Nelson DeMille - The Cuban Affair

The bandito just made half a month’s pay, but I was happy to see that official corruption existed in the People’s Republic. It could come in handy.

I proceeded to baggage claim, which was a long counter piled haphazardly with luggage. I looked for Sara but didn’t see her. I did, however, see Alison, who was directing everyone who’d gotten through customs to an exit.

I found my suitcase and wheeled it toward a customs agent who was collecting the declaration forms. Some people ahead of me had chalk marks on their bags, and they were directed to a counter where agents were searching the marked luggage. Another opportunity to levy a tax. Or be taken away to be searched. I was worried about Sara. I would have asked Alison if she’d seen her, but I wasn’t supposed to know Sara Ortega.

My suitcase wasn’t marked, and I gave the customs agent my Nothing to Declare form and headed out the door into the bright sunshine. There was a line of coach buses parked outside, each one with a sign, and I headed toward the Yale bus. Tad was standing near the bus, checking names off his list while a Cuban porter was loading bags into the luggage compartment.

I said to Tad, “MacCormick.”

He found my name and checked me off. “You can give this gentleman your bag and hop aboard.”

I turned his roster toward me and saw that most names had been checked off, but not Sara Ortega. I left my suitcase on the curb and headed back to the terminal. An armed guard at the door made it clear that I wasn’t allowed to reenter the terminal, so I stood there, peering inside.

I had my cell phone, but it showed no service, and even if it did I didn’t have Sara’s number. We were supposed to exchange phone numbers sometime after we landed, on the off chance we had service in Havana.

A few people whom I recognized from our group came out of the terminal, but not Sara.

Just as I was thinking of reporting Sara’s disappearance to clueless Tad, out came Alison and Sara, wheeling their suitcases and chatting away. Sara gave me a quick nod and Alison, who recognized me from the group, said, “We’re all here. You can board the bus.”

Sara hung back as Alison hurried to the bus.

Though I didn’t know Sara Ortega, I offered to carry her backpack as any single gentleman would do for a pretty lady who had caught his eye. She accepted my offer, and as we walked toward the bus, I asked, “What happened?”

“I was escorted into a back room and had my luggage searched. Got patted down and answered some questions.”

“Do you think it was random?”

“Nothing here is random. Here, it’s profiling. And paranoia. They have a problem with Cuban American tourists.”

“Okay... the money? The map?”

“You should never try to hide anything. The map is stuck in my guide book and they barely noticed it. The pesos are in my backpack, mixed with American dollars, which is what I did last time I was here. The customs agent asked why I was bringing pesos into the country.”

I was sure she had a good answer, or she wouldn’t be walking with me.

“I reminded him it was not illegal for me to possess pesos, it was only illegal for me to spend them, and I pointed out that I had declared the pesos. I showed him my receipt for the pesos that I’d bought from a Canadian bank and told him that I was giving the money to various Cuban charities — which is actually done by American aid groups and it’s legal.”

“Apparently he believed your b.s.”

“He believed he’d made a good score.” She explained, “Cuban customs is a gold mine for the customs officials. If they bust you, the government becomes their partner. If you pay them a fine, they pocket it.”

“I got clipped for ten bucks.”

“You got off easy. Cost me two hundred.”

“We’re in the wrong business.” Señorita Ortega was a cool customer. I said, “It looked like you got off to a bad start with the passport.”

“He was being obnoxious, asking why the Americana was coming back to Cuba for a second time, and how could I afford to stay at the Parque Central. He practically suggested I was a prostitute, and I said I was going to report him.”

“I think he reported you to customs.”

“Probably.” She added, “I hate them.”

“Right.” It’s usually my mouth that gets me in trouble. Now I had another mouth to worry about.

Tad and Alison looked impatient as we approached, and Sara took her backpack and moved ahead of me. Tad checked her off, the porter loaded her bag, and she boarded the bus.

Tad must have thought I was going to grab his roster again, so he held it to his chest.

I hopped on the big bus, whose air-conditioned interior was as cold as a well-digger’s ass in Maine.

The bus had about fifty seats, so I was able to find two empty seats together and I sat next to my backpack. Sara was behind me, sitting with one of the older ladies.

Tad and Alison boarded, greeted everyone, and Alison said, “Well, that wasn’t too bad.” She introduced our bus driver, José, and led us in greeting him. “Buenos días, José!”

Group travel requires a certain level of voluntary infantile behavior. I had a flashback to my yellow school bus.

José pulled away and we were off to Havana, which my guide book said was twenty kilometers from the airport, giving Tad and Alison time to fill us in on the day’s agenda. Our Cuban guide would join us at the welcome dinner at our hotel and answer any questions we might have about Cuba. Question number one: How do we get to Paris from here?

The bus was comfortable, made in China, and fit for Americans, though the lavatory was temporarily out of order and would probably stay that way until a plumber arrived from Shanghai.

This was Tad and Alison’s second trip to Cuba, they told us, though not together. I hoped they’d hook up and made themselves scarce.

I tuned them out and looked out the window. The area around the airport was rundown — moldering stucco buildings with tin roofs — but the flowering vegetation was lush and tropical, hiding most of the squalor. The bus swerved a few times to avoid donkey carts, and the Yalies shot pictures out the window.

So here we were in hell. There’s a TV series that documents the story of ordinary people who agree to smuggle drugs into or out of some shithole country. They get busted, of course, and I used to laugh at the stupidity of these amateur drug smugglers who risked ten or twenty years in a hellhole third-world prison for a few bucks. What were they thinking? I would never do anything like that.

There was almost no morning traffic on the airport road and no sign of commercial activity — no shops, no gas stations, and no McDonald’s. The only thing for sale was The Revolution, advertised on billboards, most of which showed the familiar Christ-like image of the departed Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and what appeared to be his quoted words praising LA REVOLUCIÓN. The only graffiti I saw was on the wall of a collapsed building — CUBA SÍ — YANQUIS NO.

If the martyred Che was the face of the revolution, Fidel was the man behind the curtain. My Yale info packet said that Fidel Castro had modestly avoided encouraging a cult of personality around him, so we’d see no images of F.C. or his brother Raúl, no statues, and no postcards or souvenirs showing F.C.’s or R.C.’s faces. I think the regime is missing an opportunity to make a few bucks on Castro Brothers T-shirts.

We reached the outskirts of Havana in about thirty minutes.

First impressions color future perceptions, and my first impression of Cuba was of decay. The buildings in Havana, like the ones along the airport road, were mostly in bad repair — except the buildings that were beyond repair. The good news was that the streets were litter-free, maybe because no one had anything to throw away.