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  The Powers That Be

  ( Room 59 - 1 )

  Cliff Ryder

  When a double agent in Cuba suddenly disappears, there is concern that he might have gone rogue, working against ROOM 59 and the world at large. But one of the agency's top spymasters has a blood tie to the operative in question, which leaves him with an agonizing choice: allow the mission to be scrubbed, and leave thousands to die in the resulting bloodbath―or risk everything he knows, including his career, to keep his secret deeply buried.

  Cliff Ryder

  The Powers That Be

  The first book in the Room 59 series

  Francisco Garcia Romero’s world had been reduced to two sensations: light and pain.

  The light came from the bare, wire-caged, hundred-watt bulb in his windowless, four-by-eight-foot punishment cell.

  Always burning, it turned the already sweltering space into a cramped oven, and had long ago stripped Francisco of any notion of the time of day. It limited his sleep to fitful minutes here and there, throwing his arm over his eyes until it cramped and he moved, which exposed his face to the harsh glare again. Its brilliance burned into his retinas. The light exposed every mark on his naked body, every bruise, every cut, every mosquito bite, every sore in stark relief, revealing the pitiful shell of the man and father he used to be.

  Emaciated and filthy, he huddled on the dirty concrete floor of his cell in Quivicán maximum-security prison, with no mattress, blanket or even a concrete bed to sleep on. It had been a good day so far, because the hole in the floor where he relieved himself—when he could muster both the energy to do so and the fortitude to handle the pain it caused—hadn’t overflowed yet. Also, he had managed to keep down the cup of watery, unidentifiable soup and handful of rice that had been doled out a few hours earlier.

  But the rattle of his cell door as it was unlocked meant that time was at an end.

  “¡Número treinta y cinco, salga! ” One of the fatigue-clad guards barked the order. Since his detention had begun here, the guards had only referred to him by a number—thirty-five.

  Francisco crawled to the door and out into the hallway, where the two men grabbed him by the shoulders and yanked him to his feet, ignoring his whimper of pain as his shoulder was wrenched back. They placed him against the wall and searched him—a seemingly useless gesture, since he was already naked, that was meant to humiliate and further degrade him. Francisco waited with his legs apart, wondering which pair would accompany him this time. There was only a casual inspection of his buttocks today, so it must have been Guards Three and Four, as he called them. The other pair of guards, One and Two, took an unpleasant interest in certain parts of his anatomy, and used every opportunity to torment him with the ends of their batons or other items.

  Satisfied he wasn’t carrying any contraband, the two guards pushed him down the hall toward the interrogation area. As he did every time this happened, Francisco whispered his usual litany:

  “Padre nuestro, que estás en los cielos, Santificado sea tu Nombre.

  Venga tu reino,

  Hágase tu voluntad,

  En la tierra como en el cielo…. ”

  He always tried to finish the Lord’s Prayer before being silenced by one of the guards or entering the interrogation room. If he could do that, he believed it gave him the inner strength to resist whatever they had planned for him. And just like every other time he had been taken to these small rooms, a part of him wondered if this time he would break under the endless torture, and tell them everything he knew.

  As he shuffled down the hallway, he tried to ignore the flashes of pain from his battered body. Everything hurt, from the deep throbbing of his improperly-healed shoulder, injured in his very first interrogation and beating, to the burning pain in his rectum from the near constant diarrhea combined with torn sphincter muscles and the resulting infection from when he had been sodomized a few weeks earlier. The assault hadn’t come from the guards, but from an enforcer for the “prisoners’ council”—trustees given limited authority by the warden—when they learned he was planning a hunger strike to protest the inhumane conditions.

  Those, along with numerous other injuries, were a constant reminder of every minute he spent here, and also what had been stripped from him since his very first night in captivity—not just his limited freedom on the outside, but his dignity, health and free will.

  Ever since he had been rousted from his bed in the dead of night so long ago and herded through a bewildering series of prisons, interrogations, torture and starvation, Francisco had clung to the slim hope that he might be released, or at least be allowed to stand trial for his supposed crimes. But as the days had stretched into weeks, and then months, and he had endured the near daily beatings, the deprivation of basic human needs and other mental and physical tortures, Francisco realized that he wasn’t going to be saved. Unlike others, such as the poet Armando Valladares, who had gained international recognition for the abuse he had endured, Francisco was just one of hundreds of low-level political prisoners trapped in the grinding wheels of the government’s relentless repression of basic human rights—what he had been fighting for every day.

  Now, with his incarceration stretching into its sixth or seventh month—he wasn’t sure exactly how long it had been—Francisco had lost hope of ever seeing the outside world again. He hadn’t seen his wife and son in at least three months, and wasn’t even sure they knew where he was anymore, since he had been moved several times before ending up at Quivicán. All he could do now hold one rational thought in his mind. No matter what happened, he would never betray his fellows still struggling to free Cuba from the Communist dictatorship. It was the one goal he still clung to—even though he couldn’t be sure, given his semi-lucid state from hour to hour, that he hadn’t already done so.

  The interrogators had certainly tried hard to break him. They had taken him from his stifling cell to an air-conditioned room and left him there for hours before questioning him, when he could barely answer through chattering teeth. The beatings and malnutrition were bad, but it was during the third month that they had come closest to breaking him.

  Just when he was coming to terms with the cruel conditions, the guards had come to his cell and told him he was being released. They had allowed him to wash up and shave, given him a decent meal, then escorted him to the main doors of the prison. And there, with freedom just a few yards away, the commander of the prison had walked up and told him that it was a mistake, that he was going back to his cell. It had taken three guards to wrestle him back into his cell that day. He had been beaten for resisting them, and that night he had been beaten again by fellow prisoners, who suspected he had made some kind of deal with the government to betray them.

  Since that day, Francisco had resisted his captors as much as possible, but he had steadily weakened. He was on the edge of telling them whatever he could to get out of his punishment cell, receive some medical treatment, even just get a bare concrete bed to sleep on. His only solace was that if they ever broke him, he wouldn’t be able to tell them much.

  His mostly bare-shelved bodega had been a drop point for messages among cells of the resistance, but he had never known who any of the contacts really were besides the man who had recruited him long ago. Francisco wasn’t a government informer, but obviously someone in one of those cells he had serviced was.

  Guard Three opened the interrogation-room door and entered, followed by Francisco, who stumbled in, assisted by a shove from Guard Four. The room looked like every other room he had been questioned in. A rattling air conditioner blew cold air across his fevered skin, and there were the standard two chairs and a small table in the center of the room. What was different, however, was the man s
itting in the chair on the other side of the table.

  He was a high-ranking member of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, at least a major, according to his epaulets.

  He was taller than the usual Cuban soldier. Even seated he loomed over the table. His features were unusual, too. He didn’t have the usual dark caramel coloring of the majority of the people. His skin tone was a few shades lighter, almost café au lait. Francisco thought he was mulatto, perhaps part African, but that his nose wasn’t broad, but narrow and long, almost patrician. And his eyes—which had locked onto the prisoner with the usual single-minded zeal—were a common light blue, not the expected dark brown.

  The two guards came to attention and saluted. The man sitting in the chair tossed off a crisp but casual salute to them.

  “Abandónenos.”

  The order to leave made the guards look at each other in confusion. “Mayor?” one asked, confirming Francisco’s suspicion about the man’s rank.

  The major waved his hand at the door. “Leave us,” he ordered again.

  “But, sir, all interrogations are to be supervised in the event of an attack by the prisoner,” a guard said.

  The major leaned back in his chair. “As you can see, this man is no threat to me. I wish to question him in private.

  Now.” The genial expression hardened in the blink of an eye.

  “Or must I report this insubordination to your superiors?”

  “No, sir!” The two men saluted again, and left, closing the door behind them.

  Francisco shivered in the cold, unable to take his eyes off this man who held his life in a black-gloved hand.

  “Please, sit. You must be weak after everything you have endured.” The major pushed his chair back and stood, making Francisco cower, tensing in expectation of the first blow.

  “No, no. Come, sit, please.” The tall man took an over-coat from the back of his chair and slowly walked toward Francisco, holding it out like a matador approaching a nervous bull. He eased it around the wasted man’s shoulders, then led him to the second chair and gently pressed him down.

  “Thank—thank you.” Francisco pulled the lapels of the coat around him and huddled into the cloth.

  The major did not return to the other side of the table, but walked around to stand behind Francisco. “No, it is I who should be thanking you, Francisco Garcia Romero. You have survived agony that would have broken a hundred lesser men, yet you have not bought yourself any comfort by providing even a scrap of information about the counter-revolutionaries that plague our great nation. However, all men have their limits, my friend, and I am afraid that my superiors have reached theirs.”

  The odd choice of words made Francisco start to turn to look up at the major, but as he did, he saw a shadow rise above him, and the last thing he felt was an impact at the base of his neck, then merciful blackness.

  The hammer blow to Francisco’s neck fractured his second and third vertebrae, causing a piece of bone to punch inward, severing the spinal cord. The shock to his nervous system killed him before the pain impulse reached its final destination.

  The major relaxed his interlaced hands and examined the prisoner, satisfied that he had broken his neck and killed him as painlessly and quickly as possible. Turning his back to the door, he quickly made the sign of the cross over the body and bent low to the man’s ear.

  “The people thank you for your dedicated service. You will be remembered when our nation is truly free.”

  He walked to the door and knocked on it, looking over his shoulder at the body slumped on the table. “Vaya con Dios, amigo.”

  Kate Cochran somersaulted through the air, maintaining enough control to tuck into her fall and roll with it instead of slamming to the mat on her back. Rising, she immediately assumed a defensive posture, feet shoulder width apart, legs slightly bent, arms close to her sides, fists clenched at her waist with knuckles up, ready to either punch or block.

  A burst of laughter came from behind her. Kate turned, keeping her fists ready, to confront the man who had just sent her sailing across the room.

  “My, my, don’t you look tough.” The man was a full head taller than her, and all lean, wiry muscle. His ink-black hair was cropped just short of high and tight, making it impossible to grab in a fight—as she had already discovered.

  He regarded her with amused, dark brown eyes that missed no detail of their surroundings.

  “Kate, I’m not training you to fight in a dojo. What I’m teaching you—well, trying anyway—is how to survive on the street. Pure down-and-dirty fighting, where no one is going to wait for you to assume the position. By the time you’re ready, your attacker will have already incapacitated or killed you.”

  “That’s what I have you for, remember?” She slowly stepped toward him, keeping her center of gravity balanced, waiting for him to pounce again.

  “Well, let’s assume for this exercise that I’m already fighting two—no, make that three other guys, and you’re on your own.” His white teeth flashed in a razor-thin grin, and Kate knew who would win in a three-on-one fight with the man standing in front of her—Jacob Marrs, her bodyguard and instructor. “Now, relax that horse stance of yours, and for god’s sake, stand like you’re walking down the street, not some extra in a kung fu movie.”

  Kate straightened up and dropped her arms to her sides, unclenching her fists. She walked toward Jake, maintaining eye contact the whole way, ignoring the spectacular view her floor-to-ceiling town house windows afforded of the Man-hattan skyline to the west. Sweat dripped in to her gold-green eyes.

  She walked to within a foot of him, but nothing happened. Turning on her heel, Kate strode back across the room, ready for a chokehold from behind, or a grab at her platinum-blond hair or any one of a dozen other possible attacks. Still nothing. Peeking at him out of the corner of her vision, Jake still stood there in loose pants and his sleeveless gi, hands on his hips, as if he were carved from stone.

  With a sigh, Kate whirled around to ask whether they were sparring or posing, only to find her trainer already in motion. Arms blurring like striking cobras, he took one large step forward and grabbed her arm. Instinctively, she stepped back, using his momentum to yank him off balance.

  Grabbing the collar of his gi with her right hand, she pulled him farther down while her right foot swept his outstretched left foot out from under him. Jacob lurched forward, and Kate directed his fall to the ground, raising a fist to follow up with a blow to his temple—

  But Jake wasn’t lying still like a good foot-sweep victim.

  He lifted his legs and scissored them toward her head instead. He caught her between his muscular thighs and snapped her forward, flipping her to the ground. Before she could scramble away, he was atop her, pinning her shoulders to the mat and leaning back so that his weight almost crushed her abdomen, but not quite.

  “Two lessons here. One, the most important thing I’m trying to instill in you is to always expect an attack, because the moment you don’t, the moment you relax your guard, that’s when your opponent will strike.” Jake leaned forward, his face inches from hers. “Second, why in the hell aren’t you trying harder to escape right now?”

  Kate arched her back as high as she could, hoping to throw him off enough to free an arm, but his weight was too much.

  He simply relaxed and settled down, forcing her back down to the mat. He readjusted his leg for a better pin, and Kate managed to wrench her left arm free and immediately brought her elbow down toward his groin. Jacob blocked it with a low forearm just before it would have made painful contact.

  “Better. Let’s try that again, and I’ll show you another couple ways out of it—”

  “Whoa, am I interrupting something, ’cause I could definitely come back later.”

  The voice from the doorway of the exercise room made both Kate’s and Jacob’s heads turn. Recovering first, Kate reached between Jake’s legs with her free hand and grabbed his crotch while scooting down underneath his legs. Em
it-ting a startled yelp, Jacob reared up on his knees, enabling her to emerge from under him and whirl around, finding him ready for her with a small yet genuine smile on his face.

  Framed in the doorway was Kate’s live-in housekeeper, Arminda Todd, holding a stack of folded towels and grinning from ear to ear. A couple of inches taller than her employer, she was slender and willowy where Kate was more muscular and toned. She shifted from one foot to another, fiddling with her waist-length hair, currently bound in a thick braid that curled down over her shoulder.

  “That’s okay, Mindy, we were just sparring. We’re done for now,” Kate said.

  Jake stood and offered his hand. Kate accepted it warily, expecting him to try another takedown maneuver. However, once on her feet, he simply released her.

  “I’m gonna hit the shower,” Jake said. He walked by Mindy, snagging a towel as he passed. Kate noticed the college student’s gaze follow as he left the room, and put on her most disapproving stare as the young woman turned back.

  “What?”

  Kate shook her head. “Don’t be thinking what I know you’re thinking.”

  Mindy’s eyes widened in shock. “I just—like watching him leave, that’s all.”

  “As long as that’s all you’re doing, then we’re fine.” Kate wasn’t the jealous type and Jacob wasn’t even close to the kind of man she’d be interested in. However, pretty little Mindy, all of twenty years old and usually wise beyond her years in most matters, seemed to have a soft spot for the laconic bodyguard. Owing to the unusual relationship between the three of them, Kate wanted to make sure that Mindy didn’t do anything she might regret later.

  She wasn’t concerned about Jake. He understood the rules, and wasn’t about to bend any of them for anyone, officer, civilian or otherwise. As he liked to say, “This ain’t that bodyguard movie with Costner, but real life, and there’s a world of difference between the two.”