NINETEEN

VENICE

TOBIAS BARRON HAD SCHEDULED A BRIEF MEETING BEFORE HIS EVENING meal. His visitor was an Afrikaner named Rolfe Van den Kamp, a leather-faced man with hard blue eyes who looked uncomfortable in the wintry climate of Venice. Barron offered sherry; the Afrikaner said he’d prefer something with a kick, and accepted a Wild Turkey straight. The two men sat facing each other in the drawing-room and Van den Kamp threw the drink back in one swallow. He emitted an air of quiet nervousness. ‘I’m glad you could see me at such short notice,’ he said.

Barron shrugged. ‘I’m just sorry we didn’t have more time together in South Africa.’ He’d met Van den Kamp briefly at a cocktail reception held in a Durban hotel, one of those affairs that by their very nature limit conversation to the most superficial level. They had briefly discussed the political situation in South Africa, which Van den Kamp of course thought calamitous. Though he hadn’t said so, Barron was of the opinion that the final ascendancy of the blacks was a matter of historical inevitability, and people such as Van den Kamp were struggling to hold back an impossible tide. You could build dykes, stash sandbags against the swell, but in the end Rolfe and those like him were going to be swept away like so many twigs.

Barron said, ‘You know how those receptions are, Rolfe. In and out. Sign a couple of documents, talk to bankers, see a few government officials, make a speech, fly out.’

Rolfe Van den Kamp looked sympathetic. ‘Course, course. I know how busy it gets. I’ll help myself to another drink, you don’t mind?’ He filled his glass to the brim with Wild Turkey. ‘You’re not the only one spreading a little light on the Dark Continent, Tobias. Christ, we do it all the time. Been doing it for years. Some of our blacks have gone on to vocational schools. Colleges. Course, we footed the bills when necessary.’

Some of our blacks, Barron thought. Van den Kamp couldn’t help the proprietorial note in his voice. His was a world of ownership and patronage; the lords of creation. It was easy to imagine him, a descendant of the Dutch who’d made the Great Trek, standing feet apart and hands on hips and surveying a vast expanse of veld his family owned and that was now menaced by black nationalism. He was a relic of another age, an endangered species.

‘When you’re in a position to help those less fortunate …’ Barron remarked, and airily waved a hand. ‘I’m interested in a number of charitable causes, not just in South Africa, of course.’

Van den Kamp turned his acid-blue eyes on Barron. You could read in those eyes a number of things – fear, anxiety, the need for self-preservation. The Afrikaner smiled, a frugal little movement of lips. ‘You occupy an unusual position. You come and go as you please in the townships because you’re the white man who brings good cheer. You don’t have a political axe to grind. You can go places in South Africa where any other white would be shot on sight.’ Van den Kamp turned his glass round in his big hands. ‘I sometimes wonder … if you ever hear anything.’

‘Hear anything?’ Barron asked. ‘Such as?’

‘This, that. Titbits. Information that might be useful to my people.’

Barron smiled. ‘What are you fishing for, Rolfe? Perhaps if you came to the point …’ He leaned forward in his chair.

Van den Kamp gazed into his drink in a brooding manner. When he spoke next he talked of the need to protect his family. Barron understood that he was referring to something more extensive than his immediate blood relations: he was talking about a way of life, about survival and supremacy. The process of democracy was a mockery as far as he was concerned. Ballot-boxes meant nothing. He had a private war to fight.

The Afrikaner sipped his Wild Turkey. ‘The militants have AK–47s. They have Uzis. We don’t know where they’re coming from, but they’re getting them somewhere. We’d like to know their source.’

‘And you think I might have access to that kind of knowledge?’

‘I think you might.’

Barron said, ‘The world is filled with arms merchants, Rolfe. We both know that. In any event, do you imagine the militants take me into their confidence? All I ever meet are mayors and tribal chiefs and pols. I don’t think I’d recognize a militant if I saw one.’ He permitted himself a small laugh, as if the very idea that he might be associated with radicals were ridiculous.

Van den Kamp rose from his chair. He was a massive, well-muscled man. ‘Scratch a black and you find a terrorist, Tobias.’

Barron shrugged. Van den Kamp, wandering the room, dwarfing the furniture, picked out the first few bars of ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’ on the spinet in a cack-handed way. When he stepped back from the keyboard he said, ‘We need to balance the situation in our favour.’

‘What have you got in mind?’ Barron asked. He wondered about the Afrikaner’s logic: how could a situation be balanced in somebody’s favour? It was a perverse use of language. Van den Kamp’s perception of balance meant that he wanted the scales tipped decisively to his benefit.

‘My people have certain urgent requirements.’

‘Such as?’

Van den Kamp didn’t answer the question directly. ‘I got the impression in Durban you might be of assistance. Correct me if I’m wrong.’

‘I’m not sure what impression I gave you, Rolfe.’

‘You seemed to have, ah, a wide range of connections.’

‘I know a great many people, if that’s what you mean. I have associates in a number of fields. Medicine. Agriculture. Education. All kinds of useful friends and allies. I have projects of different kinds all over the place. Crop rotation in Cuba. Medical aid in Ethiopia. Irrigation schemes in Angola. It’s a long list.’

Van den Kamp shook his head. ‘I think you know I’m driving at something else, Tobias.’

Barron said nothing. He had a sense of the delicacy of the situation. He might have helped Van den Kamp along, might have urged him to speak his mind, but he enjoyed the waiting game. He walked to the mantelpiece, where the photographs of his famous friends provided a striking backdrop. It was, he knew, a piece of theatre intended to impress upon the Afrikaner that he was fortunate to have been granted an audience.

‘I’ll put it another way,’ Van den Kamp said. ‘I had the feeling in Durban that you were sympathetic to our plight in the present climate of violence.’

‘Did I give that impression?’

‘Course, I may have misunderstood you …’

‘I try to stay detached, Rolfe. If I said anything to mislead you, I’m sorry.’

Van den Kamp looked down at the keyboard of the spinet. His expression was one of disappointment. ‘I hope I haven’t come all this way for nothing.’

‘Perhaps if you said what’s on your mind,’ Barron suggested.

Van den Kamp, who was not by nature a circumspect man, enjoyed frank exchanges. In his world men spoke brute facts over ice-cold lagers. ‘OK. In Durban I got the feeling that among your associates there were those who might be in a position to help us.’

Barron stared at the Afrikaner. ‘It depends on the kind of help you’re looking for, Rolfe. Clearly, you’re not talking about irrigation technicians or AIDS experts, are you?’

‘I think you know what I’m talking about. Do I need to spell it out for you?’

‘I don’t like fumbling in the dark any more than you do,’ Barron said.

‘OK. For purely defensive purposes, we’re in the market for armoured Range Rovers. Kevlar body armour. Stun grenades. We’re under threat, Tobias. And it’s no way to live. Believe me.’

Barron listened. He knew Van den Kamp was the kind of man who would first of all mention his defensive needs. He didn’t want to be perceived as the aggressor. That role could be attributed to the blacks.

‘To defend yourself,’ Barron said, ‘you also need to be able to attack.’

‘Of course.’

‘And?’

‘We’re looking for Webley gas-grenade launchers. HK93s. MP5Ks. Remington 870s 12 bore. Glock 9mm automatics. Tejas .50 calibre rifles. All the necessary ammo. It’s a long list.’

Barron pressed his fingertips to his lips, remembering Nofometo coming to his hotel in Durban. Van den Kamp and Nofometo, a study in contrasts, in attitudes; and yet when you reached the bottom line, both men had similar desires – the right of possession, a stake in the future, the leadership of a country.

‘I can always pass along a message, Rolfe. But the final decision, you must understand, would have absolutely nothing to do with me.’ Barron experienced a feeling of distance from the conversation. It was a way of protecting himself, a shell of sorts. ‘Assuming I happen to know some people who might be helpful – and I’m not saying I do – you’re talking about a considerable amount of money, Rolfe.’

‘Money’s the least of our problems.’

Barron studied the Afrikaner, on whom he’d compiled a dossier. Rolfe Van den Kamp, whose personal fortune was estimated to be in the region of five million pounds sterling, was the leader of a right-wing movement already involved in military conflict with the blacks. It had been small-time activity up to now, a few killings here, a few there, a matter of flying the flag of white supremacy. But this was changing; Van den Kamp and his people were becoming more ambitious, needed more strike power, greater displays of force.

Barron said, ‘Let’s get one thing straight from the beginning. I’m not in a position to promise you anything. All I can do is put certain people in touch with you. And if they want to do business, that’s their affair. It’s nothing to do with me. Frankly, I shouldn’t even be listening to any of this.’

‘I understand.’ Van den Kamp finished his drink, put the empty glass down on the polished wood of the spinet.

Barron picked up the glass before it could leave a ring in the wood. ‘I find the whole subject of guns distasteful.’

‘But you’ll see the message gets to its destination?’

Barron nodded. He changed the subject abruptly. ‘Are you doing a little sightseeing while you’re in Venice?’

‘I don’t have the time.’

‘A pity. The city in winter has certain charms.’ Barron looked at his watch. ‘You must excuse me. I’m expecting company.’

‘Sure.’

He walked Rolfe Van den Kamp to the door and shook his hand briefly. When the Afrikaner had gone, Schialli entered the drawing-room to announce that the dinner guests had arrived.

‘All,’ Schialli added, ‘save the old one.’

Barron twisted a length of fettuccine around his fork and raised it to his mouth. It tasted of anchovy and parmesan. He picked up his wineglass and sipped the Sardinian Vermentino, then held the glass up to the light as if seeking impurities in the liquid. Satisfied, he set the wine down and looked across the table at his companions, his eye passing over the place set for the missing guest.

On his right sat Henry Saxon in his hideously thick spectacles; despite what manners he might have learned in prep schools and at Harvard, Henry was never entirely at ease at dinner tables, as if he were constantly afraid of a faux pas in the area of etiquette. Henry tended to sweat; the palms of his hands were moist.

Next to Henry was Leo Kinsella, dressed in an expensive three-piece charcoal-grey suit. He wore decorative leather boots made to his own specifications by a craftsman in Taos, New Mexico. His expression was flinty, austere. He spoke in an accent designed to remind others of his impoverished childhood in the dirt-hills of Oklahoma. Leo was proud of his origins and how he’d transcended them: the embodiment, Barron supposed, of the American Dream, every immigrant’s fantasy – streets of gold, arid deserts out of which oil gushed.

Beside Leo was Montgomery Rhodes, a taciturn figure in dark shades. Rhodes was dressed in the kind of sharp black suit that suggested the garb of an upscale funeral-parlour director. He’d once been attached to a clandestine branch of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and so far as Barron knew might still be employed by that nebulous outfit. There was a quality of brutality about Monty Rhodes, a manic intensity in his silences and the way he scribbled in his little notebook. Barron wasn’t fond of Rhodes because the man suggested a human black hole. He drained light out of any room in which he sat. He dragged menace around with him like a dead animal.

Barron raised his wineglass. ‘Welcome to Venice, gentlemen.’

Leo Kinsella, who didn’t like eye-tie food or wine, and whose tastes ran no further than charbroiled steaks of Texan dimensions, pushed his plate aside. ‘Let’s get down to the business, Tobias. I don’t have time to wait for our absent guest.’

Barron looked at Saxon and said, ‘Henry?’

Saxon produced a set of folders. He began to flick through the messages. ‘A few of these are requests for money and matériel,’ he said in his intoning way.

‘Summarize for the sake of brevity,’ said Kinsella. ‘I know how you can go on at times, Henry. Goddam lawyers too fond of their own voices.’

Henry Saxon cleared his throat and glanced at Barron, who smiled in cheerful indulgence of Kinsella’s manner. ‘The sum of one million US dollars is requested by Lotus.’

‘I thought we’d taken care of all the money business. I was of the opinion, Tobias, that we’d laid out all the bread we were ever going to. I’m not sure we can approve that request.’ Kinsella glanced at Rhodes, who took out a notebook, jotted something down with his maroon Waterman fountain-pen, the nib of which scratched the surface of paper.

Kinsella continued. ‘Lotus is a goddam bottomless pit. If we give him the go-ahead, and that’s a mighty big if, it’s going to take time. We have to find new routes for money now. You can’t move that kind of cash without somebody asking questions. We don’t want anybody sticking their nose in. And most of all we don’t want people who have a habit of developing sudden qualms, do we? We don’t want anybody likely to be stricken by an abrupt attack of conscience. If you know what I mean.’

Barron asked, ‘Who can predict a man’s conscience, Leo?’

‘Yeah,’ Rhodes said. ‘Who indeed? Myself, I happen to think conscience a luxury item. A goddam expensive one too, as some people find out too late.’

There was a short silence before Saxon continued. ‘Orchid needs one point three million in Warsaw.’

‘I bet he does,’ said Kinsella. He stared at Tobias Barron. ‘You wonder about these guys sometimes. My people Stateside ask a lot of questions, Tobias. They see a whole lot going out and nothing much coming in so far. They think they’ve contributed enough.’

‘I’m sure the money is well spent,’ Barron answered.

Kinsella raised his dense grey eyebrows. ‘Jesus Christ, how much can it cost to buy votes in Poland anyway? What’s he paying people per head to mark their ballots for Communists?’

‘I gather it’s an expensive business,’ Barron remarked.

Montgomery Rhodes said in his quiet, nasal way, ‘There’s going to be an accounting at the end of all this, Tobias. And it better be goddam accurate.’

‘Indeed,’ said Barron. He stared a second at Rhodes. The darkness of the man’s shades was decidedly sinister. You could never tell if Rhodes was looking at you or not. And if he was, you couldn’t read his expression. Barron sighed. He thought money a grubby topic. What truly interested him about these meetings was his sense of being the epicentre of things. Even if Barron was finally apolitical, even if he found politics an unsightly game played by scoundrels, the idea that he was the adhesive holding everything together narcotized him, jangled his system like speed. He brought together diverse people in unlikely partnerships. He found the resources. He sat at the heart of a great web he’d created himself.

Kinsella, Rhodes, the others throughout Europe and the United States – they would never have come together had it not been for the influence and connections of Tobias Barron. Whether he approved of their individual aims was of no ultimate concern to him. His mind drifted away from this room a moment, it floated up and beyond Venice, beyond the confines of Europe, it became a kind of satellite high above the planet, monitoring events, digesting information, analysing and assessing, scouring the world for opportunities. He was suddenly seized by a sharp sense of self, as if he were outlined by a supernatural current of electricity. If you turned out the lights in the room, he might be phosphorescent.

‘Dandelion wants weaponry,’ Saxon said, turning over a new sheet of paper.

‘Does he specify?’ Rhodes asked.

‘The same as before,’ Saxon answered.

Rhodes rapped his pen on his notebook. ‘Seven hundred and fifty thousand rounds of ammunition for Uzis.’

‘What do they do, these guys? Eat the goddam bullets?’ Kinsella asked.

Rhodes turned to look at Barron. ‘These guys kill me. They make demands like it’s some kind of supermarket we’re working here. They don’t think logistics. OK, some places are easy. But others are real tough. Last time we sent ammo into Yugoslavia or whatever it calls itself these days, we had to smuggle the shit inside UN convoys. Bullets in bags of flour. Machine-guns in crates of antibiotics.’

Tobias Barron poured himself another glass of wine and said, ‘I don’t think in this case there are overwhelming problems, Monty. Angola isn’t Yugoslavia.’

‘I hope not,’ Rhodes said grudgingly.

Barron turned to see Henry Saxon, formerly of the State Department, formerly an adviser on Eastern European matters to the Pentagon, flick over another sheet of paper. As he did so, the door opened, and Barron looked round to watch the latecomer enter. The man had a rather kindly face that belied his history. A kid with some imagination might have envisaged him in the role of a department-store Santa Claus.

‘Forgive me, forgive me, I was delayed, this weather plays havoc with airline timetables.’

‘Take off your coat and sit down,’ Barron said. ‘We were just beginning to go through the agenda. You haven’t missed much.’

Barron observed the old man walk to his place at the table, where he removed his coat, hung it over the back of his chair, and sat.

‘Hungry?’ Barron asked.

The old man shook his head. ‘I had a meal of sorts on the flight. It has unsettled me a little,’ and he patted his stomach.

‘Wine?’

‘It might help my digestive system.’

Barron pushed the bottle across the table and watched the General pour himself an ample glass, which he raised to his lips and sipped. He shut his eyes appreciatively. ‘Fine. Very fine, Tobias.’ He looked around the table at the other faces and added, ‘Please. Continue with business.’

‘Thanks for your permission,’ Rhodes said. He had a jagged little line in sarcasm that Barron found unpleasant. But if the old man noticed, he paid no attention to it. Sometimes the nuances of spoken English seemed to elude him.

Henry Saxon said, ‘This is a report written by Nightshade in Berlin.’

The General set his glass down and leaned forward, his interest quickened. He thought these code-names Barron had come up with were absurd. Flowers and plants, for God’s sake. What did Barron think: this was all some kind of botanical gathering? Nightshade was the code-name of a citizen of West Berlin who’d been a secret servant of both STASI and the KGB in the old days of the divided Germanies, a reliable Party member who, even after the reunification process – the Wende as it was called, the bastard Germany that had been dragged into existence by the forceps of greed and expediency – had managed to conceal his past allegiance to the East. He’d been a good servant. His position of authority had allowed him to pass important information to East Berlin and Moscow.

‘According to this, the arrangements are made, the business in Berlin will proceed without interference,’ Saxon said.

Barron caught the old man’s eye and saw there a small gleam of pleasure.

Saxon went on with the next report. ‘From Sesame in Prague. The arrangements are in progress. Expect success in a matter of hours.’

The old man sat back, folding his hands on his stomach. Nightshade in Berlin, Sesame in Prague; he experienced a moment of quiet satisfaction.

Saxon closed the folder. ‘Those are the main items on this agenda.’

Kinsella tucked his thumbs in the pockets of his waistcoat and said, ‘Which leaves us with the matter of Helix,’ and he looked at Barron, who drained his wineglass and ran a fingertip round the rim.

Barron looked at the General, who said, ‘I’m assured there will be no difficulties.’

‘I don’t need to tell you my people are anxious,’ Kinsella said. He had a large projecting jaw which gave him the appearance of a retired prizefighter.

Barron smiled. ‘It’s a sure thing. You know that. I know that.’ He wiped his lips with a linen napkin. Schialli came into the room with coffee, set it out on the table, then retreated in his quietly fastidious way.

Barron poured from the cafetière and for a time there was a subdued quiet in which he thought of the assorted concerns and ambitions in the room. There was the General, of course, with his yearnings for a vanished world; he was impaled upon his need for vengeance and restitution. He and his cronies – and there were many of them across Europe – genuinely believed that clocks could be turned backwards, upstart nations dismantled.

There was Henry Saxon, who was probably uneasy with his role of gofer, Henry who’d been to the best schools and held down important positions in Government, and who now found himself calling in old markers from his powerful connections. What did Henry Saxon really feel? Barron always thought Henry required status, proximity to power, the urge to leave his mark, however small and illegible, upon the world. In one way, there was something of the leech about Henry Saxon; he sucked the blood of men bigger than himself.

There was Kinsella, who had parleyed a fortune in Oklahoma crude into a spectral political machine with many covert sympathizers in America, quietly influential men whose financial aspirations were threatened; they’d seen their outrageous profits dwindle in the last few years and they didn’t like the plunge in their graphs. They weren’t used to disappointing balance sheets; they suffered from a case of the financial bends. They liked to live in cathedrals of great wealth, places where profit was the only known divinity. But now they were beginning to notice cracks in the stained glass.

And then there was Rhodes, whose allegiances, for the time being, were directly aligned with Kinsella. These men represented the darker stars in the American political firmament – a neanderthal patriotism, the unquestioning belief in the flag and US supremacy in the world. Rhodes had lived through the fiasco at the Bay of Pigs, the humiliation of Vietnam, the failure of the so-called war on narcotics, the end of the comfortable stability of the Cold War. He had a number of grievances, old wounds to heal. But now, like the others, he was putting the world right again.

Barron picked up his coffee and thought: They are all, in one form or other, merchants of chaos.

Saxon coughed into his hand and quietly said, ‘There’s still the business with our fugitive friend.’

Barron made a dismissive gesture. ‘I wouldn’t worry about him.’

Rhodes said, ‘Guy lost his nerve, that’s all. He’s not important. So he took a hike. We’ll find him. Anyhow – what does the sonofabitch really know, huh? You think he’s gonna blow us out of the water or something, Saxon?’

‘He’s a loose end, Henry,’ Barron said. ‘Even if he knows more than we think, what can he authenticate? Who is there to back up his claims?’

‘It’s only a matter of time before we pick him up.’ Rhodes sucked air deeply into his mouth, a sound of irritation. ‘I’m not going to work myself up into a goddam lather because of The Weed.’

The General, who had been listening carefully, said, ‘The Weed, as you have so aptly code-named him, is a mistake. Who hired him? Who is responsible for him?’

‘I’m not blaming anyone but myself,’ Barron said. He infused his voice with the appropriate contrition; a consummate actor. ‘He had credentials. We needed somebody with his experience. None of us imagined he’d freak out.’

‘Error of judgement,’ the old man said in a solemn voice. ‘On your part.’

Montgomery Rhodes took off his shades to reveal odd-coloured eyes, one green, the other blue. He clicked the stems of his dark glasses shut. ‘Look. You want the truth, I was the one recommended The Weed. If there’s been an error of judgement, then it was mine. He had very vague connections with the Central Intelligence Agency for the past fifteen years. He’s what they call in the jargon of the spook trade “a reliable deniable”. If he screwed up, nobody would admit to ever having known him. So his affiliations were loose ones. He was a floater. That’s why he was selected.’ Rhodes spoke quietly, as if his real purpose was not so much to inform this thick-skulled old Kraut as to hypnotize him. ‘But he’s no big deal. We’ve got a net out for him. And by God he’ll walk straight into it. He isn’t the smartest kid on the block. Know what I mean? You relax. Take it easy.’

Barron thought of The Weed, whose life – according to Rhodes – had been spent in that shapeless hinterland populated by those claiming nebulous associations with the CIA, with Mossad or MI6 or any number of secret organizations; fantasists, failed poets, jobless politicians, petty crooks with vainglorious notions, soldiers of fortune, that whole set of drifting international flotsam who deluded themselves that they were adventurers, romantics, spies. How was anyone to know The Weed would blow a fuse? You couldn’t predict people.

Bryce Harcourt was a fine example of that.

The room was quiet for a time, the atmosphere weighted. Everyone present knew that disagreements at this stage were dangerous. Helix had its own momentum. Leo Kinsella broke the silence. ‘Well. I guess that covers everything for now. You need to contact me, I’ll be at the Grunwald until everything’s over.’

When the Americans had gone, only the old man lingered. He removed two items from his pocket, one a sealed brown envelope, the other a small cylindrical object in the kind of paper in which you might wrap a child’s gift – clowns, seals balancing coloured balls, elephants. Barron didn’t open the gift-wrapped object, but he looked inside the brown envelope and saw the ID card, glanced at the blank space where a photograph was meant to be inserted.

‘This Weed. This I do not like.’

‘Scores of people are looking for him.’

‘Just the same.’

‘Put him out of your mind. Pretend he doesn’t exist. Pretend Streik never existed.’

‘Easy to say.’

Barron smiled confidently and escorted the German to the door, a hand on the old fellow’s elbow. ‘Everything will be fine, Erich,’ he said. ‘I promise you,’ and he closed the door slowly as his visitor departed.

Sometimes, Barron thought, it was hard to believe that Erich Schwarzenbach had once been the highest-ranking officer in one of the most efficient state-security systems in the world, STASI; the man who had kept the keys to the files, who had stored in his head the secret computer passwords that allowed him access to the histories of almost every citizen in East Germany.

When the General had gone, Barron spent some time in his office. He studied the movement of ships, following the cursors on the wall map; the Falcon was already cruising close to Madagascar, an ideal location when it came to Van den Kamp’s request. The cargo ship, which flew a Nicaraguan flag, was due to lay anchor thirty miles west of the island, where it would take on board consignments delivered by ferry from Tambohorano. These shipments, intended to meet some of Nofometo’s needs, wouldn’t bring the vessel up to capacity. There would also be room for at least some of the matériel required by Van den Kamp. It was a matter of logistics; and there was a neatness, a sense of economy, Barron liked about using the Falcon to deliver two consignments. Nofometo’s would be brought ashore under darkness near Port Shepstone; a further arrangement could be made for the Falcon to continue south in the Indian Ocean and deliver Van den Kamp’s matériel offshore between East London and Umzimvubu.

He sent a couple of faxes, one to the captain of the Falcon, the other to an airstrip hacked from swampland beyond Jacksonville, Florida, where the transport planes were regularly loaded. Then he opened the General’s envelope and let the ID card slide out on to the table. Tilting an Anglepoise lamp, he examined the card beneath the bulb. Perfect, he thought. Just so.

He was about to leave the room when he received a fax from Cuba, signed by a man called Hector Camocondo, the Deputy Minister of Defence. He read the message. Camocondo’s bureaucratic turn of phrase invited you to read between the lines. The gist was that Barron’s projected agricultural research centre in the Guantánamo Province had received ‘preliminary approval’ – whatever that meant – and could now go into committee. There were, however, ‘certain conditions’ attached to these discussions, which would involve Barron making a visit to Havana within the next two weeks. Barron smiled; in Cuba’s labyrinthine bureaucracy, it was not at all surprising that the Deputy Minister of Defence should be interested in an agricultural project – if you read the hidden message in the spaces.

Barron fingered the fax. By this time, Deputy Minister Camocondo would have discovered the lethal weaponry accumulated by the freedom fighters inside Cuba – in particular the so-called super-rifle, the sniper’s dream, the Tejas. The balance would have to be redressed; the Army had to stay a step ahead of the underground movement. It was always this way. One side trying to outstrip the other, to be better armed, better prepared, to be more efficient in the business of death.

Barron left his office, locked the door. From the bedroom overhead he could hear the woman singing softly to herself, a sound that was melancholic and strangely moving. He walked to the foot of the stairs and listened.