“I know,” the President said, letting out a worried, exasperated breath. “They just disappear and go where they want.”
“Within a patrol area,” Bud added. “A very big area. This one was Mid-Atlantic.”
“Don’t our subs have some kind of emergency locator?” the President inquired. He poured himself a final cup of coffee — his personal physician would have had a fit at the number he’d had already this day — and finally undid his tie. Bud was still in a jacket.
“Emergency buoys, yes. They’re set to release at the captain’s command, or if the sub exceeds crush depth. There are a whole bunch of things that could prevent that, but no way to know until we locate her.”
“How many men on board?”
“A hundred and sixty,” Bud answered. “Men and women, sir.”
The President knew his feelings shouldn’t distinguish between women and men in a situation like this, but, politically correct or not, he did. “I hope this is just some major communications screw up. God, I hope so.”
“Everyone does, sir,” Bud observed. Going down in a sub had to be the worst way to go, he thought. But that was worst-case. There was still time, he tried to convince himself. By the look on the chief executive’s face, he was having as much success at that as his NSA.
The phone buzzed, and the President snatched it up. “Yes. Come on over, Anthony.” He hung up. “He’s over in Ellis’s office.”
The chief of staff’s office was just down the hallway. It wouldn’t be long. So much for a relaxing evening, Bud thought.
The DCI walked into the Oval Office with a gait propelled by whatever sense of enthusiasm the refined Merriweather allowed himself. “Mr. President, we have new images from a pass over the island. The Cubans are in full retreat.”
The pleasure was overflowing from the DCI, and the same emotion soon spread to the President, almost wiping away the less pleasing contemplation of a minute before. If the prediction was correct, he would be the first chief executive in almost forty years to set foot in the free nation of Cuba. Bud had to go along with the sentiment also, despite his misgivings. Success was success, and the naysayers who Monday-morning-quarterbacked were taken about as seriously as congressional spending limits. Credit due was credit due.
“Your idea changed the world,” the NSA said to the DCI.
Merriweather accepted the token congratulation politely. “Another wall down.”
“Wall, my ass,” the President said, beaming. “We just busted down our bitchy neighbor’s fence!”
Bud just took in the exchange between the President and the DCI for a moment. Surprises still lay ahead, but informing his boss of that reality would be fruitless right now. They would have to be dealt with soon enough. The real surprise, though, had been just how easily the government had fallen. Really, he had expected more. Some sort of parting shot. They had had intelligence for years that Castro had intended to attack such targets as the Turkey Point Nuclear Plant in Florida if ever he was threatened. But, then again, attack with what? His air force was gone, knocked out in the first hours. The survivors of that had hightailed it to the southern United States as soon as they could get airborne. The “Saddam Maneuver,” it was being called by the Air Force pilots sent to intercept and escort the Cuban MiGs to selected airfields along the Gulf Coast. “Fly to your nearest enemy.” At least that had been anticipated.
Still, that Castro went out with a whimper confounded Bud. It would certainly be researched and written about by the think-tank literati and doctoral candidates alike for years to come. Bud figured it proved that no man could be cut out in historical terms and fit into a neatly selected hole in the puzzle of his life. Existence was not only transitory, it was without a rudder. Currents pushed one to where the water flowed. Somehow they had avoided being drawn onto the rocks with the likes of Fidel Castro, a half reality that the landlubbing NSA had lapsed into, forgetting about the reefs that were more dangerous, and quite elusive, lurking just below the calm surface waters.
To free a people. To rule a land. To watch it all slip away.
Fidel Castro was in the unique position of having traveled from the valley to the mountain peak, only to be sent tumbling down the slope by treacherous footing. The work of a lifetime was coming to naught.
Strangely, though, he could accept that it was coming to pass. The fates were proving to be against him, just as they were during the assault on the Moncada barracks before the final push that had begun the Revolution. That attack had failed also, and he had spent time imprisoned at the hands of the corrupt government. Yet he had emerged from that to strike again. It was not a death knell. From that he had learned that setbacks would happen, as would outright defeats. And from those events the defining legacy was not that a man or an idea had failed, but rather that a man and an idea had persevered.
Sitting alone as he was in his library two floors above the below-ground command center where the dismantling of his nation was being fought by old men, Fidel Castro drifted back to the days of youth that had formed his character. The deprivation he suffered even though the son of a well-off landowner. The Jesuit education that had instilled in him more doubt about God than a belief in one. His sister and brother. A wife. Baseball.
All paled, though, in comparison to the Revolution. It was supreme over all, and it would be until his last breath was expended. To say more of it would be to distort its simplicity, which was the essence of its perfection. What did the Dumas characters say? One for all, all for one. Meaning could be found in the strangest places.
And so it would come to some conclusion. A failure it was certain to be, and in that he found a sense of peace. Failure, the feared consequence of a strategy gone wrong, would breed defiance, as it had already in him. To lose was not dishonorable, for it painted clearly those responsible for both victory and defeat. Sometimes the parties were one and the same. Other times, as in this case, the architect of defeat was an entity removed from the immediate fray but no less culpable. And, fortunately, as the weapons of war were expended in forestalling the inevitable, some sense of retribution could be brought against those who had deserved such for a very, very, very long time.
With that knowledge, and with a plan rich in irony, Fidel Castro could sleep peacefully, content that the Revolution would be avenged against those who had been the source of its undoing.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SKELETONS
The sign on the door said “Interview Room”, a departure from the term “interrogation” that had fallen out of favor with law enforcement agencies recently. The reality and the bullshit of political correctness, Art thought, closing the door as he left the room, leaving Sullivan alone with a pot of coffee. He was sober now, which was a blessing and a curse. It made him more lucid, but it also turned the expectedly frightened drunk they had come upon into a mildly arrogant combination of bloodshot eyes and a smart mouth. Art was glad Frankie had been elsewhere checking on the license number and keeping an eye on Mrs. Carroll, who was patiently describing the suspects to a Bureau computer artist. Aguirre would have wanted to slap the guy.
Art went straight to the communications room, which was the size of a large closet. In it were the regular fax machines for communications with nongovernmental agencies, high-speed color facsimile machines connected to secure lines that were routed through the government’s new Secure Voice Communications switching centers, and relays that spit out continuous reports from law enforcement agencies throughout the country and overseas.