Michael thought it through before he fell asleep. He didn’t expect Luis or Carla to help him find a way back to the States. As an MP in the army he’d never started an assignment without knowing how he would finish it, and an exit scenario had been part of the plan. Walters was going to send a tiny plane out of Miami when Michael was ready; it would land near Pinar del Rio in the middle of the night to pick him up.
But now he had to scramble for another plan, and he couldn’t burden his father or Carla. Whatever they might suggest would put them at more risk; they needed to keep a low profile. He’d come into Cuba through Mexico, but they couldn’t leave that way; neither Carla nor his father had passports.
Which left either a private plane or boat. If he’d had more time, he could have arranged a plane without Walters. In the army he knew people who knew people in the Keys who were flying in and out, picking up and delivering “cargo.” The addition of human “freight” wouldn’t be a big deal. But he had no time to track them down or coordinate logistics.
So a boat was the best option, but he’d have to use his resources here to find one. He went back over everyone he’d met since he’d come to Cuba. There was Carla’s doctor friend at the clinic—the one who’d been to Angola and told him where soldiers hung out in Havana. Mario, his name was. But Carla wouldn’t be returning to the clinic, and her colleagues would be under orders to report any contact with her. She had become a traitor. A guzano, a worm. He doubted Mario could withstand the pressure.
There were the two old men in the warehouse, the ones who’d cheerfully taken his money, and then lied about knowing Luis. Going back to them was worse than stupid, even if they hadn’t known Luis, which of course, they did. Then there was the Santería priestess. Michael wouldn’t go back to her if his life depended on it. She was the kind who would take his money, make wild promises, then give him a bullshit story when it all fell through.
That left the former army officer in Chinatown, the one who’d first led him to the print shop. He had willingly taken Michael’s money, too, and would undoubtedly demand more, but his information had panned out. What’s more, his threadbare living conditions made it unlikely he was politically connected. He was probably one of the forgotten ones, Cubans who had done their duty, thought they would be taken care of afterwards, and had come back to a country that was broke and helpless. The guy was scrounging now, trying to “resolver.” He was probably as close to a mercenary as Cuba had.
So, after breakfast Michael borrowed Luis’s bike and rode it down to Chinatown. Luckily, the officer was there, in the same dingy yellow undershirt, with the same chest hair sticking out. His ornery mood hadn’t changed either, until Michael flashed a wad of cash at him.
His face brightened. “What can I do for you, Americano?”
Michael explained what he needed. The man scratched his hairy chest, then wiggled his fingers for the money. Michael peeled off a few bills. He was down to his last few thousand. The man counted the money, then stuffed it into his pants pocket. He went into another room and came back with a scrap of paper and pencil. He scribbled something and handed the paper to Michael.
“I do not know if this man is still in Sierra Chaquita,” he said. “Maybe yes. Maybe no.”
If he heard that one more time, Michael thought he might slug someone. The Cubans’ blasé attitude toward life would never work in the States. Then again, this was life in Cuba. Maybe yes, maybe no. Never good.
“What—or where—is Sierra Chaquita?”
The man laughed. “It is our name for Regla. You will see.”
Michael heaved a sigh.
The officer seemed to understand Michael’s frustration. “Take Marti to the first side street beyond the power plant. You will be behind a warehouse. Walk around to the front. You will see an office. Go inside. If the man is still there, tell him I sent you.”
“I don’t know your name.”
He smiled. “Tell him Chinatown sends regards.”
Like the movie, Michael thought.
“Yes. Chinatown.” The officer nodded as if he’d read Michael’s mind. “That’s all you need to say.”
The view from the ferry that chugged across the bay framed Regla as an industrial area with dingy warehouses, smokestacks of varying heights, and a shabby wharf. Regla was home to those who couldn’t afford Havana prices. In return for the lower cost of living, its residents shared space with shipyards, a power plant, and an oil refinery, which belched a stomach-churning stench into the air. Once a center for Cuban rebels, over the years Regla’s energy had dissipated, like a balloon that had lost its air.
Michael walked the bike off the ferry and started down Avenue Marti, Regla’s main street. At a square past the Church Nuestra Señora de la Virgen, famous for its statue of a black Madonna, he dropped the bike. Not only was it slowing him down, but it was calling attention to him. He might as well have a target painted on his back. He didn’t expect the bike to be there when he returned—he’d buy Luis a new one when they got to the States.
He asked a gnarled black woman in the square for directions to the power plant. She vaguely waved toward the right. He started down the street. At intersections, he caught glimpses of crumbling houses and streets, old American cars on blocks, and people, mostly black, not doing much of anything.
Ten minutes later he passed the power plant. Solid wood walls cordoned off the side streets adjoining the plant, and guards stood at attention. Michael tried to appear inconspicuous and kept walking. Remembering Chinatown’s directions, he eventually got to a side street that wasn’t walled off and turned down it. A little black girl pushing a doll in a baby carriage eyed him curiously as he passed.
At the end of the street to his left was a field where a group of boys were playing baseball. The thwack of the bat as it connected with the ball, the ensuing shouts and cheers sounded familiar and comforting, and for a moment, Michael imagined he was back in Chicago. Then he looked the other way. To his right was a rocky, uneven patch of tall weeds and grass, and beyond that, the wharf. He started across the grass. As he got closer, the briny smell of salt water and dead fish assailed him.
A moment later he was in front of the shipyard. It was a dreary-looking place, with rundown piers, docks, and warehouses. A few freighters were docked near the piers, but it was eerily silent. It was nothing like Chicago’s Lake Calumet harbor, which his grandfather had taken him to when he was a kid. The opening of the St. Laurence Seaway a few years earlier had triggered an expansion of the entire harbor, and shipping in South Chicago was booming.
Here, though, the despair was almost palpable. Which made it a place to keep your wits about you. With one eye on the dark water, he shook off his backpack, retrieved his pistol, and stashed it in his waistband. The movie Chinatown had stayed with him, especially the scene where Roman Polanski slashed Jack Nicholson’s nose. That had to do with water, too, he recalled.
He made his way to a small office in one of the warehouses. So far Chinatown’s information had been spot on. The door to the office was open, and Michael could hear a fan inside blowing air. He knocked. No response. He knocked again. This time a voice, sounding disgruntled, almost hostile, replied.
“Estamos cerrados. We are closed.”
Michael stuck his head in the door anyway. “Your door is open.”
Behind a shabby-looking desk was a middle-aged man, bald, with a mustache. He didn’t look up from what he was doing, but there were only a few papers on the desk, and no pencil, pen, or computer. Not even an adding machine. He’d probably been napping. Finally he looked up.
Michael didn’t attempt to explain but read the name on the scrap of paper from Chinatown. “I’m looking for Esteban Diaz.”
The guy raised his eyebrows.
“Chinatown sent me.”
The man straightened. Michael didn’t know if that was a good sign or not.
“I feel like some air,” the man said after a pause. “Walk with me.”
Diaz strolled to the edge of the pier. Michael followed. A gull lifted off, flapping its wings, as though surprised to have been disturbed in such a lonely, desolate spot.
“What is it you’re looking for?” Diaz appraised him.
“I need to arrange a boat out of Cuba. To Miami. For three people. As soon as possible. Can you help?”
Diaz rubbed his chin, covered with about a week’s worth of stubble. He tipped his head to the side, appraising Michael. Then, “Chinatown, eh?”
Michael nodded. He wondered how the two men knew each other. Angola? He didn’t ask. It was irrelevant. He waited for Diaz to continue. It seemed like a long time. Then, “You may be in luck. I have a shipment coming in from the Keys.”
Michael didn’t ask what Diaz was bringing into Cuba. Certainly contraband. Weapons or drugs? Or more prosaic things, like gourmet food or stereos? Which they could store unobtrusively at the warehouse. The less he knew, the better. Regla was known to be a smuggler’s paradise.
“When?”
“I expect them any time. Maybe tonight.”
Michael’s pulse sped up. It couldn’t be that easy, could it? But apparently it was. Chinatown and Diaz’s bond must run deep.
“How much?” Michael asked.
The guy held up two fingers. “Thousand. In dollars. One now. One later. Come back tonight. After midnight. With your passengers.”
If he paid Diaz, he would be broke. Still, he would soon be back in the U.S. The hard part would be persuading Carla and Luis to pack up their entire lives in a few hours and flee. He promised himself he would replace their belongings with bigger and better things. Then again, Carla didn’t care about material possessions. Nor did his father.
But that wasn’t his chief concern. Why did Diaz want them to come back here? The wharf was practically next door to the heavily guarded power plant. And the lighthouse at El Morro, which wasn’t far away, had a powerful searchlight that raked the bay every night. A vessel leaving Regla after dark might be spotted, stopped, boarded.
Almost any other wharf would be a better choice. Maybe he should case the Mariel Harbor west of Havana, although it was heavily guarded too, since the boatlift a decade ago. Or one of the beaches outside Havana. Maybe this was a set-up. Maybe he should walk away. He tried to keep his suspicion in check.
“Will we be leaving from here? Is it safe?”
Diaz nodded. “Security police patrol the entire coastline. Which, oddly enough, makes Regla one of the safer places.”
“How is that?”
The man gave him a cagey smile. “The guards you should worry about are at the power plant. But they like their rum. Especially when my friend, who is one of them, brings it to them for free. By two in the morning, they will be falling down drunk.”
“What about the searchlight from El Morro?”
“The boat captain will hug the shoreline until you are well out of the bay. The light will not reach you.”
Michael wasn’t convinced. “I don’t know.”
“I do not know when there will be another boat,” Diaz said. “As you know, it is not easy. But, of course, it is your choice.”
Michael weighed the risks. The timing. The location. The people involved. But he didn’t really have a choice. They had to get out of Cuba. He handed Diaz the money.
Luis scratched his cheek in amusement. Miguel was so much like his mother, at least the Francesca he remembered: full of grandiose plans and determined to carry them out, no matter what the consequences. He recalled the time he found her at dawn curled up on the porch of the house in Havana where he’d lived. She’d simply run away so she could be with him. He realized then that she would do anything and everything to get what she wanted. Now her son—their son—was the same way.
He went into his bedroom and rummaged through his wardrobe. If, by some miracle, Miguel were able to put together an exit plan, what would Luis take? Aside from his books, which he knew he couldn’t bring, there wasn’t much. A few shirts, pants, shoes. He considered the Makarov he’d been issued in the army. It had been stashed in the back of the wardrobe since he’d come back from Angola. The pistol needed a thorough overhaul; he wasn’t even sure it would fire. He even gazed at the rug over the loose floorboard where the map was hidden and wondered whether to take it. It didn’t have any meaning for him; it had been Ramon’s scheme, not his.
He was still debating when he heard a muffled noise from the front of the house. Someone was opening the door and trying to be quiet about it. He called out. “Carla? Miguel? Is that you?”
There was no answer. Luis started out of his bedroom, but before he had taken two steps, a blur of khaki flew at him. He had the impression of a beefy Caucasian man, stocky but surprisingly nimble. The man rammed into him, knocking him to the floor. The man promptly threw himself on top of Luis and started pummeling him. The first blow, to his gut, made Luis groan in pain. The attacker followed it up with another into his kidneys. Luis gasped and tried to curl into a defensive position to block the assault, but the man’s weight prevented it. Luis cried out at a particularly sharp blow to his head, turned his head to the side, and squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them a moment later, he saw that the man had a gun and was using it as a cudgel.
Luis tried to roll back and forth on the floor in an effort to gain momentum and extricate himself from underneath the man. If that didn’t work, at least he might be able to wrestle the gun away. But the man outweighed him by at least fifteen pounds, and the most Luis could do was to free his left arm. Although he was right-handed, he threw up his left hand trying to grab the gun. A tug of war ensued, both of them rolling on the floor, each with a hand on the gun, looking for purchase. Then, with a huge effort, the attacker grunted, snatched the gun from Luis, and fired point blank into his head.