Mambo Page 16

  Rosabal said, “I am on your side, Commandante. As always.”

  The Lider Maximo looked thoughtful. “You see, the problem is simple, but not easy to correct. When we won the armed struggle against Batista, we faced a situation that was beyond our experience. What did soldiers know of the economy? Of government? They could fire rifles, but they couldn’t administer the sugar industry, or the tobacco crop, or the mines. So mistakes were made. Bad mistakes. The wrong crops were planted –”

  Rosabal thought: You were personally responsible for those, Commandante. You were the laughing stock of Cuba for your bizarre horticultural ideas.

  “ – and essential machinery rotted on the docks in Havana because we didn’t have the necessary moving equipment. And perhaps our agricultural reforms took the initiative away from small farmers. We brought capitalism to its knees, Rosabal. But what did we put in its place?”

  Rosabal was very quiet. A quiet pulse beat at the side of his head. He knew this pulse, which was often the harbinger of a rage he couldn’t always control, a dark sensation Castro often inspired in him. He maintained his poise with enormous difficulty, closing his eyes a moment, concentrating very hard on the black spaces inside his head. He made no answer to the Commandante’s question, which had been rhetorical in any case.

  The Lider Maximo said, “People live longer nowadays, and they are better educated, and they have brighter opportunities, but none of this is enough for them. Why?”

  Rosabal felt the breeze come through the flyscreen and stir his hair. His bad moment passed; that sense of slippage was gone. He had control of himself again. His voice was relaxed. He said, “I wouldn’t presume to know the answer, Commandante.” He thought: Because life is drab, and people feel hopeless. And now not even the Russians will support you. You have driven Cuba into disaster and bankruptcy, you stupid old fucking clown in your idiotic gaberdine fatigues.

  Castro said, “The problem isn’t in the system, Rosabal. Of course there are some inefficiencies. But the real problem is that the people are self-centred! They put themselves before the Revolution. If there is a failure, Rosabal, it’s because we haven’t educated the people as well as we might. We haven’t educated selfishness out of them. They still don’t understand that the Revolution requires extraordinary patience and endurance and self-denial. We’ve asked them for an enormous effort in the past, but we haven’t asked for enough. Now we must demand even greater sacrifices.”

  “Greater sacrifices?” Rosabal asked. How typical Of the Commandante to turn blame away from himself and apportion it to the people! If only the people had been educated to understand the shortages on the island, there wouldn’t be any complaints! How laughable! The populace hadn’t understood the Revolution, and in the Lider Maximo’s mind that was the real failure!

  Castro’s lips contorted slightly. There was a swift arc of pain in his intestines; he wondered if he might have ulcers. He waited until the feeling passed before he said, “In Cuba today, for example, we export all the lobster we catch, and most of the shrimp. As a consequence, the Cuban people don’t have these bourgeois delicacies in their diet. The reverse side of the coin is that children no longer have rickets and malaria is practically dead. And if the Russians are no longer going to assist our Revolution, then we must tighten our own belts one more notch, Rosabal. We must ask for more working hours and cuts in pay. We must have more volunteers in the construction industry and in the cane fields. We must export more beef cattle.”

  Rosabal was filled with contempt for the Lider Maximo. He was thinking of the small room in the Palace of Congresses in Moscow where Anatoly Tal, the Minister of Finance, had talked to him at great length about how much money the Soviet Union had poured into Cuba – and he’d emphasised the word “poured” as if he were talking about some precious liquid tossed down the sink. In currency and technical support during the last thirty years, the exact amount was incalculable, but Tal reckoned it in the region of two hundred and fifty billion US dollars. And what had the Soviet Union gained? Hard questions were being asked inside the Politburo. There were members prepared to cut Cuba completely adrift.

  Rosabal mentioned none of this to the Lider Maximo. It would prompt a ranting speech that might last for hour after hour, filled with bitter expletives and self-pity, bravado and chest-thumping. One of Castro’s speeches, characterised by non-sequiturs and nostalgic drifts, could imprison a listener for four or five hours, and Rosabal had no desire to be locked into such a monologue. Sometimes these speeches took dangerous turns, and the threats increased with the bitterness, and Castro spoke about bringing destruction to his principal enemy, the United States. You could see it then in his eyes, a certain fiery quality, something that shone with the light of old dangers that hadn’t quite died away. There are still teeth in your head, El Viejo, Rosabal thought. There is still danger in you. But for the sake of Cuba, you must be forcibly removed.

  Rosabal glanced at his watch; in one hour and twenty minutes from now, the first act would begin in the depths of the English countryside.

  “We will initiate a new propaganda campaign,” Castro said. “Tomorrow, we will announce to the Cuban people that the Russians – who are now friendly with the Yanquis – have deserted their Cuban comrades. There will be a period of patriotic self-denial. Posters. Newspaper articles. I’ll make a speech on television. I’ll talk on radio. I’ll go into the streets and squares.”

  Rosabal heard the familiar voice, but tuned out the words. He walked to the window, concentrated on the sound of the piano playing thinly from below. The tune, perhaps inevitably, was “Guantanamera”. He gazed across the courtyard, seeing small huddles of guests.

  Here and there he recognised sympathisers – an old soldier who had been with Fidel in the Sierra Maestra but had lost all faith, a female journalist whose critical reports on Communism circulated anonymously, an official from the Ministry of the Interior who despised the police state he had helped create.

  Rosabal turned back to Fidel, who was still talking. Did the Lider Maximo use language as a means of exorcising his doubts, of chasing despair away? Did he drown truth with the empty rattle of words? Or was it the poison systematically introduced into his system by his personal physician during the last three months that made him babble so freely and with such confusion? Not enough poison to kill, only to confuse and debilitate the bastard. Rosabal didn’t want him to die that way. He wanted to look him straight in the eyes at the point of his death.

  When that time came, Rosabal would kill him personally.

  And then the island would be his, wrested from this pathetic dictator whose time had come and gone, whose policies had not only failed but had torn the heart out of sad, dying Cuba; a corpse barely afloat in pale blue water.

  Norfolk

  The Range Rover travelled slowly down a narrow lane. On either side meadows stretched toward trees. An unpromising morning sun, now white and watery, hung low on the landscape, destined to vanish behind cloud mass again. A church tower eclipsed the sun a moment and headstones in a cemetery, damp still from the recent rain, gleamed gently. It was lovely and serene, a world of quiet, peaceful corners and birds that called softly. Even the sound of the Range Rover was absorbed by the landscape.

  Flavell drove. He did so with great care. No traffic lay behind, none came in the opposite direction. The world might have been empty. Ruhr sat in the front; the two Americans and Zapino in the back. The girl, bound and gagged, was cramped on the floor. She lay very still. She’d seen the body of the policeman – barely covered with dead leaves – and the sight had horrified her. If she’d worried about her own death before it had been at one remove, like a very bad dream. But it was different now because there was no awakening. This was the reality. She kept whispering Jesus to herself, over and over.

  Ruhr watched the road. He had no need of the map, which lay folded in the glove compartment. He knew where the turns were, the intersections that lay ahead. He checked his watch. It was eight a.
m. A signpost announcing the village of Hornside (population 134) approached. A narrow main street, a pub, a grocery, an antique shop, a church and then Hornside, in all its bucolic charm, was gone like an old postcard.

  The Range Rover kept moving. Ruhr looked at his watch again. Ten past eight. The narrow lane turned this way and that. A windmill loomed up, its big blades motionless. And then the road forked. Ruhr directed Flavell to drive between trees where the vehicle would be concealed from the sight of anyone passing. Flavell cut the engine and there was silence.

  Eight-thirteen.

  Ruhr ordered the men to make their weapons ready. Rick, in charge of the tear gas, stepped out and began to remove canisters, which he set carefully in the damp grass. The Argentinians checked the clips in their automatic rifles. Trevaskis fingered his St Christopher for luck, then checked his own rifle. Steffie Brough shut her eyes tightly. She didn’t want to look. Not at the men, not at the guns; she wanted to be blind, freed from everything that encroached on her. Jesus Christ, please help me. I haven’t done anything wrong, not really wrong. I don’t deserve this. Get me out of this and I’m yours for life.

  Ruhr looked once again at the time. Eight-seventeen.

  The landscape was still quiet. But it seemed sullenly menacing now, as if something long dormant were about to emerge from a crack in the earth. Ruhr stared through the trees at the road. He raised his rocket-launcher to his shoulder. He turned his face up to the sky, from which the sun had disappeared. He listened. He could hear it faintly in the distance. The timing was exactly right. Beautiful.

  And now there was another noise, a low rumble of gears that sent vibrations through the still air. It was the sound made by an engine whose enormous power was restrained.

  “You all know what has to be done,” Ruhr said. If they didn’t, it was too late to learn. The time for rehearsals was long past.

  Ruhr peered through the green enclosures of the trees. He saw a large truck covered by a dark-green canopy. More than thirty feet long and cumbersome, it travelled at fifteen miles an hour. Directly in front were three jeeps, and on either side of the truck, two motorcycles. In the rear a smaller truck carried a dozen armed soldiers. The larger vehicle’s gears groaned, the ground underfoot trembled. Ruhr looked up at the sky once more.

  There, like a flying spider, was the black helicopter, the Cobra. Unmarked, windows tinted, it came in at a low angle, barely skimming treetops and sending birds up out of branches. The sky screamed, the day gone suddenly wild; but it was merely a preamble.

  Now, Ruhr thought. He pulled his mask over his face.

  The first canisters, thrown by Rick, exploded in front of the jeeps. Swirling gas created an unbreathable atmosphere. Ruhr aimed his rocket-launcher and fired at the jeeps even as the occupants, prepared for the contingency of tear gas though surprised by it nevertheless, fumbled for their masks. Trevaskis let his M-60 blaze at the same time. One of the jeeps overturned and slithered into a ditch, where it caught fire.

  The blades of the Cobra fanned smoke and petrol fumes. Fire from the guns mounted on the chopper was directed viciously at the motorcycle escort. Fuel tanks on the bikes exploded while the chopper began to fire at the smaller lorry in the rear, where armed soldiers were scattering into the trees and firing their automatic rifles up into the sky.

  Ruhr released another rocket, which blew a second jeep apart. Flame, higher than the trees around it, created a vast blue and orange column brighter than any sun. Zapino and Flavell, both masked, ran through the trees toward the long truck. Its drivers were climbing out of the cab and shooting in the general direction of the chopper. The Cobra, hunting the soldiers, eluded the shots and sprayed the woods with quick fire. It was important to wipe out the scattered squadron before radio communication could summon reinforcements. They would arrive sooner or later, of course. Ruhr preferred later. Much later.

  He surveyed the action with quiet satisfaction. He saw Flavell and Zapino reach the long truck. He fired his rocket launcher again, setting more trees on fire. And suddenly, emerging from the thick orange smoke, was a green military helicopter, probably part of the original escort, scanning the terrain for just such a contingency as this.

  Ruhr watched the Cobra, a huge mysterious raven, churn upwards, drawing the military helicopter clear of the smoke. The Cobra fired its rocket-launchers first and the camouflaged chopper tilted sideways, then downwards, going into an evasive slump. The Cobra persisted like a rabid bat, pursuing the other aircraft with a tenacity Ruhr admired. The air struggle was brief. The military craft exploded and the Cobra wheeled away from the great reaches of flame.

  But not quickly enough. Flame and debris blown out of the falling chopper caught the fuselage of the Cobra, which disintegrated with spectacular fury and dropped into a nearby meadow where it burned.

  Ruhr, who never allowed himself to be upset by the changing fortunes of war, hurried from the cover of the trees, spraying the area before him with his M-16. He was alive now, attuned to battle, moving, not thinking, running on instinct. Zapino had already gained entry to the cab of the long truck. Flavell, dead, lay directly under the large front wheels. Everything burned – jeeps, motorcycles, trucks, the wreckage of the choppers, trees, an abandoned barn nearby. It was a landscape imagined by a pyromaniac. Everything burned except the one thing that mattered: the large truck with the green canopy.

  Ruhr climbed up behind the wheel. He engaged the gears and drove over the body of Flavell and through the wreckage of jeeps and the corpses of soldiers. Gunfire still came from those soldiers concealed in the woods, sporadic, almost indifferent. It was answered by Trevaskis and Rick as they rushed toward the parked Range Rover. Rick was struck in the neck and he fell face down.

  In the truck, Ruhr stepped on the accelerator. The Range Rover, with Trevaskis at the wheel, came out of the woodland and followed. Thin gunfire still rattled behind them, growing fainter. Ruhr stamped the pedal to the floor. He couldn’t get the truck beyond forty, forty-five miles an hour because of the weight of the cargo as he drove the narrow, empty lanes that led to the airfield. There was an astonishing density to the trees here. They created a mystery out of the quiet meadows and lonely farmhouses that lay beyond them.

  Ruhr looked in the side mirror. The Range Rover was immediately behind. The airfield was one mile away. Ruhr tried to get the truck to go faster. At fifty, it vibrated with asthmatic severity. It began to shudder and skip and threaten to die as the airfield came in view.

  At the edge of the tarmac sat the massive transport plane, the C-130, engines already running. Ruhr drove the big truck to the back of the plane where a ramp, hydraulically operated, angled out of a doorway in the C-130’s underbelly. The Range Rover came to a stop alongside the truck and Trevaskis jumped out.

  “Let’s get this fucker loaded toot sweet!” Trevaskis shouted.

  But Ruhr had something else to do first; he reached inside the Range Rover and lifted out the girl.

  “Christ,” Trevaskis said, baffled and angry. Rick was dead and so was Flavell and if somebody had managed to summon reinforcements this whole place would be crawling with soldiers and Ruhr still found time to take this girl along. The sick fuck.

  Ruhr carried Steffie Brough to the ramp. Her blouse half undone, small white breasts sadly visible, mud-flecked skirt swept to one side. Her eyes were open, bloodshot from the tear gas. If they expressed anything, Ruhr couldn’t read it. Her lips, dry and cracked, appeared to have lost colour. Ruhr took her school scarf from around her neck, draped it carefully over the back seat, then raised her small body up, passing her to the hands of the men inside the transport plane, who took this unexpected merchandise without question.

  Trevaskis, puzzled by the business with the scarf, guided Zapino as he backed the truck up toward the ramp so that the cruise missile and the separate rectangular compartment, some eight feet by seven, that contained the control system, could be loaded into the plane.

  It was a precious prize, the stolen proper
ty of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

  10

  Norfolk

  It was shortly after ten a.m., some two hours since the attack. Ambulances came and went in utter confusion along country lanes built for horses and carts. Spectators from nearby villages stood beneath umbrellas and some macabre souls took photographs, despite the entreaties of military policemen. Physicians in wet white coats, an Anglican priest, a group of taciturn military investigators, the inevitable reporters, the general ghouls attendant on every bloodletting – it was a crowded circus, and Pagan, whose chest pain flared despite a recent ingestion of Pethidine in the fast car from London, was filled with several feelings at the same time, all of them cheerless.

  Rain fell bleakly. Foxie had his collar turned up and looked like a gambler praying for a winner in the last race of a long, losing day.

  “I’m angry,” Pagan said quietly.

  When Frank’s words emerged like sand through a clenched fist, Foxworth knew Pagan was going into his dragon-like mode. Even the way his breath hung on the chill wet air suggested fire. The business in the hotel last night with the Cuban-American woman and the man known as Rafael Rosabal, who had turned out to be a member of Castro’s government, was another problem. Something there cut deeply into Frank, and Foxie wasn’t sure what. Pagan had reacted oddly to Foxie’s information about Rosabal, as if he were pretending not to listen at all. Was the woman an old love, a potent ghost still? Foxworth was a tireless observer of the signs in Pagan’s personal landscape, and he’d developed an ability to read most of them – and even love a number of them – but every now and then Frank vanished inside himself and became camouflaged at the heart of his own terrain. Now was one such moment.