Murder in Havana Read online

  It didn’t happen. The plane’s floats missed the patrol boat’s cabin by a foot, spraying water over the deck and sending the Cuban sailors sprawling.

  Pauling exhaled, and turned to Nico, who forced a smile.

  “Like you said, Max—a piece o’ cake.”

  Walden was in the Oval Office. On the desk in front of him were two photographs and a typewritten series of “talking points” provided for him earlier in the day after a lengthy meeting with CIA director George Brown. Paul Draper sat across the room at a table on which rested one of two extensions of the president’s secure line. The phone rang. National Security Advisor Draper picked it up, listened, placed his hand over the mouthpiece, and said, “Mr. President, President Castro is on the line.”

  Walden picked up the phone on his desk. “This is President Walden, Prime Minister Castro.”

  A translator said in English, “Prime Minister Castro is ready to speak with you, Mr. President.”

  “Good. I appreciate this opportunity to communicate directly with you,” Walden said. “You are well, I assume.”

  Translator: “Yes, I am extremely well, Mr. President. And you?”

  Walden: “Quite well, thank you. I asked for this conversation because of the serious situation that exists regarding the unfortunate attempt on your life, and the death of my very good friend Senator McCullough. To get right to the point, Mr. Prime Minister, I have before me irrefutable proof that the American you’ve been looking for, Maxwell Pauling, did not have any role in the attempt on your life. In fact, he was the one who saw the gunman pull the weapon and knocked it from his hand. I have been given by our intelligence officials photographs of Mr. Pauling performing that act.”

  Walden’s words were translated for Castro, and the Cuban dictator responded.

  Translator: “Your Mr. Pauling is a CIA operative sent here to disrupt my government and to attempt to take my life. In addition, he took the life of your friend and former senator.”

  Walden: “That is not true, Mr. Prime Minister. I have been assured by the highest echelons of our intelligence community that Pauling had nothing to do with either event.” He consulted the notes on his desk. “His connection with that agency ended years ago. Until retiring from government service, Mr. Pauling was with our State Department as an analyst, not the CIA. He is a private citizen who teaches flying in New Mexico. Mr. President, we will get nowhere making claims and counterclaims. I am fully aware that you and Senator McCullough met, and during that meeting, Senator McCullough expressed certain views of mine.”

  The translator repeated in Spanish.

  Walden: “I am also aware that during that meeting, Senator McCullough entered into a private business arrangement with you. His untimely death obviously affects that arrangement, but does not necessarily mean it must be canceled. Once the shock of his death is eased, I believe those now in leadership positions at his company will be able to resurrect your agreement with him. That is not my concern, however. That represents a private business agreement. But as president of the United States, I wish to inform you that should you go through with what I’m told are plans to exploit the capture of Pauling, any progress that’s been made to date regarding the embargo, as well as other elements of the relationship between Cuba and the United States, will necessarily be abandoned. In short, Mr. Prime Minister, unless you withdraw your charges against Mr. Pauling and the CIA, acknowledge that Senator McCullough was murdered by one of your citizens—perhaps someone as demented as the man who tried to shoot you—and drop your plans to make a political statement over this, the direction that our administration will be forced to take will not be to your benefit or to the benefit of the Cuban people.”

  Walden and Draper listened impassively as Castro launched into a lengthy sermon on the moral bankruptcy of the United States, grandiose plans for Cuba’s future, and myriad other issues, some of which caused Walden and Draper to glance at each other and smile. When the Cuban dictator had finished the tirade, the translator asked whether Walden had anything else to say.

  Walden: “No, I’m quite finished. We’ll be awaiting the Prime Minister’s official response to what I’ve proposed.”

  With the conversation completed, Walden asked his national security advisor, “What do you think, Paul?”

  “Castro is volatile and unreasonable. We all know that. But he’s not insane. He’s also a savvy politician. I think he’ll weigh using Pauling as a propaganda tool versus not derailing his deal with Senator McCullough and BTK Industries, or your efforts to bring us closer to some sort of rapprochement. The Pauling thing will come and go, like the downing of our U-2, the Bay of Pigs, and all the other tensions we’ve experienced with Castro over forty years. No, Mr. President, I think he’ll come around.”

  “I think so, too. I’m putting my faith in George Brown and his assurances that this Pauling didn’t kill Price. He wouldn’t be specific with me about how he knows, but he said without hesitation or qualification that it wasn’t Pauling who pulled the trigger.”

  “Did he indicate who might have?”

  “No, although I haven’t the slightest doubt that he knows. My money is on one of the Cuban-Americans from Miami.”

  “That doesn’t rule out the CIA, Mr. President. We know they provide all sorts of support to those anti-Castro groups.”

  “Yes. And, Paul, you know the importance of keeping the McCullough business deal in this room. The Republicans, and the public, might misconstrue my support of it.”

  “Of course, Mr. President.”

  “Ironic, isn’t it?”

  “What is, sir?”

  “I backed Price’s attempt to buy Cuba’s cancer research because it would bring to this country the latest advances against the disease. Better to have the United States come up with hope for cancer patients than Castro and his dictatorship.”

  “Without a doubt, sir.”

  “The defection of Dr. Caldoza will accomplish the same thing, won’t it? If I’d known that was a possibility, I would have dissuaded Price from trying to make his deal. The NIH is the logical place for Caldoza to continue his work, more logical than Price’s private company. I wish he hadn’t lost his life over it, but it turns out better for America.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “No hitch in the plan for Caldoza to come here with his wife and seek asylum?”

  “None, sir. Your wishes have been made known to all appropriate authorities.”

  “Good. Wait’ll Castro hears that.” The president laughed. “As much as I’d like to get something good and solid nailed down with Castro before leaving office, there is a certain pleasure in sticking it to Fidel. Let me know the minute you hear the next howl from Havana.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The call came to Draper two hours later from the Cuban foreign affairs minister, Diego Vasquez.

  “I am calling to inform you,” Vasquez said in measured tones, reading from a prepared statement, “that we have apprehended the person who murdered Senator Price McCullough. The perpetrator is a Cuban citizen, a known enemy of our Socialist government, who has been wanted for crimes against the state for some time. He has been taken into custody and will face indictment by the People’s Supreme Court of the Independent Socialist Republic of Cuba. Prime Minister Fidel Castro has been personally involved in resolving this tragic matter, and is to be commended for his efforts. A statement of appreciation from the most senior possible representative of your government will be highly appropriate.”

  Draper hung up and smiled. The president will be pleased, he thought. A less pleasant contemplation was the fate of whomever the Castro government had decided to charge with Price McCullough’s murder. He would be found guilty, of course, and shot.

  He dialed the president’s private number in the First Family’s quarters.

  Jessica Mumford joined Max Pauling on the deck.

  “Who was that?” he asked, referring to a phone call she’d taken inside some ten minutes ago.


  “Annabel.”

  “How is she?”

  “She and Mac are fine. She asked for you.”

  “What did you tell her, that the fugitive is resting comfortably?”

  She sat next to him and placed her hand on his arm. “You’re not a fugitive any longer, Max.”

  “I wonder why. One minute the whole Cuban government is after me for killing McCullough, the next minute they’re crowing about having caught the real killer, some poor Cuban slob who’s taking the rap.”

  He’d decided upon returning to New Mexico to tell Jessica everything, including his belief that Celia Sardiña had murdered McCullough. In his former incarnations with the CIA and State, he returned from assignments tight-lipped, offering nothing to any woman in his life of the moment, no details, just, “The assignment went okay. Glad it’s over.”

  But he no longer felt the obligation to remain silent. And so he’d filled her in on every step of his adventure in Cuba. He began with the flight to Pittsburgh and time spent with Doris and her new husband; the trip to Miami; meetings there with Vic Gosling; the twin-engine plane and his flight to Cuba via Colombia; Blondie and Grünewald; his arrest; the attack on him at the hotel; finding McCullough’s body; evading authorities; the visit to the part-time prostitute’s apartment; lucking out with the taxi driver, David; Nico and what he’d dug up for Signal Labs; the harrowing flight in the battered floatplane to Miami with Nico; and, of course, Celia.

  “But you don’t know with certainty that Celia killed McCullough,” Jessica offered.

  “You mean I didn’t watch her pull the trigger? She killed him, Jess. I don’t know who ordered the hit—CIA, anti-Castro groups in Miami—I don’t know that. But she acted on somebody’s orders and murdered him.”

  “And tried to frame you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was there.”

  “On her own? Or on someone’s order?”

  He shrugged.

  “She didn’t need to set someone up, did she?” Jessica asked.

  “McCullough was shot in the apartment she was using, Jess. She probably promised sex to entice him there and killed him. The apartment’s an agency safe house, I’m sure. No record of tenants or owners. That’s the way they work. I think back on it and realize she didn’t seem to know anyone in her building or even the neighborhood. But they could have I.D.’d her. She knew I was a known entity with the Cuban police. Made sense to her, I suppose, to shine the light on someone else. I was an easy target.”

  “You.”

  “Yeah. Me. I just don’t know.”

  He didn’t continue to share his musings with her. The possibility that someone at Langley had ordered Celia to arrange for Max Pauling to take the fall wasn’t farfetched. He’d seen that scenario before, when he was one of them, when an individual within the CIA—not the agency itself—had concocted a plan to frame him. That was the problem with the CIA, he knew, so many secretive cells with separate agendas, so many rogue characters operating in the shadows—to explain it to her would only create apprehension, even fear.

  She sensed and respected his further silence on the subject, and changed it. “You were telling me about this young man Nico,” she said. “Was he—?” The ringing phone sent her inside again.

  He’d managed to navigate the elderly Cessna Stationair to Miami despite a series of mechanical problems that promised to land them in the drink a half-dozen times, and put down at a private floatplane marina near Fort Lauderdale. Nico knew precisely where he was to go in Florida and wasted little time thanking his pilot for the flight and the money, and wishing him well. He handed over the briefcase, got in a cab, and was gone. Pauling had wanted to pump him about Celia, but the opportunity never materialized, not while having to virtually force the plane to remain in the air for the entire flight to Miami, and then experiencing Nico’s quick getaway once they’d arrived.

  He had called a number given him by Gosling, which connected him with the Cell-One London office.

  “I’m calling Victor Gosling. Please tell him that his pilot is back in Miami and that I’ll try him again.”

  Aware that he was an accused murderer in the States, too, he took a taxi to the closest motel, checked in under an assumed name, and called Jessica.

  “God, I was so worried about you,” she said. “Where are you?”

  “Florida. I just got here. I need some sleep. I’ll fly back first thing in the morning.”

  “You’re all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m all right.”

  “They’re still saying you’re wanted for Senator McCullough’s murder,” she said, lowering her voice as though that might keep anyone from hearing it over the line.

  “I know,” he said. “I’ll be careful. I didn’t kill him, Jess. You know that.”

  “Of course I know that. I love you, Max.”

  “You’re probably the only person in the world who does right now,” he said.

  He lifted off in his Cessna 182S before daybreak and set a course directly for New Mexico, stopping only to refuel at small airports where the authorities weren’t likely to be waiting. As he neared the airstrip where he taught flying, he decided to forego it and use a field thirty miles away, reasoning that those who knew him at his home base nearest the condo would have been contacted by the FBI. He called Jessica from the alternate airport, gave her the location of a pay phone from which to call him back in the event their home phone had been tapped, told her his location on the second call, and she picked him up there. The FBI and local police had indeed visited the condo, but seemed to be operating on the belief that he was still in Cuba. In a sense, the Cuban broadcasts about him had perpetuated that faulty assumption on the part of U.S. law enforcement.

  “You didn’t have to divert to this field, Max,” she said the minute he got in the car. “You’re cleared. No one is after you. The Cubans announced they’ve caught Senator McCullough’s killer. He’s a Cuban, a fugitive from Castro’s cops for other crimes.”

  Just like that, he thought. Another patsy, this one Cuban, a deal struck somewhere, with someone. He didn’t even try to understand the forces at play. He was just glad to be home.

  Jessica had received many phone calls while Max was flying from Miami to New Mexico. Victor Gosling phoned and left a number where he could be reached, day or night. Tom Hoctor called and asked that Max return his call. And there had been dozens of messages from media wanting an interview regarding McCullough’s murder. Mainly, the reporters wanted to know how he’d ended up being accused of assassination and forced to flee Fidel Castro. Once at home, Max ignored the media calls. But, after a slow drink, he did phone Gosling. They agreed that Gosling would fly to Albuquerque, and that Max would meet his flight. Gosling had suggested that he visit the condo to pick up the briefcase, but Pauling declined. “I’ll meet you at the airport, Vic,” he’d said, “and give you the bag. Then you take the next flight out of here, to anywhere.”

  Gosling arrived the next day on a flight from Washington, D.C., and was met by Pauling. He handed over the briefcase.

  “The documents aren’t that important now that McCullough is dead,” Gosling said, “but we’d still like to have them in case his successor decides to resurrect things. You gave me quite a scare, being accused of killing him and all that. I’m glad you’re home safe. Nice job, Max. The balance of the money is on its way to your bank.”

  “Do you know why McCullough was killed?” Pauling asked as they stood at the arrival gate. “Who ordered it?”

  Gosling feigned being offended. His hand went to his heart and his brow was deeply creased. “How would I know something like that, Max?”

  “Who gave Celia Sardiña the order?”

  Gosling’s sigh was equally disingenuous. “Max, I suggest you check in at some posh spa and get some rest.”

  Pauling ignored the comment. “Celia killed McCullough, Vic. She was working for you, and for Langley.”

  “Then i
t must have been our former employer, Max. As we both know, you simply can’t trust anything they say or do. Are you sure I can’t spend a few hours with you and your lovely lady friend? I almost feel as though you’re angry with me. Don’t be. We’ve shared too many experiences for that to happen.”

  “Do you know why she tried to set me up for the murder, Vic?”

  “She must have been angry with you, Max.” Gosling smiled.

  The Brit’s flippancy came close to earning him a fist in the face. There were many things Pauling wanted to say, few of them complimentary. He settled for, “So long.”

  His phone conversation with Hoctor was equally brief.

  “I should be furious with you, Max,” Hoctor said, his small, nasal voice penetrating Pauling’s ear. “You sullied my reputation with our Interests Section in Havana. I convinced them to let me come get you myself. I told them we went back a long way, and that you’d happily leave with me.”

  “To lead me to one of those cars parked at the corner,” Pauling said.

  “I suppose you’re feeling pretty good about yourself, getting out of Cuba on your own, and being cleared by Castro of the murder.”

  “I always feel good about myself, Tom. That’s why I’m such good company.”

  He almost asked Hoctor the same questions he’d asked Gosling about McCullough’s murder, who’d ordered it, and why he’d been framed, but knew it would be wasted breath.

  “I have to get off, Tom. This is a busy day for me. I have to nap.”

  “Yes, I’m sure it is. By the way, in case you’ve been worrying about whether your lady friend’s door was left open after you ran out the back, I closed it.”

  Pauling said, smiling, “I appreciate that, Tom. You’re a hell of a guy.”

  “Keep in touch, Max. You never know when we’ll need each other again. To close a door—or open one.”

  “Who was that?” Pauling asked when Jessica rejoined him on the deck.

  “Roberta. From my bird-watching group. She wondered whether I’d like to go on a watch next weekend.”