Shift: A Novel

Camagüey Province, Cuba

November 5, 1963

Maria Bayo’s uncle had died by the time Ivelitsch reached him, but there were a half dozen other cases of radiation poisoning in the village. The epicenter was a small shed one block off the village’s only paved road. Even without the Geiger counter Ivelitsch would have been able to find it: someone had painted the skull and crossbones on all four sides of the building.

“Readings are incredibly high, comrade,” Sergei Vladimirovich confirmed. “Either the unit was damaged when Vassily Vasilievich stole it, or afterwards, when Raúl’s man got it.”

“Is there any other danger? Besides the leak, I mean?”

“You mean an explosion? No, comrade—” Sergei Vladimirovich broke off.

“What?” Ivelitsch demanded.

“Just a premonition. The thieves obviously stored the device here, but they moved it before we arrived. That means they knew we were coming. Next time they won’t just stick it in a shed. They’ll look for something less noticeable.” Sergei Vladimirovich waved a hand, indicating the flat fields stretching beyond the village in every direction. “My guess is they’ll bury it.”

“And?”

“It’s just that the water table’s extremely shallow here, and porous as well. If this thing actually gets into the local supply, you could end up with hundreds sick, perhaps thousands.”

“Your concern for human welfare is touching.” Ivelitsch’s voice would have raised the fur on a cat’s back.

Sergei Vladimirovich surprised Ivelitsch. “I wasn’t thinking of the villagers, comrade.” He looked around the windblown shacks with almost as much distaste as he’d shown the pile of dog carcasses a few days ago. “An outbreak of suspicious cancers and birth defects is going to be hard to keep a secret, even in Cuba. If word gets to the relief agencies, everyone in the world will know what we’re looking for.”

“Well then. We’d better find the device before that happens.”

Most of the sick people in the village didn’t know anything. Ignorance, of course, is the Communist condition—in four years with the Czech secret police, Ivelitsch had been hard-pressed to find a single resident of Prague or Bratislava who knew his brother’s wife’s name, let alone whether his neighbor was an enemy of the proletariat—but even with a little cajoling the villagers stuck to their story. Ivelitsch ordered the sick to be quarantined and given tetracycline to combat the radiation sickness, which in most cases was fairly mild. The quarantine was more for his sake than the villagers’, since it allowed him to interview each of the patients privately. Most of them knew nothing helpful, and Ivelitsch was beginning to lose hope—and patience—when finally he came to the last man. He’d been unconscious the first time Ivelitsch visited him, but was awake now, barely. The skin of his lips and nostrils and eyelids was pocked with blisters, and thin yellow mucus leaked from beneath his fingernails.

“Favor,” the man croaked, his tongue bulging from his mouth like a lizard’s. “They said you had medicine.”

There was a cane leaning across the arms of a chair, and Ivelitsch laid it on the floor before sitting down next to the bed. He pulled a pill bottle from his jacket and set it on the bedside table, just out of the patient’s reach.

“I need information.”

“Favor. Se nada. I know nothing.”

Ivelitsch thought the man’s response came too quickly. It wasn’t an answer. It was a denial.

“An American in a truck. Dark like a Cuban, but big.”

“¿Gordo?”

“Not fat. Atlético.”

The man turned his head toward the pills. The action triggered a cough, long and deep but hollow, as though he were almost emptied out.

“There was a man. He could have been American. He paid Victor Bayo to park it in his shed.”

“What was in the truck?”

“He kept it covered.”

“You would not be sick if you hadn’t looked.”

The man on the bed closed his eyes. For a moment Ivelitsch thought he’d lost consciousness. He was reaching for the cane to prod him when the man opened his eyes.

“I don’t know what it was. Some kind of machine. As big as my sister’s dowry chest. There was writing on it. Russian writing.”

“How do you know it was Russian?”

“It was like the letters on the jeeps.” A tiny croaking laugh. “Backward consonants and funny shapes.”

“And what happened to it?”

“Someone came for the truck and took it away. Two days ago. He went east.”

“The American?”

“No. Cubano. But the American sent him.”

“How do you know?”

“He had keys to the padlock on the shed, and to the truck as well.”

Ivelitsch nodded, and stood up.

“You did well to answer my questions. You saved your people much sickness.” He grabbed the pill bottle and tossed it on the bed. “You might have even saved yourself. You are a lucky man.”

Louie Garza waited for the Russian to leave before he took the first pill. Indeed, he was a lucky man. He only hoped the pills worked before the Russian figured out Louie’d sent him on a wild-goose chase, and came back for the truth.