Havana Bay

"Just an old map? That's how you heard about the Havana Yacht Club? Amazing."

The Hotel Capri was a pocket version of the Pviviera, a high rise but off the Malecon, and no dome or spiral stairs, instead a simple lobby of glassy sounds and chrome furniture. Cubans were not allowed upstairs; they sat and nursed colas as they waited for appointments to materialize, ready to wait all day. The air-conditioning eddied around potted plants.

"I can't get over the coat," Walls told Arkady.» Do you mind if I try it on?"

"Go ahead."

Although Arkady didn't want other people even touching the coat, he helped Walls in. The coat stretched a little over Walls's shoulders. He ran his hands along the cashmere outside, the silk lining in, felt the pockets inside and out.

O'Brien watched the fashion show.» What do you think?"

"I think he's a man with empty pockets." Walls returned the coat.» But nice. You got this on an investigator's pay? Good for you."

"A good sign for us all." O'Brien led the way off the lobby and through the doors into a small, darkened theater. Arkady could barely see the stage, steps, speakers and overhead lights with colored eels.» La Sala Roja. It wasn't a cabaret then. It was a better show. Use your imagination and you can see red drapes, red carpet, red velvet lamps. In the center, four blackjack tables and four roulette. In the corners, seven-eleven and baccarat. Girls selling cigars, and I mean beautiful girls selling Cuban cigars. Perhaps a little cocaine, though who needs it? It's the sound of the ball on the track, the excitement around a craps table. The man says 'Bets, gentlemen' and people bet. Do you gamble, Arkady?"

"No."

"Why?"

"I don't have the money to lose."

"Everyone has the money to lose. Poor people gamble all the time. What you mean is, you don't like to lose."

"I suppose so."

"Well, you're unusual, most people need to. If they happen to win, they keep on playing until they do lose. Right now around the world more people are gambling than ever in the history of man." O'Brien shrugged to show that the phenomenon was beyond him.» Maybe it's the coming millennium. It's as if people want to shed material things, not in a church but in a casino. People are willing to lose everything as long as they have fun. They can't resist. It's human. The worst snub in the world is a casino where they won't take your money."

"Were you here before the Revolution?"

"A dozen times. Jesus, that was a long time ago."

"Did you gamble?"

"I'm like you, I don't like to lose. Mostly, I admired the operation. You know who I pointed out to my wife? I pointed out Jack Kennedy. He had a peroxide blonde on one arm and a sultry mulata on the other. During the missile crisis I wondered if Jack ever thought back to that night."

"There were other casinos, too," Walls said.

"Deauville, Sans Souci, Montmartre, Tropicana," said O'Brien.» The Mafia's great plan was to tear down Havana and rebuild it, make it completely modern and create a triangle of tourism between Miami, Havana and the Yucatan, an international zone of prosperity. That's what the Revolution stopped, not that the Revolution wasn't overdue but, economically, Cuba lost forty years."

"That's your plan, to reopen old casinos?"

"No," O'Brien said, "still too many hard feelings. Anyway, the Havana Yacht Club and Casino can be ten times bigger than any of these."

"You're ambitious."

"Aren't you?" Walls asked.» The Cold War's over. I was a hero in that war and look what it got me. Marooned."

"What kind of life is Moscow?" said O'Brien.» Wake up. You have sailed into Paradise and you're about to sail out. Don't do it. Stay here and work for us."

"Work for you? Take Pribluda's place?"

"Like that," said Walls.

"Why is it that I can't take this offer seriously?"

"Because you're suspicious," said O'Brien.» It's the Russian attitude. You have to be positive. Every millionaire I ever met was an optimist. Every down-and-outer expects the worst. It's a new world, Arkady, why not plan big?"

"You would share your Cuban gold mine with a man you'd never met before?"

"But I've met your type before. You're the man at the end of the pier, who's either going to jump in the water or change his life." O'Brien's eyes glowed with ... what? Arkady wondered. The showmanship of a salesman or the zeal of a priest, all his efforts bent to one moment of plausibility for this thoroughly ridiculous proposition.» Change it. Give yourself a chance."

"How?"

"As a partner."

"A partner? This gets better all the time."

"But partnership demands trust," O'Brien said.» You understand what trust is, don't you, Arkady?"

"Yes."

"But you won't show it. For two days I've been waiting for you to be as open with George and me as we have been with you. Please don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining. Don't tell me about an old map. Sergeant Luna told us about the picture of the Havana Yacht Club. We know about it. A picture of a dead Russian at the Havana Yacht Club is exactly what we don't need now."

"John would feel better if he had it," Walls said.

"If I had it I wouldn't have to worry about it. And I'd know that you had extended your trust to us the way we have with you. Can you do that, Arkady, and trust me with that picture?" O'Brien put out his hand.

Arkady felt the envelope with the photograph sticking to his back.» I don't know about business partnerships, I've always worked directly for the state. But what about this? If I accept your proposition and work for a year and have a villa and boat and a satisfying social life, at that point I will give you the photograph. Until then it's safe because we will be, as you say, partners."

"Are you hearing this?" Walls asked.» The mother is bargaining."

"Resisting." John O'Brien let his hand drop. He looked his age, suddenly a little spent, silver hair sticking to temples that were wet like sweat on the edge of greasepaint, like an actor who passionately acted a play for a dull, deaf audience.» Because you're Russian, Arkady, I'll make allowances. This is a new way of thinking for you, being part of a plan."

"Remind me, what part would I be?" Arkady asked.

"Security. George told you, in case any Mafia does show up."

"I'd have to think about this. I'm not sure I'm that tough."

"That's okay," Walls said.» People think you are."

"Appearances go a long way," O'Brien said.» I'll tell you why the Capri is my favorite casino. You know, the Mafia hired an actor, George Raft, to front for the Capri. Raft acted a gangster so many times people thought he was. He thought he was. Comes the night of the Revolution crowds start looting casinos. One mob heads for the Capri. Who goes out on the steps but Raft himself and says in his gangster voice, 'No punks are busting up my casino.' And they went away. He chased them. America's last stand."

Chapter Nineteen

The bodega was a warehouse with the dimmest light in Havana, and the fact that the lines were short and Ofelia was going to do the mule's work of carrying a sack of Vietnamese rice and a tin of cooking oil did nothing to improve her mother's mood.

"You either come home late or you don't come home at all. Who is this man?"

"He's not a man," Ofelia said.

"He's not a man?" Her mother amplified her wonderment to include as many people as possible in the conversation.

"Not a man like that."

"Like the musicians? Great husbands. Where is the last one, massaging Swedes in Cayo Largo?"

"I came home last night. Everything is okay."

"Everything is wonderful. Here I am with the world's greatest work of fiction." She slapped her ration book.» What could be belter? To know why you come home so late?"

"It's a police matter."

"With a Russian! Hija, maybe you haven't heard, the Russian boat has sailed. Gone. How did you even find one? I'd love to see this stranded Lothario."

"Mama," Ofelia begged.

"Oh, you're in your uniform, you're embarrassed to be seen with me. I can wait in line all day so you can run around and make the world safe for..." She indicated a beard.

"We're almost there." Ofelia fixed her eye on the counter.

"We're almost nowhere. This is nowhere, hija. Remember that boy you knew in school, the one with the fish tank?"

"Aquarium."

"Fish tank. Nothing but dirty water and two catfish that never moved. Take a look at those clerks."

At a counter with a register and scale were two women with whiskers who looked so much like those catfish that it was difficult for Ofelia to keep a straight face. There were four counters in the gloom of the bodega, each with a chalkboard that listed goods, prices, ration per person or family, and date available, the "date available" clouded from many corrections.

"Tomatoes next week," Ofelia said.» That's good news."

Her mother exploded with a laugh.» My God, I've raised an idiot. There will be no tomatoes, no evaporated milk, no flour and maybe no beans or rice. This is a trap for morons. Hija, I know you are a brilliant detective, but thank God you have me to shop for you."

A woman behind them hissed and warned, "I will report this counterrevolutionary propaganda."

"Piss off," Ofelia's mother said.» I fought at Playa Giron. Where were you? Probably waving your tits at American bombers. I assume you had tits."

Her mother was good at shutting people up. Playa Giron was what the rest of the world called the Bay of Pigs. Strangely enough, she actually had been in the army and shot an invader, although now she claimed she should have made him take her to Florida while she had a gun on him.

"I have a question," Ofelia said.

"Please, I'm reading the board. Two cans of green peas per family for the month. They will be delicious, I'm sure. Sugar is available. You will know the end is near when no sugar is available."

"About pickles."

"I don't see pickles."

"Where would I find them?" The Eastern Bloc had tried to unload bottled pickles in Cuba, but Ofelia hadn't seen them for years.

"Not here. In the free market you buy cucumbers and pickle them."

"Different sizes?"

"A cucumber is a cucumber. Why would anyone want a small cucumber?" At the counter her mother made a show of having her book properly marked and announcing, "You know, if you live on your rations you will enjoy a very balanced diet."

"That's true," one of the clerks was stupid enough to agree.

"Because you eat for two weeks and starve for two weeks." Having delivered her torpedo, Ofelia's mother turned and sailed for the exit, leaving Ofelia to follow with the heavy sack and can of oil the length of the bodega while everyone stared.

When they reached the street her mother stumped toward home.

"You are impossible," Ofelia said.

"I hope so. This island is driving me crazy."

"This island is driving you crazy? You've never been off this island."

"And it's driving me crazy. And having a daughter who's one of them." Her mother had been stopped by the police for selling homemade cosmetics door to door. They'd let her go, of course, as soon as they learned Detective Osorio was her daughter.» Your uncle Manny wrote to say there is a rocking chair waiting on the porch for me in Miami."

"With a drive-by shooting every night is what he wrote me."

"In his new letter he says he could take Muriel and Marisol. He says they would love South Beach. We could all go and the girls could stay."

"We are not going to talk about this."

"They would knock Miami out. They're beautiful girls and they're light."

That was always the insinuation her mother could twist like a knife, that Ofelia stood apart in the family by the deeper color of her skin, that Ofelia was different from her own daughters and, in reverse, a lifelong and

bitter disappointment to her mother. And Ofelia knew her mother could see the red heat in her cheek.

"They're staving with me. If you want to go to Miami, you can go."

"I'm only saying, it's a new world. It probably doesn't involve a Russian."

Arkady had Walls and O'Brien drop him off a couple of blocks short of the Malecon. Because he had the sense that Luna could leap over the seawall any second with an ice pick or machete once Arkady reached the boulevard, he stayed in the shadows of building columns until he reached an address with the tricolored banner of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, knocked at Abuelita's door and entered.

"Come in."

Light squeezed through with him into the narrow confines of her room, to the statue of the shrouded, dark-skinned Virgin and her shimmering peacock feather. Scents of cigar and sandalwood tickled his nose. Abuelita sat before the Virgin and solemnly laid cards. Tarot? Arkady looked over the old woman's shoulder. Solitaire. Today she sported a pullover that said "New York Stock Exchange." Arkady noticed that the statue also wore something new, a yellow necklace like Osorio's.

"May I?"

"Go ahead." When he touched the necklace beads Abuelita said, "In Santeria this Virgin is also the spirit Oshun and her color is yellow, honey, gold. Oshun is a very sexy spirit."

That hardly described Osorio, Arkady thought, but he didn't have time to delve into religious matters.

"I saw you leave this morning in that big white car, that chariot with wings," Abuelita said.» The whole Malecon was looking at that."

"Did you happen to notice any tall, black sergeant from Minint go in the building after I left?"

"No."

"No one fitting that description carrying a machete or a baseball bat?" He added five dollars to the crown at the Virgin's feet.

Abuelita sighed and took the money out.» I know the man you mean. The one who arranged the Abakua. I was at my window like I always am, but the truth is, I fell asleep right there standing up. Sometimes my body gets old."

Arkady put the money back.» Then I have another question. I still need a picture of Sergei Pribluda for the police and I'm looking for any close friends of his who might have one. No one here does, but the first time we met you mentioned that Sergei Pribluda was a man who shared his pickles. Yesterday I was at a market that sold vegetables, including cucumbers, but nothing like the homemade pickles in Pribluda's refrigerator. Because you're right, there's nothing like a Russian pickle. Did he have a special visitor?"

Abuelita spread her hand wide as a fan and hid her grin.» Now you're talking. There was one woman, a Russian, who came sometimes with a basket, sometimes not."

"Could you describe her?"

"Oh, like a fat little dove. She came on Thursdays, sometimes alone, sometimes with a girl."

Ofelia climbed a ladder to Hedy Infante's home, a platform built under the ceiling of a rococo foyer. The ten-by-ten loft held her cot, rack of dresses and stretch pants, electric bulb and candles, cosmetics and shoes, window with rope to a pail and view of the chandelier and, far below, a marble floor. The house had been built by a sugar magnate with a taste for froth, and the ceiling's swirls of white plasterwork evoked a sense of nesting in the clouds.

Hedy's interior decoration was just as fantastic, an interior of pictures she had clipped from magazines and taped to her walls, a handmade wallpaper of Los Van Van, Julio Iglesias, Gloria Estefan singing soulfully to a microphone, bathed in strobe lights, reaching out to fans. On one singer she had superimposed her own face, which reminded Ofelia of the real condition of Hedy's neck. The loft wasn't the sort of room a prostitute took a client, it was more her true, private place.

Private but violated by the little touches left by forensic technicians, police tape around the dresses, fingerprint powder on the mirror, the subtle disarray when men rather than women put things away. Hedy had collected hotel soaps, cutlery, coasters, made a seashell frame around a photograph of her quince, her fifteenth birthday party-the picture showed off the state-supplied frosted cake, beer and rum. In another photograph Hedy wore the blue ruffles and scarf of a devotee of Yemaya, the goddess of the seas, and, sure enough, on the wall was a statuette of Our Lady of Regla, spirit and saint being one and the same. A cigar box held snapshots of a variety of tourists with Hedy, toasting her with daiquiris or mojitos at cafes in the Plaza Vieja, Plaza de Armas, Plaza de la Catedral, the make-believe world of Old Havana. Hedy's favorites, though, seemed to be two photos pinned to a heart-shaped pillow of her and Luna. What had the techs made of that, the dead girl with the officer in charge? The photos had apparently been taken at different times because of a difference in clothes, but both in front of a building that bore in rusty stains the name Centra Russo-Cubano. On the underside of the pillow was pinned a third snapshot, this of Hedy, Luna and the little jinetera Teresa in the back of a white Chrysler Imperial. There were no names, telephone numbers or addresses around the bed, in the cigar box or on the wall.

There were no neighbors in the building to talk, and Ofelia went across the street to a botdnica, where a cardboard listed guava for diarrhea, oregano for congestion, parsley for gas. A Coca-Cola mirror hung on the wall, and taped to it were testimonials, including a postcard from Mexico with the illustration of a dancer with the same sort of ruffled skirt, black hair and fair skin as the woman she had seen kissing Renko. Ofelia personally couldn't care less, but she was annoyed, after all her efforts to ensure the bolo's safety, to see him invite just anyone in. Ofelia remembered how the woman leaned into Renko and brought his face down to hers.

"Hija?" The herbalista stirred from a chair.

"Oh, yes." Ofelia bought a bag of mahogany bark for her mother's rheumatism before mentioning Hedy.

"Yerba buena," the herbalista remembered Hedy by remedy.» A pretty girl but a nervous stomach. A dancer, too. Such a shame."

The woman knew Hedy from the local group that performed at Carnival. There had been sixty dancers, drummers, men balancing giant tops, all dressed in Yemaya's signature blue and swirling like waves all the way up the Prado where the Comandante himself was in the reviewing stand. And she remembered Hedy's friend, who could burn a hole through wood with his gaze.

"There, that's him."

A Minint Lada stopped outside Hedy's address, and Luna emerged with more haste than usual. Ofelia turned her back to the door, removed her cap and watched the street in the mirror, which meant she had to endure more recommendations from the herbalist and the stupid card from Mexico, but only for a minute before the sergeant came out of Hedy's with the heart-shaped pillow.

But it didn't matter to Ofelia that none of the technicians who visited Hedy Infante's loft had gathered the pillow and its photographs in time. It didn't matter whether or not they dusted Hedy's childish possessions for prints. None of them for all their expertise would understand Hedy as well as she did.

Ofelia lived in two worlds. One was the ordinary level of ration lines and bus lines, of streets of rubble, of the blue trickle of electricity that allowed Fidel to flicker on the television screen, of oppressive heat that made her two daughters spread like butterflies on the cool tiles of the floor. The other was a deeper universe as real as the veins beneath the skin, of the voluptuous Oshun, maternal Yemaya, thundering Change, spirits good and bad that brought blood to the face, taste to the mouth, color to the eye and dwelled in everyone if they were evoked. Just as drums carried a kola seed that was the soul of the drum, that only spoke when the drum was played, every person carried a spirit that spoke through their own heartbeat if they would only listen. So Ofelia Osorio carried the fire of the sun hidden behind her dark mask and saw with a penetrating light the double worlds of Havana.

This time Arkady found Olga Petrovna in a housedress and her hair up in curlers as she was organizing bags of food in the front room of her apartment. She gave him the pained smile of a pretty woman, an older woman caught by surprise. A fat little dove? Perhaps.

"A side business," she said.

"A healthy side business."

What had been a Russian nook was obscured by rows of white plastic bags stretched to the bursting point by Italian coffee tins, Chinese tableware, toilet paper, cooking oil, soap, towels, frozen chicken and bottles of Spanish wine. Each bag was taped and marked with a different Cuban name.

"I do what I can," she said.» It was so much easier in the old days when there was a real Russian community here. Cubans could depend on us for a decent supply of dollar goods from the diplomatic market. When the embassy shipped everyone home, that put a heavy burden on those of us who were left."

For a percentage, Arkady was sure. Ten percent? Twenty? It would have been vulgar to ask such a perfect Soviet matron.

"I'll be right back," she promised and slipped into a bedroom, which emitted a hint of sachet. She called through the door, "Talk to Sasha, he loves company."

From its perch a canary seemed to examine Arkady for a tail. Arkady peeked into the kitchen. Samovar on an oilcloth, oilcloth on the table. Calendar with a nostalgically snowy scene. Salt in a bowl, paper napkins in a glass. A sparkling shetf of home-bottled jams, pickles and bean salad. He was back in the front room when she returned, ash-blond hair brushed into place, primped in record time.

"I would offer you something, but my Cuban friends will be arriving soon. It makes them nervous to see strangers. I hope this won't take long. You understand."

"Of course. It's about Sergei Pribluda. You said the first time we spoke that some women on the embassy staff speculated because of the improvement of his Spanish that he had become romantically involved with a Cuban."

Olga Petrovna allowed herself a smile.» Sergei Ser-geevich's Spanish was never that good."

"I suspect you're right, because he was so Russian. Russian to the core."

"As I told you, a 'comrade' in the old sense of the word."

"And the more I investigate, the more it's clear that if he did find a woman to admire that deeply, she only could have been as Russian as he was. Would you agree?"

While Olga Petrovna maintained the same bland smile, something defiant appeared in her eyes.

"I think so."

"The attraction must have been inevitable," Arkady said.» Perhaps with reminiscences of home, a real Russian dinner and then, because an affair within the embassy is always discouraged, the necessity to plan liaisons that were either secret or seemed accidental. Fortunately, he lived well apart from other Russians, and she could always find a reason to be on the Malecon."

"It's possible."

"But she was seen by Cubans."

There was a knock at the door. Olga Petrovna opened it a crack, whispered to someone and shut the door gently, returned to Arkady, asked for a cigarette and, when it was lit, sat and exhaled luxuriously. In a new voice, a voice with body, she said, "We didn't do anything wrong."

"I'm not saying you did. I didn't come to Havana to ruin anyone's life."

"I have no idea what Sergei was up to. He didn't say and I knew better than to ask. We appreciated each other, was all."

"That was enough, I'm sure."

"Then what do you want?"

"I think that someone close to Pribluda, who cared for him, probably has a better photograph than what you showed me the first time."

"That's all?"

"Yes."

She rose, went to her bedroom and returned a moment later with a color photograph of a tanned and happy Colonel Sergei Pribluda in swim shorts. With the warm Caribbean at his back, sand on his shoulders, and a grin as if he'd shed ten years. For Bias's purposes of identification the photograph was perfect.

"I'm sorry, I would have given it to you before, but I was sure you would find another one and this is the only good one I have. Will I get it back?"

"I'll ask." He slipped the picture into his pocket.» Did you ever ask Pribluda what he was doing in Havana? Did he ever mention anyone or anything to you?"

"Men like Sergei perform special tasks. He would never say and it wasn't my place to pry."

Said like a true believer, Arkady thought; he could see what a match Pribluda and Olga Petrovna had been.

"You're the one who sent the message from the embassy to me in Moscow, aren't you? 'Sergei Sergeevich Pribluda is in trouble. You must come at once.' It was unsigned."

"I was worried, and Sergei had spoken so respectfully of you."

"How did you manage to send it? You must need authorization to send messages to Moscow."

"Officially, but we're so understaffed. They rely on me to do more and more, and in some ways it's much easier to get things done. And I was right, wasn't I? He was in trouble."

"Did you tell anyone else?"

"Who would I tell? The only real Russian at the embassy was Sergei." Her eyes brimmed. She took a deep breath and glanced toward the door.» What Cubans don't understand is while we may not sing and dance as much as they do, we love just as passionately, don't we?"

"Yes, we do."

Certainly Osorio would never understand, Arkady thought. It was a relief to be away from the detective's steamy mix of revolutionary zeal and Santeria spirits, to be in a more solid world where post-Soviet romance blossomed over pickles and vodka, and motive could be measured in dollars and bones were left in the ground and murder made logical sense.

The sight of chicken thawing in a plastic bag seemed to bring Olga Petrovna back to earth. She heaved a bosomy sigh, twisted out her cigarette in an ashtray and in a minute became a businesswoman again, checking a mirror for the proper image of a sweetly gray grandmother.

On the way out Arkady passed a file of people waiting on the steps. From the top of the stairs, Olga Petrovna had a second thought.

"Or, maybe I've been here too long," she said, "maybe I'm turning Cuban."

Chapter Twenty

Ofelia parked the DeSoto near the docks for fear of blowing a tire. Havana had been the staging area for the treasure fleets of the Spanish empire. Over time silver and gold were replaced by American automobiles, which were replaced by Russian oil. All of this was handled in the warehouses of a barrio called Atares, and when the Soviet Union collapsed parts of Atares, like a half-empty vein, did too. One decrepit warehouse dragged down its neighbor, which destabilized a third and spewed steel and timbers into the street until they looked like a city that had undergone a siege, stone pulverized in heaps, garlands of twisted steel, not to mention the potholes and shit and doorways heady with the reek of urine. Ofelia had done invasion training in Atares and remembered how convincing it was to carry make-believe wounded across a landscape of collapse. It was no place you'd want to drive into.

The single building standing on its corner was the Centre Russo-Cubano. The center had served as a hotel and social meeting place for Soviet ships' officers in port and was designed like a three-story ship's deckhouse in cement with porthole-style windows and a red Soviet flag of glass set into the house at bridge height, although at this point the ship seemed to have sailed through bad weather and run aground, rubble piled around the steps, iron railings ripped off. Ofelia was surprised the doors opened as easily as they did.

Inside, faint rays of light fell from the windows into a lobby. A curved reception desk of Cuban mahogany was flanked by a girl in black marble cutting a brass sheaf of cane and, on the other end, a bronze sailor hauling a net. The cane cutter was barefoot, work clothes molded to her body. The sailor bore heroic Slavic features, and his net overflowed with fish. Russo-Cubano, indeed! Cubans had never been allowed in, this had been strictly Russians only. All the signs, reception, buffet, director, were in Russian. Through the dust Ofelia made out a floor mosaic of a hammer and sickle on a barely discernible pattern of blue waves. The only sign of recent life was in the middle of the lobby where a dull red ray of light reached down from the glass flag to a Lada with Russian diplomatic plates.

The sound of clicking drew her eyes up to a lightbulb hanging on a cord, to busts of Marti, Marx and Lenin decorating a mezzanine balcony and finally to a goat moving along the balcony rail. The goat stared down with disdain. Nothing but a goat could have climbed the stairs, blocked as they were by the ripped-out and abandoned cage of the elevator. No great loss, Ofelia thought. Since power outages began, people didn't trust elevators anyway. An extension ladder reached from the lobby to the balcony. More goats appeared.

At the steering wheel of the Lada sat a black man, his head twisted toward her, staring. When he didn't answer her or get out she pulled her gun and opened the door. Out sagged a rag doll, Chango, with a half-formed face and glass eyes, dressed in pants and shirt, a red bandanna around his head. She looked into the car. Red candles were burned down to waxy tears on the dash. From the rearview mirror hung a shell necklace and a rosary. The sound of a bell drew her attention back to the balcony, where a Judas goat pushed its way to the forefront of the other goats and stretched its neck to stare down. As a group they stiffened and, in a clatter of hoofs, scattered not at the sight of her, she realized, but someone else behind her.

Ofelia wasn't so much aware of being hit as plunging to the floor and then waking in a burlap sack, blind as a rabbit bagged for market. She'd lost her gun and a large hand wrapped tight around her throat as a suggestion not to scream. When the fingers relaxed, the sweet, milky scent of coconut burst into her mouth.

Sometimes, not knowing was better than knowing. Isabel's long-awaited E-mail from Moscow glowed on Pribluda's screen.

Dear Sergei Sergeevich, what a pleasure to hear from you and what a surprise! I should have written you long ago and told you how sorry I was to hear of the passing of Maria Ivanova, who was always so kind to everyone. You were blessed to have such a wife. I remember the day we came in off an assignment and were so cold we couldn't speak. We had to point at the frostbite on each other's nose. She made practically a banya in the bathroom with herbs and birches and steaming water and a cold bottle of vodka. She saved our lives that day. All the best people are gone, it's true. And now there you are in the tropics and I am still here but not much more than a librarian. But busy, every day someone wants to declassify this or that. Last week I had a visit from a lawyer of a Western news organization demanding I open the most sensitive archives of the KGB as if they were nothing more than a family album. Is nothing sacred? I say that with tongue in cheek but also seriously. We can no longer simply say, "Those who know, know." Those days are gone. However, promises made must be promises kept, that is my watchword. Where society and historical truth are served by disclosure, where traitors will not be lionized or honorable reputations destroyed, where innocent people who thought they were doing their duty in often hazardous circumstances are not victimized by new standards then, yes!, I am the first man to drag facts to the sunlight.

Which brings me to this inquiry of yours about a former leader of the Cuban Communist Party, Lazaro Lindo. In particular, you ask whether Lindo was involved in a so-called Party conspiracy against the Cuban state. As I remember, Castro claimed that a circle within the CCP, feeling that he had led his countrymen down a path of adventurism, was conspiring with the USSR against him. True or not, the consequences were severe: strained relations between the Cuban and Soviet states, arrest and imprisonment of some of the most devoted Cuban Party members, Lindo among them. Naturally, this was and remains a most sensitive matter. What you ask for is documentation that.no such conspiracy existed or that, if it did, Lindo was not part of it. I understand this might allow his daughter to gain permission to travel. Unfortunately, I cannot satisfy you. But it was a wonderful surprise to hear from an old friend.

By the by, the entire country is a cheese full of maggots these days. You're well out of it.

Roman Petrovich Rozov

Senior Archivist Federal Intelligence Service

Rozov@RRFISarch.org

Arkady printed the letter out to give Isabel, but it was clear that Rozov, Pribluda's old comrade-in-arms, as good as admitted both the plot and Lindo's part in it, and although Arkady didn't know Isabel well or even like her, he dreaded passing the letter on because he had recognized the desperation in the kiss she had given him the night before. Why kiss him otherwise?

The kiss angered him because it was a parody of real desire, her hard mouth clinging to him until he pushed her away. All the same, he asked himself, would a Cuban have rejected her? Would any warm-blooded man?

The other answer he dreaded was in the photograph he had extracted from Olga Petrovna, the picture that could conclusively identify the body in the morgue as Sergei Pribluda, yes or no. It was revealing how relieved he was that Bias had not been at the laboratory. Arkady had left the photograph rather than wait for the doctor to learn for a certainty that Pribluda was the body in the drawer.

Arkady folded the printout from Moscow to slip under Isabel's door.

How many sorts of coward could a man be?

She was inside a car trunk in a sack, arms tied at elbow level, more burlap sacking piled on top of her. Ofelia threatened and reasoned, but whoever put her in closed the lid and never said a word. A car door shut without the sagging of someone getting in. Steps walked away. White or black, she hadn't seen, but an inner part of her had registered his scent, the sound of his breathing, his speed and size, and she knew it was Luna.

She shouted until her throat was raw, but the sacks stuffed on top muffled her and she doubted she was heard more then ten steps away, let alone from the street. She decided to wait until she heard someone, although she didn't feel even the reverberation of a car passing the Centro Russo-Cubano. Well, who would drive there? She could as well have been at the bottom of the bay.

With every breath, sacking clung to her face, hemp and coconut shag filled her nose and mouth, and she became aware that with all the bags over her she'd already consumed most of the trunk's available oxygen. She'd never thought of herself as having an unusual fear of tight spaces. Now it took all her concentration not to hyperventilate and waste what air was left. She felt her gun under her but outside the sack, a particularly embarrassing tease. At least she didn't yet need to empty her bladder; she thanked God for small favors.

Irrelevant items came to mind. Whether the trunk was clean. What sort of dinner her mother was cooking for Muriel and Marisol. Something with rice. She started tasting tears as well as sweat.

Ofelia thought about the statue of the girl gathering cane. The hair was wrong, long and flowing instead of wiry, but the face was right, especially the eyes anxiously twisting up, surprised.

Depend on the Russians. There was no spare tire and the nut and bolt that usually held one down dug painfully into her back. She squirmed, trying to hook the bolt on the rope that pinioned her arms, but it was like twisting in a shroud.

He was more depressed by the possible identification of Pribluda's body than he would have expected. Originally he had refused the body simply to goad the Cubans into some sort of investigation, but now he found there was also part of him that at a more basic level irrationally and against all the evidence refused to accept the colonel's death. How could anyone so tough and ugly die? The man was a brute, and yet Arkady felt like a one-man funeral cortege, perhaps for selfish reasons. Sergei Pribluda was the person on earth he knew best and, in the colonel's way, one of Arkady's last connections to Irina.

When she had been wrapped in white on a gurney, her hair brushed, her eyes meditatively shut, her mouth relaxed into a smile, the doctor reassured him it was normal to think that a loved one was still breathing. The cool chilled his sweat. He recalled Pushkin's lines how the lover ... counts the slow hours, vainly trying To hurry them: he cannot wait. The clock strikes ten: he's off, he's flying, And suddenly he's at the gate.

This was the gate that would never open. He would return again and again, race and pant like a schoolboy, strain to see her breathe one more time and the gate would stay barred.

Did people die of love? Arkady knew a man on a factory ship in the Bering Sea, a killer, who had fallen in love with a woman, a whore who died at sea. He erased himself from the face of the earth by stripping off his clothes and plunging through the ice. The shock of the water on bare skin must have been incredible, but the man was immensely strong and kept swimming away, away, away from the light. For murderers, senators, whores and good wives, love proved to be not the lamp at the ship's bow but the ship itself, and when the light was gone a person had no place to go but down.

Although Arkady was no expert in love he was an expert in death, and he knew the possibility of a relatively painless death for the diver. What killed expert swimmers practicing underwater laps in pools was not a strangling on water but the soft oblivion of oxygen deprivation. At the end they no more than gently stirred, even if in the last lit cell in their brain they were still stroking powerfully ahead, from the depths of her throat for the edification of new admirers. The image of herself naked on a steel table for the doctor's examination was bad enough, but she'd seen other bodies after a day or two in a warm car trunk, and the recollection was enough to make her saw the rope against the tip of the bolt whether it cut her or not.

She tried to think of music that would lend a vigorous rhythm to work to, but all that came to mind was a famous lullaby by Merceditas called "Drume Negrita" that whispered, "Go to sleep, my little black girl. If you sleep I'll bring you a new cradle and for your new cradle I'll bring a new bell. You are my favorite, my pearl, my beloved girl, so don't cry no more," though strangely enough the voice Ofelia heard was her mother's.

Ofelia prayed. There was a panoply of spirits and saints that might help her if they only knew. Sweet Yemaya, who saved men from drowning. Meek Santa Barbara, who changed in an instant to Change wreathed in lightning. Ofelia's patron, though, had always been Oshun, not that Oshun had particularly helped in the past if husbands were anything to go by. However, the gods picked you more than you picked them, and Oshun was the useless god of love. Ofelia saw herself sometimes as a little dark boulder in the middle of a river of useless love. What she needed was a sharp knife. Unless she got out of the car trunk soon, she would asphyxiate and Bias would be tweezering hemp threads

Floating in the dark above his bed the halo of the ceiling fixture put Arkady in mind of Rufo's white hat of woven straw, made in Panama with Rufo's gilded initials on the sweatband, which didn't mean anything to Arkady at the time because he hadn't connected it to AzuPanama S.A. Now he had to wonder what else he had seen in Rufo's room and not understood. The fact that neither Luna nor Osorio had come for Rufo's key suggested that they still hadn't tried the key Arkady had surrendered, and it was even possible that no one had been in the room since.

Was Luna waiting? Was Luna coming? Since the odds were even, Arkady slipped on his overcoat, his protective shadow, emptied the envelope of meager evidence into a pocket and went down to the street. He walked a block until he flagged a car. Arkady didn't remember Rufo's address, but he recalled the fading words on the wall next door and asked for the Gimnasio Atares.

"Te gustan los pugilistas?" The driver punched the air.

"Absolutely," Arkady said. Whatever they were.

Fighters. Next door to Rufo's the open-air boxing arena of the Gimnasio Atares had come to life, and Arkady got a glimpse over a line pushing through the gate of a ring illuminated by a hanging rack of lights. Spectators chanted, blasted whistles, rang cowbells under a layered atmosphere of smoke and orbits of insects. It was between rounds, and in opposite corners two black boxers shining with sweat sat on stools while their trainers convened like great minds of science. As the gong rang and every head craned to the center of the ring, Arkady unlocked Rufo's door and slipped inside.

There were some changes from his earlier visit. Bed, table and sink were in place. Rufo's Panama still hung on its hook, the photos of the boxing team still populated the wall and by the sofa was the same curious list of phone numbers for a man without a phone. The TV and VCR hadn't disappeared, nor the boxes of running shoes and cigars, but the minibar had disappeared.

With an eye for other souvenirs from Panama, Arkady once more went through the closet and drawers, shoes and cigar boxes. The Rogaine came from a Panamanian pharmacy and a cardboard coaster came from a Panama City club, but he didn't find anything significant.

It seemed possible to Arkady that a man who memorialized a visit to the Eiffel Tower might have taped a trip to Panama. He turned on the television, slid a cassette into the player and at once turned down the volume of hyperexcited Spanish as on the screen two fighters pummeled each other around a ring under the auspices of their national flags. The tape had the blotchy color of old East German film and the jerkiness of too few frames per second, but he could make out a young, lithe Rufo hammering an opponent and, a moment later, having his glove raised by a referee. The next fight on the tape featured Mongo, and it occurred to Arkady how boxers were basically drummers, each man trying to establish his rhythm as the beat: I am the drummer, you are the drum. A dozen tapes were of other international tournaments, and another half-dozen were instructional: proper ways to jump rope, work the bag, move without falling down.

All the other tapes had glossy sleeves with pornographic pictures and titles in different languages. Bringing sex films to Cuba seemed to Arkady like bringing pictures of pearls to an oyster bed. A couple of French videotapes had been shot in Havana and featured couples romping on deserted beaches-no one he recognized. One tape tided Sucre Noir had been shot on a rainy day. It featured interracial couples sporting in a living room decorated with cinema posters. Arkady was interested in the decor because he realized that he had been in the same room. Down to the stacks of photo albums, collection of cast-bronze bells, ivory phalluses arrayed by size, he recognized the apartment of Mostovoi, the Russian embassy's photographer. On the wall between the posters were the same framed photographs of friends in Paris, London, waving from a boat. He paused the tape. There was one more photograph that hadn't been up when he'd visited Mostovoi, five men with rifles kneeling around what looked like a dead rhinoceros, too unfocused on the tape for him to make out faces. Big-game hunters in Africa, a Hemingway-style memento given center stage in Mostovoi's collection. Why would Mostovoi hide that?

Someone was trying to unlock the door. Arkady turned off the VCR and listened to a key trying to force its way through the cylinder, followed by a low curse in a voice he recognized. Luna.

Arkady could hear him thinking. The sergeant probably had the key Arkady had given to Osorio, which worked perfectly well on Arkady's apartment in Moscow. Luna wouldn't know that; all he'd know was that keys didn't stop working, and either the lock had been changed or this was the wrong key. He'd examine his other keys. No, this was the key the detective had given him. Maybe he hadn't had to use it before. On Arkady's first visit he had closed the door but not set the latch and anyone could have simply turned the knob to open it. Someone had, since some items were gone and the latch had been set by the time Arkady returned, although setting it didn't necessarily require a key, just pushing a button on the lock plate, and this might be the first time Luna actually had to try the key.

For his part, Arkady became aware that the Gimnasio Atares was silent, the riot of whistles and bells over. Luna had been annoyed to see Arkady merely venture to the santero's. How unhappy would he be to find Arkady in Rufo's room?

The door jumped as a fist hit it. Arkady could feel Luna stare at the lock. Finally, feet turned away, accompanied by the sound of metal scraping stone. When Arkady cracked the door open, Luna was a block away under a streetlamp that had faded to brown. Two fighters in sweatsuits shuffled painfully out of the arena gate, followed by a trainer mopping his face with a towel. As they reached his door, Arkady slipped out in front of them, close enough to screen himself from Luna and merge his shadow with theirs all the way to the far corner. Focused on their own aches, the trio stumbled on. Arkady stopped and looked back.

Luna was returning. The sound of metal was an empty cart with iron wheels that he pushed to the curb outside Rufo's. The captain was in plain clothes and this time, instead of relying on the niceties of a key, he jammed his ice pick into the latch, applied his shoulder and the door swung open. The captain seemed to know what he was after, carrying out the television, VCR and boxes of running shoes to the cart. He rolled the load away, the wheel's grinding reverberating on either side. Despite the dim lights, with the cart's slow pace and noise Luna was easy to follow.

Somehow the sergeant was able to find more empty and desolate streets as he went, maneuvering the cart around mounds of broken stone, the sort of scene that made Havana appear an earthquake zone. Some warehouses had fallen in so long ago that palm trees leaned out the windows. The two men traveled about ten blocks before Luna stopped at the darkest intersection yet and let the cart stand while he positioned a board on the steps of a corner building, then muscled the cart up the makeshift ramp and through outward-opening double doors. Arkady heard the cart roll on stone and what sounded like the bleat of goats.

He followed up the steps. Somehow power had been fed to the building because in the vaulted dark was the ember of a hanging bulb. Luna had moved out of sight to a deeper interior; Arkady heard the cart progressing through a hallway.

He felt as if he had uncovered a Soviet mausoleum. There were the floor design of a hammer and sickle under the dirt, unlit sconces of red stars, busts of Marx and Lenin along the balcony, the difference being that instead of a sarcophagus in the middle of the floor there was a Lada with plates that read 060 016. Pribluda's car. And some lighter touches: at opposite ends of a counter of dark wood were two statues, black and white. The black figure looked too frail for the sugarcane she had cut, but the white was a Russian superman who had scooped the bounty of the sea-flounder, crab and octopus-in a single net. A tapping led Arkady to look up toward the mezzanine again. Between Marx and Lenin shone the gunslit eyes of goats. Dust stirred around the bulb. Although no one was visible in the car it shifted from side to side and not just as a trick of the feeble light.

The keys to Pribluda's car had been in Arkady's possession since the autopsy. He opened the trunk and felt a mound of burlap sacks. The bottom sack was heavy and tied with a rope. Arkady untied the sack and pulled it off while the goats bleated. Osorio raised her head, too stiff to stand. As he lifted her the front doors of the lobby swung open and a goat bell rang. Luna had returned not from the hall but through the same door Arkady had just used and the sergeant carried not a bat but a machete. He said something in Spanish that pleased himself enormously.

Osorio pressed her mouth to Arkady's ear.» My gun."

He saw the Makarov in the car trunk. As Osorio hung on, he picked up the gun and cocked it.» Get out of the way."

"No." Luna shook his head.» I don't think so." Arkady aimed over the sergeant's head and squeezed the trigger. He needn't have bothered, the hammer snapped on an empty breech. Luna pulled the lobby doors closed.» This is justice."

Arkady put Osorio into the front passenger seat of the car and went around to the driver's side. Ladas were not known for their power, but they did start. In the coldest or warmest weather they started. Arkady turned on the engine and lights and, blinded, Luna stopped for a moment, then crossed the floor in two strides and brought the machete down on the car. Arkady reversed so that the blow landed on the hood, but Luna slapped the blade sideways and split the windshield into two caved-in sheets of safety glass. Unable to see, Arkady drove forward, hoping for a piece of the captain, only to hit the long counter head-on. The rear window crystallized as the machete swung through. Arkady backed up, cutting the wheel to sweep Luna away. The blade came straight down through the car roof, probed and vanished. Just when Arkady thought the Cuban was actually on the car, one headlight exploded. A ladder toppled, crushing Osorio's side of the car.

Arkady peeled off enough windshield to see. The falling ladder had grazed the bulb, and as the light swung, goats, stairs, statues swayed from side to side. He backed into a column hard enough to rock the balcony, shot forward and aimed at Luna, silhouetted by crystals on his shoulders. Missed him, but as the hanging bulb flared to life Arkady saw an electric highway of glass leading to the doors and followed. As the doors burst open, the Lada landed askew on the steps, righted itself and shouldered through debris. The left-front fender was crushed, and left turns seemed to be impossible. He drove toward the streetlamp, and when he was a block beyond he looked back through the gaping rear window to see Luna running after. Arkady pushed the car as fast as it could go until the sergeant was out of sight.

At last the streets ended at docks and the deep black and trailing lights of the harbor. Air blew through the windshield and windows and safety glass sparkled on their laps. The Lada limped over railroad tracks and finally swung into an alley, scaring the spangly green eyes of a cat caught in the headlight, and lurched to a stop.

A black hand swung around Arkady's seat and hit him in the chest. He grabbed its wrist and twisted in his seat to the figure of Change. The man-sized doll had been riding in the back of the car, still wearing its red bandanna, still holding its walking stick in its other hand, its dark expression the glower of a kidnap victim. Ofelia aimed the Makarov, loaded or not, at the doll.

"Dios mio." She let the gun drop.

"Exactly." Arkady got out of the car on weak legs.

He counted the gashes in the roof and sides of the car. The front was crushed, headlights empty sockets.

"If it were a boat it would sink," he said.» It will get you to a doctor."

"No," Ofelia said.

"To the police."

"To say what? That I've refused orders from the police? That I hid evidence? That I'm helping a Russian instead?"

"It doesn't sound so good when you put it that way. Then what? Luna will only follow us to Pribluda's."

"I know where to go."

Considering that Ofelia made the arrangements in the middle of the night, she didn't do badly. A switch from the Lada, Change and all, to her DeSoto and then to a room at the Rosita, a love motel on the Playa del Este just fifteen miles outside the city and a block from the beach. All the Rosita's units were free-standing white stucco cottages from the fifties with air-conditioning and kitchenette, television and potted plants, clean sheets and towels at a price only the most successful jineteras could afford.

The first thing Ofelia did once they were inside was to shower the burlap and shag off her body. Wrapped in a towel, she asked him to pick nuggets of glass from her hair. He'd expected her curls to be stiffer, but they were as soft as water and his fingers never looked more thick and clumsy. Between the wings of her shoulder blades the skin was rubbed raw and seamed with grains of glass. She didn't flinch. In the bathroom mirror he saw her eyes on him and the natural kohl of their lids.

She said, "You were right about the photograph Pribluda took of you. I found it when I dusted his rooms for prints just as you said. I was the one who gave it to Luna."

"Well, I never told you that what Luna wanted from me was the photograph that Pribluda called the Havana Yacht Club. We're even."

"Claro, we're both liars. Look at us."

He saw an unlikely pair, a woman smooth as soap-stone with a ragged man.

"What was Luna saying when he came back?" he asked.

"He said Rufo's television was warm, so he knew you were there. Why didn't you think of that?"

"Actually, I did."

"You followed him anyway?"

Arkady wondered, "Are you possible to please?"

She said, "Yes."

Chapter Twenty-One

She was a dark sprite, except that in bed she was a woman. Her breasts were small, tipped in purple, her stomach sleek down to a triangle of sable. He laid his mouth on hers, and it was so long since he had been with a woman that it was like learning to eat again. Especially when the taste was different, heady and strong, as if she were coated in sugary liqueur.

He was helpless in his own greed, working his way through the exquisite unfolding as Ofelia, his new measure, drew him in. There was something convulsive in this feast for the starving, who had taken the vow of hunger.

He would have said he cared for people, wished them well and did his best by them, but he had been dead. She would raise Lazarus and close her legs around him so as not to let him go. She kissed his forehead, lips, the bruises on the inside of his arm as if each kiss healed. She was hard and lithe and soft and certainly more artful and vocal than he was. This seemed to be allowed in Cuba.

Outside, he heard the ocean say, This is the wave that will sweep away the sand, topple the buildings and flood the streets. This is the wave. This is the wave.

On the bed Arkady arranged Pribluda's photograph of the "Havana Yacht Club," the AzuPanama documents, his chronology of Pribluda's last day, list of dates and phone numbers from Rufo's wall. While Ofelia sorted through them Arkady took in a cement floor painted blue, pink walls with paper cupids, plastic roses in ice buckets and an air-conditioner that gasped like an Ilyushin taking off. They had placed Change in a corner chair, the doll's head resting heavily against a kitchen counter, hand balanced on his stick.

"If these documents are real," Ofelia said, "entonces, I can see why a Russian would think AzuPanama is more an instrument of the Cuban Ministry of Sugar than a genuine Panamanian corporation."

"It would seem that way."

Arkady told her about O'Brien and the Mexican truck parts, the American boots and the real Havana Yacht Club.

"He's a charmer, an intriguer, he goes from one story to another. It's like being led down a path."

"I'm sure it is."

He was distracted by the fact that all she wore was his coat and a glimpse of yellow beads. He hadn't noticed when she had put on the necklace. The coat was huge on her, and the sight was like rinding a photograph of one woman in a frame that had always held a picture of another. Every second that it clung to her, it was exchanging auras of scent and heat and memory.

Ofelia knew. It was not totally true, but the charge could be made that once she had detected his grief she had suspected his loss, and once she had observed the tenderness with which he treated his coat and discovered the faint history of perfume on its sleeve, from that moment on she was determined to wear the coat herself. Why? Because here was a man who had loved a woman so deeply he was willing to follow her right into death.

Or it might be he was just the melancholy sort-in short, a Russian. But it had to be said that when she was in the trunk of the car, trussed, bagged and barely breathing, the one person she thought might save her was this man she hadn't even met a week before. Muevete! Ofelia told herself. Get your clothes on and run. Instead, she said, "In Panama almost anything can happen. O'Brien's bank is in the Colon Free Trade Zone of Panama where everything happens. Still, he has been a friend to Cuba and I don't see what sugar has to do with the Havana Yacht Club or Hedy or Sergeant Luna."

"Neither do I, but you don't try to kill a man who is leaving in a week unless whatever is going to happen will happen soon. Then, of course, everything will be perfectly clear."

In his disheveled way, in a white shirt, sleeves rolled, long fingers cupping a cigarette, he was Ofelia's picture of a Russian musician. A musician sitting by a bus stalled on the side of the road somewhere in the Urals.» Let me get this right. You're saying that Rufo, Hedy, Luna, everything that has happened so far is to cover up a crime that took place not in the past but hasn't even taken place yet? How are we going to find that?"

"Think of it as a challenge. The biggest advantage a detective usually has is that he knows what the crime is, that's his starting point. But we're two professional investigators. Between the Russian Method and the Cuban Method let's see if we can stop something before it happens."

"Okay. For the sake of argument, somebody's planning something and we don't know what. But you force their hand when you come here with a picture of Pribluda with his friends, the two car mechanics, at the old Havana Yacht Club, which, incidentally, since the Revolution, is the Casa Cultural de Trabajadores de Construction, but that aside, Rufo tries to kill you for this picture. It would have been much easier to ignore you, so we will give some weight to that. Second, you force someone's hand again when you visit the Havana Yacht Club and Walls and O'Brien come out to take you off the dock and offer you some sort of employment, which, by the way, is too ridiculous to consider. Again it would have been easier to pay you no attention at all. Third, Luna beats you with a bat, but he doesn't try to kill you, maybe because he can't find that picture. Meanwhile, is anyone trying to kill you over AzuPanama? No. Trying to put the smallest hole in you over AzuPanama? No. Forget about AzuPanama, it's all about this picture," she said and stabbed it with her finger.

"That's one way to look at it."

"Good. But what this picture has to do with the future I don't know and neither do you. You just like to play games with time."

She was all too accurate about that, Arkady thought. She was right about a lot.» There are two ways back to whatever happened to Pribluda. One is Mongo and the other, I think, is through O'Brien and Walls."

"Well, your friend O'Brien is nuts if he thinks he's going to start a casino. Not while Fidel is alive. No casinos. That would be complete surrender. And let me tell you something else, two men like O'Brien and Walls are not going to share their fortune with someone who lands in a plane from Russia." Ofelia hesitated to ask, "Do you have a plan?"

"According to a note on Rufo's wall something about Angola is happening at the Yacht Club tomorrow night." He looked at his watch and corrected himself.» Tonight. We might drop in."

"Angola? What has Angola got to do with this?"

"Rufo wrote 'Vi. HYC 2200 Angola.'"

"This is some plan."

"I'd also like to find Rufo's cell phone."

"He didn't have one. In Havana cellular phones come from CubaCell, which is a joint venture between Mexico and Cuba. Anyone with dollars can get one, but I called CubaCell myself and they have no listing for Rufo Pinero."

"He had a phone, we just haven't found it. I'd like to push that phone's memory and learn who his best friends were."

This was the way he was at the boatyard, Ofelia thought. Absolutely certain about something invisible. The problem was that she agreed. A hustler like Rufo was incomplete without a cell phone.

There was an explosion of laughter outside as a couple walked by to a different unit. Ofelia felt compelled to explain how she knew about the Rosita, the system of jineteras and police. From the Ministry of the Interior an officer like Luna could protect Hedy and a whole string of girls at tourist bars, hotels and marinas. The Rosita was safe because it was under the wing of the police in the Playa del Este. She added, "Luna also does things for his own protection. He and Rufo were involved together in political activities, silencing dissidents. Maybe some of those people are anti-Cuban but Luna and Rufo sometimes went too far."

"Did Mongo?"

“No.”

"Captain Arcos?"

"I don't think so."

"And were they all involved in Santeria, too, like the ceremony I saw?"

"That was not Santeria." Ofelia touched her necklace.» Leave the spirits to me."

The second time was not as ravenous but just as sweet. Pleasure left alien for so long made the skin a sensual map to be explored in detail from an undercurve of the breast to the pink of the tongue to the fine hairs of her brow.

She had a variety of endearments in Spanish. He simply liked the name Ofelia, the way it filled the mouth and spoke of dreaminess and flowers.

The second time had a slow rhythm that rolled up the spine. He wouldn't know the beat but Ofelia did, the steady rocking of the tall drum, the sideways shake of the shells on the gourd, the quicker pace of hourglass drums and then the mounting acceleration of the iya, the biggest drum with the deepest pitch and in the center of its skin a red resinous circle that spread the warmer it grew until she felt herself stretched to the breaking point, breathless while he held on, his heart pounding like a machine that hadn't worked in ages.

"Now I know everything," Ofelia murmured.» I know all about you."

She laid her head on his shoulder. The oddest thing, he thought, was how well she fit. Staring up at the dark, he felt he was free-floating now, as far from Moscow as a man could get.

"What does peligroso mean?" he asked.

"Dangerous."

"A man said that at the Hemingway marina. We can start there."

In the dark Ofelia told him about the priest in Hershey, the town where she grew up.

The priest was not only Spanish but so frail that people said it was his cassock that held him up. He became a scandal, though, when he fell in love with the manager's wife. The manager and his wife were American. Hershey was American. There were two great smokestacks of the mill belching black smoke and the wooden shacks of the workers, but in the center of town was a road of shade trees and cool stone houses with screened windows for Americans, where only Americans or Cubans with work passes were allowed. There was a baseball and basketball team run by the Americans, and American women taught school for Cuban and American children. Both the wife and the priest taught school.

She had angelic blond hair that shone through the mantilla she wore to church. All Ofelia could remember about the husband was that his Oldsmobile always gleamed because it was always being washed. The problem in Hershey was the heavy soot that came from burning bagasse, the sugarcane after the juice had been pressed out. Bagasse burned very hot and produced soot as thick as fur. It was well known among maids who worked in the houses that the manager drank, and when he was drunk he hit his wife. One time when he came to school and began to drag her out, the priest stepped in between and that was probably when all three realized that the priest and the wife were in love. Everyone saw, everyone knew.

Then all three disappeared the same night. Weeks later when men cleaned ash from the furnaces at the mill, they found a crucifix and pieces of bone. They recognized the priest's crucifix from around his neck. Everyone assumed that the manager killed him and threw his body in the oven and took his wife back to the States and that was the end of it, except, a year later, someone came back from a trip to New York and said he had seen the manager's wife walking on the street arm in arm with the priest, who wasn't dressed like a priest anymore but just an ordinary man. Everyone else in Hershey laughed at this account because they remembered the priest, how timid he was. But Ofelia believed because she had seen that very same priest fight a bull.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Ofelia had gone out earlier, and he didn't recognize her at first when she returned in skintight white jeans, white tube top and white-rimmed dark glasses, and carrying bags of coffee, sugar, oranges. She had a blinding new aura, he thought, like a nuclear reactor when control rods were withdrawn, and she had for him a shirt with the embroidered design of a polo player, short-brimmed straw hat, fashionable hip pack, sunglasses.

"Where did you find these?"

"There are hotels in the Playa del Este with dollar boutiques. It's your friend Pribluda's money, but I think he would approve, no?"

He picked up the shirt.» I don't think it's me."

"You have no choice. Luna has a picture of you. In case he circulates it, we have to make you look different."

"I'm never going to look Cuban."

"Not Cuban, no. If people can mistake a tourist for you, maybe they'll mistake you for a tourist."

The truth she admitted only to herself: that she had experienced a shameful thrill walking into boutiques with so much money. She had also added a new comb and brush to her floppy straw bag. Necessities for a certain role. And to dress a man was a pleasure she felt in the marrow of her bones.

She folded his coat over a chair.» We paid for two nights, we can leave your coat here for now."

The Playa del Este offered the overwhelming nothingness of sand and sea and houses wearing a sun-bleached memory of color rather than color itself. A billboard announced the imminent construction of a French hotel by a "Socialist-Leninist Brigade of Workers," and down the beach rose ranks of new hotels already built. Ofelia drove, and Arkady discovered that to ride in Ofelia's DeSoto, a vintage monster with wedge-shaped fins, was to be invisible. A white tourist with an attractive Cuban woman was instantly categorized and dismissed. For the first time, he fit in because there were examples of him and Ofelia everywhere, a tall Dutchman and a nearly miniature black girl sitting at a table under a single Cinzano parasol that constituted a sidewalk cafe, a Mexican with a blonde jinetera taking the air in a bicycle cab, a beefy Englishman with a girl tottering on new platform shoes. Ofelia identified their nationality at a glance. What Arkady noticed was that each couple held hands but had no conversation.

"They each have a fantasy," Ofelia said.» He that he can leave his ordinary life and live like a rich man on an island like this. She that he will fall in love with her and take her away to what she thinks is the real world. It's better they can't communicate."

But Ofelia, too, felt a welcome invisibility in her dark glasses and jeans, in the attitude of her chin, and when they passed the plate glass of a gift shop she saw the reflection of a perfectly acceptable jinetera and tourist, perhaps slightly more handsome than usual.

At the approach of a Cuban girl the guard at the gate of the Marina Hemingway started from his box, only to step back in when he saw Arkady escort her around the barrier. He led Ofelia by the marina shop and across the grass to the dock where George Washington Walls had left him off after his visit to the Havana Yacht Club. The same loud volleyball game seemed to be in progress. Other Americans trafficked back and forth with bags of laundry. A boy in cutoffs hand-trucked cases of beer to a blue-water yacht the size of an iceberg, yet Ofelia treated the sight of three canals filled with million-dollar power yachts as offhandedly as Cleopatra reviewing her barges. Perhaps she was unimpressed, he thought, because of the Cuban girl suspended in a hammock from a sailboat boom.

"What's so dangerous here?" Ofelia asked.

"I don't know. You've been here before?"

"Once or twice. You go ahead. I'm looking for someone."

Among the sameness of fiberglass boats the Gavilan had a dark, distinctive silhouette, and Arkady picked it out at the slip Walls had been heading for when he was waved off by a harbor master yelling "Peligroso!" at snorkelers. There were no swimmers in the water now, and Arkady couldn't see any problem. The seaplane tender nudged peacefully against the tire fenders of the dock while lines fed electricity from a shoreside outlet box over the boat's brass rail. No swimmers, no shouts, only the deep throbbing of a motor yacht taxiing down the canal.

He continued along the canal, seeing no obstructions in the water, no flotsam by the dock. A galvanized pipe led water to each slip; a foreign crew was washing down a three-story megayacht, spraying one another, drinking the water, so it was even potable. American boats in Cuba made for an interesting community, grandiose white palaces mixed in with raffish fishing boats mus-tached with stains, all bending the law by even being where they were. Arkady had no experience on yachts himself, but having spent some time in Vladivostok around factory ships and trawlers, he knew a little about bringing power on board, and what caught his eye about the waist-high electrical distribution boxes spaced along the dock of the Marina Hemingway was how few had ordinary outlets to plug into. Instead, a power line led from the box while another led from the boat, and where they met the lines were spliced and taped together, the connection protected from water by a clear plastic shopping bag taped at the ends. He worked his way to an empty outdoor bar at the far end of the dock. Fully half the hookups he saw on the way went through spliced and bagged electrical lines sitting in water between the hull of the boat and cement wall of the dock.

The transom of the Alabama Baron was smeared with fish guts and scales, although the jinetera in the sailboat's hammock didn't look like a fisherman to Ofelia. The girl had the Julia Roberts look from the film Pretty Woman, very popular in Cuba, tons of hair, myopic eyes, pouty lips, and she was watching a bracelet being sold on a portable television connected to a small satellite dish bolted to the dock. Ofelia recognized the Home Shopping Network, also very popular in Cuba among those with access to dishes. The woman on the television laid the bracelet across her wrist to let the light play on the stones. The sound was off, but the price flashed in the corner of the screen.

"That's beautiful," Ofelia said.

"Isn't it? Good price, too."

"Diamond?"

"Same as. Last week, they had a chain for the ankle with the same stones. You think that's a good price, but wait." The woman on the television spread the bracelet on a bed of velvet and added a pair of earrings.» See, I knew. You order too soon and you don't get the earrings. You have to know to wait and then pick up your phone and give them your credit-card number and the bracelet's yours in two days." Julia Roberts glanced over.» You're new here."

"I'm looking for Teresa."

The television woman brushed back a mantle of hair to model the earrings, left, right, frontal. Another girl in a top and thong came out of the cabin. Her hair was almost as short as Ofelia's but peroxided blonde.» You know Teresa?"

"Yes. Luna told me she would be here."

"You know Facundo?" The girl in the hammock sat up.

"I met him."

"Teresa's real upset," the blonde knelt by the rail and whispered.» She was next door when Hedy got her throat slit. They were close."

"She got run in, too," Julia Roberts said.» Some police bitch gave her a tough time. For helping feed her family, you know."

"I know," said Ofelia.

"Teresa's scared," the blonde said.» She went home to the country. I don't think she's going to be here for a while."

"Is she afraid of the sergeant?" Ofelia asked.

"You met the sergeant, what do you think?" Julia Roberts said.» With all due respect, what do you think? I just know him, but Teresa and Hedy were his private girls, understand?"

The blonde checked out Ofelia's vital points.» Aren't you a little old to be doing this? What are you, twenty-four, twenty-five?"

"Twenty-nine."

"Not bad."

"I-am-trying-to-sleep," a deep voice in American came from the bowels of the sailboat, and a form struggled up the galley steps. It had to be the Alabama baron himself, Ofelia thought. He wore a Houston Astros cap, shorts and a Hawaiian shirt that couldn't cover a sunburned belly that he salved by rolling a can of beer over its expanse. He loomed over the two Cuban girls on his boat.» Talk-talk-talk-talk-talk-Jesus-Kayrist-you-women-talk. Whoa," he said as he caught sight of Ofelia, "the talent contest may still be open."

"She's with me," Arkady said. He had worked his way back along the dock to the tender and the sailboat, berthed one behind the other.» We were just admiring the boats."

The baron glanced around at the beer cans on his deck until he noticed that Arkady meant the Gavilan.

"Yeah, sure, that's a fucking classic. A genuine rumrunner, everything but the bullet holes."

Rumrunner? Arkady liked that. That smacked of Capone.

"Fast?"

"I'd say so. You're talking a V-12, four hundred horses, sixty knots, faster than a torpedo boat. 'Cept with a woodie you spend all day at the dock sanding, varnishing, polishing."

"That's a drawback," Arkady agreed.

"No time to fish. Of course, they do all the upkeep for him here. He gets special treatment. Where you from?"

"Chicago."

"Really?" The baron digested that.» You fish?"

"I wish I could. I don't have enough time."

"Locals keeping you otherwise occupied?" The baron's eye returned to Ofelia, who kept her face blank of comprehension.

"Busy."

"Well, it's a fish or fuck world, it really is. I'll tell you what, the last thing in the world I want is lift the embargo. Cuba is cheap, beautiful, grateful. Take away the embargo and it'll be 'nother Florida in a year. Hell, I'm a man on a pension, I'd hardly be able to afford Susy here." He pointed with his free hand to the girl in the hammock, whose eyes had returned to the shopping network and a new item, a clock in a crystal elephant. Arkady remembered Rufo's list of names and phone numbers. Susy and Daysi. Did the other girl peroxide her hair for a daisylike effect? Arkady could tell that Ofelia had caught the name too.

"What do you mean, 'special treatment'?" he asked the baron.

"The owner of that boat is George Washington Walls. Their hero. Hey, I was a fireman twenty years, I know about heroes. Heroes don't put a gun to no pilot's head."

"You're not just...?" Arkady raised his eyebrows delicately.

"Racist? Not me." The baron waved his arm toward the jineteras and Ofelia as proof.

"For example, then?"

"For example." The baron was hot now. He hung on to a guy wire for balance and pointed to the hookup servicing the tender.» Check out the power lead installed specially for him just yesterday. Now, look at mine." Where the Alabama Baron's lead dipped into the water was the typical splice in a bag that was filthier than the others.» I understand they're clever devils here and they got American boats and European boats with whole different electrical frequencies and they got to jury-rig a new line for every boat that hooks up, but I'm a fireman and I know hot lines and water. Get this lead in the water and spring a little leak and you will fry yourself some very surprised fish. All I'm saying is, how come Senor Walls has himself the only berth in the entire marina with a new power lead?"

"And if a swimmer was in the water?"

"Kill him."

"Heart attack?"

"Stop it cold."

"And there would be burn marks?"

"Only if he touched the line. I've seen bodies in tubs with a hair dryer, same thing. Look at her"-the baron gave Ofelia an approving nod-"like she understands every word."

The very statement that Teresa had gone back to the country made Ofelia believe that the jinetera was lying low in Havana in the rooms of her friends. Calling from the DeSoto, Ofelia tried the numbers Rufo had listed for Daysi and Susy, and when neither phone answered, Ofelia called Bias.

"It's not like a bolt of lightning but yes"-the doctor agreed with her-"if a live wire falls into water, there would obviously be a charge."

"How strong?"

"It depends. Submerged in water, power is diffused exponentially depending on the distance from the source. Then there is the size and physical condition of the victim, and the peculiarities of each individual heart."

"A fatal charge?"

"Depending. Alternating current, for example, is more dangerous than direct current. Salt water is a better conductor than fresh."

"Leaving marks?"

"It all depends. If there was contact, there would be a burn. Farther away, a person might only experience a tingle in his extremities. But the heart and the respiratory center of the brain are regulated by electrical impulses and an electrical shock can initiate fibrillations without necessarily causing trauma to tissue."

"Meaning," Ofelia said, "that somewhere between too near and too far to a live wire in water, a victim could suffer a heart attack and there would be no entry or exit mark, no burns, absolutely nothing?"

There was a silence at the doctor's end. Traffic rattled on the Malecon. Arkady seemed to be enjoying his cigarette enormously.

"You could put it that way," Bias finally said.

"Why didn't you say so before?"

"Everything in context. Where would a neumatico encounter an electrical wire in the middle of the sea?" There was a burst of static and Bias changed the subject.» Have you seen the Russian?"

"No." She met Arkady's eyes with hers.

"Well," Bias said, "I notice that he left a new photograph of Pribluda for me."

"Have you matched it to the body yet?"

"No. There are other murders, you know."

"But you will try? It's important to him. You know, as it turns out he's not a total idiot."

Since they'd skipped breakfast, they stopped at a park table for ice cream. Huge leathery trees overhung a playground and a shooting gallery. Ofelia was going after Teresa and Arkady wanted to see Mostovoi's apartment again, but at the moment the detective looked like a movie star on the Riviera, lips pink with strawberry.

"We can meet here later and have ice cream for dinner," Arkady said.» At six? And if we miss each other, then ten o'clock at the Yacht Club and we'll see what that has to do with Angola."

Ofelia was suspicious.» What will you do in the meantime?"

"A Russian named Mostovoi has a picture of a dead rhinoceros I want to take a look at."

"Why?"

"Because he didn't show it to me before."

"That's all?"

"A simple visit. And you?"

"You said last night when you followed Luna he was pushing a cart of what looked to you like black-market goods. Well, what goods? Maybe they're still there. Someone has to see."

"You're not going alone?"

"Do I look crazy? No, I'll take plenty of help, believe me," Ofelia said. She looked very composed for a moment and then pulled down her dark glasses in shock.

Arkady turned to face two girls in maroon school jumpers. They had green eyes and hair streaked with amber and held cones of ice cream close enough to drip on his shoulder. An energetic gray-haired woman in a housedress and sneakers followed with a vengeance.

"Mama," Ofelia asked, "why aren't the girls in school?"

"They should be in school but they should see their mother from time to time, too, don't you think?" Ofelia's mother took in Arkady.» Oh my God, it's true. Everyone's meeting a nice Spaniard, a little Englishman, you found a Russian. My God."

"I just asked her to bring some toiletries," Ofelia told Arkady.

"She looks unhappy," Arkady said.

"Don't offer her your chair."

But the deed was done and her mother was settling in where Arkady had been.

"My mother," Ofelia muttered as an introduction.

"My God," her mother said.

"My pleasure," Arkady said.

With a pride Ofelia couldn't suppress, "My daughters Muriel and Marisol. Arkady."

The girls rose on tiptoe for his kiss.

"Where do you even find a Russian?" her mother asked.» I thought they were gone like the dodos."

"He's a senior investigator from Moscow."

"Good. Did he bring food?"

"They look just like you," Arkady told Ofelia.

"You dressed so nice." Muriel looked Ofelia up and down.

"Those are new clothes." Ofelia's mother took a second look.

"No hablo espanol," Arkady said.

"Just as well," Ofelia assured him.

"He bought them?"

"We are working together."

"Then that's different, that's absolutely different. You're colleagues exchanging gifts of esteem. I see possibilities here."

"It's not what you think."

"Please, don't disabuse me when I have hopes. He's not so bad. A little lean. A week or two of rice and beans and he'll be fine."

"Do you like him?" Marisol asked Ofelia.

"He's a nice man."

"Pushkin was a Russian poet," her mother said.» He was part African."

"I'm sure he knows that."

"Pushkin?" Arkady thought he heard something to hang on to.

"Does he have a gun?" Muriel asked.

"He's not carrying a gun."

"But he can shoot?" Marisol asked.

"The best."

"The target gallery!" the girls shouted together.

"They see you so little," Ofelia's mother said.» You shouldn't begrudge them a little fun, and your Russian marksman can show off."

The shooting gallery was a gutted bus on blocks, the back end replaced by a counter of air rifles that faced an array of American jet planes and paratroopers cut from soda cans. Behind them, on a black dropcloth, an artist had added cutout stars and comets and a vista of the Malecon with drivers shooting from convertibles. Sound effects were supplied by a tape of machine-gun fire. The sisters pushed Arkady into an open space at the counter.

"He should feel right at home," her mother said.

"Pump it." Muriel pushed the rifle into his hands.

"You have to pump it," Ofelia said as she paid.

"First the planes, first the planes," Marisol said.

The rifle was a toy with a tiny bead at the tip of the barrel. He fired at a particularly mean-looking bomber, and the paratrooper next to it jumped.

"What are you aiming at?" Ofelia asked.

"I'm aiming at everything."

The wrong target was the best he did. Kids around him made planes hop, spin, dance, but for all the shiny, dangling invaders every other shot of his thudded igno-miniously into the backdrop.

"He must be high up in the police," her mother said.» I don't think he ever shot at anything."

The girls pushed a rifle into Ofelia's hands. She gave the lever two quick pumps and aimed at a big bomber from Tropicola.

"I think the bead's a little off," Arkady suggested.

The bomber pinged and spun.

"No, Mama," Marisol complained.» In the center."

Balancing her glasses on her forehead and tucking the stock more firmly against her cheek, Ofelia pumped and fired at a more steady pace. Silvery planes swung and paratroopers sang and danced. A comet, too, for good measure. The glasses dropped down over her eyes, it didn't matter, she had half the targets swaying at once. Arkady thought of the plane that had brought him less than a week ago, which now seemed an age. Here he was out in the open with Luna looking for him, but what better camouflage was there than a Cuban family? What could be more strange and more natural? Twelve hits with twelve shots earned Ofelia the prize of a can of lighter fluid that her mother tucked into a net bag. As she said, "Everything counts."

Appeased, the girls allowed themselves to be kissed by Ofelia and taken in hand by their grandmother, who dipped into her bag to give Ofelia a plastic toiletries bag and something wrapped in greasy newspaper.» Banana bread from Muriel's bananas. You remember the bananas?"

"I can't take this bread."

"Your daughters helped make it. They would feel much better if you did."

Muriel and Marisol made their eyes huge.

"Okay, okay. Thank you, girls." A farewell round of kisses.

"Feed it to him," her mother advised.» And take care of him."

Chapter Twenty-Three

What Arkady remembered of Mostovoi's accommodations on the sixth floor of the Hotel Sierra Maestra were a runway balcony of parked tricycles and, within, a living room with movie posters, African artifacts, a plush shag rug, leather sofa and a balcony facing the sea. He also recalled a front-door lock and deadbolt, a sensible precaution considering the cameras and equipment inside. And in case he thought of rapelling athletically by rope from the hotel roof down to Mostovoi's oceanview balcony, he had noticed in Rufo's videotape Sucre Noir that the sliding glass door was jammed shut by a steel bar. Spetznaz troops knew all about swinging in through glass doors; Arkady did not. Also, the trick was not just getting in, it was getting Mostovoi out and taking another look at the photographs on the wall.

Mostovoi was correct in calling his hotel Central Europe. The cafe and boutique of the Sierra Maestra were Russian, the graffiti on the elevator door was Polish and the entire lobby was empty. Even the smell of rancid oil from the popcorn machine at the entrance stairs couldn't conceal a standing funk of cabbage.

The last time Arkady had visited, Mostovoi had switched a photograph of a sailboat for the safari picture. Or perhaps he had given away the rhino since otten tired of seeing a dead animal on his wall. The safari picture, however, had looked like the exotic centerpiece of his private gallery, and Arkady wanted to see it on his own before Mostovoi could rearrange the pictures again. The idea was to get Mostovoi out in a rush.

Arkady may not have been a marksman or a commando, but one valuable thing he had learned was that fuel for mayhem was everywhere. Behind a door marked entrada FROHIBIA filthy drapes lay on a three-legged chair of black leatherette set between plastic bags of corn kernels and potato chips and containers of cooking oil. Arkady made sure the other lobby exits were unlocked before he carried the chair and drapes to the popcorn machine and returned for the chips and oil. He opened the containers and poured the viscous oil down the hotel steps, threw the drapes on the oil, added the bags of chips to the drapes and lit the last bag with his lighter. Rufo's lighter, actually. The plastic bag caught nicely and potato chips, dry and saturated with grease, were by weight about the best kindling on earth. The chair and drapery were polyurethane, a form of solid petroleum. Cooking oil had to get hot enough to vaporize, but when it did it was a hard fire to put out. Then he climbed the stairs to the sixth floor.

Arkady took his time. The alarm, an old-fashioned clapper on a bell, sounded before he was halfway up, and by the time he reached the stairway door on Mostovoi's floor and looked down, the blaze was a brilliant orange accelerated by the grease of the chips while darker flames lapped at the chair and drapes. Residents lined the balconies for the spectacle of motorcycle police leading a red fire-engine pumper and a tank. The hotel was only blocks away from Miramar's embassy row and Arkady had expected a fast response. A bald Mostovoi in shorts peeked out his door, ventured to the balcony rail with the other residents on his floor and jumped back before his door latched behind him. Spectators on the sidewalk scattered as the oil ignited with an orange whoosh all the way from the popcorn machine down to the street. The effect of shore breeze over the hotel created just enough vacuum to draw black smoke toward the building. Plastic silk floated up as a fireman with a bullhorn waved for the gawkers on the balconies to evacuate. Arkady stood aside rather than be stampeded by families rushing down. Mostovoi's flat was nearer the stairs at the other end of the balcony. He hopped out again in pants, shirt, toupee, camera bags slung every which way off his shoulders, shoes in hand, the dapper sort who hated to be hurried. Even as Mostovoi started down the far stairs Arkady walked to the door, pulling Pribluda's wallet from his new hip pack as he went. Burdened with gear, Mostovoi hadn't paused to turn the deadbolt, the door was only on the latch. Arkady selected a credit card; he'd seen this done in movies, but he'd never actually tried it. If it didn't work, he'd just wait for Mostovoi to return. He slipped and wiggled the card in the jamb as he turned the knob and swung his hip into the door. Three hits and he was in.

The apartment looked again like the residence of a middle-level Russian diplomat abroad decorated with souvenirs of a man who had seen much of the world, who cleaned for himself better than most bachelors, with an interest in books and the arts, who kept his own creative efforts under wraps. The photograph Arkady had noticed in the videotape was on the wall, back in its place between the pictures of a colleague at the Tower of London and a circle of friends in Paris.

It was a photograph of five men with assault rifles, one standing and four kneeling around a dead rhinoceros. Now he could see that the poor animal's feet were shredded and its stomach winking with shiny intestine. The men were not hunters but soldiers, one Russian soldier and three Cubans. Mostovoi, twenty years younger and balding even then. Erasmo, his beard mere boyish wisps. A coltish, skinny Luna cradling an AK-47. Tico with the bright, reckless smile of a leader, not the nearsighted focus of a man searching for leaks in an inner tube. And standing behind them in a safari jacket of many pockets, George Washington Walls. On the bottom border was written, "The best demolition team in Angola shows a fellow revolutionary their new mine-sweeping device." The rhinoceros's legs were pulp to the knees. Arkady considered the beast's frenzy of agony and confusion when it had wandered into a minefield, and he also thought of the callousness men develop in the midst of trying to stay alive. Tico and Mostovoi were on the ends of the group. By Tico's knee was the flattened pot of a pressure mine. By Mostovoi's was the convex rectangle of a claymore, an antipersonnel mine with the warning in English "This Side to Enemy." It was a good photograph, considering that Mostovoi had most likely set the camera's timer and run to take his place, considering the sharp African light, considering that mines were probably still all around. Arkady could almost hear the flies.

Arkady moved through the rest of the apartment before Mostovoi returned. On his first visit Arkady hadn't seen the autographed photographs in the hallway of Mostovoi with famous Russian film directors or the erotic boudoir series of Cuban girls that seemed to have been shot in his own bed. Arkady looked in the bureau, night table and under the pillow. A side table held a laptop, scanner, printer. The laptop denied him access as soon as he turned it on. The chances of hitting Mostovoi's password were remote. There was no gun in the drawer or under the bed.

Arkady walked farther down the hall into a small room redone as a darkroom with a black curtain inside the door. A red light was on, as if Mostovoi had been interrupted in the middle of developing. Arkady squeezed between an enlarger and trays of sour-smelling fixer and developer. Red film curlicued from a red clothesline. Held to the light, the film had nothing more than volleyball in the nude, and the developed pictures pinned to a board were embassy fare: Russians visiting a sugar combine, delivering postcards from the children of Moscow, pushing vodka on Cuban editors. The Russians, indeed, looked like bolos.

Back in the hall, Arkady had to push past more cabinets of photographs. He riffled through contact sheets of vacations in Italy, Provence. No nudes, no Africa. Finally in the kitchen he opened the refrigerator and found vichyssoise, an open can of olives, Chilean wine, canisters of color film and behind a bag of eggs a 9-mm Astra, a Spanish pistol with a tubular barrel. He emptied the magazine on the side of the sink, replaced the clip, wiped the gun and returned it behind the eggs. An empty ice tray sat in the sink. Arkady filled the tray with bullets and water and put it in the freezer before he sat in the living room and waited for Mostovoi to return.

Going by Rufo's sort of calendar-the urgency, that is, in trying to kill someone who would be in town for only a week-Arkady felt that time was running out. His time was. Tomorrow night he could be boarding his flight for home, he and Pribluda, but he felt he was still before the event, whatever it was that would make sense of the Havana Yacht Club, Rufo and Hedy, and the best demolition team in Africa.

Ofelia didn't bring anyone. Careful not to scuff her new shoes, she walked up the steps of the Centro Russo-Cubano, dropping her dark glasses into her bag with the banana bread as she stepped into the lobby, which had changed from the day before: the statues of the cane cutter and the fisherman had toppled facedown on the tiles, the ladder stretched by a splintered counter and no car sat on the lobby floor. Dust climbed the red ray of light falling from the stained glass overhead. Centro Russo-Cubano? From what she knew of this place, when the Russians thought they led the way to the glorious future, it was a very rare Cuban who had ever been invited in.

She took a deep breath. Ofelia had come alone to see whatever Luna had carted in the night before because she didn't want to involve anyone else until she knew what evidence she could find. The PNR did not accuse an officer of the Ministry of the Interior lightly. That was her professional reason. The real reason was personal. Nothing humiliated Ofelia more than being afraid, and inside the trunk of the Lada she had been afraid to the point of tears. She took extra target practice at the Guanabo range just so that wouldn't happen. A dusty mirror hung over the counter. She caught sight of herself as she took the gun from her straw bag and swung, body and weapon moving as one dangerous little jinetem.

Being back in the lobby made her taste the hemp and coconut milk again. That was the way Luna had picked her up, like a coconut to be thrown into a bag and the bag tossed into a trunk. She'd tried to find the Lada on the way, and it had disappeared, perhaps already being cannibalized in an Atares warehouse. A shiny track showed where the cart's iron wheels had rolled over the floor tiles of a hammer-and-sickle pattern toward a grim corridor of cement walls and doors of Cuban hardwood.

Ofelia kicked the first door open, entered an empty luggage room, scanned with the gun and returned to the hall before anyone could approach behind her. The next door had the title of "Director" and promised to be larger and farther from the dim light of the lobby. She'd reloaded the gun but she should have brought a flashlight. She knew she should have thought of that.

This was the sort of situation where a person had to gauge what they were most likely to encounter. A sergeant of the Ministry of the Interior carried the same firearm she did, but a man from the Oriente might have more confidence in his machete. Also, he knew the layout of the Centra Russo-Cubano, she didn't. He could pop out of any corner like an oversized goblin.

Ofelia shoved the door with her foot, slipped in and crouched against a wall. When her eyes adjusted she saw that the office had been stripped of desk, chairs, rug. All that was left were a bust of Lenin on a pedestal and horizontal red-and-black stripes spray-painted on the walls, windows, across Lenin's face. She heard something move in the hall.

It occurred to Ofelia that perhaps she should have changed into her uniform. If the PNR found her dressed like this, what would they assume? And Bias? He'd think what fun they could have had in Madrid.

She slid out of the office on one knee aiming left, then right. Whatever it was had stopped, although Luna could be coming from either direction. This was a time when target practice paid off just for holding a heavy gun steady for so long. Banana bread was a ludicrous item to be toting and she considered lightening her load. But the girls had helped bake it.

The next office was empty except for corn kernels and feathers underfoot. She heard a step behind her again, tentative, hanging back, and she tried to get low enough to sight on a silhouette. She moved across the hall into what had been a meeting room with no table, no chairs, no windows, just a faint row of framed Russian faces and ships. She thought if there was more than one individual after her this was a perfect opportunity to lock the doors at each end and seal her in as effectively as entombing her.

Slower, she told herself, although she was blinking through sweat, mouth breathing too, not a good sign, and her shoulders ached from the weight of the gun. She was in the dark until she opened a door to a linen room, where the light poured through unbroken windows onto shelves that once held sheets and pillowcases still white; even the dust was white as talc. On the floor a headless white chicken lay in a circle of dried blood. She left the door open to illuminate the hallway and followed a sign that pointed to "Buffet." Checked into a pantry with nothing except lists on the wall in Russian of meat, dairy and starchy goods expected six years before. There was a note to a certain Lena, "Russian potatoes, not Cuban potatoes." Historical documents that faded as the linen-room door shut.

This was the darkest yet. Reentering the hall was like stepping into a pit. Nothing but black behind her, and nothing ahead but faint light tracing a buffet door. She could feel as much as hear the step behind her, it was that close. Her father had cut cane, she knew how cane cutters worked. First slice to the base, second high to lop off the cane head. Arkady had said Luna was right-handed, which meant that, constrained by the dimensions of the hall, a downward swing to the left. She got as small she could on the right side.

She felt breathing on her. A hairy face pressed against hers and she reached out to feel two stubby horns. A goat. She'd forgotten about the goats. The rest were gone or this was the only one that had found a way down to the ground floor. A small goat with a stiff beard, sharp ribs and an inquisitive muzzle that pressed into her bag. The banana bread, of course, Ofelia thought. She laid her gun between her legs, unwrapped the bread and broke off half. She couldn't see the goat but she could hear it devour the bread as if it hadn't been fed for days. The scent of the bread must have been an irresistible trail through the building. She was glad her Russian hadn't seen this.

When the goat tried to tear up the rest of the bread Ofelia gave it a not unkind kick, then scratched its scrawny neck to make amends. Growing up in Hershey, she'd had to deal with goats, chickens, voracious hogs.

Discouraged, the goat backed away with a tremulous baa, and although Ofelia expected it to go the way it had come and return to the herd, something seemed to pull it in the opposite direction. She couldn't see the goat, but she heard its hooves tap closer to the buffet door, to the ghostly smell of food six years past. It was a swinging door. The goat nosed it open, there was a glimpse of dingy light, enough to invite the goat and it trotted through. The door flapped twice, settled, and then flew open to flame and smoke.

Although she was shielded at the moment of detonation Ofelia's ears rang, her face felt scoured. Cement dust filled the dark hall, and devoid of both sight and hearing she swung the gun one way and then the other until the air cleared enough for her to make out again the faint light that traced the buffet door. She crawled forward, felt a cord hanging slack on its lower lip and pushed the door open.

It had only been a fragmentation grenade, Ofelia thought, but in close quarters it accomplished its mission well. Half the goat was close to the door, half well down the hall, like a botched job of being shot from a cannon. One wall was pocked from metal shards. Burn marks on the other showed where the grenade had been placed at floor level, the cord around its ring. Soft clots dripped from the ceiling.

Beyond, the hall opened to the buffet, where Russian sea captains and their officers had once been served cognac and cakes, and farther on she saw a large kitchen with a vent that someone from the outside had once tried to break through, bending a louver enough let a single finger of light pierce the murk.

She waited for the nerve to move forward. It would come any second.

Arkady missed the park rendezvous with Ofelia. He sat in Mostovoi's living room facing the door and flipped through the pages of an address book he had found in the nightstand. Pinero, Rufo. Luna, Sgt. Facundo. Guzman, Erasmo. Walls. No Tico that Arkady could find, but otherwise the old team was all accounted for. Plus, Vice Consul Bugai, Havana hotels and garages, French film labs, many girls' names with notes on age, color, height.

Eight o'clock. Mostovoi was taking a long time to reappear. The emergency was long over, fire engines gone and residents returned to their apartments. He'd expected Mostovoi to enter, be surprised and affect outrage at the sight of an interloper. Arkady would ask him questions about Luna and Walls and pose them in a manner designed to make Mostovoi resort to the gun in the refrigerator. It was Arkady's experience that people who were upset were much more talkative when they felt they had turned the tables. If Mostovoi actually pulled the trigger, that would be information too. Of course, this scenario depended on Mostovoi's not carrying another gun in one of his camera bags.

Arkady only had to close his eyes for images to appear. Pribluda's Havana Yacht Club. Olga Petrovna's Pribluda and Pribluda's farewell snapshot of him. The best demolition team in Africa. The images we carry. Tribal people seeing photographs for the first time thought they were stolen spirits. Arkady wished that were true. He wished he had taken more photographs of Irina, but he saw her all the time whenever he was alone. Of course, being in Havana was like living in a faded, badly tinted picture.

Nine o'clock. The day had disappeared while he had waited for a man who wasn't coming back. Arkady carefully replaced the address book where he had found it, refiled the photos in their boxes and slipped out the door to the balcony, where tots up late raced tricycles back and forth. From halfway across Miramar the lights of the Russian embassy stared back. He took the elevator down. The popcorn machine was gone and the stairs were charred; otherwise it was as if he hadn't come at all.

Following First Avenue along the water, he put one foot in front of the other in the manner, he thought, of a sailing ship towed by rowboats when the wind had died. Not until he passed Erasmo's family house did he realize his legs were taking him to the rendezvous with Ofelia at the Havana Yacht Club.» Vi. HYC 2200 Angola." Tonight was the night.

Or maybe not. He was late when the royal palms of the Yacht Club's driveway came into view and Ofelia's DeSoto wasn't in sight at all. The club was black, the only lights two flashlight beams patrolling the long driveway. No sound except cars circling the rotary and the laugh of a bird nesting in a palm. This had been his brilliant idea, his chance to jump ahead of events. Whatever this event was, it was on a different Friday night. He looked for Ofelia on the other streets feeding the rotary. Although half an hour didn't seem very late in Cuba, she wasn't there.

A taxi stopped for him and Arkady dropped into the seat beside the driver, an old man with a cold cigar.

"A donde?"

A good question, Arkady thought. He had gone everywhere he could think. Back to Mostovoi's? To the Playa del Este and Ofelia? See, this was exactly the way he'd lost Irina, he reminded himself. Inattention. How else could a man miss not one but two rendezvous? In English he said, "I'm looking for someone. Maybe we can just drive around."

"A donde?"

"If we could drive around here, around the Yacht Club?"

"Where?" the old man took the cigar from his mouth, blew the word as if it were a ring of smoke.

"Is there an event nearby for Angola?"

"Angola? Quieres Angola?"

"I don't want to go to the embassy for Angola."

"No, no. Entiendo perfectamente." He motioned for Arkady to be patient while he pulled a stack of business cards from his shirt pocket, found one and showed Arkady a well-thumbed pasteboard card with an embossed tropical sun over the words "Angola, Un Paladar Africano en Miramar."

"Muy cerca."

"It's near?"

"Claw." The driver stuffed the card back in his shirt.

Arkady understood the routine. In Moscow when a taxi driver delivered a tourist to a restaurant, he had an arrangement by which he collected a little extra from the establishment. The same in Havana, apparently. Arkady thought they'd just drive by in case the DeSoto was there.

The Angola was on a dark street of large Spanish colonial homes only a minute away. Over a tall iron gate hung a neon sign of a sun so golden it seemed to drip. The taxi driver took one look and kept on going.

"Lo siento, no puedes. Esta reservado esta noche."

"Go by again."

"No podemos. Es que digo, completemente reservado. Cualquier otro dia, si?"

Arkady didn't speak Spanish but he understood completemente reservado. All the same he said, "Just drive by."

“No.”

Arkady got out at the corner, paid the driver enough for a good cigar and walked back under a dramatic canopy stof ragged cedar branches. Along both curbs were new Nissans and Range Rovers, some with drivers sitting almost at attention behind the wheel. Along the sidewalk were shadows within shadows and the orange swirls of cigarettes used in conversation, voices hushing as Arkady slowed to admire a white Imperial convertible reflecting the neon sun. When he pushed the gate open, a figure materialized from the dark to stop him. Captain Arcos in civilian clothes, like an armadillo out of his shell.

"It's all right." Arkady pointed to a table inside the gate.» I'm with them."

The Angola was an outdoor restaurant set in a garden of underiit tree ferns and tall African statues. Two men in white aprons worked an open-air grill and although Arkady had been told that a paladar could serve no more than twelve diners at a time there were, at tables arranged around the grill, easily twenty customers, all men, in their forties and fifties, most white, all with a bearing of command, prosperity, success and all Cuban except for John O'Brien and George Washington Walls.

"I knew it"-O'Brien waved Arkady in.» I told George that you'd show up."

"He did." Walls shook his head in wonder more at O'Brien than at Arkady.

"When I heard Rufo was so stupid as to write the place and time on a wall I knew you couldn't fail." O'Brien had another chair brought. Even the developer was in a Cuban guayabera; the evening's uniform seemed to be graybeards. The two Cubans at the table looked to O'Brien for a lead; although they were hard, mature men, O'Brien seemed to have for them the status of a priest among boys. The entire restaurant had gone quiet, including Erasmo in a wheelchair two tables away with Tico and Mostovoi, their old comrade-in-arms, the only other non-Cuban. It was strange to see the mechanics so spruced.» It's perfect that you're here." O'Brien seemed genuinely pleased.» Everything's falling into place."

Walls said to the Cuban next to him, "El nuevo bolo."

Relief spread to every face except Erasmo's. He telegraphed Arkady a glum look from across the garden. Mostovoi saluted.

"I'm the new Russian?" Arkady asked.

"It makes you part of the club," O'Brien said.

"What club is that?"

"The Havana Yacht Club, what else?"

Waiters poured water and rum, although coffee seemed as popular at the tables, an odd choice for the hour, Arkady thought.» How do you know I visited Rufo's?"

"You know George is a big fight fan. He went to see some sparring today at the Gimnasio Atares, and a trainer told him about a white man in a black coat he saw come out of Rufo's last night. George went in and there it was right on the wall, a clue no one as sharp as you was going to miss. Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn't. We have to be careful. Remember, I have been the target of more police stings and entrapment than you could dream of. By the way, keep in mind that j all our friends here tonight still remember the Russian ', language. Watch what you say."

Walls ran his eyes .over Arkady's new clothes.» Big _: improvement." : The chefs lifted lobsters from a huge sack to a cutting board, where they sliced and cleaned the underside of I the tails before setting the lobsters alive onto the grill, poking them with wooden sticks when they tried to crawl from the flames. Arkady saw no menus, no African food. The two Cubans at Arkady's table shook his hand but offered no names. One was white, the other mulatto, but they shared the musculature, direct gaze and obsessionally trimmed fingernails and hair of military men.

"What does this club do?" Arkady asked.

"They can do anything," O'Brien said.» People wonder, what will happen to Cuba when Fidel dies? As a Caribbean North Korea? Will the gang in Miami march in and take back their houses and sugarcane fields? Will the Mafia swoop in? Or will there just be anarchy, another Haiti? Americans wonder how without a managerial infrastructure full of MBAs Cuba can even hope to survive."

The lobsters were monsters, the largest Arkady had ever seen. They reddened among flares and sparks.

"But the wonderful thing about evolution," O'Brien said, "is that it can't be stopped. Eliminate business. Make the army the preferred career route for idealistic young men. Send them to foreign wars, but don't give them enough money to fight. Make them earn it. Make them trade in ivory and diamonds so they have enough ammunition to defend themselves, and you end up with an interesting group of entrepreneurs. Then, because it works cheap, when the army comes home make it go into farming, hotels, sugar. Reassign heroes to run the tourism and citrus and nickel industries. Let me tell you, negotiating a contract with a construction company from Milan is as good as two years at Harvard Business School. The ones here tonight are the creme de la creme."

"The Havana Yacht Club?"

"They like the name," Walls said.» It's just a social thing."

When the first lobsters were done, a chef stirred a glass bowl full of twists of paper, picked four twists, unrolled and read them before sending the lobsters to a table. It seemed to Arkady a better system for a lottery than a restaurant. How did the chef know who ordered what? Why were there only two choices, lobster or nothing?

"I thought private restaurants weren't allowed to serve lobster," Arkady said.

"Maybe tonight is an exception," O'Brien said.

Arkady caught sight of Mostovoi again.» Why am I the new Russian? Why can't Mostovoi be?"

"This is an enterprise that needs more than a pornog-rapher. You've replaced Pribluda. Everyone can accept that." O'Brien adopted a forgiving tone.» And you can keep the photograph Pribluda sent to you. It would have been nice if you'd offered it as a sign of trust at some point, but you're on the team now."

"Rufo died for that picture."

"Thank God, I much prefer you. I mean, it's worked out wonderfully."

"Do some of these people work in the Ministry of Sugar? Are some of them involved with AzuPanama?"

"We met some that way, yes. These are the men who make decisions, as much as anyone can make decisions besides Fidel. Some are deputy ministers, some are still generals and colonels, men who have known each other all their lives and now in their prime. Naturally, they're making plans. It is a normal human aspiration, the need to better themselves and leave something for their families. The same as Fidel. He has one legitimate son and a dozen illegitimate children salted away in the government. These men are no different."

"The casino fits somewhere in here?"

"I hope so."

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"John always tells the truth," Walls said.» Just that there are a lot of layers to the truth."

"Casino, combat boots, AzuPanama. Which is real and which is fake?"

"In Cuba," O'Brien said, "there is a fine line between the real and the ridiculous. As a boy, Fidel wrote Franklin Roosevelt and asked for an American dollar. Later Fidel was scouted as a pitcher by the major leagues. Here was a man who could have been a model American, an inch away. Instead, he becomes Fidel. Incidentally, the scouting report was 'Fair fastball, no control.' At heart, my dear Arkady, it's all ridiculous."

The body in the bay was dead, Rufo was dead, Hedy and her Italian had been slashed to death, Arkady thought. That was real. The Cubans at the table listened with half an ear as they watched lobsters continue to march off the grill and the curious ceremony of reading papers at random from a bowl. It didn't seem to matter who had lobster so much as that they all did. Arkady had the sense that if one anonymous twist of paper was blank, if one diner hadn't ordered lobster, the group to a man would have stood and left at once.

"Do you mind...?" Arkady nodded toward Erasmo's table.

"Please." O'Brien gave his blessing.

Tico was happily dismembering his crustacean and Mostovoi was caught sucking on a claw.

"You can't get lobster this succulent anywhere else in the world." Mostovoi wiped his mouth as Arkady dropped into a chair. There was no sign from the photographer that he had connected the fire at the Sierra Maestra to Arkady.

Erasmo didn't say a word or touch his lobster. Arkady remembered him drinking ron peleo and swaying in his wheelchair to Mongo's drum at the santero's, leaning out the Jeep like a bearded buccaneer as they cruised the Malecon. This was a more subdued Erasmo.

"So, this is the real Havana Yacht Club," Arkady said to him.» No Mongo, no fish."

"It's a different club."

"Apparently."

"You don't understand. These are all men who fought together in Angola and Ethiopia, who fought side by side with Russians, who shared a common experience."

"Except for O'Brien."

"And you."

"Me?" Arkady didn't remember the initiation.» How did that happen?"

Erasmo's head lolled as if he'd been trying unsuccessfully to drink himself into a stupor.» How does it happen? By accident. It's like you're in the middle of a play, say, Act II, and someone wanders onto the stage. Somebody new, never in the script. What do you do? First, try to get him off, drop a sandbag on him or lure him behind the scenery so you can hit him over the head with a minimum of fuss because there is an audience watching. If you can't get the son of a bitch off the stage what do you do then? You start incorporating him into the play, find him a role of someone who is missing, feed him some lines as smoothly as you can so that the Third Act goes virtually unchanged, just like you always planned."

The last lobster was delivered. Every plate was covered by a lobster or a well-picked carapace, although Arkady had noticed that many guests had shown no interest in their dinner once it had been served. A tall man with aviator glasses rose with a glass of rum. He was the same army officer Arkady had seen in a picture with Erasmo and the Comandante. The man proposed a toast to "The Havana Yacht Club."

Everyone but Arkady and Erasmo stood, although Erasmo raised his glass.

"Now what?" Arkady asked.» A meeting's going to begin?"

"The meeting's over." Erasmo added in a whisper, "Good luck."

In fact, men were leaving as soon as they set down their glass, not pouring out as a crowd but slipping under the neon sun to the dark of the street in twos and threes. Arkady heard a muffled sound of car doors opening and engines starting. Mostovoi vanished like a shadow. Tico pushed Erasmo, who leaned his brow on his hand like Hamlet considering his options. Soon the only ones left in the paladar were the staff, Walls, O'Brien and Arkady.

"You're part of the club now," O'Brien said.» How does it feel?"

"A little mysterious."

"Well, you've only been here six days. Cuba takes a lifetime to understand. Wouldn't you say, George?"

"Absolutely."

O'Brien pushed himself to his feet.» Anyway, we have to run. It's almost the witching hour and, frankly, I'm bushed."

Arkady said, "Pribluda was involved in this?"

"If you really want to know, come by the boat tomorrow evening."

"I'm flying to Moscow tomorrow night."

"It's up to you," Walls said and opened the gate. The Imperial glowed at the curb.

"What is the Havana Yacht Club?" Arkady asked.

"What do you want it to be?" John O'Brien said.» A few guys goofing off with a fishing line. A dump of a building waiting to be touched by a magic wand and be turned into a hundred million dollars. A group of patriots, veterans of their country's wars, having a social evening. Whatever you want, that's what it is."

Chapter Twenty-Four

The DeSoto was parked outside the Rosita. Ofelia was inside on the bed, curled up tightly in the sheets. Arkady undressed in the dark, slid beside her and knew by her heartbeat that she was awake. He ran his hand over her breast and up her arm to the gun in her hand.

"You went back to Luna's place."

"I wanted to see what he had there."

"You went alone?" he asked and read her silence.» You said you would take someone with you. I would have gone."

"I can't be afraid to go into a house alone."

"I am, often. What did you find?"

She described the condition of the Centre Russo-Cubano, the lobby and each room as she had investigated them, the goat, the buffet door and the grenade that was wired to it. Also how she had picked her way through the aftermath of the blast into a buffet and kitchen without ovens, freezers or refrigerators, then retraced her route back to the lobby, set the ladder on the balcony rail and climbed to the mezzanine to search the rooms on that level, opening every door with the tip of a broom. There were no more booby traps, no goats, nothing but their droppings and open jars of Russian hair pomade that they had licked clean.

By then their meeting time at the park had come and gone, and when she went to the Havana Yacht Club he never showed. She let go of the gun and kissed his mouth and released him slowly.» I thought you weren't coming."

"We just missed each other, that's all."

He gathered her in his arms and felt her slide down him. In a moment, he was in her and she wrapped herself around him. Her tongue was sweet, her back hard, and where he joined her she was endlessly deep.

They ate banana bread with beer while Arkady told Ofelia about his trip to Mostovoi's apartment, everything except the fire. Arson she might be a stickler about. He had to smile. She had sneaked through his defenses, a small bird on barbed wire. There was also pleasure-morbid or professional-in talking with a colleague. She was a colleague even though her point of view was not so much from a different world as from a different universe. She was a colleague even though she sat naked, cross-legged, in the haze of light produced by a power brownout.

"There are parts of Havana that haven't had electricity for weeks, although you won't read that in there." She pointed to the newspaper the bread had come in. On the front page was a blotchy picture of revolutionaries celebrating victory and a red banner that said Granma.» It's the official Party newspaper."

Arkady looked at the date.» It's two weeks old."

"My mother doesn't read it, she only gets it for wrapping food. Anyway, whatever Luna had to move- TV, VCR, shoes-he moved. It was gone."

"He tried to kill us in the car. He killed Hedy and her Italian friend if the combination of ice pick and machete is anything to go by; I don't think that's an everyday technique. And if he cleared mines in Angola he can rig a grenade. I think the least of his crimes is taking Rufo's VCR."

"He really only hit your side of the car," Ofelia said.

"What?" This was a new tack, Arkady thought.

"He only put me in the car trunk."

"He left you to suffocate."

"Maybe. You got me out."

"And then he tried to chop up the car."

"You mostly." This seemed like splitting hairs to Arkady, but Ofelia went on.» So, you went to the Yacht Club and didn't find me. What then?"

"I don't know exactly." He told her about the lobster dinner at the Angola paladar.» They were military types and they called themselves the Havana Yacht Club. How unusual is it for army officers to take over a private restaurant like that?"

"It's not unknown."

"Or have lobster there?"

"Maybe it was their own lobster. A lot of officers spearfish. The navy sells lobster, too. The officers don't eat so bad."

"They seemed unhappy."

"This is the Special Period-except for you and me, everyone is unhappy. What were they driving?"

"Sport utility vehicles."

"See!"

"But at least half of them didn't eat the lobster."

"That," Ofelia granted, "is strange."

"No speeches."

"Very strange."

"I thought so from what I know of the Cuban character. Also, Walls, O'Brien and Mostovoi were there. O'Brien described me to them as the 'new Russian' as if I was taking Pribluda's place. I feel something happened in front of me that I just didn't see. O'Brien is always ahead of me."

"He hasn't committed any crime."

"Yet." Arkady didn't quibble over the arrest warrant from America or the $20 million sugar scam of Russia.» Why would twenty highly placed Cubans call themselves the Havana Yacht Club?"

"A joke?"

"That was the answer for Pribluda's photograph."

"You think this is different?"

"No, I think it's the same. I don't think it was ever a joke."

"Did the officers at this dinner have names?"

"No names that I heard. All I can say is that they all wore guayaberas and ordered lobster on pieces of paper that had to be unfolded to be read. Some, like Erasmo, didn't touch their lobster at all, just watched, counting the lobsters, and as soon as the last one was delivered to a table dinner was over, as if they'd reached a unanimous vote. Maybe I'll find out tomorrow. I'll see Walls and O'Brien before I go."

"As long as you don't miss your plane," Ofelia said.

He knew she was studying him for a reaction about leaving. He didn't know what his reaction was. They were both so far out on a limb that the slightest shift made for dizzying sways. His eye fell on the newspaper her mother had wrapped banana bread in.

"What is Change up to?"

"What do you mean?" Ofelia was not ready to change subjects.

He picked up the newspaper. It was a greasy broadsheet folded to a photo of a black doll with a red bandanna. Under the photograph a news caption read,

Noche Folklorica Aplazada. Debtdo il condltioncs indementes fue necesario aplazar el Festival Folklorico Cubano hasta dos Sdbados mas, a la Casa Cultural de Trabajadores de Construction.

"Inclement weather I understand and Sabado is Saturday and the Casa Cultural is the Havana Yacht Club."

" 'Because of rain a folkloric festival is postponed for two weeks,' that's all."

Arkady checked the newspaper's date.» Until tomorrow." He got up to look at the Change sitting in the corner, the doll's left arm lank on a cane, feet sprawled, half-formed features and glass eyes returning Arkady's gaze. The more Arkady studied the doll the more convinced he was that it was the one that had disappeared from Pribluda's flat on the Malecon. Same red bandanna, same Reebok shoes, same baleful glare.» He reminds me of Luna."

"Of course," Ofelia said.» Luna is a son of Change."

"A son of Change?" Once again Arkady had the sense that any conversation with Ofelia had trapdoors that could open and drop a person into an alternative universe.» How do you know this?"

"It's obvious. Sexual, violent, passionate. Change all over."

"Really?" He leaned to better see the yellow beads around her neck.» And..."

"Oshun," she said stiffly.

"I've heard of that one."

"You are a son of Oggun."

Arkady felt he was about halfway through the trapdoor.

"Go ahead, who is Oggun?"

"Oggun is Change's greatest enemy. They often fight because Chango is so violent and Oggun guards against crime."

"A policeman? Doesn't sound like fun to me."

"He can be very sad. Once, he was so angry at the way of people, their crimes and lies, that he went into the deep woods, so deep no one could find him, and he was so silent no one could talk to him or could coax him out. Finally, Oshun went after him and walked through the woods and walked through the woods until she came to a clearing by a stream. She could feel Oggun carefully watching from behind the trees. She didn't make the mistake of calling out to him. Instead she began to dance slowly with her arms out like this. Oshun has her own dance, very sexual. When she felt that he was curious and moving closer she still didn't call his name. Instead she danced a little faster, a little slower, and when he came out of hiding she danced until he was close enough to her to dip her fingers into a gourd of honey hanging from her waist and she smeared the honey on his lips. He had never tasted anything so sweet in his life. She danced and filled her hand with honey and put more honey in his mouth and more honey while she tied him to her with a rope of yellow silk and led him back into the world."

"That could work."

Not honey but the sweet salt of her skin. No silken rope but her arms. No words but hands and lips, and Arkady was pulling her closer when Change's cane scraped across the linoleum. The doll sagged forward, head askew, tipped in the slow fashion of a drunk releasing himself from the obligations of respectability, slumped off the chair and landed with a thud on its face.

"Some spell," Arkady said. It had been working on him. He swung out of bed, picked up the doll and set it in the chair again. Here was a figure that had followed him all over Havana, his shadow companion, and how he'd ever managed to get Chango to stay in the chair Arkady didn't know because the cane slid one way and the doll perversely slumped the other.» The head is just too heavy, it won't sit up."

Ofelia motioned Arkady back.» Leave it. It's just papier-mache."

"I don't think so." The spell was broken. He lifted Chango and brought him to the bed, the better to see how the head was sewn to the shirt.» Are there scissors in your toiletry kit?"

Arkady pulled on pants and Ofelia slipped into his coat. Because the nail scissors were small, Arkady had to cut the threads one at a time to slide the head off a wooden stake that was the doll's backbone. He let the headless body roll onto the floor.

Ofelia asked, "What are you doing?"

"Looking into Chango."

He cut off the bandanna, leaving a red ring of cloth still glued. The head was papier-mache coated with a lacquer-hard paint like a lumpish skull daubed black. Ofelia found a serrated knife in a drawer of the kitchenette. Arkady sawed through the head from ear, over the crown, to ear, until he pulled the doll's face like a mask off a layer of cheesecloth that had been formed on someone's face to lend the effigy its rough features. Under the cloth were crumpled newspapers, and under the newspapers was a flat oval of slick silver tape. In tiny snips Arkady cut around the edges and peeled the tape off five thick brown waxy sticks that said in English "Hi-Drive Dynamite." The sticks had been warmed and molded to pack tightly together with a Plexiglas backing in the oval space of the head. On the middle stick was a printed circuit board of a radio receiver the size of a credit card with a built-in kopeck-sized battery and antenna. Arkady prodded the board up. Its wires were crimped around the leg wires of a blasting cap inserted deep into the dynamite itself. In spite of the air-conditioning he felt a bloom of sweat. He and Ofelia had been around the doll on and off for almost a week. Someone could have pressed a remote transmitter and brought his Havana trip to an end at any time.

He put the scissors and knife aside.» Something nonsparking?"

Ofelia cradled the doll's head in her lap and delicately dug the cap out with her fingernails.

You had to admire a woman like that, Arkady thought.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Enough daybreak sifted through the window shade for Arkady to see Change lying on the table, the front and back of the head resting separately on the doll's chest. Disconnected, the face seemed more animated and malevolent than ever.

Ofelia was under Arkady's coat, asleep. He dressed in his old clothes, strapped on the hip pack and stole his coat as quietly as he could. This was the point where they went their different ways. As she said, it would be difficult enough to explain how she had come into possession of the doll. Having a Russian along wouldn't help.

"Arkady?"

"Yes?" He had already opened the door.

Ofelia sat up against the headboard.» Where will I see you again?"

They'd gone over this the night before.» At least at the airport. The night's at midnight. It's a Russian plane and a Cuban airport, we should have lots of time."

"You're going to see Walls and O'Brien? I don't want you to go. To their boat? I don't trust them."

"I don't either."

"I'll be watching. If that boat leaves the dock with you on it, I will send a police boat out after you."

"Good idea." They had decided all of this already, but he returned to burrow for a moment in her neck and kiss her mouth. Love's exaction for forward motion.

"What about Bias and the photograph?" she asked.» I'll be seeing him."

"Leave the photograph to me."

"And after?"

"After? We will shop on the Arbat, ski among the birches, go to the Bolshoi, whatever you want."

"You'll be careful?"

"We will both be careful."

Her eyes let go. Arkady slipped out into a morning with a dull pewterish light rimming the water, streetlights fading, on his way, appropriately enough, to see Sergei Pribluda's lover.

A block on, he encountered another socialismo o muerte billboard with a giant Comandante in fatigues, shambling again in mid-stride, keeping pace.

Ofelia took a little longer to dress, tape the doll's head back together and take it in her straw bag to her car. It was eight by the time she reached the Institute de Medicina Legal, found Bias in the autopsy theater and sent a message that she would be waiting for him at the anthropology room. No one was ever completely alone in that room, there were too many skulls and skeletons, preserved beetles and snakes huddled in the light. On the desk a newly scrubbed skull was positioned under a video camera. She turned on the monitor, and a picture of a robust Pribluda at a beach emerged on the screen.

"Not yet," Bias said as he came in drying his hands with a paper towel.» No show until we have our other Russian. Detective, I understand you're dressed for a certain kind of duty, but I must congratulate you for how convincing you are." She was in the white jinetera outfit. Bias threw the towel into a waste basket and ran his hands up and down her arms as if performing an inspection.» Irresistible."

"I have something for you," she said.

After all, who else could Ofelia go to? He was sympathetic and sophisticated, with connections at Minint, the army, the PNR well above the level of Captain Arcos and Sergeant Luna.

"A gift?"

"Not quite." She took the head wrapped in newspapers out of her bag and placed it in front of the screen.

"Well, I'm always interested." Bias pulled the paper off and revealed Change's obsidian stare. The doctor's anticipation disappeared.» What is this about? You should know by now that my interest in Santeria is strictly scientific."

"But this head was on a doll that was in Pribluda's apartment. Later it was found with black-market goods in a building near the docks."

"So? I've seen hundreds of these dolls across the country."

Ofelia peeled off the tape that held the front and back of the head together.» Go ahead."

As Bias lifted the doll's face his own went whiter than usual.» Cono."

"Five charges of eighty percent dynamite. American-made, but we get it through Panama all the time for construction and making roads. There was a receiver and blasting cap that I removed. This is a bomb."

"That was at Pribluda's?"

"That was removed from there, I believe, by Sergeant Luna, who had also taken Pribluda's car and put it in an abandoned building in Atares, where this doll was recovered."

There was much Ofelia didn't have to say. In recent years incendiary devices had been set off at different hotels and discos by reactionaries from Miami. Just for the sake of terror. Then there was The Target whose name Ofelia was afraid to invoke, the leader who for forty years had dodged bombs, bullets, cyanide pills.

"This is a very grave matter. Does the sergeant know you have it?"

"Yes, he tried to stop me. This was two nights ago. I only learned it was a bomb last night. There don't seem to be any fingerprints on the outside of the head, but I think there are latent prints on the dynamite."

"Leave it to me. You should have come to me right away. When I think about that poor Hedy and you." Bias put down the mask to wipe his hands on his lab coat.» You're so cool about all this. Do you have the receiver and cap?"

"Yes." She brought them wrapped in newspaper from her bag.

"Better that I have all of the device. Who else knows?"

"No one." She was going to omit Arkady as long as possible. A Russian and a bomb, how would that look? Especially with those assassination files he had found on Pribluda's computer, it would muddle everything. The reason the doll's head was clear of prints was that she had wiped Arkady's off.» Except that we have to assume there are more people involved on Luna's side."

"A conspiracy in the Ministry of the Interior? Sergeant Luna is a nobody, this could go much higher. It's no wonder he and Captain Arcos refused to investigate. They're reporting to someone. The question is who? Who assigned them? Who do I call?"

"You will help?"

"Thank God you came to me. Detective, I have always said it, you are a marvel. Were you going someplace from here?"

"To the apartment where Rufo died." She didn't want to say where Arkady killed him, even if it was in self-defense.» It seems to me a hustler like Rufo must have had a mobile phone. CubaCell has no listing for Rufo but-"

"No, no, no. Stay off the street. We must find someplace safe for you. You must sit and write a complete statement of all the facts while I cogitate how to approach this problem. The first call is the most important. Since we have the means of destruction, thanks to you, we have a minute to think. The safest place is right here. There's paper and pencil in the desk.

You have to put down everything and everyone involved."

"I've written statements before, no?"

"You're right. The main thing is, don't move from here until I come back. Don't let anyone else in. Promise?" Bias eased the two halves of the head together, wrapped the head in newspaper and carried it under his arm to the door.» Just be patient."

Ofelia was surprised that her anxiety did not dissipate even when the doll was in competent hands. She found writing materials in a drawer as Bias had said, but discovered that she had become overly used to typing reports on PNR forms. Also, beyond the simplest statements of Luna's involvement with the doll it was difficult not to drag Arkady in. Questioning would be even worse. Who had identified the doll as being at Pri-bluda's? If Luna had attacked her, how had she escaped? Better a brief statement than either the complete truth or a lie. Once Arkady's name surfaced she knew that suspicion, hard earned by Russians in Cuba over so many years, would swing right to him.

Pribluda, proud of his tan, grinned from the monitor. The skull lay under the video camera. Chango and Russians, a terrible combination. Ofelia flicked the screen off and on. Why was she waiting? How would she get to the marina if she was kept in a room? She admitted she would feel easier once Luna was arrested. At the same time she had a niggling memory of the sergeant standing over Hedy at the Casa de Amor and how his entire body seemed to turn to stone. Which reminded Ofelia of Teresa, Luna's other special girl.

Between two jars of pickled snakes was a telephone. Ofelia opened her notebook and dialed Daysi's number. This time there was an answer.

"Yes?"

"Hello, is Daysi there?" Ofelia asked.

"No."

"When will she be back?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know? I have this swimsuit of hers she keeps asking for. It's the suit with the Wonder Bra like she saw on QVC. She wanted it today. She's not there?"

"No."

"Where is she?"

"She's out."

"With Susy?"

"Yes." A little more relaxed.» You know both of them?"

"They're still at the marina?"

"Yes. Who is this?"

Ofelia said, "This is the friend with the swimsuit. I drop it off today or it's mine. Frankly, it looks better on me."

"Can you call tomorrow?"

"I'm not calling tomorrow. I'll be gone tomorrow and the suit will go with me and you explain to Daysi why she doesn't have the suit."

During the silence Ofelia could see Teresa Guiteras, hair tangled, knees up to her chin, chewing on her fingernails.

"Bring it over."

"I don't know where you are," Ofelia said.» You come here and get it."

"I thought you were a friend of Daysi."

"Okay, since you're a better friend, you explain to Daysi how she lost her QVC swimsuit. It's fine with me. I tried."

"Wait. I can't come."

"You can't come? Some friend."

"I'm on Chavez between Zanya and Salud, next to the beauty shop, in back and up the stairs to the roof and the pink casita. Are you near?"

"Maybe. Look, I have to get off the phone."

"Are you coming?"

"Well..." Ofelia drew the moment out.» You're going to be there?"

"I'm here."

"Not going to leave?"

"No."

Ofelia hung up. She signed her statement and tucked it under the monitor. She hated waiting. Besides, Ofelia still wanted to know why the homicidal Luna, rather than putting her in the car trunk, hadn't simply killed her, and to that question Teresa conceivably had the answer.

Vice Consul Bugai arrived at his office at a casual eleven o'clock, removed his jacket and shoes, replaced them with a silk Chinese robe and sandals. He poured himself tea from a thermos and stood, cup in hand, at his window, which was twelve stories up, waist level in the tower that was the Russian embassy. The green palms of Miramar spread to the sea. Satellite dishes lifted their faces to the sky. Outside, the city baked. Inside, the air-conditioning throbbed.

"So you do come to work on Saturdays," Arkady said from a corner chair.

"My God." Bugai spilled his tea and stepped back from the cup.» What are you doing here? How did you get in?"

"We have to talk."

"This is outrageous." Bugai set the cup on a stack of papers and picked up his telephone. In his robe the vice consul was the picture of an affronted mandarin.» You're out of bounds. You can't just break into people's offices. I'm calling the guards. They will sit on you until they put you on the plane."

"I think they'll sit on both of us and put us both on the plane because I may be out of bounds, but you, my dear Bugai, have far too much money in the Bank for Creative Investment in Panama."

Arkady had once seen a militiaman, shot, take ten slow jerky steps before he sat and rolled over. That was the way Bugai moved as he set down the phone, bumped against the desk and dropped into his chair. He clutched his heart.

"Don't die on me yet," Arkady said.

"There's a good explanation."

"But you don't have it." Arkady moved the chair so that he was within arm's reach of Bugai. He said more softly, "Please don't make things worse by trying to lie. Right now I'm more interested in information than your hide, but that can change."

"They told me there would be bank security."

"You're a Russian and you thought there would be security in a bank?"

"But this was Panama."

"Bugai, concentrate. At this moment the affair is between you and me. Where it goes from here depends on your cooperation. I'm going to ask a few basic questions just to see how honest you're going to be."

"That you already know the answers to?"

"That doesn't matter. It's your cooperation that counts."

"It could have been a loan."

"Would pain help you concentrate?"

"No."

"We don't want to resort to that. Who wrote the checks deposited in your account?"

"John O'Brien."

"In return for?"

"For what we knew about AzuPanama."

"For what Sergei Pribluda knew about AzuPanama."

"That's correct."

"Which was?"

"All I know was that he was getting closer."

"To finding out AzuPanama was a fraudulent sugar broker created by the Cubans to renegotiate their contract with Russia?"

"In so many words."

"They were concerned."

"Yes."

"O'Brien and ..."

"The Ministry of Sugar, AzuPanama, WaOs."

"So Pribluda had to be stopped."

"Yes. But there were many ways to stop him. Include him, pay him, get him working on something else. I said I would have nothing to do with violence. O'Brien agreed, he said violence only attracts more attention."

"Except Pribluda's dead."

"He had a heart attack. Anyone can have a heart attack, not just me. O'Brien swears no one touched him."

Arkady walked around Bugai and the desk, viewing the vice consul from different angles. Despite the air-conditioning Bugai sweat through his robe at the armpits and lapels.

"Have you ever been to Angola?"

"No."

"Africa?"

"No. No one wants those postings, believe me."

"Worse than Cuba?"

"No comparison."

"Tell me about the Havana Yacht Club."

"What?"

"Just tell me what you know."

Bugai frowned.» In Miramar there's a building that used to be the Havana Yacht Club." He relaxed enough to dab his face with a handkerchief.» Quite a place."

"That's all you know?"

"That's all I can think of. One story."

"What's that?"

"Well, before the Revolution the old dictator Batista applied for membership in the club. He was complete ruler of Cuba, held the power of life or death and all that entails. It didn't matter, the Havana Yacht Club turned him down. That was the beginning of the end for Batista, they say. The end of his power. The Havana Yacht Club."

"Who told you that story?"

"John O'Brien." Bugai had a chance to look around his desk.» Why is my intercom on? I thought this was just between you and me."

Arkady motioned Bugai to follow. They walked out of his office and across a floor of empty desks to Olga Petrovna, who sat in a small workstation that she had tried to make pleasant with decals and pictures of her granddaughter. A voice-activated tape recorder sat by her intercom, and behind her stood a thickset man with the sort of face a person could grind knives on. Olga Petrovna, as it turned out, had missed Pribluda more rather than less as days went by, and the mere suggestion from Arkady when he had found her at breakfast that another Russian had betrayed Pribluda's work was reason enough for her to introduce Arkady to the chief of embassy guards and set up her tape recorder.

"We were talking in private," Bugai said.

Arkady admitted, "I wasn't being entirely truthful. If I made any other mistakes, Olga Petrovna was making notes."

She had been. Pribluda's plump pigeon finished with a flourish and lifted to Bugai a gaze that would have done Stalin proud.

There were black angels bearing wreaths above the Teatro Garcia Lorca. A black bat that roosted on the Bacardi Building. Then there was the little black jinetera sitting on top of Daysi's pink casita, which was not much more than a water tower with a coat of paint.

For hiding out it wasn't such a bad place, nothing but chimney pots and pigeons all around. Since the water tank had been removed, water had to be hauled up by pail, but what Ofelia saw of the tower interior was surprisingly roomy, tiles on the floor, a bed adorned with paper flowers. Teresa had carried a chair and an illustrated romance up a ladder to the roof. Her knees looked scuffed and her curly mass of hair was misshapen, lumped to one side.

As Ofelia came up the ladder Teresa squinted down.» You have the swimsuit?"

"I'll show you."

"Don't I know you from the marina? The Malecon?"

Ofelia waited until she reached the roof before she lifted her glasses.» The Casa de Amor."

The scales fell from Teresa's eyes. She looked Ofelia up and down and tabulated the slim shoes, white rubbery pants, white top, wide Armani dark glasses. She herself was in the same bedraggled outfit she had been wearing when Ofelia arrested her.» Puta, look at you. I don't think you dress like that on a detective's salary, no, no, no. I'm not blind. I know competition when I see it. That's why you're always after me."

Ofelia's first impulse was to say, "Stupida, there are a thousand girls just like you in Havana." She looked down to roofs that spread to the sea, clotheslines bright as paper cutouts. Sparrows scattered by a peregrine. The pursuit swirled around the capital dome and to the trees of the Prado. Winter was hawk season in Havana. Instead she said, "Sorry."

"Fuck your 'sorry.' There's no QVC swimsuit, is there?"

"No."

"This is funny. I lost my German. I lost my money. You put me on a list of whores. I can't go back to Ciego de Avila because my family is depending on me to stay here and send them money, otherwise I would be in a fucking school, like you say. And now that you have fucked with my life you're ajinetera, too? That's funny."

"You're not on the list."

"I'm not on the list?"

"Not on the list. I only said that to scare you."

"Because we're competition."

"You're a smart girl."

"Fuck off." Teresa's nose ran, making a wet smear of her upper lip.

"Teresa-"

"Leave me alone. Go the fuck away."

Ofelia couldn't go away. Luna had gone insane at the sight of Arkady at the Centra Russo-Cubano, but the sergeant had only stuffed her in the car trunk when cutting her throat would have been as easy. Why?

"Sit down."

"Fuck away."

"Sit down." Ofelia pressed Teresa down onto the chair and moved behind her.» Stay there."

Teresa's eyes rolled back to follow.» What are you doing?"

"Be still." Ofelia reached into her bag for her new brush and comb and pulled back the black excelsior of Teresa's hair.» Just sit."

Waves, curls and spit curls close to the scalp and tight as springs would have daunted Ofelia if Muriel's hair weren't almost as thick. One pull wouldn't do, she had to firmly feather the hair out, work it loose, put some shape back into it.

"You have to take care of yourself, chica."

To begin with, Teresa submitted with silent grimness, but after a minute her neck started to roll with the strokes. Hair like this warmed up with brushing, especially on a hot day, polished up like silver with a little attention. As Ofelia lifted the hair from the nape of the neck she could feel Teresa soften to the touch. Fourteen years old? Alone for two days? Frightened for her life? Even a stray cat needed to be petted.

"I wish I had hair like this. I wouldn't need a pillow."

"Everyone says that," Teresa murmured.

"That's looking better."

As Teresa relaxed, though, her shoulders began to shake. She turned to Ofelia and revealed her whole face wet with tears.

"Now my face is a mess."

"I'll cheer you up." Ofelia put the brush into her bag.» Let me show you what else I have."

"The stupid swimsuit?"

"Better than a swimsuit."

"A condom?"

"No, better than that." Ofelia brought out the Mak-arov 9-mm pistol and let Teresa hold it.

"Heavy."

"Yes." Ofelia took the Makarov back.» I think all women should be issued guns. No men, just women."

"I bet Hedy wished she had something like this. You know my friend Hedy?"

"I'm the one who found her."

"Cono," Teresa said more in awe.

When Ofelia put the gun away, she stayed kneeling and lowered her voice as if they didn't have the whole skyline of Havana to themselves.» I know you're afraid the same thing is going to happen to you, but I can stop them. You have an idea who did it or you wouldn't be hiding, no? The question is, who are you hiding from?"

"You really are police?"

"Yes. And I don't want to find you like I found Hedy." Ofelia let the girl contemplate that for a moment.» What happened to her protection?"

"I don't know."

"The man who protects you and Hedy, what's his name?"

"I can't say."

"You can't because he's in Minint and you think this will get back to him. If I get to him first, then you'd be able to leave this roof."

Teresa folded her arms and shivered in spite of the heat.» I didn't really think some turista was going to come here and marry me. Why would he want to take home some ignorant black girl? Everyone would make fun of him. 'Hey, Herman, you didn't have to marry your whore.' I'm not stupid."

"I know."

"Hedy was really nice."

"You know, I think I can still help you. You don't have to say his name. I'll say his name."

"I don't know."

"Luna. Sergeant Facundo Luna."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't, I did."

Teresa looked away, as far as the angels that balanced on the theater. A breeze lifted her hair the same as it seemed to do to the angels'.

"He gets so mad."

"He has a temper, I know. But maybe I can tell you something that can help. Did you sleep with him?" When Teresa hesitated Ofelia said, "Look me in the eyes."

"Okay, once. But Hedy was his girl."

"When you slept with him-"

"No details."

"One detail. Did he keep his drawers on?"

Teresa giggled, the first light moment since Ofelia had found her.» Yes."

"Did he say why?"

"He said he just did."

"All the way through?"

"The whole time."

"Never took them off?"

"Not around me."

"Did you ask Hedy about it."

"Well." Teresa bobbed her head from side to side.» Yes. We were really good friends. He never did with her either."

"You know, chica, it wouldn't be a bad idea to stay here for another day, but actually I think you're probably pretty safe."

"What about Hedy?"

"I'm going to have to rethink that." As Ofelia gathered her bag and stood she kissed Teresa on the cheek.» You helped."

"It was nice to talk."

"It was." Ofelia started down the ladder and paused midway.» By the way, did you know Rufo Pinero?"

"A friend of Facundo's? I met him once. I didn't like him."

"Why not?"

"He had one of those mobile phones. Mr. Big-Time Jinetero, always on it. No time for me. So you really think I'll be okay?"

"I think so."

Because the question for Ofelia ever since Sergeant Facundo Luna hadn't killed her right off at the Russian Center was whether he was Abakua. It was hard to say about a member of a secret society. The PNR had tried to infiltrate the Abakua and the result was the opposite: the Abakua had penetrated the police, recruiting the most macho officers, white as well as black. Identifying them had become an art. An Abakua might hijack a truck from a ministry yard, but he would not steal even a peso from a friend. Never allowed an insult to go unanswered. Might murder but never informed. Wore nothing feminine, no earrings, tight belts or long hair. There was one conclusive identification: an Abakua never showed his bare behind to anyone. He never pulled his drawers down even for making love. Ofelia thought of it as a kind of Achilles' ass.

One more thing an Abakua never did.

He never hurt a woman.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Arkady returned to Mongo's room in the back of what had been Erasmo's boyhood house. An empty house today, enervated by heat. After a courtesy knock on the door Arkady reached to the upper lip of the frame and found the key.

Not much had changed in the bedroom since Arkady's first visit. Shutters opened wide enough to take in the curve of the sea, fishing boats trolling against the current, neumdticos wallowing in their wake. Not a cloud in the sky or a wave in the water. Dead still. The coconuts, plastic saints and photographs of Mongo's favorite fighters were just as Arkady had seen before, and whether a sheet was tucked in the same manner he couldn't tell, but a different disc topped the CD stack, and the swim flippers that had hung from a hook on the wall and the truck inner tube that had been suspended above the bed were both gone. Arkady returned to the window to see three different groups of neumdticos listlessly paddling, each group at least five hundred yards apart from the other.

Arkady went down to the street and walked a block west to a cafe of cement tables set in the shade of a wall with the sign siempre-Siempre something because bougainvillea had taken root and smeared the rest of the slogan with magenta. Arkady was not surprised that Mongo would venture out on the water. Mongo was a fisherman. He had probably been warned away from Erasmo's repair shop while a Russian investigator occupied the apartment above. Where better to hide than on the water? If he was out on his tube, sooner or later he would have to come in, somewhere along Miramar's First Avenue or the Malecon, too much ground for Arkady to watch. But it seemed to him that he could lower the odds by remembering that what a man with an inner tube needed most of all was air. From his table he had a view of a gas station with two pumps under a canopy styled with a modernistic fin, blue once, now the off-white found on the lip of a clamshell. It was a station on his Texaco map. By the office was a faucet and an air hose.

Cars came and went all afternoon, some struggling like lungfish up to the pump and then crawling away. Neumdticos had to deal with a garage dog that accepted some and chased away others. Arkady sipped his way through three Tropicolas and three cafe cubanos, his heart tapping its fingers while he sat, invisible in the shadow of his coat. Finally a skinny asphalt-black man approached the station office with an inner tube that was going limp in his arms. He threw the dog a fish, went into the office and came out a minute later with a patch he applied to the tube. When he felt the adhesive had set, he added air to check the repair. His clothes were a green cap, loose running shoes and the sort of rags a sensible man would choose for floating in the bay. Balancing the tube with its net and sticks and reels on his head, he lay his flippers over one shoulder and a string of rainbow-sided fish over the other. When he saw Arkady cross the intersection, the neutnatico's red, salt-stung eyes looked for an avenue of escape, and but for his inner tube and the day's catch, he no doubt could have easily outrun someone in an overcoat.

"Ramon 'Mongo' Bartelemy?" Arkady asked. He thought he was starting to get a grip on Spanish.

"No."

"I think so." Arkady showed Mongo the picture of himself proudly displaying a fish to Luna, Erasmo and Pribluda.» I also know you speak Russian." It was worth a stab.

"A little."

"You're not an easy man to find. Join me for a coffee?"

The elusive Mongo had a beer. Crystal beads of sweat covered his face and chest. His mesh sack of fish lay on the bench beside him.

"I saw a tape of you fighting," Arkady said.

"Did I win?"

"You made it look easy."

"I could move, you know? I could move with anyone, I just didn't like to get hit," Mongo said, although his nose was splayed enough to suggest he had been caught a few times.

"Then when they dropped me from the team I was eligible for the army. Oye, suddenly I was in Africa with Russians. Russians don't know the difference between an African and a Cuban. You learn Russian fast." Mongo grinned.» You learn 'Don't shoot, you assholes!'"

"Angola?"

"Ethiopia."

"Demolition?"

"No, I drove an armored personnel carrier. That's how I became a mechanic, keeping that puta APC alive."

"Is that where you met Erasmo?"

"In the army."

"Luna?"

Mongo regarded his large capable hands, callused from drumming and scarred from barbs.» Facundo I know from way back when he first came from Baracoa to join the boxing team. He could have been a fighter or he could have been a baseball player, but he had no discipline with women or drinking, so he wasn't on any team for long."

"Baracoa?"

"In the Oriente. He could hit."

"He and Rufo Pinero were friends?"

"Claro. But what they did I didn't know." Mongo shook his head so emphatically his sweat sprayed.» I didn't want to know."

"And you were Sergei Pribluda's friend?"

"Yes."

"You went fishing together?"

"Verdad."

"You taught him how to fish with a kite?"

"I tried."

"And how to be a neumdtico?"

"Yes."

"And what is the most important rule a neumdtico has to follow? Never go out alone at night. I don't think Pribluda went out alone on that Friday two weeks ago. I think he went out on the water with his good friend Mongo."

Mongo rested his chin on his chest. Sweat poured off the man as if he were a fountain, not the sweat of fear like Bugai's but sweat that came from the heavy work of guilt. It was late in the day. Arkady got more beers so Mongo could sweat some more.

"He said it was like ice fishing for sharks," Mongo said.» He used to tell me all about ice fishing. He said I should come to Russia and he would take me ice fishing. I said 'No, thanks, comrade.'"

"What time did you go into the water?"

"Maybe seven. After dark, because he knew how that would draw attention if people saw a Russian in a tube. Voices travel on water, so even when we were out there he would whisper."

"What was the weather like?"

"Raining. He still kept his voice low."

"Is that a good time to fish, when it's raining?"

"If the fish are biting."

Arkady considered that fisherman's truth and asked, "Where did you go in?"

"West of Miramar."

"Near the Marina Hemingway?"

"Yes."

"Whose idea was that?"

"I always said where we were going to go, except that time. Sergei said he was tired of Miramar and the Malecon. Sergei wanted to try somewhere new."

"Once you were in the water you stayed there. Or did you go west? North? East?"

"Drifted like."

"East because that's the way the current runs, by Miramar and the Malecon and towards ."

"Yes."

"And, on the way, the marina? Whose idea was it to go in there?"

Mongo slumped against the wall.» So, you already know."

"I think I do."

"We really fucked up, huh?" Mongo beat nervously on the bench, stilled his hands and let the rhythm drop.» I said, Sergei, why would we want to fish in the marina with the guardia to chase us and maybe a boat moving through? That's an active channel, and it's night and the boats won't see us, I said, it's crazy. But I couldn't stop him. The guardia was in their office out of the rain. If you come in close they can't see you anyway, not at night in a tube. I followed Sergei up the channel, that's all I could do. He seemed to know where he was going. They have lights there, but they don't reach down to the water so well. No one was fueling. The disco was shut down because of the rain. We could hear people at the bar, that's all, and then we were in a canal where boats were docked one after the other and Sergei headed for this one I couldn't even see at first, it was so low and dark. Very sleek, an old boat but fast, you could tell. There were lights in the cabin and Americans on board, we could hear them but we couldn't see who. Right away, I knew that this was some kind of business of Sergei's he was getting me into. I told him I was going, but he wanted to climb up and see who was in the boat, which is difficult because there is an overhang on the dock. I was leaving when the lights on the boat went out. My whole body vibrated. Sergei was about five meters away between the boat and the dock and he was shaking, shaking, shaking. They let those rucking power leads lie in the water. I couldn't get any closer. Then I saw flashlights come up on deck and I hid." Mongo nodded in doleful self-judgment.» I hid. They came up to see if it was just their boat or everyone and while they talked back and forth to the person in the cabin Sergei drifted out. He wasn't shaking anymore. They didn't see him and they didn't see me because I stayed in the dark.

"As soon as his tube's clear, I told myself, I'd pull Sergei over, but before I could get to Sergei another boat came up the canal. There's not a lot of room. The boat went by and then Sergei went by. Sometimes, you know, boats trail tackle in the water, they shouldn't but they do, and Sergei was hooked by the net of his tube. He went by faster than I could keep up. I knew he was dead by the way he sat. They went out the canal together, the boat and tube. I knew once they cleared the guardia dock and opened the throttle they would feel the line and find Sergei or the hook would cut the net.

"Or maybe they would find Sergei and just cut him loose, because who needs to get involved with a dead neumdtico, no? That would be a story they could tell in a bar in Key West about a crazy Cuban they caught one time. I don't know, I just saw my friend being towed in the dark until I couldn't see him anymore. By the time I got past the guardia I couldn't even see the boat."

"Did you see its name?"

"No." Mongo drank the last of his beer and stared at the pail offish.» I didn't even do that."

"Who did you tell about this?"

"No one until you showed up. Then I told Erasmo and Facundo because they're my compays, my good friends."

The water was flat and glassy enough for pelicans to skim their reflection. Despite the accumulated heat of the day Arkady felt oddly comfortable, balanced by beer and overcoat.

"The men who came on deck of the boat that lost its power, did you recognize them?"

"No, I was looking for Sergei or trying to hide."

"Did they have guns?"

"You know," Mongo said, "it doesn't matter. Sergei was dead by then and it was an accident. He killed himself, I'm sorry." Mongo looked at the fish.» I have to go keep these fresh. Thanks for the beer."

An accident? After all this? But it made sense, Arkady thought. Not only the heart attack but the general confusion. Murders had much better cover-ups. Then he had arrived from Moscow the same time the body was found in the bay. Small wonder why Rufo had rushed to be his interpreter, and why Luna had been so badly surprised by the photograph of the Havana Yacht Club. No one had known what happened to Pribluda.

As Mongo resettled his cap and inner tube on his head, and picked up his flippers and fish, Arkady thought of Pribluda's tow in his rubbery sleigh out of the marina to deeper water-the Gulf Stream, O'Brien had said-where he either tore loose or was cut free by a no doubt exasperated fisherman.» Cubans are biting tonight!" Would that have been the joke? Then the long journey in the rain, drifting past Miramar, along the Malecon to the mouth of the bay, a "bag bay," as Captain Andres of the good ship Pinguino had said. Under the beam of the lighthouse on Moro Castle and then a swing toward the village of Casablanca to gently snag among the nest of plastics, mattresses and worm-riddled piers, all sheeted by petroleum scum, where a body could comfortably rest in the rain for weeks.

Arkady took Pribluda's photograph from under his coat and asked, "Who took this picture?"

"Elmar."

"Elmar who?"

"Mostovoi," Mongo said as if there had been only one photographer in the group.

Confession was always short-lived and always conditional, and both men knew it wasn't as if Arkady had the authority to question anyone. Just for the sake of a reaction, though, Arkady read the reverse of the picture.» 'The Havana Yacht Club.' Does that mean anything to you?"

"No."

"A joke?"

"No."

"A social club?"

"No."

"Do you know what's happening there tonight?"

That was pressing too hard. The elusive Mongo backed into the street and broke into a gliding sort of trot, a one-man caravan, his headgear undulating with every step. He slid by a blue wall, pink wall, peach and the shadow of an alley seemed to reach out and swallow him up.

Ofelia had not been at the embassy apartment since she had seen Rufo spread out on its floor. She remembered the building's blue walls and Egyptian decoration of lotuses and ankhs, that hint of the Nile. In the dusk even the car sitting on the porch had some of the silent grandeur of a sphinx in residence. Flecks of paint made a red skirt around the car. Salt pitted once proud chrome, windows were open to the elements, upholstery cracked and split and the hood ornament was missing, but hadn't the sphinx itself lost a nose? And although they sat on wooden blocks the wheels were caked in grease, a promise that someday this beast would cough and rise again.

Ofelia was looking for Rufo's phone. Arkady had said that in Moscow a hustler like Rufo would have as likely stepped out of his house without a leg as without a cell phone. If this were a real investigation she could have taken a laundry list of names associated with Rufo to CubaCell and worked backward from their calls. Instead, she'd have to find the phone itself. It was somewhere. For killing someone with a knife, work that could get messy, Rufo had taken the precaution of changing shoes and wearing over his clothes a one-piece silvery running suit; Goretex let in the air, kept out the blood. Likewise, cell phones were delicate, dollars-only items, not something a careful man placed in harm's way. Rufo thought ahead, the trick was to think like him.

The door knocker to the ground-floor apartment was answered by a white woman in a drab housedress and flamboyantly coiffed and hennaed hair. Half the women in Havana, it seemed to Ofelia, spent their lives getting ready for a party that never happened. In turn, the woman made a sour study of Ofelia's jinetera gear until presented with a PNR badge.

"Figures," the woman said.

"I'm here to see the murder scene upstairs. Do you have a key?"

"No. You can't go in there anyway. That's Russian property, no one can go in. Who knows what they're doing?"

"Show me."

The woman led the way in slippers that snapped against the stairs. The lock on the apartment door was shiny and new even in the poor light of the hall. Ofelia remembered making a search of the sitting room, pulling out Fidel y Arte and other books, a sofa and sideboard, performing a more hurried look into the other rooms for fear that the confrontation between Luna and the Russian would get out of hand. There was a chance the phone was inside the embassy apartment, but not likely. She reached on tiptoe to the dark underside of the stairs above for any ledge that Rufo could have set the phone on. No.

"You didn't find anything here?" Ofelia asked.

"There's nothing to find. The Russians don't put anyone there for weeks at a time. Good riddance."

As Ofelia went back down the stairs she let her hand trail on the risers above. She stepped out onto the porch with nothing but a dirty hand.

"I told you," the woman said.

"You were right." The woman was starting to remind Ofelia of her mother.

"You're the second one."

"Oh? Who else?"

"A big negro from the Ministry of Interior. Really black. He looked everywhere. He had a phone, too. He called on it and didn't speak and just listened, but not to the phone, understand?"

Naturally, Ofelia thought, because Luna was calling Rufo's number and was trying to hear it ring. That was the trouble with trying to hide a phone, sooner or later someone would call the number and the phone would announce itself.

"Did he find anything?"

"No. Don't you people work together? You're like everything else in this country. Everything has to be done twice, no?"

Ofelia walked out to the middle of the street. It was a block of old town houses transformed by revolution, idealism followed by fatigue and lack of paint and plaster. One front yard a parking lot for bicycles, another an open-air beauty salon. Collapsing buildings but busy as a hive.

She tried to imagine a reconstruction of the facts. The same street late at night. Arkady upstairs, Rufo outside in his freshly donned running suit, improvising on the run because no one had expected the arrival of a Russian investigator. Perhaps even placing one last call before he went into the house and up the steps to what he assumed would be the Russian's doom. Between the two corners of the block, where was the most likely place for Rufo to put, just for a few minutes, his precious phone?

Ofelia remembered Maria, the police car and Rufo's cigars. She returned to the porch.

"Whose car is this?"

"My husband's. He went to get some windows for the car, and the next thing I know I got a letter from Miami. I'm keeping the car till he gets back."

"Chevrolet?"

"'57, the best year. I used to get in and pretend Ruperto and I were driving to Playa del Este, a nice cruise to the beach. I haven't done that for a long time."

"Car windows are hard to find."

"Car windows are impossible to find."

The upholstery was more a rat's nest than seats. From her bag Ofelia took a pair of surgical gloves.» Do you mind?"

"Mind what?"

With gloves on, Ofelia reached through the open window and opened the glove compartment. Within was a wooden cigar box with a broken Montecristo seal of crossed swords. Inside the box were ten aluminum cigar tubes and an Ericson cell phone set on vibrate instead of ring.

Ofelia heard a click and looked through the car at a man taking her picture from the sidewalk. He was a large, middle-aged man with a camera bag over a shoulder and the sort of vest with many pockets that photographers wore, all topped by an artistic beret.

"I'm sorry," he said, "you just looked beautiful in that old wreck of a car. Do you mind? Most women don't mind if I photograph them-in fact, they rather like it. The light is awful but you looked so perfect. Do you think we could talk?"

Ofelia put the phone in the cigar box and the box and gloves in her bag before she straightened out.» What about?"

"About life, about romance, about everything." Despite his size he made a show of coming shyly through the gate. His Spanish was fluent, with a Russian accent.» Arkady sent me. Even so, I'm a great admirer of Cuban women."

Arkady didn't set anything on fire at the Sierra Maestra and didn't knock on Mostovoi's door. Instead he inserted the credit card into the jamb the moment he arrived and hit the door with a grunt that took the breath out of a watching toddler. Inside, Arkady looked to see whether the "greatest demolition team in Africa" was still the centerpiece of the wall. It was.

On his first visit he had gone to pains to make sure Mostovoi wouldn't notice that he'd had any guests. This time Arkady didn't care. Where there was one photograph of the Havana Yacht Club there were bound to be more, because a man who documented his greatest moments didn't destroy his pictures when the wrong company came-he just put them out of sight.

Arkady took off his coat to work. He emptied shoe boxes and suitcases, spilled book and kitchen shelves, upended files and drawers, pulled the refrigerator from the wall and tipped over chairs until he had discovered more photographs, pornography that was not so sporty and not so sweet, and videotapes of sex and leather. But everybody had a side business, everyone had a second job. All Arkady really produced was the sweat on his face.

He visited the bathroom to wash up. The walls were tiled and the medicine-cabinet mirror was half silvered, half black. Inside the cabinet were a couple of nostrums, hair elixirs and recreational amounts of amyl nitrate and amphetamines. As he dried his hands he noticed that the shower curtain was closed. People with small bathrooms usually kept their curtains drawn for the illusion of space or a childish fear of what was on the other side. Since that was an anxiety Arkady freely admitted to, he pulled the curtain wide.

Floating in the tub in ten centimeters of water were four black-and-white photographs not of nubile sports or foreign travels but of the dead Italian and Hedy. Blood showed as black and the carpet and sheets were soaked and striped. The Italian looked almost gilled from machete wounds. Arkady didn't know him, but he did recognize Hedy even if her head balanced precariously on her shoulders. At first Arkady thought that Mostovoi had gotten hold of police photographs, but of course these pictures had just been developed and none of the usual evidence markers had been laid, no shoe tips of detectives trying to stay out of the camera's way, and the darkness of the shadows themselves suggested that no other source of illumination had been on. The photographer had worked alone in a dark room the night before Ofelia arrived, and real skill must have been required just to estimate the focus. He'd only chanced four shots or only developed four from a roll. A single shot of the Italian as he dragged himself, still alive, toward the door. More thought had gone into the pictures of Hedy. A low shot from between her legs up to her head. A second that framed her head between deflated breasts. A third just of Hedy's face, surprise still fresh in her eyes. The man with the camera had been unable to resist marking the moment, thrusting his tubular white wrist and hand into the sheen of her curls to improve the pose.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

By eight o'clock the Marina Hemingway had the social hum of a small village at night. Younger crew, an international set with stringy blond hair, spread out in front of the market or carried bags from the ice bunker. From the far end came the amplified pulse of a disco, glitter and sound reflected in the canals. Overhead an edge of the moon burned through the electric haze of the marina. He didn't see Ofelia but she tended to be fanatically good to her word.

The Alabama Baron was gone, replaced by a launch so new it smelled of plastic. Already ensconced in its cabin was a jinetera mixing rum and Coke. Ahead, George Washington Walls and John O'Brien were having beers in the cockpit of the Gavilan, firebrand and financier at their ease. The new lead from the power box snaked smoothly down to the water and up the dark flank of the seaplane tender.

"You're here." Walls looked up at Arkady.

"Right on time, too," O'Brien said.» Wonderful. Back into your cashmere coat, I see. Join us."

"I have a plane to catch. You said we were going to talk about Pribluda."

"A plane to catch?" O'Brien said.» That is sad. This means you are turning down the chance to be part of our endeavor? I have always counted myself as fairly persuasive. Apparently with you I've failed."

"The man is a disappointment," Walls said.» That's what Isabel says."

"Arkady, I was hoping to persuade you because I sincerely thought it was for your own good. I had looked forward to working with you. Come on, have a drink for God's sake. We'll have an Irish good-bye. Your plane's at midnight?"

"Yes."

Walls said, "You've got hours."

Arkady stepped out of the light and down into the boat, settling against a cockpit cushion. Instantly a cold can of beer was in his hand. At night the boat seemed to ride even lower, the polished mahogany dark as the water.

O'Brien said, "You're taking back the body of your friend Pribluda? That means you've positively identified him?"

"No."

"Because you don't need to anymore, you already know."

"I think so."

"Well, that's a comfort. Your decision to go is final? What we can do"-O'Brien tapped Arkady's knee-"is give you a return ticket. Take a week in Moscow, in that miserable ice chest you call home, and if you change your mind come back. Is that fair?"

"More than fair, but I think I've made up my mind."

"Why?" Walls asked.

O'Brien said, "Because he found what he came for, I suppose. Is that it, Arkady?"

"Pretty much."

"To a single-minded man." O'Brien raised his beer.» To the man in the coat."

The beer was good, far better than Russian. On the dock a line of jineteras slipped quietly as mice toward the disco, lamplight haloing their hair. It was Saturday night, after all. The salsa accelerated. Walls balanced on the captain's chair in a black pullover that reminded Arkady of the sleek young radical who had stepped out of a plane with a gun and a burning flag. O'Brien wore his black jumpsuit. Pirate colors. He unwrapped a cigar and turned its tip over a flame, drawing it in. The boats in their slips sighed as a ripple of water lifted them.

O'Brien said, "You know what happened to Pribluda, but you don't know why? And I'm the only one who hasn't had a say?"

"You say a lot, but it's different every time."

"Then I won't tell you, I'll show you. See that sea-bag?"

Although the cabin was dark, Arkady saw one end of a canvas bag in the light at the bottom of the steps.

"Sergei's," Walls said.

Arkady was nearest. He put down the beer and went down the cabin stairs. As he picked up the bag the door shut and locked behind him. The inboard engine started in the space ahead, producing a reverberation like being inside a double bass. Overhead, feet nimbly stepped fore and aft, releasing lines and gathering fenders. The Gavilan backed, swung and eased forward. As the boat passed the disco, laughter and strobe lights flickered on the curtains. Canal echo dropped behind, and Arkady heard Walls talking on the radio. Arkady beat on the door more for form than conviction; a boat as classic as this was built of hardwood. He moved around a galley table to an engine-room door that was locked as well. He pulled aside a porthole curtain just in time to see the guardia dock slide by with no sign yet that Ofelia had raised an alarm. Past the dock the brass bow of the Gavilan sliced its way so smoothly Arkady felt no more than the faintest rise and fall, headed directly to sea by the evenness of wave slap.

Along Fifth Avenue were the first signs of a major event: brigada trucks of huddled Interior troops parked in the night dark of side streets, motorcycle policemen in white helmets and spurred boots straddling their bikes, K9 units sniffing the crowd that filed up the driveway of the Construction Union House, the former Havana Yacht Club. Ofelia's PNR badge didn't work, but Mos-tovoi somehow produced a pass that let them through. There were telltale signs that the Noche Folklorica was a more important event than she had expected. A feature of national security was that no one ever knew which of his residences the Comandante would sleep in, let alone what functions he would attend. However, when he did appear certain precautions were always taken. Tracks led on the lawn to seven armored Mercedes, an ambulance, a radio command truck, a media van, two dog vans, a circle of soldiers and a cordon of men in shirts and windbreakers holding newspapers folded over cell phones and radios and standing around for no apparent purpose until a guest deviated from the driveway. The house's two grand stairways met at a central porch. From there, under the molding of a ship's wheel on a pennant, soldiers scanned the crowd, although this was not, to Ofelia, a group that was likely to get out of hand. Some officially approved Santeria priests were on hand, but mostly she saw stiff ministry and military types and their spouses following the designated route around the mansion to the oceanfront side. The occasional man was patted down or a woman stopped to have her purse searched, but Mostovoi and Ofelia were waved through, and despite his camera bag the photographer pushed so quickly through the crowd she could barely keep up.

"Why would Arkady want to meet here?" Ofelia demanded.» How would he even get in?"

"He's been here before," Mostovoi said.» He gets around."

The Noche Folklorica was an event Arkady had asked about, Ofelia knew. If he had changed his mind about talking to O'Brien and Walls, that was just as well. She saw the colors of dancers sequestered behind spiky palms: blue for Yemaya, yellow for Oshun. Spaced along the beach were soldiers. Tied to the end of the dock was a black patrol boat. All the light and all the sound was concentrated on an outdoor stage facing the water.

The Noche Folklorica had already begun, and from the clubhouse balconies men in plain clothes scanned the crowd. Most people stood on the patio around the stage, but there was also a reviewing stand with five tiers of special guests. She knew only the figure in the middle of the front row, a man with a flat, nearly Greek profile set in wiry gray hair and beard, the face that was the second sun of her lifetime. Beside him was an empty chair.

The doors opened and O'Brien peeked through to say, "Come on. It's too lovely a night to miss."

Arkady marched up. This far out the cockpit sat under a canopy of stars. Walls steered parallel to the shore, running at dead slow. Besides his cigar O'Brien also held, casually but not negligently, a pistol with a barrel extended by a silencer. The marina had passed from sight, but approaching on the Miramar shore was a far brighter nexus of excitement and music. Arkady recognized the Havana Yacht Club brilliant in floodlights. On the patio leading down to the beach a crowd surrounded a stage and reviewing stand.

Along with floodlights the Yacht Club displayed the colored lights of carnival, although the club's twin docks were empty and only a black patrol boat had tied up to enjoy the spectacle. As the Gavilan drew closer Walls slipped forward to snap covers over the running lights and John O'Brien dropped his cigar into the water.

"Quite a show." He handed Arkady a set of heavy binoculars.» Now your trip to Cuba is complete."

The glasses were 20x Zeiss with a matte metal body, and through them the scene at the Yacht Club meters leaped into view. Spectators filled two levels of the patio. A troupe of women in yellow scarves and skirts ascended the stage while a band filled the time with a percussive rhythm, whistles, bells clearly audible even from the Gavilan. Arkady zoomed in on the reviewing stand, on a tall man with aviator glasses, Erasmo's friend, the same man who had raised a toast to the Havana Yacht Club at the Angola paladar the night before. Arkady ran the glasses along the other seated guests. In the front row's places of honor were an empty chair and a man with a gray beard who looked as if he had been big once but had since shrunk into a stiff green shell of ironed fatigues. He had the abstracted expression of an old man regarding a thousand grandchildren whose names he could no longer keep track of.

Arkady went back to the patrol boat. By now, Ofelia ought to have communicated with someone, and although the Gavilan ran low in the water Arkady assumed it appeared on the patrol boat's radar. Whether or not Ofelia had made contact, the Gavilan was within four hundred meters of the stage. Either the patrol boat at the dock would come out to inspect the Gavilan or another patrol boat was closing from a different direction. Arkady was surprised that the Gavilan hadn't been challenged already by radio.

O'Brien said, "The marvelous thing about you, Arkady, is that you're both suicidal and insatiably curious. 'What' isn't good enough for you, you have to know the 'why.' When you came out to the boat you had to know something like this was going to happen, but you had to see."

"And then maybe fuck us up," Walls said.» Go out in a blaze of glory."

"Or leave a message behind," O'Brien said.» Look on the beach to the left of the stage."

Arkady swung his glasses and saw Ofelia work her way from the spectators. He'd missed her when she was in the crowd. A PNR shield was pinned to her white halter. He waited for her to move toward the patrol boat or the stage. Instead, she moved in the opposite direction. At her side, being helpful, was Mostovoi, a camera bag swinging from his shoulder.

"What do you want?" Arkady asked.

"I have what I want," O'Brien said.

Walls nudged Arkady.» You're missing the show."

Arkady swung his glasses to the reviewing stand and saw the man in aviator glasses carry a man-sized doll with a cane and a red bandanna down to the chair in the front row, where a drummer helped make the doll sit up, its face turned toward the man on its right. Change and the Comandante. Arkady focused on the doll's bandanna and walking stick, different from the ones he had left on a doll's body at the Rosita. The Comandante returned the doll's gaze at first, then looked up and joked with his friend in the aviator glasses, who laughed and retreated from the stage to the side of the stands, where he was joined in the crowd by Dr. Bias, too energetic to stay in the shadows any longer. Arkady refocused on Change, on the doll's roughly molded head, patched and repainted, with the same glittering eyes.

"This is murder," Arkady said.

"Not just murder, please," O'Brien begged, "This is the elimination of an individual who has survived more assassination attempts than anyone else in history."

"That demands respect right there," said Walls.

"And let's admit it," O'Brien said, "the death of this man is the only crime down here of any interest. You can steal five dollars or a million, it's still petty crime while he's alive. Because you can't leave with it and essentially it's all his."

"You can stop," Arkady said.» You haven't done anything violent with your own hands yet. I know Pribluda's death was an accident."

"See, we told you we never touched him," Walls said.» We had no idea where Sergei disappeared to." \ "But we couldn't stop now," said O'Brien.» In the last forty years only one generation of Cubans has tasted S independent thought, one group has experienced command on the battlefield and operated in the greater world. There are two hundred forty generals in the Cuban army, and the army is getting smaller and smaller. Where do you think they're going to go, what do you think they're going to do? This is their prime, their window of opportunity."

"Their time to throw the dice?"

"Yes."

"And they all ordered lobster."

O'Brien gave Arkady an appreciative smile and lifted his own pair of binoculars.» That's right, very good. That was the vote. They all wanted in."

The pageant had begun again. Golden skirts and brown legs obscured the guest of honor in his front-row seat. His green cap seemed to weigh as heavily on him as a bishop's miter. Change's roughly molded face was slightly cocked, glass eyes bright in the lights. At the side of the stage the man in aviator glasses reached down to shake someone's hand. Erasmo. Appearing gravely pale and weary, the mechanic lifted his eyes toward the Gavilan, although Arkady knew the boat had to be invisible from shore.

More figures slipped out of the back rows of the reviewing stand; Arkady recognized them all from the paladar Angola. The front rows appeared mesmerized by swirling skirts, the insinuating pace of the drums booming from speakers, echoing off the clubhouse. Change's head listed heavily to the bearded man on his right.» This Side to Enemy," Arkady thought. No doubt the man's uniform fit as badly as it did in part because of an armored vest, which would stop a small-caliber bullet but not a shaped charge of dynamite. No shards or ball bearings, Arkady guessed. They didn't want a general slaughter, just an effective circle of impact, and who more expert with explosions than Erasmo?

He swung the glasses and found Ofelia and Mostovoi going in a completely different direction, working their way far from the stage and along the sand to a white wall that separated the grounds of the Havana Yacht Club from the neighboring beach. Arkady saw Mostovoi check his watch.

"It's La Concha, the old casino," Mostovoi said.» I consider it one of the most romantic settings in Havana. I've shot here daytime, nighttime, it's got that exotic feel that women love."

He ran his hand up a column. For all the police and military presence on the other side of the beach wall, Ofelia and Mostovoi had this area entirely to themselves. It was now the social center for a catering union, but she remembered that before the Revolution it had been not only a casino but a Moorish fantasy, with a minaret, date palms and orange trees, tiled roof. Ofelia and the Russian stood in the long shadow of a colonnade of horseshoe arches. The fact that she had followed Mostovoi didn't mean she trusted him. For all his assurances there was a shiftiness about him. His beret shifted, his hair shifted and his eyes seemed to be over everything, especially her. She wouldn't have spent a minute with him except for the fact that he claimed to know where Arkady wanted to meet her.

"First one place, then another? Why would he come here?"

"You'll have to ask him that. Do you mind if I take a picture of you?"

"Now?"

"While we're waiting. I think that Cuban women are nature's children. The eyes, the warm color, a lushness that can be almost too overripe at times. Not you, though."

"Where and when exactly is Arkady coming?"

"Right here. Who can say exactly when with Renko?" Mostovoi unzipped his bag for a camera and a flash unit that he tightened into the camera shoe. The unit made a warm-up whine.

"No pictures." Ofelia wanted to keep eyes adjusted to the night sky, the arc of sand, the dark of the water. The last thing she needed was a flash.» You keep looking at your watch."

"For Arkady."

The white light blinded her. She was unprepared because Mostovoi shot without raising the camera and she saw nothing but a fixed image of flash unit's faceted lens and the photographer's smirk until she blinked her way back to normal.

"If you do that again," she said, "I will break your camera.”

"Sorry, I couldn't resist."

"Was that a signal?" Arkady noticed that with the flash from the casino Walls eased the throttle forward, bringing the Gavilan even closer to the beach. Why wasn't the patrol boat at the dock responding?

Walls said, "When my friend John O'Brien plans something the z's are dotted and the t's are crossed."

"Thank you, George. The devil, as they say, is in the details. Speaking of whom ..."

Ahead in the water was a neumdtico with a hand shielding a candle. As Walls slowed the boat to idle again, the neumdtico snuffed the flame with his fingers, spun his tube and paddled backward to the stern of the Gavilan, where Walls helped him on board and tied the tube to a transom cleat. Luna stood dripping in the cockpit. Wet, he had the dank look of a body disinterred and he stared at Arkady with anticipation.

"Now you'll know what it feels like," Luna promised.

"What feels like?"

"I'm sorry, Arkady," O'Brien said.» It's time to give up the coat now. In fact, everything. You can do it yourself or we can do it for you."

While Walls took the coat and the rest of Arkady's clothing, too, Luna went below to change clothes, a modesty that surprised Arkady. The sergeant reappeared in uniform swollen with a menace kept in thin control, and Arkady wondered how he had ever managed to throw Luna into a wall. He was, himself, past lifting weights or fattening up. Then it was Arkady's turn to put on Luna's sodden shorts and shirt. Up to the point of pulling on flippers Arkady considered himself relatively safe because they were so difficult to put on the feet of a dead man. With the flippers on he felt both unsafe and ridiculous. Still, a patrol boat had to be coming.

Holding the binoculars by the strap, O'Brien returned them to Arkady.» See how it ends."

Onstage, a melee of golden dancers moved to a quickening pace. Daughters of Oshun, Arkady thought. Well, he'd learned that much. It wouldn't be a detonation set by a timer, he thought, because there were too many variables in public events. The back two rows of the stands had thinned out. Erasmo backed his wheelchair from the stage. An ecstasy in rays of sweat flew from the dancers. Change leaned. By the side of the stage a dozen men looked at their watches. In the front row, the leader himself and Chango seemed to look straight through the frenzy of the dancers. How the dancers could turn faster Arkady didn't know, but they did, their golden skirts spread and spinning at the runaway pace of the congas. He braced for the flare of explosion.