The Good Assassin

by Paul Vidich

  “A pair of catastrophes,” Jack repeated. He looked at Mueller. “I don’t mean the hurricane, although it will be brutal and there’s work to prepare for it, and I don’t mean the rebel who fired on the house yesterday with his squirrel gun.”

  Jack swept his hand across his holdings. The worst that could be said of him, Mueller thought, was that he’d grown up with an idea of himself that was out of step. He wanted land, but inside that sedentary man there was the spirit of the wanderer who was never satisfied to be in one place, or stay at home.

  “I’m in a fix, George.”

  Mueller was at his side now.

  “That girl came to the ranch today. The foreman turned the taxi away. He told me about it when I came back from town.”

  Mueller’s confusion provoked Jack’s response.

  “The girl you met. The dancer. She came here today. Demanded to see me and made a big scene. Thank God Liz wasn’t around.”

  He kicked the dirt. “She seems to think I promised her a new life, a Shangri-La in Miami.”

  The gruff dismissive tone of his voice gave his comment an angry edge.

  “She has these ideas in her head.” Jack’s voice trailed off and he gazed into the night. “Did I lead her on? I don’t know. I might not have objected, so who knows what her mind concocted. That girl has been a bit of trouble.” He looked directly at Mueller. “I have no intention of hurting my marriage.”

  Mueller gave a choked laugh. Mueller pitied Jack’s confident ignorance. It had always been that way in their relationship—Mueller the one who stepped in to help save Jack from the mess he’d made. Paid bail after he was arrested for drunken driving senior year. Arranged for a doctor in Harlem after Jack got a girl pregnant. It was George who rescued Jack from his self-inflicted wounds.

  “I need a favor.”

  George heard the request and in a way he expected it. In an old friendship the patterns don’t change, only the stakes are raised.

  Mueller looked at Jack and thought him pathetic. Jack had always been that way. It was locked in his character. Liz had seen it too, Mueller knew, and yet she’d been drawn to him. The Protestant minister’s daughter in her had seen a case to reform, and she thought she could change him. Mueller had admired that about her. She thought she could make things right—a do-gooder, Jack called her, but he didn’t intend it as a compliment. That was who she was. She’d found in Jack in the months before they married a young man confused about life, angry, lonely in the way you are when you get out of college staring with diminished ego at the hostile landscape of an adult world—and she’d taken him on as her project. And somewhere along the way in their marriage Mueller had seen Liz begin to weaken, to give up, defeated by the depressing cycles of anger and forgiveness that accompanied Jack’s recidivism. And Jack, so full of himself, didn’t see the change in his wife.

  “Liz doesn’t know about her, George.”

  Mueller stopped himself from saying all that he thought. “You’re a coward, Jack.”

  Jack raised an eyebrow. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

  Mueller stopped and stared.

  “Will you visit the girl?”

  Mueller was suddenly aware that Jack had not used her name, hadn’t dignified her with a name, so she was denied the human face that came with a name, and she was just some mess he needed to clean up—and not a human being with needs, regrets, feelings, attachments. Mueller said the name: “Ofelia.”

  “Yes, that’s her. Will you do this for me, George? Will you explain things to her?”

  “Explain what? That you’re a bastard?”

  “Explain that I will get her to Miami. But she can’t come running over here. I’ll get her out without a visa. No one is getting visas now. I’ll fly her out. There’s a private airstrip outside of Miami.”

  Mueller saw Jack struggle the way he’d once done on the football field when he scrambled to recover from a disrupted play, ball in hand, thinking whether to pass or to run. He pondered his way out of a tight spot.

  “She thinks I’ll leave her behind. She wants to get away. She can’t be happy here, married off. She has her dreams too, you know.”

  Mueller thought that was the most empathetic thing he’d ever heard Jack say.

  “I’ll give you the address. She’s in Camagüey.”

  Mueller shook his head. “The town is a warren of alleys.”

  “Have Toby drive you. He knows the place. You can take the Land Rover. Calm her down. Tell her I’ll fly her out after the hurricane. Will you do that for me, George?”

  Mueller felt his contempt rise. “Yes, I’ll do it, but I won’t be doing it for you.”

  4

  * * *

  VIGIL

  TOBY GRAHAM was alone in the parked Land Rover looking at a closed carriage door just beyond a small circle of street light. He glanced at his watch and then without thinking he did it again. George, what is taking so long?

  The attached house of two stories stood at the blind end of an alley with little to separate it from its neighbors. The space of sky above was a deepening blue and toward it the electric streetlamp lifted its feeble lantern. The wooden door through which Mueller had passed did not give a hint that it would open again, and the balcony window remained shuttered. Other houses on the street, conscious of decent lives within, were quiet and impenetrable.

  Again his watch. He was drawn to another memory of waiting for Mueller that bitter cold January night in the Graben near the statue to plague victims. Soviet patrols kept Graham away from the warmth of a nearby bar and his fingers had gone numb in the alley. The wait then, the wait now. Old grudges rose up. Stubborn slights from the past came to mind. Graham had waited an hour in the freezing night and then Mueller hopped off the tram with his “blind date,” oblivious to the scoped rifle aimed at his back. Graham should have let Mueller be the victim of his carelessness with the pretty double agent. The old grudges made Graham’s skin itch.

  A door slammed shut in the night. Graham sat bolt upright and watched a fretting Mueller approach the Land Rover across the stretch of dimly lighted street. Graham was in an uncharitable mood. He didn’t have patience to put up with a man who had no sense of time, missed the danger signs, and was too eagerly an errand boy for a socialite friend.

  • • •

  “What took so long?” Graham snapped, turning the ignition when Mueller was seated.

  Mueller pulled his door shut and looked into Graham’s face.

  “You were gone an hour. You said it would take fifteen minutes.” Graham tapped his wristwatch. “Curfew starts in fifteen minutes. We’ll be lucky to get back to the ranch without being pulled over. Arrested.”

  Mueller raised an eyebrow at Graham’s concern. “I would have left if I could. I had no choice.”

  Graham drove. He found his way through the warren of narrow, unmarked streets in the old city, but he had to double back when he discovered he’d made a wrong turn. The brace of delays had them come hard against the hour—and their risk settled in like a fever. Twilight. Too light for headlights to make a difference, too dark to make out the rutted potholes on the road. Graham could only drive so fast before the Land Rover rattled violently.

  “So,” Graham said, pausing, giving thought to what he might say. “Pleased with the meeting?”

  Pleased? Perhaps it was the silence that had settled in between them, or the abruptness of Graham’s tone, as if he hadn’t given up his irritation, or perhaps Mueller saw no reason to begrudge Graham the details.

  “That’s not the word I’d use,” he said. “I was outside the door knocking. I’m sure you saw me. What you didn’t see—and probably couldn’t guess—I knew I was being watched from inside, so I tried not to be impatient. I’m sure whoever was inside wondered who I was and why I was there at that hour.”

  Mueller found himself giving an account. “Up close they were old doors with a rivet-studded surface to withstand forced entry, and heavy brass hinges. Understand?”

&nbs
p; Graham looked at Mueller, confused.

  “I want you to understand what I saw so you’ll appreciate what happened. The doors were designed to keep you out—not let you in.” Mueller paused.

  “After what seemed like a long time I heard footsteps inside shuffling on the stone floor. My visit had obviously gotten the household worked up. The door opened a crack. An old woman in a black scarf over a wild nest of hair looked at me. Her face was wrinkled from the sun, but she had clear blue eyes that looked at me suspiciously. A shawl covered her shoulders. Light was dim and cool air flowed past her. She invited me in, using my name.”

  Mueller paused. “That was the first surprise.”

  He continued. “I found myself in a large courtyard. Dogs growled at me as I entered, but the woman shooed them away. High stone walls surrounded the courtyard. A team of horses and a carriage stood on the far side by a giant red clay pot that collected rainwater from the roof. A few straggling vines climbed the walls and a wild garden sat at the base. So you get the picture. Outside, the home looked plain and weathered and ordinary, but inside I found another world. A private world. We have this phrase—a man’s home is his castle—but for us the metaphor is all that is left. But there, inside that courtyard, and in the house, it was a castle—not in height or in grandeur, but you knew—I knew—when I stepped through those riveted doors I was inside a closed world. Keep that in mind because it helped me understand the conversation that followed.” Mueller looked at Graham. “Are you listening?”

  “I’m driving and I’m listening.”

  “You should listen.”

  Graham looked directly at Mueller. “I’m listening.”

  “I was led into a living room off the courtyard and asked to sit on a sofa. It had clawed feet, a velvet cover that was worn thin, and it looked like it had come from Spain a hundred years ago. I got the impression no one used the room except when guests were entertained. It had an empty formality, everything was worn or antique. Gold-framed portraits of dead relatives on one wall. You know how the eye picks up all these details and begins to form a story, so that’s what I did. Old Spanish colonial family once wealthy now living under the yoke of poverty. There was a large crucifix with a tortured Jesus on the wall and below it tall wick candles and a leather Bible.

  “I sat alone for fifteen minutes, maybe longer. I knew I was being made to wait and I assumed you were getting impatient, but I had no choice. Then, I was joined by a young man who entered from a side door. He sat opposite me in a large chair. A determined face. Hostile eyes. He had black hair combed straight back. I was certain I’d seen him before, but I couldn’t place him.

  “ ‘You want to speak with my sister,’ he said. He was polite, but his tone was challenging, as if to be there in his home was to violate the family. I replied that, yes, I had come to speak with Ofelia.

  “ ‘Does she know you?’

  “ ‘We’ve met.’ I said. He looked at me with thinly veiled disdain. His expression hardened and he rose suddenly. It was that motion, that sudden standing, like a jack-in-the-box popping up, that triggered my memory. I knew he was the man in El Floridita who’d shot out of his chair and shouted ‘Abajo el tirano.’

  “I recognized him, but he didn’t seem to recognize me, even though we sat opposite each other in the paddy wagon—or if he did recognize me he didn’t let on—and anyway none of that had to do with my visit. But then, I thought, of course he knew who I was and that’s why the old woman knew my name. I said I’d be happy to speak with him if that’s what he required.

  “I introduced myself and he did the same. His name is Betancourt. He went on with a little lecture on Cuban manners. He said that Camagüey was not Havana and the bad manners tolerated in the capital had no place in his home. I told him I was there at Jack’s request. I was surprised he didn’t know Jack’s name, but he knew the ranch.” Mueller paused. “Look, part of me didn’t want to be there at all, but Jack insisted I go, so I said more than I should have. But I don’t think I had a choice. I was in the man’s home asking to speak with his sister.

  “He slumped in his chair and stared at me miserably, eyes severe and piercing. I kept thinking this man was part of the group that set off ten bombs across Havana. I leaned forward and explained that Jack was offering to fly Ofelia to Miami.

  “ ‘My sister has no interest in Miami,’ he said. He waved his hand contemptuously. ‘She is a foolish girl with romantic ideas. There is nothing for her in Miami. This is her home. She has locked herself in her room.’ ”

  Mueller paused. “Then I got the second surprise. He knew you were waiting outside in the Land Rover. He called you the Americano.” Mueller’s long silence was a sign that he had finally come to the point of his story, and he stared at Graham with tolerant impatience. “He said he’d invited me into the house out of respect for you.” He waited for Graham to comment, or share his opinion, but when no opinion came and no comment was offered, Mueller snapped, “Well?”

  “A lot of people know me.”

  “Rebels?”

  Graham laughed with jaunty self-confidence. “Don’t let your imagination take you to a place where we’ll have to lie to each other.”

  • • •

  Mueller had been watching Graham navigate the pitted road with its potholes illuminated by the tunneling headlights. Mueller had taken Graham’s cue and stopped asking how Betancourt knew of Graham, but he continued to speculate how the threads connected. At one point he tired of the silence between them. “I’m not Jack’s doormat here,” Mueller said.

  “He seems to need help.”

  “His troubles have always been self-inflicted.”

  “You’d do the same for me. That’s who you are, George. You’ve always helped friends when they got into a jam.”

  Mueller heard the words and thought them unconvincing. The car was bouncing along and sputtering and it continued to do so before Mueller felt it regain a rhythm. “How long have you known her?” Mueller saw that he’d confused Graham. “Liz. How long have you known her?”

  “A little while.”

  Mueller restrained his impulse to ask all that he wanted to know—where they’d met, when, and how. He felt protective of Liz. He knew Graham’s charm and he understood how women found him attractive, but Liz was not a woman who fell for those qualities. Liz, he suspected, didn’t know who Graham worked for, or what he did. She couldn’t know the dark stain on his life.

  “Don’t hurt her,” Mueller said. “Do you understand? She is in a weakened state. Don’t take advantage.” Mueller was calm, even friendly, but his words were threatening.

  Their eyes met.

  Graham looked back at the road, his face lit garishly in the dashboard’s dim glow. “She’s miserable. You can see that.”

  “Jack has always been this way. Liz knew what she was getting into when they married. She might have ignored it then, not wanting to acknowledge what she knew about him. But, I don’t think that was it. I think she thought she could change him.”

  The sputtering returned.

  “What’s that?”

  Suddenly, the Land Rover gasped, lurched, and came to a slow rolling stop. Graham turned the ignition, and with each twist he heard the battery weaken.

  “We’re out.”

  “Of gas?”

  Graham hit the steering wheel with his palm.

  “I thought Jack filled it. He said he was going to fill it.”

  “Is there a can in the back?”

  Mueller didn’t bother to look. “We emptied it on our way out from Havana.”

  “We can’t stay here,” Graham said. “We’re an obvious target. We don’t want to be sitting in this thing if someone decides to fire a rocket.”

  They got out of the Land Rover. The night had become profoundly dark under a sky obscured by the advancing storm. Night sounds filled the dark world. They stood side by side and Graham looked up from the radium glow of his wristwatch. “We can’t make it walking. It’s past
curfew.”

  “What do you propose? Too far to walk? Too dangerous to stay. You have a suggestion?”

  “Words, words, words, George. Your mind has gone to mush with all that Shakespeare. Words will make a ghost of you.”

  Mueller wanted to punch Graham. This was the confident, mocking Graham he remembered. Clever, petulant, obtuse, foul-mouthed, and within the space of a moment able to be dazzlingly considerate and insulting. Graham had never made a secret of his contempt for colleagues who didn’t submit themselves to his mastery of a risky situation. Tongue lashings came easily to Toby Graham and it was the violence he’d survived that left him intolerant of others’ errors. Mueller knew all that, and he knew too that Graham reserved his greatest scorn for the second-guessers in the Headquarters’ bureaucracy, which he considered inept, bloated, incapable of making hard choices—men who saw each decision through the gauzy lens of selfish ambition.

  “This way,” Graham said. Far off there was the faint glow of a brush fire—land being cleared. “There,” he said pointing down the road that disappeared into darkness. “The next checkpoint.”

  Mueller saw it too. A single dot of light strung over the road that dimly illuminated a low concrete guardhouse. The squat roadside building was small and vulnerable, surrounded as it was by a vast darkness. Second-floor light bled from one window, and but for that light the checkpoint looked abandoned.

  Suddenly, far off, the crackle of rifle fire. The sound had no provenance in the dark, and Mueller was alert, moving his head a degree or two, but the sound could be coming from any direction. A mortar shell crumped far to their left. The flash of brilliant light bruised the night and a concussive blast followed. They stood absolutely still waiting for the next explosion, but there was only a long silence.

  “Someone’s taking an easy shot at a sleeping garrison. This won’t be the offensive. The hurricane is coming. But one thing, George, you and I both know we don’t want to be caught in the open on the road. In the dark both sides will see us as the enemy.”