Matthew Palmer - Enemy of the Good

She made up her mind.

“Okay, here we go,” Kate said out loud to no one in particular.

It took her twenty minutes to get to her apartment. Three minutes after that, she was rocketing through the backstreets of Havana headed for the municipality of Boyeros in the direction of the airport. Kate’s car, a twelve-year-old BMW 5 series, handled smoothly at high speeds, and in the socialist paradise of Cuba there was little traffic to contend with.

She made it to the old cigar factory in less than fifteen minutes. This part of Boyeros was industrial, or rather post-industrial, as most of the factories and workshops that lined the backstreets had closed their doors decades earlier. The Castillo-Barzaga factory had ceased rolling cigars sometime in the 1970s, but there was still a hint of tobacco smell in the air from where the juices had worked their way deep into the building’s timbers.

Kate parked in the shadows and walked up to the front door. From inside, she could hear the buzz of conversation in machine-gun Spanish. Kate let herself in. As soon as she opened the door, the conversation stopped.

There were, perhaps, two dozen people in the room. Kate recognized about half of them. The room was large and lit only by three naked lightbulbs hanging from the rafters.

“Katie? How did you know we would be here?” Reuben Morales’s voice was deep and raspy.

“I’m not supposed to know,” Kate replied in fluent Spanish. “But I do. Which means…”

“Others know it as well,” Morales finished her sentence. “G2?”

“Regular police, I think.”

“Just as bad. Are they on their way?”

Kate nodded.

“Gracias, señorita.” Morales stood. He was dressed in jeans and a white shirt open at the collar. It was hot in the poorly ventilated factory and there was a thin film of sweat on his chest. Morales was no longer young, but his hair was still dark and curly and his mustache was so distinctive it had become a symbol of resistance to the Castro regime. A basic rite of passage for aspiring activists was to draw a Morales mustache on posters of Cuba’s unelected leadership. He was an attractive man, Kate thought. Magnetic. The future of the island. But only if he could stay out of prison. Stay alive.

“You have to get out of here, Reuben,” she said.

A beam of light shining through the window briefly pierced the gloom in the factory and swept across the far wall like a searchlight.

Morales looked quickly out the window. “It’s too late, Katie. They’re here.”

Kate moved to stand beside Reuben and saw a small convoy of cars turning onto the road that led toward the factory.

“Come with me. I can get you out of here.”

“No, Katie. I appreciate what you’ve done. And I know that it was not without risk to you. But I will not leave my friends.”

An idea born of desperation clawed its way to the front of Kate’s consciousness. She tried to push it back, but she could not. It made sense to her. It could also get her killed.

She swallowed hard. There was no time to think it through, no time to weigh the pros and cons.

“Get the others out the back. I’ll buy you as much time as I can.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Something stupid.”

Kate ran for her car. Within seconds the heavy BMW sedan was screaming down the road toward the line of Cuban police cars.

The car in front flashed its lights, but there was no siren. The police would not want to alert those they had come to arrest. Kate ignored the lights and the instinct hardwired in her brain to turn away from danger, to turn the car. The distance between them closed with frightening speed.

As the cars barreled toward each other. At the last possible moment, Kate flinched and the BMW struck the Cuban police car in the left front quarter panel. Kate’s car spun wildly and the air bag deployed, blocking her view and keeping her from flying through the windshield. Her head cracked painfully against the side window, starring the glass as the force of the spin flung her into the door. Her vision grayed at the edges and she wanted to vomit.

Within seconds of the car coming to a stop, the door was ripped open and powerful hands were dragging her onto the ground. Blood ran down her face from a gash at her temple

Kate lay flat on her belly and she felt the cold muzzle of a pistol pressed up against the back of her skull.

“Quien coño eres tu?” Who the fuck are you?

Kate looked Charlie DelBarco right in the eyes, refusing to avert her gaze, to submit to his authority.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” DelBarco’s voice was calm and even, but the vein throbbing in his neck made it clear what an effort it was for him to keep from yelling. They were in his office in the embassy. Only an hour earlier, Kate had been cooling her heels in a Cuban jail. Barry Kriegler had come to get her out, something he had told her had been a heavy lift with the Cuban authorities.

“I had a car accident, Charlie.” She touched the bandage on her head like it was a Saint Christopher’s medallion.

“Bullshit. I had to call the justice minister himself to get you out of jail. I should have left you there to rot for a week or two, diplomatic immunity be damned.”

“What did you tell them?” Kate asked.

“That it was a car accident.”

“Well then, that’s what it was. It’s policy now.”

The chargé waved his hands dismissively.

“It doesn’t really matter. You won’t be my problem for long.” DelBarco picked up a legal-sized piece of paper from his desk and thrust it angrily in front of Kate’s face. “We got a dip note this morning from the Cubans. They’ve declared you persona non grata . You have thirty-six hours to leave Cuba forever.”

The news stung. Kate had known it was a possibility, but to hear it put in such stark terms was painful. She had come to love this island with its warm people and vibrant culture. The loss would hurt. But Kriegler had told her when he escorted her from prison that no one knew where Morales was. The police had not found him and he had gone into hiding. It would cost Kate, cost her a great deal. But it was worth it. She had no regrets.

“The only problem,” DelBarco continued, “is that we can’t punish you for insubordination in the way you deserve to be punished. Being PNG’d actually protects you. We can’t let the Cubans feel they got the upper hand by damaging one of our own. So we won’t sanction you, just to spite them.”

“Thanks, Charlie. I appreciate the compassion.”

DelBarco ignored the sarcasm.

“But it looks like you aren’t completely insulated from the consequences of your actions.”

“How so?” Kate asked nervously.

DelBarco picked up another document from his desk. This one a regular letter-sized paper.

“A transfer cable with your name on it, Kate. Say good-bye to mojitos and salsa music. I hope you packed a parka.”

“Where are they sending me?”

“The icky-stans. You’re going to Bishkek. I can’t even remember which one of those central Asian backwaters that’s the capital of.”

“Kyrgyzstan,” Kate answered flatly.

“Whatever. Seems they asked for you specifically. I’m not sure if that means someone’s looking out for you or if they have it in for you.”

“Me neither,” Kate agreed. “But I know who it is.”

From thirty-five thousand feet, it looked as though they were flying over a storm-tossed sea. Except that the waves were frozen in place and the whitecaps were really ice and snow. The mountains of Kyrgyzstan’s foreboding Ala-Too range stretched to the horizon, and Kate amused herself by mentally flipping the landscape back and forth from rock to ocean like a Buddhist monk meditating at one of the ancient Zen gardens in Kyoto.