Mambo (49 page)

For a moment his mood changed. He was elated. He'd come this far without impediment. Even when a car slowed alongside him he didn't let this new frame of mind dissolve immediately. He continued to walk, didn't look at the car, kept his face forward. But when he became conscious of a face perusing him from the window of the vehicle, he understood he was being tracked by a police car, and his sense of confidence slipped quickly.

Calm, Frank. Keep walking. Pay no attention. Pretend you're strolling home after a night on the town – or what there is of it in this place.

The car accelerated, went past him. On the next corner it braked, came to a stop. Pagan kept walking. He saw the door of the car open and a bulky figure emerge just ahead of him.
Can't chat, sorry, got to keep moving
. The cop stood in the centre of the pavement with his legs spread slightly apart; he clearly meant to halt Pagan. Perhaps some strange law existed about being on the streets after a certain time. Or perhaps Pagan simply looked suspicious, the late-night straggler whose presence was of universal interest to passing cops.

Shit. There would be questions in Spanish, a request for papers, documents, visas, the whole can of bloody worms.
I am a deaf mute
, Pagan thought. Would that act work?

Pagan didn't slacken his stride. He'd come this far and he wasn't about to be thwarted by any overweight Cuban cop. There was only one way through this, and it wasn't bluff. He stared at the pavement as he moved, raising his face only when he was within reach of the policeman, smiling, looking nice, friendly, even innocently puzzled by the cop's presence. He bunched one of his large hands when he was no more than seven or eight inches from the cop, who was already asking him a question in belligerent Spanish.

The punch was gathered from Pagan's depths, coming up from a place level with his hip, up and up, a fine arc that carved through air, creating an uppercut the policeman saw but couldn't avoid. The connection of knuckle on chin was painfully satisfying to Pagan, even though the overweight cop didn't go down immediately. He staggered back and Pagan advanced, connecting with a second punch, this one – viciously unfair – directly into the thickness of flesh round the larynx, a hard sharp blow that caused the cop's eyes to roll in his head. He went over this time, flat on his back with his legs wide.

Pagan hurried away, knuckles aching. He was pleased with the swift accuracy of the performance – he hadn't lost his touch; but what troubled him was the effort it had involved and the way he felt drained as he quickened his stride through drab streets of a city strange to him.

Cabo Gracias a Dios, Honduras

Three hours before first light Tomas Fuentes gave the final orders for the evacuation of the camp; he brought together the squadron leaders and their men. In their neat khaki fatigues they looked smart and trim, fighting men. Fuentes, who had a very big pistol holstered on his left hip, spoke through a PA system. He wished his men well in events that lay just ahead.

Five hundred of them would be going on board two battleships that were presently anchored off the Cape. Six hundred more would be taking to the sea in frigates and transport ships. There would be extensive air cover from Skyhawks, Harriers and F-16s providing protection for amphibious landing-craft. The landing beaches would be unprotected; military manoeuvres had ensured the absence of Cuban troops, who were on the other side of the island. Bombing and strafing from the air would knock out any small pockets of Cuban air defences that were still manned; munitions stores and lines of communication would be destroyed quickly. Tanks and field-guns, unloaded from the ships, would be deployed on the road to Havana; beyond Santiago de Cuba there might be extensive fighting with the
fidelistas
. It was not expected to result in anything but victory for the forces of freedom, Fuentes declared. Besides – and here Tomas paused for effect – it was now known that Fidel was incapacitated and couldn't lead his troops, which was certain to be a blow to Communist morale. This brought cheers from the assembly.

This invasion, Fuentes said, was different from before in every respect. This time they were prepared. This time they had amazing support from their freedom-loving brothers in the Cuban armed forces. This time there would be a popular revolt inside Cuba. This time Castro was hated. In 1961 he'd been revered – well, by God, all that was changed. Cuba was miserable and downtrodden and the people sick to death.

Fuentes looked at his watch. Within four hours, the missile would be in place in Cuba, where it would be made ready to fly upon Miami. Shortly thereafter landing-parties would arrive on the beaches and the first air strikes would occur against Communist bases and airfields. As soon as the freedom forces had established their control of Santiago and launched their initial advance along the Central Highway – joined by anti-Castro Cuban troops and the counterrevolutionary resistance – satellite photographs of the offensive missile would be released to every newspaper in the Western world. Fuentes imagined the headlines.
Castro Planned Missile Strike on USA. Aborted By Invasion Force and Popular Cuban Uprising
. Later, there would be pictures of technicians destroying the missile. Fuentes, who had a natural hunger for publicity, would make sure he got into these shots somewhere.

More than thirty years, Tomas said. It was too long a time. More than thirty dry years of wishing and wanting and longing and hating.

Libertad
! he shouted.
Viva Cuba Libre
! His amplified voice tumbled away in the breeze.

He saluted his men, who broke ranks and headed in an orderly manner toward the beaches.

Tomas Fuentes, who would fly to Cuba on one of the F-16s and land as soon as the fighter-planes had done their demolition work, went inside his tent for the last time. After today, the whole camp would be a mere memory. Bosanquet followed him. Both men sat for a few minutes in silence. This quiet was broken by the noise of bulldozers churning over the pathways between tents, obliterating all traces of this small temporary city; soon the jungle would have ascendance again, the landscape would take back that which had been borrowed from it.

“I hate this goddam place, but I'll miss it,” Fuentes said with the snarl in his voice of a man who considers sentimentality a weakness.

Bosanquet concurred. In a moment he'd rise and go to his own tent and there dismantle the radio. He wanted to wait until the very last moment to do so, because he had been expecting a message from Harry Hurt – a rousing speech, some fine words of encouragement – but the radio had been silent for many hours now.

Perhaps Harry maintained his silence for reasons of security.

Yes, Bosanquet thought. That had to be it.

Harry believed in security.

Havana

The woman who answered the door was the one Magdalena had seen in Duran's photographs. She was pretty if you liked a certain fine-boned Castilian look. Her hair, which normally she would have worn pulled back like a skullcap and tied, was loose and lustrous and hung over her white shoulders; her deep-brown eyes, the colour of bitter-sweet chocolate, were her best feature. Her mouth was ample and she had a fine straight nose.

“Yes?”

Magdalena, who very lightly touched the gun concealed in her pocket, said nothing for a moment. She realised that she'd been floating along on the possibility that Duran's photographs were fakes prepared by him for some vindictive reason of his own. She hadn't wanted to believe in the existence of this woman, this Estela. Now, faced with the reality, she felt as if her blood had begun to run backward. Her voice was unsteady. “I want to see Rafael.”

The woman stared at Magdalena as if she'd been expecting her. “He's out,” she said. “He should be back soon.”

“I'll wait if you don't mind.” Magdalena stepped into the apartment, which smelled of something very sweet, like lavender water. She hadn't expected Rafael to be absent. She made absolutely sure the woman was telling the truth by strolling uninvited through the apartment. Estela, protesting, followed her. Artwork, reminiscent of old-fashioned Cubism, hung on the walls. The entire place was lit by dull table lamps which cast an odd yellow light through their shades. Magdalena went into the bathroom, then the kitchen. They were empty.

“What are you looking for?” Estela asked. “I didn't ask you to come in. What do you want here?”

Inside the bedroom Magdalena saw crushed white sheets, a jar of skin lotion on the bedside table, a silk robe she recognised as Rafe's lay across the bed. There was an intimacy here she couldn't take. Rafael and his wife in this bed, bodies locked together: this dreadful picture reared up in her mind. Did he experience the passion with his wife that he did with her? Was it the same? How could it be? Nothing could have that scalding intensity.

Back in the living-room Estela said, “Are you satisfied now? What did you hope to find anyway?”

“Where is he?”

“He had business to attend to.” Estela sat down again and looked at an electric clock on a shelf. “Why do you want to see him?”

“Do you really want to know?” Magdalena asked.

“I'm not sure.” Estela was quiet. The clock made a slight humming noise. “I have a feeling about you. You and Rafael. A feeling. As soon as I saw you on the doorstep. And then the way you just walked through the apartment …”

“What kind of feeling?”

“Not a good one.”

Magdalena had one of those small vicious urges, experienced so rarely in her lifetime, to smack this young thing across the face, but she let the desire go. Was it Estela's fault that she was the wife of Rafael? Estela probably knew nothing of Magdalena's existence. Besides, there was something pleasant about Señora Rosabal, an unexpected intelligence in the eyes. This was no air-head, no mindless bimbo, to decorate Rafe's arm. There were depths to Estela Capablanca Rosabal. This realisation only made Magdalena feel more endangered than before; Rafe could love this woman, and it would be almost understandable. It didn't have to be a political marriage, a match of mere convenience:
He might actually love this woman for her own sake
.

Magdalena said, “We're friends. I've known Rafe a long time.”

“No, you're more than friends. I get the impression …” Estela didn't complete her sentence. She made a small gesture with her hand, palm upturned, as if she despaired of words.

Magdalena was silent. She might have said
Yes, yes, we fuck; we meet in foreign cities and we fuck our brains out
, but she didn't. She had come to confront Rafael, not his young bride.

Estela said a little sadly, “Sometimes I imagined there was another woman in his life. I didn't know who. You're very beautiful. What's your name?”

Magdalena told the woman. Estela repeated the name quietly a couple of times. “It has a nice sound.”

Magdalena wandered to the window, drew back the curtain, looked down into the street. It was all too civilised, she thought. This meeting, the way Estela purred over her name and looks, the politeness. She wished Rafael would come back and she could get the confrontation over with one way or another. This apartment where Rafe lived with his young wife was making her feel weird, off-centre. Her head ached. Rafael doesn't live here, she thought. Not the Rafael you know. It's somebody else. A stranger.

“You love him?” Estela asked.

“Yes.”
Despite it all, yes, yes, yes
.

Estela Rosabal hesitated: “Does he love you?”

“He married you, not me.”

“He didn't tell you he was married, did he?”

“What Rafael told me or didn't tell me is none of your concern.”

“I think it is,” Estela laid her hands on her lap. The wedding ring flashed under lamplight. “Anything that involves my husband affects me too. That's the way it is. Tell me why you have to see him.”

Magdalena gazed at the street. She could see a small swimming-pool, surrounded by a fence, to her left. A shimmering light burned under the surface of blue-green water.

How reasonable Estela sounded, how collected. What reserves of strength did she have that allowed her to handle her husband's mistress with no displays of hysteria? It wasn't fair, Magdalena thought. She could never have behaved with such dignity and resolve herself. The young woman had grace beyond her years. Magdalena was jealous now, and not just because of the insight she had into the life Rafe shared here with his wife. Something else. The other woman's youth. Her enviable maturity. The quietly reasonable manner that concealed firmness and iron. These were qualities Magdalena realised she had recently lost in herself. In loving Rosabal she had given up more than she'd ever really imagined.
I
was going to be independent. My own person. When I married Rafe I was going to be more than just his wife. Married, dear Christ
!

Something cold went through her. Below, wind altered the smooth surface of the pool, creating concentric circles of disturbance.

“Tell me why you need to see him,” Estela said. She got up from the sofa and stood some feet from Magdalena, her arms folded under her breasts. Perfect breasts, Magdalena thought. Perfect skin. Smooth and unblemished, unworried as yet by time. There would be no anxious scrutiny of that fine, strong, young face in mirrors, no depression when age made another unkind incision. In the future, sure; but when you were as young as Estela age was like death and disease – it never happened to you, always to somebody else.

Magdalena was filled with a sudden resentment of Estela so fierce it surprised her. The Señora had youth, she had Rafe, she shared his life, his world, the future in which Magdalena was supposed to figure so prominently. What was left to the rejected mistress? What was she supposed to do with this sense of loss?

A car drew up in the street below. Magdalena moved back from the window. “Does he have a BMW?” she asked.