Mambo (16 page)

She stared at him. She was capable of making her eyes seem like two hard stones, which stripped her face of all expression. She had masks that could be terrifying. “You've been spying.”

“No. You move so often we had trouble tracking you down.”

“I'm a hard woman to please. A hotel has to be comfortable.”

“Look at it from a police point of view. Maybe you're up to something and you want to make it difficult to be followed. You take the precaution of moving around.”

“You can shove that one, Frank. I didn't like the first two hotels. There's nothing sinister in that. I don't know what you're fishing for. I was in Paris before London. Before that Rome. You know how superficial we Americans can be. Six hours in Barcelona and we've seen everything. Now it's London's turn. Three antique stores, Harrod's, the Changing of the Guard, and I'm out of here.”

Pagan experienced one of those drugged moments in which the strip of electricity under the bathroom door seemed to vibrate. He rubbed his eyes, looked away.

“Do you have any more questions, Frank? Or are we through?”

There, he thought. A sliver of ice in her voice; a little frost. He said, “Look, I already told you your name had to be checked, that's all. You haven't been singled out especially. There's a whole slew of names.”

“It's got something to do with this character Ruhr?”

“Yes.”

“You don't imagine for a moment that I'd ever be connected with anybody like that?”

“Of course not.”

“But you just had to see me.”

“I had to see you. Did you come here alone?”

“Sure. I often travel on my own. I'm reaching that stage – set in my ways. I like solitude.”

Something troubled him here. An element was wrong, a balance disturbed. Somehow he was having difficulty imagining Magdalena, gregarious Magdalena, travelling alone.

That isn't quite it either, Frank
.

He said, “Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if you hadn't gone back home thirteen years ago.”

“Do you think we ever really stood a chance, Frank? Do you think we'd still be together?”

“Tough question.” He remembered trips along the river to Richmond; strolling in Kew Gardens; walking hand-in-hand around the Serpentine. Bistros in Chelsea; antique shops on the Fulham Road; Petticoat Lane. He'd taken her to a cricket match at the Oval and she'd fallen asleep. Tourists and lovers in starry, brilliant London.

“And totally unanswerable,” she said. “You're a British cop. I'm a Cuban democrat exiled in Florida. It's a big divide.”

Pagan looked round the room. He didn't want to leave. Screw divides, he thought. Why didn't she ask him to stay a little longer?

He realised with a quiet little shock that he knew the answer to that question, that he'd known it for some minutes now, but hadn't wanted to admit it to himself. The light under the bathroom door shimmered like mercury, then seemed to expand.
Of course
! Bright light in a closed room. The mystery of Magdalena's new-found love of her own companionship. The strange uneasiness he'd felt. It tumbled into place like so many coins slowly falling.

She was looking at her wristwatch on the bedside table; a surreptitious glance. “It was good to see you again, Frank. But I'm already late for my appointment. I'm sorry we don't have more time. I hope you get your man.”

He finally gave way to an impulse, pulled her towards him, perhaps just a little too sharply, and kissed her. He surprised himself, but she didn't resist, she offered her open mouth and the tip of her tongue, and when he placed a hand inside her robe she didn't immediately push him away. For a few seconds he forgot Ruhr, and the wound, and the way the world trespassed. He remembered what it was like to be inside this woman, that collision of flesh, and how her breasts tasted between his lips. The memory had all the odd luminosity of an hallucination and the poignancy of a dead love.

“Go,” she said.

He stepped into the corridor, turning once to look at her, seeing only one hand raised in farewell as the door closed on her. One hand. A fragment of Magdalena. It was somehow very fitting.

Downstairs in the lobby he found Foxworth sitting impatiently under a vast spidery plant. Foxie stood up.

“I want you to go up to the twelfth floor,” Pagan said.

“Oh?”

Pagan grunted and lowered himself cautiously into the sofa alongside his assistant. The plant created a dark green umbrella over his head. “The room number's 1209. Keep an eye on it in a casual way. See if you can look like the house detective.”

“May I ask why?”

“I want to find out who's hiding in the bathroom.”

“Bathroom? Can you fill me in slowly, Frank?”

Pagan looked in the direction of the lifts. “Later.”

Rafael Rosabal dried his face, then tossed the towel aside. “I didn't know you had friends in this town.”

“It was a long time ago,” she said.

“Yeah?
Poor Frank
. I heard.” He opened the closet, removed a shirt, pulled it on. “It sounded like it was only yesterday.”

“You're jealous. How wonderful! You're actually jealous!”

Rosabal said nothing. He clipped his cufflinks neatly in place. Silver and diamond, they gleamed in the lamplight. He was fastidious about his appearance.

She went on, “You heard him. He came here on a routine matter. There's a hunt going on for this German, whatever his name is. Pagan isn't the kind of guy to cut corners. He sees stones, he turns them all over. Compulsive. I just happened to be one of his stones.”

“Was he also compulsive as a lover? Did he make love to you all the time? Was he insatiable?”

“I don't remember.”

“You obviously still mean something to him. But does he mean anything to you?”

She laughed because she was enjoying this moment. She'd never seen him even remotely jealous before. “We're planning to run away together. We lowered our voices when it came to that part so you wouldn't overhear.”

Rosabal took her in his arms and held her. Had he really been jealous? He wasn't sure. He thought about Pagan and Magdalena for a moment – a surprising little fluke, a trinket of fate, amusing the way all such concurrences can be, but it meant nothing in the end. There was no way the English policeman could link Magdalena to him; and even if Pagan made such a connection, what did it matter? How could the Englishman possibly discover any association between Rosabal and Gunther Ruhr?

“Is he likely to catch the German?” he asked.

“I don't give a damn. I don't want to spend our last half hour together wondering about some lunatic on the run. We've got better things to do.”

“I was just curious. If he's compulsive, presumably he isn't going to sleep until the man is caught.”

“Who cares? What difference does it make to you?” She unclipped his cufflinks, slid her hands up his arms and felt the fine hair stir as if touched by electricity. She undid the buttons of his shirt, then pushed him back across the bed; he was distracted.

“I'm just interested in the kind of man your former lover is,” he said. “Natural curiosity. Was he better than me?”

“Forget him. Nobody's better than you.”

She lowered her face and kissed the hairs that grew across his chest. Where the hairs faded, his skin was brown and almost satin to the touch; she opened her eyes, studied a small blue vein that travelled crookedly just beneath the surface of flesh. She said, “I adore you. I wish I had words to tell you how much.”

Rosabal lay silent, his eyes shut. She felt his fingertips against the back of her neck, small indentations of pressure; he had powerful hands and sometimes he underestimated his own strength. She moved her head and his hands slackened and the pressure diminished.

She opened his fly slowly. She always knew how to arouse him and change his mood. “My sweet darling,” she said.
Vida mia
!

He saw her hair fall over his thighs. He shut his eyes and held his breath as if he meant to contain the explosion in his fashion, but he couldn't. He heard the way she moaned joyfully, her hands cupped together under his testicles; he came with a surge that rocked him. She raised her face. A glistening thread of semen lay on her lip and she removed it with a fingertip. She held this frail memento towards the light, then it drifted away. There was a profound intimacy she had with Rafael that with any other man would have been unthinkable. Certainly she'd never known it with another lover. It excluded the rest of the world. She found herself doing things she'd never done before, thinking thoughts that would never have entered her mind until now. She looked at him. He was so beautiful at times he made her ache.

They lay together in silence.

Then she said, “I want to leave before you. I don't like waiting behind after you've gone.”

“Of course.”

She shut her eyes very tightly. At the back of her mind she could already feel the sorrow that always came, like some vindictive wraith, whenever they parted. And there was always the same penetrating doubt, the heartache of wondering if, and when, they would meet again.

“Tell me we're going to win,” she said. This was another troublesome matter for her; she needed reassurances here too. Her love for Rosabal, her political beliefs, her desire to play a significant role in changing Cuba – these were bound together so tightly as to be inseparable.

“Do you doubt it?”

“I like to hear you say it, that's all.”

He turned his face towards her. “We're going to win. Nothing can stand in our way.”

Her face propped against the palm of her hand, she gazed at him.
The ultimate victory
. There were moments in which she could feel it as certainly as she might some fever in her blood – a raging flood of light and warmth. She had one such moment now as she studied her lover's face. Her fears and doubts drifted away like so much steam.

She turned over on her back, looked up at the ceiling. She thought about the role she would play later, in the time after Castro. Rosabal had brought it up a year ago in Mexico City; the only true democracy, he'd said, was one based on elections that were not only free but fair. And with that delightful smile on his face which contained her future, he told her how he had come up with a special job for her, namely Minister of Elections, a post he'd create for her when the time came, a powerful position that would bestow upon her the responsibility of ensuring elections free of corruption and coercion, elections that would be untainted by fraud as they so frequently were in such countries as Panama and Chile. Cuban democracy would be a model for the rest of Latin America.

Besides, what damn good was a rotten democracy? he'd asked. What good was it if votes could be bought with money or threats of violence? People had to cast their ballots without fear. Her job, as Rafael had enthusiastically described it, would be more than merely overseeing the impartial counting of ballots; a whole nation accustomed to one antiquated system for which
nobody had ever voted
had to be re-educated, an enormous task that affected every stratum of society. Immense propaganda would have to be created in schools, factories, farms. Simple democracy; an alien concept for a whole generation of Cubans who had to be wakened, and shaken, and remade! And he had absolutely no doubt that she had the energy for this; she had the zeal, the dedication, there was no question.

The prospect, and Rafael's faith in her, filled her with excitement; he intended to make her the principal architect of free elections in Cuba. In 1961, at the Bay of Pigs, scores of men, including her own father, had died in pursuit of that ideal. She shut her eyes. She said, “Do you know what makes me really happy? It's not just the importance of this job – it's the fact
you
understand what it means to me. Even after we're married, you want me to have a life of my own.” She opened her eyes, looked at him.

He said, “You have too much to contribute. I wouldn't expect you to give up your independence. I've told you that before. In any case, it's part of your charm.” He smiled now. “Presidente Rosabal and his wife Magdalena,” he added, as if testing the coupling. “It sounds so very right.”

And it was; what could be more natural? she wondered. Rafael and Magdalena. Lovers. Husband and wife. President and Minister. All along the line they fitted smoothly together. Sometimes this realisation overwhelmed her. She, who had always looked upon marriage as a relic of a simpler age when women blindly entered into unfair contracts – she wanted to be this man's wife; she
wanted
Rafael as her husband. He had asked her a year ago in Mexico City; her acceptance had been the most tranquil moment of her life. But she had known from the beginning that she'd never be just a decoration at Rosabal's side, never window-dressing. She wanted more. And she was going to get it.

Rafael Rosabal was silent for a long time. Then he pointed his index finger, gun-like, at the ceiling, and made a clicking sound.

“Castro is a dead man,” he said in a toneless voice.

“Yes.” Magdalena Torrente laid her face upon her lover's chest. “A corpse.”

Dover, Delaware

The house, overgrown with weeds and shrubbery, had no ostentation. It was large and anonymous, rather like its owner John Merkandome, who was known in intelligence circles as the Grim Reaper. Located a couple of miles from the Little Creek Wilderness Area, the house commanded some splendid views of Delaware Bay, but it was otherwise plain and unadorned. Merkandome paid very little attention to his surroundings. He enjoyed the indoor pool in which he presently floated, but, beyond that, he had no time for luxuries.

He breast-stroked to the side of the pool and hauled himself halfway out of the blue water, which dripped from his grey hair into his eyes. He was a lean man with an odd skin condition that caused his flesh to appear marbled. He sat down on a step and blinked as he said, “All our studies came to the same conclusion. Every single hypothesis led to the same result.”