Red Angel

so?”

“Okay. Why?”

Martinez glanced at Adrianna, then back at Devlin. “The people,” he said. “All Cubans love each other. And this island is the heart of all of us. All the people. So we love it as if it was one of us. Because it is.”

Devlin shook his head. The man was unbelievably exasperating. He even talked with a shrug. “And Castro?” he asked. “Does everybody love Fidel?”

Martinez nodded emphatically, smiling now at the edge in Devlin’s voice. “Yes. Everyone loves Fidel. He is a great hero, who loves the people even more than we love each other. And if he had died ten years ago, Cuba would be a better place today.”

Devlin was startled by the statement. “I see a prison cell with your name on it, Major.”

Martinez laughed. “No, that will not happen. At least not for speaking ill of Fidel. He knows people are angry with him. He simply believes we are children, and he knows what is best for us. If I go to prison, it will be for other things.”

“Like helping us?” Adrianna asked.

He looked at her and shrugged again. “Si. Maybe that could be a problem. And, again, maybe it will be a problem for Colonel Cabrera.” He turned back to Devlin. “There is an old joke about Cuba. It tells of God creating the world. In the north, He created beautiful mountains and valleys, wonderful lakes of clear, clean water. Then he told Saint Peter that he must put in something bad so it would not be perfect. So he added cold and snow and ice. Very bad, muy malo, no? Then he created the southern lands, with lush tropical forests, and wonderful food just growing from the trees. And Saint Peter said, ‘God, this is perfect.’ So God added dangerous animals and poisonous snakes. Again, very bad.”

The smile on Martinez’s face widened. “Then God created a magnificent island. A paradise with beautiful beaches and warm weather. Fruits that you could pick from the trees. No dangerous animals. No poisonous snakes. Perfect. And Saint Peter said, ‘But, God, you have forgotten something bad. This island is too perfect.’ And God said, ‘No. It will not be perfect. On this island I will put Cubans.’”

Adrianna smiled for the first time that morning. “So you’re telling us that Cubans are difficult.”

Martinez nodded in mock gravity. “Very difficult. But also very loving, and very tolerant of each other. You see, we only want two things. We want to remain Cuban, and we want to live decently. Fidel gave us both.” He paused. “For a time.” His smile turned regretful. “After the revolution, for the first time in our history, we lived without two things that had always been part of Cuban history. Foreign domination and an oligarchy that kept the masses poor and sick and ignorant.”

He waved away an objection he knew Devlin would make. “Oh, I know. You will say our socialist experiment was dominated by the Soviets. But to us, it was a matter of manipulating the Soviets into giving us what we needed.” He laughed. “And, remember, my friend, at the time no one else, and certainly not the United States, wanted to give us anything at all. So we had little choice. We knew what the Soviets wanted, and we knew we would never give it to them. Instead we played the Soviet game, and they gave us everything we wanted. And today, we have the highest literacy rate in all of Latin America. Today, eighty percent of our people own their homes. Today, there is free medical care for everyone who needs it. And, in the end, I think you will agree that the Soviets”-he paused to give Devlin another Cuban shrug-“well, the Soviets, they got nada, nothing at all.”

Devlin raised his chin toward the street. “This is not paradise, my friend.”

Martinez shook his head. “No, it is not. The world has changed, and Fidel has been unable to change with it. He is like an old horse who keeps returning to the same pasture because once there was grass there. But there is no more grass in this old pasture of ours. And the people know this, and realize that we must be part of this new and different world. But we must also keep what Fidel has given us, what Cuba has fought so hard to get. We must remain a Cuba for Cubans. And we must never again allow an oligarchy to oppress the one thing that makes Cuba worthy of existence-its people.”

“Tell me what’s wrong with your country,” Devlin said.

“Ah, many things,” Martinez answered. “First is repression, of course. We are not free to come and go as we would wish. Next is this dual economy that has been dropped on us like a stone. Today, we have a peso economy and a dollar economy. Two separate worlds.” He waved his arm in a large circle. “I can take you to dollar stores, where everything must be purchased in U.S. currency. They are magnificent stores that are the same as stores in your country. Then I can take you to peso stores, where Cubans must buy in our currency. They are the poorest stores of the poor, where little is available.”

Martinez raised a lecturing finger. “Now, in the past, Cubans could only hold pesos, never dollars. Dollars were only for tourists. The system was designed to bring money into our country, to prop up our failing economy. It was illegal for a Cuban to even have a dollar in his pocket. But the peso was worth nothing, and this created impossible hardships. It also told us that what we had, what was just for Cubans, was worthless.”

Martinez’s eyes seemed to fill with sadness, and he drew a long breath before he continued. “So the law was changed, and Cubans were allowed to have dollars. Now, of course, everything of value requires dollars. Everyone needs dollars to live decently, and they will do anything they can to get these dollars.”

Devlin thought of the beautiful young prostitutes parading past the hotel each night, the flyers he had seen, advertising paradores, the private, dollar-only restaurants people ran in their homes, the young and the elderly, together, peddling anything they could on the streets-cafe, Granma, a box of cigars, senor. Only thirty dollars.

“Sounds like a rotten system,” he said.

“Si. As I said before in my little joke: Nothing is allowed to be perfect. There must be something muy malo, no? And it will remain so until we have a more open economy.” Again, he raised his finger. “But before that can happen, there is the great trick we must learn to do. How to open our economy and still keep the good we have given to the people. If we cannot do this trick, perhaps it is better to suffer as we are.”

Ollie Pitts walked toward the table. “Are we suffering this morning?” he asked.

Devlin glanced up at him, taking in the satisfied vision of a man well fed. Pitts had spent the last hour in the hotel restaurant, having declined to join them for a continental breakfast on the terrace, and there was little doubt he had eaten everything in sight. It was, after all, on the arm-Devlin’s arm. A free meal. Irresistible to a cop. Something akin to bears and honey.

Martinez smiled up at him. “In Cuba, we accept suffering. It is an unfortunate part of our nature.”

“Yeah, well, it ain’t part of my nature,” Pitts said. “Suffering sucks. Anybody makes you suffer, you should break something on their body.”

Adrianna rolled her eyes. “Do you have any more words of wisdom, Detective?”

Pitts held his hands out at his sides, as if accepting adulation. “Maybe later,” he said.

Adrianna shook her head. “I tingle in anticipation.”

Martinez placed both palms on the table. “Well, we must go, in any event.” He pushed himself up. “As you requested last night, I have made arrangements for all of us to fly to Santiago de Cuba at noon today. That will give us adequate time to meet with Colonel Cabrera at ten, as he requested. It will also give us time to do as Plante Firme advised.”

“The cemetery,” Devlin said.

“Si. So we can gather soil from the would-be grave of our Red Angel.”

The Necropolis de Colon befit its name, a city of the dead that occupied more than fifty square blocks in the heart of Havana. It was quite a sight to come upon, Devlin thought, especially in a communist country. It was surrounded by a high, ocher-colored wall, emblazoned with white crosses, and the entrance was a massive sixty- foot arch, topped with statues depicting the Virgin Mary and other Catholic saints.

Devlin took in the statues and white crosses, then turned to Martinez. “For a communist, your Comandante seems remarkably tolerant of religion.”

Martinez gave his mustache a conspiratorial stroke. “Let us say he received a message from God.”

“How so?” Adrianna asked.

“You have seen the great, seventy-foot statue of Christ that overlooks Havana harbor?”