She had a little bit of wine left-becoming quite the cosmopolitan drinker. She tilted the last of it down, showing me her pale throat, shaking her head at the same time. "What'd that friend tell you? Go as a tourist?"
I hadn't mentioned Juan Rivera's name, but I'd told her that was what I planned to do.
She said, "Who looks more like a tourist? A big blond nerdy gringo traveling alone, or a guy and his girlfriend- his mistress, maybe-who want some private time in the tropics?"
She had a point.
Dewey placed the wineglass back on the table; picked up the napkin and dabbed at her mouth. Said, "Doc, for once in your life, try to be logical."
8
As the sun-bleached old Soviet-built Tupolev jetliner strained to free itself of the smudge, the frenzy, the diesel and mango stink of Panama City, Panama, Dewey looked down upon the toy cars and the horizon of rooftops and she said, "I could see you were right at home; knew your way around that place, but I've got to tell you, buddy, I'm glad to be in the air again."
We'd arrived the day before, Sunday, and I'd spent the evening showing her the sights; took a couple of private hours to renew one or two old contacts. Then it was dinner at the Continental Hotel on Via Espana. Avenue which, prior to the fall of Noriega, had been run by Panama's Defense Forces. I liked the irony of that-sitting beneath crystal chandeliers, among tuxedoed waiters, in a restaurant that had been the late-night meeting place for Noriega and his Cuban advisors
… lots of cigar smoke and nervous Spanish as they coordinated weapons shipments in advance of the U.S. invasion.
Now Dewey fidgeted in her seat and said, "You give a pretty good tour, but I feel a lot more comfortable up here than I did down there."
The veteran of an international tennis tour that focused myopically on the world's big-money glamour cities, Dewey had been unprepared for the slums and the noisy poverty of what, in comparison, was one of Central America's wealthiest, healthiest cities. That she was glad to be in the air also told me that she didn't know a damn thing about Tupolev jets.
We were side by side on threadbare seats, sitting port side, forward of the engines, in a fuselage not much wider than a commuter bus. Two broad-shouldered Americanos among forty, maybe forty-five Latinos-business types and embassy types wearing suits or guayabera shirts-in an aluminum tube crammed with seats for more than a hundred.
The door of the forward bulkhead was open and I looked through into the cockpit. Saw the co-pilot-maybe the pilot-standing there, smoking a cigarette, laughing with a stocky, busty flight attendant whose body was too pudgy for her gray Cubana Airlines uniform. Watched him pull out the pack-Marlboros-and offer her one. Watched her lean to his lighter.
"Holy shit!" Dewey had grabbed my arm. "What's happening?"
White vapor was pouring out of the overhead vents like steam from a fire hose, filling the cabin with a haze dense as sea fog.
I patted her hand. "Relax-it's because they just turned on the air conditioning. It's the way these planes are built; the way the system works."
"You sure? Geeze-oh-Katy!"
"Notice anyone else getting nervous? They've flown Cubana before."
She was beginning to relax her grip on my arm. "Hell, I can't even see anyone else."
I smiled. The fog wasn't that bad. No one else even seemed to notice. People settling back with magazines… a man sitting to our right shaking open Granma, the national newspaper of Cuba… a couple of women forward of us peering into a sack, pulling out bananas and an ata-moya. Even so, there was no vacation giddiness; none of the we're-headed-for-paradise cheer that is the hallmark of other island flights.
Dewey said, "Long as the plane's safe, I don't care."
How was I going to reply to that? Cuba, like all former Soviet bloc countries, was suffering the gradual breakdown of its mechanical infrastructure. The Tupolev, its replacement parts, and its technicians all came from a place that no longer existed. The same was true of Cuba's bulldozers, harvesting machines, power plants, buses, medical hardware, oil refineries, radios, televisions, and windup toys- the entire metal-electrical scaffolding upon which modern civilization is built. A couple of years ago, a friend of mine, who happens to be a National Security Agency research analyst, explained it to me. "By the late eighties, there were nearly thirty thousand Soviets living and working in Cuba," she said. "They kept the machines going, kept the systems working. The Russians didn't mix much with the Cubans; they never learned the language. They had their own clubs, their own restaurants, schools, and sports facilities. There wasn't a lot of knowledge exchanged. Why bother? The Soviet Union and its satellite countries were going to last a thousand years, right?
"But then the U.S. came up with the Strategic Defense Initiative," she said. "Remember how the press called it Star Wars?"
Yes, I remembered. I remembered that time all too well.
She said, "Our people laughed at it, but the Soviets weren't laughing. They believed SDI would work and all but went bankrupt trying to come up with their own version. Perestroika was a result. The Soviets began to withdraw financial support from Cuba. Then the collapse came and all the technicians were called back to Mother Russia. Left the Cubans high and dry." She chose an interesting metaphor to illustrate the predicament. "Years back, when VCRs first came out? A few people, a very few, chose Beta-and ended up on a dead-end street. Well, Castro chose Beta."
I decided that, with Dewey, evasion was the kindest course. I patted her knee and said, "I've flown these jets before, never had a problem." I had, too. Out of Saigon, out of Hanoi, out of Shanghai-always tight-sphincter flights filled with dread; the kind of flights that dissolve our public personae, forcing us to reassess as we peer over the tippy-toe edge of the black abyss, wondering: Has my life been of value? Have I contributed some tiny piece to the puzzle
…?
Dewey relaxed a little; shifted in the cramped seat. Said, "Well, if you're not scared, I'm not scared."
Pretending to ignore the creaking wings, the hydraulic whine of frayed cables, I told her, "Know what might help? When that flight attendant finishes her cigarette, maybe she'll bring us a couple of beers."
Through the starred Plexiglas, from 21,000 feet, I watched the mosquito coast of Central America slide by: sea as luminous blue as a country club swimming pool; jungle a green so dark that it implied the gloom of caverns, the silence of a great void.
"I don't get it. Is that Jamaica or what?" Dewey had a little map open on her lap-"Might as well make it a learning experience," she had told me-and she was looking from the map's coastline to the coastline outside the window.
I told her, "It's the northern border of Nicaragua. Where it humps out?" I touched the map. "A couple of more minutes, we'll be right over the capitol of Masagua-" I had to stop mid-sentence, realizing where we were… that I'd be only-what?-four miles above Pilar and her young blond son. It was the closest I'd been to her in slightly more than six years; the closest I'd ever been to him. I wondered if the Christmas present I had sent anonymously, always anonymously, was down there under the palace tree. A Rawlings Heart of the Hide catcher's glove, Gold Glove series. More likely, Masaguan security had piled it with the public's other gifts to the royal heir. Probably distributed them to the poor kids on Christmas Day, which would be just like Pilar. And besides… that damn Juan Rivera was teaching him to pitch anyway…
"Then what I don't understand," Dewey said, "is why we're flying up the coast first when it'd be a hell of a lot closer to fly straight north across the ocean."
"Nope, it's about the same distance," I said. I didn't want to tell her the truth: Aware that the Tupolev was a bad risk, the Cuban pilot probably didn't want to stray far from an emergency runway. I said, "This way, you get a look at Central America. See? That's Masagua City down there."