Cuba (33 page)

Someone slapped the side of the stall, said something

unintelligible in Spanish. Probably wanted

him to hurry up, to get out and let the next man

in.

Svenson made a retching sound. And almost

lost his breakfast.

He tried retching audibly again, less forcefully.

The person standing beside the stall walked away, the

door to the rest room opened and closed.

Where was Santana?

Maybe he wasn’t coining. Surely by now if he

were searching the terminal he would have looked into this

restroom.

Coukfit be?

Or perhaps Santana was standing outside, waiting for

him to come out, for the sheer joy of dashing his hopes when

he thought the coast was clear. Santana would do a thing

like that, Svenson told himself now.

He felt so dirty, so wretched. He wiped at

the sheen of sweat on his face, wiped his hands on his

trousers.

He watched the minute hand of his watch, watched it

slowly circle the dial, counted the seconds as it

moved along so effortlessly.

With every passing minute that Santana didn’t come he

felt better. Yes. Perhaps he wasn’t looking.

He must not be. If he were looking he would have been

hi this restroom, would have opened the door, would have

jerked him from the stall and arrested him and put the cuffs

on him and dragged him across the terminal and

thrown him into a police car.

But Santana didn’t come.

After an hour of waiting, Olaf Svenson began

thinking about how he was going to get out of the country. He

needed another passport. If he used his own, the

security people might not let him through the immigration

checkpoint.

He pulled up his pants, washed his hands

thoroughly, and went out into the main hall of the terminal.

Keeping an eye out for Santana, he went to the

ticket desk for Mexicana Airlines and stood

where he could watch the agent When handed a passport,

the man glanced up, comparing the face to the photo. Just

a glance, but a glance would be enough. Using a stolen

passport with a photo that didn’t match his face was

too much of a risk. Svenson knew he would have

to use his own, dangerous though it would be.

Screwing up his courage, Olaf Svenson got in

line.

“Ciudad Mejico, par favor.”

He handed the passport to the agent, who glanced

into his face, then handed the passport back.

An hour later Svenson went through the immigration

line. The uniformed official didn’t look up,

merely compared the passport to a typed list

that lay on his desk, then passed it back. He

did not stamp the document.

Olaf Svenson took a seat in the waiting area and

used a filthy handkerchief to wipe perspiration from his

forehead.

A reprieve. The powers that rule the universe had

granted him a reprieve.

He would have liked to have had the opportunity to study the

latest viral mutation, but the risk was just too great.

A lost opportunity, he concluded. Oh, too

bad, too bad.

When the plane from Madrid touched down at

Havana airport with Maximo Sedano aboard,

Colonel Santana and two plainclothes secret

police officers were there to meet him. They stood beside

Maximo while he waited for his luggage, then the

two junior men carried it to the car while Maximo

walked beside Santana.

Colonel Santana said nothing to the finance minister,

other than to say Alejo Vargas wanted to see

him, then he let the bastard stew. He had learned

years ago that silence was a very effective weapon,

one that cost nothing and caused grievous wounds in a

guilty soul. All men are guilty, Santana

believed, of secret sins if nothing

else, and if left to suffer in silence will usually

convince themselves that the authorities know everything. After

a long enough silence, often all that remains to do is

take down the confession and obtain a signature.

One of his troops drove while Santana rode

in the back of the car with his charge. Not a word was uttered

the whole trip.

Maximo seemed to be holding up fairly well,

Santana thought, not sweating too much, retaining most

of his color,

breathing under control. The colonel smiled

broadly, a smile that grew even wider- when he

saw from the corner of his eye that Maximo Sedano

had noticed it.

Ah, yes. Silence. And terror.

The car drove straight into the basement of the Ministry

of Interior, where Maximo Sedano was hustled to a

subterranean interrogation room.

“I demand to see Vargasea”…Maximo said hotly

when they shoved him into a chair and slammed the door

shut.

“You demand”…”…asked Santana softly, leaning forward

until his face was only inches from Maximo. “You

are in no position to demand. You may ask humbly,

request, you may even pray, but you don’t

demand. You have no right to demand anything.”

Santana seated himself behind the desk, across from

Maximo. He took out the interrogation form, filled

out the blanks on the top of the sheet, then laid it

on the scarred wood in front of him.

“Whereea”…Santana asked, “is the money?”

Maximo Sedano inhaled through his nose. He

smelled dampness, urine, something rotting, meat or

vegetable perhaps … and something cold and slimy and

evil. It was here, all around him, in this roomthe very

stones reeked of it. Before Castro the secret

police belonged to Fulgencio Batista, and before him

Geraldo Machado, and so on, back for hundreds

of years. This was a secret room that never saw the

light, where justice did not exist, where force and

venality and self-interest ruled. Here shadow men

without conscience or scruple wrestled with the enemies

of the dictator. The room reeked of fear and

blood, torture and maiming, pain and death.

Maximo pushed the images aside. With a tenuous

composure, carefully, completely, honestly, he

explained about the accounts and the German and the people at the

bank. He related what they said to the best of his

memory. He told about the ice pick and the men’s

room, everything,

CUBA

withholding only his intention of transferring the money

to his own accounts.

Santana had questions, of course, made him repeat

most of it two or three times. When the colonel

had it all written down, Maximo signed the

statement.

“Where are the transfer cards”…”…Santana asked.

“In Switzerland. I left them at the bank.”

“Why?”

“If there has been some mistake, if the money was

stolen by someone at the bank, then the banks have

valid, legal transfer orders they must honor.

They must send the money to the Bank of Cuba.”

“So where is the money?”

“It is not in those accounts, obviously. I think the

money has been stolen.”

For the first time, Santana was openly skeptical.

“By whom?”

“By someone who had access to the account numbers.

El Presidente

insisted on keeping a record of them in his office.

I would look there first.”

“Why not your office? Is it not possible

one of your aides learned the numbers, passed them

to someone

who7″

“All the numbers of the government’s foreign accounts,

including the accounts controlled exclusively by

el Presidente,

are kept in a safe in my office under my

exclusive control. None of my staff has

accessonly me.”

Again Santana smiled. “You realize, of course,

that you are convicting yourself with your own mouth?”

Maximo threw up his hands. “I tell you this,

Santana. I do not have the money. If I had

fifty-four million dollars I would not have taken

the plane back to Cuba. I would not be sitting in this

shithole talking to a shithead like you.”

Santana ignored the insult and jotted a few more

lines on his report. Personally he believed

Maximoif the man had the money he would have run like

a rabbitbut to say so would give Maximo too much

leverage. And Maximo

said that he killed a man with an ice pick, which

certainly seemed out of character. Santana raised an

eyebrow as he thought about Rail. Maximo Sedano

killing Railwell, the world is full of

unexpected things.

He left Maximo Sedano sitting in the chair in

the niterrogation room while he went to find

Vargas. The minister was in his office listening to a

report of the laboratory burglary from one of the

senior colonels, who had just returned from the

university.

Santana knew nothing of the burglary, had not been

informed before he went to the airport. He stood

listening, asked no questions, waited for Alejo

Vargas.

An hour passed before Vargas was ready to talk about

Maximo. “He is downstairs in an interrogation

roomea”…Santana said. “Here is his statement.”…He

passed it across. Vargas read it in silence.

“The money is not hi the accountsea”…Vargas said

finally.

“So he says.”

“And you think he is telling the truth?”

“Sir, I don’t think Maximo Sedano has

what it takes to steal that kind of money and come back

here to face you. He knew he would be met at the

airport. He was expecting it.”

Vargas said nothing, merely blinked.

“Actually, his suggestion about the account

numbers at the president’s residence is a good

one. If there was a leak, it was probably there.

Fidel probably left the book lying aroundhe had

no organizational sense.”

“And?”

“I know of no one in Cuba with the computer expertise

to get into the Swiss banks electronically and steal

that money, but there are plenty of people in America who

could. A lot of them work for the American government.”

“People were stealing money from banks long before computers were

inventedea”…Vargas objected. “Anybody could have

bribed a bank officer and stolen that money. The

Yanquis are the most likely suspects,

however.”

Vargas well knew that everything that went wrong south

of Key West was not the fault of the United States

government, but he was too old a dog to think that the people

who ran the CIA were incompetent dullards too

busy to give Cuba a thought.

“The Americans say that shit happens.”

“They often make it happenea”…Vargas agreed,

and stood up. “Let us talk to Maximo. Perhaps

we can save a soul from hell.”

Going down the stairs Vargas said to Santana,

“Maximo has been plotting to get himself

elected president when Castro passes. Today would

be a good time to let him know that such a course is

futile.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Some pain, I think. Nothing permanent, nothing

lifethreatening. We will need his expertise in finance

later on.”

“Yes, sir.”

A petty officer came to find Jake

Grafton. The sailor led the admiral to the Air

Intelligence spaces, where he found Toad and the

AI’S gathered around a television monitor.

“A P-3 took this sequence a few hours

agoea”…Toad told the admiral, “in the

Bahamas. It’s an anchored North Korean

freighter. The P-3 is going to fly directly

overhead here in a minute and get a shot looking

straight down. We’ll freeze the video there.”

The perspective changed as the plane came across

the top of the ship. The clear blue water seemed

to disappear, leaving the ship suspended above the yellow

sandy bottom. Just before the P-3 crossed above the

ship, Toad froze the picture.

He stepped forward, pointing to dark shapes resting

on the sand under the freighter. “I think

we’ve found the rest of the stolen warheadsea”…he said.

‘The people on the

Coldn

dumped them here in the ocean for the North Koreans

to pick up later.”

Jake stepped forward, studied the picture on the

televi-

sion screen. “Can this picture be computer

enhanced?”"…They are working on that hi Norfolk right

now.”"…How certain are they about the identification of the

ship?”

“Very sure. Undoubtedly North Korean.”

When the National Security Council met to be

briefed about developments in Cuba, the

president’s mood was even uglier than it had been

a few days before. He listened with a frozen frown as

the briefer described the biological warfare

research laboratory in the science building, at the

University of Havana. He covered his face with a

hand as the briefer explained that some of the warheads from

Nuestra Senora de Colon

appeared to be resting on a sandy ocean floor in the

Bahamas, with a North Korean freighter anchored

nearby.

“The good newsea”…the briefer said brightly,

“is that the freighter seems to be in Baharaan

territorial waters.”

“Do you have a plan”…”…the president asked General

Totten.

“Yes, sir. At our request, the Bahamans have