Havana Bay

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.

Instead, plainclothes men started to appear. They came in pairs, quietly taking away the man in aviator glasses, Bias and, one by one, the other men Arkady recognized from the paladar. Each man reacted with the same sequence of surprise, bafflement and resignation. Their military training showed. No one ran or called out at the moment of his arrest. Arkady looked for Erasmo being wheeled away. Instead, Erasmo seemed to be in charge of this new phase. Hardly anyone else in the audience seemed to notice, fixed as they were on blurred hands on drums and the golden skirts of sensuous Yemayas, every eye transfixed except for the old man in too much uniform in the front row. He dropped his head by small degrees until Arkady realized that under the bill of his cap the nation's leader was checking his own watch.

"He knew," Arkady said.» He knew about the plot."

"Much better," O'Brien said.» He helped start it. He does it every few years to weed out malcontents. The same as he did with Isabel's father. The Comandante didn't last this long by waiting for a conspiracy to come for him."

"Erasmo helped, too?"

"In spite of himself, Erasmo is a Cuban patriot."

"You took care of the details?"

"More than mere details."

"The talk about the Havana Yacht Club?"

"All true to a degree. The fact is, Arkady, revolutions are chancy things, you never know how they're going to turn out. I prefer to bet with the house, whoever the house is. The glasses?" He took the binoculars from Arkady by the strap and lowered them into a plastic Ziploc bag, which he placed in the seabag that was supposedly Pribluda's.» There's nothing trickier than an assassination, especially an assassination that's not supposed to succeed. You have to keep the means and trigger of destruction in your own hands. And you have to undermine the conspirators in the public eye. These are highly regarded men, military heroes. It helps paint them black if the man who actually tries to set off the blast isn't Cuban at all but a generally unpopular figure as, say, a Russian. A dead Russian, to be precise."

Walls and O'Brien weren't just waiting to explain how brilliant they were, Arkady knew. There was more to come. Luna opened a cockpit bench to take out a speargun. He placed the butt against his hip, cocked the power bands and slid into the muzzle a shaft with a spearhead with folded wings for barbs. No patrol boat, Arkady understood, was on the way.

"Why would anyone connect me to the blast?"

Walls held up another Ziploc bag so that Arkady could see inside a television remote control.» Remember the monitor you turned on for John at the Riviera? We modified the remote, it's a radio transmitter now, but it still has your fingerprints. Then, people saw the doll in Pribluda's apartment while you were there. We may have lost Sergei, but John said you were so bright you'd serve even better."

O'Brien answered his cell phone. Arkady hadn't heard a ring. After a word of satisfaction, O'Brien folded the phone up.

Luna fished in the pockets of Arkady's coat and found the snapshot of Pribluda, Mongo and Erasmo.» Fuck your Havana Yacht Club."

He tore the picture into pieces that he threw onto the water. He kicked the inner tube off the transom after the bits of paper.

"Get in."

Standing at the carved doors of the old gambling hall, Ofelia caught the button tones and soft fluorescence of Mostovoi's cell phone. The call was over in a second.

"Who did you call?"

"Friends. Have you ever posed?"

"What friends?"

"At the embassy. I explained that I was helping somebody, which I certainly am trying to do. I meant it about posing."

"For what?"

"Something different."

Her attention was half on Mostovoi talking to her in the dark interior of the hall and half on the pale strand of the beach. Music played on the other side of the beach wall. A rumba for Yemaya.

"How different?"

"I mean very different."

She couldn't tell what was in the room, but its large space magnified sound, and she heard Mostovoi swallow in a way she found unpleasant. All she could see of him was the oily eye of his camera and she talked mainly to keep track of him.

"What was in this room?"

He slipped sideways from the moonlight at the door.

"What was here? It was the main casino. Chandeliers from Italy, tiles from Spain. Roulette tables, craps, blackjack. It was a different world."

"Well, no one's here now."

"I know what you mean. You think maybe Renko went to the plane?"

Would Arkady do that? she wondered. Slip away without a word? It was one of the things men did best. They didn't need planes, they just disappeared. Her mother could count them: Primero, Segundo and now Tercero. Bias would deliver Pribluda's body to the airport. Arkady still might wander in like a beachcomber or stroll down the portal of arches that framed the sea, but it was more likely with every minute that he had accomplished the classic retreat, the exit with no good-bye. She felt profoundly stupid.

"I could see you in any number of poses," Mostovoi said.

But she thought about Arkady's black coat and decided, no, his problem was that he abandoned no one. One way or another, he was going to come.

"There in the moonlight," Mostovoi said, "is perfect."

Ofelia heard the shutter of his camera click, although the flash failed. She heard two more rapid clicks before she realized they weren't from a shutter but from a hammer on the empty breech of a gun. She tried to dig her own gun out of her straw bag, but it was under Rufo's phone. The hammer clicked again. When Ofelia found her own gun, it was tangled with straw. She fired one wild round that exploded the bottom of the bag. Something crushed the plaster wall by her ear. She dropped to her back and held her gun with both hands more deliberately. Her second shot through the bag lit Mostovoi, a flash of him swinging his gun down like a club. The third tunneled into his mouth.

Arkady floated in the tube on a short rope from the stern of the Gavilan. The Caribbean was warm, the net a hammock, the rubber tube actually cushy, but he felt as if he were looking up from the bottom of a well at O'Brien, Walls with the gun and Luna with the spear-gun. They blocked the stars. Arkady would have liked to think at least he was stalling. No, they were only waiting, having outthought and outmuscled him all the way. One stunning accomplishment: he not only found out how Pribluda was duped but got to be the dupe too. Finally a neumdtico himself.

Their heads lifted at the sound of gunshots.

Walls said, "The son of a bitch was supposed to use a silencer."

"And why three shots?" asked O'Brien.

A cell-phone tone came from Luna's shirt pocket. He flipped the phone open and answered. As he listened he turned toward the beach.

"Who is it?" Walls said.

"It's her, the detective." O'Brien followed Luna's eyes' turn to the casino; it really was wonderful to see how quickly the man calculated, Arkady thought.» She got Mostovoi's phone. Or Rufo's, and she's using the memory." O'Brien told Luna, "Hang up."

Luna raised the speargun for quiet and pressed the phone tight against his ear.

"Take the phone from him," O'Brien told Walls.

Luna pointed the spear at Arkady.» She says he never harmed Hedy. You told me he came looking for me. What she says is he wasn't after me at all."

"How does she know?" Walls said.

"The night someone killed Hedy, she says he was with her."

"She's lying," Walls said.» They sleep together."

"That's why I believe her. I know her and she knows me. Who hurt my Hedy?"

"Do you believe this?" O'Brien appealed to Arkady as one sane man to another.» George, will you please take his fucking phone away?"

"Your stupid Hedy," Walls told Luna, "was a whore."

The speargun jumped and a steel shaft with a line of white nylon stuck out of Walk's stomach. When he looked down blood under pressure sprayed his face.

"George," O'Brien said.

Walls sat down on the gunwale, raised his gun and shot Luna, who took a single backward step before moving forward. As Walls tried for another clear shot the two men fell over the side.

Arkady began climbing out of the tube. On deck O'Brien had pulled the second speargun from the cockpit bench and was trying to insert the spear and pull back the two stiff elastic power bands, not an easy task at the best of times, worse standing amid loose spear cable and blood on the deck. But as Arkady came up over the transom O'Brien managed to notch one band and pull the gun's trigger, and Arkady found himself on his back in the water, a spear through his forearm and the spearhead lodged shallowly in his chest, the spear's force spent on his arm. Spear cable led back to O'Brien, who had one tasseled shoe on the transom and was already, Arkady could tell, calculating ten or eleven moves ahead. With his free hand Arkady yanked the cable. O'Brien dropped the speargun overboard, but the line that tangled around his ankle stretched him over the polished mahogany. Arkady pulled with both hands and O'Brien slid all the way over the stern and in.

O'Brien shouted, "I can't swim!"

The Gavilan was low-slung enough for O'Brien to try to claw his way back on, but Arkady towed him by the line away from the boat. O'Brien turned to the inner tube, but his splashing chased the tube more than it closed the distance. The speargun floated, but not enough to hold up a man.

The spear tip's wings had spread outside the muscle of Arkady's chest. He closed them under the spear's sliding collar and drew the shaft from the arm while it I was numb. With his good arm he swam underwater. The sea was a cave around a quarter-moon with glints of fish. On the other side of the boat Walls and Luna I still struggled, trying to climb over each other to the surface. Bubbles streaked from Walls's gun. Luna had wrapped the spear line around the other man's neck. Arkady came up for air and made his way back around the stern of the Gavilan. No more than a meter away the top of O'Brien's head bobbed in the water.

The patrol boat hadn't moved, although Arkady saw lights along the casino beach. The Yacht Club was still bright.

He could haul himself onto the Gavilan, but at this point Arkady was happy to rest, watch the stars swarm overhead and float on a blackness that held him up.