Havana Harvest (16 page)

But how did Casas get to Schwartz and where was he getting the money to pay for the coins and the ivory in Africa? And, most intriguing of all, how come Micheline was sure Schwartz's supplier was the man in the photograph?

“—nothing illegal, so I don't understand why you're after him,” Lonsdale heard the question in Micheline's tone and forced himself to pay attention to her.

“I'm sorry, what did you say?”

“I said that neither Mr. Schwartz nor his supplier has done anything illegal, and that I don't understand why you have to persecute them, especially since the whole thing was arranged by the bank.”

“What was?”

“Are you going to tell me that you didn't know Mr. Schwartz was introduced to your man in the photograph by Mr. Siddiqui?”

“But Mr. Siddiqui said he'd never seen the man in the photograph.”

“That's true, he never did.”

“I don't understand.”

“I didn't either at the beginning, but I was slowly able to get it all out of Mr. Schwartz. Frankly, I don't know why I bothered.” Lonsdale could see that Micheline was becoming more agitated. He sighed. “Do believe me when I say I'm very grateful for your help. Take it as the gospel truth that I didn't know anything about the bank introducing the man to Mr. Schwartz.”

“Pretty strange words from someone who told us at the bank on Friday that he came to Montreal to make life easier for one of his colleagues who needed help in his complicated job.”

“I said ‘delicate' job, not complicated.”

“Fine.” She made a face. “I've told you this much, so I might as well tell you everything I know.” She wanted so badly to reach out and comfort him, but instinct told her now was not the time. He was hiding something from her, what and why she couldn't even guess at. “Mr. Siddiqui never met the man in the photograph. What happened was that the BCCI branch manager in Luanda wrote my manager asking for the name of a reputable coin dealer who could handle large transactions. He said he needed it for a good client. Mr. Siddiqui gave him Mr. Schwartz's name and address and then told Mr. Schwartz about the referral. Eventually your man came to Montreal, went directly to Mr. Schwartz and started doing business with him.”

“And Mr. Schwartz took him at face value.”

“He had a letter of introduction from a BCCI manager.”

“Then tell me this. How do you know the coin supplier and the man in my photograph are one and the same?”

“To tell you the truth I'm not sure, I'm just guessing. But Mr. Schwartz did say the man had gray, close-cropped hair and wore glasses.”

“So does half the male population over fifty.”

“But they don't have introductions to coin dealers from BCCI managers to help them cover up large cash transactions. Maybe this is all part of a big international money laundering operation, something that perhaps the bank knows more about than it would care to admit.” Micheline gave him a sidelong glance. “You did say that this man in the photograph is a colleague.”

Lonsdale knew that to continue questioning Micheline would trap him in a web of half-truths and outright lies from which he'd never be able to extricate himself, so he said nothing.

He needed to talk to Siddiqui.

After Micheline dropped him off in front of his hotel, Lonsdale raced across the lobby, down the stairs, and through the underground corridor to Central Station where he grabbed the nearest public telephone. Siddiqui's daughter answered and told him that her parents were at dinner and wouldn't be back until after ten.

Disappointed, Lonsdale decided to wait it out in the comfort of a movie theater on St. Catherine Street.

At ten-thirty he called Siddiqui again, this time from the theater's lobby.

“Sorry I wasn't here to take your call earlier.” As always, the banker was his polite self. “My daughter did tell me though that you'd call back, so I suppose there's no harm done.”

Lonsdale was quick to reassure the man. “None at all, none at all.”

“What then can I do for you?”

“I'd like to meet again, preferably outside the office, and as soon as possible. Are you free for breakfast tomorrow morning?”

“Unfortunately not. And after breakfast I have to visit one of our larger clients in Laval, the north end of the city.”

“How about lunch? You will be my guest of course.”

“Lunch would be fine.”

“Where shall we meet?”

“Tell you what. I'll be driving south, so why don't I pick you up somewhere and we'll have a leisurely lunch at my favorite restaurant.”

“What's it called and where is it?”

“La Saulaie and it's quite a bit outside the downtown core, on the South Shore. Do you know the general area?”

“I'm afraid not,” Lonsdale lied. He had offered to treat Siddiqui to lunch and the banker had called him on it. La Saulaie was one of Montreal's fnest—and priciest—restaurants. The man wanted to be taken for a long and expensive lunch. “What do you propose?” he asked the wily banker.

Siddiqui thought for a moment. “I presume you're staying at the Ritz, so I'll pick you up on the corner of Peel and Sherbrooke streets at noon if that's convenient. The intersection is right next to your hotel.”

“That should work out quite well.”

“I'll be coming down the hill from the north and I'll pick you up on the north-west corner.”

“What kind of a car do you drive?”

“It's a bottle-green Aston-Martin Lagonda. You can't miss it my dear fellow; it is the only one of its kind in Montreal. By the way, is there anything in particular that you wish to speak to me about? Should I have my secretary brief me on any specific file?”

“You could, perhaps, ask her for the telephone and fax numbers of your colleague in Luanda.” It was an indiscreet remark to make over the telephone, but Lonsdale reasoned that, sooner or later, Siddiqui would have to be told.

Siddiqui chuckled. “Ah, so you are aware of the recent inquiry I had from Rahman.”

“Rahman?”

“Yes, Nazir Rahman. My colleague in Angola. We'll talk about him over lunch.”

“Very well, Mr. Siddiqui. Forgive me for having disturbed you at home on a Sunday evening.”

“My dear fellow, don't mention it. We're here to serve our good customers twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. That's the BCCI way.”

“Then I won't keep you any longer and
‘à demain’
.”

“À demain.” Siddiqui hung up.

Monday Montreal, Canada

Lonsdale was cold; of late he was always cold, but this time he really did feel rotten. His teeth chattered as he stood at the agreed-upon intersection waiting for Siddiqui. He had forgotten how cold and wet and windy Montreal could be in late October on days when the sun refused to come out of hiding.

Finally, he saw the Aston Martin gliding down the hill, and with the biting wind driving the rain into his face, he started across the street, jumping the gutter water and dodging the puddles, trying to time his arrival so that the lights would change just as he got to the other side. “Piece of cake,” he muttered as he watched the driver ease over to the right to make things even simpler for him.

He noted the change with a sort of abstract fascination, a subconscious matter-of-factness rather than shock. All of a sudden the car's windshield was no longer clear and smooth and shiny. Instead, it resembled a spider's web in the center of which, however, there was no spider, but a hole—the kind high-velocity bullets made.

The dying driver's foot jerked down convulsively on the accelerator. The car picked up speed and careened into the intersection where, with a glass-shattering crash, a bus ploughed into it.

Nerves screaming, Lonsdale fought the urge to look up toward from where his training told him the bullet had come. Looking would give him away, helping the shooter find the right target this time: him. He had to get away fast, but unobtrusively.

He pretended to gawk at the smashed vehicles and made sympathetic noises while he watched the crowd around him and waited. After a decent interval he walked away with purposeful strides without a glance upward—a man going about his business, on his way to an important appointment. He hoped he'd succeeded in fooling them, but deep down he knew the game was up. Someone, he had no idea who, was stalking him, and would eventually hunt him down and kill him.

Lonsdale figured the assassin shot Siddiqui to stop him from talking to the man the banker had spoken with on the telephone the night before and whose identity the shooter could not be sure of until Lonsdale reached Siddiqui's car. By then it had been too late to kill both men. The second shot to kill Lonsdale, moving in a crowd, had probably become too difficult.

Having lost his anonymity Lonsdale was thus no longer safe. But who was hunting him and why?

He was aware that there was any number of people wanting him dead for a flood of reasons. Thirty years of cheating, lying, and killing certainly did not make him a candidate for Mister Popularity. Nonetheless, the little voice inside him, the one that had been so right so many times in the past and to which he listened very carefully, kept insisting that his troubles were directly connected with his present assignment. And that probably meant that the problem lay within the Agency. Very few people knew that Lonsdale had been given the Casas assignment and even that only a few days ago.

Walking towards his hotel Lonsdale hunkered down into his trench coat, allowing his mind to wander and his instincts to stand guard.

A young, bearded man in a black leather jacket walked by and disappeared into the crowd ahead. It was the same fellow he had noticed at the scene of the shooting: solidly built, with catlike movements, and a sharp face. Was Lonsdale being followed already?

He crossed Sherbrooke Street and headed down Mansfield toward Ben's Deli. The hostess showed him to a table next to a pillar. After looking around, he sat down with his back to the street, the embodiment of innocence.

“Vous attendez quelqu'un?”
The smiling hostess wanted to know if he were waiting for someone.

“
Non, non, je suis seul.”
Wryly, he caught his own joke: he was alone all right!

“Your waiter will be with you in a moment monsieur.” The hostess smiled again. “Bon appétit.”

She headed for the entrance where two student types—an acne-faced youth and his girl—stood waiting to be seated. Lonsdale watched them carefully from the corner of his eye in the long, horizontal mirror running along the wall behind the deli counter. When the girl spotted him she said something to her companion who nodded. They cut in front of the hostess and took their place at a table with an unimpeded view of both Lonsdale and the door.

“Ready to order?” The waiter was at Lonsdale's elbow.

“Sure! Might as well have lunch. A double-smoked meat, one lean, one fat, with fries and pickles.”

“Anything to drink?”

“A chocolate milkshake.”

The waiter shook his head in resignation and left.
Another idiot who wants to die young from high cholesterol,
he thought. Lonsdale sat back to watch his watchers.

They were young and inexperienced. The real opposition, the people who meant business, was probably waiting for him outside, or worse, at his hotel.

The waiter came back with the steaming sandwiches, and in spite of his preoccupation, Lonsdale managed a contented sigh. Smoked meat, what the Americans call pastrami, at Ben's was the best Montreal had to offer. As he bit into the fresh rye bread, the sandwich oozing with mustard and the fat drippings of the meat, he tried to estimate the number of times he must have eaten the same flood in this restaurant. He'd been a regular during his four undergraduate years at McGill University, visiting this pinnacle of the smoked-meat circuit at least twice a week, every week. Why, it was here that the Agency had recruited him thirty years ago; just a few feet from where he was sitting now.

He took a long sip of his milkshake and peered down at the forlorn-looking half sandwich on his plate. He had liked the flood, very much, and he was tempted to finish what was on his plate, but he didn't. There was no sense in taking unnecessary risks, not even with amateur lamplighters. Isn't that what the Brits called people who followed people?