each of them over. Hartmann suffered no burns or abrasions, but Woodroffe had skidded sideways into the car and bruised much of the left side of his body. Schaeffer was merely stunned into silence, and when the medics attempted to direct him away from the scene he told them to leave him alone. He was the assigned Duty Section Chief for the New Orleans FBI Field Office. This had been his territory, these had been his people, and something had torn his small world apart. The sole purpose of their being there – the investigation, the disappearance of Catherine Ducane, the details of Ernesto Perez’s illustrious history – was wiped clean in the face of the horror that had been perpetrated.
It would be more than an hour before the flames were finally extinguished, before Crime Scene and federal Criminalistics teams could enter the site, before anyone even began to ask questions about what had happened and why.
‘Feraud’ was Hartmann’s first word. By that time they had made their way from the scene and were close to the Sonesta. Woodroffe concurred, Schaeffer also, but they knew that such an investigation took weeks, and evidence would have to be collected for days before anyone could even begin to understand how this had been done, let alone by whom.
Hartmann was incensed, angered beyond words, and yet he watched as Stanley Schaeffer’s training kicked in. Hartmann’s immediate response would have been to hit back at Feraud, hit back hard and fast, but Schaeffer kept telling him how such a thing could not be considered until they possessed direct and unquestionable authority to act. It was the same world of rules and regulations, the same command channels and disciplined rigidity that prevented them taking any steps towards investigating Ducane himself. The degree of corroboration they had already obtained regarding so much of what Perez had told them, the fact that everything pointed to a clear and undisputed motive for Perez’s actions, nevertheless counted for nothing in the face of federal protocol.
Hartmann was beyond the point of questioning it any further and said nothing.
None of them spoke again until they reached the Sonesta. The second floor of the hotel was opened up and every agent was called back from the field. The atmosphere was one of disbelief and shock; men asking questions that could not be answered, men standing stunned and silent, their faces white, their eyes wide. Schaeffer stood before them, and to Hartmann’s surprise he said some words for the four men who had been killed, and then he led the attendant crew in the Lord’s Prayer. Some of them were not ashamed to show their emotions. Some of them could not stand, and so they sat with their faces in their hands, and all tried to reconcile themselves to the fact that such things could almost be expected, for this was their chosen life, this was the world into which they had walked, and some… well, some never walked out again.
Later – two, perhaps three hours – Hartmann went up to see Perez.
The man seemed genuinely distressed and upset.
‘How many?’ he kept asking. ‘Four men… all of them young. Families, with children also? Aah, such a waste, such an unnecessary waste.’
And then he said something that Hartmann did not understand, and perhaps would not understand until this whole thing unraveled.
‘This thing,’ he said. ‘This thing that Feraud has done… and I am sure, as sure as I am of my own birth and death that it was Feraud… this thing he has done has merely served to confirm that I have made the right decision.’
And though Hartmann questioned him, insisted that he explain himself further, Perez would not divulge anything.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Wait, Mr Hartmann, and you will see what I have done.’
Hartmann, Schaeffer and Woodroffe did not return to the Marriott. They stayed there at the Royal Sonesta, for this now had to be their base of operation, and while they lay, restless and afraid, in their beds, while they asked themselves if Feraud would also attempt to kill Ernesto Perez in the very hotel where they now were, Lester Kubis sat up until the early hours of Saturday morning preparing another room in which Hartmann could speak with Perez.
The following morning Feds would be stationed en masse in the foyer and around the Royal Sonesta Hotel. Less than a mile away three teams of Crime Scene investigators would pore through the rubble of the FBI Office’s lower floor, and from the still-smouldering wreck they would salvage what little they could to help them understand what had happened. Schaeffer exercised a degree of self-control and military precision in everything he did, and he stressed time and again that they could not afford to lose sight of what they were doing and why. The investigation of the bombing was now someone else’s problem; theirs was still the task of finding Catherine Ducane.
A report would come back from Quantico regarding the bombing in Chicago in March of 1991. Seemed that whoever had overseen the investigation had been in the employ of the Irish families, and with a word from their Italian counterparts the details had been ‘lost’. Official documents acknowledged that a car had in fact exploded, but whether it was an intentional attempt on someone’s life or a vehicular ‘accident’ was never established. Two deaths were noted but there were no names, nothing at all to indicate who might have been in the vehicle when it exploded.
Sheldon Ross’s mother would wake to find a representative of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on her doorstep, as would the wives of Michael Kanelli and Ron Sawyer. James Landreth had been orphaned at the age of nine, but his sister was still alive and well and living in Providence, Rhode Island. Her name was Gillian, her husband’s name was Eric, and three weeks before they had been informed that there was a ninety-five percent possibility they would never conceive children. Gillian greeted the agent, a man called Tom Hardwicke, and while he told her of her brother’s death she made coffee at the stove and cried without tears.
‘Such a waste,’ Ernesto Perez kept saying as he sat facing Hartmann that Saturday morning. ‘Such an utter waste of life, is it not?’
And Hartmann – still shocked and horrified at what had taken place only hours before, still ragged from too little sleep and insufficient appetite to manage breakfast – looked back at Ernesto Perez and wondered when this nightmare would end.
Ross, Kanelli, Sawyer and Landreth had missed the trick, it seemed, and so might Catherine Ducane if this went on much longer.
‘Tell me,’ Hartmann eventually said. ‘Tell me what happened when you went back to Havana. Tell me what happened to your son.’
And Perez, seated there in a room on the second floor of the Royal Sonesta, surrounded every which way by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, leaned back in his chair and sighed.
‘Okay,’ he said quietly. ‘I will tell you exactly what happened.’
TWENTY-THREE
Havana. Home of my father.
Thirty-two years ago we had come here. Irony is sharp and relentless: he too was running from the murder of his wife.
Havana. Some imagined sanctuary perhaps. It had begun to show its age, to lose its charm and passion, but for me it had not lost its memories.
Losing also its Soviet patronage, but Castro was nevertheless still a presence everywhere I looked. American finance and influence had already begun to show, and as I walked my eight-year-old son through the streets of
Three decades I had been absent, three decades of life with all its sharp corners and rough edges, but still the sounds and smells of this place returned to me as if it had all been yesterday.
I found the house where I had lived as a young man with my friend Ruben Cienfuegos, and for the first time I was truly aware of how much I had changed. Back then I had killed Ruben for the promise of something. Now I believed I would kill for two reasons alone: the vengeance of my wife and daughter, and to protect the life of my son.
