Topaz - Leon Uris [29]
Hernández sprawled on the couch across the room, thumbing through a Spanish edition of Life. He suddenly threw down the magazine, came to his feet heavily, stretched and grumbled.
“Goddamnit!”
“Eh? What’s the matter, Hernández?”
“Nothing.”
“Then be quiet while I work.”
“Rico is my compañero. I do anything for him, but sometimes I wonder. He never gives nobody a night off. He doesn’t even think about it. Anyhow, I thought he would be at the Russian dinner tonight. So I asked Benny García to get me a woman. She’s waiting in my room. I haven’t had a woman since I’ve been in New York. How long you be working on that stuff?”
“Till after midnight.”
“Goddamn.”
Hernández cracked his knuckles, then phoned to his room. The woman was still there. He hung up, buried his face in his hands and sobbed. “She won’t wait. She’s got to go home to her husband in an hour. Son of a bitch.”
Luis Uribe, a man who had lived his life on nerve’s edge, suddenly showed a magnificent moment of calm he never knew he owned. He took off his glasses, shoved his papers aside and folded his hands, looking much like a stern schoolmaster at the sobbing Hernández.
“Hernández, I am going to do you a favor. I will let you go to your room if you promise to do your business and be back in forty-five minutes.”
Hernández looked up in disbelief.
“You are a man. You need a girl.”
“You really mean it?”
“Of course.”
He threw his arms around Uribe in a bear hug. “What a friend! I thought you were an old woman.”
“For God’s sake be careful,” Uribe said. “We will both get into serious trouble if Rico finds out.”
Hernández put his finger to his lips in a to-the-death vow, flattened against the wall, opened the door a crack, blew a kiss to Uribe and sneaked out to keep his rendezvous.
Uribe began to shake. The papers rattled as he gathered them and shoved them into folds of the day’s New York Times.
Benny García bolted the door of his apartment behind Uribe. “God, man, thought you’d never get here. I was about to give it up.”
“We do not have long to work,” Uribe said. “Just half an hour.”
“The papers,” Pepe Vimont commanded tersely.
“Here ... in here ...”
“Spread them out on the floor, quickly.”
Pepe unsnapped the Tessina camera from his wrist, knelt, focused and shot film after film with the calm and precision of an expert marksman.
“Gather them up.”
He handed the roll of money to Benny García and beat a hasty retreat from the San Martín Hotel.
The TWA bags were switched at La Guardia Airport. Maurice caught the eight o’clock shuttle to Washington. As soon as the seat-belt sign was turned off, Maurice went to the men’s room and placed the film in a small plastic bag and shoved it down the used towel disposal unit.
Twenty minutes outside Washington an agent named Michôt entered the men’s room and retrieved the bag of film.
A banana flambée sent up a pillar of fire. As the plates were delicately served, the performance was interrupted by Jeannine, the hostess, who led André into the owner’s office and shut the door after him.
“Devereaux,” André said into the phone.
“This is Madame Camus. The letter you were waiting for has arrived safely.”
9
THE FINCA SAN JOSÉ lay midway between Havana and San Julián and not far from Pinar del Río. It had been a massive estate which belonged to a single family and was broken up by the Cuban Revolution and turned over to the hundreds of small farmers who had toiled there in feudalism for generations.
With the old masters out of the place, the Revolution turned the land back to the people with great, great fanfare. Dignitaries from Havana, Castro district leaders, new agricultural commissioners, and dream-makers all descended on the Finca San José.
Impressive documents filled with seals, government stamps, and flourishing signatures were handed over to the peasants to certify that the land was now theirs, forever.
Speeches and a week-long celebration praised the Revolution.
And the speechmakers departed. In their place, the Finca was swarmed over by the new breed of bureaucrats.