[email protected]/IntelWeb/ru Wed Aug 5 1996
A.I. Serkov, Manager
Diamond International Trading
1123 Smolenskaya Ploshad, Rm. 167
Moscow
Dear Serkov,
Greetings from the land of mambo kings. I am just now getting used to sending mail through the internet so I hope you are all well, etc. The weather is agreeable, thank you. Let me know if this reaches you safely.
Yours,
S.S. Pribluda
It was like watching someone learn to ride a bicycle.
A.I. Serkov
Diamond International Trading
Dear Serkov,
Progress.
Yours,
S.S. Pribluda
Arkady liked the sound of that. Progress! Russian and to the point. Also interesting in that it had no E-mail address or time sent, suggesting that it was a note for a real message to be sent from an encrypted machine at the embassy.
[email protected]/IntelWeb/ru Mon Oct 1 1996
Serkov,
The Chinese contact has borne fruit. I think you will see that the fox is flushed! A fox and a wolf!
Pribluda
What a wordsmith. Pribluda had obviously been flushed with victory. "Success!" was all an agent need say. "Chinese contact" seemed far too much, not that Arkady was aware of any part of China abutting Havana.
According to the spreadsheet, Pribluda's finances were straightforward, so much allotted each month for food, laundry, personal items, gasoline and car repair. The only unexplained expenditure was a hundred dollars paid every Thursday. If the item was sex, Arkady thought, Pribluda would have hidden it; as an unreconstructed Communist, Pribluda had a skewed but ironbound morality. No, the item could be for his Chinese contact. Or karate lessons. According to little Carmen, Pribluda did carry a black belt in his briefcase.
The more immediate fact was that the colonel had much more money than was found with the body in the inner tube. Arkady shut down the computer and searched the apartment again, more his line of work. This time he emptied everything, including shoes and hatbands. In pants hanging in the closet he found two red ticket stubs. In the medicine cabinet he found, rolled with white pasteboard inside a white aspirin bottle, a couple of pills left for sound effects and $2,500 American.
Which didn't tell him much. All the same, Arkady was satisfied with finding anything. He picked up a knife in the kitchen and let the blue of the sea draw him to a balcony chair. One moment he was full of nervous energy, the next barely able to move his feet. Was it the six-hour time difference from Moscow? Fear? The breeze was soft, the weight of the knife across his stomach was reassuring and he fell asleep, cooled by the sweat on his face.
He awoke to the rising pitch of sirens. The sun had moved to the far end of the Malecón, and coming up the seawall boulevard was a high-speed vanguard of four motorcycles, their way cleared in advance by PNRs who had suddenly appeared ahead at every intersection to stop all other traffic and chase bikers and pedicabs out of the way. Behind the bikes came a smooth, silent convoy, and as it flashed by people on the sidewalk paused in midstep, eyes darting to each vehicle as it flew past, from boxy Land Rover to wide Humvee, to a little Minint Lada that ran like a lapdog in front of two black Mercedes 280s with tinted glass and the swaying ride of heavy armor, from radio van to ambulance, from trailing Land Rover to a rear guard of four more cycles, an energetic whirlwind that made the entire Malecón come to a stop like a population in a trance and then, with its passing, released them.
Arkady's name was being shouted, and down on the pavement he saw Erasmo tilted backward in his wheelchair.
"Bolo, did you see him?" Erasmo touched his beard to signify El Lider, El Comandante, Fidel himself.
"That was him?"
"In one of the Mercedes. Or his double. No one knows and the where or when of the presidential cavalcade is never announced ahead of time. In fact, it's the only surprise in Cuba." Erasmo grinned and swung the chair back and forth. "You said you wanted to talk to Mongo when he came to work. Well, he didn't come."
"Has he got a phone?"
"Very funny. Come down and we'll find him. Besides, it's too beautiful to be inside. I'll give you the Cuban perspective."
Arkady thought that unless a person had an armored car and entourage it might be beautiful outside, but with Luna outside it was probably safer in. "Look," Erasmo admitted, "I need a driver."
Driving a Jeep with the radio pounding and Erasmo half over the car door, calling to friends on the Malecón was a different view of life. To begin with, the mechanic gave the PNRs a rude salute.
"Professional hijos de puta," he explained to Arkady. "I'm a capitalino, someone from Havana. We despise police, who are all rubes from the countryside, and they don't like us. It's war."
"Okay."
Some houses were Spanish castles carved from pink limestone, office buildings showed ranks of shutters with cockeyed slats and the sun itself disintegrated into light. While Arkady watched for Luna, Erasmo identified oncoming traffic. " '50 Chevy Styleline, '52 Buick Roadmaster, '58 Plymouth Savoy, '57 Cadillac Fleetwood. You're a lucky man to see one of those." He also had Arkady slow by every girl thumbing a ride. In their bright Lycra pedal pushers, halters and hair clips each girl resembled Madonna, the singer not the mother of God.
"Isn't it dangerous for girls to hitch rides?" asked Arkady. In Moscow the only females who dared were either prostitutes or women so old they were bulletproof.
"If buses aren't running, women must find rides some other way. Besides, Cuban men may be macho but they have a sense of honor." All the girls Arkady saw were fullbore pubescent, with bare midriffs or body suits painted on, their thumbs out ostensibly for eunuchs. Erasmo spotted a hitchhiker in hot orange. "When you see a girl like that, you should at least honk."
"Did Pribluda honk?"
"No. Russians know nothing about women."
"You think so?"
"Describe a woman to me."
"Intelligent, humorous, artistic."
"Is this your grandmother? I mean a woman. Like the kinds here. Criolla: very Spanish, very white. Like the dancer Isabel. Negra: African, black, which can be very forbidding or very sexy. In the middle, mulata: a caramel color, skin soft as cocoa, eyes like a gazelle. Like your friend the police detective."
"You saw her?"
"I noticed her."
"Why do men always describe women in edible terms?"
"Why not? And the best to most Cuban men, china: mulata with just a hint of Chinese, of the exotic. Now describe a woman."
"A knife in the heart."
They drove for a while.
"That's not bad," Erasmo said.
"When you called me on the street, you said 'Bolo.' What does that mean?"
"Bowling ball. That's what we call Russians. Bolos."
"For our...?"
"Physical grace." Erasmo unveiled a vicious grin. The mechanic had a broad, vigorous face, huge shoulders. Arkady realized that with legs the man would have been a Hercules.
"Speaking of Chinese," Arkady said, "are there Chinese events on Thursdays around Havana?"
"Chinese events? Wrong city, my friend."
Undeniably, Arkady thought.
They went past high rises that had the dinginess of fingered postcards, until the Malecón was swallowed by a tunnel. Emerging in Miramar, Erasmo directed Arkady along the water on a dreary, sun-washed street called
First Avenue
. They passed the Sierra Maestra, the apartment house, where Arkady had interviewed the photographer Mostovoi. Erasmo pointed out a film theater called the Teatro Karl Marx that had been the Teatro Charlie Chaplin, and if there was a better example of socialist humor Arkady couldn't think of it. Beyond was a line of beach houses in pastels (peeling), family crests (defaced) and patios with (new) cinder-block benches, where Erasmo had Arkady steer the Jeep up on the sidewalk and stop as if that were safer than the street.
"For the tires, at lea
st," Erasmo said. "This is an island of cannibals. Remember Alive? The plane crash? Fidel is our pilot, but he would call a crash a Special Period."
Erasmo's wheelchair was a folding model with bicycle tires and once it was pulled from the back of the car and he was seated, he let Arkady know not to even offer a push. He tacked recklessly around broken bottles to a series of pool-sized basins filled with brackish water and, only a step below them, a shelf of pocked coral and seawater of restless green. Concrete blocks like the stones of a pyramid had been set out as a breakwater and snorkelers floated between them and the coral.
"They're spearfishing for octopus," Erasmo said when Arkady caught up. " Before the Revolution you could swim here in a freshwater pool, a saltwater pool or the ocean. Parties all the time, American friends learning the mambo." He lifted his chin toward a house with a wooden pergola on the second floor where sheets billowed like eager sails. " My grandmother's. She wore a sable jacket and used a lorgnette instead of eyeglasses, women of a certain class did. I used to tear up and down here on a Schwinn tricycle with streamers on the handlebars. I suppose in a way I still do."
"Do you still have family here?"
"They left long ago. Flew out, sailed out, paddled out. And, of course, if you leave, you're officially a traitor, a gusano, a worm. You can't just disagree with Fidel, you are against Fidel, against the Revolution, a criminal, a faggot or a pimp. That way there's no one against Fidel except scum."
Arkady looked at the house. It was quite grand. Erasmo's hair and beard had gone a little wild in the breeze.
"You didn't want to live here?"
"I used to. I traded for rooms where a garage wouldn't be so obvious. Mongo lives here now."
"You're old friends?"
"Old friends. You know, he often misses work but up to now he always let me know."
They backed the chair up the steps and through a progression of dining room, sitting room, courtyard, second parlor all turned into separate apartments, the larger rooms divided by plywood and sheets into two apartments, so that the house was a pueblecito, as Erasmo called it, a little city. He knocked at a door in the rear. When there was no answer, he told Arkady to feel over the doorframe for a key.
"This was my bedroom whenever I slept here. Some things stay the same. I loved it. Here I was Captain Kidd."
The room afforded such a sweeping view of the water it had to be a theater of fantasy for a boy brought up on pirate tales of the Caribbean, Arkady thought. The accommodations were tight: cot, sea chest, desk and shelf of adventures like Don Quixote, Ivanhoe and Treasure Island, with the overlay of a CD player, a mirror trimmed in red velvet, coconuts and seashells on the windowsill, a plastic saint surrounded by paper flowers. A truck-sized inner tube suspended from the ceiling made a bumper and chandelier in one. Hung in fishnet bags around the walls were flippers, reels, candles, sticks, jars of hooks by size. Under the bed were a toolbox, cans of motor oil, drums and gourds. On a hook over the bed was what looked like a crossbow without the bow, a long wooden muzzle with a pistol grip and trigger and three round bands of heavy rubber hanging from the front end.
"Speargun," Erasmo said. He had Arkady take it down and showed him how to place the elongated back end against a hip to pull the bands with both hands to a cocked position. The spear itself was a steel bolt with, instead of barbs, two folding wings held down by a sliding collar behind the tip. "The Cuban fisherman meets his prey on all fronts."
Arkady was more interested in pictures of boxers on the wall.
"Kid Chocolate, Kid Gavilan, Teofilio Stevenson. Mongo's heroes," Erasmo said.
Under a newspaper photo of Fidel in a sparring pose with a tall, spindly fighter the caption read, "El Jefe con el joven pugilista Ramón Bartelemy."
"You said his name is Mongo."
Erasmo shrugged as if it were self-evident. "Ramón, Mongo, same thing."
The picture of Cuban boxers in front of the Eiffel Tower was identical with the one Arkady had seen in Rufo's room, except now Arkady saw that next to Rufo was Ramón "Mongo" Bartelemy.
"If he's not here, where do you think he is?"
"I don't know. His tube is here. Arkady, do you mind if I ask about the PNR? There were two stationed across the street until the show at the santero's. I know they don't like Russians, but is there anything you want to tell me? After all, it's where I live too."
Arkady thought that was a reasonable request. "Sergeant Luna might have something to do with them."
"Luna. That Luna, the dark phase of the moon, unseen but there. Yes, a bad man to cross and a very bad man to embarrass before his friends. An exquisite choice of enemy. And now the PNRs are gone. You may want them in case he's coming back."
"That's occurred to me."
"You're so intent on finding Sergei?"
"Or what happened to him."
"You should start thinking about what's going to happen to you. You have no authority and you don't even pretend to speak the language, which is a relief. You can't investigate, all you can do is get involved."
"In what?"
"Cuba, which is very complicated. But simply, if you don't want your head in a bucket, stay away from Luna. I tell you that because I feel a little responsible for last night. I don't need any more regrets."
Arkady opened the shutter wider. Under a low sun, waves pressed against an offshore breeze and two neumáticos came into view riding the crown of a swell, each in turn sliding up the incoming brow, sinking from sight and reappearing on the next slope of water like riders on submerged horses. " So, if Mongo's tube is here, where is he?"
"He can still fish."
By the time Arkady and Erasmo returned outside the neumáticos were using short paddles to maneuver around the breakwater. Green aerated waves churned between the breakwater and rock. The fishermen had to come in on one rush as much as possible and the boulders struck Arkady as an excellent place to crack a head.
"When does Mongo go out?"
"You never know. Neumáticos go out day or night. They fish one stretch of the bay and then another. I think you have to call fishing from an inner tube a feat of improvisation. They can stay close to shore or go miles out, where the charter boats are hooking marlin. The boats don't like that, having a couple of poor Cubans mess with their tourists."
"The neumáticos try to catch marlin?"
"They could. They're like buoys, they just drag behind until a fish gets tired. A fish could tow them to Florida, who knows? But they've got to get the fish back, no? Would you like to land a marlin in an inner tube? No. Another problem is barracuda because they'll bite on anything. A barracuda on your lap isn't so much fun either. So, they take smaller fish. They do well, especially at night, but then you have to take flashlights and lamps, and at night the inner tubes attract sharks, that's the part I wouldn't like. That's why neumáticos go in pairs, for safety."
"Always in pairs?"
"Absolutely, in case one gets sick or loses his fins. Especially at night."
"Do they have radios?"
"No."
"And what exactly could a neumático do while his friend was being eaten by a shark?"
Erasmo let his eyebrows rise. "Well, we have a lot of religions in Cuba to choose from."
What appealed to Arkady was the marginal aspect of the fishermen, the way they folded into the motion of the sea, rose on the horizon and then slid from sight, their vanishing act. Lying back in their tubes, they removed their flippers and sat up, paddles lifted. A still space was followed by a trough sucking sand and then a set of three waves gathering strength. Both men chose the same climactic surge and stroked in deep pulls to ride it around the breakwater and up the rocks. The nearer spilled, clutching his tube with one hand and rocks with the other until he could scramble up on his belly. The second was an older man in a straw hat, and he timed his landing to let the wave's momentum smoothly lift him standing onto the coral, the brim of his hat trembling raggedly in the breeze, shirt and pants bleached, black shanks e
nding in feet gray with calluses. He found a tide pool in which to deposit his catch while he tucked his gear between the tube and the net that constituted his one-man craft. Despite the weight and dripping of the inner tube balanced on his head, he found a match to light the stub of a cigar in his mouth.
Arkady dug out the photograph of the Havana Yacht Club for Erasmo to show him. The fisherman put his finger on Mongo and pointed to the sky.
"Pescando con cometa. Con cometa."
"It's what I thought." Erasmo pointed out to Arkady a dot in the sky. "You see that kite? The old man says maybe he saw Mongo fishing over there. Even from the air the industrious Cuban finds his fish."
Arkady thought of Pribluda's heart attack. "Could you ask him if he ever fishes in the rain?"
"He says, 'Sure.'"
"When there's lightning?"
A solemn shake of the head. "No."
"When was the last time there was lightning on the bay?"
"He says, 'A month.'"
They took the Jeep. Since the kite was too far over the water to keep track of from the street, Arkady stopped for another look. From a bathing stairway he saw about two hundred meters farther on a thin figure in a cap standing on steps and playing out a string rising with a delicate curve that disappeared into the air. Perhaps three hundred meters over the water a kite rode the offshore wind. The Jeep honked.
"Sorry, but you should have seen them," Erasmo explained when Arkady returned to the car. Arkady swiveled and saw a pair of long-legged blondes roller-blading away. "Jineteras on wheels, a mechanic's fantasy."
"We're looking for Mongo."
"Right. To fish with a kite you actually need two lines," Erasmo said when they started driving again. "One to the kite, one to the hook. The first line takes the second one out, and when the kite is far enough to reach the kind of fish you want, you jerk the second line and it falls into the water."
"What about the charter boats below?"
"Richly amusing. They're playing Hemingway and here's a hook dropping down from some poor Cuban bastard on the beach."