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Quintana sensed utter conviction in Pitt's tone. He turned and began walking toward the main camp.
"Come along, Mr. Pitt. It's time we put you to work."
Fidel Castro sat slouched in the fighting chair and gazed pensively over the stern of a forty-foot cabin cruiser. His shoulders were harnessed and his gloved hands loosely clutched the heavy fiberglass rod, whose line trailed from a huge reel into the sparkling wake. The dolphin bait was snatched by a passing barracuda, but Ca
stro didn't seem to mind. His thoughts were not on marlin.
The muscular body that once earned him the title "Cuba's best school athlete" had softened and expanded with age. The curly hair and the barbed-wire beard were gray now, but the revolutionary fire in his dark eyes still burned as brightly as it did when he came down from the mountains of the Sierra Maestra thirty years ago.
He wore only a baseball cap, swimming trunks, old sneakers, and sunglasses. The stub of an unlit Havana drooped from one corner of his lips. He turned and shielded his eyes from the brilliant tropical sunlight.
"You want me to cease internacionalismo?" he demanded above the muffled roar of the twin diesels.
"Renounce our policy of spreading Cuba's influence abroad? Is that what you want?"
Raul Castro sat in a deckchair, holding a bottle of beer. "Not renounce but quietly bring down the curtain on our commitments abroad."
"My brother the hardline revolutionary. What brought on your aboutface?"
"Times change," Raul said simply.
Cold and aloof in public, Fidel's younger brother was witty and congenial in private. His hair was black, slick, and closely trimmed above the ears. Raul viewed the world from a pixie face through dark, beady eyes. A narrow moustache stretched across his upper lip, the pointed tips ending precisely above the corners of his mouth.
Fidel rubbed the back of one hand against a few drops of sweat that clung to his eyebrows. "I cannot write off the enormous cost in money and the blood of our soldiers. And what of our friends in Africa and the Americas? Do I write them off like our dead in Afghanistan?"
"The price Cuba was paid for our involvement in revolutionary movements outweighs the gains. So we made friends in Angola and Ethiopia. What will they ever do for us in return? We both know the answer is nothing. We have to face it, Fidel, we made mistakes. I'll be the first to admit mine. But for God's sake, let's cut our losses and return to building Cuba into a great socialist nation to be envied by the third world. We'll achieve far more by having them copy our example than by giving them our people's blood."
"You're asking me to turn my back on our honor and our principles."
Raul rolled the cool bottle across his perspiring forehead. "Let's look at the truth, Fidel. We've thrown principles overboard before when it was in the best interests of the revolution. If we don't shift gears soon and vitalize our stagnating economy, the people's discontent might turn to unrest, despite their love for you."
Fidel spat the cigar stub over the boat's transom and motioned to a deckhand for another. "The U.S.
Congress would love to see the people turn against me."
"The Congress doesn't bother me half as much as the Kremlin," said Raul. "Everywhere I look I find a traitor in Antonov's pocket. I can't even trust my own security people anymore."
"Once the President and I agree to the U.S.-Cuban pact and sign it, our Soviet fair-weather friends will be forced to release their tentacles from around our necks."
"How can you finalize anything when you refuse to sit down and negotiate with him?"
Fidel paused to light a fresh cigar brought by the deckhand. "By now he's probably made up his mind that my offer to sever our links with the Soviet Union in return for United States economic aid and open trade agreements is genuine. If I appear too eager for a meeting, he'll only set impossible preconditions.
Let him stew for a while. When he realizes I'm not crawling over the White House doormat, he'll lower his sights."
"The President will be even more eager to come to terms when he learns of the reckless encroachment by Antonov's cronies into our government."
Fidel held up the cigar to make his point. "Exactly why I have sat back and allowed it to happen.
Playing on American fears of a Soviet stooge figureheading a puppet regime is all to our advantage."
Raul emptied the beer bottle and tossed it over the side. "Just don't wait too long, big brother, or we'll find ourselves out of a job."
"Never happen." Fidel's face creased in a cocksure smile. "I am the glue that holds the revolution together. All I have to do is go before the people and expose the traitors and the Soviet plot to undermine our sacred sovereignty. And then, as President of the Council of Ministers, you will announce the cutting of all ties to the Kremlin. Any discontent will be replaced with national rejoicing. With one swing of the ax I'll have cut the massive debt to Moscow and removed the U.S. trade embargo."
"Better be soon."
