Mambo

by Campbell Armstrong

  Canto looked grim. “I wonder if there’s anything left to lose in Cuba these days. Life doesn’t have much quality. It’s mostly dreary but one goes through the motions, because suicide isn’t an alternative. I’d like some joy, I think. Even a prospect of joy would do. Perhaps I should flee to Miami and play the exile game.”

  Was that how Canto saw her and Garrido and all the others in the US – just players in a game? It was a bleak little thing to say, almost an accusation. Magdalena made no response. How could she object? She didn’t live here. Her Cuba hadn’t been the daily grinding reality of Canto’s; perhaps hers had been no more than a dream place, a state of mind, something she thought she could help shake and remake in quite another image.

  A state of mind: was that all? A delusion? She wasn’t sure. She understood only how odd it was actually to be here in her native country after thirty years. Her sense of exile had always been strong and melancholic. What was more terrible than being forced out of your own country and obliged to live in another just because you disagreed with certain principles? Exile was a wretched condition – the yearning, the way you tried to laugh the longing off as some kind of silliness, but you were never convincing.

  Now she smelled the Cuban night as if she’d never smelled anything before. This was where she belonged, the place Rafael Rosabel had promised her and then stolen. She was suddenly aware of his nearness: he was ten, fifteen minutes away, she wasn’t sure, her sense of direction had eroded with time, amnesia, confusion. What did she feel? what did she really feel? She didn’t know.

  Canto slowed the car in the neighbourhood of Vedado. Under the outstretched branches of a palm in a dark street, he parked the Lada, turned off the lights but left the engine running.

  “Go right at the next corner. Halfway down the street there’s a new apartment block. Very small. Exclusive. Rosabal lives there on the top floor. I understand there is usually a security guard in the entrance. However,” and Canto paused, wiped his face with the handkerchief again, “because we have a few friends here and there, somebody was able to persuade the usual guard to call in sick. Unhappily, his replacement never received the order to substitute for him. A bureaucratic oversight. One of many in Cuba.”

  “Convenient.”

  “We have our moments.” Canto stared through the windshield. Wind lashed suddenly through the fronds of the palm and they made hard slapping noises on the roof of the car.

  “What about Rosabal’s wife? Does she live in the apartment?”

  “I didn’t know he had a wife,” Canto said.

  Welcome to the club, Magdalena thought.

  She opened the passenger door.

  “I’ll come back to this spot in ten minutes,” Canto said and looked at his watch. “If you’re not here, I’ll come back again in another ten minutes. If you still haven’t shown up, I’ll make one more attempt ten minutes later provided it’s safe to do so. If you’re here I’ll take you back to the airfield. If not … well, I prefer to be positive.”

  Before she got out of the car Magdalena opened Garrido’s pouch. The gun inside was a loaded lightweight Fraser automatic with a handle of imitation pearl. She slipped the weapon in the pocket of her leather jacket, then reached inside the pouch again. She removed a small brown bottle that contained two unmarked white capsules, which puzzled her for a moment. And then she understood. Garrido, in a melodramatic gesture, had provided her with failure pills, suicide capsules. Swallow two, lie down, oblivion guaranteed. He obviously had no doubts about her business in Havana. It was all black and white to him. Either she’d do the job and come back to Miami, or she’d fail and be captured and take the pills. He didn’t see the complexity of emotions involved. He couldn’t imagine how there might be any indecision on her part. He didn’t want to know. As he got older so did his need grow to make the world more simple, more manageable.

  She stuck the bottle in the pocket of her jeans, got out of the car. Canto drove away. She walked quickly, then paused in the shadows as if frozen.

  Illuminated by a solitary streetlight, two men were talking together on the pavement opposite. One wore a uniform, the other a white guayabera. The uniformed man removed his cap, tossed his head back, laughed at something. He had a pistol at his hip and was obviously some kind of cop; she had no way of knowing who his companion might be. Both men laughed now, heads inclined together like conspirators. Then the cop turned and walked away with a wave of his hand. His companion went inside one of the houses on the street, an old baroque structure carved into expensive apartments. The riff-raff didn’t live in this neighbourhood.

  Magdalena waited until the street was empty before she moved. The apartment building where Rafael lived was small and rather unassuming; presumably the Minister of Finance in an allegedly Communist society had to keep appearances down as much as possible.

  Outside the entrance she stopped to gaze up the short flight of steps to the glass doors; there was a desk in the lobby, and a lamp was lit, but nobody was present.

  She pushed the doors open, entered the lobby. There was an lift to her left, but she chose the stairs instead. She climbed quietly, swiftly, possessed by an odd light-headed feeling, as if this were not really happening and she was some kind of wraith and the real Magdalena Torrente was back in Key Biscayne. The gun in her pocket knocked dully upon her thigh as she moved. The fourth floor was at the top of the building. Since there was only one door on each floor, finding Rosabal’s apartment was easy.

  She stepped toward the door, which had no number, no name-plate.

  You will have the pleasure of killing him, Garrido had said.

  You have earned that right more than anyone else.

  She knocked on the door in a gentle way.

  Then she waited.

  Pagan drove uneasily on the central highway that linked Pinar del Rio with Havana. Yellowy moonlight on the range of the Sierra de los Organos rendered the landscape unreal. The Oldsmobile was more invalid that automobile, and had begun to make the kind of clanking sound common to terminal cars. But it hadn’t died yet.

  Near San Cristobal – where in 1962 the Soviets had installed the SS-4 missiles that had led to the Cuban missile crisis – he parked the car beneath trees because a convoy of army trucks was lumbering past with no particular attention to the conventions of the road. They wandered from side to side on the highway, their dim lights menacing. When the last truck had gone past Pagan drove on.

  On the outskirts of Havana he came to the district of Marianao. In a silent side-street he stopped the car, consulted the map he’d been given by El Boxeador. He played the dim flashlight over it; Rosabal lived in the Vedado district of the city which so far as he could tell lay in the streets behind the Malecon, the sea wall along Havana’s coast.

  He drove past darkened houses and unlit shops, a Coppelia ice-cream parlour, a shuttered bar; Pagan had the fanciful thought that a plague might have closed the city down. There were no pedestrians save for a noisy clutch of women who came out of one tenement doorway and immediately entered another, leaving the sound of shrill drunken laughter behind.

  Streetlights were practically non-existent and where he found them were about as bright as candles. Lush trees stirred in the dark; here and there large ornate buildings stood like neglected palaces. Some of them had been religious colleges or the business headquarters of dispossessed norte americano corporations or the homes of the exiled rich. He drove with uncharacteristic caution, hearing the way the worn tyrewalls, as delicate as membranes, screeched whenever he turned a corner.

  He reached the avenue known as the Paseo, which was filled with trucks and private cars and people arguing over the cause of an accident in which a ’56 Chevy had ploughed into the side of a van. He didn’t like all this activity. He turned left, then right, crossed the Avenida de los Presidentes, found himself back in narrow streets again, some of them without names. Finally, inevitably, the Oldsmobile accomplished what it had been trying to do for the last fifty miles –
it gasped and shuddered and came to a halt outside a vacant lot behind tenements. Pagan, struggling with a certain panic, pressed the starter button a couple of times. The engine wouldn’t even turn over.

  Dead. What bloody timing.

  He got out of the vehicle, kicked a front tyre in frustration. Then by flashlight he studied his map, trying to memorise the way to Rosabal’s street.

  He walked for ten minutes, staying close to shadows as he anxiously sought street signs, landmarks, anything that might correspond to his map. Once, from a window over a butcher’s shop in which hung an unrealistic slab of plastic display beef, he heard the noise of a guitar playing lazily and a woman’s reedy voice singing “Una desgracia unfortunada” and elsewhere a caged bird squawked as if in competition. Down cross streets came the damp scent of the sea and very old stone and air that seemed to crackle with the sound of water dripping on salt. He passed under the signs of closed businesses. Farmacia. Casa Joyería. Restaurante Vegetariano.

  Once or twice taxis went cruising past. A smell of bread drifted from some distant bakery, arousing Pagan’s hunger. When had he last eaten? On the flight from London to Miami. Now he couldn’t remember what the food had been. Something awful. The smell of bread teased him. He kept walking, concentrating on where he was going, staying close to walls and passing beneath trees. Sometimes a loud carousing wind blew with such ferocity that it took his breath away and he had to turn his face out of its path.

  How much further? he wondered. Was he going in the right direction in this dismal city? Now he stopped, took out the crumpled map, examined it again. His flashlight, as jinxed as the car, flickered and went out. Did nothing work on this whole fucking island? He walked until he came to a streetlamp and he stood below it, staring at the map.

  Bloody hell – nothing on the map matched his surroundings. According to the route he’d taken he should have reached a small park that was represented on the map by a tiny green square – instead, what faced him was a warren of narrow streets where the houses all looked dilapidated, not at all the kind of neighbourhood in which you might imagine the Minister of Finance to live.

  Narrow streets led to others; old houses mirrored one another. A maze all at once, a territorial riddle, like something you might dream during restless sleep and force yourself abruptly awake into the familiar surroundings of your bedroom.

  This was no dream, Frank. No chance of waking up from this.

  Sweet Jesus, nothing was familiar here. He flapped the map again, examined it, blinked, remembering that he’d heard once how Communist countries deliberately printed devious maps to throw visitors off balance, to mislead them and prevent them from trespassing in places where they didn’t belong or from seeing something “sensitive” – be it a slum or a military camp or the headquarters of State Security. He also recalled hearing somewhere that street names were frequently being changed as one Party official fell from grace and another rose in prominence. Had Garcia Street, for example, become Munoz Street? Was that the kind of thing that happened? He had an urge to crumple the map and toss it, but even if it was misleading, even if it didn’t quite reflect reality, it was still the best shot he had of finding Rosabal.

  He walked again. The narrow streets, houses oddly quiet, most of them unlit, threatened him in a way that was more than merely vague. Doorways, darkened and silent, suggested presences that observed him as he walked past. And now he remembered something he’d read once about how each neighbourhood in Cuba, each block, had its own organisation of snoops who watched from windows, who reported strangers to the authorities. He tried to force confidence into his step. He belonged here. He was a man going home late. That was all. There was nothing odd about his presence. Nobody would look at him twice. He whistled quietly, then became silent. What if you were lost here forever? he wondered. What if you could never find your way out of these streets? Round and round, up and down, never seeing a street name, a number, a familiar face. One bad fucking nightmare. One endless inner scream of panic.

  Then, when he’d begun to feel a quiet despair, the streets became wider. The houses were larger now, richer, the foliage more dense. The warrens vanished behind him, the streetlamps became more generous. Across the way he saw it – the small park he’d been looking for before, his landmark. He felt a sense of enormous relief. A tiny darkened park, a scrap of greenery, nothing more, but for Pagan it was a major discovery. He consulted his map again; all he had to do was walk another few blocks north and he would come to Calle Santa Maria, which was where Rosabal lived – if the map was even approximately accurate.

  For a moment his mood changed. He was elated. He’d come this far without impediment. Even when a car slowed alongside him he didn’t let this new frame of mind dissolve immediately. He continued to walk, didn’t look at the car, kept his face forward. But when he became conscious of a face perusing him from the window of the vehicle, he understood he was being tracked by a police car, and his sense of confidence slipped quickly.

  Calm, Frank. Keep walking. Pay no attention. Pretend you’re strolling home after a night on the town – or what there is of it in this place.

  The car accelerated, went past him. On the next corner it braked, came to a stop. Pagan kept walking. He saw the door of the car open and a bulky figure emerge just ahead of him. Can’t chat, sorry, got to keep moving. The cop stood in the centre of the pavement with his legs spread slightly apart; he clearly meant to halt Pagan. Perhaps some strange law existed about being on the streets after a certain time. Or perhaps Pagan simply looked suspicious, the late-night straggler whose presence was of universal interest to passing cops.

  Shit. There would be questions in Spanish, a request for papers, documents, visas, the whole can of bloody worms. I am a deaf mute, Pagan thought. Would that act work?

  Pagan didn’t slacken his stride. He’d come this far and he wasn’t about to be thwarted by any overweight Cuban cop. There was only one way through this, and it wasn’t bluff. He stared at the pavement as he moved, raising his face only when he was within reach of the policeman, smiling, looking nice, friendly, even innocently puzzled by the cop’s presence. He bunched one of his large hands when he was no more than seven or eight inches from the cop, who was already asking him a question in belligerent Spanish.

  The punch was gathered from Pagan’s depths, coming up from a place level with his hip, up and up, a fine arc that carved through air, creating an uppercut the policeman saw but couldn’t avoid. The connection of knuckle on chin was painfully satisfying to Pagan, even though the overweight cop didn’t go down immediately. He staggered back and Pagan advanced, connecting with a second punch, this one – viciously unfair – directly into the thickness of flesh round the larynx, a hard sharp blow that caused the cop’s eyes to roll in his head. He went over this time, flat on his back with his legs wide.

  Pagan hurried away, knuckles aching. He was pleased with the swift accuracy of the performance – he hadn’t lost his touch; but what troubled him was the effort it had involved and the way he felt drained as he quickened his stride through drab streets of a city strange to him.

  Cabo Gracias a Dios, Honduras

  Three hours before first light Tomas Fuentes gave the final orders for the evacuation of the camp; he brought together the squadron leaders and their men. In their neat khaki fatigues they looked smart and trim, fighting men. Fuentes, who had a very big pistol holstered on his left hip, spoke through a PA system. He wished his men well in events that lay just ahead.

  Five hundred of them would be going on board two battleships that were presently anchored off the Cape. Six hundred more would be taking to the sea in frigates and transport ships. There would be extensive air cover from Skyhawks, Harriers and F-16s providing protection for amphibious landing-craft. The landing beaches would be unprotected; military manoeuvres had ensured the absence of Cuban troops, who were on the other side of the island. Bombing and strafing from the air would knock out any small pockets of Cuban air defences that we
re still manned; munitions stores and lines of communication would be destroyed quickly. Tanks and field-guns, unloaded from the ships, would be deployed on the road to Havana; beyond Santiago de Cuba there might be extensive fighting with the fidelistas. It was not expected to result in anything but victory for the forces of freedom, Fuentes declared. Besides – and here Tomas paused for effect – it was now known that Fidel was incapacitated and couldn’t lead his troops, which was certain to be a blow to Communist morale. This brought cheers from the assembly.

  This invasion, Fuentes said, was different from before in every respect. This time they were prepared. This time they had amazing support from their freedom-loving brothers in the Cuban armed forces. This time there would be a popular revolt inside Cuba. This time Castro was hated. In 1961 he’d been revered – well, by God, all that was changed. Cuba was miserable and downtrodden and the people sick to death.

  Fuentes looked at his watch. Within four hours, the missile would be in place in Cuba, where it would be made ready to fly upon Miami. Shortly thereafter landing-parties would arrive on the beaches and the first air strikes would occur against Communist bases and airfields. As soon as the freedom forces had established their control of Santiago and launched their initial advance along the Central Highway – joined by anti-Castro Cuban troops and the counterrevolutionary resistance – satellite photographs of the offensive missile would be released to every newspaper in the Western world. Fuentes imagined the headlines. Castro Planned Missile Strike on USA. Aborted By Invasion Force and Popular Cuban Uprising. Later, there would be pictures of technicians destroying the missile. Fuentes, who had a natural hunger for publicity, would make sure he got into these shots somewhere.

  More than thirty years, Tomas said. It was too long a time. More than thirty dry years of wishing and wanting and longing and hating.

  Libertad! he shouted. Viva Cuba Libre! His amplified voice tumbled away in the breeze.