Cuba Straits (21 page)

“Geezus, please, no more with the cemetery. What about your grandmother?”

“That’s what I’m telling you. She never cared about baseball, so I doubt if she’ll understand.” The little man fretted for a moment. “I haven’t seen her in more than three years. She can’t cook either.”

Tomlinson returned to the letters, his eye sharpening as he skimmed through several. Fidel’s penmanship had more flourish than his brother’s, but his notes were shorter, seldom more than a few lines, and often cryptic. A couple of times Tomlinson asked Figgy for help with translation but soon realized that the multiplication table was not the shortstop’s only academic failing.

“I understand most words written in ink,” he explained, “as long as I know the person and can guess what they want to say. And certain books because they’re typed out. You know the thin ones with nice pictures?” He couldn’t talk without taking his hands off the wheel to gesture or indicate size and this time they almost went over a cliff into a river.

After that, Tomlinson stopped asking for help.

The letters were arranged haphazardly, no regard for dates or whether they were from Fidel or Raúl. Envelopes from 1953 to ’55 were all from federal prison on the Isle of Pines. Each first page contained illegible initials in red and sometimes a circular stamp
CENSURADO
. Aside from Fidel’s fantasy about his Galleguita bathing naked at a washbasin, Tomlinson was struck by the consistent formality. Each missive was respectful, mindful of decorum, but with love hidden between the lines. The same was true of letters posted after the Castros were free men.

He was impressed by the eloquence of the writing, especially Raúl, who wrote of his “embryonic love” and of his “auto-analysis” regarding Fidel’s behavior when, in 1957, they both went into hiding. These letters were not authored by ignorant thugs. They were written by articulate, well-educated men who were mindful of the social niceties due a woman, mistress or not. Two distinctive voices: Raúl rambled and strained for lyricism; Fidel snapped orders or lectured, often as a martyr or victim, and always in a superior tone.

But so far, not one single damning or controversial line, save for the one from Raúl, written from prison, that hinted at Fidel’s inept baseball skills—no, it had been softball. Certainly nothing worth killing for.

Tomlinson skipped ahead, seeking anything written during the political turmoil of the early 1960s, but correspondence had dwindled. He found several from Raúl, but only two from Fidel, who by then was revered, or feared, as the
Máximo Gran
, the leader of all Cuba.

An envelope leaped out. Tomlinson held his breath while he opened it to find a telegram:

MY FRIEND. DESTROY WHAT YOU HAVE SAVED AND FIND A SAFE PLACE. SAY NOTHING. THE SWAN LIES. MONTHS MUST PASS. F

It was dated 9:18 p.m. 22 November 1963. A Friday, Tomlinson remembered. The day John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas.

The Buick’s roaring muffler vanished as he reread the lines several times. Fidel was ordering his mistress to destroy all letters. Or destroy all of something. That seemed evident. A respectful period of time had to elapse before they could resume their relationship. Made sense, as did instructing her to find a safe place, which anticipated a nuclear attack by the U.S. But what the hell did
THE SWAN LIES
mean?

“Brother, why are you so quiet?” Twice, Figueroa had to ask.

SWAN . . . ? The chances of Figgy knowing a Cuban acronym from 1963 were slim. Tomlinson switched off the flashlight. “These were written to your grandmother, weren’t they?”

It had been obvious for a while and it was time to put it out there.

“Maybe.” Figueroa shrugged. “Others are to women named Little Ducky and My Sweet Gingersnap and strange names like that.”

“But it was your grandmother who told you to guard the letters, wasn’t it? That’s cool, man. I’m just trying to understand. Did the general read these? He knew what was in the briefcase, that’s obvious, but did he actually
read
them?”

Figgy, concentrating on the road, said, “If he had, I would have had to kill him.”

Tomlinson sat back. “Say what?”

“That worries me, brother, now that we’re shipmates. My
mu-maw
doesn’t understand baseball and cares less about ships than she does cooking.” He glanced over. “But a promise is a promise. You know?”

•   •   •

I
MELDA
C
ASANOVA
inhabited an upstairs room in a house that smelled of cobwebs and lavender, a wooden time capsule where the table was set with silver and china for two, napkins folded, as if awaiting a guest from 1959 who might yet appear.

That’s where Tomlinson waited, in the formal dining room, while Figgy stood at the stairs and called, “Guess who’s home,
mi abuela
? I brought a friend, but don’t worry, he’s not really a Rastafarian and doesn’t eat much.”

No answer. Figgy started up the stairs but lost his courage. “Maybe
yayah
is asleep,” he whispered.

“Your grandmother?”

“
Yayah
or
mu-maw.
It’s the same, but she doesn’t like those names—even from me.”

“It’s almost eleven,” Tomlinson reassured him, but was thinking,
The poor guy’s scared shitless of
the old woman
.

Only now did he understand why.

The housekeeper, if there was one, hadn’t come to the door, so they’d entered through the root cellar into the basement. Oddly, Figgy’s room was down there, next to an old washing machine, the kind with a crank and wringers. He had lived in a cubicle with a steel door and only one window that looked out onto weeds at ground level. Except for some shelves and a homemade bong, it resembled a prison cell.

“How did you and your grandmother get along personally?” Tomlinson had inquired. The room reminded him of a Colorado drunk tank where he’d once spent a night.

“She treated me pretty good as long as I worked and brought home money” was the reply. “And, of course, did what I was told to do. But don’t make that woman mad.” The man’s expression read
Wow
. “Many times she locked me in here for all day. Once, almost a week.”

“Geezus, that’s terrible.”

“Not as bad as cutting off my rooster.” He motioned vaguely at his crotch. “She always gave me a choice, though, so you can understand why I’m still thankful. It’s better to be locked up, I think, or beaten with a cane stalk.”

Tomlinson had been looking forward to meeting Castro’s mistress. Not now. “This was after you moved from the village near Cojimar?”

“Hell yes. I’d have run away, but I still had bad memories of drowning. And lots of bad hops, as you know. Plobacho has a much better baseball field. Look—you can see it from here.” He moved a stool, stood on it, and opened the window. “This is how I got out at night. If there was a full moon, we’d play until morning.” For a moment, he was happy. Then, from a higher vantage point, he surveyed his old room and realized something was amiss. “Those
maricóns
,” he said after a moment. “Someone stole my best shit.”

Tomlinson nearly winced. Weed that was more than three years old? No . . . Figgy was missing a sports coat he claimed almost fit, and a shrine to his patron saint, Eleguá, and a baseball trophy. On the shelf was a photo of the thing: an ornate silver cup with seams like a baseball and an inscription plate too blurry to read.

“You won this?”

“How old do you think I am? That’s a valuable antique, brother. Nobody won that game. I wouldn’t have felt okay stealing it if they had.” Figgy had placed the photo against the wall in a respectful way before tying on a pair of old sneakers. “If they stole my best shit, I bet they took other shit, too.”

Tomlinson had to ask, “What do you mean, no one won the game?”

Too late. Figgy went out the door, saying, “She’s going to be mad. There’s nothing my
mu-maw
hates worse than a thief, and that was my job. You know, protecting her valuables. But not everything valuable would fit in here.”

The briefcase, he meant, which he carried against his chest like a pillow, or a shield.

Upstairs, the house was spacious, though not large enough to cloak the poverty of its owner. A penniless woman lived here, but a sickness inhabited the place, too. Figgy switched on lamps that had no bulbs. Closets had been thrown open and emptied. Walls once adorned with art were scarred by outlines of missing frames. What little furniture remained was littered with fallen plaster. Yet, in the formal dining room, undisturbed, was a table big enough for candelabras and a dozen chairs, plus fine china and silverware—and place settings for only two. In the middle, a wilted sunflower.

“Does she ever come down here?” Tomlinson kept his voice low, spooked by it all, the craziness of ageless and interminable yearning for something long dissolved by time. It scared him because the same crazy yearning burned within him.

Figgy, at the foot of the stairs, tilted his head and called, “It’s me, Figueroa. I’ll find the men who robbed you. I won’t let the Guardia take me away from you this time. But, uhh . . . I’d like to say hello first. Oh—and I brought this to make you feel better.”

The briefcase—he held it up.

Tomlinson put his hand on the shortstop’s shoulder in a comforting way. “I’ll go up and check on her. Stay here, if you want.”

Figgy let him pass but said, “I’m coming, too,” then took the lead when they got to the landing because there were halls and many rooms. “She lives in there,” he said.

Tomlinson entered through double doors into a circular room with so many windows it reminded him of a lighthouse. Antique lamps and furniture . . . the scent of lavender even stronger than the scented letters opened here sixty years ago by a girl who was in love. Not a girl . . . a beautiful young woman. Tomlinson, looking at a framed photograph, said, “That’s her—Imelda,” because it could be no one else. Stunning. A teenage mistress dressed in virginal white, black eyes that projected a yearning spark across the decades.

He stood fixated while Figgy cracked a door, then another door. “She’s gone,” he said, and walked to a window that opened into stars and a breeze sweet with trees and a nearby river. “Damn it,” he muttered. Then swore again, louder. “Son of a mother . . . you see that?”

It was enough to yank a man back to reality. “What’s wrong?”

“She’s there”—Figgy pointed—“she goes there at night sometimes. But that can’t be her. She carries a candle or a lantern, not a flashlight. Last time men with flashlights were there, well . . . you know what happened. I had to throw my best bat off the cliff.”

Tomlinson was completely lost. “What in God’s name are you talking about?” But then he saw it: in the distance, a beam of light. Someone a quarter mile away panning a bright LED vertically up and down an industrial-sized chimney that had no roof or building to support it. “Is that an old factory or what?”

“You can’t stay here,” Figuerito said, “but you can’t see where she is either.” He rushed across the room, then stopped with an
I’ve got it!
expression on his face. “Follow me.” He grabbed the briefcase and took off.

Tomlinson ran after him. “Where are we going?”

“There’s a place in the cellar. No one will find you there. Me, I’m going after those men with flashlights.”

“And do what?”

“I already told you.”

“Kill them? Gad. Just because they’re trespassing? At least you could pretend to be undecided.”

Figgy didn’t know what that meant. “Do you like home movies?” he asked, and vaulted the last three steps.

“You’re not getting rid of me that easy. Let’s take the Buick. Hey . . . what’s the rush?”

“The old kind that you crank on a projector,” the shortstop replied. “If someone hadn’t stolen the projector, but they must have.
Mu-maw
, she wouldn’t like you seeing her movies, so don’t make any noise.”

“You can’t be serious, man. Watch a movie while you go off and kill people? Dude . . . slow down. Christ, you’re going to pull a hamstring. Figueroa . . . ?”

The little Cuban didn’t stop until they were in the cellar, where he opened the washing machine, removed several blankets with
Copacabana
embroidered across them, then a metal film canister. The canister was old-style, huge. “Here,” he said. “There are some parts about baseball you’ll like.”

Odd, the look on the shortstop’s face. Figgy was not a man who communicated via clever subtext, but there seemed to be a message there.

“Baseball?”
Tomlinson asked.

Figgy pointed to a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, the cellar’s only light. “You’ll have to hold the film up to that and sort of strip it through your fingers. Do it fast.” He pantomimed to illustrate. “It’s almost like watching TV.” He placed the canister on a chair next to a couple of candles. “Don’t let anyone see this, and be careful if you light a match. Film burns fast, brother. You’ve got to promise. I won’t be gone long.”

Tomlinson realized,
He thinks he might be killed by whoever is out there.
“Amigo,” he said, “let me tell you something about your grandmother. She’s crazy as three loons. Let’s leave the letters—that’s what we came to do—and get the hell out of here.”

Figuerito was in a hurry. “Don’t tell her that. If you’re lucky, she’ll only lock you in my room.”

I
f not for stomach cramps, Anatol Kostikov might have reacted differently when the Cuban cops forced him against the car and tried to cuff him. The last thing he wanted was a confrontation because he had been looking forward to following the hippie and the traitor into the cemetery. If Vernum Quick, the deviant worm, was right, they would lead him to a mausoleum where, locked inside, was something the Russian had wanted all his life.

Oh yeah—plus the letters. Official business came first. Afterward, he could enjoy his private time.

Anatol had been reminding himself of that when the stupid cops ordered him out of the Mercedes. Their timing could not have been worse. Later, no matter how he explained what happened to Cuba’s DGI, the only thought in his mind was
If I’m cuffed, I won’t be able to wipe when I find a toilet.

The cramps had made a fool of him already. Like at the stadium that afternoon when someone—an American CIA agent, he suspected—had stripped off his pants and robbed him. Until now, money and his IDs were secondary. It was the loss of his top secret Vul pistol that worried him most.

Humiliating for a direct descendant of legendary Terek Cossack warriors. He’d stood there by the stadium urinals, hands cupping his genitals, while he tried to convince an army lieutenant to do an immediate lockdown before the Yankee bastard escaped.

This embarrassment could never be revealed to anyone, let alone explained to two Cuban cops. However, after getting out of the Mercedes, Anatol did offer them his satellite phone and say, “Call embassy. You get big promotion, I think, you help me catch traitor. Perhaps American spy, yes?”

Not these two hard-ass motorcycle bulls. Their big mistake was a knee in the kidney after berating him for having no passport, no ID. Then the talkative cop had revealed what this was really about: “What you got against Cuban baseball players, señor? That little man you after, he’s half your size. He’s a shortstop, not a traitor—already got a contract for the major leagues. Try saying the same shit to us, you dick-sucking
bolá
. Now, give me your goddamn hands and let me cuff you.”

A knee under the ribs ended all attempts at diplomacy. Anatol crouched, spun with his elbow extended, and crushed the cop’s nose. The key, as he’d taught hundreds of agents, was to move fluidly and continue the attack until the situation was stabilized. The second cop was reaching for his pistol, unprepared for an unarmed suspect to charge. Anatol shattered his knee with a side kick and caught him before he fell. Did a simple duck-under, then framed the cop’s head with forearms and hands that resembled a figure four.

“You lazy turd of shit.”

Those were the last words the Cuban heard. Anatol twisted so violently that, before he killed the talkative cop, the one with the busted nose, he looked at his hands: no blood. Good. No severed head there either. Even better.

It had happened to the Russian before.

Then he stepped back and felt something akin to horror when he realized what he’d done. As a senior intelligence agent with diplomatic immunity, he could get away with just about anything—except this. That’s why he had recruited that little worm Vernum Quick. Murder the traitor from the insane asylum, and the hippie, too, or anyone else who got in his way, until he had what he’d been sent to find—plus a few other items the Russian considered spoils of war.

A fall guy . . . He had to find Vernum.

Anatol didn’t linger over the bodies. Normally, he would have taken their IDs, their weapons, and pocketed whatever cash they had. Under different circumstances, he might have shipped home their shitty rice-burning Kawasakis, too, just for the fun of it.

Anatol was crazy about motorcycles.

Not this time.

He confirmed the talkative cop was dead—a man could survive a broken windpipe—then stripped off the Cuban’s duty belt: pistol, magazines, mace, and . . .
handcuffs
 . . . Where the hell had the handcuffs gone?

Anatol retrieved them from the side of the road and hurried to his Mercedes. But try to find a public restroom in this third-world banana republic . . . Desperate, he kicked down the door of a house, ripped out the phone, and told an old man who had refused to let him enter, “Fool. Now must kill you.”

This time, he did a sloppier job. Vernum Quick, after all, was an amateur.

•   •   •

E
ARLIER,
at a pharmacy, the Russian had bought two bottles of pink medicine that resembled Pepto-Bismol, and a packet of loperamide—
Warning,
the directions read,
do not exceed two tablets daily.
The pills had brought him a few hours of relief, so he tossed back four more, washed them down with half a pint of vodka, and refocused.

He knew where the hippie and the traitor would go next—Plobacho. Not much doubt about that. Russian intelligence had a large file on Imelda Casanova. For decades, the KGB had known about her love affair with the Castros. The agency was also aware that much of their correspondence was unaccounted for. While the brothers were alive, the old woman had remained an untouchable, politically speaking.

Things were different now.

Officially, Anatol’s orders had been to confiscate the woman’s personal effects in the interest of “preserving the history of the Socialist Party.” In fact, he’d been sent for political reasons, as he damn well knew after thirty years in the clandestine services. If he had to guess, his guess was this: Vladimir Putin feared the Castros had let an uncomfortable truth slip in one of their letters. There were many ugly secrets from those early years. Many? Hell, thousands. One dated back to 1963. Cuban intelligence had recorded Lee Harvey Oswald’s wild threats at their embassy in Mexico City six weeks before the assassination of JFK.

Even uglier secrets might have been revealed, but none had more cachet. Anatol turned west toward Plobacho and thought about that. If the truth came out, it wouldn’t cause an international firestorm, but there would be headlines. Headlines would cause more suspicion, more media surveillance. That might hamper Moscow’s plans. America’s right-wingers, of course, wouldn’t concede the obvious: embassies worldwide rejected crazy aspiring traitors on a daily basis. It was impossible to predict who would do what. If the rantings of every applicant were printed and shared, governments would choke on paper. That was as true now as it was in 1963.

Anatol, however, could admit to himself that Havana and Moscow should have taken a former Marine Sharpshooter a bit more seriously. If they’d dropped a friendly line, perhaps, to their comrades at the CIA, it might have changed history.

Funny.
Pills and vodka had settled his stomach. Anatol, hunching over the steering wheel, laughed at his own joke.

He drove through Miramar into the embassy district, past his favorite restaurant, El Aljibe, which served the best
pollo
and black beans he’d ever had. Now, though, the odor of chickens roasting on a spit made him want to vomit. He burped and tasted the jerked sandwich he’d eaten on the plane.

Vernum, he remembered, had bought it for him.

That deviant freak. I will crush his head when I’m done here.

But not yet. First, he had to find the bastard.

On the passenger seat was a handheld GPS locator. The Russian had followed Vernum’s travels with mild indifference until a little after ten, when he’d received a suspicious text:
Dropped phone in
water. Messages garbled cannot call. Meet you where?

Seconds later, the Cuban’s transponder had gone dead. It was now ten fifty-eight and the screen still showed only Vernum’s last location. Or . . . maybe Vernum, the sex pervert, had switched off the transponder because he wanted privacy.

Anatol thought,
I’ll teach you to hide from me
, and hit
Destination
. The computer responded with estimated travel time to the pervert’s location: twenty-three minutes.

Eighteen minutes later, Anatol Kostikov drove up a dirt lane to a house where a woman—a very pretty Latina—and two screeching whelps ran from the porch to greet him, one of them in baggy pink-and-white pajamas who called, “Marion . . . I knew you’d come back!”

They’re expecting a female friend,
he thought, then decided, No, a Cuban female couldn’t afford a Mercedes, but a CIA agent could.
Marion
 . . . in America, it might be a name for a male
pizda
.

Kostikov got out.

The whelp in pajamas turned and fled, but the woman stood her ground.

•   •   •

K
OSTIKOV, IN HIS
best Spanish, said to the woman, “I am friends with Marion. How else I know sex deviant was here? Vernum Quick, that is sex deviant’s name. Marion, he is gringo. Tell me where is my friend and Vernum Quick.”

The woman, arms folded, backed away. “Describe what he looks like.”

“Sex deviant, he is puny. A Cuban—”

“No, tell me what the American looks like.”

Kostikov thought,
Thank you, stupid woman.
“Oh . . . you mean my good friend, Marion?” He laughed while he recalled what he’d been told after the bathroom incident. “He is strong man with glasses. Often, a green hat he wears on head. I have idea . . .” He watched her face carefully. “Tell me where Marion is found. You and me, I will drive. He will tell you we want the sex deviant arrested. Is good, no?”

The woman didn’t buy it, but her reaction confirmed she knew where the American was. Or, at least, knew more than she was willing to reveal. That was useful. Now that the cramps were gone, it was pleasurable to look at her standing in the headlights of the Mercedes, her body visible through a cheap cotton robe. All but her breasts, which were concealed by her arms. The Russian tried to change that by extending his hand. “I am Anatol. What are you called?”

Defiant bitch. She shook her head, arms still folded, and asked, “What is Marion’s last name?”

The Russian looked past her into the house. The youngest whelp was on the porch holding what might be a machete. That told him they were alone. Even so, he asked, “Where is husband?”

“He’s . . . asleep . . . And it’s none of your business anyway. He’s a soldier. My husband won’t like you being here.”

“Husband is fool and you are liar.” Kostikov pushed the woman aside when she tried to block his path, then pushed her again too hard and she sprawled sideways onto the ground—nice what the headlights revealed when her bathrobe flew open, but only for a second.

The Russian stared at her face, her legs, mindful he had packed condoms and a Viagra tablet somewhere, along with the name of an expensive prostitute. Damn . . . they were in his stolen wallet. But no reason not to strip off the Latina’s robe by pretending to help her up—a memory he could save for when he felt better. He smiled, leaned, and offered his hand . . . then stood abruptly, aware that the child was charging him, a kitchen knife, not a machete, in her hand.

The woman screamed, “Sabina, go in the house!” while the girl screamed something about a fascist gringo who would feed him to the sharks.

The Russian grinned, amused, while his hand located the pistol he’d taken from the Cuban cop. It was in his back pocket, a 9mm Glock with a magazine that held eighteen rounds. He waited until the whelp stopped beside her mother and looked up, threatening him with the knife. Hilarious—she was the size of a bee. “Who is this dangerous gringo?” he asked the girl. “Is my good friend Marion?”

“Leave my mother alone,” the girl hollered, then realized what she’d just heard. “Do you . . . you really know him?”

The woman, getting to her feet, told the girl to hush, but the girl kept talking. “I don’t believe you. If you don’t go away and leave us alone, he’ll do anything I tell him to do.

“Go in the house,” the woman ordered. “Don’t say another word.”

Yes, the girl also knew where to find the American. Kostikov used his gentlest voice. “Is important I find our friend Marion. Tell me, then we will all laugh before he feeds me to . . . did you say ‘sharks’?”

“If that’s what I want,” the girl said. She yanked her arm away from her mother. “He has the fastest boat in Cuba and it’s invisible. I’ll tell him to tie you up and throw you in the sea if you don’t leave right now.” She lunged with the knife. The Russian, still grinning, held up his hands in surrender and backed a step. Didn’t protest when the mother took the knife from the brat and herded her back to the house. Yet, something about the way the woman moved bothered him—so purposeful and suddenly in a hurry.

He let it go, thinking,
An American with an invisible boat?
It was a fairy tale no one would believe. But Kostikov, after thirty years in the clandestine services, was convinced, CIA.

Worse, the son of a whore had his silent pistol.

From inside the Mercedes gonged a persistent chiming. The satellite phone. He reached in and had a look. It was a text from Vernum, but just a string of garbled letters. Maddening . . . But wait . . . that meant the man’s phone had been switched on. This was confirmed by the GPS locator, which he held up for better satellite reception. The sex deviant—his phone, at least—was nearby, somewhere to the northeast. He zoomed in so that Google Earth showed the roads and terrain. Cross-country, only two kilometers, near what appeared to be the ruins of a collapsed building. By car, due to Cuba’s terrible roads, five times the distance and over two bridges.