“My God! If the Americans ever found atomic weapons here they would bomb us off the face of the earth! They’re only waiting for the opportunity! Jesus God! What sort of lunatic would expose us to a danger like that?” She looked fiercely protective. “It isn’t Fidel.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“It’s an American trick, that’s what it is. Have you looked into that? Are you sure this isn’t a CIA trick?”
“That is a very interesting possibility. Yes, I intend to look into it, as a matter of fact. But — you see why I am in Cuba.”
She hesitated. “If this is the truth, yes. Of course.”
“You see why I have to work outside regular channels.”
“If—” She put her face in her hands for a moment, then raised her head. Her eyes were wide. “It’s like being crazy! How do I know now what the truth is?”
“Isn’t that always a problem?”
“No!” She stood up. “No! That is the one thing I have always had — certainty. I trust the one above me and the one below me and… You know how it is. If you take that away from us…” Her nostrils widened. “Everything becomes hypothetical.”
“I want you to work for me.”
“I am forgiven, then?” She said it with a sneer.
“I will try to get some authentication from Moscow, so you will feel a little less insane. It will mean your staying as you are, doing your usual work, but reporting to me through a direct line. I will give you codes, a point of contact. You will have two missions: to find out what you can about atomic materials here; and to test the service above and below you for corruption. Will you do it?”
“I can love you?” She said that with a sneer, too.
“I cannot order your feelings.”
She moved away from the tables, hugging herself with her arms and protecting the bare upper arms with her long brown hands. She walked the length of the room and looked at the iron cot again and then came back, paused, and walked the two steps to him and rested her forehead on his shoulder, her arms still folded, as somebody who was too hot might have rested her forehead on a cool wall. “Come home with me,” she said. “I can’t. It’s too dangerous now.”
“Where will you stay?”
He dodged the question. She was right: it was like insanity, when nobody could be trusted. “I have a place.”
“For how long?”
“As long as I need.”
“Let me come with you.”
“No.”
They kissed. It was a bleak sort of kiss.
He took her to the door, where Repin’s KGB crony was waiting with a car to take her back.
“When will I see you?” she said.
“Tomorrow. I’ll tell you where and what time. I’ll use the name mariposa.”
“A flower?” She laughed, for the First time. “My steel flower.”
After she was gone, Repin came from an upper floor. “Well, how did it go?” he said in Russian.
“I think it’s all right. She’ll need some verification. Maybe you can go through her father — find somebody he trusts and we trust and have him send her the word. Can you get messages back to Moscow?”
“So far.”
“Get on it, will you?”
“And who would you like me to contact? Andropov?”
“If he’s the only one who qualifies.”
Repin was not amused. He went to an ugly credenza and took out a bottle and glasses. “She did not report you to her KGB officer here, at any rate. She took the green card to a friend at her local police station; we traced that an hour ago. The friend did the comparison for her as a favor — she had your thumbprint on a cigarette package — so that never went any further. Still, she was seen with you at the ballet, and if her anti-Castro friends are picked up for some reason, they can identify you from her apartment. So, I think she ought to report to her case officer that she met you and went out with you once and then lost sight of you. That way she is covered if something comes back.”
“It means that they’ll identify me.”
“Not for a while. But it is inevitable, yes.”
“I suppose.” Tarp accepted a glass. “It makes me an instant target, unfortunately.”
Chapter 10
In the morning, Repin came to see him before breakfast. He was wearing a natty blazer and two-tone shoes, but he looked dyspeptic.
“What’s the matter?” Tarp said as soon as he saw him.
“Matter? What could be the matter?” He put the packet of identification papers on the table and Tarp picked them up. He had brought them from the Scipio and Repin had had a visa and an entry stamp put into the passport.
“What’s the matter?” he said again as he examined them.
“The ballet mistress snores. Nothing.”
“What’s the matter?”
Repin scowled. Then, after seconds of scowling, he put a hand into the side pocket of the blazer and took out a plastic bag. In it was a piece of paper that had been water-soaked and dried, and now it was thickened and crumpled. He put it on the table and Tarp could see faded writing:
Doctor Bonano
to
Schneider, BA chem
via
?
“Well?”
“You see? It is nothing. I showed it to you only because you pestered me.”
“What is it?”
Repin made a face as if he had smelled something bad. “My contact turned up dead.” He nodded at the paper. “In his pocket.”
“Murdered?”
“He was thirty-four; what do you think, he had a heart attack? In the water. Head crushed.” He put both hands into the blazer’s pockets, the thumbs jutting forward. He was wearing a scarf in the open collar of a white shirt and he looked like a stage Englishman. “They say he was playing with somebody’s wife. Maybe. But, you know, in this business…” He made a face again. “Still, it was very crudely done. Not Department Five. Amateur work. Not professional mokrie dela.”
Tarp looked at the paper. “‘BA.’ Buenos Aires.”
“I’m not a geographer.” Repin sounded like an elitist discussing a lower class.
“Argentina is on the submarine’s route. Or at least it came close.” He waited for Repin to speak, but the old man was stubbornly looking away from him. “Since the Falklands mess, Argentina might be interested in atomic weapons.”
“The plutonium thefts started before the Falklands war.” He sounded angry — old-man angry, petulant.
“You can’t ignore this, you know.”
Repin swiveled his head slowly to look at him. “What are the possibilities? One, the paper means nothing and my contact was killed by his lover’s husband — nothing means nothing. Two, the paper means something, but he was murdered by the husband — a coincidence too good to be believed; something means nothing. Three, the death is mokrie dela, but the assassin overlooked the piece of paper, which is unbelievable — something means nothing again. Four, the death is mokrie dela and the paper is a trap. Out of those four possibilities, only one suggests the paper is any use to us.” He shook his head. “One in four is bad mathematics.”
“Five,” Tarp said, “the paper is genuine and he was murdered because he was your agent but not because of the paper and so they didn’t look for it. What do you think?”
“I think nothing.” He looked directly at Tarp; his eyes were fierce, seemingly a darker blue than usual. “You know this work as well as I do. There are times when it is not good to think because it is too soon.”
“But now we have to think.” Tarp touched the paper, and it spun on the corner of a fold. “They could have killed him and missed the paper. Oversights happen.”