by Gil Hogg
While I disliked Burton for his part in Kershaw’s capture, which might have been greater than he admitted, I somehow couldn’t bring myself to execute him. And yet his continued life was a threat to the lives of both Yarham and myself. Nor could I order Yarham to do that which I wouldn’t do myself. Oh yes, I could, but I wouldn’t on this occasion. I therefore had to have a scheme which effectively got Burton out of the way for say a week – the time it would take us to wind up this affair.
One possibility was to hire a local pilot to fly Burton to Jamaica, or even Haiti. But there was always the possibility that Burton would return promptly. A more ambitious international flight would involve a delay in getting a good quality forged passport for him, and we didn’t have that much time. I could hide him in an old mine shaft – there were plenty of disused workings, but that would put his life at risk if the water or food ran out, or put us at risk if he escaped. At last, when the sun was coming up, and my stomach was rumbling for breakfast, I had a better idea.
I had the hotel serve our breakfast of watermelon, yoghurt with honey, cereal and hot rolls, on the patio. All remained quiet in the car park, but we could not afford to take our eyes off the jeep.
“We deliver Burton to the police, Yarham.”
“With a label to say CIA spy? Whatever made you think of that, sir?”
“Our voyage with Carmelli. Imagine if the coastguard had handed us over to the police. How long would it have taken to establish who we were? That we were not drug smugglers? And to justify what we were doing in Cuba? No passports, no other ID.”
“Trying to justify the unjustifiable… a very long time.”
“We’ll buy some heroin on the street, dope Burton, fill his pockets with the drug – and, adopting your suggestion, tie a label on him. The Cuban police will have a party.”
“As long as we don’t have to bath him, Captain.”
24
That morning I received the first instruction by satellite that I had received from my bosses at C3. Decrypted by my computer, it said Return immediately.
“Not much dubiety, Captain.” Yarham had difficulty concealing his pleasure at this order.
“None. Perhaps they fear Gomez is going to fire his missiles, and they’re going to strike first. They want us out of the firing line.”
“Decent of them, I suppose,” Yarham said.
“Do you think they care about us?” I asked.
“Actually, no, Captain. I don’t think they give a damn.”
“Then there must be another reason.”
But Yarham wasn’t following me. He was off in a dream of his own. He said, “You probably gave them enough in your report to get on to the site. And they’ll have space photographs.” He couldn’t keep the lightness out of his voice.
But I wasn’t quite satisfied with the order, and I went out to a newsagent on Calle M where I knew I could get a pirate copy of yesterday’s USA Today or the Washington Post. I scanned the national and international news in both papers, and found that while there was considerable agitation about possible terrorist attacks, and a presidency under severe pressure to be more hawkish, there was nothing specific about declaring war. The focus was on the Middle East, not Latin America, and there was nothing about the Caribbean. I believed that any move the USA made would be likely to be signalled in some way in the press a few days before. Just as nature is said to abhor a vacuum, so humanity abhors secrecy; it is unnatural and virtually impossible to achieve.
When I returned to the hotel, I said to Yarham, “I think the Disciples are getting ready for a move on the home front, perhaps using the photographs of the site as evidence to embarrass the President. They don’t want any more action here. They want a hot threat at home to terrify the voters into electing a president with balls. Their man.”
“What about the local CIA boys here running wild?”
“The Disciples probably don’t even know what the CIA’s local lads are up to. And we haven’t told them.”
I was wondering whether I should report to C3 that if I didn’t hit the terrorists, the CIA would. Then, as a matter of agency pride, they might let me try to get the blow in first.
“Shall I organise a boat to take us to Jamaica, then, Captain?” Yarham asked, sweeping the line of my thoughts aside, only too glad to conclude that our mission was over.
I considered it. The mission was over – and accomplished expertly. We could make a quiet escape without passports. From Kingston, Jamaica we could organise ID, and fly to Washington. Safe. Pats on the back. Back to Laurie, and the cat. But I couldn’t help wondering whether, if we hung out longer here, there could be any kudos for me in taming the CIA, and eliminating the terrorists. And Dolores Martinez remained on my mind. I dreamed of her at night. I desired her. I was curious about her secret. Agent? Double agent? Crook? She haunted me.
“Shall I, Captain?”
“No… no boat, not yet. We know we have a week or two before Gomez lets go,” I said.
“But we don’t know when Washington will let loose,” Yarham said, dropping his chin.
“If the US strike first, Yarham, they’ll use conventional weapons, take out the site.”
“That’s a comfort, sir, if we happen to be on or near. Blown to bits, rather than fried to a crisp.”
“It’s true there are risks. But don’t you think we have a duty to find out more about this dangerous situation?”
“If you say so, Captain.”
I sent Yarham off to purchase the heroin and syringe for Burton, and when he returned, I counted out a quarter of a million dollars from our hoard, and carried it in a plastic bag to the Brazilian Bank of Commerce. Inside the august grey marble portals, a dark-suited man came from behind the counters, using my real name. I mean Roger Conway. He took me to a private interview room where he asked me to tip the contents of the bag on to the table. He examined one random note, and then counted the packets once only, like a man used to counting hundred-thousand dollar packets. Then he took an envelope out of his breast pocket, and slid it across the table. “I was given this to hand to you in exchange. I’m not aware of the contents, but I take it they are in order.” He gave a faint smile.
I thanked him and looked at the envelope. “I presume… ”
“That’s fine, Mr Conway. You can leave it all with me,” he said, standing up to conclude our meeting.
I hung on. I slit the envelope and read the typewritten slip with road directions on it. I gulped, but this was the way I had agreed. I felt the payment in a bank had an air of respectability about it, and that it would be beneath my dignity to rehearse the details of the planned hand-over of arms. I was sure the banker would have charmingly told me, if I tried, that he didn’t know what I was talking about.
The following morning at four-thirty am I drove the jeep past the police station on Padre Varela, while Yarham, in the back seat, had the rear cover open. The streets were nearly deserted except for the odd sanitary worker or bum. There was a slow, sleepy atmosphere, stars fading in the sky, the populace struggling to their feet, which was why we had chosen this time.
Burton had been carefully doped that morning with a quantity of heroin which Yarham had discussed with the dealer. The dealer presumably did not want to kill his customers, and was keen to give advice about the size of a shot, because of his claim about the purity of the drug. I did however invite Yarham to run a series of punctures down Burton’s forearm veins to complicate the issue of whether he was a regular user.
Burton was conscious now, eyes half-open, and in paradise, collapsed on the steel tray of the jeep. Yarham slid Burton’s bound body, labelled CIA spy, out of the back, as I slowed the vehicle. Burton had a heavy fall on the flagstones at the foot of the station steps, but would have felt nothing. I accelerated away.
“The jeep still stinks. Clean up the floor when we get back, will you?” I said.
Our next move that day came in the afternoon – the rendezvous to collect the arms. We drove out on the Au
topista an hour before three pm and patrolled up and down. There was an intermittent stream of traffic, old buses and ramshackle trucks, with the occasional twenty-ton semitrailer, snorting and roaring at its inferior companions. We pulled in to wait at the appointed place, a tree-lined rest bay twenty kilometres east of San Cristobal. It would be quite possible to transfer the load of arms without being seen by passing traffic. It was a good choice which seemed to corroborate the genuineness of the deal. We waited. I thought of Dolores, what she might be doing. In bed with Gomez? Or Arias?
“It’s three-fifteen, sir.”
The tone rather than content of Yarham’s words gave me a few misgivings. Had I been suckered again?
Yarham persisted, to my annoyance. “Suppose Arias took the money and did nothing. What could we do? Write a letter of complaint to him? Instruct our solicitors to recover it?”
“If you don’t shut up, man, I’ll brain you. Arias thinks we’re part of the CIA effort which he has already helped. He wants us to succeed. And he’s had good money for his fund. Why shouldn’t he produce the arms?”
Yarham sat at the wheel with a composure that suggested he was humouring me. He looked forward at the empty tree-lined track, slightly amused. I got out of the jeep and walked up and down until it began to rain. It was fine being a secret agent, and there were glamorous moments, but there were also long periods of waiting. It was five pm.
“We’ll give it another hour. There’s been a slip-up on their side. I’ll get back to Arias if there’s no delivery,” I said tersely.
There was no delivery. I drove back to the hotel seething. I went into the bar and ordered a Scotch. I tossed it off, and ordered another. I reviewed my previous plans and their outcome. Could I have played it any differently? Then Yarham came swinging into my vision, eyebrows raised, his jaw hanging down. He slapped a Cuban Star newspaper on the bar in front of me.
“There’s your answer, sir.”
I knew enough Spanish to read the headline and straplines. Arias Arrested. Senior Government Minister Detained for Sedition. Other Arrests…
“Half a million down the plug-hole,” he added.
“And the security police looking for us, I have no doubt.”
“I’ll organise the boat to Jamaica, Captain.”
“Yarham, rid yourself of this childish wish to go home. You’re a Boy Scout now.”
“I’d like to see my wife.”
I didn’t blame the uxorious Yarham for wanting to see that little woman. I thought what a relief it would be to spend a night in the peaceful USA in the arms of Laurie, or in my fantasies, Marie, the cook, with her fuzzy armpits, but perhaps not Mrs Gerry Clark. “One more visit to the Sol Night-Club, so you can practise the samba, and amaze your wife.”
It had been raining when we arrived at the car park behind the church in San Cristobal. The moon had appeared and the trees were glistening in the darkness. Yarham engaged a minder for the jeep, and we headed for the Sol. It was eleven-thirty when we took our seats in the half-dark fog of cigar smoke, as far from the dance floor as we could get. The main show was over, but there was the promise of another at one am.
We ordered Cuba libres, a salute to the expensive Dr Arias. Perhaps it was foolish to have come. I was bankrupt of ideas. What could one do, armed only with a couple of pistols and flicknives? I wanted to see Dolores once more – at a distance, and then perhaps we’d go. And I hoped, I suppose, in a distant part of my mind, that some opportunity would present itself to checkmate both the CIA and Gomez, or at least that I would pick up a scrap of information which could be massaged into a valuable intelligence coup.
On the third Cuba libre, Jose appeared, his hands in his pockets, slouching over his hollow chest. “I see you Meester. You have a friend, huh?”
“I don’t need you tonight, Jose.”
He laughed suspiciously. I invited him to have a drink, and he said he didn’t mind, by which he meant he wanted one. He sat down. “You still watching the famous people, eh?”
“Just enjoying.”
“You don’t fuck. You watch,” he said knowingly. “American who watches.”
“I drink,” I said lightly, but Jose was worrying me, because obviously I was worrying him. He knew I was a phony.
While we talked desultorily and watched the dancers with half our attention, I saw Gomez and Dolores standing in the midst of the tables. Then I lost sight of them in the crowd. When I tried to find them, searching the darker restaurant tables at the back, I couldn’t see them. They seemed to have come in – and then gone. I felt apprehensive, and in any event, we weren’t doing anything useful. I was simply indulging my imagination.
I took a five-dollar bill from the roll in my breast pocket, and pushed it across to Jose. “For your drink, when the waiter brings it.”
“Don’t go yet, senor. Stay and watch.” His lips pulled back and exposed his teeth with a humour that exceeded the occasion.
I gestured to Yarham and we stood up and made our way toward the door. “Short, but not very sweet,” he said.
Outside it was raining again, and I paused on the porch. I could see Gomez and Dolores standing to one side under umbrellas, with a few men around them. Dolores looked pale and strained but scintillatingly beautiful in the lamplight. The men wore white shirts and were unconcerned about the rain which soaked them. I looked away, stepped through a row of doormen, pimps and touts, and walked briskly across the courtyard, head down, with Yarham beside me.
I felt somebody grab my arms from behind, and pinion them, while somebody else slipped a cord around my neck and drew it tight. Nearly choked, I was propelled toward a waiting car, rammed into the back seat, and the door slammed and locked. Much the same had happened to Yarham. The driver, in the front seat, had an automatic in his hand. “Sit back, men, or I kill you.”
The thick voice, the difference in tone and pronunciation struck me. He was from the Middle East, one of the Gomez gang. He was joined by another man in the front seat who took over the gun, but never spoke. He stared at me with black, malign eyes. The driver backed out of the courtyard of the club, and there were two other cars with headlights, waiting to move. We drove the few miles, which I recognised, to the Campismo Mercados. The other cars were following.
The car turned up the path to the gate and stopped outside a long, single-storey wing of the building. I was taken inside into a room that looked like a cheap motel bedroom, with two mean single beds. I was tied to a chair, wrists over the chair-back, ankles strapped to the front legs of the chair. After a few moments Yarham was brought in and tied in the same way. Then we were left alone. We never spoke. That was the discipline. Not even one of Yarham’s awful flippancies. Somebody would be listening, and watching.
We were left for perhaps three hours, and I was drifting off into a nighmarish sleep, my head lolling uncontrollably, when the door opened. The man I had identified as Gomez came in. He was wearing a dark blue silk dressing gown with small white spots, quite tasteful. His fat neck showed. His muscular legs were bare. He wore sandals. He had evidently risen from bed; it was, I estimated, around three am. I thought of Dolores. Had she turned over and gone back to sleep? Had she even stirred? Gomez looked fresh, his beard neatly clipped, his scalp shining through his carefully combed black hair. He took a seat opposite us.
“Let me introduce myself. I am Rahman Malmuni, head of this project.”
I had no doubt that he felt free to give us his name, or as much information as he liked, in the knowledge that we would never leave the room. The only reason he had to keep us alive was to learn who we were, and the schemes we had against him. And he would press us ruthlessly, and separately, knowing that keeping us together would be unfruitful; one person’s strength encouraged another.
The theory, according to MI6, was that if you face certain death after interrogation the less said the better. A fairly obvious view, but the point was that unharmful specific answers always led to further questions, and the MI6 psychologists beli
eved that a captive was more likely to be worn down, and unnerved, once he was tangled in a chain of specific answers. The tempting thing, however, was to try to spin your life out a little longer by apparently being helpful, and it was a tactic I had used myself with advantage.
“Come now, American spies… introduce yourselves.”
Gomez waited attentively with a smirk. He might have been entertaining a lady friend at afternoon tea. Eventually, without any change of expression, he said, “Very well. I am going to choose one of you to have a chat with me, and to give a little more… accessibility, shall we say?… I shall have your lower body clothing removed.”
He beamed at each of us in turn, unhurried. “What am I going to do then? What do you think?”
I thought, sickened – something to do with my cock and balls!
Gomez produced a gold cigar case and lighter from the pocket of his robe. He selected a cigar, sniffed it with concentrated pleasure, and took his time lighting it – removing the barrel from his mouth and examining the glowing tip. Satisfied with the evenness of the burn, he rested back in a cloud of smoke.
“A really good Havana here, in Cuba, is a delight. Mature, but with a freshness that is lost in packaging and transport overseas, don’t you agree?” He raised his hand, pinching fingertip and thumb-tip together to signal the superb.
My mind had frozen, rejecting any further contemplation of what baring my lower body could entail. I fervently hoped that Yarham would be chosen for this operation.
“Now,” Gomez began gently, leaning forward confidentially, “whichever of you it is, the spy with the red hair, or the spy with the golden hair: my colleague will bring a thin cord. He will tie a torniquet – you see I have a very good English vocabulary. I spent a year in Fulham in London. There is a language school there. And the girls! A tourniquet will be tied at the base of your cock, or if he, my colleague, pleases, at the base of your balls. I don’t trouble myself with these details. So! Now you can guess what happens next.” Gomez drew heavily on the cigar, his eyes half closed. He sniggered.