Leon Uris

by Topaz

  “I dropped in to see Nicole this morning. I guess André had just left the house on his trip. She didn’t take him to the airport.”

  “That’s not a federal offense.”

  “It is with them. She was a little tight. Not drunk, just tight. A lot of tears and babbling. I’ve never seen her that way. I spent quite a bit of time with her ... that’s why lunch was late.”

  “You know how it is. He’s under pressure, she folds.”

  “What about his women? I understand he has a lot of them.”

  “Not a lot, just enough. When he travels he gets down, tired, lonely. You know, like a human being. Hasn’t got a damn thing to do with loving your wife.”

  “She’s at an age where she’s very uncertain about herself.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Liz, what does Nicole want? André hasn’t let any women give her a moment’s worry or challenge her position. He’s discreet and he hasn’t dumped it on the doorstep. Nicole writes much more into this than she should.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

  “Right for Nicole’s husband, not yours. Come on, Liz, we’ve played out the same damn scene. She’s got him feeling guilty about things he hasn’t done wrong.”

  “Are they going to make it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Lord, I wish there was something I could do.”

  “People don’t change, Liz. One by one the reasons to remain married fade. Most families hang together out of economic necessity. Then there’s the children. Or the dread of loneliness. But there comes a saturation point where none of the fears equals the torture of a deteriorated marriage. I think she’s pushed him over the edge.”

  “Nicole said something very strange. She said that she was getting the feeling more and more that he wants her to have a lover.”

  “We all go through that,” he answered.

  “Mike, it scares me to see this. Are we all right?”

  “We’re all right.”

  “It’s not easy to learn, but I came to know that all the rest of it means nothing if you don’t deliberately hurt me. I’ve really tried to make things more comfortable for you.”

  “You have, Liz.”

  The dreaded sound of the phone ringing stiffened Liz, then she answered and handed the receiver to him and saw his face grow tense and heard him say he’d be right down. Oh, damnit! Why can’t they leave him alone just one Sunday?

  “Something came up. I’m not sure when I’ll get in.”

  “Of course, dear.”

  “You go on to the show. I’ll heat up the stew.”

  “No, I’ll wait for you, Mike.” She put her arms about him and rested her head on his chest. “Try not to be too tired when you come home,” she said.

  15

  SANDERSON HOOPER ARRIVED AT the Bethesda Naval Hospital simultaneously with Nordstrom and they proceeded together quickly down the corridor toward the guarded wing housing the Kuznetov family.

  Boris Kuznetov was propped up with pillows. He smiled wanly as they entered. The Russian appeared much better. Some of the chalk had faded from his cheeks. “I regret to inform you I am making excellent progress,” he said, “although American television is no help. It’s quite bad.”

  Nordstrom pulled a chair close to the bed so Boris would not have to labor while speaking. Sanderson Hooper fingered his pipe in his pocket but remembered not to light it.

  Kuznetov looked at both of them seriously. “I’ve come to a decision,” he said. “That terrible pain hit my chest and darkness overcame me. Then I awoke under that oxygen tent. As the days passed with nothing to do but think, many things became very clear for the first time. I realized that if I could live, above everything else I had to live for my family. But I did not want to die .... I just didn’t want to die.... I still love Russia.”

  He stopped and tears came down his cheek at the mention of his mother country.

  “It’s also unjust to take this country as my home and betray it from the beginning. Well, Nordstrom, you should be proud. I’m going to tell you everything.”

  He blinked a moment and waited to reinforce his meager strength. “You can start your Americanization program with Olga and Tamara.”

  “I keep posted about your condition every day,” Michael said. “We’ll have to take it very slowly. Soon as the doctor gives the green light, we’ll start.”

  “Yes, take care. I’m a valuable piece of merchandise.... I insist that Devereaux be present.”

  “He’s on a trip. Will you agree to the preliminary interrogation without him?”

  “Yes, that should be all right.”

  “Try not to brood,” Nordstrom said.

  Nordstrom drove back to Washington, taking small consolation in the victory over the Russian.

  “I suppose things do become clear inside an oxygen tent,” Sanderson Hooper said. “Mike, you haven’t spoken a word.”

  “Just thinking.”

  “About Boris Kuznetov?”

  “About him ... mostly about Devereaux. What’s the connection? Why does Kuznetov demand André?”

  “Points to the fact that Kuznetov has been on a mission against France.”

  “Or maybe he is deliberately using Devereaux.”

  “We all seem to use Devereaux,” Hooper said.

  “He’s in a lot of hot water, wife and country. Hoop, I got a line on his health. Maybe we shouldn’t have asked him to go to Cuba.”

  “Sorry about all his bad luck,” Hooper answered coldly, “but we have to think of ourselves.”

  16

  JUANITA DE CÓRDOBA PULLED her car to a halt before the carved wooden door of the villa. In a quick, graceful movement she spun out of the driver’s seat, gathered up her packages, and shut the door with a push of the heel.

  Emilio, the houseman, rushed out and took her packages. The instant she walked into the foyer the odor of potent cigar smoke was present.

  “Rico Parra, señora,” Emilio said, “he has been waiting for over an hour.”

  She hid her displeasure, lowering her eyes. “Very well.”

  At the end of the foyer she could see past the French doors to the veranda which hovered above the sea. Rico Parra, boots propped on the rail, sat munching a large mouthful of banana from a fruit bowl. He flipped the peeling over the rail, swallowed the load, and lit another cigar.

  She studied him. The green dungarees were new and pressed, his boots polished to a high sheen, and even the unruly mop of hair and beard had been put into order for the occasion. As she approached she could smell a second odor. He reeked of cologne as though he had bathed in it in a clumsy attempt to make himself presentable.

  Rico heard her dartlike footsteps, dropped his boots to the tile floor with a thud, and came to his feet. Juanita moved through the French doors without a word and his eyes followed her with obvious longing.

  “I happened to be in the neighborhood,” he blurted. “I ... uh ... there are a number of public events coming up next month and I thought I could be your escort.”

  There was no answer from her.

  “Well, for Christ’s sake, I could have more of a welcome. I’ve been gone a long time. Did you get my letters?”

  “Yes.”

  “Paris, Moscow ... head of the Cuban delegation in New York. Not bad for a peasant’s son, eh?”

  She continued to bear his unwelcomed presence with a quiet dignity that made the contrast between them even more apparent.

  “Look, I brought some things from Paris,” he said. “France,” he continued as an afterthought. “Perfume, real French perfume and a case of champagne. And here, a needlepoint handbag. It is very expensive but it says to me ... Little Dove ... and I knew you should have it.”

  “I will not accept gifts from you,” Juanita said and watched his face grow dark.

  “Why do you always make me feel like dirt?”

  “Rico, this business has been going on for a year. I have made my feelings clear. It embarrasses me to be
put into this position. Please leave me alone.”

  He flung his cigar to the floor and squashed it under his boot and moved to her, breathing unevenly, then shoved both hands in front of her eyes. “See! My fingernails are clean! They are manicured just like yours!”

  She turned her back on him and walked toward the living room and he followed, pleading ... “Juanita ... please ... you are making a great mistake. I am now one of the biggest men in all of Cuba. Fidel depends on me from morning to night. You know how I crave you.”

  She stopped her retreat and stared into the black wounded eyes and the revolutionary quaked before her. “I have no feeling for you, Rico,” she said firmly.

  “Because I am a peasant!”

  “No. There are many beautiful peasants in Cuba. They live and die with dignity. What you really want from me is respectability. There is no way you can buy it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are scum.”

  His eyes watered and he giggled half madly. “But André Devereaux is a gentleman, isn’t he! He kisses your hand and dribbles little whispers into your ears. Oh yes, the great French lover is coming to his Little Dove and you cream!” Rico thumped his fist against his chest. “But he will never be a man like me! Yes, and what about the others ... the great Señor Iglesias with his Venezuelan oil and his yachts taken from the blood and the sweat of the people! And the Italian wop bastard aviator. Very brave when it comes to bombing defenseless Ethiopian villages .... Well ... I thought as long as you were passing it out so freely you might give a few of your countrymen a break.” He grabbed her arms and pressed his fingers until his knuckles turned white. “Behind all of that crap ... that nobility ... you’re just a slut.”

  “Good day, Rico,” she said softly, “Emilio will see you out.”

  17

  KLM FLIGHT 431 TERMINATED at Rancho Boyeros, with the stairs being rolled to the DC-6B. A trio of immaculately white-clad Cuban musicians stationed themselves to greet the debarking passengers with rumbas, cha-cha-chas, and sambas. This was Castro’s proof that there was still a “beat” in Cuba.

  However, the “beat” began and ended right there.

  André stepped into the suffocating terminal, where the air-conditioning had long been out of function for fear that explosives would be set into the ducts.

  The old health officer, a relic of Batista days, recognized him and called him to the desk ahead of the others, where he was waved through to the immigration booths.

  These were now manned by a half-dozen Castro militia clad in ill-fitting faded green fatigues. A Negro militiaman, who attempted to identify himself with the Revolution by a growth of straggly beard, took André’s passport and thumbed the fully stamped pages with confusion. André reached over, took the passport and handed it back, right side up.

  “Diplomat,” André said.

  The guard stared angrily, then gave the passport to an assistant who could read. A blank space was sought out and stamped with vigor.

  André stood by his own immune luggage as more militia poked through the baggage of the others, confiscating all English-language newspapers and magazines, both pro- and anti-Castro.

  The customs chief, a short, fat, big-bottomed woman, appearing ridiculous in green slacks, waddled over to him and placed the necessary stamps on his bags.

  Outside the checking rooms, the French Ambassador to Cuba, Alain Adam, greeted André warmly. The chauffeur gobbled up his bags and they made for the car.

  Alain Adam was a member of that dwindling band, a ranking diplomat who had escaped President La Croix’s axings and, like André, continued in office on borrowed time.

  They had gone in dozens. Good men. Good Frenchmen cast out of the services with objective ruthlessness and once out were usually unable to place themselves in compatible jobs in France and unable to survive on their meager pensions.

  This was André’s first return to Cuba in several months. The drive into the city showed, without words, that things had gotten still worse.

  The row of factories, beginning with the Goodrich and International Harvester plants, was all but defunct.

  The stadium was once again turned into a concentration camp, crammed with real or imaginary enemies rounded up after the Bay of Pigs.

  André left Alain Adam at the Chancellery, taking an Embassy car by himself to let his professional eye appraise Havana.

  The “beat” was gone.

  Havana! The city of romance, rhythm, rum, roulette!

  The “beat” was gone.

  Gone were the shrill voices of the bookies in their lottery stalls where any Cuban worth his salt would bet on the next pitch or at the cockfight or at the jai-alai frontons.

  That nervous movement of the Habanero taking his spoon-sized cup of potent sweet coffee in a single quick sip twenty times a day at the little open stands.

  The beat of barter at the cheap brothels set in near the docks waiting for the French, American, and Italian fleets to unload their cargoes of swaggering sailors. This, too, was gone.

  Gone were the clicking Cuban heels and swaying bottoms and the lust-filled eyes of the Habaneros, who seemed to have no other occupation but watching women’s backsides.

  And the beat of the promenaders who aired themselves along the Malecón sea front all dressed in bleached white.

  Gone were the shiploads of tourists seeking sin, making off for Sloppy Joe’s, where a dozen bartenders played out magnificent drama in the fine art of mixing drinks.

  And El Floridita, where those in the know waited to ogle at the bearded pundit of American literature. El Florida, which acquitted itself nobly in its sacred mission of saving the daiquiri formula during American prohibition. And, during prohibition, the luxury yachts came to avail themselves of the pleasures of the Sodom of the Western Hemisphere.

  Gone now were the delights of the lady tourists in that place where they could be improper. The pornographic movie houses and human male stud shows.

  Diminished were the world’s greatest night club, the Tropicana, and the splendid restaurants, the Monseigneur and the Crystal Palace and the rest where justice was done to the delectable Morro crab with mayonnaise made before one’s eyes at tableside.

  All these things that had made Havana a center of sin and gave her her “beat” were gone.

  And in their place the arcaded streets were patrolled by angry, bearded, bereted revolutionaries.

  The whores had all been rounded up and interned in the once elegant Hotel Nacional to be reenlightened to live as productive citizens of the new society. They were turned loose as drivers, and soon the highways and roads were littered with the wreckage of trucks that had died of abuse.

  Smart shops once bulging with alligator and tobacco and liquors and other national products that lined the Paseo de Martí on Prado Boulevard were either seedy, empty or shuttered.

  The nation’s Capitol building, an edifice built after the Capitol in Washington of marble and rare woods and gilded bronze, had degenerated into a grotesque house of barter.

  Departing refugees were forced to turn in almost every personal possession. These were dumped, sorted, and sold in the foyers, halls, and galleries of Cuba’s Capitol. Baby shoes, eyeglasses, trousers, brassieres, sandals, Panama hats, jewelry, all stacked in marble corridors like the warehouses of Auschwitz.

  André drove through the harbor tunnel to the Morro Castle and La Cabaña Fort. Thousands of Cubans stood in tragic silence waiting for a glimpse of a relative imprisoned in the former national shrines. The dungeons of Morro Castle were once again crammed. And thousands were shoved into the dry moats of La Cabaña, the black hole of the universe. They were left to die in the blazing sun with almost no water or sanitation, and they fought like rats for scraps thrown down to them by the militia.

  Old people were in these moats. Old people who had come to Cuba to finish out their lives in the sun. Now they were enemies of the Revolution. Many Americans had been among them.

  Castro made no a
ttempt to hide prisoners. They were stuffed everywhere. Thousands and thousands and tens of thousands. The once luxury hotels were walled in by barbed wire and had decayed to lice-riddled flophouses.

  In a final symbol of hate, the monument to the battleship Maine, a testimony to American help in the liberation from Spain, had been dismantled.

  And all of it made the brute dictator Batista a pale, benevolent tyrant alongside the massive rape of Fidel Castro.

  André Devereaux returned to his room in the Embassy to unpack. Alain Adam personally came to deliver him a message. André smiled as he read it. It was from Juanita de Córdoba and she was waiting.

  18

  MUÑOZ, THE PERSONAL BUTCHER of Havana and hangman of the Revolution, held court in his office in the dreaded Green House of Avenida Quinta near the sea.

  Muñoz had innocent brown eyes and baby cheeks and an almost sweetness about him that belied the brutality with which he served Castro. The G-2 headquarters had been converted into a chamber of horrors reserved for the more prominent enemies of the Revolution. Here confessions were extracted in rooms that threw off a horrible stench.

  Muñoz was no longer aware of the odor for the smell of death was a part of him. The personal torture of his victims had demented him beyond human feelings.

  His visitor was Oleg Gorgoni, Resident of the Soviet Embassy in Havana and second ranking KGB officer in the Western Hemisphere.

  “André Devereaux must be taken care of,” Gorgoni demanded. “You know his history and his sympathies. Furthermore, we suspect this woman he consorts with. This Juanita de Córdoba.”

  Muñoz looked up with such menace that Gorgoni was suddenly struck wordless. “You suspect everyone. But you are not running Cuban G-2, Comrade. Unless you are ready to supply proof against Juanita, I advise you to be quiet about her.”

  Muñoz had extended himself to the limit of his powers. He could bully and persecute underlings and small fish, but one did not murder a ranking French diplomat, nor did one toy with Juanita de Córdoba. Fidel would feed him to his own sharks if he made a mistake. True, the Comrade Resident had sound suspicions, but it was a decision beyond his hands.