Dungeon of the Audiencia
Havana, Cuba
Noon, Saturday
29 September 1888
It was a double-barreled shotgun discharging, fired by a Spanish guard hiding in a niche some slave had hacked out of the rock wall three centuries earlier. Mostly blinded and deaf from the flash and thunder of the blast, I saw only a vague shape dart around the corner though the open door. Marco, Folger, and Pots were still outside, expecting one of us to come out, but instead they saw the guard sprint past them down the tunnel to the entrance. It all happened so fast they couldn’t stop him.
My vision returned quicker than my hearing. Other than some scratches from ricocheted pellets, I wasn’t hit. Mena and Rork didn’t even get that. They stood there, stunned beyond words, staring at each other, trying to understand why any of us were still alive. Then Mena pointed at the chair and turned away, vomiting.
The guard’s blast hadn’t been aimed at us.
His gunshot and escape meant we’d lost the crucial element of surprise and had to get out before the army came in. I still didn’t know where the other dungeon guards were. I soon got my answer.
A Spanish uniform showed in the doorway, the man angrily asking, “Qué pasa? Quiénes Ustedes?”
Rork swung his shotgun and fired, crumpling the man into a twitching pile on the floor. His hand still clenched a set of keys on a brass circle. It became clear to me. The first guard must have heard the lock get pounded by the mallet, then quickly hid in the niche as we entered, without enough time to warn his comrades about us. The other dungeon guards didn’t know what was happening, but they would now, after the shotgun blast.
We had to work fast. “Mena, take Marco, get those keys, and get in that tunnel. Yell for Casas and Paloma. Open every cell you can. Tell all the prisoners to run for their lives up the tunnel!”
Rork stepped over the body, ready to head into the next passageway. I said to him, “Get in there ahead of Mena and Marco and stop any other guards. I’ll meet you all back at the first entrance door.”
To Pots and Folger, I said, “Follow me! We’re going up to that outer entrance door to hold off any counterattack until the others get out.”
I pointed to the dead guard. “Take his pistol.”
Pots snatched the weapon, saying to Folger, “Age before beauty, son. You can have the next guard’s gun.”
I was already out the door and called back, “Folger, get one of your smoking jars ready! Both of you, follow me.”
We headed up the tunnel toward the entrance, me slinging the bag of files over my left shoulder, Pots helping Folger with his box of accoutrements as we walked quickly. Reaching the last bend before the exterior entry door, I cautiously peeked around. The door was closed tightly. Probably locked.
I heard running from the cell area behind us, but it wasn’t the stamping of shoes. It was the softer sounds of bare feet: the freed prisoners, Paloma and Casas among them, I hoped. We needed to get to the entrance ahead of them.
“Folger, do you have anything that can blow that thing open?”
“Nothing strong enough for that door.”
“Stay here,” I said as I crept forward and checked. Yes, it was locked. The fleeing guard had escaped, the alarm was given, and now we were locked inside. Pots could probably pick it again, but the enemy was on the other side, waiting. The Spanish were going to take their time; no need for them to rush.
I went back to the others, my mind racing with a vague alternative plan for escape from the Audiencia that I’d considered back in the hotel room and again on the carriage tour with Belleza. It seemed far-fetched then, and still impossible now.
“All right, it’s time for the smoke device.”
Folger brought out a jar, bigger than the one he used for the diversion at the hotel.
“I’ll have a smoke cloud started in a jiffy, sir. It’s ready—just have to add a little potassium chlorate, which I happen to have right here . . .”
He poured some gray powder in the jar and shook it. Seconds later, it started smoking. “Yep, here we go.”
“What’s this smoke going to do for us?” asked Pots, his voice higher pitched than usual. He was scared but trying to control it.
“A diversion for the Spanish and a pathfinder for us,” I explained. “We’re going out a different way, gentlemen, while the Spanish sit outside the door and wait for us to cook.”
Folger figured it out first. “Follow the smoke to an air vent?”
“Exactly, son. But we have to convince the Spanish we’re dying in here first, burning to death, so they don’t rush in through this door. Go ahead and get the smoke going. Then both of you start yelling in Spanish like you’re panicking. Remember, in Spanish, not English.”
The smoke began to billow from the jar as Folger screeched, “Ay . . . yay, yay! El fire-o!”
Well, that type of Spanish wouldn’t work. “It’s ‘Incendio!’” I corrected him. He changed to the right word, yelling it over and over while apparently screaming in pain. Pots echoed him, though less passionately.
I screamed toward the door, “Rendimos!” (“We give up!”) Smoke filled the area quickly, making the electricity lamps give off an eerie, yellowish-amber–colored light. Choking in the pungent haze, we raised our hoods and covered our faces, to no avail—our lungs still filled with the stuff. Our fake cries became more realistic.
The prisoners arrived at our spot in the tunnel right about then, gasping from the smoky air and the exertion of running. They looked like they literally couldn’t go another single step: pitiful victims in foul rags, in little better shape than the man in that chair. Collapsing to the floor, they stared at us. Monks with guns?
There were only five of them, and they looked like they’d been in the dungeon for years. None of them were Paloma or Casas. Where the hell were the other prisoners? Maybe Paloma and Casas were part of a group that Rork and his men were still helping to come out.
“Los otros en el carcel? Donde estan los otros?” I asked the emaciated men, sitting down next to them.
The oldest one, his tone faint and unearthly, answered. “Todos los otros estan . . . muerto . . . o moribundo . . .”
All the others were dead or dying.
He leaned toward me and coughed out a question of his own: “Quiénes Ustedes?”(“Who are you?”)
I tried the alibi story I was leaving for the Spanish. “Anarquistas.”
No response. Just a curious stare, right through me—and the story.
Outside, somebody among the Spanish suddenly had a bright idea and cut the electricity. The passageway lights went out. Pots lit his little lamp and held it near me.
Rork’s face appeared in the gloom. Mena and Marco followed and sat down against the wall, grim-faced, neither of them speaking. No other prisoners were with them. Rork squatted beside me, out of breath, his eyes downcast, despondent. I asked him, “You all right?”
“Aye, but me life’s known better times.” He surveyed the scene and asked, “This some o’ Folger’s imitation smoke, o’ did we manage to light this bloody forsaken hellhole on fire?”
“Just Folger’s smoke. Sean, you got only five prisoners out?”
“Grisly in them cells, Peter—real friggin’ grisly. Dozens, maybe hundreds, o’ the poor lads, lyin’ about, damned near dead. This lot’s the only ones that’re strong enough to get up an’ move. An’, aye, we looked ’round for Paloma an’ Casas but seen nary a sign o’ ’em. They’re dead an’ gone already. Take me word on that—nobody’d last long in that death house. ’Tis far worse than where the Spaniardo bastards put us in eighty-six—far worse . . .”
His eyes told me there was more he could say but wouldn’t.
“Well, these men won’t be able to move much farther. We may have to give them some pistols and leave them behind. What about any guards back there?”
“Shot two farther back in the lower tunnels. That’s all me seen down there, but there’s probably more hidin’. So what’s the plan now, sir? We goin’ out the front, o’ we goin’ with that other wild notion ye had about the air vent?”
“Spanish have the front locked, so that’s out. Looks like the alternate plan we discussed: Follow the air current shown by Folger’s smoke. There must be a fairly large vent around here.”
Rork sounded ancient as he made the age-old acknowledgment, “Aye, aye, sir.”
I motioned to everyone. “Let’s go. We’re going to find an air vent by following Folger’s smoke. Mena, explain it to the Cubans and tell them they have to keep up with us if they want to escape. You, Marco, and Pots can help them along. Rork, you’re our rearguard. Folger, can you get another smoker going and lead the way next to me. I think it’ll be down one of those two side tunnels we passed.”
Folger quickly answered, “Got it going now, sir. It’s my last one.”
I saw that Pots was breathing heavily, his face drained of color, left hand trembling. “Leonard, you all right?”
“No, Peter, I’m damned well not all right, but I’ll make it. Let’s just get the hell out of here.”
We all stood and turned to go, each man silent, knowing the odds against our escape. One of the prisoners, the one who had been staring at me oddly, stretched a feeble hand to me in the murk, his thin voice struggling with words. “A . . . mer . . . i . . . cans? He . . . call . . . you . . . Peter? Peter . . . Wake?”
A chill ran through me.
“Pots, give me your lamp.”
I leaned close to the Cuban, holding the light near our faces.
“Casas?”