“You have my word, Sam,” Trent replied. “If that happens, it happens.”
“There is one wild card, though,” Ritter pointed out.
“I’ve already discussed that with Bill Shaw,” Moore said. “It’s funny. The only law he actually broke was illegal entry. None of the data he got out of her was technically classified. Amazing, isn’t it?”
Ryan shook his head and left work early. He had an appointment with his attorney, who would soon be establishing an educational trust for seven kids living in Florida.
The infantrymen were cycled through Fort MacDill’s special-operations center. Told that their operation had been a success, they were sworn to secrecy, given their promotions, and sent on to new postings. Except for one.
“Chavez?” a voice called.
“Yo, Mr. Clark.”
“Buy you dinner?”
“There a good Mexican place around here?”
“Maybe I can find one.”
“What’s the occasion?”
“Let’s talk jobs,” Clark said. “There’s an opening where I work. It pays better than what you do now. You’ll have to go back to school for a couple of years, though.”
“I’ve been thinkin’ about that,” Chavez replied. He’d been thinking that he was officer material. If he’d been in command instead of Ramirez, maybe – or maybe not. But he did want to find out.
“You’re good, kid. I want you to work with me.”
Chavez thought about that. At least he’d get a dinner out of the idea.
Captain Bronco Winters was dispatched to an F-15 squadron in Germany, where he distinguished himself and was soon a flight leader. He was a calmer young man now. He’d exorcised the demons of his mother’s death. Winters would never look back. He’d had a job, and done it.
It was a cold, dismal fall after a hot, muggy summer in Washington. The political city emptied out for the presidential election, which shared that November with all of the House seats and a third of the Senate, plus hundreds of political-appointment slots in the executive branch. In the early fall, the FBI broke several Cuban-run spy rings, but strangely that was politically neutral. Although arresting a drug ring was a police success, arresting a spy ring was seen as a failure because of the existence of a spy ring in the first place. There was no political advantage except in the Cuban refugee community, whose votes might as well already have been cast anyway, since Fowler was talking about “opening a dialogue” with the Cuba they had left. The President regained the lead after his own convention, but ran a lackluster campaign and fired two key political advisers. But most of all, it was time for a change, and though it was close. Robert Fowler carried the election with a bare 2 percent advantage in the popular vote. Some called it a mandate; others called it a sloppy campaign on both sides. The latter was closer to the truth, Ryan thought after it was all over.
All over the city and its environs, displaced appointees made preparations to move home – wherever home was – or to move into law offices so that they could stay in the area. Congress hadn’t changed very much, but Congress rarely did. Ryan remained in his office, wondering if he’d be confirmed as the next DDL It was too soon to tell. One thing he did know was that the President was still President, and still a man of honor, whatever mistakes he’d made. Before he left, pardons would be issued to those who needed them. They’d go on the books, but no one was expected to notice, and after things were explained to the Fowler people – Trent would handle that – it wasn’t expected that anyone ever would.
On the Saturday after the election, Dan Murray drove Moira Wolfe to Andrews Air Force Base, where a jet was waiting for them. It took just over three hours before they landed at Guantanamo. A leftover from the Spanish-American War, Gitmo, as it’s called, is the only American military installation on Communist soil, a thorn stuck in Castro’s side that rankled him as much as he rankled his oversized neighbor across the Florida Strait.
Moira was doing well at the Department of Agriculture, executive secretary to one of the department’s top career executives. She was thinner now, but Murray wasn’t concerned about that. She’d taken up walking for exercise, and was doing well with her psychological counseling. She was the last of the victims, and he hoped that this trip would help.
So this was the day, Cortez thought. He was surprised and disappointed at his fate, but resigned to it. He’d gambled greatly and lost greatly. He feared his fate, but he wouldn’t let that show, not to Americans. They loaded him into the back of a sedan and drove toward the gate. He saw another car ahead of his, but made no special note of it.
And there it was, the tall barbed-wire fence, manned on one side by American Marines in their multicolor fatigues – they called them “utilities,” Cortez had learned – and on the other by Cubans in their battle dress. Perhaps, just perhaps, Cortez thought, he might talk his way out of this. The car halted fifty meters from the gate. The corporal to his left pulled him out of the car and unlocked his handcuffs, lest he take them across and so enrich a Communist country. Such trivial nonsense, Félix thought.
“Come on, Pancho,” the black corporal said. “Time to go home.”
Even without the cuffs, both Marines grabbed him by the arms to help him walk to his mother country. There at the gate he saw two officers waiting for him, impassively for now. They would probably embrace him when he came across, which wouldn’t mean a thing. In either case, Cortez was determined to meet his fate like a man. He straightened his back and smiled at those waiting for him as though they were family members waiting at the airport gate.
“Cortez,” a man’s voice called.
They stepped out of the guard shack, just inside the gate. He didn’t know the man, but the woman…
Félix stopped, and the motion of the two Marines nearly toppled him. She just stood there, staring at him. She didn’t speak a word, and Cortez didn’t know what to say. The smile vanished from his lips. The look in her eyes made him shrink within himself. He’d never meant to hurt her. To use her, yes, of course, but never really…
“Come on, Pancho,” the corporal said, heaving the man forward. They were just at the gate.
“Oh, by the way, this here’s yours, Pancho,” the corporal said, tucking a videocassette in his belt. “Welcome home, asshole.” A final push.
“Welcome home, Colonel,” the senior of the two Cubans said. He embraced his former comrade and whispered: “You have much to answer for!”
But before they dragged him off, Félix turned one last time, seeing Moira, just standing there with the man he didn’t know, and his last thought as he turned away was that once again she’d understood: silence was the greatest passion of all.
END