Havana Harvest

by Robert Landori

  “But we're comfortable with each other,” he'd protested.

  “That's not enough for me. I want to settle down. I want a family. I want a home. And you're not ready for that.” She had sounded very firm.

  He had given in. “I agree. But why leave Canada?”

  She had bitten her lip so hard that it had begun to bleed. “I hate the winters in this country,” she had finally replied.

  Within a month, Micheline had landed a job in the Bahamas. They'd wished each other a good life and had promised to keep in touch, neither of them believing that they would. But they had, occasionally.

  He'd been pleasantly surprised to receive a Christmas card, in which she had written that she was working for the Bank of Nova Scotia in Nassau and that she wished him the very best for the New Year. Because he had been out of the country on assignment over Christmas, he had read her card only in February. By then Micheline—who knew nothing about his covert activities and took him for just another brighter-than-average accountant with international connections who traveled a lot—had written again saying that yes, really, she did wish him the best and would he please write.

  Instead, he had called her at work, and they had spent ten minutes catching up. Thereafter, he would call her from time to time, even after she married the Swiss owner-chef of a Nassau restaurant. Lonsdale had been invited to the wedding and had attended with great pleasure.

  A few years later the chef returned to his native land, taking his wife with him. Contact between Micheline and Lonsdale ceased, and Lonsdale didn't force the issue since, by then, he, too, had married.

  Lonsdale took the woman's outstretched hand and bent over to kiss it without his lips touching her skin, like his mother had taught him to do in the days of his youth. “Bonjour Madame,” he murmured. “Enchanté de faire votre connaissance.” Micheline, startled, gave him a piercing look, and then glanced away.

  Siddiqui beamed, oblivious to Lonsdale's discomfture. “How nice. You speak French.” He turned to his colleague, “Madame Beaulieu, this is Mr. Jackson from our Special Audit Department. He needs your help. Will you oblige?”

  “Mr. Jackson? Of course.” Then she addressed Lonsdale “How can I be of help?” She avoided looking into his eyes.

  “Madame, we are checking on the activities of one of our Latin American colleagues.” He raised his hand in a gesture of reassurance.“ He's done nothing wrong you understand, but his job is delicate, and we're trying to give him as much backup as we can.” He reached for Casas's picture in Siddiqui's hand. “This is the man I'm talking about.” He gave the photograph to Micheline. “Have you ever met him?” He watched her intently.

  She shook her head. Then she looked up and her emerald green eyes blazed into Lonsdale's with such intensity that he had to lower his gaze. “Non.” she shook her head again, her eyes never leaving his. “Je ne pense pas, I don't think I've ever met this gentleman. But, perhaps, my staff ...” she let her voice trail off.

  Siddiqui cut in on cue. “Madame Beaulieu, why don't you take Mr. Jackson back to your department. Perhaps there, surrounded by your colleagues, you will be able to find a way to make it possible for Mr. Jackson to complete his inquires.” He began to shepherd Lonsdale and Micheline toward the door.

  “Quite right, Mr. Siddiqui.” Lonsdale was surprised by Micheline's willingness to cooperate. “If Mr. Jackson can provide further details about this gentleman,” she waved the picture in Lonsdale's face, “we'll be glad to give him all the information we have on him.” She opened the door and Lonsdale, about to leave, remembered his manners at the last moment. “Thank you for your time Mr. Siddiqui,” he said and bowed in the manager's direction. “May I call on you should I need further assistance?”

  “Of course, my dear fellow, any time, even during the weekend. You have my home number, so please don't hesitate to ring should something occur to you.”

  Lonsdale bowed again and followed Micheline through the door.

  Her office was a little cubbyhole in the bowels of the branch, surrounded, almost crowded out, by the desks of her clerk assistants trying to keep up with the day's activities. She slid behind her desk and pointed to the chair in front of it. Lonsdale sat down without a word.

  Micheline studied Casas's picture for a while then, all of a sudden, turned on Lonsdale. “What do you want to know about this man? If he hasn't done anything wrong why are you showing his picture around like a criminal's? What are you anyway, some sort of a cop?” Her eyes blazed up at him again.

  Lonsdale, troubled, stood his ground. “Madame Beaulieu, Mr. Siddiqui told you who I am and what I'm trying to do. I'm sorry you're having diffculty believing his explanations, but there is precious little I can add to what's been said.”

  “OK, so you're one of the bank's security officers and you're trying to find out what this man has done.”

  Lonsdale looked hard at Micheline and decided to take charge. “No, Madame Beaulieu, I already know what this man has done.”

  “Then what do you want from us?”

  “I want you to show me the man's bank account so I can see where his money came from, how much there was of it, and where it went.”

  Micheline was relieved. “Is that all? Give me the account name and number, and I'll get you your information right away.” She picked up a pencil and held it at the ready.

  “It's not as easy as you make it sound—”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I believe that last week—Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday—a man came in here and withdrew about a million dollars, in cash. I think that man is the man in the photograph you're looking at.”

  “We had no cash withdrawals that big last week.”

  “How do you know?”

  “All withdrawals in excess of twenty-fve thousand dollars are automatically referred to me for approval, and I can tell you that last week there was no withdrawal in excess of two hundred and ffty thousand dollars.”

  Lonsdale was surprised. “And were there several large withdrawals that could add up to a million dollars?”

  “I remember four, all made by the same person: a Mr. Abraham Schwartz, and no, they do not add up to more than a million dollars. He's in the rare coin business and buys and sells them for cash. He and his people are in and out of here making large deposits and cashing large checks all the time.”

  “Tell you what. Why don't you make me a list of the people who've withdrawn one hundred thousand dollars or more in one shot during the last sixty days. Once we have the list we'll see where we go from there.”

  “Hold on.” She hit a few keys on her computer terminal and within minutes he had his list. There were thirty-seven entries, twenty-two of which related to Mr. Schwartz and his coin business. The rest showed a total transactional value of only a quarter of a million dollars, give or take, working out to about ffteen thousand dollars per transaction on average, not enough to make up the sum he was after.

  “Tell me about this Mr. Schwartz,” he said, and she became fustered.

  “Mr. Schwartz is a coin dealer, as I told you. He really does know his business—a very interesting business. I've become friendly with him, and he has told me a lot of stories about it. Would you believe he does business all over the world? Africa, Europe, Russia ... even South America—”

  A little bell went off in Lonsdale's mind. “Whereabouts in Africa does he do business?”

  “I have no idea, but I can ask him.”

  “Are you friendly with him?”

  Micheline blushed.“ Mr. Schwartz is an elderly gentleman who has a crush on me. I've been alone since my mother died, and he has been kind to me. Every now and then he takes me out to dinner.”

  “When is the next time do you think?”

  “As a matter of fact, Mr. Schwartz has invited me to go to a concert with him tomorrow night. We'll have dinner before.”

  “Great. Then, perhaps, you could ask him about his business in Africa and his contacts there. I would like to know where
he does business in Africa.”

  “Sure. I'll be glad to ask him—”

  “But, please be circumspect. The BCCI's business is nobody else's business. I don't want Mr. Schwartz to fnd out that I've asked you about him.”

  “I haven't reached my present position by being indiscreet. Leave Mr. Schwartz to me, and I'll have your information for you by Monday.”

  “Not before Monday?” Lonsdale was disappointed. His hopes for a quick confirmation of Casas and the mystery moneyman being one and the same were fading fast. He was reduced to playing a long shot, and he would have to wait sixty long, boring, and lonely hours in a city that continued to wrench his heart before finding out whether the gamble had been worth taking.

  Suddenly, he had an idea how he could reduce the waiting time. He turned to Micheline. “There's not much more we can do today, except to show my man's picture to your people to see if anybody recognizes him. That should take about half an hour.” He smiled at her. “We started off on the wrong foot, and I have to make amends. Have dinner with me tonight.”

  Micheline turned crimson. “All right. For old times' sake.”

  It was his turn to become flustered. “What do you mean by that?”

  She took a deep breath. “Cut the crap, Bernard, and stop pretending that you think I don't know who you are. I recognized you in Mr. Siddiqui's office as soon as I laid eyes on you even though someone had messed up your face a bit, and you have grown a beard. I almost had a stroke.” Furious, she shook her head repeatedly. “I thought you were dead,” she snapped.

  Lonsdale, shocked, realized that there was no way out. He had to give in; he needed the woman's help. “Micheline, I didn't know you were back in Montreal, and I certainly did not know you were working at the BCCI. I was sent up here to do a job, a delicate job, I might add, and the Fates would have it that I bump into you.”

  “That's all you have to say to me after twenty years? After making me and everybody else believe that you were dead? Have you no shame, no decency?” She was furious.

  “What can I say Miche? We don't have time just now for my story. I need to know about this man very urgently.”

  “Why is this matter so urgent?” She would not relent. “Why can't you take fve minutes to tell me what's really going on around here? I think I deserve at least that much consideration!”

  “You deserve much more and I'll tell you everything I can, but later. Just now, I must try to fnd out as much as I can about this man's banking activities.”

  “What do you mean by ‘just now’?”

  “Before the weekend.”

  Still seething, Micheline grabbed Casas's picture and stormed out, leaving Lonsdale to cope with two diffcult problems. He had to establish a clear link between Casas and the Fernandez bank account in Grand Cayman, but tangible proof of the general and the mystery depositor in the islands being the same had thus far eluded him. His gut said that he was on the right track, but his brains warned that without proof the Wise Men at Langley would not believe his theories about Castro being a drug dealer.

  That was the frst problem, the solution of which seemed to hinge on the outcome of the Schwartz lead, which was a long shot, besides which it involved Micheline. And therein lay his second problem: what to do about Micheline.

  The assassination attempt on his life in Montreal years earlier had deeply affected Lonsdale. He had emerged from his ordeal an ice cold, ruthless, introverted loner, to whom nothing mattered except revenge. He had mounted operation after operation against the world's terrorists, each daring and brilliant, and soon established a reputation as one of the Agency's outstanding, intuitive tactical planners. His handlers would have made him head of the Agency's Anti-Terrorist Division, but they saw the fatal faw: in the process of overcoming his psychological problems, Lonsdale had dehumanized himself; he had made himself into a machine. And so they anointed Jim Morton instead.

  Racked by guilt and self-recrimination, Lonsdale continued to soldier on even after the killer urge for revenge had dulled. Nowadays he went to work because he had nothing better to do, challenged only by his own reputation. He did a good job because he expected it of himself. He kept social contacts to a minimum, reveling in his almost absolute independence, and seeing no one other than trusted friends, of which there were very, very few. The old ones, the real ones, he had needed to leave behind in Montreal when he had “died.”

  The only emotional vestige of his previous “life” that he had allowed himself to carry over into his new existence was his love of the classical guitar, an instrument he played whenever he could. He also attended concerts on the occasions when one of the instrument's virtuosos—Julian Bream, John Williams, Laurindo Almeida, or Liona Boyd—was in town and spent many a night listening to the performances in his considerable record collection.

  During these sessions, he would become totally immersed in the music. With his defenses lowered he would allow himself to feel and would then have to pay dearly for what he considered to be a lapse in self-discipline. His old hurts would surface again and he would have to deal with them once more.

  Micheline's reappearance in his life had given him a nasty turn. It had taken all his self-control to hide the turmoil within him from Siddiqui: her presence was threatening to bring down the walls he had so carefully constructed around his emotional aridity. He tried to take careful stock of the situation and be objective about it.

  What did he know about Micheline anyway? She was in her late forties and living alone, she had said. Her parents were dead, but what had happened to her husband, the chef? And had she ever had children by him? Or, by anybody else? That she must have had pain and disappointment in her life was obvious. There were fne lines of suffering around the eyes that no amount of make-up could cover. Her manner had changed too. She was calmer, more self-assured, and she seemed more sophisticated. Had it been only the passage of time that had changed her? A stanza from the Desiderata sprang into Lonsdale's mind: “Give up with grace the things of youth.” It seemed Micheline had done just that.

  What about Mr. Schwartz? He had been relieved when she had referred to him as an elderly gentleman. Obviously a platonic relationship, or so he hoped. Was he feeling pangs of jealousy?

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was half-past five by the time Micheline got through her tour of the offce. “Sorry to have kept you waiting, but it took longer than I expected.” She sounded weary and still very upset. “I have bad news. None of the tellers or the clerks recognized the man. I also asked the security guards, and they say they haven't seen him either. So, as far as I'm concerned, that's it. There's nothing more I can do to help.”

  Though disappointed, Lonsdale was not ready to give up. “That's not true. There's still the Schwartz angle because of his coin dealership.”

  “I can't see any connection there.” Micheline was adamant.

  “Let's forget about work for a while. Where do you want me to take you to dinner?”

  “On second thought, I'm not sure I want to go to dinner with you.”

  He would not accept her refusal. “Come on, Miche, why not? As you say, for old times' sake.”

  Back at his hotel Lonsdale took a quick shower. Under the spell of the city in which he had lived decades earlier, he could not help but recall a life in Montreal full of hope and idealism—a life he had hoped to devote to the fight for freedom, for democracy, for justice, a life that had, instead, been spent scheming, cheating, intriguing, and killing.

  They'd been clever about how they had enrolled him. The CIA makes a point of recruiting individuals with real or potential clout in their communities: political leaders, captains of industry, scholars, artists, and scientists. Since it's diffcult to recruit a successful and well-established personality, the Agency is forever scouting for “comers,” men and women in communities outside the United States who show promise of becoming influential one day.

  Lonsdale was spotted while attending university in Montreal. He had later found out t
hat it had been his language skills that had initially attracted the CIA spotters' attention. He took no credit for these. Some people were good at sports, others made beautiful music or sang or danced. Lonsdale had a gift for mimicry, a trick of the inner ear that allowed him to learn foreign languages quickly and to speak them without accent, each in several dialects.

  He had been a loner before coming to Canada, not by choice like Morton, but by force of circumstance. Drifting from boarding school to boarding school in a war-ravaged Europe is not conducive to making close friends. Since his father had been Hungarian and his mother Austrian, Lonsdale had ended up more or less on the losing side after World War Two. Not the best of backgrounds for the only foreigner at an English public school where his classmates believed that all Austro-Hungarians were Nazis. Lonsdale had taken it on the chin for three years and had then prevailed on his parents to send him to Montreal.

  In Canada things had been better and he would have enjoyed life at the university had he known how to make friends. Unfortunately, he had not. The British had drilled into him that showing emotion, showing ambition, and, especially, showing off, were not proper things to do. Since Lonsdale had been born a gregarious show-off he could only change his personality by adopting an arrogantly aloof attitude. This, coupled with the painful shyness he felt as a result of always being the outsider, made it difficult for him to build relationships. As a consequence, he had continued to be a loner in Montreal.

  He'd studied hard and had also worked hard at making money because his expensive tastes had required extra cash beyond his modest allowance. He persuaded the personnel people at the university's teaching hospital to give him a part-time clerical job, which he then kept during four years of undergraduate work, not knowing that the hospital's psychiatric department derived most of its funding from the CIA.

  Fate would have it that Lonsdale be put in charge of accounting for special funds for mental health research. This left no choice for the CIA spotters; they had to look him over. The rest had been inevitable. The psychiatrists at Langley developed his psychological profile and identified his principal weakness—he needed to feel that he belonged—and turned him into a viable “asset”: an agent programmed to act intelligently and independently, yet with absolute loyalty.