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Castro looked at Pitt steadily, his face filled with emotion. He stepped forward and embraced him.
"Thank you," he murmured in a broken voice. Then he kissed Jessie on both cheeks and shook Hagen's hand. "Cuba thanks you all. We will not forget."
Pitt looked at Castro slyly. "I wonder if I might ask a favor?"
"You have but to name it," Castro quickly answered.
Pitt hesitated, then he said, "There is this taxi driver named Herberto Figueroa. If I were to find him a restored 'fifty-seven Chevrolet in the States and have it shipped, do you suppose you could arrange for him to take delivery. Herberto and I would both be very grateful."
"But of course. I'll personally see to it he receives your gift."
"There is one more favor," said Pitt.
"Don't push your luck," whispered Sandecker.
"What is it?" Castro asked courteously.
"I wonder if I could borrow a boat with a crane?"
The bodies of Manny and three of his crew were identified. Clark was fished out of the channel by a fishing boat. Their remains were flown back to Washington for burial. Nothing of Jack, Moe, and the rest ever turned up.
The fire was finally under control four days after the death ships were blown out of existence. The final, stubborn blaze would not be extinguished until a week later. Another six weeks would pass before the last of the dead were found. Many were never found at all.
The Cubans were meticulous in their accounting. They eventually compiled a complete list of causalities. The known dead came to 732. The injured totaled 3,769. The missing were calculated at 197.
At the President's urging, Congress passed an emergency aid bill of $45 million to help the Cubans rebuild Havana. The President also, as a gesture of goodwill, lifted the thirty-five-year-old trade embargo. At last Americans could legally smoke good Havana cigars again.
After the Russians were expelled, their only representation in Cuba was a Special Interests Section in the Polish Embassy. The Cuban people shed no tears at their departure.
Castro still remained a Marxist revolutionary at heart, but he was mellowing. After agreeing in principle to the U.S.-Cuban friendship pact, he unhesitantly accepted an invitation to visit with the President at the White House and make an address before Congress, although he did grumble when asked to keep his speech to twenty minutes.
At dawn on the third day after the explosions an old peeling, weather-worn vessel dropped anchor almost in the exact center of the harbor. Fireboats and salvage craft swept past her as though she were a disabled car in the center of a highway. She was a squat workboat, broad and beamy, about sixty feet in length with a small derrick on the stern whose boom extended over the water. Her crew seemed oblivious to the frenzy of activity going on around them.
Most of the flames in the dock area had been extinguished, but firemen were still pouring thousands of gallons of water on the smoldering debris inside the heat-twisted framework of the warehouses. Several blackened oil storage tanks across the harbor sputtered with stubborn flame, and the acrid pall of smoke reeked of burned oil and rubber.
Pitt stood on the bleached deck of the workboat and squinted through the smoky yellow haze at the wreck of the oil tanker. All that remained of the Ozero Baykai was the scorched superstructure on the stern that rose grotesque and distorted above the oily water. He turned his attention to a small compass he held in one hand.
"Is this the spot?" asked Admiral. Sandecker.
"Cross bearings on the landmarks check out," Pitt answered.
Giordino stuck his head out the wheelhouse window. "The magnetometer is going crazy. We're right over a heavy mass of iron."
Jessie was sitting on a hatch. She wore gray shorts and a pale blue blouse and looked like her old luscious self.
She flashed a curious look at Pitt. "You still haven't told me why you think Raymond hid the La Dorada on the bottom of the harbor and how you know exactly where to look."
"I was stupid not catch on immediately," explained Pitt. "The words sound the same, and I misinterpreted them. I thought his last words werèLook on the m-a-i-n s-i-g-h-t.' What he was really trying to say was `Look on the M-a-i-n-a s-i-t-e."
Jessie looked confused. "Maine site?"
"Remember Pearl Harbor, the Alamo, and the Maine. On or about this spot in 1898 the battleship Maine blew up and launched the Spanish-American War."
An edge of excitement began to form inside her. "Raymond threw the statue on top of an old shipwreck?"
"Shipwreck site," Pitt corrected her. "The hulk of the Maine was raised and towed out to sea, where she was sunk with flag flying in 1912."
