CHAPTER 7

It was a miracle that Victor hadn’t smashed the phone. He’d grabbed the nape of his neck and gone to Felipe’s room. He was standing at the foot of the bed, staring at the wall where Joaquin’s photograph had been. This is why he’d come to Serguey. Victor wasn’t made for patience, for meditation. He drowned in his own rage, let his helplessness consume him. When he was twelve, he had chased after a boy who’d stolen his favorite marble and ran with a heckling laugh to the refuge of his own home. Victor parked himself in front of the porch, seething with tears, shouting in a rabid voice for the boy to come out, accusing him of being a chicken.

“I’m going to fuck you up,” he mumbled to himself repeatedly after a while, unwilling to leave despite the neighbors telling him to do so.

The boy and his mother, everyone found out later, were afraid to return the marble. The woman had shown her face on the window, and as soon as Victor saw her, he clamped the porch rail and shook his body as if he were being electrocuted, a raspy scream spurting through his teeth. He didn’t want the marble. He wanted justice. He wanted to inflict pain. The ordeal took close to an hour, until someone went and got Felipe. The neighbors recommended that he enroll his youngest son in some kind of psychiatric program. Victor’s wrath wasn’t normal, they said, not for a boy his age, especially considering how well-behaved Serguey was.

Felipe replied that maybe no one should take Victor’s fucking marbles. To this day, that’d been the only time Serguey saw his father curse at another adult.

The electric socket dangling above Victor’s head in the bedroom was missing the light bulb. Felipe preferred to use the bedside lamp, one of the few objects State Security had left intact. Years ago, a rounded bulb was suspended in midair, the socket attached to a cord that shot down from the ceiling. Serguey had imagined it to be a microphone, amplifying their voices, recording what took place in this room.

“Let’s talk at the table,” he said.

He didn’t wait for Victor’s response. He went to the dining room, sat at the far end, and fixed his eyes on the bedroom door. He wanted to prove that he could still lead.

It worked. Victor followed him, his aspect more serene as he sat across from his brother. The food-smeared plates were close to the edge of the table, where they’d been left. The turbid dregs in the glasses, like powdered pills stirred in water, oscillated as Victor dragged his elbows.

“If that was Mario,” Serguey said, “he knows what’s going on.”

“Yeah, but I don’t even—”

Serguey lifted his hand and shut his eyes. Victor understood the cue and stopped talking.

“We’ll figure out a way to find the guy,” Serguey continued, “but right now we need to decide what we can do for Dad.”

“That’s what’s killing me: I don’t know what’s the best thing to do.”

“Stop feeling guilty, Victor. I wasn’t even around when all of this happened. You were here.” Serguey did his best to channel Anabel: “The rest doesn’t matter.”

Victor combed his eyebrows, another nervous tic. “So what’s the plan?”

Serguey tapped his splayed fingers on the table. “No one’s going to print anything about Dad. They won’t mention him on television or the radio.” The government controlled every communications medium, every mass media outlet, every newspaper. Information always came with one angle, one bias in Cuba. Felipe’s name would be brought up only if they wished to make an example out of him, and in that case, the obstacles could be insurmountable. “I’ve been thinking—and I don’t really want to do this, because I’m not sure it’ll work—but we should reach out to people outside the island.”

“Like who?”

“Anyone who can take up Dad’s cause. Maybe we can do it through someone here. Like Caseros.”

Victor shifted his eyes aimlessly, as if trying to peer inward, delving into the recesses of his memory. “I have no idea who that is.”

“He’s a blogger. His name’s been thrown around the office. He got fired from Juventud Rebelde years ago for criticizing communist bureaucracy and corruption after the Special Period.” Serguey had also seen Caseros’s name in the papers, though not in the same publication where he’d been dismissed. A scathing piece had dubbed the blogger the tip of the iceberg of a new online dissident movement bent on spreading lies about the system. The article excluded any explicit information that could send the few curious readers with internet access in search of such blogs. Instead, it’d focused on exposing Caseros as a disgruntled quasi-journalist on a mission, a morally and politically reprehensible online activist who blamed his personal failures on the country which had supported him from an early age. “The problem is,” Serguey added, sagging his head apologetically, “I’m not sure what’s the best way to contact him.”

Victor planted his hands on the table and rose. “We go to Kiko.”

“Kiko?”

“He knows all kinds of websites and that Twitter thing people in the United States are using.” Victor shoved his chair under the table and chuckled repentantly. He’d been joggled out of his haze. “I’ve always made fun of him for spending so much time with computers.”

Serguey got up gradually. “Can we trust him?”

“We’ve known him since we were kids. The guy used to be your best friend, no?”

The arched rim of Serguey’s ears heated up with shame. “He was.”

Victor seized everything from the table and ditched it in the sink.

Serguey trailed him to the front door. “What’s Kiko doing these days?”

Victor waited for Serguey to walk out onto the porch so he could lock the home. “He’s mixing CDs or something. I don’t know, I’m not that much into music. He has a girl in Mexico. He hasn’t said it, but I’m smelling that he’s trying to leave the country.”

Serguey put his hand on Victor’s chest as his brother turned and housed the keys in his pocket. “Then we shouldn’t bother him. We can mess up his plans.”

Victor smiled, full of confidence, and descended the steps in two long strides.

In June of 1989, perplexing news stopped the country in its tracks: Cuba’s highest decorated soldier and certified Hero of the Revolution, Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez, had been accused of, among other acts, treason. During a televised Military Honour Court and subsequent trial (something rare in Cuba, where serious governmental matters were usually dealt with behind closed doors), a docile, bespectacled Ochoa humbly declared that the accusations made against him—drug trafficking with the Medellin cartel, illegal arms and sugar trade with Angola, diamonds and ivory smuggling—were all true. With a slumped head and childlike aspect in his stare, he said in a soft, defeated voice (some speculated that he’d been drugged by Castro’s people during the entire proceedings) that he couldn’t explain exactly why he’d betrayed his country. While trying to acquire arms to strengthen the Cuban military, he explained, one thing regrettably led to another. The one biting assertion Ochoa made was that some of the other men suspected of involvement, as well as witnesses who’d testified, including senior officers in the Ministry of the Armed Forces and Ministry of the Interior, had distorted the facts in order to save themselves.

On July 13, after being found guilty—his sentence ratified by a Council of State led by Fidel Castro—Ochoa and three other officers were executed by a firing squad. Fidel went as far as to publicly call some of the men “sons of bitches” for involving his brother Raul in their statements and claiming that there’d been “mitigating circumstances.” Ochoa’s body was dumped in an unmarked grave in Havana’s historic Cristobal Colon cemetery. Hordes of top officials, heads of police, immigration, and counter intelligence officers were fired or demoted. A few other people went to prison. The Castros cleaned house. Numerous rumors dispersed among the population, though no one ventured to state them openly. One alleged that the Castros’ top-notch counter-intelligence unit had to know what Ochoa was up to from the start. Another said that Raul, who’d been close friends with the well-liked general for decades, saw him as an adversary for succeeding Fidel, so he tapped Ochoa head of the Western Army in order to conduct the background check that coincidentally revealed the general’s unpardonable crimes. The most popular rumor went like this: Fidel had discovered plans of a potential military coup by Ochoa and his men, and without wasting time he put on a theatrical display for all to see.

Whatever the truth, one thing was clear—regardless of who you were, you didn’t fuck with the Castros.

Soon after, the Soviet Union joined history as another failed state, and the Special Period in Cuba began. A different kind of political oppression, though just as effective as executing widely known officials, inhibited the populace: shortages. Food, water, electricity, clothes—they became commodities. The new patriotic stance was to embrace lack of possessions and access to services as a worthy sacrifice for the Revolution. The US embargo became the chief scapegoat, the reason for the acute poverty in Cuba. The flexed arm of Imperialism was hell-bent on subjugating the small, heroic island. To speak out against its government was to sell yourself to American ideals, to endanger the safety of the country’s commanders, to incite civil unrest. The number of dissenting voices grew despite this, however, emboldened by the decaying economy and political restrictions. By 2003, Fidel turned his attention to political activists, and what was later termed the Black Spring transpired. Seventy-five people, including journalists, writers, librarians, and democracy advocates, were jailed and sentenced in the blink of an eye. Many were sent to prisons hundreds of kilometers from home to secluded locations. A law student at the time, Serguey had avoided any articles or conversations dealing with the cases.

“I don’t like to get too deep into politics,” he’d say carefully, aware that he couldn’t dismiss political positions outright without arousing suspicion.

Where did Felipe’s arrest fit in all of it? Was he now a fundamental part of a questionable national history, the latest addition to an interrelated thread of persecution? These were the questions in Serguey’s mind as he and Victor walked toward their friend’s apartment. Serguey wasn’t aware of any recent executions, like it’d happened with Ochoa, but the possibility of it remained in the nation’s psyche like a stain. The rules since then had become unspoken among the population. Very few knew what exactly was happening to arrested dissidents, but everyone knew what could happen, and that was enough.

Kiko’s apartment was four blocks away from Felipe’s house, on the second floor of a once-green building, now unappealingly gray. It stood across Vento Avenue, technically in the municipality of El Cerro, home of Cuba’s premier baseball stadium—the decaying Latinoamericano; the city’s first aqueduct, whose moldy stone wall lined parts of Via Blanca Avenue like a fortress; and myriads of slums and youth street gangs.

Whenever asked where he lived, Kiko claimed that it was in 10 de Octubre. His friends weren’t shy about correcting him.

“You’re on the wrong side of Vento Avenue,” they teased.

On an August afternoon (Serguey and Kiko must have been twelve years old), while returning from a game at the stadium, an overweight young man called Kiko and Serguey over to a park bench and asked to see Kiko’s digital watch. It’d been a gift from his father: a large, colorful face on a brown plastic strap. The young man said, “I ain’t gonna take it” when Kiko hesitated in presenting his wrist. Serguey saw two shifty figures behind a tree and without thinking bellowed, “Run!”

And run they did. Serguey only got one look at the pursuant group—they must have been four or five boys—as he and Kiko sprinted for half a dozen blocks before realizing the gang had given up.

This had been Serguey’s only brush with the supposedly rampant crime element in El Cerro, though he’d been to the stadium ten or fifteen times. To indict an entire municipality because of a few bad seeds, he thought, was a ridiculous stretch. But reputation, savory or unsavory, was like an irremovable tattoo in Havana. A history teacher had once told him, “Build a reputation and go to sleep.” Serguey interpreted it to mean that the image he created in other people’s eyes, once there, would be permanent. The opposite also applied: the fact that the strip of buildings in and around Kiko’s block was safe didn’t keep him from being badgered about living in dangerous El Cerro.

Serguey and Victor climbed a set of stairs and moved briskly past two doors before reaching Kiko’s apartment. Serguey leaned on the iron decorative railing, the balusters shaped like thunder bolts, and waited anxiously for Victor to knock. His brother pounded his fist like a hammer.

Serguey clutched his forearm from behind. “You really have to stop that. You can’t go acting like a caveman at every person’s door.”

“You don’t understand. Kiko sits at his computer with headphones on. He can’t hear shit.” Victor banged on the door again. “Kiko, you asshole!”

In a few seconds, a young man with black hair twirling to the bottom of his ears appeared. A pair of earphones was clasped at the base of his neck, covering his collarbone like an immense stethoscope.

“Holy crap!” he said, lunging forward and smacking Serguey on the chest.

Serguey embraced him.

“I didn’t know you were in love with my brother,” Victor said, standing on the doorsill. “I would’ve brought him sooner.”

“You’ve got to come to terms with it, man.” Kiko receded and shook Serguey’s hand. “He was always the cooler of you two. Besides, it’s been what, three years since I last saw you?”

Victor said, “Almost four, actually. Six if you go back to the last time he was in this apartment.”

Six years ago, Kiko’s parents still lived here. Serguey recalled them speaking about a permuta on his last visit, an official exchange of domiciles. Cash under the table often played a part in the transaction, but it usually came down to space versus location. Serguey’s apartment, if he owned it, could have easily been swapped for a spacious three- or four-bedroom house with a yard in this part of the city. But giving up a location in El Vedado only made sense if you had a big family. As for Kiko’s parents, Serguey wondered how and where they had found a new place without having to give up this one.

“You’re keeping track?” Serguey told Victor, bothered by his brother’s insistence on underscoring how inattentive he’d been.

“Purely for historical purposes,” Victor said.

“Four years.” Kiko shoved his fingers like a wide-tooth comb into his hair and scratched his scalp. “You’d figure we would’ve bumped into each other somewhere.”

“My brother doesn’t go out much,” Victor said. “Not as much as us hustlers.”

“Havana’s a big city,” was all Serguey could muster, tapping his heel against the bottom of the railing.

Kiko took them inside. He brought chairs so they could sit by his computer desk. Serguey considered his friend’s new hairstyle, which had previously been shorn military-style. He considered the eyeglasses by the monitor, which had to be new, the headphones, the small mixing board on the corner of the desk, the unrecognizable furniture, wooden and lacquered, the seats and backrests woven like straw hats. The friend he had known—old-fashioned, dapper, mild-mannered Kiko—had transformed, only vestiges of his old self remained: the unrestrained smile, the cheerful gleam in his eyes at the sight of friends. Genuine expressions of delight. Kiko loved being around people. Felipe had once said that knowing someone as a child meant that you would know something of theirs forever, that not all in a person could be done away with, no matter how much one dressed it up or tried to hide it away.

Kiko and Victor lit up cigarettes and offered Serguey one. He declined. Kiko began speaking about a music project he was involved in, a rap group with jazz influences. He was mixing their latest CD. It was clear that Victor had taken Serguey’s place in the friendship. Maybe it had been that way from the beginning. Maybe the age disparity was the only meddlesome factor at the time.

Kiko’s parents had moved out to Regla, he explained, across the harbor, to care for Kiko’s maternal grandmother.

“It’s been a crazy year,” he said, crossing his legs and dumping the excess burnt ash from his cigarette into an ashtray on his lap. “My grandmother’s dementia is getting worse by the day, and my dad had a heart attack three months ago.”

“Damn,” Serguey said. Though he sincerely meant it, he felt hollow, even fraudulent, when he added, “I’m so sorry.” He sat up and stared gravely at Victor. How could his brother have thought it sensible to bother their friend, when it was obvious his own family seemed to be in a bind?

“It’s fine,” Kiko said. “Dad just had to retire early. He helps around the house and has more patience than Mom does with my grandma, which is crazy, because they didn’t have a great relationship when they were both healthy. I guess chronic illness can bring people together.” He inhaled and immediately exhaled the smoke from his cigarette and perched it on the lip of the ashtray. Serguey didn’t know what to say. Kiko continued, “Your brother has been good support, if you can believe it.”

Victor raised the corner of his lip and gazed at Serguey’s shoes.

“A couple of weeks ago,” Kiko said, “he brought them a pound of ham. It made their week. He’s convinced my dad to join him in some shady venture, you know, to give him the illusion that he’s doing something.”

Serguey looked at Victor. “So you really are a philanthropist.”

Victor shrugged and glanced at Kiko. “He’d do the same for me.”

Kiko put out his cigarette and carefully deposited the ashtray on his chair as he got up. “You thirsty?” he asked, walking away to the kitchen without waiting for a response.

The conversation Serguey suddenly wanted to have with his brother couldn’t be carried out here. He wished to learn the specifics of how Victor and Kiko’s friendship had developed, the sorts of favors they’d done for each other, the deals they’d been involved in, how much Victor had gotten to know Kiko’s parents. More precisely, he wanted to know if Victor had not just usurped Serguey’s position in their relationship but surpassed it.

Serguey skimmed the living room to distract himself. Kiko had hung posters of Queen, The Beatles, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Tupac, and Los Aldeanos. Serguey recognized the first two artists. (Felipe sometimes played A Night at the Opera, Abbey Road, and The White Album on the weekends during his friends’ informal visits.) An old record player was propped on an inverted decorative crate in the far corner, flanked by two boxes bursting with records. Serguey could make out the first album cover in the box closest to him: Irakere.

He was going to ask about it, but then he heard Kiko’s voice from the kitchen.

“Victor, is your brother deaf?”

“What?” Serguey said.

“Do you want a beer?”

“No, thanks.”

“Victor, is Heineken okay?”

“Better than what I usually have at my place.”

Kiko returned, and they popped the beers open. He asked Serguey if he didn’t mind taking the ashtray and placing it behind him on the computer desk.

Serguey took an elusive peek at his brother.

Victor wet his lips with beer and said, “Kiko, we’re here because we need your help.”

“And here I was thinking it was because you love me.” Kiko sat and crossed his legs again. “What’s going on?”

Victor described what had transpired since the previous day: the arrest, Gimenez’s advice, the conversation with Montalvo. He mentioned that they wouldn’t see Felipe for another month, that Mario had called, but they weren’t able to get anything out of him. Kiko listened raptly, his face taut with dread and sympathy. He set his beer can on the floor and jammed his fingers into his hair, this time pulling and coiling it almost like a chignon at the top of his head. When Victor paused to let him respond, he released the hair, which fell back haphazardly into place, stiff strands remaining at odd angles.

“That’s heavy.” He stroked his chin forcefully, like trying to peel a scab. “I had no idea.”

Kiko was worried, but Serguey could also detect a twinge of curiosity in his tone.

“You hadn’t heard anything from the neighbors?” Serguey asked him.

His friend’s answer came swiftly, effortlessly. “I’ve been holed up in here mixing the CD. I even told my girl not to show up until Friday. No distractions, you know.”

“Isn’t your girl in Mexico?” Victor said.

“That’s another girl. It’s complicated.” Kiko dropped his head and then looked up, his hair flopping behind his ears. “I’m sorry about Felipe. He was like an uncle to me growing up.”

“It’s fucked up,” Victor said.

Serguey said, “My brother says you might know some people who can give us a hand. Someone with outside connections who can get Dad’s story in the news, online, the radio, whatever. We’re not asking you to get involved. Heck, I wouldn’t have the nerve to ask that after being such a shitty friend. Just point us in the right direction.”

Kiko seemed to mull over Serguey’s appeal and made as if to talk, but Serguey wanted to lay the cards on the table first.

“I was thinking Caseros,” he suggested. “I’ve heard his name thrown around at work. He seems to have a lot of pull.”

“Caseros?” Kiko said. “No way. That guy works for State Security. Shit, he might know Fidel and Raul personally at this point.”

Serguey leaned his elbows on his thighs, his body bent forward. “Really?”

Kiko and Victor also leaned in. To an outsider’s eye, they might as well have been sitting at a campfire, telling horror stories. In truth, they were making sure their conversation didn’t leave the walls around them.

“I’m exaggerating about him meeting the Castros,” Kiko said, “but have you read his blog?”

“I don’t have access to any of that. Internet is restricted for people like me at the Ministry, and I can’t log on at home with the laptop they gave me.”

Kiko’s closed-mouth smile was redolent of their childhood, when he would approach Serguey and Victor with that same expression—a smile that might be smug on others, but in Kiko’s lips, gracious—and imparted some scientific fact he had learned from his father, a high school geography teacher who loved geology. “All of Caseros’s stuff is very general,” he said, “very abstract.” He picked up his beer and took a swig. Kiko was comfortable now, enthusiastic. “He thinks he’s a poet, but he’s terrible. Writes a lot and says nothing. Last year, he started traveling. He went to New York and Madrid to some journalism convention. Do you think if he were a real threat, if he really had pull, they’d let him loose like that?”

“Caseros a rat?” Serguey whispered, half to himself.

“Let me put it this way: if it were my dad’s life that depended on it, I wouldn’t go to him.”

Serguey was not ready to give up his disbelief. “Doesn’t he criticize the government? I mean, he’s got everyone in my office fooled, then. And I’m talking people who’ve read his blog.”

Kiko finished his beer and put the can carefully next to his chair’s leg. He lifted his hands with the swagger of a cool professor about to give a critical lecture. “Think of him as a plant. He posts his diatribe about corruption, lack of food, the black market, the failure of the Revolution, but he doesn’t point any direct fingers. He doesn’t call for any revolt. He’s just reporting what he sees or what other people tell him. Maybe they arrest him a couple of times, make it look like they’re persecuting him. All the while he knows exactly what he can and cannot say. That’s why he writes in such poetic prose. His posts are short, three or four paragraphs at most. You know how romantic and intellectual some Cubans are, or pretend to be. They read something that sounds good, and they don’t really pay attention to the missing subcontext, to what’s not being said.” Kiko tilted back, pausing to revel in the precision of his logical reasoning. “We were all fooled by Fidel, so why wouldn’t we be just as fooled by those who pretend to be against him?”

Serguey swallowed, too embarrassed to comment.

“Anyway,” Kiko continued, perhaps to spare him, “Caseros gives the illusion that there’s some freedom of speech in Cuba. That’s how the government sees it. But if you go to him, you run the risk of being reported to the authorities. He’ll tell those assholes exactly what you and Victor are planning to do or say, and before you know it, you’re locked up. Caseros will write about it like it’s a short story, but he won’t lift a finger to help you.”

Serguey nodded in appreciation. He had nothing to counter Kiko except his skepticism, which, if he were to let it take the reins, might lead down a path of isolation and helplessness. He had to trust him, take a chance.

“Who do you have in mind?” Victor asked. He seemed to know where his friend was going next.

“Claudia Bernal.”

“Who is she?” Serguey said.

Kiko bent to grab his beer can but desisted mid-effort, remembering that it was empty. “She’s been involved in a lot of stuff. She knows the human rights people, people in the Catholic Church, and definitely people in Miami. I studied with her at the Polytechnic. She was a computer engineering major. Believe me, she was already militant back then.” He chuckled at his own recollection. “If anyone knows how to propagate information the right way, it’s Claudia. I can vouch for her.”

Serguey asked, “How soon can you reach her?”

“Give me a few days. I have to be careful so that none of us gets in trouble, especially her. She’s been arrested before, and not like Caseros. She’s been beaten and threatened. They’ve confiscated her computer, and she’s had to start from scratch. They’re scared to mess with her too much, though, because she knows how to document abuse better than anyone, and she’s not afraid to publish names.”

“I met her once,” Victor said. “Kiko and I were hanging out somewhere in Centro Habana. She definitely likes him.”

Kiko ignored him. “I’ll serve as the link for now,” he said to Serguey. “After she gets in touch with you, you can take it from there.”

Serguey contemplated his friend, the audaciousness and ease with which he’d proposed this Claudia as the solution. They were running out of resources. If placing unconditional faith in Victor’s decision to embroil Kiko was what it had come down to, he had to commit. He said, “Thank you,” then showed his right palm as a cautioning sign, “but please tell her not to do anything without talking to me first.”

“Sure thing.”

Serguey ruminated on whether he should be frank with Kiko. Four years of non-existent contact didn’t justify his curiosity about his friend’s political interests and access to information that was forbidden to most Cubans. But again, as an unofficial lawyer to his father, he had a responsibility—to consider all angles and probable mistakes.

“How come you know so much about blogs?” he asked, modulating his tone. Not the smoothest way to phrase it, but the question had already left his lips.

Kiko wasn’t upset by it. There was no look of surprise, no throat clearing or coughing, no averting of the eyes. He opened his mouth but then closed it, perhaps searching for the most believable way to couch his response. He stood and went to the kitchen. Serguey heard the refrigerator’s door gasket unsticking, then the clanking of bottles rattling when the door closed. Kiko returned with a new beer can and sat again. He made a pistol out of his hands, the can serving as the grip, and pointed it at Serguey. “Do you know what percentage of Cubans have open access to the internet?”

“No idea.”

“Less than five percent.” Kiko cracked the can open and drank. “The government publically states that over twenty-five percent of its citizens have access, but that number is inflated. It includes restricted access, the kind that only lets you see national websites and databases. That’s what doctors, engineers, academics get at their workplaces. It doesn’t really count.”

Ash from Victor’s cigarette fell on the floor. Kiko scoffed genially at Victor’s attempt to sweep it with his foot. He addressed Serguey.

“The places where you can get decent connection are internet cafes, which are government owned, require identification, and cost between two and five dollars an hour. That’s what, almost a quarter of a monthly salary? Or you can sit in a hotel lobby if you have a tourist connection who will pay for you to sign on. Then, they block all the blogs that originate from inside the island, so you can only see what international sites are publishing. All of that material they can dismiss as imperialist propaganda.”

Serguey mimed a pistol at Kiko. “So how can you read the national blogs?”

“Like with anything, there are ways around it. You need to figure out how to bypass certain obstacles through a secure network. Once you do, there isn’t much risk of someone spying on you because the government knows there just aren’t many people inside the country reading these blogs.”

This time it was Serguey who moved his lips but didn’t speak.

Kiko asked, “Have you heard of Operation Truth?”

Serguey couldn’t recall where he had heard it, but it sounded familiar. It most likely had been at the Ministry.

“Right now,” Kiko said, “they have about a thousand students from the University of Computer Science looking for anything that relates to Cuba’s government online. It’s structured into several divisions: monitoring specialists, information analysts, and counter-responders. It’s like a cyber-militia. They attack the bloggers personally and try to discredit them. They defend the regime to make it seem like the dissenter is a traitor. I think it got started through the Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas, so it trickles down directly from the top.”

Serguey marveled at Kiko’s wealth of information. He wondered whether his friend couldn’t usually converse about these things, whether he’d taken this opportunity as a way to vent.

“How do you know all of this?” he asked him.

Kiko hoisted his beer as if it were a prize. “I still have friends at the university.”

Serguey deduced that Kiko’s access also came from those associations and not just from his technical knowledge. He swiped his eyes over the posters and vinyl compilation and figured that this might be what Kiko did in his spare time: host friends, Cuban jazz fusion humming from the record player, discussing technology and politics with cold beer in the pit of their bellies. But meddling deeper into Kiko’s life would verge on cynicism and disrespect. Serguey himself knew as much as the average person: home connections were prohibited; independent Wi-Fi networks required so many permits that they were impractical to set up; public internet access at schools, hospitals, and libraries was excruciatingly—and after Kiko’s explanation, he now suspected purposely—slow. If Kiko had found a way to sidestep and outwit the system, he should be celebrated, his privacy revered.

“We have one cell phone provider for the whole country,” Kiko said, pressing the moist-glazed can against his cheek, “and it’s state-controlled. Social media’s exploding around the world; all that data and traffic is very difficult to oversee and regulate, so it’s just easier to dissuade use by not giving people an option. It’s fucking wicked, but it’s genius. They haven’t maintained this government for five decades out of sheer luck.”

As Serguey processed Kiko’s explanation, he hankered for a beer himself. Maybe just putting his forehead to a cool, moist can would do the trick. “So the people at my job talking about Caseros—”

“They might’ve been testing you, to see if you knew or had read something. Why the fuck does an employee of the Ministry of Foreign Relations care about a blogger?”

“Unless they’re State Security,” Victor said. He finished his beer and crushed his can, burping.

“Don’t!” Kiko swatted at Victor’s hand, but he was too late. “I give the cans to a buddy of mine who makes decorative pieces,” he told Serguey. “He sells them to tourists in Old Havana.”

“You’re still giving cans to that bald guy?” Victor said.

“He’s a San Alejandro graduate. Amazing talent. He just hasn’t made any headway through the proper channels.”

Victor held up the mangled can. “Tell him it’s an abstract.”

“There’s another thing,” Serguey said. He had no idea whether his intuition that Kiko’s technical knowledge could facilitate locating Mario was right, but if his friend turned out to be their only ally, he might as well consult him. “Dad told my brother to call Mario, the dramaturge, when he was being arrested. I get the impression that he’s also my dad’s best friend. Victor doesn’t have the guy’s phone number, and State Security confiscated all of my dad’s stuff. So I was wondering if you knew—”

“Did he call your cell or the landline?” Kiko asked.

Victor squeezed whatever little pockets of air were left inside his beer can. “Landline.”

“If you can get his number,” Kiko said, fluttering his lashes with confidence, “I might be able to do something with it.”

Encouraged by the response, Serguey nodded vigorously. Looking to buy time and process some of what Kiko had laid on him, he asked his friend about his parents, about whether his mom had also retired. He expressed remorse for not being informed as to his father’s condition, for not visiting Kiko or his folks more often.

“Leave that for another day,” his friend said. “They remember you fondly and will be happy to see you whenever you go.”

“I’ll take you when Dad’s ordeal is over,” Victor said.

Serguey let his brother have his moment of moral superiority. “I should have time then. I doubt I’ll be able to keep my job.”

Kiko rucked his forehead, his pained look meant as a form of solidarity. “The minute those guys at the Ministry find out, they’re going to investigate you.”

Serguey felt the urge to ask for the beer, to taste its bitterness on his tongue. “I’m hoping my boss will intervene.”

“The guy who told you where Felipe was?”

“Yeah.”

“How well do you know him?”

“The apartment where I live is actually his.”

The expulsion of air from Kiko’s nostrils shattered Serguey’s hope that he should trust Gimenez. “All the more reason for him to watch his own back.”

“Serguey and Anabel are practically family to him,” Victor put in.

“If that’s true,” Serguey said, “I’m not sure it’s a good thing.”

Kiko tucked his Adam’s apple under his chin. He advised the brothers to get calling cards for their cell phones. “You can get them at any ETECSA branch or the post office. Those calls are untraceable.”

“I told you I wasn’t paranoid,” Victor said to Serguey.

Serguey wasn’t convinced. “Do you really think they’re listening?”

“You never know,” Kiko said. “G2 doesn’t need court orders. I’m surprised they didn’t come to you before they arrested your dad. They usually work the family first. That’s what Claudia says. Anyway, use the cards as a precaution. You get your own code and everything.”

“Why would G2 get involved with my father?” Serguey held Kiko’s gaze and watched his friend swallow.

“If it’s anything political . . .”

Until that moment, Serguey hadn’t believed that G2, Cuba’s Intelligence Directorate, could possibly be involved in Felipe’s case. G2 meant the Soviet Union, the C.I.A., espionage. For many people, however—including several clients of Serguey’s former colleagues—it spurred another kind of fear, a more recent and homegrown one. Serguey had heard stories: a cousin of a cousin who’d been electroshocked to a mumbling existence. But just as he had pretended to have faith in the Castros’ leadership, he had behaved as though State Security was a standard, if harmless institution. They had offices above his floor at the Ministry. The people who’d ridden in an elevator with him for months, exchanging polite good mornings and commenting on the receptionist’s delicious coffee, they were willing to extort, maybe even torture, behind closed doors. Serguey was horrified by the thought that he’d shaken their hands and engaged in their small talk because he hadn’t conceived he or his family would ever be targets. The deplorable nature of prison life, the one he had witnessed, he could chalk up to isolation, poor supervision, the military mindset of the guards. But persecution bore a more menacing undertone, a level of oppression that once exposed to, you couldn’t ignore, not with your own father a political prisoner.

A wearied Serguey thanked Kiko for all his help. As the brothers readied themselves to leave, Kiko asked Victor to wait outside.

“You’ve always been smitten by my brother,” Victor said.

Kiko shoved him to the entrance while laughing. As he pushed the door, Victor called out, “You two deserve each other!”

Kiko told Serguey that he understood how serious the situation was. “I won’t fuck this Claudia thing up.”

Serguey tendered his hand. “I’ve been an asshole, Kiko. But I know I can trust you.”

His friend pressed it firmly. “Your brother and I are good friends, but I’m not stupid. You’re the one who can really help your dad.”

Although he was flattered, Serguey felt saddled by the responsibility. The longer he went without replying, the more desperate he became to break the tension. “Victor says you listen through the wall when he brings a girl over.”

Kiko laughed. “Your brother says that to everyone. Truth is I give him my spare key and leave. I usually go to see my parents when he’s here with someone. The couple of times he’s been to Regla with me were because he’d been stood up.”

Serguey shook his head.

“Your brother’s an eternal prankster,” Kiko said. “He never really grew up. Then again, most people in our generation didn’t. You’re an exception.”

This facet of Kiko—the recalcitrant idealist, the system-bashing blog reader and enthusiast—was still new to Serguey. He hadn’t witnessed its natural progression, its tentacles taking hold of his friend’s worldview. To be called an “exception” hurt him, even if Kiko hadn’t meant it as an indictment or criticism. The people with whom Serguey worked and kept company over the last few years were people whose objectives and successes fell neatly in line with the system. To be looked at and judged by those outside this exclusive environment made him feel part of the problem, a comrade of those who’d imprisoned Felipe and caused Joaquin’s death, a traitor to those with whom he’d grown up.

“Nothing to do for the rest of us but drink, screw, and tell jokes,” Kiko said. “This country’s gift to its youth.”

Serguey thanked his friend again and told him that he would await his call.

As he and Victor went down the stairs, Serguey saw a boy and a girl on the sidewalk approaching the building. The boy was bare-chested, his collarbone like two perfect branches holding up his neck. He was wearing white-and-blue Hawaiian shorts that covered what had to be fist-sized knees. The girl, her feet shoved loosely inside flip-flops, wore a fluorescent green spaghetti strap top with a red school uniform skirt. Her knees, possibly broader than the boy’s, peeped out below the hem. The colors of their sparse outfits darted beautifully next to one another as the boy held on to the pooled string of a kite. There wasn’t playful happiness on their expressions but rather a kind of concentration associated with an unfinished task. Were they on their way to sell the kite? To return it? To prove to a friend that theirs flew better? Serguey watched them turn into the building next to Kiko’s and vanish behind the sidewall.

He looked at Victor and told him he was going straight home. No need to go back to the house. Victor promised him, at his request, that he would stay put until Kiko spoke with Claudia and a meeting was arranged.

Serguey walked past the building where the kids had entered and, to his disappointment, he didn’t see them. He wondered if they were on their way to the roof, to take advantage of the afternoon breeze. Serguey had flown a kite once, slicing the web of skin between his thumb and index finger when a relentless draft dragged the kite away from him. He went home with tears in his eyes, a meter of cord still attached to the twig he’d used for leverage, a burning sensation at the center of his bloody cut. The cord had snapped, and another boy had run faster than him after the kite, pilfering it from a low-hanging telephone pole and claiming possession under street rules. Felipe told him that he should pick a more brain-stimulating game, like chess or Mastermind. Flying kites and playing marbles always ended in fights. Felipe was right: Serguey wanted to punch the other boy in the face, rip the kite to shreds. But he could never do it, he told himself, not with an injured hand, or without Victor’s help.