ABSTRACT
At the beginning of his third week, David met with three officials from the Foreign Ministry to discuss the prospects for more normalized relations between Havana and Washington. The surprise afternoon meeting had been arranged suddenly by Marina Alvarez, who hadn’t bothered to inform him of it until late that same morning. Two of the officials turned out to be dogmatic communists—he presumed they once had belonged to the old PSP— and they conversed spiritedly about the United States, including what policies could be expected under Ford and Kissinger. But despite some discreet probing on David’s part, there was no hint from the Cubans of any secret governmental overtures. “The issue has got to be so sensitive that only Fidel and a few of his most trusted officials must know about them,” David surmised. “Either that, or Rudy Garcia is full of bull!”
