CHAPTER 80

JORDAN GLASS WALKED slowly along the Malecón in Havana, watching young couples stroll down the promenade while old men fished the surf along the seawall. The night air was warm, and Jordan could hardly believe she’d been in the chilly swamp of Lusahatcha County only hours ago. Her Nikon hung around her neck, but she hadn’t taken a single photo since the afternoon, when she’d shot Raúl Castro in his office in El Capitolio. The president had been too ill to be photographed, and Jordan had done a poor job of hiding her disappointment at being passed to his younger brother. Before the session was done, however, she’d had a brief encounter that from her husband’s point of view had made the trip worthwhile.

Jordan couldn’t agree, since she felt certain that had she not left Caitlin alone in Athens Point, the young newspaper publisher would still be alive. Even if Caitlin had insisted on the two of them pushing on to find the Bone Tree using Rambin’s map, with two guns they might have driven off the young man who had killed her. In fact, Jordan thought, if she’d stayed in Athens Point, Harold Wallis might never have summoned the courage to approach them. But maybe she was flattering herself. She’d survived many combat zones, but even a seasoned veteran could be killed by making assumptions about people. And in the end, that was what had killed Caitlin.

She’d been so hungry for that story—so ready to go to the end of the trail Henry Sexton had blazed, and then farther, making the story her own—that her normal defense mechanisms had been blunted. Where normally she might have felt suspicion of a stranger approaching her with information, the fact that the young man was African-American had lulled her into thinking he was naturally on her side. Caitlin probably assumed he’d heard of her quest through Carl Sims’s minister father, who’d put out the word for information on the Bone Tree the previous night. Caitlin would have known she stuck out like a TV actress in the dingy café at the Athens Point crossroads, so it was only natural that someone might recognize and approach her—

A burst of salsa music from the street startled Jordan, and she turned in time to see a gleaming relic of Detroit metal roar past, complete with tail fins and fisheye headlights. The laughing girl in the passenger seat was stunningly beautiful, as most young women down here seemed to be, and watching the antique car race past a dozen others like it gave Jordan the feeling of being lost on a film set. This feeling was magnified by the depressing fact that most of the occupants of the classic cars were tourists who’d paid locals to drive them around Old Havana. More disturbing still, she’d noticed that except for a couple of large ships visible in the harbor, the sea was empty of boats. The government knew that its citizens would not hesitate to strike out for Miami in even the flimsiest craft that offered the promise of a new life.

God, Jordan wished she’d stayed in Mississippi.

Her mind returned to the afternoon’s photo shoot, which had begun as a study in anticlimax. Raúl Castro was a poor substitute for Fidel, or at least the Fidel that Jordan remembered from her visit twenty years earlier. But as she was concluding her work, the president himself had stepped into the room unannounced and told her he remembered her from their previous meeting. Back then, the Cuban leader had been vital and filled with restless energy, and he’d flirted shamelessly with Jordan. The man facing her now was only a shadow of his younger self, a bent figure with a grizzled beard, swept aside by the tides of history.

Speaking softly in Spanish, Jordan told him that her husband had asked her to inquire whether he might answer a couple of questions. Having been briefed before the meeting, Fidel knew that Jordan was married to an FBI agent. In response to her request, he gave her a noncommittal tilt of the head and asked what the subject of her questions might be.

“John F. Kennedy,” she said. “New evidence has been discovered in America.”

Castro gave her a polite smile, but she thought she saw a flicker of interest in his eyes. “You speak much better Spanish than you once did, I believe,” he said.

“I got a lot of practice in El Salvador and Honduras in the 1980s.”

“Excellent. Tell me about this new evidence.”

Jordan had lowered her voice. “I’m not free to do that. But my husband would like to know if an American pilot named David Ferrie once ran guns to your government, before you aligned yourself with the Soviet Union.”

Castro considered the question for some time. Then he said, “This is true. Señor Ferrie was an unstable man, but in those early days we could not be selective in our choice of allies.”

“Thank you. The Bureau also has a reliable report that when you heard of the death of President Kennedy, your first reaction was to say it was a terrible thing for Cuba.”

Castro nodded firmly. “This is also true. Kennedy’s administration worked against us, and even tried to kill me, but privately we were working toward a sort of détente between our countries. Also, the man who stood waiting in the wings in America—and the men behind him—were far worse than the Kennedy brothers, from my perspective. It was Cuba’s good fortune that those men became ensnared in Vietnam. Otherwise, I fear we would have been next on the menu, and the world itself might now be only a memory.”

Again, Jordan thanked him for his candor while struggling to remember the questions John had given her. Pulling out a notecard didn’t seem like an ideal move in a situation where informality was the lubricant for conversation.

“At that time, you also seemed to imply that the CIA or a right-wing cabal was behind the assassination.”

Castro tilted his palm from side to side. “At that time, you must remember, this was a reasonable suspicion, given the events at Playa Girón—excuse me, the Bay of Pigs. And of course the Caribbean Crisis—our blockaded missiles—and the subsequent activities involving Operation Mongoose. It was very easy to see Lee Oswald as the dupe of more devious men. He tried to emigrate here, but we wanted him no more than the Soviets.” Castro waved his hand dismissively. “But that is ancient history. I no longer believe in a CIA conspiracy regarding Kennedy. Such men could not have kept that secret for so long.” The president regarded her curiously, then said, “Does your husband have a new theory about the events in Dallas? What has been discovered?”

Jordan tried to keep her answer as short as possible. “I’m afraid I don’t know that myself. But my husband and some of his colleagues now believe that the president was killed by a Mafia figure that Robert Kennedy was trying to deport from America. Do you have an opinion on that?”

The old dictator’s eyes seemed to deepen as he studied her. “I’ve had a good deal of experience with gangsters, mi cariño. They are venal men. They care only for themselves; they have no morals or mercy. If you seek a man who would murder the president of his country—one who is not a political extremist—then a gangster fighting to survive would be very easy for me to accept. Which mafioso do they have in mind?”

“The boss of New Orleans. Carlos Marcello.”

Castro’s eyes filled with some of the intensity she remembered from an earlier decade. “Ah, sí. Some of my people had dealings with this man. He was a crony of Santo Trafficante, who I held in jail here for some time. Marcello had an interest in the Lansky casinos, and . . .”

“Yes?” Jordan asked, willing him to continue.

“Marcello’s people also had dealings with Señor Jack Ruby, who paid a visit here in connection with the release of Trafficante during the early days of the Revolution.”