by Dan Simmons
The Parque Central was not just a park, but the center of a capital that the newly independent Cubans after the Spanish-American War had planned to be as grand as Paris or Vienna. All around and above the green palm fronds of the park rose the ornate, rococo, neo-baroque private and public structures that were Havana’s pride. I watched Delgado disappear into the crowds around the white marble statue of José Martí at the center of the shady plaza and knew that anyone trying to follow him into the park would be spotted. He was very good. If I had guessed wrong about which way he would exit the park, we would lose him.
I stayed within the heavy sidewalk traffic at the north end of the Parque Central, walking back and forth between the Plaza Hotel on the north side and the elaborate Hotel Inglaterra on the west side, watching the crowds. Several minutes passed and I was almost certain that Delgado had doubled back again and crossed up by the Bacardi Building and lost us when I saw Santiago near the curb in front of the Gran Teatro. He was waving his red bandanna at belt level.
I jogged down the street. The boy pointed south toward a perfect copy of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. “He went into the Capitolio Nacional, Señor Lucas.”
“Good job, Santiago,” I said, patting the boy’s thin shoulders. “You stay out here.”
I went up into the capitol building, down its echoing halls, past the diamond in the floor of the lobby that was the declared center of Havana. The main corridor was empty, but the sound of a door closing echoed down a side hallway. I moved lightly on my boat shoes, trying not to let the soles squeak on the polished floor. Pausing at the frosted door, I opened it a crack and peeked through just in time to catch a glimpse of Delgado’s panama suit twenty yards down the dimly lit corridor. I closed the door softly just as the other agent turned around.
I was sure that he would wait at the end of the corridor until he was sure that no one was behind him. But I had a hunch where he was going.
I moved quickly back to the main hallway, jogged up marble stairs to the mezzanine, moved quickly to the east wing of the building, tried several doors until I found one that was unlocked, and then went into the second-story level of the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales. It was a sad excuse for a natural history museum, its display cases mostly empty or filled with poorly preserved animals with dusty glass eyes, but it would be a perfect place for Delgado to watch reflections and stare back the way he had come. I circled the narrow mezzanine until I saw his white shoes on the south side of the central display area, and then I stepped back quickly, almost holding my breath. After an interminable ten minutes, Delgado turned on his heel and went out the locked south door of the museum.
I had to use my fist to rub grime off the upstairs window, but the dirt finally cleared in a large enough circle that I could make out Delgado crossing the wide boulevard south of the capitol building and going into the hulking mass of the Partagas Cigar Factory. I did not think that this was just another maneuver. This, I thought, was the agent’s destination.
I went out the east door of the museum and crossed the boulevard at the corner. Delgado had gone in the main door of the cigar factory, but I went south half a block and then down the alley to the loading docks. Inside the huge warehouse section of the building, I knew how hard it would be to find Delgado. On the other hand, I knew that most cigar factories had small bars just off the main rolling and packaging areas. That would be a good place for a rendezvous, if that was Delgado’s goal.
Walking confidently, as if I had business in the factory and knew my way around, I went through the warehouse doors into the main room. Here more than a hundred workers sat at their benches, their galeras; the hand-rollers using their rounded cutting knives to trim the leaves and then roll them. A “reader” was at his podium at the far end of the room, reading excerpts from some cheap romance novel. I knew that this practice of reading to the cigar workers dated back to the last century, when José Martí had made the rollers listen to pro-Nationalist propaganda while they worked. These days, it was newspapers in the morning and adventure or romance novels in the afternoon.
I walked through the galeras. Most of the hand-rollers were too busy to look up, but a few looked at me quizzically. I nodded to them as if approving their work and moved on. Some of the rollers were working on the tripa, the small leaf that gives the cigar its form. Others had finished with the tripa, and were rolling the hoja de fortaleza, the “leaf of strength” that gives the cigar its flavor, while others were already cutting and rolling the hoja de combustión that allowed the cigar to burn evenly. The final benches were applying a rice-based glue to the final large leaf, the copa, that gave the cigar its ultimate shape. Half of the workers here were men, and most of them—men and women alike—were smoking cigars as they did their work. It had taken me less than two minutes to cross the wide floor, and in that time, the old man near the exit door had cut and rolled all of the leaves of a cigar as I watched.
I went out through a side room where depalillos were removing the stems from the thin leaves and passing those leaves to the rezgagados, who sorted them according to grades. Beyond the sorting room, I caught a glimpse of the revisadores pulling cigars through holes in wooden boards to make sure that the size of each was perfect. Patchi Ibarlucia had once shared with me several ribald jokes about this quality control practice present in every Cuban cigar factory.
In the dark hallway just outside the revisadores’ room, I saw the frosted glass and wooden doors of the little bar that sold cigars, rum, and coffee. There was a Closed sign on the door. I paused a second in the hallway and then opened the door a crack.
Delgado was in the third small booth, his back to the door. The man across from him looked up as the door opened, but I closed it before he could have seen me clearly. One glimpse was all that I needed.
I moved quickly down the hallway and ducked into the men’s toilet just as the door to the bar opened and footsteps moved down the hall. There was a frosted window that opened onto the alley. I shoved up the window, went out, dangled six feet above the littered bricks of the alley, and let myself drop. Then I was up and running and around the bend in the alley before anyone appeared in the open window.
MARIA AND I made love all that next night, our passion ending only when there was a soft tapping on the door of Grade A just after dawn. The tapping was Santiago, whom I had told to report early, and the little boy tapped only once before going to wait in the courtyard of the dairy as instructed. I do not know why the young whore and I were so excited and persistent that long night. Perhaps she perceived what I had discovered—that the foundations of our little fantasy world there were crumbling and that reality was ready to blow in like a hurricane.
The previous evening, Hemingway had announced that we would be leaving early in the Pilar. Don Saxon’s infected feet had finally reached the point where he could not serve as radioman on the boat for this trip and no one wanted him aboard until his feet were better. I was to come along and handle the communications gear. Naval Intelligence had sent the writer a coded communiqué ordering him to head down along the Cuban coast to a point where they suspected that German submarines were using certain caves as supply depots. Hemingway’s crew was to consist of Fuentes, Guest, Ibarlucia, Sinsky, Roberto Herrera, me, and the boys—Gregory and Patrick. The writer guessed that we would be gone about a week—do some tracking of the Southern Cross, which was headed for the same waters—but my own guess was that he was not taking the mission very seriously if he was taking the boys along.
“I should stay here,” I said. “Who’s going to look after the Crook Factory?” After that afternoon’s revelation in the cigar factory, I did not want to be out of touch and out at sea.
Hemingway had shown his teeth and waved away the objection. “The Crook Factory will take care of itself for a few days. You’re going with us, Lucas. That’s an order.”
I came out of the Grade A cottage that morning to find Santiago waiting patiently, sitting on the low stone trough in the center of the courtya
rd. I walked with him down the road past the finca.
“Santiago, I’m going out on Señor Hemingway’s boat for several days.”
“Yes, Señor Lucas. I have heard.”
I did not ask the child where he had heard the news. Agent 22 was fast becoming our most able operative. “Santiago,” I said, “I do not want you following Lieutenant Maldonado while we are gone. Nor the man we followed yesterday. I do not want you following anyone.”
The boy’s face fell. “But, Señor Lucas, am I not doing an adequate job?”
“You’re doing an excellent job,” I said, touching the boy on the shoulder. “A man’s job. But it will serve no purpose for you to follow Caballo Loco or the other man… or anyone we have been watching… while Señor Hemingway and I are at sea.”
“You do not wish to know with whom the lieutenant is meeting?” the boy said quizzically. “I understood that it was important that we knew these things.”
“It is important,” I said. “But we know enough now that there is no reason to continue our surveillance until I return. Then I may have some very important jobs for you.”
The boy’s face brightened again. “And when you all return, we will play baseball again against Gigi’s Stars? And this time you might play with our team the way Señor Hemingway sometimes plays on his sons’ team?”
“Perhaps,” I said. “Yes, I would like that. Truly.” I was telling the truth. I loved baseball and had been frustrated watching the teams play while I sat idly on the grassy sidelines. One of the few things that I had carried everywhere in my duffel bag over the years had been the fielder’s mitt my uncle had given me when I was eight. I had used that glove in college and at law school and at pickup games on the White House lawn when I was still regular FBI. I would not mind striking Hemingway out.
The boy was grinning and nodding. “Is there anything that I should do while you are away, Señor Lucas?”
I gave him three dollars. “Have some ice cream at one of Obispo’s shops,” I said. “Purchase some food for your family.”
“I have no family, Señor Lucas,” said the boy, still smiling but staring dubiously at the bills in his palm. He offered them back.
I folded his fingers around the bills. “Purchase almond cakes on the Calle Obispo,” I said. “Have dinner at one of the bodegas where they know you. Agents must keep up their strength. There are difficult missions ahead.”
The boy’s grin lit up the morning. “Sí, Señor Lucas. I thank you for your generosity.”
I shook my head. “It is your salary, Agent 22,” I said. “Now run along. Return the unknown gentleman’s motorbike if you please. We will find you another one… a legal one. I will see you in a week or less.”
The boy had run down the dusty road past the finca in a cloud of dust.
THE PILAR PURRED OUT OF Cojímar’s harbor on a cloudless day with the brisa—the locals’ name for the trade winds out of the northeast—blowing just hard enough to cool us but not hard enough to churn the Gulf Stream into a heavy sea. Hemingway was in an expansive mood and kept pointing out landmarks to the boys: La Terreza, the big old house that was one of their favorite restaurants along the beach there, the big tree beyond La Terreza where the writer liked to sit and drink and chat with the local fishermen, and then he challenged the two boys to differentiate the fishermen from the guajiros, the countrymen, at this distance of three hundred yards and more.
“We cannot see their faces at this distance, Papa,” Gregory said.
Hemingway laughed and put his arm around the younger boy. “You don’t need to see their faces, Gigi. You see, the guarijo is nervous when he comes to town or the coast and he wears those formal shirts… the ones with the pleats… and the tight trousers, and the wide hats, and the riding boots.”
“Yes, of course!” cried Patrick, who had gone to the flying bridge with the large binoculars. “You’ve pointed that out before, Papa. And they always carry their machetes. You can see them here without the glasses.”
Gregory was nodding, happy in the circle of his father’s arm. “Yes, I see now, Papa. It is like a costume that the guarijos wear. But what about the fishermen?”
Hemingway laughed and pointed at Gregorio Fuentes, standing comfortably on the narrow ledge on the port side of the cabin. “The fishermen are cheerful and self-confident, Gig. They wear whatever they damned well please. Bits and pieces and scraps of old clothes. And if you were looking through Mouse’s field glasses, you could tell them from the guarijos by how scarred and gnarled and brown their hands are.”
“But the countrymen are brown as well, Papa,” said the younger boy.
“Yes, Gigi, but the hair on their hands and arms is dark. Can you see, even from this distance, how bleached the hair on the arms of the fishermen is… worn white by the sun and the salt?”
“Yes, Papa,” said the boy, although now we were far enough out toward the breakwater that the shapes of the fishermen on the shore were barely visible, much less their bare arms.
We headed southeast along the north coast of Cuba that day. The plan was to spend the night at the new little Cuban navy base on tiny Cayo Confites and search for the caves and the Southern Cross farther east along the coast the next day. The Gulf waters were blue and purple, the sky remained cloudless, the brisa continued blowing softly out of the northeast, and the sea was dotted with numerous fishing boats and pleasure craft, most using sails because of the wartime shortage of gasoline. It was a perfect day for cruising, but the perfection was shattered when it became apparent that the executive officer, Winston Guest, had forgotten to load the three cases of beer that Hemingway had pronounced the minimum amount necessary for a six- or seven-day mission. I was below, making notes and thinking about the ramifications of Delgado’s rendezvous in the cigar factory, when the screaming and obscenities in Spanish and English and French began on deck. I rushed up, thinking that a German sub had surfaced—which, of course, they almost never did in daylight—and that we were on the verge of being boarded or sunk.
Everyone, even the boys, was cursing Guest soundly for forgetting the beer. The millionaire stayed steadfastly at the wheel, his ruddy cheeks growing redder and redder, but his eyes were lowered and his expression had become sheepish.
“It’s all right, Wolfer,” Hemingway said at last, cutting off the flow of invective. “They’ll probably have laid in beer along with other provisions for us at Cayo Confites.”
“If not,” said Sinsky in an ominous murmur, “we shall have to mutiny and take this boat back to Havana.”
“Or up to Miami,” said Patchi Ibarlucia.
“Or just raid their base at Cayo Confites and seize the Cubans’ homemade still,” said Roberto Herrera.
“Or maybe there’ll be beer in the secret German caves,” said Patrick. “Ice-cold Bavarian beer hidden in the backs of the caves alongside the stacked jerricans of fuel.”
“Bavarian beer and sauerkraut and sausage,” cried Gregory. “Only we’ll have to get past the sentries and those snarling German shepherds standing guard.”
“I will create a diversion by setting fire to Señor Guest,” said Sinsky.
“And we’ll rush in while they’re dousing Wolfer,” said Patrick from the flying bridge. “Deprive the entire kraut sub fleet of their booze and vittles. Morale will plummet. The Nazis will abandon the Caribbean. The navy will give us a Silver Cross.”
“A golden church key,” said Ibarlucia.
Fuentes, who had been watching with squinted eyes and listening with a pained expression, said, “All this talk of cold beer is making me thirsty.”
Hemingway pulled himself up the ladder to the flying bridge and took the wheel. Below, Winston Guest sighed and sat down on one of the cockpit cushions.
“Courage, lads!” called Hemingway from above. “With God’s help, relief will come soon.”
I shook my head and went below to puzzle out the current status of cross and double cross surrounding the Crook Factory.
19
MY HEADQUARTERS for thinking was the “radio shack”—actually, the Pilar’s former head, now crammed with $35,000 worth of government radio equipment. There was barely room to sit down on a tiny stool between the banks of shortwave receivers and navy transmitters. The two books I had taken off the Southern Cross were in a watertight bag stuffed beside the main radio, where the old toilet paper dispenser had been. When I took notes, I had to prop the notebook on my knee. It was very hot and stuffy down there with the door closed, but at least the door closed. With nine males aboard the Pilar, there was no private place to sleep and no private place to perform the duties for which the once and former head had been designed. The running joke—especially popular with the two boys—was that our first war casualty would be whoever fell overboard while trying to take a crap on rough seas.
With the radio earphones on, most of the horseplay and noise from above decks was silenced. Now I tried to empty my mind of the nonsense of this seagoing “mission” so as to concentrate on what was important.
I HAD GLIMPSED THE MAN sitting across from Delgado in the cigar factory for two seconds before I had pulled the door shut, but I had no trouble at all identifying him. I had seen his photograph in a dossier two years before in Mexico City and had read his name and code name recently in the Theodor Schlegel file that Delgado had shown me. It was the same man: the dark hair combed straight back in the South American style, the long hair on the sides touching the tops of his ears, the sad puppy dog eyes, his right eyebrow heavier than the left (but only the left one had been raised in surprise as the door had opened a crack), his full, sensuous lips, only partially tempered by the precise dark mustache. He had been expensively attired in a pale suit with a burgundy silk tie, impeccably knotted, the tie showing unobtrusive diamond patterns in gold thread.
This was Hauptsturmführer Johann Siegfried Becker of the SS… perhaps Captain Becker by now, if the April SIS intelligence estimates were correct. In April, it had been reported that Becker had been ordered to report back to Berlin from Rio in early May for reassignment and a possible promotion.