The Betrayal Game - [Mikhal Lammeck 02]

by David L. Robbins

  “Get us some food, Mikhal,” Alek repeated in his high spirits, and was gone into the bathroom.

  Lammeck made the call, ordering steaks for all of them, even one for Blanco outside the room.

  When he turned from the phone, Rina said in Russian, “Yes. I know. I owe you. You have brought him back, as you said you would.” She gazed at him not with the smile she’d mounted for Alek, but with the countenance she’d shown Lammeck last night, the impenetrable face of a KGB operative.

  Behind the bathroom door, water ran as Alek busied himself inside the shower. He would not hear them.

  “Tell me now,” Lammeck said.

  The girl nodded.

  “I had no knowledge the meeting was to be betrayed. But, before coming here, I was briefed to suspect such a move from CIA. I sent you to the meeting in hope that your presence might thwart Calendar, should he have such intentions. Perhaps he might hold off, tip his hand, if you were endangered as well as Alek. I had no idea Calendar was so ruthless. I am sorry you have been used this way.”

  “You used me, too, Rina.”

  “Not to kill you, Mikhal. Only to be a distraction. I cannot repay you for what you have done for me and my country. I will not ask what other arrangements you have made for Alek’s and my benefit, and at your own expense. I thought only to give you this one last truth, for my debt.”

  One less secret, Lammeck thought. Still, there were too many. He wanted Alek and Rina on the boat, out of Cuban waters. Then he could concentrate on getting himself out of the web of deceits, and off the island.

  The meals arrived. Lammeck struggled with his bandaged hand to slice his steak. Rina told him to call the front desk for a first aid kit. Blanco knocked when it arrived. After eating, Rina inspected Lammeck’s wound. The furrow in the meat of the palm was deep but clean and pink. Lammeck gritted his teeth while Rina spun fresh gauze around his hand. Alek, showered and fed now, kept his attention out the window, gazing at old Havana.

  Conversation died soon after the meal. Alek, selfish and continuing in his drama as returning warrior, collapsed on the bed, soon snoring. Rina and Lammeck in their chairs gazed at each other above the boy’s prone body, patient with him. The girl was wise beyond her years. She had a steely nerve and a wild streak. The American boy on the bed was going to be her adventure.

  Lammeck checked his watch. Three-thirty. He closed his eyes, lulled by the silence and the late afternoon light behind Rina. He heard her climb onto the bed beside the sleeping boy.

  They all awoke to a knock on the door. Lammeck checked his watch again. Two hours had passed.

  Johan was early.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Inglaterra Hotel

  Havana

  CALENDAR BECKONED THE WAITER with an impatient signal, a street-fighting gesture, indicating, Bring it on.

  The man arrived with a tray in his hands full of empty dishes. “Señor?”

  Calendar asked in Spanish, “What’s your name?”

  “Gustavo, señor.’”

  “Gustavo, I’ve been sitting here for an hour, waiting for a sandwich and a second beer.”

  “I am sorry, señor. As you see, the patio is very busy today. The parade, Fidel’s speech. We are doing our best.”

  “Your best is going to starve me.”

  “I will do what I can.”

  “Yeah. Do that.”

  The waiter whirled away with the tray. Calendar heard his muttered curse, “Coño.” Calendar shook his head. He was eager to be done with Cuba. Communism, he thought. It always ruins the service.

  His food and beer appeared minutes after the parade lurched forward and began to file past the reviewing stand across the boulevard. Calendar munched. He cut his eyes between the platform and the roof of El Capitolio’s south wing four blocks off.

  He set the sandwich down, drained the beer instead, hoping it might quell the acid burn in his gut.

  He fixed his eyes on the platform, ignoring the capitol for the moment. He couldn’t see the boy anyway, not at this distance.

  Questions, all unanswered, fed the furnace in his stomach. He wanted another beer, a glass of water, something to pour on top of it, but Gustavo was swamped and surly. Calendar clenched his teeth.

  Lammeck. The fat man wasn’t dead. Why not? Did Hidell miss him? Not likely, the kid could flat-out shoot. Did Hidell get softhearted at the last minute?

  Where was Lammeck? Chances were he was up on the capitol roof right now, trying to talk the kid down. The professor knew his own life was forfeit if he didn’t do to the letter what Calendar instructed. Lammeck was a teacher and aging, but when the chips were down he was no puss. Calendar had to keep him on a short, tight leash.

  It’ll all work out, Calendar decided. The kid will plug the professor up on the roof. Johan will arrest Hidell. The plan will stay intact.

  But what if Lammeck wasn’t up there with Hidell? What if Hidell wasn’t even up there anymore?

  Those weren’t insurmountable problems. Why?

  Because among the dozen suits and uniforms on the stage, Fidel was absent. Hidell had no one to shoot. Lammeck must’ve gone to Johan for help. The cop had done something to keep Castro away. Risky but smart.

  Calendar still had time to work with Johan to trump something up against the kid. Get him arrested. Get him dead. Then pick up the Russian girl. With a little luck, that could all be done before day’s end.

  Later, Calendar would deal with Lammeck. That posed no challenge.

  A tractor hauled a float between the patio and the platform. For several seconds, Calendar couldn’t see around a great papier-mâché cow. When the obstruction had rolled past, he saw Johan rising up the steps of the reviewing stand.

  Rina was on his arm.

  Calendar’s gut roiled. He looked into his beer glass. Only drops remained in the bottom. He drank them. Reaching into his pocket, Calendar pulled out a ten-peso note. He raised the bill and the empty glass together in the air. In seconds, a passing waiter snatched them both.

  Before the girl approached the microphones, a fresh drink was on Calendar’s table. He swallowed a third of the glass, wondering, Now what?

  Into the mikes, casting her voice over a square mile of the city, the girl spoke Russian. Who in the hell in this crowd spoke Russian?

  Calendar shot his eyes to the roof of El Capitolio.

  Hidell. He was up there, listening.

  She was telling the boy she loved him. To trust the one beside him.

  So, Lammeck was up there, too!

  She told Hidell to come down.

  The ten thousand Cubans along Prado applauded the translations of what she said. Then Johan took the girl by the elbow to escort her away from the hank of microphones past confused but clapping dignitaries on the stage. Calendar watched the policeman guide the slender figure back down the steps, feeling the acid rage in his stomach. Johan handed Rina off to a pair of Cubans in dark garb and pistols. She let the two take her in hand without a glance around. She’d done her part.

  Was she under arrest? No. There was no reason to grab the Russian at this point. Not until Hidell was in custody. What was going on?

  An assistant handed Johan a fat green walkie-talkie. With a hurried stride, the captain lit out south along Prado, avoiding the crowded sidewalks by skimming the parade’s edge.

  On his feet now, Calendar grabbed his glass. He tipped it like a sword swallower and gulped the rest of the beer. He tucked another ten-peso note under the sandwich plate. Elbowing past patrons, brushing against Gustavo on his way out, Calendar moved into Johan’s wake up the boulevard, pressing against the current of marchers and floats.

  Inside the parade like this, the bands were blaring. Calendar’s heartburn snarled at him. He popped himself in the sternum with a fist to try and calm his gut, break some logjam inside him. Johan set a pace that made Calendar break into a slow jog. Calendar’s mood, not good to begin with, began to plunge on the weight of the unknown. Lamme
ck, Johan, the KGB girl, they’d come up with some plan on their own, something that didn’t include Calendar.

  Not yet it didn’t, he thought.

  He stayed half a block behind Johan to the capitol building. The policeman hastened across the lawn to the rear of the great structure, the side facing Avenida Industria. Calendar slowed, keeping himself hidden inside the throng along Prado, then doubling back. The police captain had positioned himself near a door leading down to the basement. Above and behind him, Calendar caught sight of three police snipers arrayed on the roof of the cigar factory. Johan spoke into the walkie-talkie; the snipers knelt and brought their long-barreled rifles up to their cheeks, scopes to their eyes. All went still as gargoyles.

  Two minutes passed. The parade skipped blithely by. The vast crowd cheered the floats and farmers, all ignorant of the real event unfolding at their backs, the one that could change their lives, not just their sunny Sunday. Calendar loved these moments of life and death and shifting world power, knowing he’d set it all in motion. Then Lammeck and Hidell came out of the basement door. Calendar crept closer.

  Johan spoke to them both, then into his two-way radio. The snipers on top of the cigar factory withdrew. Calendar half-expected them to shoot the defector down where he stood, but Johan must have decided to silence him at La Cabaña instead. Just as well. Do it out of sight.

  An unmarked police car pulled up on Avenida Industria. Johan put Alek and the professor into the rear seat. The car pulled away. Standing alone, the captain watched it go, walkie-talkie at his side. Like Rina, he acted like his role had been played out. Calendar kept an eye on him. Johan crossed the capitol lawn to stroll along Prado. This time he made his way behind the crowd, in no rush, back toward the viewing platform. At a distance, Calendar followed.

  Why didn’t the police captain get into the car? Why wasn’t he on his way to the prison right now? He should be staying close to Hidell, poised to shut him up permanently, before the kid could open his yap to spill how he was CIA, not KGB. Rina needed to be arrested. What the fuck was all this about, putting the Russian in front of the mikes, sending Lammeck up on the roof, bringing Hidell down alive, arresting him, if not to keep the plot on course?

  And Lammeck? Why’d he get into the car? His part in this was over.

  If he could, if Johan weren’t ambling around in public, Calendar would grab him by the lapels and fling him against a wall or two, get to the bottom of what was going on. Calendar peeled away from trailing Johan, quickening his step, south from the parade route, deeper into old Havana. He dodged around barricades until he found flowing traffic.

  He stepped in front of an oncoming taxi. The driver braked to keep from mowing him down. Calendar looked in the back. He handed the Cuban riding there twenty pesos to get out. He gave the driver another twenty to drive him to Miramar.

  ~ * ~

  Calendar knocked again. He went around back. He reached past the broken glass pane in the door to turn the knob from the inside.

  “Lammeck!”

  Calendar bolted through the rooms, looking for clues where the professor might be. Bed neatly made. Breakfast dishes in the sink, with two glasses that smelled of rum. Who’d he been drinking with? Johan?

  If Lammeck hadn’t come home after the parade, where else could he be? Did Johan clap him in La Cabaña along with Hidell? No, the captain wouldn’t do that. He’d have to silence Lammeck, too; both the boy and the professor knew this had been a CIA operation. Johan was too slick to make that mistake. If Alek Hidell disappeared in a Cuban jail, no big deal. Who was going to complain? The kid wasn’t American and he wasn’t Russian. But if hotshot professor Mikhal Lammeck dropped out of sight, someone would notice. That act, if it became necessary, would require a more deft touch. Calendar’s.

  He stomped out of the house, back to the taxi idling at the curb. Was Lammeck in a bar, calming his nerves? Back at his favorite spot, the patio at the Inglaterra? The man liked his beer and rum. Was Lammeck getting soused watching that fucking parade?

  Was he ducking Calendar? No. Lammeck knew better.

  Where did Johan’s bullyboys take him?

  Calendar shrugged. He’d have to find the professor later, after the crowds left downtown and the streets cleared.

  He climbed back into the taxi.

  “The Nacional. Rápidamente.”

  The taxi sped along the Malecón. Sunday revelers strolled on the sidewalks. The sea lay flat and the road glistened only with a light traffic of shining American cars. The Nacional Hotel, the former crown gem of Meyer Lansky’s empire in Havana, stood high on its escarpment above the boulevard. Calendar ignored the city’s beauty, paying attention only to his grinding gut. He rapped himself again in the chest and tried to belch.

  At the Nacional’s front door, he let the taxi go. Calendar strode without slowing to the elevators. He punched the button for the sixth floor.

  Arriving with a bell, the doors slid aside. He stepped into the hall. To the right, at the far end, was Alek and Rina’s room. Calendar did not take a step that direction. Outside their door, the armed guard, all in black, would have seen him.

  Calendar pretended he was on the wrong floor. He slinked back into the elevator before the doors shut behind him.

  Going down, he stared at himself in the mirror inside the elevator cabin. He wanted to smash the image. The stress in his stomach moved to his hands. He squeezed them in and out of fists, watching himself fume until the doors parted. The bell sounded again, like the start of a boxing round. A tourist couple stood in the lobby, waiting beside a bellhop with their luggage stacked on a brass cart. Calendar pushed them aside and knocked the cart into a spin. The man cursed in French. Calendar jammed fingers into his pocket for the mouthpiece, kept moving.

  He emerged outside, at the swimming pool. Guests lounged in the weekend warmth. Calendar stopped and surveyed them: flabby men, cigar stubs in their teeth, women lying on their stomachs with straps loosened to prevent tan lines, books, towels, and drinks beneath paper umbrellas. Calendar stood panting. He wanted to break something. He saw himself uproot a light pole and swing it like a berserk superman, swatting everyone and everything until he was alone and could scream: What the fuck?

  People began to look back at him. A waiter came his way, mounting an inquisitive smile. The man’s approach centered Calendar’s instincts again, to be invisible, make no imprint. The waiter asked, “Señor, may I help you?” Calendar shook his head.

  He left the pool through a gate in the surrounding wooden fence. He found himself by a dozen metal trashcans. One kick, one deep dent, would make him feel better but the noise would be too loud. Calendar remembered who he was supposed to be, a shadow unstaked from the ground. He was Bud. Everybody and nobody.

  His heartburn eased.

  “Alright,” Bud Calendar decided, “alright. Enough of this. So long, Fidel.”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Nacional Hotel

  LAMMECK’S BACK ACHED FROM sleeping in the chair. On the bed, Rina and Alek stirred but did not rise.

  Blanco opened the door.

  “Professor?” the guard said. “Captain Johan has arrived. He would like to see you downstairs in the courtyard. Alone.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I cannot say. He asked me to send only you down. If you please. Tell the boy and girl to pack.”

  “Just a minute.”

  Blanco closed the door. Lammeck stepped quietly into the bath to splash his face. When he came out, Rina eyed him from the bed.

  “Is it time?”

  “Not yet. Johan wants to see me downstairs. Just some last-minute details. I’ll be back. Start packing.”

  Lammeck left the room. In the hall, Blanco stopped him.

  “Captain Johan says you saved Fidel.”

  Lammeck nodded.

  “Thank you,” the Cuban said. “That boy...If the captain allows it, I will kill him myself.”

  Lammeck was stunned. Al
ek wasn’t going to be killed. That wasn’t the agreement. He was on his way to the docks, to Freeport—

  “I’m sorry, Professor. I should not speak. The captain waits. Please.”

  The guard looked down the hall, for him to go. Lammeck stepped away toward the elevators, glancing over his shoulder at Blanco. The guard made his face stony, regretting his indiscretion.

  Another of Johan’s men, pistol at his hip, waited for Lammeck at the elevator bank. This one said nothing but pushed the button and stood aside for the car to arrive. They rode down together. Johan waited on a bench in the hotel’s rear gardens under waning sunlight. The guard stopped several strides away but remained in range.