22

WITH ONE EYE on my rearview mirror and the army car tailing me, I drove east through the new tunnel underneath the Almendares River and then south through Santa Catalina and Vibora. Along the central divider of the boulevard, city gardeners were trimming trees into the shape of bells, only none of them was going off in my head. I was still telling myself that I could get away with making a deal with the devil. I’d done it before, after all, and with many worse devils than Lieutenant Quevedo. Heydrich, for one. Goering, for another. They didn’t come any more devilish than them. But no matter how smart you think you are, there’s always something unexpected that you have to be prepared for. I thought I was prepared for anything. Except the one thing that happened.

It got a little warmer. Warmer than on the north coast. And most of the houses here were owned by people with money. You could tell they were people with money because they were also people with big gates on their big houses. You could tell how much money a man had by the height of the white walls and the amount of iron on his black gates. A set of imposing gates was an advertisement for a ready supply of wealth for confiscation and redistribution. If the communists ever reached Havana, they wouldn’t have to look hard for the best people to steal money from. You didn’t have to be clever to be a communist. Not when the rich made it as easy as this.

When I reached Mantilla, I turned south on Managua, which was a poorer, more down-at-heel district, and followed the road until I came upon the main highway going west toward Santa María del Rosario. You could tell the neighborhood was poorer and more down-at-heel because children and goats wandered freely by the side of the road, and men were carrying machetes with which to work in the surrounding plantations.

When I saw the disused tennis court, and the dilapidated villa with the rusted gate, I held the steering wheel tight and rode the bump as I turned the Chevrolet off the road and through the trees. As I hit the brakes, the car bucked like a rodeo bull and made more dust than an exodus from Egypt. I switched off the engine and sat there doing nothing, my hands clasped behind my head, just in case the lieutenant was the nervous type. I hardly wanted to get shot reaching for my pocket humidor.

The army car pulled up behind me, and the two soldiers got out, followed by Quevedo. López stayed put in the rear seat. He wasn’t going anywhere. Except maybe the hospital. I leaned out of my window and, closing my eyes, pushed my face into the sun for a moment and listened to the engine block cool. When I opened them again the two soldiers had fetched shovels from the trunk of the car and were awaiting instructions. I pointed in front of us.

“See those three white rocks?” I said. “Dig in the center.”

I closed my eyes again momentarily, but this time I was praying that everything was going to work out the way I had hoped.

Quevedo came toward the Chevrolet. He was carrying his briefcase. He opened the front passenger door and slid in beside me. Then he wound down the window, but it wasn’t enough to spare me the smell of his pungent cologne. For a moment, we sat watching the two soldiers shoveling dirt, not saying anything at all.

“Mind if I turn on the radio?” I said, reaching for the knob.

“I think you’ll find I have more than enough conversation to keep your attention,” he said ominously. He took off his cap and rubbed his buzz-cut head. It sounded like someone polishing a shoe. Then he grinned, and there was humor in his grin, but I didn’t like the look of it. “Did I tell you I trained with the CIA, in Miami?”

We both knew that it wasn’t really a question. Few of his questions were. Most of the time they were meant to be unsettling, or he already knew the answers.

“Yes, I was there for six months, last summer. Have you ever been to Miami? It’s probably the least interesting place you could ever hope to see. It’s like Havana without a soul. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. And now that I’m back here, one of my functions is to liaise with the Agency’s chief of station here in Havana. As you can probably imagine, U.S. foreign policy is driven by a fear of communism. A justifiable fear, I might add, given the political loyalties of López and his friends on the Isle of Pines. So the Agency is planning to help us set up a new anti-communist intelligence bureau next year.”

“Just what the island needs,” I said. “More secret police. Tell me, how will the new anti-communist intelligence bureau differ from the current one?”

“Good question. Well, we’ll have more money from the Americans, of course. Lots more money. That’s always a good start. The new bureau will also be trained, equipped, and tasked directly by the CIA to identify and repress only communist activities; as opposed to the SIM, which exists to eliminate all forms of political opposition.”

“This is the democracy you were talking about, right?”

“No, you’re quite wrong to be sarcastic about this,” insisted Quevedo. “The new bureau will be commanded directly by the greatest democracy in the world. So that ought to count for something, surely. And, of course, it goes without saying that international communism isn’t exactly known for its own toleration of opposition. To some extent you have to fight like with like. I’d have thought you of all people would understand and appreciate that, Señor Hausner.”

“Lieutenant, I meant what I said when I told you I have no desire to see this country turn red. But that’s all I meant. My name is not Senator Joseph McCarthy, it’s Carlos Hausner.”

Quevedo’s smile widened. I imagine he could have done a pretty good imitation of a snake at a children’s party, if ever any children had been allowed near a man like Quevedo.

“Yes, let’s talk about that, shall we? Your name, I mean. It isn’t Carlos Hausner, any more than you are or ever were a citizen of Argentina, is it?”

I started to speak, but he closed his eyes as if he wouldn’t hear of being contradicted, and patted the briefcase on his lap. “No, really. I know quite a bit about you. It’s all in here. I have a copy of the CIA’s file on you, Gunther. You see, it’s not just Cuba where there’s a new spirit of cooperation with the United States. It’s Argentina, too. The CIA is just as keen to prevent the growth of communism in that country as it is here in Cuba. Because the Argentines have their own rebels, just as we do. Why, only last year the communists exploded two bombs in the main square of Buenos Aires, killing seven people. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

“When Meyer Lansky told me about your background in German intelligence, fighting Russian communism during the war, I must confess I was fascinated and decided to find out more. Selfishly I wondered if we might be able to make use of you in our own war on communism. So I contacted the Agency chief and asked him to check with his opposite number in Buenos Aires, to see what they could tell us about you. And they told us a great deal. It appears that your real name is Bernhard Gunther and that you were born in Berlin. There you were first a policeman, then something in the SS, and finally something in German military intelligence-the Abwehr. The CIA checked you out with the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects-CROWCASS-and also the Berlin Document Center. And while there’s no record of your being wanted for any war crimes, it does seem that there’s a warrant out on you from the police in Vienna. For the murders of those two unfortunate women.”

There seemed little point in denying what he’d said, even though I hadn’t murdered anyone in Vienna. But I thought I might explain it away to his political satisfaction.

“After the war,” I said, “and because of my experience fighting the Russians, I was recruited by American counterintelligence: first by the 970th CIC in Germany, and then the 430th in Austria. As I’m sure you’re aware, the CIC was the forerunner of the CIA. Anyway, I was instrumental in uncovering a traitor in their organization. A man named John Belinsky, who turned out to have been working for the Russian MVD. This would have been in September 1947. The two women were much later on. That was in 1949. One of them I killed because she was the wife of a notorious war criminal. The other was a Russian agent. The Americans will probably deny it now, of course, but they were the ones who got me out of Austria. On the ratline they provided for escaping Nazis. They provided me with a Red Cross passport in the name of Carlos Hausner and got me on the boat to Argentina, where, for a while, I worked for the secret police. The SIDE. At least I did until the job I was on turned into an embarrassment for the government, and I became persona non grata. They fixed me up with an Argie passport and some visas, which is how I fetched up here. Since then I’ve been trying to keep out of trouble’s way.”