Havana Bay (42 page)

"I'm sure he knows that."

"Pushkin?" Arkady thought he heard something to
hang on to.

"Does he have a gun?" Muriel asked.

"He's not carrying a gun."

 
 
"But he can shoot?" Marisol asked.

"The best."

"The target gallery!" the girls shouted together.

"They see you so little," Ofelia's mother said.» You
shouldn't begrudge them a little fun, and your Russian
marksman can show off."

The shooting gallery was a gutted bus on blocks, the
back end replaced by a counter of air rifles that faced
an array of American jet planes and paratroopers cut
from soda cans. Behind them, on a black dropcloth, an
artist had added cutout stars and comets and a vista of
the Malecon with drivers shooting from convertibles. Sound effects were supplied by a tape of machine-gun
fire. The sisters pushed Arkady into an open space at
the counter.

"He should feel right at home," her mother said.

"Pump it." Muriel pushed the rifle into his hands.

"You have to pump it," Ofelia said as she paid.

"First the planes, first the planes," Marisol said.

The rifle was a toy with a tiny bead at the tip of the barrel. He fired at a particularly mean-looking bomber,
and the paratrooper next to it jumped.

"What are you aiming at?" Ofelia asked.

"I'm aiming at everything."

The wrong target was the best he did. Kids around
him made planes hop, spin, dance, but for all the shiny, dangling invaders every other shot of his thudded igno-
miniously into the backdrop.

"He must be high up in the police," her mother said.»
I don't think he ever shot at anything."

 
 
The girls pushed a rifle into Ofelia's hands. She gave
the lever two quick pumps and aimed at a big bomber
from Tropicola.

"I think the bead's a little off," Arkady suggested.

The bomber pinged and spun.

"No, Mama," Marisol complained.» In the center."

Balancing her glasses on her forehead and tucking
the stock more firmly against her cheek, Ofelia pumped
and fired at a more steady pace. Silvery planes swung
and paratroopers sang and danced. A comet, too, for
good measure. The glasses dropped down over her eyes,
it didn't matter, she had half the targets swaying at once. Arkady thought of the plane that had brought
him less than a week ago, which now seemed an age.
Here he was out in the open with Luna looking for him,
but what better camouflage was there than a Cuban
family? What could be more strange and more natural? Twelve hits with twelve shots earned Ofelia the prize of
a can of lighter fluid that her mother tucked into a net
bag. As she said, "Everything counts."

Appeased, the girls allowed themselves to be kissed
by Ofelia and taken in hand by their grandmother, who
dipped into her bag to give Ofelia a plastic toiletries bag
and something wrapped in greasy newspaper.» Banana
bread from Muriel's bananas. You remember the
bananas?"

"I can't take this bread."

"Your daughters helped make it. They would feel much better if you did."

Muriel and Marisol made their eyes huge.

 
"Okay, okay. Thank you, girls."
A farewell round of kisses.

"Feed it to him," her mother advised.» And take care of him."

 
Chapter Twenty-Three

 
What Arkady remembered of Mostovoi's accommodations on the sixth floor of the Hotel Sierra Maestra were
a runway balcony of parked tricycles and, within, a living room with movie posters, African artifacts, a
plush shag rug, leather sofa and a balcony facing the
sea. He also recalled a front-door lock and deadbolt, a sensible precaution considering the cameras and equipment inside. And in case he thought of rapelling athletically by rope from the hotel roof down to Mostovoi's
oceanview balcony, he had noticed in Rufo's videotape
Sucre Noir
that the sliding glass door was jammed shut by a steel bar. Spetznaz troops knew all about swinging
in through glass doors; Arkady did not. Also, the trick
was not just getting in, it was getting Mostovoi out and
taking another look at the photographs on the wall.

Mostovoi was correct in calling his hotel Central Europe. The cafe and boutique of the Sierra Maestra
were Russian, the graffiti on the elevator door was
Polish and the entire lobby was empty. Even the smell of rancid oil from the popcorn machine at the entrance stairs couldn't conceal a standing funk of cabbage.

The last time Arkady had visited, Mostovoi had
switched a photograph of a sailboat for the safari
picture. Or perhaps he had given away the rhino since
otten tired of seeing a dead animal on his wall. The safari picture, however, had
looked like the exotic centerpiece of his private gallery,
and Arkady wanted to see it on his own before Mosto
voi could rearrange the pictures again. The idea was to
get Mostovoi out in a rush.

Arkady may not have been a marksman or a commando, but one valuable thing he had learned was that
fuel for mayhem was everywhere. Behind a door marked
entrada
FROHIBIA filthy drapes lay on a three-
legged chair of black leatherette set between plastic bags
of corn kernels and potato chips and containers of
cooking oil. Arkady made sure the other lobby exits
were unlocked before he carried the chair and drapes to
the popcorn machine and returned for the chips and
oil. He opened the containers and poured the viscous
oil down the hotel steps, threw the drapes on the oil,
added the bags of chips to the drapes and lit the last
bag with his lighter. Rufo's lighter, actually. The plastic
bag caught nicely and potato chips, dry and saturated
with grease, were by weight about the best kindling on
earth. The chair and drapery were polyurethane, a form
of solid petroleum. Cooking oil had to get hot enough
to vaporize, but when it did it was a hard fire to put
out. Then he climbed the stairs to the sixth floor.

Arkady took his time. The alarm, an old-fashioned
clapper on a bell, sounded before he was halfway up,
and by the time he reached the stairway door on
Mostovoi's floor and looked down, the blaze was a
brilliant orange accelerated by the grease of the chips
while darker flames lapped at the chair and drapes.
Residents lined the balconies for the spectacle of motor
cycle police leading a red fire-engine pumper and a
tank. The hotel was only blocks away from Miramar's embassy row and Arkady had expected a fast response.
A bald Mostovoi in shorts peeked out his door, ven
tured to the balcony rail with the other residents on his floor and jumped back before his door latched behind
him. Spectators on the sidewalk scattered as the oil
ignited with an orange whoosh all the way from the
popcorn machine down to the street. The effect of shore
breeze over the hotel created just enough vacuum to
draw black smoke toward the building. Plastic silk
floated up as a fireman with a bullhorn waved for the
gawkers on the balconies to evacuate. Arkady stood
aside rather than be stampeded by families rushing
down. Mostovoi's flat was nearer the stairs at the other end of the balcony. He hopped out again in pants, shirt, toupee, camera bags slung every which way off his
shoulders, shoes in hand, the dapper sort who hated to
be hurried. Even as Mostovoi started down the far stairs
Arkady walked to the door, pulling Pribluda's wallet
from his new hip pack as he went. Burdened with gear,
Mostovoi hadn't paused to turn the deadbolt, the door
was only on the latch. Arkady selected a credit card;
he'd seen this done in movies, but he'd never actually
tried it. If it didn't work, he'd just wait for Mostovoi to
return. He slipped and wiggled the card in the jamb as
he turned the knob and swung his hip into the door.
Three hits and he was in.

The apartment looked again like the residence of a
middle-level Russian diplomat abroad decorated with
souvenirs of a man who had seen much of the world,
who cleaned for himself better than most bachelors,
with an interest in books and the arts, who kept his
own creative efforts under wraps. The photograph
Arkady had noticed in the videotape was on the wall, back in its place between the pictures of a colleague at the Tower of London and a circle of friends in Paris.

It was a photograph of five men with assault rifles, one standing and four kneeling around a dead rhino
ceros. Now he could see that the poor animal's feet
were shredded and its stomach winking with shiny intestine. The men were not hunters but soldiers, one
Russian soldier and three Cubans. Mostovoi, twenty
years younger and balding even then. Erasmo, his beard mere boyish wisps. A coltish, skinny Luna cradling an AK-47. Tico with the bright, reckless smile of a leader,
not the nearsighted focus of a man searching for leaks in an inner tube. And standing behind them in a safari
jacket of many pockets, George Washington Walls. On
the bottom border was written, "The best demolition
team in Angola shows a fellow revolutionary their new mine-sweeping device." The rhinoceros's legs were pulp
to the knees. Arkady considered the beast's frenzy of
agony and confusion when it had wandered into a
minefield, and he also thought of the callousness men develop in the midst of trying to stay alive. Tico and
Mostovoi were on the ends of the group. By Tico's knee
was the flattened pot of a pressure mine. By Mostovoi's
was the convex rectangle of a claymore, an antiperson
nel mine with the warning in English "This Side to
Enemy." It was a good photograph, considering that
Mostovoi had most likely set the camera's timer and run to take his place, considering the sharp African
light, considering that mines were probably still all
around. Arkady could almost hear the flies.

Arkady moved through the rest of the apartment before Mostovoi returned. On his first visit Arkady
hadn't seen the autographed photographs in the hallway of Mostovoi with famous Russian film directors or the
erotic boudoir series of Cuban girls that seemed to have
been shot in his own bed. Arkady looked in the bureau,
night table and under the pillow. A side table held a laptop, scanner, printer. The laptop denied him access
as soon as he turned it on. The chances of hitting
Mostovoi's password were remote. There was no gun in
the drawer or under the bed.

Arkady walked farther down the hall into a small
room redone as a darkroom with a black curtain inside
the door. A red light was on, as if Mostovoi had been
interrupted in the middle of developing. Arkady
squeezed between an enlarger and trays of sour-smelling
fixer and developer. Red film curlicued from a red clothesline. Held to the light, the film had nothing more than volleyball in the nude, and the developed pictures
pinned to a board were embassy fare: Russians visiting
a sugar combine, delivering postcards from the children
of Moscow, pushing vodka on Cuban editors. The
Russians, indeed, looked like
bolos.

 
 
Back in the hall, Arkady had to push past more
cabinets of photographs. He riffled through contact
sheets of vacations in Italy, Provence. No nudes, no
Africa. Finally in the kitchen he opened the refrigerator
and found vichyssoise, an open can of olives, Chilean
wine, canisters of color film and behind a bag of eggs a
9-mm Astra, a Spanish pistol with a tubular barrel. He
emptied the magazine on the side of the sink, replaced
the clip, wiped the gun and returned it behind the eggs. An empty ice tray sat in the sink. Arkady filled the tray
with bullets and water and put it in the freezer before
he sat in the living room and waited for Mostovoi to return.