Hard Currency

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Now, in these explosive times, a bomb had been placed in the colonel’s hands, a bomb that could well destroy him. The implications of this murder, if it was a murder, were inescapable. Even if no one in the government or bureaucracy had murdered the minister, someone had certainly acted to conceal the cause of his death.

  The colonel laid the file neatly before him on the empty desk, smoothed his hair, and reached for the phone.

  Though there were many who considered Colonel Snitkonoy a buffoon who had been propelled to significance by a combination of impressive bearing, very good luck, and a highly professional though eccentric staff, there were few who doubted his professional integrity. It was one thing to survive by avoiding missions that ran high risks to one’s career. It was quite another thing to shirk responsibility when it was placed in one’s lap. He would have to bring Karpo’s report on the dead foreign minister to the attention of his superiors.

  While the phone rang, the Wolfhound had only one major regret: that Rostnikov was not in Moscow so the whole thing could be dumped in his more ample lap.

  SIX

  ELENA TIMOFEYEVA FOUND ROSTNIKOV in a white plastic chair next to a white plastic table at the side of the pool of the El Presidente Hotel. The sun was low and a cool breeze wafted in from the Caribbean Sea a few hundred yards beyond the hotel. There were six similar tables around the pool in which no one swam. One table was empty. At the other tables sat small groups: a couple, a family that might have been Germans, a quartet of men between forty and sixty arguing in English and Spanish. And seated alone, a bottle of beer before him and a magazine in his hands, sat Povlevich, the thin KGB man whom Rostnikov had pointed out to Elena on the plane.

  After Jaime and Abel had sheepishly dropped Elena at her hotel, she had rushed to her room, washed her face, combed her hair, and hurried down the stairs without waiting for the elevator, which she had already discovered suffered from chronic malaise.

  When she arrived at the pool, Rostnikov was drinking something from a tall glass. Next to him sat a little man in thick glasses who was leaning forward and talking emotionally in barely passable English.

  “I risk my job, maybe my life to talk to you,” the little man was saying as Elena approached. “But I must, Rosenikow.”

  The man sensed Elena beside him, went silent, and turned his head to see her. His eyes were hilariously magnified behind the thick lenses. He was older than he had first appeared, maybe sixty, possibly even older.

  “Señor Rodriguez,” Rostnikov said in English. “This is my colleague, Investigator Timofeyeva.”

  The little man rose from his chair and took Elena’s hand. She was five-foot-five. The man barely came to her shoulder. He wore a disheveled, slightly oversize Madras jacket over a faded blue shirt and dark baggy pants.

  “Mucho gusto,” she said.

  “Servidor de usted,” he replied. “Habla español?”

  “Si,” she said. “Pero es mejor si habla un poco despacio.”

  “She speaks Spanish, Rosenikow,” Rodriguez said to Rostnikov.

  “I observed,” said Rostnikov in English. “Please sit, Elena Timofeyeva. Señor Rodriguez is a journalist and a novelist. He is with that group at the other table, all writers here for a week of meetings. They have been drinking.”

  “We have been drinking too much,” Rodriguez expanded.

  “Too much,” said Rostnikov.

  “I see,” said Elena. She placed her notebook on the table and sat down. The four men at the table across the pool reached a crescendo of Spanish-English argument.

  “In the interest of international brotherhood,” Rodriguez said, “we meet every year and fight about nothing with great passion.”

  A waiter appeared, a man in his thirties in black slacks and a white shirt.

  “I suggest you have a rum drink and a hamburger,” said Rostnikov.

  “I …” Elena began.

  “It is all right,” Rostnikov said. “I have an adequate supply of Canadian dollars.”

  Rodriguez nodded in agreement. Elena ordered and the waiter moved on.

  “Señor Rodriguez …” Rostnikov began.

  “Antonio,” said the little man. He placed his right hand on his chest as if he were about to make a sacred vow. “Por favor, Antonio.”

  “Antonio and I have made an exchange,” said Rostnikov. “I have given him my four rolls of toilet paper, three bars of soap, my Bulgarian pen, and the promise of a shipment of paint from Moscow in exchange for four hundred Canadian dollars.”

  Antonio Rodriguez shrugged and whispered, “I cannot spend foreign currency. It is against the law for Cubans. So what good does this money do me? What good does it do my country? You want to know how I got Canadian dollars? No, better for me you don’t know. Let me tell you somethin’.”

  From the bar behind them came the smell of grilling burger and the sound of a Mexican mariachi band on the radio. Antonio was forced to raise his voice.

  “I love my country. I would never leave Cuba. If we were attacked by the Americans or the Cuban exiles in America, I would fight them. I say you this knowing what I risk. I say you this knowing I’m a lot drunken. Fidel doesn’t know what to do. He mus’ step down, Rosenikow, you know?”

  Rostnikov nodded and drank.

  “But this you do not care,” Antonio continued. “You want only to save one fool of a Russian. I want to save my country, my people. I don’t hate Russians.”

  Antonio Rodriguez was looking at Elena, so she replied, “I am pleased.”

  “Pleased,” Rodriguez said with disgust. “The Soviet Union looked at us like some kind of troublesome peon colony. They found Fidel an annoyance. But when they needed good medical care, your leaders, where did they go? Right here, to Cuba. Did you know that?”

  “Yes,” said Rostnikov.

  “Good,” said Rodriguez, looking at each of the Russians. “Good.”

  “What do you know about the Santería?” Elena asked.

  “More than any man alive who is no a Santería,” Antonio Rodriguez said with a satisfied smile. He adjusted his heavy glasses on his rather small nose. “I have written of them, gotten to know them. Most of what you hear is crap shit. Despiénseme, but I hear so much garbage, it would make me to laugh if I wasn’t so fretting about my country.”

  Elena looked at Rostnikov, who put down his drink and gave her a very small nod of understanding.

  “Antonio,” he said, “the Santería are a subject of great interest to Russians—a curious alien thing. It is something like the interest the English had in American Indians in the eighteenth century or …”

  “I’m no a fool, Rosenikow. Hey, you want to be my friend, my amigo, my tovarich? See, I speak few words Russian.”

  Rodriguez laughed and removed his glasses to wipe his eyes with the backs of his hands. With his glasses off, he looked to Rostnikov like a small mole.

  “This Santería question, it has something to do with your Russian in jail, verdad? I’m a journalist, remember?”

  “Yes, perhaps,” said Elena, wondering whether Rostnikov disapproved of her pursuing this before she discussed it with him.

  Antonio Rodriguez put his glasses back on and clapped his hands. “Then,” he said, “I speak.”

  The radio was now playing a loud Spanish version of a song Elena had heard in the United States. It was something about virgins.

  “The Santería are the biggest religion in Cuba, bigger than Catholics,” Antonio said, holding his hands out to show how big they were. “But they got no pope, nothing like that, just branches, groups, dozens, maybe hundreds, big, small, each with its own babalau who leads his group like a family.”

  “Are they violent?” asked Elena.

  “Violent,” he repeated, shaking his head and looking at the sky. “Who isn’t violent? Some of them they are. Most of them are no violent. There are stories yes of spells, sacrifices, all kinds of stupid stuff. Most of the Santería are Negroes. They brought their religion from Africa and had
to hide it even before the revolution. They hid their gods, giving them the names of Catholic saints, celebrating them on the Catholic saints’ days, but hiding their saints in jars, turning desks into altars. They are powerful, here, all through the islands, New York, Miami, but not organized. Now you tell me, Rosenikow, why you want to know these things?”

  Rostnikov turned his eyes to Elena. She opened her notebook and slid it in front of Rostnikov, who shifted in his seat and read the notes by the quickly fading light of the setting sun.

  Antonio Rodriguez looked at the notebook in Rostnikov’s hands and then over at his fellow writers, who seemed to be getting along quite badly enough without him.

  Rostnikov took his time going over all of Elena’s notes. Her handwriting was firm and flowing, and the notes were a combination of data and personal impressions. Karpo’s notes, which Porfiry Petrovich had grown accustomed to, were, in contrast, printed in small, efficient block letters, easy to read and with no personal impressions.

  Satisfied, Rostnikov closed the notebook and returned it to Elena. It was only then that he realized that he had been sitting in nearly the same position for a long time. The drink, the sounds of the sea, and the lights around the pool had lulled him into forgetting his leg. Now, suddenly, this rebellious appendage had gnawed into him and brought him to consciousness. Porfiry Petrovich had no choice but to stand, holding the edge of the table; and begin to coax his leg into some level of reluctant cooperation.

  “You wish I should leave?” asked Antonio, also rising. “I have give offense?”

  “No,” said Rostnikov. “Sit, sit. My leg fell asleep. It will pass. You have a wife, Antonio Rodriguez?”

  “Wife, two sons. I have pictures in my wallet, but old, very old pictures, not my sons old, the pictures. My sons are grown but … my pictures are of children.”

  Rodriguez sat suddenly, looking quite glum.

  “I have a wife and son, one son. His name is Iosef,” said Rostnikov.

  “One of my sons is José. Same name, is it not so?”

  “El mismo, verdad,” said Elena as the waiter returned with her drink and American hamburger. When the food was in front of her, Elena realized how hungry she was. Rostnikov paid the waiter in Canadian money, and she lifted the sandwich as the waiter departed.

  “A witness told Investigator Timofeyeva,” Rostnikov said, “that the son of a Santería priest—”

  “Babalau or Obba, keeper of the secrets,” Rodriguez corrected.

  “This babalau’s son had threatened the victim, Maria Fernandez, threatened her with death.”

  Rodriguez shrugged.

  “Is possible,” he said. “People get angry, say things. Is possible. Which Santería?”

  “Javier, the son of …” Elena began, and Rodriguez finished.

  “… a very important babalau named Manuel Fuentes.” He began to laugh so loud that even his journalist friends at the table across the pool paused to look at him.

  “Forgive me, Rosenikow,” he said. “We are lucky I do not choke. Manuel would hurt no one, would not permit his people to hurt anyone.”

  “You know this Manuel?” Rostnikov said.

  “I know many people in Habana,” Antonio whispered, his magnified eyes darting around the remaining patrons poolside. “Sí, I know him. Actually, I know one of his people, a Communist youth leader. Irony, no? A Communist youth leader is a secret Santería. But that’s nothing. A cabinet minister was last year made a santo, how you call a saint by the Santería. See, I trust you. I tell you things that could get my friends in trouble. You should trust me.”

  “Perhaps,” said Rostnikov, feeling painful life returning to his leg. “But experience in my country has taught me that trust must be earned slowly and relied upon almost never.”

  “You read Lorca,” Rodriguez said with a smile.

  “Gogol and Ed McBain,” Rostnikov said. “Can you arrange a meeting for us with this babalau?”

  “Maybe,” said Rodriguez. He scratched his chin and looked at Elena as if she held some special answer to the puzzle before him. “But I will have to be with you.”

  “You would be most welcome,” said Rostnikov, sitting down carefully to avoid angering his leg.

  “Then,” said the little man, “I shall get back to you very soon. If I do arrange this, however, is important you respect the babalau.”

  “Once,” said Rostnikov, watching Elena take the final bite of her sandwich, “I saw an Inuit holy man do things that may have been miracles. One of those things may have saved the life of my wife. I always respect what I do not understand until it proves unworthy of my respect.”

  “You are a crazy Russian,” Antonio said, “or maybe I no understand your English as good as I like to think.”

  “I think you understand,” said Rostnikov.

  “Ah well, so maybe I do. But as you can tell I am fond for you and more than fond for this lovely lady who has the appetite of a Cuban. I will talk to you soon.”

  “Soon, I hope,” said Rostnikov.

  “Tomorrow,” said Antonio. “Buenos noches, señorita.”

  “Hasta mañana,” answered Elena.

  The little man turned and tottered toward the end of the pool.

  “I hope he doesn’t fall in the water,” Elena said.

  “He won’t fall,” said Rostnikov.

  “A coincidence, his approaching you.” She picked up a few overlooked crumbs on the end of a finger and guided them to her mouth.

  Rostnikov shrugged.

  “Povlevich sent him to you?”

  “Perhaps, but probably our Major Sanchez,” said Rostnikov. “Do you know that song?”

  Elena didn’t. It was a plaintive song, sung by a woman who was almost in tears.

  “What is she saying?” Rostnikov asked, looking over his shoulder toward the radio in the bar.

  “She says, When one loves too strongly, one is a slave, and a slave is doomed to misery until she dies. But since one has no choice when love comes … I don’t know the word … then one must learn to accept, and get whatever pleasure one can for as long as it lasts.”

  “I’m a little drunk, Elena Timofeyeva,” he said. “So that may account for my telling you this. Say nothing, just consider. Remember the first time you met my son, Iosef?”

  “The birthday party for Sasha Tkach at your apartment,” she answered.

  “He told me in the bedroom that he loved you and that he intended to marry you. It is dark. I cannot tell if you are blushing or angry.”

  “I don’t think you are drunk, Inspector Rostnikov.”

  “Perhaps not,” he said. “Maybe it’s the island breeze and … If Povlevich didn’t look like such a boor, I would invite him over to our table for a drink. I have tried not to think about him. KGB people have no sense of humor, and once they get started they talk too much. This one … I can’t tell if his being sent with us is an insult, or if the KGB now has only mediocrities because the best have fled.”

  The Americans and Antonio were getting up now, arms around each other, problems resolved in the temporary mist of alcohol. The family of Germans had already left and the sun was all but gone. A few pool lights came on and Rostnikov and Elena said nothing for a few moments as they watched the noisy writers walk across the open patio and enter the hotel.

  “Shemenkov,” she finally said, feeling very tired. She wondered what her reaction was to the declaration of love from the son of Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov.

  “I was informed that he tried to hang himself in his cell. Tied his socks and shirt together to make a noose, hung it from a water pipe, and jumped from his bed. The makeshift rope tore, but not before causing a burn around his neck and altering his voice. All this I got from our Major Sanchez. We will be permitted to talk to Shemenkov in the morning.”

  Elena tried to hold back a yawn.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Your day has been long,” Rostnikov said. “It is still early. If there is water, I’ll take a bath and read
my novel, an Ed McBain, about women.”

  Elena hardly heard.

  “Tomorrow then,” she said.

  “I’ll call you when we must go,” Rostnikov said. “Go ahead. You’ve done well. I’ll finish my drink. Leave the notebook with me.”

  Rostnikov watched the young woman move across the patio. A new song began, unfamiliar, upbeat, instrumental. Elena was built more solidly than his Sarah. Elena’s skin was fine and her mind alert. There was an uncertainty in her that worried him, but all in all she would be a fine daughter-in-law. Deep within him he wished that it might happen soon so that the possibility of a grandchild … but that was for Sarah. He wanted very much to talk to his wife.

  “Ridiculous,” he said softly to his glass. “They haven’t even gone to a movie together.”

  Rostnikov sensed the eyes of Povlevich of the KGB looking at him over the magazine. Should he call the man over, offer him a drink? The man looked lonely, but Rostnikov was tired. Perhaps tomorrow.

  Rostnikov got up carefully, tucked Elena Timofeyeva’s notebook under his arm, and slowly made his way across the patio, through the lobby, and up to his room, which had, according to Major Sanchez, been used frequently by Maria Fernandez. Rostnikov drew himself a tepid bath.

  He closed his eyes and thought of Maria Fernandez, who had certainly bathed in this same tub. He imagined her looking down at him with a smile. But the figure above him was uncomfortably pale and vague. He reminded himself to ask Major Sanchez for a photograph of the dead woman. The warm water appeased his leg sufficiently for him to work his way out of the tub, dry himself, and put on the boxer shorts in which he slept.

  He lay in bed for a while reading about Carella and Brown. Finally, with the ghost of Maria Fernandez lying next to him in the darkness, Rostnikov turned off the light and closed his eyes.