North of Havana df-5 Read online

  Still… this wasn't a normal Tomlinson. He had been drunk and drugged and ranting-again, by his own description. Also, this wasn't just any woman. She was Cuban-American; came, presumably, from the more strictly moraled society that the hyphenated prefix implies. Yet she convinced him-a stranger-to sail her to a bank of lonely uninhabited islands just off the Cuban coast?

  It was an unlikely scenario. That's why it bothered me.

  1 could hear Tomlinson saying, "I had the hangover from Planet Zoltare."

  Yes, he had regressed; had returned to some of his old destructive ways. But the man was a sailor in the same way that others are commercial pilots or physicians. He took his craft very seriously. Would he really allow himself to drink heavily before attempting a night crossing of the Florida Straits?

  It is a quality of mine that is not attractive. There was a time in my life when I was suspicious by profession. Now I am suspicious by nature. When data does not fit comfortably into a likely chain of events, I reassemble the data into a worst-case scenario. It is my way of establishing the parameters of possibility.

  Here was one possibility: The woman used all the means at her disposal to lure Tomlinson close to Cuba. Once in Cay Sal, she withdrew those favors, then drugged him so she could sail his boat into Cuban waters.

  Could she have a reason for doing so? There were numerous plausible reasons. Was it possible that she did it? Yes, it was possible. But was it likely?

  No.

  In all probability, Julia DeGlorio was just one more casualty of the Florida Keys; a woman who'd gone to Key West looking for adventure and found, in Tomlinson, a man who happened to have a boat and was willing to take her along as crew.

  But I wanted to call Jimmy; talk about it. There were other people I wanted to contact, too, and not just to discuss Julia DeGlorio. The way I saw it, there were only two ways to get Tomlinson out of Cuba. I could contact my local congressmen, contact the media, and make a political issue out of it, or I could go there myself and try to buy him out.

  No getting around it-the second option was the most practical option.

  If Tomlinson's predicament was approached through public channels, the Cuban government would do what it had done before-claim their people had caught Tomlinson with drugs aboard, then ransom him to our own government while wringing him dry of political juice.

  That would mean months in Cuba… and he wouldn't spend them in the Hotel Nacional, either. It would mean prison. Maybe at the State Security Villa Marista complex in Havana, but more likely the much larger, dirtier, and more dangerous Combinado del Este-the gray-walled fortress where they kept the death-row people; the dangerous dissidents who had made the mistake of voicing their disapproval of Castro.

  The thought of that turned my stomach. Tomlinson locked away in some crypt-sized cell… as frail as he was, as sick and confused as he had become… he wouldn't last a month.

  So I would have to go…

  It was a stunning thing to acknowledge: Yeah, I'm going to do it; I'm going back to Cuba…

  Just making the decision, though, stirred an old energy in me. It awakened all the night-raider cognitive patterns that I had packed and put away long ago. A kind of attack mentality that I found both galvanizing and disturbing because it stirred in me an unsettling doubt about the life I had so carefully built.

  If I'm living the way I want, why is it I miss elements of the life I had?

  I looked at the stars, looked deep into the dark water and allowed the question to dissipate. I had more important things to think about… many things to do and information that needed to be assembled before I left for Cuba in, what, three days? Maybe four.

  It was possible that the exchange would be easy to make. I'd fly down, give the man in charge ten thousand cash, put Julia DeGlorio on a plane, then sail back with Tomlinson.

  Nothing to it…

  But it was also possible that things wouldn't go smoothly. What would I do if they took the money and refused to release No Mas? How should I react if some bureaucrat with a long memory connected me with my past work in Cuba?

  The potential for trouble was very real. There were contingencies that 1 had to anticipate.

  When setting out to attack a mountain, smart climbers do their homework first; set up the safety lines and establish all possible means of escape.

  I had a lot to do in a very short time…

  6

  On the phone, Jimmy Gardenas, former flats guide and now owner of Key West's top fly tackle shop, said to me, "Julia DeGlorio? The night I saw Tomlinson, there was nobody by that name at our table."

  It was Saturday, nearly five P.M. On the desk in front of me was a pad of paper on which I had written, in a vertical line, the words:

  BANK

  SKIFF

  HOUSE

  FLIGHT

  HORSESHOE

  JIMMY

  ARMANDO

  GEN. RIVERA (PILAR?)

  All brief memory goads relating to things I wanted to get done before Monday.

  Already, I had placed neat little checks beside every word except for the last three names.

  Now I picked up a pencil and placed another checkmark as I said to Jimmy, "You sure? Tomlinson said he was at your table when he met her. I got the impression you were all-"

  "Nope, I would'a remembered," Jimmy said. "No woman by that name. But Tomlinson was really drank. He could have imagined it. I think he was imagining a lot of things that night. I doubt if he remembers much of what went on."

  "He sailed to Cay Sal with her, now they're in Cuba. He's not imagining that."

  "But where he met her," Jimmy said. "That's what I'm saying. You probably don't want to hear this, but I think he was more than drunk that night. I think he was on something. The way he was talking-saying crazy biblical stuff-I think maybe he was doing some kind of hallucinogenic."

  "It's possible."

  "I tried to get him to go home with me. You know, look after him till he settled down. I don't know him very well, but he never seemed like the self-destructive type. Until the restaurant that night."

  I said, "A Cuban-American woman, probably late twenties. Attractive…" I tried to remember what Tomlinson had said about her; made some plausible deductions from that. "She would be unmarried, articulate, well-read, not much money, and probably not from the Keys. Maybe down there trying to meet people."

  Jimmy said, "Cubano in her twenties?"

  "That's right."

  "Why didn't you say so? There was somebody like that. I know who you're talking about-"

  "Yeah, Julia-"

  "No, her name's not Julia whatever-you-said. Her name's Rita Santoya. 'Least, that's what she told me. She came into the tackle shop that afternoon-during Fantasy Fest?-and said she'd been given my name, maybe I could help her. What she wanted was the names of boat people who might be headed for Cuba, willing to let her go along as crew."

  I said, "That's the one."

  ***

  Jimmy Gardenas said, "In the Cuban-American community, that name still carries a lot of weight-Santoya. The Santoya family controlled most of the sugar production in La Habana Province. Unbelievable wealth, like royalty down there. And damn good people, too, from what I've heard. Of course, they lost it all when Castro took over. So I told her to come by the restaurant that night and I'd introduce her to some guys who might be able to help. I've been so Americanized," Jimmy added, "it's hard for people to believe that I'm Cuban, too. I try to keep up on things; help when I can."

  "Maybe she used the name Santoya to impress you," I said.

  "I don't think so. She knew the family history too well. It's quite a family. Back in the forties and fifties, when things were about as corrupt as they could get, there were these two rich brothers. Ask any Cuban, they'll know the story. There was Eduardo Santoya and Angel Santoya. Eduardo… this girl we're talking about said Eduardo was her grandfather… well, Eduardo, he was the one who spent a ton of the family's money to help found a political part
y… I can't remember the name of it… but this party was devoted to administrative honesty, that kind of thing. Doing good stuff… national reforms."

  "Ortodoxo," I said.

  "Hey!, that's it. Ortodoxo. This rich guy, Eduardo, with nothing to gain, doing it because it was right. His brother, Angel, was involved, too, but he was more into the power part of it. You know how some rich kids are just total shits? That was Angel Santoya. So young Fidel Castro comes along and Angel wants him in the party but Eduardo sees the guy as the clown he is and says no way.

  "The brothers have a hell of a fight; splits the whole family. In fifty-nine, when Fidel comes marching down out of the mountains, guess who's right there patting him on the back, telling him what a genius he is? Angel Santoya, by then a working informant. Same day, Eduardo is packing the one bag he's allowed and hustling his wife and teenage son to the airport to escape Fidel's firing squads. They left a couple of mansions behind, a couple thousand acres of prime sugar, I don't know how many yachts and cars. That's the kind of wealth we're talking about."

  "This girl, Rita, she claimed to be the daughter of the teenage son?"

  "Right. Eduardo the second, Eduardo Senior's only child. Senior, he started out in Miami, then moved up to Trenton, I think-somewhere in New Jersey-where he started from scratch and built a new fortune. I think it was car sales; something like that. But then he went bust. Lost it all. Less then a year later, Eduardo-two-married and a daddy by that time-gets caught by Castro's people back in Havana. They decide he's there to assassinate Fidel, so they march him down to Mariel Harbor, stand junior on a cliff in front of a firing squad, and shoot him."

  When Jimmy Gardenas said the word "junior," the name suddenly clicked in my memory: Junior Santoya. I thought, Jesus, I knew the guy.

  I said, "That was in seventy-three, right?"

  Heard mild laughter through the phone. "A gringo who knows the history better and speaks the language better than me." Like: Why do I bother telling you?

  "I remember reading about it," I said.

  Jimmy said, "Sure, Doc. Sure. That's not what my friends with Alpha tell me, but, fine. If it's what you want me to believe."

  Meaning Alpha Sixty-six, the Cuban Exile Brigade that trained privately and secretly in the Everglades, readying to invade the homeland. With willing intelligence sources in Nicaragua, Masagua, Cuba's Interior Ministry, and Panama's G-2, it was not surprising that certain members knew about me… at least knew what I had once been.

  I said, "After the son died, what happened? Rita told you all this?"

  "Some of it; some of it I'd already heard. What happens is, Eduardo Senior gets the news about his son being executed and he dies within the month. They said it was a heart attack, but it was more like a broken heart. You know how Cubanos love their kids. Which leaves the grandmother, the mother, and the new daughter all orphaned, penniless. So yeah, a girl comes in here saying she's Rita Santoya, you bet I tried to help her. The Cuban community, we take care of our own."

  "Did she say why she wanted to go back to Cuba?"

  "She told me she wanted to go back, see where her roots are. Said her grandmother had just died and she'd been reading her grandmother's letters, going through her things, and got the urge. I got the impression her mother was somehow out of the picture. Remarried or something like that; left the girl on her own."

  "She's in her twenties?"

  "Late twenties, yeah. Not beautiful but handsome-looking. You know the look-outdoorsy, into climbing maybe; like that. She struck me as intelligent; pretty well educated. When I told her it might not be too smart, someone named Santoya poking around Cuba, she didn't seem surprised. Like she'd already thought about it. I figured that's why she wanted to go as crew on a boat. If she flew, she'd have to use a passport."

  "That's why she gave Tomlinson a fake name."

  "Maybe," Jimmy said. "Thing is, I never saw her talking to Tomlinson. I'm not even sure she was at the table when he came in. 'Fact, I'm pretty sure she wasn't. That's why it didn't click right away."

  "Any of the people you introduced her to offer to put her on a boat?"

  "They said they'd check around, but I got the feeling they weren't going to risk it. She probably read it the same way."

  We spent the next few minutes talking about what Cu-ban-Americans love to talk about: What happens to Cuba when Castro falls? Talked about how it would be; the fast changes that would take place on the island the exiles were forced to leave but where, in their hearts, they still lived. Just before we hung up, Jimmy said, "I'll tell you one thing-they find out Tomlinson's with Rita Santoya, the daughter of the man who wanted to kill Fidel, he's apt to lose a lot more than his boat."

  Dewey had gone off mysteriously; disappeared in her rental car-which really wasn't much of a mystery. Four days before Christmas, people are prone to disappear. She'd probably driven to the mainland; was shouldering her way through the Edison Mall circus, doing her shopping. So I worked around the lab, alternately trying to telephone my friend Armando Azcona-kept getting his recorder-and finishing up unfinished business. Because I had already left a message with the secretary of General Juan Rivera, down there in the small Central American country of Masagua, I didn't want to stray far from the phone. The general would call me back; he always had. I was less certain of contacting Armando.

  Armando Azcona was an old associate and now a Miami businessman who was involved with the Cuban American National Foundation, a politically powerful Cuban exile group that lobbied effectively in D.C., had worked closely with the Reagan and Bush administrations, and was the organization most likely to provide political infrastructure once Castro was out of the picture. Known as CANF, the group had set up a government in exile and, presumably, had knowledge of and perhaps supported anti-Castro ranks living in Cuba. Not that there could be many-anyone Fidel's people suspected of being a dissident was imprisoned or shot.

  In Cuba, it was a fact of life not mentioned in Castro's famous "History Will Absolve Me!" speech.

  If such a fifth-column group existed in Cuba, I wanted to know about it. If I got into trouble, real trouble, an underground network would be the only place to hide.

  So I futzed around the house and the lab, waiting for the phone to ring, waiting for Dewey to return, occasionally hitting the redial button, getting Armando's recording again and again. To leave a message, I'd have to leave a name, and I didn't want my name on tape.

  It was nearly dark. Through the west window, I could see that the guides were in, hosing down their skiffs. Watched Felix, from his skiff, toss Jeth a can of beer. Watched Jeth bobble it and drop it off the dock. Smiled at his can't-I-do-anything-right? expression. Watched him jog to get his landing net so he could fish the can out. Saw Mack standing by the bait tanks taking it all in, enjoying it. He was wearing a Santa Claus hat at a jaunty angle. Even so, Mack did not look elfin.

  Another day of charters off the calendar… another Christmas Saturday done at Dinkin's Bay.

  I sat at the table, thinking about my conversation with Jimmy Gardenas-the what'll-happen-when-Castro-falls? discussion that all Cubans enjoy.

  Like most Cuban-Americans, Jimmy knows that it will not go as smoothly as he likes to pretend. By air and boat and inner tube, more than a million Cubans have immigrated to the United States and, when Castro falls, the return migration will not be as peaceful, nor as massive, as some believe. The Cubans are one of the great American success stories. They are a brilliant people: smart, industrious, family-oriented, goal oriented. In the space of less than two generations, they have accumulated extraordinary wealth and power in the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth. Were they really going to abandon that?

  A few years ago, the Miami Herald ran the results of a poll which indicated that, even with Castro gone, only one in five Cuban-Americans would return to their native island. Although the poll did not supply demographics, it is not unreasonable to assume that, of that number, most would go expecting to recover their old proper
ties and resume their old lives.

  It's a pipe dream. It will never happen.

  Even organizations such as CANF agree that an attempt to regain expropriated properties will result in chaos. If the Cuban-Americans are smart, which they are, they will settle for a compensation program in which properties are sold to the highest bidder and the revenue prorated.

  The life they knew, in homes and on the island they loved, is gone forever…

  Another fallacy is that, after the fall, Cuban-Americans will receive a warm welcome from their long-suffering countrymen. Despite the lengthy political separation, weren't they still brothers?

  Nope. They are not brothers… and never were.

  It is a ticklish problem; one seldom discussed, but the fact is that ninety-five percent of the Cubans who fled the island were white. With their exodus, blacks became the racial majority in Cuba… and it was Cuba's black population-historically used as little more than slave labor- who rushed to take over the homes and properties abandoned by the exiles.

  On the day that Castro came to power, Havana's Mira-mar and Vedado neighborhoods were made up of tasteful mansions and estates. Now most of those mansions are black tenements and slums.

  On the day that Castro took control, Catholicism was the national religion. Today the most widely practiced religion is Santeria, an Afro-Cuban belief very similar to Haiti's voodoo. Santeria plays prominently in Castro's political decisions. The predictions of Santeria priests are even reported in state newspapers.

  Is this new Cuban majority eager for the return of the Miami exiles? Absolutely not. Indeed, they are terrified at the prospect. In Castro's essentially all-white puppet government, blacks have very little input. But they had absolutely no influence at all when the people who fled Cuba were in control.

  That's why they don't want change. And that's why they will probably fight it when change comes knocking on their door.