Murder in Havana Page 12

  Not a wasted morning. He’d met the German, Grünewald, who’d been mentioned by Nico. As for the blond Nordic or Aryan guy with the strange haircut, if he wanted to play a game, Pauling was willing to compete. He smiled. Maybe this was going to turn out to be better sport than he’d anticipated.

  Victor Gosling chose to meet Tom Hoctor at Les Halles, on Pennsylvania Avenue, because of its upstairs cigar lounge where he could retire after lunch to enjoy a Cuban Cohiba, a dozen of which were sent to him on a regular basis by a friend in Prague.

  Gosling and Hoctor were as different in their lifestyles as they were physically. Gosling towered over the diminutive Hoctor, although both were slender men. Gosling had a full head of hair. Hoctor was bald. Gosling wore expensive English suits custom-made on Savile Row, originally from the venerable Gieves & Hawkes, more recently from the trendy upstart Ozwald Boateng. Hoctor bought off the rack, and only when there was a sale. Gosling smoked cigars, enjoyed whiskey, and ate heavy food. Hoctor neither drank nor smoked; his appetite approached vegetarian.

  After lunch downstairs in the popular French bistro, Hoctor reluctantly followed Gosling to the cigar lounge where the Brit, his CIA colleague from earlier days, lit up, and sipped from a snifter one of the elite alembic cognacs. Hoctor was content with a cup of tea. They were alone.

  Gosling directed a stream of blue smoke away from Hoctor and leaned closer to him across a tiny table. “I’m telling you, Tom,” he said pianissimo, “there’s no reason for anyone at the Company to give a second thought to my using Max Pauling in Cuba. Hell, I shared with you his assignment, and I shouldn’t have done that. It’s strictly private, none of your business back in Langley. I told you about the assignment only because we go back a long way together, and I knew I could trust you.”

  Hoctor tasted his tea. After placing the cup back in the saucer, he rubbed his right eye, which tended to droop, more so when he was tired or under pressure. He thought for a moment before saying, “Zach Rasmussen wants to know about Pauling because—” He leaned forward. “Because there are ongoing projects that are particularly sensitive. Zach doesn’t want there to be any chance—any chance—that what Max is doing could cause a problem.”

  Gosling dragged on his Cohiba and finished his cognac. He again leaned forward. “Not to worry,” he said.

  “Celia Sardiña,” Hoctor said in a voice so soft it was lost in the room.

  But Gosling heard it. He cocked his head and smiled. “What about her?”

  “You have her involved, too, in this private assignment for your client.”

  “So?”

  Another rub of his eye before speaking in a tone meant to chastise, “You know damn well why I bring her up. She has other business, Vic. Important business. For us. Sensitive business.”

  “The last time I heard, Tom, she was an independent contractor, available to the highest bidder.”

  Hoctor was angry at having his concerns so casually dismissed. In all his years with the Central Intelligence Agency, he’d never grown comfortable handling independent contractors, men and women who sold their services to the agency for a period of time or specific operation, for a fee. They were necessary, he knew, but he preferred dealing with agency employees, like himself, who were accountable to a higher authority in the chain of command. The freelancers were harder to control. As far as they were concerned, they had a specific job to do—“turn” an informer in a foreign country whose language they spoke, take surveillance photos from a mile away, seduce a government official and record the pillow talk, bug a phone or room, launder money, cut a deal with drug runners in return for information, assassinate someone deemed worthy of a bloody “wet job”—and the hell with the bureaucracy.

  Most part-time contract employees had once been agency employees, like Victor Gosling. Hoctor had always found Gosling to be atypical of the usual electronics expert. Generally, these were introspective men, narrow in focus and consumed with specific knowledge and its applications. Gosling was gregarious, even flamboyant. It was the flamboyance that had caused him to be chosen as author of that book, helped by an agency-approved ghostwriter, purportedly critical of the intelligence community, yet containing only that which had already been written about, certainly nothing damaging. Gosling’s early departure from the agency, and its pension system, was quietly handled behind the scenes. With the lump sum he’d been paid, and the notoriety achieved through the book, he was quickly recruited by Cell-One and offered a compensation package only a fool would have turned down. Victor Gosling was no fool. He considered money the most worthy of motivational factors, and tended to live that philosophy.

  Hoctor had handled both Gosling and Max Pauling during their agency days, providing their only contact with Langley when the men were off on covert assignments in other countries. Gosling had been a team player. Pauling was another story. He acted more the part of independent contractor than employee, bucking superiors, deviating from the playbook, improvising, and criticizing his bosses. But he’d never failed an assignment; Hoctor had to give him that. Yet of all the undercover operatives he’d handled over his long career, Pauling was the most anxiety provoking. Hoctor sometimes joked that he wondered whether Pauling had stock in Tums, considering how many he’d prompted Hoctor to take.

  The little bald man finished the tea and primly dabbed his mouth with a napkin.

  “I want Celia Sardiña off your case,” he said in his pinched voice that lacked overtones.

  “I can’t do that, Tom. I still fail to see why—”

  “Do it, Victor.”

  “Why?”

  Hoctor stared at him, one eye slightly lower than the other, mouth set in a straight line, a vein pulsating in his temple. Gosling had seen that expression on Hoctor before, most notably during a hurried, clandestine meeting between them in Budapest. That night Hoctor had instructed Gosling to kill a Hungarian informer with whom he’d become close. The Hungarian had been a valuable source of inside military information, and was scheduled to be rewarded with a new life in the States.

  “Why?” Gosling had asked.

  “To be sure,” Hoctor had replied.

  “Sure of what?” Gosling dared to ask. “I’d bet my life on his loyalty.”

  Hoctor’s reply was to exhibit what passed for a smile, and to walk away from where they’d met in a park. The Hungarian’s dream of a better life in the democracy known as the United States ended two nights later.

  Like at that meeting in Budapest, Gosling was left without any tangible reason for dropping Celia Sardiña from the Cell-One project. He did know, however, that Hoctor, the consummate Company man, was reflecting an order from higher-ups at Langley.

  “I’ll have to make arrangements to replace her, Tom.”

  “Just do it quickly. Thank you for lunch. I’ll have to have this suit cleaned. Martha hates the smell of cigars and so do I.”

  Twenty minutes after Pauling received Celia’s call at the hotel, she arrived in an aging black Russian-made Gaz jeep driven by a Cuban teenager.

  “This thing runs?” Pauling said.

  “Most of the time,” Celia said from the front passenger seat. “When they aren’t stealing parts out of it.” In the back was a narrow wooden bench with a couple of ripped, faded cushions. “Get in,” she said. “We’re going for a ride.”

  Pauling hung on to the back of Celia’s seat as the driver headed west, the self-destruct system working well, every bump in the road magnified into a rib-rattling jolt.

  “Where are we going?” Pauling asked over the Gaz’s mufflerless roar.

  “An island. Cayo Levisa. Very pretty.”

  “I’m sure it is, but why are we going there?”

  She glanced over at the driver who sat ramrod straight, eyes straight ahead.

  Pauling got the message and stopped asking questions.

  They rode in silence as the driver negotiated a relatively smooth coastal road until reaching the town of Mariel. There, he jogged left, turning on to a rugged
, ragged two-lane road paralleling the northern coast. It was slow going at times. Large, unwieldy ox-drawn carts brought traffic to a crawl before turning off onto narrow dirt paths leading to vegas, the lush, verdant tobacco fields for which the Pinar del Río province was noted. The road was lined with palm-thatched cottages, and hordes of hitchhikers who looked at them, eyes pleading, as they passed.

  After stopping for gas, for which Pauling paid in dollars, they pulled into Palma Rubia, a small fishing village. A ferry was loading passengers for the forty-minute trip to Cayo Levisa. Celia instructed the driver to wait for them, and led Pauling to the ferry where they found an open space in which to stand at the ship’s bow. The sun was hot, reddening faces. A variety of birds could be seen in the mangrove-lined marshes along the shore—white egrets, blue herons, and sea ospreys. Black frigate birds spread their long, scimitar wings as they glided above in search of fish dropped by other birds. Pauling thought of Jessica and her love of bird watching. She would have appreciated the scene more than he.

  “You like being out on the water, Max?” Celia asked as the ferry left shore. The breeze rippled her hair. Her eyes were shut tight; her full, red lips were set in a contented smile.

  Pauling ignored the question. He noted that no one was within hearing distance. “Mind telling me why we’re here?”

  “To relax,” she said.

  “I’m not getting paid to relax.”

  “You should learn. Cuba is a wonderful place to relax.”

  He was about to say that he didn’t need lessons from her on how to live life when someone suddenly interrupted the conversation. Pauling turned to face Nico.

  “Hello,” Pauling said.

  “Hola, Señor Pauling. Cómo está?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Nico grinned and accepted Celia’s kiss on the lips.

  Pauling stepped back and leaned against the railing while Celia and Nico chatted away like reunited lovers, laughing at obvious inside jokes spoken in rapid Spanish. They were thoroughly enjoying themselves. Pauling soon found the scene mildly annoying. Celia’s cloying ways were getting to him. She treated him like a schoolboy who had to be led by the hand to the bathroom, in this case to someone who might provide the proof Vic Gosling needed for his client.

  “I hate to break this up,” Pauling said.

  Celia and Nico turned to look at him. Pauling smiled and cocked his head as though to ask, What the hell am I doing on this ferry?

  Celia came to where Max stood at the railing. “Nico has some information to give you. I didn’t want us to meet in the city. Too many eyes and ears. It’s better out here. Not as many CDRs. Still, too many people.”

  Pauling said nothing.

  “Nico places himself in a dangerous situation,” Celia said. “I would think you would respect that.”

  “Oh, I do, Celia.”

  “When we get to the island, we will be able to speak more freely. Until then, Max, enjoy the sun and water and blue sky. They’re free.”

  Forty minutes later, the ferry bumped hard into the makeshift dock. The timbers were rotted, and Pauling wondered how many more assaults by the ferry it could withstand before collapsing into the sea. What appeared to be a resort was not too distant. Stretching out to the left and right was a white sandy beach dotted with thatched-roofed huts in which men and women, mostly Caucasian, sipped drinks and ate at the resort’s tables beneath royal palms and majestic ceiba trees.

  Pauling and Nico followed Celia down a rickety set of stairs to the dock and they walked toward the resort. Celia chose a vacant beach hut and led them inside to a table and four chairs. Moments later, a young Cuban wearing a starched white waist-length jacket appeared and asked what they would like to eat and drink.

  “They have wonderful lobster and shrimp here,” Celia announced. “It is the advantage of eating where the fishermen are.” She ordered a platter and asked Nico and Pauling what they wished to drink. Pauling opted for beer. Nico and Celia ordered daiquiris.

  When the waiter was gone, Pauling asked, “How do you know he’s not a CDR?”

  “I can see in his eyes that he is not.” She smiled. “The CDRs have a look about them that is unmistakable. There is fear as well as guilt in the way they look at you, fear that they, too, might be turned in, and guilt at doing it to their neighbors. No, we are safe here. We can talk.”

  They covered inconsequential topics until the waiter had delivered a sizzling metal platter heaped with lobster meat and shrimp. He put down a basket of bread and their drinks. When he was gone, Pauling turned to Nico. “What is this information you have for me?”

  “It is not so much information I have as wanting to speak with you about what I must do to get it, and to …” He stopped in midsentence.

  “And what?” Pauling asked. “To find out how much you’ll be paid?”

  Pauling’s directness seemed to offend Nico.

  “Do you find it strange that he would want to know what his reward will be if he delivers?” Celia asked.

  “No,” Pauling replied, “not at all.” To Nico: “Go ahead. What is it you want?”

  Nico looked at Pauling with his big, round, black, doe-like eyes for what seemed an eternity. Finally, he leaned closer and said slowly and deliberately, a long pause between each word, “I want to come to the United States with you.”

  Pauling held Nico’s stare. He wasn’t sure what to say, so he did what people generally do in that situation. “You want to come to the States with me?”

  Nico was unblinking. “Yes,” he said. “I want to come to the United States. Celia tells me you are a pilot and flew here, and that you will fly away when your assignment is finished. If I get for you the proof you need, I want you to take me back to the States in your plane.”

  Celia said, “It is a good bargain, Max. Nico has a degree in biochemistry from our best university. He will have an opportunity to put his education to better use in the States.”

  “Is that how you know each other? School together? Both biochemists?”

  “No,” she said, “but we share that interest. Will you do it?”

  “I’ll have to think about it. I’m not sure I’m free to. Besides, I haven’t seen anything from you yet, Nico.”

  Nico glanced out the open door. “I have sources within the Health Ministry who can help me get for you the proof you need. The American company BTK is using the German company to buy into our cancer research. The government is beginning to put many projects and programs in private hands, but so much of the money does not come back to the government or the people. It goes into the pockets of the bureaucrats and—”

  “Just business as usual,” Pauling said.

  Nico swallowed hard. “Such an arrangement cannot be made without the personal approval of Prime Minister Castro.”

  “Which means we know where most of the money is going. Into his IRA,” Pauling said, stating the obvious.

  “What?” Nico asked. Pauling waved him on. Nico added, “There are those in the government who feel that Castro is planning to step down and go to Spain. If that is true, he will want to take as much money with him as possible. If he approves the sale of our research results to a private company, the amount of money that will exchange hands is millions.”

  “If your cancer research is as successful as you say it is—and I’ve heard it is from many sources—”

  Nico interrupted with enthusiasm. “It is very advanced. I am not a scientist. I am a bureaucrat. But I hear from the scientists about their work. You are familiar with monoclonal antibodies?”

  “I’m no scientist either,” Pauling said.

  Nico thought for a moment. “The use of monoclonal antibodies is the most effective treatment for many cancers today. These antibodies target certain cancer cells, without destroying the healthy ones. What our laboratories have managed to do is to make these antibodies four, five, even six times better. To be able to do that is very important.”

  “Millions?” Pauling said. “It�
�ll be worth mega, mucho millions to whatever private company gets the goods.”

  Nico looked to Celia to see whether he should continue. She nodded.

  “I don’t know whether you will believe this, Mr. Pauling, but there is more to my helping you than being able to go to the United States. I am Cuban. I love my country and my people. When Fidel Castro took power after the Revolution, he promised to do many things, including devoting whatever resources are necessary to cure cancer. I want that cure to come from the Cuban people, from our doctors and researchers, not from an American or German company. If the information I give you will help ensure that, I will feel as though I have made a contribution to my people.”

  Pauling tended to be skeptical about patriotism as a motive for spying and leaking information to the enemy. It had been his experience that money was the most compelling reason for deciding to become a turncoat. But he had dealt with men and women during his career whose patriotic fervor was legitimate, individuals whose sense of right overrode other considerations. The jury was out on Nico. Pauling simply didn’t know him well enough to pass judgment.

  Obviously, Nico had just as many questions about Pauling. He asked, “What will you do with the information I give you?”

  “Use it to expose how an American company is planning to gobble up your cancer research,” Pauling replied.

  “You will do this?”

  “Me? Personally? No. I’m working for another American company that doesn’t want to see it happen.”

  “Why? So that it can do the same thing, ‘gobble up’ our medical research?”

  Nico had a point, Pauling knew, but what Gosling and Cell-One did with the proof that BTK Industries was using the German company as a front wasn’t his concern.

  “I don’t know,” Pauling answered truthfully.

  “This Cell-One,” Nico pressed. “It is part of the CIA?”

  “CIA?” Pauling guffawed with too much vigor to be believed. “Of course not.”