Lone Wolf #5: Havana Hit (2 page)

“All right,” Wulff said, “you can have it.”

“We intend to take it.”

“Let these people off. Let the plane go down and discharge the passengers. I’ll go with you and the valise will go with you wherever you want.”

“You sound very sacrificing, Wulff,” the man said. He belched, covered his mouth with a hand and then clung to a bulkhead as the plane, hit by another wave of turbulence, began to skitter mindlessly, side to side this time, swaying like a hammock. For just one instant the man’s control dropped; his implacable stare was replaced by terror and the gun slipped. But Wulff could not take advantage of the moment, he was holding onto steel himself and he hardly could see the benefit of trying to get control if the tube carrying them all would fragment under the struggle. After a minute the plane began to fly straight again at a lower level and the pilot looked up, his face almost transparent with shock and said, “You’d better let me radio in again. We’ve lost a lot of altitude and if they lose me on a radar track we’re really in trouble.”

“Where are we?” Wulff said.

“As far as I can tell we’re somewhere over the Great Salt Lake. There’s too much cloud cover though.”

“If you don’t let him fly this fucking plane,” the navigator said, looking up for the first time, a much older man than the other two, (were navigators failed or washed-up pilots? Wulff found himself thinking irrelevantly) “we’re going to be
in
the Great Salt Lake.”

“All right,” Wulff said, “let’s get out of the cabin.”

“Are you crazy?” the man said. “Who do you think you are? What do you think you’re doing anyway?”

“I’ve got what you want,” Wulff said. “I’m the man you want. We can do business together. But there’s no reason to hold the plane hostage. I’ll cooperate.”

“That suits me,” the pilot said. His shoulders heaved. “That suits me; you talk sense to him. But do it out of my cabin.”

“Land the plane,” Wulff said again, “land the plane and let these passengers off. Get a fresh pilot to volunteer and I’ll go anywhere you want … with the valise. But this can be between us.”

For the first time the heavy man seemed to open a trifle, his eyes becoming luminous. “It would be easier,” he said, “it would be nice and simple if we could do it that way.”

“Let’s do it that way,” Wulff said. “Be reasonable. Do it easy.” He understood the gunman now. He understood both of them. He thought that he could see their position and a dangerous and tricky one it was. They were after the valise, that was their job and about the only way they could get it, they figured, was with a hijacking but they didn’t want any part of it. They were professionals, probably more so than any he had been dealing with so far and the theory among professionals was to accomplish the most with the least possible effort; if you could negotiate your way out of something you did it with a mouth not a gun and if you could get hold of a valise the easy way you didn’t have to hijack a plane to do it because hijacking was a Federal rap and quite serious now.

“You’ll cooperate?” the heavy man said. “You’ll go with us all the way?”

“I have no choice,” Wulff said, “I don’t want to get people killed. I’m not in this to kill people; I’m trying to save them.”

That at least was the truth. If nothing else he had not lied there; his quest was not worth the lives of the innocent. He could litter the continent with the bodies of vermin but he would not, if he could help it, make victims of those who were not culpable because if he did he was playing the vermin’s game.

“All right,” the heavy man said, “all right, I think we might be able to do business that way.” He seemed to think, pointing the edge of the gun at his nose and for a surreal moment Wulff wondered if the equation was going to be solved by the man killing himself, then he dropped the gun to waist-level and said, “I heard that you were a pretty professional guy: I guess that’s the truth.”

“Let’s let them get that plane down,” Wulff said, “and we can find out who’s professional.”

“That suits me,” the heavy man said. He made a gesture with the gun. “Go on,” he said, “you get out, go back to the coach section and shut up. I’ll stay in the cabin and help this man fly her in.” There was no irony in this.

“That makes sense,” Wulff said. “I think that that makes a lot of sense.”

“What do you think?” the heavy man said. He shrugged; in that shrug was a great deal of understanding, more comprehension than Wulff would have wanted the man to have. “You think I’m some kind of goddamned fool?”

“No,” Wulff said, “I don’t. It’s just business.”

“That’s right. Business.”

On the way back to his seat then, Wulff passed the other gunman. The other gunman was in the galley, his gun held loosely on the stewardesses, his features quite lively.
Fuck
he was mumbling and the stewardesses were looking at him impassively.
Fuck
indeed. In a few moments, the man would reach below his belt, start to grapple with himself.

Well, Wulff thought, trying to smile reassuringly at the passengers, most of them already looking as if they had suspended hope, it took all kinds, even cruising at thirty-eight thousand feet. It was as much the world up here as down there and you might as well take your pleasure where you could.

Delgado sat in the small room, feet on the floor and waited for the two men to come in. He tried to keep his mind empty, thinking nothing at all. Thinking only meant anticipation and rage and he could afford neither. Handle things as they came. Delgado breathed deeply, evenly, trying to suspend himself against the killing rage. It was true. He could kill them.

A security guard brought the two men inside. They contradicted what Delgado had conceived them to be. He had supposed that they would have a lurking stupidity, the clumsiness and indelicacy which he had always associated with the type of people who worked at low organization levels up north, but no they looked reasonably competent, even comfortable, particularly the taller, heavier man who seemed to have decided that he would do all of the speaking. The other one held himself against a corner under the gaze of the guard. “Listen,” the heavier one said, “I’m glad that we finally got a chance to get in here. We’ve been waiting—”

“Shut up,” Delgado said.

“I’ll shut up when I’m ready to. Now you people listen to me, you just can’t—”

“I said,” Delgado said, “that I wanted you to shut up.” He made a gesture toward the guard. The guard shrugged, came toward the desk, stood behind the heavy man and very carefully lifted his pistol.

Almost delicately he hit the man behind the ear. It was contrived to be a grazing blow, successful that way, and only a thin smear of blood came from the scalp lining behind the ear. The heavy man did not even fall. He stood there in confusion as if someone had whipped out a handkerchief and thrust it upon him and then, almost casually he moaned, staggered backward, landed against the wall.

The other man reached forward in a gesture of appeal. “Look,” he said, “I don’t know—”

“You keep quiet too,” Delgado said. He found that his hands were curling convulsively in rage. No good. It could not be this way. If anything was to come of this he would have to remain in control. “All right,” he said to the guard, “get out. Stand outside the door. I don’t think that we’ll have any problem here but if you hear any noises—”

The guard nodded. His English was only fair but he gave the impression of complete comprehension which was enough. He walked to the door, opened it gently and went outside.

Delgado leaned back in his chair and looked at the two men. The one that was supposed to be the spokesman was running his hands through his scalp, feeling the seam of the cut, a strange, blank expression in his eyes which was worse than fear because he had not yet judged what was happening to him. The other man stood quietly, holding his hands together, looking past Delgado out the window where he could see the mountains. They were not thoughts of escape that were overtaking him but merely a wistful desire for an openness he would never see again. Delgado knew the feeling well. He had been there.

“You gentlemen have put us—all of us,” he said, “in an impossible situation. Now I am going to do the talking and you are going to do nothing but quietly listen. I do not think that you truly understand what you have done and I have been appointed to tell you.”

The heavy man said desperately, “Listen, damn it, we had instructions—” and then at a look from Delgado seemed to become aware of the fact that he was speaking. He put a hand to his mouth like a child. A thread of blood came down over his eyebrow giving him a clown’s aspect.

“Your instructions have nothing to do with our situation,” Delgado said, “nothing to do with our situation at all. You have hijacked a major airliner with very controversial contents, have set it down in this country, have drawn international attention at a time when we want a minimum of attention, and have put my government in an impossible position. Certain agreements which were being worked out through the most intense and delicate of negotiations may have been utterly destroyed by this adventure. You have drawn maximum attention to a very dangerous situation at precisely the point where for the first time that situation seemed to be ending. And furthermore—” the heavy man seemed about to say something and Delgado raised a hand which quieted him, the man burbled to silence, the other one was looking at Delgado with an expression of absolute terror—our government has very strong feelings about being involved in what is known by the uninformed as the international drug trade. My country has had bery serious problems with this in the past and it is only through the most dedicated cleansing of the government at all levels, from bottom to top, that in the last several years we have come to assume some control over the situation. And now you have brought here and placed in our custody perhaps the largest single amount of drugs which has ever existed in a single shipment and you have also placed in our custody an extremely dangerous man who has drawn more attention. Do you begin to see now what you have done? Is there any awareness?”

Delgado sighed, leaned back from the desk and fumbled in the drawer for a cigarette, not looking at the two men now, letting them consider what he had said, trying again to reach that blankness of mind and aspect which he had had before they entered the room. It was not so much a mask now, not as much of a mask as it might have been if he had not been on the other side of this kind of desk many times in his life, knew what they were going through, knew exactly how the situation was opening up underneath them. They had a feeling of peril, of falling. It was always that way when you carried through something difficult and dangerous only to find that all along the signals had been wrong, had been issued in a different language.

“A million dollars worth of heroin,” he said to the silent men. “Let’s call it what it is, gentlemen, let’s not use any of your American terms like shit, smack, horse, H. It’s heroin, the most addictive and dangerous of all the hallucinatives used by humanity over a period of fifteen hundred years, a drug whose mere private possession in your country is a crime with severe penalties … and you have hijacked a plane in flight, imprisoned the crew, imprisoned a man named Wulff who was in original possession of these materials, have discharged your passengers at an earlier point and then have brought all of this within our borders. And what are
we
supposed to do, gentlemen?” He kicked the desk drawer closed with a force he had not expected; his rage was showing again. “What are we supposed to do?”

He looked at the spokesman intensely and finally, the man saw that he was supposed to speak this time and that an answer was being awaited. “Our instructions were clear,” he said. “We were, if possible, to take the plane in here. We were told that all arrangements had been made at this end and that—”

“No arrangements had been made,” Delgado said quietly. “There is no level of dialogue whatsoever between those people who are your superiors and my government. There has not been any for many years. You have been lied to, gentlemen, you have been misdirected all of the way. We do not want your plane in our country, we do not want your drugs and we have no arrangements whatsoever for disposition. Cuba is a free country now; it is not a backyard and a playpen for your interests.”

“Look,” the heavy man said, “I’m sorry; we were only told—”

“I don’t care what you were told,” Delgado said and came over to the man. He raised his hand and struck him in the place where the wound was, once, hard, the man groaned and spat a trickle of blood and then fell to his knees, Delgado hovering over him. Delgado kicked the man in the stomach until he arced over and then coughed, spat blood on the floor. Instantly, the rage discharged, he was calm again. He walked back to the desk. The man against the wall was looking at him in a pleading way. Delgado let the one on the floor continue to choke and spoke to this one.

“You see,” he said gently, “I am here to tell you that your position is untenable. As untenable as you have made ours. We do not want anything to do with your traffic, we do not want any of your internal problems. The internal problems and politics of our country itself have changed a great deal over the past decade and some of your people have, perhaps, not caught up to this yet. You have given us an almost insuperable difficulty. The premier himself is very embarrassed. What are we supposed to do with you?” Delgado concluded quietly, his tone almost reasonable, they could have been working out the final details of some arrangement here.

The other man shrugged and looked away. With the spokesman incapacitated, however, he seemed to feel that some kind of statement was expected from him and after a moment of silence his eyes swung back, away from the mountains, toward Delgado. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We had very specific instructions and no reason to feel that we would find difficulties here. This man left fifty people dead in Las Vegas.”

“Which man?”

“Wulff. The one we brought here.”

“Fifty people dead?” Delgado said. “I’m afraid that fifty of your people—they were your people were they not?—dead means far less to us than the fact that there were another fifty aboard that airliner and but for the grace of God
they
might have been dead and we would have had to bear the responsibility. You see, whoever is giving you your orders is a fool.”

The man on the floor coughed again, spewed blood across the carpet. Delgado looked at it with distaste. It was uncosmetic, that was all. You could not have a nice, clean interrogation anymore. In the old days people understood and cooperated but then again, Delgado reminded himself and this had to be taken into account, in the old days the people who understood and cooperated were on
his
side. The enemy had never been so reasonable. “Things have changed,” he said again. “Only the premier and the highest levels of the government know how much they have but this is still no excuse for you. You took orders from a fool, you have given us a most serious difficulty here and you may have set back certain facets of our international relations by several years. We will have to take the most extreme measures.”

He opened the desk drawer again, this time very casually and took out a pistol. Feeling it slide into his hand, leaping into his palm almost as might a woman’s breast, Delgado had a flash of recollection: this was not 1974 but instead 1957 or so and it was not he who was standing behind the desk but another man, someone in the uniform of Battista’s secret police … and this person was levelling the gun at a form which only could have been Delgado’s.
Please don’t do this to me; I am a loyalist
, this recollected Delgado was pleading,
don’t kill me, don’t kill me
. The weakness of this remembered voice poured out, gasping through every syllable and Delgado had a sudden flash of revulsion, all the more difficult because it was unexpected. The same, he thought, it is always the same, the actors and the masks and the words change but when you come to the end nothing has changed whatsoever; we have merely turned the tables. I am no different from any of the others, Delgado is like everyone else. And he reacted against this.
No!
he screamed in memory and then realized that it was not memory at all but reality which had overtaken him and facing this quivering man it was the Delgado of the present who was screaming
no!
the cry driving slivers of pain all the way from hand and elbow and then he was firing the gun into the man in front of him, firing convulsively: head, throat, shoulders, heart, spleen and the man was changing before him; he was no longer a man but a bag filled with blood, the blood spurting and leaping like fire through all the little discovered openings of his body … and then the form was falling, burbling.

“God!” Delgado found himself shouting as the man lay before him, “This cannot be,” and then his interrogator’s calm returned to him as it always would (because the masks would never change and now he was the Official, the Interrogator) and he found himself looking at the corpse now, the exploding form on the floor with something that was not revulsion at all but came closer to a sense of command. “You cannot do this to us,” he said in a calm, flat tone, “you simply cannot do this kind of thing to us anymore,” and did not know if he was talking about the hijacking and the drugs or whether it was an entirely different matter but then his attention flicked to the man lying on the floor, the man he had beaten. Death in the room had revived this man, unconsciousness had fallen from him and he was sitting in a cramped position on the floor, arms wrapped around his knees, looking up at Delgado with the expression of a child. Yes, he had made children of both of them: that was the essence of power, to strip personality and control from people and turn them into the helpless creatures they had once been.

“No,” this man said. “No, please,” but although his mouth moved his eyes did not. They were curiously cold and resigned; they seemed to be saying that they were not responsible for the motions or the words of the mouth which was, after all, only performing a series of necessary gestures. You’re going to do it, the eyes were saying, so do it quickly and at least allow dignity and to this Delgado could respond. He levelled the Beretta.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m sorry,” and he almost was because he knew what he was killing now, it was not so much these men in the room as some earlier version of himself that he had had to repudiate for survival. But every death was a recoil, every murder a lashing back, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? Of course it was, that was the key to the delivery of death; you could only do it well if you knew what you were killing and then very quickly and precisely. Delgado knocked three shots off the trigger, driving them into the man’s skull, deep into the brain pan. The expression of the face did not change, the eyes did not change at all but only held that curious, cold glimmer of knowledge and then the man sprawled out below him on the floor, sinking away, the mass of his blood pooling with the other’s on the floor. And in that posture, dead, he was no longer Delgado but merely an anonymous man who had been killed.

Delgado put the pistol away in his drawer, closed it, and then went to the door. He opened it. The guard looked at him, caught in a posture of listening, his face looking very wet and strained. “Is it all right?” he said.