The largest of the dockside warehouses was burned out. “I wonder how that happened,” Tanya said, pointing.

“The CIA set fire to it,” said Paz. “We get a lot of terrorist attacks here.”

Tanya looked around. The quayside buildings were empty and derelict. Most of the homes were one-story wooden shacks. Rain pooled on the dirt roads. The Americans could blow the whole place up without doing noticeable damage to the Castro regime. “Why?” she said.

Paz shrugged. “It’s an easy target, here on the end of the peninsula. They come over from Florida in a speedboat, sneak ashore, blow something up, shoot one or two innocent people, and go back to America.” In English he added: “Fuckin’ cowards.”

Tanya wondered if all governments were the same. The Kennedy brothers spoke of freedom and democracy yet they sent armed gangs across the water to terrorize the Cuban people. The Soviet Communists talked of liberating the proletariat while they imprisoned or murdered everyone who disagreed with them, and they sent Vasili to Siberia for protesting. Was there an honest regime anywhere in the world?

“Let’s go,” said Tanya. “It’s a long way back to Havana, and I need to tell Dimka that this ship has arrived safely.” Moscow had decided the Aleksandrovsk was close enough to reach port, but Dimka was anxious for confirmation.

They got into Paz’s Buick and drove out of town. On either side of the road were tall thickets of sugarcane. Turkey vultures floated above, hunting the fat rats in the fields. In the distance, the high chimney of a sugar mill pointed like a missile at the sky. The flat landscape of central Cuba was crosshatched with single-track railway lines built to transport cane from the fields to the mills. Where the land was uncultivated it was mostly tropical jungle, flame trees and jacarandas and towering royal palms; or rough scrub grazed by cattle. The slim white egrets that followed the cows were grace notes on the dun landscape.

Transport in rural Cuba was still mostly horse-drawn, but as they approached Havana the roads became crowded with military trucks and buses taking reservists to their bases. Castro had declared a full combat alert. The nation was on a war footing. As Paz’s Buick sped by, the men waved and called out: “Patria o muerte! Motherland or death! Cuba si, yanqui no!”

On the outskirts of the capital she saw that a new poster had appeared overnight and now blanketed every wall. In simple black and white, it showed a hand clutching a machine gun and the words A LAS ARMAS—“To Arms.” Castro really understood propaganda, she reflected; unlike the old men in the Kremlin, whose idea of a slogan was: “Implement the resolutions of the twentieth party congress!”

Tanya had written and encoded her message earlier, and had only to fill in the exact time that the Aleksandrovsk had docked. She took the message into the Soviet embassy and gave it to the KGB communications officer, whom she knew well.