Nelson DeMille - The Cuban Affair

Sara was staring at the prison, and I inquired, “Why are we here?”

“I wanted you to see this.”

“Okay. I see it. Let’s go.”

But she stood where she was and said, “This is where we could wind up — if we ever made it out of the Ministry of the Interior in Revolution Plaza.”

“Actually, we could wind up here now if those guards come across the street and ask what we’re doing here and what’s in our backpacks.”

“Fuck them.”

Sara was going into her Fuck Them I Hate Them mode. Not good.

She said, “Villa Marista was originally a Catholic boys’ school, run by the Marist Brothers.”

Now it’s run by the Castro Brothers.

“The regime expropriated the school and kicked out the Marists and the students, and turned this campus into a hell on earth.”

Which it may have already been when it was a Catholic boys’ school.

“It’s a pleasant-looking place, so you wouldn’t know what goes on in there.” So she told me, “Physical and psychological torture... things that destroy the soul before the bullet is fired into the back of your head.”

I glanced at the four armed guards, who were looking at us, then glanced at the Chevy to make sure it was still there.

“The State Security Police are headquartered here, and the prison holds no criminals — only political prisoners. Enemies of the state. There are no visitors allowed, and the few prisoners who are released from here are the walking dead. Examples to others who might dare to oppose the regime.”

I put my hand on Sara’s shoulder and said, “Paco is waiting.”

But she continued, “In the early 1960s, Castro invited the Soviet KGB to Villa Marista to teach the State Security Police the finer points of psychological torture and interrogation using psychoactive drugs. Then the Cuban torturers were sent to Vietnam to continue their practice on American prisoners of war in the Hanoi Hilton and other North Vietnamese prisons. The torturers then came back to Cuba.”

I recalled what Carlos said on my boat about Villa Marista and I knew what Sara was going to say.

“They brought with them seventeen American POWs who were secretly imprisoned in Villa Marista for advanced experiments with drugs.”

It was hard to imagine being taken prisoner in Vietnam, tortured there, then being shipped to Cuba for more of the same. And these men must have known they were less than a hundred miles from America. And that they would never go home.

Sara continued, “Most of these seventeen men died, or were as good as dead, and those who survived were shot here in 1973 when the Vietnam War ended. The American POWs in Vietnam were returned home, but these seventeen soldiers and airmen in Villa Marista were listed by the Pentagon as missing in action, though there is solid evidence that they had once been prisoners in North Vietnam — one of them was even identified in a photograph that showed Fidel Castro visiting a prisoner-of-war camp in North Vietnam. And now we know, from Cuban prison guards who have defected to the U.S., that these missing American POWs were here , died here, or were murdered here, and were buried in an unmarked common grave on the grounds of Villa Marista.”

If I actually had post-traumatic stress disorder, something like this could spark an episode. In fact, I had a brief flashback to a moment when... if one or two things had gone differently, I’d have been in the hands of the Taliban... or... I’d have put a bullet in my head.

Sara glanced at me. “I thought that you, as a veteran, would want to say a prayer for the souls of these seventeen American prisoners of war who died here, alone and with no one knowing their fate.”

She took my hand and we bowed our heads. We didn’t have many missing men in the Afghan war, but I thought of the nearly two thousand men who were still missing in Vietnam, and I thought of Jack, and my father, and the other men I knew who’d served in that war. And I prayed for all of them. Which I had never done before.

One of the prison guards began shouting at us and making menacing motions with his rifle.

Sara said softly, “Amen,” then, “Fuck him.” She retrieved her cell phone from her shoulder bag and took a photo of me with Villa Marista prison in the background. “So you’ll remember.”

The guard was not happy.

We turned and walked down the street toward our waiting car.

She asked, “Do you understand why we came here?”

“To honor the dead.”

She didn’t reply, and as we walked, I recalled what she had said outside the Catedral de San Cristóbal: The bones need to come home... , which, now that I was here, made more sense if it was these bones, not Christopher Columbus’ bones, that she was referring to. I recalled again Carlos’ words on my boat about Villa Marista, which I’d thought was just an offhand remark. And Sara’s words in bed. You’ll be very pleased with the other reason we’re here. And what I concluded from all this was that the Cuban exile groups who were opposed to the Thaw had plans to rekindle these unconfirmed stories about American POWs being tortured and murdered in Cuba, and to demand the return of the bodies — and to fire up the American public and the politicians and upset the ongoing diplomatic negotiations.

“Do you understand?”

“I think I do. But...”

“More later.”

There always is.

Sara told Paco to take us to Bollywood, an Indian restaurant on Calle 35, which she’d chosen for the location, not the cuisine.

Paco dropped us off and I gave him a hundred CUCs, which he had earned for not abandoning us at Villa Marista. And if he was a rat and called the police, they’d be looking for us at Bollywood. Staying ahead of the police in a police state was an intellectual challenge. And a bit of twisted fun.

Paco pulled away and I looked at my watch. We had ten minutes to walk to Calle 37, Number 570. If this was a Cuban Monopoly game, we’d just gotten out of jail free, and I hoped the next card we drew at Calle 37 said Go to Camagüey and Collect Sixty Million Dollars.

Sara and I walked in silence through the dark streets, then she said, “I went to Villa Marista the last time I was here... It is the evil heart of an evil monster.” She added, “The world needs to know.”

“Right.” But does the world — or the American public or the politicians — care enough to cause a major rift in the ongoing diplomatic negotiations? If we actually had the names of those seventeen men, then, yes, it would be big news. Well, more later, as Sara said.

We reached Calle 37 and began walking toward 570 at the end of the dimly lit block. I took the Glock out of my fanny pack and stuck it under my shirt.

As we approached the garage I noticed a movement in the shadows under the flickering streetlight, and as we got closer I saw a man sitting in a chair near the steel door. Sara and I continued at the same pace and now I could hear music — “Dos Gardenias” — coming from somewhere.

We stopped a few feet from the man in the chair, who was smoking a cigar, drinking a Bucanero, and listening to an old tape player that sat on the sidewalk. He seemed lost in the music, and Sara said, “Buenas noches.”

He turned his head toward us. “Buenas noches.”

The guy was old, with white hair and white stubble on his face, and he wore a tank top that was wet with sweat or beer. A walking cane leaned against the wall.

He drew on his cigar and asked in English, “What are you looking for?”

Sara replied, “Pottery.”

He nodded. “You have come to the right place.”

That’s always good to hear when you’re in a foreign city, walking at night to an address that a strange man handed to you in a cemetery.