Codename Wolf

by Gil Hogg

  “Is he from the Campismo Mercados?”

  “Sure. He thinks he’s a big shot. He spends plenty, but always trouble with the women. You know Cuban women have spirit. They don’t lie down like dead. They don’t take orders. If they like, they fuck. If they don’t like, they don’t fuck.”

  I was more curious about the protester. He was about forty, heavy, with a thick moustache under a bulging nose. I would try to remember him. Although he’d got the worst of it, the man had carried himself as though he was used to getting his way. “Do you know anything about the man?”

  “Why you so interested?” Jose said, slyly.

  I feigned indifference. “I like to know about people. If you want to talk, talk. If you don’t, it’s OK.” I finished my drink and made to rise.

  Dollar signs were preeminent with Jose. “I tell you senor, I tell you. I work here sometimes. Make a little money behind the bar. He is a drunk. Makes trouble. But he is big boss. He wants that girl. He fucks her once, wants her every time. She doesn’t like. She makes plenty without him. A star girl. Problem.”

  I received Jose’s words in an offhand way, and wandered outside. Jose called after me that I would have to pay again later if I wanted to come back. I gave Jose another ten dollars, thanked him for his help, and said goodnight.

  At the church, I met Yarham and Kershaw. Kershaw was drunk, feeding a depression from his lapse with Burton which we hadn’t chided him about. Yarham hired a driver at an exorbitant rate to take us to Havana. While Kershaw slept in the car, we guardedly discussed our plans. Yarham had identified a couple of men he thought were Middle-Eastern, but like my find, it was a case of so what? The next step was to see what we could unearth in Mariel – and the obvious way was to follow the work bus.

  It seemed extraordinary to me that Gomez had created a little ghetto at Campismo Mercados, but in a way I understood it. They were here for months, in a foreign culture. They could keep each other company, and be more readily subject to control if they were living together. But there were serious risks in making your whole group an identifiable target. It was an inept mistake.

  The next morning we hired a Suzuki Samurai jeep with a soft top from Transtur using the forged Cuban driver’s licence Yarham had removed from Burton. Yarham bribed the clerk heavily to get to the front of the queue, and the clerk paid little attention to checking the document or the photo-identity. I carried out a reconnaissance on the road between the Campismo Mercados and Mariel, selecting a place where we could wait the next morning.

  With the move to an old but reasonably quiet and spacious hotel in the Vedado area, the Hotel Yara, which had in addition a park for the jeep, I felt we were making progress again.

  We were in position on the Via Luis Fernandez at four-thirty the next morning – it had occurred to me that Al Qaeda might work unusual hours, or perhaps prefer the cool of the morning. It was a sensible move, because an old twenty-seater bus, wood-framed, with peeled paint, huffed out between the skewed gateposts of Campismo Mercados in a cloud of smoke at five-thirty. Kershaw drove, following the bus on the empty road at a distance, and closed up after forty miles, when we were approaching the outskirts of Mariel.

  When the bus seemed to have finally finished its snail-like journey around the oily pools of water, through the mud and potholes of the back-street wasteland, we were a block behind in the jeep. The sun was well up now, and lifting the rags of mist which hung over the low-lying ground like a noxious gas.

  “Stick it off the road beside the tin fence and we’ll get out and walk,” I said, and Kershaw parked and disabled the vehicle, disconnecting wires under the bonnet.

  The bus was pulling away by the time we came near to it, but several figures could be seen, walking in twos and threes in the same direction. There were a few other people around trudging to work even at this early hour and I didn’t think we had been noticed. It wasn’t necessary to split targets between us, as all the bus passengers seemed to be going to the same place, which coincided with Burton’s information that as far as he knew, there was only one site.

  Yarham and Kershaw dropped back, and I was about two hundred and fifty yards behind six men huddled in anoraks despite the rising temperature, the last of the passengers, who never looked around as they walked. We were crossing uneven waste ground which smelled like an infill site for garbage; beyond it was a yard, with a fifteen-foot galvanised wire fence. One of the men stopped to light a cigarette, and I pretended I was scavenging, kicking the earth, bending over to examine a stone, but they showed no curiosity about me – if they saw me. The men filed inside the gate of the yard when it was ponderously unlocked, and locked behind them by a guard. I turned away, and walked back to the jeep.

  I was pleased with my observation, and it tallied with what Burton had said. I’d have to get into the yard to find out precisely what stage the terrorists had reached in their work, and how to do this was occupying me, as I turned the corner of the tin fence where we had left the 4x4. I found the smart, royal blue Samurai, which a few minutes ago had been equipped with bulging, maxi-grip tyres, possibly the pride of the rental fleet, sitting on its axles in the mud, with an open hood and a broken windscreen.

  Yarham’s amusement was complete when he caught up a moment later. “Couldn’t steal it, though, could they, Captain?”

  I hired a car back to the hotel in Havana. Yarham and Kershaw now had reservations about my plan to squeeze another ounce of glory out of the mission, which they expressed in hints. They wanted us to prepare a plan of the area and return to Washington.

  Yarham had exercised his skills and money on Havanautos to produce a similar Japanese vehicle, in case I decided that we should continue, and when he returned to the hotel with the new jeep, we conferred on the patio beside the pool, with assistance from a couple of strong rum and Cokes. Kershaw was in Vieja calming the no-doubt outraged manager of Transtur about the loss of his Samurai with a wedge of dollars.

  “Is it really practicable for us to find out the state of readiness of the rockets and warheads, Captain? Nobody is going to tell us, and short of penetrating that wire… ”

  “It could be months before they’re ready,” I said calmly, although I doubted it.

  “But as a result of your report, Washington already knows enough to become nervy. The US could turn Cuba into a piece of burnt toast, and we’ll be two of the black specks.”

  “No. They’ll wait until they hear more from me. While we are in play and cool, Yarham, Washington will hold fire. I deliberately didn’t tell C3 the locations we knew about from Burton at the Campismo and Mariel, to forestall any hasty desire to loose off.”

  “Burton implied the CIA thought Al Qaeda had a way to go yet. But he didn’t know.”

  “So we have to know, Yarham. We can’t risk panicking the Disciples. They’re first-strike crazy. Are you happy to hang out for a while longer?”

  “I wouldn’t say happy, Captain… but it’s a good cause, and if you say so.”

  Yarham’s usually irrepressible sense of humour was frayed. I did not reveal to him, because he was understandably anxious about his skin, the full ambit of the plan I was forming – to do so would only have alarmed him unnecessarily.

  I had at least tentatively decided that the objective I could strive for was not merely knowledge of when the rockets would be ready, but destruction of them, and their operators; the mission as I had originally envisaged it at my meeting with the Disciples at Gerry Clark’s apartment. Complete destruction of the threat would be the great prize.

  And there was another thought which made that prize even more tantalising. Assuming Burton had told all to the local CIA, I thought that they would not content themselves with a report to Langley. They had lost two agents and the report would be a virtual admission that they were second-class operators. Instead, they would rely on what Burton said, and would seek the same prize as us. Destruction of the missiles would be a contest between the CIA and C3.

  I went to bed high
on the idea that I could do the virtually impossible.

  22

  My first instinct was to try to enter the launch site at Mariel and see for myself what was happening. And then I decided it was too risky. The site would probably be guarded around the clock, so surreptitious entry would be unlikely. A break-in would involve conflict and alert Gomez. Instead, I ordered Kershaw to move to Mariel town, and start daily, and if necessary nightly, surveillance. He had to be there when the bus arrived. And he had to find out who and what, apart from the bus workers, went in and came out of the site. We might be able to infer, from the nature of the traffic, what the state of readiness was. It was an important independent assignment, and Kershaw accepted it without demur. I think he rightly felt excluded, and was glad to get away on a project of his own.

  I had conceived a very ambitious plan, far beyond the immediate orders of my masters, but I considered I could argue that I was interpreting their likely intentions in a situation where time could be of the essence. And it was a plan which, if successful, would reflect no little honour upon me.

  With Kershaw posted to Mariel I could concentrate on the Campismo, and San Cristobal town, with Yarham. The plan I had formulated in my head went broadly like this: assemble the necessary weapons; dispose of the ten or twelve Al Qaeda or most of them; then strike and destroy the Mariel factory. I pushed the problem of how to deal with the warheads, together with our means of escape, to the end of the list. I wasn’t exactly in a position to ask for technical advice about neutralising atomic weapons.

  I had no means of acquiring weapons from the Disciples. I had the money to pay for them, but no vendor. There were only two sources of supply that I could think of: the CIA and the Cuban government. Even the CIA might not have the grenades, explosives and mines cached in Cuba that I needed, and of course even if they did, they wouldn’t sell them to me. That left the Cuban government, and the dubious Dr Arias.

  Arias was playing politics with this dangerous development, and hoping to unseat the government. Fidel Castro had just handed over power temporarily to his brother, Raul. Arias had helped the CIA, and he might be prepared to help me – for a consideration. I told Yarham we must pursue Dr Arias for further information about the Cuban government’s position. I concealed from him the fact that the approach would really be for arms.

  He responded bleakly, reluctantly agreeing to help. “Dr Arias may get us in the missionary position, Captain, as before.”

  “We don’t know whether Arias was behind the heist in the shopping mall. It may have been a little private enterprise by Dolores Martinez.”

  The question was how we were to approach this important security-conscious bureaucrat now that Dolores Martinez had disappeared. I was sure that with the codes and information the Disciples had given me, I could establish a trustworthy identity for myself which Arias would accept, but to do that I had to corner him somewhere in a calm frame of mind. I could convince him of the desirability of supporting our cause, if only I could create the opportunity.

  “You’re thinking we could go to his apartment, force our way in, cool him down, and then talk?” Yarham said impatiently.

  “He’s probably got a security guard on the premises. There could be shooting.” I meant that we could get shot.

  “We block his car in the morning, get the driver out at gunpoint, and you two have a nice chat,” Yarham tried, more seriously this time.

  “Possible, but creaky. Anything can happen on the road, like the unforeseen presence of cops, or a hidden security guard on a motorbike.”

  “I’ve got it, sir. Ring his office and make an appointment to call,” Yarham joked.

  I disregarded his cynicism as I thought for a moment. “By God, Yarham, you’ve got it!”

  “If you go in, and you’re rumbled, you’ll never come out, sir.”

  “Money opens doors, Yarham. Surely we’ve learned that.”

  In parallel with my initiative to see Arias, I had to get a line of sight on Gomez and Hertz. It would be little use destroying the bus and its passengers (my intention) if their leaders were not on board, unless they could be otherwise ambushed at approximately the same time. Another visit to the Sol Night Club and possibly even surveillance of the camp was required. Yarham therefore drove me to San Cristobal in my tourist outfit, with little more in mind precisely than watching events at the Sol for an hour or so and trying to identify Gomez and Hertz. I decided it was prudent to employ Jose again, and arranged by phone to meet him outside the club. Yarham left the jeep in the custody of a boy, and shadowed me.

  The Sol presented an entirely different picture at eleven at night. The lights were subdued, and although the jineteros were still trading, there were tourists, and numerous women who were obviously partnering the male with them for the evening, and had come for dinner, the floor show and a little dancing. I sat through a loud girlie cabaret act of legs and bosoms that looked as though they were rehearsing to understudy the chorus at the Tropicana; their sheer sexual exhuberance overcame the sloppy beat of the music, and the uncertain choreography.

  “You want I get you a girl? Beautiful!” Jose asked after the show.

  “I’ll have a pina colada.”

  “You gay or something? I get you a boy. Very nice boy.”

  I declined. “A pina colada.”

  “Whatsa matter you don’t fuck? You want me?” he smiled, raising his eyebrows engagingly.

  “No, Jose. I like to talk. I have AIDS, SIDA you know? My dick is no good. We talk. I pay you. You tell me about all the great people here. Amuse me.”

  Jose looked at me with an uncertain kind of repulsion. “SIDA you got? OK,” he said slowly, seeing the commission he had hoped to earn on sex disappear. “We talk.”

  It was at this point that my attention was jolted by a woman who had just stepped into the limelight on the dancefloor. I couldn’t mistake Dolores Martinez’s expensively coffeured black tresses with gold lights, and the slender stateliness of her tall body, so unlike the plump fat-fed jineteros. The man she was with was swarthy, rounded, an inch shorter than her, with thin black hair and a short black beard. He was about fifty; not a Cuban, but an Asian of some kind. He didn’t hold her too close. He was showing her off. She was scintillating in gold. He was wearing a white office shirt, open at the neck and rolled to the forearms, and the dark trousers of a suit. He had a proud bearing.

  “Who is the woman in the gold lame dress?” I asked Jose.

  “I don’t know her name. She’s with the big man from the Mercados. She comes here sometimes with him. They watch the show. Why you always ask about Campesino Mercados?”

  “I didn’t. I asked about the woman. You mentioned the man. I told you I’m interested in people. Beautiful women. To talk about.”

  I was rapidly working out the connection between Dolores and Gomez – assuming this man was Gomez. She had already sold him out to the CIA, according to Burton. That must be true. She was their principal informant. And if she was still close to Gomez, she wasn’t just a go-between and a thief, as I had thought. She was a spy, still on the job, working for the CIA. She couldn’t have been working for the Cuban government, or they would have moved in to clean up the rats’ nest of terrorists long before now. I admired her bravery, and her cheek with money which quite overshadowed our sleight of hand in C3. My much earlier sympathies for her returned. I didn’t quite understand her loyalties, but I thought she was a very sophisticated operator. If Gomez found out what she’d done, he’d choke her without a qualm. I didn’t begrudge her the half-million she had filched from us, sore as I felt about being duped. I wanted to talk to her again. I wanted to find out more about her… I wanted to make love to her.

  I told Jose I felt ill and would have to go. I said it was the pills I had to take. As we were pushing through the crowd, a jinetero grabbed my arm. “Come dance with me, honee!” She engulfed me with her soft breasts, and drew me a couple of paces toward the dance floor while I tried to free myself, and remain p
leasant at the same time. As I turned politely to go, I saw Dolores, staring at me blankly through a space that had suddenly appeared between all the moving bodies, like a rent in the clouds on a windy night. We were riveted together for a fraction of a second by mutual glances of surprise. What flashed between us in that moment, like a video in re-run, was our brief past together. I looked away, and followed Jose outside.

  I paid Jose off, and waited in the dark for half an hour until Gomez and Dolores came out, with two other men. A driver with a black Toyota saloon was waiting for them. They drove away taking the road toward the Campesino, rather than Havana. I assumed that Gomez didn’t want to hit the high spots, but couldn’t resist going out for an hour or two – and Dolores would be persuasive.

  When we climbed into the jeep, I asked Yarham to head for Mariel. “I want a report from Kershaw, and he can’t come to us.”

  “Where does tonight’s little venture get us, Captain?” Yarham asked, sounding exasperated.

  “I made an important discovery tonight,” I said, and I explained. I could see that I was going to have to confide completely in him, and I hoped he was up to it. “I want to work out a way of neutralising Gomez, and Hertz – if we can identify him.”

  “You mean killing, Captain?”

  “It’s a very good cause, Yarham. Think what they’ll do if we leave them loose.”

  “What about the other engineers and technicians, ten of them?”

  “Unfortunately, them too. Well, most of them. We don’t have to be fussy about detail.”

  Yarham soothed his massive jaw ruminantly as he deftly handled the wheel of the jeep with one hand. “Exigencies of the service,” he pronounced deliberately. “And considerably less than the population of Washington or New York.”

  “Very much smaller. Can do?”

  “Certainly, Captain,” he said unwillingly. “But what with? We’ve only got those two pea-shooters we pilfered from Carmelli.”