The Crook Factory

by Dan Simmons

  Braden pursed his lips and tapped his fingers.

  Hemingway leaned on the ambassador’s desk. I looked at the scar on the left arm and noticed how strong and hairy those forearms were—not my image of a writer of novels.

  “Mr. Ambassador,” Hemingway said softly, “I believe in this project. It’s a serious idea. I’m not only ready to put up most of the money myself, I’ve turned down an invitation to go to Hollywood and write a script for their stupid ‘March of Time’ series about the Flying Tigers in Burma. Two weeks’ work. A hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And I said no because I think that the Crook Factory is more important.”

  Braden looked up at the big man hovering over him. “I understand, Ernest,” the ambassador said softly. “And we think it’s important as well. I’ll have to talk to the Cuban prime minister to receive permission, but that’s just a formality. I’ve already cleared it with State and the FBI.”

  Hemingway nodded, grinned, and went back to his chair. “Great,” he said. “Great.”

  “There are only two conditions,” said Ambassador Braden, looking back at the papers on his desk again as if the conditions were printed there.

  “Sure,” said Hemingway, and he lounged back comfortably, smiling and waiting.

  “Firstly,” said Braden, “you’ll have to send me reports. They can be short, but at least weekly updates. Bob and Ellis can work out some way you can meet them privately… secretly.”

  Bob Joyce said, “There’s a back way up to my office on the fourth floor, Ernest. You can go in through the store on the corner and come up that way without being seen entering the embassy.”

  “Great,” said Hemingway. “No problem there, Mr. Ambassador.”

  Braden nodded. “Secondly,” he said softly, “you’d have to take Mr. Lucas here into your organization.”

  “Oh?” said Hemingway, still smiling but staring at me with a flat, cold gaze. “Why is that?”

  “Joe is a consultant for State on counterintelligence issues,” said the ambassador. “And an accomplished field man. I knew him in Colombia, Ernest. He was very helpful there.”

  Hemingway held his flat stare on me. “And why would he be helpful here, Spruille?” Without waiting for an answer from the ambassador, Hemingway said, “Do you know Cuba, Mr. Lucas?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Never been here before?”

  “Never,” I said.

  “Habla usted español?”

  “Sí, I said. “Un poco.”

  “Un poco,” repeated Hemingway in a mildly disgusted voice. “Do you carry a gun, Mr. Lucas?”

  “No.”

  “Know how to fire one?”

  “Theoretically,” I said.

  “Theoretically,” repeated Hemingway. “But you know all about German spies, I suppose.”

  I shrugged. This job interview had gone as far as it was going to go. Evidently the ambassador agreed, because he said, “It’s the only other condition, Ernest. State insists on it. They want a liaison.”

  “Liaison,” said Hemingway, savoring the word as if it were a French obscenity. “So who will you report to, Joe… may I call you Joe?”

  I twitched a smile. “I’ll report to no one but you,” I said. “At least until the operation is over. Then I’ll write up a report to my superiors.”

  “A report card,” said the writer, no longer smiling.

  “A report,” I said.

  Hemingway rubbed his lower lip with a knuckle. “And you won’t be reporting to anyone else while we’re working together?”

  I shook my head.

  “That will be your job, Ernest,” said the ambassador. “You’ll deal with Bob and Ellis… or contact me directly if events warrant it. Joe Lucas can be your second in command… or use him in any capacity you choose.”

  Hemingway stood abruptly and walked toward me. Towering over me, he said, “Let me see your hands, Joe.”

  I held out my hands.

  Hemingway turned them palms up, then rotated them back. “You’ve done real work, Joe. Not just typed reports. Are these old line burns?”

  I nodded.

  “You know your away around a small boat?”

  “Well enough,” I said.

  Hemingway dropped my hands and turned back to the ambassador. “All right,” he said. “Conditions and new crewman accepted. When can I get the Crook Factory cranked up, Spruille?”

  “How about tomorrow, Ernest?”

  Hemingway flashed that broad grin. “How about today?” He moved quickly and lightly to the door. “Bob, Ellis, I want to buy you two a drink over lunch. Joe… where are you staying?”

  “The Ambos Mundos,” I said.

  The writer nodded. “I used to live there. Wrote most of a damned good book there. But you’re not staying there any longer, Joe.”

  “No?”

  He shook his head. “If you’re going to go to work in the Crook Factory, you have to live at the factory headquarters. Get your stuff together. I’ll be by to pick you up about three. You’ll stay at the finca until we catch some German spies or get tired of each other.” He nodded to the ambassador and left.

  6

  I WALKED FROM THE EMBASSY, taking the long way back to Hotel Ambos Mundos, wandering through the streets of Old Havana, buying a paper at a tobacconist, strolling out to the harbor road, and then walking down Obispo Street. I was being followed.

  Nine blocks from the hotel, I saw a black Lincoln pull to the curb and Ernest Hemingway get out with Bob Joyce and Ellis Briggs. They headed into a bar called the Floridita. It was barely eleven o’clock in the morning. I glanced into a storefront window to make sure the man half a block behind me was still following, then I turned right off Obispo and turned back toward the harbor. The man turned, too. He was good—always staying behind others, never looking directly at me—but he also did not care if I knew he was there.

  Next to the Plaza of the Cathedral I stopped at a bar called La Bodeguita del Medio and took a stool near an open window that looked out on the sidewalk. The man following me paused directly outside, leaned back against the windowsill, and unfolded a Diario de la Marina to read. His head was no more than a foot from me. I studied the coppery hairs on the back of his shaven neck and the line where the heavy tan ended just above the stiff white collar of his shirt.

  A waiter hurried up.

  “Un mojito, por favor,” I said.

  The waiter went back to the bar. I opened my own paper and began reading the box scores from the States.

  “How did it go?” asked the man outside.

  “It’s on,” I said. “Hemingway is taking me out to his finca this afternoon. I’ll be living there.”

  The man nodded and turned the page of his newspaper. His panama hat was pulled low over his face, throwing even the cheek and chin visible to me into dark shadow. He was smoking a Cuban cigarette.

  “I’ll use the safe house for contact,” I said. “Same timetable we agreed on.”

  Delgado nodded again, tossed away the cigarette, folded his paper, looked away from me, and said, “Watch that writer. Era un saco de madarrias.” He walked away.

  The waiter brought my mojito. It was a drink that Delgado had recommended the night before, a cocktail made with rum, sugar, ice, water, and mint. It tasted like horse piss, and I rarely drank before noon anyway. Era un saco de madarrias. A difficult guy. We would see.

  I left the drink on the table and walked back to Obispo Street and my hotel.

  I HAD MET DELGADO THE NIGHT BEFORE, leaving the Ambos Mundos to walk into a run-down section of Old Havana where tenements gave way to shacks. Chickens and half-naked children ran mindlessly through the weeds, dodging through holes in the unpainted fences. I recognized the safe house from the description in my briefing papers, found the key where it should be under the sagging porch, and let myself in. The interior was very dark and there was no electricity. The place smelled like mold and rat droppings. I felt my way to the table that was supposed to be
in the middle of the room, found it, felt the metal of the lantern on it, and used my cigarette lighter to get it going. The glare was soft but shocking after the darkness outside and in.

  The man was sitting not four feet from me, the wooden chair turned, his forearms resting easily on the back of it. In his right hand he held a long-barreled Smith and Wesson .38. The muzzle was aimed at my face.

  I held up my right hand to show that I was not going to make any sudden moves and reached into my left coat pocket to pull out half of a torn dollar bill. I set it on the table.

  The man did not blink. He opened his right fist and set his half of the bill next to mine. With my right hand still raised, palm out, I moved the two pieces together. A perfect fit.

  “It’s amazing how much this buys here,” I said softly.

  “Enough to take presents home to the entire family,” said the man, and lowered the pistol. He slid it into a shoulder holster under his white suit jacket. “Delgado,” he said. He did not seem embarrassed by the bullshit identification ritual. He did not apologize for aiming the weapon at my head.

  “Lucas.”

  We talked about the mission. Delgado wasted no words. His manner was rough and efficient, just short of rudeness. Unlike so many of the FBI or SIS agents I had worked with, he did not want to speak about himself or irrelevant matters. He talked about the alternative safe house, drop sites, why the FBI people and places in Havana had to be avoided like the plague, mentioned the opposition briefly—lots of pro-Facists and German sympathizers but little in the way of a coherent Nazi network in Cuba—and gave me a description of Hemingway’s finca, where the nearest pay phones would be, which numbers to call in Havana and elsewhere, and why to avoid dealing with the Cuban local or national police.

  While he spoke I studied him in the lantern light. I had never heard of an SIS agent named Delgado. He seemed a serious person and a serious professional. He seemed dangerous.

  It is strange how different men strike you in such different ways. J. Edgar Hoover had seemed like a mean fat boy dressed in nice clothes—a vindictive sissy who had cultivated the speech and mannerism of a tough guy. When I finally met Hemingway, he immediately struck me as a complex, charismatic man who probably could be simultaneously the most interesting person you’d ever meet and a tiresome son of a bitch.

  Delgado was dangerous.

  His face was tanned and flat in the light: his nose obviously once broken and now crooked, traces of scar tissue on his high cheeks and left ear, heavy brows—also scarred—with small, smart rodent eyes watching everything from the shadows under those brows, and a strange mouth. Sensuous. Amused. Cruel.

  He was just an inch or so taller than me, I saw when he finally stood up—halfway between my height and Hemingway’s—and it was obvious from the way the white suit hung on him that he had no body fat whatsoever. But when he had set his half of the dollar on the table and then holstered his weapon, I had seen the muscle on his forearms. His other movements were the opposite of what I had seen in Hemingway. Delgado wasted neither motion nor energy, conserving them the way he did his words. I had the profound impression that he could slip a knife between your ribs, clean the blade, and pocket the knife again in one smooth motion.

  “Any questions?” he said when he had finished covering the details of safe house timetables.

  I looked at him. “I know most of the SIS people down here,” I said. “Are you new?”

  Delgado smiled slightly. “Any other questions?”

  “I report to you,” I said, “but what do I get in return?”

  “I’ll watch your back when you’re in Havana,” he said. “Or off the finca grounds. I’ll lay three-to-one odds that the writer will make you live out there.”

  “What else?” I said.

  Delgado shrugged. “My orders were to funnel any information you wanted.”

  “Files?” I said. “Complete dossiers?”

  “Sure.”

  “O/C files?” I said.

  “Yeah. If you need them.”

  I think I blinked at this. If Delgado could supply Hoover’s O/C files to me, then he was way outside the chain of command of either the FBI here in Cuba or the SIS as I knew it. He would be reporting to and taking orders from Hoover directly.

  “Anything else you want me to do for you, Lucas?” he said as he walked to the door. The sarcasm was just audible in his voice. He had a very slight accent, but I could not place it. American… but where? The West somewhere.

  “Can you recommend any place good here?” I said. “Restaurant? Bar?” I was curious if Delgado knew Havana or if he was as new to all this as I was.

  “The Floridita is where Hemingway and his cronies hang out,” said Delgado. “But I don’t recommend it. They make a mean drink called the mojito at La Bodeguita del Medio. Used to call it the Drake, after Francis Drake, but now it’s a mojito.”

  “Good?” I said, just to keep him talking so that I could trace the slight accent.

  “Tastes like horse piss,” said Delgado, and went out into the hot, weedy night.

  HEMINGWAY HAD SAID THAT he would pick me up at the Ambos Mundos at three P.M.—I had expected a chauffeur rather than the writer himself—and I was ready, checked out, and sitting in the lobby by three, my duffel and garment bag at my feet, but neither writer nor servant were to show up. Instead, the hotel manager bustled over in person, a message flimsy in his hand. From his torrent of Spanish and his frequent bows, I was made to understand that I had become a much more important guest now that it was understood that I had received a personal telephone messenger from Señor Hemingway and it was a tragedy that they—the manager and staff of the modest but excellent Ambos Mundos—had not known this earlier so that they could have made my stay even more magnificent.

  I thanked the manager, who bowed away as if retreating from royalty, and read the flimsy: “Lucas—Thought you might want to take in some local color. Catch the bus to San Francisco de Paula. Climb the hill. I’ll meet you at the finca. EH”

  The manager and two porters hurried back as I carried my bags to the door. Would Señor Lucas allow them to carry his bags to the taxi?

  No, Señor Lucas was not headed for the taxi. He was headed for the goddamned bus station.

  It was about twelve miles from Havana to the village where Hemingway’s farm was located, but the bus trip took me more than an hour. It was the usual south-of-the-border travel experience: grinding gears on a bus with such a sprung suspension system that I was sure we would tip over; stops every few hundred yards; shouting people; the cackle of chickens and the snorting of at least one pig amidst the gabble; snores, farts, and laughter of the passengers; the carbon monoxide fumes of the bus and a thousand other vehicles wafting in the barred, open windows; men hanging in the open door; luggage being tossed to the waiting boys on the roof.

  It was a pleasant afternoon, and I would have enjoyed the local color well enough if it had not been for the small, white sedan following us. I had moved to the rear of the bus out of habit, checking out the rear window without fully turning my head, and had spotted the car immediately upon pulling away from the downtown bus depot. White ’38 Ford, two men in it, heavy man driving, much thinner man with a snap-brim hat in the passenger seat, both watching the bus with a passionate disinterest. It was difficult to trail a bus without looking conspicuous—especially difficult in riotous Havana traffic—and they were doing the best they could to hang back, turning down side streets when the bus stopped, talking to newspaper and vegetable hawkers out the window at intersections—but there was no doubt that they were following the bus. Following me. Distance and the glare on the windshield prevented me from making out their features very well, but I was sure that neither one was Delgado. Who, then?

  FBI possibly. As per instructions, I had not checked in with Special Agent in Charge Leddy or anyone else in Havana other than the ambassador and Delgado, but the local FBI almost certainly had heard that an SIS man had been inserted into Hemingway�
�s crackpot scheme. But why follow me? Hoover must have sent some instruction to leave me alone. Germans? I doubted it. Delgado had reinforced my impressions that the Nazis had little or no network in Cuba, and it would have been unlikely that their disorganized fifth columnist sympathizers would have connected with me so early. Wild Bill Donovan’s COI outfit? I had no idea what their presence was in Cuba, but they had avoided crossing Hoover’s path in Colombia, Mexico, and the other areas of FBI/SIS hegemony with which I was familiar. Perhaps Ian Fleming’s BSC? The Havana police? The Cuban National Police? The Cuban military intelligence?

  I chuckled to myself. This whole situation had gone from slightly farcical to pure buffoonery. Hemingway had me riding a bus to teach me a lesson, to assert his place in the pecking order. Hell, I would be lucky if I didn’t end up being assigned to clean his swimming pool… if he had a swimming pool. And as I rode to professional oblivion on this stinking, brawling, wheezing bus, at least two paid agents of someone’s government were wasting their own time and effort in the afternoon heat to follow me.

  The bus made its two-hundredth stop since we had left downtown Havana, the driver yelled something, and I grabbed my bags and climbed off with two women and their pig. The three of them hustled away across the Central Highway, and I stood there breathing the fumes and dust of the departing bus for a few minutes. There was no sign of the white car. I took my bearings and headed uphill.

  I could have been in Colombia or Mexico. The same smells of beer and cooking from the open windows, the same glimpses of wash on the lines and of the old men on street corners, the same bold beginnings of paved streets that quickly turned into dusty alleys within twenty yards of the main road. A little boy had been watching me from his post in a low tree up the road, and now he leapt down and ran madly up the road, his bare feet kicking up its own cloud of dust. One of Hemingway’s secret agents? I thought perhaps yes.