Hostage in Havana - Noel Hynd

The old man slipped his hand through the grate and undid a latch, which was obscured from the outside. But the old man had visited many times over the years. There had been friction between the two men, serious grievances going each way, but all had apparently been forgiven over the last few years.

The old man entered. He walked with difficulty.

“There’s food in the kitchen,” he said. “On the counter. Take what you want.”

“Thank you.”

Jean Antoine was busy with the credit card slips, working the calculator, trying to finish for the day.

“?Somos amigos, si?” the old man asked. “We’re friends, yes?”

Hardly paying attention, Jean Antoine answered. “We’re friends,” he said. “All is forgiven.”

“That’s good of you,” said the old man.

He passed behind the Frenchman and stopped. He reached into his left pants pocket and pulled out the pistol. Then he thought better about what he had come here to do. Gunshots were so noisy. He slipped the pistol back into his pocket. He went to the kitchen. There was some leftover bread on the counter and some containers of soup. Not far away from them was a cotton dish towel and a large carving knife.

The old man picked up the knife and hid it in the towel. He tucked the two into his belt behind his back. He stayed and enjoyed some soup, watching the Frenchman close out his accounts for the day. He finished his soup.

Without speaking, the old man walked to the back room and passed behind Jean Antoine again. He stopped. The Frenchman ignored him. The old man reached behind him and gripped the knife. He drew it out. With the towel around the handle of the knife, he lifted it high over his head and brought it down into the neck of the restaurant owner.

Jean Antoine screamed and tried to protect himself. But the attack was relentless and he fought back too late. The old man brought the knife down into the victim’s body five times, then a sixth. He left the weapon imbedded in the victim’s back and was on his way.

FIFTY-FIVE

The bedroom that Thea guided them to was a long chamber with a low ceiling. It had two old wooden dressers, one queensized bed, a couple of chairs, a mirror, and an overstuffed old sofa that stood against the north wall below a long window. The window opened onto the beach. A sea breeze blew through the thin gauzy curtain that hung by the window but was not drawn. And as the old man had promised, there was a moon, a three quarters one, bright yellow and brilliant, and it sat above the Caribbean as if a gifted artist had painted it there.

Alex and Paul entered together and closed the door.

“We can speak freely in English,” Paul said. “The old man doesn’t speak it, and Thea knows only a few words. The kids, nada.”

“Okay,” Alex said. It was the first English they’d spoken for hours.

“We share a bedroom?” Alex said.

“We’re married, remember?”

“How could I possibly forget?” she said with an edge. She tossed her overnight bag to the side of the bed.

“If you did, I’d remind you,” he said.

Tired, she eased into one of the chairs and settled back. “I need some sleep soon.”

“I know. I get it,” he said.

“I think it’s monstrous,” she said. “A blasphemy.”

“What? Sharing a room?” he asked.

“Digging up a grave,” she said. “That’s what you have in mind, isn’t it? That’s what you came here to do, right?”

Paul flopped down on the room’s only bed. He quaffed from a bottle of water that was on a night table and looked back to her. “Yes,” he said.

“And you knew that ahead of time?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t tell me.”

“Would you have come if you knew that we were going to disturb a grave?”

After a moment, she answered. “Maybe not … probably not.”

“Well, that’s why I didn’t tell you,” he said. “Look, Thea’s going to drive us back to Havana tomorrow. We need to rest a bit during the day. Tomorrow night we’re to meet behind the south wall of the old cemetery at 10:00 p.m. There’ll be a truck and some men with digging equipment. The guards have been bribed. We’ll either go through a gate that’s been left unlocked or we go over the wall. We dig, we get what we want, we put everything back in place, say a short prayer if you want, and get out as quickly as possible.”

“And you knew about this all along,” she said.

“No. I knew the money was buried with my uncle, but I didn’t know where the grave was until two days ago. Uncle Johnny has lived with the knowledge for a lifetime. He’s old now. He wishes to travel to get medical care.”

“I thought the medical care was supposed to be good here.”

“It is. But it’s better elsewhere – if you have money.”

“How can he leave?” she asked.

“He doesn’t have to. There are clinics. Doctors come here. It’s a black market of sorts.” Paul paused. “Johnny also wants his family to be taken care of. So he told me what happened, where the cemetery plot is, and what’s down there.”

“So you’re going to be the facilitator of that?” she asked. “Grave robbery. Would that be too strong a term for it?”

Guarneri thought about it. “Let’s call it archaeology,” he suggested. “Recovery of historical artifacts.”

“From a grave?”

“The museums of the Western world are filled with such stuff,” he said, dismissing it. “Ever see the King Tut exhibit?”

“Yes, and I’ve been to Egypt too.”

“Then you’ve seen the artifacts from the Pyramids. And the mummies.”

“I know where you’re going with this,” she said.

“Of course you do. Excavating those tombs is no worse than what we’re going to do. Did you object when you looked at the mummies and the relics from their graves?”

She looked at him and sighed. “You have a silver tongue, Paul.”

“I think of it as a rather cozy idea, myself,” he said. “One brother guarding the other’s fortune for half a century. The dead guarding the money and reaching out from the grave to enrich the lives of the living. I like it.”

Paul triggered thoughts in Alex’s head about the money Federov had left her. She wondered if he knew and was flirting with the topic. Part of her wanted to pursue it, but the wiser voice inside her suggested that she let it go. For now, at least.

A thought hit her. She opened her cell phone and looked to see if there was a message from Roland Violette. There was none. She began to wonder if her mission was doomed to fail. Well, if he didn’t show up, that wasn’t her fault. But why, she wondered, would he have dropped off the cell phone if he wasn’t planning to defect?

She closed the phone and looked up.

Paul was reclining comfortably on a pillow, watching her. “Anything from your spook?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“Who knows, with someone as unstable as that?” he said. Paul continued to gaze at her. “So?” he finally asked.

“So what?” she answered.

“So this trip to the cemetery tomorrow night. You’ll go with me?”

“I’m not comfortable with it, for more reasons than I can count.”

“Compared to our hard landing in Cuba,” he said, “it should be a cakewalk.”

“I’ve heard that one before,” she said.

“Hang around long enough,” he promised, “and you’ll probably hear it again.”

Another thought hit her. “Tell me again,” she said. “How did you get away from the boat when we landed? There were police everywhere.”

“The same way that you did. I jumped in the water and swam.”

“But as I was swimming the gunfight was still going on,” Alex said.

“You can thank me for that,” he said. “I provided cover for you.”

“Which way did you swim?” she asked. “I never saw you.”

“The opposite as you,” he said. “Intentionally. I explained all that.”

“But I still don’t understand how you eluded them.”

He went to the closet. He unbuttoned his shirt, slid it off, and pulled on a T-shirt for sleeping. Alex watched him in fascination, wondering if he was going to change completely in front of her.

“Like I said before, there was a low mist on the water. When I guided the boat out farther, I realized the mist was getting thicker. Almost a fog. That’s when I hung over the far side of the boat. But I turned the outboard motor back on so the boat would continue to move – out to sea. By the time the Cubans got to it, they had no idea where I was. Nor could they see me.”

“So you hit a beach farther up toward Matanzas?”

“Yes. I hid out during the day and let the sun dry my clothes. There were a lot of police and militia around. In the late afternoon I found a farmer with a truck. I hired him for a hundred U.S. dollars to drive me out here to Johnny’s and keep his mouth shut.”

“So what did you and Johnny do your first night here?” Alex asked.

“You know.” He shrugged. “We just sat around and shot the breeze,” he said. “Lot of catching up to do.”

“And what about yesterday?” she asked. “Something seems off. Did you stay here last night as well?”

“Why are you asking?”

“Because I want to know. What did you do during the day yesterday?”

“Same as you,” he said. “Laying low. Trying to avoid the police and the shore patrols.”

“But did you try to make it into Havana to find me at the hotel?” she asked.

Paul said, “It’s not easy to travel in Cuba, so my intent was to get somewhere and stay off the streets. So no, I didn’t get to Havana until last night.”

“Then where did you stay last night?”

He paused. “At the Ambos Mundos,” he said. “Two floors above where you found me today,” Guarneri said. “It’s pretty run down, as you noticed, but perfectly acceptable for Cuba. Hemingway lived there for a while. I don’t think they’ve changed the plumbing or the TVs since Papa put the gun to his head.”

“Don’t change the subject. Apparently they haven’t changed the window grates in the men’s room either,” she chided. “So did you check in under your real name?”

“You think I’m crazy? I used my Canuck passport. Why are you always asking so many questions?”

“Because I’m trained to.”

“Okay, that’s healthy enough. So are you finished asking me questions so that I can ask my ‘wife’ one?”

“Sure,” Alex said. “Go for it.”

“There’s only one bed in this room. Will I have the pleasure of my wife’s company in it?”

She laughed. “We can share the bed, but we’re not having sex,” she said. “Is that where you were going with that?”

“I thought I’d try to steer it in that direction.”

“I thought you would too. You actually steered it off the road.”

He laughed. “Well, you can’t blame a man for trying. Anyway, I’m going to go down the hall to take a shower. Unless you want to go first. The water is warm, not hot. There are towels and soap in the bath area. It’s rustic but it works. It has a certain primitive charm. You might like it. So? Who first, me or you?”

“I’ll go,” she said.

“Want me to show you where?”

“If I can find my way from the beach outside Matanzas to Havana I can find my way down the hall to the shower,” Alex answered.

“I’m sure you can,” he said.

From her bag, she took a pair of thin shorts and a cotton T-shirt to change into for sleeping, plus her toiletries. The shower room had a 1950s feel to it, one pipe coming out of the wall, above a tile floor with a drain. She undressed and blasted her body and hair with the tepid water. There was a plastic container of a Mexican shower soap hanging on a metal hook. She unhooked it, washed thoroughly, and felt refreshed.

She dressed in the shorts and the T-shirt. She toweled her hair and combed it out. It was still wet when she returned to the room. Paul had left the door half-open to maintain a breeze.

While he was in the shower, she could hear the water running. She eyed his belongings, one bag and some clothes, where he had left them across a chair and dresser. She went to the door and glanced down the hall. She walked quietly down the hall to make sure he was in the shower. He was.

She returned to the room. She listened for any approaching footsteps, heard none, and couldn’t resist. She prowled through his things, looking at everything from his passport, his backup pieces of identification, his clothes, his Browning automatic, and the bullets with it. The weapon, upon close examination, gave an indication of having been fired recently, and it still smelled faintly of gunpowder. Of course, he had fired several shots on the morning they arrived. But were they fired from his own gun or from one that he had picked up on the boat? Memory failed her. She couldn’t recall.

She looked at his passport again. A fine piece of work. And so were the supporting documents: an Ontario driver’s license and an American Express card. They were just fine, she thought to herself, except they were completely fake: same as her own.

Her hand did a quick pat down of the rest of his suitcase. She came across an envelope, legal size, standard 4 ? by 9 ?. She squeezed it. Cash. She opened it. Franklin and Grant. Large denomination American currency. Fifties and hundreds. A quick calculation told her that he must have had twenty grand in cash. Well, there was another reason to pack a pistol.

She heard him turn the water off. She put everything away again, eased back, and settled into her chair, shaking out her hair, enjoying the feel of the sea breeze on her arms and legs.

Paul returned. He closed the door but not all the way.

“Time for some sleep,” he said. “Which half of the bed do you want?”

“Whichever half you’re not on.”

“Good answer,” he said.

“Take the left; I’ll take the right.”

“Deal,” he said. He climbed in. There were light blankets and a sheet.

She came to the bed and sidled into it on the opposite side. The room’s final light was on her side. She extinguished it. The sheets were cool and soft, the bed more comfortable than it had any right to be. She exhaled a long breath and tried to think of sleep as they lay side by side. Then he moved his arm. His hand found hers and held it.

“Well?” he asked after half a minute. “Yes or no?”

“Yes or no what?” she asked.

“The big question for tonight,” he said, turning toward her in the dim light. “The issue I’ve been wondering about since we walked into this room and closed the door.”

She turned toward him. “I already answered you,” she said. “I’m not going to let you make love to me.”

“No, I already shelved that idea,” he said. “It was the other thing I was wondering about, the one you didn’t answer.”