Hostage in Havana

He lit a small cigar.

“They will work on you in the crudest of ways. No sleep, a lot of physical pain, disorientation, no days or nights, either a hood over your head or the white light of the cells nonstop for weeks. It will be a slow contest between you going insane and breaking physically. And then of course,” Mejias continued, “there are other things. Female prisoners are sometimes subjected to injections of drugs to make them physically dependent. They become the forcible mistresses of certain guards. Officially, this does not go on in the socialist paradise, but I have seen it myself. You are a very pretty woman. I can only shudder at what could happen to you in the penal system.”

“I don’t know what you want from me,” Alex said.

“An admission of guilt,” he said. “You’ve been under surveillance since you arrived in Havana,” he said. “From Havana to Cojimar. Do you think we cannot track from the air? Do you think we are backward here?” He paused. “Where did you go after Cojimar?” he asked. “Back to Havana or some other place of interest?” She squeezed her eyes shut. He paused again. “Who is the man whose residence you were leaving when we arrested you?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“But you spent the night with him.”

“We met at a hotel. We had some drinks. That’s all.”

“You’re a liar.”

A thought was upon her, a desperate one. She had one card to play and almost resisted playing it, for if it failed she had nothing left.

“Figaro,” she said.

“What?” he answered rudely.

“You mentioned Spain before. There is an opera. The Barber of Seville.”

“I hate opera,” he snapped. He was suddenly angry. “Pomp and extravagance, the indulgence of the capitalist ruling classes. My wife listens to opera. Drives me out of the house with it! Maybe I should lock her up too. Why do you even mention it, opera?”

“I don’t know,” she said softly. “It was just a thing to say.”

“Why do you fail to understand the gravity of your situation?” he pressed. “No one outside of Cuba knows where you are. I am your only chance, and you are babbling, giving me nothing. I need a confession from you,” he said. “Who are you, who came to Cuba with you, and what is your purpose?”

She stayed silent.

“All right,” he said. “Have it the way you wish. He reached to a side drawer of his desk and pulled out a box, the type used to hold evidence. He opened it. He pulled from it her credit cards and her Mexican passport and laid them on the center of the desk. Then he pulled out her Walther and set it on the table with a loud flourish. The magazine had been removed.

“These are the tools of a saboteur.” He pushed them around disdainfully. “Why don’t you at least identify the agency that sent you to Cuba? CIA? A nod will suffice and get you a better cell, a private one.”

Nothing from Alex.

“You will tell me nothing, but I will tell you this,” Mejias said. “The airplane that came to take you back to America left the country without you this morning. The aging defector, the man you came to get, Roland Violette, was on it. He is mentally ill and no use to anyone. He also murdered an old adversary in love the other night in Havana. A Frenchman. So of course Violette wished to flee. Also on the plane was the man who came into Cuba with you. His name is Paul Guarneri. He sends his regards, I would suppose, as he left you behind to face the wrath of Cuban law. How do you like that?”

She refused to answer, much less believe what she was hearing.

“Where were you six nights ago?” he asked.

“I don’t remember,” she said with a shrug.

“You don’t remember!” His voice rose sharply in anger. “You don’t remember? Six nights ago a patriotic Cuban named Julio Garcia was shot to death as he peaceably ate his dinner at a restaurant in Habana Vieja. A single assassin walked in, a man connected with American gangsters, and shot him in the face with a Browning .38 special. You are telling me that you have no knowledge of this? Do you insist you were nowhere near the scene of the murder?”

“Yes, I do!” she said. “I had nothing to do with anything like that!”

“The murder was done by your gangster friend to settle an old family grudge. So you are linked to that also, as well as the man who committed the murder of a patriotic Cuban! That is what we have on you. Illegal entry into Cuba. Sabotage. Espionage. Gangsterismo. Links to two homicides. What do you say? You and you alone have been left behind to face the wrath of the law.”

She looked up.

“I have nothing to say. Speak to my embassy.”

“If you think you will be spared a firing squad because you’re a woman,” he said, “think again!”

“I have nothing to say,” she said softly.

“We will speak again,” he said. “You are my prisoner. Indefinitely.”

In a fury, he stood. He gathered his evidence and went to the door.

He shouted profanely to his guards who were a short distance down the hall. Then two new ones appeared. They each took Alex by an arm and roughly ripped her from her chair. They marched her down several unfamiliar corridors and opened an iron door that led to a small cell. They pushed her in. The door slammed behind her.

There was a sink against one wall, a mattress and a hole in the cement floor. There was one window, way up high, maybe twelve feet off the ground. There was no way she could get to it, nor would she have been able to get through it.

She was in isolation but had no idea for how long. She sat on the stone floor, let her face sink into her hands and prayed as she hadn’t prayed in months. Then she broke down completely and cried.

SIXTY-ONE

For the next two days, Alex remained in isolation. A brutal overhead light burned all the time. Breakfast was served at 5:00 a.m., a piece of bread, a banana, and a dirty plastic bottle filled with water. The water contained particles of something and had a strange tint to it.

Strangely, there was no more questioning. Alex feared that her captors, in their incompetent but Third-World way, were trying to find out more about who she was. Maybe Paul hadn’t really fled. Maybe they were searching for him. All she knew was that her head was turning mushy. Thoughts of suicide returned to her, like an old, unwelcome adversary, an evil black spirit, that she had already defeated once in the dark days after Kiev.

Against these dark impulses, she tried to weigh everything that her Christian faith had brought to her: having been on the threshold of suicide before, she was later grateful for not having pulled a trigger. But where was God now?

The old phrase came back: a permanent solution to a temporary problem. But how temporary was this problem? Thirty years’ worth of temporary? Would her government really get her back? Had Paul Guarneri set her up? Had he really killed a man in Havana perhaps to avenge an old family grievance? Could she believe a single word that Major Mejias had said? Or would she have been wise to believe every word of it?

In her tiny cell, as her mind tilted and rambled, she looked for ways to kill herself – theoretically, at least. She saw none, other than a hunger strike. But then, if she died in custody, wouldn’t that just be a victory for those who’d imprisoned her? A stubborn streak started to kick against her suicidal impulses. Her spirits seesawed by the hour.

On the third day she was taken out of her cell with four other women.

They were marched to a shower and told to disrobe. A male guard came by, amused, and sprayed them for lice. Then they were led to the next chamber, which was a shower. They were given a crude piece of industrial soap and told they had five minutes to wash as two fat matrons stood at the portal to the showers and watched.

The five-minute limit was the first mention of time since she had arrived. Time: she wondered if her existence over the last few days presaged the coming years.