Killing Castro (17 page)

He knew why.

On the other jobs, before Estrella, he had been on his own, rootless, empty. Now he had something to lose.

Saturday night Earl Fenton stormed the garrison at San Luis.

He did this alone, because he was alone now. He had been living for two days in the hills; living alone, traveling alone, sleeping alone. He had been living with cancer inside him, living with the sure foreknowledge of death and with the memory of the death of others. The memory of carnage, of Maria shooting Garth in the head, of Manuel screaming before they castrated him, of Jiminez blown to pieces by a grenade, of Maria growing weaker and weaker until she died in his arms.

He moved in silence through the hills. His Sten gun stayed always in his hands, and over his shoulder he carried a musette bag with extra clips for the gun and what food he had been able to salvage from the camp. The pain of the cancer was bad now. The disease was spreading like wildfire through his whole body, and there were times when he would cough uncontrollably while arrows of pain shot through his flesh.

Saturday, around midnight, he made his attack. San Luis was a small town a few miles to the north of Santiago. There was a detachment of soldiers stationed there. Fenton attacked them.

He killed the sentry with a knife. He crept up behind the man on silent feet, plunging the knife he had taken from a corpse into the throat of the sentry who was to become a corpse in his turn. The man died in silence and Fenton stole into one of the barracks.

He sprayed the interior with the Sten gun. He killed fourteen men before a single one of them was entirely awake. Most of them died in their sleep. The rest opened their eyes momentarily and closed them forever.

The gunfire brought soldiers from the other barracks. Fenton put a fresh clip in his Sten gun and readied himself for the charge. He threw himself under a bunk bed, sent out a burst of fire to greet the soldiers who charged into the area. Another group tried to enter through a window and he shot them dead.

They used tear gas. He ran after the first shell and threw it out at them, but the second one went off and filled the small wooden building with thick, eye-burning smoke. He knew better than to try to hold out against it. He broke open the Sten gun and fitted it with a full clip, his last. He left the musette bag behind and raced outside, his finger on the Sten gun’s trigger.

He did not stop shooting. He was surrounded and bullets came at him from all angles, but Fenton stubbornly refused to go down. He fired a full clip at the soldiers before he slumped and died.

The soldiers searched the barracks. They couldn’t believe that this one little man had been the only invader, but there was no one else around, no one but their own dead soldiers.

Someone took the trouble to count the bullets in Fenton. There were sixty-three of them. Machine gun slugs had almost torn him in half.

And, strangest of all, what was left of his face seemed to be smiling.

Hines awoke early Sunday morning. The room was dark because sunlight never reached the basement. He switched on a light and glanced at his watch. It was not yet seven. He tried catching another hour’s sleep but found it impossible. He got out of bed, washed, dressed.

At eight o’clock Señora Luchar brought him breakfast—oatmeal, fresh fruits, biscuits and coffee. She left him and he tried to eat. The food stuck in his throat. He could not possibly have been less hungry.

When she came down for the tray she saw that he had eaten nothing. “There is something wrong with the food?” she said. “You cannot eat it?”

“The food’s fine. I’m not hungry.”

“You are nervous?”

He said nothing because he did not know how to answer her. He was not nervous, not exactly. He wasn’t sure how to describe the feelings he had. He looked at his watch. The time was crawling.

“You should eat. Today will be an important day. Murder is hard work and work is difficult on an empty stomach.”

Hard work? All he had to do was toss a bomb in the air. But her words somehow intimidated him. He picked up his fork and ate some of his food. Then he drank the coffee.

“An important day,” she went on. “And you are doing something for Cuba as well as for your brother, Hines. That, too, is important.”

She left him, sparing him the need to answer her. Between then and noon he went four times to the work bench, and four times he picked up the bomb and hefted it in his hand. It was cylindrical, roughly the size and shape of a can of beer, although of course much heavier. Each time he replaced the bomb on the bench and went back to his bunk.

He no longer thought of giving it all up, of running to the Swiss consulate and asking for asylum. He was committed now, and he did not even think of backing down. At noon he left the house. It was not time yet—Castro’s speech was scheduled to start at five, the hour of bull fights. Hines remembered the García Lorca poem, the one in which every other line was
a las cinco de la tarde
, at five in the afternoon. A chilling, sobering poem about a bullfighter gored to death in the ring—

But he couldn’t stay around the house. He waved a hand at the Luchar woman, nodded at the old man rocking stonily on the porch. He headed for the Plaza of the Revolution where Castro would speak. Already people were gathering. He would have to arrive early to get a good position.

But how early? He found a Cuban man who spoke English, told him he wanted to see Castro speak, asked him how soon he would have to be there to get a good spot in the crowd.

The man looked at him. “You are a Yankee?”

“Yes.”

“That is good, then,” the Cuban said. “More Yankees should hear Fidel speak. There would be less trouble if you Yankees listened to our Fidel.”

The man told him three o’clock would be time enough. Hines thanked him and left the square. He walked to a small lunch counter next door to the Hotel Nacional and had a cup of coffee. On an impulse he bought a pack of cigarettes and tried to smoke one. He choked on it and put it out, leaving the pack on the counter.

He went back to the house, went downstairs to the basement. Señora Luchar brought him a fresh pot of coffee and a bottle of whiskey to spike it with. He mixed whiskey and coffee half and half and drank a great quantity of it. The whiskey did not seem to have any effect on him. He did not get at all high. But the whiskey did counteract the coffee, which made him sweaty and irritable when he had too much of it.

At two-thirty he put on a loose jacket and tucked the bomb into one pocket of it. He said goodbye to Señora Luchar and left the house. She told him she wished him good luck and he thanked her. The old man on the porch said
buena suerte
and Hines smiled at him.

He walked to the Plaza de la Revolution, acutely aware of the way the bomb bulged his pocket and waiting every minute for someone to notice, to tap him on the shoulder, to place him under arrest. No one bothered him. He made his way to the square where a thick crowd was already forming. He inched forward in the crowd, securing a perfect vantage point not at all far from the steps of the palace.

He was sweating. He was not sure whether it was the coffee, the crowd or the heat that made him perspire, or whether his fear was causing it. But somehow he was not really afraid. Fear ceased to have anything to do with it any more, just as logic had flown the coop not long ago. It was three o’clock. Castro would begin his speech in two hours. And the steps where he would stand were just a stone’s throw away.

A stone’s throw. Or a bomb’s throw.

Turner sat in a café on La Calle de Trabajadores. His hotel room had no television set and he wanted to see Castro’s speech. He drank bottled beer and watched the screen of the café’s set.

At four-thirty a movie ended and the channel began coverage of the speech. Castro was not yet due to arrive for an hour, but the television cameras began by panning the crowd while the announcer killed time by reading news bulletins in rapid Spanish.

Today, Turner thought. Today, while I sit here drinking this beer in this café. Today.

Maybe he was making a mistake. Maybe he should be with Hines. Maybe the kid was right to call him chicken. Maybe he was copping out, turning yellow.

But what good could he do? One man could throw a bomb as well as two. One man could blow up a dictator as well as two. And one man could surely die as well as two.

To hell with it. He had his own life to live. And if Jim Hines had his own death to die, well, that was his own damned business. And not Turner’s.

He sipped his beer and watched the screen.

At a quarter to five Garrison locked and bolted his door. He took out a small penknife and slashed his mattress open again, pulling the high-powered rifle free. His window shade was drawn. Garrison broke down the gun, cleaned it, loaded it with a single bullet. When you are paid high prices for murder, you do not need more than one bullet. Not with an expensive rifle fitted with a scope sight and zeroed in on a stationary target. One bullet was plenty.

He switched off the light in the room. That way there was much less chance of drawing attention from the street. Then he raised the shade a few inches and planted himself in a chair by the window. Castro hadn’t arrived yet but the plaza was jammed already, filled with a noisy mass of people. It was odd, sitting above them all in solitary comfort, knowing something that they could not know. Like watching a movie when you knew the ending in advance. A special feeling, a combination of superiority and, somehow, disappointment.

At five minutes to five he got the rifle in position. He propped a pillow on the windowsill, then rested the rifle upon it. The pillow would steady the gun, absorb a certain amount of the recoil, and muffle a certain amount of the noise. He knelt by the window and held tight to the rifle. He sighted in on the speaker’s platform on the steps of the Palace of Justice.

Castro appeared at four minutes after the hour. His soldiers cleared a path for him through the crowd and the big bearded man walked up the path to the platform. He wore his usual uniform—army boots, a field jacket, khaki slacks, thick flowing beard. He stepped upon the platform and the applause thundered.

The applause did not stop. Garrison watched Castro, the man he had to kill. He watched him first over the rifle, then through the sight. The hairline cross in the scope was centered upon Castro’s face, between his full mouth and his hawk-like nose. Garrison’s finger touched the trigger, gently.

Not yet, he thought. Not for an hour, maybe. Because the less time he spent in Cuba after he squeezed that trigger, the safer it was. They could figure out where the bullet came from. They could run him down, meet him at the airport—

Something else was bothering him, he realized. It took him a while to figure out what it was.

He did not want to kill Castro.

Looking at his victim through the gunsight, seeing that hairline cross that marked the bullet’s target, he knew suddenly that he did not want to kill this man. This man was not like any of his other targets, and he couldn’t expect to get away as easily afterwards. They might well catch him, here or at the airport, and if they caught him at the airport, they’d get Estrella, too.

He didn’t want to think about what they would do to her.

Before, he might have risked it. Before, when it was just him. Now, he didn’t want to.

But he had to—it was his job, wasn’t it?

Not any more. He was quitting. The Cubans—Hiraldo and his boys—were not the syndicate. He could blow the job without worrying about any backlash. They wouldn’t kill him for it the way the outfit boys would.

But the money—he needed the dough, didn’t he?

No, he thought. No, not really. He had maybe seven or eight grand set aside here and there throughout the States. With that much dough you could get set up nicely selling rifles and shotguns and shells in a medium-sized town. It wasn’t a bad business and it was one he knew inside and out. Maybe pick up a few spare bucks giving shooting lessons or taking out hunting parties. And gunsmith work, gun repair. He knew the business and you didn’t need more than what dough he already had to get started. And Estrella could help out in the store until they got going. And someday his kids could come into the business with him.

He looked through the scope sight again. Castro was speaking now. He saw the muscles knotted in the thick neck, heard the booming voice. The crowd was silent now. Everyone listened to the man, to Fidel Castro. Everyone heard his voice and followed his words.

Estrella was going to be at the airport at seven. They would catch a plane to Miami. Then they could clear out the bank accounts, look for a shop. Maybe some medium-sized town in Washington, maybe Oregon. It was good country up there. His country, the country he had been born in.

But twenty grand—

He looked at Castro. Automatically his finger found the trigger, caressed it.

No.

No, because there was too much to lose now. He brought the rifle back from its perch and returned it to its place in the slashed mattress. He put the sheets and blankets back on the bed and tucked them in. He returned the pillow from the windowsill to the bed, closed the window, drew the shade. Now to check out. Or, better yet, now to leave. If he checked out they might unmake the bed and find the gun. If he left he would be in Miami before a maid saw the inside of the room. They could keep his luggage as payment for the bill he would be skipping. All except the volume of Rimbaud. He got the book, slipped it into a pocket. He would have to try reading Rimbaud to Estrella. She might like the poems.

He was halfway to the door when the bomb went off.

The noise was tremendous. Garrison wheeled around, ran to the window. He raised the shade and stared out.

Castro was dead. That was the first thing he saw—Fidel Castro, his legs blown away, his blood flowing freely. Castro, sprawling legless across the nearly demolished speakers’ platform. Other men, near him, screaming, wounded, dying.

Then Garrison looked for the bomber. The whole crowd was in a turmoil, women shrieking, children crying, men shouting. Police officers fired their guns into the air. A riot seemed imminent.