Mambo (40 page)

“There are some iffy bits in there,” Burr said.

Pagan agreed and muttered something about the nature of all hypotheses. He glanced down the busy street.

“What do you propose, Frank?” Burr asked. Sometimes he adopted an attitude toward Pagan similar to one that might be held by an uncle toward a favoured, if slightly wilful, nephew. He was tolerant, bemused, gently critical; he knew that Pagan always did his best no matter the circumstances.

Pagan said what he had in mind.

Martin Burr put one hand up to his dark-green eye-patch. “Are you really sure that this person – this Magdalena – will tell you anything, even if she's in a position to do so?”

Pagan wasn't sure. He thought about the mysterious coup she'd been so reluctant to discuss: if he knew more about that, there might be progress. “She's the only real connection I have to Rosabal. And I think the road to Ruhr leads through the Cuban.”

“You could travel a long way and have nothing to show for it.”

“I could also sit on my arse around London and have even less.”

“True,” Burr said. A certain look sometimes came to Frank Pagan's face, and the Commissioner recognised it now, determined, and hard, the slight forward thrust of the jaw, aggressive. “May I remind you, Frank, that you're not in great shape for travelling? On top of that, your activity in Paris today hasn't improved your condition.”

“I feel fine,” Pagan said. And, for the moment, that was true enough. How long this transitory well-being would last was another matter. He had the feeling he was held together by nothing more substantial than Ghose's stitches.

Burr said, “Very well. Make arrangements to go.”

“I already made them.”

Burr smiled. “I should have known.” He was quiet a moment. Pagan's confidence was sometimes an impressive thing. “There's an old contact of mine in Dade County. A certain Lieutenant Philip Navarro. You might need him. He knows his way around.”

Pagan memorised the name.

“I hope you bring something back, Frank. God knows, we could use a break.”

The Commissioner shook Pagan's hand, then turned and walked in the direction of Old Compton Street. Pagan didn't watch him leave. He didn't have time to linger. He had to go to his apartment, toss a few things together, get his passport and his gun, and be at Heathrow Airport within the next two hours. He was pleased to have the Commissioner's blessing, the official imprimatur.

With or without it, he'd have gone anyway.

Washington

Harry Hurt kept an expensive apartment in an area of Washington that afforded a splendid view of the Potomac. It was a rich man's view, designed to instil in its owner a sense of unbridled superiority. High above the riff-raff, Hurt indulged his patriotism, which fostered the illusion that anyone – anyone at all – could rise to wealth and prominence in these United States. Any Appalachian dirt farmer's boy, any steelworker's son from Bethlehem, PA, could – God, hard work, and the machine willing – ascend to the highest offices in the land. Harry Hurt believed this without question. While he was not an innocent in world affairs by any means, he was nevertheless naive when it came to some areas of understanding. His romanticised America eclipsed the hard reality.

The apartment had an exercise-room fitted with an electronic bicycle, stretching devices, a Nautilus machine, a variety of weights and a rowing simulator. In this room Hurt burned off calories and kept himself tight and lean.

A spartan bedroom with a certain Polynesian flavour adjoined the mini-gymnasium, and beyond was a large living-room where he sometimes entertained people. A glass-panelled cabinet, centred against the main wall of the living-room like a shrine, contained a variety of weapons – automatic rifles, shotguns, pistols – as well as photographs of Hurt in crumpled fatigues and black glasses when he'd been a “military advisor” in Central America. A clutch of shrunken heads, gathered in Central American villages, hung alongside the cabinet like a spray of discoloured garlic bulbs. All were reminders of his glory days.

The door of the living-room led into a vestibule furnished in soft white leather chairs and sofas. This room was presently occupied by new guards Hurt had hired. There were three in all, one a former Secret Serviceman. They wore dark-blue suits.

On this particular evening, more than twenty-four hours after the limousine had exploded, Hurt was in the living-room pouring small shots of an inexpensive scotch called Passport from a bottle labelled Glenfiddich. He had some miserly ways and, like most misers, thought he could fool people with transparent deceptions.

Freddie Kinnaird, who had arrived an hour ago on Concorde, sipped his drink and pretended to enjoy it. Sheridan Perry, knowledgeable about malt whiskies, made no objection either. He was accustomed to this odd streak of niggardliness in Harry. The more wealth Hurt accumulated, the more thrifty he became and the more energy he spent jogging and rowing and heaving weights around. It was almost as if he were obeying some strange axiom of his own:
great wealth leads only to parsimonious guilt which can be reduced only through endless exercise
.

Freddie Kinnaird, who had just finished relating the death of Enrico Caporelli, set his glass down a moment. Hurt deftly slid a coaster, filched from the Stanhope Hotel in Manhattan, under the Englishman's drink.

“When does it end?” Hurt asked. He'd already told Freddie about the attack on the limo, glancing all the while at Perry, as if for some sign of his compatriot's guilt.

“When we three are dead, I daresay,” Kinnaird remarked.

“Hold on, hold on,” Hurt said. “Let's be logical. Let's take this thing apart and put it back together again. It has to lead somewhere.”

Kinnaird picked up his glass and finished his drink. He had so little time to spend here. There was business to conduct back in England, the affairs of his office not the least of it, but he'd come here to show a sign of solidarity with Hurt and Perry. After all, they were members of the same exclusive club. He detected some mild tension between the pair. Had there been a squabble? In the circumstances, though, nervousness was inevitable.

Freddie Kinnaird also had some information to impart at the appropriate moment, which would come when Harry had played out his little string of paranoia.

“For a while, I thought Enrico himself might be behind it,” Hurt said.

“How wrong you were,” said Kinnaird.

“Now, if it's an inside job …” Harry Hurt didn't finish his sentence.

“We three,” Freddie Kinnaird said.

“Right,” Perry said. “If it's an inside job, it's one of us.”

Freddie Kinnaird played with his empty glass. A lock of hair fell across his forehead, creating the impression of a rather red-faced, ungainly boy. He swept it back with a toss of his head. “Consider the explosion of the limousine,” he said to Perry. “Who had the information that you and Harry were travelling in the vehicle?”

Perry said, “Only Harry and me. That's it.”

“Unless
you
knew, Freddie,” Hurt said.

Kinnaird laughed. “I was many miles away, Harry. I have no crystal ball, something my political enemies in the House of Commons discovered some time ago.”

“You're saying …” Perry stopped, looking both indignant and somewhat despondent at the same time.

“It's either you or me.” Hurt turned to Perry. “That's what Freddie's saying.”

“Wait a minute there,” Perry said.

Kinnaird interrupted. “It's only one possibility, gentlemen. Consider this as an alternative. Parties unknown to us, parties seeking the destruction of the Society, might be responsible.”

This was what Hurt wanted so badly to believe. But was it really preferable to ascribe the killings to some faceless organisation rather than to Sheridan Perry? Perry he could deal with. An unknown outfit was more spooky. How the hell did you begin to fight back at a shadow? His thoughts returned to the fiery limousine and the striking little perception he'd had when he'd been obliged to flee the tailoring establishment.
Perry knew
, he had thought then.

Now it made some kind of sense to him.

Consider: Perry knew.

Assume: Perry arranged the hit.

The killers Perry had hired to strike the limousine had erred. Maybe they were supposed to blow up the car later, at some time when Perry – perhaps on the pretext of buying a newspaper, something like that – had stepped out of the limo. It made simple, stunning, logical sense. Perry's killers, in their enthusiasm to do the job, had mistimed the affair.

This is what it came down to: Perry wanted it all, the whole ball of wax. He wanted the Society for himself. He wanted Cuba for himself.

Hurt switched on the light in the aquarium standing against one wall. Sudden fluorescence illuminated a clan of silken Siamese fighting fish. When they moved they did so with a kind of narcissism, as if studying their reflections in an infinity of mirrors. Hurt peered into the aquarium. His own image, the angular features, the great bony jaw, the steely close-cropped hair, shone back at him. Seeing himself thus he remembered that control was one of his strengths, that he wasn't the kind of man to leap to unfounded conclusions. Perhaps he was judging Perry wrongly.

He turned to look at his fellow American. Sheridan Perry was pouting very slightly, the shadow of an expression left over from a spoiled childhood. Little Sheridan Perry had been the centrepiece of his parents' marriage. Fawned over, bestowed with riches, his life an endless cycle of tearing apart wrapping-paper to get to the goodies, young Perry had reached his tenth birthday before he realised that in most other houses Christmas arrived but once a year.

Perry said, very quietly, “It wasn't me. I'm not behind it. I wish you'd quit staring at me, Harry. I'm no traitor.”

He looked convincing to Hurt. He sounded like a man telling the truth. Kinnaird's hypothesis of an unknown party seemed suddenly feasible to Hurt, who couldn't stand the pained expression on Perry's face. How could Perry, no matter the unfathomable extent of his greed, be responsible for wiping out the Society?

Hurt shook his head, astonished by his own ability to vacillate. You simply couldn't have it both ways. Either Perry was guilty or he was not. Indecision was a sin in Hurt's eyes.

“Let us set all this unpleasantness and mutual suspicion aside for the moment,” Kinnaird said in a firm way. “There's something else that complicates our lives – the fact that a certain London policeman is presently on his way to the United States. A man called Frank Pagan. Pagan is the one who interviewed Enrico in Paris. He was present at Caporelli's unfortunate death.”

“Do you think he knows anything?” Hurt asked.

“Very little, I imagine. At this present time. All I can tell you is the information I myself get from Scotland Yard.”

“How did he get on to Enrico?” Sheridan Perry asked, frowning, looking oddly pale and anaemic in a way no hearty carnivore ever should.

Kinnaird replied, “Through Rosabal, I gather. I haven't seen Pagan's report yet on his meeting with Enrico.”

“But how the hell did Pagan get on to the Cuban?” Hurt wanted to know.

Freddie Kinnaird stretched his legs, clasped his hands at the back of his head, and tried to look relaxed, but he was faintly nervous here. “British domestic intelligence has an occasional policy of observing members of the Cuban government visiting Britain – diplomats, ministers, etcetera. Now and then, a Cuban is selected for surveillance. Rosabal's number came up. He was watched in Glasgow. He was seen with Enrico.”

While Hurt absorbed this information, he could hear various doors squeak open in the long murky corridor of his mind. The idea that Rosabal had been followed in the United Kingdom worried him deeply. Perhaps Enrico had also been placed under surveillance on account of his association with the Cuban. And where could that have led?

“Is it possible that British intelligence is responsible for the deaths of our members?” he asked.

Kinnaird smiled. “I don't think it's likely. That kind of information would have come to my attention one way or another.”

“Unless they're on to you, Freddie.”

“Nobody is on to me, Harry. Believe me.” Kinnaird smiled. The very idea of his exposure was preposterous.

The silence in the room was disturbed only by water passing softly through the aquarium filter and a faint
plup
as a fish briefly broke the surface. Then Hurt asked, “How good is Pagan?”

“His determination is notorious. He's also known for overlooking the book when it suits him,” Kinnaird said. He recalled the hurried telephone conversation he'd had with Martin Burr just before boarding Concorde. “Right now he's on his way to Miami. He has a contact inside the Cuban exile community. Mind you, I don't think Pagan knows very much. Nor do I imagine he's remotely interested in Cuba or anything that might happen there. He wants Ruhr and he wants this young girl Ruhr was silly enough to grab. He also wants to know the whereabouts of the missile.”

Hurt walked to the window. He surveyed the other blocks of apartments that overlooked the Potomac. Lights burned in windows and a passing yacht created a bright yellow band on the dark waters. Hurt felt suddenly crowded. It was more than the deaths of his associates, it was the idea of this Frank Pagan. He looked at his watch. Everything was so damned close to completion. How could he allow some British cop to interfere? If Pagan was headed for Miami and the Cuban community there, he was getting a little too close. He was trespassing on Harry Hurt's zone of comfort.

“Who's his contact in Miami?”

“This is the interesting part, Harry. According to my information, Pagan's friend is a woman called” – and here Kinnaird consulted a small morocco bound notebook fished from his inside pocket –“Magdalena Torrente.”