Night Work

by David C. Taylor

  “Small-group tactics. They should have somebody walking point in case there’s trouble waiting up ahead, and they should have someone walking drag in case there’s trouble coming up from behind.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing. He’s going to do it his way.”

  “They’re a proud people.”

  “I hope it doesn’t kill them. And us.”

  The trees closed in overhead so that they walked in shadow and occasional shafts of light. Without the sun, the ground was soft and muddy and the air was thick with moisture and smelled of decay and of tropical flowers Cassidy could not identify. Birds called, and occasionally an animal scrabbled away in the underbrush.

  Armando walked up past them without looking at them and spoke to a man at the head of the march. The man nodded, unslung his rifle, and jogged up along the trail and disappeared around a bend. Armando stood by the side of the trail and spoke to the men as they passed. When Cassidy reached him, he handed him his revolver without comment.

  * * *

  The clearing held six crude huts, and a large, ramshackle house of wood and tin with a front porch supported by stumps and pieces of stone. It was an old farm mostly reclaimed by the jungle. When the patrol came out of the trailhead, three men and a woman got up from where they were cleaning rifles on a blanket by a fire. People came out of one of the huts, and a man and woman left the garden patch they were hoeing. They all wore fatigues, and the men were bearded, and they rushed the incoming patrol with shouts and hugs of greeting.

  A man stood on the porch of the house and watched. He was about thirty years old, Cassidy thought. His fatigues were neat, and he wore polished army boots. He was a big man, over six feet, and heavy through the chest and belly. He was as dark as any man Cassidy had seen, so dark that his skin seemed to absorb light. He did not come down off the porch to join the noisy celebration. He waited for them to come to him.

  Armando started for the man on the porch, and when Cassidy and Dylan started to follow, he checked them with a gesture, and two of the men from the patrol came to stand near them with their rifles held across their chests. Armando went up onto the porch, and as he did, a woman came out of the house and joined the two men. She was not much over five feet tall and a hundred pounds, but wiry and strong-looking, with coarse brown hair tied back with a piece of red cloth. She stood with a hand on the big man’s arm and stared out at Cassidy and Dylan while they listened to Armando’s report. The big man glanced at them occasionally while Armando talked and at the end he shook the smaller man’s hand, clapped him on the shoulder, and ushered him off the porch. He said a few words to the woman and gestured to Cassidy and Dylan to come up.

  “My name is Antonio Gonzales. I am deputy commander of this unit of the July 26th Movement.” He did not offer to shake hands. He did not introduce the woman. His eyes were brown, large and liquid, and the whites were shot through with blood. “And you are?” His voice was deep and indicated little real interest in their answers.

  “Selena Perez,” Dylan said. “I’ve been with the Portillo group in Havana.”

  “There is no Portillo group. They were taken. They were in La Cabaña. They were executed two days ago. We received the news by radio.”

  “I escaped with this man’s help.”

  “Only you?”

  “I don’t know. We were told two others got away.”

  He turned to look at Cassidy. “You have a gun. Please give it to me.”

  Cassidy took the gun out of his pocket and handed it butt first to Gonzales. What was the point of refusing?

  “Your name? He examined the pistol briefly and then handed it to the woman who tucked it in her belt.

  “Michael Cassidy.”

  “Why are you in Cuba?”

  “I’m a police officer with the New York City Police Department. I brought an extradited prisoner to Havana.”

  “Who?”

  “A man named Fausto Echevarria.”

  Gonzales looked at the woman. She shook her head. She did not know the name.

  “He wasn’t one of yours. He was wanted for murder. He killed three men guarding some money he was trying to steal.”

  “And how did you meet this woman?”

  “I saw her when I brought the prisoner to La Cabaña. I recognized her as someone I had known in New York. I learned that she was going to be executed, so I got her out.”

  “Just like that?”

  “No. It required some work.”

  Gonzales raised his eyebrows in disbelief and looked to the woman to see what she thought.

  “Were you lovers in New York?” The woman asked.

  “Yes.”

  She nodded as if that explained a lot. “Still, a fantastic story.”

  “The truth.”

  “Perhaps,” she said.

  “If I’m not who I say I am,” Dylan said, “how would we have known who to contact to get out of Havana? How would we have known how to get here?”

  “You say you’re Selena. Perhaps you are. Perhaps you’re not. If you’re not, then who are you? A member of SIM? So you get one name from Selena before she dies, and that takes you to the mechanic. And the mechanic takes you to the woman, and the woman takes you to Armando. And now you’re here, and so the mission is almost complete.”

  “And if we work for SIM, how do we let them know where we are? Ask to borrow your radio?”

  She considered it seriously. “No. That would not be part of the plan. But my story is no more fantastic than yours.”

  “There are people in the hills who have met me, who know me. I have been in Fidel’s camp too, six months ago. There are people who know me.”

  “Fidel is in the Sierra. We are here.”

  “There are people.”

  “Perhaps there are. We will see.”

  “Maybe if we spoke to the commander of the unit,” Cassidy suggested to Gonzales.

  “I am the commander of the unit,” the woman said with a thin smile for his mistake.

  They were locked in a windowless storeroom in the house. The door was stout, but the walls had gaps between the slats, and some of the floorboards were loose. If they wanted to get out, they could, but there was a man posted behind the house, and there were two dozen armed men and women in the camp to run them down. There was a sleeping pad in one corner with a pitcher of water and two mismatched glasses next to it.

  “Three cigarettes left.” Cassidy offered her the pack.

  “Let’s smoke one now and save the rest.”

  “I don’t think she likes me much.” He lit the cigarette, took a drag, and passed it to her.

  “You insulted her. You took a look at the great big man and the little woman and you decided he had to outrank her. You thought that she was just there to keep his bed warm and to speak when he wanted to rest his voice. Women can lead as well as men. Maybe better.”

  “No argument from me.”

  “And fight just as well. A gun’s not that heavy.”

  “I, for one, am happy to turn the whole business over to you. I’ll stay home and cook and do my nails.” He took the cigarette back. “Are there really people around up here in the hills who can vouch for you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. People get moved around. People die. You can’t blame them for being careful.”

  “I can if they take us out and shoot us.”

  “It’s what they should do.” She saw his look. “It is. It’s what they should do. Their responsibility is to the cause. If they can’t confirm who we are, it’s smarter to get rid of us rather than risk the group.”

  “Stop trying to comfort me.” He handed her the cigarette. “Here. Finish it. Those things can kill you.”

  She laughed. He lay down on his back on the floor with his head pillowed on his hands. She stubbed the cigarette out and came over and sat down next to him. “I’m glad you showed up. Have I mentioned that?”

  “I am too, though I’d prefer to be in the Hotel Nacional waiting for room se
rvice.” Cassidy touched her hand, and she inclined toward him, and he thought, Here, now it comes. And then she pulled back and got up and went and poured a glass of water and drank it with her back to him.

  At night they slept back to back on the pad. He turned over in the dark and put his hand on her. After a moment she moved just enough so that it fell away. Was she awake, or had she moved in her sleep, unaware of his hand? He did not know.

  * * *

  “What are they doing?”

  He was looking out through a crack in the wall. “Cleaning weapons, checking equipment. They must be going out on patrol soon.”

  They had been in the storeroom for three days. Someone brought them food and water twice a day. In the mornings there was coffee. On the first day one of the women had come in to examine the cut on Dylan’s arm. She was a sturdy, happy woman named Conchi who pulled the wrapping from the wound slowly and carefully after softening the dried blood with warm water and she hissed as she pulled the cloth free, as if the pain was her own. She talked constantly while she worked, one of those people who shared her thoughts with whoever was in range. “My father worked in the mill for many years, crushing the cane to make the juice. He was killed in an accident there, an accident with the machinery. My brothers were told to come get the body, but the foreman would not let them bring him home in one of the mill trucks, so they had to carry him home in a wheelbarrow. And then there was no money, so they left school to work. The bosses do not care if you give your life for their profit, but the revolution will change all that. The revolution is for the people.” She washed the wound carefully with soap and water and covered it with a poultice of tobacco and other leaves and bound it with a clean cloth. “One brother is in New York. He owns his own taxi and has an apartment with two bedrooms. Do you know Brooklyn? This is where he lives. One can do this in America, but it is very hard for a man to have his own taxi in Cuba unless you can pay the bribe for the license. My other brother, the younger one, they caught him painting a message on the wall of the town hall, and they shot him. So I came to the hills to learn how to fight. The revolution is the hope of the people. The revolution will give us democracy.” She came back each day to check the wound and seemed pleased with what she found.

  The woman commandant was named Pilar, and she came each day to interrogate them. Each day she led them through their stories and checked their answers against her notes from the day before.

  “You say you showed the guard at the door your badge and said you were going to deliver something to Colonel Fuentes, and he let you go by.”

  “I was moving fast. He didn’t have time to see the badge was from New York.”

  “And there was only one guard at the door and one in the cellblock.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But the day before, when you brought Señor Echevarria, there were many more guards.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where were they when you went back? How is that they were not there to stop you?”

  “There were six men in the firing squad. Perhaps they were the guards from the cellblock.”

  “And you thought that one man could go there, to this prison, to free a prisoner.”

  “I had no choice.”

  “Yes. That’s what you said yesterday.”

  “And the day before.”

  “Yes.” Her tone was always neutral, betraying neither belief nor disbelief. “Had Portillo’s wound healed, or did he still limp?” This was a new question for Dylan.

  “I never saw him limp. He never spoke of a wound.”

  “No?”

  “No.” Maybe that was a test. Maybe she had passed, maybe failed.

  “When the car tire blew and the car went into the ditch, how long before the army truck you speak of came?”

  “Half a minute, maybe. They came around the bend from the other direction.”

  “How did they find the guns?”

  “I told you before.”

  “Tell me again.”

  “I was trying to help Antonio out of the car. He had hit his head and was dazed. Some of the soldiers went around to see the people who had been riding in the backseat and were now standing by the car. One of them knew Antonio had gone into the hills. They searched the car and found the guns.”

  “Was Portillo in La Cabaña?”

  “He was in the cell next to mine.” Wearily. “The last I saw of him was after we opened the cells. Cassidy gave him one of the guard’s guns.”

  “Did Colonel Fuentes interrogate the prisoners?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he interrogate you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he want to know?”

  “Who I knew outside the Portillo group. How many other groups were there in Havana. Where we were going with the guns.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him I knew nothing of these things. I told him I had gotten a ride in the car, because I wanted to see my friends in Las Palmas and they said they were going there.”

  “Did he believe you?”

  “No. Have you found someone who can say who I am, who can vouch for me?”

  “If we find someone, you will know.”

  If, not, when.

  * * *

  “After New York, when I was first back in Moscow, there was a man in the cell next to me. He worked for Aeroflot. I don’t know what his job was, but it allowed him to travel outside the country.” They were sitting side by side with their backs against the wall sharing a cigarette Conchi had left them, waiting to be tired enough to sleep. “People who could travel were often asked to do things, deliver a package, pick up an envelope, become friendly with a counterpart in a similar business. They weren’t spies, but they were known as friends, people who could be counted on for small tasks. He had disappeared in Paris for three days, had lost the package he was supposed to deliver. They didn’t like that, and they wanted to know why. He said that he had met a woman, and they had gone to the shore. He had forgotten the package on the train. He told the same story every day they questioned him, over and over again. It was too stupid a story to make up, or maybe it was meant to look that way, and therefore it was smart. They couldn’t decide, so they liquidated him just to be sure.”

  They finished the cigarette in silence.

  That night she turned to him on the mat and put an arm around him, and he turned to her, and they pressed together, no words spoken. She cupped the back of his neck with one hand and tugged. He kissed her and felt her mouth open under his and she pressed her body against him. He pulled her shirt up and slid his hands into the warmth of her back and down over the swell of her ass. They undressed each other as they kissed, awkward and fumbling as if they had forgotten how buttons worked, and kicked away the last of the cloth and found each other, went into each other as if they had never been away, as if time had not passed.

  * * *

  “They’re going out,” Cassidy said. It was the blue of early morning before sunrise. Dylan got up from the mattress and came to crouch beside him and look out through a crack in the boards. The patrol was forming up in the center of the clearing. Most of them were carrying packs. “It looks like they’ll be out for a while.”

  Armando, the clerk who had picked up a gun, led the patrol to the trailhead and down into the jungle. Nine people were left in the camp, Gonzales, Pilar, three men, and Conchi in the clearing and a fourth man on watch at the back of the house. Pilar and Gonzales sat together on a log near the remnants of a cook fire and talked.

  When Conchi came in half an hour later, she was quiet and somber. She checked the wound without speaking. She put a small bottle of rum and a few cigarettes on the table, an offering, a comfort, and left without meeting their eyes.

  “They’ve made a decision,” Dylan said.

  “Yes.”

  Her face clenched, and her eyes veiled as she absorbed what this meant. If you did this work, it was always there that it could end like this, but it was
a thought kept tucked in a dark corner. Now it was out in the light. She looked at Cassidy, and he wondered how his face looked. Did it show anger or resignation?

  They stood when they heard the scrape of the key in the lock. They had been sitting with their backs against the wall, touching at shoulders, hips, and thighs, sharing the cigarettes and rum Conchi had left, speaking of little, quiet talk—do you remember this day in New York when we went there, did that, the Italian restaurant on Hudson Street, the way the rain looked on the river from the apartment windows, Carlos Ribera destroying the sculpture that wasn’t quite right?

  Now they did what they had talked about. Cassidy stood against the wall next to the door. He had broken a leg off the table to use as a club. Dylan waited with her hand just above the door handle. Why go easy?

  The door handle moved. Dylan grabbed it and jerked the door open hoping to pull whoever it was into the room under Cassidy’s club. A hostage, leverage, someone to bargain with. A forlorn hope.

  The doorway was vacant. Pilar and Gonzales stood back out of reach. A Thompson submachine gun was small in his hands.

  “Please,” Pilar said. “There has been a decision.” She stopped as if she had lost track of what she had prepared to say, or maybe she understood it was not necessary. “We will give you time to make your peace.”

  Cassidy looked at Dylan. She shook her head.

  “Now,” he said, and let the table leg drop. Pilar nodded without expression and stepped back to let them leave the room.

  He took Dylan’s hand. Maybe there would be a chance when they went outside.

  Gonzales opened the front door of the house and led them out. The morning sun slanted into the clearing. Cassidy could smell the smoke from the cook fires and the rich green smell of the jungle. Birds called, and there was a whisper of wind in the trees. Conchi and the two remaining rebels stood near a fire watching them. A coffeepot was wedged on stones above the coals. Cassidy had a sudden ache for the taste of coffee.

  Pilar gestured, and they followed Gonzales down the steps and off the porch. Dylan’s hand was tight in his. The steps creaked as they went down them. He could feel the pebbles in the dirt under his feet. A beautiful day. Life all around.