Voodoo Eyes (46 page)

Benny sighed again, the air modulating as it crossed his throat.

Then he walked away, crunching over the rocks, head down, shoulders sagging.

‘Hey,’ Max called out.

Benny stopped and turned.

‘Mend your ways, all right?’ After he said it he wondered why he’d bothered. He’d had better opportunities in life than Benny, and he’d had a chance and a very good reason to change, yet he hadn’t taken it and his wife had died on her way to visiting him in prison. People didn’t change; they just got better or worse at being who they were.

‘
Vaya con Dios, Max.’

‘Adios Benny.’

Max headed back towards the hill. Behind him he heard Benny’s footsteps fading away and then the boat’s motor grumbling to life.

At the top of the hill, he found Cruz standing there with a smirk on her face, the wind brushing back her hair.

‘That was touching – seeing your man off to sea,’ she said. ‘Sure there wasn’t a little something going on between you?’

‘Fuck off,’ he said.

They both laughed and went to the car.

53

They pulled up at a concreted parking spot overlooking the Cajobabo river. They were an hour early. Around midnight a man called Marco was coming to take them to the island. All they had to do was wait. She suggested Max get some sleep, but his tiredness had gone, chased away by mounting anticipation. He opened the rucksack. As well as the Magnums and CDs, there were two pocket torches and a leather video-camera case. He took out one of the guns and checked it, dumping the shells, spinning the cylinder and inspecting the barrel. It had been well maintained. It still smelled of oil.

Spotlights lit the riverbank. A group of teenagers was holding a high-diving contest, watched by some people around a camp-fire. One after the other, the kids – boys and girls – scaled the dark cliff that flanked the water to a jut close to the top. From there they plunged into the river, landing in between two tethered wooden floats laden with lanterns. The divers were superb – highly skilled, executing all manner of moves, the like of which Max had only seen on TV.

‘I think you like it here, in Cuba,’ said Cruz. ‘I saw the way you were looking out of the window when we were driving. To you this country is a beautiful woman you don’t have the guts to talk to.’

‘I’ve been to worse places,’ he said.

‘You could always stay.’

Max laughed. ‘And ask for asylum? On what grounds? They wouldn’t want me here.’

‘You can’t be sure.’

‘I wouldn’t want me here. Besides, your coffee’s shit.’

She wound down the window. A scent of jasmine wafted into the car on the edges of a fresh sea breeze. They could hear the children shouting and clapping, and then a solitary splash as a diver hit the water.

‘This is some favour you’re pulling in,’ said Max. ‘This guy Marco must owe you big.’

‘He does,’ she said. ‘He’s my ex-husband.’

Max wasn’t surprised to hear that. ‘You stayed friends?’

‘We have two girls.’

‘How old?’

‘Nine and seven.’

‘That’s nice.’

A black girl in a yellow bathing suit executed a perfect forward somersault pike, slicing into the water with a meagre splash and almost no noise. Her friends gasped and applauded enthusiastically when she surfaced.

Rosa Cruz cleared her throat.

‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ she said, a quaver in her voice.

‘Go on.’

‘I’ve been a bodyguard for about twenty years. I started by protecting foreign ambassadors’ wives, then their children, then the ambassadors themselves. I was good at my job. Vigilant, efficient, effective. I saw everything, anticipated everything, left nothing to chance.

‘I rose up the ranks. I was promoted to government officials for a while. Then it was foreign assignments. I went to Bolivia, Mexico, and I even went to America twice, to the United Nations. That was both a job and also a kind of test. Some Cubans who go abroad don’t come back. They defect. I did not. I did my tour and returned.’

‘Because of your kids?’

‘They hadn’t been born,’ she said. ‘You may not understand this, coming from the land of free enterprise and capitalism, but I
like
it here. I like the system, the way it eradicates a lot of competition between people. I like that the state looks after you. You’re guaranteed a job for life, if you want one. It may not be a good job, but it’s a living. You come and leave at exactly the same time. You know roughly where you’ll be next year. No one can buy your livelihood out from under your feet, break it up and sell the pieces for profit. That suits me. I think, when you reach a certain age, you want things to stay the way they are. And in Cuba they tend to.

‘When the government was sure of my loyalty, I got promoted again. This time protecting Castro’s inner circle. Not all the way in, but close. Call it his
outer
inner circle. The job came with benefits. I had a better car, a better house, better rations. I liked that. And I liked the person I was guarding too.’

‘Vanetta Brown?’

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘I’d never met someone more courageous and honest than her. We used to talk a lot. About America, racial politics, race in general. And other things too. She loved soap operas and liked to read terrible romantic novels.’

‘Did you ever meet Joe?’

‘Twice.’

‘What did you make of him?’

‘I could see why Vanetta trusted him. He was a lot like her – and completely unlike you,’ she said.

‘That he was.’

She took a deep breath. And then another.

‘When Vanetta disappeared, I was demoted,’ she said. ‘I don’t blame them. I deserved it. She was my responsibility, and she vanished.

‘I lost my privileges. The house, the car, the extra rations. But I still had a job. Now I take the Libyan ambassador’s children to school. They’re nice.’

He heard the bitterness and resentment in her voice, despite its even, acceptant tone. He heard how she’d hidden her crushed emotions away under the sharp creases of professionalism, letting them build, twisted and warped, yet undetected, out of sight.

‘A while ago, I decided to find Vanetta myself – or at least what had happened to her. I thought, If I do that, they’ll give me my position back.’

Max looked at her. She was nominally watching the divers.

‘So … what you’re saying is, this isn’t official and never has been? You’re doing this independently, without the state’s knowledge?’ he said. ‘That’s why there’s no back-up?’

‘Yes.’

Max sighed. ‘Are you all full of shit in this country or is it just me?’

‘I’m sorry.’

He thought of Wendy Peck again and how she’d done exactly the same thing. Cuba was nothing but Miami in a grubby rearview.

‘Technically, this means I’m free to go, right? I could hitchhike back to Havana, enjoy the rest of my stay and fuck off home?’

‘Yes. If you want. I won’t stop you,’ she said.

And he sensed that she meant it. That she wanted him gone, out of the way; he’d fulfilled his purpose and was now surplus to requirements, baggage.

That got him thinking.

‘Surely the all-seeing, all-powerful state knows Vanetta is on that island. Sarah Dascal would have told them what she told me.’

‘As I said before, it’s complicated,’ Rosa said.

‘I think you can tell me all about the complications now, don’t you?’

Another heavy breath, filling her lungs to their capacity, then a slow exhalation. She was both steeling and calming herself.

‘OK … As you know, Vanetta had fallen out of favour with Castro because of her connections with the Abakuás. The state had her under surveillance.’

‘Were you watching her?’

‘I wasn’t
spying
on her. That’s a different division,’ she said indignantly. ‘A few months before she disappeared, she was seen meeting a man in Santiago de Cuba. She met him several times. They were photographed together. The man was followed back to the base in Guantánamo. Our sources there told us he was an FBI agent. His name was Jack Quinones. You know him?’

‘Not very well. Continue.’

‘We assumed she was negotiating her return to the US. We thought she’d maybe cut a deal to reveal what she knew about the workings of our government in exchange for immunity.’

‘How much did she know?’

‘She was
close friends
with Fidel.’

‘So why didn’t you arrest her?’

‘We were going to. But then she disappeared.’

‘When you say “we”, you mean the state – not you personally?’ said Max.

‘Yes, sorry. It’s a habit,’ she said.

‘And when she vanished, you – the state – assumed she’d gone back to America.’

‘That’s right.’

‘What about the Dascals? They know exactly where she is.’

‘The Dascals were mentioned in one of the reports I read. Not in much detail. Just a few lines. They’d said that Vanetta was terminally ill,’ she said.

‘Was that all?’

‘Yes.’

She watched a young boy climb up the rocks and ready himself, puffing out his chest, shaking his arms. He dived, like a starling off a branch, freezing briefly in mid-air, his skinny body flat and T-shaped, before twisting, somersaulting and straightening into a smooth line that disappeared into the water.

‘Don’t you understand how this goes?’ she said.

Max thought about it for a second. More time than he needed. Of course he understood how it went. He’d been there before.

‘Make it fit, make it stick?’

‘I’m sorry – what?’

‘Here’s how it goes,’ he said. ‘The official theory – that Vanetta sold Castro out, betrayed him to the Americans – is the one the state is running with because it suits them. Or rather, it suits the people who are putting it about.

‘Vanetta is out of favour with Castro. She was dealing with criminals behind his back. She betrayed his trust. So as far as he’s concerned, she’s already no good. She’s on the FBI’s Most Wanted list with a big price tag on her head. That she was meeting an FBI agent could have been for only one reason: she wanted out. But she wouldn’t leave Cuba to go to jail in America. Therefore, she must have been cutting a deal.

‘When she disappeared, there’s only one place she could have gone – back to the imperialists. It fits. Vanetta’s not around to deny it, so it sticks. It makes sense. It’s a solid story. It holds up. The truth is irrelevant. In fact, the truth is an inconvenience. If it ever came out, it might seriously embarrass a few people. They’d lose their houses, their cars, their extra rations. Isn’t that about right, Rosa?’

‘Yes.’ She fidgeted in her seat.

‘So what are you doing contradicting the official account? It’s a risky play for you. If it goes wrong, you disappear. Only, I’m guessing someone as smart as you has found a way around that problem. You’ve been vigilant, efficient, effective. You’ve seen everything, anticipated everything. You’ve left nothing to chance. Right, Rosa?’

She didn’t answer.

‘Mind if I ask a question?’

‘What?’

‘Why have you packed a video camera for this trip?’

Again, no response. Just another
deeeep
breath.

‘I can tell you why. You’re not going to bring Vanetta Brown back to Havana at all. You never were. You’re going to that island to get evidence of where she really is,’ he said. ‘You’re going to film her giving some kind of statement from her deathbed. Something that completely contradicts the official version, the one Castro believes. And then you’re going to go back to Havana – alone – and blackmail your way back to your precious position? That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what this was all about? A bigger house, a nicer car, some extra rice?’

Silence. No one was diving in the river.

‘I checked every hospital in the country to see if they were treating her,’ she said. ‘When I came up with nothing, I knew she had to be in one of the secret facilities.’

‘And you used me to find out which one – for your own gain,’ he said.

‘You sound disappointed.’

‘I expected better of you.’

‘Why? You trusted a transvestite prostitute.’

‘Who you just freed because he was a
witness,
right? Fuck that spiel you gave yesterday about him being a blight on your society. You wanted him gone.’

‘I’m sorry, Max,’ she said. ‘But what did you expect when I arrested you – the truth?’

Now it was his turn to be quiet. He should have been furious about now, brimming with rage at being used for petty ends, but instead he felt a weird sense of calm, akin to the impregnable deflation that follows relief; as close to inner peace as he’d ever come. For the first time in his life he understood the world he lived in. Everyone had an angle, a play. Every smile came with a sneer, every kiss had a bite, every caress hardened into a slap, and every helping hand curdled to a fist. All the truth in the world added up to one big lie.

‘You’re right,’ he said after a while.

‘You’re not angry?’

‘What’s the point?’ he said. ‘It’s too late for that. And anyway … you know what? I don’t care. I really don’t. I’ve come too far, gone too deep and gotten too close for any of this to matter any more. Whatever’s out there on that island is all I’ve got left.’

A light splashed over them from behind, exposing the car’s dusty brown interior. A car was approaching.

‘And I believe it’s time to go,’ he said.

54

The waters of the Windward Passage were calm and glassy, and the boat sailed across like a disembodied ice skate, smooth and straight, its engine making a gentle purring rasp as it powered along at an even speed. There was no moon, but the sky was suffocated by a billion stars, and a bluey nimbus played along the edges of the southern horizon, as if something big and radioactive were about to emerge from the sea.

Below deck, through the storeroom porthole, Max watched Cuba disappear. The outline of the land and the handful of yellow and white lights along its underpopulated coast were swallowed up by the night, until there was nothing to mark the place he’d come from but the vessel’s wake, rippling out over the ocean.