Escape to Havana

by Nick Wilkshire

  “Where’s Gray?”

  “Waiting for you, but I have to warn you that your reunion will be very short-lived unless you give me what I want. Come on.”

  Medina grabbed him by the shirt and shoved him down the stairs, then yanked him toward the dining room. Charlie understood when he stepped into the room and saw Jillian Gray sitting at his dining room table, her mouth covered in duct tape and her hands bound behind her back.

  “Are you all right?” he said, rushing toward her until another man, wielding a gun, stepped into his path and pushed him roughly into a chair at the head of the table. Gray’s eyes were wide with fear, but she seemed otherwise unharmed. Charlie looked around and noticed the drapes had been closed, so no one could see into the room. A flash of lightning outside lit up the edges of the curtains, and this time the roll of thunder was delayed by a few seconds. The storm was moving away from them.

  “Now you see her. Now I want my package.” Medina kicked Charlie’s chair, causing him to jump.

  “I … I have to go get it. It’s nearby. Not here.”

  “You don’t mean this, do you?” Medina said, tossing Charlie’s carefully packaged flour onto the table. The side had been cut open and a cloud of flour dust shot up as it hit the centre of the table. Charlie just sat there staring at it.

  “Doing some baking?” Medina said, and his associate at the side of the table chuckled. “We searched the place while you were out,” he said, approaching him, and leaning down to talk. “You weren’t going to try and fool us with that were you?”

  “No … of course not.”

  “You have about three seconds to tell me where the coca is, or you’re both going to die.”

  All Charlie could think of was Connors, possibly sitting in his car down the street, munching on plantain chips and waiting for Charlie to make a move. He was going to die in here and Connors would never know. He had to think of something, anything.

  “You’ll have to take me to it,” he said, not looking up. “It’s buried.”

  “Where’s it buried?” Medina said, grabbing Charlie by the front of his shirt and staring into his eyes.

  “Near the hotel, the Meliá Habana, under some rocks.”

  Medina continued to glare at him for several moments, and Charlie began to sweat.

  “You want me to drive you to Meliá Habana in a fucking hurricane?” Medina yelled, his face so close to Charlie’s that spittle flicked into his eyes.

  “I’ll make him talk, boss,” the other man said, starting to move toward them, but Medina just stared at Charlie, his dark eyes boring into him.

  “You don’t have it, do you?”

  “I do. It’s buried.”

  “I don’t think you do. I’ve been following you since last night, and I get the feeling you’re just stalling.”

  Charlie shook his head. “I’m telling you, it’s buried.”

  “Well, I’m going to get the truth out of you, whatever it is. Come on,” Medina said, grabbing Charlie by the shirt again, yanking him back out into the hallway and toward the basement stairs, as the other man followed with Gray. “I tried to do this the easy way, but you force my hand,” Medina said, as they descended the stairs, with only the light from the hallway above to guide them.

  “Please, I’m telling you the truth. A five-minute drive, and we’ll be there.”

  “Enough!” Medina yelled, as they reached the bottom of the stairs. “The time for you to talk is over. Now, you’ll see what happens when you lie to me.”

  Medina dragged him to toward the centre of the room and sat him roughly in the only chair in the otherwise empty basement. Charlie could barely make out the other man, forcing Gray to sit on the floor by the bottom of the stairs.

  “Tie him up,” Medina ordered.

  As Charlie’s hands were bound behind the chair, he tried to think of something to slow things down, his time running out. “How did you get in here, anyway?”

  The Colombian looked at him and laughed. “I’ll bet you didn’t know the head of Batista’s secret police used to live in this house.” Medina paused long enough to enjoy Charlie’s surprise. “I guess I’m better informed than you.”

  “What do you mean?” Charlie was even more puzzled by the cryptic answer.

  Medina shook his head. “Enough questions,” he said abruptly, walking over to the other man and pointing at his gun.

  “Give me that,” he said, taking the 9 mm. “And turn on the light. It’s too fucking dark down here.”

  As the other man searched for the light switch by the bottom of the stairs, Medina returned to Charlie and waved the gun at him. “The knife will be what kills you in the end, my friend, but I’m going to have some fun with this first,” he said, as Charlie tried to imagine what he had in mind. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good, and for a moment, all he could think of was what an utter waste his life had been; to have blown fifteen years on a marriage to an unfaithful wife, and to have sacrificed his career in the process. If he could have just one of those years back now…. But this bastard was going to kill him, and then he was going to kill Gray, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  With that realization came a sudden rage. “Fuck you, Medina,” he said, without noticing he had spoken the words aloud.

  “What did you say?”

  “I told you to go fuck yourself, same goes for your friend over …”

  Charlie never saw the punch coming, but it jolted his head sideways with such a force that for a moment everything went black. He waited for the immediate pain to pass, before spitting blood back at his tormentor. “And your dope? You’re never going to find it, because I threw it in the pool. I hope it was worth a fucking fortune!”

  Medina looked at him, and his eyes narrowed in anger. “You threw ten kilos of high-grade cocaine into your pool?”

  “Yes, so why don’t you go drown yourself in it …” Charlie said, before registering Medina’s words. Had he said ten kilos? He was trying to figure out how that one package could have weighed so much when he heard the click as Medina slid the safety off the gun, then turned to the other man by the foot of the stairs.

  “Where’s that fucking light? I want to see him die.”

  “I can’t find a switch, boss.”

  “Forget it,” Medina said, spotting the chain dangling from the overhead fixture in the dim light from the stairs. He reached up for it, his other arm rising in the process as well and, as he pulled the chain, an arc of light lit up the basement for a split second before plunging it into a darkness that was immediately interrupted by another flash of light from the end of Medina’s arm, accompanied by a deafening bang.

  Charlie felt the gunshot, or thought he did, but the screams weren’t his.

  Whatever light had come from the hallway above was gone now, and it took a couple of seconds for his eyes to adjust to the inky blackness, and to make out two figures lying on the ground before him. Medina lay motionless on the floor at his feet, while the other man was writhing in pain, clutching what Charlie thought was his upper thigh.

  Charlie began wriggling furiously, tugging with all his might at the ropes holding his arms together, and he was surprised to see Gray standing over him, turning her own bound hands back on to meet his, and undoing the rope a few seconds later. Charlie had wrenched the gun out of Medina’s rigid hand by the time the other man had stopped shouting and realized that the tables had turned, though he seemed to have no idea why his boss had suddenly decided to shoot him in the ass.

  As Charlie stood there holding the gun and wondering what to do next, the clatter of footsteps on the floor above made them all look up. A few seconds later, Connors stood at the bottom of the stairs, followed by two Cuban cops, flashlights and weapons drawn.

  “Are you all right?” Connors said breathlessly, looking first at Charlie, then noticing Gray, and finally the two
Colombians on the floor, one of them still writhing in pain. “What the hell happened? The whole block lost power, and we heard a gunshot.”

  Charlie stood there, staring at the scene of confusion before glancing up at the fixture above his head. The bulb was gone, and so was the chain that Medina had grabbed onto in an attempt to turn it on. He turned to look first at Medina’s lifeless stare and then the little chain still clutched tightly in his other hand.

  “I guess I’m not much of an electrician,” he said, looking at an uncomprehending Connors.

  Epilogue

  Charlie and Landon sat on the balcony of the restaurant, looking out over Havana Bay, and El Morro beyond. They had been driving by, noticed the multicoloured lights strung along the balcony, and guessed it was a paladar. Neither had high expectations for the quality of the cuisine, but the view was fabulous, and it was a beautiful night.

  “Salud,” Landon said as their beers arrived.

  “Thanks, Drew. It’s good to get out.” Charlie took a sip of the cold beer and looked out at the Sunday evening strollers on the Malecón and the tranquil waters of the bay. For the first time in weeks, he felt he could finally relax.

  And the past few days had been interesting, to say the least.

  After the dust had settled and he and Gray had been whisked out of his basement on Friday night, the missing pieces of the puzzle Charlie had been trying to assemble since moving into his house gradually fell into place. It was clear that they weren’t going to get much out of Medina, who was confirmed dead within minutes of the Cuban cops’ arrival — his heart having exploded when he had touched that metal chain and closed the circuit on the little electrical deathtrap that Charlie had unwittingly created weeks ago, under Teddy’s watchful eye. Any remorse he felt for Medina evaporated when he thought of what he had done to Amirjit Saini, and what the Colombian might have done to Gray, not to mention him. It sent a chill down his spine to think that he could easily have fried his own heart any number of times by touching that chain. The embassy had gotten the electrician in — he had come on short notice, for once — and he had apparently crossed himself a few times before referring to whoever had rigged up the light as loco.

  But it wasn’t until the electrician pulled the disconnected fixture out that things really got strange. Hidden in the ceiling around the fixture hole were another four packages of similar size and shape to the one Charlie had found under the bedroom floor, each containing two kilos of pure cocaine. Charlie had since heard varying estimates of the street value of such a find, but the bottom line was that it was in the millions.

  Armed with this cache, the Cuban police had conducted numerous inquiries into the activities of Diego Medina over the past eighteen months, and come up with some interesting information. First, they discovered immigration stamps in his passport that confirmed he had made a half-dozen trips to Bogotá in the last six months, as well as one excursion to Caracas. The timing of Medina’s Venezuelan trip, around about the time Charlie had moved into his house in Jaimanitas, also coincided with the “accidental” death of Javier Garcia on a remote mountain road outside Caracas, and left little doubt that it was no accident at all.

  Medina’s partner in crime, who had been much more fortunate than his boss — the wound to his derriere having been patched up the same night — was also placed under the microscope by the Cuban authorities, and was soon identified as a Venezuelan national named Oscar Suarez. Their inquiries also apparently revealed that Suarez had connections to drug smugglers in Santo Domingo and Miami, all of which led them to the conclusion that Havana was just the importation point, and that most of the drugs were destined for more profitable streets further afield. Oscar Suarez had also made several trips to Venezuela in the past few months.

  And while Charlie had been pleased that the whole business appeared to have been solved, he was surprised to learn that Suarez had been shipped back to his native Venezuela within twenty-four hours of the shooting. While they had been happy to provide information about the now-defunct drug operation in the aftermath of the events at Charlie’s house, by way of regular updates to Gord Connors, the Cubans had been rather tight-lipped about the rapid deportation, other than to say they were confident that Suarez had nothing to do with the death of either Amirjit Saini or Javier Garcia.

  In the end, Charlie supposed it didn’t matter. Gray was safe, as was he, and the Cubans appeared pleased to be permanently rid of Medina, whom no one doubted was responsible for Amirjit Saini’s death. As for Suarez’s rapid exit, Charlie should not have been surprised, given the close political ties between Cuba and Venezuela. He did wonder how long the Cubans had been watching Medina, since they seemed to have pieced together an awful lot of information in a very short period of time. He couldn’t help thinking that he had probably also been under surveillance, possibly from the beginning, and, while he wasn’t about to ask for confirmation, he had a feeling Maria Aguirre might have been sent not by Medina, but by the Cubans. It didn’t seem to matter now.

  The last piece of the puzzle — how Medina had accessed Charlie’s house undetected at least twice — fell into place when Gord Connors’s inspection of Charlie’s basement in the aftermath of the shooting revealed a hole in the floor under the stairs. A series of wooden steps led down into a tunnel that ended at the ruins of a house some hundred metres away on the government-owned property behind Charlie’s. He had confirmed Medina’s assertion that Charlie’s house had once been occupied by Batista’s head of security, but the real surprise came when he discovered that the last official use of the government building behind him was by the KGB. They still didn’t know whether the tunnel had been dug by the Russians, or if it had been there since the fifties. Either way, it was clear that Medina had become aware of it somehow. There were even rumours that Medina may have had connections to organized crime in Russia, perhaps even the FSB, but that was just speculation. Still …

  “So,” Landon said, bringing Charlie back to real time. “Are you gonna keep in touch with Jillian?”

  Now there was a question.

  “Yeah, I think we’ll be in touch.” Charlie nodded, sipping his beer. The truth was, he didn’t know where they stood. He could still picture her standing there at the airport, looking fragile but beautiful. He could hardly blame her for wanting to leave on the next available flight after what she’d been through. She had called a few days later, to thank him, of all things.

  Thanks for almost getting me killed.

  Charlie would be going back to Ottawa for some training in the fall and he would have a weekend there. Maybe he would look her up. Or maybe she would always associate him with what happened to Amirjit Saini, and what had very nearly happened to her.

  “You sure you’re ready to go back to the office tomorrow?” Landon asked him as their meals arrived — beef kebabs that looked about as tender as shoe leather. At least the place had a nice view, and the beers were cold.

  “I’m ready,” he lied. While both Connors, the ambassador, and the Cubans had cleared Charlie of any wrongdoing in the whole affair, he still felt embarrassed by it all, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about returning to work. Stewart had actually praised Charlie for his courage, although he had written that off to the ambassador’s good humour at Teddy’s sudden recovery of full bladder control now that his toy bone had been returned.

  There had been one other positive result of the whole mess. Charlie had made a point of mentioning his suspicion that Diego Medina might have been trying to insinuate himself into the construction of a new hotel on José Martí Square, and that he may have had an active role in orchestrating the incarceration of a competitor in the hotel business, as a gesture of good faith. He had pressed for a full investigation into Tate Martin’s case. It seemed that the investigation was a non-starter, but less than forty-eight hours after Charlie’s debrief with the Cubans, he learned that Martin had been released.

  As he and L
andon sat there in the warm evening breeze, chewing their kebabs and recounting the events of the past weeks, even managing a laugh or two, Charlie came to a realization. Havana had turned out much differently than he had imagined, but his experiences here so far had changed his outlook on life forever. While he felt some sadness over Gray’s departure, he wasn’t convinced their story was at an end, and having come so close to death, it was difficult not to embrace life now. And Tate Martin’s release had given Charlie renewed hope that maybe he was capable of doing something meaningful with his life, after all.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Kirk Howard and the team at Dundurn for all your hard work, and especially to my editor, Allison Hirst, for going to bat for the series. David Jacques, Pat Marshall, and Oriana Trombetti all read versions of the manuscript and provided valuable feedback, and Tara Snell helped me decipher copyright and related issues. Thanks also to everyone at the Bureau (you know which one!).

  Special thanks to Tanya, for letting me explore my fictional world by keeping things on track in the real one.

  Moscow Code

  Nick Wilkshire

  As Charlie Hillier discovers, in Moscow, the truth can be a dangerous commodity.

  Ottawa bureaucrat-turned-diplomat Charlie Hillier is back. Having barely survived his first posting in Havana, he is eager to put what he learned there to good use. And it isn’t long before he’s working a fresh case: a technical writer from Canada has been jailed on dubious drug charges.

  But Charlie has barely put a dent in the brick wall that is the Russian legal system when the jailed man dies — the official explanation: suicide. And just when evidence to the contrary is discovered, the body is “accidentally” cremated.

  Undeterred by bureaucratic stonewalling, and assisted by the victim’s sister and a journalist friend, Charlie follows the sparse clues available. What they uncover brings them all way too close to powers more dangerous than they could have imagined. Suddenly, the truth is less important than getting out of Russia alive.