13

Cabo Gracias a Dios, Honduras

Tomas Fuentes was in his tent when he heard the stale air around him vibrate, at first quietly and steadily, as if the evening sky were filled with the drone of a million batwings. He stepped outside and stood with his hands on his hips, listening. The sound, which originated close to the sea, had the texture of a natural force, a tornado gathering strength, say, or an earthquake forcing open a fissure on the bed of the ocean.

Roger Bosanquet emerged from the tent pitched next to Tommy’s. The sound grew more profound. Among the trees yellow kerosene lights illuminated pathways between the large marquees in which the army slept. It was Tent City here.

Tommy Fuentes scanned the heavens, but saw nothing moving. Still the sound grew in intensity, a rumbling suggestive of thunder now. Tommy thought the ground under his feet had begun to tremble, but it was only his imagination. This landscape seemed to trap and amplify sounds. It was like being imprisoned inside a loudspeaker.

“There she is,” Bosanquet said and pointed to the sky.

At first pinheads of light, nothing more. Then the shape of the craft could be seen as it lost altitude and dropped so low that spray rose up from the surface of the water into the lights.

Fuentes and the Englishman walked down the slope toward the airstrip. Blue electric lamps, surrounded by agitated mosquitoes, burned the length of the runway. The plane appeared over the trees, the noise so terrible now that Fuentes and Bosanquet covered their ears. They watched the craft roar down towards the strip. It seemed for a moment to stall in the air, but then it was down with a final scream, lunging across the runway, skidding slightly before coming to a halt about twenty feet from where the concrete ended in a clump of trees.

Just before the two men reached the runway, Bosanquet mentioned the message he’d received some fifteen minutes ago by radio from Harry Hurt.

“A kid?” Fuentes asked. “There’s a kid on the plane?”

“Apparently.”

“I don’t want the blood of any kid on my hands,” Fuentes said.

“It’s Ruhr’s responsibility, I would say.” Bosanquet, forever calm, nodded toward the big plane, where a door was already opening. “Your hands will be clean, Tommy.”

Bosanquet looked at the light in the open doorway of the C-130, where Ruhr stood framed in perfect silhouette. The plane’s endless rocking during the flight had made Stephanie Brough queasy. All she’d had to eat was some dry fruit Ruhr had given her from a plastic bag. Ruhr, who was never very far from her, had watched her continually. His eyes had seemed to her like the lenses of some scanning instrument beneath which she was being dissected and scrutinised. She wished he’d turn away, look elsewhere, leave her alone. So long as she was the object of his brooding fascination, she was reminded of the danger he represented.

She still had no idea where she was and hadn’t been able to eavesdrop on any conversations because of her earplugs. The two men, Trevaskis and Zapino, who sat together some feet away, didn’t look like they communicated much and Ruhr didn’t speak, so there was probably nothing to hear anyway.

Ruhr opened the door. The night air was scented in a way that was unknown to Steffie Brough, whose world had always been circumscribed by Norfolk and the Fenlands. She smelled ancient moss and lichen and something else, something bittersweet she couldn’t identify but which made her think of carcasses. She took the plugs out of her ears and was assailed at once by noises completely alien to her, bird sounds she’d heard only in zoos, a great clacking and squawking that echoed on and on.

Ruhr turned from the doorway. “Do you know where you are?”

She shook her head.

“This is Honduras.”

She tried to remember atlases, maps, but her sense of geography wasn’t strong. The Panama Canal, the Gulf of Mexico came to mind, but she couldn’t quite place Honduras. Wasn’t it close to Nicaragua? She wasn’t sure, and this lack of certainty caused her despair. Wherever Honduras was, it was a very long way from anything familiar. And how could she even think of escape? If she got a chance to run from Ruhr, where would she go? She pictured jungles and headhunters, snakes and tarantulas.

She was aware of her crumpled skirt and soiled blouse and some oil stains on her maroon blazer. She needed a bath badly, but she’d come to think that defiance was more important than fresh clothes; not outward defiance, but another form of resistance – in the mind, the heart. Outwardly, she would try to comply with Ruhr if she possibly could. But inside, where it mattered, she’d stay hard and cold and distant. It was an antidote against falling completely apart. She had to be bloody strong, that was all. No weepy moods. No moaning. Given just half a chance, she’d get through this somehow.

Still, she hated the way his hand lay against her lower back as he led her towards the door and the rope ladder that dropped to the ground. An insufferable intimacy; she remembered how he’d undone her bra back at the farmhouse – oh God, the farmhouse was such a long time ago – and blood rose to her head. She couldn’t stand his skin against hers, but she’d have to. If she wanted to survive she’d have to do everything he told her.

Just so long as she was untouchable on the inside.

She swung in mid-air, holding the ladder as it shifted with her weight. Ruhr was just above her. She looked up, seeing under the cuffs of his jeans. Around one ankle he had strapped a sheathed knife. She had an image of the dead policeman at the old farmhouse, his body half-covered with leaves and the strange empty way he stared up at the sky. She remembered how his eyes were filled with rainwater and how slicks, overflowing his lashes, ran down his face. It was pointless to remember that sort of thing. She had to survive, and survival meant thinking ahead, not back.

There were men on the ground below. In the distance, yellow and blue lights burned and a faint aroma of paraffin and scorched meat drifted through the dark. Steffie was light-headed. She gripped the rope, fought the sensation away. Then she was down, and the ground felt good beneath her feet. Ruhr came after, and then the other men from the craft, and suddenly there was confusion, men greeting one another, languages she didn’t understand, handshakes. For one tense moment, when she realised nobody was paying her any attention, she considered the possibility of flight.

Dense trees, tents pitched here and there among the lamps, shadowy figures moving back and forth, guitar music, a voice singing a Spanish song in the distance – there was nowhere to run. If she did escape, which was unlikely, she’d certainly get lost and die out there. She looked at Ruhr, who was involved in a conversation with the two men who’d met the plane. The voices were low, but Steffie could tell they were angry. Her parents argued in exactly the same muted way when they didn’t want her to overhear.

Ruhr broke away from the two men – one of whom wore a Panama hat – and stepped toward her.

“Come with me.”

She followed him across the concrete strip. An olive-coloured tent, pitched two hundred yards from the runway, stood within a thicket of trees. Ruhr opened the flap and Steffie stepped inside the tent. He struck a match, lit a lamp. An odd bluish glow threw misshapen shadows on the canvas walls.

“Sit down.”

A sagging camp bed was located in a corner. She sat, knees together, hands clasped in her lap. Ruhr stepped in front of the smoky lamp, eclipsing it with his shadow.

“They want me to kill you.”

Her throat was very dry. “Why?”

“You have seen too much and now you are to be discarded. Permanently. It’s simple.”

Steffie was quiet for a long time. She had an image of herself dead – a pale white corpse in a mahogany box, white lace ruffles, a gown, an array of soft candles illuminating her delicate features. But it wouldn’t be like that, would it? She’d be shot and dumped in the jungle, where she’d rot. And there was nothing poetic or romantic about that kind of death.

“I don’t want to die,” she said in a composed way; she was determined to hide her terror.

Ruhr had no problem with the concept of killing the child. What he resented was the idea of being ordered to do it. Nobody controlled him. Nobody told him what to do and when to do it. Fuentes would soon discover that Ruhr was very much his own man. He didn’t trust Fuentes or the quiet Englishman called Bosanquet; they had something furtive about them, as if they knew something Ruhr did not. But he knew how to protect himself from them, how to guarantee his own future. Besides, he had not yet finished with this girl; he’d barely begun. And if he was going to kill her he wasn’t going to do it the way any cheap assassin would. A shot in the back of the skull, impersonal and fast, wasn’t his style. No. He’d been observing her the whole trip, and the more he studied her the more impatient he became.

He would have her. In his own inimitable way, he would have her.

He watched how lamplight shone on her legs. She had smooth skin, unblemished, perfect as only young skin can be. He reached out with his deformed hand and slid it under her skirt, the palm flat against her inner thigh. It was as flawless as any flesh could be.

The contrast enthralled him. The idea of his imperfect hand touching this child’s perfect thigh filled him with wonder. The ugly and the beautiful welded together, the alignment of opposites, thrilled him. Gunther Ruhr, superior to most people despite being unattractive and crippled, a fugitive despised for his history of destruction, could do anything he liked with this lovely child. Anything. He had the power.

He kissed her on the mouth. She drew her face away. Ruhr smiled. She didn’t understand the nature of the game, that was all. She was not permitted to resist. He slid his hand further up, stopping just before he reached the top of her legs where she radiated a mysterious warmth. There was a loveliness here he hadn’t encountered before: an innocence. He’d known whores all his life. He’d known the child whores of Saigon and Mexico City and Manila, hardened ten- and eleven-year-old girls with sad eyes and tiny breasts who performed with mechanical exactitude. But what he’d never known was real innocence. Until now. She was fresh and new, unused.

He kissed her again. This time, with lips tight, she didn’t turn away from him. She didn’t yield to the kiss, she merely tolerated it.

“I will not kill you,” he whispered. “I will not let anyone harm you.”

He put his good hand below her chin and turned her face up, forcing her to look directly into his eyes. He could smell the fear on her. He gazed at her slender neck and he remembered her school scarf in the back of the Range Rover. He wondered whether Pagan had read the sign. He was surely at a loss by this time; even if he’d discovered the abduction of the child – and it didn’t take a genius to get that far – he had no way of knowing where she’d been taken. Frantic Pagan. Ruhr revelled in the idea of the policeman’s anxiety. The abduction of the girl was tantamount to driving a nail into the Englishman’s heart.

He caught her shoulders, pushed her down on the narrow bed. She lay mute, looking past him at the lamp, which flickered monstrously and cast enormous distended shadows inside the tent. With a finger of the deformed hand he touched her mouth, forced her lips apart, caused a frozen smile to appear. He inserted the finger between her teeth, along the surface of the tongue, the gums. He drew the finger back and forth, in and out. He could feel the child’s body go rigid.

And still she wouldn’t look at him. She had closed her eyes. He took her hand and led it toward his groin. She made a noise, shook her head from side to side in protest, then bit the finger still inserted in her mouth. Ruhr, pained, drew away from her. There were teeth marks in his flesh.

He slapped her across the cheek with the deformed hand. She turned her face to the wall silently, hearing the slap echo in her head.

“You must do what I want,” he said. His voice was quiet, hushed, kind. If you didn’t know it was Gunther Ruhr speaking, you might think it the persuasive voice of a therapist. It was one of the many voices Ruhr assumed.

“I don’t want to touch you,” she whispered.

“What choice do you have, little girl?”

She tried to free herself but it was useless to struggle against Ruhr’s strength. She shut her eyes, seeking a secret room in the mind, sanctuary. If she concentrated hard she could reach it, unlock the door, go inside. Safe from Ruhr. Safe from harm. She thought: Somebody must be searching for me. Somebody has to be looking for me. Be realistic, Steffie. How could anybody ever find you?

She felt Ruhr’s ugly hand cross the flat of her stomach, like a crab moving on her skin.

“My sweet girl,” he kept saying. His breathing was different now, harder, louder. “I will not hurt you. I promise you. You will come to no harm.”

He stroked her breasts, unconscious of the girl’s discomfort, unaware of the tautness in her body. To Ruhr, the girl’s pale flesh was a soft, white, marvellous world for him to explore and finally exploit. He was a discoverer, a pioneer, creating a new map of engrossing territory. And, like any colonialist, he would inevitably corrupt the terrain he had conquered.

A sound came from the doorway of the tent. The flap was pushed aside. A shadow fell across Steffie’s face. She saw the man from the plane, the skinny one called Trevaskis. The pressure from Ruhr’s body lifted as he turned his face around quickly, angrily.

Trevaskis, whose gaunt features appeared ghostly in the odd flickering light, pretended he saw nothing. “They want you at the airstrip. Something about opening a box.”

Ruhr got up from the camp bed. “Have you no goddam manners?” he asked. He pronounced “goddam” as “gottdam”.

Trevaskis glanced down at Stephanie Brough, then looked at Ruhr. “Don’t blame me. I’m only the messenger. They told me to fetch you. Here I am. Fetching. They need you because they have to open the box. Whatever that means.”

Ruhr laid the palm of his hand upon the girl’s face. “Don’t move,” he said. “Don’t even think of moving. Is that understood?”

Ruhr stepped impatiently toward the doorway and out of the tent into darkness. He could see in the lights around the airstrip the C-130’s ramp being lowered. He stood very still and watched the great shadow of the missile emerge from the underbelly of the transport plane. It had a hardness of line, a cleanliness of form. Incomplete as yet, it required his knowledge, his touch, to make it perfect. The mood with the girl was ruined for the moment anyway. Later it could be recreated.

Trevaskis came out of the tent, closing the flap at his back. He followed Ruhr a little way in the direction of the airstrip. Then he walked in another direction, entering a dark place where the trees grew close together. Ruhr kept going towards the plane. Trevaskis doubled back toward the tent. He undid the flap. The girl was sitting on the bed, her skirt smoothed down over her knees and her blouse buttoned up. She turned her face towards him. She was white and scared – but how the hell was she supposed to look, Trevaskis wondered, after the sicko had been at her?

Trevaskis said, “Get the hell out of here. Now.”

“Where can I go?” she asked.

“Look, you got two choices. You stay here, you die. No two ways about it. Don’t kid yourself. You go out there, you at least got a chance.”

“What kind of chance?”

Trevaskis said, “Five per cent better than slim.”

Steffie, who didn’t need time to think, got up from the bed. Trevaskis held the tent open for her. She ducked her head under his arm; the night was vast and hostile.

“Kid,” Trevaskis said, and he pointed. “Go that way. You don’t run into any tents over there. Keep going in the direction I’m pointing. I think there’s a highway over there. Five miles, something like that. I’m not sure. But it’s your best shot.”

Five miles through an unfamiliar environment. For a moment the lamp that flickered against the walls of the tent seemed positively cheerful. For God’s sake, how could she even think of staying? She turned away from Trevaskis and, saying nothing, not knowing whether to thank him, headed through the trees. She must have strayed from the narrow path because immediately the foliage was dense all around her, and suffocating, like the greenery of some nightmare.

Strange forms reached out to her, tendrils brushed her arms, something small and furry flew directly at her forehead. And the night clicked all around her. Strange insect sounds came out of the underbush and the places where ancient roots gathered around her ankles. It was too much; too terrifying.

Frightened, she stopped. She looked back. Trevaskis was standing beside the tent, his shape outlined by the flame of kerosene. Ruhr, half-crouching, conjured out of the night, appeared behind him. Steffie saw Ruhr’s arm rise in the air, then fall swiftly, an indistinct brush-stroke. Trevaskis cried out, doubled over, slid to his knees. And then she couldn’t see him any more.

She turned and tried to claw her way through the foliage. She froze when the beam of the flashlight struck her. She could hear Ruhr breathing as he came toward her.

“He thought I was stupid enough to leave you without supervision,” Ruhr said. “Do you also think me stupid, little girl?”

He caught her by the hair and yanked her head back. The blade of his knife, wet with Trevaskis’ blood, was thrust against the side of her neck.

Gunther Ruhr smiled. “I am disappointed.”

Steffie Brough couldn’t speak.

Tommy Fuentes watched the missile, mounted on the bed of the truck, come down the ramp under the guidance of the aeroplane’s crew members, men anxious to be gone from this Honduran paradise. The cylinder rolled slowly a couple of feet on the concrete, then stopped. A small Toyota truck drew up very carefully alongside the missile. The tail-gate was lowered, and the wooden crate that had been delivered by Levy and Possony was carried out by three soldiers. They set the box down about six feet from the missile.

Fuentes trained a flashlight on the crate and two soldiers held lanterns.

“Where is Ruhr?” Fuentes asked.

Bosanquet said, “It appears that our German friend has all the worst traits of his race. Arrogance and a complete indifference to any timetable but one of his own choosing.”

Fuentes impatiently tapped the handle of his sword and turned his face to look in the direction of Ruhr’s tent. Perhaps when he’d had his fun with the unfortunate girl and then disposed of her, the German genius would condescend to come down to the airstrip and do what he’d been paid for.

After all, the ship that would carry the missile to Cuba was due to arrive within twenty-four hours.

London

A deceptive autumnal sun hung over London, a hazy disc that chilled the city more than it warmed it. At eight a.m. Sir Freddie Kinnaird stepped from his limousine in Golden Square and entered the building that housed Frank Pagan’s operation. In the lobby he passed a uniformed policeman, who saluted him briskly, then he rode in the old-fashioned lift to the top floor.

He entered Pagan’s office without knocking. He considered it his prerogative as Home Secretary to go wherever he liked within his jurisdiction. He often contrived to conceal this presumptuous attitude with a certain upper-class charm. His style in Savile Row suits had made him, according to a frivolous magazine, the ninth best-dressed bachelor in Britain last year. If Sir Freddie Kinnaird had been a book, he would have been on the best-seller lists.

Today he wore a charcoal-grey overcoat with a discreet velvet collar. Pagan, who lay on the sofa, turned his face drowsily towards the man. “Sir Freddie,” he managed to say. “What a surprise.”

“No need to get up, Frank. Just passing. Thought I’d drop in and see how things stand.”

Pagan’s shirt was undone. A bandage, applied some hours ago by Foxworth, was visible around his chest. He raised himself into a sitting position and looked at Freddie Kinnaird, whose face had been reddened by the cold morning air. How things stand, Freddie Kinnaird had said. Well, one of the things that wasn’t standing was Pagan himself, who had lain crookedly in sleep and now massaged the sides of his aching legs, his knotted muscles.

“What news, Frank?” Sir Freddie said, glancing at the silk-screen on the wall, then surveying the chaos of the office, the litter that had missed the basket, the coffee cups, the stained saucers, the crumpled, fast-food wrappers.

Pagan got to his feet, poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot that had been on a hot-plate for God knows how long. “The investigation chugs along,” he said.

“How does it chug, and where?” Kinnaird asked.

“With all due respect, Sir Freddie, the details are being kept confidential in light of what happened in Shepherd’s Bush.” Pagan sipped the coffee, which was the most vile fluid that had ever passed his lips. Stewed did not describe it. He fought a certain turmoil in his stomach. “Any information you want must come to you directly from Martin Burr. That’s the Commissioner’s rule. Access is strictly limited. We don’t want any more leaks, obviously.”

“Admirable security,” Sir Freddie remarked brightly. “Naturally, Martin keeps me informed on a daily basis. I simply thought I might drop in and see if there were any recent developments that may not have reached the Commissioner’s desk yet. The overnight stuff. The low-down, as they say. This whole business has caused me quite considerable anxiety, as I’m sure you’ll understand.”

Pagan smiled agreeably. He set his cup down and buttoned his shirt. “Martin Burr knows all, Sir Freddie. Everything that happens in this office comes to the Commissioner’s attention. Promptly.”

There was a momentary silence. Pagan looked at this rather conservatively fashionable man who had become one of the most popular politicians in the present government. Prosperous, rumoured to rise even higher in his political party, Sir Freddie had come a long way. Pagan had a faint recollection of how, a dozen or so years ago, the newspapers had made much of the fact that Kinnaird was strapped for cash because of onerous death duties on the death of his father. The old country estate in West Sussex had been sold to a Japanese electronics tycoon, farming lands in Devon had been auctioned, and Freddie himself, plummeted from the comfortable heights of wealth and rank, a diminished version of what he had once been, was obliged to sit on the boards of a variety of corporations. He needed the money, the companies needed his class and style. He had obviously made a terrific recovery from those days.

Kinnaird asked, “Seen the morning papers?”

“I try to avoid them.”

“What a hullabaloo,” Sir Freddie said. “The press doesn’t know which way to turn. First the stolen missile. Then the abducted child. And if that wasn’t sensational enough, there’s the hijacked plane into the bargain. They haven’t had this much news in one day since World War Two, I imagine. And speculation, my God! Ruhr’s in Africa. He’s in Iran. He’s in the Canadian Rockies. And the one I like – he never left England. He’s holed up somewhere in the countryside, laughing up his bloody sleeve.”

Pagan said nothing. He imagined the headlines, he didn’t need to see them. He didn’t need to read about Stephanie Brough in particular. Whenever he thought about her he was filled with a kind of parental dread. He couldn’t even begin to understand what her real parents were suffering, although he had insights into their all-consuming worry.

He’d refused to take phone calls from the press. They were fielded downstairs with bland, tight-lipped comments from other officers. Reporters were given items of information they could have gleaned for themselves without much trouble – the nationality of the dead terrorists, the origin of the helicopter, the number of military casualties. It was the spirit of limited co-operation: more delicate areas of the investigation were inaccessible.

Sir Freddie adjusted his black cashmere scarf and said, “I think you’re doing a wonderful job in the circumstances, Frank. You and all your men. Convey my admiration to them, would you?”

Pagan hated such speeches, which he felt were offered more for political reasons than out of genuine gratitude. A man like Kinnaird, who was always on-stage, confused politics with real life. He probably made love the way he made speeches, with appropriate pauses for effect and great expectations of applause. Pagan wondered if he were ever heckled in bed.

“Keep up the good work, Frank.”

Kinnaird shook Pagan’s hand firmly. Then he stepped out of the office just as Foxworth, hair dishevelled, pinstripe suit crumpled, was coming in. Kinnaird nodded to the young man before passing along the corridor in the direction of the lift.

Pagan sat down behind his desk. Foxworth said, “Company from a lofty place, I see.”

“Pain in the arse,” Pagan remarked. “He drops in, fishes for some hot news, gives me a bit of a pep talk, expresses his thanks and aren’t we just wonderful all round? Spare me, Foxie. Have you slept?”

Foxworth fixed the knot of his striped tie. His complexion was colourless and he hadn’t shaved, but his eyes were bright and excited. “I got in an hour or two, Frank.” He patted his briefcase. “I also found time to pick up a change of clothes for you.”

Pagan opened the case and looked at the black and white silk jacket, brown trousers, grey socks, blue and white shirt, and he wondered if Foxie had picked them out in the dark. He didn’t criticise; he was less interested in the apparel than in Foxie’s quietly pleased little look. “So what are you repressing, Foxie?”

“Repressing?”

“I know your whole repertoire of grins, twitches and glances. Right now, you look like the top of your head is about to explode.”

Foxie leaned across the desk, smiled. “Fancy that. Didn’t know I was so transparent, actually.”

“You’re a window, Foxie. Speak. What’s on your mind?”

Foxworth took out a small notebook, flicked the pages. “A couple of recent developments I think might interest you. First, the Norwich police and our friend Joanna Lassiter. Joanna was shown Chapotin’s picture and – according to a certain Detective Hare in Norwich – responded with an emphatic denial. Chapotin was not even remotely similar to the man who rented the farmhouse.”

“Did she describe the man who would be Chapotin?” Pagan asked.

“Better than that. Based on her description, Detective Hare had a composite assembled. It ought to be coming on the fax machine at any second.”

Pagan looked at his watch. “This Hare’s an early bird.”

“Provincial living does that to a man,” Foxie said. He turned the pages of his notebook. “Now for the news from bonnie Scotland. You’ll like this.”

Pagan sat back in his chair.

Foxworth said, “Rafael Rosabal met a man in a Glasgow hotel, according to a report from the Criminal Investigation Division, which had been asked by London to conduct routine surveillance of the Cuban.”

“Was the man Chapotin?” Pagan asked.

Foxie shook his head. “No. Rosabal met briefly with somebody called Enrico Caporelli.”

“The name doesn’t mean anything,” Pagan said.

“Caporelli, an Italian citizen, is known to Glasgow CID because he has business interests in that city, one of which – a string of betting-shops – has been the subject of an undercover investigation recently. Something to do with skimming cash off the top. Tax cheating. Happens in a lot of cash operations. Enrico Caporelli is simply a sleeping-partner in the business. He isn’t involved in the daily running of it. I understand he spends most of his time in Europe and America. Probably doesn’t even know some of his managers are skimming.”

“What could Rosabal possibly have in common with this Caporelli?”

Foxworth once more turned the pages of his little book; he was clearly enjoying himself. “Cuba,” he said quietly.

“Cuba?”

“It’s a bit of a maze, actually, but according to some homework Billy Ewing has just completed, Enrico Caporelli resided in Cuba from 1955 until 1959, where he made a considerable fortune in various businesses. The Cubans took everything away from him. Expropriation is Fidel’s word.”

“How did Ewing dig that up?”

“From our American pals in Grosvenor Square, Frank. Ewing called in a small favour at the Embassy. Back comes the info that Enrico Caporelli, a businessman deported from Cuba in spring, 1959, was debriefed that same year by the Central Intelligence Agency, which was assiduously gathering material on Castro at the time with the intention, one assumes, of assassination. Hence, Caporelli’s name is in the files somewhere.”

A bit of a maze, Pagan thought. The phrase struck him as understatement. He was always surprised by the connections that existed between people who, on the face of it, would seem to have nothing in common. Threads, trails left in space and time. A Cuban politician meets an Italian businessman in Glasgow in 1989, setting up a situation that creates echoes in very old files. Join the dots and what do you get? Companions in conspiracy, he thought. But what was the meat of this conspiracy?

“Where is Caporelli now?” he asked.

“The last available information came from a check we ran with the Italian police. According to the housekeeper at Caporelli’s house in Tuscany, he’s presently at his flat in Paris.”

“I’d love to have a word with him. I’d also like to sit Rosabal down and have a nice little chat.”

“He already left the country. Presumably he’s back in Cuba.”

Pagan stood up. Despite the horror of it, he poured himself a second cup of coffee, which he took to the window. Drones crossed the square, hurrying inside offices. Another day was cranking up. In the east, clouds the colour of mud had begun to drift towards the city; below, a funnel of wind sucked up some brittle leaves. Strangely, an untended scarlet kite in the shape of a horse’s head, probably tugged from some poor child’s hand in Hyde or Green Park, floated across the roof-tops. Could a lost kite be some form of omen? Pagan watched it go, then turned back to Foxie.

“What does it all add up to?” Pagan asked. “Rafael Rosabal meets this Italian in Scotland. At the same time, Jean-Paul Chapotin arrives in Glasgow. Meanwhile, somebody using Chapotin’s name rented a farmhouse in Norfolk, which became the headquarters for a group of terrorists. One solid connection exists between Rosabal and Chapotin and Caporelli: Cuba. It’s all bloody absorbing if you’re in the mood for puzzles and you’ve finished the Times crossword, but where does it leave us, for Christ’s sake?”

Foxworth closed his little notebook. Billy Ewing put his face round the door. “Fax for you, Foxie,” he said.

Foxworth took the slip of paper from Ewing. He studied it for a moment, then smiled. “Surprise surprise,” was what he said. He gave the paper to Frank Pagan.

Pagan found himself looking at a police composite, an identikit creation; he thought these things always made human beings resemble pancakes. They rendered features flat and dopey. The constituent parts of the face never bore any relationship to one another, plundered as they had been from a kit of human bits and pieces. The face in this particular picture had black hair and a straight nose and a mouth that was rather tense and unreal. The face also wore sunglasses. Pagan thought of a zombie.

“What’s so surprising, Foxie?” he asked.

Foxworth told him. “The man in this picture, wretched as he may appear, bears more than a passing resemblance to Rafael Rosabal, which may mean only one thing – that he rented the farm under Chapotin’s name.”

“What kind of sense would that make, for Christ’s sake?”

Foxworth shrugged. He didn’t know. He said, “You’d have to ask Rafael that one, Frank. And since he’s back in Cuba, it isn’t going to be easy.”

“He’d deny any involvement anyway,” Pagan said. “How could I prove otherwise? This wretched illustration isn’t enough. Rosabal would laugh his bollocks off.”

Pagan, who hadn’t looked at a likeness of Rafael Rosabal before, hadn’t even wanted to, gazed at the picture. So this was Magdalena’s lover, this bland face that stared back at him, this prosaic product of a technician’s craft. Composites never suggested emotion, certainly not passion; those lips looked as if they might never have kissed any human being. He tossed the drawing on the desk. It was funny how, after all this time, there was a streak of jealousy in him, like the trail of a very old comet, but uncomfortable just the same.

“And what’s Rosabal’s connection with Ruhr?” he asked. “Why would he rent a farmhouse for Ruhr to live in?”

“Perhaps because Rosabal hired Ruhr to steal the missile.”

“Perhaps, but also impossible to prove on the flimsy basis of an identikit,” Pagan said. “Why would Rosabal want his own damned missile to begin with?” He was thinking of another question now, one he didn’t want to ask at all, but which he knew would have to be voiced, if not by himself then surely, sooner or later, by Foxworth.

“I wonder how Magdalena Torrente fits into all this?” he said.

“Maybe she doesn’t fit anywhere,” Foxie answered. There was some kindness in his voice, as if he intuited Pagan’s difficulty with the subject of the woman.

Pagan sipped the spooky coffee. Maybe she doesn’t fit – but he wasn’t convinced and he wasn’t reassured and the melody that ran through his brain was composed of bad notes. His instincts told him he couldn’t consign Magdalena to some convenient oblivion. Not yet, perhaps not at all. Somewhere along the way he thought he’d have to see her again, talk to her, probe the nature of her affair with the Cuban. Hadn’t she hinted in an elliptical way about the prospect of a coup in Cuba? “Hinted” was too strong a word; rather, she’d failed to answer his direct questions, leaving room for his own speculation. Mysterious Magdalena.

He had mixed emotions about the prospect of seeing her again. But she was Rosabal’s lover and there was at least a chance that she knew something about the Cuban’s business. Perhaps they shared something more than each other’s flesh; little secrets, the kind spoken across pillows and through tangled limbs.

Rosabal. Magdalena. Chapotin. Ruhr. Caporelli. He wondered what was secreted by those five names.

He asked, “Why Scotland? Why go up there at all? Why did all three men have to be in Glasgow on precisely the same day? Where did Chapotin go when he arrived there? Did he meet somebody? Did he meet Ruhr? Did he meet Caporelli? Did all three of them get together at some point? Is there life after death?”

Foxworth smiled. “Is there life after Glasgow?”

“Not for Jean-Paul Chapotin,” Pagan said.

Both men were quiet. The sound of a printer drifted through the open door; a telephone buzzed in another room, a man cleared his throat. Pagan’s head ached. Too many questions. The more information that reached his office, the more solid grew the whole edifice of mystery. It was time to be dogged, time to be systematic; take each problem as it comes. Time, he thought: did Steffie Brough, wherever she was, have the luxury of time? He was conscious of a clock ticking madly away.

“If I want to interview Rosabal, what official channels do I have to go through?” he asked.

“I can find out. I suspect they’re complicated and involve hideous protocol.”

Pagan shook his head in slight despair. It was a hopeless kind of quest really. Rosabal would simply refuse to come back to Britain, and if Pagan went to Cuba, armed with the silly composite, Rosabal would mock him – if indeed he agreed to see him at all. Ministers and their ministries could keep you waiting in ante-chambers indefinitely, whether you came from Scotland Yard or not. It wasn’t going to be fruitful to approach Rafael Rosabal in a headlong manner; there was too much tape red, as Madame Chapotin might have said, for that. No, he would have to chisel away at the edifice confronting him, sliver by sliver, like a sculptor intrigued by the form concealed in a block of granite.

“Put Billy Ewing on it. I’ve got something else in mind for you, Foxie.”

“Paris?” Foxworth asked.

“Glasgow. I’m taking Paris.”

“Why don’t we discuss it?”

“Because this isn’t a bloody democracy, Foxie. I get Paris, you get Glasgow. It’s a matter of seniority, sonny.”

Foxie sighed in resignation. He doubted if Pagan was quite strong enough to travel, but he wasn’t going to argue the point. Frank had switched into his headstrong mode and that was it.

Pagan said, “I’ll see you back here tonight.”

“That soon?”

“Soon? That gives you the whole day, Foxie. Use it well. Tell me where Chapotin went and how he’s connected to Ruhr. Tell me why Rosabal would use Chapotin’s name. Tell me why they selected scenic Glasgow for skulduggery.”

Slavedriver, Foxie thought. “You want a miracle, Frank.”

“I want more than a miracle, Foxie,” Pagan replied.

Villa Clara Province, Cuba

At four a.m. the Lider Maximo lay in his bedroom with a rubber hot-water bottle pressed flat upon his stomach. He was unable to speak because of the thermometer stuck between his lips. The physician, Dr Miguel Zayas, checked the great man’s pulse.

“Now,” Zayas said. He took the hot-water bottle away and prodded here and there the fleshy stomach of the Lider Maximo. “Does that hurt? Does that? Does this?”

Castro shook his head. How could he speak with a damned tube in his mouth? It would not do for him to moan and admit pain, even though Zayas was fingering some tender spots; especially he couldn’t admit anything so human as pain in front of that old buzzard General Capablanca, who was hovering in the room like a greedy relative at a will-reading.

“What have you eaten recently?” Zayas asked, and took the thermometer away.

“Shrimp,” Castro said. He grabbed back the hot-water bottle and laid it over his navel.

“What else?”

“Moros y cristianos.”

“Anything else?”

“Plantains.”

The physician tugged the hot-water bottle from Castro’s belly. “This may aggravate your condition.”

“Which is what exactly?”

“Gastric influenza,” the physician said.

Castro slumped back against the pillows. It was ignominious to have cancelled a speech in which he had planned to castigate the new, cosy friendship between the Yanqui imperialists and the “soft” reformist, quasi-capitalist regime in the Soviet Union, but the attacks of diarrhoea, which left him weak and helpless, were positively humiliating. He had also a fever and he couldn’t concentrate. Goddam, it would have been a great speech, perhaps his best, emphasising Cuba’s splendid isolation in the world, the kind of exciting speech that would have brought Cubans together in a show of solidarity. Cuba would not be threatened by this obscene new collusion, this game of footsy, between the United States and Russia.

Capablanca, whose thick white moustache covered his upper lip, came close to the bed. Castro was annoyed by the intrusion of the General, a man he’d never been able to stand anyway. Capablanca was a left-over from a class that should have been swept away by the Revolution, but still lingered here and there in pockets despite the Party’s best efforts.

Capablanca, who had a set of papers in his hand, said, “I have come to remind you, Commandante, that tomorrow’s troop manoeuvres require your personal authorisation in the absence of your brother.”

“What manoeuvres?” Castro asked. He could remember no mention of troop movements. His was a life totally consumed by detail: how could he possibly recall every little thing? Nor did he trust his own memory entirely. Lately, it hadn’t seemed an altogether reliable instrument. He seized the papers from the General’s hand.

Peering through his glasses he saw that the documents described a huge military exercise scheduled for dawn tomorrow. It involved the movement of troops from the Santiago de Cuba Province. Infantry battalions, as well as aeroplanes, were to move inland from the coastal region of the province, which lay on the island’s southern seaboard. Ships of the Cuban Navy were also scheduled to sail around the tip of the island at Guantanamo, bound for Holguin Province. This would expose the coast of Santiago de Cuba, leaving it defenceless. Not that Castro expected an invasion force; but one had always to be prepared.

The same documents described other military exercises in Havana Province. These were less extensive than the movement of troops from Santiago to Holguin, but they were impressive just the same and involved the transportation of more than seven thousand men from Havana Province to Matanzas; there, in the mountainous region surrounding Matanzas City, exercises would keep these troops occupied at a distance of some fifty miles from the Central Highway.

“All this involves thousands of soldiers and reservists,” Castro said.

“Indeed,” the General answered.

“Why? Why this undertaking?”

“Readiness, Commandante. Alertness. A standing army must flex its muscle, otherwise it withers.”

“Readiness is important, but does Raul know of these manoeuvres?”

“Of course,” said the General. “It was Raul’s idea.” Lies came to him with great difficulty.

Castro tossed the papers back at the General. The pain that shot suddenly through his stomach was like a fierce little cannonball. He imagined it leaving a scalding trail of debris on its passage through his guts. He spoke with some effort. “I do … not … recall my brother ever … mentioning these exercises before now, General.”

“But Commandante,” Capablanca said. He was tense, slightly panicked. He hadn’t expected resistance; he’d imagined that the debilitated and confused Lider Maximo would give his consent willingly. He needed the Commandante’s authorisation of the documents; without that imprimatur, those officers loyal to the Party, and to El Viejo himself, would refuse to participate in the exercises. They wouldn’t raise a finger unless one or other of the Castros authorised it. Such disobedience on the part of the misguided loyalists would mean chaos, disorder, bloodshed. The General pictured slaughter on the beaches. God knows, there would be unavoidable bloodshed somewhere down the road but the ship coming from Honduras had to arrive without impediment. That was a matter of the utmost importance.

Besides, there was form to consider; and form was one of the General’s obsessions. With the authorisation of Castro manoeuvres would have the appearance of legitimacy. This was important because the General did not want history to perceive him as a common adventurer and scoundrel. Everything he did had to be just so, everything by the book.

He had another important reason, one of sly importance, for getting the Lider Maximo’s signature on these papers.

A space had been left on the third page for an extra paragraph to be inserted; this paragraph, when the General added it, would contain Castro’s authorisation for a cruise missile, formerly the property of NATO, to be fired from a location outside Santiago de Cuba …

Of course, no missile would ever fly. The authorisation was the only thing required; the apparent intent was all.

Now Castro waved a hand in a gesture of dismissal. He was reluctant to give his approval to the manoeuvres because he didn’t like interfering with his brother’s gameboard. Raul played toy soldiers, not he.

“Cancel them, General. Postpone them until Raul returns.”

“Commandante,” said the General, trying to conceal the small panic he felt. “You must approve these –”

“I do not have to do anything, General. Now do as I say! Postpone the manoeuvres!”

Capablanca glanced at the doctor. Zayas understood the look; he reached inside his black bag and took out a hypodermic syringe. He inserted the needle into a small phial of colourless liquid, filled the syringe, then held the needle close to the Lider Maximo’s arm.

“What is it, Zayas? What’s in the syringe?” Castro asked. His eyes opened very wide.

“A simple painkiller,” the physician said.

“I am not in pain!” Castro would have decked the doctor, had it not been for the terrible weakness he felt. His belly creaked like the rotted wood of an old ship and he had the feeling of hot liquid rushing through his intestines. He’d have to get up, rush for the hundredth time to the john.

The needle pierced flesh, found the vein; after twenty seconds Castro, who resisted enforced sleep fiercely, closed his eyes. His head rolled to one side and saliva collected at the corners of his lips as he snored.

The doctor raised one of Castro’s eyelids, then let it flop back in place. “Give me the documents, General.”

General Capablanca did so. The doctor, with meticulous penmanship, forged the Lider Maximo’s signature. It was a passable fraud.

“I haven’t been his personal physician for years without learning a great deal about our fearless leader,” Zayas said. “Now open the middle drawer of the desk.”

Capablanca, surprised by both the skill and gall of the physician, went to the desk. Inside the middle drawer was the Lider Maximo’s personal seal. The General removed it. He took the document from the doctor, who was still admiring his own forgery, and pressed the metal seal over the fake signature.

“There,” said the General, relief in his voice. “It’s done.”

Zayas looked down at the doped leader. “When he wakes, I’ll shoot him up again.”

The General said, “I’d prefer him dead. But I have my own orders to follow.” He walked towards the door where he stopped, turned briskly around. “Your role will not be forgotten, Zayas. By tomorrow night, Cuba will be free of this madman.”

“I’m happy to help a new regime, General. People who love freedom must unite against despots.”

General Capablanca stepped out of the room. In the corridor, Castro’s bodyguards stood tensely.

“A minor gastric disorder,” said the General in a booming voice. “In a day or so he will be as good as new. For now, he sleeps.”

The bodyguards relaxed. They trusted Capablanca and they trusted Dr Zayas. They had known them for years. All, therefore, was well.