I nodded. “That’s a constant problem with this sort of thing. Right now, it’s a certainty that both British and American military planners are allowing ships to be sunk and even battles to be lost rather than reveal that they’ve broken German or Japanese codes. I’d bet anything on it. In the long run, it pays off.”
“Not to the poor Canadian fucks who are going to be ground up like hamburger on the Dieppe beaches,” snarled Hemingway.
“No,” I said softly.
Hemingway shook his head almost violently. “Your profession stinks, Lucas. It stinks of death and rot and old men’s lies.”
“Yes,” I said.
He sighed and sat in his flowered chair. The big black cat named Boissy jumped onto his lap and squinted at me suspiciously. Hemingway had been drinking a Tom Collins when I came in, but now the ice was melted. He sipped the drink anyway while he rubbed the big cat’s neck. “So what do we do, Lucas? How do we make sure that this doesn’t pose a threat to Gigi and Mouse?”
“Whoever the second Todt agent is,” I said, “he’s a professional. I don’t think the boys are in danger.”
“That’s reassuring,” the writer said sarcastically. “He’s a professional so I’m the only one who ends up dead. Unless whoever it is decides to blow up the entire finca with a bomb while the boys are sleeping here.”
“No,” I said. “I think it will have to look like an accident. Just you. An accident.”
“Why?” demanded Hemingway, his voice rough.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “It’s part of their Operation Raven… I just don’t understand it all yet. But the message says that part one of the operation is completed. Evidently you’re not needed for part two.”
“Great,” said Hemingway. “Look, I was planning to leave later this week to take the Pilar down the Camagüey archipelago to shadow the Southern Cross when it departs. Helga tells me that the captain has decided to take the yacht around the tip of South America rather than through the canal and that they’re going to make a stop in Kingston. Wolfer and I have some theories on where these U-boats are refueling. We’d make sure that the yacht actually left Cuban waters and then we’d snoop around the east end of the island before swinging down to Haiti, putting in at Kingston, and coming back up and around the west end of Cuba. We’d be gone for a week or two. Should I cancel it?”
I thought a minute. “No, it might be the best thing.”
“We’re pretty visible with our Museum of Natural History signs,” mused Hemingway. “A Nazi sub could sight us and sink us. I could be making it easier for the SD to get me.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “These communications are between Columbia and Hamburg and Columbia and some SD intelligence man aboard one German boat. I doubt if any German sub skipper has any idea who you are or what Operation Raven is. You’d be as safe as any small boat in these waters.”
Hemingway looked grim. “I was talking to Bob Joyce and a couple of the Navy Intelligence boys on Sunday. It’s all classified, but they’re projecting more than fifteen hundred Allied merchant ships to be sunk this year. At the rate the Germans are going, they’ll sink between seventy and eighty ships in the Caribbean just this month and next… between two and three hundred in the Caribbean before the year is over. And to think that Marty was out sailing around in that carnage.” He looked at me again. “Do you think I should take the boys?”
“What was the plan if you don’t?”
“They were going to stay there at the finca. The staff would be here, and Jane Joyce was going to look in on them every once in a while.”
I rubbed my cheek. I had slept an hour or two before driving over here from Cojímar, but I was very tired. The last few days and nights tended to blur together. Could there be a potential hostage situation in all of this? I could not categorically say no. “It might be best if you took them with you,” I said.
“All right,” said Hemingway. He grabbed my wrist. “What do these people want, Lucas? Other than me dead, I mean.”
I waited until he released me. “They want us to send along the documents we got from the dead Germans,” I said. “I feel certain of that.”
“And as long as we don’t, I’m in no danger?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “My guess is that they plan to kill you one way or the other.”
“Why?” demanded the writer. His voice held no hint of a whine, only curiosity.
I shook my head again.
Hemingway set the black cat down carefully and got up to pad off to the bathroom in his sandals. Before leaving the room, he looked at me over his shoulder. “For an intelligence agent, Lucas, you don’t know very much.”
I nodded.
I NEEDED EITHER another radioman or another me. Crook Factory reports kept coming in all that long, hot Tuesday—Lieutenant Maldonado’s movements in Havana, continued negative surveillance for Becker, still no sign of Delgado at the airport or hotels—and I tried to catch a few more winks of sleep before heading back to the Pilar for my graveyard shift on the radio. I did not want to leave Hemingway alone. The writer started carrying that little .22 target pistol in his belt as he wandered around the grounds of the finca, but other than that, he showed no outward concern about the death threat. That evening, he put on a clean shirt and long pants and went in to the Floridita with friends to drink.
They’ll make it look like an accident, I kept telling myself. And for that they will probably want privacy. But then I thought of the Havana traffic and how easy it would be for a car to accelerate out of an alley or down a side street and finish Columbia’s assignment.
They’ll want the documents first, I also kept telling myself. We had not trusted any hiding place at the finca, so I had been carrying the German courier pouch around in a duffel bag slung over my shoulder. It lay at my feet in the Pilar’s radio shack during the night. Not subtle, but I reassured myself that anyone wanting them would have to come straight at me before dealing with Hemingway.
Which wouldn’t be much of a problem for them given your current state. I was exhausted. I brought along pills that I had carried in my gear for years and popped them when I became too sleepy to concentrate on the earphones.
The only radio intercept achieved on August 18 happened while Don Saxon was on duty in the early afternoon. He sent Fuentes to the finca with the transcript of the transmission. It was in the SD numerical code. I went down to the guest house and decrypted it. Fourteen lines giving the specifics of the order of battle of the Canadian troops headed for Dieppe. The message began by saying that the small fleet had already disembarked and that the invasion was imminent.
On Wednesday the nineteenth, Havana radio broadcast the news that a British attack on the coastal city of Dieppe had begun. Six beaches were said to be occupied by gallant Allied forces. The announcer was very exited—perhaps this was the opening of the long-awaited Second Front! Details were sketchy, but the invasion was said to be serious—transport ships and landing craft had brought thousands of Canadians supported by tanks on the ground and swarms of RAF fighter planes overhead.
By the next day, August 20, 1942, even the censored news reports could not hide the fact that the experimental invasion had been a disaster. Most of the troops had been killed or taken prisoner. The transport ships had been blown up or beached or had fled. The RAF fighters had been beaten off by Luftwaffe aircraft that had been moved to nearby airfields before the raid. The six beaches were still covered by Canadian corpses. The Nazis were bragging that Festung Europa was invincible and were openly inviting the British or Americans to try it again.
“I guess that’s what you call a confirmation,” said Hemingway that afternoon. We were in the guest house. Patrick and Gregory were splashing and shouting in the pool outside. “Your Columbia must have gained some status with SD AMT VI with his Monday-night transmission.” Hemingway looked me in the eye. “But where’s he getting all this, Joe? Where is a German agent in Cuba picking up all this high-level intelligence on
the Brits?”
“Good question,” I said.
That night, sometime after one A.M., I startled awake on the Pilar to the sound of code beeping in my earphones. I had been so sound asleep that I had missed the first five code groups, but the sender obligingly rebroadcast his transmission three times at thirty-minute intervals.
It was the old book code, based on the anthology of German folk tales. There was no additional transmission in secure SD numerical code. After the third transmission, I clicked on the twenty-watt bulb over the table and stared again at the grubby little radio log notebook.
COLUMBIA RENDEZVOUS WITH PANAMA 0240 HOURS 22 AUGUST WHERE PALE DEATH ENTERS BOTH HOVELS AND THE PALACES OF KINGS UNDER THE SHADOW OF JUSTICE.
It was hot and humid in the tiny radio shack—the air moving sluggishly through the tiny porthole stank of spilled diesel fuel, dead fish, and sewage heated by the hot summer day and night—but my skin felt cold as I read and reread the message.
I did not believe for a moment that Panama—Maria—was to meet with Columbia at 2:40 A.M. the next morning, but certainly the rendezvous site would be appropriate for that. Columbia had obviously decided that Hemingway and I had killed Maria. Perhaps he now suspected that we had also compromised the SD number code. At any rate, I was now supposed to carry this message to the writer as dutifully as I had the previous ones, and just as we had been present for the fatal landing of the two German agents, so would we be present for this fateful “rendezvous.” Only this time, no Germans were scheduled to die.
On that Friday morning, I argued with Hemingway. I had not told him about the radio intercept. We were at the Floridita, having a breakfast of hard-boiled eggs and daiquiris. The only other customer was an old man sleeping on his stool at the opposite end of the bar.
“Look,” said the writer, “the Southern Cross is sailing on Sunday at the earliest. Why should we take the Pilar out tonight?”
“I have a hunch,” I said very quietly. “I think it would be best if you got the kids away from here for the weekend.”
Hemingway salted his egg and frowned deeply. His beard had grown in full and symmetrical over the summer, but where the beard ended, his skin carried a rash from the sun. His swollen ear looked better. “Lucas, if you’re planning some grandstand play…”
“Uh-uh,” I said. “I just want a few days to run the Crook Factory without worrying about your and my security. It’ll be easier keeping a low profile with you and the boys and your pals out of the way.”
The writer looked unconvinced.
“You can go up to Key Paraíso or down to Confites and wait for the yacht to sail,” I said. “Sonneman told you that it was sailing around the east side of the island…”
“She might not be the best informant,” growled Hemingway.
“So? You could still catch it before it reached Kingston even if it sailed west. I’ll keep your operatives watching and we’ll radio you on the regular marine band channels or call Guantánamo and have Lieutenant Commander Boyle reach you with their big transmitter.”
“So you just stay behind for a week or two?” said Hemingway.
I rubbed my eyes. “I need the vacation.”
Hemingway laughed. “You do at that, Lucas. You look like shit.”
“Gracias.”
“No hay de qué!” He ate the last of his hard-boiled egg and reached for another. “What do you do if you need help back here?”
“Same thing,” I said. “I’ll give you a call using the Cojímar radio or have Bob Joyce authorize the Guantánamo call.”
“In code?” Hemingway seemed fascinated with the code games.
I shook my head. “Saxon’s no good with real code. We’ll just make it a personal code you could understand.”
“Such as?”
“Oh,” I said, “if I need help here, I’ll say that the cats are lonely and need feeding. If we need to rendezvous somewhere else, I’ll radio that, say, we need to meet where the Cubans raise their flags.”
“Cayo Confites.”
“Yeah,” I said. “But you’ll have a lot to do if you’re sailing tonight. You’ll need to get busy.”
“Why tonight?” said Hemingway. “Why sail after dark?”
I drank the last of my daiquiri. “I don’t want anyone to know you’re gone until tomorrow at least,” I said. “I have things to do tonight.”
“Things you don’t want to tell me about?”
“Things I want to tell you about later,” I said.
Hemingway ordered two more tall drinks and another basket of hard-boiled eggs. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll get Wolfer and the others together today and arrange to cast off after dark. We’ll wait for the Southern Cross at Confites. Most of the gear and provisions are aboard, so it won’t be a problem leaving tonight. But I don’t like it.”
“You’re just leaving a day early,” I said.
The writer shook his head. “I just don’t like the whole thing,” he said. “Something stinks somewhere. I have a feeling that we’re not going to see each other again, Lucas… that one or both of us is going to be dead soon.”
I paused with the new daiquiri poised in midair. “That’s a hell of a thing to say,” I said softly.
Suddenly Hemingway grinned. He tapped my glass with his. “Estamos copados, amigo,” he said. “Fuck ’em. Fuck ’em all.”
I touched glasses and drank.
27
THE CEMENTERIO DE CRISTÓBAL COLÓN IS one of the largest necropolises in the world. Columbus’s Cemetery takes up the equivalent of dozens of city blocks some distance southwest of the hotel district and separates the areas of Vedado and Nuevo Vedado. I reached it that night by driving around the harbor, staying south of Old Havana and cutting over west past the Castillo del Príncipe.
The cemetery had been created in the 1860s when Havana had run out of regular church catacombs. Hemingway had told me that there had been a competition for the design of the necropolis, won by a young Spaniard named Calixto de Loira y Cardosa. The designer had planned the huge cemetery on a medieval grid pattern in which interlocking crosses of narrow lanes were to separate the dead according to status and social class. Set west of Old Havana, whose own streets and alleys were no wider than oxcarts, the huge cemetery seemed an extension of the city of the living into the city of the dead. Hemingway had told me that upon completing the design and original construction on the necropolis, Calixto de Loira y Cardosa had dropped dead at the age of thirty-two and become one of its first residents. The story had seemed to amuse the writer.
At the main entrance to the Cementerio de Colón, the Latin motto inscribed in stone reads PALE DEATH ENTERS BOTH HOVELS AND THE PALACES OF KINGS.
The rendezvous was supposedly set for 2:40 A.M. I parked Hemingway’s Lincoln on a side street and approached an east entrance just after one in the morning. The gates of the cemetery were all closed and locked, but I found a place where a tree grew close to the tall iron fence and clambered over, dropping heavily to the grass within. I was wearing a dark suit coat and trousers and a dark fedora pulled low. I carried the .357 in a quick-release holster on my hip, my gravity knife in my trousers pocket, and one of the powerful flashlights from the Pilar in my jacket pocket. Over my left shoulder was looped thirty feet of coiled line, also from the Pilar. I was not sure yet why I needed the rope—to tie up a captive, to set some sort of trap, to climb some fence—but it had seemed like a good idea to bring it.
Months earlier, Hemingway had told me about how bizarre the necropolis was—how important Havana families had vied with one another for almost eighty years to build ever more elaborate tombs and monuments there—but I was not prepared for the block after block of morbid architecture. I stayed off the empty, silent streets that crisscrossed the cemetery and moved quietly down the narrow walkways and lanes between the tombs. The place was a stone forest in the moonlight—crucified Christs staring down at me in agony, elaborate Grecian temples with frescoes and pillars gleaming, angels and seraphim an
d cherubim hovering above graves like so many circling vultures, Madonnas looming out of the dark like women in shrouds, their upraised fingers looking like pointed revolvers in the dark, Gothic mausoleums with iron gates throwing ink-black shadows across my path, urns everywhere, hundreds of Doric columns throwing shadows to conceal waiting assassins, and everywhere in the cooling night the stench of decomposing flowers.
That afternoon, I had gone to a local tourist bureau and bought a cheap map of the cemetery. I checked it now by moonlight, not wanting to switch on my flashlight for even a second. This was precisely the kind of situation SIS agents were trained never to find themselves in: arriving at a rendezvous which was almost certainly an ambush, on the enemy’s territory, not knowing how many of the opposition there would be, leaving all the initiative to the other side.
Fuck it, I thought, and refolded the map and moved on. I found a life-sized sarcophagus of a man lying supine with a life-sized statue of a dog at his feet. Beyond that, a four-foot-high chess knight stood guard over a stone slab under which lay the remains of one of Cuba’s greatest chess players. All right, that was on the map… just another few hundred yards to the Monument to the Medical Students. I passed a dark monolith and realized that it was a tombstone in the shape of a domino with two threes on it. The legend on the map had explained that the woman buried there had been a fanatical domino player who had died of a stroke when she failed to draw a double three during an important tournament. I turned left. A short distance beyond the domino lady was a low tomb literally buried in flowers. This had to be the grave of Amelia Goyre de la Hoz. Hemingway had enjoyed telling me her tale. She was buried in 1901, her child in a separate grave at her feet; they had exhumed her for some reason years later only to find the skeleton of the infant in her arms. Cubans loved that sort of story. So did Hemingway. Women from throughout the island made pilgrimages to this grave—thus the giant mound of flowers. It smelled like all the funeral parlors I had ever been in.