Mambo (44 page)

No more. Before this day was out it would be boxed for burial, with nobody to weep for it.

President Rafael Rosabal. He liked the sound of it. Rosabal's regime would be neither democratic nor, like that of Castro, puritanical and prohibitive. It would be a benign dictatorship, at least in the beginning; somewhere along the way, years from now, there might be a measure of popular participation. But first the people had to be weaned from the mindlessness in which Castro had raised them, they had to be freed from the shop-worn cant of Marxism. The citizens were like little kids who'd never chewed on anything but the mush provided to them by Fidel. They had to be led to the table and shown how to use a knife and fork and eat real food.

Those disgusting agencies of grass-roots espionage, the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution, would be abolished and their leaders jailed. The ministries, bureaucracies gone mad with that special insanity of paperwork, would be stripped to nothing and the ministers demoted or incarcerated. He would be cautious at first about the use of firing-squads: why alienate the West as Fidel had done thirty years ago? The nightclubs would open again and there would be gambling and if a man wanted a prostitute in Havana, that was his own business; the government would take its cut. Sin would be highly taxed.

American and European investors would be courted avidly, Soviet advisors ejected. Nor would Rosabal be blackmailed by the demands of the United States for representative democracy and human rights legislation; in any event, the Americans would be so gratified, at least for years to come, by the end of Cuban Communism, that political and social “irregularities” would be overlooked.

Rosabal thought of Cuba as a big dark arena; and he had his hand on the generator that would set it brilliantly alight. His hand, nobody else's. And because he controlled the generator, he had access not only to light but wealth, great wealth, obscene wealth, the kind of riches that a boy from Guantanamo Province should not even dream about. He'd milk Cuba; he'd plunder it as it had never been plundered before. And he'd do it with a benefactor's smile on his face for an exultant populace that considered him a hero, the one who had rid Cuba of Castro.

Havana dwindled, the shoreline receded. Twelve miles out a yacht appeared, a dark-hulled fifty-footer, equipped with communications hardware and a mass of antennae. A light blinked three times. Rosabal knew the signal. He was to board the yacht,
La Danzarina del Mar
.

The cigarette-boat moved alongside
La Danzarina
. Rosabal reached for the rope ladder that hung from the side of the yacht and climbed nimbly up to the deck.

“Rafael, my friend.”

The man who stepped toward Rosabal had a pleasant smile, although not one that Rosabal readily trusted. Despite the fact it was night, he wore tinted glasses. He was dressed in a double-breasted blazer and smart grey flannels and expensive sneakers which looked as if they'd never been worn before. They squeaked on the teak deck.

Hands were clasped, warmly shaken. Both men walked along the deck; in the shadows white-shirted crew members kept careful watch, as if they expected a murderous assault from the ocean. Rosabal leaned against the handrail. Havana was almost imperceptible now. There were brief flickers of lightning from the Gulf of Mexico, far to the west.

“It doesn't look like much from here, does it, Rafael?”

Rosabal agreed.

“Just the same, a whole lot of people have gone to a whole lot of trouble over that island, Rafael. A speck on the globe, nothing more. And it gets all kinds of people in a lather.”

“A hundred thousand square kilometres of real estate,” Rosabal said.

“Which makes people very greedy.”

“As you say.”

The man took off his tinted glasses. “Are you going to give me what I want, Rafael?”

“Of course. You have my word.”

“No Communist experiments. No flirting with the Soviet bloc. You want loans, you want agricultural machinery, you want certain types of weapons, you want technical advisors, you come to Washington. I don't expect you to smell like a rose, Rafael. You're going to be a very rich man, and very rich men never smell quite right somehow. But I expect you to play fair with me and my government. We're prepared to overlook some things – after all, you've got a long teething period to go through. Just don't overdo it. No excesses, no blatant transgressions, and we'll all be happy.” The man was silent, gazing toward Cuba with a proprietorial air. “Let's face it, the Caribbean is America's swimming-pool, Rafael. Nobody wants litter in their pool, do they? Nobody wants to swim in dirty water.”

“We have a firm agreement. I will not go back on anything.” Rosabal looked closely at the other man. He noticed for the first time a flesh-coloured strip of Bandaid at the side of the man's forehead.

“Been in the wars, Allen?”

Allen Falk patted the back of Rosabal's hand. “Your people got their timing wrong.”

“I heard about it. What can I say? They're zealous men.”

“They blew up the limo before they were supposed to. I happened to be a spectator. It's nothing.”

Rafael Rosabal smiled. “We made amends, of course. Harry Hurt was shot some hours ago in Washington.”

Falk slid his hands into the pockets of his blazer. He looked like an amateur yachtsman readying himself for a photograph. “Poor Harry and that goddam society of his. Greedy men. Men like that always want more. They don't know when to stop.”

“They were very useful. They served a purpose.”

Both men were silent. The wind blew again, flapping Falk's pants against his legs, tossing Rosabal's collar up against his cheek, shaking the antennae on board.

Rosabal enjoyed how he'd played the Society for all it was worth, how he'd borrowed men from General Capablanca's Secret Service, his private corps of élite killers; shadowy, lethal men who had all the feelings of machines, how they'd murdered the members of the Society – each of whom thought his membership such a big secret – one by one. Now the Society was dying, and with it all its hopes of controlling Cuba. Hurt and Caporelli and the others had been used, deceived in the most brutal way; they'd financed an army, stolen a missile, purchased a counter-revolution – and for what?

So that Rafael Rosabal could become the new President of a new Cuba.

Falk said, “There was one tiny fruit-fly in our nice shiny apple, Rafael. A British cop called Pagan.” Falk looked at his watch, a slender disk on his wrist. “He wanted to talk to you about Gunther Ruhr, as I understand. Keen sort of guy. Anxious to get Ruhr.”

“Pagan,” Rosabal said, thinking of London, of Magdalena, the hotel room. He remembered Frank Pagan. “I notice you use the past tense.”

Al Falk, city dweller, accustomed only to the copper-tinted broth of pollution, took an exaggerated lungful of sea air. “One of Harry Hurt's last acts was to arrange for Pagan's demise. He knew all these
Soldier of Fortune
nuts who kill for five hundred bucks. Frank Pagan is probably dead by this time.”

Rosabal frowned. Why did he feel a small cloud cross his mind just then? He thought of Magdalena and wondered if she had been a source of information for the English policeman – but what could Magdalena possibly tell Pagan anyhow? Nothing that could ever be proved. She could at best babble about how democracy was on its way to Cuba, and perhaps how she had ferried money for the new revolution, and the part she expected to play in Cuba's future; that was it, that was all. Silly chatter.
Balbuceo
, nothing more. And Magdalena was good at it; she was just as good at babbling about her Cuban dreams as she was in bed.

He asked, “How did Pagan connect Ruhr to me?”

Falk drummed a hand on the rail and said, “It's my understanding that you rented a house for the German. You were remembered. Bad move, Rafael. You could have found somebody else to rent the place on your behalf.”

“There wasn't anybody else. Who could I have trusted? In any case, it had to be done quickly. There was no time to think. Every policeman in Britain was looking for Ruhr.”

Rosabal remembered the haste with which he had to find an isolated house where Ruhr could be hidden. He'd been moving too fast to think with any real clarity. When he'd rented the farmhouse, he did so under Jean-Paul Chapotin's name, believing that if the police discovered Ruhr's hiding-place, they would never associate Gunther with the Cuban Minister of Finance. Instead, they might dig into Chapotin's life and find their way into the Society of Friends, which would have served its purpose by that time and become excess baggage. One of those moments, rare in Rosabal's life, when he'd mistaken quick thinking for cleverness; the crazy old broad who'd rented the place to him had a sharper memory than he'd thought. She must have described him at least well enough for him to be identified.

But none of this mattered now.

In a few short hours, dawn would be breaking.

Falk said, “What about Freddie Kinnaird?”

Rosabal was quiet for a moment, as if he were deciding, in the manner of an emperor, Kinnaird's fate. “Freddie has been very helpful. He always kept us informed of the Society's plans and the members' movements. Friends in high places are usually useful.”

“I hear a but, Rafael.”

“Your hearing's good. It has to come to an end for Freddie. It's over. I'll issue the order personally.”

“He expected a generous slice of Cuba,” Falk said.

“Then his expectations are not going to be fulfilled. He knows too much. A man with his kind of knowledge can be a nuisance.”

Falk paused a moment, as if Kinnaird's fate troubled him. Then he said, “Speaking of friends in high places, your friends in Washington send their greetings and look forward to your success.”

“I'm grateful,” Rosabal said.

He turned his face to Florida. Miami was where those troublesome
idiotas
gathered, those roaring political dreamers who banged their drums for freedom and talked in the cafés in Little Havana and in large houses in Key Biscayne about taking Cuba back. They were fools, and potentially bothersome to Rosabal. Men like Garrido and his large network of cronies, the bankers and politicians and restaurateurs, the TV station proprietors and Hispanic newspapermen and rich doctors, all the money men who were in the vanguard of the Committee for the Restoration of Democracy in Cuba – they were his future enemies. After all, he had stolen from them; and what he had taken was more than just cash.

Were they likely to leave him alone after Castro had been toppled?

Of course not. They would turn against him when they understood he had no intention of bringing their kind of democracy to Cuba. Left to themselves, they would go on raising funds and promoting their moronic ideals and stirring up endless trouble for him; they wouldn't leave him in peace.

And Magdalena. Don't forget Magdalena.

She would come to haunt him in time. When she discovered how she had been betrayed, she'd find a way somehow to make his life difficult. These were not guesses; these were certainties he had understood from the very beginning.

He couldn't allow anyone to trouble him. He had come too far. Everything was within his grasp; he had only to reach a little further.

Falk said, “We have detailed satellite photographs in our possession. All we need now are photographs of the missile
in situ
on Cuba. I don't want anything that looks faked. I want good clear pictures of the missile on its launcher. I don't want anybody to be in a position to accuse us of doctoring anything, if such a situation should ever arise.”

“You'll have wonderful pictures,” Rosabal said.

He turned his face away from Florida. Lightning came out of the west again, illuminating sea and sky with bright silver. Rosabal enjoyed the stark brightness, the light-show. A storm was gathering in that direction and the wind that sloughed round the yacht was stronger than before. He thought briefly of the signed order, purportedly from the Lider Maximo, that Capablanca had in his possession. The signature was a forgery, but what did that matter? Good forgeries went undetected as long as people were desperate to believe they were the real thing. How many forged paintings hung in museums? How many fake historical documents lay in glass display cabinets?

Falk said, “As soon as the pictures are taken, I expect to receive your message that the missile has been destroyed.”

“I see no problem with that. It's exactly as we agreed.”

“I'm still just a little worried about your technicians, Rafael,” Falk replied.

“Why? They know how to disarm a nuclear warhead. After all, they learned something from their Soviet masters. They're good men. They know exactly what to do. Believe me. Besides, what is the alternative? To send in some American technicians? Direct US involvement?”

Falk, his hair made unruly by wind, leaned against the rail. Open US involvement was not an option. If Rafael was convinced of his technicians' qualifications, why should he bicker and worry? He said, “Expect the full media treatment, Rafael. The man who dismantled Castro and his missile. You'll be a hero.”

Rosabal said, “I expect nothing for myself. Only for Cuba.”

Bullshit
, Falk thought. “A certain amount of fame is inevitable, Rafael.”

“Possibly,” Rosabal said. “But Cuba comes first.”

Falk looked toward the island. His heart fluttered in his chest, as if he'd been given his first French kiss; after more than thirty years of longing, and watching, and waiting, he was going to see Castro fall. In the intensity of his desire he was blind to any other possibilities; failure was not even a consideration. Everything was going to fit together and function. He believed in cycles of history; the circle in which Castro would be crushed was almost closed.

He turned his face back to Rosabal, remembering now how they had first met during a conference of the Organisation of American States in Costa Rica five years ago. The subject of the conference had been the economics of Central American republics, and the massive debts most of them had incurred. Far from the public arena, from the podium where delegates made their angry official speeches and railed at the unjust practices of the World Bank, they discovered a common interest in the future of Cuba after Fidel. They spent many hours together in a quiet resort hotel near the coast, enjoying the excellent pina coladas, the late-night visitations of exquisite call-girls, and – above all else – a sense of conspiracy that was aphrodisiacal. Although both men were initially discreet, circumspect to the point of obscurity, their mutual confidence grew and they talked more openly as the days passed; it was vividly clear to each of them that unless Fidel were “removed” then Cuba was doomed.