Our Man In Havana (9 page)

Part Two

CHAPTER 1

1

WORMOLD CAME AWAY
from the Consulate Department carrying a cable in his breast-pocket. It had been shovelled rudely at him, and when he tried to speak he had been checked. ‘We don’t want to know anything about it. A temporary arrangement. The sooner it’s over the better we shall be pleased.’

‘Mr Hawthorne said …’

‘We don’t know any Mr Hawthorne. Please bear that in mind. Nobody of the name is employed here. Good morning.’

He walked home. The long city lay spread along the open Atlantic; waves broke over the Avenida de Maceo and misted the windscreens of cars. The pink, grey, yellow pillars of what had once been the aristocratic quarter were eroded like rocks; an ancient coat of arms, smudged and featureless, was set over the doorway of a shabby hotel, and the shutters of a night-club were varnished in bright crude colours to protect them from the wet and salt of the sea. In the west the steel skyscrapers of the new town rose higher than lighthouses into the clear February sky. It was a city to visit, not a city to live in, but it was the city where Wormold had first fallen in love and he was held to it as though to the scene of a disaster. Time gives poetry to a battlefield, and perhaps Milly resembled a little the flower on an old rampart where an attack had been repulsed with heavy loss many years ago. Women passed him in the street marked on the forehead with ashes as though they had come up into the sunlight from underground. He remembered that it was Ash Wednesday.

In spite of the school-holiday Milly was not at home when he reached the house – perhaps she was still at Mass or perhaps she was away riding at the Country Club. Lopez was demonstrating the Turbo Suction Cleaner to a priest’s housekeeper who had rejected the Atomic Pile. Wormold’s worst fears about the new model had been justified, for he had not succeeded in selling a single specimen. He went upstairs and opened the telegram; it was addressed to a department in the British Consulate, and the figures which followed had an ugly look like the lottery tickets that remained unsold on the last day of a draw. There was 2674 and then a string of five-figure numerals: 42811 79145 72312 59200 80947 62533 10605 and so on. It was his first telegram and he noticed that it was addressed from London. He was not even certain (so long ago his lesson seemed) that he could decode it, but he recognized a single group, 59200, which had an abrupt and monitory appearance as though Hawthorne that moment had come accusingly up the stairs. Gloomily he took down Lamb’s
Tales from Shakespeare
– how he had always detested Elia and the essay on Roast Pork. The first group of figures, he remembered, indicated the page, the line and the word with which the coding began. ‘Dionysia, the wicked wife of Cleon,’ he read, ‘met with an end proportionable to her deserts.’ He began to decode from ‘deserts’. To his surprise something really did emerge. It was rather as though some strange inherited parrot had begun to speak. ‘No. 1 of 24 January following from 59200 begin paragraph A.’

After working for three-quarters of an hour adding and subtracting, he had decoded the whole message apart from the final paragraph where something had gone wrong either with himself or 59200, or perhaps with Charles Lamb. ‘Following from 59200 begin paragraph A nearly a month since membership Country Club approved and no repeat no information concerning proposed sub-agents yet received stop trust you are not repeat not recruiting any sub-agents before having them properly traced stop begin paragraph B economic and political report on lines of questionnaire left with you should be despatched forthwith to 59200 stop begin
paragraph
C cursed galloon must be forwarded kingston primary tubercular message ends.’

The last paragraph had an effect of angry incoherence which worried Wormold. For the first time it occurred to him that in their eyes – whoever
they
were – he had taken money and given nothing in return. This troubled him. It had seemed to him till then that he had been the recipient of an eccentric gift which had enabled Milly to ride at the Country Club and himself to order from England a few books he had coveted. The rest of the money was now on deposit in the bank; he half believed that some day he might be in a position to return it to Hawthorne.

He thought: I must do something, give them some names to trace, recruit an agent, keep them happy. He remembered how Milly used to play at shops and give him her pocket money for imaginary purchases. One had to play the child’s game, but sooner or later Milly always required her money back.

He wondered how one recruited an agent. It was difficult for him to remember exactly how Hawthorne had recruited
him
- except that the whole affair had begun in a lavatory, but surely that was not an essential feature. He decided to begin with a reasonably easy case.

‘You called me, Señor Vormell.’ For some reason the name Wormold was quite beyond Lopez’ power of pronunciation, but as he seemed unable to settle on a satisfactory substitute, it was seldom that Wormold went by the same name twice.

‘I want to talk to you, Lopez.’

‘
Si
, Señor Vomell.’

Wormold said, ‘You’ve been with me a great many years now. We trust each other.’

Lopez expressed the completeness of his trust with a gesture towards the heart.

‘How would you like to earn a little more money each month?’

‘Why, naturally … I was going to speak to you myself, Señor Ommel. I have a child coming. Perhaps twenty pesos?’

‘This has nothing to do with the firm. Trade is too bad, Lopez.
This
will be confidential work, for me personally, you understand.’

‘Ah yes, señor. Personal services I understand. You can trust me. I am discreet. Of course I will say nothing to the señorita.’

‘I think perhaps you
don’t
understand.’

‘When a man reaches a certain age,’ Lopez said, ‘he no longer wishes to search for a woman himself, he wishes to rest from trouble. He wishes to command, “Tonight yes, tomorrow night no”. To give his directions to someone he trusts …’

‘I don’t mean anything of the kind. What I was trying to say - well, it had nothing to do …’

‘You do not need to be embarrassed in speaking to me, Señor Vormole. I have been with you many years.’

‘You are making a mistake,’ Wormold said. ‘I had no intention …’

‘I understand that for an Englishman in your position places like the San Francisco are unsuitable. Even the Mamba Club.’

Wormold knew that nothing he could say would check the eloquence of his assistant, now that he had embarked on the great Havana subject; the sexual exchange was not only the chief commerce of the city, but the whole
raison d’être
of a man’s life. One sold sex or one bought it – immaterial which, but it was never given away.

‘A youth needs variety,’ Lopez said, ‘but so too does a man of a certain age. For the youth it is the curiosity of ignorance, for the old it is the appetite which needs to be refreshed. No one can serve you better than I can, because I have studied you, Señor Venell. You are not a Cuban: for you the shape of a girl’s bottom is less important than a certain gentleness of behaviour …’

‘You have misunderstood me completely,’ Wormold said.

‘The señorita this evening goes to a concert.’

‘How do you know?’

Lopez ignored the question. ‘While she is out, I will bring you a young lady to see. If you don’t like her, I will bring another.’

‘You’ll do nothing of the sort. Those are not the kind of services
I
want, Lopez. I want … well, I want you to keep your eyes and ears open and report to me …’

‘On the señorita?’

‘Good heavens no.’

‘Report on what then, Señor Vommold?’

Wormold said, ‘Well, things like …’ But he hadn’t the faintest idea on what subjects Lopez was capable of reporting. He remembered only a few points in the long questionnaire and none of them seemed suitable, ‘Possible Communist infiltration in the armed forces. Actual figures of sugar- and tobacco-production last year.’ Of course there were the contents of waste-paper baskets in the offices where Lopez serviced the cleaners, but surely even Hawthorne was joking when he spoke of the Dreyfus case – if those men ever joked.

‘Like what, señor?’

Wormold said, ‘I’ll let you know later. Go back to the shop now.’

2

It was the hour of the daiquiri, and in the Wonder Bar Dr Hasselbacher was happy with his second Scotch. ‘You are worrying still, Mr Wormold?’ he said.

‘Yes, I am worrying.’

‘Still the cleaner – the Atomic cleaner?’

‘Not the cleaner.’ He drained his daiquiri and ordered another.

‘Today you are drinking very fast.’

‘Hasselbacher, you’ve never felt the need of money, have you? But then, you have no child.’

‘Before long you will have no child either.’

‘I suppose not.’ The comfort was as cold as the daiquiri. ‘When the time comes, Hasselbacher, I want us both to be away from here. I don’t want Milly woken up by any Captain Segura.’

‘That I can understand.’

‘The other day I was offered money.’

‘Yes?’

‘To get information.’

‘What sort of information?’

‘Secret information.’

Dr Hasselbacher sighed. He said, ‘You are a lucky man, Mr Wormold. That information is always easy to give.’

‘Easy?’

‘If it is secret enough, you alone know it. All you need is a little imagination, Mr Wormold.’

‘They want me to recruit agents. How does one recruit an agent, Hasselbacher?’

‘You could invent them too, Mr Wormold.’

‘You sound as though you had experience.’

‘Medicine is my experience, Mr Wormold. Have you never read the advertisement for secret remedies? A hair tonic confided by the dying Chief of a Red Indian tribe. With a secret remedy you don’t have to print the formula. And there is something about a secret which makes people believe … perhaps a relic of magic. Have you read Sir James Frazer?’

‘Have you heard of a book code?’

‘Don’t tell me too much, Mr Wormold, all the same. Secrecy is not my business – I have no child. Please don’t invent me as your agent.’

‘No, I can’t do that. These people don’t like our friendship, Hasselbacher. They want me to stay away from you. They are tracing you. How do you suppose they trace a man?’

‘I don’t know. Be careful, Mr Wormold. Take their money, but don’t give them anything in return. You are vulnerable to the Seguras. Just lie and keep your freedom. They don’t deserve the truth.’

‘Whom do you mean by they?’

‘Kingdoms, republics, powers.’ He drained his glass. ‘I must go and look at my culture, Mr Wormold.’

‘Is anything happening yet?’

‘Thank goodness, no. As long as nothing happens anything is possible, you agree? It is a pity that a lottery is ever drawn. I lose a hundred and forty thousand dollars a week, and I am a poor man.’

‘You won’t forget Milly’s birthday?’

‘Perhaps the traces will be bad, and you will not want me to come. But remember, as long as you lie you do no harm.’

‘I take their money.’

‘They have no money except what they take from men like you and me.’

He pushed open the half-door and was gone. Dr Hasselbacher never talked in terms of morality; it was outside the province of a doctor.

3

Wormold found a list of Country Club members in Milly’s room. He knew where to look for it, between the latest volume of the
Horsewoman’s Year Book
and a novel called
White Mare
by Miss ‘Pony’ Traggers. He had joined the Country Club to find suitable agents, and here they all were in double column, over twenty pages of them. His eye caught an Anglo-Saxon name – Vincent C. Parkman; perhaps this was Earl’s father. It seemed to Wormold that it was only right to keep the Parkmans in the family.

By the time he sat down to encode he had chosen two other names – an Engineer Cifuentes and a Professor Luis Sanchez. The professor, whoever he was, seemed a reasonable candidate for economic intelligence, the engineer could provide technical information, and Mr Parkman political. With the
Tales from Shakespeare
open before him (he had chosen for his key passage – ‘May that which follows be happy’) he encoded ‘Number 1 of 25 January paragraph A begins I have recruited my assistant and assigned him the symbol 59200/5/1 stop proposed payment
fifteen
pesos a month stop paragraph B begins please trace the following …’

All this paragraphing seemed to Wormold extravagant of time and money, but Hawthorne had told him it was part of the drill, just as Milly had insisted that all purchases from her shop should be wrapped in paper, even a single glass bead. ‘Paragraph C begins economic report as requested will follow shortly by bag.’

There was nothing to do now but wait for the replies and to prepare the economic report. This troubled him. He had sent Lopez out to buy all the Government papers he could obtain on the sugar and tobacco industries – it was Lopez’ first mission, and each day now he spent hours reading the local papers in order to mark any passage which could suitably be used by the professor or the engineer; it was unlikely that anyone in Kingston or London studied the daily papers of Havana. Even he found a new world in those badly printed pages; perhaps in the past he had depended too much on the
New York Times
or
Herald Tribune
for his picture of the world. Round the corner from the Wonder Bar a girl had been stabbed to death; ‘a martyr for love’. Havana was full of martyrs of one kind or another. A man lost a fortune in one night at the Tropicana, climbed on the stage, embraced a coloured singer, then ran his car into the harbour and was drowned. Another man elaborately strangled himself with a pair of braces. There were miracles too; a virgin wept salt tears and a candle lit before Our Lady of Guadalupe burnt inexplicably for one week, from a Friday to a Friday. From this picture of violence and passion and love the victims of Captain Segura were alone excluded – they suffered and died without benefit of Press.