The general poured from a bottle into three tin cups. He offered one each to Anya and Tyler. “I apologize for the poor replacement for glassware,” he said, “but the wine is good, even drunk from tin.”
Anya sipped the wine and had to agree. It was a fine vintage. If she were to be pedantic, drinking from a tin cup provided a metallic tint that greatly obscured the finer nuances of the wine, but she wasn’t here for a tasting. “This base,” she said. “It is active?”
Florencia had told them of a secret base deeper in the mountains where he had seen a surge in activity lately. He raised an eyebrow and said, “Well, I’ve just told you it is.”
“Yes, but I mean, is it officially active?”
“Ah. Officially, no. It was abandoned after Batista yielded the Presidency to Socarras.”
“Could Batista be involved in this?” Tyler asked.
Florencia laughed. “Hell no. Batista would never lift a finger to the United States. He needs U.S. support if he is to overthrow Socarras and regain the Presidency. If anything, Batista is scrambling to reassure his friends in Washington that he had nothing to do with this.”
“What about Socarras?”
“Socarras is a fool,” Florencia scoffed, “but he is also a coward.” He shook his head. “No. No, there are foreign actors at play here. Who, I don’t know, but they are trying to take advantage of the state of our society to stockpile weapons for an assault on the United States.”
Anya lifted her eyebrow. “Stockpile?”
“Unless those vehicles were carrying fertilizer to convert the base into a tobacco plantation,” Florencia said.
“How do we get into the base,” Tyler asked.
Florencia laughed. “An air assault followed by a full-scale ground invasion.”
“Assuming we don’t have that,” Anya pressed. “How could the two of us get inside?”
“You can’t. It’s not possible. To get there requires a trek through treacherous terrain. Then you need to either enter through the gate, which you can’t since you’re obviously not supposed to be there. That means you must scale the walls, meaning you must avoid the machine gun emplacements and the company of soldiers guarding the facility. It’s not like putting on a disguise and waltzing in. You would need to fight your way in, fight your way through, and fight your way out. It’s not possible.”
“With all due respect, sir,” Tyler replied. “It can’t be impossible. We’re on the brink of nuclear war. If that war happens, and the United States finds out that the missiles that started it came from Cuba—something they already suspect—then…”
He left the thought unfinished, but it was pretty clear what his meaning was. Florencia sighed. “If you were to try to get inside, you would have to do so at night. Very quietly and from the rear of the base. The climb to the rear is extremely treacherous. You will have to hope that the soldiers at the base assume it’s an impassable way in and leave it less heavily guarded. Then… well, let’s just say you’ll need divine intervention.”
Tyler and Anya shared a look. In Russian, Tyler asked. “What do you think? Do we risk it to try to get more information, or do we tell the Wall and let him get the Pentagon involved?”
Anya pursed her lips. “I think we tell him that we need to get in ASAP and see if he can get us some help. If the CIA has a presence here already, there must be assets who can facilitate entry into the base. But we can’t wait for the military to respond. Their response will be a catastrophic preemptive strike, and we can’t risk that right now.”
“I agree,” Florencia replied in flawless Russian.
Anya snapped her head to him, eyes wide. The old man smiled thinly. “I was once a guest of Josef Stalin’s. A thoroughly unpleasant man. For all of our sakes, I hope he is not behind this nuclear threat.”
“Your mouth to God’s ears,” Tyler muttered in Spanish.
The two of them finished their wine and left the general. Tyler, thankfully, drove more carefully back into town. They left the Jeep just behind the tree line and sneaked in on foot. Perhaps on an ordinary night, Havana would be dangerous for foreigners, but the bombing earlier seemed to have scared everyone indoors. There was almost no one on the street as they headed to their resort, and those that were there didn’t so much as acknowledge them.
They checked for bugs again while in the room. Both of them remained silent, partly because of the need to wait until they had swept for listening devices before discussing what they had learned and partly because they were sobered by the realization of how serious the threat was. This was no one off. This was not even a rogue MGB agent trying to sow chaos. There was a serious risk of nuclear war within…
Hell, Anya didn’t know. Months? Days? Hours?
“We need to get into that base,” she said, breaking the silence. “We need to disarm those weapons if we can. At the very least, we need to know how many they have and what they’re capable of doing.”
Tyler nodded. “Yeah. No kidding. I’m going to call the Wall again. Fingers crossed he doesn’t decide to pull us out.”
“He can’t pull us out, Tyler,” Anya insisted. “You must convince him to let us stay. Quite frankly, I’ll stay even if he forbids it.”
“I think he knows that,” Tyler said. “But… Anya, this is heavy. Two of us against a manned military base?”
“We’ve encountered such odds before.”
“No, we haven’t. Not on this scale. We’ve fought a ragtag group of Nazi sympathizers in tunnels or a few intelligence operatives in bunkers.”
“We fought the terrorists in the Kremlin.”
“Yes, us and the Secret Service and eventually the Soviet State Police. This is just us against hundreds of soldiers. Maybe it would be better to turn this over to the military and let them figure out a response.”
“We don’t have time, Tyler. Be honest, how quickly will the military act based on the information we give them?”
“Pretty damned fast.”
“If that was the case, they would be here already,” Anya insisted. “But they aren’t. It’s just the CIA. It’s just us. Please. I’m not only saying this because it’s personal to me. I firmly believe that our time is running out. We need to act now.”
Tyler sighed. “All right. You’re right. I’ll call.”
He dialed the number and Anya waited pensively. After a few seconds, Tyler said, “Hello, sir. We just got back from talking to Florencia. He gave us a location, but it’s a very entrenched location staffed by many armed soldiers. If we’re going to get in, we need help. I want to know if there are any assets that might be able to facilitate that for us.” He paused for a moment, then said, “We don’t think we have enough time to wait. Based on the information we have, there could be a nuclear assault on the United States at any minute now.” Another pause. “Honestly? No, I don’t think it’s likely we can disarm the missiles, but maybe we can at least get a good look at the facility and see exactly what kind of threat we’re looking at. If we need to go to the Pentagon, we’ll go to the Pentagon, but you and I both know we’ll need a damned big match to light the right kind of fire under their asses.”
After a final pause, Tyler’s eyes widened. “Seriously? Why didn’t you…” He pursed his lips. “Thank you, sir. Yes, we’ll be waiting.”
He hung up and turned to Anya. "There's another case officer here. Code name Blue Jay. Apparently, he's been here since the day after the missile launch. The CIA just didn't feel it was important to tell us."
“That’s good news!” Anya said. “Don’t be upset. This is what we wanted.”
“Yeah, I know. I just wished that maybe we could be kept in the loop.”
Anya smiled at him. “You’re a spy, Tyler. You’ll never be told more than you need to know. Usually less.”
Tyler sighed. “Yeah. I just hate it. Anyway, he’ll meet us at seven in the morning tomorrow so we can prepare to infiltrate the base.”
“Good. Then we should get some rest.”
She held out her arms, and Tyler joined her in bed. They didn’t make love that night, but the feel of his strong arms wrapped around her body was just as powerful. Despite the fear that pervaded her, feeling him so close made her feel that everything would be okay. Somehow, they would succeed, as they always had.
***
Blue Jay, at least, had been allowed a cover that made sense. His skin was tanned like a field laborer's, and he'd grown out his mustache. He wore simple canvas clothing and worn shoes that allowed him to blend in well with the poorer classes of Cubans.
He met the two of them in a café that was near enough to the resort that no one would wonder why a well-dressed American couple were there, but far enough away that no one would wonder why a field laborer was there. Seeing the three of them at the same table might raise some eyebrows, but fewer than would be raised if Blue Jay met them in their hotel room at a fancy resort.
“It’s going to be a bitch getting into that base,” he said after greetings had been dispensed.
Anya hadn’t heard that phrase before, but she could guess what it meant. “You don’t think it will be possible?”
“Possible? Sure. Likely? No.” He grinned. “But hey, if it was easy, they wouldn’t call us, right?”
“Right,” Tyler agreed. “So what’s the plan?”
“Well, I’ll be support. That means I’ll be on the radio outside when you enter the base. I’ll be monitoring the base as well as I can to alert you of any threats. As far as disarming the missiles, that’s out. There’s no way you’ll be able to do that without getting caught, and if you succeed, they’ll just arm them again.”
“So we’re just gathering intelligence,” Anya said.
“Yep. Just get in, find out what you need to know, then get out. Speed is the name of the game.”
“How do we get inside in the first place?”
“We put you in uniform and sneak you in somehow. I won’t know how until we get close. I don’t think there’s enough people there to have you two just show up, and you”—he pointed at Anya— “will be a problem. There are no female officers in the Cuban Army. Granted, these guys aren’t really Cuban Army, but unless you feel like pretending to be a whore in front of a bunch of violent men who haven’t seen a woman in months, I strongly suggest cutting your hair or at least covering it. I just as strongly suggest figuring out a way to have a less pretty face. The easiest way to do that is smearing dirt on it. You’ll get away with that. Hygiene isn’t really important to freedom fighters.”
“I can arrange for that,” Anya said.
Blue Jay nodded. “Okay. Well, unfortunately, that’s the best we can do as far as planning. The rest we’ll have to figure out as we go. You guys don’t mind dying, right?”
“We’d prefer not to,” Tyler said drily, “but if that’s what it comes to, then that’s what it comes to.”
Blue Jay looked at Anya. She met his eyes and said, “I accepted long ago that I might die fighting the Soviet Union. If tonight is the day it happens, so be it.”
Blue Jay cracked a smile. “I like you two. Okay.” He stood. “I’ll meet you two outside of town on the trail to Salamanca. Good luck in advance. God knows we’ll need it.”
He left the two of them and merged with the crowd outside of the café. Anya turned to Tyler and smiled grimly. He returned an equally grim smile and took her hand. “Not a bad honeymoon, eh, Trixie?”
She laughed and leaned over to kiss him. “No. Not a bad honeymoon at all, my love.”