Castro's Daughter (11 page)

“Sí.”

“All eyes are on us,” Raúl said. “On you. Your father is dead, so you no longer have his protection.”

María flared. “My father has been dead since my conception,” she said bitterly, but Raúl had already broken the connection.

When she put the phone down, Ortega-Cowan offered a sympathetic smile. “That should hold him for a day or two, but not much longer,” he said.

“Well, the cops are out of it for now, but I think that McGarvey will come either by boat or most likely by seaplane. I want you to coordinate with the navy to alert us when and where he shows up, but he is not to be interfered with.”

“What if he’s not alone?”

“I want him picked up and brought here undamaged,” María said. “There will be no other considerations.”

SEVENTEEN

At the Sheraton Key Largo, Martínez got them a room overlooking the Bay of Florida for five days and made a few phone calls before he left, suggesting that McGarvey get a couple hours of sleep before they headed for Cuba.

“This guy who’s going to fly us over is cautious,” Martínez said. “If the Cubans catch him, he’s a dead man, so I’ll have to be convincing.”

“What’s his story?”

“He was a Cuban air force pilot, but his wife apparently was mixing with the wrong people—the anti-Castro crowd—and she was arrested and died on the way to prison. They were coming after him when he took off with his MiG-25 and flew it to Key West.”

“Ernesto Ruiz,” McGarvey said. “About twenty years ago. I remember it was a big deal because he came in so low and so fast, no one knew he was coming until he’d touched down. And the fighter was loaded with air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles.”

“And a new Russian radar jamming system that caught us by surprise. So the DI wants him in a big way. As a result, he’s become a careful man.”

“There’re a lot safer places for him to live than Key Largo.”

“That’s true, but he changed his name and appearance and runs a nice little charter service for fishermen who want to work the flats in the bay for bonefish. He told me that he likes being this near to home, and that sometimes on a day off when it’s clear, he’ll fly close enough so that he can catch a glimpse of the island. It’s enough for him.”

“What makes you think that he’ll take the risk to fly me down there?”

“If he thinks doing it will somehow stick it to the regime, he’ll jump at the chance,” Martínez said, and he smiled. “I’ll tell him about Carlos, but just leave that part to me.”

*   *   *

McGarvey was sitting in the dark on the balcony, looking at the running lights of a slow-moving boat out in the bay, music drifting down from the Fishtales Lounge on the top floor, people in the pool below, when someone was at the door. He got to his feet, picked up his pistol from the low table beside him, and stepped farther into the shadows.

Martínez was at the door, framed by the lights in the corridor. “It’s me,” he said softly.

“Are we good to go?” McGarvey asked, showing himself as he holstered the pistol at the small of his back.

Martínez came the rest of the way in and closed the door. “He’s gassing up and preflighting the plane right now. Were you expecting trouble?”

“I’m sure the DI would like to catch you at something. They might have followed you back here.”

Martínez laughed. “Those
putos
in Miami couldn’t find their asses in a lit room with instructions. You going to take your gun with you?”

“They’ll expect me to come in armed.”

“Might come in handy if something goes south. You can never tell.”

McGarvey grabbed his dark blue Windbreaker and, leaving his overnight bag behind, went with Martínez, and they drove down to the tiny village of Rock Harbor, where Bay Flats Air Tours maintained a hangar up a one-hundred-foot concrete ramp from the water’s edge on the bay side.

The plane, already on the ramp, was a sturdy short takeoff and landing de Havilland Beaver that had once been used all over the world, but especially up in Alaska, for back country flying. It could carry the pilot and up to six passengers and gear at a cruise speed of a little over 140 miles per hour, its floats equipped with wheels that allowed it to take off and touch down on land or sea. The little aircraft was all but indestructible.

Ruiz was a short slope-shouldered man with a belly, bandy legs, and thinning gray hair over thick black eyebrows and mustache. He was trundling the hangar door closed when they drove up.

“I’ve read about you in the papers,” he said, shaking McGarvey’s hand. “Pretty risky for a former DCI to be going into harm’s way.”

McGarvey instantly liked him. “That’s why I get the big bucks.”

Ruiz laughed. “They’re mostly a bunch of fine people over there saddled by a fucked-up system. But don’t think they’re incompetent because the Russians are gone and just about every governmental agency is broke. They’ve got a good coastal navy, and some damned effective radar installations.”

“You’re taking a bigger risk than I am.”

“Acceptable, given the mission.”

McGarvey didn’t ask what the man understood the mission to be.

Ruiz pulled a chart out of the plane and illuminated it with a small red flashlight. “Raúl says that you need to get somewhere in the vicinity of Cojimar, which is just east of Havana. Not so many people there, but the navy will be active, especially if they have an idea that you’re on the way, specifically to that spot on the beach.”

“They know I’m coming,” McGarvey said. “And the DI knows exactly where.”

“In that case, they probably won’t start shooting until you’re safely ashore.”

“Getting out might be a different story,” Martínez suggested.

“Might be interesting,” Ruiz said without hesitation. He turned back to the chart. “We’ll fly down to Big Pine Key, about three quarters of the way to Key West, then head a little west of south, low and fast. Fifty miles to Big Pine and from there a hundred miles to Cojimar.”

It was just midnight.

“Should set down just outside the surf line a little before two. You can take the rubber raft, so by the time you’re ashore, I’ll back in international waters.”

“Wait for us at Newfound Harbor,” Martínez said. It was south of Big Pine Key. “I’m going ashore with him.”

It was about what McGarvey had expected. “You’re a high-value target.”

“And you’re a gringo, so somebody has to hold your hand.”

Ruiz laughed out loud. “I think I like crazy people better than sane people, because I feel that I’m among friends.”

*   *   *

Heading southwest, they flew at an altitude of about five hundred feet, high enough for them to see twenty-five miles in any direction, the keys an irregular necklace of lights like jewels on a black velvet backdrop. The moon had set, and in the distance they spotted the rotating beacon of an airfield.

“That’s the airstrip at Marathon on Key Vaca,” Ruiz told them.

They wore headsets so they wouldn’t have to shout. McGarvey and Martínez were in back, where the two middle seats had been removed, leaving space for the small inflatable boat in a bright yellow soft valise.

About fifteen minutes later, they spotted what looked like a barrage balloon, a large Goodyear-type blimp, at a much higher altitude than they were flying, tethered on Cudjoe Key behind the harbor.

“
Fat Albert,
” Ruiz explained. “Aerostat radar system. Watching for illegal traffic coming across the strait.”

“Will it cause trouble for you when you fly back?” McGarvey asked.

“They know who I am.”

Just past the surveillance blimp, Ruiz banked to the southwest and headed down to fifty feet above the wave tops. The sea was fairly calm, five- to six-foot swells, and after ten minutes he eased the small plane even lower, and looking out the side windows McGarvey got the impression that they were hurtling along like a speedboat, actually leaving a wake behind them. The slightest downdraft, the least little mistake, and they would crash.

Martínez looked at him. “Ernesto has done this before.”

“Glad to hear it,” McGarvey said. “Now, tell me everything you know about Colonel León’s house, and who’s likely to be there.”

Martínez gave him the general layout of what in effect was a smallish beach house once owned by the daughter of a pre-Castro sugar baron who’d sent her to Cojimar in exile for some indiscretion that no one remembered. The state had given it to María when she returned from Moscow and took up her DI duties as department chief in signals intelligence in the late 1990s. Since then, she’d put a fair amount of money into remodeling and furnishing the house and grounds, adding a west wing, the pool, and a small cabana. But all of the work had been done over a fairly long period of time, in bits and pieces, slowly, so as not to excite much interest. It didn’t do to flaunt one’s money.

“We have people down there keeping their eyes and ears open,” Martínez said.

McGarvey had never remembered seeing such detailed information when he was deputy director of operations or as DCI. “By
we,
do you mean the Company or your exiles in Miami?”

Martínez just shrugged. “Anything important gets to Langley. Nothing is going to change the system until we can go home. Trouble is a lot of people are dying of old age, waiting for the day.”

Ruiz had been listening to the exchange, and he glanced over his shoulder. “I won’t go back,” he said.

“Why?” McGarvey asked.

Apparently Martínez already knew the answer because he said nothing.

“There’s a lot of resentment. Years of it. And when the regime finally falls, there’ll be a bloodbath in the streets. I don’t want to be a part of it, because my hands wouldn’t stay clean.”

“Nor will mine,” Martínez said. “But wild horses couldn’t keep me from going back.”

“Look,” Ruiz said, and McGarvey and Martínez leaned forward to see out the windshield.

A soft glow lit the horizon slightly right of the aircraft’s nose.

“Havana,” Ruiz said. “You might want to take the raft out of the valise—we’ll be landing in about fifteen minutes.”

EIGHTEEN

María sat at her desk, alone in the west wing of her house, staring at the images on the computer monitor that were relayed from Coastal Radar Station Guanabacoa and listening to the chatter on the navy’s guard channel. A small single-engine aircraft had suddenly popped up on the screen coming from the north, its image breaking up because of its proximity to the water, and the sector commander aboard the Russian-built missile patrol boat
Osa II
was asking for orders to blow the bastard out of the sky.

“Stand by and observe,” the squadron’s watch officer at Station Santa Cruz del Norte radioed. “Acknowledge.”

“Copy,” the skipper replied, though it was clear from the strain in his voice he wasn’t happy with his orders.

Lieutenant Miguel Vera, the young commander at Santa Cruz, was intimidated by the DI, especially since María had mentioned to him that she knew of his great-uncle’s support for the Batista regime back in the late fifties. It was the same sort of power that the Stasi had wielded over the East Germans, and that de facto branch of the KGB had been one of María’s major interests of study. Information—didn’t matter if it was true or simply implied—was power.

They’d watched for small aircraft in the Keys, looking for the one that would turn south at some point and then disappear in the surface clutter. It was exactly how she figured McGarvey would be coming to her, and she’d called Santa Cruz to keep whatever patrol vessel was in the sector to stand down.

“Pardon me, Colonel, but what happens if the aircraft you say will be coming picks up defectors?”

“Then you would be authorized to blow them out of the sky when they took off,” María said. “But I believe this aircraft will be landing someone on the beach.”

The squadron commander was impressed. “A spy?”

“We think so, in which case, the matter belongs to the DI.”

“What about the aircraft?”

“You would allow it to return to the States, so that they would think their mission was a success.”

“I see,” the young man said, even more impressed. “I’ll have a patrol vessel with night-vision capabilities standing by.”

That was earlier this evening. Now her telephone rang, and it was Lieutenant Vera. “A single-engine civilian aircraft has just landed one hundred meters from the beach north of Cojimar.”

“Yes, I have a feed from Guanabacoa, and I’m monitoring your radio traffic.”

“Stand by, Colonel.”

“Base, this is vessel two-zero-niner on station, with a sitrep.”

“Roger, two-zero-niner, report.”

“I’m seeing two people climbing into a small inflatable. Looks like they mean to come ashore. What are my orders?”

“Did you get that?” Lieutenant Vera asked.

“Yes, I’m still monitoring your radio traffic. Don’t interfere with them.”

“Sí, Coronel.”

“You’ve done well this evening, Lieutenant. I will not forget,” María said, and she hung up.

Moments later, the watch officer at Santa Cruz relayed the orders to the skipper of the missile boat.

“Once they are ashore, this becomes a matter for the DI,” the officer said.

“What about the aircraft?”

“Let it go.”

As soon as the aircraft had shown up on radar heading south from Big Pine Key and then disappeared from radar, María put Ramiro Toro and Salvador Gonzáles, her two bodyguards, on standby to fetch McGarvey, if that’s who had landed. The problem was the second man. She hadn’t counted on him. Rencke was safely locked away in a small room here in the west wing, so he couldn’t cause any mischief tonight.

She called them over from their quarters and told them what was happening. They’d been shown photographs of McGarvey. “If it’s him, bring him here. I don’t think he’ll give you any resistance.”

“What about the second guy?” Toro asked. He was a large man by Cuban standards, over six feet, with a square jaw and mean eyes. He’d been the Cuban All Services boxing champion three years in a row not long ago, and he still had the edge. It’s why she’d picked him.