by Barry, Mike
“Up the stairs,” the guard said unnecessarily and Wulff climbed a long winding flight leading to a shallow landing, paused there, climbed another row of stairs and yet another, ascending toward the high ground exactly as he had hoped, seeing windows now, jutting spokes of light. At yet another landing he paused, waiting for the guard to catch up with him. The guard was gasping; turning pale with the shock of effort; a little more effort like this and he would collapse and die, probably of arterial blockage. They had some security here. Regimes might change but the basic imcompetence of these people would go on. Incompetence would go on anywhere; that was the only thing you could count on … that the organization itself, the enemy, mostly did not know what the hell they were doing. Groaning, the guard gestured Wulff toward a door off the landing which led down a long hall ringed by officers. At the end of the hall was a small room, an open door. He slowed to allow the guard to catch up to him; then went the rest of the way almost side by side. A man was waiting for him at the doorway, a man in military uniform whose face looked closed in and purposeful. He motioned toward Wulff and Wulff went past him, into the bare room with the one window looking out on mountains. Behind him he heard the small man dismiss the guard. Wulff sighed and fell into the chair behind the desk. The man closed the door behind him, came briskly around the desk and sat. He opened a drawer, withdrew a pistol and held it lightly, like a professional, the point turned from Wulff toward the wall but obviously poised.
“That isn’t necessary,” Wulff said. “I’m not going to do anything.”
“I wouldn’t think so, Mr. Wulff. I’m sure you wouldn’t.”
“Still, you’ve got to make the display.”
“Perhaps. If you call it that.” The man laid the pistol neatly in his lap, looked briefly out the window and then turned back toward Wulff. “My name is Delgado,” he said, “and you have given us a very difficult problem, Mr. Wulff.”
“Not me. Not me at all. The people who brought me here have given you a problem. I wouldn’t be here on my own, you know.”
Delgado seemed to smile, a man sparing of his gestures but probably deep inside, Wulff thought, all heart. That twisted little smile would become an ebullient chuckle as he kicked someone to death. “That is questionable,” he said.
“Don’t question it. I was going back to New York.”
“You were on a New York bound flight. Whether you intended to go there we simply do not know.”
“Don’t you?”
“For all we know you might have been in collaboration with the hijackers. It might have been prearranged for you to land this shipment of yours in Havana. It certainly is nothing you would have wanted to take into New York.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Wulff said. He stretched his legs in front of him, tried to settle back in the chair but it was one of those constructions, made for interrogation no doubt, where it was impossible to sit with dignity. “What do you want?” he said.
“You should be asking us that, Mr. Wulff? The question is what do you want?”
“That’s simple. I want my valise back and I want to get out of this country.”
“Ah,” Delgado said. He cupped his hands, leaned forward. “An international crime has been committed,” he said. “Hijacking is an offense punishable by the death penalty both in your country and mine. Are we expected to ignore it?”
“I’m quite sure you advised the others of that,” Wulff said, “so you can spare me. This is not your problem. It has nothing to do with you; it’s an internal, private situation and I’d like my property back.”
“You are aware of what your property is?”
“I am perfectly aware of what it is,” Wulff said.
“Ah,” said Delgado again. He leaned back in his chair, still commanding the situation. His chair was quite a different piece of furniture. “You have really given us an insuperable problem, Mr. Wulff.”
“Not me. I’ve had nothing to do with this.”
“What are you doing transporting uncut heroin? A man of your credentials and background could hardly be in the supply business. Or are you?”
“You’ve done some research,” Wulff said, “so you know who I am.”
“A little,” Delgado said, “just a little. Actually I know nothing of you except that you are a very dangerous man and that there are a number of people, I would estimate them to be at least a thousand, who would like to see you dead and are prepared to kill you on sight.”
“They’re not very desirable people.”
“But neither are you, Mr. Wulff,” Delgado said carefully and then leaned forward again, gestured with a finger and began to talk very precisely. “You see, the difficulties here are enormous. If we release you and your shipment we are, by proxy, in the supply business ourselves. You don’t think that your government is unaware of what has happened by now, do you? This is major news.”
“I’m sure that you’ve hardly broadcast my presence on board the plane.”
“We did not,” Delgado said, “you are a clever man. We certainly made all efforts to conceal the apparent motive for the hijacking or your presence on that plane, let alone the shipment. Still, people even in your government, to say nothing of millions who read newspapers, can put two and two together as you say, no? We have been trying very desperately in the last several years to obtain real credibility in international relations for the sins of our lamentable and disreputable past and now we are put in a position, so to speak, of reliving a nightmare.”
“You have nothing to do with this,” Wulff said quietly. “Neither you nor your governmemt. Give me the valise and get me out of the country.” The thing to do in dealing with the Delgados, he knew, was to say one thing at a time, to say it patiently, repeat it over and again, and finally convince them of your single-mindedness. The bureaucrats could only consider one thought at a time, one line of discussion in a conference; there was no way in which they could see complexities. As bureaucrats go, Delgado was probably of a higher order—for one thing your average bureaucrat did not carry on interviews holding a gun with the option of killing his interviewees—but the principal held. It always would. It was not a man that he was dealing with here but a system. Wulff thought of the cell from which he had come and made a decision right then in that room; he would not go back. He was not going back there under any circumstances because this time they might just leave him there and forget about him. Better to leap on Delgado; take the one chance in ten that he could overpower the man and bull his way out of here … but he was not going to be incarcerated. He was already in the cell of his mind; two levels of imprisonment would kill him. “Get me passage out of the country,” he said again.
Delgado looked at him implacably. “With your valise?” he asked.
“Do you want it?”
“Do you?”
“Your whole point was that you didn’t want that shit in your country,” Wulff said, “so I’ll take it with me.”
“I didn’t quite want to give that impression,” Delgado said. “Of course we don’t want it in our country. Why should we? We are a government of revolutionaries; our drug is change itself, we would have no need for anything of this nature in our society. But can we condone delivering it back to your country?”
“It will never be used.”
“Won’t it?” Delgado said. The smile was back. “Perhaps our sources misread you Mr Wulff. You may be no so-called activist against the international drug trade. That may be a clever story. Actually you might be a purveyor.”
Wulff came half out of the chair, unthinkingly slapped Delgado across the face. The little man was surprisingly resilient; the blow streaked his skin, made his eyes whiten but he did not move. He sat still poised in the chair, then held the gun, levelled it, looked at it carefully. Wulff stood there motionless. There was too much distance toward the gun; if he went for it Delgado would blow his hand off. He held his position, looked at the man. The streaks on Delgado’s cheek began to puff.
After a very l
ong time or what seemed to be a very long time, Delgado lowered the gun. His respiration was uneven, the breath rattling around his rib cage. His eyes blinked. “That was unwise,” he said. He tried to keep his voice flat and calm but the effort showed. Wulff slowly sat in the chair, palms extended. Give then no additional provocation. He showed lack of provocation in every gesture. “Very unwise, Mr. Wulff,” Delgado said and in that tone Wulff could hear the outcome. Delgado was not going to kill him. If he was going to he would have done it already.
“No one calls me a drug purveyor.”
“It was just a suggestion.”
“Do you know what I am?” Wulff said. “Do you know what I’ve done? There are two hundred bodies behind me; there are a lot of broken buildings. No purveyor got that suitcase out of Las Vegas.”
“He might have.”
“If you call me a peddler or organization man I’ll have to try to kill you,” Wulff said calmly, “I mean that. I won’t hear anyone say that to me, not after what has happened. Do you understand that?”
Delgado looked at him bleakly, then nodded. “All right,” he said. “I understand that.”
“I want passage out of your country, I want the valise. The rest is up to you.”
“You apparently think this is your interview, Mr. Wulff,” Delgado said. His confidence was returning slowly, little pieces of it jutting together to form again the puzzle of self. “But it isn’t.”
“There’s nothing more to discuss. We understand one another now, I trust. I want transportation out of this country and I want the valise back.”
“And if we do not take these terms, Mr. Wulff?”
“Then we’ll deal with the problem as we face it.”
Delgado put a hand to his cheek, rubbed it absently, already far removed from the pain. “You are a decisive man,” he said. “You really believe yourself to be in control of situations, don’t you?”
“Some of them.”
“You have put us in a very difficult situation. At the moment I have been instructed to work out the easiest way of solving this for all of us.” Delgado looked at the pistol again. “Certainly one of the easiest measures would be simply to kill you. That would eliminate our problems right there.”
“You’re not going to kill me,” Wulff said flatly, “because if you were going to do that you would have done it already. Certainly when I struck you. You are under orders not to kill me.”
Delgado shook his head and looked downward. “All right,” he said, “you are a perceptive man. You are a very difficult man as well which you probably have been told.”
Very carefully, showing Delgado every motion before he made it, Wulff stood. He laid his calves against the chair and gently pushed it away from him. “I think that this interview is finished,” he said. “There’s really nothing more to say, is there? Get me out of the country, Delgado, and give me my valise.”
“And where do you propose that we drop you? At the border? Or would you like direct conveyance to New York?”
“I think that the border would be a very reasonable proposition. You wouldn’t want to go into any major urban center, now would you?”
Delgado sighed, slammed a palm on the desk and stood. “No,” he said, “we would not want to do that.” Something in his cheek stabbed him and he raised his hand there again, rubbed the area, his eyes darkening. “I have been instructed as you probably know,” he said, “to do just that. To get you and your valise out of this country as quickly as possible. Those were my orders before this interview even began.”
“I thought as much.”
“But you have made things very difficult, Mr. Wulff. You had no business striking me.”
“You had no business—”
“You’ll get out of the country,” Delgado said, his eyes glowing, “about that we can be fairly sure. Instructions, after all, must be respected; we are now living in an incorruptible regime. But there will be a reckoning.”
“I’m not interested in reckoning.”
“Ah,” Delgado said, “but I am. I am very much, Mr. Wulff. You are a violent, irresponsible, reckless man. The fact is that most of the people with whom you deal deserve that treatment but you have not learned to discriminate.”
He came away from the desk, stood over Wulff then, a tall man as well, not as tall as Wulff, perhaps—make him six feet one or so—exceptionally tall for a Cuban and through some intricacy of balance maneuvering himself so that he was able to look down upon Wulff. “I am very serious,” he said, “this is a personal, not an administrative manner. We will deal again.”
“I am sure of that.”
“You should be sure of that,” Delgado said. He walked toward the door, opened it and found the guard sitting in a cramped position against the opposite wall. “Take Mr. Wulff away,” he said.
The guard looked up questioningly and Delgado said something in Spanish, the short, intense syllables somehow ferocious. Wulff could pick up a little of it; wandering through Manhattan you learned a little pidgin Spanish anyway but not enough to disclose much information. Delgado was saying something about a helicopter, that much was clear.
The guard motioned; Wulff went toward him. Delgado moved from the doorway as Wulff passed him, looking impassive. Wulff ignored him. Already his mind was on other issues. The guard made a gesture with his rifle, Wulff fell into place in front of him and they walked down the corridor that way, the feeling of Delgado’s gaze burning into the back of his neck, an unpleasant heat which Wulff felt sustaining him all the way as they went outside, into another corridor, out the corridor, to a different level and there poised on a roof was a helicopter, body shaking, blades chattering, a small ramp laid out below it like a carpet.
Wulff walked right in, found a man sitting in the cramped passenger compartment a rifle draped across his knees. Wulff nodded to the man, sat across from him, folded his hands and waited. Through an aperture he could see the back of the pilot’s head, the head nodding as he acknowledged instructions of some sort. Then the sound of the engines shifted from a groan to a whimper, a series of whimpers, a series of knives cutting across his consciousness and slowly, gracelessly, the thing lifted into the air; looking out through the window he could see the ruined city of Havana suddenly opening underneath him and then they were heading north, riding in the air as if it were fire.
IV
The voice on the other end of the line said, “But how can we be sure? How can we—”
“You’ll have to trust me,” Delgado said. He felt the earpiece sliding against his temple, slick with moisture. He was sweating. Delgado never sweated but now he was. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket, cleansed his face, looked through the window at the mountains. Haze was settling. It would bring visibility down to only a few miles shortly. Good that was good.
“It’s not a matter of trust,” the voice said, “it’s—” and then it faded out again. The international hookup was impossible nowadays; new regime or not the wiring had been rotted almost clear through and the maintenance and repair could just not keep ahead of the deterioration. “Worried,” the voice said fading in again.
“I’m worried too,” Delgado said, rubbing the place where the man had hit him. “Everybody’s worried. Nevertheless, the situation is under complete control. The man is in our custody and will be disposed of shortly.”
“He’d better be.”
“Don’t give me orders,” Delgado said quietly, “you’re in no position to give me orders. You’re two thousand miles out of here and all of this is your own fault. All of it and now we have to muck up your messes.”
“All right. All right,” the voice said after a pause. Delgado wiped his face again and waited. “What are you going to do with the shit?”
“I don’t like that term. I told that to your friend. It is a term out of my vocabulary.”
“Goddamn it,” the voice said and then it faded out again. Delgado waited patiently, working on the creases around his temple, holding the phone ligh
tly against his ear. A long rest. He would have to take a long rest; he was pushing himself very close to his limits. Even he could see that. But there just seemed no way out. “—disposition?” the voice said, apparently ending a sentence.
“In due time,” Delgado said. “The ultimate disposition is the disposition of Wulff himself and that is being handled right now.”
“We want them back.”
“And maybe you don’t.”
“You have no need to keep them.”
“We do not condone the dissemination of drugs. The regime, the premier believe very strongly in the rational sectors of the human being, our ability to come to terms with reality; the necessity to accept the world as it has been given us. Drugs are a symptom of decadence and this is not a decadent regime. It is—”
“No political philosophy,” the voice said quietly. “We assume that you’re making disposition and we’ll wait to hear from you on the other matter.”
“Yes,” Delgado said quickly, “yes you will wait to hear from us,” but the other side had already hung up. He took the phone away from his ear, stared at it for a moment and then smashed it viciously into the receiver, toppling the stem, shattering the plastic into splinters and driving a wedge through his finger. Blood came instantly.
Cursing, Delgado put the handkerchief against the cut, pressing it in, looking for a fast clot. The blood, sopping rapidly into the handkerchief was a spreading, open stain, a web of darkness and implication springing from his flesh, he shoved the hand in his pocket, putting the stain away from him and for a while simply leaned back in the chair, eyes closed, thinking of Wulff, the son of a bitch who had hit him. Orders were orders. The man would be disposed of in the helicopter.
But it was a shame; in a way it was really a shame because Delgado wanted to do it himself. He wanted to confront the man, show him death in his hand and then destroy him. You can’t do this to Delgado, he would say and understanding would at last break over that face and Wulff would fall before him. Cannot do it, cannot do it, the blood went into the webbing of the handkerchief; he was shaking, his eyes seemed to be filled with some peculiar moisture.