Our Man In Havana (21 page)

‘Have you ever tried going to a public lunch and not eating anything? There’s also the question of drink.’

‘They can’t very well poison a bottle of wine. You could give the impression of being an alcoholic, somebody who doesn’t eat but only drinks.’

‘Thank you. That would certainly be good for business.’

‘People have a soft spot in their hearts for alcoholics,’ Hawthorne said. ‘Besides, if you don’t go they’ll suspect something. It puts my source in danger. We have to protect our sources.’

‘That’s the drill, I suppose.’

‘Exactly, old man. Another point: we know the plot, but we don’t know the plotters, except their symbols. If we discover who they are, we can insist on having them locked up. We’ll disrupt the organization.’

‘Yes, there aren’t any perfect murders, are there? I dare say there’ll be a clue at the post-mortem on which you can persuade Segura to act.’

‘You aren’t afraid, are you? This is a dangerous job. You shouldn’t have taken it unless you were prepared …’

‘You’re like a Spartan mother, Hawthorne. Come back victorious or stay beneath the table.’

‘That’s quite an idea, you know. You could slip under the table at the right moment. The murderers would think you were dead and the others would just think you were drunk.’

‘This is not a meeting of the Big Four at Moscow. The European Traders don’t fall under the table.’

‘Never?’

‘Never. You think I’m unduly concerned, don’t you?’

‘I don’t think there’s any need for you to worry yet. They don’t serve you, after all. You help yourself.’

‘Of course. Except that there’s always a Morro crab to start with at the Nacional. That’s prepared in advance.’

‘You mustn’t eat that. Lots of people don’t eat crab. When they serve the other courses never take the portion next to you. It’s like a conjuror forcing a card on you. You just have to reject it.’

‘But the conjuror usually manages to force the card just the same.’

‘I tell you what – did you say the lunch was at the Nacional?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why can’t you use stroke seven?’

‘Who’s stroke seven?’

‘Don’t you remember your own agents? Surely he’s the head waiter at the Nacional? He can help to see your plate isn’t tampered with. It’s time he did something for his money. I don’t remember you sending a single report from him.’

‘Can’t you give me any idea who the man at the lunch will be? I mean the man who plans to …’ he boggled at the word ‘kill’ … ‘to do it.’

‘Not a clue, old man. Just be careful of everyone. Have another planter’s punch.’

3

The plane back to Cuba had few passengers: a Spanish woman with a pack of children – some of them screamed and some of them were air-sick as soon as they left the ground; a negress with a live cock wrapped in her shawl; a Cuban cigar-exporter with whom Wormold had a nodding acquaintance, and an Englishman in a tweed jacket who smoked a pipe until the air-hostess told him to put it out. Then he sucked the empty pipe ostentatiously for the rest of the journey and sweated heavily into the tweed. He had the ill-humoured face of a man who is always in the right.

When lunch was served he moved back several places and sat down beside Wormold. He said, ‘Can’t stand those screaming brats. Do you mind?’ He looked at the papers on Wormold’s knee. ‘You with Phastkleaners?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m with Nucleaners. The name’s Carter.’

‘Oh.’

‘This is only my second trip to Cuba. Gay spot, they tell me,’ he said, blowing down his pipe and laying it aside for lunch.

‘It can be,’ Wormold said, ‘if you like roulette or brothels.’

Carter patted his tobacco-pouch as though it were a dog’s head – ‘my faithful hound shall bear me company’. ‘I didn’t exactly mean … though I’m not a Puritan, mind. I suppose it would be interesting. Do as the Romans do.’ He changed the subject. ‘Sell many of your machines?’

‘Trade’s not so bad.’

‘We’ve got a new model that’s going to wipe the market.’ He took a large mouthful of sweet mauve cake and then cut himself a piece of chicken.

‘Really.’

‘Runs on a motor like a lawn-mower. No effort by the little woman. No tubes trailing all over the place.’

‘Noisy?’

‘Special silencer. Less noise than your model. We are calling it
the
Whisper-Wife.’ After taking a swig of turtle soup he began to eat his fruit salad, crunching the grape stones between his teeth. He said, ‘We are opening an agency in Cuba soon. Know Dr Braun?’

‘I’ve met him. At the European. Traders’ Association. He’s our President. Imports precision-instruments from Geneva.’

‘That’s the man. He’s given us very useful advice. In fact I’m going to your bean-feast as his guest. Do they give you a good lunch?’

‘You know what hotel-lunches are like.’

‘Better than this anyway,’ he said, spitting out a grapeskin. He had overlooked the asparagus in mayonnaise and now began on that. Afterwards he fumbled in his pocket. ‘Here’s my card.’ The card read: ‘William Carter B. Tech (Nottwich)’ and in the corner, ‘Nucleaners Ltd.’ He said, ‘I’m staying at the Seville-Biltmore for a week.’

‘I’m afraid I haven’t a card on me. My name’s Wormold.’

‘Met a fellow called Davis?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Shared digs with him at college. He went into Gripfix and came out to this part of the world. It’s funny – you find Nottwich men everywhere. You weren’t there yourself, were you?’

‘No.’

‘Reading?’

‘I wasn’t at a University.’

‘I couldn’t have told it,’ Carter told him kindly. ‘I’d have gone to Oxford, you know, but they are very backward in technology. All right for schoolmasters, I suppose.’ He began to suck again at his empty pipe like a child at a comforter, till it whistled between his teeth. Suddenly he spoke again, as though some remains of tannin had touched his tongue with a bitter flavour. ‘Outdated,’ he said, ‘relics, living on the past. I’d abolish them.’

‘Abolish what?’

‘Oxford and Cambridge.’ He took the only food that was left in the tray, a roll of bread, and crumbled it like age or ivy crumbling a stone.

At the Customs Wormold lost him. He was having trouble with his sample Nucleaner, and Wormold saw no reason why the representative of Phastkleaners should assist him to enter. Beatrice was there to meet him with the Hillman. It was many years since he had been met by a woman.

‘Everything all right?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Oh yes. They seem pleased with me.’ He watched her hands on the wheel; she wore no gloves in the hot afternoon; they were beautiful and competent hands. He said, ‘You aren’t wearing your ring.’

She said, ‘I didn’t think anyone would notice. Milly did too. You are an observant family.’

‘You haven’t lost it?’

‘I took it off yesterday to wash and I forgot to put it back. There’s no point, is there, wearing a ring you forget?’

It was then he told her about the lunch.

‘You won’t go?’ she said.

‘Hawthorne expects me to. To protect his source.’

‘Damn his source.’

‘There’s a better reason. Something that Dr Hasselbacher said to me. They like to strike at what you love. If I don’t go, they’ll think up something else. Something worse. And we shan’t know what. Next time it mightn’t be me – I don’t think I love myself enough to satisfy them – it might be Milly. Or you.’ He didn’t realize the implication of what he had said until she had dropped him at his door and driven on.

CHAPTER 3

1

MILLY SAID, ‘YOU’VE
had a cup of coffee, and that’s all. Not even a piece of toast.’

‘I’m just not in the mood.’

‘You’ll go and over-eat at the Trader’s lunch today, and you know perfectly well that Morro crab doesn’t agree with your stomach.’

‘I promise you I’ll be very very careful.’

‘You’d do much better to have a proper breakfast. You need a cereal to mop up all the liquor you’ll be drinking.’ It was one of her duenna days.

‘I’m sorry, Milly, I just can’t. I’ve got things on my mind. Please don’t pester me. Not today.’

‘Have you prepared your speech?’

‘I’ve done my best, but I’m no speaker, Milly. I don’t know why they asked me.’ But he was uneasily conscious that perhaps he did know why. Somebody must have brought influence to bear on Dr Braun, somebody who had to be identified at any cost. He thought, I am the cost.

‘I bet you’ll be a sensation.’

‘I’m trying hard not to be a sensation at this lunch.’

Milly went to school and he sat on at the table. The cereal company which Milly patronized had printed on the carton of Weatbrix the latest adventure of Little Dwarf Doodoo. Little Dwarf Doodoo in a rather brief instalment encountered a rat the
size
of a St Bernard dog and he frightened the rat away by pretending to be a cat and saying miaou. It was a very simple story. You could hardly call it a preparation for life. The company also gave away an air-gun in return for twelve lids. As the packet was almost empty Wormold began to cut off the lid, driving his knife carefully along the dotted line. He was turning the last corner when Beatrice entered. She said, ‘What are you doing?’

‘I thought an air-gun might be useful in the office. We only need eleven more lids.’

‘I couldn’t sleep last night.’

‘Too much coffee?’

‘No. Something you told me Dr Hasselbacher said. About Milly. Please don’t go to the lunch.’

‘It’s the least I can do.’

‘You do quite enough. They are pleased with you in London. I can tell that from the way they cable you. Whatever Henry may say, London wouldn’t want you to run a silly risk.’

‘It’s quite true what he said – that if I don’t go they will try something else.’

‘Don’t worry about Milly. I’ll watch her like a lynx.’

‘And who’s going to watch you?’

‘I’m in this line of business; it’s my own choice. You needn’t feel responsible for me.’

‘Have you been in a spot like this before?’

‘No, but I’ve never had a boss like you before. You seem to stir them up. You know, this job is usually just an office desk and files and dull cables; we don’t go in for murder. And I don’t want you murdered. You see, you are real. You aren’t
Boy’s Own Paper
. For God’s sake put down that silly packet and listen to me.’

‘I was re-reading Little Dwarf Doodoo.’

‘Then stay at home with him this morning. I’ll go out and buy you all the back cartons so that you can catch up.’

‘All Hawthorne said was sense. I only have to be careful what I eat. It
is
important to find out who they are. Then I’ll have done something for my money.’

‘You’ve done plenty as it is. There’s no point in going to this damned lunch.’

‘Yes, there is a point. Pride.’

‘Who are you showing off to?’

‘You.’

2

He made his way through the lounge of the Nacional Hotel between the show-cases full of Italian shoes and Danish ashtrays and Swedish glass and mauve British woollies. The private dining-room where the European Traders always met lay just beyond the chair where Dr Hasselbacher now sat, conspicuously waiting. Wormold approached with slowing steps; it was the first time he had seen Dr Hasselbacher since the night when he had sat on the bed in his Uhlan’s uniform talking of the past. Members of the Association, passing in to the private dining-room, stopped and spoke to Dr Hasselbacher; he paid them no attention.

Wormold reached the chair where he sat. Dr Hasselbacher said, ‘Don’t go in there, Mr Wormold.’ He spoke without lowering his voice, the words shivering among the show-cases, attracting attention.

‘How are you, Hasselbacher?’

‘I said, don’t go in.’

‘I heard you the first time.’

‘They are going to kill you, Mr Wormold.’

‘How do you know that, Hasselbacher?’

‘They are planning to poison you in there.’

Several of the guests stopped and stared and smiled. One of them, an American, said, ‘Is the food that bad?’ and everyone laughed.

Wormold said, ‘Don’t stay here, Hasselbacher. You are too conspicuous.’

‘Are you going in?’

‘Of course, I’m one of the speakers.’

‘There’s Milly. Don’t forget her.’

‘Don’t worry about Milly. I’m going to come out on my feet, Hasselbacher. Please go home.’

‘All right, but I had to try,’ Dr Hasselbacher said. ‘I’ll be waiting at the telephone.’

‘I’ll call you when I leave.’

‘Good-bye, Jim.’

‘Good-bye, Doctor.’ The use of his first name took Wormold unawares. It reminded him of what he had always jokingly thought: that Dr Hasselbacher would use the name only at his bedside when he had given up hope. He felt suddenly frightened alone, a long way from home.

‘Wormold,’ a voice said, and turning he saw that it was Carter of Nucleaners, but it was also for Wormold at that moment the English midlands, English snobbery, English vulgarity, all the sense of kinship and security the word England implied to him.

‘Carter!’ he exclaimed, as though Carter were the one man in Havana he wanted most to meet, and at that instant he was.

‘Damned glad to see you,’ Carter said. ‘Don’t know a soul at this lunch. Not even my – not even Dr Braun.’ His pocket bulged with his pipe and his pouch; he patted them as though for reassurance, as though he too felt far from home.

‘Carter, this is Dr Hasselbacher, an old friend of mine.’

‘Good day, Doctor.’ He said to Wormold, ‘I was looking all over the place for you last night. I don’t seem able to find the right spots.’

They moved in together to the private dining-room. It was quite irrational, the confidence he had in a fellow-countryman, but on the side where Carter walked he felt protected.

3

The dining-room had been decorated with two big flags of the United States in honour of the Consul-General, and little paper flags, as in an airport-restaurant, indicated where each national was to sit. There was a Swiss flag at the head of the table for Dr Braun, the President; there was even the flag of Monaco for the Monegasque Consul who was one of the largest exporters of cigars in Havana. He was to sit on the Consul-General’s right hand in recognition of the Royal alliance. Cocktails were circulating when Wormold and Carter entered, and a waiter at once approached them. Was it Wormold’s imagination or did the waiter shift the tray so that the last remaining daiquiri lay nearest to Wormold’s hand?