The Raiders

1

THE SECOND WEEK AFTER JONAS SUFFERED HIS HEART attack, Sonja flew to New York. Bat met her at Kennedy Airport and took her to the apartment in the Waldorf Towers. She went the next day to visit Jonas at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.

Bat offered to drive her, but she insisted she would take a cab. She wanted to do some shopping, too, and would meet him for lunch at the 21 Club at one-fifteen. Her first cab driver, a Puerto Rican, took a sympathetic interest in her when she spoke Spanish to him and suggested she remove a diamond ring and an emerald bracelet she was wearing and carry them in her purse. She thanked him for his advice and did what he said. He could not have guessed she was wearing a jeweled platinum belt worth more than the combined value of the ring and bracelet, plus his taxicab.

Jonas was grateful to her for coming. He was sitting up now, propped up by pillows and the mechanical bed. He was thinner already and looked a bit fragile. He had a better color, just the same. Maybe that was because this was the first time since his hospitalization after the crash of The Centurion that he had gone twelve whole days without a drink.

He was in a mood to speak earnestly, driven undoubtedly by his brush with mortality. "Do you have any idea how grateful I am to you for rearing our son to be the man he is?" he asked her. "Here I am, out of it. Bat is a godsend for me. Who else could I trust to take responsibility for everything?"

"You have a loyal staff," she said.

"They are not Cords," said Jonas with a tone of finality in his voice that suggested that was a complete answer.

"He is," she said. "I can see that."

"But Sonja ... He doesn't like me. Why doesn't he like me?"

"Because the two of you are of a piece," she said sharply. "Both of you ought to see that."

"Christ, I've offered him the world! I've given him ..." He stopped, shrugged.

Sonja nodded and did not comment. She was trying to assess the damage this man had sustained. Her memories of him were — first, of the twenty-one-year-old stud she had accompanied to Europe: handsome, muscular, filled with optimism and enthusiasm; and, second, the matured and self-confident entrepreneur she had met for the second time four years ago. He was fifty-two years old now, young to have suffered a heart attack. It was apparent that he knew it. He had planned at least twenty more vigorous years, without limitations, and now he had to reassess his plans.

"I would like to ask a favor of you," he said.

"Of course," said Sonja.

"Your Uncle Fulgencio knows my name. On Bat's recommendation, I have invested money in a casino in Havana. I depend on a man your uncle also knows to keep the operation honest."

"Meyer Lansky," she said.

"You know — Well ... It would be in everyone's best interest — Uncle Fulgencio's, Bat's, and mine — if your uncle were to look sympathetically on an application Meyer Lansky will be making for a license to open a casino-hotel in Havana. He will adhere to the customs, if you follow my meaning."

"He will pay my uncle such bribes as are customary," Sonja said dryly.

"Whatever is customary," said Jonas.

"Will you have money in this?"

"Bat will make that judgment," said Jonas.

"You're letting Bat make judgments? That's something new, isn't it?"

Jonas shrugged weakly. "What else can I do? Anyway, he's smart. He's a Cord ... and a Batista, of course."

"Do you want a word of advice?" she asked.

"Why not?"

"Invest a little more in your relationship with your son. It will pay a better return than any other investment you ever made."

"I do. I let him have his head on that television show. I put money where I shouldn't have put it. We'll be damned lucky if we break even on it."

"I'm not talking about money, Jonas. Investing money is your whole life. It's what you do, and you do it well. What you don't do is invest yourself. You don't commit yourself. Do you love our son?"

"Of course I do."

"Then why don't you tell him?"

"He's never said anything of the kind — " He stopped abruptly, and for a moment Sonja thought he'd felt a hard twinge in his chest. " — to me ..." His voice trailed off, and Sonja was alarmed.

"Jonas?"

"It isn't easy. My father died without ever having said he loved me. He never heard it from me either. He died, and we never ... told ... each other. That was a huge mistake, Sonja, a horrible mistake. My god, am I making it again?"

"You have pride, Jonas. So has Bat. I could wish you were not so very much alike."

2

Sonja surprised Bat at "21" by ordering steak tartare. "They know how to do it here," she said.

"You've been here before, then."

"Did you suppose I had never been to New York before?" she asked with an amused smile.

Of course she had been in New York before. He should have remembered that. She had been in Europe, too, and not just when his father took her there. She had been in Cuba and most of the countries of Latin America. She had decorated two rooms in the hacienda outside Cordoba with pre-Columbian artifacts from Peru. Hanging in her own bedroom, instead of the crucifix that hung in the bedrooms of most dutiful wives, was a print by Picasso and a Calder mobile. She was no longer the innocent girl his father remembered. In fact, she was not the placid, compliant woman he thought he remembered as his mother. He should have thought before of being proud of her.

At age fifty, she was a memorably striking woman, who drew glances from men at nearby tables. His father had a taste for women who were beautiful when they were young and then aged well. Though he found it difficult to like Monica much, he could see why his father had married her twice. And the latest of them, Angie, was a fit successor to the two others he knew about.

His mother had ordered an appetizer of caviar, with Stolichnaya vodka so cold that it was not absolutely liquid but had begun to change consistency to something thicker. He had never tried it but had duplicated her order and found it surprisingly good.

"Your father tells me you are having an affair with Glenda Grayson."

"That's true."

"She's older than you are."

"She's a wonderful woman. The world has not always been kind to her."

Sonja shook her head. "That is a very bad reason to fall in love with a woman."

"She's very outgoing, very loving."

"Worse reasons," said Sonja. But then she smiled. "I thought you meant to marry the little girl from Florida."

"She wants a career."

"And Glenda Grayson does not? If you should decide to marry her, which God forbid, would she give up her career and become a wife?"

"Things haven't come to that state yet," said Bat.

Sonja glanced around the room, as if to make sure their fellow diners could not overhear their conversation. "I need to talk with you about something. How much money have you and your father committed to Cuba?"

Bat, too, glanced around before he answered. He leaned a little toward his mother and said, "A little over a million dollars. In the Floresta casino."

"What about the hotel being built by Meyer Lansky? Don't you have money in that?"

"So far, we don't have any money in that. Lansky has secured financing through others. He'd like for us to buy out one of his partners. It would give him more respectability."

"Your father asked me to contact our Uncle Fulgencio and ask him to be certain Lansky gets all the necessary licenses and permissions."

"That might be helpful," said Bat. "Lansky has a good relationship with Uncle Fulgencio, but I'm not sure it's good enough."

Sonja took a sip of the icy vodka. "I will fly to Havana on my way back to Mexico," she said. "I am going to tell you something, however. I'll put in a good word for your friend Lansky. I strongly advise you, even so, not to invest any more money in Cuba."

"Why?"

"You'll lose it."

Bat touched his mouth with one finger. "You take seriously the — "

She nodded. "The whole thing is a house of cards. Our uncle may be dead in a year. If he's lucky, he'll be in exile. He is not bright. He steals too much. Cuba looks brilliantly prosperous. It isn't. A few miles from those beautiful new casino-hotels, people live in squalor. The rebels in the mountains are growing stronger. More of them all the time. And they're getting weapons from the Soviet Union. Our uncle's regime — " She shrugged. "He was driven from power before. It can happen again. It will happen again."

"Meyer Lansky has committed every dime he has to his hotel."

"He will lose it."

"The new regime, whatever it is, will need the casino-hotels just as much as the present regime does," said Bat. "And they can't run them themselves."

"The British thought the Egyptians couldn't run the Suez Canal," she said. "Anyway, they will close the casinos. Those people in the mountains are Communists. They don't want the tourist trade."

"You paint a gloomy picture," said Bat.

"It's a gloomy situation," said his mother.

Bat watched the waiter stir raw eggs and herbs into the raw ground beef. He wished he had ordered steak tartare.

"Tell me about your father," she said.

Bat sighed. "It's difficult to know what to say. One day he's a thoughtless egomaniacal tyrant, scornful of anything I suggest; the next day he promotes me and increases my compensation. You know— He's clever as hell. Little by little, he's drawn me within his orbit. It's a game. When he gets me to where I'm seriously thinking of chucking the whole thing, he makes a concession. He doesn't make them short of that. The longer I stay, the more difficult it is to tell him to go to hell and walk out."

"Do you have any personal feeling for him at all?" she asked.

"Uh ... Well, he can be— He's a man. I don't know if you can understand what I mean by that."

"Do you think he has any personal feeling for you?"

Bat shrugged, then nodded. "Yes. I know he does. But do you know why? He's afraid. And what's he afraid of? Not of dying, not any more than any other man is afraid of dying. No, what Jonas is afraid of is that he'll die and everything he's spent his life building will fall into the hands of strangers. He thinks of himself as a king, and he wants the kingdom to survive him in the hands of— In the hands of a son."

"And that's all it amounts to, you think?"

"I don't know," he admitted quietly.

"You may be right," she said. "I'd think about it if I were you. There is something about you that is very much like him. You are a very generous man, except of yourself. You don't give of yourself. You're afraid to commit yourself. That's your Cord inheritance. That's an inheritance you've already got. You don't have to wait for him to die to inherit that."

3

Invitations to attend the grand opening of Meyer Lansky's Riviera Hotel were sent to Jonas and Bat. Jonas was not sufficiently recovered to make the flight from New York to Havana; but Bat flew from Los Angeles, taking Glenda with him, explaining to curious reporters — and through them to Toni — that his star might do a show at the Riviera between television seasons.

The Riviera was the paradigm of new casino-hotels. It was a turquoise-colored high-rise building in the shape of a curved Y, and every room had a view of the sea. Inside, it was more gaudy than tasteful; the effect was in fact overwhelming; guests were submerged in bright modernistic decor. The casino was in a golden dome outside the hotel.

Meyer Lansky personally welcomed Bat and Glenda. He escorted them to their suite, where he handed them tickets to the grand opening show in the Copa Room and told them they would be seated at his table.

They dressed for dinner: Bat in black tie, Glenda in a black gown glittering with gold sequins. They left their room early enough so they could look around a little before they went to the Copa Room. Bat was especially interested in seeing what the casino looked like. He liked what he saw. Jackets and ties were required of men. About half the players wore black tie. The big room was quiet except for the hushed calls of the croupiers and dealers. It was obvious that big money was at stake on the tables.

When they left the casino, Bat and Glenda stepped outside for a breath of the gentle tropical air, warm and heavy with moisture and the odors of tropical flowers. The strident beat of cacophonous Latin music drifted to the Riviera from a club not far away, Then suddenly a jarring sound came to their ears: the sharp, harsh crack of gunfire, followed by the signature rip of an automatic weapon. The firing lasted about ten seconds, then the night was quiet again except for the persistent music.

"What do you suppose that was?" Glenda asked.

"The policia are gun-happy," said Bat. "They're nervous."

They went to the Copa Room. Meyer Lansky was at his table. He introduced Glenda and Bat to the man who would be their dinner companion, Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo. Bat knew that Jimmy Blue Eyes was a partner in the Riviera. He was not the man Meyer Lansky hoped the Cords would buy out.

It was Lansky's theory that a good casino had to have a good kitchen. His official position in the hotel was director of food-service operations; and though that was only a front, he did take a personal interest in the kitchen, the preparation of food, and the way it was served.

President Fulgencio Batista arrived. He paused on his way to his table to salute Meyer Lansky, and when he saw Bat he came across the room with his hand outstretched. "¡Sobrino!" he said — nephew. "¡Jonas Enrique Raul! ¡Bienvenida!"

''¿Puedo presentar a la Señorita Glenda Grayson?" said Bat.

"Es una muchacha bonita," said Batista — She is a beautiful girl. Then with a sly smile he asked, "¿Es ella su hija?" — Is she your daughter?

Glenda understood nothing of the exchange and looked puzzled.

"I am very pleased to meet you, Miss Grayson," said Batista in English. "I know your name well. We receive American television in Havana. You would do well, Meyer, to book Miss Grayson to star in a show here in the Riviera."

"Yes. I mean to discuss just that with her this evening," said Lansky.

The star of the opening show was Ginger Rogers. Lansky told them that Abbott and Costello would play the Copa Room soon. Other major stars were being booked. He would indeed like to arrange an appearance by Glenda Grayson.

When the show was over, Glenda said she would be happy to put her agent in contact with Meyer Lansky. She said she had never seen a nightclub show so elaborately and expensively staged.

4

Lansky was ebullient when he accompanied Bat and Glenda to their suite after the show. They were trailed by waiters wheeling carts laden with champagne on ice, caviar, lobster salad, coffee, and Danish. Billy Blue Eyes Alo came, too, attracted by Glenda even though he knew he did not dare touch her.

"You see?" he said to Bat. "It is how a casino should be run."

Bat nodded. "And you'd like for us to put some money in it, hmm?"

Lansky grinned. "Only if you see in it the very great likelihood of very great profit. I'm asking you to invest, not to shoot money into a speculation."

"Meyer ..." said Bat. "Let's step out on the balcony. I'd like to talk with you alone."

From the balcony, twenty floors above the street, they had a view of the Straits of Florida — "You can almost see across," said Lansky — and of a part of Havana. The city was alive. President Batista had put out an invitation for everyone in the world to come to Havana; there was no limit to what they could enjoy there — the most honest casinos, the most luxurious tropical hotels, the most spectacular shows, the finest food, the youngest but most wanton whores, music, dancing, everything to amuse and arouse. (In one show room a man called The Giant laid out twelve silver dollars edge-to-edge on a table, then laid his penis on them to demonstrate that he could cover all twelve.) From the balcony, the vitality of the city's nightlife was evident. At midnight, traffic was heavy, as music floated up on the warm, scented air, as did the sound of laughter, somehow carried over a long distance.

"Meyer— "

And then they heard a random burst of gunfire, just as Bat and Glenda had heard it earlier.

"Do you know what that is, Meyer?"

"The police," said Lansky. "They're too quick to use their guns, but they fire in the air almost always."

Bat shook his head. "No," he said somberly. "That is the sound of war. Civil war. The rebels from the mountains. You are going to hear a great deal more of it."

Lansky turned his eyes away from Bat and out across the city. "Batista will take care of that. When he turns the army loose— "

"The army is already loose, and they can't stop it."

Lansky drew a deep breath. "You are saying you won't invest here."

"More than that," said Bat. "I am advising you to save what you can and get out."

"You have to be crazy. Everything I have in this world is tied up in the Riviera. Look at it! The world's finest casino-hotel ... The world's finest!"

"Meyer, I know I can trust you," said Bat. "You can guess the source of my information. My suggestion to you is to bail out as much as you can."

Lansky shook his head. "No. No," he said. "I'm a professional gambler. I should have known better than to bet everything on one throw, but I did. I have to believe you're wrong."

"Fine," said Bat. "I hope I am, too."

"You've spoiled my evening," said Lansky dolefully.

5

As soon as Meyer Lansky and Jimmy Blue Eyes Alo left the suite. Bat turned off the lights and pulled back the drapes. Moonlight off the ocean, plus the warm orangish glow of the city, gave the room plenty of light for anything but reading.

As he stood for a brief moment looking at the ocean, he felt Glenda pressing against him from behind. He reached back, touched her, and was not surprised to feel that she was already naked. As he turned, she grinned impishly and handed him two lengths of coarse hempen rope.

"Where'd that come from?" he asked, laughing.

"I packed it, of course," she said.

"All right. Turn around."

She turned and offered her hands behind her back.

He tied her wrists together with tight hard knots. He tied the second length of rope around her chest, just under her breasts, to pinion her arms at her sides. She went into the bedroom and sat down on the bed. "Hurry," she murmured as he began to undress.

The rope had been her idea. At first, he had been reluctant to bind her, especially to pull the ropes and knots so tight she could not possibly escape, but she insisted that he must bind her not just symbolically but rigorously. He had to admit the effect was powerfully erotic, stimulating to both of them.

With her hands bound behind her, she could not lie on her back. So they coupled the way she enjoyed better than any other: she atop him and astride, her hips writhing. She loved doing it that way, whether she was bound or not. It put him in her deeper than any other way, and it made possible a greater variety of movements. Twice she lost her balance and started to topple off him. With her hands and arms bound she couldn't stop herself. Expecting this, because it had happened many times before, he reached up quickly to brace her. Each time she laughed.

She closed her eyes and wore a contented smile as she worked. She gasped and moaned, and he knew she had reached a climax. Then she reached a second one and maybe a third; he wasn't sure.

"Ready to come, lover?" she asked finally.

"Any time," he said.

He put his hands on her hips to steady her, and she began more vigorous thrusts, forcing him deeper and deeper into her and squeezing him almost painfully. His orgasm was powerful, enervating.

She lifted herself, then rose and walked out to the living room. Bat remained on the bed, satiated and exhausted. From where he lay he watched Glenda use an elbow to shove the sliding glass door open. She stepped out onto the balcony and stood staring moodily at the ocean — confident apparently that no one could see her, though he was not so sure. Maybe the idea that she could be seen occurred to her, because she turned abruptly and hurried back into the room.

"Bat — "

"What, baby?" he asked, still not rising.

She came to stand in the bedroom door. "What's going to become of us?"

"What do you have in mind?"

"For god's sake, if I have to tell you — "

"I don't know, Glenda," he interrupted. He rolled off the bed and stepped toward her, meaning to untie her.

She turned and walked back to the open sliding door. "There's nothing for us, is there? In the long run." She stared out over the moonlit sea. "I mean, anything permanent. We fuck. We fuck good. But that's all there is. Right? We say we love each other, but — "

"Glenda — "

"You wouldn't want me to bear a child for you, would you?"

"Are you telling me you're pregnant?" he asked.

"No. I've never been pregnant. I'm not going to get pregnant. I can't afford to be pregnant. I don't want to carry a bastard."

"My mother did."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Bat. Bad choice of words. I am truly sorry. But — "

He began to untie her.

"The whole deal," she said quietly, "is that we don't have any future. The biggest reason is, your father— "

"My father has nothing to do with — "

"No? Your father doesn't like me. Oh, I'm fine as a cash cow, but he wouldn't want his son to marry one."

"My father doesn't control my personal life!"

"The hell he doesn't."

6

The smell of cigar smoke wakened them. Bat woke first, but before he said a word, Glenda woke, too. Cigar smoke. Coming in through the air-conditioning vents? No. It was fresh and pungent. Someone was in the suite.

Actually, someone was in the bedroom. Bat first spotted the point of fire on the tip of the cigar. Then he saw the man, first as a shadow and then, as his eyes focused, distinctly.

Bat almost never suffered nightmares, and when he did there were just two. In the first he was running across the Ludendorff Bridge and was hit in the lower chest. In the second he awoke to find an intruder staring at him. This was that one, but it was no dream; it was real.

The man was sitting on a chair facing their bed. He was dressed in an open-collared pleated white shirt and nondescript trousers. An automatic pistol in its holster hung from a wide web belt. The man himself was anything but prepossessing. He wore a scraggly dark beard, as if he were not old enough to grow a solid beard but had let whiskers grow out where they would. He puffed with an air of thoughtfulness on his oversized cigar.

"You have not to worry, señor, señorita, "he said. "I come to do you no harm." His English was Spanish-accented.

"Then why are you here?" Bat asked as he drew himself up in bed. He spoke Spanish. "And who are you?"

"I am nobody, señor. That is the point. And that is why I am here."

"You'll have to explain that."

"You are Señor Jonas Enrique Raul Cord y Batista," the man said. "The señorita is Glenda Grayson, the famous American television star. 'Cord y Batista.' You are the grand-nephew of our dictator. You have come to Havana to gather facts and to advise your father whether or not your family should invest more money in Cuba and in the Batista regime."

"You know a great deal," said Bat.

The man nodded. "It is essential to know everything," he said. "That is how wars are won."

"But — "

The man raised his hand. "The purpose of my visit is to demonstrate to you how very shaky the Batista regime is. You know we kidnapped a famous American racing driver?"

"Yes."

"And we released him unharmed. Our only purpose was to demonstrate to the world that this corrupt regime cannot protect Americans who come to Cuba."

"So, are we kidnapped?"

"No, no. We simply wanted you to see that the vaunted Batista secret police cannot even surround you with protection in a luxury suite in the Riviera Hotel. We have no interest in harming you, certainly not to murder you. But I could have done it, you see."

"It is your ... recommendation, then, that we not invest in this hotel," said Bat.

"That is my suggestion, Señor Cord. If you do, you will not be in danger. But you will lose your money."

"Suppose you take control of the country," said Bat. "This hotel will still be an important asset. Surely — "

"Batista has attempted to turn Cuba into the whorehouse of the Western Hemisphere," said the man, raising his voice. "Every kind of criminal is welcomed to Havana. The dignity of the nation and of its people has been sacrificed. We will restore our national honor, even at the sacrifice of the money these places bring."

"You are Marxists," said Bat.

"Our struggle is the people's struggle," the man said.

"Well ... You have delivered your message. Now?"

The man rose from the chair. He shrugged. "You are right. I leave now. I — Oh. Incidentally, feel free to call hotel security as soon as I am out the door. They will not catch me, and that will be additional evidence of what I have been telling you."

Bat shook his head. "You are an interesting man, Senor ... ?"

"Guevara," the man said. "Ernesto Guevara. I am more often known as Che Guevara."