whitecaps in our path. Ninety miles due north was Key West, but our heading would take us east of the curving chain of islands. I stood on the deck in my jeans and Dolphins jersey, watching the whitecaps appear, build, and die. Overhead, four U.S. Air Force jets streaked in formation, heading back to Guantanamo.
Soto had disappeared into the hold, telling me to wait for him. The old freighter pitched gently through the small waves, the motion making me sleepy. A crewman offered me a can of guava juice and a piece of sugary pastry.
Half an hour passed before Soto reappeared and greeted me with a silent nod. We stood on deck, shoulder to shoulder, elbows leaning on the rail, watching the waves break, staring at the sea. Studying the great green depths quiets a man. We look into our species’ past, the beginning of life in the salty waters, and it stills us. The endless vista compels contemplation. Beneath the surface, the sea teems with life.
And danger.
And death.
Finally, I said, “If my bearings are right, Andros Island is off to our east.”
“ Si.”
“If we continue this heading, we’ll hit Grand Bahama Island tomorrow morning.”
“ Si.”
“We’re taking the art to the Bahamas?”
“No.”
Soto drew a Partagas from one of four pockets in his guayabera. He had trouble lighting it, so I helped out, cupping my hands around his, shielding the wind with my back. We stood that way a moment, huddled together, and he looked up, studying me intently. Did those dark eyes seem to soften for just a moment?
“Jacobo, have you lived a full life?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Do you have any regrets?”
Still, I looked at the sea.
Regrets.
Who hasn’t looked back and considered the road not taken? We’re not handed an itinerary when we start out. Most of us get where we’re going by accident. A kind word from a math teacher, and the student aims, knowingly or not, toward engineering. A thoughtless rebuke and the young violinist surrenders his dream.
If we’re lucky, we take a path where we can do some good along the way. My first career had little social utility, other than providing televised entertainment interrupted by sixty-second accolades to the glory of various beers, cars, and insurance companies. My second career has even less. Now, I’m one of the players in a game where justice is dispensed nearly as often as the Red Sea is parted.
Regrets.
I wish I’d been faster then, smarter now. I wish I could paint a picture or build a bridge. I wish there was a woman-just one-who had lasted. A best friend and only lover, a soulmate, not a cellmate.
After a moment, I said, “We all have our regrets.”
“Have you accomplished all you have wanted? Have you left your mark?”
“My name’s not in the NFL record book,” I told him, “and I doubt it will be in any history books.”
“Perhaps you are wrong.” But he said it in a whisper I barely heard above the droning of the diesels and the whine of the tropical wind.
D usk came quickly, and still we stood, side by side, as the sky deepened to a dark purple, and the light softened. The whitecaps were tinged with pink from the fading light. “You think I am misguided, a foolish, deformed old man living in the past,” Soto said.
I didn’t know if it was a question. “You’ve confused me. First I thought you were a rabid anticommunist, a right-wing nut like so many of the exilado s in Miami. Then, I find out you’re a charter member of the Fidel Castro fan club. Now, I don’t know what’s up your sleeve.”
“Nothing!” he exclaimed, pointing to his empty right sleeve flapping in the breeze.
It was a silly joke, and so out of character for the dour Cuban that it convulsed me. And then him. Maybe it had been the tension of the day. I didn’t know. We stood there together, sharing the moment of a Caribbean sunset, laughing into the wind. He was puffing a cigar now, its smoke whipping away.
I watched the setting sun, which appeared off the bow. “We’re angling to the west.”
“ Si.”
I tried to figure how many miles we had covered. If I kept this up, I was going to qualify for a Sea Scout badge. “We’re headed to Miami!”
Soto didn’t say a word.
“You pulled a double whammy. You’re taking the art to Miami. You’ve got Foley under house arrest or something. All that Castro-as-demigod was your cover. You’re recovering the money and the art. You’re still a CIA operative.”
Still, he was silent.
A strange bundle of emotions. Anger. I’d been double-crossed. The government had never meant to honor its deal with Foley, and I was part of the deception, even if I didn’t know it. But just a bit of exhilaration, too. A sense of awe at how slickly they’d done it, turned the tables on the biggest thief in history. To say nothing of his formerly ten-million-dollar lawyer.
“We are headed to Miami,” Soto said. “But if the rest of your theory is correct, if the U.S. recovers the money, why did Fidel assist us? Why do we have the use of Cuban troops and a Cuban crew, and why were we permitted to leave the island when Foley’s deal was to share the riches with the Castro government?”
I didn’t know. What was it Foley had said? That I was half right, as usual. “Maybe the State Department made a deal,” I guessed. “Castro gives up the money and the art, and the U.S. drops the trade embargo.”
“Politically infeasible,” Soto said. We stood quietly another moment, listening to the slappity-slap of the waves against the hull. “Think. You have come to know me. What is it I would do with the full consent of Fidel?”
“I can’t figure it out. If you’re returning the art-”
“I never said I was returning it.”
He saw I didn’t understand, so he motioned me to follow him. We circled the deck and took a ladder into the hold. Below deck, the steel bulkheads rattled with engine vibrations, and the air stank of sweat, grease, and fuel. Soto turned a wheel at a steel hatch, and we stepped into the cargo compartment. One of the crewmen, a skinny, olive-skinned man who hadn’t shaved this week, sat at the wooden table. What looked like an oversize car battery was at his feet, a simple electrical panel in front of him. On the deck was a spool of white wire. Or rather, half a spool. The rest was strung across the deck and around the steel containers that held an unfathomable fortune. The other end was connected to the battery, which, in turn, was connected to the electrical panel. The crewman had a shotgun in his lap.
I know what it was, but I couldn’t say it. Soto did me the favor. “Plastiques.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. He was right. I had come to know him.
I could make a revolutionary statement the world would never forget.
It hadn’t meant anything then, but it did now. The crewman shifted in his chair and cradled the shotgun. I listened to a pump below us and Soto’s breathing next to me.
“I was wrong,” I admitted. “I figured there were only three choices: Give the art to the Americans, to the Russians, or to Fidel. I never thought you’d destroy it. But for you, it really is a double whammy. Castro gets the two hundred million to buy bicycles and bread, and you get to make the greatest revolutionary statement of all time.”
“ Lo entiendes? So you understand?”
“Maybe not all of it. But it has something to do with destroying objects of bourgeois fascination. While the peasants were starving, the nobility had jewelers making diamond-studded clocks. Am I on the right track?”
“Yes, but that is not all. With one fiery blast, I will show the world the value of its gilded objects. I will blow asunder the worthless canvas and meaningless gold. I will turn your silver chalices and precious pearls into shrapnel. I will take five hundred years of decadence and vanity and turn it to silt at the bottom of the sea. And the two of us will join it there.”
