Havana Harvest (33 page)

A pause. Then Morton was back on the line. “I'll go one better, sport. There will be a scrambler phone in the limo that will pick you up at the airport. You won't have to leave the lovely Micheline for even a moment. You won't have to pass by the offce.” It was evident Morton was trying to do his best to be accommodating.

“Deal.” Lonsdale hung up and returned to the room to break the news.

They were driving toward the Doral by eleven thirty that night. The limo that met them was one used by the Secret Service to accompany the motorcades of VIPs, such as the president of the United States. It was referred to as a “battle wagon” because, in addition to being fully armored, it contained super-sophisticated communications equipment and, when on “patrol,” a veritable arsenal of weapons. Lonsdale sat in the back and Micheline up front, the soundproof glass divider separating them.

He picked up the phone. Morton was already on the line. “Can you hear me clearly?” he asked.

“You sound as if you were surrounded by cotton wool.”

“That I'm certainly not; it's the scrambler.”

“All right then. Tell me what happened, step by step.”

“Fernandez was enrolled in the witness protection program last Sunday. He was given a brand new identity and a million one hundred thousand dollar bonus for the information he gave us.”

“You mean on top of the million bucks he brought with him?”

“That's right.”

“Who negotiated the deal for him?”

“His cousin, the lawyer Filberto Reyes Puma. He specializes in immigration work.”

Lonsdale was shocked. “Hang on for a moment. You did say Fernandez was enrolled in the program only last Sunday. Where was he being held until then, and why wasn't I given access to him?”

“At one of our safe houses in the Miami area. You were denied access to him on Director Smythe's specific instructions.”

“So what did that stupid bastard mean by ‘he’s being looked after' when I last spoke with him?”

“A fair question, which I'm afraid you'll have to ask him.”

“Continue.”

“Fernandez was given the money in negotiable bank drafts. He was also given a full set of identity papers: passport, social security card, credit cards, and so on, so he took off.”

“How?”

“Reyes Puma picked him up and drove off with him.”

“Has anyone interviewed Reyes Puma?”

“Yes, we did. He dropped Fernandez off at the Doral Beach Hotel, the place you'll be staying at. That was the last time Puma saw him.”

“When was that?”

“Sunday afternoon.”

“Do we know what happened next?”

“Fernandez rented a car from Alamo, spent the night in Miami then drove to Naples on the West Coast of Florida.”

“And?”

“He checked into the Ritz on Monday, spent the afternoon organizing his affairs. He opened a bank account at the Florida Federal Savings Bank, deposited most of his money there, went deep-sea fishing with a Canadian couple on Tuesday and returned to the Ritz around two p.m.”

“Next?”

“He was shot to death in his room between six and ten p.m. while watching TV.”

Lonsdale went rigid. “Back up Jim and give me details.”

“Like what?”

“You said he was shot while watching TV in his room.”

“That is in the affrmative.”

“Standing up, sitting down, or lying on his bed?”

“Sitting in an armchair, having a drink in front of the TV set in his cabana.”

“And nobody saw or heard anything, right?”

“Right.”

“Who found him and when?”

“The assistant manager of Housekeeping the day after he was shot, on Wednesday, around six in the evening.”

“And it took that long to find him because the Do Not Disturb sign was on his door and nobody wanted to disturb him. Right?”

“Yes, but how did you know?”

“Never mind that. I'll tell you later.” Lonsdale began to see things clearly. “I suppose he was shot to death at close range with a silencer-equipped pistol and the assassin used low-velocity high-impact bullets, leaving no exit wound.”

“Right again. Are you onto something?”

“Has ballistics analyzed the bullets?”

“Yes, they have. They were fired from a Walther PPK model semiautomatic 42-caliber pistol.”

“How many bullets?”

“Two.”

“Did Fernandez call room service before getting himself killed?”

“We thought about that and checked, but the answer is no.”

“How do you think the assassin gained access to him?” Lonsdale asked.

“We don't know for sure, but we think, based on what the Ritz people told the police, that a woman impersonating a member of the housekeeping staff knocked on his door and offered to turn down his bed. He opened the door and let her in. She went to the bathroom with some towels; he returned to his chair and his drink. She came out of the bathroom, shot him, wiped all surfaces she touched with the towel under which she was holding the weapon, then left the room, and hung the Do Not Disturb sign on his door.”

“How do you know all this?”

“One: the housekeeping staff doing the turn-down service at the Ritz is exclusively female. Two: the police found the towel with powder burns in the laundry chute. Three: one of the maids reported her uniform missing from her locker—which, by the way, she always locked after changing into her uniform and going on duty, never before,” Morton replied.

“When was that?”

“What?”

“What day and at what time did the maid report her uniform missing?”

“On Tuesday afternoon, around two thirty, just before going on duty. The maids' shifts start at three and they finish at eleven.”

“I suppose it's no use asking why the head housekeeper did not immediately investigate the case of the missing uniform.”

“Missing uniforms are a frequent occurrence. The maids leave their uniforms in their unlocked lockers after going off duty so that the Housekeeping department can check to see if they need cleaning. In the case of the maid in question the head housekeeper figured the uniform had been sent to the cleaners and the person in charge had forgotten to provide a replacement.”

“Did you follow up on this?”

“We did, but there are over sixty maids at the Ritz: two to each floor of the building, plus two for the cabanas. The head housekeeper says such mistakes happen all the time.” Morton was getting impatient. “In any event, what difference does all this make? Fernandez is dead and we're in trouble.”

“You're absolutely right. One last question. Why was Fernandez not being kept under surveillance by us in spite of the fact that we knew we may need him as a material witness?”

“He was, but the surveillance was passive in the sense that it was nonintrusive. Nobody got excited when he didn't show before noon on Wednesday. His car was in the parking lot, the lights in his cabana were turned off, as was the TV by the way. Everybody _figured he had decided to sleep in.” Morton let out a deep sigh. “Under the circumstances, I can't fault anybody.”

“I agree.”

“In any event, we would never have been able to amass this much detail on such short notice had we not had a surveillance team in place.”

“The Naples police seem to have been of help too.” Lonsdale was thinking out loud. “Tell me. Did you, yourself, interview the cousin personally?”

“No, not yet. But the Miami police who know him well, respect him. He has an excellent reputation. Why?”

“He was the last person known to have seen Fernandez alive. Maybe he even knew his new identity. For sure, he is the key to how the Cubans or the Colombians found Fernandez so soon after his release.”

“What makes you think it was the Cubans or the Colombians?”

“Who else but they—and perhaps one of us—would have an interest in shutting him up?”

“One of us? You mean you or me?” Morton's voice had a cold edge to it.

“Or Smythe.” Lonsdale was trying to set the cat among the pigeons.
Divide and conquer, divide and conquer, divide and conquer.
His inner voice kept insisting.

“That's a thought.” Morton sounded troubled.

“Isn't it just?” Lonsdale was pleased. His strategy to rattle Morton seemed to be working. “By the way, while you're at it, get in touch with the Budapest police and get a copy of the ballistic report on the bullets they dug out of poor Mr. Schwartz.”

“Why?” By now Morton was really puzzled.

“I'll explain when I see you Monday. Meanwhile, get the necessary paperwork authorizing Casas's and De la Fuente's extraction ready by the time I get in.” He hung up. They had arrived at the Doral.

Thursday through Sunday
Prague, Checkoslovakia and Luanda, Angola

Oscar De la Fuente hated everything that had to do with airplanes, especially flying in them. By the time he landed in Prague on Friday morning, he was irritable and sick to his stomach. Knowing he would have to take another fight within eight hours didn't help his disposition or his stomach for that matter.

When he got to the Forum, definitely not a five star hotel, all he wanted was a cup of hot tea and a few hours' sleep.

He had left Havana on Thursday late afternoon, planning to arrive in Angola twenty-four hours later. Altogether too long a trip, he decided. Since he was going to stay only three days in Angola it hardly seemed worthwhile spending two full days getting there and back.

Plus, it was quite impossible for him to concentrate on anything while flying. He was far too nervous for a book or a movie to hold his interest. All he could do was to obsess over the consequences of Fernandez's defection and its effect on his own relationship with Patricio Casas Rojo.

It had been a bad moment when, during their meeting at Casas's house, Patricio had demanded to know how compartmentalized the drug operation really was. His own offhand reply seemed adequate then, but now he wasn't sure. The seed of doubt had somehow taken root in Casas's mind and De la Fuente feared it would soon grow into a plant of dangerous proportions.

And without Casas, Operation Adios would be just that—“adios.”

The past month had been absolute hell for De la Fuente. In damage control mode ever since Fernandez's unfortunate departure, he'd been too busy to maintain a balanced overview of what was happening. He'd gotten Fernandez's second-in-command to confirm that all the money that was supposed to be in the BCCI account in Cayman was properly accounted for. It turned out that Fernandez had carried out his tasks with scrupulous precision to the very end. As a result, the Colombians' last shipment had reached its destination without incident and they had no reason to suspect that anything was amiss.

This enabled De la Fuente to arrange for the shipment scheduled for the second weekend after Fernandez's departure to be postponed, but time was running out and the Colombians' supply line was backing up. Customers in the States were getting restless and turning to alternative sources of supply as their regular dealers began to run dry.

The problem reached crisis proportions when De la Fuente attempted to postpone the shipment scheduled for the very day he intended to meet with Casas in Luanda. The Colombians told him in no uncertain terms that unless two catch-up shipments were processed within the next two weeks they would come to Havana to take the matter up with representatives at the highest levels of the Cuban government, not a mere deputy minister.

De la Fuente was caught between a rock and a hard thing: he had yet to inform the Colombians that their contact in George Town was dead and that their banking operation in the Cayman Islands was blown. As if he didn't have enough troubles already.

Meanwhile, where was his buddy, his ally, his comrade in crime? Seeing his buxom girlfriend in Budapest, that's where. He looked at his watch. Another two hours and he would have to leave for the airport. Then there would be six more hours of agony on that bone-rattler to Africa.