October's Ghost (14 page)

“Sturgess didn’t do any time?”

Art’s head shook as the 3 lit up above them. “Never happened, Frankie.”

Her lips parted slightly with shock. “You mean you...”

“Lied? Yes, I did that. I lied to keep a man who was damn near destroyed from going over the falls because some lowlife took his world away from him. Have I ever done it again or before? No. Would I?” Art paused momentarily, the door opening to their front, and the answer to the self-inquiry hanging somewhere inside his conscience.

“I’ll drive,” Frankie said. She’d never have expected it of her partner. He was the finest and most human cop she had ever known, and
he
would do that! The motivation was easy to understand, on both sides of what had happened. Art didn’t want to destroy a man, and that man wanted desperately to avenge a loss. One, though, was much stronger for her.

Art’s hand retrieved the Chevy’s keys and something else from his pocket. He handed the keys to Frankie as they stepped into the sun and placed a dollar in the hand of the old beggar.

“Let’s go find Sullivan.”

“Sure thing,” Frankie said, seeing something new in her partner that she hadn’t expected to and feeling something new in herself that, despite its source, was strangely satisfying.

*  *  *

It was best to die in one’s own land, Antonio Paredes believed. His father had fallen during the invasion of the
Bahia de Cochinos
, just thirty miles from the home in Juragua he had fled when the Communists came to power. The men strewn across the field south of Santa Clara had seen themselves as patriots also, but they were defenders on the wrong side of two rights in this instance. They had died at the hands of their comrades who were fighting to free them. What an incredible juxtaposition of purposes, Antonio thought.

“Papa Tony.” It was Captain Emilio Manchon, assistant to Colonel Ojeda. “The colonel wishes to see you.”

They walked toward the gathered command vehicles belonging to Ojeda’s old unit, the Second Mechanized Division, which he had appropriated en masse from the Cuban Army. Across the nation, Ojeda’s collaborators were waging the war with their own units, some of which they seized control of by subterfuge and threats, and some, like Ojeda, by elimination of a hated commander. And, surprising to some of the participants, they were winning. Ojeda was not among the doubters.

“Papa Tony.” The colonel was seated in the passenger seat of the familiar American Jeep of World War II vintage, hundreds of which were in use by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, and now by the rebels. He offered the American a drink from his metal canteen, also a vintage piece of equipment, though this from the former East Germany. “We have secured this area. Santa Clara is ours, and from here we can slice the island in half.”

Antonio noticed that the words were not said with glee but with precision, like a surgeon describing a procedure. A surgeon had certainly visited this field, though not of the healing kind. “Who were these men?”

A shot rang out nearby. Antonio jerked his head to see one of Ojeda’s men finishing off a loyalist who had not been killed outright. He felt a wave of coldness envelop his body.

“They died like they fought,” Ojeda said. “With a lack of proficiency. As for who they were...  Captain?”

“The Thirteenth Infantry Brigade, Papa,” Manchon answered. “Nine hundred men.”

“Dispatched with in half a day,” Ojeda added. “We move tonight toward Cienfuegos. Major Sifuentes is closing on Mariel from Los Palacios. In the east Colonel Torrejón will have Camagüey in our hands by tomorrow evening.”

“And the people?” Antonio asked. “What are they doing? How are they reacting?”

Ojeda looked puzzled at the question. “The people? Papa, tell me, if you lived in the house of a slave master for thirty-five years, and suddenly the master was gone, what would you do? Eh?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Exactly. Did you think these people, who have known only one way of life, had only one man who told them what to do, what to eat, how to behave, did you think they would run into the streets and celebrate?” Ojeda brought up a long finger that waved back and forth. “No, Papa Tony. They cannot. They are afraid. Their world is changing. It will take time for them to understand what is happening. Much time.”

“I see your point, Colonel.” The man was wise, Antonio decided. Fierce and wise. He might have made a good leader for the nation under different circumstances.

“Papa,” Manchon began, “when will we have the locations of the loyalist units?”

“Tonight,” Antonio replied. “Each night we will get the report.”

“We will go over the information together.” Ojeda pronounced the directive like a dictator, then signaled his driver to take him away from the place where only dead enemies abounded. He wanted to find where there were more loyalists to remove from the rolls of the living.

“It was an appropriate place for the men to die,” Captain Manchon commented, pointing to an overgrown patch of rough earth off to the east a hundred yards or so. “The old cemetery at St. Augustine’s.”

Antonio walked toward the site, leaving Manchon behind. It was a diversion of sorts, something to relieve his mind from the constant thoughts of the newly dead by visiting those who had met their maker long before. From the looks of the graveyard it had been decades since any had been planted in the ground beneath the lush canopy. What church might have been near was reduced to rubble, a result of some battle in the Revolution before he was born. The headstones were mostly toppled, some broken, a tangled tapestry of weeds and vines covering the dark gray slabs.

“Witnesses to history,” Antonio said aloud. He bent down and moved the foliage aside with his hands, exposing several of the markers. “Mariana Lopez. Died 1962. Age twelve.” The grim reaper took whom he took, regardless of age, Antonio thought. His gaze moved across the other names, all people who had...

Wait
. Antonio went back to one of the names, then to the next one, and to the one beyond that. There were several of them, all names foreign to the island. Well, not entirely correct as they had probably come as invited guests.
Ha!
Only to die for some reason. It must have been an accident or something. Maybe a transport went down. That would make sense.

While not of any real consequence to his mission, it was of an interesting nature and worthy of a mention in his situation report for the night. Langley could take it from there. Something for the history books, Antonio figured.

He pulled out his notebook and began taking down the names from the headstones, careful to get the correct spelling for each, thanking the stars that whoever had buried these fellows had opted for the English spelling of the names, rather than the traditional Russian.

*  *  *

The night’s sleep had done him wonders, as had the bottle of bourbon. The company hadn’t hurt either, though she had cost five times as much as the liquor. George Sullivan knew he could have had cheaper, but Loretta was a favorite, and, hell, just
thinking
about her expertise in certain matters made him realize that she was worth every penny.

But today.
Damn
. How was he going to explain to Bill that the guy he was suppose to meet the day before got the shit blown out of him? Just like those two gangland hits he’d covered in New York. The whole damn world was turning into a slaughterhouse.

“Guess the guy might have really had something,” Sullivan said to himself as he pulled into the driveway of his house.
And guess I have a real story, now
. If only he hadn’t run from the scene like a scared school kid afraid of the bully. Now he’d have to start digging almost twenty-four hours after the fact.

He closed the car door with a kick, hearing the familiar groan of old metal. Maybe it was time for a new car. His eyes scanned the front of the house as he trotted onto the porch, deciding it was
definitely
time for a new paint job for the house. Yellow peels were not attractive.

He took yesterday’s mail from the box and went through the front door, tossing his keys to the right as he checked what wonderful bills had come for—

The sound of his keys
not
landing on the bookcase just inside the entry caused him to freeze. Then his eyes came up from the mail, the sight immediately erasing the semblance of normalcy he had attained from the night just ended.
Oh, my God
.

Everywhere there was chaos. The furniture was turned over, the tables upended. Pictures were off the walls. Sullivan let the mail slip from his hands as he stood and listened for any sign that the intruder might still be there. He was just feet inside the door and could have bolted out with no problem, but there was quiet. Utter, disconcerting quiet.

He began to take steps forward, his eyes looking left to the kitchen. It was empty, though no less disheveled than the living room. Then the hallway. Stripped of the pictures and other decorative items that had adorned the wall. Still silent as he gingerly stepped over the debris littering the carpeted hall, past the bathroom, to the bedroom.

The same there. The mattress was off the heavy oak-and-steel frame, lying against one wall, its fabric covering sliced open exposing the springs. Drawers pulled out and left lying on the floor, along with all their contents. The fucking robber had...

But nothing is missing.
The video player was there, in the corner on a pile of clothes, its cover
torn off
? The same with the television.
What the... No way!

Someone was looking for something. They weren’t here to rob him, they were here to...
What if it’s the same ones who...?

Sullivan backed out of the bedroom and went to the kitchen, his feet sliding through the glass littering the linoleum floor. There was something there he had to get, something he needed. No fucking work today, that was for sure. So who would give a—There! He found the bottle, still intact, thankfully, and twisted off the cap. The sweet, smoky flavor rolled down his throat a second later.

The drink hit him where he needed it. He had to get his head on straight and figure this out. He thought of calling the police, but what would he say? “
Hi, I witnessed a murder yesterday and just ran away. Oh, and by the way, the guys who did it were just over at my place.
” No way on that one. He took another swig, still thinking, the ideas racing through his mind. He had to relax. Had to calm down. Another drink. But what if they came back?

That question hit him like an unwelcome brick of sobriety, which he washed away with a long, steady draw on the Jim Beam.
What if they do?
He knew what to do about that, or at least what he could do, or maybe what he might be able to do.
Shit!
He went back to the bedroom and fished through the piles that had been his life until sometime between yesterday and today. The box was under a mound of his various sweats and T-shirts, its lid open and...the contents right under it.

George picked it up, holding it tightly in his right hand while his friend stayed true in the other. He was really safe, now, he believed, but had no idea what came next. None whatsoever. With such a stunning plan he sank to the floor, his back against the wall, and waited. For what, he hadn’t a clue.

*  *  *

He was in the basement of the Defense Ministry in Havana, the Plaza de Revolución fifty feet above.
Buried by the Revolution
, Fidel Castro thought. A proper way to go.

What the president had heard from his brother so far led him to wonder if his destiny did lie in failure. Yet it was early. Though the threat was serious, the gravest he or the country had ever faced, they were still in power. Still the chosen leaders. The people would come to the defense of their land as they had been trained to do. All would be well. All would be fine.

“We have almost no aircraft remaining to fight with,” Raul Castro said in exasperation, hoping to break through the disbelieving trance his older brother had fallen into. As defense minister, he knew the gravity of the situation, and it fell on him as his brother’s closest confidant to explain it. “The last two MiGs we had capable of flying, both out of the capital, did not return from their mission. They were more than likely shot down by antiaircraft fire, or...”

“Or what?” Fidel asked, the spell broken by the trepidation in his brother’s words.

“They may have gone north.”

The aged leader rose up, his right fist clenched as it came up even with his face. “The cowards!” His fist crashed down upon the makeshift map table before him, causing the group of senior military officers present to jump where they stood. “If
ANY
man so much as
THINKS
about surrender or defection to the enemy, I want him shot dead
ON THE SPOT
! Is that clear?!
IS IT
?!”

“It is, Fidel,” Raul said. “Every man here knows that. They are all loyal to you, to the Revolution.”

Fidel turned sharply to one side and paced two steps, then back to where he had stood. “We will defeat this
coup d’état
. The perpetrators will be captured and hanged in the plaza!”

“
Si
, they will.” Raul acquiesced more than agreed. He had to get the seriousness across to his brother somehow. “But we have to ensure your safety. If the rebels are fortunate, they may—”

“Fortunate! To hell with their fortune! Wars are fought not on the basis of luck, but by men with vision! By men with a fire in their belly!” The president looked down at the map table, noting the location of units in the center and west of the country. In the east there was less fighting, mostly from ragtag partisan bands, he suspected. From there the crushing blow to this coup would be struck. “Raul, listen to me carefully. This is what I want done. From Camagüey I want Colonel Torrejón to move west and strike at the flank of the units moving southward toward Cienfuegos. This will force them to halt their advance. I know Torrejón. He will take the fight to them and destroy them!”