Killing Castro - Lawrence Block [57]
He was sweating. He was not sure whether it was the coffee, the crowd or the heat that made him perspire, or whether his fear was causing it. But somehow he was not really afraid. Fear ceased to have anything to do with it any more, just as logic had flown the coop not long ago. It was three o’clock. Castro would begin his speech in two hours. And the steps where he would stand were just a stone’s throw away.
A stone’s throw. Or a bomb’s throw.
Turner sat in a café on La Calle de Trabajadores. His hotel room had no television set and he wanted to see Castro’s speech. He drank bottled beer and watched the screen of the café’s set.
At four-thirty a movie ended and the channel began coverage of the speech. Castro was not yet due to arrive for an hour, but the television cameras began by panning the crowd while the announcer killed time by reading news bulletins in rapid Spanish.
Today, Turner thought. Today, while I sit here drinking this beer in this café. Today.
Maybe he was making a mistake. Maybe he should be with Hines. Maybe the kid was right to call him chicken. Maybe he was copping out, turning yellow.
But what good could he do? One man could throw a bomb as well as two. One man could blow up a dictator as well as two. And one man could surely die as well as two.
To hell with it. He had his own life to live. And if Jim Hines had his own death to die, well, that was his own damned business. And not Turner’s.
He sipped his beer and watched the screen.
At a quarter to five Garrison locked and bolted his door. He took out a small penknife and slashed his mattress open again, pulling the high-powered rifle free. His window shade was drawn. Garrison broke down the gun, cleaned it, loaded it with a single bullet. When you are paid high prices for murder, you do not need more than one bullet. Not with an expensive rifle fitted with a scope sight and zeroed in on a stationary target. One bullet was plenty.
He switched off the light in the room. That way there was much less chance of drawing attention from the street. Then he raised the shade a few inches and planted himself in a chair by the window. Castro hadn’t arrived yet but the plaza was jammed already, filled with a noisy mass of people. It was odd, sitting above them all in solitary comfort, knowing something that they could not know. Like watching a movie when you knew the ending in advance. A special feeling, a combination of superiority and, somehow, disappointment.
At five minutes to five he got the rifle in position. He propped a pillow on the windowsill, then rested the rifle upon it. The pillow would steady the gun, absorb a certain amount of the recoil, and muffle a certain amount of the noise. He knelt by the window and held tight to the rifle. He sighted in on the speaker’s platform on the steps of the Palace of Justice.
Castro appeared at four minutes after the hour. His soldiers cleared a path for him through the crowd and the big bearded man walked up the path to the platform. He wore his usual uniform—army boots, a field jacket, khaki slacks, thick flowing beard. He stepped upon the platform and the applause thundered.
The applause did not stop. Garrison watched Castro, the man he had to kill. He watched him first over the rifle, then through the sight. The hairline cross in the scope was centered upon Castro’s face, between his full mouth and his hawk-like nose. Garrison’s finger touched the trigger, gently.
Not yet, he thought. Not for an hour, maybe. Because the less time he spent in Cuba after he squeezed that trigger, the safer it was. They could figure out where the bullet came from. They could run him down, meet him at the airport—
Something else