make his romp in the graveyard. We would connect you to Roland Violette, and the CIA would be allowed to settle their long-standing grievance with him. All the events came together at once and allowed me the perfect moment to leave Cuba, a moment that hadn’t existed previously and would not have lasted indefinitely. Too bad the hotheads on the boat started shooting at us. They would have been home to Miami in a few days if they’d only surrendered.”
“So when I arrived on the beach, you knew I was the one who was there to bring you to America,” she said.
“That is correct. I wished to take you into custody. I was constantly being watched by secret police. So I wished to do my job and keep you under my personal supervision. Then we could both leave. Along with Juanita, of course.”
“The CIA people told me they didn’t know who you were. They only knew a code name. That was true?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “There are traitors everywhere. If Cuban intelligence knew there was a major in the militia who wished to defect, I would be dead now. That’s why they needed to send somebody and let me find him. Or her.”
“Then why didn’t you arrest me in the bar of the Ambos Mundos?” Alex asked. “We were
“Impossible.”
“Why?”
“There were two men at the bar. Undercover police. Not very good and not very undercover. But they report to the federal authorities. They would have taken you away right then. Better to make a night-time arrest, fill the files with paperwork, and move you around at my whim until we were ready to leave.”
Alex switched to English. “And after I was in custody and the original escape dates were blown?” she asked. “Who arranged a new date for the CIA to make the pickup?” She smiled. “I’m guessing it was the only person who really knew when the prisoner, me, would be ready to escape,” she said.
Mejias smiled. Juanita retained her silence. If Senora Mejias spoke English, she didn’t let on.
“Of course,” he said.
“You,” Alex said.
Mejias nodded.
SIXTY-FOUR
Alex took the train back to New York that evening, but she was in no mood to face her office anytime soon. She made an appointment with Christophe Chatton of the Swiss Bank and went to visit her money. She wanted to see what would happen, how she would be received, and in truth, if it was all still there.
It was. She rearranged some of the accounts so she could accrue better interest. In fantasy, she played with the idea of buying a condo in Maui or a race horse, then decided against both. But for the first time, she fully understood that she was a wealthy woman, although she knew in her heart that wealth was never measured by a bank balance.
On that same afternoon, to put to rest some final perplexities about Cuba, she phoned Paul Guarneri. They arranged to meet in Brooklyn and take a walk together on the promenade across the bay from Manhattan. Alex worked on him for a while, allowed him to take her hand for the stroll, and got him talking.
Long ago, he said, when he had been just old enough to begin to understand such things and had repaired his relationship with his father, the old man had imparted some wisdom.
“If anyone ever comes after me,” his father had said, “it won’t be from America. It will be from Cuba.” It was the 1970s after all, Paul explained, and people were looking into the dirty secrets from the 1960s. Castro and Kennedy. Hookers and hotel rooms, cash and casinos, Jimmy Fratianno. Santo Trafficante. Judith Exner and Jimmy Roselli.
“The whole venal backbiting worthless load of them,” Guarneri called them.
As Paul and Alex walked along the promenade, he opened up to her as never before. It was a bright summer day with low humidity, perfect for a game at one of the new ballparks or an afternoon at Aqueduct, had the old man been around. It was equally perfect for skaters, strollers, and joggers.
Joseph Guarneri had made his peace with the American mob and was allowed a quiet retirement, his son explained. Even more quietly, however, shortly before his premature death, he was talking to investigators from the U.S. Congress about the Cuban connection with the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
“My father had theories and personal stories,” Paul said. “They weren’t backed by any evidence, but if true they filled in some dirty little pieces of history. You can only invade an island, poison cigars, hire homicidal mistresses, and plant contagious scuba gear for so long before the opposition hits you back.”
“True enough,” Alex said.
“Castro hated my father personally,” Paul said. “Maybe no more than any other North American gangster, but I had the idea it may have been over a woman. Maybe even my mother. Who knows now? Everyone’s dead. My father once told me, ‘Castro’s got a man named Julio Garcia who’s been assigned to kill me.’ “
Paul paused, admired the skyline, took in some air, and then continued. “We lived under the shadow of that for a long time. Garcia lived in Dallas and New Orleans in the 1960s. He took care of a lot of Castro’s dirty work in the U.S. He knew Lee Harvey Oswald personally. Also knew Che and E. Howard Hunt. That’s what my father used to tell me. What do you make of that?”
“Intriguing,” she said.
“Later on, after my father was murdered, there was some underworld scuttlebutt. Garcia had gone back to Cuba. Castro gave him some sort of medal. Top stuff, was what I heard. Hero of the revolution and all that.”
“But what direction does that go in?” Alex asked. “Does that mean that you went to Cuba to capture Garcia? Or kill him, like Major Mejias says?”
“I went there to kill him,” Guarneri said. “Honest to God. I wanted to kill the man who took my father from me, even so late in life. Whether I could have looked him in the eye and done it was another question. So, when we were set to travel, your friends in Langley approached me. They said they had a man they were ‘turning.’ A sniper who had worked for them in the past. They were bringing him to Cuba, and he was going to take care of one assignment, so why not have him take care of another?”
“Then what was your part?” Alex asked.
“I just had to be the spotter,” Paul said. “My team of diggers, the fellows you met in the cemetery, knew Garcia and led me to him the second night. I fingered him for Perez. Perez went in and finished the job and I paid my diggers handsomely.”
“Thirty-eight years after the fact,” she said.
“Better late than never,” he said. Then he looked troubled. “You know, I’ve been thinking about it long and hard since then, and I still can’t decide whether I’m glad I didn’t pull the trigger or sorry that I didn’t.” He pondered. “Instead of my hands being dirty, I suppose they’re only slightly soiled.”
Paul slouched slightly, but strolled with a carefree air, as if some great burden had been lifted. He was remarkably calm and at ease.
“Oh, I think your hands are a little dirtier than that,” she said. “You eliminated an old enemy, maybe your last enemy on the island. I can’t tell whether it was a gangland hit or a political payback or something with elements of both.”
“The world is gray like that, isn’t it?” he asked.
“You also laid a solid groundwork for your own future in Cuba. After the thaw. In those inevitable first years when democracy creeps back in and corruption and criminal organizations come with it. You’ve already got your own boys on the street, don’t you?”
“If and when,” he said. “If and when. But of course, it would be ninety miles offshore. So why should you care? It’s not your jurisdiction.”
Alex processed all this. But Paul wasn’t finished. “A good businessman needs to be prepared,” he said. “Fidel
