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  On this particular evening, more than twenty-four hours after the limousine had exploded, Hurt was in the living-room pouring small shots of an inexpensive scotch called Passport from a bottle labelled Glenfiddich. He had some miserly ways and, like most misers, thought he could fool people with transparent deceptions.

  Freddie Kinnaird, who had arrived an hour ago on Concorde, sipped his drink and pretended to enjoy it. Sheridan Perry, knowledgeable about malt whiskies, made no objection either. He was accustomed to this odd streak of niggardliness in Harry. The more wealth Hurt accumulated, the more thrifty he became and the more energy he spent jogging and rowing and heaving weights around. It was almost as if he were obeying some strange axiom of his own: great wealth leads only to parsimonious guilt which can be reduced only through endless exercise.

  Freddie Kinnaird, who had just finished relating the death of Enrico Caporelli, set his glass down a moment. Hurt deftly slid a coaster, filched from the Stanhope Hotel in Manhattan, under the Englishman’s drink.

  “When does it end?” Hurt asked. He’d already told Freddie about the attack on the limo, glancing all the while at Perry, as if for some sign of his compatriot’s guilt.

  “When we three are dead, I daresay,” Kinnaird remarked.

  “Hold on, hold on,” Hurt said. “Let’s be logical. Let’s take this thing apart and put it back together again. It has to lead somewhere.”

  Kinnaird picked up his glass and finished his drink. He had so little time to spend here. There was business to conduct back in England, the affairs of his office not the least of it, but he’d come here to show a sign of solidarity with Hurt and Perry. After all, they were members of the same exclusive club. He detected some mild tension between the pair. Had there been a squabble? In the circumstances, though, nervousness was inevitable.

  Freddie Kinnaird also had some information to impart at the appropriate moment, which would come when Harry had played out his little string of paranoia.

  “For a while, I thought Enrico himself might be behind it,” Hurt said.

  “How wrong you were,” said Kinnaird.

  “Now, if it’s an inside job …” Harry Hurt didn’t finish his sentence.

  “We three,” Freddie Kinnaird said.

  “Right,” Perry said. “If it’s an inside job, it’s one of us.”

  Freddie Kinnaird played with his empty glass. A lock of hair fell across his forehead, creating the impression of a rather red-faced, ungainly boy. He swept it back with a toss of his head. “Consider the explosion of the limousine,” he said to Perry. “Who had the information that you and Harry were travelling in the vehicle?”

  Perry said, “Only Harry and me. That’s it.”

  “Unless you knew, Freddie,” Hurt said.

  Kinnaird laughed. “I was many miles away, Harry. I have no crystal ball, something my political enemies in the House of Commons discovered some time ago.”

  “You’re saying …” Perry stopped, looking both indignant and somewhat despondent at the same time.

  “It’s either you or me.” Hurt turned to Perry. “That’s what Freddie’s saying.”

  “Wait a minute there,” Perry said.

  Kinnaird interrupted. “It’s only one possibility, gentlemen. Consider this as an alternative. Parties unknown to us, parties seeking the destruction of the Society, might be responsible.”

  This was what Hurt wanted so badly to believe. But was it really preferable to ascribe the killings to some faceless organisation rather than to Sheridan Perry? Perry he could deal with. An unknown outfit was more spooky. How the hell did you begin to fight back at a shadow? His thoughts returned to the fiery limousine and the striking little perception he’d had when he’d been obliged to flee the tailoring establishment. Perry knew, he had thought then.

  Now it made some kind of sense to him.

  Consider: Perry knew.

  Assume: Perry arranged the hit.

  The killers Perry had hired to strike the limousine had erred. Maybe they were supposed to blow up the car later, at some time when Perry – perhaps on the pretext of buying a newspaper, something like that – had stepped out of the limo. It made simple, stunning, logical sense. Perry’s killers, in their enthusiasm to do the job, had mistimed the affair.

  This is what it came down to: Perry wanted it all, the whole ball of wax. He wanted the Society for himself. He wanted Cuba for himself.

  Hurt switched on the light in the aquarium standing against one wall. Sudden fluorescence illuminated a clan of silken Siamese fighting fish. When they moved they did so with a kind of narcissism, as if studying their reflections in an infinity of mirrors. Hurt peered into the aquarium. His own image, the angular features, the great bony jaw, the steely close-cropped hair, shone back at him. Seeing himself thus he remembered that control was one of his strengths, that he wasn’t the kind of man to leap to unfounded conclusions. Perhaps he was judging Perry wrongly.

  He turned to look at his fellow American. Sheridan Perry was pouting very slightly, the shadow of an expression left over from a spoiled childhood. Little Sheridan Perry had been the centrepiece of his parents’ marriage. Fawned over, bestowed with riches, his life an endless cycle of tearing apart wrapping-paper to get to the goodies, young Perry had reached his tenth birthday before he realised that in most other houses Christmas arrived but once a year.

  Perry said, very quietly, “It wasn’t me. I’m not behind it. I wish you’d quit staring at me, Harry. I’m no traitor.”

  He looked convincing to Hurt. He sounded like a man telling the truth. Kinnaird’s hypothesis of an unknown party seemed suddenly feasible to Hurt, who couldn’t stand the pained expression on Perry’s face. How could Perry, no matter the unfathomable extent of his greed, be responsible for wiping out the Society?

  Hurt shook his head, astonished by his own ability to vacillate. You simply couldn’t have it both ways. Either Perry was guilty or he was not. Indecision was a sin in Hurt’s eyes.

  “Let us set all this unpleasantness and mutual suspicion aside for the moment,” Kinnaird said in a firm way. “There’s something else that complicates our lives – the fact that a certain London policeman is presently on his way to the United States. A man called Frank Pagan. Pagan is the one who interviewed Enrico in Paris. He was present at Caporelli’s unfortunate death.”

  “Do you think he knows anything?” Hurt asked.

  “Very little, I imagine. At this present time. All I can tell you is the information I myself get from Scotland Yard.”

  “How did he get on to Enrico?” Sheridan Perry asked, frowning, looking oddly pale and anaemic in a way no hearty carnivore ever should.

  Kinnaird replied, “Through Rosabal, I gather. I haven’t seen Pagan’s report yet on his meeting with Enrico.”

  “But how the hell did Pagan get on to the Cuban?” Hurt wanted to know.

  Freddie Kinnaird stretched his legs, clasped his hands at the back of his head, and tried to look relaxed, but he was faintly nervous here. “British domestic intelligence has an occasional policy of observing members of the Cuban government visiting Britain – diplomats, ministers, etcetera. Now and then, a Cuban is selected for surveillance. Rosabal’s number came up. He was watched in Glasgow. He was seen with Enrico.”

  While Hurt absorbed this information, he could hear various doors squeak open in the long murky corridor of his mind. The idea that Rosabal had been followed in the United Kingdom worried him deeply. Perhaps Enrico had also been placed under surveillance on account of his association with the Cuban. And where could that have led?

  “Is it possible that British intelligence is responsible for the deaths of our members?” he asked.

  Kinnaird smiled. “I don’t think it’s likely. That kind of information would have come to my attention one way or another.”

  “Unless they’re on to you, Freddie.”

  “Nobody is on to me, Harry. Believe me.” Kinnaird smiled. The very idea of his exposure was preposterous.
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  The silence in the room was disturbed only by water passing softly through the aquarium filter and a faint plup as a fish briefly broke the surface. Then Hurt asked, “How good is Pagan?”

  “His determination is notorious. He’s also known for overlooking the book when it suits him,” Kinnaird said. He recalled the hurried telephone conversation he’d had with Martin Burr just before boarding Concorde. “Right now he’s on his way to Miami. He has a contact inside the Cuban exile community. Mind you, I don’t think Pagan knows very much. Nor do I imagine he’s remotely interested in Cuba or anything that might happen there. He wants Ruhr and he wants this young girl Ruhr was silly enough to grab. He also wants to know the whereabouts of the missile.”

  Hurt walked to the window. He surveyed the other blocks of apartments that overlooked the Potomac. Lights burned in windows and a passing yacht created a bright yellow band on the dark waters. Hurt felt suddenly crowded. It was more than the deaths of his associates, it was the idea of this Frank Pagan. He looked at his watch. Everything was so damned close to completion. How could he allow some British cop to interfere? If Pagan was headed for Miami and the Cuban community there, he was getting a little too close. He was trespassing on Harry Hurt’s zone of comfort.

  “Who’s his contact in Miami?”

  “This is the interesting part, Harry. According to my information, Pagan’s friend is a woman called” – and here Kinnaird consulted a small morocco bound notebook fished from his inside pocket –“Magdalena Torrente.”

  “So? What’s so interesting about that?” Hurt asked.

  Kinnaird was quiet a second. Then he said, “Magdalena Torrente is an intimate friend of Rosabal’s.”

  “Intimate?” Hurt asked, alarmed by this new connection. “How intimate? What does that mean?”

  Kinnaird gazed at the shrunken heads. They really were monstrous little things. Their mouths hung open as if these were the faces of people who had died in unspeakable pain. “My dear Harry, I can only tell you what I read in the reports. And police reports are not renowned for their pornographic details. She’s a friend, a close friend. Perhaps a lover.”

  “What does she know? Did Rosabal tell her anything?”

  Kinnaird shrugged. “I don’t have the answers. My information isn’t complete. Pagan won’t tell me anything directly. And since he’s not the quickest person when it comes to compiling reports for the Commissioner, I am sometimes not altogether au courant. But I rather doubt that Rosabal would confide in this woman anything so important as our undertaking, don’t you?”

  Hurt nodded, though a little uncertainly. “I don’t like it anyway you cut it. The fact that Pagan’s contact in Miami is an intimate friend of Rosabal – this is not good news, Freddie.”

  Sheridan Perry said, “It’s very simple. I’ve always followed the old line that it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

  “You mean what I think you mean?” Hurt asked.

  Perry nodded but said nothing.

  “You’d eliminate the pair?” Hurt asked.

  “Eliminate’s a good word,” Perry remarked.

  Hurt wondered if Perry’s suggestion, lethal and yet so simply phrased, was Sheridan’s attempt to turn attention away from any suspicion of murderous betrayal that might have gathered around him. Kinnaird had deftly changed that subject a few minutes ago, putting into abeyance the question with which this meeting had begun. Sir Freddie, diplomat, smoother of tangled paths, had focused attention on another problem, one more easily solved than that of identifying the killer behind the murders of the Society members.

  “Who would you get to do it?” Hurt asked.

  Sheridan Perry shook his head. “Harry, come on. I don’t have an inside track with the criminal fraternity. I thought you might know somebody. After all, you’re the man with connections when it comes to guns and guys that know how to use them.”

  Hurt had the feeling that Perry’s last remark was a way of casting a little light of suspicion on Harry himself. It was undeniably true that he had contacts among ex-soldiers and mercenaries, men who considered killing as natural a function as, say, screwing. Hurt had kept some bad company in his time, also true. Was Perry trying to damn Hurt by association? Was he trying to say that Hurt was the logical candidate if the murders were an inside job?

  Sweet Jesus, Hurt thought. When you stepped on board that great rolling locomotive of doubt and suspicion it just gathered speed and kept moving, never stopping at any stations, it rattled and screamed past objectivity in its frantic journey to confusion and madness. He took a couple of deep breaths, seeking the calm centre of himself.

  “I could make a call, I guess,” he said. Why deny it? He had the contacts.

  “I wish there were some other way.” Kinnaird’s voice was quiet.

  “There isn’t,” Perry said. “You let this character Pagan go where he pleases – what then? And if the woman happens to have information … No, Freddie. There’s no other way. We can’t afford to take chances now.”

  Hurt stepped inside the kitchen. Kinnaird and Perry could hear him talking quietly on the telephone. He spoke for a few minutes, then he returned to the living-room.

  “It’s done,” he said flatly.

  There was a silence in the room. In the entrance room, behind the closed door, one of the bodyguards coughed. Hurt strolled to the window. The view was breathtaking. There was more traffic on the river now: launches, yachts, one of which was strung like a Christmas tree. In the windows of other apartment buildings lights were dulled by drawn curtains or tinted glass.

  He said, “Ever since we became involved in this Cuban business, we’ve had nothing but problems. I remember when everything was easy. Plain sailing. No clouds. Full membership. We didn’t have deaths, killings. We weren’t involved in all this …” He waved a hand. The appropriate word had eluded him. “Mainly, though, our associates were still alive and well.”

  He stared across the expanse of the Washington night. Because of the vast electrical glow of the city, the stars were dimmed in the sky. He was about to turn his face back to the room when a bullet, fired from an apartment tower nearby, pierced the window in an almost soundless manner.

  It penetrated his skull.

  Harry Hurt put his hand up to his head, thinking for the shortest time possible, the kind of time only a sophisticated atomic clock might measure, that he had a migraine. It was his final perception, quicker than quicksilver. He neither heard nor saw Freddie Kinnaird and Sheridan Perry rush to the place where, face-down, he had fallen.

  The Caribbean

  The freighter, an old vessel badly in need of fresh paint, flew the red white and blue flag of Cuba. It was not of Cuban origin. Built in Newcastle, England, some forty years before, it was registered in Panama and named – at least for this voyage – La Mandadera. It was a vessel of formidable shabbiness. Rust seemingly held the ship together, creating brown bands around bow and stern.

  The captain was a moustached Cuban-American called Luis Sandoval who lived in Florida. He had fled Cuba in 1964 with his wife and family at a time when rumours concerning the removal of children from Cuba to Russia had been rife on the island. It was said that Fidel was going to send Cuban kids to the Soviet Union to be educated and raised there as good little Communists. Luis, like thousands of others, had left Cuba for good. For more than twenty-five years he’d plied his trade as a fishing-guide around Miami, impatiently waiting for the moment of his return to the homeland.

  Now he was in the vanguard of the liberation movement.

  He stood on the bridge of La Mandadera, his binoculars trained on the dark shore five miles away. There was a half-moon and some low cloud and the sea was tranquil. Sandoval scanned the shoreline slowly. He wasn’t nervous.

  There! To his right he saw the sign he was looking for: a red-orange flare that ripped the darkness like a wound opening. It was followed by a constant flame, a bonfire burning on the beach. Luis Sandoval gave his crew the order to proceed. Within a
mile of the place known as Cabo Gracias a Dios he would drop anchor and wait for history to take place. It did not escape his vanity that he was one of many co-authors helping to shape forthcoming events.

  Twenty-three thousand miles above La Mandadera, a United States spy satellite, that until recently had been bugged by a mysterious malfunction, began to take photographs, hundreds of them, thousands, pictures that would be relayed back to a deciphering station deep in the green West Virginia countryside, where they would be processed and analysed and, like little coded mysteries from space, broken wide open. These same photographs also showed a stormy cloud formation, as menacing in its darkness as a black hole, moving across the Gulf of Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula toward the waters of the Caribbean.

  16

  Miami

  On its descent into Miami the plane was buffeted like paper in a wind-tunnel. Pagan was the first person off. He entered the stuffy terminal, ploughed through customs and immigration, explained the gun and holster in his overnight bag to an ill-mannered officer who wanted to confiscate it, Scotland Yard or no Scotland Yard identification. A quick phone call was made to Lieutenant Philip Navarro of the Dade County Police, the name of Martin Burr was dropped, and Pagan was let through grudgingly.

  He found a cab driven by a cheerful Haitian called Marcel Foucault, whose English was as thick as bouillabaisse. Pagan had Magdalena’s address from the forms she’d had to complete for British immigration. It was a house in Key Biscayne. Foucault, who howled appreciatively from his window at passing women, and shook with irrepressible mirth when they responded, claimed to know Miami like a native.

  Pagan had never been in this city before. Downtown was bright – office blocks blazed and hotels rose like lit glass slabs. Palm trees, tropical shrubs alongside the road, these surprised him with their alien lushness. He rolled down his window, smelled the salt air. Small man-made islands, loaded with mansions, sat in the dark of Biscayne Bay: Palm Island, San Marco, Hibiscus.