Killing Castro - Lawrence Block [8]
Turner came back, handed him a cup of coffee. They drank in silence. When they set down empty cups Turner offered him a cigarette. He shook his head and Turner lit one for himself.
“What I said before,” Turner apologized, “about you grabbing a plane and going home. Just forget I said it, okay?”
“Sure.”
“How old are you, Hines?”
“Nineteen. Why?”
“No reason. You ever have a woman?”
Hines looked at his hands. He took a deep breath.
“Well? Did you?”
“No.”
“Don’t be ashamed of it, for Christ’s sake. Look, it’s late, we’re both tired. There are bedrooms in the back. We’ll sack out for eight hours, then send out for some food and some liquor. You drink?”
“Sure.”
“Good,” Turner said. “We’ll get some food and we’ll get some liquor, and I’ll call somebody on the phone and get a couple of girls. We’ll eat the food and we’ll drink the liquor and we’ll lay the girls. Then we’ll go to Cuba and get our asses shot off. That sound okay to you?”
“Sure,” Hines said.
“Fine,” Turner said. “Now let’s get some sleep.”
TWO
Fidel Castro was born on the thirteenth of August in 1926. His father was a Spaniard, a Galician who settled in Oriente Province and became rich from sugar and lumber. Fidel grew up on his father’s farm at Biran, in the municipality of Mayari on the north coast of Oriente, near Nipe Bay. He ran barefoot in his father’s fields, hauled lumber with a tractor. He was baptized as a Roman Catholic and went to church schools in Santiago.
Fidel Castro was seven years old when Batista took over the island. Fulgencio Batista, a tough-minded sergeant in the Cuban Army, managed to rally the armed forces around him and grab power in the turmoil surrounding the revolt which ousted Machado. The young Fidel Castro grew to maturity in Batista’s Cuba, an island where personal liberty was ground out beneath the iron heel of dictatorship.
He attended the Christian Brothers’ Colegio La Salle, then transferred to complete his grade school education at the Jesuit Colegio Dolores. He played a bugle in the school band and wore his first uniform, a navy-blue outfit with a white Sam Browne belt.
In 1942, while the rest of the world abandoned itself to the early years of the second world war, Fidel was sent to high school in Havana at the Colegio Belen. It was there that his talents for leadership came to the foreground. He was outstanding in his studies and in athletics as well, pitching for the baseball team, playing basketball, running for the track squad. By the time he graduated in June of 1945, he had made his choice of a vocation. He was going to become a lawyer.
The University of Havana, where Fidel Castro enrolled in the fall of that year, was a fundamentally different sort of place from North American universities. Latin American colleges have, throughout history, played a predominant role in the politics of their nations. Revolutions and uprisings are fomented there, radical thought is encouraged. Panty raids and homecoming rallies are unknown in Latin American colleges. Latin American students have weightier concerns to occupy their time.
It was at the university that Fidel’s future was molded. He entered the Law School, became embroiled in student affairs. He was an impressive figure—tall, good-looking, with strong features, a quick mind, and a fine speaking voice. In a short time he had become a prominent campus figure, an artist at political manipulation.
But in the summer of 1947 Castro’s revolutionary zeal interrupted his academic studies. He joined an expeditionary force training in the hills of Oriente, preparing to invade the Dominican Republic to overthrow Trujillo, the island republic’s long-term dictator. There Fidel got his first taste of military life, a taste which developed with the years.
The invasion was premature, and a failure. The Dominican government got wind of the