Havana Bay (2 page)

Rufo said, "That smells disgusting."

"Russian tobacco." Arkady filled his lungs with
smoke.» Want one?"

"No, thanks. I boxed in
Russia
when I was on the
national team. I hated
Moscow
. The food, the bread
and, most of all, the cigarettes."

"You don't like Russians, either?"

"I love Russians. Some of my best friends are Rus
sian." Rufo leaned for a better view as Bias spread the
chest for the camera.» The doctor is very good. At the rate they're going you'll have time to make your plane.
You won't even have to spend the night."

"Won't the embassy make a fuss about this?"

"The Russians here? No."

Bias slapped the pulpy mass of the heart in a separate
tray.

"You don't think they're too indelicate, I hope," Rufo
said.

"Oh, no." To be fair, as Arkady remembered, Pribluda used to root through bodies with the enthusiasm of a boar after nuts.» Imagine the poor bastard's surprise," Pribluda would have said.» Floating around, looking up at the stars, and then bang, he's dead."

Arkady lit one cigarette from another and drew the
smoke in sharply enough to make his eyes tear. It
occurred to him that he was at a point now where he
knew more people dead than alive, the wrong side of a
certain line.

"I picked up a lot of languages touring with the
team," Rufo said.» After boxing, I used to guide groups
of singers, musicians, dancers, intellectuals for the
embassy. I miss those days."

Detective Osorio methodically laid out supplies that
the dead man had taken to sea: thermos, wicker box,
and plastic bags of candles, rolls of tape, twine, hooks
and extra line.

Usually, an examiner cut at the hairline and peeled the forehead over the face to reach the skull. Since in this case both the forehead and the face had already
slipped off and bade adieu in the bay, Bias proceeded
directly with a rotary saw to uncover the brain, which proved rotten with worms that reminded Arkady of the
macaroni served by Aeroflot. As the nausea rose he had Rufo lead him to a tiny, chain-flush lavatory, where he
threw up, so perhaps he wasn't so inured after all, he
thought. Maybe he had just reached his limit. Rufo was
gone, and walking back to the autopsy theater on his
own, Arkady went by a room perfumed by carboys of formaldehyde and decorated with anatomical charts. On
a table two feet with yellow toenails stuck out from a
sheet. Between the legs lay an oversized syringe con
nected by a tube to a tub of embalming fluid on the
floor, a technique used in the smallest, most primitive
Russian villages when electric pumps failed. The needle
of the syringe was particularly long and narrow to fit
into an artery, which was thinner than a vein. Between the feet were rubber gloves and another syringe in an
unopened plastic bag. Arkady slipped the bag into his
jacket pocket.

When Arkady returned to his seat, Rufo was waiting
with a recuperative Cuban cigarette. By that time, the
brain had been weighed and set aside while Dr. Bias
fitted head and jaw together.

Although Rufo's lighter was the plastic disposable
sort, he said it had been refilled twenty times.» The
Cuban record is over a hundred."

Arkady bit the cigarette, inhaled.» What kind is this?"

" 'Popular.' Black tobacco. You like it?"

"It's perfect." Arkady let out a plume of smoke as
blue as the exhaust of a car in distress.

Rufo's hand kneaded Arkady's shoulder.» Relax.
You're down to bones, my friend."

The officer who had taken the keys from Osorio
returned. At the other table, after Bias had measured
the skull vertically and across the brow, he spread a handkerchief and diligently scrubbed the teeth with a
toothbrush. Arkady handed Rufo a dental chart he had
brought from
Moscow
(an investigator's precaution),
and the driver trotted the envelope down to Bias, who
systematically matched the skull's brightened grin to the
chart's numbered circles. When he was done he con
ferred with Captain Arcos, who grunted with satisfac
tion and summoned Arkady down to the theater floor.

Rufo interpreted.» The Russian citizen Sergei Se
geevich Pribluda arrived in
Havana
eleven months ago
as an attache to the Russian embassy. We knew, of
course, that he was a colonel in the KGB. Excuse me,
the new Federal Security Service, the SVR."

"Same thing," Arkady said.

The captain—and in his wake, Rufo—went on.» A
week ago the embassy informed us that Pribluda was
missing. We did not expect them to invite a senior investigator from the
Moscow
prosecutor's office. Per
haps a family member, nothing more."

Arkady had talked to Pribluda's son, who had refused to come to
Havana
. He managed a pizzeria, a major
responsibility.

Rufo went on.» Fortunately, the captain says, the
identification performed today before your eyes is simple and conclusive. The captain says that a key found in
the effects was taken to the apartment of the missing
man where it unlocked the door. From an examination
of the body recovered from the bay, Dr. Bias estimates that it is a Caucasoid male approximately fifty to sixty
years of age, one hundred sixty-five centimeters in
height, ninety kilos in weight, in every regard the same
as the missing man. Moreover, the dental chart of the
Russian citizen Pribluda you yourself brought shows
one lower molar filled. That molar in the recovered jaw
is a steel tooth which, in the opinion of Dr. Bias,
according to the captain, is typical Russian dental work.
Do you agree?"

"From what I saw, yes."

"Dr. Bias says he finds no wounds or broken bones,
no signs of violence or foul play. Your friend died of
natural causes, perhaps a stroke or aneurysm or heart
attack, it would be almost impossible to determine which for a body in this condition. The doctor hopes
he did not suffer long."

"That's kind of him." Although the doctor appeared more smug than sympathetic.

"The captain, for his part, asks if you accept the
observations of this autopsy?"

"I'd like to think about it."

"Well, you accept the conclusion that the body recov
ered is that of the Russian citizen Pribluda?"

Arkady turned to the examining table. What had
been a bloated cadaver was now split and gutted. Of
course, there had been no face or eyes to identify
anyway, and finger bones never did yield prints, but
someone had lived in that ruined body.

"I think an inner tube in the bay is a strange place to
find a Russian citizen."

"The captain says they all think that."

"Then there will be an investigation?"

Rufo said, "It depends."

"On what?"

"On many factors."

"Such as?"

"The captain says your friend was a spy. What he
was doing when he died was not innocent. The captain
can predict your embassy will ask us to do nothing. We
are the ones who could make an international incident
of this, but frankly it is not worth the effort. We will
investigate in our own time, in our own way, although
in this Special Period the Cuban people cannot afford
to waste resources on people who have revealed them
selves to be our enemy. Now do you understand what
I mean?" Rufo paused while Arcos took a second to
compose himself.» The captain says an investigation
depends on many factors. The position of our friends at
the Russian embassy must be taken into account before
premature steps are taken. The only issue we have here
is an identification of a foreign national who has died
on Cuban territory. Do you accept it is the Russian
citizen Sergei Pribluda?"

"It could be," Arkady said.

Dr. Bias sighed, Luna took a deep breath and Detec
tive Osorio weighed the keys in her palm. Arkady
couldn't help feeling like a difficult actor.» It probably
is, but I can't say conclusively that this body is Pribluda.
There's no face, no prints and I doubt very much that you will be able to type the blood. All you have is a dental chart and one steel tooth. He could be another
Russian. Or one of thousands of Cubans who went to
Russia
. Or a Cuban who had a tooth pulled by a Cuban dentist who trained in
Russia
. Probably you're right, but
that's not enough. You opened Pribluda's door with a
key. Did you look inside?"

Dr. Bias asked in precisely snipped Russian, "Did you
bring any other identification from
Moscow
?"

"Just this. Pribluda sent it a month ago." Arkady
dug out of his passport case a snapshot of three
men standing on a beach and squinting at the camera.
One man was so black he could have been carved from
jet. He held up a glistening rainbow of a fish for
the admiration of two whites, a shorter man with a
compensating tower of steel-wool hair and, partially
obscured by the others, Pribluda. Behind them was
water, a tip of beach, palms.

Bias studied the photograph and read the scribble on the back.»
Havana
Yacht Club."

"There is such a yacht club?" Arkady asked.

"There
was
such a club before the Revolution," Bias
said.» I think your friend was making a joke."

Rufo said, "Cubans love grandiose titles. A 'drinking
society' can be friends in a bar."

"The others don't look Russian to me. You can make
copies of the picture and circulate them."

The picture went around to Arcos, who put it back
into Arkady's hands as if it were toxic. Rufo said, "The
captain says your friend was a spy, that spies come to
bad ends, as they deserve. This is typically Russian,
pretending to help and then stabbing
Cuba
in the back.
The Russian embassy sends out its spy and, when he's
missing, asks us to find him. When we find him, you
refuse to identify him. Instead of cooperating, you
demand an investigation, as if you were still the master
and
Cuba
was the puppet. Since that is no longer the
case, you can take your picture back to
Moscow
. The
whole world knows of the Russian betrayal of the Cuban
people and, well, he says some more in that vein."

Arkady gathered as much. The captain looked ready to spit.

Rufo gave Arkady a push.» I think it's time to go."

Detective Osorio, who had been quietly following the
conversation, suddenly revealed fluent Russian.» Was
there a letter with the picture?"

"Only a postcard saying hello," Arkady said.» I threw
it away."

"Idiota"
Osorio said, which nobody bothered to
translate.

"It's lucky you're going home, you don't have many friends here," Rufo said.» The embassy said to put you
in an apartment until the plane."

They drove by three-story stone town houses trans
formed by the Revolution into a far more colorful
backdrop of ruin and decay, marble colonnades refaced
with whatever color was available—green, ultramarine,
chartreuse. Not just ordinary green, either, but a vibrant
spectrum: sea, lime, palm and verdigris. Houses were as blue as powdered turquoise, pools of water, peeling sky,
the upper levels enlivened by balconies of ornate iron
work embellished by canary cages, florid roosters, hang
ing bicycles. Even dowdy Russian cars wore a wide variety of paint, and if their clothes were drab most of
the people had the slow grace and color of big cats.
They paused at tables offering guava paste, pastries,
tubers and fruits. One girl shaving ices was streaked red and green with syrup, another girl sold sweetmeats from
a cheesecloth tent. A locksmith rode a bicycle that
powered a key grinder; he wore goggles for the sparks and shavings flying around him as he pedaled in place.
The music of a radio hanging in the crook of a pushcart's umbrella floated in the air.