Mambo Page 34

  “It doesn’t look like much from here, does it, Rafael?”

  Rosabal agreed.

  “Just the same, a whole lot of people have gone to a whole lot of trouble over that island, Rafael. A speck on the globe, nothing more. And it gets all kinds of people in a lather.”

  “A hundred thousand square kilometres of real estate,” Rosabal said.

  “Which makes people very greedy.”

  “As you say.”

  The man took off his tinted glasses. “Are you going to give me what I want, Rafael?”

  “Of course. You have my word.”

  “No Communist experiments. No flirting with the Soviet bloc. You want loans, you want agricultural machinery, you want certain types of weapons, you want technical advisors, you come to Washington. I don’t expect you to smell like a rose, Rafael. You’re going to be a very rich man, and very rich men never smell quite right somehow. But I expect you to play fair with me and my government. We’re prepared to overlook some things – after all, you’ve got a long teething period to go through. Just don’t overdo it. No excesses, no blatant transgressions, and we’ll all be happy.” The man was silent, gazing toward Cuba with a proprietorial air. “Let’s face it, the Caribbean is America’s swimming-pool, Rafael. Nobody wants litter in their pool, do they? Nobody wants to swim in dirty water.”

  “We have a firm agreement. I will not go back on anything.” Rosabal looked closely at the other man. He noticed for the first time a flesh-coloured strip of Bandaid at the side of the man’s forehead.

  “Been in the wars, Allen?”

  Allen Falk patted the back of Rosabal’s hand. “Your people got their timing wrong.”

  “I heard about it. What can I say? They’re zealous men.”

  “They blew up the limo before they were supposed to. I happened to be a spectator. It’s nothing.”

  Rafael Rosabal smiled. “We made amends, of course. Harry Hurt was shot some hours ago in Washington.”

  Falk slid his hands into the pockets of his blazer. He looked like an amateur yachtsman readying himself for a photograph. “Poor Harry and that goddam society of his. Greedy men. Men like that always want more. They don’t know when to stop.”

  “They were very useful. They served a purpose.”

  Both men were silent. The wind blew again, flapping Falk’s pants against his legs, tossing Rosabal’s collar up against his cheek, shaking the antennae on board.

  Rosabal enjoyed how he’d played the Society for all it was worth, how he’d borrowed men from General Capablanca’s Secret Service, his private corps of élite killers; shadowy, lethal men who had all the feelings of machines, how they’d murdered the members of the Society – each of whom thought his membership such a big secret – one by one. Now the Society was dying, and with it all its hopes of controlling Cuba. Hurt and Caporelli and the others had been used, deceived in the most brutal way; they’d financed an army, stolen a missile, purchased a counter-revolution – and for what?

  So that Rafael Rosabal could become the new President of a new Cuba.

  Falk said, “There was one tiny fruit-fly in our nice shiny apple, Rafael. A British cop called Pagan.” Falk looked at his watch, a slender disk on his wrist. “He wanted to talk to you about Gunther Ruhr, as I understand. Keen sort of guy. Anxious to get Ruhr.”

  “Pagan,” Rosabal said, thinking of London, of Magdalena, the hotel room. He remembered Frank Pagan. “I notice you use the past tense.”

  Al Falk, city dweller, accustomed only to the copper-tinted broth of pollution, took an exaggerated lungful of sea air. “One of Harry Hurt’s last acts was to arrange for Pagan’s demise. He knew all these Soldier of Fortune nuts who kill for five hundred bucks. Frank Pagan is probably dead by this time.”

  Rosabal frowned. Why did he feel a small cloud cross his mind just then? He thought of Magdalena and wondered if she had been a source of information for the English policeman – but what could Magdalena possibly tell Pagan anyhow? Nothing that could ever be proved. She could at best babble about how democracy was on its way to Cuba, and perhaps how she had ferried money for the new revolution, and the part she expected to play in Cuba’s future; that was it, that was all. Silly chatter. Balbuceo, nothing more. And Magdalena was good at it; she was just as good at babbling about her Cuban dreams as she was in bed.

  He asked, “How did Pagan connect Ruhr to me?”

  Falk drummed a hand on the rail and said, “It’s my understanding that you rented a house for the German. You were remembered. Bad move, Rafael. You could have found somebody else to rent the place on your behalf.”

  “There wasn’t anybody else. Who could I have trusted? In any case, it had to be done quickly. There was no time to think. Every policeman in Britain was looking for Ruhr.”

  Rosabal remembered the haste with which he had to find an isolated house where Ruhr could be hidden. He’d been moving too fast to think with any real clarity. When he’d rented the farmhouse, he did so under Jean-Paul Chapotin’s name, believing that if the police discovered Ruhr’s hiding-place, they would never associate Gunther with the Cuban Minister of Finance. Instead, they might dig into Chapotin’s life and find their way into the Society of Friends, which would have served its purpose by that time and become excess baggage. One of those moments, rare in Rosabal’s life, when he’d mistaken quick thinking for cleverness; the crazy old broad who’d rented the place to him had a sharper memory than he’d thought. She must have described him at least well enough for him to be identified.

  But none of this mattered now.

  In a few short hours, dawn would be breaking.

  Falk said, “What about Freddie Kinnaird?”

  Rosabal was quiet for a moment, as if he were deciding, in the manner of an emperor, Kinnaird’s fate. “Freddie has been very helpful. He always kept us informed of the Society’s plans and the members’ movements. Friends in high places are usually useful.”

  “I hear a but, Rafael.”

  “Your hearing’s good. It has to come to an end for Freddie. It’s over. I’ll issue the order personally.”

  “He expected a generous slice of Cuba,” Falk said.

  “Then his expectations are not going to be fulfilled. He knows too much. A man with his kind of knowledge can be a nuisance.”

  Falk paused a moment, as if Kinnaird’s fate troubled him. Then he said, “Speaking of friends in high places, your friends in Washington send their greetings and look forward to your success.”

  “I’m grateful,” Rosabal said.

  He turned his face to Florida. Miami was where those troublesome idiotas gathered, those roaring political dreamers who banged their drums for freedom and talked in the cafés in Little Havana and in large houses in Key Biscayne about taking Cuba back. They were fools, and potentially bothersome to Rosabal. Men like Garrido and his large network of cronies, the bankers and politicians and restaurateurs, the TV station proprietors and Hispanic newspapermen and rich doctors, all the money men who were in the vanguard of the Committee for the Restoration of Democracy in Cuba – they were his future enemies. After all, he had stolen from them; and what he had taken was more than just cash.

  Were they likely to leave him alone after Castro had been toppled?

  Of course not. They would turn against him when they understood he had no intention of bringing their kind of democracy to Cuba. Left to themselves, they would go on raising funds and promoting their moronic ideals and stirring up endless trouble for him; they wouldn’t leave him in peace.

  And Magdalena. Don’t forget Magdalena.

  She would come to haunt him in time. When she discovered how she had been betrayed, she’d find a way somehow to make his life difficult. These were not guesses; these were certainties he had understood from the very beginning.

  He couldn’t allow anyone to trouble him. He had come too far. Everything was within his grasp; he had only to reach a little further.

  Falk said, “We have detailed satellite photogr
aphs in our possession. All we need now are photographs of the missile in situ on Cuba. I don’t want anything that looks faked. I want good clear pictures of the missile on its launcher. I don’t want anybody to be in a position to accuse us of doctoring anything, if such a situation should ever arise.”

  “You’ll have wonderful pictures,” Rosabal said.

  He turned his face away from Florida. Lightning came out of the west again, illuminating sea and sky with bright silver. Rosabal enjoyed the stark brightness, the light-show. A storm was gathering in that direction and the wind that sloughed round the yacht was stronger than before. He thought briefly of the signed order, purportedly from the Lider Maximo, that Capablanca had in his possession. The signature was a forgery, but what did that matter? Good forgeries went undetected as long as people were desperate to believe they were the real thing. How many forged paintings hung in museums? How many fake historical documents lay in glass display cabinets?

  Falk said, “As soon as the pictures are taken, I expect to receive your message that the missile has been destroyed.”

  “I see no problem with that. It’s exactly as we agreed.”

  “I’m still just a little worried about your technicians, Rafael,” Falk replied.

  “Why? They know how to disarm a nuclear warhead. After all, they learned something from their Soviet masters. They’re good men. They know exactly what to do. Believe me. Besides, what is the alternative? To send in some American technicians? Direct US involvement?”

  Falk, his hair made unruly by wind, leaned against the rail. Open US involvement was not an option. If Rafael was convinced of his technicians’ qualifications, why should he bicker and worry? He said, “Expect the full media treatment, Rafael. The man who dismantled Castro and his missile. You’ll be a hero.”

  Rosabal said, “I expect nothing for myself. Only for Cuba.”

  Bullshit, Falk thought. “A certain amount of fame is inevitable, Rafael.”

  “Possibly,” Rosabal said. “But Cuba comes first.”

  Falk looked toward the island. His heart fluttered in his chest, as if he’d been given his first French kiss; after more than thirty years of longing, and watching, and waiting, he was going to see Castro fall. In the intensity of his desire he was blind to any other possibilities; failure was not even a consideration. Everything was going to fit together and function. He believed in cycles of history; the circle in which Castro would be crushed was almost closed.

  He turned his face back to Rosabal, remembering now how they had first met during a conference of the Organisation of American States in Costa Rica five years ago. The subject of the conference had been the economics of Central American republics, and the massive debts most of them had incurred. Far from the public arena, from the podium where delegates made their angry official speeches and railed at the unjust practices of the World Bank, they discovered a common interest in the future of Cuba after Fidel. They spent many hours together in a quiet resort hotel near the coast, enjoying the excellent pina coladas, the late-night visitations of exquisite call-girls, and – above all else – a sense of conspiracy that was aphrodisiacal. Although both men were initially discreet, circumspect to the point of obscurity, their mutual confidence grew and they talked more openly as the days passed; it was vividly clear to each of them that unless Fidel were “removed” then Cuba was doomed.

  It started with that simple notion: the replacement of Castro with a non-Communist, democratic regime in which bankers and investors might have faith. If the proposition were simple, the execution was not. It required all of Falk’s cunning and patience to hammer together the strategy that would bring down Castro and elevate Rosabal. It required financial partners, men like Harry Hurt and Sheridan Perry and their Society, money men whose greed could always be counted upon to overwhelm their misgivings. Hurt and the others had to be brought into the scheme in such a way that they might eventually credit themselves with the glorious idea of bringing down Castro in the first place. But the plan required more than Hurt’s merry gang – there had to be co-operation in certain Government and intelligence agencies, there had to be a force in Cuba itself that Rosabal could galvanise when the time came. So many elements, so many different instruments; but Falk, concert-master, conductor, knew how to syncopate the music and make it coherently sweet.

  Falk stared back in the direction of Cuba. He was under no illusion that Rosabal’s regime would exist three or four years from now. All Cuban administrations, no matter how sound in the beginning, sooner or later deteriorated into ill-tempered factions and violence and corruption of a kind the United States could not officially tolerate. But, in the meantime, President Rosabal would be tolerable, and friendly, and the honeymoon between the US and Cuba would vibrate with fresh enthusiasms and some satisfying intercourse. A pro-American government, corrupt or otherwise, was forever preferable to Communism in any form.

  Rosabal looked at his watch. “It’s time for me to leave. When we meet again, Allen, it will be in Havana.”

  “I look forward to that,” Falk said.

  “A new Havana,” Rosabal added, smiling his best and brightest smile, which flashed in the dark.

  Miami

  Magdalena Torrente parked her car behind the Casa de la Media Noche in Little Havana. The restaurant was closed for the night, although lights were still lit in the dining-room and the jukebox was playing a mambo and a fat man was dancing with a hesitant skinny woman between the tables. Magdalena stepped into the alley behind the building. Garrido, who had been expecting her, opened the door before she knocked. In his white suit he seemed to shimmer. An hallucination, she thought. Like everything else that had happened.

  He held the door open for her, then closed it. They went inside the windowless box-room stacked with cans of tomatoes and sacks of rice. She suddenly longed for a view of something, anything at all. A vista. She clenched her hands and said, “I love him. I’ve worried it every way I can and I come to the same conclusion every goddam time. I love him.”

  Garrido nodded his head. “I know,” he said quietly. He thought: It is your love that makes you the only choice, Magdalena. It is your love and pain. He was filled with melancholy suddenly, as if he were remembering the lost love of his own life, Magdalena Torrente’s mother Oliva; it was all so long ago, ancient history. Just the same, he was glad there was so little resemblance between the dead woman and her daughter.

  “You look tired,” he said.

  “I’m fine, really I’m fine.”

  Garrido caressed her hair with his hand. A small electric shock flashed across his palm. “Are you sure? Absolutely sure? Do you have the energy, querida?”

  For a second she gazed up into the bare lightbulb that illuminated the room. She remembered the lights of the Buick on the causeway, the way they burned in her rear-view mirror; she heard again the noise of the big car going through the barrier and over the side.

  She blinked, then looked at Garrido. She said, “I’m sure.”

  He went to his secret compartment in the wall behind the shelves. He removed a green pouch, which he handed to her. “Some things you may need.”

  She took the pouch but didn’t open it.

  Garrido kissed her on the forehead; the touch of his lips was dry and avuncular, his cigar breath and the scent of brilliantine on his hair not exactly pleasant. But she had the thought that at least there was no betrayal in the old man’s gesture.

  17

  Miami

  Lieutenant Philip Navarro of the Dade County Police was an uncommon kind of cop, articulate, smart, inquisitive, loaded down with none of the weariness and cynicism, the suggestion of emotional numbness you sometimes find in forty-year-old policemen. He had enthusiasm still, a vitality Pagan liked. He was short and slim, his face boyish; to offset this impression of youth he’d grown a thick moustache and wore a sombre three-piece suit of the kind you might encounter in the lobby of a Hilton during a bankers’ convention. He listened to Pagan’s convoluted story
with the look of an impartial, but kindly, branch manager about to make a loan to somebody with no collateral.

  Navarro was a big fan of Martin Burr, who had apparently deported a notorious Colombian drug lord from the United Kingdom some years ago, a man Navarro wanted for a variety of crimes in Florida. Burr had smoothed the extradition process, overriding paperwork and red tape, and Navarro had always been grateful. It was this gratitude that Frank Pagan hoped to tap now as he sat in the Lieutenant’s cramped office, whose window looked over a lamplit yard containing impounded cars. On the wall behind Navarro’s desk hung framed awards commending him for his civic work and his marksmanship.

  Navarro said, “With your British passport you can enter Cuba legally. Fly out of Miami to Jamaica or Mexico City, get a visa, fly to Havana. I don’t see any problem there.”

  “That takes too much time,” Pagan said. “I’m looking for a fast alternative.”

  “The age of immediacy,” Navarro said, and sighed, as if he longed for slower eras. He rose from his chair and walked to the window where he leaned his forehead against the pane a moment. “When I got your call, first thing I did was check you out with Martin Burr.”

  “And?”

  “He asked me to extend the hand of co-operation. Said you were sometimes on the headstrong side but otherwise okay.”

  “Good of him.”

  “Also you were less than objective at times.”

  “Character analysis isn’t Martin’s strong point,” Pagan remarked. “Besides, objectivity’s overrated. I get involved.”

  “At the gut level,” Navarro said.

  “Usually.”

  Navarro, who had no great regard for professional detachment himself, liked Frank Pagan. He turned from the window. “I’m happy to extend the hand of co-operation. I’m just not sure how far it should go. If I understand you, what you’re asking me to do is break the law.”

  “Purely in a technical sense,” Pagan said.

  “Easy for you to say, Frank. I live here. You don’t.”