Dead Silence Read Free

Farfel’s shop one morning, then pressing a note in his hand instead of a tip.
    Reading the note, Farfel had felt like a man again. He’d told Hump, “I don’t care if it is a trap,” as they walked to their first meeting.
    It wasn’t a trap.
    Castro’s personal possessions, files included, had been stolen by the Americans and shipped to Maryland in industrial cartons. Four cartons to a container, thousands of items and documents that had been grouped, not cataloged. Collectively, the Americans were calling them the Castro Files.
    A carton labeled C/C-103 (1976-’96) contained details of experiments the Soviets had conducted on American POWs in Vietnam, then Angola, Panama and Grenada. Administrators of the study, working as private contractors, had continued the experiments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pain and fear: What were the human limits? The study ended in 1998 when the last POW from Vietnam finally gave-up and died.
    The Cuban Program. The Soviets called it that because Castro had provided three unusual interrogators with special skills. The men were scientists, in their way, and were so determined, so exacting, that they soon usurped control from their Russian bosses.
    One of the interrogators was a small, fastidious man named René Soyinka Navárro. He was the son of a Russian mother and a Cuban KGB officer.
    In Afghanistan and Iraq, Navárro had been hired by Al-Qaeda as a expert contractor, an interrogator who could obtain information from even the most determined prisoners. To those countries, he had brought along an apprentice, the son of a fellow interrogator named Angel Yanguez, Jr.
    From his late father, Yanguez had inherited a genetic deformity— Seborrheic keratosis —in the form of a cutaneous horn just beginning to grow. He’d also inherited the nickname Hump, which he didn’t mind, unlike Navárro who despised his nickname, Farfel. It had shadowed him since Hoa Lo Prison in Vietnam, where POWs had named him for the Nestlé’s Quik TV puppet that clicked his wooden teeth shut at the end of every sentence. Navárro, who wore dentures, made a similar sound when he wanted to emphasize a point.
    In Vietnam, prisoners had referred to the Cubans, collectively, as the Malvados —fiends.
    The New Yorker’s note had read: “Americans once begged for your mercy. Are you willing to beg for theirs?”
    How could the New Yorker know the truth about Navárro if the documents didn’t exist?
    The New Yorker and Venezuelan weren’t partners. They were working for someone. Farfel had overheard them whisper a name in English. The name sounded like Tenth Man. Possibly Tenman .
    The Venezuelan was a twenty-three-year-old maricon , his face smooth, like an angel’s. He was a Communist, a young fool with ideals. The New Yorker was a Muslim who used whores and marijuana but not alcohol. They had no interest in the Cuban Program. Carton C/C-103 contained something else their employer wanted. Something worth only money, Farfel believed, if they weren’t willing to kill for it.
    Didn’t matter.
    The grave will be dug .
    Since the Soviet collapse, Farfel and Hump had been in government protection, living like peons in Havana. False identities, menial jobs. Humiliating after living like gods in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq.
    Now, though, they were working again. Professionals with unusual skills.

1
    THE EXPLORERS CLUB, 70TH STREET, NEW YORK CITY SIX DAYS LATER
    O n a snowy January evening in Manhattan, I was in the Trophy Room of the Explorers Club when I saw, through frosted windows, men abducting a woman as she exited her limousine.
    It wouldn’t have made a difference, but I knew the woman. She was Barbara Hayes-Sorrento —Senator Barbara Hayes-Sorrento—a first-term power-house from the west who had won the office once held by her late husband.
    Well, not much difference. The senator was my dinner date for the evening. No romantic sparks, but I liked the lady.
    It was six p.m., already dark outside. The Trophy