Frame 232 (29 page)

He released the bartender and went yet again to his pocket. His hand revealed five twenties this time, all neatly folded into little rectangles. It had occurred to him on the trip down that he should also bring a supply of fifties and hundreds, feeling they would be dazzling enough in their mere appearance to loosen even the tightest lips. But the
guides had corrected his instincts
 
—it was nearly impossible to change out American bills of such denominations.

He pressed the twenties into the bartender’s hand. “Please,
señor
, whatever information you can give me . . .”

The recipient stared at the money for a moment, almost as if unable to believe it was really there, then deposited it in his own pocket and leaned in close.

Hammond’s heart began pounding.
Here it comes.

“It is you who may find yourself in a life-and-death situation,” the bartender whispered, “if you do not forget about this man.”

Hammond’s face darkened with fury; he struggled against an instant, blinding-hot desire to physically harm another human being. Then a hand fell on his shoulder. He fully expected to find the monstrosity from the other side of the bar behind him. When he looked back, however, he found another kid, early twenties, with peach fuzz around his mouth and a lean, muscular body that was kept well displayed in a tank top one size too small.

The ten-ton beast was there too, standing just behind the kid. “It’s time for you to go,” he said. There were others, too.
An insta-gang,
Hammond thought, and he noticed that the rest of the patrons were giving them a wide berth.

He looked back at the bartender and said,
“No disimule.”
Stop pretending.
Then he felt the tip of a blade poke into the flesh of his lower back.

“Vamos,”
the kid said.
Let’s go.
The rum on his hot breath blended pungently with the reek of his unwashed body.

“Desaparécete,”
Hammond replied without turning.
Get lost.

He was jerked away from the bar, arms slithering around him like tentacles. People began moving back, clearing a
space for what would come next. Some lingered, eager to see. Others went off to find new stations, indifferent to what was obviously a common occurrence here.

Amid the growing cheers, the ten-ton beast came forward and swung his cannonball fist into Hammond’s gut. Hammond doubled over with a groan, but since he was being held tight, he did not go down. His attacker moved in again and used a knee to deliver the second shot
 
—to his face. Stars exploded in Hammond’s brain, and blood began running warmly out his nose and down his chin. The third blow, a punch to the jaw, felt like a cinder block. Hammond was released and allowed to drop to the floor. Dazed and breathless, he remained flat on his stomach as the crowd laughed and pelted him with obscenities. He struggled onto all fours and watched the blood drip onto the carpet. Finally he got to his feet. The bartender with the eye patch was still there, his face impassive.

The kid with the knife came behind once again. “Now, let me show you to the door.”

“I know where it is,” Hammond shot back, grabbing a pile of napkins from the bar and pressing them against his nose. He pushed his way out and cut through the courtyard with long strides as the delinquents on the balcony began berating him again. One took a lime from his drink and tossed it down, where it missed its target by no more than a foot and bounced away.

On the floor above the balcony, through the louvered shade of a private room, a pair of eyes followed Hammond as he went around the dead fountain, reached the mouth of the alley, and disappeared.

STANDING IN FRONT
of his dresser mirror, Rydell tried again to get his tie just right. This was the third attempt, and after feeding it through the knot and pulling it down, he felt his blood pressure surge as the front flap fell two inches short of the narrow strip in the back.

He undid it in a mad flurry and whipped it onto the floor, cursing vividly. Then he took several deep breaths and sat on the edge of the bed. The sheets were in a swirled mess behind him. It was a rare morning when Rydell left his bed unmade, but then it was rare for the sheets to have been twisted into such a state in the first place. He was a sound sleeper who barely moved during the night. He’d had mornings when he literally peeled the sheets back, got up, and with a single motion returned them to a made position.

Last night had been a very different affair, maybe one of the least restful nights of his life. He’d lain there for hours, eyes aimed at the ceiling, replaying Sheila Baker’s answers over and over in his mind. Each was more chilling than the last, thrusting lancets of fear into his eroding psyche.
They have all the pieces of the puzzle now. All they need to do is locate the man who can put them together.
He wondered again if
Galeno Clemente was really still alive, still out there somewhere. Even if he wasn’t, what about the brother? Surely Hammond would find him. How much did
he
know? Some of it? All of it?
Hammond is the key. You have to act, and you know what needs to be done. There are no remaining options.

He rose from the bed and scooped up the tie, and his thoughts flowed back to the woman. He was deeply relieved he had retracted the green light for Birk to eliminate her. The man had all but begged, but Rydell had said to hold off and simply mind her for a while. Rydell’s intuition had told him she might still have some value. That had turned out to be most prescient, as half the nation was now trying to figure out where she was. If Birk had slipped up and Baker’s body had been found somewhere . . . that could’ve been a problem.

Rydell began working on the tie again.
Take care of Hammond,
the voice in his mind pressed,
and you’ll be in the clear.
He wasn’t even certain he wholeheartedly believed this, but what else was there to do?

When the tie came together at last, he relocated to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. He had never been particularly fond of it, but he knew he’d have no chance of getting through this day without at least one cup. He checked his watch
 
—7:04.
Still plenty of time.
He downed the cup in three gulps, then went into his den and got behind his desk. The e-mail address he needed was on his personal computer, buried in an invisible folder and then a password-protected file. He hadn’t used it or even thought about the owner of it in years.

He prayed it was still valid.

Police Chief Gilberto Diaz sat behind his antique desk filling out paperwork when a knock came at the door. He
was dressed impeccably, as always, in his Policía Nacional Revolucionaria uniform
 
—short-sleeved gray shirt with epaulets, dark cotton trousers, and patent-leather jackboots. A matching black beret with insignia sat off to the side of his desk, along with his sidearm. He looked starched and clear-eyed, every hair in place. He was only four years shy of sixty, yet his stately gray mane was thick and lush and exhibited no signs of diminishing. It seemed the perfect metaphor for everything else about the man, whose unblemished complexion and full frame seemed to radiate health and vigor.

He called out, and the door opened. The two men who walked in were junior officers, each on the force less than a year. They patrolled the central region of Matanzas, in the area around the Palacio de Junco. It was not uncommon for writers, musicians, painters, and other creative types to gather there and commiserate about the government’s limitations on their respective crafts. One individual in particular, a homeless and streetwise poet named Enrique Sardina, had crystallized into a natural agitator, stirring up the kind of passions the Cuban government worked so hard to smother. Diaz had sent these two officers to bring him in for questioning and, his answers notwithstanding, incarceration.

Diaz stood and walked around to the front of his desk, a sheaf of papers and a pen held in the same hand.
“En qué puedo ayudarlos?”
he asked, smiling.
What can I help you with?

The men exchanged nervous glances. Then one said balefully,
“Lo localizaron hace una hora.”
He was spotted an hour ago.

“And?”

“And we pursued him . . . but he got away.”

Diaz looked from one to the other, his eyes giving no indication as to the thoughts that lay behind them.

“We apologize,” the second officer said sheepishly. They
bowed their heads toward the checkerboard-tile floor, the shame like a rash on their faces.

“Well, it is disappointing,” Diaz told them, his smile retreating only slightly, “but it is the way it goes sometimes. I have every confidence you will secure his capture tomorrow or the next day.”

Their astonishment was as plain as the fear had been a moment earlier. The younger of the two, an adolescent-looking boy named Javier whom Diaz had recruited personally, stared at the man with worshipful adoration.

“We will, sir,” he said, snapping to attention. “You will be pleased.”

“I’m sure I will. All right, you are both dismissed.”

“Thank you, sir,” they said in unison, then strode out with military stiffness.

They are in awe of me,
Diaz thought as he walked back to his chair.
All of the boys.
And this was the truth
 
—all the officers under his direct command, most of them still in their twenties, treated him with the kind of easy, willful respect that only came from true affection. The secret, he had told himself a thousand times, was to give a little every now and then, loosen the leash. So many of his equals did not understand this. Cracking the whip every moment of the day might be an alternative method of harvesting respect, but it was respect of the anemic, fear-based variety, and that usually came back to haunt you. If you made the effort to show a little kindness, you never had to worry about having your throat cut. Even with those above him, from his bosses at the Ministry of the Interior to friends he had made through the years at the Council of State, he had always known when to push forward and when to pull back. The real key to his survival, however, had been the simple fact that he went out of his way not to make enemies.

He got behind his desk, spent another half hour on paperwork, then turned to his computer. It was a somewhat-outdated system, at least five years behind the latest models in offices across America. Still, having one of his own made him part of a very tiny Cuban minority. He opened his e-mail program and waited. All messages would be filtered through the ministry even though most were part of the nation’s Intranet; very few came from outside. Eleven appeared on the screen, most from senders he immediately recognized. One did not look familiar but, judging by the subject line, was part of a mass mailing from some ambitious bureaucrat in the ministry trying to splash his name around.

It was the last one that gave him a jolt. It appeared to be spam
 
—
American
spam
 
—from a furniture store that was going out of business.
Impossible.
Such a thing would never clear the government’s filters. Then Diaz realized what it truly was, and his large mouth dropped open.

“No,” he mumbled, guiding the cursor toward it. “It can’t be. . . .” He clicked on the message, read it from top to bottom, and said, “No” one more time. Every function in his body felt as though it had ceased.

There was a phone number embedded in the ad. Diaz was amazed that he remembered how to decode it after all these years. He did not write it down but rather committed it to memory in his reeling, overwhelmed mind.

Then he rose and hurried out.

The tiny white Peugeot
 
—standard issue among Cuban police
 
—zipped through the rain-soaked Matanzas streets, its blue light turned off but its radio antenna waving crazily. Diaz went down a narrow corridor to a construction site that
had been abandoned two years earlier. The crude wooden fence that surrounded it was covered with political graffiti, including a DayGlo rendering of Che Guevara over the motto
“Hasta la Victoria, Siempre!”
Until the Victory, Always!

Diaz parked between the fence and a rusting Dumpster on the south side, well out of view. Removing his cell phone, he licked his lips and dialed the number. It was answered immediately.

“Tardó mucho en llamar,”
the voice on the other end told him.
You took too long to call.

“Estaba en mi oficina y tuve que salir,”
Diaz replied.
I was in my office and had to leave.
“What is it you want?”

“Your services are required.”

A shudder went through him
 
—this was precisely what he didn’t want to hear.
No, please. . . .
He was still having trouble believing the conversation was even taking place. It had been more than eight years since he last heard from this man, whose name was still unknown to him. He had prayed
 
—literally, on his knees, alongside his wife and children during their own entreaties
 
—that the man had died somewhere along the way. The fact that he was there now, alive and well, was the manifestation of a thousand nightmares. “I thought we agreed last time that my services were no longer available. I thought it was understood that the last time would, in fact, be the last time.”

“We dictate the rules where your services are concerned,” the man replied. “We do not have them dictated to us.”

“And if I don’t cooperate?”

“This is a waste of time. You will cooperate because you want to keep your home, your family, and your job. A job that you would not possess if not for us. Have you forgotten that the position only became open because the man who occupied it before you
 
—a man who, if memory serves,
passionately disliked you
 
—conveniently died of a heart attack in spite of having a clean bill of health? You owe us on that alone, wouldn’t you agree?”

Diaz did not reply.

“Today you are the revered head of one of your nation’s most able police forces. The men under you would follow you off a cliff, and those over you believe your dedication to the revolution is absolute. I wonder, then, what would result if word got out about your past efforts to bring that same cause to ruin? If they knew, for example, of your part in the plot to assassinate three of your leader’s most trusted ministers in the spring of 1992? Or your facilitation of domestic protests two years later? Or, for that matter, the sheer volume of intelligence you have provided to my country over the course of
 
—”

“All right, all right,” Diaz said, undoing the top button of his shirt. “You have made your point. I was a different man then. I was trying to survive.”