Murder, She Wrote: Prescription For Murder Page 20

  I could do nothing but laugh, which seemed to please Rodriguez, who laughed along with me.

  “You say you’re a doctor?” Seth said. “So am I. This is one heck of a way for a physician to act.”

  “I am sure that after a good night’s sleep, you and your charming companion will be in better spirits, Dr. Hazlitt. You’ll find that your accommodations are satisfactory, and that the meals provided for you will be likewise. A car will pick you up here this evening at six. In the meantime, I suggest that you relax, freshen up, perhaps nap. Buenas tardes.”

  He walked to where the officer stood with his men and issued instructions in Spanish. Two of the soldiers came to us and indicated through hand gestures and a smattering of English that we were to go into the cabin.

  “Let’s do as they say, Seth,” I said.

  The cabin consisted of one room, a pair of twin beds with colorful bedspreads, a small desk and chair, a brown vinyl easy chair that had seen better days, and a tiny bathroom lighted by a single wall lamp, in which towels and a bar of soap were provided. There was a window at the front. I looked out and saw that the soldiers had taken up positions thirty feet away. They sat on a low stone wall, their weapons resting on the ground, their faces mirroring their boredom.

  Seth plopped himself in the easy chair and I sat at the desk.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Tired, that’s all. You?”

  “I’m fine. I’m just wondering whether there’s a way for us to escape.”

  “Don’t be foolish, Jessica,” he said. “We’re on an island. Where would we escape to? More of Cuba?”

  “Can we get word out to someone that we’re being held prisoner?”

  “I don’t see how. They took our phones.”

  “It’s stuffy in here,” I said. “I’m going out on the porch.”

  As Seth followed me through the door, two soldiers picked up their weapons and approached. They shouted orders, presumably for us to return to the cabin, but I said to Seth, “Ignore them.”

  We defiantly sat in two green-and-white webbed chairs and stared at the soldiers, who continued to issue orders and used their weapons to indicate that we were to go inside.

  “Ignore them,” I repeated. “We’re here because someone up the chain of command wants something from us. They won’t dare hurt us.”

  I wasn’t sure that my bravado was appropriate, but it seemed to work. The soldiers muttered under their breath and returned to their colleagues. They must have found the situation humorous, because they all laughed at something one of them said.

  “The way I figure it, Jessica, there’s one good thing to come out of this,” Seth said.

  “What is that?”

  “The question of Al’s death and why he died. I keep thinking about what Dr. San Martín said about the strain of C. botulinum that was in that cigar Al smoked just before he died, that it had to have been concocted in a sophisticated lab, most likely a government lab. Seems to me that it had to have come from here in Cuba.”

  “That makes sense to me,” I said.

  “And if that’s true, the next question is, who gave Al that cigar?”

  “He said it was a gift from someone special.”

  “He also said it was Cuban,” Seth said.

  I knew where he was taking this and didn’t want to acknowledge it.

  “Had to be one of his children,” he said grimly.

  I started to respond, but he cut me off.

  “That’s not a pleasant thought to have,” he said, “that a son would kill his own father.”

  “Or a daughter,” I said. “But we don’t know whether that’s true.”

  “How else could it have happened? They obviously resented their father defecting with the research he’d started in Cuba, research that was paid for by the Castro government. Xavier said it himself, that the research belongs to the Cuban people. The cigar was Cuban. He must have had his sister get it for him. Who else would have easy access to Cuban cigars? The way I see it, Xavier and Maritza murdered their father to get hold of his research and return it to his native land. I’ll bet you all the moose in Maine that Xavier also ended up with Al’s laptop.”

  “Then why bring us here?” I asked. “If they have the laptop, they have the research.”

  “I don’t have an answer for that, Jessica, but I suppose we’ll find out tonight when they come get us. Meantime, I’m going back inside and catch me a nap. I suggest you do the same. We’ll need our wits about us this evening.”

  I was too keyed up to nap. I stayed on the porch for an hour before returning inside, where Seth was snoring loudly on one of the beds. I curled up on the other and tried to fall asleep but to no avail. The afternoon passed slowly, but eventually it was time to get ready for whatever the next step would be. We walked out on the porch just as the gray limousine arrived. Dr. Rodriguez came to us, a wide smile on his face. “Did you rest?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “I am sorry that you didn’t. I imagine that you and the doctor are hungry.”

  “As a matter of fact, I am,” said Seth. “Hungry and damn mad.”

  “I assure you that we will feed you well,” Rodriguez said. “Come. Time to go.”

  After another bumpy half-hour drive, we came to a stop in a sprawling square, where an intimidating eight-story building stood, its drab front dominated by a soaring black metal mural bearing the unmistakable face of Fidel Castro’s revolutionary colleague Che Guevara. The mural dwarfed the building, and the setting sun gave the picture an eerie three-dimensional look.

  “Where are we?” I asked Rodriguez.

  “The Plaza de la Revolución,” he answered pleasantly as two of the soldiers took up positions on either side of Seth and me. Back home in the United States, the sight of two obvious foreigners being escorted across a wide plaza by armed soldiers would have aroused the interest of onlookers, but no one—and I judged there to be a couple of hundred Cubans milling about—paid us any notice.

  “Why are we being taken here?” Seth asked, indicating the building.

  “We are not going there,” Rodriguez replied. “That is the Ministerio del Interior building. We are going to that building.” He pointed to an equally uninspired gray building across the square. “It is where our Maximum Leader, Prime Minister Castro, and his brother have their offices. It is also headquarters for the Central Committee of the Communist Party.” He laughed. “See?” he said. “We treat you especially well. Few tourists see the inside of our most important buildings.”

  “I don’t care whether we see the inside of your buildings or not,” Seth said. “I already saw this square when I visited Havana as part of a tour. Now I wish I’d never come.”

  “Follow me,” Rodriguez said. “Just a few questions to be asked.”

  “And what if we don’t want to answer them?” Seth asked, sticking out his jaw for emphasis.

  Rodriguez’s reply was a noncommittal shrug.

  We were propelled toward the gray building, where armed guards checked papers that Rodriguez carried before allowing us entry. He led us down a long hallway past dozens of closed doors until reaching an elevator manned by an armed guard. It carried us up two floors, where we exited and walked across the hall into an office’s anteroom. An open door led to a conference room with a small black-and-white marble table and six comfortable yellow swivel armchairs. A large color photograph of Fidel Castro dominated one wall. The other walls contained smaller framed photographs of Havana scenes intermingled with pictures of Castro posing with foreign dignitaries. There was only one person in the room when we entered, the gentleman from the Ministry of the Interior who’d spoken with us at the airport. While Rodriguez was congenial and treated us politely, this man had the look of someone who’d been absent when genes of sympathy and sensitivity had been handed out. He sat ra
mrod straight at the head of the table, small, rimless eyeglasses catching the light from overhead fixtures.

  “Please take a seat,” Rodriguez said. “I will be back in a moment.”

  As Seth and I took chairs, our eyes went back and forth between the interior ministry representative and the only item on the table, a laptop computer. I was about to whisper something to Seth when the door opened and Rodriguez entered, followed by Dr. Pedro Sardina.

  “I believe that you know Dr. Sardina,” said Rodriguez.

  “Yes, we do,” I said, “and I must admit, I’m shocked to see him.”

  Sardina said nothing as Rodriguez took a chair, opened the laptop, and sat back as though expecting us to comment on what it revealed.

  “Is that Alvaro Vasquez’s laptop?” Seth asked.

  “It is,” replied Rodriguez.

  I looked at Sardina, who sat stoically, his eyes fixed on the tabletop.

  “How did you get it?” I asked.

  “That really doesn’t matter, Mrs. Fletcher,” Rodriguez said. “What’s important is what is not on it.”

  “Not on it?” I said.

  “Yes. Unfortunately someone—and I must assume it was Dr. Vasquez—saw fit to remove the hard drive from the computer. There is nothing on the computer. Absolutely nothing.”

  I addressed my next question to Sardina. “Did you bring the laptop here to Cuba? Or was it Xavier?”

  Sardina looked at Rodriguez, who told him, “You can answer her, Pedro.”

  “We brought it here together,” Sardina said.

  “Even though there was nothing on it?”

  “We didn’t know that. The night Dr. Vasquez died, Xavier hid it away until we left for Havana. We assumed it had all the notes.”

  “You can imagine how disappointed we were when we turned it on and nothing worked,” Rodriguez said. “We had been awaiting its arrival with great expectations. Needless to say, it was a very unpleasant discovery.”

  “So why have you brought us here?” Seth asked. “You’ve broken the law, United States law and international law, too. Believe me, sir, someone will pay for this.”

  Rodriguez told Sardina to bring Xavier to the room. They returned a moment later and joined us at the table.

  “Dr. Hazlitt wishes to know why we have invited him and his lovely friend to join us,” the Cuban doctor said to Xavier. “Perhaps you are the one to explain.”

  “I’d like to wipe that smirk off your face,” Seth said to Xavier.

  “Big, tough talk from you,” Xavier said. “You’re just like my father, lots of talk, always talk.”

  “And your father is dead,” Seth said, “murdered by the son he loved.”

  I felt a wave of disgust come over me, and I knew that Seth was feeling the same thing.

  “I don’t care what you think of me,” Xavier said, the nasty smile still on his lips. “What is important is that my father’s research benefits the Cuban people.”

  “And if it doesn’t do that,” I said, not trying to hide my anger, “was it still worth murdering your father?”

  “It wasn’t murder,” Xavier said. “It was a political assassination. If he hadn’t defected, he’d still be alive. But no, he was greedy, and he and my mother abandoned everything good that was given to them and done for them here in Cuba, to sell out for a fancy home and a boat. You know what we call Cubans who defect to the United States? We call them escoria. Scum. Worms.”

  “You are a despicable young man,” Seth said. He turned to Dr. Rodriguez. “And you would sanction a murder in order to get your hands on Alvaro Vasquez’s research?”

  “It was not my decision,” Rodriguez said, casting a glance at the Ministry of the Interior’s representative. “While I agreed that Alvaro Vasquez’s work belonged here, I would never have suggested that he be killed in order to accomplish that. There are always other ways of recovering what has been lost. Alvaro was a friend and colleague. Whenever he mentioned defecting, I always tried to talk him out of it, but I never took him seriously. When he actually did leave for the United States, I was shocked and dismayed.”

  He looked again at the other official at the table, and I had the feeling that Rodriguez was concerned that he might be viewed as having cooperated with Vasquez’s defection. I believed him when he said that he would not have wanted Vasquez assassinated and had tried to talk him out of defecting. Whether the Ministry of the Interior official also believed him was something Rodriguez would have to deal with.

  Rodriguez picked up where he’d left off.

  “But this has all resulted in a blind alley, I am afraid. That Alvaro’s laptop has been dismantled leaves us in a quandary, Dr. Hazlitt, one that we hope that you will resolve.”

  I hadn’t seen Seth smile since we left Tampa, but now he shook his head in response to the situation, an ironic smile playing on his lips.

  “I can’t believe how wrong you people could be,” he said. “You assumed that because Al Vasquez and I became friends, and because we spent time together over the past few years discussing his research, that I would know anything about his results. Want the truth?” Seth stood and leaned on the table. “Here’s the truth. Al never told me anything that could be used by anyone else because every avenue he explored in his research resulted in a dead end. There were no advances toward finding a cure for Alzheimer’s. Every test failed. Every hypothesis proved a waste of time.”

  “You lie!” Xavier snapped. “He was paid millions by Bernie Peters. You think Peters paid that money for nothing?”

  “That’s exactly what I think,” said Seth. “No one liked and admired your father more than I did. I treasured the friendship that developed between us, was thrilled that such a great man would call me—an insignificant country doctor—his friend. But since his death, I’ve also come to realize that he was not the man I thought he was. Maybe I even suspected it before then—or at least I should have.”

  “Meaning what, Dr. Hazlitt?”

  Seth drew a deep breath before continuing. “From what Mrs. Fletcher and I have learned, Alvaro might not have been completely honest when it came to his business dealings. I believe that even though his research wasn’t getting anywhere, he continued to claim that he was on the verge of a breakthrough, encouraging his backer, Bernard Peters at the pharmaceutical company K-Dex, to keep funding his laboratory. Despite his failures, he manipulated Peters—and maybe others, too—into giving him more and more money without any hope of a return.”

  “That’s quite an accusation,” Rodriguez said.

  “And I hate making it.”

  “But why should we believe you?” Rodriguez asked. “Everything that Alvaro ever told me, and based upon information we’ve received from friends in Tampa, he was making progress.”

  “Friends in Tampa?” I said. “You mean those spies your government has in Florida who report back on Cuban American citizens living there?”

  The man from the Ministry of the Interior cleared his throat but said nothing.

  “Please sit down, Dr. Hazlitt,” Rodriguez said.

  “No, I won’t sit down,” Seth said. “You’ve brought Mrs. Fletcher and me here under false pretenses in order to satisfy your government’s need to benefit from Alvaro’s work. Let me tell you something, Dr. Rodriguez. I’ve always had mixed emotions about where Alvaro’s research should end up. On the one hand, I was pleased that a cure for Alzheimer’s would come out of the work of someone in America. At the same time, I felt sympathy for Cuba, where Alvaro’s work started and was supported for years. But the truth is that neither of our countries will benefit from his research because it didn’t lead anywhere, not to a deeper understanding of the disease, nor to a cure. In other words, Dr. Alvaro Vasquez was murdered by his son for no good reason.”

  “That’s not true!” Xavier shouted, pounding the table with his fist. “My father told me
he’d already made significant progress.” He looked at the official from the Ministry of the Interior, who was scowling at him. “He did. He even said that he had developed an outline of the next steps in his research that would lead to discovering a cure. Everything was in place. He just had to follow his outline.”

  “He lied to you,” Seth said. “There was no outline.”

  “Perhaps he simply wanted you to have faith in him,” I added.

  “No! It’s true. It must be true.”

  Rodriguez turned his mild gaze on Vasquez’s son. “That’s enough, Xavier. We will talk later,” he said. To Seth, he said, “I would like to believe that you have told us the truth about Alvaro’s research results, Dr. Hazlitt, but I have only your word for it. That is not enough for our government.”

  “Then maybe these will convince you.”

  Seth reached into his sport jacket pocket, withdrew the three thumb drives, and slapped them down on the table with such force that everyone jumped.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “What are those?” Rodriguez asked once the initial surprise had dissipated.

  “These,” Seth said, “are what was on Alvaro’s laptop, all his notes on his research.”

  I felt myself release a sigh of relief. When I’d seen the red tape on our luggage, I’d feared that our captors had found the thumb drives and confiscated them. I hadn’t said anything to Seth. Our situation was upsetting enough. But he had been wise enough to keep such valuable items on his person, and we’d been fortunate not to be searched personally.

  “Where did you get those?” Dr. Rodriguez asked.

  “Dr. Vasquez left these thumb drives to me in a letter he wrote.”

  Rodriguez asked Xavier, “Did you know about these?”

  “Yes,” Xavier replied. “He told me about them yesterday. My father must have transferred his notes to them before he destroyed the laptop.”

  “You have the letter?” Rodriguez asked.

  “No,” Seth said. “I left it with the Tampa Police Department, along with a set of the thumb drives.”