“I admit,” Lammeck muttered, “it’s not much of a vacation.”
Felix fetched his chair and sat in front of Lammeck.
“Why does Captain Johan come by your house to visit, Professor?”
The question shook Lammeck. He didn’t know who Felix worked for, but he expected to be asked about other topics. Johan was a secret policeman. Perhaps, then, Felix was not. Or was he a rival of Johan’s? Was Johan himself involved in something illicit?
“Felix?”
“¿Sí?”
“Don’t hit me again. ¿Comprende?”
The bald man grinned. “I shall try to restrain myself, Professor. But that will require cooperation on your part. Now, why has Captain Johan befriended you?”
Lammeck blinked. The pulsing in his right cheek grew worse by the heartbeat.
“We play checkers.”
“And what do you talk about over checkers, you and our police captain? The assassination of Fidel? Come, Professor. Fidel is your sole interest for being in Cuba. And that is Johan’s concern, as well. This is not an accident that the two of you have become comrades. What does Johan know? What has he told you?”
“That the siete rum is better than the quince. Doesn’t make sense, but he’s right.”
“Anything else?”
“Cuban women. And cigars.”
Felix nodded at this.
“Of course. You are an American. Your opinion of us would be demeaning. Bueno. I will allow you a touch of bravado. But I suggest you get it out of your system quickly. Let me try a different question. Who is Bud Calendar?”
Again, Lammeck was taken aback by Felix’s inquiry. Didn’t he know? It was Calendar who’d sent Lammeck to El Floridita in the first place! How could Felix have intercepted him without knowing something about Calendar? Who was Felix? Who was behind him? Lammeck fought to keep any reaction from his face. He was certain of only one thing: that he could not answer. He didn’t know what Felix was capable of beyond kidnapping and a few wicked blows to the head. But Lammeck was dead sure of Calendar’s power, and the CIA agent’s willingness to use it. And Johan? He was Fidel’s protector; it was not a job you got without being ruthless, even with his affinity for historians.
“I don’t know the man.”
Again tall Felix massaged the knuckles on the back of his jack-hammer hand. “Why are you protecting these two men, Professor? If I accept what you say, you do not speak with Johan about the killing of Fidel, though I know you do. And you do not know Calendar, when I am convinced you do.”
“Someone’s lying to you, Felix.”
“Yes. That is certain. And the liar is you.”
Felix stood again from his chair. This time he raised his right hand slow and high, backhanded again, to use the studs of his knuckles. Lammeck stared straight up, marveling, even as the blow swept in, at the degree of his fear of Calendar and the CIA, to take this punishment instead of telling everything he knew of them. He turned his cheek, to let the wallop land on his right ear.
The pain was not worse than the first shot, but this time Felix didn’t stop the chair from tumbling over. Lammeck landed on the concrete, banging his left shoulder and cracking his head.
He lay on his side, listening to himself groan. He tried to open his eyes but failed. He wanted badly to rub them but with his hands tied could not. When he could see again, he looked into the dirty tips of Felix’s shoes.
The tall man kneeled beside Lammeck’s head.
“I did not think I would be impressed with you, old man. But you have a mean streak.”
Felix dug a hand under Lammeck’s cheek, lifting his head off the bare concrete. He pulled the scarf up across Lammeck’s eyes, returning him to blindness and the smell of dust.
“You will be driven back to your house, Professor. You will be watched closely here in Cuba. I hope you have enough sense to make your visit short. And when you do go back to your powerful, comfortable homeland, drink your own rum, screw your own women, but take some of our excellent cigars with you.”
Felix patted Lammeck’s shoulder. Lammeck heard the man’s shoes grind in the grit of the bare floor, walking away. Felix called for the others to come back into the room.
Lammeck was sliced free of the chair; his hands were left bound. Arms hoisted him off the floor to return him to his feet. Hands under his elbows kept him from stumbling while making his way up the steps out of the basement. Someone used a kerchief to stanch blood off his forehead where he’d struck the concrete. Under the blindfold, Lammeck’s right cheek took up a murderous, bloated throb.
On the arms of Felix’s henchmen, Lammeck entered open air again. Quickly, he was folded into the car, this time not into the trunk but the backseat. He sat on his bound hands. Men pressed in on either side of him.
Lammeck’s blindfold was lowered. He looked at the four men with him in the car. Felix sat in the front passenger seat. The three others were not remarkable in any way. Two were white Spanish like Felix, the third was mulatto.
“I suppose you don’t mind if I get a good look at you all,” he said.
Felix pivoted to reply, “And who will you tell?” Felix challenged. “Johan? Will he believe you said nothing to us about your conversations? Calendar? You think I was harsh in my interrogation? Be my guest with Castro’s secret police. Or your CIA. No. I have no concern that you will make any trouble for me.”
Lammeck asked, “Which one’s Diego?”
Beside him, the mulatto nodded. The man whispered, “Siento.” Sorry.
Lammeck nodded back. He glanced outside the car to get an image of where he was. The street was dark, the brick houses nondescript. Hedges rimmed the yards, trees shadowed the few working streetlamps. A lone motorcycle puttered past, but no pedestrians were on the evening sidewalks.
Felix said, “Turn around.”
Lammeck faced the rear window. His arms were gripped and raised. The rope tying his hands was snipped. Instantly, blood flowed back painfully into his wrists. They itched. Lammeck massaged the flesh, turning back to Felix. The man held Lammeck’s four-inch dirk.
Felix pointed the blade at Lammeck’s battered face.
“I like this knife, Professor. I think I will keep it.”
Lammeck rubbed his wrists, working his fingers to animate them.
Felix waved the knife once, a bully’s threatening gesture.
Lammeck, sure of his hands now, acted with long-practiced instinct and speed. With one eye swollen shut, he moved by feel and pressure. Swiftly opening his left palm, he slammed it against Felix’s big forearm, pushing the knife to the right. He wrapped his fingers around Felix’s wrist, pressing his thumb hard into the back of the man’s hand to bend it inward, a quick aikido disarming grip. In the same instant, Lammeck’s open right hand smashed against Felix’s exposed knuckles, shoving the hand in farther, painfully, forcing the tendons to open the fingers around the knife handle. Flexing his right hand wide between index finger and thumb, Lammeck swept the haft out of Felix’s suddenly weakened grasp. In less than a second, Lammeck held the blade. In the next moment, before Felix or any of the men could react, he released Felix’s arm, then reached his left hand behind the bald head, pulling forward, pinning the Cuban against the front seat. Lammeck laid the sharp point of the knife into the flesh below Felix’s shocked left eye.
“Concerned now?”
Above the knifepoint the man’s eyelid fluttered wildly. Lammeck pressed the knife; a drop of blood bubbled beneath its point.
“Everyone out of the car,” he said evenly.
No one moved. Lammeck waited.
Felix repeated the command in Spanish. The two were left alone.
“Felix.”
“Sí, Professor.”
Lammeck let a little of the man’s blood slide onto the silver blade.
“I’ll be taking my knife with me. It’s a museum piece. And it’s drawn better blood than yours. The sheath, please.”
Lammeck watched the nervous eyeball above
the knife shift up to meet his gaze, then down again to the red-dribbled blade.
“Sí.”
Felix fumbled on the seat beside him without looking away from the steel. He produced the leather case for the ancient priests’ knife.
“Toss it on the seat next to me.”
The man obeyed, with his head clamped between Lammeck’s palm and the dirk at his eye.
“And understand, I’ll have this knife on me at all times. Including the next time I see you. Yes?”
In his soft voice, Felix answered, “Yes. Of course, Professor.”
“Now, it’s my turn to ask a question. Who do you work for?”
Under his hands, Lammeck felt Felix’s head shiver, to tell him, No.
Lammeck pressed in the tip. A thicker trickle of blood sluiced down the blade.
“Let’s try again. Who are you working for?”
Felix’s eyeball cut left and right, his jaw worked, but these were the only parts of his head he could move in the vise of Lammeck’s grip.
“Easy, Professor. Let him go.”
The voice came from outside the open car door. Lammeck didn’t look.
Calendar.
“Felix,” Lammeck asked, “is this your boss?”
The bald man leered, as if he’d been spared in the nick of time and there was nothing Lammeck could do.
“Sí.”
Lammeck flicked the knife away from Felix’s socket, but kept his left hand tight behind the bald head. Swiftly, he raised the knife backhanded, exposing the hard metal knob at the bottom of the handle in the meat of his fist. He slammed his fist on top of the bald head, once, then harder, twice, his other hand braced behind Felix’s neck.
Lammeck let him go. He watched Felix sag back against the Cadillac’s dash. Before he faded too far, Lammeck unleashed one more good shot, this time a fist hardened around the knife’s handle, aimed dead into the bleeding eye socket, for what would become a splendid shiner.
“I believe you,” Lammeck told Felix. He put the knife in his free hand and shook the sting out of his knuckles. He collected the black sheath.
The three men on the sidewalk hauled Felix out of the front seat, off the floor mat. Lammeck pulled the bandanna from his neck. He threw it into the street at their feet.
Watching the others lug Felix away, he slid the dagger into its case. Lammeck, his ear still buzzing, let out a slow breath.
With his anger subsiding, his hands began to shake.
“Climb in the front,” Calendar said, leaning in. “I’ll drive.”
~ * ~
The agent tossed a duffel bag into the backseat, then drove away.
Lammeck glared. He padded fingertips over his burning cheek.
Calendar shot him a glance. “You thinking about having a go at me, Professor?”
“I’m not ruling it out.”
“Well, rule it out. And get back to thinking things through, before you do something else stupid.”
The Cadillac knifed through a tight neighborhood of working-class homes, brick, with front stoops. People took their strolls before dinner, a Cuban custom. Calendar swung the big car at a fast clip down narrow streets. He knew the area.
“Where are we?” Lammeck asked.
“Luyano. South of the centro. That was my safe house.”
“You were there? You let Felix beat me up in your basement?”
“I was upstairs, Professor. Cool down. I didn’t know he was gonna go that far. Hey, I told the guy just to knock you around a little, scare you. Felix went overboard. I got nothing to do with that.”
“Plausible deniability?”
“You can say that.”
“Did you have him put me in the trunk, too?”
“I had to know, Professor.”
“If I could keep a secret?”
“Exactly. You got no idea how much is riding on this operation. Far as I knew, you were just some chubby egghead from Rhode Island come down here to play on the edge. Now I got a real idea what you’re made of. You can take a licking and keep on ticking. I saw that for myself. Now we can move ahead.”
Calendar brought his finger around to wag in Lammeck’s face. “And listen to me. It’s square between you and Felix, understand? You evened the score, so I got no more beef with the guy. If you do, keep it to yourself.”
Calendar wended the Cadillac out of the warren of streets onto a wider avenue along Havana harbor. The car sped past the behemoth sugar and fruit warehouses where four Soviet-marked cargo ships were moored. Great cranes swung pallets from the ships’ holds onto the quay, lit by floodlights.
“Russian arms,” Calendar said, indicating the freighters. “Artillery, trucks, tank parts. More good reasons to take Castro out.”
Calendar was trying to deflect the conversation back to their mission. But Lammeck was not finished; he figured he’d paid for some answers.
“Who’s Felix?”
“Need-to-know basis, Professor.”
“Calendar?”
“Yep.”
“I’m pretty pissed off. Now’s a good time to show me you trust me.”
Calendar eyed Lammeck again.
He nodded. “Those guys were all Cuban Mob.”
“The CIA’s working with the Mafia?”
“They’re bookies. I got their names from a couple of Miami syndicate big shots. They’re paying off some debt to Lansky. He handed them over to the guys I’m working with.”
“I don’t believe this.”
Calendar shrugged. “The Mob hates Castro as much as anybody, believe you me. They’re losing millions a week since they got kicked out. So we throw Lansky and his pals some bread, and tell ‘em we’ll turn our backs for a while after we get everything shipshape again down here. At the moment we’re all on the same side, Professor. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Sun Tzu said that.”
Lammeck was tempted to lay out for Calendar what he knew about Sun Tzu, which would fill a two-hour lecture. Or he could tell the agent what he’d learned about the damage the Mafia had done to Cuba’s economy. Plus what American Fruit, Domino Sugar, and nine U.S. presidents had done. But Calendar couldn’t be made to care. Cuba wasn’t his concern. Only America was. Probably not even that, Lammeck considered. What Calendar cared about was the game, the assassination. It began to dawn on Lammeck that, for the time being, he’d be better off if he did the same.
“What about the underground?”
“We’re still doing business with them. But the infiltration rate’s too high. These gangsters, on the other hand. You don’t just join up with them because you nailed an anti-Castro poster to a pole somewhere. They got a code. They know each other. They keep their mouths shut, and they police their own. Best thing is, they’re greedy. I can work with greed. We’re pulling out all the stops, Professor. Anyone, fucking anyone. Mob. Cubans. You.”
Lammeck dug into his pocket for the pill bottle.
“And these?”
“You’re catching on.” Calendar took the amber bottle. He opened it. “Want one?”
“No.”
The agent popped a white capsule in his mouth. “Sugar pills.” He capped the bottle and lobbed it back into Lammeck’s hands.
“Why?”
“You can figure this one out.”
“To make sure I wasn’t going to flush them.”
“Botulinum’s expensive to refine, Professor. Besides, the real pills aren’t prescription, you know. If the wrong people got hold of one, it’d be a definite link back to CIA. Not good for business. But you kept ‘em in your pocket, where they belonged. That took cojones.”
The Cadillac zoomed onto the Malecón. The boulevard glistened with spray. Couples walked along the seawall, daring their luck before dinner. Lammeck asked no more questions until the car turned onto First Avenue in Miramar. Calendar parked in front of Lammeck’s rented house. He shut off the headlights and cut the ignition. Above the dark house, the first stars of the Caribbean night glittered over the Florida Straits.
>
Calendar grabbed the duffel from the backseat and hoisted it onto the bench between them.
Lammeck looked at the bag.
The agent slapped a hand on the canvas. “Don’t open this ‘til I tell you. Hide it.”
Calendar pulled from his pocket another small amber bottle. Inside were six more identical white capsules. He handed them over.
“These are live action, Professor. Listen close. One of these is for you. Keep it on you every minute of the day, next to your bed at night. If this operation goes sour, if you get caught, take it. Shut your mouth until the poison shuts it for you. This operation is bigger than you and me, by far. Tell me you get this.”
The Betrayal Game - [Mikhal Lammeck 02] Page 10