Mambo (35 page)

“Spies.”

“Spies is as good a word as any.”

“How do you know he isn't investing money on behalf of the cause? You don't have any evidence he's investing this cash for himself.”

“Not directly, no. All I can tell you is what I already said – funds are being diverted. And the likelihood that the cash has been invested for the cause is, let's face it, slim.”

Garrido, like a patient country doctor schooled in platitudes, spoke soothingly when he interrupted. “Sometimes too much money is too much temptation. A man can find weaknesses in himself he never suspected.”

“I believe in Rafael,” she said. She was hoarse; tension had dried her throat and mouth.

As if he hadn't heard her, as if he were just too wrapped up in his own ambitions to pay Magdalena any attention, Garrido continued in a mournful voice. “It's more than just the money. It's the violation of the trust we put in Rosabal. He was supposed to be our representative in Cuba. He was supposed to be spreading funds to make the democratic underground strong. He was the big man, the force behind the movement to overthrow Castro, he was preparing a coup, assembling a democratic alternative to Communism, and when the time came …” The old man paused and looked sad. He touched his lips with a linen napkin. “I was a part of it. I was going back to Cuba to serve in this new government. Now what? Now what, Magdalena? Where is the dream now? How can we know if there is any kind of strength or unity in the anti-Castro cause? How can we know if Castro is ever going to be deposed? Do you see what Rosabal has accomplished with his treachery, Magdalena? Confusion. Disappointment. Unhappiness.”

Magdalena stood up. She'd listened longer than she needed. What proof had these two men offered her of Rosabal's alleged larceny? It was unsubstantiated talk. It had its roots in Garrido's approaching senility, his unsupported mistrust of Rafael. Probably even jealousy – Garrido resented the younger man for staying in Cuba instead of fleeing, as he himself had done, into the safety of exile.

“Where are you going, Magdalena?” the old man asked.

“Home.”

“Are you going to ignore what Sergio has told you?”

She didn't answer. She stood, her hip pressed against the edge of the table, her weight on one leg.
Castro's a dead man
. She remembered how emphatically Rafael had said that in London. If Garrido and his side-kick, Duran, had heard him then, they wouldn't have entertained any doubts about his trust, and this obscene investigation need never have taken place.

“We're not finished, Magdalena,” Garrido said. “Please. Sit down.”

She refused. She took small, almost spiteful pleasure in denying Garrido. He said, “I didn't want to inflict any more on you, dear girl. But since you choose to defend Rosabal still, you leave me no real choice.”

Garrido nodded to Duran, who took an envelope from the inner pocket of his jacket. He opened then inverted it; photographs slid out on the table.

“Please, Magdalena, sit down,” and the old man gestured in a not unkindly manner, but still she refused him. She gazed at the coloured pictures that lay on the table. She had no desire to look at them closely.

“I took these in Havana,” Duran said. He isolated one, pushed it across the table. As if it were alive the photograph made a quiet sound that suggested breathing; it was the contact of shiny photographic paper on the surface of the table.

Magdalena squinted down at it.

“Pick it up,” Garrido said.

Why did her hand tremble? She didn't reach for it. She could make out Rafael's likeness without touching the thing.

Duran raised the picture, studied it. “This shows Rosabal getting into a car. Look at it carefully, if you will.”

She saw a car, rear door open, Rafael, beloved Rafael, bending slightly to step inside. Then she looked away. She stared across the room at the window; pinkish light lay on the opaque glass. A car backfired somewhere.

“This I took at Rafael's house outside Havana,” Duran said, and selected another photograph. Once more Magdalena glanced at the thing, seeing a flash of colour, shrubbery, a swimming-pool filled with turquoise water, and there was Rafael seated on the edge of the pool, beautiful in his black trunks, face turned slightly away from the camera.

“Lovely home,” Duran said. “He lives well.”

Magdalena drifted. She floated from this table, this room; she didn't need to see photographs.

“The young woman beside him in the car, the one who is holding his hand beside the pool …” Duran said, then faltered just a little. “That is his wife. Estela Alvarez Capablanca, daughter of General Capablanca. They were married a few months ago.”

Wife: the word exploded like thunder in Magdalena's head. And, like thunder, it rolled meaninglessly away, echoing even as it faded. Wife: it might have been a word from an alien dictionary, a signal sent out through space, travelling countless centuries before being picked up on this planet, in this city, this room now by Magdalena Torrente. How could Rosabal possibly have a wife?

Magdalena reached down, picked up the photographs, flicked through them. The woman was young and handsome in a way that was distinctly Spanish. The few photographs where she appeared she was invariably looking at Rafael with the eyes of an adoring wife, a new wife, one in whom love has barely flowered. Magdalena, dizzy, set the pictures back down. The tips of her fingers were suddenly chill; a sensation of cold tingled upon her spine and neck. A strange pressure built behind her eyes, and her heartbeat became arrhythmic.

“I am sorry,” Garrido said. “He has abused you as well as the cause. I am sorry, Magdalena.”

She barely heard Garrido's voice. She was tracking her own thoughts as if they were strangers eluding her. There had to be a simple explanation. There had to be a reason. Why had he never mentioned this woman, this wife, to her? Why, with the love they shared, had he never shared this information too? Reasons, all sorts of reasons – the wife was the daughter of the General, therefore the marriage might be political, a marriage of convenience. How could she know? How could she know anything? Unless she looked him in the face, unless she stared directly into his eyes, how could she know she'd been betrayed? She had only Duran's photographs to go on. And photographs, at best, were limited windows into reality.

But still her heart wouldn't beat regularly, and the cold had spread like a glacier from spine to scalp. Now the pressure was not located so much behind her eyes as it was in the very air around her, as if she were descending through unlit fathoms in a faulty bathysphere. She moved towards the door. She had to get out of this room and away from these two men and their
evidence
of treachery. She needed time alone, the clarity of solitude.

Neither Garrido nor Duran made any move to detain her. She stepped into the street and stood under a sky whose clouds had become an outrageous bright pink, a carnival colour far removed from what Magdalena Torrente felt.

Paris

At midday Frank Pagan arrived at Orly Airport and took a taxi driven by a chain-smoking Parisian who complained for miles about the economic policies of the Common Market, and how migrant workers were the scourge of all Europe. Pagan nodded politely from time to time and muttered
Mais oui, mais oui
, but he wasn't interested, and the man's patois was difficult to follow.

Pagan asked to be let out on the corner of the Avenue Victor Hugo in the sixteenth arrondissement, a little way before his ultimate destination. His eyes watered from cigarette smoke and his head throbbed as he walked in the direction of the Bois de Boulogne, slowly, deliberately, wary of pain.

Paris was overcast, damp, locked in the leaden grip of autumn; the greenery of the Bois had faded. The gutters were choked by fallen leaves. It wasn't a city that held personal associations for him. Once or twice he'd come here on business, but he knew the place only superficially, like a tourist. He checked Enrico Caporelli's address in his notebook. It was an exclusive apartment building about a hundred yards from where the taxi had dropped him. Grey, imposing, opulent in a stately way, it overlooked the Bois with the musty dignity possessed by the old apartment buildings of the very rich.

Pagan was confronted by a uniformed doorman as soon as he stepped inside the lobby. The doorman, haughty, a
Gauleiter
in burgundy cap and uniform with gold epaulettes, insisted on telephoning Caporelli before Pagan was allowed access to the lift.

Enrico Caporelli apparently was not perturbed by the prospect of an English policeman coming to call; Pagan was led promptly to the lift by the doorman, the iron gates were closed, and it rose in the shaft. He got out on the fifth floor. The corridor was dimly lit. Two men, both dark-suited and muscular in a way no subtle tailoring could ever conceal, greeted him – although there was nothing warm in their manner. They checked his identification, frisked him expertly, without apology. He hadn't brought a gun. When they were satisfied they ushered him into the vestibule of the apartment then withdrew, a pair of big gloomy ghosts vanishing in the dimness of their surrounds.

Enrico Caporelli appeared in a doorway. He wore a navy-blue robe and carpet slippers; somebody's diminutive uncle, Pagan thought. The quick handshake was firm and cool, the skin like smooth leather.

“They overprotect me,” Caporelli said. “Good men, but perhaps a little too diligent. Come with me, please.”

He led the way inside a study where heavy brocade curtains had been drawn against the windows. The room was lit only by an antique desk-lamp. Pagan, a little surprised by Caporelli's calm acceptance of a policeman's presence, sat down on one side of the desk and wondered about the two bodyguards and whether they came with the territory of the rich. Caporelli drew up a chair facing Pagan and pushed a cigar box across the desk. Pagan declined to smoke.

“I have read about you in the British newspapers, of course,” Caporelli said. There was a hint of New York in the Italian accent. A man without a country, Pagan thought. Or perhaps one with many countries. “You've become quite a famous man, Mr Pagan.”

Pagan brushed this aside. He'd been played up a great deal in the newspapers lately, but if that was fame then it was a kind he didn't want; it was the notoriety of a man who has survived a tragedy – an airline disaster, a sinking ship. In the circumstances, he preferred anonymity.

“First the unfortunate killings, now the business with the missile.” Caporelli looked sympathetic. “I am a little surprised you have come to see me. I cannot imagine how I can help you. Of course,” and here was the little shrug of a man prepared to do favours, “I will always help the police in any way I can. In Italy, for instance, I co-operate with the police beyond the call of any citizen's duty. Ask them. They'll tell you.”

“I'm sure you're an exemplary citizen,” Pagan said. Dark curtains drawn against the light of day, bodyguards in the corridor: what was Enrico Caporelli afraid of? Kidnapping? Violence of the kind practised by certain Italian radicals? “But I haven't come to Paris to discuss your good behaviour, Signor Caporelli.”

“Somehow this does not surprise me,” Caporelli said. “How can I assist you?”

“You were in Britain recently, I understand.”

Caporelli tipped his chair back and looked up at the dark ceiling. Painted there, but obscured by the bad light, was an impression of an angel's gold wing, vast and still. “Yes,” he said. “Why is that of interest to you?”

Pagan didn't answer. He sailed straight ahead. Unanswered questions often created a useful uncertainty. He took out his notebook and used it as an actor might a stage prop, flicking pages meaninglessly, pretending to search for something in particular. “You went to Glasgow.”

“I have business there, Mr Pagan,” the Italian said. “Now and again I like to check on it. I had no idea my movements would attract official attention.”

Pagan longed to draw the curtains and let daylight fill the room. “Who did you meet in Glasgow?”

“What would happen if I refuse to answer you?”

Pagan allowed this question to pass unanswered also. There wasn't any sharp response to it anyway; Caporelli could refuse to say a word. That was his prerogative. The important thing, from Pagan's point of view, was to keep rolling along. “Did you meet a man called Rafael Rosabal?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Caporelli appeared amused by Pagan's bluntness. “He keeps me informed of events in Cuba. A long time ago, I lived there. I like to have news of my old friends on the island. Call me sentimental.”

Sentimental, no, Pagan thought. There was nothing soft-centred about Enrico. “The Cuban Minister of Finance, a member of Castro's government, brings you news of your friends? Isn't that an odd arrangement? How does Rosabal justify this … service? Does his government know he meets you?”

“You sound melodramatic, Mr Pagan. It's all very innocent, I assure you. Years ago, I knew Rosabal's family. The connection has never been broken. Besides, Rosabal and I never, never, discuss politics. I have no interest in Cuban affairs.”

Was this a lie? Pagan wondered. Caporelli had a certain easy plausibility about him, but Pagan couldn't quite get a handle on Rosabal's angle in this. Why would the Cuban ferry news to Caporelli?

“Why did you have to go to Glasgow to meet?”

“It was convenient for me,” Caporelli answered.

“And for him?”

Caporelli gestured in a manner capable of only one interpretation:
I
don't give a damn about his convenience, Pagan
. It was easy to see who had the upper hand between the Italian and the Cuban. Rosabal was clearly ready to be inconvenienced. But why? It wasn't adding up; Caporelli was sliding past another element, something that sent Rafael scurrying to Glasgow. A hold, perhaps; or Caporelli had something Rosabal badly wanted. Pagan pressed his fingertips into his eyelids. Guessing games, no bone-hard facts. He needed links solid enough to create a strong chain.