I continued on through the dark streets of 10 October. The Autopista was south of Havana and it ran east, according to the road map, in the direction of Cayo Guillermo, though it went through the interior of the island, far from the coast. The Soviet-built highway hadn’t existed when Eduardo fled Cuba, but Eduardo and Sara agreed that the Autopista would be faster than the more direct coastal road that the tour bus had taken to Matanzas. And it would be safer—no towns to pass through and no local police. You could legally do a hundred K—60 mph—on the Autopista, and with luck, said Sara, we might never see a police car. Sounded too good to be true.
Sara and I and Eduardo had loaded the two steamer trunks into the rear, and I was surprised how heavy the legal documents were, and how light the skulls were. We’d covered the trunks with the tarp, and Eduardo had given Sara the padlock keys and said, “The next time these trunks are opened will be in Miami.”
Or when the police ordered us to open them.
Before we’d closed the lids on the trunks, I’d looked at the soil-stained skulls more closely. Some of the lower jaws were missing, but all of them had their upper teeth, mostly intact—and through dental records and DNA they could be identified and matched against the Department of Defense’s list of missing in action. And then we would have names. And those names would have families . . .
About half the skulls had the distinctive round hole of a bullet entry wound, but one of the skulls looked like it had been crushed with a blunt instrument. The rest were free of trauma, and I assumed those men had died from . . . who knows? In any case, these skulls would be a powerful visual image, and very strong evidence of imprisonment and murder in Castro’s Cuba. What I—and Sara—had to do was tell the world how we’d gotten them.
Sara asked, “What are you thinking about?”
“Our cargo.”
She nodded. “It’s fitting that it’s you who are bringing the bones home, and that it’s me who’s returning the deeds to the stolen property.”
That sounded like a talking point for the press conference.
I had asked Eduardo about the rest of the remains—the skeletons—and he’d told me and Sara that the bodies had been exhumed from their common grave on the grounds of Villa Marista about a year ago, and the purpose of the exhumation was to burn the bones in order to obliterate any evidence of the American POWs. And this was done, Eduardo said, in advance of the diplomatic talks, and in anticipation of demands from the Americans—politicians, MIA groups, and veterans’ organizations—that a U.S. military body recovery and identification team be allowed to visit Villa Marista to investigate the rumors and accusations that seventeen American servicemen had been murdered there.
And how had the skulls survived the bonfire? According to what Eduardo had been told, the skulls, and especially the teeth, were difficult to burn, so they were to be pulverized before burning. And according to Eduardo, this presented an opportunity and an incentive to someone—maybe a worker or a guard or someone who opposed the regime and recognized the potential value and importance of these skulls—to smuggle them out of Villa Marista. For money. Or for truth and justice. Or both.
I saw signs for José Martí Airport, which brought back memories of my arrival when I stepped off the plane a virgin, hoping to make my fortune in Cuba. And hoping to get laid. One out of two ain’t bad.
Sara said, “Turn here.”
I turned left where a sign pointed to A-1, and we came to a ramp that took us to the eastbound lanes of the Autopista. If we drove through the night, we’d be in Cayo Guillermo at about 7 or 8 A.M. And at about 7 p.m., we’d meet our contact in the lobby bar of the Melia Hotel, then sometime in the night we’d get this cargo aboard The Maine and set sail for Key West. What could possibly go wrong?
The divided highway had four lanes in both directions and the pavement was good, though the road lighting was not—which was also good; the darker the better. There wasn’t much traffic heading away from Havana, but enough so that we didn’t look like the only vehicle on the road. But later, as we got farther into the interior, and into the early-morning hours, we might actually be the only vehicle on the highway—certainly the only ’53 Buick Roadmaster Estate Wagon, which, even in a country of vintage American cars, would attract almost as much attention as Sara Ortega in a tight dress walking down Calle Obispo at two in the morning.
I mentioned my concern to Sara—without the analogy—and she assured me, “According to Marcelo, the Tráficos—the highway patrol—are underfunded, and they don’t want to burn gas or put miles on their cars if they don’t have to.”
Good that Sara learned so much from Marcelo last year. But all it takes is one Tráfico waking up from his backseat siesta to cause a problem.
She reminded me, “You have a gun.”
“Right.” And I’d use it if I had to.
I pushed the wagon up to what I estimated as sixty miles an hour and it handled okay, despite its ethnically diverse body parts. Which made me think again of our cargo, and do some fact checking.
I wasn’t sure how Eduardo knew that those property deeds were hidden in a church in Havana, and not in the cave at Camagüey as Sara had told me. I could assume that Eduardo knew Sara’s father and/or grandfather, though he didn’t say that, and neither did Sara. Eduardo also didn’t tell me or Sara how the skulls from Villa Marista came into his possession, though the less we knew about that the better. Bottom line, there was a lot of dark matter that held this universe together.
In any case, those exhumed skulls were now sitting next to a trunk of exhumed documents that were to be reunited with the families who’d lost their property, and the skulls were to be reunited with the families who’d lost and loved these men in life. There was something in this for everyone. Mostly loss, unfortunately, but also maybe hope and closure.
We continued on the straight highway, and I hadn’t seen a police car yet, though I’d seen military vehicles in the oncoming lanes. The Buick dashboard had lots of old gauges and instruments, but none of them were working, so for all I knew the engine was overheating, the oil pressure was dropping, and the generator had stopped working. A mechanical problem on the road was basically a survival problem.
“You’re not saying much.”
“I’m thinking.”
“Are you angry?”
“No. I’m saving that for when we’re on the boat.”
She put her hand on my arm. “I’m sorry I lied to you.”
Didn’t we have this conversation?
“Mac? You understand why I had to lie.”
“I can answer that question if you can answer the question of what you actually knew and when you actually knew it.”
“I honestly wasn’t sure that Eduardo would be here . . . or that we weren’t going to Camagüey. Or that either of those trunks would be waiting for us in Havana . . .”
I didn’t reply.
“I really thought we’d be able to fulfill my grandfather’s promise to his clients.”
Not to mention her promise to me of three million dollars. I thought back to my boat, to when she was pitching this to me. It was, as I suspected, a story too well told, but . . . “I can believe that Carlos and Eduardo were not completely honest with you. And we both know that you weren’t completely honest with me.”
She didn’t respond directly but said, “What we’re doing . . . it’s important . . . and sometimes the ends justify the means.”
I had a flashback to some bad days in Kandahar Province, and I advised her, “Don’t become what you’re fighting.”