“I understand,” she said. “Are you applying now? You should.”
“I already have,” he said. “We may stay in America, or more likely we may emigrate to Spain. We will decide. I cherish the freedom to make that decision.”
“I’m sure you do,” Alex said.
Senora Mejias kept nervously watching the door. Alex had a hunch the little lady was packing a pistol just in case. But Alex didn’t ask.
Juanes followed Shakira on the restaurant’s play list, then the sounds went retro with the Buena Vista Social Club. Mejias seemed happier with the latter.
“Cuba remains in the grip of an economic calamity,” Mejias said, shaking his head. “Tourism is shrinking with the global recession. There are crises in the pricing of nickel mining and in the sugar industry. The government is closing half of the sugar mills. No one has anything. People pretend to work; the government pretends to pay them. Human rights are nonexistent and the European Union plays along with Castro to protect their trade agreements. It is disgusting. The situation becomes worse by the year. The people are frustrated,” he said. “Even Castro admits, after a half century of misery, that the Cuban model has failed.” He sighed and looked deeply troubled. “How long must Cuba wait?”
“It took the Soviet Union almost seventy years to collapse,” Alex said. Her words were meant to console and they failed.
Then, perhaps feeling that he was coming across as too dour, Mejias lightened. “There aren’t even any Marxists left in Cuba,” he said, with a wink. “They’ve all emigrated and found teaching positions at American universities!”
Alex smiled politely. Senora Mejias, who had probably heard the same joke a thousand times before, never looked up from her chicken.
Mejias laughed strangely, and so did Alex. The ex-major went back to business. Alex let him talk. One never knew what he might reveal, though she also sensed that Mejias was singing the tunes that he believed everyone wanted to hear. It wouldn’t have been the first time the CIA had bought such a catalogue. Yet Fajardie and his analysts seemed pleased with their acquisition so far and, who knew? They might even be correct in their assessments. It happened from time to time.
Alex then moved to the only question that remained of which the answers might interest her. “What about the Venezuelans?” she asked.
“What about them?”
“Were they really interested in taking me into custody?”
“Very much so,” he answered. “And a deal was in the works and very near completion. Since you were never officially in Cuba, your government couldn’t very easily track you. You would have been of great value to Hugo Chavez, and you might never have returned. That was why we left so expeditiously. I know solitary confinement was unpleasant, but it kept you alive. And as long as you were my prisoner, it was more difficult for the government to find you and move you. I’m deeply sorry to have frightened you and to have held you there.”
“Forgiveness is nothing new to me,” she said. “So, muchas gracias.”
“De nada.”
Then he leaned forward slightly. “You see,” he said, “the fix was in from the very beginning. My squad was to take you into custody on the beach. Senor Guarneri would be allowed to have his moment with Julio Garcia and make his romp in the graveyard. We would connect you to Roland Violette, and the CIA would be allowed to settle their long-standing grievance with him. All the events came together at once and allowed me the perfect moment to leave Cuba, a moment that hadn’t existed previously and would not have lasted indefinitely. Too bad the hotheads on the boat started shooting at us. They would have been home to Miami in a few days if they’d only surrendered.”
“So when I arrived on the beach, you knew I was the one who was there to bring you to America,” she said.
“That is correct. I wished to take you into custody. I was constantly being watched by secret police. So I wished to do my job and keep you under my personal supervision. Then we could both leave. Along with Juanita, of course.”
“The CIA people told me they didn’t know who you were. They only knew a code name. That was true?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “There are traitors everywhere. If Cuban intelligence knew there was a major in the militia who wished to defect, I would be dead now. That’s why they needed to send somebody and let me find him. Or her.”
“Then why didn’t you arrest me in the bar of the Ambos Mundos?” Alex asked. “We were codo con codo in there. Cheek by jowl. You could have arrested me then.”
“Impossible.”
“Why?”
“There were two men at the bar. Undercover police. Not very good and not very undercover. But they report to the federal authorities. They would have taken you away right then. Better to make a night-time arrest, fill the files with paperwork, and move you around at my whim until we were ready to leave.”
Alex nodded. “Muchas gracias otra vez,” she said.
“De nada.”
Alex switched to English. “And after I was in custody and the original escape dates were blown?” she asked. “Who arranged a new date for the CIA to make the pickup?” She smiled. “I’m guessing it was the only person who really knew when the prisoner, me, would be ready to escape,” she said.
Mejias smiled. Juanita retained her silence. If Senora Mejias spoke English, she didn’t let on.
“Of course,” he said.
“You,” Alex said.
Mejias nodded.
SIXTY-FOUR
Alex took the train back to New York that evening, but she was in no mood to face her office anytime soon. She made an appointment with Christophe Chatton of the Swiss Bank and went to visit her money. She wanted to see what would happen, how she would be received, and in truth, if it was all still there.
It was. She rearranged some of the accounts so she could accrue better interest. In fantasy, she played with the idea of buying a condo in Maui or a race horse, then decided against both. But for the first time, she fully understood that she was a wealthy woman, although she knew in her heart that wealth was never measured by a bank balance.
On that same afternoon, to put to rest some final perplexities about Cuba, she phoned Paul Guarneri. They arranged to meet in Brooklyn and take a walk together on the promenade across the bay from Manhattan. Alex worked on him for a while, allowed him to take her hand for the stroll, and got him talking.
Long ago, he said, when he had been just old enough to begin to understand such things and had repaired his relationship with his father, the old man had imparted some wisdom.
“If anyone ever comes after me,” his father had said, “it won’t be from America. It will be from Cuba.” It was the 1970s after all, Paul explained, and people were looking into the dirty secrets from the 1960s. Castro and Kennedy. Hookers and hotel rooms, cash and casinos, Jimmy Fratianno. Santo Trafficante. Judith Exner and Jimmy Roselli.
“The whole venal backbiting worthless load of them,” Guarneri called them.
As Paul and Alex walked along the promenade, he opened up to her as never before. It was a bright summer day with low humidity, perfect for a game at one of the new ballparks or an afternoon at Aqueduct, had the old man been around. It was equally perfect for skaters, strollers, and joggers.
Joseph Guarneri had made his peace with the American mob and was allowed a quiet retirement, his son explained. Even more quietly, however, shortly before his premature death, he was talking to investigators from the U.S. Congress about the Cuban connection with the assassination of John F. Kennedy.