Micheline gave him an angelic look. “It took me a long time to find something suitable to buy.”
He grinned, relieved. “There was no pursuit then?” he asked, just to be sure.
“None that I could spot. But if there was I lost him at the hotel.”
“It may have been a her, rather than a him.”
She shrugged. “Peut-être. But no one came down the stairs before me or after me, I am sure. And when I left the hotel through the back door I crossed the street and stood behind the cashier's booth here, watching if someone came out after me. No one did.” She blew him a kiss.
Glancing into the rearview mirror he made a sharp turn onto Route 20, in the direction of Micheline's country house.
By the time they stopped for groceries in Saint Sauveur his mood had changed from elation to apprehension. He was getting very worried about his situation.
“Nothing is ever what it seems,” he muttered.
Micheline looked at him questioningly, but he just shook his head and kept on driving. It seemed fairly obvious that General Casas was involved in drug dealing. The amounts of money flowing through Cayman were too large to have any other explanation and, clearly, Casas wanted the United States to know about it. Why else would he have tried to chase Fernandez into the CIA's not-so-open arms?
And why would Morton suddenly want to call off the operation? Who ordered him to do so? What did someone higher up than Morton know that Morton did not know? Or did Morton know?
It was pitch-black when they arrived at Micheline's house, but a spotlight turned on automatically when she approached the door so they didn't have to fumble around in the dark with the parcels.
The house had a magic effect on him; it calmed his fears and soothed his spirit and made him lay his preoccupations aside.
“Why don't you start a fire, Bernard,” she called over her shoulder after dinner as she walked toward the kitchen to leave their dirty dishes by the sink. “I want to go upstairs and freshen up.”
He smiled at the promise in her voice as he fetched dry logs from the back porch. He built a good bed of kindling that caught quickly, and soon he had a roaring fire going. After putting on a sultry piano blues CD, he closed the shutters, and then went to tidy up the kitchen.
Because of the running water he didn't hear Micheline come downstairs until she was right behind him. “Turn around, my darling,” her voice was low and husky, “and see what you've bought for me.” Surprised, he spun around and saw she was wearing her new negligee, a striking classic black satin sheath with thin spaghetti straps, decidedly sexy and utterly female. As he reached for her she backed away, drawing him into the living room where she'd spread a thick white eiderdown in front of the crackling fire. He bent to kiss her hungrily. Her response to him was immediate and totally trusting as he opened his arms to envelop her and pull her down gently on top of him where, fumbling blindly with desire, she helped him shed his shirt, his pants, his shorts. “I love you for not giving up on me,” he murmured hesitantly, as if testing the words he hadn't spoken for a long time. He watched her glistening eyes in the fire's fickering light. “I'm grateful,” he whispered and laid his face on one breast, his hand tenderly lifting the other to cup the satisfying weight in his palm.
For a while she held him close, stroking his face silently while his thumb idly traced the deep tan aureola surrounding her nipple. The steady motion was almost hypnotic. Slowly her nipples became tighter and longer, his hand rougher and more demanding until she couldn't stand it another second and she locked his head in place for him to suck one elongated wickedly alert nipple and pull it deep into his needy lips.
Sinking into her spilling wetness to begin that urgent slippery climb through building heat, faster and faster, he brought her to the very brink of immortality before he rode them both over the edge to the achingly long, hot streaming release they each desperately sought. She arched her back as the aftershocks went on and on.
When at last his pulse had slowed and his respiration was partially restored to its indent state, he rolled over on his back, grinning hugely. “Oh, sweet woman, I'm so happy I'm me!” And Micheline, stretching her glorious body wantonly in the glow of the dying fire, simply smiled in that mysterious way that truly satiated women who are deeply in love smile.
On Wednesday night Oscar De la Fuente could barely restrain himself from shouting at his petulant wife. She was taking forever with her makeup and had changed her jewelry three times. Finally, a totally disgusted De la Fuente could stand waiting no longer. “Tere, if you're not ready to go within five minutes, we're not going.” He looked at his watch. “It's just not worth going anymore. Everyone will have eaten.” He let his voice trail off. He didn't feel like talking; he felt like screaming.
“Come on Oscar, cool it.” His wife wasn't fussed at all. “You like us to get there late. You get off on all the men gawking me as much as I do.” She gave him a wink, got up and rubbed herself against him. “Especially since you know that you can get what they want so badly anytime you want it.” She fingered his crotch then twisted away from him smoothly. “Come on, big boy, let's go. And, do me a favor today. Drive faster than usual.”
In a hurry to see Spiegel again, he surprised her by getting to the Marina Hemmingway in twenty minutes. He was so busy thinking, he didn't say a word during the trip.
The opportunity to speak with Spiegel presented itself only after dinner when, as usual, his wife went off with her friends to gossip and touch up her makeup. Spiegel rose and De la Fuente followed him to the men's room. They sat down in adjacent stalls. The Englishman slid a slip of paper under the partition between them. His note was brief and to the point: “F. has been neutralized. The soldier is under 24-hour surveillance by our people.”
De la Fuente used the facilities, then carefully fushed the note down the pan with the toilet paper and went to wash his hands. Spiegel stood at the sink next to his, and started to tell him an elaborate joke. When he stopped talking the Cuban laughed and opened the water taps wide: “Maybe we should neutralize the soldier too.” He spoke so softly that Spiegel could barely hear him above the noise of the rushing water. They headed for the towel machines.
“Too risky,” the Englishman said, almost to himself, “and too early. We'll just watch him closely.”
“Have your people snatch him. I'd feel safer.”
“No, that would arouse suspicion, and we need more time.”
“If he opens his mouth to the wrong people our goose is cooked.” Oscar was pleading.
“Don't you worry, he won't—just yet.”
They returned to the dining room, where the band was playing a rumba. De la Fuente asked his wife to dance.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Wednesday
Luanda, Angola
Brigadier General Casas's private air force was based in Angola, but the general, who hated waste, returned to duty from vacation, as was his custom, via commercial airliner. His superior, Raul Castro, appreciated the gesture, and to help make traveling easier for the general, provided him with a diplomatic passport in the name of Carlos Casares.
To get back to Angola, Casas had to fly to Prague first and catch the connecting flight, a real rattler—a Tupolev—to Luanda. By the time he got there on Wednesday night he was tired and out of sorts. To make matters worse, the air-conditioning was failing at the Hotel Presidente, headquarters of Cuba's forces in Angola just around the corner from the head office of the National Bank and two blocks from the beach.
The sweltering heat did nothing to improve Casas's temper. But he was used to physical hardship and had disciplined himself to be in control even when fatigue made him irritable.
Colonel Font, his chief of staff in Angola, was still at his desk when Casas reached the hotel.
“Welcome back, general,” the colonel, a tanned and savvy soldier in his mid-fifties, extended a muscular arm in greeting. “Glad to have someone with whom to share the fuck-up that's going on around here.”
Casas resented the remark, but didn't show it. “Why? What's up?”
“The usual shit. I guess organizing an orderly troop withdrawal is more difficult than mounting an attack.”
“Or perhaps we are not used to withdrawing,” mused Casas dryly.
“Maybe, but if they'd let us get on with it without interference we'd do a better job of it.”
“And just what do you mean by that?”
“Hell, General, we keep getting these directives from Department Z to do what they call odd jobs for them, jobs that require lots of energy, time, and specialized knowledge, when they know we're stretched to the limit here as is.”
“We always were.” Casas was beginning to suspect what Font was driving at.
“They want us to organize another ivory hunt, as if we had nothing better to do.”
Casas's gut constricted at the news. “On whose orders?” he asked, but knew the answer in advance.
“Deputy Minister De la Fuente. He was on the scrambler earlier asking if you had arrived.”
“And?”
“He said he'll call back tomorrow sometime.”
“He must have gotten back from lunch early.” Both men laughed and Casas went into his office. He glanced at the pile of messages on his desk, sighed, and went out on the balcony.
The view was, as always at night, magnificent. In the full moonlight he could see the horseshoe-shape bay stretch out below him, bathed in the fluorescence of a calm sea gently lapping at the sand. The lights along the road running parallel to the sea hinted at a cosmopolitan city nearby, not unlike Rio de Janeiro, or Havana for that matter. This, Casas knew was an illusion. Luanda resembled Havana perhaps, but not Rio, for the night was kind, hiding the decaying city, softening the harshness of reality.
Cuba's soldiers had first come to Angola in 1975, shortly after the country became independent of Portugal. The new government needed help to stop the South Africans who did not want a sovereign black country as their neighbor. Angola, with the yoke of colonialism removed, was definitely headed for the socialist camp, looking to the Soviet Union for economic assistance. But the Russians themselves were having a hard time; they were pouring eight million dollars into Cuba every day, and they wanted something in return. So Fidel Castro was told to provide military aid to the Angolans and not to look to the USSR for payment of its soldiers' upkeep. The troops, well trained and equipped with the latest Soviet weaponry, were duly transported to Luanda by ships of Cuba's modern merchant feet and told to make do with their meager wages, paid to them in military scrip.
The pillage of Angola's middle class that followed was remarkable even by modern standards. Boatloads of furniture, household, offce and factory equipment, plumbing fixtures torn out of walls, doors and windows removed from private homes, cars, trucks, motorcycles, and bicycles, left Porto Amboin for Cuba en masse, courtesy of Castro's underpaid soldiers who quickly realized that the homes of those well-to-do Portuguese who had quit Angola because they did not wish to live in a socialist country had been left behind unguarded.
Portugal was outraged, but powerless to help its citizens alone. In return for certain military concessions in the Indian Ocean, Portugal enlisted Uncle Sam's help. The States, no friend of Fidel, was glad to be of assistance. One fine day a Cuban merchant ship, loaded to the gunnels with toilet bowls, sinks, and bathtubs was discreetly intercepted by a U.S. submarine and escorted to Puerto Rico. The cargo was unloaded and the ship sent on its way.
No one complained. Publicity would have been too painful for all parties concerned. So the pilfering stopped.
Casas returned to his office, leaving the balcony doors open behind him, grabbed a handful of papers off the pile marked “urgent,” flopped into an easy chair, and began to read. It was around one in the morning when he came across what, to the uninitiated, appeared to be a routine request for payment from the Hungarian Ministry of National Defense. Addressed to Casas personally, it said that the Cubans owed the equivalent of seven hundred and fifty thousand U.S. dollars and suggested a meeting in Budapest to settle the matter. Casas was taken aback. From the wording, Casas saw that the request was from Schwartz, the coin dealer, and not the Ministry.
Why did the Montrealer want to see him so urgently?
“It must be serious if he's asking for help,” Casas muttered as he reread the fax. Schwartz wanted to see him on Sunday, so Casas would have to leave Luanda on Saturday morning at the latest, which wouldn't be a problem. He'd go via CESA to Prague, and then to Budapest. He had made the trip a number of times.
For the next hour Casas kept at it, reducing the pile by half before he quit and, fully clothed, fell asleep on the couch opposite his desk.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Thursday
Montreal, Canada
Micheline and Lonsdale got up while it was still dark.
“I told Schwartz,” Lonsdale said between mouthfuls of yogurt and cornfakes, “to get a message to Casas asking him for a meeting in Budapest.”
“Why Budapest?”
“It's easy for both of them to access. Schwartz deals in coins there with the government and so does Casas.”
“Deals in coins?” Micheline was no slouch.
“No, my darling. Casas buys ammunition from the Hungarians. They are the designated manufacturers of small arms ammo for the Soviet Bloc.”
“I see.” Micheline took a sip of her coffee. “And I suppose you'll go along with Mr. Schwartz for the ride.”
“Not quite. He'll make his way to Hungary via London. I'll go via Amsterdam. The object of the exercise is for Schwartz to arrange a meeting between Casas and me.”
Micheline pursed her lips. “Do you think Casas will cooperate?”
“It seems the two meet often in Budapest, whenever Casas has stuff to sell.”
Micheline was puzzled. “I thought Casas brought the stuff to Canada for Mr. Schwartz. At least that's what he told me.”
“That too, but only the fner pieces. The bulk stuff they transact in Hungary.”
“Why?”
“For many reasons, one of which I suspect is tax driven.”
“And I suppose it somehow involves the BCCI.”
“Maybe, but that doesn't concern us.” Lonsdale collected the breakfast dishes and placed them in the dishwasher. “What does concern us is that Schwartz should not chicken out at the last minute.”
“And how will we know that?”
“He's supposed to come to see you in the bank late today to confrm he's going.”
Micheline shook her head. “He usually comes in around lunchtime, so he can try to talk me into going to eat with him.”
“He won't this time.”
“Why?”
“He'll wait until he has General Casas's reply to the message he was supposed to have sent him yesterday.”
He helped her on with her coat, then kissed and held her for a while before gently cautioning her: “Drive carefully and come home safe and sound. These country roads are slippery.” He watched her drive away.
As he jogged along a country road, Lonsdale breathed deeply, enjoying the crisp, cold air. Although the trees had lost their foliage to winter, making them look sad and spiny, there were plenty of magnifcent evergreens to lend color to the landscape. The lake, a metallic gray under the fall sky, glittered harshly in the light of a pale, rising sun.
“It'll freeze over soon,” he murmured as he ran up the hill and turned onto the main road. He forced himself to think positively and to feel good about his body, which he was keeping in good shape, about his mind, which seemed to be sharpening with the improvement in his physical condition, and about his relationship with Micheline. He was beginning to think things might just work out somehow.
As he ran, he tried to figure out what was happening. He thought that the Cubans had probably shot Siddiqui, because they did not want anyone with knowledge of Casas's affairs to talk to the CIA.
Lonsdale wondered if it was the Cubans who were fol
lowing him? Maybe they wanted to see if Lonsdale would try to make contact with Schwartz and through Schwartz with Casas. So then, the next victim would have to be Schwartz—to shut him up permanently.
What about Micheline? The Cubans were bound to wipe her out en passant, as the chess players say. As a friend of his and Schwartz's, she was a risk.
But this presupposed that it was the Cubans, and that they had been watching Siddiqui for some time and had been tapping his phone, thereby overhearing his conversation with Lonsdale. Why not? Lonsdale was aware of how extensive the Cubans' intelligence operations were. Montreal was the headquarters of Cuba's spying activities in the West, and Florida was crawling with Fidel's agents.
If they had been watching Schwartz they would know about Micheline. But they were unlikely to touch her. It was reasonable for them to hope to get away with one murder, Siddiqui's, but killing Schwartz and Micheline—three murders—would be tempting providence.
No, Micheline was safe, but they would follow her around to see whom she met up with, how often she would run to Schwartz to comfort him and be comforted by him, and, above all, whether she would lead them to Lonsdale, someone they had to slow down somehow.
Micheline got back from town a few minutes past eight. “I did what you told me, mon amour, and I didn't have any trouble,” she reported. “Mr. Schwartz came in just before five and confrmed that he was leaving for London tonight. He wants to do some business there tomorrow. He will fly to Budapest on Saturday.”
“Has he got his ticket?”
“Only to London. He will buy the portion to Budapest there.”
Lonsdale was pleased. The old man was following instructions. “What about you?” he asked. “Did anybody try to follow you?”
“I don't think so. I left the car at the De La Savane Metro Station when I went to work this morning and took the Metro the rest of the way. I bitched to everybody about the garage where my car was being fxed. I must have been convincing because I got two offers of lifts home.”
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