Johan added, “She, of course, attempts to blame the CIA. But Alek, a defector to the Soviet Union, is dead. Her accusations would ring a bit hollow.”
“Then you tell Fidel the Russians are out to kill him. They’re not his friends anymore.”
“As you say, Professor, such a thing does get in the way.”
Lammeck let the plan sink in.
Johan pressed on: “Fidel will surely reconsider his attachment to Moscow after this news. He might even rekindle relations with America. Such a turn in events might even forestall the coming invasion.” Johan poked a finger into Lammeck’s shoulder. “Weeks ago, you said to me that Fidel was a classic candidate for assassination. Fidel knows this, as well. But, certainly, he does not suspect the range of his enemies includes Russia. That knowledge would sober him.”
Lammeck strode sluggishly beside Johan.
“So you understand?” Johan asked. “It was an excellent plan.”
A plan that the girl sniffed out, Lammeck thought. That’s why she sent him along, to foil it.
Lammeck shook his head. “I’m not going to tell you where Alek is.”
“Professor, there is no one left for you to salvage.” The policeman’s voice remained level. “Heitor and his people will be executed soon. They were conspirators, all of them. We will find Alek and he will be silenced. Then Rina will be swept up, to be taken to the paredón when we are through with her. The only one you can save is Fidel. And if you do not, I assure you there is nothing I can do to preserve your life. That is, if Calendar does not take it before I do. I’m sorry, but you make it necessary.”
They’d reached the edge of Lammeck’s yard. He stopped and faced Johan, indicating to the policeman that their negotiations had reached an end.
“Fm offering a trade, Johan. I’ll tell you where the boy is. What he’s going to do and when. In return, you let me bring him in alive. I want him and the girl safe off the island.”
“No.”
“You’d rather see Castro dead?”
“No. I’d rather jeopardize my own security by calling out every policeman and militia on the island to find Alek Hidell before sunup. I’d rather break every bone in Heitor Ferrer’s body until he signs a document implicating the boy. I will do the same to the Russian girl until she admits she is a pawn in a KGB assassination plot. Then I would rather see my nation chart a path back to freedom alongside the United States, instead of in thrall to the Soviet Union. I would rather see you dead before Fidel.”
Lammeck stood stock-still.
“I see. Johan?”
“Yes.”
“If you get your wish, if you get the freedom you’re so willing to torture and kill for, you’ll find your society has no more use for men like you.”
“I pray for that day, Professor.”
“There’s something else.”
“What would that be?”
“Does it make sense to you that I would stand here and refuse to tell you where Alek is? Even though, as you’ve put it so plainly, I risk my own life?”
“No. It does not.”
“Then you’ve got to figure,” Lammeck said, “there’s something you don’t know.”
* * * *
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
April 9
Old Havana
A BASEBALL ROLLED NEAR Lammeck’s feet, thrown by one child, missed by another. He stopped to pick the ball up and toss it back to one of the brown boys playing on the lawn. He tugged the panama hat farther down over his eyes and followed Jorge, the old janitor.
The man looked to be at least seventy, dried and cured as tobacco. He wore denim overalls and work boots without laces. He spoke in a nonstop fusillade of Spanish, mumbling about his sore feet, his vast family, and the rundown condition of his abandoned building.
The front of El Capitolio, the grand steps, grass, and sidewalk, were filling with picnickers and tourists angling for position to view the parade, scheduled to start in thirty minutes. Every bistro table of the Inglaterra and the other hotels and restaurants along Prado was jammed. Lottery salesmen in their tricornered hats wove through the crowd hawking numbers, buskers played flamenco for coins dropped in open music cases. The weather turned out as Lammeck had predicted, balmy with a trace of breeze from the south, blowing straight up Prado toward Parque Central. Lammeck did not tell Jorge he was hiding inside the crowd and beneath the panama. The old janitor did not know why he’d been instructed to guide this fat American to the capitol’s roof.
The man led Lammeck to the rear of the building, the side facing Avenida Industria and the Partagas factory. Lammeck had not smoked one cigar all day yesterday, a horrible day. He promised himself a fat robusto as a reward if he was alive at dinner tonight.
Jorge led him out of the swarm of Habaneros carrying coolers and lawn chairs for the parade. The old man continued his gripes about bunions while traipsing down a set of forgotten steps to a basement door. A rusty lock and chain held the door shut. Jorge produced a key ring so large it would have been humorous on another afternoon. Uncannily, the old man selected the correct key out of the jangling mass, slid it into the lock, and pulled the chain away from the door handle. Without looking back at Lammeck, he pushed on the door and stepped inside.
Lammeck followed, shutting the door behind him. He stood on a raw concrete floor, beneath a low ceiling teeming with what seemed like miles of ductwork, asbestos-wrapped pipes, and bare electric wires. Jorge quieted. A reverent look eclipsed his face. Lammeck pulled off his panama to better see the metal jumble inches above his head, to keep from bumping it. He hung the hat on a protruding gauge that read no pressure. Jorge lapped a hand around one iron pipe he seemed to recognize. He shook his head, gazing at the pipe as if at a cold, dead friend.
“Jorge,” Lammeck said, “with respect. There’s not much time.”
The old janitor took down his hand. He wiped dust on his overalls.
“There’s not much anything,” he said. “Come.”
Again Lammeck followed, past boilers the size of cars, banks of fuse boxes, through doors marked No Entre. Peligroso. Jorge turned on lights, pulling the chains on bare bulbs along their path. The old man continued to grumble through the cavern.
When they reached a set of stairs, Jorge tramped up the first steps with his unlaced boots. The sound of his shoes on the concrete echoed through the stairwell. Lammeck put a hand on the man’s bony shoulder.
“Jorge, please. We must make very little noise from this point on.”
The janitor showed a peeved face. “Why? Is someone else in here? There’s not supposed to be anyone here. Only me.”
“I know. I’m going to bring him out. But we can’t let him know we’re coming. So, quit talking while you walk. And stop walking like a horse, alright, viejo?”
Jorge narrowed his eyes, deepening the creases around them. “How did he get in?”
“A broken window, a rusted lock. I don’t know, perhaps someone gave him a key.”
“Is there danger?”
“There might be.”
“Good,” the old man said, turning to continue up the steps. “My fucking life is so boring. Let’s go.”
With lips clamped and a lighter tread, Jorge rose up the stairs, emerging with Lammeck into a long hallway of vacant offices.
“We’ll stay out of the concourse and the atrium,” the janitor said. “I know ways to the roof the rats don’t know.”
“Don’t take too long,” Lammeck said, tapping his watch. Twenty minutes remained before the parade began.
“I said rats, Americano,” the janitor snapped, “not pigeons with wings. Come on then, no dawdling.”
Jorge ducked into one of the many doors in the hall, uncovering another narrow staircase. Lammeck followed, rising and huffing with the effort, amazed at the spryness of the weathered janitor. The stairs ran for three flights, then dead-ended. Jorge referred again to his extensive key ring to exit, once more knowing the exact key. He looked back to see Lammeck proppe
d against the wall, wheezing. The old man made no comment beyond a shake of his head.
The door opened to a balcony looking down from four stories above the vast lobby of El Capitolio. Sunlight from a circle of windows in the dome overhead lit the expanse. White pillars, marble floors, balconies, statues standing in alcoves; the building exuded power, emasculated by Castro when he enthroned himself elsewhere. It seemed excessive to abandon such a structure, to leave it for Jorge because it reminded Castro of America. Lammeck was stunned gazing into such colossal silence. Nothing he’d seen on the island brought home to him like this empty palace the chasm between America and Cuba.
Jorge referred to his key ring, unlocking the door at the end of the balcony. He said, “This will take you to the roof.”
“How many other doors lead up here?”
“Seven.”
“Are they locked, as well?”
“If they are not, someone else is responsible.”
“Pardon. Go down now, Jorge. Leave the building. Come back in an hour and lock everything behind me. Please walk quietly. If you see anyone inside, run from him.”
“You do not need my help, Americano? I was a soldier. I can handle myself. You can barely catch your breath.”
“I’ll be fine. I have to go.”
“Do so with God, then.”
The janitor left the balcony and sank out of sight down the stairwell. Lammeck faced the door leading outside, hand on the doorknob.
Tasting fear in his throat, he faltered.
Beyond this door, Alek was armed. He not only had the Winchester but the pistol the Unidad man had put in his hand yesterday with the soldiers bearing down on them. The boy would not quit this roof or his mission willingly; he’d made that clear. Was he watching, did he know Lammeck was coming his way?
Fear was not the main reason Lammeck didn’t open the door and stride into the open. He hesitated under a new wave of uncertainty—that saving the boy, in fact, was the right thing to do.
Should he reconsider? Or should he let Calendar’s plan play itself out? What if the CIA was right? What if exposing the KGB’s assassination plot would actually turn Castro away from Russia, back to relations with the U.S.? What if the invasion could actually be called off? Why shouldn’t Lammeck throw Alek and Rina into the chasm, to help bridge it? Wasn’t that an important enough goal in history to warrant sacrifice? Heitor, Susanna, and countless others had already been tossed in; could Lammeck, one man—an academic out of his element, playing spy—really block the plots of the CIA, defy Johan’s police?
Or should Lammeck continue with his own scheme? Rescue Alek and Rina. Save himself. Save Castro.
Could he actually stand in the path of history with his hand jutted out, telling it to stop?
Let’s see, he decided.
Lammeck pushed the door open. He stepped onto a gravel and tar surface. Above him, against an unbroken canopy of blue, the great dome of El Capitolio rose another six stories. Alek would not be up there. The boy didn’t need the extra height for an excellent view of the park and the reviewing stand on Prado. Also, he’d be very exposed up there; the dome was visible across the entire old city. Days ago, Lammeck had told him not to climb too high, it would slow his escape.
Jorge had brought Lammeck to a parapet above the north wing. The roof stretched almost a hundred yards to its tip. The expanse was broken by a small, concrete blockhouse and several mechanical apparatuses for heating and cooling the building below. Lammeck didn’t expect to find Alek here. The boy was more likely to have set up on the capitol’s south wing, for the added cloak of distance from the park. Lammeck checked his watch. Eleven minutes to the start of the parade. He made his way around the great base of the dome, careful to ease his footfalls on the gravel.
Moving, Lammeck peered over the rampart to the milling crowd below. A thousand Cubans brightly dressed sat in lawn chairs sharing baskets of food and bottles, anticipating the parade after church. Even from this height Lammeck could hear children and music. Unidad had chosen an ideal perch for Alek’s shot. In ten minutes, the people’s festive din would be added to the parade’s marchers and bands. The pop of a suppressed rifle report might go completely unnoticed.
Lammeck trod to where he could see out over the south wing’s roof. It was identical to the north. He paused to scan for any sign of Alek: the Winchester on its tripod, the spotter’s scope, trash from a meal, a blanket. Lammeck saw what he expected, nothing. The boy was no fool. Few Marines were.
Lammeck swept the area one more time with his eyes, his skin prickling. What if he’d guessed wrong, and Alek was not here?
His watch read seven minutes to one.
Lammeck turned his back and descended the ladder. At the bottom, his concerns about Alek’s whereabouts were put to rest. The boy came from behind the blockhouse, jogging, pistol raised in a two-handed grip.
On reflex, Lammeck held his hands in plain sight. He said, “I’m not armed.”
Alek said nothing. Arriving, he took one hand from the revolver to turn Lammeck roughly by the shoulder, spinning him to face the ladder. He searched under Lammeck’s guayabera to check for the knife. Lammeck had left it behind. Quickly, the boy patted Lammeck, armpits down to his ankles.
He set the barrel of the gun against Lammeck’s temple.
“Goddammit, I told you not to follow me. You alone?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t think I’d be watching? You sounded like a herd of sheep coming up them stairs.”
“We were supposed to be rats.”
“What?”
“Never mind. It was just an old janitor. He’s gone, and I’m by myself. Can I drop my hands?”
“Yeah. Turn around.”
Lammeck pivoted. Alek backed off with the revolver.
“Why did you shoot at me yesterday?”
Agitated, the boy yanked the gun back up. “For the same damn reason I gotta shoot you today.”
Facing the pistol, Lammeck did not raise his hands this time. “Because Calendar told you to do it.”
“That’s right. Anybody who came after me, except him. What the hell am I supposed to do? Calendar’s got me by the shorts. Why didn’t you just stay out of it? Damn it, I made you promise, ‘cause I knew this would happen.”
“But you didn’t hit me. Why not?”
“ ‘Cause you’re a nice fella. I figured you were smart enough to take a hint. The point was for you to leave me alone and let me do what I gotta do. I hoped I didn’t have to kill you for you to get the message.”
“Oh, believe me, I got it.”
“But I reckon I was wrong, ‘cause here you are.”
“I had to come back, Alek.”
“Why? Why in the hell did you come up here, knowing I had to do this?”
“Because I made another promise.”
“To who?”
“Rina. She made me swear I’d bring you back to her in one piece. I’m pretty sure that includes me coming back in one piece, too, son. Put the gun down.”
Alek eased the revolver to his side. “What’d you tell her?”
“That you’re working with the CIA. That you’re a spy. Nothing else. You tell her what you want. But you’ll have to get back to her to do it. I’m here to take you.”
Alek shook his head. “I can’t do it. What about Castro? What about... what about me going home?”
“Calendar sent me to come get you. He said the deal stands, you can come back to the States.”
“He sent you, and he knew I was supposed to shoot you?”
“Yes.”
“That’s fucked up.”
“That’s CIA. Don’t ask me to explain it. But I am sure of one thing. Calendar doesn’t want you to shoot Fidel.”
“Why not?”
“Because if you do, you’ll get caught.”
At this, Alek turned to stalk away. The boy led Lammeck to the concrete blockhouse. Tucked behind the structure, where Lammeck could not have seen it from the para
pet, was the Winchester 70. The rifle rested on a stack of crates topped by a rolled blanket. A plastic bottle had been taped to the end of the barrel, just like Lammeck had taught the boy. Next to the gun, the spotter’s scope stood on its tripod. On the ground, the duffel bag lay open.
Alek let Lammeck come within a few strides of the rifle, then stopped him. Lammeck looked down the black length of the barrel. There, five hundred yards away in an unhindered view, on the rim of Parque Central, was the wooden riser decorated with bunting and the lone star Cuban flag. Lammeck glanced at his watch. Two minutes to one. He saw people standing on the viewing platform. Prado Boulevard was lined five deep with spectators. Barricades halted traffic on all the side streets.
The Betrayal Game - [Mikhal Lammeck 02] Page 25