“You too, Earl.”
“Last time I saw you was in the triage station on Saipan, right?”
“That’s the one. I heard about you on Iwo. I was still in sick bay.”
“You were lucky to miss Iwo, Ray. Wasn’t no place for human beings, I’ll tell you. So what have you got for me?”
“Well, we were told to get a good rifle ready for a man from Washington.”
“Hell, I’m from Arkansas.”
“Earl, I just know I got orders and so I follow ’em. This has ‘very important’ ticketed all over it. They wanted us to mount up a sniper rifle and to take it out of inventory as if it never existed. That ain’t no easy thing in the Marine Corps, where we got to watch every last damn penny.”
“Sorry for the trouble, Ray. These boys do business their own way. Can’t say I like it much, but I signed on to something and I have to ride it out.”
“Well, I’m glad it’s you getting this here rifle, Earl.”
“Ray, I’ll get it back to you if I ain’t damned dead.”
“Believe you, Earl.”
By this time they’d reached the cover just ahead of the shooting pits, where hundreds of marines gathered each day to zero or practice with their M1s. All training canceled today, of course.
Earl saw a rifle lying on one of the tables, almost like a religious icon presented during high mass.
“It’s a Model 70, Earl, a Winchester.”
“Yes, I have one back in the rack at home,” he said. “The barrel on mine is narrower.”
“The Marine Corps rifle team bought a mess of heavy-barreled target models back in the thirties for team high-power. Did right well with them, too. Major Schultz won the Wimbledon Cup in 1938, some big shooting match, very important. Our armorers bedded and adjusted the rifles and put a Unertl 8x scope on. Somehow we ended up with six of them for our rifle team down here. This here’s the most accurate.”
Earl looked at the sleek tool, blued steel, wood brightly burnished, the whole dark thing much loved and tended after. It specialized in hitting black paper circles at a thousand yards.
“Well, let’s see if it still remembers where the black is,” said Ray.
“Hell,” said Earl, “let’s see if I still remember where the black is.”
He got into a good prone, and the two lance corporals, evidently armorers, bent to fit the rifle to him. The sling had to be let out some so that he could get it cinched up tight. They coached him, for the intricacies of shooting cinched were something that, once drilled in him, hadn’t stuck around. He’d never shot with a sling in combat, but then all his killing had been done up close.
Then there was the issue of getting the scope properly focused so that the crossed wires of the reticule stood out black and precise, yet what lay beyond them was still clear as well. This took some diddling, and the bad news was that Earl’s vision had deteriorated some, so that he had to place his eye in a certain way for maximum efficiency of the system.
“You hunt any, Earl?” Ray asked, as Earl cracked a box of 173-grain brown-box ammo from the Frankford Arsenal and threaded the shells in behind the bolt, down into the magazine well.
“I do, and dearly love it. Took my son after his first whitetail this spring, but he decided not to take it.”
“I know he’ll be a sure shot like his daddy.”
“I hope he don’t never have to fire a rifle at a man,” said Earl.
He shoved the bolt forward and down where it locked like a vault door closing, then squirmed into position to find the rifle after a time—after his muscles quit ticking and stretching—pointing naturally so that the crosshairs bisected the black dot of the target three hundred yards out.
“Any time, Earl.”
Earl settled in, until it was only himself and the rifle, and then the himself part went away and only the rifle existed. He forced all his concentration on the intersection of the two dark lines in the dark of the spot that was the target, waiting for it all to settle. It never would, he knew, but he knew also that you had to read and feel your own breathing, so when the crosshairs fell through absolute center, you were already into your trigger press.
The gun snapped, jerked, rose an inch or two and settled back down. He watched as the target disappeared into the butts and anonymous men put a spindle through the hole. When it popped back into view he saw a white marker, lower left hand quadrant of the circle.
“Good shot. Fire again please, sir,” said the lance corporal hunched on the spotting scope.
Earl sent four more downrange, clustering his hits in that lower left area. Then he relaxed as the rifle was taken from him and the other lance corporal clicked the scope the prescribed amount of windage to the right.
Earl received the corrected rifle back and fired another cluster of five, this over to the right, but still under the bull. The lance corporal worked over the rifle again, and when it was returned with the new corrections, it put the cluster into three inches at the center of the bull.
“That’s a good three hundred-yard combat zero. You still shoot a bushel, Earl.”
“I ain’t forgot as much as I’d thought.”
For the next hour or so, they diddled. The young men coached Earl through his positions, and he forced reluctant muscles into positions they hadn’t assumed in years. He practiced sitting, kneeling and offhand, the latter at a shorter range for snap shots.
“Trigger feel fine, sir?” asked one of the boys.
“Could let off a little more lightly,” Earl said, “but not too lightly.”
“Yes, sir.”
The rifle was taken from him, broken down from its stock, and the tiny twin screws in the mechanism manipulated. Reassembled, a few ounces had vanished from the press. He requested more and it was done and measured to be a two-pound trigger, and was then slopped with shellac to keep the tiny screws from slipping under the pounding of recoil.
“We’ve made you a sniper, Earl.”
“Next thing you know, you’ll be painting my old face green like a bush. Wouldn’t that be a thing.”
“Earl, green. What a sight that would be.”
And then at four the Navy Ford returned with its two crisp officers in their tropic khakis, neatly pressed and ironed, a far cry from the sweaty marines who’d been working hard in the sun all afternoon.
The two didn’t approach the marines directly. They parked and waited.
Earl waited as the two lance corporals quickly and effectively cleaned and greased the rifle, restoring it to a condition of maximum accuracy. Then after their nod, he placed the rifle and two boxes of the Frankford 173-grain brown-box ammo into a civilian gun case that had been thoughtfully provided, took it, shook hands and turned to go meet his sponsors.
“Earl,” said Ray, behind him, “I hope you know what you’re doing, getting mixed up with these birds.”
“I hope I do too,” said Earl.
Earl took a shower, changed into his suit and a fresh shirt, and went with the two officers to the Officer’s Club, where as “Mr. Jones” he felt himself the secret celebrity of a dull room full of dull naval officers and their dull wives. He saw the odd marine officer here and there, including an old-breed fellow here and there, and felt a longing to go over and say, “Hey, I’m Earl Swagger, USMC, wonder if you’d mind if I joined you.” He knew they’d say, “Hell no, Mr. Swagger, set yourself down and we’ll listen to your sea stories and we’ll tell you some of our own.” But that didn’t happen, couldn’t happen, wouldn’t happen.
He had good steak and salad and passed on the drinks, though the two officers each belted back a couple of martinis apiece, and, loosened up, began to yap idiotically about “it,” by which he took it they meant the Agency. They didn’t say, but their curiosity was overwhelming. “What’s it like,” they wanted to know. “How secret is it? How tough to get in?”
He knew the answers to none of their questions and really didn’t give a damn about either of them, the kind of dandy, fancy, educated
boys who somehow didn’t end up in the lines but always wangled intelligence or communications or staff. No, that wasn’t true. There were a few who—
But a seaman, clutching his cap, came in and whispered something in Lieutenant Dan’s ear, which sobered the young fellow up instantly.
“We heard from Roger,” he said. “Finish up. You aren’t getting another night on the navy. They want you in town but fast.”
“Okay,” Earl said. “Havana?”
“No, Santiago. It’s only an hour away. We’ll get you there by staff car. They say something’s about to happen in Santiago.”
“What would that be?” Earl wondered.
“Maybe there’s a war about to break out,” Lieutenant Dan said.
“Hell,” said the younger officer, “it’s more like an orgy. Hey, Mr. Jones, take me along.”
“Jerry, what the hell are you babbling about?”
The answer, from Jerry, was one lascivious word: “Carnival.”
Chapter 37
Speshnev worked the streets, but it was difficult to get people to pay attention. It was carnival week in Santiago and those not yet drunk thought only of becoming drunk, and at night with the music, the beat of the drums, the running of the blood, who could tell? What adventures lurked, what possibilities beckoned?
He began at the Plaza de Armas, the plush green square that was the center of Santiago’s red roofs and riotous streets that careened out of control toward the harbor. He started in the lobby of Hotel Casa Grande but wandered in wider and wider circles, avoiding the billy goats pulling children in the square—he doubted either goats or children knew much—then moseyed through the great Cathedral of Santa Ifigenia, where the devoted lit candles and the priests muttered like conspirators but dried up when a stranger approached. It was the one place where the air was not filled with love and pleasure and cigar smoke; only the muttering priests were there, and those hungry to confess so that their consciences would be free to accumulate yet more sin over the weekend of paganism, thus to be purged again with time in the booth.
He drifted by the oldest house in Cuba—a conqueror built it in 1516 and now, in 1953, conquerors were here still—and eventually wandered over to the heart of the city, Calle Herrera, locus of bars and tourists, the latter who had tired of Havana’s commercial vulgarities and come in search of a more refined style of debauchery in the night. Perhaps they wouldn’t have to pay as much for their pleasure; it might even be free. There was so much excitement that it reminded him of Catalonia in 1936, where the war was fought for real and people’s passion—for revolution, bread and freedom, not sex—was so intense the desire reached out to embrace death itself. There were no tourists in Barcelona in 1936 and too many in Santiago in 1953.
He kept moving. He strode by police stations and military installations, he got his hair cut at one barber’s and his chin shaved at two others, and his shoes shined three times. He bought seven bolita tickets and four cigars. At every stop he paid attention, asking an outsider’s bland questions, hoping for interesting answers. He located the biggest newspaper, and followed a fellow with a notebook to the bar where all the reporters hung out—reporters, especially the stupid American ones, had been a source of much information in Spain—and jostled among them, again listening, drinking for camouflage. He had too many beers, most of which he poured down pissholes in the men’s.
What?
Well, nothing. It’s carnival time, my friend. Relax, enjoy, perhaps a pretty woman will take notice of you.
Not that. The other thing.
Oh, that. Just rumors. Nonsense, stupidity. Nothing definite. Nothing sure.
There was nothing about a leader, about a plan or a conspiracy, about strikes or demonstrations or speeches or mass movements. No name was magic, no name was spoken. But still…
Someone had heard that someone had been collecting Cuban army uniforms from ex-soldiers, or from bums on the street, offering them rum for the old green shirts. Someone else said he had heard that someone had seen someone buying as much .22 ammunition and as many shotgun shells as possible in a variety of sporting goods stores. Someone else said that certain men had not been seen in a few weeks, men of good standing, shopkeepers, carpenters, factory workers, not students or ex-soldiers. Where were these men? Where had they gone? What did it mean?
No one could say. Alas, Speshnev did not have sources in the police Political Section or, other than the overheard buzz of gossip in the restaurant, in the press. He had no support here in this far city, no networks, no informants, no enthusiastic believers to be manipulated. He had nothing except his wits and his legs and his impatience at the carnival madness.
He walked, he walked, he walked, finally trying to figure out if there were targets of opportunity for the ambitious young man whose ill-discipline, whose temper, he feared was behind all this. The police station was too big, as was the army base, which was garrisoned at some monstrosity called the Moncada Barracks north of Martí Square, fronting on Calle Carlos Aponte. With its crenellated walls it loomed above its own parade ground, almost a castle. A thousand men were quartered there. What would the point be, other than suicide? Only a fool would try such a thing. That left the post offices (unlikely), the radio stations, the municipal government. But those were direct targets, that would strike hard at the president, make him lose face but not really any power. A subtler man might try to discredit him before his sponsors or clients, possibly by aiming at some symbolic target, like an American building, say the mansions owned by executives of the United Fruit Company. Yet that would bring marines by the boatload, hellbent and righteous with fury. It would turn Cuba into the forty-ninth state even faster than it now seemed to be heading. Would this young man do such an insane thing? Even Speshnev couldn’t believe he’d be that stupid.
Another thought: the docks. Here the big American ships—the sugar vessels, the fruit carriers—put in to load up on Cuba’s wealth, which was fated to become American wealth. If you sank a ship full of sugar, it would have a certain mythic resonance, no? It would echo back to the battleship Maine blown up in Havana harbor so many years ago, but with a comic twist. Better still if the bomb killed no one, but just forced the ship to settle into the cold water. And if he also did the same on a Bacardi rum tanker? It could be accomplished quite easily by surprise. All that sugar, all that rum, turning Santiago de Cuba’s harbor into the biggest mojito the world had ever seen! What a magnificent gesture.
But then he realized that’s what he, Speshnev, Speshnev of Spain who’d learned at the toe of Levitsky, the master, that’s what he would do. Castro would not. Castro was too vain for cleverness, too narcissistic for the oblique. He wanted simply to blow something up and make himself famous, that’s how limited his poor imagination was. Never trust a man who can’t play a good variation on the Ruy-Lopez defense.
Nevertheless, Speshnev spent a day down there, finding only sweating men and tough foremen and American bosses, plus plenty of armed guards. The Americans were taking no chances with their property, however ill-gotten it was, carnival or no carnival; men with guns lurked everywhere. Nobody would attempt anything there. Not even the maniac Castro.
Roger and Frenchy had better contacts. They met with the political department of Domino. They dined with the head of security at United Fruit, and key executives. They met with representatives of Bacardi in the Bacardi mansion. They consulted with their sources at Cuban Military Intelligence, in the castle-like barracks called Moncada.
Everywhere, they received the same news, if it was news at all under the blare of carnival. It was nothing definite. It could never be sourced or tracked. It didn’t come from snitches or networks. It was more a feeling that the pagan revelry would make a wonderful cover for an angry strike. Everyone would be drunk, everyone stupid, everyone (or most everyone) sexually spent and in that state of listless bliss that follows the act. Maybe it was pure intuition, or pure superstition. Maybe it was sunspots acting up far out in dark space, causing men
of earth to act madly. Maybe it was summer, getting hotter by the moment, and people began to fabricate to escape the heavy press of air under the influence of rum and the bare flesh of women’s shoulders, the beauty of their legs, the smoothness of their skins.
But still: someone overheard someone saying it was coming.
Yes, carnival.
No. Something else.
It. It! You idiot, it!
When?
In carnival.
Who is the leader?
You know who.
Say his name!
The name is forbidden. I cannot say. Everywhere ears are listening, so I cannot say. But nevertheless it is coming….
One night after dinner with the same Bill and Ted whom they had vanquished on the tennis court so many months ago, the four men sat on the terrace of one of the United Fruit mansions up in Vista Alegre, on a hill above the town. They sipped mojitos, drawing on immense and zesty cigars from the nearby Fabrica de Tabaco Cesar Escalante, enjoying the cool shimmer of a summer night in the Antilles, the spray of stars, the soft sea breeze, the sounds, from far off on the Calle Herrera of mambo beat-beat-beating of a jungle tom-tom as the revelers tuned up for the real letting-go yet another night down the pike.
“I hope you boys are up to this,” Ted said.
“We are,” said Roger.
“Roger, you and Walter play a mean game of tennis, that I know. But…this is a bigger game. The company has millions tied up. Its entire posture on the market is based on the political stability of our operations down here. I suppose we can reconfigure to Panama or someplace in Central eventually, but, Roger…I just hope you’re up to snuff on this one.”
“Sir,” said Roger, “we saw this one coming months ago. We’ve been moving actively to counter it. We’re ready. We can’t preempt because our mandate won’t allow it but it won’t be Pearl Harbor either, where we’re caught with our thumb up our ass. If anything happens, you can bet we’ll be in operational mode fast. We know where it’s coming from, we have put some extraordinary measures in place. Your bananas are safe. Your pineapples will be untouched. Your sugarcane will go unburned.”