Havana Bay (50 page)

She tried to imagine a reconstruction of the facts.
The same street late at night. Arkady upstairs, Rufo
outside in his freshly donned running suit, improvising
on the run because no one had expected the arrival of a
Russian investigator. Perhaps even placing one last call
before he went into the house and up the steps to what
he assumed would be the Russian's doom. Between the
two corners of the block, where was the most likely
place for Rufo to put, just for a few minutes, his
precious phone?

Ofelia remembered Maria, the police car and Rufo's
cigars. She returned to the porch.

"Whose car is this?"

"My husband's. He went to get some windows for
the car, and the next thing I know I got a letter from
Miami. I'm keeping the car till he gets back."

"Chevrolet?"

 
"'57, the best year. I used to get in and pretend
Ruperto and I were driving to Playa del Este, a nice
cruise to the beach. I haven't done that for a long time."

"Car windows are hard to find."

"Car windows are impossible to find."

The upholstery was more a rat's nest than seats.
From her bag Ofelia took a pair of surgical gloves.» Do
you mind?"

"Mind what?"

With gloves on, Ofelia reached through the open
window and opened the glove compartment. Within
was a wooden cigar box with a broken Montecristo seal
of crossed swords. Inside the box were ten aluminum
cigar tubes and an Ericson cell phone set on
vibrate
instead of
ring.

Ofelia heard a
click
and looked through the car at a
man taking her picture from the sidewalk. He was
a large, middle-aged man with a camera bag over a
shoulder and the sort of vest with many pockets that
photographers wore, all topped by an artistic beret.

"I'm sorry," he said, "you just looked beautiful in
that old wreck of a car. Do you mind? Most women don't mind if I photograph them—in fact, they rather
like it. The light is awful but you looked so perfect. Do
you think we could talk?"

Ofelia put the phone in the cigar box and the box
and gloves in her bag before she straightened out.»
What about?"

"About life, about romance, about everything."
Despite his size he made a show of coming shyly
through the gate. His Spanish was fluent, with a Russian
accent.» Arkady sent me. Even so, I'm a great admirer
of Cuban women."

Arkady didn't set anything on fire at the Sierra Maestra
and didn't knock on Mostovoi's door. Instead he
inserted the credit card into the jamb the moment he
arrived and hit the door with a grunt that took the
breath out of a watching toddler. Inside, Arkady looked to see whether the "greatest demolition team in Africa" was still the centerpiece of the wall. It was.

On his first visit he had gone to pains to make sure Mostovoi wouldn't notice that he'd had any guests. This
time Arkady didn't care. Where there was one photo
graph of the Havana Yacht Club there were bound to
be more, because a man who documented his greatest
moments didn't destroy his pictures when the wrong company came—he just put them out of sight.

Arkady took off his coat to work. He emptied shoe
boxes and suitcases, spilled book and kitchen shelves,
upended files and drawers, pulled the refrigerator from the wall and tipped over chairs until he had discovered
more photographs, pornography that was not so sporty
and not so sweet, and videotapes of sex and leather. But
everybody had a side business, everyone had a second
job. All Arkady really produced was the sweat on his
face.

He visited the bathroom to wash up. The walls were
tiled and the medicine-cabinet mirror was half silvered,
half black. Inside the cabinet were a couple of nostrums,
hair elixirs and recreational amounts of amyl nitrate
and amphetamines. As he dried his hands he noticed
that the shower curtain was closed. People with small
bathrooms usually kept their curtains drawn for the
illusion of space or a childish fear of what was on the
other side. Since that was an anxiety Arkady freely admitted to, he pulled the curtain wide.

Floating in the tub in ten centimeters of water were
four black-and-white photographs not of nubile sports
or foreign travels but of the dead Italian and Hedy.
Blood showed as black and the carpet and sheets were
soaked and striped. The Italian looked almost gilled
from machete wounds. Arkady didn't know him, but he did recognize Hedy even if her head balanced precariously on her shoulders. At first Arkady thought that Mostovoi had gotten hold of police photographs, but of course these pictures had just been developed and none
of the usual evidence markers had been laid, no shoe
tips of detectives trying to stay out of the camera's way,
and the darkness of the shadows themselves suggested
that no other source of illumination had been on. The
photographer had worked alone in a dark room the
night before Ofelia arrived, and real skill must have been required just to estimate the focus. He'd only
chanced four shots or only developed four from a roll.
A single shot of the Italian as he dragged himself, still
alive, toward the door. More thought had gone into the pictures of Hedy. A low shot from between her legs up
to her head. A second that framed her head between
deflated breasts. A third just of Hedy's face, surprise still
fresh in her eyes. The man with the camera had been
unable to resist marking the moment, thrusting his
tubular white wrist and hand into the sheen of her curls to improve the pose.

 
Chapter Twenty-Seven

 
By eight o'clock the Marina Hemingway had the social
hum of a small village at night. Younger crew, an
international set with stringy blond hair, spread out in
front of the market or carried bags from the ice bunker. From the far end came the amplified pulse of a disco,
glitter and sound reflected in the canals. Overhead an
edge of the moon burned through the electric haze of
the marina. He didn't see Ofelia but she tended to be
fanatically good to her word.

The
Alabama Baron
was gone, replaced by a launch so new it smelled of plastic. Already ensconced in its
cabin was a
jinetera
mixing rum and Coke. Ahead,
George Washington Walls and John O'Brien were having beers in the cockpit of the
Gavilan,
firebrand and
financier at their ease. The new lead from the power
box snaked smoothly down to the water and up the
dark flank of the seaplane tender.

"You're here." Walls looked up at Arkady.

"Right on time, too," O'Brien said.» Wonderful. Back
into your cashmere coat, I see. Join us."

"I have a plane to catch. You said we were going to
talk about Pribluda."

"A plane to catch?" O'Brien said.» That is sad. This
means you are turning down the chance to be part of
our endeavor? I have always counted myself as fairly
persuasive. Apparently with you I've failed."

"The man is a disappointment," Walls said.» That's
what Isabel says."

"Arkady, I was hoping to persuade you because I
sincerely thought it was for your own good. I had
looked forward to working with you. Come on, have a
drink for God's sake. We'll have an Irish good-bye.
Your plane's at midnight?"

"Yes."

Walls said, "You've got hours."

Arkady stepped out of the light and down into the
boat, settling against a cockpit cushion. Instantly a cold
can of beer was in his hand. At night the boat seemed
to ride even lower, the polished mahogany dark as the
water.

O'Brien said, "You're taking back the body of your
friend Pribluda? That means you've positively identified
him?"

"No."

"Because you don't need to anymore, you already
know."

"I think so."

"Well, that's a comfort. Your decision to go is final? What we can do"—O'Brien tapped Arkady's knee—"is
give you a return ticket. Take a week in Moscow, in
that miserable ice chest you call home, and if you
change your mind come back. Is that fair?"

"More than fair, but I think I've made up my mind."

"Why?" Walls asked.

 
O'Brien said, "Because he found what he came for, I
suppose. Is that it, Arkady?"

"Pretty much."

"To a single-minded man." O'Brien raised his beer.»
To the man in the coat."

The beer was good, far better than Russian. On the
dock a line of
jineteras
slipped quietly as mice toward the disco, lamplight haloing their hair. It was Saturday
night, after all. The salsa accelerated. Walls balanced on
the captain's chair in a black pullover that reminded
Arkady of the sleek young radical who had stepped out
of a plane with a gun and a burning flag. O'Brien wore
his black jumpsuit. Pirate colors. He unwrapped a cigar
and turned its tip over a flame, drawing it in. The boats
in their slips sighed as a ripple of water lifted them.

O'Brien said, "You know what happened to Pribluda,
but you don't know why? And I'm the only one who
hasn't had a say?"

"You say a lot, but it's different every time."

"Then I won't tell you, I'll show you. See that sea-
bag?"

Although the cabin was dark, Arkady saw one end of
a canvas bag in the light at the bottom of the steps.

"Sergei's," Walls said.

Arkady was nearest. He put down the beer and went
down the cabin stairs. As he picked up the bag the door
shut and locked behind him. The inboard engine started
in the space ahead, producing a reverberation like being
inside a double bass. Overhead, feet nimbly stepped fore
and aft, releasing lines and gathering fenders. The
Gavilan
backed, swung and eased forward. As the boat passed the disco, laughter and strobe lights flickered on
the curtains. Canal echo dropped behind, and Arkady
heard Walls talking on the radio. Arkady beat on the
door more for form than conviction; a boat as classic as
this was built of hardwood. He moved around a galley
table to an engine-room door that was locked as well.
He pulled aside a porthole curtain just in time to see
the
guardia
dock slide by with no sign yet that Ofelia
had raised an alarm. Past the dock the brass bow of the
Gavilan
sliced its way so smoothly Arkady felt no more
than the faintest rise and fall, headed directly to sea by
the evenness of wave slap.

Along Fifth Avenue were the first signs of a major event:
brigada
trucks of huddled Interior troops parked in the
night dark of side streets, motorcycle policemen in
white helmets and spurred boots straddling their bikes,
K9 units sniffing the crowd that filed up the driveway
of the Construction Union House, the former Havana
Yacht Club. Ofelia's PNR badge didn't work, but Mos-tovoi somehow produced a pass that let them through.
There were telltale signs that the Noche Folklorica
was a more important event than she had expected. A feature of national security was that no one ever knew
which of his residences the Comandante would sleep in,
let alone what functions he would attend. However,
when he did appear certain precautions were always
taken. Tracks led on the lawn to seven armored Merce
des, an ambulance, a radio command truck, a media
van, two dog vans, a circle of soldiers and a cordon of
men in shirts and windbreakers holding newspapers
folded over cell phones and radios and standing around for no apparent purpose until a guest deviated from the
driveway. The house's two grand stairways met at a
central porch. From there, under the molding of a
ship's wheel on a pennant, soldiers scanned the crowd,
although this was not, to Ofelia, a group that was likely to get out of hand. Some officially approved Santeria priests were on hand, but mostly she saw stiff ministry
and military types and their spouses following the
designated route around the mansion to the oceanfront
side. The occasional man was patted down or a woman stopped to have her purse searched, but Mostovoi and
Ofelia were waved through, and despite his camera bag
the photographer pushed so quickly through the crowd
she could barely keep up.