Nelson DeMille - The Cuban Affair

I asked, “Do you have your pesos with you?”

She tapped her shoulder bag.

We stopped near a salsa group, and, inspired by the hot music, Sara handed me her bag and joined a few people who were dancing. She had some good moves and she was really shaking it. She hiked up her dress and the crowd whistled and clapped, and I felt my pepino stirring.

Sara blew a kiss to the band and we moved on. I returned her bag with a compliment. “Not bad for an architect.”

“I’ll teach you Cuban dance when we get back to Miami.”

I would have said “if,” but I liked her optimism.

We stopped and looked out over the seawall at the beach and the Straits of Florida. People were fishing or wading in the water, maybe thinking about those ninety miles to Key West.

On that subject, Sara said, “You’ll notice there are no boats out there.”

“Right.”

“There are virtually no private watercraft allowed in Cuba, for obvious reasons.”

“They should just let people go.”

“Sometimes they do. As with the Mariel Boatlift. The regime understands it needs a safety valve — an unofficial method of getting rid of people who could cause problems. But Cuba loses many of its best and brightest.”

“I assume there are patrol boats out there.”

“There are. The Guarda Frontera — the border guards. They keep an eye on the commercial fishing fleet and also look for the rafters. But they can’t patrol hundreds of miles of coastline.” She added, “About five or six thousand rafters a year try to escape, and fewer than half are caught.”

Not bad odds. I asked, “Do the border guards have helicopters or seaplanes?”

“A few of each, but not many.”

“It only takes one.”

“It will go well.”

“Okay.”

We continued our walk, but no one approached us except artists selling their sketches or kids looking for a few coins.

I spotted a few ladies of the night, and Sara noticed. “Prostitution was one of the first things outlawed by the regime, and it carries a four-year prison sentence for both parties.”

“I’ll let Tad know.”

She smiled and put her arm through mine. “But you don’t need to buy sex.”

“Right.” Meanwhile, I’m not getting any for free.

“Cuba is a very promiscuous society, and casual sex is rampant. The Cubans say that sex is the only thing that Castro hasn’t rationed.”

Funny. But all this sex talk was getting me cranked. I could see the Nacional ahead and said, “Let’s have a nightcap.”

“We should keep walking.”

“No one’s selling Cuban pottery tonight.”

She didn’t reply.

“But that needs to happen soon. Our window will start closing in two or three days.”

“Would you be willing to come with me to Camagüey Province even if our Havana contact doesn’t show up?”

Actually, I’d prefer to do that and not have any Cubans involved. If Cuba was anything like Afghanistan, every time we relied on the locals to assist us we’d get double-crossed, ambushed, or at best screwed out of money.

“Mac?”

“Well... if I say no, would you go without me?”

“I would.”

The lady had balls. “Let’s give it a few days, then if our window of time is closing and we haven’t met our contact here, we can make that decision.”

“All right. And you understand that if we don’t meet our contact in Havana, we won’t know how to meet our contact in Camagüey, and we won’t have a vehicle or a safe house.”

I assured her, “I know how to hot-wire most vehicles, and the best safe house is under the stars.”

She stopped walking and faced me. “I told Carlos and Eduardo you were the right man for this job.”

Before I could think of a response, she threw her arms around my neck and we were locking lips on the Malecón.

She let go and we continued our walk. She asked, “Was that a gun in your pocket?”

“That was my Cuban Missile Crisis.”

She laughed, then said seriously, “It would be good if we had a gun.”

“We’ll have guns on The Maine if we need them to get out of Cuba.”

“We could need a gun much sooner.”

“As I understand it, getting caught with a gun in Cuba could be a death sentence.”

“I would rather die in a gunfight than be captured.”

“I think it’s time for a drink.”

We walked in silence, then Sara pointed out a modern six-story building off to the right. “That’s the U.S. Embassy.”

The windows were dark, except for a corner office on the sixth floor. Someone was working late, maybe trying to catch up after being out of the office for fifty years. The area around the building was bathed in security lights, and I could see the Great Seal of the United States over the front door.

Sara said, “We have no ambassador yet, but we have a Chargé d’Affaires, Jeffrey DeLaurentis, who runs the embassy. His boss, the Secretary of State, John Kerry, is a Yalie, and I met him once. So if we wind up in a Cuban prison, I can play the Yale card.”

Based on what I saw of her Yale alum group, neither the State Department nor the embassy would be taking that call.

Anyway, there was a small plaza in front of the embassy that Sara said was called the Anti-Imperialist Forum. “It’s where crowds gather spontaneously to protest against America. Except nothing in Cuba is spontaneous.”

“Except dancing.” And sex, which is unrationed.

Well, our primary objective didn’t go too well on the Malecón, but I had a secondary objective that might go better at the Nacional.

We reached the tree-lined drive of the Nacional and entered the hotel lobby, which, unlike the Riviera, was hopping and crowded with what looked like an international clientele. I hoped Jack didn’t show up here tomorrow in one of his inappropriate T-shirts.

Cocktails on the terrace appealed to me, and we went out the back door.

The terrace was crowded, but for five CUCs the hostess found us two comfortable chairs that looked out at the Straits. A waitress appeared and Sara ordered a daiquiri and I got a Bucanero, por favor. A three-piece steel band played Caribbean Island music.

A soft breeze came off the moonlit water, stirring the palms, and the air was sweet with tropical flowers. The combo was playing “Guantanamera,” one of my favorites. Out over the water a jetliner was climbing out of José Martí Airport.

This would be the perfect end of a nice evening if I was going to get spontaneously laid.

On a different but somewhat related subject, Sara said, “This is romantic.”

Our drinks came and we clinked. “To a new friendship,” she said.

“And to you,” I replied.

We stared out at the water, and I could see the silhouettes of the old and new fortifications along the beach. People have a way of screwing things up, even in a tropical paradise.

She said, “I never asked you — do you have a woman?”

The best and shortest answer was, “No.”

“Why not?”

“I was married to my boat.”

“Be serious.”

“I never found the right woman.” I added, “But I’m open to that possibility.”

“Sounds like bullshit. That’s okay. When we leave here, we go our separate ways.”

I hate these kinds of conversations. “Let’s focus on getting out of here.”

“And if we don’t, we’ll always have this time together.”

I had the feeling I was being manipulated, but I also felt that Sara honestly liked me. If we actually got out of this place alive, we could sort it out. Meanwhile, the clock was ticking — two more days until sex on Sunday, then a few more days after that until we had to make some big decisions. Regarding the first subject, I spontaneously suggested, “Let’s get a room here.”