He watched the minute hand of his watch, watched it slowly circle the dial, counted the seconds as it moved along so effortlessly.
With every passing minute that Santana didn’t come he felt better. Yes. Perhaps he wasn’t looking. He must not be. If he were looking he would have been in this restroom, would have opened the door, would have jerked him from the stall and arrested him and put the cuffs on him and dragged him across the terminal and thrown him into a police car.
But Santana didn’t come.
After an hour of waiting, Olaf Svenson began thinking about how he was going to get out of the country. He needed another passport. If he used his own, the security people might not let him through the immigration checkpoint.
He pulled up his pants, washed his hands thoroughly, and went out into the main hall of the terminal. Keeping an eye out for Santana, he went to the ticket desk for Mexicana Airlines and stood where he could watch the agent. When handed a passport, the man glanced up, comparing the face to the photo. Just a glance, but a glance would be enough. Using a stolen passport with a photo that didn’t match his face was too much of a risk. Svenson knew he would have to use his own, dangerous though it would be.
Screwing up his courage, Olaf Svenson got in line. “Ciudad Mejico, por favor.” He handed the passport to the agent, who glanced into his face, then handed the passport back.
An hour later Svenson went through the immigration line. The uniformed official didn’t look up, merely compared the passport to a typed list that lay on his desk, then passed it back. He did not stamp the document.
Olaf Svenson took a seat in the waiting area and used a filthy handkerchief to wipe perspiration from his forehead.
A reprieve. The powers that rule the universe had granted him a reprieve.
He would have liked to have had the opportunity to study the latest viral mutation, but the risk was just too great. A lost opportunity, he concluded. Oh, too bad, too bad.
When the plane from Madrid touched down at Havana airport with Maximo Sedano aboard, Colonel Santana and two plainclothes secret police officers were there to meet him. They stood beside Maximo while he waited for his luggage, then the two junior men carried it to the car while Maximo walked beside Santana.
Colonel Santana said nothing to the finance minister, other than to say Alejo Vargas wanted to see him, then he let the bastard stew. He had learned years ago that silence was a very effective weapon, one that cost nothing and caused grievous wounds in a guilty soul. All men are guilty, Santana believed, of secret sins if nothing else, and if left to suffer in silence will usually convince themselves that the authorities know everything. After a long enough silence, often all that remains to do is take down the confession and obtain a signature.
One of his troops drove while Santana rode in the back of the car with his charge. Not a word was uttered the whole trip.
Maximo seemed to be holding up fairly well, Santana thought, not sweating too much, retaining most of his color, breathing under control. The colonel smiled broadly, a smile that grew even wider when he saw from the corner of his eye that Maximo Sedano had noticed it.
Ah, yes. Silence. And terror.
The car drove straight into the basement of the Ministry of Interior, where Maximo Sedano was hustled to a subterranean interrogation room.
“I demand to see Vargas,” Maximo said hotly when they shoved him into a chair and slammed the door shut.
“You demand?” asked Santana softly, leaning forward until his face was only inches from Maximo. “You are in no position to demand. You may ask humbly, request, you may even pray, but you don’t demand. You have no right to demand anything.”
Santana seated himself behind the desk, across from Maximo. He took out the interrogation form, filled out the blanks on the top of the sheet, then laid it on the scarred wood in front of him.
“Where,” Santana asked, “is the money?”
Maximo Sedano inhaled through his nose. He smelled dampness, urine, something rotting, meat or vegetable perhaps … and something cold and slimy and evil. It was here, all around him, in this room — the very stones reeked of it. Before Castro the secret police belonged to Fulgencio Batista, and before him Geraldo Machado, and so on, back for hundreds of years. This was a secret room that never saw the light, where justice did not exist, where force and venality and self-interest ruled. Here shadow men without conscience or scruple wrestled with the enemies of the dictator. The room reeked of fear and blood, torture and maiming, pain and death.
Maximo pushed the images aside. With a tenuous composure, carefully, completely, honestly, he explained about the accounts and the German and the people at the bank. He related what they said to the best of his memory. He told about the ice pick and the men’s room, everything, withholding only his intention of transferring the money to his own accounts.
Santana had questions, of course, made him repeat most of it two or three times. When the colonel had it all written down, Maximo signed the statement.
“Where are the transfer cards?” Santana asked.
“In Switzerland. I left them at the bank.”
“Why?”
“If there has been some mistake, if the money was stolen by someone at the bank, then the banks have valid, legal transfer orders they must honor. They must send the money to the Bank of Cuba.”
“So where is the money?”
“It is not in those accounts, obviously. I think the money has been stolen.”
For the first time, Santana was openly skeptical. “By whom?”
“By someone who had access to the account numbers. El Presidente insisted on keeping a record of them in his office. I would look there first.”
“Why not your office? Is it not possible one of your aides learned the numbers, passed them to someone who—?”
“All the numbers of the government’s foreign accounts, including the accounts controlled exclusively by el Presidente, are kept in a safe in my office under my exclusive control. None of my staff has access — only me.”
Again Santana smiled. “You realize, of course, that you are convicting yourself with your own mouth?”
Maximo threw up his hands. “I tell you this, Santana. I do not have the money. If I had fifty-four million dollars I would not have taken the plane back to Cuba. I would not be sitting in this shithole talking to a shithead like you.”
Santana ignored the insult and jotted a few more lines on his report. Personally he believed Maximo — if the man had the money he would have run like a rabbit — but to say so would give Maximo too much leverage. And Maximo said that he killed a man with an ice pick, which certainly seemed out of character. Santana raised an eyebrow as he thought about Rall. Maximo Sedano killing Rall — well, the world is full of unexpected things.
He left Maximo Sedano sitting in the chair in the interrogation room while he went to find Vargas. The minister was in his office listening to a report of the laboratory burglary from one of the senior colonels, who had just returned from the university.
Santana knew nothing of the burglary, had not been informed before he went to the airport. He stood listening, asked no questions, waited for Alejo Vargas.
An hour passed before Vargas was ready to talk about Maximo. “He is downstairs in an interrogation room,” Santana said. “Here is his statement.” He passed it across. Vargas read it in silence.
“The money is not in the accounts,” Vargas said finally.
“So he says.”
“And you think he is telling the truth?”
“Sir, I don’t think Maximo Sedano has what it takes to steal that kind of money and come back here to face you. He knew he would be met at the airport. He was expecting it.”