Murder in Havana Read online

  She’d given her phone number to him when she left his suite in the morning, and he promised to call her before leaving. Now, a few hours later, showered and shaved and dressed in a freshly pressed suit, he prepared for an encounter decidedly less lascivious.

  He paced the room until the knock on his door. He opened it. Two men in dark suits, one wearing large sunglasses, the other severely pockmarked, stood in the hallway. McCullough nodded, took a final glance about the suite, and followed them to a service elevator at the rear of the floor. They stood in silence, waiting for the elevator to arrive. When it did, they stepped inside and rode down to a subbasement. A short distance from the elevator was a heavy metal door leading to a small parking space shielded from view of the curious. A black Mercedes sedan was parked within feet of the door, its engine running, the rear door on the passenger side open. One of the men accompanying McCullough got in first, followed by the former senator, then the other escort. The door was slammed shut and the driver, separated from the rear compartment by a heavily tinted Plexiglas panel, slowly maneuvered the vehicle from the area and up a ramp to an alley behind the hotel. Waiting there were two other black Mercedes sedans. One led the way, the other fell in behind, and the three-car motorcade navigated the narrow streets of Old Havana at imprudent speed, scattering pedestrians like chickens as it went.

  They slowed as they turned into an alley barely wide enough to accommodate the vehicles. People who’d been in the alley had been brusquely cleared out by uniformed PNR, along with plainclothes members of the Ministry of Interior’s secret police. The alley ended in a circular courtyard in front of a two-story baroque mansion that stood out because of its size and enhanced state. It had been recently painted a subtle, pale blue. A pair of massive, burnished mahogany doors dominated the building’s façade. Windows on both levels were covered with ornamented antepechos, wrought-iron grills flush with the front wall.

  The driver came around and opened one of the car’s rear doors. McCullough followed the man wearing sunglasses and stepped onto the cobblestone drive. He looked back down the alley. It had been closed off by a marked PNR vehicle parked across its entrance. Dozens of police had taken up positions along the alley’s walls.

  The door to the building opened and four uniformed security men carrying automatic weapons exited and took up positions on either side of it. Others followed and formed a gauntlet between McCullough and the building. At the door was a heavyset man wearing a tan suit and Panama straw hat. He motioned for McCullough and his two escorts to follow.

  There were still more security personnel inside, lining a hallway leading to the rear of the house. McCullough could see a courtyard through French doors at the end. He followed the man with the hat down the corridor to a set of doors on the left. The man knocked.

  “Entrar!”

  The door was opened and McCullough stepped into the room. Seated at a table were three men. The one in the middle waved his hand to indicate McCullough was to sit in the only other chair in the room, directly across from him. McCullough came around the chair, smiled, and complied. He was greeted in English by one man, and asked by another whether he wished something cold to drink, an offer he declined.

  Then Fidel Castro, his signature beard now totally gray, and wearing his familiar combat fatigues and hat, fixed McCullough with tired eyes. Although he was fluent in English, he spoke in Spanish, which was translated by the man to his left: “Go on. I am listening.”

  Victor Gosling sipped one of seventy single-malt scotches offered by the Athenaeum Hotel’s Whisky Bar. He was a frequent guest; the hotel functioned as his home when he was in London to meet with colleagues from Cell-One. He was commenting to the barman about the splendid run of weather London was experiencing when the concierge came to tell him he had a telephone call.

  “I’ll take it in my room,” Gosling said, gulping down what was left in his glass and heading for the elevators. He entered his suite on the ninth floor and picked up the phone from the desk. “Gosling here.”

  “Hello, Victor.”

  “Ah, Celia, dear. You got my message.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was enjoying a scotch in the bar when you called.”

  “Should I apologize for interrupting you?”

  He chuckled. “Just trying to inflict some guilt upon you. How are things going?”

  “All right.”

  “You and my friend have met?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think of him?”

  “As what? A potential husband?”

  “Good God, no, but I did think you’d find him attractive.”

  “A matter of taste. Actually, he’s pleasant, for the most part. A little snappish, impatient for action. We’re enjoying our time together.”

  “Good. Then you’re making progress in your … mission.”

  “Yes. Good progress.”

  “Did he say how long he’d be staying?”

  “A week, I believe.”

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to interfere with your budding romance, Celia.”

  “Oh?”

  “Another of your ardent suitors wants you back.”

  “I’m flattered. Which one?”

  “Your favorite. He misses you and wants you to toss over this latest beau and be available exclusively for him.”

  “Do I have a say in it?”

  “Oh, you know him, Celia, he’s very demanding, always gets what he wants. Besides, he’s rich. The man I sent to meet you isn’t. Go for the money, Celia. Always go for the money. Have I ever steered you wrong?”

  “Frequently.”

  “I’m hurt. Actually, my dear, let my friend down easily. No need to break it off abruptly. I’m not sure his ego can withstand sudden bad news.”

  “All right.”

  “Everything else going well with you?”

  “Yes. You?”

  “Couldn’t be better. Thanks for ringing me up. Stay in touch. I’ll be here in London for another two days. By the way, severing your relationship with my friend won’t cost you. Full payment guaranteed.”

  Gosling hung up and placed a call to Washington where he reached Tom Hoctor.

  “I passed along your message to our friend Celia.”

  “Good,” Hoctor said.

  “Just thought I’d let you know I’m still the good soldier.”

  “Good.”

  “And never received the recognition I deserved.”

  “Thank you for calling, Victor.”

  The click in his ear said the conversation was over.

  He returned to the bar. “Another of the usual,” he told the barman. “No, a double.”

  Celia Sardiña thanked her friend and left the art gallery on Calle Obispo, one of Havana’s most famous streets, lined with shops and galleries, many of which were the rooms of private homes rented for business purposes by the artists themselves. She’d placed her call to London from the state-owned gallery’s back room where the manager, a failed middle-aged artist, maintained a satellite telephone system for use by Celia and others in their network. Because he represented only art and artists approved by the Castro government, he was above suspicion, a true Fidelista, a son of the Revolution. Privately, he supported the anti-Castro movement in Cuba, and shared the desire of Miami-based Cuban-Americans to see Castro toppled by force. Maintaining the communications system was his contribution—and an important one it was—to the effort.

  She returned to the apartment, poured herself a glass of mineral water, and sat by the open window. The city was in the midst of another blackout. Without air-conditioning, the small room was oppressively hot and humid.

  Gosling’s message was plain enough. He’d been instructed by someone in the Central Intelligence Agency to pull her off the assignment. The question was why. She could only surmise.

  She’d been sent to Cuba by her handler at Langley a short time before and told to remain there until receiving further instructions. When Gosling first
contacted her and suggested she might like to do something for him and one of his clients, she declined. Her allegiance, at least at that moment, was to the agency for which she’d undertaken freelance assignments before. But then Gosling explained that another former CIA operative, a man named Pauling, would be involved, and that the agency was aware of the project.

  She considered running it past her handler at Langley but decided against that. What she did in her spare time was her business, she reasoned. Besides, she’d begun to sour on her role as an independent contractor.

  Her involvement had begun two years earlier when she was approached by a friend, a member of the Miami-based anti-Castro Cuban-American National Foundation. He suggested that because of Celia’s easy entry into Cuba as part of the Cuban-American Health Initiative, she could help the cause by carrying messages, and sometimes money, to the group’s Havana counterparts. Celia eagerly agreed. It wasn’t the extra money that appealed. Rather, it was doing something tangible to help a movement in which she strongly believed. It meant really being a part of something, not just a freelance come-and-go artist, without any long-lived involvement and commitment.

  She had made a few runs on behalf of her friend, delivering envelopes to the art gallery on Calle Obispo. It was there that she first met Victor Gosling, who was in Cuba as a guest of Fidel Castro himself. The Cuban leader had praised Gosling’s book and its criticism of the American intelligence agency, including some of the failed attempts on his life. That those few incidents, each a comedy of errors, had already been made public in newspapers and magazines, went unnoticed by El Presidente, blinded by his hatred for the CIA. Gosling, the former agent, now a published turncoat, was treated like a hero in Cuba. For the most part, his movements were relatively unrestricted. The leash was long, giving him opportunities to make contact with anti-Castro forces within the country.

  This most recent trip to Havana would be, Celia had decided, her last. She’d been asked to do things in the past that had challenged who she was and what she stood for. She’d met those tests, but not easily, by falling back on the strength of the powerful metaphor of patriotism, of commitment to justice and human rights and the God-given right of people to live in freedom. She would take on this final assignment, do her best, and sever the relationship. In the meantime, what could be wrong in helping Gosling on behalf of his client? The twenty thousand dollars she was being paid would be a welcome addition to her bank account, as well as—some of it—to the coffers of her Miami friends engaged in bringing down Castro. It wouldn’t interfere with what she might eventually be called upon to do by Langley. According to Gosling, Pauling’s assignment promised to be a quick one, a week at the most, and she certainly had time to kill until hearing from Langley. Also, it was a private matter, for a private client, nothing political about it.

  For those reasons, and a dozen others, she’d said yes to Gosling.

  Now Langley wanted her off the pharmaceutical case. Why? It could mean only one thing: the CIA had some operation that was about to be put into action.

  Should she tell Pauling right away? Or at all? Gosling’s comment about not severing the relationship too abruptly said to her that she didn’t have to disengage immediately. If Nico came up with something real in a day or two, it would be over anyway.

  She placed a call to Pauling’s hotel. There was no answer in his room. Just as well. She needed a night alone. She opened that day’s copy of Granma, the official publication of the Communist Party, named after the wooden luxury yacht Castro used in his December 1956 invasion of Batista’s Cuba, the beginning of the Revolution. She checked the movie listings for Havana’s more than 170 theaters, sat through a dubbed version of My Fair Lady, returned to the apartment, and went to bed early.

  She barely slept.

  As Celia Sardiña sat in the darkened Cine Charles Chaplin Theater, listening to a male singer perform “With a Little Bit of Luck” in Spanish, Max Pauling was getting out of a taxi in front of the Hotel Comodoro, on Avenida One. It was an ugly, function-over-form ’60s-style building, a Spanish-Cuban joint venture that had succeeded despite its uninviting appearance, popular with German and Greek tour groups. He found Grünewald at the bar in the hotel’s disco, an intensely brown, almost black, serious-looking drink in front of him. Because it was early, there were few people in the disco. The music was canned, and loud.

  “Ah, Mr. Pauling,” the affable Grünewald said, hitting the glass with the back of his beefy hand as he stood, causing some of the drink to slosh over the rim. Although the air-conditioning was cranked up to its coldest setting—power had been restored to the city an hour earlier—he was sweating profusely.

  “Mr. Grünewald,” Pauling said, shaking hands and taking an adjacent bar stool. “I see you have a head start on me.”

  “Ya. For once, I was able to leave the office early. You found it easily?”

  “No problem.”

  “Jesús, a drink for my American friend,” Grünewald told the bartender.

  “Rum on the rocks,” Pauling said.

  “Habana Club for my friend,” Grünewald said. “The seven-year-old.” To Pauling: “It is what I drink. Very good rum.”

  Pauling held up his glass in a toast. “To meeting you,” he said.

  “Ya, I will drink to that.”

  Pauling took in the room. A few young couples danced to the incessant beat of the music coming from large speakers in each corner.

  “They have rhythm, ya?” Grünewald said, smiling and draining his most recent drink. “These Cubans, most come from Africa, you know—the slaves the Spaniards brought—they like a good time, hah! Almost as much as the Germans.”

  Pauling wasn’t sure that comparing Afro-Cubans with Germans made sense but he nodded anyway and watched Grünewald finish off his drink and motion for another.

  “I get the feeling you like being in Cuba,” Pauling said.

  Grünewald’s face suddenly turned serious. “Like being here? No, I do not like being here. My family is home in Heidelberg. Have you ever been there?”

  “Can’t say that I have.”

  “A beautiful place, Heidelberg. Nothing like here. I have many friends.”

  “I’m sure you do. Your company is headquartered there, isn’t it?”

  “Ya. You know that?”

  “Yeah. You told me when we met.”

  “I did? Ah, the mind goes as we grow older, ya? You are right. Heidelberg is the center of medical research in Germany. Many of the best scientists in the world are there.”

  “What does your company do?”

  “Research. Medical. Cancer research mostly. We are developing powerful new drugs to cure cancer. What a terrible thing cancer is, ya?”

  “I wouldn’t want to have it.”

  He laughed. “You speak plainly, like all Americans. I would not want to have it, either. Are you hungry? The food here is not so bad. Not like at home what my wife makes, but not so bad.”

  “I am hungry,” Pauling said.

  “They have many restaurants in the hotel, but I have my favorite. More European food than Cuban. I do not like Cuban food. Do you?”

  “It’s not so bad once you get used to it.”

  “And I have never gotten used to it. Two years here and I am not used to it.” In a moment, he ordered another round. Pauling paid and they carried the drinks to the restaurant, where they were seated at a corner table partly hidden by potted palms from the rest of the room. Outside the window was a sprawling terrace edged by almond trees. The hotel’s small private beach was in the distance.

  Pauling led back into the conversation they’d been having at the bar.

  “I have this family member back home in the States, Mr. Grünewald. She—”

  “Kurt. It is Kurt.”

  “Right, Kurt, and I’m Max.”

  “It sounds like a good German name.”

  “Well, there’s a little German somewhere in my background. Anyway, my aunt has cancer and she’s always search
ing for a cure, anything, herbs, witch doctors, anything.”

  “In hope of a miracle.”

  “Right. She was telling me before I left for Cuba that they’re doing incredible research into cancer right here. Is that true?”

  Grünewald nodded. The waiter came to the table and the German ordered another drink. He was quite drunk by now.

  “Is that true?” Pauling repeated. “What?”

  “Cancer research in Cuba. I understand it’s very advanced.”

  Dimly recognizing the state he’d reached, Grünewald drew a series of deep breaths and mopped his brow with a handkerchief. His grin was wide and sappy. “Too much of the rum,” he said. “Perhaps we should order dinner. Chicken. The chicken is good. The steaks are not good.”

  During dinner, Grünewald seemed to sober up somewhat. Pauling avoided revisiting the subject until the dessert the German had ordered, tatianoff, chocolate cake smothered with cream, arrived. Grünewald ate with the same gusto as he drank.

  “Oh, yes, we were talking about medical research,” Pauling said.

  “Yes, we were. It is hard to believe, isn’t it, that in such a backward country they could do such sophisticated work? Very advanced. Yes, very advanced indeed.”

  “Who owns the research, the government?”

  “Ya. It owns everything here. It is a Communist country after all.”

  “I wonder if they’d be interested in having a private investor.”

  Grünewald’s forkful of cake and cream stopped halfway to his mouth. “Private investor?” he said.

  “Yes,” Pauling said. “That’s what I do back in the States. I’m a venture capitalist. I came to Cuba looking for investment possibilities for some of my clients.”

  “It is the government that owns everything,” he said, completing the fork’s journey.

  “I know, I know, but I’ve heard that Castro is in the process of privatizing some things here in Cuba. Have you ever thought of trying to buy into the research, grab a piece of the pie?” Pauling displayed his widest smile.