The ship moved slowly from one Mediterranean Sea port to another. Sometimes it seemed to Stanley that he was traveling in a circle, that the squeaky old ship would never make it out to the ocean. He asked Mao when they would finally set a course for Cuba.
“Never,” answered Mao.
“What do you mean? Is this a joke?”
“You’ll go to Cuba in a tanker. Big tanker. It’s waiting for us at a shipyard in the Canary Islands. Waiting for us and others. It’s carrying oil, oil stolen from bad people. They’re taking it to the Cubans. We need to collect other goods and deliver them to the tanker. The tanker won’t go anywhere until we deliver our goods and other people deliver theirs.”
“And what am I supposed to do?”
“Get better. I’ll treat you. You’ll be walking good by the time you board the tanker. Your knees won’t even hurt! And I’m going to feed you rice. Rice and vegetables. Good for your health. You’ll drink tea and baijiu. You like baijiu?”
“Is it this nasty stuff?” Stanley sniffed at the contents of the drinking bowl he was holding.
“Yes, that’s it. Good drink?”
“It’s swill! You don’t have anything better?”
“You want Maotai?”
“Maotai? What’s that?”
“The best vodka. Chairman Mao thought highly of it. Maotai is also baijiu, but an expensive kind, and not as strong as what you’re drinking. No, sir, you don’t have the money for Maotai. Drink what I pour you. More?”
“Go on!”
Stanley couldn’t get drunk, even after several bowls of the Chinese vodka. He never had understood why Russians put such value on the ability to drink without getting drunk. He liked feeling intoxicated, but thought that drinking as a sport, where the one who can drink more is the toughest, was total idiocy. Like much of what his former Russian friends valued.
Mao usually locked the cabin when he went out so that the other crew wouldn’t see him, particularly the captain, a gloomy Romanian, and his first mate, an enormous Ukrainian man. They didn’t know that they had the most wanted Swiss banker in the world in their very own hold.
The faithful Mao let Stanley out at night, only under cover of darkness. One night, Stanley climbed quietly from the hold to the deck and found a secluded spot to smoke. The clouds hung low overhead, and the ship rolled from wave to wave. Sometimes there were lights in the distance, either another ship, or lights from the shore.
Stanley tried to figure out what part of the Mediterranean they were in. Maybe that was Malta, or maybe Alexandria. The ship slowed down, then started to drift. A larger ship loomed out of the fog, and thin black men began to climb to its deck via rope ladders.
One by one, they disappeared into the open deck hatches. Two men with automatic weapons over their shoulders were in charge. One of them, sensing he was being watched, looked up and saw Stanley. His hand started for his weapon, but then he just smiled, and brought his finger to his lips.
When Stanley got back to the cabin, an anxious Mao was waiting for him.
“You shouldn’t have gone out tonight!” he said. “You might have been spotted. That would have been very bad!”
“Who were they loading onto the ship?” asked Stanley.
“Slaves. From Africa. Europe wouldn’t take them, now they can’t go back home. They’ll work for pennies somewhere. Like all of us.”
Another time, lost in the bowels of the ship, he encountered a small, elegant woman, frightening them both. The woman shrank back against the peeling paint of the wall, and Stanley squeezed by her, catching a faint scent of perfume as he went by. It was a familiar smell. The same expensive perfume he’d given to Christine.
He looked up. She was beautiful, but for the dark rings around her eyes, and her swollen, peeling lips.
“Sorry.”
The woman just watched him as if she didn’t understand.
“Do you speak English?”
“I do, but I’m trying to hide it.” She laughed suddenly.
“Why?” asked Stanley.
“I’m hanging out in the hold with a bunch of Sudanese, Berber, and Eastern European girls. I told them I’m Greek, since I speak Greek, and have lived there. Are you American?”
“Yes. And you?”
“And who do you pretend to be?” she asked, without answering his question.
“Chinese.”
She laughed melodically. “Somehow, you don’t look very Chinese. But, hmm, maybe if I look a little closer.” She laughed again.
“Your perfume,” said Stanley. “Is it Mzinov?”
“How about that?” the woman replied in surprise. “On a half-rusted-out Chinese ship filled with stench and shit, a man who recognizes Ralph Lauren perfume! Who are you?”
“I’m looking for a way up on deck. But one that I can use without any of the crew seeing me. And what are you looking for?”
“In general? Or here?”
“Here.” Stanley smiled.
“A shower. There’s none in the hold. The Sudanese women wash using buckets. It’s about to drive me crazy.”
“I’ve got a shower in my cabin,” said Stanley. “And some good hashish. And Chinese vodka. I’m happy to share.”
“Are you suggesting we shower together?”
“You can take the shower by yourself, but we’ll share the joint and the vodka.”
“If I come back to the Sudanese women clean, they’ll suspect me of being a plant and strangle me. Thanks. I’ll stay dirty for now. And anyway, I’ll lose the hint of my old perfume if I shower. Thanks anyway, stranger!”
“You’re welcome! Good luck!”
“To you as well!”
Stanley and the woman went their separate ways.
A couple of days later, Mao said that the ship had finally turned toward Gibraltar. When they were out in the ocean, he told Stanley that there had been a knife fight between some of the women in the hold that left two Sudanese women and one white woman dead.
“A short, Greek woman? Pretty?” asked Stanley.
“You went to the women? Ay ay ay, that’s no good! They’ll catch you! Mao will get it bad! And you, mister, it will be bad for you. Very bad!”
“Which woman?”
“Yes, the Greek. They cut her. Dumped her overboard.”
Stanley lay down and turned his face to the wall.
“Hey, Yankee, what’s wrong? Be happy! We’ll reach Cuba soon!”
Stanley didn’t answer.
He thought that if this woman pretending to be Greek, who was probably running some kind of con, an aristocratic thief, or a high-class prostitute, if she had come to his cabin, she might still be alive. Or maybe the Sudanese women would have strangled her right then. He tried to understand the nature of his feelings. He understood that he didn’t actually know this woman, that he wasn’t hurt by her death, not really, but it nonetheless somehow intensified his sorrow and his bitterness.
He lay for hours looking at the wall. He decided that if he couldn’t find Lagrange in Cuba, he wouldn’t work with Frank anymore, either. He just wouldn’t have any strength left to continue the fight. Only the belief that Lagrange was hiding from the world in Cuba gave him strength to go on. Each day, as the ship swayed through the Mediterranean, passing Gibraltar, toward the Canary Islands, Stanley turned over and over in his head how he would kill Lagrange, and what he would say before he did it.
In his mind, he hacked Lagrange up with a blunt knife, sawed off his arms and legs, shot or drilled through his knees, clubbed him with a baseball bat. He watched himself in these internal movies, spattered with Lagrange’s blood, heard himself talking, but everything he said sounded artificial, stupid, pointless.
He was transported to the tanker at night, in the same rowboat as a silent Sudanese woman wrapped in striped cloth.
The tank
er was enormous, like an entire city towering over the surface of the sea. Almost all its lights were dark that night. Mao warned Stanley not to talk to anyone, and to follow the crew’s instructions to the letter. One of the sailors led Stanley to a narrow, cramped cabin.
The cabin had a porthole. Stanley opened it and breathed in the slightly bitter scent of the Old World, blowing in from the east. The gigantic hull of the tanker shuddered as it prepared to move, its bulkheads creaking. Stanley lay down on the bunk. His knees, thanks to Mao’s treatments, hardly hurt. Only a slight limp remained of the torture he had endured. But he didn’t have to walk very far anyway—food was brought to him on a tray, and he was forbidden to go on deck.
It was also nighttime, about a month later, when Stanley was transported to the Cuban shore. Alone.
Chapter 51
After paying for his passport, Stanley had about $3,000 left. This, he reckoned, should be enough for a couple months of searching. According to his new green passport book, Stanley was now called Clyde Griffiths. He liked the name. He looked sharp in the photograph, taken in the basement of a Marseille dive; it fitted his state of mind.
“My name is Clyde. I’m from Pretoria, but I haven’t been there in almost twenty years. I worked in Switzerland. I’m a cigar aficionado,” Stanley repeated, making his way along the shore toward some lights in the distance. “I will find Lagrange. I will find fucking Lagrange. I’ll find him.”
Stanley had no stamp in his passport showing he had crossed the Cuban border, but that didn’t seem to bother anyone. Everything he’d heard about the easygoing attitude of Cubans proved to be entirely true. He found a room in a small hotel on the outskirts of Havana and paid in dollars, raising him even higher in the estimation of the hotel clerk. The other man liked that his new guest was unpretentious, that he traveled only with a small bag over his shoulder (which Stanley had stuffed with various rags to look full). And he’d never seen a South African passport before.
“How are things in Africa, Mr. Griffiths?” the clerk asked, handing Stanley his room key.
“We’ve got lots…”
“Lots of what?”
“Lots of wild monkeys!”
The next morning, Stanley went for a stroll and met an elderly Cuban woman in a bar who rented out rooms to solo tourists like the man he was pretending to be.
Stanley’s new landlady also found him a car, or rather, she took him to the owner of a small garage who had several cars to rent. At first, he took a liking to an old Soviet model with the strange name of Zhiguli. He gave it a test drive, but when he got in, his head almost hit the ceiling and the gears shifted with such a screech that he slapped his hands over his ears.
The owner of the garage suggested a different car, and he pulled the tarp off it to reveal a Ford Fairlane 1957. It wasn’t in the best condition, with paint peeling in some spots and rust showing in others, but the seat was fine, and when the owner installed a battery and started the engine, Stanley was pleasantly surprised by the rich sound.
They didn’t bargain long over the price, and Stanley left a deposit while the owner promised to do a maintenance check on the car.
He spent another couple of days hanging out in bars, where he started up conversations about cigars, asking where the best plantations for cigar tobacco were to be found. He believed that Lagrange, as a true cigar lover, would set up his secret refuge near such a plantation.
He soon learned that the best region for cigars was Vuelta Abajo, on the western edge of the island. They grew the best tobacco there, and there were three large cigar factories where they rolled the tobacco from the nearby plantations into the cigars sold by the world’s most prestigious brands.
Once the Ford received a clean bill of health, Stanley set off to visit the area. His first trip, on which the car drove like a dream, was to San Luis. The land around the city was known to produce the best wrapper leaves. Over lunch at a small café, Stanley learned that the farm of the legendary Cuban grower Alejandro Robaina wasn’t far away.
“It would be nice to meet him!” said Stanley, but the waiter informed him that it would be impossible now to meet with Señor Robaina, as the man had been in the nearby cemetery for the last ten years. He was surprised that the guest from South Africa hadn’t already been aware of this.
“It was such a tragedy! Condolences from all over the world! From Schwarzenegger, from Depardieu! His grandson, Hiroshi, is in charge there now. I think you would find him an interesting conversationalist, Señor Griffiths.”
Stanley got directions and set off for the Robaina farm. Hiroshi didn’t resemble his idea of the typical tobacco grower or the typical Latin American—no rubber boots, no hat, only sneakers, jeans, and a T-shirt.
Stanley apologized for taking up the time of one of the world’s best cigar producers and told Hiroshi that he represented a small tobacco company interested in starting cigar production in the Natal Province.
Here, Stanley’s experience as a banker and investor came in handy. He spoke at length about the financial prospects and the benefit to Hiroshi should he choose to get involved.
Stanley said that his partners would be proud to collaborate with Vegas Robaina, one of the top cigar makers in the world. Toward the end of their conversation, he asked if Señor Hiroshi knew any foreigners who had bought tobacco plantations in Cuba in the last few years, even small ones?
Hiroshi thought for a moment.
“Yes, Señor Griffiths, I do. Not personally. But I heard of it. The plantation is called Acrecabot, in Vuelta Arriba. They don’t grow cigar tobacco there, mostly wrapper leaves. The taste is not so important for those, you know, the taste that comes from the composition of the soil. The beautiful appearance matters more, which you can get easily—it’s enough to simply take care of the plant. Of course, between us, our wrapper leaves are better. But there is a cigar plantation there, yes. It was bought by—”
“A Frenchman?”
“Yes, yes, a Frenchman! You know, he bought it long ago, when my grandfather and El Comandante were still around. The plantation was considered to be rented, then. I don’t know how he managed it. I can’t say for sure, but he probably thanked someone for it quite generously. He has quite a bit of money, I think, and renovated a villa not far from the town. He used to come a couple times a year, but now the locals see him all the time.”
Stanley returned to Havana. He was on Lagrange’s trail now. He could feel it. Close to having Lagrange in his snare.
He needed to prepare so that, if the French owner of the plantation did indeed turn out to be Lagrange, he wouldn’t have to act hastily.
Stanley found a small hardware store and was shocked at the scarcity of goods, but was able to buy a large knife, pliers, rope, wide duct tape, and a flashlight. He asked if they had binoculars, and the sales clerk produced an ancient, worn pair from beneath the counter. They were of Soviet origin, he said, sold long ago by a Soviet soldier for a bottle of rum.
Stanley was checking out a drill as well, but it was too expensive. The clerk, seeing Stanley’s hesitation, advised him to buy a secondhand drill, or better yet, rent one.
“What size drills do you have?”
“What is the señor planning to drill?” the clerk asked.
“Nothing harder than concrete. I’m looking for a twenty-five-millimeter drill.”
“What for?”
“I need to help a friend with some repairs,” answered Stanley.
“A man must help his friends, señor. Holy Mary bless you! Everyone rents tools from us, except for people working in cooperatives.”
So Stanley did, but he bought new drill bits, the newest, cleanest, and largest the store had to offer. As he paid, he was already imagining the pliers tearing off Lagrange’s nails, the drill going into his knees, the long bits entering the bone.
Stanley had a hearty dinner and went to bed. H
e got up early in the morning, had coffee, and set off on his way.
The road ran along the ocean shore. He drove at a leisurely place, trying to ease his agitation. He rolled down a window and smoked the cigar he’d bought from Hiroshi, checking the paper map the garage owner had given him.
He stopped in Santa Clara, where he had another coffee, and then went on toward San Antonio de las Vueltas, where he had a lunch of rice, black beans, and fried beef, and asked around about the plantation.
“Yes, that’s not far,” the café’s pretty owner told him. “The owner came by recently, had a beer. What? Yes, he’s French. You want to visit him? Business? Of course. We used to fight for communism, and now it’s business everywhere. Would you like coffee?”
Stanley drank his coffee and smoked another cigar. He asked about a room and got one right over the café. As she gave him his key, the owner asked if the señor would be interested in a young girl.
“Thank you, no,” said Stanley.
“She’s only fourteen, tall and pretty, nearly a virgin. Yes?”
“No, thank you.”
“Perhaps a woman? An experienced one such as myself?”
“An experienced woman would suffer with an inexperienced man like me,” said Stanley, “and I try to reduce the amount of suffering in this world.”
“You’re a wise man, Señor Griffiths.” The owner laughed.
Stanley sat on a wicker chair on the balcony of his room. He drank a bottle of rum, smoked a few cigars, and watched local life play out in the street below until evening. Then he napped for half an hour. When it was dark, he took an ice-cold shower, drank a bottle of beer, and headed off in the direction of the plantation.
He parked outside the town and went on foot from there, keeping close to the forest. He reached the plantation owner’s house after half an hour.
He crouched beneath a wide-branched tree, a knife at his side just in case. The lights of the mansion were quite close.
The Banker Who Died Page 50