Mambo

by Campbell Armstrong

  Magdalena stood up. She’d listened longer than she needed. What proof had these two men offered her of Rosabal’s alleged larceny? It was unsubstantiated talk. It had its roots in Garrido’s approaching senility, his unsupported mistrust of Rafael. Probably even jealousy – Garrido resented the younger man for staying in Cuba instead of fleeing, as he himself had done, into the safety of exile.

  “Where are you going, Magdalena?” the old man asked.

  “Home.”

  “Are you going to ignore what Sergio has told you?”

  She didn’t answer. She stood, her hip pressed against the edge of the table, her weight on one leg. Castro’s a dead man. She remembered how emphatically Rafael had said that in London. If Garrido and his side-kick, Duran, had heard him then, they wouldn’t have entertained any doubts about his trust, and this obscene investigation need never have taken place.

  “We’re not finished, Magdalena,” Garrido said. “Please. Sit down.”

  She refused. She took small, almost spiteful pleasure in denying Garrido. He said, “I didn’t want to inflict any more on you, dear girl. But since you choose to defend Rosabal still, you leave me no real choice.”

  Garrido nodded to Duran, who took an envelope from the inner pocket of his jacket. He opened then inverted it; photographs slid out on the table.

  “Please, Magdalena, sit down,” and the old man gestured in a not unkindly manner, but still she refused him. She gazed at the coloured pictures that lay on the table. She had no desire to look at them closely.

  “I took these in Havana,” Duran said. He isolated one, pushed it across the table. As if it were alive the photograph made a quiet sound that suggested breathing; it was the contact of shiny photographic paper on the surface of the table.

  Magdalena squinted down at it.

  “Pick it up,” Garrido said.

  Why did her hand tremble? She didn’t reach for it. She could make out Rafael’s likeness without touching the thing.

  Duran raised the picture, studied it. “This shows Rosabal getting into a car. Look at it carefully, if you will.”

  She saw a car, rear door open, Rafael, beloved Rafael, bending slightly to step inside. Then she looked away. She stared across the room at the window; pinkish light lay on the opaque glass. A car backfired somewhere.

  “This I took at Rafael’s house outside Havana,” Duran said, and selected another photograph. Once more Magdalena glanced at the thing, seeing a flash of colour, shrubbery, a swimming-pool filled with turquoise water, and there was Rafael seated on the edge of the pool, beautiful in his black trunks, face turned slightly away from the camera.

  “Lovely home,” Duran said. “He lives well.”

  Magdalena drifted. She floated from this table, this room; she didn’t need to see photographs.

  “The young woman beside him in the car, the one who is holding his hand beside the pool …” Duran said, then faltered just a little. “That is his wife. Estela Alvarez Capablanca, daughter of General Capablanca. They were married a few months ago.”

  Wife: the word exploded like thunder in Magdalena’s head. And, like thunder, it rolled meaninglessly away, echoing even as it faded. Wife: it might have been a word from an alien dictionary, a signal sent out through space, travelling countless centuries before being picked up on this planet, in this city, this room now by Magdalena Torrente. How could Rosabal possibly have a wife?

  Magdalena reached down, picked up the photographs, flicked through them. The woman was young and handsome in a way that was distinctly Spanish. The few photographs where she appeared she was invariably looking at Rafael with the eyes of an adoring wife, a new wife, one in whom love has barely flowered. Magdalena, dizzy, set the pictures back down. The tips of her fingers were suddenly chill; a sensation of cold tingled upon her spine and neck. A strange pressure built behind her eyes, and her heartbeat became arrhythmic.

  “I am sorry,” Garrido said. “He has abused you as well as the cause. I am sorry, Magdalena.”

  She barely heard Garrido’s voice. She was tracking her own thoughts as if they were strangers eluding her. There had to be a simple explanation. There had to be a reason. Why had he never mentioned this woman, this wife, to her? Why, with the love they shared, had he never shared this information too? Reasons, all sorts of reasons – the wife was the daughter of the General, therefore the marriage might be political, a marriage of convenience. How could she know? How could she know anything? Unless she looked him in the face, unless she stared directly into his eyes, how could she know she’d been betrayed? She had only Duran’s photographs to go on. And photographs, at best, were limited windows into reality.

  But still her heart wouldn’t beat regularly, and the cold had spread like a glacier from spine to scalp. Now the pressure was not located so much behind her eyes as it was in the very air around her, as if she were descending through unlit fathoms in a faulty bathysphere. She moved towards the door. She had to get out of this room and away from these two men and their evidence of treachery. She needed time alone, the clarity of solitude.

  Neither Garrido nor Duran made any move to detain her. She stepped into the street and stood under a sky whose clouds had become an outrageous bright pink, a carnival colour far removed from what Magdalena Torrente felt.

  Paris

  At midday Frank Pagan arrived at Orly Airport and took a taxi driven by a chain-smoking Parisian who complained for miles about the economic policies of the Common Market, and how migrant workers were the scourge of all Europe. Pagan nodded politely from time to time and muttered Mais oui, mais oui, but he wasn’t interested, and the man’s patois was difficult to follow.

  Pagan asked to be let out on the corner of the Avenue Victor Hugo in the sixteenth arrondissement, a little way before his ultimate destination. His eyes watered from cigarette smoke and his head throbbed as he walked in the direction of the Bois de Boulogne, slowly, deliberately, wary of pain.

  Paris was overcast, damp, locked in the leaden grip of autumn; the greenery of the Bois had faded. The gutters were choked by fallen leaves. It wasn’t a city that held personal associations for him. Once or twice he’d come here on business, but he knew the place only superficially, like a tourist. He checked Enrico Caporelli’s address in his notebook. It was an exclusive apartment building about a hundred yards from where the taxi had dropped him. Grey, imposing, opulent in a stately way, it overlooked the Bois with the musty dignity possessed by the old apartment buildings of the very rich.

  Pagan was confronted by a uniformed doorman as soon as he stepped inside the lobby. The doorman, haughty, a Gauleiter in burgundy cap and uniform with gold epaulettes, insisted on telephoning Caporelli before Pagan was allowed access to the lift.

  Enrico Caporelli apparently was not perturbed by the prospect of an English policeman coming to call; Pagan was led promptly to the lift by the doorman, the iron gates were closed, and it rose in the shaft. He got out on the fifth floor. The corridor was dimly lit. Two men, both dark-suited and muscular in a way no subtle tailoring could ever conceal, greeted him – although there was nothing warm in their manner. They checked his identification, frisked him expertly, without apology. He hadn’t brought a gun. When they were satisfied they ushered him into the vestibule of the apartment then withdrew, a pair of big gloomy ghosts vanishing in the dimness of their surrounds.

  Enrico Caporelli appeared in a doorway. He wore a navy-blue robe and carpet slippers; somebody’s diminutive uncle, Pagan thought. The quick handshake was firm and cool, the skin like smooth leather.

  “They overprotect me,” Caporelli said. “Good men, but perhaps a little too diligent. Come with me, please.”

  He led the way inside a study where heavy brocade curtains had been drawn against the windows. The room was lit only by an antique desk-lamp. Pagan, a little surprised by Caporelli’s calm acceptance of a policeman’s presence, sat down on one side of the desk and wondered about the two bodyguards and whether they came with the territory of th
e rich. Caporelli drew up a chair facing Pagan and pushed a cigar box across the desk. Pagan declined to smoke.

  “I have read about you in the British newspapers, of course,” Caporelli said. There was a hint of New York in the Italian accent. A man without a country, Pagan thought. Or perhaps one with many countries. “You’ve become quite a famous man, Mr Pagan.”

  Pagan brushed this aside. He’d been played up a great deal in the newspapers lately, but if that was fame then it was a kind he didn’t want; it was the notoriety of a man who has survived a tragedy – an airline disaster, a sinking ship. In the circumstances, he preferred anonymity.

  “First the unfortunate killings, now the business with the missile.” Caporelli looked sympathetic. “I am a little surprised you have come to see me. I cannot imagine how I can help you. Of course,” and here was the little shrug of a man prepared to do favours, “I will always help the police in any way I can. In Italy, for instance, I co-operate with the police beyond the call of any citizen’s duty. Ask them. They’ll tell you.”

  “I’m sure you’re an exemplary citizen,” Pagan said. Dark curtains drawn against the light of day, bodyguards in the corridor: what was Enrico Caporelli afraid of? Kidnapping? Violence of the kind practised by certain Italian radicals? “But I haven’t come to Paris to discuss your good behaviour, Signor Caporelli.”

  “Somehow this does not surprise me,” Caporelli said. “How can I assist you?”

  “You were in Britain recently, I understand.”

  Caporelli tipped his chair back and looked up at the dark ceiling. Painted there, but obscured by the bad light, was an impression of an angel’s gold wing, vast and still. “Yes,” he said. “Why is that of interest to you?”

  Pagan didn’t answer. He sailed straight ahead. Unanswered questions often created a useful uncertainty. He took out his notebook and used it as an actor might a stage prop, flicking pages meaninglessly, pretending to search for something in particular. “You went to Glasgow.”

  “I have business there, Mr Pagan,” the Italian said. “Now and again I like to check on it. I had no idea my movements would attract official attention.”

  Pagan longed to draw the curtains and let daylight fill the room. “Who did you meet in Glasgow?”

  “What would happen if I refuse to answer you?”

  Pagan allowed this question to pass unanswered also. There wasn’t any sharp response to it anyway; Caporelli could refuse to say a word. That was his prerogative. The important thing, from Pagan’s point of view, was to keep rolling along. “Did you meet a man called Rafael Rosabal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Caporelli appeared amused by Pagan’s bluntness. “He keeps me informed of events in Cuba. A long time ago, I lived there. I like to have news of my old friends on the island. Call me sentimental.”

  Sentimental, no, Pagan thought. There was nothing soft-centred about Enrico. “The Cuban Minister of Finance, a member of Castro’s government, brings you news of your friends? Isn’t that an odd arrangement? How does Rosabal justify this … service? Does his government know he meets you?”

  “You sound melodramatic, Mr Pagan. It’s all very innocent, I assure you. Years ago, I knew Rosabal’s family. The connection has never been broken. Besides, Rosabal and I never, never, discuss politics. I have no interest in Cuban affairs.”

  Was this a lie? Pagan wondered. Caporelli had a certain easy plausibility about him, but Pagan couldn’t quite get a handle on Rosabal’s angle in this. Why would the Cuban ferry news to Caporelli?

  “Why did you have to go to Glasgow to meet?”

  “It was convenient for me,” Caporelli answered.

  “And for him?”

  Caporelli gestured in a manner capable of only one interpretation: I don’t give a damn about his convenience, Pagan. It was easy to see who had the upper hand between the Italian and the Cuban. Rosabal was clearly ready to be inconvenienced. But why? It wasn’t adding up; Caporelli was sliding past another element, something that sent Rafael scurrying to Glasgow. A hold, perhaps; or Caporelli had something Rosabal badly wanted. Pagan pressed his fingertips into his eyelids. Guessing games, no bone-hard facts. He needed links solid enough to create a strong chain.

  “Rosabal rented a farmhouse in England. Did you know that?”

  Caporelli shook his head. “I do not monitor his life.”

  “He never mentioned this farm?”

  “Never.”

  A quick beat. “The house was occupied by Gunther Ruhr.”

  “Ruhr? The terrorist? Are you sure of that?”

  “I’m sure,” Pagan said. The terrorist, as if there were other Ruhrs who might come to Caporelli’s mind. “Can you see a connection between Ruhr and your friend Rafael?”

  Caporelli moved his face out from the reach of the lamplight. Shadows settled around him. Only his white hair was visible. “I can imagine no relationship, Mr Pagan. None at all. Your information surprises me. In fact, it astonishes me.”

  But Caporelli’s face and voice didn’t altogether suggest astonishment; Pagan had the feeling he was telling Enrico things he already knew.

  “Why would the Cuban Minister of Finance rent a farmhouse and allow a group of terrorists to inhabit the place, Signor Caporelli?”

  Caporelli folded his fine little hands on the desk and regarded them as if they were precious. He shook his head from side to side. “It defies reason, Mr Pagan. I have no ready explanation.”

  Pagan was silent now. Quietness gathered in the black hollows of this spacious unlit room. A clock chimed half past the hour with the subdued sound of an expensive mechanism.

  “Stranger still is the fact that Rosabal rented the farm in another man’s name,” Pagan said.

  “Really?”

  “He called himself Jean-Paul Chapotin.”

  It was obvious at once that Caporelli hadn’t known this before. He bit on his lower lip, then backed himself further out of the range of the lamp, and his face became invisible to Pagan. There, concealed, he recovered his composure with a swiftness that was admirable.

  He said, “The name – you did say Chapotin? – means nothing to me. And as for Rafael’s private affairs, well, I’m ignorant of them. I am sure this business is all very interesting for you, but I don’t share your fascination.”

  Pagan had a well-honed instinct, activated whenever he was presented with a lie. Sometimes, like a pulse, it beat strongly, sometimes hardly at all, but he’d heard so many lies in his lifetime – some told to him by experts – that an encounter with yet another fiction was like greeting an old, if unreliable, acquaintance. Caporelli’s lie, that he didn’t know Jean-Paul Chapotin, wasn’t the best Pagan had ever heard, but it was executed with theatrical skill and assurance. The little man popped a tissue from a fancy designer box with a conjurer’s flourish, as if it were the climax to his brief performance, and pressed it to his lips.

  “You must excuse me now, Mr Pagan. I don’t think I have anything more to tell you. Not that I’ve been of very great help, I’m sure.”

  Pagan wasn’t quite ready to be dismissed. “Are you aware that Chapotin was murdered in London, Signor Caporelli?”

  “How could I be? As I already said, Mr Pagan, I am not familiar with the man. I’m sorry if he was killed, of course. But what can I say? You really must excuse me. I have business to conduct.”

  Pagan rose from his chair. “Like you, Chapotin had Cuba in his background,” he said. “It’s one of those bloody terrible coincidences that keeps bothering me. You and Jean-Paul and Rosabal. And the common factor is Cuba. I can’t get it out of my mind.”

  Enrico Caporelli held a hand in the air, palm turned outward to Pagan. His voice was firm. “You should know when to stop asking questions. You should know when enough is enough.”

  “I never do. It’s one of my worst traits.”

  Caporelli reached for the gold-plated telephone on his desk.

  Pagan stretched a hand out over the receiver,
preventing the man from picking it up. “Why are you in such a hurry to boot me out of here, Signor Caporelli? I want to know a little more about you and Rosabal and poor old Jean-Paul. You can’t really expect me to believe you didn’t know Chapotin. He was in Glasgow the same day you were there. He lived in Cuba at exactly the same time as yourself. And he was obviously known to Rafael. Don’t ask me to file all this under coincidence. Don’t insult me.”

  Caporelli gave an odd little laugh, a brittle note like a tiny hammer falling twice on a recalcitrant nail. He got up from the desk and wandered among the shadowy furniture. “You have a fine imagination, Pagan. For your own sake, let it rest. Let it lie quietly. Forget it. A little amnesia is often a healthy thing.”

  Ah, Pagan thought. Was that a veiled threat, a fist in a soft kid glove? He liked the idea of being gently menaced by Caporelli; it stirred his blood, his combative instincts. He got up from his chair and grinned at the little man, knowing how utterly infuriating this look could be at times.

  “Something’s going on, Enrico – if you don’t mind – and I want to know what. You and Rosabal, for starters. He travels thousands of miles just so you can hear glad tidings from Cuba? Give me a bloody break, Enrico. I didn’t get up with this morning’s dew.”

  Caporelli was about to object, but Pagan went on regardless. “Let’s think about Gunther next. He lives in a house rented by your friend Rafael. What does this begin to smell like, Enrico? The whiff of conspiracy?”

  “I tell you again. Too much imagination. Empty your mind. Sleeping dogs must lie.”

  “I kick sleeping dogs, Enrico. I like the way they howl.” Pagan heard a dryness in his voice. He didn’t have the spit for this pursuit, the wind. His lungs seemed shallow to him, his intake of oxygen poor. He caught his breath. “Now why does Gunther steal a missile? Not because he wants one for his collection, I’m sure. He’s the hired hand. But who’s the boss, Enrico? Rafael? He’s a good choice. After all, he was Ruhr’s landlord. But is Rafael carrying out an order on behalf of some other party?”