Batman knew Tombstone was referring to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “But when? I’ve got preparations I need to make out here, you know.”
“Of course I know that,” Tombstone said sharply. “Look, as soon as I hear anything, I’ll let you know. It shouldn’t be long, though. I understand the President’s in conference on the matter right now.”
Batman sighed as he hung up the telephone. The President might be consulting his top political and military experts, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this one out. Weapons poised on Cuba could have only one target the continental United States. And, when a decision was finally made, it would be up to Batman to walk that thin line between defense and aggression, between preserving the integrity of the United States and provoking war.
The President stared down at the photos strewn around his desk. In his past twenty-five years as a political animal, he’d seen satellite imagery often enough never before, however, in such telling detail.
He leaned back in the custom-built chair, feeling the sinking sensation of resignation. Around him, his staffers and aides fell silent. The President steepled his hands under his chin and thought. Finally, he glanced back at the man standing in front of him. “So it comes down to this? Again?”
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid so, Mr. President.”
The President sighed. “Kennedy thought he had the problem licked forever,” he said reflectively. He gestured at the photographs. “We should’ve known better. They won’t stop not really. Even with the fall of the Soviet Union, there will always be power-mongers and terrorists in the world. Whole nations, even.”
The chairman shifted uneasily. “We have some options.”
The President spun his chair around to stare out at the Rose Garden.
“Oh, I’m certain we do. We always do.
There’s not a spot on the world that we haven’t projected out as a terrorist or rogue state and tried to figure out what we should do about it But in the end, what it comes down to is American men and women setting foot on foreign soil, doesn’t it?”
The roses were in full bloom, each bush carefully and lovingly tended by the White House gardener. Some of the plants were decades old, he guessed. There was no garden on earth that got finer care than this collection of roses. “We should take care of other things just as well,” he said out loud. He heard the uneasy scuffle of feet behind him. And now the President is talking to himself. Wonder if that makes them feel any worse as if it could. He spun his chair back around to face the group.
“One of the reasons I was elected,” he said slowly, organizing his thoughts as he went, “was my commitment to a strong defense policy.”
He grimaced, shrugged slightly.
“You all know I’ve seen all ends of this, from the ground up as a young Army officer in Vietnam to the crises I saw as vice president. I know what I’m about to do, more than any President since maybe Eisenhower.
The other military men that have held this post came from some of the more refined fields of warfare submariner, fighter pilot, that sort of thing.” He gestured dismissively. “But it takes an old Army dogface to understand what fighting’s really about. It takes men hell, and women, too, no won the ground, face-to-face.” He finally came to a decision and looked up at the assembled group. “Cuba is a sovereign nation, but this is our part of the world. I won’t have a land strike capability in Cuba-I won’t. And I’m not going to sit in this office and watch the spectacle of an American fighting pilot being dragged through the streets of Cuba and tried for war crimes.” His voice got louder and stronger. “It will not happen on my watch am I absolutely clear about that?”
The chairman seemed to stiffen. New conviction and pride filled his voice. “As you say, Mr. President not on my watch. On our watch, sir.”
The President nodded sharply. “We understand one another. Thank you for coming. General. I’d like to see you again later this afternoon with answers, this time.”
“I’ll have them for you, Mr. President. You can count on that.” The general saluted, executed a smart about-face, and left the room.
“The rest of you, start getting the other pieces of the packages together. I want everything public affairs coordination, a conference call with the governor of Florida …
no, Louisiana and Texas, as well and the rest of the staff immediately available for the next forty-eight hours.”
And that’s all it should take: forty-eight hours.
Aguillar reached out and patted Pamela’s leg lightly above the knee. He let his fingers linger a moment, feeling the smooth silk of the stockings rasp against his well-manicured palm. He trailed his fingers up ever so slightly, lifting them reluctantly away only when she glanced sharply at him. The more he saw of her, the more he thought that the possibilities might be … ah, well, perhaps another time. He sighed, thinking what a waste it was that the woman’s mind could be so firmly fixed on her job. “You are not nervous, I hope?” he inquired politely.
“Of course not,” Pamela said calmly, anger barely edging her tones.
“I’ve been to Cuba before.”
Aguillar chuckled and leaned back in his chair. The aircraft was already taxiing for departure. “Never this Cuba, Miss Drake. And never with a native guide.” A nostalgic look crossed his face.
“There’s nothing like it, nothing in the world.” A strong wave of homesickness shook him, still a surprise after so many years away.
He felt her eyes on his face, studying him, dissecting him in the coldly calculating way he’d seen her operate before.
“Never this Cuba?” she inquired, letting the question trail off to invite response.
“Oh, no, I’m sure you haven’t seen my Cuba. Not the one I grew up in.”
“Under Castro?”
He nodded. “Castro was part of it, but hardly the thing I remember most.” He fixed her with a stern look. “You must remember. Miss Drake, for us, this is normal.”
“Assassinations? Purges? Genocide?”
“That’s not what I remember not what I miss,” he said, surprising himself slightly. For all her brittle prickliness, there was something about Pamela Drake that made him want to talk, to explain to her the sheer luxuriant sensuality of his homeland. The rich, warm nights, the endless beaches, the pure, clean water around her, though the latter would change now, since the advent of heavy industry along the coastline. “It was …” He searched for exactly the right words to convey to her. “Paradise,” he concluded finally.
He saw her doubting look. “Oh, I know what you’ve been told. There’s disease, poverty, and oppressive political regimes but really, remember, we grew up with all that.
There was nothing unusual, nothing abnormal about it. Life went on.
We had families, we had children, and we had …”
Again, words failed him. It seemed impossible to convey to her the simple rhythms of life in Cuba, the feeling of rightness and oneness with nature. And the women ah, the women. He glanced over at her again, contrasting her with Cuban women he’d known. Too many angles, he decided, too many sharpened little edges poking out of her. A classical beauty, yes, yes, every inch of her refined and somehow pure.
But there was none of the raw sensuality he remembered from his island days, none of the exuberant passion for life and making love that he missed perhaps most of all. The American women, so far removed from what was important in life that they were virtually sucked dry of all of the joy of life now that, that joy, was what he missed. “I will show you some places,” he decided suddenly. “Yes, the guerrillas, the freedom fighters you know they’re there and that’s where your story is.”