The Betrayal Game - [Mikhal Lammeck 02]

by David L. Robbins

  “How do you know that?”

  “Though you tried, the two of you did not keep your voices down. And the stage whisperings, it was like watching Shakespeare. I do not speak Russian, but I am concerned, Professor. Where is your caution? On an evening when you are to meet me, you draw such notice to yourself. I find it disappointing.”

  “But you’re speaking to me anyway.”

  “I do not have the luxury of time.”

  “Are you with the underground?”

  Orta grimaced. “Certainly not. I do not burn department stores. I am with the government. I am Office Chief and Director General of the Office of the Prime Minister.”

  The man dropped his cigarette to the grass. He crushed it underfoot.

  “And that, Professor, is all I will tell you about myself or my intentions.”

  Lammeck didn’t like Orta, his imperious manner wedded to an assassin’s purpose. And the man’s motives worried him: Orta claimed no allegiance to the underground, so he wasn’t driven by politics or power.

  True to his word, the man clammed up. Lammeck reviewed the legion of assassins he’d studied, searching for the category that oily Orta belonged in. The grand and affected mannerisms, the tailored tux: This man was corrupt to his soul, and his motive was greed, blood money. History recorded only a few examples of this ugly sort. It preferred to commemorate the names of more colorful characters, lovers, patriots, regicides, and the mad.

  A little shamed, Lammeck handed over the poison, keeping one pill in his pocket.

  ~ * ~

  April 8

  First Avenue

  Miramar

  Barefoot, Lammeck carried his coffee to the back porch, looking north to see how the wind blew across the straits this morning. The wind seemed to determine so much in Havana: the spray on the Malecón, pennants in the revolution parks, the rain, sidewalk cafes, often the mood.

  Stepping outside, he avoided a folded newspaper left at his threshold.

  Another New York Times. Johan.

  Lammeck looked down at the paper, considering that he ought to get a different house. This address was becoming too popular with all the spies in Havana.

  The breeze blew out of the northeast. A turn in the weather was coming. Good, he thought. A cool, drizzly day would be comforting, a reminder of New England. This afternoon, he would stay in, read, relax under a lap blanket on the porch, and watch the seas whip up. He still had the lion’s share of a bottle of siete rum.

  He bent for the newspaper. Unfolding it, he saw immediately the headline Johan meant for him: “Anti-Castro Units Trained to Fight at Florida Bases.” The article made a strong case that the invasion of Cuba was looming. It claimed that the training of the exile brigade had been halted because the rebels were now adequately prepared. The offensive had entered its final phases. The men and machines were moving to their staging ground in Guatemala. Soon they would depart for the journey and the assault on the island.

  Lammeck tossed the paper on a wicker chair. He had no curiosity for the rest of the Times or what was going on in America right now. Cuba was his focus.

  He watched morning clouds gather. The brightness of the tropic light dimmed, cooling with his coffee. Lammeck went inside to eat his accustomed big breakfast. He shaved and dressed in loose khakis and guayabera. Tucking his bone-handled knife into the waistband at his back, he left the house and walked by the ocean, to the blustery Malecón, then a mile to the Nacional Hotel.

  Along the way, he circled blocks, ducked through alleys, and monitored the cars and pedestrians over his shoulder. Up to now, Lammeck had been less than vigilant in his movements and security.

  Today was not a day to be followed.

  ~ * ~

  National Hotel

  Alek walked out the front door, held open by a doorman. He stopped at the top of the steps, looking down.

  The boy said nothing, made no reaction. He came to stand next to Lammeck. Like Rina last night, he was dressed in an outfit Lammeck had already seen, the Marine T-shirt and dungarees he wore when they’d gone shooting. Lammeck thought how impoverished the young couple must be back in Minsk. Yet Alek didn’t look so young today. There seemed a mature readiness about him.

  Beside them, guests of the hotel queued for taxis entering the long oval drive. The boy spoke quietly. “What’re you doing here?”

  “Rina.”

  “When did you talk to her?”

  “Last night. At the casino.”

  “She asked you to come with me?”

  “You’re the one who told her about the meeting.”

  The boy curled his lips. “Goddammit.”

  “Yep.”

  “I don’t know about this. That guy Heitor didn’t say anything about you coming along.”

  “I don’t report to Heitor. And I promised Rina.”

  Alek cursed again. Lammeck wondered what his invectives were aimed at: Rina’s prying, Alek’s own recklessness, or Lammeck’s intrusion? No matter, Lammeck decided. He didn’t report to Alek either.

  “Why?” the boy asked.

  “She thinks it might be dangerous.”

  “It’s just a meeting.”

  Lammeck smiled. “Good. I’m not looking for danger. I’ve got other plans for my day. But, Alek, what you and I are involved in, you understand the magnitude?”

  The boy nodded, resolute.

  “You’ve got to stop even hinting at it. She’s a clever girl.” Lammeck sighed. “Enough said. I’ll tag along. I’ll stay out of your way. Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.”

  The two entered a taxi, Lammeck in the backseat. Alek gave the driver an address, Calle 11 in the Mendares neighborhood, near Miramar. When he was sure they were within several blocks of the meeting place, Lammeck tapped the driver on the shoulder to pull over. Alek glowered at him for asserting himself despite his guarantee to stay out of the way. Lammeck paid the driver, climbed out, and motioned Alek to join him. The boy did, and opened his mouth to complain. Lammeck cut him off.

  “From now on, you and I are both going to be a lot more careful. Not just with Rina, but every step we take. You’re planning to assassinate the leader of this country. There are lots of forces in place to stop you from doing that. So we’re going to walk. We’re going to see if anyone’s following. And we’re going to keep walking if we’re not sure we’re clean.”

  Lammeck strode away. After a moment, Alek got in step beside him. He kept his eye on the boy, to measure whether he followed orders or chafed. Lammeck was prepared to tell Heitor he’d changed his mind about this thin lad, that Alek Hidell was too much of a loose cannon, too callow and irresponsible to be reliable. With his braggadocio and attentive Soviet fiancée, he was a risk to reveal the conspiracy. Lammeck would tell Calendar to give nasty Orta the word, to go ahead and poison Fidel because the shooting plot was off. But Alek walked with his head up, eyes darting front and back to make sure they walked without scrutiny. Lammeck caught no petulance in the boy, nothing but a marine’s march in his gait. With a pang, he looked across his own shoulders, memorized cars driving past, and let events proceed.

  On Calle 11, the address which Alek had given the taxi driver, was a large, canary-yellow house. Royal palms swayed overhead, shading a short, suburban street. Lammeck could smell the ocean here, only a half mile north, on today’s strong breeze. There was hibiscus in the wind, and jasmine, too.

  Alek said, “You look like a dog sniffing like that.”

  “I’ve been told dogs are hard to fool. Come on.”

  They crossed the street to the front gate of the house. Heitor and a woman sat on the patio watching them. Heitor waved. Lammeck returned it, figuring Heitor was keeping up appearances. He could not be pleased to see Lammeck uninvited this morning.

  Heitor rose and held open the iron gate. A table on the patio held playing cards and a tea service. The couple were in the middle of a game of rummy. Lammeck walked to the woman, smiled, then turned to Heitor.

  “This is my wife, Susann
a,” the Cuban said. The woman had long legs and gray hair hanging to her waist. She did not look like a conspirator; rummy and tea were not Lammeck’s image of killers’ pastimes. It seemed so middle-of-the-road, sane. He thought of Richard Lawrence, who in 1835 became the first man to attempt an assassination of an American president when his two pistols misfired against Andrew Jackson on the Capitol rotunda. Lawrence was a madman, believing he was the heir to the crown of England; Jackson was keeping him from his throne. In 1892, Emma Goldman became a New York prostitute to make money so her cohort Alexander Berkman could buy a gun, to shoot industrialist Henry Frick. And the Roman emperor Caligula, who had thousands killed, enjoyed fencing with gladiators whom he had armed only with wooden swords against his sharp steel. Lammeck considered Heitor and his handsome wife, their yellow house and pleasant habits. He smiled privately at the magnificent and diverse cast of characters in history’s long play.

  Lammeck took her hand. “Madam.”

  Heitor shot Alek a sharp glance.

  “Go inside. Wait in the parlor.”

  The boy complied and disappeared unaccompanied into the house.

  Heitor motioned to an empty chair on the patio. “Would you like some tea?”

  “Do you have time?”

  Heitor laughed. “Why go to all this trouble, Professor, if at the end of it all, there is no time for a cup of tea?”

  “Certainly, then. Please.”

  While Heitor fetched another cup and saucer from the kitchen, Lammeck complimented Susanna’s home. She answered that she and Heitor had been lucky out here, several miles from the city center; the revolutionary housing councils had not yet appropriated the buildings on their street. They still lived alone. But it was only a matter of time. Then, the same way Lammeck had minutes before, she lifted her nose to the rising wind.

  “A storm,” she said. “Out of the north.”

  When Heitor returned, Susanna excused herself with a curtsy.

  “My wife,” Heitor said, “is anonymous. She must stay that way.”

  “I understand.”

  Heitor poured Lammeck’s tea. “If that is true, what are you doing here?”

  Lammeck explained his reason. He assured Heitor he would stay on the porch until the meeting was completed. “Maybe Susanna would like to play me in rummy.”

  “With respect, we will leave my wife uninvolved with you, Professor. Drink your tea and speak with me instead. The meeting will wait. I understand you have an interest in the matters of revolution and assassination.”

  “I do.”

  “You may ask me a few questions. To be honest, your compensation for so much risk seems quite small. You receive some insights into the upheaval coming to our island. I, on the other hand, get a freed country.”

  Lammeck asked Heitor how he’d become involved with the counterrevolution.

  The man answered that, once the revolution was won, after he and the other barbudos came down from the mountains, he’d been a staunch supporter of Fidel’s.

  “I was in the front ranks when we walked into Havana. We looked fearsome, I tell you, bearded and dirty. Fidel arm in arm with brother Raul, handsome devil Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos in his bush hat. The people waved flags from the balconies of every house, from the Malecón to the barrios in Montejo.”

  Heitor explained how both he and Susanna had accepted some difficult truths: that, in the beginning, some Batistianos had to be put against the paredón, some had to be jailed, others had to be exiled, and many with no affiliation at all, just raw dissatisfaction, would flee to America.

  “This was how a revolution worked if you were truly going to start a new way of governing. To think otherwise was to be naive.”

  But after the first year, when Fidel announced there would not be elections, when Soviet Foreign Minister Mikoyan came to Parque Central and Fidel embraced him on the stage for the world to witness, and finally, when Castro announced he was ending all private and religious education in the country, Heitor and Susanna secretly broke ranks.

  Parodying himself, Heitor concluded, “Why go to all this trouble, if at the end of it... ?”

  He joined Unidad. He had not told his wife the depth of his involvement in the underground. She believed his contribution to the counterrevolution was to make their house on this out-of-the-way block in Mendares available for an occasional Unidad meeting.

  “We have had some successes recently,” he said. “In the past weeks, our petacas have blown up several theaters across Cuba. Last week, incendiary bombs destroyed one of Havana’s major department stores, La Epoca.”

  This was what Orta had referred to, that he did not blow up department stores.

  “I can see on your face, Professor, you wonder what good comes from destroying theaters and stores.”

  “They’re civilian targets. Why do you think that endangering civilians and burning their shops is political opposition? It’s terrorism.”

  Heitor sipped his tea, a dainty counterpoint to the violent topic.

  “Castro and his revolution intend to make all who oppose him powerless. There is no legitimate channel for resistance. No free press, no public rallies, no opposition parties. With those explosions, the underground accomplished three things. First, we told Castro that we exist and we defy him. Second, we told the United States we are here and we need their help. Third, and most important, we in the resistance got to tell ourselves that we indeed have teeth. That we remain men of power. True, it is just a shadowy, nighttime sort of power, planting petacas then cheering the rubble like vandals. We excuse the casualties of innocents as accidents. We blame Fidel. But just like the revolution, there are hard truths that must be accepted to stage a counterrevolution.”

  Heitor did not wait for Lammeck’s reaction. He stood.

  “Now you will pardon me, Professor. I must go inside. Your young man needs to meet the others who will assist him. Please make yourself comfortable. Keep an eye out. We will be an hour.”

  Without ceremony, Heitor entered his house. Lammeck watched him go. The man cut no imposing figure; his gentle wife with long gray hair did not suspect him as a planter of bombs. Lammeck reminded himself that the vast majority of folks who made history were just ordinary people in extraordinary times. Most did not carry their names with them into the annals; their roles dissolved with them into dust. As Heitor had said, with luck, both he and Susanna would remain anonymous.

  ~ * ~

  In the time Lammeck waited on the patio, the weather socked in. The sun disappeared behind tufted clouds, palm branches swayed noisily above the yellow house.

  After thirty minutes alone, he grew bored and stiff sitting. Susanna did not come back outside to keep him company. He played a few hands of solitaire with the cards left on the game table. He might have liked more tea but felt he was not allowed inside the house to ask. Lammeck stood and pushed aside the iron gate. He walked out to the sidewalk, stretching his legs, gazing up to gauge the swirling weather.

  He strolled up the block, moving north, toward the smell of the ocean. The meeting would be over soon. Lammeck would guide Alek to Avenida 5 and tuck him into a taxi. Then he’d walk the half mile to Miramar, back to his own porch to watch the clouds and the rising straits. He’d take care that he was not followed, would remind the boy to do the same. After that, he’d hear from Heitor only when to deliver the rifle, then not see him, Alek, or Rina again. He planned to stock up on groceries, cigars, and rum, to do what Calendar suggested, hunker down until Castro was dead by bullet or poison. His research at the archives would be on hold. He’d go home carrying secrets and skeletons locked in his head. He would wait to write them, expose them, as Calendar promised.

  Just before turning back at the end of the block, Lammeck caught a curious sight. A fair-skinned woman, middle-aged and in an apron, ran from between two houses. She hauled behind her a little boy running barefoot. The woman came up the street at a dead sprint in Lammeck’s direction, the child barely able to keep up. Her hair and a
pron flew around her, the child complained. She whirled to say something to keep the small one moving. Dashing past Lammeck, she glanced at him.

  “¡Saiga!” she called. Go away!

  She and the child ran until they disappeared into a home across the street from Heitor’s iron gate.

  On the sidewalk, Lammeck froze.

  What was happening?

  He stared ahead, up the lane between the houses where the woman and child had emerged. Nothing. The neighborhood stayed hushed. A light drizzle began dotting the sidewalk.

  Then Lammeck heard them.