Randy White - North of Havana

At Cayo Parafso, a crescent island, palm and bleached shacks at the base of mountains, we'd hidden the Avon in a thicket of mangroves, then walked to the village. Geis had wanted to commandeer the largest boat on the island, a rotting lobster boat, probably forty-some feet with a cabin. But because I wanted to approach Cayo de Soto quietly, I'd settled on a raw-wood fishing smack with hand-hewn dagger boards and rudder. It had a single mast with a spinnaker pole, plus a little one-cylinder diesel engine if the wind failed us.

An additional advantage was that patrol boats would be less inclined to stop such a craft-a couple of locals out fishing for food. Not in any hurry.

Yet I was in a hurry. Whenever I thought of Dewey, it was like a sickness inside me. I wanted to be there; get her the hell away from a world she didn't know or had ever suspected. It was less true of Tomlinson. He, or his injury- maybe his illness-had gotten us into this mess. But, though I was less sympathetic, I was still worried about the guy. Sappy greeting cards aside, friendship is defined, not measured, by one's willingness to go to the aid of another. It is an obligation that blends conscience and accountability. Very, very few are worthy of the word. Tomlinson is. Lately, he'd been behaving like a selfish, drug-addled dilettante, which I, his friend, would happily tell him… the moment we got away and were safe.

If he and Dewey were on Cayo de Soto.

That was another constant worry.

I kept telling myself, they'll be there. They had to be there. I knew Tomlinson all too well; knew how his mind worked.

She'll be there…

But to find them, I had to stay smart; couldn't rush it. The fishing smack's lack of speed was a serious drawback, but the trade-off seemed necessary if 1 was to make it to the island at all.

The old man who owned the boat had asked for a hundred dollars, U.S. I'd given him two hundred and told him, in a couple of days, maybe he and his grandchildren should go looking in the mangroves. Maybe he'd find a replacement.

"If this son-of-a-bitch sinks,^J ' Geis had said dourly, as he stepped down off the dock, "we'll both drown." Meanings the sailboat.

The old man had given me a few days' supply of water and a couple of chunks of salted shark. I had been stowing it aboard. "If it sinks," I'd told Geis, "I want to die knowing what the hell's going on. That's why you're going to spend the next ten miles or so talking. If you won't talk, get out. Steal the lobster boat. I'll take this and go alone."

Geis had looked at me-me, his fall guy if Castro required an explanation. Why had he disobeyed orders? Because he'd been on the trail of the American spy, that's why. The one who'd murdered the four guardsmen and injured others; the one who was tracking Taino, maybe even wanted to take another shot at the Maximum Leader himself.

Geis had thought about it a moment before he said, "Thing is, I've gotten kind of fond of you. Like I said back at the Havana Libre, when you showed up, it was like being in jail and getting a visitor. You know the feeling?"

"That was a guy named Lenny Geis talking. Not you."

"You got a problem with the name? I'll choose another, any name you want. But me, I've gotten kind of fond of that, too."

Lenny.

He had been smiling when he added, "No offense, but I think it's a hell of a lot better than the name you used. That time you came to Havana to play baseball? I followed that Iran-Contra business; watched that Marine on television those Senators tried to nail. The same last name you used, man! I thought, Can't those people think of anything original?"

Now Cayo Parafso was nearly two hours behind us and Geis was talking about Taino and Castro. He'd told me, "Because of what we might be walking into, I guess we're still on a strictly need-to-know basis. Which means you need to know." He sat there speaking softly in the darkness, the tip of his cigar glowing bright orange whenever he paused.

It was a little after nine P.M. With the wind behind us, we were fishtailing along wing-and-wing, jib and headsail on opposite sides, making pretty good bottom speed. Maybe five knots-fast in that old boat. Above us, stars illustrated the basin of deep space, rotating above the mast as if the universe were being drained slowly, slowly into some celestial whirlpool.

Ahead, I could see a white rind of beach and a charcoal elevation that was the eastern point of Cayo de Soto. I'd been steering toward it for the last maddening hour, and only now did it seem slightly closer.

I sat with the wooden tiller under my arm and listened to Geis say, "Like I told you, Fidel has a thing about Ramon… Taino… whatever the hell you want to call him. What it is-and Fidel never told me this, I checked around and found it out for myself. Taino is Fidel's illegitimate kid. One of the many."

I remembered how the names Ruz, Mayari, Sierra Maes-tra had stuck in my memory; the names Tomlinson had supposedly divined. They had something to do with Castro. Maybe a family name among them. Fidel Ruz Castro? And where he was born. I wasn't sure; it didn't matter-but it suggested that Tomlinson knew more about Taino than he had volunteered. I said, "Castro doesn't seem like the kind of man who keeps track of illegitimate children."

"Hell, no. He's probably got forty, fifty-hell, a couple hundred. Who knows? But the thing about Taino is, he's got power. Fidel likes that. He respects it. His only legitimate son is a lazy dope. Fidel tried to hide him away by appointing him head of the Cuban Atomic Energy Commission. That's like being appointed head of Ireland's space program. But Taino's just like Fidel. He's ruthless. Got to the top by lying, killing-shit, that's nothing-the kind of guy who looks at people but sees ants. What Fidel thinks about Taino is, hey, a chip off the old block."

I remembered that Tomlinson had said they were duplicate spirits, Taino and his father. Remembered that he'd said that Taino's powers were stronger-whatever that meant. I said, "Castro didn't tell you this."

"No. I already told you he didn't. It's just me putting the pieces together. But Fidel, he likes to talk. Up until about two weeks ago, he talked to me all the time. I've seen the man alone, face-to-face, maybe twice in the twelve years I've been here. But what he'd do was call me. Started maybe two years ago. And always late at night, because the guy can't sleep, and he'd just ramble. Name a subject, he'd ramble. At first, I thought, why the hell's he calling me? Then I realized-I'm a Russian. The only Russian left in the country. A Russian could never hold a position of power in Cuba. No way; the Cubanos, they wouldn't stand for it. See? No matter how much I knew, how much I had against him, I wasn't a threat. Another thing, I've got a secure phone line and I've got top security clearance. So he could say any damn thing that popped into his mind and he didn't have to worry about it. When you think about it, if a guy like Fidel's got a lot of shit he wants to get off his chest, I'm the perfect choice."

Lately, Geis told me, Castro had a lot to get off his chest. I sat steering, feeling the boat lift and surf on the dark waves, hearing wind in the rigging, my eyes fixed on the beach ahead, as Geis told me about it. The picture of Fidel Castro that emerged was that of a man who was paranoid, egomaniacal, and who had lost touch with reality. The failed economy, the food shortages, the gas shortages, the failed tobacco crop, the political isolation-why were people blaming him? During the last secret ballot, several members of his own politburo had actually voted against him. First time in history his election wasn't unanimous- and he was going to find out who the traitors were and destroy them. Had Geis heard the whispers? People were saying that he was losing control of Cuba. But it wasn't true! Here is what he would do to prove to them that it wasn't true.