"It could be," Arkady said.
Dr. Bias sighed, Luna took a deep breath and Detective Osorio weighed the keys in her palm. Arkady couldn't help feeling like a difficult actor.» It probably is, but I can't say conclusively that this body is Pribluda. There's no face, no prints and I doubt very much that you will be able to type the blood. All you have is a dental chart and one steel tooth. He could be another Russian. Or one of thousands of Cubans who went to Russia. Or a Cuban who had a tooth pulled by a Cuban dentist who trained in Russia. Probably you're right, but that's not enough. You opened Pribluda's door with a key. Did you look inside?"
Dr. Bias asked in precisely snipped Russian, "Did you bring any other identification from Moscow?"
"Just this. Pribluda sent it a month ago." Arkady dug out of his passport case a snapshot of three men standing on a beach and squinting at the camera. One man was so black he could have been carved from jet. He held up a glistening rainbow of a fish for the admiration of two whites, a shorter man with a compensating tower of steel-wool hair and, partially obscured by the others, Pribluda. Behind them was water, a tip of beach, palms.
Bias studied the photograph and read the scribble on the back.» Havana Yacht Club."
"There is such a yacht club?" Arkady asked.
"There was such a club before the Revolution," Bias said.» I think your friend was making a joke."
Rufo said, "Cubans love grandiose titles. A 'drinking society' can be friends in a bar."
"The others don't look Russian to me. You can make copies of the picture and circulate them."
The picture went around to Arcos, who put it back into Arkady's hands as if it were toxic. Rufo said, "The captain says your friend was a spy, that spies come to bad ends, as they deserve. This is typically Russian, pretending to help and then stabbing Cuba in the back. The Russian embassy sends out its spy and, when he's missing, asks us to find him. When we find him, you refuse to identify him. Instead of cooperating, you demand an investigation, as if you were still the master and Cuba was the puppet. Since that is no longer the case, you can take your picture back to Moscow. The whole world knows of the Russian betrayal of the Cuban people and, well, he says some more in that vein."
Arkady gathered as much. The captain looked ready to spit.
Rufo gave Arkady a push.» I think it's time to go."
Detective Osorio, who had been quietly following the conversation, suddenly revealed fluent Russian.» Was there a letter with the picture?"
"Only a postcard saying hello," Arkady said.» I threw it away."
"Idiota" Osorio said, which nobody bothered to translate.
"It's lucky you're going home, you don't have many friends here," Rufo said.» The embassy said to put you in an apartment until the plane."
They drove by three-story stone town houses transformed by the Revolution into a far more colorful backdrop of ruin and decay, marble colonnades refaced with whatever color was available-green, ultramarine, chartreuse. Not just ordinary green, either, but a vibrant spectrum: sea, lime, palm and verdigris. Houses were as blue as powdered turquoise, pools of water, peeling sky, the upper levels enlivened by balconies of ornate ironwork embellished by canary cages, florid roosters, hanging bicycles. Even dowdy Russian cars wore a wide variety of paint, and if their clothes were drab most of the people had the slow grace and color of big cats. They paused at tables offering guava paste, pastries, tubers and fruits. One girl shaving ices was streaked red and green with syrup, another girl sold sweetmeats from a cheesecloth tent. A locksmith rode a bicycle that powered a key grinder; he wore goggles for the sparks and shavings flying around him as he pedaled in place. The music of a radio hanging in the crook of a pushcart's umbrella floated in the air.
"Is this the way to the airport?" Arkady asked.
"The flight is tomorrow. Usually there's only one Aeroflot flight a week during the winter, so they don't want you to miss it." Rufo rolled the window down.» Phew, I smell worse than fish."
"Autopsies stay with you." Arkady had left his overcoat outside the operating theater and separated the coat now from the paper bag holding Pribluda's effects.» If Dr. Bias and Detective Osorio speak Russian, why were you along?"
"There was a time when it was forbidden to speak English. Now Russian is taboo. Anyway, the embassy wanted someone along when you were with the police, but someone not Russian. You know, I never knew anyone so unpopular so fast as you."
"That's a sort of distinction."
"But now you're here you should enjoy yourself. Would you like to see the city, go to a cafe, to the Havana Libre? It used to be the Hilton. They have a rooftop restaurant with a fantastic view. And they serve lobster. Only state restaurants are allowed to serve lobster, which are assets of the state."
"No, thanks." The idea of cracking open a lobster after an autopsy didn't sit quite right.
"Or a paladar, a private restaurant. They're small, they're only allowed twelve chairs but the food is much superior. No?"
Perhaps Rufo didn't get a chance to dine out often, but Arkady didn't think he could even watch someone eat.
"No. The captain and sergeant were in green uniforms, the detective in gray and blue. Why was that?"
"She's police and they're from the Ministry of the Interior. We just call it Minint. Police are under Minint."
Arkady nodded; in Russia the militia was under the same ministry.» But Arcos and Luna don't usually go out on homicides?"
"I don't think so."
"Why was the captain going on about the Russian embassy?"
"He has a point. In the old days Russians acted like lords. Even now, for Cuban police to ask questions at the embassy takes a diplomatic note. Sometimes the embassy cooperates and sometimes it doesn't."
Most of the traffic was Russian Ladas and Moskviches spraying exhaust and then, waddling as ponderously as dinosaurs, American cars from before the Revolution. Rufo and Arkady got out at a two-story house decorated like a blue Egyptian tomb with scarabs, ankhs and lotuses carved in stucco. A car on blocks sat in residence on the porch.
"'57 Chevrolet." Rufo looked inside at the car's gutted interior, straightened and ran his hand over the flecked paint. From the back.» Tail fins." To the front bumper.» And tits."
From the car key in the bag of effects Arkady knew that Pribluda had a Lada. No breasts on a Russian car.
As they went in and climbed the stairs the door to the ground-floor apartment cracked open enough for a woman in a housedress to follow their progress.
"A concierge?" Arkady asked.
"A snoop. Don't worry, at night she watches television and doesn't hear a thing."
"I'm going back tonight."
"That's right." Rufo unlocked the upstairs door.» This is a protocol apartment the embassy uses for visiting dignitaries. Well, lesser dignitaries. I don't think we've had anyone here for a year."
"Is someone from the embassy coming to talk about Pribluda?"
"The only one who wants to talk about Pribluda is you. You like cigars?"
"I've never smoked a cigar."
"We'll talk about it later. I'll be back at midnight to take you to the plane. If you think the flight to Havana was long, wait till you go back to Moscow."
The apartment was furnished with a set of cream-and-gold dining chairs, a sideboard with a coffee service, a nubby sofa, red phone, a bookshelf with titles like La Amistad Russo-Cubana and Fidel y Arte supported by erotic bookends in mahogany. In a disconnected refrigerator a loaf of Bimbo Bread was spotted with mold. The air conditioner was dead and showed the carbon smudges of an electrical fire. Arkady thought he probably showed some carbon smudges of his own.
He stripped from his clothes and showered in a stall of tiles that poured water from every valve and washed the odor of the autopsy off his skin and from his hair. He dried himself on the scrap of towel provided and stretched out on the bed under his overcoat in the dark of the bedroom and listened to the voices and music that filtered from outside through th
e closed shutters of the window. He dreamed of floating among the playing fish of Havana Bay. He dreamed of flying back to Moscow and not landing, just circling in the night.
Russian planes did that, sometimes, if they were so old that their instruments failed. Although there could be other factors. If a pilot made a second landing approach he could be charged for the extra fuel expended, so he made only one, good or not. Or they were overloaded or underfueled.
He was both.
Circling sounded good.
Chapter Two
Osorio negotiated a white PNR Lada down a potholed street. Like her driving, she talked in a quick, surefooted way, deleting any s in the Russian language that she found superfluous. Since Arkady's Spanish consisted of gracias and par favor, he wasn't inclined to be critical even if she had appeared without warning in the early evening and gathered him in a rush.
She said, "You wanted to see your friend's apartment and so we will."
"That's all I asked."
"No, you asked much more. I think you are refusing to make an identification of your friend because you think you can force us to investigate."
"I assume you want to be sure you're sending the right body to Moscow."
"You think it's impossible for him to be out on the water the way we found him? Like a Cuban?"
"It does strike me as unusual."
"What I find unusual is that when a message comes to you from an embassy in Havana you drop everything to come. That's unusual. That must have been expensive."
The round-trip took half his savings. On the other hand, what was he saving for? Anyway, everything in Havana struck him as unusual, including the detective, although there was something about her small size and imperiousness he found endearing. Her features were delicate and sharply cut, dark eyes made darker with suspicion as if she were an apprentice devil handed a tricky soul. He also liked her sporty PNR cap with plastic visor.
"Tell me about this friend of yours," she demanded.
"You're interested?" He got no response to that. Oh well, he was fishing.» Sergei Sergeevich Pribluda. Workers' family from Sverdlovsk. Joined the Committee for State Security out of the army. Higher education at Frunze Party School. Stationed eight years at Vladimir, eighteen in Moscow, rising to colonel. Hero Worker, honored for bravery. Wife, dead ten years; one son, a manager in an American fast-food franchise in Moscow. I was unaware of Pribluda's ever being stationed abroad before or studying Spanish. Politically reactionary, a Party member. Interests, Central Army ice-hockey team. Health, vigorous. Hobby, gardening."
"Not drinking?"
"He made flavored vodka, that's part of gardening."
"Not culture, the arts?"
"Pribluda? Hardly."
"You worked together?"
"In a way. He tried to kill me. It was a complicated friendship." Arkady gave her the short version.» There was a murder in Moscow involving politics. As it happened, there was a woman who was a dissident that he suspected. Since I thought she was innocent, I became a suspect and Pribluda was given the job of delivering, as we say, a nine-gram letter in the back of my head. But we had spent time together by then, long enough for me to discover there was something strangely honest about him and for him to decide there was, as you say, something of the idiota about me. And when he was given the order to shoot me, he didn't. I don't know whether you could call it a friendship, but our relationship was built on that."
"He disobeyed an order? There's never an excuse for that."
"God knows. He liked to grow his own vegetables. When his wife died, I would go round to his place and drink his vodka and eat his cucumbers and he would remind me that not every guest got to dine with his executioner. Red tomato pickle, green tomato pickle, peppers and dark bread to eat. Lemongrass and buffalo grass to flavor the vodka."
"You said he was a Communist."
"A good Communist. He would have joined the Party coup if it hadn't been led, as he said, by imbeciles. Instead, he drank until it all blew over and then went into a decline. He said we weren't real Russians anymore, only eunuchs, that the last Russian, the last true Communist anywhere was Castro." Which Arkady had taken as drunken ranting at the time, a detail he decided not to share with Osorio.» He said he was looking for a post outside Moscow. I never knew he meant here."
"When was the last time you saw the colonel?"
"More than a year ago."
"But you were friends."
"My wife didn't like him."
"Why not?"
"An old score. Why would the captain turn down the picture of Pribluda and his friends?" Arkady asked.
"He must have his reasons," Osorio said in a tone that suggested she didn't fathom them either.
Jasmine lay like snow over walls, Dumpsters overflowed with the sweet stench of fruit skins.
Binding the ocean was what Osorio called the Malecon, a seawall that protected a six-lane boulevard and an oceanfront line of three-story buildings. The sea was black, and traffic on the boulevard consisted of the running lights of cars a block apart. The buildings were the gaudy group Arkady had seen at daybreak from the other side of the bay; without their colors, dimly lit by lamps, they were occupied wrecks. In the shadow of a long arcade Osorio unlocked a street door and led him up worn stone stairs to a steel door which let them into a living room that could have been delivered complete from Moscow: subdued lamps, stereo, chess set, upholstery on the front door, lace curtains on the balcony doors. Homey Soviet hammer and sickle in silk tacked to a wall. A table and tray of water glasses, dish of salt. Whittled nostalgia-roosters, bears, St. Basil's-on the shelves. Plastic ivy and carnations trimming a kitchenette with a two-burner range, refrigerator, butane tanks.
Bottles of Havana Club rum and Stolichnaya stood under the sink.
The only element out of place was a black man in a white shirt with a red bandanna around his head and Reebok basketball shoes on his feet sitting in a corner chair and holding a long, straight walking stick. It took a moment without breathing for Arkady to realize that the figure was a man-sized effigy. The face had a crudely molded brow and nose, mouth and ears, making its glass eyes glitter all the more.
"What is that?"
"Change."
"Change?"
"A Santeria spirit."
"Right. And why would Pribluda have it?"
"I don't know. That's not what we came for," Osorio said. What they had come for, apparently, was to see how thoroughly she had dusted the apartment for fingerprints, every door, jamb, knob and pull. Some prints had been lifted, leaving the transfer tracks of tape. But many more prints were visible as brown whorls expertly brushed.
"You did all this?" he asked Osorio.
"Yes."
"Brown powder?" He hadn't seen that before.
"Cuban fingerprint powder. In this Special Period, imported powders are too expensive. We make powder from burned palm fronds."
She hadn't missed any opportunity. Under the lamp was a small turtle, armored and obtuse in a bowl of sand. A perfect pet for a spy, Arkady thought. The shell was branded with a brown fingerprint.
She said, "Pribluda could have had a protocol house, but he rented here illegally from the Cuban who lives below."
"Why do you think he did that?"
For an answer she opened the balcony doors, their curtains lifting like wings with the breeze that rushed in. Arkady stepped out between two aluminum chairs and the balcony's marble rail and looked out on the vault of the night sky and the Malecon, displayed as an elegant curve of boulevard lights. Beyond the seawall was the flash of a lighthouse and deck lights of a freighter and pilot boat entering the bay. As his eyes adjusted he made out the fainter gunwale lamps of fishing boats and, nearer in, a widespread candle glimmer.
"Neumdticos" Osorio said.
Arkady imagined them, a flotilla of inner tubes riding black swells.
"Why wasn't there a police seal on the front door?" he asked.
"Because we are not investigating.
"
"So, what are we doing here, then?"
"Putting your mind to rest."
She motioned Arkady inside through the parlor and to a corridor, past a laundry room and into an office that held an ancient wooden desk, computer, printer and bookshelves crammed with binders from the Cuban Ministry of Sugar and photo albums. Under the printer, two briefcases, one of brown leather, the other of extraordinarily ugly green plastic. The walls were covered with maps of Cuba and Havana. Cuba was a big island, Arkady realized, twelve hundred kilometers long, marked with X's on the map. Arkady opened an album to pictures of what looked like green bamboo.
"Sugarcane fields," Osorio said.» Pribluda would have visited them because we foolishly depended on Russia for harvesters."
"I see." Arkady put the album down and moved on to the map of Havana.» Where are we?"
"Here." She pointed to where the Malecon swept east toward the Castillo de San Salvador, where the seawall ended and Havana Vieja and the bay began. West lay neighborhoods called Vedado and Miramar, where Pribluda had scribbled "Russian embassy." "Why do you ask?"
"I like to know where I am."
"You are leaving tonight. It doesn't matter if you know where you are."
"True." He looked to see that the power button of the computer was dusted and prints lifted. Nice.» You're finished here?"
"Yes."
He turned the machine and monitor on and the screen pulsed with an electric, expectant blue. Arkady did not consider himself computer-adept, but in Moscow murderers moved with the times and it had become a requirement of investigators to be able to open the electronic files of suspects and victims. Russians loved E-mail, Windows, spreadsheets; paper documents they burned at once, but incriminating electronic information they left intact under whimsical access codes: the name of a first girlfriend, a favorite actress, a pet dog. When Arkady clicked on the icon for Programs the screen demanded a password.
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