The Man Who Loved Dogs (68 page)

“You were touched by Trotsky’s breath on your neck,” Alfred Rosmer told him, and, smiling, explained the manifestations of that paralyzing spell and the way it had affected, for example, a man as hardened and sure of himself as André Breton.

On June 10, when he picked up the phone and heard his mentor’s voice, Ramón felt his hands nearly trembling as he received the order to leave for New York in a couple of days. What was happening?

“Should I travel with all of my things?” he asked.

“Only what’s necessary. Keep the cabin. Madame Roberts will get you at the airport,” Tom said, and hung up without saying goodbye.

If they were ordering him to leave his belongings, it meant that the operation was still in motion. His spirits lifted immediately, and as he separated out the clothing he would send to the dry cleaners, he removed the mountaineer’s ice axe from the locked suitcase. He took it in his hands, weighed it again, struck the air three or four times, and convinced himself that it could be the ideal weapon. The only problem was that its downward motion was complicated by the length of the grip, which
prevented the wrist’s free motion at the time of the blow, but cutting the wood would resolve that difficulty. The problem was what to do with it during his stay in New York. Leaving it in the cabin, at the mercy of the cleaning ladies, was dangerous, and he decided to search for a hiding place. Although he could have bought a similar one at any sports store, Ramón felt that that ice axe was his.

The morning of the twelfth, by previous agreement with Harold Robbins, he took the Buick and drove to Coyoacán. Since one of the cars of the house had been damaged when the Mexican attackers fled in it, Jacques had decided to leave them his for the time he would be in New York, so they could use it if there was an emergency. With his suitcase in the trunk, he stopped by the complex’s offices, turned in his keys, and paid in advance for the rest of June. A few miles from the camp, he turned down a dirt road he had covered on other occasions, and between some porous rocks placed on one side of the path he hid the ice axe.

As they had agreed, Jake Cooper was waiting for him to take him to the airport and go back to Coyoacán in the Buick. All the guards, with the exception of Hansen, who was assigned to the main tower at that moment, came out to the street to say goodbye. Jacson said that he hoped to return as soon as possible, since everything seemed to indicate that, thanks to the war, Mr. Lubeck had some promising business lined up in the country. That night, when it was beginning to get dark, the airplane in which the Canadian Frank Jacson was traveling took off for New York.

Ramón couldn’t remember the last time that a meeting with Caridad brought him happiness. His mother, dressed with the elegance befitting Mrs. Roberts, received him with her usual disquieting kiss, and Ramón could taste that she had been drinking some cognac. Roberts was waiting for them at nine at a restaurant very close to Central Park, Caridad said, and immediately announced that everything was on the verge of going into motion.

“I’m afraid, Ramón,” the woman said, taking refuge in the Catalan language, which would be difficult for the Irish-looking taxi driver to understand.

“Afraid of what, Caridad?”

“Afraid for you.”

“What chance does Tom think I have of getting out?”

“He’ll tell you eighty percent, but he knows that you barely have thirty
percent. He’s going to convince you of the opposite, but he can’t fool me. They’re going to kill you . . .”

“You’re just realizing that now?”

Ramón thought about his mother’s words. He knew that she was as capable of telling the truth as she was of lying to make him desist and, in her strange way, protect and control him. But if she herself had pushed him in that direction, why was she trying to dissuade him now, when she knew it was impossible to turn back? Ramón was convinced that he would never fully understand his mother’s paradoxes.

“I know I’ll manage to get out,” Ramón said. “I’ve been there and I can get out if I have support. You worry about getting me that; leave the rest to me.”

“I couldn’t stand it if they killed you,” Caridad said, and looked away at the illuminated windows of Fifth Avenue, in which, with tiresome frequency, American flags were displayed. Those flags and the uniformed servicemen who could be seen every once in a while were the only obvious signs of the war, so far off for most New Yorkers.

“Do any of us really matter that much to you?” Perhaps due to the certainty that he would very soon die, Ramón felt petty and powerful. “I would’ve never imagined. Don’t you still think that the cause is above everything, including family? Are you losing heart?”

They left the suitcase at the hotel on Lexington Avenue and walked the seven or eight blocks to the restaurant. The June night was pleasantly cool and he placed his raincoat on his arm. Caridad was walking so close to him that their shoulders touched frequently and it was difficult to look at each other as they spoke.

“Sometimes I think I should’ve never gotten you involved in all of this,” she said.

“Are you going to tell me once and for all what in the hell is wrong with you now?”

“I already told you, dammit, I’m afraid.”

“Who would’ve imagined!” Ramón said sarcastically, and remained silent for a few moments.

“Don’t be an imbecile, Ramón. Think a little bit. Doesn’t it seem strange that the Mexicans who organized all of that shooting weren’t able to kill anyone?”

Ramón agreed and had been thinking the same thing since the day of
the attack, but he preferred not to involve Caridad in his doubts regarding what had happened that predawn morning.

The brasserie had an authentic air and reminded Ramón of the place where, two years before, they had met with George Mink in Paris. Roberts welcomed him with a hug like an old, dear friend. Loyal to his habits, he prompted Caridad and Ramón to try the dishes he considered to be the most attractive and picked the wine, a full-bodied 1936 Château Lafite Rothschild with a delicate bouquet that left a faint taste of violets on the palate that brought back memories of Ramón’s buried life. Roberts announced that they would not talk about work, but it was difficult to avoid the subject that had brought them together. According to the latest news, the Germans were at Paris’s door. The Soviets, Roberts stated, were not going to stand by with their arms crossed and were preparing to complete the reinforcement of their borders with the occupation of the Baltic republics. That was war, he said.

The following morning Roberts picked up Frank Jacson at his hotel and they traveled to Coney Island. Roberts preferred that Caridad not be present, and Ramón appreciated it. In view of the sea, over which some gulls were flying, Roberts opened the collar of his shirt and slid down the wood of the bench. It appeared that the only motive for that excursion was his eternal eagerness to drink in the sun.

“Why didn’t you call me or say anything to me before leaving?”

“Kid, you have no idea what’s happened.”

The failure of the Mexicans’ attack had forced them to evacuate several people who had participated in the preparations, among them Grigulievich and Felipe. Later he had to prepare a detailed report, send it to Moscow, and await new instructions.

“Can you imagine a very, very put-out Stalin? Asking for blood, hearts, heads, and testicles, including yours—I mean mine?” he said, and lowered his hand to between his thighs, as if to confirm that his testicles were still there. “I had to convince him that the failure had not been our fault and that, in any event, the commotion doesn’t hurt us.”

“So why did those imbeciles fail?”

Roberts turned his gaze from the sun and focused on Ramón.

“Because they’re idiots and cowards. They did everything with fear. They got drunk before entering the house. They thought that it was some kind of Wild West movie and that everything could be solved with a lot
of gunshots. Felipe tried to impose order, but he couldn’t do it alone with all of those scared, drunk animals. It was a disaster. They couldn’t even burn the old man’s papers. The one who was supposed to lead the action said at the last minute that he would wait outside, and the one who had the order to enter the house and kill the Duck was one of the first to go running out when he heard the engine of the car start. When Felipe wanted to take on the task, he was almost killed by them. Their shots crossed and no one could get close to the house.”

“What about Sheldon?”

“He did his part; he’s not to blame for everyone else’s failure . . . We’re going to get him out of Mexico as soon as possible. He’s the only one who knows anything and we can’t risk the police getting their hands on him.” Roberts fell into a long silence. He lit a cigarette. “Now it’s your turn, Ramón. If you don’t complete the mission, neither you nor I are going to find any fucking place in the world to hide. Can I trust in you?”

Ramón recalled his conversation with Caridad the previous night and the superiority that he felt the whole time.

“What do you think my chances are of getting out?”

Roberts thought. He was looking at the sea and smoking.

“Thirty percent,” he said. “If you do everything right, I think fifty. I’m going to be honest with you, because you deserve it and I need you to know what you’re going to do and what you’re risking. If you do things as you should, you have a fifty percent chance of leaving that house on your own feet. If not, two things can happen to you: either they kill you right there or they hand you over to the police. If they hand you over, you go to jail, but you can count on all of our support to the end. You’ll have the best lawyers and we’re going to work to get you out somehow. I give you my word. I’ll ask you again: Can I trust in you?”

The sea off Coney Island is different than that of El Empordà. One is the open Atlantic, cut through by great waves, and the other one is the warm and peaceful Mediterranean, Ramón thought, and concluded that he preferred the beaches of El Empordà. Observing the coast and the restless gulls, he said:

“This sand looks dirty,” and added: “Yes. Of course we’re going to do it.”

With a bouquet of roses in his hands, Jacques Mornard realized that, in all his life, Ramón had never bought flowers for any woman. He felt a
little sorry for him, for the commitments and struggles that his times had pushed him toward, robbing him of the carefreeness of youth and many of the stressful maneuvers of love. It was all the more sad that Jacques was traveling in a taxi with that splendid bouquet of flowers in order to give them to a woman he was using like a marionette and with whom he had to make love with his eyes closed, his secret mission hiding behind every caress. He recalled the women with whom Ramón had been involved in his youth, furious militants who tended to be as removed from romantic gestures as he was. His great love, África, would not have allowed him that romantic expression, which she would have labeled decadent while labeling him weak. Perhaps Lena, the one with the sad eyes . . . Jacques Mornard, knowing the crossroads of fate that Ramón was approaching, regretted that he had never confronted those insults of África’s, just for the sake of having the ridiculous but kind memory of having bought her at least a rose, a dahlia, a carnation from the ones that perfumed some of the flower stands along Las Ramblas, which was getting more distant every day. Would he ever again walk along those places of his memory?

They had spent two days discussing the different plans that he and Tom were developing. Ramón was certain that the different variants were complicated by Tom’s insistence on increasing his pupil’s possibilities for escape. From the start, they agreed that taking out a gun and shooting the renegade in the head was a quick but impractical solution. The same went for cutting his throat in front of the rabbit cages where the Duck often lost himself. As they went on discarding options or considering others to revise them more slowly, Ramón asked himself what moved Tom, whose ultimate intentions he could never be sure of, to complicate the operation so that he would be able to leave the attack alive. Did they want him alive to silence him once the mission was completed? Was it possible to imagine that there was a bond of affection between them? Or perhaps they feared that he would weaken and confess the true source of the execution order and that was why they were searching for ways to escape. The images of the cards put on the table, and the ones that with all certainty were still hidden, bumped around in his head as Tom debated with him how they would carry out the job. It had also become clear that poison, which could guarantee his flight, was also practically impossible to use, at least in the span of a brief time period and taking into account the scarce level of intimacy that Jacques could reach with the condemned man. Left
on the table were the most violent but silent methods, strangulation and an attack with a knife. Of these two, due to its quickness, Tom preferred the second one. For execution with a knife, they would need what presented itself, whichever way you looked at it, as the greatest difficulty: a private meeting between the renegade and Jacques Mornard. They calculated that the efficacy with which he could stab him determined whether the thirty percent chance of escape would rise to more than fifty or even sixty. What about the ice axe? Ramón proposed. Tom moved his head, without deciding to accept or reject the option. He liked the ice axe, he had to admit, because of the symbolism of its use. It was cruel, violent, revengeful, and a lethal fusion of the hammer and sickle, he said. Could he even enter the house armed with an ice axe? In any event, if Ramón managed to step on the street once the act was consummated, his chance of escape reached eighty percent; and if he got in the car and put it in motion, Tom guaranteed him escape either by air, by sea, or by land to Guatemala, the United States, or Cuba, where they already had safe places for him. Tom would handle the details, and in a week Jacques would return to Mexico with Sylvia on his arm and would stay again at the Hotel Montejo.