Mambo (54 page)

Staggering, he followed Ruhr. He almost missed the hold because its hatch was closed save for a narrow space at one side where it had either been carelessly placed or budged by the storm. He almost missed seeing the section of covered missile below him in the dim light. For the moment he passed it by, rather as a man might hurry past a glass case in a museum that contains artifacts of no fascination for him.

He tried to keep Ruhr in sight. Catching up with him was impossible. His principal objective was not to be washed overboard. Ruhr clutched his rope, his lifeline, hurried, hurried, slid, hurried. Pagan, his breath knocked out of him by the storm, kept following. He took his pistol out, thinking he might wound Ruhr and stop him. He fired but couldn't hit anything on board a ship that bucked like a mad horse. Water streamed across his face and eyes and into his mouth. He thought it was possible to drown without having to sink underwater to do it.

Ruhr glanced back once, then kept moving, holding still to his safety rope. Pagan fired his gun again – useless, useless; and then the wind blew him back and the Bernardelli was jerked out of his hand and carried overboard and he saw it vanish into the heart of the foam.

Ruhr kept moving with the assistance of the rope. Pagan, scudded by water, cuffed, landed on hands and knees. He crawled, rose, glanced up at the helicopter: it looked fragile and exposed and altogether unnatural where it hung. How much longer could Alejandro keep it hovering there? Pagan had to find the kid, get her into the chopper, and get the hell off this ship.

Drenched, blinded, he kept going.

Gunther Ruhr, about twelve feet from the door of the cabin, looked back at Pagan. It was amusing to see the Englishman struggle to stay upright – but then the whole day was one of imbalances and upsets, of symmetry broken down, composure destroyed. Ruhr wiped his eyes with his knuckles, saw the place where he'd tied the rope, saw the cabin door.

He turned to look back one more time at Pagan.

Frank Pagan thought he saw Gunther Ruhr toss back his face and laugh. It was something of which he'd never be certain.

Steffie Brough hammered and hammered on the door until her fists ached. Useless. Then she tugged again and again on the handle.

– Why hadn't Ruhr come back?

– She caught the handle, twisted, cursed, strained.

– The bloody thing wouldn't turn, wouldn't, just wouldn't.

She closed her eyes; small tears slithered out from under her eyelids. There has to be something, she thought. There has to be some kind of way out. She kicked the door panel, nothing yielded.

She took a deep breath, bit her lower lip in sheer determination, puffed out her cheeks, pulled together every fragment of strength she could find. She hauled on the handle, and felt a screw pop out from damp wood, a small, rusty screw, and the handle itself was loose and a second screw fell away and the door, warped by seasons and sea-changes, split slightly. In the core of the wood were tiny worm-holes, small tunnels that released very fine sawdust. Now the entire handle came away in her fist and she opened the door and the sea blast winded her.

She saw Gunther Ruhr coming along the deck.

He was attached to a rail by a length of rope. It was knotted only twelve inches from the open door of the cabin. She was conscious of a second man hanging on to the rail, trailing Ruhr from behind.

She stepped forward. The idea that came to her was both inevitable and compelling. She had to do it.

With frantic fingers she took the loose end of the knot, the kind known to sailors as a double timber-hitch, and passed it through two loops of rope, which undid the knot swiftly. She dropped the rope. She heard Ruhr shout at her in alarm. Released from his anchor of safety he slipped. She saw him fall flat on his back. The rope curled about his ankle and he slithered toward the side, toward the dreadful sea, even as the other man hurried to prevent him sliding out into the waves.

Fingers clamped on Ruhr's wrist, but he kept slipping away.

“I cannot hold,” he shouted. “I cannot hold, Pagan –”

“
You have to fucking hold, you bastard
!”

Pagan groaned, clenched his jaw, caught Ruhr's shirt under the neck and pulled with all his strength, dragging Ruhr back from the edge. He couldn't let Gunther go, not now, not after all this distance had been travelled. If he released Gunther, then what had been the point of everything? He owed it to the dead men in Shepherd's Bush to take Ruhr back to London. He owed it to the soldiers murdered during the hijack of the missile in Norfolk. And he owed it to Steffie Brough, to her parents, to all the people Gunther Ruhr had hurt.

He couldn't let Ruhr slide into the sea. Couldn't lose him.

The German wasn't heavy, but the effort of rescuing him drained Pagan. He hauled him away from the rail, then released him; Ruhr lay flat and drenched and breathing badly near the cabin door. Landed, Pagan thought. Like a bloody great fish. Harpooned at last.

Pagan's sense of achievement lasted a second before he felt his heart frost over.

In his good hand Gunther Ruhr held the pistol which he had produced from the belt of his trousers. He pointed the gun directly at Pagan. “You overlooked this, Frank. Stupid of you.”

Pagan stepped back, alarmed. Why had he forgotten Ruhr's gun? Why the hell hadn't he let Ruhr slide into the bloody sea? Too damned anxious, Frank. Too damned keen to play Mr Justice, to take Ruhr back to London and the law. He didn't deserve due process, did he? He was a killer, a terrorist. He had no sense of right and wrong, no charity, no humanity. He didn't deserve his moment in a court of law, for Christ's sake. Pagan glanced at the girl, who was clinging to the cabin door as if her life depended on it.

Ruhr said, “Wonderful effort, Pagan. But futile –”

The ship bucked suddenly again. The swell, surging under the hull with great might, momentarily forced the bow out of the water. The deck tilted up. Gunther Ruhr, slick and wet, slid seven or eight yards on his back away from Pagan, flailing his arms like a man tumbling down a slippery chute.

It was an opportunity, and Pagan had to seize it before the ship righted itself. There might never be another. Fighting to keep his own balance, he caught the girl by the hand and they ran skidding together towards the rope-ladder which shimmied and flapped as if possessed by a life-force of its own, and was difficult to grasp. Pagan finally gripped it, brought it under control, helped the girl on to the first sodden rung. The climb was strenuous. The ladder blew sideways, the helicopter swayed, all the balances were so delicate that everything seemed destined to fall at any moment from the sky. The girl climbed a couple of rungs, and Pagan came behind. There was a lull then, a few wonderful seconds in which the storm abated a little. Pagan and the girl were able to advance about one third of the way up, which was when Steffie Brough stopped climbing.

“Keep going, for Christ's sake.” Pagan looked down – always a mistake. He saw Gunther Ruhr, upright now, trying to steady himself on the deck for a shot.

“Can't,” the girl said.

“Yes you can.”

“My legs won't work. They won't work. I can't make them work.”

“Bloody hell.” Pagan heard the sound of gunfire; overpowered by a revitalised wind, it was strangely unthreatening. But it came close, and he knew it. So did Alejandro Bengochea, who had been watching Ruhr from the cabin. He turned the helicopter away from the
Mandadera
and out over the water beyond the range of Gunther Ruhr's gun.

Pagan reached up with one hand, placed it against Steffie's spine, pushed gently, tried to ease her further up the ladder. She moved then, one slow rung at a time, panting, terrified of falling. He supported her even when the ladder swung to positions that made climbing impossible.

Once, unable to resist the impulse, he glanced at the sea again.
An evil dream of endlessly falling
.

The chopper kept moving back toward land as Pagan and the girl made their way slowly upwards to the cabin. The rain was falling hard, but the closer the aircraft came to the shore, the more the wind dropped and the sea quieted because the storm was pulling back and rolling out, to renew itself with a vengeance, across the Caribbean. It wasn't completely dead yet. It gusted, still creating havoc as Pagan and the girl pulled themselves up, exhausted, gasping, inside the cabin.

Pagan slumped in the narrow seat, squashed alongside the child. His eyes stung from salt, his hair was plastered to his skull, his clothing and skin so completely soaked he had no idea where fabric ended and flesh began; the storm had welded him to his clothes. His skin was numb.

“We've got to keep the ship in view,” he said to Bengochea.

Bengochea appeared not to have understood. Pagan grabbed his arm, pointed down towards the sea. “The
Mandadera
. We've got to follow the bloody ship to Santiago. Understand?”

Bengochea shook his head and pointed to the dials in front of him. “
Necesito gasolina. Comprendo
?”

“
Gasolina
?”

Bengochea rapped a dial in front of him with his fingertips. “See?
Vacante. Comprendo
?”

The chopper lurched suddenly; the fading storm, as if made petulant by its failure to down the craft, seized the machine and gave it one final, terrible shake. The girl, stricken by panic, pressed her face into Pagan's shoulder. The helicopter dropped rapidly, but then the storm, like a fist at last unlocking, released it; now there was only rain and a slight wind and a green rainswept landscape just beyond the shoreline ahead.

Pagan stroked the girl's wet hair. She was uncertain about his touch, but she tolerated it the way a suspicious animal might put up with a stranger's caress.

Bengochea flew directly toward the coastal road that linked Manzanillo with Santiago. On an airstrip outside Palma Soriano, forty miles from Santiago, he brought the craft down. He got out. Pagan watched him walk towards a one-storey building where he went inside. The girl, her face still pressed against Pagan's shoulder, stared vacantly across the tarmac. She shivered, said nothing. Pagan looked out at the grey sky and listened to the way rain fell sharply on the roof of the cabin. He was bitterly cold, sneezed once or twice, longed for a good fire, warm clothes, dry shoes.

Soon the
Mandadera
would reach the safe harbour of Santiago. Presumably Ruhr and the missile would go ashore there. In her rather glassy, dazed manner, Estela Rosabal had said that the missile – according to her husband – was intended to do nothing more than discredit Castro.

Pagan mulled this over while he waited for Bengochea to return. A missile to discredit Castro, to make him look like a warmonger. To justify his overthrow. To justify the coup Magdalena had talked about.
Fidel has a missile! Look! He intends to use it! He intends to blow up some part of the world! Crazy bastard
! But Rosabal overthrows the old dictator in an heroic coup; nuclear holocaust averted by dashing new President of Cuba. Wasn't that what Estela had whispered?
Rafael believes he will be the next president
.

Question: What nation would be most threatened by a missile on Cuba?

That was obvious. Ergo: by overthrowing Fidel and destroying the missile, Rosabal would be nothing less than a saint in American eyes. American aid would flood the island. American trade would bring riches. Rich tourists. The old guard would flock back to Havana: gamblers, call-girls, pimps, the drug-dealers, gunmen, low-lifers, outlaws, the dubious bankers and lawyers.

Pagan sneezed again and lost his chugging train of thought. His chest throbbed. His eyes watered. His mind was a cold, numb place. What he wanted was dryness, and food, then sleep.

Bengochea came out of the building and walked back towards the helicopter. He was smiling. He had clearly found a source of fuel. He looked up at Pagan and made a thumbs-up sign.

“
Abundancia,
” he said cheerfully. “
Immediatamente.
”

Rafael Rosabal had flown by jet through the edge of the storm from Havana to Santiago. There he'd been met by a half-dozen of Capablanca's officers – two of whom carried expensive cameras to photograph the missile in the launch position.

Followed by a truck containing a score of armed soldiers, Rosabal was driven by jeep out of the storm-swept city and along the coastal road toward Siboney. The nice irony did not escape him. It was from a farmhouse at Siboney that Castro had planned his first assault on the Batista regime in 1953, six years before his ultimate triumph. From this place Castro's revolutionaries had carried out a failed attack, a comedy of errors and confused timing, on the garrison at Moncada. Now monuments to the dead rebels lined the roadside and the farm had become a shrine to deify El Viejo. It was one of Communism's many hypocrisies: God was an unofficial entity, forbidden, but men like Castro could ascend to the vacant summits formerly occupied by the deity.

The jeep took Rosabal to a site about two miles from Siboney, a secluded meadow, ringed by trees and sheltered somewhat from the wind, where the missile would be placed. A house – in the possession of a farmer sympathetic to the new revolution – had been placed at Rosabal's disposal. Rosabal sat silently with Capablanca's officers on the screened porch and listened to what was left of the storm and waited.

He would have preferred better weather, but the storm was gradually diminishing; the
Mandadera
would surely reach its destination. The missile would get here. Delayed, but it would still get here.

Rosabal looked at his watch every so often. Now and again he rose and walked up and down the porch and stared out across the meadow, watching rain sweep through the trees. He was tense. The moment he'd worked for was almost here. The time he'd dreamed about for so long was almost upon him. How could he remain perfectly cool?

He thought about Magdalena Torrente.