Dance with the Dragon (30 page)

Yet her work had not suffered. Through it all she’d never fallen into any sort of a depression that would affect how she operated in the field. Her intelligence had not been muted by her moods, nor had her courage been diminished. McGarvey had witnessed that part himself last year in Afghanistan. And according to all accounts she had not folded when she and her partner had come under intense fire down in Gitmo.

Even more curious, to McGarvey’s way of thinking, was her reaction to her partner’s death. If she’d been as psychologically scarred because of her husband and father as her psych reports indicated, she should have been out of it after Gitmo. She’d been upset, blaming herself for his death, but she’d picked herself up and gone right back into the field.

Gloria made no sense to him. Yet he was sure that she was the perfect tool to use against General Liu. He just had to find out who she really was from the only man left alive who might have the answers.

FORTY-EIGHT

MIAMI

The flight touched down a few minutes after nine at Miami International, more than twenty minutes early. McGarvey had only the one carry-on bag, so he didn’t have to wait around to retrieve luggage. As he got to the aircraft door the pilot turned in his seat.

“Thanks for tagging along.”

“My pleasure,” McGarvey said.

“I hope they don’t ax the air marshal program like they did in the seventies.”

“Not this time,” McGarvey said. He nodded to the copilot and flight attendants and headed through the jetway to the terminal. The program had eliminated aircraft hijackings, but he supposed that some congressman looking to get more votes by saving the taxpayers’ money would make a move before long to cut the program, as had been done in the seventies. And it wouldn’t take long after that happened for the bad guys to figure out that hijacking had once again become possible. He sincerely wished that he was wrong, but he didn’t think so.

A short, slender Hispanic man with a pencil-thin mustache, wearing a Cuban guayabera shirt, who could have come direct from central casting, was waiting just outside the boarding area. He was carrying a fat manila envelope under his left arm. He stepped forward to intercept McGarvey.

“I have the material Mr. Rencke sent down for you, sir. Name is Martinez. Do you have any other luggage?”

“This is it,” McGarvey said. “I’ll need to find a hotel room and then locate General Marti. Tonight if possible.”

“I’ve booked you a suite for two nights at the Park Central; we had no idea how long you’d be staying. And at the moment the general is at the Jugar Hasta el Fin, where he goes most nights. It’s a small coffee shop with a big name where the regulars play dominoes.”

They headed through the terminal toward one of the parking ramps, McGarvey paying attention to the people coming and going, looking for the face or faces that seemed out of place. Martinez noticed.

“The boarding area is clean—I made a sweep of it myself before you came in. And I’ve got a few guys cruising the terminal who’ll give me a shout if they spot someone who shouldn’t be here.”

Because of Cuban intelligence activities amongst the émigrés, the CIA had a strong presence here, a fact that hadn’t been much publicized since the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

Martinez’s car was a pale yellow ten-year-old Coupe de Ville with spinner hub cabs and sheepskin seat covers.

“Do you want to go over to the hotel first, or see the general?”

It was a few minutes past nine. “How late does he usually stay out?” McGarvey asked.

“Midnight, sometimes later,” Martinez said. “If you want, I’ll drop you off near the coffee shop, then take your bag over to the hotel for you.”

“Sounds good.”

“Do you want me to hang around? I can pick you up when you’re done.”

“I don’t know how long I’ll be. If you have a cell phone I’ll call if I need you.”

Martinez gave him the number, and McGarvey programmed it into his cell phone as they headed south from the airport on Okeechobee Road toward the Orange Bowl, traffic fairly heavy.

The manila envelope that Martinez had brought out contained several dossiers on Gloria’s father, former Cuban Air Force chief of operations General Ernesto Marti; a batch of articles from publications like the
New York Times,
the
Washington Post, Aviation Week & Space Technology,
and
Jane’s International Defense Review;
a summary report from his CIA file; and a batch of photographs taken at various times and places including Washington, New York, here in Miami and at the Company’s training site, and Cuban radio monitoring post in the Keys.

He was tall for a Cuban, dark skinned like his daughter, and husky, with broad shoulders and a square peasant’s face, weathered by too much exposure to the elements. He was a distant cousin to the Cuban hero Jose Marti, which hadn’t hindered his promotions.

He had decided to defect to the U.S. with his wife and their only child, Gloria, who was thirteen at the time, because of what Castro was doing to Cuba. With the help of the KGB the island had been turned into a police state with even tighter controls on its people than had been in place in East Germany at the height of the Cold War.

In Marti’s own words, his country was “sliding into a deep depression that was sapping the life out of not only the people but of the buildings and infrastructure itself. Soon Cuba will be past hope for repair.”

He was chief of air operations, so he’d had no trouble commandeering a light plane, picking up his wife and daughter, and heading the ninety miles north across the Straits of Florida directly to Key West before the alarm was sounded.

By then it had been too late not only for the Cuban government, but for Marti and his family. The plane had developed engine trouble within sight of Key West. He’d flown too low to make it land, and had to ditch in the ocean a hundred yards outside the reef in water more than five hundred feet deep.

His wife had been knocked nearly unconscious in the rough landing, and Marti had not been able to get her out of the plane before it sank. He and his daughter had watched her disappear.

The general had been extensively debriefed by the CIA and the Air Force OSI, after which he had become a paid consultant to the Company on Cuban military affairs. Times had changed, especially in the last couple of years with Castro’s failing health, and the general had all but retired, only occasionally getting the call to come to Washington.

Like a lot of other Cubans living in Florida, he was counting the days until he could go home.

McGarvey was most interested scanning Marti’s psychological profile, which had been conducted by Dr. Stenzel, the same man who’d done Gloria’s. The general’s was a strong personality. He had been deeply saddened by his wife’s death, but understood that life was for the living.

After a period of mourning, he’d thrown himself into consulting for the CIA, giving something back to a country, he said, that had provided him and his daughter, and so many other tens of thousands of Cubans, a safe refuge.

“He is a man of strong convictions, and a deep sense of family and home,” Dr. Stenzel wrote in his brief conclusion. “Leaving Cuba and turning informant against the Castro regime was the most difficult decision in his life to that point, a decision that he still ponders every day. He will never fully integrate into U.S. society, nor does he appear to desire U.S. citizenship. He is here to help bring about Castro’s downfall so that he may return to his homeland.”

Martinez got off the connector highway and took Southwest Twenty-seventh Avenue to Calle Ocho in the heart of Little Havana. This was an area of Cuban shops and markets and what were considered some of the best Cuban and Latin American restaurants anywhere in the world. The place was alive with activity, music blaring from open doorways, people strolling arm in arm, and the smells of good food in the air. It reminded McGarvey of how New Orleans’s French Quarter used to be.

They circled back and pulled over at the corner of Southwest Seventh Street, one block up from Calle Ocho.

“The Jugar is in the middle of the block, on the upper side of the street,” Martinez said. “Are you carrying?”

“Of course.”

Martinez nodded. “The general’s people are expecting you, and they’ll want to take your piece before they let you inside. But you’ll get it back later. Do you have a problem with this?”

“How does he know I’m coming to see him?” McGarvey asked, though it was about what he’d expected. Marti’s CIA file also described him as a very careful man. Cuban intelligence agents had been trying for years to get to him. The fact that he’d survived for so long, especially here, was a testament not only to his caution but to the people he surrounded himself with.

“I told him,” Martinez said. “It’s not wise to try to sneak up on him. There’ve been a couple incidents.”

McGarvey looked up sharply. “Lately?”

“I think somebody tried to get to him a few days ago, but we’re not sure of the details,” Martinez said. “He’s agreed to see you, so you can ask him yourself.”

“Thanks,” McGarvey said, getting out of the car, leaving the envelope behind.

“Your suite is 501. They’re holding your key for you.”

McGarvey strolled up Seventh, taking his time, watching for anyone who might be taking a more than casual interest in a gringo by himself. But although the street was busy, no one seemed interested in him.

The coffee shop was in a narrow storefront on the other side of the street. The large windows were not covered, so the patrons inside could watch the comings and goings outside. The place was jammed.

McGarvey waited for a break in traffic, then crossed over. He was stopped at the door by a pair of beefy men in baggy black slacks and loose guayabera shirts.

“Your weapon please,” one of them said politely, his accent heavily Spanish.

McGarvey unholstered his Walther PPK from beneath his jacket at the small of his back and handed it to the bodyguard, who stuffed it in a pocket.

“Straight back, there is a table in the corner. The general is expecting you.”

Both men were professionals. They were pleasant but watchful, their eyes never resting on one spot for more than a moment. And when McGarvey had approached, they’d separated, so as not to present a single field of fire.

“Keep on your toes, gentlemen,” McGarvey warned. “I expect they’ll try to hit him again. Soon.”

“Who?” one bodyguard asked evenly.

“An independent operator, I should think.”

The bodyguard shrugged.

“From Mexico,” McGarvey said, and he saw a brief flicker of interest in the bodyguard’s eyes.

“Thank you.”

McGarvey nodded and went inside the crowded, noisy coffee shop. A dozen tables were filled, mostly with men but also a few women, people playing dominoes loudly and with a lot of flourish.

In a corner at the back of the room, to the left of the kitchen doors, General Marti was seated with a half dozen men, who all got up and left when McGarvey approached. Like everyone else in the place they had been playing dominoes and drinking the strong
café cubano.
The place was thick with the haze of cigar smoke.

Marti looked up and studied McGarvey for a long moment.

“Good evening, General,” McGarvey said.

“What are you doing here this evening?”

“I came to talk to you about your daughter.”

“Yes,” the general said. “She is in love with you.”

“I know, but it’s not about that. It’s about her husband, Raul, and about you.”

FORTY-NINE

LITTLE HAVANA

“Let’s take a walk,” Marti said, rising.

He escorted McGarvey out of the coffee shop, stopping at every table to say good-bye or make some small talk in Spanish. He was obviously well liked and well respected by these people.

Outside, the general took McGarvey’s arm, and they headed around the corner up to Calle Ocho, which he explained was simply Spanish for Eighth Street. His two bodyguards fell in close behind, their heads on swivels.

Marti, like just about every other male in this part of the city, wore the traditional white guayabera shirt with lace trim, dark slacks, and shoes with pointed toes. He also wore a jaunty straw hat with a paisley band at the base of the crown.

“The Spanish-speaking people, especially us
Cubanos,
find it hard to completely integrate ourselves wherever we chance to land away from our homeland,” Marti said lightly. He was smoking a very large cigar. “Have you been here before, Mr. McGarvey?”

“Once, briefly, ten or fifteen years ago.”

“Yes, the Basulto business with the Bay of Pigs,” the general said. “It was the Russian, General Baranov, whom you were after.” He gave McGarvey a smile. “Relax. I, too, do my homework.”

McGarvey nodded.

“Most of us count the days until we can return to Cuba and help rebuild our country. But make no mistake, while we are here most of us behave like loyal Americans.” Marti shook his head. “There are only a few hotheads who find it necessary to blame someone for their troubles. And of course the DGI has its people everywhere here, stirring up trouble.”

The DGI, Directorate General of Intelligence, was Cuba’s secret service. Most of its officers had been trained by the KGB, and they were very good at what they did.

“Were they the ones trying to assassinate you a few days ago?” McGarvey asked, and the general gave him a sharp look, but McGarvey smiled. “I, too, do my homework.”

“Probably DGI, like before, but we’re not sure.” Marti shrugged. “If it was Castro’s boys, they changed their methods. Instead of trying to poison me, or run me over with a truck, or plant a bomb in the Jugar, they took a couple of shots at me from a passing car. A dark SUV. We’re looking for it now, but nobody thinks it’ll be found.”

“A pistol maybe?” McGarvey asked. “Silenced?”

Marti gave him an interested look. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“They might have been independent operators from Mexico.”

“GAFE?”

“Ex,” McGarvey said. “I’ve already had a couple of run-ins with them.”

“Interesting,” Marti said. “Who is signing their paychecks?”