“But you cannot count on them.”
“But killing a man so you can plant a message on him is extreme. Department Five is cautious, in my experience. Crazy, but cautious. It’s like the CIA and Castro; they had that insane idea to make his beard fall out, and they took months just talking about it. Crazy and cautious. No, if DGI or KGB killed your man, it was because he was a spy. But neither DGI nor KGB is in on the Maxudov business; the only ones who are are Maxudov’s own people. So if they did it, they probably did it quickly — reflexively. Defensively. And then, did they have time to think out what it meant, set up a trap, and plant the paper on him? How much time did they have, anyway? When did he die?”
“Last night. About two in the morning.”
“When did you see him alive?”
“Me, before you came to Havana; one of my people, yesterday.”
“So they had — a few hours. In a few hours, they made up a plan and carried it through? Maybe. Yes, it could be done. If there weren’t too many people involved. If they didn’t have to check back with Moscow.”
Repin’s smile was thin and sour. He hated bureaucracy, even though he had ended up as a bureaucrat. “It isn’t like shooting the pope, you know,” he said heavily.
“Well, you’ll admit at least that the message could be genuine.”
“How did it get into the pocket?”
“He was carrying it when he was killed, what else? Whoever killed him did it on impulse — got frightened, ran away. Or killed him in such a way that the body couldn’t be searched. Maybe he fell into the water from a height.”
“You should write for the films.”
“I’m thinking of possibilities.”
“You are persuading yourself of a fantasy.”
“Is the paper in his handwriting?”
“We think not.”
“How did he communicate with you?”
“Code through a drop.”
“This is not code.”
“Obviously.”
“Somebody passed him a paper with the writing already on it; he was killed before he had a chance to encode it.”
Repin bounced twice on the balls of his feet. He was wearing white-and-tan shoes with lavishly fringed tongues that danced in the sunlight. “This was a good man. He would not have kept such a paper very long. Minutes. Seconds. He would read it, then destroy it.”
“It was dark.”
Repin nodded. “It was dark; he took the paper, put it in his pocket — he will carry it only until he reaches a light — but he is killed even before that, so very quick, within seconds—” He looked at Tarp.
“Maybe the one who gave him the paper killed him.”
“Meaning that it is probably a trap. Now we are both writing films.” He sounded more cheerful, however. “I knew he had a source. He had been asking about plutonium and submarines. It was down around the docks. He sent a message two days ago he thought he would have something last night. You know what that says to me? I am such an idiot!” Repin struck himself on the side of the head and his straw hat fell off. He looked at it and then kicked it.
“Well?”
“He was waiting for somebody on a ship — what do you think? I am an idiot! And he was waiting because it was probably a ship that docked yesterday. Yah! My brain is turning to dust with age.”
“What would you do, question every crewmember of every ship that docked? It could be a fisherman — there are thousands in Cuba. Or it could have been somebody on a plane, Repin.”
“He was killed at the docks.”
“So?”
“Well.” Repin stuck out his lips in that characteristic expression of disgust. “Well, there he is, then, down near the docks in the dark. He meets the contact. The contact hands over the paper, my man hands over the money to pay for it. He turns away — ka!” Repin raised a hand, the fingers open as if he had just let the man’s life fall; his eyes followed it as it tumbled into the imagined water. “There is the body, the smashed head, the paper.” He folded his arms. “Maybe.”
“So the message could be genuine.”
“Could be. Not the likeliest possibility. Still…”
“Well?”
“I am very bothered by the matter of organization. In Moscow, we know we have Maxudov. A man of intelligence, power, passion. In Cuba, maybe we have half a dozen people Maxudov has corrupted. But do they kill for him? It is very, very difficult to get a man to kill for you. Unless he is entirely yours. And it is my feeling that Maxudov does not get very close to these people. He corrupts them a little, buys them off. But there is no belief here, no ideology, no passion. Let us say, for example, that I have decided to steal art works from the Hermitage. Fine. I bribe two guards; I bribe a trucker; I bribe some border guards. And so on. Right out of the Soviet Union to, let us say, a dealer in Bonn. Now, you find out about it. One of the people I have bribed realizes that you know. What is he going to do? Kill you to protect me? Of course not. He is going to cover his own backside with both hands and hope I fall down dead.”
“He might kill me to protect himself.”
“He might. Not likely.”
“So you don’t think your man was killed by Maxudov’s people?”
“I think nothing. I am puzzled.”
Tarp took an orange from a basket and began to peel it. “Suppose your man had not been killed. Suppose you got this same message in code from him. What then?”
Repin took a step, pulling at his lower lip. “I would have taken it rather seriously.”
“And so your man’s getting killed actually lowers the likelihood of somebody’s trying to feed us.”
“Yes, yes, I see what you mean.” Repin sat down. “If they want to give us false data, they would better have sent it through him.”
“Yes.”
Repin grunted. He picked up the piece of paper, dropped it. “I don’t like any of it.”
“Neither do I.”
“For once, I would like the bureaucracy. To check everything.”
“We have to check everything ourselves.”
Repin’s eyes glinted. “Buenos Aires?”
“I’d think so. If Schneider is a name there.”
“It is. I already checked. There are a number of Schneiders, but only one in chemicals. Schneider Chemical, Limited.”
“And Doctor Bonano?”
“Makes no sense.”
“Well?”
“There is one medical doctor named Bonano in Havana. He is head of an abortion clinic.”
Tarp ate part of the orange. “No, that makes no sense. Some other Doctor Bonano, then. Maybe in Buenos Aires.”
“You will go?”
“Yes. On my way to Moscow.”
“They are likely waiting there with one of their famous death squads.”
“Maybe.”
“How do you want it done?”
Tarp made a neat little pile of the orange peelings. “Get a place on a flight tomorrow to Mexico City. Order a passport in the same name from the Fourteenth Department here — my height and so on. Make some show of it. Make a separate reservation from Mexico City to Buenos Aires.”
“You will take these flights?”
“Of course not.”
“How will you go?”
“I don’t think I’ll tell you.”
“I think you are wise. It is humiliating, but you are wise.”
“I’ll need clothes.”
“Yes, yes — at once.”
“I’ll need a communication link.”
“Very well, but only after I leave Havana. I will give you a contact in Europe. Then we will work on getting you into the Soviet Union, assuming…”
“Yes, assuming I get out of Argentina. Yes.”
Tarp met Juana in the Plaza Marti at four o’clock, where they strolled in the sunshine with other couples, old and young — a boy going slowly on a bicycle so he could stay even with a girl, a woman in a wheelchair being pushed by an old man. Pigeons rose, swung across a quadrant of sky, settled again.