Killing Castro - Lawrence Block [17]
Moreno told them in Spanish simply to come, to follow. He led them out of the caves again. Turner decided that he could not possibly have found his way alone. He wondered how Moreno managed it. One cave looked pretty much like the next.
“The underground,” he told Hines. “They don’t kid around here. The underground lives under the ground.”
They were out of the caves finally and Turner took his first look at Cuba by daylight. The sun was bright, the sky empty of clouds. The air, while warmish, was clear and fresh, especially after the stale air of the caverns. He filled his lungs with it, killed his cigarette. Moreno had a car parked nearby and Turner and Hines got into the back seat. In Spanish Moreno said that he was going to drive them into Havana.
“Just like that?”
Moreno said it was simple, that no one would stop the car. He was taking them to the home of some members of the underground, he explained. These members were not known to the police. There was a room in the basement, a safe room, and Turner and Hines would live there. They would be fed, they would have beds to sleep in. And from there they could murder the Communist bastard Castro, the betrayer of revolutions, the murderer of women and children, the pig, the ladron, the hijo de la gran puta, the maricon, the hombre sin cojones—
All of this came in a steady stream that sounded as though it had been memorized from a prepared speech. Turner didn’t bother listening to the end of it. It was more fun looking out the window.
The highway between Matanzas and Havana had been built within the past several years and looked it. It was wide and traffic moved at a steady pace. The cars, Turner noticed, were mostly old ones. Almost all were American models, with an occasional Volkswagen and Renault tossed in. The newest one Turner spotted was a Fifty-eight Buick. The road ran parallel to the shore but a good distance away from it. There were cane fields on both sides, fields broken by an occasional gas station or roadside restaurant.
Turner glanced at Hines. The kid was looking out the window, too. “It’s pretty,” he said.
“You sound surprised.”
“It’s not what I expected.”
“What did you have in mind? Guns and barbed wire?”
“Something like that.”
Turner shrugged. “I don’t know politics,” he said. “They don’t interest me. But I’ve been a few places, done a few things. I used to ship out, short term cargo stuff, up and down the coast and around the gulf.”
“I know.”
“You meet people, sailors. That’s where I picked up Spanish. I’ve shipped with Cubans. It’s not that bad down here, Jim.”
“You think Castro’s a bargain?”
“I think he’s a bastard and a son-of-a-bitch. He found a little power and it went to his head. This happens. But Batista was just as big a bastard. The average Joe didn’t eat steak and still doesn’t. A few years ago he had to be satisfied with beans and rice and was happy to get that. One revolution later and he’s still eating the same crap. They’ve got wholesale executions and no democracy and it’s easy to find a lot of reasons to put Castro down. But you get back to the average Joe and he doesn’t care about these reasons. He’s more interested in eating better and being pushed around less. And all the things he finds wrong he can sit back and blame the Yankees for them, because that’s what Loudmouth Castro tells him, over and over again, ad nauseam. He figures Castro and the people around him are Communists but he also figures he’s got nothing to lose. So don’t look around for barbed wire. They don’t need it yet. The average Joe is still on Castro’s side or, at least, not definitely against him.”
“How about the underground? Aren’t they average Joes, Turner?”
“No. Maybe they’re rebels, sharp guys with a yen for more and better. Maybe they want power on their own. Hell, maybe they’re crooks or nuts or cranks or rapists or—”
Hines pointed to the driver.
“Forget him. He doesn’t understand English. None of the gang at the cave understood English.”
“How do you know?”
“I tested them last night. I told them all to go home and drop dead.