Lammeck changed his mind about the rum in his coffee. The smell under his nostrils incited the liquor already in his head. He set the mug aside.
“Fifteen years ago you wrote a book about assassination. Pretty damn good book, I hear.”
“You haven’t read it?”
“Apologies. I’ve been busy. A world to save and all that. You speak four languages. You’re skilled with weaponry from a dozen different centuries. martial arts, in four separate disciplines. All this so you can understand assassins better. An admirable work ethic, Professor. Back in the big war you were a weapons trainer for Jedburgh teams in Scotland. Came home to the States, cushy teaching job at Brown. Kept up your studies, started a museum at your college. And for some reason that’s not in your dossier, you started carrying a weapon everywhere you go. Even here in Cuba, sitting on your back porch for a little nip in the evening.”
Lammeck did not move in the chair. He narrowed his eyes.
“I have a dossier?”
“A fat one.”
“You’re having me followed.”
“It’s not just me, Professor. You’ve been followed for the last sixteen years since Roosevelt. Look, I don’t know what secrets you lug around in your head. I don’t need to know. Whatever they are, the government keeps pretty close tabs on you. And yes, on occasion that includes following you.”
“Are you going to require an explanation about the knife, Agent Calendar? Because as you can guess from my fat dossier, I’m not going to give you one.”
“Not at all.” Calendar reached into a pocket to dig out a little plastic horseshoe. A boxer’s mouthpiece. So, he was a fighter. Calendar held the thing up for display, then tucked it away. “A man with no enemies hasn’t done shit in his life.”
“So you say. Should I be curious what else you know about me, or can we just assume that it’s enough for me to be annoyed, and enough to make you come see me in the middle of the night?”
Calendar sipped his coffee. “Works for me.”
“If you don’t mind my getting to the point, what are you doing here?”
“You know.”
“I do?”
“It’s why you’re in Havana. Why Johan’s made buddies with you.”
Lammeck did know. But the answer was clouded in its own magnitude, and he’d been slow to admit it in the minutes Bud Calendar had been on his porch.
“You’re trying to kill Castro.”
“I’m going to kill Castro,” the CIA agent answered.
Lammeck sat back in his wicker chair, fully awake and sober now. Calendar was a government assassin—for Lammeck’s own government! Lammeck had a thousand questions to ask. He knew he’d get answers to none.
The agent said, “When we saw you were coming to Havana for research, we got interested. Made sure you got your research visa. Then the plan sort of fell together.”
“Agent Calendar, I’m an historian. That’s all I am. Why come here to tell me about a CIA plan to kill Fidel? Unless you want me to put it in the book I’m writing, which I very much doubt.”
Calendar raised a finger. “And which you’re very much not gonna do.”
“Then why are you telling me?”
“Because you’re gonna help me.”
Lammeck did not see this shocker coming. After a moment, Calendar reached for the rum bottle. He offered it first to Lammeck, a testimony to the look frozen on Lammeck’s face. Lammeck shook the offer off, then watched the agent pour himself another shot.
“Tell me, Mr. Calendar. Why do you use the name ‘Bud’?”
“What do you call the guy on the street? The guy you don’t know? That’s me. I’m Bud. I’m everybody and nobody.”
“You’re probably a very dangerous man.”
“I need to be.”
“So this might not be well advised on my part, but are you out of your mind?”
Calendar smiled at this. “Doesn’t change anything if I’m nuts. Frankly, with some of the things I’ve done, I’m betting it helped. In any case, Castro’s going down. And you’re gonna be part of it.”
“No. I’m not.”
The agent sat back, crossing his big legs at the knees. “Out of respect, Professor, I’ll let you go first. You tell me why you’re not, then I’ll tell you why you are.”
“I’m not a killer.”
“You don’t have to be. I’ve got a different job for you.”
“Johan. You know he’s been following me.”
“I know everything about Johan. Him striking up a gab with you is actually a bonus. We can use him for information. Don’t worry about Johan.”
“You want me to be a conspirator and a rat?”
“Yep.”
“No. I won’t do it.”
Calendar unfolded his hands out of his lap. “That’s it? That’s your argument?”
Lammeck did not like his predicament, but this agent didn’t need to take such pains to condescend to him, treat him like a child or a pawn.
“Alright. Make your point, Calendar.”
The agent caught the shift in Lammeck. He sat straight on the wicker, the strawlike weave creaking under his weight.
“The United States government has put the highest possible priority on this operation—”
Lammeck interrupted: “There’s an invasion coming, and killing Castro goes hand in hand with it.”
At this, Lammeck reached to the floor for the Times article Johan had left for him. In the lamplight, Calendar took it and read the narrow headline.
The agent set his elbows on his knees. “Whatever happened to secrets? We invaded goddam France with half a million men and no one knew a thing.” He lifted his head. “Yeah, there’s an invasion of Cuban exiles coming and, yeah, Castro needs to be dead when it hits the shore. Did Johan give you this?”
“Yes. The Cubans know, Calendar. You’re screwed.”
“Not if Castro’s dead. They can be waiting right there on the beach when the exiles land and it won’t matter a damn.”
“You’re counting on chaos, a popular uprising.”
“Exactly.”
“Forget it. You’re not going to get it. These people are too supportive of the revolution, and of Castro personally. Have you seen the guy speak in public? He’s like Babe Ruth, Buddy Holly, and Patton rolled into one. You kill him, you’ll turn him into a martyr.”
“Too late to change the plan, Professor. The decision’s been made. And you of all people should have figured out the reasons why.”
Lammeck had guessed at this inevitability, had described it to Johan.
He asked, “How soon?”
“Don’t know, it’s still being debated in Washington. But you can bet it’s around the corner. The exile brigade’s getting ready...”
“In Guatemala.” Lammeck tapped the newspaper in Calendar’s hand.
The agent licked his lips in displeasure. He set the paper aside.
“Okay, Professor, I get the point. I don’t know when and I don’t know where. And I don’t really give a shit. My orders are just to take Castro down. Let’s assume the invasion will follow fast enough.”
A silent moment passed between them.
“One last thing,” Lammeck said. “Why can’t you do it yourself? You’re the spy. I’m just an academic.”
“A little thing called ‘plausible deniability.’ The United States can’t touch this operation, not officially. The political fallout of an American agent caught in a hit on Castro would be... well, real fucking bad. This whole Cuba project is illegal. In one way or another, invading Cuba and assassinating Castro violates the Neutrality Act, the Firearms Act, the Munitions Act, the regulations of the IRS, FAA, Immigration and Customs, and I’m sure the enabling charter of the CIA. Plus the laws of about six states and several nations.”
“Calendar, in case you didn’t notice, I’m an American citizen, too.”
“Yeah, but like you said, you’re an egghead. So you’re perfect. An international specialist on assas
sinations, come down to Cuba to keep tabs, be close to the action. Maybe you got carried away when some underground types approached you about knocking off Fidel. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to not just watch history but make it. You couldn’t resist. You’re freelancing, with no official connection to the U.S. government. Very believable.”
“Very risky.”
Calendar took up his coffee mug to pour himself more of the rum. He eyed the half-full bottle and chose to leave it. He set his cup on the table and waited.
“I’ll pass on the offer,” Lammeck said. “Attractive as it is.”
The agent filled his lungs with the Caribbean evening. He looked out, past the edge of Lammeck’s rented yard to the moon-raked ocean. “You finished?”
“For now.”
“Alright,” the agent said, “let me give you some answers. First, I can’t personally do it. Like I said, it would be a debacle of biblical proportions if I got nabbed. Second, if something happened to me, the whole operation would stop and there’d be no way to nail Castro before the invasion lands. I’m the last CIA agent in Cuba.”
“And what if I get, as you say, nabbed? That sounds like some kind of breakfast food, Calendar, nabbed. It’s not. It’s a dawn in front of a firing squad.”
“First of all, you won’t get nabbed. Second, if for some reason you do get picked up, you’re still an American citizen. We’ve got some juice left, even here in Commie Cuba. Kennedy raises a back-channel stink that you’re this famous academic who’s simply researching a real important and timely book on Cuban politics. You might’ve strayed too close to the flames, but hey, that’s why you’re a good historian. Anyone who claims you were involved in an assassination plot is a liar and covering his own butt. You were framed. Plausible deniability. Behind the scenes, worse comes to worst, we extract you. We’re not going to let an American citizen end up in one of Castro’s jail cells. And especially not you, with what you carry around in your head. But, lookit, Professor, you’re not gonna be swinging an axe at Fidel or anything. I just need you as a courier, between me and the names and addresses I give you.”
“Courier of what?”
“Information and instructions. And these.”
Calendar dug into a pants pocket. He tossed to Lammeck a small glass vial. Lammeck caught it and looked inside at six white capsules.
“Botulinum,” the agent said. He described the symptoms, the creeping paralysis. Death between twenty-four and forty-eight hours. Untraceable. Irreversible.
Lammeck lobbed the poison back.
“No.”
Calendar caught the amber bottle but didn’t stow it again in his pants. He set it on the table beside the siete.
“Professor, do you agree that Castro has to go?”
“From the standpoint of the United States and the CIA, I can see your logic. But that’s in the abstract. It’s different when I’m asked to take a direct hand in murder.”
“So you’re afraid, then.”
“In addition to my ethical qualms, yes. Who in his right mind wouldn’t be?”
“Me.”
“Of course,” Lammeck observed. “But there’s that issue again of whether or not you’re out of yours.”
The flesh beside the agent’s eyes crinkled. He breathed deeply once more, seeming to regret what he was going to do.
“Well, if no is your answer, let me tell you what that’s gonna look like from your end of the stick. First of all, the IRS will be your new best friend. You don’t need a description of that particular hell, I assume. Next, the government contracts at your university in Providence won’t be renewed. You’ll be fingered for some suspicious reason that won’t stand up but, hey, it won’t matter. You can forget foreign travel. Visas are going to be impossible for you, so get used to sea-to-shining-fucking-sea for your research and vacations. And that’s just for beginners. We’ll come after your job, your money, and your reputation.”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
Calendar turned his head to the side, appealing in a disgruntled mutter to some phantom jury. “I tell the guy I’m gonna kill Castro, but he doesn’t believe I’d wreck his life.” The agent looked back at Lammeck. “Yes, Professor, that’s exactly what I’d do.”
Lammeck felt the crosshairs of America intersecting between his eyes. What had he done to get himself targeted like this? How to escape? All he wanted was to study and write, to leave a legacy in the worlds of ideas and history. But his own government had been marking him for sixteen years, and now they’d sent this ape to Cuba to threaten his livelihood and good name. Lammeck’s heart sank. Escape? This was America they were talking about.
“And if I cooperate?”
The corners of Calendar’s mouth relaxed. “You’ll be permitted to write the book you’re researching right now, with two large changes. First, you’ll have complete access to every record of the Cuban invasion, soup to nuts, plus everything you want to know about the assassination plans, the ones that’ve failed and the one that will work. The second change is the book you write will have to stay secret in CIA archives for fifteen years. That does you no good right now, but you’ll have the opportunity to write the definitive insider’s history of one of the twentieth century’s greatest adventures. How America stopped Communism in the Western Hemisphere. You want to make a name, Professor, that’ll give it to you in perpetuity. You’ll definitely make professor emeritus at your college. Plus all the doors a secretly grateful nation will open for you.”
Lammeck sat staring at Calendar, weighing. The big agent was right; he’d be given the chance to write a secret history, a seminal analysis of invasion and assassination, with unparalleled access to government source material. A colossal and important undertaking.
But murder? Lammeck had spent his career studying assassins. Could he become one? How would that affect his posture as a professional historian? Could he take part in such a killing, then maintain the proper—indispensable—academic distance? And what about the larger question, the only one that really mattered: the moral issue. Is killing murder when done by a state? This was the endless query, the subject of volumes and centuries of debate by the greatest historians and philosophers.
To inject himself directly into that debate? To be in simultaneous roles—political theorist and assassin? Who could question his authority, or insights? Even if he had to wait fifteen years for the secret history to come out; even if he was dead when it did. Who could top Dr. Mikhal Lammeck? Emeritus.
He rattled his head to chase these thoughts off. He was not faced with a metaphysical scale to decide what he ought to do, measure the aftermaths in his own life, good and bad, or parse a complex ethical question. He was not staring at a choice, at all. Seated in front of him, waiting for an answer, was a burly and lethal CIA agent with enough power vested in him by the strongest nation on earth to do everything he claimed he would. Kill Castro. Lavishly punish or reward Lammeck.
I’ll be just their courier, he thought. Names and addresses. If not me, Calendar will just find someone else. And Castro will still die.
Lammeck knew this was temporizing. He recognized himself for what he was, a coward and a pawn, exactly why Calendar and America had picked him.
“What names?”
Calendar rose from the wicker chair. Without a word, not of thanks or assurance, he set a white envelope on the table beside the vial of pills. With less sound than when he’d arrived, he strode off the porch into darkness.
* * * *
CHAPTER SEVEN
March 23
Obispo Street
Havana
FOR TWO DAYS, LAMMECK could not go back to the archives to study, not with capsules of poison in his pocket.
Instead, he roamed the streets of Havana. He wanted to see as much as he could of the life of the city before the change fell. The pills would be a major cause of that change. He kept the little amber bottle with him all the time, hidden like the knife in its black sheath beneath his guayabera.
Lammeck walked everywhere now, taking a taxi home at night only when he was too tired to traipse the long, wet Malecón. He hadn’t seen or heard from Captain Johan in two days; this was one of the reasons he stayed away from his rented house where the policeman might find him. Johan had said Lammeck would not be followed anymore, but since his encounter with Bud Calendar, Lammeck was wary of all who walked behind him. It was unnerving to think of how much of what he’d done in the past years, and weeks, how much of his life had been secretly observed.
Lammeck had been in Havana almost three weeks, and now that he’d pulled his nose out of books, he’d begun to more fully realize the size and complexity of the city. It was much larger than New Orleans, and a hundred years older than the United States itself. Havana was dense, laid out in warrens and skewed angles like a European town, growing organically with the flow of centuries and prosperity. Streets uncoiled in every direction. Lammeck looked above the throngs and traffic, block after distant block built by Spain, then by the U.S. Sixteenth-century churches stood alongside seventeenth-century carriage houses, stone keeps, and twentieth-century banks and offices built with American money. On the narrow streets, Fords and Chevrolets jostled alongside boxy Czech Skodas, Tatras, and Russian-made Zaporozhets. Many avenues were blocked from traffic by two-hundred-year-old Spanish cannons buried barrel-down into the cobbles as barricades. Inside doorways, Lammeck caught glimpses of marble stairs, stained glass, black terrazzo, bronze inlays, terra-cotta, wrought iron, wood paneling, the remnants of grand Caribbean riches.
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