Havana Bay (44 page)

 
A taxi stopped for him and Arkady dropped into the
seat beside the driver, an old man with a cold cigar.

"A donde?"

A good question, Arkady thought. He had gone
everywhere he could think. Back to Mostovoi's? To the
Playa del Este and Ofelia? See, this was exactly the way
he'd lost Irina, he reminded himself. Inattention. How
else could a man miss not one but two rendezvous? In
English he said, "I'm looking for someone. Maybe we
can just drive around."

"A donde?"

"If we could drive around here, around the Yacht
Club?"

"Where?" the old man took the cigar from his
mouth, blew the word as if it were a ring of smoke.

"Is there an event nearby for Angola?"

"Angola? Quieres Angola?"

"I don't want to go to the embassy for Angola."

"No, no. Entiendo perfectamente."
He motioned for
Arkady to be patient while he pulled a stack of business
cards from his shirt pocket, found one and showed
Arkady a well-thumbed pasteboard card with an
embossed tropical sun over the words "Angola, Un
Paladar Africano en Miramar."

"Muy cerca."

"It's near?"

"Claw."
The driver stuffed the card back in his shirt.

Arkady understood the routine. In Moscow when a
taxi driver delivered a tourist to a restaurant, he had an
arrangement by which he collected a little extra from
the establishment. The same in Havana, apparently.
Arkady thought they'd just drive by in case the DeSoto
was there.

The Angola was on a dark street of large Spanish
colonial homes only a minute away. Over a tall iron
gate hung a neon sign of a sun so golden it seemed to
drip. The taxi driver took one look and kept on going.

"Lo siento, no puedes. Esta reservado esta noche."

"Go by again."

"No podemos. Es que digo, completemente reservado. Cualquier otro dia, si?"

Arkady didn't speak Spanish but he understood
com
pletemente reservado.
All the same he said, "Just drive
by."

“No.”

Arkady got out at the corner, paid the driver enough
for a good cigar and walked back under a dramatic
canopy stof ragged cedar branches. Along both curbs
were new Nissans and Range Rovers, some with drivers
sitting almost at attention behind the wheel. Along the
sidewalk were shadows within shadows and the orange
swirls of cigarettes used in conversation, voices hushing
as Arkady slowed to admire a white Imperial convertible
reflecting the neon sun. When he pushed the gate open, a figure materialized from the dark to stop him. Captain
Arcos in civilian clothes, like an armadillo out of his
shell.

"It's all right." Arkady pointed to a table inside the
gate.» I'm with them."

The Angola was an outdoor restaurant set in a garden
of underiit tree ferns and tall African statues. Two men in white aprons worked an open-air grill and although
Arkady had been told that a
paladar
could serve no
more than twelve diners at a time there were, at tables arranged around the grill, easily twenty customers, all men, in their forties and fifties, most white, all with a
bearing of command, prosperity, success and all Cuban except for John O'Brien and George Washington Walls.

"I knew it"—O'Brien waved Arkady in.» I told
George that you'd show up."

"He did." Walls shook his head in wonder more at O'Brien than at Arkady.

"When I heard Rufo was so stupid as to write the place and time on a wall I knew you couldn't fail."
O'Brien had another chair brought. Even the developer
was in a Cuban guayabera; the evening's uniform seemed
to be graybeards. The two Cubans at the table looked to
O'Brien for a lead; although they were hard, mature men,
O'Brien seemed to have for them the status of a priest
among boys. The entire restaurant had gone quiet,
including Erasmo in a wheelchair two tables away with
Tico and Mostovoi, their old comrade-in-arms, the only
other non-Cuban. It was strange to see the mechanics so
spruced.» It's perfect that you're here." O'Brien seemed
genuinely pleased.» Everything's falling into place."

Walls said to the Cuban next to him,
"El nuevo bolo."

Relief spread to every face except Erasmo's. He tele
graphed Arkady a glum look from across the garden.
Mostovoi saluted.

"I'm the new Russian?" Arkady asked.

 
"It makes you part of the club," O'Brien said.

"What club is that?"

"The Havana Yacht Club, what else?"

Waiters poured water and rum, although coffee
seemed as popular at the tables, an odd choice for the
hour, Arkady thought.» How do you know I visited
Rufo's?"

"You know George is a big fight fan. He went to see
some sparring today at the Gimnasio Atares, and a
trainer told him about a white man in a black coat he
saw come out of Rufo's last night. George went in and there it was right on the wall, a clue no one as sharp as
you was going to miss. Maybe you would, maybe you
wouldn't. We have to be careful. Remember, I have
been the target of more police stings and entrapment
than you could dream of. By the way, keep in mind that
j all our friends here tonight still remember the Russian
',
language. Watch what you say."

Walls ran his eyes .over Arkady's new clothes.» Big
_:
     
improvement."
:
     
The chefs lifted lobsters from a huge sack to a cutting
board, where they sliced and cleaned the underside of
I
     
the tails before setting the lobsters alive onto the grill,
poking them with wooden sticks when they tried to
crawl
 
from the flames.
 
Arkady saw no
 
menus,
 
no
African food. The two Cubans at Arkady's table shook
his hand but offered no names. One was white, the
other mulatto, but they shared the musculature, direct
gaze and obsessionally trimmed fingernails and hair of
military men.

 
"What does this club do?" Arkady asked.

"They can do anything," O'Brien said.» People won
der, what will happen to Cuba when Fidel dies? As a
Caribbean North Korea? Will the gang in Miami march
in and take back their houses and sugarcane fields? Will
the Mafia swoop in? Or will there just be anarchy,
another Haiti? Americans wonder how without a man
agerial infrastructure full of MBAs Cuba can even hope to survive."

The lobsters were monsters, the largest Arkady had ever seen. They reddened among flares and sparks.

"But the wonderful thing about evolution," O'Brien
said, "is that it can't be stopped. Eliminate business.
Make the army the preferred career route for idealistic young men. Send them to foreign wars, but don't give them enough money to fight. Make them earn it. Make them trade in ivory and diamonds so they have enough ammunition to defend themselves, and you end up with
an interesting group of entrepreneurs. Then, because it
works cheap, when the army comes home make it go
into farming, hotels, sugar. Reassign heroes to run the
tourism and citrus and nickel industries. Let me tell
you, negotiating a contract with a construction com
pany from Milan is as good as two years at Harvard
Business School. The ones here tonight are the creme
de la creme."

"The Havana Yacht Club?"

"They like the name," Walls said.» It's just a social
thing."

When the first lobsters were done, a chef stirred a
glass bowl full of twists of paper, picked four twists, unrolled and read them before sending the lobsters to a table. It seemed to Arkady a better system for a lottery
than a restaurant. How did the chef know who ordered
what? Why were there only two choices, lobster or
nothing?

"I thought private restaurants weren't allowed to
serve lobster," Arkady said.

"Maybe tonight is an exception," O'Brien said.

Arkady caught sight of Mostovoi again.» Why am I
the new Russian? Why can't Mostovoi be?"

"This is an enterprise that needs more than a pornog-
rapher. You've replaced Pribluda. Everyone can accept
that." O'Brien adopted a forgiving tone.» And you can
keep the photograph Pribluda sent to you. It would
have been nice if you'd offered it as a sign of trust at
some point, but you're on the team now."

"Rufo died for that picture."

"Thank God, I much prefer you. I mean, it's worked out wonderfully."

"Do some of these people work in the Ministry of
Sugar? Are some of them involved with AzuPanama?"

"We met some that way, yes. These are the men who make decisions, as much as anyone can make decisions besides Fidel. Some are deputy ministers, some are still generals and colonels, men who have known each other
all their lives and now in their prime. Naturally, they're making plans. It is a normal human aspiration, the need
to better themselves and leave something for their
families. The same as Fidel. He has one legitimate son
and a dozen illegitimate children salted away in the
government. These men are no different."

"The casino fits somewhere in here?"

"I hope so."

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"John always tells the truth," Walls said.» Just that
there are a lot of layers to the truth."

"Casino, combat boots, AzuPanama. Which is real
and which is fake?"

"In Cuba," O'Brien said, "there is a fine line between
the real and the ridiculous. As a boy, Fidel wrote
Franklin Roosevelt and asked for an American dollar.
Later Fidel was scouted as a pitcher by the major
leagues. Here was a man who could have been a model American, an inch away. Instead, he becomes Fidel.
Incidentally, the scouting report was 'Fair fastball, no
control.' At heart, my dear Arkady, it's all ridiculous."

The body in the bay was dead, Rufo was dead, Hedy
and her Italian had been slashed to death, Arkady
thought. That was real. The Cubans at the table listened
with half an ear as they watched lobsters continue to
march off the grill and the curious ceremony of reading
papers at random from a bowl. It didn't seem to matter
who had lobster so much as that they all did. Arkady
had the sense that if one anonymous twist of paper was
blank, if one diner hadn't ordered lobster, the group to
a man would have stood and left at once.

"Do you mind...?" Arkady nodded toward Erasmo's
table.

"Please." O'Brien gave his blessing.

 
 
Tico was happily dismembering his crustacean and
Mostovoi was caught sucking on a claw.

"You can't get lobster this succulent anywhere else
in the world." Mostovoi wiped his mouth as Arkady
dropped into a chair. There was no sign from the
photographer that he had connected the fire at the
Sierra Maestra to Arkady.

Erasmo didn't say a word or touch his lobster.
Arkady remembered him drinking
ron peleo
and sway
ing in his wheelchair to Mongo's drum at the
santero's,
leaning out the Jeep like a bearded buccaneer as they cruised the Malecon. This was a more subdued Erasmo.

"So, this is the real Havana Yacht Club," Arkady said
to him.» No Mongo, no fish."

"It's a different club."

"Apparently."

"You don't understand. These are all men who fought
together in Angola and Ethiopia, who fought side by side
with Russians, who shared a common experience."