Havana (28 page)

“If you value your eyes, you'll stop complaining and start moving.”

“Oh, Christ,” said the boy.

“Yes, call to Christ, but whomever you call to, get going.”

“I am so thirsty. I have dust in my throat.”

“There's a whole ocean out there for you.”

Speshnev looked back. As yet no dogs had crested the hill, but it could happen at any second, and here, where the forest was thin and rocky, where their feet kicked up puffs of dust and shale, they'd be easily spotted and brought under fire. And under fire, there'd be no escape. The Cubans weren't any kind of shooters, but there were enough of them, and their fusillade would either bring down the runners dead and wounded, or pin them for more leisurely fates.

“Go, go.”

Off they ran, trying to control the wildness that built in their limbs as they rushed down, fast but not too fast, close to the edge but not over it.

The boy gasped in agony, and even the mighty Speshnev, escape artist and ambush master, assassin and agent, guerilla and infantry commander, had to admit this was the most difficult moment in his long war against the forces of darkness. His ankles ached in the effort and the body's fear undercut everything. He didn't think they'd make it, not without a bad fall and if the fall were bad enough, it could end them. And the boat was so close.

The boy collapsed, heaving.

“I can't go on. I'm spent. Leave me.”

“Stop it. I don't have that choice.”

“I'm gone, blown, finished. I have no—”

“Look, ahead, beyond the meadow. Do you see it?”

“The boat? It could be miles away, that's how little chance I have of—”

The dogs barked. Speshnev looked up and saw three of them, unleashed, against the crest. They howled to indicate they'd picked up the scent and waited patiently for their masters and permission to bound down the hill.

The boy was beyond caring.

“Not the boat,” Speshnev said. “No, look down there, just beyond the field. See where the trees are so much greener? Water. There's a creek bed there. We'll head there, we can make it before the men get over the top. Water, Castro, it'll revive you. Once you get the water, you'll recover instantly. You're simply dehydrated, that's all. Come on—”

And he lifted the boy up, feeling the tremors of surrender in the lax musculature and the heart beating desperately, the lungs sucking over dried lips for oxygen, and never quite getting enough. “Come on, now, just fight it another two hundred yards, and there's salvation!”

 

Frenchy had never believed in it. Not for a second. It seemed some fantasy to him, some improbable crusade that this Davy Crockett from Arkansas were pulling on him. But then he saw them: two men, one of them demonstrably the young political leader Castro, rushing helter-skelter downhill exactly where Earl had said they'd come, their arms windmilling for balance as they fought the pull of gravity, both ashen and desperate, both craven with thirst.

If he felt any triumph, Earl didn't show it. His manner was glum, matter-of-fact, professional. Now was time for the shooting.

Earl unslung the rifle. They were about two hundred yards out, on a slight ridge, and Earl had sited them so they had a good line of fire straight onto the widest part of the creek, where a beaten man could drown his face in sweet green water and suck it down, and cool his weary, booted feet. No limbs, no brush, nothing interceded to deflect the bullet. It was a simple matter for someone as sure a shot as Earl.

“You can make it?” Frenchy nevertheless asked, nervous.

“Should I cover and lay fire on in case you miss?”

“Shut up,” said Earl.

Earl squirmed some, found a good shooting position and drew the rifle to him as, now three hundred yards away, the men rushed toward the water. They'd drink and rest for a minute, then hurry onward. Frenchy turned and saw that the trawler had gotten within fifty yards of the beach; it would be an easy slosh, and its cargo safely aboard, the boat would set fair wind for Jamaica and be gone in minutes.

Earl locked his knee and rose and hunched simultaneously behind the rifle, feeling his way into a solid shooting position. Frenchy squatted next to him, watching the prey through binoculars as they approached.

He had a moment's study of Castro, familiar from the picture but weirdly different here, in the flesh. Frenchy thought of a big baby at one of his prep schools, sent there by an overmanly father for some toughening up, a boy who cried each night and was too fat for sports. The boy disappeared one night, actually beating Frenchy out of the school, though Frenchy's crime wasn't melancholy and self-loathing but simple cheating. Castro had the same gray look of defeat, and the flesh through his face trembled at each step, loose and slack. His lips rose like a wave under the vibration as the foot struck the ground, and Frenchy saw not heroic intensity or worker's will to endure but simple, abject fear, a face bathed in sweat, a shirt translucent with the moisture it had captured, everywhere baby fat and terror at play on the big, clumsy, boy's body. He was infantile, a class goat picked on by the football captain.

Frenchy let the binocs slide left to see this mysterious Mr. X who was running the show. What he saw was a wiry European in a dark bandanna like a peasant, and a peasant's dirty smock and sandals, but something no peasant could ever have: intense and impenetrable dignity.

It occurred to Frenchy that here was the real thing, so rarely glimpsed, almost mythological in Agency culture: a high-ranking, superbly trained and motivated true Red agent. He couldn't help but be impressed, for even as he watched, he could tell the boy was lost in panic but the old goat was still clever and making shrewd decisions even as they reached the water.

“That guy looks like a Russian,” he hissed, so excited he could hardly stand it. A victory of immense proportions was just before him. Kill Castro, as Plans had decreed, and capture this guy! What a coup! What secrets he could unlock! Why, you could build a whole career out of one afternoon's work and bask in sheer glory forever.

“Kill the Cuban,” he said, “wound the Russian. Hit him in the leg, the knee. We'll take him. He's unarmed. Jesus Christ, what a catch.”

 

The boy collapsed in the pond, and thrust his head into the water. But Speshnev grabbed him before he could gulp in the gallons.

“No. Don't lose control. Small, easy sips, wet your lips, let it hydrate your body. If you swallow everything, you'll bloat and your internal temperature will go out of balance and you'll collapse. I'm not carrying you.”

The boy fought him for just a second, bucking like a horse to get his snout into the wet, but then yielded. He dipped in demurely, and sipped.

“Excellent,” said Speshnev.

He himself at last bent to the surface and admitted the water, and felt the miracle of it as it spread hope through his body. The sheer pleasure of it was better than anything sexual.

But in a second he was back in the game, pulling the boy from the water, letting him rest on the bank, but at the same time looking around.

The boat was so close now. A line of trees cut the beach off from the creek, and then it was but a hundred yards or so until they cut across the nakedness of the sands. Speshnev looked back, at the crest of the hill. The dogs were still baying; the soldiers had not arrived yet and as the distance was over a half a mile, he knew he was too far for any kind of accurate shooting.

He took a quick scan about, and his senses saw nothing except the blend of forest and jungle that was Cuba, the palms jutting out among the pines, the odd bright flower, the singing of birds, the bright sun above, behind some clouds.

“Here, wrap this around your head, it'll keep you fresh for this last little bit. Hurry.”

He pulled off his dark bandanna, soaked it in the water, then handed it over.

Then he heard the shot.

 

Earl didn't like it. The problem was the intimacy. In battle, over iron sights, the enemy was a blur. You pressed, the gun fired, and down he went and you moved on. If you were close enough to see the bullets hit and blow holes in him, then the fight was desperate and crazed and horribly dangerous, so there was no time for thought, you operated on instinct alone. But the sniper's curse is his intimacy and now, the magnifications of the eight-power scope blew up the faces of the men who lay before him.

He saw not a Red politico but a fat boy with greasy hair and an unmolded, unformed look to his face. And he saw the man who'd twice saved his life, crafty and professional, almost on the verge of what appeared to be a great coup. This man was the enemy, he told himself, and tried to believe it desperately.

Earl had always followed his orders. That was the compass heading of his life.

The Winchester was set solid against his shoulder, supported by bone not muscle, his body itself solid against the ground, helped by the cupping effect of the slight rise against which he curled.

“You can hit one guy, throw the bolt and hit the other, say, in the knee?” Frenchy implored.

He didn't say a word.

“You want me to get set to move down there with the carbine? If you hit the old guy in the leg, I
know
we can take him alive. He's no dummy. If he doesn't go with us, the Cubans will pick his bones clean in a torture chamber. He'll see it.”

There was no waver in the crosshairs, so solidly was the instrument supported. He had examined each face and now set the reticule on the boy's neck, under his ear, in the softness just behind the jaw; the shot would blow out his spinal column and he would be a footnote in Cuban history. Earl knew the arc to target two was short and that he could flick the bolt in a second. He thought the Russian would be quick, but how quick? He guessed he'd roll right, and Earl could hit him in the fat part of the thigh, hoping to miss the femoral which would bleed him out in minutes. He had an image of the man squawking, his hands flown to the wound in his leg, trying to stanch the flow. He would know exactly who shot him.

He felt the trigger come back against the urging of his fingertip, as it drained the ounces out of the mechanism.

He put the rifle down.

“You know what? I ain't pulling your trigger.”

Frenchy looked at him.

“What?”

“Forget it. I don't do this kind of thing. It ain't my way. Do your own killing, junior.”

“I—You
have
to. For God's sake, Earl, this isn't a
joke.
This isn't a
game.
This is what it is, what we do, what our country needs. You
have
to, for God's sake.”

Earl just spat into the dust.

When he looked back, Frenchy had raised the carbine and pointed it at him.

“Earl, you will do what I say. You
will
do it. Do you get it? You don't have a choice.
Now,
fast, before they get away.”

Earl chuckled.

“There's another trigger ain't getting pulled, kid. Don't make me laugh.”

And Frenchy didn't. The rifle came down.

“This is so
wrong,
” he said.

“Let's let the Cubans decide what to do with this boy.”

He went back to the scope and put the crosshairs into the exact center of the distance between Castro and the Russian, on the shimmering surface of the water, so that each would feel the shockwave of the bullet as it roared past, and each would know that they were taken, and saw the Russian's hand dip into the water and come out with a soaked handkerchief. The boy reached to touch it and in that instant, as each man was connected to the handkerchief between them, he pressed the trigger.

When the scope cleared recoil and came back down, mist still hung in the air from the bullet smashing into the water, and the Cuban was running crazily toward the beach.

The Russian had disappeared already.

Lieutenant Sarria dreamed of caramel-skinned beauties, with white teeth and flowers in their hair. He was fifty-four years old and much darker than caramel. His hair was salt and pepper, his body long and sinewy and his eyes sad. He dreamed of young ladies often. The way they walked, with music in their steps. The jiggle of their breasts under their blouses. Their behinds, proud and sassy. The magic in their smiles, their eyes. Their toes, long and slender and pink below, caramel atop, their—

He was jerked awake by a noise.

“What was that?” said Corporal De Guama, making coffee.

“It sounded like a shot,” said Private Morales.

All three men wore the green-brown uniforms of the Cuban national police, though without ties and much in need of cleaning and pressing. They were normally stationed at Sevilla, just a few miles inland, but with all this madness of the insurrection at Moncada, they had been sent out to set up an outpost on the outskirts of Siboney, the beach town. When they got to the beach town, though, the lieutenant decided it was unlikely the fleeing man would come this way, where it was so populated. So he had moved west down the beach by jeep and been unable to locate quite the perfect place until, well beyond Siboney, they came upon an old planter's shack, where they'd been for a day, out of radio contact or telephone contact, but ready to defend Cuba and the president with their lives, meanwhile catching up on much-needed sleep. Sarria would never rise above lieutenant—high enough for a negro—and the other two were men whose ambitions had been ground into indifference by the rigors of avoiding duty. All three men were armed, but two of the three revolvers carried between them were empty. Only the lieutenant's held ammunition, though as it had held that same ammunition since 1934, he wasn't entirely certain that it would fire.

“Well,” said the lieutenant, “I suppose we'd better go do something.”

“I suppose,” said De Gauma, sadly. It seemed that something
always
interrupted his coffee. “May I finish my coffee first?”

“He always wants the coffee,” said the corporal. “He lives for the coffee.”

“Well, De Gauma, actually, no, I'd prefer if you just went along this time. Would that be all right?”

Sarria wasn't being sarcastic. He wore the mantle of command somewhat unsurely. He genuinely wished to know if it was all right with the private.

“No, no, it's fine,” De Guama said.

The three men rose. Morales could not find his cap, and De Gauma had taken his boots off.

“I'll have to stay in the sand, where it's soft.”

“Yes, yes, that's fine,” said Sarria.

They stepped out and saw only what they had seen for two days: the blinding brightness of the beach, the blinding blue of the bay, the blinding though lighter blue of the sky, and the dark green of the forest here where the Sierra Maestra plunged so precipitously into the water. The sun was hot, the wind was still. Prickly sweat came at their hairlines immediately and began to run down their cheeks. The air had been superheated by the sun and to breathe was not pleasant. It was July, after all.

“I think it came from there.”

“Is this dangerous? A man with a gun? Maybe I'd better run back to town and call for reinforcements.” De Guama was not the bravest of policemen.

“It's just a hunter,” said the private, Morales. “He's cornered a boar, he's finished him, that's all.”

“The boar don't usually come down this far,” said Lieutenant Sarria. “They like it up the mountains, where it's cooler.”

The three walked along the beach for a while, but could see nothing of consequence. Birds, flowers, the sand, the floating gulls, a trawler of some sort fishing close in.

“I've never seen them come in that far,” said Morales.

“Maybe they were the ones who fired?”

“A gun on that old tub? I doubt it. It certainly is low in the water, though. Maybe it's taking sea.”

“We should inquire.”

They walked ahead and though they would later argue about it, it actually was Morales and not De Gauma who saw a flash of movement off to the right, in the trees, and alerted the others.

 

Speshnev had squirmed into the trees and gone to dead, still calm. He waited and waited. No soldiers appeared. None at all.

He tried to reconstruct the last several seconds in his brain. He and the boy, kneeling in the water, letting it soak, drinking slowly, not glugging like fools. The boat a few hundred yards away. No soldiers yet at the crest. No noise, no sense of approaching men, no nothing.

He soaks his handkerchief, hands it across and at that moment feels the whisper of hot air as a bullet roars by. Simultaneously, his handkerchief is torn from his hand to flutter across the pond, and at the same second the surface of the pond explodes in a bright plume of water.

The size of the blast, the noise of the shot, the force by which the handkerchief was ripped from his grip all indicated a heavy-caliber military bullet. Yet why had the bullet not struck head, his or the boy's? He realized the handkerchief was shot from his hand on purpose, for a shooter gifted enough to put his round into it could have just as easily shot either through the eye or the ear.

But that mystery was quickly enough forgotten. What had to be done now was more exact and specific. Find the boy. Get the boy to the boat. Yet how could he do so with a marksman about, possibly hunting him, possibly playing tricks on him. And why would a marksman play a trick on him?

And then of course he knew. It could only be one man. And the message was: you must fail. Fail and live, attempt to succeed and you die. I will have to kill you. But this time, I only make you fail.

Well, he thought, you are a clever man, a brave man, but I have a duty to do as well, and if I have a chance, then I will kill you, too.

He realized with perfect clarity the man wouldn't shoot him. He just wouldn't, he knew, at least not to kill him. He would watch from his perfect hide and if Speshnev seemed about to do it, then he would shoot.

Speshnev realized that—

But then movement caught his eye. Through the screen of trees, he saw three policemen. Where the hell had they come from? From the sloppiness of their clothes and the indifference of their postures, he determined that they were not the army troops being driven forward by Captain Latavistada. In fact, they moved so tentatively upon the beach it was as if they'd prefer to be anywhere else. The sound of the shot could not have delighted them.

Yet here was the comical part. The manhunt was run by the best of Cuban intelligence with advice from the CIA, and it had failed completely. These three idiots had succeeded.

For he now saw that they approached a clump of rags hunched trembling behind a knot of trees, and that clump of rags could only be Fidel Castro.

 

“Is it a man?” De Guama asked.

“I think it is. A bum. He is sleeping.”

“
You!
” cried the lieutenant. “
You!
Wake up!”

The figure, indeed a man and not a clump of rags behind a glade of palms, stirred. Eventually a raggedy mop of hair came up, a pair of wet brown eyes, a broad axe of a nose, a pinched mouth, a whole face.

“It is him!” said De Guama. “Good Christ, it is Fidel!”

The young man assembled himself slowly, then got up, his hands raised.

“I thought you would be a negro,” said Lieutenant Sarria. “I thought only a negro would have the strength to fight the president.”

“I am fighting for the negroes as well as all other Cubans,” said Fidel. “I fight for you all.”

A whistle sounded far off.

All four of them looked up the hill. There, at its crest-line, troops were assembling, an officer was shouting orders smartly, dogs were barking, and then the unit started to move.

“They will kill me,” said Castro. “Please don't give me to them. The man in charge, he has cut the eyes out of many of my friends. He will cut my eyes out and then shoot me.”

“Yes,” said Lieutenant Sarria, “Ojos Bellos, of SIM. I know his reputation. De Guama, Morales, you run back and bring the jeep. We will transport this bad boy into Siboney.”

The two turned and ran off.

“You may as well sit down,” said Sarria. “It'll be a few minutes yet.”

“Thank you,” said Fidel.

The two sat. Sarria held his pistol in his hand, but did not point with it or gesture with it dramatically. Frankly, it scared him a little.

“You won't try anything, young man? I'd hate to have to shoot you. In twenty-seven years as a policeman, I have hurt nobody. I would hate this to be the day I had to kill a man.”

“I'm too tired,” said Castro. “I've been running forever. I need to sleep and eat. They will kill me eventually, I know, but I am beyond caring.”

Kill him!
Speshnev ordered himself.

He had finished a long squirm through the brush, reached a creek and loped along, leaving the shooter far behind but keeping a bearing on the three policemen and Castro. Three: too many. Pray for a miracle.

He crawled forward, sliding through the earth itself, the floor of jungle rot, feeling the coolness just beneath the surface. He'd shimmied up an embankment, low-crawled some feet, and now was just ten feet away from them.

Then the officer sent the two men off. Now there were just the two of them, the boy and the old negro.

He looked back, and could see the soldiers easing their way down the mountainside, still forty minutes away.

He thought: kill him. Kill the old man.

Work back through the brush, staying out of the sunlight, the open. Reach the boat. It can still be done. The shooter cannot see me, he will not track us.

Kill him!

He reached into his pocket and withdrew a flick knife. With a snap of his wrist, three inches of naked blade spurted out like a lizard's tongue, and locked in place.

Kill him!

At this point it was so easy. The old negro policeman had his gun out, but it rested easily against his thigh, the finger not even on the trigger. Speshnev recognized it as an old Colt revolver, but so beaten and ancient it was clearly not the gun of a pistolero. The man held it so sloppily and with so little tension that it seemed strange to him.

Speshnev looked at him. He was in his fifties, with a face much ravaged by a hard life. Yet his eyes were milky with moisture and depth, surely the sign of a humane man. The men with feelings, they all had eyes like that unless they were insane, and Speshnev had really met few who were completely insane.

He saw how it would happen. He would be upon the old dog so fast, the man would not have time to look up. The knife would flick out, go to the throat, probe and cut the carotid, and the old man would bleed out in seconds.

Then grab the boy, hold him in the treeline, and race along it till their waving and screaming caught the attention of the men in the trawler. Then they could race into the surf, swim outward, and the boat would pick them up.

Do it, he commanded himself.

Yet the old man was so relaxed and without aggression in his body, Speshnev could not find it in himself.

Do it!
he commanded again, trying to find the energy for this last, horrible thing.

 

He was so damned good. God, he was good.

“Shoot him, for Christ sakes,” said Frenchy. “Shoot
someone.
”

“If he moves on the cop, I'll shoot him, Junior. Then and only then.”

“He's a Red agent.”

“He's a man doing a job. We'll see how hard he does it. If I have to, I will. You shut up and keep on the glass.”

Through the scope Earl could see the little drama playing out. The sitting policeman with the revolver, the failed, beaten revolutionary, and the Russian agent crouching in the shadows. Earl had picked him up moving west just inside the treeline, a shape flitting through shadows. It took a great game eye to pick up prey like that, through a scope, but Earl had read the land and knew how he'd have to travel to close on the fleeing boy.