Murder in Havana Page 30

  “Her brother has boats.”

  “Here? In Cojímar?”

  “No. In Santa Maria del Mar. It is not far from here, maybe ten miles.”

  “What kind of boats does he have?”

  “Fishing boats. Very good boats.”

  “Would he sell one to me?”

  David shrugged. “Maybe if there is enough money for him to buy another.”

  “There’s plenty of money.”

  “There is a plane there, too.”

  Pauling straightened. “A plane? There’s an airport there?”

  “No. No airport.”

  “What kind of plane?”

  “A water plane.”

  “A seaplane? With pontoons?” He illustrated with his hands.

  “Sí.”

  “Who owns it, your girlfriend’s brother?”

  “No. His friend.”

  “Does it work?”

  “Yes. I have seen it fly. It is very old but—”

  “But you’ve seen it fly. How long ago?”

  “I don’t know. Two months maybe. Maybe four months.”

  “Can you go talk to your ‘sometimes’ girlfriend, ask if her brother’s friend would like to lend it to me?”

  “Lend it?”

  “I’ll rent it from him.”

  “How would you get it back? You are coming back to Cuba in it?”

  “I’ll buy it from him. Ask how much.”

  “All right. I will do it.”

  “Will you get me something to eat first?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Anything. Are there restaurants here?”

  “Sí. A good one. La Terraza. Hemingway ate there many times. There is a statue there for him.”

  A statue of Papa everywhere, huh? Fidel’s rival. “Bring me something. Then go find your girlfriend.”

  David returned a half hour later carrying a small basket made of reeds. In it was a bowl of paella and a loaf of bread.

  “Great,” Pauling said, using one of the chairs as a table. “Go on, to your girlfriend. I’ll be here.”

  Pauling watched television after eating. The Cuban channel reported on the search for him, the announcer pointing out that every conceivable way of leaving Cuba had been blocked by authorities, including the airports and docks. There appeared footage of Cuban military boats patrolling shorelines in and around Havana, and of Pauling’s plane at Aéropuerto José Martí. Let’s see if your expense account covers that, Gosling, he thought.

  He fell asleep. When he awoke, it was dark outside and in the room. He turned on the only lamp and checked his watch. Ten o’clock. Two hours until Nico was to arrive. Where was David? Pauling wasn’t putting much stock in the floatplane he’d mentioned. Chances were the owner wouldn’t want to sell it, not if he used it to make money. Of course, Pauling could always commandeer it at gunpoint, but that didn’t appeal. More than anything, he wanted a quick, smooth, nonconfrontational way out of Cuba, with nobody shooting at his back.

  By eleven, he’d become jumpy. He paced the room, stopping frequently to open the curtains a crack to peer outside to the beach. Nico hadn’t said how they would meet up at the motel. What was he supposed to do, sit in the lobby? Probably. When Nico had told him where they would meet, Pauling hadn’t yet been the subject of a manhunt. Now that he was, putting himself in one more public place was risky.

  At eleven-thirty, he’d decided he didn’t have a choice. He’d go to the lobby to allow Nico to spot him. He got up to leave. Someone knocked. Pauling drew the gun from his vest and went to the door. “Who is it?”

  “David.”

  He opened the door to see David standing next to a petite, pretty young girl, no older than sixteen, in jeans and a blue denim shirt. A sturdy young man wearing white shorts, a yellow T-shirt, and sandals waited in the doorway with them.

  “These are my friends,” David said. He introduced the girl as Ernestine and the young man, her brother, as Joe. Pauling stepped back to allow them to enter, and closed the door behind them.

  “Joe says he will sell you one of his boats,” David said, sounding excited that he’d successfully brokered the deal.

  “Good,” Pauling said. “It will get me to Miami?”

  Joe, who was one of those perpetually brooding young men, hunched his shoulders and conversed with David in Spanish. David said to Pauling in English, “He says he will not guarantee it. He says you pay the money and take the boat. If it doesn’t go all the way to Miami, he will not give back the money.”

  Pauling laughed and said to David, “Tell him I won’t need the money back if I don’t make it to Miami.”

  David motioned Pauling aside and whispered, “You said you were meeting someone here.”

  “Right.”

  “There is a man and woman in the lobby, sitting there.”

  “Man and woman?”

  “Sí. I thought—”

  “You and your friends stay here. Is there anyone else?”

  “Just the clerk at the desk.”

  “I’ll be back.”

  He stepped into the hallway and listened for sounds. All was quiet. He slowly approached the lobby, pausing at each door before moving past. He reached the break in the wall and took a few steps to his right, giving him a view of the small lobby. Seated in adjacent chairs, and looking every bit like a couple in a doctor’s waiting room, was Nico—and Celia Sardiña.

  Pauling was stunned. Although she’d been on his mind almost constantly, coming and going in flashes of anger or confusion, the last thing he expected was to see her again. He stared, incapable of saying or doing anything. Although he was partially concealed by the wall, she spotted him, told Nico, stood, straightened her skirt, and crossed the lobby to him.

  “Hello, Max,” she said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I came with Nico. He told me he was meeting you.”

  “You’ve got one hell of a nerve.”

  “I take that as a compliment. You’re ready to go?”

  Pauling glanced behind the desk at the clerk, who seemed disinterested in their conversation.

  “Hello,” Nico said.

  Pauling ignored him. He lowered his voice and snarled at Celia, “Why did you set me up like that?”

  “I don’t have time to discuss it, Max. The important thing is for you and Nico to go. He has everything you need.” She turned and nodded at a briefcase Nico held in his hand. “How are you leaving?”

  “We would have been leaving in the plane I flew in on, but thanks to you, it now belongs to Cuba. I think I have a boat.”

  “No good. They’re patrolling the coast with boats and helicopters.”

  “Then you tell me. You seem to have all the answers.”

  “You need another plane. Let’s go to your room.”

  “How do you know I have a room?”

  She looked at the clerk, then back at Pauling. “He’s one of us. Please stop asking questions. You and Nico don’t have time.”

  Pauling took them to his room where David, Ernestine, and Joe waited.

  “Who are they?” Celia asked.

  “Friends. After you, I needed some.” He said to David, “The boat’s out of the question. I need a plane. Where’s the guy who owns the floatplane?”

  David spoke in Spanish to Joe.

  “He lives in Santa Maria del Mar, where the plane is.”

  “Tell Joe I have plenty of money if he’ll help me get that plane. Plenty of money for all of you.”

  David’s translation didn’t bring a smile to Joe’s sour expression, but he did nod.

  “Then let’s go,” Pauling said.

  They all left through the back door and went to David’s Cadillac. Joe and Ernestine got in the backseat and David climbed in behind the wheel.

  “You have the money for Nico?” Celia asked Pauling.

  Pauling could no longer corral the anger that welled up in him. He grabbed the front of her blouse and pushed her against the wall. Nic
o put his hand on Pauling’s shoulder but it was shaken off. “Get in the car,” Pauling ordered. Nico backed off, and Pauling, his face inches from Celia’s, said, “I’d have no problem killing you right now.”

  The smirk on her face only further infuriated him. He shook her by the blouse but the grin remained. “Why?” he asked. “You killed McCullough and set me up to take the fall. Why?”

  “Get your hands off me, Max.” The smirk was gone, replaced by a venomous stare. “I did what I had to do. Sorry if it caused you any inconvenience. We are at war against Castro, Max. There are no rules, no allegiances if they get in the way of winning. You got what you wanted. You can leave here and forget it ever happened. Unfortunately, we can’t do that.”

  He released his grip on her and drew a deep breath, which carried the sweet scent of her up to him. He shook his head. “Why McCullough, Celia. For who? Who?”

  “Does it matter? He couldn’t be allowed to steal from the Cuban people and line Castro’s pockets.”

  “Christ, what about the information I’m taking back to Gosling? That would have been enough to kill McCullough’s deal without killing him.”

  She looked into his eyes for what seemed a very long time, and although no words were said, he knew what she was thinking, that she was living in a different world, a world he once occupied but one that no longer consumed him. For him, there were no causes left. For him, the challenge to which she responded had faded from his life.

  “The money for Nico. You have it?” she asked.

  “Yes, I have it.”

  “One day, when this is over, perhaps we can sit down together and discuss it. Have you forgotten? Have you been away from it so long that you have forgotten expediency and the need for it, urgency that breaks all the rules between people? I didn’t want to hurt you, Max, but I’m not sorry that I did. Enough of this. For now, concentrate on leaving Cuba.”

  She walked away, disappearing into fog that had rolled in off the water. Pauling almost went after her. He wanted that discussion with her now. He wanted answers, didn’t want to leave Cuba without them. But he knew that wasn’t about to happen.

  Nico stood next to the open rear door of the Cadillac.

  “Get in,” Pauling said, and joined David in the front seat. “Santa Maria del Mar,” he said. “And don’t talk to me.”

  It took David ten minutes to get the Caddy started: “We need oil,” he said.

  “Just get us there,” Pauling said. “You can junk this thing after we’re gone and buy something else.”

  They chugged along the coastal road, loud, constant backfires startling everyone in the car, the engine hacking like a sumo wrestler with bronchitis. Police vehicles passed in the opposite direction but paid them no attention. Pauling didn’t bother scrunching down in his seat. He wore his hat low over his eyes, holding the Glock on his lap. No one spoke; only the engine’s grumble intruded on his thoughts.

  When they reached their destination, Joe instructed David to turn down a narrow residential street to a house at the end of a row of cottages. David didn’t turn off the engine as Joe got out and disappeared into the cottage. A few minutes later he emerged with a tall, rangy young Cuban who spoke to David in Spanish. He, in turn, said to Pauling, “He will sell you the airplane for ten thousand, American.”

  “I don’t … I want to see it first.”

  They piled into the car with David following verbal directions to a floating dock a thousand yards from what appeared to Pauling to be a string of seafront hotels. The fog had thickened, but he could see the vague outline of an aircraft bobbing in the water at the end of the dock. They got out of the Caddy and walked to where the plane was secured to the dock by mooring lines.

  Pauling pulled on the lines and brought the plane against the dock. He handed the lines to David and said, “Keep it close. Does he have the keys?”

  The lanky Cuban handed a set to Pauling, who opened the door on the left side of the plane and slipped into the seat. He fumbled in his vest, found a small penlight, and played it over the instrument panel. The plane was a very old Cessna Stationair. The panel was crusted with dirt and nicotine; he moistened his fingertips and cleaned the glass on some of the gauges. He trained the light on the front passenger seat. The gray fabric was ripped as though a large cat had run its claws over it. The way an aircraft looked cosmetically was a clear tip-off as to how it had been maintained mechanically, he knew. But he wasn’t there looking to buy the best used airplane on the lot. All he could do was hope that the engine turned over and the plane didn’t, and that it had enough left in it to travel the ninety miles to Miami.

  He inserted the key and turned it. The engine seemed to think about it, made a few false starts, then coughed to life, turning the prop in fits and starts before smoothing out and sending it into a continuous circle, shaking the craft and causing its ancient fittings to creak and whine in protest. He checked the fuel gauge; half a tank in each wing, enough for the trip unless they were forced to make a wide detour. Or, if the fuel had been sitting in the tanks for months and had become diluted from condensation … He asked about it when he got out, the engine idling, and joined the others on the deck.

  “Not so old,” the plane’s owner said of the fuel. “New. Last week.”

  And I’m Fidel Castro, Pauling thought. It didn’t matter. The plane, and its questionable fuel, was the only game in town. “Ten thousand is too much,” he told David, who passed it on to the plane’s owner. “It’s old, probably doesn’t have a hundred hours left on the engine. Two thousand.”

  They bickered back and forth, with David in the middle as occasional translator. Finally, the owner suggested four thousand, and Pauling agreed. It was still an outrageous price for the plane, but every minute spent haggling was a minute longer in Cuba.

  “Ready, Nico?” he asked.

  “Yes. I am ready.”

  “I have the money for you. I’m trusting that what you have in that briefcase is worth it.”

  “It is, Señor Pauling. Trust me.”

  Pauling didn’t express his feelings about trust at that moment. He handed David one of the four bundles of bills he carried and told him to take care of his friends with it. “I got lucky getting in your taxi, David,” he said. “You’re a good man. Hang in there. This place will be free one of these days and—” He grinned and stroked his chin. “And he’ll be gone.”

  “Good luck, buddy,” David said, gripping Pauling’s hand and shaking it vigorously.

  “You, too.”

  Nico and Pauling climbed into the Cessna. Nico’s seat belt had been severed, and Pauling’s wouldn’t extend far enough to buckle. Pauling reached to turn on the running lights, assuming they worked, but decided not to. There was no telling whether police boats might be out there in the fog. Of course, that same fog posed another problem. Pauling had no idea what was beyond his hundred-foot field of vision. Were there buoys out there with boats tethered to them, or floating debris? He reached into his vest, pulled out the collar, rubbed it, and hung it on a knob on the instrument panel. Not smashing into something during takeoff would be pure luck.

  The owner of the plane, anticipating Pauling’s need, untied the two ropes from the aircraft and pushed it away from the dock. It floated freely out into the water. There hadn’t been the time or opportunity to conduct an external inspection of the plane, nor to run down a preflight checklist, things about which Pauling had always been meticulous. But that wasn’t his biggest concern at the moment. He ran through a mental recounting of the few hours of floatplane instruction he’d received years ago while on assignment for the CIA in Florida. It wasn’t totally unlike flying a land-based plane, but there were some differences. The floats on which the plane rested had water rudders at the rear to help control taxiing while in the water. The elevator trim on a seaplane had to be set to give the control yoke neutral pressure, and unlike on a runway where the aircraft remains fixed until power is applied, the water currents continually keep a floatpla
ne moving, often in a direction away from the one intended by the pilot. He knew that the key to taking off was to get the aircraft up on its floats in the proper planing position to minimize resistance from the water.

  This night, he realized, had certain advantages. The wind was calm, as was the water. With any luck—he touched the collar again—they’d make it into the air. The craft didn’t have navigation instruments except for a simple compass, which would have to suffice. He looked at Nico, whose expression was one of extreme discomfort. “All set?” he asked.

  “I think so,” the Cuban replied.

  Pauling slowly advanced the throttle. The plane trembled like a corrugated tin house in an earthquake, but began its taxi into open water. Pauling looked back at the dock where David and the two others watched. “Thanks,” he muttered as he advanced the throttle and made a determination as to which direction to take off. It made almost no difference because of the lack of wind. Had there been a breeze, he would have taken off into it to increase lift on the wings.

  “We will be okay?” Nico asked.

  Pauling flashed him a reassuring smile. “Nothing to it, Nico. Piece o’ cake, as we Americans say.”

  He pushed the throttle to the firewall and the plane began to move, slowly and laboriously. The floats attached to the belly of the plane in place of wheels fought to gain speed against the water’s resistance. Pauling felt the plane lift a little, and soon it had achieved the requisite planing attitude to allow gathering speed. “Come on, come on,” he exhorted the craft, raising himself slightly off the seat as though to add buoyancy to the process. The water was less calm farther from the shore, and small swells slapped against the floats. Pauling peered into the fog. “Almost there, baby,” he said over the engine’s roar. “Come on, come on, get up, get up.”

  The aircraft’s floats lifted clear of the water. As they did, lights appeared in the distance. It was a boat, a sizable one, and it was heading straight for the plane, which was only five feet off the water. Pauling pulled the yoke back into his crotch and held it there as the approaching lights raced closer. Pauling could now see that it was a military boat. A searchlight swung around and flooded the cockpit with a blinding glare. Pauling closed his eyes against it, filled his lungs with air, and waited for the collision.