Cuba is a meeting ground for the novel’s supernatural and political plots. In Havana, a public religious ceremony draws together Loïc, Rodrigo Lerbier, and Isabelle D’Anjou without their understanding that the family histories converging there are connected; elsewhere in the country, the strange death of Ramondo Cardoso turns Cuba into the destination of an intelligence pursuit focused on a missing jewel.

Havana: Ceremony and Encounter

At a ceremony in Havana, Lerbier’s presence carries unusual public authority: several people in the crowd recognize and greet the babalao with deference, and his importance to them is described as equal to that of the Catholic priest. After the spectacle, Manuel introduces Loïc and Laurence to Lerbier. The three walk through the night toward the bus that will take them back to Varadero, and Loïc soon begins talking with the babalao, who speaks French from years of work in Varadero’s shops and hotels.

Loïc feels an immediate, inexplicable kinship with Lerbier, which he senses goes beyond their shared Latin background. He asks about Yoruba religion and then, abruptly, whether stones can contain curses. Lerbier is momentarily unsettled. He answers that stones can concentrate powerful positive or negative energies, while privately wondering whether Loïc is an intelligence agent or knows about the jewel’s history in Cárdenas. Loïc tells him that a jewel of unknown origin belonged to his great-grandfather and had brought harmful effects upon his family, but withholds both its identity as a cameo and its disappearance in New York on September 11, 2001.

Havana also places Isabelle and Loïc in the same crowd. She appears with a young Cuban man whom Manuel identifies as her fiancé; each notices the other and then pretends not to. Their mutual avoidance spares them an awkward encounter between couples whose relationships might be considered illicit. The coincidence of their presence at the ceremony is more consequential than either realizes: the narrative says that three descendants of the Founder are near one another in Havana that evening, though they do not yet know it.

Cárdenas: Death and the Jewel’s Trail

Cuba’s connection to the jewel darkens in Cárdenas. At the entrance to a room, Lerbier sees the fixed eye of Ramondo Cardoso in what remains of a human head amid the ashes. The sight makes him recoil. He wonders whether the dead man is really Cardoso, his former classmate, returned from exile in the United States. Remembering a warning from the year’s Letra del Año, he connects the death to the proverb El que lleva candela en las manos, no se puede esperar. He also recalls that Chango, the Yoruba deity associated with war and lightning, governs 2002, and remarks that Cardoso seems to have been struck by lightning. The priest answers that there was no storm.

The account of the investigation links Cardoso’s sudden, unexplained death in Cárdenas to the jewel he had bought in Kansas City. The jewel passed into the hands of Lerbier, and the CIA traced the babalao’s movements before placing him under surveillance. Cuba is thus both the site of a baffling death and a crucial stop in the jewel’s circulation: a private family object has become the focus of an international search.

Underground Politics and Unrecognized Kinship

The intelligence story expands beyond the search for Cardoso. In Havana, a Spanish operative with access to the Castro government has been recruited through a CIA network. The narrative also describes two covert Cuban dissidents, both holding senior positions within the regime, who maintain ties with influential Cuban Freemasons in Florida and elsewhere in the United States. These exiles form the Grand Lodge of Cuba in Exile. Their stated aim is to prepare for the period after Castro and lay groundwork for a successor government.

Against this political backdrop, the chance encounter between Loïc and Lerbier acquires a second meaning. When Lerbier’s description of a relative seems to fit, Loïc stops, stunned, and exclaims that they may be related. The recognition remains a question at this point, not a settled genealogy; nevertheless, it gives the felt fraternity of their earlier conversation a possible family basis. Cuba’s narrative role rests on these convergences: religious ceremony, the passage of the jewel, covert political organization, and a kinship that begins to surface before its participants can fully explain it.