He would get little sleep this night, but it would be a night worth living.
FIVE
Elena Timofeyeva sat in the empty cafeteria of the women’s prison waiting for Victoria Oliveras. The stone tables and benches were gray and clean. The light from the narrow windows was bright, and the large photographs of Castro, Che Guevara, and Celia Sanchez that looked down at Elena were depressing.
The ride to the women’s prison had taken about an hour, during which the driver of the ancient Buick and his partner, both un-uniformed men in their early thirties, had argued about whether they had enough gas and if the tires would make it.
They had been recruited by Major Sanchez to take Elena Timofeyeva. He had told them that they would be paid for their service to Cuba when they brought her back. The two men, Jaime and Abel, had accepted humbly and gratefully, but once in the car they had begun to complain.
It was also clear to Elena as they drove down narrow roads past African-style thatched huts and through small towns where apparently windowless little homes were jammed next to each other that the two men had no idea she could understand their language.
On several occasions during the journey, the young men had discussed her sexually. She had looked out of the window as they gave her high marks for body and face and low marks for potential passion. But, ultimately, they seemed more interested in the possibility of the Buick’s actually completing the journey.
And then, when they had reached the prison, the men had asked for money so they could go to a nearby small town to get something to eat.
Elena had let them mime and speak loudly in simple Spanish, repeating the word pesos and pointing to their mouths.
While they were going through this a woman in a light khaki uniform appeared. There was a star on her collar and above the right pocket of her blouse a white-on-black patch saying “Ministerio del Interior.”
“Can I help?” asked the woman in Russian.
“No, gracias, pienso que yo puedo hacerlo,” Elena answered in Spanish, certain that Jaime and Abel could hear her.
Then Elena gave them some Cuban pesos and told them to return in two hours.
When they drove off, the woman in uniform identified herself as Lieutenant Colonel Lopez, director of the City of Havana Women’s Prison. She was a tall, slender mulatto with a handsome, weary face. Her skin was clear and her manner efficient, which had suited Elena.
Elena had been expected and the order had come down for her to have a complete tour of the prison before meeting Victoria Oliveras.
“Victoria is working,” Lieutenant Colonel Lopez said. “She will be available in one hour. Meanwhile, I have been instructed to show you our prison.”
The tour had been as efficient as Lieutenant Colonel Lopez’s manner and it was evident to Elena from the start that what she was seeing was a showcase, a model prison maintained for foreigners. She knew because the Soviet Union had also maintained such prisons and she had visited both the showcases and the much more numerous and punitive remnants of the past.
The “work with internment” prison itself consisted of three two-story buildings, one building for the guards, most of whom were women, and the two cell blocks. Beyond the gates of the prison and the fifteen-foot-high metal fence was lush, green jungle through which Elena had been driven for the last five miles of the journey.
Elena was told by the lieutenant colonel that though the building had been built in the 1960s for nine hundred women, there were only four hundred now inside. Their sentences ranged from one month to twenty years for nonviolent felonies such as petty theft, drug sales, and economic crime.
The tour had taken Elena through fluorescent-lit corridors. She was shown large cells for four to six women, each cell individually coordinated in identical bedspreads and pillows with matching pillowcases. It looked better than any Moscow University dormitory room. It looked better than the tiny dark apartment in Moscow Elena shared with her aunt.
Flowers were everywhere-in cells, offices, the pharmacy, the twenty-four-bed hospital staffed by two full-time physicians. There was a baby ward in the prison hospital. The nearby conjugal visiting rooms reminded Elena of low-cost American motels she had been in when she had studied in the United States.
“The babies stay here for forty-five to ninety days after they are born,” a young woman doctor in a white smock explained. “Then they go to relatives or the state center for orphans.”
From the hospital Elena was taken to the heart of the prison, the textile factory. She was told that prisoners were paid to work an eight-hour-a-day schedule. There was also schooling in weaving, sewing, and knitting.
“The policy of Fidel, the Central Committee, and the Ministry of the Interior is reeducation before release,” Lieutenant Colonel Lopez said. “We have psychologists, social workers, and lawyers on the staff. Some of our women choose to live in the nearby towns when they are released. They can continue to work in the prison factory and earn the same or better wages than they would in the city.”
Elena had asked a few polite questions, accepted the offer of orange juice, and was led to the cafeteria, where she sat drinking alone and listening to the distant sounds of the prison, the chatter of women’s voices, the churning of sewing machines.
Then a woman guard appeared with a full-lipped, angry young woman. The young woman’s dark hair was long, straight, and tied back at the neck. She was short and lean with the body of a model. She wore denim slacks and a denim blouse with denim buttons.
Elena asked Victoria to sit and the guard to excuse them for a few minutes. The guard nodded and disappeared, but Victoria did not sit. She crossed her arms defiantly and stood across from the Russian detective. Elena took her notebook from her pocket and went over her notes once more before looking back up at Victoria.
“You are not Cuban,” Victoria said.
“I am not Cuban.”
“You are some kind of Russian.”
“I am some kind of Russian.”
“Your Spanish stinks.”
“We can speak Russian.”
“I don’t speak Russian. Just Spanish.”
“Then you will have to suffer my Spanish.”
“Or not talk.”
“We will talk,” Elena said. “Sit.”
“You like men?”
“As a gender or …”
“For sex,” said Victoria, rubbing her finger along her lower lip.
“That is not relevant to our conversation,” said Elena. “Now sit.”
“It is relevant to our conversation,” said Victoria. “Maria liked men and women. Have you ever made love to a woman?”
“No,” said Elena. “Now you sit.”
“What is so important about my sitting?”
“I don’t like looking up, and I don’t want you uncomfortable and hostile.”
Victoria shrugged and sat across from Elena on the stone bench. She kept her arms folded and her eyes defiant.
“Thank you,” said Elena. “I have only a few questions.”
“I’m not in a hurry. I go back to the pressing machine when we’re finished.”
“Did you see Igor Shemenkov murder Maria Fernandez?”
Victoria laughed. “I see. You’re going to try to get him off. He’s a Russian and you’re … I saw him.”
“You actually saw him stab her?”
“No,” Victoria said. “One minute she was fine. Then we were out in the hall and she was alone with your Russian. The next minute we came back in and he is on his knees over her body with a knife in his hand and a scratch on his face.”
“Carlos and Angelica Carerra were with you in the hall the entire time?”
“Yes,” said Victoria, rolling her eyes to the ceiling at the stupidity of the question. “Yes. Yes.”
“To your knowledge, had Shemenkov ever acted violently toward Maria?”