Murder in Havana (3 page)

“The domestication of Max Pauling,” Gosling said, reading the note Jessica had left for Max on the kitchen table.

Pauling laughed politely. “Didn’t one of our distinguished predecessors say that gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail? Domestication? It agrees with me. Drink?”

“Please.”

“Sorry, but we don’t stock Pimms at this bar.”

“Good God, Max, just because I was born a Brit doesn’t mean I only drink Pimms Cups. I don’t enjoy bangers and mash either. Since I’m in the States, I’ll have bourbon, if you have it. Neat.”

“Just joking. I have bourbon. Wouldn’t want to seem un-American.”

Pauling poured a single-barrel whiskey over ice for Gosling, made himself a vodka and tonic. They sat at the table; Gosling offered a toast: “To friends.”

Pauling nodded and they touched glasses.

“So, Max, tell me all about your idyllic life these days.”

“Not much to tell. I’d had enough of the game. So had
Jess. She was with State, the Russian section. We packed it in and headed out here. Jess is working for a local hospital. I teach flying and—”

“And run munitions into Mexico in your spare time.”

“Not in little green bags. As I said, the money’s good. Jess isn’t thrilled I’m doing it. She’s afraid I’ll get the itch and sign on again—long-term.”

Gosling sipped, then said, “You already have the itch, Max. It never leaves you. You know that. The question is whether you’ll decide to scratch it, or live with it.”

“I can live with it. Sorry she’s not here. I’ll whip something up for dinner. You want to check flights to California?” he asked, pointing to a wall phone.

Pauling took two steaks from the freezer and went to the deck to fire up the grill.

Gosling joined him in a few moments. “Nothing tonight,” he said.

“You’ll stay over. I’d like you to meet Jessica anyway.”

“It will be my pleasure.”

They ate on the deck and continued drinking throughout dinner. It was a cool and clear night, the western sky a stunning black scrim for the light show provided by thousands of stars.

“So,” Pauling said, “tell me about this project.”

Gosling grimaced as he looked into the kitchen through the sliding glass doors.

Pauling smiled. “Want me to sweep the place, Vic?”

“Always a good idea,” Gosling replied.

Pauling shook his head and said, “Doing what we did really screws us up, doesn’t it? A tap in every phone or microwave oven, some guy in a raincoat behind every tree. Jesus! What a way to live.”

“Have you?”

“Have I what?”

“Swept the place. Just because you’re ex-agency
doesn’t mean that they—or others—are no longer interested in you.”

Pauling slapped the glass-topped table. “No, I haven’t swept the place, Vic, and I don’t intend to.”

“I don’t blame you,” said Gosling, the bourbon thickening his speech just a little. “Tell you what. Let’s forget the project for tonight. I’ll get to meet your ladylove, sleep soundly on your couch, and tomorrow you can take me for a spin in your plane. I’ve always wanted to learn how to fly.”

Translation:
We’ll talk when we’re up in the air
.

Pauling was putting glasses in the dishwasher when Jessica came through the door. She saw Gosling sitting on the deck and asked the question of Max without speaking.

“Vic Gosling,” Max said, kissing her on the cheek. “A buddy from the agency days.”

“The book?” she said.

“Yeah, that’s him.”

Gosling came into the kitchen and Max introduced them.

“I see why Max looks so happy,” Gosling said.

“Does he?” Jessica asked. “Look happy?” She laughed, put her arm around Max’s waist, looked into his face, and said, “That’s what I like, a happy man around the house.”

She didn’t add that he hadn’t seemed especially happy lately until he started making the runs into Mexico—which didn’t make
her
especially happy. She knew men like Max Pauling only too well. She’d once been married to an FBI agent who spent most of his time working undercover, and who seemed truly happy only when he was in danger, using his wits to survive. Max was cut from that same damnable cloth, she knew, happiest when infiltrating
Russian intelligence cells or turning some Central American bureaucrat into an informer. Danger acted like an Adrenalin I.V., providing a burst of satisfaction, even happiness of the sort she knew she could never provide. No woman could.

Max poured another round of drinks for himself and Gosling, and served Jessica a pony of brandy. They sat on the deck and had an easy conversation—a little politics, some background exchanged, nothing too heavy, a few amusing stories, gentle kidding between the men about past exploits.

“That’s all history,” Gosling said, “old war stories.”

Pauling said, “Cold War stories. Boring.”

“I’m trying to convince your man to help me out with a project,” Gosling said. “You know, Max, I was thinking of you for it before I bumped into you in Mexico. Déjà vu, it’s called.”

“Or preview. If you believe in that sort of thing,” Pauling said.

“What kind of project?” Jessica asked. Pauling read the edge in her voice.

Gosling shrugged. “I’m working for a private investigation agency,” he said. “No need to check your clearances, is there?” He laughed. “Max has been telling me I’m paranoid, which I suppose I am. Hard to shake it. Right, Max? At any rate, I’m working for Cell-One. We have a Who’s Who of corporate America as clients, top companies. One of them has given us an assignment that Mr. Pauling here, with his experience, might find interesting.”

Jessica silently awaited a further explanation. It wasn’t to come. Gosling yawned, stretched, and said, “Getting close to my bedtime. Hope you don’t mind, Jessica, having an unannounced overnight guest. I sleep well on couches.”

“No need for that,” she said, forcing lightness back into her voice. “We have a real guest room, an office most of the time—but with a comfortable pullout.”

He followed her into the room carrying his small blue canvas overnight bag. “Sleep as late as you want,” she said. “I leave for work at eight.” To Max: “Do you have students tomorrow?”

“Two, in the afternoon. I thought I’d give Vic a spin in the plane in the morning. He wants to learn how to fly.”

“I thought you already had a spin in the plane,” she said, “coming up from Mexico.” Had Gosling outlined the assignment to Pauling during that flight? She didn’t bother asking.
Check clearances indeed!
The games little boys play.

“That was all business,” Gosling said pleasantly. “I’d enjoy a purely personal joyride. Good night. You’re the perfect host and hostess.”

Max and Jessica sat on the deck for another hour. She didn’t ask about the project until they’d gotten into bed.

“You told me you never trusted him, Max,” she whispered. “The book was a phony, you said.”

“It was,” he whispered in reply. “But no harm in hearing him out. It’s private work. I am still employable, I think. Or I’d like to think so.”

Her silence was verbose.

He kissed her on the lips. “I love you,” he said.

“Me, too,” she said, turning her back to him, sighing, and snuggling her head into the pillow. Max didn’t know whether that meant she loved him, or herself. But as long as love was in the air.…

They heard the shower go on at six. When they emerged from their bedroom at six-thirty, Gosling had made coffee and was sitting on the deck, a steaming cup in front of him.

“Sleep well?” Jessica asked.

“Extremely,” Gosling replied. “Hope you don’t mind that I helped myself to coffee.”

“Not at all,” Max said. He suggested that Jessica shower. “I’ll get breakfast.”

As Jessica was about to leave for work, Gosling thanked her again for the hospitality. He then cocked his head, nodding in agreement with something he was thinking. “Leave it to Max Pauling to fall in love with the most beautiful woman in the State Department.”

Jess didn’t feign modesty. “Thank you,” she said. “Please visit again.” She accepted Max’s kiss and was out the door.

“I meant it,” Gosling said when she was gone.

“I’m sure you did,” Max said. “Because you’re right.”

Max had met Jessica Mumford and her friends Mac and Annabel Smith a little over a year ago in the John Quincy Adams State Drawing Room at State, where a new Russian minister-counselor of trade was being fêted. Jessica was there because of her job in State’s Russian section. Max had just returned to Washington from an extended stint in Moscow, operating as a State intelligence officer under embassy cover.

His attraction to her was immediate and powerful. She was tall and willowy. She wore her blond-and-silver hair short and wet. Her profile was clean and strong, cheekbones prominent, nose appropriately long and fine. He circled, planned his angle of attack, moved in, said the right things knowing she wouldn’t respond to anything less—inane banter wouldn’t have done it—and took her to dinner, silently relieved that Mac and Annabel couldn’t join them. Things progressed urgently from that point despite his having to spend time undercover in Moscow. Eventually, he ended up saving Jessica from her ex-husband, the FBI agent, who turned out to be a snake,
and a crazy one at that. Rushing to her rescue cemented the relationship. Nothing like a genuinely lovely woman to buff up an old knight’s armor and make it shine again.

“Marriage on the horizon?” Gosling asked.

“Some day maybe. You never remarried, did you?”

“No. I was grotty as a husband. They deserved better.”

“They?”

“I gave it a second shot. It lasted slightly longer than an hour.”

Max thought of his own former wife and the two kids they’d created together, but didn’t mention them. Instead, he asked, “Ready for your first flying lesson?”

“Yes, sir,” Gosling said.

Pauling handed over the controls to Gosling once they were airborne, but it was obvious the “student” had little interest in piloting. He suggested Max take over. Once he had, Gosling said: “About this project, Max. Ever hear of Signal Laboratories?”

“Yeah. Big pharmaceutical company. Heavy on research. Blue chip.”

“Exactly. Global. They’re a client of ours, have been for a few years. Ever hear of BTK Industries?”

“Another client?”

“No. A competitor of Signal. They’re both leaders in the development of anticancer drugs. Maybe that’s not the right term. Too simplistic. Of course, I’m no scientist. What it boils down to is that they’re in a race to develop the next generation of monoclonal antibodies, hopefully the magic bullet to cure one kind of cancer or another.”

“Uh-huh.” Pauling had set the autopilot and relaxed, his hands off the yoke, an urge for a cigarette coming and going. “I get it,” he said. “Your client wants you to steal lab secrets from the competitor.”

“Not quite.”

“Isn’t BTK headed by ex-senator McCullough?” Max asked.

“You’re absolutely right. He chairs the board and is the major stockholder. The last of the old liberals.”

“Nothing sadder, someone said.”

“Hubert Humphrey, I think.”

“He doesn’t sound like a liberal to me. He’s big business. Sounds more like a conservative Republican.”

“Texas liberals are different from other liberals, Max. Lyndon Johnson did okay in business. At least Lady Bird did, with a little help from LBJ’s political clout. At any rate, our client Signal Labs is convinced that BTK Industries is playing dirty pool in Cuba.”

“Cuba?” Pauling’s laugh was strictly involuntary. “What the hell does Cuba have to do with cancer research?”

“Aha,” Gosling said. “It’s always a pleasure to enlighten people about something they don’t know. Cuba, my friend, that decrepit, backward banana—well, certainly not a republic—happens to have first-rate medical research, including work being done on the development of anticancer drugs. Cuba may be a Communist government headed by that bearded bastard, Fidel, and it may be on its ass economically—especially since the Soviets pulled out—but its medical research is world-class. Trust me, Max. I’m telling the truth.”

“Okay,” Pauling said, “so Cuba has research going. What does that have to do with Signal, your client, or McCullough’s company?”

“Interested enough for me to go on?”

“You’ve made me curious, that’s all.”

“I don’t want to tell you too much unless you’re sincerely interested in getting involved. Need-to-know and all of that.”

“How can I consider getting involved if I don’t know what I’m getting involved in?”

“Where are we headed?” Gosling asked.

“Home,” Pauling said. He disengaged the autopilot and put the plane in a hard left bank, virtually standing it on one wing.

“All right,” Gosling said, breathing hard, once they’d leveled out. “Here’s the deal.”

Two hours later, after a quick lunch at Pauling’s apartment, he drove Gosling to the Albuquerque airport for a flight to San Francisco.

“Glad you’ll be with us,” Gosling said as they stood at the security gate.

“I told you I wanted to think about it for a few days,” Pauling said.

“I know,” said Gosling, slapping Pauling’s shoulder. “Talk it over with the little woman and all that.”

“Don’t ever call Jessica that to her face,” Pauling said.

“Wouldn’t think of it. I’ll be back to you with some of the details you asked about. If nothing else, you’ll be able to put that new multiengine rating to some use. Cheerio!”

Pauling watched Gosling put his little blue bag through the baggage scanner and lope down the wide hallway toward his gate. He stood there for a time, watching Gosling’s disappearing figure, then went outside, got in his car, and drove home to wait for Jessica’s return from work. Making the decision to sign on to Gosling’s project would be easy. Placating Jessica wouldn’t be.