IN TAIPEI, at the beginning of November, Aaron Black had reserved a suite for himself and three adjacent rooms for his son Simon Black, for Guido, and for Julienne Laqueur at the Imperial Hotel on Linsen North Road. The hotel’s semi-Americanized architecture was as deplorable as the fake-picturesque Chinese interior decor dominated by red-and-gold plastic. Each room boasted air conditioning, along with a television, a radio, and all the modern comforts of 1956. Aaron Black spent the morning of November 5 unenthusiastically visiting the National Palace Museum, where he contemplated acres of antique porcelain and bronzes that were unable to hold his attention.
Aaron Black was born, roughly speaking, with the century, a little too late to take part in the First World War. His first encounter with anything remotely resembling gun-running occurred in 1923. At that time, after flirting for a while with the “leftist” KAPD before eventually joining the orthodox Communist KPD, he participated in the Hamburg insurrection, before and during which he organized the supply and distribution of arms and munitions. In the years following he became a specialist in this line but never had an opportunity to deploy his skills in Germany. There are those who claim to have spotted him in China, in the United States, or in Switzerland. But it is certain that in 1935 he was in Germany, and in 1936–37 he was seen in Marseilles, probably supervising arms shipments to Spain. After that he returned to Germany, where he undertook hopeless clandestine operations before being arrested at the beginning of 1943. Tortured, then sent to Buchenwald, he rose to a modest rank in the internal camp hierarchy, which at the time was largely controlled by politicals, especially the Stalinist Communists.
The state of the world and of the revolutionary movement convinced Aaron Black not to resume his political activity upon his liberation. He took his companion and their twenty-five-year-old son Simon to America. From his birth until that moment, Aaron Black was named Franz Aaronson Blachefeld. In America he became Aaron Black and his son Simon Black, after the fashion of a cousin who had likewise changed his family name. The cousin in question invested a great deal of money in Aaron’s ventures. As junior partner in a limited liability company run by the cousin, Aaron made them both very rich by selling military surplus, especially all kinds of firearms, throughout the world. It was aboard a Bentley that the cousin and Aaron’s companion died in a road accident. The cousin left the care of his daughter Alba in Aaron’s hands along with the provisional management of his majority share in their limited liability company, which was called Black & Black, Ltd.
As Julienne Laqueur regaled Aaron Black with all the comments appropriate to viewing bronze jars, bronze kettles and bronze wine pitchers of the fifteenth or eighteenth century BC, Guido and Simon Black dallied behind them in the gallery of the National Palace Museum. Abruptly, despite timid protestations from Julienne, Aaron Black put an end to the visit. He was fed up to the back teeth with it. They went back to the Imperial Hotel, where the ill-tempered gun-runner wanted to lunch alone. He had tea-smoked duck and rice and a bottle of French wine brought up. He turned the radio on. It had been preset to either of two local stations, to the Voice of America, to the BBC World Service, or to a closed-circuit source broadcasting repellently sweet Chinese-American music. Aaron Black chose the BBC World Service. As he ate the BBC informed him, in succession, that the second Russian attack against the Hungarians, launched at dawn the previous day across the whole country with fifteen armored divisions, had met with stiff resistance, and that today, November 5, British and French airborne forces had been dropped at Port Said in Egypt and seized control of the northern end of the Suez Canal. Aaron Black listened to the rest of the news bulletin. He turned the radio off when he finished his meal. He had drunk only half of his bottle of Médoc. He went to Julienne Laqueur’s room and entered without knocking. The young woman was seated at a table writing notes on a pad.
“Schreibt und farschreibt!” said Aaron Black approvingly. And he translated: “Write and record! This afternoon we are going to the Botanical Garden. I have an appointment at half past two. You must keep your distance, you and the others. Tell Guido and Simon. Does Simon still screw as badly as before?” Julienne Laqueur cast him an expressionless and distant glance. “Bah!” went Black. “I’ve done so much for him. I’ve done my best, but in the end I’ve had it. I don’t love him anymore. He’s too stupid.”
“He screws fine,” said Julienne suddenly. “But for the rest you are right. He’s an idiot. And he doesn’t love you either.”
The Taipei Botanical Garden, which one may enter either from Po Ai Road or from Nanhai Road near the National Museum of History, boasts specimens of seven hundred plants, ponds strewn with flora, red-and-green kiosks and vendors of beverages who even offer sugarcane juice. Aaron Black and Simon, Guido and Julienne arrived via Nanhai Road around two fifteen in a two-tone chauffeur-driven Buick. They entered with Aaron Black in the lead. He seemed to know where he was going. He wore a three-quarter-length gray woolen coat; Julienne and Simon had on lined raincoats; and Guido had a black leather coat, a red silk scarf knotted beneath his chin and black peccary gloves.
“All of you wait for me here,” commanded Black.
He approached a kiosk with a green frame, green columns and a red roof in the style of a pagoda. Sitting there was a white man in rust-colored loden. A green leather briefcase with a zipper on three sides lay flat on his thighs. The man had spectacles with thick black frames, a long face rubicund after the fashion of a fifty-year-old given to drink, and a clutch of hair the color of straw. His eyes were blue and his teeth far too white. He bared his teeth to Aaron Black. There was no handshake as the two greeted each other in English. Black sat down next to the man.
“Frankly, Stanley,” said Black, “I could come and see you at the embassy. We are no longer young enough to be sitting in a park in November. Nobody gives a damn if I visit the embassy.”
“Would your clients like that?”
“My clients can hardly doubt that I must occasionally buy some protection.”
“Very well,” said Stanley, “next year we’ll meet in my office. Meanwhile, what do you have for me?”
“According to an intermediary,” said Aaron Black, “there are some Tamils in Ceylon who have bought a small consignment. Two hundred rifles and fifty Sten guns. That won’t get them very far. But I’m very fond of Ceylon; it is beautiful and peaceful. The Grand Hotel in Nuwara Eliya is a marvel. Every year I tell myself I ought to spend a few weeks there, and I don’t want a handful of fanatics to ruin the landscape.”
Stanley nodded his head, made no other kind of comment, and took no notes. Black was silent for a moment as four F-86 Sabre fighters in pairs, bearing Chinese Nationalist markings, flew over the city with a thunderous roar. When they were gone Black gave several other clients away to Stanley.
“And then” he went on, “here’s something that may be to your liking: some of your CIA people are operating on the Chinese frontier in the north of Burma and they are beginning to buy very modern matériel. They pay for it in opium. Seems as though they want to engage in actions without being supervised by their superiors, eh?”
“You have names?” asked Stanley, apparently gazing off into the distance.
Black gave him three names. Stanley gave a slight nod, then looked at Black in a still absent way.
“Anything else?”
“A small matter that I haven’t dealt with but have been informed about,” said Black. “Doctor Castro, that Cuban who attacked a barracks in Santiago three years ago: it appears that he is getting ready to do something else stupid. He is in Mexico with a few fanatics and they have been buying matériel. Cuba, that’s our backyard, isn’t it? We don’t need a guerilla war on our doorstep, do we?”
“Possibly not.”
“I’ll pass the word to Fulgencio. You keep an eye out at your end.”
“Agreed.”
“That’s it,” said Black. “Your turn to talk.”
Once again Stanley showed his teeth, too white in his too-pink face.
“The president is not very well,” he said.
“That’s not news.”
“This time Nixon is a heartbeat away from the White House. Which would suit everybody, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps.”
Stanley blinked and his tone became more cheerful as he changed the subject.
“Are you acquainted with the AK-47?” he asked.
“Somewhat.”
“Our services long considered that an assault rifle was of no great interest in the nuclear age. We were likely wrong. The Russians have deployed a lot of AK-47s in Hungary and by all accounts with great effectiveness. We have obtained a few. They are on the way to the Farm for assessment. I’ll get you the report.”
“Thank you very much,” said Aaron Black with apparent sincerity.
He had had two AK-47s for three years and was well aware of their merits. He also knew that the future M14 being designed for the American armed forces would be far inferior. At the moment Black was organizing the conduits that should shortly allow him to trade in AK-47s. He contemplated Stanley, who was staring off vaguely into space.
“Is that all?” asked Aaron Black.
Still looking straight ahead, Stanley opened the three sides of his green briefcase and withdrew a rather large envelope, which he handed to Black without a word. Black took out two pictures taken by Ivory Pearl and showing Victor Maurer as he was now in the Sierra Maestra. Black’s lips tightened and the blood drained from his face. He examined the two enlargements, breathing carefully. Then he turned his head towards Stanley.
“Who is this?”
“No idea,” replied Stanley. I was told that these would interest you. I was told that these photos were taken in Cuba, in the Sierra Maestra, by a woman wildlife photographer. It is not known if anyone else is with them. I am repeating what I was told to tell you. It means nothing to me. I was told that you would understand. I have to go now. You can keep the photos.”
Stanley rose suddenly and immediately moved away.
“Goodbye, Stanley,” called Black, raising his voice slightly. “Till next year. And in your office, okay?”
“I promise.”
Stanley was soon far away. Black stood up and went to the balustrade of the kiosk.
“Guido!” he shouted.
Guido bounded over to join him. Black had sat down once more and waved Guido down near him. He gave the two photographs to the Italian, who scrutinized them and gave a bizarre, unnaturally high-pitched groan. With his left index finger, gloved, the man tapped the scar visible on Maurer’s bare torso that marked the point of entry of the .380 ACP round fired from the Sauer Model 38 semiautomatic pistol in Spain in 1950.
“If only I had centered my aim by five more centimeters,” Guido said in his hoarse whisper, “there would have been no fuck-ups. It is my fault. I’m ashamed. I’m furious. Where is he?”
“In the Sierra Maestra. Alba may be with him. I have no idea. You are going to go to Havana. There you’ll hire a solid team. I thought of going with you, but it will be better not to change any of my habits. I’ll arrive at the end of the month, early December at the latest. I want no action before my arrival.”
“Fine.”
“You know what, Guido? It’s stupid, but I don’t care any more about having them killed.”
“It will be however you want. Maurer cut off my hand and slashed my throat, so I want to kill him. But I am your man; without you I would be dead. It will be however you want.”
“I can no longer let them live,” said Black.
“No, probably not,” said Guido. “Not anymore.”