Havana Libre Page 7

  “Bombs also exploded in the lobbies at the Chateau and Tritón at fifteen-minute intervals.”

  “Long enough for someone to walk from each hotel to the next.”

  “There were dozens more injuries but no fatalities. Late last night, one more blew at the Bodeguita del Medio after closing time and nobody was hurt. All the bombs were made with the same C-4, and the timer-detonators were assembled from the same primitive components.”

  “Why are you telling me this? I’m a doctor. How do you expect me to stop a bomber?”

  “We already have this bomber.”

  “¿Qué?”

  “Un Salvadoreño. Forty-four years old. DSS took him into custody yesterday evening and he confessed before midnight. He was in possession of detonators and C-4 to make more bombs.”

  “A Salvadoran? Why?”

  “For money. The real butcher is a Cuban exile who pays for it without ever leaving Miami. His contact recruits mercenaries in San Salvador. We have gotten some new intelligence that you are in a position to build on.”

  “How?”

  “Your invitation to the conference in Tampa next week.”

  “I never expected it to get approved.”

  “Expect it now.”

  “This is absolutely crazy. I am not a spy.”

  “No, but gathering intelligence means quickly getting close to a doctor in Miami, and it will be more credible telling you what to look for than training a spy to impersonate a physician.”

  “I see the reasoning.”

  “I cannot tell you any more unless you come with me to a secure location.”

  “Is my apartment not a secure location?” I am surprised that an insider of Cuban intelligence like Pérez does not feel that everywhere is a secure location.

  He stubs out his cigarette and I copy him. We take the back stairs to the alley, where a black Toyota with dark-tinted windows is waiting. It is an inconspicuous sedan, not one of the late-model SUVs that draws attention and makes people in the neighborhood gossip about what ministry someone has gotten mixed up with.

  Pérez gets in the front passenger side and I get in back behind the driver, an unsmiling prieto who stares at my lunar in his rearview mirror. I try to catch the driver’s eye for some kind of acknowledgment that he knows I have been in the back of a car like this before, that I know I am lucky to be on Pérez’s good side—for now—but he consigns for me less regard than the toothpick clenched in his jaw. The moment both doors shut, he hits the gas and accelerates down the alley to Paseo.

  I am an atheist, so it is only figuratively that I say something sent me in a circle through Miramar yesterday. If I had not heard the blast and seen that young man die, I might not be here. Pérez reads my mind. “Look, Doctor Rodriguez, there is no way you could have prevented what happened at the Copacabana, but now the time is short. It is essential you tell me if you feel even the slightest hesitation.”

  The driver makes a fast, sharp left onto the avenue, pushing me into the empty seat beside me. “No. No hesitation.”

  “It’s a little different, isn’t it, when you look a victim in the eye, and you can hear the monster breathing?” It does not escape my notice that Pérez, his expressionless gaze fixed downhill and out to sea, does not need to tell the driver our destination. Things are proceeding as planned—that is, according to Pérez’s expectations. A deep, familiar discomfort stirs in the pit of my stomach.

  We hurtle down Paseo, the police on the median conspicuously ignoring our government plates. Everyone else leaps back at the intersections. That is usually me standing on the corner, jumping out of the way of a government car’s inexorable slipstream. A right on Linea and one block to the tall building I take note of on the corner of Calle A whenever I walk by on my way to el Malecón. There are metal barriers on either end of the sidewalk and, in case there remains any question in your mind whether you must cross Calle A just to walk past, two military guards brandish AK-47s in a bulletproof sentry post by the driveway.

  We slow just enough not to bottom out on the tire shredders that the guards lower, waving us into a small underground garage. The only other vehicle is a gleaming Toyota pickup truck. I have never seen something so big, not to mention brand new, except for in pirated American movies. The driver parks beside the pickup but does not shut off the engine. Pérez gets out and when I go to open my door, I discover there is no inside handle. The simplest traps are the ones you need to keep alert for, Mano.

  Pérez comes around and opens the door for me. We find our way through the dark, damp garage, leaving the driver to torture his toothpick in solitude. There is a set of two elevators: one for floors 1 through 12, and the other for 14 and 15. Pérez pushes 14 and we rise silently inside the fortress.

  State security’s mission is to protect the Cuban people from rogue and mercenary external threats. The elevator stops but the doors do not open yet. Pérez stays perfectly still, his chin tilted back a little farther than customary. This is when I see he is looking up at a fish-eye lens mounted in the middle of the number 8 above the pocket doors. We are on closed circuit, awaiting authorization to escape this box. The simplest traps . . .

  The doors open onto a small dining room. It is essentially a converted apartment, but unquestionably it was remodeled with attention to the kind of impenetrable security one would expect of Daniel Caballero, general chief of the DI of the DSS, the Intelligence Directorate of the Department of State Security. He says, “Pérez tells me you have an invitation to a conference.”

  “That’s right.”

  We sit in the dining room around a glass table with a clean ashtray. The general chief smokes Newports. Pérez pulls out his Camels and also gives me a fresh pack of Populares. “Very thoughtful,” I mutter.

  We smoke. “Has he told you about the assignment?” Caballero asks, looking at me.

  Pérez lets me answer. “Just that I am to contact a doctor who has access to the exile community.”

  “Yes, but to accomplish this you shall have to miss the conference.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will have to defect.” I look over to Pérez, but he is studying his fingernails.

  “¿Cómo?”

  “For a little while, at least. If you want to establish credibility quickly among los gusanos, you will have to make your allegiance clear by renouncing Cuban citizenship.”

  “I have to pretend I’m going to stay?”

  “You know the saying. Every family has one gusano and one gay.”

  Now that we are in a secure location, Pérez becomes talkative and gives me the précis: “The suspect in the Copacabana bombing flew in on September 1 as a tourist, smuggling timers in the linings of his suitcase and C-4 in the bottoms of his boots. He has no clear ideological position. You know the rate for bombing a Cuban hotel?”

  “How much?”

  Pérez says, “They offered the Salvadoran $1,500.”

  Caballero interjects, “About the cost of a week at a nice hotel.”

  “That is a morbid way of looking at it.”

  “Not enough left to cover a jinetera,” says Caballero.

  I think about that young Italian’s father upstairs in the hotel. When he heard the blast, what had he thought? Could he have imagined at that instant his son dying in the lobby below?

  Pérez continues, “He’d intended to hit four targets for $6,000, flying back to El Salvador this weekend. He would have been paid after the backers heard about it on Univisión or Telemundo, but now that he’s in prison, Miami and San Salvador have naturally cut him off. He became cooperative after he realized that we have all the forensic evidence we need from his fingernail clippings to put him in front of the firing squad. He has given us much useful information, the most actionable being that there is a second bomber with more C-4 already in Havana.”

  Caballero remarks, “We cut off a dragon’s head, but discovered it is a two-headed dragon.”

  Pérez unbuttons the inside pocket of
his overcoat and removes some papers. He reads from a transcript. “There is a second bomber who came with a lot of C-4. Before the end of the month he’ll try to hit a target that will make a very big impact—those are his words.”

  Caballero says, “He knows neither the identity nor the whereabouts of the second bomber, but a link through his recruiter in San Salvador to a Cuban exile in Miami could lead us to the next target and date.”

  Pérez says, “There is something else you did not need to know until now.”

  Caballero fixes my gaze. “The exile is a landlord in Little Havana named José Felipe Mendoza. He rents a building to another exile, a former doctor who runs a small pharmacy on Calle 8 in Little Havana.” The air in the room turns cold instantly. I know immediately whom he is getting at. “I am talking about Doctor Juan Rodriguez.”

  I stand in shock and push my chair back from the table. Pérez puts his hand on my arm and says, “The monster is not a tourist from Central America hiding explosives in his shoes, Rodriguez. It is a relatively small group of men in Miami paying him to do it.”

  Pérez looks me in the eye. He seems to be asking a question. I understand something, and I have to catch my breath. He is asking me to look the monster in the eye. He is telling me I cannot deny his existence any longer and asking me to take a job nobody could want. Pérez knows that the work he has inherited is detestable, but if he tried to refuse it, either he would have to convince himself like a madman that the monster does not exist, or he would slowly die trying to drown out the sound of his own breathing with strong drink.

  “You saw the destruction at the Copacabana,” Pérez reminds me. “If we know where the monster plans to strike, we can prevent it. If you can learn the target, we can stop the next one.”

  “We know this is not easy,” Caballero says, “but you must exercise your will as a doctor and separate the person from the problem, which is to get close to Mendoza.”

  They are both staring at me now. I have been flirting with abandoning the Revolution, but now they are asking me to spy on my own father and risk my life for it. I do not care much about socialist doctrine or preening one’s principles, but I do care about saving lives. If I do this, it will not be for Cuba. It will be for decency.

  It might not be far from materialist to say that what propels me on this expedition is this new feeling for Mercedes. Pérez is correct: I would do this for life’s small triumph over the senseless death of an innocent young person. You cannot pretend any longer, Rodriguez. What are you going to do?

  I look at Caballero. “On one condition.” He glances at Pérez, not accustomed to being given conditions. “That you will not allow them to close the family clinic I operate in Vedado. I can even tell you how to do it.”

  Pérez’s complete stasis must tell Caballero something, if only, Go on, this is not unusual; I’ll take care of it. The general chief says flatly, “How?”

  “Someone high up in the Ministry of Health will suggest to Director Gonzalez the doctor who will take over in my absence. She’s new at the pediátrico and has not become indispensable.”

  Pérez turns to Caballero and says, “Gonzalez will be helpful.” And that seals it.

  Caballero says, “All right. We have to move forward quickly. What would your normal routine be leading up to a trip like this?”

  “Tomorrow I was planning to go to Pinar to visit my grandparents.” Even as I hear myself say it, I am thinking that there is nothing normal about a Cuban doctor getting approved for a salida to go to a conference en los Estados Unidos, with or without the spying.

  “Then you will go to Pinar. Anyone there you could ask for your father’s telephone number?”

  “I would have thought you knew it already.”

  “We do, but your father will wonder where you got it from.”

  “I think my primo Emilio has a socio in Miami who once got him the number of the pharmacy.”

  “Then get the number from Emilio, but if he asks, say that you are only thinking of calling your father from the conference. Can you return from Pinar on Sunday?”

  “That was the plan.”

  “Get back as early as possible. We’ll need to meet at a different location. Pérez will arrange for transportation.”

  On the elevator down, I ask, “What happens on the fifteenth floor?”

  Pérez replies, “That’s where Caballero lives.” In the car I tell him about Doctora Hernández. He says, “I’ll take care of it tonight.”

  The driver stops at the same spot in the alley behind my apartment. It is dark. The apagón is taking extra long tonight. But of course this alley is not the same alley. Everything is different now.

  Pérez says, “If you’re lucky, sometime in the next forty-eight hours the Copacabana bomber might give us information that will lead to the second bomber, and instead you get to go to your conference.”

  Before getting out of the car, I ask him, “How did you people come up with this locura?”

  “The analysts created models for thirty-seven discrete scenarios: introducing multiple agents, introducing a female agent, recruiting from disgruntled members of the organization. Yours is the one with the greatest probability of achieving our objective in the shortest amount of time.”

  “And how long did your analysts say it might take me?”

  Pérez can read between the lines, but his expression is inscrutable when he says, “Until you get to Miami, you’re the only one who knows you’re defecting. Tell your grandparents you’re going to Tampa and that you will see them in a week. Tell your cousins about all the things you will bring back for them from la Yuma.”

  “Just as if I were really planning to return in a week?”

  Pérez says, “Just as if you were really planning to defect.”

  The Toyota pulls away.

  In the morning I will have to fix the flat on the Lada. When I get to my apartment at the top of the stairs, the light returns.

  SÁBADO, 6 SEPTIEMBRE

  Mercedes

  In the basement dormitory for laundry staff and maids at the Havana Libre, her new home, she lies on the top bunk and looks at the ceiling. “Cuídate,” her mother told her when she set out for Havana. “Men will look at you and men will look through you. They’ll try to do you favors because they believe you will think they deserve something in return.” She said it with such gravity that it was clear her mother was talking about the girl’s father, whom Mercedes never knew. She refused to believe all men were like this, but it would be useless to argue. In her mother’s mind and heart, it was manifest truth.

  She is done with Andrés. He told her she would never amount to anything in Havana but a puta jinetera. She should inject with him and go into the sanatorium. Or they could do it without a condom, which were getting harder to find anyway. Fidel would find an antidote in the next year or two. Hell, he probably already has it, he’s just waiting to make a big announcement. “Let him wait. Meat every day, milk and eggs—and air-conditioning!”

  It disgusted her, how he spoke of it as if he were on vacation in Varadero, when for more than a year already los rockeros in Los Baños have been dying. People told stories of diseases that ate the brain, rendering the dying patient insane.

  “You’ll never be more than a whore of a jinetera. You’ll have to sell your ass just to pay the rent. Fat, ugly Germans will think they deserve a piece for the price of a Coke and entry to a disco. Some of them will want to choke you until you lose consciousness, and the police won’t give a shit . . .”

  “Stop!” she shouted. “Stop talking!” She left the room. Why wouldn’t he stop these barrages?

  “. . . because you chose to sell a tourist your skin just to pay the rent.”

  Why wouldn’t he stop? It makes her shudder to remember the nights he treated her like this, not much better than the brutal tourists he described, when he knew that she would never turn to prostitution. All the more now that she was carrying his baby, although he had no idea she was pregnant.
Something was inside of her that she would never sell, even if she had to die to protect it. She had known she would have to leave Pinar del Rio. She left the apartment and she left Andrés.

  It has been so sad, and while she will never turn her back on her friends, she will not visit them in the sanatorium as long as Andrés is around. Is she hoping he’s going to go soon? Is that what she meant by that thought? She doesn’t know for sure, but she suspects that Fidel and all his doctors have no fucking idea what to do about AIDS. She hopes that Andrés will be around for one reason: because some day the child will want to know who her father is. Even though he was a scoundrel once, and may still be if he survives until her daughter is four or five, the drive to know your father is something Mercedes understands from experience, and when that time comes she will need to arrange a safe way.

  Havana is a new beginning. In Havana she is free to start over, and the doctor is giving her a direction for her to make the first move. He has given her license to make a new start, this doctor who helped her find a job. Why is he treating her so kindly? She wonders at what, in a manner of speaking, she would call his androgyny. Platonism is supposedly his occupational imperative, but that does not mean that she has not noticed the male doctors at the polyclinic in Pinar del Rio, while lifting the stethoscope from her chest, letting their hands linger a little longer, allowing fingers to brush her breasts—not this one. She cannot even imagine him trying.

  She is certain he is not a maricón, but he separates his manhood from their consultas for some combination of professionalism and paternalism. Nevertheless, he does not seem like a family man, and that first time they met, he clearly said I live upstairs. She opens her eyes and looks at the ceiling, picturing the doctor going to his conference en la Florida, dazzling some blond Americana with his awkward gentleness. She hopes he will be happy. She hopes he will be as happy as he has made her. She hopes that he, too, will find love.

  SÁBADO, 6 SEPTIEMBRE

  Manolo

  If it gets complicated quickly, it is because I know there isn’t much time before I might be gone a long time. Whatever help I might give her will have to be between now and Tuesday, when I leave for the conference. Whatever energy I have left after my shifts at the pediátrico must go to Mercedes. In the morning before leaving for Pinar, I pay a visit to the daughter of a regular patient who now directs the círculo infantil in the neighborhood. “A cousin of mine just moved here from Pinar. Her husband is very ill and the baby is due in March. Can you get her on the wait-list?” I assure the director that the mother has a job at the Havana Libre, and she assures me there will be space for a baby in the spring.