Havana Bay (43 page)

Going by Rufo's sort of calendar—the urgency, that
is, in trying to kill someone who would be in town for
only a week—Arkady felt that time was running out.
His time was. Tomorrow night he could be boarding
his flight for home, he and Pribluda, but he felt he was
still before the event, whatever it was that would make
sense of the Havana Yacht Club, Rufo and Hedy, and
the best demolition team in Africa.

Ofelia didn't bring anyone. Careful not to scuff her new
shoes, she walked up the steps of the Centro Russo-
Cubano, dropping her dark glasses into her bag with
the banana bread as she stepped into the lobby, which
had changed from the day before: the statues of the
cane cutter and the fisherman had toppled facedown on
the tiles, the ladder stretched by a splintered counter
and no car sat on the lobby floor. Dust climbed the red
ray of light falling from the stained glass overhead.
Centro Russo-Cubano? From what she knew of this place, when the Russians thought they led the way to
the glorious future, it was a very rare Cuban who had
ever been invited in.

She took a deep breath. Ofelia had come alone to see
whatever Luna had carted in the night before because
she didn't want to involve anyone else until she knew what evidence she could find. The PNR did not accuse
an officer of the Ministry of the Interior lightly. That
was her professional reason. The real reason was per
sonal. Nothing humiliated Ofelia more than being
afraid, and inside the trunk of the Lada she had been
afraid to the point of tears. She took extra target practice
at the Guanabo range just so that wouldn't happen. A
dusty mirror hung over the counter. She caught sight of
herself as she took the gun from her straw bag and
swung, body and weapon moving as one dangerous
little
jinetem.

Being back in the lobby made her taste the hemp
and coconut milk again. That was the way Luna had
picked her up, like a coconut to be thrown into a bag
and the bag tossed into a trunk. She'd tried to find the
Lada on the way, and it had disappeared, perhaps
already being cannibalized in an Atares warehouse. A
shiny track showed where the cart's iron wheels had
rolled over the floor tiles of a hammer-and-sickle pat
tern toward a grim corridor of cement walls and doors of Cuban hardwood.

 
Ofelia kicked the first door open, entered an empty
luggage room, scanned with the gun and returned to
the hall before anyone could approach behind her. The
next door had the title of "Director" and promised to
be larger and farther from the dim light of the lobby.
She'd reloaded the gun but she should have brought a
flashlight. She knew she should have thought of that.

This was the sort of situation where a person had to
gauge what they were most likely to encounter. A
sergeant of the Ministry of the Interior carried the same
firearm she did, but a man from the Oriente might have
more confidence in his machete. Also, he knew the
layout of the Centra Russo-Cubano, she didn't. He
could pop out of any corner like an oversized goblin.

Ofelia shoved the door with her foot, slipped in and
crouched against a wall. When her eyes adjusted she saw that the office had been stripped of desk, chairs,
rug. All that was left were a bust of Lenin on a pedestal
and horizontal red-and-black stripes spray-painted on
the walls, windows, across Lenin's face. She heard some
thing move in the hall.

It occurred to Ofelia that perhaps she should have
changed into her uniform. If the PNR found her dressed
like this, what would they assume? And Bias? He'd think
what fun they could have had in Madrid.

She slid out of the office on one knee aiming left,
then right. Whatever it was had stopped, although Luna could be coming from either direction. This was a time
when target practice paid off just for holding a heavy
gun steady for so long. Banana bread was a ludicrous
item to be toting and she considered lightening her
load. But the girls had helped bake it.

The next office was empty except for corn kernels
and feathers underfoot. She heard a step behind her
again, tentative, hanging back, and she tried to get low
enough to sight on a silhouette. She moved across the
hall into what had been a meeting room with no table,
no chairs, no windows, just a faint row of framed
Russian faces and ships. She thought if there was more
than one individual after her this was a perfect oppor
tunity to lock the doors at each end and seal her in as
effectively as entombing her.

Slower, she told herself, although she was blinking
through sweat, mouth breathing too, not a good sign,
and her shoulders ached from the weight of the gun.
She was in the dark until she opened a door to a linen room, where the light poured through unbroken win
dows onto shelves that once held sheets and pillowcases
still white; even the dust was white as talc. On the floor a headless white chicken lay in a circle of dried blood.
She left the door open to illuminate the hallway and
followed a sign that pointed to "Buffet." Checked into a
pantry with nothing except lists on the wall in Russian
of meat, dairy and starchy goods expected six years
before. There was a note to a certain Lena, "Russian
potatoes, not Cuban potatoes." Historical documents
that faded as the linen-room door shut.

This was the darkest yet. Reentering the hall was like
stepping into a pit. Nothing but black behind her, and
nothing ahead but faint light tracing a buffet door. She
could feel as much as hear the step behind her, it was
that close. Her father had cut cane, she knew how cane
cutters worked. First slice to the base, second high to
lop off the cane head. Arkady had said Luna was right-
handed, which meant that, constrained by the dimen
sions of the hall, a downward swing to the left. She got as small she could on the right side.

She felt breathing on her. A hairy face pressed against
hers and she reached out to feel two stubby horns. A
goat. She'd forgotten about the goats. The rest were
gone or this was the only one that had found a way down to the ground floor. A small goat with a stiff
beard, sharp ribs and an inquisitive muzzle that pressed
into her bag. The banana bread, of course, Ofelia
thought. She laid her gun between her legs, unwrapped
the bread and broke off half. She couldn't see the goat
but she could hear it devour the bread as if it hadn't
been fed for days. The scent of the bread must have
been an irresistible trail through the building. She was glad her Russian hadn't seen this.

When the goat tried to tear up the rest of the bread
Ofelia gave it a not unkind kick, then scratched its
scrawny neck to make amends. Growing up in Hershey,
she'd had to deal with goats, chickens, voracious hogs.

Discouraged, the goat backed away with a tremulous
baa, and although Ofelia expected it to go the way it
had come and return to the herd, something seemed to
pull it in the opposite direction. She couldn't see the
goat, but she heard its hooves tap closer to the buffet door, to the ghostly smell of food six years past. It was
a swinging door. The goat nosed it open, there was a glimpse of dingy light, enough to invite the goat and it
trotted through. The door flapped twice, settled, and
then flew open to flame and smoke.

Although she was shielded at the moment of deto
nation Ofelia's ears rang, her face felt scoured. Cement
dust filled the dark hall, and devoid of both sight and hearing she swung the gun one way and then the other
until the air cleared enough for her to make out again
the faint light that traced the buffet door. She crawled forward, felt a cord hanging slack on its lower lip and
pushed the door open.

It had only been a fragmentation grenade, Ofelia
thought, but in close quarters it accomplished its
mission well. Half the goat was close to the door, half
well down the hall, like a botched job of being shot
from a cannon. One wall was pocked from metal shards.
Burn marks on the other showed where the grenade
had been placed at floor level, the cord around its ring. Soft clots dripped from the ceiling.

Beyond, the hall opened to the buffet, where Russian
sea captains and their officers had once been served
cognac and cakes, and farther on she saw a large kitchen
with a vent that someone from the outside had once
tried to break through, bending a louver enough let a
single finger of light pierce the murk.

She waited for the nerve to move forward. It would come any second.

 
Arkady missed the park rendezvous with Ofelia. He sat
in Mostovoi's living room facing the door and flipped
through the pages of an address book he had found in
the nightstand. Pinero, Rufo. Luna, Sgt. Facundo. Guz
man, Erasmo. Walls. No Tico that Arkady could find,
but otherwise the old team was all accounted for. Plus,
Vice Consul Bugai, Havana hotels and garages, French
film labs, many girls' names with notes on age, color,
height.

Eight o'clock. Mostovoi was taking a long time to
reappear. The emergency was long over, fire engines gone and residents returned to their apartments. He'd expected Mostovoi to enter, be surprised and affect
outrage at the sight of an interloper. Arkady would ask
him questions about Luna and Walls and pose them in
a manner designed to make Mostovoi resort to the gun
in the refrigerator. It was Arkady's experience that
people who were upset were much more talkative when
they felt they had turned the tables. If Mostovoi actually
pulled the trigger, that would be information too. Of
course, this scenario depended on Mostovoi's not carry
ing another gun in one of his camera bags.

Arkady only had to close his eyes for images to
appear. Pribluda's Havana Yacht Club. Olga Petrovna's
Pribluda and Pribluda's farewell snapshot of him. The
best demolition team in Africa. The images we carry.
Tribal people seeing photographs for the first time
thought they were stolen spirits. Arkady wished that
were true. He wished he had taken more photographs
of Irina, but he saw her all the time whenever he was
alone. Of course, being in Havana was like living in a
faded, badly tinted picture.

Nine o'clock. The day had disappeared while he had
waited for a man who wasn't coming back. Arkady
carefully replaced the address book where he had found
it, refiled the photos in their boxes and slipped out the door to the balcony, where tots up late raced tricycles
back and forth. From halfway across Miramar the lights
of the Russian embassy stared back. He took the elevator down. The popcorn machine was gone and the stairs
were charred; otherwise it was as if he hadn't come at
all.

Following First Avenue along the water, he put one
foot in front of the other in the manner, he thought, of
a sailing ship towed by rowboats when the wind had
died. Not until he passed Erasmo's family house did he
realize his legs were taking him to the rendezvous with
Ofelia at the Havana Yacht Club.» Vi. HYC 2200
Angola." Tonight was the night.

Or maybe not. He was late when the royal palms of
the Yacht Club's driveway came into view and Ofelia's
DeSoto wasn't in sight at all. The club was black, the
only lights two flashlight beams patrolling the long
driveway. No sound except cars circling the rotary and the laugh of a bird nesting in a palm. This had been his
brilliant idea, his chance to jump ahead of events.
Whatever this event was, it was on a different Friday
night. He looked for Ofelia on the other streets feeding
the rotary. Although half an hour didn't seem very late in Cuba, she wasn't there.