every few days, went out by themselves, often spent the night at anchor in the harbor. After a year or so they tired of it, the old man said wistfully, never came back. The boat belonged to the Cuban Navy — seized from an American — and was eventually converted to a gunboat.
He could remember the old man talking, could see the wind playing with his white hair as he stood on the dock in the sun talking about his hero, Fidel, about that moment one day long ago when their lives came close together.
The harbormaster had been dead for years. The new man was far too young to remember anything.
What if the gold were on the floor of Havana Harbor?
Each night Fidel and Che could have lowered hundreds of pounds of it over the side of the boat free from observation. Given enough nights …
Over time the gold could have gradually disappeared from the Finance Ministry. If no one but Fidel and Che handled the gold, there was no one to talk.
Maximo could see logistical problems with this possibility, of course, but not insurmountable ones.
He left the museum deep in thought.
“The air force’s AWACS reports that the Cuban military is moving toward the silo sites, Admiral.”
The briefer was a commander, the senior Air Intelligence officer on the carrier battle group’s staff.
“The troops are being moved from barracks in the Havana area. We can see tanks and trucks, which presumably contain supplies and troops. The columns are moving slowly, eight to ten miles per hour. Cuban troops have already arrived at missile site number one. Just arriving on sites two and three. We estimate that there will be no Cuban military presence on sites four though six until tomorrow morning after dawn.”
“Why so slow?” Jake Grafton asked.
“These are old tanks, Soviet T-54s. We think they see no reason to risk breakdowns by driving faster. The consensus seems to be that the Cubans aren’t on full alert.”
“Okay,” Jake Grafton said, because there was nothing else to say. The god of battles was dealing the cards.
The briefer continued, pointing out bridges and crossroad choke points, and Jake tried to concentrate, which was difficult. When the briefer finished, Jake dismissed his staff and sat staring at the map on the bulkhead.
The plan was good: the weather would be typical, the forces he had should be adequate, they knew their jobs … but if the Cubans fired those missiles at the United States, two Aegis cruisers were all he had to prevent the missiles from reaching their targets.
Should this whole operation be delayed until antimissile batteries could be moved to south Florida?
Every hour of delay meant more American troops would die taking those missile sites. Yet if the missiles successfully delivered their warheads, the results would be catastrophic.
He looked again at the plan — at the timing, at the units assigned.
Biological weapons. Poliomyelitis.
He could always use more people, of course. One of the primary goals of warfighting — some people argued, the only goal — was to direct overwhelming force at the point where the enemy was most vulnerable. Or as Bedford Forrest put it, “Get there firstest with the mostest.”
Already the Cubans were digging in around silos one and two. What if the forces he had committed couldn’t crack those nuts?
The urge to wait for a bigger hammer had Jake Grafton in its grip now. He felt like David with his slingshot. Maybe he needed more Aegis cruisers, some Patriot missile batteries, more cruise missiles, troops, Ospreys, airplanes.
If one of those missiles got through …
He found a handkerchief in his hip pocket and mopped his face.
His stomach tried to turn over.
He hadn’t felt like this since Vietnam. Way back in those happy days he had been responsible only for his bombardier’s life and his own miserable existence. All things considered, that load had been relatively light.
This load …
Well, Jake Grafton, Uncle Sugar’s been paying you good money all these years while you’ve been getting fat and sassy on the long grass. It’s payback time.
In midafternoon Toad Tarkington went to the communication spaces to call his wife, Rita Moravia, on one of the ship-to-ship voice circuits. He had done this a time or two before and the chief petty officer was accommodating when the circuits were not in use for official business. This afternoon he asked the chief for an encrypted circuit but they were all busy — the chief handed him a clear-voice handset. Toad called Kearsarge and left a message for his wife. Ten minutes later she called him back.
“Hey, Toad-man.”
“Hey, Hot Woman.”
Tonight, he knew, she would be flying a V-22 Osprey, hauling troops to missile silo two.
“Just wanted to hear your voice,” Toad said, as matter-of-factly as he could. He could envision this conversation coming over radios in ships throughout the battle group and in Cuban monitoring stations. He had no intention of giving away secrets nor of entertaining kibitzers.
Rita was equally circumspect. “Got a letter from Tyler. He wrote it with Na-Na’s help, of course.”
“How’s Ty-Guy doing?”
“He has a girlfriend, the Goldman girl across the street.”
“That’s my boy,” Toad said. “A lover already. A chip off the old brick.”
Aboard Kearsarge Rita was holding the handset in a death grip. She loved life: her son, her husband, her job, the people she worked with — every jot and comma of her life. Oh, of course there were days when the stress and problems threatened to overwhelm her ability to cope, but somehow she managed. In the wee hours of the night when she paused to evaluate, she knew that she wouldn’t change a thing. Not one single thing.
Now she realized that Toad hadn’t spoken in several seconds.
“I wouldn’t change a thing,” Rita said.
“I was thinking the same thing,” he said.
“From day one.”
“I remember the first day I saw you. Wow.”
“When we were at Whidbey, I thought you hated me.”
“And I thought you didn’t like me.”
“Thank God you finally screwed up the courage to kiss me.”
“Wish I could now,” he shot back.
Tears ran down her cheeks. She wanted to tell him how much he had meant all these years, how grateful she was that they shared life, and nothing came out. She put her hand over the mouthpiece so he wouldn’t hear her cry.
“Next time we’re together, better not wear lipstick,” he said.