Murder in Havana (35 page)

“If you hear anything, Annabel, you’ll call? Any hour.”

“Sure. Try to get some rest. I’m sure this is all a big mistake.”

“I hope you’re right, Annabel. I pray you’re right.”

Getting some rest was the last thing on Jessica’s mind as she poured herself a snifter of brandy and went out to the deck. There, she sat in darkness, the millions of white stars against the sky’s black scrim only a tease of well-being. She thought of Max and that he could be looking up into that same sky at that very moment. The news reports indicated he was still at large. Where was he? What was he doing? Was he frightened? He was not a man who frightened easily. Still, to be accused of murdering a
distinguished visitor and to be hunted down for that crime would rattle even the most fearless of men.

As hard as she tried, she could not push from her consciousness the reality that Max had gone to Cuba to investigate Price McCullough’s company and the business it was conducting there. Had McCullough discovered what Max was doing and confronted him? “No,” she said aloud, shaking her head.

Her thoughts drifted to her life with Max Pauling. Her former husband had been an FBI undercover agent who was away more than he was home—a blessing for her most of the time—and who, she came to learn later, had killed, initially as part of his job as a special agent, then in a warped attempt to become rich.

Had Max ever killed in the line of duty while with the CIA, or as a special undercover operative for the State Department? She preferred to think not, but how could she be certain? You could never be certain about such a thing with Max and people like him. They lived shadow lives, shielded from sunlight by the very nature of intelligence agencies, wrapped in the flag, confident that what would be misdeeds for most people would, instead, be viewed as admirable and honorable in their case—“Job well done!”

She’d spent enough time in Washington before moving to New Mexico to know that what is said there and in all nations’ capitals is often not the truth; it is “disinformation,” to be polite. In Max’s former life he had to lie, was expected to lie if he was to be successful and survive. Had he lied to her about the nature of his trip to Cuba on the Vic Gosling assignment? Was it purely a private undertaking, as he claimed, or had he signed on for a job with the CIA as an independent contractor, using Gosling and his client as cover?

“No,” she repeated, again shaking her head. One of
the troubles with secret work is that you get to believing nothing—or everything. You can only wait for the truth to emerge, if it ever does. The half-full glass slipped from her hand and shattered at her feet. She cried for only a minute before returning to the TV set.

The lights in the U.S. Interests Section at the foot of Calle L burned bright.

Gene Nichols, the senior CIA operative, watched Cuban television and its coverage of the McCullough murder and the failed attempt on Fidel Castro’s life. Nichols, who spoke Spanish, made notes of what the Cuban commentator said, glancing occasionally across the room at section chief Bobby Jo Brown, who was on the phone with the crusty Joe Pitura, head of the Cuban section at Langley.

“Let me give you over to Nichols,” Brown told Pitura in answer to his question.

“Nichols, here.”

“Hey, Gene. How goes it?”

“A laugh a minute. What can I do for you?”

“Where’s Pauling?” Pitura’s directness was both appreciated at Langley, and troublesome to those without immediate answers.

“Wish I knew, Joe. The Cuban authorities have his picture pasted all over town, and Cuban TV keeps running it, but he’s nowhere.”

“What are you doing to find him?” Pitura asked. Nichols could hear pain in Pitura’s voice, knew Joe’s rheumatoid arthritis was especially painful, and that the
increasing number of painkillers he took each day weren’t helping much.

“We’ve got the word out,” Nichols replied. “We’re also ready for him if he decides to walk through the door.”

“I don’t really give a damn how he surfaces,” Pitura said, “as long as we can get him out of Cuba. Until this McCullough mess, the Cubans weren’t claiming that the attack on Castro was a CIA act, were they?”

“No. I got word just an hour ago that the guy who took the shots at Castro was released from a Cuban prison only a few days ago. A mental case. Fidel would really have to stretch it to link this nut with us.”

“But now he’s got Pauling to make the connection. Castro is attacked, and less than twenty-four hours later an ex-senator is gunned down by a guy with former CIA ties. If Castro gets hold of Pauling, he’ll parade him all over Havana as proof that we took a shot at him. The brain trust here doesn’t want that to happen.” His lowered voice and measured cadence emphasized his words.

“The Cubans say they want Pauling dead or alive,” Nichols said.

“Yeah? So do
we
,” said Pitura. “Keep in touch.”

Brown, who’d been standing at the window during Nichols’s conversation with Pitura, turned at the sound of the phone being hung up. “He wants Pauling,” he said flatly, stating the obvious.

“Alive, or otherwise,” Nichols said.

“He said that?”

“Yeah, he said that.”

“You’ve got everybody possible out there looking for him?”

“The word’s out, Bobby. Every CDR on
our
payroll is looking. I put up a hundred bucks.”

“A hundred?” Brown smiled. “You’re getting generous in your old age.”

“For a hundred, they’ll be up all night looking in every alley, café, and Dumpster in Havana.”

“If the Cubans find him first, do we have anybody inside who might play ball with us?”

“Sure. But this is too big, Bobby. Let’s just hope Pauling decides he needs us and walks through the door.”

“Think that’s likely?”

Nichols shrugged and said, “I haven’t the slightest idea.” He drew a deep breath and shook his head. “You ever work with Pauling, Bobby?”

“No.”

Nichols’s laugh was good-natured. “He was good, Bobby. Brilliant. I mean, in the sense of improvising his way out of trouble. And an idealist.”

“I thought idealistic agents didn’t last long,” said Brown.

“Depends on what the ideals are. With Max … well, his ideals said that when you put an agent in harm’s way, you don’t let the suits back in Langley jeopardize the agent or the mission. Politics, bureaucrats … they meant nothing to him. That’s why he was always on the carpet. But know what?”

“What?”

“They may have put reprimands in his file, but they never pulled him from the field. He was too damn good at what they asked him to do, needed for him to do.”

“Why’d he pack it in?”

“Ideals. He had a buddy eliminated in Moscow, and not by the Russians.”

Brown’s frown asked the question.

“He was convinced our people did it. His buddy was involved with a Russian woman. What rule does that
break, number three thousand? I don’t know this for a fact, but I’ve been told that the death of his buddy was what finally pushed him out the door. That, and a beauty named Jessica.”

They shared a few moments of silence.

“I hope he makes it,” Nichols said softly.

Entering his hotel was out of the question. Although there did not seem to be any discernible police activity in its vicinity, Pauling knew he couldn’t take the chance. He ran through a mental inventory of what he’d left in his room. Nothing of importance. Everything he needed was contained in the twenty-six pockets of his photojournalist’s vest.

What the vest didn’t offer, however, was a safe place for him to hole up for the night. He needed some sleep to clear his mind and enable him to formulate a further plan of action to carry through to midnight the following night, when he was to meet Nico. But as he thought about that, two problems loomed large.

First, there was the matter of the twenty thousand dollars he’d promised the young Cuban. He had two sources. One was the Cuban office of Cali Forwarding, the Colombian company for whom he’d flown supplies into Cuba, located near José Martí International Airport. Gosling had told him to contact an individual there who would advance him up to twenty thousand after he’d properly identified himself.

The second source of funds was Banco Financiero Internacional. Gosling had said Pauling could use his Canadian MasterCard there to take an advance up to five thousand dollars, only a quarter of what he’d promised Nico.

The choice was simple, provided that he even bothered going after money to pay Nico. The bank was out of the question. What would he do, stroll in there and lay down the credit card with his name on it? It was an invitation to an arrest.

That left Cali Forwarding, providing he could find a way to get there. But that meant trusting the contact at the company—trusting Vic Gosling, for that matter—and he still wasn’t of a mind to trust anyone at the moment. He decided to defer that decision until morning. Finding a safe place to sleep was primary.

He left the park and walked away from the hotel, again sticking to back streets. He pulled the candy from a vest pocket and consumed the contents in a few anxious bites. He was hungry and tired.

He reached an intersection that was residential except for a brightly lit café on one corner. He checked the other corners; no kiosks with his picture displayed. No PNR cops either.

He crossed to the café and walked past it, glancing inside as he went. There were a dozen people at the bar and small tables, both men and women. Mambo music and pungent food odors reached his ears and nose as he passed, stopped, turned, and gave the area a final look. Should he chance it, go inside and have something to eat? Given a choice, he would have opted for a steak and salad with Jessica on their deck in Albuquerque, but that wasn’t in the cards. Maybe in a couple of days, if his luck held out. Luck! He reached in his pocket, fingered the necklace, the
collar
, sold to him by the street vendor, and entered the café.

As he moved past the bar and through the small, chipped, yellow Formica-topped tables, he remembered how he looked. The bruises on his face had faded somewhat, but it wasn’t his face that captured the attention of
other patrons. He now wore a wide-brimmed reed hat—he had thrown away the bright red hatband—and the flowing white embroidered guayabera shirt, hardly the way a yanqui tourist would dress. Nor was it the sort of place frequented by tourists. Still, it was better than being bareheaded, he reasoned, pulling the brim of the hat down even lower over his eyes and taking a chair at a vacant table that positioned him with his back against the wall and a clear view of the door. He looked to the bartender, an older man with a shiny bald head and tufts of gray hair at his temples, who was busy serving other customers. Pauling didn’t know whether he’d be served at the table, or was expected to go to the bar and order. Because there was no sign of a waitress, he soon decided to get up and approach the bartender. But before he could, a woman who’d been sitting at the bar slowly swung around on the stool, sent a wide, inviting smile in his direction, stood, and sauntered to his table. She was light skinned, a mestizo, one of eleven million Cubans of European, African, and indigenous ancestry, although Pauling thought he detected a faint Oriental cast to her features. She was ripe bodied and walked with a slow, deliberate sway to her hips, causing her red miniskirt to provocatively follow her movements. Her blouse was black and low cut. In the time it took for her to cover the distance between the bar and his table, Pauling pegged her to be anywhere between twenty-five and thirty-five, older than most prostitutes he’d been approached by. She had a round, pleasant face; her makeup was more subtle than that of the
jineteras
, the teenage sex jockeys working the streets.

She didn’t ask whether she could join him, simply pulled out a chair and sat down next to him.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello,” he said.

“American?”

“Yes. How do I get a drink and something to eat?”

She caught the bartender’s eye and waved him to the table.

“What do you have?” Pauling asked.

The bartender shrugged:
“No hablo inglés,”
he said.