Then he realized that the forward deck was empty.
Empty!
The people were gone. Into the sea … that must be it! They were swept overboard.
“Ocho.”
Diego put his hand on the young man’s shoulder, gripped hard.
“I didn’t mean to shoot him. As God is my witness, I did not mean for this to happen. It was an accident.”
Ocho swept the hand away.
He pointed through the glass at the forward deck. “They are gone! Look. The people are gone!”
“I did not mean for this to happen,” Diego repeated mechanically.
“What?” Ocho demanded. “What did you not intend? For the captain to die? For your daughter to drown at sea? For all of those people on that deck to die? What did you not intend, Diego?”
Oh, my God, that this should happen!
“Answer me!” he roared at Diego Coca, who refused to look forward through the wheelhouse windshield.
“Look, you bastard,” Ocho ordered through clenched teeth, and grabbed the smaller man by the neck. He rammed his head forward against the glass.
“See what your greed and stupidity have cost.”
Then he threw Diego Coca to the floor.
The impact of the disaster bowed Ocho’s head, bent his back, emptied his heart. Diego’s guilt did not lessen his, and oh, he knew that well. He, Ocho Sedano, was guilty. His lust had set this chain of events in motion. He felt as if he were trying to support the weight of the earth.
Maximo Sedano’s office in the finance ministry reflected his personal taste. The furniture was simple, deceptively so. The woods were hardwoods from the Amazon rain forest, crafted in Brazil by masters. Little souvenirs from his travels across Europe and Latin America sat on the desk and credenza and hung on the walls, small things of little value because expensive trinkets would be impolitic.
He turned on the light, then walked to the huge floor safe, which he unlocked and opened. He found the drawer he wanted, removed a stiff document envelope, took it to his desk and adjusted the light.
With the contents of the envelope spread out on the highly polished mahogany, Maximo Sedano paused and looked around the room with unseeing eyes. He blinked several times, then leaned back in his chair and stretched.
There were four bank accounts in Switzerland, all controlled by Fidel Castro. The last time Maximo computed the interest, the amount in the accounts totaled $53 million. Castro had been very specific when the accounts were opened years ago; the accounts were to be denominated in United States dollars. This choice had worked out extraordinarily well through the years as the currencies of every other major trading nation underwent major inflation or devaluation. The United States dollar was the modern-day equivalent of gold, although it would certainly be poor politics for any member of the Castro regime to say so publicly.
Fifty-three million dollars.
Quite a sum.
Enough to live extraordinarily well for a millennium or two.
Fidel kept that little nest egg in Switzerland just in case things went wrong here in this communist paradise and he had to skedaddle. No sense living on government charity in some other squalid communist paradise, like Poland or Russia or the Ukraine, when a little prior planning could solve the whole problem. So Fidel rat-holed a fortune where only he could get at it and slept soundly at night.
Now he wanted the money back in Cuba.
Not that the money ever really belonged to the Cuban government. The money came from drug dealers, fees for using Cuban harbors for sanctuary, fees for being able to send shipments directly to Cuba, stockpile the drugs, then ship them on when the time was right.
The money was really just Castro’s personal share of the drug fees. An even larger chunk of the profits had gone to army, navy and law enforcement personnel, all of them, every man in the country who wore a uniform had been paid; another chunk went to Castro’s lieutenants and political allies. Maximo had received almost a half million dollars himself. All in all, the deals with the drug syndicates had been good public policy — the drug business was highly profitable, giving Castro money to buy loyalty and so remain in power, and the business corrupted America, which he hated. Ah, yes, the money came from the United States despite the best efforts of the American government to prevent it. Fidel had savored that irony too.
Fifty-three million.
Maximo pursed his lips as he thought about the life of luxury and privilege that a fortune that size would buy. The money could be invested, some hotels, bank stock, invested to earn a nice income without touching the principal.
He could stay in the George V in Paris, ski in St. Moritz, shop in London and Rome and yacht all over the Mediterranean.
God, it was tempting!
Fifty-three million.
All he had to do was get Castro’s thumbprint on the transfer order. Without that thumbprint, the banks would not move a solitary dollar.
Really, those Swiss banks … Maximo had urged Castro to transfer the money to Spanish and Cuban banks for months, ever since the dictator was diagnosed with cancer. If he died with the money still in Switzerland, prying money out of those banks was going to be like peeling fresh paint from a wall with fingernails. And the drug dealers thought their racket was profitable!
But why be a piker? Why settle for $53 million when there was a lot more, somewhere?
From his pocket he removed a coin, a gold five-peso coin dated 1915. There was a portrait of José Marti on one side and the crest of Cuba on the other.
Gold circulated in Cuba until the revolution, until Fidel and the communists declared it was no longer legal tender and called it in, allowing the peso to float on the world market.
Maximo rubbed the gold coin with his fingers. By his calculations, based upon Ministry of Finance records, almost 1.2 million ounces of gold were surrendered to the government in return for paper money.
One million, two hundred thousand ounces … about thirty-seven tons of gold. On the world market, that thirty-seven tons of gold should be worth about $360 million.
A man who could get his hands on that hoard would be on easy street for the rest of his life. Yes, indeed.
The only problem was finding it. It wasn’t in the Finance Ministry vaults, it wasn’t in the vaults of the Bank of Cuba, on account at banks in Switzerland or London or New York or Mexico City … it was gone!
Thirty-seven tons of gold, vanished into thin air.
If a man could lay hands on that gold … well, Alejo Vargas and Hector Sedano could fight over the presidency of Cuba, and may the better man win. Maximo would take the gold. If he could find it.
He had a few ideas about where it might be. In fact, he had been quietly researching the problem since he took over the Finance Ministry. Eight years of ransacking files, talking to old employees, looking at clues, thinking about the problem — the gold had to be in Cuba, in Havana. Thirty-seven tons of gold.
A life of ease and luxury in the spas of Europe, mingling with the rich and famous, surrounded by beautiful women and the best of everything …
But first the $53 million.
He would type the account numbers on the transfer orders and the accounts the money was to be transferred to. He would use the secretary’s typewriter. He had the account numbers written in the notebook he removed from the safe. He flipped through the notebook now, found the page, stared at the numbers.
How closely would Fidel check the order?
The man is sick, drugged, dying. He is barely conscious. Unless he has the numbers of the accounts in the Bank of Cuba by his bedside, he’ll be none the wiser.