Havana Twist

by Lia Matera

  A few hours later, we landed in Mexico City. I could hardly believe our luck, though I suspected there was more at work than a fortunate coincidence. Emilio had, presumably, sneaked people out of Cuba before. Was this his usual route? For a particular reason?

  Customs, predictably, proved a hassle. We presented passports showing we’d recently flown out of Mexico City. There were no exit stamps on our passport inserts from Cuba. The rest of the passengers had documents showing they’d come from Tblisi, Georgia. We were diverted out of the line.

  I began to worry that I wouldn’t like a Mexican prison any better than I’d have liked a Cuban prison.

  But the customs agent who came to fetch us for further questioning was Agosto’s old friend—and Jamieson and Travolta’s business associate—Pirí. He ushered us into a small room with sickly green walls. I recognized them as the background of his file photo of Lidia Gomez using Myra Wilson’s passport.

  Pirí didn’t seem to recognize me, though he kept eyeing me as if he knew he should. The only time we’d met, Agosto had done all the talking.

  But he knew Martin Marules, all right. He didn’t say so, but he addressed him exclusively.

  “Señor,” he said to Marules, “can you explain the discrepancy between your passports and those of the other passengers?”

  Marules, looking a little better for a wash-up on the plane, said, “We boarded in Cuba. Obviously, as you can see from our passports, we are not returning from Georgia. Apparently, because of the tardiness of our arrival at the airport, the Cubans neglected the proper paperwork.”

  “Ah, was the plane scheduled, then, to pick up passengers in Cuba? Because I have been notified that you are expected to go to the Aeroflot ticket counter and pay full-price fares from Tblisi. That is, if you do not wish to be detained here by their security officers.” Last-minute airfare from Georgia—that would make a dent in my credit, all right.

  Marules shrugged. “Yes, of course. Obviously, we have here a misunderstanding originating in Cuba’s airport. But not of our making. And we have no wish to cheat Aeroflot.”

  Don sat with his arm tightly around me, his expression serious. He watched Marules as if trying to intuit an understanding of Spanish from his mannerisms and tone.

  But those things weren’t doing the real talking. Marules had pulled out his wallet. It was in his lap, covered by his hands.

  “You are a well-known personage here.” Pirí shrugged. “And so I might be inclined to hurry this inquiry.”

  “I am pleased to hear this.” Marules slid some bills out.

  “A personal token for my trouble, yes.” Pirí glanced at the wallet. “But also an accommodation for another party.”

  Marules made a face as if calculating the amount this would add to the mordida. Too bad Pirí couldn’t just post a fee schedule.

  “This party,” Pirí continued, “would wish a meeting with you. And a promise, which will be described to you at that time.”

  Marules looked surprised. “I am to promise to make a promise? How can I do this without even knowing its nature?”

  Pirí shrugged again.

  Marules looked disconcerted. Nevertheless, he slipped more currency from his wallet. Then he rose, shaking Pin’s hand with the bills folded in his palm. However much he’d passed along, Pirí seemed satisfied.

  “I shall allow you to leave without problem when the other parties arrive to fetch you, Señor. Whether you will keep your promise to them, that is your concern.”

  He rose, smiling like a man who’d just pocketed a huge bribe. He left us in the small room.

  We brought Don up to speed.

  Don surprised me by saying to Marules, “I don’t think it’s Jamieson and Travolta coming to pick you up. There’s nothing they’d want from you, nothing they could get from you. Is there?”

  “Silence?” Marules suggested. “I do, after all, run a newspaper.”

  “Would you really print it as fact that the people at such and such an address are CIA agents?”

  “Without more proof, no.” He ran his hands over his hair. “But I have reporters to find proof for me, if I wish it.”

  “What would be the point? You don’t know what they’re involved in, you only know they use a certain apartment now and then. Apartments aren’t that scarce. All they have to do is move, and they’re out of your purview.” Don pinched the bridge of his nose as if to concentrate his thinking. “They might already be gone.”

  Marules looked troubled. But he didn’t get a chance to say more.

  Pirí stepped back in. “You two, please come with me.”

  Marules half rose, saying, “And I?”

  “You will wait for your ride, Señor. It will not be long. I will take your friends to Aeroflot to avoid the Russians filing charges against you. They have quick tempers.” To me, he said, “It will simplify matters if you will pay also for Señor Marules.”

  “I will repay you,” he put in.

  I translated quickly for Don. God knew, I didn’t have a high enough credit limit.

  “I’ll get the tickets,” Don said, “I don’t care about that. But I want to be here when the ride comes.”

  I told the customs agent.

  “They do not wish it,” Pirí said, with complete certainty.

  “Who are they?”

  “If they would like me to mention their names, you would already know. You have only to visit Señor Marules this afternoon, and ask him then.” Pirí held the door open. “I am offering an easy solution to a not-so-easy problem. If you wish me instead to call the police?”

  I went straight out the door. At the top of my list, as usual, was a vow to stay out of jail.

  I turned to find Don looking at me, then at Marules. He didn’t seem happy about following me out.

  Pirí led us to a small room behind the Aeroflot counter. Don put three full-price last-minute tickets from Tblisi to Mexico City—several thousand dollars’ worth—on his American Express card. Then Pirí insisted on handing us into a cab for the Zona Rosa, Mexico City’s tourist district.

  And that was fine with me. I wanted to go to a hotel. I wanted to take a long shower and sleep till nightfall. On this, Pirí and I were in complete accord.

  But less than a mile from the airport, Don motioned the driver to pull off the highway. He found a small cafe in a neighborhood of drab shops, and he paid the driver to let us out there. When the cab drove off, he walked straight to a pay phone and dropped in some change.

  “Conner,” he said, “pick up if you’re in. We’re back. If you’re not there already, go to the usual apartment and keep your eyes open.” Then he handed the phone to me. “Call a cab and tell them to get here as fast as they can.”

  With an exhausted sigh, I obeyed. When I hung up, I asked, “Where are we going?”

  “Airport,” he said, confirming my fears.

  “It’s too big and too busy. We’ll never spot Marules leaving. Or Travolta and Jamieson picking him up.”

  “I don’t think we’re looking for Travolta and Jamieson,” he said. He guided me into the small restaurant, which stank of rancid fat.

  I didn’t need any prompting to order coffee to go.

  We sat on a bench outside the front door. After Cuban coffee, this brew seemed as weak as tea.

  I watched midmorning pedestrians, plump women with parcels and baskets of produce, making the rounds of markets and shops. I admired the bright colors of their clothes, the newness of the stores’ plaster, wood, and paint. I enjoyed the coolness of the air here, high up the mountain.

  I took pleasure in the bustle because it meant there were goods to bustle for, and because I had the freedom to sit here and watch it.

  Don said, “Did I ever tell you the theory of investigation I’ve evolved over the years?”

  Our chats, this trip aside, could be
counted on one hand, so I knew the question was rhetorical.

  “I tell my men to focus on what they know for sure. What you seem to know changes all the time, as you get more witness statements, as you weed out the lies and excuses and unintentional misrepresentations. But if you stick to what you actually know for sure, you start out with a short list, and you watch it grow until eventually it tells you something.” He finished his coffee and crumpled the paper cup. “For example, Jamieson and Travolta gave us the magic phone number. We know they’re CIA, the real deal.”

  I’d ordered a larger coffee than he had. And until I finished it, I wasn’t even going to try to employ higher levels of reason. With luck, I was going to continue to sit upright, impersonating an awake person.

  “Another item on the list of what we know for sure: We were separated from Marules. We were given an explanation—maybe a real reason, maybe just a pretext—and we were sent off to play tourist. But the bottom line is, we’re not with him now.”

  A yellow Beetle taxi pulled up in front of the restaurant. I dropped my paper cup into a trash can, and we climbed in.

  We rode to the airport in silence. At the best of times, I’m not much of a conversationalist in the morning.

  When the cab pulled toward the arrivals gate, Don handed the driver some cash, saying to me, “Tell him we want to sit curbside and wait. If we jump out at some point, he keeps the change. And if we tell him to drive on, we pay him the difference when we get there.”

  The driver took the bills and grinned.

  “Any idea who we’re looking for?” I asked him. “Besides Marules?”

  He shook his head. He was turned away from me, scanning the exits. “I just hope we didn’t miss them. You don’t ditch somebody unless you’re going to do something you don’t want them to see.” He groped for my hand, still looking out the cab window. “I’d have turned the first cab around, but I thought they might have bribed the driver. If so, they think we went to breakfast.”

  But we’d lost twenty minutes. We could sit here all afternoon waiting to see something that had happened in our absence.

  I settled into the cab seat, stretching my legs. VW taxis had no front passenger seat, presumably since the trunk wouldn’t hold luggage bigger than a handbag. The back seat stank of curdled milk and body odor. But it would have taken more than that to keep me awake. I nodded off without even realizing it.

  I don’t know how long I slept. I was suddenly aware of the fact that the cab was in motion. I opened my eyes to find we were out of the airport and back on the highway.

  “What?” I said. “What happened?”

  Don looked grim. “It’s worse than we thought. It’s Gomez—”

  “Lidia Gomez?” I was astonished. But, perhaps because I wasn’t yet fully awake, I didn’t see why this was worse than we thought. Not that I’d thought much of anything.

  He pointed up the highway. “We’re four cars behind—luckily I know the Spanish word for ‘go.’ ‘Hang back a few cars’ was more of a challenge. They’re in the Dodge minivan with California plates.”

  “Marules and Gomez?”

  He shot me a look. “And Sarah Swann.”

  Mother’s friend, the organizer of the WILPF caravan to Cuba, the woman who’d come to San Diego to console me and my father.

  “Sarah Swann,” I said flatly.

  I watched the Dodge drive at a conservative speed, deeper into the smog perennially smothering the city.

  Sarah Swann. Why would Mother’s friend be here picking Marules up from the airport? Did Sarah really want a favor from him, as Pirí had said? Did she want publicity for her goods-to-Cuba drives? Would she ask him to pull strings to find my mother?

  But how would she have known to go through Pirí? Where would she have found the clout?

  We knew Pirí did work-for-hire for the CIA. What did that mean about Sarah Swann?

  She had organized my mother’s trip to Cuba. If, as a consequence of that trip, Mother was running a chain of safe houses for fund-raising Cubans, could she be doing it—definitely without her knowledge!—under the aegis of the CIA?

  I could hardly believe what I was thinking.

  34

  We were lucky in one regard. There were too many Beetles in Mexico for our cab to attract attention as we followed the Dodge. Likewise, there were too few minivans with California plates for our driver to lose track of Marules, Swann, and Gomez.

  I sat forward, trying to catch a glimpse of them through their back windshield, as if the angle of their heads would reveal their intentions to me.

  If that was the real Lidia Gomez up ahead, who had I spoken to in that apartment in Cuba? An actress put there to fool Cindy and Dennis, to show them what they expected to see? If so, why did the Cubans care what Cindy and Dennis thought?

  Months ago, I’d discounted Mr. Radio Havana’s assertion that Cindy and Dennis were CIA agents. But he’d risen in my estimation since rescuing me from arrest. If he was right, it would explain why the supposed reporters had taken over Jamieson and Travolta’s apartment. And why they’d picked me up in Havana, just as “Ernesto” had.

  But more troubling, if Sarah Swann wasn’t just a nice WILPF lady with a knack for organizing computer drives and goodwill forays, who was she?

  “Is Marules in danger?” I murmured to Don.

  “Too early to say. It would help if we knew where they’re going.”

  I asked the cab driver, “What are they heading toward? What part of the city?”

  “Many parts,” he shrugged. “Bars, offices, prison.”

  “Which prison?”

  “Women’s prison.”

  I shuddered, wondering what would have happened this morning if Marules hadn’t bribed Pirí. What if Don hadn’t had the means to pay Aeroflot for our ride? Would I be on my way to Mexico City’s women’s prison?

  The minivan turned off the highway. None of the cars between us turned, making us more conspicuous. But the van didn’t slow.

  It continued down a street of auto repair shops and light industries. Then it pulled into a parking lot. It belonged to the women’s prison. Don and I exchanged glances. If he had a theory, his expression masked it.

  The cab driver circled the far side of the lot, pulling behind a row of small yellow buses, probably designed for excursions or work-furloughs.

  We watched the threesome from the minivan go inside the building.

  Don paid off the driver. Apparently he expected to stay a while.

  We crossed to the minivan. Don walked around it, looking in the windows.

  I watched the door of the unornamented box of a prison.

  “Why would they come here?” I asked him. “Gomez especially.”

  Perhaps my fear of prisons was clouding my judgment. Perhaps a person was no more likely to get arrested in a prison waiting room than in a laundromat. But it would take a hell of a lot of confidence to believe this if, like Lidia Gomez, you were in hiding.

  “Maybe they came to see someone.”

  I shook my head. If he was expecting a suggestion, he was out of luck.

  “Your mother,” he said.

  I staggered back a step. “Mother? In there?”

  “It would explain why General Miguel couldn’t find her in Cuba.”

  “But why would she be here? She wouldn’t—”

  “Maybe she arrived in Mexico City the same way we did, tucked onto an airplane on layover. If her papers weren’t in order, and she didn’t have the money to cover air fare …” Then she might indeed have ended up with several months of jail time. “Do you know anything about the legal system down here?” Don looked pained. “I understand there’s very little leeway—unless you’re willing to bribe everybody right up the line.”

  “Mother wouldn’t bribe anyone. She’s too ethical.” Maybe too broke.

>   “What I gather is, if you get busted in Mexico, and you don’t pay the mordidas, you’re inside till you’ve served your sentence. Period.”

  “She’d have called me or Daddy. To try to get her out. She’d have let us know.”

  “She’d have let you know something,” he agreed. “Not necessarily that she was in jail.”

  “Even if she didn’t want me to know she was …” The way I felt about jail, Mother was likely to tell me anything else, any lie. “She’d have gotten word to us that she was okay. She’d have given some excuse.”

  “Through a friend?”

  I nodded.

  “Like Sarah Swann?” He was squinting at the entrance. “Maybe she’d have Sarah tell you she was staying in Cuba a little longer to cut cane? To help at the hospitals? Something like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could Sarah have told your father?”

  “No. He definitely doesn’t know anything—this is killing him. And he’d never keep a secret from me, not this kind of secret.”

  “If it is your mother in there, apparently Swann visits her.”

  “Why would she keep us in the dark?”

  “That would depend on who Sarah is.” He scowled. “One possibility, considering the little bit I know about her?”

  “Yeah?”

  “She organized a caravan into Mexico to drop off computers for Cuba. But the caravan was met at the border, and the computers were tossed out of the trucks and ruined.”

  “You think Sarah works for the CIA?” A nice WILPF lady? I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

  “No. Think about it: the caravan generated lots of publicity. It was a dare, in essence, and U.S. Customs took it. But in the meantime, consider all the meetings and teach-ins about Cuba. And who ended up looking bad? The Cubans, who are too poor to afford electronic equipment, or the U.S. government, which would rather ruin computers than let Cuban schoolchildren get their hands on them?”

  “Making Sarah what?”

  “Maybe the same thing Marules is: a very good friend of Señor Emilio.”