Free The Prisoner of Guantanamo by Dan Fesperman Page B

to on-base jobs. In the early 1960s there had been three thousand of them, daily enduring the taunts and abuse of Castro’s guards in exchange for dollar wages. Only nine remained, and the youngest was sixty-four. They arrived at 5:30 a.m. and departed at 4:30 p.m., and every two weeks they carried home pay envelopes stuffed with American cash for themselves and about a hundred pensioners.
    The only other regular contact was a monthly meeting between the commander of Guantánamo’s naval base, Captain Rodrick Lewis, and his Cuban counterpart from the Revolutionary Army’s Brigada de la Frontera, General Jorge Cabral. Their meetings were friendly and low key. In order to avoid unpleasant surprises, they gave each other advance notice whenever one side or the other was about to build something new or engage in a military exercise. General Cabral had learned of the imminent arrival of hundreds of prisoners from Afghanistan well before most of the American public.
    They took turns acting as host. Usually there was little official business to discuss, so they talked instead of baseball, or fishing, or of the meal that had been set before them. As if to affirm the informal nature of their relationship, they sometimes engaged in small barters of contraband—a box of Cuban cigars for a carton of Marlboros, a country-western CD for a homemade cassette of salsa. Any issue that arose between meetings was generally handled by e-mail, unless there was a wildfire to fight, in which case they convened like old generals at the front, marshaling their resources to defeat the common foe.
    But the discovery of Sergeant Ludwig’s body called for extraordinary measures. No American had ever turned up dead on the wrong side of the fence. For the moment, Cold War tension was back in vogue, and Falk was about to get a front-row seat.
    He arrived at the observation post to find three Humvees already parked. One had the general’s two-star flag. Trabert was inside, waiting to take care of the necessary introductions.
    â€œFalk, this is Captain Lewis. I want you with him when the Cubans hand over the body.”
    The captain cut an impressive figure. He was a tall, trim African American with a calm demeanor. It would have to be. His job as base commander required the skills of a small-town mayor as much as those of a military leader. Base families got skittish in a hurry when they were this isolated. They hadn’t been thrilled with the idea of an al-Qaeda prison being built in their backyard, but they’d been pleasantly surprised by the vigor it injected into base life. Lewis had even joked about reinstalling the town’s one and only stoplight, which had been retired to the base museum. From everything Falk had heard, the captain had been quite content to stay out of Trabert’s hair, and vice versa, which made this meeting seem all the more awkward.
    â€œI’ll be introducing you to General Cabral,” Captain Lewis said.
    â€œAs what?”
    Lewis turned toward the general.
    â€œWhat was the agreed-upon terminology, sir?”
    â€œLiaison from the civilian side, representing Sergeant Ludwig’s family. There will be no mention of your employer. The captain will do all the talking, Falk, but keep your eyes open.”
    â€œFor anything in particular?”
    â€œAnything out of the ordinary.”
    â€œThis whole thing’s out of the ordinary.”
    â€œAll the more reason for another set of eyes.”
    Falk wondered if Lewis was unhappy about his presence. Cluttering the usual one-on-one intimacy, especially with a civilian, seemed indelicate at best. He noticed that Lewis had brought along a recent copy of
Sports Illustrated
with a cover story on a Cuban-born pitcher, perhaps as a peace offering. Trabert’s maneuvers would probably cramp his style. But Falk wasn’t about to get in the middle of an Army-Navy dustup, if it should come to that.
    â€œSo how will this