Havana Run (11 page)
They were less than a mile out from the coast now, and a string of impressive, Renaissance-style buildings had come into view, perched improbably above a huge seawall at the rocky, crescent-shaped shoreline and stretching away endlessly into the distance. It reminded Deal, who was still trying to get his breathing under control, of the striking view from seaward of the Art Deco hotels strung along Ocean Drive.
But, however impressive that sight was, it was only a few short blocks. This array seemed to go on forever, its graceful curving aspect only adding to the allure.
“The Malecón,” Fuentes said, following Deal’s gaze. “Miles of it. It looks rather grand from this vantage point, does it not?”
Deal glanced over. Fuentes’ eyes remained hidden behind his dark glasses, but he had shed his suit in favor of a pair of buttery linen slacks and a long-sleeved guayabera of a slightly darker shade. He wore a cap with an elongated fisherman’s bill and a flap that extended down the back of his neck. Maybe the man suffered from some form of albinism, Deal thought. Or maybe it was just a lifetime living under rocks.
“Grand?” Deal agreed, grateful for Fuentes’ preoccupation. “I guess that’s a good word for it. It looks almost surreal, Florence by the sea or something.”
“Best to see it this way to begin with,” Fuentes said, nodding his approval. “That is one reason we came by boat.”
“I’m not sure I follow,” Deal said.
“Once we are there,” Fuentes said, gesturing toward the shore, “you will understand what I mean. Better your own eyes tell you than my words.”
Deal took it in without comment. He glanced toward the land again, noting that they had changed course slightly. They were heading west now, running parallel to shore.
“We’re not going into the harbor?” he asked, a bit disappointed not to sail in beneath the prow of that massive fortress that hovered in the sky.
Fuentes shook his head. “It is the commercial port which lies that way,” he said, using his chin to point back toward the castle. “We will dock at the Marina Hemingway. Arrangements are made more simply there.”
He flashed Deal a hint of his all-knowing smile and paused before changing tacks. “I’m pleased that you were willing to take this journey, Mr. Deal. I’m confident that great things lie ahead for us all.”
“A few years in a dungeon?” Deal said with a backward glance at the room where he’d planted his bug. Images from old movies spun through his mind, men in iron masks digging through rock with knives and spoons and fingernails.
It brought a hearty laugh from Fuentes. “We’ve hardly come here to plot the overthrow of the government,” he said. “Our presence is welcomed here by many men of influence, I assure you. We will be discreet in our discussions, of course, but we have nothing to fear.”
Deal nodded, but he was hardly convinced. He suspected that the real reason that they had come by boat was to avoid the annoying niceties of Customs. Despite the embargo and the travel restrictions, pleasure craft plied the waters between Cuba and the States with relative impunity. Even flying indirectly to Cuba, with an intervening stop in Canada, Jamaica or Mexico, left a paper trail that was easily traced by U.S. authorities.
While no one had ever been jailed for making the trip without a proper license, there’d been plenty of fines doled out, especially when friends of the Cuban exile community were occupying the White House. At the very least, they were traveling off the radar screen of the American government, Deal thought, or certainly Fuentes would assume that they were.
Barton Deal himself had favored a sail to Cuba for much the same reasons. His father had used the old port of Cojímar, just east of the city, an ancient fishing village where Hemingway had moored his own yacht,
Pilar
, and was said to have met regularly with Carlos Gonzáles, the true prototype for
The Old Man and the Sea
, but Deal knew that his father had docked at the more modern Marina Hemingway at least once. He’d returned grumbling about it, though: “Papa wouldn’t have set foot in the place,” he’d said. “Not a Hemingway thing about it.”
“We’re coming up on Miramar,” Fuentes said, gesturing at a point of land that jutted into the sea not far ahead. “That’s the River Almendares,” he added, pointing at a cleft that separated one spit of land from the next. “We’ll be putting in soon.”
Deal nodded, pushing himself from the rail as the awesome sweep of the Malecón began to fade behind them. As they rounded the point, the seawall and its bulwark of rock and the modest surf disappeared, and the shoreline was transformed into a ragged blend of trees and waterfront housing, the sort of view he might have encountered virtually anywhere along the Florida coast south of Miami.
Up ahead he could see a long breakwater jutting out from shore, marking the entrance to the Marina Hemingway, he supposed. He could make out a line of red-tiled roofs poking above the treetops just inland, resembling nothing so much as a seaside complex in any one of a hundred South Florida communities.
Quite a contrast—he’d have to give Fuentes that much. One moment he was staring at medieval Europe dropped down at seaside in the tropics; the next he was back in condo land.
The
Bellísima
made its way past the end of the breakwater and slowed, its big engines shuddering as it made the turn inside the protected waters. Just ahead, Deal saw a pelican drop into the water toward some unseen prey, as swift and as forceful as feathered lead. He glanced inside the screened afterdeck, where Russell Straight still grazed among the delicacies laid out on the buffet table.
“It looks a little like Boca Raton around here,” he said to Fuentes, as they slowed to no-wake speed. They had entered a narrow channel now, flanked on either side by a series of three-story condominiums, their screened porches and cabanas arranged to offer a view of the murky canal and the occasional passing yacht. A few hundred yards ahead was the marina basin itself, where a welter of conning towers and sail masts poked up, bobbing alongside the docks.
“Indeed,” Fuentes said, sounding as if he took it for a compliment. “But it’s nothing to what was planned before the revolution.” He swept his hand over the adjoining rooftops. “There are several hundred acres still untouched here. A silent fortune just waiting to be mined.”
Deal nodded as if he agreed, but inwardly his spirits sagged. He was having a hard time matching up these surroundings with the images of an intolerant dictator haranguing the masses on the evils of capitalism.
“Most of this has to have been built since the revolution,” he found himself saying to Fuentes.
“You are quite correct,” Fuentes said.
“Fidel’s been in the condominium business all along?”
Fuentes smiled. “What you see here is the result of foreign investment,” he said, “monies which have reached the country in limited amounts, and in a few selected areas. After all, if you keep a lid too tightly on a boiling pot, Mr. Deal…” He trailed off with a shrug. “But this is only a mere suggestion of what is to come.”
The engines of the
Bellísima
had ground nearly to a halt now, and Deal realized they were easing broadside toward a larger dock that sat apart from the crowded basin. Russell joined him as a deckhand and tossed a line to a counterpart standing on shore, just opposite the forward rail, and another pair performed the same aft.
“I guess we’re here,” Russell said, and Deal nodded, feeling an odd, unexpected sensation as he watched the dock glide up to meet them. On the way across the Straits, he hadn’t thought much about the political aspects of what Vines had told him, but suddenly he couldn’t help considering the prospect for a moment.
What if it were true, the intrigue that Vines had choreographed for him? What if the men he met here were indeed the ones who would change the land that lay before him forever? Hard to imagine anything other than the closed-off, cauldron-of-trouble Cuba that he had known all his life, and just as difficult to believe that anything he might do could influence such a monumental change. But on the other hand, the very concept was enough to nudge at his heart rate.
…
with a wild surmise
, came the phrase into his mind. How the poets had described the early explores’ view of the unknown Pacific regions they’d encountered. At the time an English teacher had required him to memorize the lines, Deal had had no idea what “
wild surmise
” was, but now he thought he had an inkling.
“Take a look at
that
, would you,” said Russell, taking his arm and pointing.
The condos had curved away from the docks here, leaving room for a service road to make its approach. At the end of the lane, where the pavement widened beside a rusting storage shed, sat two cars parked at the end of the pavement: One was a hulking vintage Cadillac from the fifties, black with bulbous whitewalled tires and a chrome sun visor that ran along the top of the windshield like a glinting eyebrow; the other was a Mercedes sedan, not new, perhaps, but still impressive enough to Deal’s eye. In a country where an American automobile hadn’t been imported in more than forty years, he suspected that these two vehicles constituted a significant portion of the flagship fleet.
“We must rate,” said Russell at his side, and Deal could only nod his agreement.
One of the hands had already secured the ship’s gangway to the dock and had assumed a position of rigid attention on shore. The ship’s engines died away, replaced by the revving motors of the automobiles. The driver of the Cadillac emerged to stand by the nose of his idling machine, though the doors of the Mercedes remained closed, its occupants, if any, hidden behind a screen of dark tinted glass.
Fuentes had a hand on Deal’s shoulder, urging him toward the gangway. “Welcome to Havana, Mr. Deal,” he said, with his saturnine smile.
Deal glanced about, noting that one of the deckhands was at the rear of the gleaming Cadillac, loading their bags into the cavernous trunk.
“How about Customs?” Deal asked, as Russell passed between them, shaking his head in disbelief, his eyes wide, as if drawn toward the vintage car by an otherworldly force. “Immigration, all the little things like that?” He had the rest of the disks Vines had provided him clutched in his fist, ready to scatter them like seeds if the prospect of a search presented itself.
Fuentes gave him another hearty laugh. “Everything is taken care of, Mr. Deal. Rest assured. You have nothing to worry about.”
Funny, Deal thought, his clutched fist relaxing as he stepped to join Fuentes on Cuban soil. Those were the last words he’d heard from Norbert Vines as well.
“Who’s in the Mercedes?” Deal asked, pointing as the Cadillac followed the lead car past the gated marina entrance toward a junction with a highway. A slender, dark-skinned man in a set of faded green khakis stood at the intersection, waving them on, his hand raised to halt a tiny, smoke-belching car that was lurching toward them from the west.
Deal had already slipped one of Vines’ devices into the crevice where the seat was joined. Vines had told him that the removal of the covering activated the devices. For all he knew, their conversation was going out on the Voice of America.
“Friends,” Fuentes said, glancing ahead amiably.
He was sitting across the broad backseat, his fingers comfortably tented beneath his chin. Even with Russell’s formidable presence between them, there was plenty of room. In the seat beside the driver sat Tomás, his gaze fixed on the road before them.
Deal nodded. “It’s good to have friends,” he said. He gave another glance at the tiny car that the guard had forced to a halt. A Fiat, he realized, twenty years old if a day. Blue smoke swirled in a cloud that enveloped even the guard, but the man seemed not to notice.
“It is indeed,” Fuentes said.
“It seems some of yours are quite powerful,” Deal said, wondering if the seat padding would muffle their conversations. But where else would you stick a wad of gum? He held up the packet Fuentes had sent along in Key West.
“Those are often the most valuable sort,” Fuentes said. He stared out the window as if he were a tourist intent on the view.
The road had widened, Deal saw, its narrow two lanes turned to a broad boulevard divided by a well-tended median and flanked by fifties-style homes on broad lots, impressive enough by anyone’s standards.
“This is Miramar,” Fuentes said, gesturing out the window. “And there just behind you, the area of the Country Club,” he added, pointing over Deal’s shoulder.
Deal turned and glanced down a side street, caught a distant glimpse of an even more impressive set of homes. “Who lives in these places?” he heard Russell ask: “El Presidente and his posse?”
Fuentes gave Russell a tolerant gaze. “Actually, the president keeps a series of residences, for security reasons, most of them quite modest. The preponderance of the homes in this area is occupied by foreign emissaries, businessmen and the like. Some are embassies.”
He fixed his gaze on Deal, then. “As I have been telling you, it’s not all hovels and grass shacks down here.” He flashed them both his all-knowing smile.
Deal nodded. “Let’s say that I were to get involved with your enterprise,” he began.
Fuentes gave Russell a glance that affected surprise, then turned back to Deal. “I would like to believe that you already are involved,” he said.
“I’m talking about the real thing. Cashed your check, signed on, went to work,” Deal said. “Just who is it I’d be dealing with?”
It brought another look of feigned surprise from Fuentes. “With myself, of course.”
“And all these partners I was reading about?” Deal gestured with the packet once again.
“What about them?”
“Are these people I’d have any contact with?”
Fuentes gave him an inquiring look. “Not ordinarily, I should think. These are world travelers, men with a broad array of interests. Perhaps you might come in contact with someone at a social occasion, but in the everyday course of business, I’d call it most unlikely. Why do you ask?”
Deal shrugged, casting a sidelong glance at Russell, who kept his gaze straight ahead, his expression studiously neutral. “I think I ought to know who it is I’m working for, that’s all. I’d feel a lot more comfortable that way.”
“Well, Mr. Deal, let us say that a person in your position were to accept a commission from a multinational corporation, a Bertelsmann, perhaps, or a Vitech, seeking to build an offshore headquarters or a warehouse complex somewhere. Whom would you be working for in that case?”
“I’d know where the money was coming from, at least.”
“And given the recent track record of these corporations, what assurances would that provide?” Fuentes gave him an ingenuous stare as the heavy car rumbled across a bridge—perhaps the one that had been pointed out to him earlier, Deal thought.
An enormous, oddly shaped bus passed them going the other way, belching diesel exhaust in its wake. “A camel,” Fuentes said, pointing out his window.
Russell’s head swiveled. “Say where?” he said, his tone disbelieving.
Fuentes smiled from behind his tiny glasses. “The autobus,” he said, gesturing. “They call it a camel for its hump.”
Russell peered out the window at the departing bus. “Because it’s pretty damned ugly, that’s what I’d say.”
“Ugly, perhaps,” Fuentes allowed, “but certainly efficient.”
He could agree with that much, Deal thought. It looked as if the population of a small city might be jammed inside the bus, more the size of a train car than anything he’d seen in Miami.
The canopy of trees had fallen away altogether, he noticed, and the boulevard had become a broad highway running along the verge of the seawall, the whole sweep of the Malecón opening itself before them once again. In the distance, Deal could make out the profile of the massive castle rising above everything. It was quite a sight, he thought, as the familiar tang of sea breeze poured through the open windows, one that seemed to dominate the city from any perspective.
He forced himself from the view at last and turned back to Fuentes. “Let’s just say that the chance to meet the people I’d be working for would give me peace of mind.”
Fuentes seemed to think about this. “For now, why not think of yourself as working in my employ, Mr. Deal,” he said at last. “I’m a reasonable man, with nothing to hide…”
It brought a laugh from Deal, a sound loud enough to prompt Tomás to turn his stony gaze upon them. “I’m sorry, Fuentes,” Deal said, ignoring the bodyguard, “but you make the Sphinx seem forthcoming.”
Fuentes reached across Russell’s impassive form to pat him on the knee. “I appreciate your concerns, truly I do. I’m a cautious man myself. Believe it.”
He broke off to fix Deal with a stare. “I would not have lived this long if I were not.” He leaned back in his seat then, gesturing out the window at the seawall where a pair of lovers sat entwined.
“I’m sure I will be able to satisfy something of your curiosity in time,” Fuentes continued. “But, for now, I simply ask that you be patient. Look around this magnificent city. Breathe in its essence. Speak to our associates. Once you have a better grasp of the scope of the enterprise before us, you will feel quite differently, I am certain of it.” He turned back to Deal, his tone earnest. “You are a builder. You take pride in your work, this I know about you. Here you can indulge the passion for your craft as nowhere else on earth.”
They were well down the Malecón by now, passing the façade of a multistoried building that might have stood for a doge’s ruined palace, had they been in Venice. The building’s ochre paint had worn nearly to the color of the underlying concrete skin, and the many tall windows on the lower floors were boarded over.
A dark-skinned man in an undershirt and drooping trousers stood in the once grand doorway, a cigarette dangling from his lips, scratching his underarm idly while an infant in a diaper climbed about the steps below. Whatever had stood on the lot next door had crumbled into a pile of brick and mortar at least twenty feet high.
“What happened there?” Russell said, a low whistle emitting from his lips.
“Raúl,” Fuentes called sharply and the driver braked, piloting the Cadillac toward the curb before the ruined building. “
Un momento
,” he added, then gestured for Deal to get out.
Deal glanced at Russell, who shrugged, then levered his door open and stepped up onto the curb. The sun was hot, the air thick with the humidity familiar to him from Miami, but the breeze off the bay was stiffer than he might have expected, whipping his hair, snapping at the collar of his polo shirt. Russell joined him on the curb, working his big shoulders as he stared at what lay before them.
“Looks like the Bronx to me,” Russell said, staring at the giant pile of rubble where a building once stood.
On the steps of the building next door, the man in the undershirt had scooped the infant to his hip, and the two of them stared down at the entourage that had pulled up as if something of great import was about to occur.
“But that’s not your ordinary tenement,” Deal said, gesturing at the tattered palace where the pair stood watching.
“Now you see what I was talking about earlier,” Fuentes called as he came around the back of the Cadillac to join them. “From a distance, you apprehend the beauty that once was. Up close, you see what is.”
He gestured along the Malecón before them, where a series of once-grand buildings marched off into the distance like embarrassed dowagers, their façades wiped nearly clean of paint by the ceaseless breeze, many with their windows blank and boarded, their impressive porticos sagging toward collapse. Here and there, scaffolding crept partway up a façade, but Deal saw no one at work.
“Reminds me of this hooker I knew in Atlanta,” Russell Straight said, one hand massaging the opposite bicep. “Woman had to have been something once.”
Deal’s eye had been gauging the unsorted pile of rubble before them. He saw the hint of a staircase jutting above a tangle of fractured beams, and just beyond, the corner of a mattress sandwiched between concrete slabs. “I’m going to guess that nobody brought this building down on purpose, Mr. Fuentes.”
“Very good, Mr. Deal,” the man replied. He glanced up at a series of scudding clouds that briefly darkened the harbor sky. “There is a saying here: ‘When it rains, it is good for the crops. But today buildings will fall in Havana.’”
“Was anyone inside this one when it came down?” Deal asked, his eyes still roaming the tangle.
“Perhaps,” Fuentes said, shrugging. “There generally is.”
“Shoo.” Russell Straight loosed a breath at Deal’s side. “Work from now till kingdom come, you couldn’t straighten this place up.”
Hard to argue with that sentiment, Deal thought, though he suspected Fuentes would put it another way. He was still thinking of what Russell had said when a few drops of rain splattered the dusty sidewalk in front of them, and Deal turned to the building next door. The man in the undershirt and the infant had disappeared, the deserted entryway gaping back at him now like a broken smile.
The rain picked up a bit, turning to a summer squall, and Fuentes gestured toward the car, where Raúl and Tomás stood, each with a hand on a door. “Quickly,” Fuentes called. “We’ve seen enough, I think.”
He’d seen plenty, Deal thought, with one last backward glance, though maybe not enough. And then he was running after Russell and Fuentes through the chilling rain.
