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  Ocho let the first ball go by … outside.

  The second pitch was low.

  The opposing pitcher walked around the mound, examined the ball, toed the rubber.

  The fact was Ocho was a better batter than he was a pitcher. Oh, he was a great pitcher, but when he had a bat in his hands all his gifts were on display; the reflexes, the eyesight, the physique, the ability to wait for his pitch … .

  The third pitch was a strike, belt-high, and Ocho got around on it and connected solidly. The ball rose into the warm, humid air and flew as if it had wings until it cleared the center field fence by a good margin.

  “He caught it perfectly,” Mercedes said, admiration in her voice.

  Ocho trotted the bases while everyone in the bleachers applauded. The opposing pitcher stood on the mound shaking his head in disgust.

  Ocho’s manager was the first to greet him as he trotted toward the dugout. He pounded his star on the back, pumped his hand, beamed proudly, almost like a father.

  “What else is happening?” Hector asked.

  “The government has signed the casino agreement. Miramar, Havana, Varadero and Santiago. The consortium will provide fifty percent of the cost of an airport in Santiago.”

  “They have been negotiating for what—three years?”

  “Almost that.”

  “Any sense of urgency on the part of the Cubans?”

  “I sense none. The Americans were happy with the deal, so they signed.”

  “Who are these Americans?”

  “I thought they were Nevada casino people, but there were people in the background pulling strings, criminals, I think. They wanted assurances on prostitution and narcotics.”

  The Cuban government had been negotiating agreements for foreign investment and development for years, mainly with Canadian and European companies. Tourism was now the largest industry in Cuba, bringing 1.5 million tourists a year to the island and keeping the economy afloat with hard currency. Now the Cuban government was openly negotiating with American companies, with all deals contingent upon the ending of the American economic embargo. Fidel Castro believed that he could put political pressure upon the American government to end the embargo by dangling development rights in front of American capitalists. Hector Sedano thought Fidel understood the Americans.

  “The tobacco negotiator, Chance—how is he progressing?”

  “He is talking to your brother Maximo. Then he is supposed to see Vargas. Tobacco will replace sugarcane as Cuba’s big crop, he says. The cigarettes will be manufactured here and marketed worldwide under American brands. The Americans will finance everything; Cuba will get a fifty-percent share of the business, across the board.”

  “Is this Chance serious?”

  “Apparently. The tobacco companies think their days are numbered in the United States. They want to move offshore, escape the regulation that will eventually put them out of business.”

  Hector sat silently, taking it all in as the uniformed players on the field played a game with rules. What a contrast with politics!

  Mercedes was a treasure, a person with access to the highest levels of the Cuban government. She brought Hector Sedano information that even Castro probably didn’t have. The big question, of course, was how she learned it. Hector told himself repeatedly that he didn’t want to know, but of course he did.

  He glanced at the woman sitting beside him. She was wearing a simple dress that did nothing to call attention to her figure, nor did it do anything to hide it.

  She was a beautiful woman who needed no makeup and never wore any. Every man she met was attracted to her, an unremarkable fact, like the summer heat, which she didn’t seem to notice. Extraordinarily smart, with a near-photographic memory, she had almost no opportunities to use her talent in Cuban society.

  Except as a spy.

  “Will Maximo be at Mima’s party tomorrow?”

  “He said he would.”

  “Should I be shocked if he acts possessive?”

  Mercedes glanced at him, raised an eyebrow. “He would not be so foolish.”

  Well, just who was she sleeping with? Hector glanced at her repeatedly, wondering. She appeared to be concentrating on the ball game.

  The only thing he knew for sure was that she wasn’t sleeping with him, and God knows he had thought about that far more than any priest ever should. Of course, priests were human and had to fight their urges, but still …

  Castro … Of course she slept with him—she was his mistress—that was how she got access. But did she love him?

  Or was she a cool, calculating tramp ready to change horses now that Castro was dying?

  No. He shook his head, refusing to believe that of her.

  Where did Maximo fit in? As he sat there contemplating that angle, he wondered how Maximo saw her?

  Mercedes left after watching Ocho pitch an inning. He faced three batters and struck them all out.

  When the game was over, Hector Sedano stayed in his seat and watched the crowd file out. He was still sitting there when someone shouted at him, “Hey, I turn out the lights now.”

  The darkness that followed certainly wasn’t total. Small lights were illuminated over the exits, the lights of Havana lit up the sky, and lightning continued to flash on the horizon.

  Sedano lit another cigar and smoked it slowly.

  After a few minutes he saw the shape of a man making his way along the aisle toward him. The man sagged down on the bench several feet away.

  “Good game tonight.” The man was the stadium keeper, Alfredo Garcia.

  “Yes.”

  “Your brother, El Ocho, was magnificent. Such talent, such presence.”

  “We are very proud of him.”

  “Why do you call him El Ocho?”

  “He was the. eighth child. He has the usual half dozen names, but his brothers and I just call him Ocho.”

  “I saw that she was here, with her security guards circling … . What did she say?”

  “What makes you think she tells me anything?”

  “Come, my friend. Someone whispers in your ear.”

  “And someone is whispering to Alejo Vargas.”

  “You suspect me?”

  “I think you are just stupid enough to take money from the Americans and money from Alejo Vargas and think neither of them will find out about the other.”

  “My God, man! Think of what you are saying!” Alfredo moved closer. Sedano could see his face, which was almost as white as his shirt.

  “I am thinking.”

  “You have my life in your hands. I had to trust you with my life when I first approached you. Nothing has changed.”

  Sedano puffed on the cigar in silence, studying Garcia’s features. Born in America of Cuban parents, Garcia had been a priest. He couldn’t leave the women alone, however, and ultimately got mixed up with some topless dancers running an “escort” service in East St. Louis. After a few months the feds busted him for violation of the Mann Act, moving women across state lines for immoral purposes, i.e., prostitution. After the church canned him, he jumped bail and fled to Cuba. Garcia had been in Cuba several years when he was recruited by the CIA, which asked him to approach Sedano.

  Hector Sedano had no doubt that Garcia had the ear of the American government—in the past four years he had supplied Sedano with almost a million dollars in cash and enough weapons to supply a small army. The money and weapons always arrived when and where Garcia said they would. Still, the question remained, who else did the man talk to?

  Who did his control talk to?

  Hector had stockpiled the weapons, hidden them praying they would never be needed. He used the money for travel expenses and bribes. Without money to bribe the little fish he would have landed in prison years ago.

  Hector Sedano shook his head to clear his thoughts. He was living on the naked edge, had been there for years. And life wasn’t getting any easier.

  “Castro is dying,” he said. “It is a matter of week
s, or so the doctors say.”

  Alfredo Garcia took a deep breath and exhaled audibly.

  “I tell you now man-to-man, Alfredo. The records of Alejo Vargas will soon be placed in my hands. If you have betrayed me or the people of Cuba, you had better find a way to get off this planet, because there is no place on it you can hide, not from me, not from the CIA, not from the men and women you betrayed.”

  “I have betrayed no one,” Alfredo Garcia said. “God? Yes. But no man.”

  He went away then, leaving Sedano to smoke in solitude.

  Fidel Castro dying! Hector Sedano could hear his heart beat as he tried to comprehend the reality of that fact.

  Millions of people were waiting for his death, some patiently, most impatiently, many with a feeling of impending doom. Castro had ruled Cuba as an absolute dictator since 1959: the revolution that he led did nothing more than topple the old dictator and put a new one in his place. Castro jettisoned fledgling democracy, embraced communism and used raw demagoguery to consolidate his total, absolute power. He prosecuted and executed his enemies and confiscated the property of anyone who might be against him. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans fled, many to America.

  Castro’s embrace of communism and seizure of the assets of the foreign corporations that had invested in Cuba, assets worth several billions of dollars, were almost preordained, inevitable. Predictably, most of those corporations were American. Also predictably, the United States government retaliated with a diplomatic and economic blockade that continued to this day.

  After seizing the assets of the American corporations who owned most of Cuba, Castro had little choice: he had to have the assistance of a major power, so he substituted the Soviet Union for the United States as Cuba’s patron. The only good thing about the substitution was that the Soviet Union was a lot farther away than Florida. Theirs was never a partnership of equals: the Soviets humiliated Fidel at almost every turn in the road. When communism collapsed in the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Cuba was cut adrift as an expensive luxury that the newly democratic Russia could ill afford. That twist of fate was a cruel blow to Cuba, which despite Castro’s best efforts still was a slave to sugarcane.

  Through it all, Castro survived. Never as popular as his supporters believed, he was never as unpopular as the exiles claimed. The truth of the matter was that Castro was Cuban to the core and fiercely independent, and he had kept Cuba that way. His demagoguery played well to poor peasants who had nothing but their pride. The trickle of refugees across the Florida Straits acted as a safety valve to rid the regime of its worst enemies, the vociferous critics with the will and tenacity to cause serious problems. In the Latin tradition, the Cubans who remained submitted to Castro, even respected him for thumbing his nose at the world. A dictator he might be, but he was “our” dictator.

  A new day was about to dawn in Cuba, a day without Castro and the baggage of communism, ballistic missiles, and invasion, a new day without bitter enmity with the United States. Just what that day would bring remained to be seen, but it was coming.

  The exiles wanted justice, and revenge; the peons who lived in the exiles’ houses, now many families to a building, feared being dispossessed. The foreign corporations that Castro so cavalierly robbed wanted compensation. Everyone wanted food, and jobs, and a future. It seemed as if the bills for all the past mistakes were about to come due and payable at once.

  Hector Sedano would have a voice in that future, if he survived. He sat smoking, contemplating the coming storm.

  Mercedes was of course correct about the danger posed by Alejo Vargas. Mix Latin machismo and a willingness to do violence to gain one’s own ends, add generous dollops of vainglory, egotism, and paranoia, stir well, and you have the makings of a truly fine Latin American dictator, self-righteous, suspicious, trigger-happy, and absolutely ruthless. Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz came out of that mold: Alejo Vargas, Hector knew, was merely another. He could not make this observation to Mercedes, whom Hector suspected of loving Fidel—he needed her cooperation.

  Alfredo Garcia found a seat near the ticket-taker’s booth from where he could see the shadowy figure on the top row of the bleachers. He was so nervous he twitched.

  Like Hector Sedano, he too was in awe of the news he had just learned: Fidel Castro was dying.

  Alfredo Garcia trembled as he thought about it. That priest in the top row of the bleachers was one of the contenders for power in post-Castro Cuba. There were others of course, Alejo Vargas, the Minister of Interior and head of the secret police, prominently among them.

  Yes, Garcia talked to the secret police of Alejo Vargas—he had to. No one could refuse the Department of State Security, least of all a fugitive from American justice seeking sanctuary.

  And of course he cooperated on an ongoing basis. Vargas’s spies were everywhere, witnessed every conversation, every meal, every waking moment … or so it seemed. One could never be certain what the secret police knew from other sources, what they were just guessing at, what he was their only source for. Garcia had handled this reality the only way he could: he answered direct questions with a bit of the truth—if he knew it—and volunteered nothing.

  If the secret police knew Alfredo had a CIA contact they had never let on. They did know Hector Sedano was a power in the underground although they seemed to think he was a small fish.

  Garcia thought otherwise. He thought Hector Sedano was the most powerful man in Cuba after Fidel Castro, even more powerful than Alejo Vargas.

  Why didn’t Hector understand the excruciating predicament that Alfredo Garcia found himself in? Certainly Hector knew what it was like to have few options, or none at all.

  Alfredo was a weak man. He had never been able to resist the temptations of the flesh. God had forgiven him, of that he was sure, but would Hector Sedano?

  As he sat in the darkness watching Hector, Alfredo Garcia smiled grimly. One of the contenders for power in post-Castro Cuba would be Hector’s own brother, Maximo Luís Sedano, the finance minister. Maximo was Fidel’s most trusted lieutenant, one of his inner circle. Three years older than Hector, he had lived and breathed Castro’s revolution all his life, willingly standing in the great man’s shadow. Those days were about over, and Maximo’s friends whispered that he was ready—he wanted more. That was the general street gossip that Garcia heard, and like most gossip, he thought it probably had a kernel of truth inside.

  For his part, Maximo probably thought his only serious rival was Alejo Vargas. He was going to get a bad shock in the near future.

  And then there were the exiles. God only knew what those fools would do when Fidel breathed his last.

  Yes, indeed, when Fidel died the fireworks would begin.

  Hector Sedano was taking the last few puffs on his cigar when his youngest brother, El Ocho, climbed the bleachers. Ocho settled onto a bench in front of Hector and leaned back so that he could rest his feet on the bench in front of him.

  “You played well tonight. The home run was a thing of beauty.”

  “It’s just a game.”

  “And you play it well.”

  Ocho snorted. “Just a game,” he repeated.

  “All of life is a game,” his older brother told him, and ground out his cigar.

  “Was that Mercedes I saw talking to you earlier?”

  “She is here for Mima’s birthday.”

  Ocho nodded. He seemed to gather himself before he spoke again.

  “My manager, Diego Coca, wants me to go to the United States.”

  Hector let that statement lie there. Sometimes Ocho said outrageous things to get a reaction. Hector had quit playing that game years ago.

  “Diego says I could play in the major leagues.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  Ocho turned toward his older brother and closest friend. “Diego is a dreamer. I look good playing this game because the other players are not so good. The pitch I hit out tonight was a belt-high fastball right down the middle. American major league p
itchers don’t throw stuff like that because all those guys can hit it.”

  “Could you pitch there?”

  “In Cuba my fastball is a little faster than everyone else’s. My curve breaks a little more. In America all the pitchers have a good fastball and breaking ball. Everyone is better.”

  Hector laughed. “So you aren’t interested in going to America and getting rich, like your uncle Tomas?” Tomas had defected ten years ago while a team of baseball stars was on a trip to Mexico City. He now owned five dry-cleaning plants in metropolitan Miami. Oh, yes, Tomas was getting rich!

  “I’m not good enough to play in the big leagues. Diego tells me I am. I think he believes it. He wants me to go, take him with me, sign a big contract. I’m his chance.”

  “He wants to go with you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “On a boat?”

  “He says he knows a man who has a boat. He can take us to Florida, where people will be waiting.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Diego does. That is what is important.”

  “You owe Diego a few hours of sweat on the baseball field, nothing else.”

  Ocho didn’t reply. He lay back on his elbows and wiggled his feet.

  “Why don’t you tell me all of it?” Hector suggested gently.

  Ocho didn’t look at him. After a bit he said, “I got Diego’s daughter pregnant. Dora, the second one.”

  “He knows this?”

  Ocho nodded affirmatively.

  “So marry the girl. This is an embarrassment, not dishonor. My God, Mima was pregnant when Papa married her! Welcome to the world, Ocho. And congratulations.”

  “Diego is the girl’s father.”

  “I will talk to him,” Hector said. “You are both young, with hot blood in your veins. Surely he will understand. I will promise him that you will do the right thing by this girl. You will stand up with her in church, love her, cherish her … .”

  “Diego wants the best for her, for the baby, for me.”

  “For himself.”

  “And for himself, yes. He wants us to go on his friend’s boat to America. I will play baseball and earn much money and we will live the good life in America. That is his dream.”