“But you must have something to eat, my friend.”
Oswaldo finally conceded with a shrug. “I’ll pour us coffee, Comrade Presidente. Thank you.”
Oswaldo ambled over to a floral table by the window, set with a pot of strong coffee and a bowl of sugar. “Another beautiful day in our Cubita bella, no?” he said as he poured two cups.
“Yes, yes,” the president said cheerily.
“How is El Jefe today?”
“My brother is the same. His body is alive, but his mind has died. The doctors tell me he could go on like this for years. The doctors say he could even recover.”
“We have the world’s best doctors,” Oswaldo said, “so perhaps . . .”
“My brother will never be the same”—the president bowed his head—“I have accepted it. The nation will need to accept it. The revolution will need to accept it.”
“The revolution never rests, Comrade Presidente.”
“Now, tell me about these yanquis. What are we going to do?”
Oswaldo turned his back to the president as he dropped a spoonful of sugar in each coffee. “I’ve already let them go.”
“They’re gone?” the president gasped.
“They are already in America.”
“America?”
“Gone, Comrade Presidente,” he said as he slipped a white cube from his pocket into one of the coffees. He turned around to face the president, holding both cups triumphantly. “They were nothing. Just some foolish yanqui cowboys. I put them on a plane and sent them back to Washington.”
“Washington?”
“Yes, Comrade Presidente. It’s over.”
“I don’t understand, Oswaldo,” the president said, accepting one of the coffees. “You told me this was important. These hostages were dangerous. They were yanqui spies sent to disturb our new friendship with Washington. That they were leverage for getting more from the Americans.”
“I didn’t say they weren’t leverage, Comrade Presidente.” Oswaldo took a sip.
“Ahhh!” The president sat back in his chair and laughed from deep down in his belly. “Of course! Of course! You are Oswaldo! You must have tricked the Americans! Or you got something valuable, didn’t you?” He sat forward and slurped a healthy gulp of coffee. “Ahhh! What did we get, Oswaldo? What did we get? A prisoner exchange? Ships of wheat? Baseball? What?”
“Something much more valuable than any of those things,” Oswaldo said, a smile forming on the edges of his mouth.
“What’s more valuable than”—the president winced and grabbed his chest—“baseball?”
Oswaldo watched the president cough and sputter. As the old man gasped desperately for air, Oswaldo calmly took a sip of coffee before answering the question, the final words the president would ever hear. “Independence, my friend. Total independence.”
81.
SANTIAGO, CUBA
SATURDAY, 8:04 A.M.
Che! Che! Che!
Ernesto could hear the chanting in his head even before he arrived at the Plaza de la Revolución. He could imagine the people—his people—singing his name. As he sat in the backseat of the vintage Cadillac, waiting to be driven to the rally, he peered through his reading glasses at the speech sitting on his lap.
The Cuban Revolution is ready for the next phase! We have achieved so much, but the time for something new has arrived . . .
Ernesto hadn’t slept much since landing late the night before. The woman at the airport, one of Ruben’s people, had brought him to a safe house for rest and this morning had deposited him in the back of an electric-blue 1955 Cadillac Eldorado.
He was excited for the rally in the heart of Santiago, the historical epicenter of political opposition in Cuba, the site where he was to make his own history, to launch his own campaign. He was ready for the new stage of his long, strange journey.
But Ernesto was also nervous. After so many years in Africa, working in the slums, healing the sick, living close to the people, he was now venturing into wholly new waters.
The empty shelves are a potent symbol of what has gone wrong with the revolution. Corruption is eating the revolution from within, yet it is the people who cannot eat! . . .
Ruben had assured him those reasons were exactly why he was the perfect candidate. His big brother had made a convincing case that Ernesto’s national service, his years in Angola, his humility, his selfless patriotism, his simple life—these truths all made Dr. Ernesto Sandoval a man of the people.
It was all correct, Ernesto decided. He was a simple, honest man. He could restore the country to greatness without tearing it apart. He could bridge the revolutionaries in Havana with the exiles in Miami. He was precisely what Cuba needed.
A government that cannot deliver bread, cannot deliver on the promise of the revolution . . .
His nagging anxiety was jumping from the quiet life of medicine into the shark tank of Cuban politics.
We must have free elections in Cuba! Our leaders must be chosen by the people! We must have a new government in Havana! . . .