Thirty seconds later there was a sharp cry of pain. The surging tide had smashed one of the Russians up against the jagged stalactites that formed the grotto’s ceiling. Hawke switched on the light and aimed it at the Russians. The skinny little one had a bloody gash over his right eye.
“I want a Borzoi, comrade,” Hawke said, swimming up to him and getting right in his facemask. “Nothing else. Is that clear? Borzoi.”
The Russian sputtered something, shaking his head and peering into Hawke’s mask.
“What’s he say?” Hawke asked Congreve.
“He says yes.”
“Pithy,” Hawke said, smiling behind his mask.
“He says, yes, it’s possible he may be able to locate a Borzoi for you. The price will be very high, however.”
“Good,” Hawke said, smiling at Congreve. “I thought they’d rise to the occasion. Tell them we’ll talk money over dinner aboard Blackhawke. The launch will pick them up at the dock. Seven sharp. Dinner at eight.”
Hawke dove and kicked down, his powerful beam catching the brilliant fish and multicolored coral and lighting the way out of Thunderball. He wasn’t surprised to find his little flock paddling right behind him.
8
Colonel Manso de Herreras sat on the unshaded platform next to the empty chair of his closest friend, the Maximum Leader. Fidel Castro. The Cuban caudillo.
Manso was sweating profusely. His uniform was drenched. Perspiration burned his eyes. It wasn’t the heat that was bothering him, though. It was the chain of events he planned to unleash when and if this never-ending ceremony was concluded. The last Communist leader in the Western Hemisphere had already been speaking for well over an hour.
The platform where Manso sat baking beside the empty chair was on the white marble terrace of the old Habana Yacht Club. They were in one of the old neighborhoods, only a few blocks from the leader’s primary residence. Still, there were six big black Mercedes parked in the circular drive. The leader never rode in the same car twice. Never slept in the same house two nights in a row.
Manso had been sitting in the sun on the flimsy folding chair for almost two hours now. He’d turned a deaf ear to the ceremony and passed the time gazing out over the drowsy harbor. There were a few fishing trawlers crisscrossing the mirrorlike sea. He’d followed their passages idly, trying to tune out the papery voice at the lectern.
It was a dedication ceremony of some kind, God knows what. It was easily the third one he’d attended this week. He no longer bothered to find out who or what they were honoring at these events. They were constantly honoring or dedicating something or other lately, he’d noticed. It hardly seemed to matter what it was.
They would dedicate a tractor if they could find one that was running, he thought, scanning the crowd for any pretty senoritas. He had come to believe that el jefe either enjoyed being handed wilted carnations by endless processions of schoolgirls or was convinced such festivities took the people’s minds off some of their more immediate problems.
Like eating.
An American joke had circulated recently amongst the higher echelons of the Cuban military and State Security. The joke had it that Castro had gotten everything right in Cuba but three little things. Breakfast. Lunch. And dinner.
Since their beloved comrades in Moscow had abandoned them in the early nineties, his country’s economy had crashed and burned. Cuba now had one of the lowest per capita incomes in the Caribbean, ranking right up there with that other economic powerhouse, Haiti. He was sure that el jefe wasn’t mentioning that little economic tidbit in his remarks.
The Soviets had poured a hundred billion dollars into the island of Cuba. Where had it all gone, Manso and his band of disgruntled confederates wondered.
A short list: the army, its uniforms, and missiles. The now-outdated electric power system. A nuclear power plant intended to wean Cuba off foreign oil and left two-thirds completed. A twenty-six-square-mile intelligence- gathering complex outside of Lourdes that Fidel was now trying to peddle to the Chinese. And countless enormous, hideously ugly residential buildings now falling down around their ears because of the amazingly shoddy construction.
And of course, there was the highway system. Ah, yes. Since shortages of fuel, oil, and machinery parts had paralyzed transportation, the endless miles of highways were utterly useless. Sugar production, the economy’s mainstay, had been cut in half. New tourism efforts were helping some, but not nearly enough. Unless drastic measures were taken, Cuba, already running on fumes, would soon be running on empty.
Manso shifted in his chair. The metal seat had begun to roast his backside to a crisp. The hot seat reminded him of yet another misery, the shortage of paper. No books, no magazines, no toilet paper. Thank God for the limitless supply of Marxist economic textbooks that the Cuban populace had finally, after forty years, put to good use.
They also found the Communist paper, Granma, very useful. Published only every other day, it consisted of eight pages full of pap about la lucha, the “struggle,” and how the people must endure these sacrifices for the greater glory. Manso had read an article that very morning stating that not eating was good for you! Privately, Manso had taken to calling Granma the Toilet Paper.
But there was no shortage of speeches and dedications like this one, Manso thought, mopping his brow. The production of speeches, dedications, and pontifications, always high, had recently gone through the roof.
The comandante, at the podium well over an hour or so already, was warming to his theme. As if it weren’t warm enough already, Manso thought, reaching for a cup of iced lemonade beneath his chair. The ice had melted but the tangy juice helped a little.
Out on the lawn, Manso’s olive-green helicopter was waiting. In approximately one half hour, God willing, he and the comandante were scheduled to depart for Manso’s retreat on the southeast coast for the weekend. The two of them would be flying out alone, with Manso at the controls of the aging Kamov 26 helicopter gunship.
Before Fidel had made him head of State Security, Manso had been the highest-ranking colonel in the Air Force. He had a distinguished flying record and many decorations. He was also the only pilot in Cuba to whom the comandante would entrust his life.
The flying time to his personal estate, Manso estimated, was just less than two hours. The weather was perfect, but it still promised to be an exciting flight.
Manso’s estate occupied a good deal of the five thousand acres of an island just off the town of Manzanillo. Manso, whose boyhood nickname had been Arana, the spider, had called the place Finca Telarana, the Spider’s Web. Originally, it had been just a casita on the balmy shores of the Golfo de Guacanayabo. A little retreat, where he and the great leader could escape the pressures of La Habana and have a little fun.
Over the years, Manso had gotten very good at finding ever newer and more interesting ways of keeping el comandante amused. There was, of course, no shortage of girls willing to do anything for money or el jefe.
The most recent event Manso had staged at Finca Telarana was a tree-climbing contest. About ten local beauty queens had participated. They had stripped and raced for the trees. The winner got an expensive jeweled watch, while the losers had to shave their heads, eat a few live insects, and perform an elaborate dance number while everyone else enjoyed an exquisite buffet.
Manso supplied the female pipeline and he kept it full. This talent had helped his career in the Air Force enormously. Not to mention the size of his personal fortune. Manso had also done many favors for his leader. Favors Castro would entrust to no one else.
“He has become an inconvenience, Manso” was all that needed to be said. The man, or his entire family, would disappear. Always with a knife, never a gun. Guns, Manso had discovered very early in life, were no fun at all. He had grown up in the cane fields of Oriente province. He had learned that a razor-sharp machete made him the equal of bigger, stronger, and even wiser men.
When he was still a boy, he had formed a small band known as the Macheteros. The machete wielders. Once, barely twelve, he and his two brothers had kidnapped a staff member of the Soviet consulate. The Russian bastard
