“Yes,” said the colonel, sitting down in his large dark wooden desk chair and putting his fingertips together.
“Died of a heart attack Monday afternoon,” said Pankov quickly.
“I have reason to believe,” said Karpo, holding up the first sheet of Paulinin’s report, “that the foreign minister was murdered.”
Grigorovich shook his head again, this time in more open exasperation. Fifteen minutes later, when Emil Karpo had finished reading, Colonel Snitkonoy took the report, ordered the three men at the table to maintain absolute secrecy on this possible crime, and dismissed them.
When they were gone, Colonel Snitkonoy scratched his head. He had been suffering an overpowering itch of the scalp for more than half an hour and had resisted the pleas of his body to respond. Now he indulged and opened the file.
Rostnikov, he thought, would have handled this better. Rostnikov would have given him the information privately and said no more if he were not directed to pursue this bizarre possibility. Well, that was not quite so. Rostnikov would probably pursue it, but he would do so with some sense of discretion. Karpo was a dangerous man. All zealots were dangerous.
Karpo was a Communist. When others had taken the opportunity to renounce and abandon, Karpo had quietly insisted on retaining his Party identity and membership. At first this had seemed an act of near suicide, but recently, as food and jobs disappeared and Yeltsin began to appear in more and more devastating cartoons hung up for sale along the Arbat, Colonel Snitkonoy had begun to wonder if he should not keep his portrait of Lenin handy.
Now, in these explosive times, a bomb had been placed in the colonel’s hands, a bomb that could well destroy him. The implications of this murder, if it was a murder, were inescapable. Even if no one in the government or bureaucracy had murdered the minister, someone had certainly acted to conceal the cause of his death.
The colonel laid the file neatly before him on the empty desk, smoothed his hair, and reached for the phone.
Though there were many who considered Colonel Snitkonoy a buffoon who had been propelled to significance by a combination of impressive bearing, very good luck, and a highly professional though eccentric staff, there were few who doubted his professional integrity. It was one thing to survive by avoiding missions that ran high risks to one’s career. It was quite another thing to shirk responsibility when it was placed in one’s lap. He would have to bring Karpo’s report on the dead foreign minister to the attention of his superiors.
While the phone rang, the Wolfhound had only one major regret: that Rostnikov was not in Moscow so the whole thing could be dumped in his more ample lap.
SIX
Elena Timofeyeva found Rostnikov in a white plastic chair next to a white plastic table at the side of the pool of the El Presidente Hotel. The sun was low and a cool breeze wafted in from the Caribbean Sea a few hundred yards beyond the hotel. There were six similar tables around the pool in which no one swam. One table was empty. At the other tables sat small groups: a couple, a family that might have been Germans, a quartet of men between forty and sixty arguing in English and Spanish. And seated alone, a bottle of beer before him and a magazine in his hands, sat Povlevich, the thin KGB man whom Rostnikov had pointed out to Elena on the plane.
After Jaime and Abel had sheepishly dropped Elena at her hotel, she had rushed to her room, washed her face, combed her hair, and hurried down the stairs without waiting for the elevator, which she had already discovered suffered from chronic malaise.
When she arrived at the pool, Rostnikov was drinking something from a tall glass. Next to him sat a little man in thick glasses who was leaning forward and talking emotionally in barely passable English.
“I risk my job, maybe my life to talk to you,” the little man was saying as Elena approached. “But I must, Rosenikow.”
The man sensed Elena beside him, went silent, and turned his head to see her. His eyes were hilariously magnified behind the thick lenses. He was older than he had first appeared, maybe sixty, possibly even older.
“Señor Rodriguez,” Rostnikov said in English. “This is my colleague, Investigator Timofeyeva.”
The little man rose from his chair and took Elena’s hand. She was five-foot-five. The man barely came to her shoulder. He wore a disheveled, slightly oversize Madras jacket over a faded blue shirt and dark baggy pants.
“Mucho gusto,” she said.
“Servidor de usted,” he replied. “Habla español?”
“Si,” she said. “Pero es mejor si habla un poco despacio.”
“She speaks Spanish, Rosenikow,” Rodriguez said to Rostnikov.
“I observed,” said Rostnikov in English. “Please sit, Elena Timofeyeva. Señor Rodriguez is a journalist and a novelist. He is with that group at the other table, all writers here for a week of meetings. They have been drinking.”
“We have been drinking too much,” Rodriguez expanded.
“Too much,” said Rostnikov.
“I see,” said Elena. She placed her notebook on the table and sat down. The four men at the table across the pool reached a crescendo of Spanish-English argument.
“In the interest of international brotherhood,” Rodriguez said, “we meet every year and fight about nothing with great passion.”
A waiter appeared, a man in his thirties in black slacks and a white shirt.
“I suggest you have a rum drink and a hamburger,” said Rostnikov.
“I …” Elena began.
“It is all right,” Rostnikov said. “I have an adequate supply of Canadian dollars.”
Rodriguez nodded in agreement. Elena ordered and the waiter moved on.
“Señor Rodriguez …” Rostnikov began.
“Antonio,” said the little man. He placed his right hand on his chest as if he were about to make a sacred vow. “Por favor, Antonio.”
“Antonio and I have made an exchange,” said Rostnikov. “I have given him my four rolls of toilet paper, three bars of soap, my Bulgarian pen, and the promise of a shipment of paint from Moscow in exchange for four hundred Canadian dollars.”
Antonio Rodriguez shrugged and whispered, “I cannot spend foreign currency. It is against the law for Cubans. So what good does this money do me? What good does it do my country? You want to know how I got Canadian dollars? No, better for me you don’t know. Let me tell you somethin’.”
From the bar behind them came the smell of grilling burger and the sound of a Mexican mariachi band on the radio. Antonio was forced to raise his voice.
“I love my country. I would never leave Cuba. If we were attacked by the Americans or the Cuban exiles in America, I would fight them. I say you this knowing what I risk. I say you this knowing I’m a lot drunken. Fidel doesn’t know what to do. He mus’ step down, Rosenikow, you know?”
Rostnikov nodded and drank.
“But this you do not care,” Antonio continued. “You want only to save one fool of a Russian. I want to save my country, my people. I don’t hate Russians.”
Antonio Rodriguez was looking at Elena, so she replied, “I am pleased.”
“Pleased,” Rodriguez said with disgust. “The Soviet Union looked at us like some kind of troublesome peon colony. They found Fidel an annoyance. But when they needed good medical care, your leaders, where did they go? Right here, to Cuba. Did you know that?”
“Yes,” said Rostnikov.
“Good,” said Rodriguez, looking at each of the Russians. “Good.”
“What do you know about the Santería?” Elena asked.
“More than any man alive who is no a Santería,” Antonio Rodriguez said with a satisfied smile. He adjusted his heavy glasses on his rather small nose. “I have written of them, gotten to know them. Most of what you hear is crap shit. Despiénseme, but I hear so much garbage, it would make me to laugh if I wasn’t so fretting about my country.”