Randy White - North of Havana

"I don't suppose you ever read much by Stalin?" Geis asked me. "We had to read it. One line stuck with me was this thing Stalin said: 'Only religion can keep the masses satisfied to live in hunger and ignorance.' Know who told me the same thing about a year ago? Fidel-but said it like he'd made it up himself. That's when he started talking about Santeria and Taino. Taino's idea was they could unify the country if Fidel started taking the national religion a little more seriously. Couple of months pass and I realize that Fidel has slipped over the edge; he's believing this shit. Talking about which god is in charge of what; how the tobacco crop failed because the idiotic priests hadn't made the right sacrifices, hadn't read the omens correctly. That's one thing about Fidel-no matter what the subject, everybody's an idiot but him."

Taino the anti-Castro revolutionary?

Geis made a fluttering sound of disgust. "Taino likes to pretend he's working for Fidel. He's an informant. Ochoa, the name, it was Taino's idea-this big white guy pretending he's mostly Arawak. Who's going to suspect the head man? It's like a big sting operation: let the traitors find us instead of us having to go looking for them. As long as they're not a threat, let the names keep piling up and arrest them all at once."

"Then you were lying to me. You don't believe Taino is conspiring to kill Castro."

"Hell, yes, I believe it. Adolfo Santoya, too. Trouble is, I couldn't get Fidel to believe it. Tells me, 'Taino is a great Babalao, a brilliant man like me-are you questioning the personal judgment of the Maximum Leader?' " Geis was lighting another cigar. "Why else would I be here, riding in this shitty sailboat with you? It's because Fidel got so mad arguing about it. Told his own security people that I was crazy. Okay, I'm crazy. What do they care? Except for one crazy Russian, everybody in the goddamn country wants the man dead. He tells them to ignore a plot to assassinate him, they couldn't be happier. Then what's Fidel do? He turns around and fires me."

What I wanted to do was start the little diesel engine to navigate the last half mile to shore-had to be some sandbars and coral around; tough at night under sail-but I didn't want to risk the noise.

"Damn right you don't," Geis said. "That stuff about Tomlinson being attracted to some kind of identical island… Jesus, has everyone gone stupid? But if they are here, they'll have those voodoo people I told you about posted around. Like bodyguards. The Abakua. To get into their secret society-what it really is is a gang-they get pissed on, drink blood. All this weird, secret stuff. Bite the heads off rats, eat babies? Whatever they're told to do. But don't sell them short. They hear us, they'll kill us. In a country where guns are illegal, they've gotten real handy with machetes."

I said, "You never said anything about that. Why bodyguards? They go looking for the Santoya fortune, why would they want extra people around?" I stared at Geis.

He was sitting forward of the mast, looking at the island-silhouetted forest and beach rising, then sinking beyond the bow. For some reason, he hadn't told me what I had already guessed. I thought about it before I said, "What they're really after is Columbus's casket. They want those medallions." Fidel, whose power had been consolidated by a white dove, was looking for another harbinger to reestablish his authority.

I wondered: Why doesn't Geis want to tell me?

Geis was nodding, not looking at me. "Taino, you're damn right that's what he's after. Fidel, too. The people in this country really do believe in magic. They run their fucking lives by signs, omens, all that shit. Put Yara Hatuey's medallion around Fidel's neck-a symbol like that?-the people would accept him as president and head priest. Tell them, after all these years, the gods chose him to find it. How are the other priests going to argue? Taino's angle, what he knows is, whoever wears it has obviously been chosen to be in control."

"Your deep interest in the church; I can see a reason now. What makes them so sure the casket wasn't taken to Spain? You're the one who said it was a legend. Maybe-"

"That was just a way of… believe me, they know it wasn't taken to Spain. Remember when we were at the Plaza de la Catedral? The part I left out was, back in nineteen hundred, it was the most powerful family in Cuba that made sure Columbus's bones never left the island. The San-toya family. People looked for the damn thing for sixty years, but the only ones who knew where it was were a few of the Santoya men.

"Then Rita's grandfather got into such a fight with Angel, he found it and moved the thing just before Fidel came to power. Angel's people went through just about every mausoleum in the country-I guess it was originally hidden someplace like that-but no luck. Taino, people like him, have been waiting a long time for one of Eduardo Santoya's grandkids to come back and lead them to it."

I said, "So why didn't Rita lead them to it? She sits around watching Tomlinson eat peyote, point at a map.

That makes no sense. Why the charade? I think her grandmother really did screw up the directions. Rita has no idea where it is. She sees the scar on Tomlinson's temple- everybody falls in love with Tomlinson. She listens to a lot of convincing talk about mysticism and magic, or maybe she finds out she really does like the idea of playing revolutionary. She decides why not find out? Can he do it?"

Geis said, "Rita? No, what I think is… I'll tell you, I took one look at her and think, Jesus, she's Angel Santoya all over again. Those eyes of hers, like gun barrels. With her, I think it's strictly the money… which is why I expect her to be gone by the time we catch up with them. The only reason Rita would stick around is because she was still looking for it herself. Looking for something; doing it on her own privately. Or because she wanted to buy herself some time. That's what I've thought right along. She wanted a few extra days, so she had to play along. Up until yesterday, Adolfo was still officially in charge of shipping. Whatever he told his people to do, they'd do. Maybe she was waiting for a freighter to take her out. Maybe they were both waiting."

I thought: Panama.

I had tacked to starboard and was now running just off the beach. Everyplace I thought there might be reef or a bar, there was a reef or a bar-could hear the rollers breaking in the shoal areas as I dodged them. Cayo de Soto's similarities to Sanibel were only that. Similarities. Yet they were consistent enough that I began to acquire confidence in my knowledge of sea bottom and topography. Arriving here by boat-if he had arrived at all-Tomlinson would have experienced the same eerie sense of mirror image, only it would be stronger in him. He would accept every likeness as a directive; a kind of homing signal from God. His spiritual home had always been and would always be Dinkin's Bay-the shallow-water lake located in the eastern mangrove littoral of Sanibel Island.

Cayo de Soto's duplicate bay would be the first place he'd go. He'd expect to find what he wanted to find right there. I knew the man. Had heard all his theories on parallelism and the symmetry of life. He'd once asked me, "Have you ever looked down and noticed that urine spirals precisely like a DNA helix?" And had once told me, "Shadow universes exist-that's a scientific truth. So is repetition of design. So isn't it illogical not to believe that every planet, every dimension, every thing has a shadow duplicate?"

No, I didn't think that it was logical, but I did believe it was that kind of reasoning that would lead Tomlinson and his group to the bay. Which is why I wanted to sail inland. Wanted to confirm that there were boats there. Hoped to pull into the bay and see the familiar night outline of No Mas sitting at anchor.