The Betrayal Game - [Mikhal Lammeck 02]

by David L. Robbins

  “He was telling you to go away.”

  “Or he’d kill me.”

  “I think so, yes.”

  Lammeck was stymied. “It doesn’t make sense, Rina. What’s he gain by gunning me down in the street?”

  “He wouldn’t have done that on his own. He was following instructions.”

  Lammeck waited her out.

  “Calendar,” she said.

  With that name, everything Rina claimed to be true was driven home. She wasn’t just playing spy, the way Alek often did. Rina wasn’t pretending to be KGB. She knew Agent Bud Calendar.

  “He sent you to be shot by Alek, Mikhal. I do not know why. But the CIA is playing a separate game from what the rest of us are.”

  Lammeck glanced out the window. Dusk began to feather over the straits, a deep indigo beautiful above the aqua waters. Silently, he thanked Alek for allowing him to sit here to see it.

  “One more question, Rina. I need you to trust me right now, and not ask what I’m going to do. Just tell me what I want to know, don’t ask me why, then do what I say from this point on. Alright?”

  The girl studied him a moment. Lammeck stood out of the chair to step into her embrace. Against his guayabera, he felt her head bob in assent.

  “You said Alek came back here. That he took money and his passport.”

  “Yes.”

  “What nationality is his passport? Soviet? Or American?”

  “American.”

  Lammeck held her for a long minute. He looked down at the top of her head.

  When he let her go, he turned for the door. “Stay where I can find you.”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Miramar

  INSIDE OF AN HOUR, Lammeck restored order to his house. He showered, careful to keep his bandaged hand dry. He changed clothes, then foraged in the kitchen for a quick meal of chicken and beans.

  On the back porch, he lit a candle, as if expecting a woman. He’d missed the sunset while cleaning and showering, catching only glimpses through his busted rear door. He sat in his wicker chair with a glass of añejo from a fresh bottle. On the table beside the vacant, matching wicker chair, a second empty glass waited.

  He sipped, observing the candle flame. The fire stood straight, with barely a waver. What breeze there was came out of the southeast. Tomorrow it would whisper at Alek’s back, causing him to make only a little adjustment.

  One by one, stars attended the darkness over the straits. As he did whenever he looked north across the water, Lammeck thought of America, so close. Unseen, his country pulled at him. He tried to sense the tug Alek must feel after two years of self-imposed exile in the Soviet Union. So close, the boy must be thinking too, gazing north from his high roof. Just pull a trigger, a tug of the finger, a few millimeters.

  Lammeck’s mind wandered into the house, to his briefcase and research. He hadn’t touched either in a week. He didn’t know if his work had all been for naught, if his book on Cuba would ever be written. He couldn’t even guess what the next several days would bring. A dead Castro and international chaos? A living Fidel and a rescued Alek? A dead boy? An invasion that returned America to power on the island, or a landing that would be ruthlessly swept off the beaches? Lammeck finished the last swallow of rum in his glass, and poured another.

  He waited two hours on the porch, resisting the lure of the bottle beyond the initial tumblers. Enough time passed for Lammeck to fetch another candle. Of all the guesses he’d made, the one he had the most faith in was proven correct a minute after the new candle was lit and the old stub tossed into the backyard.

  “Should I have brought flowers?” Johan asked, coming around the corner of the porch.

  Lammeck responded by reaching for the rum bottle. He poured first into the clean glass set out for the police captain, then for himself. The two raised their rums with nods to each other and drank.

  “I’m sorry,” Johan observed, “that I have not been to visit in a while. But apparently you were expecting me this evening.”

  “I thought events might bring you around.”

  “Yes, well, it seems that your sources are beginning to rival my own.” Johan looked at the busted back door. “I heard, for instance, that your house was broken into. I did not know, however, that you had been hurt.” He indicated Lammeck’s hand. “Did you cut yourself on glass?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let us hope you will heal quickly. You’ll find that the salty air this close to the ocean will speed the knitting of your wound.”

  “I’ll try that, when I get time.”

  “Have you been busy, Professor?”

  “Johan.”

  “Yes, amigo.”

  “I’m very tired. I’ve had a day. Honestly.”

  “I understand. How can I help?”

  “I want to ask you some questions.”

  Johan tipped his glass toward the candle flame, as if both were evidence. “With respect, Professor, you are in possession of facts or at least presumptions about me that led you to believe I would come here tonight. As it turns out, you were correct. So, since you are in my homeland and I am not in yours, and I am a policeman and you are not, I will for the first time in our friendship insist on something. You will tell me what you know. But first, por favor—” Johan waggled his emptied rum glass.

  The flame between the two men jittered, casting nervous shadows across Johan’s round face. It didn’t matter to Lammeck which of them asked and which gave answers. He figured the destination would be the same tonight. He refilled their glasses, then said, “The Unidad meeting this morning in Mendares.”

  Johan’s eyebrows went up. The rest of his features remained composed.

  “Why would you admit to me that you know this? Have you gone suicidal, Professor?”

  Lammeck kept his tiredness and impatience out of his voice. “Heitor Ferrer.”

  Johan touched fingertips to his chin, making no reply. He seemed reluctant to let Lammeck go farther.

  “Captain, please,” Lammeck said. “Heitor Ferrer. His wife, Susanna. Four others from the underground. Are they dead?”

  Johan stared down into his rum glass. He swirled the brown liquor, considering.

  “No. Heitor was wounded but he will live a while longer. We have them all in La Cabaña.”

  “Has anyone talked?”

  “Not yet.”

  Lammeck made himself move past images of Heitor, his wife, and the others being interrogated. Nothing in the captain’s tone hinted at what they were suffering inside the prison.

  “I was at the meeting. When the army showed up, I jumped out a window and got away. That’s when I cut my hand.”

  The policeman’s face didn’t flinch. “What were you doing there, Professor?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “What I know is irrelevant at the moment. All that matters is what you choose to tell me, and what I choose to do about it.”

  Earlier, waiting for Johan to arrive, Lammeck had concocted a dozen lies for this moment. All of them were elaborate, all flawed. He raised his glass for a quick fortification of rum. He swallowed deeply, then set the tumbler on the table.

  “I’m involved in a CIA plot to assassinate Castro.”

  Glumly, Johan smiled. “It seems everyone is, these days. Go on.”

  “I came here for research, just as I told you. Then the CIA approached and said they needed me because of my background in weapons and assassination theory. They just wanted me as a courier, nothing else.”

  Johan nodded. “Plausible deniability. The watchwords of your CIA. What did they promise you in return?”

  Lammeck described the offer, authorship of the secret American history of Castro’s assassination. He did not mention the exiles’ coming invasion. He said nothing of Calendar’s identity, or of the agent’s threats of ruination and death if Lammeck failed to cooperate. He didn’t produce the poison pill in his pocket.

  “I did what I was told. Then they kept
demanding more.”

  “Deals with the devil,” Johan said, “often end up that way. Continue.”

  Lammeck felt the understated lash of Johan’s disapproval. He figured he deserved it, and his situation was a testament to that.

  “Before I knew it, I was told to train and evaluate a kid, a sniper the CIA brought in.”

  “The defector Hidell.”

  Lammeck swallowed his surprise; Johan’s admission confused him for a moment. He hadn’t expected candor from the policeman. But the two of them were playing a chess game of information; pieces were withheld and pieces sacrificed.

  “I was at the meeting, with Alek. Your troops raided it.”

  “We received a tip this morning.”

  From dead Felix, Lammeck thought.

  He said, “Heitor started shooting first. The soldiers opened up with automatic weapons. Alek and I barely got away.”

  “I should not be surprised, Professor. I have watched you dodge the sea along the Malecón. I know you to be nimble. You are a reluctant man of action, but a capable one. You received a cut hand. Was Hidell injured?”

  “He wasn’t when I last saw him.”

  “And where was that?”

  “Running through the alley behind Heitor’s house.”

  “I ask again. What were you doing at the Unidad meeting?”

  “I was there to watch out for the boy.”

  “It seems that is, indeed, what you did. Were you there at the CIA’s request?”

  Lammeck chose a lie. So far, there was no need to move Rina onto the chessboard. “It was my own idea.”

  Johan rose from his wicker chair, carrying his glass with him. He stood before Lammeck’s door, inspecting it.

  “So when you returned home from your ordeal, your house had been broken into. What was missing?”

  Lammeck eyed the candle, without a breath of air to stir it. “You know what was taken.”

  “Do I?”

  Lammeck decided to test his authority now that he’d switched to the offensive.

  “Have a seat, Captain.”

  Johan complied, sinking with a middle-aged sigh into the cushions of the chair. The candle flame quavered at the disturbance.

  “You know Alek has the rifle. And you know he intends to kill Castro with it. What you don’t know is where and when.”

  Johan’s gaze fell on Lammeck without wrath.

  Lammeck continued. “You’ve got a Marine-trained sniper armed and loose in Havana. But there’s no manhunt out for him. That tells me one thing.”

  “What is that, Professor?”

  Lammeck drew a long breath. He judged the move to the knife at his back using his left hand, should he need it.

  “That you’re in on it.”

  Johan’s sole response to the accusation was to knit his fingers over his belly.

  “I know who called in the tip this morning. He’s been murdered, by the way, so don’t look for any more out of him. He told you about Heitor’s meeting and about Alek. What he left out was me. He didn’t know I was coming. I was the wild card.”

  “You remain a wild card, Professor.”

  “When I jumped out the window, I took the assassination plans with me. I memorized them, and I burned them. A soldier chased me, but there’s no way he got a good enough look to identify me. So, I figure until Heitor or one of his men breaks, no one knows I’m involved, unless they’re part of the plot themselves. When you showed up here tonight, I knew for sure.”

  Johan shifted in the wicker chair, setting his chin on his balled fist, a patient posture. “And what do I want from you now that I am here, incriminating myself?”

  “You’ve found out I’m trying to stop Alek.”

  “And I don’t want you to do this?”

  “No.”

  “You’re saying I want Castro dead. That I am part of Heitor Ferrer’s plot and I’m attempting to keep you from foiling it. Do I have this correct?” The policeman sounded skeptical.

  “Yes.”

  “And why exactly are you trying to stop it? If, as you say, we are both part of a plot to kill Fidel, why not let the boy play it out?”

  “Because I’ve been told to stop him. By CIA.”

  “Ah, yes. One would like America to stake out a position and stay there. It would make it so much easier for the rest of us. Tell me now, what do you want from me? You lit a candle, you poured me good siete. You are courting me for something, Professor. What is it?”

  “I want you to help me bring Alek in. Quietly, with no bloodshed. I want him and his fiancée put on a boat and off this island.”

  Johan twirled a finger beside his head. “And poof, like magic, none of this ever happened.”

  “Right.” Lammeck clamped his teeth against his growing annoyance and concern. Had he been wrong about Johan? Or was he dead on target? The policeman refused to give him a clear signal. “It never happened.”

  “But why should I do this, if I am so keen on the death of Fidel? Why not let Alek Hidell do what he came here for? Because you will expose me as a conspirator?”

  “If I have to.”

  Johan laughed openly. “If that is true, do you assume I will allow you to continue living?”

  Klaxons rang inside Lammeck now. His left hand slid off the arm of his chair, inching behind him.

  “Do not reach for your dagger, Professor. At the moment, you are in no danger from me. Likewise, I wish to be in none from you.”

  “You’ve just threatened my life, Captain.”

  “I said that merely as a way to illustrate the many holes in your most improbable thesis.”

  “There’s no other explanation for you coming here tonight.”

  “Really? Have you considered that perhaps the tipster this morning did in fact mention you by name, and I came to investigate, to see if you might know something to help me find this dangerous boy, so he can be brought in, as you say, without bloodshed? What if that is why there has been no manhunt so far? Or maybe I’ve been doing my job as Fidel’s protector and already knew you had an involvement with Hidell and Heitor, and I’ve simply chosen to bide my time confronting you over it, until this evening? Worst of all, what if tonight was nothing more than a social call to a friend I have not seen in a week, and you have just blurted out that you are up to your neck in a plot to assassinate my country’s leader?”

  The candle shuddered on Johan’s words. Lammeck considered snuffing it, but needed the thin light to help him gauge Johan.

  “It seems,” the policeman remarked, “that your conclusions are quite flimsy. I’m disappointed in you. I considered your deductive skills more keen.”

  “Alright,” Lammeck said, having danced long enough on the end of Johan’s flippancy. “Try this for keen. Hidell’s passport.”

  The policeman untwined his fingers over his waist. He sat erect in the chair.

  “Ah, you restore my faith. Proceed.”

  Lammeck knew that, despite Johan’s claim to the contrary, his life depended on his being right.

  “Something you told me when we first met. Ever since diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba were broken off in January, your office has been in charge of approving all visas from Americans. You said you personally approved mine.”

  “An action I have not regretted until now, my friend.”

  Lammeck ignored this. He rose and strode past Johan, looking down, aligning his argument.

  “Alek’s a defector to the Soviet Union. That means he’s given up his U.S. citizenship. He should not have an American passport. But he does. That tells me Alek Hidell isn’t his real name. When the CIA recruited him, they ginned him up a passport for him to come to Cuba. And they did it in record time. Five days before leaving Minsk, he didn’t even know he was coming.”

  “And I,” Johan said mildly, “am implicated because I approved the visa for Alek Hidell, an American visiting Cuba?”

  “And for his Russian fiancée. There couldn’t possibly have been enough time for
you to see any visa applications. CIA came to you. They told you to let those kids in. And you did it.”

  Lammeck stood in front of Johan. The policeman sat motionless, gazing up at Lammeck in the sallow glimmer of the candle.

  Lammeck asked, “Do you even know his real name?”