The Betrayal Game - [Mikhal Lammeck 02]

by David L. Robbins

  Johan stood.

  “Professor.”

  “Captain. You’re early.”

  “A trifle. I am eager to be going, I suppose.”

  Johan motioned for the guard to stand elsewhere, to stop hovering so conspicuously. The captain sat, motioning for Lammeck to join him.

  Lammeck asked, “Did Fidel make it to the parade?”

  “Yes, halfway through. When it was done, he spoke for two hours. Astonishing, the stamina that man has.”

  “It’s the audience’s stamina that’s astonishing.”

  Johan chuckled. “Perhaps. Are the children awake?”

  “They’re packing.”

  “Have them ready in five minutes.”

  “That’s not much time.”

  “I’m in a hurry. Also, you will be coming along.”

  Lammeck did not move. “What’s changed?”

  “The only thing in this world that is permanent is change, Professor. You’re an historian, you know this. We shall play the game to its conclusion, the two of us. I will see you shortly.” The captain stalked off without explanation.

  Lammeck headed for the elevators. The guard swung in behind him. Lammeck wiped concern from his face before walking past Blanco, into the room on the sixth floor.

  Alek and Rina packed at a leisurely pace. Clothes were spread everywhere.

  “No time,” Lammeck said in Russian. “Take what you need for the next few days. One bag each. Leave the rest. Johan’s waiting.”

  Rina continued to fold a sundress on the bed. Lammeck laid a gentle hand across her wrists. “Leave it.”

  The girl read on his face what he did not say. She said to Alek, “Empty the bathroom. I will take clothes for us. We will get what else we need in Freeport. Quickly.”

  The boy seemed not to care either way and did what she told him. Blanco knocked and stuck in his head.

  “Now.”

  The guard ushered them to the elevator. A second one joined them in the lobby. Two black Skodas waited at the bottom of the hotel steps. Another pair of Johan’s armed men took the bags from Alek and Rina, tossed them into the trunk of the second car. The rear door was held open for them; the young couple looked questioningly at Lammeck.

  “I’m coming in this car.” He pointed to the lead vehicle. “I’ll see you at the docks.”

  Alek got in. Rina kissed both of Lammeck’s cheeks. Spinning away, she climbed into the second Skoda. A thick wire mesh separated the couple from the policemen.

  Johan rose from the passenger side of the lead car. “Professor. Join me.”

  Blanco held open the rear door. Lammeck stuffed himself in behind the same wire barrier. Johan did not turn to address him. Blanco got behind the wheel.

  “Johan,” Lammeck asked, “?Qué es diferente?”

  The captain glanced quickly through the wire back at Lammeck. His expression said: Be quiet, Professor.

  The road ran alongside Havana Channel. Ahead were the gargantuan piers, with a dozen cargo ships moored alongside. Which one was headed for the Bahamas? Lammeck glanced back to the following car. He saw the outline of the couple’s heads in the rear seat, behind the wire. Were they wondering the same, which boat was theirs?

  The car slowed.

  “What’s going on?” Lammeck asked through the screen.

  Blanco steered off the main road, past a high fence of black iron pickets. Both cars stopped on a stone drive, at the foot of a foreboding, rocky keep with many turrets and towers, a drawbridge gate. Uniformed, armed men moved to surround the second car.

  Police headquarters.

  “No.” Lammeck gripped the wire with his left hand and shook. “No!”

  Blanco shut down the engine. Johan signaled the guard to leave the car.

  Lammeck tried to open his door but the lock was controlled from the front seat. He whirled to look out the back window. A half dozen policemen formed a phalanx at the rear door of the second Skoda. Blanco approached and bent to speak inside. The boy got out. Immediately, policemen engulfed him. Alek’s shocked face found Lammeck gaping back at him. The boy was hustled under the dark arch leading inside. Blanco and the rest of Johan’s men stayed behind, guarding the second car.

  “Johan,” Lammeck growled, “we had a deal.”

  Lammeck rattled the wire mesh in Johan’s face. In the backseat of the other Skoda, Rina pounded on the window, howling, rocking the car like a caged wildcat.

  Lammeck dropped his hand from the wire. “You son of a bitch.”

  The captain said, “You were correct, of course. Things are different. The boy’s luck has failed to hold. Actually, it wasn’t the boy’s luck that collapsed. It was Heitor.”

  Lammeck looked across the channel, at La Cabaña prison. He imagined the old engineer inside the battlements, broken and bleeding secrets to Johan’s inquisitors.

  “When?”

  “An hour ago. He identified Alek Hidell as the sniper. He named CIA as being behind the conspiracy, with Unidad. Once he’d blurted the raw facts, I did us both a favor.”

  Lammeck did not take his eyes from the prison.

  Johan said, “I stopped him before he could mention you. It was merciful. And it was for the best. Trust me.”

  Lammeck wanted to smash his one good fist against the wire, like Rina in the car behind. “What good did breaking him do? You couldn’t wait two more hours until they were on the boat and gone? Christ, Johan.”

  “It was not me, Professor. Fidel himself ordered the interrogation. Two days ago, he was told of Heitor’s arrest. They were old comrades from the Escambray campaign, you know. He took Heitor’s betrayal very seriously. Young Fidel hides behind the demeanor of a warrior, but in truth he is only a lawyer. Every day the people see him in fatigues. He does this to remind them of the struggle, to make them believe he was a true guerrillero. They say Castro learned in the mountains to survive. What the people do not yet realize is that he also learned to be unbending.”

  Lammeck asked, “What about the girl?”

  “She’ll be taken back to the Nacional. Kept there under guard until she’s summoned back here.”

  “Why’d you have them pack? Why the ruse of going to the docks?”

  “To avoid this unfortunate scene at the hotel. Look at her.”

  Rina had not stopped battering the car window.

  “Is Alek dead?”

  “No. My plans have been trumped. I cannot silence the boy. Fidel intends to speak with him personally. Then it merely becomes a game of connect-the-dots. Your defector will tell Fidel about you. You will be questioned. You will tell about me. I will be arrested and reveal everything I know about the girl, the CIA, and KGB. She will be next. Fidel will become incensed, and we will all hold hands at the firing wall.”

  “And Calendar?”

  Johan loosed a sardonic laugh. “He will fade into the woodwork. He’s not the sort to face consequences. His kind rarely do.” The captain sighed. “Saddest is that after all is said and done, we’ll have had little effect on Fidel’s attachment to the Soviets. The boy will live long enough to name the CIA as the origin of yet another plan to assassinate Castro. The KGB’s role will be seen as minimal. Moscow will, of course, officially disavow it. In a few days, or hours, CIA-trained exiles will invade my homeland. Fidel will have more reason than ever to loathe America. I will die, Professor, and I will have failed Cuba.”

  Lammeck didn’t know if Johan was right about Fidel, but he was sure that neither Russia nor the U.S. was going to interfere; that would be an admission of guilt. Alek, Rina, and Lammeck would be written off as rogues. Johan as a traitor. Plausibly denied.

  He set a hand over his pants pocket. The botulinum pill. It could break him out of the chain, save Johan and Rina behind him. At least that would be something salvaged. But as always, the thought of suicide, even nobly done, sickened him.

  “Put me and Rina on that boat.”

  Johan lofted an eyebrow. “Do I hear cowardice or mere pragmatism?”

&
nbsp; “It’s the only way to keep yourself alive, Johan.”

  The captain brought his face close to the wire. The mesh pressed against his nose.

  “You are a pawn, Professor. But even a pawn can have awful choices. You can tell me what I do not know about the CIA’s plans to murder Fidel. That will save his life. Then I will allow you and the girl onto your boat to Freeport. But Calendar will surely come to Providence to repay you for that betrayal. And I suspect a similar fate awaits the girl in the Soviet Union. Or you may continue to stay closemouthed with me. In that case, I will have Blanco drive you across the channel to La Cabaña. You will be questioned with whatever ferocity is required. You will tell me what I need to know, and my police will stop the CIA plotters. After that, you and the girl will face the paredón.”

  “Why?” Lammeck asked. “It’s senseless. You’ll die, too.”

  “Do you recall yesterday when I said I would rather see you dead than Fidel? I would also rather see myself dead than to allow his murder. He is my country’s leader. He has gone wrong by taking Cuba down the path of Communism. Many of us oppose that. But to kill him? That would make us unworthy of the democracy we wish for. I believe Fidel is a rare man, that he has greatness left in him. I want him to realize his mistake, his betrayal of the revolution. I want him to lead Cuba as only a great man can.”

  “And what if you’re wrong?”

  “Then I will die as a man of sins, but not as a traitor.”

  Lammeck glanced at the fortress across the channel. He saw himself behind the prison walls, in poor Heitor’s place.

  One slim path opened in his head, a way out. He looked up to gauge Johan, how much tolerance was left in the man. Lammeck saw the last trace of patience drain from the policeman’s face.

  “Choose,” Johan said.

  “I want to talk to Castro.”

  “You jest.”

  “I’d have to be a lot braver to make a joke right now. I’m serious.”

  “What good will speaking with Fidel do?”

  “I’ll tell him about the plot myself. You said he was still a lawyer at heart. I’ll negotiate.”

  “What for? Your life?”

  “For the boy’s life. If we can get Alek and Rina out of Cuba before he’s interrogated, you and I are safe.”

  “And have you considered Calendar? Once you spoil the CIA’s assassination, you become his target.”

  “I’ve been Calendar’s target for a while now. I’m getting used to it.”

  Johan covered his mouth with his fingers, considering.

  Lammeck said, “I’ve got nothing to lose. Like you said, I’m dead either way.”

  The policeman smiled bleakly. “That does play to our advantage.”

  “Where’s Fidel right now?”

  “He has a routine after a speech. He takes several of his barbudos to dinner. They relive the campaign days and compare their beards.”

  Lammeck’s other hand shot to the wire screen. “Where?”

  “Various places. He has a few favorite restaurants.”

  Calendar’s voice from three days ago replayed in Lammeck’s brain, talking of Juan Orta and the botulinum capsules: He’s going to hand them off to a connection of his in town, a cook in one of Castro’s favorite restaurants. The cook’s been told not to do anything until he gets the signal.

  Had Calendar given that signal? No way to tell.

  “Do you know which restaurant Fidel’s going to?”

  “The Peking, in Vedado, on Twenty-third Street.”

  Lammeck pushed against the wire. “Get behind the wheel, Johan! Drive!”

  ~ * ~

  The Skoda did not have a siren or lights. Johan dashed down the Malecón at a frightening rate, weaving into oncoming lanes to pass slower vehicles. Cars honked and flashed at them; Johan leaned on the horn and mashed the gas pedal.

  Lammeck sat forward in the backseat, linking his fingers into the wire barrier to hold himself in place while the Skoda careened. Between moments blowing the horn, Johan shouted into the backseat.

  “Botulinum! Calendar gave you botulinum! Ai, that comé mierda. How does it work exactly?”

  In short bursts, not to divert the police captain’s attention from the flying road, Lammeck explained the effects of the poison. Twenty-four to forty-eight hours of creeping paralysis, death by asphyxiation. How the capsules were only to be sprinkled on foods or in a cold liquid. Five pills. He made no mention of the one in his pocket.

  “After Calendar gave the capsules to you,” Johan called, “you took them to the Peking?”

  “No.”

  Johan swerved to avoid a slow-going truck.

  “There was a middleman then. Who did you give them to?”

  “I won’t tell you that, Johan. There’s enough of a body count already.”

  “Fidel will ask, amigo. You will have to give him the name. You may as well tell me now.”

  Lammeck let go of the wire and sat back.

  So complex, Lammeck thought, this assassination business. Not as simple as just pulling a trigger, thrusting a dagger, pouring a cup of nightshade. There were wheels within wheels, mysteries inside lies, shifting loyalties, losses to be cut. Good and bad men, good and poor plans, far too much bad luck.

  Lammeck let go of responsibility for Orta’s fortunes. When the man accepted the pills from Lammeck’s hand, he surely knew events could turn against him. It would not be Lammeck betraying Juan Orta Córdova. It would be inevitable, heartless, history.

  “If Fidel asks,” Lammeck said.

  With screeching tires, the Skoda turned left onto Twenty-third. The street was the main business avenue heading west from the old section of the city. Restaurants, banks, tightly packed shops lined the road. Pedestrians crossed without warning. Johan drove in fits and starts, cursing.

  Johan asked no more questions and focused on his driving. He ran red lights and stop signs, blaring the horn almost without cease. Lammeck sat back against the rear seat, unable to hang on to the wire anymore with his bandaged hand. The constant jostling, and the fear of a collision, kept him from arranging his thoughts about meeting Fidel. He settled for steeling his nerve.

  The road neared the reaches of a gigantic cemetery on the left. Inside an iron fence, an uncountable number of headstones stood like marble dominos arranged in rows; there were so many, Lammeck thought, if one fell into another, they would topple for days. With his eyes on the cemetery, Lammeck wasn’t watching when Johan swung the car off the main road into a sharp right turn onto Fourteenth Street. Lammeck smacked his head against the window. The thump was the opening gavel; Johan slung the Skoda to the curb. Lammeck had to wait for the captain to open his door from outside.

  “Say nothing, Professor. Not one word until I tell you to speak. Inside this restaurant, there are suspicious and loyal men around Fidel. And there are many guns.”

  Lammeck nodded. He followed Johan into an alley off Fourteenth, to enter the Peking from the back. Johan walked as he had driven, urgently. Lammeck understood that the man did believe in Castro, did love him, and would truly try to save him at any cost.

  An armed guard in fatigues, a submachine gun slung over his shoulder, put the weapon into his hands on sight of the two approaching. Johan raised a palm in greeting.

  “Rafael, I’m late. How long has he been here?”

  “Ten minutes maybe.” The guard plucked a cigarette from his lips. He pointed it at Lammeck. “Who’s this?”

  “An American. Fidel wants to meet him.”

  “El Commandante said nothing to me about this.”

  “If you were one of Fidel’s confidants, you would be inside eating and not out here on watch. Step aside.”

  The guard eyed them both. Lammeck put a look on his face of innocence, as if he did not speak Spanish. The guard shuffled backward a reluctant step. Johan walked past him. Lammeck followed.

  In the restaurant’s kitchen, two small Orientals in undershirts were busy at sinks washing dishes and pots. Anoth
er, a tall Cuban in a white paper hat and apron, turned to look at the intruders, a chopping knife in his grip. Johan glanced at this one, then back to Lammeck, to see if any recognition sprang between them. Lammeck had never seen the cook before, but the man glared back.

  “One last thing, Professor. Fidel is twenty years younger than you and I. But do not, for an instant, think you are speaking to a pupil.”