Nelson DeMille - The Cuban Affair

And while I was not taking anything at face value, what about those twelve steamer trunks filled with money and hidden in a cave in Camagüey? Did they really exist? And if they did, were they still there?

This country was like an elaborate magic show, a grand illusion, a game of three-card monte, and a Hogwarts for con artists. And I thought the Afghanis were slippery.

Well, the property deeds seemed real enough.

I glanced at Sara. She was real. And she had confessed all her lies. What more could I want?

“What are you thinking about?”

“I’m thinking about Antonio coming to your room at midnight and seeing the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign.”

“Do you think he’ll notify the police?”

“That depends on whether or not he wants to tell them he had a date with you, and that you jilted him.”

She nodded.

“I myself would be embarrassed, and probably not tell the police that I’d been scammed. But if he’s a good police informant, he might make that call and give the police a heads-up, and by seven A.M., when we don’t show up at the pier, there’ll be no question that we’re gone.”

She thought about all that and replied, “We didn’t get much of a head start.”

“No.” And we were already on a police watch list, thanks to Antonio. And we had a few other problems with this road trip. Like if the police had already made the connection between me and Fishy Business , which would lead them straight to Cayo Guillermo. And we wouldn’t know we had that problem until we got to Cayo, and by that time... Well, as they say, you should never travel faster than your guardian angel can fly.

Another problem with this Misión Imposible was us arriving in Cayo and discovering that the fleet had been booted out of the country. And the third possible problem was Eduardo, wandering around Havana, or beginning his cross-country walk home.

Eduardo was the only person in Cuba — except for Jack and Felipe — who knew where Dan MacCormick and Sara Ortega were going, and he even knew what we were driving. And if the police picked him up, and ID’d him as Eduardo Valazquez, the notorious anti-Castro enemy of the state, they’d ask him why he was in Cuba as they were electrifying his nuts. Eduardo had assured us he would take the poison — but you never know.

And then there was Chico and Flavio, both of whom knew a little more than I wanted them to know. And I shouldn’t forget the old man with the cane. I was sure that Eduardo’s amigos in Miami and Havana had vetted all three of them, but... everyone in Cuba, as Antonio said, had a second job. And everyone sold each other out.

Sara said, “Someday, Antonio and everyone like him in Cuba will face a day of judgement.”

Actually, I would’ve liked to have been in Sara’s room at midnight to deliver my own judgement to Antonio’s nuts. But the mission comes first.

Sara was looking in her sideview mirror, and now and then she glanced over her shoulder.

I asked her, “Do the Tráficos use unmarked cars?”

“They do.” She added, “They drive mostly Toyota SUVs.”

Sara was a wealth of information. Some of it obtained from Marcelo last year. Some of it obtained from her briefing officer, the retired CIA guy. And some information had come to her from Eduardo, Carlos, and their amigos in the exile community. I wasn’t as well-informed as she was, but I noticed that if I asked, sometimes I got an answer. So I asked, “Did Eduardo know your father or grandfather?”

“He knew both.”

“Right. So one or both of them must have told Eduardo that those property deeds were hidden in a church, not in the cave.”

“I guess.”

“But you didn’t know that.”

“I... may have known. But forgot.”

“Or those deeds were in the cave, and someone has already been to the cave and cleaned it out.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I’m suggesting that Eduardo has been playing this game long before you or I were even born.”

“This is not a game.”

“It is. But who’s calling the plays?”

“Not you.”

“Right. I’m just the running back. You’re the quarterback, and Eduardo is the coach.”

“Good analogy.” She advised me, “Don’t think about this too much.”

“Okay.” But I was thinking about who owned the team. And I concluded that the Company owned the team.

It occurred to me that cyanide is not that easy to come by. They don’t sell it in Walgreens. I thought, too, about Eduardo’s forged passport, and about his friends in American intelligence. And the more I thought about all this, the more I saw the hand of the Company in some of this mission — the CIA. I mean, any normal American boy raised on conspiracy theories sees the hand of the CIA in everything. Even my father, who blames his bad golf game on CIA mind control. I had worked with the CIA in Afghanistan, and seen them at their best in Special Ops. Cuba, however, was another story. The CIA had been intimately, obsessively, and unhappily involved in Cuban affairs even before Castro took over. The careers of CIA officers had been made and broken in Cuba — mostly broken. That was a long time ago, but the pain and institutional embarrassment of those failures lingered on. I mean, the exploding cigars had become a joke, but the Bay of Pigs Invasion was a historic catastrophe.

I assumed, therefore, that the CIA wanted a win. And I suspected that the CIA was no fan of the Cuban Thaw, which would legitimize the regime and help keep the Castros and the Communists in power. And to allow the Thaw to go forward would be a betrayal of all the dissidents risking their lives in Cuba, and all the exile groups in America who still had a relationship with the CIA — people like Eduardo Valazquez and his amigos. So, yes, I could see the hand of the CIA in this mission, and if true, it never was about the money in the cave; it was always about recovering the skulls and the stolen property in the back of this Buick, and stirring up a shit storm that would send the diplomats home, or at least give them more to argue about.

And if all this was true, what was also true was that my three million dollars was just bait — and not even a real hunk of meat; just a shiny lure. Well, as Sara said, I shouldn’t think about this too much. But it explained some of the bullshit. And maybe prepared me for my surprise in Cayo.

Bottom line, though, I felt good about getting out of Havana and sitting behind the wheel of my own car with a loaded Glock in my belt. It was still a long way to Key West, but we were heading in the right direction, and I was in the driver’s seat for a change. The Havana bullshit was behind me. From here it was all balls, all the way.

Sara had retrieved a bottle of water from her backpack and we shared it. She said, “I’ve been thinking about the Yale alum group.”

“Who’s that?”

“Be serious, Mac. I hope we don’t cause them any problems.”

“That’s nice of you to think about them.” While we’re running for our lives. “Any problems they have will be caused by the Cuban government. Not us.”

“I feel that we used them.”

“We did.” I reminded her, “That was your plan.” Or maybe the CIA’s.

“They may be questioned by the police.”

“The highlight of their trip.”

“And kicked out of the country.”

“Or worse. Another week with Antonio. Unless the police beat him up.”

“Be a little sympathetic.”

“Okay, I liked Tad,” I admitted. “And Alison, and Professor Nalebuff, and some of the others, like...” Pretty Cindy Neville. I reminded Sara, “I left my Hemingway T-shirt for Richard.”

She ignored that and said, “I wonder what Tad is going to do when he discovers we’re missing.”