Murder in Havana Read online

  “No, I—that is an interesting idea, Max, but—well, I mean, it has been considered by my company but … How much would your clients be willing to pay for such a thing?”

  “Plenty. Millions. You know, Kurt, running into you might have been the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time. You must know the right people in the government to approach about something like this.”

  “Yes, of course.” The waiter brought another rum, a beer for Pauling, the previous one largely untouched. “I am well connected here in Havana with very high-ups in the government. It is my job to make those contacts on behalf of my company. But I am not sure that—”

  “That you can trust me?”

  “No, no, that’s not what I meant.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you, Kurt. We’ve just met. And I’m just throwing out an idea. Probably a silly one at that.”

  Grünewald turned from Pauling and stared into his empty dessert plate. “Not so silly,” he said in a low voice.

  “Huh?”

  “Not so silly,” he said, again looking at Pauling. “But too late.”

  “How so?”

  “Nothing,” he replied, waving away the comment.

  “I’m surprised your company hasn’t been after it.”

  “My company is—well, no one knows what will happen. We never know, do we, what will happen in our lives?”

  The rum had now reached whatever area of the brain that turns happy drunks into morose ones. Grünewald looked sad.

  Pauling glanced at his watch. “Are we going to the Tropicana?”

  “Ah, yes, of course. I get into a conversation and forget about time.”

  As Pauling waited for the check—Grünewald never made a move toward his wallet—Pauling asked, “How many people work for you here in Cuba?”

  “Just one, my secretary. A Cuban woman. Very intelligent.”

  “That’s it, huh, just her?”

  “And the new one.”

  “A new employee?” Pauling said, placing American dollars on the check. “What does she do?”

  “He—” Grünewald mumbled what Pauling assumed were German four-letter words. “They sent me an assistant from Heidelberg. He flew back with me the last time I was there, not so long ago. Blöder Trottel!”

  Pauling forced a laugh. “What’s that mean?” he asked.

  “Useless imbecile. They send him to work for me but he talks only to those back in Germany. He does nothing, is almost never there. When he is, he sits in a small extra room and broods.”

  “Sounds like a charming young fella. Is he young?”

  “Ya. Young, dumb. He wears a silly haircut, like a blond bush on the top, nothing on the sides.”

  Pauling had been right. Blondie was German.

  “Does he have a job title?” Pauling asked as they moved to leave the hotel and in a moment climbed into a taxi.

  “Vice president, huh?” Grünewald said after instructing the driver where to take them. “Vice president of stupidity. I don’t even want to think about him. We go to the Tropicana, have a few more drinks, and enjoy the beautiful Cuban women on the stage. I will say that Cuban women are beautiful, better than the food. A shame I am a happily married man. Otherwise …”

  Pauling had been alert while in the disco and restaurant for anyone demonstrating undue interest in them. He saw no one. But that didn’t mean his meeting with Grünewald had gone unnoticed.

  A middle-aged Cuban man who’d dined alone at the opposite side of the restaurant left immediately after their departure and hailed another taxi: “Follow that one,” the passenger told the driver.

  And across the street from the hotel, in an outdoor café, Erich Weinert rose from the small table and walked in the opposite direction than the taxis had taken. “Keep an eye on him” he’d been told by Dr. Miller when Miller had hired him to accompany the overweight Grünewald to Havana. “He drinks too much, talks too much. Do what you must to keep him from blabbering to the wrong people.”

  Fifteen minutes later he let himself into Kurt Grünewald’s apartment with a duplicate key made shortly after arriving in Havana. He poured himself a glass of Habana Club from the stock in the small kitchen, turned off the lights, pulled a chair up to an open living room window, and waited.

  Gene Nichols, CIA operative assigned to the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, took the call at home.

  “Pauling went to the Hotel Comodoro,” he was told. “He had drinks and dinner there with the German, Kurt Grünewald.”

  “Any idea what they talked about?” Nichols asked.

  “The waiter—he is one of us—told me that they said something about cancer research, he thinks, in Cuba.”

  “Specifics?”

  “None. Grünewald also spoke of the beautiful Cuban women at the Tropicana.”

  “What was their mood?”

  “Grünewald was drunk. They went from the hotel to the Tropicana. The German fell asleep at the table.”

  “Who paid?”

  “The American, Pauling.”

  “Where did they go after that?”

  “A taxi to Grünewald’s apartment building. It is only a few streets from his office. Pauling helped him to the front door, got back in the taxi, and left Grünewald standing alone. He fumbled for his key and dropped it a few times.”

  “Then?”

  “I followed Pauling. He returned to his hotel.”

  “And?”

  “He went to his room. I waited an hour. No further sign of him. I went back to the Comodoro and spoke with the waiter.”

  “Thank you for the information.”

  “Of course.”

  Pauling had returned to his room to sleep. But once there he knew that alcohol would cause sleep to elude him and didn’t even try. He considered phoning Celia but thought better of it. She was not the sort of woman who would take kindly to a 3 A.M. call to say hello.

  He replayed the evening as he paced the room, stopping occasionally to peer out the window at the street scene below. Don’t they ever stop the music in Havana?

  He had, in fact, enjoyed the show at the Tropicana. Grünewald was right; the women, their dark bodies and minuscule costumes, were indeed shapely and lovely. Grünewald was in no shape to appreciate anything and distinctly unlovely. He’d nodded off during the orchestra’s overture, his head resting on the table between his glass and a bottle of rum he’d ordered. They’d had to wade through dozens of jinteras on their way into the massive outdoor theater that seated fifteen hundred people. One young woman was especially aggressive, white-blond hair, dusky skin, fresh-faced with large, round blue eyes and a melting smile. She said she was a dance student who aspired to join the show at the Tropicana but didn’t have the admission charge. Would they take her in with them? Grünewald happily agreed, saying she reminded him of his dear, sweet youngest daughter back in Heidelberg. But Pauling dismissed her with finality, rudely perhaps, but necessary. He didn’t need a fifteen-year-old Cuban hooker growing old prematurely becoming part of his time with Grünewald.

  Grünewald!

  The German hadn’t confirmed absolutely that his company was involved in buying into Cuba’s cancer research, but his few comments convinced Pauling. But was the German company doing it as a front for Price McCullough’s BTK Industries, as Vic Gosling claimed, or for itself? There was nothing untoward if Strauss-Lochner was operating on its own, for its own gain. But if McCullough’s company was using it to get around U.S. embargo restrictions.… Well, that’s what he was there to find out.

  He felt sorry for the German. He is obviously a fairly decent man, nearing the end of his career, whose drinking undoubtedly didn’t go without notice back at headquarters in Germany. Was that why they’d sent the dumb-looking punk to Havana, to keep tabs on him?

  Or on me?

  What was Blondie all about?

  Obviously, Grünewald isn’t the one who sicced him on me, Pauling reasoned. It had to have been his superiors back in Heidelberg. But how did the Hei
delberg crowd even know I was in Havana? Since it was obvious that they did, they must also know why I’m here.

  Who could have told them?

  Celia? Gosling? Gosling’s client at Signal Labs? Jessica?… Pauling was annoyed at the number of people who were aware of where he was, and what he was doing. Tell one person, you tell the world.

  He thought of Grünewald at home, uneasily sleeping off his drunkenness. His apartment had been only a few blocks from Strauss-Lochner’s offices on Quinta Avenida. The office would be unoccupied. The Cuban secretary was probably home in bed with her hubby. As for the blond thug, it was unlikely that he slept in the office.

  Pauling had taken note of a back entrance to his hotel, and there was a staircase at the rear. He checked the pockets of his vest. He had everything he needed—the Glock, a Swiss Army knife with enough folding appendages to open a fort, a small flashlight, money, and some business cards he’d been given identifying him as a pilot for Cali Forwarding.

  Pauling opened the door and stepped into the hallway. He was alone. He made his way to the rear stairs and tried the door. It was unlocked. He went slowly down the four flights, pausing at each landing to detect sounds from the other side of the doors. Nothing.

  The door at the lobby level opened into a utility room in which kitchen supplies were stored. A rat scurried beneath shelving. The small space was thick with the odor of spices.

  The rear exit was across a short hall from the storeroom. It led to a narrow street only slightly wider than an alley. Like every street in the city, there were people, listening to music from boom boxes, necking, tossing dice against a cement wall, and whooping it up when someone won the throw. Pauling nodded at those who noticed him and walked to a busy intersection where the usual assortment of geriatric American cars waited for paying passengers. He climbed into one and gave the driver the address.

  Unlike central Havana, the wide boulevards of the Miramar district were relatively quiet. A few prostitutes wearing Spandex tights and low-cut blouses tried to sell their wares to drivers stopped at traffic lights; one succeeded and got into a vehicle as Pauling passed. The world’s shortest ride, with a few seconds of paradise promised.

  He stood across the street from the office building and sized things up. The building was unlit. So were the buildings flanking it. He waited until there was no foot traffic, then crossed the street and ducked into the alcove by the front door. He tried the door. Locked. He took out his knife, chose a blade, and was inside within seconds. He paused to see whether anyone had noticed him and was coming to check. It didn’t happen.

  The stairwell was black, but he took the steps two at a time until reaching the third floor. To his surprise, the door to Strauss-Lochner was unlocked. Grünewald had probably forgotten to lock up in his haste to get to the hotel bar. Pauling took out the penlight, flashed it quickly about the room, and extinguished it. Draperies on the windows facing the street were drawn back. He pulled them shut before turning on the flashlight again.

  The suite consisted of three rooms: the reception area, Grünewald’s office, and the small storage room where Blondie probably did his brooding, according to Grünewald. He looked for file cabinets. There was a four-drawer cabinet in the reception area, and two two-drawer ones in the office.

  He went behind Grünewald’s desk and tried the drawers. All were unlocked. He rummaged through them. Not much there: personal items, medications, pens and pencils, a Strauss-Lochner employee handbook, a couple of wrinkled ties that should stay in a drawer, water glasses, and two bottles of Habana Club. No surprises.

  He swiveled in the chair and trained the flashlight on the file cabinet, rolled to it, and opened the top drawer. Folders were neatly labeled, titled by projects. Nothing of interest there. He tried the bottom drawer. Locked. Because sensitive documents were housed there? Better to bury such materials with unimportant documents than to make the point of their value by putting them under lock and key. It was like putting a sign on the drawer: LOOK HERE. He’d been taught during his early CIA days that it was more secure to send such things by regular mail, the innocuous way diamond merchants often sent their precious gems, than to plaster an envelope with stickers proclaiming the importance of its contents.

  His knife blade opened the bottom drawer in a second. One file tab immediately jumped out at him: BTK.

  He pulled the thin folder from the drawer and examined its contents. It contained only two pieces of paper, both memos, one from Grünewald to a Dr. Hans Miller, CEO at corporate headquarters in Heidelberg, and Miller’s reply. That’s the extent of what Pauling could understand. The memos were in German. He had no idea what they related.

  He took the file to the reception area where a photocopying machine sat next to the receptionist’s desk. He fired it up, copied the two pages, folded them, and placed them in one of his vest’s hidden interior pockets, turned off the machine, returned the file to the drawer in Grünewald’s office, made sure things were left as they had been, closed the door, and went down the stairs to the street. He had to walk a few blocks before coming upon an available taxi.

  At his hotel, he stayed outside on the street for a few minutes and looked around. No sign of the blond one, or anyone else. There was a marked PNR car parked in front of the hotel, and he could see a couple of officers in the lobby. Cubans bragged that their crime rate was among the lowest in the Western Hemisphere, but that didn’t mean there weren’t criminal types preying on oblivious tourists.

  He stepped into the lobby. His thought at that moment was that he needed to find someone to translate the memos. Maybe Celia could help. She seemed to know lots of people. He hoped she could help; he wasn’t about to stop some tourist who looked like he belonged in an oompah band and ask a favor.

  He was halfway across the lobby when he heard the desk clerk shout something in Spanish. He stopped walking and turned. The clerk was pointing at him, and two PNR cops headed across the lobby in his direction. That wouldn’t have been quite so upsetting if they didn’t have their weapons drawn and pointed at his belly. They yelled commands in Spanish, punctuating them with thrusts of their weapons. Pauling raised his hands and tried to think of something conciliatory to say. He came up blank. One of the officers pulled a radio from his belt and spoke into it. That quickly brought more uniformed police, and a detective dressed in a suit and tie, into the hotel. To Pauling’s relief, the detective spoke English: “Do not move, señor. Do not do anything foolish.”

  “Okay,” Pauling said, his hands still in the air, “but what’s this about? I think you’ve got the wrong person.”

  The detective’s reply was to order one of the officers to put cuffs on Pauling.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Pauling protested. “I’m an American citizen. I’m here because I delivered medical supplies to your hospital and—”

  His arms were jerked up high behind his back and the cuffs were affixed.

  “You will come with us now,” the detective said.

  “Why? For what?”

  “To be questioned, señor.”

  “Questioned about what?” Pauling asked as he was ushered past a dozen curious onlookers to the street. He figured it was for breaking and entering, or whatever the phrase for simple burglary was in Spanish.

  “About murder, señor. Murder.”

  Price McCullough’s meeting with Castro had lasted a half hour. Because the deal had already been worked out with high-ranking types from the Health Ministry, there was no discussion of specifics as to how BTK Industries would take control, in stages, of the crucial findings from myriad clinical trials of Cuba’s cancer research and the drugs it produced. It would ostensibly be accomplished through Strauss-Lochner Resources, which would distribute $60 million of BTK Industry’s money to selected members of Castro’s cabinet. In return, Strauss-Lochner would receive 20 percent of BTK’s profits from the marketing of the new drugs in the United States where BTK was big and Strauss-Lochner nonexistent.

  Castro used the oc
casion of meeting with the former U.S. senator to pontificate on the superiority of the Cuban medical establishment and its scientists. McCullough listened patiently, feigning intense interest as Castro became more splenetic in a diatribe hailing all that his Communist regime had done for the people of Cuba and lambasting the corruptions of capitalist America. Of course, the hypocrisy of his adamant anticapitalist stance wasn’t lost on McCullough, who was about to hand over $60 million, most of which, he was certain, would go directly to a Castro account, unnamed but numbered, somewhere in Spain or Africa.

  The meeting ended when Castro stood without as much as a good-bye and left the room, followed by his translator and his minister of health. McCullough continued to sit alone in the room, unsure what to do. Maybe Fidel had temporarily run out of words and had departed to get a fresh supply. Or maybe a man just had to wait. His dilemma was solved when the stooge in the straw hat and tan suit appeared and motioned for him to follow. He was taken to the Mercedes that had delivered him to the mansion, and driven back to Hotel Nacional. There, others in McCullough’s delegation took note of his ebullient spirit. One would think he was campaigning for elected office once again, given the way he slapped backs and flashed what had always been a winning smile.

  Castro, too, was in good spirits as he entered his office in the Central Committee of the Communist Party building. His sudden, often inexplicable shifts in mood were familiar to those who worked closely with him. He’d been combative during the meeting with McCullough, and retained some of that seeming anger during the short ride back to Plaza de la Revolución. But once there, he was in a playful frame of mind, even joking with aides and a visitor, a high-ranking official from Algeria where many of Cuba’s famed “Flying Doctors” had been providing medical services since 1963. In fact, thousands of Cuban doctors were currently serving in twenty-two Third World countries. The Algerian was among many government leaders who’d come to Cuba to celebrate Castro’s birthday.