“Okay.” But I was thinking about who owned the team. And I concluded that the Company owned the team.
It occurred to me that cyanide is not that easy to come by. They don’t sell it in Walgreens. I thought, too, about Eduardo’s forged passport, and about his friends in American intelligence. And the more I thought about all this, the more I saw the hand of the Company in some of this mission—the CIA. I mean, any normal American boy raised on conspiracy theories sees the hand of the CIA in everything. Even my father, who blames his bad golf game on CIA mind control. I had worked with the CIA in Afghanistan, and seen them at their best in Special Ops. Cuba, however, was another story. The CIA had been intimately, obsessively, and unhappily involved in Cuban affairs even before Castro took over. The careers of CIA officers had been made and broken in Cuba—mostly broken. That was a long time ago, but the pain and institutional embarrassment of those failures lingered on. I mean, the exploding cigars had become a joke, but the Bay of Pigs Invasion was a historic catastrophe.
I assumed, therefore, that the CIA wanted a win. And I suspected that the CIA was no fan of the Cuban Thaw, which would legitimize the regime and help keep the Castros and the Communists in power. And to allow the Thaw to go forward would be a betrayal of all the dissidents risking their lives in Cuba, and all the exile groups in America who still had a relationship with the CIA—people like Eduardo Valazquez and his amigos. So, yes, I could see the hand of the CIA in this mission, and if true, it never was about the money in the cave; it was always about recovering the skulls and the stolen property in the back of this Buick, and stirring up a shit storm that would send the diplomats home, or at least give them more to argue about.
And if all this was true, what was also true was that my three million dollars was just bait—and not even a real hunk of meat; just a shiny lure. Well, as Sara said, I shouldn’t think about this too much. But it explained some of the bullshit. And maybe prepared me for my surprise in Cayo.
Bottom line, though, I felt good about getting out of Havana and sitting behind the wheel of my own car with a loaded Glock in my belt. It was still a long way to Key West, but we were heading in the right direction, and I was in the driver’s seat for a change. The Havana bullshit was behind me. From here it was all balls, all the way.
Sara had retrieved a bottle of water from her backpack and we shared it. She said, “I’ve been thinking about the Yale alum group.”
“Who’s that?”
“Be serious, Mac. I hope we don’t cause them any problems.”
“That’s nice of you to think about them.” While we’re running for our lives. “Any problems they have will be caused by the Cuban government. Not us.”
“I feel that we used them.”
“We did.” I reminded her, “That was your plan.” Or maybe the CIA’s.
“They may be questioned by the police.”
“The highlight of their trip.”
“And kicked out of the country.”
“Or worse. Another week with Antonio. Unless the police beat him up.”
“Be a little sympathetic.”
“Okay, I liked Tad,” I admitted. “And Alison, and Professor Nalebuff, and some of the others, like . . .” Pretty Cindy Neville. I reminded Sara, “I left my Hemingway T-shirt for Richard.”
She ignored that and said, “I wonder what Tad is going to do when he discovers we’re missing.”
That was the more important issue. “Hopefully, he’ll alert the embassy, who will call the Ministry of the Interior, who will deny we are in their custody but will be put on notice that the U.S. Embassy is aware of our absence and concerned.”
She nodded.
“Unfortunately, before Tad makes that call, Antonio will have made his call to the police sometime before dawn, and the Ministry of the Interior will e-mail our airport photos to every police station, military installation, airport, and seaport in the country, including Cayo Guillermo.”
She stayed silent, then asked, “Do you think we’re going to make it?”
“We are going to give it our best shot.”
She nodded. “Do you remember what I told you in our room at the Nacional?”
“About . . . ?”
“About us sitting on the bow of your boat, with Jack and Felipe in the cabin, looking at the horizon as Key West comes into view.”
“Right.”
“And I said that our mission is blessed. And that just as you returned home from Afghanistan, you will return home from Cuba.”
“I remember that.”
“You need to believe that. That is what got you home from the war.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “When you are blessed, and when your cause is just, God is with you, and you are strong.”
I nodded. And I recalled something handwritten on a piece of paper that had made the rounds among the troops: Fate whispered to the warrior, “You cannot withstand the coming storm.” And the warrior whispered back, “I am the storm.”
“We’re going home. Jack and Felipe are going home. And the warriors are going home.”
CHAPTER 45
It was about 2:30 A.M., and we were almost three hours out of Havana. I hadn’t seen another vehicle for awhile, and I was feeling conspicuous by their absence.
On another issue, if I was getting about fifteen miles to the gallon, we had, theoretically, enough fuel to drive a few more hours. But that was based on two assumptions: that Chico had topped off the tank, and that he hadn’t swapped the standard twenty-or twenty-five-gallon tank for something smaller.
Also, without a working speedometer or odometer, the math had too many unknowns. But based on my estimated speed of 60 mph, and three hours on the road, I figured we were about one hundred and eighty miles out of Havana—about three hundred kilometers. It was about another three hundred kilometers to Cayo Guillermo, though a lot of that was on secondary roads, and that could take over four hours.
But my main concern at the moment was hearing the engine sputter. Then having a Tráfico stop to see what our problem was.
The interior lights didn’t work, so Sara was reading the road map by the light of her otherwise useless cell phone. “We should be approaching Santa Clara—a fairly big town.”
“Will they have all-night gas stations?”
“Yes. But . . . us pulling into a gas station at three in the morning might not be a good idea.”
“Right. But I’m not sure of our fuel situation.”
She thought about that and said, “I think we need to get off the road and continue at dawn when we won’t be the only car on the highway.”
We probably had more gas than I thought, but the real issue now was a police car pulling up behind us. “Okay.”
The signage on the Autopista was either nonexistent or unlit, but we looked for the Santa Clara exit.
Meanwhile, Mama Inés’ ropa vieja was just a distant memory and my stomach was growling. “Did you pack anything to eat?”
“I have some chocolate from the minibar that I might share with you.”