Jigsaw (11 page)

Tracked by the hammering persistence of the music, he walked absently through the flat, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom. In the bathtub he found a dead mouse, a desiccated little corpse. He picked it up by its brittle tail and held it.

He heard somebody knocking on his front door. He knew at once that it was Miss Gabler from the flat below. He opened the door. She stood clutching the collar of her robe to her throat.

‘You are playing your Negro music again,' she said. She was fragile, seventyish, and had been raised in India, where her father had been some kind of colonial administrator. ‘I have had weeks of peace, Mr Pagan. Blessed weeks. I really must protest. My nerves are bad enough. I have my angina to consider.' She spoke of her heart condition as if it were a neurotic pet she had to nurse.

Pagan was apologetic. ‘I'll turn it down, Miss Gabler.'

‘I would understand it if you had less violent tastes, Mr Pagan. Some soothing Haydn, a little Mozart. I would not object to these.'

‘I'll turn it down. Promise.'

‘Very well. See that you do.' Miss Gabler still held her robe shut as if she thought there was some connection between ‘Negro music' and a menace to her chastity.

Pagan held up the mouse close to the woman's face. ‘Look what I found.'

‘Oh lord,' said Miss Gabler, and stepped back, her mouth open.

‘In the bathtub no less. Poor little bastard.'

‘You have a cruel sense of humour.' She flapped a hand, shuffled away. Her slippers flopped. ‘Some people,' she remarked, more to herself than Pagan.

Smiling, Pagan shut the door. He liked Miss Gabler if only because she brought out a mischievous streak in him, a light-heartedness. He dumped the mouse in the garbage, then turned off the music. The silence rushed back in. He finished his drink just as his street-door buzzer made its customary rasping sound.

He went to the intercom and said, ‘Yeah?'

‘Frank Pagan?' The voice that came up from the street was American. Pagan recognized the accent; the man was from one of the southern states, Alabama, Georgia. ‘My name's Al Quarterman. From the US Embassy? I need to have a word.'

The US Embassy. Why? Pagan pressed the button that released the lock on the street door. He listened to his visitor climb the stairs. When he opened his apartment door, he saw a cadaverous man in his mid-forties. There was an air of ill health about Quarterman. He had dark mournful eyes and yellowy skin. In another age you might have said he was consumptive. He held out his hand, Pagan shook it. Quarterman's fingers felt like unfleshed bone.

‘I don't want to intrude on your privacy. I tried your office first. Your associate Foxie was reluctant to give me your address. It was like getting a bone away from a Doberman. He relented only when I explained why I needed to see you.' Quarterman glanced round the room, saw the rock posters. ‘Hey, an aficionado. I go way back. Bill Haley and The Comets. “Rock Around the Clock.” When life was fun and games.'

‘I remember it,' Pagan said. ‘Drink?'

‘Don't mind if I do, Frank. Can I call you that?'

Pagan said he had no objection. He admired the easy familiarity of Americans. He poured two shots of Auchentoshan. He gave one to Quarterman, who said, ‘Here's to lost youth and rock and roll,' and tossed the drink back, unforgivably, in one gulp.

‘You ought to savour that, Al,' Pagan said.

‘Is that the proper way?'

‘It is for me,' Pagan said. He tasted the malt. It suggested peat, liquid smoke, heathery mysteries. ‘So. Why do you need to see me?'

Quarterman set his glass down on the coffee table. ‘One of our people is missing,' he said. ‘He may have been on that tube.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘No, we're not sure. And we hope to God we're completely wrong. But he didn't take his car to the Embassy when he came to work. He said something to one of the typists about how he wasn't looking forward to going home on the Tube. And he isn't answering his telephone. Consequently, it's a possibility we have to consider.' There was an expression of sad uncertainty on Quarterman's face. ‘The Ambassador considers this a matter of protocol. We need to nail this down before you publish a list of the casualties. We don't want Harcourt's family to just come across his name in the newspapers or on TV. If he was on the Tube, the Ambassador feels we should be the first to deliver the information to the next of kin.'

‘Harcourt, did you say?' Pagan asked.

‘Bryce Harcourt.'

Pagan found a pencil and wrote this down.

‘If Bryce was on the train, naturally we'd want to ship his remains back. His family …' Quarterman looked at the bottle of Auchentoshan. ‘Do you mind?'

‘Help yourself.'

‘Damn fine stuff.' Quarterman poured himself a generous glass. ‘His family would want him interred in Florida. The Harcourts are old and influential. Plus they're personal friends of the President, which makes Harcourt's death all the more … significant. If we don't act as fast as we can and ship the body back – if there is a body – they're bound to bring some pressure to bear on us. I'm sure you understand.'

‘It's not going to be pleasant for them, I'm afraid.'

‘I figure that. Where are the victims being kept?'

‘At the station. A few have already been removed.'

‘I'll send somebody around, see if we can't make an ID. We have his records, of course, if we need them. Medical. Dental. The usual. They might prove useful in the event …' Quarterman didn't finish the sentence. He sipped his drink as he'd been instructed. ‘How's the investigation going?'

‘These are early days.'

‘You don't have any idea who perpetrated this?'

Perpetrated, Pagan thought. It was an antiseptic word. ‘Not yet.' He drained his glass. His mind was foggy. He felt at one remove from his body. He longed for sleep, a couple of hours.

‘I imagine it's a difficult operation,' said Quarterman. ‘Do you have any leads? Anything valuable?'

Pagan shook his head. ‘We've hardly begun.'

‘I guess it's like a godawful jigsaw puzzle.'

‘Except I don't have any idea of what the finished picture looks like,' Pagan said. ‘What did Harcourt do at the Embassy?'

‘He prepared background papers. If the Ambassador was to receive a visit from, let's say, a company in Norwich interested in building a microchip plant in Des Moines or wherever, Harcourt would work up profiles of the company just so Ambassador Caan had some grasp. A research position basically. He worked directly under Caan.' Quarterman looked into his drink. ‘We were quite close. We played indoor squash together. He was a sociable kind of guy. A party animal. Poor bastard.'

‘Maybe he wasn't on the Tube,' Pagan suggested.

‘Then where is he? He's not the type to stay out of the office without calling in to say he's sick. He's conscientious. Even a little driven. I can't imagine him going away without saying anything. His career was important to him.'

‘It's still a possibility.'

‘Maybe. Look. If I can help, or if the Embassy can render any assistance, don't hesitate. You can reach me at the Security section. Thanks for the scotch.'

Pagan walked Quarterman to the door and said good night. He heard Quarterman go down the stairs. Bryce Harcourt, possible victim. Another name for the list, for the roll-call of the dead. Pagan went inside his bedroom, sat on the bed, tried to collect stray thoughts and impressions and see if they might be moulded into a whole. But nothing came to him, he was empty; if he was blessed with a muse, it had abandoned him. As he stared up at the ceiling he remembered Foxworth's unanswerable question:
Was the bomber after just one person, Frank?

EIGHT

VILLA CLARA PROVINCE, CUBA

I
T WAS JUST BEFORE NIGHTFALL WHEN THE CONTINGENT OF
C
UBAN
forces entered the city of Santa Clara in a convoy of ten jeeps, most of which were in a state of disrepair. Palls of black exhaust hung in the air as the jeeps idled in the main square alongside the Leoncia Vidal Park. It was in this city that Castro's rebel army, under the command of Che Guevara, had won a decisive battle against counter-revolutionaries, armed with American weapons, in January 1959. Santa Clara had been absorbed into the myth of Fidelismo, complete with bullet-pocked walls and a number of exhibits showing how Che and his guerrillas had derailed a train carrying enemy troops more than forty years ago. The Revolution had been petrified here as in so many other places throughout Cuba; Fidel's triumph had been reduced to photographs and artefacts in what were no more than museums. Past glories coexisted with current deprivations. The place had the defeated look of unfulfilled dreams.

The young lieutenant in charge of the convoy, Rafael Mendoza, stepped down from his jeep and stood smoking a cigarette. He gazed at the park where, on benches under guasima and poinciana trees, old men sat in brooding contemplation of their chessboards, or simply dozed; here and there students from the Central University stood around in conversation that was seemingly casual. Everything appeared to Mendoza altogether normal, and yet he experienced tension. He had the habit of running the tips of his fingers through his moustache when he was anxious, and he was doing this now as he surveyed the square and the park.

He gazed at the soldiers in the jeeps, most of them younger than himself; none of them had known any form of government other than that of Fidel. They grumbled sometimes, especially when they looked at videos smuggled in from Florida, or when they received mail from relations in Miami, where the Good Life, Yanqui-style, was lived. Mendoza, although he'd been thoroughly indoctrinated and believed in the ultimate success of the Revolution, felt a certain sympathy toward his men. They'd come from poor backgrounds for the most part, they didn't get enough to eat, they were often obliquely critical when they spoke of food lines, and rationing, and shortages, and they were openly resentful of the tourists who came from Canada or Germany or Spain and had access to luxurious aspects of Cuba denied the ordinary citizen. Even when it came to artillery, there had been shortages since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. There was not enough ammunition, equipment was often outdated, and maintenance slack. Fidel always said that things were changing, a better world was coming, patience was the greatest virtue of the revolutionary – but Mendoza knew the men in his charge regarded Fidel's words as so much meaningless noise, like the slapping sound made by fish dying in a barrel.

Mendoza's sergeant, a plump little man called Estevez, came toward him, hitching up his gunbelt as he walked. Estevez scratched his bald scalp and shrugged. ‘Nothing's happening,' he said. Estevez was from Havana and considered Santa Clara strictly a provincial dump, a graveyard. So what if there were industrial plants and hospitals – it was still the sticks, compared to Havana.

Mendoza made no reply to his sergeant. He studied the square, the park, the idling jeeps. An old man on a bench raised his face from his chessboard and looked at the soldiers in a dispassionate way; he was accustomed to the fact that the military came and went at unusual times.

Mendoza stepped on his cigarette.

Estevez asked, ‘What are we here for anyway?'

Mendoza listened to the song of a blackbird. He thought it a melancholy sound. A large orange sulphur butterfly floated against his face and he swatted it aside. He pondered Estevez's question before he answered it. ‘There are rumours,' he said.

‘There are always rumours,' Estevez said. ‘What is it this time? Rebels? Freedom fighters?'

‘Freedom fighters?' Mendoza said. ‘That description is inappropriate, Estevez.'

The sergeant belched into a folded hand. ‘Slip of the tongue,' he said. ‘I meant counter-revolutionaries, of course.'

‘Of course.'

Estevez looked slightly embarrassed by his
faux pas
. He needed to make amends, to ingratiate himself with Mendoza, whom he considered cold and aloof, a real Party hack. ‘Let them show their faces around here,' and he patted his holstered gun. ‘That's all I say. Just let them show their faces.'

‘Your eagerness does you credit,' Mendoza remarked in a dry way.

‘We defend the Revolution, after all,' said Estevez, and tried to remember some suitable phrase from one of the doctrinaire tracts he was supposed to have read. His mind blanked. He could never keep all that political dogma in his head anyway. It was convoluted, tedious, and seemed to have no relationship with the impoverished reality of Cuba.

‘We defend the Revolution,' Mendoza agreed. ‘It's worth remembering our function.'

Estevez was silent. He looked down at his feet, his scuffed boots. His heels were chafed, and caused him some discomfort. He'd asked for new boots two months ago, but nothing had happened to his request, presumably lost by this time under the standard avalanche of requisitions.

Mendoza wondered if he should move the convoy along, perhaps circle the square, drive past the Palacio Municipal, wheel round by the railway station: making the military presence felt, even if there were no counter-revolutionaries in the vicinity. His information had been vague at best. Anti-Castro groups had been reported near Remedios, fifty kilometres from Santa Clara – but this might have been rumour, although rumour had a way of being elevated to the status of gospel in the political climate of Cuba. An underground printing-press had been seized a few weeks ago in the Escambray mountains in the southern part of the province, that much Mendoza knew for certain. And a couple of AK-47 assault rifles had been confiscated from the suicidal students operating the press. But the rest …

He fingered his moustache, surveyed the square, glanced at Estevez, who was forever tugging at his belt. Mendoza decided to move. What was the point in hanging around?