Fidel's Last Days Read online

  “Says who?”

  “Say several of our people inside the Cuban military. Separate, unimpeachable sources, all reporting the same thing. That arrest was what convinced us to move now.”

  “And what, you are going to assassinate the leader of a sovereign nation and then take over that nation based on the word of a handful of disaffected captains?”

  “I think you should give us more credit than that, sir. We never would undertake something like this without first doing the requisite polling on the ground, without having prepared the way for years in advance. Money works small miracles.” She almost added “as you know” but thought better of it. She was quickly losing patience with the man and she had to stop herself, take a breath, hold the juice up to her old mouth for a long drink.

  “Fine. I happen to know a bit about your organization. You people have done some remarkable work. But you haven’t yet told me how it will be fashioned, this little exercise. How, precisely? Who are these contacts? Captains? Lieutenants? Generals? Little Havana housewives cooking up rice and beans for the new breed of Cuban revolutionaries?”

  It was a similar line of questioning to her uncle’s, and she deflected it in a similar way. “I can’t answer that, sir.”

  “Then I want to talk with the person who can. Now. Tonight.”

  “With all due respect, that’s not possible, sir.”

  The vice president’s face was the color of a persimmon. He was glaring at her, sweating, trembling. Another rich man used to getting his way, she thought. But something was not right—even beyond the drinking and the outburst about her uncle, something was not right. He almost seemed to be acting a role. One, he should not have known about her conversation with her uncle. Two, Oleg had informed her that all she would have to provide was a quick briefing to a high government official sympathetic to their work. As much as possible, the U.S. government wanted to appear to be staying out of this. They wanted it to happen, of course; they’d wanted it to happen for generations. But they wanted it to happen without their direct involvement, which was the beauty of the whole plan. The people who ran the Orchid had understood this a long time ago: Though the U.S. government wanted Castro out, they could not be seen to be ousting him. But if another entity came along with the same desire, and, more important, the means, then the government—this administration in particular—would be anxious to offer whatever kind of clandestine assistance it could and then stand aside innocently and wait.

  What also troubled her was the rice and beans remark. It didn’t make sense. He knew she was a cubana. He must be trying to upset her, to get her to say something she did not want to say. Perhaps he was only pretending to have been drinking heavily.

  He huffed and he puffed and he stared at her. She stared back, emboldened now, unafraid. “Without your quiet support we won’t act,” Carolina lied. “My superiors sent me here because they’d been assured we’ve had a commitment for that support for months now, that all you wanted was a sense of our timing and a few relevant details. My understanding was that you had been contacted previously by—”

  The vice president held up one hand again, and she saw that it was as steady as a stone. “I’m not interested in what you’ve been told,” he said. “I’m interested in what you can tell me.”

  She took another slow breath. It was a trick. Exactly what kind of trick she did not know, but a trick all the same. And now that she had seen through it, she would be perfectly all right. “I’ve told you pretty much everything I was authorized to tell you, sir. If you’d like to go back to my superiors, I suppose that could be arranged. But once things have been set in motion like this, a change in your position would—”

  “Surely you have to understand my reservations, Ms. Perez. We’re putting our reputation at risk here, as the leader of the free world. You fail in this and do you realize what kind of a disaster-waiting-to-happen we have ninety miles off our shores?”

  “Yes, sir.” She watched him. Something was wrong. He was not quite a good enough actor to pull this off. Something was happening just beyond the borders of her information.

  “When does it begin?”

  “Two months from today,” she said without blinking.

  He pursed his lips and brought his eyes down to her half-empty glass of cranberry juice, not seeing it. “There’s going to be a popular uprising. There’s going to be bloodshed in the streets. What about his maniac brother? Guevara’s friend.”

  “Guevara’s friend will be dealt with very early on, sir, as I said. There will be a popular uprising, yes, probably. But we will control it. We have people in the television and radio stations, in the newspapers. There will likely be some resistance to those who assume power after Fidel is gone. There is no line of succession, as you know, and there will be some competition for his rule. We know who those people are and we have plans for them. Fidel’s successor, our man in Havana, will make overtures to the dissidents, to the masses.”

  “The military will allow that?”

  “The military will not be a problem, sir.”

  “Then it’s a military man, your so-called successor.”

  Carolina went on without answering, “We will broadcast demonstrations of people supporting this new leader. We will take the propaganda machine and turn it on its ear. A hundred people can be made to look like a thousand on television, for a brief period of time, and of course there will be many thousands eager to support the new regime. The images will be broadcast around the world. We have news stories already prepared—to discredit the likely opposition, and to bolster our man’s claim to power and popular support. The Europeans and others will rush to give aid to stabilize the new regime. We have a large sum of money set aside for the initial days—good works, food, bribes.”

  “And you are confident that those you’ll install in power will have the full support of a majority of the people?”

  “Of a significant minority, at first. Revolutions aren’t made by majorities, sir.”

  “Thank you for that lesson in history. But how can you be so confident? How can you gauge the popularity of a man who is untested, unknown?”

  “I can’t reveal that, sir. As I said earlier. But he’s hardly unknown.”

  “A hero of the Revolution, then,” the vice president said. “A hero from Angola. A military man. Stepping in to take the glorious mantle from Fidel.”

  Carolina shifted her weight and felt the strange stockings pull against her legs. “Except that our man is going to do what Fidel might have done in the earliest days of the Revolution, before Guevara and the communists took him under their influence. He is going to shift the direction from Fidel’s direction just enough to co-opt the dissidents, please the United States and its allies, and quiet the unrest that is likely to occur. Those who are uncomfortable with this shift will be taken care of by us, in part, but mostly by our friends in the armed forces.”

  The vice president looked at his watch. Carolina studied the muscles at the sides of his jaw as they flexed. He drew a handkerchief out of the pocket of his pants, opened it with some fanfare, and ran it across his forehead. “You put me in an awkward position. I have to go back and report to the president after this, naturally, and I’m sadly lacking in hard information.”

  It was very likely, she thought, that other reports would be made as well. The president was a pretty face, a figurehead.

  “I have to report to the president,” Lincoln repeated, as if the prospect frightened him, which she was certain it did not. “And there are gaps here; questions he’s going to ask that I won’t be able to answer.”

  He paused and looked at her. She looked back. Something about being dressed up as an old woman gave her a certain advantage over him. It took the sexual tension out of the equation. He waited for her to speak, but she calmly held her silence.

  “And I’m going to have to tell him the plan seems shaky to me.”

  “You’re welcome to tell him that, sir, of course. I’ll carry that message
back to my people as well.”

  Lincoln’s face reddened again. He seemed to be working hard now to maintain control. “It’s extremely frustrating not to be able to speak with the people who are actually in charge,” he said, between his teeth.

  “I can understand that, sir. I feel the same way sometimes.”

  “To whom do you report?”

  She could no longer contain herself. “To whom do you report, sir?”

  The man standing at the window turned slightly and watched her.

  The vice president flew into a rage. He stood up—for a moment she thought he would approach her—and kicked the base of the sofa, twice, then walked around behind it and slapped the palm of his hand hard against the hotel wall. One of the small, framed pictures crashed down against the desk, and splinters of glass skidded across its surface. The taxpayers would be billed. Now both Secret Service agents had turned fully into the room and were watching with more than their customary alertness. “Goddamn it to hell!” the vice president shouted. “It’s off. Our participation in this is off. That’s all, and that’s final!”

  “And you don’t have to clear that with the president?” she said quietly, calmly. She had not moved. Her hands, with their old woman’s spotted and wrinkled skin, lay crossed in her lap.

  The vice president spluttered and fumed, paced back and forth. “Off, off, that’s it,” he muttered once. “The president will concur.”

  “Fine,” Carolina said. “I have a jet waiting for me, and I’ve been here a very long time, and I’d like to go back, deliver my report, and go to bed, if you will, sir.”

  “Go,” he said, waving a hand in a violent dismissal. “But there are going to be repercussions, I can promise you that. You people drag me all the way down here for some half-baked, tricked-up, rice and beans bullshit! Who do you think you are dealing with here?”

  “Sir, I meant no disrespect.”

  He fumed and huffed, and Carolina watched him closely, trying to penetrate to the heart of the little performance. Inside herself, she took a step back, brought a calm curtain down across her face. When he quieted a bit, she stood, thanked him for his time, and then gave her elderly self over to the company of his protectors.

  Without another word being spoken, the Secret Service detail escorted her out of the suite, down the freight elevator, and all the way to the door of her room. She was given her gun back, and they disappeared. She went into the room, used the toilet, checked herself in the mirror, swallowed a mint, took the single empty piece of rolling luggage, and went down to awaken her chauffeur.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Carlos turned away from what remained of Ernesto’s body, from the pulsing arteries and puddling blood, and handed the pistol back to the smirking Olochon. He took off the bloodstained doctor’s gown, left the colonel without a word, and went downstairs, through the lobby, out the door, and down the steps, just trying to keep himself from breaking apart.

  “You came out alive,” Jose said. “That’s something.”

  Carlos could not answer. As they drove through the streets leading away from the Montefiore Prison—Libertad, Cinco de Diciembre, Cabo Rosa—Jose turned to look at him at every opportunity, but Carlos volunteered nothing. “To the office?” Jose said at last.

  Carlos was staring blankly out the side window at a stretch of apartment houses built years ago in the pitilessly ugly Soviet style. There was a whole block of them, a blot of Stalinist gray against the ochre of Havana’s older facades. “Cabinet meeting at the Central Committee at eleven,” he said.

  In Vedado, in front of the ultramodern tower where Fidel worked but did not live, Carlos put one unsteady hand on his friend’s shoulder, and got out of the car. The monument to José Martí. The enormous image of Che Guevara on one wall. More guards, more gates, more doors. He seemed to be swimming past them in a river of blood. If he hadn’t made this same walk a thousand times, he would have faltered, stopped, looked down bewildered at his own trembling hands. At last, he found himself seated around the oval cabinet table in the sunlit room of the Martyrs of the Revolution, three-quarters of his mind still occupied by the sight of a stranger’s head exploding in a splash of bright red and gray.

  He was early. For a long time he gazed out the windows at the Plaza de la Revolución, thinking about Elena, and what she would say if he told her. One by one the others arrived: the ministers of commerce and economic development, Lopez and Caudillo, two quiet men who, since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of the subsidies, had carried nothing but bad news into this room. Bad news disguised by fabricated graphs, impossible predictions, ridiculous optimism. Expert liars, both of them, they had somehow managed to keep their jobs while the sugar harvest shrank and the nation tumbled toward despair. Lately, things had improved somewhat—thanks to the tourist income, mainly—and Lopez and Caudillo had started strutting and crowing like triumphant delivery boys bringing a hand of bananas to parents whose children had just starved to death. No more of this, Carlos thought. No more.

  Next into the room were the four giants of Castro’s personal security detail, who took up places at the four corners.

  Then there was Alina Gonzalez Guiteles, minister of education, a woman Carlos considered a friend; a woman who cared about the healthy upbringing of children, a woman who, like himself, had only a secondary interest in things political.

  Then the military men: General Augusto Rincon and his only superior, General Emmanuele Adria. Carlos studied Rincon without actually looking at him. The man was laughing when he entered the room. Once he’d taken his seat—just to the left of the head of the table—he started folding a sheet of paper into triangular shapes, then unfolding it, then folding it back again. He was a hero of the Angolan campaign, built like an Olympic wrestling champion, with the face of an Incan god. In time, if everything went as they hoped it would, Rincon would be sitting in the chair to his right, turning the rusting and battered ship that was Cuba away from the rocks long enough for actual elections to take place.

  Next came the ministers of propaganda, energy, and labor—a trio of pirate liars in expensive Spanish suits.

  Finally, Olochon and Fidel and Raul Castro entered together, with two more bodyguards behind them. Carlos could feel Olochon’s eyes on him. When Fidel took his place behind his chair they all stood and saluted, then everyone sat and the meeting began.

  Fidel, as always, did almost all the talking. Carlos kept statistics in his head: The record was seven hours and fourteen minutes, in his speech to an international youth group at the Plaza de la Revolución; second place was six hours and two minutes, in this very room. On dozens of occasions, Fidel had held forth for more than four hours, while everyone thought about lunch, their families, the weather, and pretended to listen with both ears.

  “This morning the news is good,” the Maximum Leader began. “We have a report that . . .” He shuffled through the small sheaf of papers in front of him, looking momentarily confused. “That the Gross Domestic Product is up fourteen percent in the first four months of the year, which means that our reestablishment of further control of the central mechanisms was the proper strategy.”

  Around the table everyone but Olochon nodded and smiled knowingly, or said, “We knew it would be.” Caudillo, minister of economic development, the one who had created the exaggerations contained in the papers in Fidel’s hands, nodded most energetically of all. For nearly an hour, Fidel went on about the economy, its surging strength, and how that strength proved that those who had counseled him to allow more private enterprise were mistaken, completely mistaken, caught in the grip of the delusion of capitalism. It had been correct to close down the small private markets. Correct to eliminate the direct selling of a home from person to person, without the government involved. Correct to focus on the project of breeding a species of cattle that could produce both meat and milk. Correcto. Correcto, said the Father of Genetics. On and on and on.

  As the Great Leader spoke, Carlos watched
him. His hairline had receded. There were brown age spots, sprinkled like drops of mud, over Fidel’s forehead and the tops of his cheeks, and small scars where two cancerous moles had been removed. His eyes, so piercing and alert in the old days, now wandered and drifted behind thin whitish clouds, and his voice often sounded like a dim echo of the vibrant young revolutionary’s, a voice that could make even hungry women with hungry children hand over their bowls of frijoles. His blood pressure was 131 over 81, his heartbeat sturdy and regular. No signs of cancer except for the skin lesions, no high cholesterol, no diabetes, no breathing problems. The man’s mother had lived to be ninety-three, suffering from diabetes for decades and not succumbing. Left to the caprices of the natural order, he would live to be a hundred.

  When the economic report ended, Fidel glanced at Carlos and turned to the health of the nation. Instead of letting the ministers read the reports they had submitted, Fidel read them himself. More of the same: a further drop in infant mortality, a further increase in life expectancy. Some of it, even most of it, was true. But around the table people looked at Carlos and nodded somberly, as if to say: You lie as cleverly as the rest of us; good work.

  Then education, then the military situation—at this point Alina glanced at her watch. Fidel saw her do so and asked, without looking directly at her, if he might be going on at too much length. Immediately there was a chorus of “No, no, Comandante!” He smiled and looked at Alina triumphantly. Any tiny deviation from the posture of adoration was a personal insult now, but Fidel was magnanimous; he forgave such things . . . and remembered them for decades.

  At last, the oration seemed to be winding down. Three hours and thirteen minutes, Carlos noted. He wore his watch with the face to the inside of his wrist, so he could pretend to be examining his palms contemplatively, thoughtfully, while actually checking the hour. This time, he noticed one spot of dried blood clinging to the hair of his wrist. He could not keep himself from looking at General Rincon then, just for an instant. Rincon looked back and the tiniest flicker of something passed between them. Carlos felt Olochon’s eyes on him.