The Good Assassin

by Paul Vidich

  “Oh, I believe you. I want to believe you. But I hear doubt in your voice. Maybe you don’t want to be certain.”

  “Twice he was called the Americano. I know what I heard and I know what I saw.” Mueller repeated his account of Graham’s disappearance with the rebels, giving the facts as he remembered them, consulting his notes. He recalled how Graham had returned as if nothing had happened and he repeated Graham’s witty brush-off. Mueller gave what he knew—the garrison asleep, the call of the bird—or was it a signal? Their lucky escape moments before the attack.

  “He knew something was going to happen,” Mueller said. “It was not a coincidence that we got out in time.”

  The two men looked at each other. Pryce’s fingers tapped the table in a slow drumroll. “I suppose I should be more surprised—or maybe impressed. A coup is what you’d expect of him—what I expected—but it was a magician’s trick.” He saw he had confused Mueller. “The hand draws attention to itself, but the real action is elsewhere. He was happy to have me think the rifles were to arm a coup. But you didn’t believe that, did you? He’s capable of anything, but not incompetence.” Pryce laughed. He ground his cigarette in the saucer. He looked at Mueller. “Did you know this all along?”

  Mueller felt the question like an accusation. A cop’s mentality. Everyone a suspect.

  There was a long silence. Pryce let his eyes drift back to Mueller.

  “Here’s what I see. He’s put guns in the hands of the rebels. You saw the Czech weapons. You don’t get those from army deserters. He is off the reservation, fed up with official policy, making up his own. You will put it more elegantly, but that’s what I see.”

  Mueller acknowledged the logic, seduced by it, but he was also repelled. He asked himself again, but with a different emphasis, would a thirty-seven-year-old officer of the CIA earmarked for great things commit an act of treason so outrageous that if detected it could cost him his career, his freedom, indeed his life? Namely, delivering guns in breach of the embargo into the hands of the rebels? The thought rankled Mueller—astonished him really—but there it was. That’s what he was being asked to believe. Mueller knew no paymaster controlled Graham. No Soviet puppeteer plucked the strings that made him dance. He was confident of that. Soviets in Cuba? Toby Graham turned? No. Mueller could only believe, if he believed Pryce at all, and he wasn’t sure how much of what Pryce said was true and how much invented to promote the FBI’s stubbornly simpleminded view of itself, that Graham was acting on his own.

  “You’ve made your judgment. That’s it?”

  “There’s a war on. Men are dying with guns he’s brought in.”

  “You’re rushing to judgment.”

  “He knows very well what he is doing.”

  Mueller knew that he was seeing the real Frank Pryce, the loyal operator following Washington’s orders. A poke in the eye. Mueller felt Pryce stare coldly and he had the uncomfortable sensation that the man across the table was judging him, trying to peer into his mind.

  Pryce leaned forward. “His treason is fresh and speed must answer it.”

  Mueller felt Pryce’s remark like a rope around Graham’s neck. “More evidence would help,” he snapped. He stared at Pryce. “We’re talking about a man’s life here.”

  Mueller got his answer in Pryce’s long silence and his flat expression. There was no further discussion, no instructions, no plan, but the next step was clear enough to Mueller. When evil raised its head it always seemed to do so with great clarity. Only the pursuit of justice, or the excavation of truth, required a nuanced imagination—and a ponderous study of evidence.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” Pryce said. “You’ve played your part and it didn’t help. I wanted to believe Graham was following orders—then I’d be able to protect him.” He paused. “Alonzo has suspected this for some time. I had to keep him from acting. I can’t do that any longer. Here’s what will happen next. Graham will be in a café in Camagüey. Perhaps in the company of a SIM agent who is posing as a member of the July 26th Movement. A green Oldsmobile will drive up. Graham might be arrested. More likely he will be assassinated. This is how things are done in Cuba. The circumstances might be different, but the treachery will be the same. The outcome identical. Only the time is uncertain.”

  Mueller’s mind was calm. “When?”

  Pryce knitted his brow. His fingers had taken up their impatient tapping. “A week. Two. Three on the outside. They don’t need to be sophisticated about this. A man and a gun. Executioners are easy to hire.” Pryce met Mueller’s eyes. “Does he trust you?”

  “He doesn’t trust anyone.”

  “Will he listen to you?”

  “It depends on what I say. Will he leave if I tell him his life is at risk?” Mueller laughed. “That adrenaline is his heroin.”

  Pryce smiled. “Let’s go. There is someone we need to visit.”

  • • •

  Mueller looked out the Packard’s rear window to see if he recognized where the driver had stopped. The grand Beaux Arts apartment house was in a line of nineteenth-century buildings that graced El Paseo del Prado, empty at that late hour. Across the harbor channel El Morro was brilliantly illuminated for the night. Mueller slid across the backseat and followed Pryce onto the sidewalk, nodding at the driver, who held open the rear door. Mueller couldn’t read anything into the man’s expression.

  Mickey Ruden was suddenly there talking to the driver. “Keep an eye open. Check the street, the lobby, the sidewalk. And don’t bring attention. Make it look casual. If you see something suspicious, something that doesn’t check out, you ring the apartment bell twice. Start the car. Keep the engine running until we come down. Do you understand?”

  Mueller and Pryce followed Ruden into the ornate lobby. A wide marble staircase with Art Nouveau banister spiraled up four floors to a leaded-glass skylight. It reminded Mueller of the luxury homes in Vienna—the grandeur, the privacy, the quiet. How quickly one became aware of silence in so boisterous a city as Havana. Mueller had reached the second floor when he became convinced that he was making a mistake. His instinct for danger rose in the uncomfortable silence as he entered the unfamiliar place. They reached the third floor, where a woman held open a door and suddenly any reasonable excuse to turn back was gone.

  The woman ushered them in, and when they passed her, she looked quickly down at the lobby. Satisfied, she closed the door and locked it. He saw she was young and pretty, with curly black hair that fell to her shoulders. She had olive skin and long delicate fingers, the hands of a pianist. Ruden had walked by her without acknowledging her. Mueller saw she was reserved, quiet, and mindful of the men. Ruden’s nod was her instruction, and the Cuban mistress disappeared into another room. Mueller knew, as did everyone, that Ruden’s wife and daughter lived in Miami.

  “She is discreet,” Ruden said when he saw Mueller look where the woman had gone. “Drink?” Ruden moved across the room to a tall glass breakfront with bottles. Mueller followed, his eyes taking in the oil paintings of a bucolic medieval Rome. Fabric covered the walls and French doors were thrown open to the night. Somewhere in the distance the cry of a baby.

  Ruden poured Pryce a scotch on the rocks without asking a preference. Mueller thought, Well acquainted. Ruden’s eyes solicited Mueller’s request.

  “Club soda.”

  He poured Mueller a glass. “Ice?” He took his own drink of chocolate liqueur in crystal. “Frank says you have a situation. I might be of help.”

  Mueller looked at Pryce.

  “Am I wrong?” Ruden asked. “Is it not why you’re here?”

  “I filled him in,” Pryce said to Mueller, speaking as if they were alone and not standing beside Ruden. “He doesn’t know everything, but he knows enough. Let’s hear what he has to say.”

  Later, Mueller would remember the mobster’s smile—pleasant and polite with a vague anguish that drew sympathy. There was no cost to hear him out. The three men stood in a tight group in the middle of the r
oom, and it was only when Ruden began to ramble on about an unrelated topic that Mueller became conscious how none of them had moved to the sofas.

  “Havana has everything to make me happy,” Ruden was saying. “Everything but one thing. The chickens. You can’t get a decent chicken. They are all skinny and tough. But it’s a great place if you don’t eat chickens. Beef is no problem. We serve the best steaks in my hotels. Seafood is good, which you’d expect. Pork is first class. But fresh chickens is the problem. The local ones are scrawny. We have to fly chickens in from Tampa. As I said, Havana has everything to make me happy. We don’t like trouble and sometimes opportunity comes along dressed up like a good-looking hooker and you’re not sure what to do.”

  He sipped his chocolate liqueur. He nodded at Pryce and then at Mueller. “We have good relations with Batista. The only problem we have—except for the chickens—is that he is losing the war. Every month we meet with him and he wants more. The more his army loses the more he wants in his palm. That’s the only problem. We can bring in chickens, but we can’t stop the defeats. You know what I mean.” Ruden turned the crystal in his hand. “You admire the glass?” he said to Mueller. “It’s Murano.”

  Ruden nudged Mueller toward the open French doors. “Here, let me show you.” Beyond the gleaming dome of the Presidential Palace a modern glass building rose above the skyline. “The new Hilton makes all the difference. The name is known everywhere. We want to make Havana the Monte Carlo of the Caribbean.”

  Cool evening air came in from the sea and refreshed the stale room air.

  “We don’t like the revolution. It’s hard for tourists to relax when there’s violence in the streets. I understand this man Toby Graham is putting guns in the hands of the rebels. It’s in our mutual interest to handle him the right way. He is your friend. That’s important. I respect that. SIM agents know what he does. They only know one solution, which is not the solution I would want.”

  Ruden paused. “Let me tell you a story. I had a home in the States with woodchucks. My wife liked them. They are little furry animals that sit on the lawn and our daughter liked to look out the window when they ate the dandelions. They’re cute, but they dig burrows under the house, and these burrows undermined the foundation. It was going to crack. A big problem, these little cute animals. I had to get rid of them, but I knew I’d break my wife’s heart if I used a kill trap. So I did it humanely. I had them trapped and set free in a nature preserve.” Ruden looked at Mueller. “That’s what we need to do here. No one gets hurt, but we remove the problem.”

  The meeting ended. A few details would follow, Ruden said, but the plan was set. All that remained was to bait the trap.

  “Bit of a shock,” Pryce said when they were outside on the sidewalk. El Paseo del Prado was empty in both directions except for the Packard and the driver, who nodded. “A kind gesture from the likes of him.”

  “You believe him?” Mueller asked.

  “Graham dead? That’s not good for Ruden. Alonzo would be blamed and it would alarm Washington. Things become uncertain. It’s better for business if Graham goes quietly.”

  Mueller pondered. “I need a drink. Where will they take him?”

  “Where he can walk barefoot on ice, thinking of summer’s heat.” Pryce winked.

  Mueller and Pryce stepped out of El Floridita after an hour of cautious drinking—careful to stay sober in each other’s company. Pryce turned back the whistled solicitations of two prostitutes who approached from across the street. Pryce was a cop, a professional, even on his own time. Mueller remembered Graham’s comment. He doesn’t know how to dance. Mueller felt the weight of what had been settled that night, but in coming to a settlement, still nothing seemed as it should be. This was not how he thought things would turn out. What he’d thought was true was no longer true. Then the elemental fear of being wrong came over him, and he felt daunted. Something wasn’t right. He remembered how the director had boasted the CIA and FBI had gotten over the old rivalries. If there is a success they can take credit and we won’t have to dirty our hands. Mueller pondered the words and he remembered how unpersuasively they had been said.

  Mueller and Pryce were walking in silence—two men joined in conspiracy but not enjoying trust—when Pryce suddenly stopped. They had come to the USS Maine memorial that honored dead American sailors killed when the cruiser exploded in Havana harbor in 1898. Pryce contemplated the tall marble columns, refulgent in moonlight, and the bronze eagle with its wings spread wide, talons clawing the globe. The busts of Roosevelt and McKinley graced the huge stone monument and were a reminder of an earlier war.

  “We honor our dead,” Pryce said. “A terrible tragedy. Three-quarters of its crew killed. Good men. All the tabloids ran big headlines. There was public outrage across America. McKinley had no choice but to invade. Today’s Washington politicians are bleating cowards.” Pryce spat his contempt. “The whole lot of them are wishy-washy, whiny, and weak. We need another Teddy Roosevelt here. Another Maine.”

  Not since West Berlin, when his colleagues advocated for harsh interrogations in which the subject might die, had Mueller felt such revulsion. There was no one at the memorial to see a solitary man stare appalled at his colleague.

  7

  * * *

  ALL SAINTS’ WEEK

  PERFECT WEATHER at the start of All Saints’ Week provided the opportunity to honor the promise of the day. Clear sky. Warm sun. Pleasant breeze from the north. It was agreed by everyone that Camagüey’s streets would be packed with a holiday crowd and they should avoid town and head to the beach. A day of rest and relaxation was what they all needed to get away from continuously grim war news.

  Katie too joined the group, having gone missing during the hurricane, and everyone worried she’d been swept away in the flood waters. But she had reappeared a few days later after telephone service was restored, brought into Hacienda Madrigal on an oxcart. She wore a bright, ambitious smile, muddy fatigues, and her Leica camera. She hopped off the cart into Liz’s embrace as the household emptied to greet her. The excitement of her safe return stilled the previous week’s urgency to get her on a plane to Miami. Crises followed crises and the best protection against expulsion, or arrest, was the continuous unfolding of events, each more urgent than the last, that preoccupied the police.

  The beach was blustery, the breeze too chilly for sunbathing, but they were not willing to concede disappointment in the face of their high expectations of a beach picnic, so they endured the weather, making fun of themselves. When they’d spent enough time in misery to justify the hour drive, they packed up and headed back to Hacienda Madrigal.

  Two vehicles had taken the group out and brought the four of them home. Liz insisted that Mueller join her in the Land Rover on the return, which left Katie to go with Jack in his pickup. “Oh, he’s not so bad,” Liz whispered to Katie. “He likes you. Let him tell you all about the tick problem. You won’t have to say a word.”

  Mueller’s vivid memory of the ride back was of sitting in the passenger seat staring at the red dust cloud mushrooming a mile ahead. The road was pitted and dry and Jack’s pickup was the only vehicle visible. “He likes the pickup on these roads,” Liz said to Mueller. “He likes to bounce around. It makes him feel like he’s in Texas.” She laughed sadly.

  Mueller glanced at her.

  Liz threw out: “Jack invited Toby for dinner tonight.” She turned to Mueller. “I wish he hadn’t done that.” She looked straight ahead at the dust mushrooming behind the pickup. “I wish Toby hadn’t come. I have a life here and now he’s shown up.”

  Mueller waited for her to finish her complaint.

  “We never go to the beach here,” she said. “Strange, don’t you think? All these tourists pay through the nose for vacations to the beaches that we could visit any day of the week. And we don’t. You don’t see many Cubans at the beaches or in the water. If you think about it, sunbathing is a sort of madness—to lie on hot sand and sunburn. Have you ever seen
fishermen sunbathe? Or an Arab? Well, that’s the point. It’s a madness of the idle rich.”

  They had gone halfway and the channels of choppy water that lined the coast road had given way to dry burnt savannah. High cirrus clouds sailed across a chalk blue sky. Suddenly, Mueller heard Liz expel her exasperation.

  “What does he want from me?”

  “Who?”

  “Toby. We are talking about Toby.”

  “I didn’t know we were talking about anyone.”

  “We were talking about him a moment ago. I said I wished he hadn’t come.” She looked at Mueller. “What does he want from me?”

  Mueller considered what not to say.

  “Whatever it is it’s too late,” she said. “Jack and I have a life here. I am invested in it.” She had grasped the steering wheel and her knuckles had gone white.

  “I don’t mean to make it sound like a commercial enterprise with Jack—but it’s a partnership. I don’t forgive him his affairs, but I put up with them, yes. I tolerate them because we have this complicated life together. And I believe in the work I do here. I make a difference in the lives of the families we employ. Small things—food, clothing, medicine, and money if they need it. They are poor and we have means. I get satisfaction out of that. You might not understand.”

  Her voice softened. “What Jack gets from that girl? I know what it is. Let’s settle that. I do know. He needs it so he takes it. He is an entitled man who wears no shame. I know this, but it took too long to see.”

  She gazed ahead at Jack’s pickup shrouded in a dust cloud. “I use him as much as he uses the marriage. You didn’t know that either. At my request he has given title of small plots to the precaristas we employ. He has done that because I asked him to.”

  She paused. Concern riveted her face. “Don’t judge this marriage, George.” She glanced sideways at him. “It’s easy to look at me and think I’m rationalizing a bad choice. Maybe I am.”

  “Are you? Your heart doesn’t seem to be in it.”