Mambo (33 page)

“What could Rosabal possibly have in common with this Caporelli?”

Foxworth once more turned the pages of his little book; he was clearly enjoying himself. “Cuba,” he said quietly.

“Cuba?”

“It's a bit of a maze, actually, but according to some homework Billy Ewing has just completed, Enrico Caporelli resided in Cuba from 1955 until 1959, where he made a considerable fortune in various businesses. The Cubans took everything away from him. Expropriation is Fidel's word.”

“How did Ewing dig that up?”

“From our American pals in Grosvenor Square, Frank. Ewing called in a small favour at the Embassy. Back comes the info that Enrico Caporelli, a businessman deported from Cuba in spring, 1959, was debriefed that same year by the Central Intelligence Agency, which was assiduously gathering material on Castro at the time with the intention, one assumes, of assassination. Hence, Caporelli's name is in the files somewhere.”

A bit of a maze
, Pagan thought. The phrase struck him as understatement. He was always surprised by the connections that existed between people who, on the face of it, would seem to have nothing in common. Threads, trails left in space and time. A Cuban politician meets an Italian businessman in Glasgow in 1989, setting up a situation that creates echoes in very old files. Join the dots and what do you get? Companions in conspiracy, he thought. But what was the meat of this conspiracy?

“Where is Caporelli now?” he asked.

“The last available information came from a check we ran with the Italian police. According to the housekeeper at Caporelli's house in Tuscany, he's presently at his flat in Paris.”

“I'd love to have a word with him. I'd also like to sit Rosabal down and have a nice little chat.”

“He already left the country. Presumably he's back in Cuba.”

Pagan stood up. Despite the horror of it, he poured himself a second cup of coffee, which he took to the window. Drones crossed the square, hurrying inside offices. Another day was cranking up. In the east, clouds the colour of mud had begun to drift towards the city; below, a funnel of wind sucked up some brittle leaves. Strangely, an untended scarlet kite in the shape of a horse's head, probably tugged from some poor child's hand in Hyde or Green Park, floated across the roof-tops. Could a lost kite be some form of omen? Pagan watched it go, then turned back to Foxie.

“What does it all add up to?” Pagan asked. “Rafael Rosabal meets this Italian in Scotland. At the same time, Jean-Paul Chapotin arrives in Glasgow. Meanwhile, somebody using Chapotin's name rented a farmhouse in Norfolk, which became the headquarters for a group of terrorists. One solid connection exists between Rosabal and Chapotin and Caporelli: Cuba. It's all bloody absorbing if you're in the mood for puzzles and you've finished the
Times
crossword, but where does it leave us, for Christ's sake?”

Foxworth closed his little notebook. Billy Ewing put his face round the door. “Fax for you, Foxie,” he said.

Foxworth took the slip of paper from Ewing. He studied it for a moment, then smiled. “Surprise surprise,” was what he said. He gave the paper to Frank Pagan.

Pagan found himself looking at a police composite, an identikit creation; he thought these things always made human beings resemble pancakes. They rendered features flat and dopey. The constituent parts of the face never bore any relationship to one another, plundered as they had been from a kit of human bits and pieces. The face in this particular picture had black hair and a straight nose and a mouth that was rather tense and unreal. The face also wore sunglasses. Pagan thought of a zombie.

“What's so surprising, Foxie?” he asked.

Foxworth told him. “The man in this picture, wretched as he may appear, bears more than a passing resemblance to Rafael Rosabal, which may mean only one thing – that he rented the farm under Chapotin's name.”

“What kind of sense would that make, for Christ's sake?”

Foxworth shrugged. He didn't know. He said, “You'd have to ask Rafael that one, Frank. And since he's back in Cuba, it isn't going to be easy.”

“He'd deny any involvement anyway,” Pagan said. “How could I prove otherwise? This wretched illustration isn't enough. Rosabal would laugh his bollocks off.”

Pagan, who hadn't looked at a likeness of Rafael Rosabal before, hadn't even wanted to, gazed at the picture. So this was Magdalena's lover, this bland face that stared back at him, this prosaic product of a technician's craft. Composites never suggested emotion, certainly not passion; those lips looked as if they might never have kissed any human being. He tossed the drawing on the desk. It was funny how, after all this time, there was a streak of jealousy in him, like the trail of a very old comet, but uncomfortable just the same.

“And what's Rosabal's connection with Ruhr?” he asked. “Why would he rent a farmhouse for Ruhr to live in?”

“Perhaps because Rosabal hired Ruhr to steal the missile.”

“Perhaps, but also impossible to prove on the flimsy basis of an identikit,” Pagan said. “Why would Rosabal want his own damned missile to begin with?” He was thinking of another question now, one he didn't want to ask at all, but which he knew would have to be voiced, if not by himself then surely, sooner or later, by Foxworth.

“I wonder how Magdalena Torrente fits into all this?” he said.

“Maybe she doesn't fit anywhere,” Foxie answered. There was some kindness in his voice, as if he intuited Pagan's difficulty with the subject of the woman.

Pagan sipped the spooky coffee.
Maybe she doesn't fit –
but he wasn't convinced and he wasn't reassured and the melody that ran through his brain was composed of bad notes. His instincts told him he couldn't consign Magdalena to some convenient oblivion. Not yet, perhaps not at all. Somewhere along the way he thought he'd have to see her again, talk to her, probe the nature of her affair with the Cuban. Hadn't she hinted in an elliptical way about the prospect of a coup in Cuba? “Hinted” was too strong a word; rather, she'd failed to answer his direct questions, leaving room for his own speculation. Mysterious Magdalena.

He had mixed emotions about the prospect of seeing her again. But she was Rosabal's lover and there was at least a chance that she knew something about the Cuban's business. Perhaps they shared something more than each other's flesh; little secrets, the kind spoken across pillows and through tangled limbs.

Rosabal. Magdalena. Chapotin. Ruhr. Caporelli. He wondered what was secreted by those five names.

He asked, “Why Scotland? Why go up there at all? Why did all three men have to be in Glasgow on precisely the same day? Where did Chapotin go when he arrived there? Did he meet somebody? Did he meet Ruhr? Did he meet Caporelli? Did all three of them get together at some point? Is there life after death?”

Foxworth smiled. “Is there life after Glasgow?”

“Not for Jean-Paul Chapotin,” Pagan said.

Both men were quiet. The sound of a printer drifted through the open door; a telephone buzzed in another room, a man cleared his throat. Pagan's head ached. Too many questions. The more information that reached his office, the more solid grew the whole edifice of mystery. It was time to be dogged, time to be systematic; take each problem as it comes. Time, he thought: did Steffie Brough, wherever she was, have the luxury of time? He was conscious of a clock ticking madly away.

“If I want to interview Rosabal, what official channels do I have to go through?” he asked.

“I can find out. I suspect they're complicated and involve hideous protocol.”

Pagan shook his head in slight despair. It was a hopeless kind of quest really. Rosabal would simply refuse to come back to Britain, and if Pagan went to Cuba, armed with the silly composite, Rosabal would mock him – if indeed he agreed to see him at all. Ministers and their ministries could keep you waiting in ante-chambers indefinitely, whether you came from Scotland Yard or not. It wasn't going to be fruitful to approach Rafael Rosabal in a headlong manner; there was too much tape red, as Madame Chapotin might have said, for that. No, he would have to chisel away at the edifice confronting him, sliver by sliver, like a sculptor intrigued by the form concealed in a block of granite.

“Put Billy Ewing on it. I've got something else in mind for you, Foxie.”

“Paris?” Foxworth asked.

“Glasgow. I'm taking Paris.”

“Why don't we discuss it?”

“Because this isn't a bloody democracy, Foxie. I get Paris, you get Glasgow. It's a matter of seniority, sonny.”

Foxie sighed in resignation. He doubted if Pagan was quite strong enough to travel, but he wasn't going to argue the point. Frank had switched into his headstrong mode and that was it.

Pagan said, “I'll see you back here tonight.”

“That soon?”

“Soon? That gives you the whole day, Foxie. Use it well. Tell me where Chapotin went and how he's connected to Ruhr. Tell me why Rosabal would use Chapotin's name. Tell me why they selected scenic Glasgow for skulduggery.”

Slavedriver
, Foxie thought. “You want a miracle, Frank.”

“I want more than a miracle, Foxie,” Pagan replied.

Villa Clara Province, Cuba

At four a.m. the Lider Maximo lay in his bedroom with a rubber hot-water bottle pressed flat upon his stomach. He was unable to speak because of the thermometer stuck between his lips. The physician, Dr Miguel Zayas, checked the great man's pulse.

“Now,” Zayas said. He took the hot-water bottle away and prodded here and there the fleshy stomach of the Lider Maximo. “Does that hurt? Does that? Does this?”

Castro shook his head. How could he speak with a damned tube in his mouth? It would not do for him to moan and admit pain, even though Zayas was fingering some tender spots; especially he couldn't admit anything so human as pain in front of that old buzzard General Capablanca, who was hovering in the room like a greedy relative at a will-reading.

“What have you eaten recently?” Zayas asked, and took the thermometer away.

“Shrimp,” Castro said. He grabbed back the hot-water bottle and laid it over his navel.

“What else?”

“
Moros y cristianos.
”

“Anything else?”

“Plantains.”

The physician tugged the hot-water bottle from Castro's belly. “This may aggravate your condition.”

“Which is what exactly?”

“Gastric influenza,” the physician said.

Castro slumped back against the pillows. It was ignominious to have cancelled a speech in which he had planned to castigate the new, cosy friendship between the Yanqui imperialists and the “soft” reformist, quasi-capitalist regime in the Soviet Union, but the attacks of diarrhoea, which left him weak and helpless, were positively humiliating. He had also a fever and he couldn't concentrate. Goddam, it would have been a great speech, perhaps his best, emphasising Cuba's splendid isolation in the world, the kind of exciting speech that would have brought Cubans together in a show of solidarity. Cuba would not be threatened by this obscene new collusion, this game of footsy, between the United States and Russia.

Capablanca, whose thick white moustache covered his upper lip, came close to the bed. Castro was annoyed by the intrusion of the General, a man he'd never been able to stand anyway. Capablanca was a left-over from a class that should have been swept away by the Revolution, but still lingered here and there in pockets despite the Party's best efforts.

Capablanca, who had a set of papers in his hand, said, “I have come to remind you, Commandante, that tomorrow's troop manoeuvres require your personal authorisation in the absence of your brother.”

“What manoeuvres?” Castro asked. He could remember no mention of troop movements. His was a life totally consumed by detail: how could he possibly recall every little thing? Nor did he trust his own memory entirely. Lately, it hadn't seemed an altogether reliable instrument. He seized the papers from the General's hand.

Peering through his glasses he saw that the documents described a huge military exercise scheduled for dawn tomorrow. It involved the movement of troops from the Santiago de Cuba Province. Infantry battalions, as well as aeroplanes, were to move inland from the coastal region of the province, which lay on the island's southern seaboard. Ships of the Cuban Navy were also scheduled to sail around the tip of the island at Guantanamo, bound for Holguin Province. This would expose the coast of Santiago de Cuba, leaving it defenceless. Not that Castro expected an invasion force; but one had always to be prepared.

The same documents described other military exercises in Havana Province. These were less extensive than the movement of troops from Santiago to Holguin, but they were impressive just the same and involved the transportation of more than seven thousand men from Havana Province to Matanzas; there, in the mountainous region surrounding Matanzas City, exercises would keep these troops occupied at a distance of some fifty miles from the Central Highway.

“All this involves thousands of soldiers and reservists,” Castro said.

“Indeed,” the General answered.

“Why? Why this undertaking?”

“Readiness, Commandante. Alertness. A standing army must flex its muscle, otherwise it withers.”

“Readiness is important, but does Raul know of these manoeuvres?”

“Of course,” said the General. “It was Raul's idea.” Lies came to him with great difficulty.

Castro tossed the papers back at the General. The pain that shot suddenly through his stomach was like a fierce little cannonball. He imagined it leaving a scalding trail of debris on its passage through his guts. He spoke with some effort. “I do … not … recall my brother ever … mentioning these exercises before now, General.”

“But Commandante,” Capablanca said. He was tense, slightly panicked. He hadn't expected resistance; he'd imagined that the debilitated and confused Lider Maximo would give his consent willingly. He needed the Commandante's authorisation of the documents; without that imprimatur, those officers loyal to the Party, and to El Viejo himself, would refuse to participate in the exercises. They wouldn't raise a finger unless one or other of the Castros authorised it. Such disobedience on the part of the misguided loyalists would mean chaos, disorder, bloodshed. The General pictured slaughter on the beaches. God knows, there would be unavoidable bloodshed somewhere down the road but the ship coming from Honduras had to arrive without impediment. That was a matter of the utmost importance.