When the woman departed Julio said, “A man who disobeys one order will disobey another.” He stared at the old man contentiously.

“This isn’t the Wehrmacht,” Cielo said, trying to placate them. “And Emil, Jr., didn’t train with us. He’s young.”

“What you’re saying is it’s my fault this happened. I saddled you with him. Well I thought he might learn something about manhood from you. I meant you no disservice.”

“The American’s dead,” Cielo put in. “Whipping Emil won’t revise that.”

“Whipping,” the old man said, “doesn’t come into it. No one is going to whip Emil.”

Julio stroked his bandit’s mustache and watched Cielo ingenuously, eyes like black olives. Abruptly and brashly Julio said, “If we punish him we make him our enemy, he’ll come at our kidneys one night with a knife. But if we don’t punish him we’ll only encourage his contempt for what he believes is our weakness. Either way he’ll betray us sooner or later. I don’t give a damn whose blood relation he is.” And his eyes rolled back to the old man again.

Cielo sucked in his breath. It wasn’t the proper time for such a confrontation.

The old man took it calmly enough. “What, did you expect we could retake Havana without firing a shot? Don’t tell me after all the blood that’s been shed you’re turning into mangy intellectuals, you two. Pacifists, is it?”

“No, we’re soldiers,” said Cielo. “But we weren’t at war with the American Peace Corpsman.”

“Emil won’t betray his own family.” Cunning thinned the old man’s eyes. “The two of you would welcome an excuse to ease him out, wouldn’t you. His presence threatens your authority.”

Cielo felt a twinge of disembodied pain. He felt trapped between his brother and the old man. He was losing ground, as he always did before the old man: Draga might as well have been his father, he always made Cielo feel eleven years old. He was like a Renaissance cardinal.

He made a feeble attempt: “We must do something, you know.”

“Leave my grandson to me. I’ll make sure he understands.”

Julio spoke up resolutely: “We must take a position, that’s all there is to it.”

Draga frowned at Julio, then turned to his brother.

“What do you say, Cielo? You know I’ve always trusted you.”

“With all due respect, sir. We believe we are the ones to settle the matter.”

“You have the floor.”

Cielo drew a breath deep inside, expanding with reluctant resolve. He knew he must step in, if only to protect his older brother. The old man would accept it from Cielo—he must have sensed Cielo’s lack of ambition. Julio was another case and his presence at this meeting goaded Cielo into taking a stronger position. “You’ll recall none of the hostages was to be killed,” he said finally.

“There was an excellent reason for that. One can’t very well litter the landscape with American corpses and expect the Americans to reconfirm their neutrality afterward. I don’t expect support from Washington but we must have their assurance that they will keep hands off. That’s why this crime distresses me so deeply.”

And never mind that an innocent boy died, Cielo thought sorrowfully. To the old man the boy was a casualty of war. He could hear himself thinking: Why don’t we tell him the truth? He looked at his brother, expecting a mocking expression; fortunately Julio had put his nose in his coffee cup.

Cielo said, “The thing would have worked out according to plan if I hadn’t been saddled with your grandson.”

The old man went very calm. “Yes?”

“From here on I’ll move only with my own people. Not your grandson, not anybody from this villa. I know this deprives you of eyes and ears—I’ll keep you abreast. But I must maintain absolute discipline and I can only do it by excluding outsiders.”

“Emil is hardly an outsider.”

“He is to us. He wasn’t in the Sierra Maestra—he didn’t fester in Fidel’s prisons.”

He heard the breath sawing through Julio’s nostrils, saw the encouragement and surprise in Julio’s eyes.

The silence stretched until he thought his nerves would crack. Then the old man put on a brittle smile. “This demand—is it non-negotiable, as they say? Or may I have a moment for rebuttal?”

Cielo sagged back. It hadn’t worked.

The old man pushed both palms against the table, rising to his feet. He began to pace, chewing on his teeth, emitting hard little bursts of dogmatic thought:

“The organism’s a fragile thing. I should have checked into a hospital long ago. They tell me I’ve got to have surgery for this and that—hernia, prostate, whatever. We’re all dying, aren’t we? I’m sure I shall be forced to settle for the limited satisfaction of having set things in motion. I won’t live long enough to see these efforts come to fruition. I envy you—you’ve both got so much more future than I have.”

Cielo had heard it before. He didn’t dare look at his watch.

“That a man like me should have instigated this movement is peculiar, isn’t it? I never took much interest in politics. I’ve no desire to correct injustices or reform the world. In fact I’ve never viewed the human plight as anything one ought to improve—as Léautaud said, I’d like to be a lover of mankind but unfortunately I have a good memory.… This started with me because I wanted to redeem the family name by recovering our lost properties. The arrogance of that snaggle-bearded jackass, expropriating things he’d never have the ability to build.… I suppose they’ve learned their lesson under Castro—they’re far worse off now than they were before, they’ve got no shred of dignity left but they brought it on themselves. You know, I begin to see as I approach the grave that I never honestly cared whether I reoccupied the mansion in Havana. Cuba wasn’t my home, it was our family’s corporate headquarters. Even if we win this fight in my lifetime I’ll have no wish to leave this house. Yet I’ve gone on with the fight. Do you know why? It’s a matter of challenge. It’s not very different from raiding a corporation—you don’t need the money, you do it to prove yourself.”

The old man paused at the screen. “The rain’s stopped.” Then he swiveled slowly and paced again, hands in his pockets. “I could have paid for this operation out of my pocket. The kidnapings were necessary not to raise money but to legitimize the raising of money. The question would have been raised as to who was financing our movement. There d have been inquiries—that might have led them here. After all, how many expatriate Cubans are wealthy enough to mount the operation we’re planning? But now we have ten million in cash and they know where it came from, so it won’t occur to them to seek its source. If necessary we’ll be able to spend twenty million. Spread it around and no one will notice the discrepancy. Clever, isn’t it?”

Momentarily pleased with himself, he walked out to the corner and pressed a switch. The screens slid up into the veranda roof—a soft humming of motors. The old man hunched his shoulders in the breeze and stared down at the sea. “I won’t live to see it finished. Emil will.”

Cielo glanced at his brother. Julio rolled his eyes toward Heaven and shook his head.

The old man turned to face them. “My blood is in him. I want him to be there. To see it when that infamous regime of thieves and pimps is brought down. My satisfaction, you see, is in knowing Emil will be there—to slap Fidel Castro in the face with the name of Draga.”

Such foolishness, Cielo thought sadly.

“You will keep him by your side. Discipline him if you must. But you haven’t the authority to dismiss him. I don’t grant it to you. Understood?”

Cielo said, “We had to try. You can see why.”

“Your positions are threatened by his presence.”

“No,” Julio replied. “It is our discipline that is threatened.”

“Nonsense. Discipline him. I’ll help—I’ll remind him he is under your orders and can expect no protection from me.”