“And you won’t hesitate to use your voice if I don’t go to Cuba.”
“Exactly.”
“You must be very good at your job.”
He smiles again. “I am.”
And I was very foolish to let my heart get in the way of all this.
“Nicholas Preston is a good man.”
“He is. Hopefully, he will continue to be one. However, it really doesn’t matter at the end of the day. All that matters is whether he is a useful man, whether his interests align with ours—”
“And whether you can control him.”
“You can control anyone, Miss Perez. It is merely an exercise in finding their weakness. Yours is him. His is you. And Fidel’s is that he likes women and has an ego that clouds his judgment.”
“And what’s yours?”
“That I like the game far too much.”
“How do you do this? Do you never feel the weight of the lives you wreck, of the countries whose destinies you change on a whim?”
“A whim? Hardly. This is just one country in a long line of them, Miss Perez. One threat in a never-ending series of dangers that keeps me up at night worrying about the nation I have sworn to serve and protect. You see us as the villains in this piece, and perhaps to you Cubans we are, but ask yourself this—
“Have you not seen the lengths to which you would go in order to protect your country, your family, those you love? How is what we do any different? I do not do this for some evil machination, nor do the men and women embedded with our enemies at this very moment, learning their secrets and gathering intelligence that will save American lives, do it for theirs. They risk their lives, their families, everything because they believe in the cause that they support.
“It’s not a matter of politics or ideology, but a duty to one’s country, a sense of patriotism that supersedes all else. A willingness to engage in great sacrifice and risk great personal peril. We are a nation at war—the Soviet Union seeks to destroy our way of life, to reduce our position in the world, to spread communism far and wide. It is my duty to defeat them, and I owe it to the men and women fighting in the field to make sure they are protected and supported.
“So here’s your chance. What are you willing to do for your country? Your family? Your people, Miss Perez? For Senator Preston? What will you sacrifice for Cuba?”
All in all, it’s a pretty enough speech, and he knows it. But at the end of the day, it’s not his words that convince me, not even close. It’s the fact that I’ve given so much of my life to this cause that the need to see it to the end is inevitable.
In the end, it’s my decision, and I already made it a long time ago.
“We have a deal.”
chapter twenty-eight
The thing that has always surprised me most about politics is the sheer unpredictability of it all. Events creep by slowly; so slowly you’re convinced nothing is happening at all, change moving at an unbearable snail’s pace. And then, suddenly, a transformation comes, moving so swiftly, so unexpectedly, that your world shifts, and you struggle to play catch-up, to understand how everything altered so quickly.
We move from President Kennedy warning the nation of the threat of nuclear war to waiting. So much waiting. And then, just five days after he addressed the nation, we receive the news that an American reconnaissance plane was shot down over Cuba, the pilot, Major Rudolf Anderson, killed, and war appears inevitable.
“They’re preparing to invade Cuba,” Nick announces over dinner late that evening.
“Do you think the invasion will really happen this time?”
“I don’t know. The president’s advisors whisper different things in his ears. Kennedy favors peace, diplomacy. And at the same time, there is much fear surrounding him. We cannot afford to be weak in front of the Soviets.”
It’s the entrée I need to tell him of Mr. Dwyer’s visit. I’ve kept it from him since yesterday, nervous to shatter the fragile peace we’ve developed between us.
“They want me to go to Cuba.”
Nick sets his glass on the table gently.
“They?”
“The CIA.”
“So Dwyer is hard at work. I didn’t realize you were in contact with him again. What did he say about London?”
“They took care of it. It won’t come back on me. Everything is handled.”
“Good.”
We’ve spoken little about the day I killed Ramon since we returned to Washington, but the relief in Nick’s voice tells me that it’s been on his mind as it has been on mine.
“Dwyer came to the house yesterday,” I add.
“He turned up here?”
“Yes. He was waiting on the steps for me when I arrived home from the market.”
“That man has no shame, does he?” Nick pauses. “So they know about us.”
“I think everyone knows about us at this point. We haven’t necessarily been discreet. Does it bother you?”
“It doesn’t bother me, but it complicates things.”
“I think everything is already pretty complicated now.”
“Yes, it is.” With careful precision, he slices into the meat I overcooked, his knife forced to saw to and fro to cut through the dried bits.
“What did he want?” he asks.
“They want me to go to Cuba,” I repeat.
“Of course they do. And what do you want?”
Silence falls between us.
“You didn’t tell him ‘no,’ did you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Don’t you see what a mistake this is?”
“The only mistake is the fact that Fidel has been able to remain in power for so long.”
“Are those your words or the CIA’s? After London, how can you put yourself at risk again? You saw what comes of the work you do for them. You saw what the stakes are. You got lucky. You could have been killed. Do you really think you can make it into Cuba and back out again? That you can kill Fidel Castro?”
“I have to try. The CIA thinks I have a chance. What do you expect? I’ve always been clear with you where my loyalties lie.”
“And what about my loyalties? Or that this is bigger than Cuba? The Soviets have nuclear weapons trained on us. They shot down one of our reconnaissance planes. The situation is volatile enough as it is, and the only way a safe conclusion will be reached is if cooler heads prevail. This is no time for the Agency or for Dwyer to insert themselves into the diplomatic solutions being crafted. The CIA has been allowed to run rampant for far too long. They’ve become too powerful, too arrogant. They think they’re the ones running the show these days.”