It wouldn’t fit. He tried another.
“What’s wrong?”
“Key doesn’t seem to want to go in this lock.”
“Let’s get the fuck outta here, man,” Cabrera said, and started for the van’s passenger door.
A spotlight hit them.
“Put up your hands,” boomed a voice on a loudspeaker.
Poveda dropped to his knees, pulled a 9-mm pistol from his pocket. He didn’t hesitate — he aimed at the spotlight and started shooting.
Something hit him in the back. He was down beside the rear tire trying to rise when he realized he had been shot. People shooting from two directions, muzzle flashes, thuds of bullets smacking into the van like hailstones. A groan from Cabrera.
“I’m hit, Enrique.”
“Bad?”
“I think … I think so.” He grunted as another bullet audibly smacked into his body.
The bullet that hit Poveda had come out his stomach. He could feel the wetness, the spreading warmth as blood poured from the exit wound. Not a lot of pain yet, but a huge gaping hole in his belly.
He lifted the pistol, pointed it at Arquimidez Cabrera, his best friend. There, he could see the back of his head. He fired once; Cabrera’s head slammed forward into the dirt. Then he put the barrel flush against the side of his own head and pulled the trigger.
Sitting in the back of a van just down the street from the Ministry of Interior, William Henry Chance watched the second hand of his watch sweep toward the twelve. It passed 1:30 A.M. and swept on.
The lights stayed on. Carmellini was looking at his own watch.
“What the hell is wrong now?” Carmellini asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, Lord.”
They sat there in the van looking at the lights of the city.
“It went bad,” Tommy Carmellini said. “Time for us to boogie.”
“We’ll give them a few minutes.”
“Jesus, when it doesn’t go down as planned, something is wrong. What are you waiting for, a phone call from Fidel? Let’s bail out while our asses are still firmly attached.”
“If I had any brains I wouldn’t be in this business,” Chance replied tartly.
His watch read exactly ten seconds after 1:32 A.M. when the lights of downtown Havana flickered. “All right,” Carmellini said, and whacked his leg with his hand.
The lights flickered, dimmed, came back on, then went completely out. All the lights. Only automobile headlights broke the total darkness.
“That’s it. Let’s go,” Chance said to Tommy Carmellini. They opened the back of the van and climbed out while the driver of the van started the engine. Chance walked the few steps back to an old Russian Lada parked at the curb behind the van and got into the passenger seat. Carmellini started the car and turned on the headlights while the van pulled away from the curb.
The two agents drove down the street toward the Ministry of Interior, a hulking immensity even darker than the night.
The three guards at the main entrance of the Ministry were illuminated by the headlights when Tommy Carmellini drove up. He killed the engine and pocketed the key as William Henry Chance got out on the passenger side.
Of course the guards had seen Chance’s uniform from the car’s interior light while the door was open — now they flashed the beam of a flashlight upon him. Then they saluted.
Chance was dressed in the uniform of a Security Department colonel. He had been to the building several days ago in the daytime wearing civilian clothes: he thought it highly unlikely that anyone who had seen him then would recognize him now. It was a risk he was willing to take. Still, his stomach felt as if he had swallowed a rock as he returned the guards’ salute, and spoke:
“We were just a block away when the power failed all over this district.”
“Yes, Colonel. Just a minute or two ago.”
“And you are?”
“Lieutenant Gómez, sir, the duty officer.”
“Have you taken steps to start the emergency generator, Gómez?”
“Ahh … I was about to do so, Colonel. It is in the basement. I was waiting to see if the power would come back on immediately. Often these outages last but moments and—”
“The darkness seems widespread, Gómez. Let us start the generator.”
“Of course, Colonel.” The lieutenant began giving directions to his two enlisted men, who obviously knew nothing about the emergency generator. The lieutenant began by telling them which room the generator was in.
Chance interrupted again. “Perhaps you would like to take them there, supervise the start-up, Lieutenant. My driver and I will guard the front entrance until you return.”
“Of course, Colonel.” With his flashlight beam leading the way, the lieutenant and the two enlisted men made for the stairs.
Carmellini opened the trunk of the car, extracted a duffel bag, which he swung over one shoulder. Without a word to Chance he disappeared into the dark interior of the building.
Carmellini took the main staircase to the top floor of the building, then strode quickly down the hall to Alejo Vargas’s private office. The door was locked, of course.
Working in total darkness, Carmellini ran his hands over the door. One lock, near the handle. From the bag he extracted a small light driven by a battery unit that hooked on his belt. He donned a headband, then stuck the light to the headband with a piece of Velcro.
He checked his watch. It was 1:36 A.M.
He examined the lock, felt in the bag for his picks.
Hmmm. This one, perhaps. He inserted it into the lock.
No.
This one? Yes.
The latex gloves didn’t seem to affect his feel for the lock.
Carmellini had always enjoyed pick work. The exquisite feel necessary, the patience required, the pressure of time usually, the treasure waiting to be discovered on the other side of the door … the CIA had been a damned lucky break. Without that break he would have certainly wound up in prison sooner or later when his luck ran out, because no one’s luck lasts forever.
He inserted a smaller pick, felt for the contacts …
And twisted, using the strength of his fingers.
The bolt opened.
He stowed the picks, picked up the duffel bag, and opened the door.
Dark office, with the only light coming through the windows, the glow of headlights on the street below, somewhere the flicker of a fire.
The safe sat in the corner away from the windows. It was old, and huge, at least six feet tall, three feet wide and three feet deep. Painted on the door of the safe was a pastoral scene; above the landscape arranged in a semicircle were the words “United Fruit Company.”
After a quick glance at the safe, Carmellini turned his attention to the rest of the room. He searched quickly and methodically. First the drawers of the desk. One of them held a pistol, one a bottle of expensive scotch whiskey and several glasses, one pens and pencils and a blank pad of paper. Several lists of names, phone numbers, addresses …
The lower right drawer of the desk was locked. A small, cheap furniture lock. He opened it with a knife, began examining files. The files seemed to be on senior people in the government, girlfriends, vices, lies told, bribes offered and accepted, that kind of thing.
He flipped through the files quickly, stacked them on the desk, and moved on.
The crystals were on the windowsill. A rack of books was below the window. A cursory check revealed no files peeking out between the books.
The displays of old coins didn’t even rate a glance. Back before he worked for the government the coins would have made his juices flow, but not now.
On to the credenza. Many files in there. Carmellini sampled them, looking for anything on biology, weapons, strange code names. When he saw something he didn’t understand he opened the file and glanced at the papers inside. People — most of these files were on people. Unfortunately Tommy didn’t recognize the names. He added the files to the stack on the desk.