of T-shirts. The store also had some fresh underwear. Alex used the family bedroom to change and tried to keep her gun well hidden, though she wasn’t sure she had. Ramona had a twelve-year-old daughter who helped.
Ramona used her sewing skills to adjust the waist on one of the skirts. Within minutes all three women were laughing as old friends might.
There were some baseball caps there too, and Alex picked one. She avoided American logos and opted for one from a Mexican professional baseball team.
Ramona wouldn’t let Alex leave until she had also repaired the damage to Alex’s clothes. She washed out the area that had been spoiled with sand and dirt, then went to work with a needle and thread. Alex added a pair of sneakers that fit and also saw a used tote bag. She offered to buy it. Ramona let it go for the equivalent of five dollars.
In the end, Alex wore new clothing out the door.
“I have Mexican pesos and Cuban pesos,” Alex said. “Which do you wish?”
There was a pause. Ramona and Maria exchanged a conspiratorial smile.
“Do you maybe have American dollars?” Ramona asked.
Alex paused. “I might have a few,” she said. “You’d prefer those?” Ramona nodded, not surprisingly. “How many do you want?”
Ramona couldn’t bring herself to ask for such an extravagant amount as she had in mind. So, with a giggle, she wrote the number on a pad and showed it to Alex.
Thirty-five dollars. She looked as if she were ready to bargain.
But Alex exuded gratitude, not a cheap streak.
Later that afternoon, Maria and Alex strolled back to the house.
Behind the house was a makeshift shower stall for bathing. There would be no hot water. Maria warned that the warmth of the day would soon be gone and the sea breezes made bathing chilly at night. So it was best to shower before their late dinner, while the sun was still on the back of the house.
The water pump wasn’t working, Maria warned further, and the showerhead was out of order. But the bathing area would drain properly. So the family directed Alex to the well, where she drew four buckets of water. Guillermo helped carry the water to the bathing area. There was a single shower curtain, badly torn, behind which Alex could shield herself from two directions only, but the family gave her privacy. Maria handed her a small bar of Camay soap, the type found in downscale American motels.
Alex stashed her new tote bag and clothes by the shower stall, safely away from the water. She pulled the curtain and undressed. Maria gave her a towel, then left. Alex hung the towel on an exposed nail outside the stall and washed quickly. She was out of everyone’s view. The cool water, fresh air, and soap on her body refreshed her. She closed her eyes and for a moment savored the notion that she had survived the day and might even survive the journey, though the uncertainty about Paul’s fate gnawed at her.
Abruptly, she heard a male voice on the other side of the curtain, so close that it jarred her.
Alex grabbed the towel and covered herself. But it was only Guillermo, the teenager.
Guillermo flipped the second towel up to where it hung over the bar of the shower curtain. Peeking through one of the rips in the curtain, Alex could see that the boy, bashful, was looking the other way. Alex suppressed a smile. She finished her shower and dressed in her new clothes.
She came back inside, still functioning in an information void of what had transpired the previous morning. She knew the rumors that the locals were spreading, but questions haunted her: Was Paul dead? What was the larger picture? Did Washington yet know what had happened? Who was looking for her? Cuban police, Cuban security? Violette? Figaro? Anyone?
As for Roland Violette, Alex had carefully memorized the contact procedures. She had little choice but to persist in her initial assignment until it blew up completely. But ugly scenarios further presented themselves. What if, by contacting Violette, she was walking further into a trap? What if the CIA wasn’t leveling on their intentions with him. There were plenty of questions and some fly-by-night morality. But no answers emerged.
That evening, as the sun was setting, the family took Alex to a small cafe in town. Alex went warily, not wishing to be spotted by police, but the hour passed uneventfully, during which she watched the street from a corner table. Working men knocked back slugs of rum in the bar lit by fluorescent light. She listened as dominos banged on tables. She tried to tune in on the bawdy passionate conversations among lovers and strangers. The ever-present whiff of
Later, Alex sat in the small living room with her new friends and they chatted. Maria seemed to be preoccupied with correspondence that she was writing by hand. They had no extra bedroom for her, so when they retired to their single bedroom at about 11:00 p.m., Alex slept on the sofa.
FORTY-FIVE
At a side-street cafe in Old Havana, shortly before midnight, business was finally slacking off. Gradually the cafe El Rincon Cubano emptied out. Two couples still sat at separate tables, as well as a single man in a suit, reading a newspaper. At a table in the rear sat an old revolutionary named Garcia, drinking by himself. One of the couples rose and left, followed by the man who’d been reading the newspaper. Then the other couple started smooching, but soon they got up and left as well. Watching all this was yet another man at the bar, alone, nursing a
Jose, the bartender, spoke to the barfly. “I’m going to close,” he said. “Time for everyone to go home.”
The final drinker nodded. “May I finish?” he asked politely.
“You may finish,” Jose answered.
The drinker turned to the window and spotted a man lurking outside. He checked to see if Garcia was still at the rear table. A figure appeared at the door and entered. The man at the bar looked at the new arrival and gave a decisive nod.
Jose was about to speak when the man at the bar drew a pistol, held it low across the bar, and aimed it at Jose. He raised a finger to his lips to indicate silence. Everything would be okay if Jose remained silent.
Meanwhile, the lone man in the suit got up, yawned, and stretched. Manuel Perez closed the door behind him. He went straight for Garcia, who was straightening his jacket.
What he wanted was not conversation. Perez reached a hand into his jacket and quickly pulled it out again. It now held a small powerful pistol, one of those Italian ones that are just perfect for killing in tight areas.
Garcia yelled in terror when he saw the weapon. He tried to bolt but Perez fired. The first bullet caught the old revolutionary in the stomach and hurled him backward over a table. Then Perez pounced on his fallen prey and pushed the nose of the pistol to Garcia’s head. He fired point blank.
Two loud pops got the job done.
Perez turned and was quickly out the door. His accomplice gave Jose a curt nod and packed away his own pistol. He was out the door as quickly as Perez, disappearing into the shadows of a pleasant summer night in Havana.
Alex tried to sleep, but a violent fight between two feral cats just beyond the open screened window woke her up at 2:00 a.m. The animals screamed like banshees and the brawl recurred around 3:40. The next morning at 5:00 a.m., sunlight flowed in brilliant yellow into the living room through the same window, followed by the incessant crowing of several roosters.
The Cuban family gave her breakfast. At 8:00 a.m., Guillermo walked her to the bus stop on the road that led out of the village and westward into the town of San Ferrer. He explained that she should go to San Ferrer first,
