The Shot

The Shot

Philip Kerr

*

PART ONE

Chapter 1

In the Kingdom of the White Caesars

Helmut Gregor feared the sound of his real name as another man might fear the name of his worst enemy. But thanks to the generous support of his family and the agricultural business that continued to thrive in GA1/4nzberg, Bavaria, he managed to live very comfortably in Buenos Aires.

An old but attractive capital - it is a well-named city of good airs -Buenos Aires has many fine boulevards and an excellent opera house, and on a cool July afternoon in 1960, the middle-aged German doctor could still think himself in his beloved Vienna, before the war - before the defeat of Germany had necessitated such a protracted period of exile. For almost ten years he had resided in a quiet country house in the predominantly English suburb of Temperley. At least he had until now. After what had happened to Adolf Eichmann, Helmut Gregor considered it safer to move into the city centre. And until he could find a suitable apartment in the microcentro, he was currently staying at the elegant and modern City Hotel.

Other old comrades, alarmed by the audacity of the kidnapping -Eichmann had been snatched from his own house in San Fernando by Israeli intelligence agents and spirited away to Jerusalem - had fled across the Rio de la Plata to Uruguay and the city of Montevideo. The cooler Helmut Gregor, noting the world's condemnation of Israel's violation of international law and the possibility that the Israeli embassy in Argentina might be forced to close down - not to mention the rather satisfying wave of anti-Semitic violence that had recently occurred in Buenos Aires as a result of the illegal Israeli action - had reasoned that in all probability Buenos Aires was now the safest city in all of South America. For him and others like him, at any rate.

There seemed little chance of the same thing happening to Helmut Gregor as had happened to Eichmann. Especially now that sympathetic friends in the right-wing Argentinian government had arranged for him to have twenty-four-hour police protection. It was Gregor's opinion that by living in the middle of nowhere and lacking the kind of money that would have bought some protection, Adolf Eichmann had made it easy for his Israeli enemies. Even so, he had to admit that the Jews had carried off the operation with considerable flair. But he did not think they would, or could, snatch him from the biggest hotel in Buenos Aires.

Not that he stayed skulking indoors all day. Far from it. Like Vienna, Buenos Aires is a city made for walking, and like the ancient capital of Austria it boasts some excellent coffee houses. So every afternoon, at around three o'clock, and accompanied by the melancholic, swarthy-featured policeman who was his afternoon bodyguard - but for the man's piercing blue eyes, Gregor would have said he looked more gypsy than Spanish - the German doctor would take a brisk walk to the Confiteria Ideal.

With its elaborate brass fittings, marble columns, and, in the late afternoons, an organist who played a medley of waltzes and tangos, the Ideal cafE, just off Corrientes, seemed a perfect evocation of old Austrian GemutA1/4chkeit. After drinking his usual cortado doble and eating a slice of delicious chocolate cake, and having closed the cold dark eyes that had seen his own hands inflict a whole Malabolgia of horrors, it was quite possible for the doctor to imagine himself back in Vienna's Central CafE on Herrengasse, anticipating a night at the Staatsoper or the Burgtheater. For a while anyway, until it was time to go.

As he and his bodyguard collected their coats and left the Ideal at the usual time of a quarter to five, it would have been quite impossible for Helmut Gregor to have imagined himself in any way worse off than Adolf Eichmann. And yet he was. It would be another twenty-three months before Eichmann would meet the hangman in Ramleh Prison. But judgement was rather closer to hand for the doctor. Even as he was leaving the Ideal, one of the waiters, himself a Jew - of whom there are a great many in Buenos Aires - had ignored the doctor's generous tip and was calling the Continental Hotel. Sylvia? It's me. Moloch is on his way.'

Sylvia replaced the hotel room's telephone receiver and nodded at the tall American who was lying on the big bed. He threw aside the new Ian Fleming he had been reading, stubbed out his cigarette, and, having climbed up on top of the large mahogany wardrobe, adopted a prone position. Sylvia did not think this behaviour eccentric. Rather, she admired him for the efficient professional way he approached his task. Admired him, but feared him too.

The Continental Hotel, on Roque Saenz Pena, was a classic Italian-style building, but it reminded the American most of the Flatiron building in New York. The room was on the fifth-floor corner and through the open, double-height window he could see right up the street to the corner of Suipacha, a distance of over one hundred and fifty yards. The wardrobe creaked a little as he leaned toward the Winchester rifle that was already carefully positioned there between a couple of pillows. He always disliked poking a rifle out of an open window, preferring the comparative anonymity of a makeshift marksman's platform constructed inside the shooting position. Moving the wardrobe away from the wall by six or seven feet had created the perfect urban hide, rendering him virtually undetectable from the street or the office building opposite. Now all he had to worry about was the unsuppressed noise of the .30-calibre rifle when he squeezed the trigger.

But even that, he hoped, had been taken care of: Sylvia was already signalling to a car parked on the other side of the street. The black De Soto, a popular car in Buenos Aires, was old and battered, with a tendency to backfire, and, seconds later, there came a report, as loud as any rifle shot, that scattered the seagulls and pigeons on the ledge outside the window like a handful of giant-sized confetti.

Not much of a ruse, thought the American, but it was better than nothing. And anyway, BA wasn't like his hometown of Miami where the locals weren't much used to the sound of firecrackers, or gunfire. Here there were plenty of public holidays, always celebrated at maximum volume, with cherry bombs and starting pistols, not to mention the odd revolution. It was only five years since the Argentinian air force had strafed the main square of the city during the military coup that had overthrown Peron. Loud bangs and explosions were a way of life in Buenos Aires. And sometimes death.

Sylvia collected a pair of field binoculars and stood with her back against the wardrobe, immediately underneath the barrel of the rifle. More powerful than the 8X Unertl scope mounted on the American's rifle, the binoculars were to help her ensure that among the many pedestrians who passed along the length of Roque Saenz Pena, the target was properly spotted and a kill detected.

Sylvia glanced at her watch as, in the street outside, the De Soto backfired once again. Even with some cotton wool in her ears to stop her being deafened when the American finally pulled the trigger, the echo-chamber effect of the backfire between the tall buildings of Cangallo and Roque sounded more like a bomb going off.

Having achieved a solid body position, the American took hold of the rifle butt with his non-shooting hand and pressed it firmly against his shoulder. Next, he clasped the grip, slid his forefinger through the trigger guard, and positioned his cheek against the smooth wooden stock. Only then did he check the eye relief through the scope. The sight was already zeroed, following an uncomfortable three-hundred-and-fifty-mile round trip the previous weekend, to the valley of the Azul River, where the American had shot several wild goats. But even with a correctly boresighted rifle, this promised to be a much more difficult target to hit than a goat. There was a considerable amount of traffic along Roque Saenz Pena and across Cangallo, to say nothing of the confusing effect of the ancient seaport's many crosswinds.

As if to confirm the difficulty of sniping in an urban environment, a colectivo - one of the red Mercedes buses that served the city -obscured his practice view through the scope just as he had been positioning the cross-hairs of the reticle on an old porteA+-o's wide-brimmed hat.

Moloch should be coming into view any second now,' Sylvia said loudly, because, like her, the American was also wearing ear protection.

The American said nothing, already concentrating on his breathing cycle: he had been trained to exhale normally, and then hold his breath for just a fraction of a second before squeezing the trigger. He had no doubt that Sylvia would correctly identify the target when he hove into view. Like the rest of the local Shin Bet team in Buenos Aires, she knew Moloch's face almost as well as she had come to know Eichmann's. And if the American did have a concern about her, it was that to confirm he had hit or missed his target he was relying on someone who had never before seen someone shot dead in cold blood.

Any rifle's recoil prevented the shooter from seeing if he had hit his man. Especially when the target was standing more than a hundred yards away and in a crowd of people. At that kind of distance a shooter needed a spotter like a pitcher needs an umpire behind home plate, to call balls and strikes on the batter. The least amount of squeamish hesitation on her part and they risked losing the opportunity for a second shot. Observing bullet impacts was easy; detecting a miss - even the best marksman could miss - and describing where the bullet went was the hard part.

The American held no opinion of his professional skills except to say that he was able to command a high fee for his services. It wasn't the kind of business where you could claim to be the best. Or indeed where others could legitimately claim that distinction for you. Moreover, he disliked that kind of reputation as much as he eschewed inflated claims of his own excellence. For him discretion and reliability were the two defining features of his way of life and the fewer people there were who knew about what he did and how well he did it, the better. The most important part of the job was getting away with it, and that necessitated the kind of quiet, unassuming, unsigned behaviour that was characteristic of only the most self-effacing of people. In none of this, however, did he consider himself to be at all atypical of anyone in that particular line of work. He knew there were other marksmen out there - Sarti, Nicoli, David, Nicoletti, to name but a few - but other than their names he knew very little about them, which told him that they aimed to be as anonymous as he was himself. His name was Tom Jefferson.

There was one thing he knew was quite unusual about his own situation, however, and this was that he was married, and to a girl who knew exactly what he did for a living. Who knew what he did, and approved of it.

Mary had accompanied Tom on the trip to Lake Tahoe to pick up the contract. That had been the plan anyway; things happened a little differently when finally they arrived in Lake Tahoe.

They flew Bonanza Air from Miami to Reno, from where they drove to the Cal-Neva Lodge on the North Shore's Crystal Bay, at the invitation of a man named Irving Davidson. Mary, a second-generation Chinese, had never been to Tahoe, but she had seen the Cal-Neva's advertisements in the magazines, (Heaven in the High Sierras') and she had read about how the resort was part-owned by Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford, and how Marilyn Monroe was a frequent visitor there, as were members of the Kennedy family. Mary, as interested in the Kennedys as she was a fan of Monroe's, was keen to stay in such a glamorous spot.

And she took to the place as soon as she saw it. Or rather as soon as she saw Joe DiMaggio and Jimmy Durante having a drink in the Indian Room. But there was something about the Cal-Neva Tom didn't like. An atmosphere. Something indefinably corrupt. Perhaps it was because the operating philosophy of the place seemed to be that money could buy you everything. Or perhaps it was because the resort had been built by a wealthy San Francisco businessman with the express purpose of circumventing Californian law. Located on the state line dividing California and Nevada, the resort comprised a central rustic lodge with an enormous fireplace, a cluster of luxury chalets, and a casino which, because of the laws banning gambling in California, was located on the Nevada side of the border. The state line ran right through the middle of the swimming pool enabling bathers to swim from one state into another. Tom was glad that, as things turned out, he only had to spend one night in the place.

Soon after their arrival it became clear that their host and potential client would be unable to join them. Telephoning the discreet chalet where Tom and Mary were relaxing together in the large hot tub, Irving Davidson explained the situation.

Tom? May I call you Tom? I'm afraid that some business is going to detain me here in Las Vegas for a while. Look, I'm very sorry about this, but I'm not going to be able to come up there and join you. That being the case, for which once again you have my apologies Tom, I was wondering if I could prevail upon your time and patience a little further. I was wondering if you would mind driving down here to meet me and my associates here in Vegas. It's about four hundred and fifty miles down Highway ninety-five. You could leave just after breakfast, and be here late afternoon. It's a nice drive. Especially if you're in a nice car. Living in Miami, I bet you drive a convertible, Tom. Am I right?'

Chevy Bel Air,' confirmed Tom.

That's a nice car,' said Davidson. Well, there's a Dual Ghia at your disposal while you're in Nevada, Tom. That's a really beautiful car. But here's the kick: it belongs to Frank Sinatra. How does that sound? And when you arrive in Vegas you can stay in the suite Frank has here at the Sands. Everything is fixed. What do you say, Tom?'

Tom, who had never much cared for Sinatra's music, was silent for a moment. He sensed that the suite was for him alone. What about my wife?' he asked.

Let her enjoy herself where she is. Listen, she's got everything she needs right there. A drive through the desert with the hood down, she doesn't need. Her hair doesn't need it. Her complexion doesn't need it. There's a pretty good beauty salon in the Lodge. I've booked her a whole morning in there. And I've arranged for her to have five hundred dollars' worth of chips to play with in the casino. She needs anything else, all she's got to do is pick up the phone and Skinny'll fix it for her. That's Skinny D'Amato. The general manager? He knows all about how you and Mary are my special guests. I believe that some celebrity guests are coming in tomorrow. Eddie Fisher and Dean Martin. I can have Skinny introduce her if she wants. So what do you say, Tom?'

Okay, Mister Davidson. It's your party.'

Early the next morning, Tom left Mary very excited about the possibility of meeting Dean Martin and drove Sinatra's expensive convertible to Vegas, as requested. On the way down he listened to a country music radio station and, by the time he arrived, he thought he must have heard Hank Locklin sing Please Help Me I'm Falling' as many as a dozen times. Tom preferred Jim Reeves. Not just his most recent record, He'll Have to Go', but also because he sometimes fancied he looked a little like a younger, slimmer version of the singer.

It was around five when he turned off 95 on to Las Vegas Boulevard, and saw the Strip, which was always a picture to warm the heart of any magazine pictures editor. He checked into the Sands and went up to a suite that was the size of the Fuller dome. On the Formica free-form coffee table was an enormous basket of fruit, a bottle of Bourbon, and a card inviting Tom along to Davidson's own suite for drinks at ten o'clock. So he lay down on the bed and dozed a little, then took a bath, ate a banana, put on a clean shirt, and walked around the Strip for a while.

Tom did not gamble. He did not even play the slots. Tom had little time for the old Vegas saying that the more you bet, the less you lose when you win. But he did like to look at bare-breasted girls, of which the Strip had a plentiful supply. The Lido show at the Stardust's chic CafE Continental was good, and so were the Ice-cubettes at the Thunderbird's Ecstasy On Ice review. He liked to see breasts, lots of them too, but most of all he liked to see a woman's ass, and for that you had to go to Harold Minsky's harem headquarters at The Dunes, where there was more bare flesh on display than any other show in Vegas. A winning pile of chips on a craps table was nothing to look at compared with a good piece of ass in a spangled G-string. When he'd seen enough, he went back to the hotel, took another shower and then knocked at Davidson's door.

It was Davidson himself who answered.

Tom, come on in. He was a smooth, sharply dressed little George Raft of a guy who was possessed of a politician's easy manner. 'Here, let me introduce you to everyone.

Three men stood up from an ersatz leopard-skin couch that curved around the Lucullan suite's rough stone walls. The drapes were pulled over the silver-screen-sized window, as if privacy was of paramount importance.

Morris Dalitz, Lewis Rosenstiel, and Efraim Hani. Gentlemen, this is Tom Jefferson.'

Even before he'd greeted everyone, Tom had guessed he was the only gentile in the room.

Pleased to meet you, Tom,' said Morris Dalitz.

His was the only name Tom recognised. A big man, with a fleshy, big-nosed face like a coarser version of Adlai Stevenson, the guy crossing the thick pile rug to shake Tom's hand was Moe Dalitz, the godfather of Las Vegas. Or so the Kefauver Committee had said a few years back. All Tom could say about Rosenstiel, catching sight of the man's fancy diamond cufflinks as he, too, shook Tom by the hand, was that he looked rich. Which was the only way to look in Vegas. The third guy, Hani, wearing a plain white short-sleeved shirt and open-toed sandals, and who looked as poor as Rosenstiel looked rich, just lit a cigarette and nodded.

For the first few minutes it was Davidson who did most of the smooth talking. That seemed to be what he was good at.

Get you a drink, Tom? We're all having Martinis.'

Tom saw that everyone didn't include Hani, who was drinking iced water.

Thanks, I'll just have a Coke.'

Keep a clear head for business, huh? I like that. It's the only way to survive in this town.' Davidson fixed the drink himself off a drinks trolley that was shaped like an airplane wing, and handed it over with the kind of big-shot swagger that made Tom think he didn't often mix the drinks. Suite okay?'

When I've been all the way round it, I'll tell you.'

Davidson smiled. And the drive down from Lake Tahoe?'

The landing and takeoff were okay.'

That's a nice car, the Dual Ghia.'

Yeah, it's a swell car,' agreed Tom. Real smooth. Like the owner, I guess.'

Is that an American car?' asked Rosenstiel.

It's a fucking Chrysler,' Moe Dalitz told him.

Yeah? Sounds more Italian,' said Rosenstiel.

Sinatra's got one,' said Davidson. Peter Lawford, too. Tom drove Peter's car down here for us.'

Tom smiled quietly, wondering which of the two stars the car really belonged to, if either. Not that it mattered any to him.

Hey,' he said, sitting down on the sofa and sipping some of his Coke, for all I care about such things, Elizabeth Taylor could have driven naked across America in the car and not wiped the seat when she was through with it. I'm here, so let's talk business.'

Sure, sure,' Davidson said smoothly. We're all businessmen. The four of us you see here now represent a variety of business backgrounds, Tom. But Morris, Lewis, and myself are meeting you in our capacity as members of the American Jewish League Against Communism. And in our desire to help Mister Ilani. This particular matter does not involve any communists, you understand, but fascists.'

Makes a pleasant change,' chuckled Dalitz.

Mister Ilani is concerned with the pursuit and punishment of Nazi war criminals. I take it you've heard of Adolf Eichmann, Tom.'

I read the newspapers.'

Since Prime Minister Ben-Gurion told the Israeli parliament that Eichmann was in his country's custody, Israel's been in pretty bad odour with the international community. To say nothing of the very severe diplomatic difficulties that now exist between Israel and Argentina. The whole affair has left Mister Ilani here with some unfinished business back in Buenos Aires. Someone he'd like to have seen in Israel, standing trial alongside that bastard Eichmann. Only Mister Ilani and his people can't go back, for obvious reasons.'

Tom sneaked a glance at Ilani. With his pale skin, hairy body, and heavy glasses, Ilani looked more like the chairman of the local chamber of commerce than someone who worked for Shin Bet or Mossad.

At least not right now. Not for a while, maybe. So, the next best alternative would be to have this second man, himself an important war criminal, brought immediately to book and subjected to an extreme penalty without the visible benefits of legal process, as the people of Israel would of course prefer.'

In other words,' added Moe Dalitz, we want this Nazi bastard hit.'

Tom nodded slowly. And addressed his next remark Hani's way.

I used to have an English friend,' he said. A British army officer, stationed in Jerusalem. This was twelve years ago. Nineteen forty-eight. Anyway, this friend got himself killed. Shot in the head with a six-point-five-millimetre Mannlicher Carcano rifle at eight hundred yards.' Tom pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. Centre forehead at eight hundred yards,' he repeated. Helluva shot.'

Are you saying you don't want this contract, Mister Jefferson?' This was Ilani speaking. To Tom's ears his accent sounded more Spanish than Hebrew. You have something against the State of Israel, yes?'

I don't give a fuck one way or the other about the State of Israel. What I'm saying, Mister Ilani, is that you have some pretty fine marksmen back in Israel. I can't see why you need my services.'

In view of the delicate state of relations between Israel and Argentina,' explained Davidson, it would be best if a professional was brought in to handle the contract. Someone who isn't Jewish. Our information is correct, isn't it, Tom? You're not Jewish, are you?'

Me? Hell no. I'm a Roman Catholic. At least that's what it says on my army record. It's been a while since I went through the church doors, mind you. God and me haven't talked in a long while. You might say it's an occupational hazard.'

I've read that,' said Ilani. Your army record. US Marine Corps. You speak several languages, including Spanish. Served Guadalcanal, Okinawa. Ended World War Two with the rank of Gunnery Sergeant, and with twenty-three kills. Attached to UN nineteen forty-seven to -nine, and a member of US Armed Forces in Korea when North Korean troops crossed the thirty-eighth parallel. Captured Pork Chop Hill January nineteen fifty-three. Repatriated August. Honourable discharge. Several decorations et cetera, et cetera. It's very impressive.'

You're pretty cute yourself, Mister Ilani,' Tom said with a smile. All that information without so much as a note in front of you. A regular Charles Van Doren, that's what you are, sir. I'll bet you could answer twenty-one about anybody in this damn room.'

Moe Dalitz, who had got up to fix himself another drink, snorted loudly. As long as the man doing the asking isn't Bobby Kennedy, I really don't mind how many fucking questions it is.'

Rosenstiel laughed uproariously and lit a large cigar. Maybe we should ask Tom to fix Bobby too,' he said.Two rats for the price of one.

Tom lit a Chesterfield and let them carry on with this line of conversation for a minute or so before drawing them back to the contract that was on the table.

You said this man who lives in Buenos Aires is a Nazi war criminal. What's his name and what did he do?'

Doctor Helmut Gregor,' answered Hani. He unzipped a cheap plastic briefcase and took out a file that he handed over to Tom. That's the name he lives under now. You'll find everything you need to know about him in this dossier. I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to tell you his real name. But to be quite frank with you, few people have ever heard of this man. It is enough to say that he tortured and killed thousands of people, but mostly children.'

Even we don't know his real name, Tom,' said Davidson.

Won't the Argentinian government guess that Israel is behind this operation?' asked Tom.

Hani shrugged.

Since the Argentinian government denies that this man is in their country at all,' he said, it is unlikely that they will wish to draw attention to the fact of his having been there by complaining about his assassination. In all probability they'll sweep the whole matter under the rug. This is to your advantage, Mister Jefferson. You should be able to leave the country without too much trouble. Of course, supposing you take the contract, you will be assisted by a local team of Argentinian Jews. They've been keeping Gregor under surveillance since the arrest of Eichmann. They will supply you with everything you need on the ground. A suitable rifle, transport, hotel accommodation. With the help of the American Jewish League Against Communism I will supply you with a US passport and a suitable cover story.'

What about a visa?'

Visitors of US nationality are admitted on a passport without any consular visa.'

You'll be travelling as Bill Casper, a Coca-Cola sales director, from Atlanta,' explained Davidson. It so happens that I'm a registered lobbyist for Coca-Cola among others. I've escorted teams of soft-drinks executives, including the real Mister Casper, on missions all over the world. Incidentally, the real Bill Casper is currently vacationing in Brazil. Enjoying the spas of southern Minas Gerais. When you get to BA you can hand out some Coke, make the hit, and then fly home.' He shrugged as if to say that was all there was to it.

Tom nodded, holding off a smile as he held two of these images in his head: drink Coca-Cola, and make the hit. Simple. Maybe some Madison Avenue type could get an ad campaign out of that. The hit that refreshes. Only Hani was shrewd enough to spell out the reality of what was being proposed.

Of course it won't be that easy,' he said. OtherwiseaEU|'

Tom gave in to the smile, relieved that there was at least someone who recognised the existence of a few potential problems.

Otherwise,' said Tom, you wouldn't be prepared to pay me twenty-five thousand dollars.'

Damn right,' said Rosenstiel.

Tom wondered if it was Rosenstiel who was putting up the money for the contract. It was no longer just the diamond cufflinks that made Tom think he was loaded. By now he'd added on the Duoppioni label inside the coat of Rosenstiel's silk suit, the Italian tasselled loafers, the Rolex watch, and the Dunhill gold lighter.

Since Eichmann's arrest, Gregor is well guarded,' said Ilani. He has some powerful friends in the military government. Officials he has bribed with large sums of money.'

While we're on that subject,' said Tom, my terms and conditions include fifty per cent of the consideration, in advance, in cash.'

No problem,' said Moe Dalitz.

Then we have a deal, said Tom. He had been wrong about Rosenstiel. It was the casino that was going to put up the money for the contract. That was okay. They'd probably let him win at roulette, or something. Just as long as they didn't expect him to take his money from a slot machine.

He handed Davidson a sheet of paper.

My bank is Maduro and Curiel's in CuraASSao,' he said. That's the cable address and my account number. When the service has been rendered, I'll telephone to let you know so you can deposit the balance of my fee.'

There is one more thing,' said Ilani. We'd prefer it if you could go to Argentina immediately on your return to Miami.' He handed Tom a ticket. There's a Braniff flight from Miami to Buenos Aires this Friday. We'd like you to be on it. It's just possible Gregor may yet disappear altogether.'

I understand,' said Tom. I can be on that flight. But can you do the passport by then?'

You'll have it by tomorrow morning,' Ilani confirmed.

Then there's just the deposit.'

Sure, sure,' said Dalitz. Ever play keno, Tom?'

I'm more of a golfer than a gambler.'

Keno was the national lottery in ancient China. Funds acquired from the game were used to build the Great Wall of China. Which ought to tell you that the house percentage is bigger than on any other casino game. Maybe in Disneyland they win money at keno, but anywhere else it's the original hard way bet. Damned if I know why but it's about the most popular game in the joint. Vegas loves a winner, Tom. And tonight, my friend, you're it.'

Moe Dalitz handed Tom a keno form. It was divided horizontally into two rectangles. The upper half was numbered 1 through 40, and the lower half 41 through 80. Fifteen numbers had already been marked with a thick black crayon and, in the right-hand corner of the form, was the price of the ticket: $100.

Hand this in at the keno lounge desk,' Dalitz told him. Pay for the bet. The lady will give you back a ticket with the number of the game you're playing. Then watch the keno board. After twenty numbers have appeared turn in your ticket and collect your money. Only don't hang around before the next game, otherwise you'll forfeit your winnings. All thirteen grand of it.'

Grinning affably, Dalitz toasted Tom, and said: Congratulations. You're leaving Vegas with a small fortune. To do that most people usually have to arrive in Vegas with a large one.'

It was the first time Tom ever played keno. And in view of the ease with which the fix had gone in, he thought it would be the last time, too. The whole experience confirmed Tom's belief that luck was something only suckers believed in. Like God. And Justice. Perhaps there were those who might have seen some kind of Nemesis in what was about to befall Helmut Gregor. Tom was not one of these, however. He had no illusions with regard to what he was doing. However heinous the man's crimes, this was plain murder. And plain murder was what Tom was good at. The way some guys were good at pitching a baseball, or playing a saxophone. Not much of a talent, maybe, but enough to make a good living. Tom would have put a bullet through Walt Disney's head if someone had come up with the twenty-five grand.

For considerably more than that - a cool two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, to be precise - a consortium of embittered Cubans, angry at Eisenhower's lack of support for their now-exiled President, Fulgencia Batista, had contracted Tom to assassinate Ike during his state visit to Brazil, back in March. Had the Cubans managed to stay out of gaol - all of them were now imprisoned in the notorious Isle of Pines - and come up with even half of the money, it might have been the easiest of jobs: on the newsreels he'd seen Ike riding the length of Rio's mile-long Avenida Rio Branco sitting right up on the back of the open-top limousine so that the crowd with its tickertape welcome could get a better view of him. It had been a rare opportunity. The car had been travelling at just eight miles an hour. Usually, American presidents were not so easy to kill.

Moloch. There he is,' Sylvia reported. The biographical charm bracelet she wore on her wrist clinked noisily as she rocked up and down excitedly.

Her scent was in his nostrils. Something nice. Better than the stink of gunpowder that was to come.

I see him.'

Tom's voice was calm, even appreciative, as if he was observing a rare bird, or a girl undressing in front of an open window. The man who had just rounded the corner looked respectable enough and like someone Tom had once known. Tall and dark-haired, Gregor cut a well-dressed, handsome figure and seemed hardly German at all. More like a typical porteA+-o male: dressed with the care of a Frenchman, and possessed with the attitude of an Englishman. Josef Goebbels in a grey suit, with two good feet and an extra six inches.

Tom could easily see how, for over ten years, the German had managed to fit right in.

He took aim, which was another kind of concentration, choosing the exact spot he wished to hit. It was an old sniper's trick: pick a point of impact that was the same size as your bullet. When shooting at the side of a man's head, Tom favoured the tip of the ear. Shooting from the front, as in this case, he always aimed at the philtrum, the little groove in the target's upper lip. Either way you were certain to hit the brain stem. And at less than a hundred and fifty yards, teeth and bones were hardly likely to deflect a .30-calibre bullet. Tom could shoot groups of one inch at a range of one hundred yards. For a precise shot to the central nervous system, that was really his maximum range. So, keeping the scope's reticle steady on the man walking toward him, and his aiming spot, he waited for Sylvia to report that the target was clear of other pedestrians and traffic. It was like watching a silent movie, except that the picture he could see was in colour.

For almost thirty seconds a horse-drawn carriage obscured his view of the target. Then, the driver, wearing a tweed cap and blue suit, cracked his whip and the single horse broke into a trot and turned the corner of Cangallo, leaving Tom with what Sylvia confirmed excitedly was now a good clear shot.

Slowly he started to gather the trigger under the tip of his forefinger, taking just the slack out of it, until he felt the heavier resistance of the sear, and, gathering his breath once more, pulling back only to the point of release. He was only a second away from firing when Gregor turned his head and glanced behind him as if to be reassured that his police bodyguard was still in tow. Seeing that he was, Gregor looked to his front again, smiling now, and then slowed as he approached the street corner, ready to cross over Cangallo. He did not seem to have a care in the world. Or a conscience.

You're clear to fire,' repeated Sylvia. There's nothing coming either-'

A split second before she heard the gunshot above her, she saw the German reach up for his mouth as though he had felt the sharp pain of a sudden toothache, and his head was momentarily surrounded with what looked like a circle of crimson light as the back of his skull blew off. Both the bodyguard and a pedestrian walking to the rear of Helmut Gregor were splattered with blood and brain coming toward them. Even to Sylvia's untrained eye it was plain to see that Gregor had suffered a fatal head shot. But swallowing her horror she followed his poleaxed body down on to the sidewalk, and continued to report the silent scene visible through the binoculars. Her first thought was that it seemed incredible that Gregor could have been killed from such a distance.

It looks as though you blew the nose right off his face,' she said.

Tom bolted the rifle and relocated his target now lying in the gutter. This time he aimed at the throat, just below the lower jaw.

And I think also the back of his skull,' she added. He must be dead. No, wait. I think his leg moved a little.'

Tom thought it was probably just a spasm, but he squeezed off a second shot anyway, to make quite sure.

Jesus,' exclaimed Sylvia, hardly expecting that Tom would have bothered to fire again. Still watching through the binoculars, she caught sight of Gregor's jaw fly off like a piece of broken pottery. Shaking her head, she threw the binoculars on to the bed, and added that the man was now dead for sure. Then she took a deep breath and sat down heavily on the floor, with her back against the bed, and dropped her head between her knees, almost as if she herself had been shot.

The cruelty of what she had seen appalled her. The coldbloodedness of it, too. She had only a vague idea of the dead man's crimes: that he had done things of unspeakable cruelty. She hoped so. She took no pleasure at all in having participated in this man's death, however wicked he might have been. Her only source of consolation was that for Helmut Gregor, the invisible hand that had killed with such detached precision had struck him like the fist of God. Not that the man climbing down from the top of the wardrobe looked much like an angel of the Lord. There was something about the American's face that made her feel uncomfortable. No laugh lines around the mouth, not even the line of a frown on the high forehead, and as for the eyes - it wasn't as if they were dead or anything grotesque like that, it was just that they were always the same, with the right eye -the one he used to peer through the sniper-scope - permanently narrowed, so that even when he was looking at her he appeared to be choosing some feature on her face as his next aiming point.

Tom slid the rifle into a tournament-size golf bag, disguising the barrel end with a numbered head cover. He added the clubs, hoisted the bag on to his shoulder, and then checked his appearance in the wardrobe's full-length mirror. There were a number of excellent golf clubs in the suburbs of BA - the Hurlingham, the Ranelagh, the Ituzaingo, the Lomas, the Jockey, the Hindu Country Club - and, dressed in a pair of dark-blue flannels, navy-blue polo-shirt, and matching windcheater, Tom thought he looked to all the world like a man with nothing more lethal on his mind than the dry Martinis he might consume at the nineteenth hole.

And, but for the fact that it was late in the afternoon and would soon be dark, he might even have played. He was a keen golfer and often used a bag of clubs to disguise the fact that he was carrying a rifle. This particular bag and the cheap set of Sam Sneads it contained (not so cheap when he remembered the ad valorem they'd charged him at the airport) he had brought with him from the pro shop at the Miami Shores Country Club where he usually played, and he planned to give them to Sylvia's father after she had disposed of the rifle. The old man was a member of the club at Olivos, close to where Eichmann had been living until rabbit farming took him to San Fernando and the house on Garibaldi Street from which he had been kidnapped.

You're just going to carry it out the front door of the hotel?' asked Sylvia, closing the bedroom window.

Sure. You got a better idea?' He thought she was looking a little green around the gills. Never seen anyone shot in colour before. Probably just a few old SS newsreel shots of Jews getting it in the back of the head. Not the same thing at all.

She shook her head. No, I guess not,' she admitted.

You look like you need a cup of mate,' said Tom, who'd developed quite a taste for Argentina's national drink himself. A herbal alternative to coffee, mate was a refreshing drink as well as being considered a great remedy for mild stomach upsets.

How can you do that?' she whispered. How can you kill someone like that? In cold blood.'

Why do I do it? Why do I take down contracts?'

Tom considered the question for a moment. It was one he'd been asked many times before, mostly in the army, when he'd been more up-front about being a shooter. Somehow it never seemed to satisfy people merely to say that it was all a matter of training. Not that he usually felt much of a need to explain himself. But during the three or four days he had spent with Sylvia he had come to like her. There was something about this girl that made him want to tell her that he wasn't filled with hate any more than he was some kind of psycho. That he was just a man doing what men were always best at, which was killing other men. Never very articulate, Tom searched for a form of words that she might understand, and in doing so he shrugged, pursed his lips, bobbed his head one way and then the other, and took a deep breath through his nose before finally he answered her.

I go to the movies a lot. I'm in a lot of strange towns, killing time, y'know?' He smiled wryly as he reflected on that particular choice of words. One movie I saw. Shane. With Alan Ladd? Pretty damn good movie. It's about this stranger that arrives in a little Wyoming town, who tries to forget his previous life with a gun. Only you know he won't be able to do that. He'll try and he'll fail and that's all there is to it. Which means that right from the moment the bad guy, Jack Palance, appears on screen, you know he's going to be shot. And that Shane is going to be the one to kill him. The guy's a walking dead man and he doesn't even know it. Just waiting to fall into his grave.

It's the same with these guys I kill. When I take the contract they're dead already. If it wasn't me who killed them, it'd be someone else. The way I see a contract is that it's better for them it's me because I'm good at what I do. Better for them: a clean shot; better for me: I'm well paid for what I do. If it wasn't for the money I'd probably still be in the army. Money's the how and the why of just about everything in this world. Whether it's cutting a man's hair, pulling his teeth, or shooting him dead.'

Sylvia was shaking her head. There were tears in her eyes.

You're young,' he said. You still believe in shit. In morals. In an ideal. Zionism. Marxism. Capitalism. Whatever. You think that stuff's any less corrosive to society than what I do for a living? Let me tell you, it's not the people who believe in nothing you gotta worry about, it's the people who believe in stuff. Religious people. Political people. Idealists. Converts. They're the ones who are going to destroy this world. Not people like me, the people who pay lip service to no creed or cause. Money's the only cause that will never let you down and self-interest's the one world philosophy that won't try to bullshit you. There's a dialectic for you that'll always make sense.'

Tom smiled and shifted the golf bag on to his other shoulder. There were times when he almost convinced himself with his own bullshit. And if that wasn't politics then he was the man in the Hathaway shirt.

Now let's get the hell out of here before someone smells our gunpowder.'

Chapter 2

Quiniela Exacta

It was a hot and humid Friday evening in September when Tom Jefferson left his Biscayne bayfront home in Miami Shores and drove twenty minutes southwest, to the jai alai frontA3n on 37th Avenue and North West 35th Street. The ancient Basque sport of jai alai, though popular in Spain and France, was played nowhere in North America except Florida, reflecting the sunshine state's uniquely heterogeneous character. It had been two Cubans who built America's first frontA3n in the shadow of Hialeah, the grande dame of Florida racetracks, back in 1928. This edifice lasted only as long as the great hurricane of 1935. Subsequently, another frontA3n was built just a short way south of the original, right next to Miami International Airport and, until 1953, when an enthusiastic aficionado from Chicago erected a second frontA3n in Dania, the one on 37th held a monopoly on the game.

Tom followed jai alai the same way he followed baseball and football, which is to say he rarely got a chance to go, but paid close attention to the results published in the Miami Herald. Besides, tickets were hard to come by. Played indoors, the seating capacity of the frontA3n on 37th was just three thousand five hundred. Hugely popular among the city's Latin population, especially at the weekend, the promoters could have sold two or three times as many tickets. But for the ticket he had received in the mail, Tom, who was part Cuban himself, would never have dreamed of actually going to the Friday night jai alai. Let alone going there to discuss a contract. People who wanted other people killed nearly always preferred to meet somewhere quieter, where there was less chance of being overheard. Which meant that the mysterious Mr Ralston, who had sent Tom his ticket, was either a rank amateur in the business of killing and hence someone to be avoided, or someone so sophisticated in the purifying euphemisms of the trade that he felt comfortable talking contracts in a crowd.

The game listed was an eleven-game doubles for seven points, with all sixteen pelotaris who were in action coming from as far away as Cuba, Mexico, and Spain's Basque region. Tom never minded making a small bet on jai alai: the number of players involved meant that the game was hard to fix. So upon entering the frontA3n, and glancing over the players, he purchased a five-dollar quiniela exacta from one of the pari-mutuel, state-run betting machines. To collect on this ticket meant that it was necessary not only to have picked the winning pair, but also the runners-up.

When it was approaching a quarter to seven, Tom went to find his seat. This was a good one, the best Tom had ever had - right in front, next to the protective glass wall. But of his host there was, as yet, no sign. Just after seven, the four pelotaris already warming up on court, a man carrying a copy of the New York Times and a paperback novel sat down beside him.

I'm John Ralston,' he said, shaking Tom by the hand. Nice to meet you. And thanks for coming.'

It was a strong handshake, stronger than the man's business-like, not to say dapper appearance might have indicated. He wore heavy-framed dark glasses, a cream shirt and tie, a well-cut beige linen suit, a folded silk handkerchief in the breast pocket, more than a hint of cologne, and a large ruby ring. The silver hair above Ralston's high, tanned forehead was a little longer than was fashionable, but neat, and from time to time he touched it as if it had been recently cut. Straight away Tom decided that the man was no amateur: Ralston was not in the least bit fearful of Tom.

Thanks for asking me,' said Tom.

Have you made a bet?' Ralston was as well spoken as he was groomed. His accent was hard to place, too, a curious mixture of Boston and West Coast.

A quiniela exacta on the green shirts to win,' said Tom. The two Cubans are in form. And the orchid shirts to come second.' He watched Ralston study the programme for a moment or two and guessed him to be in his mid-fifties.

You sound as if you know this game.'

I follow it in the newspapers.'

I've only recently started coming,' admitted Ralston. Since I've been in Florida. Originally I'm from Chicago, but most of my business has been in Hollywood and Las Vegas. Pedro Mir. The matchmaker? He's a friend of mine. I've been telling him that he ought to open a frontA3n in LA. Or in Vegas, maybe. With all the Mexicans living there, I think this game would go pretty well. What do you think, Mister Jefferson?'

I don't know LA very well.'

What's to know?' smiled Ralston. Raymond Chandler once said LA has all the personality of a paper-cup. But to be fair it was Bay City he really hated. Are you much of a reader, Mister Jefferson?'

I read pretty much anything,' said Tom, noting the title and the author of the paperback lying on Ralston's lap. Island in the Sun, by Alec Waugh, was one book he thought he would probably never read.

I knew Chandler when he was working at Paramount Pictures. That would have been around nineteen forty-three. Chandler and a few others besides. Lately, I've been in the fruit business. In Central America. But in those days I was in movies. Producing some, but mainly on the money side.'

I hear that's the best side to be on,' offered Tom.

The game was starting. Played on a three-walled court approximately 180 feet long, the pelotaris used a curved wicker basket called a cesta, strapped to the hand, to hurl the pelota which, made of solid rubber and twice the size of a golf-ball, was covered in kidskin. Pelotas travelling at speeds of up to 170 miles per hour were caught in the air, on one bounce, or off the back wall before being returned to the front. Jai alai was a game that demanded power, stamina, and an instinctive ability to cover the best positions on a court longer than the width of a football field.

Ralston lowered his voice. Mostly I've been involved in the gaming business,' he said. Not the pari-mutuel kind, you understand. Although I can't ever see how some sports are blessed with the gambling seal of purity while others are not.'

A dog, or a horse, or for that matter a pelotari is harder to fix than a game of keno,' observed Tom.

That's what most people think, it's true. But it's not why the casino business was throttled here in Florida. The real reason is that the casino threatened the Florida state's profits from the mutuel machines. Not that I give much of a fuck any more. This is all ancient history as far as I'm concerned.'

He handed Tom his business card. Tom took it and glanced at the name and the LA address, which was somewhere near Sunset Strip. But it was the job title that intrigued Tom. The card described Ralston as a strategist.

These days I'm working for the government. In a strategic and advisory capacity. Helping them to solve problems, preparing working papers for discussion groups, that kind of thing. I give those cards out, and unlike you, most people ask, What's a fucking strategist? And I say that a strategist is a kind of trouble-shooter.'

Like me,' said Tom.

Hmm?'

His eyes following the ball, Ralston didn't even acknowledge the joke. He was concentrating on the game and on himself. Reflecting that clearly these were subjects Ralston enjoyed, Tom offered up an equally provocative description of those he guessed were probably Ralston's associates.

You're working for the agency of bright ideas and brainwaves. Also known as E Street, right?' Tom was referring to the Washington headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The trouble with a lot of so-called bright ideas is that they simply are not very practical. Not to say hare-brained. Oh, good shot.' Ralston began to applaud.

God save us from people with bright ideas.' Tom noted that Ralston had not contradicted his suggestion that he was working for the CIA. That's what I always say.'

Amen to that,' said Ralston. He handed Tom his copy of the previous day's New York Times which had been folded so that he could read an account of Fidel Castro's trip to New York, to address the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Tom glanced over the story, with which he was already familiar from his own paper. Alleging that they were being overcharged, the Cuban delegation had moved out of the Shelburne Hotel to stay with their oppressed black brothers in the Theresa, a run-down flophouse in Harlem that not even the poorest African diplomat would have considered suitable. The Times reported the mess the Cubans were accused of making in their rooms during their brief sojourn in the Shelburne: cigar burns in the rugs, chicken feathers in the rooms, raw meat left in a refrigerator. It was almost as if the newspaper was suggesting that some voodoo-communist rite had been performed there - a Marxist-Zombie created to wreak havoc on the capitalist world. Meanwhile, at the Theresa, the reporting fixed on the squalor and the number of prostitutes who frequented the place. A library picture of Castro, smoking a large cigar, appeared next to a shot of the neglected Harlem hotel front.

Ralston sighed loudly. But even if I told you, you simply would not believe the kind of hare-brained schemes the people at Quarters Eye have thought up to deal with our friend in the paper.'

Tom knew that Quarters Eye, on Ohio Drive in Washington, was another part of the CIA - the part that dealt with Cuba.

Blind eye would be a better name for that place. You simply would not believe it. They've come up with everything from an exploding cigar to a dirty toilet seat.'

Catch a man when he's got his pants down, huh?' said Tom. I've done a bit of that myself. A target stays steady when he's taking a dump.'

The crowd roared its approval as one of the Cuban players in the green shirts pulled off a spectacular catch.

Shooting's one thing. Dumb ideas are another. There is too much unnecessary complication around these days,' observed Ralston. Too much gorp on the front of the Cadillac, so to speak. You know what I mean?

I think so.'

Those bombs on the front of the fifty-three model.'

Dagmars.'

Devoid of utility and impossible to repair. You've got to keep things simple. That's what I'm talking about. Look at the Volkswagen. Look at the Porsche. Look at you.'

Me?'

What you did down in Argentina? No cigar. No bullshit. It was just match-grade, boat-tailed, high-quality loads at one hundred yards. Am I right?'

It was Ralston's turn to remain uncontradicted.

Simple,' he continued. Of course, I'm not for a minute suggesting that it was an easy takedown. From what I heard it was a shot to take gold at the Pan American Games. No, the point I'm making is that what you do, what you are good at, is as reliable a method of pest control as it's always been, since way back when. Since Tim Murphy brought down General Simon Fraser at three hundred yards during the battle of Saratoga.'

Tom was impressed. The exploits of famous snipers were something that had been drummed into him twenty years earlier, during his training at Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps Scout and Sniper School, in Greens Farm, San Diego. But he would not have said that the man sitting next to him showed any signs of having been in the military. The mob, maybe, but not the army.

That's why I'm talking to you now,' said Ralston. The people I represent. People in government. They would like you to prepare a feasibility study for a job covering the gentleman in the Times.'

A little uncomfortably, Tom glanced around him.

Oh, I wouldn't worry about these people,' said Ralston. I bet there is not a man here who wouldn't like to see the Maximum Leader turn up his toes. Besides, nobody's speaking English except you and me.'

A feasibility study, huh?'

Can it be done, Mister Jefferson? If so, how? And for how much? And if the Maximum Leader, then what chance his bearded brother, Raul, at the same time? You could say that's my own quiniela exacta, so to speak. There's not much odds in picking the winner if you can't pick the runner up too, eh? Naturally, we will cover the cost of your wager.'

Ralston handed Tom the paperback novel. Seeing Tom merely stare at it, he said: You should never judge a book by its cover.'

Perceiving that the book hid something of value, Tom placed it on his lap and, surreptitiously riffling the pages, discovered that it contained five one-hundred bills. Turning the book over, he glanced at the copy on the back. Appropriately enough the story seemed to be set on some fictional island in the Caribbean.

I'm looking forward to reading this,' he said.

Excellent. But don't take too long. I'm eager to tell my friends what you think about it.'

I'm a fast reader, Mister Ralston. I can probably give you a reader's report within a few days.'

Shall we say a week?'

Fine.'

Do you know the University Inn, in Coral Gables?'

I know it. The place on campus,' said Tom. Next to the Riviera Golf Course.'

You can leave a message for me there. Do I take it that as well as being a hunter, you are also a golfer?'

What else is there to do in Miami?'

No doubt I could offer you some surprises. However, I myself play at the Biltmore.'

That's a better course. Plenty of creeks to fuck around with your game. The Riviera's okay. I mean it's well trapped, but there are no water hazards, and in Florida, well, that's like a circus without any clowns.'

You must like losing balls. Where do you play?'

Miami Shores. One of the toughest courses in Florida, I reckon.'

Who's the pro there?'

Jim MacLaughlin.'

And what's your handicap?'

Eight.'

What a coincidence. So's mine. We must play sometime.'

Yes, but where? It ought to be on neutral ground.'

Ever play Coral Ridge, in Fort Lauderdale?'

No.'

Neither did I. But Lou Worsham, the pro there, he's a friend of mine. I'll arrange something with him.'

Tom smiled to himself. Ralston was obviously the kind of man who dropped names like bad golfers dropped shots. He wondered which one of the quartet of men he had met in Vegas had been the friend who'd told Ralston about the contract in Buenos Aires. Not Hani, that was for sure: the Israeli didn't look like the type. But that left any one of the other three: Davidson, Dalitz, or Rosenstiel. He guessed Dalitz. Dalitz had more connections than GEC.

Apparently, there's a one-shot hole they have got there,' Ralston was saying, with this enormous tee. Big as a baseball diamond. You can play it as a two-hundred-yard drive over a lake, or as a hundred-and-twenty-five-yard pitch.'

It sounds interesting.'

Then it's a match,' said Ralston.

The crowd applauded loudly as the Cubans picked up the first point. Their opponents now retired to the bench behind the eighth-place pair, to await their turn to play again. The first team to reach seven points would be the winner.

But Ralston was already crushing his ticket and dropping it to the floor. He produced a silver cigarette case and waved it at Tom, who shook his head, preferring his own brand. Lighting himself with a matching Dunhill, Ralston stood up and extended his hand.

It's been a pleasure, Mister Jefferson.'

The two men shook hands.

Going so soon? The game's just beginning.'

I have a dinner engagement at eight thirty,' said Ralston, glancing at the chunky gold Girard-Perregaux he wore on his wrist. And if I'm not careful I shall be late.'

I'll be in touch,' said Tom.

Don't forget my quiniela exacta,' said Ralston, and then he was gone.

Tom waited in his seat for a minute or two, and then followed.

Leaving the frontA3n, Ralston walked a couple of blocks south along the Miami Canal and didn't even glance up as a Transamerica Constellation left MIA with a shattering roar that made Tom glad he hadn't rented a house in Miami Springs. When Tom looked down again Ralston was climbing into a light-blue Cadillac Eldorado Brougham -a car that seemed to contradict everything the man had said about too much chrome and not enough simplicity. With tail fins that towered more than three feet above the sidewalk, the Eldorado was Baroque on wheels.

Tom ran back to where he had parked his own car, although there seemed little reason for haste; he thought it would have been harder following Elvis, whose own pink Cadillac drew crowds wherever it went. Finding the Chevy Bel Air, he vaulted the door, gunned the small-block V8 into life, and then sped off down 31st with an audible squeal of tyres, catching up with Ralston just in time to see him turning south on to 27th Avenue.

With the Eldorado comfortably in his sights, Tom settled down in his seat and took his foot off the gas a little, just in case Ralston was the suspicious type. At a traffic light he let a bus and a Dodge station wagon get in front of him, and lit a cigarette. Then they were moving again.

Miami was a Company town, the largest CIA station in the world, and it was an open secret that Suntan U let the spooks use its campus as a school for espionage. In any other town this might have seemed remarkable, but the CIA was a major source of city revenue, pumping more money into the local economy than all the pari-mutuel gambling machines put together. There were as many companies and institutions offering a front for the CIA as there were coconut palms and poinciana trees. It was one of the reasons Tom lived there. That, and the golf, of course.

For a while Tom thought they were heading to the university campus. Or maybe Ralston's golf club. But a little way north of the Biltmore, where 37th Avenue became Douglas Road, Ralston turned east on to 22nd Street, and just a few minutes later the two cars were driving over the Rickenbacker Causeway with the sunlit blue waters of Biscayne bay flickering beneath them.

Ralston drove fast, but it was no effort for Tom to keep pace with the big Cadillac. The Chevy was built for speed rather than the smooth, effort-free driving experience that characterised the Cadillac. The Bel Air was a hot car for a hot date, or so Pat Boone had implied on his weekly TV show for Chevy a few years back when Tom had bought it. Thinking about that always made Tom smile. He tried to imagine the kind of hot date that would have necessitated the handy extras Tom had with him in the car: taped under the driver's seat, a Smith & Wesson .44 Special; and, inside the trunk, underneath the spare tyre, a nine-shot .22 Harrington & Richardson revolver with a two-inch barrel. Elvis didn't look the kind of guy who would have minded that, but somehow Tom didn't think Pat would have approved.

The clock on the Bel Air's dashboard said eight o'clock by the time the blue Cadillac turned on to the exclusive Ocean Drive, where even an undeveloped waterfront lot cost as much as forty thousand, and sighed up to the front of the luxurious Key Biscayne Hotel. Tom cruised past, executed a U-turn, and drew up on the opposite side of Ocean Drive.

There was plenty of space to park even as big a car as the Cadillac, but Ralston handed the keys to the parking valet and, affably acknowledging the doorman's smart salute as though he knew the man well, disappeared inside the hotel. Tom waited while the valet drove the Cadillac somewhere out of sight. It looked very much as though Ralston was staying in the hotel.

When the valet reappeared, Tom hit the gas and turned into the hotel driveway. He parked the Chevy out front himself, walked up to the valet, and nodded back at the car.

Am I all right there?' he asked, handing the valet an over-generous five-dollar bill.

The valet, who was aged about twenty and Irish, with a dumb Irish face that reeked of tobacco, grinned his immediate assent.

Don't you worry, sir. I'll watch it for you. Want me to clean the windshield?'

Yeah, thanks. Listen, I'm supposed to meet a Mister Ralston here.'

Mister Ralston?' The young Irishman frowned. Ralston, you say. Is he a guest of the hotel, d'you think?'

Silver hair, glasses, drives a light-blue fifty-seven Cadillac Eldorado? Y'know? With the built-in tissue-box, and the gold-finished drinking cups?'

You mean Mister Rosselli, don't you sir?'

Tom smacked himself on the forehead.

Mister Rosselli. Of course. That's the name. Where the hell did I get Ralston from?' He shook his head. I dunno. I guess I was paying too much attention to that car he drives.'

He went into the hotel only a few minutes ago, sir.'

He did, huh? Thanks a lot. You know, this could have been so embarrassing.'

Don't mention it, sir.'

Tom went to walk through the door, then turned on his heel, grinning sheepishly.

Pardon me. But Mister Rosselli. His first name is John, I suppose.'

I believe it is, sir, yes.'

Well, at least I got that right. John. You're sure about that?'

Oh yes, sir. Mister Rosselli lives here. Most of the time.'

Thanks. You've been very helpful.'

Inside the cool lobby of the hotel, chattering macaws and cockatoos added to the deliberately tropical atmosphere. Tom walked to the front desk and enquired of the pansy on duty as to Mr Rosselli's whereabouts. Miami wasn't just a spook town. It was a pansy town, too. Only in England could you be a spook and a pansy.

You know? I think I just saw him walking into the restaurant. Would you like me to have him paged?'

No, that's okay,' said Tom. He went into the bar and ordered a lime daiquiri.

With Ralston, or Rosselli, safely ensconced in the restaurant, Tom was half-inclined to try and search his room. As usual he carried a simple diamond pick - a piece of flat, cold-rolled steel with a barely perceptible diamond on the tip - in the cuffs of his pants, just the thing to rake the pins in a hotel door lock. But picking took time and it was still a little early in the evening to expect that Rosselli's floor - he didn't doubt that a trip to the hotel garage would have found him the keys to the Eldorado attached to Rosselli's room number - would remain quiet for as long as he would need to open the door. Because he liked to know as much about his potential clients as possible, especially when they were new to him. In Tom's line of business he could not be too careful that he wasn't being set up by a cop, or a federal agent. But there wouldn't have been too many law-enforcement officers who could have afforded the Key Biscayne. Not to mention a thirteen-thousand-dollar Cadillac.

Tom decided to content himself with having discovered Ralston's real name. As he was sure it was. Maybe he had seen John Rosselli on a list of movie credits, but Tom was certain he must have heard that name somewhere before. Maybe Mary would know who he was. He would ask her at breakfast. He finished his drink and drove home.

Mary was painting her nails while watching TV, but as soon as Tom came through the living room door she put down the Revlon bottle on the boomerang coffee table and, waving her hands in the air as if she had burned her fingers, went to turn off the TV. The room darkened a little as the light given off by the illuminated white frame around the screen of the Sylvania Halovision went out, prompting her to switch on the free-standing lamp.

You don't have to do that,' said Tom, heading toward the small wrought-iron bar that occupied the corner of the room.

S'okay, I wasn't really watching it. It was just company.'

You're not usually short of that,' he said pointedly, and poured out some rum. You want one?'

No, thanks, I've just taken a pill.'

Didn't expect to find you in,' he said, going into the kitchen to fetch some lime juice from the refrigerator.

Mary was a Democratic Party worker at the Miami office, and with the presidential elections less than two months away, she was often working late. Not that this was any different to how it always was. Mary liked to go out. Tom didn't. Mary liked people, too. Tom didn't. Mary was a Chigro - half Chinese, half Negro - born in Kingston, Jamaica. In her it was a spectacularly successful combination for she was as beautiful and athletic as she was intelligent and industrious. Tom had been introduced to her in Japan, while convalescing at the US Navy Hospital in Yokusaka, after his release from a North Korean POW camp. At the time Mary had been working as a hostess in an expensive Tokyo night-club. Just a few weeks later they had married. Seven years later they still got along pretty well, bound together by a powerful physical attraction and a mutual amorality, not to mention their politics.

I didn't expect to be in myself,' she explained. I had a headache. I spent the whole day collating canvass reports.'

Tom found the lime juice and some ice and started back toward the living room, but checked himself in front of the cooker as he felt the heat coming off the Hotpoint oven. A quick glance inside revealed that it was empty.

You left the oven on,' he called out to her.

For you,' she said. In case you were hungry. There's a TV dinner on the worktop.'

Thanks.'

Tom drew the tripartite foil container - turkey, gravy, whipped sweet potatoes, and peas - out of the Swanson carton and sniffed it instinctively. Nobody in Florida had forgotten the great TV dinner scare of 1955 when solvent-contaminated chicken dinners had been dumped on the market at rock-bottom prices, but this one smelled okay, and anyway, Tom was hungry. Besides, he liked TV dinners. They reminded him of being in the army. He always liked army chow. He slid the tray into the oven and went back into the sitting room to find Mary reading the novel Rosselli had given him.

The final words of advice,' she said, reading aloud, given to Lord Templeton by the Minister of State for the Colonies had been, When in any doubt produce a simile from the cricket field. His Excellency remembered that advice when he prepared the speech with which he was to announce the new constitution.' Mary smiled. I wouldn't have thought this was your kind of thing at all.'

No? Well check out the title page.' Tom poured the lime juice into the iced rum and toasted her discovery of the five one-hundred-dollar bills.

It beats an author signature, I guess,' said Mary.

Tom dropped down on the two-piece pink sofa that occupied the centre of the cherrywood floor. A couple of rattan chairs, some potted palms, and a blond-wood hi-fi console made up the rest of the living room furniture. Round the corner of the L-shaped room was the popsicle table and plastic shell chairs where, sometimes, they ate a meal together. The taste, impeccably modern, was all Mary's. Tom preferred antiques, which Mary hated as a Philistine disliked outsiders.

Some guy wants me to do a feasibility study. For a contract on Castro.'

A feasibility study?'

Those are the words he used.'

Who is this guy? Vance Packard?' Mary shook her head and sat down beside him. And what's he think he's going to do when Castro is dead? Check the Nielsen figures?'

Tom hadn't heard of any of those guys, but he let her talk for a moment before answering the one question he could.

He calls himself Ralston. But his real name is Rosselli, John Rosselli.' Tom sipped some of his drink, adding by way of explanation, I followed him to his hotel and got the low-down from the parking attendant.'

John Rosselli?' Mary frowned.

You heard of him?'

It seems like I ought to have,' she said. But don't ask me from where.'

Pity. I was depending on that memory of yours.' One of the qualities that made Mary such an excellent party-worker was that she possessed a tremendous capacity for remembering names, faces, facts, and figures. Tom was in awe of her memory. She knew things he had forgotten about himself. Is it a bad headache?'

Bad enough. I took some pain killers.'

You've been working too hard.' Tom began to rub the back of her neck but she was too preoccupied by what he had told her to find much comfort in it.

It's not that.'

What then?'

Every night I go to bed I wonder if any of us are going to be here in the morning,' she said. With all the bombs and missiles, the world is dangerous enough as it is. I mean, what would the Russians do if Castro was killed?'

We just have to try and live our lives as if none of that matters' said Tom.

I suppose so.'

Tom put his arms around Mary and hugged her tight, enjoying the scent of her silky hair and her cool body.

I love you,' he said. But you're going to give yourself an ulcer if you start worrying if we're going to be here in the morning and stuff like that. Don't worry about it. Life's complicated enough. Just accept that I'll be here and leave it at that.'

Okay,' said Mary. She smiled and kissed him on the cheek. She sensed he wanted more but held herself back a little. They were both silent for a minute.

Then Tom said: I guess I'd better go and see Alex.'

Mary grimaced. She didn't much care for Alex, nor the interest he took in their lives. He was always turning up, uninvited, unannounced, as if he was checking up on them or something. She supposed it came with the territory - who Alex was and what he did -but that didn't make it any better. About the only thing she appreciated was that he had never tried to make a pass at her. Like most of the other guys she met. Quite a few of whom she even slept with.

You know? I think I remembered,' she said. I think there's a Rosselli who is in the mob.'

Tom thought for a moment about what Rosselli had actually said: that he worked for the government. For the CIA. Absently, he said, I wonder if it's the same guy.'

In your line of work, honey, I doubt that it's any Rosselli selling vacuum cleaners.'

Tom smiled at that. But there were times when he thought Mary's mouth, beautiful though it was, might be a little too smart for her own good.

Alex Goldman was an old friend of Tom's from way back, who now worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation at the Miami headquarters on Biscayne Boulevard, in northwest Miami. Like most of the agents working there, Alex was concerned with the fight against communism. But he and Tom shared information on a regular basis, about a whole host of subjects that was not necessarily anything to do with commies. So when Tom had eaten his turkey dinner he went out again. Usually, Alex was not a difficult man to find at eleven o'clock at night. Just about every evening when he was in town he could be found in Zissen's Bowery on North Miami Avenue, only a few blocks away from the FBI building.

Zissen's Bowery was the oldest club in Miami, but the Carioca or the Boom Boom Room, it was not. Big hotels, like the Americana or the Fontainebleu, might have succeeded in stealing most of Miami's well-heeled night-club trade, but there were still a few joints that appealed to those who had to get by on a special agent's salary. Places like Zissen's, with sawdust on the floor, pretzels on the bar, and the kind of barman who had no more idea of how to mix a Manhattan than he had of making a Betty Crocker cake. The people who went to Zissen's drank beer and hard liquor, and if they happened to be people like Alex Goldman, they drank them side by side.

Goldman was bigger than Tom with fists the size of bowling balls. His grey hair was crew-cut and he wore a dark cotton suit that was too tight for him and smelled strongly of sweat and pipe-tobacco. The money clip on the bartop in front of him, made out of a silver bullet, was the neatest thing about Goldman and seemed to indicate that he was making an evening of it. Originally from New Orleans, he had the up-tempo drawl of a well-educated if easy-going southerner.

Well, well, well,' he said, eyeing Tom through a thick cumulus cloud of pipe smoke. If it isn't Paladin.'

Tom didn't watch much TV but he knew Goldman was referring to a show on CBS called Have Gun, Will Travel that starred Richard Boone, an actor to whom Alex bore a certain resemblance. Tom wasn't in the least bit concerned that a federal agent knew what he did for a living. Federal agents turned a blind eye to all kinds of things in Miami. Especially agents like Alex Goldman, whose own activities as a member of the FBI's Domestic Intelligence Division were in the main illegal.

How's my favourite spy?' asked Tom, clapping the big man on his Dakota-sized shoulder.

That fucking movie,' sneered Goldman. I hate Bob Hope. The Road to the Gas Chamber. Now that's one movie I'd like to see him in.'

They ordered some beers and took them to a quiet table in the back.

What do you know about John Rosselli?' asked Tom.

Johnny Rosselli,' sneered Goldman. Don Giovanni to his guinea friends. He's the mob's number one faggot.'

He is?' Tom sounded surprised. Then he was surprised that he was surprised. Now that he thought some more about Rosselli - the cologne, the fastidious lips, the manicured fingernails, the Eldorado Brougham with the built-in vanity case, maybe even the fag at the Key Biscayne Hotel - it seemed a little more obvious than before. But he still was not wholly convinced. Sometimes Goldman just said things to provoke people, which was, after all, his main job function. Within the Intelligence Division he ran the FBI's local COINTELPRO, a counter-intelligence programme devised by J. Edgar Hoover to flush out or screw up communists.

Goldman puffed his pipe furiously. He was married for a while. To some movie actress broad. June Lang, I think her name was. But it didn't take. Anyway, that's why he likes it here in Miami. I'm told it can get quite hot in Vegas and LA, so it isn't the fucking sunshine that brings his guinea ass down here, you can be sure of that. Just don't go to the can with the guy, that's my advice.' Goldman chuckled his way into a short fit of coughing.

Mob guy, huh? He told me he's working for the government. For the Company.'

Now and then, mob and Company interests coincide and they share resources. Like in Guatemala. The Don's been in and out of Guatemala since fifty-six, fixing things for Carlos Marcello. He runs most of the things down in G City. Anyway, fixing things for Marcello also fixed things for the Company. But it's interesting that he actually said that. Give it to me again. Like his exact words, Paladin.'

He said he was working for the government,' shrugged Tom. Later on, when I referred to him working for the Company, he didn't contradict me.'

Goldman nodded thoughtfully. I guess it would figure. Rosselli's one well-connected queer, I'll say that much for him. He's always been a kind of liaison man in Hollywood and Vegas. Between the big bosses: Meyer Lansky, Sam Giancana, Santos Trafficante and Marcello. Back in the thirties and forties he was Capone's man. Then Ben Siegel's sidekick.'

According to Rosselli, he was a Hollywood producer for a while.'

That's one word for it. But he was always Chicago's man out there. Him and Joe Kennedy. The Don and some other muscle took over the labour unions in Hollywood and started to put the squeeze on the big studios. Columbia. Warner Brothers. MGM. They paid up or there was a fucking strike. As simple as that. The amazing thing was that the Bureau managed to make a case against him. Rosselli and some of the other guineas involved. It doesn't happen very often. Sometimes I think Hoover must be on the take himself. That or they've got something on him. Like he's the same kind of fruit as Rosselli, for instance. Take the Bureau here in Miami. We've got two hundred agents handling the investigation of so-called communists in the city. And just three who are concerned with organised crime.

Anyway, back to the Don, fifteen, twenty years ago. There was this guy named Willie Bioff.' Having pronounced the name Buy-off, Goldman grinned. 'Is that a good name for a chiselling rat who is helping to put the squeeze on you, or what? The mob had made him president of the biggest motion picture union out in Hollywood, and it was him the feds managed to put the squeeze on right back. Willie Bioff ratted on the Don and some other colourful friends of his, and then lived long enough to change his name, move to Phoenix, and get blown to pieces by a car bomb. Don Giovanni and those other movie fans, they went to jail. Not that the Don did much fucking time, you understand. Couple of years at most. Someone fixed it for him to have an early release. LAPD most likely. When Siegel got himself murdered it kind of left a vacuum for all the cops on the take. So Rosselli came out and cut himself a deal. Parker, the LA police chief, virtually fingered the Don's only rival for the territory. A Jew named Mickey Cohen. See, Parker disliked Jews about as much as he disliked niggers, and felt more comfortable dealing with the guineas.

Goldman re-lit his pipe and blew out a long cloud of smoke.

The Don was quite a talent-spotter, too, let me tell you. Still is. He's helped a lot of careers in Hollywood and Vegas. A part in a movie here, a season at the Sands there. A lot of big stars owe that guinea sonofabitch.'

What is his connection with Cuba?' asked Tom.

Cuba is to the mob what Detroit is to General Motors. And Rosselli is to the mob what Christian Herter is to the White House. The Don's kind of like a Secretary of State for the Mafia. The olive oil in the Cosa Nostra machine. Would that the Secretary of State was able to achieve so much. Christian Herter's a fucking amateur next to the Don. Lansky and Trafficante have got a problem with Castro in Cuba? Let's speak to our roving ambassador of organised crime. Maybe the Don can come up with a solution. A proposal. Some contacts. Pull in a few favours. Come up with a plan.' Goldman toasted Tom with a bottle of beer. I guess that's where you come in, Paladin. Who do they want dropped from the team?'

Castro.'

Well good for you.'

And his brother.'

Wouldn't that just suit everyone?' said Goldman. The mob, the CIA, the big corporations, the government. Everyone except the Cuban people, I guess. So the mob and the Company have cut a deal on this, have they? I guess it makes a lot of sense. If it can be done.' He paused and inspected the cherrywood bowl of his pipe before relighting what tobacco remained in there.

That's what Rosselli's paying me five hundred bucks to find out.'

Find out all you can, if I were you.'

Sure. I'm on it. S'why I'm talking to you.'

Can it be done, do you think?'

Tom lit a cigarette and smoked it silently, his face a study of indecision.

Any fool can stick his fucking head in a lion's mouth,' he said finally. The trick is taking it out again.'

True.'

But, why not? It's not like Cuba's closed for business, or anything. The American embassy may have pulled down the shutters, but the ferry still sails from Key West, and Pan Am still flies in and out of Havana.' He shrugged. And Castro's the kind of man who likes to make a lot of public speeches. So, yeah. I'd say it can be done.'

Whatever you need, just let me know.'

Thanks, man.'

By the way, how is Mary?'

Not sleeping too good.'

I find that hard to believe. She takes enough fucking pills.'

She keeps thinking the atom bomb's going to go off while she's in bed.'

Best place to be if it does.'

And she's busy with the election, of course.'

Of course. Who's going to win?'

It'll be close.'

Oh, for sure, but let's hope Kennedy, right?'

Tom shrugged, noncommittally.

For Mary's sake, anyway,' argued Goldman. She's put a lot into this. And after November she might be well placed to get something valuable out of it.'

Kennedy's no different from Nixon,' grumbled Tom. He just sweats less and owns a better razor. But Mary.' Tom shook his head, and stubbed his cigarette out angrily. Sometimes I think maybe she's in love with the guy. You should see her when he's on TV. It's like he's Gary fucking Grant, or something. And the rest of the time, she's breaking my balls about his style and his good looks. It's Jack Kennedy this and it's Jack fucking Kennedy that. I tell you Alex, I'll be glad when this is all over.'

If I didn't know you better, I'd say you were jealous.'

Me, jealous? Of Jack Kennedy? Come on.'

Sure. Why not? She wouldn't be the first party-worker to fall for the candidate. S'probably easier for her to do her job that way.' Alex grinned. You really don't like him, do you?'

Tom tried to hold back a sheepish smile and then, letting it go at last, shook his head. I'd like to blow his fucking brains out,' he said quietly.

Why? What is it that makes you dislike him so much?'

Tom thought for a moment and, remembering Brando's line in The Wild One, grinned and said, What have you got?'

Chapter 3

The Big Barbudo

Though we have a reputation for talking at great length, the assembly need not worry. We shall do our best to be brief.'

Old habits die hard, and in the event, Castro's speech to the General Assembly was, at over three hours, the longest in United Nations history. The Indian Prime Minister, Nehru, fell asleep and was woken only by the assembly president using his gavel to reprimand the longwinded speaker for saying that the two United States presidential candidates, Nixon and Kennedy, lacked brains.

Tom had read the report in the newspaper with interest. Castro's use of the royal we' seemed to indicate a Mussolini-sized ego. He didn't disagree with Castro's historical account of US-Cuban relations, but he did question the wisdom of referring to JFK as an illiterate and ignorant millionaire. What interested Tom most of all was the unscripted duration of Dr Castro's address. By all accounts three hours was hardly unusual for the Big Barbudo. Back home in Cuba, speeches lasting four or five hours were not uncommon. These were delivered to every kind of audience, too: sports coaches, doctors, agronomists, dentists, film-makers, and schoolteachers. It was clear that the bearded one liked the sound of his voice as much as he enjoyed a good cigar.

Tom wondered if the point of Castro's frequent speech-making was not to mobilise the masses, but to bore them into submission. Either way, a man who seized every opportunity to speak to an audience, no matter how large or small, and at such interminable length, was an assassin's dream. The wonder was that a marksman - some disaffected Batistiano, or dispossessed landowner's son - hadn't already tried. Of course Castro had his posse of revolutionary army bodyguards to protect him. But Tom, who was Cuban on his father's side, knew Cubanos well enough to guess the real worth of that kind of protection. After all, it wasn't as if the rebel army had defeated the regime of Fulgencio Batista in some great battle, merely that the old dictator's troops had refused to fight, preferring to stay in their barracks.

Tom had always felt that this was the real Cuban character: guerrillas more interested in fine cigars than sticks of dynamite, and soldiers who neglected their posts to watch the World Series on television. While about the only belief that united Cuban men was their hatred of homosexuals. Tom wondered if this was the real reason Johnny Rosselli himself wasn't in Havana making a feasibility study for a hit on Castro. Because from everything Alex Goldman had told Tom about the Don he was more than equal to the task of how and where to kill a man, having murdered as many as a dozen men during his thirty-year mob career.

Not that Tom minded very much. He welcomed this excuse to return to Cuba. He'd been too long away.

Tom felt the Cole Porter rhythm of Havana the minute he stepped off the plane at Rancho Boyeros airport. It felt good to be back in Cuba, to be speaking Spanish again, to hear the endless clamour of automobile horns, to be bargaining for his taxi fare into the centre of town, and to find himself offered a girl from a selection of photographs made available immediately he sat in the backseat by the mule-faced jinitero driving. Already enjoying his trip, Tom amused himself by having the driver describe each girl in obscenely intimate detail. The revolution did not seem to have changed things all that much. The Big Barbudo might have announced an end to gambling and prostitution but the taxi-driver still managed to make Havana sound like a sexual Disneyland. No government in history, insisted the driver, had ever succeeded in putting an end to the oldest profession.

You here on business?'

Yes, business.'

What kind of business?'

If I get time I was hoping maybe to catch one of the Maximum Leader's speeches.'

The taxi-driver twisted around in his seat, his face wearing a horrified expression, as if Tom had just admitted that he was a maricA3n.

Are you a journalist?'

No, I'm just curious, that's all.'

Shaking his head the driver looked back at the carretera central. The most beautiful girls in the world,' he muttered, and the American wants to hear El Fidel give a speech.'

Well, maybe not the whole speech,' allowed Tom. I hear he speaks for quite a long time.'

That he does,' said the driver. And, as it happens, you're in luck, because he's going to speak on Wednesday night. Tomorrow. To tell us about what a lousy time he had in New York and all the skinny American women he fucked.'

And where will that take place?'

The same place as usual. From the balcony of the presidential palace. Where are you staying?'

In order to avoid paying more Tom had merely instructed the driver to take him to Central Park, on the western side of old Havana. Having a fare who was staying at one of the better hotels would have demanded that the driver try and screw even more money out of the rich yanqui.

The Inglaterra,' answered Tom.

The driver chuckled sadistically as if enjoying the prospect of the penny-pinching gringo's discomfort.

Then, without doubt, you will be able to hear every word of the Prime Minister's speech, whether you like it or not. With or without your window closed.' The driver laughed again as he thought about this some more. For your sake I hope he makes an early start.'

He was still laughing when he dropped Tom on Acrea del Louvre, where a crowd of local youths were smoking cheap cigars and admiring a 1957 Packard that was parked in front of the Inglaterra Hotel.

Tom checked in and asked for a quiet room. The desk clerk, a short, almost dwarfish man, with a goatee beard, considered the question with a weary politeness.

The quietest room I can give you is in the centre of the building,' he said, hardly looking at Tom.

Okay, I'll take that.'

But then, it has no window.'

Tom smiled patiently. Outside in the street it was touching ninety-five, with eighty-two per cent humidity.

How about a room that's a little bit quiet but that also has a window?' he said, handing the clerk a couple of pesos.

I think we can accommodate you very comfortably on the south side of the hotel,' smiled the clerk, and waved the porter toward him.

Tom's room, overlooking San Rafael, a busy pedestrian street, was cool and dark, at least until the porter threw open the shutters. Stepping out on to the little balcony, Tom looked down on the street with its many shops and bars and sighed loudly.

This is a quiet room?'

Quieter than the ones overlooking the park,' said the porter, a high-yellow, coloured boy of about eighteen.

Tom stared at the exorbitantly baroque facade of the Gran Teatro opposite and signalled his defeat with a slow nod. At each of the building's four corners was a tower, topped by a dark marble angel reaching gracefully on tiptoe for heaven, and through the open window opposite he could see a similarly hued dancer, standing beside a wall-bar and achieving much the same sort of pose.

Joining Tom on the balcony to collect his tip, the porter saw the girl and quickly noted Tom's interest.

I know that girl,' he said. She's a dancer.'

That much I guessed,' said Tom, handing over a few centavos.

A proper dancer,' insisted the boy. Not like those horses in the chorus at the Tropicana.'

I kind of like those chorus girls,' said Tom. But he continued to stare at the girl opposite.

I could introduce you to her, if you like.'

You? Know her?'

Sure,' said the boy, flexing himself.

What's your name, kid?' he asked.

Jorge Montaro.'

And her's is?'

Celia.'

Celia, huh?' said Tom, liking the boy's style. So far the boy hadn't promised him the fuck of his life and Tom wondered how long he could keep this particular novelty in progress. So what's this Celia like?'

A very good family. A very respectable girl. An educated person, you know?'

Now he really was intrigued. This was true salesmanship. Tom smiled and handed over several banknotes. I'd like to. Bring her up. Bring a bottle of rum, too.'

And for the lady? Some champagne perhaps?'

Tom started to laugh. Get outta here. No, wait. One more thing, Jorge. Can you find me a firecracker?'

A firecracker?'

You know. A cherry bomb. As big as you can get.'

Jorge shrugged. I think so.'

Only don't tell anyone.'

Jorge frowned and shook his head as if he wouldn't dream of such a thing, but Tom could see that he desperately wanted to ask why the American needed a firecracker.

It's a surprise,' said Tom, and waved Jorge out of the door.

Tom didn't watch what took place in the dance studio opposite. Instead he closed the shutters and lay down on his bed. He strongly suspected that Jorge didn't know the girl from Eve and that right now he was trying to set her up as his own jinitera. Assuming she needed the money - and nearly everyone in Cuba needed money: most of the American employers had left the island - then it was just possible that he might succeed. Necessity was both the mother and father of all invention in the new Cuba, and probably the aunt and uncle as well. But when it came to overcoming local shortages nothing more was necessary than American dollars. He just wished he could have heard Jorge's pitch.

Opening the carton of king-size Chesterfields he had bought at the airport, Tom smoked a cigarette and found his thoughts turning to his own Cuban father, wondering if he was back in Cuba, or still in Miami somewhere. It was years since they had seen each other.

Following the Great War, which had left most of the baseball teams with an acute shortage of players, Roberto Casas had been brought from Cuba to Philadelphia, to play ball for the Phillies. Casas had been a promising left-hand pitcher until the loss of a thumb in a knife-fight had ended his career before it had hardly started. But not before Tom's father had met and impregnated his mother, Mildred Jefferson, during the Phillies' spring training in St Petersburg. They had never married - not least because Roberto already had a wife back in Santiago de Cuba - and Tom had been brought up mostly by his mother and his aunt. Yet somehow he'd seen a fair bit of his father during his childhood. It had been his father who had taught Tom shooting and Spanish, in that order. But since the Korean War, he'd seen nothing of the old man, and from what he had heard the guy was in and out of Cuba like cigar smoke. For all Tom knew, his father was dead. And maybe for all he cared, too. He hadn't much use for a father any more. Nor for that matter a mother: on the few occasions he saw her, at the old people's home in Intercession City, he wondered that he was related to her at all.

Tom awoke with a start, and sensed that there was someone outside his door. Hearing a knock he shook his head clear of sleep, sprang off the all-too-noisy bed and went to open the door. It was Jorge, with the rum and a broad smile. He walked into the room, and was followed, at a shy distance, by a beautiful negress.

This is Celia,' said Jorge.

Hullo Celia. I'm Tom.'

Pleased to meet you, Tom.'

Celia, wearing a tight, sleeveless blue dress, matching high-heels, and smelling strongly of sweat and perfume, smiled pleasantly and walked over to the window where she threw open the shutters, stepped out on to the balcony and leaned forward on the rusting wrought-iron balustrade. Tom felt his heart beat loudly. She was the most beautiful woman. Watching her stare into the studio she had been conjured from he realised that the way she was standing reminded him of something. He tried to remember. Yes, there had been a picture by Salvador Dali, a print he had seen on some hood's wall in Atlantic City. Quite a suggestive picture as he recalled it now. Something about a woman being fucked up the ass by her own chastity, he seemed to think.

Tom drew Jorge into the bathroom and handed him ten pesos, which was about a quarter of the Inglaterra room rate. Jorge pocketed the note and explained that he would return later with the firecracker. Then he left them alone.

Tom sat down in the room's solitary armchair and poured himself a drink. Celia turned and came back into the room, closing the shutters behind her. The sun painted a series of pale stripes across her light brown face so that she looked like a mulatto dancer, a santiaguero woman from Santiago.

Celia sat down on the edge of the bed and pressed it experimentally. So you like the ballet, eh?'

Tom nodded. He had seen a ballet in New York once, when he'd been tailing a guy he'd agreed to kill, and hadn't thought much of it, which was probably why he couldn't remember the name of it.

Some,' he said.

Like what, for instance?'

Tosca,' he said finally.

Tosca is an opera,' she said. By Puccini.' She folded her arms and shrugged. Not that it matters. There's not much of either happening in Cuba right now. But I try to stay in shape.'

I know. I saw you.' It occurred to Tom that maybe he was supposed to see her; that the whole thing was meant to look like his idea, when it was actually a regular jinitero thing going between Celia and Jorge. Not that he really cared much either way. You're in pretty good shape, I'd say,' he said, toasting her with the Havana Club he was drinking.

I'm putting on weight.'

A man likes a little meat on the bone.'

It gives him something to chew on, eh?'

Makes for better eating, yeah.'

I wouldn't know. I live on coffee, and cigarettes.'

Would you like a drink?'

No thanks. They put bacteria in it, you know? To give it flavour.'

Tom scrutinised his glass and then drained it.

It works,' he said. How would you like to come out to dinner with me, tonight?'

Sounds good.'

As a matter of fact, I'd welcome your company tomorrow as well.'

Wednesday's always a quiet day for me.'

Naturally, I'll pay you to keep me company. How does fifty dollars sound? Twenty-five in advance.' Tom took out his dollar clip and thumbed five bills into her hand. He knew he was paying way over the local rate but he wanted to ensure the girl's loyalty, and perhaps even her silence.

It's generous.' But Celia still handled the notes with some suspicion before putting them in her purse. Very generous.' She threw the purse on to the bed and before he could stop her she had stood up and hauled the dress over her head to reveal her nakedness.

Tom felt his chest tighten. Her body was even more magnificent than he had supposed. But this was not what he wanted. At least not right now. Tom didn't much care to pay for sex. Which was why he didn't mind paying too much, in the hope that it would help her to forget about money. If he did go to bed with her he needed it to feel a little less business-like, and a little more because she wanted to. A delusion of course, and an expensive one - he knew that. But what else was having money good for if not to indulge in a few expensive delusions now and again? He picked up her dress and handed it to her.

Have you got an evening dress?'

When the evening's worth it, sure.'

Meet me back here at seven.'

Is something the matter?' Celia looked puzzled. I thought-'

Tom smiled and shook his head. Nothing's wrong,' he said. And you needn't think I'm a maricA3n. I'm not. I'm as hard for you as the holy cross, sweetheart. But right now it's just the boat I need, not the whole fishing trip.'

The last time he had been in Cuba, almost four years before, he'd murdered a man. As it happened he would have murdered three if he'd had the chance. Back in October 1956 he had been contracted to kill Colonel Antonio Blanco Rico, the chief of military intelligence, as he and his wife left a Havana night-club. Tom had waited on a rooftop across the street and shot him through the heart. But when he tried to collect the balance of his fee, his clients - two senior officers in the Cuban military police - had tried to kill him, and Tom had barely escaped with his own life. The two officers, General Canizares and Colonel Miguel Zayas, had used Rico's assassination as a pretext for an attack on the Haitian embassy, where a number of Cuban opposition leaders had sought political asylum. A gun-battle had ensued during which General Canizares had been killed, leaving Tom with just the one score to settle.

Months after the revolution he had learned that Zayas had escaped being tried as a Batistiano and the inevitable firing squad that resulted from such a charge, and was now working as head of security at the Hotel Nacional in Vedado, the largely middle-class suburb of Havana where the university and most of the formerly Mafia-run hotels were situated. And when Celia showed up at the Inglaterra wearing a beautiful sequinned black cocktail dress, it was to the Nacional that Tom told their taxi-driver to take them.

He did not wear a tuxedo. In Havana those days were gone. People dressed down or got trouble. A woman could still wear more or less what she wanted, but only a man who was a fool wore evening dress. So like other Cubans who were out on the town, Tom wore a white short-sleeved shirt outside his pants, guayabera-style. This helped him to blend in, and to conceal a Smith & Wesson Centennial Airweight inside the waistband of his beige linen pants. Tom was expecting the evening to end with a bang. And then maybe, if he and Celia got along, the whimper, too.

Heading west along the MaleASSon, with the seafront to their right, it wasn't long before they were among the cream-coloured villas and high-rise hotels of Vedado. The suburb always reminded Tom of South Beach in Miami, just as the Nacional with its distinctive twin towers and Italianate facade always put him in mind of the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach. Until Castro, Cuba had always looked like Florida's backyard.

Like the nearby Riviera Hotel and the Hilton - now renamed the Habana Libre - the Nacional had been seized by the revolutionary government just three months before. But back in 1956 the Nacional's casino had been operated by Meyer Lansky. Further up the road, the Capri had been run by Santos Trafficante and fronted by none other than movie tough-guy George Raft. The following year, Lansky had opened the Riviera at a cost of fourteen million dollars. Then Castro turned up. Some of the mob-run casinos in hotels like the Deauville, the Sevilla-Biltmore and the Commodoro had been destroyed by rioters celebrating day one of the revolution; the rest, allowed to remain open, but forbidden to gamblers, had just drifted into a limbo of desuetude before they closed as well.

The extraordinary thing was that the mob had taken so long to put out a contract on Castro, thought Tom as the taxi drew up outside the Nacional. There were often times when he considered organised crime was hardly deserving of the title.

Apart from the absence of an operating casino, inside the Nacional was much as he remembered it. And they still served the best daiquiris on the island. He and Celia drank several, which put both of them in a good mood for an excellent dinner of Morro crab, roast pork with rice and beans, and fried sweet bananas on the side. As soon as they had ordered candied papaya for dessert Tom excused himself and went out of the dining room.

It took only a moment or two to use the phone in the Spanish-tiled lobby and check that Zayas was in the hotel. Tom recognised the former policeman's lisping Oriente accent the minute he came to the phone. It is hard to forget the voice of a man who has done his best to destroy you. Giving his best imitation of a native Cuban, Tom told Zayas that he had Luis Rodriguez, the Minister of the Interior, calling from the Habana Libre - from where members of the revolutionary government conducted their affairs of state - and asked him to hold on for a minute while the minister came to the phone. From the lobby Tom had a good view of the Nacional's telephone operator, and it required only a glance as he passed the switchboard to see that his call had been connected to suite 919 on the penthouse floor.

Tom went along the corridor to the self-service elevator and rode up to the seventh floor. When the elevator had gone down again he walked along to the service stairs to climb the last two floors. This gave him time to take out the .38 from under his shirt. Hammerless, so as not to catch on clothing, weighing only twelve ounces, and with a three-and-a-half-inch barrel, the Airweight was the assassin's preferred choice of revolver. It fired just five shots, but each with sufficient stopping power that it hardly needed six. Tom thumbed off the safety and, peering out of the stairwell, looked out on to the ninth floor, but there was no one in sight. Suite 919 was almost immediately opposite the service elevator up to the roof terrace. Tom listened at the door and, hearing only the sound of a television set, knocked quietly.

Con permeso,' he said, as if he might have been room service.

A voice answered with military vigour. Entrar!'

Gun pointed, Tom slid into the room.

Telephone receiver still in hand, Zayas was watching baseball on television. It looked like a game from Cerro Stadium - the Sugar Kings versus a team Tom couldn't identify. Which no doubt explained why the Big Barbudo, a keen fan, had chosen the following night to speak to the people of Cuba. The suite was the size of a polo field with a worn leather sofa as big as a Pontiac and an enormous white jellyfish of a chandelier. The kind of suite that might once have accommodated Churchill, Brando or any of the other larger-than-life personalities who had once stayed at the Nacional.

Zayas looked surprised to see Tom and the gun in his hand. Almost as surprised as Tom was to see that Zayas was sitting in a wheelchair.

Put the phone down,' Tom ordered.

Zayas coolly did as he was told and wheeled himself round to face his assailant. That was you, I suppose,' he said. On the phone, just now.'

He looked heavier than Tom remembered. With his thin, mascara-line moustache, coffee-bean eyes, flattened nose, and Dunlopillo belly, he reminded Tom of Joe Louis after he retired from the ring, and lost all his money. Tom had seen the boxer once working as a shill at the blackjack tables in Vegas, a burnt-out shell of the Brown Bomber who had beaten Max Schmeling in less than one round.

Where'd you get the wheels?' asked Tom.

I took a bullet in the spine at San Domingo. With Cantillo. Before he caved in.'

Too bad for you he didn't cave in earlier.' Tom jerked the gun at the door. Get rolling.'

Are we going somewhere?' Zayas pushed himself across the checkerboard floor. He knew better than to argue with a man like Tom. The best he figured he could do now was to keep talking.

In the corridor outside the door to his suite he paused, waiting for instructions. Tom summoned the service elevator, and when it came pushed the wheelchair and its occupant inside with the heel of his shoe. They rode up to the roof terrace.

I thought we'd make sure we weren't disturbed,' he said, wheeling Zayas out into the warm night air. It was breezy out on the terrace and the air smelled strongly of the sea, but a six-foot-high ornamented parapet meant that there was not much of a view without standing on an overturned beer-crate.

It's a nice evening,' said Zayas. Are you planning to shoot me up here? Is that your plan?'

Could be,' grunted Tom.

That would be foolish,' said Zayas. For one thing I can give you the money I owe you, with interest.' He pulled nervously at the little brightly coloured bow-tie he was wearing. There's a safe at my house in Varadero. Why don't we go there now? It wouldn't take long.'

Tom pulled a face and shook his head. I don't think so,' he said, spinning the .38 in his hand with purposeful dexterity.

You wouldn't shoot a man in a wheelchair.' Zayas spoke with an almost confident disbelief.

Tom drew a deep breath and glanced up at the moon as if considering what Zayas had said, but merely thinking that he had eaten too much at dinner. Then he said, I guess you're right at that.'

Zayas smiled as if he had known it all along. It was enough of a smile to make Tom wish their conversation ended. No doubt Zayas had smiled just such a smile when he had ordered Tom's death, and the thought of that was enough to provoke in Tom an explosion of rum-fired rage. With a loud, feral curse he whipped the .38 hard across the Cuban's sweaty smiling bullfrog face, sending him sprawling on the terrace floor.

You're not in a fucking wheelchair now,' he snarled. How do you like that, you cock-sucker? Hey? How do you like that? Hey, coA+-o.' Tom stamped at Zayas's head. I'm talking to you.' He stamped again, as if he had been trying to crush a cockroach under his heel. Hey, cabron.'

Groaning loudly, the ex-military policeman tried to protect himself, in vain.

Estafador,' Tom hissed, and kicked him again, but with little apparent effect. The man's arms and shoulders were so well padded with fat, he couldn't seem to get near his head.

Zayas wriggled up against the parapet prompting Tom to put down his gun, pick up one of his victim's useless legs and drag him away from whatever protection the wall afforded him.

Hijo de puta.'

Finally, Tom picked up the wheelchair, raised it over his head as if he had been King Kong, and then brought it down hard on the neck and shoulders of Zayas. He did this twice more, until Zayas stopped moving. But he was still breathing. Tom took off his shirt, laid it neatly across the parapet, and turned Zayas on to his back. It took a minute or so to manoeuvre the unconscious man into a seated position and another minute to lift him, fireman-style, on to his bare back.

Double-cross me, would you?' muttered Tom as, standing on the upturned Bucanero crate, he managed to lift Zayas on to the top of the parapet.

Pausing for breath, he took in the ocean-side view, wondering why they didn't make the parapet a little lower. The Havana coastline curved back on itself like a crab-claw. Across the bay, the lighthouse in front of the El Morro fortress signalled its lonely vigil, as if in defiance of the vastly superior force of its enemy across the Gulf of Mexico. Once it had been the English who had wanted to control the island, and now it was the yanquis. Only history showed that Cubans were not so easily pushed around.

Tom smiled grimly and shoved Zayas off the parapet. The body fell ten floors, through a clump of tall palm trees at the back of the hotel, and then disappeared into the darkness. Tom spat after him and, having collected his gun and his shirt, rode the elevator down to the first floor.

Back in the lounge he paused in front of one of the show-cases that were full of imported items supposedly for sale - Radiac shirts, Brunex superfine mohair cloths, Floris soaps, Queen Ann whisky, and Mappin & Webb silverware - to check his appearance in the dusty glass. Straightening his hair he walked back into the dining room.

You took your time,' said Celia.

Tom glanced at his wristwatch. He'd been gone for less than fifteen minutes.

I had to make a quick telephone call,' he said, lighting up a Chesterfield.

In Cuba?' Celia laughed. That explains why you were so long. For a moment I thought you'd dumped me.'

Tom smiled and kissed her hand.

I'm not so easy to get rid of,' he said.

I don't doubt it,' said Celia, and dabbed at his cheek with her napkin. Blood.'

Tom glanced at the tiny spot of red on the napkin and then wiped his face with his own.

That's all,' she declared. It must have been a very heated call. And if anyone should ask? The police?'

They're not interested in this.'

But if they should be?'

Tom shrugged. I went to the men's room. I was gone for five minutes.'

What if they ask the waiter?'

Tom glanced around the near-empty restaurant.

What waiter?'

You're right. He's not been near this table since you left to do whatever it was that you did.' She helped herself to one of his Chesterfields. Just promise me you won't tell me what that was. I'm quite scared enough of you as it is.'

Why should you be scared of me?'

I don't know, but I am. Instinct, I suppose.'

Instinct?'

I'm descended from slaves. This house-girl knows to do whatever the master tells her or risk a good whipping.'

Is there such a thing as a good whipping?'

Depends on who's doing the whipping, master.'

I like an old-fashioned girl,' observed Tom. Shall we leave? I've a sudden urge to make you disobedient.'

The next day Celia accompanied Tom on a walking tour east of the Prado, Havana's favourite promenade. Two roads, Agramonte and Zuluetta, paralleled the Prado and sloped gently down to the waterfront and the fort of San Salvador de la Punta, and between these was a wide open park that led up to an equestrian statue of one of Castro's revolutionary predecessors, Maximo Gomez. At the south end of the plaza, beyond a semi-derelict watchtower that was a fragment of the old city walls, was the presidential palace. This enormous, wedding-cake of a building, with its domed cupola, high arched windows, gap-toothed colonnade, and Tiffany interior had been home to all of Cuba's presidents since 1917. Castro preferred to stay elsewhere: on the twenty-third floor of the Habana Libre; at an apartment on llth Street, in Vedado, or on 22nd, in an apartment formerly owned by Santos Trafficante; there was even a villa in Miramar, and a small fisherman's cottage in the port of Cojimar. But the prime minister still spoke to his people from the twenty-foot-high balcony on the front of the palace's ornate, almost ecclesiastical facade. Even now the television cameras and radio microphones were setting up to broadcast the Big Barbudo's speech that night.

Tom's sniper's eyes took in the layout of the open plaza. Immediately to the west of the palace stood the old Corona cigar factory, a four-storey Italianate building, pale green, which was the way Tom had felt the last time he smoked a large cigar. The factory's rooftop and corner windows commanded an excellent view of the balcony, but as a vantage point it suffered the drawback of being a little obvious. Still, on the west side of the plaza, a pair of eight-storey terracotta-coloured apartment blocks immediately opposite the factory looked a better bet, with a wide variety of windows, balconies, and different-level rooftops to choose from. Further north were a pair of white office buildings, from the upper storeys of which Tom felt he could easily pick out a target on the presidential balcony. But it seemed probable that all four buildings would host a large number of spectators for any speech by the prime minister. The use of any such apartment would undoubtedly have required that Tom first kill the occupant, with all the risks that such a course of action entailed.

The eastern side of the plaza offered fewer sniping possibilities, which, to Tom's eyes, made it more interesting. The fewer possible vantage points, the less likely it would be that anyone would decide to look there first, in the event of Castro's assassination. One eight-storey apartment block - plenty of windows - stood north of a church immediately to the east of the palace. But it was the church, the Iglesia del Santa Angel Custodio, atop a rock known as Angel Hill, that interested Tom most of all. This neo-Gothic church, with its winter forest of white pinnacles, looked like a better prospect for a concealed shot at the balcony. A man might easily hide in such a petrified white forest.

Tom and Celia both crossed themselves as they passed through the entrance on Cuarteles.

I never figured you for a tourist,' remarked Celia, watching Tom's keen eyes take in the statues and the stained-glass windows.

Me? My middle name is Baedeker.'

So does it interest you that JosE Marti was baptised here?'

I'll make a note of that. Another revolutionary.'

Celia shrugged. It's what happens when you need a revolution.' She looked around the mahogany interior and sighed her admiration. It's beautiful, isn't it?'

Tom pointed up at the painted ceiling. How do we get up the tower?'

This way,' she said, leading. It's not the original. That was toppled during the last century. By a hurricane.'

The two-storey tower provided what looked like an easy access to the rooftop of the church, from the rear of which Tom thought he could kneel behind one of the candle-shaped pinnacles to make his shot. He took several photographs. A distance of less than one hundred yards separated church from palace. It was not a difficult bit of shooting in the daytime. But at night, with a southerly breeze off the Gulf of Mexico - or, for that matter, a westerly off the Bay of Havana - it was a shot that would require quite a heavy load, a bullet like Sierra's 168-grain Matchking. Probably the balcony would be floodlit, so there would be no problem with the scope; during the Korean War Tom had hit head-size targets at one hundred yards with only one second of illumination. He was confident he could make the shot. It was the set-up he didn't like.

Escaping from the church rooftop with the plaza full of G2 - the Cuban Intelligence Service - and soldiers would not be easy. Could he dress up as a priest perhaps? Unlike the mob, the Catholic Church was still free to work its racket, and there were plenty of priests in evidence throughout Havana. Surely no one would suspect a priest. Tom had some reservations about the wisdom of shooting from the church. But it looked like a safer proposition than working out of one of the apartment buildings, or the cigar factory.

Outside, on the steps of the church, Tom took some more photographs, although in Celia's eyes he seemed quite unimpressed with her hometown's famous landmarks. He used a superwide Haselblad single-reflex fitted with a thirty-eight-millimetre lens that gave a ninety-degree angle over the plaza. It was hardly a typical camera for a tourist, she thought, even an American. She began to suggest some of the other sights that were to be seen in old Havana.

Would you like to see the Columbus Cathedral? He's not buried there any more, but it's still worth seeing. It's only a short distance from here.'

Tom grunted and took another photograph of the plaza and its buildings, his mind still fizzing with marksmanship and ballistics.

Threading her arm through his, she said, Or maybe you would like to take me back to your hotel room? I enjoyed it last night, although my behind is still a little sore.'

Tom smiled vaguely. The Hilton,' he said abruptly. The Habana Libre, or whatever it's called now. I think I'd like to go there.

You want to go and see a hotel?'

Come on. Let's find a taxi.'

Celia shrugged and followed Tom down the steps of the church. It was true, he spoke very good Spanish, even looked a little Hispanic, but he was, she reflected sadly, still a yanqui, with a yanqui's small horizons. In spite of all the beautiful and historic buildings Havana had to offer the tourist, he still preferred to go and see another deluxe yanqui hotel and no doubt marvel at the expense of such opulence and luxury. She would never understand Americans.

Just as surprising to Celia's mind was Tom's desire to hear the Maximum Leader speak in public. Like most Cuban women of her age, Celia had got over her early infatuation with Fidel Castro. Back in January 1959 she had been in the Plaza to hear him make his very first speech to the people of Havana following a meeting with President Urrutia - the only time the Prime Minister had made a short speech. If only he had held on to that brevity. Just a few months later Castro had made a speech on television that had lasted for seven hours, without a break. Life, Celia told Tom, was too short to stand around listening to a man who could rouse his audience to a state of complete indifference. But Tom was adamant.

Besides,' he added. There's an experiment I'd like to conduct.'

You're crazy,' she said, after he had told her what he planned to do. They'll arrest you. They'll put you up against the wall and shoot you. Me too, probably, if I'm seen with you.

Tom shrugged. Then don't be. Wait for me at the Hotel Plaza. In the rooftop bar.'

I'll be there,' she said angrily. But I don't expect to see you again.'

You will,' said Tom. But just in case you lose your nerve waiting for me, here's the money I owe you.'

Celia took the dollars and squeezed them down the front of her brassiere. Then he was gone.

Crazy American,' she said, telling herself that now she had been paid she was under no obligation to meet him anywhere. But she was still in the fifth-floor azotea of the Plaza, with its splendid view of the old Bacardi building - an excellent place to hear every word spoken from the balcony of the presidential palace - when, at ten minutes after ten, the Big Barbudo began to speak.

Listening to the speech from the Agramonte side of the crowded plaza, Tom was surprised at how gentle and high-pitched the leader's voice was. He had been expecting someone who sounded tougher, as befitted a guerrilla leader and heavy smoker of large cigars. Even so, the content of the speech - which was about the ten days Castro had spent in New York - lacked for nothing in its harsh criticism of the American way of life. The United States was not the golden land of opportunity people thought it was. Blacks were oppressed. The poor were downtrodden. The press told lies. Truth existed nowhere. Everyone was motivated by money.

Tom agreed with a lot of what Castro said. When he went to the movies and saw representations of life in small-town America he sometimes wondered if any of these Utopian places, with their white picket fences, beautiful children, friendly cops, and sober fathers, had ever existed except in the minds of the non-American immigrants who had dreamed them up. The real America - the America he knew, and where he had been raised - was a harder, less sentimental place than anybody ever expected, and the reality was sure to be a disappointment for the majority of Cuban refugees who went there. It was no great shakes, but at least they belonged in Cuba. Tom thought Castro was probably right to tell his people that they were better off where they were. It almost seemed a pity to interrupt him.

Tom studied the balconies and windows of the apartment buildings surrounding the plaza carefully, and found them bristling with spectators. Whereas in the afternoon he had seen these people as a potential drawback, he was now inclined to think of them as a possible advantage. With so many people in those buildings he might easily slip away and make his escape. At least he might, always supposing he had some good identity papers.

In the cigar factory most of the lights were on and there were figures moving on top of the roof. Probably security guards, he thought. So the factory was definitely out of the question.

Puffing on a large Upmann, he glanced at the crowd around him and then dropped down on to his haunches to light the fuse of the firecracker he had between his ankles. It was a small mortar bomb, the kind of thing they'd thrown at him during his army training. By the time anyone else had noticed what was happening Tom had slipped away into the crowd, heading south down Agramonte. There was a sudden push behind him as the crowd quickly parted around the mortar, adding some urgency to his progress. Seconds later, the things exploded. Quite harmlessly he was sure, although several women screamed with fright. To Tom's ears it had sounded- very like a shot from a .50-calibre machine-gun.

He turned in the crowd to try to gauge the reaction. Apart from the crowd's momentary panic, nobody did very much. A couple of soldiers started to move towards the source of the explosion and then seemed to change their minds. There was even some laughter as shock turned to relief. Just as interesting was the reaction from the floodlit balcony of the presidential palace. The Big Barbudo looked like a little bearded puppet. And he hardly hesitated - even worked the explosion into his speech: the American imperialists were stupid and naive if they thought they could defeat the revolution with their little bombs, he yelled with outrage.

The crowd cheered and began to chant: To the Wall! To the Wall!'

Hearing this cry taken up, Tom judged it best to be away from the scene as quickly as possible even though he was not afraid of being caught by the police. The people were more unpredictable than the security forces. To his surprise the sound of a second explosion, almost as loud as the first, was now heard, and Tom wondered if the little mortar had actually been two. Either that or some enthusiastic Fidelista had fired his weapon into the air. Not that the prime minister was at all deterred.

And he was still extemporising upon these two explosions when, some ten minutes later, Tom reached the rooftop bar of the Plaza Hotel. He figured the Big Barbudo could get at least an hour's worth of rhetoric out of the incident. Maybe even two.

Chapter 4

Aloha

Johnny Rosselli swirled his Smirnoff on the rocks around his glass and then pressed it against his forehead, like a cold compress. Try the antipasto, Tom,' he said. It's the best in town.'

Tom Jefferson was meeting Rosselli at Leone's, an Italian restaurant opposite the Gulfstream Park racecourse, and virtually on the county line. Out of season it was a quiet place and Tom wondered that they had bothered to open at all.

Celestine, eh che se rigga? Come se va?' said Rosselli, waving the proprietor towards him, embracing the man fondly and speaking Italian with him for the next fifteen minutes. A couple of times while they were speaking, Celestine, who was younger than Rosselli, put his hands together and rocked them back and forward in a gesture of benediction, saying, Sa benedica, Giovanni. Sa benedica.'

Tom studied the menu and decided to have the antipasto and some gnocchi. Then he lit a cigarette and waited patiently for the chiacchiera to conclude, helping himself to some Chianti when that arrived, and generally wondering if the food would be better than Gerardo's on Biscayne Boulevard at 163rd Street, which was the best Italian restaurant he knew, and Mary's favourite.

Celestine took their order personally, and since Tom and Rosselli were the only people in the place, he wondered if they hadn't opened especially for the Don. When at last Rosselli sat down, he rubbed his well-manicured hands excitedly and asked Tom if he liked food.

I like food,' said Tom.

How about Italian food?'

It seemed a little late to be asking a question like that, but Tom just nodded back politely and said he liked Italian food a lot.

Ever been to Italy?' asked Rosselli.

Nope.'

I was born there. A little town near Cassino, called Esperia.'

Really?'

So you might say casinos are in my blood.'

It wasn't much of a joke, but Tom tried a smile anyway, just to be pleasant. He wasn't much of a smiler.

Take this place. It used to be the Colonial Inn, a gambling joint before the fucking puritans took over this town. That's when I first got to know it.' He shrugged. I've been coming here ever since. I'm like that, I guess. I stay with someone, through the good times and the bad times. You work with me, you'll learn that about me. I'm always there for my friends.

That's good to know,' said Tom, who didn't care much one way or the other.

Rosselli rubbed his hands some more, and then lit an Old Gold. Is that my feasibility study?'

Tom handed over the document he had prepared.

If that's what you want to call it,' he said. It always irritated him the way some people tried to bury what was being said when the subject got around to murder. Just one time he'd have liked a client who came right out and asked him to kill some sonofabitch.

Rosselli put on his glasses, finished his vodka, and, pouring himself some Chianti, opened the little folder. What's with all this plastic shit?' He frowned. You trying to lift my prints or something, Tom?'

Those are celluloid sheets, said Tom. 'To help you to burn papers and stuff if you're in a hurry. I mean, we wouldn't want that document falling into the wrong hands now would we?

No, indeed,' said Rosselli. He nodded, approvingly. That's a neat trick. Where did you learn it?'

Tom shrugged. Just something I picked up. The way you do. I'm the real careful type, Johnny. Ava Gardner offered to suck my cock I'd probably ask what was in it for me.'

Always easy to amuse, Rosselli chuckled. I know Ava,' he said. Her and Sinatra. She's quite a girl. To be quite frank, she and I never got along that well, but we both helped Frank to get something he wanted, once.' He settled down to read the document through. Then, after Celestine had served the antipasto, he read it again. What the hell happened to my double? To my quiniela exacta?'

Can't be done. Not with a rifle. 'Sides, it isn't exactly a double, you know. There's three of those motherfuckers: Fidel, Raul and Ramon.

Raul's the only one with balls, though,' argued Rosselli.

Yeah? You're forgetting all the sisters. Anyway, Raul isn't that popular. During his May Day speech earlier this year Fidel said that if the Yankee imperialists managed to nail him, then Raul would take over as prime minister. From what I hear this didn't go down too well with the crowd. Probably on account of the fact that Raul is the real bloodthirsty banana in the bunch. Even put a few of his own rebel soldiers in front of firing squads during the revolution, for disciplinary offences. As military governor of Oriente, he shot seventy Batistianos in one day. Without so much as a trial. Cubans don't like that kind of thing. Take my word for it, Fidel is your target.'

You're very well informed about Cuba,' said Rosselli. And this.' He tapped the document in his hands. This is very good. Very good indeed.'

So is the antipasto,' said Tom.

Would you come and discuss this with my associates?'

Just tell me when and where.'

The Fontainebleu Hotel.' Rosselli pronounced it the French way, a sure sign that he was from out of town. Without exception the locals called it the Fountain Blue. Five o'clock this afternoon? Just ask for the Aloha suite.'

I'll be there.'

The Fontainebleu was the Cadillac of Miami hotels, a great gleaming white confection of modern American styling, with every conceivable extra, at an inconceivable price. Situated right on the golden beachfront, among carefully tended avenues of bougainvillaea and neatly raked gravel paths, it soared twelve storeys above an Olympic-sized emerald of a swimming pool and a series of cool cabanas where wealthy New Jersey widows and skinny Boston matrons worked on achieving the colour of aged Seminole Indians.

It all seemed a far cry from national television debates between Nixon and Kennedy, missile gaps, and a contract to kill Castro. The thoughts occupying the minds of those who occupied the Cabana Club steamer chairs in the late-afternoon orange-blistering sunshine were incessantly quotidian. Were the kids being looked after properly in the Kittekat Club? Was there time for a pre-ablutionary glass of iced tea in the Bamboo Coffee Shoppe? Should dinner be eaten in the Fleur de Lis or the La Tropicala? In the event of which, and assuming there was change out of fifty dollars a head, would they try and end the evening in the Rendezvous Bar or the Boom Boom Nighterie? Such, reflected Tom, as he made his premature entry into the hotel, was modern philosophy, Miami-style.

With ten minutes to kill before his appointed meeting in the Aloha suite, Tom went down to the hotel's Pineapple Shopping Arcade and bought a Playboy magazine and copy of the Herald to wrap it in. The front cover of Playboy flagged the Girls of Hollywood and Hunting for the Urban Male. Tom reckoned he knew all there was to know about hunting the urban male; with the girls of Hollywood he thought he could use a little tuition. The front page of the paper included a story about Khrushchev losing his temper at the UN General Assembly and thumping his desk during the speech of the British Prime Minister. Tom thought the Russian probably needed the company of the girls of Hollywood or maybe a few days at the Fontainebleu to unwind a little. Just passing through the lobby it was hard to think of thumping anything other than a floor button on the elevator.

He rode up to the twelfth floor and walked along the blue-carpeted corridor to the Aloha suite. It was easy enough to spot. Outside the door to the suite stood a man the size of an exhibition stand at the World's Fair, wearing a light-blue Dacron suit and beige driving gloves. Tom, dressed in a lightweight blazer, sports shirt, and slacks lifted his arms and let the bodyguard check him for weapons. Then the guard knocked and opened the door.

Thanks,' grunted Tom, and stepped into a small lobby to find another guard and another door. Tom hardly looked at the second man, only the Colt .45 automatic he was carrying openly in his hand. Once again the door was opened for him. Muscle had better manners these days, mused Tom, and went into the suite.

Two hundred dollars a night bought you a quarter-acre of high ceiling, split-level floor, a CinemaScope-sized window with balcony, and furniture scaled long and low to encourage a relaxing frame of mind. Tom felt anything but relaxed, especially when he saw one of the men in the room. He had a good memory for faces and thought he recognised this one from a movie theatre newsreel. The Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, chaired by Senator John McLellan, had been formed to investigate links between unions and organised crime. Both the Kennedy brothers had been on the committee, with Bobby its chief counsel. A number of the leading figures in organised crime had been subpoenaed to appear before the committee, including, Tom thought, the man who was standing by the window. The radiogram was playing Henry Mancini's Mister Lucky'.

The telephone rang and the man by the window waved at someone to get it. Get that will ya, Fifi?'

Tom smiled. The man who got up off the sofa and dragged his knuckles over to the Grundig could not have looked less like a Fifi if he had been wearing sixteen-ounce boxing gloves. He turned off the record, picked up the phone, listened for a moment, and then said, Hey boss, it's Frank.'

What, that fucker again? Tell him to call back another time. I'm busy.'

Fifi shrugged and handed on the message. Meanwhile Rosselli, wearing the blazer but with a neat ascot this time, was coming out of the bathroom drying his hands on a towel. He smiled his smooth white smile, like a big silver fox, and placed a welcoming hand on Tom's shoulder.

Tom,' said Rosselli. Here you are. Right on time.'

Time is money. That's what Karl Marx says anyway.'

Jesus fucking Christ. He did?'

Not in so many words. Matter of fact it was a lot more fucking words.' Tom grinned. I guess more people would read him if he'd been a little more to the point.'

You've actually read that shit? I'm impressed.'

Some. In my line of work I have to read all kinds of shit. I even read that fucking book you gave me. I liked it.'

I'm glad. It's one of my favourite books.

Hey, Johnny.' The man talking was the man Fifi had called Boss. Can we cut with the critic's choice and make a fucking start here?'

Sure, Sam, sure.' Rosselli's tone became momentarily unctuous. Okay, Tom? Let me introduce you to everyone.' Indicating Fifi's boss, he said, This is Mister Gold.

Gold was wearing an olive silk glen plaid suit, a round-collar shirt and a patterned silk tie; he looked like an older, meaner version of Frank Sinatra. Tom nodded and shook Gold's outstretched hand.

A real pleasure to meet you, Mister Giancana,' he said coolly.

Sam Momo' Giancana, the boss of the Chicago outfit and one of the most feared men in America, said nothing for a moment, his weasel-like face flickering on the edge of anger before the cruel mouth spread slowly into a wry smile. That's good,' he said to Rosselli. Any man who's gonna work for me has to have balls in his pants. It's nice to meet you too, Tom.'

I like to know who I'm working for,' said Tom. In my line of work it's best to avoid any opportunity for misunderstanding. Especially when I'm dealing with an organisation like yours, Mister Giancana.'

I can understand that. And I appreciate your candour, Tom. If I use a different name it's not because I want to deceive you. Not at all. I use the name Gold because Miami is a Jew town, and a Jew name gets you the proper respect.'

You got that right, Momo,' said Rosselli, ushering Tom toward the sofa where a trio of men were waiting to be introduced.

The first to extend his hand was a short, dark man with a receding hairline and a lawyer's sharp appearance. Tom thought he looked like a sleazier version of Bob Hope. Most lawyers looked like a sleazier version of someone. Bob Maheu,' he said. And you can relax, fellah. That's my real name.'

Next was a large, lugubrious man with a hound dog's face and the smell of a cop, none too cool in his Mister Cool sports coat, shoes just a little too clean, feet just a little too large.

This is Jim O'Connell,' said Rosselli. We call him Big Jim, for obvious reasons.'

Tom caught a look passed between O'Connell and Maheu as the big man shook him by the hand. These people weren't quite used to each other, he thought.

The third man by the sofa had the face of a retired boxer - Jake La Motta after he put on weight and went on the club circuit: broken nose, small scar on right cheek, and a jaw that was as square as a box of Wheaties.

And this is Frank Fiorucci, also known as Frank Sorges, although I dare say Castro has a few even choicer names for him now that he's working for us and not the Cubans. Eh Frank?'

Sorges took Tom's hand and grunted a greeting. Tom couldn't decide if he was smiling any more than he could tell if the man was Cuban or American.

And the guy by the door is Fifi Buccieri,' continued Rosselli. You already met Butch and Chuck outside, so now you know everyone, Tom.'

Everyone except you, Mister Ralston,' replied Tom. Or should I say Mister Rosselli?'

The smile vanished abruptly from Rosselli's Tanfastic face as if Tom had taken an eraser and rubbed it off.

Better not take the fifth on that, Johnny,' laughed Giancana. This guy's liable to figure you for a double-crosser and use you for target practice.

Tom reached for a cigarette and studied the faces around him. Buccieri was mob, like Rosselli and Giancana, with a real torturer's face. Maheu and O'Connell he decided were CIA, but he couldn't figure Sorges. He had a mob face and mob taste in clothes - the sports coat he was wearing was as loud as Rosselli's laugh, now restored to full volume as finally he saw the joke - but the cool, guarded manner and the close mouth was typical Company.

Like I said,' shrugged Tom, blowing out a steady stream of smoke, I like to know who I'm working for.'

While Fifi Buccieri organised a round of drinks, Tom and the rest of them arranged themselves around a dining table. For a few minutes Rosselli kept on talking about nothing in particular until everyone was comfortable and looked like they were ready to come down to business. But it was O'Connell who set the ball rolling.

I've read your report, Mister Jefferson,' he said. It's a fine piece of work.' He lit a Muriel Coronella from a pack of five, and continued: This fall-guy you're proposing to use. I mean the idea of using one. Is that something you've done before?'

No,' admitted Tom. To be quite frank with you, in all normal circumstances, I wouldn't even countenance the idea. I like to work at the kind of distance and from the kind of position that makes that kind of ruse unnecessary. But this is a special situation. The plaza in front of the presidential palace provides a limited number of sniping positions. And I think that any crowd occupying the plaza would know that. And will react accordingly. Because whatever your feelings about Castro, his is a popular revolution.'

Sorges tutted loudly and shook his head.

That's certainly my impression as a disinterested outsider,' said Tom.

You're half Cuban, aren't you?' demanded Sorges, as if that was supposed to make him better informed about the situation.

The half of me that's Cuban is only half-interested half of the time. The half of me that's American doesn't really give a shit. It's your best guarantee of getting the job done. I'm a professional, not a fanatic. And like I was saying, the impression I have formed is that this is a popular revolution and that Cuban public opinion will demand that someone is apprehended for Castro's murder, and apprehended quickly. I consider that my best chance of escape depends on someone else being caught.'

Sam Giancana leaned forward on the table, affording Tom an excellent view of two magnificent oval cut emerald cufflinks. The Chicago boss might be a hood, but he was a hood with good taste.

Tom is right,' he said quietly. You always need a patsy. Back in thirty-three, we set up this guy to hit Cermak, the Chicago mayor. Name of Zangara, Joe Zangara. He was an ex-soldier from the Italian army. We gave him a straight fucking choice: make the hit, take the fall, pay off your debts, with some money left over to take care of your family; or die real hard, and leave your family with the debts. So what could he do? He shot Tony Cermak and went to the chair for it. And because he said that he was actually trying to shoot Roosevelt, no one connected us to the killing. Matter of fact, it happened right here in Miami. Cermak and FDR riding around in an open car in the Florida sunshine, like sitting ducks.'

Tom laughed nervously. With all due respect, Mister Giancana, I had someone else in mind to take the rap, not myself.'

Sure, sure. All I'm saying is that sometimes it's the guy who pulls the trigger, and sometimes it's someone else. But you're right, Tom, somebody has to take the fall for Castro. Public opinion will demand it.'

Do you have anyone in mind?' asked O'Connell.

No. I figured you guys would still have plenty of connections back in Cuba. To help me find someone suitable.' Tom shrugged and began to try to paint a picture of the kind of individual he was thinking of. It could be someone with a background in the Cuban army perhaps. A real die-hard Batistiano, with a well-known grudge against Castro. Preferably some kind of misfit, outsider type. Someone dumb. Anyone too bright might figure he was being set up. And nothing too complicated or the Fidelistas won't understand the cards they're being dealt.'

I think we could find someone like that,' said O'Connell, raising an eyebrow in the direction of Frank Sorges. Frank? What do you say?'

Anything's possible,' said Sorges. Sure.'

It goes without saying that I'd want to take a look at whoever you find,' said Tom. Just to make sure the patsy isn't me.'

Naturally,' said Maheu. Just so as you know, Mister Jefferson, I represent an industrial group seeking to recover American-owned businesses and properties that have been or are going to be nationalised by the Cuban regime.' Maheu's narrow eyes hadn't yet met Tom's. All the time he was speaking he tapped at a blank pad of paper with a Sheaffer pencil. I think the most pressing question my clients will have is what all this is going to cost.'

Me too,' admitted Rosselli. It's the one thing that's not in your report.'

I'd have thought there was no price too high to recover what's been lost in Cuba,' said Tom. Considering Meyer Lansky spent fourteen million building one hotel, I don't think you should worry about a down-payment of one hundred thousand dollars. And another hundred and fifty thousand dollars when the job is done.'

Rosselli whistled and clutched at his chest. A quarter mill? Jesus, I hope my Blue Cross covers me for this kind of heart attack.'

Maheu wrote down the two figures on his pad and underlined them furiously.

Most guys figure ten thousand a year before they're thirty is setting their sights a little high,' said O'Connell.

Isn't that just the point?' asked Tom. You're paying me to set my sights dead centre.'

Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money, Tom,' said Maheu. Sinatra doesn't make that kind of dough.'

Not last week anyway,' growled Giancana.

A lot of money,' repeated Maheu.

For just the one fucking Castro,' added Rosselli. For that kind of money we should get all three.'

Try telling that to some of those companies you represent,' said Tom. Sears Roebuck, Woolworth, Remington Rand, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Otis Elevators. To say nothing of a few banks, breweries, sugar mills, chocolate companies, and department stores. I believe the Wall Street Journal has put an estimated figure of at least two hundred million dollars' worth of American property on the island. Under the circumstances, gentlemen, a recovery fee of point one two five per cent does not seem unreasonable.'

Maheu started to check Tom's arithmetic on his sheet of paper. If we recover it,' he said.

Tom watched him arrive at the same decimal figure, and said, I'm just the button. I leave the probable causes and effects of my actions to people like you. You want the job done? That's my fee. You think it's too much, then get someone else.'

Giancana waved an imperious hand at the others sat around the table. Tom is right. The money he asks is not unreasonable.' He touched his hair for a moment and Tom suddenly realised, almost with horror, that the Chicago boss was wearing a toupee. That fucking prick Castro's the one who's being unreasonable. But he's just a man, and a man only has to be killed once. These brothers of his, Raul and Ramon. From what I hear, they're just the dog's balls and tail. Fidel's the head and heart of the revolution, just like Hitler was in Germany and Nasser in Egypt. We cut off the head, the whole fucking dog dies. The revolution's over. We do it? We do it right. No half-measures. No penny-pinching fuck-ups.

Bob? Jim? What your people have got to understand is that taking out a contract on Castro is like arranging your daughter's wedding. What it costs isn't really the issue. What matters most is that the thing goes off without a hitch and everything is the way it's supposed to be. I know what I'm talking about. Back in July I gave my daughter Bonnie away, right here in this hotel. She married this guy who's a congressional aide to Roland Libonati, so you can appreciate that the wedding had to be the best. No expense was spared.'

It was a beautiful wedding,' said Rosselli. Real class.'

Two hundred guests at thirty dollars a plate. And talking about decoys, I even arranged a decoy wedding party back in Chicago, just to keep the fucking feds and the news reporters off our backs. That's what I mean about doing things the right way. So I say we pay Tom what he asks and have done with this piece of shit Fidel fucking Castro. I say we approve his plan and get rid of the bastard.'

I agree with Sam,' said Rosselli.

As if he would say anything else, thought Tom. It was plain from the way the two mobsters behaved around each other which one of them had the whip hand.

Maheu nodded. He'd taken off his coat and was looking at O'Connell. Tom guessed Maheu was the liaison between the mob and the Company, with O'Connell probably running some kind of covert operations outfit for the CIA in the same way Alex Goldman did for the FBI. Sorges, he had decided, was the local expert, probably part-Cuban like himself.

Agreed,' said O'Connell.

Sorges said nothing and no one seemed to expect him to comment, which told Tom all he needed to know about how important he was in the scheme of things. This was a deal between Giancana and O'Connell. And once again it was Giancana who spoke.

One more thing, Tom. I don't want Castro dead without you hearing the word from me. And certainly not this side of the election. I don't want anything happening in the next six weeks that does that sonofabitch Nixon any fucking favours. Is that clear?'

Tom nodded. Sure, I understand. I'm a Democrat myself, Mister Giancana.'

I don't think we've talked about this before, Sam,' objected Maheu. I mean, surely the sooner the better.'

Not from where I'm sitting,' said Giancana. Listen, Trafficante can't be here this afternoon. I'm just saying what he would want. He has some narcotics deals going down in Cuba that have to be out of the way first.'

But Maheu still looked unhappy. Rosselli nodded, and said, Bob, you have to understand, this is Santos's territory we're discussing.' Maheu shrugged.

Tom? Frank here will offer you whatever assistance he can,' continued Giancana. Both here and in Cuba, with the underground movement. He used to be Castro's Minister of Sport, so he knows all the plays. Isn't that right, Frank?'

That's right.'

Last year,' said Rosselli, Frank and the guy who used to run the Cuban air force borrowed a B-25 and flew to Havana on a bombing mission. They dropped a lot of leaflets on a convention of American travel agents that Castro had arranged to try and get the tourists back to the island.'

Is that so? said Tom. At last he had the measure of the man. Sorges was a cowboy, a crazy, someone who might turn out to be more of a liability than an asset. The kind of guy who wouldn't have made a bad patsy himself. 'And what was on these leaflets?

Only the truth,' Sorges said defensively. That Castro is a tool of communism. And that the travel agents were kidding themselves if they thought the tourists were going to come back and put money in the hands of a lot of fucking reds.'

The nerve of that guy,' snarled Giancana. To think that he can bring the tourists back to Cuba without the casinos. Without the casinos the big hotels are dead.' Giancana leaned back in his chair and lit a large cigar. Smoking it created the impression of a man who was literally fuming about the fate of his casinos.

That was certainly my impression,' said Tom.

How do you want your money, Tom? Here in Miami, or somewhere out of the country?' asked Rosselli.

Tom tossed an envelope on to the table in front of Giancana. It contained details of a bank he sometimes used in Nicaragua: J.R.E. Tefel in Managua. Tom liked to bank around.

Full instructions are in the envelope,' he said. When I'm advised by my bank that the first tranche of money has been deposited, I'll go to work.'

Good. Then we're done on this.' Giancana glanced at a gold Patek Philippe watch. Tom stood up. Go with him, Frank,' ordered Giancana. Buy him a drink. Find out what he needs. Give him any help you can. Okay with you, Tom?'

Okay with me.'

Tom nodded at the rest of the men who remained seated around the Aloha suite table.

Gentlemen,' he said quietly, and started slowly towards the door, followed by Sorges.

Giancana was already discussing something else - something to do with his girlfriend, Phyllis, and some fucking comedian she was still seeing in Vegas and asking Maheu if maybe he could fix things there, just to make sure. Seeing Fifi open the door, Giancana glanced back over his shoulder and shouted after Tom.

When you hear the word from Johnny, Tom. You make sure you kill that bastard. Kill him. Kill him good. Kill Castro.'

Chapter 5

Air on a G String

Death was so familiar to Tom's thoughts that it seldom gave him any misgivings. Knowing it so well, he did not fear it. Indeed he had almost forgotten what it was to taste fear. Only sleep had the power to kidnap his inattentive mind and subject it to the most veracious imitation of doom. If he had a horror of death at all it was that it would be anything like sleep. The death notices in the Local' section of the Herald referred to people who fell asleep', as if that was a more palatable choice of words than met their deaths'. Not for Tom. He hoped only for complete oblivion. He did not see how anything else could suit him. Some nights were worse than others, but he had no idea why. Seconal or Nembutal stopped him from dreaming but only at the price of blurring the day that followed. And needing all his wits about him he endured the nightmares as another man, afraid of the dentist, might endure a toothache.

This particular morning he awoke with a shout, his pyjamas drenched in sweat, and reached for Mary. This particular morning, she was there.

Was it a bad one?' she asked, wrapping his damp torso in her arms.

They're all bad,' he mumbled.

Do you want to talk about it?'

Not particularly. What is there to say? If Shakespeare's to be believed, it's an occupational hazard.'

Maybe you should see a doctor,' she said, going into the bathroom. Get yourself a different medication. Seconal and Nembutal aren't the only sleeping pills around. Maybe one of the other ones might suit you better.'

What can he give me that isn't on your bedside table?' Tom lit a cigarette to steady his nerves, and followed her into the bathroom. Cigarette's 'bout the only thing that helps.

They're not so easy to handle when you're asleep,' said Mary.

Besides, I need my edge.' He thought for a moment, considering Mary's own situation. I guess we both do.'

He watched her pee and then take a shower, enjoying the way she felt so comfortable around him. Humming High Hopes', the Frank Sinatra song that was the Kennedy campaign anthem, she washed herself with vigorous efficiency. Tom sat on the edge of the tub, handing her the soap and the shampoo when she held out her hand.

I like you watching me,' she said. When a man stops looking at his wife she'd better look out. I read that somewhere.'

I can't imagine not looking at you,' said Tom. That hour-glass figure of yours just makes me want to go and play in the sand.'

Well, you can, if you want. I'm in no particular hurry this morning.'

Tom stepped out of his pyjamas and into the tub beside her.

Why is that?' he asked, taking her in his arms.

Because I'm going to be late tonight.' Grasping the handles on the tub, she bent over in front of him and felt him penetrate her from behind. JFK and Nixon are on television again tonight. Everyone at the campaign office is staying behind to watch it.'

Sometimes I think you've got a thing about him,' said Tom, thrusting himself into his wife's body with something close to venom.

Whatever gave you that idea?' she gasped.

I don't know,' he said, admiring the sight of their lovemaking. Squeezing her buttocks with his hands and then pushing them apart the better to observe her penetration, he chuckled and added: One thing I am sure about.'

What's that?'

I kind of like to stay behind and watch myself.'

No. 1410 Brickell Avenue was an expensive apartment block between Highway 95 and the Rickenbacker Causeway. The place where Frank Sorges had told Tom to meet him was a two-storey house behind the main building. A suspicious-minded New York widow named Genevieve and a black cocker spaniel named Cooper met Tom at the door with a scowl and a growl.

Who are you?'

Tom Jefferson.'

If that's an alias, mister, it's a mighty patriotic one.'

Actually, it's my real name. I guess that comes as a shock to you people. Never knew so many people with different names. Frank sent me. Frank Sorges. Frank Fiorucci. Frank Sinatra for all I care, lady.'

I know who sent you. Do come in, Mister Jefferson. And forgive me. Like most exiles, I feed on dreams of hope, but sometimes I forget my table manners. Quiet, Cooper. This man is a friend.'

Tom stepped around the dog in the hallway. Genevieve closed the door behind him and said, Would you like a cafecito? Just about everything has a Cuban angle around here.'

His quick eyes took in the stack of Bohemia, a Havana weekly newspaper once anti-Batista in its sympathies, but now vehemently anti-Castro, that stood in the hall; the many boxes of Montecristo cigars; a large black brassbound navy foot locker with a label that read Zenith Technological Services', a company Tom had earlier learned was a front, on the university campus, for the CIA's anti-Castro effort; and a furled Cuban flag.

So I see,' he said.

I used to be married to a Cuban tobacco grower,' she explained, thinking Tom was referring only to the cigars. Help yourself if you'd like a smoke.'

No thanks. They give me a throat.'

Me, I love them. I smoke at least one a day, but only when I'm at home. On the whole, Miami is still not really receptive to the idea of the female cigar smoker.' Genevieve pointed behind Tom. Well, go right on through and introduce yourself. Frank's not here yet. I'll get you that coffee.'

Tom watched her as far as the kitchen door. She was wearing a tight-fitting sleeveless black lounge suit with her initials - GS -embroidered just beneath one of her substantial breasts, of which there was plenty to see. Genevieve may have been an American but Tom thought she had that Havana look, a flirtatious style that emphasised the bust and the bottom. Tom liked that. Those were the parts he liked to emphasise himself. With both hands.

The lounge was more Palm Beach mansion than Biscayne Bay modern: a couple of Mack-sized sofas, expensive Persian rugs, antique coffee tables, Japanese lacquer screens, and Chinese vases full of flowers. Just about the only Cuban influence on the way the room looked was the quartet of macho individuals who were sitting in it. Not one of them was in charge of a moustache less than one inch thick or a cigar less than six inches long.

Tom found a cloud-free area of the room and sat down with a curt good morning largely prompted by his having recognised one of the four men, a skinny, inscrutably featured character wearing Lee slacks, a Lacoste shirt, a fur felt casual hat with a wide batik band, and hair that was the colour of his bloodshot eyes. Tom never forgot a face, nor the name that went with it, nor the reason why it needed remembering in the first place. He knew this guy from a job he had done back in Guatemala. But the man, whose name was HA1/4ber Lanz, could only recall one third of what Tom had already remembered.

I know you, don't I?' he asked.

Tom grimaced and shrugged, but he held the bloodshot stare, as if his own eyes had been stuck to Lanz's own. Now was not the time to look shifty or evasive. Could be,' he allowed.

Yeah, but where from?'

Damned if I know.' Tom held out his hand. Name's Tom Jefferson.'

HA1/4ber Lanz.' Lanz shook it, and then shook his head. Jefferson? No. Doesn't connect. But it'll come to me. I've got a memory likeaEU|' He shook his head as he tried to remember the word in English. Un tamiz.'

A sieve,' said Tom, translating. Sure looks like it.'

Exactly. Anyway, this is Diaz Castillo: And over there we have Orlando Bosch. And Alonzo Gonzales.'

Tom nodded at each of them. Pleased to meet you, gentlemen.'

Frank sent his apologies,' said Bosch. And to tell you that he'll be joining us as soon as he can.'

You're some kind of freedom fighters, right?'

El Movimiento Insurreccional de RecuperaciA3n Revolucionaria,' Bosch said proudly. However, since Miami Anglos seem to have such a problem with Cuban names, we are the M-I-R-R, for short.' He smiled. Although I fully expect even that to give us some problems when Christmas comes and we have little children talking about gold, frankincense and myrrh.' Bosch was well spoken, with the professional, even clinical air of a doctor or a dentist. Although no gift could seem as precious as the one you bring to our humble cause, Mister Jefferson.'

Hit. Termination. Contract. Feasibility study. And now a gift. Tom winced. Another rat creeping around the cheese. I wouldn't say gift describes it exactly,' he objected, with a wry smile. There's the not-so-small matter of my fee.'

Since we are not paying your fee,' laughed Gonzales, it's a gift to us. A gift from your vice-president.'

Does that mean you're going to vote for him?'

Alas, no,' said Gonzales. We are not yet permitted. But fortunately for us it will make little difference who is president. Kennedy is also very sympathetic to our cause.'

Frank has told us all about you,' said Bosch. We have been told that you're the best.'

You've certainly priced the contract that way,' observed Lanz.

Tom shrugged dismissively. That's capitalism, I guess.'

But even the best needs help to kill a man like Fidel Castro. So we have been very busy on your behalf. Isn't that right, Genevieve?'

Genevieve was laying a tray of coffees on the table. Very.'

Genevieve is a great patron of our cause,' explained Bosch. Some people come and go, but Genevieve almost makes el exilio a pleasure. And because she is an American she is able to come and go, in and out of Havana, as she pleases. As a matter of fact she has just returned from a visit she made on your behalf, Mister Jefferson. But I'll let her tell you about that in a moment. She's as well connected as it's possible to be. She even entertains Cuban government officials. None of these communist idiots suspects where her real sympathies lie, of course. And why should they? She still has her seaside estate in Miramar, and her beautiful apartment in Marinao.'

Tom took the little cup offered to him and, drinking, found the coffee thick, strong, and sweet, the way Cubans liked it. The way he liked it himself.

Alonzo there, he is in the same kind of business as yourself, only he lacks your experience. He'd never fired a gun before the revolution. Diaz is a bookmaker. HA1/4ber is a pilot. He flies a seaplane for Southern Air Transport.'

The company's owned by Actus Technology,' explained Lanz. But really that's just a holding company for the CIA. You see? Another gift. People here are very generous.'

I guess we can afford it. Especially when we're Jack Kennedy.' Tom nodded back at Lanz who, with eyes narrowed, still looked as though he was trying to recollect the circumstances of their first acquaintance. And what about you, Mister Bosch? What do you do?'

Doctor Bosch. I'm just a poor paediatrician, Mister Jefferson. This kind of thing is all new to me. All I want to do is to see my country restored to democracy before it is too late. I do not approve of murder, you understand. None of us is a criminal. But these are special circumstances. Castro is an evil dictator. Many people in my country have died already. And many more look certain to die before this thing is concluded. Perhaps I will die myself. If so, I do not fear it.'

Tom nodded, and said, No temAis una muerta gloriosa.' This was the lyric of La Bayamesa', the Cuban national anthem. Do not fear a glorious death. To die for country is to live.'

Bosch looked impressed. Yes. That is it precisely, Mister Jefferson. Thank you. I can see now that you are much more than a mere assassin, as I had been led to believe. It will be an honour to help you in any way we can. So. To business. The matter of una estafa, a trick to expedite the completion of your business and a successful escape. Genevieve. Tell him what you and Diaz have rolled at your galera.'

Genevieve finished lighting her cigar, holding it by the underside, as if she had been grasping the handle of a golf putter. The reason for her seductively low voice was now plain to see. It's true,' she said. This plan has to be rolled together like a good cigar. The first smaller leaf, the tripa, gives the cigar its form. Then the hoja de fortaleza for flavour, and the hoja de combustiA3n to enable the cigar to burn evenly. Last of all we have the copa with which to wrap the cigar. I shan't bore you by telling who is what. And I certainly don't want to make any of this seem tenuous. So let's just start with this church in the plaza. The one you photographed so well.

The Iglesia del Santa Angel Custodio is run by a Father Xavier, a good, simple man who cares only about his church. The church itself is in a poor state of repair, but there is not much money with which to carry out the work. I told him of the existence of the Instituto per le Opere di Religione. The IOR. It's the Vatican Bank in Rome, through which funds may be sent to the Cuban church in this time of need. The IOR is run by Cardinal Alberto di Jorio, who's very old and probably hasn't even heard of Cuba. But I told Father Xavier that I was acquainted with Cardinal Spellman, in New York, who was a good friend of di Jorio's secretary, a Monsignor who also happens to be a qualified building engineer. It's this fictitious person's job to go from one poor country to another, inspecting the fabric of the church's buildings and deciding whether or not money shall be donated. Spellman is a friend of mine, from Boston. He owes me more than one favour. And naturally he hates the communists. So he'll provide any credentials we need in order to pass Tom off as this same Monsignor.'

Genevieve handed Tom a number of pamphlets and booklets to do with the Catholic Church's catechism and sacraments.

Of course, you'll have to read these,' she told him. If you are a Catholic, I'm assuming, given what you do, that you're not a very conscientious one.'

You could say that,' agreed Tom.

Naturally we'll have a real priest to help you with the way a priest handles himself and that kind of thing. But the important thing is that, as a priest who is also a building engineer, you'll have the perfect excuse to spend a lot of time up on the church roof.'

Sounds good.'

And naturally you'll be supported by the MIRR in Havana,' said Bosch. Whatever you need to get the job done.'

We'll take you in,' said Lanz, grinning wolfishly. And we'll take you out, too.'

Tom nodded, but he wondered what Lanz meant by that remark. If the red-haired Cuban had meant it to sound at all ambiguous.

Which leads me to the next leaf in our cigar,' said Genevieve. The copa. The wrapper. The patsy. We believe we've found the perfect mark. His name is Everton Echeverria and he's a jockey right here in Miami, at Hialeah.'

He's not so much a jockey,' interrupted Diaz Castillo. Not these days, anyway. He's more what we call a hot walker. An exercise boy. After races he cools down the horses by walking them around. If he had a little more nerve he might make it as a jockey, but he took a fall a few months back and since then he's lost the cojones for the job. Anyway, he's a real loner. Lives in a crummy motel close to the track. And he likes to gamble. Knows even less about betting on a horse than he does about riding one. He's into me for about a thousand bucks. But naturally I'm prepared to wipe the slate clean, even leave him some extra dough besides, if he's willing to go back to Cuba and do me a little favour. It's out of season right now, so there's no reason for him to say no.'

He's Cuban?'

Ella cabeza? Didn't I say?' Castillo continued. Yes, his background makes him just right for us. He was a soldier in Batista's army. Not a bad shot by all accounts. His father was a croupier at the Capri until they closed the place. Then he tried to leave, only, unlike Everton, he got caught and now he's in prison. His mother runs a small shop in Havana, selling sponges, mother of pearl, turtle shells. But since the revolution the business hasn't thrived. She still keeps Everton's room though. A couple of our people took a look around while she was out, and found his old army rifle under the bed. A thirty-calibre Ml Garand, and apparently still in good working order.'

Tom nodded, although he had his doubts about the effectiveness of a Second World War rifle left gathering dust under a bed in a port like Havana. All that sea air was bad for a rifle left without gun oil for any length of time. And even the best M1s had a poor trigger pull and a badly designed stock. But you didn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Finding the copa's own army rifle was a real stroke of luck for them. They knew that. And they would expect him to be pleased. He said, With a Griffin and Howe mount, and a four-power Bear Cub telescopic sight, not to mention some gun oil, that might just do the job. And even if it doesn't, it'll be a good bit of evidence to leave for the Cuban authorities. Excellent work.'

Tom lit a cigarette and smiled optimistically at HA1/4ber Lanz, who grinned and wagged a finger back at him. As if he was warning him he wasn't going to forget to remember. Then he noticed that Sorges had come into the room while Castillo had been speaking and was now sitting in the corner. He was wearing a seersucker sports jacket and a button-down shirt. Seeing him, Tom nodded, and this seemed to prompt Sorges to bring his chair closer to the rest of them.

Tom? How's it going? Got any questions?'

Tom nodded, but addressed his next question to Castillo: And what are you going to tell our friend Everton?'

That there's a false passport for him and someone else. Someone we'd like to get out of Cuba. A political dissident. Everton's to meet this person in the church on the night you kill Castro. We'll have him wait inside the confessional. Only instead of a political dissident turning up on the other side of the screen, it'll be the murder weapon. Here's what I propose, Tom. You come down from the roof and put the gun there, on your way out. Simple as that. When Everton's arrested they'll find the rifle, the two false passports, and back at his mother's shop they'll find all sorts of other incriminating shit. Copies of Bohemia. Money. Maybe even some of the photographs you took of the plaza, Tom, with the balcony on the palace marked out with a neat little cross. A diary about how much he wants to kill Fidel. We have a handwriting expert to help us with that.'

Tom thought it all sounded okay, apart from the bit that had him leaving the rifle in the confessional. Leaving the rifle up on the roof would be a better option. Not that it mattered enough to say anything now.

This Everton character,' he said ruminatively. I'd like to take a look at him myself.'

Sure, no problem,' said Sorges. You can check him out to your heart's content. And the money, it should be hitting your account any time now.'

Tom glanced over the pamphlets. My mother always wanted me to be priest.'

Not just a priest,' said Genevieve. A Monsignor.'

Let's pray it works,' said Bosch. Because as soon as Castro's dead, the invasion can begin.'

You really think that whoever wins the election is going to do that?' asked Tom.

Listen,' said Sorges. Nixon. Kennedy. Either way we win. But as it happens, I've heard that JFK's election is in the bag. The fix is in. Momo's seen to that.'

You reckon?'

Sure,' said Sorges. Look, it wouldn't be the first time the mob delivered votes for the Democrats. Coolidge, FDR, and now JFK. What? You don't believe us?'

Tom looked less than convinced. I don't know,' he said. Somehow I can't figure the mob fixing things for someone who was on the McLellan committee.'

That's part of the deal,' insisted Sorges. In return for the votes, Kennedy will call off the dogs. Leave the mob alone again. Things will be just like they were before. Here, and in Cuba. You'll see. After the election, Kennedy's going to do what he's told. Momo has an insurance policy handsome Jack doesn't even know about. Him on tape, in bed with Marilyn Monroe.'

That's a tape I'd like to hear,' chuckled Gonzales.

Me too,' admitted Lanz. How about it Jenny?'

But Genevieve was shaking her head. Count me out,' she said, good-humouredly. If I want sounds for swinging lovers, I'll listen to Frank Sinatra.'

That pimp,' snorted Sorges. He's the one who introduced them.'

Tom glanced at his watch. Well, I've got to be going,' he said. Everything sounds good, though. I'm impressed with what you've devised.' He stood up and pointed at Lanz, wanting to be away from him but going along with the idea of hoping to remember where it was they had met. It'll come to me, where it was we met,' he said, trying to turn things so that it looked like it was him trying to remember Lanz from somewhere. It'll take a while, but I'll get there.'

Yeah, you do that, friend.'

Tom shook hands all round. Even before he left the room he had decided to kill Lanz. And as soon as possible.

Outside, on Brickell Avenue, Tom waited in his car for HA1/4ber Lanz to emerge from the guesthouse. The Company seemed to have no shortage of premises. So far, with Sorges, he'd seen a suite of rooms in the Dupont Hotel, another apartment on Riviera Drive in Coral Gables, and the headquarters of the Democratic Revolutionary Front - more like a convention centre than a clandestine recruiting station - on campus at Miami University. Then there were the CIA/ Cuban-exile watering holes, such as the Waverly Inn, the ill's Three Ambassadors' Lounge, the 27 Birds, the University Inn, and the Stuft Shirt Lounge at the Holiday Inn right there on Brickell Avenue. He was going to have a lot of information with which to tickle Alex Goldman when he returned from his trip to Mexico City.

It was another twenty minutes before Lanz emerged from the guesthouse and climbed into a 1956 De Soto. Tom followed him. At first he thought Lanz was heading to the Holiday Inn himself, but when, after a while, they did stop, they were on Ponce de Leon in Coral Gables. Lanz collected some dry cleaning, went into Boyd's Florist Shop and bought something in Engel's Men's Shop before heading back to the car. Then they were driving again, only east this time, back the way they had come, and then across the MacArthur Causeway. Just south of Collins Avenue, Lanz drove into a Burger King, picked up some lunch, and headed north up to Lincoln Avenue where he parked his car and took his thirty-nine-cent burger and his nineteen-cent shake into a movie theatre.

Tom got out of his car and walked up and down outside the movie theatre, thinking. A gun, even the .22 Harrington & Richardson in the trunk, would be too noisy in there. A knife was too messy. Finally, seeing a music shop a couple of blocks down the street, Tom had an idea. He went in and bought a guitar string. And having collected his driving gloves from the car, he followed Lanz into the movie theatre.

He had already seen the feature, a Hitchcock jolter called Psycho, the previous week and thought the movie was appropriate for what he was planning as it was certain to cover the sounds of a struggle. The time Tom had seen it, several women had nearly screamed the place down when Janet Leigh got her just desserts in the shower. She was a thief, after all. And he had enjoyed the movie, especially the glimpse of Janet Leigh's naked body when it was stabbed thirty times by Anthony Perkins. That part was useful, too. Lanz would be too busy concentrating on trying to see her tits and her bare ass to notice Tom behind him. He bought a ticket and went inside.

It was cool in the theatre. Cool and dark. And lonely, too. As only a matinee can be. How many afternoons had he spent alone in such places with just the movie for company? Tom sat down in the nearest seat and waited for his eyes to adjust to the black and white shades of Hitchcock's Gothic world. The movie was just starting, and seeing the opening shot again - a half-open window with the blind three-quarters drawn, in a room on the upper storey of a cheap hotel - Tom recalled how, the previous week, he'd half expected to see a sniper at work. It was just the way Tom preferred to work himself. Instead of which it was just a couple conducting an illicit affair, although just quite why it was illicit, since neither of them was married, was still lost on Tom.

By now he had seen HA1/4ber Lanz, although it would have been truer to say that he had smelt him and his hamburger. Lanz was seated about ten rows in front of Tom, right in the centre of the near-empty auditorium. There was no one seated anywhere close to him, which was one of the reasons Tom preferred matinees himself: he disliked other people. Which was an advantage for a contract killer.

Tom started to unravel his guitar string. When he'd been a kid, his father had taught him a few basic chords. He thought he probably could still play The Peanut Vendor' or Guantanamera' if someone had stuck a guitar in his hands. But most of the time he just pitied people who played the guitar. As if you didn't have enough baggage in life without a guitar as well. Even a rifle was easier to carry around than a fucking guitar.

Janet Leigh got in her car with the forty thousand dollars she'd stolen and left Phoenix, Arizona for California, which was about the time that Tom decided to move a few rows nearer to Lanz. He pulled on the gloves and tugged the G string experimentally between his fists. Guantanamera' was sung in G, he thought. And it was something to do with JosE Marti, the dead Cuban revolutionary. A nice song, but kind of miserable, too, like all guajiras. Tom preferred movie music. Like the movie music he was listening to now. That really touched a chord in him. Especially the slashing violins when Janet Leigh got knifed. Now that was music. Not exactly garrotting music, but then what was? He considered his own record collection, all of them LPs mail-ordered from the RCA Victor best-seller club (any five for $3.98) and came up with Mario Lanza and the soundtrack recording of his last film, For the First Time. Some kind of big tenor anyway. You had to have someone singing his heart out, fit to bust, to properly juxtapose a truly cinematic strangulation.

He moved a little closer as Janet Leigh pulled up at the Bates Motel. By the time she had eaten her sandwich and drunk her milk, Tom was only two rows behind Lanz, who was nervously smoking his third and probably his last cigarette.

Tom's cue to move again was when Janet Leigh removed her blouse. Lanz threw away his cigarette, too busy watching her undress to smoke now or to pay any attention to what was happening in the row behind. How much else would she show? Tom was certain that this was what Lanz would be thinking. It was what he had thought himself.

Stepping demurely into the bathtub, Janet drew the curtain and began to shower. How like Mary she looked, thought Tom as he recalled her in the shower that morning. Different hair colour of course, and Mary's skin was a little darker, but the body was the same.

Tom tightened the string and waited for the bathroom door to open, and the blurred outline of Norman Bates to appear on the other side of the shower curtain, as through a glass darkly (his favourite text in the Bible). Like a conductor steadying his orchestra, Leonard Bernstein taking on the New York Philly, Tom raised both his gloved hands in the air, and then struck the second that Bates tore the curtain aside, collaring Lanz's neck with the all but invisible string that connected them.

Gritting his teeth, Tom pulled the guitar string in two opposite directions with all his wiry strength. Lanz's cry of surprise and then pain was hardly audible under the dramatic music and Janet Leigh's piercing scream. He tried to twist around in his seat but Tom, concentrating on squeezing the blood vessels on the right-hand side of Lanz's neck rather than pressuring the airway, held him firmly with the makeshift ligature. Death from cerebral anoxia was always much swifter than by vagal inhibition. Desperately, Lanz kicked out in front of him and clawed at the wire around his neck, but to no avail. He might have somersaulted backwards over the seat and on top of his assailant except for the fact that one leg of his pants got hooked on the ashtray in front of him.

Still keeping the pressure on, Tom leaned back in his seat, putting his whole weight on to the ligature, and tried to watch what was happening on the screen: Norman Bates disappearing back up to the house and Janet Leigh slipping down the tiled bathroom wall, breathing her last few breaths. Reaching for the shower curtain there was a faint glimpse of her nipples before the curtain gave way under her dead weight and she collapsed on to the floor. Then the camera closing in on that dead eye. And the emptiness that now lay behind it. Almost as if nothing had ever been there. How fleeting life was.

Tom stayed where he was until long after Norman Bates had returned with a bucket and a mop and started to clear up, before relaxing a little and finally releasing the string that was now embedded deep in Lanz's constriction-burned neck. Then he looked around, saw that no one was paying him any attention, and checked for a pulse. Lanz was dead all right. As dead as if he'd been stabbed thirty times in a shower. Tom waited for a few minutes and then left through the fire exit. After the air-conditioned chill of the movie theatre it felt good to be back in the warmth of the afternoon sunshine. It felt good to be alive.

Back home, Tom took a bath and ate some dinner while reading through some of the instruction books that Genevieve had given him. The Church's Seven Special Sacraments. What Every Catholic Should Know about the Catechism. And, Growing Up Catholic: The Seeker's Catechism. He had been a fairly conscientious Catholic up to about the time he went into the army. But it wasn't true that his mother had wished him to be a priest. She had encouraged him to be a doctor. Anyway, after he went to Guadalcanal and Okinawa nothing religious ever made sense to him again. And saving lives looked like harder work than taking them. Tom thought if there was a God he wasn't the kind of God who looked after his friends, and that was pretty much all you needed to know. Praying a lot, living the faith, observing all the high holy days, and confessing your sins - none of it ever prevented you from stopping a Jap .25-calibre bullet in the throat at four hundred yards and taking two hours to drown in your own blood.

But the thing that really annoyed Tom was the idea of confession. Was an act of contrition really all it took to obtain absolution of sins? Because if it was then someone like him saying sorry and meaning it made a mug out of all the people who'd spent years living a decent life. It couldn't be that simple.

Tom threw the handbook he was reading aside in disgust and turned the TV on. It was nearly eight thirty and he wanted to see the debate between Nixon and Kennedy. He wondered how much of the catechism JFK himself believed in? Now that would be a fucking handbook worth reading, he told himself. How to be President and Press the Button and Still be a Good Catholic.

In the event it wasn't a debate at all, just the two candidates fielding questions from the news reporters in the Washington studio, and commenting on each other's answers with the polite detachment of two attorneys arguing a point of law. Nixon sounded aggressive and still looked less appealing than the cooler and more handsome Kennedy. Both men seemed overly preoccupied with the subject of American prestige abroad, but neither man seemed the obvious superior of the other. As the standing vice-president, Nixon looked and sounded more experienced. But Kennedy had personality and charm and that counted for a lot in the television age, especially in black and white. It looked like a straight choice between Playmate of the Month and the Vargas girl: one was too true to be good, and the other too good to be true.

JFK was answering a question about some remote Nationalist Chinese islands no one had ever heard of when Tom's doorbell rang. It was Frank Sorges and he looked worried. Tom could guess what about.

Frank,' he said. What are you doing here?'

Can I come in? I'd rather not talk out here.'

Sure.'

They went into the lounge. Tom walked over to the bar and waved at the sofa. Drink?'

Yeah. Why not? That's a pretty impressive bar you've got, Tom. You wouldn't have any Kahlua there by any chance?'

Coming up.' Tom opened a bottle. I've had this since last Christmas. I didn't know anyone drank it. Ice?'

No, just as it comes.' Sorges shrugged. I just like the taste of coffee, I guess. Got the taste for it when I was in Mexico last year.'

Tom poured himself a Bourbon and sat down opposite him, but left the TV on.

Nice place.'

Tom shrugged. It's okay, I guess.'

Are you alone?'

Tom nodded. I was just watching the debate.'

So I see.'

Is there something on your mind, Frank?'

As a matter of fact I was wondering if you had remembered where it was that you and HA1/4ber Lanz might have met before?'

Don't you trust him?'

I don't trust anyone.'

And that's why you drove here?'

Sorges nodded, almost amused at the idea of it himself.

I don't remember where we met. But then I haven't lost much sleep trying. How the fuck should I know? Ask him. Next time save yourself a journey and call.'

Sorges sipped some of the Kahlua and stared at the TV.

What does Lanz say?' asked Tom.

Not much. He's dead.'

I see.' Tom lit a Chesterfield and laughed.

Did I say something funny?'

Not yet. But I've a feeling you will. What the hell happened?'

Someone strangled him in a fucking movie theatre.'

I'm choked. And you think it was me, right?'

Maybe. Why not? It's what you do, isn't it?'

Tom guffawed loudly. There you go,' he said. I knew you were going to make me laugh. You're Irwin fucking Corey, you know that, Frank? I'd laugh a lot louder only I'm afraid you might get the idea that I don't regret poor HA1/4ber's unfortunate demise, and suspect me all the more.'

Do you? Regret it?'

Makes no difference to me if he's lying next to Gerardo Machado in Woodlawn Park cemetery, or whooping it up with Anita Ekberg in Palm Beach. He's just some guy who only vaguely registered the first time I met him.'

The way I figure it, Tom, it takes someone with a lot of cool nerve to kill a guy in broad daylight. But, like I say, it's what you do. From what I hear, do pretty well.'

I thought you said it happened in a movie theatre.'

In a public place, then. Either way, someone who knew what they were about. Someone who's used to killing other people.'

Don't ever be a detective, Frank. Evidence is supposed to look a little more substantial than a lousy hill of beans.'

Maybe. Maybe I just wanted to look you in the eye when I told you the bad news.'

Then get closer so you can make doubly sure.'

But Sorges looked away, almost embarrassed.

Frank, you've got more maybe baby than Buddy Holly. Maybe you think you can see into my soul, is that it?'

Maybe,' grinned Sorges. Why not?'

You're wasting your time, Frank. There's no such thing. Soul's Ray Charles or it's nothing at all.' He picked up one of the little pamphlets on the Catholic catechism and tossed it into Sorges's lap. I think you're the one who should read up on how to be a priest, not me.'

Sorges looked at the cover and nodded. There's not much I wouldn't read for two hundred and fifty thousand bucks.'

If that's all there was to it, then you'd be in a job, I guess.'

Maybe. But if it was up to me we'd poison the bastard. O'Connell told me he heard CIA chemists have developed all kinds of new shit. Mind control drugs. Poisons. They've got this stuff called Blackleaf Forty. Sprayed on some tobacco leaves, rolled into a Montecristo cigar and then smoked by Castro. Dead within the minute. Simple as that.'

Poison, huh? You see, that's what I mean. You really have missed your vocation, Frank. Catholic priests always did like poison.' Tom lit another cigarette. How do you know O'Connell, anyway?'

I don't really. He's Rosselli's contact. Rosselli's in the middle of everything. Him and Maheu. But Johnny's okay, you know? He loves America almost as much as he hates fucking communists. Momo says, you give Johnny a flag and he'll follow you around the yard.'

They were both silent for a long while, watching the TV. Finally, Sorges said, with contempt, after listening to one of Kennedy's smoother answers, Listen to him. Mister fucking clean. If people could only hear what I've heard. Him and Marilyn. Like a pair of fucking rabbits. Man, they should broadcast that and see what the man's polls are like in the morning. Mark my words, we're about to have a sex maniac loose in the White House.'

Is that so?' And then: Freshen your glass?'

Sure.'

Tom refilled their glasses and came back to the sofa.

You gotta hand it to Kennedy though,' he said. If you're gonna risk your presidency to fuck some broad, she might as well be the best-looking broad in the world.'

She doesn't pull my chain,' grimaced Sorges. Novak. Russell. Now you're talking.'

Marilyn's got everything I want.'

Take my word for it, man. You hear the tape, you wouldn't be so impressed with her. She doesn't even come when he fucks her.'

Hardly her fault, I'd have thought.'

Uppers, downers, you name it, she takes it. The woman is falling to pieces. Ask Momo.'

I'd sure like to pick those pieces up. She's got something. I dunno. Star quality. Vulnerability. Charisma.'

Well, Merry Charisma, my star-struck friend. You must believe in Santy Claus.' Sorges toasted Tom with his coffee liqueur. Charisma, my ass. Jack Kennedy fucks her like she's just some dumb broad he picked up in Burdine's. You ask me, it's the only way you can fuck a broad like that. Like she's nobody. Pay any attention to who you think she is, you'd never get it up her pussy, man.'

I can't believe that.'

Forget about it. She's just another piece of meat for him, I swear. And let me tell you, the guy owns the fucking butcher's shop.'

Tom looked unconvinced.

Don't take my word for it,' said Sorges. I'll bring the tape. I can fix it. This surveillance guy? I think his name is Bernie something. He works for Hoffa and Momo. He's a friend of Johnny's. Johnny used to be a telephone man himself. Maybe I'll speak to Johnny. We can make an evening of it, hey? What do you say?'

Sounds like fun,' said Tom. Sure, why not?'

Gotta tape machine?'

Tom showed him the Phonotrix portable tape-recorder he had bought the previous summer. Almost as light as a camera, he sometimes used it for reconnaissance work.

This is no good,' said Sorges.

What do you mean, no good? This cost me a hundred bucks.'

Three-inch spool's too small. I'm talking several hours of tape, here. You'd better come and hear it at the safe house. Besides, Johnny doesn't like lending it out that much. He'd probably feel happier if I kept a hold of it.'

I can imagine,' said Tom.

Why bother, when I can save you the trouble? That's what this is all about. After you hear this tape you won't ever have to imagine what it's like with her again. You won't want to either. You'll know, man. You'll know all there is to know. That she's a whore. That she wears a-G string, or sometimes no panties at all. That she likes him to talk dirty when he's fucking her. That she likes to suck his dick. That she even takes it up the ass.'

That's okay,' shrugged Tom. Nobody's perfect.'

Chapter 6

The Highway of the Dead

Tom's idea was to give Everton Echeverria a trial run somewhere other than Cuba. Since he had to go to Mexico City anyway, Tom suggested that the MIRR send Echeverria down there on some kind of wild goose chase that would test his reliability. And so, on 13 October, a Thursday, the day of the third Nixon/JFK debate, Tom flew Pan American to the oldest city in North America. Around the same time, Everton Echeverria was boarding a Continental Trailways bus in Laredo, on the last stage of a long and gruelling journey from Miami. It would be another twenty-four hours before he arrived.

Tom liked Mexico City a lot, although it was fast becoming just another city of skyscrapers. The newest tallest building, the Latino-Americano, was some forty-five storeys high and it was here, at the Bankers' Club on the top floor, that Tom met the manager of the Banco de Comercio for an early lunch, before visiting the branch on Venastiano Carranza to review his account and to sign some papers. The hundred thousand dollars from Rosselli's consortium of mob and CIA had been deposited just a few days before and Tom wanted to remove twenty-five thousand of it in cash, to take back to Miami and place in his safety deposit box at the Pan American bank.

In the afternoon he arranged through his hotel, the Reforma, the hire of a chauffeur-driven car and, as was his habit - on average, Tom visited Mexico City twice every year - he went out to see the pyramids at Teotihuacan. It was one of his favourite places, with the Pyramid of the Sun, at 216 feet high, approaching Egyptian dimensions. The sides were terraced, with wide steps leading up to the summit, and Tom always made a point of climbing to the top. He liked heights, although sometimes he felt naked on top of the pyramid without a rifle. From there he had a superb view of the Pyramid of the Moon, the Temples of Tlaloc, of Quetzalcoatl and the Highway of the Dead. It was the only place that ever made Tom feel like he believed in a God.

Back in Mexico City he met up with two members of the local anti-Castro community, Leopoldo and Angel, at the cocktail bar in Tom's hotel. A member of the Intercontinental Hotel Group, the Reforma was the city's most modern hotel, and the bar one of the smartest. As soon as Tom saw the two Cubans he realised it had been a mistake to see them there. Leopoldo was tall and aged about forty; Angel was shorter and wore tinted glasses. Neither man was educated, and neither was clean. They both wore greasy polyester suits and brightly coloured Nybuc nylon slip-ons; Leopoldo's were red, and Angel's light blue, which was the way Tom managed to remember who was who. An angel in blue shoes. Neither one of them spoke any English, and they both smoked Old Gold and drank Margaritas.