Murder in Havana Page 21

  “I do not believe that will happen,” said a female visitor, Casandra. “I remember his words as clearly as if it was yesterday. ‘If I am told that ninety-eight percent of the people no longer believe in the Revolution, I’ll continue to fight. If I’m told I am the only one who believes in it, I will continue.’ No, he will only leave office in a pine box.”

  “We shall see,” Caldoza offered. “In the meantime, I would like to be kept informed about this American—Pauling, is it?—and his efforts.”

  “Of course.”

  “You will continue to be in touch with this woman?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Good.”

  Caldoza stood, prompting the others to follow.

  “Dinner was wonderful, as usual,” one said.

  “Tell Maria,” said Caldoza. “If we can be as successful in the laboratory as she is in the kitchen, cancer will be but a memory. Thank you for coming. It is always a pleasure having you.”

  Now, alone in his office, Dr. Caldoza reflected on the conversation of the previous evening. Most of the research institute’s staff had left to attend the Castro birthday celebration. He knew their motives in doing so were mixed. There were those who, like himself, had believed in the Revolution and saw it as a new, cleansing dawn for Cuba and its eleven million people. It certainly wasn’t a matter of personally profiting from the new Socialist regime of Fidel Castro. Everything, including the medical establishment, became state-owned and -operated. Salaries were cut dramatically; Caldoza was paid only a tenth of what he would have earned under the open Batista government. But there were the sudden infusions of money into his research budget, and Castro’s pledge to mitigate personal loss.

  He ran his fingertips through tufts of white hair at his temples and turned to look at a photograph on his desk. It had been taken ten years ago during a family vacation on the Peninsula de Ancón, a beautiful stretch of beach on the southern coast, two hundred miles from Havana. Caldoza and his wife and two sons stayed at the tourist resort Playa Ancón, where they’d snorkeled together at Cayo Blanco, enjoying the white, powdery sand beach and clear, warm water. Caldoza had asked a tourist to take a family portrait with his camera, and they posed at the base of a palm tree, his sons clowning a little, his wife beaming, he sucking in his stomach at the time the shutter was released. Both boys had gone on to Cuban medical schools but eventually left Cuba for Canada where they practiced medicine and started their own families. They’d tried to convince their mother and father to leave Cuba, too, but Manuel Caldoza wouldn’t then consider it. His work at the labs was going well, the results providing a level of psychic satisfaction that was like a daily shot of Adrenalin. And it was his home. Leave Cuba? Inconceivable.

  He removed his lab coat, put on the jacket to his suit, and left. As he walked to the elevators, he passed a young lab assistant who looked up from her worktable and smiled. “Going to the birthday celebration, Dr. Caldoza?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “You?”

  “I would like to but I cannot leave in the middle of this experiment.”

  Caldoza returned the smile and patted her on the shoulder. “What you are doing is more important than attending,” he said. “Besides, there will be thousands there. You will not be missed.”

  He rode down the elevator and went to the parking lot where he got into his car, started the engine, waved to the security guard at the gate, and prepared to pull onto the street. Plaza de la Revolución was to his left, the route to his home to his right. He never hesitated. He turned the wheel to the right and headed for Vedado and his house where the phone call would come from the States.

  After his guests had left the night before, Caldoza had placed a call to the home number of Dr. Barbara Mancuso in Silver Spring, Maryland, a number she’d given him during his presentation to the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Their conversation was brief. At its conclusion, she said she would have to consult others at the National Institutes of Health for answers, and said she would call the next day.

  “At your office?” she’d asked.

  “No,” he replied, “at my home.” He gave her his number. “Anytime,” he added.

  Pauling stayed at Celia’s apartment until a few minutes past four. The phone had rung once, but when he answered, the caller hung up.

  The alley was comparatively empty when he came down the stairs. An old woman watched him from inside her apartment as he walked by. He gave her a small nod but her stern expression never changed. A CDR if he ever saw one. Or if ever one saw him.

  The children were gone, evidently off to serenade El Jefe. Pauling could hear the faint roar of a crowd, and dissonant march music coming from Plaza de la Revolución. He walked in that direction, aware that the streets most distant from the plaza were virtually empty. The music, and the crowd, became increasingly louder as he approached. Now the narrow side streets that fed into the vast plaza were clogged and he had to squeeze through in order to reach a point where he could see the raised platform and podium. There were staging areas for the bands, other speakers, and VIP guests. The rooftops were chockablock with spectators, like birds on a wire. Smoke from barbecues on the street and roofs stung the eyes while tickling the nostrils. He kept looking for Celia in the sea of celebrants.

  As he moved into the plaza itself, he began to feel the party atmosphere. If the thousands of Cuban citizens were there only because it was the prudent thing to do, their exuberance didn’t reflect it. People danced to music being played by a festively costumed band, the incessant beat infectious. He continued to inch closer to the stage. He could see the people on it now, dozens of government bureaucrats and Castro cronies surrounding the podium, chatting, laughing, and slapping each other on the back. Directly in front of it was a large, roped-off VIP area. Uniformed PNR officers were stationed every six feet along the ropes, their eyes trained on those special guests.

  Pauling was aware of other men in the crowd who looked as though they might be plainclothes detectives, or Minint’s secret police. Positioned along the edge of the Ministerio del Interior and Ministerio del Justice roofs were armed members of the military. Looming witnesses to the event were the huge, black metal mural of Che Guevara dominating the front of the Interior building and the imposing Monumento José Martí. Fidel was everywhere, his face and piercing dark eyes on dozens of blowups of his image.

  Although Pauling was not the only Caucasian foreigner among the thousands of spectators, he felt that he was. Armed Cuban officers scattered throughout the crowd seemed to take particular interest in him, and he wondered whether he might be stopped and searched, detained, taken off the streets in the interest of national security. He knew the bruises on his face didn’t help him avoid scrutiny. Who was this gringo wearing a vest with dozens of pockets in which, Dios knows what, something destructive, might be concealed—a grenade, a knife—and looking as though he’d just survived a train wreck?

  He continued to keep an eye out for Celia, the blond one, and anyone else of recent acquaintance. He remembered that Jessica had told him Mac Smith was in Havana with the Price McCullough delegation, and strained to see him among the VIPs gathered in front of the podium. He had a vague recollection of what Smith looked like, although he wouldn’t swear he could pick him out of a police lineup with certainty. It didn’t matter. He was still a little too far away to distinguish individual faces in the VIP section.

  When it seemed that the noise level in the plaza couldn’t become any louder, it did, a different sort of noise, one filled with expectation and excitement. A deafening cheer went up as Fidel Castro, dressed in his signature combat fatigues and wearing his green fatigue hat, appeared from nowhere and stepped to the podium. He held his hands high above him and uttered a rapid-fire greeting in Spanish. Pauling noted the security officers in his area, and thought they’d never cut it in the U.S. Secret Service. Their attention had turned from watching for potential assassins to their leader, who’d transformed Cuba from a hedonistic pl
ayground for the rich into a Communist state ninety miles off the shore of the mighty United States, and done it with arrogance and bravado that had perplexed president after president and generated heated public discourse for more than four decades.

  Pauling tried to translate what Castro was saying. What does this guy possess to have pulled it off and kept it going for so many years? Colleagues at the CIA and State had offered many explanations in the past. “He’s the best TV actor in the world,” was one. “He’s a dictator,” was another. “He gave his people hope,” a more sanguine colleague offered. “He’s smart, knows what buttons to push and when,” said another. Castro’s close friend, the Nobel Prize–winning Colombian author, Gabriel García Márquez, explained Castro’s success this way: “His rarest virtue is the ability to foresee the evolution of an event to the farthest reaching consequences. He is a masterly chess player.”

  One thing was certain, Pauling knew. The man could talk—and talk, and talk. An ancient entertainment. The people in the plaza seemed spellbound as their leader went on, stopping only to allow a chorus of schoolchildren to sing to him, their sweet voices bringing smiles to everyone. When the children were finished, a chant went up: “Fidel! Fidel! Fidel!” And he picked up where he’d left off, to the crowd’s seeming delight.

  Although Pauling understood little of what Castro was saying, he found himself drawn into the forceful, passionate delivery, fascinated by the man’s presence even at that distance. He maneuvered through the crowd to get closer, a moth drawn to a summer candle. “Perdón,” he said as he squeezed by people. “Sorry. Excuse me.” He reached the rope separating the VIP section from the main crowd. A burly Cuban officer glared at him. Pauling smiled and nodded to indicate his approval of what Castro was saying. He slid to his right, away from the guard, stopped, and looked up at the podium where Castro was making what was obviously an important point, his voice rising and falling in passion, a finger jabbing at the air.

  Pauling now took in the assembled dignitaries behind the ropes, but saw only their backs, their attention turned to the speaker. One man moved for a moment; Annabel Lee-Smith’s husband? Pauling couldn’t be sure, but he did recognize Price McCullough. He looked closely at Castro. No matter how the assignment turned out, he’d gotten within twenty feet of the man. He felt like a groupie, a fan club member trying to catch a glimpse of a pop idol. As that unflattering thought ran through his mind, he realized again how dangerous someone like Fidel Castro was, able to whip a nation into patriotic frenzy through the power of his words and ferocity of his delivery.

  People to his left and right began to sway in rhythm to Castro’s vocal cadence, bumping into Pauling. He decided it was time to leave. He’d had enough. He peered over heads on his left, in search of Celia, then tried the right. As he did so, the man pressing next to him drew his attention. He was middle-aged and considerably shorter than Pauling. His eyes seemed to be glazed, his face expressionless, unlike the smiling, humming people under Castro’s verbal spell. Celia had told Pauling that in advance of the celebration, the police would sweep the streets of suspicious types and corral them somewhere until Castro was safely offstage. Pauling wondered why he hadn’t been included in that group; this guy certainly should have been.

  Pauling turned to begin the tortuous route back through the crowd and out of the plaza, but something unstated caused him to look again at the man with the crazed expression. He was reaching slowly beneath his white guayabera and pulling a handgun from his belt. Pauling froze for the second it took for the man to raise the weapon in Castro’s direction and to shout “Murderer!” Pauling lunged, his hand hitting the weapon and turning it from its target. It discharged once, then again. Other people pounced on the shooter and immediately began punching and kicking him. Castro had been flung to the stage floor by bodyguards. VIPs within the roped area hit the ground, too. Pandemonium broke out in the plaza. The cheers and chants changed to screams and wailing, a swelling chorus of curses and questions and accusations. A nervous soldier on the rooftop of the Minint building opened fire into the crowd. People tried to run from the square and soon were knocking each other down, stepping on and over the fallen, panic as thick in the air as the aroma of food and the density of the speech had been.

  A security guard, who’d seen what had happened, began speaking loudly and quickly with a fellow officer, pointing at Pauling. Mac Smith, who’d gone to the ground at the sound of the first shot, stood and looked in Pauling’s direction. He was certain it was Jessica’s boyfriend. He shouted the name “Pauling,” but his words were drowned by the din in the plaza.

  Others who’d been standing close to Pauling and the gunman when it happened started yelling things at Pauling that he didn’t understand, but they sounded angry. Did they think he’d been with the shooter? That he was part of the plot? He didn’t wait around to find out. He pushed past them, sending an older man to the ground, found some open room, and began to run, dodging knots of people, searching for other breaks in the crowd, trying to move away from security forces who seemed as confused as the rest of the people. Then he reached a narrow solar and ducked into it, his breath coming hard, his sides aching. Soon, he reached the opposite end, thankful it wasn’t a dead end, crossed a wider street, and entered a small park. He found an iron bench nestled in a thick clump of trees and bushes and sat down. The sound of police sirens reached him in this temporary haven. He drew deep breaths and shook his head in an attempt to clear it. The last few minutes had been a blur. Now things returned to focus.

  An attempt had been made on Fidel Castro’s life, and he, Pauling, had been there to thwart it. It probably wouldn’t have made any difference whether he’d knocked the gun away or not. The shooter was unlikely to have hit his target from where he was standing. The gun looked like a cap pistol. Not a very creative approach to taking out the Cuban leader, but Pauling’s former agency’s high- and low-tech attempts at the same target hadn’t been effective either.

  Pauling tried to think. Who was the guy with the cap pistol? Jesus! He had shouted, “Murderer!” A nut looking to make a name for himself? Was the failed assassin on his own, or was he part of a larger conspiracy? If it had happened in the States, he’d soon be branded a lone assassin with no ties to anyone, no matter how illogical that might be. Governments don’t like conspiracy theories; “the people” can’t handle it, they rationalize.

  Who was the guy? Was he still alive?

  Pauling stood and looked through the bushes at the street. Sirens continued to wail, and there was the sound of people shouting from outside the park. He tried to get his bearings. Once he had them, a decision had to be made where to go next, Celia’s apartment or his hotel? His first inclination was to rule out the latter. But he decided there was no reason not to go there. He hadn’t done anything to make anybody mad, unless saving Castro’s life was sufficient. Hell, they ought to give him a medal and a year’s supply of free mojitos.

  He made his decision based upon which place would more likely put him in touch with Celia. Had she been in the plaza? If so, he reasoned, she’d probably go back to her friend’s apartment.

  As he made his way carefully, staying off major streets in favor of smaller, less populated ones, Celia Sardiña got out of a taxi in front of the art gallery on Calle Obispo. The blinds on the windows were tightly shut, and a sign in the window said CLOSED. She rang the bell and waited. A minute later the gallery owner peeked through the slats and unlocked the door. She followed him to the back room.

  “It failed,” the owner said.

  “Of course it did,” she replied. “Did you think sending someone with a pistol would succeed?”

  “The message had to be sent that all Cubans are not happy with Castro. The world will know.”

  “The world will know we are inept when trying to rid ourselves of him.”

  The owner hung his head. “I must report to Miami,” he said, looking up. “The tape? McCullough? What is new with that?”

  “That is n
ot a problem,” she said. “I am taking care of it.”

  He looked at her quizzically.

  “I must go. Roberto is in custody?”

  “Sí. They beat him, I am told. An American hit him, pushed his gun away.”

  “An American?”

  “Sí. You were not there?”

  “I had things to do.”

  “You can stay for dinner?”

  “No, gracias. I have other plans.” She checked her watch. Ex-senator McCullough would be back at his suite by now. “I will be leaving Havana shortly.”

  He nodded.

  “This is a crucial period for us,” she said. “Huge changes are about to take place. We must be ready for them.”

  “I will do what I can.”

  She embraced him, left the gallery, and told the taxi driver to take her to Hotel Nacional.

  This is Lolita Perez reporting from Cuba. An attempt was made today on the life of Fidel Castro as he spoke during his annual birthday celebration. The attempt by a lone gunman, who fired two shots at President Castro, failed, and the assailant was taken into custody by the police.”

  Footage taken at Plaza de la Revolución during the celebration aired, with the correspondent talking over it. When it was finished, her face again filled the screen.

  “I’m at Havana’s famed Hotel Nacional where former senator Price McCullough and a trade delegation he’s led to Cuba are staying. The senator and his delegation were at the birthday celebration when the assassination attempt took place.”

  The shot widened to include McCullough standing next to the reporter.

  “Senator McCullough, what happened today during President Castro’s speech? What did you see?”

  “What I saw, Ms. Perez, was a crazed gunman try to take the life of President Castro. Fortunately, he missed. I understand a member of the security forces was hit by one of the bullets, but wasn’t seriously injured.”