Текст книги "Cuba Straits"

Автор книги: Randy Wayne White

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

“Figuerito had the brain of a turtle,” she said finally. “At night, he fouled my father’s house with the smell of marijuana, and he would rather play baseball than eat. Not that I cared—there’s been no cook in my home for thirty years—but, come time to pay his rent, he had no money. The ungrateful son of a slut. A filthy slut who bedded baseball trash and . . . and others above her station. And what good is a man if he has no money?” Bitterness required her to look up for understanding . . . but Imelda Casanova did not look up.

Vernum felt a chill.

She reached into the bag and placed a thimble next to three tiny cups. “I loathed Figueroa. All through his whining childhood, then his pimple-faced teens, I loathed him. I would have put him in an asylum years ago, but for one thing”—her head tilted, but then she reconsidered—“Figueroa knew . . . something about me. So I tolerated the brainless bastard. But . . . I suppose even stupid boys have useful qualities. He did whatever I told him to do. Very obedient, that child. He protected me, my personal privacy, which is important to someone like myself. Tell me”—she dealt four small white shards onto the cloth as if dealing cards—“do you know what these are?”

For a moment, Vernum strained against the wire, then went limp. Yes, he knew. Four pieces of coconut rind, each sliced as round and white as a coin. Coconut represented Earth’s own flesh. Life fed on life. In the little cups would be ground cowrie shells, turpentine, and powdered bluestone. This was a purification ceremony.

“Do you feel guilty about the things you did here—and in the cane fields?” The woman’s voice different now, purring like a young girl in love.

Vernum nodded eagerly.

“Do you believe in redemption? Or justice? We can’t have it both ways . . . Or can we?”

Vernum had to think about that before he nodded again.

“The guilt in your head, late at night,” she asked, “does it pound like it’s trying to escape through your eyes? Do your thoughts cut flesh and scream for purity? Do they ask what you might do to make yourself pure again?”

The body voids excess liquids when panic overwhelms. Vernum’s head tilted up, then down, and he began to cry.

The woman removed an empty gourd from the bag, a sunflower . . . a fillet knife. Then she suddenly turned to look at the chimney as if surprised by an old friend. She beckoned with her hand. “Chino Rojo,” she called. “¡La Chino! Come . . . it is time.” Laughter in her voice, as if summoning her lover to the picnic.

Chino—a “Chinaman.” That, at least, wasn’t part of the ceremony. But then she added, “Hurry up, Raúl.”

In Cuba, there was only one Raúl.

Insanity.

The woman approached with the knife in her hand and placed the gourd between his feet at the base of the tree. By then, Vernum knew that the truth didn’t matter, but he struggled and wept and finally looked into her face—a face layered with wrinkles and the skulls of seven dead girls.

“When Figueroa was bad”—she smiled—“I always gave him a choice.” Her fingernails sparked like flint as they struggled with his zipper, then stretched him like a chicken neck. “Why don’t you sing while you make up your mind? You know the words.” Her smile showed fangs. “Your favorite song. I’ve heard you sing it many times here.”

Oggún shoro shoro, the verse went.

The knife had been cleaned and specially sharpened. When she offered the knife to Vernum, he screamed through his nose.

Tomlinson was startled by the bellow of an animal in the distance. He fumbled the canister and loops of film came peeling off in his hand. Black-and-white Kodak celluloid from the 1950s. He recovered and rewound the spool, careful to handle it by the ratchet tracks so as not to smudge the frames.

He took a last look at a moment in time, held the film to the light: a soldier on his ass, hat askew and embarrassed but still holding the bat after attempting to hit a . . . softball?

No. That couldn’t be. Tomlinson was so disillusioned, his sense of justice demanded a replay. He stripped through four previous frames.

Damn . . . it was true. Just as Raúl had hinted in a letter a few years before this film was shot—and probably later letters. Brother Fidel, instead of a major league prospect, had been a spaz on the baseball diamond.

Correction: softball field.

But so what? It didn’t matter when compared with the achievements of a visionary leader who had done his best to help the world change its profit-drunk, thieving ways.

The animal bellowed again. It was a sound so primal that Tomlinson grimaced while he tapped the canister closed. A cow, probably. Certainly not Figgy, who had been gone only a few minutes. Or was it Figgy’s next victim, some poor bastard who had wandered into Imelda Casanova’s web of madness? Gad, what a sickening turn of events. If the film hadn’t riveted his attention, he would have been on the shortstop’s trail already. Now he had to hurry to catch up.

There were two candles on the chair and a trusty Bic lighter in his pocket. He went up the root cellar steps and outside, where there were stars and a Gulf Stream breeze but no longer a distant flashlight to mark Figgy’s destination. When his eyes adjusted, though, the chimney was visible, a black spire against a tropic sky. Behind him, the village of Plobacho slept.

Tomlinson went down the hill with the canister tucked under an arm, alternately fretting about his friend and the film’s contents.

The hell it doesn’t matter, he thought. Baseball wasn’t just a part of Cuba’s history, it was a keystone. An unrealized triad was implied by the era—Mantle, Maris, and Fidel—icons of a generation, but one of those icons had sacrificed every man’s dream for the betterment of everyman.

Damn this film. The footage unmasked a lie, a generational fraud that would wound fellow travelers to the bone. It would loose a pack of right-wing hounds, a visual blood track that would craze them until they had savaged and befouled a legend who had lived the truth, a truth brighter for the flame of one small deception.

Flame.

Film burns fast, Figgy had warned him.

Tomlinson felt for the lighter in his pocket.

Why not burn it? Imelda Casanova wasn’t the victim of a tragic love story. She was nuts. A child abuser who had perverted her own grandson into slavery and made him a lackey who killed on command. And for what? To protect letters and film that gave her power over the past and guaranteed her future. This was political extortion, nothing less. What other damning secrets did the crazy lady have hidden in her arsenal?

Why not, indeed?

On a path that wound along the river, he didn’t stop but imagined himself stopping as he flicked a flame to life. The film canister was leaden beneath yellow foliage. For the first time, he noticed a date written in pencil: 12 Nov. 1958.

Gad. Only weeks before Fidel and Che had led a peasant army into Havana, they had been eating hors d’oeuvres and playing slow-pitch. The context took the wind out of Tomlinson. It was the equivalent of Bob Dylan pirating lyrics, or Hendrix commuting from suburbia to fake guitar riffs.

History. He held it in his hand. He wasn’t naïve. He knew that minions of the future often revised the past to fit the needs, or fears, of the present day. But destroy history? That, he could not do.

Well . . . he might, but later. There was a possibility he would need this film to buy Figgy’s freedom a second time.

In Cuba, apparently, it all depended on who he had killed.

•   •   •

SWEET LORD ABOVE . . . the mad shortstop had struck again.

Tomlinson, for the first time in his life, hoped he was suffering the horrid flashbacks a counselor had warned him about decades ago, but this was no hallucination. He stood among bricks, a long throw to the chimney, and watched Figgy’s silhouette pull a lifeless body away from a tree. Then he dropped the body as if it were a sack of potatoes and swiped his hands together like a workman congratulating himself on a job well done.

Reason enough to yell, “If he’s not dead, don’t kill him, for god’s sake. Figgy . . . ? I mean it.” Tomlinson set off at a run but soon slowed because it was dark. A lot of holes and bricks to trip him. He stumbled anyway, and the film canister went careening down a grade into more darkness, where there were bushes and god knows what else in a place where the air had the weight of illness. He had to use the lighter and hunt around on his knees. By the time he found the canister and confirmed the film was okay, the shortstop was close enough for Tomlinson to speak in a normal voice. Impossible to sound normal, however, under these conditions. “Is he still alive? I know CPR, if he’s alive. But if he’s dead . . . Christ, I don’t know what to do. What’s the plan? Take him to your usual spot and throw him off a cliff?”

Figuerito cast a long shadow in the lighter’s flame. “There are nice mango trees on the way to the sea,” he said, “unless you have a better idea. I hope you do. At the house, I didn’t see the donkey, so it won’t be so easy this time.” He paused, staring down at Tomlinson. “Brother, I warned you about lighting matches around old film. You trying to get us in trouble?”

The Bic went out. Tomlinson got to his feet. He walked toward the body, which was hidden by distance and weeds. “You’re sure he’s dead?”

“Oh yeah. Anyone lose that much blood, they gonna die. Two big gourds full, plus what the earth drank as an offering.”

Tomlinson stopped. “Gourds?”

Figuerito’s mind was on something else. “Did you watch the film?”

“What do you mean, ‘gourds’? Oh. Well . . . I held it up to the light. Just a few dozen frames, but I know why your grandmother wants the footage protected.” On tiptoes, he got a glimpse of one dead hand. “Any idea who that person is?”

“It’s the bad Santero,” Figgy said. “I didn’t kill him, she did. But I took his phone and his money. His phone was next to the tree.” He patted his back pocket to confirm both were safe.

“The guy, his name’s Vernum, you said. Vernum attacked you, right? Self-defense. You had no choice in the matter. An open-and-shut case. I mean, no one in their right mind would . . . Well, you know what I mean.” Tomlinson felt faint.

“In Key West, sure, that was true. You don’t remember? His face is still a mess from my baseball shoe. Lots of stitches. It made me happy, seeing that. I wanted to kill him, but my abuela is still very quick for her age.” Figgy started toward an open space between the chimney and a crumbling brick wall. “Come on. You can help me look for her since you understand about the film.”

Tomlinson hurried after the little man. “You’re telling me your grandmother—she’s, what, seventy, eighty years old?—that she murdered the guy?”

“Either her or the spirits came out of the ground. That happens in this place sometimes. The Egun spirit, she can inhabit a human person to, you know, do her bidding. Have sex with a man, if she wants. Or steal his shit or even kill him. My abuela was a Santería novia in her youth. Ask her, but”—the shortstop turned to stress his point—“do not make her mad.”

Tomlinson thought, No shit, Sherlock, while his brain debated Are they both nuts? No jury in the world would believe the little Cuban’s spiel. But he also remembered hearing gunfire. “Oh . . . Oh! She shot him, you’re saying. Okay. It’s a little easier to picture a woman that age—”

“Brother,” Figgy interrupted, “what she did was cut off his rooster. I always wondered if she would do it. Now I know.” He turned left past the wall and angled down a hill shaped like a bunker. “The place I’m going to show you I promised I never would, but I’m worried because you’re right. Even three years ago, she had lost a few steps. Her bad leg, you know? They built it for her back when she could dance.”

“Built her . . . a prosthetic leg?”

“I don’t know what this is, prosthetic. I’m talking about the place I’m taking you. There were bombs in those days. Like a shelter, you know? This was before I was born and before my mother left for Moscow because I was so much trouble.”

“Whoa! amigo. You can’t blame yourself for that.”

“If it’s true, why not? Stupid boys get what they deserve. The shelter, though, they built that back when there were bombs.”

They, Tomlinson translated, were the Castros. The cruelty of Imelda Casanova was equally apparent. “No child deserves to be called stupid. That was a shitty thing for her to say, Figgy.”

“My mother? She didn’t say anything. How could she? They don’t have telephones in Moscow where she lives.” Figuerito stopped. “Strike a match,” he said.

Tomlinson used the lighter and watched his friend descend into a trench lined with bricks that was more like a ramp, bushes all around. Beneath camouflage netting was a metal gate with a chain and padlock, the gate open. “Wait here,” he said, then looked back after opening a steel door. “If she comes out holding a knife, don’t ask questions, just run. You’re faster, but she might make me kill you anyway.”

•   •   •

FROM WHERE Tomlinson stood on the side of the hill, he couldn’t see a road, but he knew a road was there when he noticed headlights ricocheting between the trees and sky. A bad road with lots of bumps, for a car traveling so fast. Beyond, to the southeast, distant flames were a candle in the darkness. A peasant’s house on fire, it looked like.

Shit-oh-dear. The Russian came into his mind. The Santero’s Key West wingman in the black Mercedes. But what was he, or anyone else, doing out here in Fumbuck, Cuba, at this hour?

Tomlinson didn’t need a watch to feel the starry weight of midnight.

His logician brain shifted to the phone in Figgy’s pocket while his extrasensory powers probed the horizon. Not easy because, first, his receptors had to pierce a veil of agony; a century of pain lingered here. His lens soon broke free and there was contact: heavy . . . very heavy—a human presence out there. A gelid void: intelligence with a functioning heart.

Was it Ford? The biologist, in certain moods, transmitted a similarly scary vibe. Possible. The message Tomlinson had left with the hotel doorman read En route biggest house in Plobacho to return what was taken. Meet there or No Más anchored Cojimar. PS: Giant Russki chasing us. Float on and watch your ass.

Tomlinson concentrated on the road and fine-tuned his reception. No . . . it wasn’t Ford. The biologist drove like an old woman, even in a rental. Yet, Ford was out there somewhere—a green aura, blue-tinted—and seemed to be pressing closer.

The cell phone, his logician mind reminded him. That’s the problem, dumbass. The phone Figgy’s carrying has a GPS in it.

Something else he noticed: the odor of woodsmoke, sudden and fresh. Very close. He changed angles and saw a spark spiral out of the bushes not far from where he stood. The chamber within was vented, and someone had lit a fire. Once again: shit-oh-dear.

Tomlinson tapped at the steel door, then opened it a crack. “Figgy . . . ? Oh, Figuerito, I think we might have company.”

No response. He flicked the lighter and went through into a hall made of rebar and concrete, walls three feet thick, with a ceiling so low he had to duck. It actually was a bomb shelter. A second steel door was open. Down a ramp, along another hall, where a light allowed him to pocket the Bic before his thumb blistered.

“Figgy? Uhh . . . Miz Casanova? I’m not armed, just a decent man trying to help a shipmate.”

He exited into a room that was a small office. A steel desk, military green, maps on two walls, kerosene lamps on hooks in the ceiling, only one lit. On a table, a portable shortwave radio next to a battery-operated phone, the old kind with a crank. Wire snaked through a hole in the wall—antennas. Another steel door at the back of the room was closed. The rivets reminded him of a watertight hatch on a ship.

Damn. No wonder Figgy couldn’t hear him. This was more than a bomb shelter. It was headquarters for a few high-ranking survivalists. Only two names came to mind—or three, counting Imelda Casanova. But why, during a nuclear war, would the Castro brothers sequester themselves with only one mistress?

They wouldn’t. In a space this small, mayhem could be guaranteed.

He placed the film canister on a chair and sniffed. Faint odor of lavender, and woodsmoke from the fire that had to be in an adjoining room. It was quiet down here below ground. A good spot for a nervous man to breathe deeply while his heart slowed to normal. On the desk by the radio was a logbook, pages yellow with age. He removed a lantern from its hook and flipped through a few entries, then several more. Ham radio gibberish, mostly, but one grabbed his attention:

25-10-62. Radio SWAN Island. Pro-fascista tráfico. U.S./CIA 19:23 hrs. Putas mentiras . . . All entered in a flowing, feminine hand.

Putas mentiras meant “lying whores.” The date was in transposed Latino: 25 October 1962. A dangerous period. The Cuban Missile Crisis. It was the Kennedy-Khrushchev era, when the world had teetered on the brink of nuclear holocaust.

Tomlinson considered the concrete fortress. Hell, no wonder they had built this place. There were probably similar bunkers spaced around Cuba in case bombs fell while the Castros were on the road. The logbook entry explained the letter Fidel had written on the day JFK died. Swan Island, as sailors who had transited the Canal knew, was off Honduras. Tomlinson hadn’t made the connection. Apparently, the CIA had transmitted radio propaganda from there.

The SWAN lies.

So what else was new?

Fidel had also instructed his mistress—perhaps his former mistress by then—to destroy everything. Imelda Casanova had obviously ignored those orders. Tomlinson closed the book and moved around the room. It was a small space, cluttered but orderly, and a treasure trove of Castro memorabilia. Somehow, Juan Rivera had learned that Figuerito had access to such things. He had bartered freedom in trade for blue-chip collectibles to be sold on the Internet.

Comrade, my ass, Tomlinson thought. Yet another soul bites the big green weenie.

On a shelf was a stack of stuff: a cartoon of Uncle Sam with fangs like Dracula, Look magazines, 1960 to ’63, Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, LBJ on the covers . . . Oh, and the Buddhist monk who had set himself ablaze to protest U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Very heavy and sad, sad mojo. Time had stopped in this bomb shelter. All inhabitants had turned to dust.

Stored in a box was happier news, the trophy from Figuerito’s photo: an ornate silver cup with seams like a baseball. Big; tarnished with a greenish black patina. Tomlinson lifted the trophy and read the inscription:

INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE CHAMPIONS

1959

That was all. The name of the winning team hadn’t been added. Inside the cup was a Miami Herald clipping from the same year. Dateline: Havana, Cuba.

During a game between the Havana Sugar Kings and Minneapolis Millers, a late-inning celebration degenerated into firecrackers and gunfire. Minnesota’s third-base coach, Frank Verdi, was struck, as was Leo Cardenas, the Sugar Kings’ shortstop. Neither was seriously injured, but three U.S.-born pitchers for the Kings fled the stadium and are still missing. The game and the series have been canceled according to . . .

Tomlinson stopped reading when he heard the door to the next room open.

“Figgy,” he said, turning. “Look what I found.” He hoisted the trophy.

Figuerito grinned and made a fist as if he’d just sunk a long putt. “Now the old woman has done two good things.”

“Yeah?” Tomlinson looked past him, seeing a woodstove and a table set with china for two. “Can I meet her?”

“That’s the first good thing,” the shortstop replied. “You don’t have to. She’s dead. Now there’s no promise to break when I show you what I’ve been lying about.”

Tomlinson was so untracked and confused—then fascinated by what awaited on the other side of the door—that he wasted several minutes gawking before he remembered to say, “Figgy, we’ve got to ditch the Santero’s cell phone. Or . . . how about we move our asses and hide?”

Anatol Kostikov, leaving Marta’s house, watched flames in his rearview mirror and ruminated over a likely investigative tagline: Sex deviant sets fire to destroy evidence.

Workable if he pitched the theory to the right Cuban official. Someone sloppy enough not to bother with DNA, or interviews, or details that had more to do with arson than sex crimes. The key was killing Vernum first; make it look like self-defense, then planting evidence enough to stifle an investigation. To hell with what anyone else thought or said. He was a senior Russian agent, by god, and Cuba, once again, was in his country’s debt.

On the passenger seat was a bag. It contained all the evidence he needed. Under the seat was another pint of vodka. He needed that, too, plus a few more pills.

The vodka went down with a nice burn.

On the dashboard, the GPS tracker marked the location where Vernum’s phone had gone dead ten minutes earlier. The would-be spy was two kilometers away, if pursued on foot, five kilometers by road, but driving was still the only choice. Stupid to leave his Mercedes near a crime scene. Plus, along with stomach cramps, Anatol now had something else to worry about. He was bleeding. Not badly, but enough. A bullet had furrowed the fat on his left side when a pistol magically appeared in Marta’s hands. She’d shot him. Fired three times, eyes closed, before he’d slapped her to the ground.

The Russian gulped from the bottle and watched the scene repeat itself in his head. The obnoxious brat screaming when he grabbed her, teeth snapping like an animal. Then the mother was there, her face ashen in the headlights, bringing her hands up, up, up, which should have been warning enough, but he had been complacent in a country that didn’t allow even Party members to own guns.

It was his only excuse for what happened next. Those scenes, Anatol did not want to replay in his mind. Among the worst was later, when he tried to put a bullet in the woman’s skull, but the stolen Glock was loaded with dummies that wouldn’t fire because even cops weren’t trusted in this tropic shithole nation. The Latina and girls had bolted, while he rushed to pilfer a few bullets before they got to the trees. The scene had stayed with him, Marta’s expression of horror, and the burden of his own sloppiness.

Goddamn . . . disgraceful. In the same day, he had been robbed in a public restroom, then shot by a peasant female. Him, Anatol, the descendant of legendary Cossack warriors.

To spare his reputation, if nothing else, he had to find Vernum. This time, do every little thing right. Place the evidence just so and cover his tracks. Once that was done, he was free to turn his attention to Fidel’s letters, then the CIA agent. If he was methodical—and his luck changed—he might even ship home an antique Harley or three when his job was done.

Another gulp of vodka allowed him to linger on the lone masterstroke in this long, shitty day. After so many screwups, he had stepped back and rallied. The seasoned professional had asked himself a professional’s question: How would a sexual deviant kill three victims and cover his tracks?

The resulting finesse was a nice touch he would share with that worm Vernum.

The answer: burn them all alive.

•   •   •

ANATOL SKIRTED a cluster of trees, his eyes on the GPS tracker, while the house burned in the far, far distance. He was so intent on his quarry that had it not been for the scent of blood, he would have kept going up the hill, past a derelict chimney, then another sixty meters.

Metallic iodine and brass. Distinctive, that odor, if the sample was large enough. Some of his most satisfying achievements were linked to the smell of blood, but it could also signal danger.

He crouched and pocketed the tracker but not the pistol. Even though he had dimmed the LED screen, his vision required several seconds to adjust. Head tilted, he inhaled . . . moved a few steps; sniffed again, and followed his nose into the trees. A penlight came out and threw a red beam. On a blanket were cups, seashells, and a sunflower as if spread for a picnic. A couple of pumpkin-like vessels nearby. Then what looked like an empty garbage bag, but it wasn’t a bag—it was the goddamn stupid Santero.

I can make this work, Anatol told himself. He believed that until he was standing over Vernum and saw how the would-be spy had died.

Idiot. What brand of stupid sex deviant allowed himself to be wired to a tree so an even crazier sex deviant could cut off his cock? Closer inspection added to the puzzle. Vernum’s wrists showed abrasions, but his hands were free, and there were no defensive wounds. So . . . he had been unconscious during the assault, or—Anatol had to project himself into the mind of a sick deviant—or Vernum was such a masochist, he had welcomed his own mutilation.

Either way, it would be tough to convince authorities that the murderer of two cops and an old man had, while taking a breather, parted with his own cock willingly.

Shit.

Profanity was better in Russian. He stomped away from the body, hissing, “Der’mo. Der’mo. Der’mo!” Then the finale: “Eto pizdets!”

Total screwed-up madness. This sort of crap didn’t happen to Anatol Kostikov. Never had he experienced such a streak of bad luck.

To hell with it. Vernum had to be the fall guy. There was no other way. If a senior Russian intelligence agent couldn’t fool these Caribbean hicks, who could?

He stretched on surgical gloves. Then did a slow recon of the area in darkness. Insects and frogs cloaked the sound of his weight. He moved from tree to tree, knelt for long seconds in the weeds. In the distance, the saffron flicker of Marta’s house was useful. With only four bullets in his gun, a brighter backdrop made for better target acquisition.

There was no target. Even so, Anatol returned to the corpse, thinking, Someone is out there.

It was more than intuition. Vernum’s body was still warm.

He popped the last of the wire bindings and went to work. The scenario was this: he had surprised the Cuban, who was with another sex deviant. They had bragged about assaulting some local girls and their mother. Because of his status with the embassy, Anatol had an obligation to Cuban law. They had argued. Vernum had shot him. As to how the idiot got his cock cut off, why ask a respected Russian agent? No goddamn idea—that must have happened after he’d left to seek medical attention.

Into Vernum’s hand went the little Sig Sauer pistol taken from Marta. Fingerprints would register on the barrel even though the dead hand failed to grip it. Three brass casings were scattered nearby. He added subtle touches: a bit of hair from Marta’s brush, hair from the two girls. Then a swatch of cloth from the obnoxious brat’s pink-and-white pajamas, and a robe he had torn off the mother—this was just before the goddamn Glock had misfired. He spattered each with Vernum’s blood—just a little—then smeared footprints.

Enough.

He took out the GPS tracker and went up the hill. Stopped twice to grimace and clutch his side. The bullet wound was insignificant. The cramps had returned.

•   •   •

A BOMB SHELTER . . .

Anatol recognized the construction immediately. A Type 4, Level 1-A Complete, designed by Russian engineers, then reassembled in Cuba. He wasn’t old enough to have served during that period, but he was old enough to remember, and to appreciate, similar shelters he had seen on the island and in what was becoming the New Soviet Union.

Who knew? Maybe bomb shelters would be needed again.

He started down the ramp, then dropped to a knee and waited, pistol ready. Someone was following him. He felt sure, even though he hadn’t seen or heard anything. On a night as dark as this, there were two possible explanations: he was either paranoid or there was someone out there wearing night vision. Not the cheap third-generation stuff either. CIA-quality.

Yeah. To a thirty-year vet of clandestine services, the explanation felt right.

Under any other circumstances, he would have called his contact at Cuban intelligence. The DGI could have a chopper here with an ops team hanging out the doors before the American escaped. But he couldn’t risk that. Not now, with Vernum lying out there, dead and dickless, and Marta’s house ablaze.

A better idea was to drop everything and turn the tables. Hunt the hunter. He was, after all, the expert who had taught the world’s elite to track and kill. In his soul, in his marrow, that’s what he wanted to do. But there was another problem: the stomach cramps were worsening. The last time Vernum’s phone had pinged a signal was twenty-eight minutes ago. The ping had originated from here, the entrance of the shelter, but there was no guarantee the phone was somewhere inside.

Vernum certainly was not.

To hell with the phone. A Type 4 shelter contained everything four or fewer people needed to survive a nuclear attack. That included food, storage, sleeping cells, a kitchenette with woodstove—which was not a requirement in Cuba—and, of course, a chemical toilet with a septic tank.

That’s what Anatol required, a toilet, and he required it soon.

Three minutes he stood guard, which was less than protocol demanded, then slipped inside—but, first, removed the padlock and chain to reduce the risk of being trapped within. Clearing a room couldn’t be rushed, especially a room already lit by a kerosene lantern. Someone had been here, or was still here—Vernum’s killer or killers, judging from footprints. Bloody smudges suggested a person with small shoes had been accompanied by a man with feet almost thirty centimeters long. He peered around a concrete portal, then followed his pistol into an office area crammed with old military furniture and hardware.

Fidel, he thought, or Raúl. This was one of their hideouts.

It made sense. Their mistress Imelda Casanova lived nearby.

Check under desk and table. Stop, listen, sniff the air. All clear, and the door to the next room was open wide. He repeated the process and entered the kitchenette, where the woodstove was still burning. But why on a balmy November night?