Adios Muchachos (18 page)

Chapter
Thirty-Nine

November 17, 1000 hours

The three men in the inner office heard the telephone ringing through the thin partitions in the Trade Building and everything came to a standstill. They heard Bos’s secretary pick up the receiver: “Groote International, good morning … Yes, just a moment; I’ll let Mr. Bos know you’re calling.”

A little red diode lit up on the intercom.
“Mr. Bos, there’s a call for you from a Miss Myriam.”

Karl Bos arched his eyebrows, looked at the two men, and answered in his everyday tone, “Yes, I’ll take it now.”

Victor was staring at him in expectation and van Dongen was looking out the window with an air of total calm.

“Hello? Yes … Yes … I understand … yes, let me jot that down,” he said, making notes on the pad he kept beside the telephone. “OK, it’ll be there in a few minutes, but …”

When he explained that they wanted to accompany van Dongen in another car, he was quite surprised to hear:
“Of course, but van Dongen comes alone; the others can follow behind in another car.”

Bos hung up and sprang out of the chair, excited. He looked down at his notes.

“How do they want the drop done?” Victor asked.

“Simple, so far. I’ll explain along the way.”

Bos walked quickly to the corner of the room, dropped to one knee, and started dialing the combination to the safe mechanism. When the door opened, Victor took the bag by the loop, again verifying that it rolled easily on its small plastic wheels and that it weighed the same as before.

The three men walked single-file through the side door of the office and down the brightly lit corridor to the elevator bank. Standing there before the brushed aluminum doors, Bos finally told them the plan.

“They say it’s all right if we follow in another car, but,” laying a hand on Jan’s shoulder, “you have to go alone with the money in the lead car. When you get to the Triton Hotel, you go to the Reception Desk, where there will be an envelope with your name on it. The envelope will give you the next instructions.”

“Should we go directly to the garage floor?” Victor asked, before pressing the button.

“Yes! Let’s go.”

1005 hours

Alicia came out the front door of the hotel with a kerchief covering her hair and dressed in her chubby American tourist persona. She turned in the direction of the swimming pool and walked down the paved path to a point directly below the window of the room they had reserved on the third floor. She looked up and down, assessing the distances and, as she reached into her purse for a cigarette, dropped a tube of red tempera. When she bent over to pick up the tempera, she quickly drew a six-inch circle on the pavement.

1020 hours

Victor was just turning off the wide avenue as van Dongen finished parking in one of the slots closest to the hotel entrance. Taking their cue from Jan, Victor and Bos parked a few yards away, parallel to the first car. There were several cars between them, but from their vantage, they could easily follow all of Jan’s movements up to the hotel lobby.

They watched closely as van Dongen got out of the car, came around the back, took the bag out of the trunk, and moved toward the hotel. From her window, Alicia was also watching van Dongen’s every move.

A uniformed bellhop came out to help him with his heavy bag, and together they climbed the few steps leading into the broad lobby, where they disappeared from view.

Victor and Bos sat back to wait. Alicia dropped the field glasses on the bed and got to work with her gear.

1027 hours

Jan van Dongen and the bellhop arrived at the reception desk, where a young woman smiled brightly at them. “How may I help you today?”

“My name is van Dongen—I was told there would be an envelope here for me.”

“Right away, sir,” she said, looking though her papers.

“Simmons, Terry, van Dongen. Here it is, sir.”

Taking the envelope from the clerk, van Dongen tipped the bellhop and moved a few steps toward the door before opening the instructions.

Go through the Duty Free Shop and out of the main building of the hotel. Turn right and follow the paved path toward the pool until you come to the men’s showers. From there, count the tiles and stop when you come to tile twenty-six, where you will see a red circle. Stand there and wait for a sign.

1031 hours

Victor and Bos almost jumped when they saw van Dongen reappear through the Duty Free Shop. They could see that he still had the bag, so the operation was not over. They watched him turn toward the pool and walk carefully, like a man looking for something he had lost, the bag following easily behind him on the end of the leather loop. When he came to a halt by the building, they wondered what he was doing, but they did not have to wonder long.

“Look, there’s something coming out the window. There it is … some kind of rod. And there’s a sign. The bastards are right there on the third floor.”

Victor stopped biting his nails, which were about to start bleeding. He twisted his neck to see the window, but, of course, all he saw was the rod and the sign being reeled down.

Bos, who had given up his beloved Dutch cigars when he came to Cuba, had chomped his Havana down to an unsightly mockery of the elegant Cohiba it had once been. He kept right on cursing, and Victor went back to his nails.

1032 hours

Van Dongen was startled when he suddenly found the sign he had been waiting for practically hitting him in the face.

The big black letters on the white background read:

HANG THE BAG ON THE HOOK.
TURN AROUND. DO NOT STOP.
DO NOT LOOK BACK.

Van Dongen slipped the handle over the enormous snag-hook on the end of the line beside the sign, executed a perfect about-face, and walked back along the path, following his instructions to the letter.

From the car, Victor and Bos watched the bag levitate gracefully toward the third floor. Bos chomped and Victor bit as a hand came out of the window, withdrawing the bag from their view.

The foreign tourists lounging around the pool who saw the maneuver were all from countries where it was very unseemly for people to notice or comment on other people’s affairs. There were some Cuban witnesses, of course, but they figured that as long as these foreigners kept the tips coming in and did nothing openly offensive, well, they could have their luggage delivered to their rooms any way they wished.

1034 hours

Alicia quickly put the bag in the large white valise, placed it on the luggage cart, and tied it up every which way with the elastic cords. She took apart the fishing tackle and stored it in the black bag. Following Victor’s instructions, she left the frame and lead weights where they were. They would be too heavy for her, anyway.

Lastly, she opened the door, took off her gloves, and walked down the long hall. Still in her chubby American disguise, she timidly said hello to the couple waiting for the elevator and descended with them to the lobby.

Van Dongen had gone through the delivery with Dutch calm. But now he suddenly felt like vomiting, and he rushed to the bathroom in the hotel lobby. Coming out of the elevator, Alicia spied his nose in the crowd and, in a display of bravado and pure balls, she stopped to smoke a cigarette, long enough to watch him leave the hotel, cross the parking lot, go past his own car, and approach Victor’s.

Van Dongen leaned against the car roof and complained that he was not feeling well.

“No, you don’t look well,” Bos answered. “Did everything go according to plan?”

“All I know is what you saw, but they obviously got it.”

“Fine,” Bos said, “take whatever time you need to recover. Would you like us to drive you home?”

“No, all I need is a sedative and some rest. I’ll see you some time this afternoon, at the office.”

1042 hours

Alicia got out of the taxi at her mother’s house and asked the driver to help her with the bag in the trunk. With the chubby American gone, it was the old Alicia who walked toward the door her mother was holding open.

The driver dropped the bag just inside the front door, took his tip, and left the two women trying to heft the bag up the two steps into the living room.

“What have you got in here?” Margarita asked with concern.

That was the exact question Alicia had been expecting; she had the answer all ready, but she wanted her mother to stew a while. She sat down and reclined in one of the big easy chairs, lit a cigarette, and blew smoke softly into the air. With deliberate calm, she placed one leg on the bag and then the other, crossing them at the ankle.

“What do you think I might be carrying in such a heavy bag?”

“I have no idea,” Margarita insisted.

“If I tell you, you won’t believe me; so guess,” she said with a triumphal smirk.

“Well, I really hope it’s not a frozen corpse.”

“No, silly. Guess again.”

“So if it’s not a corpse, then it must be four million dollars.”

It was Alicia’s turn to be surprised. “Um, yes, but how could you possibly know?”

“Listen, dahling,” Margarita said, “when you were planning to go, I was already on my way back. I knew you were not going to tell me anything until it was all over. So now you’re telling. So it’s all over, and this is the money.”

Alicia rose from the chair and embraced her mother. Together they jumped around and giggled like schoolgirls.

“We did it, Momma; we did it …”

Kneeling on the floor, Alicia began to fiddle with the locks to get the bag open, as Margarita bolted the door and drew the curtains. When the inner bag was open, with the lid on Alicia’s side so that Margarita could enjoy the full panoramic view, the two women gazed at the stacks of hundred-dollar bills, Margarita in stunned amazement, Alicia with smug satisfaction. She was about to pick up one of the bundles of bills when she noticed the rose slipped in the top pouch and brought it to her nose. If it was from Victor, it was a very original and tender thing to do.

Margarita was nervous and insisted that they should not be doing this in the middle of the living room, when a knock sounded at the door.

“Didn’t I tell you? Somebody’s out there. Lock that up and take it to the other room.”

Alicia wheeled the bag into the broom closet under the stairs; Margarita peeked through the window to see if they should open the door or ignore it. “It’s Leonor,” she mumbled to herself. “What a pain in the ass she is!”

She walked over to the door and opened the little window they used to receive mail without having to open the door. “Hi, Leo. What brings you around?”

“Oh, nothing. I just saw Alicia come in and, well, since we haven’t talked in such a long time … I thought we might have a cup of coffee and—”

Just then, Alicia came up to the door and pushed her face against the crossbars in the window: “Hi, Leo, it’s great to see you, but the truth is I just came home to shower and take off again. Why don’t we get together next week?”

A minute later, wearing a Turkish towel on her way to the shower, Alicia smiled as she recalled what a touch of class the rose was. “Sometimes I think Victor really cares,” she told her mother. “That little detail was very affectionate, and even a little dangerous.”

When she was at the high point of her shower, covered in suds, she felt a chilly breeze on her back as her mother opened the curtain and poked her in the butt with the antenna. “I’m sorry, sweetie. It’s Victor and he says it’s urgent.”

Alicia turned off the water, dried one hand, and took the telephone. “Yeah, what is it? … They’re beautiful. Stacks and stacks of them … Come again … You bet, the most beautiful sight in the world. And by the way, the rose was really a touch of class …” Alicia made a face. “Oh, the Nose … I was dumb enough to think it was from you … Well, some day I’ll have to tell the Nose it was very charming … OK, I’ll be out of here in fifteen minutes to make the call.”

Alicia thought she had lost all confidence in humankind a long time ago, but every once in a while she still got carried away by a glimmer of hope.

1105 hours

After a quick dry, a sandwich, and a glass of milk, Alicia pulled on some jeans, a T-shirt, and sandals, and drove off to the Comodoro Hotel. There she could make a telephone call without being noticed and without linking the call to her own home or neighborhood.

“Groote International …”

“Hello. Ms. Myriam for Mr. Bos.”

“One moment.”

When Bos got on the telephone, Alicia went into her American-English routine to allay his fears and confirm that everything was in order: “Yes, we have everything you sent us, and your friend will be phoning you or van Dongen or Victor King at home some time this evening to tell you where he’s staying … No sir, you have nothing to worry about; there’s nothing wrong. It’s just that your friend feels that it would be much safer for him if he isn’t seen in broad daylight. He would prefer moving at night.” She hung up without waiting for another word.

Victor had asked her to make that call because he wanted to be able to stay at home, or at least not have to be with the others. If Groote were going to be released at night, he could feign exhaustion and ask to be excused from the pick-up. Besides, the other two would certainly be in a state, and he didn’t want to fake the growing concern that would be overwhelming them as the hours went by with no news of Rieks.