Adrianna looked sharply at Devlin.
“I like him,” Devlin said. “I especially like him watching my back.”
“No one likes him except Paul,” Adrianna said.
“And why is that?”
“It’s simple.” Adrianna threw another sharp look at Devlin. “Ollie Pitts is a beast.”
Martínez sat back in his chair and nodded. “Ah, a beast,” he said. “Yes, that is definitely what we will need. A beast.”
Robert Cipriani sat in his brightly lit cell, the day’s edition of
Granma
propped on his lap. He glared at the newsprint, his face twisted in a sneer. He despised everything about Cuba’s daily newspaper. Even the fact that it was named after the battered ship that Fidel and eighty-six followers had used for their 1956 invasion at Alegría de Pio. It was so like these goddamned Cubans, he thought. Deifying some leaky tub, just because the fucking “Comandante” and his band of bearded greasers had once puked in its head. Naming their one fucking national newspaper after it. His jaw tightened. Christ, they had even put up a monument to the boat right behind Batista’s old Presidential Palace.
Cipriani tossed the newspaper aside. It was useless. The only financial news it carried was so laden with propaganda, all the facts became skewed. Fidel’s view of world finance. Like tits on a bull.
He pulled himself out of his leather easy chair, walked the three steps it took to cross his cell, and punched the button that would boot up the mainframe of his IBM computer. At least they had given him this—a way to communicate with the still-sane world. He moved to the cell’s one barred window while Windows 98 performed its magic. Outside, across the wide, green parade ground of the State Security compound, he could see an occasional car move past the barbed-wire-topped gate that opened onto Canuco Street. Most Cubans avoided the street. The high, wire-topped wall with its watchtowers and heavily armed guards, the mounted video cameras that tracked each car and pedestrian, made the entire two-block area inhospitable.
He snorted over the final word, then turned to take in his own “hospitable” surroundings. A ten-by-eight-foot cell, closed off by a solid iron door. A single bed, not even adequate for the weekly whore they provided. A leather reading chair. And the goddamned computer they had confiscated from his own house.
He closed his eyes and raised his hands to his face. He could feel the changes that had taken place in the five years he had been locked away. His hair was thinner now, the former widow’s peak now reaching back to the middle of his head. His face felt skeletal under his fingers, the cheeks sunken, the lines deeper across his forehead and around his eyes. He had kept his mustache, still too vain about the harelip it hid to cut it away. Christ, he was only fifty-five, but he looked ten years older, all of it coming since they had stuffed him in this cell. The bastards were killing him.
Cipriani’s eyes snapped open with the sound of the key in the lock. He watched as the door swung away and
that prick
Cabrera stepped into the cell.
“Hola, my friend. Have you come to free me at last.” He had forced a wide smile that Cabrera did not return.
“We have a problem.” Cabrera spoke to him in English, as he always did to protect their conversations from any eavesdropping guards. The colonel had taken care to make certain all the guards on the cellblock were not fluent in the language. It had only added to Cipriani’s miseries.
“We?” he said. “Why is it that
we
have problems, while only
you
enjoy the occasional success?”
“Spare me your philosophical observations.” Cabrera perched on the very edge of Cipriani’s bed, worried, as always, about damaging the knife-edge crease in his trousers. He was dressed in a business suit—his normal attire. Like all officers of State Security, he wore his uniform only for ceremonial occasions, or when he wanted to intimidate someone.
Cipriani
“I like him,” Devlin said. “I especially like him watching my back.”
“No one likes him except Paul,” Adrianna said.
“And why is that?”
“It’s simple.” Adrianna threw another sharp look at Devlin. “Ollie Pitts is a beast.”
Martínez sat back in his chair and nodded. “Ah, a beast,” he said. “Yes, that is definitely what we will need. A beast.”
Robert Cipriani sat in his brightly lit cell, the day’s edition of
Granma
propped on his lap. He glared at the newsprint, his face twisted in a sneer. He despised everything about Cuba’s daily newspaper. Even the fact that it was named after the battered ship that Fidel and eighty-six followers had used for their 1956 invasion at Alegría de Pio. It was so like these goddamned Cubans, he thought. Deifying some leaky tub, just because the fucking “Comandante” and his band of bearded greasers had once puked in its head. Naming their one fucking national newspaper after it. His jaw tightened. Christ, they had even put up a monument to the boat right behind Batista’s old Presidential Palace.
Cipriani tossed the newspaper aside. It was useless. The only financial news it carried was so laden with propaganda, all the facts became skewed. Fidel’s view of world finance. Like tits on a bull.
He pulled himself out of his leather easy chair, walked the three steps it took to cross his cell, and punched the button that would boot up the mainframe of his IBM computer. At least they had given him this—a way to communicate with the still-sane world. He moved to the cell’s one barred window while Windows 98 performed its magic. Outside, across the wide, green parade ground of the State Security compound, he could see an occasional car move past the barbed-wire-topped gate that opened onto Canuco Street. Most Cubans avoided the street. The high, wire-topped wall with its watchtowers and heavily armed guards, the mounted video cameras that tracked each car and pedestrian, made the entire two-block area inhospitable.
He snorted over the final word, then turned to take in his own “hospitable” surroundings. A ten-by-eight-foot cell, closed off by a solid iron door. A single bed, not even adequate for the weekly whore they provided. A leather reading chair. And the goddamned computer they had confiscated from his own house.
He closed his eyes and raised his hands to his face. He could feel the changes that had taken place in the five years he had been locked away. His hair was thinner now, the former widow’s peak now reaching back to the middle of his head. His face felt skeletal under his fingers, the cheeks sunken, the lines deeper across his forehead and around his eyes. He had kept his mustache, still too vain about the harelip it hid to cut it away. Christ, he was only fifty-five, but he looked ten years older, all of it coming since they had stuffed him in this cell. The bastards were killing him.
Cipriani’s eyes snapped open with the sound of the key in the lock. He watched as the door swung away and
that prick
Cabrera stepped into the cell.
“Hola, my friend. Have you come to free me at last.” He had forced a wide smile that Cabrera did not return.
“We have a problem.” Cabrera spoke to him in English, as he always did to protect their conversations from any eavesdropping guards. The colonel had taken care to make certain all the guards on the cellblock were not fluent in the language. It had only added to Cipriani’s miseries.
“We?” he said. “Why is it that
we
have problems, while only
you
enjoy the occasional success?”
“Spare me your philosophical observations.” Cabrera perched on the very edge of Cipriani’s bed, worried, as always, about damaging the knife-edge crease in his trousers. He was dressed in a business suit—his normal attire. Like all officers of State Security, he wore his uniform only for ceremonial occasions, or when he wanted to intimidate someone.
Cipriani
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