Our Man in Havana

  ‘I want to apologize to you, Carter. That silly business of the whisky. I was tight I suppose. I’m a bit tight now. Not used to apologizing.’

  ‘It’s quite all right, Wormold. Go to bed.’

  ‘Sneered at your stammer. Chap shouldn’t do that.’ He found himself talking like Hawthorne. Falsity was an occupational disease.

  ‘I didn’t know what the H-hell you meant.’

  ‘I shoon – soon – found out what was wrong. Nothing to do with you. That damned head-waiter poisoned his own dog. It was very old, of course, but to give it poisoned scraps – that’s not the way to put a dog to sleep.’

  ‘Is that what h-happened? Thank you for letting me know, but it’s late. I’m just going to bed, Wormold.’

  ‘Man’s best friend.’

  ‘What’s that? I can’t h-hear you.’

  ‘Caesar, the King’s friend, and there was the rough-haired one who went down at Jutland. Last seen on the bridge beside his master.’

  ‘You are drunk, Wormold.’ It was so much easier, Wormold found, to imitate drunkenness after – how many Scotch and Bourbon? You can trust a drunk man – in vino Veritas. You can also more easily dispose of a drunk man. Carter would be a fool not to take the chance. Wormold said, ‘I feel in the mood for going round the spots.’

  ‘What spots?’

  ‘The spots you wanted to see in Havana.’

  ‘It’s getting late.’

  ‘It’s the right time.’ Carter’s hesitation came at him down the wire. He said, ‘Bring a gun.’ He felt a strange reluctance to kill an unarmed killer – if Carter should ever chance to be unarmed.

  ‘A gun? Why?’

  ‘In some of these places they try to roll you.’

  ‘Can’t you bring one?’

  ‘I don’t happen to own one.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ and he believed he caught in the receiver the metallic sound of a chamber being checked. Diamond cut diamond, he thought, and smiled. But a smile is dangerous to the act of hate as much as to the act of love. He had to remind himself of how Hasselbacher had looked, staring up from the floor under the bar. They had not given the old man one chance, and he was giving Carter plenty. He began to regret the drinks he had taken.

  ‘I’ll meet you in the bar,’ Carter said.

  ‘Don’t be long.’

  ‘I have to get dressed.’

  Wormold was glad now of the darkness of the bar. Carter, he supposed, was telephoning to his friends and perhaps making a rendezvous, but in the bar at any rate they couldn’t pick him out before he saw them. There was one entrance from the street and one from the hotel, and at the back a kind of balcony which would give support if he needed it to his gun. Anyone who entered was blinded for a while by the darkness, as he himself was. When he entered he couldn’t for a moment see whether the bar held one or two customers, for the pair were tightly locked on a sofa by the street-door.

  He asked for a Scotch, but he left it untasted, sitting on the balcony, watching both doors. Presently a man entered; he couldn’t see the face; it was the hand patting the pipe-pocket which identified Carter.

  ‘Carter.’

  Carter came to him.

  ‘Let’s be off,’ Wormold said.

  ‘Take your drink first and I’ll h-have one to keep you company.’

  ‘I’ve had too much, Carter. I need some air. We’ll get a drink in some house.’

  Carter sat down. ‘Tell me where you plan to take me.’

  ‘Any one of a dozen whore-houses. They are all the same, Carter. About a dozen girls to choose from. They’ll do an exhibition for you. Come on, we’ll go. They get crowded after midnight.’

  Carter said anxiously, ‘I’d like a drink first. I can’t go to a show like that stone sober.’

  ‘You aren’t expecting anyone, are you, Carter?’

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘I thought – the way you watched the door …’

  ‘I don’t know a soul in this town. I told you.’

  ‘Except Dr Braun.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course, Dr Braun. But he’s not the kind of companion to take to a h-house, is he?’

  ‘After you, Carter.’

  Reluctantly Carter moved. It was obvious that he was searching for an excuse to stay. He said, ‘I just want to leave a message with the porter. I’m expecting a telephone call.’

  ‘From Dr Braun?’

  ‘Yes.’ He hesitated. ‘It seems rude going out like this before h-he rings. Can’t you wait five minutes, Wormold?’

  ‘Say you’ll be back by one – unless you decide to make a night of it.’

  ‘It would be better to wait.’

  ‘Then I’ll go without you. Damn you, Carter, I thought you wanted to see the town.’ He walked rapidly away. His car was parked across the street. He never looked back, but he heard steps following him. Carter no more wanted to lose him than he wanted to lose Carter.

  ‘What a temper you’ve got, Wormold.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Drink takes me that way.’

  ‘I h-hope you are sober enough to drive straight.’

  ‘It would be better, Carter, if you drove.’

  He thought, That will keep his hands from his pockets.

  ‘First right, first left, Carter.’

  They came out into the Atlantic drive: a lean white ship was leaving harbour, some tourist-cruiser bound for Kingston or for Port au Prince. They could see the couples leaning over the rail, romantic in the moonlight, and a band was playing a fading favourite – ‘I could have danced all night’.

  ‘It makes me homesick,’ Carter said.

  ‘For Nottwich?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’s no sea at Nottwich.’

  ‘The pleasure-boats on the river looked as big as that when I was young.’

  A murderer had no right to be homesick; a murderer should be a machine, and I too have to become a machine, Wormold thought, feeling in his pocket the handkerchief he would have to use to clean the fingerprints when the time came. But how to choose the time? What side-street or what doorway? and if the other shot first …?

  ‘Are your friends Russian, Carter? German? American?’

  ‘What friends?’ He added simply, ‘I have no friends.’

  ‘No friends?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘To the left again, Carter, then right.’

  They moved at a walking pace now in a narrow street, lined with clubs; orchestras spoke from below ground like the ghost of Hamlet’s father or that music under the paving stones in Alexandria when the god Hercules left Antony. Two men in Cuban night-club uniform bawled competitively to them across the road. Wormold said, ‘Let’s stop. I need a drink badly before we go on.’

  ‘Are these whore-houses?’

  ‘No. We’ll go to a house later.’ He thought, If only Carter when he left the wheel had grabbed his gun, it would have been so easy to fire. Carter said, ‘Do you know this spot?’

  ‘No. But I know the tune.’ It was strange that they were playing that – ‘my madness offends’.

  There were coloured photographs of naked girls outside and in night-club Esperanto one neon-lighted word, Strippteese. Steps painted in stripes like cheap pyjamas led them down towards a cellar foggy with Havanas. It seemed as suitable a place as any other for an execution. But he wanted a drink first. ‘You lead the way, Carter.’ Carter was hesitating. He opened his mouth and struggled with an aspirate; Wormold had never before heard him struggle for quite so long. ‘I h-h-h-hope …’

  ‘What do you hope?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  They sat and watched the stripping and both drank brandy and soda. A girl went from table to table ridding herself of clothes. She began with her gloves. A spectator took them with resignation like the contents of an In tray. Then she presented her back to Carter and told him to unhook her black lace corsets. Carter fumbled in vain at the catches, blushing all the time while the girl laughed and wriggled against his fingers. He said, ‘I’m
sorry, I can’t find …’ Round the floor the gloomy men sat at their little tables watching Carter. No one smiled.

  ‘You haven’t had much practice, Carter, in Nottwich. Let me.’

  ‘Leave me alone, can’t you?’

  At last he got the corset undone and the girl rumpled his thin streaky hair and passed on. He smoothed it down again with a pocket-comb.’ I don’t like this place,’ he said.

  ‘You are shy with women, Carter.’ But how could one shoot a man at whom it was so easy to laugh?

  ‘I don’t like horseplay,’ Carter said.

  They climbed the stairs. Carter’s pocket was heavy on his hip. Of course it might be his pipe he carried. He sat at the wheel again and grumbled. ‘You can see that sort of show anywhere. Just tarts undressing.’

  ‘You didn’t help her much.’

  ‘I was looking for a zip.’

  ‘I needed a drink badly.’

  ‘Rotten brandy too. I wouldn’t wonder if it was doped.’

  ‘Your whisky was more than doped, Carter.’ He was trying to heat his anger up and not to remember his ineffective victim struggling with the corset and blushing at his failure.

  ‘What’s that you said?’

  ‘Stop here.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You wanted to be taken to a house. Here is a house.’

  ‘But there’s no one about.’

  ‘They are all closed and shuttered like this. Get out and ring the bell.’

  ‘What did you mean about the whisky?

  ‘Never mind that now. Get out and ring.’

  It was as suitable a place as a cellar (blank walls too had been frequently used for this purpose): a grey façade and a street where no one came except for one unlovely purpose. Carter slowly shifted his legs from under the wheel and Wormold watched his hands closely, the ineffective hands. It’s a fair duel, he told himself, he’s more accustomed to killing than I am, the chances are equal enough; I am not even quite sure my gun is loaded. He has more chance than Hasselbacher ever had.

  With his hand on the door Carter paused again. He said, ‘Perhaps it would be more sensible – some other night. You know, I h-h-h-h …’

  ‘You are frightened, Carter.’

  ‘I’ve never been to a h-h-h-house before. To tell you the truth, Wormold, I don’t h-have much need of women.’

  ‘It sounds a lonely sort of life.’

  ‘I can do without them,’ he said defiantly. ‘There are more important things for a man than running after …’

  ‘Why did you want to come to a house then?’

  Again he startled Wormold with the plain truth. ‘I try to want them, but when it comes to the point …’ He hovered on the edge of confession and then plunged. ‘It doesn’t work, Wormold. I can’t do what they want.’

  ‘Get out of the car.’

  I have to do it, Wormold thought, before he confesses any more to me. With every second the man was becoming human, a creature like oneself whom one might pity or console, not kill. Who knew what excuses were buried below any violent act? He drew Segura’s gun.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get out.’

  Carter stood against the whore-house door with a look of sullen complaint rather than fear. His fear was of women, not of violence. He said, ‘You are making a mistake. It was Braun who gave me the whisky. I’m not important.’

  ‘I don’t care about the whisky. But you killed Hasselbacher, didn’t you?’

  Again he surprised Wormold with the truth. There was a kind of honesty in the man. ‘I was under orders, Wormold. I h-h-h-h –’ He had manoeuvred himself so that his elbow reached the bell, and now he leant back and in the depths of the house the bell rang and rang its summons to work.

  ‘There’s no enmity, Wormold. You got too dangerous, that was all. We are only private soldiers, you and I.’

  ‘Me dangerous? What fools you people must be. I have no agents, Carter.’

  ‘Oh yes, you h-have. Those constructions in the mountains. We have copies of your drawings.’

  ‘The parts of a vacuum cleaner.’ He wondered who had supplied them: Lopez? or Hawthorne’s own courier, or a man in the Consulate?

  Carter’s hand went to his pocket and Wormold fired. Carter gave a sharp yelp. He said, ‘You nearly shot me,’ and pulled out a hand clasped round a shattered pipe. He said, ‘My Dunhill. You’ve smashed my Dunhill.’

  ‘Beginner’s luck,’ Wormold said. He had braced himself for a death, but it was impossible to shoot again. The door behind Carter began to open. There was an impression of plastic music. ‘They’ll look after you in there. You may need a woman now, Carter.’

  ‘You – you clown.’

  How right Carter was. He put the gun down beside him and slipped into the driving seat. Suddenly he felt happy. He might have killed a man. He had proved conclusively to himself that he wasn’t one of the judges; he had no vocation for violence. Then Carter fired.

  CHAPTER 6

  1

  HE SAID TO Beatrice, ‘I was just leaning forward to switch on the engine. That saved me, I imagine. Of course it was his right to fire back. It was a real duel, but the third shot was mine.’

  ‘What happened afterwards?’

  ‘I had time to drive away before I was sick.’

  ‘Sick?’

  ‘I suppose if I hadn’t missed the war it would have seemed much less serious a thing killing a man. Poor Carter.’

  ‘Why should you feel sorry for him?’

  ‘He was a man. I’d learnt a lot about him. He couldn’t undo a girl’s corset. He was scared of women. He liked his pipe and when he was a boy the pleasure-steamers on the river at home seemed to him like liners. Perhaps he was a romantic. A romantic is usually afraid, isn’t he, in case reality doesn’t come up to expectations. They all expect too much.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I wiped my prints off the gun and brought it back. Of course Segura will find that two shots have been fired. But I don’t suppose he’ll want to claim the bullets. It would be a little difficult to explain. He was still asleep when I came in. I’m afraid to think what a head he’ll have now. My own is bad enough. But I tried to follow your instructions with the photograph.’

  ‘What photograph?’

  ‘He had a list of foreign agents he was taking to the Chief of Police. I photographed it and put it back in his pocket. I’m glad to feel there’s one real report that I’ve sent before I resign.’

  ‘You should have waited for me.’

  ‘How could I? He was going to wake at any moment. But this micro business is tricky.’

  ‘Why on earth did you make a microphotograph?’

  ‘Because we can’t trust any courier to Kingston. Carter’s people – whoever they are – have copies of the Oriente drawings. That means a double agent somewhere. Perhaps it’s your man who smuggles in the drugs. So I made a microphotograph as you showed me and I stuck it on the back of a stamp and I posted off an assorted batch of five hundred British colonials, the way we arranged for an emergency.’

  ‘We’ll have to cable them which stamp you’ve stuck it to.’

  ‘Which stamp?’

  ‘You don’t expect them to look through five hundred stamps, do you, looking for one black dot.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that. How very awkward.’

  ‘You must know which stamp …’

  ‘I didn’t think of looking at the front. I think it was a George V, and it was red – or green.’

  ‘That’s helpful. Do you remember any of the names on the list?’

  ‘No. There wasn’t time to read it properly. I know I’m a fool at this game, Beatrice.’

  ‘No. They are the fools.’

  ‘I wonder whom we’ll hear from next. Dr Braun … Segura …’

  But it was neither of them.

  2

  The supercilious clerk from the Consulate appeared in the shop at five o’clock the next afternoon. He stood stiffly among the vacuum cleaner
s like a disapproving tourist in a museum of phallic objects. He told Wormold that the Ambassador wanted to see him. ‘Will tomorrow morning do?’ He was working on his last report, Carter’s death and his resignation.

  ‘No, it won’t. He telephoned from his home. You are to go there straight away.’

  ‘I’m not an employee,’ Wormold said.

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  Wormold drove back to Vedado, to the little white houses and the bougainvilleas of the rich. It seemed a long while since his visit to Professor Sanchez. He passed the house. What quarrels were still in progress behind those doll’s house walls?

  He had a sense that everyone in the Ambassador’s home was on the look-out for him and that the hall and the stairs had been carefully cleared of spectators. On the first floor a woman turned her back and shut herself in a room; he thought it was the Ambassadress. Two children peered quickly through the banisters on the second floor and ran off with a click of little heels on the tiled floor. The butler showed him into the drawing-room, which was empty, and closed the door on him stealthily. Through the tall windows he could see a long green lawn and tall sub-tropical trees. Even there somebody was moving rapidly away.

  The room was like many Embassy drawing-rooms, a mixture of big inherited pieces and small personal objects acquired in previous stations. Wormold thought he could detect a past in Teheran (an odd-shaped pipe, a tile), Athens (an icon or two), but he was momentarily puzzled by an African mask – perhaps Monrovia?

  The Ambassador came in, a tall cold man in a Guards tie, with something about him of what Hawthorne would have liked to be. He said, ‘Sit down, Wormold. Have a cigarette?’

  ‘No thank you, sir.’

  ‘You’ll find that chair more comfortable. Now it’s no use beating about the bush, Wormold. You are in trouble.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course I know nothing – nothing at all – of what you are doing here.’

  ‘I sell vacuum cleaners, sir.’

  The Ambassador looked at him with undisguised distaste. ‘Vacuum cleaners? I wasn’t referring to them.’ He looked away from Wormold at the Persian pipe, the Greek icon, the Liberian mask. They were like the autobiography in which a man has written for reassurance only of his better days. He said, ‘Yesterday morning Captain Segura came to see me. Mind you, I don’t know how the police got this information, it’s none of my business, but he told me you had been sending a lot of reports home of a misleading character. I don’t know whom you sent them to: that’s none of my business either. He said in fact that you had been drawing money and pretending to have sources of information which simply don’t exist. I thought it my duty to inform the Foreign Office at once. I gather you will be receiving orders to go home and report – who to I have no idea, that sort of thing has nothing to do with me.’ Wormold saw two small heads looking out from behind one of the tall trees. He looked at them and they looked at him, he thought sympathetically. He said, ‘Yes, sir?’