Now that Beatrice was here, Wormold had a great deal more to worry about than his Saturday evening exercises. There was not only the basic training which Beatrice insisted on giving him in microphotography, there were also the cables he had to think up in order to keep Rudy happy, and the more cables Wormold sent the more he received. Every week now London bothered him for photographs of the installations in Oriente, and every week Beatrice became more impatient to take over the contact with his agents. It was against all the rules, she told him, for the head of a station to meet his own sources. Once he took her to dinner at the Country Club and, as bad luck would have it, Engineer Cifuentes was paged. A very tall lean man with a squint rose from a table near-by.
‘Is that Cifuentes?’ Beatrice asked sharply.
‘Yes.’
‘But you told me he was sixty-five.’
‘He looks young for his age.’
‘And you said he had a paunch.’
‘Not paunch – ponch. It’s the local dialect for squint.’ It was a very narrow squeak.
After that she began to interest herself in a more romantic figure of Wormold’s imagination – the pilot of Cubana. She worked enthusiastically to make his entry in the index complete and wanted the most personal details. Raul Dominguez certainly had pathos. He had lost his wife in a massacre during the Spanish civil war and had become disillusioned with both sides, with his Communist friends in particular. The more Beatrice asked Wormold about him, the more his character developed, and the more anxious she became to contact him. Sometimes Wormold felt a twinge of jealousy towards Raul and he tried to blacken the picture. ‘He gets through a bottle of whisky a day,’ he said.
‘It’s his escape from loneliness and memory,’ Beatrice said. ‘Don’t you ever want to escape?’
‘I suppose we all do sometimes.’
‘I know what that kind of loneliness is like,’ she said with sympathy. ‘Does he drink all day?’
‘No. The worst hour is two in the morning. When he wakes then, he can’t sleep for thinking, so he drinks instead.’ It astonished Wormold how quickly he could reply to any questions about his characters; they seemed to live on the threshold of consciousness – he had only to turn a light on and there they were, frozen in some characteristic action. Soon after Beatrice arrived Raul had a birthday and she suggested they should give him a case of champagne.
‘He won’t touch it,’ Wormold said, he didn’t know why. ‘He suffers from acidity. If he drinks champagne he comes out in spots. Now the professor on the other hand won’t drink anything else.’
‘An expensive taste.’
‘A depraved taste,’ Wormold said without taking any thought. ‘He prefers Spanish champagne.’ Sometimes he was scared at the way these people grew in the dark without his knowledge. What was Teresa doing down there, out of sight? He didn’t care to think. Her unabashed description of what life was like with her two lovers sometimes shocked him. But the immediate problem was Raul. There were moments when Wormold thought that it might have been easier if he had recruited real agents.
Wormold always thought best in his bath. He was aware one morning, when he was concentrating hard, of indignant noises, a fist beat on the door a number of times, somebody stamped on the stairs, but a creative moment had arrived and he paid no attention to the world beyond the steam. Raul had been dismissed by the Cubana air line for drunkenness. He was desperate; he was without a job; there had been an unpleasant interview between him and Captain Segura, who threatened. … ‘Are you all right?’ Beatrice called from outside. ‘Are you dying? Shall I break down the door?’
He wrapped a towel round his middle and emerged into his bedroom, which was now his office.
‘Milly went off in a rage,’ Beatrice said. ‘She missed her bath.’
‘This is one of those moments,’ Wormold said, ‘which might change the course of history. Where is Rudy?’
‘You know you gave him week-end leave.’
‘Never mind. We’ll have to send the cable through the Consulate. Get out the code-book.’
‘It’s in the safe. What’s the combination? Your birthday – that was it, wasn’t it? December 6?’
‘I changed it.’
‘Your birthday?’
‘No, no. The combination, of course.’ He added sententiously, ‘The fewer who know the combination the better for all of us. Rudy and I are quite sufficient. It’s the drill, you know, that counts.’ He went into Rudy’s room and began to twist the knob – four times to the left, three times thoughtfully to the right. His towel kept on slipping. ‘Besides, anyone can find out the date of my birth from my registration-card. Most unsafe. The sort of number they’d try at once.’
‘Go on,’ Beatrice said, ‘one more turn.’
‘This is one nobody could find out. Absolutely secure.’
‘What are you waiting for?’
‘I must have made a mistake. I shall have to start again.’
‘This combination certainly seems secure.’
‘Please don’t watch. You’re fussing me.’ Beatrice went and stood with her face to the wall. She said, ‘Tell me when I can turn round again.’
‘It’s very odd. The damn thing must have broken. Get Rudy on the phone.’
‘I can’t. I don’t know where he’s staying. He’s gone to Varadero beach.’
‘Damn!’
‘Perhaps if you told me how you remembered the number, if you can call it remembering …’
‘It was my great-aunt’s telephone number.’
‘Where does she live?’
‘95 Woodstock Road, Oxford.’
‘Why your great-aunt?’
‘Why not my great-aunt?’
‘I suppose we could put through a directory-enquiry to Oxford.’
‘I doubt whether they could help.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘I’ve forgotten that too.’
‘The combination really is secure, isn’t it?’
‘We always just knew her as great-aunt Kate. Anyway she’s been dead for fifteen years and the number may have been changed.’
‘I don’t see why you chose her number.’
‘Don’t you have a few numbers that stick in your head all your life for no reason at all?’
‘This doesn’t seem to have stuck very well.’
‘I’ll remember it in a moment. It’s something like 7,7,5,3,9.’
‘Oh dear, they would have five numbers in Oxford.’
‘We could try all the combinations of 77539.’
‘Do you know how many there are? Somewhere around six hundred, I’d guess. I hope your cable’s not urgent.’
‘I’m certain of everything except the 7.’
‘That’s fine. Which seven? I suppose now we might have to work through about six thousand arrangements. I’m no mathematician.’
‘Rudy must have it written down somewhere.’
‘Probably on waterproof paper so that he can take it in with him bathing. We’re an efficient office.’
‘Perhaps,’ Wormold said, ‘we had better use the old code.’
‘It’s not very secure. However …’ They found Charles Lamb at last by Milly’s bed; a leaf turned down showed that she was in the middle of Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Wormold said, ‘Take down this cable. Blank of March blank.’
‘Don’t you even know the day of the month?’
‘Following from 59200 stroke 5 paragraph A begins 59200 stroke 5 stroke 4 sacked for drunkenness on duty stop fears deportation to Spain where his life is in danger stop.’
‘Poor old Raul.’
‘Paragraph B begins 59200 stroke 5 stroke 4 …’
‘Couldn’t I just say “he”?’
‘All right. He. He might be prepared under these circumstances and for reasonable bonus with assured refuge in Jamaica to pilot private plane over secret constructions to obtain photographs stop paragraph C begins he would have to fly on from Santiago and land at Kingston if
59200 can make arrangements for reception stop.’
‘We really are doing something at last, aren’t we?’ Beatrice said.
‘Paragraph D begins stop will you authorize five hundred dollars for hire of plane for 59200 stroke 5 stroke 4 stop further two hundred dollars may be required to bribe airport staff Havana stop paragraph E begins bonus to 59200 stroke 5 stroke 4 should be generous as considerable risk of interception by patrolling planes over Oriente mountains stop I suggest one thousand dollars stop.’
‘What a lot of lovely money,’ Beatrice said.
‘Message ends. Go on. What are you waiting for?’
‘I’m just trying to find a suitable phrase. I don’t much care for Lamb’s Tales, do you?’
‘Seventeen hundred dollars,’ Wormold said thoughtfully.
‘You should have made it two thousand. The A.O. likes round figures.’
‘I don’t want to seem extravagant,’ Wormold said. Seventeen hundred dollars would surely cover one year at a finishing school in Switzerland.
‘You’re looking pleased with yourself,’ Beatrice said. ‘Doesn’t it occur to you that you may be sending a man to his death?’ He thought, That is exactly what I plan to do.
He said, ‘Tell them at the Consulate that the cable has to have top priority.’
‘It’s a long cable,’ Beatrice said. ‘Do you think this sentence will do? “He presented Polydore and Cadwal to the king, telling him they were his two lost sons, Guiderius and Arviragus.” There are times, aren’t there, when Shakespeare is a little dull.’
2
A week later he took Beatrice out to supper at a fish-restaurant near the harbour. The authorization had come, though they had cut him down by two hundred dollars so that the A.O. got his round figure after all. Wormold thought of Raul driving out to the airport to embark on his dangerous flight. The story was not yet complete. Just as in real life, accidents could happen; a character might take control. Perhaps Raul would be intercepted before embarking, perhaps he would be stopped by a police-car on his way. He might disappear into the torture-chambers of Captain Segura. No reference would appear in the press. Wormold would warn London that he was going off the air in case Raul was forced to talk. The radio-set would be dismantled and hidden after the last message had been sent, the celluloid sheets would be kept ready for a final conflagration …
Or perhaps Raul would take off in safety and they would never know what exactly happened to him over the Oriente mountains. Only one thing in the story was certain: he would not arrive in Jamaica and there would be no photographs.
‘What are you thinking?’ Beatrice asked. He hadn’t touched his stuffed langouste.
‘I was thinking of Raul.’ The wind blew up from the Atlantic. Moro Castle lay like a liner gale-bound across the harbour.
‘Anxious?’
‘Of course I’m anxious.’ If Raul had taken off at midnight, he would refuel just before dawn in Santiago, where the ground-staff were friendly, everyone within the Oriente province being rebels at heart. Then when it was just light enough for photography and too early for the patrol planes to be up, he would begin his reconnaissance over the mountains and the forest.
‘He hasn’t been drinking?’
‘He promised me he wouldn’t. One can’t tell.’
‘Poor Raul.’
‘Poor Raul.’
‘He’s never had much fun, has he? You should have introduced him to Teresa.’
He looked sharply up at her, but she seemed deeply engaged over her langouste.
‘That wouldn’t have been very secure, would it?’
‘Oh, damn security,’ she said.
After supper they walked back along the landward side of the Avenida de Maceo. There were few people about in the wet windy night and little traffic. The rollers came in from the Atlantic and smashed over the sea-wall. The spray drove across the road, over the four traffic-lanes, and beat like rain under the pock-marked pillars where they walked. The clouds came racing from the east, and he felt himself to be part of the slow erosion of Havana. Fifteen years was a long time. He said, ‘One of those lights up there may be him. How solitary he must feel.’
‘You talk like a novelist,’ she said.
He stopped under a pillar and watched her with anxiety and suspicion.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, nothing in particular. Sometimes I think you treat your agents like lay figures, people in a book. It’s a real man up there – isn’t it?’
‘That’s not a very nice thing to say about me.’
‘Oh, forget it. Tell me about someone you really care about Your wife. Tell me about her.’
‘She was pretty.’
‘Do you miss her?’
‘Of course. When I think of her.’
‘I don’t miss Peter.’
‘Peter?’
‘My husband. The UNESCO man.’
‘You’re lucky then. You’re free.’ He looked at his watch and the sky. ‘He should be over Matanzas by now. Unless he’s been delayed.’
‘Have you sent him that way?’
‘Oh, of course he decides his own route.’
‘And his own end?’
Something in her voice – a kind of enmity – startled him again. Was it possible she had begun to suspect him already? He walked quickly on. They passed the Carmen Bar and the Cha Cha Club – bright signs painted on the old shutters of the eighteenth-century façade. Lovely faces looked out of dim interiors, brown eyes, dark hair, Spanish and high yellow: beautiful buttocks leant against the bars, waiting for any life to come along the sea-wet street. To live in Havana was to live in a factory that turned out human beauty on a conveyor-belt. He didn’t want beauty. He stopped under a lamp and looked directly back at the direct eyes. He wanted honesty. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Don’t you know? Isn’t it all planned like Raul’s flight?’
‘I was just walking.’
‘Don’t you want to sit beside the radio? Rudy’s on duty.’
‘We won’t have any news before the early morning.’
‘You haven’t planned a late message then – the crash at Santiago?’
His lips were dry with salt and apprehension. It seemed to him that she must have guessed everything. Would she report him to Hawthorne? What would be ‘their’ next move? They had no legal remedy, but he supposed they could stop him ever returning to England. He thought: She will go back by the next plane, life will be the same as before, and, of course, it was better that way; his life belonged to Milly. He said, ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’ A great wave had broken against the sea-wall of the Avenida, and now it rose like a Christmas-tree covered with plastic frost. Then it sank out of sight, and another tree rose further down the driveway towards the Nacional. He said, ‘You’ve been strange all the evening.’ There was no point in delay; if the game were coming to an end, it was better to close it quickly. He said, ‘What are you hinting at?’
‘You mean there isn’t to be a crash at the airport – or on the way?’
‘How do you expect me to know?’
‘You’ve been behaving all the evening as if you did. You haven’t spoken about him as though he were a living man. You’ve been writing his elegy like a bad novelist preparing an effect.’
The wind knocked them together. She said, ‘Aren’t you ever tired of other people taking risks? For what? For a Boys’ Own Paper game?’
‘You play the game.’
‘I don’t believe in it like Hawthorne does.’ She said furiously, ‘I’d rather be a crook than a simpleton or an adolescent. Don’t you earn enough with your vacuum cleaners to keep out of all this?’
‘No. There’s Milly.’
‘Suppose Hawthorne hadn’t walked in on you?’
He joked miserably, ‘Perhaps I’d have married again for money.
‘Would you ever marry again?’ She seemed determined to be serious.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t know that I would.
Milly wouldn’t consider it a marriage, and one can’t shock one’s own child. Shall we go home and listen to the radio?’
‘But you don’t expect a message, do you? You said so.’
He said evasively, ‘Not for another three hours. But I expect he’ll radio before he lands.’ The odd thing was he began to feel the tension. He almost hoped for some message to reach him out of the windy sky.
She said, ‘Will you promise me that you haven’t arranged - anything?’
He avoided answering, turning back towards the President’s palace with the dark windows where the President had never slept since the last attempt on his life, and there, coming down the pavement with head bent to avoid the spray, was Dr Hasselbacher. He was probably on his way home from the Wonder Bar.
‘Dr Hasselbacher,’ Wormold called to him.
The old man looked up. For a moment Wormold thought he was going to turn tail without a word. ‘What’s the matter, Hasselbacher?’
‘Oh, it’s you, Mr Wormold. I was just thinking of you. Talk of the devil,’ he said, making a joke of it, but Wormold could have sworn that the devil had scared him.
‘You remember Mrs Severn, my secretary?’
‘The birthday party, yes, and the siphon. What are you doing up so late, Mr Wormold?’
‘We’ve been out to supper … a walk … and you?’
‘The same thing.’
Out of the vast tossing sky the sound of an engine came spasmodically down, increased, faded again, died out into the noise of wind and sea. Dr Hasselbacher said, ‘The plane from Santiago, but it’s very late. The weather must be bad in Oriente.’
Our Man in Havana Page 12