The Obedient Assassin: A Novel (18 page)

R
ow after row, eight abreast, thousands of Mexicans marched down Reforma. Many looked Aztec or Mayan, with straight black hair and sharply sculptured features. Plumbers, carpenters, electricians, painters, the rank and file of the Communist Party in Mexico, they carried cardboard placards demanding that Trotsky get out of the country.
Afuera Trotsky!
Trotsky, get out! They walked silently, their faces so impassive, it might have been a funeral procession but for the trucks with loudspeakers that passed at regular intervals bearing large pictures of Trotsky looking satanic with his white goatee, eyes glaring intensely through his spectacles, a harsh metallic voice ringing from big cone-shaped speakers. “Trotsky is a traitor and terrorist!” the voices would cry from the distance, grow painfully loud, then fade away as the trucks moved on. All the while, the shuffling of the workers' feet on pavement remained soft and constant.

To the casual observer, the May Day parade was a stunning turnaround. Trotsky had been a hero to peasants and workers when he arrived in Mexico, and now he was an archvillain. To Jacques, the parade was a demonstration of Eitingon and Caridad's prowess. They had brought the power of the Kremlin and Comintern to bear upon the Communist Party of Mexico. Moving behind the scenes, never showing their hand, they purged the Communist newspapers in Mexico, replacing the editors and writers who had accepted the presence of Trotsky. Brought to heel, the Communist press mounted a campaign against Trotsky, all but calling for blood. Trotsky was not a friend of the worker. He was a terrorist and a Fascist.

Eitingon and Caridad had applied the same sort of pressure to the largest and most powerful labor unions in Mexico, which were Communist-run. Union bosses had turned out twenty thousand Mexicans to protest against Trotsky. Eitingon and Caridad had their hands on the levers of power and were pulling all of the elements of their plan into alignment. Everything was running according to schedule. The attack on Trotsky would take place soon. It was the first of May; Hitler's troops had invaded Denmark and Norway. France, the Netherlands, and Belgium were next. The free world would watch in horror as a Fascist dictator marched through Western Europe. Hitler would provide all the cover needed for Stalin to settle an old score.

After the parade finally passed, Jacques got in his car and started for Coyoacán. He would have preferred not going on that particular day, but Marguerite had asked him, and he feared it would look strange if he didn't appear.

As Jacques pulled up in front of the house, lightning flickered in the dark clouds clustered against the volcanoes. He recognized Julia and Ana, the women Siqueiros had hired to spy on the house. Dressed like peasant girls, they were flirting with the policemen in front of their hut. They had rented cheap flats on the next street, where they entertained the police, pumping them for every last detail about their post.

Jacques waved to Jake Cooper in the machine-gun turret, then heard the electric lock snap open as he approached the reinforced door. The heavy metal bar scraped against cement; Sheldon opened the door, stepping aside, his eyes wide in the dim light of the garage.

“What are you doing, letting me in like that?” Jacques asked in a low voice.

“I heard your car. I knew it was you.”

“You have to be careful.”

“Marguerite had to go out, but Hansen wants to see you.”

“Me? Why does he want to see me?”

“I don't know, but he said to send you in. He's in the library.”

Walking up the flagstone path, Jacques felt as if some greater gravitational force were taking hold of him, a strong ocean current that would drag him out to sea. The doors to the library stood open, a waiting trap. As he stepped beneath the bower of bougainvillea, he removed his dark glasses, his eyes and mind working rapidly, taking notes for Siqueiros. The room resembled a battlefield command station, spartan, improvised, orderly with unfinished plank floors, thick adobe walls plastered a deep mustard color, bare lightbulbs hanging on long cords from the rafters of the ceiling. There were two desks and a worktable, two big black typewriters, filing cabinets, a telephone, a map of Europe, and a small bookshelf filled with volumes of an encyclopedia.

Jacques had imagined the room so often, assembling a picture from bits and pieces of information. He was surprised to find it empty, except for Joe Hansen, who sat at the desk toward the back of the library. He gazed up from a typed document, studied Jacques for a moment, then got to his feet. Wiry and of moderate height, Hansen was like a character from the Wild West, his dark blond hair cut badly by a Mexican barber, pale blue eyes, and a prominent Adam's apple riding above the knot of his tie and the frayed collar, a holstered pistol hanging from a wide leather belt.

“Marguerite asked me to give you this,” he said, handing Jacques an envelope. “I've seen you outside. I don't think we've met.”

“Yes, I know who you are.”

“The Old Man wanted me to talk to you. He keeps hearing about you and has begun to wonder what it is you're doing here.”

Jacques felt his mouth go dry. “I'm in Mexico on business. My wife, Sylvia, introduced me to the Rosmers.”

Hansen frowned. “What about this false passport?”

“Yes, I had to buy a Canadian passport in Paris. I'm Belgian but couldn't get a passport there.”

“Why was that?” Hansen asked, crossing his arms.

“A problem with my family, a legal difficulty.”

“By legal, do you mean criminal?”

“No.” Jacques recoiled a bit as if offended. “I don't believe this is your business, but I was commissioned as an officer in the army. Later, after I was discharged, my family pulled strings to have me recalled so I wouldn't leave the country. I was eventually cleared but with the war and all, my visa was tied up in red tape. Buying a passport was a matter of convenience, nothing more.”

Hansen chewed on that for a moment, nodding. “The Old Man also wants to know about your politics.”

“I stay clear of politics.”

Hansen gave a slight shrug. “Well, I'll let you get on your way.”

Leaving, Jacques found Sheldon waiting in the garage. Thunder rumbled in the distance. The tin roof above ticked as the afternoon sun abated. The area smelled of dust and oil and tires and grease. A straight-back chair, a clipboard, and a stack of old magazines suggested the monotony of waiting.

“What did he want?”

“Nothing. He had a note from Marguerite for me.”

“Why didn't he give it to me?”

“I don't know.” Jacques took out his cigarette case, offered one to Sheldon, and took another for himself. As he lit their cigarettes, he observed the young man's hand tremble slightly. Jacques put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “Can you get away tonight?”

He nodded. Yes.

“Come to the Shirley Courts. I'll bring you home.”

“When should I come? Is seven too early?”

“No, that's good. Now, you'd better let me out.”

He watched Sheldon move the heavy iron aside. The door opened to the smell of rain coming across the valley.

W
ith rain sheeting down the windows and the electric lights flickering overhead, Caridad looked haggard, her mouth a thin red line of lipstick she was quickly blotting away with the butt end of a cigarette. “It's tomorrow night, then?”

“Yes. Tomorrow is a Friday. Is there any reason it shouldn't be on a Friday?” Eitingon asked. “Anything special about the schedule at the house?”

He looked around the table.

The time had finally come.

“Ramón?”

“No, I think the guards have the same schedule.”

“And David, you have your men ready?”

“Yes, but they're restless. Ten or eleven days is a long time to wait when you don't know what you're waiting for.”

“And we still go in at four a.m.?”

“Unless there's a reason to change.”

“I'm having the men gather in three groups at different houses,” said Siqueiros. “I'll make the rounds, give them instructions, pass out the uniforms, but someone needs to be at each of the houses to make sure they don't wander off.”

“Ramón?”

“Yes, I can do that.”

“And I'll do another,” said Eitingon. “One of the Spaniards can hold down the third.”

Eitingon slid the map of the house to the middle of the table. “Let's go over it again to make sure we're all in agreement.” He pointed out where the cars would park, one on Churubusco next to the dry riverbed, another on Abasola, and a third on Viena. “We approach on foot.”

“Bloody dogs are going to bark.”

“That can't be helped.”

“What time should Julia and Ana start the fiesta for the cops?” asked Siqueiros. “They've got enough tequila and mescal to float a boat.”

Caridad looked to Siqueiros. “How long does it take to get a cop drunk?”

“Twenty minutes.” He laughed.

“No, seriously. If we want them dead drunk at four in the morning?”

“Tell the girls to start the party at ten o'clock. You can't predict how fast anyone is going to pass out.”

Siqueiros turned to Ramón. “And your friend will open the gate for you?”

“He will, if he's there.”

“That's a big fucking if. Can't you find out?”

“If I ask too much, he'll get nervous. Anyway, the schedule could always change at the last minute. I'm more worried that one of the other guards will be up in that machine-gun turret on the front wall. That could turn into a firefight.”

“We would still win.”

“Yes, but with a lot of blood.”

“What are the chances?”

“Unlikely. One of the other guards is sick and has been sleeping through the shift from midnight till dawn.”

“If we have to go over the wall, we'll have dynamite, grappling irons, and rope ladders. But if the gate opens, then we're in and out within minutes.”

“When do you give the men their assignments?”

“Not until tomorrow night. Three of the boys will set up a machine gun behind the trunk of that eucalyptus tree to keep the guards pinned down, while four of us with machine guns position ourselves at Trotsky's windows. No one will hear anything until we start shooting. Some of the men will stay out front to take care of the cops and the guard.”

“Remember, this is the room where the boy sleeps,” Ramón said, pointing to the floor plan. “You'll have to go through there to get to the Old Man's room, but there's no reason to hurt the boy. Just let him run off or hide under his bed. And this room back here is where the Rosmers sleep. I don't want them hurt.”

“Are you getting soft?” Siqueiros asked.

“No, but there's no reason to hurt them.”

“Ramón and I aren't going in,” said Eitingon. “As soon as the gate opens we leave. He'll drive me back into town. Caridad and I are on the six-thirty flight to Brownsville. You and your men can use Trotsky's cars to get away.”

“What about Sheldon Harte?” Ramón asked. “What happens to him?”

Siqueiros made a pistol with his index finger and thumb, then pulled the trigger.

“No,” said Ramón. “You can't kill him.”

“If we leave him, he'll identify you. Your picture will be in every post office in Mexico and the United States by eight o'clock the next morning.”

“Then let's go over the wall.”

Eitingon looked at Caridad, pushing his hand through his hair. “No, we're not going over the wall unless we have to, and we won't kill the guard. David, you can take him with you when you leave. Make him drive one of the cars. We'll implicate him. The cops are going to suspect him anyway. It will look like an inside job, like Trotsky's men turned on him. Stalin will like that.”

“Then what happens?”

“We'll stash him for a couple of months. By then we'll be drinking vodka and eating caviar in Moscow. He can sell his story to the newspapers.” Eitingon rubbed his eyes and looked around the table. “Anything else? Any questions?”

R
amón wondered about the future as he drove to the Shirley Courts. The only thing that made sense to him was to be with Sylvia in New York. He surely couldn't see himself in Moscow; a winter there would be worse than prison. Returning to Spain was out of the question as long as Franco was in power. His sister and brothers were in Toulouse, hoping the war would wash over them.

That night in bed, he tossed and turned. He dreamed that he heard a loud metallic clanking noise coming toward him, a familiar sound he couldn't identify. Then he looked down to see the sticks of dynamite strapped to his chest.

He stayed at the motel the next morning until the Arenal brothers came by in a panel truck to pick up the crate of “engineering equipment” he'd been keeping in the storage room at the Shirley Courts. Then, to kill time, he walked to the apartment on Hamburgo, where he found Caridad dumping files into cardboard boxes. She looked as if she hadn't slept, her face sculpted by fatigue. “There's an incinerator downstairs in the alley,” she said, handing him one of the boxes.

He found the wire basket where ashes still smoldered, dumped the contents of the box, holding his lighter to the papers, then watching the flame catch and spread, the papers curling as they turned into sheets of carbon. The weather was fine, the air fresh from the night's storm. He found a stick to poke the papers, then went back upstairs to see if there were more. Caridad was sitting at the table, going through files, a cigar burning in an ashtray. She looked up when he sat down on the battered green sofa.

“Tomorrow night you'll be in New York.”

She nodded, the slightest frown flickering at the edge of her vision.

“How long will I need to stay here?”

“A month, six weeks,” she said, not looking up.

“That long?”

“You can go off mountain climbing if you want. We just don't want it to look like you ran.”

“And what comes after that? Do you know what we'll do?”

She turned a page, reaching for the cigar. “No, but if this goes as planned, we can write our own ticket.”

“Sure?”

“We will have plucked a very large thorn from Stalin's side.”

“I'd like to be assigned to New York.”

She raised her eyes and studied him for a moment. “Let's see what happens tonight.”