Fidel's Last Days Read online

  “The elevator is broken,” his escort informed him at the end of the corridor, and they turned toward the steps. An old woman in a black dress was mopping them. At the sound of the guard’s boots on the stone, she cowered against the wall, turning her face down and away. For Carlos, this small gesture was worse even than the screams. Afterward, he told himself, after this thing is finished, there will be no old women cringing in a place like this. Whatever had been done to her would no longer be done to human beings in the nation of Cuba. He vowed that on the souls of his parents and his late wife.

  He and his escort climbed the three flights side by side. Though he had turned sixty the previous October, Carlos kept himself in good condition, and at the top he was breathing no harder than the young guard. They went along another dank corridor, to a door near the end on the right. The guard rapped hard, twice, and waited to hear the Dentist’s voice before he saluted yet again and marched away.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Carolina Anzar Perez was almost sure she was being followed. She turned and backtracked through the streets of downtown Miami, glancing in the rearview mirror every few seconds. A dark green SUV kept appearing behind her, fading away, reappearing.

  At last, when she believed she’d shaken it, she drove across the drawbridge to the place she thought of as Brickell Key, pulled her white Roadmaster convertible into the underground garage of its tallest building, and waited several minutes, just inside the door, to see if the SUV would turn in, too.

  Nothing.

  The garage attendant waved at her impatiently. He was a man about her own age, tall, muscular, skin as black as coal. He commanded her forward with a jerky, scolding movement of his left hand. “How long?” he asked, when she pulled up beside him and stepped out. His words echoed harshly against the concrete, a short string of bad notes, off-key, toneless. An exile from Port-au-Prince, she was sure, full of the anguish of that place. She didn’t know why the sound of his voice bothered her so much on that day—maybe it was the sense of some old bitterness he’d carried with him across the Caribbean. Or maybe it was not being fully at peace with what she was about to do.

  “Mwen pap rete’ la lontan,” she answered, trying to soften him up. But the brown eyes stayed on her coldly; his face hardened. She’d spent months working in Haiti, years studying the language; her Creole was nearly as perfect as her Spanish, it couldn’t be that. It must be just the sound of that language on the tongue of a pretty, blond, Cuban American woman driving an outrageously nice car. It was misery meeting opulence, the hard world meeting the soft, a story as old as Miami, the hot, roiling city at her back. She turned and walked toward the elevator and thought she heard the attendant hissing.

  On the fourteenth floor the elevator opened into the lap of luxury itself: glass doors with Mandarin written across them in a flowing gold script, and beyond them real Chinese vases holding calla lilies, a small cocktail lounge of leather upholstered armchairs, and the perfectly calibrated Bach concerto sliding out from invisible speakers. The tables—less than half of them occupied at this hour on a Tuesday—stood before her like white-clothed servants in rows. And when the slim Chinese hostess greeted her with a mellifluous “Good afternoon,” there wasn’t so much as a speck of world-to-world friction in her voice.

  Carolina said, “I’m having lunch with Roberto Anzar,” and the hostess tilted her head with a studied mix of dignity and servility, the lick of a smile catching the corners of her lips. She put one of the black menus into the crook of her arm, held it against her breast, and walked between two rows of tables and out onto a balcony overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway. There was only one patron out here on a sunny day, and it crossed Carolina’s mind that it would be just like her uncle to have paid off the manager of Mandarin to keep everyone else out of earshot. Roberto sat far to the right, his back to the wall, of course, his tired eyes gazing out languidly at the turquoise water, the string of small yachts, and the blue and silver buildings of the city beyond, two of which he owned.

  When he saw her approach, her uncle got to his feet, took her hand in both of his, and kissed her softly on the right cheek. “Angelito,” he said. He tugged the arm of her chair a few inches closer to his and waited for her to sit.

  “How are you, Uncle?” She edged the chair back an inch away from him. He was jowly and pink but perfectly shaved, his white hair swept back grandly from a high forehead, his nose just like Castro’s nose, an almost exact replica. Such a persistent irony, she thought, because Fidel Castro had been her uncle’s lifelong obsession, the man he despised more than any soul on earth.

  In answer, Roberto shrugged his sagging shoulders. “Eh, I am a person who eats and drinks anger. I make love with anger.”

  “You’ve been that way for forty-five years,” she said. “It keeps you young.” She watched the quick flash of vanity cross his eyes, and then the waiter was there, and her famous uncle was asking about the specials as if it was his first time at Mandarin, as if there were a hundred foods he couldn’t tolerate for medical reasons. It was supercilious, she thought, annoying, just another manifestation of the power he wielded, the privilege in his life. But then he turned to her with all the graciousness of Old Havana, asked if she would mind allowing him to choose their luncheon menu—he knew her likes and dislikes so well. And he put his hand on the waiter’s arm as if they were brothers, and listed his desires like a beloved commander—the appetizer, the wine, the main courses spiced in a particular way—so that the waiter left their table feeling as if he’d just been addressed by God.

  When they were alone again, Roberto looked out over the water, blinked twice, and faced her. “The position goes well?”

  “Thrilling days and boring days.”

  “Atlanta still suits you?”

  “I’m a tropical girl. The winters there are too cool for me. I’m glad you convinced me to buy an apartment here.”

  “But you hardly use it,” he said.

  Carolina shrugged and looked away. In a moment, the waiter brought a plate of Peking dumplings, browned in oil, glistening. She and her uncle began to eat.

  “You have a man?”

  A little twist of pain went scampering through the middle of her. Uncle Roberto had always been able to find the tender places in her, prod and poke them, bring tears up behind her smile. “Three men,” she said, and he threw back his head and roared out a laugh that rang across the empty balcony and through the albums of her childhood. Instantly, the sound brought back a chain-link-enclosed yard in Little Havana, women pulling apart cooked chicken meat in the kitchen, men in guayaberas playing cards and cursing communism. “Do you have a woman, Uncle?”

  She expected him to mention his beloved late wife, but he nodded, surprising her. Then he smiled his devious smile and said, “My woman,” and paused. “My woman is the anger we just spoke of.”

  The dumplings had been served so promptly that she wondered again if he had instructed the people in the kitchen to prepare something ahead of time. Had the ordering been merely a charade? With her uncle, one never knew: Roberto Anzar lived behind a dozen veils; invested his money in a thousand secret places; had friends who devoted their lives to work they could never speak about. Every gesture and word could have been sincere, or it could have been part of some intricate deception, a three-dimensional game of chess in the dark. He loved her, as she loved him, but over the years a shadow of mistrust had found its way into their relationship, the dark lining to a bright tropical garment.

  On the heels of their dumplings, the main course followed with perfect timing. Scallops and vegetables in extra spicy garlic sauce for him, and for her the Mandarin’s specialty: sesame chicken with mangoes. Uncle Roberto had chosen a California sauvignon blanc, something perfectly un-Latin. She wondered if it might be his way of mocking her. But he raised, as always, a toast to the thing they both dreamed of: a free Cuba.

  They ate for a time without looking at each other. Through the warm afternoon a sweet breath of ocean
air arose and whisked bits of dust and grit along the edges of the balcony, lifting the hems of the tablecloths as if they were women’s skirts. Roberto ate with great delicacy and care. As she sometimes did with men who took her to lunch, Carolina looked at his hands and mouth and imagined him making love with those same manners—precise, appreciative, but with some uncontrolled lust, some danger, at the edges of things. “They say the taste buds gradually die as one ages,” he said, “but I have not found this to be true.” He lifted his glass a second time. “To the sense pleasures.”

  She drank and waited, wrestling with one devil of doubt. She had done so many difficult things in her life. But she did not know if she could do this. She consoled herself inwardly, encouraged herself: If what you did ultimately helped people—the Cuban people especially—then it had God’s blessing. She had been raised on that belief. It had come, in the beginning, from the lips of the man sitting opposite her.

  Still, she hesitated. She watched his handsome face carefully. Intent on the food, he spoke without looking up: “Usually you come to dine with your uncle if you happen to be in Miami.” He pronounced it the way all the Cubans of his generation did—Mah-yammi. “This time, your uncle thinks you happen to be in Mah-yammi in order to dine with him.”

  “My uncle is either spying on me, or he can read my face like a book.”

  “Both. Both true, Angelito. I have men watching you, you must know that already. I have friends in the phone company listening to you . . . cameras in both your apartments. And you are like a daughter to me, closer than a daughter, so I have always been able to read everything beneath the skin of your beautiful face.” There was a pause, one beat—as if to make her think that all of it might be true—then his gentle laugh.

  “Well, then you know already why I’m taking you to lunch.”

  “I am taking you, Angelito.”

  “Nothing new there. I’ve never yet paid for one of our meals.”

  “And you never will. I accept the ways of the modern norteamericano man only as far as a certain line.” He chewed the last morsel of his last scallop and washed it down with the sauvignon blanc. “And the purpose of our meeting, aside from the love we have for each other and for the ones we knew who have gone?”

  She started to look around at the empty tables, at the doorway leading back into the restaurant. It was a reflex as old as her career. Roberto immediately sensed it and put two fingers on her right wrist. “You can speak freely here, Angelito. This is my place, my city.”

  Looking into his eyes again, she thought of a particular summer night in their home, a party for the birthday of some nephew or niece. She couldn’t remember who it was now. What she could remember was her father—Roberto’s younger brother—knocking on her door and coming into her room, late, when everyone had gone and she was half lying, half sitting on her bed with a book. She could picture, still, her father’s powerful forearms and the web of small scars around his eyes. “Your uncle will be president of Cuba someday,” he’d told her. “On the day our land regains its freedom, he will be there.” The men had been drinking rum, and the women Rioja, and she had been sixteen, restless, without authority, without courage. The name she was about to speak had been haunting them then. It haunted them still. She said: “We have reason to believe that Fidel will not be alive in another short while.”

  Roberto’s face did not change. He seemed to be studying her, curious, perplexed, perhaps disappointed. After a long moment he said, “Forgive me. I love you. You know with what strength and depth I love you. But over the past forty years I have heard this so many times.”

  “I know you have. But this time is different. I can’t speak more specifically, even to you, Uncle. I’m surprised you’ve had no information from your people there.”

  He shrugged, giving nothing away.

  She tried again: “Have you heard anything?”

  “Zero. Other than what has been in the press.”

  Good, she thought. Perfect. She said: “For the time being this should go no further than between you and me, but he is not long for this world.”

  “He is truly ill, then,” Roberto said, without emotion. “Suffering, I hope.”

  “Not seriously ill as far as we know. But approaching the end of his life. That’s all I can say, though I can say it with some confidence.”

  “Ah.” He raised his glass, half closing his eyes so she could not read them. “A week? A month? A decade?”

  “Less than a decade.”

  “But more than a week?”

  “A few months, roughly. I can’t say more specifically than that.”

  “Ah.”

  “Aside from what the constitution says about Raul—which no one pays any attention to—there are no real provisions for a successor, as you know.”

  He nodded and went into his Castro imitation, waggling one long finger and shaking his cheeks: “ ‘I haven’t had time even to consider such a thing as a successor’ he says, and the world lets him get away with saying it.”

  “One possibility is Raul, of course, which would mean more of the same.”

  “Worse than the same,” Roberto said.

  “You know about the other likely successors. Someone from the Council of Ministers, Crian, perhaps. Or Escalante from Foreign Affairs.”

  “I dream of them frequently,” her uncle said, sipping his wine. “Nightmares.”

  “But there could be someone else. In the first weeks, especially, there is the possibility of chaos: looting, armed gangs doing battle with his thugs. We expect, at the very least, that there will be a period of instability. We expect his propaganda machine to suggest that the United States government had a hand in his death, which, of course, would not be true.”

  “Of course not,” Roberto said calmly. He held the stem of his wineglass but made no move to lift it. His eyes were a quarter closed, brown as coffee beans, steady as stars. “America has tried to kill him so many times. Why should it be America that finally succeeds? Why not old age? A jealous lover? The Monarchy of Monte Carlo?”

  Carolina frowned and waited two beats. “We don’t want to find ourselves in the position of reacting to events.”

  “By ‘we’ you mean . . . ?”

  “The organization I work for now.”

  “Ah,” he said. “The famous White Orchid.” And now surely he was mocking her, showing that he knew the nickname only insiders knew, and making it sound foolish, a child’s club. “But this ‘we’ ” he went on, “could also mean the United States of America, could it not, Angelito?”

  She watched him from behind her smile. “We like to think that our objectives and the objectives of the United States of America often overlap.”

  “Often but not always.”

  “I love this country as you do,” she said.

  “But you were employed by its government once and now you are not.”

  “And you’ll never forgive me for leaving. The government, or the husband who recruited me.”

  He made his classic expression of pretend-hurt, lifting the thicker ends of his eyebrows, turning down his lips. “I love you more than any creature on earth, Angelito. Surely you know that.”

  “Uncle, after Fidel is gone there is the possibility of anarchy. Think about this—anarchy, ninety miles from the American mainland. Think of what that would mean for the United States, for Cuba, Venezuela, for all of Latin America. To the extent possible, we want to control the events of the street. We want, eventually, to give the people a chance to have their country returned to them—”

  “And property returned to those who lost it?”

  “Some kind of compensation,” she said. “It’s unrealistic to hope that the million and a half Cubans in this country can return and take up residence in their old apartments, work their old fields, play Mozart on their old grand pianos.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Unrealistic.”

  “There is an entire mechanism in place in Cuba now, an establishment of fear and lies, an
d that establishment—”

  “You don’t have to tell me of that establishment, Angelito. Nor of the possibilities after he has gone. I have spent decades contemplating those possibilities, preparing for them, waiting for the moment. You don’t have to educate me about my homeland.”

  “Of course not. I’m sorry.”

  He was leaning two inches closer now. She could smell the garlic on his breath. “And other than the fact that this mysterious and sudden conclusion to Fidel Castro’s ugly reign will mean I shall live to see my country free again, perhaps be able to return and at least look at the property that was stolen from my family . . .other than this, and the love you have for your uncle, why did you call on me, Angelito?”

  “We want you to assist us with your contacts here and in Cuba.”

  He nodded, almost seemed to smile. “Naturally. And at great risk to them, no doubt.”

  “They’re already at great risk. There is no hope of anything good without risk. I risk my life every other week. You’ve risked your life for almost fifty years in one way or another.”

  He blinked slowly, once, twice.

  “You have a web of friends, admirers, and contacts here and in Cuba that even we can’t rival. Military men. Political figures. Journalists. In the hours immediately following Fidel’s death, we want you to get word to them to maintain order. We want you to counsel Cuban Americans not to expect too much in the way of compensation, not to take any action at first, not to suppose that they can return to their—”

  “So that they will be that much more easily manipulated.”

  She watched him again. She wondered, momentarily, if someone who did not know him at all should have been given this assignment, if they were too close, too aware of each other’s vulnerabilities. “You have to trust us or not trust us,” she said. “The people who run the organization I work for—”

  “Who are these people, Angelito? What is their purpose? What are their beliefs?”