Murder in Havana (16 page)

He looked back up the hallway. He had it to himself.

He pulled the Austrian Glock nine-millimeter semiautomatic from the largest pocket in his vest, placed his other hand on the doorknob, and carefully, slowly opened the door, the weapon held pointing up, next to his ear. His eyes swept the room. No sign of a person. But he saw the open drawers in the dresser, and clothes on the floor.

He checked every corner of the room, the bathroom, behind the shower curtain, the closet, under the bed. Feeling secure, he closed and locked the door and sat on the bed.

Because he traveled light, there had been very little in the drawers or the closet. There had been no need for Blondie to have tossed things on the floor. He’d done it so that Pauling would know he’d been there. A warning. A message that his presence in Havana had not gone unnoticed.

He picked up the few items of clothing from the floor and returned them to the dresser. He opened the drapes and stood in front of the air-conditioning unit, reveling in the cold air that bathed his face. Four floors below, Havana was on the move.

Not a wasted morning. He’d met the German, Grünewald, who’d been mentioned by Nico. As for the blond Nordic or Aryan guy with the strange haircut, if he wanted to play a game, Pauling was willing to compete. He smiled. Maybe this was going to turn out to be better sport than he’d anticipated.

Victor Gosling chose to meet Tom Hoctor at Les Halles, on Pennsylvania Avenue, because of its upstairs cigar lounge where he could retire after lunch to enjoy a Cuban Cohiba, a dozen of which were sent to him on a regular basis by a friend in Prague.

Gosling and Hoctor were as different in their lifestyles as they were physically. Gosling towered over the diminutive Hoctor, although both were slender men. Gosling had a full head of hair. Hoctor was bald. Gosling wore expensive English suits custom-made on Savile Row, originally from the venerable Gieves & Hawkes, more recently from the trendy upstart Ozwald Boateng. Hoctor bought off the rack, and only when there was a sale. Gosling smoked cigars, enjoyed whiskey, and ate heavy food. Hoctor neither drank nor smoked; his appetite approached vegetarian.

After lunch downstairs in the popular French bistro, Hoctor reluctantly followed Gosling to the cigar lounge where the Brit, his CIA colleague from earlier days, lit up, and sipped from a snifter one of the elite alembic cognacs. Hoctor was content with a cup of tea. They were alone.

Gosling directed a stream of blue smoke away from Hoctor and leaned closer to him across a tiny table. “I’m telling you, Tom,” he said pianissimo, “there’s no reason
for anyone at the Company to give a second thought to my using Max Pauling in Cuba. Hell, I shared with you his assignment, and I shouldn’t have done that. It’s strictly private, none of your business back in Langley. I told you about the assignment only because we go back a long way together, and I knew I could trust you.”

Hoctor tasted his tea. After placing the cup back in the saucer, he rubbed his right eye, which tended to droop, more so when he was tired or under pressure. He thought for a moment before saying, “Zach Rasmussen wants to know about Pauling because—” He leaned forward. “Because there are ongoing projects that are particularly sensitive. Zach doesn’t want there to be any chance—
any
chance—that what Max is doing could cause a problem.”

Gosling dragged on his Cohiba and finished his cognac. He again leaned forward. “Not to worry,” he said.

“Celia Sardiña,” Hoctor said in a voice so soft it was lost in the room.

But Gosling heard it. He cocked his head and smiled. “What about her?”

“You have her involved, too, in this private assignment for your client.”

“So?”

Another rub of his eye before speaking in a tone meant to chastise, “You know damn well why I bring her up. She has other business, Vic. Important business. For us. Sensitive business.”

“The last time I heard, Tom, she was an independent contractor, available to the highest bidder.”

Hoctor was angry at having his concerns so casually dismissed. In all his years with the Central Intelligence Agency, he’d never grown comfortable handling independent contractors, men and women who sold their services to the agency for a period of time or specific operation, for a fee. They were necessary, he knew, but he
preferred dealing with agency employees, like himself, who were accountable to a higher authority in the chain of command. The freelancers were harder to control. As far as they were concerned, they had a specific job to do—“turn” an informer in a foreign country whose language they spoke, take surveillance photos from a mile away, seduce a government official and record the pillow talk, bug a phone or room, launder money, cut a deal with drug runners in return for information, assassinate someone deemed worthy of a bloody “wet job”—and the hell with the bureaucracy.

Most part-time contract employees had once been agency employees, like Victor Gosling. Hoctor had always found Gosling to be atypical of the usual electronics expert. Generally, these were introspective men, narrow in focus and consumed with specific knowledge and its applications. Gosling was gregarious, even flamboyant. It was the flamboyance that had caused him to be chosen as author of that book, helped by an agency-approved ghostwriter, purportedly critical of the intelligence community, yet containing only that which had already been written about, certainly nothing damaging. Gosling’s early departure from the agency, and its pension system, was quietly handled behind the scenes. With the lump sum he’d been paid, and the notoriety achieved through the book, he was quickly recruited by Cell-One and offered a compensation package only a fool would have turned down. Victor Gosling was no fool. He considered money the most worthy of motivational factors, and tended to live that philosophy.

Hoctor had handled both Gosling and Max Pauling during their agency days, providing their only contact with Langley when the men were off on covert assignments in other countries. Gosling had been a team player. Pauling was another story. He acted more the part of
independent contractor than employee, bucking superiors, deviating from the playbook, improvising, and criticizing his bosses. But he’d never failed an assignment; Hoctor had to give him that. Yet of all the undercover operatives he’d handled over his long career, Pauling was the most anxiety provoking. Hoctor sometimes joked that he wondered whether Pauling had stock in Tums, considering how many he’d prompted Hoctor to take.

The little bald man finished the tea and primly dabbed his mouth with a napkin.

“I want Celia Sardiña off your case,” he said in his pinched voice that lacked overtones.

“I can’t do that, Tom. I still fail to see why—”

“Do it, Victor.”

“Why?”

Hoctor stared at him, one eye slightly lower than the other, mouth set in a straight line, a vein pulsating in his temple. Gosling had seen that expression on Hoctor before, most notably during a hurried, clandestine meeting between them in Budapest. That night Hoctor had instructed Gosling to kill a Hungarian informer with whom he’d become close. The Hungarian had been a valuable source of inside military information, and was scheduled to be rewarded with a new life in the States.

“Why?” Gosling had asked.

“To be sure,” Hoctor had replied.

“Sure of
what
?” Gosling dared to ask. “I’d bet my life on his loyalty.”

Hoctor’s reply was to exhibit what passed for a smile, and to walk away from where they’d met in a park. The Hungarian’s dream of a better life in the democracy known as the United States ended two nights later.

Like at that meeting in Budapest, Gosling was left without any tangible reason for dropping Celia Sardiña from the Cell-One project. He did know, however, that
Hoctor, the consummate Company man, was reflecting an order from higher-ups at Langley.

“I’ll have to make arrangements to replace her, Tom.”

“Just do it quickly. Thank you for lunch. I’ll have to have this suit cleaned. Martha hates the smell of cigars and so do I.”

Twenty minutes after Pauling received Celia’s call at the hotel, she arrived in an aging black Russian-made Gaz jeep driven by a Cuban teenager.

“This thing runs?” Pauling said.

“Most of the time,” Celia said from the front passenger seat. “When they aren’t stealing parts out of it.” In the back was a narrow wooden bench with a couple of ripped, faded cushions. “Get in,” she said. “We’re going for a ride.”

Pauling hung on to the back of Celia’s seat as the driver headed west, the self-destruct system working well, every bump in the road magnified into a rib-rattling jolt.

“Where are we going?” Pauling asked over the Gaz’s mufflerless roar.

“An island. Cayo Levisa. Very pretty.”

“I’m sure it is, but why are we going there?”

She glanced over at the driver who sat ramrod straight, eyes straight ahead.

Pauling got the message and stopped asking questions.

They rode in silence as the driver negotiated a relatively smooth coastal road until reaching the town of Mariel. There, he jogged left, turning on to a rugged, ragged two-lane road paralleling the northern coast. It was slow going at times. Large, unwieldy ox-drawn carts brought traffic to a crawl before turning off onto narrow
dirt paths leading to
vegas
, the lush, verdant tobacco fields for which the Pinar del Río province was noted. The road was lined with palm-thatched cottages, and hordes of hitchhikers who looked at them, eyes pleading, as they passed.

After stopping for gas, for which Pauling paid in dollars, they pulled into Palma Rubia, a small fishing village. A ferry was loading passengers for the forty-minute trip to Cayo Levisa. Celia instructed the driver to wait for them, and led Pauling to the ferry where they found an open space in which to stand at the ship’s bow. The sun was hot, reddening faces. A variety of birds could be seen in the mangrove-lined marshes along the shore—white egrets, blue herons, and sea ospreys. Black frigate birds spread their long, scimitar wings as they glided above in search of fish dropped by other birds. Pauling thought of Jessica and her love of bird watching. She would have appreciated the scene more than he.

“You like being out on the water, Max?” Celia asked as the ferry left shore. The breeze rippled her hair. Her eyes were shut tight; her full, red lips were set in a contented smile.

Pauling ignored the question. He noted that no one was within hearing distance. “Mind telling me why we’re here?”

“To relax,” she said.

“I’m not getting paid to relax.”

“You should learn. Cuba is a wonderful place to relax.”

He was about to say that he didn’t need lessons from her on how to live life when someone suddenly interrupted the conversation. Pauling turned to face Nico.

“Hello,” Pauling said.

“Hola, Señor Pauling. Cómo está?”

“I’m fine.”

Nico grinned and accepted Celia’s kiss on the lips.

Pauling stepped back and leaned against the railing while Celia and Nico chatted away like reunited lovers, laughing at obvious inside jokes spoken in rapid Spanish. They were thoroughly enjoying themselves. Pauling soon found the scene mildly annoying. Celia’s cloying ways were getting to him. She treated him like a schoolboy who had to be led by the hand to the bathroom, in
this
case to someone who might provide the proof Vic Gosling needed for his client.

“I hate to break this up,” Pauling said.

Celia and Nico turned to look at him. Pauling smiled and cocked his head as though to ask, What the hell am I doing on this ferry?

Celia came to where Max stood at the railing. “Nico has some information to give you. I didn’t want us to meet in the city. Too many eyes and ears. It’s better out here. Not as many CDRs. Still, too many people.”

Pauling said nothing.

“Nico places himself in a dangerous situation,” Celia said. “I would think you would respect that.”

“Oh, I do, Celia.”

“When we get to the island, we will be able to speak more freely. Until then, Max, enjoy the sun and water and blue sky. They’re free.”