Havana Harvest (38 page)

Lonsdale continued walking without looking back. Within minutes the car was behind him again, but, this time, it slowly drew even and a window opened.

“You're fat,” Reuven Gal shouted out at him from the driver's side.

“And you're ugly,” Lonsdale replied laughing.

Gal pulled over and stopped the car. “Get in Bernard before you catch cold.” Lonsdale slid in without a word. Gal accelerated away from the curb.

Lonsdale waited for a minute out of respect for having put his erstwhile colleague to so much trouble on such short notice and then, half-turning toward the Israeli, inquired with some delicacy. “How pissed off are you?”

“Me? Pissed off, no; intrigued, yes.”

“Intrigued?”

“Yes, intrigued. I thought you were dead. Where the fuck have you been all these years?”

“How do you know I'm me and not an impostor?”

“Come on Bernard, give me a break.” Gal sounded hurt. “Nobody waddles the way you do.”

“You mean you identified me by my walk?”

“Why else do you think I followed you for two blocs?”

Lonsdale grinned. “All right, all right, you win. Now tell me where you're taking me.”

“To eat, of course. I presume you're hungry.”

Lonsdale remembered that he had not had time to have lunch. “Starving.”

Gal was pleased. “I'm glad. I booked us a table at Cafe Europa. How I got us in on such short notice I'll never know.”

“Come off it you big show-off. Everybody in Palm Beach knows that you know everybody and that your connections in high places and low are better than ever.”

Gal was ready to give as fast as he got. “Is that why you called me? For my connections?”

“Partly. But I'll tell you all about it after we've eaten.” The car slowed, and Lonsdale started to open the door. Gal put a hand on his shoulder. “Not so fast my friend, not so fast. I want to tell you something before we go in.”

Lonsdale closed the door and faced Gal.

“I'm glad you're not dead,” said Gal deadpan. “I liked working with you and hope to work with you again, but on one condition.”

“And what would that be?”

“That you don't hold out on me.”

“You mean information-wise?”

“That too.”

“I won't, I promise”

“Then let's go get 'em.”

During the meal they revisited old times. Although Gal tried to be delicate, it soon became apparent that, to get Gal's cooperation, Lonsdale had to give a plausible explanation of where he had been during the last two decades.

Having spun a yarn about residing in Argentina and making a living as a security consultant, thereby implying he and Gal were colleagues Lonsdale steered the conversation around to the present.

“You're listed as a security consultant too,” he said, stirring his coffee. “How's business?”

“Can't complain. And you?”

“Just a little too good,” Lonsdale allowed, testing the waters. “And that's why I'm here.”

“Really?” Gal leaned back in his chair laughing, “I can't wait to hear what you're in the process of cooking up.”

Lonsdale shook his head. “Not here, Reuven. Let's fnd a more private place somewhere.”

“OK, but first: where are you staying?”

“I have a guaranteed reservation at the Breakers.”

“Can you afford to lose the guarantee?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Be my guest for the night. I've plenty of room, and we can talk in complete privacy at my place.”

Lonsdale reasoned that the advantage of seeing Gal's headquarters from the inside and, perhaps, getting a glimpse of his operation, outweighed the strong likelihood of Gal recording every word that would be said at his place.

“What about your wife?”

“I'm not married.”

“You live alone?” Lonsdale pretended surprise. “I don't believe it. A leopard doesn't change its spots.”

“I live in a large, well-located and well-protected house. There's a maid comes in every day to do for me, so don't worry about putting me out. She'll look after both of us. Makes a damn fine breakfast.”

Lonsdale gave in. “Sold. Drive me back to Bice's to pick up my car, and I'll follow you to where you live.”

It was past midnight by the time they got to Gal's house on Ibis Crescent located on the Inter-coastal Waterway and shielded from the street by a solid brick wall. Lonsdale dumped his bag in the bedroom next to the office and joined his host for a short nightcap on the screened part of the pool patio between the house and the sea.

Gal poured them a small brandy each. Raising his glass he said, “Nice to see you alive and well and healthy.”

“L'Chaim.
” Lonsdale countered with the traditional Jewish toast: “To life.”

They settled into comfortable armchairs facing the waterway and neither spoke for a while. It was Lonsdale who broke the silence. “How secure is this place?”

“Quite. Once the gates on the outer wall are electronically locked no one can get through them. There are infrared motion sensors on top of the wall, and above the flower beds along the two sides of the property. The rhododendron bushes separating me from my neighbors are, as you can see, very thick, but when you'll look at them from close up tomorrow you'll discover I didn't rely on nature. There is razor wire strung through them to a height of nine feet.”

“So you can be penetrated only over the wall or from the waterway.”

“True, but I have twenty-four hour regular and infrared surveillance from four TV cameras through monitors in my bedroom. They display the entire area at all times and keep a taped record of all goings-on.”

“Wouldn't like to be your gardener, or pool boy.” Lonsdale mused.

Gal laughed. “Right.” His English was near perfect and sometimes very Englishy since he had been educated in the UK. “I view the tapes daily, of course, and about a year ago had the pleasure of watching the pool boy making it with the maid at the poolside.”

“In broad daylight?”

“Yeah, on the chaise this side of the pool.”

“What did you do—fire them?”

Gal was taken aback. “Why should I want to interfere with the civil liberties of two consenting adults? Besides, they're both Cubans and good at that sort of thing.”

“Which brings me to my reason for visiting you.”

Gal emptied his glass. “At last. But first, let me neutralize any eavesdroppers who might be around.” He got up and flicked one of the light switches upward. Nothing visible happened.

“What does that do?” asked Lonsdale.

“See the mosquito screen around us? It's a bit heavier gauge than normal. I've just electrified it thereby creating a magnetic field around the patio, which knocks out all electronic listening devices in the vicinity.”

“What about the rest of the house?”

“Only the office is safe. It's always locked, and I have the only key. Of course, I sweep it for bugs daily, but we both know that, although conversations inside the office can be protected, the wires, telephone, fax, computers, and so on are all open to interception at the other end.”

Lonsdale leaned forward in his chair and put his glass on the table. “Let's get down to business.”

“About time.”

“We have to extract two heavily guarded men from a Latin American country.”

“Who's the client?”

“I don't know because the job was contracted to me through an intermediary.”

“Do you have a plan?”

“A rough one. It involves a total of twenty men in the field and four backup.”

“Does that include the diversionary team?”

Lonsdale was pleased. Gal had not lost the touch. “Yes, it does.”

“How many vehicles?”

“A panel truck, two taxis, a helicopter, and a cargo ship.”

Gal looked at him perplexed. “You're not crazy enough to be thinking of mounting an amphibious operation?”

“In a way, I suppose I am.”

“Explain.”

It took Lonsdale until three a.m. to put Gal into the picture. He had to be careful not to give away his targets' identities or the specific area where the action would take place. When he finished, Gal poured them both a last drink. “What's our budget?” he asked.

“About twelve million bucks, I estimate.” Lonsdale decided to keep three million dollars in reserve.

“How much of it is mine?”

“One million guaranteed, half up front, the other half at the end. You get another quarter million for each target we bring out alive.”

“In other words, about 10 percent of the total is mine. How much are you taking?”

“I'm being paid separately.”

“So we have about ten million dollars for the operation itself.”

“About.”

“Twenty men in the field at a quarter of a million dollars each is five million. Your support people are another half million, so total payroll is five to six million. The helicopter with fuel and maintenance is another million, as is the cargo ship. This leaves about two million dollars for weapons, uniforms, protective gear, and three motor vehicles.” Gal closed his eyes for a few seconds. “What kind of artillery are we thinking about?”

Lonsdale was glad Gal had said “we” for a second time. “Galil assault rilfes, side arms, tear gas, stun grenades, and perhaps a couple of rocket launchers.”

Gal closed his eyes again, this time for a full minute. Then he got up and stretched. “My preliminary impression is that our budget is somewhat tight, but let me redo the sums, and I'll let you know tomorrow morning.” He yawned and held out his hand. “Sleep tight, Bernard. I'll see you at nine thirty for breakfast.”

Lonsdale was pleased. The bargaining had begun. He bade his host goodnight and headed for his room.

“How do you propose to smuggle all those men and their equipment into Cuba?”

Lonsdale almost choked on his orange juice. “Who said anything about Cuba?” he managed to croak.

Gal grabbed a piece of toast from the rack in the middle of the table and wiped the remains of the egg yolk off his plate. “Come off it, Bernard! What kind of a schmuck do you think I am?” He stuffed the soaked toast into his mouth and washed it down with a gigantic gulp of hot coffee. Then he burped discreetly and sat back in his chair with a contented smile. “I worked it all out last night. Your clients are the Colombian drug cartel and the people whose necks you're to save must be some high-up Cuban officials whom Fidel has sent to the pokey for helping the cartel smuggle drugs through Cuban waters. What I don't understand is why anyone would want to spend upward often million dollars to spring two has-beens from jail once their usefulness has come to an end.”

“Maybe it's the men themselves who're putting up the money for their own liberation.”

“Then why don't they just offer the money to Fidel and be done with it? For fifteen million dollars Fidel could buy a lot of much-needed agricultural equipment for his people.”

Lonsdale helped himself to a tangerine, peeled it, and stuffed the skin into his coffee cup. He looked past Gal and beyond the pool. The houses across the Inter-coastal Waterway shimmered tantalizingly in the morning sunshine, their windowpanes glittering like huge diamonds.

“Reuven, I don't deny that the Colombians might be my ultimate clients, but I don't know for sure. I've been retained by a Panamanian, and he's the one who's paying. As for the extraction targets, I have no clue about their identity, nor about the place from which we're supposed to extract them. What I do know, because I've checked, is that there've been no recent arrests of senior Cuban government officials on drug-related charges, nor are there any such individuals being held in jail in Cuba.”

He reached across the table for a glass of water. “My instructions are to train a team of about twenty commandos and have them and their equipment ready to move out at a moment's notice three weeks from today. Everybody, and that includes you and me, gets paid half their basic pay in advance and the other half at the conclusion of the mission, whether successful or not. Bonuses will be paid only if the mission is successful. And this we'll only know at the end.”