Havana Best Friends (34 page)

Okay, he was out of the game, had given up, No-Balls Pena. The major rested his feet on top of his desk and closed his eyes. Fucking circulation. But he had faith in young people. They didn’t know how closely he studied them, day in, day out. Guys like Trujillo, Pichardo, Martinez. Better educated and brighter, they suspected they had been duped at school when they were taught that everything was bad before the Revolution. They didn’t seem to dread a return to the ways of the past (or a boat trip to Miami) as much as he and people his age did.

The guys who would take the reins in the twenty-first century studied closely the young Europeans doing business in Cuba,
mostly men their age, in their late thirties or early forties, making a lot of money, attracting the best broads, jetting in and out. They also carefully observed the friends of the Revolution: idealists who sincerely believed Cuba was the Last Paradise. Communists, socialists, followers of Trotsky and Ché, some Christians who were allowed to travel abroad whenever they wanted, had hundreds of dollars to pay for round-trip airfares, were free to proclaim their political ideas, publish newspapers and magazines, strike, organize public demonstrations against nearly anything or anyone, demand amnesty for political prisoners. They could even set up barricades and stone the police, for Christ’s sake! But Pena suspected that this generation kept their views to themselves. Their reasoning might be something like:
You don’t argue with the old guard. Just say, “Yes, sure.” Let them believe we are in full agreement. They can’t understand us. They don’t know the meaning of the word
dialogue,
of the term
generation gap.
Just let them be. Our time will come
.

In his mind’s eye Pena could see Trujillo and Pichardo by the door of his office, whispering, stealing looks at him. He was getting to his feet now, approaching the young stallions to give them a tongue-lashing. He hadn’t always been No-Balls Pena, he yelled. He had fought in the mountains of Escambray from 1963–65; he had been in Ethiopia with Ochotorena, the most
cojonudo
of all
cojonudos …

“Chief …?”

Pena’s eyes snapped open. “What?”

“You were napping?”

“Nah. Just resting my eyes a while. Hey, you look better.”

“I
feel
better. Those caplets really work. And Mom’s bowl of soup made me sweat like a pig.”

“Fine.”

“You have news?”

“Immigration in Boyeros say they haven’t left the country.” Pena paused to light a cigarette. “And Tourism say they haven’t checked in at any of the better-known hotels.”

“Why only the better known?”

“They need six hours to check on all Havana hotels. There are fifty-five, you know. So I asked, How long would it take to verify the best-known ones first: Nacional, Cohiba, Libre, Riviera, and Capri? Two hours, they said. And they delivered. Not there.”

“So, when do we hear about them all?”

Pena consulted his watch, “By 10:30.”

Trujillo pulled up a chair and sat with his legs splayed out. “Maybe we should call Zoila, the president of Elena’s CDR. Find out if Elena is back, see if we can visit her tonight.”

Pena agreed with a wave of his hand. Trujillo looked the number up and dialled it. He was especially courteous and polite. He regretted bothering her at this hour, but would she be so kind as to ask Elena if she could come to the phone? He lit a cigarette while Zoila went to see. He was crushing it in the ashtray when she returned. Nobody had answered the door in Apartment 1, all the lights were off. He thanked Comrade Zoila, then returned the receiver to its cradle.

“This woman …,” Trujillo began, as though talking to himself.

“What woman?”

“Elena Miranda. She’s not the kind of woman who disappears.”

“Disappear? Did you say disappear?”

“Well … that’s stretching it a little.”

“A little? She was seen this morning, Trujillo. With a man.”

“I know.”

“Didn’t you say she was a fine piece of ass?”

“I did, but …”

“But what, she doesn’t go out? Never goes to the movies? Never fucks?”

Trujillo nodded, eyes half-closed. He knew he didn’t have a case, objectively speaking, but there was a nagging doubt at the back of his mind. “So, what do we do now?”

“Wait till Tourism calls.”

“Okay. How about a game of chess?”

Five kilometres outside Matanzas something went wrong as the bus climbed a hill and fumes from an electrical fire began wafting through the bus’s ventilation system. The driver pulled over and radioed in the problem. A spare bus is kept in Matanzas for such an eventuality, but its driver could not be found. The man had told his wife he would be at the company garage playing dominoes with the mechanics on duty when in fact he was at a flophouse, scoring with a lady. By the time the conductor thumbed a lift to Matanzas and drove the spare to where the passengers waited, two and a half hours had elapsed.

Keeping up the deaf-mute pretence all that time was hard. Passengers were asked to get out with their luggage and wait on the shoulder of the highway, where tall grass and a few stunted trees offered no shade. Luckily, the sun was low in the sky. After half an hour waiting, Marina approached the driver and asked him how long it would take to get them rolling again. The man said noncommittally, “A little while.” An hour later, as dusk fell and bats began to flit around, she approached the guy for a second
time and asked how many minutes a Cuban “little while” consisted of. The man shrugged his shoulders and raised the palms of his hands. Fuming, she returned to where Elena was guarding their luggage.

They wanted to chat, reassure one another, discuss alternatives, make plans, but both had exactly the same fear. What if one of the passengers was also getting off at the airport? What if he or she saw them talking and later spotted them lip-reading and signalling? So, Marina put on her lousy act and Elena pretended to understand, hoping that no real deaf, deaf-mute, or special-needs teacher wandered into the immediate vicinity.

Elena wanted to say to the exasperated Marina,
You find this upsetting? You find this unacceptable? Well, honey, you can’t imagine what people who pay their fare in Cuban pesos have to put up with to travel from an eastern province to a western province. Some spend two, sometimes three days at a terminal waiting in line for a bus or a train, sleeping on the floor, eating junk food, unable to wash. You don’t know! This is nothing! A bus will come in an hour or two and take us to Varadero because you paid for our tickets in dollars, because all these passengers are foreigners
.

Marina wanted to shout to the world her revulsion toward all things Cuban.
This hot, humid, stinking island where nothing goes according to plan. Where people kill people with impunity, men undress you with their eyes, buses break down, and bats the size of model airplanes swoosh overhead. Oh, Holy Virgin Mary! You help me get out of this fucking Communist country with my diamonds, I promise you I will donate ten thousand dollars to the church of the Immaculate Conception
.

Night fell. Elena lifted her eyes to the sky and became enthralled by the sight of millions of blinking stars. It was, she reflected, as though the heavens were mocking the speck of dust
called Earth. Finally, the replacement bus arrived. Everyone heaved a collective sigh of relief, gave each other the thumbs-up, and scrambled on board. After Matanzas only the headlights of approaching vehicles intermittently lit up the interior of the bus. The nearest passengers were three seats in front of them, so, when Elena returned from the toilet, Marina assumed they could risk some whispering.

“Elena.”

“What?”

“I was wondering …”

“Hey! Didn’t you say we shouldn’t talk?”

“It’s okay if we whisper. It’s dark and that couple are four yards away. And this is important. Won’t it look odd if we get off the bus at the airport?”

“What do you mean ‘odd’?”

“Unusual, peculiar. People don’t drive all the way from Havana to this airport to board a plane. You board it in Havana. Now, you said this airport is halfway between Matanzas and Varadero, right?”

“Right.”

“So, if we get off there, the conductor and the driver will realize we just wanted to get to the airport, not go to the beach. Maybe some airport people will find it odd too.”

“Well …”

“What do you say we go all the way to the bus depot in Varadero, take a taxi to one of the hotels, eat something there, then take a second taxi to the airport? The first cabby would think we are checking in; the second would believe we just checked out. Any curious airport cop or porter would see us coming from the beach, which makes sense if we’ve just learned that my son’s had an accident and we need to catch the first plane out.”

Elena considered this for a moment. “I hadn’t thought about that. You may be right. In any case, it’s safer the way you say.”

“Okay. We’ll do that.”

When the bus left the main highway to take the road to the airport, they kept their eyes peeled for signs and people. By international standards the main building looked small and poorly lit. There were no huge neon signs advertising airlines, hotels, or restaurants. A couple left the bus at what appeared to be the only entrance for all airlines and gates and nobody seemed to care. Elena gave a comforting look to Marina to imply she shouldn’t regret being overly cautious. The bus closed its door and left the terminal.

“I think it’s better this way anyway,” Marina whispered when they were wrapped in shadows again.

“I think so too.”

Pena was scribbling frenziedly on a piece of paper and Trujillo figured that something significant had been unearthed. The major had said, “At your service,” into the phone, then covered the mouthpiece and mouthed, “Tourism” to the captain.

“Spell it out for me,” he said.

Trujillo stood and watched him write in capital letters CHRISTINE ABERNATHY. Above it were four short lines:

Hotel Deauville

Room 614

Marina Leucci

1:35.

“They what?” Pena barked at the phone. Then wrote 3:50.

“How come?” the major was saying. “Nobody asked them?”

He listened for a moment, then inhaled deeply. “Yeah, I know. Sorry, comrade. We’ll question the hotel staff. Thanks.”

Trujillo waited in silence until the major hung up and ran his hand over his head, a characteristic gesture when something had him baffled. “Let’s hit the road, Captain. Marina Leucci and a lady named Christine Abernathy checked in at the Deauville at 1:35, then checked out at 3:50. Central Desk knows nothing more. Let’s see what we can find out from the staff.”

Trujillo returned the chess pieces surrounding the board to their cigar box as Pena adjusted the webbed belt and gun around his waist.

“I had you fried,” the captain said, contemplating his white king, bishop, knight, and two pawns still confronting Pena’s black king, bishop, knight, and pawn.

“C’mon, let’s get moving,” the major said, putting on his cap.

Trujillo gathered the pieces on the chessboard, tossed them into the box, and followed Pena out the door.