Topaz - Leon Uris [76]
I have your letter of instructions about getting Juanita to Point Lucia on the Cape Saturday night and although the fishermen you mentioned are prepared at this end, there are other events that have to be explained.
When I left you at the airport I went immediately to Juanita’s villa to take her to the sanctuary of the Embassy. She was not there and I could get no information on her whereabouts.
I had to turn my efforts to the balance of our plan. After several futile hours I literally bullied my way into Che Guevara’s office and warned him we were on to a plot to kidnap you.
The rest of your departure from Cuba is history. Thank God you made it.
I tried hourly for the rest of the day to reach Juanita without success. Next morning I phoned and was answered by someone new in the villa who informed me rather tersely that she was not available.
I sent Blanche to the villa in an Embassy car on the pretext of a social call and there she relates a bizarre turn of events. Juanita was apparently not herself and barely hospitable to Blanche. She begged off outside social engagements on the pretext that she was feeling ill. Blanche was hopeful that some sort of note or sign could be passed but it was obvious the encounter was being closely watched.
Next day I went to the villa myself. A pair of militia were at the gates. I was unable to establish much except that her houseman, cook, and gardener had all been replaced. She seemed a virtual prisoner.
The day before yesterday she made her first public appearance since your departure. The occasion was the dedication of a new hospital. I made it a point to attend the ceremony in the last hope of being able to establish contact and inform her about the boat.
André, my dear comrade. I choke with pain as I write these words. Juanita showed up on the arm of Rico Parra. She was closely guarded at all times, making it impossible for me to speak to her more than a perfunctory greeting. I loathe having to tell you this but the rumor is around that she has become Parra’s mistress.
It appears, my dear André, that Juanita bargained for your life and is now paying off her end of the bargain.
Blanche and I share your grief.
Your affectionate friend,
ALAIN ADAM
André sat like a wax statue. “Cancel the flight to Miami,” he mumbled harshly. “I swear ... as long as she is alive I will find a way to get her out of Cuba.... I swear it ...”
8
INSPECTOR MARCEL STEINBERGER PARKED his car on Boulevard Murat and proceeded on foot to his flat some two blocks away. With so many new cars, parking had become a large headache in Paris these days.
He walked, hands clasped behind him, head bowed, consumed in thought and oblivious to the game of kickball being played around him by surging, screaming youngsters.
The odors of the variety of foods being cooked seeped into the stairwell and hallway as he climbed the winding stairs to his flat.
Sophie greeted him at the door, took his hat, coat, scarf, umbrella. He bumbled off absent-mindedly to the kitchen, took the lid off the pot of steaming pungent cabbage borscht, their usual Thursday night meal, and passed his blessings on it as he always did.
His wife was of Polish origin. They had met as inmates of the Dachau concentration camp. Some fifty of her immediate family had perished in the extermination ovens, leaving her as sole survivor. After the liberation they were separated in that confusion of human movement. By some miracle they found each other again when Marcel read one of the hundreds of thousands of messages desperately and pathetically pinned on the walls of the refugee centers:
MARCEL STEINBERGER—I AM ALIVE, IN VIENNA AND AWAITING TRANSPORT TO PALESTINE—CONTACT ME THROUGH HIAS (HEBREW IMMIGRANT AID SOCIETY), VIENNA—SOPHIE PERLMUTTER.
Like most concentration-camp couples they felt that their son Émile had to live in the name of a hundred murdered relatives. He was considered by them a very special